The French Laundry Revisited - With Mark Van Name!
It's been six years since my first trip to the French Laundry. I'd heard rumors that Thomas Keller had spread himself too thin, opening too many restaurants, too many projects, that the French Laundry had slipped and wasn't as good as it used to be. I don't know what these people are talking about!! And I apologize in advance for the length of this article. It was a nearly 5 hour meal. You'll have to cut me some slack. But I'm jumping ahead of myself. A few months ago I was contacted by my friend, Ticia, about an interview with Mark Van Name. He was coming out to the West Coast for World Fantasy Con, wanted to go to the French Laundry, and could I get reservations? Oh sure, you betcha! I have no insider connection, I just had to hope, keep my fingers crossed, and war dial the reservation line at 10am. The first day I tried for, I couldn't get in. I called back three days later for the second available date and, miraculously, got a table for five at 6:30 PM. I about dropped the phone I was so excited.
When we arrived, the first thing I asked to do was see the kitchen. I didn't do that last time and was kicking myself for it. I also wanted to do it before we started drinking wine...I figured that was a smart move! I was giddy standing in that kitchen. I was in complete awe. It was so quiet, so clean, and so precise. No one spoke above normal conversation levels and no one was rushing. I watched them assemble a plate of foie gras and it was so perfect (of course if it wasn't it wouldn't have gone out to the table). I felt like I had been granted access to the inner chambers of the food Vatican. I could have stayed there all night, watching, trying to learn, being enamored with the food and the dedication of the chefs. But we also felt we were in the way so we moved along. We then headed up to our table in the corner of the second-floor. Earlier, when we'd just gotten into our hotel we were early so I took a little nap. The first thing I said when I woke up was, "Salmon Cone." I anxiously awaited the croquette. It was just as heavenly as I remembered. The waiter then went over the menu with us in detail and I conveyed my weird, inconvenient-as-a-foodie, food aversions. These of course would not be a problem for the magicians in the kitchen.
Before we dove into the menu and I wanted to get my standard interview questions out of the way. I knew once we started eating we would want to talk about nothing but the meal! I also liked posing the questions before we ate knowing at some of the answers may end up changing throughout the meal... and I was right.
Chantrelle: What is your favorite comfort food?
Mark: Macaroni and cheese. The kind that is fake cheese, Velveeta. The kind that probably turns your insides orange!
Chantrelle: What is your best childhood food memory?
Mark: I don't have many. I'd have to say Thanksgiving. We were living in a house with two adults and 10 kids and food was scarce. My mom usually worked so the other woman in our house did most of the cooking and she wasn't a very good cook. But on Thanksgiving my mom cooked and it was the only day we had food in such excess. And there were pies! I would eat until I had to lie down, my stomach was so full. The rest of the year we would have things like stuffed peppers with one pound of meat stretched between 12 people. Thanksgiving was the only day we could eat as much as we wanted.
Chantrelle: If you were forced to eat food from only one region or country what would you choose?
Mark: Italy I think. I love Florence. That's if I didn't have to worry about my health. If I were worried about being healthy I'd have to say China. But without taking health into account I'd say Italy with France being a close second.
Chantrelle: I'm always torn between Italy and Japan because I love sushi so much.
Mark: Japan doesn't do breakfast well. Have you ever had natto?
Chantrelle: Funny, I never thought of breakfast when I asked this question! I think that tips the scales for Italy. I make a frittata every week, I will never go anywhere near natto!
Since my interview with one of the cowboy junkies, the way I phrase this next question has changed. And it's changed in a way that is perfect for you!
Mark: Which Cowboy Junkie?
Chantrelle: Alan Anton, the bass player. He's a huge foodie.
Mark: Ah. Margo Timmins' voice is like an angel.
Chantrelle: I agree! I used to ask what you want your last meal be. Apparently that was a little too morbid and depressing. So now, you are about to be shot into space, what do you want your last meal on Earth to be?
Mark: My answer may change after tonight!
Chantrelle: We predicted that may be the case. But as of now....?
Mark: The 16 course truffle menu at Robouchon in Las Vegas. With the banana cream pie from Emeril's.
Chantrelle: Really? Emeril??
Mark: You don't have to eat anything else there. But if you like banana cream pie he has the best.
Chantrelle: And my favorite Food Porn question: What do you consider the sexiest food?
Mark: It depends on who is eating it. Anything can be sexy with the right person eating it! A hot dog eaten correctly by a woman can be quite sexy. But I'd say foie gras. Cooked perfectly but not cooked through so it's just warm in the middle.
(This question was later revised when the white truffle course was served! Wait for it....)
Formalities out of the way, it's time for serious eating.
First up, the famous, now classic, "Oysters and Pearls". I was concerned. I don't like cooked oysters, I don't really like caviar. That was the biggest blob of caviar I've ever seen on a plate in front of me. After my first bite I added to my list of sexiest foods. There was so much sumptuous butter in the dish I don't think I would've cared what was cooked in it. Pure, fatty bliss. I almost licked the bowl but I restrained myself. This was followed by a black truffle brioche. Everyone else got some cheesy thing. I got a hot-air-filled pastry balloon of happiness. For the next course, it was a choice of soup or foie gras. Mark got the Moulard Duck "Foie Gras au Torchon" with Gingerbread Purée, Tokyo Turnips, Watercress, Pecans and Cranberries. He was a happy, happy man. If I could go back in time I would take a picture of his face upon the first morsel of foie hitting his tongue and pair that with the sexiest food question. The rest of us got the Musquée de Provence Pumpkin Soup with Chestnut Beignets and Whipped Maple Syrup. It was sweet, it was toasty, it was autumn in a bowl...a very refined, fancy, somewhat elitist autumn. Before this course we got some bread. Luckily I had a piece left so I actually got to mop up every last drop of the soup! There was an extra "little" menu addition. We happened to show up during white truffle season. Just to add to my weirdness, I'm a fungophile who doesn't really enjoy truffles. I love to smell them and would love to hunt them (I never have) but they are too overwhelming of a flavor for me. I was the only one at the table that did not opt in to the truffle supplement menu. The waiter didn't want me to feel left out so asked if it was okay if he brought me a little egg custard infused with white truffle oil... like I would say no! It was lovely but still too truffley for me. I enjoyed two or three bites and really enjoyed it with our wine (2006 Corton Charlemagne, Coche-Dury that we picked up not too long ago as a pre-arrival at Kermit Lynch). They brought the truffle humidor around for all of us to smell the beautiful fungus! Then shaved the most truffle I've ever seen on one plate. It was such a beautiful thing, I thought I'd share. Sorry there's no smell-o-vision!
My husband described the truffle experience best when he said, "The wine with the truffles made me taste colors I've never seen before." And when discussing the experience later, "Washing down a mouthful of freshly shaved white truffle with a slurp of Coche Dury Corton Charlemagne was a new peak moment for me as a foodie, though I suspect it guarantees that I will, in fact, be going to hell -- if not for the sheer decadence of such an indulgence, for the so-called "statutory grape" of opening an '06 a decade early."
After the richness of the truffles came a refreshing tartare of Medai Belly with Fuyu Persimmon, Yuzu, Black Sesame, Radish and Mizuna. The plate was a beautiful combination of colors. It was sweet, crunchy, fresh and made my sexy food list longer once again. I think I'll have to add this whole dinner into that list!
Exit fresh and light and return to rich and decadent: Maine Lobster Tail "Pochée au beurre doux" with Michigan Sour Cherries, Sunchokes, Piedmont Hazelnuts, Pearl Onions and Coffee-Chocolate Emulsion. Yes -- coffee-chocolate with lobster. I'm not going to say it was something I'd request on a dish again, but it wasn't bad or as weird as I thought it would be. It didn't take away from the dish, it was quite mild, but I don't think it added anything either. It wasn't a "miss" but it was the only thing all night that wasn't a life changing taste with each bite. The lobster itself was though!
