Hope Springs Eternal

For the last year I have really been trying to embrace this "molecular gastronomy". It's not taking.

Its greatest contributor Ferran Adria prefers the moniker "modern cuisine", and I concur. I was taken aback last spring at the Catersouce Convention in Las Vegas by young European chefs demonstrating a nitrogen-frozen mojito and quick frozen yogurt lollipops. Cool space-aged equipment and a whole array of products that I can buy online rather cheaply...and I have!

I have been seduced by pictures of beautiful food from another planet called "Alinea", and another called "NOMA". I've studied some of the works of Adria and Andres, and I'm currently making my way through a series of Harvard lectures by a number of today's cutting edge culinarians. I even did a little demo of this stuff just a couple days ago in Maryland.

Milk skin, spheres, powdered anything--dehydrated, aerated, gelled, noodled, filmed, parceled, and yes...foamed gastronomic delights! And I must tell you that after working with some of this stuff and paying huge amounts of money to try it in restaurants I really don't get it. It's just not fucking food!

I'll tell you how weird it got for me. In designing a menu for a recent benefit dinner I actually almost menued Thai Curry Marshmallows with Chili, Lime, and Crispy Chicken Skin. That's when I woke up in a sweat, screaming, and said "this must stop".

I must say that I finally got the blackberry sphere right, and it was pretty frickin' cool, but I couldn't help but notice the harsh aftertaste from the calcium chloride. You've seen this stuff, it's the little white balls that you spread on your sidewalk when it snows. I think they're used in pickling as well.

A couple days ago I put a teaspoon of them in a little plastic cup and added some water to dissolve them. Within moments the plastic cup became too hot for me to hold. And you want me to eat this? Even worse, serve it to others? And this is something that naturally occurs and is not a dangerous "chemical". I dunno pal!

When the long-distance love of my life and I are able to get together for a quarterly visit we always have at least one extravagant meal together. Last November it was at The Inn at Dos Brisas in The Middle of Nowhere, Texas. They are one of 20 U.S. restaurants that are fortunate to have a Five-Star rating from Forbes (formally Mobil Travel Guide).

Dos Brisas is about 2 hours from Houston on a road that Tom Tom is very confused about. Once through the stately front gate and on the property one winds over hill and dale through several Certified Organic growing fields where most of the Inn's produce is grown year round. Once at the 28 seat restaurant we were escorted in and seated in front of a huge and picturesque fireplace--the evening's only diners. We were pampered by the manager/maitre d'/sommelier and cooked for diligently by a team of two (one of whom was supervising for the most part I believe). You can tell a 5-Star place by the little stool they bring the ladies to place their purses on. That may be about it these days as you'll soon see.

Our first course, a amuse, was a lone tiny radish buried in a bowlful of brown butter powder that needed more brown butter and salt. I actually kind of like this technique where a fat or other non-water item is blended with tapioca maltodextrin into a feather light powder that melts immediately in your mouth.

Maltodextrin is used in several things that we've been consuming for ages. The thing that most readily comes to mind is the protein powder that so many body builders stir into a delicious (sometimes) shake after a hard workout.

The radish was good, the combination was good (in theory)...but it was a two component dish where one component was merely plucked from the ground and the other made poorly.

Next we were dazzled with a couple tiny, tiny small little beets, some beet puree, and a baby beet leaf all splayed out on a thin slab of slate. Art imitating life I guess.

It was about this time that the bread basket came 'round including a buttermilk biscuit that was the size of a wagon wheel and as dense as a sea ration from the 1600's. It was like one of those coloring book pictures where you're supposed to circle the thing that doesn't belong.

Additional courses stayed the course of more traditional cooking methods, but with a disappointing trend of harvesting vegetables for looks long before they develop flavor and texture. We also found it alarming how undercooked some of the items were. Why does fine-dining have to equal "undercooked" these days? Is that what they're teaching? Where is the skill and craftsmanship in that?

Clams were unpurged and sandy. In a 5-Star place one would expect that someone has taken the time to ram pipe cleaners or something into each clam's intestinal tract and extracted each grain of sand individually. It is normally customary to cut bivalves loose from their shells in even the diviest of oyster bars. These were firmly fastened, a severe faux-pas.

Lobster had no flavor. Dishes were missing components that the menu described. Our captain described Loupe de Mer (the king of European sea bass) as a bottom-dwelling flounder-like fish. Vegetables were undercooked. And vegetables were almost raw...repetitively.

Dessert was a lemon ricotta tart--cheesecake. Just cheesecake.

Mignardises were fresh-from-the-oven full-sized chocolate chip cookies that had nothing on the Toll House back-of-the-bag recipe. Not 5-Stars!

It seems that Forbes has apparently made a mockery of Mobil's Star system if Dos Brisas is any indication of the mettle of things.

Our next venture takes us to Maryland and Virginia just last week during Spring Break.

The Ashby Inn is a delightful bed and breakfast in the tiny town of Paris, VA. Paris is quaint and beautiful with a population of 51. The only two buildings in the town are the Ashby Inn and the church next door which is now closed.

