A rundown of my visit to UNC (crosspost with Houston Chowhounds Yahoo! Group)

So, I was on a training course at UNC this week. Although most of our meals were served at the conference center where I was staying, I did have a chance to try a few places in the greater Chapel Hill area. As is usual for me, beer takes precedence over food when I am traveling, so stopped at the two brewpubs in town, Top of The Hill and the Carolina Brewery. Both had a mixed bag in terms of food – fine for what it was but nothing worth traveling to. Top of The Hill seemed obsessed with fusion type things, serving what they called a sirloin bruschetta, basically slices of top sirloin steak over brioche covered in gravy. A strange idea but really tasty.

In my opinion, Carolina Brewery had the superior beer – with an Oktoberfest that was exceptional – malty, sweet and not noticeably strong. A white beer was also available that was pretty nicely balanced, but they served a British-style summer beer called Golden Ale that was amazingly drinkable and a nice
alternative to the tired old ‘Blonde Ale’ served as the light option in most
brewpubs.

Top of The Hill had a workable IPA that I drank a large amount of over my week there as well as a pretty tasty Imperial Stout named after Tar Heel Lewis Black. They also served a Pilsner that was really well put together, nicely balanced, easy drinking, and with the interesting ‘bite’ of the namesake malt that characterizes those beers.

I had dinner at a local comfort kitchen called Mama Dips. Apparently a famous place, I had chicken and dumplings that were OK, if not a little salty. My companion’s smothered pork chops were the highlight at our table. My favorite item was the special pie that evening – chocolate pecan. I normally don’t like this, finding the chocolate an afterthought to an otherwise great pie. I got it anyway on the reco of the waitress, and it was the best chocolate pecan pie I have ever tasted. The chocolate flavor was blended into the filling. It was perfect. I could have eaten 2 or 3 whole pies that night.

Finally, if in town and looking for a small pub serving local and hard to find
east coast micros, Tylers Tap House is a good option. I had a number of hard to find beers there on a visit late in my week, including a fun ‘imperial’ pumpkin/spice beer from Weyerbacher brewing in PA. I also had a number of beers from Duck Rabbit brewing, as well as Carolina Brewing Company (not to be confused with the Carolina Brewery …)

Unfortunately, I missed out on the best of central Carolina BBQ – was not able
to get to Allen and Sons just north of Chapel Hill, as they close at 5PM on
weeknights, and also did not get to the famous ‘Pit’ in Raleigh since I did not
have a car of my own, and since I wasn’t traveling with chowhounds I couldn’t
convince anyone to drive there
A return trip is in the works, so I can get to Asheville, Raleigh, Wilmington
and other places around the state.

Thought I’d share! Thanks to the hounds that pointed me in the right directions - @viva_victoria, @hedrives, @msdclark, everyone else!

Beavers!!!! (crosspost with Houston Chowhounds Yahoo! Group)

It’s been a few months since I posted much of anything to the board, but the wife and I ended up at Beavers last night. At this point it’s not news to anyone here that fantastic food is being served up at the converted icehouse on Sawyer, but I’m gonna go ahead and say it again: Mr Jones knows what the hell he is doing, folks.

I remember at PBTD I overheard JJ vigorously (the vigor may or may not have been inspired by a few Southern Star Bombshell Blonde Ales discussing his understanding and vision for ‘Texas Coastal Cuisine’, and how there were some that thought this just meant fancy BBQ. His perspective was that classic techniques and focus were long overdue to be applied to the foods of the western gulf coast – and not just the french techniques from New Orleans – but to all of the homestyle cooking that has gotten so mashed up in east and southeast Texas. I may have some of the details wrong (I was eavesdropping after all), but I remember being reenergized to go and try his cooking again based on his excitement and passion.

I’ve been a few times since that day, but it was topped off with last night. The specials were generally stupendous. First was a softshell crab sandwich. The crab was dredged in cornmeal and some spice, fried to perfection and served open faced on brioche with veg and shaved pineapple. It was awesome.

Next was a dozen San Leon oysters with a lemony foam and bacon. IMO, Gulf oysters this time of year are not at their best, and so the lemon and bacon were a nice counter on top of the shellfish. Our table was mixed on these – they were OK, but I really felt it was a nice way to work with an ingredient as it was. It would have been quite easy to just serve the oysters on the halfshell and work with the excuse that October has an ‘R’ in it, so it was OK.

The topper was a cowpea (crowders I think?) salad with a spicy marinade/vinaigrette, red onion and tempura battered and fried okra. The spice, vinegar bite and cold cooked peas were seriously great. A really nice and well executed play on cowboy caviar.

Interestingly we ran into a bunch of HouCHies and ended up dining with them, and later I found out that there was another table of HouCHies in there at the same time – so obviously I’m preaching to the choir here .

However, it was simply that good of a meal and I wanted to share it.

