Joe Ray

Friday, October 12, 2018

Quick Takes From The 2018 Smart Kitchen Summit

Sunday afternoon, I got off a long-haul flight from Korea to Seattle, and immediately crossed town to where the Smart Kitchen Summit had just kicked into gear. The Summit the nerd prom for the connected kitchen set, full of some of the best minds in cooking along with manufacturers trying to find the right balance between food and tech. Talks and panels have names like “reinventing the recipe,” “food robot evolution,” and, um, “augmented food experiences,” whatever those are.

Not to be outdone, I moderated one panel about the future of restaurants and sat on another about reviewing called, “Is this thing on?”

While wandering the conference, I tried wheat-based ‘chicken’ nuggets—they weren’t bad!—tasted a dragon fruit ‘berry’ that came out of a printer (NRFPT) and was badgered by a robot waiter hawking a tray full of beef jerky. I also learned that many of those who were pioneers of creating food tech word salads have changed surprisingly little in the four years since the conference started.

That said, I could feel things falling a little further into place, and perhaps becoming a little bit better. Here, I thought I’d share a few quick thoughts I had—in italics—and quotes I heard while at the Summit.

...

Countertop smart ovens—like June and Brava—are becoming a thing. The June, for example, can recognize which food you put inside of it and suggest its preferred method to cook it, and the Brava has heat zones so you can cook steak in one, mushroom in another, and onions in a third.

Three things strike me when I see these ovens.
-One: they seem to be reinventing sheet-pan meals, and you already own the oven to make those.
-Two: they’re small, so they can’t really replace your home oven if you want to have more than one friend over for dinner.
-Three: they take up a ton of counter space and aren’t really the kind of thing you’re going to store in a cupboard when you’re done.

...

THE RECIPE
- “People don’t have to bake to survive” — Stephanie Naegeli, Nestlé
- “You can’t cook without a recipe” — Cliff Sharples, Fexy Media
- “Bacon is a challenge” — Matt Van Horne, June, whose oven now offers 36 ways to make bacon
- I’d argue that it might just be a challenge for their oven and one good method is just fine.

...

VOICE CONTROL
- “It’s more complicated to do a recipe with voice than not. It has to be a marriage of voice and screen” — Stacey Higginbotham, Stacey on IoT
- “Voice is great, but not when my daughter’s yelling” — Jason Clarke, Crank Software
- “‘[I love being able to ask Alexa] what’s the ETA on my chicken?’ when I’m in the living room.” — Matt Van Horne, June

Stuff like this last quote constantly leaves me wondering ‘Didn’t your recipe already tell you that? Didn’t you set a timer?’

...

THE CONNECTED KITCHEN
Manufacturers and tech companies are starting to understand that if there’s going to be anything like a “Kitchen OS” they need to communicate with each other’s machines (and not just to other products in their own brand.)

- “All the devices will have to connect…but I don’t personally like the idea of robots in the kitchen” — Shelby Bonnie, Pylon AI
- “Is [the applicance] a hub or an end device? If it’s an end device…don’t fool yourself that you want to be a hub…Nobody wants to watch Netflix on their thermostat.” — Jason Clarke, Crank Software
- “We’re past the novelty stage of turning the lights on with the phone” — Christofer von Nagel, BSH Home Appliances
- “Most [new] Whirlpool products will be connected within the next year” — Brett Dibkey, Whirlpool
- “We’re sick of going to the grocery store. We just want to push a button and have food dropped on our doorstep” — Pablos Holman, Intellectual Ventures
- “We were metal benders and now we’re an experience company…The digital experience is defining who we are” — Brett Dibkey, Whirlpool
- “Today you ran a lot. Today we recommend this recipe.” — Stephanie Naegeli, Nestlé
- I’m fine without my Fitbit telling a giant global food corporation that I went for a jog.
- “Connecting a radio and a shaver doesn’t help anyone” — Ben Harris, Drop Kitchen

...

ONE LAST ONE, JUST FOR FUN
“We’re German! We engineer the shit out of everything!” — Christofer von Nagel, BSH Home Appliances

| More

Wednesday, March 14, 2018

Coming Soon To A Kitchen Near You: Smart Trends And More At The Chicago Housewares Conference

I’m fresh back from four days at the International Home and Housewares Show in Chicago. Once I got off the plane in the Windy City and had an Italian beef sandwich at Al’s, I was ready to see what almost every possible kitchenware manufacturer is doing, all in one place.

Wandering the acres and acres of show floor, I picked up on several trends—some encouraging ones, some not so much. I was also inspired by two students, surprised by something that’s not usually up my alley, and figured out what I’ll be writing about for many stories to come.

Here are some takeaways:

TRENDS

THE SMART KITCHEN
—After years of ups and downs, the smart kitchen is starting to move forward in a (sorta) unified direction. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of false starts and failed companies worth of shakeout ahead, but this trip allowed me to see the bigger picture of where it might go. One of the best examples of this was a discussion with Christoph Milz and Philip Tessier at Hestan Smart Cooking. Hestan will soon be selling a built-in induction range and (likely next year) a gas range that will allow guided cooking when used with their pans. Even more exciting, they plan to offer the guided cooking capability to people who have a Bluetooth-enabled stovetops with other brands they’ve partnered with.

—Tyler Florence of Innit’s claim that “The Recipe Is Dead” seems to have wisely recognized as the idiot clickbait that it was.

—I loved the Thermomix when it was introduced in the United States. Their new Cook-Key attachment gives the existing TM5 model the capability to connect to the cloud and store 5,000 recipes. If you’re really organized, you can tell it what you want to cook for the week and it will give you a comprehensive grocery list broken down by the section of the store.

EYE-ROLLING TRENDS
—Big brands are really getting into making all of the things. Not everybody should be slapping their label on an electric pressure cooker or sous vide machine, but it’s happening. It makes sense from a marketing standpoint, but it cheapens the brand when these new products don’t add anything new to the game.

—To wit, everyone is now making an air fryer.

—Everyone is also trying to make All Things Coffee.

—Sigh and sigh.

THE PRACTICAL KITCHEN
As somebody who’s deep into the practicality of anything that goes into the home kitchen, I was glad to find plenty of new, unconnected products that help keep things moving while we cook and clean. Some highlights:

—Staub is out with glass lids for a few of its Dutch ovens so we can see what’s going on while we cook.

—Polder’s got a little platform built onto one of its drying mats, giving glasses a stable spot to dry off.

—There’s lots of effort being pointed toward people with small kitchens and limited storage space. The forthcoming D3 Studio Line is not from L’Oreal, but a supremely stackable set of pans from All-Clad.

—Similarly, Zwilling has a peculiar-looking ‘Universal Lid’ that can cover everything from a small saucepan to a large skillet.

—As a panelist at IHA’s Inventor’s Corner, I was happy to discover the FluteSpa—a plastic container in the form of a six-pack holder. It allows you to put wine glasses—flutes for now, red and white glasses in prototype—in the dishwasher without chaos erupting.

SOME BUDDING GREATNESS
I met some amazing young designers who, as the winners of IHA’s Student Design Competition (https://www.housewares.org/show/sdc), had their own section on the show floor.

—Following a trip to Nepal where he saw dozens of used plastic water filters discarded on roadsides, Cody Moore came up with a design for a mold to make filters made of clay and sawdust (two easy-to find and biodegradable materials).

—I also met Brandon Rodriguez who’s building the Novus Home Brewing System, a compact machine that uses Keurig-style pods to make a six-pack’s worth of beer. Pico Brew may wish to figure out when he’s graduating and turn him into a Seattleite!

A PLEASANT SURPRISE
I’m a ‘form follows function’ guy, but a couple of things really caught my aesthetic eye at the show.

—Smeg’s unlikely partnership with Dolce & Gabbana makes for some of the coolest-looking appliances I’ve ever seen.

—To a lesser, but still impressive extent, I saw beautiful designs on KitchenAid mixer bowls.

—Finally, I’m not much of a tea drinker, but on the show’s last day, I fell hard for Dafu Ironware’s enamel-coated cast iron kettles. Lovely.

Sign up for my newsletter

| More

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Down at the Dutch

I’d been looking forward to dining at The Dutch for almost exactly a year. It was almost impossible to read Sam Sifton’s glowing NYT review and not want to immediately get on the subway, or a plane for that matter, and head to SoHo’s newest hotspot. The amazing Blaine Wetzel told me his dinner at The Dutch the best meal he had when he was in the city for a 48-hour chef-fest last fall, beating out his experience at a not-to-be-named Michelin three-star.

When my wife, two friends and I visited The Dutch a few weeks ago, however, I wondered if too much of chef Carmellini’s energy had been siphoned off into The Dutch in Miami, which opened last fall. So many great chefs are tempted to replicate a good thing with other restaurants or even a product line – Wolfgang Puck Vanilla Fusion Coffee, anyone? – but it’s an art form that needs to be backed with a lot of good business sense and an unflappable team.

Stacked atop The Dutch in Miami (Dutch Deux?!?!), Tribeca’s acclaimed Locanda Verde and a sausage joint in Madison Square Garden, The Dutch in New York seems to be teetering.

To set things straight from the get-go, ours was a solid dinner. “Little oyster sandwiches” lifted the whole fried oyster genre, allowing their full briny goodness to shine through in two perfect bites. Korean-style hanger steak had a sensual, sushi-like quality to it. The waiter referred to the dish I’d get – black fettuccine, octopus, rock shrimp and Calabrian chili – as “seafood everything” and, sure enough, the tentacles of perfectly-cooked squid mingled in with the dark noodles as if they’d tangled together on the tide.

But there was a lot about our meal that went pear-shaped.

When my wife asked the not-too-busy bartender if she’d let the hostess know that the other two members of our party arrived, the response was full of New York snarkiness:

“I can do that as soon as I’m finished making drinks,” she said, implying that they’d be the drinks at the end of her shift, so I did it myself.

A steamed halibut, crispy rice and mushroom-yuzu broth dish – a variation one of the signature dishes here –  was solid, but gave no indication why it had become a favorite.

Dario, our Italian friend, went big and ordered $52 bone-in New York Strip, aged for 28 days, but he waved his arms about in trademark Italian style, trying to come up with a way to describe his disappointment.

His steak, which had come all the way from Nebraska, could have done with a few more days in the cooler. There was an odd, cake-like texture – not unpleasant, but not what I want from a steak – and that ambrosial combination of concentrated flavors, tender texture and lovely nuttiness that aging a steak imparts were absent. It was solid, but not the steak-house quality that its price tag implied.

The Dutch is a beautiful spot, we had a great waiter, a fantastic sommelier and a couple of lovely desserts to boot. The space is an assembly of great moods depending on where you sit, and it’s the spot rumored to be heir to Balthazar’s throne – a place to see and be seen while soaking up all of the components of a great meal. That’s the kind of restaurant I wanted to eat in and the one I’m still sincerely hoping to visit.

The Dutch
131 Sullivan Street, Manhattan
+1 (212) 677-6200
http://www.thedutchnyc.com

Follow me on Twitter: @joe_diner and on Facebook.

| More

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Review - Prime Meats: They do that as well as anyone these days

I stretched my birthday a bit. Last Monday’s delightful diner à deux at Roberta’s is followed, a few days later, by dinner with friends.

For this, Prime Meats does not disappoint. Here, you get all the thick glasses, beards, vests and cocktails you need to know that you’re smack dab in the middle of Brooklyn. It’s a fantastic spot and with our big table for 11 at one end of wooden-paneled, high-ceiling-ed dining room, it felt like a tiny church in New England.

Tipplers in the pews, we finish our cocktails (old fashioned this time, applejack Sazerac next time), and I ask the wonderful Amy Zavatto to be in chargee of picking out a few bottles for the table. Among others, she steers us toward a fantastic 2009 Red Tail Ridge from New York State. New York reds – who knew?

Plates arrive – an order or two of bluefish rillettes, (a clever natural for that preparation) create quite a stir, but I’m almost too happy nibbling away at smoked sweetbreads to notice. I want to share and hoard.

The real sharing comes with the mains – I share bites of my steak frites – with just about everyone and reap the benefits. Friends return the favor with crispy and moist schnitzel, juicy, taut bratwurst, and tangy homemade sauerkraut. Elisabeth has an iceberg lettuce salad with Maytag blue and bacon.

“They do that as well as anyone these days,” she says.

I look over at Amy, who, after biting into her cod, takes on the look of a parishioner at prayer and Jonathan does the same when I offer him a second bite of my New York strip. It’s crispy on the outside, with a ribbon of tasty fat on one edge, and pink happiness within.

“You know,” he says, snapping out of his trance, “you can throw all the ingredients you want in a dish, dress it up however you’d like, but that? That’s hard to beat.”

***

A quibble - It took a little while to get to our seats; Two people in our group were running rather late and, in short, the staff didn’t want to sit us until every member of the party of eleven arrived. We offered to order right away, offered to wait to order until they arrived. The staff, some polite, some a little less so, declined, but it wasn’t quite full enough in there to put up that kind of a stink. I get it if half of a party of four is missing, but how rare is it that one couple in a much larger group gets held up? It puts a good dent in the pleasure of an evening.

Prime Meats
465 Court Street
Brooklyn, NY
+1 (718) 254 0327
frankspm.com

| More

Wednesday, March 07, 2012

Pizza and Perfection on the L Train

Cue the rock music, throw on a cool T-shirt and hop in the L train to Williamsburg – Roberta’s cures what ails you. While the possibility of a lamb dish worthy of a spot in Daniel next to a pizza might sound a bit schizophrenic, here it works just fine.

With its woodsy feel and merry, multicolored light garlands on the walls, Roberta’s, est. 2008, has a feeling of a saloon that sits not too far from the 49th parallel – one that hits full swing by 7 and stays that way till the last tippler is pushed into the Brooklyn night at closing time. I was invited by my sweetheart, Elisabeth, who’d picked up on some very strong hints on where I’d like to celebrate my birthday and we were not let down.

These guys, particularly chef Carlo Mirachi, have some serous friends in the food sourcing business. ‘Beef Carpaccio’ shows up with the marbling of something noteworthy and turns out to be Wagyu from a farm on a big, flat state out west. A drizzle of stellar olive oil creates a dreamy, one-two-three-four adagio progression between vegetal freshness, slick vegetable fat, beefy meatiness and Wagyu fat. I got as much pleasure nibbling away at it as watching Elisabeth enjoy it – something she readily encouraged.

One plate over, tiny bay scallops with crispy bits of trout skin, Meyer lemon and poppies snuggled in a bowl, reminding me of not one but two childhood favorites – Mom’s broiled scallops, and, thanks to the poppies and the almost bread-y flavor to the broth they waded in, the frozen Pepperidge Farm rolls she’d make in the oven when I was little.

The big gun, however, was the lamb breast main course, cooked sous-vide for a long time then sizzled for a short time to create a crispy/melting combination that recalls the textures of a savory crème brulée. Nearby, a comma of yogurt, dollops of a light mint aspic and gently-braised leaves of, I believe, radicchio and Swiss chard provided punctuation marks of acidity, bitterness and a faint sweetness. Any three-star restaurant would be proud to serve the dish at three times the price.

Next to the lamb, we’d ordered a pizza – this is a pizzeria, after all – and maybe because it was next to something so spectacular, our pie was the evening’s only relative whiff. The ‘Tracy Patty’ pie features tasty mozzarella, ricotta, lip-smacking boquerones (vinegar-drenched anchovies), garlic and savoy cabbage, but it lacked some juicy agent like tomatoes or more of that amazing olive oil to shuttle each slice it to its final home.

No matter. Next time we go, we’ll likely try another pie. Perhaps the ‘Voltron’ – it’s got sopressata.

While some crow that the bar-like atmosphere is an odd or uncomfortable place for food this sophisticated, we could have cared less. This is the kind of spot where you want to grab good friend or three on your birthday and have one of the best nights of the year, fussiness be damned. Mirachi’s created an American doppelganger of Sicilian chef Francesco Cassarino’s wonderful Pizzeria Caravanserraglio.

On the subway and once nibbling some of Elisabeth’s fantastic birthday cake at home, we got talking about the best dishes we’d ever had. Rare are the meals that engender that sort of conversation.

“What were the tens?” Elisabeth asked, a question that brought us around the world and back to the meal still in our bellies.

Our lamb, we agreed, was a 9 ½, the scallops a scarce point and a half behind.

“What about the Wagyu carpaccio?” I asked. “A solid eight?”

She responded without hesitation.

“That was a ten.”

Roberta’s
261 Moore St.
Brooklyn
(718) 417-1118
www.robertaspizza.com

(Editor’s note: No reservations at Roberta’s - go early or wait in line.)

Follow me on Twitter: @joe_diner and on Facebook.

| More

Saturday, February 04, 2012

Chicken Wings With Sriracha Hot Sauce

New wing story bonus #2! You’ll have to go to DBGB to try chef Kevin Lobene’s smoked BBQ wings, but I got him to share his sriracha hot sauce recipe…

WINGS
20-30 wings, cut into flats and drumettes

SAUCE
¼ lb. (one stick) melted butter
2 cups sriracha hot sauce
½ cup honey
crushed red pepper

1 tbsp. toasted sesame seeds

BLUE CHEESE DRESSING
2 cups sour cream
1 cup mayonnaise
1 cup blue cheese crumbles
¼ cup red wine vinegar
½ cup lemon juice
Celery & Carrots, cut into sticks.

Combine melted butter, sriracha, honey and a pinch of crushed red pepper in a saucepan and set aside.

Combine all dressing ingredients in a bowl and set aside.

Bring 1.5 qt of canola oil to 350 degrees in a wok or Dutch oven and lower wings in with a metal skimmer or strainer. Fry, stirring occasionally for 13-15 minutes.
Dry wings on a paper towel, then transfer to a metal mixing bowl.

Coat wings with hot sauce and serve in a bowl, sprinkled with sesame seeds. Serve with a side of blue cheese dressing, carrots and celery.

| More

Saturday, February 04, 2012

If You Go To Buffalo…

As a little bonus for my chicken wing story in The Daily, here are a few of favorite places to visit for wings in Buffalo. To avoid fights, I’ll just say here that this is neither an exhaustive list, nor a top ten, but they’re all good!

Anchor Bar
1047 Main Street
Buffalo, New York
anchorbar.com

Kelly’s Korner
2526 Delaware Ave.
(716) 877-9466

Papa Jake’s
1672 Elmwood Ave.
(716) 874-3878

Casa di Pizza
477 Elmwood Ave.
(716) 883-8200
casadipizza.com

Gabriel’s Gate
145 Allen Street
(716) 886-0602

DBGB
253 Allen St.
(716) 240-9359
dukesbohemiangrovebar.com

And when you can take no more…
Allen Street Hardware
245 Allen St.
(716) 882-8843
allenstreethardware.com

| More

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Is Paris The World Champion of Gastronomy?

That’s the question French food critic Francois Simon posed to a little panel: Nick Lander, Carlo Petrini, Ken Hom, Anissa Helou, Yumiko Inukai and…yours truly. For a recent article in Le Figaro’s magazine, Figaroscope.

Here’s my response in Version Originale…

World capital? That’s loaded question.

