The Gastropub

Eating Seattle

2006-08-23T10:09:00.000-04:00

Where I have eaten and what I have consumed during the past 24 hours in Seattle:

Black Bottle

Macrina Bakery

Pike Place Fish

Beecher's Handmade Cheese

The Tasting Room/Wines of Washington

Matt's in the Market

Salumi

Licorous

Lark

Insignia -- for a significant fee

2006-02-25T23:04:00.000-05:00

Behold. A glass of the 2002 Joseph Phelps Insignia -- Wine Spectator's top wine of 2005. I drank the highly touted wine as part of a $20 five-wine flight at the winery back in December. Twenty dollars is a high tasting fee, but it's not a bad deal at all when you consider that a bottle of the almost-full Bordeaux blend (cabernet sauvignon, merlot, malbec, and petit verdot, but no cabernet franc) goes for a whopping $150 retail. Was the Insignia an excellent, boisterous wine? Yes. Was it worth $150 a bottle? No. The cost-to-quality ratio was way out of whack. (Though it was a steal at $4 for the glass.) Is any wine worth $150 a bottle? $75? $50?

This dish reminds me of my childhood

2006-02-25T21:59:00.000-05:00

Last night, Amy took me to the always tasty Firefly for dinner. After splitting a raw tuna appetizer spiked with jalapenos and paired with crunchy, matchsticked jicama, we dived into some hearty winter fare on what was, after all, a very cold night. Amy opted for the lamb stew. I went for the mushroom cassoulet. (We drank a delightful bottle of 2002 Chambolle-Musigny with our food, but that's another story for another day.)

The last time I'd eaten cassoulet was last winter in Quebec City, when my father and I stopped for lunch at the tiny Café Le Saint Malo inside the old town's walls. That sausage cassoulet went down like creamy insulation, which was ideal given that the temperature was nearly 35 degrees below zero. Firefly's cassoulet was significantly lighter and far heavier on breadcrumbs, though replete with the requisite white beans.

The cassoulet got me and Amy thinking about casseroles, and I told Amy that one of my favorite dishes as a very little kid was my grandmother's tuna casserole. The meal -- which screams '50s housewife to some -- was extremely simple: canned tuna, cream of mushroom soup, elbow macaroni, frozen peas and carrots, a sprinkle of Parmesan cheese, and perhaps a little milk for creaminess -- all mixed up and baked in a casserole dish. What I liked best about the finished product was how the elbows browned and hardened, allowing the pasta to do for the tuna mixture what the jicama did for the raw tuna at Firefly -- provide a textural contrast. My grandmother died when I was 10, and I haven't had a very basic casserole since.

I decided to change that tonight by recreating almost exactly my grandmother's casserole -- in part to remind me of what she used to make, and in part as a test run for future casseroles. While I boiled three-quarters of a box of Barilla elbow macaroni, I thawed a half-pound of frozen peas and carrots. Into my trusty metal mixing bowl, I poured a can of Campbell's lowfat cream of mushroom soup and a little under a pound of canned chicken. (Amy had picked up some at Target this week, and it substitutes nicely for canned tuna.) In went the thawed vegetables and the just-undercooked pasta (so as to allow the pasta to suck up some of the soup's flavor) and a bit of grated Parmesan cheese. I mixed the ingredients and poured the resulting goop into a Pyrex baking dish. Over the top, I sprinkled some fresh bread crumbs and a little more Parmesan. The whole thing went uncovered into a 400-degree oven for almost 25 minutes; really, I just wanted to ensure that the top got nice and crusty, how I like it.

And I ate the casserole Paula Deen-style -- right out of the oven. Just like Grandma used to make.

Olives in the raw

2005-12-23T01:37:00.000-05:00

When I was traveling through Sonoma County three weeks ago, I stopped in at the Olive Press in Glen Ellen to taste some of their housemade oils. Outside the shop, raw olives were everywhere -- on the ground, on Van Gogh-esque trees, and in bins awaiting brining or pressing. And although I'd eaten a raw olive once before (a not-yet-ripe green one off a tree outside Renoir's house in Cagnes-sur-Mer), apparently I hadn't burned my hands badly enough on the hot stove of extreme bitterness to avoid popping yet another olive into my mouth. This time, I chose a freshly dropped black olive from off the ground, hoping that its increased ripeness would make the taste milder. It didn't. I spit out the small piece of olive meat and tossed the now-lopsided orb into the woods.

Much to my curious delight, the Olive Press didn't have a monopoly on raw olives. I found more on trees at Trefethen Vineyards in the Napa Valley and freshly picked ones at the original Dean & Deluca, just south of Saint Helena. One does not find olive trees on the East Coast, and thus one does not find raw olives. Marveling at the rare fruit, I had a conversation with the produce folks there about shipping some back to Washington so that I could brine my own (using lye, I learned), but the logistics were just too difficult. Do people even do that out east? I find the thought of curing olives appealing in the same way I find baking bread appealing; you're making something edible out of something that's virtually inedible. You're bringing life to it.

I've recently found out the bad news that shipments of raw olives are generally finished until next winter. Until then, I'll have to be content with store-bought cured olives. In the meantime, I'm stocking up on lye.

Last of the Summer Drinks

2005-10-02T19:10:00.000-04:00

Raspberry mojitos (and snacks) at the Four Seasons Biltmore in Santa Barbara, Calif.

Kitchen Non-Confidential

2005-10-01T11:27:00.000-04:00

In honor of my good friend Caroline's very last day at work (next week, she moves to Philadelphia for a year-long job), Todd and I took her to lunch at Vidalia -- a high-end Southern-style restaurant in Washington. Caroline opted for Vidalia's signature dish, the always excellent shrimp and grits. Todd and I ordered off the special $19.90 lunch menu; to start, I had the scallops over quinoa, and then the trout, which came with lima beans diced okra. (I've come to hate okra, but that's not Vidalia's fault. Okra is simply a gooey vegetable. Well, perhaps that is Vidalia's fault. Isn't one of the marks of a truly great restaurant whether they can make you like something you thought you didn't?) Like everything at Vidalia, the food was consistently in the B+ range. That is to say, Vidalia's food is pretty much like every episode of Wings -- always good, but never, ever stunningly great.

And thus, had it not been for the earthquakes, the meal would have been a sad one (at Caroline's departure) but otherwise uneventful. Three times during the course of the meal, the restaurant -- which is located in a basement space -- rumbled loudly. And this being Washington, the dining room hushed at each rumbling, the patrons wondering if Vidalia would be doubling as a bomb shelter by the time dessert came out. No one offered any explanation to the puzzled diners. No one stopped the French presses. No one acknowledged the shaking. This left us to think that perhaps our table alone was shaking, much like that lone raincloud that follows unlucky cartoon characters wherever they walk. But the other diners' perplexed looks reassured us that we were neither specifically unfortunate -- nor crazy.

Perhaps worse (if indeed the rumbling was nothing more than an air conditioning unit acting up), a loud "Fuck!" emanated from the kitchen. This "Fuck!" was followed by several other "Fuck!"s and some muffled yelling. The manager and the wait staff wandered into the kitchen to determine the cause of the "Fuck!"s. Each person emerged from the kitchen into the dining room with an embarrassed smile. One server's eyes darted from patron to patron as if to discern whether she was giving up that she knew what had gone down among the pans. Did the rumbling have anything to do with the "Fuck!"s? Or were they separate occurrences? (It's not just me. Insurance companies are always interested in such questions.) Whatever the case, patrons should not have to wonder -- not necessarily because they deserve to be told, but because they shouldn't have to hear "Fuck!"s coming from the kitchen in the first place.

I'm fully aware that kitchen fights break out all the time. This type of stuff has been well chronicled in books such as Kitchen Confidential and Waiting. Indeed, when I asked one server what was going on, he said that he wasn't at liberty to say (the correct answer, as opposed to the incorrect response of silence to the rumbling), but that I could read all about it in Kitchen Confidential. For the shock value, part of me was glad to see it (or, hear it) happen yesterday. But another part didn't want the curtain of gentility to be pulled away. I would say that that's especially true in a restaurant catering to high-paying customers, but it's equally true in a place that serves up $5 burritos. If a restaurant allows its patrons to hear kitchen fights and unexplained rumblings, those patrons will inevitably wonder whether that inattention to customers spills over into the food in ways perceptible or imperceptible.

Salad dog days of summer

2005-10-01T11:20:00.000-04:00

An authentic Chicago hot dog, accompanied by a dill pickle, relish, mustard, tomatoes, and "sport" peppers (yes, they're hot) -- all on a poppy seed bun. Don't take a drug test after you've eaten one of these. And don't eat a three-course meal two hours after you've eaten one of these, as I did.

