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Fri, 02 Dec 2005
The "chow" conference on The Well
is, needless to say, my favorite. Chow is devoted to the singular and
unilateral pursuit of food and drink, disregarding all obstacles and
distractions. It was founded on November 30, 1995, by Well user
<kayo>, meaning that November 30, 2005 was a good night for a
tenth-anniverary party, hosted by <kayo> and chow's inner
circle.
We met at Medjool, a contemporary Mediterranean bar and restaurant in San Francisco's Mission district. It's a pretty snappy place, with a large, high-ceilinged main floor with a large bar, and a wraparound mezzanine with a satellite bar and good sight lines. We took over the mezzanine bar and its environs, which is a great place for a party.
The menu circles the Med, with sections focusing on North African, Southern European, and Middle Eastern dishes. We started with some of the cold plates -- crisp pitas with a yogurt dip; soft pitas with hummus, baba ghanoush, and tabbouleh; and plates of cured olives. The tabbouleh was easily the best I've had. It's something I usually turn my nose up at, having been associated in my college years with whole-wheat granola hippie food from my co-op house's alternative (i.e., vegetarian) kitchen. But this stuff was pretty serious, with lots of olive oil and garlic, and you can't go wrong there. (I've always liked hummus and baba ghanoush, and these were good examples.) The olives were sublime. They marinate them in-house, and in addition to the usual flavours I detected notes of anise, sumac, and cinnamon. It was hard not to just gobble up the whole dish, but I wanted to Play Well With Others.
Our little table ordered two dishes to share -- everything at Medjool is "small plates" oriented and suitable for sharing -- and both were hits. The fried sumac-dusted calamari, red onions & lemons with aioli went pretty quickly. (I'd never had a deep-fried lemon slice before.) This was followed by brined pork tenderloin on a bed of chorizo white beans, which was a stand-out. The pork was grilled just short of medium with the exterior having just the right amount of char. It was sliced and presently beautifully on top of the bean-chorizo mixture, which itself was superb, as the white beans soaked up the juices.
This was all washed down, in my case, with a very dry Spanish cava, Segura Viudas Brut Riserva Heredad, which comes in a bottle adorned with what looked like devotional jewelry from Madonna's early career, but was very tasty. That was followed by a Norwegian artesian spring water called VOSS, in the cylindrical glass bottle.
To top the evening off, I was even able to find a convenient parking space on Mission Street. Anxiously awaiting chow's 20th!
Posted at 17:59 | permanent link
Tue, 04 Oct 2005
I was in San Francisco today, and after shopping for athletic shoes and walking around the Inner Sunset in gloriously non-foggy weather, I developed a terrific jones for one specific dish: a Vietnamese savory crepe, sometimes called a Vietnamese pancake. It's rice flour and potato flour made into a crepe, and stuffed with shrimp, ground pork, chicken, bean sprouts, and other stuff, and you eat it with romaine lettuce, pickled carrots, mint leaf, and fish sauce. When you have to have one, you really have to have one.
I tried to put it out of my mind, and went shopping at Andronico's. I came up with the idea of making cioppino for dinner, and found an plausible pre-packaged seafood medley that I could toss in a pot with some sauce (I get it in quarts) and it would be fine. But that just did not appeal. So I left with merely two kinds of boconccini (one with dried herbs and roasted garlic; the other with tomato and fresh basil), stuffed grape leaves, caramelized onion dip, a couple of Ritter's Sport chocolate bars, a bottle of pinot noir, and some croissants. (I love Andronico's.)
But back to the idée fixe. I had to find that crepe. I headed to Yummy Yummy, which has a silly name but is one of the best Vietnamese restaurants in the city (and it's a block from Andronico's, at 12th & Irving). Alas! Closed Tuesday!
The other Vietnamese places in the Sunset are undistinguished, and mostly pho-centric. Another good place in SF is Vietnam II in the Tenderloin, but I didn't want to go all the way down there and try to find parking, and wasn't sure if they made the crepe, anyway (although they seem to make every other dish in existence). Since I was heading home, I got on the bridge and headed for Le Cheval in Oakland. I'd never had a crepe there, but it's a great place. Parked right in front. Alas... they do not make the crepe. Aaaagh.
So. Time to hit the GPS navi, conveniently built into the dashboard of the car. Thankfully, I was in a dense region of Vietnamese restaurants (Chinatown/downtown Oakland), and "Sort by Nearest" worked well. The first one was Cam Huong, but it turned out to be a bakery which had already closed. Next -- Thanh Lan, but it was a sandwich shop, no hot food. Grrr. What next? Da Quang? Saigon? Phuong Lan? I followed the navi to each one, and finally stopped at Saigon, which is across the little plaza from Oakland City Hall. I grabbed the menu, and... no crepe. Well, the place was pretty empty, being only 5:30, so I asked the guy if they could make me a Vietnamese crepe. He said, "Oh, you mean banh xeo? Sure, no problem." 15 minutes later I was out the door with a crepe (and since I was there, an order of fried fish with hot sauce on general principles).
