→ December 7, 2012
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Nashville eats, 2012 edition.

I ate really, really well in Nashville this week, which is what happens when you get the hell out of the Opryland Hotel, itself a testament to what happens when capitalism’s DNA mutates and reproduces out of control. Over the last five years it seems that Nashville has had a culinary boom, and I had more places I wanted to visit than I could have gotten to in a week.

Our first big group dinner was Monday night at City House, one of the most-recommended restaurants in Nashville by those of you who live there, and one of the most enjoyable meals I have ever had when you combine the food and the company at the table. Because of the size of our party, we were served family-style, which had the benefit of allowing us to all try more items. I thought two items really stood out above everything else: the belly ham pizza and the bread gnocchi. We tried all four pizzas on the menu, with the anchovy pizza the only disappointment, but the belly ham pizza with fresh mozzarella, oregano, and a pretty healthy dose of red chili flakes was incredible, from the light, almost cracker-like crust to the bacon-like pork to the bright, creamy cheese. The gnocchi, without potato as traditional gnocchi would have, were the best I’ve ever eaten (caveat: potato gnocchi don’t thrill me) and are served with a scant tomato sauce, braised pork butt, and grana padano (essentially Parmiggiano-Reggiano from cows near but not in that specific region). That’s the dish everyone was talking about the next morning. The octopus starter everyone’s joked about was just fair, cooked correctly (that is, not till it was a spare tire) but still not that pleasant a texture and without the powerful flavors to stand up to the fish. I loved the rigatoni with rabbit sugo and fennel, kind of like a duck ragout with big flavors from the aromatics and tomato. That night’s special dessert was a chocolate-peanut butter pie that would put Reese’s out of business.

Tuesday night’s dinner included at least 16 of us from the media side at the Pharmacy Burger Bar and Bier Garden, one of the best burger places I have ever visited. Their burgers are made with Tennessee-grown beef and served on stark white rolls that are as soft as potato bread and are custom-baked for the Pharmacy. They hand-cut their fries, including skin-on sweet potato fries served without that annoying sugar topping so many places use or any tricks to make them crispier, and they serve their own tater tots, which might have been an even bigger hit than the burgers. They also had a strong selection of regional beers, including the Nashville-brewed Yazoo Gerst Amber beer, so smooth it went down almost like soda and might be too mild for folks who are more serious about their beer than I am. As for the burgers, most of us went for their signature item, the Farm Burger, with bacon, country ham, and a fried egg on top, which is a top five burger for me at this point.

We ventured out to two new lunch places, Fido and Marché. Fido is related to the Bongo Java coffee shop and retains that coffee-shop vibe even when serving sandwiches or fish entrees like the trout special I ordered, along with a cinnamon cheesecake that Jonah Keri said was to die for and a chocolate-chocolate chip cookie that also really strong. Marche offers a duck confit sandwich about which one probably needs to say little more, because really, it’s some damn good duck confit. Molly Knight ordered a latte which was large enough to drown an orangutan. Both places were worth hitting again, especially because they gave us a chance to eat somewhat more healthful items in expectation of big dinners.

On the way to the airport I made a detour to revisit Arnold’s Country Kitchen, a meat-and-three place that seems to rate as Nashville’s best and where I had a great meal back in 2007. The meats change every day as do about half of the sides available; Thursday’s options included roast beef, while mashed potatoes and turnip greens (with ham hock) appear to always be options. One of the special sides that day was fried green tomatoes, about four-inch discs breaded with seasoned bread crumbs and quickly deep-fried. They’re not good for you – none of this is – but the salty-sour combo was surprisingly satisfying. For dessert, they offered four different kinds of pies plus a few other options. The hot pepper chocolate pie wasn’t very popular but I’d gladly eat that again – the filling had the texture of a dense mousse and the flavor of half-cooked brownies, and once you finished a bite, a warm heat took over from what I assume was cayenne pepper. A meat, three sides, bread (which I skipped), dessert, and a drink ran about $13 and I was full for the whole flight back to Arizona.

Finally, the headline meal of the trip was at The Catbird Seat, named one of the ten best new restaurants in the U.S. this year by Bon Appetit. This was the most expensive meal I have ever eaten, and one of the longest at over four hours and nine-plus courses. It’s a set tasting menu, and the food tends toward the experimental – not quite Alinea territory but along the same philosophical lines. All of the courses hit the mark save one, and I was challenged by a number of the dishes to rethink ingredients or flavors. If you’re not interested in a $150+ meal that goes on for days, feel free to stop reading here – that’s why I’m covering this last. Also, each dish comes with a wine pairing, which the sommelier introduces and explains in some depth, but as the group’s driver I skipped this part.

* The meal began with quarter-sized ‘oreos’ made of a parmiggiano cream or mousse sandwiched between two slices of porcini mushrooms, producing a gustatory dissonance as my palate kept expecting sweet. The point of this starter, other than just being playful, became evident later on.

* The first actual course was a trio of one-bite items, including a raw Island Creek oyster with kimchi and a lime foam, a “cracker jack” using shiitake mushrooms roasted until crunchy, and a rectangle of chicken skin baked until crunchy and topped with ground red pepper for a twist on Nashville hot chicken. That’s the first raw oyster I’ve ever eaten, incidentally – growing up on Long Island during a time when raw oysters were quite dangerous to eat, I had no exposure to them and had (have?) a long-standing bias against raw shellfish of any sort. The faux cracker jack was the best item here, combining the earthiness of the mushroom with the hint of sweetness and crunch you’d expect from something that looks like caramel corn.

* Second course was a diver scallop crudo, sliced thinly, served with their own dashi, smoked roe of Arctic char, crumbled chicken skin, lime juice, finely minced serrano chiles, soy sauce, and shiso leaves. As complex as that sounded, and even looked, the end result was perfectly balanced and nothing overshadowed the scallop itself. This was also one of the largest portions of the night.

* Third course was a soup of roasted sunchoke and caramelized yogurt, poured tableside over a quarter of an artichoke heart, shaved roasted fennel, black olive, black garlic, and a tiny bit of black truffle. Cooked yogurt is very much not my friend, but the texture of the soup was unreal, like double cream, and the roasted sunchokes gave it the appearance of a rich light-brown roux with hints of sweetness and a nutmeg-like spice.

* Fourth course was Arctic char with cream cheese gnudi, dill-infused oil, pureed Meyer lemon (rind and all, apparently), capers, and sorrel leaves. I love Arctic char, a fish nearly indistinguishable from salmon, but prefer it cooked a little past medium rare; this was practically swimming upstream. The gnudi, marble-sized spheres of (I presume) cream cheese with just enough flour to give them structure, had the texture of potato gnocchi and just a hint of the tang from the cheese so that they could soak up some of the dill flavor below them. (Gnudi means “nude” in Italian and refers to a filling cooked without its pasta wrapper.)

* Fifth course was probably the restaurant’s signature dish, roasted pigeon leg, served with the claw still on it, along with a celeriac ribbon, smoked butter, cured egg yolk, chestnut purée, and huckleberry reduction, with the last two items perhaps a play on peanut butter and jelly. Pigeon (usually marketed here as “squab,” for obvious reasons) was another first for me, here cooked rare with a flavor like that of a duck breast with a texture a little closer to a rare lamb rib chop. The chesnut purée stole a fair bit of the show, though, with the crisped skin of the pigeon also standing out.