Master of my domain name

2005-09-30T23:36:00.000-04:00

Is The Gastropub's URL to cumbersome to remember? Now, you can stop by The Gastropub simply by typing http://www.thegastropub.com into your Web browser. We're here to serve you better.

(Speaking of service, I'm reminded of a sign I saw as a little kid outside an Empire Falls-esque diner during a day trip to Harpers Ferry, West Virginia: "Men: No shirt, no service. Women: No shirt, no problem." For some reason, I highly doubt that restaurant is still serving up scrapple.)

The Creamery and the clear

2005-09-18T17:53:00.000-04:00

Notwithstanding our having suffered the 1-2 punch of a broken-down car (me) and a stolen purse (Amy), Amy and I endeavored to get out of town a few weekends ago by any means necessary. We rented a car and headed north into central Pennsylvania, ending up in State College -- home of Penn State University. Wandering around campus, we happened upon the Creamery, a university-run shop that sells dairy products made by the school's cow herd via the fine folks at the Department of Food Science. Although tempted by the fresh butter and milk, our lack of refrigerator dictated that we needed to consume food on the spot. Accordingly, the ice cream was the only real option (and, in retrospect, would probably have been the only real option, even if we had brought a Playmate Cooler along).

I thought about getting the Paterno Peach (we were, after all, in Nittany Lion country), but we ended up splitting some cookies and cream. This was a perfect ice cream, slightly buttery with a moderate level of sweetness, nothing overblown -- made all the more enjoyable because it was an unexpected find. My friend Caroline introduced me to some fabulous gelato in Philadelphia last week, but I take true pleasure in the unadorned, ideal expression of something so simple and home-grown. No bells and whistles at the Creamery. Well, cowbells are okay.

Killing yourself to eat

2005-08-28T20:24:00.000-04:00

I just finished reading that brilliant Chuck Klosterman book, Killing Yourself to Live. The premise is that Klosterman, a music critic for Spin magazine, drives across the country ostensibly to visit the places where famous rock stars have met their early demises, but ends up trying to make sense of the relationships in his life.

This book is not about food. But Klosterman occasionally writes about where he eats along the way. And where he eats demonstrates his outlook on his on-again-off-again relationships, all of which come to an end by the end of the book. Klosterman eats at one of two types of places: 1) chain restaurants; and 2) restaurants that he frequented in his past. Both serve the same purpose -- to make him feel a little less lonely.

In the former camp are Cracker Barrel and the Olive Garden. Klosterman elevates Cracker Barrel to the "sublime" because "[y]ou can order chicken and dumplings with a side order of dumplings." He also claims/fantasizes that he fell briefly in love with a 19-year-old Cracker Barrel waitress who brings him dumplings and apparently reads Kafka. As for the Olive Garden, he says that "the Olive Garden is good; it always makes me happy." He adds that he wanted to go the Olive Garden because it was "in the news"; a Bachelor contestant claimed to wine-not-tires-heir Andrew Firestone that it was her favorite restaurant.

In the latter camp is the Uptown Bar and Grill in Minneapolis (his "emotive ground zero"), where he sauntered in twice a week during the summer of 1994 -- and "always for supper on Sunday night[.]" Indeed, he recalls that, the night before the '94 Lollapalooza, he ate a "delicious hot turkey sandwich with mashed potatoes and gravy while listening to a semi-hard rock band called Hester Moffet."

Klosterman chooses restaurants not for the food, but for the comfort, familiarity, and grounding they provide. The chains plug him into a larger community of people sharing a common experience; and like those people, Klosterman wants to fall in love and to be loved. Indeed, he frequently falls in love quite easily (see, e.g., mythical Cracker Barrel waitress above) and places value on relationships as relationships; the girlfriend, whomever she is, simply fills a role. Olive Garden makes it a piece of cake, er, tiramisu to fall in unchallenging love. The greasy spoons of his past allow him to recall those pleasant life episodes, those first girlfriends who gave him comfort. They force him to think about what could have been and to ponder whether those feelings are worth recapturing.

Fungi

2005-08-07T20:21:00.000-04:00

Mushrooms for sale at the farmers' market on the Embarcadero in San Francisco.

Make way for duxelles

2005-08-07T19:46:00.000-04:00

I respect Andrea Immer, but I don't really like Andrea Immer. For starters, the master sommelier very nearly talks down to her viewers on her Fine Living Network show, Simply Wine with Andrea Immer. The perky Immer also praises boring, uninteresting wines, mainly because the wineries give her major access for her show. But what Andrea Immer attempts to do is to make wine accessible to everyone, so that you don't have to walk into a male-dominated, Bordeaux-laden wine shop unarmed. And that is to her credit.

To that end, she came out with a food-and-wine pairing-essentials book, Great Tastes Made Simple, in 2002. Amy picked it up at a Super Target during our trip to her hometown of Orlando, Florida in January. While we were driving down to the Keys and back, she read excerpts of the Immer book to me. The blurb that captured my attention was about duxelles. According to Immer on page 85:

"[Duxelles are] the ultimate trump card. It's also easy to make. Very finely chopped mushrooms are slowly sweated in butter with some flecks of shallot until the mushrooms are very tender, reduced, and concentrated. In addition to seasoning with salt and pepper (always!), a squeeze of lemon is classically added to kick up the taste. I liked to add a little bit of white wine or sherry earlier in the cooking, in lieu of lemon."

For whatever reason (probably because I became fascinated by Jose Andres' simple mushroom preparation at Jaleo), I forgot about duxelles completely until Thursday evening, when I found myself saddled with mushrooms that were about to go bad. So, I chopped the hell out of some creminis and put together a riff on Immer's duxelles, opting to use both wine and lemon. The end result smelled like a rich mushroom stock that reminded me of a cream of mushroom soup I used to eat at the American Cafe when I was 9 or 10, something that's now perfect with an Oregon pinot noir or in Jack Czarnecki's kitchen. Based on Immer's remark that she typically made a batch on Sunday and pulled from it throughout the week, I poured the duxelles into a plastic container for future use. But for what?

This morning offered up the answer. Amy asked me to make her an omelette for breakfast before she went off to work at the wine shop. She reminded me that Immer folded the "classic culinary cornerstone" into "an omelette or stir[red] them into scrambled eggs." I combined some of the duxelles with grilled green peppers and put them into an omelette. The result was a step away from the vieille-ecole matching of eggs and white truffles, earthy and rich.

Immer suggests using duxelles as a topping for hamburgers, but I'm thinking that I might use them as a soup base. But what else can I use them for?

Boulevard of pork and greens

2005-07-10T09:36:00.000-04:00

After meeting my good friend C. for drinks at the Ferry Building, my girlfriend A. and I walked over to Boulevard to make our 9:15 p.m. reservation. It is the morning-after. Nancy Oakes fattened me up with potatoes, pork, chocolate, and wine. Then, she kicked me into the street. I am woozy, but nearly recovered. This is my story.

We each started with a glass of non-vintage Billecart-Salmon brut rose -- a mass-produced, but exceptionally well made sparkling pink wine from the Champagne region of France. A., the wine professional and sparkling devotee, had spied a bottle lounging in an ice bucket on the bar and gleefully asked for two glasses' worth. It's really everything you'd want from a sparkling wine -- fine streams of Don Ho-like tiny bubbles and a slightly nutty aroma that captured a hint of the original fruit. And to misappropriate "Dayenu," that would have been enough.

Although I'd heard a good buzz about the Sonoma fois gras appetizer, I simply don't fois' creamy density. I opted instead for the squash blossom gnocchi -- and not in small part because I had wanted so desperately to buy some squash blossoms that morning at the farmers' market. The potato-based pasta floated like buoys in a richly flavored veal broth, baby chantrelles and lobster bits swimming nearby. This is, quite obviously, a decadent dish. My only real gripe about it was that I couldn't see or taste any of beautiful orange squash blossoms that supposedly went into the gnocchi. Typically, squash blossoms are used as carriers for cheese or a meat mixture -- the same way a ravioli holds its goods. But here, I couldn't find any trace of them. It's all about managing expectations.

For her appetizer, A. chose the raw ahi tuna and hamachi with habanero peppers -- a dish whose description reeled her in because it reminded her of a similar dish she'd eaten recently at Nobu Next Door. The thinly sliced fish, made mildly hot by the habaneros, was what a true appetizer is all about -- a brisk, clean dish that paradoxically leaves you hungrier for your entree than when you had no food in your belly. She liked the soy-laden Nobu version better, but it was a matter of personal preference, she said. This dish was well executed.

