Juliette's Clog

Mission Chinese Food

2010-07-18T21:28:00.001-05:00

Good stuff! And hipster hilarious. See the other photos on Flickr.

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Sooo, a lot can change in one year.

2010-07-12T01:02:00.005-05:00

Like, I can become athletic.

Who knew?

Well, I suppose 15 years ago I was respectably athletic, but those days are clearly long since passed. Today I survived my first triathlon, just a sprint one, after many grueling weeks of good intentions to train (and subsequently not). Ok, I trained moderately in swimming, which was -and is- my weakest sport by far. I do take small solace in the fact that I was not in actuality literally the last one in the water from my modestly sized wave; Abe claims that I was 4th to last. I even passed a poor, struggling guy from a previous men's wave. I'm not saying it made me feel better, but at least I did not feel utterly alone in the struggle of it all.

Through my own mistake, it seems that I may not receive official race times from my chip. I took it off when removing my wetsuit, and forgot it for the bike, only to put it back on for the run. But, I can at least deduce my overall time, which appears to be 1:32:19, pretty much median in my age group. So not too shabby! ESPECIALLY given that I have biked on the real road all of, I don't know, 6 miles in the last 3 months, and ran precisely one time, maybe 3-4 miles. I'm not so much boasting my lackadaisical nature as reveling in the fact that I somehow managed to pull it off so... passably.

Due credit goes to: Merritt Lander, my *wonderful* swimming coach without whom I never even could have even flailed, gasped, backstroked and limped my way through the first leg of the race as I did (and, as promised, I did NOT dog paddle!); my friends, family and co-workers for their many words of encouragement; Bootcamp SF, specifically Chris and Brooks, for really helping me get more fit but far more importantly grow confident and enjoy being active, from January til April or so... I truly hope to rejoin BCSF in some capacity when my schedule and funds allow. And last but not least, huge thanks to Abe, my roadie, groupie and sole cheerleader/ photojournalist on race day... it really meant a lot to me to have you there :)

SEE THE ENTIRE PHOTOSET HERE

Minneapolis Dy 7: BBQ Fest

2009-07-03T12:30:00.002-05:00

These pictures were taken chez Flicker, where we (and by "we" I mean mostly Doug and partly TJ) staged a meat feast to rival even that of Fogo de Chão. Alongside the carnage we also had tuna & shells, two types of coleslaw, sweet corn, and of course Doug's patented BBQ sauce. Not to mention optionally spiked Koolaid (of the non-suicidal variety) and TJ's home brews, including Chimp Attack. It was exactly the perfect kind of chill backyard affair I needed to do while home for a visit. Thanks again y'all!!

The representing proteins: pork belly, short ribs, veal tongue, merguez à la Rawitzer, chicken and filet mignon.

For dessert I patched together a mille feuille of sorts with sheep's milk yogurt mousse, rhubarb compote and pistachio brittle.

Minneapolis Day 7: The Saints

2009-07-02T15:00:00.001-05:00

Karate Night with the St Paul Saints

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Minneapolis Day 7: lunch at Jasmine Deli

2009-07-02T00:43:00.000-05:00

Going against my intuition, I had a late lunch at Jasmine Deli due to the fact that Quang's is closed on Tuesdays. Sure enough, it was merely serviceable. The pork was wafer-thin and dry, there was little cilantro and no mint in the salad, and the nuoc cham was sweet and one-dimensional. I probably should have gone to Pho 79.

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Minneapolis Day 6: Fogo de Chão

2009-06-29T16:24:00.003-05:00

The Minneapolis outpost of the Brazilian Fogo de Chão chain is situated in one of the massive downtown spaces where no restaurant seems to last for too long. As such, I feared that I had missed my chance to check it out when I moved away. But it's still there, and must either be doing quite well or digging itself very deeply in debt, as it seems to employ a massive armada of meat-wielding "passadors," bussers and other staff. Plus I can't imagine the scale and cost of waste from overcooked or excess meat. Meat-fest aside, I had long heard about the salad bar, a title which may normally imply a forgettable array of wilted vegetables, stale croutons and maybe some sad antipasti if you're lucky. No, this salad bar is epic, not so much in size but in its offerings.

The prosciutto, salami, smoked salmon and manchego zone.

Snazzy salads filled with... more salad!

Green beans bordered logically by... pineapple and mango! Wait, huh?

My somewhat modest salad plate containing cured meats, smoked salmon, steamed asparagus, green beans, beets, peppadew peppers, pickled cippolini, marinated shiitakes, hearts of palm, a little basil dressing and tabbouleh. First of all, the salmon was pretty outstanding for a buffet. Give me a bagel and some capers and I would go to town on that stuff. Everything else looked fresh and attractively maintained, not to mention bountiful, an essential part of any buffet. Did I mention they even had one of those ginormous hollowed out wheels of parmesan, filled (obviously) with its crumbled insides? And I'm not talking about a plastic ginormous wheel of parmesan. And there were whole bocconcini. And a heap of good-looking artichoke hearts. And even waldorf salad for posterity.

The beginnings of meat-fest. A lamb chop and a slice of picanha, which is the cap of top sirloin (fat attached).

Meat-fest in full effect. All told, I also had pork ribs, ribeye, bottom sirloin, yet another sirloin of some kind, ambiguously titled garlic beef (some part of the chuck?), bacon-wrapped filet mignon, sausage (dubiously billed as linguiça), and maybe even some other stuff. My favorite was surely the garlic "mystery" beef, but really hardly anything was not good (a notable exception being the sausage, which my dad had previously raved about, but this time was utterly forgettable). The meats were also seasoned properly, as their surface area was proportional to their mass. I never found the need for any additional salt, which is usually not the case when I eat beef.

You also get unlimited sides of fried polenta sticks, rice, black beans, deep fried bananas, farofa, mashed potatoes, and plenty of pão de queijo. But don't be fooled! These things are all good (well, at least while they're still warm), but the key to the churrascaria experience in my opinion is to stay focused and not be led to distraction from the true, carnal heart of the matter. I limited myself to mere bites of the starchy sides so as to save maximum prime "real estate," as my parents put it, for the good stuff.

A glass-enclosed corner of the dining room, visible to the street, showcasing some beef ribs slow-roasting around the fire.

Service was attentive and friendly, and we truly were bombarded incessantly with meat at all times that we displayed the "green light" token. Although my colon surely doesn't thank me, I thank both Fogo and my parents for the protein bonanza!

Minneapolis Day 5: Chef Shack

2009-06-29T16:23:00.002-05:00

Soft shell crab sandwich with ramp tartar sauce and pickled ramp. Perfectly fine, but not worth $10. Possibly-maybe if it came with an accompaniment, but it would need to be something at least psychologically "substantial" like fries or slaw or something. And then I saw a kid get a small scoop of ice cream for FIVE BUCKS... sorry, but that makes even Crema Cafe look like a steal (don't get me wrong, I'm happy to splurge on my Sonny's i.c.). I like the Chef Shack and what they're doing, and I appreciate as much as anyone in the industry the need for sufficient mark-up to create profit. However, some of that pricing seems way out of whack. What impressed me most, actually, was their sexy and bountiful condiment bar, photos of which I will post soon.

A glimpse into the galley.

I also stumbled into the very tail end of the Pride parade, and the trash-strewn aftermath left in its wake along Hennepin.

Minneapolis Day 4: Bewiched, plus the last night of D'Amico Cucina

2009-06-29T16:22:00.002-05:00

Stopped by Bewiched to say hello and grab lunch, and naturally could not resist the tuna confit sandwich. That tuna, it haunts my dreams and whispers of sacred spices from a land of mythical fish gods anointed with aïoli from the land that time forgot!

Or something like that.

Anyways, it's freakin' delicious.

I could likewise not resist a daily special soup of roasted cauliflower, white cheddar and house cured bacon, which was very nice even in spite of the fact that usually can't stand eating (hot) soup in hot weather. It reminded me of a classier version of the beer cheddar concoction, minus the popcorn (who came up with that one, anyhow?).

Later I dropped by D'Amico Cucina for what I thought would be a brief few courses by myself in the bar but turned into a veritable smorgasbord of hedonism, which ran to such an extent that we were in fact recipients of the The Last plates ever to be sent out of the kitchen (as it was their final service). It was an historic night in Minneapolis (and Minnesota) fine dining that I feel very honored to be a part of. It's incredible that so many of today's well regarded local chefs came out of that restaurant and/or organization. And now the continuity in fine dining that Cucina has represented for these 22 years has shut its doors. But I've been hearing the rumors about the staff's iminent takeover of a certain restaurant downtown, so I suppose it will just be the next evolution (...or some may argue devolution) in the scene.

Wickedly good grilled foie gras and figs with mugolio syrup on a crostino. Nice one, TJ!!

Bigarò, a terribly good blend of moscato d'asti and brachetto, with a pretty rosé hue. Big thanks to server Jeff for his thoughtful gesture of bringing me this to pair with the surprise arrival of the foie. They went together beautifully.

Kumamoto oyster with Red Ice granité and mignonette (only those who closed Auriga will get the Red Ice joke). The oyster was plump and briny, but I stayed away from that granité.

Gently cooked white tuna (poached in olive oil, I believe) with wild fennel pollen and arugula believed to be from Doug's garden. The fish was moist and accentuated nicely by the sweet and aromatic pollen.

Piadina with gorgonzola, prosciutto and warm rosemary honey. This was addictive... what's not to like about fried flatbread, drizzled with honey and topped with sweet-salty ham and cheese?

"Scotched" pheasant egg (we agreed the sausage must have been merguez) with grilled eggplant and roasted peppers. This was probably my favorite course, which was spicy, juicy, salty, sweet and creamy all at once. The sausage and vegetables played off each other very well, while the perfectly cooked egg brought it all together nicely.

Agnolotti of veal braised in white wine with olives and parmesan. Oddly, this reminded me strongly of the church-basement-casserole-style turkey tetrazzini from the Byerly's deli I loved as a kid! Then: bowtie pasta, shredded turkey, cheesy sauce, sliced green olives. Now: Pasta stuffed with shredded veal, parmesan (recalling the cheesy sauce), slivered green olives. Coincidence?...

Somewhere in here we also had a course which I did not photograph of seared foie gras with sautéed morels. This sent our server literally running for a wine to match, which turned out to be a 1927 Bastardo madeira. It was nice, but not a terrific match for the dish. This was a rare night where my cup overfloweth with foie gras... a little morbid, but you gotta get when the gettin's good. And it was good.

Seared black bass with a fennel (if I remember correctly?) and porchetta sauce. This dish had interesting things going for it, what with its surf-and-turf theme, but could have used some tweaking. It wasn't bad, but it was somehow just a bit lacking.

Our final savory course was veal tenderloin cooked sous vide, with braised celery and black truffle. This was flavorful and, of course, earthy, a satisfying "meat" course to end the progression of dishes. Simple elements done well.

I neglected to take pictures of our dessert, a sautéed crêpe filled with frangipane, with vanilla mascarpone mousse, orange flower water croquant, and dried (billed as "candied") apricot. Mignardises were tiny caramel chocolate tartlets with fleur de sel and praline truffles.

I will also mention that we drank excellent wines throughout the evening in addition to those I've already mentioned, including a pinot grigio and a Brunello di Montalcino... but I don't know the details beyond that. The Bigarò was really the discovery of the night for me.

It was a very significant evening, but also very fun and convivial, so once again a huge thanks to my friends for letting me crash their party and join in, TJ and all the rest of the BOH crew for the excellent food, the FOH for attentive and personable service even in spite of the chaos, and of course the D'Amicos for having begun the restaurant in the first place. Yet more additional thanks to Chef John Occhiato and Richard D'Amico for being so extremely gracious.

Minneapolis Day 3: Cocktails and Weiners

2009-06-26T22:53:00.001-05:00

Random happy hour cocktails at Zeno, semi-late night dog from SA (and yes, those are jalapenos)
Not pictured: mango sorbet at Ben & Jerry's

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Minneapolis Day 3: lunch at Sea Salt

2009-06-26T16:13:00.001-05:00

Gazpacho with shrimp and crab and fried calamari

The gazpacho (which I had accidentally ordered with the additional shrimp and crab) was pretty good but decidedly salsa-like, a fact which was reinforced by the side of tortilla chips which I didn't eat. The shrimp were decent but not exceptional, and the crab was watery and tasteless--- which is essentially why I had meant to order the soup plain. But the calamari was great, crispy but not excessively battered, and perfectly tender. The accompanying "remoulade" type dip was kind of ghetto but tasty nonetheless. It also came in a morbidly large portion, which made me wish I had somebody to share with (yes yes, of course I scarfed it all regardless) . All in all, I still find it a bit pricey for what it is and for the fact that it's served more or less like take-out. I guess it validates my original thought which was "why would I eat seafood in Minnesota when I now live on the ocean?" Yet I like Sea Salt for what it is, and it's nice on a gorgeous day like this to be able to grab some fish and chips and a pitcher of Surly to enjoy out under the oak trees in the sun.

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When it's gotta be DQ

2009-06-26T13:55:00.000-05:00

Two very hungry caterpillars

Nothing like a cherry slushie (er, Arctic Rush, that is) when biking the trails while it's 90 degrees.

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Big Bunny!

2009-06-26T13:17:00.001-05:00

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Minneapolis Day 2

2009-06-26T00:32:00.001-05:00

Lunch at Common Roots: beet and wheatberry salad with apple and chevre, toasted onion bagel with veggie cream cheese
Very tasty salad, with all around good flavor and texture. The bagel lived up to the hype I'd been hearing, which is to say that it was very good. With a blistered, very crisp exterior and a nice chew, I'm pleased to finally find a bagel that's got some substance--- unlike the donut-shaped Wonderbread that one usually finds. I would say, however, that some of the pricing seems a little fuzzy... If a bagel costs .95, how does a small swipe of cream cheese work out to $1.55 in addition?

Dinner: pink lemonade and popcorn (with real butter!) at the Riverview, mango-habanero ice cream and strawberry sorbet at Crema Cafe

Late night snack discovery: Turns out HKN's beef with celery is quite tasty the day after, cold.

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Minneapolis Day 1: Hong Kong Noodle

2009-06-24T21:25:00.001-05:00

Stopped by good ole HKN. The so-called "kimchee" is as good as always with its whole coriander and pronounced sweetness, and the watercress with garlic was a big yarn-like ball of tasty greens. For some reason I went off my usual beaten path of "weird" stuff and ordered the comparatively mundane beef with celery, which was fine but probably not something I'd get again. My dad polished off an entire Mt. Everest of lo mein, and my mom navigated a huge rice plate of BBQ duck and bok choy. Makes me wish HKN was still right around the corner from home! And as far as a late night joint goes, what it lacks in Sam Wo's kookiness it makes up for in spades with pretty cheap and very tasty eats.

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Minneapolis Day 1: Brasa

2009-06-24T18:43:00.001-05:00

12 Hour slow cooked heritage pork, jalapeño creamed spinach, curried
chickpea salad, lemonadeThe pork was tasty enough, but completely plain and like any other
carnitas or confit I've ever had. I have been to the mountain top
and looked down upon mere mortal pigs... All other pork has been
ruined for me by Roli Roti! A blessing and a curse.
The creamed spinach was luscious, with a nice subtle heat. At first I found it to be a bit undersalted, at least in relation to the rest of the plate, but eventually a mere squeeze of lime balanced it out perfectly.
The chickpea and barley salad, which came recommended by my server (who curiously kept calling me "ma'am"... I didn't think I came off as so old..?), was quite delicious--- even in spite of the chickpeas being noticably undercooked.

So, not perfect, but still quite tasty and generously portioned: I left quite full (even overly so) and with a small box of leftovers. The damage? $18 bucks with tip, not bad, but I think maybe next time I'll just stick with the side dishes.

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VICTORY!

2008-11-05T01:40:00.001-06:00

The "beach" at Chicago O'Hare, during a 5 min flight change over

2008-08-31T13:46:00.000-05:00

And thus marked the rather inauspicious start of my relocation to one
of the great food capitals in the country, and possibly the world.
Grilled chicken and pickled jalpeno quesadilla, with a side of
guacamole.
You know, I've had worse.

Hello blog, I'm back!

2008-03-15T00:44:00.002-06:00

So it's been awhile, in fact quite a long while, but it's finally time to get back to the keyboard. So much eating and so much cooking has occured in the meantime! It's been over three months since I intended to give my own Best of 2007 list (cliché as they might be), but I will still do my best to to conjure up and put into writing those especially memorable meals and dishes-- of which there was happily no shortage, particularly in SF.

Lately my excuse for having neither written nor barely eaten, slept nor seen the light of day is that I am indeed back to work... in spades. 'Why, why do I keep opening kitchens? Whay do I do this to myself?!' is the half-joking refrain I've cried both aloud and to myself as of late. Is it simple masochism? Does it go back to childhood trauma? Or am I cosmically cursed? Yes, it's painful, to be sure. Really though, in spite of the dramatization, it certainly is good experience.

If I survive.

Ok, really, joking aside, things are going very well, and improving all the time. I've begun having a good time at work, now that I've started to let go of the enormous pressure that I was creating for myself. Not to say there's no pressure, oh no! Indeed there is, plenty enough for everybody to get a big piece of the pie. But I'm trying to take one day at a time, which is really all you can do in this industry so much of the time.

I swear that list is coming. And photos!

(XLB x 2)+(Incanto x 3courses)= FULL

2007-11-29T23:58:00.000-06:00

Despite the fact that I will be returning to SF for a few more days in a week and a half, I went out in a blaze of excessive eating glory yesterday. I kicked off the day with another double dose of xiao long bao in the Richmond, which confirmed my preference for those at Shanghai House. In my opinion, Shanghai Dumpling King's are a bit too sweet and have a less delicate pork flavor. SH's vegetarian goose was also good, very crisply fried and lightly sauced with sweet soy. On a previous visit, the same dish at SDK arrived not only cold but still slightly frozen in the center... never a positive quality. I also tried the cold tripe in chili oil (listed on the menu in a less appealing fashion simply as "cow stomach") at SDK, which was tasty but cut in thick, irregular hunks instead of shaved, of which I much prefer the latter.