* Sixth course was a large medallion of rare “Wagyu” beef ribeye with roasted Belgian endive, little spheres of Asian pear, roasted maitake mushroom, and walnut butter. This was by far the most generous portion of the night, but a little tricky to eat with all the components in one bite, in part because the beef, while tender, wasn’t quite that “like butter” consistency I’d expect from that particular cut. (There’s also a lack of labelling standards for “Wagyu” beef, but I’ll trust that the Catbird Seat is at least buying very high-quality inputs.) Getting a sphere of anything the size of a large marble on to the fork with four other elements is nearly impossible, even though the fruit’s mild sweetness was a perfect complement to the various savory elements. Great ideas here, but perhaps not fully executed.

* Seventh course was the one whiff for me, Rush Creek Reserve cheese with a curried granola, rose-water honey, and apricot jam. The cheese looks like mayonnaise and had a heavy, cheddar-y flavor that I simply don’t like. It’s supposed to be one of the best domestic cheese around, so I’m chalking this up to my specific palate and not the dish itself, although Jonah expressed his dislike of the curried granola, which I probably could eat by the bowl.

* From there we move to desserts, three plates although they’re listed on the menu as just two courses. Course 8A was a play on coffee and tea, with coffee ice cream, molasses cake, rooibos (red tea) foam, and a hazelnut and coffee crumb, just insanely good across the board, a dessert where everything was sweet but nothing was too sweet, and a great way to show off the complexity of rooibos’ flavor. (I happen to love the stuff, and especially like to drink it when I’m sick because it has no caffeine.) Course 8B was a maple-thyme flan-like custard cooked in an egg shell with a maple glaze on top and a single stick of bacon protruding from the top – an egg-and-bacon dish that implied there were pancakes on the plate that required the use of maple syrup.

* The ninth course was the most impressive dessert from an execution perspective: charred oak ice cream, vanilla cake, pineapple gelée, and bourbon balls – bourbon encapsulated in a very soft gel so they’d explode in your mouth almost on contact. The ice cream here was smoky but also had subtle flavors that reminded me of caramel, coffee, and of course whiskey, and its texture was as smooth as that of good gelato.

* Finally, another small plate of three Oreo-like items appeared, but this time, they’re sweet, with chocolate wafers and a vanilla cream. They don’t taste anything like the real thing, but speaking as a devout chocoholic, I appreciated the hit of bitter cocoa at the end of the meal.

Someone in Nashville asked me if I preferred the meal at City House or the one at the Catbird Seat but I struggled to compare them. City House is pretty straightforward upscale cuisine – recognizable dishes, done well from start to finish, using fresh, local ingredients with outstanding execution. You will also leave there stuffed. Catbird Seat is experimental and challenging; it isn’t food to be consumed so much as it’s food to be considered. Your preference would likely depend on what you prefer. Catbird Seat is doing things very few restaurants outside of New York, LA, and Chicago are doing, and that makes it the “better” restaurant, the place I’d absolutely take my wife for a special occasion or a client I wanted to blow out of the water. On the other hand, if my goal was to go have a boisterous meal with nine friends, which was what we did on Monday night, I’d take City House. You can’t lose either way.

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→ July 24, 2012
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Phoenix eats roundup, July 2012.

Today’s column at ESPN ranks the top ten prospects in contenders’ organizations by their current trade value. I’ll be back on the podcast on Wednesday.

Chou’s Kitchen in northwest Chandler, at Warner and Alma School, serves regional Chinese cuisine from northeastern China, known as dongbei cai, from the area generally known in English as Manchuria. Because the climate in the area is less favorable for growing rice than that of central and southern China, northeastern Chinese cooking includes more wheat, which means lots of dumplings, including the thick, doughy filled dumplings known as baozi. Chou’s version is less doughy than the baozi I’ve had elsewhere and was more like an oversized “potsticker,” meaning a better ratio of filling (pork and vegetables) to dough. I preferred those to the “meat pies,” large discs with a thinner dough and the same filling (they also offer beef, shrimp, or vegetable fillings), fried on both sides, with more meat and less dough – still good, but not as balanced as the baozi. Their version of tiger salad (lao hu cai) incorporates sliced fresh green cabbage and peanuts with the traditional combination of cilantro, scallions, and chili pepper, with enough to serve two people and a great balance of acidity, heat, and sweetness. All of that food – more than I was able to finish – cost about $17 before tip, and the service was very attentive; the owner even came out to ask me how I’d found them. They’re in Phoenix magazine’s current issue, listing over great “cheap eats” from around the Valley.

And so is My Arepa, which shares a space with a Rosati’s Pizza, a strange arrangement that didn’t give me great confidence when I entered. The food was very good, and apparently they’ve got a small following among Venezuelan Cubs players, with signed photos from several on the walls (including Carlos Zambrano and Angel Guzman). The menu is enormous but we ordered one item from the three main categories – one arepa, one empanada, and one cachapa. Arepas are thin pancakes made from ground corn meal, sliced the long way and filled like a sandwich. My Arepa’s masa is made from white corn, so it’s pretty bland (I’ve had yellow-corn arepas a few times and prefer them, but I guess that’s not authentic), with the fillings – braised shredded beef, sweet plantains, and black beans – more than making up for the dough’s lack of flavor. The cachapa, a yellow-corn pancake with kernels in the batter, folded in half like an omelette and filled, was the best item we tried, sweet from both the corn kernels and from caramelization on the griddle, with the same options for the fillings as the arepas. The place itself is pretty bare-bones, from the furniture to the décor, and could probably use a little facelift. Both Chou’s and My Arepa are inside of 15 minutes from HoHoKam.

Also in that Phoenix magazine feature was Baratin Cafe, located in Old Town Scottsdale just off 5th street, in a walkway across Craftsman from Citizen Public House. Baratin’s menu is as small as they come, changing daily, with one starter, one salad, one sandwich, one vegetarian option, one “potted” entree, and one dessert. The day I went, the starter was roasted tomatoes and garlic with basil, olive oil, and grilled slices of rosemary-olive bread, and the sandwich was a pulled pork with spicy whole-grain mustard, sliced apples, and cole slaw on a crispy flatbread from Mediterra Bakehouse in Coolidge. Business is slow everywhere here in the summer, but it can’t be a good sign that I was the only customer at 6 pm on a Saturday evening – this place is far too good for that, and quite reasonably priced for some of the highest-quality ingredients I’ve come across out here, about $18 for those two items plus a drink.

Tortas Paquime in Avondale is one of the few independent restaurants I’ve found on the west side worth hitting, close to the Glendale stadium and on the way from my house to Goodyear, serving, of course, tortas, Mexican sandwiches on soft white bread (they also offer whole wheat) with the usual array of meat fillings. Torta ahogada (“drowned” in sauce) is the most traditional, but I went for the cochinita pibil with “everything” – avocado, tomato, lettuce, jalapeno (and a lot of it), and mayo, served with a handful of homemade potato chips for $5.49. This pork was still tender and had a good balance of acidity and smokiness from the achiote, nicely cut by the fats from the avocado and mayonnaise. They also offer tacos, various pastries, and six flavors of agua fresca.

