From the SFA Blog...
http://southernfoodways.blogspot.com/2010/01/sfa-oral-history-internship-deadline.html
http://southernfoodways.com/index.html
True to our mission, we are as committed to teaching as we are to documenting. In an effort to mentor students in the field of oral history and initiate collaborations, we've developed two kinds of internships: in-house and guided. Information on both can be found here.
The deadline for the in-house internship is listed as February 1, but, given that we quietly added this information to our Web site without sending out a formal call for applicants, we have extended the deadline to February 15.
If you are interested in an in-house oral history internship with the SFA, please read the requirements and email a letter of inquiry, indicating previous experience and areas of interest (fieldwork or media production), to Amy Evans Streeter, acevans@olemiss.edu by February 15. Notifications will be sent on March 15.
Monday, February 8, 2010
RB Review from Serious Eats
http://www.seriouseats.com/2010/02/notes-from-the-south-rolling-bones-barbecue-bbq-review-atlanta-ga.html
Notes from the South: Riblets, Smoked Chicken, and More at Rolling Bones Barbecue in Atlanta
Posted by Chichi Wang, February 4, 2010 at 2:15 PM
[Photographs: Chichi Wang]
More Notes from the South
Wilber's Barbecue and Currituck BBQ Company »
Flip Burger Boutique in Atlanta »
Busy Bee in Atlanta »
The mighty Appalachian Trail begins in Georgia where the Chattachoogee Mountain Range, dense with towering pines and oak, sprawls over much of the land north of Atlanta. Dusk was setting in as our Prius clung to the dirt road winding up the side of the mountain; having chosen the wrong fork in the road, we made our sojourn back down with little light. By the time we finally reached Atlanta, the city was dark and the streets on which we drove, deserted. Rolling Bones Barbecue shined like a beacon of barbecue light, the only establishment open in the Old Fourth Ward region of downtown Atlanta where the restaurant opened last year to much acclaim.
Named in 2009 by Bon Appetit as one of the "Top 10 New Barbecue Restaurants in America," Rolling Bones specializes in Texas-style barbecue with smoked brisket, ribs slathered in tomato-based sauces, and slices of thick, butter-brushed toast. All meats are smoked with a mixture of hickory and pecan. Most cuts are brined before smoking, and smoking times vary from four hours for the chicken and ribs, to sixteen for the pork shoulder and brisket.
Ravenous, we arrived an hour before closing time with only one thing on the mind: ribs. I ordered a whole rack and was halfway through listing the sides I wanted when the man taking my order interrupted me.
"Miss, we're out of ribs," he told me. "Sold out about half an hour ago."
I took a step back in utter shock. Out of ribs? We had driven hundreds of miles without a meal and navigated our way out of the Appalachians, only to be vanquished by a missing rack of ribs? All the blood drained from my face as I tried to bear this news. Then, salvation came from behind the counter.
"Get the riblets," one of the cooks told me. "They're taken from the top two inches of the ribs, and I like them better anyway because they've got more fat and cartilage on them."
Folks, those were his words verbatim. I remember because I've said the same thing to anyone who'll listen: Meat is only worth eating if it's got a good amount of fat in it. The riblet meat was marbled with fat; pleasantly soft bits of cartilage stuck out from under. The sauce was slightly too aggressive for my palate though well within the canon of proper Texas barbecue sauce—tangy, sweet, with just a bit of spicy kick. I gnawed on riblet after riblet, barely needing to use my teeth to remove the tender meat from the bones.
Since closing time was near, the cook also threw in a quarter rack of ribs for me to compare to the riblets. He was right: the ribs, lacking the necessary marbling of fat, were not nearly as juicy and tender.
I returned the next day eager to try the rest of the menu. Most of the praise for Rolling Bones has focused on its smoked chicken, and with good reason. The chickens are brined, smoked for four hours, and then finished on the grill before serving. (The chicken, in fact, is the only item on the menu that's grilled.) The skin was thin and crispy with very little residual fat underneath its burnished surface; the meat was juicy and impossibly tender, with a smoky depth that remained even after my taste buds had acclimated to the flavor.
The brisket was a trickier affair. The first few slices we received were tough and dry, with plenty of smoky flavor but very little beefiness. Not one to rest on my fat-loving laurels, I marched back to the counter and asked if the cook if he had any fattier, juicier slices of brisket. He obligingly retrieved the large hunk of brisket from which he had cut our original slices, and let me inspect the meat for a better cross section. The tips of the brisket were well-marbled, and the little bit of fat made all the difference: the taste was extremely beefy and the texture, moist and juicy.
