Hours of Devours

We decided not to overthink things this July 4. We’ve really gone all out in previous years. Blueberry pies, smoked trios of meat, salads galore, jerk chicken that knocked your socks off…

This year, with just two families joining us, we are keeping it simple: Corn on the cob. Fried chicken. Watermelon. Deviled eggs. Chips and guac. Brownies, chocolate chip cookies.

We are still loving our ice cream maker, so we’re using recipes from Perfect Scoop to make a vanilla and a cherry almond ice cream. Some watermelon agua fresca from this week’s L.A. Times food section. White wine, lemonade, vodka.

Hope you’re having fun shopping and cooking and getting ready to fete the U.S.A.!

We are lucky to be heading later this month to two of our favorite food cities: Santa Fe and New York City.

So now, it’s time to plan where we want to eat. This may influence things we actually do, like museums and other site-seeing. 

Santa Fe is pretty slam-dunk. We’ll eat at Maria’s for sure, because we dream of the food there. Blue corn enchilada, sopapilla, margarita…But we have a list of other places to consider, and not nearly enough days in town. Plus, there’s the drive. Time to go on chowhound, do some Google-searching…

New York, however, will take a lot more thought. We’re traveling with our kids, who are 10 and 5, old enough to join us every night for dinner. Last trip, we left them behind at night and spent a lot of lunches eating barbecue and pizza. This time, we think they’ll be up for some better meals. Gramercy Tavern, perhaps, or Spotted Pig.

Time to start investigating, reading food blogs and seeking advice.

We’re open to suggestions, if any of our wonderful readers have a favorite, can’t-miss spot!

We had family in town, and we wanted a special dinner out. In our town, that means a call to Five Crowns.

Five Crowns is an amusing place, a faux English inn that is owned by Lowry’s and specializes in prime rib. We like going here at Christmas, when they have carolers and lots of festive decorations. In the summer, it’s a little less fantastic, but the food is solid, and it is about the nicest place you can go with little kids.

We arrived right on time, but we had to wait a short while for our table. Things were slow and off-kilter because of a traffic jam earlier in the day on Coast Highway. So we got some gin and tonics at the bar, and the kids helped themselves to the crunchy potato chips they have as bar snacks.

Our table was fine, in a gorgeous solarium that gave us a view of lush greenery outside. We all ordered, were served first courses, had our wine decanted, had our main courses, and were fine.

But there were some weird things. Like they forgot salad dressing on two salads. One steak dish was supposed to have an onion side dish or garnish, that wasn’t there. The onion soup was cold, and service was generally really slow. Our daughter, age 5, was practically asleep and would jerk awake to ask where her noodles were ever going to appear.

We do enjoy Five Crowns, and we don’t have high expectations of a meal of a lifetime. 

But this time, it seemed a little flat. Maybe we’re better off going when it’s December, and we can imagine that we’re in from a cold, English country night.

On our Southwest flight home from Vegas, we thought we heard the flight attendant announce that she’d thrown the peanuts on the floor. And we should rummage around under our seats if we wanted them for a snack.

“Excuse me, but did you really throw the peanuts on the floor,” our seatmate inquired, looking a little appalled. 

“Yep,” she said. “It’s sort of a game, because it’s such a bumpy flight out of Vegas, and only 30 minutes. The idea is that the peanuts get bumped down the aisle of the plane and everyone on the aisle is supposed to hand them out.”

“I do not want peanuts that have been on the floor,” the woman stated firmly. It didn’t matter that they were in foil packets. It was truly a disgusting thought.

The flight attendant said she’d hand her some “if there was time”, but of course there was time. Seatmate happily munched away. 

We thought there was a mighty big chance those peanuts had been on the floor, however. And we try to avoid salty things in general when we’re flying.

But we had to wonder. Have you ever been on a flight with the peanut game? Did anyone enjoy it?

Do you think it’s gross to thrown snacks on the floor and make passengers root around for them?

Here at the Bellagio in Vegas, there are too many choices. We can have a massage, soak in a whirlpool bath in a room that looks like Roman heaven, wander through a lobby conservatory that has been decorated with pine trees, flowery bears and baby eagles and electric trains and so forth, see a chocolate fountain that claims to be the tallest in the world, bet on next year’s Super Bowl, play craps, bet on red, drink for free all night (if you don’t count losing money as paying for drinks), shop for jewels and Prada outfits, and eat great food from morning to night.

