Unleash the Beast

I had very high expectations. In fact, right before the waiter brought us our first glass of wine, I turned to Andrew – I am quivering in anticipation right now.

You see, Beast is one of the most talked-about Portland restaurants these days. Helmed by Naomi Pomeroy, a Food and Wine Best New Chef this year, the restaurant boasts an exclusively small dining room, with an equally exclusive menu – six meat-centric courses, substitutions politely declined. Everyone dines at a long table during one of two seatings each night. Spots are cherished. I had tried to eat there back at graduation but by the time I called, the place was booked all week. Somehow, this week Andrew had more luck, and at 6:00 Friday, Andrew, his sister, his mother and I finally took our seats.

I was lucky enough to nab a prime spot, facing the open kitchen, where I could watch Pomeroy and her überhip assistants plate our dishes. Speaking of dishes – the six course meal was a fairly traditional progression (minus the fish): soup, charcuterie, an entree, salad, cheese and dessert. Andrew, his mother and I chose the wine pairing option, which while a bit more than I would drink normally, was certainly educational and much more fun than a single bottle.

Our soup was a chilled cream of watercress with a nasturtium chiffonade. Totally refreshing and summery, it seemed a richer version of the spinach soups with which I've been experimenting recently. It's like slurping the best flavors of summer greens. The first wine, a dry and bubbly Bott-Geyl Cremant D'Alsace NV Brut was fine but it seemed chosen more because it was a safe sparkling wine and less that it paired well with the soup.

The charcuterie plate arrived with much fanfare. Pomeroy's foie gras bon bons are becoming famous for much of same reason Gabe Rucker at Le Pigeon succeeds – decadence and a thwarting of Portland's "crunchy" reputation. Besides the bon bon, the plate has salami, pickled beets and carrots, steak tartare with quail egg toast, pork liver and sour cherry pate, a cornichon and mustard, chicken liver mouse with pickled shallots and a micro greens salad. The wine, a Graf Hardegg vom Schloss Riesling, was not particularly memorable other than the fact that I liked it better than most Riesling I've tried. What was memorable, however, was the peanut butter shortbread on which the foie was served. Since the online menu had made no mention of peanuts, I had forgone calling ahead to inform the restaurant of my allergies. I was so embarrassed, then, when I had to ask the server if they could remove it. After a bit of conversation, they re-plated everything and even gave me a new bon bon (not bad for a substitution of sorts). Still, I was a bit too red in the face to enjoy my meats as they should. Everyone else cleaned their plates.

Between courses, we cleansed our palates with a grapefruit-prosecco granita. Just perfect for what it was.

Our entree was a medium-rare lamb loin chop served with a tomato stuffed with veal, Tail and Trotters pork, lamb, bread crumbs and spices. We all assumed that the tomato would be boring, but it truly stole the show. Literally exploding out of the bright tomato shell, each component of the stuffing brought a new meaty layer of flavor and texture, and when eaten alongside the chop, eat bite popped, enhancing the gamey deliciousness of lamb. The wine, a Peillot Mondeuse Bugey VDQS 2006, or "bougie," was nice, but, again, not particularly memorable.

The salad of baby oak leaf lettuces, frisee, sheep's milk cheese, black mission figs and fried Marcona almonds with a sauvignon blanc vinaigrette was stellar. Late summer on a plate. And the wine, a Masson Apremont Savoie Blanc Vielles Vignes Traditionelle 2006, strange on its own, tasted outstanding alongside the almonds – the lingering taste of the nuts brought out a dryness in the otherwise caramelly wine, a depth of flavor unmatched in all other pairings. Makes me want to try pairings at more restaurants.

The cheese plate featured two raw milk cheese (one unpasteurized and hard, the other pasteurized and semi-soft) and a rockin' camembert. All three cheeses has just the right amount of footiness – kind of raunchy, but still enjoyable. They came with local honey and grapes (yum!) as well as anise and fleur de sel shortbread (totally making this at home). The wine, Peillot Altresse Roussette de Bugey (more bougie-ness!) tasted great with everything, but I experienced to revelatory new tastes.

