Experimenting with quick pickling...several meals at Momofuku were the inspiration and the recipe comes from David Chang himself. However, our 1st attempt following the proportions for the brine (1 Cup hot water, 1/2 cup rice vinegar, 6 tbsp sugar and 2 1/4 tsp kosher salt) came out a bit too sweet for my palate. We'll try reducing the amount of sugar the next batch.
Monday, June 7, 2010
CSA's and Pickling
Its been a bountiful 1st few weeks of the CSA season...lots of kale, kohlrabi, lettuce, radishes, garlic scapes, spring onions, turnips, broccoli, Napa cabbage, bok choy, leeks, arugula, daikon, basil, dill, collards, chard, fennel and even a bit of summer squash. Thomas O'Neal of Signal Mountain Farms is an amazing local producer who has the most beautiful produce. Williams Island Farm is the other CSA we've enrolled in this year and they also are doing a terrific job.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Quick Notes
Great trip recently to see Monticello, Yorktown and Williamsburg. 3 restaurants worthy of recommending.
Best of the lot was Fat Canary in Williamsburg. Fantastic appetizers and a market based menu, with great prices on the wine list...a Copain Pinot that we bought from the winery for 50 dollars was 63 on the list. Why can't more restaurants take the European approach to wine pricing? Walking out of the restaurant to a healthy debate between three William and Mary students about religion...each standing on a step ladder!
Also in Williamsburg is Le Yaca which is French, but fairly casual with a 37 dollar 4 course tasting menu. Everything was superbly done except for a "sea bass" which did not seem to be of the Mediterranean variety....those that chose beef as their entrees were very pleased.
Finally, C & O was a last minute replacement for Taste of China (Peter Chang snuck out of town yet again the weekend before we were to eat there). It was generally very good. Here's a link to the latest in the Peter Chang saga
and it appears he may be headed back to Atlanta:
or maybe not:
And an April Fool take on Chef Chang:
Speaking of Atlanta, Chef Kevin Gillespie of Top Chef fame is at Woodfire Grill in Atlanta. We had 3 meals there in the late winter and 2 of the 3 put in the top echelon of fine Atlanta dining (though Atlanta has always had a dearth of top end restaurants...the generally accepted number 1 is Bacchanalia, but its always seemed a bit tired to us. The presentation at Woodfire Grill was sub par, but the flavors were excellent except at the third meal when Chef was out of town. I've since heard of another similar experience, so if you go, confirm that Gillespie is actually at the open kitchen.
If you are visiting Chattanooga the next few weeks, Erik Niel of Easy Bistro has Chesapeake soft shells in...he does them 2 different ways, and they are better than the Alinea version we had this time last year.
It appears that you will soon be able to mail order some of Townhouse Chef Karen Urie Shields creations soon. Hope those olive oil cakes & the onion breakfast tart are available, too.
Monday, March 22, 2010
McCrady's and Townhouse: America's Arzak and Mugaritz
Originally, I had wanted to do a post on a recent culinary swing we did last month through Savannah and Charleston but we only one restaurant worthy of recommending.
McCradys was so outstanding that we cancelled our next evening reservation at FIG to go back. All the other recommended/touted places in both cities were at best ok. Put Chef Sean Brock and his tasting menu on the short list of best restaurants in the US.
McCradys is a busy place...and a complicated one. I sense that Chef has to please both a traditional clientele, but has been given creative freedom with his tasting menu. Here is where the terrific experience lies....where imagination and creativity rule. Elements of molecular gastronomy(i've come to dislike this term.. it fails to explain the intellectualism and sheer artistry that go into this style of cooking) pervade these dishes.
Several specific items of note from these 2 dinners. First, I'm not generally a lobster tail fan...most times I find it texturally too tough...I'd rather have Crawfish most times. The tail meat is more tender and sweeter. The exception to this is the butter poaching technique championed by Thomas Keller...love it. So Chef Brock takes this technique but improves on it using foie butter and borrowing a technique for removing leg meat(which is inherently more tender than the tail) from Wylie DuFresne. Brock trumps Keller.
Second, we had a crispy pork terrine that seemed similar to Daniel Humm's Eleven Madison Park version. Chef Brock again made his better.
Third, the guy makes his own molasses. This is a dying art. Several years ago we were invited to a friend's family farm to watch/participate in the process of making molasses that this family had done for 3 generations...they grew the cane and had a hillside gravity flow operation...it took all weekend- a very labor intensive process. The family informed me recently that due to lack of interest among the new generation of family members, they were forced to discontinue this tradition.