After recovering for a good few hours, I moved on to Incanto, my fifth visit in as many weeks. I had come with the intention of just sampling the truffled mortadella agnolotti, but of course the menu had a multitude of new offerings that I found impossible to resist. This resulted in ordering three courses (all morbidly decadent, incidentally), to be consumed all by my lonesome. First off was the enigmatically alluring cod milt bruschetta with shaved fennel. I had assumed that milt was some unfamiliar term for roe... what arrived was a large piece of grilled bread topped with a delicate, pale, creamy mass that looked a lot like calves' brains. Its rich and melting texture, only barely hinting of fishiness, was offset nicely by the crunchy shaved fennel and crisp-chewy bread. Upon returning home, a google search revealed the reality of cod milt... it would seem that I swallowed more than I had bargained for! At first I found that thought pretty... off-putting, you could say. But really, is it so different in concept than eating caviar, or any eggs for that matter? And uni is in fact ovaries, from what I've understood (another polarizing delicacy of which I am a fan). But moving on... Next came another crostino, this time topped with two fat slices of seared foie gras, bits of braised pig trotter, a slice of bacon and sauteed pieces of pear. One third of the way and I wasn't sure I was going to make it to my next course, let alone through this plate. Delicious, yes, but it was truly one of the richest dishes I have ever eaten, anywhere. Oddly, I wasn't into the trotter component; its formlessness and bland fattiness detracted from the foie, whose richness was overwhelming enough already. However the relatively lean bacon partenered very well, its sweet-salty chew providing an interesting dynamic. I would say that the dish as a whole could have used a bit more acidity, as the fairly ripe pears were merely sweet and not at all astringent. Finally, ready to keel over, I mustered up the will to face the agnolotti for which I had originally come in the first place. Showered with shaved fresh truffles (which must have been domestic, given the low price), they were worth it. I didn't love the slightly grainy texture of the ground mortadella filling, which for some reason I had expected to be smoother, but the sweet, subtle flavor with just a hint of nutmeg was very nice. The brown butter sauce was once again velvety and well-balanced.

Third course conquered at last, I rolled myself to Cafe Flore in hopes that espresso might cut through the discontent in my maxed out belly. To no avail, my tummy ache lasted all night, through my flight and into this morning.

I guess gilding the lily has its consequences.

Pomegranate madness, lumache insanity, and the ubiquitous persimmon: autumn in San Francisco

2007-11-25T15:45:00.000-06:00

This is the first time I've been in San Francisco during the fall, and I must admit it's quite pleasant. It's still sunny most of the time and fairly warm during the day, which is certainly more than can be said of Minneapolis at the moment. Menus are featuring fuyu persimmons, pomegranates, stinging nettles, truffles (for a stiff supplemental fee), game birds, fresh porcini, braising greens, heirloom apples and pears, winter squash and so forth. Our Thanksgiving was a blow-out feast: butternut squash soup with creme fraiche and lemon thyme, apple and watercress salad with kurobuta pork belly (braised with the porchetta mixture from Roli Roti, then sliced and pan fried), gingery sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce (with grapefruit zest, ginger and star anise), swiss chard gratin, roasted cauliflower (with chilies, capers and toasted breadcrumbs), yukon golds (with lots of bacon, shallots, garlic, lemon zest and parsley), stuffing with Italian sausage from Boccalone, Chinese roast duck (better, easier and even cheaper than turkey!), buttermilk biscuits, and apple crisp with ice cream. Food coma ensued!

In no particular order, some selected dining experiences....

A few days ago Zuni thankfully redeemed itself from what what was a pretty poor lunch experience several months ago. Good oysters, friendly service, a killer bloody mary (every bloody should have fresh shallots!!), pizza with a good crust, and a truly standout salad of juicy, seared rabbit loin and thin strips of belly on frisee with pomegranate seeds (see?) and shockingly sweet and flavorful pecans. The nocino pot de creme was pretty wonderful, too.

Although not completely perfect, Incanto once again provided a great meal. The biggest disappointment was that they were out of the roasted lamb's neck, the item we had come specifically for on this visit. A crepinette of pork and sweetbreads was so-so in and of itself, but the aioli on the plate was stellar, as was the little watercress salad dressed with a tasty and elusively flavored vinaigrette. Chicken liver ravioli were a bit undercooked (floury raw dough was visible at the seams), but the mousse filling was lushly decadent. The accompanyng balsamic brown butter sauce was perfectly balanced and emulsified, providing just the proper acidity to cut through the rich sweetness of the liver. But the real stars of the meal were the lumache, aka large, tender burgundy snails, which were simply warmed and served atop two purees, one vibrantly green and grassy with parsley, and then a sweetly mellow white garlic one that I suspect contained bread. Atop it all were fried slices of garlic whose slightly bitter edge pulled everything into focus. It was the perfect trinity of snails, parsley and garlic, but without the usual triple helping of butter that you get in France... not that I have anything against garlic butter. Once again we both had different wine flights (northern reds and Tuscan reds, respectively), which I think is a really nice option, especially for a wine philistine such as myself. Finally, moist, warm ginger bread with butterscotch and ice cream was a comforting last indulgence.

We ate crab in two different Chinese joints, the first of which being Chinatown's Great Eastern Restaurant (very very good dim sum, albeit cart-less), the second of which being at Superior Seafood Palace in the outer Richmond. We ordered our crab sauteed with scallions and ginger at Great Eastern, and although it was extremely good, towards the end we couldn't help but covet the crab of the guy next to us, which had been fried and jazzed up with something or other. Plus that guy didn't have to share with anybody... a decided bonus. We ordered a similar preparation at Superior Seafood Palace, and though it was less flavorful it was still very good, plus it cost about five bucks less AND came on a absurd amount of saucy fresh egg noodles.

Little Sichuan in San Mateo is as spicy as I remember it... crimson chili oil bathed tender ribbons of cold shaved honeycomb tripe and beef, and dumplings came literally floating in a big bowl of the stuff. The cold noodles also had no small measure of kick from the oil, although the coolness of the shredded cucumber served to mitigate the heat slightly. Szechwan pepper tied another common thread, numbing the lips and providing floral undertones. A scallion pancake rounded out the spread, but it was not as good as some others I have had (mm, Shanghai Dumpling King....).

Good old Okazu-Ya in the Sunset was as tasty as usual (although our hotate nigiri left something to be desired), but the oysters proved to be one of the best deals in town: $6.95 got us a half dozen Fanny Bays on ice, each topped with a bit of crunchy tobiko, along with a savory-sweet scallion mignonette that we guess must have included soy, mirin and rice vinegar.

The verdict is in: pork tastes delicious

2007-11-03T00:28:00.000-06:00

It's been a veritable whirlwind of eating this past week in San Francisco, and the photos are starting to pile up deep on my camera's memory card (plus quite a few of a certain moustachioed Capitan). Food highlights have included...

-Fantastically tender garlic-butter poached squid and other good things at Canteen
-Many treats at Tartine (such as the unbeatable bread pudding), as well as a very nice dinner at Bar Tartine, which was highlighted by roasted marrow (how could one ever go wrong scooping delicious beef fat straight from the bone onto grilled bread??), as well as meltingly tender braised veal cheeks and perfectly executed gnocchi whose sweet, pure potato-y nature was made to shine
-Lots of good stuff from Pizzeria Delfina, though the clam pie was a let-down
-Many excellent things at Incanto, particularly the seared pork liver, all the salumi (they have an artisan salumi sister-company, Boccalone), and incredible spaghettini topped with an egg yolk and generous grating of intense, bottarga-like cured tuna heart (!)
-Unbeatably cheap and good banh mi from Saigon Sandwiches
-Ridiculously flavorful pork meatballs with braised greens at A16, as well as ciccioli that gives French rillettes a serious run for the money
-Two doses back-to-back of xiao long bao (those inimitable Shanghai soup dumplings) and other treats, at Shanghai Dumpling King and Shanghai House, respectively
-As always, otherwordly porchetta from the Roli Roti truck at the Ferry building, which I plan to consume religiously every Saturday for as long as I'm here

So, it's clearly been a pork-heavy week here, but that's suits me just fine. In fact, tomorrow already being porchetta day once again, I just might continue the trend a bit longer.....

Dispatch from Lexington, Nebraska

2007-10-23T10:18:00.000-05:00

Much has transpired since I last posted, and now here I am, post-Harry's, at a Days Inn somewhere in central Nebraska. Between a toast and jam breakfast and lunch in El Paraiso in neighboring Cozad, we are eating our way to the sunny shores of the Pacific (ones not engulfed in flames, that is). We had a major strike out in that endeavor last night at Don and Millie's just outside Omaha. Our quarry was the cheese frenchee: a deep fried battered and cornflaked mayo-cheese sandwich. The reality: a bland, crumb-coated abomination of a grilled cheese. Onion rings were similarly crumbed and unappealing (although improved by dunking in ranch-- obtained at the big pump at the cash register), and even the morbidly enormous chili-cheese dog was curiously bland and extra greasy. The food settled in our stomachs like a cinderblock, and even the 99 cent margaritas didn't improve things.
Hopefully today we will fare better!

SWEEEEEEEEET!!!

2007-09-24T20:36:00.000-05:00

alineabook.com

.... and yes, I've already preordered mine!

Biopsy: The Sequel... more dispatches from the infirmary...

2007-09-20T16:12:00.000-05:00

Immobilized by our respective bum legs, Andy and I are holed up once more in the living room, with only laptops, DVDs, Vicodin and the sporadic company of roommates and visitors to amuse us. Summer is over. The days are increasingly chilly and gray, which adds to the sense of being marooned indoors. Indeed, this is the most time by far that I will have spent at home since before Harry's opened 9 weeks ago. I am thus afforded the opportunity to catch up on reading, movie-watching, laundry, and evidently, blogging. Despite working so much, there's been a respectable amount of dining in my life as of late, not least of all two weeks ago in Chicago. The breakdown:

Lunch: two different preparations of mole at Tepatulco, as well as ceviche and crepas with homemade cajeta. The ceviche was over-marinated and tasted slightly fizzy... not so nice. The moles (both red varieties), however, were great-- complex, rich and smooth. The corn tortillas were also fantastic, flavorful and resilient. The hot crepas were delicious except for the plantains, which were underripe, bland and starchy. Service was friendly yet somewhat inattentive, and oddly there was no agua fresca or other fruit juice in house. What's up with that? All in all, and in spite of the good mole, we could have done better for an excellent authentic Mexican meal. During the netherworld between lunch and dinner we bought gelato and chocolate from a very friendly man at Canady le Chocolatier.

Dinner: The one, the only... Charlie Trotter's. I was expecting a truly sublime meal, and that's certainly what I got. Naturally, we chose the Grand Menu (ie, "normal" non-vegetarian). I also requested to sample all of the desserts at the end of the meal, a request which was almost accomodated... I think maybe 2 or 3 things didn't appear, but we still had 6 (or 7?). Highlights from the meal... a gorgeous bowl holding monkfish, several varieties of seaweed, sea beans and the freshest salmon roe I've ever had, with hidden pools of kaffir lime sauciness and lemon creaminess.... tomato granité of astoundingly pure flavor.... a spicy yet balanced composition of, among other things, cockles, serrano and three preparations of celery (which reminded me of Michael's gazpacho at Auriga).... pickled ginger that we suspect to have been braised in lamb demi (whose scent and taste provoked in me an oddly strong association with my mom's adobo).... the shockingly harmonious flavor combination of canteloupe, feta and spearmint.... a perfect watermelon sorbet, topped with an impossibly tiny squash and its attached blossom.... a chocolate dessert incorporating Iberico chorizo..... and along with the entire meal great wines, the best of which being an incredibly honeyed and complex auslese riesling. Service was of course gracious, informed and, above all, inobtrusive. At the risk of sounding cliché, our dinner wasn't short of being.... pretty magical. But then it also had everything to do with me feeling damn lucky and happy to simply be there, sharing a beautiful experience with someone very special.

Figuring it couldn't hurt to top the night off with yet more food (coupled with the fact that we had botched our opportunity to go earlier for lunch), we decided to rush over to Blackbird for yet more dessert--- specifically the butterscotch-bacon ice cream. One cheese plate, two glasses of Tokaji wine and three desserts later, very serious food coma was beginning to take hold. The bacon ice cream was certainly awesome, but the overall combination of elements (mission fig beignets, raspberries), although plated beautifully, wasn't my favorite. The parmesan toast (like cheesy french toastix!) with peaches and olive oil ice cream was tasty but would have been much better had the olive oiliness come through. I would say my default favorite was the crepaze with rhubarb consommé and the best pistachio ice cream I've ever had-- although the promised candied celery was stringy and not candied at all. After falling unconscious on my friend's couch shortly after this orgy of desserts, we realized it was time to retire to the hotel.

The second day I struck out on my own, winding up in Chinatown. Although in search of dim sum at Shui Wah, I couldn't ignore the place a few doors down, Lao's Sze Chuan, whose windows were pasted over in press clippings. So, I did what any respectable eater would have done and ate two full meals back to back! At Shui Wah I had fried seaweed rolls (not so special), har gow (excellent), chive and shrimp dumplings (awesome), and pan fried chive dumplings (sweeeeet). Total, including tea and tip: about 12 bucks. Trying to capitalize on the time window before my hypothalamus would realize my stomach was full, I proceeded to Lao's, where I had very good cold spicy beef tendon and a huge, wonderful bowl of clam and tofu soup. In a daze of shrimp, chili oil and jasmine tea, I wandered into a bookstore a couple doors down and impulsively bought an instructional book written in Mandarin on the fine art of carving taro, daikon and carrots into frilly dragons, pandas playing the drums, monkeys grooming each others' butts, frolicking antelope and the like. Although I had a mind to return to Blackbird or Avec for dinner, I later continued the Asian eating theme of the day with a huge amount of sushi at a little place in Wrigleyville.

And thus ended the 36-odd hour Chicago Whirlwind of 'o7!

......unless you count the sausage-egg english muffin and chocolate milk I had at the truck stop during the bus ride back to Minneapolis.

It seemed so right at the time.

Chicago in a nutshell

2007-09-07T14:36:00.000-05:00

...and now, in macro!

2007-09-04T01:22:00.000-05:00

Macro lens-outfitted camera in hand, I venture forth to Chicago, for 36 hours of relentless and unrepentant eating.....

Alright, Charlie, hit me with your best shot!!

And now, my world as viewed through the lens of the *ist!!!!!

2007-08-27T14:53:00.000-05:00

At long last I have uploaded my first batch of photos off my fairly new camera!!!!! See them all on Flickr. They also serve as a decent photo-narrative of the last 8 weeks during which I've been utterly absorbed in work (and subsequently not blogging).

A few of the more interesting dining highlights from lately:

La Belle Vie's lounge-- the Tomgirl cocktail (fantastic), foie gras (we decadently tried two different preparations), escargots and desserts. Freakin' wonderful. Followed by very good nigiri at Sushi Tango (toro, uni, unagi, hotate and ama ebi).

I also checked out the eagerly awaited Brasa, which was pretty good. I definitely want to go back and try the chicken, creamed corn bread, cheesy grits, braised collards, tapioca pudding......

Wilde Roast is pretty good, too.

On Food and Cooking (according to me)... aka, Juliette gets all new-agey up in here

2007-08-20T18:00:00.000-05:00

My current job is having a tremendous impact on my perspective on food....

I am at last coming to fully embrace the fact that food is at the very forefront of my interests. Food is the lens through which I view the entire world around me. It informs many of my decisions, just as my mood informs my taste on any given day. Food is possibly the single most important thing to me in this world, and I'm finally starting to take real pride in that, as opposed to feeling somewhat bashful and geeky. Or maybe it's that I'm learning to take pride in my geekiness. More than anything, I'm coming to realize that I'm blessed to have found my passion so very early on in life, and to have been infinitely blessed with the privelege of being able to pursue it as a career. That is a truly wonderous and wonderful luxury that proportionally few people in this world are afforded. In fact, I experience no small dose of guilt from that fact... years back, at the height of my political activism I wanted to change the whole world, in that way that only kids think they can. Misogyny, racism, heterocentrism.... you name it, I would put an end to it! And then I burnt out. These days I'm less politically hardcore, at least in action, but I feel a real moral dilemma about how to incorporate the task of improving the world into my chosen life of preparing food. I know the two are compatible, in fact wildly so. The need to be nourished, spiritually and physically, exists in every living thing, and these days I find that we as the human race are generally lacking in both regards. So how to approach this task? That's the 64,000 dollar question. The recurring question I ask myself is "do I want to cook food for rich people food the rest of my life?" as well as its follow-up question "if I cook food for rich people the rest of my life, on my deathbed will I feel as though I have helped the world to be a better place for my children and their children?" Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not down on all rich people. In fact, in the grand scheme of the planet, I'm a pretty damn rich person myself. I guess more what I mean to say is, I create art, I am an artist, I create something of aesthetic and gustatory value mainly to serve the hedonistic desires of myself and others. Can't I do more?? Can't I improve the world while practicing my craft? Can't I affect some lasting change in this world on a small or even moderate scale? Can't I help save humanity through foodsy endeavors?

I guess I'll find out. But for now I completely love my job.

Queen of Prime

2007-08-18T22:53:00.000-05:00

Last Friday marked my lifetime debut on sauté, and I am hooked. I feel like I never want to work another station ever again! Last Saturday I was almost swallowed a few times by the Prime Monster: three sizes of prime rib, carved to order, cooked to different temps, up with items from other stations... but we pulled through and emerged victorious in the end. It was exciting! Yet to pastry I am wed, and to her I must remain faithful. But perhaps I will be able to pick up some sauté shifts on a regular basis.

Computer finally fixed, I will hopefully soon be able to upload my many, many photos off of my new camera...

29 Days Later

2007-08-05T18:26:00.000-05:00

A day off! My FIRST!!! What better way to celebrate than to go out for a drink at... work! Ironically, I just can't stay away. I want to take a visiting friend there, and it appears as though today is my sole opportunity.
Amazingly, I had the chance to go out and grab some actual sit-down dinner on Friday night. I finally, after years of meaning to go, made it to the 112, which was of course bursting at the seams at around 9:00. I had the duck and radicchio salad and the steak tartare, both of which were good. And today I had yet another chance to eat out in the normal world, this time at the Chicago-y neighborhood joint Chris and Rob's (formerly known as Joey D's). Killer italian beef. Of course I've been photo-documenting all of this (and more than my fair share of last-calls at Grumpy's), but with no computer I can't post anything.

2007-07-30T09:06:00.000-05:00

Still here, but I have traded civilian life for that of an increasingly depraved line cook for the time being.

Bare bones update:

-Momentum rapidly, frightfully gaining at Harry's.

-Got a new DigiSLR! But our computer is dead and so I cant upload photos from it :( Many barbecue and drunk-at-the-bar photos so far.

-Survived an EMG, in spite of quite literally wanting to die at certain points.

Obviously, working about 100 hours a week has a tendancy to cause a blogging standstill (not to mention eating, sleeping, interacting with other human beings, etc etc).

Updates again someday.

Sugar, surgery, sweat and stress: the first half-week at Harry's Food and Cocktails

2007-07-15T02:04:00.000-05:00

Above: us in the kitchen. I'm at left.

We've been public now since Thursday (the full website is yet to come), and are just starting to get our sea legs. Certain difficulties have been... considerable. Take, for instance, non (or barely) functioning major equipment (which willfully resist repair efforts), next to zero dry storage space (a zillion shelves soon to come), a frightfully (over)crowded walk-in, not to mention the insanity of a dozen or more cooks in a space that often seems as small as a ship's galley.

