FoodCrunch

The Most Important Food in America: Part I

2011-03-03T23:09:00.000-08:00

I miss October. It is the best month. It is smack in the middle of my favorite season. It contains my birthday and that of my spouse. And, it is National Pizza Month. Are there really eleven other foods that warrant their own month? National Tuna Tartar Month? National Warm Frisee Salad with Farm-Fresh Poached Egg Month?

Pizza, of course, deserves more than a month, since it IS the most important food in America. It is our default food. It satisfies. We can have it any time without having to make it ourselves. We can feed tons of kids with 30-minutes notice. We can make it ourselves if we want. It cleans up easily. And the boxes make great construction material for children. It is much more important here than in Italy—really, it is. In fact, I think pizza should have more than a month of honor. We should celebrate pizza the entire 4^th quarter of each year—or at least until Turkey takes over in late November.

Now, I have had dissenters tell me that Hamburgers are more important than pizza in America and that McDonalds alone is enough to make the case. First, fast food frankenburgers are not burgers. On the other end of the spectrum, if it is stuffed with slow-braised short-ribs topped with fois gras and a duck egg, it may be good food, but it is not really a burger either. A burger is meat, salt, pepper and a bun. Yes you can put some other stuff in, as long as the meat is the main thing.

And burgers aren’t particularly controversial. I like my hamburger medium rare. You like yours well done. I think you are a leather-eating cretin. You think I am a bloodsucking tick. I’ll eat mine now. You take yours off the grill, whenever the hell you feel like it, Conan. End of debate. No nuance, no subtlety. America's Most Important food must be ubiquitous. Burgers? Check! Established stylistic or regionally variations should exist. Burgers? Not Really. Able to form the foundation of an unresolvable debate that crosses decades. Nope.

So maybe Steak is America’s most important food? Sorry no, too highbrow where it matters. Not ubiquitous except among the non-PC elite. It apparently takes a bona fide American food expert to debate the merits of a good steak for more than a few minutes. Awhile back, Frank Bruni, then head restaurant critic for the New York Times, weighed in on the imperfections of various New York steakhouses. Much esoterica about wood & leather fixtures and creamed spinach (the anti-spinach)—cigars or not. He settled on the venerable Peter Luger’s in Brooklyn, and relative newcomer, Robert’s Steakhouse, which resides inside a Penthouse-operated strip club on Manhattan’s West Side. I guess atmosphere does matter in the case of steak. Of course, Bruni asserts he doesn’t go to Robert’s for the girls, just to read the menu.

I ventured to Brooklyn on a recent trip to try Luger’s and, despite my great anticipation, it didn’t float my boat. Surely it’s much better than Outback, but nothing transcendental. It felt like I was in a 100-year old landmark with surly waiters, decent food, and a room full of people, enjoying their meat because Zagat’s told them they were supposed to enjoy their meat.

I am still lobbying for a hall pass that gets me into Robert’s. To her credit, Susan is more concerned about my cholesterol than my fidelity. Or perhaps she believes that I am more likely to succumb to the Gold Label Kobe New York Strip, Creamy Mashed Potatoes and the pistachio ice cream, than the Gold-accessorized New York Stripper, creamy complexion and pistachio eye shadow. Nevertheless, I refuse to go there by myself, and have not yet found a companion brave enough to broach the issue with his spouse. Thanks to the Internet I can still read the menu.

Instead I visit local gastro-hero, Michael Mina, who slow cooks steaks in various fats before grilling them over mesquite at his Vegas spot, StripSteak and Bourbon Steak in SF. Hmmm, not enough fat on the inside of one of those Kobe rib eyes for ya? Now you need to encase a 70% fat hunk in a 100% fat shell. Definitely time to make more cardiology and diabetes investments (my real job).

I have to admit that Mina's “regular” (non-Kobe) rib-eye was a drool-inducing slab of umami amino acids and dispersing lipids, the likes of which I had not previously consumed. Yum. And the duck fries—I am not a fan of fries, French or Freedom--were alone worth the cab lines at McCarren Airport. These are potatoes fried in duck fat, not fried ducks as one companion assumed.

In LA, at Wolfgang Puck’s CUT, the best of the meat was sittin’ on bar stools not served on plates. But what I could get for $75 was delicious, if undersized, and adorned with creative concoctions of chili, fruit or jus—not for the purist, but tasty. I am talking here about aged beef, of course not the under-aged variety at the bar.

For rank-and-file steak lovers there is another famous LA spot, Pacific Dining Car. It was good beef, seasoned and cooked right. The usual sides. Same experience at Morton’s in Orange County, Donvan’s in San Diego, Drover in Omaha, Smith & Wollensky in various towns and Ruth Chris’ in Dallas, except that the latter was scuba-diving in clarified butter.

Steak then is simple: buy very good beef, age it, liberal salt and pepper, hot, hot surface—get a char, and don’t screw it up by overcooking. I learned how to do this at Bonanza Sirloin Pit during High School—everything except the “buy very good beef” part. Nevertheless, if I did not mess them up by overcooking, the Bonanza steaks tasted very good. That is why, it never ceases to amaze me that you can still go to an otherwise spectacular restaurant, love everything in site, order the steak and have all the air pop out of your balloon.

It happened just last night at Skool in SF. Fabulous creative food: inventive cocktails, great fish, veggie and vegan dishes—crab cakes, baby aji fritti, surprising eryngil mushrooms with miso aioli, shishito peppers, squid noodles in a Japanese broth, the best salad “I have ever eaten in my life” says my wife. This restaurant wasn’t just good, it was amazing. Then the steak came: grass-fed Eel River New York strip. Promising start. But wait, you cooked it how? medium-well? Are you kidding me? Dry, tough, rough mouth feel with no lubricating juices, like french kissing a large thirsty cat—how is this possible? Just don’t f**k it up; the Golden Rule of steak. Yet, they managed. Don't get me wrong. I am going back to Skool. It was too good. Just won’t order the steak—ever.

So the most important food in America is not burgers, not steak and not, my vegan friends, tofu anything. I like Kale as much as the next guy, but it is still like eating some one else's green tongue. I do make a mean kale burger chocked full veggie umami bombs like double-concentrated tomato paste, parmesiano cheese, dried porcini mushrooms and crushed anchovies, with various nuts & seeds. But this variant will never take over the nation.

In Part II, I will make the affirmative case for pizza as America's Most Important Food. Set your ovens for 700-degrees.

Whale Tail by Foodcrunch Contributor Adam Grosser

2010-08-16T19:42:00.001-07:00

I ate whale and I feel awful. A week later, I can still feel it lodged in my belly like a small dark stone. I can hear it castigating me for my moral ambiguity. It's amazing that the tiny piece I swallowed - I'd be stunned if it was more than a couple of grams - has grown over successive days to feel like kilograms of guilt.

I suppose you need some context. We were in Iceland touring the beautiful countryside. After a solid half-day in the outdoors, we were all starving. Our guide brought us to a hotel near one of the most active and theatrical geysers. Their restaurant offered a large buffet of traditional Icelandic fare. I started well, with a plate full of salad, poached salmon, and a bowl of vegetable soup.

My 14-year old is a carnivore. We count our blessings every time something green is coaxed past her lips. In perfect and predictable form, she went straight for the meat table with a ravenous gleam in her eye. If she doesn't eat something approaching 6000 calories a day, she gets faint and woozy. Apparently it is difficult to stoke the fires of 122 pounds of fast-twitch muscle. I wouldn't know. The meat table was sagging from the effort of supporting mounds of roast pork and something dark that looked like beef. She asked the server what it was, and the reply was, "whale." Undeterred, my daughter speared a couple of thick juicy slices.

The concept of whale meat didn't bother her a bit. She didn't bat an eyelash. I suppose we're all products of our time, and while I grew up in the throes of "Save the Whales" she most certainly did not. By in large, the whale war has receded to a background issue save for the occasional news item regarding Japan, Norway, and Iceland. The public outcry is certainly not loud enough or frequent enough to make it through the media veil that blankets today's teenagers.

So there I am at the table. My daughter is devouring the whale with gusto. Her elbows are up, sawing quickly with her knife, and shoveling it home. She declares it delicious, and cuts off a small corner. She spears the morsel on her fork, and holds it across the table. It glistens redly in the overhead lights. Our guide shrugged his shoulders and said, "When in Rome..."

Against all my better judgment, I took her fork, chewed quickly and washed it down with some water. It was exactly like one of those reality shows where the people have to eat the fat, white, squirming grub to win the prize. Mustering the courage always involves closing the eyes, and I am no exception.

I have no idea what whale actually tastes like. I do know what the guilt tastes like, and it is bitter. I ate whale and I feel awful.

Best Meals of the Decade 2000-2009

2009-12-29T21:51:00.000-08:00

It is time for the best fine-dining restaurant meals of the decade. This list is heavily skewed to great restaurants that, despite their reputation, exceeded our very-high expectations. Note that we barely made it to Italy this decade, but on that trip we stayed pretty rustic preferring to experience small local trattoria on the advice of locals. Our hit rate here was pretty darn good. We did make it to Paris, Laussane, London, Barcelona, Geneva, Delhi, Bangalore, Shanghai and Tokyo, all of which provided amazing and sometimes bazaar experiences. Here is the list:

Alinea-Chicago (4 times) each time surprised and satisfied.
French Laundry-Yountville (4 times) each time satisfied, not always surprised
Le Bernadin-NY (3 times) surprised and satisfied
el Bulli-Roses, Spain (1 time) surprised more than ever
The Bazaar-LA (1 time) lovely twist on a restaurant
Drolma-Barcelona (1 time) One concept to relate: goat leg sous vide
L’Altiere Joel Robuchon-NY and LV (3 times) The man
Urasawa LA (2 times) Sushi in the hands of a master architect
O ya-Boston (1 time) Rich from sushi to turf
Bastide (under Lefevbre, now closed)-LA (2 times) Pasta with cinnomon scallops
Babbo-NY(4 times) Beef Cheek Ravs., short ribs, rabbit 3 ways, ragu
L’Arpege-Paris (1 time) vegetables sous vide with intense flavor, crazy choices
SPQR-SF (1 time) the best potatoes we ever ate, and moore
Ubuntu-Napa (2 times) The other best vegetables in the world
Daniel-NY (1 time) Less formality than the Classics, no compromise on food. first frog legs
StripSteak-Las Vegas (2 times) amazing rib eyes overshadowed by duck fries
Cut-LA (2 Times) T bone
Quince-SF (3 tImes) 11 course custom pasta meal
Manressa-Los Gatos (2 times) Daniel West, with his own farm
WD-50-NY (1 time) Wylie makes crazy good food
Central Michel Richard-Washington D.C. (2 times) I cannot even imagine better chili
Arola-Hotel Arts Barcelona (1 time) Tapas of love
River Cafe-London (1 time) Sole soul
Spago-Beverly Hills (1 time) Friend of chef took us to 3 hour lunch
Michael Mina-San Francisco (1 time) 3x3x3
Stonehill Tarvern-Orange County (1 time) lobster pot pie I could eat every night
Topolobampo-Chicago (2 times) Mexicago cuisine as
Momofuku Ko-NY (1 time) Joel Robuchon East
Cibreo-Florence (1 times) It wasn't Offal, but it was
Le Suite in Laussane. It was just very good, with amazing views, and I wore sweats. (Pretended I was an Italian basetball star.)

Can't wait for the winners of the next decade.

Check www.foodcrunch.com for the most disappointing meals of the decade.

Mama, Say It Ain't So

2008-10-16T00:00:00.001-07:00

It has been quite awhile since I last posted, but inspiration has its own clock, I suppose.

Ultimately, when I read that the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is trying to force Ben and Jerry’s to forgo cow’s milk in favor of ice cream made from human breast milk, I could be silent no longer. What are they gonna call it? Your Sister’s Cherry—Garcia? Chunky Mommy? Peanut Butter D-Cup?

Branding issues aside, my opinion on this matter is not polemic. There is some merit to PETA’s case. For example, we finally have a cogent argument to persuade Bill Clinton to do a “Got Milk” commercial. Perhaps white mustache and white cigar . At 25-cents per 8-ounce serving, we are looking at a tremendous material cost-savings over bottled water during the upcoming economic nuclear winter, many unqualified observers are predicting. And imagine the self-serve possibilities—which would greatly reduce labor costs at most eating establishments as well.

I believe Ben & Jerry’s is only the beginning. What about picketing the folks at Yoplait until they offer a human replacement for their trademark brand? I humbly suggest “Yo Mama”. Natural food for the hood!

Imagine the opportunity to change the shape of the milk carton to more closely resemble the swelled-form of the nursing mother. Mrs. Butterworth went down this road with syrup, but “shapely and sticky” is no match for “milky white and wholesome”. I can envision legions of strippers with tattoos of missing children needled to their mammaries. I will try hard to not lose sleep over this image now that I said it out loud, but I bet we find more of them this way.

