[Thanks Chris for the pic.]
Communal hipster wannabe soba and Japanese appetizers. A decent clone of London’s Wagamama over. Another half decent video production.
I once had some pretty amazing chicken soup (as well as some incredible chicken) at Chez Panisse. And I have always loved Steely Dan. The fressers over at Infinite Fress combined the two for a special evening:
“Last month, we visited Berkeley to see Steely Dan stamp out any lingering idealism at the Greek Theater. Nevertheless, Chez Panisse (and the Cheeseboard Pizza Collective) demonstrated that Berkeley’s Sixties legacy is not dead; it’s just confined to Shattuck Avenue’s Gourmet Ghetto. In contrast, downtown Berkeley is still plagued with faux radicals who disregard their surreal inauthenticity and congregate along fetid Telegraph Avenue and in People’s Park, when not sitting in trees. These shenanigans helped elevate Kid Charlemagne that evening to an especial darkness.”
Kevin is doing a great job documenting his eating over at Kevin Eats. Here’s his excellent report on Studio from his belated birthday dinner:
“I’d been interested in trying out Studio for a number of years now. I was thus quite excited to find out that a few buddies of mine were taking me there for my birthday. Now mind you, my birthday was in June, so this was quite a bit belated, but it’s the thought that counts right? In any case, a lot of people have stated that Studio is, in fact, the best restaurant in Orange County, a pretty lofty assertion to be sure. I was eager to test out that claim… “
Any regular reader of this blog knows about the Fat Duck. My illustrious partner Dana has even worked there for a time. Thanks to all the readers who suggested some restaurant focused blogs. Here’s some perspective from Chuck Eats:
“Intuitively, I agree with Heston Blumenthal’s basic premise 2 - eating food is multi-modal and it is influenced by, but not limited to, context, sight, sound, memories, and anatomy. It is hard to argue this, despite the absolutes in so many of our reviews. Anecdotally, we know that psychological mind-game of expectations has a great influence on the final outcome of a meal. Sights, sounds, and smells act as different triggers for people; personally, a particular sound can bring me back to a very specific point in time, where others describe a similar sensation with smell (and, thus, taste.) It would be foolish to discredit these factors when reviewing the restaurant, particularly when there are so many references scattered throughout the menu.”
Since being at Poppy, for all of 5 days total, I have received more phone calls and mail through the restaurant than ever. In fact, if you added all the times a person called me through a restaurant I have worked for, and mailed something to me at the restaurant, I have still received more efforts of communication at Poppy than all combined.
I keep saying to myself, “I have been her for 3 days, how on earth do these people know where I am?”
When I went to my favorite breakfast diner, the boys behind the counter looked at me and smiled knowingly. Sikey said, “what’s up girl?” to which Niko replied, “yeah, we know what’s up.” When they asked about the new job I replied, “how on earth do you know?!? I have only had the job for two days!”
It seems the planets have aligned to make this job my recognizable home.
Long story short, I received a hard copy of an article written by one of our readers, and I wanted to thank him.
As we rejuvenate our own little blog here I’m eager to link to and highlight the work of other restaurant bloggers who are doing a great job. When Tasting Menu started in August of 2002 it was one of maybe five or ten food blogs in existence. Now it seems like there are millions. And yet, despite all that explosive growth I am having a really hard time finding a set of good restaurant review blogs that post consistently and have good taste. No doubt, limiting myself to blogs in English isn’t helping, but there’s no reason to assume the pattern doesn’t repeat in other countries. And of course, the few that I’ve found are mostly centered on New York city. Duh. The restaurant bloggers go where the restaurants are.
I know there are lots of food blogs that review a restaurant experience here or there. That’s not what I’m looking for. I really want focus. Like a laser. On restaurants. As much as I appreciate and respect the home cook, most high quality chefs are always going to make something better than I ever could. I don’t fill my own cavities or sew my own clothes, and I don’t see anything wrong with trying to have a professional cook for me as often as possible.
Know of a kick ass restaurant blog? Let us know in the comments.
We needed to carbo load before a grueling marathon at Powell’s City of Books in Portland. NYC style pizza seemed to fit the bill. I won’t give away the verdict, but be warned the F word is used when describing what they put on the pizza. (Hopefully you’ll also notice much fewer “ums” and “ahs”.)
My friend Megan recently took her first trip to Israel. I always tell people about the food there, but there’s really no substitute for experiencing it yourself. Her full report (with pictures!):
“It was unanimous. He told us about his favorite local place. He described it as “The Hummos Nazi” - like the Soup Nazi in Seinfeld. I was more in than ever for this place! We set of on our hummos adventure for the Hummos Shack (my term, not his!) which was tucked in a small retail space in another office complex. (Its in the Ramat-Gan neighborhood)”
I came here today to to tell all of you about the salted caramel ice cream we make at Molly Moon’s. I had plans to describe exactly why it is such a dynamic flavor. With a small reminder that on our tongue are the 5 cornerstones of taste, salty, sour, sweet, bitter, and umami, I was going to tell you that salted caramel is the only flavor that touches all five of those points, a rarity for any dessert, particularly a single scoop of ice cream.
I sat down to surf the web, in hopes of finding a factoids, particularly some backing on the statement, “the butter added to the caramelized sugar provides umami.”
I got lost along the way, however. Or more accurately, found a road I had meant to travel down later this week; the path from cream to butter.
I was hired to teach two in home cooking classes, my only guideline being to center the menu around the farmers market. Because the farmers markets have recently begun to include raw milk and cream from Sea Breeze farms, I knew immediately that we would make our own butter to top a loaf of Tall Grass Bakery’s superb bread, and use the buttermilk to flavor the soup the bread would be served with.
An article in the New York Times food section last year, written Daniel Patterson followed his path from cream to butter for the tables in his restaurant Coi, and provided a recipe. Most of all, it reminded me that butter was in fact very simple to make. I had made butter as a youngster many times with nothing more than a mason jar and a little cream.
But knowing that I can do something just because it works is never really enough for me, particularly when I am teaching the process to eager students.
With a simple google search of the phrase, “does butter have umami” I came across this site detailing the entire process of butter making, with everything my curious little head could want to know. It would be an injustice to paraphrase the massive amount of information this website holds, so go ahead and read it yourself. It’s worth every moment.
What got me thinking was the section about culturing the cream before making butter, a tradition still practiced heavily in Europe. I recently learned that as cheese is all essentially the curd of milk separated from the whey with rennet, it is the culture added to the dairy that makes for the vast and varying flavors. So the thought that culturing cream makes for varying flavors in butter also piqued my interest, and started me thinking about flavored butters.
I have certianly made flavored butters, or as we call them in the industry, compound butters. These compound butters amount to nothing more than butter mixed with something like an herb, spice, or cheese.
But i wonder what would happen if rather than mixing in a whole spice or herb after the fact, we infused the cream itself then used the flavored cream to make butter. Aroma molecules are incredibly fat soluble, so it stands to reason that the fat in cream which is to become the butter itself would absorb said flavor and make a nice flavored butter.
Would it work, would it taste nice? How would we use it? Banana’s caramelized in coffee butter? Lavender butter smeared on toasted brioche? Yellow cake made with rosemary butter? Scallops basted in cumin butter?
How will the flavor carry through to the final the application?