The way around having no acceptably functioning ovens on soft-opening day?

1.Pack up everything pastry related, veiling raw panic with incredulous humor at the surreal nature of the situation.
2.Call Rainbow Cab .
3.Take over part of a dear friend's bomb-ass prep kitchen a mile away. During lunch service. While said friend is (simultaneously?!) doing a tasting menu and a photo shoot for a magazine. (By the way, THANK YOU TIMES INFINITY, YOU ALL KNOW WHO YOU ARE.)

And what if on that day you're missing a sliver of quadricep from a muscle biopsy performed that morning at 7:00? Codeine sulfate and cyclobenzaprine, that's what.

Keep in mind that the above solution does not resolve the issue of unloading again back at the restaurant only to discover that there is almost nowhere to establish a dessert line, much less stock the prep anywhere...

Needless to say, desperate times called for desperate measures. Tony ain't got the monopoly on kitchen stories!! Things are much much calmer now, at least for the moment, as we try to organize systems in anticipation of the impending onslaught of customers.

In fact, it's the calm before the storm.

HARRY'S FOOD AND COCKTAILS: HOLY SHIT, WE'RE OPEN FOR BUSINESS

2007-07-13T00:16:00.000-05:00

500 Washington Avenue South. You know the statue of the fat naked people dancing?

That's us.

Behind the scenes scoop coming soon.....

Hospital food and other (better) recent dining highlights

2007-07-02T22:57:00.000-05:00

A few days ago I was served an enormous breakfast in bed of cheese blintzes with cherries, bacon, oatmeal, milk, coffee and apple juice. And at which bed and breakfast did I have the pleasure of vacationing? None other than Methodist Hospital, a most caring host--- albeit one whose rate will prove to be most, er, indulgent to a poor sucker such as myself without health insurance. It's been 13 years since I last spent any great length of time in a hospital. That breakfast was relatively edible but by no means good, though I will say that lunch the next day was actually pretty decent: chicken noodle soup, big turkey sandwich, macadamia nut cookie.

Needless to say, neither of these meals were especially memorable, due not least of all to my general haze of pain and displeasure of being hospitalized.
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On to better things. I returned a second time to Queen of Sheba for more kitfo and tibs, and was certainly not disappointed. This time I took the kitfo cooked medium rare for Ryan's sake, and although I think I prefer it raw, it was still very good (except it seems that I did not get the version I had ordered). The special tibs were great, although I was less into the texture of the dried beef than I had expected to be. Otherwise, it was tangy, a bit spicy and with a great texture lent by the torn up injera that got all mushy, thereby binding the sauce together and making it easy to scoop up with yet more injera.
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A couple weeks ago I dropped by Vincent for their happy hour, trying the tomato braised octopus (which turned out to be baby octopus) and the pommes dauphines (a bit greasy). Nothing to blow my socks off, but a steal for the price ($4 and $2.50, respectively). That plus a perfectly drinkable three buck glass of Chilean pinot noir equals a good deal that I'd probably go back for if I were in the neighborhood. Sadly, I missed out on the days of the happy hour 6 buck Vincent burger (now $8), although to be honest I saw a couple of them walk by while I was there and they looked more diminuitive than I recall from years past. My imagination?
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While we're on the topic of burgers, let me segue to Barbette's Royale with Cheese. It was coincidence that I found myself there immediately after Dara covered this very burger, but with her endorsement in mind I ordered one up. Everything Dara wrote is true:

Each bite is gooey, beefy, funky, craveable, and just enough too much, if you know what I mean.

My sole point of contention (unrepentant gourmande that I am) is that I actually could handle a little bit more too much-- if you know what I mean.
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Next up, the very cute Cafe Ena, sister to El Meson, both just up the street. The room is lovely, bathed in bright, warm tones of ochre and chiles, with rustic exposed beams and an airy, expansive feel from the wall to wall windows onto the street. Service was extremely friendly and eager to please, but not very competent on this particular day (no menus for a very long time, our appetizer came out after our entrees, etc). The menu is a unique blend of Latin cuisines without being over-the-top or inaccessable. Delivering fully on that potential, the food was all very good, from seared coriander-encrusted tuna salad to the ceviche (which included among other things sweet, buttery, morsels of sea scallop) to a dense wedge of flan (topped with strawberries and outstanding). Even the fries were great. My only concern is some of the prices, considering the neighborhood... for 12 or 14 bucks, we had expected the salads that include chicken or tuna to be more substantial, yet in fact their size, although not downright miniscule, was more so that of a first course. In this neighborhood which straddles the line between middle and upper-middle class, this fact could be a turn off to budget-minded families who could just as soon head a bit further down to The Malt Shop or Broders, or even to Bistro Levain, which offers a comparable price point yet larger portions. But then again El Meson seems to continue its success, and so hopefully people in the area will recognize the quality and uniqueness of Cafe Ena-- and make sure it sticks around. It's definitely a place I'm happy to have around the corner.
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Priced most appropriately for my (lately nonexistant) income is Lu's Sandwiches, the teeny bánh mì joint located in the parking lot on the south side of Shuang Hur. For $2.50 you get your choice of 5 subs, which they toast up briefly. When eaten immediately (perched right there on the Nicollet curb, as I prefer to do) this gives you a warm, crisp crust to contrast the spicy, meaty and pickly guts. This is a procedure sidestepped by some places, and no matter how good the filling, makes all the difference. Of the all the tested contenders on the Vietnamese Nicollet strip, I do in the end prefer Quang's cold cut bánh mì, despite its untoastiness. It's got mayonnaise (I'm not a fan of Lu's use of butter), the pâté is peppery, everything is plentiful and fresh, and I do like the thickly sliced headcheese, in spite of its shocking firetruck red color. But Lu's has a couple options that Quang's does not, and I'll most certainly be back to try out at least the sour pork sausage. Ah, Vietnamese food. I love it.

A glimpse into what's been cookin' chez moi lately:

2007-06-27T00:06:00.001-05:00

Saffron: get your ass down there!

2007-06-26T23:52:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was a balls-to-the-wall eating extravaganza, kicking off at the Sibley Plaza strip mall gem Queen of Sheba and finishing with Saffron Restaurant and Lounge. Queen of Sheba will get their well-deserved shout out in another post... for now let's focus on Saffron, shall we?

Having opened in February, highly favorable reviews can be found from the Strib and MSP Mag, as well as in a growing thread on the Mpls Chowhound board. I agree with the lot: practically everything coming out of Saffron's kitchen vibrates with freshness, and the execution last night, from a cook's perspective, was mostly flawless. The unique thing about Saffron's food is its successful marriage of middle-eastern, north African and mediterranean influence. Recurrent are the flavors of harissa, mint, cumin, cinnamon, cilantro, parsley, za'tar, sumac and, of course, olive oil. At the same time, western luxe favorites such as ahi tuna and foie gras are enlivened by astringent, herbal tabbouleh and a dab of subtle rose jam, respectively. I had the luck to try almost everything on the menu-- a staggering 25 or so dishes which the four of us, in attack formation, took on 3 items at a time (we told them to just keep sending food until we could handle no more). A few favorites: deviled eggs topped with high-quality olive oil tuna, capers and a few blades of tarragon; rich and earthy house-made mirqaz (merguez) sausage, on a tangle of sweet and tender roasted red pepper confit; sugary date slivers with creamy, neutral goat cheese and fresh thyme; a special not-on-the-menu plate of beef carpaccio topped with spicy, zesty cumin-laced beef tartare, crisp fried chickpeas and brown butter; the delicate vegetable bisteeya which in my mind recalled baklava with its walnuts, almonds and crisp phyllo dusted with cinnamon powdered sugar. There were very few disappointments. The scallops had sounded promising, but the saffron sabayon was thin and lacking in flavor. The main course items we tried were well executed, but inherently less exciting than many of the small plate items-- yet at this point we were also getting to be quite stuffed, which consequently altered our perception. I had been thrilled at the thought of the house made lamb bacon accompanying the braised lamb shoulder, but in fact it had been simmered with the chickpeas and had therefore all but dissolved as far as we could tell. But apparently at lunch they offer a BLT featuring it in its rightful, unadulterated salty, lamb-y glory (at least, that's how I imagine it). Desserts (admittedly overkill for us at this point) were really nothing special, but not bad. A turkish coffee and chocolate ice cream was very nice and not too sweet, as was an intense cherry sorbet. Happily, Saffron also pulls a good espresso... I'm always so disappointed when a meal ends with bitter, watery coffee. Monday through Wednesday the already affordable wine is 1/2 price, and we drank a nice chablis followed by a tasty Oregon pinot noir.

Even after the dining room eventually filled completely, service thoughout the evening was attentive, efficient, friendly and very well-informed (despite just a few times when mint was verbally identified as basil, thyme as rosemary and other such finicky things that only stickler cooks --such as yours truly-- give a damn about). Our many courses came at a steady and appropriate pace, water and wine were generally refilled frequently, plates were cleared very quickly, and our server thoughtfully replaced our silverware and small tasting plates every couple of courses as they got all saucy.

I really do hope to see Saffron continue its success beyond a couple-month wave of popularity from favorable reviews. As I and many others have already expounded upon, the Minneapolis fine dining scene is a fickle mistress these days. So get out there, spend that extra 60 bucks or even 20 bucks burning a hole in your pocket, or else we'll be screwed with nothing but goddamned Wolfgang's worthless pan-asian blah blah blaaaah!

Sick, twisted... and undeniably delicious

2007-06-17T11:54:00.000-05:00

In the summer I love few things better than a fat burger from grass-fed beef, lovingly grilled over blistering hot coals to a wonderfully carcinogenic char, revealing a carnal medium-rare interior, served on a soft but substantial homemade bun with few or no fixin's. Like this one. Or Ryan's signature off-the-hook concoction of beef mixed with lots of diced red onion, good blue cheese, garlic and a hefty dose of black pepper.

But sometimes you find yourself wasted.

At 3am. Biking down Blaisdell Ave, about to cross Lake St.

Yes, friends and family, you know what that means: I paid a visit to The Castle. Yes, the white one. Ryan and I are both to blame for this, er, lapse in reason. We were truly enraptured by the sweet but deadly siren song known only as The Drunk Hunger. But you know what, those bacon double cheeseburgers (two each!) were preposterously good, perched there on the dirty Lake St curb while drunkenly dissecting the highly dubious merit of the term "steam-grilled." I don't know what heinous, biohazardous mojo they put in those damn things, but by god were they good at the time!!

Levain redux: Bistro Levain

2007-06-15T23:30:00.000-05:00

Due to my underwhelming (read: empty) schedule, I made a point of being among the first kids on the block to scope out the reincarnation of Levain... out with high-fallutin' (read: exquisite) degustation, in with reasonably priced Frenchy food for the neighborhoodies: meet Bistro Levain, of which we've been recently hearing anticipatory rumblings. Now, I very very unfortunately never got to eat at the original Levain, so I can easily refrain from drawing comparison between the two. The following is a general breakdown of my evening on opening night, June 12th 2007...

Upon arriving at 8:00, the room was almost completely full, and subsequently quite noisy, which lends either a very convivial or irritating quality depending on your mood. Like the other diners, fortunately we were feeling convivial, although all the shouting around the table did prove a bit tiring. This was not aided by the fact that our table, a six top, was too large for our party of four, but of course that can't be helped when they're the last seats in the place, which I believe they were. So, settling into the bustle of the pleasant, low-lit (but not annoyingly dim), newly woodpaneled room, we ordered a nice bottle of 1995 reserve I-forget-the-details Rioja and opened our menus. The first thing that struck me were the encouraging prices: mussels available in two sizes, for 8 bucks or 14, nice salads for 6 to 9/ten-ish, main courses for I think as little as 12 and topping off at around 20. For the neighborhood, I find this price point to be decidedly correct. The second thing that struck me was momentarily a little more surprising: in this day and age of seasonal, local, farmer's market-driven dining hype, the menu at Bistro Levain is straightforwardly, well... bistro-y! See this excerpt from Wikipedia's definition:

A bistro is a familiar name for a type of small restaurant serving moderately priced simple meals in an unpretentious setting, especially in Paris, France. A bistro may not offer professional service or printed menus, and it will usually specialize in simple classic dishes such as steak au poivre, French onion soup, and coq au vin.

Small? Check. Unpretentious? Check. Moderately priced? Definite check. Simple? Another check. And although there's no steak au poivre, there was a hangar steak (mm, good ol' onglet... love it!), and also both onion soup and coq au vin. Which is to say, these are indeed bistro classics-- which, if you're like me, you might find to have a winter-weather, stick-to-your-ribs feel. Meat and potatoes. But, fair enough! We began with all three of the offered starters: a take on moules à la crème (the mussels here steamed with wine, a bit of cream, tomato and chives), breaded and fried frogs' legs with a sauce reminiscent of rouille and wedges of roasted fennel, and pork rillettes. A very thoughtful touch is the condiment caddy that every table receives, which this night featured a tasty corn relish, chopped marinated beets, quick-pickled shaved cucumber, and a loose and good aïoli. Next we shared an arugula salad with a creamy lemon vinaigrette and grilled marinated artichoke hearts, a chilled cucumber soup, and the French onion soup. For our mains, we got coq au vin, braised shortribs, roasted chicken and duck confit (yep, that last one was me). Another user-friendly system is that you choose your own side dish with all of the main courses, which can also be ordered à la carte. These included grilled asparagus with lemon, roasted brussels sprouts, mac n cheese, fresh fries, roasted (or sautéed? I forget) mushrooms, bread and tomato salad, and maybe even a few more I can't remember. So let's start at the beginning...

The mussels were well seasoned and fairly plentiful considering we had ordered the smaller size. The frogs' legs were presented simply and prettily arranged, offset by smears of the sauce and a couple wedges of the fennel. This dish, although not bad, was not a standout. The frog was, as frog frequently is, just like chicken, and therefore was like eating oddly shaped breaded chicken wings. The sauce added the only flavor to the otherwise bland and lean meat in its crisp coating, and the fennel, although tender and flavorful, we found to be overly oily. Them frogs' legs... I always want to like the idea (unlike most people), but the only really great ones I've ever eaten were at some Thai place in Miami when I was a kid. Oh well. I tasted only a bit of the rillettes. The seasoning was good, but I felt they lacked the lush, artery-clogging quality so inherent to that preparation. And one other little thing that bugged me: our bread baskets came with a dish of lovely big butter curls... which were fridge-cold and unspreadable. Argh!

I feel that our second course was the highlight of the meal. The salad was simple, properly dressed with a vinaigrette that reinforced the assertiveness of the arugula while still holding its own, and with ingredients as fresh and crisp as you could want. The artichokes were of the canned/jarred variety, but still very good and a bit warm and smoky from the grill. And wasn't there mozzarella on there too..? I think so. Anyhow. The cucumber soup was clean, pure, refreshing and subtle, maybe the best version of this classic I've had. Enhanced by a few drops of olive oil and just a mere spoonful of crème fraîche, the cool, melony nature of the vegetable was able to shine through. The texture was also just right, smooth but with some body, which we suspected might be thanks to a bit of buttermilk. And the French onion soup was a real champion! This is the kind of dish that holds no interest for me during summer months, but I had to sample it anyways... it turned out to be a little bowl of insanely rich, beefy stock, onion-sweet without being cloying, with a molten crown of good quality cheese. It truly had the substance and depth of demi-glace; I challenge anyone to find a better French onion soup this side of Bouchon (um, who I can only imagine to have a good version). On the side came a fluffy heap of fried shallots scattered with chives. Crispy and good, but far too many of them.

Moving on, I was a bit let down by my main course. My duck confit arrived missing its thigh section almost completely, and was tender but curiously did not taste seasoned throughout (despite the fact that it had, of course, been salt-cured). Its accompanying red wine-blackberry sauce was ok, but nothing special, and therefore to me superfluous. There was was also a small pouf of assertive greens and flat parsley dressed with lemon, whose brash sharpness served as a nice contrast to the rich meat. I had chosen the bread salad as my side, which turned out to be a large dish of olive bread croutons, chopped tomato, lots of thinly sliced red onion and shredded basil. It was summery, well seasoned with a good balance of salt/acidity, and the tomatoes were actually quite good for this early in the season. My single criticiscm is that the croutons were slow to soak up the juices and mostly remained intact and hard; torn pieces instead of cubes would fare better (although admittedly a prep nightmare), and perhaps the whole could be combined in small batches throughout service so as to allow the bread to better resoften. I did not try the roasted chicken, but the report was good, nor did I try the shortribs. I did sample the coq au vin and was unimpressed. The sauce seemed muddy and indistinct, the chicken without much character. Dessert was simple, but so-so. Crème brûlée was fine and what you expect.... although misspelled on the menu (ok, ok, I do know that I'm a big ass when it comes to that!!! But yes: missing/incorrect accents in French does equal misspelled. Also: the menu states that rillettes are "similar to pate..." this is neither French or English, though it's more similar to "pâte,"which means either quite simply "dough" or "paste" or "pasta"). I had good hopes for the tarte Tatin, but alas, it was limp and uncarmelized. Next time I would like to try the licorice ice cream.

Aside from the food, service was friendly and mostly adequate, but could use fine tuning... water glasses were always filled, but bread was not replenished, plates were not brought for sharing of the starters, and things like dirty silverware did not always disappear. Smaller things, but ones to address nonetheless.

All in all, Bistro Levain has all the makings of a great neighborhood place, and worthy of a short detour for their highly affordable (and accessible) French food in a pleasant yet casual atmosphere. Et là, ça va marcher très fort, à mon avis......

See my several (very poor quality) photos here.

*EDIT: In an effort to google this post, I came upon a January post on Andrew Zimmern's Chow and Again also entitled Levain Redux... just for the record, I ain't tryin' to be a little blog thief! (A relevant problem, I should add, which was recently brought to my attention at Chez Pim.) Actually, I now realize that I had read his post soon after it was published, while I was scoping out what the town had to say about the closing of Auriga (ah, my dear departed). His observations on the dining scene vs. MN consumer mentality are still interesting and highly relevant, especially as we are just beginning to see what might be the next phase in that scene's evolution, what with Doug Flicker now steering Mission and Steven Brown apparently about to open the kitchen for Harry's Food and Cocktails. Yep, a few days ago Craigslist's employment ads spilled the beans on that one, unless there has been some gossip I've missed:

Harry's Food & Cocktails is opening in early July and we need to staff our kitchen.... This is an excellent opportunity to work in a top kitchen with a well known chef making original cuisine with a neighborhood mentality. Our motto will be; Nothing Fancy. Everything Tasty! some examples:
* pressure cooked pork roast with strongbow cider and mustard de meaux
* dry aged duck breast with pickled grapes and sherry
* the harry burger - 100% organic chuck with local cheddar and harry's secret sauce. served with a grainbelt, of course........
*Please Email resume and letter of interest stating why you want to work at Harry's to the attention of Steven Brown.

