Dining@Large

Save the environment: Eat red lionfish?

2009-11-08T10:52:43Z

Who knows? Pretty soon you may be seeing panko-crusted red lionfish with a sherry-Dijon beurre blanc on the menu of your favorite seafood restaurant.

The Economist is excited about the fact that the restaurant business may take care of a serious ecosystem problem.

No, I don't subscribe to the Economist. (Of course that's not my Entertainment Weekly over there.) But I have a daughter in business school who does.

According to the story, the red lionfish is an invasive predator that can gobble up 80 percent of small fish when introduced into an environment where it's not native. It's a "top predator" because it has poisonous spines, so even sharks leave it alone.

Well, it's not quite the top predator. ...

]]> As Calvin Trillin once said, lobster is protected from its natural enemy by its high price. The same doesn't seem to be true of red lionfish -- yet.

A company called Sea to Table, which connects chefs with fishermen from sustainable wild fisheries, has gotten high-end restaurants in Chicago and New York to test out the fish. (Apparently when they are de-spined, red lionfish taste like snapper.) The idea is that if there's enough demand, divers in the Caribbean, where the fish is damaging the biodiversity of the coral reefs, will be happy to go out and catch them.

The restaurants' customers loved the flavor, but also loved the idea they were doing something good for the environment.

Why am I skeptical of this as an eco-solution? It reminds me of when Gailor explained the concept of "perverse incentives" to me and used as an example a government that put a bounty on rats to get rid of them, so people started to farm rats.

On the other hand, one commenter on the story online suggested figuring out a way to make kudzu taste good.

Now that's a concept I can get behind.

(Photo courtesy of the Economist Web site)

The Comment of the Week

2009-11-08T01:47:57Z

If I could, I would award every comment under The Awesomeness of Cheese post Comment of the Week. Can you have Comment Section of the Week?

But if I must limit myself to only one comment, it would have to be:

cheese is the beatles of food.

Posted by: ryan97ou | November 6, 2009 1:34 PM

How true. How simple and yet Zen-like in its wisdom. ...

]]> 100 things wait staff should never do.

101. Do not exhibit magic tricks at table. No excuses. Do not do it; not even "the salt cellar out of the customer's ear" trick.
102. No "doo-rags."
103. No humming whilst plating the table. Not even "Hunka Hunka Burnin' Love" for the well-done filet mignon.
104. If your are missing a digit on one hand or the other, wear white gloves.
105. Do not holler back at the kitchen for any reason. Go back there in person and speak in your "six-inch voice."
106. Do not narrate the history your tattoos.
107. Do not talk about "my ex-" anything.
108. Never begin a sentence "At the last place I worked..."
109. Do not fondle the pepper mill. Two or three quick turns and be done with it.
110. If a customer lightly touches you on the arm, smile and slowly pull away and look at the person as if the person were radioactive.
111. Address male customers as "squire" and female customers as "mum" until somebody tells you to stop.
112. When using the crumb scraper, do not say to the customers "Isn't this a neat little tool?" like you are the Sham Wow Guy or something.

Posted by: Cleatus | November 2, 2009 11:38 AM

Are diners looking for value or deals?

2009-11-07T12:31:42Z

One interesting thing to come out of of my post on dining trends for 2010 a few days ago was that another restaurant consultant jumped into the fray.

My finger hovered over the delete button because it felt like spam to me, but I finally decided to let the comment stay because there is some truth in what he had to say.

Or is there? I still can't quite decide. ...

]]> Here's Jeffrey Summer's response to a statement by the original consultants that they would tell us "How the downturn has altered consumer expectations and what it will take to lure ... diners out of their economic storm shelters. ":

This is the biggest myth to come out of journalists and businesses who just don't get it. The 'downturn' didn't do anything but amplify the ever increasing expectations of consumers across the board. And there's no such thing as "...luring diners out of their economic storm shelters.." because they don't exist. The recalibration of the consumer's mind was underway long before the economy went south. Operators who do not understand that past levels of spending won't return anytime soon or that the consumer isn't looking for deals as much as they are value, will be left behind.

My guess is that if you ask 100 potential restaurant customers if they are looking for value when they go out -- and were even before the recession started -- 99 of them would say yes. The other one would say no just to be annoying.

