I want to say two words to you. Just two words. Are you listening?

Ring molds.

Today was a potluck for my friend Geoff's birthday (which is really tomorrow...I bet Halloween babies get extra candy, whereas Christmas babies get shafted with combination presents...plan accordingly, future parents), that had a Mexican theme. I wanted to avoid the use of my oven for anything because I've already burned through two years' worth of gas making popovers. Avocados were on sale so I figured I'd do something with that. Also, ceviche (though technically Peruvian in origin) doesn't require any cooking if you use the right things. So I figured, ceviche with avocados and stuff...simple and straightforward.

But I chose this occasion to practice a bit. For what you say? For when I'm sponging off of a rich wife and throwing dinner parties and the like. Indeed, the only reason I came to med school was to find a future rich doctor wife. I've failed in my first couple years so far. Since I haven't sewn one up yet, I'm doomed to take Step 1 of the boards, but I'm still keeping hope alive. In short, I'd have absolutely no problem being someone's "trophy husband" (hell I'd gladly take "consolation prize live-in boyfriend").

But what if somehow I manage to land a woman of sophistication and taste? I'd have to step up my home cooking game, and maybe borrow a few tricks from fancy restaurants.
That's where the ring molds come in. In my case, the set of biscuit cutters that I got for my chicken biscuit.

Here's some tricks that I've noticed fancy restaurants use (though I haven't been to that many...these might be outdated at this point) in order to make simple dishes look fancier:

First, deconstruct. The idea that restaurants want you to think is that by isolating the elements of a dish, you're presenting in radical form a familiar flavor, aggressively inviting the diner to consider the culinary process by which something edible comes together.
In reality, this is an awesome way to make the person eating do all the work for you. You don't have to mix your stuff together in the right amounts! Just put it all on a plate, have the person do all the work, then blame them if it doesn't turn out well! You could just criticize the ratio of the different items they put onto their fork/spoon and say it's their fault. Genius!

I deconstructed a Mexican ceviche by separating avocado from seafood from tomato. After some calculations, I figured out that each serving is about $2.50 worth of ingredients. Let's say the theoretical base price if I owned a restaurant that no one really knew about would be about $5 (I have no idea how they decide what to charge for stuff). Here's how I would mark it up. Please try to imagine a cash register "ka-ching!" sound every time you see a dollar sign:

The menu would simply say "ceviche" because that's more ironic and playful. Clearly this is not just any ceviche, but the foodie crowd would read "ceviche" then the description, and would feel smug about picking up on the chef's "cleverness" and feeling as if they were in on the joke with the chef, who is clearly their close personal friends because they go out to eat at fancy places all the time. ($6)
"ceviche" would be in all lower case letters, and the price would not have a dollar sign next to it. Also if there were a fraction of a dollar, it would be written as an actual fraction, not a decimal ($6.50...er i mean 6 1/2)



Here's the description:

Citrus-marinated ($6.75 for use of "citrus" instead of "lime") fresh sea scallops, wild caught ($7) gulf shrimp, and red onion.
Grape tomato and cilantro salsa cruda (use of the term "salsa cruda" instead of "hastily chopped" $7.50).
Chilled Haas Avocado soup (whaat...Avocado soup? $8) with cumin and cayenne.
All produce sourced from local ($8.75) organic ($9...local and organic are two words that give you license to charge anything! KA-CHING!) farms.

I garnished with lime zest. I don't describe the garnish so that it seems like a surprise and extra effort on my part ($9.25).

Second tip: Ring molds ($9.50). Food just tastes better when it's perfectly round.


Here's where I went wrong:


I mean look at those bowls. They're just so...round.
Despite the fact that food tastes better when it is perfectly round, it tastes worse if it's in the same shape as the plate it's on.
I could've charged much more for square ($9.75), or better yet an unnamed geometric shape ($10). The motherlode were if it were served on some sort of bowl carved out of pink sea salt ($12) that was cooled to the perfect avocado soup temperature ($13), thus keeping the dish cool and adding a subtle saltiness. If at all possible, use some sort of squeeze bottle to put sauce on ($13)
Oh yeah...the owner of the restaurant is a celebrity ($16). That celebrity is Jay-Z ($17), co-owned by Kanye West ($16.50). Also I'm Asian, so by definition making Mexican food is fusion ($18). Also my restaurant is in Vegas ($25).

