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Saturday, August 31, 2002
Despite having had its title translated from sweetness into nonsense, "Mostly Martha" (nee "Bella Martha") is the best movie I've seen this year, in no small part for the entertaining way it serves up the frantic life of a professional kitchen.
Martha is a gourmet chef in Hamburg, the "second best chef in the city," her employer tells her. Into her tightly controlled, Type A world is thrown a sensuous, free-wheeling rival chef, Mario. She moans to the owner: "Of course he's a madman. He's Italian!" (In a clear nod to "Big Night," he plays Louis Prima on the boom box he brings to the kitchen.) They go together like olive oil and mineral water, but of such pairings are the best (all?) romantic comedies made.
The movie includes a lot of details we've discussed here, such as feeding the staff before opening. And in an early scene, a customer sends back his foie gras for being undercooked. Outraged, Martha storms into the dining room and basically tells him to go screw. She notices his cigarettes and expensive wine. "I don't understand why you bother with wine. With all you smoke, it's not like you can taste it."
Mario says its a cook's obligation to stuff himself by tasting everything. Only then can he judge his food's quality, for if the food can make him swoon on a full stomach, he says, imagine what it can do to a famished diner.
There's also a great scene in which Mario, Martha and Martha's niece have dinner together -- without plates. Instead, they dig in to common serving bowls on the living room floor. It looked like fun, and a splendid way to save on dishwashing. (Of course, I do this already, but I don't think a lonely bachelor eating straight from the pot over the sink is quite the same experience.)
posted by Luke at 2:58 PM | 2 comments
Thursday, August 29, 2002
Today's Mister Boffo comic, which I appropriately first saw while munching on leftover potatoes at the Cafe, pretty much nails what it's like to cook with me. "One sausage for the guest, one for me! (Munch munch.) Some green pepper for the omelette, some for me! (Munch munch.)"
This is why I'd never be good in the kitchen of our restaurant. All this delicious food in front of me, and I'm supposed to seal my lips? Unlikely. If I must don the apron, Luke better hope there's not one cubic inch of space available in my belly, or else our kitchen's efficiency rating will go out the window. Or down the hatch, as the case may be.
YANI: The Nibbler.
posted by Sandor Weisz at 4:25 PM | Comment?
Wednesday, August 28, 2002
When I returned to Chicago in 2000 after a two-year exile in San Jose, it was refreshing to once again patronize smoke-filled bars. Though I've never had a cigarette myself, I enjoyed having to part a thick haze that separated me and my bartender. I found romance in an old-timer taking drags with his left hand and nursing a glass of Schlitz with his right.
This lasted about a week. Then I remembered how much I enjoyed breathing. I suddenly found romance in a deep drag of fresh air. Ever since, I've longed to spend a night out and not come home smelling like an ashtray.
I've argued before that we should not allow smoking. Looks like we might not be alone: Chicago is considering a ban on smoking in large restaurants. Though this doesn't include bars, it's excellent news. And as Jane Brody notes in the Times, such a ban doesn't necessarily curtail sales. In fact, 70 percent of New Yorkers have said they would go out to bars as much or more often if smoking was banned.
I'll drink to that -- lots!
posted by Luke at 8:33 AM | Comment?
Tuesday, August 27, 2002
EUREKA, Calif. -- I notice an absence of a Chicago-style hot dog joint here. Perhaps we could follow in Hot Doug's steps and export the high-end wiener to the land of endless-high weenies. Restaurants here come and go with the tide, but there are worse places to set up shop.
posted by Luke at 9:08 AM | Comment?
Monday, August 26, 2002
EUREKA, Calif. -- Greetings from Humboldt County, where the fog is thick and the line between 1962 and 2002 is thin. This weekend I've had the pleasure of staying at one of the area's finer bed-and-breakfasts (read as, "my parents' house"). To repay the hospitality, I asked my hosts to give me an Iron Chef cooking challenge, in which each of them would suggest an ingredient around which I would make dinner.
Dad chose T-bones, a complete surprise (read as, "his favoritest food in the whole wide world"). Mom asked for eggplant. After an hour scouring the recipe books, I had a menu: grilled T-bones with chimichurri sauce, accompanied by oven-roasted vegetables and a spinach salad. (The sauce and vegetables included garlic, parsley and rosemary plucked straight from Mom's garden, a test-run of my idea for ikezukuri vegetables.) I burned the candied pecans, the chimichurri was too thin and I had to substitute heirloom tomatoes for mangoes, but otherwise it was a success. I didn't catch anybody slipping food into their napkins.
I've been thinking of how an ingredient challenge could work for a restaurant. How about this: A customer calls a week ahead of time to make a reservation, minimum party of eight. She names an ingredient. After our chef consults his cookbooks and confers with our food distributor, he calls the guest and informs her what the price will be for the prix fixe meal we have designed for her and her companions (the price is all she gets to know; everything else should be a surprise). If she accepts, that meal will a week later be our special of the night. Voila: We have a way to rise above the fray, we maintain a fresh menu and we attract large parties, all with one gimmick.
posted by Luke at 9:36 PM | 4 comments
Thursday, August 22, 2002
Commenting on one of Sandy's posts, Lucia recoils at the RoseAngelis menu. "Pasta with chicken? With balsamic vinegar! Gosh, I'm thinking you guys down there still need some real italian cooking!" Sounds like Lucia would be a good candidate for the Italian taste police. (Indeed, happy is the thought of being deputized as a taste cop. "You, there! With the striped polo shirt on top of the green turtleneck! Thirty lashes!")
