Archive for the ‘Restaurant Reviews’ Category
Pierre Calmels is such a pimp.
t says: I’d like to know what you were thinking as you read the title of this post. Maybe you don’t know of Pierre Calmels, in which case, you might suspect that I’m talking about a character onsome sort of Jersey-Shore-meets-France crossover. It’s not. Sorry. (Actually … I’m not sorry.) For those of you who know that Pierre Calmels is one-half of the dynamic duo responsible for Bibou, a perennial favorite of adsz, maybe you’ve stumbled across this post thinking that I’m going to reveal some sort of sordid indiscretion he committed. It’s not. (And shame on you for thinking that Pierre could do something like that!?) So what is this post about? Quite simply, this post is here to further illustrate Pierre’s uncanny ability to make grown men cry and women swoon … through food.
March 2012, Friday Dinner, Party of 6. g and I were dining with a, v, and a’s parents. That’s right, it was time for us to “meet the folks” (g had already met them, but I had not). And, because a and his dad are real big into wine, I was super-excited about what kinds of wines were going to show up. They didn’t disappoint (more on that later).
Now, with so many adsz posts already dedicated to Bibou, we don’t want to go into such great detail about ever dish again. Yes, the pig’s feet rendered v speechless. Yes, g got the steak again and had no regrets. The escargots were still ridiculous. a and v’s parents had the fish entrees – maybe they’ll have a word or two to say in the comments!
But let’s talk about me – after all, that’s what I do best. After tackling my first ever plate of frog’s legs with g (that’s right – g went for frog’s legs … and liked it!!), I wondered if I was going to regret going for the “special” instead of the steak or the pig’s foot, both of which are my faves. They’re just both so consistently delicious! Had I made a mistake?! … And just when I thought Bibou couldn’t possibly be more delicious …
Pierre goes and does something like this …
... and totally crushes it.
What you see in the above pic is a duo of pork. I eschewed the pig’s foot and the beef in favor of this “special” which included [essentially] a T-bone of pork and a slab of pork belly. Yes, there were greens and a root puree. But I need to draw focus to the pork belly. Now, my favorite pork belly has long been Lee Styer’s at Fond. This one is nothing like Lee’s. There’s no dense crust. The portion is fairly petite. But the flavor! O! M! G! (Don’t you love it when I do that?) The flavor! The rich fat disintegrates in your mouth instantaneously, letting out a deeply piggy flavor framed in such a wonderful sweetness, but not in a cloying way. And it just keeps going. I was brought to silence, and, had I had enough wine, perhaps a single tear could have escaped from my eye. It was so beautiful. It was like seeing a baby being born (except that I don’t proceed to eat the baby). And in that instant, Pierre stole the crown from Lee. It. Was. Epic.
The best part was that when I told the server about how delicious the belly was, he said, “that’s great! you should also go to Fond and try theirs”. I told him that I did and that Pierre’s was superior. He was impressed. And then Pierre himself came around. He did his usual super-humble-Pierre routine, where he thanks you, tilts his head, and flashes his bashful smile, as if he just “doesn’t know how it happened”. He said something like, “the secret’s in the pig … we get it from <insert source here – I couldn’t hear him>” Sorry Pierre. That’s bull$h!t. And you know it. Unless you have some sort of genetically engineered pig that eats chocolate and craps cinnamon buns, I can only conclude one of the three possible explanations:
1) You are in possession of some kind of magic wand and aren’t afraid to use it.
2) You are straight-up lacing your food with some kind of French cocaine
3) You are a brilliant chef.
Regardless, it’s more than just the pig. And so, for refusing to rest on your laurels and continuing to produce entrees that repeatedly blow us away, we salute you.
(And yes, we salute Charlotte and the rest of the Bibou staff as well … they are top-notch, too!)
a says: Pork belly was AAAAAAAamazing. The pig’s foot and steak was great, as always. Fish dishes were good but didn’t have enough to remember major themes.
no overhyping in FedNuts’s chicken
t says: The other day, a and v decided that it was time to rectify a wrong. We had had Federal Donuts’s donuts, but not the fried chicken. So we set out to fix the problem:
March 2012, Saturday Brunch, Party of Several. We ventured over the 2nd and Federal (actually, it’s a block over from 2nd and Federal), where we were greeted by a huge line. Fortunately, a and v were already there, in line, and right about to order. Woohoo! They ordered, we transported the chicken back at their crib, and then I proceeded to plate the chicken.
FedNuts chicken
I can’t remember all the flavors, but I’ll see what I can do: chili-garlic, traditional buttermilk, zatar, honey-ginger-something, and something else.
