→ March 30, 2014
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Raleigh eats.

Two new ESPN posts from Saturday – my report on Carlos Rodon and some more prep bats, and my 2014 MLB predictions.

I decided to make this trip to the Triangle into a tour of Ashley Christensen’s Raleigh restaurants, after receiving several recommendations from scout friends and (I think) hearing of her via Hugh Acheson. Christensen has four outposts in downtown Raleigh, three of them on the same block of Wilmington Street, which served for all three of my dinners plus a breakfast/coffee stop.

Poole’s Diner is her high-end shop, with a menu that changes weekly or daily and focuses on local products, meaning it’s very heavy on vegetables even in the mains – which was a positive since I took my cousin, a vegetarian, for dinner. The best item was actually a side dish, sauteed Brussels sprouts with oyster mushrooms and a sherry cream sauce. Mushrooms and fortified wines like sherry or madeira are great friends, and mounting the resulting sauce with cream (saute the mushrooms, deglaze with the wine, finish with just enough cream to thicken) adds flavor and mouthfeel that goes with almost everything … but I’ve never had it with Brussels sprouts or any other brassica before. The combination was unexpected but provided great balance to the slight bitterness of the sprouts, with the cream limiting that bitter note and allowing the umami of the mushrooms to move to the front.

My entree was a seared halibut over farro with a roasted tomato relish, everything perfectly cooked, with the farro actually the best part of the dish. Farro, an “ancient grain” in the wheat family that can refer to spelt, emmer, or einkorn; the hulled berries are cooked until al dente and can substitute in many recipes for rice or barley, but with more flavor than plain rice and less of that good-for-you taste of barley. We shared a dark chocolate/mocha pot de crème with coffee shortbread, served in a wide-mouth mason jar, my kind of dessert – bittersweet, not cloying, with the consistency of a thick mousse so that even a half portion was very satisfying.

Poole’s also has its own house cocktail menu; I couldn’t pass on a drink based on Mount Gay XO rum (especially after I heard rumors, unfounded as it turns out, that Mount Gay was shutting down). The cocktail included Mount Gay, sweet vermouth, and orange bitters, served with a strip of orange peel, and for a drink that had no non-alcoholic components it was surprisingly smooth, and the dark rum provides a hint of sweetness without any added sugar in the drink. The entree, the side, my cousin’s salad (an entree portion size), dessert, and the cocktail came to about $75 before tip.

Couple of important notes on Poole’s: They don’t take reservations, but there’s a large bar where you can get happy while you wait; there’s a large parking lot across the street that’s free after 5 pm; and their website discourages diners from bringing children.

Beasley’s Chicken + Honey, Christensen’s fried chicken restaurant – I know most of you are already sold at this point – actually shares a space with Chuck, her burger place, separated by a wall but with staffers going back and forth between the two. Beasley’s was the better place by far; the chicken was excellent, among the best fried chicken I’ve ever had, served with a very slight drizzle of honey over the top – just enough for the taste, not enough to make it sticky. But the sides are absolutely incredible; one friend of mine who lives in the Triangle says he only gets the $9 plate of three sides and skips the chicken altogether. I went with the roasted beets with pickled onions and an orange & white balsamic vinaigrette, and the green cabbage slaw with malt vinegar, roasted tomatoes, and what I think was a celery seed mayo dressing that may have had dried mustard as well. The beets came cold, both red and golden, with the vinaigrette thicker than a typical dressing, somewhere between the consistency of a regular vinaigrette and that of pure maple syrup, with the onions on top, giving two elements of acidity to brighten and balance the sweetness of the beets. (Disclaimer: I love roasted beets in pretty much any form as long as they never saw the inside of a can.)

The cabbage slaw was also strong, maybe a little overdressed, but the celery seeds in the dressing were a surprising and effective touch; I might have though of crushed caraway seeds or mustard seeds, both of which work extremely well with cabbages, but the celery seeds were a note I kept coming back to after eating. Also, they have bourbon chocolate pecan pie for dessert and that was hands-down the best pecan pie I’ve ever tasted, maybe the first time I’ve had one where I never thought for a second, “this is a little too sweet.” The predominant flavors were the dark chocolate and the bourbon – the booze wasn’t there for nomenclature, but you actually get that smoky/sweet flavor in the finished product.

Chuck was a little disappointing after my meals at the other two spots, mostly because the burger itself was underseasoned. Although the good folks on the Beasley’s twitter feed advised me to get the Dirty South – a burger with smoked pork shoulder and chili on top of the patty itself – I couldn’t bring myself to order it, not with an avocado and bacon-onion jam option staring me in the face. (Besides, I wanted to taste the beef, and though the Dirty South would overwhelm it with the pork flavor.) Also, the bun was kind of nondescript. The hand-cut fries were good, and seemed to have all the salt that was missing from the burger; you get your choices of two dipping sauces from a list of seven or eight, and I recommend the espelette mayo, although if you like garlic mayo theirs is potent as well. They offer unusual milkshake flavors and will spike them with alcohol, but I didn’t partake. A five-ounce burger (they offer a half-pound, but really, no one needs that) and a quarter pound of fries was more than enough for me.