From our first course we felt that the chef was torn between contemporary American and modern cuisines. There was the cleanness and innovation that one expects from today's trendier restaurants, but with a distinct clumsiness and portion sizes that would founder the heartiest of eaters. Too much of a good thing IS too much. Too much of a dish that hasn't quite reached its evolutionary peak is just not good at all. We had several of these.

I had a spectacular bacon and egg salad, though it could have been half its size. Following was an enormous portion of tough, gamey beef that was billed as "smoked" but I couldn't be convinced. The plate was splattered by farro salad that consisted of the now-popular ancient grain swimming in a warm sauce based on the most indistinguishable flavor I've ever experienced. It was brown and it tasted like a combination of stale refrigerator melange and wine vomit.

Joan had a pork shoulder dish that was presented in a not-elegant manner. Really an over-sized clod of uninteresting well-done pork piled onto...something. I can't remember, but it did have a couple of sorrel leaves thrown on for garnish and delicious puree of garbanzo beans that tasted more like Jerusalem artichokes.

She had an amazing dessert of warm tapioca pearls swimming in a light cinnamon custard, pistachios and some olive oil, and crowned with a quenelle of dried fig gelato. Very delicious actually. My dessert was a chocolate semifreddo with candied barley and vincotto ice cream.

Semifreddo is turning up on a lot of menus this year. Last year it was chiboust and speculaas, this year semifreddo. This is sort of new to me, or at least it's been a long time. Semifreddo means "half frozen" and in my opinion amounts to lightly aerated frozen mousse that is not nearly as pleasurable to eat as ice cream. Vincotto is a condiment made from non-fermented grape must leftover from the wine making process. Good I suppose. Anti-climatic at best.

Candied barley nearly destroyed my teeth and was entirely inedible. Raw, whole barley was tossed with a little hot caramel. That's it. No cooking, no puffing. Just hard, hard little pellets of grain. If this entire meal was the product of a creative chef being inspired on the way to work, tossing together initial ideas and throwing them on a plate thinking "this could be better, but I'm not sure how", then candied barley was its pinnacle!

The Alinea influence is felt here mainly in dessert, although Achatz/Adria's "air bread" turned up on our favorite course which was a delightful sharp cheese from Meadow Creek Dairy in Galax, Virgina. Toasted almonds ground together with maltodextrin and a little sugar made an awesome addition to the semifreddo. Saved it in fact. The presentation very Alinea-ish. Altogether though we gave the place a 5 out of 10.

Keep practicing. Stop reading and become your own chef!

A couple of days later we ventured out to Fredrick, MD to the kind-of-famous-in-some-circles Volt. Right away we were treated to a trio of amuse'; mock oyster, potato soup with lobster, and crisp apple foam with foie gras.

Mock oyster was the most perfect and beautiful sphere of salsify (oyster root) topped with a hand-torn piece of oyster leaf (never heard of it). Terrible.

Potato soup was sublime, but Joan's son and I both got the tiniest fragment of lobster shell that nearly took out a couple teeth. Disappointing in the end.

Foam and foie gras thing was right out of the Alinea play book. Just saw it online that afternoon. What it amounts to is a meringue made with water and methyl cellulose (whatever that is), dried in a dehydrator, and filled with the tiniest little squirt of foie gras. Anti-climatic at best.

Thin sliced kampachi was about 1/2 inch thick, and there was about 4 ounces of it on the plate. Way too much for the first of 7 courses. Blood orange sauce was juice over-thickened with UltraTex. We used a similar product in the hospital to thicken liquids and pureed foods so that patients who were unable to chew could enjoy some type of texture to their food and beverages. Comes out kind of like piping gel. Not very classy.

I must say that the next course was a divine combination of noodles arranged in a bonito flavored broth with radish kimchi, microgreens, perfectly cooked chicken, and a poached quail egg. This was our favorite, and I'd put it against nearly anything I've ever eaten for flavor and finesse.

A couple courses later we had turbot (another one of the great fishes of Europe) that was bland, flat, colorless, boring, and covered with what appeared to be a substantial mouthful of spit except it had no flavor. Here we go with that foam crap.

Right away we got three black ravioli haphazardly thrown on the plate and artfully topped with more spit, except this spit looked more like bubble bath suds. Still no flavor in the foam. Is this stuff supposed to be for looks or what?

Next came sweetbreads that were properly cleaned and stuck back together with "meat glue" or transglutaminase. Now I actually really like this stuff. It's the secret behind chunked and formed ham, turkey, and roast beef; the star behind Chicken McNuggets, and the controversial element that binds little scallop scraps into something that looks like a real scallop. You'll see these heavily coated with breadcrumbs and fried on Chinese buffets.

Transglutaminase was at one time illegal in Australia and parts of Europe because clever butchers can take meat scraps, glue them together, form them into a nice uniform logs, and slice them into what appears to be top quality filet mignon, and no one can tell. I've been using it to bind roulades, especially this boned and rolled whole chicken that I do. Before I discovered meat glue I was tying and I lost at least 25% of each chicken because it was just ugly. This stuff really is handy in my opinion, but one must wear gloves and a face mask when working with it or it can cause pretty severe problems.

Some chefs are mixing it with pureed seafood and chicken and then it can actually be rolled or extruded into "noodles" and poached. Kind of cool but then there is a great deal to be said about actually just eating a noodle.

