By Kevin Finch on October 29, 2009
Lakeside MT: Signs are critical when you are traveling. GPS devices can be brilliant, but I still appreciate a physical sign to confirm where I’m headed. In Montana, some of the best signs are nailed to trees alongside dirt roads.
Near my parent’s and my uncle and aunt’s homes south of Lakeside is a cluster of signs nailed to a tree, and some of them have been hanging there my whole life. But every now and then a new one is added. Not too long ago one in particular appeared. I noticed it again today because it simply stands out.
I have yet to meet Mr. or Mrs. Von Schledorn, but if their sign is any indication, they are colorful people.
Posted in culture, travel | Tagged color, contrast, Lakeside MT, Photoshop, road signs, signs |
By Kevin Finch on October 25, 2009
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.
Posted in culture, dining, travel | Tagged bread, Charley Bartlett, crepes, France, French cuisine, French food, lapin, Pam Bartlett, rabbit, street food |
By Kevin Finch on September 16, 2009
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.
Posted in culture, dining, travel | Tagged dining alone, eating alone, Eleven Madison Park, French cuisine, French restaurants, great service, Le Pichet, New York City, Seattle restaurants, serving, waiters |
By Kevin Finch on August 31, 2009
The last time I was driving through Vancouver WA I went out of my way to find a Burgerville location. I was hungry (not all that surprising), but I specifically sought out Burgerville because of all I’d heard about how the company cares… for its customers, for the environment, and for its employees. For a number of years the company has purchased premium ingredients and they try to celebrate local foods.
After a visit I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a fast food chain with a more obvious commitment to minimizing their environmental impact. Clearly this makes for great marketing in the current cultural climate that celebrates all things green, but I believe Burgerville decided they cared before it was a marketing home-run.
Then today I came across an article in the Wall Street Journal praising Burgerville for not only offering health care to their employees, but for paying 90% of the premiums for any employee working 20 hours or more a week. This doubled the cost to the company of their health insurance in 2005, but the company feels the end result has been great for employees and also positive for their bottom line.
The Wall Street Journal article notes that fewer than half of restaurant chains report that they provide any kind of health insurance and those that do typically pay less than half of the premium costs and limit enrollment to only employees working more than 30 hours a week. Given this, Burgerville’s choice is that much more striking.
The impact has been equally striking. Typically, very few restaurant employees enroll in company health plans even if they are offered. This is due to the prohibitive cost of the plans even when the company kicks in half the money. Burgerville before the change typified this generalization. Only 3% of their hourly workers were enrolled in the company plan. Contrast this to now. Today 98% of the hourly workers and 97% of the salaried employees have opted into the plan.
Equally striking is the apparent direct link to employee retention. In 2005, Burgerville’s employee turnover was 128%. In 2006, after the company chose to cover 90% of the premiums, the turnover rate plummeted to 54%.
Overall sales and average ticket prices both increased at the same time. While it might be simplistic to suggest that this was only due to the gutsy move in health care, it seems reasonable to suggest that this move contributed to both increases.
This probably means there will be plenty of Walla Walla onion rings waiting for me next time I’m in the Portland/Vancouver area along with a burger made from beef that is 100% antibiotic and hormone free.
Posted in culture, dining, travel | Tagged burgers, Burgerville, Burgerville USA, employee retention, employee turnover, fast food, fast food industry, heath insurance, local food, onion rings, Portland OR, sustainable food, Vancouver WA, Wall Street Journal article, Walla Walla onions |
By Kevin Finch on August 24, 2009
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.
Posted in dining, drinks, travel | Tagged barbecue, BBQ, East Shore Smoke House, Flathead Lake, Flathead Lake restaurants, Flathead Valley, J.R. Daniels, Jim Bassett, Lake City Home Bakery, Montana restaurants, rum bbq sauce, smoked chicken, smoked Prime Rib |
By Kevin Finch on August 21, 2009
St. Regis Travel Center Edition: Western Montana travel kitsch seems to lean heavily on huckleberries and outhouses for the local items, but a number of more generic items also caught my eye in the food-related kitsch category. Weigh in with which of the items you think should take top honors.
Entry #1: “Chili Makins” that claim to not to contribute to global warm or ozone depletion.
Entry #2: Silicone bakeware with a conscience. “Let them eat cake” takes on new meaning.
Entry #3: Ice cube nostagia for the early video game addict.
