Traveling Feast

It was the match book.  I saw the name of the restaurant and the picture and thought “Ah, Asian food with an attitude.”

A moment more of reflection and I wondered if it might even be a vegetarian place with a sense of humor.  In my experience most vegetarian spots do earnest and self-righteous much better than playful.

But no… read a bit more carefully below the title and the true nature of the Tummy Temple becomes evident.  This is not the place to to go for lunch.

Last week I followed up on a tip from Josie Urbick about a Seattle taco truck with a unique item on the menu: a Mexican hot dog ($4.50).  She described it as an almost unthinkable gut bomb that had to be eaten to be believed.

At 9 pm last Thursday I decided it was time.

I found Flair Taco on just off the main drag between Fremont and Ballard (North 36th Street that turns into Leary Way).  The beat-up truck sits in a parking lot at the corner of North 36th and Phinney Avenue North.  When I arrived, 0wner Angel Aguilar was unloading food for Flair’s Friday and Saturday bar close rush.

“The cops stand right over there on the corner,” he said, “and when guys come out of the bars they have a decision to make: try to drive or come eat tacos.  Most choose tacos.  This parking lot will be packed tomorrow night.”

I had already ordered my Mexi dog, and asked about the story behind it.  I make it a point to eat at nearly every taco truck I drive by and never had seen a hot dog on another menu.

“These are how everyone eats hot dogs in Mexico,” Aguilar said.  “I grew up eating them just like this.  Then I came to the states and saw a hot dog on a menu.  I ordered it only to be stunned.  This wasn’t a hot dog.  It had nothing on it!  Finally I saw the relish off to the side and thought at least they had jalapenos. But when I took a bite, I said ‘What the hell is this?’”

Long story short, when he opened Flair Taco with Johnny Flair, Aguilar added to the menu a hot dog the way Cardiac Arrest intended it.

I doubt I’ll eat another dog again without thinking about Aguilar’s Mexi version.  I’ll also be back with friends.  Sure it is a gut bomb, but some gut bombs are worth it once in a while.

I’m also making a note to bring my passport because Flair has another unique item on the menu called the Passport Meal ($9.00).  It is whatever Aguilar decides it is when someone orders it, but he categorically refuses to sell you one without seeing your passport.  His iPhone has picutres of everyone who orders the meal and comes with proper documentation.

I’m in love.  Mocha love.

This comes from a guy who only orders coffee if it might go well with what I plan to eat.  It is a good thing I don’t live anywhere near Redmond WA or my wife might look at our VISA bill and begin to ask questions.

“What are all these charges at Kitanda Brazilian Bakery and Espresso?”

“Uh…”

“This isn’t like you.  Are you meeting someone?”

“Well… um…”

“What is it?  Tell me! There are 100s of dollars of unexplained charges here.”

“I’m too embarrassed.  I didn’t think it would go this far.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m in love… but wait… before you do anything rash.  It is only coffee.  Nothing more.  Delicious, beautiful Brazilian coffee, but that’s all.”

Counseling would probably be required.  Things would be rough for a while.  We’d make it.  I’d probably be drinking green tea again within a few months, but there would be times I would break down and cry.

Yet since I live in Spokane I hope to never need to have the imagined conversation above.  Our VISA bill won’t reflect daily charges at Kitanda and I won’t need to invent excuses to drive to Redmond day after day.  But you can be sure I’ll be back when I’m in the Seattle area and I suggest you do the same.

One sip and you just might be in love too.

I might have grown up in Montana on meat and potatoes, but often when I come back to visit my aunt and uncle we go a bit more exotic for at least one dinner: Thai food.  Steven Lympus taught my aunt to cook Thai, and she passed on the cookbook Steven shared with her: Simply Thai by Wandee Young and Byron Ayanoglu.

For both of us, the cookbook functions as our Thai cooking bible and last night we went for a dinner of three of our favorite dishes in the volume.

Phad Thai.

Cold Spring Rolls

And Cucumber Salad.

I regularly ask friends who traveling to send in pictures from their eating adventures abroad.   Here are a few posted from France by Charley and Pam Bartlett.

First is a crepe storefront that is offering brilliant product placement for Nutella and several soft drinks.

Then there is a meat case with whole rabbits… a great protein that makes most Americans a bit squeamish.  The “fluffy bunny” effect.

And finally a lunch spread… I particularly love the Instant French guide under the bread basket.  Thanks Charley and Pam.

I hear stories about how awkward it can be to eat alone… stories of being shuffled into corners or tables back by the door to the kitchen, rude wait staff, and uncomfortable moments on loneliness in the midst of others so obviously together.  And I can imagine that eating alone all the time could be hard.