A visit to RDG for Houston Restaurant Week (crosspost with Houston Chowhound Yahoo! Group)

This evening the wife, a couple friends and I made a first visit to RDG for Houston Restaurant Week. It was a pretty enjoyable experience, and deserves a writeup here for all to see (methinks) .

Forgiving the fact that the restrooms are downstairs, the overall layout really is quite nice and certainly encourages what I would characterize as a civil see-and-be-seen atmosphere. People preen and show off, but its not what the place is all about. The small but sheik cocktail area downstairs is quiet, open and kinda’ casual, especially since there is a constant traffic of people enering the restaurant and filing back to the bathrooms. The quasi-floating stair (steps are backlit somehow with lighting) is plastered with signs encouraging patrons that have had anything at all to drink to take the elevator. Since it is in the rear of the restaurant this may be more of an attempt to control overall foot traffic than to ensure safety, but whatever – on to the upstairs.

The bar and dining room really is stunning. Outfitted in a subdued poplar/white pine (ish) wood motif, the slim granite tables match well with the completely recessed lighting. The noise level is pretty high – but with the small tables I didn’t have any trouble hearing my tablemates during dinner. The din actually made me feel more like I was part of an honest-to-goodness scene than trying to eat in a football stadium (as places like Glass Wall can often feel). A well done balance for RDG, especially considering the Tanglewood/River Oaks crowd that seemed to be smashing in on our Friday night visit.

On to dinner – we dined from the HRW menu, and ordered a couple of specialty cocktails. I had the RDG martini, which was a vodka martini flavored with watermelon. I didn’t notice this description on the menu – kinda annoying, since I don’ generally prefer vodka martinis or fruit flavored drinks. It was generally OK though. One of my companions tried to order beer, and was treated slightly like a pariah for even asking – the restaurant doesn’t even have a single beer on tap. What a waste. I can’t say I’m not surprised, but it’s simply ridiculous how fine dining restaurants simply ignore beer as a reasonable accompaniment to food. Shameful, really.

I ordered the tortilla soup, shrimp and grits and ice cream sandwich. Once I finished my martini, I ordered a glass of the Richard Partridge 2006 Chard. At $10/glass, it was certainly not a steal, but I figured it would balance out the slightly spicy flavors of a tortilla soup and the grits pretty well. In honesty, I ordered it as the ‘Robert Partridge’ Chard. May explain why the server looked at me like I was crazy at the time

My first glass, served with one of those little decanters, was so sour I could barely take a sip. I immediately told our server, who oddly took the decanter (not the glass) and told me ’someone would taste it for me’. He disappeared. I proceeded to finish my soup and visit the downstairs restrooms, coming back to still no replacement. The waiter finally returned slightly before our entrees were served – informing me that they had opened a new bottle and this was ‘much better’.

He was right, it was much better – it actually tasted of Chardonnay.

I felt vindicated that whomever tasted my wine agreed it was turning to vinegar. However, I was also a little annoyed that my server had to let me know my claim of dislike of the wine needed to be ‘proven’. This annoyance faded as the slightly buttery Chard began to work really nicely with the grits. I let it go.

Wife got the beer glazed skirt, and it was really very good. They allowed her to order it medium, and although it had some ‘chew’ it was exceptionally beefy and very tender. My shrimp were cooked perfectly – the grits were buttery and wonderful and were soaked in the same spicy enchilada sauce-y broth that was in the tortilla soup. It was a nice main course.

In general all four of us were very pleased with our food.

Dessert was an ice cream sandwich. It was a scoop of choco in between two sticky (marshmallow?) cookies. It was good, nothing special. I had a cup of coffee and we called it a night.

The most shocking thing of the entire evening was the ‘normal’ menu. Entrees (which for fairness sake do include two sides) were on average about $50. The 2lb lobster main was priced at $68. The classic Cafe Annie dish – coffee crusted filet with potato pancake and (something else) was $48. With starter+main leading me to a $70-$80 per person cost BEFORE wine, I’m not sure that RDG is going to be on my list for return without the benefit of the HRW menu.

Get there while you can and HRW is still on – just make sure if you get some bad wine, show a little patience and take a look around at the beautiful people and space. It’ll get fixed and it won’t really matter that much to you

Tasting notes – Saint Arnold DR#3

Saint Arnold Divine Reserve #3 – Double IPA. Bottled 2006.

Appearance: Pours quite thin. No head, very little effervescence. Color a light copper, in the low 20s. Avoided settled yeast on the pour – there was a good bit of it for a beer that was not bottle conditioned.

Aroma: dominated by a malty sweetness. Just a hint of alcohol. Hops not really noticeable in the head at first, beer still pretty cold.

