Denveater

My pal jerky (Doug Born's Smokehouse & Sausage Kitchen, Lake Michigan)

With just a few substitutions—like changing "person" to "preserved meat"—I could probably turn the theme song from The Courtship of Eddie's Father into an ode to American charcuterie. We've just returned from a lakefront cabin on the outskirts of Montague, MI—where the view was Merriam-Webster baroque, totally "marked generally by use of complex forms, bold ornamentation & the juxtaposition of contrasting elements often conveying a sense of drama, movement & tension,"

as were the street signs,

as was the generosity of the company we kept, who kept in turn the wine flowing & the charcoal glowing for fat smoked sausages that I truly did consider my cuddly toys, my ups, my downs, my prides & joys. They

came from here,

as did the stash we acquired out of this case, 

lined with big plastic jars of house-pickled eggs & brats & stacked with containers of beef & turkey jerky, 5 or 6 types each—among them honey, teriyaki, garlic pepper, Louisiana hot cajun & bourbon—as well as elk, venison & buffalo jerky, plus smoked local salmon & trout filets. 

We went for this

& this, 

both really mean if not necessarily lean. I had no idea dried beef could look or taste so much like a baby back rib, complete with cherry smoke.

As for the turkey, the fact that it was recognizable as white meat brushed with still-sticky barbecue sauce likewise struck me as a revelation.

 

We polished off both bags on the road from Montague back to Detroit Metro Airport, leaving us with 1 last impulse purchase—or, as the case may be, freak accident—to deal with:

Wine Poem 4, with notes on a bottle of 2006 Qupé Marsanne

With a single whiff of this Santa Ynez Valley blend of marsanne & roussane,  the words "flowering date palm" formed in my head in swaying pastel letters. A sip, meanwhile, conjured ripe apricots. 

I'm aware my newfound capacity for specificity w/r/t wine tasting  does not necessarily translate into a knack for accuracy. I do feel some vindication upon discovering that 1 critic detects notes of "hazelnut and a trace of honey. Subtle, floral-accented quince and white peach." Close enough. But if I'm lucky this poem could be even closer.

Wine Poem 4

Perhaps happens. All it is could be.
Another word for it would be—
maybe it’ll come to me—
Granted shape is just a phase. Granted form—
goblet, tumbler, bottle in the dark,
amarone in the gloaming and a body
clad in black—just inserts itself between
to and from, from and to, abstract to
the touch, concrete as thought.
So it seems in light of these say
libations—in the light,
the bare flicker, the slight gyre
of their bilabials one icy eve.
Grape, grape, barbaresco, primitivo,
after such anticipation the
first sip nearly hurts, 
a little bit, a touch, 
like on certain liquids you could cut your lip,
the way of fluid having after all an edge
—
When the wine winds down,
nearly is nearby, the word is not to be.
I want everything, nothing included.

***

Brown-butter bread pudding with mulberries and milk jam
sounds like sculpture.
The heart is its own brain.
The heart pauses, then hesitates.
Something’s on the tip
of the heart’s tongue, the heart taps
fist to brow to jar
a memory into place. Perhaps
it’s a name, the name is not Claude Muchmore, it is not
Javier Flores, it cannot be
Soso Kokynos, maybe it’s a place
by the sea, by the wayside, over yonder.
It thinks, I’ve heard this song
for twenty-something years,
the heart knows the lyrics by heart
(one night in Iowa, he and I in a borrowed car)...
The heart has hips and sways. The heart has lips and applies
its own pressure, its own logic, its own balm.
The heart acknowledges the dichotomy
between mind and body mind and body
barely acknowledge
and in the moment
of so doing wrinkles and shrinks
into a golden raisin.
Thinking things is coming to not terms but blows. 

DNC SchmeeNC: The American Cheese Society 25th Anniversary Conference, with Forward Foods' Steve "Wampus" Reynolds

Among Norman, Oklahoma's most famous sons: James Garner. Vince Gill. Wampus. 