This trip, we were too busy to eat at many of our favorite places here at Bellagio. We didn’t dine together at Noodles, a great Asian snack place where we’ve feasted many a late night. We didn’t get to Le Cirque, where we once devoured truffle risotto underneath a circus-tent ceiling of pink and yellow silks. We didn’t go high-end at Picasso, or have steaks lakefront at Prime.

We did, however, make a point to return to Olives for lunch. We love this Todd English restaurant, a place we first dined together on the occasion of our tenth wedding anniversary. It’s a casual-but-nice spot, where you need a reservation and they make sure if you’re wearing black, that you get a black linen napkin. Yet it’s slightly noisy and the food is rustic. Perfectly relaxing and fitting four our mood. They asked if we wanted to sit outside on the patio, where the view of the tops of the dancing fountains is more prominent, but the 107-degree heat isn’t helped with the water misters. We opted for a table, a banquette on one side and chair on the other.

The room was the same as ever, with electric candles glowing on shelves up and down the walls, more candles on huge candelabras,  a dramatic glowing bar, and a basket of yummy breads delivered immediately to the table. We had iced tea and a glass of Sancerre, split a Caesar salad and two different flatbreads.

The salad was perfect: lots of shaved parm, crispy bites of romaine, some sliced tomatoes and a creamy flavorful dressing. We should have shared one flatbread as well; we had overindulged on the onion focaccia and parmesan crisps when we first sat down, ravenous.

But would we have split the Bronx bomber, with spicy pepperoni and gooey cheese? Or the lighter one with fresh mozzarella, tomato sauce, arugula and onions? Both were crispy from the brick oven, cut in six giant pieces and completely wonderful.

The food was great, the mood upbeat and gearing up for a party. A couple seated next to us told the waiter, “We just got off the plane. We don’t want water, bubbly or otherwise.” Another woman, as she was served a Bloody Mary, said loudly, “Oh happy day!”

How could you not adore a place that looks good, treats you well, gives you delicious food and surrounds you with people that are all determined to be happy?   

We have long been fans of Tom Colicchio, from our meals in the late 90s in New York’s Gramercy Tavern to his judging on our favorite reality show, Top Chef.

So when we decided to take a break from the craziness of work, family and deadlines and go to Las Vegas for a few days, we thought…Craftsteak.

We’d long been aware of Colicchio’s Craftsteak places in New York and L.A., but we hadn’t been to any of them. Same with the sandwich place, ‘Wichcraft, that we nearly went to in San Francisco. So it seemed like a fine idea to get over to the MGM, get a great meal and check things out for ourselves. We went into the evening expecting to be wowed, and also expecting that Colicchio’s steaks and sides would erase the bad tastes we had left from some recent steakhouse disasters.

We arrived early, quickly lost $20 on video poker and decided to check in with the hostess. She told us our table wasn’t ready. She didn’t invite us to the bar for a drink, but we are pretty smart about these things, so we told her that’s where we would be. The bar was busy, but we were able to find two seats together. We asked for a cocktail menu, and the bartender gave us two and also a little flashlight because it was too dark to read. We chose a Hendrick’s martini up, and a house specialty, the sidecar martini, which had rum and syrup and citrus. Sweet and delicious on the one hand, dry and cold on the other — color us impressed with the bartender.

But wait! Our table was ready the moment we’d toasted and had our first sips. We paid our tab, then the hostess led us on a long walk through the big place to our table in the very far corner, kind of by the kitchen. Now, a man might be OK carrying a very full martini on a long schlep to the table, but a lady was not. Up glasses from the bar should be on a little tray and carried for us. This hostess would not ruin our evening, but please. What if we had spilled?

Once we were seated, we could relax a bit and take in the room. At first, we wished we’d been given a lovely curved booth, but the booths are separated by chainmail type screens. (This same material was used in the bar wine racks, sort of as hammocks for each bottle.) Cool effect, but would we feel as if we were stuck in chicken coops?