Il Bosco is a new, tiny, wood-fired pizza shop in north Scottsdale, tucked into a strip mall on a side street on the northeast corner of Scottsdale and Shea. Their site says they cook their pizzas at 900 degrees, but I chatted with the pizzaiolo a little bit and he said he’s found the ideal temperature is between 700 and 800, which produces a pizza somewhere between Italian style (ultra thin crust, more charring on the outside) and New York style (moderately thin crust, toppings cooked a little further). The menu is small and simple, with a handful of standard pizzas plus a daily special; that option on the night we went was superb: homemade meatballs, sliced thinly like sausages, with three cheeses and rapini, a vegetable I don’t usually like unless it’s cooked at a hot enough temperature to bring out some of its sugars. The salads are extremely fresh and the restaurant grows its own herbs in pots out back. The service was off the charts, and the owner even let my daughter come behind the counter and see how some of the equipment worked while she poured her own drink.

I’ve mentioned Frost Gelato on Twitter as our new favorite gelateria in the Valley, just barely edging out Angel Sweet (which we do still love). Frost, located in the Santan Mall, has two locations in Tucson as well as one in Chicago now, and was started by two U of A alumni who hired – and somehow secured a “special skills” O-1 visa for – an Italian gelato chef to help them devise the recipe. The gelato’s texture is perfect and their flavors are strong, including dark chocolate, salted caramel, and coconut, with only the bitter, extract-y mint chocolate chip disappointing so far.

La Condesa Gourmet Tacos made Phoenix magazine’s list of the best new restaurants of 2011 and was recommended by several friends of mine who rave about its salsa bar, which is quite extensive. But the food itself was very disappointing. The cochinita pibil tasted of nothing but vinegar, while the carne asada was tough and surprisingly bland. Worse, however, was the corn tortillas themselves: If you aren’t making the tortillas fresh in-house, you’re not a “gourmet” taco shop. These were the same tortillas I could buy at Target in a package of 30 for $2. Stop spending so much time on strawberry salsa and start making tortillas from scratch (and grilling them, while we’re at it), and then we can talk.

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→ April 17, 2012
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Atlanta, Macon, Greenville, & Baton Rouge eats.

The marquee meal of the trip was Top Chef All-Stars winner Richard Blais’ new “haute doggery,” HD1, located in Atlanta. I went with the Eastbound and Down dog, given its baseball theme and the presence of pulled pork as one of the toppings on the hot dog, along with sweet mustard and cole slaw, and it didn’t disappoint. As you’ve probably heard (I’ve said it enough recently), I ended a ten-year boycott of hot dogs with this meal; I gave them up because, as I told Chef Blais when he came on the podcast last month, in most cases you just don’t know what you’re eating when you get one. I’d also had too many mediocre or worse hot dogs and found that I always felt lousy after eating them, so the easy solution was to just cut them out. HD1’s hot dog was worth making the exception, bringing back a lot of (possibly constructed) memories from childhood – this is what I think a hot dog at the ballpark used to taste like, even though I know it was certainly never this good.

The pulled pork worked surprisingly well as a supporting player, bringing smoky and savory elements that made the final product more complex, so it felt more like real food as opposed to fast or junk food, while the thin layer of mustard gave the sandwich a much-needed sharpness. The waffle fries come with a sweet/spicy maple-soy dressing that defied my palate’s expectation of sweet/salty/sour (that is, ketchup); most potatoes aren’t that flavorful, so the bold sauce works really well on the blank canvas, although I ended up adding salt to mute the sweetness (I love maple syrup, but it is really sweet). The homemade pickles were actually the better of the two sides – large chunks with a subtle yet strong spicy finish. I was there just before 2 pm on a Wednesday, so the place was pretty quiet, but I like the décor and the vibe – the seating is mostly communal – and with a pretty broad menu that features various sausages (I’d like to try their Merguez, made with lamb), at least one vegetarian option, a good beer/wine selection, it seems like a good place to head with a group.

I followed several reader recommendations to hit Atlanta’s Antico Pizza, serving thin-crust, wood-fired pizzas reportedly in the tradition of Naples, itself the pizza capital of Italy (although regional variations abound). Antico’s pizzas are very good, a 55 on the 20-80 scale, a little too spongy in the crust, with high-quality toppings cut way too large for the pizza; the fennel sausage itself was fine, but balls of sausage the diameter of a half-dollar are too big for any kind of pizza, much less a thin-crust variety. That sausage is the star player on the San Gennaro pizza, along with sweet red peppers, cipolline onions, and mozzarella di bufala, a classic combination that, while tricky to eat, brought a solid balance of salty and savory flavors on a spongy dough.

They make several claims that they’re serving “authentic pizza napoletana,” and while what they offer is good, it’s not authentic. There are fairly specific guidelines on what authentic Neapolitan pizza comprises, including a thinner crust than what Antico offers (it should be 0.36-0.44 cm thick, specifically), a wetter center, smaller toppings, and usually fresh mozzarella rather than what I assume was the low-moisture mozzarella Antico used on the pizza I got. This is more a Neapolitan/New York-style hybrid, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Antico offers a very reasonable value ($21 for one pizza that was two meals’ worth of food for me) for what is at heart an artisanal product, but it’s not as good as Scottsdale’s ‘Pomo, which is actually certified as authentic (take that for what it’s worth – I may be Italian by descent, but I lack faith in any sort of Italian authority) and meets the requirements for authentic pizza napoletana. And ‘Pomo isn’t even the best pizza in the Valley.

Macon eats were generally unremarkable; the best meal was at the Bear’s Den, offering southern comfort food in a meat-and-two format, with the fried chicken at least above-average (very crispy crust, not too greasy) but the fried okra very disappointing (crust was soft, inside wasn’t evenly cooked) and the cornbread dressing somewhere in between. Breakfasts at Market Street Cafe and at Jeneane’s were both generally disappointing; Market Street Cafe did have a decent biscuit, but that’s about it. I did have a place in mind in Baxley, Georgia, where Byron Buxton plays – K&L Barbecue, where they serve the meat on a baked potato – but the game ran over three hours, by which point the restaurant was closed, and I can’t imagine I’ll ever be in Baxley again.

Moving on to Greenville, SC, one of the coolest towns I’ve come across in all of my travels – in less than 24 hours I was thinking about whether I could live there, and leaning towards ‘yes’ – after leaving the gorgeous Fluor Field and hitting Main Street at around 10:15 on a Wednesday night, I was shocked to find few parking spots open, plenty of people milling about, and a number of bars and restaurants still open or just closing up. I ended up at Stellar Wine Bar, which offers a small menu of appetizers, tapas, and entrees, and what they do offer they do very well. The server was a little thrown by my open-ended request for suggestions – I told her I eat just about everything and wanted to try two smaller plates rather than one entree – but eventually gave me her five favorites, from which I chose two.

Their veal “paté” is actually a terrine of seasoned ground veal wrapped in bacon and sliced thinly, served with crisp slices of pretzel bread (termed ciabatta on the menu, but that’s not what I got on the plate), spicy whole-grain mustard, diced white onions, and cornichons. It was a tricky dish to eat – the cornichons had no intention of cooperating with my plan to get every element into one bite – but, even as someone who prefers meat dishes hot rather than cold, I was impressed by the layering of flavors and the perfect seasoning on the meat, although the presence of cold, soft bacon on the outside didn’t do much other than hold the thing together (sort of).