We all had a funny reaction to the delivery of the Fricassée of Liberty Farm Pekin Duck with Cèpe Mushrooms, Toasted Farro and Brussel Sprout Leaves... we forgot it was on the menu, all thought it was the beef course and didn't two of the five of us order lamb? Well, yes they did but this is the duck you dingbats! What, are you getting full?!? You are only halfway through! But was I happy to get this duck afterall! I don't even like duck... or Brussels sprouts. It was moist, juicy, rare, tender, flavorful, roasty-toasty, rich and earthy. Turns out I like duck when it's been run through the Keller-Magic-Pan-of-Yum. Now, no one else complained about this but me. The Snake River Farms "Calotte de Boeuf Grillée" with Horseradish Dumplings, French Laundry Garden Beets, Romaine Lettuce, Crème Fraîche and "Sauce Borscht" was an abnormally large portion for the French Laundry. I actually said, "Why is that so huge!?" I was already full at this point and had been powering through for a couple of courses. I took a couple of bites and shared the rest with the table (no one objected!). The meat just melted away. Two others at the table shared the Elysian Fields Farm Lamb Saddle with "Cassoulet" of Autumn Beans, Tomato Compote and Garlic "En Persillade". One of those two was my husband and he doesn't like lamb. He had a similar epiphany that I had with the duck. How can the kitchen transform flavors like that? Thankfully the cheese course, "Camembert" with Black Truffle, "Pain Perdu," Quince, Celery Branch and Brown Butter, was next which meant I got a little refreshing salad break. This is the first time I've been happy about not liking cheese because I think I would have exploded if I tried to consume that much fat and richness at this point in the meal.
Ahhh, on to dessert. Simple, yes? Just sorbet and then a little chocolate, right? WRONG! First up was the Bartlett Pear Sorbet with Roasted Jacobsen's Farm Pears and Chai Tea Sablé. It cooled the senses, gave the illusion that you could keep eating. Pear sorbet has become a favorite dessert for me (Scream Sorbet at our farmers market sells their's, in season) and this one, of course, encapsulated every bite of peariness imaginable. Second, "Gâtueau Saint Nizier au Manjari" with Mango-Chili Relish, Valrhona Cocoa Nibs, Lime Foam and Coconut Milk Sorbet. Can I just say that for the first time I *EVER* loved foam! Now I finally get the foam thing. It's not like a little pile of flavored bubble bath soap on your food, it's denser and flavorful, still light, and this particular one was like a little, frothy virgin margarita topped with crunchy salt and lime zest. And yes, this paired wonderfully with the chocolate. That's the end of the menu, so were done. The album is over...Nope! There's that hidden track that's not listed in the liner notes! Now the multilayered box of cookies and confections: nuts, sesame, caramels, toffee, things I don't even recall. Then the plate of truffles: caramel, peanut butter, pumpkin, peppermint, coffee. Good Lord! Just like six years ago, this last surprise course came home with me for breakfast.
Thankfully we didn't have to find room for more food. Sadly, the dinner was concluding. Tea, coffee, a little parting gift of shortbread cookies. We lingered as long as we could. Mark then ventured into the kitchen to be awed by the work in there as well. He came out sufficiently venerated.
To be honest, I usually would have more quotes from my interviewee in my write-up. We talked about books: his and others ("Shoes off and the whale!"), tech work (Mark is CEO of Principled Technologies). We discussed many other restaurants: Pigeon, Beast, and Sel Gris in Portland, Little Washington, Alinea and El Bulli). We talked about his upcoming book projects, family, and more food. Alas, my recorder failed and all this has all come from memory. I think that means we have to do this again! We've all agreed to return to the French Laundry together and this time LICK THE PLATES!!! Etiquette be damned!
Trevese 115 North Santa Cruz Avenue Los Gatos, CA 95030 (408) 354-5551
Just found out Trevese has closed its doors. Guess my scathing review was a little late!
Our 10 year wedding anniversary snuck up on me somewhat. We'd gone on vacation, had been preparing for our son to start kindergarten, and summer was just flying by. But at the last minute I found a babysitter and did a little Googling and found that Trevese had a Michelin star and we hadn't been there. I hired a car to drive us over windy Highway 17 and we had our evening booked.
We quickly vetoed the tasting menu as it had too many things we wouldn't enjoy (pork, lamb, cheese). The vegetarian tasting menu seemed like a joke. The chef has got to be mocking vegetarians. On the vegetarian tasting menu is Tofu TarTar, Granola Rice Roll and Potato Tot... seriously?!? I wanted to order the Tofu TarTar (note, not "tartare") just to see what the heck it was! But I didn't.
The first thing to arrive was a shot glass of heirloom tomato and strawberry gazpacho. It was the inspiration for my own gazpacho shooters. A wonderful balance of sweet and tangy. A great start while we were perusing the menu. We did finally settle on what we'd order and it started off well. The Crispy Quail with Polenta Cake, Smoked Cherries and Chard was finger licking good. The quail had a fried chicken quality and not in a bad way. In an "I want to suck on the bones and lick my fingers" way. The greens were excellent along with the polenta cake. I didn't have the cherries because I don't like fruit with my meat but my husband liked them.
To accompany the meal we had a bottle of 2004 Domain Leflaive, "Clavillon," Premiere Cru, Puligny-Montrachet. It seemed versatile enough to match most of our courses. The wine list was quite interesting. What was most striking was the entire page and Brunello di Montelcinos. There was no other (especially Italian) wine that took up so much of the list so we inquired about this and found out that one of the main investors in the restaurant has a huge collection of Brunellos and sells them on consignment. Brilliant! This gets wine that has been properly aged onto the wine list without the exorbitant markup you can get by trying to find 10-15-year-old Brunello on the retail market. But back to what we actually drank! The Puligny-Montrachet went beautifully with the quail. Next up was the Sweet Gem Lettuce with a Sweet Onion Dressing, White Anchovy, and Kalamata Olive. This had a very good Caesar salad flavor so it surprised me that it had no cheese on it—of course I was happy with that! It was served with what really tasted like our favorite quick appetizer: Dinon white anchovies. The other salad we ordered was the Asparagus Salad with Juniper Berry and Basil Vinaigrette and Fennel. This was seasonal and fresh. It was a challenge to get on a fork but we managed. It had something they were calling "asparagus flan" which I think would have been better if they'd not called it a flan. It had the texture of a butter more than a custard or flan. Great flavor in it though, just inaccurately named.
So the first courses were great. And then the, unfortunately, all too familiar happened. The main courses came and were disappointing. I see this in so many fancy pants restaurants it seems. The firsts and desserts are great but the mains fall short. Sometimes it's because of too many ingredients, this time it seemed like it was because of the wrong ingredients. First up was the Mer Rouge—Prawns, Couscous and Shells Simmered in Marsala Tomato Sauce. This dish was prawny. That's all there was to it. To quote Janice in Chef, "The prawniness borders on the vulgar to be frank." I had about three bites and left the rest. And unfortunately the wine emphasized that flavor as well. Blech! The other dish was Skillet Seared Loch Duart Salmon with Herbed Rice, Fennel Salad and Basil Saffron Broth. The rice in the basil broth was good, the salmon was cooked well (more cooked than I tend to prefer but not overcooked by any means) and then they smothered the salmon in overpowering mustard sauce! It obliterated the fish and anything it came in contact with. Sad. I decided to have a simple dessert and got an assortment of sorbets and ice cream which were all very good. The texture was wonderful and the flavors were interesting. I wish the openers and desserts stuck with me as much as the mains did. I'm still perplexed by the Michelin star. Was it an off night? Maybe. The first courses were lovely though. Service was impeccable and the sommelier knew his stuff. The evening wasn't a total loss by any means but not the 10th anniversary extravaganza I was seeking.
We were in the mood to try something new for lunch the other day. Since we were on that side of town I suggested The Cellar Door since we'd been told to go there so many times but had never made it. I'm really glad we went. We had an assortment of small plates. I started with local greens with lemon and almonds. A salad was beautifully presented, well dressed and lovely. My husband started with a plate of pedrón peppers which he said were great, but I had to take his word for that, I can't stand the things!
We also started off with some Boquerones. They were beautifully marinated, not at all over salty. We ended up having to order two more plates of them because our five year old ate them all!! I finished up with the Crisp Steelhead with local squid, cannellini bean brodo, corn and Sungold tomatoes. This was fantastic. The skin on the trout really was very crispy and tasty. The squid was cooked perfectly so it wasn't chewy and the brodo was drinkably good. I've got a thing about corn in dishes, it tends to taste like a cheap filler to me (I think this comes from school lunches as a kid). This corn was so sweet still so crisp that it added to the dish rather than taking away from it.
I'd like to return to taste more of the menu and try their tasting menus sometime.
Something More Besides Food - My Interview with Cowboy Junkies' Alan Anton
I had such a rock star week. It began with seeing Tori Amos two nights, one of which was from front row center seats. It continued with catching up with Neil Gaiman and meeting Amanda Palmer, and immediately leaving them and going to pick up my lunch date interviewee, Alan Anton of the fantabulous Cowboy Junkies. I could get used to this lifestyle. Since the band was playing Villa Montalvo that night, I made reservations at Le Papillon in Saratoga which I'd never been to but had heard good things about.