I think adopting an ethnic cuisine would be dicey, as I've noted. Without being natives, we'd be pretenders writ large and quickly exposed as food frauds. That said, there are thousands of successful Italian restaurants in America and, as I far as I know, very few could be considered authentic. I know of none within my means. It goes beyond knowing the difference between true Italian and spaghetti-and-meatballs Italian. It's cultural: Americans don't have the patience for primi and secondi. We don't go for courses unless it's a 28-course, one-teaspoon-of-food-at-a-time extravaganza from someone like Charlie Trotter.
Oh, what I'd give for a true Tuscan dinner under $20. (I'd probably give $25!)
posted by Luke at 11:18 AM | 3 comments
Wednesday, August 21, 2002
Yet another menu item: Game hen, cooked in lava.
posted by Sandor Weisz at 10:20 AM | 3 comments
Tuesday, August 20, 2002
Burrito Beach is having a promotion in which local celebri-chefs have donated original burrito recipes, proceeds from which are given to the Greater Chicago Food Depository. It's excellent marketing (I'd never heard of the place until I heard about the promotion) and, assuming they're just adding a quarter or so to each burrito, costs them nothing. Oh, yeah -- and it helps a good cause.
As for the burritos? Not bad. As far as corp-urritos go, they're definitely a step up from Chipotle (and locally owned, so not that corporate).
It's straight from Ben & Jerry's playbook, but we, too, should consider letting a special menu item raise money for our favorite non-profit. (Of course, I have a feeling that our favorite non-profit will be "us," but that's beside the point.)
posted by Luke at 4:01 PM | Comment?
Monday, August 19, 2002
My mom called me a few minutes ago, gushing over a recent dinner at RoseAngelis. "Oh, Sandy, you'd absolutely love this place! It's so cozy, and the portions are huge, and the prices are half what you'd expect to pay." Sure sounded good to me. I told her I'd put it on my list.
Then I loaded up RoseAngelis' website. In addition to all the vital information you'd look for on a restaurant's site -- menu, reviews, contact info -- they have a list of statistics in honor of their 10 years in business. It's a brilliant execution of a concept I proposed a while ago.
Most numbers seem mind-bogglingly huge until you break them down into a day-by-day statistic. (55,000 gallons of soup [!] works out to about 80 bowls per day.) Even though I'm sure it's simply a compilation of 10 years' worth of sales data, I'd like to imagine that the numbers were tallied order by order -- that there are 51,400 individual ticks on the wall next to the pizza station.
Second-most impressive stat: 127 engagements in 10 years. That works out to about one per month. It says a hell of a lot about your restaurant if people consistantly choose it as a setting to propose. (Unless, of course, it's actually one guy, trying and failing 127 times.)
Most impressive stat: six employees who've been with the restaurant since the beginning. It's hard enough imagining we'll be successful enough to keep the two of us employed for 10 years, much less four others. We should be so lucky.
posted by Sandor Weisz at 3:03 PM | Comment?
Sunday, August 18, 2002
John Kass takes a look at ways to get diners to wash their hands. He's found a device that, triggered by the sound of a toilet flush, reminds people to lather up. I suppose it's a good idea, though I'd be wary of the cacophony generated by a busy washroom. And why stop at reminders to wash hands? Why not remind them to tip their waitresses and call their mothers, too?
Personally, I think the best solution would include neon signs and klaxons. How about if a customer doesn't wash their hands, we take away their utensils?
I also know that I am more likely to wash my hands if someone else is in the washroom with me. Maybe we have some sort of scarecrow?
posted by Luke at 3:18 PM | 4 comments
Saturday, August 17, 2002
At a party tonight, Levi posed a crucial challenge: "I'm not someone who eats out a lot. What is it about your restaurant that makes me want to come back once a week?"
And this is what I told him: "Levi, we will be the kind of place you can go to alone with a book on a Tuesday night. We won't hassle you for staying long after your food is done. In fact, our waitresses will be not only foxy but smart, too, and one of them will, without prompting, drop an extra candle at your table so you have more light."
Then someone put a lampshade on their head or something and I wasn't able to continue, but this is what I had to add:
"We'll be the kind of place that lets you stay even after everyone has left and our busboy has started stacking chairs atop tables in order to mop. Around 11:30, you'll still be there, with every candle we own sitting on your table, casting an inferno of reading light that flickers across the room.
