Will Work For Food

I haven't been able to do a blog post since we left St. Louis as we've been driving through rural Kansas and Colorado, where internet service is spotty for us. Luckily, we decided to stop at a campground that happens to have pretty fast free wi-fi, so we got to upload some pictures! Lily posted some pictures from Niche in St. Louis on her photo blog, but here are some more:

Niche is a pretty small, crowded kitchen, as you can sort of see here

Fish guy Chris plating a few things

Popcorn stock - you know, for making buttered popcorn foam! A stock is made from water and air-popped popcorn, and when it is done, it is strained over more fresh popcorn and cooled, then strained again. Then, butter and xantham gum is added, which enables it to foam.

Roasted eggplant soup, plated on top of induction burners. I like the idea of having induction burners for certain purposes when you need to really control the exact temperature of what you are cooking, but Niche uses three pairs of $3000 induction burners on the hot app station for almost everything you would use a regular gas burner for. I still prefer gas, which I can actually control and change temperatures easier and faster, but maybe that's because I'm not used to using induction burners yet.

Meat guy Mark plating a couple things

Some of the guys in the kitchen, me in the fuzzy background

I wish I got to try this dish: Roasted pork cheeks, peach, and foie gras torchon. It looked so fatty and melty and delicious.

Tomato salads - the beans are dressed with a really delicious minted vinaigrette

Meat - I found it interesting that they not only temper their meat to room temp but also season it ahead of time. I've always thought that seasoning proteins ahead of time pulls moisture out of the meat, but even the little scrap end peices I kept tasting (I'm a scavenger) were always juicy and well seasoned throughout. I think proteins might actually re-absorb the moisture that seeps out, taking with it the salt on the surface, sort of like a quick cure.

The second best thing about working at really good restaurants for free - besides the experience gained - is the food I am rewarded with! We ate at Niche one night and An American Place the next, and we were very full and happy at the end of each meal. An American Place was decent but not great - the desserts shined (biscuit with carmelized pears and whipped cream, caramel mousse with stout foam) and the first course was great (barbecue shrimp with ale beurre blanc). Everything else was solid but nothing to write home about.

Niche, on the other hand, was excellent. They just kept sending and sending more and more food, to the point where I had to go into the kitchen with my napkin, waving the white flag for surrender. Highlights:

-Porcetta di testa (spelling) - the whole head of the pig cooked (boiled/simmered?) for a long time, the meats pulled and then rolled in the skin in a big roulade, then sliced thin and served with apples and brioche fingers and something else was there I forget - wonderful

-Their twist on caprese - one slice of good tomato in a cold bowl, topped with burrata sorbet (?!?!), and drops of basil oil around the bowl, then ice cold clear tomato water is poured into the bowl tableside, with the bright green basil oil droplets rising to the top. I wish I had a picture of this dish - it was ice cold, refreshing, sweet, a great palate opener - really amazing.

-Roasted pork belly, pickled peach, and barbeque consomme - barbeque sauce is made and then gelatine is added and the mixture is frozen, then thawed. Apparently the process of adding gelatin and freezing separates the solid from the liquid of any puree. The mixture is then poured through cheesecloth, leaving a very clear reddish liquid that is very light but tastes like really good barbeque sauce. We all loved this dish.

-Desserts - tollhouse pie, ubiquitous chocolate souffle (good though), coconut kulfi with passionfruit sorbet, one more i forget - all excellent

There were more courses we thoroughly enjoyed - many more actually, but these are the ones I could remember.

Oh and on our way through Kansas City we ate at Arthur Bryant's BBQ, which is definitely the best BBQ we've had so far. They have a really good sauce that isn't too sweet - lots of spice though - chilis, cumin, I don't know what else. It was a fun experience.

That's it for now - I'll try to blog more often - but I would also like some comments so if you are reading this let me know!

-Wax

St. Louis Stagaire - Niche and An American Place

It's been a month since I've been working at a restaurant, and I've been getting increasingly antsy because of it. That's why as soon as we got to St. Louis, I contacted two of the best restaurants in the city to get some work for a few days.