So we'll see. I'm as hopeful as the next diner to see Minneapolis poke its head out from the ashes.....

Bistro Levain Minneapolis restaurant review MN 4800 Chicago Ave Turtle Bread Company

Rage against the machine, indeed!

2007-06-10T19:18:00.000-05:00

I found this to be a rather interesting article on the increasing impact of the "food blogosphere" on the mainstream.....

Through the lens of the Spotmatic....

2007-06-10T16:22:00.000-05:00

Ah, film.

Child of the digital age yet luddite-at-heart, I've been fiddling around lately with the ol' 35mm Asahi Pentax that Ryan gave me a few months back. Although I'm a total amateur and know only the very barest basics of film photography, I'm pretty pleased with the results from Camp Bread, plus the few shots from Hog's Back Farm. Of course the scan quality dimishes the sharpness, but you get the gist. See the rest here.

My Life in France... Julia's, that is

2007-06-06T17:18:00.000-05:00

I just finished reading Julia Child's partial autobiography, My Life in France, focused primarily (as you might imagine) on her tranformative years spent in Paris and Marseille, and her subsequent fame in the US springing from the publication of her seminal work, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Now, I believe it was circa 1991 or 1992 that I became obsessed all those old-school, waaay pre-FoodNetwork cooking personalities and shows: Martin Yan, Biba, Graham Kerr, The Frugal (and morally suspect) Gourmet Jeff Smith, the Great Chefs series, and so forth. So, how on earth did I manage to miss Julia? Well, perhaps that summer spent glued to the screen taking my chicken-scratch notes coincided with a rare lull in her steady stream of shows. In any case, I've always been aware of who she was and that she was an American champion of French cuisine, but I never got acquainted with her effervescent character, her joyful enthusiasm and earnest dedication to cooking and eating. It was inspiring to read about her adventures. I'm so struck by her unhesitating plunge into the world of haute cuisine... she, a brash and towering Californian woman going head to head with the biggest Old Boys Club in French culture. And she undertook this pursuit at age 37!

37!!!!!!!

She was unapologetic, indefatigable and opinionated. She refused to compromise the quality or scope of MtAoFC, even when it meant getting dropped from a publisher (whose editors were no doubt kicking themselves later!). Yesterday I found myself killing time in Barnes and Noble, idly browsing the cookbook bestsellers. I came upon a book I'd seen much publicized, Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously, one woman's self-appointed challenge to cook her way through MtAoFC's 524 recipes in 365 days. The concept had first struck me as contrived, although it was mainly the fact of it getting billed as Bridget Jones Diary-type chick-lit that sparked my predjudice. But newly intrigued by all things Julia Child, I picked it up and was suddenly in 50 pages deep! However I'm on a moratorium of sorts for book buying, so onto the library list it goes.

Part of the reason for my moratorium is that I have so many unread food lit books lying already. I've just begun one of those: The People's Chef: The Culinary Revolution of Alexis Soyer. Good so far.....

Return from SF, the sequel

2007-06-01T21:07:00.000-05:00

Fresh off the plane early yesterday morning, I brought back with me from San Francisco the lovely souvenir of strep throat. So much for getting back home renewed and refreshed. But it is nice to return in the midst of full-on Minneapolis "pre-summer," when everything is green, the weather is warm without being suffocating, and the mosquitos have yet to take total reign. Having spent so little time here in the past 15 months (and having therefore missed summer here since 2005), I'm amazed all over again at what a pleasant environment this city provides during the warmer months. Although so far I've only lain around in my pajamas for hours on end feeling sorry for myself, the great outdoors are calling me to bike around, have picnics, hang out at the lake, and of course barbecue.

My last few days in SF yielded some very good food: chicken from Roli Roti, more pork belly craziness (with duck fat fries!) from Bar Tartine, very tasty assorted homemade sausages crafted with the blood and sweat of Miyuki and Nick, the wait-worthy dry fried chicken at San Tung, an indulgent farewell lunch at SFBI by Miyuki and I, and finally a last-minute stop at Yamo, where I had also gone to just before leaving SF the last time. It is definitely a bit torturous to leave California (well, mainly SF) and all its great food behind. Who knows, perhaps I'll find yet another random reason to go back sooner rather than later?.....

And the winners are.......

2007-05-26T20:21:00.000-05:00

Camp Bread flew by, and Team USA for the 2008 Coupe du Monde de la Boulangerie has been selected... including one Solveig Tofte, head baker from Turtle Bread Bakery in Minneapolis! And if I am not mistaken, she is the world's very first female representative in her category, that being baguette and specialty breads. I had the good fortune to taste her winning breads: one incorporating American chestnuts and cocoa nibs, a fig rye, a Scandinavian sowing bread (with barley, oats and rye), pain de mie boosted with potato, a great baguette made with 140% poolish and 10% liquid levain, and my personal favorite, an intensely substantial and flavorful cracked wheat bread with a remarkable open crumb. Made frail by exhaustion, I broke down in a fairly uncharacteristic Oprah moment at the announcement of the winners... there may well be some photos floating around out there of yours truly all snot-nosed and teary-eyed at the surprising election of a team that is 2/3 female and 1/3 Chinese-American! This is probably the first (and potentially the last) time I will say, Go USA!

Even aside from that momentus occasion, the rest of Camp Bread was truly a great time; it rekindled in me, as might be expected, a real passion for bread. This is something that I certainly never had lost, but I've been on the pastry boat, so to speak, now for quite some time. I must say, pastry certainly lacks the elemental satisfaction that is inherent to the idea of bread. This week I've once more been reflecting upon the common thread that bread, and grain in general, has always woven between cultures. Pastry appeals to me for its creativity and hedonistic nature (in spite of the fact that I don't have such a sweet tooth), yet bread is incomparably more soulful. By the same token, I feel that the bread crowd is a better fit for me on a personal level, though I'm not positive if it is more so than the crazy line cook set I'm so used to (friends, you know who you are...). I do appreciate the fussy, technical character of high-end pastry and plated desserts, but in a sense it's not always so "me."
All my Camp Bread photos can be seen here.

On a different note, due to my extreme business I've been remiss in dining out for the most part. One exception to this is Little Sichuan, inconveniently located down in San Mateo. I've gone twice, the first of which yielded painfully (and deliciously!) spicy dishes such as dry fried string beans, cold beef and tripe in chili oil, szechwan whole fish, cold szechwan noodles and excellent dry fried chicken wings utterly encrusted in mouth-numbing szechwan pepper. (And yes, you do indeed feel the spice twice.) On my second visit, it was less impressive and less painful, but we still had a well-executed ma-po tofu (creamy tofu that was delicate yet fully intact) and what we believe to have been "water-cooked beef,"(pictured above) despite the fact that we had actually ordered "cold spicy beef tenders." What we received turned out to be a large steaming bowl of thick chile-saturated liquid chock full of preserved cabbage and very tender beef slices, topped with a good scattering of chopped cilantro-- this was certainly the best dish of the meal. Less outstanding were the eggplant and the intriguingly-named "powdery steamed beef," but hey, live and learn. All my Little Sichuan photos can be seen here.

From field to table: feasting at Hogs Back

2007-04-29T22:14:00.000-05:00

The delicate, gauzy green of springtime Minneapolis is reaching its annual pubescence. Seemingly overnight, millions of tiny buds have exploded into miniature leafy tufts, the pearlescent violet bunches in my backyard promise a lush (albeit fleeting) abundance of lilacs at any moment, spring-fevered folks of all ages are venturing out clad in shorts and tank tops, and though most home gardens have yet to flourish, our dandelion-ridden front lawn has already bloomed into opulent yellow splendor. With a record number of barbecues at the house (are we up to 6?), perhaps we have been egging summer on more persuasively than we had realized.

Meanwhile, lacking the heat and barbecue quota of a population-dense city, rural western Wisconsin is lagging slightly behind. The grass on gently rolling hills is still subdued from its winter dormancy and not yet spiky and unruly. The forests lining the St. Croix shimmer a sea of speckled green over a profusion of stark, spare trunks and branches. Cows laze about at every other turn, practicing for the summer heat yet to come. All in all, the farms appear calm, just beginning to come back to life after the cold. But at Hog's Back Farm in Arkansaw, WI, the greenhouse reveals the true anticipation of growing season: trays upon trays sprout everything from feathery fennel, delicate tiny field greens, beet leaves appearing to be veined with real blood, and dozens of other still wispy, fluttery herbs and vegetables. It is a fascinating snapshot for a city girl like me, to see the precipitation of what I think of as raw product... this is it, it's more than raw, it's barely nascent. Appropriately, the occasion for this visit was a birthday. Dinner naturally centered around the few yet precious goods that may be culled this early from the farm (nettles, ramps, chives), the farms of nearby neighbors (lamb, raw milk and cream, spinach), and, in the case of my desserts, the fruits typical of spring (rhubarb and strawberry) which had to be "faked" by using stuff from California since the local crops just aren't ready. Perhaps I redeemed myself slightly from this treason by using chives from my much-neglected garden for the bread. You can see all 30 photos here (and note my woeful ignorance to look up from the damn food long enough to take some pictures of the beautiful surroundings!! Next time. Promise.).

Potato and egg yolk ravioli, parmesan broth,
seared lamb liver with chives and white truffle oil

Chickpea and nettle soup

Family style: grilled lamb, risotto, sautéed spinach,
and a relish of grilled ramps, pine nuts and bitter honey

Artisan cheeses with potato-chive rolls

Intermezzo: rhubarb, granité and poached

Raw milk panna cotta with almond praline,
strawberries and strawberry syrup

Assorted macarons

Yamo!

2007-04-21T23:56:00.000-05:00

By the way, when in SF, do drop in to check out the teeny Burmese place Yamo on 18th between Mission and Valencia. This counter service hole-in-the-wall is dirt cheap, and utterly fresh-- seeing as how there would be absolutely no place to keep much of anything prepared in advance. I had the potstickers and the tea salad. The potstickers were decent and pure in their pork and vegetable simplicity, and came with the delicately crisp bottoms so prized in a pan-fried dumpling. I prefer a more tricked-out kind with lots of ginger and chives and stuff, but that's ok. The real winner of my meal was the salad: a small heap of finely shredded cabbage is tossed with tea leaves, green onions, fried garlic, lentils, peanuts, sesame, sprouts, dried shrimp and I don't even know what else. The result is an intriguing mix of crunchy, salty, herby and spicy. It's not dissimilar to Thai salads, I would say. This presentation differs from what I understand to be the more traditional little-piles-of-stuff approach, but I have no complaints. I wonder if I can search out some Burmese in this town..?

Home on the range

2007-04-21T23:08:00.000-05:00

Once again here I am in Minneapolis, where the as-of-yet lack of lack of leafy greeness has been compensated for by warm temperatures and lots of sunshine. My appreciation is renewed for how much space this city affords its residents for a fraction of the price of Paris or San Francisco, allowing for such luxuries as multiple bathrooms, sunrooms, covered porches (think bicycle storage), and backyards. Taking advantage of the latter, last night we fired up what was my first bbq in well over a year [edit: actually no-- there was the wildly good June '06 bbq at Mario's!]. We started out with eggplant, zucchini and asparagus all brushed with chile-garlic oil, and quickly moved on to Ryan's killer burger concoction: good-quality beef mixed with salt, plenty of diced red onion, local amablu cheese, a bit of garlic, and lots of fresh ground pepper. On grilled homemade sesame buns, much else in the way of condiments would have detracted from the burger's inherent charred, juicy and salty glory. I'm not positive that other burgers can live up to those standards-- the bar has been raised, and raised high. Finally, we made the practically foolproof Cook's Illustrated grilled pizza, topped simply with garlic oil, San Marzano tomatoes, pretty good brick mozzarella (alas, why is fresh mozz so damn expensive??) and extras like fresh basil, grilled veggies and italian sausage. Awesome. To flaunt my overblown patriotism (ahem), an apple pie was clearly in order (props again to Cook's for their insight). And although the folks at Sonny's down the street were inexplicably out of vanilla, their dense, crunchy almond ice cream stood in just fine (ok, wonderfully).

Beer, burgers, pie... come on, bring on summertime already!

I'm tasteless-- literally

2007-04-14T18:07:00.000-05:00

Besieged by a lingering cold, my sense of taste has been rendered null and void. At times like these, I feel like time slows to a crawl and I pass my colorless days in shadow, a meager shell of a woman. Alright, perhaps I hyperbolize, but when I lose my god-given right to enjoy eating it can seem pretty grim.

I only have a few days left in SF, which leaves me with maybe only a dozen or so meal opportunities... will I be up to the task??

Hedonism chez Tartine

2007-04-10T14:27:00.000-05:00

This past weekend I went on a brief bender at Bar Tartine, dining solo on Saturday night and returning Sunday morning for brunch. I can consequently report that all the good things I had heard about Bar Tartine are true-- the food was honest, simple yet refined and, most importantly of course, very, very tasty. Prices are understandably moderate yet far from prohibitive. Here's the rundown...

Saturday dinner
Walking in at about 7:00, I was seated immediately at the classy marble bar, in front of the garde manger/dessert station. I ordered a glass of Spanish tempranillo rosé from the adorable and friendly bartender/ server, and was soon after brought a sliced hunk of Tartine's signature bread (chewy and almost eggy interior with a fantastic balance of creaminess/acidity surrounded by a dark, crunchy crust) with a small slab of butter. Partly with a mind to cost but mainly because they were more intriguing to me, I ordered two starters as my meal. My server reassured me that the amount of food would be sufficient given its richness, and she was absolutely right. I started with a chilled white asparagus soup with pickled ramps, sautéed local prawns and piment d'espelette. This was hands-down the best asparagus soup I've ever had, period. The soup itself was slightly nutty with real white asparagus character, creamy without being at all heavy, and properly salted. Striped with bright green oil made from the ramp tops, in the center of the bowl were three rosy shrimp, a hidden tangle of ramps and one fried prawn's head. Without hesitation, I investigated the head-- it was shatteringly crisp throughout and utterly shrimpy, in roasty-sweet way. I devoured it. The prawns themselves were tender, almost to the point of melting, and fantastically sweet-- these two presentations of the prawn seemed to be a sly nod to ama ebi. The ramps added a pleasing textural contrast, a bit like enokis, their acidity brightening the other flavors. The piment, dusted over all, united everything with its earthiness and subtle spice. Excellent! Next came a dish whose singular weirdness I simply could not resist: braised pork belly, egg salad, fried potato and baby squid. Yes, on the same plate. Such a combination references nothing that I know of (any insight out there?), but I sensed that it would all come together in the end. And it did: the egg salad mimicked the fatty softness of the belly, the tiny sautéed squids were like the egg yet more toothsome, the diced fried potato lent textural interest and were a logical counterpart to the pork, and then just when you thought this was all sounding morbidly rich... a generous drizzle of salsa verde cut through like a laser with its herbal lemony-ness. Without its acidic punch, the whole would have seemed greasy and leaden-- in fact there was a decent slick of oil on the plate, ironically from the salsa. But it all balanced out enough for my taste, and I even mopped up that oil slick with the last of the wonderful bread. Observing my gluttony, my thoughtful server splashed a bit more wine into my by-now empty glass to wash down my last few bites. At this point I could have stopped eating as it was plenty of food. However, in fulfilling my "professional obligation" to try dessert (ha- but no, it really is partly true), I went ahead and ordered a rose geranium panna cotta with crumbled coconut macaroon, rhubarb confit and rhubarb consommé. Desserts at Bar Tartine seem to take after the bakery: simple, pretty and enormous. The panna cotta itself was perfectly wobbly and voluptuous, although the delicate scent of rose geranium became lost behind the tang of the accompanying big pile of meltingly tender shredded rhubarb. The little pile of toasty macaroon crumbs kept their integrity even after having sat in the consommé, which was poured from a silver creamer into the bowl tableside. The glowing pinkness of the lightly syrupy liquid made the presentation very lovely, along with a pretty pink rosebud and a few petals scattered on top. It was a nice spring dessert, it's just too bad I didn't have someone to share it with since it was huge.

Sunday brunch
I found brunch to not be at quite as high a caliber as dinner. I went for the Leb Lebi, a Tunisian chickpea stew with olive oil tuna, toasted hunks of bread, capers, harissa and poached eggs. It was not bad, but not outstanding. The tuna in particular wasn't as good as I expect from oil-packed varieties. My friends got scrambled eggs with gravlax, green garlic and asparagus, french toast with carmelized fruit, and a Portuguese cilantro soup with a poached egg (possibly the best thing I tried, which incidentally is also on the dinner menu). I envied a woman at a neighboring table with good-looking poached eggs on toast with thin shavings of country ham. Lastly, we shared a Meyer lemon Napoleon: small palmiers layered with lemon cream, flanked by lavender caramel (alas, recrystallized) and a large heap (indeed too large) of seductively tart lemon confit. Nice flavors, but the balance of elements was off. In the end, I've had better or as-good brunch for cheaper in the city, so I think I'll stick to Bar Tartine for dinner.

Down by the bay, where the watermelon grows...

2007-03-23T10:53:00.000-06:00

Having so far been neither swallowed up in "the big one" nor run over by a cablecar, I continue the habit of eating myself to (near) death in the hilly streets of San Francisco.
The gist: Pancho Villa (carnitas, lengua etc), Yum Yum Fish (assorted nigiri), Pearl City (tasty fried quail with spiced salt but lackluster mu-shu), Pizzeria Delfina (perfect tuna confit with white beans and a great rhubarb-kumquat tart), lots of chinese BBQ, Chow (pretty decent Cobb salad), May's (tuna+egg combo), more Okazu-ya, and of course the totally fantastic roast pork (twice!) by the extremely sweet people at the Roli Roti truck at the Ferry Building market (almost as good as my beloved Pork of the Gods of from Latte di Luna). Haven't done much cooking myself at all lately, although this morning I did grill up a fantastic hangar steak from golden Gate Meat Co. (easily better than any I've had in France), which went deliciously aside over-easy eggs and a wild arugula salad dressed with Meyer lemon olive oil.

In other foodsy news, today I began what I think will be a great stage at restaurant "X," which out of discretion I won't name. All the crew was extremely friendly and helpful, and it was great to be in an environment where stagiares are really encouraged to learn, taste, be efficient, and ask questions. And even apart from all the great product I'm getting to see and taste, I think some of the most valuable information to be absorbed is in observing the fine-tuned system of the place: there are many cooks all together in a small space, so efficiency and organization must be maximized. Add to that the fact that every night turns more or less as many covers as on the weekend. Add also the fact that it is commonly regarded as one of the best restaurants in the city, with service also up to that par, and it becomes clear that there are some real lessons to be learned about running a profitable and popular fine dining restaurant. But do the goods deliver? At the end of the day I tried one dessert, a new item: a frozen carrot chiboust, bruleed to order, with carrot puree, coconut-tapioca soup, pineapple foam and ginger-lime sherbet. My verdict: damn good-- and good-looking, which in this business is just as important.

