I had a column up from earlier today looking at which organizations are deepest at each position; there’s a lot of Pittsburgh on there. This week’s Behind the Dish podcast features my conversation with Padres VP and former Mets scouting director Chad McDonald.
—
I went to Salt’s Cure with a friend during the Area Code Games, just on the recommendation of a reader who thought it was my kind of place – a spot-on suggestion, since restaurants with small menus that change daily are very much up my alley. We started with their cheese plate, featuring a trio of California cheeses, one each from cow’s, goat’s, and sheep’s milks, as well as a little apricot jam and some grilled bread. As expected, I liked the goat and sheep options but didn’t love the cow’s – a function of my palate, not the cheeses themselves. I intended to eat something light that night but couldn’t pass up the braised pork shoulder over creamy grits with caramelized onions, a meal that photographed poorly but that was perfectly cooked, with the (cheese-less) grits a good balance to the fatty/salty meat and the sweet/tart flavors from the onions. We also ordered the very simple raw kale salad on the side, which was only the second-best kale salad I had that week. My friend got the lamb sirloin with romanos beans and romesco, all of which he raved about – I didn’t try it as I’m just not a huge fan of lamb. For dessert, we had these multi-layered chocolate custards that were rich and dark and not too sweet … I can’t even remember what the other layers were. This was a huge find, just a fantastic locally-focused place with amazing food.
My second swing to Umami burger, first since February of 2010, was just as good as the last time out – their original burger is an umami-bomb, and now they offer ice cream sandwiches that are also pretty spectacular.
I discovered Caulfield’s in January when Bobby Flay tweeted that it was the “best new restaurant in LA,” which seemed like sufficient reason to check the place out. It’s located in the Thompson Hotel in Beverly Hills, but isn’t your ordinary hotel restaurant, with an inventive, seasonally-informed menu that has lots of lighter dishes that don’t sacrifice flavor. I ordered a starter, the albacore tuna and sockeye salmon poke, and a salad, a kale salad with almonds, hard-boiled eggs, bacon, and anchovy dressing. The poke was solid, although the wasabi-ginger-soy dressing overwhelmed the fish a little bit, especially the albacore tuna which doesn’t have a pronounced enough flavor to survive that much salt and heat. The salad, however, was among the best I’ve ever had: thin ribbons of kale perfectly dressed with an umami-heavy dressing (think Caesar dressing, but without the parmiggiano-reggiano), with added texture from the almonds and the smoky boost from the bacon. It was absolutely perfect, and that’s before I consider its high content of antioxidants and omega-3 fatty acids.
Over in Long Beach, there isn’t a whole lot to recommend. I went to Koi in Seal Beach for sushi, as I do every year, although I admit it’s a little weird to park across from the hair salon where eight people were killed in 2011. The fish at Koi is outstanding, with a specials board always up showing what’s fresh, and many of the nigiri options come with the sauce of the sushi-ya’s choice.
As for new spots, Lord Windsor Roasters is a new-ish third-wave (meaning lighter roasts) coffee roastery and cafe on 3rd, about ten minutes’ drive from Blair Field. They roast their coffees in the back of the store, with three options available for pourovers each day I was there, as well as their own blend for espresso drinks. The pourover was a little weak by my standards, without much body, as if the grind was a little too coarse, but I loved their espresso for flavor and texture.
I can also recommend Thiptara, a Thai restaurant on PCH right by Blair Field, which has the standard Thai dishes but also has some more regional items, like the yellow pumpkin curry with chicken that I had as an entree. The sauce includes a roasted chili paste as well as the spices you’d expect to find in Thai yellow curry, with a coconut milk base, but it’s the chunks of al dente pumpkin that set the dish apart, bringing sweetness to balance the salty and spicy notes of the sauce. I also had the green papaya salad, with carrot, cherry tomatoes, and string beans in a garlic-chili-lime dressing, which was just mildly spicy. The salad had great color and crunch and everything was obviously very fresh.
The trip to San Diego was a little less successful. Breakfast at the Mission was amazing, as always. Cafe 222 was a mess, the second time I’ve been disappointed there – and thus the last. I drove up the coast a little to visit Bird Rock coffee roasters, where I got a decent espresso (although too small to be the double I’d ordered) and was shocked to see an option for Chemex coffee using geisha beans (which are the world’s most expensive) that cost $9 for a cup.
Dinner at Craft and Commerce was a mixed bag. I had a good salad to start, with citrus supremes, avocado, and sliced jicama, although the fried goat cheese came in ping pong ball-sized chunks that were at room temperature when that should be served warm. They were also out of their signature dessert item, warm beignets with chocolate-bourbon sauce, even though it’s not a yeast dough and could be made to order if need be.