Our table was near the kitchen. So we had some rattling-hum-of-voices noise, and the sight of dirty dishes going back. Also, the table next to us was very close. We felt the need to acknowledge the men sitting there when we first arrived, and the next table felt the need to chat us up as well. We were all happy to meet new friends and talk about the group’s deejay gig, basketball playing college days and jewelry. But this was not a quiet or romantic setting.

We did take note of the gorgeous Bernardaud china  designed especially for the restaurant. We had a moment of fond reminiscence of Gramercy Tavern and its little Bernardaud china plates with tiny feathers. We obsessed, eventually buying a few Bernardaud plates of our own. Craftsteak had a nice white plate with a gorgeous, hand-painted rim of a brownish-pink color. Too bad the flatware was utilitarian and plain and in the case of one fork, bent completely out of shape.

The food, however, was stunning. We started with an avocado salad and kobe tartar.  The salad featured two avocado halves beautifully fanned out and buttery beyond belief.  To contrast the butteriness, each half was sprinkled with a very crunchy sea salt which made for a wonderful contrast.  We were reminded of the strips of lardo we’d had a few years ago on a pizza.  The richness was cut nicely by an acidic lightly dressed slaw of cucumber and red onion.  A dish presented this way really makes you appreciate the quality of great knife work — its presentation really matched the taste, but how did the peel and slice such a soft delicate avocado without turning it to mush?  The tartar was great.  It was a fine tartar — but what really made the dish were the crostini it was served with.  Again perfectly shaped, perfectly crunchy and wonderfully garlicky, perfectly accenting the luxurious beef.

For mains we went with the filet and the surf and turf, which featured a 7 oz. kobe rib eye and butter poached lobster.  For sides we followed our servers suggestion and went with grilled white corn and fries and on our own selected the assorted mushrooms.  As we hoped, the beef was perfectly cooked, that wonderful seer on the outside and the rich savory flavor of great beef.  The white corn was great white corn, grilled to give it that char flavor which came through nicely with the summery sweetness.  This was sweet corn like we haven’t had since our days in New England when we’d pick the corn ourselves and rush home to shuck and boil it.  The fries were lightly flavored with vinegar and a great crunch salt.  Our only regret was that they were piled so high that we couldn’t finish the stack before they cooled off.  The only minor disappointment were the mushrooms.  They were very good, just not nearly as good as the other two sides we ordered here.

While the food was grand, what really stole the show for us was the sommelier.  In most restaurants today, it is really unusual to find a sommelier who can; 1) listen to customers and not just push what he likes; 2) explain wines in English and 3) make you feel like you know what you’re talking about.  It’s easy to wander into a place like Craftsteak, stumble onto the California cab section and pick out a familiar name.  It’s much more challenging to reach out and try new things, and that’s what we pushed our sommelier to do.

We went through the list first on our own and identified three wines we were interested in — an Etude cab, a DuMol syrah and Paradigm merlot.  These are all wines we had not tried but were from producers we loved.  We told him that we loved the spiciness and big fruit of these wines and also that our all time favorite wine is Pichon Lalande.  We told him that we were very open to trying something different and that we would prefer if he’d pick something for us.  He then knocked it out of the park — he picked a red from Portugal of all places from Quinta do Crasto and made with the touriga nacional grape (which is also used to make port).  His description was dead on — the wine had the spiciness of a great syrah with the deep fruit of a great cab.  A huge home run.  But the hits kept on coming.  When we mentioned that we’d love a glass of something white to go with our avocado (no buttery white, something grassy and fruity) he produced a fantastic New Zealand sav blanc which reminded us of a La Sirena muscat we’d had the other night at the beach.  When you have a sommelier listening to your ideas, you know you’re in a great place. The glass of white was crisp and light, no fruit or grass or butter overpowering the food. Perfect summer wine for a perfect summer starter.

No meal is complete without at least a split of champagne, and we followed the suggestion and went for the Rene Geoffroy Brut rose.  The color was that beautiful pink that lingerie designers always try to capture, and it had that perfect dry yeasty flavor that balances with the fruit and makes real champagne so special.  After all that rich food, we wanted something light and sweet to finish off the night so we went with the coconut sorbet, which perfectly fit the bill.  Like a good sorbet it was light, creamy and tasted perfectly of coconut.  But wait, as we were sipping our champagne and enjoying our sorbet our sommelier stopped by with and Icewein he thought we’d really enjoy.  So he poured us each a glass of a wonderful sweet wine, surprisingly clean compared to so many dessert wines that taste amazing and complicated but verge on the cloying or syrupy.

