The Dinner Files

I had the supreme privilege of being asked to go on down to Pomona College and regurgitate what little I’ve managed to figure out about food writing to some very bright undergrads for a few hours last night. What they usually do Wednesday nights from 7-9:50 is have serious discussions about race and gender and politics in their food studies class. What they did last night was eat a food product they did not recognize and attempt to describe it. I then rewarded them with chocolate. But then I made them describe that, which probably took some of the fun away for them. And I made them try and describe it to someone who’d never had it in an effort to help that person figure out if they would like to try it. So the term “chocolatey” was out. But man did they come up with some good stuff. Their young, fresh palates even figured out, basically, what the mystery food was.

Want to join in the fun? Track down some gjetost* and write a sentence or two describing it. Not your opinion of it. It. If you want to throw in your opinion that’s fine, I suppose, but that’s the easy part. If you’d like to share it with the class, I’m sure we’d all appreciate it.

So that was me torturing others. I flew back today and had lunch with a friend. But now I wonder: Is she friend or foe? She took me to 900 Grayson where she suggested I order a Demon Lover. Since the Demon Lover is fried chicken on a waffle with cream gravy, I, being no fool, ordered it. Oh. My. God. She was right. She warned me. It will haunt my dreams. I will die wishing I’d eaten more of them, I’m sure of it. Crunchy and creamy and a bit spicy and just so much fat and flavor without being greasy or overly unctuous and coating your mouth in the unpleasant way and the chicken was so tender deep inside that spicy crunchy coating and there was so much of the coating, which is always the best part of fried chicken, and and and…. I couldn’t eat the whole thing. I just couldn’t. I wanted to. But I couldn’t. So I took about a third of it home. I meant to share it with my family, I really did. But I only lasted about an hour and a half in the house with it alone. I wasn’t hungry. In fact, I was still quite full. But I had to eat it. It was sitting on the counter, calling to me.

How did it know my name?

Long story short: I skipped dinner tonight. No little salad. No bit of toast. Just skipped it. I may never eat again. Not, that is, until I can get my hands on another Demon Lover.

* Once again, wikipedia is off. I’ve been to Norway. I’ve seen “gjetost” on the label in the stores.

I was invited to move to Portland last night. And I’m thinking about it. Of course, I’ve thought about it before. (Wait, I did it before! Wait, does going to college someplace count as “moving there”?) I’ve even floated the idea by my dashing husband. His response: “I love to visit Portland.” I know what that means. That means there’s no way in hell he’s moving there.

If I did live there I would spend a lot of time having drinks at the Secret Society Lounge. Up a non-descript, “I’m going to my therapy appointment” staircase and into a cozy, grown-up bar with a slight speak-easy feel. The breeze blowing in the open window on the warm but not sweltering summer evening made the well-crafted drinks taste all the better.

Then I would head downstairs and go next door to Toro Bravo for dinner. Amazing tapas: oxtail croquettes, mint-stuffed squash blossoms, green olive radicchio salad, squid ink fideos, churros e chocolate. A dish called “drunken pork” was a particular favorite. Chunks of meaty, juicy pork wrapped in bacon served over big but not bitter fava beans. I forgot to ask what made the pork so drunk, but I’m guessing it was gin.

That I ate anything following the afternoon of eating I had was a testament to the power of the human stomach. I split a burger, half a rack of ribs, and a charcuterie and sausage plate for lunch, then stopped in at Ten 01 for some Thai sticky ribs around 5. Of course, my friend had dragged me to “corepower yoga” earlier in the day. Have you heard of this? It’s flow-style yoga in a sauna-hot room (not Bikram!) with sit-ups and various core-building Pilates-mat-work-esque worked into the proceedings. Since my idea of a good time is long swims in cold water by myself, listening to someone tell me what to do in a dark room with a bunch of sweaty people was not so much up my alley, but it was an amazing work-out and I did feel all high afterwards, which was nice. I also felt hungry. Very, very hungry. Burger, ribs, and sausage hungry. Oxtail croquettes and drunken pork hungry.

Have you ever surprised someone? Have you ever flown to another city for no reason but to go to dinner and take a walk and shoot the shit? I did that yesterday. I flew to Portland in cahoots with a friend who lives there to surprise another friend who was coming into town (who promptly dubbed us wing-nuts). I highly recommend it. It’s ridiculous and impractical and absurd. And joyous and magical and life-affirming.

First we snarfed down take-out from Jarra’s Ethiopian Restaurant–an old favorite of ours from college that haunts our taste memories. It was just as good as ever. Just as good as we remember it. Maybe even better.