Certainly Steve Reynolds is a solid fixture in my old hometown, cheered on in high school for various ingenious & occasionally illicit stunts detailed here, then for his winning turn on Jeopardy, & now for Forward Foods, the gourmet shop he runs with his charming wife Suzy Thompson, which is as fine as any I've frequented in Boston or Denver, boasting a luscious cheese selection & gastronomic curios galore, like

 &   &

 & 

When Steve told me he had just returned from the American Cheese Society's annual conference, I pressured him to dish until he caved:

What's all this about? I assume there's a tasting floor and also seminars and so forth? Do people dress up like dancing cheeses?

The ACS was in Chicago this year (last year, Burlington). It's attended by cheesemakers, cheese & specialty-food wholesalers, cheese retailers, consultants, dairy scientists, a bunch of people who say they're writers and others I'm forgetting. There are a couple of seminars a day and they're aimed at different people—I wasn't the target for "Demystifying Rennet and Coagulants." [Other tempting topics: "Understanding Butter Flavor"; "Sell It or Smell It: Extending the Life of a Bloomy Soft Ripened Cheese."]

Before the first seminars, different groups—Wisconsin cheesemakers, California cheese groups, wholesalers—laid out a spread for people. No one dressed up like a dancing cheese, pervert. Some folks did wear cow-spotted overalls and hard hats when they fashioned the Chicago skyline out of cheese. The Sears Tower was probably six feet tall. It looked to be all cheddar and jack. You don't want a ten-grand Roquefort Carles sculpture.

If you ever want to feel more grossly full than you've ever felt in your life, go to the Festival of Cheese—1000 different cheeses laid out with beer & wine & all the condiments. Ugh. It's sushi for me for awhile. 

What was the coolest seminar you attended?

There was one seminar where Chicago chefs made courses with American artisanal cheeses (side note: HUGE circular debates about the word "artisanal" abounded). We ate double macaroons with a triple crème Fleur de Teche from Bittersweet Plantation, a savory pannacotta with Humboldt Fog & a melted Hudson Valley Camembert on brioche. They all RAWKED.

What was the weirdest or dumbest thing you encountered there? 

Cranberry-chipotle flavored cheese. Enough said. 

If you could only eat 1 kind of cheese for the rest of your life, what would it be and why? 

WHY DO YOU PRESENT THIS NIGHTMARE!?! I guess I would do a gouda or cheddar-- something versatile, but I would miss the blues fo sho. You know how when you have a perfect bite at a great restaurant that makes you close your eyes? So many cheeses deliver that.

Brasserie Felix, if you say so

Brasseries have been popping up like, oh, the bistros they often actually are cross-country ever since Balthazar stormed New York back in 1997. Even Boulder’s got the halfway decent Brasserie Ten Ten. So it’s about time Denver had one too.  

Which may or may not have anything to do with the opening of Brasserie Felix, rocky enough to seem fatally premature.

It goes without saying that anyone wishing to assess the merits of a given eatery fully and fairly should wait at least a few weeks past day 1—6 to 8's about right. But first impressions do count. And mine amount to the fact that Brasserie Felix has a long, longue way to go before it’s worthy of either half of its own name. Right now it’s less like a the French equivalent of a brewpub owned by un homme de félicité and more like Chez Whatever.

1st of all, back in 2005, former Post critic Kyle Wagner eloquently explained why Brasserie Rouge was something of a misnomer. What she said; the beer list here is noteworthy only for its lack of noteworthiness. For that matter, the wine list, though reasonably priced (the majority of bottles keep well within the bounds of $20–$40), is unreasonably narrow, comprised almost entirely of Cotes du Rhone, cabs & merlots, virtually devoid of varietal quirks.

Granted, it’s got something of the look down pat—spacious enough to invite beaucoup bustle and clatter, dotted with vintage-style prints and such. Speaking of pats, however, the bread basket was the 1st sign of trouble, containing half a sliced, supermarket-grade baguette & a ramekin full of foil-wrapped butter squares. Quelle crappe! 

