Don't try this at home

I had but a minute to lament the death-by-overpreparing beautiful two-year avocados. That was last shift's lesson. Last night at Cooks County, I received a hard lesson in under-preparing.

Embrace the silence.

Roxana, one of the chef-owners, shares the station with me. Her side of the counter is pastry, I'm on the cold line, making appetizers and salads. While prepping our stations in moments of relative calm, conversation goes like this:

Chat chat chat what kind of yoga do you do? chat chat chat You need to get some more sleep, girl, and drink water... I love the huckleberry sauce you serve with the pop tart dessert! chat chat chat How long do you proof the spretzel dough? chat chat We need to make more mustard dipping sauce, but let's put it on the list for tomorrow.

Then:

Wham.

Oh. Shit. This is what I get for making fun of vegans. I've got 16 salads up and that's not counting the chicken liver and radish apps. One table ordered four radish plates? "Don't worry about new tickets, Chris, just clean up what you have." Dan, the other chef-owner calls over; Christianna, "Fire what you have." I sense that is code for "Hurry *%@$!^ up." I'm out of the avocados I over-prepped the other night. I'm out of grapefruit. 25 plates due five minutes ago and I'm segmenting grapefruits and avocados on the fly. Roxana, the owner who employs me, is working four of my tickets. Not her own. Mine. Joy of joys, they are called The Weeds, and I am in them.

After the tickets clear, I look out into the dining room. People are having fun. They're standing, waiting for tables on a Wednesday night. I get my station back in order, and watch the wave that hit me land on the hot line, then desserts. The steelhead salmon steaks searing on the wood-fired grill catch my eye from across the kitchen, glowing a beautiful orange. The whole line smells of mussels steaming in white wine and roasted tomatoes. Those plates go out, rustic but composed. Roxana, done with her charity work for the evening on my station, is back to plating her gorgeous desserts.

Pop tart with huckleberry sauce

Roxana says, "I haven't had a run like that in six years." Okay good. Context is good.
"I did not handle that well."
"It's fun, right?"

Yes, it is. For a restaurant that has been open just over two months, it is a good problem to have that most nights feel like Friday nights in the kitchen. Our reward for the night's work: there's one half of an avocado left, and Roxana and I split it. We're back to chatting while we break our stations down. Chat chat avocados are great for your skin! Don't let me forget to make the mustard dipping sauce tomorrow. Chat chat chat I think I'm going to bring my paring knife in for service tomorrow. It's better for segmenting.

"See you tomorrow night?"

Of course. I wouldn't miss this much fun for anything.

A New Year, A New Voice

View from my station.

Three months ago, a friend of mine opened a restaurant in West Hollywood, and I called to see if I could help out. She said yes, and, she’s letting me document the experience. For the thousands of ways food establishments close, there’s only one way to open. It involves 80-hour weeks, sleep-deprived decision-making, and if you can think it, you can worry about it, from napkin inventory to payroll taxes.

I work the cold line, nights. My worst fear is running out of food on a busy shift, especially while I’m still new on the line and both chef-owners are in the kitchen with me. Last week, I cut too many two-year avocados for my mise en place, and all night they sat there, decaying. No worries, we can just compost them and grab more. In two years. A well-designed plan you can’t execute might as well be no plan at all, in the kitchen, in business, in life. And sometimes, perhaps most times, logic won’t get you to that great plan. I heard it, the voice that said, “Those are too many avocados.” I didn’t listen, because I didn’t want to have to cut and season avocados on the fly with seven tickets up during service. I reasoned it would be a busy night, and it was, just not for the avocado salad. While I was prepping, my gut said, “Easy on the avocados, cowgirl!”

Sorry, kids.

Enter the new year. I feel like setting a resolution is creating a plan I can’t execute, but a conversation with my loving compadre opened my eyes to a new way of preparing for the year. “What are your posts contributing outside your community of foodies?” he asked. The question hit me simultaneously like a ton of bricks and an inspiration. This year, I have one thought in mind when I hit the post button, “What else am I contributing when I publish this?” If this remains a straightforward recipe blog, I’m denying the side of my brain interested in people’s stories, and our senses of place and culture. There will still be recipes, to be sure. But, I set an intention to write more stories and take more pictures of subjects that intersect with food (and are not just about it.) My gut is telling me that’s the sweet spot, so I’m going to start there this time, with some fun stories from a back kitchen in Los Angeles.

Lessons in Columbian Street Food

Columbian street food in Sedona, Arizona? I’ll push through an aura-readers’ off-roading jeep tour for that.