Still, we must remain cautious. The possibility of tainted Chinese milk will require close inspection of the source of imported dairy products. OK, let’s not always see the same hands. And please, no jokes about Mad Cow Disease being the new name for PMS. That is purely and simply disrespectful and I will have none of it.

Joking aside, the PETA people have a point about how we treat animals, but somehow I don’t think the solution is to herd nursing mothers into feedlots and force them to gorge on vegetable remnants until they burst with metabolized fats and proteins. (Oh no—another image that will haunt me the entire evening.) Turns out, Fresh Choice has been doing this for two decades without noticeable relief to our bovine cousins.

In the end, we should probably keep milking cows, sheep, goats, yaks, rabbits, whatever, while treating these lactose dispensers with more respect than—well—than we would treat the average nursing mother just trying to stop her baby from crying on the bus. Factory farms are a scandal, be they dairy- or meat-inspired. We are daily turning a blind-eye to a situation that none of us would put up with if it were occurring within our ability to observe directly—and it is time to observe directly. Perhaps that is PETA’s genius—create an image we want to observe to make us conscious of one we are ignoring.

Dessert Matters

2007-09-19T13:43:00.000-07:00

It isn’t often that you can get your wife’s permission to spend three-days with a dozen attractive, passionate women. And to do so, without the excuse of an old buddy’s bachelor party in Vegas is completely unheard of. But that is exactly what happened to me last weekend, when I joined Tori Richie’s Food Writing Class, courtesy of Tante Marie’s cooking school in San Francisco. Three days with a group of women passionate about food. How good was it? Well I missed a Forty-Niners game to attend the final session. You do the math.

If any of you guys are considering following in my footsteps, you ought to know a couple of things up front. First, when you break bread with a group of women over three days, don’t worry about dessert. Some one will always bring dessert. On the other hand, you likely will have to BYOM—bring your own meat. Maybe it’s that animal carcasses don’t fit neatly into their bags, or perhaps it’s the threat of blood drippings breaching a butcher paper barrier. But whatever the reason, if you want to eat meat, bring it yourself.

I did meet one classmate, who is planning an October trip to New York and already has reservations at—not Per Se, not Babbo, not le Bernadin—but Peter Luger, the venerable Brooklyn man-joint and steakhouse. I did not get to know her very well over only three days, but this one piece of data suggests that she might, in fact, be the perfect women.

Second, when women think “food”, the context of the meal is at least as important as the quality of the actual hydro-carbons they consume. So expect a great deal of conversation about candles, centerpieces, scents and other accrutements. The good news is they don’t seem to notice when you completely glaze over during these discussions.

The class itself was at once inspirational and cautionary. Writing for a living is hard work, and much of the reward comes from the act of writing itself, rather than the resulting fame and fortune. The people I met were “hungry” to become accomplished food writers, which was inspirational. Even more inspiring were the chocolate chip cake and lime macaroons these ladies brought for sharing. Tangy molten centers oozing fresh citrus oils. Did I just say that? I must be succumbing to their influence. Somebody bring me a pork chop!

Some gems from the weekend:

Tuesday Recipe www.tuesdayrecipe.com . Sign Up.

Bay Area Burger Blog http://bestburgersfbay.blogspot.com/

The Politics of Eating at My House: Part I

2007-06-18T16:04:00.000-07:00

Since when did it become essential to reference a laminated wallet card to figure out what constitutes acceptable cuisine? Wild Salmon from Alaska—Good. Wild salmon from the Atlantic—Bad. Farm-raised salmon—Bad, unless you know what it has eaten. Farm-raised shellfish-Good, however. Foreign shrimp—Bad. Domestic shrimp—Good. Yellowfin tuna—OK. Bluefin tuna—Bad. I don’t know about you, but most of the tuna I eat doesn’t have the fin attached to the can.

And how was it caught? Longline-Bad. Trolling-Good. Floated to the top after above-ground nuclear test—not referenced, but probably bad. Coaxed into the boat with soothing music and the promise of paradise in the next life—probably Good. Fresh? Good if caught recently. Flash frozen—OK if you must. Left on the loading dock in Honolulu for six hours, while some one tracks down the truck driver—Skip it. And, if you ask Thomas Keller, you should also know if it was packed in ice upright or flat on its side.

AND THAT’S JUST FISH.

Chickens should range free, but what constitutes a “range”—certainly not a 20-foot by 4-foot wire enclosure attached to one side of an 80,000 square-foot, artificially-lit and heated windowless warehouse? Pigs should be pen-less; and cows grass-fed. Turkeys—heritage breeds only need apply. Tomatoes—heirloom! Mushrooms—foraged by some one you would trust with your life. Soon they will be telling us not to eat white asparagus, because the fact that it is shielded from the sun’s verdant-producing rays in its own vegetable-Guantanimo, constitutes a false imprisonment and an unprovoked denial of its God-given right to photosynthesize. And speaking of incarceration, my home state of California is changing its State motto from “Eureka, I found It” to “Eat a duck liver, Go to Jail”.

It is getting so it easier to do my taxes than to order a meal.

What about an organic approach to food? Well, it turns out this label means only no chemical fertilizers, antibiotics or hormones. It does not necessarily mean the animals were treated well or that the food is safe. After all, wasn’t it organic killer-spinach that Soprano-ed half a dozen people in 2006.

And the “industrial organic” food chain, Michael Pollan tells us, is not a substitute for sourcing our food locally and seasonally. We can get organic strawberries from Chile for Christmas, thus expending 50 calories in fossil fuel to deliver 12 calories of nutrition. Just last week, instead of contemplating the succulent flavors of my bowl of PEI mussels in their own broth, I found myself trying to remember where the hell Prince Edward Island is, and how far these briny morsels traveled to get to my dinner plate. Yes, I was actually calculating the carbon footprint of something that doesn’t have a foot.

But if we buy local, how do we support free-trade farmers in the Developing World. This is giving me a headache. All I want to do is have lunch without pissing people off.

Some believe the only safe and responsible way to eat is to gather and hunt one’s own food. Might work. Earlier this year, Gourmet Magazine encouraged New Yorkers to forage their way around their metropolis munching through the urban edibles available in parks, gardens and the cracks in sidewalks. An interesting idea, but is it scalable? Lets say only 10% of New Yorkers take the Gourmet sages up on their suggestion. Central Park would, in a fortnight, resemble the Bonneville salt flats, save for a few sunburned waterfowl cowering behind toxic rhododendron bushes.

Perhaps if the article had had less of a veggie-bent, the available rats and roaches could sustain the populace a bit longer. But in the end, my math says that the only way we survive a year as a society of hunters and gatherers is if we commence hunting and gathering each other. Trouble is that in the places on the planet where this is actually going on, real estate values are plummeting. No free lunch it seems.

So far we have merely scratched the surface of the politics of eating at my house. Next, we have to deal with my family’s idiosyncratic issues. My 3-year old sustains himself on fresh fruit, broccoli with chilies , blood orange juice, farmstead cheeses and pizza. Thank God for pizza! To get him to eat any meat, we have to tell him it is sausage. Ergo such inventions as steak sausage, roast sausage and my personal favorite sausage loaf.

My wife, who will unabashedly dismember a well-roasted six week old chicken, acts wounded when I attempt to serve rabbit or, my favorite, kid goat. Moreover, she is proselytizing her Save-the-Cute culinary philosophy to young Max with, I am pleased to announce, only mixed results. Last month, when Max spied a display of homeless animals at the Mall, he bee-lined to the rabbit cage. When the joyless but sincere PETA representative asked Max if he liked rabbits, my son replied “Yes. Bunnies are Deeeeeeeee-licious. Some days they just make you proud.

Eating the Friendly Skies

2007-03-29T22:20:00.003-07:00

Some might assert that the most positive development during the last thirty years of the human experience was the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War. Others might point to the decoding of the humane genome with the potential this holds for extending quality life.

However, I am pretty secure in my belief that the most positive development of the last thirty years for mankind is the decision of most airlines to no longer serve food in flight. This single set of corporate edicts has improved the existence of millions of annual travelers and spared the lives of billions of no-range chickens, flavor-deprived cow-food and overcooked carrot spears.

These days you’re lucky if you even get a beverage on some flights. On a recent flight from L.A. to San Francisco, I was told they had no orange, apple or tomato juice—only cran-apple. I have never even seen a cran-apple. And on a late flight from Chicago I was offered a choice of light snack—a package of cracker-cheese food sandwiches or a ginger biscotti, with the half-life of Dick Clark. I had the cookie, and if I deciphered the date code correctly, it had been flying around the country long enough to achieve Platinum Status. This might explain why it had been upgraded to business class.

Still as bad as it is, I am appreciative that they no longer attempt to serve an airline meal on most flights. Historically, experiences in this regard have been less than encouraging for me. The worst one followed a post-meal movie on a flight from San Francisco to London. Some time between the last bite of my chicken cordon-beige and the rolling of the credits on the first Indiana Jones movie, the fourty-ish guy seated to my right passed to the great beyond. I had fallen asleep just after the big round ball chases Indiana out of the cave and managed to get two hours of shut-eye before the kid to my left, on his first ever plane flight, tapped me on the shoulder and awakened me with a head-gesture toward our window-seated aisle mate and the words, “I think he’s dead”.

I swiveled my head from left to right and back left again to reply “Yep he’s dead”. Stiffer than my mashed potatoes and paler than an airline green been, the poor guy needed no official coroner to put an exclamation point on his fate. He was dead and the only consolation was that I had, at last, an opportunity to use my call button for a matter of import. “Ding”.

“Yes Sir, what can I do for you?”

“Well you can’t do anything for me, and I think it’s too late to do anything for him”.

The look on the young attendants face was—well special, as she nearly suppressed an “Oh my God!”, not wanting to alarm other passengers.

I will spare you the details of the subsequent ordeal that led to me and the kid standing in the back of the plane for several hours before finally being relegated to the attendants’ fold-out seats for the rest of the full flight. The young attendant was herself attended to, by a more experienced colleague who assured her that “this kind of thing happens all the time” on the “geezer-flight” from London to Sydney. “Just close their eyes and put a blanket up around them”.

In due course, the first flight attendant came ostensibly to check on us, but her first question was, “I have to ask you, what was your first thought when you realized the gentleman next to you had died?”

I replied that I was “glad I didn’t order the fish”. Now I can’t say for sure that the mini-brick of Chilean Death Bass, was the cause of this poor soul’s demise. But when I asked an official in London to share with me the cause of death, he replied ominously, “don’t worry sir, we’re quite sure it wasn’t contagious”.

Hmmm, not contagious. I could see he wanted to add, “You did have the chicken, right?”, but he maintained his Buckingham Palace guard stoicism in the face of a possible admission of liability. Clever, those Brits.

These days, while we are spared the threat of airline food poisoning, we are left to worry about what the passengers near us are going to bring on board to eat. Used to be you just sat there hoping that the fat guy (or in my case the other fat guy) doesn’t sit down next to you. Or if traveling from Paris, you try to fly on Sunday because you know Saturday is “bath night”. Now it’s “God, please don’t let the vegan-looking anti-shaver woman with the tupperware container sit next to me.”

So in the interest of good human relations, let me suggest the following rules for bringing food on to airplanes.

Nothing with fish sauce
No cooked fish whatsoever, sushi is OK
No blue cheese, Roquefort, gorgonzola, etc.
No BBQ sauces
Leave the onions off the chili
Come to think of it, No Chili
No organ meats
No leftovers prepared more than 24 hours ahead

I am soliciting other rules of thumb to add to this list in order to create the comprehensive “Let’s All Get Along” heuristics for bringing food on planes. Please send yours to paul@foodcrunch.com.

In the meantime, don’t eat the fish!

I'll Take Manhattan

2007-01-30T23:48:00.000-08:00

In the latest James Bond movie, Casino Royale,we finally understand why our hero chooses the vodka martini as his signature cocktail. It has nothing to do with the inherent sensual allure of this tasteless concoction, but rather, it is the easiest drink in which one might be able to detect poison. And, when you spend your most productive hours killing people and sleeping with women others hold dear, the possibility of poisoning is more than an academic consideration.

I come by my personal drink, the retro, straight-up Manhattan, by a different route. But, like Bond, it gives me the excuse I need to drink my favorite distilled beverage, 90-proof All-American Kentucky Bourbon, in as pure a way as possible, without feeling like a complete degenerate. A large splash of vermouth, a shake of bitters and a cherry or lemon twist, give the bourbon a degree of respectability.

