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Every so often, I toy with the idea of going back to my vegetarian ways, and then I'm presented with something like this:
MH's South African-tandoori-spiced, yogurt-bathed, grilled-on-the-barby chicken that'll make you say uncle to your meat cravings like no twist of the arm could.
Served up with a wholesome Russet potato slathered in gobs of butter plus a medley of roasted veg, this chicken dinner was finger lickin' good.
I will always be ever so grateful to AS for getting us into the second seating at Portland newcomer Beast, which according to Travel & Leisure, "isn’t so much a restaurant as a regularly occurring, eccentric dinner party in chef and co-owner Naomi Pomeroy’s exhibition kitchen. Dining is at a pair of communal tables, and there are just two seatings per evening. ... Meals are prix fixe, either five-course or six-course (wine pairings optional), and there’s one nightly menu—no choices, no substitutions. Pomeroy and her talented staff prepare exquisite meals using sustainable, farm-fresh ingredients."We decided to go for broke and opted for Beast's 6-course, 2 oz wine pairings.
Sitting down to the smaller of the 2 farm tables (seating 8, and on this night including the chef's own dad), we started off with a luscious cream of spinach soup topped with a spiral of lobster créme fraiche and a sprinkle of espelette pepper. We scooped up every drop.
Following on its heels, a dreamy charcuterie plate comprising artisanal salami; steak tartare and quail egg toast; pork, pork liver, sour cherry and pistachio paté; fois gras bon-bon with a sauternes geleé on a peanut butter biscuit; and my absolute fave: chicken liver mousse with a small slab of maple candied bacon. All helped down with a lightly dressed fennel and radicchio salad, pickled veg, cornichon and stone-ground mustard.
Then came the oh-so-tender and succulent pork cheeks braised in rosé, accompanied by sweet-hot pepper and roasted shallot salsa, roasted potatoes with olives and Beast bacon, sautéed rapini with garlic and chili flake, and a generous douse of pork demi glace. By this point, I was already struggling to get all of this rich food down, much as I wanted to ... the 2 oz pours were really more like 3 ... and with a few more courses bearing down, what to hold back on?
Well, as it was, the next course was a huge helping of butter lettuce and herbs in a pistachio vinaigrette with a dollop of fresh raw house-made ricotta sitting on a warm bit of toast, so I held back on the (slightly overdressed) greens though couldn't resist finishing off the soft creamy curd.Nor could I forgo the selection of cow's and sheep's cheese brought out with some poached plum, marcona almonds, and anise and fleur de sel shortbread. And no one could resist the finale: a lemon-buttermilk souffle with créme de cassis ice cream.We rolled out of Beast well past midnight, 3 and a 1/2 hours after we'd first arrived. All in all, it was a magical and somewhat surreal experience—made all the more surreal looking out the picture window and into the windows of the building across the way to see the silhouettes of not one but 2 lone folk taking showers in stalls stacked one on top of the other. Go figure.
I had no idea that last weekend's jaunt to Portland would be a gastronome's dream, but indeed it was. First up: brunch at Belly Timber, which is Victorian slang for "food of all sorts" including the most soul-satisfying fried chicken and waffle doused in bacon butter and maple syrup.MN called it a turkey leg, it was that massive. I could swear the bird had been brined, the flesh was so moist, well-seasoned and herbaceous under the crispy, crunchy batter.
The fresh bacon bits served as a good savory balance against the sweet syrup and melting ooze of butter.
If not for the strong cup o' Stumptown brew to help it all down, I'm certain I woulda slid under the table into a food coma ...
When my sister said her friend KT was planning to throw a turkey in the fryer for a little BBQ party, Hawaiian-style, I said sign me up. I'd been hearing about the wonders of deep-fried turkey since my college days, but had never had the chance to partake, so I was more than willing to hop in the car and take a spin out to the 'burbs (Mililani, HI) for a piece of the action.
You could say KT's a deep-frying turkey pro, having done this about 8 or 9 times. He's tried Martha's recipe and Bobby Flay's as well, and says they're all a little to a lot wrong.
By trial and error, he's now got his technique down to a T. After brining the turkey, he hickory smokes it, then drops the honey-coated bird into the roiling peanut oil.
The first couple of times his wife thought he'd destroyed the bird, blackened as it was when it came out. But that's just the sugar (aka honey) that's burned up on the outside.
All the lovely juices are sealed inside, keeping the flesh moist and tender, and absolutely divine.
With all kinds of kids running about, KT followed the bird with some corndogs and French fries to keep them happy. Of course, the "big kids" (me too!) helped themselves to the fat-laden bounty.
And then finished up with a whole mess of airy, light and cinnamon-sugar dusted funnel cakes.
Looking through a boozy, fat-filled haze ...
A couple of days before I was to fly in for my 4-day jaunt in Hawaii, I emailed my sister, "Wouldn't it be nice if we ate at Alan Wong's," to which she shot back a "not likely at this late date!" (Celebrity chef and James Beard award winner Alan Wong played host to the Top Chef finalists a couple of seasons ago. He rocks.)
But we were in luck. A last-minute cancellation meant we were headed to the downtown Honolulu restaurant on a Friday night to partake in some super fine Hawaiian regional cuisine, rubbing elbows with the likes of ex-NY mayor Rudy Giuliani (OK, not literally—but he sat not 10 feet away from us ... of course, SP had no idea who he was when I pointed him out. Her defense: "I don't follow NY politics." Hello! 9/11! Ran for president! What what? ...)Well, never mind about that. Here's what we had:
The amuse bouche: a "Seafood Fantasy" comprising abalone, lobster, butterfish, ahi and kona kampachi with watercress, ponzu gelee and a wasabe-abalone sauce. I went straight for the abalone, it being my least favorite of the bunch so I figured I'd get it out of the way and then savor the rest, but turns out it was pretty easy on palate ... tender, smooth and surprisingly delicious. I enjoyed most everything on the plate except for the ponzu gelee, which was a tad overpowering in its tartness—it made my tastebuds tingle, and not in a good way.