So as is, I served a

ceviche 9 1/2

that cost me $2.50 and required absolutely no cooking whatsoever. I just stole $7 from your pocket. I'm gonna need that to pay for Step 1...unless someone wants to bail me out in time...ladies?

Buttermilk frying...and something completely different

There seems to be a bit of a debate as to how to do Southern Fried Chicken. Should you use a traditional brine or should you pseudo-brine in buttermilk instead? The benefits of using buttermilk are well-known, with its slight acidity helping creating for a more tender chicken. In my opinion, after trying both methods, buttermilk doesn't contribute a whole lot to flavor. If anything, my poultry rub (that always sounds dirty) has to be a bit stronger for buttermilk frying. For my chicken biscuit, I decided to use buttermilk for a crust, having already been happy with how the brine's turned out. I did give it an hour or two in buttermilk just to make sure it really stuck.


And there it is. It makes for a nice dark crust, but one that's a bit heavy and thick. Interestingly, using buttermilk makes the overall taste of the chicken sweeter (the Coke is more noticeable). I think I prefer egg and flour or Panko, but this is certainly on the table and will be up for review.

In other news, I used an Amazon.com gift card to order some psych books, and with the leftover, I got something I've been meaning to get ever since BLT Steak. Here's my first attempt at popovers, with my brand new popover pan.


Not bad I think. I used a bit of bread flour just to make sure they held together, but I think I'm cool to use all AP from now on, and maybe the weaker dough will puff bigger.
I also topped a couple with some gruyere:


This was shredded by the food processor, and I think ended up being a bit too heavy. I don't actually own a cheese grater though, so we'll see if microplaned gruyere is too light and burns right away.

Say hello to the biscuit

This is it...


Sweet potato, cake flour, buttermilk.


A few of you will be trying some of these tomorrow. They're decent if you microwave them for a few seconds.


The final chicken biscuit tasting panel will try small pieces of each type of chicken on these mini versions...

Even More Fried Chicken...

Interesting timing of this NY Times Article. Southern Fried Chicken has no flavor? I disagree. I'm a huge fan of Korean fried chicken and other creative forms of fried chicken, but to say Southern Fried Chicken is only in the crust is insulting. Interestingly, I do use a generous amount of Old Bay to season my flour/cornmeal, as well as smoked paprika, cayenne pepper, and garlic powder among a few other things. When I fry whole birds I like to shallow fry, but for these thin breast cuts I've been straight deep frying in a combination of Safflower and Canola oil. Peanut is just so damn expensive...though they do sell 35 pounds at Costco for 29 bucks.

I'm happy to report that the brine is done. The combination of Coca-Cola and a light pickling spice is perfect. It led to some incredibly moist and flavorful results.

Today I tested egg dredge methods for the crust. Each piece of chicken starts with a coat of seasoned flour, then a dip in egg, then another dip in either...

More seasoned flour:


Probably the most traditional result so far, and nice crisp crust. One of the finalists for sure.

Seasoned cornmeal:


The crispiest crust and the most "staying power" in terms of crispness, but also a bit dry and gritty. At this point, pure cornmeal has been abandoned. In the future buttermilk testing, I'll test out how it is to mix a bit of cornmeal into the flour.

Panko:


I wasn't really thinking about doing this, but the flour-egg dredge method is how I start out frying things Katsu style too. Although it started out as a dark horse, this is definitely gonna be one of the finalists. I'll have to adjust the initial flour dredge to have more seasoning, but the panko crust is incredibly crisp and light. It also fries faster so there's not as much danger of the chicken drying out.

In any case, I've got a bunch of fried chicken in my fridge. In defense of Southern Fried Chicken, one of its best qualities...which doesn't work with sauced versions...is that it's just as good at room temperature (or cold) as it is when piping hot.

It just comes down to my buttermilk frying results (that'll be next week...I'm off to Chicago tomorrow) and another crack at sweet potato biscuits, then I'll need to enlist the help of some judges for focus group testing.