But the reality is that before the economy went south, an awful lot of people were ordering $40 entrees and $12 mixed drinks, even at restaurants where you would be hard pressed to defend the food as "good value."

A $12 martini is never a good value to me -- not saying it isn't fun to order one anyway if you have the cash.

I have no hard facts to back up my feeling that people are living it up a lot less now. Certainly many of the recent closings suggest that. But I do know that restaurants are offering deals to lure customers in.

I'll use the example of the Prime Rib. I got a press release from Baltimore's premier steak house saying that it had had a great year this year in spite of the recession.

Even so, the Prime Rib has started offering various deals, including a half-price wine list on Sundays and a three-course meal for $30.09. I don't think it would be doing that if giving good value were all you had to do to draw in customers these days.

(Photo by Brendan Cavanaugh/special to the Sun)

The awesomeness of cheese

2009-11-06T17:21:07Z

So I'm sitting here trying to get some work done, and the phone rings. I pick it up and my daughter is on the other end, calling me to say she's eating a fruit and cheese plate for lunch.

"Can we talk about the awesomeness of cheese for a moment?" she asks.

Uh, no. On deadline here.

This is going to be a great blog entry, she insists. Cheese is a no-brainer. It's the kind of topic you can throw out there when you're on vacation and say, "discuss."

"How about a Top 10 Baltimore cheese shops?" she asks.

"We don't have 10 cheese shops," I say.

I don't want to be dismissive, so I add, "We did do Top 10 Cheese Plates."

Dead silence on the other end of the line.

"You have been doing that blog a long time."

(Jed Kirschbaum/Sun photographer)

Almost seduced by the dark side

2009-11-06T16:31:12Z

I'm worried about Robert of Cross Keys. I'm afraid that associating with all the degenerate characters on this blog, including its writer, may be getting to him. Here's Robert and today's excellent Free Market Friday. EL

Right now I’m sitting in Red Emma’s -- yes, Red Emma’s. I’m trying to write my Free Market Fridays, or Fascist Fridays as my wife calls it, but it is hard to focus in here. I feel like the Jewish mother in “Fiddler in the Roof” when she goes into the Orthodox church looking for her daughter. As I sit here in my Brooks Brothers shirt and sushi tie, I truly know the feeling of being a stranger in a strange place. ...

]]> Oh well, the coffee here is actually very good…much better than Starbucks. I’m very surprised that communists have Splenda, but here it is right next to a vegan Death by Chocolate cake and some Bush t-shirts marked down 50 percent.

So, anyway, this weekend was my annual Ravens tailgate. I was hoping to bring one those Texas hickory briskets that I have written about, but I didn’t order it in time. In its place the menu had a red theme, although different from the red theme I’m experiencing right now. We had homemade meatballs and sausage in marinara sauce alongside Bloody Marys.

This breakfast was prepared by one of my good friends, who is of Italian-Irish lineage. Fortunately, he got his culinary skills from his Italian mom and his cocktail skills from his Irish dad, otherwise I would have been greeting the day with cabbage and Amaretto.

The tailgate went great. I had a couple of sausage and meatball combo sandwiches on fresh rolls with Provolone, and I had a few Bloodies. I also did quite well in the battle of wits, which consisted of a three-hour onslaught of insults among friends about receding hair, expanding waistlines and fantasy football ineptness that was surprisingly interrupted with a rather lengthy debate on whether deism can be reconciled with evolution.

Oh yea, then there was a Ravens game. I cheered loudly. They played well. We won.

On the walk back to the car, I found myself hungry again. Now, I should have gone back to the meatballs and sausage, but I found myself saying that we should stop off at Bill Bateman’s in Severna Park. I don’t have much of a track record of making great decisions on days when drinking begins at 8 a.m., and this would be no different.

Bateman’s: not good.

There was a time when I liked Bateman’s. I’m not sure if I changed or they did, but it has been a long time since I’ve enjoyed anything about this place. The wings, both bourbon and original, were fair to poor, and nowhere near as good as what you can get at place like Cluck-U or even the old Damien's wings that Bateman’s used to serve. The fries were truly forgettable, limp and flavorless. The onion rings were just strange. I think they had a breading normally seen on coconut shrimp.

