In the Pink

So we went to a pop/rock concert last Saturday night in one of those gargantuan sports palaces where thousands of citizens pay hundreds of dollars to rabidly root for teams whose players are not even from their own home town.  On non-sports nights such arenas schedule concerts, circuses and tractor pulls to maximize return on the investment required to build these vaulted shrines to sweat and steroids.  There are about three huge conglomerates which operate concessions in the majority of these venues and they all sell questionable foodstuffs for immorally high prices.

Knowing this, we would normally make plans to dine in an actual restaurant in the vicinity but a prior engagement had us sprinting from the parking lot to the AAC to catch an 8 o'clock start. (We needn't have bothered, the opening act was fronted by a poor man's Jagger whose few moves consisted of cheer leading type high kicks and the quiet desperation of a lead singer who knows everyone would rather he just stop shrieking for a moment and be quiet.)

We only had a few minutes until showtime so we scanned the brightly lit food stalls looking for something of sufficient nutritional value to assuage the growling beasts within.  Big Texas Hot Dawgs.  Um, no.  Gigantic Pretzels with Two Unidentifiable Dipping Sauces.  I think not. Burgers grilled hours beforehand now soaking comfortably in hot water awaiting their turn in a stale bun saddled with germ ridden condiments dispensed from convenient community kiosks.  Ugh.  As the least of all evils we settled on a hybrid:  Italian food with a Mexican name, Pizza Patron.  (This makes no sense to me whatsoever; it's like French Wiener Schnitzel or Chinese Pot Roast.)

High Degree of Radioactivity

There were no nearby tables so we huddled over a trash container whose flat top made a convenient resting place for our individual pan pizzas and frozen margaritas served in green plastic vessels shaped like beakers. (I thought it kind of rude that while we were eating, people kept coming up and tossing their refuse into our dining room, but in all fairness, I think they were equally irritated that we were bogarting the trash can.) The "pizzas" were round, room temperature spongy disks about an inch thick with what looked like processed cheese food and three limp slivers of nitrate-laden, cured organ meat congealing on top.  The pizzas tasted like something between communion wafers and feet. (BTW, aside from being a food preservative, sodium nitrate is also used to make fertilizers, smoke bombs and solid rocket propellant.) The "margaritas" were composed  of bilious green, frozen sugar molecules that had once been stored on a shelf next to a tequila bottle for half an hour or so.  Total bill for this fine dining experience?  $56.00

Si Si Senor

No wonder the French think we are barbarians.  You can walk down any small street in Le Marais in Paris and find a food vendor who will sell you a baguette avec jambon et fromage for a couple of euros and it will be the finest ham and cheese sandwich you have ever had the pleasure of masticating.  I believe that same street vendor would have gagged before swallowing one bite of the ill-prepared, overly processed junque we had for dinner that night.

How can we be the greatest country in the world with a globally envied standard of living and yet willingly accept such inferior provisions?  Are we so numbed by Chicken McNuggets and Canned Easy Cheese that we don't think twice about swallowing empty, greasy calories and paying through the nose for it?  Why don't we draw the line and refuse to accept month-old popcorn shoveled into grease-spattered boxes from 2 gallon garbage can liners? (And while I'm at it, when will those annoying Kardashians return to the inglorious anonymity they, and we, so richly deserve?)

Ironically, after the hideous first act, P!nk staged an incredible, athletic, imaginative, mind-boggling performance.  She was the essence of rosy-cheeked, American fitness with ripped abs and serious stamina as she danced and twirled and Cirque de Soleiled from bungee cords strung from high up in the heavenward rafters of the arena.  For two-and-a-half hours she fantastically  displayed the results of ingesting healthy food and exercising every day inside the sold out, 20,000 seat arena.

I'm fairly certain she didn't eat there before the show.

It's Greek To Me

Say It With Me: Opa!

Last night we celebrated a friend's birthday at an "authentic" Greek restaurant in Dallas called Stratos.  I air quote "authentic" because, having spent a fair amount of time in Greece, I detected several Americanized innovations such as clean, working toilets and no swarms of flies orbiting the gyros.  But the noise music was right, as were the large gatherings of happy families shouting Opa! whenever a waiter set some cheese on fire.

