Augieland

Thanksgiving Wine

Wine with Thanksgiving dinner seems well discussed these days. Personally, for an all around suggestion when asked I tend to recommend Dr. Konstantin Frank’s Salmon Run Riesling.

There are three levels to the classic Thanksgiving dinner as far as a see it. The first are the immutable dishes that absolutely must be included no matter what else you do: roasted turkey, gravy, horrible canned cranberry jelly (other versions are great but nothing has the insane acidity combined with sweetness of the can-shaped blob), stuffing (which varies regionally), and fluffy white mashed potatoes. In the second level are the standards that round out this meal and are interchangeable but will appear in variations: sweet potatoes (roasted with glaze or mashed and topped with marshmallow), green beans (almandine, baked with onion crisps, steamed), creamed pearl onions, green salad, and way too many other ingredients and preparations to go on listing. The third level is one I heartily endorse as long as it does not attempt to replace any of the core five components; it is comprised of the foodie items. Here is where truffle whipped potatoes will show, great in addition to mashed but not a good substitute. Orange-glazed grilled acorn squash can sit right next to sweet potato purée or replace it, but must sit proudly next to the simple, straightforward traditional roast turkey dinner. In my opinion, you can fancy yourself a foodie all you like and try new things with your family and strive to impress, but to impress me make a better turkey than I have ever had; perfect the flavors, don’t replace them.

Over the years I have tried many wine parings to this traditional meal. I have had the very American and egocentric “if I like drinking it, I will like food with it” dinner in which mostly Bordeaux was served. We did the all rosé dinner and the champagne/rosé champagne dinner. I’ve been to the “only vitis grape indigenous to America is Zinfandel” dinner (really indigenous to Croatia by the way), and have tried the always-a-failure “Beaujolais Nouveau with turkey” dinner. In the long run, I have come to feel that the best parings are aromatic whites: they handle the tartness of cranberries, the richness of mashed potatoes, draw out the subtlety of well roasted turkey and stuffing, and stand the best chance of pairing with the thousands of other dishes that will appear over the years.

Having been through all the Alsatian versions, the German versions, the Austrians and the Americans, I have a couple of standbys: Austrian Grüner Veltliner is quite good; in France go with Pinot Gris or Blanc; and in Germany go with the earliest of the Rieslings, Kabinette or Spatlese. As far as America goes, I wanted it to be the home of the perfect wine for the American holiday but had found most of the aromatic whites of America to be overwrought and/or cloying. Then I tried Salmon Run and the other Rieslings of the Finger Lakes region.

Salmon Run is the second label of Dr. Konstantin Frank, the man credited with bringing viticulture to the Finger Lakes. His is a fascinating story well worth learning, but has little to do with pairing wine to turkey. His wine though is my favorite for gifting, bringing, suggesting, and drinking (at least till the crowd forces the move to red) for Thanksgiving dinner.

Autumnal by nature, dry Riesling is pretty well suited to the Thanksgiving meal. Salmon Run benefits from being local – American if that’s you, and New York for me. I have sampled the current vintages over the last five years and have found them, in spite of vintage variation, to be light, minerally and steely, with driving acids enough to contrast well while having enough autumnal fruit and spices on the nose to compliment. And best of all, since a reasonable amount of any one wine for my family gatherings is at least a case, it is very fairly priced ($12.99 on the website).

Start the way I did, add one bottle to that collection of under twenties we all end up mixing into a case with bright ideas like California Sangiovese and see how it suits you.

Thoughts week ending 11/10/06

… I just assume diners know that real Kobe is back in America after a hiatus. But Meg recently linked this rather fluffy piece in the Post so I figured I would offer my experience with it here. I became aware of the embargo’s end shortly before I had what I assumed was real Kobe on my second L’Atelier visit. I didn’t ask so I can’t swear it was authentic, what I can say is it was exponentially better than all the other meat I have been served around town that was branded as Kobe or Waygu (don’t know if you have been to Old Homestead but little in New York food is as pathetic as their offerings).

When I had this discussion with my friend Mark, the Chef De Cuisine at Morimoto, he explained that to truly appreciate the finest Kobe it should be prepared Shabu Shabu. In a nutshell, you quickly swish very thinly sliced Kobe through a hot, flavored liquid and pair it to differing vegetables and dipping sauces. Absolutely convinced that Mark had gone insane from too much Japanese exposure and that meat with that kind of fat content could not be better boiled than seared, I accepted his challenge, leading to my first ever full meal at Morimoto not at the Omakase bar.

The meal left me feeling three things: that Mark is a very good chef producing very cool food from the Morimoto kitchen, that I am a bad friend for confining my dining at his restaurant to the Omakase bar with which he is not involved, and that I was totally wrong – Shabu Shabu is indeed the superior manner for Kobe preparation.

Grilled/seared/roasted and all other high heat methods scorch the predominant and flavorful fats, while with Shabu Shabu the flavored broth heated by an incredibly hot rock releases and encourages them to bloom, offering more of a slightly melted silky texture. Words like rich, buttery, and unctuous describe fast high heat preparations of Kobe and they are indeed special. However, I have no words to describe the sensation of this dish. I will tell you it ended a headache that I had in my temples and I spent most of the rest of the evening with the aromas running through my head in rather blissful contemplation.

There are many reasons to be into trying Kobe and it is an amazing ingredient. If your inspiration is that you are into flavor contemplation and you have an opportunity to try it as Shabu Shabu I think it is well worth taking.

Not sure why I never posted a report on the meal; maybe because I didn’t keep good enough notes, or didn’t want to concede my wrongness to Mark. Either way it was an exceptional meal. I did shoot it, though. Here are the pics of the Kobe Shabu Shabu course:

Woody's chestnut raised pork

A while back I did a post about the glories of the acorn-fed black footed pigs of Spain and the hams and charcuterie that arise from them. Soon after, I received an email from a gentleman named Woody explaining that he was a chestnut farmer/breeder and had recently been raising some pigs on the chestnuts he had been farming. While at this point he is not producing the pigs for sale so I couldn’t buy them, he explained that he would happily give me some for sampling if I was interested and would give him feedback. After entertaining the idea that he might be related to the wine guy at A Voce or some other restaurateur I have been less than nice to, I decided this would be quite an elaborate ruse and that maybe this guy was on the up and up.

Last week, right before my Alba trip, a Styrofoam cooler box filled with dry ice and some pig showed up (so it is worth noting all this meat spent 10 days in my freezer before the tasting). There was a tube of ground pork, a pork liver, an Iowa chop, and some bacon. In the interest of giving good feedback and running this meat through its courses I decided on three tests:

First test – Bacon. For the bacon I went over Pichon’s and did a side by side comparison with what I felt would be a competent competitor. For the other bacon we chose Seriously Good bacon from the guys at the Greenmarket with the Seriously Good Bacon sign.

To be fair, the Seriously Good bacon guys had no idea they were entering a competition, but there was a drastic difference between the two bacons physically. Woody’s bacon was striated with fat while the Seriously Good bacon was more a fat cap next to meat. Both types possessed almost a one to one ratio of meat to fat, the Woody bacon however had its fat spread throughout, while the Seriously Good bacon was more two distinct sides.

We went with two methods of preparation: microwave for its exactness and lack of human error, and pan-frying, because it tastes better. Each preparation was done separately, so as not to commingle flavors. The pan-frying was performed by Pichon in two pans, the microwaving for four minutes at half power in two waves.

