→ May 16, 2010
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Atlanta & Dallas eats.

The updated draft top 100 went up on Friday, and I just went into the Conversation to answer your questions.

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I was only on the ground in Atlanta for about 24 hours last week but did end up eating at three new places.

Big Daddy’s is a well-reviewed and inexpensive soul food place just south of the airport where you order at the counter from steam trays, much like the meat-and-three places I found in Nashville a few years ago. The one surprise to me was the lack of fried dishes – they offer fried fish to order but no fried chicken, which I think of as a staple of Southern cuisine. I’m assuming that they don’t offer it because fried chicken that has been sitting is just not good eats. The service was extremely friendly, but the food – roasted chicken, cornbread stuffing that was way too salty, steamed okra that was just slimy, and collard greens – was unremarkable. Grade 45.

I met a friend of mine from high school for dinner at Milton’s in the town of that name in Fulton County, where we ended up ordering the same thing, the panko-crusted trout with black sesame seeds, which the server told us was their most popular dish. The fish was excellent, very fresh, pan-fried but not greasy, and the sweet red chili sauce underneath was a good complement to the slightly salty taste of the breading. The dish was overloaded with sides, including shrimp-sweet potato fritters that looked amazing but were kind of gummy, and some ho-hum mashed potatoes. I’d give them a 50 for the fish but they may be trying too hard with the extras.

The best meal of the trip came on a tip from Friend of the Dish Richard Dansky, whose novel Firefly Rain earned my recommendation last month. The Buckhead Bread Company is part bakery, part upscale brunch spot. I’m not normally a French toast guy, but I figured that was a smart order in restaurant attached to a bakery. The chef uses rounds cut from brioche and must finish them under a broiler to add a sweet, crunchy crumb topping, and the dish comes with a blueberry sauce and fresh blueberries, strawberries, and blackberries. I also had the sausage patties, which were on the savory side for breakfast and were overcooked, but the saltiness was a good offset to the sweetness of the French toast, which could easily have been on the dessert menu for a fine restaurant. (Pain perdu, the French version of French toast, is served as dessert in France, not as breakfast.) The menu wasn’t extensive but they had several other offerings I wanted to try, so between that and the high quality of what I got, it’s a 55.

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My 24 hours in Dallas were less productive from an eating perspective, as I only ate one meal outside a hotel or ballpark. Spring Creek BBQ is a local chain of Q joints, and there’s one not far from UTA’s park that was reasonably convenient for me to hit before hopping my flight out of DFW. Their sliced beef (brisket) was mixed – the ends were flavorful on their own and just needed a little sauce to cut their dryness, while the center slices were almost too moist and had the texture of corned beef (one of the few foods that I absolutely despise). The mild smoked sausage was plus, a salty-sweet-smoky link of porcine goodness. The sides are serve-yourself, which makes me think about how utterly disgusting most people are, but the meal comes with unlimited hot rolls, a little like a large Parker house roll but white rather than slightly yellow inside, which I assume means it’s made with milk but doesn’t contain much butter. It’s a high 50 for me.

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→ April 8, 2010
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Pressure-cooker carnitas with blue corn pancakes.

Pressure cookers cook foods faster by utilizing the fact that water boils at a higher temperature when it’s under higher pressure; the typical pressure cooker works at 15 psi, a pressure level at which water boils at 250 degrees. For stews or other long braises, this can reduce cooking times by 75% or more, yet you don’t lose the braise’s power to break down connective tissue or extract gelatin (or its precursors) from bones, and of all my pressure-cooking escapades only beans come out substantially different when cooked under pressure. (It causes beans to pop out of their skins, which is fine if your intent is to mash or puree them.)

Cooking with pressure requires no special skills or other equipment beyond the cooker itself, and unlike your mother’s (or grandmother’s) pressure cooker, today’s models aren’t likely to explode and leave your dinner on the ceiling. The model I use is no longer in production; this Presto 6-quart model seems to be the best starter cooker available, although I can’t tell from the item description if it has two pressure settings or just one.

Somehow, I got the idea the other day to try to make carnitas, which I had often in Phoenix and now miss, via the pressure cooker. Pork carnitas refers to a pork butt (really the shoulder), the same cut you would smoke to make barbecued pulled pork, but braised low and slow in a slightly salty liquid with aromatics and spices, especially cumin. A quick Google search for recipes that might tell me how long to cook the meat turned up this recipe, which didn’t require much modification. After thirty minutes under pressure, the chunks of pork held their shape but could pull apart easily with a fork, and the oven finish brought out the flavors you’d ordinarily get by browning the meat before braising or roasting it. You could take the meat, wrap it in a tortilla with some rice, beans, and salsa, and make a burrito; you could serve it with guacamole and rice as a main course; or you could do what I did: Toss a bunch of it on some blue corn pancakes as a sort of Mexican/New Mexican take on chicken and waffles. A recipe for those pancakes follows.