Twenty years – even 10 – ago, the question was bandied about for fun but we already knew the answer, but now, just using the places I know well, it’s a legitimate debate. Barcelona combines an unquenchable curiosity and solid base to keep themselves on cuisine’s front edge. Sicily combines incredible raw ingredients with solid value and New York could win on sheer numbers yet it is Paris’ equal in quality and exponentially more diverse. India is a time machine whose cuisine never ages.

Plus, in Paris, coffee is awful and the beer second rate. It’s also pricey. That said, you forget all problems instantly when the former butcher who can hold four bottles of wine in one hand and owns Le Severo puts a côte de boeuf aged 40 days under your nose. You forget it when Pierre Gagnaire boils down a great vat of red wine to make a tiny component of a sauce. You forget it when Laetitia at Le Bistro Paul Bert greets you with a smile, seats you at your favorite table and gifts you with a glass of wine and when it comes to choosing a bottle of wine doesn’t foist something you can’t afford on you. You forget it when three bottles, two glasses of Calvados and one conversation into a meal, you realize with a start that it’s 5 a.m. and you’ve been at the table for nine hours.

Undeniable world champ? Not anymore. However, the French exception still reigns. Let’s call Paris first among equals.

Follow me on Twitter: @joe_diner and on Facebook.

| More

Thursday, November 10, 2011

NEWS FLASH: EARLY CHRISTMAS IN COBBLE HILL

The Txikito gang has been doing some early Christmas shopping. Alex Raij and Eder Montero, the couple who made Chelsea a better place by opening both Txikito and El Quinto Pino, signed a lease on Monday for a new Brooklyn restaurant, La Vara, slated to open in early 2012.

Located in the spot recently vacated by the ill-fated Breuckelen restaurant at 268 Clinton St. - next to the lovely Ted & Honey Café - Raij says the cuisine will be “Spanish food seen through its Moorish and Jewish roots.”

The food will be a mix of small plates and shareable larger dishes.

“The basis will be home cooking, not the traditional ‘meat, starch, veg,’” says Raij.

Who’ll be running the line? “We will, for now,” she says.

Somewhere in there, Raij will also be having a baby.

“We did our last opening like that,” she jokes.

Why change now?

Follow me on Twitter: @joe_diner and on Facebook.

| More

Friday, September 09, 2011

GOING NATIVE

I met Hilary Nangle, a fellow Boston Globe freelancer, Maine specialist, skier extraordinaire, and all-around good egg, at a travel writer’s conference last year. Late this summer, I sent her a pair of desperate notes:

ME:
Hi! Heading to maine w family for the afternoon. Got any snack/clam shack recs between Kittery and Ogunquit? Thanks!

This is a sort of abuse of a perk of the trade on my part, particularly when you note my timing. Yet within an hour I had a response…

HILARY:
Bob’s Clam Hut, Route 1, Kittery, tops a lot of lists of the best fried clams. If you’re craving Jamaican fare, there’s a funky takeout spot on the inland side of Route 1, in Cape Neddick, north of York. Flo’s Steamed Dogs have a legacy of their own (written about in both Gourmet and Saveur). It’s also on Route 1 in Cape Neddick (ocean side, look for a reddish-brown roadside shack, open to 3 and not a minute later). Brown’s Ice Cream, Nubble Rd, York, is wonderful, and if you want an old timey experience, stop by the Goldenrod in York Beach (makes taffy, fudge, ice cream). No culinary traveler should miss Stonewall Kitchen just off 95 on Route 1 in York (heading north, exit just before toll). In Ogunquit, Bread and Roses bakery always has wonderful treats.

We try as much as we can - Bob’s is the bomb (see photo), the Jamaican joint was closed, Flo’s was fantastic (they serve Moxie!), and Bread and Roses’ coffee (Carpe Diem) does the trick in spades.

ME:
My word, have I not even written back to say thanks? I’m such a dog. One last question - turns out we’re coming up for a lobstah story Monday & Tuesday (post hurricane, I hope!) any Freeport-area places to stay?
Grazie!
Joe

HILARY:
Grin! Freeport, you can’t beat the Harraseeket Inn (http://www.harraseeketinn.com, it’s close to everything—steps from Bean’s, outlets, shops, restaurants, and it has the best dining in Freeport (okay, new chef since I last went, so can’t guarantee that, but innkeepers are committed to excellence and have deep Maine roots.

Other good spots in Freeport: Mediterranean Grill, Azure Cafe.
H.

All this lady does is throw strikes! Follow Maine’s self-proclaimed Travel Maven on Facebook.

Thank you, Hilary!

| More

Thursday, September 08, 2011

GHOST RESTAURANT

NYC - The boss is in town, looking to dine and wants to know where we should go. I almost panic. Where do you take the most-feared food critic in France? I call friends and comb over the list of places I’ve been until I remember the place I really want to try: M. Wells in Queens.

Something of a media darling, M. Wells is/was also a gastronomic UFO housed in a diner: they do what they wanted to, which is pretty admirable in my book. It received incredible raves and, since I’ve been there, one blazing, bizarre review whose subject matter I’m not touching with a ten-foot pole.

Since then, the restaurant has apparently been forced out of their Long Island City location by their landlord and, at this point, there are only rumors about it resurfacing.

When we arrive, François promises to share some of his Caesar salad with smoked herring but it disappears before I point my fork in his direction. I try ‘Bacalao Magasin’ a veritable bath of olive oil that poaches, heats or finishes carrots, shrimp, beans, peas and salt cod in a great terracotta bowl.

For our ‘Big Dish’ – menu choices here are divided into ‘big’ and ‘small’ – we try the ‘BibiM Wells,’ a seafood riff on the Korean dish, which is something of a bunt that could have been a home run with more thought given to the play of texture that make the original so good.

The night we’re there, I wish we were with a much larger group to try the big dishes, where much of the creativity appears to lie – BBQ short ribs, lamb saddle with za’atar, tahini and pomegranate molasses, chicken wonton pot-au-feu – but get a sense of the bigger game the chefs seem to be after with an escargot and bone marrow pasta dish with shallots and a red wine ‘purée’ – the mollusk cousin to octopus and bone marrow pasta. M. Wells’ snails are served right in the bone, two forms of slippery goodness bathing in the wine sauce, covered with crunchy, garlicky breadcrumbs.

What is (“What was”?) most interesting at M. Wells is the idea factory the place became. Francois and I get talking about it - in Paris, you’d wonder about the chef’s motives, what they want to accomplish and, often, what their next step will be. Here, creation seems to be the whole point – there is no next step.

Brouhaha aside (please) it’ll be interesting to see what happens next.

| More

Monday, August 22, 2011

GARBANZO HEAVEN - A SICILIAN BID FOR THE PERFECT STREET FOOD SANDWICH

PALERMO - There are moments when I come back to this city and wonder if it isn’t the coolest place on Earth.

(This is before I’ve been here too long and the too-close buildings become too close, but till then, hoo boy.)

I cooled my heels after some field research for my WSJ gelato story, sat outside of Caffè Malavoglia, ordered a whiskey (they were out of Fernet), and slow-sipped until peckishness settled in and I realized that even on a Monday, I could roll down to the nighttime fest of the Ballarò market for a panelle sandwich.

Who would have thought that a chickpea fritter sandwich from a street vendor could be so good?

Here’s why: extra-fresh bread laden with sesame seeds, extra hot fritters, along with a shot of lemon and a spritz of salt to wake it up, all in an atmosphere that makes you feel alive.

Hoo baby. So good, I burned the roof of my mouth. Twice.
After that, as my good friend Francesco says, the shutters go down. Time for bed.

This is Joe Ray reporting from The Motherland.

| More

Friday, August 12, 2011

INSERT GONG HERE

On a recent trip to Richmond, B.C., the value of a good guide was reaffirmed when exploring Chinatown. (Anywhere, for that matter.) With thousands of options, how do you figure out where to go, let alone the two specialties on 100-item menu?

Craig Nelson figured out Manhattan’s Chinatown on his own. Not For Tourists guide editor by day, Nelson spent years worth of lunches trying every place he could walk to near their offices. Then he made his own app – Chinatown Chow Down. (Insert gong sound here).

We started with pork buns at Mei Li Wah Bakery – brown (baked) or white (steamed) – is about all you need to say at the counter. We scarfed them in the street - they’re packed with sweet, meaty flavor. Total cost for both? $1.60! Cheaper than a Snickers bar!!! Ha!

We had sit-down handmade noodles around the corner, fritters and a mustard green sandwich from a street-food vendor which we ate in the park under the West Side Highway. We capped the tour with my favorite – fresh sour plum juice at Yuen Yuen. It’s sweet, sour, funky and smoky. How did they make it smoky? No matter – just keep it coming. How much? $1.25! Fresh juice for less than a Coke! Where’s that gong?!?!

| More

Thursday, May 26, 2011

FORGOTTEN FRIES

“Look at those fries,” a friend said walking past Seattle’s Capitol Hill sandwich shop, Homegrown. Stuffed to the gills, we still considered a plate.

I wound up there for lunch a few days later, convinced we’d head to the neighboring Sitka & Spruce, but for reasons I didn’t understand, nothing on Sitka’s menu looked as interesting as Homegrown’s catfish po boy with slaw.

Homegrown calls itself a ‘sustainable sandwich shop’ which is about as interesting as sustainable wine - it’s only worth it if it’s good.

It’s worth it. We try a fun spin on grilled cheese made with cured ham and mozzarella, along with solid homemade chips and a beet salad, but the po boy, made crispy with the slaw, is the show stealer - a sandwich with momentum. So much momentum, we forget to order the fries.

After lunch, visit Homegrown’s top-notch neighbors: The Calf & Kid for cheese and sausage from Rain Shadow Meats. I’ll go back to try Sitka & Spruce, though I might smuggle in some Homegrown fries.

Homegrown

1531 Melrose Avenue
Seattle, WA
+1 (206) 682-0935

eathomegrown.com

Count on $10-15 for lunch.

Follow me on Twitter: @joe_diner and on Facebook.

| More

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

THE SCENT OF FRYING GARLIC

SEATTLE - “I love how this neighborhood smells like garlic,” said a friend as we walked from Stumptown coffee down into the International District.

Coffee and frying garlic - what a nice way to lead into dim sum.

We’d tried to get into Harbor City last time I was in town only to be discouraged by the line at the door on a Sunday morning. Today, our group of eight got there early and waited it out.

Moments after tea is poured and my nephew Eli is installed in his booster chair, the first cart arrives - hum bow (pork bun), salty long beans, broccoli rabe, shu mai, fried calamari just need to have their little bamboo steamer opened and showed to our crowd   to start a “Yes” chorus.

There’s something about dim sum that makes you forget that more will come if you wait. Whoever thought of the dim sum cart was a business genius: seat the hungry customer then immediately wave hot, fresh food under their nose. You may have a little mountain of dumplings in front of you, but would you like an order of sticky rice with meltingly good meat?

Hell, yes!

Count on $10-20

Harbor City Restaurant – MAP
707 S King St.
Seattle
(206) 621-2228

Follow me on Twitter: @joe_diner and on Facebook.

| More

Friday, April 08, 2011

DEAR CATASTROPHE WAITER

Dear catastrophe waiter
Dear catastrophe waiter
I’m sorry that you seem have the weight of the world over you
I cherish your smile
– Lyrics (with a tiny gender substitution) by Belle and Sebastian

I’m not sure what phase of the meltdown I arrive in, but the sweet-as-honey waitress hadn’t started crying yet.

Walking into at Café Gadagne, a beautiful spot with a terraced patio designed to be a compliment to the newly-refurbished Musée whose name it bears, I’m glared at by the waiter, a walking black cloud whose pants hang a bit too far down the southern half of his rear end for a place this nice.

Turns out he glares at everyone, clanking plates, occasionally pretending everything’s ok, but his whirlpool of bad juju sucks the place down around him. A smart teacher would put this kid in the ‘time out’ corner. Instead, he bosses the hard-working waitress around in front of everybody until she implodes.

Too bad. The food would be good if you could get past his distraction. I would have enjoyed my pumpkin ‘cappuccino’ soup with roasted chestnuts – there was a nice hot/cold thing going on, but it’s lost in the chaos. Ditto for my steak tartare.

Appropriately chaotic jazz warbles out of the kitchen and at one point, the chef comes out, smiling and oblivious. This is where I realize the bigger failure: nobody’s in charge.

Who knows? I was there a few weeks ago and maybe he’s gone by now. We can all hope, but I’m not going back to find out.

Count on about 20 euros.

Café Gadagne – MAP
1 Place du Petit Collège
Lyon
+33 4 78 62 62 34 60

Follow me on Twitter: @joe_diner and on Facebook.

| More

Friday, March 11, 2011

LE SEVERO - ORDER ANOTHER PLATE

I’ll begin with the closer; sometimes I talk about a meal having ‘momentum,’ something that gets better and better with every bite making you want more. Le Severo served a meal’s worth.

I’d wanted to come here since I first walked by years ago when I lived on place Denfert-Rochereau. The chalkboard wall full of good wines and the short menu had a wonderful ‘serious food’ air that tripped my radar.

The hard-working waiter speeds around the floor by himself. He also happens to be the owner, a former butcher and a man who knows how to age meat, which he does for 40 days in the space beneath the dining room.

Did I mention he can carry three wine bottles in one hand and though very busy, is unfailingly polite and patient with my table of nine?

On this night, we order appetizers, passing them around to share. When cep mushrooms, seared in generous quantities of butter make it to Mom, she takes one bite and commands, “Order another plate.”

There’s also a meatier-than-most blood sausage served without casing and cooked crispy on the outside, melting within. Mom immediately declares one of the best she’s ever eaten.

I mention this to the owner and he blushes.

After this, we pass to the serious meat. Just before taking our order, the owner declares that all meat will be cooked rare, fanning his arms out over the table. I mention that Mom prefers her meat on the done side and he blushes again, then caves to her wishes.

Dad and Jim get a côte de boeuf with intense marbling served blissfully rare and accompanied by fries that would make a Belgian proud. Jim gnaws on the bone, smiling the whole time and Dad’s got that “ooh, baby, baby” look on his face.

At the end of the night, the owner’s got time to come by and talk about his food – he’s wonderfully proud of it, rightfully so.

Momentum, indeed.

Count on 40-50€.

Le Severo – MAP
8 rue des Plantes
Paris
+33 (0)1.40.44.73.09

Follow me on Twitter: @joe_diner and on Facebook.

| More

Thursday, February 17, 2011

NYC’S SWAN SONG OF THE ALABAMA SLAMMER

A bit out of sequence, but, this stuff isn’t getting any younger. Above, a shot from the scene at the ‘pop-up’ Fatty Johnson’s in the Village last night - barman/journalist/pal Toby Cecchini announced “sundry a selection of reviled cocktails from the 70s through the 90s” signing off on the invite saying “Join us
if you dare, and feel free to bring anyone you don’t particularly like.”

Jello shot and a Blue Hawaiian, anyone?

Fatty Johnson’s - MAP
50 Carmine Street
New York, NY 10014
+1.212.929.5050
www.fattyjohnsons.com

| More

Thursday, February 17, 2011

THE CREPE KING OF OYSTER CITY

CANCALE, France - Dad, Jim and I leave the ladies to roam on their own for a bit and we head to the oyster stands to split a few plates, sitting on the sea wall and flipping the shells into the sea.

Later, we double back for lunch at the Breizh Café. With the mother ship here, and branches in Paris and Tokyo, this place is multiplying like, um, hotcakes and that’s not such a bad thing.

Bertrand Larcher serves classics with high-quality fillings or more creative combinations like my smoked herring, lumpfish roe and cream - smoky, salty and just a little sweet. Whatever you get, the buckwheat crepes are crispy on the outside, downy within.

Nobody at the table offers to share - a good sign - and we wash it down with a Fouesnant cider that has a wonderful, farmy funk.

I run out to feed the meter before the dessert crepes - chocolate and butter and apple compote, cider syrup and whipped cream - are ordered and return to two rather tiny wedges the gang has ‘saved’ for me. Not bad considering I had to push the idea of dessert on them.

After that, we go back out and have more oysters on the sea wall.

Not really. But we thought about it.

Count on 15-20€ with cider.

Breizh Café - MAP
7 quai Thomas
Cancale
+33 (0)2 99 89 61 76
www.breizhcafe.com

Follow me on Twitter: @joe_diner and on Facebook.

| More

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

SPAIN LOSES ONE OF HER GREAT CHEFS

He may have been a bull in a China shop, but he was a very interesting bull. Spain’s lost a great chef. R.I.P. Santi Santamaria.

| More

Tuesday, February 01, 2011

DAD, TINTIN AND THE RESTAURANT ON THE BEACH

I’ve just made a mad dash inside the walls of Saint-Malo, trying to find a restaurant for my party five and left glassy-eyed. I’m sure some are fine, but most look like they’re made to accomodate the hordes that descend on the city in the warmer months.

“Bof!” the nonplussed French would say.

Crestfallen, I meet the gang.

“There was a good-looking place back by the hotel,” suggests Dad.

The place near the hotel, are you kidding!?!? I think. I’m the food guy - I should be able to find something better…Except I had noticed that place and it’s getting late…

“Perfect! Let’s go!”

La Brasserie du Sillon, a 10-minute walk down the beach from the center of Saint-Malo is bustling when just about everything else out this way is quiet. The food will be good and after a week of translating menus for my folks and their friends, the service is blessedly, impressively bilingual. While there are several à la carte options and shellfish platters a gogo, there are good values in the 25 to 40 euro prix fixe menus. My favorite is the whopping raie à la Grenobloise, skate served in brown butter, capers, lemon and walnuts. Roasted, it makes the tip of the skate wing flip up like Tintin’s hair. Mom gets an Italian-themed salad with a great slab of cured ham and the best mozzarella I’ve had in France.

Good call, Dad.

La Brasserie du Sillon - MAP
3 Chaussée du Sillon
Saint-Malo
+33 (0)2 99 56 10 74
www.brasseriedusillon.com
Reservations recommended

Follow me on Twitter: @joe_diner and on Facebook.

| More

Monday, January 24, 2011

NO MAP, NO PHOTO. NO WAY.

This is a public service writeup for what we call the “run away” column on the Simon Says site.

I’ve spent the last few weeks on the road, working on a Frommer’s guide update in Burgundy and the Rhône. Meeting an out-of-town colleague and his wife for brunch right after my return to Paris, I was happy to have someone else choose the location.

Les Editeurs sits across the street from Yves Camdeborde’s wonderful Le Comptoir and a stone’s throw from the Odeon metro. Walls of books and red-leather chairs make Les Editeurs look like a nice place to while away an afternoon, perhaps that’s best done with a beer or something else that they didn’t create on site.

Yesterday morning, 25 euros bought Sunday brunch at Les Editeurs. Brunch is a Parisian trend I’ve never understood in ten years here - a bad translation from the beautiful, bountiful American original. The French version is often overpriced and boring. Les Editeurs version included watery OJ, bad coffee, a basket of croissants and soggy toast and a plate with small ramekins of unremarkable scrambled eggs, a fruit cup, yogurt and something else that my mind has blocked out.

My colleague’s wife ordered a fifteen-euro club sandwich which she asked for without bacon. She was informed the sandwich was pre-made, but she could remove the bacon.