We were having a lovely conversation when the waiter brought our amuse bouche: Halibut Green Curry Mousse Garnished With Mango Chutney, which went over very well with many "mmmmmms." Alan and his family left Toronto a while back and now live on Vancouver Island, one of my favorite places on the planet. I reminisced with him about Sooke Harbour House and Point No Point. I must go back! We settled on ordering the chefs tasting menu and got back into our conversation:
Alan: "Do you ever make terrines and things like that?"
Me: "No, I tend not to do the stuff that takes that much processing."
Alan: "I used to but then I ran out of time for that kind of stuff. I loved making sauces but it was such a process."
Me: "I tend to do the grab-the-stuff-out-of-the-garden-and-throw-it-together kind of menu"
Alan: "Do you know Mark Bittman? I really like his stuff. He's got a video site where he shows the basic steps for recipes. He's got a great sort of New York, laid-back attitude and everything looks so easy, and it is. He reduces everything down, 'You don't need this, forget about this, most people say do this but it just takes too much time...' and he comes up with some really great flavors that you'd never think of."
Me: "I've been finding that with Eric Ripert's Le Bernadin cookbook. Seafood is our main protein most of the time. It's all really simple stuff. There are a few elements to each dish that you still taste the fish. You're not piling so many things on it. His recipes are all very simple and precise but not complicated."
Alan: "It's hard to find a place that cooks fish right, they tend to overcook it. A friend of mine has a boat and we go fishing at home and eating it two hours later out of the water is unbelievable. You don't need to do anything to it, a little salt and pepper, it's unbelievable."
Me: "At the farmers market they'll have locally caught sardines, which are basically bait. My son absolutely loves them and I'm sure not going to discourage that! I love having a four-year-old that runs up and yells 'Hey mommy, they have sardines, let's get some!!'"
Alan: "Does he eat avocado?"
Me: "I think every kid in California eats avocado. It's a great first food."
Alan: "Oh right, it's a California thing."
Me: "We get these marinated white anchovies, the brand is Dinon, they have them at Whole Foods but we get them at our local market. He just loves them! It always freaks out anybody that comes to our house for dinner parties."
Alan: "Living in the city, not on the West Coast, in Toronto, you're just surrounded by processed foods. It's what your kid is exposed to at school and it becomes so hard to get them to taste stuff. Anything with flavor and texture they don't want.
Me: "I basically consider food my religion so it goes against everything I believe to go to fast food. I'm a Slow Food person. My son doesn't like anything breaded. He doesn't even like things like gyoza, he just wants what's inside. He doesn't like breaded chicken, he just wants chicken. It's great. He tells McDonald's "The M. place, pleh!" We just go there to use the bathroom on road trips. It makes me proud as a foodie."
Alan: "The whole food issue in this country is pathetic. It's got the worst food, and the cheapest food so you've got a third of the population living on that. McDonald's, or whatever, which leads to obesity which leads to heart disease."
Me: "And these people would never consider picking up fresh vegetables or anything like that. Why would you do that when you can get a hamburger for $.59?
Alan: "I don't know if you saw Michael Moore's movie Sicko but it talks about how a large portion of this country's health issue would go away if we started to eat right which means taking on the huge agribusiness guys. Which can be done starting on a local basis, starting on a small basis, even in the cities. Make sure your kids don't take crap to school. Get the food out of a good organic situation, or a local situation."
Me: "I think local is even more important than anything. Organic or not it's better if it's coming from up the road than being shipped around the world."
Alan: "Right, and you've got the energy issue in that as well."
We went on to talk about heat waves, global warming, the fact that neither of our towns have air conditioning. I felt as if we were old friends.
Alan: " I went to a scotch bar that a friend of mine owns in Denver when we were just there on this tour. It's got, he claims, the largest selection of scotch in the country by the glass. 260 bottles. While I was in there looking at the list there's one that is $850 a shot. And I said, 'Wow, do you ever sell any of these?' And five minutes later these guys walk in. They'd driven from two hours away with their little books. You know how birders have their books to check off all the birds they see? They had one of these for Scotch. Each of them opened up their books and started looking at the menu and sure enough one of them bought the $850 shot! It was really weird, he said he hadn't sold one in six months. He paid $10,000 for this bottle. He'd had it for about seven years or so. It was really weird, as soon as I said, 'Who buys this stuff?' The guy walks in and buys one.
While we're waiting for our first course, I pulled out my questions.
Me: "What's your favorite comfort food?"
Alan: "Any kind of sausage. I love the sausage. Smoked chorizo. Something hard, smoked, little slices. If I'm in a bad mood I have one of those and it's all gone."
Me: "What's your best childhood food memory?"
Alan: "There are so many. I grew up with parents that were East European: Croatia and Serbia. My grandmother moved in with us when we were little and she did all the cooking. I had this authentic cooking from a woman who was doing all the cooking at the turn-of-the-century for her family. She would put an enormous spread on the table every night. Way too much food for everybody. She had seven or eight standard weekly meals and every weekend she would make strudel on this huge table. She'd be stretching the dough until it was paperthin. Waving it in the air and laying it down. She'd make cheese and apple strudel every weekend. We had it all week long. During the week it was tons of meats, stuffed peppers or cabbage rolls. All beautifully done, very rich, heavy stuff. There were always sausages hanging, ham hocks hanging."
Me: "I guess this is where your sausage comfort food comes from?"
Alan: "For sure, yeah. Every second weekend my dad and I would go to the local Serbian meat store. Everything would come from over there, so it was all smoked and made a certain way. I learned all about the different meats and how they did it. I had my favorites. We'd walk back with a basket full of smoked stuff to get us through the next couple of weeks. I grew up with very rich, heavy, delicious food...nothing like this."
...Our first course arrived: Hokkaido Scallop Ceviche with Lemon, Sunflower Salad and Browned Butter Powder. A very fresh, sweet scallop, thinly sliced. A wonderful start.
Alan: "I grew up in an environment where my friends were all pretty much eating processed foods so I never had them over for dinner because they didn't like what I was eating and I didn't like eating what they were eating."
Me: "It's so important that you expose your kids to real food. We always had a garden when I was growing up, I could just go into the backyard and pick stuff. I've got this really vivid memory of me, really really little, just sitting in the dirt in the garden eating peas."
Alan: "That's one thing I haven't gotten around to yet, having a garden at home. It's a lot of work. We have a lot of animals around so you have to build a huge enclosure, it's a big deal or else it's all eaten. You have to keep the birds out too. Birds just appear, anytime of the year, just a million of them, they'll land on your stuff and five minutes later they disappear and everything's eaten. Lots of deer. And we have a bear right now."
Me: "That's got to be scary!
If you were limited to eating food from only one region for the rest of your life, where would you choose?"
Alan: "Anywhere in the world? Any country? Somewhere in Italy for sure. I don't know where exactly. Not the south, anywhere in the upper half. Is that good enough? Can I have the whole upper half?"
Me: "Sure, I'd say the same thing actually. But I'm torn, because if I choose northern Italy I can't have sushi."
Alan: "I'm not really a sushi guy."
Me: "I go back and forth. David Sedaris said Northern Italy as well."
Alan: "Well there you go! It's a popular spot. I think that anyone that goes there and eats just falls in love. It's amazing."
Me: "What would you want your last meal to be?"
Alan: "That's a bit depressing. A much more pleasant way to think about that would be: 'You're about to embark on a space mission to another planet so it's your last chance to eat on Earth.' That's a tough one. I think I'd need a week to design the menu and the wines to go with it. It would be a lot of food, many courses, and many wines. I'll get you a list."
[I will post the last meal menu when I get it from Alan.] A second course is delivered: Gulf Prawn and Linguine "Turban" with Brandy-Truffle Cream. I'm always leery of truffle dishes. The truffle tends to overpower. Alan agrees:
Alan: "Truffle is a hard thing to get right. I've had really bad truffle in restaurants. This is very good."
Me: "It's rich but I thought it would be richer from the looks of it. Yum."
Alan: "Do you know of any good raw food restaurants?"
Me: "No, haven't been to any."
Alan: "There's a really good one in Vancouver called Salt that I went to recently. There's no kitchen, you just look around and pick out what you want. They do a lot of meat which is great, sausages and things like that. Cheese, meat, and vegetables."
Note to self: try that place!!!
Course three is presented: Grilled Medallion of Durham Ranch Buffalo with Syrah Jus, Parsnip Puree And Cocoa Nibs. This was a course I was slightly concerned with since I'd never had buffalo before but it is a hit. In a blind tasting, neither of us would be able to tell this from beef and it is very, very tender.