The chicken was easily the second-best fried chicken I’ve ever had, with first place going to Meritage’s Korean Fried Chicken. Ironically, it was the chili-ginger (i.e. the one most like a Korean fried chicken) that was the crowd favorite, for its vivid flavors and spicy oomph. The chicken was fabulous on all the flavors, however. It was nice and juicy and tender despite the car ride and time spent waiting for me to arrange the chicken into like groups on a single plate for the above picture (I was drooling the whole time). I think a special honor goes to the buttermilk, which was most surprising for us – I guess we expected it to be a bit boring when compared to the other fancy flavors, but no, it hung right in there with the rest of ’em.
Moral of the story: despite Rotisseur‘s frequent jabs at FedNuts (I’ve gone there often enough to overhear a comment or two), they do a good job at a great pricepoint. We’ll be going back again for sure – and I think a and v already have!
the ‘burgh says hello.
t says: lc took me to some hippy-dippy-lookin’ donut place in Pittsburgh for breakfast one morning. Looking at the sign outside, which said “Peace Love and Little Donuts”, I wondered if I’d be required to don a woven pancho before entry. Fortunately, they didn’t discriminate against non-hippies, and I was granted access. And look what I found:
look at all those donuts!
This place has three tiers of donuts. They are more silly-named than Coldstone Creamery’s sizing scheme (i.e. “like it vs. love it vs. gotta’ have it”). <Uncontrollable aside: “what kind of crackhead terminology is that? i gotta have it, man! i’m tweakin’ i’m tweakin’!” Ok, I feel better now that I got that out.> Here, the donuts are “groovy”, “far out”, or “funkadelic”. Refusing to acquiesce to such silly names, I began to assemble a dozen of “the really fancy ones” to bring in to some co-workers. Unfortunately, lc chose some of the lamer “groovy” ones for the dozen as well, claiming that maybe some people would like a more “normal donut”. (Blasphemy!)
It’s ok. I made sure we got 2 of these babies:
maple bacon bacon bacon bacon!
Yes, I know that putting bacon on sweets is soooooo “two years ago”, but I don’t care. I have never seen such a bacon-loaded sweet before, so I knew that 2 of the dozen were going to be this maple bacon concoction. Funny thing – these were the last 2 of 3 remaining donuts after people attacked the dozen. I guess the bacon scared people away. I admit – it’s not for the faint of heart.
How’d it taste? Pretty damn good. I give the hippies big props for loading on the bacon. I do wish it was a little crispier, but am really happy I went for it. The donut was nicely textured and surprisingly not-too-sweet. It was plusher/softer than FedNuts, and the glaze wasn’t too thick/syrupy at all. Man, if these hippies opened up shop i Philly, they could give FedNuts a run for their money (FedNuts does better with “unique” flavors, but honestly, how can you say no to classic combos like strawberry shortcake or chocolate-peanut-butter?).
Regrets? Well, after consuming the maple bacon donut, I was then over-full for a long time … but it was worth it … and I’d do it again … and maybe ask for a single swirl of chocolate …
nom nom accomplished …
t says: What a glorious Friday! And look! This post is going up on the same glorious Friday! That’s right – I’m going to post about a meal on the actual day I ate it! (I tend to collect our posts and evenly distribute them.)
So … while walking back from swimming (i.e. attempting to recapture my former glory days), my mind raced with possible lunches that I could now eat because I had net negative calories for the day. What would I spend them on? More Rotisseur? Nah – I go there often enough. Tsuki Sushi? They do a decent job, but I’ve already eaten raw fish once this week (I like to limit it to once a week to keep my mercury levels down). I needed something new. Something sexy. Something that would fill me up, not cost a lot of ca$h, and give my mouth a festival of flavors. Not one place came to mind. I hate it when that happens. Actually, I lied – one place did come to mind (burger.org), but I knew I just couldn’t go there with dz, so that was tabled for another day. I survived the treacherous journey home, opened up my laptop, and began my daily ritual of perusing foobooz, eater, and uwun, looking for inspiration. And there it was. Nom Nom Ramen was open for lunch. I hadn’t had decent ramen since my November 2011 adventure to Ippudo in NYC (the glory of the blog: allowing me to remember stuff). I showered off the chlorine stench (or at least I tried – it never really goes away), threw on the trusty uniform (black tee and denim), and hurried to make it before any lines could form …
gee, I think I made it in time ...
