I got stuck in Fort Lauderdale an extra day after Hurricane Harvey disrupted travel through Houston for a couple of weeks. I never travel through Houston to get to the East Coast, but somehow booked that flight for an event I needed to attend in South Florida.
But in the spirit of making lemonade out of lemons, it just
meant I had a full day to myself on at the beach, at the pool and at some of
the local places along beach boulevard (not its real name). It was a Saturday
and I prided myself for making it all the way to 3 pm before my first cocktail
of the day – a couple of Mojitos with an okay serving of coconut shrimp at Café
Ibiza. I went into Café Ibiza because of fond memories of staying nearby on
Mallorca years ago. The days and nights in Banalbufar remain one of my favorite
holidays. Besides, back in Fort Lauderdale, the other choice was a Hooter’s.
The night before my friends Ken and Melissa took me to
B&B Oyster Bar where the oysters we excellent. We knocked back a sampler
dozen before finding our favorite, then ordered a dozen of those. I wasn’t
taking notes and can’t remember the oyster names but they were good, East Coast
bivalves.
Back home, I went to Cucina in town on one of those nights that neither of us felt like cooking. Look at this salad. It’s mouth-watering, with awesome ingredients: Arugula, ripe peach, burrata cheese, dry-aged Spanish ham, with “lemon-zest dressing.” OMG it was uneatable! My mouth puckered with each bite, it was so lemony. I don’t think you could have had a more lemony experience even if you bit straight into a lemon. I at the fruit and ham and left the salad.
A week later I was on another plane, this time to Southern
Cal to take my father, sisters, brother-in-law and niece out to dinner to
celebrate Dad’s 95th day on this earth. We went to an Italian place
in a strip mall that is popular with the locals. The bruschetta and steak
tartare were good starters. My niece had the best dish I think – Chilean sea
bass with artichoke hearts and black olives. I went with gnocchi because the
book on this place is that it’s real Italian food. Meh!
Ordering gnocchi is always risky. The worst part of the
restaurant was the portions. They were huge. Everyone leaving the restaurant
had to go packages. I left that program for the small-plate revolution years
ago!
Two days later, however, I met a foodie friend from the media for lunch in downtown Carlsbad. Plan A didn’t work out – closed for lunch on Mondays, but Plan B – Compass, was no slouch! The Hamachi crudo topped with a smidge of avocado, pinch of orange and fresno chile slice was sublime. So was the bacon-wrapped dates served with a creamy goat cheese and arugula. The white truffle oil fries with aioli called for a cold beer, but I was working that afternoon and stuck with a single glass of pinot noir.
Back home a few days later I had lunch with a new
professional colleague at Farmshop in Larkspur. I had been there before and
recalled the quality – for its modern food and freshness. I was not
disappointed on this visit.
The avocado hummus was richly creamy and flavorful, great with the house-made whole wheat pita bread and a glass of Rose. I dreamt of the South of France and a hammock after lunch after drinking an entire bottle of the pink wine. Is there anything better than Rose with lunch on a warm day?
My new colleague is on a “paleo” diet with protein, fat and vegetables with little fruit and no gluten. She order the steamed chicken breast salad with boiled egg and lettuce. It looked yummy. I absolutely had to have the crispy artichokes with burrata cheese, castelvetrano olives, stonefruit and harissa spiced walnuts. Easily, this was one of the best dishes of the year.
The short rib at Nobu in New York City is also a top 10 for 2017. We were there in August to kick off the college tours. We go to Nobu every time we’re in New York. Why not?
Steven Rednikowski made a name for himself as a chef in Boulder, CO, with Oak at fourteenth. His new place in Denver, Acorn, is located in the 1880’s foundry that’s been converted to a high-end food court, or “epicurean marketplace” in Denver’s emerging hipster neighborhood, River North District. I found this place after doing some research on Denver’s burgeoning food scene, and Denver.eater.com put Acorn squarely in its “Essential Restaurant” listing, citing the eatery for its “hottest new American cuisine.”