Joule’s Coffee is the Christensen coffee/breakfast joint, a few doors down from Beasley’s and Chuck, using beans from Durham’s Counter Culture, one of the best roasters on the east coast. They offer drip, cold brew, pour-overs, and various espresso drinks, with your choice of two different single-origin beans for the last option. The breakfast menu includes egg dishes, croissant French toast, sausage and biscuits, and, my choice, house-made yogurt (thick, like Greek yogurt or labneh) with granola and fresh blueberries. The coffee, a Rwandan varietal, was good enough that I contemplated getting up a half-hour earlier the next morning to drive over there before my flight home – I didn’t, because I like sleep too, but I was tempted – and the yogurt was a good reminder that homemade can beat even the best packaged, authentic Greek yogurts*.

* Authentic Greek yogurt means it’s strained yogurt, without any added thickeners. The FDA has no guidelines on Greek yogurt or the use of the word “authentic” here, so you get major yogurt brands creating fake Greek yogurt by adding vegetable gums, pectin, or corn starch. Read the labels and buy the real stuff – Chobani, Fage, and Whole Foods all do it right.

My one non-Christensen meal spot was La Farm Bakery in Cary, not too far from the USA Baseball complex where I was attending the NHSI tournament. La Farm was founded by a baker of traditional European breads, including sourdoughs, dark ryes, and pain de campagne – the French bread style that can be formed into decorative shapes. They also sell a variety of traditional French pastries and do salads and sandwiches for the lunch crowd. The bread is the star, a solid 70 on the 20-80 scale, especially the Italian bread with sesame seeds and the focaccia, with the ciabatta closer to average for me. The sandwiches were a mixed bag; I loved the Mediterraneo, with fresh mozzarella, roasted tomatoes, basil, and balsamic vinaigrette, but the “award-winning” albacore tuna salad sandwich was very ordinary. The BLT was very good, better with the added avocado option, but there was about twice as much chipotle mayo as the sandwich needed. On one of those days, one MLB team’s contingent walked in right as I was finishing, so I hung out for a bit and saw what they ate, with the kale salad with eggless Caesar dressing the most appealing. If I lived near Cary, I’d be buying bread from them twice a week, at least.

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→ May 30, 2013
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Underbelly and 800 Degrees.

My updated ranking of the top 25 prospects in baseball went up Tuesday for Insiders. This week’s Behind the Dish podcast features my chat with Aaron Hill about what it was like to be evaluated and drafted back in 2003.

On the recommendation of two scouts, I went to Underbelly in Houston with a friend last week, getting there a little on the late side but still having a tremendous meal. Everything they serve is sourced within 150 miles of the restaurant, a trick that works when you’re located near a large body of water.

They were out of the sourdough bread appetizer – I almost called it a “starter” but that would be a very different dish – so instead we went with the carrot cooked three ways, coffee-roasted, pureed, and pickled, an interesting way of showcasing the vegetable’s flavor and texture, although the plate was sparse and the roasted carrots would have been better served hot and with some sort of fat, even a drizzle of olive oil. The “gyro” style meatballs were stronger, lamb meatballs barely cooked through with just a hint of pink – one reason I don’t usually order lamb is that it’s best eaten when it’s still bleating – served with a thin layer of tzatziki (herbed yogurt sauce) and tomato relish that’s mostly just halved sweet grape tomatoes.

The star dish was the roasted pork belly with tomato-bacon jam and bruleed peaches, which was a special that night but is apparently sometimes a regular menu item. The plate came with two large chunks of pork belly that pulled apart like a boneless short rib, but still had plenty of tooth like a well-roasted pork shoulder. The pork itself was just lightly seasoned, with a little bark on the top of each chunk, but the smoky-sweet peaches and the saltiness of the jam complemented it well – if you worked a little to get all components in each bite.

The one dish I didn’t like was one of their signature items, the Korean braised goat and dumplings. The goat is braised until very tender, shredded (or perhaps just allowed to fall apart), and then doused in a very spicy, sticky-sweet sauce that I found unpalatable, more for its sweetness than its heat – it was like a chile pepper candy, and the meat could have come from any animal given how pungent the sauce was. The dumplings weren’t much better, very tough, chewy gnocchi-shaped pellets that didn’t absorb the sauce or have any browning or other flavor of their own. The server noticed we’d barely touched it and offered to remove the charge from the bill even over our protests, which I thought was impressive. At a restaurant of this caliber, I wouldn’t send a dish back unless it was completely inedible – raw, or burned, or somehow ruined. This plate just wasn’t to my tastes, and since I ordered it, I expected to pay for it no matter what.

Dessert was tremendous – a warm chocolate cake, almost the texture of a brownie, served with a giant quenelle of spicy chocolate ice cream that was warm enough to develop the consistency of a gelato or even a perfectly smooth mousse. The spice in the ice cream was more of a suggestion than the in-your-face heat of the goat dish, and balanced out the dark, rich cocoa flavor of the cake. The portion was very generous, plenty for two adults to share.