Finally, dessert. Online it said we would have tarte tatin, but it changed by that evening to a dandy plum brown butter spice cake with vanilla ice cream. Certainly comfortable, but nothing special. The wine, Francois Pinon Vouray Cuvee Botrytis 2007 was actually very enjoyable (and I usually hate dessert wines – too sweet – bleck!), surprisingly dry in the mouth, which complemented the sugary cake well.

Final thoughts? All of the food was excellent, and held a level of rustic quasi-refinement for which, in my ideal kitchen, I strive. Yet it was not the best meal of my life, and, besides the almond-wine pairing, contained no new tastes. Not much can compare to the duck noodles at Ping or my first taste of sweetbreads at Paley's, or even the zucchini salad at Chez Panisse. What was new, however, was the family-style/relaxed fine dining approach taken by Pomeroy. While other top Portland restaurants attempt to toe the line between formality and casual hipness, Beast is the first place that actually pulls it off. By serving plated yet rustic food in a small room in which you can watch the chef (certainly not dressed in chef's whites) banter with her staff, and giving diners a chance to toast with complete strangers, Beast fills a space previously unoccupied. The fact that the food didn't totally blow my mind didn't matter so much. I went to bed that night feeling nourished, body and mind.

So there is good Chinese in Chinatown! / Ping

The other day when I was in Chinatown for reasons other than eating, I thought out loud if there was actually any reliably good Chinese food to be had in the area. Those few blocks in Portland seem overrun with pretty much everything but reliable goodness – strip clubs, “lounges,” homeless shelters, and the occasional music venue populate instead.

Upon recommendation from one of my new colleagues, however, I decided to check out Ping when my dad was in town. Andy Ricker, the chef at Pok Pok, opened Ping about 6 months ago; and I have a vague recollection of reading about it, putting it on my endless “to eat” list, and promptly forgetting about it. It’s a shame it took me so long to get there.

Focusing more on Southeast Asian street food than specifically Thai cuisine, Ping is a dream for diners of my persuasion. The menu contains 21 different types of skewers, as well as a perfectly varied collection of entrée-type dishes, organized by cooking method. Most dishes are small, and the waitstaff encourages ordering as you would in a tapas bar, a couple of dishes at a time, sharing with your friends, and stopping once full.

My dad and I started with the fried pork ears, a special for the day:

(unfortunately I forgot my camera, and so these photos are from my phone…)

Crispy, porky, and slightly chewy, these were a great drinking snack, but perhaps a bit too heavy for a starter (I prefer lighter appetizers, usually, so that my appetite is wet, not deadened).

Next came the baby octopus skewers:

Just the right amount of chew, with a very spicy chimichurri-like chili sauce over the top, which added fire but still managed to allow the subtle ocean taste to come through at the end.

For our slightly larger dishes, we had the nonya-style daikon cakes, fried with eggs and a sweet soy sauce (kecap manis):

and the kuaytiaw pet pha lo, a duck and noodle dish, which was probably one of the best dishes I have eaten in months:

The duck was falling off the bone tender, juicy, and slightly sweet, accompanied by thick rice noodles, shittakes, and pickled mustard greens. These greens infused what could have been an overly sweet broth with a sour, briny complexity that echoed on my palate long after swallowing. I could eat this bowl over and over again for days, weeks, months.

After such a meal, I was totally craving an ice kachang, so I asked the waitress if they made such delicacies. She laughed and said she had never heard of it, but brought us the dessert menu anyway. Turns out they make a dish somewhat similar to an ice kachang, minus the shaved ice:

I don’t remember what this was called, and Ping doesn’t post its dessert menu online, but it was basically a bowl of assorted jellied things like tapioca, lychees, and fresh coconut shavings, covered in coconut milk and ice cubes. While not exactly what I wanted, it was very refreshing and a perfect, cooling end to a delicious meal.

In other words, the answer is now, yes, there is good Chinese (and Southeast Asian) food in Chinatown. Brave the crazies. It’s totally worth it.

Ping: 102 NW 4th Ave, 503-229-7464, Monday-Friday 11-10, Saturday 4-10.

Restauranting it

Surprise!

Working in a restaurant, even in a slow one, and even in a relatively stationary position, is exhausting. I just worked a closing-to-opening double and I am pooped. Haven't been cooking much either.