Manhattans were medicine, not cocktail, in the Matteucci household of the last century. My Nonnie (deal with the fact that a middle-age man is using the word “Nonnie” with a straight face), who lived with us, used to “put them up” in old Canada Dry ginger ale bottles, so that there would always be 64-ounces available in case some one came down with something. Nonnie would “take” one Manhattan-a-day prophylacticly to ward off the possibility of disease. The $5 per bottle Old Crow whiskey, which the family would buy multi-case from “some one in the business”, was the central theme of this miracle drug.

Others of my relatives would show up for their doses occasionally--I assume mostly during cold and flu season, which apparently lasted pretty much year-round in San Francisco.

This wasn’t the only family snake-oil. Nonnie would also drink, each afternoon, a concoction of lemon juice, water and ginger ale, which may have been medicinal, but I think was just her way of emptying Canada Dry bottles. In the sweltering 68-degree San Francisco summers she might augment all of this with one 18-cent Brown Derby beer.

Now, one drink a day as a tonic strikes me as a perfectly reasonable solution to viral invasion. My mother, on the otherhand, drank not at all, except for soaking fruit cocktail in crème-de-menthe and scooping it over vanilla ice cream during the holidays. After a second helping, we might find her dancing with her sisters in the kitchen as they slurred Italian songs and waved dish towels. My father didn’t drink much—well not much for a man, who lived with his mother-in-law.

Like most Italian children, I enjoyed a taste of fermented grape now and again, with permission, from my parent's glass at family gatherings. I didn't drink alcohol with a purpose until the morning of my Junior Prom, when I proceded to exhale the remains of a pint of Old Minors Gin into the face of my buddy's silky terrior. I thought it might be funny. The dog, apparently a comedy-critic attached its jowels to my face in protest. It took several seconds of shaking my head back and forth to get the two-pound rat-mammal to disengage after which I wore make-up to the Prom.

My life and Nonnie’s intersected for approximately two decades, during which I came to understand the concept of personal power. At 4-foot nothing, and 16 years young, she emigrated alone to America to marry a man she had never met. Upon arrival, she decided she did not like him, so she broke up the deal and eventually married another man. True-love #2, legend has it, was a familial non-entity, who died shortly after fathering his third daughter, my mother. Nonni raised her three girls during the depression by taking in laundry and boarders, one of whom eventually became a son-in-law. I was actually conceived in her Hattie Street house in the Castro district of San Francisco. It has been suggested that I may have been one of the last people conceived in the Castro district of San Francisco. Who knows?

By the time we met, Nonnie was commanding a hundred-plus extended family of sisters, half-brothers, third cousins, nephews, nieces, son-in-laws, daughters, grand children and a couple of cats. She held this group of gumba-misfits together by the strength of her will and her high expectations of all of us. Lots of love; no excuses. She communicated without English, even to us youngsters, who knew no Italian. To this day, I can understand a language I cannot speak.

No one made an important decision without consulting her. No one wanted to disappoint her, let alone cross her. Yet she had no material currency, save for the $1 a month us grandkids lined up to receive from her meager accounts. She had no ability to affect our lives except by her opinion, and by what control we willingly allowed her. And, amazingly, virtually all of us, dozens of children of the ‘50s and the ‘60s, made something of our lives.

She accomplished this while traveling life’s highway, first with a cane, then a walker, then a wheel chair and finally by being carried as arthritis riddled her body. In short, she was the most powerful person I have ever known.

This explains why, as a twenty-year old man, I spent her last summer at her side, some days literally—lying next to her as stomach cancer took her from us. That summer, I would make the daily trips to Fred’s Pharmacy to pick up the opium enemas that would ease the pain, and listen to her last stories, admonishments and instructions. Finally, I witnessed her last breaths.

I think this might also explain why I have so little tolerance for a culture where a hangnail apparently entitles some one to victim status and collective retribution. When you watch a diminutive, crippled, non-native speaking, poor, female emigrant run the micro-world that is most significant to your existence with imagination, love, strength, determination and multi-generational perspective, you want to say to those with moderate obstacles not of there own making:

Get Over It, and Use the Gifts God Gave You To Conquer Your World. And If You Don’t Reap the Reward Directly, Your Children or Grandchildren Will, Because You Gave Them the Life Skills They Needed to Thrive. And if You Don’t Believe In God—Then I Submit that Evolution Teaches the Same Lessons More Mercilessly. So, Again, Get Over It.

Easy for me to say since I am the Grandchild--huh!

Anyway, this is why I drink Manhattans. Now for the important question: how do you get a good Manhattan. One way is to befriend Robin Selden at Logitech and convince her to let her young son, Spencer, make one for you. Spence has a knack for the perfect Manhattan, and I don’t believe he actually drinks them.

Barring this eventuality try the following:

Standard Manhattan

Fill a shaker with ice then add:

2 parts excellent bourbon like Knob Creek or Woodford Reserve (I like saying "parts" because then you can make them as big as you want).

1/2 part (or a little more) sweet vermouth

2 dashes of angostura bitters (available at your liquor store)

Shake well and pour into a wide-rimmed cocktail glass

Finish with a marachino cherry or twist of lemon

TO MAKE IT MORE FESTIVE, TAKE IT UP A NOTCH WITH THIS INFUSED BOURBON:

In a pitcher or a jar combine:

750 ml of good quality bourbon like Woodford Reserve.
3 cored and diced (large) Jonagold apples (you can use Granny Smith in a pinch)
4 cinnamon sticks
2 whole vanilla beans, sliced open longwise

Refrigerate 2-5 days stirring or shaking daily.
Strain back into the original whiskey bottle.

For the Manhattan make as above but substitute Amareno cherries from Sicily.

Here’s lookin' at you, Nonnie!

Sweating from the Heat of the Bamboo Pickle

2007-01-23T20:44:00.000-08:00

It has been more than a year since we heard from FoodCrunch buddy Adam Grosser on these pages. This time Adam is in India reporting on the most important meal of the equatorial day. My regular postings will return soon with dispatches on the politics of eating at my house and the perfect Manhattan. Talk with you soon.

For the business travelers among us, the stultifying routine of waking up in a distant hotel, on some one else's clock, and choosing between the standard array of disappointingly prepared western breakfast choices – American Breakfast, Continental breakfast, and the newly invented but no less grim Fitness Breakfast - can only reinforce that you’d rather be home with some cherry scones in the oven. If you’re really lucky, a high-end hotel will offer a Japanese breakfast, which, while usually wildly over-priced, offers some welcome diversity, or at the very least a box of Total.

Enter the lucky visitor to India. I, know, it’s really far away. Especially from California. But, turns out, it’s worth the trip just for breakfast. I started my first day with Akuri eggs, a dish common to the Parsi region of Western India. The eggs are scrambled with red chilies, ginger, turmeric, tomatoes, and freshly milled cumin. They are served with mango chutney, and a griddled paratha (whole wheat flatbread) to scoop it all up. The eggs are cooked in ghee (clarified butter), so they have a light, fluffy consistency, and the fresh spices are in full song. The chilies are bright, but not overwhelming and the resultant mélange turned out to be the ultimate breakfast burrito sans pico de gallo. My traveling companions thought I was nuts.

The next morning, I ventured further afield and had a Dosa – a staple from Southern India. Dosas are a thin – perhaps 1.5mm thin - crispy slightly tart pancake made from a batter of fermented rice. They are typically cooked only on one side, which forms their famous crust. You can order dosas filled, buttered, or plain. I had the Masala Dosa, which consists of the aforementioned giant pancake folded in half, with a dollop of soft potato and lentil curry in the middle. The curry was rich with ginger, mustard seed, and coriander. Words do not begin to do the flavors justice. It was perfect. When I had the first bite, I couldn’t speak for at least a minute. My traveling companions thought I had graduated from nuts to bananas.

The last morning I realized I needed to try everything on the breakfast menu I hadn’t yet ingested. I had no idea what some of the dishes were, but given my early triumphs, I was boldly optimistic. I ordered the tomato Upma, the Vada Sambhar, and another Masala Dosa in case I didn’t like my first two choices. The Upma is made from a semolina batter that’s prepared similarly to soft polenta. Compared to the other foods I’d had, it was more lightly spiced, but that only allowed the freshness of the tomatoes, onions, and coconut to shine through. The Vada is a savory donut made with lentil flour and spinach, served with a thin spicy curry for dipping. It was a more substantial breakfast – the Indian equivalent of bacon and eggs. All of these dishes were served with mint chutney and a large bowl of pomegranate seeds. By this time, my traveling companions had not only decided I’d gone completely native, but went so far as to suggest that perhaps I should eat at my own table. Sweating from the heat of the bamboo pickle, but thoroughly content, I managed to ignore their feeble attempts at conversation.

To Be Alerted Each Time There is a New FoodCrunch Post

2007-01-13T12:15:00.000-08:00

Send your email address to paul@foodcrunch.com

Las Vegas--I Think It's Nevada

2007-01-10T00:53:00.000-08:00

Tonight I met Jimmy Rooney at the Podtech BlogHaus. Yes--Mickey Rooney's son. But more importantly he is the new Mel Blanc. Remember Mel? The voice of just about every cartoon character you have ever known--"what's up Doc, Tweety-Bird--very entertaining. You can check him out at www.jimmyrooney.com. He is truly amazing.

The Consumer Electronics Show is CRAZY as usual. Tomorrow the Adult Entertainment Expo begins (I will not be attending), which is just this industry's way of showing the geeks what is really driving the sale of all those silicon wafers, plasma screens and universal remotes.

As the porn stars poured into my hotel last night, I had two thoughts:

1. These people are as much like the people I know as the "panini" at Jack-in-the-Box are like real Italian snack food. The women are like Cheetahs. Strangely beautiful, but you are happy they are behind thick glass so they can't bite you.

2. The CES push towards higher and higher resolution is not a boon to the porn industry. High definition is definitely not a positive development for some of these stars--at least not from the neck up.

Anyway, back to food. Linda Furrier of Podtech.net persuaded me to post about restaurants in Las Vegas, while I am here at CES. I have eaten at a great many lousy Las Vegas Restaurants over the years and a dozen or so very good ones. But for now I will start with my Top 6 (really 4 plus 2 special mentions)

1. Bartollota @ Wynn Hotel--The best Mediterranean seafood restaurant west of Barcelona. Think red mullet, langoustine and much much more. They bring you a platter of pre-cooked whole fish for your inspection--the piscine offerings having flown first class from the Med only moments before. Some of them were still wearing their complimentary head phones.

2. L'Altelier Joel Rubuchon @ MGM Grand--Eat off the small plate menu and order everything venison, chestnut, langoustine, or oyster--oh yes--finish with a Hamburger. Sit at the counter so you can see a whole lotta cooking goin' on. The guy who sounded the most French was from Austin--go figure.

3. Mesa Grill @ Caesars--I was prepared for a remote celebrity chef disappointment, but loved the food. First time reservation last year, got bumped when Ellen Degeneres showed up with her entire audience and took the place over--but when we went back the next day they apologized and treated us like celebs. You know flashing pictures and chasing us in their vans--great fun.

4. Michael Mina @ Bellagio--formally Aqua. Spectacular lobster pot-pie. The first time I ate there 4-years ago I met a great couple that actually had their wedding reception at the French Laundry in Yountville. That is soooo cool.

5. Bellagio Buffet--because more than half the people there are fatter than me.

6. Yolies Brazilian Steakhouse--OK, the food is only good, but the way they carry the big hunks of meet around and slice it to your plate just makes you feel like a man.

Places I want to try (let me know if you've been).

1. Guy Savoy

Places not to spend your temporary winnings:

1. Picasso @ Bellagio--Very good vittles, but very expensive, stuffy and nothing special. Many better choices.

2. Nobu @ Hard Rock--OK, but you can do better at his abodes in L.A., London and NY or at Sakae in Burlingame.

3. Noodles @ Bellagio--Service? We don't need no stinking service.

4. Seablue @ MGM Grand. Except for the just OK food, crummy service, and out-of-stock menu items this place was 3-star.

el Bulli and Micro-Sushi

2007-01-02T22:02:00.000-08:00

A colleague of mine sent me this link to an article about single-grain sushi. Apparently a restaurant in Japan is serving up miniscule portions of nigiri sushi consisting of one grain of sushi rice, a pinpoint of fresh wasabi and a centimeter of succulent tuna belly, fluke flesh or shrimp side—pick your mercury delivery vehicle. Any of you, who have knelt through the traditional Japanese formal meal consisting of thirty courses, each about 2 grams in mass, all delicious, but none satisfying, understand the source of Japan’s minimalist culinary roots. But single-grain sushi is over the top--even within a Japanese context. In a future post I will discuss the trend of minimalist American eaters who restrict themselves to diets of 1500 calories per day (they really exist), in an attempt to lead far-longer-than-average and far-lower-quality-than average lives.