There were twenty-four of us seated at a long, long table, making it impossible to converse with anyone other than your immediate table mates unless one was well-versed in ASL or  a seriously gifted lip reader.  Since I am neither I just looked up and waved vaguely to the far end of the table every so often.

Phyllo Donohue

We love our friends dearly but don't understand their affection for this particular dining destination.  Mexican food has basically six ingredients--tortillas, cheese, meat, salsa, beans and rice; depending on what form they take when plated, these items are called tacos, burritos, enchiladas, nachos, or tostadas.  The food at Stratos is somewhat in the same vein. There is phyllo dough, cheese, meat, spinach, rice, and grape leaves.  The menu consists of various shapes and combinations of these ingredients with foreign sounding and weirdly spelled names until you get to the baklava, which adds honey to the list.

The Belly of the Ball

The drinks must be concocted with a generous pour, because it wasn't long before what looked to be a suburban Jazzersize instructor emerged from a utility closet swathed in cheap orange fabric, finger cymbals, and harem pants to the wild applause and shrieking wolf whistles of an inebriated audience.  She had on some sort of embroidered crop top which enabled everyone to see her unsuccessfully roll her abdomen around in an awkward, Elaine Benes version of belly dancing.  She seemed a little self-conscious too, so she did what anyone else would do in that situation.  She wordlessly yanked people who had earlier self-identified as birthday celebrants up on top of their dining table, blindfolded them, and then gestured to the customers to jeer loudly as each hapless mope sort of shyly shimmied and stiffly moved their hips from side to side.  To me, it wasn't as much comical as it was puzzling. 

After her (seemingly endless) set, the music was turned up and even more merriment ensued, culminating in a long conga line of bachelorette parties, sorority sisters, a few moms and one rather dazed looking male soccer coach snaking through the packed restaurant performing the Syrtaki, perhaps the only Greek song and dance well-known to most Americans because it is the one Anthony Quinn stumbled through with a broken foot in the epic 1964 film Zorba the Greek. As the tempo churned faster and faster, the flushed faces of the now sweating flash mob showed traces of fear that they soon might be careening drunkenly into somebody's souvlaki.  Mercifully, the dance ended sans mishap.

Everyone in the packed restaurant was thoroughly enjoying themselves as evidenced by frequent shrieks of laughter and spontaneous rounds of drunken cheers.  I alone seemed to be the only one present not captivated by the entertaining offerings of this Mediterranean Renaissance Faire.  I guess I prefer anything flaming to be in the kitchen and the only belly I want to contemplate in a restaurant is my full one.

Opa!

Dining in the Big Easy

We just got back today from 5 days in New Orleans.  We dined around and ate so much food I barely noticed Mardi Gras was in full swing all around us.  (That's a lie, beads were flung, much beer was downed,  disrobing occurred, boas were worn by partiers of both sexes, and spontaneous explosions of mirth expressed through dance were a dime a dozen.  But this is a (hopefully) humorous food blog so I shan't dwell any more upon abandoned revelry.)

A Sign of Good Taste

Our gastronomic safari led us from the ridiculous to the sublime.  One of our first stops was the Clover Grill, an institution on lower Bourbon Street known for its greasy hubcap burgers and bountiful, heart attack breakfast fare served all day.  Open 24 hours, the joint has not been cleaned since FDR was President.  All the employees call you Sugar (even the toothless dishwasher) and most of the patrons are drunk.  We never go to New Orleans without hitting it at least once.

Shrimp Crepes N'awlins style.

We went to a landmark restaurant called Muriel's Jackson Square.  Cozy and classic Creole, it had memorable food like Goat Cheese Crepes with Gulf Shrimp (not a trace of BP Oil Spill flavoring!) and a sublime Pecan Crusted Puppy Drum over Crabmeat Relish.  Our server was a friendly woman with one of those adorable New Orleans accents which only added to her gracious and expert table maintenance.  When I declined dessert she asked me if I had a headache. Bless her heart.