The crepe itself was no better than average for the course, but it made me happy. The best I've had were at Cafe de Mai in Lincoln, Nebraska (which has a sizeable Vietnamese population), a place called Nam Bistro in Islington, London, and the aforementioned Yummy Yummy. I get the idea that banh xeo is more casual food than restaurant food, so it might be available in places where it's not on the menu, if you ask. I've seen a few recipes on the Net and might give it a try at home.
Posted at 22:22 | permanent link
Mon, 29 Aug 2005
An early Berch on Food "classic", just dug up and scanned. This was in Hong Kong, November 1989. (Note big beard, big glasses.) My father and I, who were staying in Kowloon, took the ferry to Central and then a bus to Aberdeen, on the southern side of Hong Kong Island. We looked at the famous floating restaurants, but had been told the best dim sum was in a huge place, which I think was just called "Aberdeen Restaurant", on a hill adjacent to the harbour. It was quite different from what we had at Hong Kong Flower Lounge in Kowloon (or Millbrae, for that matter). This was less showy and more meaty, with a huge selection of steamed dumplings and fried goodies, but no fancy tableside carved duck or noodles cooked on the trolley. Nevertheless quite delicious, although the combination of MSG, beer (rare for me) and bright sunlight resulted in the only migraine I've had following Chinese food.
Posted at 23:27 | permanent link
Tue, 09 Aug 2005
Trying to remain calm, I surveyed the table in front of me. To my left, an enormous mound of "burnt ends", the smoky, charred, fatty, crusted parts of a barbecued beef brisket, tossed with sauce. In front of me, possibly the best barbecued ribs on the planet. And to my right, the largest sliced barbecued pork sandwich I'd ever seen.
Yes, this was Arthur Bryant's in Kansas City. With Maggie supervising the pork sandwich, I tucked into the ribs and burnt ends. They were heavenly. Bryant's ribs are the perfect degree of juiciness and smoke, with a tasty crust, yet never chewy or dry. These were the ribs that all ribs yearn to be. These were the ribs that made venturing out into the wrong side of Kansas City in the oppressive, 101-degree heat worth it. And the burnt ends, which were allegedly invented as a dish by Arthur Bryant himself, were pretty much the best and highest use for a beef brisket.
It was not long before I was gazing covetously at Maggie's pork sandwich, and generously granted access, I tasted something I'd not come across before -- not pulled pork, but thinly-sliced barbecued pork with an almost herbal flavor from the rub and smoke. Make all the "hog heaven" jokes you like -- this was the real stuff.
As many of you know, I'd been threatening to go on a barbecue pilgrimage for a number of years now. Sometimes it was a grand plan for an American heartland road trip, through the southwest, Texas, the deep South, Tennessee, back through Kansas City, and back West. I'd sit down with AAA road maps and try to put together an itinerary that would sample each regional style and get as much barbecue as possible with the least wasted travel or backtracking. And like many such things, it turned into a mythical quest that never happened, a victim of time and logistics.
But I managed, nevertheless, to fill in many of the blanks. Besides all the barbecue available in California and nearby, I managed to hit some famous Texas places, including the Old Coupeland Inn on two trips, Cooper's in Llano on a trip to see friends near Austin; some east Tennessee barbecue on a business trip to Oak Ridge; all the barbecue in eastern Nebraska, and lesser-known places too numerous to mention.
But I'd never been to Kansas City.
Ever since I read Calvin Trillin's 1974 article anointing Arthur Bryant's Barbecue "the single best restaurant in the world", I've had the niggling feeling that anything I might write on the subject of barbecue was tentative and incomplete, since I had never been to Arthur Bryant's. That era, I'm happy to say, ended last Tuesday night.
Since I was coming to Nebraska to visit Maggie, she suggested we take a short road trip down to KC and symbolically complete my barbecue pilgrimage. It's three hours on the Interstate, and two days there ought to afford the chance to eat at Arthur Bryant's and at least one or two other places, not to mention sample Kansas City's other blandishments.
So we headed on down, checked into a hotel (long story there, but it's of a pedestrian and predictable nature so we'll skip over it, except to note that if you stay in KC you might want to avoid the Raphael Hotel), and -- having skipped lunch -- rested up for the trip to Arthur Bryant's. Being hungry, we headed out early, and it was 101 degrees when we left the hotel. The tour books touted something called the 18th & Vine Historical Jazz District, so we headed there first. It was a couple of blocks of restored and new buildings in an otherwise downscale part of town. There are some new museums -- one for baseball's Negro Leagues, another for jazz, and some new clubs, and it looks like a good start for building a tourist-friendly, newly-revived entertainment district. Unfortunately, on a late Tuesday afternoon with the temperature around the century mark, it was scarily deserted.
Just a few blocks away is the original Arthur Bryant's. Looking at tour maps and guidebooks, I expected something like a gentrified tourist district, complete with Starbucks, ice cream shops, chain stores, knicknack vendors, and the like, stretching all the way from 18th and Vine to -- and including -- Arthur Bryant's at 18th & Brooklyn. This is emphatically not the case. The optimism of 18th St. at Vine quickly gives over to vacant lots, boarded up buildings, and when we got to Brooklyn Ave., I was wondering if we'd taken a wrong turn somewhere. (As I've read since, everyone else thinks the same thing.)