His website describes the style of food as “eclectic,
contemporary American cooking in an approachable, family-friendly format.” The
final phrase of that description, “family-friendly format,” is code for small
plates, shared plates etc. And the food is fucking good!
Rednikowski is no overnight sensation. The resume – started
in the business at 15 in a local pizzeria in Upstate New York, graduated to a
culinary school in Schenectady, NY, moved to the City and landed a gig in 2000 at
Le Cirque, followed by a stint at three Michelin-starred, Jean Georges. After
that he moved west in 2002, first with a job at Little Nell in the iconic
Aspen, CO, before taking an irresistible job in the Boulder, CO kitchen Frasca
Food and Wine when Executive Chef and Co-Owner Lachlan Mackinnon-Patterson
opened that restaurant. Staying in Colorado continuously was not in the cards
at the time for Rednikowski. Instead, in 2006 he moved to Napa, CA to work
under Chef Douglas Keane at the two-Michelin-starred Cyrus restaurant, only to
return to Aspen two years later for the Executive Sous Chef job at Little Nell
Hotel.
Rednikowski had met his Acorn business partner, Bryan
Dayton, when the two were paired up at Frasca in Boulder and Dayton was
managing the bar. In 2010 the duo got their dream jobs as owners, when they
opened Oak to rave reviews and critical acclaim. Central to their food concept
was an oak-wood fired oven and grill – a kitchen tool that is prominently
featured at Acorn, which opened in 2013.
To this diner, the nearly 4 years since opening Acorn has
served Rednikowski and Dayton very well, as my visit to Acorn one warm night in
early July was a flawless evening of eating and drinking.
Flying solo, I sat at the bar, of course. Yet before sitting I checked out the vast interior of the old Foundry. A Mexican restaurant is across the way from Acorn. Some guys that had success with a food truck made the switch to a full-service place. There’s a bar in the back of the building – lots of craft beer, as expected. Craft beer may be the only “boutique” industry in Colorado that is bigger than marijuana. There’s a butcher shop, wine bar, charcuterie store. There were also young people making some sort of ice cream sandwich toward the front the building when I was there.
In addition to the “bar bar,” where I sat, there is a “chef’s bar” where the line cooks work, and the aforementioned oak-fired oven and grill resides.
In keeping with the theme of ‘craft beer’ for more spirited
types, the bar did not have the usual kind of vodkas I drink – mainstream
brands. But it did have a locally made vodka that naturally caught my eye,
called Woody Creek. The last place I lived in the Aspen area was a mostly
finished solar house on 4 acres on Little Woody Week, and I was neighbors with
the gonzo journalist, Hunter S. Thompson. I ordered the Woody Creek double on
the rocks with a splash of soda, NFL – my new standard (No Fucking Lime, No
Fucking Lemon). If the vodka is any good, let’s taste it!
From my seat at the bar, I looked past the bartenders to a little outdoor patio and a nice sunset right around 9 pm. This industrial zone is undergoing a lot of construction – mostly loft-style apartments. This is a new hotel being built next to the Source.
The night I was there, Acorn offered 18 small plate dishes. Immediately, I recognized the problem with dining alone at a place like this – I would only be able to sample 3 or 4 of these yummy nibbles. One item fairly leapt at me off the menu, which I knew I would start with, whereas I studied the rest of the menu over my cocktail, using the process of elimination to decide what might be my second, third, and fourth (if I had room) plates for dinner.
I started with the Hamachi Crudo (Hamachi Crudo – passion
fruit vinaigrette, avocado, cucumber, Fresno pepper, cilantro), with a second
cocktail. The cold vodka paired well with this dish, which was perfect in so
many ways. The fish was very fresh, avo just right, acidity and snap from the Fresno
chili in complete harmony – and the portion was amazingly generous. No skimping
on core ingredients here. And for a California dude, the price of this dish, at
$14, was difficult to get over. Back home in San Francisco, this plate would
have easily sold for $26, maybe $28.