Thanksgiving weekend was a blast. The day after making (and eating) untraditional Cornish hens, Brussels sprouts, German potato salad, and mom’s famous cheesecake, I went on a seven-mile hike in Sedona, Arizona, as penance for the weekend’s diet sins. “Of course there’s a flute player on the rocks.” He was perched on top of one of the red rock spires, probably for maximum volume projection. The rest of the time I could hear him, I spent making fun of Sedona in my mind. As a tour helicopter flew over, someone joked that it was probably a part-time resident on a Starbucks run. At the end of Boynton Canyon trail, the graffiti defacing the rocks was of a sun with a yin-yang symbol inside. It would be unwise to publish the rest of the stereotype-rich cracks at this point. I finished growing up around here, so I give myself a local's license.

In search of post-hike beer and food, we stumbled upon the antidote to the elite resorts, rock climbing flute soloists and crystal shops that make up a significant part of the cultural landscape of Sedona. At the Oak Creek Brewery, the bartender gave me a menu for the hot dog window I ignored in order to get inside the brewpub.

Lesson #1: Never, ever ignore a person who seems happy to be stuffed into in a hole-in-the-wall food establishment with an order window. He knows something you do not.

Simon, of Simon’s Gourmet Hot Dogs opened this closet-sized hot dog business a year and a half ago, and the fingerprints of his Columbian heritage are all over the comfort food on the menu. While looking at the menu, aloud, I reasoned that “I can get a chili dog anywhere, so I’ll have the maicitos instead.”

“You can’t get my chili dog anywhere.”

Lesson #2: Know better than to say “I can get that anywhere” to the person making, serving, cashiering and bussing your food, especially when the menu says “chili dog” followed by “family recipe”.

“I'll get both.” My loving compadre ordered the Loka brat, a brown mustard, mayonnaise, sauerkraut, and jalepeno-covered bratwurst. I ordered the chili dog and the maicitos, a corn, bacon and cream baked stew with white cheese and crushed potato chips on top.

The dogs came dressed in a soft, tangy roll. The beef chili was savory but had a sweetness of a clove or cinnamon-type spice. In a word, I suppose, it was balanced. And delicious.

Maicitos

The maicitos came with tortilla chips on the side, probably to prevent people from grabbing the entire bowl and drinking it, and contained the power to break whole sentences into shards, in public.

“Corn delicious sweet.”

“Bacony crack.”

“Love potato chips...”

“Cheese melty”

“Try… make this someday.”

Simon seemed as though he has seen this reaction before. He gave us a card, thanked us for ordering food, and beamed a soul-lifting smile.

If you are within 50 miles of Sedona, please make a special stop to go find Simon. For $20, you’ll receive two full bellies of killer Columbian-infused street food, no attitude, a great story, and a brilliant twist on the classic beer-and-brats combination. Over our country’s most hallowed food holiday, it was one of the best meals of the weekend.

Simon’s Gourmet Hot Dogs

2050 Yavapai Drive, Sedona, AZ, inside the Oak Creek Brewery

928-496-0266
Plug the address into your gps; the brewery is located on a small street off highway 89A and is easy to miss.

Bar Bouchon, Beverly Hills, CA

I love finding little gems in Los Angeles.  Bar Bouchon's happy hour is one of them.

Truffled popcorn? Why didn't I think of this? It's so easy... popcorn, butter, truffle oil. Well, now I know, having been to Thomas Keller's Bar Bouchon, the younger, hipper sibling to the lauded upstairs establishment, Bouchon, in Beverly Hills, California.

While big brother is exacting French technique on classics like foie gras and rillettes, downstairs plays with its food, quietly offering its menu at a more approachable price point.  Turning out good old-fashioned American "casual classics" like braised BBQ pork sandwiches, served with a tangy-sweet cabbage and fuji apple coleslaw while nodding to staple French ingredients like brothy saffron-infused mussels and delicate, cured charcuterie is what gives Bar Bouchon its charm. A few haute-cuisine standards from upstairs like Terrine de Foie Gras de Canard and Rillettes aux Deux Saumons cross-pollinate, but more whimsically opulent dishes like Tartare de Saumon and fresh tomato soup and grilled cheese on brioche are at home on the sweeping zinc bar under the soft glow of rustic Edison light bulbs, breaking with the starched white traditions of upstairs.

The bar’s popular happy hour brings prices down to an affordable slice of Beverly Hills, with a daily cocktail, beer, red and white wine selection for $5-7, and menu that includes oysters of the day ($2/ea) to smaller versions of existing menu items BBQ Pork Sliders ($8/two). It's available 4-7pm Monday through Friday. When it's not happy hour, prepare to spend between $11.50 and $18.50 per entree.