Probably the best course was a couple of slices of beef (not sure what cut) that was served with a tiny little potato and perfect thin rectangle of potato puree on the plate underneath. So I'm guessing that this is what this guy does really well. Ok, just do that! It was decadent, delicious, and appropriately portioned!

Now we start down the slippery slope of modern dessert.

I think what they tried to do was recreate carrot cake but with parsnips. Parsnips look like white carrots, but it is there with physical resemblance that all similarities cease in my opinion. While quite closely related botanically (which may be an error that no one has had the stones to challenge) parsnips to me have a flavor and texture closer to a sweet potato. Nonetheless they do not make good cake.

Also on the plate however was a homemade version of Dippin' Dots, which I adore. Basically you take ice cream base and drip it into liquid nitrogen. Frickin' cool, don't care what you say!

Then we have another idea stolen from Grant Achatz (which by the way rhymes with "jackets"). Nitrogen frozen chocolate mousse. Much better that the Ashby semifreddo from earlier in the week. A paper thin shard of burnt sugar made it all worthwhile, but otherwise the dish was sloppy and not terribly exciting.

Even Joan's teenage son agreed on a score of 5 out of 10, even though he got a free special occasion dessert out of the deal. You guessed it...semifreddo.

So pending a trip to Chicago this summer to try "modern cuisine" at the last existing mecca of its creation, and to say goodbye to Charlie Trotter's which closes its doors in August, I am all but giving up and going back to the classics. I intend to give it one more shot in my own kitchen and I've fashioned a shopping list of among other things iota carrageenan, calcium lactate, gellan, methyl cellulose, glycerin flakes, a dehydrator, and a caviar spherification kit. Perhaps...just maybe there's something to this stuff and these other guys are just doing it wrong.

So I said all of that to say this...

The original title of this article was "Foam Is For Pussies, Revisited". It was inspired by my chagrin with modern cuisine--a plug for the classics and the simplicity of "a lot of little things done well".

I was called to St. Louis, MO for a seminar about sustainability (I feel another article coming on). While trying desperately to stay awake during a lecture on building "green" parks and buildings I entertained myself by Googling "best St. Louis restaurants", in the hopes of finding a reasonably decent dinner in a town that I am sure is void of genuine cuisine. Although there is this indigenous thing called Gooey Butter Cake that must be experienced!

At the same time my mind wandered back to the last 2 or 3 upscale dining experiences I've had and I thought "Jesus, another 3 hours in a restaurant wishing I'd gone somewhere else". Keep in mind that I know nothing about this city, and even forgot that they make beer here.

My eyes found "Niche" on the little 2 inch wide screen of my Blackberry, and as best I could tell with just the right squint it was by far the most interesting option that I could conjure. I made reservations. Nestled in an unassuming neighborhood next door to a church and across the street from what appears from the huge flashing neon Budweiser sign (there's a lot of those in this town) to be somewhere between a biker bar and a liquor house.

I went in and was shown to a table for one directly across from the kitchen...and then it began.

I gave the menu a quick glance and decided upon my entire meal in mere moments. I don't remember ever being so decisive!

"BBQ" Trotter; foie gras, calvados, tobacco, grapefruit, and mint

Pork Duo; smoked shoulder, pulled belly, popcorn polenta, dill, hickory broth

Vacherin; lemon meringue, thyme, hickory, lavender

I had passed on the Chef's 5-course sampler, but was disappointed that I was going to miss a couple things that weren't on the menu--and then they came.

They sent out an amuse which was an egg shell filled with warm maple custard, roasted shiitake mushrooms and I believe grapefruit (but I could be mistaken), and then topped with bonito caviar. I wasn't in the mood for caviar, but then it occurred to me that this wasn't true caviar. Oh no--much, much better. It was Adria-style hand-made caviar-like "spheres" made from an umami filled bonito broth.

I dug down into the egg with the little spoon and combined silky smooth custard, bacon-like roasted shiitake nuggets, a hint of sweet/sour fruit, and a little mass of "caviar", and suddenly I was transported back to Joel Robuchon's amazing lemon/anise gelee. I think that I can honestly say that the two afore described dishes were the two most genius dishes that have ever graced my palate, and I have discovered an amazingly valid use for spherification! I'll be investing in the study of this craft immediately. Like a child watching fur-lined red velvet clothed legs dropping from the chimney on Christmas morning--I BELIEVE! I'm giddy! I furiously texted Joan elation-laden expletives describing the rebirth of cuisine as I know it.

Next I was brought a delightfully playful arrangement of carrots on a large white plate entitled "Carrots Three Ways". On this night two baby carrots beat the fuck out of beets on a rock!

Next came another dish that incorporated some of the stuff I see in the fancy books of late. A space-age arrangement of boneless pig's feet molded into disks and fried layered with Keller's foie gras torchon and shards of fleur de sel "glass". A sauce made from apple brandy and infused with tobacco (Cohiba or Marlboro...I can't be sure) adorned the plate underneath. Grapefruit and mint finished the presentation. The textures, flavors, and originality were flawless!