S to tha F!

2007-03-04T01:01:00.000-06:00

Here I am, in alternately sunny/monsoon-y San Francisco, surrounded by the best food, many happenings, and of course more gays than you can shake a stick at (no pun intended).
The abbreviated food rundown of the past couple weeks.... some excellent Chinese (mu shu, possibly the best hot & sour soup), excellent sushi (I'm obsessed with Okazu-Ya's Yin Yang roll-- spicy ika with uni and topped with black and wasabi tobiko), pretty good tacos, excellent Mexican seafood (tostadas de pulpo!), awesome brunch (think crabcake benedict), etc etc etc. I've been pretty good about keeping up with photos, however I just need to upload them onto a computer.

San Francisco... it's good to be back!

Happy b-day, big boy!

2007-02-12T02:19:00.000-06:00

Ryan's 25th trip around the sun was commemorated foodwise with an awesome brownie-stuffed marble cake (courtesy of Bob), lots of hummus, tomato basil risotto, and crispy garlicky roast chicken. See the rest of the pictures here. Happy birthday, big boy!!!!!

The world through a fish's eye...

2007-02-04T14:38:00.000-06:00

Lacking a scanner, I went ahead and took digital photos of my first batch of fisheye pictures, which are mostly from my Christmas eve spent in Denier. See all the photos here.

Thanks!

2007-02-01T21:26:00.000-06:00

Thanks a lot to Dara for her nice article in City Pages this week. We appreciate it.

Exhausted, proud, sad... Auriga: the end of an era

2007-01-29T20:03:00.000-06:00

Sadly, very sadly, Auriga is no more. Vultures are already upon it, picking and scrutinizing the remains. Our last week was difficult, physically and emotionally. To call it stressful would be an understatement of the highest order-- we did a nearly unfathomable amount of business between Tuesday and Saturday, so much in fact that it was almost ridiculous. By the way, I'm going to take this opportunity, as this is my blog and my prerogative, to briefly say a big FUCK YOU to those involved in the gift certificate "scandal." I now have an even greater antipathy for Fox News (no big surprise there), as they may be largely responsible for the stampede of insensitive assholes who showed up in the last couple of days of business demanding reimbursement.... reimbursement for a GIFT, no less..... the definition of GIFT being something you have not purchased for yourself, but rather was given to you out of generosity and kindness. And here we are, over thirty people out of work, owners up to their eyeballs in debt and all kinds of hell, and these jerks show up asking for a check. For their gift. But.... those people are certainly not among the many wonderful folks who came by to show their support and wish us all well one last time this past week. My sincere thanks to all of you, especially the regulars who've been coming in for years, whether it be for happy hour pizzas or Catalan stew or even your weddings or whatever. I wasn't part of Auriga from the beginning, I've been gone for almost a year, and I only was back for one utterly insane final week, but I honestly feel like I never left.... Auriga had its own community, some of you knew that and some did not. But it was there and it was real. I hope we're all going to go on and do some great things out there, together or not. For my part, I am proud and truly honored to have landed --by chance-- in the midst of such a beautiful place. Auriga, you will be sorely missed.

Back in business!

2007-01-20T01:14:00.000-06:00

I had my first day of official "work" in 10 months today, much of which was spent scribbling halfwit dessert code on several blank pages. Such is my feeble effort at organization. No, but really, things went totally fine. Planning aside (which is always perhaps the biggest challenge, whether a rookie or seasoned pro), I was able to execute a few simple things, thereby quelling the vague fear that the act of leaving France had vaporized my pastry skills... like a pumpkinized stagecoach after the glamorous ball. The very first thing at all that I attacked were the macarons...... yes, my old nemesis. It was a spiritual test: I knew that if I could successfully pull off a batch of those damned things right off the bat it would be a good omen. And lo and behold, the heavens opened up and showered macaron fortune upon me! Except that they're way too dry, but it's not entirely my fault as I wasn't able to steam them off the parchment like in France. Can we easily get sulfurized paper here? I don't know. And I haven't looked. But that's ok, the point is that my macarons should taste as good as they look after they've soaked up some humidity from their filling from a couple leisurely days hanging out in the fridge. A technique borrowed from Mr. Hermé, I might add. Anyways, if all continues as planned, the new menu should go up in its entirety this coming Tuesday, with potential early appearances by select items as early as Sunday.

It's good to be back in the land of crazy line cooks.

A taste of Vietnam

2007-01-17T14:29:00.000-06:00

It's so good to eat quality Vietnamese food again, it's almost unbelievable. How could I have gone so long without Quang's? Granted, I had no shortage of other delicious things available to me for the past 10 months, but Vietnamese food this damn good --and for this damn cheap!-- is sadly lacking, indeed, nonexistent, in Paris. And Quang's isn't the only choice here, of course. I've also revisited Pho Tau Bay, which is also very good, but in my opinion the real heavyweight contender for Nicollet Avenue Champion of Vietnamese is perhaps Bubble Delite-- not in terms of ambiance or service, but they have some damn good food, much of which seems a bit more authentic and less modified for Minnesotan tastes than some of the other usual suspects on that street. If only we could breed an all-powerful mutant baby between the ambiance and service of Jasmine Deli with both the authenticity and bubble tea selection of Bubble Delite and the efficiency and consistency of Quang's, I think the resulting bánh mì and bun thit nuong could crush capitalism, end global warming, reverse misogyny and unify all the races and religions in perfect harmony, bringing about a golden, utopic era for humankind!!!!!!!!!

Ok, at least it would be the best lunch in town.

The gentle tingling of.... culture shock!

2007-01-15T02:37:00.000-06:00

So, here's some initial perceptions I've been having as I go through the wacky mind game called Reverse Culture Shock (uh, is that a real term?). Are any of my observations especially revelatory (or, for that matter, accurate), whether being compared to France or not? No, I certainly don't think so. But judge for yourself.

*Americans are LOUD. This is more what I'm used to now... BUT HERE EVERYONE SOUNDS LIKE THIIIIIIIIIIS. I find many "indoor voices" --which is to say, for speaking with someone right next to you-- here to be at the volume level I might use for communicating amidst the quickening gale of a level 3 hurricane.

*Kids are bratty. Granted, French kids can definitely be bratty, but they're generally much less so (and quieter!... see above).

*Strangers are friendlier here, which is nothing new considering this is Minnesota. I'm no longer used to looking people in the eye and simply saying "hello," or even smiling, as I walk down the street.

*American TV, advertising and basically most media is such sickening, repulsive and mindless garbage that I can hardly even believe it-- although I already had thought in a less alarming extent that before leaving. Don't get me wrong, a lot of mainstream French stuff is pretty bad too, but here....... it's..... well, just take a look for yourselves.

*Our public transportation in pitiful for a metropolis of our size and population density. Again, I already knew that, but the feeling has been reinforced exponentially.

*It feels as if there are no grocery stores. It's like I should be taking a team of camels on a fortnight's expedition to get my provisions, which must then last me until the spring.

Well, those are just a few, and let's just say that they are the milder, edited ones. And thus begins by attempt at readjustment.

From international metropolis to in the middle of the Midwest

2007-01-13T02:11:00.000-06:00

White Castle, down the street. Photo from Wing Young Huie's Lake Street USA project.

May Day 2000. Can you spot me??

On the 21 bus. Photo from Wing Young Huie's Lake Street USA project.

Mon quartier.

Anodyne, down the street.

Shockingly, impossibly, I suddenly find myself once again in my hometown of Minneapolis, and obviously also in my greater homeland, the US. Home, home... the definition blurs when you adopt a new one. In the short time I've been back, everything is somehow familiar and foreign at the same time, like in a dream where you know it's your house but the appearance is warped and alien. Perhaps I exaggerate a bit, but anyone who's gone through a similar cultural shock can understand. As certain storefronts have changed, moved, or been somehow otherwise altered, it lends the landscape a very confused feel to my mind... "ok, this I recognize, that I recognize-- hey, what the hell is that doing there?!"

But overall, compared to the bustle and clamor of Paris, it's almost as if I'm half-expecting a tumbleweed to float dreamily down my street. It feels unnatural to call and order a pizza, let alone in my native tongue. I have to consciously stop myself from using my automatic "bonjour/merci/au revoir." I have developed a schizophrenic Franglish inner monologue. Spaciousness is also a major change.

Readjustment will certainly take some time.

Breaking up is hard to do.

2007-01-11T01:22:00.001-06:00

Il faut que je te laisse pour l'instant. Prends soin de toi.

Je t'aime. Je reviendrai.

A la prochaine, Paris.

I DONE IT!

2007-01-06T15:38:00.000-06:00

My celebratory parade. Really.

Freshly diploma-ed, I feel like a woman reborn! Ok, maybe not exactly, but it feels pretty good nonetheless. It was an enormous relief to finish my exam, from which I will post some photos soon. Things went pretty smoothly for the most part, until a slightly mad dash at the end which was still not a huge ordeal. My viennoiserie turned out very very well, my macarons also, and aside from a few other small problems things worked out ok.

Only few short days left now before I leave, during which I will be trying to enjoy Paris to the very last moment.....

BONNE ANNEE!!!!!!!!

2007-01-03T14:49:00.001-06:00

Adios 2006, the future is now! And what better way to start out the new year than with my final exam, which I began today and will finish tomorrow. My morning got off to a rough start when I woke up at 4:00 in the fitful throes of Macaron Anxiety Dreamland and could not get back to sleep. This episode was later followed by the the semi-realization of those dreams when I flunked my first batch of the fussy little cookies early on in the morning. I did, however, make a rapid recovery, after which everything went fairly smoothly. Needless to say, I'm a bit tuckered out. Hopefully I will be able to report news of success tomorrow afternoon...

From classroom to coalmine... oh, and happy b-day, Jeebus.

2006-12-27T09:14:00.000-06:00

The collective meal at the awesome art squat Théâtre de Verre, next to Bonnes Nouvelles.

Gooey warm chocolate and Grand Marnier tart. Yes, it was as good as it looks. Hot and cold desserts class.

La Caprice: Oreo-coated black truffle ice cream with liquid cognac center and warm lemon madeleines. Hot and cold desserts class.

Yann Tiersen at Le Bataclan. My copine Christine is in the backround.

And the bow goes to.... !

And just like that, more than 8 months in Paris have flown by quicker than the blink of an eye. Spring, summer and fall have come and gone, Christmas has passed, and 24 weeks spent chez Lenôtre have blazed by in a sugary blur. My last week of class turned out to be my favorite, that being hot and cold plated desserts. Good desserts, ideas, and techniques-- and no superiority-complex jerks. All that remains as far as school goes is my exam, which I hope to pass in quiet solitude immediately after New Years. Naturally it's intimidating... especially given the fact that if I screw it up I have a quite narrow window before I return to the US in which I could redo it. Every single one of my other classmates have passed theirs, so hopefully I can follow suite with no major catastrophes.

I spent last week in production, where instead of sweating over a hot stove I instead froze slowly but surely to my core in a very cold lab as I put the finishing touches on a seemingly neverending number of bûches. The French take their jelly rolls seriously: designer bûches can easily fetch prices upwards of 100 euros, take last year's Lolita Lempicka, for example. This year Lenôtre collaborated with well-known architect Philippe Starck in creating a seemingly minimalist bûche, which was in fact anything but. I saw the (frankly quite unimposing) thing a few times at school, but not its fabrication. The labyrinth of production is extensive, and I was busy in my own world of red glitter-coated raspberries. I think a secret elite team took care of the Starck contraption. But as far as degustation goes, I actually had the good fortune to be able to taste a genuine homemade bûche out in La France Profonde with a clan of frenchies, at the end of a gargantuan meal that stretched until nearly 3 am. How did I end up in Denier? Grace à mon ami Benoît for inviting me, and of course the rest of the Lesieux family for having graciously hosted and humored a displaced americaine on Christmas Eve. Sadly, I was able to properly photo-document neither my personal record-breaking consumption of oysters nor the stark yet lovely countryside, as I lost my camera battery charger over a week ago (a regrettable occurence which I hope to rectify very soon). However, I have in the meantime been taking some pictures with my nifty fisheye camera, which I may be able to post eventually.

The distasteful task of preparing for the imminent trek back home is upon me. It's impressive how many things I have accumulated, not to mention all the stuff I plan to get before leaving, largely pastry-related. A substantial amount will likely stay behind, which is indeed practical but also a mind trick whereby I will be able to feel like I haven't left my life here in Paris for good.

Home stretch

2006-12-10T20:22:00.000-06:00

As impossible and unthinkable as it may be, I am down to my last week of classes at Lenôtre, it being one of three plated desserts classes at the school (although I still have a week scheduled in production and then of course my exam). This past week I also was in plated desserts, which was excellent, despite a pronounced Genius French Man vs. Silly Foreign Girl group dynamic. Although not unusual, that divide was heightened this particular week by the mysterious alchemical ringleadership of the Hotshot Professional From A Certain Big Hotel... granted, this type of Jonesy exists everywhere in the world, but believe me when I say that they're that much worse when they're French. I would say the French culinary school breed of Jonesy can generally be identified by the following characteristics: consistent inability and/or unwillingness to clean up after himself partnered with the tendancy to make big messes, diminuitive stature (ok, that one is not always true), know-it-all attitude, and last but certainly not least-- thinly veiled chauvinism.
Anyhow, perhaps I'll expand on that note in a later retrospective on general French-American cultural differences from my point of view. For now I try to just roll my eyes and keep on working. Ya can't let Jonesy getcha down!

Happy Frenchgiving

2006-12-02T09:02:00.000-06:00

Feasting on the bounty: Chris, yours truly and Benoît

Chris receives the medal for most food eaten, shown here with triumphant second helping of biscuits and gravy.

The green bean casserole.

Hannah, our Japanese contingent.

The dessert cart.

Let the last Sunday of November be known henceforth as Frenchgiving, and let it be good! And let there be a great overabundance of food in relation to the number of guests, and let there be many languages spoken among them.

The inaugural menu: green bean casserole (my way: haricots verts in a creamy mushroom sauce and topped with fried shallots), herbed stuffing (both vegetarian and with homemade pork sausage), buttermilk biscuits (yes, buttermilk can be found here under the name "lait fermenté"), gravy, gingery sweet potato pie (texture ended up a bit weird), apple crisp, assorted cheese, grapes, wine... and chicken wings that were to be in lieu of turkey but never ended up in the roasting pan. Sadly lacking was cranberry sauce or an analog thereof, though I hear it's available for a pretty penny at some expat-oriented stores such as the conspicously-named restaurant and grocery Thanksgiving in the 4ème. And I similarly missed the forethought to search out sage for the stuffing, a bit regrettable but forgivable nonetheless. Despite the fact that fewer people attended than had been anticipated, it was a success. We ate both excessively and well, which is after all the original act that knows no cultural boundaries.

All my photos of this momentous event in French history can be seen here.

And here... am I sitting in a tin can?......

2006-11-22T16:59:00.000-06:00

Pretty passion flower outside Les Frigos.

Fête-ing the Beaujolais Nouveau at Lenôtre.

Le Pignon in plated desserts class.

La Pêche Blanche in plated desserts class.

Gang of Four play Le Festival des Inrocks at La Cigale.

I am still very much alive and well in the land of fromage, despite my grievous lack of blogging as of late. A quick rundown: spent an EXCELLENT week in a plated desserts class; currently spending a very good week in a chocolate entremets class; ate again La Regalade to celebrate the bittersweet graduation of Rosemarie, the first in my class to finish the program; ate excellent Mexican food at a classmate's house; seen some great concerts (Gang of Four, ESG); seen some good films (Shortbus, Borat, and most notably Marie October, an old French black & white whodunnit that I was pleased to understand very well without subtitles); seen some cool stuff for photo month in Paris; trying to speak yet more French, including at home; tried more cheese (no I'm not being sarcastic).

More extensive update to soon to come, but in the meantime you can peruse my 350 or so photos newly up on Flickr. They're not yet fully organized, but check them out anyway.

A bientot...

Food food food, be it in good restos or disappointing classes...

2006-11-05T15:18:00.000-06:00

Overdue for a check-in, there is much I could report on, including...

-the final dining blitz preceding Ryan's (lamented) Oct. 31 departure
-good concerts
-a couple more fancy-pants books from La Librairie Gourmande
-the cold finally sinking its teeth into meaty, cheesy France
-two consecutive weeks of disappointing classes (boo)
-the sense that my French continues to improve (hooray)
-the sense that French is affecting my English in strange ways (hmm)
-and last but not least... my first Actually French Friend!

-actually, the new last but not least: like a dumbass I just accidentally- and permanently- deleted 140 new photos while trying to upload them... therefore dashing my ability fully illustrate the preceding items. There were the usual many photos of dinners I've been having, mainly out but also at home; assorted photos from school; a dash of street art; and a healthy dose of really nice market photos which I'm the most disappointed to have lost.

Restaurant highlights:

L'AOC
A really fantastic place in the 5eme whose main concept is taking amazing high-quality regional products (AOC meaning appelation d'origine controlée, ie products of protected origin and labelling standards). These products, mainly meats, are served utterly simply and perfectly-- for the most part having been slowly spun in the big rotisserie immediately inside the entry. I had an incredible terrine of lentilles de puy, oreille de cochon (ok ok, yes, that does indeed mean pig's ear), and a center of foie gras. Ryan had the house terrines, which were all delicious, including wild boar, poultry liver and headcheese varieties, among others (naturally accompanied by an enormous crock of cornichons-- oh, and excellent bread). I then had a pork chop (from an heirloom black pig breed), Ryan, "pattes noires" chicken (like poulet de Bresse). Both from the rotisserie, both perfect, the only other items on the plate being tasty roasted potatoes and a bit of sauce. We drank a quite nice bottle of Costières de Nîmes for cheap, and shared a decent hunk of tarte Tatin for dessert. All this plus coffee for less than 100 E, and with very friendly service in a pleasant and casual atmosphere. Not bad du tout.

Moules frites in a sort of random bar facing Gare du Nord. Pretty good.

Kunitoraya
Awesome little udon joint on Japanese row in the 9eme. Had the kunitora-udon (shaved pork, salsify [which I suspect was in fact burdock] and udon in miso soup), and we all shared tempura (flawless) and a dish of fried fish cake, hard boiled eggs and cooked vegetables all simmered in a mild soy based broth. My girlfriends had other variations on the udon as well as katsudon, which were all very very good. I will certainly make repeat visits.