Our final meat selection of the day was the pulled pork sandwich. Like the brisket, the pulled pork is smoked for 14 hours and quickly rewarmed on a stainless steel griddle just before serving. The meat was moist and porky, but again, I found the sauce to be too assertively flavored.
For sides, the collard greens are porky but too sweet. The Brunswick stew was as thick as I've ever had, with a strong tomato flavor. Sweet potatoes had a dense and creamy texture, accompanied by a honey glaze that accentuated the smoky flavor. Sweet and crisp corn was a refreshing change from the heaviness of the meat.
Rolling Bones Barbecue
About the author: Chichi Wang took her degree in philosophy, but decided that writing about food would be much more fun than writing about Plato. She firmly believes in all things offal, the importance of reading great books, and the necessity of three-hour meals. If she were ever to get a tattoo, it would say "Fat is flavor." Visit her blog, The Offal Cook.
Notes from the South: Riblets, Smoked Chicken, and More at Rolling Bones Barbecue in Atlanta
Posted by Chichi Wang, February 4, 2010 at 2:15 PM
[Photographs: Chichi Wang]
More Notes from the South
Wilber's Barbecue and Currituck BBQ Company »
Flip Burger Boutique in Atlanta »
Busy Bee in Atlanta »
The mighty Appalachian Trail begins in Georgia where the Chattachoogee Mountain Range, dense with towering pines and oak, sprawls over much of the land north of Atlanta. Dusk was setting in as our Prius clung to the dirt road winding up the side of the mountain; having chosen the wrong fork in the road, we made our sojourn back down with little light. By the time we finally reached Atlanta, the city was dark and the streets on which we drove, deserted. Rolling Bones Barbecue shined like a beacon of barbecue light, the only establishment open in the Old Fourth Ward region of downtown Atlanta where the restaurant opened last year to much acclaim.
Named in 2009 by Bon Appetit as one of the "Top 10 New Barbecue Restaurants in America," Rolling Bones specializes in Texas-style barbecue with smoked brisket, ribs slathered in tomato-based sauces, and slices of thick, butter-brushed toast. All meats are smoked with a mixture of hickory and pecan. Most cuts are brined before smoking, and smoking times vary from four hours for the chicken and ribs, to sixteen for the pork shoulder and brisket.
Ravenous, we arrived an hour before closing time with only one thing on the mind: ribs. I ordered a whole rack and was halfway through listing the sides I wanted when the man taking my order interrupted me.
"Miss, we're out of ribs," he told me. "Sold out about half an hour ago."
I took a step back in utter shock. Out of ribs? We had driven hundreds of miles without a meal and navigated our way out of the Appalachians, only to be vanquished by a missing rack of ribs? All the blood drained from my face as I tried to bear this news. Then, salvation came from behind the counter.
"Get the riblets," one of the cooks told me. "They're taken from the top two inches of the ribs, and I like them better anyway because they've got more fat and cartilage on them."
Folks, those were his words verbatim. I remember because I've said the same thing to anyone who'll listen: Meat is only worth eating if it's got a good amount of fat in it. The riblet meat was marbled with fat; pleasantly soft bits of cartilage stuck out from under. The sauce was slightly too aggressive for my palate though well within the canon of proper Texas barbecue sauce—tangy, sweet, with just a bit of spicy kick. I gnawed on riblet after riblet, barely needing to use my teeth to remove the tender meat from the bones.
Since closing time was near, the cook also threw in a quarter rack of ribs for me to compare to the riblets. He was right: the ribs, lacking the necessary marbling of fat, were not nearly as juicy and tender.
I returned the next day eager to try the rest of the menu. Most of the praise for Rolling Bones has focused on its smoked chicken, and with good reason. The chickens are brined, smoked for four hours, and then finished on the grill before serving. (The chicken, in fact, is the only item on the menu that's grilled.) The skin was thin and crispy with very little residual fat underneath its burnished surface; the meat was juicy and impossibly tender, with a smoky depth that remained even after my taste buds had acclimated to the flavor.
The brisket was a trickier affair. The first few slices we received were tough and dry, with plenty of smoky flavor but very little beefiness. Not one to rest on my fat-loving laurels, I marched back to the counter and asked if the cook if he had any fattier, juicier slices of brisket. He obligingly retrieved the large hunk of brisket from which he had cut our original slices, and let me inspect the meat for a better cross section. The tips of the brisket were well-marbled, and the little bit of fat made all the difference: the taste was extremely beefy and the texture, moist and juicy.