Of course, the sushi article has inspired me to concoct recipes for five grain risotto (warm the chicken broth in an eye dropper and use only two strands of saffron), and bottle-cap paella with braised bunny cheeks and krill substituing for the traditional shrimp. I considered a minimalist jambalaya, but it turns out to be difficult to cure ten grams of andouille sausage in a gerbil intestine casing. I figure that, with a little more thought, I may be able to construct an entire menu for an upscale restaurants catering to supermodels and female gymnasts. Of course I will include chili fries (1/32^nd of a potato, one bean, one centimeter cube of grass-fed free-range beef, 1 gram toasted cumin and 1 gram chili powder) for the collateral male diners that the target clientele is likely to attract.

If you think all of this is a little extreme, this brings us to el Bulli named after the above pictured bulldog. It has taken me three months from ingestion to reflection to finally post on our visit to this foodie Mecca, about two hours up the Costa Brava from Barcelona. It took 1000 days to get a reservation, and I was successful only because one of my CEOs (I am a venture capitalist by day job) happened to have a son who worked at the restaurant a few years ago. So after thrice suffering rejection via official channels, we brought out the big guns, promised Tom Alexander we would buy dinner and made plane reservations for Barcelona with my wife Susan, Phil and Nancy Young, Tom and his similarly named son, Tom. Now this is the farthest I have ever traveled for dinner--just under 5,700 nautical miles. Though once when I was stuck in a loop of one way streets near 9th and Market in San Francisco, looking for a parking place, it seemed longer.

The facts:

Gorgeous place--middle of nowhere (Picture).

Surprisingly casual atmosphere. We were the only ones with ties, I having bought a 100-euro Armani in Barcelona just for the occasion. I destroyed this adornment about 4 minutes after we sat down, whence the restaurant staff proceeded an attempted resuscitation with sparkling water, only to deepen and lengthen the stain. I kept the tie as a souvenir and may eventually make it available on Ebay.

Creator: Chef Ferran Adria

Prices: Expensive, but less so than top U.S. Restaurants in New York and San Francisco.

Reputation: Unsurpassed among foodies for its molecular gastronomic innovations.

Now the food: There are plenty of places to go to get a play-by-play on the el Bulli experience including a recent article by Mark Bittman for the NY Times and an even more detailed version in one of my favorite food blogs, Chocolate & Zucchini. But I think I should warn you about doing too much research on the place if you ever hope to go there. You don't want to be reading "The Secrets of Penn and Teller" before you go see their magic show at The Rio. Like P&T, El Bulli is all about astonishment and bewilderment. I am convinced that the less you know the more fun you will have.

I will therefore offer my comments on a more conceptual level and only a few pictures. Dinner at el Bulli is like eating mushrooms while on mushrooms (an archaic reference for those of you, who did not live formatively during the 1960s and/or do not listen to Eminem in the current era). Nothing looks or tastes like it should. The Mango looks like caviar. The caviar tastes like Mango. Popcorn foam dissloves into quantum particles in your mouth. Olives are devoid of structure, but burst oily sensations all over your tongue. Seeds are a savory course. "Virtual" Iberian ham. It is the LSD of fine dining--the greatest culinary show on earth.

So now the hard question. Did I like it? Well I know I would not have wanted to leave this planet without having eaten Ferran Adria's amazing food. It was exhilerating, inspiring, confusing. I liked it like I like Disneyland. It was great fun, but I wouldn't want to go there every day. Especially since after ingesting 30 or so 2 gram courses. Susan and I went back to the hotel chirping about the amazing experience, while we cracked open the mini-bar and inhaled a bag of chips. Now that's satisfying.

TransFatdental Meditations

2006-12-13T22:41:00.000-08:00

California is being out-greened! And by who? New York City of all places. It could only be worse if New Jersey beat us to the punch. First the Big Applers outlaw smoking in restaurants, to catch up to their Left Coast kin in the category of lung-legislation paternalism. Now they are outlawing transfats, joining health conscious Chicago, of all places, in culinary legislation, as local governments strive to reshape America one french fry at a time.

Transfats are a molecular designation, describing re-engineered (hydrogenated) natural vegetable fatty-acids transformed into double bonded carbon chains--blah, blah, blah. What is really important is that (1) they don't exist without human engineering, (2) they extend the shelf life of many processed foods, (3) the extended stability allows for repeat usage in processes like deep-frying--making them a relatively cheap alternative to natural fats and (4) they are linked to coronary artery disease, heart disease, obesity and death.

Now until you get to number (4) things sound pretty good. And regarding the final quality, my doctor told me just last week that, while I was worried about the possible consequences of various diseases I have yet to contract "the fact of the matter is that none of us are going to leave this place alive". A true enough sentiment, I suppose, given that 2.1 million of us expire each year (60 million worldwide), but one you would prefer not to hear emphasized by your primary health care professional.

As I struggle against my libertarian biases, I have to admit I hate smoking, and love being free of second-hand mouth clouds, when paying good dollars for decent table fixins'. This position is reinforced each time my travels compel me to pay good Euros or good Yen for expensive meals, only to have the subtle flavors blunted by a coat of bitter tobacco fog emanating from an adjacent table.

Transfats? Well I'm afraid I am OK with getting rid of them too. We seemed to do fine as a species without them for a few million years. And, as I recall, McDonald's fries tasted great in the 1960s, when the company presumably used oil of a non-engineered variety. So the new fries last a few weeks longer. They suck after 15 minutes anyway.

But what about that Price Club palate of Hostess Twinkies stored down in your bomb shelter? Let me offer that if Kim Jong Il manages to land one of his lego-missles in your neighborhood, the relative freshness of your snack food is likely to be the least of your worries.

Now I might feel differently about transfats if some marketing guy gets hold of the issue and manages to turn this dietary disaster into a feature. Imagine restaurant menu items like:

Appetizer: Monterey Bay Calamari, dusted with Folker Farms organic whole-grain semolina, lightly sauteed in Monsanto Hills TF30Xc Iowa-corn derived oil food.
Main Course: Vialone Nano Risotto with fresh Adante Farms Minuet Goat Cheese, and organic zucchini blossoms crisped in an artisan ceramic vessel filled with Archer-Daniels Midland 530AR9.2 essence of olive oilishness.
Dessert: Decadent "Death by Scharffen Berger Chocolate" with Cafe Dumond Begnets cooked to golden perfection in Dow Farms X3D001-PX2 "death by fat-life extender"molecules.

"If you can't fix it, feature it" as my marketing mentor, Jeff Miller, taught me two decades ago.

The backlash against engineered fats reminds me that is was exactly twenty years ago that the big new idea in nutrition was the fake fat, non-fat engineered protein, which promised the mouth feel, texture and flavor-carrying ability of real fats, without any of the actual fat calories. Olestra, from Proctor and Gamble was the poster child of the fake fats, which promised a healthier future for America.

Problem was that these products ended up carrying warning labels describing possible side effects, including severe cramps, vomiting and the ever popular "anal leakage". Now, it turns out that the prospect of anal leakage makes a food unattractive to enough people to prevent its wide-spread adoption. When tongs threaten to become standard equipment in the laundry room, most of us draw the line.

In the current era, one has to ask why local governments are taking up the anti-transfat crusade. The easy answer is that the federal government isn't doing its job. Of course it could just be that the feds don't think it is their job to tell us what we can and cannot eat. But then how can we explain the outlawing of raw milk cheeses and wonderful cured meats from our European trading partners.

I think the answer is that local governments pay most of the price for the plumping of America. We don't fit in buses, we can't walk hand-in-hand on public sidewalks, we drop dead in city streets at an alarming pace, requiring six or seven city workers to crane us up and cart us off to the morgue. Worse yet, we actually have to look at each other as we navigate this world in increasingly larger jeans with belts that require leather goods makers to stitch two cow hides together, and baggier T-shirts that, with the addition of extendible poles, can double as emergency shelters for a family of four.

But is it really that bad? I think so. Now that "muffin-top" has been adopted as an official body-type by respected organizations as the National Funeral Directors Association and the Brotherhood of Mob Disposers, I think it is time to admit that we are just TOO transfat.

One might offer that the solution resides in each of us taking personal responsibility. Avoid processed foods that use transfat. Treat trips to fast food restaurants as a special event, not a daily default meal solution. Learn how to actually cook. I don't know, this sounds like way too much work for my fat ass.

Better to just leave it to our government. Afterall, we can always trust politicians to act in our best interest.

Yan Can Cook; But Can Rachael?

2006-11-30T08:09:00.000-08:00

Used to be all you had to worry about when you ate out was finding a hair in your food or, worst case, picking up some bacteriological disorder. But now you apparently have to bring a geiger counter to prevent ingestion of polonium-210, especially if you are sitting nearby anyone who has gotten cross-wise with Russian president Vladimir Putin. Makes me think that when I see those bumper stickers that say "Worst President Ever" cruising around Silicon Valley, those drivers are just not thinking globally enough.

Now it is obvious how Putin and George Bush can be divisive lightening rods, but how is it that cute, perky Rachael Ray stirs up similar "love-her, hate-her" passions amongst foodies and the general public?

Growing up in the 1960s and 1970s with Public Television as the sole source of food programming, only Julia Child and the Galloping "Inebriated" Gourmet were more falmiliar culinary icons than Martin Yan of Yan Can Cook. Yan introduced PBS viewers to Chinese cuisine, by playing with his indgredients (many of them still writhing) and warmly mocking his ethnicity in a way that has become impossible in this country, since the passage of the "Nothing Is Funny Anymore" Act circa 1985. But at the end of the day, Yan could cook--and still can.

Today we have what? Nine hundred cooking shows across two hundred channels, some in high def. You can perceive the three dimensional crunchiness of a single grain of fleur de sel in all its briny glory. And with all these offerings, no food evangelist stirs up more controversey than Rachael Ray. From 30-Minute Meals to $40-Dollars a Day to $50K an episode (just guessing) of her new talk show format, this perky brunette charms middle America, while pestering nearly every food snob and chic metrosexual--and just about everybody else who just hates to see people be happy.

But can she cook? Well, I got to witness a taping of her talk show, The Rachael Ray Show, last month--a surreal experience. Huddled into an audience-prep room with three other guys and three hundred women SRO, we were plied with free bagels, danish and coffee. I felt like an uninvited guest at a planned parenthood clinic. The research says that women speak 20,000 words a day, compared to 7000 for the average man. Doing the math this put us at a 6 million to 21 thousand word disadvantage and frankly, I had trouble getting my 7000 words in edgewise. I was saved when our "audience attitued officer" arrived to get us mentally prepared (sans the alcohol Emeril provided on his show) to scream, clap, yell and otherwise act like the idiots you see on TV.

We were ushered onto the rotating stage, where we witnessed an hour or so of segment taping, focused on helpful hints for getting through the day, week, month in America a little happier and a little healthier. Best segment: how to stop your kid from getting sick. Sure wash their hands like four million times a day. But what I didn't know is you should change their clothes when they get home from pre-school or school because bugs are sticky and will continue to migrate from clothing and infect your rug rats long after contact with other children has passed. Who woulda thought?

Then Rachael made a pork loin in a pan. Any good? Well, I was in the back, but the ladies in the front who got a taste couldn't stop talking about it (or anything else for that matter). My conclusion, she probably can cook better than most of us, and in general helps improve the average home cooking quality across the country--which, by the way, is pitiful. But to make sure, we are having a dinner party for one of Max's friend's families this Friday and Max wants meatballs. The Food Network has a 5-star rated Rachael Ray meatball recipe online--and I am going to make it. Something tells me the boys and the parents will like it.

Finally, and this cannot be overstated, Rachael is hotter in person than on TV. They say the camera adds ten pounds. Well the other side of that coin is that "in person" sheds ten pounds (which makes me happy most people meet me in person). And those missing 10 turn Rachelle from cute, perky girl next door, to sleek smokin' girl next door. (For the record, I grew up next door to tall lanky George Sarantitus.)

So my advice is don't waste hate-cycles on pretty girls, with good (sometimes too good) attitudes, who appear to live clean-enough, help people and make an honest buck, when there are plenty of opponent-poisoning, aide-stealing, child-murdering politicians around trying hard to earn your disrespect. (Just don't let them know you don't like them--especially if you enjoy eating out).

One Flu Over the Truffle Nest

2006-11-20T09:41:00.000-08:00

It turns out that food poisoning, or the one-day flu, or whatever it was, is the supreme dis-incentive to food blogging. So wrapped as I was in a fetal stance, prostrate on my bed, writing about the culinary wonders of the world did not rise to the Top Ten of my "to do" list. In fact, at one point, it fell below "make funeral arrangements".

Still, with lots of time on my hands, I was fleetingly able to consider the subtle differences between brands of saltines and flavors of gatorade. Nabisco and blue are my favorites respectively. Plus, this month, the Nabisco box has a comforting picture of perky Rachael Ray, giving one hope that there might be a brighter future.