2nd of all, while the long-lost twin of a Cabaret-era Michael York who served us at the bar was both kind & attentive, he was neither terribly knowledgeable nor apparently aware he wasn't terribly knowledgeable. 

The Director: Can I get the moules frites? 

Michael York: What? 

The Director points to the moules frites 

Michael York: Got it. Do you want fries with that? 

Later he recommended the petits fours, describing them to us lovingly as it became mortifyingly clear he meant profiteroles (oh, j'excuse, profiterolles, as it's spelled on the menu). 

In between, he nonchalantly presented us with a bread plate containing 1 dollop of dijon & another of "careful-it's-really-really-spicy" harissa dip, which had all the kick of an octogenerian donkey with advanced bone cancer. It was for the kinda dandy but skimpy Merguez sausage platter that we were by then more than halfway through with.


sausage platter the Director's 1 bite through with

Skimpy & not even kinda dandy was (3rd of all) what, IIRC, the menu called frisée aux lardons. For every duck lardon you spot, you get 1 point. & if you get 1 point, you already win, because I never did find 1 amid the barely dressed greens & the bacon chips & the small croutons made, apparently, from yet another cruddy baguette, going soggy pronto in the yolk of the poached egg.



The broth in this bowl was excellent, heady with mussel liquor, anise liqueur & cream.



Less excellent were the bivalves themselves, supposedly weighing a pound en masse but rife with empty shells—the Director estimated the loss at about 15%.

I had no beef with the steak tartare, under- if not downright un-seasoned but boasting all the more fresh, clean savor of raw ground cow for that.

Still, at present I'd say felicity's to be found in far greater measure mere blocks away at Indulge. 

The Salad Series (Part 5): lunchtime at Black Pearl

There is something so achingly civilized about a lady lunching solo with a good book on a sun-dappled patio: Say she's wearing a maroon felt cloche. Say she's absorbed in Forster. Say she sips from a flute of champagne after turning this or that page, & from time to time takes a neat forkful of the Waldorf salad before her. 

Unless she's me, of course. I pretty much snarf it all down in a tee-shirt & low-tops while engrossed, indeed, in some freaky read like the one I'm finishing now, Umberto Eco's On Ugliness—undoubtedly provoking the wrath of fellow diners who lose & keep losing their appetites with each sideways glimpse of its contents:

Here's hoping the vision of loveliness that was the chopped salad I recently had for lunch at Black Pearl overshadowed such (awesome!) nastiness.

 

By "recently" I mean my smart little neighborhood fave has just resumed midday-meal service after a year-plus of lunchlessness. Where anarchy reigned, order is restored in the form of a fairly short, fairly familiar menu: a good 70% of it, I'd guess, replicates the dinner repertoire. Sandwiches & salads comprise the rest: think grilled cheese with a sunny-side-up egg & garlic-spinach cream; crispy calamari tacos with shishito peppers, crabcakes over greens.

As for the above, not only was it generously sized and properly dressed—by which I mean every bite was slicked with good, strong, creamy garlic vinaigrette; whoever decrees that it's better to err on the side of underdressing than overdressing should be left in a snowdrift in the altogether for awhile—but it was chock-full of tchotchkes: pulled chicken (dark & light meat); chunks of avocado & Medjool date; radish slices, cherry tomato halves & pieces of asparagus so thin I almost didn't recognize it & thought maybe it had developed a smack addiction since I saw it last; &, best of all—& worst of all, as my only complaint is that a little more would have gone an even longer way—a few utterly buttery chunks of gorgonzola.

Granting, however, that not everyone's as mesmerized by a fine salad as I am, I submit my humble apologies to the guy next to me who ordered the steak.

***

For the record, the above paintings are William Hogarth's The Reward of Cruelty; The Deceased Lovers, Death & Lust by some unnamed 16th c. "Master of the Upper Rhine"; & Chaim Soutine's Carcass of Beef, respectively.