Flavor: Hop bitterness amazingly strong, overwhelms almost all other flavors. Use of some of the higher alpha varieties (Chinook? Simcoe?) seems likely, as the bitterness turns into a dryness on the back of the palate. Not much hop flavor – spiciness there somewhere, but doesn’t have that all-around hop flavor that I like so much about strong IPAs. Malt profile actually really nice – and quite noticeable once the bitterness subsides a little. A nice balance of crystal and caravienne. Getting all of that lovely roasty/toasty flavors, and just a hint of caramel sweetness at the very very end of each sip. It’s the malty finish that makes me want to go back for more. No noticeable fruity esters, no yeast or bread flavors.

Mouthfeel: Thin. Carbonation very low, pretty close to out of style. No warming alcohol notes, even at 9.5%. This was brewed extraordinarily carefully to prevent fusels from developing.

Overall Impression: It has aged too long. What I’ve learned drinking this beer is that big IPAs have a more delicate balance of the big flavors than I had previously thought. Time has not been kind to that balance. have so darn much going on that it doesn’t take a lot of entropy to put that out of whack. The good points of this beer are simply shadows of what used to be great. I need to drink this as quickly as I can.

12 places to drink beer that aren’t Flying Saucer

I’m not usually one to pick at a place where beer can be consumed. However, the recent discussion on the Houston Press Eating Our Words blog on ‘most overrated’ places got me thinking, and I couldn’t think of a more overrated place to drink beer than the Flying Saucer in downtown Houston.

Don’t get me wrong. I like the Flying Saucer. I think it’s a fine bar, it has a massive selection, but I just feel like too many times it gets a pass simply based on this fact. The major challenge at a place like that is keeping the draft beer fresh – meaning fresh lines. It’s a formidable challenge, and one the Saucer doesn’t do an especially good job at in my experience. I’ve basically resorted to drinking whatever is on the ‘fire sale’ that day, just because I know it won’t be stale beer-line beer. (As a side note, the fire sale beer is almost always something unique and tasty, so that’s not necessarily a bad thing).

I just tire of people constantly fawning over the place. When it’s crowded, which it often is at happy hour and prime beer drinking time, it is AMAZINGLY loud, and the service can be a little hit and miss if you don’t have a table and want to just order pints at the bar.

So, I put a comment on this post nominating The Flying Saucer as one of the most overrated places in Houston, and I quanitifed it by saying there were easily 12 better beer bars in town. Another commenter challenged me on this, so I’m going to make my list:

1. Anvil
2. Kelvin Arms
3. Brewery Tap
4. Gingerman
5. Under the Volcano
6. Market Square Bar and Grill
7. Little Woodrows (Bellaire)
8. Kays Lounge
9. Kennealeys
10. The Stags Head
11. The Mucky Duck
12. Hans Bier Haus

I could keep going, and going, and going….

Oven roasted brisket

I got bamboozled into buying a packer brisket at Kroger on 4′th of July weekend. They were only 98 cents/lb, and I just can’t resist cheap meat. I’ve made this mistake many times before only to toss out the spoiled meat in a guilty rage some weeks later, feeling like a complete waste.

See, I don’t own a smoker. I have  Weber grill, and I have successfully cooked one of these giant briskets on it once. It took all weekend (just about – all of a Saturday and into the wee hours on Sunday) and an immense amount of care and focus. The result was stupendous, as home-smoked brisket always is. However the work was simply overbearing. When I’m at the store looking at a cheap brisket, the sitting outside for hours, smelling like smoke for days and staying up all night parts seem far away and almost glamorous. However, once I get home the reality of how much work it really is comes crashing in – and this wonderful cut of meat sits in my fridge (or worse, my freezer in the garage), until it just about is ready to walk out on its own.

The last three or four times I’ve bought one of these has ended in a guilt-filled moment where I turn my head, cry a single tear and drop the brisket (still in the cryo packing) into the big black CoH trash can – vowing never to be tricked again.

But the pattern repeats itself. I eat fantastic brisket at someone’s house, I see it on sale, my brain thinks ‘man, I can DO this!’ and suddenly I’ve got another one in my fridge staring at me. This Thursday was the watershed moment for the latest purchase. The sell by date was the week before. The cryo pack was starting to fill with liquid/blood that had drained from the meat.

It was time to do something.

I swallowed down all my Texan pride and made a fateful decision: I would oven roast the thing. I did some Internet searching and settled on a wet marinade. I found a recipe that sounded good, and then I ended up completely modifying it, although I did follow the cooking instructions pretty well to the tee.

It turned out pretty good. I took out the tip/point end after about 5 hours, and it came out really nice, somewhere in between real smoked brisket and plain old roast beef. The blade/flat end I left in until about 11 hrs total, lowering the heat to 170 for the final 6 hours cooking time. It was overcooked and tough, but flavorful – it will make a nice chop for tacos or eggs.

Bottom line, I’m not afraid of losing my Texas citizenship by treating a brisket in this way – it still tastes like brisket, and it will keep me from throwing away perfectly good meat when I get seduced again at the grocery store.