As for the entrees, I ordered the pork because I'd heard that Nancy Oakes is all about precisely that. A. went for the rack of lamb -- a decision that allowed us to order a wine that matched both of our dishes. Because we're in California, we decided to go for a California syrah with some spiciness and depth that would stand up well against the heavy meats. We chose a 2003 Kenneth-Crawford syrah from the Santa Rita Hills outside Santa Barbara to do the job. The youthful ruby earthiness of the wine made me think of Bjork's cover of the Drifters' "Ruby Baby," which then repeated through my head until we'd polished off the bottle.

The taste of the pork reminded me of the barbecued spareribs that Chinese restaurants turn out -- marbled with sufficient fat and not dripping with sauce, which in this case happened to be a Mission fig glaze. I soaked up most of it with the white polenta, which had the fabulous texture of mealy mashed potatoes: a side dish with gravitas. A split grilled fig and small cauliflower tops rounded out the dish.

A's lamb was cooked to a perfect shiny medium rare, which made it difficult to determine where the glaze ended and the meat began. A potato tower watched over the two cuts of lamb, while the lamb guarded the garlicked spinach greens and pine nuts in the middle of the plate.

On the recommendation of our waiter, we then shared a chocolate cake with alternating layers of cake, mousse, and hardened chocolate -- the Italian flag en brun. Brooks cherries granita -- the icy taste of which reminded A. of Dairy Queen's Cherry Freeze -- joined the chocolate bomb.

Service was stellar. When I mentioned to my waiter apologetically that I kept catching my lip on a chip on the rim of the water glass, he wisked it away and brought another. In the "be careful what you wish for department," I had asked for -- on a friend's recommendation -- a table with a view (implicitly, I thought, of the Embarcadero and Bay Bridge). And we ended up in a table with a view -- out the windows on the other side of the restaurant. What did I learn? Being explicit pays. Just ask Jenna Jameson.

San Francisco treats

2005-07-09T21:08:00.000-04:00

Ah, vacation. A time when I can gorge myself without pummeling myself with guilt. Right now, in fact, I'm nibbling on chocolate-covered almonds left by the hotel staff. I don't need the almonds. But I want them. And I can have as many as I want. And I will. Notwithstanding the fact that I have a dinner reservation in three hours.

Vacation takes me to the California Coast, where my girlfriend and I plan to make our way from San Francisco to Los Angeles in 10 days. It might be nine days, but I brought 10 pairs of socks, so my estimate of 10 will have to do. We arrived in San Francisco late last night, but got started eating early this morning. Our hotel is just steps away from the Ferry Building on the Embarcadero -- home to a wonderful farmers' market that hums to life on Saturday mornings, of which this morning was one.

The smells hit me first. The basil, the lemons, the lavender. Then, the colors. Purple Japanese eggplants, white-and-green baby bok cho, orange zucchini flowers. The elation, followed soon after by the dual resentments: 1) because I lack a kitchen and a refrigerator for the road, anything I would consume would have to be eaten then and there; and 2) because I live in Washington, I am regularly deprived of things such oddities as lemon cucumbers, purple pole beans, pluots, and the aforementioned zucchini flowers.

To make the most of the market, we took advantage of free samples. First up were the plums -- orange-tinged, firm-fleshed, and clean. Next was a small cup of vanilla granola, which smelled identical to freshly brewed vanilla tea and had a tight, ultra-crunchy texture -- nothing like the cereally, Frosted Flakes-styled boxed granola. After sampling some small heirloom tomatoes, we dived into the cheeses. Our favorite was a cheese from the Cowgirl Creamery -- a mild, slightly earthy, sheep's milk concoction. A blue cheese spread from the Point Reyes Farmstead was a close second. We purchased only juice -- I drank freshly squeezed orange juice, while my girlfriend opted for a strawberry lemonade. What's great about fresh juice is that it's not a sugar-bomb. You could drink it all day long.

Inside the Ferry Building were scores of food shops that complemented the goods on the outside. A mushroom stand, an olive oil shop, gelato spot, antique cooking items. I nearly bought a 120-bottle Champagne riddler just because it looked pretty.

Not soon after sadly passing over dandelion greens and Hungarian peppers, we took the cable car up to Polk and California, where I hoped to eat lunch at the foodie-favorite Swan Oyster Depot. To my profound dismay, it was shuttered for the week. Without a lunch destination, we opted for a safe bet in San Francisco -- Mexican food. So, we headed down to the Haight, mostly because I wanted to hit Amoeba Music. We ate burritos and tacos at Zona Rosa, which, as California Mexican food goes, is merely average. But transplanted anywhere else, it would be a must-visit. Bursting burritos accompanied by cliantro-spiked salsa. In the kitchen, a man who spoke no English created a pile of sliced beef for the marination bin. Blood and juices pooled in the cutting board's moat.

A walk through Golden Gate Park and a visit to the Legion of Honor followed a short stop at Amoeba. From there, we took the bus to Vesuvio's Bar on Columbus Avenue -- home to the beat poets. How I missed the West Coast brews. My girlfriend opted for Anchor Steam on draught, while I went for the Widmer Hefeweizen, which I'd fallen in love with while we were in Oregon last summer. Let me say too that anti-smoking bans make all the difference when enjoying food and drink. You can actually smell and taste what you're putting in your piehole. And, when you're traveling, you don't have to pack the Febreze.

Tonight, after meeting an old friend for a glass of wine, we'll be dining at Boulevard -- which I understand is one of the best restaurants in San Francisco. Nancy Oakes is known for her pork, so I'm sure I'll have plenty to say about that tomorrow.

Dinner at my desk

2005-06-29T01:45:00.000-04:00

In what's becoming an increasingly frequent occurrence, I ate dinner at my office desk again tonight. Although I'd rather be dining at home, it's all for a good cause -- burning the midnight oil to help some folks in need. To keep us plugging away, my employer uses a system called Seamless Web to deliver food directly to its worker bees' door. The only real restrictions are that you're performing overtime work and that you stay within the generous $25-per-meal limit. Ah, the sweet incentivizing of working.

Behold the three-pronged art of maximizing your order:
1. Steer clear of places that charge a delivery fee (ruling out Takeout Taxi-affiliated restaurants).
2. Don't order from take-out spots based in Virginia or Maryland (increased delivery time and cost).
3. Never get involved with a woman with a tattoo of a dagger on her body.

The somewhat depressing notion of dining all'interno becomes more bearable when you can surround yourself with cartons of wakame salad, lemongrass chicken, tuna rolls, summer rolls, and a $4 bottle of Aquafina.

Fishhh...

2005-06-28T11:03:00.000-04:00

The best kept food secret in Washington is the tuna ceviche at the rarely frequented Agua Ardiente in D.C.'s West End. For 10 bucks, you get a school of diced tuna chunks, swimming in an addictive blend of sesame oil, soy sauce, and ginger. So simple, and so cleanly perfect. And if you're balking at the idea of paying $10 for a what amounts to tuna sashimi appetizer, consider that you're getting four times as much tuna as would be included in Firefly's good-but-not-as-good tuna sashimi appetizer. This isn't even to mention that you'd be paying at least $20 for the same amount of tuna at any of this town's fine sushi establishments.

Also, not to be missed is their papaya mojito, which isn't yet on the drinks menu. The briskness of the mint balances the sweetness of the fresh fruit and rum. The closest equivalent is the raspberry mojito at the Four Seasons Biltmore in Santa Barbara. And if you can't make it out there for drinks with Britney and Cletis, you can always hit up Agua.

Making Bob Marley spin in his grave

2005-06-27T17:14:00.000-04:00

Every month or so, I buy four buffalo hot dogs at the Dupont Circle farmers' market from the French guy who works at the Cibola Farms stand. I pick up ground buffalo meat for everyday cooking (I know, I know...), but I'm there for the tasty, spicier dogs. Tastier and spicier -- and healthier (though a hot dog's still a hot dog) -- than the chili half-smokes at Ben's Chili Bowl that deserve high praise. When I grill them up, I want to sing "Buffalo Hot Dogs" in the place of the title refrain of "Buffalo Soldier."

The Emerilization of the world

2005-06-26T18:20:00.000-04:00

Each year, the Mall in Washington plays host to the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. The Folklife Festival typically shines its benevolent paternalism on cultures of countries that are: 1) established tourist spots for wealthy Americans; 2) emerging tourist spots for wealthy Americans; or 3) formerly war-torn regions on the verge of becoming emerging tourist spots for wealthy Americans. If the organizers take on America, they walk a fine line between turning it into a cultural freakshow by trotting out people from the stereotypically poorest and historically most forsaken regions of the country (Appalachia and the Mississippi Delta) and calling attention to areas that need it. But this year, they dropped the charade and conjured up Food Culture USA -- gastro-tourism for wealthy Americans.

I stopped by on Saturday and camped out in the "Beyond the Melting Pot" tent for the cooking demonstrations. Let me preface this by saying that I love watching cooking demonstrations -- and not for the free food that often follows them. You can surf the aisles at Costco for that. No, I love watching cooking demonstrations because I pick up a wealth of techniques by watching the chefs do their thing.