The place was clean and empty, minus the two guys you see in the photo above. I guess no one is really craving ramen at 11:30am? More for me! The decor is minimal, with the exception of the kinda hokey upside-down parasols and obligatory Asian paper balls. I kind of wish they weren’t there, but what do I know about creating “atmosphere”?
I ordered up the shoyu ramen in the regular size but added a poached egg and an extra helping of pork belly. Basically – if I was going to blow some calories, I figured I should go big or go home.
After a few minutes of me people-watching out the window, the bowl arrived:
nom nom shoyu ramen + egg + more pork belly
I was pumped. Unable to decide if I wanted to sample the broth or a noodle first, I ultimately went for noodle. Thicker than what I was expecting (it was like a thick spaghetti), it was perfectly al dente and had a bit of that alkaline musk on the back end. Personally, I’d prefer even more of that flavor in my noodle, but can see where others would prefer less (kind of like how yogurt-zingy do you like your Greek yogurt? I like it more like in Fage, and some like it light like in Chobani). So the noodles were pretty good in terms of taste and texture. Unfortunately, that’s where “pretty good” was replaced with mountains and mountains of “meh”. The broth, which I feel is a super-critical component of ramen, as it’s the background for every bite you’re going to encounter, was kind of wussy. It was thinner than Ippudo’s, and, similar to what Mr. Etchells had to say, it was a little lacking in oomph. Sure, there was salt, so I was quite happy with that, but it was missing the heart, the soul, the rustic meat flavor that Ippudo delivered. And, unlike Mr Etchells’s experience, it never quite went anywhere or did anything, no matter how long I waited. Darn. Instead, I found that the more Nom Nom I ate, the more I wished I was at Ippudo (and from what I hear, Ippudo is nowhere near the best ramen in NYC). The pork belly was very chewy and refused to be rent asunder no matter how much I tug-of-warred it between my chopsticks and my teeth. The other ingredients didn’t really have that “freshness” that I’d normally expect them to bring to the party. And finally, there’s the egg … the “poached egg” … which apparently means “soft-boiled egg”. I guess in the end, both preparations would accomplish similar tasks, but I have to admit that it was weird to be promised one but delivered another. That’s ok – maybe it was just an oversight on the menu.
As you can probably tell, I was a little let down. But I think it was my fault. My initial hopes were likely too high. Damn you Ippudo! Of course, it was half the price of NYC ramen, so maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on it. And after all, it’s not like it was in the least bit “bad” – I finished every noodle and add-on:
all gone ... and I like the reflection of the naruto fish cake from the sign outside
BUT, I think that this photo depicts my point: the broth just didn’t provide me with a compelling enough reason to finish it off. Bummer. I hope someone in this city makes some actually blow-your-socks-off-good ramenbefore the craze dies down, because I’d be sad if this was supposed to be a shining example of the best ramen the city has to offer. Actually – you know what – get Pierre Calmels of Bibou in there to make some ramen. Sure, he’d be completely out of his element in the beginning, but I’d bet a dollar that the end result, which would be in no way traditional (“?rustic French ramen?”), would be so profoundly flavorful that not a single person would care. Where the crap did that random-ass thought come from, you ask? Well, let’s just say that more on Pierre (and Charlotte) is coming soon …
i wanted some “eggs n’at “
t says: On a recent trip to Pittsburgh, g, lc, and I decided to get some breakfast. lc suggested “Eggs N’At”, which is apparently some sort of Pittsburghian saying that translates to “Eggs And That”. She described it as “like a diner”. I like diners. g likes diners. So off we went!
March 2012, Saturday Brunch, Party of 3. The place is pretty tiny. I’d say it’d seat 25 comfortably, maybe 30 uncomfortably. They were just cleaning off a table so we stood by the register and looked at the t-shirts they were selling with other sayings, like “jeet yet?” (my spelling might be off, but you get the idea). Cute, very cute.
After taking our seats, we looked over the menus, where I was torn between several options. It didn’t help that I was starving. Banana chocolate chip pancakes? Yummers. Pancakes with bacon and blueberries? Yes please. And then the “special” corned beef hash? Sign me up for that, too! There were also sausage gravy and biscuits, huevos rancheros, items with chorizo – it just kept going and going! Egad!