Really? Why do you need to pre-make a club sandwich in a restaurant? There are other time-saving/corner-cutting measures to take in a kitchen that don’t make bread soggy.

She did her best to push the sandwich around on her plate, but couldn’t bring herself to eat it. The waitress asked her about it and she couldn’t lie. To their credit, they comped it.

I’ve just come off of three days of incredible food in Lyon - fantastic three-course meals for under 20 euros. Yes, you can argue you pay for a prime location, but today’s brunch made me want to walk to the train station and have a few more meals in the Rhône before returning to Paris and pretend like I just got back.

Les Editeurs
4 Carrefour de l’Odéon
75006 Paris

Follow me on Twitter: @joe_diner and on Facebook.

| More

Sunday, January 09, 2011

FOLLOWING YOUR NOSE TO A MAN OF HIS CRAFT

New story: Beer wunderkind Shaun Hill’s new digs at Hill Farmstead Brewery in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. Cheers!

| More

Friday, January 07, 2011

TASTE OF THE FUTURE

I’ve seen the future on a little island in the Pacific Northwest. A few weeks ago, I got a taste of Blaine Wetzel’s cuisine in his new role as executive chef at the Willows Inn.

Who’s Wetzel? You’ll likely be hearing quite a bit about him, particularly if you’re from that neck of the woods. Wetzel, 24, is fresh off a stint at Copenhagen’s noma restaurant, working as the chef de partie for Rene Redzepi. He was there when noma officially went through the roof, knocking El Bulli out of the top slot in San Pellegrino’s Best Restaurant in The World hooplah.

Did they win because he was there? No. Was he taking good notes? You bet.

I was at the Willows to interview Wetzel for a set of upcoming articles and a sneak preview of what to expect when the Willows reopens next month.

A seven-course tasting menu was about six courses more than I needed to know that it was worth the trip. He might be a two-hour drive and five minute ferry ride from both Seattle and Vancouver, but you might want to reserve now.

What’d he serve? Barely poached end gently pickled Hammersley Inlet oysters were one of many surprise ‘snacks,’ but my favorite dish might have been the wild mushrooms, fresh cheese and woodruff. For the latter, he forages some of the mushrooms and woodruff and makes the cheese - rennet’s in a little bottle on a shelf in the fridge. He devotes a whole course to the potatoes inn owner Riley Starks grows at the adjacent Nettles Farm that supplies much of the kitchen’s produce.

Need any more reason to go? A four-course tasting menu will start at $40 and a seven course for $65.

The inn and restaurant are closed for a January remodel. Taste of the future begins in February. Go early.

The Willows Inn - MAP
2579 West Shore Drive

Lummi Island, WA 98262

(360)758-2620
www.willows-inn.com

For a bit of background on Wetzel’s arrival, click here.
...and for my Boston Globe story on Willows Inn owner Riley Starks, click here.

Follow me on Twitter: @joe_diner and on Facebook.

| More

Thursday, December 23, 2010

“THIS PART OF SICILY IS LIKE A PROTEIN FACTORY”

Having found pizza 8.5, we went to see grandma in Frigntini. I’d heard about Ristorante Maria Fidone from a man who let his choice to live in Noto be based largely on proximity to pastry chef Corrado Assenza so I followed through on the recommendation.

Maria Fidone is the spiritual cousin of Casalinga Benevento, one notch higher in quality and one notch less expensive. This is about as close as yo8u can get to eating at a Sicilian grandmother’s house without an invite from a Sicilian grandmother.

The exterior has a art deco look more at place in Florida than here but the interior has that peculiar no-frills look that allows a flat screen TV to qualify as a decoration.

There are few choices to make. Red or white is one and it will arrive in a carafe fitting to the number of people at your table. There’s no menu to choose from either, but just by answering in the affirmative to every question the waiter asks, you’ll be eating what grandma is making. You’ll be wildly happy.

I know we’re on to something special when house-cured olives arrive with a bit of mint, but realize how serious this place is with one bite of ravioli di ricotta con sugo di maiale - something that instantly becomes one of the best-prepared pasta dishes of my life. The pasta is almost see through while still retaining a bit of al dente crunch. The ricotta within is transformed, with a cloudy, almost flan-like texture.

“This part of Sicily is like a protein factory,” quips Francesco.

The meat in the sauce along with the tomatoes create an acidic tang that gives the place immediate momentum: the more you eat, the more you want to eat.

“There’s a precision to this that reminds me of my grandmother’s cooking,” says Francesco. In all of the meals we’ve shared together, he’s never complimented food like that.

We share a pork dish, also in the tomato sauce, and the meal is crowned by stewed rabbit with veggies - again, a hint of mint - and each element retaining its own flavor.

The kicker? It’s a steal. Dinner for two, including wine, fizzy water, several courses, coffee and a shot of grappa and a handshake from the waiter as we head out the door is 26 euros. Total. Thirteen euros each.

Memories of grandma and her untouchable cooking are provided free of charge.

If you don’t get to a restaurant like this in Sicily, you’re missing the point.

Ristorante Maria Fidone - MAP
Via Gianforma, 6
Frigintini (Modica)
+39 0932 901 135
www.mariafidone.com

Closed Monday. Cash only. Reserve ahead. Wednesday is vegetarian night.

Follow me on Twitter: @joe_diner and on Facebook.

| More

Saturday, December 18, 2010

DIPASQUALE DUE

When not in Ragusa Ibla for gelato, Ragusa proper can hold its own. The discreet Pasticceria DiPasquale - no relation to the wonderful cheese shop up the hill with the same name - doesn’t fool around.

The inside has a whiff of discreet luxury and there’s a room devoted to writer Leonardo Sciascia (seek out his Mafia writing - he’s blissfully good). God knows if he’s ever used the typewriter in the corner case, but it makes you dream anyway.

Unusually, the gelato is hidden from view - you choose from a short list on the bar. A pair of Sicilian classics are seriously good but what’s most intriguing is the difference in texture; the almond is cake-like and the pistachio more liquid and creamy.

I could be just a flux in the fridge, but I doubt it. The slight differences make each one that much better - a secret modern touch in an austere place.

Pasticceria Di Pasquale - MAP
Corso Vittorio Veneto, 104

Ragusa, Sicily, Italy
+39.0932.624635
www.pasticceriadipasquale.com

| More

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

CHEESE TIME IN RAGUSA

RAGUSA—We arrive a bit early for the cheese and mill around in the mist - wandering through the garden courtyard of a church we never find before settling on the step in front of DiPasquale. We’re not alone; a pair of men wait next to us and two women wait in an old, minuscule baby blue fiat that’s nudged up against the curb.

We’re all waiting for the cheese.

Once in, the cheesemonger recognizes my face and I just say that I’ve been in before and would like to introduce my friends to some good Sicilian cheese. In Sicily, Dipasquale is where you go for the good stuff. The sourcing is impeccable and the cheese, wine and meat they procure has made them deservedly famous.

Show interest or let your eye rest too long and the cheesemonger cuts a slab for each of you to taste. One slab per person. The clever could easily make a meal out of a visit.

He guides us toward beautiful Ragusanos of different ages - these being the large, rectangular cheeses aged by hanging them on thick ropes, tumas (tomme), pecorino and a lovely, saffron-laced Piacentinu Ennese.

Above it all, there’s Lardo di Colonnata - melt in your mouth fatback typically aged in marble with herbs in the Colonnata mines.

In a larger European city, we’d pay twice as much for this kind of quality, but the real value is the contribution to the evening ahead.

Here, I wink to my great friends in the Ispica Social Club, whisper buonanotte, and disappear.

Dipasquale - MAP
Corso Italia, 387
Ragusa
+39 0932 227485
www.dipasqualeformaggi.it

MY SITE:
Follow me on Twitter: @joe_diner and on Facebook.

| More

Friday, December 10, 2010

THE ANARCHIST’S CANNOLI

At the end of dinner at the anarchist’s in Siracusa, I asked the woman at the counter - the anarchette??? - where to go in town for good cannoli.

“There’s a fair one on the square, but if you really want a good one, you have to head up into the hills - to Palazzolo Acreide, but they’ll be closed now. It’s too late.”

We went to the piazza and ‘fair’ in this case was more than enough. We’re thrilled to be rediscovering the island, the architecture and the people. The Motherland.

The next day, Lex and I head to see winemaker Salvo Foti in Chiaramonte Gulfi, then head up and away into the hills and windmills, the sheep and the sunset. We start leaning vaguely toward home when a roadsign indicates “Palazzolo A.”

“That’s where the cannoli is!” I shout. I may have a memory like a sieve, but not when a town shares a name with one of my favorite Sicilian pastry chefs and gelato makers, Santi Palazzolo.

Had I not turned, Lex might have staged a putsch.

Palazzolo Acreide is an off-the-track find, cannoli or no. We hop a fence to explore the ruins of a hilltop castle, then wander between the town’s four gem-like churches.

Everyone in town knows that Corsino is the place for cannoli and there’s a bit of a momentary panic when it appears they’re out of ricotta filling. My word.

Instead, we get two cannoli on one tiny plate and have a seat outside. They’re wonderfully un-made-up - no chocolate bits, no candied fruit just the ricotta, just the shell and a dusting of powdered sugar - the Tilda Swinton of cannoli.

The filling’s perfect - the silky texture contrasting with the punch of good ricotta. Lexy may have had a life-changing experience at Bonajauto but isn’t above devouring this one. She does her little ‘pure pleasure’ gesture, eyes closed, huge smile, head thrown back a little, clapping her wrists together.

There we are again, grinning our way through another town. We sit on the stairs above the main square and watch a wedding party stroll by - photos of the bride and groom taken between the columns in the arcade of an old building.

In front of another church hidden up a set of stairs, Lex twirls and smiles. The moon comes up full and orange above the city.

Corsino - MAP
Via Nazionale, 2
Palazzolo Acreide
+39 0931 875533
www.corsino.it

Follow me on Twitter: @joe_diner and on Facebook.

| More

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

STARS BETWEEN THE BUILDINGS

A stroll through Ragusa Ibla will shave hours from the time you need to get to know people.

We’ve just had dinner at Pizza Nove. Suffice to say, Ristorante Caravanserraglio retains its Sicilian pizza crown.

We head up to Ragusa Ibla for a walk, stopping off for a completely unnecessary gelato at Gelati DiVini and Francesco orders cups of jasmine and olive oil. (The olive farmer pleases the ladies in our group with edible flowers and does a bit of marketing at the same time - genius!)

More importantly, how do you turn jasmine - still blooming across the countryside in the Sicilian fall - into gelato? And how do you do it so it doesn’t taste like cheap perfume? This is the place to find out.

We head back into the side streets, staring at the stars between the buildings. Smiling. Present.

Gelati DiVini - MAP
Piazza Duomo, 20

Ragusa Ibla, Sicily
http://www.gelatidivini.it

PS - That fuzzy looking thing in the photo of Lex? That’s the gelato - she made us go back the next day. And the blissed-out grin? That’s the gelato, too.

PPS - Gelati DiVini has a host of other gelato flavors - check out writer and Ragusa resident Jann Huizenga’s take on it here, and read my Boston Globe Giro del Gelato here.

Follow me on Twitter: @joe_diner and on Facebook.

| More

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

PIZZA IN COUGAR TOWN

FRIGINTINI, Sicily

Spurred by a comment from Sofia, I’ve pushed a new Sicilian pizza post up in the schedule!

…

I wish they made pizza in the daytime here.

Just driving these roads - the Ragusa province’s white, round-topped stone walls and the olive and carob trees behind them - are enough to know this is stunning countryside.

Good luck finding Frigintini - I went pizza hunting with my pal Francesco who grew up one town away and we had to turn around two or three times before finding the town and restaurant, Le Magnolie. I realize the place is in such a small town that to survive, it’s gotta consistently pull people in from the neighboring towns.

Inside, there’s nothing to indicate how they do that other than the ever growing herd of locals wearing those peculiar clothes that make their way down here, often leaving grown women dressing like 16 year olds for lack of options. Welcome to southern Sicily’s Cougar Town.

Nevertheless, the menu is dressed to impress. They’re serving coral colored mushrooms pulled from carob trees and on this day there’s a whole prix fixe menu based around the fungi. We’re here for the pizza, as it’s rumored to give Ristorante - Pizzeria Caravanserraglio (a.k.a. Pizza Nove) and Modica’s Il Contea (Pizza Otto) a run for their money.

F. and I split an order of the mushrooms, stew-like and wonderful, but the real star is the dense bread next to it. Drizzled with a bit of olive oil and downed with a sip of local beer, there’s a wonderful flavor of almonds that fills my mouth.

“I’ll be that’s from the oven,” says F., “They’ll use almond branches to fire it.”

I plow into the combination like there’s no tomorrow.

Pizza arrives - one proscuitto and rocket and one margherita - and we go quiet, shift gears and tuck in.

The proscuitto alone is worth the trip. Generously layered on and contrasted with the in-season rocket’s fiery snap, the combination is divine. This is destination pie.

“Let me tell you what you’re thinking,” says F.

I look up, remembering he’s there and nod.

“Otto punto cinque.”

Eight point five, indeed.

Ristorante Le Magnolie di Macauda Emanuela - MAP

Via Gianforma n.179
Frigintini Modica
+39 0932908136
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
www.ristorantelemagnolie.it

Follow me on Twitter: @joe_diner and on Facebook.

| More

Sunday, November 07, 2010

MEN MISSING THEIR MOTHERS

Lexy will be the only woman in the room when we sit down for lunch, but I’ll wait to tell her that until after we’re through the front door.

There’s no reason to know there’s a restaurant there and no name on the outside of the building - just a misleading circular sign that says ‘BAR.’ Cucina Casalinga Benevantano (“Beneventano’s home cooking”) - is a name used mostly to have something for the phone book and the business cards.

Inside, you might get a curious glance or two if you’re not a regular, but you’re welcome just the same. The sign on the wall opposite the TV no one watches tells you all you need to know - starters, pasta and meats all within the five to ten euro range.

There are about twenty items, from chickpea or fava bean soup, ricotta ravioli with ragu, perfect lamb stew and, aside from the addition of tripe one or two days a week, the menu never changes. This is daily food made for the local crowd and a primer on homestyle Sicilian cuisine.

Maybe all the men in here just miss their moms.

Cucina Casalinga Benevantano - MAP
Via Nazionale Modica-Ispica, 155/a
Modica
+39 0932 771250

Closed on Sunday.

Follow me on Twitter: @joe_diner and on Facebook.

| More

Tuesday, November 02, 2010

BACK IN THE MOTHERLAND: THE CRY OF A CANNOLI CONVERT

Upon Lexy’s arrival, I looked to convert her as quickly as possible. Either that, or I just didn’t want to eat cannoli alone.

Pierpaolo Ruta, who owns and runs Modica’s venerable Antica Dolceria Bonajuto came out to say hello and had some very good news in the form of a question.

“How did you know to arrive when the cannoli shells are still warm?”

My knees buckled a bit and I put two fingers in the air as the form of an across-the-room order.

The shells were, indeed, still warm.

In a form of full disclosure, I know Pierpaolo, who put the cannoli in our hands so I’ll leave any sort of review to Lexy…

… A few nights after visiting Bonajuto, we drove toward Ragusa, the highway crossing a towering bridge with a jaw-dropping view of Modica with its homes and churches clinging to the valley wall. I expected a gasp from Lexy and a nostalgic cry of the city’s name.

Instead, three syllables, the cry of a convert: “Ca-noooo-liiiii!”

Antica Dolceria Bonajuto - MAP
Corso Umberto I, 159

Modica
+39 0932 941225
www.bonajuto.it

Follow me on Twitter: @joe_diner and on Facebook.

| More

Saturday, October 30, 2010

HALLOWEEN IN THE MOTHERLAND WITH THE WOLFMAN

Fueled on gelato and strong espresso, I take a sunset run through town and down into the canyon. Past the chapel dug into the canyon wall and west toward Modica. Nobody but the goats go beyond the shepherd’s farm.

I forget how wild it is out here. There are pomegranate plants, boughs bent with plump, almost-ripe fruit, wild herbs, particularly a form of sage that’s got a near-fruity smell and cactus full of prickly pear are everywhere. Dried carob beans litter the ground, thistles dot the trail and an owl-like bird I’ve never seen flies out of the trees and toward the sun.

I come to my turnaround point, legs nicked from the thick, high tufts of grass and turn on Green Day. The right music makes you feel like you’ve got rockets on your feet. I go as fast as I can the whole run home, thinking I’m going to lose it on a rock and they’ll hear the pop of my ankle echo down the canyon. Instead, I grunt, snort and make animal noises all the way back - who’s going to hear me? It’s the best run of the year.

Past the shepherd’s place, I pass a teenage couple, the air thick with hormones and perfume.

Staring at me, she shrieks “L’uomo lupo!”

Wolfman!

I howl obligingly.

Back in town, the sky purple after the sunset, noisemaking fireworks detonate in the air. Pigeons scatter into the air and school kids in uniform play soccer in a church square. A pair of widows dressed in black walk toward me and say good night to each other and turn in opposite directions, giving the scene an unintentional symmetry.

I’m back in the Motherland. It’s time to eat.

Follow me on Twitter: @joe_diner and on Facebook.

| More

Saturday, October 09, 2010

IN BRUGES: THE END OF THE BEER REPUBLIC

Last blog in Belgium Beer and Fries week! (Or was it ‘Brussels Beer & Fries’?) No better way to end than a final round or two in Brugges…
...
Thanks to our great B&B’s beer selections, a belly full of Brussels’ best (where I confirmed I’m more of a gueuze and lambic guy than a Trappist type) and a short time frame, we only sipped suds on the town on one night.

We’d been tipped off that Lokkedize was the spot people from town go to hide from the tourists and found that though there isn’t an enormous selection, beer is the drink of choice. On this night, there’s a great Straffe Hendrik from the town’s Brouwerij de Halve Maan. The food, though it didn’t look like anything to write home about looked like a good, inexpensive option.

Heading back to the B&B, we walked in front of De Republiek, a bar with just the right amount of people, just the right amount of light, just the right amount of noise and a great beer list. Somebody by themselves could come into this big space without feeling self conscious and a group of friends could enjoy a conversation without shouting.
We looked at each other and went in without a word.

The beer list was good enough to have Boon’s Oud Gueuze - a beer that’s been barrel aged for a few years then put in a bottle and stored for a few more. I had one (33 oz.) then another (25 oz.). What can I say? It was my last night in Belgium.

Before we left, I took a sniff and a sip (both deep). I could come up with a set of descriptors, but it was better than that. It smelled good. It made me smack my lips and smile. Maybe it was the alcohol talking, but I said, “This is pretty perfect.”

It was.

Lokkedize - MAP
Korte Vulderstraat 33

8000 Brugge

http://www.lokkedize.be/bistro.html

+32 (0)50 33 44 50

The front of the menu says both “Hard to find and worth the discovery” and “We appreciate cash.”

De Republiek - MAP
St. Jakobsstraat 36
Bruges
http://www.derepubliek.be
+32 (0)50 34 02 29

Beer fans - continue your reading here with my Boston Globe story, Stalking A Wild Brew and Bottled Brilliance in Centurion Magazine. Cap it off with the beer & fry blogs from this past week.