Entry #4: Possibly the strangest of the items in the expansive local huckleberry line-up.
Entry #5: For the butter challenged who appreciate single season, single action gadgets, comes the Butter Boy. I believe it runs on ethanol.
Entry #6: When just a state-branded shot glass won’t do, go for the one with the miniature bear camped inside.
Entry #7: The Celene Dion soundtrack is optional.
And our final St. Regis Travel Center entry, #8: The moose-chugger bottle holder.
Your votes please.
Posted in culture, drinks, kitsch, travel | Tagged Butter Boy, coffee, Gin & Titonic, huckleberries, Ice Invaders, Montana, outhouse, Peace of Cake, St Regis, travel kitsch, western Montana |
By Kevin Finch on August 21, 2009
I tend to be a bit incredulous on my way to the bathroom at most travel centers. Why? It is the nick-nacks offered for sale.
Yesterday though I decided to take a more studied approach to travel center commerce. On the way from Spokane over to my parents home on Flathead Lake, I determined to try find the MOST OUTRAGEOUS food-related item offered for sale wherever we stopped to visit the loo. I did just this, took pictures, and intend to let you vote on what you think should be #1. Yet just the idea of looking for the most outrageous item on display gave me a new clinical distance that offered up general observations as well as some real kitsch contenders.
Observations First: Travel kitsch tends to fall into categories. There are all the locally-branded items from tee-shirts to mugs and shot glasses. My favorite in this category yesterday was the Montana mug trying to impersonate a tree trunk.
Most of this seems to be made in China, but is intended to evoke a sense of place far far from Shanghai. Second there are all the vanity items embossed with your name. My son Peter’s name is always available on key chains, pens, pipe bombs and the like. Daughter Megan’s name is equally popular. It is only our third child, Brendan, who is left out. Apparently there are enough Brandons in the world to justify a print run, but the Brendans are out of luck.
The third category is the humor category: items intended to make you laugh enough to forget you have no place to put said sign or item when you get home. For some reason a high percentage of the travel kitsch in the humor category seems to skew toward the crude.
Fourth comes the cheap home decor category with a line up of items destined to gather dust on mantle pieces (much of it with a country/folk/old fashioned feel).
Fifth are the toys guaranteed not to break only until at least the next exit on the Interstate.
Sixth: jewelery.
Seventh: unique local items… often food like hot sauce, jams, candy, and a pancake mix supposedly made by Aunt Alice. In the case of western Montana, apparently the critical ingredient is a huckleberry. Maybe in Minnesota it is a walleye trout.
What I’m curious about at the moment is what categories I might have missed. The specific kitsch from St. Regis should show up for comment soon, but right now let me know what classic travel kitsch categories I’m missing.
Posted in kitsch, play, travel | Tagged Flathead Lake, kitsch, Montana, travel kitsch, vanity items |
By Kevin Finch on August 13, 2009
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.
Posted in dining, travel | Tagged butter sauce, Canada, Dawett, Indian food, Kelowna BC, Kelowna BC restaurants, Lamb Vindaloo, nan, roti, Tandoori Chicken, vegetarian |
By Kevin Finch on August 8, 2009
While on the hunt for a great local gut-bomb burger in Ellensburg WA today we discovered Rossow’s U-Tote-Em - a unique drive-up burger joint that has been in the Rossow family for three generations and 40 plus years.
On the food front they serve up some fun shakes, a long list of burger and sandwich variations, as well a few funky items like deep fried cauliflower. The menu is mostly grease and gut bombs, but this is LOCAL grease and gut bombs like the Ellensburger and the Awesome Rossow that you’ll only find at U-Tote-Em rather than in franchises at nearly every interstate exit in the country. It also matters to me that the Rossows have been serving customers since the 1960s.
But there is another reason you need to stop at Rossow’s: indiscriminate use of apostrophes. Here is one of the outside menu boards:
And a close-up:
Ah, the dread apostrophe strikes again…
And again…
And again.
Stop in, say ‘hi’ to Barbara, and order a burger and a shake. While you wait for them to come up, count how much gratuitous grammar you can find.