We left the meal stuffed and drunken, in desperate need to hit the tables and earn back a few bills to cover the cost of the decadence. Unfortunately, we were exhausted from the desert heat and indulgence.

Thankfully, we have another day and night to explore Vegas and play and eat. Lunch today at Olives. Maybe by then, we’ll be hungry again!

The L.A. Times had a nice article today about why it’s a good idea to buy wine by the case, especially this time of year, so you’re prepared for any last-minute party, or group of really thirsty guests, that happen to come your way.

We’re always on the lookout for what we call a “house wine” — a bottle that costs $10, better if it’s less, a white and a red, that you can buy in abundance. We love wine and won’t always serve these bottles as our first drink of a party, or at a fancy dinner. But when you have an open-door policy, as we do around the holidays and over the summer, it’s very nice indeed to have those bottles that you can pull out.

Granted, storage isn’t a problem for us because we have a closet that we use inside where it’s cool. But even when we were in a small one-bedroom apartment, we stored wine any where we could. Under the bed was a big place for awhile, as was our bedroom closet by the shoes.

We’re surprised sometimes by our friends who really like wine, and who drink a lot of it, and who have money, who don’t buy more everyday type bottles by the case. They are constantly running low, or buying at the local grocery, so they don’t get good deals and they have to think about it every time they have people over.

Not us. We like wine, we like to have it on hand, and we like to open it up early and often.

We’d advise you what to look for in your house wines, but frankly, that’s between you and your wine shop. We suggest going to a good store, asking for help, thinking outside the box for a Spanish wine, or say something from New Zealand. Buy some bottles and take them home to taste. Then go back and stock up.

The only thing you need to do then is send out an email telling everyone to stop on by. Summer’s here! Time to party!

Last week we blogged about making pickles from the Arthur Schwartz cookbook.  After 6 days on the brine, we put the jars into the fridge to slow down fermentation to a crawl.  

We also popped one into our mouth and were immediately taken back to childhood and our visits to delis on New York’s lower east side.  The pickle had that wonderful fresh snap and was just right of that point of a bit green and plenty sour.  The garlic gave it just a touch of flavor without dominating the taste.  We could just picture that silver tray on the table with assorted pickles of varying sourness and a green tomato or two.  All in all a great success.  We are interested to see how the fermentation progresses in the coming days.

For months, the signs outside promised, “Soon..Soon…” And finally, the new “A” restaurant opened in the old Arches building a few weeks ago, with a lot of hoopla and buzz and of course, the expected comments about A-holes eating at A-restaurant. It was big talk amongst our friends: Who was going? Who had a wine locker? Who knew the investors? Who had been to the grand opening? What was the crowd like? What were the all-girl valet parkers like? What was the room like?

Not too much talk about the food.

We were going to resist the place. After all, we’d barely liked the old Arches. It was an old-style place, dark even on a hot summer day with heavy wood panels, ancient waiters and old-fashioned food (and high, high prices.) They moved to Cannery Village, and we’ve heard that the style and food are far too heavy for the waterside, airy place they now inhabit.

The new A restaurant seems to want to pay respect to the old place while refreshening things up. We applaud that, and we also had read that the food was great and not so pricey as other local hot spots.If so, we’d welcome the addition to our local food scene, in spite of reservations about the trendy, desperate crowd we thought it would attract.

We went on a Saturday night, about a month after its opening, with friends. The room was still darkly paneled as we walked through the red-lighted bar to our table, a cozy curved booth. 

The place was busy and noisy and had a frantic feeling (rather than an excited hum) about it. The room tried hard to be updated with black and white photographs, modern and clean, against the backdrop of old-fashioned red-leather booths and wooden walls, but there seemed something incongruous about the effort. It was an interesting crowd: drunken old-timers finishing up an early supper alongside tables of kids who looked like they borrowed Dad’s platinum card wandered in, a hopping bar scene and every table filled. But they definitely needed something to buffer the noise. We could barely converse over the din. 