Our final meat selection of the day was the pulled pork sandwich. Like the brisket, the pulled pork is smoked for 14 hours and quickly rewarmed on a stainless steel griddle just before serving. The meat was moist and porky, but again, I found the sauce to be too assertively flavored.
For sides, the collard greens are porky but too sweet. The Brunswick stew was as thick as I've ever had, with a strong tomato flavor. Sweet potatoes had a dense and creamy texture, accompanied by a honey glaze that accentuated the smoky flavor. Sweet and crisp corn was a refreshing change from the heaviness of the meat.
Rolling Bones Barbecue
About the author: Chichi Wang took her degree in philosophy, but decided that writing about food would be much more fun than writing about Plato. She firmly believes in all things offal, the importance of reading great books, and the necessity of three-hour meals. If she were ever to get a tattoo, it would say "Fat is flavor." Visit her blog, The Offal Cook.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Maybe...
Maybe the idiot who thought that these briskets were the same size should have watched sesame street.
Monday, February 1, 2010
Lupus
Many of you know that I am a avid supporter of Lupus research.
Some may not know because I've never posted it on my blog before as candid as this.
No time like the present.
Please visit the lupus foundation blog for information on this under funded disease research. It amazes me how some can say we don't need health-care reform. When you see a monthly prescription bill of $2200 a month somethings wrong. Very wrong!!!!
I'm putting a team together for the lupus walk May 8th, 2010.
I'm matching gift cards for donations to the foundation/walk. If interested you better find me!!!!!
http://lfa-inc.blogspot.com/
Sunday, January 31, 2010
The little bakery that could...
There is no secret we buy our desserts...
Like Clint Eastwood said, "Man gotta know his limitations."
So we keep it in the hood and buy our desserts from Sweet Auburn Bakery.
Chef Sonya Jones was featured on CNN and here is the link.
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/bestoftv/2010/01/27/harris.little.bakery.cnn?iref=allsearch
We sell pecan pies, sweet potato pies but my favorite is.....
THE BUTTERMILK LEMON CHESS PIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!
http://www.sweetauburnbread.com/
Like Clint Eastwood said, "Man gotta know his limitations."
So we keep it in the hood and buy our desserts from Sweet Auburn Bakery.
Chef Sonya Jones was featured on CNN and here is the link.
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/bestoftv/2010/01/27/harris.little.bakery.cnn?iref=allsearch
We sell pecan pies, sweet potato pies but my favorite is.....
THE BUTTERMILK LEMON CHESS PIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!
http://www.sweetauburnbread.com/
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Found this article on Coi Restaurant website.
http://coirestaurant.com/star-test-2-stars/
Very good read...
Should Fine Dining Die?
Food & Wine Magazine
April 2009
Anya von Bremzen
200904-a-fine-dining-die-1
While scanning the Russian press a while back, I came across an interview with Anatoly Komm, the country’s top chef. Komm is famous for the dazzling avant-garde riffs on black bread and borscht at his Moscow restaurant Varvary. Asked why people need haute cuisine these days, Komm had this to say: “Why go to the opera when you can buy a CD? If I don’t wow and regale diners with totally new sensations, I have wasted their money and failed as a chef!”
Of course, as a former Muscovite, I chuckled at Komm’s bluster. But then I couldn’t get his words out of my mind. As customers around the world abandon white-tablecloth restaurants, haute dining rooms have begun to feel like an endangered species. America’s most elite chefs, like Daniel Boulud, are opening beer halls, and Thomas Keller dreams of launching a burger place. Their disciples, meanwhile, have swapped foie gras for chicken livers at the neighborhood bistros where they cook now. Fed up with elaborate four-hour, three-figure meals, diners aren’t opting for the new sensations that Komm reveres; they would rather go to their local gastropub and order heritage pork belly.
After eating countless multi-starred meals around the world, I share—in spades—this aversion to the contrived amuse-gueules-to-petits-fours rigmarole known as fine dining. Yet there I was recently, nearly weeping into my lobster bisque at the unabashedly haute L2O restaurant in Chicago. Why? Well, for starters, the bisque was extraordinary. A pool of decadent chestnut puree surrounding sweet, succulent nuggets of lobster meat (vacuum-cooked in a fancy gadget called a Gastrovac), it had an opulence you just can’t find in a dish that’s ever been described as “yummy.” And in a clever conceptual gambit, chef Laurent Gras served the bisque as a nod to his classic French training—a stark contrast to the rest of his ultramodern tasting menu featuring sometimes-esoteric fish, much of it flown in from Japan. But there was more to my revelatory experience at L2O than simply the food.