The chicken...round one

So where did we leave off? That's right, I made a pickle brine, threw some chicken in it, then fried it.
The chicken itself was too briny. There was a lot of flavor, and it was moist and all that, but it was like eating a pickle...a chicken textured pickle. My next brine will omit the vinegar and use less pickling spice. I'll also probably brine it for less time.

As for which crust I'm going to go with, I tried a few different things out.

Seasoned cornmeal:


Though it doesn't look pretty, it's tasty, but can border on a bit dry. This is definitely something I'm gonna have to follow up on.

Seasoned 00 flour:


00 flour is so fine it's almost like making a corn starch batter. This was light and crisp, but maybe a bit weak for a chicken biscuit.

Batter:


Stay away from this. The extra juiciness afforded by the brine generates massive amounts of pickle flavored steam which turns the initially crisp batter soggy in a matter of minutes. My guess is that Chick-fil-a uses an egg dip then flour, so it's a bit drier and thinner than a batter, but also they fry their stuff in a pressure cooker, which I don't own.

For my next brine, I'll be replacing the vinegar with the liquid that flows through the veins of Atlanta...good ol' Coca-Cola. Also I'll be testing out the flour-egg-flour dip method for frying, as well as a combination brine-buttermilk-flour/cornmeal crust method.

Man cannot live on chicken biscuits alone...no matter how hard he tries

So I might've been pretty close to getting scurvy. I figured I should balance things out with a few fruits or vegetables or something. Well, I used pickle brine on my chicken (will post about that tomorrow/later today) so that's technically a vegetable right? Figured I should eat some fruit. What better way to eat fruit than with frozen yogurt?

This whole frozen yogurt insanity actually started in 2002 with Korea's Red Mango. Pinkberry is a filthy knockoff, though many people give it credit for starting the craze. These must be the same people that think General Tso's chicken is an ancient Chinese secret, and that the Star Wars prequels were awesome.

The first time I had Red Mango in Korea I was blown away. I had no idea it was supposedly healthy at the time, but it didn't matter. The yogurt was unbelievably smooth, rich, and instead of artificial vanilla sweetness, was tart and well...yogurty. The fresh fruit toppings reminded me of my other favorite yogurt spot in the Dayton's basement in Minneapolis (now a Macy's...I wonder if that yogurt place is still there...) A subsequent trip to Korea was Red Mango-less, and therefore a disappointment.

A couple years later, when rumors started emerging from Southern California of a Red Mango-like yogurt shop, I started to get excited...but also suspicious. "What a ripoff of my beloved Red Mango!" I thought to myself...but mostly I was pissed that someone had stolen MY idea to rip off Red Mango and make a billion dollars by opening up in the states. Still...when I saw those American Express Plum Card commercials and saw those Korean people had opened up Pinkberry, I was like "maybe they're affiliated...maybe they renamed Red Mango to Pink Berry for the states...because those names are way too similar." But nope...no affiliation...just a straight rip off.

Oh well...maybe it'll be just as good and it won't matter. I tried Pinkberry though...AND IT WAS FUCKING TERRIBLE! Why are people going crazy over this shit?! How could those Korean American guys in that American Express commercial take something so good and fuck it up so bad? I understand if someone decides to pawn off the crap that Korea deems unsuitable for domestic use on other countries to make a few bucks (see "Winter Sonata" and "The Lake House"), but Red Mango was something from Korea to be proud of! I henceforth label you Pinkberry people TRAITORS TO KOREA (though to be fair, I too may have earned that label after the infamous Buford Highway Karaoke incident of 2008...but that was mostly Topel's fault).

It was bland, overly sweet, and icy as hell. It was like spoiled milk mixed with corn syrup and poured over hospital ice chips. There was no way you could call this shit yogurt...and the California FDA agreed with me:
Only 69,000 bacterial cultures per gram? That's well short of the 10 million required to be called frozen yogurt.
To borrow a joke from Aziz Ansari...if Pinkberry was a drug dealer I would've shot him in the face. Did you think I wasn't gonna count that shit?! Also, you guys at Pinkberry are TOTAL DICKS for claiming you could cure colon cancer.
Perhaps it's gotten better now that they've changed their recipe to be actual yogurt, but they still make their yogurt from powder, and now that Red Mango has formally opened in the states, there's no need to ever go to Pinkberry again. I'm pleased to say that Red Mango is just as good here as it was in Korea. It didn't suffer the pitfalls of a famous institution from abroad opening up in the states and not being nearly as good (talking about you GROM...it's not our fault that you didn't look into the fact that you wouldn't be able to get all your fancypants ingredients here. Geographically, Torino:The Rest of Italy::Upper West Side:Staten Island and New Jersey...I'm sure the Sicilian almonds are coming in nicely on top of Fresh Kills right about now).