First up was Steven Raichlen -- barbecue guru, Baltimore boy, and Barry Gibb lookalike. I watch his show, Barbecue University, virtually every Saturday morning and I don't even own a grill. Although some of his techniques necessarily apply only to outdoor grilling (e.g. building a three-tier fire with your charcoals), you can easily apply others to your work indoors (e.g. what is the thickness at which you should cover a steak?). In 45 minutes, he put together grilled shrimp on sugar cane skewers, grilled chicken with a tomato-based marinade, and grilled peaches with mint leaves. His dexterity isn't surprising when one considers that he once defeated an Iron Chef in a barbecue battle on the original Japanese television show.

What was alarming was the audience's reaction to his adding butter and spices. "I'm going to add a little more butter here," he remarked in making his "B-3" glaze for the peaches. The audience let out some whoops and "Yeahs" to indicate their approval of his adding more of a "bad" ingredient. And this is Emeril Lagasse's fault.

He's rightly considered the grandfather of the modern-day cooking show (he took the baton from Julia Child and ran with it) because he ushered in this notion of watching cooking as entertainment. Without Emeril, Iron Chef simply isn't popular in America. And I thank Emeril for that -- and for his outstanding food, which I've had twice in Orlando.

But what bothers me is the effect Emeril's show has had on the work of other chefs who perform in public. Raichlen wasn't adding butter to get a crowd response. He was adding butter because, well, things taste better with butter. But the audience's Pavlovian reaction was to hoot and holler. Which then shows the chef that he is a pretender to Emeril's throne.

Even worse, I was watching the pizza episode of NapaStyle with Michael Chiarello (the former chef at Napa Valley's Tra Vigne). NapaStyle stands alone as a cooking show that focuses on techniques rather than recipes. Chiarello had brought his his daughter Giana and her friends to help him make some pies. Chiarello asked one kid whether he wanted to add some more pepperoni. And the kid did so -- with a "Bam!" Yelling the competition's catch phrase in your host's house! Chiarello sheepishly shook it off, and the kid was just a kid. But you know that Emeril was doubled over in laughter at home.

When Emeril arrives at the Folklife Festival at the Mall, the audience will have found its muse. Until then, don't say "Bam."

Duck, duck, duck...

2005-06-25T18:17:00.000-04:00

Roasted ducks in the window of a restaurant in Toronto's Chinatown.

Back on the scene

2005-06-25T17:52:00.000-04:00

The Gastropub has re-opened its doors after a 4-1/2-month hiatus. Although I've been eating well and cooking some interesting things in the interim, work has been kicking my rump roast. My return to the literary kitchen doesn't mean that work has stopped kicking my rump roast. It's just that I'm ready to get up and do my thing. I wanna get into it, man. You know, like a, like a pasta machine, man. Movin', doin' it, you know. Can I count it off? One, two, three, four...

Say cheese

2005-02-12T18:03:00.000-05:00

Cheeses on display at a cheese shop in Amsterdam.

Burritography

2005-02-08T20:12:00.000-05:00

Tuesdays are $6.99 burrito night at Tortilla Coast. I did not know this fact before I met up with my girlfriend there tonight. Indeed, I hadn't even planned to eat dinner there. Just a drink. Maybe some chips and salsa. But the little square on the menu taunted me. Burritos -- regularly priced anywhere from $7.99 to $9.50 -- cost a mere $6.99 on Tuesdays. Tonight was Tuesday. And I had to have a $6.99 burrito. I had no choice. With apologies to Kanye West, like Chester the Cheetah needs Cheetos, I need burritos.

The Tortilla Coast burrito was about average -- certainly not the best I've ever had. That honor belongs to the barbecue tri-tip burrito (the "numero cinco") at Chilango's in Santa Barbara, California. A large tortilla is stuffed with grilled tri-tip sirloin, black beans, barbecue sauce, shredded romaine lettuce, diced white onions, salsa, and chiffonaded cilantro. When rolled up, the burrito is quickly rotated over the grilltop. When bitten, the slightly charred burrito shell bursts open, expelling into your mouth the aggregated scent and taste of all of Santa Maria.

Perhaps in memory of this burrito, I had ordered the barbecue chicken burrito at Tortilla Coast. This burrito was essentially nothing more than grilled chicken, peppers and onions wrapped in a large tortilla, which was then smothered in industrial-grade barbecue sauce and melted cheese. The barbecue sauce's sweet tanginess overwhelmed the burrito such that Tortilla Coast should rechristen it a "barbecue sauce burrito." Yet I ate the whole thing. If it were anything but a burrito, I might not have done so.

Although Columbia, Md., where I grew up, fancied itself a diverse social environment, its culinary options were anything but. Accordingly, my early dining-out experiences consisted of fast food, oddly outstanding New York-style bagels from the Bagel Bin, and Chinese take-out -- often from as far away as the China House in Silver Spring, about 25 miles away.

Whenever we got Chinese, my mother ordered moo shu pork. The moo sho pork required assembly from the contents of three separate packages. Inside the "white-paper-Enjoy!" box was the core part of the meal: shredded pork tenderloin with sauteed cabbage, wood-ear mushrooms, and bamboo shoots in soy sauce. A foil wrapper hid four small flour pancakes, each with the thickness of a crepe and the consistency of a fresh tortilla. A tiny transparent Solo plastic cup held a generous dollop of sweet hoisin-plum sauce.

To construct the dish, you placed a pancake flat on your plate and spread some of the plum sauce over it. After placing two large spoonfuls of the sauteed pork mixture in the center, you draped the nearest pancake edge over the top of the mixture, folded in the sides, and rolled up the lumpy cylinder. The moo shu pork was now ready for a good scarf-down.

The tightly packed moo shu pork inherently created a layering of flavors. And the stuffed pancake set the stage for my affinity for the similar burritos. The Chinese dish was merely an ethnic variation on a burrito. An egg roll is perhaps an even closer relative. European sandwiches, Italian canneloni, the Greek gyro ("Say yee-roh!") and North African brik are among its cousins, all created generally independently from a desire to combine multiple types of food in an easy-to-handle format. The burrito is a more recent entry in this genre, its origins in Northern Mexico in the early 1930s.

When I moved to Philadelphia for college, I began to frequent a local place called the Santa Fe Burrito Company. It was a far cry from the El Torito Mexican food of my youth. The ingredients were completely fresh, and the contents of the burrito were prepared when you ordered them. My favorite was the chicken mole burrito -- a multi-ingredient, slow-simmered concoction that veered between chipotle and chocolate, similar to the famous Oaxacan mole dish, which itself was an herb-based Jersey stir-fry. I don't know if it was great, but it was my first burrito, and I remember it as if it were momentous.

Not soon after I had discovered my love of burritos, my dad drove the car onto the sand during a winter family trip to Ocean City, Md. The car, which did not have four-wheel drive, got stuck, stranding us on the cold beach. After a tow truck extracted the car and sent us on our way, we searched for food and found a place called La Hacienda -- one of the few spots open in the quiet off-season. Starved, my brother and I each ordered a deluxe beef burrito -- a behemoth burrito the size of four Taco Bell burritos, but far more elegantly spiced (not to mention that the ground beef mixture wasn't prepared en masse in a trash can lined with plastic). The kitchen finished the burrito in the oven, providing it with a charred crust beneath a coating of cheese and pico de gallo. I was content, but I would later find out that this was still the child's play world of the burrito.

During law school, I made my second trip to California to interview with a federal judge for a clerkship in Santa Barbara. I had heard about the renowned Santa Maria tri-tip steak (California-speak for the bottom sirloin cut of a cow), but didn't want to shell out a staggering $20+ for a sample. As I walked down State Street for the very first time, I looked at the menus of the many restaurants that lined the thoroughfare. Chilango's offered a tri-tip burrito for around $5, and I jumped at the opportunity to try tri-tip. This burrito was ideal.

After I moved to California, I sampled probably hundreds of burritos. The ones I liked best were relatively unadorned -- grilled marinated meat with beans, cilantro, salsa, and onions. No cheese, no guacamole. You know, it's the notion that the Holy Grail was not gilded, but wooden.

Now that I live in Washington, a quality fix is harder to come by. Chipotle and Baja Fresh are quite excellent substitutes for the West Coast's real deal. But smaller, local outfits such as the hidden Well-Dressed Burrito and Tortilla Coast stand out simply because they are an oasis in the desert. But does it matter if the water is muddy?

My good friend from work recently moved to another one of the company's offices. She invited me out for lunch, and we ate at the Red Sage's Border Cafe. Among the daily specials, our server listed roasted duck enchiladas, which sounded quite appealing.