Opened last year by the burningly talented Gras (an F&W Best New Chef 2002), L2O is a seriously luxe seafood restaurant, with the grand gestures of French haute cuisine carefully refined for 21st-century Chicago. “In France, three-star dining can feel like going to church,” declared Gras, who himself trained with Michelin-starred chefs like Alain Ducasse before making a name for himself at San Francisco’s Fifth Floor. “For American diners, you need a much more relaxing environment.” For L2O’s serene open space, which references Chicago’s glorious midcentury modernism, Gras opted for bare tables of expensive but under-stated ebony wood, exquisite pure-white German china and service with genuine warmth. In a great restaurant, details are crucial: They add up to what my boyfriend, wryly invoking composer Richard Wagner, calls a gesamtkunstwerk—a complete artwork on all fronts. And, from the first bite of Japanese snapper smoked over cherrywood to the ethereal salt-cod parfait, everything about the dinner reminded me of what a first-class meal can achieve. The refinement, the rigor, the setting—they deliver a fully articulated aesthetic vision that elevates the restaurant experience to something transcendent.
We left L2O with a kind of post-opera glow, back into the real world of stress and uncertainty. I flashed back to Komm and then thought, Do I really want to see such restaurants disappear?
Whenever I talk to critics and chefs, they mostly blame France for our current fine-dining phobia. The Gauls did invent haute cuisine—and the restaurant proper—but these days, their Gilded Age model is seen as an elitist, over-codified relic that doesn’t reflect what we now appreciate most in a restaurant: hospitality and human connection. If you pay an arm and a leg for a meal, shouldn’t it have an emotional resonance and a value that represents something more than the sum of the food and the plush upholstered chairs and the designer-clad waitstaff? No wonder French chefs are sending back their Michelin stars, while the world has firmly embraced Spain’s alternative paradigm. Even at the fanciest Spanish places, the experience never feels redundant or fusty, thanks to the immediacy and excitement that Spain’s avant-garde chefs have brought to their food. Dissatisfied with the label “molecular gastronomy,” the country’s most famous cook, Ferran Adrià, prefers to call Spain’s futuristic cuisine “techno-emotional,” emphasizing the sense of connection, of diners’ engagement. At its very best, an avant-garde Spanish meal is a piece of whimsical, interactive performance art.
And yet. Why sink fortunes into a degustation menu from a multistarred chef, whether he’s from Spain or not? Why not enjoy downsized versions of those same dishes cooked by the chef’s disciple at a convivial tapas bar? Recently I suggested to Adrià that the future of Spanish cuisine might not lie with his restaurant El Bulli, located outside Barcelona, but rather with Barcelona’s new wave of casual gastrobistros—pared-down storefront restaurants where young chefs are channeling cutting-edge inspirations into earthy, affordable food.
“Oh yeah?” Adrià replied, cocking an eyebrow. “And who supplies them with their ideas?”
That was Gras’s line, too. Top-end restaurants, he insisted, are like creative laboratories; from them, experimental ideas trickle down to more casual places. Case in point: my lunch in Chicago the day after my L2O meal. The place was Urban Belly, a hipster noodle joint opened recently on a very small budget by Korean-American chef Bill Kim. After working with some of the country’s fanciest chefs, like Charlie Trotter and David Bouley, Kim decided, like most of us, that four-star dining wasn’t his thing. His amazing, labor-intensive seven-buck dumplings, however, tell a different story—delicate squash pouches, for instance, with intricate background accents of kaffir lime and passion fruit. Would this sophisticated layering of flavors be possible without Kim’s training? No more than a $60 Zara knockoff of Prada could exist without Prada. Thanks to such trickle-down effects, the salmon on the crostini at Spur gastropub in Seattle is cooked sous vide for ultimate silkiness, while the fried chicken at Washington, DC’s Art and Soul undergoes two complex stages of brining—that “simple” bird takes two days to prepare.