After much thought and consideration, I knew I just had to get the corned beef hash. You see, corned beef hash [from a can] was one of the things that I fondly remember eating as a child. We would eat it on Sundays when gathering with my dad’s side of the family, and although fairly gross-looking, something about it was just so delicious! It was salty and savory. Of course, it was probably super-extra-salty by virtue of being a canned meat, but I still liked it. Naturally, I haven’t had it in years, as we now eat very few canned goods (perhaps the most frequently purchased canned good we use is Tuttoroso brand crushed tomatoes for gravy) … but this was my chance! And the waitress said it was made with “homemade corned beef”. So corned beef it was … but right when I ordered, the greedy little piggy in me made one additional request …
t’s pick: corned beef hash and one “mama’s pancake”
Yea, I just had to have at least one pancake. Knowing that Cochon and Honey’s have made some ridiculously delicious pancakes featuring chocolate and/or bananas in the past, I went with the “Mama Evans” pancake: bacon and blueberry put in the batter. I cannot begin to express to you how awesome everything was. All of it was so homey, but so good; it really hit the spot. The corned beef and potatoes were perfect. And that pancake … breath-taking. As soon as blueberry season gets here (“bluebs”, right k?), I’ll be whipping up a batch of these bad boys fast.
lc’s pick: eggs, homefries, chorizo, marble rye
lc’s had a very diner-y feel, with the exception of some awesome chorizo, which I’m 100% sure I wouldn’t be able to find in any Jersey diner anywhere … but it’d be awesome if I could … I think she also had an oatmeal raisin pancake, but I never got around to tasting it …
g’s pick: mixed grill omelet (peppers, onion, potates, cheese)
g opted to go for an omelet, which was surprising because I thought for sure she was going with juevos rancheros. g took one bite and said, “wow … you can tell that this was made with cheese and butter … in a good way!” g certainly did a number on her omelet, which was an ooey-gooey concoction of heaven.
All-in-all, this was some wonderful homey food. On one hand, it reminded me a lot of Jersey diner food, but with a bit more novelty, kind of like Honey’s, but not mobbed with hipsters and without a bajillion hour wait-time. g said, “I feel like this place should be on Diners, Drive-ins and Dives – it’s just so good!”. Consequently, if these guys were in Philly, they’d give a lot of brunch hot-spots a run for their money for sure.
rationalizing the chocolate in my diet.
t says: I <3 chocolate. A lot. All the time. I knew that sooner or later someone would find some kind of silver lining to the cloud that’ll come with eating 5+ servings a week. And here it is:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/27/us-chocolate-idUSBRE82P11320120327
Inspired by this recent article, I’ve decided to put up some pics of some recent chocolate experiences:
Austrian chocolates courtesy of temporary Austrians!
When drb and his fiance visited us most recently, they came bearing gifts! Handmade Austrian chocolate bars! And, while not something that g and I are particularly aware of, these were organic, fair trade handmade Austrian chocolate bars. That’s right – chocolate with a conscience! Feeling that we should share these with friends, as access to foreign candies is rare for us, we brought them out when dining with dz and smn. In short, I can tell you that they were fabulous. Well, 2 were fabulous, while 1 was straight-up weird (in a potentially fabulous way!). The “Happy Birthday” one (technically for g’s bday) had milk chocolate and caramel butter cream nougat and a stiff, thin layer of “cracknel” (crunchy caramel). While not as dark a chocolate that I normally prefer, it was actually quite wonderful. The ratio of chocolate to filling was just right, unlike those chocolate samplers that everyone sees around the Valentine’s day which have way too much filling. Had it been darker chocolate, it might have overwhelmed the sweet caramel, so I liked it the way it was (but wonder what would happen if there was a dark chocolate version with a bit of salt). The sesame and sour cherry one I think was crowd favorite. Imagine a mouthful of bitter dark chocolate, a sweet-and-sour cherry overtone, and a hint of sesame in the background and that’s precisely what this tasted like. I’m going to add some sesame to my cherry chocolate chip cookies the next time I make them. The wildcard here was the ginger-carrot bar, which had a “carrot chocolate” with “coconut and ginger cream”. I think that this caught us off-guard because I have a feeling that “carrot chocolate” is as much a chocolate as “white chocolate” is (i.e. NOT chocolate). It was interesting – the coconut was a nice surprise (we didn’t read the label before indulging). While definitely the loser of the trio, as it was the only one we had leftovers of, I think that I’m going to have to experiment with this bar some more before criticizing it.
take 2 cookies and call me in the morning ...