The gastro-tsunami that engulfed Susan, Max and myself cost us an annual truffle dinner at Oliveto and a home cooked Aloo Gobi lunch from my business partner, Arati. But mercifully, the cloud has lifted before Thanksgiving.

Finally, whoever invented my doctor's prescribed BRAT diet, was a sadistic sort. Bananas, Rice, Applesauce and Toast cannot be combined into any palatable concoction. And, don't say Rice Pudding, which to me has always been like eating teeth. My preference would be an Italian version of BRAT, say Bolonese Ragu And Tortellini.

Anyway, have a great week of FOOD AND FAMILY! And be thankful for health.

Bam! Emeril and Daniel Braise the Rabbit

2006-11-10T22:08:00.000-08:00

It has been an amazing month. On Thursday, I sat in the front row, eating mussels, during a taping of Emeril Live, the Food Network's flagship show, starring Emeril Lagasse and his endearing enthusiastic personality. Now, I know what your thinking. But I tend not to be overly judgemental of mega-culinary personalities--regardless of how much they must "cook down" to their audience in order to garner a big enough one. Guys like Emeril, Alton Brown, Nigella Lawson, Rachel Ray, Tyler Florence et. al. simply introduce more people to good food than all of the hoity-toity Michelin Guides or gourmet reviewers combined. Without at least some instruction on home cooking, most of us would be relugated to eating breaded, compressed, deep-fried, flaked, factory-farmed, machine-molded, dry white meat chicken pieces.

Further, I have actually eaten at Emeril's restaurants in New Orleans and Las Vegas--AND THEY ABSOLUTELY DO NOT SUCK! I have yet to have a bad meal in any of his establishments. Not always off the charts, but never disappointing.

But it gets better. Today on Emeril Live. Daniel Boulud of Daniel, DB Bistro and Cafe Boulud in NY, and restaurants in Palm Beach and Las Vegas was Emeril's special guest cooking from his new book Braise, which he wrote with Melissa Clark. Now Daniel is certainly a world class chef if the one meal I have eaten at Daniel is any indication--and of course Michelin and the New York Times agree. The book is a global look at amazing dishes that share one thing in common: their method of preparation is that of slow cooking with intense seasoning in various liquids.

I took a cooking class from Daniel in Monterey last year at the Masters of Food and Wine, and was amazed by his cooking but, until Braise, found some of his instruction a bit intimidating. Braise, by contrast, is very approachable, save for the occasional tough to find ingredient. On the show, Daniel concocted a rabbit in mustard braise, which seemed spectacular (the plate never got around to me unfortunately, but those partaking appeared in rapture) and a dessert of pears with various forms of licorice flavoring that I will attempt this weekend.

Rabbit is the best meat on earth. Leaner than almost everything and tastier than almost everything. Good free-range organic pork is tastier than almost everything, but leaner than almost nothing. Chicken is leaner than almost everything, but tastier than almost nothing. Rabbit is the dream meat, in my opinion. Bison is a close second, when one wants to combine leaness and tastiness. I tell 3-year-old Max that "Bunnies are pets, but rabbits are tasty" in a doomed attempt to counteract the wierd American bias that allows us to consume 6 week old force-fed baby chickens at will, but regard mature rabbits as too cute to consume. This bias unfortunately afflicts his much-more-influential-than-me mother, so I have little hope in succeeding.

Besides the Rabbit and the Pears in Braise, I am looking forward to trying these recipes from the book:

veal breast with cinnamon
pork butt with hazelnuts and Jerusalem artichokes (f I can find the latter)
smoked chili
Thai curry chicken
grilled tofu with Chinese sausage, and
skate cioppino

The Emeril Live experience is just that. A live taping of an actual show from beginning to end--not segment by segment, but as if it was going to air live without much, if any editing. So it moves fast, and the audience is expected to be raucous--so much so that you actually ache from clapping and screaming by the end of the 90-minutes. Emeril appears genuine. Even with cameras off, he treats people with respect and courtesy and is always thanking those around him--nice to see. The crew is professional and entertaining, part of what it takes to keep the audience in the moment and the show alive. And the band--Doc Gibbs and the Boys--made you wish the commercial breaks would never end.

My only complaints--I didn't get to taste the rabbit and we only got to say "BAM!" one time. French-bistro food is apparently not amenable to the emphasis of the BAM. It should air in early 2007--but the best thing about The Food Network is that it will air at least once a month for the next 200 years. One way to preserve my legacy.

L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon

2006-11-08T20:55:00.000-08:00

Ok, so the title isn't quite right. But I don't know how to put the two french dots over the "o" in Joel in Microsoft Word. Nevertheless, that is the only thing that wasn't perfect about this night at New York's Four Season Hotel and this amazing restaurant.

The perfect foodie experience. Instead of sitting around a white table cloth with a stuffy server, imagine a sushi bar motif, but with exquisite new-french inspired food being passed over the transom to you at a rate about 2X what you actually ordered. Was the pesto adorned, tempura langostine the best dish? Well it was until you tasted the amazing calamari salad with raw baby artichokes and chorizo. Of course its reign lasted only until they served the tuna sashimi with chives; and then there was the chestnut soup with foie gras, and the stuffed quail again with foie gras (get it while the law still allows), and the kobe beef hamburger.

Moreover, the whole time you are talking with the strangers on either side, to the point that after a course or two you are actually passing plates back and forth. Myriad of courses while meeting a writer, singer, producer (that is one person), a fashion designer, and a private equity investor--all willing to share their food (although I think we were annoying the fashion designer a little bit). This was definitely in my top 4 dining experiences of 2006, and that is saying a great deal, since 2006 has been a banner year including: el Bulli, Manressa, Daniel, French Laundry, Drolma, Alinea, Topolobampo and several other contenders.

If you get to New York, definitely get to L'Atelier de Joel (two dots over the French "o") Robuchon at the Four Seasons. Meet some very cool people and eat some amazing food.

Bravo, Top Chef in New York

2006-10-28T13:36:00.000-07:00

Ok, three nights in New York. Can't eat 6 courses every night, so I meet friend and fellow venture capitalist Brad for soba noodles in Soho--a famous place, I learn, called Honmura An. Good noodles, very good noodles actually and decent small plates too. But that's not the good part. I thought $80 for two, including two light beers was a bit steep for noodles, no matter how sublime.

Brad says he knows a place next door to get tea and dessert. Sounds a little Castro-district to me, but Brad doesn't ride that bike, so I say lets go. Two minutes later we enter a nearly empty Moroccon tea room. Casablanca is quite literally projecting on the white curtains and we are ordering mint tea and baklava, as the French police are busting into Rick's Bar high above us. But that's still not the good part. Well actually that was a pretty good part.

Then, at about ten o'clock, some vaguely familiar people stroll into the place each with respective entourage in tow (what is the plural for entourage?). They are, I am amazed to overhear, some of this season's contestants on Bravo's TOP CHEF. My wife and I are addicted to Top Chef, which rotates in production with what I think is the only other show on Bravo, Project Runway, which is also a Susan favorite. On Top Chef, 15 pro-am chef's, cooks, cafeteria workers etcetera each compete for circa 15 weeks for something like $100,000, a vending cart and a whisk. Anyway they are here--and now we are here--in an obscure Moroccan bar in SoHo to watch and drink through this week's episode. For me this a little like finding yourself watching the first screening of Star Wars, while sitting next to Jabba the Hut (I am sometimes told by strangers I look like either Bruce Willis or the young Jabba). What a hoot!

I engage the top chefs in idle banter and find out that this is the first time they have seen the actual edited production of the episode and by a vote of 2-1 consider it fairly true to what actually happened. None of them would reveal the outcome of the competition--apparently doing so results in the forfeiture of the whisk.

It turns out that Josie, Cliff, and Sam (the three TC contestants) respective followers consist of some of the most beautiful women I have ever seen--yes all three of them are surrounded by gorgeous women, especially Josie. Andy Warhol was right about each of us getting our 15 minutes of fame. What he didn't tell us is that after those 15 minutes are up, we will be surrounded for some longer period by gorgeous women, whether we like it or not. Is it just me or does this sound ominously like what al Qaeda tells its prospective suicide bombers.

Barcelona Get Your Goat?

2006-10-27T21:05:00.000-07:00

So many places, so few meals. The goal of the trip was to visit the famed el Bulli restaurant, located a couple of hours north of Barcelona on the Costa Brava. It took years to score this reservation, which I was unable to get until one of my colleagues, Tom, let slip that his son had worked there, and would be happy to call chef/owner Ferran Adria to request a table. Tom and his son, of course, flew in to eat with us. Thus, Barcelona's own munching opportunities were an afterthought for us, despite the fact that the city has rapidly become a magnet for some of the world's most creative young chefs.

It turns out, that the Hotel Majestic, where we stayed, was home to one of the best classic Catalan restaurants in the city, Drolma. To not ride the elevator down four floors to this culinary gem would have, certainaly been an inexcusable oversight. So, when my partner, Phil, his wife Nancy, and I ventured down to the first floor, we were hopeful, but ultimately focused on a different meal a few days hence, and a few hundred kilometers North.

BIG SURPRISE. Chef Fermi Puig (who worked at el Bulli in the early '80s) slow-cooked a baby goat leg, which transformed into one of the most luscious and memorable pieces of animal I have ever ingested. The sauce seemed to have chocolate touches (one of our party said cinnamon, but I don't think so). But it was the meat, roasted for eight hours at low temp, that created the amazing taste and texture that was now melting in my mouth. I still dream about it. It has imprinted on my brain like a baby duck to its mother. I must replicate it, or get close. If you go to Barcelona, you must, MUST, have the baby goat at Drolma. But don't fill up on other stuff (and there was a bunch of other great stuff), because after you finish your half goat leg, they come back to offer you the other half. Eat it too!

Easter at my childhood home meant baby goat. My dad, a butcher, would drive his light blue pick-up hundreds of miles to some obscure ranch to collect live animals, then deliver them to the processor for----well----processing. Most would go to his customers. One would come home. Then, my grandmother would take the resulting parts and turn them into food. Shoulder became a savory stew with tomato, wine, onions and olives. Rib chops were dipped in egg and lightly breaded; then fried in hot olive oil to become crispy little goat cutlet popcycles with the rib bone forming the easy-grip handle. Then the leg, roasted with garlic, olive oil and rosemary--like a small leg of lamb, similar in texture, but with melting collagen causing a little extra tenderness. And, no lamby or goaty flavor. Young goats don't taste like goat, they taste more like milk-fed veal.

So, now back in the States, I am trying to score baby goats and find eight-hour roasting recipes. My father's sources have long since succumbed. So far, I have leads on three goat sources; one from Alice Waters, who was kind enough to connect me with S&B Ranch in Petaluma. I was able to get one goat from this rancher, but she has since found them to be more work than profit and would prefer to sell me piglets. Maybe another time.

It also looks like a sister of the proprietor of Marin Sun Farms, which produces my favorite organic grass-fed beef, may be raising goats. Traded phone calls suggest that Julie, the sister, might prefer to sell me several at a time--restaurant style. But I went up to the Farmers' Market today to meet her and she seemed open to my request for one goat at a time. She is looking for help in finding ways to prepare goat (a special African breed raised for its meat not its milk), so maybe--if my cooking experiments are successful, I can help her out too.

At any rate, working out all the uncomfortable details of turning free- range organic livestock into food on on a one-off basis in a healthful, legal and humane fashion has proven to be a challenge, the details of which you will be spared. But I am finally convinced, I can get the goat at some price and in some condition.

The hard part, it seems, is sleuthing out an acceptable plan for preparing the meat. The Internet has been zero help. Paula Wolfert offers a recipe for slow-roasted lamb which, in principle, should apply. This will take some more work , so I may need many baby goats. I'll let you know how it comes out. If you want to be guinea pigs (which I don't yet eat), let me know. In the meantime, I will write a letter to Chef Puig, to see if he just might send me the recipe.

Just to close on Barcelona, while we were hunting goat, I wanted to find great authentic tapas as well. First choice was Cal Pep, but our concierge screwed up and blew our chance at a reservation (a skinny girl who clearly didn't grasp the importance of finding the best food and apparently didn't understand the words "call first thing in the morning on September 1, when they are just back from holiday"). Oh well, a reason to go back.

So Phil checked with his concierge at the modern Hotel Arts, who informed him that a star chef from Madrid had just opened up a new white table cloth tapas restaurant in that very hotel called Arola (celebrity chef Sergi Arola). All I can say is ANOTHER ELEVATOR TRIP TO NIRVANA. Check it out. Also if you go to la Boqeria, the central market try Pinotxo, one of Ferran Adria's "happy places". No white table cloths, but the food! Plus you are surrounded by most of Spain's greatest ingredients.