I am sorry to report another return trip to Emeril's NOLA was a big let down.  I still love your welcoming maitre D', pretty hostesses, and outstanding food but our waiter skipped class on the day they taught Personalities Can Really Boost Your Tip.  He actually yawned twice while taking our order and failed to check with us after the food runner plunked down each course.  When he finally brought the check after repeated, increasingly frantic gestures, police whistling, and tabletop gyrations, I (somewhat sarcastically) thanked him and he kind of smirked and frowned and crossed his eyes.  Weird.

Slurped and Burped.

Despite the ever-present block-long line at ACME Oysters, we always go to Felix's across the street.  It's a much shorter wait because they spend more money on groceries and less on advertising than their more famous neighbor.  The oysters were nice and briny and served very cold in a round metal pan filled with crushed ice.  The Bloody Marys provided a spicy and delicious counterpoint.


The highlight this year, though, was Domenica, John Besh's Italian love song of a restaurant on the ground floor of the Roosevelt Hotel (formerly a pretty dumpy Fairmont before the Waldorf Astoria people got a hold of it.)  Although there were at least 40 tables unseated on Tuesday night at 8 PM, the hostess told us there would be an hour wait due to reservations.  This was a flat out falsehood.  It would be better to just admit that half the staff had come down with a sudden case of Mardi Gras Flu and the restaurant was in full-on damage control.  Luckily for us we snagged two seats at the bar where the amazing young man behind it, Adam, served up an awesome Arugula, Beets, Gorgonzola, and Pecan Salad,  the best coal-fired Calabrese Pizza I've ever tasted, and true southern hospitality with a blindingly white smile.  The people on either side of us were super friendly and just eccentric enough to provide a running comic dialogue.  The place charmed us so much I didn't snarkily ask the hostess when we left where all the people with reservations had gone.


Laissez le bons temps rouler, indeed.

Won't You Be My Valentine?

Shot in the Heart

I noticed the day after Christmas that all the sparkly ornaments and inflatable yard monstrosities  at Kroger had been banished to the Seasonal aisle and dismissively marked down  to 60% off.  Overnight, Cupid and his band of immodest, albeit angelic archers had winged in to create  a towering display of chocolates in shiny red boxes and cuddlesome teddy bears wearing little shirts with "I WUV U" emblazoned accross the front.  I thought it seemed a little premature but I recalled seeing Halloween decorations go up in July so I shrugged it off as crass commercialism.

It's six or seven weeks later and Valentine's Day is nigh.  Although clearly not as Hallmark-engineered as Sweetest Day or Administrative Professionals Day, the origins of St. Valentine's Day are murky at best.  A quick scan of Wikipedia yields no fewer than three distinctly different possible scenarios including executions, martyrdom, fertility dances, and/or pagan rituals involving animal sacrifices. How this evolved to its current status as America's Diningest Day I can't imagine.  Perhaps instead of killing fatted calves we are now becoming them.

Ask just about any server how much they like one of the busiest restaurant days of the year and they are likely to favor you with the stinkeye.  Loathsomely referred to as Another Amateur Night (along with New Year's Eve) Valentine's Day presents its own set of potential liabilities.  Demand is high, yes, but customers don't want four or six tops, just deuces, so therefore a restaurant's tables are full but they are not producing maximized revenues. To offset this, crafty propietors oftentimes proffer a "limited" or a "prix fixe" menu which gouges guarantees a higher spend per person. Frequent diners are onto this ruse and stay away in droves, so you end up with innocent naifs being stung by high prices and rushed waitpersons speeding up the steps of service to turn their tables quickly and eke out as many 15% tips as they can.  Sounds really romantic, no?

One year we catered a super high-end dinner for the top contributors to a local arts organization.  The event was on Valentine's Day, so we came up with what we called the I'm Falling For You menu. The first course was tomato veloute (soup) with a heart-shaped crouton floating on top.  Following that was a warm, heart-shaped artichoke-gruyere bread pudding nestled in wild field greens.  The entree was roast rack of lamb which had been separated in half so the bones could face each other, making a heart shape.  Finally, a slab of triple chocolate cake rested atop, you guessed it, a heart-shaped raspberry coulis.  So the heart "fell" through each course, starting on top and landing on the bottom.