Follow me on Twitter: @joe_diner and on Facebook.

| More

Friday, October 08, 2010

IN BRUGES: LOLLING IN THE COACH HOUSE

Finding good accommodations online is as fun as buying a plane ticket. In Bruges, where seemingly every other business is a hotel catering to the legions of tourists who descend on this place in the warmer months, it’s particularly intimidating.

To avoid losing a day, I give myself 15 minutes and a budget, opening tabs left and right off of the helpful brugge.be Web site and doing a quick process of elimination.

God bless the off season - I’m now two for two at finding great B&Bs in Belgium.

The full day we’re at ‘t Koetshuis - the one you’d imagine spending all day wandering around one of Europe’s most beautiful cities? Well, the little guest house has a bath, a patio that looks out onto a canal, a fireplace, a big couch and a huge selection of beer; we spend most of the day lolling around, not feeling like we’re missing out at all.

I also like that it’s a pair of professionals - two child psychologists - running the place. Clearly, they don’t need to be doing this, but they’re generous with their time and have plenty of good recommendations for where to go in town.

Next time I’m here, booking will consist of one phone call.

‘t Koetshuis MAP
Sulferbergstraat 38

Bruges
+32 (0)50/348.867
www.gastenkamer.be

One suggestion: go with friends or family: the guesthouse has two rooms upstairs and a the common room (with the fire and the kitchen) downstairs. If the other room was occupied by people you didn’t know, I could imagine the lolling around part being a little awkward.

Follow me on Twitter: @joe_diner and on Facebook.

| More

Thursday, October 07, 2010

IN BRUGES: RESTAURANT REVIEW - I TURNED AND THERE HE WAS…GONE!

The idea was to do a Belgian blog a day until it’s over (it’s almost over), but one or two of you may have noticed that ‘404 Not Found’ notice on these pages 24 hours ago. As my good friend Jerry Romano likes to say: “I turned and there he was…gone!”

Without further ado, it’s time for dinner in Bruges.

...

There’s a bit of sticker shock when you get here - your eyes go wide when they gaze up the beauty of the architecture and stay wide when they look down at the prices on the menu. The price of UNESCO status, I suppose.

On a tip and without much time to choose - they’re early eaters up this way - we head to De Wijngaart, just outside of where most visitors stray. The restaurant stays smart and honest in a town catering to so many out of towners that you have to watch your step.

It’s a treat to watch the guy at the grill which is cleverly placed at the center of the tiny dining room; his heat tolerance must be legendary in these parts. With stubby red fingers, he uses a long-handled cinder rake to move coals under the grill, giving him great heat control. It’s a very clever system.

What I also like is that while you’re eating your entrée, the grill man’s got your cut coming to room temperature, instead of going from the fridge to the flames.

One tic: the waiter asks if I want my steak medium rare, I say ‘rare’ and it comes out medium, but it’s still good enough that it doesn’t matter. We also have a salad using bacon that’s grilled right next to my steak that’s worth it just for the salty goodness of the meat.

Dessert? Too sweet. We eat it with a smile.

How much? We did some creative ordering, had a few beers and got out of there for 20 euros a head. Hungry eaters should count on about 30.

De Wijngaert - MAP
Wijngaardstraat 15
Bruges
+32 050 33 69 18
http://www.wijngaert.com

Follow me on Twitter: @joe_diner and on Facebook.

| More

Tuesday, October 05, 2010

BRUSSELS BEER & FRIES WEEK! PART SIX: GOOD (FRY) HUMOR

I love this kind of place: old, out of the way and authentic. La Bonne Humeur is a spiritual cousin to the American diner, right down the splotch of Formica worn white by the thousands of Dutch ovens and plates set in front of every seat.

What’s cooking? Millions of mussels, a google of frites, too many Jupiler drafts to remember!

Here in the house of moules et frites, the offerings do not disappoint. The mussels are magnificent. What appears to be important is not which sauce (marinière? Green peppercorn?) but that you pause to spoon some of the buttery, fennel-y goodness up from the bottom and pour it over the top.

The fries, part of my five consecutive meal fry extravaganza, cause the group buffoon to shout “McDonalds!” when he first tastes them - which made me want to hit the dirt in case knives came flying from the kitchen … even if there’s a grain of truth to it. ‘McDonald’s in heaven’ is much more appropriate.

The clever can save money by ordering smaller numbers of bigger portions. Three larger portions - they are ordered by the kilo or kilo and half - are plenty for the five of us, buffoon included.

Count on about 30 euros and, as it’s in a funny neighborhood and not too close to a Metro stop, take a cab.

La Bonne Humeur - MAP
Chaussée de Louvain 244
Brussels
+32 02 230 71 69

Follow me on Twitter: @joe_diner and on Facebook.

| More

Monday, October 04, 2010

BRUSSELS BEER & FRIES WEEK! PART CINQ: SUDDEN DEATH IS PREFERRED

My word, what a mess.

The “If You Go” recommendation from my Globe lambic story that said “Skip the food, have a drink and move on” was more accurate than I thought.

A La Mort Subite - French for “sudden death” - is a Brussels landmark bar and restaurant, replete with scores of beer and a beautiful hall for quaffing.

Disasters on this scale are tricky to explain, so let’s stick to the facts.

I joined a group of fifty for dinner - we had the upstairs hall to ourselves, a bit too exclusively. Though one guy ran the occasional tray or two of beer up the stairs, here was one waitress assigned to us. One.

She was heroic in her efforts, but at the end of the day, she was all alone. For most of us, it took two hours for our food - salads and omelets - to arrive.

As a restaurateur who has likely known for weeks that a group of 50 is coming for dinner, how do you screw up that badly? If feeding 50 people à la carte (as we did) is beyond your capacity, why not say so and propose another option? Why not make sure you have the staff to keep the beer flowing and the food moving? Why not have the chef chop up a few tomatoes ahead of time?

At the one hour 45 minute mark, I looked over at a friend who had an expression on his face that said, ‘shoot me.’

“You’d better write about this,” he sighed.

A la Mort Subite

rue Montagne-aux-Herbes Potagères 7

Brussels

+32 (0)2 513 13 18

www.alamortsubite.com

Follow me on Twitter: @joe_diner and on Facebook.

| More

Saturday, October 02, 2010

BRUSSELS BEER & FRIES WEEK! PART QUATRE: FRY ME A RIVER

Part by design, part by chance, I had fries at five meals in a row in Brussels, including one breakfast.

This might rile some feathers, but what’s funny is that the Bruxellois don’t seem terribly picky about their fry stands as long as their frites are done right: fried once to cook them through, then a second time to crisp up the edges at a hotter temperature.

My two faves come from dedicated places outside the center, often surrounded by pimply students who make lunches out of fried meat sandwiches called mitraillettes – pure roach coach grub ‘machine guns’ topped with a few fries and drowned in the sauce of your choosing. Let your eyes alone do the feasting.

Here, the fries are thick, stubby, soft, crispy and salty - the kind of things that have you walking along, gazing up at the city and chuckling to yourself, thinking ‘I’m eating fries in Brussels’ as you pop another another in your mouth.

Two notables:
Friterie de la Place de la Chapelle - MAP
Place de la Chapelle
Brussels
First ones I had on this trip. Breakfast, bien sûr!

Friterie de la Barriere - MAP
5, Avenue du Parc
Brussels

Follow me on Twitter: @joe_diner and on Facebook.

| More

Friday, October 01, 2010

BRUSSELS BEER & FRIES WEEK! PART TROIS: BEER’S MOEDER SHIP

Last year, one of my favorite, accidental and off-the-map finds was Chez Moeder Lambic up above the wonderful Parvis Saint-Gilles.

This year, I herded the cats again, this time to the Moeder Lambic’s new downtown outpost - Moeder Lambic Fontainas - with 46 beers on tap.

It was empty.

“Sometimes you don’t have to go to the perfect place,” says the group buffoon. I wanted to punch him in the nose, only partially because he was right. Nothing deflates my balloon like bringing a gang of foodies to a place that looks like it might be a dud.

Au contraire.

Despite the relatively flashy look - at least compared to their, er, Moeder ship - selection and service are impeccable. There are scads of Cantillon beers on tap (MMMM!!!!) and even the younger members on the staff know their product cold. Even the buffoon can’t flap our waitress. Compared to what’s available in the center of the city, this is a great addition.

Beer fans - continue your reading here with my Boston Globe story, Stalking A Wild Brew and Bottled Brilliance in Centurion Magazine.

Moeder Lambic Fontainas - MAP
Place Fontainas, 8-10
Brussels

Follow me on Twitter: @joe_diner and on Facebook.

| More

Thursday, September 30, 2010

BRUSSELS BEER & FRIES WEEK! PART DEUX: WITHDRAWAL SYMPTOMS

Somebody sunk serious money into this place and I suspect they’re much richer for it. If you want an authentic Brussels experience, this might not be the place, but if you want a good time with a stellar beer selection, Bob’s your uncle at Delirium Café.

Scanning the Guinness World Record beer selection - 2,000 kinds of beer! - we start with a faro from Lindeman’s - sweet, tangy and kind of Smith-Brothers-cough-drop-y. Not for the faint of heart, but big fun. The ‘café’ gets its name from Delirium Tremens - the Belgian beer whose name, roughly, means ‘the shakes you get from alcohol withdrawal.’ It would be hard for that to happen here.

For our second round, the group gives me free reign and, feeling nostalgic for the beer of former interviewee Armand Debelder, I order a vintage oude gueuze and an oude kriek from 3 Fonteinen: - both kept in a temperature-controlled walk-in cooler behind Delirium’s basement bar.

I’m with El Bulli sommeliers Ferran Centelles and David Seijas and on first sip of the gueuze, they pucker and screw up their faces before saying. “Wow…wow.” The kriek is a curiosity, but the gueuze is true discovery for all of us.

Motivating a group of sommeliers and getting them to try something new can be like herding cats, but I love sharing that moment.

Delirium Café - MAP
Impasse de la Fidelité 4A
Brussels
+32.2.514.44.34
http://www.deliriumcafe.be/

P.S. - Pick your visiting times carefully - this place is a zoo on a busy night.

Follow me on Twitter: @joe_diner and on Facebook.

| More

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

BRUSSELS BEER & FRIES WEEK! PART 1: REMEMBER THE FUNK

Back in Brussels, I quickly note that this is the trip where my eyes are still wide open, but the pieces of the city begin to connect.

Back at La Brocante, a beer bar I visited last year, I notice that this year, the deer head on the wall has a cigarette in its mouth and put a finger on one of my favorite things about this town: the inherent funkiness.

Even the popular Jupiler is an acquired taste that makes equivalents like Kronenbourg, Budweiser and Estrella Damm taste like ultra-pasteurized wimps.

I let the waiter steer me toward a beer called Floreffe, a Trappist triple with apple compote, smoke and some wonderful, nose-in-a-brewery smells.

On this day, with the flea market outside, there’s a band - Le Jeu de Balles - crammed into the space between the front door and a beer cooler. The guy next to me appears not to have left the premises since I was here a year ago. Another dude walks in wearing ski googles, followed by an older woman in heels and fur.

It’s good to be back.

Café La Brocante - MAP

Blaesstraat 170

Brussels

+32 (0) 2 512 13 43

Click here to read my 2009 Belgian beer story, “Stalking A Wild Brew”

Follow me on Twitter: @joe_diner and on Facebook.

| More

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

ON THE ROAD IN PARIS

The pre-meal e-mail back-and-forth went like this:

Me: For dinner, I want to start with cured herring on potatoes with a beer, followed by andouillette (tripe sausage) with some good wine.

Anne: MMMMMMMMMM!!!!

These are the friends you hang on to.

Dinner at Les Routiers had been pushed back several times, but was worth the wait. It’s the kind of place favored by Le Guide du Routard: a substantial meal, gentle prices, a little rough around the edges. There’s a giant zinc, assorted kitsch on the wall including a giant Georges Brassens head shot and a surly waitress.

Appetizers are a bargain and could be a meal in themselves. My herring and beer are just as they should be and Anne’s ‘figs stuffed with foie gras’ turns out to be a salad ringed with the figs - dried and fantastic - the salad is generously crowned with charcuterie not even listed on the menu.

The mains, on the other hand, are exactly what it says on the menu: my andouillette sits alone on the plate, reminding me of an infamous French dessert called rêve de jeune fille. Anne’s roast lamb is just that - no thought given to the presentation, but with a crust this crispy and interior this juicy, it doesn’t matter.

Dinner with wine, whether or not you get the prix fixe menu, will run 40-50 euros per person.

Restaurant Les Routiers – MAP
50 Rue Marx Dormoy
75018 Paris
+33 1 46 07 93 80

Follow me on Twitter: @joe_diner and on Facebook.

| More

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

YOUR NAME IN JAPANESE, YOUR DINNER IN FRENCH

My colleague who works in the 8th arrondissement felt a bit challenged when he saw I was disappointed with our last lunch near the Champs Elysées.

For this meeting, he pulled the Aoki card. Not the Japanese pastry chef with outlets around town, but the one with a tiny restaurant a block away from the ‘most beautiful avenue in the world’ (pff!) who’s busy outdoing the chef up the street. At his own game. At half the price.

When I arrive, I give the name of my dining partner who’s made the reservation. The Japanese waiter then reads back the name from the reservation notebook, where it’s written in Japanese. This must be wildly perplexing to the French.

A cod and creamy smashed cauliflower main is cooked just right, but the star is a lentil salad appetizer with petals of cured ham and a gently poached egg. The lentils are more of a soup made bright by vinegar and luxurious by the egg floating on top. There’s a fun, almost light, spin on the baba au rhum for dessert.

Aoki trained under Alain Senderens and the result isn’t fusion cuisine or even French with an Asian flair, as the other Aoki does. Instead, it’s good, clean and modern French.

In Chilean and Argentine Patagonia, I visited foreign winemakers who used their skill to squeeze the most from the local grapes. Here, it’s a warped version - the Japanese chef in Paris showing his neighbors how it’s done.

Lunch formule (appetizer and main or main and dessert) for 21.50€. Great value. Makes me want to go back for dinner.

Restaurant Makoto Aoki
19 rue Jean Mermoz
75008 Paris
+33 1 43 59 29 24
Closed Saturday lunch and Sunday

Follow me on Twitter: @joe_diner and on Facebook.

| More

Tuesday, September 07, 2010

SOMETHING BIG AND ROUND THAT I HAVEN’T TRIED BEFORE

It’s a shame I ate my way through this neighborhood for two years and never once stopped at Melac.

Walk in the door of this 1938 bistrot à vins and underneath the sign that reads “water is for the plants” you’ll find the monstrously mustachioed owner greeting those who he wants with a big smile and a handshake. Sylvie, my cheesemonger friend and longtime regular, gets bisous. Behind him, giant wheels of beautiful cheese take up a counter and the walls in the shade are filled with shelves and shelves of wine.

We move from the first dining room to the second - a movie-like sequence that takes us through tables of jovial long-time customers, a corner of the kitchen complete with sizzling pans and the rack of cloth napkins and customized napkin rings given to preferred customers. The second dining room is every bit as nice as the first.

For wine, Sylvie - who has a napkin ring - has only to ask the waiter for something “big, round and that I haven’t tried before” and he nods and comes back with a bottle of Marcillac which we drink à la ficelle - you pay for as much as you drink. Get in as much trouble as you want.

The chef is new as of this summer and I’d guess he’ll be around for a bit. There will be no reinventing of the wheel and we’ll be very happy that way.  A chicken liver appetizer comes bathing in a beautiful sauce, rich in wine and onions and crowned with two broiled eggs. A bread-dipper’s delight.

Lunch is simple and solid bistro fare: good sausage on a bed of aligot - mashed potatoes with Cantal curd and garlic that nod to the restaurant’s roots in the Auvergne, and a flank steak that’s a little tough but full of flavor. Dessert is riz au lait that would send Mom over the moon.

This is very much a place that’s the sum of the parts - a troika made up of food, wine and ambience that makes you want to eat with friends. I’ll take visitors here. I’ll take friends here. It’s a bit of the real thing.

Count on about 20€ per person, plus wine.

Melac - MAP
42 rue Leon Frot
75011 Paris
+33 1 43 70 59 27 (reserve ahead for dinner)
Closed Sunday & Monday

Follow me on Twitter: @joe_diner.

| More

Sunday, September 05, 2010

NEWS FLASH - SECRET SPRING

Get there while you can.

We got a walk-in seat for dinner at Spring last night.

As in Spring, where you usually have to wait months for a table. We just sat at the downstairs bar and ordered à la carte.

We had walked by after being shut out at Chez Denise, which, we learned, is either closed on Saturdays or still enjoying summer vacation. Wandering aimlessly, I went in to say hello to chef Daniel Rose who opened Spring in its new location a few months back.

“Come check out the bar!” he said.

And while, at 9:30 at night, there were still people upstairs still kicking around from the lobster roll lunch he does every Saturday (no Saturday dinner), downstairs, the beautiful ‘cave’ is essentially functioning as a little restaurant with a bar.

“Spring Buvette!” he declared.

“When did you open?”

“Last night.”

As Rose tells it, he just didn’t tell anyone about it. At this point, he really doesn’t need to.

No reservations, tiny, very reasonably-priced menu, order à la carte (as opposed to the prix fixe upstairs) beautiful space, killer wines.

Last night, we had little canned sardines with perfect bread and butter, wonderful Spanish charcuterie (including a chorizo, which, on that bread with a thin layer of that butter may have been my favorite bite of the meal), a veal and foie gras ‘tourte’ topped with little, ruby-colored radish sprouts and a lamb and cèpe stew with white beans.

Our meal was destined for a bunch of catch-up with an old friend, but we kept getting interrupted by the food that would make my friend moan.

“Some of this is better than bad sex,” I joke.

“Some of this is better than good sex,” she replies.

You’ve got about three days to get there before the word’s out and the line’s out the door.

Count on about 30 euros per person. Without wine. Most bottles start at 30 euros and go up from there.

Spring Buvette - MAP
6 Rue Bailleul
75001 Paris
+33.1.45.96.05.72

Follow me on Twitter: @joe_diner.

| More

Thursday, September 02, 2010

GOD BLESS CHEESE. ESPECIALLY FREE CHEESE.

I’m late for my plane.

I’ve been simultaneously packing to leave for summer in the USA, packing up to move apartments and file my taxes for the last few days and, shutting the door behind me, realize I probably won’t be able take the metro and make it on time.

I also can’t find a taxi and have to stop in to pick up my sister’s request of fresh, salty butter. That’s all she ever wants me to bring from France and I can’t blame her. It’s sublime.

But I’m late.

En route for the taxi stand where there are always taxis but never any drivers, I run past Belleville’s Fromagerie Beaufils.

It’s early and Beaufils is one of the only shops on rue de Belleville that’s open, Monsieur Beaufils (?) still arranging cheeses.

“Hi, I’d like some butter for my sister,” I say, leaning my suitcase up against the display case.

He smiles, pulls down some fresh butter from the Ile de Ré and asks where I’m heading.

I explain the Oregon/Seattle/New Hampshire itinerary, noting the family connections along the way. Ready to leap out the door if a taxi rolls by.

“Does your family like cheese?” he asks.