I shouldn’t just pick on Bateman’s. There are a lot of places like them, particularly in the suburbs. Places that serve uninspired food that is bigger on portion than flavor. Places that nonetheless seem to attract a lot of customers, not all of which started drinking at dawn before going there.

As I wrote about last week, there are good places in the suburbs. Places like Diamondback Tavern that use quality ingredients procured from local sources to create well-composed dishes that are flavorful and affordable. There’s a place in Anne Arundel County that also does this. It’s called Punk’s Backyard Grill, and it’s where I went the day after the tailgate to recover from Bateman’s.

Punk’s, which is located in the Annapolis Mall, could easily be mistaken for some corporate eatery, but it is actually an independent restaurant that began as a thesis project of a group of students enrolled in Cornell’s restaurant graduate program.

Their concept is to recreate a backyard cookout, but I think that undersells the quality of the food. This place isn’t just serving up simple burgers and hotdogs alongside Natural Light and bug spray. Punk’s has excellent food that is fairly sophisticated but not pretentious.

I started off with a salad of beets -- beets are very big this year, I’m seeing them everywhere -- oranges, orange oil, walnuts and goat cheese on arugula. It was a very fresh tasting salad with flavors that complemented each other. There was no skimping when it came to any of the ingredients, particularly the cheese and nuts that more often than not in salads like this are relegated to a cameo appearance.

I then had a turkey burger with applewood smoked bacon, cranberry relish and sage mayonnaise on a brioche bun. This burger had a lot of flavor and a nice balance of sweet from the brioche, tartness from the cranberry, savory from the sage and salty smokiness from the bacon.

For beverage and dessert I went with pumpkin flavor. I had a Dogfish Pumpkin Ale and a pumpkin bread pudding. Both had a nice seasonal taste, and neither was overly sweet.

What I really like about the food at Punk’s is that it is thought out. Someone is saying this flavor goes with that flavor, and I’m going to combine them to create something special. Obviously, crafting a dish isn’t anything new from a culinary perspective, but it is not something you always see at a casual restaurant. I appreciate that the turkey burger at Punk’s isn’t like something you’d see at Bateman’s. You don’t ask for ketchup or mustard. There are no optional add-ons of the cheese of your choice or bacon for 75 cents extra.

Well, what do you know? It seems that I’m coming out against the freedom to choose and opting instead to have someone make decisions for me. It is probably time for me to leave Red Emma’s, but I think I’ll try that vegan Death by Chocolate cake before I do.

(Jed Kirschbaum/Sun photographer)

This just in

2009-11-06T16:07:39Z

Susan Reimer rushed over to my desk (OK, she was passing by on the way to some place more important) and told me she just got a tweet that Dogwood Restaurant will be reopening in December. I checked the Web site, and that's what it says.

Sam discovers Five Guys is closed

2009-11-06T15:28:23Z

I feel I'm being unfairly blamed in Midnight Sun Sam's lament here. Everybody knew the Park Avenue Five Guys has been closed for ages. EL

In a vain effort to dodge the terrible city traffic last night, I took Park Avenue, which took me past one of my fallback burger joints – Five Guys.

Just then, my heart stopped. I wasn't dead, though -- I was just in shock.

The Five Guys at the corner of Centre Street and Park Avenue was gone. ...

]]> Gone!

The sign had been taken down, the number was disconnected, and the Brown Paper of Death was taped up in the windows.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

I wanted to jump out of the car, run over to the building and claw at the door until my fingers were sore. But I knew it would do no good. There was nothing I could do to bring Five Guys back.

Come to find out, Five Guys has been closed for some time. I didn't know this, even though I sit next to the Baltimore Sun's restaurant critic. Thanks for telling me, Elizabeth. Geez!

For the next few days, I'll be in mourning. I don't know what I'll do after that. There's another Five Guys in the Pratt Street pavilion in the Inner Harbor, but that's just so impractical. You can't park outside, and there are these tourist types everywhere. Yuck.

There's also a Five Guys all the way out on Boston Street, past Canton and past Brewer's Hill. It's nice, but it's just so far removed.

In all honesty, I'm not that hardcore about Five Guys. But I feel betrayed, and I want to take my revenge.

What if I open up another burger joint in the exact same location? I could name it Six Guys. It would be slightly better than Five Guys (because there's one more guy).

Who's with me?