Ah Red Mango...thank god you're in...Walnut Creek. Damn, I'm in Atlanta. Enter Yoforia...another Red Mango knockoff, but this one has some pretty bold claims on its website (which looks exactly like Red Mango/Pinkberry's sites). Organic milk and yogurt? Could this place finally live up to Red Mango?

In a word: no.
In two words: Definitely no.
In more than two: What the fuck is this shit?


First they make a huge pile up the middle then try to squeeze the fruit around the sides...they then squish it down with the lid, but all this leads to not that much fruit. Red Mango builds the base layer, puts the fruit on in a layer, then puts more yogurt on top.


Next you'll notice the grittiness. It was just as disappointing as Pinkberry. Completely bland, aggressively cold, and grittily icy. When it melted, it melted down to grit...I have a feeling that all those claims of organic milk and yogurt are complete crap, and that this yogurt too is made from a powder, possibly supplied by IFDPrep (italian freeze dried prep), cielo, only8, or any of the other knockoff suppliers, evidenced by the sign:


If that's too small to read, it says "Italian frozen yogurt," which is a bit bizarre. You can tell if it's a knockoff if they don't carry the Live and Active Culture seal from the National Yogurt Association (yeah it really exists and Red Mango was the first to get it). If these guys were large enough to be on the radar, they'd probably get into trouble for calling themselves "yogurt." Sorry Atlanta, nothing but cheap pretenders here. Guess I'll have to wait until another trip home to Korea or California.

Chicken biscuit quest continued

After the somewhat disappointing sweet potato biscuit result (tasty but not really biscuit shaped), I went back to basics. I figured I should make a normal biscuit to compare the sweet potato biscuits to (a baseline biscuit if you will), and see if it's even worth the effort to do all that potato business. This time I got myself an actual cutter, some cake flour, some fresh baking powder, and it made a huge difference. I also wore gloves kept in the freezer while handling the dough. Here are the results:


Very pleasantly biscuity, flaky, etc. They split nicely by hand. Just a wee bit on the salty side. I really think that sweet potato does actually make a difference. It's subtle, but the tang from the dairy and the chemical leavening is pleasantly dampened a bit, and they're a bit moister. Also, the biscuit is not quite as salty, which will be good when I slap a piece of chicken on there. Maybe with all the changes I made, the next sweet potato batch will be successful.

Here's what I had for dinner:


I've also made my first brine for chicken frying (that'll start up tomorrow). This is a straight pickle brine. Unfiltered cider vinegar, water, sugar, salt, pickling spice, a few chiles de arbol, and a couple cloves of garlic.