Intellectually, then, I conceded the need for serious restaurants. But I still wasn’t sure (L2O notwithstanding) that a dazzling dish really requires a setting to match. To expand my research, I went to Corton in New York City, which ace restaurateur Drew Nieporent recently opened to rave reviews. The minimalist, stunningly comfortable all-white room won me over the minute I walked in. Twenty-four years ago, Nieporent took the pretension out of linen-tablecloth dining with his groundbreaking Montrachet. Having recently revived the space as Corton, he has reenergized the allure of fine dining. No fan of what he calls “carpetbagger” Continental-style imports, Nieporent, like Gras, stresses the need to redefine haute cuisine for specific times and places. “I wanted my restaurant to feel right for downtown New York today,” he insists. As I scanned the room, I could see what he meant about the “subliminal luxury” he was after. The banquettes’ perfect curves, the flattering lighting—you can’t get that carefully streamlined vision of downtown chic at a Michelin-all-star-Euro-chef franchise. And I’ll certainly miss it the next time I fight for an uncomfortable stool in the sonic blast of a gastropub.
The food at Corton does its part, too, of course. Nieporent has smartly installed British-born wunderkind chef Paul Liebrandt at the stoves. Liebrandt is the kind of chef who will accent the saline twang of an oyster with the earthy crunch of toasted buckwheat and a hint of nutmeg oil—a dish with mysterious layers of flavor that unfold, evoking a dozen different taste memories. He brilliantly smokes—smokes!—the flour for pasta, which he then accentuates with dusky slices of black truffle and the barest suggestion of Gouda cheese. And he gives a classic foie gras torchon a haute-couture twist with a gorgeous pink gelée of hibiscus and beet. Personally, I don’t need those totemic luxury foodstuffs—truffles, foie gras—but indisputably, Liebrandt’s playful, sometimes challenging riffs lend a sexy frisson to the stylish room. (Imagine a killingly glamorous supper club where Miles Davis might play.) Is fine dining dead? Not at Corton. The place does almost a hundred covers a night with a $79 three-course prix fixe.
I began to wonder if haute cuisine done right was the answer. I became convinced of it the following week, when I dined at Coi in San Francisco. This subtly experimental 29-seat restaurant is powered by the passion, intelligence and disarming humility of chef-owner Daniel Patterson (an F&W Best New Chef 1997). If for Liebrandt, beet is an accessory to foie gras, Northern California chef Patterson brilliantly spotlights the actual vegetable. The beets were presented on a plate like three small M&M’s. My first reaction—ingredient worship—gave way to the childish pleasure of popping the delicious, vibrantly colored root-vegetable “candies” into my mouth. Later I learned that the beets, topped with shiny jellies made from a blend of their roasted juices and citrus oil, took Patterson hours of intense work to prepare. “It’s an idealization of a beet,” he explained, then added, “And who’s to say that beets can’t be as valuable and exciting as caviar?” Not I.
Similar thought and exquisite craftsmanship went into the rest of my meal at Coi. A dish called Abstraction of a Garden in Winter combined local, seasonal root vegetables, aromatic herbs, cocoa nibs and smoked oil in a dark still life that evoked a barren cold-weather landscape. There was supernally buttery beef from a boutique ranch that supplies loins almost exclusively to Patterson, paired with a classic wild mushroom duxelle and gently transmogrified roasted bone marrow. Liquefied and re-formed into its natural shape with gellan (a gelatin that can withstand heat), the marrow tasted like a delicate yet luscious distillation of offal, jolting my complacent taste buds, which had been numbed by a gastropub-pork-belly overdose.
The entire meal at Coi bridged nature and culture, past and future, while the intimate service, the idiosyncratic wine list and the tactile, slightly irregular handmade ceramics on the table all brought home the idea—again—that a great restaurant is a total environment. Best of all, like Corton and L2O, Coi spoke to its time and location, delivering that crucial sense of emotional authenticity. If this is the haute cuisine of the future, we’d be mad to abandon it.
After I finished my meal I needed no reassurances, but I asked Patterson anyway why he thought fine dining mattered. “Because a great restaurant,” he replied, “creates an illusion of a life where everyone is happy to see us, every need is met and everything tastes better. And we need this now more than ever.” Knock off the very top level, he went on, and the next level down becomes the top. Keep “democratizing” like that, and eventually, a five-buck burrito will be the new standard.
So what would be lost then? I asked Patterson before I left.
“Risk-taking, inspiration, the sense of discovery.” In short: the transformative power of cooking.
http://coirestaurant.com/star-test-2-stars/
Very good read...
Should Fine Dining Die?