(Photo of Harborplace Five Guys by Andre F. Chung/Sun photographer)

25 food buzzwords for 2010

2009-11-06T12:07:18Z

Are you ready for some buzzwords? (Sorry, my family watches a lot of Monday Night Football.)

Here are, as promised, the 25 buzzwords from international restaurant consultants Joseph Baum & Michael Whiteman Co.

Now don't go telling me there are more or less than 25. I can't figure out why they labeled them that way myself. ...

]]> BUZZWORDS FOR 2010: Authentic Neapolitan pizza. Lamb riblets. Too many food trucks, not enough curb space. Latino street food. Farmed trout creeps up on farmed salmon. Curry- and Indian-spiced fried chicken. Vietnamese sandwiches (bahn mi). Gelati. Global comfort food. Artisan hot dogs. Made-to-order ice cream. Chefs turned butchers. Casual comfort. Touch-screen kiosks and home delivery in fast food outlets. Latino street food. Wood oven cooking. More energy drinks and adulterated waters. Mood food. Backyard and rooftop bee hives. Stevia. Kimchee. Urban farms. Griddled burgers. Free food. House-made everything, especially in sandwiches.

I wish we had Messrs. Baum and Whitehead here with us to talk a little about these. Free food, for instance, is sort of slipped in there. Is that like free hors d'oeuvres or oysters during happy hour? I have noticed more of those this year.

Obviously any and all of these are interesting and fun to talk about -- well, maybe not "casual comfort" or energy drinks -- but what would make them even more interesting would be if they have a good chance to be true in '10. (That looks weird, doesn't it? First time I've written the new decade that way.)

Anyway, I thought it might be fun to show you last year's buzzword predictions so you can judge for yourself:

BUZZWORDS FOR 2009: Maple syrup – in vinaigrettes, in sauces, as glazes on savory food. Brussels sprouts. Mozzarella bars – there’s one in LA, one in New York, and a San Antonio pizzeria recently opened a “burrata bar," so expect more restaurants promoting hand-pulled mozzarella in various forms. Shisito peppers and pimientos al padron – thumb-size peppers from Japan and Spain that vary randomly from hot to sweet, showing up as blister-fried bar snacks and atop grilled meats. With more and better types of mangos are entering the country, they’ve become the sweet fruit of choice. Porchetta. House-made pickled vegetables are enlivening the palate, especially when served with fatty foods such as charcuterie. House-made charcuterie is taking off as chefs demonstrate their artisan talents. Osterias. Spray cans of olive oil and balsamic vinegar for interactive customer experiences. Stevia. Ultra-slow cooking, either in pouches (sous vide) or in ovens (four-hour chicken at 250 degrees) that yields less shrinkage so that portions look larger, more succulent, and easier control in restaurant kitchens – so long as no one gets poisoned. Duck Eggs. Breakfast all day long. Nutella. Old fashioned Dutch gin with lots more flavor impact. Comfort food like baked beans in gourmet concoctions, and peanut butter. More drinking places calling themselves gastropubs. Korean food (tamed for western palates) as kimchee goes multi-culti; Peruvian cuisine, as we predicted last year, will make big strides; and other Andean countries’ foods will emerge this year. Basque and Catalonian cookery, as people explore the flavors of northern Spain beyond their local tapas bars. Salt will be the new trans-fat and there’ll be attacks on bottled beverages, especially energy drinks. Superfruit flavors and extracts added to gins and vodkas. Chickpeas are the vegetable of the year.

Chickpeas aren't my vegetable of the year, but it seems to me a lot of these were right on. So does that mean we'll have beehives in our backyards by the end of next year?

(Barbara Haddock Taylor/Sun photographer)

Your chips (or pretzels) are safe

2009-11-06T02:16:03Z

As of now anyway. The Utz-Snyder's merger has fallen through.

The Mystery Restaurant resurfaces...

2009-11-05T20:09:30Z

...on Midnight Sun Sam's blog.

50 more things wait staff should and shouldn't do

2009-11-05T18:49:01Z

I think I better post a link to Part 2 of "100 Things Restaurant Staffers Should Never Do." It deserves its own entry.

I have to say, I would love to eat at a restaurant where the wait staff followed all his commands. I'm just not sure it's ever going to happen.

Not my definition of TV history

2009-11-05T15:52:20Z

Some press releases I just shake my head at.