The diver scallops over cauliflower puree were perfectly seared, perhaps slightly overcooked in the center but not to the point of toughness, and the cauliflower puree was light and a bit creamy, giving a richness to contrast to the lean scallops. For dessert, I took the server’s suggestion of the flourless chocolate torte (over chocolate mousse or bread pudding), which was dark, rich, had a hint of cinnamon, but was a little too dense, to the point where it was hard to cut or chew.

For breakfast, Marybeth’s promised a slightly more upscale take on basic breakfast items, with my meal somewhat hit or miss. The scrambled eggs with goat cheese and basil were made to order but so massive (it had to be at least three eggs, probably four or five) that they were overcooked on the edges while soft in the center. The hash browns, however, were superb, perfectly browned on the surface, soft and fluffy inside, and not greasy in the least. Just add salt and go.

Final stop was Baton Rouge, good for one meal and one dessert. The meal was very ordinary, Sammy’s Grill on Highland (a reader rec) – the gumbo was thin and the grilled shrimp po’ boy, while made with very fresh shrimp, desperately needed some kind of seasoning. Also, they didn’t hollow out the bread, which I thought was part of the definition of a po’ boy, although I could be wrong about that. Dessert was better, at Rue Beignet, apparently the upstart in competition with Baton Rouge landmark Coffee Call; the beignets (a photo of which I posted on Twitter) were extremely light and airy inside, crispy and brown on the outside, although without the powdered sugar they didn’t have much flavor beyond that of “fried dough” – not that there’s anything particularly wrong with that. They also served the obligatory weak cafe au lait, which I would never drink anywhere except in Louisiana. One warning – Rue Beignet isn’t open as late as Coffee Call, but they did serve me even though I arrived just a few minutes before closing.

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→ December 13, 2011
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Dallas eats.

From a culinary perspective, this had to be my most successful winter meetings since Las Vegas in 2008, which isn’t exactly a fair fight since Vegas is something of a food mecca. But Dallas had quite a bit to offer even with my restriction that no meal take place more than 15 minutes’ drive from the Hilton Anatole.

I’ll start with the one place I hit twice, Zaguan Bakery on Oak Lawn Drive, just under a mile and a half from our hotel and on my way back to Love Field to fly home. Zaguan is a South American bakery, featuring pastries, sandwiches, and other dishes from all over that continent, including one of my favorite foods on the planet, the arepa – a thin cornmeal pancake, here sliced lengthwise and stuffed with the fillings of of your choice for a deliciously sloppy sandwich. The slow-cooked beef was whole (I believe brisket) rather than ground, producing a much better texture, and while it comes with a mildly spicy red sauce it’s elevated by fresh guacamole. As good as the arepa was, it was topped by the cachapa, a thick pancake of cornmeal with fresh corn kernels mixed in for a crunchier, sweeter wrap around the same choice of fillings (like an omelet); I had the cachapa with chicken, white meat cooked in a similar sauce but without the depth of flavor from the beef. Both sandwiches are served with plantain chips that you can upgrade to maduros for $0.99 (do this). There’s also a big display case full of sweet pastries that merits a return trip – I only tried one, the alfajor de chocolate, a linzer tarte-like cookie with chocolate frosting between two shortbread cookies with a chocolate glaze on top, not too sweet with a perfect crumbly texture.

My editor Chris Sprow and I went for high-end Mexican on the first night of the meetings at La Duni, a very well-reviewed restaurant over on McKinney. The fresh guacamole appetizer was big and more chunky than smooth (I prefer this style, although I think it’s a matter of taste), with diced onions, cucumbers, and serrano peppers. For the meal, I went with the slow-roasted lomo sandwich, primarily because the restaurant has its own bakery and I can’t turn down fresh bread – in this case, Pan de Yema, a sort of South American brioche that, unfortunately, came out very dry, saved only by the avocado and Manchego in the middle along with the roasted pork. It came with yucca fries dusted in paprika and spritzed with lemon juice, perfectly fried (good thing, as undercooked yucca can kill you); but we also grabbed a side of maduros which were just as perfectly cooked, almost candied while maintaining some firmness inside. Sprow ordered enchiladas con pollo and cleaned his plate so fast I thought he’d eat the napkin too. I don’t care that much about ambience or décor but we both noticed how cool the place looked. One weird thing: They have valet parking … and the valet just pulled the car into the space right next to the front door. I’m pretty sure I could have done that myself.

Il Cane Rosso was the site of the first of our misfit-writers outings – I can’t tell you how much fun these dinners were, even beyond the food – over on the east side of Dallas, serving pizzas cooked in their wood-fired oven at 900 degrees. The house salad was fresh but overdressed; the Caesar, on the other hand, was one of the best I’ve had outside of the garlicky heaven you’ll find at Strip-T’s in Watertown, Massachusetts, although Il Cane Rosso does use anchovies in their Caesar dressing (which isn’t traditional). The pizzas had a great crust (they use imported 00 flour) with the correct amount of char on the outside and high-quality meats among the toppings, although their fresh mozzarella melted more like the low-moisture find you’d get in a grocery store. Of the pizzas we ordered, the prosciutto e rucola, with prosciutto crudo, arugula, and mozzarella, was my favorite. I only tried one of the three desserts we ordered, the zeppole, smaller than the kind I’m used to getting on Long Island but with the right crisp exterior and soft, yeasty interior. They had a solid selection of local beers, and the server (who also gets points for being an Arcade Fire fan) was knowledgeable about the beers and the pizzas. We ordered a substantial amount of food and everyone had at least one drink; with tip, the total ran just $35 a person.

The second group dinner was to Lockhart Smokehouse, in the Bishop Arts District. Lockhart brags “no forks needed,” although I’d call that a slight exaggeration; the brisket was insanely tender with the best outer bark I have ever had on any kind of smoked beef. The smoked sausage, from Kreuz Market in Lockhart (near San Antonio), was fair but didn’t have the same great smoke flavor as the brisket. They smoke food over local post oak, which is apparently common in Texas but isn’t a wood I’ve encountered anywhere else. My fellow writers gave positive reviews to the ribs, the jalapeno sausage, and the smoked chicken. I did try the baked beans but tasted all heat and very little smoke. Sprow’s contribution to the blog follows:


Beware of meat.

Back to solo dining: Tei-An is a Japanese soba house in the Arts District with a slightly peculiar menu mixing traditional Japanese dishes with plates more tailored to the American palate. I went with a soba dish, figuring I should go with something I couldn’t get just anywhere, short green soba noodles served hot with chicken in a mild curry-like sauce (too mild to really be curry, I think). The dish was solid, very filling thanks to the noodles but touching on bland, and the dish came with four mayo-heavy California rolls as a free side dish. The soba noodles were very well made, but just lacked flavor; maybe I ordered the wrong thing, but at a soba house, shouldn’t the soba dishes blow you away?

I ventured out for one breakfast, at Craft Dallas, another outpost in Tom Colicchio’s growing empire. The short rib hash with two eggs any style was a small disappointment, given Craft’s legendary 24-hour short rib dish; the short ribs themselves were fine, but the hash was sitting in a fancy bowl with a very salty sauce on the bottom, and the (perfectly) poached eggs ended up running into that sauce.

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→ October 8, 2011
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Phoenix eats, part 10.

First Arizona Fall League update of 2011 is up for Insiders, leading off with Anthony Gose.