Le Pré Catalan

2006-10-28T05:11:00.000-05:00

Original readers of this blog may remember in April that I toured Le Pré Catalan, a Lenôtre affiliated two-star restaurant (with attached hotel and reception halls) in the Bois de Boulogne. As part of this week's sous vide class I had the opportunity to eat there, which was lucky seeing as how I would never throw down that kind of money myself. If I had, I would have been disappointed. But since I didn't, I had a fun time in spite of the fact that the food was bizarre. The main dining room itself is about as grand as Versailles, not in size but in decadent gilt-everything luxury, which is certainly not my style and does little to make me feel at ease. However, the service was friendly, although quite involved, and not as fussy or stuffy as one might expect based on first impression. We started with champagne, moved on to Mâcon Milly Lamartine "Clos du Four" 2004, Lafan, and finally Côtes de Provence 2003 "Retour aux Sources," Pierre Mann. Here's a breakdown of the food.

Amuse bouche: what they called a "chaud-froid," a deep bowl with sautéed diced cèpes hidden beneath a foam, with a tiny pitcher of cèpe cream poured over at the table. I couldn't tell you which part was chaud or froid, as the resulting mixture was just warm, although to be fair we waited a few moments before digging in. Due to a childhood obsession with this product, I was immediately and forcefully reminded of Cambell's Cream of Mushroom! It tasted much better than that, to be sure, however it should have just been chaud-chaud.

First course: L'Étrille, preparée en coque, fine gelée de corail et caviar, soupe au parfum de fenouil... This was a small bowl of foamed shellfish soup (which supposedly had fennel, though I didn't detect it) with an accompanying spoonful of caviar whipped cream, and another plate with a small crab shell stuffed with crab salad and glazed with a caviar and coral aspic. The shellfish soup was very good, but the caviar in the cream was chewy and lacked the pop and brine that it should have had. The crab was sweet and tasty, but too mayonnaise-y and heavy for what you would expect, more American-style, I daresay.

Second course: La Saint-Jacques, cuite au plat, jus de pommes à cidre, crème de noix écrasées et torréfiées, fines lamelles juste tièdes, caviar et zestes de citron vert... These were scallops in three preparations: seared with toasted walnut cream and ground walnuts, seared with cider cream and a topping of chives and I think almonds (?), and thin slices forming "ravioli" stuffed with caviar (again) served warm with kaffir lime foam and zest. The walnut one was best, being subtly sweet but still earthy and rich. The cider one was almost as good, but the many chives in the topping were too harsh against the sweetly acidic cider cream. The last preparation was unremarkable. The caviar was imperceptible (though given it's lackluster appearance in the previous course maybe that's a good thing), and the brash, exotic kaffir lime flavor was unharmonius with the rest of the course.

Third course: La Sole, cuite au naturel, glacée d'un jus de soja épicé, poêlée de germes de soja, mangue fraîche légèrement acidulée... This was a piece of sole cooked sous vide with a soy-glaze poured over at the table, with a side of stirfried soy sprouts with caperberries. This was a bizarre concoction... the fish was supple but strangely dense, either from being too compressed under vacuum or perhaps from having been frozen (though I would doubt the latter), and the sauce was very salty and overpowering. There was a familiar taste to it that I couldn't put my finger on, and then I heard the teacher explaining that it had a base of browned butter. That was it, it tasted nutty and carmelised, but this was at odds with the strongly salty, tangy, almost miso-like character. The soy sprouts with caperberries were equally strange, to me an unsuccessful attempt at fusion. And as for the mangue fraîche légèrement acidulée (lightly pickled fresh mango), I think it was MIA.

Third course: Le Lièvre à la Royale, à la façon du "Senateur Couteaux," pâtes au beurre demi-sel... This was very incongruent with the rest of the meal, especially aesthetically. Like every other course, dishes topped with silver domes arrived at the table, and then a million servers flocked around and dramatically removed them in unison. However, this time we were not met with a shimmery foam or a dainty piece of fish. The gleaming domes lifted to reveal an amorphous hunk of meat (braised wild hare) obscured underneath a dark, even murky, blanket of blackish-purple blood sauce (and a micro green stuck on top). If the preceding course had seemed salty, this one put it to shame. And I normally don't have a big prejudice against blood, as I've come to enjoy a well-made boudin noir every once in a while, but this sauce was finely grainy and slightly livery tasting... in other words, not very appealing. In addition, despite the wine philistine that I am, it was clear that our Côtes de Provence didn't have the body to stand up to this dish. A tiny side portion of five (!) tubes of penne pasta completed the course.

Cheese course: This was easily the best part of the meal! A massive trolley was wheeled over (see last photo, above) and everyone in turn told the server their personal cheese preferences. There were at least a good twenty or so varieties. His selection for me consisted of Brin D'Amour, 1/2 a piece what I believe was Cabécou, a very pungent hunk of either Langres or l'Ami du Chambertin, and three other fairly strong soft cheeses. Delicious.

Dessert: Another strange Americanish concept... Tartelette fondante servie tiède au peanut butter [yes, this is what the menu said], chouchou, banane écrasée parfumée au rhum... This was essentially a little tart shell filled with what seemed to be little more than warm mashed banana and peanut butter. A shaving of peanut nougat sat beside it, and a paper cone (the "chouchou") of carmelized hazelnuts in a holder on the side. Weird. I'm not sure what the French at the table thought about it, but our British-American-Korean cluster wasn't impressed. Coffee (decent but not great) and pretty dishes of mignardises followed, with various chocolates, pâte de fruit, marshmallows, candied nuts and tiny tartlettes.

So, there you have it. It was an interesting experience, and this time the price was right. But what does the paying public think? I'm guessing our lunch would have costed at least 150 euros a pop. Do people line up just because there's two stars, or are they really loving it? I think my familiarity with American and Asian flavors perhaps tainted the meal. Although that shouldn't matter, good should taste good despite our personal associations. Or maybe Paris is rubbing off on me and I just can't help but be another party pooper.

All my photos of the meal can be seen here.

Tai Yien

2006-10-25T16:50:00.000-05:00

We found another fairly good Chinese place in Belleville last night, although we had actually been on our way to Wen Zhou (and as an additional side note, tonight I accidentally stopped in the "fake" Wen Zhou a few doors down--I think it's called Weng Zhou Traiteur or something-- for what turned out to be a delicious fresh-steamed sticky rice flour bun stuffed with pork, woodear mushroom and other goodies). Reeled in by the lacquered glory of the barbecue window display, we decided to give Tai Yien a chance. A notch pricier than Wen Zhou and Asia Palace, but still not bad, the crispy pork belly was great (though not as good as Shuang Hur's in Minneapolis!), the hot pot was hot and with good ingredients but in a typically bland, though thankfully not starchy and slick, Cantonese sauce (I knew but somehow couldn't resist), and the dumplings were pretty good but nothing special. Food came lightning fast. I saw a large number of people take whole bbq ducks to go, wrapped in paper tablecloths, as well as some people slurping seriously good-looking noodle soup topped with that duck. I guess this means I'll have to go back!...

Dinner-mania

2006-10-23T17:13:00.000-05:00

The combination of friends being in town and Ryan being so close to leaving has given birth to a feeding frenzy, so to speak, on restaurants lately.
We've (or I've) been to...
Chez Jenny, an Alsatian bistro right on Republique, pretty good and not pricey
Café Milou, little bistro near Montparnasse, good and friendly, with a big charcuterie board starter
Le Tir-Bouchon, right off Montorgeuil in the 2eme, friendly and very good
Asia Palace, next door to Tang Freres in the 13eme, cheap and very tasty dim sum-- but no carts =(
Little Italy, on Montorgeuil, very friendly and busy, inexpensive great pasta

And as already mentioned, there was also L'Atelier, as well as repeat visits to Salon de Thé Wen Zhou and Chartier. We'll probably try to squeeze in a few more before the week is up...

The big rock candy mountain

2006-10-21T05:25:00.000-05:00

This week I had a candy class at school, which was very very interesting, in spite of the fact that I don't especially like candy. I realize now that sugar work is actually of much more interest to me than than I had thought... I may never have the occasion (or the desire, for that matter) to make a big crazy sugar showpiece, but the principles and techniques would be quite useful for smaller, simpler finishing touches that add an air of elegance or whimsy. Sugar is a fascinating substance, and if I were less of a science flunky I would try to gain a deeper understanding of it. For example, sugar cooked to a high temperature very quickly may cause more crystals in the finished project... however, the same sugar cooked to the same temperature too slowly may be too soft to work properly... therefore a compromise must be made-- this entails much experience, including awareness of how efficient various heat sources are, the conductive properties of various pans, etc. And then for pulled pieces you must delicately balance how hot or cold the sugar "dough" is so as to maximize shine, extensibility, fixability etc. And as if this all wasn't enough already, working with sugar is inherently dangerous as it exceeds temperatures of 300 degrees fahrenheit. In spite of protective gloves, burns are essentially a guarantee.

The worlds of candy and confiture are other subjects with their own concerns, be it caramel, nougat, jelly, fondant or another tooth-melting goo. For example, I never knew that many candies are made in starch molds-- a rather interesting and somewhat complex process explained rudimentarily here and further illustrated in my fairly extensive photos from this week.

In other sweets-related news, I just purchased Paco Torreblanca's book, which I believe will prove to be a worthwhile investment.

If you had told me five years ago I would be involved with this much sugar and chocolate and cake and ice cream, I never would have believed it. I always crave salty things!

Girls' lunch out at L'Atelier de Joël Robuchon

2006-10-15T19:37:00.000-05:00

I went for lunch Saturday at L'Atelier de Joël Robuchon with four of the five other girls from my class, this being the first time I've been to a real "celebrity name" place (albeit unstarred) in Paris... um, or anywhere, actually.
Ridiculous pricing aside (i.e. Astronomical for certain dishes), I had a great time. In particular, service was very very friendly and casual, and the atmosphere made us feel comfortable in being giddy and silly and take a zillion photos. I started with The Most Expensive Ravioli on Earth, otherwise known as La Langoustine en Ravioli Truffé à l'Étuvée de Chou Vert-- langoustine ravioli with foie gras & truffle sauce and braised green cabbage. It was decadent and utterly fantastic, but in my opinion still does not justify the pricetag. Other people's starters included delicious suckling pork chops (cooked sous vide then seared), iberico ham (you can sort of see the whole ham in the picture above) and an eggplant millefeuille. Next I had the glazed foie gras-stuffed quail, accompanied by a teensy herb salad and a dollop of Robuchon's famous Insanity Mashed Potaoes (equal parts butter and potato)-- jazzed up with chives and crowned with white truffle. The quail was quite tasty, but in all honesty reminded me, and my friend who had also ordered it, of Chinese barbeque. Granted, I believe that was the concept, but if I want Chinese barbeque I can walk down to Belleville and feast til I'm sick for probably 15 euros. The potatoes, however, were another story. These were potatoes from the cafeteria of a private school on the top cloud in heaven. As rich in pure truffle flavor as they were in butter, they were incomparable to any other potatoey preparation I've ever had. Other main dishes my friends had, which I did not try, included foie-stuffed cabbage-wrapped pigeon, Rhône valley milk-fed lamb chops and half-smoked salmon with cucumber.
And then of course came dessert. We shared 5 different things, my favorites probably being the tart assortment and the Mara des Bois (both shown above). Of the tarts, my favorite was a rather unusual one which was just a thin pastry crust smeared with a mild, creamy honey and crusted with lots of cinnamon. The Mara des Bois was nothing outrageously special, but the kataifi topping was addictively crisp. I would say none of the desserts blew us away, but the 10 euro price was (amazingly!) reasonable, comparatively speaking, and they were all good.
Despite the sucker punch to my wallet, I had a fun time and I'm glad I went. I daresay I would even like to go back, armed with a better concept of how to order... it was quite clear that certain dishes were much bigger than certain others, and/or cheaper, and/or simply better of course. But then again, there's still so many places I haven't yet been to at all.....

En cours de construction

2006-10-12T16:52:00.000-05:00

Thanks to the essentially idiot-proof template of Blogger Beta, I'm freshening things up and restructuring this site. Hope the new stuff is of interest.

P.S. A few dozen new photos up on Flickr.

Chardenoux and The Head

2006-10-11T15:45:00.000-05:00

Sadly, I had forgotten my own camera =(

Well, I can now die knowing I've tried tête de veau (note: the link to the left os NOT for the faint of heart!), that venerable French classic that reminds me of an infinitely gringo-downed version of some crazy Mexican voodoo stew from my (over-active?) imagination. But am I better off for having done so? Well, maybe not particularly, but I can truthfully say it was not as ghastly as you may think (however, if you're veg, it was that ghastly and worse). Tucked away on a sidestreet not far from Bastille, Chardenoux is a very lovely little old school bistro which, in spite of what seems to be lots of press, appeared to me to still be very much a locals-frequented hidden-gem spot.
Although the côte de veau with sautéed girolles (chanterelles) and potatoes almost dissuaded me from the tête, along with the knowledge that Ryan and quite possibly the rest of our party would be mildly terrified, I remained steadfast in my decision. This was guided largely by the fact that I knew I would be having the best and most authentic version possible, which turned out to be true. It just wasn't my cup of tea, er, bowl of head... Baddum-shing!! Sorry, I couldn't resist that one. I will say the sauce gribiche was quite good, it's just that I'd rather eat it with some nice fried fish instead. Aside from the tête (which, again, to be fair, was just as it should have been), everything else we had was great: salade de roquette (arugula salad, pinenuts, 2 rounds of St. Marcellin baked on top of cooked slices of green apple), carpaccio of cured salmon with shaved fennel and herb oil, cœur de rumsteack à l'echalotte, pavé de cabillaud (cod) with cabbage and saucisse de Toulouse, and finally a showstopping crème brûlée infused with jasmine tea. It was one of the best versions I've ever had, and I've probably eaten a bathtub full in my day. So, Chardenoux, I give you both thumbs up, the head included.

Welcome to Chinatown/ Des Petites Conneries

2006-10-03T08:54:00.000-05:00

At long, long last we have discovered the good Chinese food, and it's a mere 10 minute walk down the hill! Housemade dumplings and buns of many varieties, at least a couple dozen soups, squid sauteed with celery, baby eels with ginger and garlic... real goddamn Chinese food, not the sickly porc sauce caramel and floppy mystery nêms languishing in hundreds of traiteur windows all across the city. We had fresh, juicy little herb and pork potstickers, ma po tofu as mushy as it should be, and a pretty tasty dish of pork with scallions, pickled mustard greens and sticks of firm tofu. We were crammed between two anglophone expats and a Chinese couple; when we were leaving I realized two Italians were at the end of the table. It almost felt like we could have been back in San Francisco.

I was recently able to entertain a long-held and ridiculous fantasy. It would seem as though being at a decent level of profiency in French has made me into kind of an asshole at times... in Paris I rarely want other anglophones to know that I'm one of them. I don't know why this is, exactly. So when Giuseppe and I somehow ended up in the bar of a hostel at Jaurès two nights ago, it's only natural that my aversion to speaking English was all the more amplified by the almost exclusively American and British student clientele. Which, don't get me wrong, is the crowd to be expected in such a place. Cajoled into begging a cigarette for him, Beppe pointed me to a table nearby, who I in a moment discovered were indeed British. So I asked for the cigarette, to which the first guy tried valiantly to remember how to say "sorry I don't speak French." At this point I was faced with the decision to either be an asshole and allow to the charade to continue, or drop it, thereby dashing my fantasy. Although the couple glasses of wine in me would have surely led to the same decision, it was made for me when the girl at the table (being the quickest on the draw of the three) immediately realized what I wanted and excitedly interrupted her boyfriend with "cigarette! She wants a cigarette!" Let me point out to those who may not know: yes, cigarette is a French word. An unopened pack was produced with a flourish, almost triumphantly. Instead of opening it, I started to pack it, recalling hazily the ritual of being a regular smoker some time ago. I was met with slightly panicked immediate protest-- "No, no, is ok, is ok!" Further melodramatic gesturing bade me to abandon this activity, along with a very loud and well-anunciated apology from the girl, explaining "yes, I always do that too, and he gets annoyed." We shared a sympathizing glance. The boyfriend tried to redeem himself by offering me a light, the word for which came out as a strange cousin to "fuego," which is of course Spanish. "Feu?" I offered, the girl quickly chiming in again with "yes, 'feu' that's it! Feu!" Mission accomplished at last, I went back to our table with the guilty little cigarette.

Yes friends, I, too, can be a jerk with the worst of them. Aw, but come on, it's all in good fun isn't it?

Around Western Europe in 12 Days, Ice Cream Technology, The Triumphant Return of Giuseppe Punzo, and Other Amazing Tales

2006-09-28T15:35:00.000-05:00

Hello again. I know I've been lacadaisical lately about the blog, but rest assured I'm still alive and eating. Here's an abbreviated rundown of the past month or so:

-road tripped a good portion of Western Europe... castles, rainbows, tripe, spiders, le mistral, caves, black bread and superlative smoked fish all made appearances at one time or another
-took a very interesting ice cream technology class this week with a very hilarious prof... my favorite flavors (of around 30) included sorbet yaourt, crème glacée à la vanille (I actually liked the eggless version the best), banane flambée, sorbet framboise fraiche, crème glacée au cassis et crème fraîche, sorbet ananas vanillé, crème glacée au caramel fleur de sel, crème glacée wasabi, & crème glacée à l'huile d'olive
-one of our beloved former roommates has returned to Paris to continue his studies, making life much more fun again

Fall continues its approach, but has yet to sink the mercury too low or fade the green from the trees. We're starting to discover new places and things to do, which I suppose should not be too surprising, given this is Paris after all. I'm more and more in love with our neighborhood, which is diverse and, although maybe not as lovely as some others, packed with busy little bars, brasseries, markets etc. In addition, we're a brief stroll away from the wonderful Parc Buttes Chaumont, Gambetta, Oberkampf, and the reknowned À la Flûte Gana, a bakery at which the two head bakers are women (something practically unheard of here!). Despite the fact that I have some months left here, I feel time slipping away... more than six months have passed since I left Minneapolis. I'm filled with a desire to absorb as much of this insane city and culture as I can. It can be remarkably difficult, for me at least, to balance the neccessary -and don't get me wrong, certainly also desirable- normality of everyday life with the richness and enormity and goddamn complexity that is this city. Sometimes I almost feel like it's a sin to not go out, that by eating spaghetti at home on the couch with a book is a punishable offense when Paris -by god, PARIS!- is surrounding me with nearly infinite possibilities. To not answer its call can make me feel like a sad fool. But in the end, it's simply not possible to do it all. I'll never see all there is to see, eat everywhere, meet everyone. So, spaghetti on the couch is inevitable. But I'm doing my best in spite of it.

Classes are very good, I've finally altered my schedule to a pretty ideal state. I cancelled on chocolate bonbons and small breads for restauration, replacing them with Entremets de Tradition and a Viennoiserie course. I will hopefully be filling the couple gaps I have with some good stages, but I have yet to arrange them.

P.S. 200 new photos up on Flickr from classes, the road trip and more.