The moment I walked in the door, though, I knew I was "home": this was the place. What struck me first was that despite 30 years of hype and visitors ranging from Jimmy Carter to Steven Spielberg, Bryant's was still firmly un-gentrified, and even though you can now get t-shirts, caps, and bottled sauce, it remains pretty much a generic-looking barbecue joint in a bad neighborhood on the east side of Kansas City.
I was prepared to be underwhelmed -- after all, I've eaten a fair amount of barbecue in a lot of places with decent pedigrees, and after all, what place can keep its "A" game for decades, especially in the face of incredible hype? But Arthur Bryant's keeps the barbecue crown, as far as I'm concerned. I'd say Cooper's comes close or equal with its brisket, and Lincoln's (late, lamented) Haggan's Holy Smoked BBQ nearly matches Bryant's ribs. But overall it's gonna be tough to beat the wily old champion.
Thus fortified, we could have returned victorious to Nebraska. But I wanted to get a little perspective on the KC barbecue scene, and since it's not a place on my regular travel circuit, I might not have another chance for years.
The traditional rival to Arthur Bryant's is Gates Barbecue, with a location near the original Bryant's, as well as some outlying locations (including one near the Raphael Hotel). But in recent years a new place, Oklahoma Joe's, has been attracting attention, and it placed second only to Arthur Bryant's in a number of polls, as well as garnering some media hype including a visit from Tony Bourdain, and mentions by a number of writers including one mentioned in an entry below.
The original location of Oklahoma Joe's is a gas station and convenience store on West 47th St., across the state line into Kansas City, Kansas. It was crowded even early on a Wednesday evening, and the clientele -- mostly upscale suburbanites -- was very different than Arthur Bryant's. Inside, it's pretty much the same as a few dozen barbecue places I've seen spring up in the last decade or two: corrugated tin siding with humorous signs, photos and memorabilia from other barbecue places, and the like. Unfortunately, that same genericity of decor carried over into the food.
We summoned up ribs and burnt ends again (at Oklahoma Joe's, burnt ends are a special only available on Wednesdays), and while everything looked great, both were somewhat of a disappointment. The ribs came as a very generous-sized slab, but were more than a little dry and chewy, though with a good smoke flavor. Perhaps that slab was on the lean side, or overcooked, or both. The burnt ends, unlike Bryant's, were served unsauced, which initially excited me, but even though they were a magnificently piled mound, they lacked the deep smoky, flavorful nature of Bryant's. Yet the place was packed, with a long line at the counter. Don't get me wrong -- Oklahoma Joe's is not bad barbecue; most any town would be lucky to have it. But Kansas City sets a high bar, and it was difficult to agree with the critics that rank it up there with Arthur Bryant's.
We checked out of the hotel the next morning and were anxious to get back to Nebraska before a line of thunderstorms met us on the road. Nevertheless, lunchtime rolled around as we were passing the northwest part of KC, near the airport, which provided the chance to eat one more barbecue meal before leaving the scene. That was the Smoke Box Cafe, which is in a small strip mall at the Tiffany Springs exit off I-29, near the airport Embassy Suites.
The Smoke Box appears to cater to locals and travelers alike, and at least one guide to KC said that if you're at the airport, and have a car, it's a good place to check out. In addition to barbecue they offer Italian subs, fried fish, and fried chicken. I couldn't resist one more shot at the burnt ends -- the Smoke Box has them as a lunch special, and while the portion was smaller than Arthur Bryant's or Oklahoma Joe's, they held their own, fortified by a thicker, sweeter, molasses-based sauce. Not a place you would want to drive to (or across) KC for, but if you're nearby, it's tasty barbecue.
By the time we hit the road, I was ready to forswear barbecue for at least a week. (As it happened, it turned out to be 4 days.) Besides, the Czech Festival in Wilber, Nebraska would be coming up in a couple of days, so I needed to get back into training. Onward!
Posted at 18:23 | permanent link
Tue, 19 Jul 2005
I spent Sunday with friends from The Well, which held its annual picnic. It's been 101-102F the last few days out where I live in Pleasanton, so I was really looking forward to cooling down at the site, at Fort Mason in San Francisco, a secluded (well, sort of) clearing on a bluff above Aquatic Park. The picnic area is called Black Point Battery and is reservable for weddings and other events. It's in kind of a backwoods part of Fort Mason, behind the Youth Hostel and next to an old battery and stores (there's at least one preserved cannon there). It appears to be completely private, but as we discovered, even though it's in the middle of nowhere, a public path runs through it, connecting a steep stairway from Aquatic Park to a smaller stairway to the upper battery and Hostel. So every time people came up, we looked them over, trying to decide who they might be (a lot of people who come to Well events have only met online) before we realized they were not coming to the picnic.