Pressure-cooker carnitas

One 3-4 lb pork butt (shoulder), trimmed of exterior fat and cut into large (two-inch-ish) chunks
1.5 Tbsp salt
2 tsp cumin
1 tsp coriander
1 Tbsp ancho chili powder
1/8-1/4 tsp cayenne pepper (optional)
1 bay leaf
1 onion, roughly chopped
1 jalapeño pepper, seeds and stem removed, chopped
3 cloves garlic, bruised

1. In a large bowl, toss the pork with the salt and seasonings.
2. Add the pork, bay leaf, and aromatics to a pressure cooker with enough water to cover – it took just over a liter for me to cover 3.3 pounds of meat.
3. Close the cooker, turn the valve to its maximum setting, and put over high heat until the cooker begins hissing loudly. Reduce the heat to bring the cooker to a faint hiss and cook for 30 minutes. With about ten minutes to go, preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
4. Release the pressure according to the cooker’s manual – usually that means turning the dial down a level at a time – and remove the pork. Transfer it to an oven-safe skillet or rimmed sheet pan and lightly press each piece with a fork to expose more surface area to the oven’s heat. Re-season with more salt, cumin, etc.
5. Roast the pork with a very thin layer of either the braising liquid or hot water for about 15 minutes, until much of the exposed surface has turned brown. Do not let the pork burn or dry out – check it at the ten-minute mark. Serve.

Blue corn pancakes

I find these sweet without sugar because of the corn, but if you want to make these more breakfasty, you could add 1 Tbsp of sugar, agave nectar, or maple syrup to the mix.

2 cups blue corn flour, preferably whole grain (I like Arrowhead Mills, available at Whole Foods)
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup AP flour
3/4 tsp salt
4 tsp baking powder (more if you want thicker pancakes, but for the pork, I like them thinner)
4 cups milk, 2% to whole
2 sticks (1/2 pound) butter, melted and cooled slightly
4 eggs

1. Mix the flours, baking powder, and salt in a bowl.
2. Whisk the milk, butter, and eggs until well combined. Pour over the dry ingredients and beat just until moistened with no visible lumps. Cook on electric griddle or skillet as you would regular pancakes, on one side until brown at the edges, then flip and cook roughly half as long on the second side. If the pancakes aren’t cooking through, you can thin the batter slightly with a little more milk, or reduce the heat on the griddle.

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→ March 22, 2010
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Las Vegas and Utah eats.

I had a quick run through Vegas and Utah last week to see Kris Bryant and Marcus Littlewood and ate pretty well overall, with only one bad meal and a few gems in Utah.

First meal in Vegas was west of the Strip at Yassou Greek Grill on West Charleston, serving gyros, hummus, and other basic Greek items at very reasonable prices. Their lemon-herb chicken is heavily marinated and has a strong flavor without any compromise in the texture, and the pitas they use in their gyros are soft and thick, nothing like the dry pitas you get at the grocery store. The gyro passed my tzatziki test – when I held it perpendicular to the table, I didn’t get any glops of tzatziki, which means they sauced it properly. That gyro plus a side Greek salad and rice pilaf (just rice prepared pilaf-style, with no other ingredients) ran about $8.30 before tax and drink.

I’ve been to the original Mesa Grill location in Manhattan but haven’t had a chance to get back in nearly two years, so I dropped into the Caesar’s Palace location on this trip and decided to branch out, trying two appetizers and a dessert, for research purposes, of course. The blue corn pancake with barbecued duck was dominated by the flavor of the hoisin sauce on the duck; hoisin’s sticky-sweet flavor and texture make it the elephant on the plate, and in this case it wiped out the flavor of the duck itself. I liked the presentation and am certainly a fan of shredded meat in a crepe or pancake, but all I tasted here was hoisin. The creamy wild Mushroom Grits with poached egg, charred serrano sauce, cotija cheese, and blue corn tortilla were better, very creamy as advertised, with only the serrano sauce (which tasted largely of burn) failing to add something to the dish. For dessert, the bartender recommended the churros with chocolate dipping sauce, which were the second-best I’ve had, behind only the version at Toro in Boston.

One bad meal on the trip was at the highly-touted Hash House a Go-Go in Imperial Palace, one of two locations in Vegas. I went for breakfast and ordered the top hash on the menu, a roasted chicken hash with rosemary and asparagus. The dish was incredibly dry, especially the chicken, all white meat and often inedibly tough. Great concept – who doesn’t love a good hash? – but horrid execution.