When we first moved to Arizona last year, I grabbed a copy of Phoenix Magazine‘s September issue, which included their annual list of the best new restaurants in the Valley – an impulse purchase that led us to three of our favorite restaurants in the area, The Hillside Spot, Culinary Dropout, and ‘Pomo Pizzeria. This year’s list is now online (although I picked up the paper copy a month ago) and I’ve hit three of the 23 restaurants on their list, including one knockout, the upscale Thai restaurant Soi4.

Located in the Gainey shopping plaza in central Scottsdale, at the intersection of Scottsdale Road and Doubletree Ranch (which becomes Via de Ventura, so it’s close to the Salt River stadium), Soi4 is Thai cuisine, updating classic Thai dishes with modern twists in a trendy Scottsdale atmosphere (if you live around here, you know the positives and negatives in that phrase). Soi4’s take on panang neur uses perfectly-braised short ribs in place of more typical, inexpensive cuts like rump steak. The ribs come with a mixture of chopped red and green bell peppers and cucumbers with a slightly spicy red curry/coconut milk sauce with thai basil. The only better-cooked short ribs I have ever had were at Tom Colicchio’s craftsteak in Las Vegas (twice), and that’s a restaurant that specializes in beef – and costs about three times as much. For an appetizer, I tried their kao pode tod, spiced corn fritters served with a cucumber relish and a spicy clear sauce for drizzling, another traditional Thai dish taken up several notches with stunning presentation, almost a work of art on the plate, with crisp exteriors, bright centers of mostly corn with some minced lemongrass, and no sign of grease or oil on the plate. It’s a little more expensive than your typical Thai place – those two items and a pot of hot tea (bonus points for loose leaf) came to $24 before tip – but absolutely justifies the cost through freshness of ingredients and the masterful preparations.

The Arrogant Butcher, a short walk west of Chase Field, was more middle of the road on my visit, solid food marred by a single kitchen error. It’s yet another outpost from Fox Restaurant Concepts, the people behind Culinary Dropout and Zinburger, this time focused primarily on meats, including charcuterie and slow-cooked meat dishes like the short rib stew I tried on my one visit. The stew was hearty and filling, with small (maybe one-inch) chunks of short rib and red beans, served with a fried egg on top and a rich corn muffin on the side. But the stew contained a large piece of connective tissue – I can’t think of the last time I was in a decent restaurant and had to spit out a piece of food, but this was unchewable and certainly not something I wanted in my stomach. It was just one piece, an oversight by a prep cook, but that undermined the whole meal for me. They offer a strong selection of small sides, including grilled mushrooms, marcona almonds, or the one I tried, roasted red peppers, sliced thinly and tossed in balsamic vinegar.

The third place I’ve tried from that list was Spasso Pizzeria and Mozzarella Bar in Phoenix just off 51, a huge disappointment across the board. The mozzarella is apparently made fresh in house, but for $12, the plate of two cheeses (we also chose scamorza, another cow’s milk cheese that’s dried to produce a harder texture) included just two slices of each plus some very unappetizing-looking, drab/grey roasted vegetables, all unseasoned and undressed. Even the mozzarella itself was unsalted, which is a small crime, and was totally unremarkable in flavor or texture – you can buy equivalent or better fresh mozzarella in any Trader Joes (and there’s one next door!) or Whole Foods. The pizza was entirely ordinary aside from the use of the same fresh mozzarella on top, and everything was inordinately pricey given how inexpensive the ingredients are. Even the crème brulee, which I bought only because my daughter wanted something for dessert, was all wrong, served in a deep ramekin so the ratio of sugar crust to custard was way off. With so many better pizza options in the Valley, I can’t see why anyone would go here and pay more for an inferior product. UPDATE: It appears that Spasso has closed. Can’t say I’m surprised.

That same issue of Phoenix Magazine included a great article on the second act for Chris Bianco, the owner/chef/genius behind Pizzeria Bianco and Pane Bianco. He’s become one of the Southwest’s greatest advocates for local agriculture and biodiversity, an amazing adaptation for a man whose first career, making every pizza by hand, ended abruptly as airborne flour particles worsened his asthma, causing his doctor to give him a “quit or die” warning he had to heed.

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→ June 9, 2011
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Disneyland eats.

I did promise a review of the food at Disneyland, with a warning that it’s nowhere near as good as the food at Disneyworld is. Disneyland’s options are more limited of necessity, but we also found the execution wasn’t as good and had more disappointments than favorites. (I’ve written several posts on the food at Disneyworld over the past four years.)

I’ll start with the two best things we ate. The best meal was at Downtown Disney at the unfortunately named Tortilla Jo’s, which serves much better upscale Mexican fare than you’d expect after hearing the casual-dining name. The server talked me into his favorite dish, the achiote citrus-grilled chicken, which was very good, correctly cooked (that is, not dry) with a ton of flavor from the glaze. It came with chipotle mashed sweet potatoes that didn’t stint on the heat or mask it with sugar, charro beans, and roasted corn on the cob, for a meal that probably could have fed two. My wife was also impressed by her enchiladas suizas, saying they compared well to her favorite Mexican place from back in Massachusetts, and also finding herself full after eating about half her meal. They have aguas frescas although I found the tamarind a little watery. They don’t offer guacamole as a small side item, unfortunately – it’s made tableside, which isn’t ideal for flavor development, and is something like $9 for a very large bowl of the green stuff.

The other hit was the beignets served at the French Market at New Orleans Square, at a side window on the side facing the railroad station. The beignets are thinner than you’d get in New Orleans and are shaped like Mickey, airy inside, freshly fried and golden brown, handed over in a bag with powdered sugar. Skip the “fritters” served elsewhere in New Orleans Square (they were undercooked inside, but also had the wrong texture) and get the beignets instead.

I’d give a passing grade to Naples, the “authentic” pizzeria also at Downtown Disney. The crust was solid, better texture than flavor, mildly charred in the wood-fired ovens, and the quality of the ingredients was top-notch. Unfortunately their basic tomato sauce is badly underseasoned and both the pizza and the pasta with sauce tasted flat. (Get it? Pizza? Flat? Never mind.) I don’t know if we hit them on the wrong day; the executive chef is Italian and I can’t imagine he’d give his imprimatur to this sauce, which tasted more like pureed canned tomatoes than a cooked, seasoned sauce. If they tweaked that, they have everything else in place to have a restaurant I could preach about.

What’s most peculiar about Naples is that the restaurant management group behind it also runs Via Napoli, the new authentic pizzeria at Epcot in the Italy pavilion (which I reviewed earlier this spring). I’ve eaten there three times in the last six months across two trips and there is no comparison – everything at Via Napoli is better, from the crust to how it’s baked to the sauce to the ingredients to the menu, which includes more options for toppings, more ability to customize your pizza, better appetizers (including a verdure fritte that I recommend), and way better desserts, led by ricotta zeppole served with a warm chocolate sauce.

Returning to Disneyland, we had breakfast at La Brea Bakery just at the entrance to the promenade as you walk into the complex from the theme park entrances. The bread was good, the pastries were not (they were tough and gummy), the bacon was high quality, the potatoes served with the egg dishes were also ordinary. It does the job if you want a filling breakfast, which we did, but it’s not something to go out of your way to hit.