Lots
of people brought lots of tasty food, including some spicy smoked pork
ribs (from Scott, the host of the HotLuck), marinated lamb kebabs, some ginger-fried chicken, curried
plaintains, peach spice cake, homemade lavender lemonade, various
breads and sweets, and I contributed a meatosaurus, which everyone
here knows is a marinated beef tri-tip. This one was marinated in
bourbon and spices. Here is the meatosaurus fresh from
the grill:
It was fun to wander around in a part of Fort Mason I'd never visited. (If you do this, be careful: many areas are posted for poison oak.) And from the top of Black Point there was a great view of Aquatic Park and shipping traffic, and the dozens of ferries, and even the square-rigged Balclutha, an 1887 three-masted sailing ship moored nearby as part of San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park. And we watched as a group of Segway-riding tourists headed out to the end of the end of the pier. We could see the fog in the distance, but it stayed away and it was pretty warm and very sunny by San Francisco standards. By contrast, I returned home and found it still 93 degrees.
Posted at 15:54 | permanent link
Fri, 27 May 2005
David Plotz: An American Barbecue Pilgrimage
You need to put down whatever you're doing and go read David Plotz's An American Barbecue Pilgrimage: What 15 Barbecue Meals in a Row Did to My Digestion, from Slate.
Posted at 21:48 | permanent link
Fri, 06 May 2005
My apartment was blissfully quiet, even in the morning, even though my bedroom window overlooked the tiny courtyard that all the residents used to get in and out. I made strong American-style coffee, ate a croissant, watched CNN International with breakfast, and headed out walking. After some time exploring my own neighborhood's bookstores and art galleries and design shops, it was time for lunch, and with no fixed plans I ended up at L'Atelier Joël Robuchon, which is one of Robuchon's new ventures, a hypermodern small-plates place, with an open kitchen, in the Hotel Pont-Royal. It doesn't take reservations, which I though would enhance my chances of just walking in, but it was absolutely packed, and the keeper of the list advised I should come back "around 14h or 15h". Well, I was much too hungry for that, figured I'd catch up with L'Atelier later and ended up down the street at the undistinguished but perfectly good Le Saint-Germain, a bistro-ish place right on the Boulevard.
From the crowd and their plates it looked like an "order the classics" type place, so I went with an assiette de charcuterie followed by the confit de canard with fried potatoes. It was an average-to-good duck leg confit, although I must say I've never had a bad one. (As pleasant as it was, one of my favorite little French places in San Francisco, Le Charm, actually does a much better one.) But the fried potatoes were the hit of the meal: not (Belgian-style) frites, these were flat-cut strips fried (presumably in lard) to a beautiful, golden brown crispness and tossed with herbs and garlic. Possibly the best fried potatoes I've ever had. Independent of any low-carb leanings (suspended for the duration of my stay in Europe!) I've never been a real potato person, but these converted me. The frites at Belgo Centraal in London were delicious, but these potatoes were on a whole different level.
From there I waddled over to the Louvre, which I check in on every trip, and discovered that I was just not really in a Louvre mood at all. So I went out to the Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie, Paris's best science museum, which is in the far northeast corner of the city, in Parc de la Villette in the 19th arrondissement. All sorts of cool tech and toys, aviation and space, computers, astronomy, biology, everything. Worth a trip. Just at sunset, I walked most of the way back to central Paris, in time to change clothes and head over to Les Halles, since I had a dinner reservation at Au Pied de Cochon.
Au Pied de Cochon
is one of the best-known brasseries in Paris, and like many
traditional brasseries, has, over the years, morphed into a
full-service restaurant well beyond the Alsatian beer and
choucroute garni fundamentals. This is one of Tony Bourdain's
favorite places, and it has the special distinction of being open 24
hours a day. There are just not that many places you can get a
delicious, full-course dinner at 3 AM (we're talking serious French
cuisine here; please don't mention Denny's), which is one of the
reasons for the complete awesomeness of Paris in the food department.
Au Pied de Cochon's 24/7 hours date back to when Les Halles was the
immense wholesale food market for the entire Ile de France, and
needless to say, kept unusual and long hours. (The market outgrew Les
Halles and moved to suburban Rungis; Les Halles is now home to a
charmless underground shopping mall.) And in addition to its long
hours, Au Pied de Cochon needed to impress the restaurateurs and
shopkeepers who hung out at Les Halles, which it did, and has survived
Les Halles' relocation and remains very popular.
There's a long menu, and unlike a lot of places in Paris, you can just have the waiter ask the chef to make something custom to your liking, at least during the wee hours or mid-afternoon lull. But the most celebrated specialty of the house is the eponymous pied de cochon grillée, roasted pig's foot. (Grillée, usually translated "grilled", can mean grilled, roasted, or pan-fried, depending on context. Au Pied de Cochon's pig's foot appears to be oven-cooked, but I would not be surprised to learn a frying pan was involved as well.)
I started with the soupe à l'oignon gratinée, which was hearty and filling (it's one of the late-night favorites). Then the grillée itself, lightly breaded and too hot to touch! I had had pig's foot before, both the German/Alsatian smoked style, and the cold, sliced Chinese style, but Au Pied de Cochon's was something else: it's not deboned, and the slow cooking which makes the meat tender means it also falls away from the bones, which are incredibly numerous, and the connective tissue has dissolved as well. So you are provided a little bowl for bones, and an extra napkin. Fortified with some of the house burgundy, I went to work, and it was delicious, though quite a bit of work. No room for dessert!
And so to bed.