I Didn't Really Like Breakfast Food Until I Came To The South

The chicken biscuit is quite possibly the perfect food, anytime anywhere. I think it's almost impossible to get a bad chicken biscuit wherever you are, simply because it's such a perfectly conceived food. Chick-Fil-A? Delicious. Gas station in South Carolina? Delicious.
My sister and dad are breakfast food fiends. There was a time growing up when I would always try to order off the lunch menu if we went out for breakfast (eggs used to make me throw up actually...i wasn't picky...my stomach just couldn't handle them for some reason...chocolate too...those were dark dark times). Going to Millie's Kitchen and eating a burger and coffee cake was probably the worst possible thing for your health, but it sure was delicious. The chicken biscuit is like a gateway breakfast food for someone like me. Chicken fried steak...though delicious...is a bit much. Fried chicken on a biscuit? That's the perfect amount of unhealthy in the morning. I do like breakfast foods a lot now...though I'm not really in the habit of eating breakfast on a daily basis. But sometimes on the weekend I get up and cook myself a little something like eggs, or hash browns...or that time I made corned beef hash with leftovers from St. Patty's day.
Since coming to school I've been introduced to the world of the lake house (it's not just a shitty Keanu Reeves remake of a Korean movie that makes absolutely no sense...how do they have conversations back and forth on written letters through a time portal mailbox? RIDICULOUS). I have found that I suck at waterskiing (in my case it's more like watertainting...think about it) and hate getting up in the morning early enough to go out on the boat for the best conditions. I'm much happier getting a bit more sleep and cooking breakfast for everyone when they get back, then heading out later for tubing/jetskiing etc.
I made a promise to myself that I would make fantastic chicken biscuits for all next time I go to the lake. But opportunities for that to happen are quickly disappearing. Still, nothing's stopping me from learning how to make a chicken biscuit.
In the coming months, this blog will prominently feature updates on my project of making a phenomenal chicken biscuit. This is a food that deserves this kind of attention (I've gotta study for/take the boards at some point in there too). I'll be trying out different types of biscuits and testing out all sorts of fried chicken. I'll be devising my own brines, crust methods, frying methods etc. But first let's start with biscuits:

Batch #1: Sweet potato biscuits.

Sure anyone can pop open a can of pillsbury's or mix up some bisquick and make some pretty delicious biscuits. I want something more. Something that's undeniably handmade and special. Let's put some freaking sweet potato into a biscuit:

It starts here:



Baked a monstrous sweet potato for an hour, then let it cool and pureed it silky smooth.
I then used organic whole wheat (mom would be proud) pastry flour...trying to infuse a bit of my California heritage into something Southern. Used baking powder and baking soda, cut in butter, mixed in the sweet potato puree, and used a bit of pourable yogurt to bring it all together. Had to use a glass as a biscuit cutter and the final results are as follows:


Disappointing really. They're too thin, as they don't rise nearly as much thanks to the sweet potato. They're dome shaped due to the very blunt drinking glass mashing down the sides of the biscuit round instead of cutting through...and I'm forced to use a processor to cut the butter in due to my incredibly warm hands preventing me from using that thumb rolling technique that leads to nice and flaky results. The inside looks like this:


Next time I'll mix in the cold sweet potato puree by hand after cutting in frozen butter into the flour mixture, which will hopefully keep some of those big globs of butter intact. I'll make the dough thicker and find a better biscuit cutting device, all while using the ice bath/frozen glove technique I use while making truffles.

Also, almost all biscuit recipes call for more shortening than butter...but I'm not gonna go down that road. Shortening makes for some damn good biscuits (and fried chicken too), but it's an abomination against nature. Screw California though...whole wheat pastry flour is out. I'm gonna go full throttle with bleached cake flour.

And for no particular reason...one of the sexiest things you'll ever see:


The Chick-Fil-A nuggets party platter.

Why are you still here?

The other day I noticed that I've had this blog for over four years now. I don't think I've ever been able to keep something up for this long, and a lot has happened in four years. I went back and looked at my first posts for fun, and realized that my blog content has changed a lot over the years. When did this food blog stop being about making fun of people and start being about...well...food? What happened? Maybe it's because I started dating...but even now that I'm not I still am a lot friendlier than I was before. Perhaps it's because the only people I ever interact with now are my classmates, all of whom are pretty terrific people. I genuinely like the four people that actually read this blog and don't end up here accidentally, but I never foresaw that anyone would actually read this thing.

And when did I stop making fun of my sister? Is it because it's just way too easy to make fun of someone pushing thirty who's unmarried and living with her parents? (hahaha...still got it)

Is it time to change my blog title?

Not yet...aside from the four aforementioned "serious" readers (and admit it, you're only here as a break from facebook), the majority of the people that land here on my blog are absolute morons who are brought here by google. I've already talked about the people who come here with the google search "foods i don't like," (it leads to more specific results than their first attempt that included "and i'm too much of a complete idiot to know myself and am expecting google to tell me"). Let's take a look at some of the most recent keywords that have landed here:

tempura soba
shrimp tempura soba - it didn't work, we're not dating anymore. Make something else you asian fetishist creeps.

pseudoplastic foods
food pseudoplastic - Try wikipedia for your third grade science report next time you punk kids.