“Bien sur!” I reply, wondering how the hell the guy knows I have “god bless cheese” written on my business card.

He turns around, picks up a two-pound hunk of Comté laced with those good-news crystals of amino acids, holds it up for me to see and says, “for your family.”

I’ve never met the man before and, as far as he knows, I’m never to be seen again, and he sticks what I’d guess to be a 20-euro ($26) hunk of cheese in my hands, charging me three bucks for the butter and waiving the fee to put everything in a vac-pac bag.

We eat it on a vineyard in Oregon. They like the cheese.

Fromagerie Beaufils - MAP
118 rue de Belleville
75020 Paris
+33 (0)1 46 36 61 71

Follow me on Twitter: @joe_diner.

| More

Thursday, August 12, 2010

NEWS FLASH - NOMA SOUS CHEF TO TAKE REINS AT WILLOWS INN

I visited the Willows Inn on Washington state’s little-known Lummi Island for an upcoming Boston Globe story a few weeks back - the restaurant is locavore heaven. Proprietor Riley Starks and his partner Joan Olsen catch the salmon in reef nets, grow much of their own produce and raise amazing mangalitsa pigs at their Nettles Farm just up the road, buy incredible spot prawns caught in the water in front of the inn and wonderful lamb raised a few miles down the road. On some nights, even neighboring Bellingham’s Boundary Bay Brewery’s beautiful Reefnetter Pale Ale is on tap. The whole thing is done so well, they pull off the local thing without the twee thing that often goes with it.

It’s about to get even more interesting. Starting August 23, Blaine Wetzel, a Washington native fresh from a stint in the kitchen at Copenhagen’s noma - the number one restaurant in the world (if you buy that sort of thing) - will be taking over as executive chef at the inn’s restaurant. Very curious to see what happens. noma’s chef Rene Redzepi is a big proponent of the New Nordic movement - a group of chefs working to go local even at those higher latitudes, a philosophy that should dovetail very nicely with what Starks and Olsen have done.

The inn is a two-hour drive and five minute ferry ride from Seattle and I’d bet it’s worth a trip to see what’s cooking ... I’m planning on a visit.

The Willows Inn - MAP
2579 West shore Dr
Lummi Island, WA 98262
888-294-2620
www.willows-inn.com

Follow me on Twitter: @joe_diner and on Facebook.

| More

Friday, July 30, 2010

THE GIGONDAS CHALLENGE

PARIS – The waitress at Willi’s Wine Bar poured a bit in my glass to taste and waited next to me for a verdict.

Nothing good happened in my mouth. Nothing bad either. “Nothing to signal” to borrow a local phrase.

“Should it be like this?” I venture, trying to play it semi-diplomatically.

As the words leave my mouth, the wine - a Gigondas - begins to unwind. It’s good, but a bit too late now.

The waitress takes it in stride as I begin to backpedal. Later, the wine steward drops by to offer to exchange the bottle anyway. Perhaps he smiled when he noticed it was almost gone.

…

“Willi’s?” a friend would later ask. “That place still full of Americans?”

“Smart ones,” I reply.
…

Count on 30-40 euros for a good, seasonal lunch, tasty wine and classy service.

Willi’s Wine Bar - MAP
13 rue des Petits Champs
75001 Paris
+33 (0)1 42 61 05 09
www.williswinebar.com

Closed Sunday.

Follow me on Twitter: @joe_diner.

| More

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

HAIL THAT CAB!

PARIS - I’d been back in town for 48 hours, my mental Rolodex a little rusty and trying to think of a good place to meet a friend for lunch. My brain falls on a well-worn card.

Taxi Jaune is a perfect ‘welcome back’ - serving, on this day, radishes with good, sweet, creamy butter and salt flakes - the dish might as well have a little French flag on the top.

Later, Ari and I share mains. A bavette (flank steak) is crunchy on the outside, juicy within - a bite full of flavor, good technique and strong sourcing.

The trout, skin crisp and peeled back like the page of a good book reveals something sensual, a kind of ‘pages turned slowly’ read. There’s a fettucine next to it that’s so good, it causes me to go home and try to make my own pasta.

Outside, the sun is bright. The city shines like a diamond.

Count on about 20€ with a drink at lunch.

Le Taxi Jaune - MAP
13, rue Chapon
Paris
+33 1 42 76 00 40

| More

Monday, July 12, 2010

SUGAR FRENZY

PARIS

“Mmm… Almonds, fleur d’oranger, vanilla…” says Ari dissecting the Pain du Sucre confection I’m sharing.

“What else is in it?” asks her friend.

My only reply is a frenzied chewing sound, similar to the dining animals in “The Fantastic Mr. Fox.”

Both friends have each ordered exactly one mint macaroon with chocolate (girls!) and they taste exactly like the mint that grew in our side yard when I was five.

Yesterday in the patisserie where we got them – Pain de Sucre, run by ex-Pierre Gagnaire partner/dynamic do Didier Mathray and Nathalie Robert – a woman, perhaps intoxicated by the beautiful fumes practically stampedes our threesome.

Today, on our return visit (Ari needed some more for her return to Barcelona), another woman snatches one of her macaroons from the box before the salesman can close the top, pretends to offer it to her infant and acts surprised when, ostensibly, the baby says ‘no.’

The mom wolfs it down in one bite.

I can’t blame her.

Pain de Sucre – MAP
14 rue Rambuteau
75003 Paris
http://www.patisseriepaindesucre.com/
Closed Tuesday & Wednesday

Click here to see my 2007 story on Pain du Sucre and other, emm, mold-breaking patisseries

Follow me on Twitter: @joe_diner.

| More

Thursday, July 08, 2010

LUNCH IN THE BLACK HOLE

PARIS

Unless you’re willing to plunk down the cash, eating around the Champs Elysées is an expensive and often unsatisfying proposition.

“There’s a great Chinese, good sushi…” my dining partner said, citing his local favorites but after years of working in the neighborhood, but he still hadn’t found a favorite French place that’s a good value.

Luckily, he was prepared to plunk down the cash.

In front of Citrus Etoile, Audis and Porsches fight for the space in the crosswalk by the valet and inside, it’s businessmen and a bit of Botox. A little too showbiz for me. The waiter will take your order using an oversized Palm Pilot. That tap, tap, tap noise is about as pleasant a sound as fingers on a chalkboard.

The Web site describes the “adorable” owners Gilles and Elizabeth Epié as “a dynamic and sexy couple.” Someone needs to turn the PR down a notch. Some eat this stuff up and love what the couple does, but this is not my cup of tea.

Having spent a big hunk of time cooking in California, Monsieur Epié makes a laudable effort to offer a menu that’s good for you, but I don’t want to come to a place like this and have a dish that looks like it was pulled from the ‘heart-healthy’ section of a menu.

I will also mention that at a wine tasting yesterday, I had a very similar main dish - fish with spring vegetables - at the wine bistrot Vin Chez Moi (18 rue Duphot 75001) and it was about twice as good (and good looking) as this. Everything we eat at Citrus Etoile is good, but there’s no point during the meal where we say ‘Mmmmm!’ I hate to say it, but I felt like I could do some of this at home.

It also feels like you need to know what to get - there’s a businessman a few tables away whose tie is thrown back over his shoulder like it was in his way. I want what he had, but at 70 euros a head for lunch without wine or dessert, I should be able to point at dishes with my eyes closed and come up with winners every time.

Again, maybe it’s just me. Everything about this place is what the French would call ‘more than correct’ but I’m not interested in paying for a seat in a semi-exclusive place that doesn’t make me want to eat with my tie slung over my shoulder.

Lunchtime prix-fixe options at 49 and 69€. It goes up from there.

Citrus Etoile – MAP
6 rue Arsène Houssaye
75008 Paris
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
http://www.citrusetoile.fr
+33 1 42 89 15 51

Follow me on Twitter: @joe_diner.

| More

Friday, July 02, 2010

BLEU BUT WARM

PARIS

The 11th keeps getting better.

I went to dinner with my favorite cheesemongers from Fromagerie Charonne (a.k.a. Autour du Fromage) the other night - they had a new place to show me in my old neighborhood. Who am I to say no?

po.za.da is visible from Boulevard Voltaire but tucked away on the tiny rue Guénot - you either know it’s there or it’s a lucky find. It’s not a cross-town-trek kind of place, but it’s a great addition to the offerings in the 11th and they’re making the right gestures to please the local crowd. The young chef in the tiny kitchen has the leeway to cook what he wants (the menu only exists on the chalkboard) and there’s an extensive list of good-value wines, available at a marked-down price to take home.

Sylvie, who’s ordered her steak “bleu but warm” gets exactly that and goes quiet for several minutes when it arrives. Daniel gets a burger and though I could care less about the Paris Burger Wars, I want to reach across the table for a bite - it’s wrapped in cured ham, topped with wide shavings of Parmesan and cooked like Sylvie’s steak. Pork chops ‘à la moutarde à l’ancienne’ means the mustard is whipped to a frenzy - a creamy puff as good on the chops as it is on my spuds and the salad. Chef also had the wisdom to let a sautéed girolle mushroom appetizer be just that.

Count on around 30€ with wine for dinner - lunch appears to be a good deal with 12€ appetizer/main or main/dessert options.

po.za.da - MAP
2 rue Guénot
75011 Paris
+33.1.43.70.63.24

Autour du Fromage - MAP

120 rue de Charonne

75011 Paris

+33.1.43.71.58.48

| More

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

HOT ZONES AND A SLOW DANCE

PARIS

Dinner is with a pair of war correspondents. Talk ranges from world hot zones to falsifying papers.

Nothing quite like that to make a food and travel writer feel like a wimp.

I try to flex my muscles by coming up with somewhere new to eat in the neighborhood (without returning to the wonderful L’Escargot) and come up with La Lanterne, a spot I’ve spied on a side road along my jogging route near the Buttes Chaumont park.

Downstairs at La Lanterne is candlelit bric-a-brac, remnants of some bygone era that’s hard to put a finger on, but must look better on a cold winter’s night than the misty early summer’s eve we’re here on. We make a beeline for the covered roof deck, currently occupied by ten friends in their 50s celebrating a birthday.

Entrées arrive - a tartare de legumes, escargot with roquefort sauce and a salad with pork cheeks. Everything sounds more interesting that it is. Bof! say the French. Though the business card says “old Paris atmosphere” it’s really like eating at a so-so countryside restaurant.

But the table next to us has a good mood floating in the air above them and at our table, the guys are smiling, talking about dodging bullets. Mains arrive and one of the correspondents cuts his andouillette open longwise like he’s gutting it. Truthfully, they’re a bit disappointing - better, but not worth a trip, until I look around the deck - wonderful views in a quiet city spot. The woman at the table next door pulls out an iPhone to play a tinny slow song, holding it up like a candle at a concert.

The birthday girl and her sweetie - clearly still a sweetie after a long time together - get up and dance together. It’s the kind of charming you don’t always see in Paris. Which makes the whole dinner worth it.

Count on about 25-30 € for dinner. Rooftop dancing optional.

La Lanterne MAP
9 Rue du Tunnel
75019 Paris
+33 1 42 39 15 98

| More

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

TURBOT’S DEAL WITH THE DEVIL

I’d wanted to come back here for years. I’d also been wondering where to have my last meal of the summer in Barcelona.

Appropriately, I went with my old lunch partner/landlord Fede who introduced me to Restaurant Montalban when I rented my Poble Sec apartment from him years ago.

All I wanted for this meal was to repeat the one I remembered, as it seemed the owner had made some sort of deal with the devil to make good seafood.

There is no disappointment.

We start with percebes - gooseneck barnacles - sugar sweet, wildly expensive, and looking like dinosaur toes, Montalban’s are made with a pinch of cinnamon in the court bouillon. To eat them, pinch the neck, pull out the sweet center, pop it in your mouth and wash it down with a Galician white and you, too, will be saying, “Money? What money???”

We follow with a plate of galician octopus that’s plump, tender, almost sweet and paprika smoky. Every time I eat this dish I like it more.

Barnacles and octopi, however, are sideshows compared with the real reason I want to return; I want the rodaballo. The turbot comes out crispy-chewy on the outside firm and flavorful on the inside. There’s a lemon, but there’s no reason to bother with it; this fish is worth a deal with the devil. My word - one taste and you wonder why anyone would bother with any other preparation.

You’ll pay for the pleasure, but Montalban is still a great value. As Fede says, “this place and Quimet & Quimet are the only places you’ll find people wearing suits in Poble Sec.”

Count on about 35 euros for lunch with wine. Sky’s the limit if you order percebes, but they’ll be worth it.

Bar-Restaurant Montalban “Casa Jose” - MAP
Margarit 31
+34 93 442 31 43

Closed Sunday night and Monday.

| More

Friday, June 04, 2010

UPHILL FROM ANCHOVIES

We roll out of “the place with the amazing anchovies” and head next door to the new Cal Marino - which, with walls lined with bottles, barrels and a bar full of tasty vittles, looks like Quimet & Quimet’s little cousin.

Toni brought me here for a quick snack a month ago and I wanted to check in again and see what’s cooking.

They don’t cook much, actually, they source. There are gourmet snacks a gogo - lots of good things to skewer with a toothpick and a few combinations à la Quimet. There are plates with excellent olives, tasty shrimp, or little bites of octopus; you’d have to make a concerted effort to make a meal out of it, but paired with, say, a good cider, they get the appetite racing, the conversation moving.

They’re still working out a few kinks; I tried flagging the waiter for some tomato bread and he made a long-distance stiff-arm gesture that said, “Can’t you see I’m overwhelmed?” Come in at a quieter time, however, and the barman/owner will be happy to teach you about the products he stocks.

They’ll work it out. Can Marino is a great launching point, a future neighborhood reference as a watering hole and part of a great one-two punch after you have some of those anchovies.

Count on 5-15€ depending on how much of a meal you want to make of it.

Can Marino - MAP
C/ Margarit 54
Barcelona
+34 93 329 45 92

Follow me on Twitter: @joe_diner.

| More

Sunday, May 30, 2010

THE FOOD’S BETTER HERE

ASTURIAS, Spain—Three steps before I get to the restaurant that’s been recommended to me, I walk in front of the place where I’ll end up. I do my ‘hesitate, peek inside at a place that has really good potential, look at them menu and salivate’ thing.

Without prompting, a customer in front of La Botella looks me over, sees what’s up and says “the food’s better here.”

Does anyone need more prodding than that?

Inside, there are all the right signs: a bunch of ruddy-faced white-bonneted women in the kitchen, a table of five grandmothers on a Sunday out, sawdust on the floor that a 10 year old uses to spell out the name of her crush with the tip of her shoe and the staff you want to adopt as your host family.

Cider - in this case sidra Peñon (currently celebrating their 100th birthday) - is poured by guys who look like they’ve been doing it for 100 years - eyes fixed not on the glass four feet below where they’re pouring, but on some fixed point on the horizon…until they fix your gaze as they hand you your glass.

This isn’t expensive stuff - 2,30€ for a 75 cl bottle - but it’s the kind of stuff where you take a sip and truly wonder how we can bother spending so much time drinking second-rate drinks.

I watch dishes go out - plump bits of octopus, tiny scallops in their shells and have a bit of buyer’s remorse. Galician-style hake? What was I thinking?

Good things, apparently.

I will note the size of my cut of fish: every bit as large as my fist. My word, a Parisian chef would cut this in three pieces and sell it for more!

I will also note that my worries about having a fish with a sauce are unfounded. The hake would be a marvel on its own - bite-sized discs breaking off with just the right amount of fork pressure. The sauce - laden with paprika (but not too much) - is there if you want it, smoky and even slightly sweet goodness.

I’m sure it’s fantastic, but did I miss the place next door? Not one bit.

Count on about 20€ per person.

Restaurante La Botella - MAP
C/ Emilie Robin 15
Aviles, Spain
+34 98 556 48 08

Follow me on Twitter: @joe_diner.

| More

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

THREE-STAR BEER IN BARCELONA

BARCELONA - It happens to every host. Your and your guest are well fed*, you don’t need more caffeine, you’ve been walking for a couple hours and going home now would torpedo the afternoon.

There we were, sore of foot and in front of La Cerveteca - the beer place. Not the toss ‘em back and drunk by five style, though. In Barcelona, like in Paris, coffee and beer are always good, but seldom better. La Cerveteca is one of the few wonders that falls into the ‘better’ category - the kind where you walk in and stare in wonder, saying ‘Holy cow - what’s this doing here?’

Case in point, I spy Nøgne Ø beers from Norway - something I recognize from Anders Kissmeyer’s wonderful Norrebro Bryghus brewery in Copenhagen - along with American IPAs, treats from Belgium and Germany and even Anchor Steam from San Francisco!

(Seeing the latter, I instantly pine for my San Francisco days, roaming Potrero Hill when the smell of the hops streaming out of the brewery takes over the neighborhood, with a scent that, inexplicably, will always remind me of Spaghetti-O’s.)

Guillaume and I order an IPA and a Liberty Ale, grab a few papers, find a back table and take a load off for an hour.

Perfect.

La Cerveteca MAP
Gignàs 25
Barcelona
+34 93 315 04 07

*Pinotxo, of course. A Joe Ray three-star
.

| More

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

BACALAO’S AHA! MOMENT

Bacalao - salt cod - has never been my favorite. Catalans do backflips for it, but to me, there are so few aha! moments, I never quite understand the bother or the price.

To set me straight, my ever-helpful Barcelona tipster, food writer Carme Gasull, took pity on me and sent me to the Masclans kiosk in the Galvany market on the far side of Avinguida Diagonal. The only tourists up this way are lost.

First, the negotiations: three of us would like to try Esteve Masclans’ bacalao and there are no tables at his kiosk. The man behind the counter works out a deal where we’ll eat the fish at the tables of a nearby bar/food stall whose beer we will happily drink.

Our meal begins with a dive in the deep end.

“Start with this,” the waiter says. “It’s chick peas and bacalao spine.”

Technically, it’s the tissue inside the spine and my friends look at each other like they’re wondering what they’re in for, but it disappears in a flash. It’s possible I ate the whole thing. I don’t remember.

Masclans are masters of sous-vide, slow-cooking much of their bacalao in a vac-pac bag and we try a few variations - one with tomatoes, one with truffle another with a type of mirepoix. Sweet and silky, the tomato preparation is the landslide winner.

The best dish, however, is carpaccio-style translucent bacalao rounds, each disc with a pea-sized dot of olive paste, the whole drizzled in healthy quantities olive oil, accompanied by a scattering of sofregit-esque fresh tomato sauce. The fish is the star, of course, but it gracefully shares the stage with its friends.

Aha!!!

Count on 15€ for lunch, including beer from the neighbors.

Masclans - MAP
Mercat de Galvany
Santaló, 65
+34 93 200 99 27

| More

Sunday, May 23, 2010

ANCHOVIES IN THE CAVE

BARCELONA - Similar to the way he divulges his kitchen secrets, Toni’s stingy when it comes to sharing his favorite places to eat in Poble Sec - my favorite Barcelona barrio.

We were out picking up supplies for a soup he was making and as we walked down the street from La Cova, he casually mentioned how their anchovies were the neighborhood’s best.

I did not fail to take note.

Ari and Diego (my hot-stuff Web designers), Meri, the queen of all wine, and I went up to check it out a few weeks back. Truthfully, I dragged them along, but nobody complained.