After my epic struggle with the pied de cochon, I elected to
sleep in, and I looked in the fridge and found some goose rillettes
and Vietnamese imperial rolls, and decided that, with black coffee,
grapefruit juice, and fish sauce, would make a fine brunch.
I headed back to Les Halles, with the idea of actually seeing the shopping center since it had been closed the previous evening when I ate at Au Pied de Cochon, but it was indeed unremarkable, and I didn't stay. I walked the interesting pedestrian streets east of Les Halles and made it to the Centre Georges Pompidou, which unlike the Louvre I actually was in the mood for, and spent the afternoon there, reserving a little daylight for wandering around Beaubourg and the Marais.
The Marais is an old Jewish district, with kosher restaurants, synagogues, and shops. More recently it has been the center of much of Paris's gay and lesbian community, with clubs and bars and a community center. On my trip in 1997, my friend Darin took me to a marvelous place called Equinox, which featured Quebecois cuisine. (I had rabbit terrine en papillotte, a lovely duck breast with honey and cranberries, and a serious St. Emilion, a 1993 Le Second de Haut-Sarpe.) So when I wandered down the rue des Rosiers, one of the main streets of the Marais, I was very happy to see that it was still there and still popular. I was tempted to return, but really had another idea in mind.
That was to sample the Jewish cuisine of the Marais, which could mean either one of the venerable deli-style institutions like Chez Jo Goldenberg, with pastrami, cabbage rolls, and other Eastern European delicacies, or else Israeli-style food. Since Israeli food is relatively hard to find back home in California, I opted for the latter, and the most interesting looking was the modernistic Mi-va-Mi, which (if my Hebrew is correct) means "who and who?".
It was only 7:30 PM, meaning I was the only customer in the place (Parisians dine late), but I was greeted warmly and took a table my the window. It had been cold and raining off and on most of the day, but I looked up at the floodlight illuminating the restaurant's sign and noticed snowflakes! The idea of eating grilled middle-eastern food at an Israeli restaurant in Paris while it was snowing made me happy for some completely unfathomable reason.
The food itself was a delight, and a good contrast from the heavy
cream sauces of the previous couple of weeks. (Mi-va-Mi, being a
kosher meat restaurant, cannot serve dairy products, or, of course,
pork or shellfish.) What is did have was the mixed grill, consisting
of lamb kofte kebab, chicken en brochette, and a merguez (spicy lamb)
sausage, served with a very generous assortment of Israeli salads,
and a glass of unlabeled and undescribed house red wine which came
from a wooden barrel in the corner of the dining room. (It wasn't
bad, and was the cheapest wine I drank in Europe, at about $1.75/glass.)
I stayed late, as the place filled up, with parties around me speaking
Hebrew, Arabic, English, Russian, as well as French, with greater
festivity as the wine flowed freely. Definitely my kind of place!
Posted at 21:38 | permanent link
Fri, 08 Apr 2005
As it happened, I made it onto the TGV by literally 8 seconds. (I counted.) That's the time from when I jumped on, after tossing my luggage aboard, past the platform guard yelling "Allez! Allez!", just like in the movies, until the time the door was slammed shut. OK, allow another 3 or 4 seconds for the train to start moving. This was the result of a wrong turn inside the Geneva train station caused by poor signage. (My instinct, and Eliot's advice, was to go the other way, but I decided to rely on the sign. Berch on Food's advice is to go with your instincts in matters of food and travel.)
So... the TGV. Frankly, compared to the Swiss ICN, it was not all that. At least I got a non-smoking car, and it was not initially full, leaving an empty seat across from me and one next to me, but they all filled up around Mâcon. It was not mealtime, and I had a big dinner planned for Paris, but I did want coffee, so I made my way many, many, cars to the dining car, which was... a snack bar. The coffee was good (not as good as on the Swiss train) but as I watched the food come out of the tiny kitchenette, I was glad I'd lunched in the Elvetino. It was not bad-looking, in the sense of unappetizing, but I has expected more from the SNCF's premium train service. (Presumably other, newer trains, on different routes, have better food service.)
The TGV is, at least, very fast, on the Mâcon to Paris segment,
and we arrived at Gare de Lyon in plenty of time, in fact about 3
minutes early. I found the nearest ATM, hailed a taxi, and found a
delightful driver who wanted to chat in English, and had no problem
getting me through the beginnings of rush-hour traffic to my apartment.
Taking my cue from the London portion of the trip, and on the advice
of some friends on The Well, I found
a lovely weekly-rental apartment from RothRay Apartments. The apartment
was on rue Bernard Palissy, which is a small street just a short
block from St-Germain des Prés (the intersection of boulevard
St-Germain and rue de Rennes), adjacent to the Metro, as well as Left
Bank fixtures Cafe Flore, Les Deux Magots, and Brasserie Lipp.
It's hard to conceive of a better location to stay in Paris if you
want to be in the heart of everything.
I was greeted by Mr. Ray Lampard, the proprietor, at the corner and welcomed to the apartment and shown the ropes. (I give RothRay my highest recommendation, and really hope to stay in one of their apartments again on future trips.) The apartment was large and comfortable, and I had time to unpack before setting out.