Ytee’s Oven Roasted Brisket

1	large onion, chopped
½ cup	liquid smoke (Colgins)
½ cup	Worcestershire sauce
2 tbsp	Tex-Joy all-purpose seasoning
1 clutch	garlic, pressed
¼ cup	chili sauce (Heinz)
¼ cup	light brown sugar

1. Wash and dry the brisket.
2. Trim as much fat and silverskin as possible from the meat, and separate the blade and tip ends, roughly cutting the meat into two equal size pieces.
3. Wash and dry the meat again
4. Mix the marinade ingredients together in a large mixing bowl.
5. Put each half into a large roasting dish, just a bit larger than the meat itself.
6. Pour half of the marinade into each pan, and turn the brisket to cover it fully.
7. Cover each roasting dish tightly with foil.
8. Roast at 275 for ~5-6 hours, until internal temps are about 200 degrees
9. Wrap tightly in foil and let rest for about 30 minutes-1 hour
10. Refrigerate or serve.

A rundown of the Uni tasting at The Rainbow Lodge

Some great pics/add’l thoughts here: Instant Gratification

I haven’t been to Rainbow Lodge since the days of Lance Youngs, so certainly this was my first trip to the location on Ella. We gathered in the Tied Fly Bar, and since I was in for the wine pairing I had a skyball cocktail before dinner. Enjoyed some nice conversation with SteveP and Sammy_Ford, and we all were in eager anticipation of what was to come. We were escorted into a large open room with a huge table set relatively sparsely for about 20 people. The front end of the table had no chairs – only two platters filled with live Pacific sea urchin – at least 15 or 20 of them. They were beautiful – dark and purple, and much bigger than I had imagined. The room itself had a pitched ceiling, and a loft area was visible up and above us. Someone more familiar with the place (I think it was tastybitz) mentioned this area led off to the wine room upstairs.

Course Zero – live uni demo and tasting

Randy Rucker came in with a great big steel prep bowl and did a demo of how to butcher the urchins. It’s a pretty simple process, actually. A large pair of kitchen shears is used, the tip inserted just next to the mouth. A cut is made about halfway down each side of the urchin and then the whole shell is cracked open. The innards are remarkably sparse – I would judge that about 75% of the material inside is roe, with the remainder being liver and other organs. The creature is most likely filled with some type of liquid/seawater that aids digestion, and this obviously is purged when it is removed from water. Randy offered all of us that wanted some a taste of this ‘live’ urchin. Although I dropped a huge glob on my shirt, the roe was a very unique flavor – somewhere in between the intense buttery minerality of the big gate crab I had in China and the freshest oysters Ive ever tasted. It was not nearly as iodinic as I expected, and the texture was much creamier than the uni I have had at sushi restaurants. It really was a flavor to ponder and think about, and was an experience I will not forget.

Course 1:  uni popcorn – uni powder seasoned poporn

Wine: Roderer Estate sparkling

I don’t think I realized this was ‘the’ uni popcorn until I got to the bottom of the conical dish it was served in and found the little bits of uni powder that had aggregated there. The popcorn didn’t taste of uni at all – but boy did the little bits – mega concentrated flavor of uni roe, caked solid. The folks at my end of the table were all a little disappointed that these weren’t a bit more spread out over the popcorn itself.

This got served in the middle of the urchin demonstration, so impact was a little lost. I also ended up letting my sparkling warm, and so didn’t really enjoy it that much.

Course 2: live uni with olive oil, persimmon vinegar & chive

Wine: ibid

The most interesting thing about this dish was how the uni changed with the ‘quick cure’ (Randy’s words) done tableside with the vinegar. The roe was much firmer, and closer to the texture I was accustomed to. The eggs were still noticeable in the roe, and it still had a creamy texture and the lovely sharp salinity/metallic flavors. The micro-chive wasn’t especially noticeable on my dish, and the persimmon vinegar was a nice whip to the little bit of sweetness in the uni itself.

Course 3: raw uni with smoked miso and brown butter

Wine pairing: ibid

This little dish was served in abalone shells. Raw uni was placed on top of a dollop of smoked miso and sprinkled with flakes of dehydrated brown butter. The best thing about this dish was the dehydrated butter – a genius idea that inspired me to want to put it on nachos. The little butter flakes melted instantly in the mouth, providing the sensation of butter ‘fullness’ without any hint of greasiness. The uni of course, was fantastic but I got a little too much miso in my bite – it really overwhelmed the uni flavors and some of the freshness. Not everyone around me felt the same – but not everyone around me gobbled down all the miso either

Course 4: baby white geoduck clam & a vinaigrette made from uni, meyer lemon  & caramel oil

Wine: Ravines Dry Riesling, Finger Lakes 2006

I.Like.Geoduck.