This is how I cook...take a perfect component from one chef, another from a favorite book, one more from a cool picture, and some of my own creativity and intuition to make it mine. When it doesn't work is when you don't really know what you're doing, but that's not the case with Chef/Owner Gerard Craft (who I didn't actually meet). This guy really knows what he's doing. He's the real deal. After a little accidental research it turns out that in addition to ten years worth of accolades he's nominated for a James Beard award this year. Hope he wins! He certainly has my vote after just two amuse' and a first course.

My delightful server Sarah (who also deserves a James Beard award) brought me a single slice of focaccia that was flavored with something, something, and chili flakes. It was the softest, most moist, chewy, airy, and delicious bread I've ever had. I had bread this memorable one other time, and that was at Charlie Trotter's in 1997. Sarah didn't offer butter, she didn't offer more focaccia. When I was done she took the plate away.

This was a course--a bread course. Probably not intentional but how fricking perfect is that? At this point I'm asking myself where did this guy learn how to cook?

Then a scoop of sorbet as a palate cleanser--grapefruit and basil.

Now at first I'm thinking this is the 3rd course I've had that had grapefruit (though I'm still not sure about the first alleged grapefruit addition). But then I tasted. Sweet...salty...bitter...sour...basil, basil, basil! Then I went back to the demo I did for Joan's class last week on the physiology of taste when I explained the benefit of filling the palate with flavor by touching all of the components of taste.

So it's not actually just grapefruit again...but perfect!

We move on to a spectacular table-finished presentation of pork shoulder, pork belly, apples, parsnips, a really cool polenta cake that tastes a bit like popcorn, some crunchy pork cracklings, and an ethereally light hickory broth. I thought about the slight version of this dish that Joan had in Virgina last week and I wanted to go back there and punch the guy that made it right in the mouth. THIS was the way it was SUPPOSED to be!

Here I shall make a comment about where dessert has been heading for the last few years in the fine-dining sector. Why does dessert have to be made from vegetables and herbs and chilies and such. What's wrong with fruit and sugar and chocolate and a limited number of spices. Why does black pepper and vinegar and olive oil and basil have to keep showing up? Are we really that bored with dessert that we have to reinvent it? I wasn't!

Ok, thanks.

When I ordered the Vacherin I ordered it like a lot of people are going to vote this November--not FOR anyone but AGAINST one guy (again hope springs eternal). My memory is of the gateaux I made every day as an apprentice with circles of crispy baked meringue, ice cream, and whipped cream. I figured this would be at least that, but much, much more and I was not disappointed.

Again I was presented with a plate designed by a sculptor and a genius in a nearby galaxy 60 years from now. Something like the ice palace from the first Superman movie actually. A disk of lemon/thyme ice cream was topped with whipped cream and tiny scoops of the most tart lemon sorbet I've ever had (almost too tart to be honest, but it worked) and shingled with delicate sheets of perfectly crispy meringue that you could almost read through. Splatters of rich lemon curd, dots of woody (but not smoky) hickory whipped cream, thyme leaves, and lavender blossoms adorned the outer circle of the plate.

This was another dish composed of inspired components that I've seen in some of my favorite books, yet it was truly a unique dish that belongs to Niche. While it is clear to me where some of Chef Craft's inspiration comes from, it is truly inspiration and not plagiarism by any stretch of the imagination.

Sarah brought the bill. $60!

I paid over twice that 3 times in the last year and got bupkiss!

I'm putting Niche in the category with the most masterful meal I've ever had at Robuchon last year which blew my mind, restructured my entire understanding of cuisine, and took $350 plus tip out of my pocket.

I paid the sixty bucks and left before they changed their minds.

Folks there is hope for the future of cuisine in America. I wish I could tell you how to find it every time, but there doesn't seem to be a pattern or an accurate and consistent indicator of excellence. Gerard Craft has certainly found his "Niche". I guess you have to kiss a lot of frogs.

That's a different story!

Smoke 'Em If You've Got 'Em

Ya know that haunting, delicious, ethereal scent that is produced by seasoned meat simmering slowly over a hardwood fire? Pork, ribs, chicken, and beef brisket...oh how wonderful! Your nose perks up, your mouth waters, your stomach growls. Even on a summer evening when you smell it in your neighborhood it frankly just turns you on--makes you hungry!

Well, no matter how it starts, when 63 other people are creating that smell around you and it's 4 o'clock in the morning, and it's in your hair and your clothes, and it's getting a little chilly, and you just want to sleep...it's fucking repulsive!

On Friday September 30, 2011 two of the five members of the newly formed Dean Street Smokin' Rib Rubbers showed up at a parking lot in dowtown Jonesboro, AR to begin setting up for Jonesboro's annual barbecue competition. I wasn't one of them, but I am a member of the team and I was there at 4 am wishing the guy next to us would have shown up a couple hours earlier to start his fire!

We talked about doing this last year and nothing ever happened. This year we signed up just in time! Our team leader and head cook is Mark Griffith. Mark is one of our catering cooks at ASU, and he has a nice butt...barbecued pork butt that is!