I made a day trip to St. George, Utah, from Vegas – just under two hours each way, including a very cool drive through the Virgin River Gorge – and had an unbelievable lunch at the Painted Pony, which I would say is in “downtown St. George” except that there doesn’t seem to be much to it besides downtown. The Painted Pony is the sort of local restaurant of which Gordon Ramsay would approve, at least for lunch, with simple dishes focusing on fresh, vibrant flavors. Their torta ahogada sandwich comes on this absolutely perfect ciabatta-style roll and features roasted beef tenderloin, caramelized onions, bell peppers, and cotija cheese, with a rich red sauce on the side, so the sandwich becomes a sort of New Mexican take on French Dip. The side salad was also fresh, with walnuts and julienned apples, and none of the wilted leaves that often plague mixed greens.

I skipped their opulent desserts to hit up Croshaw’s Pies on the, um, west side of town, which was a good call. Their “very berry” pie is sweet-tart with its mix of raspberries and blackberries, and the crust was soft and butter, more tender than flaky, which is how I prefer my pie crusts anyway. It didn’t have great structure, since the filling wept slightly on to the plate, but the compensation was that it didn’t have the slightly gluey texture that comes from using too much cornstarch. Croshaw’s recently opened a second location in Mesa, Arizona, on Brown Road well east of the Cubs’ facilities.

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→ February 23, 2010
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Michael Ruhlman’s Ratio + whole wheat pancakes.

Ratios liberate you – when you know the ratio and some basic techniques, then you can really start to cook.

That’s the final line of Michael Ruhlman’s Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking, a cookbook that’s also part anti-cookbook in the way it attempts to separate you from your 1/8-tsp-this-and-1/2-cup-that recipes by addressing the underlying relationships between ingredients that make the recipes work. It’s worth buying even if you never get out of the Doughs and Batters section that opens the book, including master formulas for bread, pasta, pie crust, biscuits (his are rolled, but unrolled they are as tender as can be), cookies, pâte à choux, pancakes, muffins, fritters, crepes, and more. I’ve adapted his master pancake recipe to use 100% whole wheat flour* below, but if you do decide to buy the book, I suppose you might want to delve into later sections on stocks, roux, brines, vinaigrettes, hollandaise, and custards. I’m just saying the first section is the part I’m wearing out.

*I love white-flour pancakes, but let’s face it – you feel like crap after eating a whole stack of them. Pancakes have a high glycemic load, and good ones contain a fair amount of fat, so to me, they function more like dessert than breakfast. If I’m making pancakes for the family for breakfast, it needs to be a kind that won’t put us all in a food coma for the rest of the day. It reminds me of a line in the very silly too-good-to-be-true travel memoir Pasquale’s Nose, where a crazy old man has just one sentence to say: “Nobody ever feels good after eating pancakes.”

Whole wheat pancakes

Ruhlman’s recipe is identical to this one save an extra half-ounce of flour, since he’s using white all-purpose flour instead of whole wheat. These freeze and reheat well – cool completely on a rack, freeze in a flat layer (if you stack them in a bag before they freeze, you’ll need a jackhammer to separate them), then reheat in the microwave for about 40 seconds, or reheat for 30 seconds, top with cold syrup, and give it another 10 seconds to heat it through.

Wet ingredients:
8 ounces milk (anything but skim)
2 large eggs
2 ounces (1/2 stick) butter, melted
1 tsp vanilla extract

Dry ingredients

7.5 ounces (by weight) whole wheat flour
2 Tbsp sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt

1. Preheat your griddle. It has to be completely hot or the first batch of pancakes won’t brown.
2. Whisk the wet ingredients together in a bowl, making sure the egg is thoroughly broken up.
3. Whisk the dry ingredients together in a second bowl.
4. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and stir briefly to fully hydrate the flour and eliminate any huge lumps. Small lumps are okay.
5. Lightly grease the griddle and immediately begin pouring the batter on to the griddle once any sizzling (of butter or bacon fat) has stopped.
6. When the bubbling on the top becomes firm and the bottom is nicely browned, flip and cook for roughly half the time it took for the first side to cook.

These pancakes are strong enough to handle anything you’d fold into ordinary pancake batter, but I haven’t found a better partner for the nutty, grainy, slightly cardboardy taste of whole wheat than sweet blueberries.

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→ February 22, 2010
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Las Vegas eats, 2010 edition.

Latest draft blog post is on Kyle Blair, Sammy Solis, and Cory Vaughn. I’ll be on Baseball Tonight on ESPN Radio tonight in the 10 pm EST hour, and on Mike & Mike on Wednesday morning at 8:10 am EST. I recorded 45-second previews for M&M on the four AL West teams, which will air some time over the next two weeks.