Yet so many of my meals out… reviewing restaurants… require me to eat with others, and this admittedly warped perspective has allowed me to discover the gift of eating alone.  Two of the best meals I’ve eaten this year have been meals alone: one in New York City on Memorial Day weekend (Eleven Madison Park) and a second tonight on the west coast in Seattle’s Le Pichet.

The food on both occasions was wonderful, and, come to think of it, French.  Elegant and daring at Eleven Madison Park.  Rustic and simple at Le Pichet.  Not that I’ve come out of the closet as a Francophile… I haven’t.

In fact, what was most memorable about both meals wasn’t the great food at all, but the wait staff and specifically how they treated me as I dined alone.  At Eleven Madison Park it was Reilly and Chris who went out of their way to describe the food and discuss the wine.  Tonight it was Aaron who did both.

I got to glimpse briefly their delight and expertise as they described the possibilities represented by the menus and my interest was met with enthusiasm and a willingness to take extra time pointing out details I’d surely have missed if I’d been at the table with a party rather than alone.

In fact, in the end it didn’t feel like I was eating alone at all.  They made space for me, offered real hospitality, and set a table that felt a lot like home.  The food was more refined, but what in the end I’ll remember long after I’ve forgotten the flavors is their grace.

When we need a fix of great Chinese we usually pile into the van and head to the South Hill strip mall  in Spokane that houses China Garden.

The restaurant tucked in next to an Ace Hardware store doesn’t scream EAT HERE in neon like most of the Chinese restaurants on the Division strip up north, but the food keeps us coming back.

Tonight it was Honey Walnut Prawns (sweet and undoutbtedly addictive), crispy Sesame Beef with just a hint of heat, and Broccoli Chicken.

If you have your own Chef Raymond favorites, please pass them along for the next time the family gets a Chinese food craving.

Fried rice might sound a bit odd for breakfast, but this morning I was playing around with ways to use up some leftover shredded cabbage and start the day with some protein.  The result was simple and curiously satisfying as an unusual breakfast dish.  It ended up getting bonus points for also using up some quinoa and rice in the refrigerator.

QUINOA?! You may not stock quinoa in your kitchen currently, but if you don’t, that is the place to start.  Pronouced ‘KEEN-WAH,’ it is a leafy herb that grown in the Andes that produces an abundance of seeds. Part of the reason quinoa is remarkable is that it can be grown on rocky and hard packed soils where nothing else will grow, and the nutritional profile is impressive.  It is low in sugar and starch and high in fiber and unsaturated fats. It contains many essential vitamins and minerals as well as fifty percent more protein than wheat, rice and barley and this protein is high quality with a critical balance of the amino acids that are needed by the human body. Quinoa has bragging rights in the vegetable world for containing the amino acid lysine which normally found in meat, fish and eggs. It also provides phosphorous, calcium, iron, vitamin E and several of the B vitamins.

Here endeth the nutritional lesson and beginneth the recipe. Amen.

CRANKED PROTEIN BREAKFAST FRIED RICE

Ingredients

1 tablespoon butter or sesame oil

1-2 cups thinly shredded cabbage

dash of salt

1 ½ cups leftover quinoa and rice mixture (see note below)

several dashes of soy sauce to taste

2 eggs, beaten

Directions

Melt butter in non-stick skillet and add cabbage and dash of salt. Cook for 1-2 minutes.
Stir in quinoa and rice and season with soy sauce to taste.
Add in the beaten eggs and cook, stirring constantly until the eggs are cooked to your liking.

2-3 servings

Note
In an effort to cut back on carbohydrates and bump up proteins, we have been cooking up a mixture of half rice, half quinoa for a side at dinner using the same proportions and cooking times we would for straight rice. This breakfast fried rice is a delicious way to use up leftovers as well as get both vegetables and protein from both the eggs and quinoa at start of the day.

I originally just made this by ‘feel’ so the specific measurements above are kitchen ‘guesstimates’ once it turned out well.  Let me know what you think.

Polson, MT: A tip from a friend in Spokane sent me out Highway 35 to hook up along the east side of Flathead Lake.  The mission?  Taste the smoked Prime Rib at the East Shore Smoke House.  It was out of my way, but the friend in question has opened and managed more restaurants than some people will visit in their lives.  If he suggests a place, I’m willing to go out of my way.

The low-slung Smoke House now looks nothing like the pale blue building that used to house a German restaurant before Jim Bassett bought the property.  “I don’t think there is a single thing in the restaurant that you can see that we haven’t redone,” Jim says with a grin.  “I didn’t intend to do this much.  Originally I planned to just open a hambuger joint.”

I, for one, am delighted Jim got carried away.  The restaurant… both inside and out… invites you to forget what is beyond the gate and settle in for a meal in a space designed to be both visually intriguing and down-home comfortable.