My first holiday season at ASU I had just hired Mark and he brought me a barbecued pork butt for Christmas. He had cooked a bunch for his church and had a couple left over. I thanked him and put it in our walk-in freezer for a rainy day. I live alone, don't eat at home much, and didn't have room in my home freezer for a ten pound piece of meat. I forgot all about it and from time to time didn't really know if it was still there.

One year later I was headed back to North Carolina (the home of American BBQ, I don't care what you say) for Thanksgiving and I toted the year old frozen roast with me just in case. Not only did it weather the year in the freezer well, it was the BEST barbecue that I and my family had ever had! So good in fact that my nephew and his fiance required it for their wedding the following Spring.

So when this year's barbecue competition came up we knew we had to get involved, and Mark was our guy!

The team consisted of Wes Wade (one of our cooks), David Miller (our General Manager at ASU), myself, Mark, and Allan Gates (Mark's catering partner in the kitchen). Mark is the expert and the rest of us were there to bask in his success, have some fun, and pitch in wherever we could.

It took a day to set the thing up and we started the first fire just after 11 pm. Pork butts went on about 12:30, along with brisket a bit later, and cooked all night. Everything was rubbed with Mark's own spice blend (which I'm still trying to talk him out of the recipe for), and the larger cuts were injected with a mixture of liquid love and spice!

The competition is broken into four different areas; chicken, ribs, pulled pork, and brisket. Competitors can choose what to enter, we entered all four.

Now here's where it get's a bit sticky...

Food competition is not necessarily about whose food is best. It's about a lot of things seemingly. It's a little about politics, a little about standards, a little about looks. It's about texture, timing, flavor...and I think a little about luck! There were 64 entrants in the competition. Now seriously, when 64 people are cooking all night and have spent the money on equipment and food that a thing like this requires, one might imagine that all 64 are pretty good at what they do.

So imagine that you're the judge...

Tell you what, do this...open a brand new bag of potato chips. Eat one. Eat another one. Let's say you've chosen barbecue potato chips. What do you taste? Imitation smoke, sugar, tomato, a little tanginess. Keep eating them (you can't eat just one). Get down to half the bag. Now tell me what you taste. For me it's always potato, grease, and salt!

Now, tell me how a barbecue judge whose tongue is covered with smoke, sugar, salt, and tanginess is going to be able to differentiate the next 30 or 40 samples accurately. And this was a small competition compared to some. And now put yourself in that seat for 4 hours tasting as many as 256 unique samples of food. Jesus, I wouldn't even be able to sit still much less eat all that stuff! I certainly wouldn't be able to be objective at some point...which is one of the many reasons that I am not a barbecue judge. LOL!

Are you getting yet that we didn't win?

Well anyway, let's look at barbecued chicken. We all know what barbecued chicken is right? Guess again. In competition standards we're talking about thigh meat only. And what the judges want to see (from what we were told) is not chicken to me at all.

I grew up with whole pieces of juicy chicken that are seasoned and cooked slowly on the grill for an hour or even two before being basted at least 3 times with delicious, tangy homemade barbecue sauce. Be careful to wait until the coals are the right temperature and then turn and move the chicken around frequently to avoid burning the sauce. When it's all done the chicken is juicy, the sugar in the sauce is lightly caramelized, and the skin is thin and crispy and holds most of the flavor. Oh how divine!

We were supposed to bone the thigh, remove the skin, scrape off all of the fat from the skin, trim the thigh to a perfect rectangle, then lightly season, roll into a perfect little bundle, and wrap the skin back around it before cooking. You can't tie it or pin it all together, as this would leave unattractive marks.

At this point you can't manhandle the pieces or the skin falls off. In fact, no matter how long you cook it the skin will be fine until the very end when we flip the skin side towards the flame for the final crisping and the skin reacts to the direct heat and shrinks up and off of the meat. At the very least the skin now has no flavor and none of the delicious crispness that would have come from leaving the fat in it.

We did brine the meat for a hour so our chicken was delicious, tender, and juicy...but barbecued chicken it wasn't. Not our fault, but the fault of the system that dictated this heinous bastardization in my opinion.

We didn't place in the chicken category.

Ribs...now Mark's ribs are without peer! Ribs are what Mark does...and pulled pork.

We were told that we could use any kind of pork ribs that we wanted to, as long as they were delicious. We bought St. Louis style ribs (my personal favorite) and baby back ribs. We cooked both...some with the membrane on the backside left intact to be removed after cooking, and some with the membrane removed prior to cooking.

After the team sampled them all we decided unanimously and without reservation that the baby backs with the membrane removed after cooking were far superior not only to each other but also to any ribs we'd ever eaten! These we sent in with great pride.

We didn't place in ribs.

We later found out that the judges in this region are currently (but not always apparently) looking for Kansas City ribs. I don't even know what in the hell that is.

Pulled pork is Mark's claim to fame, and my family will back it up from Arkansas all the way to North Carolina and Virginia. We took morsels from 5 or 6 different butts to submit the perfect entry. And it WAS perfect!

We didn't place in pulled pork.

Beef brisket is more of a western barbecue favorite. Though certainly part of the standard barbecue repertoire we don't do it in the Carolinas. I think it starts in Arkansas and makes its way south to Louisiana and west to Texas. I like barbecued brisket...always have. I've never made it and neither had Mark. We menu a more institutional version at school once a week or so, but have only really gotten it right once that I remember. It's not easy!