Spanish Pigs Have Black Feet

2006-10-14T17:00:00.000-07:00

For information on finding ingredients and recipes go to www.foodcrunch.com
To get the latest foodcrunch post on you mobile phone text the
word "foodcrunch" to 44-636

The first night in Catalonia is dinner al fresco in my Barcelona Hotel. Three reasons for this. One, I need to pace myself over the next week. Two, there are several Spanish ingredients I want to try at the market. Three, its August 30 and most of the places I want to try are closed until September 1. Those Euros and their August adventures.

Barcelona's main covered market, Mercat de Sant Josep/ La Boqueria, is centrally located just south of the Gothic quarter. I went there in search of sheep's cheese and jamon iberico (ham from the patta negra "black-footed" pig) "Bellota" (which refers to the pigs being free-range and fed on acorns). I was also looking for some exotic fruit and a decent local wine to wash it all done. SCORE! I found a Catalonian raw milk sheep's cheese that tasted like a sweet ricotta, but with enough structure to stick to a piece of baguette. I urge you to seek out these anonomous fresh cheeses in European markets. They simply don't exist in the U.S. except at a very few farmers' markets around the country. SCORE 2: Izatzabel, one of my favorite Spanish cheeses, in the pecorino toscano style, but with a sharper edge. SCORE 3: Mediterranean peaches and plums and a 10-euro Tempranillo (red wine) that was perfectly drinkable.

Then the Grand Slam: 150 grams of cured pork leg, sliced thin, from the acorn-fed black-footed (patta negra) iberico pigs--a bona fide culinary treasure, in my judgement, like the white truffles of the Piemonte and the endangered beluga cavier. Much earthier than the Prociutto di Parma of my heritage, this ham is darker in color and has more of a caramel sweetness. It is also less salty and can be more or less chewy than Prociutto, depending on the paricular ham and how it is cut. My experience is that the Spanish cut it more thickly than is typical in Italy. At room temperaure the surface of the slices is pleasantly oilly. Rub a piece on your upper lip and eat fruit!

I also tried several other cured cuts of this animal, including the Lomo (cured loin of the black-footed pig) and Chroizo (a spanish paprika-spiced cured sausage, unlike the raw Mexican Chorizo). It was all spectacular. Once, the first slice of spicy chorizo went down, it was slice after slice until it was completely gone.

So how do we get it here? Go to Spain. Unfortunately, there has been no acorn-fed jamon iberico from patta negra pigs in the United States, because there was no USDA approved processing facility in Spain--but that is all changing. This year a U.S. company called la Tienda began importing iberico lomo and chorizo and will be receiving its first iberco hams very soon. The company has worked directly with Spanish producers and the USDA for half a decade to bring jamon iberico to the United States and you can go to the web site to pre-order yours now. But fair warning, it will be expensive. The stuff I acquired during my trip cost 122-euros (about $146) per kilo. In the meantime, try their lomo and chorizo and get a can of the sweet smoked spanish paprika to juice up your sauces and rubs.

We put in for our ham three or so years ago and will be having a pig-eaten party when it arrives in 2008.

But back to Barcelona. With my ham, fruit, cheese and wine (and British TV), I was in no need of the famed Barcelona night life. Instead, my foodie equivalent of smoking hashish in Amsterdam--partaking of contraband raw milk cheese and forbidden cured pig in a Barcelona hotel was enough for me. I felt like I was putting one over on the puritans at the USDA, and with the price of the ham and measuring it in grams, it was not unlike an illegal drug experience.

www.FoodCrunch.com

2006-10-06T22:10:00.000-07:00

It took a month, but FoodCrunch www.foodcrunch.com is finally up and running with food ingredient sources, recipes and restaurant suggestions. I hope you enjoy it and will contribute your comments.

FoodCrunch is Back

2006-09-08T07:06:00.000-07:00

I have been away for awhile, but my sources tell me you are all managing and munching just fine without me. Also, who needs another restaurant review afterall.

SO--A New Direction

Going forward, FoodCrunch will focus on ingredients and ingredient-sourcing and recipes, more than on restaurant reviews per se. There are several reasons for the change. First, I am better at this, have more to offer, and greater passion for cooking than for eating out. Second, their is a paucity of practical information on exceptional ingredients, and on the purveyors themselves. Especially for those of us that can't afford to subscribe to Foody Newsletters like The Rosengarten Report, or no longer read the leading food sections of major newspapers (because we don't read newspapers) like the New York Times, L.A. Times and, yes, the San Francisco Chronicle, which I think is the best of the bunch. Third, my son and I love to visit farmers and farmers' markets and do so everywhere we go. These people are passionate about their food and love to talk about it.

Having said this, I will talk about restaurants occasionally, just not as much. For example, I will post in the near future on eating fish in New York, because two recent trips there have inspired me to declare 2006, the year of fish in the Matteucci household--much to the consternation of my Iowa-DNA'd spouse and carb-loving three-year-old. Luckily I have been able to recruit several of my neighbors into my picene experiments. I bring them steaming plates of wine-poached butterfish, or flattened lobster or miso-marinated black cod.

Another set of , near-term posts will cover our recent trip to Catalonia, which included partaking of the famous jamon iberico (pata negra), the black-footed, acorn-fed pigs cured in the style of italian and spanish cured meats. The trip also uncovered the best baby goat EVER at Drolma and our trip-defining pilgramige to 3-star elBulli, where we ate 30+ courses of Ferrar Adria's world-inspiring avante guarde food in a remote cove on Spain's Costa Brava. This post will include pictures! But if you can't wait, check out the excellent blog Chocolate and Zucchini.

Finally, I will be connecting this FoodCrunch blog to a new web site aptly called FoodCrunch shortly, which will also gather recipes, purveyors and links for those inclined to cook. You can check it out as I build it here, but I will let you know when it is ready for primetime.

Melts in Your Mouth & In Your Hand

2005-09-23T15:30:00.000-07:00

Waking up in Vignamaggio http://www.vignamaggio.com/ a villa outside of Greve in Chianti (Tuscany), one might anticipate a day exploring Etrusian ruins or walking through a quaint Tuscan village or biking along the s.s.222 from winery to winery. NOT ME. I wake up thinking about the Fresh Bufalo Mozzarella that is waiting for me downstairs, and the sensation I will experience when wrapping my teeth around the little mound and breaching its taught outer skin, releasing that fresh tangy burst of creaminess. Hard to get this experience in California (at least while eating cheese). Cow's milk mozzo has about half the butter fat per unit weight of bufalo milk and getting the real thing from Italy, usually means it is several days or even weeks old--just not the same--too tart and a little off-flavor. If the water it is sitting in appears yellowish, don't even bother. Of course, now you can get decent American-made bufalo mozzarella in your specialty cheese shop or gourmet grocery store. It seems somebody is raising the bulky critters near San Diego.

But just when I thought I had eaten the best Mozzarella ever in my little Tuscan villa, some one introduced me to something called Burrata an even creamier (literally and aesthetically) rendition favored in Italy's Southland, especially Aupulia and Campania. Basically, Burata is the Hostess Twinkie of Mozzarella. A creamier, buttery fresh cheese center, surrounded by a stretched skin of Mozzarella that holds it in tact until you cut into it. Then the filling slowly oozes out onto your plate, your hand or on whatever other serving platform you might imagine. Eat it plain or adorn it. Last time I had it with smoked chili jam and strawberry-lavender preserves, chopped mint and Manni Olive Oil (another post). It was a pleasant, meltingly satisfying dessert after a rather large meat feast.

However, there is one very big problem with burrata: the shelflife of the stuff is even shorter than Fresh Mozzarella. So getting it from a cheese maker in Italy (not impossible; check out http://www.formaggiokitchen.com/kitchen/asp/home.asp) is even more problematic. First, some Italian farmer makes it, gets it to an airport hours away (or maybe it passes through the hands of several middlemen), then ships it to some retailer in America, who enters it into inventory, processes your order and then ships it to you. Could be days if you're lucky!

Enter Gioia Cheese Company of El Monte, California. I first tried their American-made burrata at A16 in the Marina district of San Francisco. A16 takes great pains to replicate the southern Italian artesan eating experience, right down to certifying its pizza oven with the consortium in Italy that governs such things. I was prepared to meet my maker after my first bite. Next, I had it once more at that bastion of old line, high-end Italian eating in Los Angeles, Valentino's. The burrata was a spectacular segway between a perfectly-executed Osso Buco and I what I imagine was a good dessert. I never got to dessert--went right from burrata to grappa.

A16 would serve Gioia burrata simply because it is a terrific product. Valentino's would only serve it if it was terrific AND typical of the best of the motherland. With no help from Valentino's but tremendous assistance from Victoria Lidbin at A16, I was able to track down the source:

Gioia Cheese Company, Inc.
1605 Potrero Ave.
South El Monte, CA 91733
Bus: (626) 444-6015

As you might expect, they are transplanted Southern Italians and very family-sounding over the phone. Furthermore, they agreed to ship their cheese to me for a party I was having. It arrived the day after it was made--in perfect condition. But now I have even more great news! Cowgirl Creamery is getting the stuff directly from Gioia and, so far, it seems to be arriving at the store in San Francisco's ferry building in darn good shape.

Still, for special occasions (like any time I am really hungry or just when the tomatoes look good) I intend to order directly from Gioia. Trouble is I have to order about six pounds at a time, so if anybody wants to piggy back on my latest addiction, drop me a note. One bite and you will become a acolyte of fresh, fresh, fresh burata.

So the next recipe I will attempt will be a Reconstructed Fried Egg, which I have never eaten and only imagined.

On top of some fresh greens, lay one slice of oozing burrata with a slight indentation in the middle made with the back of a spoon. Top this with a soft-cooked sunny-side up quail (or small chicken) egg (YOKE ONLY), a few drops of this-season's olive oil, many many slices of fresh white truffles from Piemonte (this will have to wait until early November). Finally, adorn with a very few chopped chive pieces. Next to the egg will be 2 smallish pieces of toasted ciabatta bread rubbed, when still warm, with a halved garlic clove and topped with very thin slices of prociutto di Parma and a few micro-greens. Projected cost--about $40 per plate with the truffle. Breakfast at my house anyone?

Fill 'er Up and Fill Me Up Too--The Gourmet Gas Station

2005-07-27T12:53:00.000-07:00

Gas station food isn't your favorite? Ah but you haven't had the fresh fish special at the Gourmet Gas Station in Gallitan Gateway, Montana. The GGS offers a sit down diner- style motif with an inspired menu of hearty fare. For dinner this means Mexican specialties, fresh seafood, special BBQ nights and occasional pile-0-rib-roast platters. Tom, who runs this child-friendly establishment isn't shy about portions. The Giant Burrito, my personal favorite isn't adorned by all those foofy california condiments. No Sour cream or guac on the inside--just tender moist chicken, rice and beans--and tons of it, wrapped in a warm flour tortilla. And it all starts with multiple varieties of house-made salsa and chips.

Not a fan of Mexican and you think its a bad idea to eat Fresh Alaskan Halibut when you find yourself more than 100 miles from any ocean? Well it is a bad idea--knucklehead! But somehow the GGS gets it right enough. It's not fancy, not le Bernadin, or even Fish Market, but its better than Red Lobster (it is FRESH afterall) and a welcome break from the standard Montana hunk-o-cow bar and grill. Thank God for airlines connections to cities with oceans.

But, you say, you ARE in Montana and you want hunk-o-cow? Show up for the barbequed bison ribs or make it for prime rib and get Tom to reserve the end cut.

Wine list. Yes I said WINE LIST. Very servicable, a couple of dozen choices of decent brands in high distribution. I always find something I know I will like. No doubt the best Gas Station wine list on the North American continent, I wager.

Dessert? How about batter-fried cheesecake. Actually, I have never made it to dessert, but the dessert board has tempted many of my dinner mates. Again think good country efforts and large portions.

The bottom line is The GGS gets 5/5 on the Gas Station Food scale and a 2.5/5 overall.

The GGS is attached to the Conoco Station on Highway 191 about 9 miles from downtown Bozeman on the way to the Big Sky ski area and Yellowstone National Park. Heading South turn left right after passing the Gallatin Gateway Inn on your right.

Olena Gives Boston 3 World Champions

2005-07-10T22:34:00.000-07:00

My good friend Adam Grosser Posts on 2 Boston Restaurants, One Burlingame fiasco and his new favorite herb. Take it away Adam . . .

Two Boston Restaurants

I have had occasion to eat at two very different restaurants in Boston recently, Hammersley's Tavern, and Oleana.