Hamptons dinners - if you can't afford to have a personal assistant look this up for you, you shouldn't be eating there. Get a job.

im fucked for the mcat
i hate the fucking mcat
i fucked up the mcat - Hope you enjoy dental school.

I like I Don't like grammar food - you're beyond help.

i don't like restaurant food - don't go to a restaurant jackass.

Whew...that's better.

Cooking Lessons

At various points, a few people in my class have asked me to teach them how to cook something. To some degree, there's not too many things that I cook that are really interesting at all for people to learn, or that they couldn't just figure out from reading some recipe instructions, but gnocchi is something that may be useful to have someone show you how to do the first time. So, I gathered a few of the people who have asked for cooking "lessons" at my place.

Of course, wine and antipasti are the most important part of cooking any meal:


Then it was on to making the dough. The basic recipe I used goes a little something like this:

For 4 people:
1 lb. starchier potatoes (King Edwards are great, russets if you can't get those)
1 egg yolk
Roughly 1 cup 00 flour (AP is fine if you don't have 00)

Cover the potatoes in their skins with water in a pot, put it on the flame and bring to a boil. Simmer until cooked. For faster cooking, peel and cut potatoes first then boil, but you have to dry them out over a low flame or in a low oven after that. Peel each potato (try to do this before people arrive or they'll be really bored and start taking pictures of you peeling potatoes).


Mash 'em (ricer is cool, food mill would be best if you're lucky enough to own one of those) then stir in the egg and about half the flour. Then flour a board and gently incorporate more flour (try not to knead too hard so as not to develop gluten) until a workable dough forms. I had each person add a different ingredient, roasted garlic, basil, cheese, and spinach. In the end the additions didn't make a huge difference in flavor.

Roll it out into a rope and cut it up.


Optionally, you can roll each one off the tines of a fork to create grooves.


Boil 'em until they float then give them another minute or so, drain, sauce, enjoy.
Everyone did a phenomenal job.


Denise made a design for aprons for all future students to wear...which is a great idea...and I love the 'stache.


You may have noticed that there were no men in this class (there almost was when Amanda pretended to have a headache and was going to send her boyfriend over instead, then pretended to miraculously recover just in time when she couldn't get a hold of him...women). I assure you this is not in an attempt to emulate other TV chefs who give cooking "lessons" as a veiled excuse to flirt with bored housewives (bonus points if the chef himself is married and/or has a foreign accent...see Tyler Florence in Food 911, Danny Boome in Rescue Chef, or the absolute winner, Curtis Strong in Take Home Chef). It's actually because dudes never ask me to teach them HOW to cook, but rather ask me WHAT to cook in order to impress the ladies, and would likely find it a bit awkward to have a private lesson on "romantic dinners." It seems like a bit of a bad strategy to ask a single dude how to woo the ladies, but we're not that smart.

The Door-to-Door Meat Salesman of Endocrine Test Week

Friday is the endocrine and reproductive health exam. I was sitting in a classroom studying when I get a call from Erin:
"Chris, what are your plans for dinner?"
This is always a good sign, because it means some sort of awesome dinner is about to be proposed...this goes double for a test week when the answer is usually "I'll probably just microwave a lean pocket, then out of the need to stress eat, microwave two more."

Apparently a meat salesman (think Omaha Steaks) had a box full of meat that needed selling, and in a last ditch effort to meet a bonus quota, sold it to her at cost. Tonight was gonna be burgers.

What goes great with burgers? Pretty much any type of potato really. I like burger places with multiple potato options, like the Vortex. There you can get fries, tater tots, or sweet potato fries. But why sweet potato fries and not sweet potater tots? Clearly something needed to be done. I was almost certain the idea of the sweet potato tot had already been done somewhere. A quick google search yielded no recipe ideas, but a few pictures and references to Atlanta's own FLIP Burger Boutique (still gotta try it). Judging from the pictures, it seems they cheat a bit by serving little cylinders of tempura fried sweet potato. Their cheatery cheater version looked delicious, but I wouldn't really call that a tot...more of a glorified steak fry. It's gotta have that shredded hash-browny texture to it. So I'd have to take matters into my own hands.