Food & Wine Magazine
April 2009
Anya von Bremzen
200904-a-fine-dining-die-1
While scanning the Russian press a while back, I came across an interview with Anatoly Komm, the country’s top chef. Komm is famous for the dazzling avant-garde riffs on black bread and borscht at his Moscow restaurant Varvary. Asked why people need haute cuisine these days, Komm had this to say: “Why go to the opera when you can buy a CD? If I don’t wow and regale diners with totally new sensations, I have wasted their money and failed as a chef!”
Of course, as a former Muscovite, I chuckled at Komm’s bluster. But then I couldn’t get his words out of my mind. As customers around the world abandon white-tablecloth restaurants, haute dining rooms have begun to feel like an endangered species. America’s most elite chefs, like Daniel Boulud, are opening beer halls, and Thomas Keller dreams of launching a burger place. Their disciples, meanwhile, have swapped foie gras for chicken livers at the neighborhood bistros where they cook now. Fed up with elaborate four-hour, three-figure meals, diners aren’t opting for the new sensations that Komm reveres; they would rather go to their local gastropub and order heritage pork belly.
After eating countless multi-starred meals around the world, I share—in spades—this aversion to the contrived amuse-gueules-to-petits-fours rigmarole known as fine dining. Yet there I was recently, nearly weeping into my lobster bisque at the unabashedly haute L2O restaurant in Chicago. Why? Well, for starters, the bisque was extraordinary. A pool of decadent chestnut puree surrounding sweet, succulent nuggets of lobster meat (vacuum-cooked in a fancy gadget called a Gastrovac), it had an opulence you just can’t find in a dish that’s ever been described as “yummy.” And in a clever conceptual gambit, chef Laurent Gras served the bisque as a nod to his classic French training—a stark contrast to the rest of his ultramodern tasting menu featuring sometimes-esoteric fish, much of it flown in from Japan. But there was more to my revelatory experience at L2O than simply the food.
Opened last year by the burningly talented Gras (an F&W Best New Chef 2002), L2O is a seriously luxe seafood restaurant, with the grand gestures of French haute cuisine carefully refined for 21st-century Chicago. “In France, three-star dining can feel like going to church,” declared Gras, who himself trained with Michelin-starred chefs like Alain Ducasse before making a name for himself at San Francisco’s Fifth Floor. “For American diners, you need a much more relaxing environment.” For L2O’s serene open space, which references Chicago’s glorious midcentury modernism, Gras opted for bare tables of expensive but under-stated ebony wood, exquisite pure-white German china and service with genuine warmth. In a great restaurant, details are crucial: They add up to what my boyfriend, wryly invoking composer Richard Wagner, calls a gesamtkunstwerk—a complete artwork on all fronts. And, from the first bite of Japanese snapper smoked over cherrywood to the ethereal salt-cod parfait, everything about the dinner reminded me of what a first-class meal can achieve. The refinement, the rigor, the setting—they deliver a fully articulated aesthetic vision that elevates the restaurant experience to something transcendent.
We left L2O with a kind of post-opera glow, back into the real world of stress and uncertainty. I flashed back to Komm and then thought, Do I really want to see such restaurants disappear?
Whenever I talk to critics and chefs, they mostly blame France for our current fine-dining phobia. The Gauls did invent haute cuisine—and the restaurant proper—but these days, their Gilded Age model is seen as an elitist, over-codified relic that doesn’t reflect what we now appreciate most in a restaurant: hospitality and human connection. If you pay an arm and a leg for a meal, shouldn’t it have an emotional resonance and a value that represents something more than the sum of the food and the plush upholstered chairs and the designer-clad waitstaff? No wonder French chefs are sending back their Michelin stars, while the world has firmly embraced Spain’s alternative paradigm. Even at the fanciest Spanish places, the experience never feels redundant or fusty, thanks to the immediacy and excitement that Spain’s avant-garde chefs have brought to their food. Dissatisfied with the label “molecular gastronomy,” the country’s most famous cook, Ferran Adrià, prefers to call Spain’s futuristic cuisine “techno-emotional,” emphasizing the sense of connection, of diners’ engagement. At its very best, an avant-garde Spanish meal is a piece of whimsical, interactive performance art.