Bar Bouchon

235 North Canon Drive, between Dayton and Clifton Way

Beverly Hills, CA 90210

310-281-5698

Wheelchair accessibility:  Bar Bouchon is at ground level. If you park in either public parking structure flanking the Bar Bouchon and Bouchon building on Canon, elevators will take you to the ground floor. From there, curb ramp accessibility is great along Canon.  Access to Bar Bouchon is a wide, tiled, covered entry, with a curb ramp right in front.

A trip to Samosa House, daydreaming of India

Last week, at a blogging conference in Atlanta, I met Sonia and Raja, creators of VelvetAroma (a blog recipe search site so new, it is in beta). After our requisite "What blog do you write?" questions and answers, we exchanged thoughts and experiences of travel, landing on the riches of cultures and flavors in India. When I got home to Los Angeles, I dug out a map of India, and daydreamed. I have had this dream before.

Southern India

I never made it to India on a trip to the Arabian Peninsula last year. India's influence in the region was entrancing, each imported spice in the souks singing "Come on over! We're just across the water." Curry dishes were as common as lamb kofta in alley restaurants. This weekend, Los Angeles became my India as I set out to make a fish curry to quell the homesickness for a place I have never been.

Chinatown Cafe, Boston

A late night in Chinatown, Boston, is about 8:30, if the sidewalks have anything to say about it. We wandered in to the Chinatown Café as they were wiping the restaurant day off of its surfaces. As the staff was putting up chairs and cleaning around us, we ordered off-menu, based on what they had left to make.  The place smelled like cleaning products and fried rice.

We ordered.  She said, “You take out.” Done.

Repost: Top five dining experiences, Part I.

This is a repost from December, 2010.  What I love about most of my favorite dining experiences is many of them involve being outdoors, in other words, not in fancy restaurants where the experiences are expected to be amazing. I am also very curious what your most memorable meals are, so please leave a comment below!
--

As a younger, fitter lass, once a year I backpacked with my high school Chemistry teacher's husband, who led backcountry excursions through the Grand Canyon for his friends.  Why he took kids along, I have no idea, because at 16, we were whiny, complainy, fussy members of the group.  One year, a girl took a butane curling iron on one of our five-day trips.

On a different year, my sister came along with us, which was great because that meant I got to share a tent with a kid I didn't mind sharing a tent with.  It was an "intermediate" hike, and as I recall, sis and I were the only two kids on the hike.  By that time, I was well-conditioned through a routine of Cross Country in the fall and Track and Field in the spring to hike 40 miles in five days. With 40 pounds on our backs, we trudged down and across an eastern section of the Grand Canyon.  When we found the springs at our scheduled eight-mile stop dry, we had to move forward for water, which meant descending to the bottom of the canyon, another eight miles in.  After 16 miles that day, I took my pack off, and my sister was grossed out by the salt stains on my t-shirt.  I think I ate my weight in salty pasta that night.

After a day of rest, we launched again, this time up (really up, I think it was a 3,000 foot elevation gain) to our next campsite.  Ron, our guide, talked us in to setting up camp and hiking out an additional 4 mile round trip to an overlook in the canyon to have dinner.  As we were sitting on Plateau Point, making dinner on our campstoves, Ron, a devoted lover of the outdoors, said to us,

"You are eating at one of the most exclusive restaurants in the world."

Beaten down to tired, accomplished, happy bags of human beings, watching the canyon's colors warm up the sunset over the Colorado River 2,500 feet below and across the canyon up to the North Rim, he nailed that moment onto the walls of my memory bank.

I ate two of these cups of soup.

A Trip To Neptune's Net, Malibu, California

On weekends, many of us cruise north of Los Angeles up the Pacific Coast Highway in search of a little solitude and glimpses of undisturbed nature.  In this nature, there is a place where road-hardened bikers flock to a fish shack enticed by a thin, golden-hued alcoholic beverage.  They convene upon Neptune's Net, via expensive bikes, big egos and some heavy drinking, all of which spill out onto the front parking area. It is a gritty, lively slice of Malibu, California's prime ocean-side real estate. Why are you stopping if you're not on a bike?  The spectacle, the view, the experience.

A Trip To The Purple Pig, Chicago.

I don’t know much about the history and accolades of The Purple Pig, but what I can tell you about are particular luxurious details of my experience sitting at the bar there last week.   

I'll keep this brief: Business trip to Chicago. 24 hours. One meal out. One recommendation from a local.

How to eat Fried Chicken: Ludo Truck in Los Angeles

Among foodies and chefs, Ludo Lefebvre is our Los Angeles French darling, popping up and out of restaurant spaces, crisscrossing town in his food truck. In combination, those things make one feel like they're a private detective hunting down an elusive person of interest, which is exactly why I jumped on my bike and rode six blocks down the hill from my apartment when I heard Ludo Truck snagged a spot this week on the Santa Monica Gourmet Food Truck Corner. Person of interest, indeed.