Noshing on the crudo, I “eliminated” the Key West royal red ‘shrimp
& grits’, the oak smoked pork posole, the smoked trout sandwich, the smoked
brisket sandwich (on a brioche bun) and the buttermilk fried chicken sandwich. I
was really tormented by not ordering the crispy Icelandic cod, which looked as
if it was prepared with Vietnamese influence, my favorite flavors (nuoc cham,
napa cabbage, toasted peanuts, mint, cucumbers).
And I’m still made at myself for not starting with the
crispy fried pickles with green goddess aioli. For $5, and no doubt delicious
with vodka & soda, I could not have gone wrong. How often in life will you
get a chance to eat a crispy fried pickle? Plus I would have had some insight
as to what was to come with Chef Red’s food – cucumbers and its cousin, pickles.
They appeared frequently, usually unexpectedly.
So for the second plate, I went with a vegetarian dish, grilled eggplant.
It was out of sight, as we used to say in the groovy years.
The eggplant was meaty, slightly smoky and perfectly
grilled. It actually ate like a steak, and for my first few bites that’s what I
focused on. And who knew, that pickle chips would contrast so nicely with
grilled eggplant, not to mention the crispy Papadum crackers from the Indian
subcontinent. This was all good, but the real wow factor came into play when I
got below the eggplant to the quinoa with Kalamata olive oil, the tzatziki
(yogurt-based) and the slightly creamy goat feta, which was accented by the
Chermoula (the reddish sauce to the right of the plate), a slightly tangy marinade
typically used by cooks in Algeria, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia. The chilled
rose (Gerard Boulay, a Sancerre Rose from the Loire Valley, $12) I drank with
this dish was as good a complement as Bonnie Parker was to Clyde Barrow, though
I was optimistic that my story would not end as badly as theirs did.
By the time I finished the second plate, I had decided that
the past hour or so was one of the most pleasurable 60 minutes of the year so
far, with over 5 months to go!
While my appetite may have been sated with these first two courses, I was hungry for more. And I could not pass up the braised lamb, since braising meat is probably my favorite way to eat pork (shoulder/butt), beef (ribs) and lamb, especially in winter when you can pair these foods with creamy polenta, risotto and mashed potatoes.
(Olive oil braised lamb leg – fruition farms crispy ricotta, English peas, pea shoots, pecorino, mint)
This dish was good – solid from start to finish, with a light and tasty sauce (from the melted ricotta) that called for a piece of bread to sop up (the bartender gladly obliged, bringing a side a toast though I only used half a slice). The lamb was tender, as expected, and the peas very fresh – as if it were still Spring and I was, in fact, in England. I drank a Terrazas Malbec, $15 from Mendoza, Argentina, thus proving that one can survive a great meal without a single California wine.
The lamb dish was delicious, though not as distinctive as my
first two plates.
I might have ordered a fourth dish but I had an early
morning with a train to catch for Aspen by 8 o’clock. As my 90+ year old father
still says, “the best exercise you can do to keep the weight off is push
yourself away from the table.”
And so I did, vowing to come back to Denver or better yet,
go up to Boulder to eat Chef Rednikowski’s food again.
Nothing beats a good BLT, but a great sandwich is always
made with great bread, so I have had a BLT or two that were just ok. Plus the
thing about BLTs is that the tomato makes up a third of its core ingredients,
and tomatoes can be pretty iffy in terms of quality. They are subject to
seasonality, locations etc. Now there is this: The Avocado, Bacon &
Cucumber sandwich.
I had open-faced ABCs last night watching TV. I smashed up a half of avocado in a bowl, squeezed a little lime juice, and added a few dashes of hot sauce and salt. I used small slices of thin-sliced, very good sour dough. I didn’t use or need mayo, putting the avo down first, then the bacon, then thin-sliced standard cucumbers.
I made an enclosed sandwich by finishing the bacon, using the thin-sliced sourdough, smashed avo and cucumber. Today, however, I did use a light amount of mayo on both pieces of bread and also spiked the sandwich with torn up pieces of pepperoncini. Great ABC!
It’s starts in Silicon Valley, goes south on Hwy. 101 to
Paso Robles, then over to the coast on Hwy. 46 to Cambria, then north on Hwy. 1
through Big Sur and into Carmel. It’s that beautiful and varied, from the
ranchlands and vineyards of interior California to the sea… just gorgeous.