And yet. Why sink fortunes into a degustation menu from a multistarred chef, whether he’s from Spain or not? Why not enjoy downsized versions of those same dishes cooked by the chef’s disciple at a convivial tapas bar? Recently I suggested to Adrià that the future of Spanish cuisine might not lie with his restaurant El Bulli, located outside Barcelona, but rather with Barcelona’s new wave of casual gastrobistros—pared-down storefront restaurants where young chefs are channeling cutting-edge inspirations into earthy, affordable food.
“Oh yeah?” Adrià replied, cocking an eyebrow. “And who supplies them with their ideas?”
That was Gras’s line, too. Top-end restaurants, he insisted, are like creative laboratories; from them, experimental ideas trickle down to more casual places. Case in point: my lunch in Chicago the day after my L2O meal. The place was Urban Belly, a hipster noodle joint opened recently on a very small budget by Korean-American chef Bill Kim. After working with some of the country’s fanciest chefs, like Charlie Trotter and David Bouley, Kim decided, like most of us, that four-star dining wasn’t his thing. His amazing, labor-intensive seven-buck dumplings, however, tell a different story—delicate squash pouches, for instance, with intricate background accents of kaffir lime and passion fruit. Would this sophisticated layering of flavors be possible without Kim’s training? No more than a $60 Zara knockoff of Prada could exist without Prada. Thanks to such trickle-down effects, the salmon on the crostini at Spur gastropub in Seattle is cooked sous vide for ultimate silkiness, while the fried chicken at Washington, DC’s Art and Soul undergoes two complex stages of brining—that “simple” bird takes two days to prepare.
Intellectually, then, I conceded the need for serious restaurants. But I still wasn’t sure (L2O notwithstanding) that a dazzling dish really requires a setting to match. To expand my research, I went to Corton in New York City, which ace restaurateur Drew Nieporent recently opened to rave reviews. The minimalist, stunningly comfortable all-white room won me over the minute I walked in. Twenty-four years ago, Nieporent took the pretension out of linen-tablecloth dining with his groundbreaking Montrachet. Having recently revived the space as Corton, he has reenergized the allure of fine dining. No fan of what he calls “carpetbagger” Continental-style imports, Nieporent, like Gras, stresses the need to redefine haute cuisine for specific times and places. “I wanted my restaurant to feel right for downtown New York today,” he insists. As I scanned the room, I could see what he meant about the “subliminal luxury” he was after. The banquettes’ perfect curves, the flattering lighting—you can’t get that carefully streamlined vision of downtown chic at a Michelin-all-star-Euro-chef franchise. And I’ll certainly miss it the next time I fight for an uncomfortable stool in the sonic blast of a gastropub.
The food at Corton does its part, too, of course. Nieporent has smartly installed British-born wunderkind chef Paul Liebrandt at the stoves. Liebrandt is the kind of chef who will accent the saline twang of an oyster with the earthy crunch of toasted buckwheat and a hint of nutmeg oil—a dish with mysterious layers of flavor that unfold, evoking a dozen different taste memories. He brilliantly smokes—smokes!—the flour for pasta, which he then accentuates with dusky slices of black truffle and the barest suggestion of Gouda cheese. And he gives a classic foie gras torchon a haute-couture twist with a gorgeous pink gelée of hibiscus and beet. Personally, I don’t need those totemic luxury foodstuffs—truffles, foie gras—but indisputably, Liebrandt’s playful, sometimes challenging riffs lend a sexy frisson to the stylish room. (Imagine a killingly glamorous supper club where Miles Davis might play.) Is fine dining dead? Not at Corton. The place does almost a hundred covers a night with a $79 three-course prix fixe.
I began to wonder if haute cuisine done right was the answer. I became convinced of it the following week, when I dined at Coi in San Francisco. This subtly experimental 29-seat restaurant is powered by the passion, intelligence and disarming humility of chef-owner Daniel Patterson (an F&W Best New Chef 1997). If for Liebrandt, beet is an accessory to foie gras, Northern California chef Patterson brilliantly spotlights the actual vegetable. The beets were presented on a plate like three small M&M’s. My first reaction—ingredient worship—gave way to the childish pleasure of popping the delicious, vibrantly colored root-vegetable “candies” into my mouth. Later I learned that the beets, topped with shiny jellies made from a blend of their roasted juices and citrus oil, took Patterson hours of intense work to prepare. “It’s an idealization of a beet,” he explained, then added, “And who’s to say that beets can’t be as valuable and exciting as caviar?” Not I.