Alan: "I was trying to think of musicians that are into food, there's not a lot of them."
Me: "No, when you tour you don't get to be. Do you guys get to eat relatively well when you're touring?"
Alan: "It's hard. On our days off we look for the good restaurant but the days of shows there's no time. We're stuck with either catering or a local restaurant."
Me: "Do you guys have your rider demands of decent food?"
Alan: "We have a little rider but there's just not that much stuff."
Me: "No brown M&Ms?"
Alan: "Yeah."
Me: "When it's your turn to cook dinner, what are you making?"
Alan: "It depends on the season."
Me: "You may answer seasonally. Let's say it's right now, July."
Alan: "July is good. It would probably be a grilled thing. Definitely be a grilled thing. Outdoor. I have to say it would be probably halibut. All the big halibut catches happen in July at home. I get phone call right away, it's a rare thing. Halibut are huge fish and they chop them up right away, right on the dock. And whoever is down their first gets to buy some. It takes about six or eight hours before the thing's sold. Its great, we go down and buy, probably, 100 pounds. If we can, if we get there early enough. The fish will come in at between 400 and 1,000 pounds. Then we freeze them."
Me: "How do you make them, because it's really easy to dry out halibut?"
Alan: "We have a great little pot this guy gave to me. It's really thin. We use it instead of aluminum foil. We pack, like, a 5 or 6 pound piece in there, fill it up. Add just a little bit of water and then just pack in all the garlic and seasonings and cook it for maybe two minutes."
Me: "Nice. I never ever order halibut because it is always overcooked"
Alan: "Salmon is always overcooked as well, even when you ask for it rare."
Me: "I've made some really nice salmon for family before and had them request that I cook it all the way through and that just kills me!"
Alan: "Another good thing... Have you ever done corn on the barbecue where you soak it in water for a while then you put it on the barbecue for two or three minutes. Then you put butter on it and put it back on the grill. Roll it around the grill until it starts getting caramelized and the sugars come out of the corn and the butter starts getting browned. It's great"
Me: "Corn is just coming into season, I'll have to try that."
Our soufflé arrives. They are enormous! Dessert was supposed to be a chocolate-coconut dish. Neither of us like coconut so they substituted dessert for us.
Me: "I plan vacations around restaurants. That's how I ended up at Sooke Harbour House. When we were in Minnesota earlier this summer, we were heading out to lunch and my husband asked me where we should go...when I didn't know he was very surprised. I always research the restaurants in towns we're visiting! We had a terrible lunch. So I went back to the hotel room and researched dinner. Found a wonderful place so I was redeemed."
Alan: "You never hear of musicians opening up restaurants. Every second movie star does that, every second sports hero does that. I guess writers don't either."
Me: "Maynard from Tool opened a winery."
Alan: "Yeah, I guess there's wineries. Sting has a winery now too."
Me: "We have a bottle of Maynard's wine we haven't tried it yet. It's, I think, a 2007 cab so it will little be a while before we drink that."
Time was running out so we wrapped up lunch and headed off to sound check. I got to drive right up to where the tour bus was parked by using phrases like, "I'm with the band." I'm such a fan girl!! The show that night was wonderful as usual. You can't beat a day with excellent food, excellent company, and excellent music. Hopefully when we are in the same town, Alan and I will get together to grab a bite or just chat. He was a lovely lunch companion.
Cafe Rouge 1782 Fourth St Berkeley, CA 94710 510-525-1440
I've been to Café Rouge a few times now. We always seem to get out to Kermit Lynch late in the day and by the time we get out of there we're starving. The café is always busy but we've always gotten a table. I've had a variety of dishes there. My favorite being the steak, it is incredible. The fries that come with it are perfectly crispy. But this time around I got something different
First, the Hog Island Manila clams. Clams used to be one of my favorite dishes. When I was pregnant with my son they were my most intense craving. Husband would come home and all I would say was, "Clams... now!" and we'd head out to dinner. Now, sometimes they are too, well, clammy for me unless they're cooked perfectly in any good broth... and aren't too big. These were the tiniest, cutest little clams ever! The broth was super salty (in a good way) with fennel, green garlic and just a hint of chili flakes.
After practically drinking the clam juice, the salad arrived. The Romaine was sweet and lightly dressed. It was topped with the most intense, crunchy, toasty, tiny little pumpkin seeds. They were more the size of sunflower seeds with a very concentrated flavor. Contrasted against these were creamy chunks of avocado and fresh, crunchy radish. They worked so well together. Crunchy, toasty, creamy, sweet. My whole tongue was happy.
The Salmon main was surrounded by baby red beets (my husband got to have all those, blech!!), spring onions, potatoes and beurre rouge. The salmon was cooked perfectly, in other words, undercooked as fish should be.
To drink with all this we had a 2007 Domaine Sylvain Bailly Sancerre. It was a bouquet of flowers in liquid form. Amazing! It would be perfect on the back deck on a hot summer day.
And for dessert, I had what I really think is one of the best dessert inventions in history: bonbons! Really dark chocolate. It was an excellently messy experience. Thought it odd that the server offered silverware for them though. Who uses silverware for bonbons?? Part of the joy is licking all the chocolate and ice cream off your fingers when you're done!
We will be returning to Café Rouge again. The staff is always lovely and we always seem to have to pick up wine from Kermit Lynch anyway!
The second I saw the notice about this salt and chocolate event, I signed up. I think those two things work so magically well together, I even dreamed of them when I was pregnant with my son. That's how I came to know about Recchiuti's Fleur de Sel caramel chocolates. I had a dream about having salted chocolate, got out of bed, Googled salt and chocolate and found Recchiuti's site. Two great things that taste great together. This class was a collaboration between Michael Recchiuti and Mark Bitterman. Both love to talk and played hysterically off of each other. We started the event in the hallway outside of the Recchiuti kitchens with a drink that was a bit of a spin on a Bloody Mary. It is a blend of apricots, celery, and radish with Schramsberg Blanc de Noir. They weren't shy with the champagne!! The combination worked really well, the celery added a savoriness that cut the sweetness of the apricot. It was a bit of a challenge to drink at first with the chocolate swizzle stick-like thing in it but we all managed! The chocolate was sprinkled with Murray River salt from Australia which we discovered and fell in love with when we were in Sydney, brought back a few bags for us and family and then not long ago found it at Stonehouse olive oil. Turns out we weren't the only ones to love it.
Next we filed into the tasting room via a Himalayan salt block that was sitting on a hot plate heating it to 120° topped with a large block of 65% Sur de Lago chocolate. Grab a graham cracker, scoop up some melty chocolate and enjoy! The salt block thing absolutely fascinated me. Like I really needed another reason to love salt, the idea of cooking on salt itself (not encasing something in salt but using the salt as the frying pan!) is amazing. You can heat these blocks to 500° and seer your scallops on them and get this amazing caramelization process happening. You can freeze the ones that have been made into bowls and use them to make ice cream. These salt blocks are around 600,000 years old. Mark explained that when you taste the salt you were really tasting the ocean from the time before plants existed on Earth! When the Tarte Tatin on the menu was brought to us it was topped by this beautiful nest of spun sugar and suspended in the sugar was a deep-sea harvested Japanese salt. Truly an enjoyable dish. Really you can't go wrong with apples, caramel and salt (well, some can, but these guys can't!)
The "Palette" cleanser (cute little play on words) was something that I would buy given the chance. A disc of single origin "Ocumare" dark chocolate topped with three caramelized and buttery pistachios, minced rosemary and roasted Korean bamboo salt. The salt is roasted in a bamboo canister in a furnace upwards of 1000°. This particular one was roasted three times and wasn't overly funky or sulfuric. Apparently the nine times roasted becomes quite intense in a use-it-in parts-per-million sort of way.
Our frosty beverage was a chocolate milk that I could enjoy anytime. It was malted with a roasted barley malt, not too rich, not too creamy and the glass was rimmed with ground and sifted cocoa nib powder mixed with Iburi Jio Cherry Salt. It was another deep sea harvested and evaporated salt that was then roasted with cherry wood which gave it a very distinct flavor. It works beautifully with the nibs. It didn't step on the subtle chocolate flavors, it just enhanced them.
At this point we all got up to take a tour of the kitchen. Michael's got a lot of cool, fancy toys. The Windows XP-controlled squirter, the long conveyor belt cooler, the walk-in hot room that keeps the chocolate melted at 120°, and a giant copper pot full of boiling water to clean the floor (oh, and the giant pot also used for making caramel!). I'd love to be in there during production.