You’ve asked about this week’s chat (maybe Friday, definitely not the usual time on Thursday) and a podcast (still working on it, so Jason and I will probably bootstrap one in the short term). Thanks for bearing with me.

—

I spent under 48 hours in Vegas last week and mostly went to places I’ve already talked about here (in December 2008) or in chats. I only have one truly new place to recommend an inexpensive breakfast spot in a strip mall a mile or two west of the Strip, called The Maple Tree. The concept is to serve the food you’d find in a New England diner or bed-and-breakfast, although I think it’s fair to say it’s more straight-up American breakfast. The one distinctive item I had was the maple muffin, a very light, airy pastry like an angel food cake with a pronounced maple flavor and none of the heaviness of a typical muffin. For the meal, I did a sampler so I could at least taste the pancake (fluffy, but a little bland without the syrup) while also getting the usual eggs, meat (a kielbasa sausage that was seared on the outside and therefore cold at the center), and country potatoes. Everything is cooked to order – in fact, I heard the waitress ask the cook why he only does one plate at a time, which is inefficient but meant I knew what I was getting was freshly prepared – and all that food ran only about $13 including tea.

Jason Churchill and I went to craftsteak on Friday night – and no, per diem didn’t quite cover it – which was my first time there since 2004. It was as spectacular as I remembered it, especially the 24-hour braised short rib, which is one of their signature dishes. (Granted, I’m not sure that 24 hours of braising, if that’s what they’re really saying, is necessary, but the dish is amazingly tender). For sides, we went with the mushroom risotto – a lot creamier than a typical risotto, and a little more al dente than a truly authentic one, but still plus courtesy of the mix of perfectly-sauteed wild mushrooms – and the asparagus, which was probably over a half-pound before cooking and flavored with fresh thyme. With two entrees and two sides, no booze, no dessert, the pre-tip bill was over $100, so I could easily see two people with big appetites and strong livers racking up a $200-250 bill no problem.

Churchill and I also hit two places where I’d eaten on that last trip, with both matching their previous reports. We went to Firefly with a crowd – there were six of us – so we ended up with a few items I hadn’t tried before. The tuna tartare was fair, good-quality fish but not all that flavorful outside of the mango/avocado accompaniment, but the merguez (spicy lamb sausage) was outstanding, and while I skipped the lamb chops the sauteed lentils that came with it were good enough to be a menu item in their own right. We also did lunch at Lotus of Siam, which is currently expanding but still open for business; the khao soi was somewhere between a noodle dish and a tom kha gai (soup), with sweet and spicy flavors brought to life by the assortment of pickled vegetables served alongside it.

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→ February 15, 2010
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Hollywood eats.

My first draft column of 2010 is up today, a breakdown of Saturday’s showcase at the MLB Urban Youth Academy in LA, featuring just about every top senior in SoCal this year. (One guy was missing, and I’m working on finding out why.) There’s also a clip of my ESPNEWS hit today, talking Victor Martinez (my most boring answer of the day, of course). And I’ll be on ESPN Radio’s Baseball Tonight in the 10 pm EST hour tonight.

To the eats:

First meal was at Umami Burger in Hollywood, which turned out to be within walking distance of my hotel, which made me feel rather stupid for driving there and rocking the GPS to go a whopping 0.4 miles or so. Anyway, it’s a good burger, made from the relatively unknown cut of cow called flap meat, which has a strong beefy flavor and responds well to quick searing (so I don’t think you want to go past medium on your burger here). Where they shine is in the toppings, a mix of grilled and roasted vegetables designed, in theory, to hit that “fifth taste” of umami; I know I spotted caramelized onions, some kind of roasted tomato, and a little cracker made from grated, griddled Parmiggiano cheese, served on a Portuguese (and therefore slightly sweet) roll. I strongly recommend the burger, but skip the fries and try the thick-battered onion rings, with a crunchy crust that shatters on impact.

Sticking with Hollywood, I went to Ike Sushi at Hollywood and Gower, buried in a corner strip mall, which turned out to be a great find. The fish was fresh – I’m not sure how a sushi place in LA would stay open if they didn’t use the freshest fish – and other than the salmon, just barely laced with a little ponzu and some finely minced scallion, it was all served straight-up, including some of the best yellowtail I’ve ever had (Ike also had yellowtail belly, or toro, a good find although it was a little tougher than what I get at Koi in Seal Beach) and very strong maguro. Six or seven orders of fish, including tip, was under $40. They’re apparently known for their rolls and combinations, if that’s more to your tastes, but when I’m in California I want the real deal.