"What would you like?" the server turned to me and asked.

"I'll have the steak burrito."

Alien gourds

2005-01-31T08:40:00.000-05:00

Oddly shaped squash for sale at a city market in Montreal, Quebec.

Doctor's Associates, or: How I Reconciled My Dislike of Jared with My Love of Subway

2005-01-28T17:08:00.000-05:00

I grew up in the neo-socialist community of Columbia, Md. Founded in the mid-1960s by real-estate-mogul-with-a-conscience James Rouse, the unincorporated Central Maryland town was envisioned as a racially and socially blended Lake Wobegon. A supposedly perfect place where children could wander the woody paths while their progressive parents tended houses on acorn-strewn streets named for poems and literary characters. It was Stepford gone liberal and erudite.

Rouse divided the city into villages, each with its own village center. Each house within a village was theoretically within walking distance of the village center, where residents could shop for groceries, grab a bite to eat at one or two of the tiny local restaurants, or gather at the town hall to discuss who had incurred the wrath of the village's feared Architectural Committee by painting his shed fuchsia.

I lived in the village of Harper's Choice in the neighborhood of Longfellow on Eliot's Oak Road, the only street not named for something out of "Hiawatha" or "The Wreck of the Hesperus." When we were old enough, my brother and I were permitted to walk the bucolic half-mile path from our townhouse to the village center for lunch. With the $20 bill our mother had given us, (she expected at least $10 change from the excursion), we could buy congealing slices of New York-style pizza at Columbo's, a painfully unadorned ham sandwich with throat-scratching Fritos at the Red Caboose (their saving grace was excellent rainbow sherbet), or salad from the rapidly rotting items on the SuperThrift salad bar. To a suburban 9-year-old, the act of purchasing food himself is more important than the quality of the food that he is purchasing.

In the mid-1980s, Subway opened one of its first Maryland franchises in my village center. Owned and operated by a young Korean family that had recently come to the United States, the Subway was at once a local sandwich shop where you might meet up with a classmate after school and a purveyor of consistently fresh and tasty sandwiches. Not long after Subway arrived, the now useless Red Caboose gave way to a Chinese restaurant and Columbo's yielded to local chain Jerry's Subs and Pizza.

I marveled at the limitless concoctions I could buy at this new Subway for less than my $5 allotment -- a footlong tuna salad sandwich, an Italian B.M.T., a meatball sub, or a Cro-Magnon steak-and-cheese hoagie. And for my toppings, I could choose from standard lettuce and tomato to then-more outrageous green peppers, olives, and hot peppers -- a far cry from the lettuce-tomato-onion-pickle prison of the Roy Rogers "Fixin's Bar." With a 25-cent bag of Utz barbecue potato chips on the side, I was stuffed for cheap.

It was at this Subway that I learned what went into classic sandwich combinations. It was also at this Subway that I learned fast food isn't necessarily a heart attack in every bite. When a McDonald's planted itself across from the new Chinese restaurant, the old Subway's sales took a hit. When a shiny, new Subway opened in the nearby Hickory Ridge village center (the Mondoburger to the original's Good Burger), the old Subway started to take on water. And when the town remodeled the village center and left the old Subway invisible from the street, the old Subway sank.

By the time the old Subway closed, I had a driver's license and could high-tail it over to the new Subway in Hickory Ridge for lunch. And I must admit that the food was fresher than at the old Subway and the service more efficient. A Mark McGwire-lookalike named Dylan ran the place. He had smartly assigned one "Sandwich Artist" to pulling the bread from the oven and cutting it open, the next to meats and cheeses, the next to toppings, and the last one -- usually himself -- to wrapping the sandwiches and manning the register. The new Subway was visible from the street and boasted a steady supply of customers from the nearby high school and the burgeoning neighborhood. They offered footlong sandwiches for $2.99 on Tuesdays, guaranteeing a line out the door at lunchtime at least once a week.

During my four years in college at the University of Pennsylvania, I very easily could have gone through Subway withdrawal. I lived on campus, and the closest Subways were on the Drexel University campus and at 30th Street Station -- fairly short walks from Penn, but crossing the Market Street barrier to the north seemed like going to another country. More important, Philadelphia is the quintessential sandwich town. Why go to Subway when you can easily get a stellar hoagie from the local Lee's Hoagie House or Wawa? Only to break the monotony of an embarrassment of riches. I would only eat at Subway when I returned home for breaks -- and then exclusively at the Hickory Ridge subway, the paragon of efficiency and quality.

Just after I graduated from college, Subway introduced "Jared" as its spokesman. The chain was growing rapidly and repositioning itself as a healthy alternative to the Burger Kings and McDonald's of the world. It had seized upon as its new spokesman Jared Fogle -- an Indiana University student who lost 245 pounds off his 435-pound frame by eating a spartan diet comprised only of Subway sandwiches. All of a sudden, Jared was everywhere. He waved his old oversized pants like a bullfighter's cape in front of charging dieters who desperately wanted a quick fix.

Who couldn't admire this newly svelte, Nietzschean ubermensch who had conquered his weight problem by using institutions to his advantage? Me and the majority of Americans. Whereas it was hard not to perceive his initial appearances as borderline inspirational, his ubiquitousness and holier-than-thou attitude made me wish that he would cover himself with those big pants -- a living, breathing version of a Cristo sculpture.

The introduction of Jared was a harbinger of Subway's impending corporatization. The longstanding practice of cutting the top out of the submarine-shaped loaf of bread gave way to slicing the bread through the middle. Quality and efficiency sometimes fell by the wayside as it became easier to land a Subway franchise. Subways franchises became more consistent in their offerings (just try to find barbecue chicken or sprouts nowadays). New baked breads left a scent on your clothes when you left.

I valued those Subway franchises that retained some measure of independence or quirkiness in an environment pushing toward the uniform. When I began law school in Philadelphia, my access to a Subway became extremely easy. I lived downtown, and I often grabbed dinner at the Subway inside the Sunoco gas station at 22nd and Walnut streets. A tongue-less woman named "Santa" made Philadelphia-inspired behemoth subs on which you could get hot and sweet peppers; like a true Philadelphian, she counseled against mayonnaise in favor of oil and vinegar. Off Route 95 in Christiana, Del., an aged Subway franchisee held tight to her old ways and cut the top portion out of the bread. And back in Columbia, the Hickory Ridge Subway made the best of its corporate trappings.

Not surprising considering the chain's proliferation, I have visited unequivocally bad Subways across the country, including several in Washington that are way too stingy with their frequent-buyer stamps. But what keeps me coming back to the chain is the knowledge that I can nearly always get a sandwich with a high cost-to-quality ratio. I can get a sandwich that I can modify according to what I want that day. And wherever I am, I can get a sandwich that reminds me of proudly trekking to the village center with my brother, my mom's $20 bill in hand.

Yellow in blue

2005-01-25T23:32:00.000-05:00

The Hawaiian kids make flavored snow cones at Matsumoto Shave Ice on the North Shore of Oahu, Hawaii.

Grocery list

2005-01-25T22:22:00.000-05:00

This weekend in Quebec City, I chanced upon the oldest grocery store in North America, J.A. Moisan. The quality of its produce, prepared foods, and imported goods inspired me to list the top five grocery stores I've ever been to -- an act that would undoubtedly do Rob Gordon proud. Here in Washington, it's nearly impossible to shop at a single grocery store if you want quality ingredients at fair prices. And don't talk to me about Wegmans. Sure, it's got everything truffles to peanuts, but the variety simply isn't worth confronting the throngs of people or driving out to Chantilly. No one wants to drive in Northern Virginia. But the places below come close to doing it all.

1. Ralphs Marketplace, Santa Barbara, California and various locations throughout California. Combining a high cost-to-quality ratio with virtually everything you could ever want, Ralphs Marketplace is the best. The fruits and vegetables are stellar and reasonably priced, the meats are fresh and varied, and the place is open 24 hours a day. The standard of Ralphs is what chain grocery stores should strive to reach.

2. Albertsons, Morro Bay, California. Owing to its Central Coast location, the Albertsons in Morro Bay not only carries fantastic quality produce and meats (including tri-tip) at fair prices, but its wine selection is one of the best in the state -- and thus in the country.

3. Lazy Acres, Santa Barbara, California. I have never seen a better produce and wine sections than the ones at Lazy Acres. Plus, it carries Straus Family Creamery butter, which I have already confessed I could eat by the stick. My only problem with the place is that you can't by a bottle of Coke there. Why is it that the fancy organic places deny us simple comforts?

4. J.A. Moisan, Quebec City, Quebec. Although Moisan is small, the prepared foods are excellent, and the import selection superb. Want lavender syrup and fresh leeks in January? It's OK!