Nothing on the drinks menu seemed exceptionally exciting, and our mojitos were a bit flat, although the Manhattan was certainly adequate. We brought a bottle of wine and were happy to learn that corkage was just $10. But had we wanted to buy a second, which we usually do on a Saturday night, we found nothing of note on the wine list and no one on staff who could offer up a suggestion.

The menu was a strange mix of retro choices that screamed 1950s and an attempt at a more modern steakhouse feel. Choices ranged from lasagne and pot roast to a selection of “steaks” and nothing seemed to really fit together.  Obviously management is trying to walk a balance between the old school Arches and a newer more popular alternative.  However, to us this menu was confused at its best and read like a food network special on how to open a steak place at its worst.

We started with a roasted pear salad, a hearts of palm salad and grilled octopus with fingerling potatoes.  All were okay.  Certainly both salads could have been replicated at home with ease.  The spicy tomato sauce with the octopus was quite good and without a doubt the best thing we had all night.

We skipped the daily pasta choices, which frankly seemed out of place on the menu, and decided to have steaks with yummy sides. We had Kansas City strips and a ribeyes, and the waiter told us that two veggie sides would be more than enough. We paid no mind and chose three: creamed spinach, corn gratin and onion rings.

And now, the night goes from just ok to really bad.

The steaks were cooked to the proper temperature, but they were very fatty and gnarly. They also lacked that wonderful crust that you come to expect from a restaurant.  We understand marbling and butchering enough to know that this meat was just not great. When was the last time you paid $36 for a steak and only could eat one-third because the rest was gristle?  With all of the high quality product available in the marketplace we were very disappointed in the quality of what was served.  This was a particular disapointment after the phenomenal steak we had at Blanca (see our review below).

The sides were ridiculously off-putting. The onion rings were not drained properly, so after the first bite, you were left with a greasy, limp goo. The creamed spinach was like frozen spinach boiled in cream: when you took a spoonful, it separated into a soupy mess. And the corn? We were served a ramekin so small that if it had been a dessert serving of creme broulee, we would have felt shortchanged. We joked about how it was the best of the sides, and yet we had to divvy up the kernels one by one. Why had the waiter hinted we were over-ordering? And why did they charge six bucks for that?

We ordered a dessert to share, unmemorable, and some coffees. Then we paid and left to get our car from the girl valets. (This hiring of girls is apparently something to brag about.) However, the girls could not find our car, and we had to kneel on the pavement to go through the rows and rows of keys. They still had us pay $5, and they even left us something in the car: marketing materials for the restaurant’s brunch, and for how we too could hire the all-girl valet staff.

This was so insulting to us, to leave brochures in our car. We don’t know why we felt so annoyed by this, but we were. 

Overall, we’d have to give A a D. Not pretty enough of a room, too loud, not great food, not a pleasant experience, especially for the price. 

It is unusual for us to get “hot” restaurants here in Newport Beach.  A was the fourth in Newport-Mesa in a short window of time — Mesa, Javier’s, Blanca and now A.  The good news for local foodies is that two of the three — Mesa and Blanca are fantastic;  the perfect blend of atmosphere and great food. And Javier’s is good Mexican, although we could do without the fussy, fancy Newport crowd if only we could go back to the Laguna Beach location.

 A, on the other hand, is the standout — in a bad way. We wonder if the crowds will continue to ram themselves into this so-called hot place, or if people will realize that the emperor has no clothes and move to Blanca instead?

We had never owned a fish spatula until last month. That’s when we bought two for a birthday gift after reading how they were among Michael Ruhlman’s indispensable kitchen items.

Hmm, we thought. His list was so basic and spare, brought on by a blog about the most useless kitchen gadgets that people had cluttering their cupboards. (Pie maker, anyone?)

So we are really trying to get rid of cooking things we don’t need, like the mini angel food cake pans and the old cruddy spatulas.

And we added some of his basics, including the flat-edge wooded spoon and the fish spatula.

You know what? He’s right. Those fish spatulas rock. They are so solid in our hands as we take cookies off parchment to put on the cooling rack. (We love the idea of sliding the whole parchment off onto the rack, cookies and all. But then you have to use three times as much parchment. Call us…cheap.)

They are a good way to handle meats, because they don’t tear things like tongs do. (Although tongs are also on our crucial list.)

We don’t know how we lived without these simple tools.

What would be on your essential list?