So, I didn't have anything for you yesterday and don't have anything for you today, but I promise to write tomorrow.

Hang tight, fellow readers, I still have much to share.

New Tastes / Pho Oregon

Add one point to the offal team:


It may be blurry, but it definitely is what you think it is - tripe. I ate it. And I enjoyed it. A little chewy, a little meaty, a lot of texture, whichever stomach this type of tripe comes from, it's certainly delicious and I think you should try it.

I also think you should get out and eat the rest of this yummy bowl of pho (number #2, in case you're wondering, with everything except the meatballs):


It is way worth the trip up 82nd during rush hour.

Do it.

Pho Oregon. 2518 NE 82nd Avenue. Portland, OR 97220. 503-262-8816.

Road Trip Days 6-9 / Eating famously in San Francisco / Chez Panisse

I’ve been to the Bay Area a few other times in the past to visit friends, to hang out, to cook Thanksgiving dinner, but never with the explicit purpose to eat as much local cuisine as possible. I could have pretended that this most recent trip was planned to visit friends and to look at colleges (for my sister), but, really, I wanted to eat more; and, in a touristy fashion, I wanted to eat as much of the talked-about, famous food as possible.

As Sally and I were staying in a friend’s apartment in Berkeley, we woke up extra early on Saturday to get on the BART and head to Ferry Plaza to experience the farmers market in full force. On this visit, the market was awash in stone fruits – cherries, peaches, plums, nectarines, and, Sally’s new favorite, pluots. We walked around, sampling these fruits as well as olive oils, honeys, pickles, almond butter, peas (…) before deciding that we didn’t want to carry around fresh produce through the city all day. I picked up a pound of Rancho Gordo flageolets (awesome, by the way, and will probably pop up here again soon), a couple of pluots, and a (very strong) cup of Blue Bottle coffee, and we headed inside the ferry building for some (famous) Acme sourdough and Cowgirl Creamery cheese for lunch.

The bread itself was a bit too chewy for my taste (I like as many air bubbles as possible); flavor-wise, it was a bit bland, actually, for sourdough. I much preferred the olive rolls we grabbed as well. The cheese was delicious, but the bigger surprise was the store’s guest cheese of the day – a tarentaise made by Thistle Hill Farm in Vermont by one of my fellow Reedie’s family. Totally cool.

For the next day and a half, we wandered around San Francisco, visiting famous places, like the Williams-Sonoma mothership (10 pound bars of chocolate!) and Bi Rite Creamery (I had strawberry balsamic and ginger ice cream – epic),

and less famous, but no less authentically San Franciscan, locales like Four Barrel Coffee, Isaac’s new place of work,* and Heaven’s Dog restaurant (a hip take on Chinese, delicious, but too dark for visible photographs … sorry).

Sally and I also ventured over to the Cheeseboard in Berkeley for their Bastille Day special pie. Not only was this pizza an awesome deal for two small girls ($20 fed us for 2 ½ meals!), but also the quality of ingredients used was so fresh that I could taste summer in every bite. I could overlook the too-chewy crust (I like mine thinner, with more char and bubbles) and embrace the sharp notes of the Comte cheese and shallots, and the sweet heirlooms and thyme. The first night we ate the pizza at the apartment, with their Niçoise salad, still warm, but away from the crowds. It held up well, cold, for lunch, the next day as well, and as a snack on the road (and, now that I think about it, I can’t say the same for other famously delicious pizza like Apizza Scholls in Portland).

None of this, however, compares to our most famous meal, the lunch for which I made a reservation a month in advance, at the awesome but perhaps not too surprising,

Ben, our Berkeley host, and Joanna, my friend from high school, joined Sally and me for the meal. I have to admit that I was a bit disappointed in the beginning – the place was packed and the hostess was spacey and a bit rude, and once we were seated (about 10 minutes after our 2pm reservation), our waitress seemed to want to rush us into ordering our meal. Things improved dramatically, however, when the food arrived.

My salad, baby romaine with raw zucchini and mint, was every bit as light, crisp, and refreshing as I desired, almost like a cool glass of ice water.

My sister had a pizzetta with goat cheese, shallots, and green onion. It was a bit heavy for a lunchtime appetizer, but it tasted great and Sally enjoyed it.