Hammersley's is a cozy experience, with redolent smells permeating the restaurant. I had a breast of garlic chicken over white bean puree that was fantastic. It was very simple, served with deglazed pan juices, and some rosemary. My guest had the evening special of short ribs - braised with vegetables, and again, well cooked. We followed it up with a lemon tart and home-made ice cream. If you're in the mood for lovely seasonal fare, with a bias toward comfort, check out Hammersely's.

Oleana, on the other hand, was something completely different. Tucked away on Inman Square in Cambridge, the restaurant is a tiny gem you could miss if you blinked. When we arrived, the place was packed, but they had our table ready. The place is cramped, and we were seated between the two aisles which compounded the feeling. As we perused the menu, our server asked if we'd been there before. When we said no she said, "The food here is a party in your mouth". I started with a small plate of grilled hummus wrapped in Turkish Pastrami (Basturma) served with roasted tomatoes. My appetizer was a Spinach Falafel and Arugula Salad with house cured Beets. My entree was "Sujuk" - a house-made Turkish Sausage with a Fava-bean Moussaka. Words don't begin to describe the flavors, and the sophistication of the pairings. The chef, Ana Sortun, was recently named "Best Chef Northeast 2005" by the James Beard Society. I'd be back once a week if I lived there, as all of us independently decided that it was a Top-Ten Lifetime Dining Experience.

A Burlingame Restaurant
Stella Alpina Osteria opened recently - less than a month ago. It is half a level below street level, and takes the place of the long-lasting Alpine Inn. Skip it. The food was awful. The servers weren't into the food, and all of it tasted like bad institutional offerings. My wife had the delightful sounding "Saffron Risotto with Sausage and Porcini". It tasted (and looked) like bright yellow paste with a bottle of cheap sauce poured on top. I had the "Gamberi a la Diavola" which turned out to be almost raw prawns in ketchup. Dessert was a piece of Chocolate Bread Pudding - ostensibly the owner's mother's recipe - I think she didn't share the full list of ingredients. The only pleasant part of the experience was dining outside on a warm summer night.

An Undiscovered Herb.
I'm obsessed with Shiso - the Japanese herb that tastes like a blend of Thai Basil, Tarragon, and White Pepper. You can buy a bunch of leaves in any Japanese market for about $1. I like to take paper thin slices of beef, wrap them around a Shiso leaf, and grill the bundle quickly over charcoal. Sprinkle with Olive Oil and Salt/Pepper. People will eat them faster than you can make them. I've also made a steamed Sea Bass in Shiso Broth with Shiitake Mushrooms. I'm going to make Shiso Pesto to see how that works, but I suspect, that will become a new favorite as well.

Bartolotta is a Wynn-WIn

2005-07-08T11:57:00.000-07:00

Las Vegas again. Business again--really! This time Rick Lewis and I hit the new Steve Wynn Hotel on the Strip for--of all things--authentic Italian Seafood. Casey got sick playing basketball, he went straight to bed--at least that's his story. Chef Bartolotta has created Bartolotta Ristorante di Mare from his Ligurian memory. He imports the fish fresh from European sources and uses it fast to create familiar flavors, with Fine Dining presentation and Las Vegas flair. The red mullet appetizer with capers and halved cherry tomatoes was spectacular, if skimpy on serving size. They claim they are creating a small plate opportunity so diners can engage in variety. And variety is key at Bartolotta--because you get fish here you just can't get anywhere outside of Europe--and certainly not in any other desert setting. So you want to try more than one course.

I was tempted to get a second course of penne with the same mullets because I just love this fish. But for variety sake, I made my primi a rabbit (sorry no fish, but I just can never resist eating the little hopping mammal from a chef, who is new to me). It was an outstanding carmelized loin on a bed of baby artichokes.

My main course was a pile of perfectly cooked Langostino (the lobster/shrimpy crsustacion that is the source of real Scampi) in a "must sponge it up" sauce again with dozens of halved cherry tomatoes. You just know some fresh-faced apprentice is spending all his day cutting these ripe red morsels in half. Fresh, tasty, perfect tecture. Boy did it make me miss Italy. Rick had a European Turbot fillet that had a firm texture--not swordfish firm, but was perfectly moist. He preceded that with a standard Insalata Mista and a plate of little-pillow Gnocchi in a tomato sauce. And the wines--all Italian, many single glass selections of hard to find, moderately priced grape juice from regions like Friulli, the Veneto and Sicily. But they also have a great selection of the Super Tuscan, Brunello and Barolo sort.

Love fish, but sick of the Salmon, Swordfish, Halibut, Mahi Mahi rotation. At Bartolotta, you are looking at a dozen types of seafood that you simply won't find at other places--European Sea Bream, Purple Snapper. A half-dozen whole fish selections, simply prepared, as well as more deconstructed high-style concoctions.

Check out the most recent Wine Spectator review of all the Wynn restaurants. Wynn's brought a gang of up and comers to Las Vegas, and is making them live there and work in their beautiful custom-designed culinary palaces. For me, I can't wait to go back to Bartolotta: 4/5.

The rest of the trip--not to food-eventful. The worst convention food ever was found at the World Series of Poker at the Rio. Casey and Rick actually threw their hotdogs away. Still the actual event was a hoot. And we did meet a bunch of Poker TV stars including James Woods and Jennifer Tilly. Not sure what they were eating.

Ratings:
No rating--don't bother, better choices around every corner for the same or less money.
1/5 I will eat here, but something is always left wanting, food or service or something.
2/5 Good food. Not always consistent. Decent value eating.
3/5 Solid. Consistent. You look for reasons to eat here.
4/5 Excellent. You will not be disappointed even if it costs more.
5/5 Beyond a meal. An experience, like going to the opera at la Scala or watching your team win the World Series.

French Laundry: 4th Time, Less Charm

2005-06-15T12:29:00.000-07:00

It wasn't bad enough that the French voted down their own constitution, and that they are the butt of surrender jokes (I'm opening a French Army Store where the pocket knives only have cork screws, no blades and the maniquens all have their arms in the air), but now namesake, French Laundry has to endure the Foodster wrath.

I have had 3 of the 10 best meals of my life at The French Laundry in Yountville, California. In fact, those experiences have defined the 5/5 rating in my mind. Amazing, creative food, formal yet not off-putting service and decor, and wonderful knowledgeble folks from the busgirl to the Solmmelier. Just the BEST.

My fourth visit to this culinary mecca in 4 years engendered some surprises, but the biggest one is that there weren't any culinary surprises, like those we have experienced in the past. Keller's Salmon Tartare cones and the Oysters and Pearls (sabayon of pearl tapioaca with beau soleil oysters) were as delectable as always. And the Sturgeon (with smoked steelhead trout roe) was unexpected and spectacular. The lobster "cuites sous vide", tartare of Australian "Wagyu", and Elysian "cote d'agneau" were what you would expect from any very high-end accomplished chef and a great kitchen. But the French Laundry is not any great kitchen, and Thomas Keller is not "any" accomplished chef.

So the food was wonderful 4/5 but not as edgy as we had come to expect. The service, on the otherhand, was neglectful and uninformed 3/5. Especially uninformed. I asked several questions about various menu items and beverages, which were incompletely or incorrectly resolved, and the staff did not exhibit the energy, passion, pride and humor we had exerienced in earlier visits.

And the cost!!!! Two of us spent an embarrassing $800, more than 4 Club Seat Rolling Stones Tickets at SBC Park, and more than what a party of four cost us at TFL 2 years ago. $175 per person, tax, a mandatory 19% service charge (when the service was declining in quality). Drinks? A great Sake, a half bottle of something very nice but not notable and I think my wife had a cocktail. No First Growths. No Screaming Eagles.

Pheeew! Got that out of my system. Since I will not likely get another TFL reservation in my lifetime, I will have to resort to Freedom Fries and the occassional trip to LA (can't believe I am admitting that) to get a Bastide fix--at least until I can make it to el Bulli in 2006.

Eating Las Vegas

2005-06-15T09:06:00.000-07:00

Short summary:
Nobu 2.5/5
Picasso 2.5/5
Red Square 2/5
Knob Hill 3/5
Seablue 1/5
Mesa Grill 3/5

OK, so you think I shouldn't be eating Sushi in the desert. Granted, but Las Vegas is getting its food pretty quickly from the coast these days. Still I tried a nobel experiment (Nobu experiement). I ate there like I would eat at my favorite sushi place back home. I ordered only the most interesting and exotic sashimi, with a rice bowl chaser at the end. It was fine. It was fresh, It was clean, It was nothing special. I have eaten at several of Nobu's Restaurants in the past. My 4 visits to Matsuhisa's in Beverly Hills, his first endeavor, have all been 4 or 5/5 visits--the best tempura I have ever had (despite living in Japan)--plus I saw Richard Gere and Cindy Crawford on separate occassions. My view of celebrities is generally "just live your own life". But I have to say, Cindy definitely captured my attention. If the magazine editors make her look beautiful via Photo Shop. She must have had a Photo Shop pro at the ready before she went out that night. Stunning. Oh yeah, the food was spectacular. Black Cod with Miso. My two visits to Nobu London were both 5/5 in food and service and great people watching events. Matsuhisa's in Aspen was merely a 2/5. It felt like more of the downstairs overflow room at a Popeye's in Washington D.C.

Red Square. I was looking forward to the stroganoff. It was odd, and I think my taste buds were failing me. But still 2/5, tasty and great 1950s Soviet ambiance, without the six hour wait in a bread line.

Picasso, in the Bellagio was the real disappointment because expectations were extremely high. Wonderful ambiance, killer service, but the food--nothing that said "can't get this anywhere else". 2.5/5.

I have enjoyed Pices (Bulringame) and Aqua (Las Vegas, since changed to Michael Mina) so much in the past, that I was really looking forward to Michael Mina's restaurants in Las Vegas' MGM Grand. Knob Hill did not disappoint. I ate lucious Lobster Pot Pie at the bar, while getting to know a Washington D.C. foodie who happened onto the stool next to mine. Solid 3/5. Just wish some one had been there with me so I could have tried more things and judge consistency across selections better. Unfortunately, Seablue was not as satisfying. It looked good. I mean live anchovies swimming round the big tank outside certainly suggested good fresh fish. But this 1/5 restaurant was overpriced, the service made me long for the days when a freckled kid would ask me "you wanna supersize it". At Seablue I felt lonely from inattention, miffed from the large number of menu items that were unavailable at 6 p.m. in the evening--what, did they have a mad rush of early-bird halibut eaters or something.

Now Mesa Grill--talk about exceeding expectations. Went once with Susan (wife), then went back the following week when I in LV on business. I watched the TV show about how Bobby Flay built the restaurant. Reality Construction of the soft rock sort. So I expected just another absentee celebrity chef locale, with an uninteresting but consistent menu of easy to chow down Southwest fare. What I got was two very different selections on two trips--so much variety that I missed not ordering my favorites twice. I also got spectacular rabbitt cooked multiple ways--no doubt borrowed from his buddy, Mario Batali's, Rabbit 3-Ways dish at fabulous Babbo in NY. Wonderful tamale. One co-worker ordered a fabulous steak, while the other said his lamb was a bit dry--lucky I didn't try any. Sauces were different, not overwhelming. Drinks were creative--go crazy with the margarita selection! Mesa Grill at Caeser's gets a 3.5/5.

Where should I go next in LV folks? Likely to have to be there again soon.

Taste Buds and Asahi Super Dry

2005-06-14T17:45:00.000-07:00

First, my taste buds. Went through a bout of sinus infection about a month ago and dragged the whole family along with me. For 2 weeks I could not taste anything--nothing. Dr. thinks I had a blocked olafactory nerve or something. It was weird. But it is over now. Nevertheless, my tasting has not completely returned to normal. I can taste high notes and sour things very well. Savory things are less nuanced than in the past. It is like I am dropping packets (to put it in Internet terms). Probably a trip to the saw bones is in order. Anyone have any suggestions?

Second, Asahi Super Dry--my favorite bev at a fantastic 10-year old Sushi depot in Burlingame called Sakae. Not a cheap place, this little dive. I can easily spend $50, all-in, on miso soup, excellent sashimi, a beer and a bowl of rice chaser, tax and tip. But the quality makes this a 4/5. I am never disappointed and rarely wish I had spent less for dinner. Of course when I bring Max, I have to tip more as retribution for the carnage that is his culinary aftermath. But he loves the vegetable tempura--this along with Amici's penne pesto is about all the veggies he will eat. For me it is the sweet scallop sashimi with lemon slices and the white tuna or fresh anchovies that satisfy. Went to Nobu in LV two weeks ago and Sakae compared favorably in quality with this world famous sushi brand, especially when ordering straight forward Sashimi (as oppposed to Nobu Matsuhisa's sauce-inspired concoctions). A must try--fish I can apparently still taste.