Bought a few organic jewel sweet potatoes, shredded them with my food processor, shredded in a bit of shallot just for kicks, added an egg and some flour, a bit of salt, switched to the processing blade, gave the whole thing a quick pulse and voila:


Unappealing sweet potato tot "batter." I tried dishing them into small sizes and then forming them, but they would just fall apart. I decided to dish out individual portions, freeze them, and then fry them. In retrospect this was completely unnecessary, because I thought they'd be more frozen, but that wasn't necessary. Just pop the whole bowl into the freezer until the mix is cool and easier to work with (or fridge if you have more time...but like I said before...test week...I don't have time to sit around waiting for my homemade sweet potato tots to cool down in the fridge.)

Give 'em a deep fry until they're pretty darn brown in 360 degree oil:


Sprinkle on a bit of salt and enjoy.


There you have it, no need to make the tough choice between tater tots and sweet potato fries, when you can have the best of both worlds.

Downtown Restaurant Week, BLT Steak

I have mixed feelings about restaurant weeks. I love the idea of getting people to go out and try restaurants they wouldn't normally try because they might be a bit too expensive. I have absolutely no problem with a prix fixe menu, and I even find it okay if there's only one option for one of the courses. What I don't like is how, sometimes, a restaurant will treat the week with disdain and contempt. I've been to restaurants where they feel their name and reputation makes the idea of restaurant week beneath them...as if it's a hassle for them to serve the unwashed masses while they could be making much more money off of their beloved hard-drinking, power-lunching corporate regulars. It is these restaurants that let the quality of their service drop to zero, that don't make available anything else on their menu to prixe fixers, and-should you want to drink any-force you to buy a "restaurant week" bottle of wine at the same price as the prix fixe meal itself (a bottle that likely cost them no more than $0.50). Some of these restaurants also miss the point entirely, and the prix fixe meal really offers no savings over the price of those items a la carte.

BLT Steak at the downtown W hotel really gets what restaurant week should be about. They treat it as a chance to open their doors to a lot of new people who will want to come back for a special occasion if their experience is good. They want to showcase their kitchen rather than begrudgingly churn out their most profitable menu items. The service was excellent, the food was phenomenal, and at no time did I feel that any corners of the normal BLT experience were being cut. I really don't care that our admittedly great bottle of wine was massively expensive, because I had the entire impressive list to choose from. It was the kind of place where you say to yourself "well the wine is how they make money so I understand...it's a fantastic place," instead of "these hacks are trying to rob me with squeeze-bottled sauce and a $12 glass of carlo rossi."

The restaurant week dinner menu was $25 for three courses. We were started with an amuse bouche of toast and chicken liver pate.



Smooth and creamy, perfectly seasoned with consumption on toast in mind. The aggressiveness and tang of iron that turns people off of liver was completely gone, leaving only a fluffy, luxuriant richness. It really felt like a gift.

We then got the famous gruyere popovers, and their reputation is well deserved.




Served with unsalted butter and smoked sea salt. These popovers are far better than the famous Judie's in Amherst ones, which are really known more for their massive size and the delicious apple butter that comes with them. The gruyere made a nice frico crust on the popover, without being burnt. They give you a little recipe card, and I'll be trying my hand (and probably failing) at them for sure.

This meal turned into a belated/impromptu birthday celebration, and walking to our table we passed the raw bar and at that point knew I was going to get oysters. I chose to get a half dozen Kumamotos:

Fresh, delicately briny, and melty. My only issue was that I happened to get one which wasn't completely released from the shell, but I'm a big boy who can operate a fork so all was well.

The entree choices were:
Duck terrine with sweet potato chutney

I ordered this and it was rich and good. Speckled with a bit of pistachio, it was a on the salty side on its own (even on bread), but this was calmed down by the sweet potato chutney, which in and of itself was too sweet. Together they were balanced, but the overall effect was off-putting to some of my dining companions. I think it was the weakest of the entrees.

Roasted beets with endive, walnuts, and humboldt fog.

Perfectly cooked beets, nicely prepared/slightly caramelized endive and walnuts concealing a little mound of Humboldt fog, which is one of my favorite cheeses on the planet.