My last chocolate adventure has to do with Insomnia Cookies, which recently opened up a storefront in addition to their truck (which I had visited before). What’s better than having closer access to delicious cookies? FREE cookies! As I had mentioned, the week they were opening, they were giving away free cookies. Obviously, I absolutely had to find some excuse to visit the store and get my free cookie. But why stop there? Why not support them and actually buy a cookie, too? So, as you can see, I got a free standard chocolate chunk cookie (on the left), and I bought the triple chocolate deluxe one (on the right). I won’t belabor just how awesome it was to eat warm fresh cookies. Simply put, there are few desserts that can rival such a feeling. I will say, though, that the deluxe cookie actually did taste better than the regular, free one. Is it worth the nearly doubling in price? Well, it is larger (I calculated it to be approximately 40% bigger by volume), but even more important is that because of this, the center is chewier. If you’re like me, a chewy center is key, so I guess I’m going to always have to with the deluxe. Yea. I’m sure that’s exactly what Insomnia Cookies wants me to do. Oh well. I guess they know their target audience: suckers for cookies (n.b. I still prefer my homemade cookies to these because I like a darker chocolate and some salt, but it’s not like I’m crazy enough to have dough on hand at all times or anything … right? No. That’d be crazy.)
pie for supper at Supper’s pi day!
t says: I just got back from dinner at Supper. It was pi day!! Get it? “Pi” day, as in 3.14, as in 3/14, as in March 14. Pretty cool, right? Yea it is.
So Supper brought out some awesome pies, savory and sweet:
Ritz-and-crab pie
Veal tongue pie
Rabbit pot pie
Pork pie
PB pie
Mississippi mud pie
Pecan pie
Apple pie
Now, it should be noted that these weren’t just “pies”. Supper actually had far fancier names for these, so it’s probably not fair for me to call them all “pies”. But whatever …
Another awesome little coinkidink was that pi day happened to fall on a Wednesday … which means that it’s BYO night at supper!! So not only was there a two-pies-for-$20 deal, but we could bring our own wine! Boo-yah! I immediately signed up the usual crew to go and notified them via email. There was some attrition, so only a, v, and I were able to go. That’s cool – more wine for us!
We didn’t take any pictures and we didn’t get all super-critical, but had a blast. I went with the veal tongue pie which was prepared more like a chili poured on top of a layer of frito’s. It was quite tasty – like the best meat-based tortilla chip dip ever! The one drawback was that cilantro was still served with the stems on – I hate that.
a’s rabbit pot pie was homey and delicious. v’s crab pie was more like a crab cake, but at least a very well done one.
And all of the dessert pies we sampled were quite delicious: the peanut butter one was a densely whipped PB cream with a peanut crust, the Mississippi mud pie was like a moist brownie with a pie crust, and the pecan pie was exactly that – a well-done pecan pie.
In all, aside from the cilantro stems, we really had no complaints with Supper’s pies. For $20 a head, we were full, and our mouths were happy. It was quite a deal! The server was a little weird/awkward, but maybe it’s because customers aren’t spending much moo-lah on pi day. Whatever. He warmed up some by the end of the meal. By the way, can you imagine what’ll happen on 3/14/15? That’s gonna be SUPER-[nerdily-]awesome
OH … and the wine!
I brought two bottles of pinot noir not from what I feel are traditional pinot noir countries: Italy and Argentina. a picked out the Argentinian one. I was excited because the reviewers had nice things to say about it:
“Dark ruby red in color, it reveals a charming bouquet of smoke, spice box, raspberry, and cherry. Silky, sweet and savory on the palate, this elegant, concentrated effort displays impeccable balance and length. It is an excellent value in quality Pinot Noir.” -WA 91 pts
“Quite good and honest, with full raspberry, cherry and tea aromas along with a hint of grassiness. The palate is dark and full-bodied, with toasty cherry and herbal tea flavors. Finishes long, full and several steps ahead of most of the competition. Drink now.” -WE 88 pts
So we poured the wine into Supper’s nice a big glasses, gave it some swirl-action, and then got to it …
2008 Alma Negra Pinot Noir (Mendoza, Argentina, $21.98 at wineworksonline.com). The nose was interesting in the beginning – smelling a lot like earth and chocolate and tart red berries. As it opened up, the nose developed into more like a cranberry apple pie. On the palate, it had some tart cranberries and sour cherry and this hint of something … different. In retrospect, I honestly think that it was indeed that “herbal tea” flavor – you know – it’s what you get when you order tea, but instead someone gives you a cup of some sort of fake Rooibos crap. It wasn’t something I was ready for and it caught me offguard. Overall, it tasted kind of weird but it wasn’t like a restrained, elegantly balanced French pinot, and it wasn’t fresh-and-fruity like new world pinots. It just didn’t quite taste like a pinot. v called it a “heavy beaujolais”. Quite right! And, while it improved with food for sure, ultimately, I don’t think I’ll be venturing any more Argentinian pinots in the near future. Darn.
I wonder what the Italian one will taste like?
after dinner sneeze 