Pronounced ‘Gooey-duck’, it is a native North American clam/bivalve with a tongue that can reach many feet in length. It’s exceptionally tasty when cooked correctly -  just the right amount of chewy and without the normal depth of earthy flavors that can accompany other clams. This dish paired it with a really delicate vinaigrette, the meyer lemon floral flavors pronounced and the caramel flavor subdued. Honestly, uni flavor was not really apparent until the last bite, but it was a great dish, something that could inspire an entire salad-style entrée. The dry Riesling didn’t have the normal pop of sweetness, but the acidity and minerality worked well. Riesling was definitely the one wine I knew I would be drinking (the only thing my non-oenophile mind could come up with to pair with the complexity of uni), so no surprises with the selection.

Course 5: lots of different eggs both hot and cold

Wine: Laird Pinot Grigio, Carneros 2004

This was my personal favorite dish.

In a small shallow bowl were uni, paddlefish roe, a slow poached duck egg on top of salsify ‘dirt’, which is the root vegetable roasted heartily and chopped finely. It resembles earth and has a taste reminiscent of bacon. Poured over all of this was a warm dashi.  This dish worked magnificently. The duck egg became the sauce – the dashi and salsify melded together into a smoky broth and the uni and slightly salty and inky paddlefish roe really brought out the sweetness of the uni. It was really something special. The only challenges to the dish were in balance – the dashi, at first, made the salsify look a little strange. Once it sat for a moment it turned into a lovely paste-like consistency and was easier to eat with the other components. Also, the duck egg was a little large – a quail egg might have had the same effect and been in better balance with the other ingredients. However, as anonymouseater and I agreed when the argument is over the better merits of a quail vs a duck egg in a dish, you’ve got pretty good food in front of you. The wine pairing left us both perpelexed at first – but this pinot grigio was quite sweet, and was really a great counterbalance to the rich flavors of the egg dish. In my opinion it was the most successful pairing of the evening.

Course 6: almond gnocchi with caviar, coddled buttermilk & uni

Wine: Trevor Jones Chardonnay, Australia 2007

Of all the dishes, I had the most trouble ‘getting’ this one. The almond gnocchi was really more like a biscotti in texture. It was somewhat bland at first taste, but had a nice sweetness that hit the back of the palate. The coddled buttermilk was sour to be sure, and the uni stood alone as a flavor component. There were a few bitter baby greens on the plate, and my first few bites left my mouth in confusion. These flavors weren’t melding together. However, as I ate more of it and started chasing with the Chardonnay, things began to meld, at least a bit. The Chardonnay had the sweet qualities normally indicating an all-steel fermentation, but  the label mentioned some limited oak barrel agin and malolactic fermentation. It was OK wine with an OK dish.

Course 7: slow poached iowa pork belly seasoned with carbonized onion powder & re-seared, creamed kimchee and uni toast

Wine: Buil & Guin Gine Gine (Priorat ??)

This was really something, and was my second favorite dish. Randy described this pork belly as having been poached for three days (in an immersion circulator, of course), and was the only dish which he advised us how to eat, recommending we  make sure and get each of the components in each bite. A powerful warning, as the ‘carbonized’ onion powder was pungent stuff, meant to add a ‘grilled’ flavor to the sous-vide meat. The house made kimchee stole the show, as it had a strong vinegar kick and a layered spiciness that worked well against the saltiness of the uni and the astringency and smoky flavors of the carbonized onion. Whould’a thunk it – but the pork belly almost acted as a simple canvas for these other flavors to play around on. This was the first time I had ever had a Priorat, and I really liked this blend. However, the pairing was uninspired. In my opinion the juiciness of the wine was wasted alongside the layers of flavor in this dish. However, anonymouseater disagreed strongly, and thought the blend of big red grapes was a good counterpoint to the engineered nature of the dish. Side note – the carbonized onion captured a childhood flavor for me – my grandmothers fried okra, which she would roll in cornmeal and absolutely blast for me. All these years I’ve been eating and loving ‘carbonized’ okra and never event knew it J

Course 8 (BONUS): uni and micro chives over forbidden rice

Wine: ibid

This was the third place dish for me. Simple, elegant, beautiful and delicious. The forbidden rice was evocative of Italian arborio – nutty and slightly creamy. It melded really nicely with the wonderful dollop of uni roe on top. The chive offered a nice mellow crunch in each bite. The Priorat worked well with this dish – balancing out the nutty fullness of the rice in a way it could not with the pork belly.

Course 9: sea urchin frozen yogurt & our papaya ceviche

Wine: Yalumba Botrytis Viognier (Wrattonbully, 2006)

This was another dish I just didn’t get. The uni yogurt was good but it tasted like frozen yogurt. I didn’t get a lot of uni flavor from it. The papaya ceviche was a slice of house-pickled green papaya, which was intensely sour. It all balanced nicely, but after the previous two dishes it was quite honestly a little bit of a letdown. This dish may have worked better as an intermezzo between the egg dish and the almond gnocchi dish. I liked the late harvest viognier, it was tasty and not too sweet. It worked quite well with the bitter/sour flavors of the dish.