Ben had a beet salad served with avocado and cucumbers. The picture doesn’t do justice to the excellence of this dish. I certainly never would have thought to pair these three vegetables, their flavor profiles seemingly too disparate to complement. Yet the flavor and texture contrasts – at the same time crunchy and creamy, crisp and rich – brought by each element recall a more complex, deconstructed cuisine, yet without the assistance of foams, gels, or liquid nitrogen. This is Alice Waters/California cuisine at its best – a celebration of seasonal ingredients in all of their unadorned glory.

Sally and Joanna both ordered the roasted chicken breast, served with grilled polenta, summer veg (corn and peas, mostly), and a tomatillo sauce. All of the flavors here were good, and the chicken very moist, but I think there was a little too much on the plate – it was almost a three-course meal in itself.

Ben ordered a pizza with housemade sausage and nettle leaves. The leaves were a new taste for all of us, and lent surprisingly creamy note, still with a lingering bitterness, which complemented the sausage nicely.

My favorite entrée was my own – oricchette with a lamb ragu. The pasta was super fresh, with just the right amount of chew, and its crevices were the perfect vehicle for the shreds of tender lamb.

For dessert, Joanna had the espresso-chocolate pave, a dense, flavor-packed brownie of a dessert – a few small bites were enough for me.

Ben had a beautiful black mission fig tart, which was surprisingly not sweet – the pure subtle taste of fig shone through.

I had roasted apricots with raspberry couli and sabayon – orgasmic. Just sweet enough, with a little crunch provided by the crust on the apricots, caramelized and warm, the best possible flavors intensified by the oven. While I wish there had been a higher ratio of apricots to accoutrements, I still licked my bowl clean.

Sally chose the most Alice Waters-y dish of the evening for her dessert – a bowl of summer fruit (Santa Rosa plums, a Suncrest peach, and local raspberries). The plums and raspberries were good (sorry, Isaac, not quite as awesome as you described), but the peach was the greatest surprise. Being from Georgia, I am a self-admitted peach snob, and thus rarely enjoy a west coast peach. But this peach was just as good as the best of the early season Gaffney peaches my mom picks up on her way back from Charlotte every summer. Juicy, sweet, slightly creamy, and golden yellow all the way through – this was what peaches are supposed to taste like.

We finished the meal a bit confused about what time of day it was (I don’t think I’ve ever eaten like this for lunch – 3 courses with a bottle of wine – but I could get used to it. Anyone out there want to fund a Gourmet lunches for Kate campaign?). Sally and Ben went home to take a nap, and Joanna and I wandered down to the Edible Schoolyard for a bit more Alice Waters time before she headed back to Carmel and I back to the apartment to pack for the last leg of the trip.

With not much famous left in us, Sally and I drove up to Ashland the next day to visit Sunya, my freshman year roommate, and then on to Portland on Friday. I’ve settled in to my temporary summer house, looking for jobs, ** cooking, and eating for myself again.

* We did sample an apple maple bacon donut here, which we later discovered while vegging out in front of the Food Network is one of their star’s “best thing I ever ate (with bacon).” Small world.

** Want to hire me? I’m a bright college grad who will do anything and everything, preferably around food. References available…

Road Trip Days 1-5 / Observations on the middle of the country

In many cases, I find it strangely comforting to confirm stereotypes. Not so much stereotypes like, “All people from the South are fat and ignorant,” but stereotypes more like, “Germans eat a lot of sausage and drink a lot of beer” (true). To me, these stereotypes are more along the lines of common wisdom, and verifying their accuracy reminds me that it is possible to trust the words of experience. Case in point – the Midwest. Flat. Mesmerizing. Most of the time, pretty damn boring. Just like everyone said. We had thought that we would find surprising roadside gems, but, in the end, we just found Patti's 1880's settlement, where we did not eat:

and an overpriced animal farm, in which we did not enter:


The road trip took Sally and me up through Nashville to St. Louis and from there, across vast, straight stretches of Kansas, Colorado, Utah (more on Salt Lake later), and northern Nevada. While we certainly witnessed some amazing scenery (see Smoky Mountains, the Great Salt Flats, and Tahoe), many days we had only the masses of trucks on to keep us alert. That, and snacks:


Sitting here reflecting on the journey, I’ve realized that, for those ten days, we mostly just sat (driving) and ate. Pretty well, I might add. I stocked the car with way too much dried fruit, nuts, energy bars, cheese, chocolate, pretzels, tea. In addition, our great aunt Barbara gifted/forced upon us a giant bag of leftover 4th of July popcorn:

Really, had we been in a hurry and too disinterested to stop, we could have survived on my car snacks the whole way. But stop we did. In Nashville, for barbeque:

and we also stayed with family and friends in St. Louis and Kansas City, where we were generously fed homecooked meals. In Denver, we ate at a Ted’s Montana Grill next to our hotel, as we were too drained to search out anything more interesting. We ate at a Subway and a coffee shop, a rest stop and a park, but our best gamble was on a cantina in Salt Lake City.

The night before, we were struggling to plan our upcoming evening in Salt Lake, and for some reason decided to look up Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives. Confession: I cannot stand Guy Fieri. He came to Portland in the spring to visit Woodstock’s own Otto’s Sausage Kitchen and cast a giant Food Network shadow over the Reed neighborhood for the rest of the day. But his show is a good source of ideas for cheap, good food. And, as it turns out, he does know a good cantina. This place, Lone Star Taqueria, was luckily near our hotel (and after getting lost once already that day, close was important).

The place was small, brightly painted, and packed. All of the cooks in the open kitchen spoke in Spanish. There was an abundant salsa bar. All good signs. As for the menu, you basically had a choice between tacos, burritos (half and full sizes!), or tamales. Simple, but with an abundance of filling choices.

I ordered a carne asada taco plate, and my sister had a chicken tamale plate (after poking around some more at reviews of the place, I wish I had ordered the fish taco of the day – they are supposed to be killer – but “next time,” perhaps). My taco was almost excellent: the steak was juicy and flavorful, the toppings were fresh but sparse (as they should be); I only wish that they used housemade tortillas. While I appreciated the automatic use of double-stacked white corn tortillas (instead of the far less delicious flour), a housemade tortilla makes all the difference between a great taco and the best taco ever.

The rest of the food was good too – the beans and rice were tasty and filling, but I wish I had ordered another taco instead, mostly for varieties' sake. Sally thought her tamale was delicious (I didn’t try it, so her opinion stands).

After dinner, we stumbled back to our hotel, watched a movie, and got some rest before heading out on our last long day of driving into the Bay Area.

Tomorrow: San Francisco, Berkeley, and a surprise lunch!

Road Trip Day 0 / Filling up on Penang

As you may have noticed, I like to plan – make lists, gather maps, color-code, and cost-calculate just about everything. So when it came to my road trip cross-country, I needed to know just when we would leave and go, where we would stay, what we would eat, for an entire 10 days. I printed out maps and directions a couple of times (my reliance on Google maps was probably a bit too trustworthy, in the end), and made countless contacts with friends and family dotted along interstates 70 and 80. In the end, my sister and I did a pretty good job staying on track – getting lost only once, and only staying slightly behind schedule most of the way.

Part of my plan was to stuff ourselves with good eats before getting on the road, because you never know what you’re going to find on the road. And I had to get in one meal at my favorite Malaysian restaurant before taking off. So my family and I ventured out Buford Highway to Penang.

One thing you have to understand about my family and Penang is that we have certain set dishes. We go there so infrequently, that by the time we sit down, we all know exactly what it is we crave. Much of the time, we invite friends just for this reason – more people equals more dishes equals more chances to squeeze in an extra new dish amongst the roti canai and char kway teow. This time, there were only six of us (my immediate family and grandmother), so we only tried one new dish – a fried fish with “Thai sauce.”

But I’m getting ahead of myself. We always start with the same three appetizers:

Roti Canai, a griddle-fried pancake, made with lots of butter and served with chicken curry. This dish is always a crowd pleaser. The bread is airy and only slightly sweet, with alternating pockets of air and chewy, buttery bits. It can be enjoyed on its own, but is awesome in the curry. Because we usually share these between two or three people, my siblings and I used to fight over who got to eat the potato and who got to eat the bite of chicken (always a random, unidentified piece of dark meat, usually with skin and bone attached – my parents used to describe watching the chicken butchers in Singapore hack away at the birds until no more than small cubes – nothing like supermarket chicken in America). We always save the leftover sauce to pour over white rice with the rest of our meal.

