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Portland Food & Beer Recap #3

Another year, another weekend trip to Portland to see friends, eat, and drink beer. Getting up early and going to sleep late– less to take advantage of the nightlife and more to fit in four meals a day. Some memories:

Heart Coffee: Easily the best coffee of the trip. A very light roast, lemony, smooth. Highly recommended.

Apizza Scholls:

Oh, wow.

I’d been here many years ago and remembered it being good, but the first hot slice of Margherita this time was one of the best slices of pizza I’ve had anywhere (including New Haven, Brooklyn, and Naples). Perfect. They nailed it. Thin crust without being crispy, elastic without being chewy, tender without letting grease soak through, tart distinctively tomato sauce without being too acidic, small pockets of excellent cheese and basil, and just the right temperature…. even 15 minutes later it wasn’t as amazing. The New York White Pie (fresh mozzarella, pecorino, ricotta, garlic) was also very good and moist, but not in the same league.

Yeah.

Horse Brass Pub (again):

I had to come back, it was as British-dark-wood cozy as I remembered, and the cask conditioned Hogsback Stout tasted as good. The beer equivalent of light roast coffee, with toasty grapefruity flavors.

Cascade Brewing Barrel Room:

Barrel-aged sour beers. Really good ones. 2 oz tasters let me gradually work my way through all 10 of them. And not at all crowded (well, at 3pm on a Friday…) A great way to spend all afternoon, and up there with Hair of the Dog in my favorite brewpubs in Portland.

The Noyaux was fantastic– I have to track it down. Blondes and tripels aged on oak for years, then another year on raspberries and apricot pits. Tart to the point of saliva-stimulating at first, then getting more and more funky (in a barnyard-straw way) as it warmed up. It smells like it would be sweet, but it’s not at all. A+.

The Vlad was also very good, a quad blonde aged in bourbon barrels, not one-note, and it kept developing as it warmed up. I don’t know if it would be interesting enough to drink a full pint, but I really enjoyed this small glass.

The Manhattan NW was the most interesting though not my favorite: a quad aged in bourbon barrels with sour cherries. Very woodsy in taste, but it smelled too much like grenadine syrup.

I thought the Chocolate Burbonic sounded interesting (porters, bourbon barrels, cinnamon, dates, chocolate? what’s not to like?) but I thought it was disgusting, evoking “subtle notes of bile”. Humbug.

Oh, and the apricot, cherry, and blueberry sour beers were all good, tart, and about what I expected from past bottles.

Lardo:

Yeah, yeah, a posed-food-getting-cold low-depth-of-field juxtaposition photo, I have to take one of these in between all the blurry quick cell phone shots.

A burger covered with porkstrami / pork belly, on a half-size loaf of bread because they were out of rolls. Don’t get me wrong, it was delicious– but the “lardo sauce” was over the top and the whole thing was just too *pow* in my face creamy. Great at midnight after a beer at Apex, and I’d try something else from their menu, but I have no need to have that burger more than once in my life.

Luce:

A cheerful, friendly Italian bistro, which by total chance I was standing in front of when I got a message I should check it out. The $12 steak and salad lunch plate was a great deal, and the salad was remarkably good: interesting greens, parsley, dill, other slightly bitter greens– it tasted fresh out of someone’s backyard garden. The steak was fine though nothing special — if I’m there again I hear I should try their pasta.

Broder:

A fun place to eat brunch, though not mind-blowing or deserving of a Zagat 27 and a “Best Brunch Spots in Portland” award.

Excellent dill-infused aquavit bloody mary:

Baked scrambled eggs in a square skillet and a mashed potato pancake were cute twists on the typical brunch dishes… but neither tasted better than any generic eggs and potatoes:

Evoe, the counter in Pastaworks:

This was one of my favorite places to eat the last time I was in Portland. It was quite good this time but just short of excellent.

The oven-roasted rapini with meyer lemon and anchovies was fascinating: who knew that rapini would roast so well? The leaves were crispy but the stalks stayed moist, chewy, and really flavorful, unlike many roasted greens (I’m looking at you, kale):

A cauliflower soup with bottarga and a raw shaved squash salad with mint and balsamic were both interesting but very one note.

See See Motorcycle Coffee Company:

I went for the ambiance, the espresso was quite good.

Apex:

A huge beer selection (taps and bottles), the kind of place I’d think would be right up my alley– maybe if I went with a group of friends. I stopped by after a film festival on my own and it didn’t quite click for me. The not-so-cozy space and the bright high-tech beer lists were a little off, and the one beer I tried was nothing but a hop punch in the face.