.” I mentioned this in a chat a month or so ago, but this might be the song of the year for me, mixing clever imagery, a tremendous hook, and enough musical twists to make it fit better on the alternative charts than on the pop charts, although a crossover feels inevitable. It’s just too catchy to remain on the fringes, and yet combines enough elements from different subgenres to feel fresh yet familiar at heart.
.” I can’t wait for this album to drop in September, especially with how promising this song is, as well as last year’s one-off single “R U Mine?” This one has to be the best slow-tempo songs the Monkeys have ever released, but without giving up Alex Turner’s trademark sneer or wordplay like “Been wondering if your heart’s still open/and if so I wanna know what time it shuts.”
.” I absolutely love this song, which reminds me of The National but with a vocalist who actually wants you to hear what he’s saying. The rest of the album doesn’t quite measure up, unfortunately, making for better background listening as atmospheric rock (not emo, but atmo?) that lacks the bright definition of “Diamonds.”
.” Final candidate for song of the year from this batch (on top of a few tracks from the April post). Is smart-pop a genre? If so – see what I did there? – this Aussie duo may define it.
.” I just want to mention that I think this is a gorgeous pop song, ruined by the fact that the lead singer mumbles his way through the vocals. Dude, if you can’t get up for this song, why the hell should I? It’s begging for a cover version with a singer who lets it out. (The track is available free through that link.)
. Album of the year so far. I 
(album). Overall, I was disappointing in Fitz’s sophomore effort. It’s not as punchy as their debut, and I don’t think it has the breakout potential of that disc’s lead single, “Moneygrabber,” and has one very radio-friendly song in “Out of My League” that’s a little too poppy for me. Their lyrical subject matter really needs to extend beyond thinly-told tales of romance and heartbreak. The sleeper track on the album is the more uptempo “Spark,” which is one of the few songs where co-singer Noelle Scaggs gets at least equal time with Fitz himself; I’d also check out “Break the Walls” and “MerryGoRound” if you liked their first disc and want something more along those lines.
.” (
.” Kind of an updated Erasure with vocals more along the lines of Violator-era Depeche Mode. The song has been all over Sirius XM’s Alt Nation, and has been a hit all over Europe and in Australia, making it seem inevitable it’ll cross over here at least to some extent. It’s just a very good electronic/pop song, with an effervescent synth backing behind rising and falling vocals that include the line you won’t get out of your head, “How am I gonna be an optimist about this?”
.” The PA folks at Petco played the first few bars of this track during the PG All-American Classic, which just about knocked me out of my seat given how under-the-radar and out-of-date this band’s blues-heavy hard-rock sound is. They’re edgier and rougher than their hair metal predecessors, but it wouldn’t be insane to call the song the result of a lab experiment to cross Whitesnake and the Black Crowes. Also, it rocks.
.” They just turn out 2-3 pop gems like this on every album, don’t they? The album comes out on the 27th of this month. I’d rate this track ahead of “No You Girls,” but behind “The Fallen,” “The Dark of the Matinee,” or “Ulysses.” It’s more of Franz Ferdinand’s version of a great highway driving song.
(album). First two tracks, “No Magnatone” (in 3/4 time, a Rogue Wave staple that once ended up with the Dancing With the Stars band massacring “Lake Michigan” during a waltz) and “College” are standouts. I could make a case for the closer, “Everyone Wants to Be You,” but it goes on far too long for me to stick with it till the end. Everything in between is filler, some bland, some outright soporific. The deluxe version, linked here, also has a half-hearted cover of one of my favorite tracks from the 1990s, Screaming Trees’ “Nearly Lost You.”
.” Death metal song of the year so far, although the upcoming Carcass release may change that. The screaming-and-growling thing feels very silly to me – you sound like Cookie Monster and are as threatening as Prairie Dawn – but the music underneath the vocals here is tight and intense, a rare bit of evolution in the post-thrash/grindcore environment.
.” More synth-pop, with a heavier feel than Bastille but just as strong of a hook and better overall energy. It’s amazing to me to hear so much of the synth-heavy sound of early ’80s New Wave come back around, but with tighter production and less obvious pop-radio pandering. I also like Smallpools’ use of a story, or at least the shell of a story, of being trapped somewhere and under attack, while refusing to surrender, to back up the energy of the guitar and keyboard lines.
.” I want to call this jazz, but it’s more jazz in philosophy than in practice. There’s an experimental feel to this, with offbeat piano lines, aposiopetic stops, and internal references to earlier parts of the track. It’s way out there for me.