Posted in dining, play, travel | Tagged apostrophe, Barbara Rossow, burgers, drive-in, Ellensburg WA, Ellensburg WA restaurants, food service typos, milk shakes, Rossow, Rossow's U-Tote-Em |
By Kevin Finch on July 29, 2009
After a week of heavy eating with some of the best chefs in the Northwest, I planned to simply order a glass of juice or a cup of tea at Café Presse this morning. I’d arranged to meet Charles Drabkin there to follow up on a conversation begun over the weekend at the International Pinot Noir Celebration, and while food and cooking would inevitably be part of the conversation, I didn’t plan to eat anything.
But Drabkin spoke so enthusiastically about the food coming out of the kitchen that I felt a moral obligation to try something on the menu.
I looked for something cheap and noticed the omelette for a buck or two less than on any breakfast menu I’ve seen for quite some time. I ordered one with mushrooms… not expecting much given the price… and when it came my expectations were met. It was plain and completely alone in its dish.
But two bites into the omelette I started to wonder how in the world I was going to make it in for breakfast weekly given the fact that our home is on the other side of the state.
Most places use omelettes as a comatose-producing egg wrap for a mess of cheese, meats, and occassionally vegetables. The perfect omelette at Café Presse is a study in simplicity. You taste egg, perfectly cooked, and, in my case, mushrooms. There was also a slight tang inside that I’m still trying to identify in the hopes that I might try to make something similar at home. I hate to admit I couldn’t identify that third element immediately, but I’m willing to fess up in the hopes that one of you do know and will tell me. Please.
It didn’t even occur to me to reach for the salt or pepper. And Tabasco? Not a chance. You don’t mess with perfection.
Posted in cooking, dining, travel | Tagged breakfast, Cafe Presse, Capitol Hill, Charles Drabkin, mushroom omelete, Northwest chefs, omelet, perfect omelette, Seattle, Seattle restaurants |
By Kevin Finch on July 29, 2009
I met Boka’s Executive Chef Angie Roberts this weekend in Oregon and after a taste of her amped up breakfast hash, I was very interested to find my way into her restaurant in Seattle soon afterwards. Last night on the back end of a Mariner’s game (we left BEFORE Ichiro’s game winning hit at the bottom of the 9th) we stopped by Boka’s sleek space in Hotel 1000 for appetizers and dessert.
But first the space…
Near the center of the room is a stand of glass bamboo. Equally striking are the walls in the back reaches of the dining room: they gradually change color throughout the evening. Our server said these transformations are programmed along certain themes such as “sunset colors” but confessed that she didn’t know what the current for the night might be. Whatever it was, it included a cool blue and a blood red along with white and purple. Maybe the theme for the night was Patriotic Eggplant.
I seriously doubt I would ever be inspired to decorate my home to look like a cocktail lounge lifted out of the Jetsons, but it Boka’s version is a great spot to spend a few hours. Good food certainly helps, and Boka throws in the food righteousness factor with a menu that is upwards of 75% organic and as local as possible. Expect individual farm names on most of the dishes on the menu.
We opted for an heirloom tomato salad with fruit grown on Billy Alsott’s farm and a small plate of of goat cheese gnocchi served with smoked tomatoes (excellent), porcini mushrooms (meaty), toasted pine nuts and shaved parmesan cheese. I was enjoying myself and quite full before Sous Chef Andrew Pritchard appeared with the most memorable dish of the night: a selection from the brand new dessert menu.
It is listed under a somewhat confusing name,”easy like sunday mornin’, but don’t let a little menu camouflage get in your way. Megan start to eat while I talked with Pritchard, and I should have known that something was amiss when she didn’t stop. Just seconds before Pritchard arrived at the table, she had said with conviction that she couldn’t eat another bite.
Easy like Sunday morning’ is technically a sundae, but unlike any I’ve encounter in recent memory. Put together a remarkable graham cracker ice cream with a huge pillow of house-made marshmallow skewered on a stick of sugar cane and suspended over the bowl with a tiny pitcher of hot fudge sauce on the side. I may not be able to eat another s’more again with thinking of Boka and beginning to weep silently. Okay… that might be a bit melodramatic, but it truly was a treat… so much so that I completely forgot to pull out the camera until we’d almost destroyed it entirely.
Posted in culture, dining, travel | Tagged Andrew Pritchard, Angie Roberts, Boka, gnocchi, graham cracker ice cream, Hotel 1000, Ichiro, Jetsons, Mariners, marshmallow, Northwest restaurants, organic, s'more, Seattle restaurants, Seattle WA, sundae |