Back to reality

2006-09-02T13:59:00.000-05:00

Minnesota represent!!

The city has refired its engine after a month of mass exodus and repose. Our neighborhood is much more vibrant now that shops have reopened their doors, and everywhere there seems to be a desire to be out and about, soaking up the last traces of summer before the inevitable grip of fall and then winter settles in for good. Already I can some mornings see faint traces of breath on the air while waiting for the bus just before sunrise. But upon leaving school, it will be sunny and humid, too warm for the sweater and scarf from that morning.
Like the rest of Paris, I'm back to work. It wasn't as awful as I had anticipated having to wake up early for the first time in over two months. My commute is indeed long and bothersome compared to the extreme ease of where we last lived, but I've using it as an opportunity to read more (and am devising an intricate schedule of cellphone alarms to allow for potential napping). It also allows for meeting people: on Tuesday a business-looking man started chatting with me and we stumbled upon the subject of my recent apartment woes. "Well, if there's anything I could do to help, I'd be happy to lend a hand," he'd offered. I'd replied that that was very kind, but unless he was a lawyer there wouldn't be much he could do... but in fact he is!! He said he would be more than happy to get together and have a look at my contract, which he confirms to indeed contain the illegalities I had suspected. There may yet remain a sliver of hope! But regardless, more than anything it is heartening to meet a stranger who would sympathize, let alone offer assistance. And a Frenchman, no less!
Class is good, although it certainly is a different beast altogether than the first 3 months. This past week we were a modest group of 6: two Korean women (of which one is in my program), three French men, and me. I didn't like my partner terribly much, and luckily the only times we all paired off was to scale ingredients. I immediately tagged him in my mind as a frimeur-- showoff. Cocky, quite young, a wise-ass, and some type of manager at a Lenotre production facility in Dubai, India, he made no real friends of us three girls (nor the other French men, perhaps?) by sometimes mocking our baking gestures or treating us like fools. It's very interesting to be a categorical member of not only the Inept Girls Who Would be Bakers club but also the Clueless Foreigner club. Being frequently patronized, whether intentionally or not and to varying degrees, by teachers and classmates is going to get old, very old. And there's nothing you can do about it. It makes me ponder just how some immigrants manage to tolerate such treatment, in more severe manifestations and for sometimes their entire life. I'm not used to encountering prejudice, albeit not crippling in this case, against me on such a regular basis. It's a curious position. But I can't say it's a great shock, I suppose... I'm some scruffy, bawdy American girl studying a Good Ol' Boys' Club profession in a renowned capital of Good Ol' Boys' culture.

P.S. Many new photos on Flickr, some from this past week in class and also a bunch of old photos from June/July.

La rentrée

2006-08-27T08:25:00.001-05:00

I came, I ate, I ate some more, I went back to Paris. And I got really tan. And naturally I saw lots of amazing things along the way. But it feels good to be back "home."

A Finet-free home no less! We saw loony-toons yesterday for what I hope to god will be the last time ever. It seems that fate arranged one last ridiculous confrontation, just for old-time's sake. Upon leaving the building we happened to run into one of the downstairs neighbors, started talking about the situation, I was about to give her my contract and rent receipts for their court case, and who should pop down but the celebrity herself! True to form, she was listening at the window four flights up, and came down, zany guns a-blazing. Lots of rapid French back-and-forth ensued between her and the neighbor, during which I went into a semi-catatonic state from the futility of it all. And right now she's calling me claiming she'll give me back the money for September... later this week, or something, oh, but first I need to come and take the latch off my door because her and her brother can't get it off-- gosh, it seems somebody put epoxy in the screws. Whoops! And I'm telling her no way, not until there's money in my hand, to which she says no, and I'm hanging up. And she's calling back, saying oh, actually my brother wants the apartment for half the month, so we'll reimburse you for that, but you still need to take off the lock, and I'm saying I didn't put the glue in, which she takes to mean I didn't put the lock on, which I'm fine with her believing as well. And she seems genuinely baffled by that, and appears to believe me, which genuinely baffles me. And then I'm telling her that I'll be gone during the middle of September, which is true, and then she says some convoluted thing how she'll call her brother (you know, the one that was supposedly there in the apartment during the last call!) and see if blah blah blah. And thus a fitting interaction to mark the end of the relationship.

But back to the trip! Our first lesson: avoid Florence and Siena in August at all costs. Second lesson: be prepared to sell organs on the black market for the money to rent the car last-minute in Florence in August that will enable you to drive through the backhills of Tuscany. Third lesson: it is very worthwhile to drive through the backhills of Tuscany.
Some other Proven Facts from the past weeks: Trattoria Latte di Luna in Pienza makes the best roast suckling pig in the universe (and they have a talking bird that greets you with "ciao! buona sera! come va!"), grilled eel at Lago Castiglione is very delicious but is almost sickeningly rich, there is some very very bad pizza to be found in Sorrento, Barcelona is a lot cooler than Paris, Spanish wine tastes good, lots of people at hostels are annoying, and Pompeii is surprisingly huge.

All my vacation photos are posted on Flickr, check them out.

I went back to school today after nine weeks of lazing about, which is good. I am already feeling the hurt of my much longer commute, but such is the price I knew I would pay. This week I'm taking Pains de Tradition, which is cool although I'm skeptical of many of the teacher's explanations.
It feels good to be productive again.

BCN-O-RAMA

2006-08-24T12:29:00.000-05:00

Well, freshly fattened on Barcelona´s considerable bounty, we are about to take the overnight train back to Paris. Many reports to come on our eating exploits from the past few weeks...

Just want to say...

2006-08-12T11:39:00.000-05:00

Italy rules!

Movin' on up!!

2006-08-03T12:06:00.000-05:00

I hope you Minneapolitans are taking advantage of the Midtown Global Market. It sounds goddamn awesome.

FINALEMENT!!!

2006-08-02T15:13:00.000-05:00

ON A ÉCHAPPÉ!!! We are officially free from you-know-who's zany clutches! It remains to be seen whether I will recuperate any of my cash. Let's just say there is a possibility but I'm not exactly optimistic. At least a lesson has been learned here... DON'T GIVE A PSYCHO A TON OF MONEY UP-FRONT, OR PREFERABLY NOT AT ALL!

But tonight we made a highly, um, idiosyncratic curry concoction (ready-made vindaloo paste, jarret de boeuf [shank-- pretty much only used here for pot au feu], button mushrooms, red pepper and zucchini) on top of Thai sticky rice with sliced cucumber on the side and crème fraîche on top (and with a Portugese wine!), in the very considerable comfort of our new apartment--- faaar from the 16eme. Indeed, we have relocated to the 19eme, which could hardly be further from where we were living before. This neighborhood is much more our style-- multicultural, lots of restaurants, a family feel... it seemed to me that the only non-white folks in the 16eme are either nannies or working at the grocery checkout. And I cannot say enough about how good it feels to wake up (in a real bed, no less-- not a dumpy mattress on the floor) in peace, without a radio blaring through the wall, sopping wet floors, a kitchen sink full of potato skins (or egg shells, or noodles, or chicken bones...), or any number of other unpleasant surprises.

Our vacation is about ready to launch, final preparations are underway. One week of adventure en route to Rome from Milan, then several days there, then "?" for two days (Naples, we hope? Beppe, where are you?), then Barcelona, then back home. And then it's back to school for me! Five weeks off have blown by at tremendous speed. How the heck did that happen, you might ask? Well, one class I wanted was full, another I decided to move closer to the final exam so it would be fresher in my memory, and then my much-looked-forward-to Maîtrise de Conserves (read: High-Fallutin' Pickles) class was cancelled seeing as how I'm apparently the only one out there who wants to spend a week making high fallutin' pickles. Er, I mean, master conserves. And then on a note of double misfortune, the timing has worked out neither for a stage in production at the school nor for a stint at an organic farm. There would be the possibility to push some of my classes back even later so as to make room, but I think they've been pushed quite far enough as it is. My stay here is extending itself a good deal longer than originally anticipated already. My pipe dream of the week is to somehow hustle a stage at Michel Bras' in Laguiole, but I find it pretty much inconceivable, especially given that there's only one week where I'm off classes before they close for the season. But I've slopped together a new resumé nonetheless, and if I can muster up the motivation in the next day and a half I'll send it off into the ether just for the hell of it.

Finetisms, the short list

2006-07-31T04:39:00.000-05:00

An abbreviated account of antics perpetrated by this blog's favorite zany antagonist... Helene Finet!!!

>CUE BENNY HILL THEME, HIGH VOLUME<

*dumping water all over the floors and leaving it there... everyday! "It's cleaning!"
*stealing money out of our rooms and bags! Twenty euros from us yesterday, and assorted 1 and 2 euro coins from Cole!
*stealing toilet paper CONSTANTLY, be it from the bathroom, or our hiding places in our rooms (suitcases, empty flowerpots...)!!
*stealing and/or throwing away food! A nectarine from our room yesterday... vanished, without a trace!
*stealing from the neighbors! We saw her take their ladder and then hide it in a weird service shaft!
*telling her 'boyfriend' that she's on Crete and flying to Lebanon by helicopter, therefore he can't return her call!
*cruising AA meetings for dates!
*talking about how she's supposed to find an American to marry her so she can live in the States... just like her daughter! It's their 'plan!'
*bringing home what she claims is a crocodile egg so it can hatch and be a pet!
*showing prospective renters a book which she claims to have authored... as a ghost writer! Ya know, for anonymity!
*loading the dishwasher like, well, a maniac so that nothing gets cleaned!
*dumping food in the sink so it clogs... again and again and again!
*leaving the apartment late at night for a 'conference' and returning 10 minutes later!

>CONTINUE BENNY HILL THEME DURING WACKY FINET SLAPSTICK MONTAGE<

GIVE ME BBQ OR GIVE ME DEATH

2006-07-28T06:49:00.000-05:00

Oh barbeque, how thy absence makes my heart grow fonder! And by the way, these aren't BBQ but I hope you bastards in Minnesota will eat here for me: Sea Salt Eatery and Pop's Family Cafe. If I still had a spleen to speak of I would probably tear it out for some good old American food like this right now.

Those of you up to date are well aware of my failure to procure daily food-related entries this week. Yeah, well. I do have much better news, however: I've hustled up a new apartment and even a future roommate for us! The place is super nice with a decent kitchen (by Parisian standards), a pleasant neighborhood, and even hundreds and hundreds of books of English and French literature. Unfortunately it is drastically inconvenient for my commute and I will be losing a barrel-load of money from doubling up on rent between it and Planet Finet for 2 months... you can't win 'em all I guess. The roommate will be an as-yet-unseen Canadian girl who sounds very nice and shares many interests with us.

But returning to barbeque (really, don't all roads lead back to barbeque?)... in the spirit of my previous Breakfast Joint Menu, I now submit my Barbeque Shack Menu-- indeed these are the first in a potential series of menus. The following has been rattling around in my head for many months, as are very well aware ye fellow Aurigans......

THE GOODS (aka PLEASURES OF THE FLESH)
All smoked insanely long, of course.
Spare ribs... just salt and pepper or dry-rub
Beef ribs... just salt and pepper
Chicken... dry-rub or extra spicy
Brisket... Flicker style.
Pulled pork sandwich... choose the sauce

Non-smoked Goods...
Spicy fried catfish with real tartar sauce
The Line Cook Basket: fried chicken livers with fries-- Crystal hot sauce a must!
Cornmeal-fried oyster po'boy
Buffalo wings-- done really well. And killer blue cheese sauce.
Good corndogs. I'm serious.

Sauces
you know, pretty much the standards... thick and sweet; extra spicy; Texas-style vinegar; chipotle-raspberry aioli (ha- JUST KIDDING)

Sides
Skin-on mashed potatoes with chicken gravy
Loaded potato salad... extra pickles, eggs, celery
Spicy jojo potatoes
Skin-on fries
Baked beans with Nueske's bacon
Cider braised collard greens
Coleslaw
Cornbread (northern style)
Best ever buttermilk biscuits
Blackened succotash
Hushpuppies
Very soft white buns

Dessert
Sweet Potato Pie with candied ginger
Pecan tart- like the pie but less devastating
Coconut cream pie
Deep dish apple pie
Very dark chocolate brownie
Seasonal fruit cobbler or crisp

My breakfast joint

2006-07-24T16:09:00.000-05:00

If I had a breakfast joint, the menu would surely have things like this...

*Egg-in-the-hole-in-the-bread. House white bread, brioche or pain au levain.
*Buckwheat pancakes with real maple syrup. Potential variations: banana-cocoa nib, wild blueberry, white nectarine-pinenut, candied pecan..........?
*Garlicky sauteed kale. With poached eggs, shaved parmesan, truffle oil and lots of cracked pepper
*Chorizo scramble. With queso fresco, lime, homemade flour tortillas and pico de gallo
*Overnight yeasted waffles with real maple syrup or Nutella sauce or house vanilla bean ice cream or combinations?..........
*House granola with tupelo honey, hemp seeds, dried sour cherries and toasted almonds. With organic milk, or house yogurt.
*Smoked fish platter in tribute to Prune in NY. Many delicious garnishes.
*Super fluffy omelette like at Mickey's in St Paul. Possible combos: extremely sharp cheddar and Neuske's bacon; lox, a bit of cream cheese, red onions; house spicy sausage and the house home fries; roasted asparagus and cambozola.....
*House cuban-style black beans with fried eggs, green onions, creme fraiche, house flour tortillas and sriracha (DUDE THIS IS SO GOOD)
*Soft scrambled eggs with toast and hashbrowns
*'Benedict' with roasted asparagus, jambon de pays and the best bearnaise ever, on top of toasted pain au levain. With hashbrowns.
*Corned beef hash with eggs on top. House corned beef. And lots of onions in the hash!
*Waffle iron brioche french toast, dammit!

Sides would include stuff like....

*Home fries with sweet onion, garlic, rosemary and thyme
*Not-too-sweet yeasted cinnamon coffeecake
*Hashbrowns fried in butter
*House spicy sausage
*Nueske's bacon
*Grapefruit salad with mint syrup. Or pineapple? Both?

Un guêpier?

2006-07-23T11:07:00.000-05:00

Well, I have decided to enable comments once again. I'm curious about what feedback might be floating around out there, and also about who cares to keep up to date on our exploits.

So, what's on yer minds out there in the ether??

Note: Lelchuks and Parsons, please take it easy ;-)

Gazpacho

2006-07-23T07:19:00.000-05:00

I have had a tremendous craving for gazpacho lately, which I suppose is derived from the extremely hot weather of the past few weeks and the subsequent disinterest in all hot foods. But then again on of the hottest days we had Korean barbeque (which entailed sitting next to a sweltering butane grill and searing my own bulgogi), and the other day we had great big bowls of steaming hot pho, so maybe that makes me a big liar. However, that's because I also have a really crappy cold with a lung-rattling cough, so I've been trying to punish the virus into submission with additional heat. I think it's working..?
But back to gazpacho. Man, that stuff is good. I finally realized my goal yesterday... peel, seed and chop tomatoes; microplane garlic; dice red pepper and cucumber; mince a bit of onion; mix it all up with some salt, a bit of sugar, red wine vinegar and a bit of balsamic to vaguely compensate for the very regrettable fact I have no nice sherry vinegar-- well, any sherry vinegar, period. I didn't add bread because I personally don't really roll like that, not for gazpacho. And we're out of olive oil, but it would be so much better with it, so I think I'll have to to get some. And there you have it. It's awful good, but I could definitely also go for some Gazpacho Fitzgerald (I know, only a couple of you get that reference).
We also tried to go to a new (to us) market, but upon arrival at 1:00 sharp it was almost entirely broken down, which is quite unusual, especially as it was a fairly decent-sized one. Managed to quick snatch up some gazpacho fixins and haggle 3 melons for 5 euros-- heh heh heh. It's too bad it was done with, especially as I had heard one woman sells the normally quite rare fresh (which is to say unaged) camembert, which is twice the height of the normal stuff and eaten like many other fresh cheeses: either sweetened with sugar or honey, or savory with chopped herbs and cracked pepper.

In other news, we saw Life Aquatic last night at La Villette, which I liked much, much more than the first time I saw it. Unfortunately they started the movie too late, or maybe the problem was that they showed a short film first, so afterwards we missed the last metro-- along with probably several hundred -or more- other people. We took a meandering trek through the upper 19eme to Belleville, where we finally caught the Noctilien. All in all, it took us about two hours to get back.

Tonight we have an appointment to go check out this pretty cool-sounding place to live by Montparnasse. We're keeping our fingers crossed!

Joyeux anniversaire, moi!

2006-07-21T20:51:00.000-05:00

Well, I am one day older and have completed my 23rd trip around the sun! Above is photo I totally stole from some other guy's blog. This is what you find when image googling "birthday cake eiffel tower." It was a very low-key day. Slept in quite late, hung around, walked near Trocadero and hung around and read, ate pho with a couple of my classmates in the 13eme, and saw a Mongolian film at La Villette as part of the Cinema en Plein Air festival.

I have lately realized that my narrative has veered off course from that of a cook in Paris to one of "ahhh, I'm freaking out about the psycho landlady, oh nooooooooo, my brain is seeping with self-pityyyyyyy," and frankly, the latter doesn't conjoin neatly with the word blog (this is my Clog, right? Wow, I must be like the wittiest damn person on the planet!). No, but really, where did all the love go? And by love I can only mean food. I'm sorry I've given you almost no "dinners lately" or reports on new outdoor markets, or shoddy glare-obscured shots from patisserie displays. Am I growing jaded to Paris? I don't think so, but I guess I am slowing down. I'm acclimated to being here, which is a polite way of saying I'm lazy. So I hereby set forth a goal for myself this week: I will post something about food every day, and take a photo for each day which I'll post later because it's easier that way.

We'll see if I can bring back the love a little bit...

Ces choses me manquent

2006-07-10T16:17:00.000-05:00

Today I present a miscellaneous array of things I miss from home. Not included are the obvious things, such as friends and family.

*Golooney's subs on Sunday morning
*The Weinery, especially the fries & Mr Sunshine dog
*Vietnamese food on Nicollet! How can the Vietnamese food here be inferior given the history of colonisation?! Dude, for real.
*Lake Harriet
*Chinese food! It SUCKS here!
*Minneapolis summer, even as hot and buggy as it is
*Cinema Revolution
*bluegrass at Dulono's
*my bike!!
*BBQ, both the availability thereof and the activity
*breaking down the kitchen to Styxx's Greatest Hits
*Loring Park
*a big freezer
*my books
*concerts
*bulk food (especially spices) at the co-ops
*big ol' American breakfast!! Bacon! Eggs! Freakin' hashbrowns, dammit!
*a bed that's actually comfortable
*trashy, sloppy American pizza
*BURGERS! Yes, Ryan and I miss burgers to a very great extent, despite the fact we eat them quite rarely at home. Go figure.
*messing around in my kitchen making random stuff (tamales, bagels, curry, sticky rice, who-knows-what)

Ryan misses pancakes probably most of all. Luckily we can remedy that in France without too much effort.