We returned to our tables that had been set up with a flight of six artisan salt caramels. From left to right it was a square of caramel, a square of chocolate covered caramel, and six squares of chocolate covered caramel each with a different salt sprinkled on top. Number 1, Pangasinan salt which is a fleur de sel very similar to what Michael uses regularly in his caramels. Number 2, Kona salt, similar to #1 but a fresher, lighter mouth feel. Number 3, Cypruss Silver flake salt was more intense because of it's more geometric shapes. Number 4, Amabito No Moshio (aka algae salt) tasted a lot like iodized, table salt but without chemical aspects that table salt has. It does have a very high iodine level. Number 5, oak smoked salt that was not subtle on the oak flavors. It was like licking a salty barrel! And number 6 was my favorite with the caramels, Shinkai Deep Sea Salt.
We finished with an incredibly rich, creamy ice cream with Stonehouse olive oil drizzled on top making it even more rich and creamy. To sprinkle on top of that Mark provided a Haleakala Ruby salt and, as good as the ice cream was, I don't think I could eat it without the salt. It was so rich, but not overly sweet, the salt really sliced right through all that fat and made it a wonderful closer to the tasting.
I've been a fan of Recchiuti for many, many years. I get the gift club subscription for Christmas every year. Every time we're in San Francisco and we can make it to the Ferry Building we stock up and, if we can't, we order from the website for any holiday we can come up with to give each other chocolates. Now I'll have another site to frequent and somewhere else to visit when I'm in Portland: The Meadow. Michael and the entire Recchiuti staff and family were wonderful hosts. This only increased my love and hopefully their fanbase.
Lillian's Italian Kitchen 1116 Soquel Ave Santa Cruz, CA 95062 831-425-2288
You can't throw something in Santa Cruz without hitting an Italian restaurant it seems. Ristorante Avanti, Lucio's, Limoncello, La Posta, all favorites of mine. I was looking for a simple lunch today and remembered that Lillian's was open for lunch so decided to finally check it out.
Lillian's isn't like any of those. It's more casual, more like something maybe from Little Italy. Granted I was there for lunch and I've heard they've got some items on their dinner menu that are must-haves. I got the lunch special which is a cup of soup and a half order of one of their pastas. The soup was Pasta Fagioli, cannellini beans, chard, just a hint of heat. I devoured it and mopped up the bowl with my French bread. Quite tasty! And since I wanted something just basic and simple, I got the Penne Arrabiatta. It had a good amount of heat but not so much to destroy my taste buds. I would have added a little more salt and fresh basil (there was fresh basil on top but not enough to get some in every bite). But overall it was a good dish, I didn't leave much!
I need to go back for dinner and not by myself so I can try more dishes. But all in all a very good lunch special and I walked out of there paying only $10! You don't find that very often these days.
Sushi Groove South 1516 Folsom St San Francisco, CA 94103 415-503-1950
This is our new pre-Slim's-show dinner. You could easily miss it if you don't have the address and aren't really looking for it. Just keep an eye out, you'll find it. Slip past the thick curtain over the entry and excellent fish and sake awaits.
Hamachi sashimi, never a disappointment. Waloo nigiri I'd never tried and it was a buttery, yummy experience. Sake nigiri, a silken, and beautiful slice of salmon.
The sake, we ordered Ozeki Karatamba, is served in martini glasses so don't get confused like I did and not think it's your drink! I've yet to have anything here that I didn't thoroughly enjoy.
It also makes me quite proud that the last time I went was with a friend of mine who hadn't had sushi and doesn't like fish but she was really open to trying new things. It turns out she likes raw fish, just not cooked or "fishy" fish. Yay! Sushi for all!
I discovered Sushitomi when I worked in Mountain View just a few blocks away. Unfortunately, I found it just a few weeks before our office moved to San Francisco. I had been on a search for good sushi in downtown Mountain View and had failed for a year. Then we went out for a department lunch at this little place that, from the outside, didn't look like much but once the food was served I knew I'd be coming back.
Well, I now have to go out of my way to get there but it's worth it. The latest Sushitomi visit was due to a friend visiting from New Mexico. We were arranging a place to get sushi, I suggested Sushitomi and she quickly got very excited because when she used to live in the area she was a regular there and missed it.
My friend ordered a bottle of Soju which I had never had before. It's basically a cross between Sake and vodka. To be honest, it's a little strong for me but it sure looks cool in a shot glass with a quail egg floating in it! They brought the quail egg perched beautifully atop a little mound of wasabi. If you want to try Soju, make sure you get the kind made from rice and not sweet potatoes...bleh!
It has become my habit to order the chef specials. This time I ordered the extra fancy nigiri plate. I've done that before and was not disappointed. And it exposes me to various imported fish that I wouldn't necessarily know to pick off of the menu. To be totally honest, I don't exactly know what I ate. There were some standards: hamachi, ebi, sake. Then there were the ones I thought I could identify as mackerel and scallop but it turns out the mackerel was something I didn't get the name of but it was great (I know that's no help is it?!) and the scallop was octopus!! It was so tender I never would've guessed.
I need to keep looking for excuses to go to Mountain View for sushi. I love this hidden gem.
Michael Mina Westin St. Francis 335 Powell St San Francisco, CA 94102 415-397-9222
After the great meal we had at Michael Mina Vegas, knowing the San Francisco restaurant was rumored to be even better, I was very much looking forward to the meal. We decided before we even arrived that we would most likely do the seasonal tasting menu. Luckily it was perfectly laid out for us with the "or" choices on just the right dishes.
Course one was Grilled Japanese Kanburi (tatsoi, Asian pear, ginger vinaigrette). This was amazing. The fish was perfectly cooked. The savory and sweet had an absolute perfect balance. It was a wonderful start. The wine pairing did not start well though. There is this trend that we've been experiencing with the chef's tastings and pairings of sweet, fruity wines served with Asian flavored dishes. This one was a Spanish Moscatel Seco (2007 Jorge Ordonez Botani) that was full of pineapple and mango. It was dry but had a coy sweetness from the tropical fruit flavors. This would be a good hot day quaffing wine, but did not pair with the food.
The next dish was one I thought I would love but it ended up being my least favorite of the evening: Extra Virgin Olive Oil-poached Wild Sturgeon (pickled cabbage, pumpernickel panade, dijon emulsion). It was an interesting flavor combination but the mustard overwhelmed everything else and, combined with the pickled cabbage, reminded me of a hot dog! "I'll have the sturgeon with mustard and kraut please!"
I'm not usually a fan of squab. I mean, really, it's pigeon! Why the fancy name? Anyway, WOW! It was practically rare, but a tender, perfect texture, not at all squab-like. It wasn't stringy or gamey although it was intensely smoky. Luckily, the sommelier paired this one with a Pinot Noir (2006 Whetstone Pinot Noir, Jon Boat) that cut through the smoke.
Michael Mina isn't immune to the influence of the Kobe trend. They have added a great twist to it though: "Thai Beef Salad" (grilled little gems, serrano peppers, green curry). The beef was tender, the curry had some heat and, unpredictably, this was our favorite dish of the evening. The other surprise was that the 2007 Celebration Gamay Noir (Eola-Amity Hills, Oregon) worked so well. Red wine with beef, sure, of course! Red wine with spicy serrano, Thai curry... what? It was awesome. The Apple Tarte Tatin (Burnt cinnamon ice cream, cider foam, toffee) for dessert was spiced and sweet and tart cinnamony. The 2003 Tokaji brought out a brown sugar in the dish which made it a very good pairing. There was an extra little bite that came out, a sort of s'more gelée. I don't tend to like the textures gelées and foams but this little bite was so intensely S'MORE! Great finish to the meal.
We had a lovely time -- oh, and this was my birthday dinner so they wrote "Happy Birthday" on my Tarte Tatin plate in chocolate... cute!
I'm looking forward to my next opportunity to return to Michael Mina. It's an extravagant meal but there's nothing wrong with that if the dishes deliver and these sure did.
La Posta 538 Seabright Ave. Santa Cruz, CA 95062 831-457-2782
We had an excellent dinner tonight at La Posta. I've been meaning go there for ages and we finally made it down. My husband and son devoured the mixed salumi plate (everything on the plate was house-cured except for the imported prosciutto). I had the Baby mixed lettuces with anchovy vinaigrette and was very much looking forward to the anchovy vinaigrette. I was not disappointed, it was overwhelmingly anchovied and amazing.