Goodies in my belly (Part 3): Snooze, Beatrice & Woodsley, Jaya, Urban Pantry, East Europe Market

Behold some eats that slipped through the cracks of one relatively recent blogpost or another if not of my meticulous gut:

pulled piglet's benedict at Snooze

From the neat script logo to the asterisk motif marking the two-tone vinyl, this place sometimes sets my teeth on wink-wink-retro-edge. But what soothes them like a plate full of Anbesol is this: a hot, buttered, darkly crisped but super-chewy English muffin topped with perfectly poached eggs, plump-to-bursting like bellies that you just want to tickle 'til they do, loads of slow-braised pulled pork (one associates pulling with barbecuing, but really, it just means removing the meat from the bone using something other than a knife—hands, a fork, etc.—so it's in shreds rather than slices), sliced avocado & smoked-cheddar hollandaise that actually tastes like a hollandaise gone wild rather than cheese dip. 

lamb loin with Merguez sausage & Marcona almond gazpacho at Beatrice & Woodsley

Let's pause to eulogize this remarkable combination of morsels, which is no longer with us (though I imagine the milkfed veal loin with herbed veal sausage & roasted cauliflower that took its place on the menu as a variation on the theme). Mighty for its size, it contained thumb-length slices of seared lamb so juicily rare the blood still seemed to be circulating through them; charred crumbles of spicy housemade sausage (true to the Merguez name, I suspect—i.e., made with lamb & beef & harissa-spiked); & all of an ounce of coolly creamy gazpacho (which I likewise presume came by its creaminess the traditional Spanish way, via bread & olive oil).

sotong goreng at Jaya Asian Grill

Fried calamari, Malaysian-style: tender & light on the breading, heavy on the seasoning, from black pepper & chili pepper to fried bits of garlic & onion. (Conventional wisdom says China's going to take over the world, but I think it should be Malaysia, because the garlic-&-tamarind-fried anchovies known as ikan bilis, sadly not available at Jaya or anywhere in Denver as far as I know, ALREADY RULE:

 )

yet another cheese plate from Urban Pantry

Clockwise from top are Z garlic & basil crackers; Jacquin Valençay—a runny, stinky, ash-coated French goat cheese; a classic aged gouda, nutty & sharply mellow (not an oxymoron in aged gouda's case); balls-out, pepperoniesque chorizo seco.

another jar of malidjano (eggplant dip) from East Europe Market, this one Macedonian and heavier on red peppers than the first one I sampled

As EEM devotes 1 entire aisle to veggie pickles & spreads, I aim to devote at least 1-half of 1 of my 2 hollow legs to same; therefore, more such luscious aerial shots to come. 

The Old South Pearl "Farmer's" "Market" (plus a nod toward Black Pearl)

The Old South Pearl People Selling Stuff for a Block is more like it. There are maybe 3 or 4 farm stands, definitely outnumbered by prepared food vendors and craftspeople whose booths almost but can't quite stretch all the way from Iowa to Florida Aves. Some of the produce sounds like porn stars. 

Big Jim & the Hot Hungarian

The coolest-looking farm stand is run by some weather-beaten Hmong who sell mostly leafy stuff, it seems, as well as salsa and hot veggie pickles that I didn't purchase this time, being in between journeys (to Oklahoma & Lake Michigan, respectively, of which more soon), but will report on as soon as I do.

Nor did I purchase any of the following, but it, too, struck me as cool-looking. That's about as articulate as I'm going to get regarding anything sight seen but taste untasted.

Dragonfly wine jellies; other flavors include pinot noir, shiraz, riesling & pink champagne, which the Director tried & said he liked. I'm holding out for the 1787 Chateau Lafite 

Sweet Jayne's Homemade Pie; below the strawberry-apricot galette is peach-cherry

 
wacky & wackier orzo from Pappardelle's; I've been a sucker for flavor for as long as I can remember. When other kids wanted chocolate or vanilla I wanted, oh, kim-chi ripple. If my choices were Italian, French, or smoked-habanero-&-orchid double-R ranch, I'd go with the weirdo. To this day, the more exotic components the better, even if it's worse. So when I get around to gobbling down a bowl of Pappardelle's harissa linguine, chocolate-orange gemelli, scampi-gruyère ravioli or, as above, Southwest orzo flavored with corn, red chile & black beans, I'll yell about it.