Wednesday night I worked at An American Place, one of Larry Forgione's restaurants. The chef there is on the way out and Chef Larry is in Vegas opening a restaurant, so the place is in a bit of disarray. The sous chef Chris is left in charge for the time being, and he's a pretty young guy, but he's doing a pretty good job, especially considering he has no sous chef to lean on. Fortunate for Chris but bad for me is that they are really, really slow right now, so it's not the most opportune time for me to work there. Still, I'm working there tonight for someone who needs the night off. Oh yeah, and Lily and I are hopefully going to get some food out of this, and what I've sampled at An American Place is pretty good stuff.

Chris pointed me to Niche, which is probably the "hot" restaurant in St. Louis with a Food and Wine Best New Chef in Gerard Craft, who is a really cool guy. He and his staff like to do the "molecular gastronomy" thing, which I am still skeptical of, but they use it subtly in a way that I think makes sense. Cooking is all about control and manipulation, and these guys are just occasionally using (relatively) new ways to control and manipulate food. I've been learning a lot in the couple days I've worked so far, and Lily's going to join us in the kitchen on Monday, so that means pictures are coming soon.

-Wax

Fast Food Everywhere

One thing we've noticed from driving through Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Arkansas, is the domination of fast food in the south. We really began to notice this when we passed through Gadsden, Alabama, which is practically the fast food capital of the world.

As we approach Gadsden, which is surrounded by lots of nowhere, we can tell we're getting close to a town because we see a couple little barbecue and southern restaurants - you know, the types of places just outside town that you stop on the side of the road for good grub. It's hard to stop an 11,000 pound camper going 55mph on short notice, and in order to do it you have to be very decisive and break as soon as you see something promising. We can be a bit indecisive at times, so unfortunately we didn't stop at one of these road-side joints, but we figured there would be a handful of places to choose from in the town itself.

We were wrong. We hit the town, and we see a legion of tall signs sporting fast food logos. There's almost every fast food place I've ever heard of - Micky D's, BK, Sonic, Taco Bell, Arby's, A&W, KFC, Chick-fil-A, and more. There were also some we haven't seen before until we came down south, like Jack's (Jack in the Box?), Five Guys, and Zaxby's. Some of these chains had two locations in the town of Gadsden. We couldn't find a single local non-chain restaurant amongst the fast food giants.

Gadsden is a large blue-collar town due to the huge one-square-mile Goodyear factory on the river that runs through it. I'm guessing the reason for fast food being so popular in Gadsden is because the townsfolk work long hours and don't have time to cook or sit down to a leisurely lunch or dinner. However, Gadsden isn't the only town like this - fast food places are everywhere, abundant in every town in the south. So it's not just because people don't have time to enjoy good food - plenty of people down here work normal 40 hour weeks. Fast food has become a part of southern culture, at the cost of the great soul food and barbecue traditions.

Personally, I think a little fast food now and then is fine. But clearly, in the states we've been in recently, fast food is what people eat on a regular basis. Now I'm not the one to lecture on eating healthy, and I'm not going to. Other people will tell you that fast food will kill you. Instead, I'll tell you that it's bad for your mind and bad your soul. Food is something we are eating every single day multiple times a day. I believe is very important to enjoy it, to savor it, to let it be as culturally and socially important as it is necessary for survival. As we drive through the south and continue to see those bright, tall fast food signs peppering the landscape, I really am seriously bothered by how many fast food restaurant there are. And I'm worried that the trend toward fast food will continue to spread throughout the United States, until all regions of the country relegate good food as an afterthought.

-Wax

The Roman God of Wine (And Over-Attentive Service)

Last night my sister and brother-in-law treated us to a really nice dinner, as a thank you for the month's worth of food I cooked for them. We chose to dine at Bacchanalia as it is considered to be one of the best, if not the best restaurant in Atlanta. It's definitely on the pricey side, but my sister wanted us to splurge, so why not?

The food was good, but nothing wowed us. There were highs and lows, and while the food was pretty solid, it would have shined more if the service wasn't so eerily weird. I'm not going to talk about food for once - I'm going to talk about service, hospitality, and when it's going too far.

The first thing we noticed about Bacchanalia is the space... its high ceiling room is very nicely decorated with red cloth hanging as makeshift walls, numbing noise and making the room feel more intimate. The lighting is dim, there are candle-lamps on the tables. The bar is beautiful, with a great view of the open kitchen. The way that the space is decorated screams FINE DINING!, and FANCY!, but something doesn't feel right. Lily points it out. The ceiling is exposed and industrial-looking, and the walls are large off-white grimy tiles. It feels like someone is disguising a school cafeteria as a fine dining establishment.