My main course was the Roasted Striped Bass with clams,artichokes, fingerling potatoes, and leeks. The fish was perfectly cooked, the leeks still had a bit of a good crunch to them, the clams were flavorful, everything meshed very well together. I accompanied the meal with a glass of 2005 La Spinetta "Ca di Pian" Barbera d'Asti, careful not to drink it with the artichokes! It was a beautiful wine. I finished the meal with two incredible scoops of Strawberry Gelato. It's made in-house and is the essence of strawberry. It's served atop strawberry puree and with a large, yummy in-season, local strawberry. A perfect dessert, that is if you're a strawberry freak! It was awesome.
I'm glad we finally made it down there, it was worth the wait. We'll be back soon.
Aubergine Restaurant Monte Verde at Seventh Carmel-by-the-Sea, CA, 93921 831-624-8578
This meal began brilliantly. We got the chef's tasting menu with the wine pairing. We were brought an Amuse Bouche that was made with cauliflower and coriander seeds. I hate cauliflower and I ate every bit of this dish. The highlight of the evening for me was the first course, Avocado and Scallop (haas avocado purée, watermelon radish, cucumber gelée, Nantucket Bay scallop ceviche). This was excellent, not at all fishy, the raw scallop was served atop a quite gourmet guacamole. I'm usually not big on gelées but the cucumber had wonderful flavor. The dish was a good balance of creamy-scallop-crunch.
Course two would be hard to mess up. The menu said: Asparagus & Morel (first local green asparagus, chicken oyster, sorrel sabayon, morel "etuvée"). This was all just fancy talk for a very good plate of perfectly cooked asparagus alongside local, blonde morels. A classic combination for a reason, it's all the flavors of spring to me. The sommelier chose to serve a Grüner Veltliner with it which I thought clashed horribly. I didn't drink it with the dish so as not to ruin the wonderful flavors I was enjoying.
When the halibut dish came we were told it was topped with porcini, this caused a moment of panic when I noticed the porcini had gills. We had already had a discussion with the waiter about the presence of "Big Sur porcini" on the menu given it was the end of March and porcini season is in November-December. His response was "well it did just rain"... that is not how it works. They never did fess up to the porcinis being (probably) frozen. After we questioned the "gilled porcini" they told us it was a chantrelle. Mushroom mistake aside,the halibut was overcooked and dry and I couldn't finish it.
Speaking of the porcini dish, that was the veal. We had asked for the meat to be rare. This could have been farther from rare. It was so well done I had trouble cutting it. Poor little baby cow gave up its life for that? Admittedly, I've never had veal in my life, maybe it's supposed to be cooked to the point of greyness?
I hate giving less than stellar reviews. The waitstaff was wonderful, helpful and attentive without being hovering. Given the wad of cash we dropped on this meal I want to have nothing but praise for it. I asked for a copy of the menu, I got one and it was signed by the chef: "Taste is built from memories"...he's right. Memories are also built from taste and I'll remember this as a place I may only need to go to for an appetizer (I'd go back for the scallops). I think this dinner was very Carmel: pretty on the outside, presented well, pricey, but lacking depth and flavor.
Bellagio 3600 Las Vegas Blvd. South Las Vegas, NV 89109 702-693-7223.
I've had the opportunity to not only eat at one Michael Mina, but two. The first was in Las Vegas and we were impressed, although we were still being subjected to "Vegas people." They are not our people. The sommelier and waiter were actually quite appreciative of the fact the we were foodies and interested in the details of both the food and the wine. For the Vegas meal we went with the cookbook tasting. I thought these would be the dishes that have had any kinks worked out and were really the best they could be. It of course had Mina's signature Ahi Tartare that he brought with him from Aqua. I was disappointed with the dish at Aqua years ago, there was too much heat and the fish was lost. I'm happy to say that problem has been corrected and the flavor balance is perfect. I do however think they need to evaluate their bread choice. The toast points have the taste and texture of a sliced white sandwich bread. I found the wine pairing I challenge: 2005 Schloss Johannesburg Riesling. The sesame flavors in the tartare really clashed for me. I'd rather have had champagne or any very crisp, white wine.
The lobster pot pie could have been really good but missed on a few points. The first was that it was very hard to eat. It was served in a small pot which made it geometrically impossible to cut up the chunk of lobster inside. The second was that it had button mushrooms in it... lobster is worthy of a fungus better than a button.
The highlight of the meal by far was the Miso-glazed Black Cod with shiitake consommé, shrimp and scallop raviolini. The fish, bok choy, mushrooms and accompanying ravioli were all perfectly cooked and at the perfect temperature to eat all while floating in broth. A near impossible task in my book. we had a lovely not sweet, not sharp sake: Takasago Junmai Daigingo "Diving Droplets" sake. Very much recommended. The recipe for the dish is on page 203 of Michael Mina's cookbook, I'm sure it's a snap!
The dessert course was a trio of root beer float, chocolate chip cookies, and Valrhona chocolate ice cream and mousse. The root beer float was a challenge with any wine or aperitif (the artichoke of desserts) but it was still a good float! The whole dessert plate was fancified comfort sweets.
If I find myself back in Vegas, which I don't plan to for a very long time, I will go back to Michael Mina. But given that I'm an hour and a half from San Francisco, I'd rather just pop in on that one again and not have to deal with the neon.
Nobu In the Hard Rock Casino Las Vegas, NV 702-693-5090
When we found ourselves planning a trip to Utah, we couldn't be within a few hours of Vegas and not head there for dinner. We are not gambling people, we are not 110 degree heat people, I do not dress like I just stepped out of the Frederick's of Hollywood catalog. Las Vegas is not a place we would typically migrate to. However, given that the majority of the world's best chefs have decided to open up restaurants there, it is now a vacation destination for me. I booked a hotel (sans Casino-- a rarity I know) across the street from the Hard Rock which houses Nobu. Across the street when it's 114 feels like a marathon, but we made it. We had a reservation for the first seating at 6pm. If you make it there, note that they don't open their door until six o'clock sharp, so no point getting there early except to look at the music memorabilia around the casino (which is pretty cool!). We had a reservation for a table, but my four year old wanted to watch them make the sushi so we moved to the bar. That was a great move!
We ordered the Omakase (Chef's choice) and got to watch each dish being prepared, minus the hot dishes from the kitchen. The first dish was Nobu-style Tuna Poke. It was tossed in an acidic miso dressing, topped with some cherry tomatoes, little dollop of mild caviar, and a taro chip. This was incredible. It really made me want to up the ante on my Wednesday night farmers market creations.
Round two was mackerel. I hate mackerel, oily, fishy, I avoid it. This was the best mackerel ever but, having said that I hate it, that's not praising it enough. It was one of my favorite dishes of the meal... mackerel! It was topped with a dry miso that tasted like some of the best, gourmet, Top Ramen powder... I know that doesn't sound like a compliment, but it is, and I couldn't think of any other way to describe it. There was also some curry oil and a little round fruit that we couldn't identify, it turned out to be some sort of baby peach. It functioned as a palate cleanser, it wasn't very sweet but very refreshing.
The third dish was the one "miss" of the evening. It was Tako Sausage with an overwhelming number of other flavors tossed together on the plate: feta cheese (yes, cheese in Japanese food!), hard-boiled quail egg, corn, broccoli, peas, and a ceviche sauce. Not the masterpiece of the evening.
The meal quickly got back on track with Otoro and scallop with a sauce made of dried shrimp, dried scallop, and chili oil. Both the Otoro and scallop were like butter. Scallop is another thing that I typically avoid these days, I get a heavy metallic taste from it, but not this one. Next came a palate cleanser of strawberry-Mango sorbet on champagne granita with a white chocolate tuille (which the waiter told us was shizo--what?!-- he came back apologizing profusely for being wrong).
We were now moving on to the hot dish, kitchen portion of the meal. Crab stuffed zucchini blossoms with passionfruit Ponzu sauce and golden pea shoots: well-balanced and flavorful, the pea shoots were perfectly salty. Another amazing dish. The Kobe beef with seared foie gras, kabocha puree, asparagus, and shizo oil was next. I am not a foie gras fan, so I felt incredibly guilty leaving this huge chunk of foie on my plate -- I tried to eat it but it was just too much. The Kobe however was tender and flavorful and the kabocha puree tasted very similar to butternut squash and added a sweetness and freshness that was balanced and excellent.
Out next was a cilantro-lime soup with grilled squid. This didn't taste Japanese to me, it tasted almost Thai-like but it was very refreshing after the heavy Kobe dish. I did think the squid was a little too chewy though.