As it happened, my week in Paris coincided with visits from other
friends from The Well, so we decided to meet up for dinner on my first
night there. The choice was Chez Paul, on rue de Charonne, in the
11th arrondissement, near the Opera Bastille. The six of us were
escorted to the upstairs dining room, cozy on a chilly night, and
perused the lengthy menu.
Chez Paul has a pretty good range of
cuisine traditionelle, and though almost everyone opted for
pot au feu, I started with a terrine of chicken livers with
armagnac and sweet red cabbage, and proceeded to a main course of
rolled stuffed rabbit breast with chevre and white sauce. Both were
quite tasty. To my great delight, a couple of my fellow diners decided
to forego the os de moelle (marrow bones) from their pot au
feu, and I greedily accepted them and spread the slow-cooked beef marrow on
crusts of bread. Kathleen selected the wine based on a previous visit
to Chez Paul -- an interesting Rhone, Coteaux de Tricastrin, from
Domaine Saint-Luc (2001).
I was a little tired from traveling, but managed to stop by the Monoprix near my apartment to pick up some provisions. Amazingly, the Parisian supermarkets exceed even the Tesco/Sainsbury branches mentioned below in quality and variety. They're no match for Paris's specialty stores and open markets for freshness and unusual items, but I'd love to live next door to a Monoprix or Francprix anywhere. After the day's travels, I slept in, and prepared some strong coffee, and brunched on a croissant, terrine of duck with armagnac, some freshly-smoked salmon lox, and some Greek taramasalata.
Thus fortified, I set out for a day of touring, including wandering
all over the Left Bank, including the little side streets of the
Quartier Latin, remembering yet again how small and accessible
a scale Paris is set in, and with a good pair of legs and a Metro pass
you can be anywhere pretty quickly if need be. I returned to change
for dinner, and after deciding to stay on the Left Bank, picked out
the Polidor for an informal dinner.
The Crémerie-Restaurant
Polidor, on rue Monsieur-le-Prince near Odéon in the 6th, has
been around since the middle of the 19th century, and in fact started
out as a creamery and sweet bakery. It was said to have been
André Gide's favorite place, and James Joyce and Ernest
Hemingway also put in appearances over the years.
Nothing is cheap in Paris in 2005, but it's among the more reasonably-priced traditional bistros, and is full of students, notional artists and writers, and so forth. (I shared a table with two American students who ended up in a faux pas involving credit cards, but it was sorted out eventually.)
The service at Le Polidor is friendly, and the waitress recommended the pumpkin soup, which was delicious. My main course was an entrecôte of beef, known to Americans as a rib-eye steak. (In some Anglo-American usages, an "entrecote" is a strip-loin steak, but the true entrecôte is cut from the rib.) My steak was no better than average, although prepared with care, and I recalled that I had been warned that except in the very best places, French beef is no match for American (or South American) beef. C'est la vie. It was accompanied by the ubiquitous frites, and they're better in Paris than anywhere else except maybe Belgium. Le Polidor still makes exceptional desserts, though, and my tarte tatin was wonderful. The prix-fixe menu included a glass of house wine, which was a well-rounded Bordeaux. As always when I eat sugar, especially with wine or other alcohol, I got an amazing burst of energy, and after paying the bill I set off, at 10 or 11 pm, for a brisk walk all over the neighborhood, until I was wound down enough to hit the sack.
Posted at 22:31 | permanent link
Fri, 11 Mar 2005
Last year my friends Eliot and Christine moved to Wetzikon, Switzerland, a town near Zurich, and since I was "nearby" (London) I was invited to visit for the weekend and see the sights and investigate Swiss cuisine. I had been to Switzerland before in 1988 and 1997, but had spent most of the time in the area of Neuchatel, which is in a French-speaking part of Switzerland and a cuisine most similar to nearby parts of of France. Zurich is German-speaking, with a cuisine to match, with lots of local specialties.
We last left Berch on Food at Gatwick Airport, having
lunched at Chez Gerard, and about to board a Helvetic Air flight to
Zurich. Alas, the flight was two hours late due to mechanical problems.
This played havoc with our dinner plans, although that
turned out be an advantage in the end, since I was pretty tired by
the time the plane landed. Eliot picked me up at the
airport and took me home, where Christine had cooked a marvelous lamb
curry, which was accompanied by a unique bottle from their wine cellar
-- a 1997 red from Chateau Musar, which is a winery in Lebanon's
Bekaa Valley. It was delicious and complex, a blend of cabernet sauvignon,
carignan, and cinsault grapes. Chateau Musar was founded in 1930 by Gaston
Hochar, and is still run by the Hochar family. I really appreciated the
efforts of the winemakers all the more considering that they must
operate under extremely difficult conditions, as the Bekaa Valley has
been the scene of almost continuous low-intensity fighting and air raids
for several decades, involving Lebanese, Syrian, Hezbollah, and Israeli
forces.
The next day, well rested, we set out for a day of touring, beginning
with lunch at the Rathaus in Rapperswil, a lakeside resort town with a
charming central pedestrian zone and waterfront. The Rathaus is as
traditional Swiss as you can get, and for lunch I had the boiled meat
platter - a generous serving of boiled beef, ham, sausage, and
sauerkraut (not unlike the French-Alsatian choucroute garni).