Underbelly has a huge wine list but no license for hard liquor, and they even permit you to bring your own wine for a $15 fee as long as it’s not something already on their list and you limit your importation to three bottles per table. Prices for the small plates we ordered were reasonable, given the high cost and quality of the inputs; after the server removed the charge for the goat, but including two glasses of wine, the bill was under $100 for two people.

* I also managed to get to 800 Degrees, the pizzeria opened by the folks behind Umami Burger and Umamicatessan, in west LA in mid-May. It’s not table-service; you order at the counter, and they assemble the pizza as you walk down the glass, where you can see most of the possible toppings and can either order a set combo or create your own. The ingredient quality is high, but the crust was the standout – cooked at, well, 800 degrees, it gets a little char on the exterior and remains soft in the center, almost Neapolitan style (which would have something akin to soup in the middle), with enough structure to hold together when lifted. The salad offerings are a little meager, however, with the “greens” lacking the “mixed” portion and too light on the olive oil for me. This is the fifth of the pizzerias on Food and Wine‘s list of the best pizzerias in the United States that I’ve visited, better than Stella Rosa (Santa Monica) or Punch (Minneapolis), not as good as Bianco (Phoenix) or Lola (Minneapolis), definitely good enough to hit any time you’re near the UCLA campus.

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→ November 18, 2010
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Hillside Spot & Barrio Cantina.

Busy day today. I’ll be chatting at 1 pm EST, on the Scott Van Pelt Show on ESPN Radio at 2:05 pm EST, and on Outside the Lines on ESPN shortly after 3 pm.

My latest post at mental_floss covers the histories of eight classic board games, with another post on the history of Settlers of Catan coming later today. And my last two posts over on ESPN.com broke down the Joaquin Benoit signing and the Uggla trade and John Buck signing.

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I’ve mentioned Hillside Spot before, but let me recommend it again: If you live anywhere near the Ahwatukee region of Phoenix, or pass through it on I-10, you need to try this place, because the food is outstanding.

I’ve been for breakfast and lunch and can vouch for both meals. The “El Gallo” torta with eggs, chorizo, and avocado was tremendous, with the eggs cooked to order (they’re not that quick – that would be my only warning, but I will wait for food like this); bright, fresh avocado; just the right amount of mayo; and a fresh, soft, square roll from La Sonorense Tortilla Factory in downtown Phoenix. It’s a steal at $6. Their pancakes have earned some acclaim around here, for good reason – they’re eggy and buttery, like a thick, soft crepe, with one order more than my wife could finish even with some serious help from me. It looks like they rotate their coffees but try to offer something from a local roaster, such as one from Tempe’s Cartel Coffee Labs the day I was there.

I went back for lunch because I’d seen a pulled pork sandwich on their menu, with the pork first braised then finished over mesquite on their rotisserie grill. The pork was perfect, falling apart but with good browning on the outside, with a good background smoke flavor. It comes with a spicy cole slaw and, oddly enough, sliced fresh pear, which was a new combination for me but worked well, giving the sandwich a little bite and providing a small amount of natural sweetness to balance the acidity in the slaw. It comes on the same bread as the torta (telera bread), and the French fries, one of four side options, were hand-cut and just-fried.

Hillside Spot uses a lot of local vendors (including all of their eggs) and has that great funky cafe vibe I love to find in a local restaurant – like the Mission in San Diego or Blue Moon Cafe in Baltimore. Other than the Angel Sweet gelateria, I haven’t found anything as exciting as this place since we moved. It’s located on Warner and 48th, behind the McDonald’s, in the same strip mall where the Sunday farmer’s market is held.

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We found Hillside Spot because it was mentioned in Phoenix magazine as one of the best new restaurants of 2010. We also tried another one, Barrio Cantina, in Scottsdale on Cactus right by the Tatum mall. The food was good, but on the heavy side, not just in fat content (that doesn’t usually bother me) but in the chef’s hand, adding sauces and flavors that end up detracting from the dish. But the core ingredients were all very strong, particularly their meats.

They offer a strong selection of taco plates, all available with corn or flour tortillas or as a torta. I went with the torta – that’s a new dish for me since we moved out here, so I’m indulging – made with machaca short ribs, braised to the point of collapse, with a full, satisfying, beefy flavor. It comes with shredded, slightly wilted cabbage and a crema that was probably unnecessary with the fattiness of the short rib. The dish came with a scoop of a strange, earthy rice and corn mixture that was slightly overcooked but tasted good, a solid neutral note to give me a break from the strong flavors of the machaca.

My wife went with a carnitas enchilada that came in a small cast-iron skillet and was served with the tortillas open, so the sauce and cheese (browned slightly under a salamander) were directly on the meat. She enjoyed it, although the presentation within the skillet was a mess.

We tried one appetizer, the “mini chimis” – small chimichangas where the ratio from dough to meat is way too high. I peeled a few of them open and ate the carnitas and machaca inside, to reduce the doughiness and get away from the tangy crema sticking to the outside like wallpaper paste. Someone there really knows how to slow-cook meat; they just need to work on how they serve it.

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