5. Reading Terminal Market, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. So, it's not a grocery store per se. But the old market pulls together wonderful meats, vegetables, and personalities under one huge roof. Obscure cheeses, quality hoagies, and Mennonites, oh my! It would be higher on the list, but you can't buy wines there -- and, no, Blue Mountain Vineyards doesn't count.

Honorable mentions
Trader Joe's, all locations that sell wine. Nobody doesn't like Charles Shaw.
Publix, Florida's wonderful supermarket chain.
Whole Foods (high quality, but simply too expensive for daily use).
Shoppers Food Warehouse, Alexandria, Virginia. Very high cost-to-quality ratio and an extremely complete international food section. Plus, I once saw the Iraqi president shopping there.

Conch-ed out

2005-01-25T19:42:00.000-05:00

A plate of conch fritters at Alabama Jack's on remote Card Sound Road in Key Largo, Florida.

Restaurant Week: By the numbers

2005-01-21T16:00:00.000-05:00

Last week ended the latest installment of Restaurant Week here in Washington. Restaurant Week comes twice a year, and it's a time when you can eat a three-course meal at many of Washington's best restaurants at lunch for only $20.05 and at dinner for $30.05. Because I left for my vacation halfway through the Week, I had no choice but to cram the experience into the two nights at the front end.

Although the prices often represent a significant deal when you consider that a dinner entree alone often costs $30 around here, the downside to Restaurant Week is that a product quality/service drop may accompany the price drop. With restaurants pulling in less cash per four-top, they may tend to rush through service to maximize turnover. And with less frequent diners showing up at restaurants to take advantage of the lower costs, the restaurants may not feel the need to pull out all the stops.

Consider the two restaurants that I hit. The first stop was 1789, a Washington institution that has been around for more than 60 years. With its prime spot near Georgetown University, 1789 has a constantly renewing client base of visiting parents wishing to take their student-scholars out for a fancy dinner, not to mention foodies who show up for the creative grub. The service at 1789 was leisurely and relaxed -- and the quality of the food outstanding. I started with the pumpkin ravioli smothered in chanterelles, continued with the venison and lentils, and ended with an apple Charlotte. My girlfriend started with the French onion soup, continued with the restaurant's signature rack of lamb (for a $10 supplement -- a Restaurant Week trick used by many restaurants, including Vidalia, to cover, and maximize costs), and ended with the white chocolate creme brulee. There was no indication that the service/food quality had fallen along with the prices. Indeed, the 1789 brass seemed to recognize that Restaurant Week is a chance for restaurants to attract new customers with a special deal to get them in the door.

The second stop in my Restaurant Week tour was Butterfield 9. Butterfield 9 is a new American restaurant that is always solid, but never creatively great. I started with the shallot soup with sliced duck confit, a bit oily but otherwise richly sweet. The next course was a lightly breaded cod with sauteed greens. Again, a bit oily, but otherwise not terribly flaky or dry. The dessert was an outstanding Mexican chocolate cake that hovered between pastry and mousse. For 30 bucks, not too shabby. The problem? From the outset, it was clear that it was Butterfield 9 management's lone objective to run through as many customers as possible -- and thus to rack in as much cash as possible on a night when the big spenders don't come out to play. The entree came out right on the heels of the soup, allowing the absolute minimum time for digestion. The server almost literally threw the dishes down on the table, picking them up as soon as it appeared that anyone was getting close to finishing. And as we finished our port with dessert, the maitre d' twice asked us if we needed anything else -- translation: get the hell out so that we can use your table again.

If I pay $30 for a complete meal -- even if it's less than the usual price tag, I don't want gruff, hurried service. If a restaurant signs on to do Restaurant Week, not only should it live up to the standard to which it should aspire on a regular night, it should go above and beyond -- to reel in those folks who dine out less.

I won't return to Butterfield 9. But if I have some cash to burn, I'll certainly go back to 1789.

Sugar bombs

2005-01-09T17:57:00.000-05:00

A display of "gaufres," or waffles, at a bakery in Brussels, Belgium.

Jersey stir-fry

2005-01-09T16:52:00.000-05:00

In a little more than three days, my girlfriend and I are skipping town for vacation. The one problem is that we ran low on food several days ago. Because of our recent busy schedules, neither of us had time to go to the grocery store (or, as my Philadelphia-based friend Buster says, "go food shopping") when it actually mattered. Much like the two-man crew on the International Space Station, we've had to subsist mostly on takeout from Moby Dick House of Kabob -- and make use of whatever odds and ends are lying around in the refrigerator and cupboards.

Before I leave town for an extended trip, I have but one grocery-oriented goal: use up whatever perishables are in the house. According to my friend Bob, a meal made from throwing together such eclectic items is called a "Jersey stir-fry." Similar to the concoctions that my classmates and I made in first grade from weird lunch foods in the school cafeteria, a Jersey stir-fry may contain anything and everything. The lone difference is that a Jersey stir-fry can and should be consumed in the absence of small-scale gambling, dares, and promises of "10 cartons of milk to wash down the hot sauce if you eat it." Jersey stir-fries are not limited to pre-vacation times; they may be eaten during busy periods when grocery-shopping is impossible; before moving (so as to get rid of perishable foods that you can't take with you); or for fun -- as when Kramer wanted to find out how far he could drive on gas fumes.

The origins of the term "Jersey stir-fry" date back to the Hundred Years War. In 1468, a Chinese adventurer named Jiang Lao approached King Edward IV in London with a proposition: he would help the king to take back the English Channel island of Jersey from the French in exchange for four acres of coastal land on the island for use as a small farm. Recognizing the strategic importance of Jersey in his ongoing battles with the French and the relatively low cost to the kingdom of ceding a measly four acres, the king agreed. He generously outfitted Jiang with a rowboat, a shield, and two weeks' worth of dried mutton and leeks. Jiang soon arrived on Jersey, but found it heavily guarded by French forces. He hid in a rocky crevice while he planned his next move. Unable to make headway after two weeks, Jiang used up all his provisions but one dried leek. The situation was dire. He netted a fish from the Channel and picked some wild dill growing near a northwest-facing beach. Starving, he built a fire and fashioned a makeshift pan from his shield. Jiang, a top chef back in China, expertly fileted the fish and stir-fried it with his dill and leek. The wonderful scent brought the French troops out of their camps, whereupon they discovered the heretofore hidden Jiang. Impressed by his culinary ingenuity with random ingredients, the French troops surrendered their weapons to Jiang, who immediately took Jersey for Edward IV and England. The Jersey stir-fry was born.

That was a big lie. The Jersey stir-fry actually derives from the same New Jersey-based line of humor that created the term "Newark tuxedo" to refer to a sleeveless undershirt -- or a "wifebeater," to use the parlance of our times. The comedic theory is that New Jersey is a trashy place whose citizens may view trashy things as luxurious. Bob himself is from New Jersey, so I don't feel too bad. Yesterday, I made a Jersey stir-fry consisting of couscous, cream of mushroom soup, diced fennel, and diced carrots. Today, I made two Jersey stir-fries: 1) a chicken salad sandwich using my emergency can of diced chicken, a spoonful of mayonnaise, Old Bay, and diced fennel (hey, I bought two bulbs on a whim last week, OK?); and 2) chocolate cookie malt frozen yogurt from soon-to-go-bad vanilla yogurt, Whoppers chocolate malt syrup I picked up in Hershey, and ground Moravian double chocolate cookies. Together, these "trashy" things were nothing short of phenomenal.

It's a lot like that old Food Network show Door-Knock Dinners, where famous chefs show up with Gordon Elliott at a random house and try to whip up a gourmet meal from whatever's in the kitchen. Often, the best meals are generated out of necessity. With virtually nothing in the cupboard, the world is my mock oyster.

Le vert et le brun

2005-01-06T23:30:00.000-05:00

It's not a novel by Stendhal; it's a basket of fiddleheads and a basket of morel mushrooms at the fabulous Granville Island Public Market in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Ten sticks of butter

2005-01-06T21:33:00.000-05:00

When I lived in Santa Barbara, I wandered the aisles of the 24-hour Ralphs supermarket for relaxation. I would do this at 2 in the morning, when my only aislemates were UCSB students hunting for Corona, bread distributors restocking the shelves, and the Dude drinking half and half out of the carton. I found contentment in picking over pluots and persimmons (fuyu, not hachiya) in the middle of the night.

The District of Columbia has no such luxuries. Sure, there's the 24-hour CVS in the Ritz-Carlton. It does the job in a pinch, but it's really just a pretender to the throne. Faced with the loss of the heroin that was Ralphs, I've turned to the methodone of Great Chefs of the World -- which, thanks to the miracle of TiVo, I can watch at 2 in the morning if I so choose. When I hear Joe Byrd's bass kicking off the theme song followed by the rest of the Charlie Byrd Trio playing over images of people skiing in the Alps or lounging on Elbow Beach in Bermuda, I'm lulled into a pleasant vegetative state that may or may not include drooling.