You’d walk past La Cova 1,000 times, but once you’re in, you never want to leave. Anchovies are served up six to a plate and there’s a fantastic bit of skin on the underside adding extra flavor and silky texture. Twice, my notes read “fleshy goodness” and they’re bathing in a tiny pool of house-blend olive oil, vinegar and secret spices - if you ask, the owner might divulge his secrets.

Ari will later refer to La Cova as “The place with the amazing anchovies.” Toni would turn red.

Four beers, two plates of anchovies and pa amb tomaquet (tomato bread) came to about 12 euros.

Hard to beat.

La Cova MAP
Margarit, 52
Barcelona
+34 934 411 063

Follow me on Twitter: @joe_diner.

| More

Friday, May 21, 2010

SNACKS: TONI ROSSINI

BARCELONA - While we’re prepping the calcot sauce in Toni’s kitchen, we get talking about our favorite artery-cloggers and I mention steak Rossini - a big steak with a slab of foie gras, preferably seared, melting over the top - at Le Tambour.

Or, well, anywhere.

He grins and walks toward the fridge which, is a Pandora’s box of high-cal goodness and pulls out two steaks and a slab of foie gras.

Lunch is served.

Follow me on Twitter: @joe_diner.

| More

Sunday, May 16, 2010

CUATRO - NEW FOUR YOU

Hot off the press? Hot off the griddle? Who cares?

Located at the bottom of the culinary wasteland of Las Ramblas, Cuatro is new, very good and a solid value.

Reserve now - they may be working out the kinks, but it’s going to be full to the gills very soon.

Kinks? There’s a bit of a split personality - the sign on the door says “Bar Cuatro” giving the hurried and hungry every reason to walk past. There are noble G&Ts, good value wines, but it’s not a destination bar - it’s a destination restaurant.

The dining room is spread out, spacious and relaxed, making me wonder why they didn’t give themselves a little more room in the kitchen or if they’re planning on squeezing in a few more tables once they’ve hit stride.

Order à la carte if you will, but there’s a six-course degustation menu for two at 25€ a head and you get to choose which courses to try.

Our foursome, including my tipster, Barcelona food writer Carme Gasull, Edu and Meri, start with a duck crepe with red fruit chutney, which is like hot duck rillettes, minus some of the fat, rolled into a crepe, with a nice acidic bite from what’s really a drizzle of fruit reduction. It sets a nice tone for what’s to come. ‘Calamari strips with wasabi mayo’ are fried in a tempura-like batter, which would normally make me whine about needless poaching from other cultures if it wasn’t so good.

My favorite main - which elicited bipolar responses from our group - is a poached egg over a cauliflower cream with a wiggle of truffle oil and a tiny slab of wonderfully fatty bacon, everything bathing in a spoonful of olive oil and (I think) meat jus. I’m also almost forgetting the side of vanilla-scented mashed potatoes that came with a braised veal cheek. Giving the spuds gentle sweet, savory and honey-like flavors, none of us could figure out the mystery ingredient, likely the fruit a clever collaboration between chef Aitor Bergaretxe and lauded pastry chef Vicente Carvalho.

The wines, sourced by sommelier Jaume Martorell are smart, unique and good values - we have a 2009 Tempestad, a Galician beauty made with the godello grape - and the peculiarly-named 2006 Squared Three (bzah! - the number on the label is three squared), a grenache, tempranillo and merlot blend from the Rioja that leaves us every bit as happy as the godello.

There’s a salty chocolate mousse for dessert, presented in a way only a Catalan could appreciate, but the superstar is a play on french toast with a Parmesan ‘cake’ and pear sorbet. This alone is worth the visit.

Count on 25 euros, whether you order à la carte or the tasting menu, plus wine.

Cuatro
C/ Montserrat, 4 (a stone’s throw form the Drassanes Metro)
Barcelona
+34 93 301 43 24

Follow me on twitter: @joe_diner

| More

Wednesday, May 05, 2010

COVERING MY CALCOTS*

I met Toni (see above) this morning to learn salsa per calçots - the sauce for the celebrated spring onion that’s barbecued into a coma (see above) for the masses, dipped into the romesco-like sauce and eaten by the dozens in wonderfully-sloppy sword swallower style.

Trying to get an invite into his kitchen to help, he was reluctant to have me over. “You’re going to steal my secrets!” he bellowed.

When I got to his house, however, he asked if I was going to pull out my pen.

Around the kitchen, there are two hocks of jamón, at least three active bottles of wine, including one with the bottle neck cut off, a bag of bunyols - (seasonal Munchkin-like mini donut/fritters, often flavored with a bit of anise) and three different kinds of oranges.

For the sauce, he’s got separate trays of roasted tomatoes, peppers, garlic and onion ready and once those are done, it’s pretty simple.

“[The nearby Catalan towns of] Sitges and Villanova fight to see who makes the best,” he claims.

For his entry, he throws the following into the blender in batches:

- the flesh of a rehydrated ñora pepper in the blender (substitute, if you must, a sweet, mild dried red pepper)
- a dangling handful of roasted red peppers
- one roasted onion, skinned and chopped into rough chunks
- 10 roasted tomatoes
- 5 cloves of roasted garlic
- 2 cloves raw, peeled garlic
- 1 cup almonds
- â…“ cup hazelnuts
- ½ cup bread crumbs
- two shakes of pepper
- 1 cup olive oil
- 2 cups water
- ¾ cup red wine vinegar
- 1 ½ tbsp salt

Run the blender slow for 5-10 seconds then fast for about 20. The sauce should be thick and still slightly chunky.

Salsa per calçots is also fantastic for making xató (pronounced “chateau”) - a salad made with curly endive, black olives tuna belly and/or bacalao.

*Admittedly, this is running a bit late, but I’m playing catchup after a month in India. Besides, if you’re in a cool climate and have access to spring onions to grill, they’d be wonderful doused in this sauce…

| More

Saturday, May 01, 2010

HEN DON’T?

I did something with this place I don’t usually do: I recommended a restaurant to a friend without having been there to eat in a long time. A friend from London was coming into town for what the Brits call a ‘hen do’ (a.k.a. a bachelorette party) right around the time another friend who runs Slow Food Barcelona was talking about a favorite restaurant: Mam i Teca. There seemed to be a bit of serendipity involved, so I went with the flow. Now that I’ve gone, I can’t decide if it was a good idea.

At first, I thought the tiny restaurant lacked a bit of soul, but I figured out that it feels like that you’re eating in the semi-industrial living room of the guys who run it, right down to the Johnny Hallyday on the radio and the waiting for the waiter/barman to finish up his conversation with the client/friends at the end of the bar before you can ask for another napkin.

If you like that sort of stuff - it can have its charms - you’re in for a treat. I love that feeling that the two guys who run the joint are clearly doing exactly what they want to be doing, but I wonder how many other people come out of there feeling a little weirded out by the experience. The cuisine is Catalan and you can understand the Slow Food connection; product is excellent. Xató - a salad of escarole with salt cod and olives with romesco sauce wasn’t much to write home about, but it was counterbalanced by a sweet and salty rabbit stew with apricots and prunes. Mmm!  Our favorite dish, a mix of just-cooked mushrooms, asparagus and garlic drizzled in olive oil was so good, we ordered it twice.

I can’t remember the last time I did that.

Maybe it was a good idea to send the hens here.

Mam i Teca - MAP
Carrer de la Lluna 4
Barcelona
+93 441 33 35

| More

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

WORLD’S BEST? THAT’S UP TO YOU.

I love the hype surrounding the announcement of The World’s 50 Best Restaurants* – it somehow points out how goofy and subjective it is to rank them (where are Pinotxo and the Agawam Diner?!?!) while reminding us how wonderful they are.

For anyone interested in a trip down memory lane to the places on the list where I’ve been lucky enough to eat, here we go…

noma – Rene Redzepi (see photo)

El Bulli – Ferran Adria

El Celler de Can Roca – Joan Roca

WD-50 & Daniel

Le Chateaubriand

Pierre Gagnaire & Plaza Athenée - Pierre Gagnaire & Alain Ducasse

St. John

Finally, two conspicuously absent personal faves:
Restaurat Jean-Marie Amat
and
Les Cols

*Congrats to my pal Lexy Topping for breaking the 50 Best story for the Guardian – woop woop!

Follow me on Twitter: @joe_diner and on Facebook.

| More

Friday, April 09, 2010

IN ‘N’ OUT

Motherlanders,

I’m off to Bombay for the weekend, then heading to Darjeeling to learn about tea and hike in the Himalayas until late May.

Really.

So… I’ll be in and out. Hopefully mostly out.

Woohoo!

More at the end of the month!

Joe

| More

Wednesday, April 07, 2010

SAVED BY THE CUBANS

Walking out of the flat with two visiting friends, I point out the Celler del Nou Priorat - a local favorite in the Sants neighborhood run by a trio of Cubans that’s exactly the kind of place you pray to find when you’re wandering around looking for a place for dinner.

Instead, my idea is to get out of the neighborhood and do a Poble Sec tapas crawl. I drag my pals around to find that the three places I want to go - Quimet & Quimet, the new bar at Xemei and inopia are, respectively, closed, full and full.

I put in a desperate call to the Cubans and we hop in the metro and head toward home.

Once I sit, it takes only a glass of Cava, some sweet potato chips and a plate of pimientos de padrón for me to go from feeling like I’ve lost my touch back into the Food Leprechaun.

Olives help, too. And maybe some mushrooms sautéed with little bits of jamon. And there’s an octopus dish that has a friend from Lisbon take a mental return trip home with one bite.

There’s a famous brownie for dessert, but we get perfect, sweet and minty mojitos instead.

Cuban? Catalan? Spanish? Not really. More like fresh-from-the-Catalan-market inspired Cuban/Catalan/Spanish goodness. More like yes, yes and more please.

Count on 15-30 euros, redemption included.

Celler del Nou Priorat - MAP
Vallespir 19

Barcelona
+34 934 905 952

| More

Thursday, April 01, 2010

HAIL TO THE BEAN!

Now, I understand.

For years, I’d tried the classic faves a la Catalana - a broad bean dish without ever understanding why dish makes up part of the Catalan canon. Wrong places? Bad luck? Who knows? It’s all over now.

I’d wondered about the Sants’ neighborhood’s Can Manel - which typically has, say, a whole roast suckling pig and some grilled artichokes in the front window - looked like it could be great or a dud and the only way to know would be to try it.

I finally bit the other day - they have a menu del dia for 10 euros and I was hungry.

It was clear when the beans were set in front of me that I’d have a new outlook on things.

Sitting by myself, I must have said, “Man, these are good!” to myself 25 times. The beans are rich, hearty and buttery-textured, brought to life with small quantities of - get this - three kinds of pork products.

“Bacon, blood sausage and jamon,” explains the waiter.

While my main - slices of pork loin (more pork!) with fries - is admittedly less interesting, they use good product.

I’ll be back.

Restaurant Can Manel - MAP
Galileo, 85
Barcelona
+34 93 339 10 47

| More

Monday, March 29, 2010

LUCK IN THE BASEMENT

El Bulli interview finished, I head to Cadaqués to Can Rafa, a sojurn I’ve been trying to make for months…except every time I go, it’s closed and this time is no exception.

I’m alone and looking for a place where I won’t feel like too much of a chump sitting by myself and can still eat well. On this night, that doesn’t exist in Cadaqués. In desperation, I leave town and call my friend Twin Stomach for somewhere to try in the nearby El Port de la Selva but the phone rings and rings…

In town, I knock on the door where a set of stout-bellied accordion players are practicing and they point me toward El Celler, a family-run seafront place set apart from the town’s more kitschy offerings.

There are fantastic anchovies with gobs of good olive oil and a bit of tomato which are fantastic together on top of their warm, homemade bread. I have a great duck breast in fig sauce and the front of house owner does a perfect job of alternately chatting and leaving me to enjoy my meal.

Count on about 25 euros.

El Celler - MAP
C/ Llancà 8-10
El Port de la Selva
+34 972 126 435

| More

Thursday, March 25, 2010

ITALIAN CRESCENDO, WITH MOTORCYCLES

BARCELONA

“It’s too expensive,” was the first thing out of a friend’s mouth when I mentioned we were heading to Xemei.

“But it’s goooood,” was the second.

“Best risotto of my life,” said another friend, “made with cod tripe!”

I was sold, plus there was serendipity involved. Food writer Carme Gasull proposed going at right around the same time.

On the weekend, Xemei is bustling with the open concept kitchen with the restaurant’s namesake Venetian twins running the show. It’s a loud, fun and casual atmosphere that stimulates the mind and the appetite.

We start, sharing a giant appetizer dish that’s an Italo-Catalan tapas with cod fritters, anchovies in vinegar on a fresh tomato salsa, a tender slab of mackerel. It’s all fine, but I’m thinking of the “expensive” comment more than the “good” one.

The waiter stops by, proposing a new bottle of wine and when I ask about the screw cap, he launches into a bizarre, five-minute explanation about screw caps, corks, evaporation and, to synthesize, how this case of special Italian wine, initially bound for America happened to end up in their restaurant.

It’s harmless fun, but I want to ask the guy if he actually believes what he’s saying.

“We’ve got a phrase here: he sold you a motorcycle,” says Edu. “He just wanted to sell you the bottle.”

The wine is peculiar but fine, but more important, the mains knock our socks off. All of them. The girls get mushroom risotto and Edu has spaghetti in squid ink that tickles our umami sensors and is served looking like cross between a Sicilian sfogliatelle pastry and a perfect beehive hairdo. I get a squid and artichoke dish - each element cooked separately and perfectly, the whole with fantastic textures.

Expensive? Motorcycles aren’t cheap, but it’s not that bad. Goooood? Yep.

We’ll be back.

Count on 40€, with wine.

Xemei - MAP
Passeig de l’Exposició, 85
+34 93 553 51 40

| More

Friday, March 12, 2010

GEOTHERMAL CUISINE

OLOT, Spain

The first thing you notice on a tour of the kitchen at Les Cols is that there’s a water garden fed from the heavens in the middle of it. This makes sense. An ardent but not annoying locavore, chef Fina Puigdevall is intent on building your relationship to the ground beneath your feet - this volcanic area where she was born.

She immediately shines spotlights on local ingredients - buckwheat, cured sausage from Olot, wild mushrooms, the cabbage that gives the restaurant its name and even wonderfully fragrant black truffles. One dish features an egg from the black chickens running around outside the window.

The clever thief would begin by swiping Puigdevall’s purveyor list;  in retrospect, what’s odd is that there’s no standout dish, nothing so wildly good that it makes you want to do cartwheels between the tables, yet hers is is food with roots. These are deep and wild flavors, strength pulled up from the soil - a geothermal cuisine.

Puigdevall is like a wayward member of Rene Redzepi’s New Nordic cuisine gang - you half-expect to find Sigur Ros jamming in the henhouse.

You spend a bit of time like this, thinking of where she fits into the scheme of things - some say she’s the next Carme Ruscalleda but you quickly realize their styles don’t match, give up the ghost and start enjoying things.

There is pea soup - a bright and happy green canvas supporting tiny cubes of balsamic, a micro-scoop of peanut ice cream, a bright yellow dollop of saffron sauce and a deep orange sea urchin. Squint from above and it looks like abstract art made with a set of Crayolas.

‘Pumpkin in five different ways’ has similar beauty, showcasing an ingredient that deserves the attention. Tendrils might grow from our fingers, roots from our feet.

In another dish, salt cod floats on brandade, those under spinach and chard everything heating the truffle (see above). You stare, you smell, you think, you hesitate to destroy it with a fork, then you smile. The beauty in the presentation of these dishes is subtle when looked at individually and breathtaking when considered together.

Equally as sublime is the space.

Using iron, glass and stone, the design of this restaurant hits what they missed at Can Fabes. While spots inside Santi Santamaria’s nearby restaurant can feel like the inside of a tank, Puigdevall clearly spent a long time talking to an architect who listened.

The sliding and pivoting glass doors and arches make the chef’s 13th century home modern and the main dining room are set slightly into the earth, so your eyes are level with the grass. We’re here on one of those winter days where you look at a picture of the backyard in summertime and it’s so green it might as well be another planet, yet even in winter, that subtle shift makes you notice shoots and buds you wouldn’t have seen otherwise.

When your gaze extends upward, it might linger on clouds clinging to the hills or you might spend two minutes watching a drop of water work its way down the giant window. On any other date, this much time spent gazing outside would signal disaster. Here, you’re simply taking time to reconnect to the world around you.

The hotel rooms here are minimalist glass and metal cubes and I would love to return and spend the whole afternoon - post lunch - in the bathtub with a bottle of wine watching the clouds stick to the hills and contemplating the meal I just ate.

Service is well done, without hovering, and low key. Bravo for the bravery to offer a cart full of very worthy Catalan cheeses.

A tasting menu is 70 euros plus wine.

Les Cols – MAP
Carretera de la Canya
Olot, Spain
+34 97 226 9209
www.lescols.com

Follow me on Twitter: @joe_diner and on Facebook.

| More

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

NEWS FLASH - HOLLAND’S BEST CHEESE COMES TO AMSTERDAM

To taste Holland’s best cheese, you used to have to truck out to the tiny town of Santpoort to visit Betty and Martin Koster at L’Amuse. One taste could tell you it was worth the trip, but there was no other reason to head out there.

No more: L’Amuse Amsterdam opened last week and now that city’s got their own version of Randolph Hodgson or Marie Quatrehomme.

If they’ve got ‘em, try the Oude Remeker 18-Month or the Wilde Weide Kaas. They’ll knock your socks (wooden shoes?) off.

Doei!

L’Amuse
Stadionweg 147
Amsterdam
+31-20-6707559.
http://www.lamuse.nl

Click here for a look at my story on Betty and Martin at their Santpoort store.

| More

Monday, March 08, 2010

MOVING THE ROCK

GIRONA, Spain

Living in Ferran Adrià’s shadow is not an enviable position. Or maybe it’s liberating. Or maybe it just is.

Joan Roca of El Celler de Can Roca is one of the greats in a region of greats like Santi Santamaria, Carme Ruscalleda and, of course senyor Adrià - and his style is closest to the latter.

Roca’s also got a ‘James Bond of the Catalan culinary set’ thing going. He’s a bit of a tough guy with some cool gadgets - he’s a big cheese in the world of sous vide cooking, for example, writing the book on the subject long before Thomas Keller did. After the service is finished, you can imagine Roca, standing by the entrance, smoking a cigarette and looking cool.

Every once in a while though, the Adrià comparison’s gotta drive him nuts. Early on in our meal, it seems as though most of the dishes in the ‘snacks’ catetgory (little amuse gueules that come out before the tasting menu really starts) could have been nicked from Adrià’s book - like little ‘caramelized olives’ which arrive dangling from a bonsai olive tree, little Campari ‘bonbon’ balloons served on a bed of crushed ice or Parmesan ‘tulips’ nesting in a rock - but then - poof! - it’s gone; you stop comparing and start enjoying.

This might have been about when the sea urchins arrived. On the menu, the dish is called “crustacean velouté with cauliflower toffee and tangerine,” but my notes read “little, edible sexual organs from the sea.” RRRRRRROW!