The second thing we notice is the sheer volume of employees wandering about. We had the first reservation, at six o'clock when they open, and we were really overwhelmed by the army of white-coated servers. First sign of uptight formal service - the hostess brings us to our table, one person pulls the table out for Lily to sit, another pulls my chair out, another brings us menus, and a manager observes for good measure - five people hovering around us. All the while I'm thinking, "go away", as thirty people are watching us, cooks peering out the glass of the open kitchen.

The third annoyance was the menu lecture. Our server explains, "The crab fritter is prepared blah blah blah and is an excellent dish...This is one question we usually get about the appetizers...the sheep's milk gnudi is a blah blah blah...Another question people frequently ask is blah blah blah blah..." Ten minutes go by as he's explaining the menu items, most of which we already know and understand. Yes, we are more knowledgeable than the average customer, but still - Why not just ask us if we have any questions instead of answering every possible question that the oblivious diner might have?

The room fills up by 6:30, but with only a couple empty tables, the white coats are overwhelming. Lily described the scene at Bacchanalia as an ant farm - worker ants swarming all over the place, walking to and from the kitchen, pleasing the queen. They're trying to be subtle - walking quietly when they approach your table, speaking too softly when describing the dishes they bring you with the same exact words as what is printed on the menu (this is a very annoying trend in fine dining).

But as hard as they are trying to provide perfect service and never let your water glass reach 3/4 full, they are failing miserably by constantly interrupting their customers. Lily sent back her requested medium lamb as it came to the table rare - no big deal. It came back perfect, and it was delicious. A manager approached five seconds after the re-fire arrived to ask how it was, and Lily says "I don't know I haven't tried it yet." Then three other little worker ants approached at different times with us mid-conversation and asked how she liked her lamb. "FOR THE FOURTH TIME MY LAMB IS FINE...LEAVE ME ALONE," Lily thought (she's too nice so she said "perfect").

The pacing of the meal was really terrible. Some courses were a leisurely 10-15 minutes apart, and some were not even a minute apart. From the dessert course on, we felt like they were rushing us out the door, snatching up our plates before the spoons hit the table and giving us the check along with the cookies and madeleines. It felt as if the pacing between courses was either, "Take your time, enjoy yourself, and digest a bit before the next course" or "Hurry the hell up and don't let the door hit you on the the way out".

Now I'm doing a lot of nitpicking, and the staff deserves credit for being friendly and staying on top of everything we needed, but this is just an example of how there's a difference between proper, attentive service and protruding, over-attentive service. It can easily make the difference between a good meal and a great meal.

-Wax

Jaleo vs. my grandma's southern fried chicken

Lily and I are in Atlanta now, cooking (and freezing) up a storm for my sister, who is just about ready to pop out my second niece. We haven't eaten anywhere special in Atlanta other than my own cooking, which is very very special...just kidding. We drove here from Washington D.C., with a stopover at my grandmother's house in Rockingham, NC.

In D.C. we had the pleasure of dining at Jaleo with our friend Allison. Jaleo is the flagship Spanish tapas restaurant owned by Jose Andres, who owns multiple restaurants in the D.C. area. I've been anticipating eating there for a while, after hearing about how authentically spot-on their food is compared to the food you would eat in Madrid. Lily and I went to Spain a couple years ago, where our night time activity usually involved tapas-bar hopping. We fell in love with the food there, and we've been craving some really excellent tapas ever since. So, Jaleo seemed the obvious place to get our fix.

My 92 year old grandmother's southern fried chicken was better.

Here's some highs and lows from what we chose at Jaleo:

Sangria - the best part of the meal. Theirs was on par with or better than most of what we drank in Madrid and Barcelona. It's pretty much the same as what you fin in most bars in Spain - wine, brandy, citrus, and a bit of sugar - except they add diced apples which I enjoyed to eat and crunch on.

Pan con tomate - toasted bread with pureed tomatos spread on top - the tomato spread was too wet and too plentiful, so the bread was soggy by the time you ate two bites. We ordered this in Spain a lot, and remember that most of the tapas bars were much more sparing with the tomato spread on top so the bread didn't get soggy.