Similar thought and exquisite craftsmanship went into the rest of my meal at Coi. A dish called Abstraction of a Garden in Winter combined local, seasonal root vegetables, aromatic herbs, cocoa nibs and smoked oil in a dark still life that evoked a barren cold-weather landscape. There was supernally buttery beef from a boutique ranch that supplies loins almost exclusively to Patterson, paired with a classic wild mushroom duxelle and gently transmogrified roasted bone marrow. Liquefied and re-formed into its natural shape with gellan (a gelatin that can withstand heat), the marrow tasted like a delicate yet luscious distillation of offal, jolting my complacent taste buds, which had been numbed by a gastropub-pork-belly overdose.
The entire meal at Coi bridged nature and culture, past and future, while the intimate service, the idiosyncratic wine list and the tactile, slightly irregular handmade ceramics on the table all brought home the idea—again—that a great restaurant is a total environment. Best of all, like Corton and L2O, Coi spoke to its time and location, delivering that crucial sense of emotional authenticity. If this is the haute cuisine of the future, we’d be mad to abandon it.
After I finished my meal I needed no reassurances, but I asked Patterson anyway why he thought fine dining mattered. “Because a great restaurant,” he replied, “creates an illusion of a life where everyone is happy to see us, every need is met and everything tastes better. And we need this now more than ever.” Knock off the very top level, he went on, and the next level down becomes the top. Keep “democratizing” like that, and eventually, a five-buck burrito will be the new standard.
So what would be lost then? I asked Patterson before I left.
“Risk-taking, inspiration, the sense of discovery.” In short: the transformative power of cooking.
Burgess-Peterson Academy
Reggie & I did the school garden at Burgess Peterson Academy.
Lowe's sponsored it along with Georgia Organics.
It's amazing how much these kids knew about food and the growing process.
Coach Jackson did a wonderful job.
Here are some pics.
Dress Code
Some how, with no rhyme or reason, food matters to me again.
It's not in the same matter as before.
Recently Jerry, Tiff and I went my former employer The Ritz-Carlton Atlanta for a Bordeaux wine tasting. The wines were fantastic especially the white Bordeaux. But all of the glitz and glam of the cheese display and using the rooms furniture I'm so over it. Maybe because I've done it for 20 years. Don't really know. I just don't think I'm ready to cover my tats, take off my jeans and where the stark tighty whitey again. I like my gas station shirt, with the RB logo on it and just serving great food.
People have asked what's next. I really just want to do a simple 40 seat place w/ really great food. It has to be somewhere in the hood where it can make a difference. I want it to be ground breaking in the way Trotter changed Halsted St. but without the fuss. If you wanna wear a jacket wear one. If you wanna wear hot pants than wear 'em.
Dress Code:
Shoes and shirts required. Pants are optional...
It's not in the same matter as before.
Recently Jerry, Tiff and I went my former employer The Ritz-Carlton Atlanta for a Bordeaux wine tasting. The wines were fantastic especially the white Bordeaux. But all of the glitz and glam of the cheese display and using the rooms furniture I'm so over it. Maybe because I've done it for 20 years. Don't really know. I just don't think I'm ready to cover my tats, take off my jeans and where the stark tighty whitey again. I like my gas station shirt, with the RB logo on it and just serving great food.
People have asked what's next. I really just want to do a simple 40 seat place w/ really great food. It has to be somewhere in the hood where it can make a difference. I want it to be ground breaking in the way Trotter changed Halsted St. but without the fuss. If you wanna wear a jacket wear one. If you wanna wear hot pants than wear 'em.
Dress Code:
Shoes and shirts required. Pants are optional...
Friday, January 22, 2010
Just winging it...
It must just be something in the air about wings. The price has increased 35% in a month. Oh year it's superbowl time. I get it. Wings are over $2 a pound. That would make chicken wings the second most expensive protein we serve on a daily basis. It's second only to duck. We have to buy jumbo wings because in order to get smoke in the wing they have to be big enough to dehydrate.
The size of the jumbo wings have increased about 2oz.
Each wing is averaging 1/2#. After cooking they weigh 6oz. So a pound would be roughly 2.5 wings. These are whole wings no parts.
The issue we are coming across is the expense compared to the quantity served. It's hard to tell a person their going to pay $12 for 2.5 wings; especially since we use to serve them 4 to 5.
In my former life of fine dining you could get away with because arrogance and pretension always prevailed over common sense. But this is BBQ. Smoked meats. It just proves hard to charge $14 bucks for wings.
Hopefully the price will drop soon. We're going to bite it for now.
Stay tuned....
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