Sometimes I'm so clever it's almost painful.  But you know what they say--love hurts.

 

 

Destination Dining: FT33

After every food critic, blogger and tarot card reader in Dallas proclaimed FT33 the best new restaurant of the century late last year, I have been anxious to try it.  It took four weeks to snag a reservation for 2 on a Saturday night but we finally got in.  I was afraid all the hyperbole-and-a-half was going leave me underwhelmed and empty-pocketed so I put my game face on, hoping for the best but sort of expecting to be disappointed.

Industrial Chic

I wish the word WOW had more than three letters in it.

Chef Matt McCallister has redefined the term chef driven kitchen. Every plate, every ingredient, every nuance is his artistic self-expression.  The dishes hitting the table that night were like highly stylized, personal gifts from his kitchen.  His "season inspired modern cuisine" soars with freshness, balance and originality.   Okay, I am going to stop now because I am gushing so sweetly I am in danger of early onset diabetes.

Six apps, six mains, six desserts.  I guess the devil is in the details because two of those 666s were absolutely flawless. The menu is presented on a rectangular piece of press board, cleverly held in place by bindings on either side snugly fitting into top and bottom notches.  Down alongside the left margin of the page are the numbers 1 through 31, with a hole punched through that night's date.  A little later we discovered previous nights' menus had been cut into thirds and were used as coasters.  Clever and Green have never enjoyed a more symbiotic relationship.

Our crisply professional yet amusing waiter ran us through the short menu, highlighting certain items and explaining unusual ingredients we may not recognize.  (As restaurant savvy as I think I am, that comprised about half the menu, but I nodded along knowingly as he intoned exotic words and phrases like tassione greens and speculoos.)  He gave us a few minutes to ponder and then returned to the table with an inquisitive smile.  "Gentlemen, are you ready to order?" he asked politely.  I said what do you think I should have and without hesitating he suggested pork sugo, confit matsutake & hand-cut tagliardi as a first course and general tso's duck breast, lemongrass sausage, kimchi & fried wheatberries as my main course.  (I said fine after quickly checking the menu to see if he had just quoted the highest priced item in each category to boost his tip from the newby rube.  He hadn't.)

I never order duck.  I don't even think about duck.  And if I do, I don't like to think of them with breasts.  I couldn't quite picture pork sugo, had forgotten what he said matsutake was, and wheatberries sounded like something you'd find in the grocery store between Fruity Pebbles and Raisin Bran.

Matsutake is the Madonna of Mushrooms

Everybody Jump to the Left

OMGosh if those plates could sing they'd be belting out the national anthem (live not lip sync) at the Super Bowl this coming Sunday.  That sugo thing was actually a pasta dish with what tasted like North Carolina pulled pork sporting a sexy, savory mushroom sauce.  Sounds weird but it was gone in sixty seconds, no sharing.

Fine me $1,000 for all the duck dissing I've done in my life.  Those tender, medium rare slices of heaven kissed my tongue good night and then slid down my throat to cuddle lovingly in my stomach.  The dry sausage and pungent kimchi were welcome, tangy counterpoints to the rich duck breast, and the fried wheatberries provided a crunchy, fun alternative to a more plebeian rice offering.  My dessert (I know, I know, I don't eat dessert but the food was so good here I  had to try it) was the only dish to disappoint.  It was an okay chocolate torchon--a dense, fudgy disc with bergamot (isn't that a perfume?) earl gray (tea?) and cocoa nibs (the word nibs makes me giggle?)  The menu had informed me the pastry chef was Josh Valentine, the twirly mustachioed villain poseur on Top Chef Seattle this season, so maybe I was predisposed to dislike it since it came from him.  I don't know, maybe I've skipped so many desserts I've forgotten how to enjoy them.

At any rate, FT33 was and will remain a highlight in my dining repertoire.  Chef McCallister, I pudgily salute you.