Fourth, he's taken the concept of sourcing local to heart, starting a large garden for the restaurant.
Chef Brock is one of the new generation of chefs that is taking American cuisine to the next level. The Keller generation has largely become restauranters- Keller admits in a recent Wine Spectator article that he no longer cooks in his restaurants. The fact that Brock can succeed in pleasing both a more traditional clientele and one looking for more creativity is a monumental accomplishment. Wow. You wonder what Chef Brock could do if the constraints came off and he was able to explore his creative bent. Still one of the best meals in the US right now.
Townhouse in Chilhowie VA is the most under appreciated dining destination in the United States right now. It is the best meal in the United States, if not the world. It is an example of what happens when a pair of chefs are given total creative freedom. The owners, Tom and Kyra Bishop, are visionaries. It is the style of food that appeals most to us these days. The last couple of years have been an epiphany for us, beginning with 2 trips to Spain in 2008 and 2009 (and a terrific meal at Noma in Copenhagen preceeding that), followed by a couple of trips to Chicago last year where we were able to experience several of our country's greatest talents. For this style of cooking, look to Chicago not New York. (Schwa, however, has remained an elusive reservation for us).
John and Karen Shields food appeals to you cognitively...it drives you to consider each element of the dish. It appeals to you emotionally...you can't help but be moved by the supreme effort, the love and the care that goes into each creation. It appeals to your right brain, realizing the artistry of the presentation. It appeals to your palate, pushing you to experience new flavor combinations. Some chefs are combining savory and sweet these days, but few to the effect that the Shields do. There seems to be an incredible attention to details like melding a dish texturally. And I can honestly say that the John has only improved since the 1st meal we had there last May.
We ate there for a third time Saturday, completely on a whim, after seeing a photo 2 days previously of a dish representing Spring rain, which included banana ice cream, avocado, peas, nasturtium and our favorite legume, favas. No dish repeated anything we'd had previously...a pair of tiny tacos with pork belly and kaffir were the new amuse bouche...an amazing bite. Many of the dishes are pictured on the website of the restaurant at http://townhouseva.com/ (see the link to the blog http://townhouseblog.blogspot.com/. We had the oyster, the shrimp dish, the squid risotto, the hearts of palm, the morel dish, the Valencia orange, the scrambled egg mousse, the scallop, a horse mackerel, and a couple of Karen's wonderful desserts. Terrific wine service by Charlie Berg. Best meal of our lives.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Peter Chang at Taste of China Charlottesville, Va
He can run but he cannot hide!
2 recent links to articles about the elusive, on the move Peter Chang, and the hunt to keep up with him!
New Yorker, Calvin Trillin Article can be found here:
IMHO, a better article can be found here:
We are off to Charlottesville in a few weeks for a try. Of course, Townhouse in Chilhowie, VA is on the way! townhouseva.com
Monday, January 25, 2010
Quito Ecuador
We spent a couple of days here as a staging point for a Galapagos trip...my advice would be to skip Quito if you can. Its a strange city that becomes deserted at dark...really kind of eerie. You are told to take cabs door to door even if its a couple of blocks, and security (armed guard types) is everywhere. Though we never had any problems, its uncomfortable realizing you can't just go for a walk.
Having said that, if you find yourself in Quito, you must go to the Quito branch of Astrid y Gaston...this is better than the original Lima location...infinitely more creative and lighter style of food. I'll post some photos soon. Everywhere else we dined seemed so tired and touristy...
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Chicago Again
We've come to believe after a second trip to Chicago this fall that this is THE city in the US for cutting edge cuisine in the United States. On our recent trip Blackbird shone brightest, and I'd put that at the top of the list of restaurants in the city. Moto was also excellent and extraordinarily fun and creative....with the food actually tasting good (which I cannot say for every molecular gastro experience we've had). L2O was a beautiful space and started out great, but ultimately did not live up to the hype as one of the best seafood restaurants in the country. Rick Bayless at Topolobampo was solid as ever, with a mole that is one of the best sauces of any type you can experience at any restaurant in the world.
Schwa remains elusive, and along with Momofuku Ko in NYC, remains the most difficult reservation in the country. Maybe someday we can score a table at Michael Carlson's place.