The big winner was Erin, who ordered the Gazpacho Andalou with Tabasco sorbet.

The last time I've had a tomato dish that can equal this one was the tomato and basil gelatin at Cibreo in Florence. Subtle and uncomplicatedly good on its own, the Tabasco sorbet added depth. Outstanding stuff.

The main choices were:
Hanger steak with roasted shallot and herb butter.

Hands down the best prepared hanger steak I've ever had. It was a more than generous 8 ounces, and was perfectly cooked. Nice and peppery on the outside, the herb butter didn't add much but the meat was so good on its own that it didn't matter. The shallot was well roasted and looked beautiful, but everything was overshadowed by the steak itself. This steak's preparation, flavor, and tenderness rivaled much more expensive cuts I've had in other steakhouses, and I won't even get started on some of the rubbery and dry onglet/hanger preparations I've had when trying to get a decent steak frites.
They were served with a side of jalapeno mashed potatoes.

Maybe my favorite part of the meal. I love potatoes. I love spicy things. I love rich creamy mashed potatoes that are also nicely spicy. Enough said.

Garlic herbs stuffed chicken with english pea and morels sauce.

Great traditional english pea and morel sauce, especially the mushrooms. The chicken itself was nicely seasoned and well cooked.
Horseradish crusted scottish salmon, cauliflower and horseradish sauce.

Delicious. I normally don't like to order fish in restaurants because it's inevitably drowned in something that kills (sometimes deliberately) the taste of the fish. This salmon was cooked through, but not a second too much. Great natural flavor, all the accompaniments were well cooked and appropriately understated.

I also got a side to share: Gorgonzola and grits.

Phenomenal. Creamy and delicious, coarser ground grits with a perfect amount of gorgonzola. It was crusted with another cheese, maybe gruyere that was nicely broiled to toastiness and had a bit of tomato coulis on top. Excellent steakhouse side that should be adopted at places outside the south.

Whew...still with me? I was feeling pretty heavy at this point too, but luckily there was a good break before dessert came out.

Carrot cake with ginger ice cream:

Liked it, but for my taste the ginger was a bit too subtle and the rest of the dish a bit too sweet.

The break was on account that these guys had just been popped into the oven, then needed to cool: Georgia peach and blueberry cobbler with chamomile ice cream.

Winner. The fruit wasn't oversweetened/seasoned nor overcooked. The peaches still had just the right amount of bite while being pleasantly warmed through. I'm still not sure how such a good crust was achieved...imagine a croissant...then imagine the best shortbread you've ever had. Then imagine that you had infinitely thin layers of that shortbread making a croissant, and that this was then placed on top of a cobbler.
The subtleties of the chamomile ice cream were completely lost on me at this point.

And a nice surprise with my red velvet cake with coconut cream cheese ice cream:

A birthday candle and a song. The red velvet cake was moist and rich, the frosting a nice balance between tangy and sweet. The ice cream was the weaker part of the plate. The ice cream itself was nice, maybe a bit too sweet, but I was distracted by the coconut. I would've preferred to have the coconut be toasted, because the texture of the untoasted dry coconut was a bit too much to get through. Good overall though, and it was nice that they made the plate up like they did.

With the bill came petits fours, a hybrid brownie/cookie thing which had a crisp cookie-like exterior that gave way to a fudge-brownieish interior. I don't even remember it at this point. I remember it being rich, but at this point I was pretty delirious.


After it was all done, the staff was nice enough to take some pictures, validate our parking and send us on our way. As I write this I'm still massively full. I was about to burst as we left:

Notice my distended gut casting a shadow over the bottom part of my hipstery ensemble.

On one hand, I'm a bit envious of people who get to eat like this regularly. On the other, tonight was incredibly special because I felt invited into an experience I wouldn't have been able to take part in otherwise, and the fact that I was able to share it with so many good people (who let me steal off their plates) made it unforgettable. I feel life would be more depressing if a fantastic restaurant's food was no longer a joyful surprise for my palate. What impressed me most about BLT Steak, especially during restaurant week, is that they managed to make every plate of food coming out of the kitchen feel like a gift, not an obligation.