Soon after, there’s a plate called ‘artichoke with duck liver, eel and orange’ - that launches ‘brown food’ into the stratosphere, followed immediately by a single grilled sole filet flanked by individual dabs of olive oil, fennel, bergamot, orange, pine nut and green olive emulsions. The whole thing’s got a musical look to it, like a deconstructed music scale - and there’s Roca, standing by himself in the middle of a big field, smiling, waving.

When we try the cod pot-au-feu, which draws a direct line to some perfect chowder of my youth and I come to the realization I needed - I want Roca to teach.

“He does,” says my dining partner - most notably at Girona’s catering and tourism school.

Adrià has so much to teach, but it’s a specialized class - I don’t want 1,000 little Adrià copycats running around out there, but I want as many as possible with a foundation built by Roca.

Desserts, by brother Jordi Roca, are as good, complex and beautiful as the mains. Josep Roca’s wine list has wheels.

Tasting menus run from 90 to 135 euros. Spend as much as you like on wine.

El Celler de Can Roca - MAP
Can Sunyer, 48
Girona, Spain
+34 972 222 157
www.cellercanroca.com

Follow me on Twitter: @joe_diner and on Facebook.

| More

Thursday, March 04, 2010

A HOLE IN MY KNIFE

I’d searched for almost 10 years ever for someone to sharpen my knives in Paris. Never found a thing.

Closest I got was the boys at E. Dehillerin who had some sort of outsourcing deal, but I didn’t like the idea. Once burnt…

A decade ago, I took my Wüsthof chef’s knife to a sharpening shack just north of the Golden Gate. I had the vaguest whiff of apprehension when I dropped off my knife and should have listened to my instincts: the guy put a hole in my knife.

At the end of the cutting edge, just before it meets the heel, the guy pushed a little too hard; put it on a flat surface and you could see light coming through the other side. Made me want to cry. Who knows? Maybe he was using the lawnmower blade stone.

The blade cut beautifully through 99 percent of the vegetable, then stopped, leaving me with celery that looked like a slinky heading south if I didn’t exaggerate the rocking motion of the cut.

Then I found the guys at Gaignard-Millon Outillage et Machines on a back street near my old flat in the 11th - one of those places that leaves a guy with any sort of wood shop experience slack jawed and drooling in the front window.

There are Japanese saws, chisels, hammers and beautiful knives from around the world…and the shop is quite good at sharpening.

It took a couple tries, but they fixed my knife as well as they could.

Not long ago, after years of staring longingly into shop windows at santoku knives, I walked into Gaignard-Millon and bought one, along with a sharpening stone.

The transaction was a lesson in knife care and sharpening not unlike I was taking Mr. Millon’s (Mr. Gaignard’s?) brand-new Peugeot - a car whose every feature he’d memorized the day he bought it - for a for a spin.

“You may not use this knife on one of those glass cutting boards,” was my favorite instruction/commandment. I cringed at the idea like he’d run his fingers down a chalkboard and he smiled approvingly.

My new knife corners like it’s on rails and Gaignard-Millon’s got a client whenever I’m in town.

Gaignard-Millon Outillage et Machines - MAP
24 rue Jules Vallès
75011 Paris
+33 1 43 71 28 96

| More

Monday, March 01, 2010

BANG THAT DRUM

Paris

This is the place I used to go to in Paris to make sure I knew (why) I was here. It connected me to my city with shoulder-to-shoulder seating and decent bistro food, preferably preceded with a drink at the crowded bar.

There are simple rules: go late and avoid anything that swims. I used to make an exception for a smoked herring and potatoes that down with a Meteor draft, but I won’t be doing that anymore.

A bout a year ago, the crotchety old owner left and the new owners have tried to keep much of the same feeling while cutting a few corners and bumping prices slightly northward. Case in point? Six oysters served on the half shell served with a glass of Colombelle white for 14€. Whose bright idea was it to pair oysters with plonk marketed at women?

I digress. The aim here is to revel in the conversation, getting down to the nitty-gritty with old friends under what used to be a thick cloud of smoke that descends like a heavy carpet. (This is one of the few places that seems less enjoyable with the laws that have pushed smokers outside.)

Here, you eat a steak, have a few glasses/bottles of wine and realize with a start that it’s 5 a.m. and you’ve spent eight hours connecting.

Lucky us.

Count on 30-50 euros, depending on how much connecting you want to do.

Le Tambour - MAP
‪41 Rue Montmartre‬
‪75002 Paris, France‬
+33 ‪1 42 33 06 90‬‎

| More

Thursday, February 25, 2010

SUN IN THE GARDEN

PARIS

After days of weather misery, a break in the clouds at lunchtime created a rule dictated by deprivation: sit in the sun.

I got lucky.

In the lonely, hilly heart of the 20th, the locals-only set at Le Jardin includes artists, teachers, funky clothing designers and old friends playing hooky and catchup over a bottle of wine, all sitting on the warm side of the giant windows.

They’ve got the right idea. The plat du jour is nine euros on this day and couscous runs from nine to fifteen - the vegetable stew served with theirs is made pungent with cabbage and a meaty broth. I’d have been completely happy with this alone.

Downside? The pocket-sized kitchen gets overwhelmed by a table of six. Everyone waits, but if no one cares, is it a downside? We’re sitting in the sun.

This isn’t the stuff you cross town for, but it’s worth an uphill walk if you’re nearby. Count on 9-15 euros.

Le Jardin MAP
52, Rue de la Bidassoa
75020 Paris
+33 1 46 36 27 99

| More

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

GIVE ME MORE YORE!

PARIS

Locals hate when a place like this gets on the map.

Despite being lost in the far reaches of the 15th arrondissement, there should be a Sparkler marking Jadis’ spot on the map instead of a thumbtack. On the night we’re there, it’s 50% out of towners, easy.

They’re no dummies. There’s a great, clean, modern menu with a prix-fixe dinner at a fantastic 32 euros and a quality that makes me want to savor each dish.

Everything goes the way it should: a cauliflower mousseline and smoked herring ‘mimosa’ entree is a layer of creamy cauliflower under a layer of shiny black gel (This is where the herring is and I’d love to know how they transform a fish from the Atlantic into something black as ink and terribly tasty) under florets, bits of egg yolk, black fish eggs and chervil. The dish plays with color, contrast, texture and even definitions.

Later, there’s a house version of a blanquette de veau, this one forsaking cream,  and allowing the diner to spoon their own melting-soft hunks of veal from a silver serving pot onto a dish of winter vegetables. I try a pheasant ‘chartreuse’ - a like a dreamy disc hot pâté, wrapped in a pinwheel of root vegetables - pungent within, beautiful without.

Dessert includes a pistachio riz au lait with a grapefruit and honey ‘salad.’ I think the idea is to combine the two, but they’re beautiful on their own.

There are tasting menus for more money, but I’d rather come back and spend more time with each dish than try smaller portions in one sitting.

There are two seatings with a grey area between them at turnover time when service gets a little harried, but it always remains friendly. Reserve ahead - that Sparkler’s burning bright.

Count on just shy of 50 euros.

Jadis
208, r. de la Croix-Nivert - MAP
75015 PARIS
+331 45 57 73 20
m° Convention / Porte de Versailles

| More

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

ORACLE’S INSTINCT

I imagine people like Wylie Dufresne or Ferran Adrià sitting around conceiving dishes - thinking of flavor combinations, what goes with what and how to make it work. Three-star chefs also tend to try to dazzle – they work hard to blow your mind.

Jean-Marie Amat is like The Oracle – the little old lady from “The Matrix” who bakes cookies and knows the future – his conception process comes naturally. He just knows.

How else do you come up with a forkful of roasted squab coated with cinnamon, soy, cumin and powdered sugar? And how do you know that if you put a little bit of raw fennel tips from the garden on that same fork, your feet start doing the uncontrollable happy dance? He doesn’t need to set out to wow, it just happens.

It’s the last step in cooking - to know and execute as a matter of instinct and reflex. What else do you need after that?

There’s a customer who eats at Amat’s restaurant in the Chateau de la Prince Noir (love that name) once a month, all by himself. If Amat makes the rounds, they have a conversation that lasts about 30 seconds, max.

Eating by yourself is a skill that makes you call on your inner M.F.K. and half the time, you’re either self-conscious or bored out of your mind, plowing through a book and shoveling your food, alternately praying that the host will keep you company or leave you alone.

Here, by myself, I just wanted to learn by eating.

Lunch prix fixe 30€

Dinner prix fixe 50€

A la carte, count on 100€ without wine

Restaurant Jean-Marie Amat MAP

Château du Prince Noir

26 bis, rue Raymond Lis

Lormont, France

+33 5 56 06 12 52

http://www.jm-amat.com/


Full disclosure: I ate at Amat’s while working on a story for The Boston Globe and spent the first half of the dinner service in the kitchen shooting some of the photos. I paid my bill. I saw versions of what I ate go out to other customers and the only difference between my experience and theirs was that I knew what my meal would look like when I ordered it.

| More

Saturday, February 13, 2010

BEEF HEARTS AND HOME RUNS

I was a bit sad when Chateaubriand changed hands a few years back - I loved the feel of the place, the beautiful anglophone woman who owned and ran it, her polka dot dresses and 50s-era swoopy hair. Most of all, I loved that the house specialty was beef cheeks - it takes guts to stake your reputation on a dish like that - but they were right in doing so; it was fantastic.

That said, chef Iñaki Aizpitarte, became a media darling when he took over and it was well-deserved.

It still is. I was here almost a year ago and have no trouble remembering what I had for lunch: blood sausage on a bed of squash puree with little bits of almond and pear to add flavor and texture. Recently, we visited again again - my first Aizpitarte dinner - and it was even more memorable.

Aizpitarte does a 45 euro, four-course tasting meal that changes frequently and places him squarely in front of the modern edge of the gastro-bistro movement, trying bold and inventive pairings that will keeps the meal at the center of conversation.

The star of the meal was a smoked herring broth with fall vegetables and cubes of foie gras. Inside, slightly-cooked chestnuts, charred button mushrooms and black radish shared space with triangles of pickled onion that lent elements of surprise and fun to the dish. The foie gras - something I rarely rave about - melted slightly, giving depth and texture to the broth and made everyone at the table wide-eyed and happy; every dish afterward was watched very closely.

A big, luscious block of cod followed, served on a sauce with sweet onions and flanked by king oyster mushrooms. The fish held form until it reached my mouth; I could have stopped there and gone home happy.

A meat course - veal covered with a black radish ‘paper’ served with a cod-liver sauce, and a little dollop of onions macerated in fish sauce - didn’t quite work; mixing fish and meat is the chef’s equivalent of big game hunting (I once sat in on late-night telephone lessons between an aspiring chef and a three-star chef on how to cook beef heart and cuttlefish in a Dutch oven), but it signals Aizpitarte’s larger intentions - where his heart is.

After one bite, I spent ten minutes trying to explain my thought - a double on a home run swing - to the French diners at our table.

Besides, he followed up with a crowd-pleasing triple, mixing beets and pears at dessert.

Dinner is 45 euros, plus wine. Smiles are free and plentiful.

Le Chateaubriand - MAP
129 Avenue Parmentier
Paris
+33 1 43 57 45 95

| More

Tuesday, February 09, 2010

COMFORT ON WINTER’S MENU

After lunch at Jeu de Quilles, I really wanted not to like dinner at Au Bon Coin when it was set in front of me. (So much so, I seem to have accidentally erased all photo evidence of the meal.)

Came out too fast. Skimpy portion of string beans, I thought as my main course arrived. Then I dabbed a spud in the sauce next to my steak and reconsidered.

Au Bon Coin is packed with locals on the wonderful north side of Montmartre for a reason. The quality/price ratio is where it should be. ‘Comfort’ should be on the menu.

“I was here a week ago and the didn’t have the stuffed cabbage. They only have it in the darkest part of winter,” said my friend and dining companion who lives three blocks away. On this night, it’s on the menu and it arrives, dark, pungent and delicious a moment or two after my pièce de Charolais.

Is it me, or are the days getting longer?

Count on about 20€ with a drink or two.

Au Bon Coin MAP
49 Rue des Cloÿs‬
75018 Paris
‎+33 1 46 06 91 36 ‎

P.S. - If you’re going to make a night out of it, start with an apéro at the nearby La Renaissance - 112 Rue Championnet - where Tarantino shot a scene from “Inglorious Basterds.” With any luck, there will be an impeccably-dressed woman delivering your drink. “Wearing jeans in public,” she once told me, “is despicable.”

| More

Tuesday, February 02, 2010

DEATH BY PIERRE

“You’re not going to write about this place, right?” asked Pierre.

I smiled, but truth be told, I didn’t answer.

I’m a bit of a pho fanatic. Years ago, I worked in chef Didi Emmons’ restaurant Pho Republique in Cambridge, MA. As a birthday present to my sister, I made up a gift certificate for the place before it opened. Once we went, I liked Didi’s version of Vietnam’s signature soup so much, I got a part-time job in the kitchen. I had to know.

Knowing in Paris may require a compass. Or a Pierre with Vietnamese heritage.  This place - a pagoda-lined pedestrian street lined with residential high-rises - looks more like Mars than Paris. Just before you open the door, however, you can smell that you’re in the right place.

It’s all in the broth. Good pho broth bubbles away all night, pulling flavor from a giant pot of goodness that usually includes beef, bones, ginger, charred onion, star anise and lemongrass. There are scores of variations including vegetarian, chicken and seafood versions. I could have imagined a version of this one - clear, clean and complex as any wine - as part of a recent meal at El Bulli. (!)

In Paris, I’m a regular at Belleville’s Dong Huong, where they make a very respectable bowl, but until today, I’d forgotten the magic that made me fall in love with pho in the first place.
While the star is the soup, the whole meal is fantastic. Consistently good plates like a Vietnamese crepe with mushrooms and marinated pork, fresh nem, pork ribs and marinated, grilled pork strips, all play with flavor and texture - even at dessert. Nothing misses the mark.

At less than 20€ for a royal feast and a drink, this is one of the best-priced meals in Paris.

Restaurant Quan Ngon MAP
63 rue Javelot
75013 Paris
+33 1 44 24 35 59

| More

Saturday, January 30, 2010

More For The Carnivores

As our cote de boeuf is set down in the center of the table, Pierre makes a general announcement, putting his hands up to his mouth, megaphone-style.

“Vegetarians are now invited to clear the area!” he bellows.

My word, yes they are.

I made a sort of promise to check out the ‘bicycle built for two of the steak world’ at L’Escargot after checking out the offerings at Le Bastringue and was far from disappointed.

There’s a price difference - 32 euros at Bastringue and 40 at L’Escargot (remembering each diner is paying half of that) and you can taste the difference: L’Escargot has better and more flavorful meat (likely linked to chef Fred Valade’s triperie down the road), but each one is a great value for the price.  One nitpick: L’Escargot would also do well to get some real steak knives.

There were nice vegetable side courses with my meal tonight, complete with Valade’s signature flaming thyme garnish ... and, no fault of their own, after a few bites, I completely forgot about them. Desserts were fabulous. I’d get the homemade chantilly (served on top of the ‘choco ivoire & son biscuit caribbeanesque’ which I once launched onto my lap) over and over again as a solo dish.

L’Escargot MAP
50, rue de La Villette
75019 Paris
+33 1 42 06 03 96

Full disclosure: I am known (though not notorious) at L’Escargot as it’s about a block away from my flat. They didn’t know we were coming, but they knew I was there. That said, even in Paris, you can’t conjure different beef at 9 p.m. on a Wednesday night.

| More

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

FALLEN FROM HEAVEN

PARIS

I rode right right past the opening night festivies at Tombé du Ciel. At first I chalked it up to the bliss of zooming around Paris on my brand-new-to-me vintage Peugeot 10-speed, but I backtracked to #7 on the tiny Rue d’Enghien. There it was, lost among the cheap grec sandwich restaurants and coiffeurs, the ‘PHONEBOUTIK’ sign of a previous owner still gracing the facade.

Just below, a large glass window glistened with the prerequisite warmth, barely obscuring a healthy crowd and a few dozen bottles of natural production wine. It looked as indigenous to this part of town as… as… um… hence the name.

I wish them well. If clients find the place, just two blocks north of the Boulevard de Bonne Nouvelle in the 10th, they’ll come back. This is La Cremerie’s fun and gritty cousin. The wines are great, with double digits of by-the-glass options ranging from about 2.50 to 5 euros. There are some whites and fizzy options that will leave you drooling with glee, served with perfect food for nibbling, particularly considering the kitchen is still under construction. (The kitchen will open ‘soon’ and there will be a plat du jour or two.)

The showstopper was a tarama of sea urchin, served with bread and a slice of lemon. You really need nothing else with a product this well-sourced.

The ambience may be the best part. People leave their belongings wherever and walk away, trusting they’ll be there a couple hours later when they leave, and at the end of the night, everyone crowds around the bar and I half expect them to break into a well-deserved song.

With wine, count on around ten euros if you’re feeling peckish. More if you’re hungry.

Tombé du Ciel MAP
7 Rue d’Enghien
75010
M: Strasbourg St. Denis

| More

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

NEWS FLASH: BYE, BYE BULLI???

Ferran Adria’s just announced that they’re ‘stopping’ El Bulli - starting in 2012-2013, turning their Barcelona lab and Roses restaurant into ‘research centers’.

Sounds like it’ll be business as ‘usual’ in Roses through 2011 (two more seasons), though exactly what happens after that and what happens for the 2012-2013 season remain a bit vague. 2014 remains very mysterious. Return from a sort of sabbatical, perhaps in a different ‘format’???

| More

Monday, January 25, 2010

SUN ON A PLATE

PARIS - My tolerance for number of days cooped up in the kitchen in an effort to avoid bad weather ended today. I should have come out sooner.

Acting on a tip from a friend…who recently acted on a tip from Francois...I cross town on my bike, popping up to meet friends in the lower reaches of the 14th arrondissement at Le Jeu de Quilles.

I’m a bit early and watch a table of six guys who were clearly on an afternoon out at one of their favorite spots, downing good wine and asking the chef about where to get a whole lamb to roast.

Ann has barely sat down when she says,  “The sun’s out!” with a smile like she was recognizing a long-lost friend who’d grown a beard since the last time they met.

The prix fixe lunch plan is simple: choose from three appetizers, two mains and a handful of desserts for 25 euros. There’s an à la carte menu that makes me want to come back for dinner. In form and function, it quite resembles the original version of Spring and Le 122.

Along with a generous, high-end charcuterie plate, highlights included an oeuf cocotte, swimming in a wonderful shallot-y red wine sauce and resting on a hidden strip of pork fat.  There’s also a braised pork main with a hot, pudding-like side of polenta laced with Emmental and tasting of real corn bread.

“This tastes like America!” I blurt.

Dessert was a still-bubbling pear and apple crumble, arriving with a ‘watch your fingers’ warning from the waitress. Imagine hot, crushed Pecan Sandies above hot, buttery fruit and all the dairy farmers you’re supporting with this one dish!

Sun on a plate.

Lunch prix fixe menu: 25 euros (21 if you skip dessert, but why would you want to do that?). There is no prix fixe at dinner where appetizers run between 12 and 20 euros and mains are in the mid-20s.