Brisket is a tough, fatty, but higher flavorful and less costly cut of meat from the front shoulder of the cow (or steer as it were). It requires proper trimming and just the right amount of fat. Fat...good, too much fat...not good.

It requires the right seasoning, a dark but thin and tender outer crust or "bark", and it needs to be not too tender and not too tough. Not easy! When sliced it needs to be thin and across the grain. There should be a substantial pink "smoke ring" around the edges. It should taste smokey. When sliced it should slice easily and you should be able to stretch it just a couple or 3 millimeters before the meat breaks apart--it should not just fall apart. It should stay together pretty well.

You should not need a knife to cut it for eating, and the necessary remaining fat should melt in your mouth and create a symphony of flavors and textures that you just can't get from any other food!

Our brisket was overcooked. The bark was too thick from too much cooking, and it was tough which made it difficult to slice. We were to produce six perfect slices, and we cut portions of 3 briskets to get them. I would liked to have seen a wider smoke ring and a little pinker meat than grey. The flavor was delicious, but the meat tended more towards falling apart than stretching.

We took 7th place in brisket.

We laughed!

They didn't even pronounce our name right!

Nonetheless, the name was heard and will perhaps stick in their minds for the next time.

Will there be a next time?

A few months ago I did an ACF culinary hot food competition (Category K-4 for those of you who are in the know). I had never done one and I took a bronze medal, which to this day I am ashamed of. The lamb rack I used was supposed to begin unfabricated and the only lamb I could get was already "frenched". The judges awarded me with enough points for a high silver, but later reviewed the rules and took some away because of having the wrong product.

However, they loved my dish. One judge said that he "would love to order this dish in a restaurant". They didn't say anything like that to any other competitor. Had I brought the right product and utilized the trim in an additional item on the plate I would have no doubt been given a gold medal and quite possibly "Best in Show".

The guy who got that designation produced an awful looking combination of foie gras, soft potato, and fried egg (which was tough and brown on the bottom) all served with a salad of vegetable peelings. I kind of liked the salad actually, but the presentation was sophomoric at best and the combination of flavors and textures was in my opinion way to rich and terribly uninteresting. Nonetheless, he got a gold medal and $2,000.

I couldn't help but notice that one of the judges spent the entire hour standing and talking to the gold meal guy as if to "catch up" and reminisce about old times and mutual acquaintances. The same judge told me that my coriander chutney was more of a pesto and that if I was going to use multicultural ingredients and labels that I should study them a little more. I obviously eat more Indian food than this guy, and I assure you that I have studied the cuisine exhaustively. I wanted to tell him to do the same...but I didn't.

So finally what I think is that when one is planning to compete in anything, one must first attend a few competitions and really study what the judges are looking for. Study who wins. Watch what they do at the next competition or two that they enter. Talk to them--pick their brains. Ask them what they do to be successful. Find out who the judges are, and why they are judges. Practice what you do...A LOT! Practice making mistakes and plan how to recover from them successfully. From all of this one should be able to distill what the competition is really all about, and perhaps what it takes to do well in it.

What you and all of your friends and loved ones thinks is spectacular may not mean much at all to the people who don't know you exist. So in the end one must feel a sense of accomplishment from it all. Most importantly one MUST have fun--and the Dean Street Smokin' Rib Rubbers collectively had a blast! We perhaps learned more about each other in a non-occupational setting. We bonded at times. We learned from one another. We respected one another. And we ate some great food!

Would I do it again? Not if my life depended upon it! But if someone else's life, happiness, or success depended upon it, or even if they just asked, I would gladly show up and do anything I could to help! It's what I do.

As for the ACF, I dunno. I don't think so...but who knows what the future will hold. I change my mind all the time.

What I know for sure is that I know food, and Mark Griffith makes the best ribs and pulled pork east of the Mississippi--and at least 100 miles west of it--and that's all that matters! I'm proud to have been there.

The Search Is Over, Part Two (AKA - Molto WTF?)

I remember many years ago listening to a radio show or something like that where the speaker was talking about restaurant expectations. He was discussing something I had experienced, and he gave me the answer I had been looking for to a problem about which I was mystified.

He said, for instance, that people go in droves to Alice Waters' Chez Panisse in Berkley and are often disappointed to find that it's just food that she offers. This is largely due to the expectations that diners have developed by listening to stories, reviews, and marketing pieces about a place. As human beings we take in the hype and we come to expect something much different than can be delivered in reality.

I remember dining at Lutece in NYC back in the late 80's with no expectation and was truly overwhelmed by the flavors of foods I normally don't even eat. I dined at the once (locally) famous Restaurant Million (previously Phillipe Million) in Charleston, SC a couple years later and had the meal of my life. Never heard of the place previously.

Went to Charlie Palmer's place in New York, Aureole, and was very disappointed. A trip to Charlie Trotter's in Chicago left me wondering what these high dollar celebrity chefs have that I don't.

What I settled on was the concept of an agent, a crack marketing team, an enormous staff of talented people, and a whole lot of operating capital.