Course 10: uni and white chocolate

Wine: Kings Estate vin glace late harvest pinot gris (Willamette valley)

I’m not a fan of white chocolate. In general, I avoid it. However, this dish has reintroduced me to white chocolate as a vehicle for tasty emulsions like this. Randy has already gained my utmost respect for introducing me to the joy that is the foie-gras milkshake – a dish that on the surface sounds disgusting, but is equally ingenious in using a milk/chocolate base for an emulsion with savory fat. This dish works on the same principle. The cocoa butter just extends and deepens the uni flavors, and the touch of sweetness from the white chocolate shavings and crunch from the walnuts were the icing on this proverbial cake. What an end point to a great meal, and a dish I will not soon forget. The vin glace was done in the eiswein style, but didn’t have the depth of a traditional ice wine. It simply didn’t have a chance against this wonderfully complex dessert.

BUT WAIT … THERE’S MORE

Course 11: split and lightly seared spotted prawn

Shortly after the meal ended, tastybitz gave Randy a hard time – he had seen some spotted prawn in the walk-in before dinner and wanted to know if we were going to get some. A joke, but it paid off. Shortly after this Randy came out with platters of split prawns in olive oil and garlic, which had been flash seared with a handheld kitchen torch. The flavor was really nice – sweet and meaty, somewhere in between the flavor of Pacific tiger prawn and the deepwater Gulf ruby reds I had in Alabama last summer. Someone asked Randy what you called a seafood course after dessert – I call it delicious!

A return to The Italian Cafe (crosspost with HouCH Yahoo! Group)

A few months ago I absolutely skewered The Italian Cafe on this board. It’s a really popular BYOB spot out here in Clear Lake, in Pasadena at NASA Road 1 and Kirby. I’ve felt a little guilty about that ever since, as my wife thinks maybe I was putting too much weight on one visit and not giving the place enough credit for the atmosphere, which really is grand. Needless to say, we had a bottle of Nickel and Nickel 2006 Suscol Ranch Merlot and wanted a place to take it – and decided close to home was better than in town.

I actually suggested The Italian Cafe, wanting to give it another chance after thinking about it a little more. We had a resonably nice visit – and I don’t think the place is on my ‘never’ list anymore, but it’s not a recommendation for someone to drive all the way out here to get to.

PROS

The space: It is tucked into a little strip center slot, narrow and deep. The open kitchen is tight, clean and run very efficiently – it’s actually quite entertaining just to watch them work. Specials are laid out on a front table – in my case I ordered a roast pork loin, turned around to the kitchen and I saw the entire loin that had just come out of the oven. Ingredients are stacked on shelves that face the dining room. Things are a little tight, but the place ‘buzzes’ without being overwhelming. Big boisterous groups, couples and families all get along well without getting in one another’s way. Pretty well the definition of ‘casual bistro’.

The family-owned atmosphere: The owner sits on a chair in the front and greets everyone, and his wife wanders through the restaurant, fixing this or that. The walls are covered with pictures of the owner’s travels, and a big LCD screen rotates through digital shots. At the cashier stand is a set of flyers announcing the next trip to Italy, and inviting whomever to join in. Pretty cool. The expediter announces your number (you pick up your own food) and does last minute plating (ubiquitous chopped parsley goes on every plate)

The corkage fee: Only $5. A steal.

CON

The food: It’s not bad, as I previously harped on. It’s just not good either. My previous visits where I had tinny tomato sauce and limp bread were probably an anomaly. The place turns out pretty freshly cooked plates most of the time with reasonably good ingredients. However, I described it to my wife when we left as ‘Perfectly Acceptable Italian Food’. There are just some clumsy touches that keep the good ingredients and homey recipes from being really great. The boxed penne (DeCecco – a solid brand I’ve used before at home) that comes with everything is cooked to order – so its not mushy or anything terrible like that, but it adds a serious amount of water to everything it touches (is it impossible to drain this stuff?). My pork was seasoned really nicely, but overcooked and a bit dry. The gorgonzola salad I had was fine – lots of cheese – but way too much vinegar in the dressing. The cream sauce served with my pork was actually well balanced – but my plate had easily 1+ tablespoons of capers in it. The salty, briny caper flavor completely overwhelmed everything else. The wife had meat lasagna – and it came out looking really nice – a huge portion. However, the piece she had was all ricotta – I like ricotta, but I tasted almost no sausage or the flavor of the delicate and quite good marinara.

BOTTOM LINE

Sigh. I really want to like this place, and the atmosphere is *almost* worth it, but the food leaves something to be desired. If you’re ever looking for a place in Clear Lake with a low corkage, a good atmosphere and unimpressive yet Perfectly Acceptable Italian Food, ‘The Italian Cafe’ is your spot – but not worth a special trip out here. Stick with Collinas ITL.