There is bar and dining area outside and both are completely enclosed with tall log slab fences.  The eating area offers welcome shade in the summer – much of it from trees and bushes carefully built around rather than removed.  In fact, if you spend any time looking around before you dive into the menu, you’ll notice careful details and quality everywhere.  The corrugated metal up in the eves was salvaged locally with Jim and his family digging much of it out of the ground where it was buried.  And Jim designed and built just about every light fixture in the restaurant.

In addition to using this steer skull, he created another wall fixture using the old boiler door from the Lake City Home Bakery in Polson.  Next time I come I might ask to sit inside near said boiler fixture for reasons of pure nostalgia.  I worked as a short-order cook at the bakery during high school, and occasionally had to venture down in the basement near the old boiler for supplies.

Yet all the architectural love in the world can’t keep a restaurant open if the food is forgettable.  Thankfully, Jim and his staff seem to know this.

Bassett did his homework for the barbecue, and Chef J.R. Daniels is turning out some great, straightforward food that begs for a cult following.  Three days out and I’m already wishing I’d smuggled out several bottles of the their house-made rum barbecue sauce.  It provides a sweet-savory counterpoint to the each of the meats I tried.  This included their (1) chicken (2) chopped pork and (3) St. Louis style ribs as well as (4) their smoked Prime Rib.  All four were cooked perfectly, still moist, and touched with a distinctive smoky tang.

The prime rib sandwich ($13.95) comes with whipped cream horseradish sauce, but the barbecue sauce was close enough to addictive that I felt compelled to slather it on the Prime Rib as well as on the chopped pork and St. Louis style rib.

The spot probably isn’t the place to host a convention for vegetarians, but feel free to drag along a couple friends who are avoiding charred beast.  There are several good options absent the meat even if the most compelling culinary reasons to show up come out of the smoker.  I plan to try the brisket next time, convince someone with me to order the smoked Prime Rib so I can steal a bite or two, and then I plan to turn my attention to the generous number of microbrews offered on tap.

Kelowna BC: We were simply looking for something better than generic fast food and a place with a vegetarian item or two on the menu for Megan.  Following a reader poll in Okanagan Life we settled on Dawett, an Indian restaurant on Ellis Street.

The air conditioning was cranked too high for the evening.  I worked my way through four glasses of ice water waiting for the food.  And the portions, once they did arrive seemed disappointingly small.  But none of that mattered after the first bite of Lamb Vindaloo or Tandoori Chicken with a Butter Sauce.  The mushroom rice along with the nan and roti were noteworthy, but for me it was the sauce on the lamb and the butter sauce were in a class by themselves.

Either we stumbled onto the best restaurant in Kelowna in one shot or this is a town with a number of restaurants cooking at a level not normally seen outside a major metropolitan area.

Seattle WA: Last Monday night for dinner we slipped in for dinner at Tavolata on 2nd Avenue in Belltown.  Given the heat wave engulfing Seattle and the observation that air-conditioning had never been installed or wasn’t working, we opted for a table on the sidewalk out front and hoped for breeze.

Bingo.  Shade and vague air movement.

The parade of people past our table with different gaits and varied expressions turned out to be a bonus and a topic for conversation until the house focaccia from Columbia City Bakery ($2) arrived.  The focaccia received rave reviews from Megan, and held both of our attention unto the arrival of an Arugula Salad ($11) tossed with white nectarines, black cherries, almonds, and shaved Parmigiano-Reggiano.

Points for both: good ingredients, not over-wrought.

Then onto two of the house pastas: the Gnocchi alla Romana ($16) and the Spaghetti ($15) served with anchovies, chili, garlic, and Parmigiano-Reggiano.  The spaghetti struck me as a risk, and turned out to be acceptable but not life-changing.  The Gnocchi, on the other hand, was intriguing.  “It isn’t what you might be expecting,” our server warned.  “It is baked.”

Up until two months ago, virtually every gnocchi I’d tried looked basically the same.  Small divots of potato or ricotta mixed with flour and possibly a binder.  These would then be boiled, sauced, and served.  This formula held true until two months ago and the most expensive meal of my life to date in New York City.

Now Tavolata has further expanded the category of gnocchi at a price in the teens.

Not only is Tavolata’s gnocchi baked, each piece is relatively huge.  The kitchen appears to roll them out into tubes two to three inches in diameter, slices them into inch portion and sets six into a personal baking pan.  Then they drench the said six in a bright tomato sauce, top them with mozzarella, and pop them in the oven.  At least this is my imagined recreation of the scene in the back of the house.

I can speak with more authority about the front of the house experience: hot, bubbling, and delicious.  If you like baked polenta, you might be tempted to compare.  Don’t.  The gnocchi is more tender and the flavor more subtle, and the match with the sauce and mozzarella is close to inspired.  Two bites and I thought: “Brilliant.”  Three and I began to scheme: “How can I recreate this at home?”