World class motivator Tony Robbins would say that what they have is drive, acuity, and perseverance. I suspect there's a lot of truth to that as well. I lack most of that some of the time...or some of that most of the time.

So, I think that the idea of expectations has a lot to do with one's dining experience these days! But that's not everything because if I ain't got nothing I do have good taste and an excellent palate.

And that my friends brings us to the steak house of (Molto) Mario Batali--Carnevino. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this because it just gets my blood boiling. I was just at the doctor today and my blood pressure was great. I wanna keep it that way.

Carnevino is a place where you can get a steak that has been aged for at least 60 days, and it will cost you about half of your net income for the same period. Well, it seemed like it anyway.

A New York Strip is $54 and an enormous Ribeye, weight unknown, is $65 per person for two. Yes, $130 for one steak. Had it been an amazing steak I wouldn't be writing this. In fact, I bought a ribeye at our local Kroger two weeks prior and cooked it at home. It could have been one the 10 best steaks I've ever had. I paid about eight 9 bucks for it.

The waiter came to our table and greeted us with his idea of what we should have. He fancied that we should order one of three different items from the grill and split them among the 6 of us. When he returned to take our order and we told him that we preferred to order separately he criticized us and persisted to sell us his idea of a check that would've been about half what it ended up being. What an idiot.

Reminded me of the one time at the poker table that I went "all in" when I had a hand that would've beat anything. Rather than drawing out a pile of money I forced everyone to fold. Valuable lesson...but I digress (again).

So then he brings over some warm bread, not homemade, and two little vessels of condiment. One was butter. The other was "lardo", which is apparently the rendered fat of a pig that has been seasoned, cured, and aged. Fucking repulsive!

Sorry, I can't think of a better way to describe it. "It's an acquired taste", they said. We couldn't acquire it.

When beef is dry-aged, what takes place is water is evaporated out of the meat which concentrates flavor. There is further enzymatic breakdown of muscle tissue which increases tenderness. The outside of the meat turns black and must be trimmed before cooking.

The resulting piece of meat, if aged properly, is simply amazing! It cooks very fast because what cooking is really all about is denaturing protein and evaporating water. It melts in your mouth. Like a complex wine or a good cigar it tastes like several different things...a well aged cheese being one of them usually, maybe a little chocolate, and a little wine. There's nothing finer, and there was nothing that even comes close to it at Carnevino.

We told the waiter how disappointed we were, but none of that made it back to the manager until the next day when Dave and I went back to collect the $80 they stole from us. Well, it turns out it was only a pre-authorization on the credit card that was released a couple days later. The manager had read the comment card I left and was very apologetic. I guess we were the only ones who ever complained.

Nonetheless, if you're ever in Vegas and want to have a round or two of free drinks send me an email and I'll give you the manager's name. He'll be delighted to have you! Let me know if they took my advice and started chilling the bottled soft drinks before serving them. Mine was warm, flat, and expensive.

When in Vegas, Molto Mario should take the straw out of his nose and the stripper out of his lap and pay attention to the overpriced food that has his name on it! But that's just my opinion.

Then...

Just 48 short hours later we walked through a back hallway at the MGM Grand into what I will forever remember as the most amazing meal of my life. Right back where this whole story began--Joel Robuchon

First came the Amuse. Amuse-bouche means "amusement for the mouth" and is usually something designed to whet the appetite in just a couple of bites. Everyone at the table usually gets the same thing, and it is a course generally conceived as free or gratis by the guest (of course it's built in to the price). The amuse is also not usually posted on the menu or ordered by the guest. Understate and over-deliver is my favorite motto in our business.

Our amuse was Lemon Gelee with Fennel, Fennel Cream and Basil Coulis. It came out in an almost egg shaped glass dish and must have been around 33 degrees. It was ice cold. This made a huge difference. Basically the best, most tart, coldest lemon Jello (I hate to call it Jello, but that's what gelee is) you could imagine with finally diced fresh bulb fennel, topped with half- whipped cream that was flavored with fennel puree, and garnished with pureed basil.

Even if you didn't like the combination it was hard to argue with the mastery of flavors, textures, and temperature. From the first bite some of our table was disgusted, but I knew at once that we were in for the ride of a lifetime. I think I even giggled just a little bit.

Next came Carpaccio of Foie Gras with Violet Artichoke Salad and Shaved Parmesan. Black truffles were not listed on the menu...another extra! Again, I've never eaten anything that was so perfect. Perfect flavors, perfect amount of dressing with the perfect amount of acid, served at the perfect temperature. Spectacular how-did-they-cut-that-so-thin presentation, and I'm certain that nothing was leftover from the day before.

Also at the table was a dish of Lemon Flavored Scallops with Red Turnips and Radishes. I didn't taste the scallops but they looked divine. What was most remarkable was the radishes were whole and about the size of a fingernail, but smoothly and evenly coated with a bright green herb butter. It was as if they were grown that way. I'm blown away by the details in this meal, and we're only on the second course!

Chestnut Veloute with Smoked Lardons Foam followed. Imagine a warm cappuccino with extra foam, but it's flavored with bacon and chestnuts...heavy on the cream. Somehow there were almost microscopic flakes of bacon on top of the soup. Micro-planed I would guess, but perhaps Robuchon is as particular about knife skills as my Skills Development instructor Bruno Elmer was.