When men were men and queso was tasty

Last week a post on the Eating Our Words blog at the Houston Press documented the news that the fellows over at El Patio have licensed a number of recipes from the Tijerina family’s now defunct Felix Mexican Restaurant and have hired a former cook from the old place on Westheimer and Montrose.  I’m pretty excited about this news, as Felix is one of the places I grew up eating at with my family. I still remember going there as a kid, eating cheese enchiladas and getting my cheeks pinched by Mrs. Tijerina at every visit.

However, the post inspired some vitriol. Included was a picture of the famous Felix queso. Admittedly, it looks gross. It’s made with lots of grease (rumor has it they used drippings from the chile gravy), and has a runny, red tinge to it. Comments on the blog post ranged from ‘unappetizing’ to ’sucks ass’ to ‘fucking nasty’.

I felt I had to intervene, and so I posted a defense of Felix queso.

A lot going on in my reply, but it inspired some additional negative comments in response. What’s been rattling around in the old noggin is a response to a remark made in one of the following posts. I’ll quote it here because I think it’s a bold statement:

… Felix’s might represent Houston Tex Mex from the 1950’s, but Houston has changed a bit since then. There is much better Tex Mex around now …

I really, really question this, and I think it gets to the heart of my point. One of my issues with Tex-Mex restaurants ‘nowadays’ is that the queso (and other dishes – another blog post there)  is downright boring – and I’m not entirely sure anything else is better either. One thing I can be sure of – most menus are all the same. Sticking to queso, I’m no Velveetist, but paying $5 for a small bowl of Velveeta/EasyMelt and Ro-tel tomatoes is **NOT OK**. Maybe some of these more ‘modern’ Tex-Mex places have got some new dishes right – but good, unique restaurant specific queso has been lost to history. In my opinion, when queso had recipes, it was better. When queso had character and secret ingredients, it was better. Like it or not, these original Tex-Mex places had really tasty queso because they worked at it. Nobody does that anymore. It’s all the same stuff.

As we all try so hard to find the next little hole in the wall place that has great tacos or tamales or whatever, I worry that our Houston Tex-Mex heritage is dying a little bit. Is Houston’s Tex-Mex to be forever relegated to books and old school restaurants that everybody disdains simply because they are old? Are we destined for a future when every Tex-Mex place in Houston is a clone of Gringos or Lupe Tortilla? Thank goodness for El Patio, Thank goodness for the recipes from Felix and thank God there’s finally a queso to argue about.

We’ve all been missing it for a while, whether we knew it or not. The 50’s were a long time ago – but it was indeed a time when men were men and queso was tasty.

Crab Fest 2009 – Bolivar’s Back!

Not but a few short months ago I wrote a sad rambling post about how much I missed Bolivar and about my undying love for the  Texas Crab Festival – so when I heard that the crab fest was back on and was going to be held jointly with Hayes Carll’s Stingaree Music Festival this year, I was ectstatic.

Bolivar’s Back indeed!

Crystal Beach and the entire Bolivar peninsula is obviously still struggling under the heavy weight of recovery. Homemade signs at the cut off to High Island implore you to call a 409 area code number to ’save our pass’ – referencing Rollover Pass, the man-made cut at the thinnest point in the peninsula that some say helped the waters wash completely over and obliterate the community of Gilchrist and nearby Caplen Shores. Flat beach and tidal pools now abut highway 87 where 15 foot dunes used to be. Debris has for the most part been piled up everywhere, and mountains of sand  ’dumps’ are along the side of the road every few miles – the tailings of the huge operation to move what mother nature washed ashore. 

In Crystal Beach and farther towards Point Bolivar, much of the first two rows of homes were pretty well damaged or destroyed, and about 50% of everything else behind it was too. Trees, grass, and most vegetation was either poisoned with salt water or covered in sand. Roadside signs are all that remain of a number of former landmarks – the True Value hardware store, Mama Rosa’s pizzeria, Sharkeys, Rancho Carribe golf course.

However, just underneath the facade of all that damage and destruction is a strong spirit of survival. The beaches at the High Island turnoff, now clearer and more accessible, are packed with campers and people having a great time. The landmark yellow house in Gilchrist – the only structure still standing on the Gulf side of the road – is being rebuilt, and the land around it reclaimed. Fisherman have put up a bait camp at Rollover and crowd the pilings on either side of the pass – just like they always have. Builders are advertising everywhere, promising to do their part to bring back Bolivar with ‘fair prices’. New construction is evident in every development, and restaurants are reopened. The ‘Big Store’, (the Gulf Coast Market) is open again, with a Texas General Land Office truck parked out front to help with recovery. The Bolivar Community Cemetery at loop 108 and 87 has been cleaned up and looks freshly mowed. The ferry landings have been dredged out and easily handled the traffic on crab fest weekend.