As for things I anticipate missing about Paris...

*the outdoor markets!!!!!!!! I will be truly, truly sad to leave behind the markets of Paris. The traiteurs, bouchers, charcutiers, fromagers, maraichers......
*the cheese. To be honest, we haven't explored as wide a range as you might think, but cheese is so pervasive and cheap that we eat it all the time. We actually buy the ghetto cheap cheese most of the time, which is pretty funny (perhaps shameful?) given all the better options.
*the monuments and aesthetic that remind you "hey, this is Paris! I LIVE here!"
*THE BREAD! It will be sad to leave the bread-valuing atmosphere of France (well, Europe, really).
*speaking French. I really hope I can maintain (and maybe, maybe even improve) my current level of fluency after I leave.
*the generally more food-valuing attitude. Everybody loves to eat here.

SUCCHIA LA FRANCIA!

2006-07-09T15:57:00.000-05:00

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! TAKE THAT, FRANCE!!!

So, I had before now neglected to note my (temporary) love for soccer. But I am now coming out of the closet, as a blissfully happy supporter of Italy-- who has convieniently won the World Cup, just moments ago. We're heading to the Champs Elysees right now to celebrate, hopefully we make it back alive.......

EDIT: So, last night I was pretty enthusiastic, huh? Well, I'm still glad Italy won, but I retract my earlier statements professing love, or coming out of closets, or blissfully happy or any of that. We walked to Trocadero, where not much was going on. Ryan and I bailed on Champs Elysees and went back home instead. It was just a bunch of sad, drunk Frenchies and riot cops anyways.

What did we ever do to deserve this???

2006-07-07T12:10:00.000-05:00

The situation here just sucks.

We saw a lawyer at the mairie Friday who confirmed our suspicions that A) we signed an illegal contract (it is valid for only 3 months, but Finet had wrote in 5) and B) it would be both stressful and potentially fruitless to try and take actions to recuperate our money.
Finet's daughter is staying here for the time being, who initially appeared to be benign enough but then showed herself to be a horrific beast-monster of biblical proportions. From what (rather heated) conversations I've overheard between her and her mom, we've reached the conclusion that Evil Daughter is just utterly money-hungry and selfish-- it seems clear that she needs the cash from renting this apartment to pay for her stupid wedding. This beastly nature was revealed to me at an impressive and unnerving level after I was flat-out caught warning a prospective future renter to GET THE HELL AWAY FROM HERE, FAST. It turns out that I actually shot myself in the foot in more ways than one with that stunt: the girl was representing a language school that (purportedly) would have rented out ALL the rooms, thereby enabling us to get reimbursed and thusly freed. As much as that sucks that I ruined our way out, I do feel that I did the morally right thing in warning her... and I screwed Finet and Little Beast over bigtime in terms of money! That's rewarding to me.
But now, through my gratuitous eavesdropping I have discovered that big and little Finet are both plotting against me. I do not mean this in a joking or paranoid sense. Phone calls have been made, to whom I have no idea, I believe a visit to a lawyer has been made but I'm not positive, some person is supposed to come on Monday (but to what end, again I don't know). I AM FREAKED OUT AND STRESSED AS HELL. They have NOTHING on me or anyone else living here for that matter, but I am still totally panicked, as I think most people would be.

We are getting the HELL out of here as soon as possible... we've rented an apartment in the 11th for the week that Andrew and Carolyn will be here, during which we'll leave our stuff here, I guess. After that there is a brief limbo period before we leave to travel that remains to be dealt with, during part of which I would like to do a stage in the bread bakery at Lenotre. However this necessitates staying in the motel next door to the school as the bakery shifts start at 3AM. I feel like everything is really, really complicated at the moment. And, while all of this is happening, I am now trying to find some poor soul to taking over the last 2 months of our contract so I don't have to eat the enormous cost of that embarassingly and foolishly prepaid rent. Does this make me a hell-bound hypocrite?? Maybe so. In fact I might well not have the heart to go through with it. I can't help but feel -and HATE- that Finet is winning by succeeding in chasing us from what is supposed to be our home (and quite possibly getting a load of my money in the same blow). However, although we may be losing this battle, Karl pointed out the very good fact that in helping the neighbors with evidence we might enable them to eventually put an end once and for all to this tyranny. By god I really do hope so.

Felicitations, mes potes!!

2006-06-27T17:24:00.000-05:00

MAD SHOUT OUTS, ALL Y'ALL!! (click here...)

And so pass the days of my life

2006-06-27T17:19:00.000-05:00

A few recent kodak moments. More up on Flickr.

Escape from planet Finet

2006-06-25T06:42:00.000-05:00

Well, there is a pinpoint of light at the end of the tunnel for me and Ryan, although it necessitates certain misery for a new set of renters. The result of our recent rock-the-boat measures has caused enough fear and/or discomfort to Finet that she is now saying she'll make an "exception" just this once for us and let us have our money back IF she can find someone to take our room. Right now we're being quite individualistic in looking out for our own interests, but we do feel bad for the doomed souls that move in after us. Yet my goal is to make it impossible for her to continue renting this apartment in the future, so hopefully the suffering will be put to an end somewhat soon (although within the French system who knows what "soon" means). In regards to that, Karl and Giuseppe went to speak to a semi-lawyer on Friday, who did indeed confirm that it is illegal for her to sleep in the hallway and all that (wow, big surprise there!). This afternoon Karl and I returned to the neighbors' downstairs, where we were met with a very warm reception indeed. We swapped crazy Finet stories (which of course are never in short supply), and talked legal stuff. They were very happy to receive the photos and statement concerning the apartment, in fact, they even gave us a bottle of wine when we were leaving!! The sweet nectar of alliance. So hopefully at the very least we can help them and the rest of the building out in the long run, as what they've really been in need of is certain evidence that only insiders like us could provide (heh heh heh).

In other signifigant news, I passed my "exam" (which in fact was not a tremendously big, or graded, deal) last week, which was a relief to be done with. I thought the thing that was the most stressful about the whole ordeal was that I was working with someone that was always freaking out and pissed at everyone else. Granted, I felt pressure to get things done and to do them well, but even still I didn't feel inclined to have a heart attack over it. But my partner's attitude put quite a damper on the whole class, and me most of all. In the end I was fairly happy with the quality of my products. Some things weren't perfect, but on a whole I think I did a competent job, and was told as much by the teacher in the critique. It's very strange that we're done with the part of the program where we're all together... there probably won't ever be a week that we're all there at the school. I must say it's sort of sad. Some of my favorite classmates are pursuing cuisine, so we will have few or no classes together now. And I found out my conserves (i.e. pickles, etc) class was cancelled, as I was apparently the only one signed up for it. It's really too bad, as I was especially looking forward to it. But I will replace it (hopefully) with a pretty awesome looking petits fours class in December, for which I saw the presentation last week. And in honesty that is of much more professional use to me than pickles.

We leave on another little road trip tomorrow night with Karl and Beppe to Holland and Belgium. It should be a lot of fun. Not really sure where we're staying or even going precisely, but we'll find out soon enough. Unfortunately, Karl had his bag stolen from Champs de Mars on Saturday... and with it his passport, wallet, drivers license, credit cards, iPod, digital camera... everything important, basically. I feel really bad for him, and I feel stupid because I was sitting right next to it when it happened. We pretty sure we got totally worked over by a crew of scammers. One hit on me to keep me busy, another two chatted up Karl, and then one of them excused himself and must have swiped the bag. Makes me feel quite a bit more mindful for the future. Shit happens, I guess.

Saw the Pride march/ festival at Bastille on Saturday also, which was truly quite underwhelming, not so much in size but in creativity. Very conservative, compared to San Francisco, or even to Minneapolis, I felt like. It was with clinical precision that they cleaned up after such an event! I have never seen such a marvel of efficiency. Huge crews of trucks with pressure hoses, dudes with those green brooms, leaf-blowers, sweeping trucks and more descended upon the area like hyenas, leaving nary a trace of the day's events. All before the sun had even set. I then went directly to see the movie Paris, Je T'aime, which I must say I really liked... or dare I say-- loved? No pun intended. No really, it was very good. The Coen brothers' story was funny. Man, Steve Buscemi is getting old.

Been reading more in French lately, including some comics. Expanding my vocabulary more and more. Going to start working on my command of the subjunctive, which is a weird concept to me but necessary to master if I want to speak properly.

And last but not least, eager to know how everything went at the Beard house for Auriga!!! Been thinking about it all weekend. Sent my thoughts westward across the pond.

Pointless shouting match number 2

2006-06-21T15:53:00.000-05:00

Well, as I like to keep things lively here (seeing as my exams this week aren't stressful enough), I took it upon myself to have another highly fruitful argument with madame this afternoon. The highlight was HER telling ME that I am "psycho" and/or "nuts," and also that she was a lawyer for 15 years so she knows her rental laws (as Beppe said, "oh yeah right, she was actually a lawyer for 2000 years".
In the heat of the moment, I utterly could not resist telling her that I have an appointment with a lawyer this Friday (true, although I am in fact not going, my roommates are) to talk all about our situation here, and that I have been talking with the neighbor downstairs about helping him with the court case against her. As might be imagined by those who have been following recent events, neither of these phased her much (i.e. she almost completely ignored it, and refuted it with riduculously fabricated stories to the contrary), although she did relent a bit later by saying that *maybe* (MAYBE!) Ryan and I could have money back and move out early IF she could find someone else to take our room... which in my opinion is a very thinly veiled attempt to wash her hands of us so as to avoid legal problems.
I cannot even stress enough how much bullshit ("connerie") she is full of. Edith, the Taiwanese girl, came back today to get something, and madame tried to force her to hand over her key to the padlock she had installed on the door... I was so proud of Edith!! I pulled her away and said she absolutely must NOT give madame the key, so she slipped it to me instead. And then upon Finet's insistence that she give her the key, she refused without even blinking. It was great, in a shitty, miserable, futile kind of way. She then proceeded to tell Finet that she is exploiting us foreigners, to which Finet disagreed with/ didn't give a shit.
After the stress of the whole confrontation (which I don't -and won't- even begin to detail further here), I drank a moderate amount of wine to take the edge off. This resulted in a comensurate amount of kissing ass and flat out lying when she explained maybe she could make an exception just this once and give us our money back if she finds someone else. I bit my tongue so hard it's a wonder I didn't sever it. I played friendly to everything, even though it was all sickeningly ridiculous.

We'll see what the lawyer says. I hope to god it's on our side.

On a brighter note

2006-06-16T10:29:00.000-05:00

Recent photos. Added a couple hundred to Flickr today, check them out.

The talking chair that lives in our hall

2006-06-15T17:41:00.000-05:00

Well, the merde hit the fan tonight, so to speak.

We finally found a lock that fits on our door, and so needless to say we put it on immediately once madame left the house. Later, it was Ryan who bore the initial brunt of her reaction, which was suitably unreasonable (see previous posts for backround). As soon as I heard from the other room that the can of worms was already open, I joined the scene and, both Ryan and my guns blazing, proceeded to inflict not even one dent in the solidly outlandish worldview that exists in the mind of Madame Finet. We tried to retreat to the Italians' room and slam the door on her which, having no lock (!!!), proved to be utterly ineffective. This instead drew the "conversation" out maddeningly. The other guys did pipe in their support which was nice but, again, to no avail whatsoever.
What was said was of so little importance given the futility of it all, but I will try to briefly recap for education's sake.
1. She UTTERLY believes that we are meant to live here like a family, and that all the rooms are open to everyone, and that she's here to help us and to be our "French teacher" and our protector. To put locks on doors goes against this principle. (?!!?)
2. She wants everyone to be happy, and when it was very blatantly stated that we would be happier without her, she simply denies it and goes on again about #1 (above).
3. We said over and over and over that it's not Ok for her to sleep in the hallway and that it ceases to be her "home" if she rents out all the rooms and has none of her own. She says it would be terrible to deprive a "poor student in need" of a room when she's fine sleeping in the hallway, and besides, it doesn't bother anyone that she does that. Again, when explicitly stated that YES we do mind, she either returns to point #1, or ignores the statement, or returns to the argument that this HER home and we knew all along that it would be like this. Everyone disagreed with that, and she disagreed with us, AND what's more she then pretended that we all agreed!! We also said it's not ok that she sleeps naked in the hall (which she denies, yet we have seen ourselves), takes showers with the door open, puts water all over the floor (she calls this "cleaning"), eats everyone's food, doesn't do dishes.... on and on. She denies these things. We even told her we have VIDEO of her going in peoples rooms repeatedly, which she basically ignored completely.

In summary, she steamrolls over anything you try to say and tries to dismiss it and pretend like there's no problem, there's at most just a slight misunderstanding. And we kept saying NO, we do NOT agree, there IS a problem, YOU are the problem, YOU are wrong etc. And she kept trying to say she wants the house to be like this or like that, and we flat out said WE DON'T CARE WHAT YOU WANT, WE PAY TO LIVE HERE, which she obviously is incapable of comprehending. And she above all kept stressing that she's super cool, she lets us do whatever we want, we're free here, she wants us all to be happy, she protects us, we're lucky to live here.... and Beppe finally said "you know, you act like it's a gift to us that we live here, but it's not, we PAY rent, we PAY you" and then she returned to..... you guessed it, point #1!

So, I would say Beppe finally hit the nail on the head when he said it's just like talking to a chair. A crazy, crazy chair.

La Grande Famille

2006-06-14T13:06:00.000-05:00

So Ryan got an earful of madame's "philosophy" today, which, as one might guess, was highly enlightening and reasonable. So, in her universe, this is her home, and we are all a big happy family with no boundaries or personal space. It is wrong to keep doors closed (and god forbid we put locks on them like "the Chinese [Taiwanese] girl"), and anyone is free to enter each others' rooms as they wish, because, you know, someone might want "air from the window" of someone else's room. To this Ryan replied that it's both a matter of privacy AND the little fact that we have paid rent and therefore are free to do anything we want with our rooms. And she said "no no, is like French family... is a concept, is a concept." So it's good we got that cleared up. And then apparently she said to Beppe today that I am a problem in the house, that I give her awful looks and yet she's done nothing to warrant it. I find that beyond hilarious. The looks part is definitely true.
Karl and I went to see the downstairs neighbor last night, which went quite well. He suggested that we write a statement listing all the abnormal aspects of living here, and take some digital photos of everything in disrepair. He has been assembling a dossier on madame for his court case against her, so this will become part of that and should hopefully help all of us. He was very, very cordial, which made things easy. Apparently he works at Roissy airport and knows lots of cops and lawyers, so he seems fairly well-versed in the system. So that's looking hopeful!
Switching gears...
In the rest of life, things have been pretty good. Jeremy came, and then left early, which was too bad but the right decision for him. We went out a bit of course, which was fun. Finally went to The Crocodile, a super awesome bar in the Marais, which I will definitely return to. Last week there was a great BBQ at Mario's lovely house in the burbs, pictures soon to come. Saturday saw a FANTASTIC circus-y theatric gitane music show at a park in Nanterre which was part of an art fair weekend. And we finally got a spell of warm weather, to a fault in fact.
This week of class is really good, as the teacher is fantastic-- passionate about food, knowledgeable, easy to understand (which matters a lot these days!), funny, practical, on task. And the stuff we're making is for the most part excellent, like a truly killer bordelaise (albeit marrow-less), sauce amoricaine (or as I say, Lobster Madness), lamb shoulder sous vide Robuchon style, etc etc. Tomorrow we're roasting Bresse roosters, making bearnaise, and regenerating sauteed cod as well as scallops with langoustines. We learned a pretty sweet trick to make langoustines (or anything) super rosy-red: take raw lobster coral and whisk it up (this can be defrosted frozen coral that gets saved here and there over time) and brush it on the raw product before sauteeing-- it's so bright it's almost unbelievable, but looks nice.

S.O.S.

2006-06-13T14:44:00.000-05:00

The atmosphere in the house is grim. As far as I'm concerned, we're living under siege. Between the heat and my early mornings I've been totally exhausted, and this afternoon as I was taking a much-needed nap I was rudely awakened by madame opening our bedroom door without knocking. I woke up and said "what are you DOING?" to which she replied she wanted fresh air from our open windows. I was about to find a blunt object suitable for inflicting moderate head trauma, and then like an afterthought she said, "oh, are you sleeping?" To which I responded in the affirmative in a tone I would normally reserve for a murderer of small children.
We're going to talk to the neighbors downstairs who apparently are in a court case against her to see if maybe we can help each other in some way. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, as they say. And we want to talk to the renters' advocate organization and the police, so we'll see where that goes.

This is too fucking ridiculous.

NIGHTMARE ON JASMIN STREET

2006-06-06T14:17:00.000-05:00

Just as the weather in Paris was getting nicer, today a black cloud settled over our house. The reign of terror is once more upon us, and its name is Finet... aka Madame Froot Loops.

The toilet paper is already missing.

Beppe already saw bosoms within half an hour of being home.

Manic laughter is raging on the other side of our (tightly shut) door.

We have opened the double door between our room and that of Ro, creating a fort-like environment. We have moved in the toaster, and there is a good supply of bread and Nutella for the troops.

A lock is going on our door ASAP.

Jeremy arrives tomorrow to join the struggle, unaware of what is in store.

Dix semaines

2006-06-04T19:25:00.000-05:00

We saw X Men today, which was fantastic. I saw Marie Antoinette yesterday which was lukewarm at best, yet about a hundred times better than Da Vinci Code which was almost insufferably terrible (although the albino dude really cracked me up). I realized yesterday that of the two films I had seen in Paris, both of them were American-made yet set in France/ Paris. I must say I really enjoy watching english movies and DVDs with the French subtitles. It's quite helpful.
Time is FLYING by! We just finished our 8th week of class, which is impossible to believe. I met up with some of the other girls in my class yesterday for the movie, after which Ryan joined us and we had an insane feast of delicious Korean food at one of the girls' apartments on the southeast peripherique. Her studio's kitchen was scarcely more than a shoebox, but somehow she managed to make a mind-boggling array of dishes-- by far the best asian food I've had since New York. As usual, pictures to come. And we visited a cool Korean grocery near Opera, whose area I noticed is quite peppered with Japanese and Korean markets.
Of course, there is yet another jour de ferie tomorrow, for some Jesus-related cause that I know and care nothing about. It's just as well. I've been feeling a bit run down lately, so I'm happy to have another long weekend. We also went out with Sophie and Julien the other night for dinner and tarot readings, which was interesting and seemingly accurate, though not something I will probably ever spend another 20 euros on.
The last of the road trip pictures are up on Flickr now. This final (and obviously nicest) batch of photos was taken by Beppe.