Eating out and about, 2009
Am I a snob? A food geek? A locavore? Part of the slow-food movement? I don’t really know. I do know that in 2009 the wife and I decided to stop buying food products that contained ingredients that we couldn’t buy on their own, nor make ourselves from natural plants and carcass and such. I know I will troll around eating virtually any kind of food, so long as it is any good. 2009 was, indisputably, the best year for eating I’ve ever had. I became a cook in 2009, and my boss, the chef, had made his bones in fine dining, and so I started to learn what really made food good, and my tolerance for frozen, canned, stale and bland dropped down, and my passion for fresh and fresher went way up.
So this is what I liked eating in 2009. Obviously, there is a bit of subjectivity here: part of dining out is the people you are with, the occasion, the weather outside, whatever. Your mileage may vary. But these are dishes I would recommend to any hungry person (with exceptions for vegetarians, diabetics, etc). In the approximate order in which I ate them:
I have been to Earth Bread + Brewery at least a half dozen times now, and while the atmosphere and staff are pleasant, nothing else on the menu is half as good as the Seed. Mozzarella with pine nuts, pumpkin and sesame seeds, garlic and a little salt does some magical things.
While you’re there, though, if it’s available, be certain to get yourself a Love Your Mother Mild. It’s 3.2% alcohol, which means you can have more than one (or more than two, or three), but its sweetness and slightly burnt toast flavor give the beer some punch that plenty of brews with far higher ABV cannot muster.
Zahav is, according to the waitstaff, an Israeli tapas restaurant. Our first trip there was for Katie’s birthday, and we learned three things: 1) There is no hummus, like Zahav’s hummus. 2) Israeli’s know how to make cabernet: Flam is a no-joke, earthy monster of a wine. 3) In Israel, when you have something to celebrate, you eat lamb. Well, from now on, when we have something to celebrate, we want to eat Zahav’s braised, bone-in lamb shoulder. We stuck to that, too. We ate it with 22 of our favorite people for our wedding 7 months later.
Our neighborhood bar, The Memphis Taproom, has some of the best pub grub in Philadelphia: quite possibly the city’s best wings. But the most notable items, for me, seem to be its ever changing vegetarian and vegan menu. I still do not know what jackfruit is, but I want it in a cake, and I want as many jackfruit cakes as possible, please. The guy sitting next to us at the bar described the thing as a vegan crabcake, but awesome. That’ll do.
My friend Andy spent two years living in New Orleans, working with Presbyterian Disaster Assistance to help repair the city from Hurricane Katrina. When his time was up and he was to come back to us here in the northeast, the wife and I flew down to NOLA, took Andy out to a celebratory dinner at Restaurant August. The meal was outstanding, but, without a doubt, concluded with the strongest course: Napoleon of nougatine with Valrhona chocolate bavarois and salted toffee ice cream, served with Late Harvest Grenache, Domaine du Mas Blanc, Banyuls, France, 2007. The three of us were already delighted with an excellent meal, and this dessert so rich and sweet, with a touch of salt and bitter and the complement of that wine turned us into giddy children, just laughing at how good everything in the world was at that moment.
From NOLA, the three of us drove back to Philadelphia, stopping in Kentucky for whiskey, and we learned about Elijah Craig 18 Year Single Barrel, which is like a magic trick of alcohol. We continued on the North Carolina, birthplace of barbecue, where they slowslowslow cook the whole hog, pick it, and serve it a big mess. We had a bunch of ‘em, but Allen & Son in Chapel Hill was good enough that we didn’t have to talk to each other until we had gotten too full to keep eating. The only place that compared was the Skylight Inn in Ayden, and we were in such a rush (and so out of cash), that we just grabbed three BBQ sammiches and ate them in the car while trying to tear-ass out of NC. That ‘cue was so good I want to go back right now. Who has a car? Incidentally, both Skylight and Allen&Sons were discovered thanks to the North Carolina Barbecue Trail.
Another new Philly restaurant this year (Zahav being also new) is Bibou, a French BYOB in a town that has a lot of French food, and a lot of BYOBs. But the chef/owner there, Pierre Calmel, who runs the kitchen while his wife Charlotte runs the front of the house, are veterans of fine dining, and Calmels had spent the previous five years heading the kitchen in Philadelphia’s legendary Le Bec-Fin. When I bit into their Pied de Porc, a braised pig’s foot, deboned and then stuffed with foie gras, served in a bed of French lentils, I knew we had found a special place. Oh, and their Escargots, served with mushrooms and fava beans, were good enough that, if socially permissible, I would have licked the plate.
Bibou, of course, is not the only escargots serving Frenchman in Philadelphia. The grand old man of Philadelphia fine dining, Georges Perrier, is still serving buttery escargots at Le Bec-Fin. Growing up in the Philly suburbs, I always thought Le Bec-Fin was the best restaurant in the world. I ate there for the first time this year, for lunch, and while “best” can mean a lot of things to me nowadays, it was a singular experience eating there, and it lived up to nearly every expectation I had.