Selection of all their cheeses - all the cheeses were very good, but curiously and annoyingly were served with breadsticks instead of bread. My favorite was the cana de cabra - a harder goat cheese washed in red wine. The preserved apricots accompanying the cheeses were nice.

Jamon Iberico - only in the past couple of years has this stuff been allowed on American soil by the USDA. I love this stuff, but the jamon they served us was from the lower, less fatty part of the leg, and it was sliced thicker than my liking. It was still good, but I really hoping for fatty jamon Iberico sliced thin so that the fat melts the second it hits your tongue.

Patatas bravas - in Spain this is chunks of fried potatos covered in aioli and spicy (hence bravas = brave) tomato sauce. For some reason Jaleo decided to do it differently and use thinly sliced fried potatoes (like potato chips) instead of whole chunks of potato. The aioli was nice, but the dish missed the mark. They advertised it on the menu as "a modern twist on a classic", but I'd prefer to call it "a classic done wrong".

Salt cod fritters with honey aioli for dipping - my favorite tapas of the night - salty, sweet, slightly fishy, and fried...perfect hangover food which I was left craving next morning.

Croquetas de pollo - these were uninspired - batter is mixed with not enough boiled chicken and then fried not enough - the inside was oozing with raw batter...not for me.

Don't get me wrong...Jaleo was okay, but not great. And I will give them the benefit of the doubt - we came on a Friday night during restaurant week and it was packed. But still, it's the little things that left me slightly disappointed...the annoying rendition of patatas bravas, the too-quiet server, the soggy pan con tomate, the not-fatty-enough jamon iberico.

My grandma taught me how to make her fried chicken, which is as simple as can be (like most tapas actually), and it is her attention to detail - the little things - that makes it great. It's all in the amount she seasons her chicken, the thickness of the egg-milk mixture she uses, the amount of flour she packs on, the gentle bubbling heat of the oil she fries it in, and the patting dry of excess grease when it's done. Her chicken is close to the P-word...(perfect...I dare say).

That's the story of how my 92 year old grandma cooks better than a kitchen full of celebrity-chef-trained cooks in a nationally well-known restaurant.

-Wax

Craft - simple and delicious

Last night we had the pleasure of dining at Craft in Manhattan. Lily and I went with by brother Aaron, sister-in-law Diana, and Diana's cousins Glen and Anelle. I got to pick the restaurant, and while I was considering going to a place well known for an excellent tasting menu and eating that way, I decided that we could really enjoy some very well-prepared, simple food presented family style so we can all share. The six of us ordered the perfect amount of food, which met my high expectations.

Here's what we ordered for the first course (enjoyed with a nice but slightly-too-sweet Sauvignon Blanc):

-Mizuna salad with walnuts, peaches, and truffle vinaigrette, Arugula salad with preserved lemon: these salads were both simple and excellent - especially the mizuna salad with its aromatic truffle vin
-Ragout of escargots with garlic and herb purees, topped with a poached farm egg - I only got one bite of this, but wow - probably my favorite preparation of escargots I've ever had (although I haven't had it more than a handful of times)
-Porchetta with pickled chantarelles and radishes - the head of the pig braised for a long time and then rolled and set in a terrine, then sliced thin. Porky, fatty - a winner for me.

First courses were all close to perfect, but it wasn't a lot of food for the six of us so we were a bit worried about the entree sizes. However, we ordered just enough to leave room for dessert, and ate our second course accompanied by a Super Tuscan red (delicious):

-Whole roasted milk fed poulard with currants and currant gravy: I was worried when they presented this to the table bringing it back to slice it that the skin wasn't very brown (which I like), but in fact the skin was perfectly crispy, every part was juicy and tender, and the gravy was nicely sweet-tart.
-Braised shortribs: everyone liked these for how fall-apart tender they were (probably braised for a long, long time), but I do like a bit of structural integrity when eating braised meats - so it melts in your mouth before it melts off your fork. Still, very good.
-A two pound one month dry aged bone-in cote du boeuf (ribeye), served with two roasted marrow bones: I ate the bone peice, and it was excellent - salty, fatty, and aged very nicely. They were accommodating in cooking half of this medium rare for some of us and medium for the rest. My one complaint for the whole meal - the one single item that I was annoyed by - was that the marrow bones weren't roasted long enough, and the marrow coated your mouth with a fatty residue instead of melting in your mouth.
-Sides - Gnocchi, roasted hen of the woods mushrooms (maitaki), braised swiss chard, squid ink risotto: The gnocchi were very simply prepared (tossed with butter and herbs) but they were so good that 1) we ordered another order and 2) I became jealous and angry because they were better than the gnocchi I make. The mushrooms were perfect - nice and simple like everything else. The swiss chard was nice and earthy, and the squid ink risotto (with peices of squid) was also very good.