Le Jeu de Quilles MAP
45 rue Boulard
75014 Paris
+33 1 53 90 76 22

| More

Friday, January 22, 2010

A GOOD (AND PRICEY) SLICE

A pair of friends have been telling me about their favorite new pizza place since it opened. Good pizza in Paris is a rare bird, so naturally, my ears perked up.

Al Taglio is an interesting concept, borrowing heavily from Italy. Walk in, go to the counter, point to one of the big, beautiful rectangles of thick-crust pizza beneath your nose and they are ready to take a pair of kitchen shears and cut a slice approximately one and a half times as large as the size you indicated, as you will be paying by the kilo.

No matter. Take a seat on a stool under Smurf-blue lamps and discover that the pizza is fantastic. We shared slices with the anchovy and garlic glory of the Napoli, a decent quattro stagioni, and a beautiful yet mysteriously-named “speck” with uncured (but tasty) ham, mushrooms and ricotta.

I was all smiles until a friend burst my bubble. “The only problem with this place,” she said, “is the price.”

I looked up at the menu board, tried to do some calculations and, well, couldn’t. How much does a slice of pizza weigh? I have no idea. I do know that some pizzas cost almost 40 euros a kilo and it made me think of the field day I could have at the cheese shop.

A form of answer came when the cashier cut a huge square for a take-out order – just a little more than I could eat in one hungry sitting – which came out to 30 euros.

Solution? Do as we did and go for an appetizer-sized portion – that and a glass of wine will run you a very reasonable eight euros.

Count on anywhere between 8 – 40 euros.

Al Taglio MAP
‪2 Bis Rue Neuve Popincourt‬
‪75011 Paris‬
+33‪ 1 43 38 12 00‬‎

| More

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

H. AND THE STEAK

PARIS

H. and I had a peculiar beginning - the ambiguous and non-ambiguous fits and starts of a relationship that quickly turns platonic.

Those questions now years out of the way, we can concentrate on dishing without feeling like it’s been six months or a year since the last time we saw each other. (What better compliment can you pay to a friend?)

We can also concentrate on what’s on our plates. Last time we met, that meant côte de boeuf - the bicycle built for two of the steak world.

“That and a bottle of wine are all you need to bother with here,” said H., laying down the law of how to order at La Bastringue. She’s done the menu sampling for us at this rowdy/friendly 19th arrondissement bistro overlooking the Bassin de la Villette and there’s no reason to question her.

Moments before the steak arrives, a ridiculous-sized plate of salad, mixed veg and cube-shaped fries is set down. You’ll nibble on those, but that’s not why you’re here.

The steak is charred, bloody (lest you want the cook to cry), and very tasty. It might be a bit chewy in spots, but with a steak this big, there’s plenty of room to roam. There is no non-carnivorous reason to leave hungry.

Need more convincing? You can get out of there for about 20€.

Le Bastringue - MAP
67 Quai de Seine
75019 Paris
+33 1 40 05 70 00

p.s. - I stopped by l’Escargot the other night for a drink and noticed that they have a côte de boeuf on the menu. It’s more expensive than down the hill at Bastringue, but that’s the next one I’ll be trying…

| More

Saturday, January 16, 2010

JEWEL OF A COUNTRYSIDE PUB

MONTBRISON, France

Outside of a few ‘special’ beers and a penchant for whiskey, it’s hard to tell what makes ‘Irish Pub’ Irish - the twisted stag’s head on the wall? Maybe it’s just that ‘vaguely Irish décor and drink selection with French bistro fare’ doesn’t have much of a ring to it as a restaurant name.

No matter. I went with locals (I was in town to do a one-off story on jeweler Philippe Tournaire) to this Rhone establishment for a reason – it’s good and unadorned. We get flank steak, liver and stew and that’s exactly what’s on our plates.

The waitress did set down a baking dish full of big potato halves, baked then grilled and accompanied by a (vaguely Irish?) sour cream and chive-style sauce.

The liver had a zingy vinegar-based sauce, simple and perfect for understanding why it’s in there in the first place.

Perhaps the luck of the Irish brought me here, but it doesn’t matter. The food’s good and if you’re nearby, it’s worth the trip.

Count on 15-30 euros, depending on how many pints you toss back.

Irish Bar – MAP

11 Rue Victor de Laprade

Montbrison

+33 4 77 58 13 79

| More

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

FLYING CANNELLONI

Carles Gaig is a chef and a businessman. The combination can make you cringe – it’s hard to pull off and, truthfully, fewer chefs should try. Gaig, a Catalan cuisine legend, can be found anywhere from his high-end eponymous Barcelona restaurant to the sides of Barcelona’s bus systems where he’s currently hawking a set of cheap-looking knives.

Another Gaig newborn is promising. PortaGaig is in the Barcelona airport’s new Terminal 1, hidden off to the right before you head through security. It being the 26th – St. Stephen’s day – where you traditionally eat cannelloni stuffed with Christmas leftovers. Gaig being known for the little tubes of joy, we stopped in.

There are some great ideas at work here – get to the airport early enough and you can have a full-out meal with great wine in a beautiful space with a swarm of smart-dressed waiters at your disposal. Sometimes you want to swat them away, there’s so many, other times, they’re standing around, looking good and waiting for the restaurant’s reputation to grow.

There’s also a special bar menu with reasonable prices featuring items that are quicker to prepare. That said, it’s hard to get out of there for less than 15 euros – made more annoying by the 2.50€ ‘cover charge’ for disappointing bread.

Best cannelloni I’ve ever had? Who knows, but, paired with a glass of Cava, they beat the pants off the plastic-boxed sandwiches on the other side of security. It costs a bit more, but it’s a better value. Best airport food? (A question I’m posing from a chair on another flight at 38,000 feet.) Without a doubt.

Plan on anywhere from 15€ for drinks, snacks and (ugh) bread at the bar to a couple times that for a sit-down meal.

PortaGaig MAP
Barcelona. Terminal 1 - P3. Departures Public Zone
+34 932 596 210

| More

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

BEER HUNTER, WHISKY CHASER

My apologies for nicking the title of a book dedicated to the late beer and whisky expert, Michael Jackson, but I think he’d approve.

I’ve got a pair of stories out published in the last few weeks in The Boston Globe’s Travel section worth the hunt and the chase. First on tap is a look at Lambic beers in Belgium. It gives a sense of how this “wild beer” is made, the people making some of the best along with where to go, eat, drink and stay.

Here’s a taste:
Belgium is boring.

Click here to read the story on the Boston Globe’s site or here to read it on joe-ray.com, where you can also find a PDF copy of the story in its print format.

Next, I headed to Scotland for a whisky road trip…

The roads between the Speyside region and Kennacraig are a driving enthusiast’s dream, flecked with micro-towns, straightaways, S-curves, views of the Loch Ness, and signs that read ‘‘Stone Skipping Championships This Saturday!’’ and ‘‘Apples £1/BOX.’’

The cafe on the ferry from Kennacraig to the island of Islay (pronounced EYE-la) is a sign of good things to come, with representatives of almost every distillery on the island behind the bar — a short and sweet selection that would blow most American bar choices away…

Care for a wee bit more? Click here to read the story on the Boston Globe’s site or here to read it on joe-ray.com.

As, always, I’d love to hear what you think.

| More

Monday, December 28, 2009

Who Needs Teeth In A Half-Cellar of Goodness?

I reconnect with the city a few steps below street level.
We share a little plate of artichokes hearts that are drizzled with olive oil and spritzed with fleur de sel. They’re so tender, you don’t need teeth.

There’s also a little wheel of oil-bathed goat cheese that’s somehow has the wonderful tang of cheddar. We get a bacalao-tomato dish with olives and a separate plate of olives that I’m supposed to share. Oops.
We wipe up our fingers with the ubiquitous useless napkins and wash it down with vermouth and seltzer water.
It’s good to be home.

Count on about 10-20€

La Bodegueta – MAP

Rambla de Catalunya 100

Barcelona

+34 932 154 894

| More

Thursday, December 24, 2009

Catalan Christmas Wishes, By Way of Sicily

As a holiday card, I had this odd idea of setting the camera on the tripod and hefting the lit Christmas tree so all you’d see would be my arms and jeans, with Guido’s painting in the background. Luckily, I remembered the Catalan Christmas connection with La Boqueria Market, which regularly graces the front page of many newspapers here on the 25th.
It also makes a much nicer photo.

Time for a Turkey.

(No, not me, the one in the oven.)

Ho, Ho!

Joe

P.S. - For a Christmas-esque message of peace from Guido, click here.

| More

Monday, December 14, 2009

Au pied de cochon

PARIS

The “Run Away!” category was designed for meals like this.

A rainy, hungry cold and dark afternoon in Paris called for something warm and reassuring. We almost went for pho in Belleville but my visiting friend suggested soupe à l’oignon (French onion soup) it seemed perfect.

Le Pied de Cochon is a Paris classic dating back to when Les Halles was the mammoth food market I’d give my pinky to have seen, not the current resident: a subterranean shopping mall that both houses and smells like a swimming pool. Restaurant names from the market period were designed with its oft-illiterate workers in mind. If you were looking for the boss who was cutting a deal for broccoli or tossing a couple back, he would be at the Chicken in The Pot, the Bell, The Drum or…the Pig’s Foot.

I was reassured that though the tourists were making up a majority of the customers - particularly as it was only four in the afternoon - there was was also an older, distinguished looking gentleman eating by himself and reading Le Monde dated the following day.

Waiters and waitresses buzzed around, giving the restaurant a wonderful, busy feeling and when the soup arrived, and we breathed in its wonderful smell - a bit reminiscent of Mom’s chicken pot pie - we felt like happy and lucky little kids.

We should have stopped there. The soup tasted like soap.

At least the broth did. I nibbled my way dutifully through the cheese on top, hit the broth, winced, tried again, tried my friend’s broth and then just stopped eating.

I never stop eating.

What’s worse is that this is the traditional food for served in Les Halles, arguably the birthplace of soupe à l’oignon. I tried distracting myself by thinking of the word Francois might use when confronted with something like this, but in the end it was all mine: atrocious.

We split duck confît that arrived cold and limp and when we sent it back for a warm-up, it came back lukewarm and limp.

That was enough. We left.

Count on around 15-30 euros better spent elsewhere.

Au Pied De Cochon - MAP
6 rue Coquillière

75001 Paris

+33 1 40 13 77 00

www.pieddecochon.com

| More

Saturday, December 05, 2009

The Consecrated Onion - The Great Rioja Tapas Crawl Part III

LOGRONO, Spain

“At El Soldado de Tudelilla, get the tomato salad and the little sardine sandwich with sport peppers,*” says Artadi.

We do.

The notes for the little sandwich (a pincho) say “Why don’t we eat more sardines in the U.S.A.?”

The question floats into space as I take a bite and flag the stout-bellied barman for a tomato salad which turns out to be the star of the show.

Said barman makes the salad on the bar beneath our noses by plucking a tomato from of the cooler with the wine and the onions and cuts it into bite-sized chunks with a pocket knife. He does the same with the onion.

“This is not just any onion,” he says, “This is the white onion of Fuentes de Ebro,” which, we’ll learn, is more mild than a Vidalia.

“It is a town consecrated to the onion,” he says.

He adds a can of still faintly-pink tuna to the plate and drops a few olives over the top before giving the whole thing a shot of vinegar, a 15-count drizzle of olive oil and a sprinkle of gros sel.

It’s a little mountain on a plate that disappears in a heartbeat.

“We’re going to be late,” I say.

“I don’t care,” comes the response.

Perfect.

Count on about 10 euros for salad, sardines and a glass of wine or two

El Soldado de Tudelilla MAP
C/ San Agustín 33
Logroño, Spain
+34 941 209 624

*Truth be told, he said “guindilla.”

| More

Wednesday, December 02, 2009

Cebas, C’est Bon! - The Great Rioja Tapas Crawl Part II

LOGRONO, Spain

“At bar Cebas, get everything,” says Artadi.

Pressed, he mentions a tortilla and the anchovies and the chroizo I immediately burn my mouth on when we get there.

“It’s hot!” I warn my friend before burning myself again.

The tortilla is fantastic, I even had a lamb’s ear sandwich (!), but the sublime star is a toothpick with a pair of olives and a pair of anchovies sandwiching a guindilla – a pickled green pepper folks in the Midwest would call a sport pepper.

There’s vinegar, spicy heat, salt and texture, all at once – it’s mind-blowing goodness, especially when coupled with any of the wines on their wonderful list (just scan the wall – it’s somewhere near Artadi’s picture with the owners).

Count on a few well-spent euros for snacks.

Bar Sebas - MAP
Caille del Albornoz, 3
Logroño, Spain
+34 94 122 0196

| More

Monday, November 30, 2009

Mushroom Pops - The Great Rioja Tapas Crawl Part I

In the Rioja, we ask winemaker Juan Carlos Artadi where to go on and around Logroño’s Caille del Laurel – a foodie heaven of a street with nothing but tapas bars. Technically, we’re in the region for a wine conference, but this is the place that gets my blood racing.

“First, go to Bar Soriano and get mushrooms à la plancha,” he says.

It’s a shoebox of a place with a mushroom-shaped sign hanging out front, thousands of those useless Spanish napkins littering the floor, three men behind the bar and a heavenly smell.

“Some mushrooms?” I say tentatively, looking for a menu.

“Vamos!” he calls to the man at the griddle, confirming there is no menu. Soriano is a one trick pony I could ride all day.

Moments later, two tiny towers of hollowed-out button mushrooms arrive, undersides facing heaven, cupping their own juices and one tiny shrimp.

“How do you eat them?”

The bartender smiles the gentle smile he must give to all the rookies and motions that we should push the toothpick that holds them together down through the bottom, turning the whole thing into something of a mushroom Push-Up Pop, allowing you to eat them one by one and finish with the juice-soaked bread. Rrrrowww!!!

We’re off to a good start…

Bar Soriano MAP
Travesia Laurel 2
Logroño
+34 941 22 88 07

Food and travel writer and photographer Joe Ray is the author of the blog Eating The Motherland and contributes to The Boston Globe’s travel blog, Globe-trotting.

| More

Friday, November 27, 2009

Copper Top Charge

BARCELONA

I always get stubborn when people suggest that I write about something, even on the rare occasion that it’s a good idea. If I’m already working on it, don’t push me in the way I’m already heading. Or, at least, that’s how I justify it.

I recently shimmied my way into a Barcelona Slow Food dinner at Coure – Catalan for ‘copper’ another Barcelona bistronomic, located almost directly across the street from Hisop. The next day, the mails started coming in from my Slow Food friend – “you’ve gotta blog about this place.”

I knew. I knew.

While I could see where Hisop was heading – but had trouble getting there – at Coure, even though I was at a table with 25 people, it’s clear the chef’s feet are more firmly on the right path. Coure is a restaurant confidently hitting the ball on the rise.

Case in point: a perfectly-cooked mackerel ‘confit’ served with spinach pesto dish that made my feet do their involuntary ‘happy dance,’ particularly as the dish centered around local and sustainable products. The chef fought an uphill battle against starch with puréed ratte potatoes that had a pudding-like sheen, but they supported a buttery-textured oxtail stuffed with local Perol sausage. We drooled with happiness.

When my Catalan sweetheart visits me in Paris, she always marvels at how poor the service is relative to the price paid and I do my best to defend France, but here there’s no refuting – I know, I know – you’d have to pay two to three times this much in the City of Light for service this good. Our waiter shyly rushes through the presentation of a dish he’s been asked to do, but the moment he’s finished speaking, he takes advantage of being in front to everyone to scan every seat at the table and instantly knows better where we are than we do.

Bonus? The price – a 35 euro prix fixe dinner menu that includes water, wine (including the fantastic Vinya d’Irto Terra Alta ‘05) and coffee. There’s also a 45 euro degustation menu and à la carte runs about 50-60 euros plus wine.

Restaurant Coure MAP
Passatge Marimon, 20
Barcelona
+34 93 200 75 32

| More

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Drowning Roses

BARCELONA

By Joe Ray

My apologies to the non baseball-playing world.

Four of us visited Hysop a while back. The restaurant is one of the city’s most respected ‘bistronomic‘restaurants and, on this at bat, they whiffed.

I think (I hope) that the kitchen just had a bad day. Likely, it also illustrates why a good dish takes time to perfect.

A shelled oyster amuse gueule bathed in some sort of vodka tonic with lime and horseradish mixture and I just wished that they would leave a good thing alone.A first course of gazpacho with mussels was a similar misfire. Fresh ingredients wilted into the soup and, combined with the mussels, the whole thing got a bit mushy.

Both dishes reminded me of the beautiful, submerged roses in the bathroom.

Things started going the other way with a warm, salty sardine with strawberries, soy sprout and salt flake dish. It was a product-first design someone spent a lot of time thinking about how it would taste, look and feel.

I had a great dish that combined white beans, anchovies, and pork jowl. “Salt fiesta! Yum!” read my notes… right next to “Why don’t they warm the plates?”

One of us had the most beautiful lamb shank and… well… it was burnt.

I really wanted to like this meal. The lunch prix fixe is a bargain at 25 euros and at that price, I should probably be told off for nitpicking a meal that is an incredible value.

Maybe I’m just a little frustrated. I can see where the chef is heading, know how well his colleagues are doing and want to be there when he hits a home run.

Lunch prix fixe: 25€

Dinner tasting menu: 48€

Hisop – MAP
Passatge Marimon 9
Barcelona
+34 932 413 233

| More

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Sherry’s Sweet Market

JEREZ DE LA FRONTERA, Spain

Dad’s gateway drug will be breakfast.

Toast a little wheel of bread, pour a liberal dose of olive oil on top, add a few spoonfuls of crushed tomato and a sprinkle of salt for good measure. Watch the city wake up as you down a café con leche.

Later, have your idea of freshness brought up to date at the Mercado Central de Abastos where you sell fish or play second fiddle.

Perhaps due to most stalls’ paintings of Jesus, the big-eyed redfish stare out, looking forlorn and guilty.

All I can think of is following one of these little ladies home so I can see how she cooks her fish.

Mercado Central de Abastos MAP
C/ Doña Blanca
Jerez de la Frontera

| More

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Toe-Tapping Sardines and Pork Roast From Heaven

JEREZ, Spain

It’s a wonderful feeling to know you’ll need to come back to a place before you sit down.

Eyes wide and fresh from the plane, we head to Bar Juanito for a crash course of a menu of the good and the local.

We try langoustines and mushrooms in a deep, sherry-laced sauce with bits of shell that give away some of its secrets. Then we dig into a little plate of fried fresh anchovies that, matched with a glass of the salty counterpart-loving fino wine, was toe-tapping goodness.

The bar’s signature artichokes slip by unnoticed - our fault for trying them offseason - but the showstopper is an Andalusian native that arrives with our drinks for free: chicharonnes - bite-sized cubes of pork which are like bits of crispy, fatty pork roast from heaven. My friend who’s on a diet takes one look and groans. I pop another and my heart skips a beat.

Count on 5-15 euros, depending on how peckish you feel.

Bar Juanito MAP
C/ Pescadería Vieja 8-10
11403 Jerez De La Frontera, Spain
956 33 48 38
bar-juanito.com

| More