Breakfast the next morning was at Square One Dining, a recommendation from dak of FireJoeMorgan fame. They specialize in local & organic ingredients, and the menu incorporates a lot of fresh vegetables in their omelettes and baked egg dishes. The basil and asparagus omelette with goat cheese and squash was fresh all over, but a little light on flavor – it needed salt, but also could have used some oomph from a spice or a bitter vegetable. The thyme-roasted potatoes were golden and crispy and tasted a little more fried than roasted, not that there’s anything wrong with that, and they had an excellent tea selection, with large bags of either whole leaves or something close to it.

I also went back to the Culver City location of Versailles, a small local chain of Cuban restaurants, which I hit last year as well. I mention it here to recommend it again (the lechon asado is excellent, and the service is fast – I was in and out inside of 20 minutes after sitting at the counter) and to torment Joe Sheehan, who recommended it to me in the first place.

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→ January 17, 2010
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Yeast-raised Belgian Waffles.

I’ve mentioned before that the problem with “Belgian waffles” as currently served by most American restaurants that offer them is that they are only “Belgian” in shape – it’s a regular waffle batter poured into an iron with deeper ridges, creating a dense, greasy, cakey waffle that bears no resemblance to the lighter, crispier waffles that earn the Belgian moniker. I’ve even seen recipes in reputable cookbooks that make no allowance for the different shape of Belgian waffle irons and assume that your straight-up chemically-leavened waffle batter will do the trick. Of course, it won’t.

It’s not clear to me whether there is a single waffle style that qualifies as an authentic Belgian waffle, but everything I’ve read points to the inclusion of one of two methods of introducing lightness into the final batter: yeast or an egg white foam. This recipe, adapted from The 1997 Joy of Cooking, uses both to create a waffle with a light texture and crispy exterior and that brings the virtue of on-the-fly extensibility.

A quick note on equipment: The model I have, from Hamilton Beach, has been discontinued – I got it four or five years ago for $10 on clearance. It has a 7-inch diameter and nonstick grids; they’re not removable, which does make cleanup tricky, but for ten bucks I wasn’t going to be picky. The heat setting runs from 1 to 5, and I found somewhere between 3 and 4 was perfect for this recipe. If you decide to buy a Belgian waffle iron, look for nonstick grids and a variable temperature setting; I vote for a circular grid since it’s easier to spread batter on a circle than on adjacent squares. Always preheat your iron before the first waffle, and after removing each waffle close the lid and allow it to come back up to temperature.

3 cups milk, warmed to 105-110 degrees
3 eggs, separated
11 Tbsp unsalted butter, melted and cooled to lukewarm
1 Tbsp vegetable oil*
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour*
2 1/4 tsp instant yeast*
a pinch of cream of tartar

1. Whisk the egg yolks, butter, oil, and 1/2 cup of the milk together in a bowl.
2. Whisk in the sugar, salt, and extract.
3. In another bowl, stir the yeast into the two flours.
4. Alternate adding the flour mixture and the remaining milk (3 installments of flour, interspersed with two installments of milk), whisking thoroughly to combine each addition.
5. In yet a third bowl, beat the egg whites with the cream of tartar until you achieve soft peaks. Fold the foam into the master batter. Seal with plastic wrap and let rise at room temperature for about an hour, until roughly doubled, although any healthy rise will suffice.
6. Preheat your waffle iron about 45 minutes after you finished making the batter.
7. Stir the batter to deflate it, then pour enough batter to make one waffle on to the hot iron’s grid. For my 7″ iron, it took about 3/4 cup of batter; Joy says about 1/2 cup, which probably assumes a 6″ grid. Use an offset spatula or heat-proof silicone spatula to spread the batter quickly to the edges, then close the iron and cook until the steaming starts to subside and the waffle is golden brown; this took about two and a half minutes on my iron. Serve immediately; hold in a 200 degree oven; or cool on wire racks before freezing.

* Notes:

  • The vegetable oil will help keep the waffles from drying out. It’s a tiny sacrifice of flavor for greater shelf life.
  • I’m sure this recipe will work fine if you use 4 cups of AP flour, but I like whole wheat flour for both its flavor and nutritional benefit. Not that these waffles would qualify as health food. Pastry flour is lower in protein than regular whole wheat flour and is usually ground more finely.
  • Instant yeast is infinitely superior to the crap they sell in packets as “active dry” or “rapid-rise” yeast. Instant yeast lasts longer – I’ve taken instant yeast that was in the fridge for over two years and baked successfully with it. It doesn’t require you to bloom it separately in liquid. And it uses less packaging than other kinds. Whole Foods sells a brick of the stuff for $5, so if you use yeast even a dozen times a year it’ll save you money. Just dump the contents of the bag into an airtight container and stick it in your refrigerator.
  • If you decide at any point you want to add something to the batter – nuts, berries, dried coconut, chocolate chips (I’d grease the hell out of the iron before that one, though), even crumbled bacon – you can just drop it into the master bowl or even into one waffle’s worth of batter, stir quickly, and pour. Unlike a chemically-leavened batter, this one bounces back quite well from agitation and the resulting waffle won’t be heavier or denser for the intrusion.
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→ December 11, 2009
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Indianapolis eats.