We moved back sushi bar portion for an incredible plates of nigiri: Chutoro (AMAZING), snapper with shizo, sake with mild jalapeno (incredible), Spanish saba with sweet kelp (unbelievably good -- again with the Saba!) , amaebi (creamy) and tamago (like a little soufflé on rice).
They brought us the dessert that was apricot gyoza with almond ice cream. This was good, a fine dessert... We could not end this fabulous meal with a dessert that was just "fine." We ordered our real desert: Hamachi and otoro sashimi. having chatted with the sushi chef for most of the meal, we got a little bonus with our Sashimi, fluke fin. Very thinly sliced in a little mirin and soy dressing, it was chewier than fish, not as chewy as squid, unlike anything I've ever had really, and quite a treat. The sashimi plate was truly the best dessert we could have possibly ordered. That's the way to end a meal. Oh, the sake! I'm not sure how I managed not to write down the names of the sakes that we got, but I don't think you can go wrong. They have numerous sakes brewed just for them and something for every palate, sweet to dry.
I was not surprised by the quality of ingredients or incredible knife skills of the chefs but I was impressed nonetheless. I was unimpressed with the other patrons wearing their perfume, ordering spicy tuna rolls -- seriously, in Nobu, spicy tuna... what?! So there is a downside to the location, and they don't have a restroom within the restaurant, you have to go into the casino which deadens your sense of smell with all the perfume and smoke lingering about. But I gladly got past those problems and will excitedly return to Nobu again.
Update: We excitedly returned to Nobu in November. We again got the Omakase. I'm sad to say that it didn't live up to our July visit. The front of the house seems to have slipped. Our waiter wasn't knowledgeable about the sake list and when handed a list of things we were allergic to, asked if it was a tempura order. The items that came from the kitchen were lackluster. Having said all that, they do still have some of the best fish at the sushi bar that I have ever experienced. The men behind the counter know what they're doing, their purchasers know with they're doing, I'm just afraid the front of the house is falling victim to Vegas. For future reference though, if you ever see Tasmanian ocean trout on a menu, order it!
I used to watch Molto Mario religiously. I have a hard time deciding which I enjoy more, Italian or Japanese food. So on our trip to Las Vegas, I booked dinners for both. The second night we were at Nobu, but our first night was at B&B run by my favorite Italian chef, Mario Batali.
First things first, a bottle of Brunello please! Yum Yum!! The wine list is impressive, if not overwhelming, and they've got quite the mark up -- holy my gosh!! -- our sommelier called it the "Strip tax." But, the wine was pure bliss. As usual, I didn't even get to the second page of the menu. I ordered as many antipasti and primi dishes as I could. Oddly, the dishes I was looking most forward to from watching Mario's shows were the least interesting to me when I actually ate them. The Calamari and Seppie Fritti was fine but really not the best calamari I've ever had. The Marinated Fresh Anchovies "alla Giardiniera" were incredibly fresh (not surprisingly), not fishy like you would think anchovies to be, but they were all about the vinegar they were marinated in. It made drinking wine with them incredibly challenging. They were really good, but not a dish I would return to the restaurant to get. Those two dishes aside, the rest of the meal was fantastic. The Roasted Beet Salad with Ricotta Salata was the antipasti winner for my husband. It seemed they had every kind of beet known to man on the plate and they were all perfect. The ricotta salata was a nice touch, it balanced the dish well and wasn't too cheesy.
What really blew me away about the dinner was what I ordered from the primis. The blue ribbon winner for me was the Spaghettini with spicy budding chives, sweet garlic and one-pound lobster. It was so simple, pasta in a spicy red sauce, but none of the flavors were lost to each other. The spice didn't overpower the sweet, tender lobster. The chives and garlic were a fragrant addition to the sauce but weren't too strong. If I wouldn't have had the Beef Cheek Ravioli coming next, I would've loved another dish of this. But, alas, I finished off the spaghettini and the large, rich plate of ravioli was put in front of me. This was really amazing. It was like a rich, slow cooked, stroganoff (but a really good one) wrapped up in a perfectly cooked pasta. The truffles were sizable but the truffle flavor was really in the sauce. The Brunello worked tremendously well with both the beef cheek and the spicy spaghattini so that was an excellent choice. The only problem with the ravioli dish was that it was too incredibly rich for me to finish. I didn't want to send any back to the kitchen but I couldn't eat another bite. Actually, that's not entirely true, I did order dessert. I got the Cioccolato, the Italian chocolate death, with raspberries and espresso syrup -- heavenly! My son got the chocolate malt gelato and the Mint Stracciatella which was thoroughly enjoyed (the Mint Stracciatella should be a palate cleanser for them), and my husband got the cannoli. All three desserts were lovely. I still think I would've liked to have ordered in other spaghettini for dessert though!!
Balzac - inside La Stampa Hotel & Spa 35 Dawson Street, Dublin, D2, Ireland Phone: (353) 1 677 4444
I couldn't eat at Boccaccio every night, so I poked around online to try to find somewhere else in Dublin with edible fare. I found a few good references to Balzac so we decided to check it out. Like the rest of Dublin, it follows the trend of ridiculously high prices and exorbitant wine markups. Unlike most of the other places we've been to however, the food was good as well (not just expensive).
I ordered the Poulet Vert - Herb Roasted Poussin, Watercress and Lemon. This is not "first date" food, at least not for me. I can't have a whole bird served to me and dissect it with only my knife and fork; I dive in with my hands and I'm a mess. But luckily this time I was a mess of flavorful juicy poultry. On the side I got the green salad which was supposed to be served with the French dressing (which I hate) so they dressed it with a simple vinaigrette for me which was very tasty. There are much more elaborate dishes available on the menu but I took the safe route based on experiences of other Dublin restaurants falling short. I think I chose wisely, they did this classic dish very well.
Along with the meal we got a bottle of Gevrey Chambertin Burgundy. Overpriced but familiar, a very good bottle.
For dessert I also chose what I thought was a safe route. I got the Raspberries with Lemon Cream and Lavender Shortbread. The lemon cream was inedibly sweet. I just stuck with the raspberries and the buttery lavender shortbread.
Of the fancy pants restaurants in Dublin that we've been to, I think the food here was decent. If told I had to return to one of the pricey places I've been to, I'd choose this one. How's that for a backhanded compliment?
I've been to Dublin twice now. The first trip was in the summer of 2006, the latest was just this past June. Sure, there's the Book of Kells, churches that are nearly 1000 years old, but what about the food!? Both times I tried to do my research as to where to eat, and although Dublin is coming into its own as a tourist destination with a couple of Michelin stars, I could not find a restaurant I wanted to return to for a second meal. That is until we found Boccaccio.
It has very much the same atmosphere as Limoncello, in fact every meal at Boccaccio closes with a complementary shot of limoncello. So in brief it's everything I love about Italian cuisine: a relaxed atmosphere, a family feel, and phenomenal food.
We went there twice in the week that we stayed in Dublin. The first night I ordered Linguine al Granchio (Pasta with crab meat claw, spring onion and fresh tomato concasse). The crab-tomato sauce concoction can easily be muddled. Either you can't taste the crab, or the crab takes over with the fishy/wharfy taste -- neither of these problems existed at Boccaccio. The crab was fresh and added a creaminess to the tomato with more than a hint of spice.
We ventured back the night before our plane was to leave which was a busy Saturday night. We didn't have reservations and the place was packed. After giving my sob story of wanting to eat there one more time before flying back to the states, they fit us into a table as long as we could order, eat, and get out of there before a huge party was arriving at nine o'clock. Deal! I don't need to linger, I just want the food!
This time I ordered the simple dish that so many restaurants don't seem to be able to master, Spaghetti alla Bolognese. This was a classic ground beef version, nothing fancy, but high-quality meat that wasn't drowning in sauce; a perfect ratio. With it we ordered the house wine: “Montepulciano d’Abruzzo Perugino Rosso” which, like in any good Italian restaurant, was highly drinkable and didn't break the pocketbook.
Both nights I closed my dinner with the Tartufo Limone with Limoncello (Lemon ice cream with a soft lemon liqueur center coated with chrushed lemon meringue). I was in lemon heaven. It was creamy, it was tart, and with a shot of limoncello poured over it, it had a kick! I highly recommend it, along with the light-as-a-cloud Tiramisu.
I don't know if I'll find myself in Dublin again anytime soon. It's an incredibly expensive city to visit. But at least now I know that if I do go back, I have a place to eat... and eat, and eat.