Very filling, and a good thing we were not heading out for a serious
hike. Instead, we visited the transportation museum in Luzern, the
highlight of which for me was an intact, mounted Convair 990 Coronado.
For dinner, I was Eliot and Christine's guest at the area's finest restaurant, 10' Dieci, on Rapperswil's lakefront. The lower level is an immensely popular pizzeria which overflows onto the waterfront plaza in good weather, but upstairs is the dining room, a quieter venue for the chef's skills. The chef offers two tasting menus -- fish or meat -- and I elected the meat option, which began with small courses of a carpaccio of beef with parmesan cheese, chicken cooked with herbs, and a tiny roast quail with cous-cous. After a pause to enjoy the wine, a cabernet-sangiovese blend from Liano, the main course was served, which was a grilled combination of a veal chop, lamb rib chops, and a game hen portion, in a reduction sauce with gratin potatoes. The sauce had a good smoky flavor, with a hint of game juices, and complemented the meats wonderfully. I must, must return to 10' Dieci, since I have not yet sampled the fish course -- nor their summer menu.
On Sunday we arose to find it snowing vigorously, which made our
planned trip to the Alps simultaneously more scenic and more
difficult. The original plan was a trip to the top of Schilthorn, via
cable car, to an altitude of 2970 meters, and a great view, plus
lunch or dinner, depending. But as we headed toward the Bernese
Oberland, the weather became more challenging, and when we stopped in
Interlaken we learned that the cable car was not running due to the
snow, and it would not have mattered if it was, since visibility at
the summit was practically nonexistent. Which left us in central
Interlaken around lunchtime. (A similar situation prevailed on my
1997 trip to Switzerland, where we made an attempt on Jungfraujoch,
only to find out it was also closed by snow, resulting in lunch in Interlaken
and a trip by funicular to Schynige Platte.)
The best option in Interlaken appeared to be the Restaurant Schuh, of traditional style, and we were very nearly the only diners under age 70. But I managed to get a mixed salad, followed by a very nice veal steak with asparagus, on toast with hollandaise sauce and then gratineed. Very good for the walk in the snow in Interlaken's town park that followed.
That evening, we headed back towards Zurich, to the hill town of
Wald, where Eliot and Christine lived temporarily before finding their
present residence. Their place in Wald, the Bleiche, is a brilliant conversion of
a former textile mill into a complex with loft apartments, a hotel,
spa, and bar-restaurant. We were greeted warmly by Jeff Theiler, the
manager of "Bleichibeiz", and seated in the dining room, which retains
much of its industrial charm. The kitchen turned out a delightful veal
cordon bleu, preceded by a salad with roquefort and apples. We drank a
Spanish wine, a 2000 montsant, from ENEAS, which was light and spicy,
a good foil for the veal.
Early the next morning, snow notwithstanding, was my train for Paris, with changes at Zurich and Geneva, and in the Swiss tradition, it was not even a minute late. I took Eliot's advice, and sat in the dining car on the Swiss (SBB) ICN train. The service is called the Elvetino, and it's easily the best meal I've had on a train since a childhood trip across the Canadian Rockies on the old Canadian Pacific. I had a salad followed by schupfnudeln, a bowl of dumplings in cream sauce with wild mushrooms. A good farewell to Switzerland, before my wild dash through Geneva station, French border control, and on to the TGV for Paris.
Posted at 22:55 | permanent link
Mon, 31 Jan 2005
As many of you might know, Berch on Food has been doing a bit of traveling lately, which is one of the reasons for the woefully sporadic updates, but also has permitted me to "lard in", as they say, material for a number of future pieces. I spent the last half of December in Nebraska (and more about that later, including the mystery disappearance of the best barbeque joint in the whole state), and spent the last half of January abroad, in London, Switzerland, and Paris.
Treating London first, I was handicapped by the fact that the UK portion of my trip was in fact for client meetings at a London law firm, which is to say, I was unable to spend all day trying to sniff out good chow, and had to take things as they came. Nevertheless I managed to both drag my colleagues off to some good meals, and break away from them when opportunities presented themselves.
First, let me put in a good word for beleaguered and oft-criticized United Airlines. The food on my flight over (business class) was pretty good, with the sole exception of an overcooked filet mignon. They started us off with smoked salmon lox with creme fraiche, prosciutto, a nice salad, followed by the filet in a tarragon sauce (not bearnaise), scalloped potatoes, and carrots. The wines were an interesting minervois from Robert Skalli (not often seen in North America), and a claret that called itself Chateau de Grand Caumont Corbiéres Cuvée Special 2001, which is a mouthful, but it was a great wine. We finished with Sandeman's (non-vintage) Founder's Reserve port with Stilton and English cheddar.
So after that, and the usual airline breakfast omelette, the trip into town, and so forth, I wanted something a little different. I don't typically suffer from jet lag, and one thing I like to do on arrival is get out into some fresh air (even in the rain, as in London) and get some exercise, ending up with lunch or dinner. First I popped into Selfridge's food halls and snagged a crayfish and avocado salad and a slice of saffron crab quiche for lunch, then went out walking.