Indianapolis seems like a perfectly nice place to visit in the spring or summer, but its potential as a “walking city” (even though downtown is pretty heavy on the chain restaurants) was nonexistent the last two days, with temperatures of 20 F or below and winds from 20-40 mph or more. I rented a car, so I wasn’t limited to Subway and Rock Bottom, and was fortunate to have a cheat sheet of restaurants from reader Aaron G., who is responsible for sending me to every place in this writeup except for the barbecue joint GT South’s (which was recommended by at least one of you before the trip).

Taste Café is about twenty minutes outside the center of Indianapolis in a neighborhood called Broad Ripple, about as far as I ventured from downtown on the trip, and if it had been closer I probably would have gone every morning for breakfast. Their waffles looked amazing, but my visit to Taste was to serve as breakfast and lunch so I chose something more likely to get me through to dinner (which it did), an egg and bacon sandwich on Pullman bread with basil aioli. The eggs were over an inch thick, and I ended up doing a little culinary surgery to keep the sandwich from falling apart, while the basil aioli gave a sweet background note that balanced out the salty, smoky bacon. The bread – well, it’s hard to screw up Pullman bread, and this was very soft but strong enough to hold the contents together. The dish came with breakfast potatoes which were swimming in olive oil. Taste offers a solid selection of loose teas and a lot of seating for a breakfast/lunch café.

Hoaglin To Go Café does, in fact, offer seating and table service, despite the name, although they seem to do a thriving take-out service. Their breakfast menu focuses on egg dishes like omelets and quiches, but the standout item here is their potato gratin dish called pommes anna, sliced potatoes cooked through but still al dente with gruyere as the accent but not so much that the gratin fell apart. The omelet of the day (called their “Big O,” aren’t they clever) contained sausage, mushrooms, and artichokes, but it came as a simple omelet folded over those ingredients, rather than having them cooked in the omelet with the eggs as the binder. They also use high-quality sandwich bread.

Café Patachou is a local mini-chain that has a location within “walking distance*” of my hotel and the Marriott. The menu is a little less adventurous and inspired than those of the previous two places, although it offers plenty of options and the food quality is fine. I finally gave in and had a waffle, which was properly cooked with a crispy exterior but was very dense inside, and came with a slightly sad little fruit cup that I hope would be better when fruit is actually in season in Indiana. They have a wide selection of bagged teas from a company called Revolution.

*“Walking distance” is, of course, only applicable at certain times of year. I did walk to the café from my hotel, all of four blocks, and couldn’t feel my ears, the end of my nose, or my fingers (despite my gloves) by the time I got to the restaurant, and had to catch my breath when I got inside. I’d like to think Minor League Baseball has learned its lesson about putting the winter meetings** in cold-weather sites, but I doubt it.

**If Minor League Baseball organized the offseason meetings for the NHL, they’d rotate between Phoenix, Miami, and Houston.

Siam Square is a new Thai restaurant just outside downtown on the northwest-bound side of Virginia with a menu that reaches into other Asian cuisines but offers a number of standard and, according to my dinner partner Alex Speier (of WEEI.com fame), authentic Thai dishes. The vegetarian spring rolls contained fresh julienned vegetables instead of the sad, limp, cabbage-like slop they normally contain, and the rolls were about as non-greasy as spring rolls can get. The sweet sauce that usually accompanies them was kicked up about three notches with red chile pepper, so the sauce was complex instead of cloying. Their “siam ginger” stir fry was full of strips of ginger like strands of spaghetti squash, a vague hint of sweetness (palm sugar?), and fresh vegetables that still had all their texture and crunch even through cooking. The menu actually labels many dishes as “Mild not available,” although I tasted Alex’s pad pem and didn’t find it very spicy, which says something since I find almost everything with chile pepper in it to be spicy. The restaurant offers a bonus in a highly attractive blonde (and not Thai) server named Erin who probably justifies a visit to Siam Square all by herself.