Ariel’s Grotto in California Adventure has a prix fixe dinner special that includes admission to the World of Color light show, which was just amazing. My daughter was riveted almost from the start and for days afterward would spontaneously ask us, “Remember when we saw the World of Color?” Clips from Disney films are projected on to sprays of water over the artificial lagoon, interspersed with colored lights and the odd bit of pyrotechnics. That made up for a meal that was just average. You have a choice of antipasti; we went with the vegetarian one so my daughter would have more options; the cheeses (manchego and fresh mozzarella) were excellent but the vegetables were undermarinated. For my main course I chose the grilled redfish with pineapple chutney over wild rice pilaf with sauteed vegetables; the fish was perfectly cooked and well-seasoned, although it needed the sweet/sour flavors of the chutney to boost the flavor, while the sides were just filling the plate. The family-style dessert options were mostly disappointing, led by the “chocolate lava cake” that was around 40-50 degrees, so the inside was thick like grainy fudge, not oozing like lava. (And the server said this wasn’t a kitchen error.) The French macarons, however, were phenomenal, perfect in color, shape, and flavor, the kind for which you’d pay at least $3 apiece at a bakery in LA or Manhattan.

We did one character meal, breakfast with Minnie and Friends, at the Plaza Inn. The character part was fantastic and my daughter was over the moon to meet characters she’d never met before (Eeyore, Tigger, Captain Hook, and Chip). The food was like a hotel buffet, and there were execution problems all over the place, like trays not being replenished, waffle/pancake toppings still at refrigerator temperatures, and slow service everywhere.

The quick-service Mexican place in Frontierland, Rancho del Zocalo, was also very disappointing, the one place where we ended up leaving most of the food on our plates. I tried the grilled fish tacos, which were bitter, overcooked, and badly seasoned. The rice we were served was dry and flavorless. My wife got enchiladas with carne asada and said the steak was too tough to chew – and she typically orders steak or burgers well-done.

What’s so odd about this is how different it is at Disneyworld, where the restaurants are like well-oiled machines and the food is consistent. We have places to which we look forward when heading to Florida, from Raglan Road to Jiko to Flame Tree and now to Via Napoli as well, and plenty of options that are more than just “fill the stomach” even if they’re not automatic favorites. I don’t know if we hit some kind of lull in Anaheim but it didn’t live up to my expectations.

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→ February 25, 2011
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Catching up on recent eats…

‘Pomo Pizzeria*, located just north of Old Town Scottsdale in the pretentious Borgata shopping center, has been certified by the Neapolitan authority that travels the world and gives its imprimatur to pizzerias serving authentic Naples-style pizza. It lacks the cachet of Pizzeria Bianco, but has the benefit of being easier to patronize, since they’re open for lunch and take reservations, with a product that’s nearly as good as their more famous rival.

*Yes, there’s an apostrophe before the word ‘Pomo, something I have yet to decipher. The Italian word for tomatoes is pomodoro, but if the restaurant’s name derives from that word the apostrophe is on the wrong end. Perhaps the Borgata’s owners insisted on the apostrophe to ratchet up the restaurant’s elitist factor.

‘Pomo’s menu is straightforward – a few antipasti, salads, and many pizza options with an extensive list of ingredients, several of which are imported from Italy, including mozzarella di bufala and proscuitto di Parma. The oven runs up to 950 degrees, on the low end of acceptable for this kind of product, and the crust had the requisite slight char with plenty of lift to it. Neapolitan pizza doughs are very thin in the center and should still be wet when they reach the table, although they’ll tend to firm up as the pizza cools; don’t be alarmed by reviews that call it “soggy,” as that’s an application of an American standard for pizza to a completely different product. The texture is fine, while the dough’s taste is a little quiet compared to the toppings.

I went with two other writers, Nick Piecoro and Molly Knight, and somehow we all ended up with pizzas that boasted at least one pork product. I went with a bianca pizza, one of maybe a half-dozen tomato-less options on the menu, featuring mozzarella, prosciutto, and Parmiggiano-Reggiano, a combination that would be too salty and acidic if you layered any sort of cooked tomatoes underneath them. Nick and Molly both went for tomato-based pizzas featuring more charcuterie, including the diavolo, featuring a spicy salame that ‘Pomo uses in lieu of pepperoni (which is fine by me, as I find most pepperoni to be harsh).

There’s a definite focus here on fresh and authentic ingredients; the mixed greens in the salad were immaculate, the Parmiggiano-Reggiano was the real deal (not some American or Argentine knockoff), and the tomatoes come from San Marzano (although I admit I probably wouldn’t know the difference on that score). They also offer a handful of Moretti beers for about $5 apiece, including La Rossa, a red beer that’s about 8% alcohol that is outstanding but requires that I surrender my keys before ordering. Total damage for three pizzas (which run $11-16 each), a salad, a beer, and four glasses of wine was about $105 with tax but before tip, and we had probably 2/3 of a pizza left over. It wasn’t quite the transformative experience that my one meal at Pizzeria Bianco was, but it is among the best pizza experiences I’ve ever had in the United States, one I strongly recommend.

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Speaking of authentic pizza in America, in December my family and I went to Via Napoli, the new restaurant in Walt Disney World at Epcot’s Italy pavilion; we were lucky to get two reservations in our week in Orlando but I understand it’s become a tough ticket as word has spread. Via Napoli’s menu is somewhat limited, with fewer toppings available and not much in the way of salads, but more antipasto options including some expertly fried verdure fritte (fried vegetables) and prosciutto e mela (prosciutto and fresh cantaloupe). The restaurant boasts three giant wood-fired ovens and the dough is superb, with thicker crusts (perhaps to suit American palates?) but less of the trademarked char on the exterior. As with ‘Pomo, Via Napoli imports many of its key ingredients and I felt the mozzarella they used was more flavorful, perhaps because it contained a little more salt. (Cheese without salt is like water without oxygen.) The dessert menu includes real gelato and a new take on zeppole, the Italian version of fried dough; Via Napoli’s includes ricotta cheese in the mix, which you’d expect would make the end product heavier but instead creates these soft, slightly sweet pillows of dough that don’t actually need any accompaniments but oh hey you brought some dark chocolate sauce so I feel obliged to use it. Via Napoli is where I discovered La Rossa and where I discovered that a large serving of it will keep me inebriated for at least six solid hours.

–

On to Los Angeles from mid-February, where I’ll start with the last meal I had, Bludso’s BBQ in Compton on Long Beach Boulevard, a real hole in the wall that focuses on takeout with an emphasis on brisket and beef ribs. The service was definitely more Texas than downtown LA, and when I asked what the specialty was the woman behind the counter insisted that I sample the brisket before ordering; it was smoky and tender and didn’t need sauce to provide flavor or moisture, although the salty-sweet-earthy sauce they use is a good complement. For takeout they package their meats in foil with a healthy dose of sauce, enough that it started to drown out the meat’s flavors, but that’s easily fixed by asking for less sauce or for the sauce on the side. The ribs were smaller than I expected but had good tooth and pulled away from the bone pretty easily. The collard greens were deep-South style, cooked low and slow with plenty of liquor included; the baked beans had become soft and mushy but had strong flavors from the meat included in them. For about $11 you can get two meats, two sides, a piece of northern-style (that is, very sweet) cornbread, and some of that white bread that people in Texas always serve with Q but that just confuses everyone else. Yes, it’s a bad area, but it’s worth seeking out.