I say “nearly”, because one of the things I grew up knowing (though never experiencing) about LBF is its famous dessert cart. The process goes: you eat your dinner on immaculate platters with silver domes (which, naturally, the tuxedo-ed waiters all remove in unison), and then, instead of a dessert menu, a large cart is wheeled out, heavy laden with cakes and pies and other sugary delights that are, by reputation, as delicious as they are beautiful. Here is an image of the cart, somewhat blurry, but you get an idea, I suppose, and there is a certain visceral joy, I think, in ending a 5-star meal by pointing at what you want instead of attempting to select the menu’s short, ornate descriptions. Perrier has gotten older, and the fine dining scene in Philadelphia has gotten decidedly more casual, and so, the cart is out, at least at lunchtime. The dessert menu is still present, and fulfilling a childhood fantasy, ordered a slice of the signature dessert, Gateau Le Bec Fin, which is, simply put, the best chocolate cake I’ve ever eaten.
In December, Katie and I went down to Washington DC to experience Minibar, chef Jose Andres’ mecca of culinary experimentation. 12 people per night (in two seatings of six people) consume nearly 30 courses, prepared right in front of them. Food, traditionally, has been primarily a feast for the nose and the tongue, with texture and sight trailing far behind. Minibar’s 30 single-bite courses will deliver some food of astonishing flavor, while engaging all of your other senses. Dragon’s Breath Kettle Corn looks and tastes like a piece of regular kettle corn, until you see the other diners breathing smoke from their nostrils as they eat it. A bagel with cream cheese and lox is a pretty common breakfast all over, until your bagel is a thin, crispy, flakey cone filled with a cream cheese foam and salmon roe. The best brussels sprout I have ever eaten was their Tempura Brussels Sprout Rose. I have had no dining experience like it, and while it was, at times, frustrating (”please, sir, can I have some more?”), it engaged my sense of wonder in a way few meals ever have.
Another one of our favorite restaurants this year, Meme, served us a number of lovely dishes, but perhaps none were better than its Strawberry Napoleon with Whipped Ricotta that I ate there over the summer. Crispy, creamy, light and fruity and tart, it was the best of the non-chocolate sweets I ate this year.
Philadelphia has a growing Mexican food scene (actually, it would seem that every regional cuisine is growing in Philly, other than French, which is either dying or dramatically evolving, depending on one’s perspective). Xochitl is one of the more upscale Mexican places in the city, and while their main dishes were good but not great, their small plates were memorable. None moreso than Coctel de Camorones, their version of shrimp cocktail, but served with fried artichokes and corn foam and chicarrones and sorbet, for a combination of spicy and sweet, hot and cold, crispy and creamy.
One of the best new bars in Philly this year was the Franklin Mortgage and Investment Company. The Franklin is a bar with a pre-Prohibition vibe, some of the city’s best cocktails, and a policy of keeping their patrons mostly sitting instead of crowding all over the place. The result is a bar where it’s always busy and never over-crowded, and where classics like the Whiskey Sour are made and served with as much care and attention as more exotic cocktails like El Pinche Tigre, made with jalapeno-infused blanco tequila, ginger, apple, and lemon.
The Franklin is not the only liquor slingin’ newbie in town, though. Village Whiskey opened this year with, essentially, two items of note on its menu: whiskey, and bourbon. The whiskey list is enormous, with plenty of bottles of whiskey and whisky and scotch and bourbon not available in PA liquor stores, albeit, at a price. That said, its APA cocktail, made with Cascade hops-infused vodka, egg white, ginger and grapefruit is like drinking pale ale concentrate. Meanwhile, the grub is outstanding. They have a menu of delightful pickles–my favorite has been pickled cipollini onions with white anchovies. For the main course, however, Philadelphia’s best burger is served here. I haven’t had the monstrous Whiskey King ($26!), but their standard Village Burger for a reasonable $9 is the best burger I’ve had within the city limits.
Philadelphia has also gotten into barbecue a little bit. I haven’t (yet) been to Bebe’s BBQ in South Philly, which has a high reputation thus far, but Percy Street BBQ’s beef brisket with burnt ends is outstanding. For other, inexpensive fare, there is Paesano’s Arista, a roast pork sandwich served with broccoli rabe and long hots, the brisket soup at Nan Zhou Hand Cut Noodle House, which has the best broth of any noodle soup in a city filled with good noodle-soup broth.
All in all, a great year for eating, with some of the best meals coming at extraordinary prices (Minibar, Le Bec Fin, August), and at low-low ones (Nan Zhou, Skylight Inn). I can only hope for 2010 to be as good.