I don’t know how much of these results were due to cut and how much were the chestnut raising, but texture does not seem a fair point of comparison. Woody’s won hands down. The fat on the Seriously Good was just getting limber while the meat was already too tough. The Woody pig, however, benefited from its fat being distributed in striations so that crisp was crisp rather than crunchy. This carried even into the tasting – as you chewed the Seriously Good bacon the sensation was of freeing trapped salt from the limber fat, while Woody’s was uniform enough to be perceived as one thing.

As for flavor, in order we preferred the Woody bacon in a frying pan, the Woody bacon in the microwave, the Seriously Good bacon in the microwave, with the Seriously Good bacon in a frying pan bringing up the rear. We tried desperately not to use the word “nutty” to describe the flavor of the Woody bacon. The best alternative we could come up with was when Ringwald noted its faint aromas of roasted winter squash, which did make some sense of the flavor. Sadly, as clichéd as it sounds, the fat of the nut-raised pigs was nutty, wonderfully nutty. Both bacons were salt cured, though the salt notes were far more pronounced in the harder fat of the Seriously Good bacon.

I chose Seriously Good bacon because I love it and wanted as fair a competition as possible. Going in, Pichon absolutely declared he doubted one bacon could be better, or even very different. But side by side I may have designed an unfair competition. Whether we admit it or not, bacon is about fat and the fat of nut-raised pigs just tastes better, more interesting, more complex, more pastoral and in general just more. Hands down the victor of this round was Woody’s bacon.

Second test-was actually an experiment. For the liver I decided we should try to recreate the sofritto Nettasdad made when we roasted the pig in October. I had tasted Nettasdad’s sofritto but was too busy with pig roasting and wine drinking to see him make it. What we had to go on was that awesome old hand Italian cook thing where he mumbled the recipe as: “the liver, the heart, some pork meat, some tomatoes, some garlic, some wine, some peppers oh yea and some peppers.” With this in mind, the gift liver seemed a fair excuse for me to test my hand at some-some-some.

We grated about four garlic cloves and set them in a cool pan with olive oil to wait while I chopped up the liver in a rough dice and mixed the ground pork in.

Once the liver was cut up and the ground pork was added to it I turned the heat under the pan to high.

As the garlic started to brown I added the pile of meat and spread it around evenly. I moved it a little too much, I think, because in the long run the meat more grayed then browned. (Next time I will brown the offal first, then the meat).

Once everything was uniformly grayish brown I added some twists of salt, black pepper, and a couple shakes of chili flake.

Then we threw a large fistful of rough-chopped vinegar peppers in and let it simmer for about fifteen minute with about four glugs from a bottle of a California Cabernet Sauvignon we were drinking (‘97 McKenzie Muller to be exact).

The first taste lacked a certain acidic zing so I added a couple more twists of salt, a couple more twists of pepper, a few more shakes of chili flake, and about a quarter cup of the vinegar from the peppers.

Then Pichon remembered that Nettasdad had said tomatoes so we added about a half cup of chopped tomatoes and their liquid and let that cook down for another fifteen minutes. This added a different and sweeter acidity, rounding the dish out nicely.

Was it as good as Nettasdad’s? Who knows? (Like I said, I was Busy drinking and roasting while he made it.) It was very good and I think I can make it better next time. I would happily serve it to friends as well as enemies as was. How much of the credit belongs to Woody’s pig meat and liver? At this point I am willing to split credit, the worst critique we got was “that’s awesome” and that was from a sober person. If I am sure of anything it is that great cooking may cover mediocre ingredients, but just as much when fooling around in the kitchen trying to reproduce someone else’s good results great ingredients will give you a huge amount of leeway which I definitely enjoyed.

Third Test-For the chop I decided to take my hands out of the prep. Not many people make a pork chop so well that the New York Times reviewer dedicates the title of a review and a whole paragraph to explaining how he was close to getting it on every visit to a particular restaurant. Joey Campanaro is such a chef, so I called Little Owl to see if Joey would play along. I asked that he take my chestnut-fed Iowa chop and one of his now famous chops into his kitchen, prepare them identically, and come out and eat them with me and Pichon, not telling us which was which.

I gave the chop to Joey wrapped hoping he would be able to mask from me which was which; sadly this could not happen. So I never saw it uncooked. On the plate, though, Woody’s was a more traditional chop and obviously different from Joey’s very thick one so I decided to turn the tables, cutting them down to bite-sized morsels and presenting them to Joey and one of his waiters blind, both of whom preferred the house chop.

Again, this was an expected outcome. Joey, his recipe, and his chop have come together over time to be a pretty special combination and just throwing Woody’s chop in deprived it a fair evolution. There is no doubt, though, that Chef Campanaro was fair in the kitchen; both chops were the same hue of pink in the middle, the Woody chop a little more succulent and the Joey chop toothier, apparently by nature.

Once the four of us had tasted, the consensus seemed to be:
-- that the fat on the Woody chop scorched on the grill, giving it an acrid note. We figure that this cut may be better suited to roasting or some other longer, lower heat aplication.
-- that the fat in the Woody chop really adopted the fennel and black pepper notes of Joey’s marinade, so much that some bites were a little overpowering, and that the aroma of these lingered far longer with the Woody chop.

So what have we learned? First and foremost, it may be bad to accept candy from strangers, but pork should always be welcome. Second, that a diet of nuts makes for far more interesting pork. I don’t know what it will take for Woody to move from the fooling-around-raising-pigs-on-the-nuts-left-over-after-the-humans-are-taken-care-of phase to the pig-raising phase, but I hope it happens soon. This meat was amazing, seriously reminiscent of the greatest pigs I have had.

Meatball sandwich

It's summer and I am lazy. For today's post I will simply ask, who has a better meatball sandwich than Little Owl? I had the meatball sliders again last night and I am pretty sure at this point they should be filed as the best.

Alinea: 994 apexillian stars

Last October, Bestfriend and I had a dinner at Alinea which was easily one of, if not the, best meal I had to that point. After that, I came home and talked about it a lot. I made many declarations as to the merits of Grant Achatz and his cuisine, going so far as telling Bear that if Grant stayed on the course I saw in reading about him and from the dinner I had, there was little doubt in my mind that in the future there would be no question that Alinea is the best restaurant in the world, and that it is possibly already America’s. With that gauntlet thrown, it should be of little surprise that less than a year later we (Bear, Bestfriend, Beewife, Wife, Soho, and I) sat down together for the menu they call Tour, here is what we had:

CORN coconut, cayenne, lime: a small frozen cube about one third of an inch on all sides, two-thirds sweet corn and one-third coconut, served on a small silver palette with three small drops on its top corners – one lime, one lime zest, and one cayenne. In one tiny establishing dish, Grant illustrates Alinea’s strongest qualities. A commitment to a subtle, engaging, balance of flavors, served in a manner that involves your brain long before your palate, in a portion sized to stimulate and excite without numbing.

YUBA prawn, miso, orange: The utensil for this course is a fried Yuba (tofu skin) twist. Around the crisp is a steamed prawn, a bit of lemon zest, and a young chive, all lashed in place with thread of orange pith. In the bottom of the bowl it is presented in is a dollop of miso emulsion, adding its sweetness to the dish.

TOMATO several complementary flavors : seasoned breadcrumbs, mozzarella, paprika jelly, dried pepperoni, red pepper puree, pickled cucumber, lemon zest, and a saffron noodle are laid on a filet of an heirloom tomato. The suggestion is to eat each complimenting component individually with its tomato section.

MACKEREL radish pod, lemon, poppy seed: The dish for this service is a round-bottomed bowl with a fork fit into it. On the fork is a piece of Mackerel topped with some lemon leather, a radish pod, a cilantro leaf, a slice of chili, and a section of orange. After you remove the fork and eat the bite, you can drink from the remaining cup the white poppy seed soup in the bottom. With the fork removed and all consumed, the vessel will balance on its rounded bottom à la a weeble.

HAMACHI buttermilk, blackberry, green peanuts: poached green peanuts scattered about a plate interspersed with small dollops of thickened buttermilk. On top of each dollop, a couple of drupelets from a blackberry are placed, with drops of a blackberry sauce. All this surrounds a piece of hamachi with a peanut crust seared to it.

KOBE BEEF watermelon, cocoa, red wine: Small cubes of seared steak, small cubes of watermelon macerated in red wine and rolled in crushed cocoa nibs, pickled sections of watermelon rind, a few drops of a clear smoke-flavored gel, fennel fronds, sliced fennel stalk, and fennel gel, bitters and sweets roasted and raw and of varying intensities; a dish of unexpected extremes.

SQUAB strawberry, sorrel, long peppercorn: captured on the end of a metal stick in a thin sugar film are oxalis (sorrel seed pods) which you are encouraged to taste first as a palate cleanser. If you like sorrel or even general lemonyness, this alone would be a pleasing thing. Once this tart bit with its touch of sweetness has been consumed, your mouth can leave behind the smoke and chocolate of the last dish and move on, ready for: seared squab breast, grilled squab loin and squab rillettes, topped with a strawberry and some micro-greens.

MUSKMELON eggplant, orange blossom: a curl of frozen muskmelon , dotted with drops of a mucilaginous reduction of eggplant and an orange blossom cream, together on a spoon. The consistency of the melon is that of ice rather than frozen melon flesh, while the flavor is that of undressed melon.

VERJUS lemon, thyme, beet: an espherication of beet juice in a pool of verjus with lemon sections and lemon thyme foam, dotted with olive oil. When the beet bubble was pierced, its red liquid spread through the dish combining a lightly astringent, earthy sweetness with the ascorbic components of the rest of ingredients. This dish best illustrates Grant’s layering of flavor. Thyme was a pervasive flavor, yet scattered in the foam were three thyme leaves, just enough so that about every third taste had a spike in the level of that element, which helped make you aware of it being there. Any more would have turned overpowering; without it the thyme may have blended into the background.

MENTHOL angelica, lemon: A menthol puff on the end of an antenna (the eighteen inch needle grant uses for small bites) wound in a strand of lemon leather with an angelica leaf. I am suspicious the taming affects of the angelica on the lemon leather may have also worked on the menthol aspects of the puff; the menthol flavor was subtle, almost imperceptible.

YOGURT juniper, mango: a soft-centered yogurt puff topped with a dusting of powdered juniper and dried mango. The flavors, while light, were very aromatic with a long finish evocative of a gin fizz.

PEAR celery leaf & branch, curry: a hard, waxy, curry orb containing a thin pear flavored liquid floating in celery juice with celery leaves sits in a crystal clear, thick bottomed shot glass with tapering ends. When it was presented, we were warned that because of an optical illusion the orb was actually bigger than it appeared, and that the liquid contained inside was very thin so when we cracked the shell our lips should be closed. Immediately after six grownup English-speaking people took this advice, one by one we failed to open our mouths wide enough to accommodate the pill, then struggled to close our lips quickly as we bit. Laughing ensued. A fun course, well played flavor and presentation-wise, that served as a reset for the dishes that followed, both palate and energy-wise.

PORCINI cherry, ham, toasted garlic: a strand of porcini custard with a chew like soft taffy, with dried porcinis, a slice of dried ham, marinated black cherry, and toasted garlic chips.

LOBSTER puffed, and seasoned with pollen: standing in what looks like a giant’s cuff-link is the flavor of lobster with a touch of fennel suspended in air with a crunchy exterior.

LANGOUSTINE vacherin, litchi, ginger: langoustine with a foamed sauce tasting deeply of iodine and brine on shaved toasted meringue, with a ginger emulsion.

LAMB summer vegetable jam, mastic, mustard peach: the first thing placed on the table at the top of service was a sprig of rosemary set standing upright in a cylindrical setting (something like a place-card holder). For this course, three small bites of lamb come to the table on a hot stone in a metal frame. In order to deliver this, a sort of potholder is used comprised of a stick placed through a hole at its end with a heat resistant fabric attached. Once the sizzling bits of lamb are on the table, the potholder is removed and the sprig of rosemary is inserted in its place. As the rosemary needles meet the hot stone their aroma spreads over the table and fills your nose as you taste the pieces of lamb, each topped with one of the three listed accoutrements.

HOT POTATO cold potato, black truffle, parmesan: on a pin inserted through a hole in the side of shallow wax bowl with cold potato soup in its bottom sits a ball of hot potato with the circumference of a nickel. Also speared on the pin are a tiny cube of butter and a slightly larger cube of parmesan cheese. Balanced on the potato is a slice of black truffle, and a couple of sea salt crystals. By removing the pin from the bowl, the butter, cheese, hot potato and truffle slip into the cold soup, which you then shoot from the side of the bowl as you would an oyster. Generally the favorite flavor of the night.

BISON gruyere, pumpernickel, ramps: roasted bison in sauce under a pile of shaved gruyere and crisped pumpernickel, with pickled ramps and a roasted section of leek.

SASSAFRAS Blis aged sherry vinegar: frozen to the end of a pin on a negative skillet, served in a shallow indentation in a short solid Pyrex cylinder.

CREAM CHEESE guava, black sesame, tamarind: a small cheesecake disk filled with guava syrup on black sesame sauce, with sugared minty cachaca jelly cubes and dried tamarind chips. Here, the Alinea approach to adding variations on a flavor shows in desserts; the addition of seven black sesame seeds adds dimension to the black sesame sauce.

CHOCOLATE elderflower, umeboshi, green tea: a long strand of chocolate somewhere in consistency between pulled taffy and pudding, with umeboshi (dried Japanese apricots often called plums) ice cream, dots of elderflower and green tea gels, and bits of crunchy dried chocolate and tea.

COFFEE mint, buckwheat, passionfruit: the mint is a clear gel cut to look like diamonds, around the mint diamonds is a frozen coffee tube filled with a clear liquid, set on piles of toasted buckwheat and dots of passion fruit gel.

PEANUT five other flavors: at the end of foot-long needles radiating in a stepped pattern from a metal disk are five coated peanut halves with the following accoutrements: celery, grape, honey, chocolate, and sugar/salt.

In my first Alinea meal there was a course based around tobacco that was great in theory and horrible in actuality. Both in spite of and partly because of this daring course, I fell in love with Alinea. This time around there were no such clearly daring steps taken. In fact, in twenty–three courses no one had anything but praise for any dish, the worst that was said was, “well I liked the hot potato-cold potato best.” It is hard to complain about a meal this inspired and exhilarating that pleases so broadly, so I won’t. I will simply say I still consider Grant’s cuisine the most exciting available, and hope that every course pleased because it is well tried and tested before appearing on the table at this point, and not just some amazing version of playing it safe.

This meal came less than a year after my first and there were zero repeated courses, so obviously the menu is evolving with the place. Joe Catterson’s wine parings were again off the standard chart and well suited to each course. I think at this level of flavor there will never be a dud course, the reaction will always be great or horrible; the commitment to flavor is that serious. I would happily swallow a couple more tobacco courses to insure a future of meals like this. I just hope passionate reactions to the bad don’t tame the Alinea team’s commitment to experimentation, and I hope the fear of losing praise doesn’t scare them into a rut.

(the size of bubble represents size of dish and the further to the right it is the sweeter the course)

Chicago dogs

I place the Chicago dog very highly and confidently at the top of the world of junk food, up there with the likes of the Philly steak, the NY slice, the LA roadside taco, and NJ’s disco fries. The basic ingredient list for a Chicago dog is a dark red Vienna Beef hotdog on a poppy seed roll with shredded lettuce, sliced tomato, celery salt, thin yellow mustard, a pickle spear, chopped onions, neon-green relish, and sport peppers. Starting with just the colors of the relish and the dog and moving into the fact that, except for the sausage, it is largely a hand-held salad, it is a truly unique food. Someone at some point took the direction “everything” to an existential level.  There are contrasting, bold, forward flavors like the smoky salty dog, and the vinegary acerbic mustard, there are aromatic notes to the celery salt and piquant notes to the little peppers, similar flavors compare in the natural sweetness of the onions and tomato next to the sugary sweetness of the ridiculous relish. All come together to make a pretty involving portable treat.

On this trip I made four stops for dogs:

When I land at Midway airport I usually find a reason to grab a dog at Gold Coast Dogs in the little food court area. Most often I am traveling to Illinois to catch up with Bestfriend and to do some destination dining so I am never sure when another opportunity will arise. Sometimes the excuse is as simple as it’s a better use of the next ten minutes than standing at the carousel waiting for my bags. In this case, I had landed at 10:15pm and figured it was the easiest way to grab a late-night snack. When I arrived and found them cleaning the steam table I thought I had missed my opportunity, but happily came to find I could still get a dog.

I ordered a steamed dog with everything and got a pretty straightforward, sadly not exactly hot, dog. At best, it was tepid which allowed it to become mostly about the flavors of the mustard and the celery salt. Not the best dog I have had, even from Gold Coast.

Watching the Mets-Cubs game from the Sheffield Rooftop afforded another dog opportunity. Because of the nature of the open spaces around Wrigley some of the adjacent buildings have taken advantage of both their vantage and proximity by building watching areas on their roofs. Included with the price of admission to the super-fourth floor perch is all you can drink (canned beer till the 7th inning stretch) and all you can eat (grilled cookout fare, and frozen pizza).

I had a grilled dog with everything. A wide-gauge dog with that kind of plasticy bite topped more with burger fixings than dog toppings. It had chopped tomato, sautéed onions, pickle chips, sauerkraut, and raw onions, with Heinz yellow mustard in packets and ended up tasting more of bitter over-cooked white vinegar than anything else. I tossed it after two bites and got a cheeseburger, which while only mediocre by cookout standards, passed as a burger (something the dog couldn’t).

I went to Wiener’s Circle for the first time after I saw Dave Attell on his Insomniac show cutting up with the rather brash counter ladies in the wee hours of the morning a couple of years ago. This time I went because Nellie insisted after reading my Italian Dog post that it was definitely worth my trying their Char Cheddar Dog because it is one of the possibly greatest dogs in the world. I of course agreed to try it, as long as she committed to sample the wurst genius to be found at the Windmill in Long Branch, NJ.

At the Weiner’s Circle I asked the (not necessarily ingratiating but nowhere near as hostile as they are at 3am) counter lady for a Char Cheddar with everything. I was served a Vienna Dog with its ends quarter-split and nicely blackened, with all the standard accoutrement plus a double pickle spear, noticeably ripe tomato slices, and a drizzle of a bright orange sharpish cheese product. Besides violating the integrity of the bun with moisture, guaranteeing you eat 30% of the dog from the paper carrier tray, the addition of cheese brought an oleaginous salty quality that played very well, adding another dimension to a dog that already sits at a good balance point of the flavors. I have no doubt had I stopped here on the way home from some of those many “too much cheap American beer from large plastic Solo cups” nights of my youth, I would with great regularity and conviction espouse the merits of this tasty bite.

The last stop of this journey was Hot Doug’s. When Chicago area magazines do surveys, Hot Doug’s often appears on the “favorite places to eat” lists of the Chicagoland chefs I respect most. On a little corner far from the city center (the 3300 north block), across from an empty field with a crew using a backhoe to dig a hole deep enough to fit an extension ladder, is a small (about a dozen four-top tables) lunch-counter kind of place somewhat haphazardly decorated with things like pictures of Brittney Spears, an 8x12 print-out of sausage-centric German phrase translations, and in large white lettering the slogan that “the two nicest words in the English language are encased meats.” There are two menus at Hot Doug’s: one, about ten square feet painted in yellow and red on the wall, offers about a dozen options; the other, a chalkboard about a foot-and-a-half square written in all the colors of an eight-pack of chalk, offers about 8 selections. The larger menu has pretty standard options ranging from “The Dog,” a run of the mill Chicago dog, to “The Ace Patrick,” an immersion-fried corn dog. The shorter list has gourmet sausages as varied as Thai or crawfish and chorizo. All dogs are offered steamed, charred, fried, or fried and charred. On Friday and Saturday they also offer duck fat fries (this couldn’t go unmentioned).

I got The Dog, charred, with everything. Leaning more to brown than red, the link at the center was all the things a dog should be, smoky, spicy, and salty, with a snap to the casing and a juicy stuffing with a resilient chew. If there is an aspect you want to play the center of the mélange of components in a Chicago-style hot dog it is the dog, and this one does so well.

The best part of Chicago dogs is they are all over the place and are made by many people. There is no one dominant place franchising stands all over town. Without straying far from Bestfriend’s apartment, I think I could try 50 made in 50 ways by 50 people, so setting a favorite would just limit opportunities. That being said, although I probably enjoyed Doug’s most this trip, he does himself a disservice in the “best” category, because when I return I will be busy trying his other sausages; they look very interesting. When I want a prototypical, this is what I think of when I crave a Chicago dog, dog I will be heading back to Wiener’s Circle, probably for a Char Cheddar with everything, extra sport peppers (it seems to make sense with the cheese).

The best burger: Barnacle Bill's

I love when New Yorkers argue about the greatest burger. It starts some awesome debate, and your answer tells much more about you than you think--especially if your vote is for something like the very good but nowhere-near-the-best Shack Burger at the Shake Shack (this says you like to consider yourself a foodie but actually are more interested in who the popular kids are). Some votes are for Corner Bistro (which I have always imagined started because a writer for one of the local magazines lived near it and somehow had never had the burger; it is a version of at one of its readily available incarnations at outlets near any body of water in the continental United States). Others dig on Burger Joint (I assume you know that this is the place on 57th street and not the pathetic little slider outlet on 3rd St. called The burger Joint,). For most burgers there is an opinion, which is what makes them so much fun to debate.

Before I rock all your worlds and tell you the best burger in the world is to be had in a small town called Rumson, NJ, at a bar called Barnacle Bill’s, rendering the best in New York a fruitless struggle (around here I am in the Burger Joint camp), I feel the need to set up some parameters for this debate:

1.      There are two kinds of burgers in the world: the fast food burger and the restaurant/bar burger.

2.       Anything that is not one of these is, of course, the greatest of its kind because it does not fit one of these two vast categories. (So don’t post comments about weck, and don’t offer the Kobe sliders at Stanton Social, or DB’s modern burger. Yes, they rock but they are a one-of-a-kind thing or a subcategory.)

If you haven’t tried the burger at In-N-Out Burger, I don’t think you get to vote on best fast food burger. If it is not the best, it is a benchmark. Fast food burgers are small, 2.5-5oz prepared within guidelines in the interest of efficiency and uniformity, served on buns and if you change an ingredient the burger changes name. Fast food burgers are served on trays and you go to them. But that is not what this post is about.

Bar/restaurant burgers are big, in the 8-12 oz range, are cooked to order, come on rolls, and are juicy (whether or not they got past your prescribed doneness when the short order guy got distracted from his duties). There will always be at least three cheese choices, it will be made of ground beef or chuck, is served on a plate, and comes to you.

If you look at the burgers people in NY seem to favor, they straddle these areas well and probably win polls because they draw votes from both camps.

As far as bar/restaurant burgers go, Barnacle’s has the best offering. If you order a burger you get a hand-formed 10oz beef patty on a roll with a dill pickle spear and some ruffled potato chips. The patty is grilled on what is basically a huge flat-top grill pan, with a flame heat source over the back third. The burgers end up with a nice black char, combined with the smokiness of fat that has fallen on something extremely hot and vaporized, then wafted back up to perfume itself. Most of all, it has been the same for the 20 years since I had my first.

The other thing that makes Barnacle’s burger superior is its simple condiment. It comes on what is called a hard roll in that part of the world. Basically a drier, darker, and taller version of a Kaiser roll with poppy seeds baked onto it; it has a crispy shell with a light, chewy simple white crumb. Onions can be had raw, sautéed or ringed, and it can also come with lettuce and tomato on request. You can get mozzarella, Swiss, American, bleu, or cheddar (a sauce). And that’s about it (if you wish you could get some jalapeños or sun-dried tomatoes you have such little respect for the burger and yourself I will ask you to stop reading at this point. I mean a burger is about the burger, not condiments, really, if you want to load stuff on a grilled sandwich, start with chicken. And if this is the first time that thought has occurred to you, then you like a bad place, poorly making burgers out of crappy meat, you nincompoop… this rant interrupted by the editor in the interest of sanity and flow AL)

On my last visit to Barnacle's, I was with Wife, who is very good about sharing. So, in the interest of variety I had a bacon cheddar burger and she had an American burger on an English muffin, and we split them. As horrible and boring as American cheese is in most cases, one of the places it plays well is on a well-made burger. Because of Bestman and his preference for this burger, it holds a place in the repertoire with the chips actually put on it. The bacon cheddar burger is the one I have been getting for twenty years. Originally I was sucked in by the way the burger's oily juices combined with the cheddar sauce's tanginess and the salty, smoky bacon. At this point I would say I get it about one out of every three times I go to Barnacle's out of familiarity.

I could go on and on about Barnacles Bill’s burger and presuppose all arguments, but I won’t. I will simply mention as a last point that while most of the rest of the menu at B Bill’s (predominantly fish dishes; get the steamers as an appetizer when you go) and all the other restaurants in the area have almost doubled in price since my first visit back in ‘83 or so, the burger stays in the very fair six-dollar range. You have to desperately try to get this burger to ten dollars. Even if you add everything you can to it, it stays a very sensible price.

I understand that people take this question very seriously and are sure I am wrong. To them I propose a fair forum for debate. I will happily join you to sample any contender, right after you try mine. I'll even do them in the same day if both are in the greater metro New York area. So far everyone that has had a vote has been forced to concede to this one. And heck, my pride can stand being wrong if it means finding a better burger.

El Bulli: 444 impossibillian stars

Throughout history, legendary trips to see wise men have often included scaling a mountain. So it felt appropriate that the trip to El Bulli involved driving straight up one of those one-lane European mountain roads that possess many switch backs, and coming to a full stop every time a car approached in the opposing direction. After about fifteen minutes driving away from a very small town, there was still nothing on the horizon that could have been the building that houses what many consider the most creative chef in the world. Once the mountain was crested, going down the other side, about half the distance you traveled up on the way out of the small beach town of Roses, a cove set deep into the mountainside on the vast gulf of Roses you have been traversing is revealed. At the center of the shore of this horseshoe-shaped inlet sits El Bulli.

I first became aware of Ferran Adria's existence about eight years ago, while listening to two chefs discuss the best chef in the world. Between that and El Bulli receiving the somewhat ubiquitous honor of being Restaurant Magazine's number one restaurant in the world early in April, I had built up some pretty ridiculously mythic expectations for my meal there, if it ever took place. Rather than do the same for you I will simply tell you what happened when I got out of the cab at the bottom of that hill, walked in, and sat down at a table for eight in the deepest room of a humble restaurant built near a seaside town in the 1950's.

EL BULLI

While we waited for our other six diners we were served a Piña Colada. A simple up glass was set in front of us with about eight inches of spun white sugar piled high in it. Into this, our waiter poured a blend of pineapple and coconut purees, melting the sugar. After the second or third sip we discovered that there where three of Ferran's spheres hidden under the cotton candy. When you gulped one into your mouth and pierced it with your tongue you realized it was full of rum, adding the alcoholic bite the virgin drink was missing up to this point. 

Along with the Piña Colada fish crackers were served: crisp fried ribbons that tasted somewhat of grilled sardines and had an aftertaste of a finished meal of fish and chips.

At this point our dining companions joined us and we started the planned menu for the evening with a palate cleanser of tarragon: a simple small dollop of pureed tarragon leaves that had had their moisture removed to leave the concentrated green flavors of light licorice and hints of mint, a rather firm-handed primer.

We started off with a magnum of Cava.

caipirinha-nitro con concetrado de estragón

While we were experiencing the somewhat numbing effect of pure herbal essence on the center of our tongues, the waiters started preparing the solid caipirinhas. Limejuice, caracha and simple syrup were placed in a bowl with liquid nitrogen and whisked until solid. This concoction was then spooned into a frozen shell of lime and served with a gelato shovel. It had the beauty of a frozen drink without all that pulverized ice to bruise its integrity.

aceitunas verdes sféricas-1

Next up were the green olive spheres – truly the essence of marinated green olive, trapped in a very thin alginate skin and served on a spoon. (The spoon appeared again throughout the meal. A snub-handled version with measurement lines etched on it, it harkens you to remember that this chef is the scientist behind all the food science you hear about these days). The olives are presented in a mason jar, floating in olive oil with orange zest, rosemary, thyme, garlic and shallots; they actually taste of all these ingredients and also have a slight, cheesy bite. I am not sure how permeable the membrane of the sphere is, but my suspicion is that this is all affect for presentation and that the liquid inside was made to taste of these common marinade flavors long before the olives were put in the jar.

marshmallow de piñones

Peanut marshmallows were next. Savory marshmallows, each one far too light to actually be made with gelatin, it was more as if stabilized whipped cream had been rolled in toasted peanuts. 

oreo de aceituna negra con crema doble

Then black olive double-cream Oreos came to the table. Black olive cookies sandwiched whipped double cream rather than having twice as much stuffing.

"croquanter" de guanábana

Cheese popcorn. Pieces of popcorn fitted with hats made from a crisped aged cheese (maybe Gouda). There was a bite of what tasted like nutmeg that I never quite put my finger on... until I got home to America, translated the title from Spanish and found that it was nutmeg.

palomita con Reypenaer a la nuez moscada

Then guava chips. If you stacked three on top of each other you could still read through these incredibly delicate crisps that were a light touch of the taste of guava.

pan de gambas

Next, a simple shrimp toast. This tasted like a shrimp stock had been slowly cooked down till it was completely dry with nothing left but the essence of shrimp, powdered, then turned into dust and sprinkled onto a shrimp toast.

caramelo de aceite de calabaza

Pumpkin oil caramel (garnished with a piece of gold leaf). Pumpkin oil had been poured through a tube with hard crack caramel on the end so that the oil pulled the sugar to form a bon-bon. The shell was actually far thicker than I expected, with quite a lot of burnt sugar in the ratio.

esencia de mandarina

Essence of mandarin. Remember trying to mix Tang into a thick paste rather than a thin liquid as a kid, only to be frustrated by its granular nature? Well Ferran has made something with that flavor but none of the icky crystals. You are directed by the server to hold this in your mouth for 30 seconds. It tastes as orange water smells but feels similar to papaya nectar in your mouth.

bocadillo ibérico 2003

Iberian ham baguette. El Bulli is a Spanish restaurant and Spanish restaurants serve ham on bread. I'm pretty sure it's a law. Ferran's is somehow just the crust of a standard white baguette, magically hollow on the inside. His Iberian ham is cooked, with a note of sweetness in the cure similar to a maple sugar rub.

caviar sférico de melon

Cantaloupe caviar. Probably the dish I saw photographed most, and read most about prior to my journey. The presentation is fabulous. A mock oesetra tin is filled with orange balls only slightly larger than, and looking just like, salmon roe, but made of cantaloupe. There are some passion fruit seeds on top bringing tanginess to the equation (along with their look, reminiscent of a developing tadpole back in grade school science class). The truth is the "caviar" tastes exactly like cantaloupe tastes in April, kind of dull, especially next to the fresh mint and tangy seeds. Ferran often explains he wants to make food taste more like itself. Here, he has succeeded. Sadly, long ago I decided that the flavor of cantaloupe only holds my interest at the end of a very hot summer. I wonder what this dish tastes like in August.

We moved to a magnum of Sauvignon Blanc blend.

brioche al vapor de mozzarella al perfume de rosas

Steamed brioche with mozzarella and rose air was our first espuma sighting. A brioche, soft and chewy like a Chinese bun but as buttery and light as any brioche, was topped with a fresh mozzarella that was like the innards of a burrata, soft, loose and creamy as result of a steaming. On top of all this was a very light, white foam that literally tasted just like roses smell, disappearing the moment any part of you came in contact with it and leaving just the waft of rose buds.

I am a devout follower of the new cuisine and seek out chefs dabbling in it at every opportunity. The hard truth is that at this point in its fruition everyone is doing either versions of techniques Ferran played a key role in developing or that they learned at his side (be it in his kitchen or at one of the many gatherings he attends, like Madrid Fusion). You can't get away from them. Orbs, espumas, powders and decompositions are all out there and, up to this point in our meal, we were sampling things from the repertoire of El Bulli's past. To be sure, El Bulli's spheres were better for their thinner skins; its espumas held their shape longer and their density varied with the desired impact of their flavors; whatever made the popcorn taste like nutmeg was so imperceptible I wasn't sure it had actually happened. But honestly I started feeling like I had done this Picasso of the new modern art a disservice by one, going to too many of his acolytes' restaurants, and two, believing the hype about this mad scientist auteur (like Restaurant Magazine’s "best restaurant in the world" grade). Then came:

aire helado de parmesano con muesli

Parmesan cheese bread with nuts and fruit muesli. You are presented with a closed Styrofoam coffin about the size of a school lunchbox, with a beautiful image of the hills of Parma wrapped around it and sealed with a sticker that reads elbulliaire. Sometimes the most profound things in cuisine are born of simplicity, like how well aged cheese pairs with fruit and toasted nuts. In the little white box is a translucent plastic liner that has been filled with Parmesan air and submerged in liquid nitrogen, setting it as a solid (in effect freeze-drying it). Remember the first time you had the sensation of the creaminess of astronaut ice cream melting on your tongue and you were ecstatic that it was exactly like ice cream? This is that for the undisputed king of all cheeses. In a small, plastic zip-lock presented alongside are dried walnuts, raspberries and almonds, to be sprinkled over the top as you dig through the air and discover the textural differences of the parts that were closer to the freezing agent. Before discovering the plastic liner, I decided at some point as I dug into the densest part at the bottom that I might actually be digging out Styrofoam and consuming it, and I decided that was ok. It was so much fun I wasn't going to stop till I hit table.

migas de almendra, tomate raff, saúco y gelé de almendruco

Tomato salad with elderflowers and almond powder (to be eaten separately). Here Ferran has decided to make a salad, leaving the door open to combine many ingredients. In the bowl part of the bowl were peeled sections of tomato (crunchy even for this season), a section of a large-celled citrus fruit with a very light flavor (maybe a pomello) dusted with bitter dried citric oil, tiny elderflowers, basil oil, and a tamarind syrup, all dressed with an elderflower foam. On the edge of the bowl was a white powder, a dust really. It was like it had been dried, put in a blender, pulverized, and then put in an atom smasher just to make sure it was as fine as could be. In your mouth, it re-hydrated to taste milky, with a finishing aroma of that taste right after your first bite of marzipan before it moves to sickly sweet because you overdo it by chewing.

nueces tiernas", té ahumado y wasabi

This culinary movement Ferran has clearly settled at the head of is often called molecular gastronomy, a title I bristle at for two reasons: one, because as far as I know, as much as science is a contributing factor (along with culinary expertise and creative vision), I know of no science these chefs are doing on a molecular level; and two, because I think it allows the old school devotees of Haute Cuisine to trivialize this as a fad, discouraging people from spending their hard-earned money on the childish toying of ambitious, but possibly misguided, precocious youth, and thus convincing folks to pay for the same old experience over and over. 

That being said, I have no explanation for walnuts in textures with smoked tea air. What I suspect is that somewhere in the kitchen is a mold in the shape of walnuts which re-forms purees to resemble walnuts. What I know is that on a plate are a warm walnut dust, three dark brown (as if roasted) walnut halves and three white (as if blanched) walnut halves that have dots of wasabi on them. Both types are held in place by a walnut cream and around that is a golden liquid redolent of a wonderfully rich chicken soup.

Now the molecular part: the best comparison I have come up with to describe the textures of these walnuts is the lupini bean. If you brine raw lupini beans in their shells you get what the Portuguese call tremoços. The white walnuts, which looked completely raw and as if their skin had been stripped, had the almost synthetic crunch of these Portuguese bar snacks. I can't actually tell you what they tasted like other than walnuts with a tiny dot of wasabi and a creaminess on the bottom, because all I could do was be captivated by this totally alien feeling. Having almost wrapped my head around the white ones, I was happy to move to the familiar-looking brown ones, which clearly appeared to be the same kind of walnuts I like to brine and slow roast for 48 hours at home (for snacking). Then, of course, I put one in my mouth, bit down, and it disappeared. Going back to the lupini analogy, it was as if the bean had been steamed to a point where it had no structural integrity left, as if the minute it touched something solid it dematerialized, leaving behind only the impression of a walnut.

Ferran's ability to transmogrify things into finer powder than I have ever felt appears in a walnut version here. It is literally as fine as cornstarch, and this one tastes of roasted walnuts and burnt sugar.

Exciting and stimulating on so many levels, I decided it best to stop trying to figure this dish out and just accept that there is a machine in the kitchen that I had missed on my tour that had probably been used to make the walnuts right after it turned Jeff Goldblum into a fly in 1986 and move on to:

espárragos en escabeche

Asparagus and asparagus escabeche. Asparagus tips (so perfectly pared I could not find a flat side where the cylindrical stalks had been touched by either a knife or a peeler) were awash in an asparagus and saffron espuma reminiscent, to this provincial palate, of hollandaise. Grated over the entire dish was tuna bottarga. The dried roe of the tuna permeated the dish so bites of the espuma were not unlike a tuna salad, and taking all three components together the re-composition was strikingly reminiscent of a niçoise salad.

guisantes al jamócon ravioli cremoso a menta fresca y aire de eucalipto

Ok I am sick of apologizing for it, pork fat tastes good. So I don't want to hear any guff when I explain that this was a viscous, opaque soup of pig fat that contained spring peas, cubes of ham fat, and clear raviolis filled with mint cream, with eucalyptus air and pea flowers on top. It's spring and you are going to go to restaurants and hear all kinds of things about English spring peas, mint, and bacon or ham. It is just a great group of flavors. By stripping it down like this you are left with a dish that doesn't cover up these beautifully delicate flavors with smoking, salt-curing, or anything else. Revel in the joy and, if you are a person with some kind of guilt fetish, go for a jog.

Mejilones sfericados con sopa de patata al bacón y crema doble

Mussels with potato and bacon consommé and cream. The mussels were encapsulated in a gel of either their liquor or the liquor of one of their bivalve friends, each one bursting with moist brininess while still possessing the denser texture of a properly cooked mussel. There were little cubes of pine-infused apple as a garnish and somewhere about halfway through this course you remind yourself that there are bacon-based, cream of mussel soups in America and it's the apple and pine that spruce this one up so nicely. And the fact that what the sphere holds is a perfectly cooked mussel that feels and tastes like a nonexistent thing: a mussel that could be eaten on the half shell, uncooked, at a raw bar.

ventresca de salmón con encurtidos

Salmon and pickled vegetables. The striation of fat in the salmon combined with its opaqueness made me assume it was from the belly/collar area of the fish. There was a white discoloration around the corners of the cubes of salmon that led me to believe it had been cooked in some way, but I can't imagine how. It felt and tasted profoundly of raw salmon. Accompanying it were cucumber centers, alfalfa sprouts, capers, shaved garlic, chives, all kinds of sprouts, pickled ginger, pickled flower buds (mini-daisies, cat tails), a black olive sphere, and caper berries.

At this point we switched to a magnum of red from Ribera del Duero.

colmenillas a la crema

Morels in cream with a pine tree jelly. The morels have to have been prepared in a rosemary flavored beef stock of some kind. This was the first truly rich dish of the evening – there were notes of butter, demi-glace, and some kind of lemon in a pine tree cube. The coolness of this dish lies in how it pairs to red wine. The mushrooms may as well be beef essence and the resin-y pine cubes draw so many herbs out of the wine it ends up tasting like a retsina.

el mar

We were presented with forceps and then a dish they simply titled "the sea" showed up. Five little letters describing the most involved dish of the evening. On a square plate, woven into ribbons of tuna espuma, were all kinds of shapes and colors: aquatic life laid at a jaunty angle, flowing towards a pool of viscous purple liquid. There were about ten types of sea vegetation, flowers in purples, reds, and greens, as well as parts of seaweed leaves bunched in little piles.

Interspersed between each specimen were other aspects of flavor. The sea creatures were primarily bivalves. I clearly identified a percebes, a clam, an oyster, another gelled mussel, along with orange roe (about the size of steelhead salmon's) and a square of watermelon. Luckily for me there was a person at the table who did not like fish so I got two attempts at this dish.

The first time, I started with the flower at the corner opposite the liquid and worked my way in columns, top to bottom, towards it.  It was as if an archeologist had done a bisection in rock of the strata of flavors of the sea – starting at the top where the tuna air was light, foamy and slightly salty, and finishing at the purple pool that was culinarily evocative of the primordial ooze (deep, dark, thick, bitter and most aquatic). As the flavors move from sweeter to more severe you come across the watermelon square about two thirds of the way through and are revitalized before making the plunge into the dark bottom of the sea.

The second time through I put each plant with the next item down the line from it and dipped them in the fluid. Interestingly, as I progressed the flowerage moved from being the lighter side of the paring to the stronger.

Cintas con kalix

In the center of the plate was a clear liquid with a darker liquid in its center which sunk to the bottom. Together they tasted like burnt lemon oil and clarified butter. The taste was biting, as if the oils of lemon zest had been scorched and added later. Reaching out from this pool appeared three white tentacles with an orange vein running up their centers. The tentacles were actually long, thin fillets of a very tightly-ribbed white-fleshed fish (it reminded me of fresh water eel, but our servers said it translated to belt fish). In the cooking process, its thinner edges had tightened around the thicker center of the fillet to make a channel that had been filled with a very small bead roe of kalix.

patas de pollo

Ever sit eating nicely crisp chicken skin and declare you would happily just eat this all day if it weren't so wasteful to go through the effort of roasting a whole bird just to eat the skin? Well, on this plate was the perfectly browned and crisp skin of a chicken thigh, a little pickled seaweed, and milk air. There was a slight bite to it, with the flavors of cayenne and black pepper just strong enough to play off the slightly sour milk air. All the best flavors of good southern fried chicken dish, except for the mac-n-cheese.

tatin de pimiento del piquillo y platano

Banana tarte tatin with red pepper and a tarragon yogurt topping. A red pepper-like lacquer formed a skin around a cooked piece of banana, which was completely soft. The red lacquer, slightly piquant, was too pliant to have been put on the cooked banana but too moist to have been on the banana while it cooked. The tarragon yogurt, served on the side, was just slightly sweet and was actually the sweetest part of the dish. This all was served on a phyllo crisp so you could eat it in one or two bites (any more and the banana would have spread all over the place).

liquid de melocotón

A study in peaches and cream, this was a frozen cream bon bon filled with peach schnapps and one of the laboratory spoons filled to the 2.5 mark with peach nectar.

palet negro

Chocolate in textures. A minty chocolate gelato, dehydrated raspberries, candied ginger jelly, dried chocolate cookies (like big versions of the crunchies in a Cookiepuss) and a square like a gelatinized mousse.

Preserved limquat (lime and kumquat hybrid).

Morphings….

Cookies: chocolate, raspberry, green tea, lemon.

A large, hollow, egg-shaped bitter chocolate wrapped in foil. The foil was cut open and you were presented a small rock hammer to break the strong, orange-scented dark chocolate with.

Is El Bulli the best restaurant in the world? Depends what you are into. If, like me, you believe the strongest attributes a chef can have are creativity and a deep understanding of the interplays between color, flavor, texture, temperature, and aroma, and have spent your lifetime developing a reference base that presupposes many things about cuisine but are happiest when those assumptions are completely shattered... If you eat for the effect it has on all of your senses rather than because your body requires food, and you have learned that there is an endorphin rush from eating past satiety... If you are suspicious that learning a million variations of the mother sauces may actually be an exercise to compensate for the lack of genius required to truly be great... then yes, go through the process, get yourself to El Bulli and put yourself in Ferran's hands. In the long run, it costs less than making an extravagant night of a Madonna show at MSG. This man is a genius. Many people played guitar before and after Hendrix, but don't you wish you had seen him live?

italian hot dog

In Red Bank, New Jersey, on Monmouth Street, is a place called Mr. Pizza Slice. For all of my junior year of high school, I would meet up with my chums at the end of the school day and hang out there. We would listen to the jukebox, play video games, drink soda, and eat. It was all very Happy Days -- except with Catholic school blazers instead of letterman sweaters, and I don’t remember one single guy that carried a comb in his back pocket.

Steve was the guy behind the counter and he knew us all by name. Steve made a very good slice of pizza, had a great head of black hair, and was comfortable enough with all of us to know who the trouble-makers were and to chase us out after the time our rent (paid in slices, or orders of round French fries and fountain beverages) had ended, usually around 4:30 PM. The thing Steve made, though, that sits him squarely in the middle of my memories of great food only to be had in my hometown, is the Italian Hot Dog.

Most places in America with any credibility have their hot dog and its preparation. In Monmouth County, NJ, they are Shickhouse dogs that sit on a flat griddle for an indeterminate amount of time. Once the natural casing starts to brown and crack, they are ready. These dogs are about 10 inches long, mildly yet pleasantly spiced, and are available at most of the bars around town. In my opinion, they are best when they have done a progression from the cooler part to the ready part of the griddle and have then split wide on one side. Put this on a regular old bun that has had its inside tanned on the griddle, with spicy brown mustard and copious amounts of sauerkraut, and you would have my favorite version; that is, except for Steve’s Italian Hot Dog.

At Mr. Pizza Slice, the natural casing dog starts on a flat griddle. When you order an Italian Hot Dog, it is moved to a grill where it sits over a fire for a couple of seconds (a step I am against, except in this case). Then it goes into a deep, chewy, half an Italian sub roll (not Italian bread, but the unique rolls that exist only here for the subs of this area). On top of the dog goes a little pizza sauce and sautéed peppers and onions (just like you’d find on a sweet sausage at a street fair), then some round French (we called them Spanish) fries go on top of that. Onto all of this, I like to add a little mustard (it is a hot dog after all).

Maybe it’s because I had Steve’s growing up, or maybe because it is born of an aesthetic that runs through the Jersey shore and therefore through me, but I have had things people call an Italian hot dog in other places, and none are as good as this. Every time someone says theirs is better, they face Steve’s and concede. Don’t believe me? Try it.

Alinea 90044 stars

I recently had the best meal I have had in my life so far. When I say this, I am only comparing it to meals at restaurants I walked into knowing no one, with a reservation I obtained myself. So included in my comparison are places like The Fountain, Charlie Trotter's, and Per Se. Excluded are places like Morimoto, Cru, and Gramercy Tavern that I feel I can evaluate honestly but, having developed strong relationships with them all, through regular visits, feel I may see a level of service even beyond their already amazing standards which makes it unfair for me to compare them to new places.

 

I first heard of chef Grant Achatz when he was at Trio, and decided I had to try his food some day. After he opened Alinea he would pop up quite a bit in articles about what I call "the new food," the chefs that fall into Ferran Adrià's school of experimental cuisine.

 

The pitfall with any new creative process is that for every ingénue there is a hack turning out technical approximations of the art but missing the soul. Getting to El Bulli in Rossas, Spain has long been a quest of mine but as far as its American counterparts are concerned, their chefs seemed to emulate the surreal aspects of Adria's cuisine, rather then the obsession with flavor people who have been to El Bulli attribute to Ferran. That is, except for Grant.

 

When people talk about Grant they speak of skill, precision, and wonderful experiences, as well as pillows of aroma and bacon on trapezes. So, looking for an opportunity for a nice meal with Bestfriend prior to his bachelor weekend, I decided it was to Alinea we would go.

 

The myth is that there is an umpteen month wait for reservations, but I called on a Wednesday afternoon, explained I was Bestfriend's best-man and would be flying into Chicago the following day and that, if we could, we would like to have dinner for two the following night, time of seating not being a concern. Christopher, the Matrie d' saw no problem with the two of us dining at 8:00 pm.

 

There is a tradition among fine restaurants, especially those in Chicago, of being located inside townhouses that in no way stick out significantly from the other edifices on the block. We walked past Alinea twice before deciding it had to be that nondescript brown brick building with the warm glow across the street. Once through the front door, though, the design aspects became quite unique. You enter into a gray hallway that diminishes as you proceed, ending in a short space with a sculpture comprised of a bunch of blunted steel needles in rows. About halfway down the hallway, a pocketed door opens on your left and you are in front of the host's stand, which is tucked under the staircase. To your left is the downstairs dining room, where larger parties are sat, and to your right is the wide-open kitchen. In the center of the very sleek, sensible kitchen stands a young man who looks more like an old boy. This is when it first occurs to you the guy who is probably the next, best American chef, is twenty-nine years old.

 

The staff is very proud to be working with a system of unique elements, that will be new to your dining experience and they take the time to point out to you aspects that are distinct to Alinea. What makes these speaches so unfeigned is that each detail is explained as a choice of the chef, with an explication of some of his logic behind it. When silverware is presented it is put on a small platform in the middle of the table. The stand is topped with a rectangle of white linen. The server goes on to explain that the aesthetic of the big black wooden tables was preferred to linen but the functionality of linen also makes sense so the chef designed this simple solution. Armed with this information you see the logic of the approach without experiencing any of the instinctive resistance that the thought of something being different just for the sake of being different inspires.

 

The menu consists of three options: One, Two, and Tour. Tour is everything, 26 courses on the night I went, and it never occurred to me to dig deeper into what the other choices were.

 

We opted to have Joe Catterson, the sommelier, choose our beverages per course. Before flying, Robert Bohr, the manager of Cru, said Joe was absolutely to be trusted, and I trust Robert absolutely. After agreeing to select our beverage pairings, Joe also suggested we wait till after dinner to see our menu, thus removing any preconceptions it might inspire. We agreed, and we were on our way.

I have attached the menu and you can refer to it for any clarifications. The wines are listed as well. What I find compelling, and what a lot of my food geek friends like to argue against (though not from experience), are those aspects of Grant's preparation beyond those accepted as standard at this point in the evolution in cuisine, that I believe to be better than what I have seen so far.

 

The wines were some very interesting choices from all over the world. Not enough people are using Lillet; and Movia makes great wines in Slovenia that your average wine guy is afraid to commit to because it is just too much work to explain that the vineyard is only 30km from Italy. Joe's selections favored whites and light-bodied reds, which made absolute sense with the food.

The Olive Oil was seared. Grant has what I visualize as a cold-plate as opposed to hot. It holds some incredibly low temperature like negative billion degrees or something. No matter what it actually is, what results when you drop some olive oil on it is solid olive oil. This is served on what resembles an acupuncture needle with a little black pepper and Parmigiano. The second it touches your tongue it liquefies so what is now in your mouth is the unctuous feeling of olive oil, black pepper and Parmigiano. So far, the next best way I have seen this done (bread to soak up olive oil, which changes the purity of those flavors) is a far distant second to this.

 

Maitake is a soup that comes stacked in a cylinder, giving you a chance to observe and comprehend the layers before the waiters make a whoosh sound as they pull the cylinder up and the soup spreads and mixes in to the bowl to become one thing, the soup.

Dover Sole always comes with butter and capers. Grant dries the butter to a powder and adds banana as a counterpoint.  Rather then have a sole made to taste like butter and capers; you can taste the sole, or the sole with butter, or the sole with capers and butter, or banana, each combination working to enhance your appreciation of the fish itself.

Pomegranate is a pomegranate gel with a small square of Explorateur, a tiny slice of a Thai chili, and a micro mint leaf. Of course the taste is fantastic. Pungent cheeses, sweet fruit, nip of capsicum, cooling effect of mint. Grant stacks them and serves them on a two-foot needle counterbalanced on the table. You are asked to eat the "dish" with no utensils and no hands, so you must move your open face towards the needle. As you approach and consider this daring move on your part and his, you can't help but think about what your about to eat, and I am attracted to things that make me think about my food.

Lamb is served in a bowl that is placed on a pillow filled with smoke from burnt star anise. The weight of the bowl causes the air to leak out of the pillow so as you eat, the closer you are to the bowl, and the more the aroma of anise affects you. With your head over the bowl, the lamb tastes like anise, while the anise flavors lessen if you sit back in your chair.

Those are my five best examples. Everything on the menu has something special about it, and it all is great. The only two down-notes for me were Blackberry and Quince. The Blackberry because the tobacco, although it tasted interesting, did not necessarily taste good, and the flavor lingered through the next four courses and the Quince because it tasted trite and like cumin.

If you have the opportunity and the roughly $450 it will cost for the food and wines, go. No one on this continent is being more creative with ingredients and presentation. At its base, Alinea is serving very fine food that tastes great and, in its execution, is stimulating to all of your senses (even your sense of fear as you stare down at that needle).