Little T Baker:

Nice space, very good pretzel roll…

Less memorable: Common Grounds Coffee (though I do appreciate their fox logo and $1 coffee), the Pie Spot (a fine marionberry tart, nothing special), the crepe food truck near Ladd’s Addition, the Korean taco truck next to Prost, Lucky Lab (so-so pizza and beer), Amnesia (friendly outdoor seating and strangers, reasonable beer).

Tags: Apizza Scholls, broder, cascade brewing, cask beer, heart coffee, Horse Brass, lardo, Portland, Sour Beer

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Categories travel

Tacos &c in Sayulita, Mexico

19 Jul

I spent 4 days in Sayulita and ate both great and deeply mediocre food. If I don’t write up a few notes now I’ll forget them, so off the top of my head:

Good advice in general in Mexico: “Get tacos at outdoor places with red plastic Coca-Cola chairs”.

(as a side note, I was horrified to see that the top Sayulita restaurants according to Tripadvisor readers are a burger place, a nachos place, and a burrito place)

The very best tacos were at Tacorriendo, about a block North of the town square on the street that Sayulita Fish Tacos is on, on the left (which we nicknamed “dessert taco” from our first after-a-terrible-dinner experience with it), usually filled with Mexican families and not another gringo in sight. Great chicken, roasted jalapenos, and salsa spread:

Next best, though very rich and spicy and not for everyone: birria (goat, probably) tacos at a small shack a short walk North of the town center (across a bridge, then down a few sunken steps to a taqueria with the menu written on the wall). No photo.

The basic meat tacos at Sayulita Tacos (not Sayulita Fish Tacos) were pretty good (especially the chicken mole and adobo chicken), though the fish tacos loaded up with crema were not great:

There was a pair of taco stands side by side (red awning, green awning) across from Taco Corriendo and a little farther North on that street. We never saw them both open at the same time– we heard it was a shared family business. One of them had a pretty good (B+) friend fish taco, the other was also B+ meat tacos.

There were also some terrible tacos (dry fish tacos with french fries at a restaurant right on the beach, across from Don Julio, with a popular big outdoor patio but terrible, terrible food).

Sayulita Fish Tacos (big yellow building on the main square) also had terrible fish tacos I never want to eat again. The attached tequila bar was phenomenal, though.

That’s what I remember. Oh, and there was some non-taco food. Just summarizing a few highlights and lowlights:

An average but serviceable breakfast at Mary’s Cafe (they also have an excellent banana milkshake– and if you get it to go, they pour it into a plastic bag with a straw):

I had low expectations for Don Pedro’s, given their prime beachfront location, their aimed-at-tourists prices, and the lack of Mexican families eating there… but their tuna poke w/ sesame, hot pepper, and avocado was very good– some of the best tuna I’ve had in a long time:

The popsicle stand sort of across from Sayulita Taco and next to the burger place had an impressive variety of fruit popsicles. The tart, flavorful guavabana (which I knew as soursop from SE Asia) was my favorite, but the coconut (with chewy strips of coconut embedded), watermelon, and pineapple were also excellent. The tamarind and lime were good but unremarkable.

An average California-style burrito at Burrito Revolution, for us gringos wanting something familiar. Meh, an okay vegetarian break. I also never saw anyone else eating here (granted, it was low season and the town was fairly empty).

Oh, and El Espresso had the least terrible coffee (americano) of three I tried.

Chocobanana, to end on a crotchety rant: Mediocre food and coffee. Also full of missing-the-point tourists (I saw one couple sitting there during a gorgeous sunny day, him hunched over his ipad and her over her iphone, with him occasionally showing her parts of a movie or online video he was watching on the ipad).

Tags: mexico, sayulita, Taco

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Categories mexico, restaurant, travel

Tequila, Mexico

19 Jul

I’ve never really appreciated tequila. The closest I came was a series of excellent, smoky, mezcal* cocktails at Mayahuel in New York a few years ago, and the occasional good tequila Francisco had around, though I was never concentrating just on it.

That started to change last week– I was down in Sayulita, Mexico for vacation, and got the tip that I should check out the Sayulita Fish Tacos Tequila Bar. The fish tacos in the restaurant upstairs were pretty bad, but the bar itself was a revelation. A few notes of what I remember or jotted down:

I went there three of the evenings I was in town, and the bartender and other travelers at the bar were all very friendly, offering tips and tastes.

These were all “sipping tequilas”, to savor gradually like a whiskey, and with much more variation tequila to tequila than I’d ever noticed before.