Harry & Izzy’s is the casual restaurant next door to and associated with the century-old steakhouse St. Elmo’s, although the exteriors couldn’t be more different, with St. Elmo’s looking tired while Harry & Izzy’s looks new and inviting. What appears to be their signature sandwich, thinly sliced prime rib au jus with fresh horseradish sauce on focaccia, is outstanding, with meat that melts in your mouth and is tender and moist enough that the jus is truly optional. It comes with hand-cut fries on the side for $15 (that’s the lunch price), the same as I paid for just a steak sandwich at Lobel’s stand at Yankee Stadium for an inferior product.

GT South’s came in a recommendation from one of you (I apologize for forgetting who sent it) and also showed up online as a highly-regarded Q joint, so I trekked it out with Alex again to their location right off I-70. They have the standard array of smoked meats except for sausage, and allow you to add four ribs to any platter for about $5. Both the ribs and pulled pork were solid-average, good texture and strong smoky flavor, although the pulled pork was only lukewarm when it hit the table. Their turnip greens were oversalted, but the cornbread muffin that comes with the dish is money, with a perfect crust and a hint of tang from buttermilk. Alex went for the brisket and crushed it, which I’ll consider an endorsement.

Yats is a hole in the wall – in fact, you get your food from the kitchen through a hole in the wall that separates it from the dining room. Yats serves Cajun food, and they believe presentation is a waste of time, with most dishes comprising a stew or soup slopped over a bed of white rice. The menu is limited on Mondays, the day I went, but the hunter’s stew – andouille sausage, three beans, and tomatoes – was hearty, filling, not too salty, just a little too spicy so that the taste of the beans lost the battle. It’s a good place to eat when you want to be full for hours, and the meal and drink cost under $8.

The one disappointment of the trip was, unfortunately, one of the best-known and best-reviewed places, as well as a strong recommendation from Aaron G. and from Will Carroll, a small artisanal food shop and sandwich counter called Goose the Market. The store – part salumeria, part gelateria, part wine/beer shop, part fancy packaged food vendor – is certainly a foodie’s paradise, with high-end, small-batch, local goods mixed with somewhat rare or obscure imported items (like 00 flour, something I rarely see anywhere around Boston, or very good olive oils). The salumeria has many expected meat items and some unexpected ones like salmon pastrami, and the staff behind the counter are friendly and helpful. Even the cold drink case held a few surprises, like root beer and cream soda from Goose Island Brewery in Chicago. The disappointment came in the sandwich I ordered, the Batali, with a mix of Italian meats and cheeses on an outstanding pain a l’ancienne baguette with a hard, toothy crust. Unfortunately, the sandwich is piled with so many toppings that the meat and cheese are completely lost under the mayonnaise, pickled onions, and sliced jalapeños that I have no idea how good or flavorful the star ingredients actually were. I wish I’d had another day to try it again and order the same sandwich without the nonsense. It’s maybe a five to seven minute drive from downtown, straight north up Meridian from Monument Circle.

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→ October 8, 2009
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Washington DC eats.

Chat today at 1 pm EDT. Baseball Tonight on ESPN Radio at 10:27 pm EDT (if your local affiliate isn’t carrying the late game).

All right, I’ve been promising this for two weeks but playoff writing took precedence. I had two full days in DC plus a half-day, which turned into five different restaurants plus what I ate at the ballpark. All of these places but one are in the McPherson Square/Farragut area.

Breakfast both mornings was at Teaism, a tea salon that serves a full breakfast with a limited menu, although it was diverse enough for me. The best item – besides the tea, which is loose-leaf and served in ceramic pots – is the ginger scones, crumbly and faintly sweet with chunks of crystallized ginger in the scone and castor sugar on top. Two of those plus the cilantro scrambled eggs – cilantro and diced green bell pepper in eggs, little light on the salt and probably cooked 30 seconds past perfect – was more than enough food, since the egg platter comes with a small fruit salad and triangles of grilled whole-wheat naan. I also tried the tea-cured salmon, which had great flavor (a little sweet, a little savory, like a cup of a mild Indian black tea with a half teaspoon of sugar) and was obviously very fresh (they say they do the curing themselves) but had a chewier texture than good smoked salmon. Teaism’s only real drawback is that it’s not cheap, running $15+ each day including tip.

Worst meal of the trip, by far, was at Kaz Sushi Bistro, an overpriced Japanese restaurant where the focus is definitely not on the food. The fish itself was completely tasteless; the seaweed salad came with a mayonnaise-based dressing; everything was overpriced; and the two people serving as hosts were rude to each other and to at least one group of customers.