I met my friend Jay Berger at his local favorite sushi place, Yoshi’s Sushi on Santa Monica in West Hollywood. We had nothing but nigiri, which has become my style anyway after reading The Story of Sushi last summer. About half came with a ponzu sauce, including the yellowtail and the halibut; everything was fresh and only the salmon was disappointing, although I should know by now that salmon nigiri is not very authentic – I just love salmon in any preparation. The albacore, which I usually find kind of boring, and red snapper were both among the best I’ve had of each kind of fish. However, I tried octopus for the first time and am still chewing it three weeks later. Next time I’ll stick with the raw stuff.

And I should throw another mention at Square One Dining in Hollywood, which is becoming my breakfast ritual when I’m in town for the Compton workout. Square One focuses on natural, local ingredients, and their breakfasts include some real throwback elements, like bacon rashers cut about three times as thick as you’d get at a typical diner or fresh eggs cooked to order. My only criticism is that despite using good tea, somehow it’s already overbrewed and bitter when it reaches the table, which makes me think they have pots of tea ready to go for breakfast service – thoughtful, but counterproductive.

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→ October 28, 2010
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East Valley eats.

One music note (pun intended) before I get to the food: Arcade Fire’s new album The Suburbs (best album I’ve heard in 2010) and their debut album Funeral are both just $5 as mp3 downloads on amazon.com, probably just through the end of the month (Sunday night). Their second album, Neon Bible, is just $5.99 as a download, but I don’t think that disc measures up – you could buy “Keep the Car Running” and call it a day.

–

Jason Grey has been trying to get me to try Rancho de Tia Rosa in Mesa for at least three years now, but it was never convenient until we moved to this part of the Valley. (When we were here for spring training, we’d stay in north Scottsdale, near Kierland, so heading out to eastern Mesa for dinner was a haul and would have screwed with my daughter’s bed time.) The restaurant absolutely lived up to expectations, especially since, like Ortega’s in San Diego, Tia Rosa makes their own old-school flour tortillas, the biggest delimiter for me between an ordinary Mexican restaurant and an above-average one. We’ve been there once so far, although we’re going again soon, and the portions are generous with very fresh ingredients. I ordered the carne asada, figuring I’d start with a classic dish (the menu has a mix of classics and modern Mexican cuisine); the flavor was outstanding, deep, smoky, not too salty, but unfortunately the meat had dried out a little, probably because it was slow-cooked all day and then held a little too warm for service. I don’t pay extra for ambiance, but my wife was impressed by the building and décor inside; I’m more about the tortillas and salsas and bright flavors, enough that I’m willing to give them a pass on the dryness of the main course.

In downtown Mesa on Main Street, there’s a small lunch place called Mangos that apparently keeps inconsistent hours for dinner, but for lunch it’s more of a nicer twist on a taco shop. Their fish taco is the best I’ve ever had, hot, crispy, non-greasy, with just enough seasoning, and their aguas frescas were outstanding – I went with the cashier’s recommendation, a mix of watermelon and pineapple. The shrimp taco wasn’t as good as the fish taco, mostly because it seemed undersalted, but all ingredients on both tacos were fresh, and the tacos plus beans and rice ran about $11 for more food than I could think about eating. Mangos has a sister restaurant in downtown Chandler called El Zocalo that is just a poor imitation of Tia Rosa, as expensive but with inferior product; you’re paying mostly for setting and atmosphere, and I’d rather pay for the food.

The Urban Grocery and Wine Bar at the Phoenix Public Market doesn’t have an extensive menu, but the market itself is worth checking out. At the grocery counter you can order a few sandwich items, including a roast beef sandwich that feels artisanal through all of its ingredients, from the baguette to the spicy mustard to the unusual pickles, and the sandwich is generously filled. My only complaint was that the roast beef was sliced thickly and incorrectly, resulting in a very tough product that detracted from the experience, but if that’s not the norm, it’s a steal at $7.

For pizza, I’d still call Grimaldi’s the tops among casual places in the area, but Florencia’s on Ray in Ahwautukee (near 40th) does a very solid rendition of New York-style pizza, with just a little too much sauce separating them from NYC slice-dom. The Italian sausage had a nice pronounced fennel note, and the sauce isn’t sweet as it too often is outside of New York. The pesto was a little oily for me but had a good balance of basil, garlic, and cheese. The garden salad, while basic, has always included very fresh ingredients, and the homemade balsamic dressing is solid if a touch thin.

We’ve tried three local dessert options, two of which are gelaterias. The winner there is Angel Sweet, on Chandler Blvd just east of Dobson, tucked in a strip mall with a Starbucks and a Basha’s. The owner of Angel Sweet – whom we’ve never seen – is reportedly Japanese, but I think he has an Italian soul given how incredibly smooth and precise his gelatos are. The super dark chocolate does not boast without cause, as it is about as black as the last banana with strong cocoa flavor, while the mint is actually a straciatella with an unusually round, full mint flavor. The panna cotta and crème caramel are similar, but I prefer the darker caramel notes in the panna cotta. The coconut, one of my two bellwether flavors along with dark chocolate, is bright and fresh and not too sweet. My wife and daughter are both big fans of the seasonal pumpkin pie flavor.

The other gelateria we’ve found is Enzo’s, on Ray Road, run by an emigrant from Italy who also pulls what looks like a legit shot of espresso. He’s extremely friendly, but unfortunately the gelato we had was slightly grainy and didn’t have the same powerful flavors as Angel Sweet’s. Che peccato.

Cake Cafe on Ray Rd in Ahwautukee is primarily a cupcake shop that also sells custom cakes, typically selling a dozen or so cupcake flavors on any given day. I’d call it fringe-average, not quite as good as Sprinkles (which to me is the definition of solid-average, useful since it’s likely some of you have tried it) because the cupcakes tend to be slightly dry, and the frosting portions are a little meager. The buttercreams are smooth and rich with solid flavors, as good as my own but made with (I assume) less swearing. At $2 apiece they’re actually a good value relative to what most cupcake shops charge.

Finally, to the burger debate. It started on Twitter when someone asked if I’d tried Smash Burger, which I did shortly afterwards, but devolved into a partisan Five Guys/In-n-Out argument, which I assume was geographically motivated. Smash Burger itself was a big disappointment; other than the fact that the burger was extremely hot when it reached the table, there was nothing good about the meal. The burger was greasy, but not with the rich, fulfilling flavor of beef fat – it tasted of the grill, of a thousand burgers and chicken breasts and other who-knows-what made before, a stale, slightly burned flavor that made me feel like I was in a rundown diner at 1 in the morning. The fries, covered in a rosemary-garlic mixture, weren’t fresh-cut and probably went from a freezer bag to the deep fryer. With In-n-Out here and Five Guys invading, I see no reason to think Smash Burger can succeed. Then again, I have no idea how Burger King still exists, so who knows.

As for Five Guys and In-n-Out, I stand by my assessment that Five Guys offers a better burger. Most of the counterarguments I’ve heard revolve around the In-n-Out burger package, not the meat itself. When you cook an extremely thin, tightly packed hamburger to well done, as In-n-Out does, you’re going to end up with a dry product. In-n-Out compensates for that by putting Thousand Island dressing, which at its heart is just jarred mayonnaise, on the bun, which adds fat back to the sandwich and keeps the bottom bun from getting soggy, but the burger itself is as dry as it gets. If you don’t believe me, try this experiment: Order a plain burger at both In-n-Out and Five Guys – no cheese, no condiments, no vegetation. Just the burger. Five Guys also cooks their burgers to well done – I wish they would stop at medium well – but the burger is thicker and loosely packed, so it retains some moisture and fat. I just don’t see any comparison.