After we practically licked every plate clean from our entree course, we ordered dessert. We each had different beverages which I cannot report on, but I had a wonderful not-too-sweet '89 Vouvrais that was perfect. They offered four composed desserts, and then had a section of "create your own dessert", which is just pick a pastry and a flavor of ice cream or sorbet (served in separate dishes). We ordered this course individually, but ended up sharing everything:

-Two of us ordered sorbet/ice cream samplers, highlights were: yogurt, cantaloupe, and plum sorbets, honey ice cream: all ranging from good to I'm-eating-this-don't-touch-it. We got to try pretty much very sorbet and ice cream they had on the menu
-I ordered the sweet polenta cake with blueberries and blueberry sorbet - it was basically a warm blueberry muffin, only one of the best muffins you've ever had. Good, but not great.
-Someone ordered some warm doughnuts, and I was happy for it
-Diana ordered the winner - a "make your own" pairing of bananas roasted in caramel sauce and brown butter ice cream. I got one bite of this, and I'm not a huge banana fan, but wow this was delicious. Simple, too (you see the theme?)

That's pretty much everything we ate last night. Afterwards I asked to see the kitchen because I was curious, so Lily and I checked it out. The chef de cuisine (James) gave me a tour, and he seemed like a really nice guy. I asked him if he'd consider taking me on for a couple weeks sometime next year, and he said sure. So yeah - I might work at Craft at the tail end of our trip!

It was really an amazing meal - definitely one of the top 20 of my life. It got me thinking about the factors that go into a great meal, a subject that I'll write about on my next blog post (this one is long enough). One of the top factors of really good meal is the company you share it with. We had a great time, and for some reason that makes everything taste a little bit better.

-Wax

Done at Primo, wish I wasn't

On Thursday Lily and I sadly left our temporary home that was the employee parking lot at Primo. We'll miss the pigs, and plants, and of course the people the most. I learned so much in the kitchen, Lily learned a lot in the garden, and we ate so much great food during our stay. I can see myself working in that kind of restaurant for a long time, and I have a feeling we'll be back at Primo at some point, possibly to work and if not, definitely to eat.

After a couple days back home, I've been thinking a bit about my experience in Rockland and why Primo is so different than any other restaurant I have worked at before. I came to a realization that can be explained by some of the things the employees do when they are not at work:

One server named Evan is a mushroom foraging junky. Every nice-weather day before work, he heads to his spots in the forest and picks beautiful (and safe) wild mushrooms for the restaurant, which for the past couple weeks have been mostly big, red, beautifugly lobster mushrooms. Evan shows his daily catch to a couple of people every day, who in turn inquire about any recent mushroom turf-wars, prod him for his secret spots, and ask when chantarelles are coming up.

One day on a mutual day off, a couple of cooks headed to the ocean to pick sea beans, a sort of small sea-weed like plant that tastes like the salty sea grass. They brought in a bag full of sea beans to show Chef, with "look at what we got" expressions on their faces. Chef tasted one and nodded approvingly and thanked them. They went up to eat dinner at the bar and were taken care of as a reward.

We ate five wonderful meals at the bar during our stay. Each time we went up to the bar, there were at least two or three other Primo employees on their day off who came to eat dinner at the bar. One night, the whole bar was filled with Primo employees drinking good drink and eating great grub. These people love the food they cook or serve so much that they eat at their own restaurant regularly, at a frequency far beyond any other restaurant I have encountered. One night I grilled the grill cook (sorry) Jason about why he doesn't get "desensitized" from the food he cooks and sees all the time. He defends by saying the food at Primo is simply way better than any other options in the area, and instead of ordering something off the grill which he handles, cooks, smells, and sees every day, he just orders off the saute station.

I have come to the conclusion that most of the people at Primo share a common passion for food that extends beyond their hours at work. True, for a handful of people Primo is just a job to them like at any restaurant, but many employees are in Rockland, ME, or have stayed in Rockland, because of Primo.

-Wax