Like a meal, the show is divided into three parts -- the appetizer, the entree, and the dessert. Typically, each course comes from a chef who works in a different region of the world. The Charlie Byrd Trio's music plays only during the beginning and end of each segment -- never while the chef is preparing the dish. Indeed, while the chef prepares and cooks, the only background noises are the humming of a nearby walk-in refrigerator or the Wolfe-ian fwalops of the wisk working through eggs, sugar, and milk.

Many of the featured chefs do not speak English, which means that they describe the cooking process or the recipe in their native tongues -- typically German (for the pastry chefs, who are nearly always Austrian), French, or Italian. This also means that the show must enlist a narrator to explain in English precisely what's happening.

The narrator is Mary Ann Conroy, a native of New Orleans whose soft Southern accent doubles as Calgon. Great Chefs does not feature "light" or "low-fat" dishes. We're talking real-deal, heart-attack-in-every-bite, classically prepared dishes that contain butter. Or, as Ms. Conroy calls it, "buddah." And not just a pat of butter. Two sticks of butter. Five sticks of butter. Ten sticks of butter. Yes, it's glorious. I could watch episode upon episode, not only for the bountiful skills and ideas, but for Ms. Conroy to roll another "Chef then adds two sticks a'buddah" off her tongue.

Sometimes, ten sticks of butter isn't nearly enough.

A surefire New Year's hangover cure

2005-01-01T15:22:00.000-05:00

At Nevada's In-N-Out Burger flagship store at Industrial and Tropicana in Las Vegas, a Double-Double and "well done" fries await a scarf-down.

Cold fusionberry

2004-12-31T20:46:00.000-05:00

Move over, Dr. Emma Russell -- there's a new cold fusionist in town. Sure, my successful attempts at cold fusion have not yet averted a mass revolt in post-Communist Russia over soaring energy prices. But my cold fusion tastes better. Indeed, my cold fusion brings all the girls to the yard. My cold fusion is better than yours. My cold fusion is homemade ice cream.

For the holidays, my girlfriend gave me an ice cream maker. I didn't even know that I wanted an ice cream maker until I saw what one had wrought at a recent dinner party. The dinner party host and chef -- now a culinary student in New York -- had similarly received an ice cream maker as a birthday gift from her boyfriend. After the meal, she extracted a white plastic container from her freezer. Placing it on the kitchen island's countertop, she peeled off the lid to reveal the ice cream equivalent of "moonshine" -- a completely homemade, non-Ben & Jerry's honey lavender ice cream. She dropped a scoop into my bowl, and I immediately went to town. The texture was the perfect balance between rich and light. Unlike store-bought ice creams, this one wasn't cloyingly sweet; the natural flavors did all the work. I turned to my girlfriend and told her that I needed -- yes, needed -- an ice cream maker.

Dare to dream. My girlfriend e-mailed the host and asked her for the exact make and model of her ice cream maker and whether she liked it. The host replied that she loved the thing -- that it was simple to use and that it produced excellent results. My girlfriend was sold. She bought the Cuisinart CIM-20 Automatic Frozen Yogurt-Ice Cream & Sorbet Maker at the local Williams Sonoma.

When I opened it, I nearly did the Dance of Joy. Small kitchen appliances do for me what a new bandsaw did for Tim "The Toolman" Taylor. Two days later, after freezing the aptly named freezer bowls, I tried to make my first batch -- the raspberry sorbet from the recipe booklet that accompanied the machine. To avoid super-sweetness, I halved the two cups of sugar that the recipe called for and replaced the frozen raspberries with a slightly larger bag of frozen blackberries, blueberries, and raspberries. After suffering an early utensil casualty (I accidentally shredded my plastic icing smoother in the blender when I used it to push the frozen fruit into the blender's rotating blade.), I inserted the mixing arm in the now frozen freezer bowl and poured in the mixed elements. The freezer bowl went onto the ice cream maker's rotator.

I flipped the on-off switch and waited twenty minutes for the magic to happen. This must have been how Dr. Russell felt when she watched to see if her cold fusion machine would work under President Karpov's hand. (If you can't tell already, I admit that I enjoy watching The Saint. If that lurid detail precludes me from being chosen as President Bush's next Homeland Security secretary, so be it.) Twenty minutes later, Tretiak was finished and Simon Templar nearly free! Um, no. But the sorbet was done. The color was a ruby red, and its consistency was closer to that of ice cream than sorbet, notwithstanding the fact that no dairy products went into the mix. I put the bulk of it into a cleaned-out Chinese food takeout bowl for freezer storage and dropped two spoonfuls into a bowl for immediate consumption. It tasted much like a Jamba Juice smoothie, but with a deeper berry flavor. I had made cold fusionberry.

Although I hadn't mysteriously shaken off my rare heart condition or gotten Simon Templar out of trouble in the process, I'd made one of those elemental food items -- like bread, cake, or wine. I had harnessed the power of nature and given life to fruit and sugar! Okay, so I'm vastly overstating it. But I did make something delicious from scratch.

This afternoon, I used three of the clementines that my grandfather gave me yesterday to make a lovely clementine-honey frozen yogurt. It won't save the world. But unlike the crappy frame I made in my middle school shop class, the frozen yogurt was fun to make and went down easy. Form and function.

White truffle madness

2004-12-30T20:13:00.000-05:00

At Per Se, the server shaves slices of white truffle over the top of a dish of risotto.

It's not a restaurant review, Per Se

2004-12-29T20:48:00.000-05:00

When I was up in New York in November for my old boss' 85th birthday party at The Penn Club, I had the opportunity to go to Per Se -- Thomas Keller's highly touted restaurant in the new Time Warner Center. According to many, it's damn near impossible to snag a reservation to eat there, especially given both its Hiltonesque "hotness" and the fact that that you have only a brief window of time -- two months to the day you want to go -- to reserve your spot. Most people try calling the main reservation number to land a space. There is, however, another way. A nearly secret way. And it doesn't involve posing as Richard Parsons.

The alternative route is to use Open Table. The word on the street is that the online restaurant reservations site makes available one two-top and one four-top each day, two months in advance of your desired dining date. There's no guarantee that you'll win one of the coveted tables, but a second, merit-based system is better than none at all. I managed to snare the four-top, but, hey, I'm tenacious.

Anyway, Per Se. Given the fact that I have advertised this site as one that values reasonably priced cuisine and a high cost-to-quality ratio, it may strike you as odd that I plan to tell you about my meal at the restaurant. But the fact is that, at $150 a head in exchange for nearly flawless service, exceptional ingredients, and careful preparation, that price is a bargain for what you get.

Per Se sits in the lavish Time Warner Center, just across the way from the V Steakhouse on the fourth floor. You enter next to faux blue wooden barndoors through automatic sliding glass panels, the former merely to evoke the countryside in an atmosphere that's quite clearly urban. And that's the lone problem with Per Se; it's trying too much to be like the French Laundry and not trying hard enough to find its own identity.

The dining room overlooks Central Park, which we -- my girlfriend, my father, my brother, and I -- saw transform from light to dusk as we ate (we had a 5:30 reservation; if you get a reservation, you don't complain about the time). Of course, we all opted for the chef's tasting menu, which, at $150, was $25 more than the French Laundry's menu -- but the rent is higher, after all. We elected to do wine pairings as well, rather than buy several bottles. (If you're already going to spend at least $200 per person, then you should go all out.)

Before the meal began, we started with aperitifs. My brother and I each had a glass of 2001 Condrieu viognier, and my dad and my girlfriend had a glass of 1997 Schramsberg sparkling. As we finished our glasses, they brought out the amuse bouche -- the miniature poppyseed coronet, engorged with creme fraiche and topped with a scoop of sesame oiled tuna tartare. The time that I took to finish it was inversely proportional to its size; I savored each of the four bites that it merited.

Our first course was the famed Oysters and Pearls. The dish was identical in form and flavor to the West Coast edition, and it was paired with a light, slightly effervescent Basque white wine.

For the next course, we went off the tasting menu (foregoing the Hawaiian hearts of peach palm salad or the Moulard duck fois gras au torchon) and tacked on a $40 supplement for choosing the white truffle risotto. Just as the French Laundry has a "truffle boy" dedicated to presenting and shaving off slices of the gnarly goodness, the truffle boy's East Coast counterpart soon appeared with the truffle box. He opened it and instructed us to sniff what he described as "the first truffle of the season from the region of Alba." The servers then brought out the cymbal-covered risotto dishes and pulled off the tops two by two, as if they were mechanized German
clock figures. Before too much risotto steam could escape skyward, the truffle boy moved from dish to dish, shaved generous portions over top of each bowl. Another server spooned hot browned butter in Pollock-like splotches over the truffle shavings to cook the spores on
site and extract their scent. The wine pairing remained the Basque white, but I really couldn't have cared less about it at that point. As Frank Bruni wrote in his review, "I still remember the first [bite], and how insanely happy it made me, and the last, and how ineffably sad I was."