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→ March 2, 2010
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Houston eats, 2010 edition.

I had three meals out in Houston, one plus, one solid-average, and one fringy. The plus meal was a reader recommendation on Twitter when I put out a call for Q joints. Pierson & Company, a two-year-old restaurant up on TC Jester north of downtown, made a stir when they finished first in a local competition for best brisket and second to Luling City Market* for ribs. When I asked the woman behind the counter what she recommended, she asked if it was my first time at the place, and a few moments later I had a sampler plate in front of me with a small chunk of brisket, a shred of pulled pork, and a hunk of house-made beef sausage – probably close to a quarter pound of meat, gratis. All three were outstanding, with the sausage really standing out for its mix of flavors (beef, smoke, and hot pepper), but I went with the brisket since that’s Pierson’s main claim to fame. I could eat the bark of Pierson’s brisket all day long; the sliced brisket sandwich came with easily a half pound of meat, more than the roll could hold, with a deep pink smoke ring and the perfect mix of smoky flavor and internal moisture. (They’re known for closing early if they run out of meat – the mark of any great barbecue shack, because it says that they’re smoking meat daily and won’t serve anything that’s been stored and reheated.) Their cole slaw was freshly made but a little oversauced, although anyone familiar with the use of a fork could get around the issue, since the vegetables were still extremely crisp. Skip the peach cobbler, though, as it tasted of the can. All that including a bottle of water ran about $10.

*I have read many times over that Luling City Market in Houston is but a pale imitation of Luling Bar-B-Q in the city of Luling, west of Houston. If any of you can vouch for this or contradict it, I’d love to hear about it.

The solid-average meal was a recommendation from a scout who’s worked Texas for a few years: Dolce Vita, a pizzeria/bar on Montrose in what I think is Houston’s trendy-restaurant district. Dolce Vita does a respectable Italian-style pizza, with a thin crust and a mix of traditional and non-traditional pizzas. (I don’t believe you can do toppings a la carte, although I didn’t ask since they offered something I liked.) The prosciutto and arugula pizza was generously topped with both items and properly sauced underneath, which is to say there wasn’t much tomato sauce at all – deconstructed, it was a sparsely-topped margherita pizza with a significant helping of arugula and several slices of prosciutto added after the underlying pizza was cooked. The roughly twelve-inch pizza ran about $13 and I inhaled it despite ripping through more than half of an appetizer, the grilled broccoli with pecorino romano, which despite coming cold (a shock to me, since it didn’t say anything about it on the menu and “verdure” more often refers to hot vegetable dishes) was one of the best broccoli dishes I’ve ever had. The broccoli was grilled and then chopped or shredded and tossed with salt, lots of fresh black pepper, and thick short ribbons of pecorino romano, so in every bite you’re getting salty, bitter, sweet (from the caramelized parts of the broccoli), and umami (from the cheese). Total bill without a drink was $25 including tip.

The fringe-average meal was around the corner from Dolce Vita, a place called Little Big’s. One of a handful of restaurants from Bryan Caswell, a Houston native who’s both a chef (his higher-end restaurants are Reef and Stella Sola) and a sports fan, Little Big’s combines two recent food trends, sliders and gourmet burgers, with middling results. You can order their three-inch-diameter sliders individually, but the standard order is three sliders in any combination of four types – beef with caramelized onions, southern-fried chicken, pulled pork (smoked for twelve hours), or black bean. In the interests of serving you, the reader, I ordered one of each of the first three types. The beef burger was dominated by the flavor of the caramelized onions, which were brilliantly sweet with just a hint of their natural acidity, but the beef itself ended up in the background – and, worse, it wasn’t hot, just warm when I got it. The pulled pork was similarly lukewarm, although I can at least understand why Q might not be served piping hot (it’ll dry out if you smoke it and then hold it too long), but the smoke flavor was strong and it was only slightly sauced so the smoke could come through. The chicken was boring and the crust, while very crispy, had no intention of staying anywhere near the meat and half of it slid off the first time I picked the slider up. Their hand-cut fries are on a par with Five Guys’ (that’s good) and maybe 2/3 the cost, although sitting in a basket they started to steam themselves and became a little soggy. The chocolate milkshake was thick and creamy and redolent of chocolate syrup stirred into vanilla ice cream. I do really like what Caswell’s trying to do here, and with better execution – quality control on the burgers, serving the fries in a paper bag or just a wider basket, using actual chocolate ice cream instead of syrup – it could be plus, but this time out it fell short.

Unrelated to food but worth a mention: I was very impressed by Rice’s baseball field, Reckling Park. I’ve been to minor league stadiums that weren’t that nice and I can see why the NCAA might love to have regionals there when the Owls earn it through their play. I know college baseball is still a poor cousin to its big-revenue brethren on campus, but Rice should be able to convert their history of good clubs and a beautiful stadium into fan support from outside the campus. After all, would you rather go see Anthony Rendon … or Brandon Lyon?

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→ March 14, 2009
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Pizzeria Bianco.

Links first – my blog entries on Team Japan are here and here, the latter featuring a writeup of Yu Darvish.

Last night, I finally made it to Pizzeria Bianco, perhaps the best pizzeria in the United States. Chef/owner Chris Bianco won a James Beard Award for “Best Chef in the Southwest” in 2003. His restaurant earned a 29 rating (out of 30) from Zagat’s. Food writer Ed Levine called Bianco’s creations the best pizza in the United States. Jeffrey Steingarten called it the best in the world. Peter Reinhart echoed these sentiments in The Bread Baker’s Apprentice.

Who am I to argue? It was otherworldly.

The first bite I took of his margherita pizza – tomatoes, homemade mozzarella, and basil – was a Proustian moment, where memories of my last trip to Italy, made ten years prior, all came rushing back so fast that they were crowding each other out to take center stage in the theater of my mind. One bite and I was there, in Genova eating outside in an osteria, in Firenze in a trattoria one level below ground, in Rome, in Assisi, there and everywhere. I have never in my life had a food experience bring back such a torrent of memories.

The pizza nearly defies description; it must be tasted to be understood. The crust is amazing, puffy and blistered at the edges yet soft and airy inside, reminiscent of great naan in texture but thinner with that ideal near-cracker texture in the center of the pizza. The fresh mozzarella was firm, smooth, and – thank God – sufficiently salted, also the best we’d ever had. The tomatoes were bright red and sweet, and the olive oil that came both with the bread and with the insalata caprese was bright and fruity and drinkable straight from the bowl, although I admit I didn’t do this for fear of making a scene. We also tried the Biancoverde pizza, featuring mozzarella, Parmiggiano-Reggiano, and ricotta cheese and topped with peppery arugula; it was more of a knife-and-fork pizza because the dough couldn’t support all of the toppings, but the combination of creamy mozzarella, salty Parmiggiano-Reggiano, tangy ricotta, and spicy arugula was sublime.

The restaurant itself is tiny, with around a dozen tables and a bar with a handful of seats, and a good chunk of the real estate in the building is taken up by Chris’ kitchen and brick oven, which means that you can shower him with gratitude after you’ve experienced his pizza. From chatting with him and reading about him (here and here and here), I understand now that that is what he wants – to have you not just eat the food or enjoy it, but to experience it, to leave having had a magical experience that reminds you – as it did me – of how wonderful food can be.

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