Enjoy the following photos...and keep in mind that everything at Moto including the menu is edible.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Peru
Peru
Peru, and especially Lima, is currently being hyped as the food capital of South America. That may well be true, but unfortunately it is necessary to lower your expectations a bit as to what that signifies. There are some things done here that are on a level no where else (ceviche is the best example) and some product (think corn- non hybridized varieties with a kernel size 4 to 5 times what we are used to ) that is unlike anything we can procure in the United States. Peru, according to local guides here, gave the world potatoes, corn, tomatoes, strawberries, fava and lima beans (incidentally, the toasted favas, limas and corn eaten as snacks are incredible).
Fine dining is a bit of a letdown compared with the hype- even Astrid y Gaston which is reputedly the best restaurant in the country falls a bit short of its lofty expectations. There is a bit of molecular gastro with the occasional foam and presentation is wonderful, but some of the food fell short- especially a suckling pig that suffered from a gaminess (especially aggravating because a local goat dish was absent of that typical characteristic…best goat we’ve had, in fact). The food occasionally was over seasoned.
Astrid y Gaston has top notch service and a wine list centered around South America and Spain. Portions are more than generous. Foie gras was on par with that anywhere, a spider crab ravioli satisfied, but a rabbit dim sum did not live up to China town standards. If you are looking for one fine dining experience in Lima, this is probably it, but Michelin starred fare it is not.
Restaurant Huaca Pucllana……. Located nearly on top of a 1800 year old mud pyramid really did not live up to the hype of various guide books…service was poor and the food really lacked finesse. Portions were more than ample. If you go, the cuy (guinea pig) appetizer was much better than the entree cuy, which was so tough as to be inedible. Apparently, preparation of cuy is an art, and this may have simply been poor technique. Risotto was heavy and gooey. The view is incredible as the pyramid is lit up at night, but the whole experience somehow seemed disrespectful to the souls of those proud Indians from so long ago.
Matsuei is a revelation and is highly recommended for sushi lovers….we have enjoyed Nobu’s style of sushi before in New York and it was a treat to come to the restaurant he co founded 30 years ago in Lima. Reportedly, he stayed only 3 years but the time there had a lasting influence on him. The experience was terrific, with the freshest product I’ve ever experience…and we did the chef’s choice for 4 persons (a mixture of sashimi and maki) that was more than enough….the cost was only $45 for all 4...11.25 USD each!
As we stayed in the San Isidro section of Lima, we hit 2 of the places mentioned in Lonely Planet for ceviche at lunch. The first was Punta Sal located on Avenue Conquistadores. A modern place, crowded with locals, it hit on every level. Each of the four dishes we ordered were large, and reasonably priced at about 28- 32 solas (about 10 US dollars) each. Washed down with a sweet blue corn beverage (sounds odd but is really a nice counterpoint to the acidity of the lime in the ceviche), this restaurant was a definite one to return to. Highly recommended. The only negative note was the fish tank in the back…the dead koi floating at the top of the tank was a bit disconcerting for a place serving fresh fish. Ceviche is generally a lunchtime tradtion so most places dedicated to serving it close after lunch.
The second place Lonely Planet recommended for ceviche was Alfresco. While the ceviche was not as good as Punta Sal, the black squid ink risotto was perfect. Some of the best anywhere. Having said that, probably would recommend you try elsewhere.
Machu Picchu is a dream trip for most people including us and it did not disappoint. All roads( and flights and trains) to Machu Picchu lead you through Cusco which is a lovely Incan-Spanish colonial town with many beautiful ruins of its own. We did not have a chance to dine independently there, as a typical tourist lunch was included in the transfer and the hotel we stayed at (Sol y Luna) was remote from the town…the restaurant there was merely ok. However, we wanted to spend 2 days seeing Machu Picchu so we stayed at the Hotel Sumaq Picchu in Agua Caliente which is where the 30 minute bus ride up to Machu Picchu originates from. The restaurant at the Hotel Sumaq Picchu was solid, and would be recommended. They have a local freshwater trout which they make a terrific ceviche from. The hotel itself is the last building on the road out of town and has an awesome view of a cascading river. There is a buffet lunch at the Machu Picchu lodge(only hotel at the entrance to the ruins) which is expensive by Peruvian standards at 33 US dollars, but considering it costs a $1000 dollars a night to stay there is probably not outrageous. Fairly standard buffet food, though there was an excellent suckling pig and another nice trout ceviche.
A final bit of advice….beware of Lima cab drivers….not the most honest of human kind.
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