"Just as you finish a chapter, our chef will emerge from the kitchen, pause at the doorway and slowly walk to the front window. He'll flip the 'open' sign to 'closed' and stand there a minute. He will sigh. He'll wring his hands in his apron. Finally he will return to the kitchen but quickly come back out with a half-full bottle of cheap red wine. He will grab two Ball fruit jars and walk over to your table. Without asking for permission, he'll pull down a chair, fill the jars with wine and sit next to you.
"He will lift your book to see what you're reading. He'll take a deep breath, and already he will have forgotten the title. 'Uff da,' he will say. 'I've got to get out of this business.' He'll proceed to tell you about his day -- troubles with the vegetable stock, troubles with the city, troubles with his dumb, homely waitresses -- and you will tell him about yours.
"He will grunt, shake the now-empty bottle, study it as a scientist might study an erlenmeyer flask, and grunt again. He will go through the kitchen to the office, where he'll fetch from the safe an unopened bottle of $200 chianti (the last to remain from a mix-up with the liquor distributor). He'll return and refill the jars, and the two of you will spend four more hours discussing, among other things, homeland security, romanticism (he'll spit at the mention of Lord Byron) and Tommy John surgery.
"Before either of you know it, it will be 4 a.m. 'That clock is either four hours fast or it's four hours past my bedtime,' you will say. 'I ought to get home.'
"'I ought to go, too,' he'll say, except he won't be going home. He'll be off to the Fulton Street Market to get the next day's produce. He'll offer you a ride, but you'll have come on your bike and will decline.
"'Oh,' he'll say. 'Well, come again, I guess.'
"'I'll be back next week.'"
And that is how Levi will come to be a regular at our restaurant -- sometimes to eat, sometimes to read, sometimes to cook his own groceries on our range, but always to have a word with our chef, every Tuesday night.
posted by Luke at 12:38 AM | 4 comments
Friday, August 16, 2002
We spent a good part of yesterday evening on Tango Sur's sidewalk patio, devouring their delectable Argentine meat like it was going out of fashion. Luke orderd the mixed grill for one, a dish with enough meat to feed one, one's mother, and enough left over to feed one's dog. Most of the meats were obvious, but one kept us guessing -- something called sweetbread. We guessed the worst, testicles or maybe brain, not that it stopped us from devouring its buttery goodness. But some research today revealed the truth: Sweetbread is actually "the savory pancreas and thymus glands," mostly from steer and calves. Ah ha, no wonder they prefer to stick to a euphemism.
It was on this search for the definition of sweetbread that I came across a quiz called "Are You a Foodie?" Even though I knew the answer to the question, I took the quiz anyway. My score: 23 out of 38, casting me as a Debonair Diner:
"The debonair diner loves to eat and is too busy enjoying the fruits of chef's labors to be bogged down with every last kitchen detail. You are likely to think the best culinary experiences are about sitting around a table enjoying great foods with equally special friends, which you do with frequency and fervor."
Sounds about right. I'm the kind of guy that can't be bothered with "every last kitchen detail," like knowing exactly what part of the cow I'm being served. Better to eat first and ask questions later, I say.
posted by Sandor Weisz at 6:38 PM | 5 comments
Thursday, August 15, 2002
I'm listening to an "Eight Forty-Eight" story right now about getting the most out of a dining experience. A major theme is that patrons shouldn't be afraid to politely raise grievances with a waiter or management. Good restaurateurs embrace criticism.
One of the guests runs Grabbing a Bite, which includes such sections as "Complaining made easy and profitable." He says that diners should always make eye contact with their waiter. Treating a waiter like an honest-to-God human being, he says, is an excellent way to ensure good service.
posted by Luke at 8:34 AM | 1 comment
Tuesday, August 13, 2002
Adam Gropnik writes about hanging out with cooks: "I ... enjoy the company of cooks because I have always wanted to be one. A surprising number of writers I know, apart from the bitter ones who dream about being publishers, share this fantasy. Words and food are bound together in some inexplicable way, a peculiar communion that lends grace and mystery to what otherwise would seem to be a simple exchange of gluttony for publicity."
Speaking of writers and cooking, I've added Calvin Trillan's food anthology to my wish list. I was won over by this excerpt: "I know the problem of asking someone in a strange city for the best restaurant in town and being led to some purple palace that serves 'Continental cuisine' and has as its chief creative employee a menu-writer rather than a chef. I have sat in those places, an innocent wayfarer, reading a three-paragraph description of what the trout is wrapped in, how long it has been sauteed, what province its sauce comes from, and what it is likely to sound like sizzling on my platter."
Still speaking of writers and cooking, fuckcorporategroceries.net has an amusing yet terrifying exchange that details the collision between a hipster with salty language, her grandma and two sensitive candymakers.
posted by Luke at 6:17 AM | 2 comments
Monday, August 05, 2002
"One day Peter asks himself, 'I like restaurants, so why don't I build and run one?'" The result is Jin Ju. I've been once. The food is excellent, but the decor is a bit over the top for my proletarian tastes. The Tribune story mentions that the owners have taken out a lease on the space next door, formerly the excellent Cousin's. Renovation is under way now, and I'm curious whether they will expand Jin Ju or open an entirely new concept.
posted by Luke at 2:36 PM | 2 comments
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