Black China Cafe 1121 Soquel Ave. Santa Cruz, CA 95062 (831) 460-1600
Given that I just grabbed a sandwich to go, this review is based on very limited input. Having said that, the sandwich was exquisite. They called it an open faced sandwich, but it was really more like three pieces of bruschetta. Toasted francese with a large pile of delicious hummus (not at all bland or pasty) topped with cucumber, cherry tomatoes, basil, fennel seeds, and sesame seeds. It was the perfect sandwich for a lovely sunny spring day.
Keep an eye on this page, I have a feeling I'll be adding reviews as I go back more often. I have to go back, I didn't come home with any of their famous dessert!!
Gabriella Café 910 Cedar St Santa Cruz, CA 95060 (831) 457-1677
It had been a while since I'd been to Gabriella Café, they seemed to have a slight downturn in the kitchen a couple years ago, but that is the case no longer. We had an outstanding meal.
Since it was my husband's birthday, we started the meal off with a 1998 Roederer champagne. It was lovely with the amuse bouche sent out by the chef: an oyster with lentil "caviar." The oyster was a perfect size with excellent flavor but I think I needed a squeeze of lemon or a dash of vinegar to bring a little acid to it. Nevertheless, it was a great opener.
We stared at the list of antipasti and salads for quite awhile not able to decide which ones to get. The way we solved that problem was by getting all of them! Well, all but the Pigs Blood which just grossed me out. Anyway, the first to come out was the Chili Mint Shrimp (with green garlic anchovy white bean purée). The shrimp had a good char on the outside, and was cooked flawlessly. Served at the same time, the Seared Kampachi Spine had tremendous flavor but was quite the challenge to eat, seemingly having more bones than flesh. The flavor was so good however, we sucked the bones clean!
The winners of the evening, without question, were Hamachi and the Marinated Asparagus dishes. I eat as much raw fish as I can, so I have a lot of palatial experiences (experiences with the palate) to compare this to. This was some of the best hamachi I have ever had. It was on par with the Ahi we ate in Hawaii that was just an hour out of the water. Complementing it were two fried sides: a shrimp polpettini that wasn't overwhelmingly shrimpy just scrumptious, and fried spring onion, both of which added a good contrast to the freshness of the fish by being fried and crunchy (and I'm not typically a huge fan of fried food). The asparagus dish was served with a rustic salsa verde which was acidic, smoky, buttery and overall just yummy. The asparagus was perfectly crunchy and a wonderful, fresh reminder that it is spring. It also included "Upland Cress" which is a type of cress I'd never tried; it had a nuttiness similar to arugula but with an almost musty flavor, I'll have to keep an eye out for this market, I very much enjoyed it.
Having moved on from the Roederer, we needed a hearty red wine to go with our entr&actue;es. The chef recommended a Ridge Lytton Springs, and although we would have loved it, we've got that in our cellar and wanted to try something we didn't have. So we went with a 2005 Alfeo Super Tuscan. I have to say, it went very well with my braised beef cheeks. If you would have told me a couple of years ago that I would be ordering beef cheeks, I would've thought you were insane. I remember watching an Iron Chef episode back when it was on the Japanese station and just subtitled—pre-Food Network bastardization of the show—entitled Hohoniku Confront! a.k.a. Battle Beef Cheek. They were so excited about the portion of the cow that they got to use for this battle, the commentators had the on screen drawing tools they use for football games, which they were using to point out the perfectly gelatinous-looking areas of the beef cheek that were the best to eat. I think I may now understand the love. The meat had all the flavor of a slow cooked stew meat, but was amazingly tender and buttery, not at all stringy, with the ideal amount of texture. It was supposed to have been served with polenta, but that already had cheese in it so that was out for me, so they substituted a braised Umbrian Chicerchia herb salad instead. The Chicerchia is a cross between a fava bean and a chick pea and that is exactly what it tastes like. I would say that's another thing I want to look for in the market but fava beans are so much work to shuck, if these are the same, I will never make them! I'll leave that to the fancy-pants chefs at places like Gabriella. The dessert menus came and I was shocked to see that there wasn't a single chocolate dessert on the menu… what was I to do? Well I wasn't disappointed. I ordered the "peas and carrots" which I was pretty positive didn't involve peas or carrots. It was gelato prepared in a way that reminded me of a terrine without the wiggly-Jello aspect: pastel layers of gelato. I much prefer this preparation!
We had a meal without disappointment, with a few surprises, and a desire to return soon to an old favorite haunt.
I've been driving by Limoncello meaning to go there for a while. We finally decided, somewhat on a whim on Saturday night, to try out dinner there. Not the smartest move on Saturday night on Easter weekend, without a reservation. But we waited for about half an hour, and got a table outside. While waiting we could hear everyone raving as they left the restaurant after wonderful meals. I couldn't wait for mine.
I started with an antipasti of Crostini di Melanzane al Funghetto (Toasted bread topped with fried eggplant, garlic, tomato, parmesan and Romano cheese). If you been reading my reviews for awhile though, you know that I got it without cheese. It was absolutely fantastic. The eggplant had no bitterness in it whatsoever, and was cooked perfectly. I shared one piece (with cheese) with my husband, and devoured the other three pieces myself.
For my main course I got the Strozzapreti al Sugo di Carne (Corkscrew egg pasta in a southern italian style meat sauce). I just recently began eating meat again. I'm not sure what changed, but it started tasting good to me again after 15 years of not eating it. I love how many more things I can eat off the menu now and after ordering this particular dish, I'm really happy I fell off the wagon. It wasn't just a ground beef Bolognese sauce, it had what I believe were whole pork spareribs, but given that meat is new to me again, I'm not the best at identifying it yet. No matter what it was it was delicious! One of the things that is still creepy to me about eating meat is gnawing flesh off a bone, this was so good I had no problem with that this time! I was munching away!
My 3 1/2 year old son got the Linguine Li Galli (Flat spaghetti with a tomato, onion, caper sauce). He's a huge fan of the caper. He was not disappointed either, the capers were huge and there were plenty of them. It's always a bonus to find a very good restaurant that is kid friendly and still has amazing food (like here, Ristorante Avanti, and Caffe Lucio).
The waiter was very adamant that nothing in the kitchen is "precooked.." Apparently there are a lot of people who don't understand the "slow food" concept in this town. Caffé Lucio also had to post a sign that cooking fresh food takes time and you need to be patient. Even when dining with a three-year-old I understand that there's going to be a wait, actually I expect there to be a wait, if there isn't one I get worried. Everything was served in a reasonable amount of time and what little wait we had was filled by a lovely 2001 Castello Romitorio Brunello di Montelcino. I think Brunello is my favorite Italian wine. It never seems to disappoint.
The only problem with the meal was that I couldn't finish it! Really not a problem in the end, since I also got to have for lunch today.
I'm already looking forward to heading back and I really want to try their paninis at lunch. But now I know reservations are highly, highly recommended! It is popular for good reason, we had an excellent meal. Santa Cruz is definitely not lacking for a good Italian meal. But just like Italy, each place has their own style, specialty, and flair. Welcome back to the neighborhood Limoncello!
Addendum: I popped into Limoncello for lunch today. I was torn, so I asked the waiter if I should get the Panino con Bistecchina (Marinated flank steak in homemade bread) or the Cacuzzo con Calamari al Sugo (Calamari in a spicy tomato sauce in hollow bread loaf). He confidently recommended the flank steak and, not having had the calamari, I don't know if it's better, but I wasn't let down with the recommendation. I was trying to decipher what the marinade was, and was told it was a secret, but all I could figure out was fennel seeds. I think that was the best steak sandwich I've ever had. For dessert I got what was, I think, their signature dessert. It was a frozen parfait swirled with frozen limoncello yumminess. It was pretty as well as delicious and I could have easily devoured three or four of those, but really I was stuffed.! So Limoncello has my wholehearted recommendation for both lunch and dinner!!
When the halibut dish came we were told it was topped with porcini, this caused a moment of panic when I noticed the porcini had gills. We had already had a discussion with the waiter about the presence of "Big Sur porcini" on the menu given it was the end of March and porcini season is in November-December. His response was "well it did just rain"... that is not how it works. They never did fess up to the porcinis being (probably) frozen. After we questioned the "gilled porcini" they told us it was a chantrelle. Mushroom mistake aside,
the halibut was overcooked and dry and I couldn't finish it.
dining with a three-year-old I understand that there's going to be a wait, actually I expect there to be a wait, if there isn't one I get worried. Everything was served in a reasonable amount of time and what little wait we had was filled by a lovely 2001 Castello Romitorio Brunello di Montelcino. I think Brunello is my favorite Italian wine. It never seems to disappoint.