.” Three listens to their new album, …Like Clockwork, still didn’t sell me on it, but at least we have this lead track, a throwback to Kyussian slow-jam headbanger days, to keep QotSA alive in our hearts. Or something. I concede this album probably demands more time from me. The track is free through that amazon link.
.” Less lo-fi than early post-punk/new wave to my ears, a little disinterested vocally (not quite as much as The National), and not as exciting as DIIV, formed by former Beach Fossils member Zachary Cole Smith, just subtle and concise and pulsing with a sort of compulsive negative energy.
.” I know I’m not supposed to say this, but I thought Bankrupt! was a huge disappointment, barely building at all on their last disc, the Grammy-winning Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix. “Entertainment,” the lead single, at least boosts the sound from their previous album with a stomping energy, like a song from the soundtrack to a Cirque du Soleil show.
.” The music frames a perfect pop song, undone by lyrics that turn the band into a bad blonde joke: “Waves/picking you up/pushing you down/they’re always around.” Like, deep, man.
.” Inevitable comps to the Go-Gos and the Runaways abound, although I think they’re probably going to end up staring up at the Savages more than anyone else. “Dead in Your Head” stays low in the zone, with a sludgy feeling and lethargic pace under a superficial story of the emotional costs of regret.
.” I get a little “Chelsea Dagger” out of this track, a sort of grimy yet lambent confection that clocks in at 3:13 and would feel too long at 3:30. Sometimes you can just hear a band gunning for more airplay within the confines of their existing sound; this song pretends to machismo, but when Mona drops the “hey hey hey-ey-ey-eh,” they’re quietly hoping you sing along.
.” I’ve been of the general opinion that the Brits do intelligent, accessible rock music better than we do for years, but Australia is starting to gain on us as well, with Jagwar Ma following the Cut Copy path. There’s a distinctive Aussie-rock sound here, with lo-fi production, stomping percussion, and choruses that feel like they’re holding something back to maintain the tension into the next verse. The track is currently free through that link.
.” We draw some funny lines around songs and artists, pigeonholing them into specific genres so we know what stations are and aren’t allowed to play them. “Time to Run” finds itself boxed in as alternative music, or folk-rock, when it’s more country than anything else – think David Gray doing country, without the whole my-tractor’s-sexy nonsense that has reduced contemporary country music to antiseptic idiocy.
.” Similar to Lord Huron with a country-folk-crossover vibe, less overtly country than “Time to Run,” a definite step up from H&H’s last album. Their new disc drops on October 15th.
.” A straight-up pop song that never crossed over from alternative radio. Solid, better than what you’ll hear on pop radio these days, but not as good as the other songs I cover here.
.” Worth a listen, mostly for the chorus, although the harmonies have been overproduced to the point that the individual voices are flattened beyond recognition, like someone in marketing figured they’d get more airplay on soft-rock stations that way. 
.” I loved their last album, 
, which I discovered thanks to recommendations from several of you. This song doesn’t quite hit the mark for me, mostly because of the walking keyboard line that turns a dreamy alternative track into a slightly twee space-pop song. If they just took that one part out, it would be tremendous.
.” Their best track since “Wolf Like Me” from their 2006 Return to Cookie Mountain album, “Mercy” is a fierce, fast-paced rocker with clever, alliterative lyrics. It seems to be a one-off single for now, with no announcement about a forthcoming album, unfortunately.
.” This one song is better than the entire Daft Punk album put together. Yeah, the repetitive vocal sample thing isn’t my thing – it’s been fifteen years or so since that appeared on mainstream tracks, so maybe we could try something new? – but that bass line is tremendous, and if you’re only going to have four lines of lyrics, these are good choices.
made it on to my to-read list about a year and a half ago after I caught a very positive review in the Guardian, a left-wing British paper that has one of the stronger arts sections I’ve come across. I finally picked the book up last month and … well, it’s a strangely mixed bag of bad writing and fascinating character study.
and James Hogg’s 
.
(#12 on 
is the first cookbook from the Top Chef: All-Stars winner and general man-about-TV, bringing his odd and slightly twisted take on cooking to the masses with appealing and mostly easy-to-execute recipes. It’s well-written for a cookbook, with clear steps and plenty of side explanations of ingredients or techniques, as well as some appealing photography that also helped me envision some of the dishes as I cooked.
, which I do own and love. I think the bigger leap for the novice cook is Blais’ adventurous taste level – this book will challenge your palate, as he combines ingredients you wouldn’t always put together, or presents familiar flavors with new textures. I need books like that, because I enjoy novelty in cooking and in eating, but your mileage may vary.