Throughout the evening, the service was knowledgeable and precise, but a bit more formal and stilted than I would have liked -- especially when compared to Per Se West. But in the realm of comparing apples to apples, either of these two is head and shoulders above virtually anywhere else.

Our next dish was the crispy skin filet of Pacific mo'i, accompanied by stir-fried vegetables and a satay sauce. As with many of Thomas Keller's fishes, he seemed to have marinated this one in buttermilk to prevent it from drying out during the cooking process and to remove any fishy smell. Accordingly, he made the fish taste like Southern fried chicken dappled in General Tso's sauce. The wine pairing was a light red -- a blackberry-nosed Nuits-St. Georges pinot noir that meshed well with the salty-sweetness of the dish.

After a short break, they then brought us the Nova Scotia lobster "cuit sous vide" with celeriac, Perigord truffles and roasted chestnut puree. Rather than decadently poaching the lobster in butter as he does out west, he takes a Spartan approach here: he vacuum-seals the lobster portion and boils it at very low temperatures for hours on end, so that the meat literally cooks in its own juices. The benefit of the sealant is that none of the juices dissipates during cooking. The celeriac added slight natural saltiness to the dish, and the chestnut puree -- which had the texture of Gerber baby food peaches -- gave it sweet richness. Although fish typically matches with white wines, the sommelier kept us with the pinot noir because the chestnuts hailed from Burgundy and filled the fat void left by the absentee butter.

I sopped up what remained of the chestnut puree with one of three breads that rotates through our side plates during the meal: an olive bread, a German pretzel bread, and a baguette. If the butters were missing from the lobster dish, then they were quite clearly hiding in two bowls on our table holding Straus Family Creamery butter from Northern California and hand-churned unsalted Vermont butter. I don't say this lightly, but I could down a stick of Straus Family Creamery butter in one sitting. The fabulous Santa Barbara grocery store Lazy Acres used to sell it, and I've nearly tried on several occasions to stuff a whole stick in my face. I wished I'd brought a little Playmate cooler with me so that I could transport it back with me as if it were a donor kidney.

Two meat dishes came in rapid succession. The first was an all-day-braised Eden Farm's Berkshire pork shoulder that sat alongside collard greens, poached Granny Smith apples and a whole grain mustard sauce. The second was a roasted saddle of Elysian Fields Farm lamb with forest mushrooms, red-wine-braised pearl onions, and Yukon Gold "pomme puree" (if you call it that instead of mashed potatoes, you can charge $25 more for the dish). In this phase, T.K. went all Willy Wonka on our Violet Beauregarde asses, giving us what were essentially full complementary meals in tiny portions -- with the exception that we did not turn into large blueberries when we'd finished, even if we felt like them. His meats look deceptively dry but simply hemorrhage juices when you cut into them. The pork made you think you were at a
post-revival Sunday dinner in Tuscaloosa, Alabama; indeed, this food is the secular equivalent of a holy ghost explosion. Our wine pairing was a Priorat blend from Spain, heavy on grenache with hints of carignane and syrah. The spiciness and boldness took the edge off the rustic meats.

The slow denouement began with the cheese course: the Bingham Hill "Harvest Moon" cow's milk cheese, which was served with roasted heirloom beets, watercress, and pumpkin seed oil. This cheese was at the other end of the spectrum from the shadily imported, stinky and
runny cheese that we could barely swallow at the French Laundry. It was mild and firm with no distinguishing characteristics. To me, the earthy golden and red beets were the highlight of the plate. We enjoyed it with a slightly sweet Loire Valley semillion.

Our "palate-cleanser" was the Persian lime sorbet, which took its place among a string of dishes matching sweet and salty. Soy-caramel foam ringed the scoop of sorbet, giving the ice a flavor much like that of the barren crust of a key lime pie.

Consistent with my friend Bob's theory that every menu contains a "chocolate bomb," our main dessert arrived: the "Tentation au Chocolat, Noisette et Lait." On one side of a thin, rectangular plate, milk chocolate mousse rested atop of hazelnut streusel, as condensed milk sorbet balanced the seesaw on the other side. Meanwhile, the fulcrum hosted five sweetened salty hazelnuts. Essentially, this was haute-cuisine Nutella and vanilla ice cream -- malt, nut, and vanilla flavor rushing through your olfactory glands long after each bite, just as you can expel alcohol vapors through your nostrils after right drinking a sip of huge red wine. Needless to say, they paired this dish with an appropriately sweet and alcoholic port from Portugal.

For the final course, my brother and I were brought chamomile pot decremes, while my girlfriend and my dad received Tahitian vanilla creme brulees. Our mignardises -- the jellies, macaroons and chocolates -- appeared soon after with our check, probably to ease the pain and shocked caused by the numbers on the bill ("A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down.").

This was the most expensive meal I've ever had. Wonderfully prepared and executed, but not as relaxed as the French Laundry. Even though Per Se tries to remove you from the hustle and bustle of New York, you're just not in a tiny town in the Napa Valley where the chef gets his tomatoes from out back. But it is the best that one can do in the city, and there's no one who does it better. So what if I have to eat Ramen noodles for the next two months?

A soft opening

2004-12-29T18:52:00.000-05:00

Now that I put my marinated pork tenderloin in the oven, I have a few minutes to make my first post on The Gastropub -- an experiential blog devoted to glorious workaday cooking, stellar eating and dining, excellent but reasonably priced drinking, and lyrical food-writing.

I plan to write about what I know, what makes me happy, and what gets me riled up in the world of food. With the exception of a few classes in the Santa Barbara City College's adult education cooking program and a day-long session at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, I lack a formal culinary education -- whether in school or in restaurants. Yes, I am the Matt Damon of food-writing.

But as you'll come to learn, I do possess an honest and deep love for tasty food and beverages and for quality writing. I cook as often as I can. Before becoming a member of the world's most-hated profession, I dabbled as a member of the world's second most hated profession; that is, I was a journalist. I had stints at The Daily Pennsylvanian and USA Today, and I even got to pen a few restaurant reviews out of the deal. I read eGullet and Leite's Culinaria. I stare far too intensely at the Food Network. I deify Thomas Keller, Anthony Bourdain, and Dario Furlati. I also try to eat out frequently, preferably at places with -- as my French cooking teacher Stephane Rapp described it -- "a high cost-to-quality ratio." For me, relaxation is strolling through the aisles of a 24-hour grocery store at night. Bliss is chopping vegetables.

My girlfriend, my brother, and I were having lunch today at the local Baja Fresh, trying to come up with a name for this blog. I trotted out the pathetic "Ate is Enough," and it was promptly rejected by nearly everyone there including the Baja Fresh grill cook who can't even speak English. My brother chimed in with "Eat Me." My girlfriend -- a wine industry professional who has some serious writing chops herself -- laughed and liked "Eat Me" both for its edgy attitude and for the prospect of posting companion "Drink Me" pieces. Even better, when a little cake directed Lewis Carroll's Alice to "Eat Me" and a bottle enticed her to "Drink Me," Alice metaphorically gained new perspectives on the rabbit hole environs into which she'd tumbled. "Eat Me," it was.

Sadly, the Blogger Brass informed me that "Eat Me" was unavailable, owing more likely to its sexual implications than to the possibility that the Lewis Carroll's estate copyrighted the term. Confronted with an empty white box and the human need to fill it, I conjured up "The Gastropub."

Although the idea is making inroads in the United States, the "gastropub" is largely a London phenomenon -- a neighborhood pub where you can score high-quality, creative food and drink at reasonable prices. Think modern-day French bistros. Think South Dakota buffalo burger topped with baby spinach and melted Cana de Cabra. Think a pint of Dogfish Head Raison d'Etre or a glass of Jaffurs syrah. The epitome of the gastropub in America is Philadelphia's Standard Tap.

The word "gastropub" consists of two parts. "Gastro" hails from the Greek gastr, meaning "belly." Now, of course, it has evolved to refer too to the food and drink that one puts in his or her belly. "Pub" is short for the British public house, which is a tavern licensed to sell alcoholic beverages. "Pub," however, is also short for publication. Hence, "The Gastropub" -- a food and drink publication.

I hope that the blog will live up to the high standards set by the Standard Tap -- and that it will turn out at least as well as tonight's pork tenderloin does.

With that, I welcome you to The Gastropub. Sit wherever you like.