Photo Post: Paris Baguette Bakery, Koreatown.

I snapped this photo at one of Paris Baguette Bakery's rare US outlets in east Hollywood, California.  I love the unlikely French-Asian collaboration in pastry, a tenet Paris Baguette is founded on and gracefully executes.  In addition to this red bean bear claw, I had a purple sweet potato latte.  All were delicate and delicious. 

Photo Post: Anisette Brasserie, RIP

Anisette Brasserie, just off the Promenade in Santa Monica, California, is now closed, according to yelp.  I, too, had a mediocre food experience there, but my stars, was it a gorgeous place inside.  I snapped this photo on my maiden voyage there in November, 2010.

Let me count the ways I love Korean food: Western Doma Noodle.

In the last year, "home" has been Dubai, New York, Nebraska, Colorado and California. In these journeys, my favorite comfort foods have become Yemeni, Lebanese food and Korean food. (It's probably the most random game of connect the dots I have ever played.) So, in the process of saying goodbye to yet another locale, east Hollywood, for ocean side Santa Monica, fingers crossed for permanently, we took ourselves out to a lingering and lovely "goodbye Hollywood" lunch at Western Doma Noodle in Koreatown. They don't seem to have a website but I found this post here, and of course, they're all over yelp.

Homemade banchan with lunch.

How to eat vegan: Native Foods Cafe

Cooking vegan reminds me of Ginger Rogers' famous statement about doing everything backwards in high heels to get half the recognition as the man. In the same way,  I feel vegan food has to be 100% spot on to even have the opportunity to overcome the stigma of the "vegan" moniker.

I'm not a vegan.  I'm not even a vegetarian.  But I am an appreciator of deliciousness. So, the great thing about Native Foods Cafe opening in Culver City, California, is that west-side, meat-and-three types of which I am a sometimes-member won't miss the flavors and textures they are used to in their diets. In fact, our dining options just increased. (I never visited the restaurant that previously inhabited the space given new life by chef Tanya Petrovna.)

The Turquoise Room.

Last week, I wrapped a project in Denver, packed up and drove to Los Angeles over a weekend, and started running on another project here on Monday. I bitched about making yet another move with a car load of crap for weeks before I actually had to do it. Just when I was at the end of my moving-around-the-globe-for-projects rope, this most recent route took me through northern Arizona, an area I grew up hiking, biking and running as a kid. While I can't say driving 1,500 miles in two days was a blissful experience, one of the stops I made along the way reminded me why I ultimately love my nomadic lifestyle.

On a recommendation from a colleague, I stopped for breakfast along I-40 at the Turquoise Room inside the historic La Posada hotel in Winslow, Arizona.  I ordered the second best bread pudding I have ever eaten. (The best was an Italian friend's grandmother's recipe in Portland, Oregon, that my friend topped with dark chocolate and served warm.) This one was a pumpkin spice bread, soaked in cream and topped with prickly pear cactus syrup, pine nuts, dried cherries, and candied quince from the hotel's backyard garden. The rest of the menu was filled with elk sausage, duck leg, and other local ingredients and the coffee was roasted nearby in Flagstaff.

How To Eat A Sonoran Hot Dog.

A Sonoran Hot Dog is an American southwestern regional hot mess of a deep-fried bacon-wrapped hot dog topped with so many other things that you forget there is a deep-fried bacon-wrapped hot dog in the bun. So, of course, when in Tucson, Arizona, we had no choice but to do as Tucsonans do and go find one. One particular purveyor of this wonder of street food, Mr. Antojo's, is a food cart parked six days a week on the corner of Pantano and 22nd.  Don't bother calling to find it.  Just cruise that intersection any day but Sunday.  (I did find an interesting tidbit on his rolls while trying to find out the cart's location and schedule here.)

Here's how a Sonoran Hot Dog happens.

Rockenwagner Bakery.

Yesterday,  on Third and Arizona in Santa Monica, California,  I was on my way to find sushi for lunch, but I like the color orange, so I stepped inside to take a look at the menu in the Rockenwagner bakery and cafe. (Sorry there's no umlaut over my "o".  My current font package just can't handle the concept.)

The Squeaky Bean

**Update, as of July, 2011, the Squeaky Bean is closed!**

A couple of weeks ago, The Kitchenette and I met at a local Denver, Colorado, spot, The Squeaky Bean.  I cannot comment on the Best Dinner Ever since we were there for lunch, but we were both charmed by their mighty claim.  And that they got away with it because the place felt quaint-but-not-pretentious.

 

Lunch coffee first. Duh, long-lunchy bistro.  If I have been born before, it was as a cute little adventurous (for the times, wore trousers, had own money) French lady, because I am at home in this life in these environs.