Of the maybe 20 I tasted (at least at the sip level), some notable ones:

Cava de Oro** (the white bottle) was my favorite of the trip, and the one that I ordered twice: very smooth and mellow, with a silky agave flavor and no harshness or smokiness, but also without being too sweet. [A+]

Chamucos was good in a very different way– spicy, a bit of smoke, but well-balanced and not at all harsh. [A-]

Aha Toro (Anejo***) (not shown) was also good though not especially distinctive: smooth and balanced. [B+]

Tierra Reposado and Don Abram Anejo were both good, but I didn’t write anything specific down about them / I don’t remember them being unusual. [B]

After tasting sips of a few to narrow in on what to get the third evening, we settled on Los Tres Tonos Extra Anejo and 99000 Anejo, both very enjoyable in the smooth-with-a-little-smoke vein, and I remember liking the 99000 especially, though when writing this up two weeks later I don’t really remember the difference between them. [B+, A-]

Arette Extra Anejo was quite different from the others, smooth but also herbal, vegetative, sort of like the flavors in gin / campari / fernet, though milder. It and Cava De Oro were my favorites of the trip (though Arette was 2x-3x more expensive than anything else I had here, at M$400 (about US$34) for a shot– a bottle costs about $150 in the US). [A+]

Worth it on a special occasion and as a way to wrap up a great trip.

Both this Herradura Resposado and the Corrales were good sipping tequilas in the middle of the smoky / smooth range, but also weren’t strongly memorable. [B]

* I looked up the details on Wikipedia so you don’t have to: “Mezcal is a distilled alcoholic beverage made from the maguey plant (a form of agave, Agave americana) native to Mexico. The word mezcal comes from Nahuatl metl and ixcalli which mean ‘oven cooked agave.’Today, mezcal is still made from the heart of the maguey plant, called the “piña,” much the same way it was 200 years ago, in most places. In Mexico, mezcal is generally consumed straight and has a strong smoky flavor. Mezcal is not as popular as tequila (a mezcal made specifically from the blue agave in select regions of the country).“

** Gold (oro) tequila could be a real, 100% agave tequila that’s a blend between a blanco and a resposado, as in this case… or it could be a cheap tequila with non-agave spirits and food colorings added.

*** The basic tequila classification of silver/blanco, reposado, anejo, extra anejo ranks how long it has been aged or rested in wood barrels (from young to old). Longer aging = stronger, smoother flavors, darker colors, and generally more expensive (though not necessarily better, depending on your tastes).

Tags: mexico, sayulita, tequila

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Categories mexico, restaurant

Shin-Sen-Gumi Hakata Ramen, Gardena

19 Jun

Life brought me to Carson, CA recently, so on a suggestion from a friend who saw my gmail chat status (who knew that would be useful?) I checked out the Shin-Sen-Gumi in Gardena for their Hakata-style ramen.

And am I ever glad I did– it was a delicious bowl of ramen.

I’d accidentally arrived half an hour before they opened, but within a few minutes there were already another few people waiting– so it’s good I didn’t show up right at 6. I got the base Hakata ramen of pork, giner, and green onions (choosing the default levels of noodle firmness and broth strength), and added spinach, menma, and a delicious medium-cooked seasoned egg.

I loved the broth, though it wasn’t what I usually think of as ramen broth– it almost reminded me of a chai tea — not that I think it included milk, but it was rich without being oily in the same way that milk tea would be if you soaked a pork chop in it. It wasn’t too salty or strongly miso-flavored, the oil was evently distributed, and it was hearty and mild.

It’s definitely worth a visit if you find yourself anywhere in that region at the right time of day.

The gyoza and the sweet potato shochu (cut with hot water) were good as well, but the ramen was definitely the star.

Tags: Gardena California, Hakata, Ramen

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Categories favorites, restaurant, travel

Next: El Bulli photos and dishes

30 May

One of my friends at the 28-course from-the-cookbook-of-El-Bulli/molecular-gastronomy dinner at Next put this excellent summary image together (you can click through and then click again to zoom in to the full-size image).

This is all but one of our courses (it’s missing the liquid-nitrogen-frozen caipirinha):

It was a fascinating dining experience and tour through the history of experimental food– with each dish, they told us what year it had been served in El Bulli (for example, the red mullet gaudi was in one of the earlier years– conceptual in terms of its mosaic-like appearance, but without the “magic powders” of later foams and smokes).

Some of my favorites were the the cuttlefish-coconut “ravioli” (thin sheets of cuttlefish serving the role of the pasta), the “golden egg” (an egg yolk encrusted in a crispy gold-covered sugar shell, somehow without overcooking the yolk, leaving it in a delicious soft-cooked state), spherical olives (olive juice encapsulated in a thin flexible gel-like coating, so that as you put it in our mouth it bursts and releases the juice), cauliflower “couscous” (shredded and formed into the texture of couscous, with an intensely rich lamb sauce and many interesting surrounding tart and savory and sweet garnishes and gelatinous cubes, each of which I know might have been its own several-hour-or-more preparation. I also loved the eel with bone marrow, paired with a Half Acre beer brewed with beets.