A few hours later we headed to Alberta Street Oyster Bar. Honestly? It wasn’t as good as when I was there two years ago and my poor hands are showing the effects of way too much salt in most of the dishes (ouch, my fingers hurt when I bend them). But we did slurp through a mess of plump Totten Inlet oysters with a brilliant cucumber-horseradish mignonette with glee and my cherry-infused bourbon Manhattan left nothing to be desired as I sipped through the welcome bits of ice floating on its dark, beaconing surface.

Oh? You read yesterday’s post? You were worried? No need! Everything is fine! It all ended very well! I found coffee! Then I spent the day listening to brilliant people who do amazing things inspire the rest-of-us yet again and before I left I gave one of them my card and said, “You know what? I’d like to do amazing things too.”

She doesn’t even have to call. I’d be okay. I mean, it would be great if she called and I could do that amazing thing, but I could always do some other amazing thing. And anyway, whatever. You know why? Because yesterday was my dashing husband’s birthday. I was home in time for dinner. Ernie had decided that “we” should take Daddy to sushi for dinner. Know this: Ernie LUVS sushi. The kids today! I tell you!

So Ernie got a sushi dinner out of someone else’s birthday. (I say: way to work it kid.) And then, after we all had downed our portions of seaweed salad, Ernie took a look at what to you and me might look like an empty plate and said, “Mama, can I have that last little bit?” All the while gesturing at the few strands of seaweed clinging to the plate with his chopsticks.

Birthday Boy and I locked eyes with amusement, joy, pleasure, admiration, love. And I thought: not too shabby. Then I scraped the last little bit onto my son’s plate.

Leftovers: Like beauty, they are in the eyes of the beholder.

How to describe the indescribable? I speak, internets, most specifically of love.

When I teach food writing, the main thing I try to get my students to do is figure out how to describe food so someone who does not know them can figure out if they would like to cook, eat, order, try that food. Delicious, tasty and their endless stream of synonyms food writers generate with such panache do not suffice. Tell me why it’s so good.

And yet, can you ever really relay why you love a specific dish? Isn’t something always missing in the description? I mark the task akin to describing why you love someone. Smart, kind, good-looking, funny, interesting–whatever string of adjectives you come up with are never really specific singularly onto that person. My dashing husband has described the essence of love thusly: we’re in the jungle, I like the way you smell and you like the way I smell. The idea being, of course, that the “smell” component is now unconscious for humans, making the description impossible.

But then someone goes and does something amazing. Something so extraordinary that you think, if but briefly: see, that’s why I love this person.

My charming husband did that last night. See those grilled sardines? When he was done with them the plate was clean. No heads, no tails, no nothing. It’s a move that wouldn’t work with all–or even most of–the ladies, but I found it positively charming. Of course, that might have been the pint of cask-drawn Ruby Mild I was enjoying.

*Dinner was on the house–we were at a press event for the re-opening of Magnolia Gastropub and Brewery. I would have happily paid for that food, however (especially the porter chocolate cake that was really a very grown-up Suzy-Q, and that’s a high compliment from the girl who was NEVER allowed junk food growing up and scraped and scrimped her allowance to buy chips and sweets). The beers were, predictably, out of sight. I was particularly partial to the cask-drawn ales, the Cypress Big Brown being my favorite among them.

We took that mother down.

Chana dal, eggplant, saag paneer, 4 lamb kebabs, 2 orders of fish (Ernie eats one all by himself), 5 naan, 2 orders of rice. 4 adults and 1 Ernie. It wouldn’t be nearly as impressive if 1) any of the food you see clinging to the dishes remained by the time we left the table (seriously, we even downed all the raw onions) and 2) the kitchen hadn’t felt it had overcooked the fish and sent us a second double-order on the house.

Before dinner with Cousin Sam and Cousin Katie, Ernie and I went to see a surf movie with Cousin Sam. “Archy” is about a very troubled surfer known as Archy who, according to the movie, is super-duper famous. I had never heard of him, so I found that pretty interesting. Ernie had begged to go with Sam when he heard Sam talking about it. Sam and I both thought perhaps there would be a lot of surfing footage. And there was. But there was much more footage of people repeating themselves and each other on the subject of Matt Archbold and his rise and fall and rise and fall and redemption in the world of professional surfing. Ernie claimed the fun Friday after-school treat was boring. We could not fully disagree. The child was rewarded with flatbread and tandoori fish and seemed to think it a fair trade.

All. You. Can. Eat. Walleye.

We were just going out to dinner–mixing it up, planning on getting some tasty thin pizza. We pulled up to the dock and were the only boat there. Is it possible the restaurant is closed on Mondays?, we wondered.

Quite the contrary. Monday night is All You Can Eat Walleye night at the Lonesome Pine on this fair Bay Lake in Northern Minnesota, and the place was packed. Why no boats? The forecast of rain made all the sensible, non-Watson people drive their cars.