First course: Vanilla butter poached lobster and seared day boat scallop with spiced Hawaiian hearts of palm puree and a citrusy corn salsa. I loved the perfectly caramelized and seasoned scallop. And though I liked the fleshy tenderness of the lobster, the vanilla kinda put me off; it made the shellfish a bit too perfumey for my taste. I think I would've liked it more if they'd gone with something of the meyer lemon butter variety. Oh, and though the corn salsa rocked ... a perfect foil for the protein, the small block of hearts of palm to the right was odd ... left unadorned, it just seemed out of place with the rest of the dish.
The main: Medium-rare and oh-so-tender rosemary oil-poached Maui cattle company beef (fed pineapple tops and sugar cane in their 110-odd days on this earth), sauteed Ma'o Farms lacinato kale and hamakua mushrooms along with a bacon and goat-infused, crispety-crunchy taro croquette, plus a few other bells and whistles. Well done, I say.
The other main: Of course, you always want what you can't have (or didn't order, in this case). My sister got the red wine slow-braised short rib sitting on a fluffy bed of stick-to-your-ribs, rich celery root truffle puree, ringed by subtly sweet roasted baby beets and cipollini onion. The portion size was honkin', fork-tender and fabulous. Plenty to take home for a second go 'round.
Dessert: Kula strawberry shortcake with a macadamia crust and a really fresh, gummy-moist strawberry mochi on the side. The mochi was the highlight of the dish ... one of the best I've ever had—and usually I'll leave rather than take 'em. This time, I took and I wished I could've taken some more ...
KG remembered it was Dine About Town with just 4 days left to go, and as soon as she gave me the heads up, I booked us a table for lunch at Town Hall's and Salt House's new sibling Anchor & Hope, having heard a bit of a buzz—albeit both good and bad—around this lofty dining hall.
Our first impressions were good ones. With a 30-foot trestle ceiling, skylights throughout, and a tongue-in-cheek underwater/nautical theme holding it all together, Anchor & Hope has done a fab job of taking over this turn-of-the-century warehouse on Minna Street.
The Tuscan heirloom bean soup was better than I expected it would be—garden fresh ingredients in a very clean broth. Of course, there was room for improvement—a dash more salt and a pinch more pepper would've done it a world of good.Can't complain about the miyagi oysters ... a slippery sweet bit of the sea helped down with a tasty tart mignonette.
Huge points for this bowl of earthy goodness: ricotta and butternut squash agnolotti with sage brown butter sauce. It came out molten hot, tossed up with crisp-tender French green beans, tender pearl onions and a mess of wild mushrooms. Probably one of the best damn pasta dishes I've ever had.
I had a taste of the spice blackened mahi mahi with shaved fennel and arugula salad and rosemary pesto, and was delightfully surprised by the fact that it was super moist and tender, and well-flavored ... a skillfully made dish. Why surprised? Because I've had some really bad mahi mahi ... folks can really overcook that fish. A&H knows what it's doing with its seafood, it seems.Enough for me to want to go back.
Talk about a generous pour ... Latin American Club sets you up with a big 'un. Well done, I say.
Lucky for me, AG was giving me a ride home (so I could drink my wine with abandon) following our visit to new-kid-on-the-block Ristorante Specchio, a cavernous space on Mission St. that was sadly—and I'll admit, alarmingly—empty, save for 2 other diners last Thursday night. Well, turns out, the food was good—though really you'd have to be a complete kitchen idiot to mess this one up. After all, Specchio's 2 cooks could focus their full attention on our meal. Softball if ever there was one.That said, everything—the beet salad with toasted pine nuts; homemade egg pappardelle with wild boar bolognese and juniper berries sauce; and pork chops with gorgonzola cream sauce and sauteed spinach—was well-seasoned, balanced in flavor, and cooked to just the right done-ness.It's solid rustic fare, albeit in a somewhat bizarre interior (read: the nude mannequins have got to go).
OK, so I didn't spend a lot of time taking pictures of the multitudinous small plates the 3 of us ordered at ever-so-welcome and affordable newcomer Uva Enoteca in the lower Haight. We were too busy enjoying them ... Of course, I didn't love everything—like the cold dice of roasted celery root tossed up with a bit of pomegranate and sage; it was a tad underseasoned and flat in flavor. As well, the diminutive salame and mozzarella pizza could've done with a hotter oven (and perhaps a more delicate hand?) as its crust was a tad too chewy and dense for my taste.But here's what went down and what went down really, really well (helped along of course with a few quartinos of red wine):- the deep-fried gnocchi generously sprinkled with parmesan and served with a pesto aioli- an assortment of 3 cheeses served with the loveliest of sides including castelveltrano olives, marcona almonds, a luscious truffled honey and more- pan-fried Brussels sprouts with crisped up pancetta and onions bits- a soft, oozing blob of creamy, curdy burrata ringed with tangerine slivers and chervil - oven-baked orecchiette pasta with the most heavenly crumble of wild boar ragu Mario Batali has taught his disciple well ...
JA and I ducked into The Grove to get out of the dreary, drizzling cold ... and found a little bit of sun inside. I was wondering why the barrista was huddled over my caffe latte for so long—and was starting to think I woulda been better off getting my joe elsewhere, but when he slid the cup towards me, and I spied the sunny face looking up, I couldn't help but smile.