Satay (one chicken and one beef), Malaysia’s version of meat-on-a-stick, served with peanut sauce (except for me), cucumbers, and red onions. My dad has come up with his own version of satay, which we have served at a couple of dinner parties over the years. It’s surprisingly tricky to recreate the marinade, and many restaurant versions, in my opinion, just aren’t up to par.

Achat, pickled, jullienned veggies, covered in peanut sauce and sesame seeds. I’ve never eaten this (warning, don’t give me peanuts unless you are skilled with an Epi Pen and know the fastest way to a hospital), but it’s one of my brother’s favorite dishes.

Following the appetizers, we pretend like we don’t know what else to order for a few minutes, close our menus, and recite our standards:

Pork Fried Rice, for my increasingly less picky sister, which, in Penang’s Malay version, has little seasoning other than oil, and a smattering of carrots, peas, and red onions to go with the char sui pork. About 5 or 6 years ago, Penang added a menu insert of “daily specials” that actually never changed, including the memorably misspelled Pineapple Friad Rice. Entertained by the comedy of it all, we would order this instead, until finally growing tired of the overwhelming sweetness of the pineapple added in.

Char Kway Teow, a fried rice noodle dish, with seafood, egg, and a few vegetables. Traditionally, the dish is very spicy, but at Penang it varies from visit to visit. This particular night, it was one of the hottest things that we ordered. Regardless of the varying intensity, char kway teow is one of the few dishes we have ordered every single visit. It is one of my favorites, and I crave it regularly. My mom tells me this is because she ate it constantly while she was pregnant with me, and so I’ve had it in my blood since before I was born. Maybe this is true, or maybe it is just delicious.

Kari Sayu, a vegetable curry, served in a coconut broth. We first ordered this dish a couple of years ago on a whim, and it is now in regular rotation, partially due to the abundance of green in the bowl, and partially due to my mother’s obsession with lady fingers (or okra, in the south). This curry manages to walk the line between creamy and crunchy, and it only slightly spicy – a nice contrast to our other dishes, like –

Crispy Golden Fried Squid, a spicy calamari, covered in some kind of chili powder and served with beautiful slices of bell peppers and onions. This was the first squid that I ever enjoyed – it is never chewy, always crisp – and it’s painfully addictive.

As I mentioned earlier, our guest dish of the evening was a deep-fried whole fish (we were thinking red snapper, but the menu just calls it fish) with what they called “Thai sauce” a mysteriously red lemongrass sauce that makes an appearance on many of Penang’s seafood. The fish was flaky and moist, just as it should be, but the sauce stole the show. I found myself scraping it on to rice too many times to count. More Thai sauce, please!

After stuffing ourselves with spice, we always end our meal with Ice Kacang. As my parents explained to me at a very young age, successful, stomachache-less Malaysian meals need both heating and cooling elements. As our entrees are almost always hot and greasy, our desserts must always be cooling. An ice kacang does just that. Extremely sweet and strange the first few times you eat it, the snow-cone like bowl of awesome gradually grows powerfully enticing. At this point in my eating career, I can’t imagine anything better to end a meal, and I find myself wanting them every time I eat spicy food. What makes it so strange, though? At first glance, it seems innocent enough – a towering pinnacle of shaved ice with syrup on top. But this syrup is not your average artificially colored high-fructose corn syrup mess. Instead it is a combination of rose syrup, palm sugar, and sweetened condensed milk. And hiding underneath the tower is a collection of agar agar jellies, atap seeds, corn, and beans:

Sound weirder? It took me several years to get up the courage to try the treats hiding underneath, but it is now my job to eat up the bottom. I don’t know why it tastes so good, really, but it is. Awesome.

Stuffed and happy, we left the restaurant and headed home to finish packing, organizing, planning. I was still full the next morning when Sally and I jumped in the car at 8 am and headed to St. Louis.

Tomorrow: The long leg of the trip, across the Midwest, though the desert, and into the west coast. Stay tuned!