The title of the latest one in that category is "MARTHA STEWART AND RACHAEL RAY MAKE TELEVISION HISTORY BY APPEARING ON SAME SET FOR THE FIRST TIME."

The moon landing. That made television history. The last episode of "Seinfeld." Not Martha Stewart and Rachael Ray appearing on each other's shows.

Oh well, if you must know:

Martha Stewart will appear on the "Rachael Ray Show" on Nov. 12, where she will show Rachael how to create a "unique Thanksgiving centerpiece." The next day Rachael will return the favor and appear on "The Martha Stewart Show," where Martha will "show the baking-challenged Rachael how to prepare a perfect Thanksgiving Day dessert."

It sounds like Martha is having to do all the work here. ...

]]> Obviously I don't have a photo of Rachael and Martha together because they haven't made television history yet, but I kind of like this one of Martha and her daughter Alexis. Of course, Gailor and I are better looking, but...it's a nice photo.

(AP Photo/Martha Stewart Living/Omnimedia, Dana Gallagher, file)

The gastropub poll

2009-11-05T15:23:05Z

You asked for it. You begged for it. Here it is:

Is it a gastropub? Or a bistro bar? Or...

2009-11-05T11:06:06Z

We've talked about gastropubs at length before, and the consensus seems to be good idea, terrible name.

But a couple of things came up just now that made me want to bring up gastropubs again.

First, scottbbfm and Lissa introduced the concept of fine-dining bars, or rather I introduced it, scottbbfm pointed it out and Lissa gave it a name I love. ...

]]> Now I'm obsessed with having a Top 10 list of fine-dining bars. Nominations for the list accepted below.

Then this excellent story appeared in the Denver Post. Although there are only two gastropubs in Denver, so we know that the writer has no right to call it a local trend until he comes up with one more, I like the discussion of the word itself.

"The first half is Greek and the other half Latin, but never mind that," [a language expert] says. "The gastro part evokes acid and drastic and the Astros, and gastropod, more than it does gastronomy. A gastropod is a snail or a slug or a limpet — an animal whose one leg, pod, extends more or less from its stomach, gastro. Then there's ghastly. Not to mention gas."

Amazingly, some people actually defend the word in the story. Don't you prefer the term "fine-dining bars"? Or at least "bistro bars"?

It seems to me there's no advantage to calling your bistro bar a gastropub unless you really want to convey some sort of Britishness. And I can't think of a bar in Baltimore that wants to do that.

(Kim Hairston/Sun photographer)

All that Jazz

2009-11-04T20:17:59Z

Bucky sent me an e-mail earlier today that said in its entirety:

"Where does the Jazz apple rank on your list?"

I knew that this blog had introduced him to the Honeycrisp, which somehow has given me the aura of an apple expert, but I had never thought about having an apple list before. If I did it would look something like this:

1) Honeycrisp

2) Fuji

It's not that I have anything against any other varieties (except Red Delicious). It's just that I start eating those two and before I get bored with them suddenly apple season is over. ...

]]> I don't remember seeing Jazz apples at the farmers markets or in the supermarkets around here, but then I haven't been looking for them. I know nothing about them except that a fresh Washington crop is available in November, and maybe that's why Bucky is getting them now.

While I was mulling this over I got a second e-mail:

"OK…this is weird. I pulled my Jazz apple out of the bag but when I looked at the little label, it says, 'American Cameo.' So now I need to go back to the store and see what’s up. I’m positive I pulled it from the bin that says, 'Jazz Apples.' (The American Cameo tastes like a Delicious to me…)"

That reminds me to check those little labels myself. Nothing worse than expecting an edible apple and getting a Delicious.

That was immediately followed by a third e-mail:

"I found this on the Cameo: 'The Cameo is a cultivar of apple, discovered by chance by the Caudle family in a Dryden, Washington orchard in 1987. Its parentage is uncertain; it may be a cross between a Red Delicious and a Golden Delicious…'

"Know what that means? I am apparently developing an apple palate. (See previous email.)"

I had one wild moment of thinking he meant all that was written on the little sticker on his Cameo apple, and I was wondering whether he used a microscope to read it. But then I realized he must have Googled "Cameo apple."

The idea of Bucky's developing an apple palate seems a little, what's the word, incongruous.