Dinner turned out to be a lovely Lebanese place called Fairuz,
in Blandford St., next door to the Blandford St. Restaurant (my
intended destination, but it didn't look appealing -- no knock on
the place, but just not what I was in the mood for), just off
Marylebone High St. At Fairuz I opted for a first course of
minced lamb baked in a flatbread -- I failed to record the Arabic
name but it's sort of a Middle Eastern-spiced version of the Indian
keema paratha. This was followed by the main course, a
mixed grill of sea bass, trout, calamari, and prawns with a spicy
tomato sauce. Instead of wine, I drank a small glass of
arak, a potent anise-flavored, milky-white liquor which is
the national drink of Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria.
Since I was staying in a rental flat with full kitchen and not a hotel, I stopped at a nearby of Tesco and laid in a stock of breakfast and snack foods. (It's amazing how much better even a modest British supermarket branch, at least in central London, is than most American markets. Ours in the U.S. are bigger, but Tesco/Sainsbury are surely better. Of course, I've heard the opposite from British people, so it just may be a case of "greener grass".)
Off to work and then I joined my colleagues at lunch at Shampers, a popular restaurant in Kingly St., just off Regent St. (near the Apple Store), which was best known originally as one of London's first wine bars, and started with the grilled spicy prawns, served in the shell (and while delicious, a little tricky in suit and tie), followed by a grilled sliced filet of lamb, perhaps marinated, tender and flavorful, one of the best I've had, served on a bed of planchada beans in some sort of reduced stock-based sauce. This set a pretty high bar for things to come. As my companions opted mostly for fish, we had a sancerre (Les Perrieres, 2003) which was crisp and complex.
After the afternoon meeting I sprinted for the TKTS half-price ticket booth in Leicester Square, and was rewarded with a ticket to Jerry Springer: The Opera (highest recommendation, but only if you enjoy the transgressive and profane, as I do). So: where for a pre-theatre dinner? I wandered by the theatre to get my bearings on the local neighborhood, and ended up at Belgo Centraal, which is an enormous Belgian underground beer hall with long tables, an incredible din, and I was lucky to get a seat immediately. I shared a table with a local couple, who had come into London from Oxfordshire for their third wedding anniversary. I wanted to give them a private moment for their dinner, but the husband was a gregarious sort, and when he found out that I was in a somewhat similar line of work we chatter pleasantly. They, too, were attending Jerry Springer and we made plans to meet for a drink.
In any case, the specialty at Centraal is giant pots of steamed mussels and Belgian frites, which is what I had. There are various formulas for the mussel pot, and I chose the white wine and cream version. Tasty and filling, and I made the curtain with plenty of time to spare.
We worked through the next day's lunch (with tasty catered
sandwiches, though, including one with chicken tikka), but
finished up early and I was able to meet several friends from
The Well at a pub, followed by
dinner in Drummond St., which is near Euston Station. There are a
number of Indian, Pakistani, Middle Eastern, and Greek places in
the area, and we went to Diwana, which is a vegetarian south
Indian restaurant, basically specializing in bhel puri and dosas,
and I had a chance to sample real bhel puri for the first time,
having read about it in various books, especially those by Salman
Rushdie writing about the beaches of Bombay. I had a
thali dinner of several
vegetable curries, and sampled others' dishes including a dosa,
dahi vada, idli, and sambar. These dishes -- excepting bhel puri
-- are typically available in the Bay Area, but are not nearly as common as
what my friend Andy calls "indifferent Punjabi food".
(I'll make it back to Veeraswamy next trip, or maybe Red Fort.)
Since we finished up in time for a late lunch the next day, I
headed for Knightsbridge for some window shopping, and to
Harrod's Food Halls for dinner take-out, and lunched in Beauchamp
Place (an exceptionally precious shopping street a block or so
from Harrod's) at a Portuguese restaurant, O Fado.
One specialty
of Portuguese cuisine is cod which is salted and cured in the open
air, and then rehydrated and incorporated into various dishes. I
had A Ze di Pipo, which is salt cod mixed with onions,
seasonings, and mayonnaise, and baked in the oven with a crust of
mashed potatoes. Every bit as good as it sounds, though more
than I could finish, having started with a seafood-stuffed crepe
with a brandy cream sauce.
My final dinner in London, by tradition, was catering brought back
from Harrod's Food Halls. This varies from season to season, but
I ended up with a few treats -- cold shrimp in garlic and dill,
matjes herring with apples, two "artisanal" concoctions (a peeled
tomato stuffed with caper salad and topped with a giant prawn and
an avocado stuffed with salmon mousse, lobster, and an olive),
shrimp toast topped with salmon roe, and a slice of beef
Wellington. Not bad for "take-out"!
I had a flight to Zurich in mid-afternoon from Gatwick Airport, and managed to squeeze in lunch from the local branch of Chez Gerard, a chain of French-style brasseries in the UK, and had a quite decent salad and a plate of Toulouse sausages in bearnaise sauce. Not real French food but acceptable for airport eats.
All in all, a pretty successful trip to London. My work schedule prevented me from hitting any of the temples of Modern British gastronomy for which London is now justly famous, but perhaps next triphttp://www.berchonfood.com.!
Posted at 22:31 | permanent link
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