I’m fortunate to have had this experience… and at the same time, I only needed to do it once. If I were to spend that amount of money in Chicago again some day, I’d go back to Alinea instead.

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Categories Chicago, favorites, restaurant

Chicago Food: Avec, The Publican, Au Cheval

16 May

One memorable evening in Chicago involved a group of 4-5 of us eating at Avec, The Publican, and Au Cheval in succession. Any of their web sites have far better food photos than my quick cell phone snaps below, but so it goes.

At avec (a long, cozy, space with a lot of wood and light), the huge “chorizo-stuffed medjool dates with smoked bacon and piquillo pepper-tomato sauce” was one of the best things I ate all trip:

We also had a great antipasto, with farro I believe, and a good burrata.

However, while I like pretty much every adjective and noun in ”wood-fired squid with san marzano tomatoes, guanciale, fideo and fennel aioli”, I didn’t enjoy it– I think tomatoes + squid just doesn’t work for me.

After appetizers, on to the Publican (in a high-ceilinged room with plenty of pig-themed paintings), where I loved the blood sausage with hazelnuts, the ramps with romesco, and the boudin blanc (though it was a bit farther along the creamy and sweet axis than the ones I liked at Camino). This was part of a many-dish long, leisurely dinner over conversation and beer (their beer list is excellent).

To my surprise, given how excellent their pork is in general (I went there for brunch once last year), I was not thrilled by their “selection of hams” dish– nothing stood out. And the halibut crudo, the scallops, and the collection of fried seafood also were good but not great (though I’m also finding myself less into fried food in general these days).

After an exciting incident as they were closing down where water started trickling down through six locations in the ceiling (from an overflowing, blocked up bathtub in the apartment above after someone fell asleep: everyone handled it well and it was no big deal), we moved on to Au Cheval (cozy upscale diner atmosphere, with plush booths) for a beer and long discussions of the restaurant and retail (food, beer) industries. And for some people– cheeseburgers, though I couldn’t imagine that at this point, and just tasted a sliver of one. Ow.

This was a solid 6 hours of eating, walking, drinking, and company– not bad for night #2 in Chicago.

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Categories favorites, restaurant, travel

Good Beer in Chicago

15 May

While visiting Chicago, I was usually getting dinner with other people who are into craft beer, making it easy to try a wide variety. It was a busy few evenings so I don’t remember all the details, but I jotted down a few notes of my favorites that I’m going to keep an eye out for in the future:

Vichtenaar, a slightly sour Flemish Red
Avery Maharajah, a very distinctively-flavored IPA (and one of a small number of IPAs I’m excited about these days– I’d had it before)
Half Acre Over Ale (a brown ale, a bit nutty, a bit like toast, quite good — sadly I don’t think they distribute outside of Chicago)
Half Acre Sanguis brewed with oranges and beets, and really excellent with strong food (smoked eel)
Brooklyn Sorachi Ace (Sorachi Ace is a particular unusual hop that I think smells a bit like dill– I only knew it from the Mikkeller Single Hop series tasting I did with some friends last year)
Revolution Coup d’Etat (from a local brewery, in the slightly funky belgian farmhouse/blonde/yeasty style)

As a side note– I liked the design of the Half Acre Sanguis label quite a bit– my photo of it is a bit blurry but I found a blog post from the designer with the image:

Other good beers:

Half Acre Daisy Cutter Pale Ale
Ivanhoe from Ridgeway Brewing in the UK (light caramel and malt flavors, round, smooth)
Vitus (unfortunately I don’t remember details about it, but I jotted down that I liked it)
Weihenstephaner (their Lagerbier? Or perhaps it was their wheat beer– I just tasted a friend’s)
Belhaven (pretty good in general)

I was less interested in:

Biere de Garde from Brasserie Castellion (though friends I was with liked it)
Goose Island Green Line (a pale ale, and I believe only sold on tap and only sold within Chicago– mild and reasonable but nothing special)
Three Floyds Zombie Dust (a pale ale, a distinctive hop flavor, good and something I’d drink again but not something I’d go out of my way for)
Two Brothers Cane and Ebel (rye and palm sugar– sort of fruity/sweet– complex, but I didn’t like it– fortunately I was just tasting a friend’s)

Half Acre has a nice little tasting room at their brewery (which was near where I was staying with a friend). I sneaked a peek in back at their small canning operation as well– ever since friends started The Can Van, I’ve been especially curious which craft beers come in cans and at what scale that happens. From chatting with people at the brewery, one of the barriers to canning more beers is the printed cans themselves– they have to get huge pallets/stacks of cans printed at any given time, making it unreasonable to can their smaller-run beers even after making the investment in a canning line.