Speaking of yelling about it, this sight was the highlight of the trip:

Of that, too, more soon.

The Salad Series (Part 4): Jordan's Bistro & Pub

"Parenthood is a vortex of bad art," said my friend Ellen the other day when I asked what was it like to have "Elmo's Potty Time" on endless video loop. You don't have to be a parent, just an American with a modicum of taste, to know that it's also got to be a constant barrage of bad food. Drinking middling wine & playing Scrabble at the bar as family after family with teens & tweens & toddlers streamed into Jordan's Bistro & Pub last night, I imagined in pretty vivid detail that suggesting the place was a mistake. I'd already suspected as much based on the name. Did Jordan—versus, say, Jean-Georges or Kieran or Jean-Georges-Kieran—think "pub & bistro" would serve as an upmarket synonym for "bar & grill" rather than a promise of Guinness & colcannon on the one hand, vin de table & frogs' legs on the other? 

Still, it was close to home, it was quiet & casual enough that a pseudofriendly game of Scrabble wouldn't be out of place, & it listed on its menu a slew of just the sort of overstuffed salads I was craving. In fact, it listed on its menu a slew of just the sort of overstuffed everything everyone craves at any given time: "Irish nachos" with corned beef, Swiss & horseradish-Dijon; mac-&-cheddar with brie & sundried tomatoes; pizza from a wood-burning oven; & sure enough, the likes of fisherman's pie & boxty, steak-filled & whiskey-sauced. 

Ultimately, the proof that Jordan really means well was in the pudding, in this case hummus (though for all I yet know it may be in the pudding too, black & white, both of which are offered at weekend brunch). 

Alongside pita wedges that were not only warm but, I'd swear, cornmeal-dusted (ours is not to wonder why, at least not when it's our turn, we're staring down an A, A, E, I, O, T & a blank, & the dinner tab's riding on the game) was a bowl brimming over with a chunky, peanut-butter-colored substance that I indeed recognized as chickpeas freshly ground with salt. Whether or not you'd accord it the status of hummus depends on whether or not you believe in a world drenched in olive oil & lemon juice &, occasionally, topped with fried ground lamb. I do, so I wouldn't. 

Still, the mere fact that the kitchen crew is even attempting to cook from scratch in a joint that's not only at the edge of a college campus but part of a statewide franchise—that it's demonstrating a DIY ethic against all odds—is downright stirring.

& the grilled beef tenderloin salad clinched my, if not undying admiration, certainly hearty non-objection. 

A, observe the so-red-it's-nearly-blue hue of that steak. I asked for it rare, & I got it, which is itself pretty rare in the lower-brow circumstances. B, note the fat, lumpy cloves of roasted garlic, not at all like the old brown fingernails that come from a jar. C, mentally compare that honey-mustard dressing to its bilious & cloying bottled counterpart. Granted, it erred so far on the side of Dijon that they probably should have called it mustard-mustard dressing. Granted, the chopped red onion was not grilled as advertised but raw as a skinned knee. Granted, the gorgonzola was supermarket-grade. But all in all—the which also included cherry tomatoes & roasted bits of red & yellow pepper—my low expectations were certainly surpassed. 

Incidentally, this is hardly among the more intriguing offerings; both the goat cheese salad with, apparently, deep-fried eggplant "croutons" in a pomegranate vinaigrette & the almond-studded Cobb have my number—an inspiring feat in itself, since my number's infinity, which is extremely hard to get on a salad.

The Director, for his part, was delighted with his prettily piped, richly gravied shepherd's pie,

which is fortunate, since he had to pay for it after drawing both the Q & the Z in the last round of the game, poor dear shlimazl.