Everyone should be able to do this drive at least once in their lifetime.
Paso Robles should not be confused with Central California.
Paso’s valley – indeed the 101 valley, includes the famed Salinas Valley in
Monterey County that is north of Paso. The St. Lucia (coastal) mountains
separate the coast from this valley on the west, and to the east is another
range of low-lying mountains – I’ll have to look it up but I think it is called
the Diablo Range, and east of that is the Central Valley.
Without explaining our business in Paso for now, I can tell
you that the food scene is alive and well there. Our timing was off to try the best
know restaurant in Paso Robles – Bistro Laurent, which was the first high-end
restaurant to open in Paso Robles years ago when the region’s wine country
began to be recognized for what it is – one of the best places to grow grapes
and make wine in the world. So revered is Bistro Laurent’s reputation
(French-inspired cuisine) that even though we didn’t try a morsel of Chef
Laurent’s food, it deserves to be mentioned here. We were there on Sunday and
Monday nights and the brick-building restaurant on the southwest corner of the
square is open Tuesdays through Saturdays.
We arrived in Paso shortly after 1 pm on the Sunday in which
the NBA Final Game 7 was to be played, starting around 5 pm. We spent the
afternoon touring the local real estate market with a delightful Realtor
originally from Pittsburgh PA, Wendy. It was 100 degrees and by the time we got
to our hotel – the unbelievably perfect Hotel Cheval (in so many ways!), we
were dying for cool showers and to get out of sweat-soaked clothes we worn
looking at real estate. We watched the first half of the game wrapped in bath
towels while the AC brought our temperatures down. We watched the second half
of the game in the hotel bar sipping lightly chilled Rose with a few other
guests. When the Warriors completed their historic collapse by losing the last
three games of a final (a first!) and the Cleveland Cavaliers were crowned
champions, it was dinnertime. While I nonchalantly proclaimed “it’s only a
game,” inside I was deeply disappointed with the outcome of the series. And
thirsty for a real cocktail.
We stopped at a bar on the way to Artisan where I knocked
back a couple of double vodka sodas on ice.
So despondent was I actually from our team blowing the
championship that I uncharacteristically lost my appetite. Not completely, but
mostly. Over the years there been have championship series’ that I got
passionate about – some of the epic Lakers-Celtics series in the 1980s, a Super
Bowl here and there, the 2004 World Series when Boston ended Beantown’s 86-year
drought.
At Artisan, she ordered the Hangar Steak with potatoes and bone marrow jus. We shared a green salad with local cheddar (light, somewhat creamy for a cheddar, delicious), honey mustard and oddly, a granola topping (but it worked, for texture). All I had was a simple small plate – Dungeness crab slider with pancetta and quail egg. The bread was an English muffin made at the restaurant, a very good call as the bread was sturdy enough to hold the moist ingredients together without a bunch of bread getting in the way of the featured ingredient, crab (which I was remiss in not asking where the crustacean was nabbed from the sea). The pancetta gave the pure, shredded and lightly seasoned crab meat with just enough of an accent flavor and the quail egg gave the sandwich a decadence as well as richness and subtle moisture without using mayonnaise. It was a great start to a superb week of eating.
The Hatch
The Hatch Rotisserie & Bar
Wendy the Realtor had recommended The Hatch Rotisserie &
Bar and when we asked people at the hotel about it, they heartily reinforced
Wendy’s recommendation. We went there on a Monday night after 5 hours of wine
country touring and tasting at four wineries in 100 degree weather (not
recommended!). In between the splendid afternoon and dinner, however, we took
cool showers and a three hour nap at the Hotel Cheval. We arrived at The Hatch
hungry.
For starters we shared the Grilled Caesar and Pork Belly,
the latter of which was glazed with a blackberry “mostarda” whatever that is
and it was yummy. For entre we shared another starter, the Cold Beans salad
with Haricot verts, wax beans, roasted shallot vinaigrette, fennel, cucumber
and parmesan. I rarely leave unfinished food at a restaurant but both salads
were huge and I could not finish it. For protein, while the lady had seriously
eyed the Farro & Roasted vegetables with Heirloom farro, burrata, sweet
peppers, asparagus and fava beans with lemon vinaigrette, we settled on their
roast chicken. The nameplate at the door does include the word rotisserie,
after all.
The chicken was very good and served with house-made
buttermilk dip and hot sauce, a good thing because the breast was dry. We make
such good chicken at home (read the next blog, please), particularly
whole-roasted bird, that we rarely order chicken out. Yet these days we’re
trying to cut back on the beef and knowing that we were heading to the coast
the next day for three nights and would likely eat from the sea mostly, we went
for the chicken. I contend that no one can perfectly cook the breasts and the thighs
in one dish. When I make roasted chicken, I remove the bird from the oven, cut
away the thighs and legs and finish them in the oven while the body of the bird
with all the white meat and wings rests before carving. That’s that.
I would still go to The Hatch again when in Paso Robles and highly recommend it. I didn’t get the chef’s name but looking at the menu now online and having been there and seen it (marvelous interior – brick wall, clean, simple, good lighting, and great wine list), you can tell that they get it and make good food. Some of the items I would have liked to have tried include Shrimp & Grits (with a smoked sausage side option), Harissa-Rubbed Tri Tip, Ramen with house-made Miso Broth, and the Crawfish Boil. We left Paso Robles after shopping at the local Walmart for me to buy some tank tops. I had not brought any from home and had not anticipated the blistering heat. It was 102 when we left Paso around 1 pm and the temperature would rise another couple degrees before it started tapering for the day. An hour later we were walking the tourist strip of Morro Bay in marine-shielded sun and a lovely 68 degrees. We popped into a forgettable restaurant for large, cold Sapporo beers and a side order of fried calamari. Before heading north for Cambria we drove over to the base of the Rock. If you’ve never been, it’s impressive, as if a giant rock fell out of the sky one day and happened to land on an otherwise flat beach. I am sure geologists have a logical explanation for this:
At the beach there was a warning sign about the rough surf
and tides that is a classic: “Drowning is an once-in-a-lifetime experience.”
In Cambria we settled into our OK lodging for the next few
days, El Colibri. It is on Moonstone Beach which further north has many smaller
places of lodging and a few restaurants with ocean views. This section of town
has a boardwalk that parallels the road (which in turn parallels the 101) and
the boardwalk meanders along the cliff that is a few hundred feet above a rough
and hardly trammeled beach. I took off on the mile or two walk to the end of
Moonstone Beach to have some cocktails while the lady rested.
One of the beachside restaurants is locally famous and so
popular that they demand and get away with their payment policy: cash only. The
Seafood Chest reminds me of the Chart House in the 1980s – all the fish is
lightly broiled and slathered with butter and lemon. How original! But the
tourists love it and keep coming back for more. On our second night in town we
decided to give it a try, lest we be snobs. We let the early birds and people
that dine at “regular hours” do their early thing and got there in time to
watch the sunset around 8:30, then walked in to get a table. We were told it
would be about 90 minutes.
Fortunately, earlier that day after touring the Hearst
Castle (amazing) we stopped at the Hearst Ranch winery in the little hamlet of
San Simeon, which is right at the base of the road that leads to the Castle, to
do a little tasting. My traveling companion is always good about asking locals
for local information, including the question (that starts with a statement): “you
live here, where do you go out to eat, and where do the locals go?” The guy
pouring wine gave us a couple of names of in-town restaurants (vs. the strip of
coast where we stayed). This information came in handy as we took a pass on
what I labeled “Corporate Seafood” when told we had a 90 minute wait for a
table.
Finding The Black Cat Café was easy enough and out of the 20
or so tables with white linen covers, only a handful were occupied. It’s too
bad I couldn’t text all the people waiting for a table at Corporate Seafood,
because they missed out on some great food. The Black Cat has a menu that
appeals to locals and tourists alike and you could go there several times of
month and not tire of it. In fact, I wished I could go several times because there
were so many appealing choices – from the entrees alone: Maple Leaf duck
breast, Bella-Sage Farm braised rabbit, chicken or shrimp piccata, chipotle
shrimp linguine and wild caught salmon, to name a few.
My dining companion had stuffed pork chop with fontina cheese (pictured below).
Stuffed pork chop with fontina cheese
Two items on the menu had my attention from the start – sea
scallops and rare seared albacore tuna, the latter of which appealed to me more
so for its accompaniment that just the fish itself. I am a sucker for anything
that starts with “Vietnamese,” as in “Vietnamese cucumber slaw, shitake,
ginger, wasabi cream, shallots, peanuts, cilantro served with jasmine rice.
For as accomplished of a home chef that I am and student of food, I can’t cook scallops to save my proverbial life. It is one of those dishes that I just can’t pull off. I’ve tried brining them in milk, roasting them, sautéing them, you name it. It all turned into cat food, and we don’t even have a cat. So when I see them on the menu at a good restaurant, I want them. Our food server and the chef were gracious to make the Vietnamese dish and replace the tuna with the scallops. By far, this was the best meal of the trip.
My former wife, as was often her habit, wanted to meet the
chef.
On a different trip — in Madrid (Spain), the day we arrived
after flying the red eye from New York, we unpacked at our hotel, showered and
went for a walk to get on local time. We ended walking near Retiro Park and
looking for food, walked down a street to find Casona Retiro, which was open
but with hardly any patrons. The food was so good we still talk about that
meal. At the end of lunch (the last plate was chicken wings with a hunk of the
breast still attached in a butter tarragon sauce) my wife asked to meet the
chef. A big black guy with a gap between his two main upper teeth came out to
meet us. After that I never set any expectations when meeting chefs in
restaurants where we eat.
Back in “downtown” Cambria, Chef Mauricio came out to say
hello upon the request for us to thank him in person for a wonderful meal. It
turns out he is not only the chef, but also the owner. Mauricio is a
Mexican-American, presumably legal, who worked in California restaurants
starting when in his teens. He went to the Culinary Academy of America in Napa,
so his skills were honed by hours of hours of work and formal training. I’m
always curious how people manage the business side of restaurants so I asked
Chef Mauricio if he had used a small business loan to buy the restaurant. “No,”
he said, “just savings.” America is truly a great country.
Normally when you opt to cook with boneless skinless chicken breasts, you are training for a triathlon or body building contest (or the guy that played Tarzan in the 2016 remake) in which you are eating super lean meats and steamed broccoli to get that “six pack” for Abs. The other reason to eat the breast without the merits of bone or skin is speed and flexibility in flavor profile. Well I adapted one of Mark Bitman’s recipes (from How to Cook Everything) into one transformative quick meal that featured one of the most harmonious ingredient combinations I can ever recall.
But first, the cooking vessel. If you don’t have a 4-quart Le Creuset Brazer with lid, you must buy one (these also make great wedding gifts).
This is the 4-quart brazer with lid on:
You can fry, saute, braze with lid on or make a killer
“Grilled or Broiled Chicken Cutlets with Honey and Cumin,” as I did. Bitman
called for grilling or broiling the chicken but I thought #1, firing up the
grill is not worth the effort for boneless/skinless breasts, #2 it seemed that
the great liquids and flavors in the recipe could get lost by basting etc. and
#3 I could better control the done-ness of the chicken by cooking it on the
stovetop in a deep skillet. Nobody likes dried breast, especially me (a
lifelong dark meat guy). While I never did put the lid on to make this dish
(thus, it wasn’t truly brazed) the depth of the skillet was great for handling
the meat and the sauce without making a mess of the stovetop.
Other than changing the cooking method, I used peanut oil
instead of olive oil (peanut oil can handle higher heat to brown the chicken), sake
instead of dry sherry, white wine or orange juice, and I also added some
vegetable stock, plus I added a 1.5-inch thick cut of butter from a
quarter-pound section at the end of the cooking which gave the sauce a silky
texture. Butter makes everything better, anyway.
Two halves of a boneless skinless breast
3 Tbls Peanut oil
Half cup sake
Quarter cup vegetable stock
3 Tbls honey
1.5 Tbls ground cumin
1 teaspoon minced garlic
Salt and pepper
3 Tbls butter
Steps: Heat the skilled and just before putting
the chicken in add the peanut oil.
Brown chicken 3 minutes a side and then remove
Add sake, scrap brown bits off bottom of pan (on
medium high heat)
Add minced garlic, honey and cumin – stir and
cook for a minute or two
Cut the breasts in half (making four pieces)
Add veggie stock – cook on medium high heat two
more minutes when some of the liquid starts to evaporate, add the chicken to
the liquid and lower heat to simmer, cooking for 2 minutes.
Add the butter, stir the chicken and sauce
gently and constantly for about a minute then turn off heat.
Let stand for 2-3 minutes, then turn the chicken
pieces over and stir the sauce again.
Let stand for 2 minutes and serve.
We had this dish with sticky white rice and steamed
broccoli. Fantastic!
My former wife was burdened by my love of food and frequent
thinking and talking about food, which some may consider a compulsion, it was
her that encouraged me to start a food blog or contribute to one.
But I resisted until one day I went ahead and did it, thinking it could have saved my marriage. It didn’t.
I am what is legitimately now called an “accomplished home
chef” and my first career was as a baker, working in bakeries and restaurants. I
was trained by a Master German Baker beginning when I was 15 and worked for
Fritz Jansen until I was 19, when I moved to Aspen, CO and worked at Little
Cliff’s Bakery. I worked in restaurants as a bread, pastry and dessert baker
and was around some accomplished pro chefs when I lived and worked in Aspen. My
last restaurant job was when I moved to Boulder to start college as a
24-year-old freshman and I got a job as a baker at a “Good Earth” restaurant,
or some such name. But the early AM hours were killing me, in combination with
morning school and night studying. Something had to give so I left the food
business for afternoon retail work to get me through the rest of college.
Does this add up for me to be a natural blogger? Not so
fast.
After a little research I found many food blogs, even awards
for bloggers from Saveur, among others. Probably a marketing tactic (called
reader engagement, like most social media; the word engagement used to be used
nearly exclusively to describe a commitment to wed, but I am so old school).
Then I remembered my first book idea (still incomplete!)
after my first trip to Spain, tentatively called ‘Good Eats.’ I was on a train
from Barcelona to Valencia where I was to catch a ferry to Mallorca (which I
did, but just a day later than planned) when our train broke down.
Coincidentally and beneficially, the train came to rest next to a village. We
were about 40 miles south of Valencia. The conductor told us passengers that we
would be a few hours here so we might as well get off the train and visit the village.
The village was an old Spanish village and I don’t recall
its name. You had to walk up a cobblestone road to get to the village. It was
hot. It was hot on the train even when it was moving and the only relief from
the heat was to pull all of the windows down in the train. Once the train
stopped you wanted to flee, it was so hot. It was also hot walking up that road
to the village in the afternoon sun. I think I felt like Hemingway walking
toward the arena for an afternoon bull fight.
Not far inside the village I spotted a doorway to a square,
stone building, with long rows of beads as a door. This is a genuine village, I
thought, with a beaded door so that air could come in the building but flies
would be discouraged. Isn’t it curious how it actually works? I mean a fly can
slip between a row of vertically hung beads, given the size of flies and the
gaps between the strung beads. But they don’t. Above the door a word said “Bar”
and that was enough for me. A cold beer sounded heavenly.
Once inside I ordered the beer and drank it rather quickly.
When the waitress came over to ask if I would have another, she also asked if I
wanted food. I asked what they had. She said ham sandwiches. Eating a ham
sandwich with a second cold beer inside a cool stone building on a hot
September afternoon 40 miles from Valencia with no place else to go was exactly
what transpired next.
What happened after that was transformative. When asked by
others, as I sometimes am, “how did I become so interested, involved and active
in cooking, eating and talking about food?”
Normally attribute it to my mother, a modest cook with a big heart. But
she made great Italian food and I was a half-Italian (and half-Irish) boy. I
cooked with my mom. The red gravy (meat sauce), hand-made raviolis and
hand-made sausages were our favorite family meals and I mastered Italian while
still a teenager.
I realize now, however, that it wasn’t my mom or her cooking
that made me love food and cooking. It was that afternoon in Spain when the dark-haired
Spanish woman with perfectly tanned and toned legs brought me a second beer and
a ham sandwich. The sandwich was small. The bread was the size of a large
dinner roll. There was no spread or condiments on the bread. The only
ingredient inside the bread were a few slices of ham and a thick slice of
tomato. That was it. And one bite did it, sort of like when you meet someone
and it is love at first sight, or “you had me at hello” as the saying goes, which
to me is one of the best lines ever expressed in English and no, I don’t think
it is a cliché.
That ham sandwich in Spain, I would later learn, was made
from the infamous “Iberico” pigs that free-range and feast on acorns.
Consequently, the pork is all-world by virtue of the black Iberian pigs’ environment
and not surprisingly, what they eat or are fed. The sandwich transformed me
from being interested in good food to becoming passionate about it. For years I
have been saying “life is too short to eat mediocre food” and I mean it. It
started in September, 1989, 40 miles south of Valencia.
When the 1990 recession hit I lost my income because I was
in a sales commission industry and one day the industry was fine and the next
day it was dead. I started freelance writing, pouring beer at a brew pub and
doing neighborhood handyman work and chores to get by. I contacted an editor at
Bon Appetite and pleaded my case to be one of their contributing writers. I
sent proof that I had a degree in journalism (I still have it!). I sent some of
clips, including one that published in the Boulder Daily Camera when I interned
with a features editor on the daily newspaper while earning my degree at CU.
That clip’s headline was called “Taming the Game” and I had done a story on how
local chefs were serving venison, elk, goose and other game on their menus and
how they took the gaminess out of the meat. Now I think, why would you want to
take the genuine flavor out of the meat? But that’s another matter.
I received a very polite rejection slip from the Bon
Appetite editor. But I persisted and sent more clips and another letter. The
phone rang one day and it was the editor, who could not have been sweeter in
telling me why she couldn’t hire me to contribute to her magazine. She spoke in
the same tone as a would-be lover, explaining why she couldn’t give you her
love.
“You seem very capable, Gary, and certainly enthusiastic.
And your clips are solid. But we just can’t publish a person that is unknown to
the food business. It’s just too much of a risk for us,” said the editor in her
sweet tone.
She could have been saying, if I was pining for her, “Ah that’s awfully nice that you feel this way about me and you are a sweet man. And while I like you a great deal and hope we can remain friends, I’m sorry but I just don’t have the same feelings that you have.”
Rejected, and understanding why, I gave up that pursuit and
got a journalism job at a business weekly. Immersed in my new career, I forgot
about food writing, even though I remained serious about cooking. About that time
I took a trip with friends to Santa Fe for a cooking class. I brought home a
new passion for New Mexican food. For several years in the 1990s I barbecued a
turkey for Thanksgiving, which I stuffed with lemons, limes and onions and
rubbed the bird with a delightful spice package with the flavors of New Mexico.
Served with creamy polenta and sautéed poblano peppers, it is a splendid meal.
Which brings me to now. So I am going to start a blog but it won’t just be about some cool dish me or a friend made. It will be some of that but mostly, I am going to talk about other people’s food – Pro and Amateur alike. I’m going to take food pictures. I am going to interview cooks and chefs, and take their pictures. I will write food stories. Some my own, and some other people’s food stories. For example, I will likely write about how we came to love Snake River beef from Idaho and in particular, its New York strip steaks. Look at these!
I may write about the history of food, or how the expression
for corn came to be, “knee high by the 4th of July.” There is plenty
of other food-related lore. I don’t know that I will get political about food
but everything is open game, no pun intended.
You probably get the drift by now. Food stories. With all
the foodies out there today, I think there is a ready-made audience.
Grilled Bourbon Chicken with Strawberry Rhubarb pie for dessert, anyone?