So, even with the devastation recovery is evident. The crab fest this past weekend served as the most poignant reminder of this combination of  superficial damage over a deep survivors spirit.  Gregory Park, the home of the festival was completely covered in sand by Ike. The baseball field is no more – backstops completely gone. The old 18-wheeler trailer that served as a combination crab fest storage trailer and stage was tossed aside and destroyed. However, somehow Ike spared the metal roof over the basketball court, and the steel legs holding it up amazingly didn’t get taken out by a house floating by. The park is probably 12 rows off the beach. It survived, and the crab fest did too.

So – enough pontificating – onto the food. I walked in on Saturday and made a beeline for my favorite crab fest starter – the pistollete. Some years a few vendors have them, sometimes only one, sometimes none. In this case, there was a small trailer selling crawfish pistolletes, and they also had a sign advertising ‘Real Natchitoches Meat Pies’. As one with roots in west LA and a fan of Lasyone’s in Natchitoches (their motto – “You haven’t been to Natchitoches until you’ve been to Lasyone’s” – is emblazoned on a tumbler I got there) I had to try that as well.

The pistolletes were not as right out of the fryer as I like them – this means the bread gets a little dry but it also provides for safer eating, as the filling is not hot as molten lava. Although the crawfish filling inside was a little doughy, they were spiced really nicely. The meat pies were much smaller than I remembered from Lasyone’s, and looked frighteningly like the $1.00 meat pie a friend of mine from school used to eat for lunch at our HISD school cafeteria – but one bite proved my fears misplaced. The meat was a really nicely seasoned ground beef, mixed with fresh onions and peppers, and the crust/shell was flaky and held together. It was a pretty darn good meat pie, and I ate a few of those over the course of the day.

Next, I headed over to the crab vendors in search of the legendary softshell crab sandwich. At La Playita’s booth I found what I was looking for. They fried mine up to order, and served it whole on a sesame seed hamburger bun with a not-so-generous smear of tartar sauce. I’ve had better softshell crab sandwiches. I find these are tastier on Mrs. Baird’s Texas Toast and with a lot more tartar sauce. I didn’t have too much time to piddle and ask for more sauce though because I had to wolf down the sandwich and go pick up the wife, who was waiting for me at the ferry landing.

When I returned it was back to La Playita for BBQ crabs. These were not cajun style BBQ crabs – rather, they were boiled crabs put on a smoker for a bit and slathered in BBQ sauce. I got a dozen.

Even sharing with Houston Foodie these babies took me nearly 90 minutes to finish off, and were probably the messiest food I have ever eaten. I think I still have BBQ sauce under my fingernails! However, the crab was cooked just right, and was exceptionally fresh – not a mushy part to be found. Although the BBQ sauce was nothing special, the combo of sweet tangy sauce, a little bit of smoke and fresh lump crab was excellent.

I took a little break after this – wait, who am I kidding – I went straight back to the festival food, finding a little trailer advertising it was from Woodville TX – another place I am quite familiar with in my trips into west LA. I noticed they had Frito pie and so put my order in. The older woman behind the counter told me the chili was her secret recipe – and it was pretty good, nice and meaty and lacking that anathema of Texas chili – beans.  I ate it a little too quick and didn’t let the Fritos get too mushy, but it was pretty good.

Back to La Playita for crab nachos. These are an old crab festival fave of mine – basically ballpark-style nachos with a can of jumbo lump crab meat dumped on top. The canned crabmeat tastes a little fishy but you really can’t beat it as a trashy-tasty dish.

Houston Foodie had picked up some gumbo from the Lighthouse Krewe – a multiple time winner of best gumbo at the crab fest. Although I am not a fan of a dark, roasty roux, this one was pretty good. However, the cup he got was absolutely chock full of chicken bones. He joked he was ‘getting his calcium’, but it seemed like they made chicken stock and just added a roux to it without taking out the carcass. I later got some gumbo from Howard’s, and it was dark and alright – nothing special.

Unfortunately with only one day at the fest I couldn’t get crabs at every place. I missed the boiled crabs at Howard’s, which a local told me were his faves because Howard was just a crab man and didn’t even run a restaurant. The crabs from his booth were clearly the biggest ones. I also did not try the ‘cajun spicy’ crabs from coconuts, even though I think those were authentic cajun BBQ crabs.

Maybe next year.

I did get to take a little side trip over to Stingaree with Houston Foodie and have some wonderful Muggaritas and chat up the owner (Mr. Brad Vratis) regarding an upcoming Houston Chowhounds visit to his restaurant.

The music was absolutely fantastic. I was able to catch Jesse Dayton, the John Evans Band, Hayes Carll and Sisters Morales. With the sun setting over the stage, a cold beer in my hand and that music playing I really couldn’t have asked for more.

The crowds were a little smaller. There weren’t quite as many crab vendors. The carnival was scaled down – just a few moonwalks. But the big sign over the main stage proclaiming that ‘BOLIVAR’S BACK!’ said it all. A great return to the beach, and as usual some darn good eatin’!