It Takes A Village Pub

2005-05-13T22:43:00.000-07:00

Three meals, three restaurants, no workout--tough day. Penninsula Creamery has gone way downhill at their Stanford Mall Location. Barely a 1/5. Horrible service with an attitude. Not worth anymore ASCII characters here.

Max's for dinner because my son Max likes Max's--who'da thunk.

So let's focus on the Village Pub in Woodside 3/5 with promises of a 4 on occasion. Lunch at VP happens 2-3 times a month for me. Stick to the basics and the seasonal treats. A great hamburger with bistro style fries of perfect salinity and crispyness. Expertly done frittata specials. Interesting soups unavailable elsewhere. I do miss their mussel dish. They started their reincarnation 4 years or so ago with a menu that included a farmer's lunch of house cured meats cheeses, greens and breads. While they no longer have it, I was able to reconstruct it by ordering the asparagus and artichoke salad with goat cheese and the salumi and artesian cheese plate. $20 bucks, light lunch, very tasty. I also love the Buetlesman photos of the Crystal Springs area--take a long look at these since their beauty is so close to where we all live, yet the local wilderness is off limits to all but a few friends of the SF Water Department.

I haven't been to the Village Pub in quite awhile for dinner, but have never been disappointed at this restaurant and plan to hit the night option their soon. Looking forward to Vegas next week. Anymore suggestions out there?

Quince-essential Dinner

2005-05-12T22:40:00.000-07:00

Last night hit Quince, by Michael Tusk. As a matter of full disclosure, one of my business partners is an investor. Anyway, excellent use of the best of current produce offerings in the frito misto antipasti and the homemade mortadella would have made Tusk's mentor Paul Bertolli proud. Actually, Tusk worked under Alice Waters at Chez Panisse when Bertolli was the chef their, and then went to work for Paul at Oliveto, one of my favorite restaurants (more disclosure: I am an investor in one of Paul's other ventures).

Pasta dishes were highligted by the crab and lemon pasta, bigoli with duck; but I had the champion main couse braised shortribs milanese: off the bone rib meet breaded (like an Italian Veal cutlet) and lightly fried. I have had a sinus infection for 3 weeks unable to taste anything--and Tusk's shortribs were the cure. Try Quince. It gets a 4/5.

0/5 or No rating--don't bother, better choices around every corner for the same or less money.
1/5 I will eat here, but something is always left wanting, food or service or something.
2/5 Good food. Not always consistent. Decent value eating.
3/5 Solid. Consistent. You look for reasons to eat here.
4/5 Excellent. You will not be disappointed even if it cost more.
5/5 Beyond a meal. An experience, like going to the opera at la Scala or watching your team win the World Series.

Coming up for us--a big week in Vegas. Dinner at Red Square, Picasso and Nobu. Lunch at Mesa Grill. I had a Mesa Grill reservation last week while on business, but they cancelled it because Ellen Degenerus (or however you spell it) showed up with a bunch of her friends impromptu. Told them I would be happy to sit quietly in a corner and watch, but they said no thank you. Offered to "take care of me" the next time I was in town. Well that's next week.

The following a week is visit 4 to the French Laundry (5/5). The first time with a table for two. Brother and Sister-in-law will watch Max, who believes Amici's Pizza is 5/5. Lots to eat. Amazing I have actually lost weight the last 3 months.

This week at the Farmers' Market--Fava's still good, baby chokes better than the big ones, nettles, look for fresh garbanzos.

Craving Bastide

2005-04-12T11:06:00.000-07:00

Scary wierd food--loved it. Lots of little plates. How does this sound: Deconstructed Bloody Mary--celery gelato, spicy tomato puree, and a vodka jello shot. All on one spoon.

How about Fois Gras Pina Colada? Good, but not as good as the Scallops in Cinnamon Butter over Fried Vermicelli. AMAZING!! Made this at home this week.

Lamb--don't love lamb. But Chef Ludovic Lefebvre's Saddle of Lamb with Squid Ink Gnocchi and Basil Ice Cube was fabulous. Great Cheeses. Desserts: Ginger Soup with Litchi Sorbet and Carrot Jam and New Catalan Creme Brule and Espresso Nitro.

And the wines: classics like 1989 Chateau Gruaud Larose and 1996 Nuits St. Georges 1cru Les Forets. Crazies like Engelgarten "Vin de Terroir" Marcel Deiss 1999.

I haven't had a dinner this creative since my first visit to the French Laundry--but while Keller serves classic tastes with a sense of humor, Lefebvre borders on bizarre. You wouldn't want to leave this earth without experiencing both of them. (I have to make to el Bulli sometime to compare). Check out this restaurant. I give it a 4/5 with the possibility of moving higher after subsequent visits. It is a reason to go to L.A. not simply a place to eat while there. LL also has a book, CRAVE, coming out this month.

Susan and I are headed back to the French Laundry this month, and to Las Vegas in May. Any Vegas eats suggestions?

Finally, Something to Like about LA

2005-04-12T10:40:00.000-07:00

Company offsite last week in Los Angeles and a chance to visit three outstanding restaurants. Of Bastide, Valentino and Grace, the former was the clear winner, though all were exceptional and a wonderful time.

The highlight of Grace--my highlight (much of the rest of the group thought the outstanding female clientele in the main room was the apex of the experience)--was the Fred Flinstone size braised pork shank. In fact, it was sooooo good and sooooo big, I remember little else about the experience. Not even apparently the most beautiful bodies money can buy. Couldn't even eat the dessert--a specially concocted cheese plate (3.5/5).

Ratings:
No rating--don't bother, better choices around every corner for the same or less money.
1/5 I will eat here, but something is always left wanting, food or service or something.
2/5 Good food. Not always consistent. Decent value eating.
3/5 Solid. Consistent. You look for reasons to eat here.
4/5 Excellent. You will not be disappointed even if it cost more.
5/5 Beyond a meal. An experience, like going to the opera at la Scala or watching your team win the World Series.

Valentino was--well--Valentino (4/5). Terrific high-end Italian fare with flair and spectacular wine. Me? I had Osso Buco--very traditional and high quality. I was on a shank binge that week. Superb homemade pasta. Wonderful Cheese. But the highlight? Locally made burrata--seems they found an artesian cheese maker from Puglia, living North of LA and willing to make the cheese for them--what are the odds. The buttery, melty premium mozzarella made from Water Buffalo milk (significantly higher fat content than cows) must be eaten the day it is made (or at least within 3 days). A little fresh olive oil and salt. Done! Finished with a spectacular grappa (and I don't even like Grappa)--Berta "Roccanivo" Grappa de Barbera.

Bastide deserves its own post, which I will add soon.

The Door is Open

2005-03-06T20:53:00.000-08:00

When we had our condo on SF's Embarcadero, we would walk to Giants baseball games, only 15 minutes away. Each trek would take us by the "temporary" location of the Mission District's famous Slanted Door restaurant (4/5), which had relocated from the Mission so the original could be remodelled.

Not only was the baseball great, but we would pick up to-go eats from one of the City's best and most creative restaurants--Shaking Beef, Ground Pork with Summer Corn (my favorite), Spring Rolls with Peanut Sauce and the wonderful rare Ahi. Beats the heck out of stadium food (1/5). Three seasons after its "temporary" debut , we were still eating and running or running and eating are way through Vietnamese fusion fare, in Section 125 Row 15 of PacBell (now SBC) Park.

Anyway, we sold the condo and Slanted Door never moved back to the Mission, but instead ventured a few blocks North to the remade Ferry Building, San Francisco's 21st Century culinary capital. The Ferry Plazza is great, the Slanted Door is not missing a beat, but for its first year of operation--no take out business and a difficult reservation to eat in. Instead we went through spring-roll withdrawel while being relegated to Orlando's Cha Cha Bowls in Left Field (2/5) and an occasional Polish Dog (when you are in the mood for a dog, the SBC polish is a definite 3/5).

But new this season, Chef Phan has opened, behind the Slanted door (inside the main Ferry Building's lobby) his new "Out the Door" serving a special take out menu that includes his famous Spring Rolls (same old peanut sauce, thank God), noodles, steamed buns, pork sandwhices soups and more. It is not quite the same, because you don't have access to the Slanted Door's entire menu, but the food is still excellent and you can grab it, head for the dock and watch the ferries steam in and out, and if you need to work it off, it is only a 25-minute walk to the best baseball venue in the Major Leagues.

RATINGS:

No rating--don't bother, better choices around every corner for the same or less money.
1/5 I will eat here, but something is always left wanting, food or service or something.
2/5 Good food. Not always consistent. Decent value eating.
3/5 Solid. Consistent. You look for reasons to eat here.
4/5 Excellent. You will not be disappointed even if it costs more.
5/5 Beyond a meal. An experience, like going to the opera at la Scala or watching your team win the World Series.

Now Devil Them

2005-03-06T20:37:00.000-08:00

Ok, so you are making the perfect eggs. How do you make great deviled eggs. Well last thanksgiving I did the following, and the eggs went before the Turkey (and it was moist wonderful heritage turky flown in from Kansas).

Boil the eggs as below. Let them cool. Peel them. Halve them. Scoop out hard yokes and reserve whites.

Place yokes in bowl and crush with a large fork. Add enough Best Foods or Hellman's mayonaise to make a dry paste. To this add 1 heaping tbls of dijon styled prepared mustard per dozen eggs. Then add one mashed garlic clove, 1 tablespoon SPANISH smoked sweet paprika (get it from Tienda.com if you can't find it elsewhere)--don't use the plain paprika you get from the grocery store. Add 1 tbls chopped fresh chives. Mix well. Salt and pepper to taste. Now, add small amounts of a fruity olive oil until you get the consistency you want (like pesto) so that you can squeeze it though a pastry bag or ziplock back into the egg whites. Not too hard. But don't skimp on the right Paprika. YUM!

Perfect Hard Boiled Eggs

2005-02-28T09:54:00.000-08:00

We all eat them, but so many complain of struggling to make them right. So many people ask me about it, that I thought I ought to document one way to do it. Below is a method that is nearly fool-proof. Love to hear yours.

First, farm fresh eggs make great-tasting hardboiled eggs, but they are almost impossible to peel. As the eggs sit in the frig for 4 or 5 days, they lose a little moisture and separate better from the inner shell. Make it easy on youself. Store your eggs for a few days before boiling them. If you have time, take them out and give them an hour or so to get to room temperature before boiling.

Start with cold water in a medium deep pan. The water should completely cover the eggs plus a litle more. Before placing them in the pan, puncture eggs on wide end with a pin or needle. This prevents the sulfpur build-up that causes the green-gray ring on the egg yoke. Place eggs in cold water and bring the water to a boil. When you the water boiling vegourously, cover the eggs and turn off the heat and let it sit there for 10 minutes. Then dump the eggs into ice water for 5 minutes. Check it out.

Small Plates, Big Taste

2005-02-27T20:33:00.000-08:00

I went to a restaurant in SF recently that was terrific. Moreover, given its location--a particularly sparsley populated corner of SOMA without much walk-by traffic--it might not be around very long, so I suggest to give it a whirl soon. BTW, we have no financial or other interest in Tamal except that it was really good and unique food that we fear might not be available for very long, though I am convinced the chef will surface somewhere else.

Tamal is a "small plate" restaurant located at 1599 Howard Street in the former residence of a typical blue collar lunch/cafe. The menu is highlighted by tamale inventions and other ancient America-inspired dishes. If you go, try the duck leg smothered in bittersweet chocolate, Grand Marnier, orange and chile sauce--unbelievable. We also loved the Crab empanadas, especially the sauce, and the porcini mushroom tamale with truffle oil. The dessert, a chocolate-chile tamale with Kahlua cream, my wife described as maybe the best dessert she ever had.

If enough people try it, maybe it will make it South of Market anyway.

Masters of Food and Wine: Chapter 1

2005-02-23T22:43:00.000-08:00

I generate most of my posts from the San Francisco Bay Area, but I travel reasonably widely and search even wider-ly to find amazing ingredients. Think of me as an amateur David Rosengarten, who cares more about what you think than I do about what you think about what I think. My goal is a selfish one, to share what I am learning in the hope you will do the same.

This past weekend I visited the annual Masters of Food and Wine in Carmel, California--three days of culilnary demonstrations from great chefs, rare wine tastings, seven-course meals and over-the-top receptions. Best of all, you can by these experiences ala carte starting for about $100 and ranging up to about $300 per person--with the exception of a Friday night small group "rarities" dinner for $3,500. I cannot imagine what they are eating for $3,500, but I can guess what they might have been drinking. Still the rest of us invested about $200 in a 7 course extraviganza (with 7 wines) that did not disappoint.

The Masters of Food and Wine www.mfandw.com happens the third week of February every year. This year my highlight was talking with Alice Waters, Charlie Palmer and Rick Bayless during their demonstrations. In a subsequent post I will give you more details.