KO KO: Bissonnette knocks us out (Boston)

Hitting KO Prime for the first time in a year, I came, I suspect, as close as I'll ever come to celebrating the Saturnalia without actually traveling back in time to inhabit the body of a Roman slave, packing a week of howling, chest-pounding debauchery into an evening (that, granted, began around noon with lunch & cocktails at dante, continued with more cocktails at UpStairs on the Square & still more cocktails plus apps at Hungry Mother, & ended with a nightcap or two at No. 9 Park). As promised here—where the pics below of chef Jamie Bissonnette's signature bone marrow & surely-soon-to-be-signature calves' brains piperade (essentially a Basquaise sofrito, heavy on the peppers) 1st appeared—what follows is a montage that, I imagine, speaks for itself, albeit in a slur devolving into a series of grunts.

 

ceviche amuse

house-cured Bayonne ham, jamón ibérico & Cape Fear country ham with pickled lily stems & truffled aioli

marrow strewn with pickled shallots over oxtail marmalade

pan-roasted sea bass over heirloom corn relish

heirloom tomato salad with crottin (an aged goat cheese from Vermont) & a brushstroke of avocado

delicious, creamy-as-pudding BRAINS sprinkled with fried capers

Kobe flatiron with grilled onions & romesco, professedly, though I remain confused by the profession; although almonds and stale bread are key in traditional recipes for the Spanish sauce, so are red peppers—sweet & dried chile—& tomato, & the color of the final product generally reflects as much. 

lobster bisque with a touch of sauternes

absolutely no recollection. cocoa-dusted cheesecake? semifreddo? with mint coulis? 

essentially a blueberry muffin top with chocolate gelato shaped like a daisy-sprouting egg. How adorably like the whole thing was transported in a time machine made out of a vinyl beanbag from the patchwork-filled kitchen of a free-love commune circa 1972 & not at all like something you could order in a postmillennial steakhouse & lounge is that? The sauce should spell out "war is not healthy for children & other living things."

The Salad Series (Part 3): The Oceanaire

Hey, I like the feel of an Art Deco–era supper club in Miami Beach as much as the next guy snapping his fingers in pinstripes and wingtips. Ergo I swing by the bar at The Oceanaire now & again, a chain whose links seem to obtain their high polish from sentient beings, not lobotomized corporate lackeys—for better &/or worse, which really could be worse. The Lodo branch, for 1, resembles an independent operation more than a franchise in both its strengths & its weaknesses—the latter including above all human inconsistency, which I'll take over robotic consistency any evening.  

What’s both consistent & human here are the bartenders—always young yet seasoned, both warm & sharp. What's consistent & molluscan are the oysters: with 7 or 8, Pacific & Atlantic, on ice at any given time, the raw bar here's got the best selection that I know of by far. (McCormick & Schmick's shmcmormick & schmick's. When a West Coast operation opens 2 branches in an East Coast city—especially 1 as bursting with local pride as Boston—it's asking to get smacked. But then, its owners appear to be born that way, eh?

 

to be played by Louis Anderson & Dennis Hopper at his most self-parodic 

Point is I still won't set foot in there. The Oceanaire got its start in Minneapolis, which is so dumb as to be endearing.) Shucking skills are fair—occasionally I hit a bit of grit, occasionally pine for an extra sip of liquor—but the regular opportunity to try new-to-me varieties like Wildcat Cove is reason enough to belly up.

Even before I started looking like a seahorse with flatulence (not that they're not absolutely charming, by the by; I've seen them in tanks at the New England Aquarium's exhibition hospital, & they just keep floating up), I often opted for salads here—the BLT salad, boasting thick slabs of beefsteak tomato (a name whose connotations of a sexy hermaphrodite I always did relish) & buttermilk dressing crumbled with yet more bacon, & the crab louis, a total crustacean overload, being particular faves. Most recently I ordered the chopped salad with crab & bay shrimp,

a carb-counter's blessing if ever there was one, especially the dressing; it comes with a fine Greek vinaigrette, but I also asked for Green Goddess

 

& was so pleased by the pungency of both—the 1 full of lemon & even hinting at actual oregano, the other terribly sure of its anchovy self—that I barely noticed how I barely noticed the cheese til I saw the photo. It looks like feta; it tasted like cottage cheese—cottage cheese played by Milton in Office Space: