Beard and . . .

What would you do if you were a participating judge for the James Beard Awards this year? Let’s say you were a Twin Cities based adjudicator, fully versed in the work of the five nominees in our region. Three of those nominees are 112’s Isaac Becker, Alma’s and Brasa’s Alex Roberts, and Solera’s and LBV’s Tim McKee.

Do you vote for the kid from Milwaukee or Indianapolis? That would be a cop-out, and frankly, our three homeboys are all more deserving. Now the results don’t come out until June when the winners are announced in NYC, and for the umpteenth year in a row, I can’t make it because of a prior commitment, which bites. But I did have to vote for one of the lads, and I will be happy to share that with everyone at the last possible moment. But the question is, who would you vote for, and most importantly, why? Check out the James Beard website for all of the nominees in several categories.

****

Want to see something hysterical? Check out the Deep End Dining website and the fun video that Eddie Lin and I made in Los Angeles last week.

****

An finally, in what might be the most horrifying piece of news that has ever come across my desk, proving once again that there is no accounting for taste of any type. The Emmy nominations came out, and the she-devil of the Food Network garnered a nomination that I am sure she is so proud of:

Outstanding Achievement in Hairstyling: Semi-Homemade Cooking with Sandra Lee, Food Network 


As my friend Dan Barreiro says, you just can’t make this stuff up.

Conspiracy Theory

According to a WCCO piece I caught online by John Lauritsen, it is a weak economy to blame for Temple having to close its doors, rising food costs, a sluggish economy (let me tell you, this is a full-blown recession and could approach depression standards very shortly). I logged on to several local blogs and news sites and checked out the temper of the commentary, and several posters got it right. As they see it, and as I wrote four months ago, there will be a lot more closings across the region as the discretionary budgets of Minnesotans shrinks.

Temple was not a victim of the economy as much as it was a casualty of its own miscalculations of the marketplace. Restaurants close because customers don’t go. And Temple failed to create a compelling reason for being there. The food was poorly conceived and executed from the get-go, the chef was gone within the first year, and naked sushi is a more desperate attempt at wooing customers than half-price wine nights could ever be.  It’s an important distinction to make because restaurants still work, in good economies or bad, so long as they are resonant with customers and create a business model within their own four walls that allows them to quickly adjust their costs to stay in line with their weekly haul and customer counts. In rugged times, simply thinking (as I believe Pham did) that if you build it they will come is a mistake of the highest magnitude.

The reason I launched my BODY COUNTS in these pages last year was to illustrate the point that the amount of people in your restaurant on a given night is the single greatest indicator of long- and short-term success. We had to suspend our counts because travel schedules and the like in our office, but I would encourage readers to take some body counts as they make their way around town. You might see some interesting trends.

****

Heidi’s restaurant, Heidi and Stewart Woodman’s restaurant, appears in this months Condé Nast Traveler’s annual “Hot List” guide to the “world’s most exciting new establishments.” Check out the May issue of Condé Nast Traveler or visit the website.

****

IACP Awards were handed out not long ago and Lee Klein's November 22 article in the Miami New Times, "Eat Shit and Die,” won an award. Klein’s piece detailed the dirty little secret that food animals are fed feces in the American Ag system. Other secrets that I have heard and read about recently include, but are not limited to, male chicks thrown into trash cans as soon as they hatch in egg farms; male calves torn from their mothers at birth and slaughtered before they are one-day-old; pig farms slice off the toes, ears, and tails of live piglets using knives and no painkillers; meatpacking plants (slaughterhouses) keep it a secret that up to four out of ten animals are not properly stunned, and the list goes on.

For real conspiracy theory freaks, here are a few pieces of food for thought: Some think the USDA isn’t really interested in mad cow disease because finding it would be bad for business. The American Medical Association keeps it a secret that there is overwhelming evidence linking dairy products to cancer. The American Veterinary Medicine Association keeps it a secret that food animals are pumped with hormones and antibiotics, which are directly responsible for many antibiotic-resistant strains of disease. Anyone else care to chime in? In the light of the fact that industry spokespeople are now saying that the powers that be are willing to concede that downer cattle have no place in the food system, it might be time to start stirring the pot.

Top Chef(s)

The James Beard Award nominations came out Monday, and although I have not eaten at Bluestem, I have eaten at the other four JBA-nominated restaurants in our region. Alex deserves the nomination as does Isaac, both of who deserve the recognition, which is long overdue. But pound for pound, the cooking that Tim is doing at LBV outshines what anyone else has been doing in this town for the last two to three years. And what’s more, there are dozens of chefs more deserving than the guy at Bartolotta’s. I have eaten there several times, and it’s good bistro fare, but it is nothing that makes it Beard-worthy in my opinion. More on all the JBA news on Monday.

****

Top Chef received two nods, and I have to say this show keeps getting better each season. Finally, a show that merges the challenges and evictions that reality TV junkies crave and the rigors of cooking that food fans hunger for.

Some observations so far:

Richard and Dale seem like potential winners to me, both will be there in the end.

Erik is a bozo. Perhaps the dumbest thing I have heard come out of a human being’s mouth regarding food was the insulting, ethnocentric, and ignorant drivel he hurled at Rick Bayless: “I don’t think fine dining and Mexican go together, so he can go screw himself.”  Erik came close to equaling that feat when he declared, after being tossed out, that, “I have a bright future ahead of me . . . .” Not with that attitude and talent level, you misguided idiot!

The only thing you need to know to be convinced that Padma neither enjoys nor understands food: She tried to eat a toasted marshmallow rolled in finely ground graham crackers and chocolate in two bites.

Someone please tell me who does not belong in this group of judges: Tony Bourdain, Rocco DiSpirito, Rick Bayless, and Ted Allen. I need to hear from anyone as to what qualifies this fella; although, he did a fine job explaining why it’s a bad idea to serve corn dogs two hours after they are fried. Then again, my three-year-old could have explained that one.

****

According to yesterday’s DailyCandy that arrived in my box, there is an answer for all the folks out there who want to eat some of the world’s most obscure delicacies. Everything from croc, scorpions, civet coffee, and mopane worms can be found at the Edible website.

****

Scott Pampuch sent me this great article: “The Revolution Will Not Be Pasteurized.” It is a piece as timely as it is relevant. Raw milk should be labeled as such and sold legally; it’s a no-brainer. In similar news, Rep. Michelle Bachman is pushing for a dismantling of the new legislation requiring incandescent bulbs to go the way of the horse and buggy in favor of the more environmentally friendly long life bulb. Again, a no-brainer. Except in this case, it’s Bachman that needs to have her cortex examined.

True Lies

I voted last weekend for the second phase of the Beard Awards. Anyone who wants to see the talent pool that my fellow judges and I had to work with can check it out at on the James Beard website or at NY Mag's site here.

I voted for a lot of hometown heroes during this winnowing phase of the process since we were allowed to vote for five nominees in most categories. There were a lot of head scratchers in some categories (more on that later next week), but I got to give some juice to some of the out-of-towners I have dined with throughout the last year. Lee Hefter, Mike Lata, Tony Mantuano, Gabe Rucker, Gavin Kaysen, etc. My old buddy Steve Hanson got one of my nods for Restaurateur of the Year as well.

****

In Tuesday’s NYT, I read that Robert Irvine got fired. The Dinner Impossible star lied about his background in his CV and told the St. Petersburg Times that he lied because he felt pressure to keep up with the Joneses! Why? He was the anti-star, the mess hall cook. How crazy is this? He didn’t have to make anything up for gosh sakes; he works for the network that airs Sandy Lee, the Neelys, and the numbingly ridiculous Fieri guy.

In the same issue, Peggy Seltzer, who wrote Love and Consequences as Margaret Jones, admitted she fabricated her whole best-selling, critically acclaimed bio a la James Frey. Except, this lady could have written her book as fiction and not lost a damn bit of the story. What gives? Seltzer says she wanted to show readers how the other half lived. Irvine and she have one thing in common: They are full of it. They wanted the . . . and rather than admit that they thought they had to lie to keep it, they keep the spin spinning. He thought he had to be pedigreed to get it, she thought she couldn’t sell fiction. Sad.

****

The Kathie Jenkins story keeps getting better and better. Friends who were at P & F on opening night spotted her there with a gal pal, so she bashed P & F in a first-peek style blurb, which is ridiculous in the first place since those types of notices should simply be alerts that a place is open along with a description of the look and feel of a joint. To not tell people you were there on opening night when you are lambasting the restaurant is disingenuous. Why do I care? Because I write about food, and I am shocked at the Pi Press editorial policy that allows this to be printed. I believe in transparency when it comes to these sorts of pieces, and Steven Brown is a friend of mine besides being a phenomenal talent. And it comes hot on the heels of her famous Chambers diatribe in last year’s Pi Press where it turned out that she had based some of her writing on a visit there during one of the pre-opening test dinners.

****

Now, on to the ethics of customer expectations, a question raised by posters to my last blog.

First off to Tony: You are nuts. The idea is to blend art and commerce, especially in the dining world, which is different than the eating world. And if you have the stones, let us know where you work. I am curious. And as someone who attended Doug Flicker’s Beard dinner, all I can say is that not only was the food sublime, but the vibe in the room was indescribable, especially to see Doug’s staff, and their faces, when he was presented with his dream knife. Wow. That night in NYC was the reason I do what I do. It was performance art; you just had to be there.

If a restaurant is taking money for their food, a customer deserves to say what they want about the level of service and quality of food they eat. And it should be good; open means open. But take the Broadway show/restaurant metaphor one step further: When I see The Producers during the first week of its run, I get a less perfect product than I do when it is 100 nights into it. But the energy is amazing, and when I go to see it again, I can compare the performances. I like that, which is why I dine in restaurants early in their lifespan.

A restaurant is a growing, moving, and changing organism. It is thrilling to see, and I always experience less than ideal service early on and eat dishes in need of work regardless of the caliber of eatery. That is par for the course even though I might be paying the same dough for that early dinner as I do for a better one three months later. But that is the fun of seeing a place grow, morph, and become refined. Sometimes the other extreme is disheartening. I have seen The Producers 500 shows in and saw the stars sleepwalk through ‘yet another’ performance. I’ll take the opening week any day over that dud. And even worse, try going to a restaurant, a truly good one, 500 nights into its run. The chef might not even be there!

That’s why I like eating out in good restaurants. It’s about more than the food: It’s about the theater.

Mistaken Identity and a Brain Dead Moron

Thank God more people read this blog than peruse Kathie Jenkins’s column in the Pi Press because that way I can rest assured that one of my fave new eateries gets a fair shake. I know firsthand that it is possible to have a bad meal in a great restaurant; I have had several myself over the years, but her first peek at Porter & Frye puzzled me.

Jenkins railed on the food to a degree that I found laughable considering she must have gone there during the first three or four nights of opening to make her deadline.

Who would so harshly judge a restaurant so early on? I also found it puzzling that she ate so many items on the bar menu and failed to differentiate that tidbit of info in her abbreviated remarks. But mostly because I find her experiences in eating food (both at P & F and elsewhere) so remarkably different than mine, I just had to point out the obvious. Despite my respect for her personal opinion and emphatically stating I believe that she is simply writing her own ‘truth’ about her experience there, I am in shock. Anytime she wants to have dinner there, I would love to take her and give her a primer in what makes for great cooking. I adore the food at P & F. Steven Brown has assembled a fantastic brigade, and this group can really cook.

But don’t take my word for it. I had dinner there on Wednesday evening. I took Tony Mantuano from Spiaggia in Chicago, one of the best chefs in America and a legend in the business, winner of multiple Beard/IACP awards. I was also entertaining Lawrence Keogh from Roast in London’s Borough Market. Roast is one of the best restaurants in the world, and Keogh has helmed kitchens in two different two-star Michelin restaurants and has directed of one of the most forward thinking, organic, sustainable slow-food movements on the planet in his role on the board of Borough Market. Also in attendance was Robert Gadsby, chef at Soma in Houston and formerly of Noe in Houston and Los Angeles, a man who has worked all over the world with Alain Chapel, Thomas Keller, Joel Robuchon, and Alain Ducasse. Addlyn Thao and Nana Chen came from Beijing and Taiwan, local talent was also represented (Lenny Russo was there), and we ate on what I think was the fifth night the restaurant was opened. Porter & Frye BLEW THIS GROUP AWAY.

The food Brown is doing is entirely familiar to his fans, and if the restaurant management can warm up the room a tad, this restaurant is destined for greatness. The food is world-class. I find it unfathomable that Jenkins could have had such a dud of an experience there.

We began with a squash soup amuse with fried sage and truffle; wolfed down a stunner of a Greek salad that featured a garnish of tomato puree, which had been turned into a sunset-colored crisp of tomato candy; inhaled seared tuna with shishito peppers, sea salt, and lemon; devoured grilled swordfish with a sauce I though tasted like the delicious child of the illicit coupling of white anchovies and a tonnato sauce; and we greedily demolished what is easily the best reason in the five-state area to eat chicken in restaurants again: A chicken thigh boned out, stuffed, and cooked sous vide until it literally melted in your mouth and then crisped before being plated, so it ate like a lacquered Peking-style duck. It came over polenta with red-onion marmalade, a stunner. We had a sous vide lamb roulade of both loin and forcemeat over a shank or shoulder confit, which came on brilliantly braised pistachios. We finished the meal with mignardise and a warm, chocolate tart with nutmeg foam and carrots that were crisped and candied. Even local pastry legend Marjorie Johnson couldn’t contain her glee.

After dinner, when Brown came out to meet my out-of-town pals, he got the third degree from Tony, Lawrence, and Robert, all of whom were thrilled with their dinner, awed with Brown’s technique, and stunned at the level of cuisine that was being executed in the first week of P & F’s opening. When Gadsby and Keogh can’t figure out how a chef accomplished a level of finish on a dish (we are convinced Brown is keeping the secret to his swordfish a secret), you know you have really pulled a rabbit out of a hat. This is a must-go restaurant, and along with LBV, Porter & Frye is cooking at a level above and beyond what anyone else in town is doing.

BTW, Mantuano has a new book out in April that will be a huge hit. He is also opening up a Spiaggia in South Beach this summer. Gadsby is opening two new eateries this spring in Houston, where he is literally the hottest table in town. Don Cheadle is playing Gadsby in the new Will Smith project based on the life of a prison inmate to whom Robert gave a job and mentored in the food biz several years ago. Keogh has his hands full with all his activities and is working on a partnership between Borough Market and La Bouqeria in Barcelona while managing to earn every accolade that the European press can toss his way.

****

Congressional hearings into the Westland/Hallmark meat packing company brouhaha could have spawned plenty of laughs and puzzled glances if it wasn’t so achingly sad and disturbing. Secretary of Agriculture Ed Schaefer, the pathetically disingenuous scumbag who runs the Ag Dept., actually said under oath on Thursday that “we do not believe this is a food safety issue” when commenting on the horrific conditions and his own agency’s ineffectual stupidity (the plant has five inspectors assigned there). How could those inspectors miss the obvious endemic abuse? And why not use digital cameras in all slaughterhouses that stream video to the USDA, FDA, and Ag. Dept. as Wisconsin Senator Herb Kohl suggests? It is cheap, easy to do, and would save money to boot. And since our tax dollars fund those agencies, we deserve to see inside them, once and for all. Schaefer is a vile and pernicious man who is solidly in the pocket of BigAg. It is shameful that he, as the man charged with protecting our health interests, is the only one defending the process and the slaughterhouses. We need people running these agencies who will stand up and loudly decry the industry for its transgressions and work diligently to make our food-supply chain safe for all Americans. He is simply an apologist for the rule breakers.

****

Hope you saw me on the Today Show this morning; I’ll be on Access Hollywood next Tuesday.

Miami Rhapsody

To whoever took my camera at the SoBe Food and Wine Festival on Saturday, please return it. There is a reward.

Everyone should make his or her plans now for next year’s SoBe FWF. It is an awesome event, and this was my first year working the fest. Michael Bloise (Wish Restaurant) and I took on Rocco DiSpirito and Clay Conley (Azul) in an Iron Chef contest live on the Target Stage, and we destroyed them. The Target folks did an amazing job down there, and those lime Popsicle bars are addictive in the extreme. Come down next year and hang with all of us, you will love it.

I think it is one of the top food fests in the country, and I got to hang with lots of old and new friends: Matt and Ted Lee are working on a new book proposal; Tim Love was taking his fans “to the mountain top” thanks to a never empty bottle of Patron; Michael Schwartz; Adam Perry Lang, who is the Daisy May BBQ honcho and the nicest man in the business; Emeril (he looks more exhausted than any human being I know; Rachel (cute dress); Paula (went through the motions); Geoff Zakarian from Town and Country in NYC (congrats on getting married and the new baby, my man); Jimmy Boyce, Giada, Jonathan Barnett (who reminded me of all the obnoxious crap I used to tell him back in NYC when we worked together); Jimmy Bradley from Red Cat and The Harrison, and loads of other great folks all cooked up a storm all weekend long.

My only regret is that I can’t post all my great behind the scenes pics because some a**hole lifted my camera along with my cool new shades.

The best thing I ate all weekend was the foie with black pepper marshmallow at Wish on Friday evening, second best was the carpaccio with white truffles and roasted coconut at Wish, third best thing was the cinnamon cured salmon that Bloise made during our demo. He is a talented young man.

I shot a commercial all night in the Everglades and got back in town hours late. I had planned on hitting the Bubble Q with Cat Cora but ended up missing it, and the folks at Wish blew me away with an awesome meal. South Beach also offers the best people watching in North America, not even close.

****

To those of you who read the posts to this blog, here is some explanation to all the questions posed by readers on last Thursday’s blog:

NO, you do not have to advertise in the magazine to win awards at our Best Of event, especially not for Restaurateur of the Year.

YES, there were several other deserving candidates this year.

The Town Talk lads would have been a reasonable choice, and I was partial to the Solera/LBV crew simply because of all the accolades they earned this past year for their exceptional work. You also could have made a case for Alex Roberts and his two restaurants (Alma and Brasa), but because of the launch of Flame, the perseverance of Atlas, the re-energizing of Mission with the hiring of Doug Flicker, and the hugely successful opening of Via, the choice that the editors at the magazine made was Anoush, Hadi, and the folks at Hemisphere.

It is a group choice to suggest candidates for a pool that is ultimately decided on by our editor-in-chief, Brian Anderson. Some of us have Brian’s ear more than others, and lots of thought goes into the decision—and not every reader will agree on who is chosen. Of course, we are all aware of the ridiculousness of some of the choices over the years given the turn of events after the selections. Aqauvit wins and closes, and we gave them the award for changing the nature of dining in the city. Sam Ernst and his boys won for T of C and Red Fish Blue at a time when they seemed poised to do something big, and then they fizzled, and I could go on and on.

The confusion for our readers, I am thinking, is that there is no consistent criteria for picking winners from year to year, so some of the choices are made one year for food excellence (112 Eatery or Aquavit) and the next year for business acumen (Rick Webb), and some years there are some truly deserving candidates who are not selected. I do agree with several of the e-mailers and post-a-holics that the Solera/LBV team is sorely overdue an award from us, considering they have yet to win one, and they have twice created a restaurant that changes the culinary landscape in this town and have twice hit home runs.

I was also being somewhat rhetorical when I posited my ‘shock and outrage’ over the Readers Poll results. I get it, and I have said for years that to me, the Readers Poll is a conundrum, wrapped in a riddle, inside a puzzle . . . or is that Russia? Who cares about a Readers Poll? Any thoughts?

****

Before it becomes an issue du jour, the critics’ picks list was divided among four of us. We picked fifty restaurants, and then Adam Platt divvied them up—otherwise, we would all have too much repetition with our selections.

****

Zander is no more from what I gather. I returned from Thailand the other week, and several people told me the doors were shut. Is it true? If it is, I am not surprised in the least, despite the very nice meals I ate there throughout the years. The restaurant never recovered from the lunacy of the sale of the breakfast joint and the remodeling of the room next to the restaurant into a wine bar, all of which happened at the height of the popularity of the eatery—both created a confusion for the customer. It makes me sad that a restaurant that existed solely because of a talented man’s passion for good food (Alexander Dixon) failed to sustain a customer base, and passionless restaurants with mediocre food, such as Kincaid’s, keep winning our Reader’s Poll

****

Speaking of mediocre, I have had several folks tell me that r.Norman’s is disappointing in the extreme. True or false?

****

I had a delightful lunch last week at Red Stag with Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl. Our server seemed puzzled when two people ordered enough food for five. But hey, we were hungry. This place shows promise but lacks some attention to detail. As with many restaurants, with a little more effort and expertise, they could really be doing some cool stuff.

The room is comfy, and the map of the USA from the mid-eighteenth century is one that I have been looking to add to my collection for years; I was jealous. The chili was average, the food all needed salt, the lobster-studded mac and cheese was pretty good, the grits were good, the garlic-kissed Jo-Jo-style potato bats were killer, the egg-salad sandwich was fair and poorly constructed, and the bangers and mash could have been great had the sausages not been overcooked and made with too little fat to begin with. The red-velvet-style beetroot cake was inedible as was the grainy (frozen too slowly) ice cream that came with it. Someone needs to crack the whip in that place. How can you serve inedible cake that tastes like the fridge and ice cream that is made improperly? Crazy.

****

I am dining at Porter & Frye this week, and all the early money says this will be a thrilling restaurant from a food standpoint; I am looking forward to it.

Seth, Lies, and Videotape

Seth Bixby Daugherty is making his national TV debut on Monday, March 3 on the Rachel Ray show all in support of his charitable efforts to change the way children eat in our school system. He’s a rock star.

Here is a nice segue: The following night, Season 2 of Bizarre Foods airs. And set your DVR for February 26 for another Bizarre Foods Best Of special with some previews of Season 2. A lot of folks have seen the new ad campaign for the show; if not, here is a sneak peek. These ads are hysterical and remind me of the SportsCenter ads from back in the day.

****

Anyone see the NYT piece about the growing crop of "bloggers calling for fat acceptance" that is giving rise to "a virtual soapbox known as the fatosphere"?  Roni Caryn Rabin of The New York Times profiles these bloggers—who include both women and men— who "challenge just about everything conventional medical wisdom has to say about obesity” What a pack of lies!

According to Tim Manners’s Cool News, the message from the fatosphere is not just that big is beautiful.

Says the NYT article:

Many of the bloggers dismiss the “obesity epidemic” as hysteria. They argue that Americans are not that much larger than they used to be and that being fat in and of itself is not necessarily bad for you."

Kate Harding, whose blog is called Shapley Prose, starts by attacking the premise that being fat is a choice. "No fat acceptance advocate is saying you should sit around and wildly overeat," she acknowledges. "What we're saying is that exercise and a balanced diet do not make everyone thin." Others point to evidence that overweight people can be healthier than thin people. For example, "recent studies on heart patients and dialysis patients have also reported higher survival rates among heavier patients, suggesting that the link between body size and health may be more complex than generally acknowledged."

Others point to study of people over 60 that "found that being fit has more bearing on longevity than simply being thin." But the main argument "is that being fat is not a result of moral failure or a character flaw, or of gluttony, sloth or a lack of willpower," and that it may have more to do with genetics than anything else. "We accept that some people are short," says Rachel Richardson, whose blog is called The F-Word. "Yet we seem to think all people should be thin -- it just doesn't make sense." There's also a certain feminist streak at work, although at least one blogger, Red No. 3, specializes in the male perspective, and says: "See, I don't have a problem with fat ... My body is simply adorned, and I'll take that."

WHAT A BUNCH OF CRAP! Being fat has physical, mental, and spiritual components to the disease. Obesity is a disease, and there is also a wellspring of available cures and treatments, and the people who think that being grossly and chronically overweight is in some way OK are in denial.

****

The recent contretemps re the Humane Society videotape, its undercover work, the downer cattle going to slaughter, and the beef recall all bring to mind the shortsighted and ignorant citizens of our country who actually believe that the USDA and the other federal agencies charged with protecting our food pathways are doing a competent job. That idea would simply be crazy. The agencies, such as the USDA, FDA, and the like, are broken.

****

The Mpls.St.Paul Magazine Best of the Best Party on Monday night was a rousing success. The Walker Art Center staff did an outstanding job! What a great place to have an event of any size, and 1,500 of you filled the rooms. The MSP people, most notably Adam Platt and his team, Natasha Freimark and her team, Deb Hopp, Stephanie Peterson, Kevin Dunn, Gary Johnson, Brian Anderson, and scores of other folks should be loudly applauded for creating such a compelling evening of food celebration. Also, congrats to Hadi and Anoush and all the folks at Hempisphere for winning our Restaurateur of the Year award.

Here are a couple of other observations:

Restaurants that are looking to impress 1,500 potential A-list customers should try to serve great food at an event like this, not mediocre food. Chopped sausage at a high-end tasting event is a cop-out. Saffron, Masa, Chambers, Solera, 20.21, and La Belle Vie did some great food that night as did the Puck catering people in the VIP room.

Speaking of La Belle Vie, that restaurant earned sixth place in our annual Readers Poll if I remember the presentation video correctly. WOW. How can you reconcile the Readers Poll with other accolades that LBV regularly acquires? Does LBV not resonate with your average Minnesotan? Gourmet magazine called them one of the fifty best restaurants in the country. I listed them on my judge’s ballots for Beard Awards and for the S.Pellegrino World's 50 Best Restaurants award (there is a mandatory section for local restaurants in a judges given geographic zone).

I believe LBV is pound for pound the best restaurant in our state for food quality/service/beverage, program/ambiance/innovation, etc. So anyone who thinks that there is not some lingering provincialism in our DNA when it comes to our ability to recognize culinary greatness should be pointed in the direction of the Readers Poll and the disparities it points out between who is eating where and why. I would understand if LBV is not everyone’s cup of tea, but sixth?! C’mon now, people. And for the record, the bar at LBV is a low-key and casual place to enjoy great food without sitting at a table for two hours if that is more your speed. If you love great dining experiences, sit in the dining room for the full-frontal effect.

****

Porter and Frye is now open. I finally ate at Red Stag (are you writing that down, Jeremy!?), and Zander closed. More on all that on Monday.

Illegalities

On a local news site last week, there was a lot of poutine chat going around. Here in Minnesota, the idea of French fries with cheese and gravy—with or without the foie gras supplement—is an easy thing to say yes to. In other parts of the country, there are some foods that inspire heart attack paranoia and are considered illegal to serve. I don’t know about you, but this seems pretty frickin’ awesome to me!

****

What foods and other related matters should be illegal in Minnesota? Here is a list:

—Anyone writing a menu with yet another Caesar salad on it?
—Restaurants who make waiters introduce themselves.
—A Japanese restaurant with the same menu as the other twenty that are already open here.
—Another Kincaids.
—Food billed as homemade that isn’t, such as bread and desserts that are brought in the back door and sold as house-made. Happens all the time.
—Tuna sold table-side by servers as “sashimi quality.” It’s a misnomer and often is used to push inferior quality fish on unsuspecting consumers.
—A second Zahtar.

Oh, wait, there is a second one opening. I opened up my latest copy of Foodservice News, and there it was. The restaurant in the Grand Hotel that Life Time Fitness owns will soon become Zahtar number two, and it will be open to the public. Zahtar number one is located in the Eden Prairie Life Time Fitness and is available only to members. So let me get this straight: The restaurant and concept is so perfect, so finely honed that the company is going to open another one?! Wow. I am speechless. I heard through the rumor mill that the Zahtar GM only lasted six weeks before he quit.

****

Set your DVR for February 26. We have a “best of” special for Bizarre Foods airing, and the following Monday, I am on the Today Show to kick off premier week. First show airing is Beijing on Tuesday, March 4, our new night.

****

Did you know they do naked sushi at Temple Restaurant and Bar? As in eating sushi off a naked person. And, according to what my boss Brian Anderson said on the radio last week, not just off naked women. I don't think eating sushi off a naked man has the same intrinsic sex appeal. Hey, that's not a caterpillar roll! And is this the 2008 version of closing for lunch and offering half-price wine? Are these the death throes of a restaurant—when they copy a ten-year-old dining cliché that didn’t work for anyone back in 1997 let alone now?

The World's Largest Bake Sale, Nick and Eddie, and News

Seth Bixby Daugherty is helping to organize the world’s largest bake sale—aptly named the World’s Largest Bake Sale—at Mall of America on Sunday, March 30 from 1 to 5 p.m. The event is to raise funds and promote Share Our Strength’s Great American Bake Sale. What’s on the menu? Food Network talent recipes will be produced by The International Culinary School at the Art Institutes International, and there will be baked goods donated by Twin City bakeries and restaurants, too.

According to the latest info, both Sandra Lee, host of Food Network’s Semi-Homemade Cooking, and Duff Goldman, star of Ace of Cakes, have agreed to make personal appearances, and Lee will do a book signing. I love Goldman and his show; it gets DVRed at the Zimmern household every week. But Lee, who might be a fantastic person in real life, represents everything that is wrong with our modern food culture. And guess what? Hers is the most popular page on the Food Network website. Help me now, Lord. Apparently Goldman might create the world’s largest cupcake for a taping of the Ace of Cakes. According to Guinness, there is currently no world’s record for the world’s largest bake sale or cupcake. So mark it down, and get involved with Share Our Strength by checking out its site.

Seth will be featured on an upcoming segment of Rachael Ray—they will be in town on Tuesday taping some stuff with him detailing the work he is doing in the local public schools system to improve the quality of the food programs for kids of all ages. The taping is for air at a later date, but I will keep you posted.

****

Scott Irestone is indeed gone from 20.21, but my naming of sous chef Asher Miller as the new chef is only half true: He is the acting chef. The company is considering Miller and several other members of its national organization for the permanent post. I say, “Keep the local guy!”

As part of my ongoing effort to regain the respect and admiration of legendary food writer Jeremy Iggers, I ate at Nick and Eddie the other day for lunch. This is the new restaurant that Doug Anderson opened along with several other local notables, including Scott Ida, Steve Vranian, and the superbly talented Jessica Anderson (Doug’s wife). I really think Doug has an innate sense of style and substance as a restaurateur, and I hope that his new venture stays on course over its first few years so that it can grow and mature.

The base they have set down is impressive. I love casual restaurants that take their food seriously, and if Nick and Eddie can take an accurate self-appraisal and fix some of its issues, this will be a great restaurant for years to come. If it doesn’t, it could go the way of Bakery on Grand and A Rebours: hot start, cool finish. The space is light and contemporary, the location is superb (right on Loring Park), and the menu is very appealing. But some of the items we sampled need tweaking that should be obvious by anyone’s standards. Vranian has his work cut out for him.

On the day I was there, he was not in the kitchen but in the restaurant, which means the cooks are sending out food they shouldn’t have (a training/awareness issue) or, worse, the cooks were simply executing to the chef’s standards. I am hoping that is not the case, but stranger things happen.

The breads we tried were fantastic, especially the Parker House dinner roll loaf that we had. Good Lord was it awesome. The borscht was a decent beef soup with cabbage, but it could have used some seasoning—anything really. It was too thin, had no backbone, and was really disappointing. The whitefish salad that came with potato pancakes was stellar—about as good as it gets—, so clearly someone in the kitchen gets it, but the potato pancakes were gray on the inside and tasted muddy. The pickled onions on the dish were old. What was billed as chopped chicken liver was just a smear of chicken liver mousse, and it tasted of old onions and was bitter on the rebound going down, but the cress salad with it was delightful. The egg salad sandwich was fair, but the grilled sausages over polenta with caramelized onions and peppers were exquisitely turned out, a simple cold weather bowl of happiness. The butterscotch pudding that was so good at Bakery On Grand has risen again, like the phoenix, and I am eternally grateful.

****

The New York Daily News reports that “The New York City Board of Health is poised to reenact a bitterly contested rule requiring restaurants to post the calorie contents of each dish on their menu. The proposed regulation - part of Mayor Bloomberg's campaign to reduce obesity and diabetes - would make eateries with 15 or more outposts around the country prominently display calorie counts before patrons order."

This is a bad deal. Posting calories is only half the battle—not even—, and it is misplaced energy. We need to see proper labeling of all food in retail and wholesale operations and in supermarkets on all items, especially when it comes to a food’s origin. The big restaurant chains will argue successfully that they are being prejudiced against and that the rule should apply to everyone, but how does a mom-and-pop operation afford to test and post all the nutritional information on a menu? And if we properly labeled our food in its ‘natural’ state, wouldn’t the general population become better educated and be able to make better decisions about how and what they eat? And when it comes to fast food, half of the restaurants should be shut down by government agencies anyway for poisoning the public at large. If Big Tobacco can go down, why can’t McDonald’s?

****

City Pages announced who its new food critics will be, and it unveiled plans for expanded restaurant coverage both in the paper and online. Taking over Dara’s chair covering the new and noteworthy openings is Rachel Hutton, formerly of Mn Mo, and James Norton, whose work I have referenced before on this blog, will cover the ‘deals on meals’ angle. All of this begins on February 20, and both of the new hires will be blogging and podcasting as well. I like the work of both these writers, and CP’s commitment to its food section and its plans to grow it is good for the local food scene.

Chef Tales

This just in: Longtime sous chef Asher Miller has replaced Scott Irestone as the chef at Wolfgang Puck’s 20.21 in the Walker Art Center.

****

Randy Lewis, 2001 Food & Wine 10 Best award winner for his work at Kendall-Jackson Wine Estates and Indigo restaurant, is taking over the stoves at Chetek, Wisconsin’s Canoe Bay, our five-state area’s only Relais & Châteaux property. That says a lot about Canoe Bay’s commitment to excellence. Lewis’s friend Lenny Russo told me that Lewis was sold on the resort because of the availability of so many fantastic farm-fresh ingredients in our neck of the woods. Nice.

But last time I checked, Santa Rosa, California had us over a barrel on produce and larder quality, which tells me that the Dombrowski’s made some compelling offers and persuasive arguments to land a chef of that caliber. I have stayed at Canoe Bay before, and it rocks; make your reservations now, and don’t wait ’til summer.

****

Mark McGraw hired Dan Grilz (Bayport Cookery sous and Trio (Chicago) alum) to take over the kitchen at Confluence. Mark will still be there when the restaurant is open, but since the restaurant is weekends only until summer, he has taken a position at Porter & Frye along with some of the best young talent in the city, all of whom are flocking to Steven Brown’s new restaurant to be a part of what I think will be the most important new restaurant in town. Had Restaurant Levain stayed open in 2007, Brown would have been a lock to earn a James Beard nomination, and based on what I have heard from Steven and from others associated with the project, this restaurant will be the eatery that he has always wanted to create. My gut tells me this is the year that Brown gets the national press he deserves, and we get a place to enjoy his stellar, sophisticated, and urbane take on food.

As McGraw told me, “I am absolutely amazed at the team that Steven has put together for this restaurant. I absolutely could not resist the temptation to jump on board; I have no doubt in my mind that this is going to be a very big deal. I know you know this, but he has never had an opportunity to create his own world like this before. Steven is an amazing person, and his ability to lead is something that this town has not seen in this business, at this level, period.”

McGraw also told me that he is upping the food quotient at Confluence and making it more food focused than it already was; that’s also saying something. I guess the ‘build-it-better’ vibe is in the air.

So what local restaurants could benefit from taking a cold, hard look at themselves and improving the food? Which eateries are close enough to making a real impact on the food world but whose food is just a notch below what would get them there? Who could benefit most from a Pimp My Kitchen makeover? Thoughts?

****

And for those looking to catch up on some fun reading:

Absinthe is legal! Here's a very informative and myth-busting article by Sarah Hepola from Slate.

Smoking ban begins—in FRANCE!

Here are some great graphics illustrating how the cheapest calories come from bad food, which is low in nutrition.

Hot Stuff! A notebook made with cocktail napkins; let the inspiration flow!

Sir Ask A Lot

I get asked all the time about cooking classes. I used to teach a lot at Cooks of Crocus Hill in St. Paul. But this coming November, I am teaching a bunch of classes and hosting a dinner onboard the Holland America Line’s Ryndam. This is all part of the Carlson Wagonlit Travel culinary cruise program, and the classes and events are available only to passengers booking through Carlson Wagonlit Travel agencies. The ten-day cruise along the Mexican Riviera is roundtrip out of San Diego and stops in Cabo, Mazatlan, Puerto Vallarta, etc. Want more info? Go here to book the cruise.

I also get asked to go to restaurant openings, and in the past, I always said no out of some vague sense of professional propriety. But I was asked to attend a soft opening for The Strip Club, Aaron Johnson and Tim Niver’s new joint, and I told chef-partner J.D. Fratzke I would stop by; but last week, my wife and son had the flu, the dog had surgery, and the cat was being the cat, so needless to say, I missed the first few nights of service at The Strip Club, a restaurant on my side of town that I have high hopes for. But I got an e-mail from J.D. at the end of the week. He told me that on opening night, into the first rush, with a bunch of tickets hanging,

“the shelf bolted into the stainless over our char-broiler -- the one holding all of our steak plates -- collapses.  Platters shatter all over the first ten grass-fed strips we've fired for paying customers, two fillets of char, four salmon steaks, two saute pans and, of course, my broiler cook, six foot seven Anthony Finck, who turns to me and says with a bewildered smirk, "I don't think we can stack plates there anymore, Chef." We fought out of it. It took about an hour, but we fought out.  Insurgents breached the perimeter, but we took no casualties.”

Funny stuff, J.D. Every chef has stories like this one, and since so many readers of this blog are in the business, on both sides of the room, perhaps some of you will share yours? Here’s one of mine:

I was running the floor one night in 1984 (or 85?) at Elio’s as a favor to the owner who was out of town for the weekend; it was a Friday night in NYC—in the summer. I was working at his other restaurant Petaluma as the chef, but he wanted me up the street at his flagship for the night, and my sous was handling the light night at our eatery. Calm evening at Elio’s, full but no crush; all our customers were retreating to their summer homes. A guy lights up a cigar at a six-top. I tell him to put it out since tables near him are complaining. He points out that two other tables in the front are smoking cigars. It’s Ben Gazzara at one table and someone at Woody Allen’s table smoking the other one. I tell the foppish guy in the back with the heavy New York accent that those men are regulars and that no one complained about them. He throws five one-hundred dollar bills on the table and walks.

The next day I get a call from the GM at Elio’s; there’s a picket line around the restaurant, and no deliveries can come through. We call Elio. He does some digging on Local 459. Turns out, there is no such union local. Turns out the guy I pissed off was Tony “Fat Tony” Salerno, head of the Genovese crime family. I ended up having to go with the restaurant GM to meet this guy and apologize before they would lift the fake picket. Scared sh**less. Thank goodness he was more interested in coming back to try the gnocchi than he was in messing with me.

****

Here’s a great local blog, The Masticator. I get asked what I like about these all the time, and of course I think this guy’s take is spot on. Go figure.

****

Go here, and check out the awesome photo contest, and start charging the digi-cam batteries—there are great prizes galore. Also, am I the only one who thinks that Punch in Highland is heads and shoulders better than any of their other locations when it comes to pizza quality?

****

Tori Shin in NYC is a hot little Yakitori bar that serves chicken sashimi and some killer skewered, grilled poultry treats. I have been asked about this stuff endlessly, and I promised many of you that I would let you know about it. Consider yourself informed. The yakitori is out of sight, and this should be a must-stop for anyone heading to the Big Apple looking for a taste of Tokyo.

Catching Up

For months, I have lamented my crazy schedule, and spending half the year overseas means that I have lost ground in my battle to stay on top of my local restaurant visits. And of course because I want Jeremy Iggers to think I am really on top of the local food scene (insert sarcastic look here), I have redoubled my efforts to catch up on places I have not eaten at or have only been to once or twice.

I finally made it into Good Day Cafe for the second time. I first visited during its second month of operation and was underwhelmed. On Tuesday, I had breakfast there with Ed Levine and Rick Nelson, and the food, for the most part, was better. Service was very good. I could care less for the cavernous room, which to me comes off as cold. The caramelized apple pancake was absurdly large and would make a great dessert if it was three inches across and came with a small scoop of caramel ice cream. Please explain to me why they serve a twelve incher in the morning. It is grossly oversize.

The omelet with potato, leek, and cheese was nicely cooked, but the potato component was a dud. The potatoes should have been crisped or made flavorful in some way. The leek was an ingredient in name only, and the GDC potatoes that are bragged about all over the menu were flash-fried, listless half moons that left me unimpressed. The caramel pecan rolls were good. The best thing I ate there was the highly touted fried egg sandwich, which was very tasty but was oddly lukewarm when it arrived.

****

I had lunch this week at Be’wiched, which, like the GDC, has gotten a lot of great ink this year. I ordered a pastrami on rye, and you can get a “New York” style pastrami sandwich (double meat) if that is your thing. The pastrami is a scratch product; they brine raw briskets for six days, roll the brisket in crushed peppercorns and coriander, and smoke it for six to eight hours.

Be’wiched also smokes its own turkey and bacon, and it was in the process of smoking thick slabs of bacon for La Belle Vie in a huge smoker using apple and cherry woodchips on Wednesday. But I digress.

The brisket has great flavor, but my sandwich was dry. First off, it needed a good brown mustard. Second, the coleslaw that came on the sandwich, which was very tasty, was skimpy. Third, the beef itself was too lean. Next time, I am going to see if a fatty cut is available, but like most non-traditional delicatessens, it seemed that it was only using the “flat end” of the brisket; I like the “nose.” Last, the sandwich came with a pathetically small (one ounce soufflé cups that were not even filled) tablespoon of potato salad and five razor-thin slices of pickle as sides. C’mon guys, at least give me a whole pickle. All of this being said, the sandwich was great, and had the pastrami not been dry, Be’wiched would have been a home run.

I give them huge points for the scratch pastrami, and based on the owners’ pedigree and their obvious desire to make a great product, I think it should improve. I cannot wait to eat my way through more of the menu over the next few months.

I am aware that many Twin Citians have said the Be’wiched pastrami is better than any they have had in NYC. These people are clearly in desperate need of a new deli to go to in the Big Apple, and I mean no disrespect to the Be’wiched crew, but c’mon.

****

As God is my witness, I am going to make it into Heidi’s this month. Check out this review from Jim Norton; pretty funny stuff.

Peace on Earth, Good Will to All Men

Oh my, what a Pandora’s box the whole Mitch Omer rake.com piece has become. I just got back from a family vacation and only saw the blog last Thursday afternoon when my editor e-mailed it to me to see if I had seen it yet. I hadn’t but read it for the first time by late Tuesday night. I know City Pages is running a story on it next week, and I will be posting something on Monday myself, but to satisfy the gossip addicts out there, here is the short version.

1. Holy crap was that a great read! I really enjoyed it.

2. Omer had some factual errors, but they were all excusable given the format he was writing in. Blogs are fun for that kind of rant.

3. He was misinformed about several Mpls.St.Paul Magazine policies, but no harm, no foul.

4. My blog last Thursday morning was not a response to Mitch—I submitted that blog the day before I saw his piece.

5. Most importantly, I have been advocating for years to see the loosening of the ‘road rules’ for these types of conversations. I applaud them; they are all healthy, and we need more people speaking their minds, not fewer.

6. I no longer write monthly restaurant reviews for the magazine and haven’t for some time.

7. In our print and online media, we consistently applaud many of the items at Hell’s Kitchen, and I have listed them in several roundups I have been a part of. My family loves the lemon ricotta pancakes.

8. Anyone who didn’t think that Aquavit in its prime was worth fellating should have their head examined. When that restaurant was firing on all cylinders and when Marcus and Roger were in the kitchen, the food was the best in town, hands down.

Anyway, more on Monday.

****

One thing is true: I am a food first kind of guy, and I am ecstatic that one of the Midwest’s best chefs is about to go public, again, in a kitchen that is geared to his talent level. Steven Brown has promised to let me know ASAP about Porter and Frye’s opening, but he did e-mail me last week to fill me in on the crew he has put together and the training/testing they are undergoing right now. He has taken over Mark McGraw’s kitchen at Confluence in Prescott for a few weeks to test recipes and train staff. More restaurants should be approaching opening day the way Brown is—very few can afford it, but the results for opening a kitchen without having the food execution reasonably tested are disastrous.

According to Steven, P and F’s chef de cuisine is Josh Habiger, an alum of Chicago’s Alinea as well as Craft in NYC. Other crew members include Abe Sanchez (112 eatery sous-chef and currently staging in San Fran) and Juliette Lelchuk (an Ecole Lenotre grad who just finished staging for a second time at Gary Danko) in pastry. Other local line cooks and sous-chefs are headed there as well. Potential menu items include veal tenderloin and veal breast paired with spinach, grapefruit, and juniper. Also look for swordfish with apple butter, celery, crescent potatoes, and warm truffle vinaigrette. I am excited to say the least.

Top Tastes

I have been poring through local food writers’ ‘best of’ lists, which is a sure-fire way to stoke the fires of my small-minded and punitive judgmental thinking. But here is something I really and truly am thinking about these days. Since Dara is now gone from City Pages, Ann Bauer and Jeremy Iggers are handling more and more food writing at The Rake and its online little sister, and the Strib has its all-star food-writing lineup set to handle the work load of Taste (and budgets over there being what they are), does this mean that Stephanie March takes the CP gig? Do they let an intern now handle food writing at the alt weekly? And will Jeremy and Ann take over the monthly print job, or is their task to simply fill pages online each day? They must be getting paid to produce a lot of copy, and they have decades of experience between them. Are we to believe they are just going to log on and blog on? Both are savvy writers. Iggers has more of a workmanlike style honed over many years churning copy at the Stribune. Bauer is a very good writer, more of a craftsperson than I will ever be—I am more of a hack. But reading their columns throughout the last month and finally seeing Bauer’s piece touring us through the highlights of her year of eating was the biggest buzz kill of my day. Sample Room? Kinhdo? Coffee News Cafe? Pizza Luce? Atlas Grill? Anne, you need to get out and eat more!

Someone at The Rake needs to send these folks out to dine at the restaurants in town that are really making some noise. Bauer hedges her list in the opening graph, insisting that many list makers are simply showing off when they compile lists or are trying to impress with their breadth of knowledge . . . or both. Uh, yeah. They are, and they should.

Any food writer, dining critic, call it whatever you like, has to be conversant with the vast majority of the eating scene, especially in a city like ours, which has a relatively small number of quality restaurants to become familiar with. What about La Belle Vie, Heartland, and about two dozen other restaurants in town that are kicking ass every meal period? And if small, cheap Asian hybrid joints are more your style, I could name about sixteen places I would recommend to anyone before I would send them to Kinhdo. Anoush Ansari and his Hemisphere partners (Mission/Via/Kabobi/Flame, which is their new restaurant that will open in May 2008) own and operate Atlas, and they are great restaurateurs and know how to run a business. I am sure they are flattered by the nod Bauer threw their way for their salmon, but I think if you asked them, they would name a dozen places with a better piece of sautéed fish than their own Atlas Grill. So, now that I have that off my chest, anyone have some fun food experiences to share? Mine from last year are below, not in order of importance:

Patricia Quintana week at Masa

Heartland on principle and because I love the ‘everything from scratch’ vibe.

Mike Phillips’ Minnesota prosciutto at Craftsman

Brasa for pork and greens and grits

Krakowska at Kramarczuk’s

Foie terrine at Cosmos

Sautéed fish with pickled vegetables at The Teahouse

Quail with pineapple at 20.21 . . . and brunch as well—the smoked salmon alone is worth it.

Almost anything at Peninsula

Morton’s for a salad, a steak, and some creamed spinach

Oysters at Oceanaire

Striped bass at Alma

Everything I ever ate at La Belle Vie, and each time I go there, it gets better and better.

The vegetable sides at 112

Mussels and a wedge of pate at the bar at Vincent

Homestyle tofu at Little Szechuan

Lunch at Que Nha—you can’t go wrong.

Passion fruit and chocolate dessert insanity at Chambers, and its truffle pizza and the ridiculously good galangal dipping sauce

Punch Pizza

Steamed walleye with ginger and scallion at Shuang Cheng

And I am sure I am missing plenty . . . mea culpa. And now that I am back in town for awhile, I cannot wait to check out Heidi’s, Meritage, Nick and Eddie, et al. I need to get up to speed.

News, Dinner and a Movie, And . . .

Sarah Masters, formerly of Spoonriver, is the new chef at Barbette. So where did the talented, mustard-tossing Landon Schoenfeld go? Well, he didn't go to the Red Stag Supper Club, as many thought many months ago, because William Baskin is the chef there. The rumor mill says Schoenfeld is headed to Porter and Frye to work for Steven Brown.

****

Carrie Summer has her food cart officially test-driven. It made its debut last Friday evening in the Robot Love parking lot on Lyndale serving late-night snacks in the early hours of what was technically Saturday morning. So where and when for this coming weekend? Look for it in the same neighborhood serving pulled pork, chocolate mousse, chili-cheese fries, and, of course, mini doughnuts. On Saturday evening, the cart was in the Grumpy's lot but closed early because of power issues in the cart. The kinks are still being worked out.

****

Looking for something great to do on Thursday evening? The Oak St. Cinema is screening a wonderful film, directed by one of the cameramen on my Travel Channel show. You need to see Joel Weber’s new documentary, The Listening Project. His film, created with Dominic Howes, asks the question “what do you think about America?” Get there earlier than the 7:30 p.m. showtime to make sure you get tickets. Want to eat something before or after the movie? Well, the best of Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s pan-Asian recipes have been compiled in a new book entitled Asian Flavors of Jean-Georges. The black pepper shrimp and dried pineapple recipe is worth its weight in gold. From Vong's Thai Kitchen to Spice Market, 66 to Chambers Kitchen, London’s Rama to Las Vegas’ Prime, JGV’s Asian touches have been his signature. To celebrate the book, The Bookcase of Wayzata and the Chambers Hotel are hosting a special cocktail reception and book signing 6 p.m. on Thursday, December 13. The hotel’s restaurant, Chambers Kitchen, also will offer a special tasting menu that evening, featuring recipes from the new cookbook. Tickets for the author reception are $40 and include wine, hors d’oeuvres, and a copy of Asian Flavors of Jean-Georges. The price for the three-course tasting menu is $45. Reservations for both events are required and may be made by calling Chambers at 612-767-6999 or the Bookcase of Wayzata at 952-473-8341.

****

On Saturday, you can head out to the Ridgedale Byerly’s in Minnetonka from 1 to 3 p.m., and see my pal Marjorie Johnson. She is out there to sign copies of her cookbook, Road to Blue Ribbon Baking, a collection of recipes including most of the baked goodies that have earned her thousands of ribbons at the Minnesota State Fair over the last thirty years. Now that she is a big late-night TV star, you should bring your camera. Mar-Jo (every hottie celebutante needs a cool moniker) was kind enough to shoot some stuff with me this last summer for Bizarre Foods, and it was a trip. This woman is completely her own person and negotiates life with a different operating system than the rest of us. She is one-of-a-kind, and if you haven’t met her yet, you should do it this weekend. If you do not know who she is, search her Tonight Show appearances with Jay Leno on YouTube.

Tell It Like It Is

Let’s set the record straight: Some restaurants slip through the cracks—the great neighborhood eateries that oftentimes cook food that can compete with the better restaurants in town for quality and composition. No excuses, but in the rush to chime in on current crops of new restaurants, the space problem (some magazines like ours only come out twelve times a year and only write about a relatively limited number of eateries) and the ongoing “best of” listings that websites, newspapers, weeklies, and monthlies churn out, which are sometimes restricted by subject, good restaurants that should be talked about sometimes are not. For example: Our August food issue cover story was about steak houses, our March issue was about local/fresh/best, and so on. So who gets hosed in all this? One of my favorite restaurants does! JP American Bistro is owned and operated by a chef who has set a standard of excellence in this town for more than a decade. J. P. Samuelson and his team do a fantastic job day in and day out despite the road construction outside their front door, which would have closed any other restaurant long ago. And every time we talk or write about another restaurant in town, the folks at JP chime in and voice their displeasure—so noted and corrected.

FYI, another restaurant in this category is Sapor.

Any others that you can think of?

****

You know how much I love press releases, especially the ones that make me laugh. The last two I got that fit the bill are excerpted below.

First:

Opening Thursday December 13, the Twin Cities Premier Gentlemen’s Club Schieks Palace Royale and Stone Management Group, LLC. will officially launch “The Kitchen” at Schiek’s serving dinner seven nights a week and lunch on Wednesdays thru Fridays.

Dinner selections will include 42oz USDA Prime Porterhouse, Kobe beef hotdog, colossal shrimp, lobster tails, burgers, lobster tacos and calamari; all affordably priced.  Patrons can also choose from a variety of steaks, chops, seafood, appetizers, soups, salads and desserts. The Kitchen will use the freshest ingredients and the menu will be diverse as to appeal to a large guest base.

Mike Stone, of Stone Management Group says “There’s a real opportunity to create the whole package for a true gentlemen’s club. Approximately 40% of our guests are couples and they have been suggesting this type of food concept for some time and the timing is perfect with the new ownership.” Mr. Stone adds “We wanted to create a safe and profession environment for our guests who want a gentlemen’s club experience and food is one part of that. The new owners have invested in everything from new furniture, new lighting, new sky suites, to community involvement. They have shown a commitment to serve our guests and the city of Minneapolis.”

Wow. Kobe hot dogs and community involvement? No way! And my all-time favorite BS press-release gimmick that I read approximately five times a week is, “the kitchen will use the freshest ingredients and . . . try to appeal to a large guest base.” Holy crap. Does someone actually get paid to write that junk? Is that the best point of difference the owners can come up with? Oy vey.

Second:

I am pleased to introduce Zahtar by Fhima, a new fine dining destination designed especially for our members. Located within the Eden Prairie Life Time Athletic Club, this new restaurant boasts the rich, beautiful finishes found within our health and fitness centers and offers a wide range of culinary delights and impeccable service.

I've personally designed each menu item, applying particular focus on creating exquisite meals that delight all of the senses. All items are zero trans fats and are made using the highest-quality ingredients.

From starting your day with organic eggs Benedict and a cup of fair trade organic coffee, to grabbing a bowl of lobster bisque or the absolute best sushi in town to enjoying a candlelit dinner over a Kobe beef filet mignon complemented by a vintage Bordeaux—Zahtar serves breakfast, lunch and dinner. Over 200 wines and specialty micro brews are also available.

Designed specifically with the comfort of you and your guests in mind, Zahtar by Fhima features both open and private fine-dining areas. Book our Chef's Room—complete with a full wall of organic wine - for your intimate gatherings.

Zahtar by Fhima is available to ALL Life Time members and their guests.

While our official Grand Opening will be in January, I invite you to experience our beautiful new restaurant beginning this Friday, November 30. Reservations are recommended.

Double wow! All five senses will be delighted? I can’t wait to hear my dinner. Does anyone ever read these things before they are sent out? Does anyone really want to brag about having the “absolute best sushi in town” before they are open? And there is that persnickety “highest-quality ingredients” phrase, which is backed up by the allure of the Kobe beef and vintage Bordeaux dinner that I always feel like whenever I am at the health club.

As my friend Dan always says, you can’t make this stuff up.

Zagat and Other Craziness

The good folks at Zagat Survey came out with their "America's Top Restaurants" rankings a few weeks ago. There is no market here in Minnesota for a local guide of our own, so we get lumped into ‘other guides.’ According to those locals who filled out a Zagat form online, the number one rated restaurant in the Twin Cities is . . . drum roll, please . . . La Belle Vie. This is followed by 112 Eatery, Restaurant Alma, Bayport Cookery, Lucia's Restaurant, D'Amico Cucina, Fugaise, Manny's Steak House, and Heartland. Are you in agreement? Any of your faves missing from the list? Well, in an unranked listing of “Other Noteworthy Places," sits Bank, Chambers Kitchen, Cosmos, Cue, Dakota Jazz Club and Restaurant, The Oceanaire Seafood Room, Solera, St. Paul Grill, Town Talk Diner, and 20.21.

OK, I know how goofy these things really are, but off the top of my head, how can Masa, Spoonriver, I Nonni, Campiello, Broder’s Pasta Bar, Morton's, Zander, W. A. Frost, Punch OR ANY ETHNIC RESTAURANT not even make the list? I love Bayport, Lucia’s, and Manny’s, and they deserve the votes they got: People love these restaurants and with good reason. But would they be in your top twenty taking into account the Zagat formula? What about The St. Paul Grill? Fair service, gorgeous room, and terrible food. Cue? C’mon now people . . .

The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) is co-sponsoring the screening of a film we have touted loudly here on this site: King Corn will be shown at the Oak Street Cinema on December 7 at 7 p.m. The documentary film follows two college friends who explore their agricultural roots by moving to Iowa and growing a bumper crop of corn on one acre. As they follow their pile of corn into the food system, the film raises questions about what we eat and how we farm. King Corn cast members Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis will be at the screening. IATP President Jim Harkness will join Cheney and Ellis for a short discussion following the show.

So here is a good one. In Shiga Prefecture in Japan, the local government is asking the residents to help eliminate a pesky pest by eating it. Apparently, approximately fifty years ago, the Midwestern blue gill was introduced into Lake Biwa and is steadily killing off native species. Shiga’s website has recipes for bluegill that may amuse some of you local fishermen. Hit the button on the top right for the site to reload in English.

In last Monday’s New York Times, there was an excerpt from Andrew Revkin’s blog about whether or not “tourism focused on special places could threaten the spectacular ecosystems and landscapes that it aims to celebrate.” It also points out the recent Explorer tragedy as an example of the dangers involved but that part of the thrill of seeing places like this is that it involves some risk. Many of the posts on the blog came out in favor of banning travel to many of these types of sites. I think that’s crazy. There are dozens of ways to eliminate the human footprint on these natural wonders and still allow us to visit them. Look at the BWCA in our state for example. In fact, I would argue that exposing humankind to the wonders of the world will help us to understand how important conservation really is. Thoughts?

In the same issue of the paper, Katherine Ashenburg had a nice op-ed piece about hand washing, arguing that it is the most important, single act a person can perform to maintain their optimum health. Even the CDCP agrees. She says only 15 percent of people wash hands after using the john despite our obsession with hygienic products. I hung out in a restaurant bathroom the other day in NYC (please, no Larry Craig jokes) and counted the number of men who came in and took a leak. Fourteen guys came and went in the space of ten minutes. It turns out that Balthazar on a busy night compels a lot of dudes to hit the head. Anyway, only two washed up after taking care of business. Now I use Vicks Early Defense Foaming Hand Sanitizer on the road approximately ten times a day, and at home I use it whenever I remember to—I think in my old age I am turning into Howie Mandel. But in a cleanly appointed restaurant bathroom, why would so few people wash up? BTW, the Vicks stuff impedes bacteria for three hours and has a slick cucumber scent.

Talk of the Town

Food chat is great, but there is so much to catch up on, I thought we could stretch a little today as well. Did anyone catch Tony Bourdain at Triple Rock or Solera? What did you think? Anyone go to both events and have a favorite? Any great pull quotes you heard? I was in NYC doing the Today Show, so I couldn’t attend. Very disappointing; I would have loved to check out the action, especially at Solera. If you go to my website, we have some blogs up from some ladies who attended the event, and we also have a podcast on the site that I recorded last week with TB.

Did anyone see the pics of the one-and-a-half kilo white truffle that was discovered in Italy a few days ago? Good lord, I could smell it through my TV. Apparently it was dug up in Tuscany by a truffle-sniffing dog and will be auctioned this week in Florence for charity. According to the AP:

“Truffle hunter Cristiano Savini said Tuesday he was searching for truffles with his father and dog Rocco last week in Palaia, a town about 40 kilometers (25 miles) from Pisa, when his dog, Rocco, started sniffing "like crazy." With Rocco leashed to a tree to prevent him from digging too furiously, the Savinis carefully extracted a truffle they said weighed 1.497 kilograms (about 3.3 pounds), which they contended was a record weight. Guinness Book of World Records lists a 1.3 kilogram (2.86-pound) white truffle found in Croatia in 1999 as the biggest. Cristiano's father, Luciano, said the truffle had been weighed at the traffic police station in the nearby town of San Miniato, which issued a certificate attesting to its weight. The station said the officer involved in the weighing was not immediately available for comment. On Tuesday, Cristiano Savini brought the truffle to Rome to publicize the planned auction, to be held Saturday in a palace in Florence. Truffles can fetch €7,500 ($11,155) a kilogram [$5,500 a pound] in Rome, although they usually weigh from 30 to 80 grams (1 to 2.8 ounces). Slivers of truffles, with their strong aroma, are prized in Italy to flavor pasta sauces and rice dishes. Proceeds from the auction will go to an Italian organization that helps sufferers of genetic diseases, a group that helps street children in London and Catholic charities in Macau.”

In a recent Mpls.St.Paul Magazine issue, I wrote a few blurbs on our leading local pastry chefs and was limited to highlighting five talents. Last week, I had lunch at Bank and was impressed with the awesome confection that Liz Matheson sent to our table. Next time you are there, order the white chocolate grapefruit bomb with dark chocolate and salted pretzel. It’s goooooooood. 

Did any of you fall in love with the cardamom mini donuts as much as we did last summer at the Mill City Farmers Market? Well, the talents behind those little gems, Carrie Summer and Lisa Carlson from Spoonriver, just bought a winterized concession wagon. Carrie will be taking her treats to the street. And the menu is growing. You can look forward to more mini-donuts, soft-serve ice cream, and her famous chocolate mousse in Popsicle form. Over the last few years, I have been aching for someone to bring street food into our food culture. Why can’t McCormick and Schmick's have a stand outside their restaurant that sells oysters and cups of ceviche? What about Brothers Deli pushing kosher dogs on the Avenue? Chino Latino could go in several directions, and Lucia’s could do hot chocolate and baked goods all winter long. Well, Carrie is trying hard to bring street food into vogue here, and there is even a wonderful rumor swirling about that she is thinking of creating some kind of winter carnival to take place between the Guthrie and Spoonriver with even more street food being hawked.

Here is the fun part: She needs a name for the cart. In my office, this is cause for a major creative brainstorming session. Berit came up with Street Treats. Dusti came up with The Honey Wagon. Carrie said she would consider readers' suggestions, so get on the stick, and let me know your thoughts. Carrie will check in on this site, and if you end up with the winning name, I am thinking you would never have to wait in line . . . ever.

Now a month or so ago, I started writing about Landmarc, one of the most ridiculous restaurants I have been to in a long time. First, no one ever seems to be there. I have stopped in to peek out the room on five occasions, and it was never more than 25 percent full, not once. No one ever seemed to be talking about it anywhere I went; it had no buzz at all. The food I ate there on the one visit I stayed for dinner was awful. One reason I think this restaurant is still open is because it is in a hotel, which provides some shelter from the typical financial vagaries facing a restaurant on life support. Only open for a relatively short time, the chef was gone one day and then back; and now the manager (my former Café 1-2-3 buddy Michael Morse) is apparently gone from Landmarc in a quid pro quo move by ownership in order to get the chef to return to the stove. Anyone know any details? I called and only got the broad story.

In NYC, I ate a wonderful dinner at Balthazar, followed up by a banana pudding at Magnolia Bakery on Bleeker and 11th.  BTW, the pool at Miami’s Standard Hotel has some of the best mini burgers I have ever tasted, and Versailles in Little Havana still has some killer roasted pork with beans and rice. Cuban sandwiches at La Carretta are better than I remembered.

Thanks for all the opinions on Heidi’s everyone;
anyone been to Nick and Eddie’s yet?

Perspective

The obits are filled these days with notices that give me more pause than usual. A woman whom I cooked with years ago, Kristine Fontaine, passed away last week in San Francisco, and her memorial is this Saturday here in Minnesota. Anyone cooking in town for more than the last five minutes might remember her and might want to attend. She was forty-two. AA historian and author Bill Pittman was sixty, and Norman Mailer was older still; Ira Levin, another of my fave authors passed away, too . . . the message I am getting at is that life is precious, treat it that way. Too often we take ourselves way too seriously. Moving on . . .

****

Nice quote from Lucia Watson in Wednesday’s New York Times in Julia Moskin’s mashed potato piece: “You always have to have sympathy for the potato.” Beautiful. Not sure what it means, but I love it. Speaking of the New York Times, Frank Bruni’s brutal review of Harry Cipriani on Fifth Avenue is proof positive of how fun it is to wield a poison pen, especially when it is deserved and helps to inform thousands of diners who assume the place is good based on historical reputation. You really need to read it for yourself. A sample? Regarding the crowd, he writes, “You rarely see blondness this improbable, cosmetology this transparent, wealth this flamboyantly misspent.” Awesome.

****

The Red Stag Supper Club, Kim Bartmann’s new joint, is opening on Monday. Cosmos alumn, Bill Baskin, is the chef. Anyone want to chime in on this one? Why am I not interested? Hmmmm. Am I not a target customer of this concept? What about Kim’s other venues? I love Barbette (food driven), but I rarely go to Bryant Lake Bowl (not food driven). What if Baskin’s food is outrageously good? I’m in.

****

This Saturday is the annual KARE 11 morning news food show. Look for Eric and Belinda to interview chefs, go live at Cooks of Crocus Hill for some turkey talk, and (here comes the shameless plug) see a few vignettes from yours truly on just a few of my fave cookbooks. And to the people who saw the shoot through the window and emailed me about getting back into the