Casa Blanca is a small Peruvian (or Peruvian-plus) place on Vermont Ave that is an anti-Kaz in that the focus is on the food and definitely not on the decor or ambience. I ordered chicharrones (fried chunks of pork shoulder) with fried yucca, which was, of course, a bit on the heavy side but crispy and salty with a little bit of a peppery kick. Their homemade tamarind juice is good, a little too sweet for me but given the tangy taste of tamarind, I imagine this is how most people prefer the drink. They apparently also make great empanadas, although those appeared to be for takeout customers and weren’t on the menu. Service is a bit indifferent, and remained so even when I ordered in Spanish. Cash only.

I left the area once for lunch and headed over to Eastern Market to try Market Lunch, where folks apparently line up in great numbers on weekend mornings for pancakes. I had read that Market Lunch had one of the top crab cake sandwiches in the city, and their fries are hand-cut, which sold me. The crab cake was above-average, mostly crab, all lump, lightly seasoned so that the primary taste is of the crab meat, but the crab cake itself wasn’t fresh or even hot, just lukewarm, as if it had been sitting for five minutes. I understand they’re trying to keep people moving, but crab cakes should, at worst, be kept hot if they have to be held at all. The fries were on the greasy side. I suppose if you work in the area and need something fast, this is a great option, but I’m not sure it was worth the Metro* trip.

*Seriously, another city with a crappy subway system. Philly’s system is cash-only and is filthier than Rome’s. Washington’s takes credit cards, but the cost of your ride depends on exactly where you’re boarding and exiting, instead of the single-price system used, oh, everywhere else in the country. And is there a reason the stations are all so dark? You could grow white asparagus down there.

As for Nationals Park, it’s nice, clean, big, and kind of boring. It has forced character, not actual charm. And I’m sorry, you don’t get to put up posters of great players who didn’t play for your franchise – you can take the Senators’ history, by all means, but Honus Wagner is not yours. They get big props for Teddy’s Q stand out in right field. They smoke the meat right there, in a smoker that’s at the edge of the tent, and both items I had were solid. The pulled pork sandwich wasn’t too dry and only needed a little sauce for flavor, while the beef (short) rib was perfectly smoked with plenty of well-browned edges. I’m not sure what’s in the beef rub, but it’s sweet without any heat – a little pepper would balance out the sweetness well. Two quibbles: At $14, the rib should come with something on the side, even the tiny cole slaw that comes with the sandwich; and it seems odd that you have to go to another stand to get a starch like French fries. The Nats also get props for the kosher-food cart across the aisle from the Q. The knish was excellent, smoking hot (not just made, but they had the sense to keep it hot), and the three people working at the cart are animals – everything moved quickly, and when the line started to build up, they moved faster. I saw a little gelato stand up the first base line and wanted to try it, but I was so full from the Q each night that I never had the chance.

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→ September 11, 2009
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Milwaukee eats, 2009.

I was on Mike and Mike this morning and apparently made Scott Feldman a left-hander. Good times. The moral of this story, since I was thinking about Feldman’s cutter as a weapon against lefties, is not to think when talking on the radio. I did 90-minute chat and believe I got everyone’s handedness right, so there’s that.

Joe Posnanski mentions me in his new column for Sports Illustrated, which means I’ll probably hear from a whole new group of people from my childhood who had no idea I was a sportswriter.

I didn’t do much new in Milwaukee from my last trip, revisiting Cempazuchi (and ordering the same stuff) and Beans & Barley (going for the whole wheat pancakes, which were very good but very wheaty). I finally visited Kopp’s for frozen custard, and it was very good, particularly the texture, which was probably an 80 on the 20-80 scale – you’re not likely to find smoother custard on the planet. Their chocolate isn’t very chocolatey, but the only place I hit last year that had a strong chocolate custard had the worst texture.

I had breakfast at Hotch-a-Do, across the street from Beans & Barley, a really funky, very local place that unfortunately only opens at 9 am. The blueberry and banana pancakes were a little rich and mildly flavored but generally good, although I’d probably give something else on the menu a shot next time around. They do serve Alterra coffee, which I tried the next day at the Alterra stand at the Milwaukee airport. I’ve largely given up drip coffee, but Matthew Leach at mlb.com swears by Alterra, and he didn’t lie – that is some Damn Fine Coffee, dark but not overroasted, with plenty of character of the bean (Nicaraguan, mildly acidic but well-rounded with good body), and brewed at the right strength.

Matthew and I also had dinner at Elsa’s on the Park after I found out that Sobelman’s was closed for dinner on Labor Day (but open in the afternoon … that makes, well, no sense). He raved about his burger, but mine was cooked enough to serve as a coaster despite the fact that I ordered it medium. They also lose points for having no beer on tap and almost nothing local, but I did enjoy a Chicago beer, Goose Island Matilda, a “strong Belgian pale ale” that was a rich amber with great body and a pronounced note of good-quality honey.

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