For those of you unfortunate enough to be unfamiliar with walleye, it is a fresh water lake fish with delicate white flesh that, when perfectly cooked as it was last night, flakes apart in large, moist, blindingly white opaque shales. We had it deep-fried, pan-fried, and broiled. All were fabulous, but the best was pan-fried. Cornmeal coated, just a bit of grease clinging to it to keep it extra-moist. The coating was less crunchy than the deep-fried version, but the flesh was even more tender and moist, and the coating and flesh were more of a piece, as my grandmother might have said.

All-you-can-eat affairs aren’t usually to my advantage. Great heaping portions in great numbers don’t really appeal to me. But walleye? Which I get once a year? Let’s just say I did my part.

*My dashing husband is not from Minnesota, nor anywhere near it geographically or culturally. When deciding what to order, he asked if he could get a salad. I explained: around here dinner comes with soup or salad and your choice of baked potato, French fries, mashed potato, or rice pilaf. The Lonesome Pine is a modern establishment that also offers vegetables (last night was steamed broccoli, corn on the cob, or grilled zucchini). He smiled, nodded, and said “Old school, I like it.” Yeah, me too.

Which is the wild mushrooms on white corn polenta and which is the potato gnocchi with peas and fava beans? Internets, you may never know. All I know is I ordered one and my dashing husband ordered the other and when they arrived at the table we almost fell over laughing.

So we enjoyed our speed date. I highly recommend it. A bit of grown-up time together and just enough time to talk about your day/week/month/life without incessant pleas–I dessert, no not that dessert, a different dessert, I want someone to play with me, let’s all play spaceship–but without the big “date night” pressure of fun and romance. So you end up actually having fun. You parents know how it is.

Ernie had a last-minute playdate that included an invitation to dinner, so we found ourselves with an hour to kill. And kill it we did. With shaved parmesan- and foam-covered dinners (call it “emulsion” all you want, menus, I know foam when I see it).

My mile-high adventure continues. Before I get into it, let me make one thing clear: dinner at Rioja last night was fabulous. The food was inventive with purpose, the service attentive without being obsequious (it was a press dinner, so too much service tends to be more of the problem than anything else).

But the name. When I say I had dinner at Rioja, aren’t you picturing rustic Spanish dishes? Some tapas? Plenty of earthenware cassuelas? Seafood a la plancha? Saffron all over the place? The owners chose it because they love the wines of the region. Fair enough. But the name in no way adequately or accurately reflects the food they serve. The highlight of the meal–and I apologize to everyone in the kitchen there who has got to be sick to death of prepping and cooking this signature dish, but you y’all make it too good for me to ignore–was a bit of pork belly gently braised to melt in its fat before being seared to a crisp with a cardamom rub served atop a pureed of fresh chick peas flavored with a bit of curry powder. Sounds weird, I know, but it works. It really works.

The chef will be adding a smoked corn risotto as soon as Colorado corn is ripe. (After smoking the corn and cutting off the kernels, she infuses the cream for the risotto with the cobs to deepen the smoky corn flavor of the dish.) If I were in Denver this summer, I’d certainly stop by and give it a try.

“Rioja” doesn’t really fit any of that, does it? I’m no Name Inspector, but I find such a mis-match distracting. But then, the name doesn’t matter when you’re shoveling the candied lemon gnocchi–crispy and light–into your mouth….

For reasons I seem unable to adequately explain, I am in Denver. Last night I ate a dinner-of-never-ending-small-plates (thank goodness they were tasty, one and all) that began with this large plate of cured meats, marinated vegetables, and cheeses. Commonly known, as you well know internets, as an antipasti plate (or platter, if you or it are feeling grand). The rose jelly was particularly refreshing with the salty cured meats, of which I am always a fan.

*Let me publicly state my intention of developing a recipe for such a jelly.*

Much of the dinner conversation centered on whether or not the house frites (that’s freedom fries to you and me) were thumbs-up or thumbs-down. The Bistro Vendôme in this Rockies-adjacent city crisps up an excellent base fry, which the kitchen then coats with gastrique (vinegar and sugar mixture) before tossing with too many herbs. Other diners were more caught up in the pro- and anti-gastrique camps. But me? I found the herbs a bit much.

But when I really seemed to lose the group was when I found out there is an acre-large bar outside of town “off the highway” (off the highway, people!) called The Grizzly Rose where line dancing and cheap beer throw down together every night. I thought we should ditch the vaguely Mediterranean-themed jazz club/restaurant/bar in the ballpark-revitalized section of downtown where we were having after-dinners drinks and head to The Rose immediately. I was alone with these thoughts.