Anyway, each taunting bite left me wanting just a little more bacon...just a little more chestnut...and alas, the bottom of the bowl appeared.

For the main course (Les Plats Principaux in French) we had Sea Bass and Octopus with Lemon Grass and Baby Leeks, Chicken En Cocotte with Fricassee of Salsify, Spiny Lobster with Daikon and Nori in Sake Broth, and my Braised Veal Cheeks with Thai Spices and Fondant Carrots. I did not try the bass or the chicken. I'm told they were delicious. I did try the lobster and thought to myself for the first time in 20 years, "Oh, so THIS is what lobster tastes like".

After eating the veal flavored chewing gum at Jaleo a few nights previous I was able to share with one of my fellow diners that THIS is what veal cheeks taste like as well! They melted in my mouth like braised butter. OMG! They were surrounded by a clear veal broth that was ever so slightly scented with lemongrass and a little Thai chili, but not enough to know it until just after the very last bite, and only for a moment.

All of our entrees were accompanied by a small side dish of Robuchon's signature Pommes Puree (mashed potatoes). The potatoes are painstakingly made by boiling fingerling potatoes with their peels intact, peeling them, pushing them through a ricer...then a tamis. Then the potatoes are cooled and held for service, at which time they are heated with cream and mounted with butter--almost 50/50.

They're more like potato buttercream. They only gave us a small portion each, and after what I guess came across as a bewildered glance they brought another bowl for the table. They shouldn't have. They knew what they were doing the first time.

Throughout the meal we had been tantalized by a bread cart that carried at least 15 kinds of bread loaves and rolls that had baked that morning. We tried several of them...several times. There was bacon bread, mini baguette, petit pain, basil rolls, two kinds of cheese rolls, butter rolls, brioche, and a few others. But that was over now.

Our tables were cleared to make room for Fuji Apple Confit, Cinnamon Sable, and Manzana Milkshake; Guajana Chocolate with Coffee Ice Cream, Caramelized Puffed Rice, and Lemon Confit; and Banana and Passion Fruit Cream with Dark Rum Granite and Coconut Foam.

About 10 or 12 years ago a friend asked me, "What's the best dessert you've ever had?" I responded that I hadn't had it yet. A year or so later I had a Creme Brulee Napoleon with Butterscotch at Etienne Jaulin's Townhouse in Charlotte, NC. Etienne was trained by Michel Richard and Jean Louis Palladin. His restaurant closed years ago and he moved on to better things, but his legacy lives on in preparing "The Best Dessert I've Ever Had".

Robuchon's were awfully pretty though!

And when it all had ended, along came the mignardises (min-YAR-deez). Like the amuse-bouche, mignardises are perceived as being free by the guest, they are not ordered, and everyone usually gets the same thing. It's dessert after dessert in just a few bites. For that matter in America after-dinner mints are mignardises, but nothing like these!

I've looked back at the picture of the cart and counted 36 different hand-made candies that our waiter described for us by name and served to us each by choice. Between us all we tried most of them I'd guess. It was another lesson in "how did they do that?"

I remember blackberry opera torte, Poire Williams, blueberry custard, caramel with sea salt, pineapple gelee, pineapple marshmallow, blueberry financier, chocolate feuilletine, ganache macaroon, and five-spice chocolate. But if I studied my whole life I don't think that I could figure out the flavors and textures. They were not of this world. I've eaten a lot of chocolate, but never anything like this.

Fifteen cooks and six bakers and pastry chefs labored over this meal, some French...some American. Of course the Chef himself was unavailable, but he had been there a week or so prior and was expected back in a couple of weeks.

I can't tell you what it cost because my boss' boss might be reading this.

I floated away with a grin on my face.

I'm not sure that all of my dining companions "got it", but I'm grateful that they tolerated one of the most joyous moments of my life.

There'll be another burger run soon!

Stay hungry my friends!

The Search Is Over, Part One

We sat in a room with purple velvet couches, fresh orchids, and soft piano in the background. Ours was the only party seated in this particular room. The wall was covered in a thick carpet of live ivy and below was a flower bed filled with tiny pink and white azaleas.

The table was adorned with two white linen runners, gold mesh, and over-sized, starched white linen napkins. I don't mean cotton.

First a tiny stool came to the table for Laura's purse.

Then a little plate came with two half-dollar sized curls of purest French butter sprinkled with sea salt.

A maitre d', a captain, a sommelier, two servers bringing bread and 2 kinds of bottled water, and two or three other tuxedo clad professionals all stopped by our table to offer their services. We hardly ever noticed them. There were plenty of other diners, but we were the only ones that seemed to matter to the team of French and Asian service staff there to meet our needs.

Looking back I don't remember anyone ever once asking, "How is everything?" They didn't need to--they knew the answer.

This was Joel Robuchon!

In 1989 French chef Joel Robuchon was given the title of "Chef of the Century" by the Gault Millau guide. To date his dozen or so world-wide restaurants have earned 26 Michelin stars, more than any chef on the planet. His restaurant in Las Vegas has 3, which is the maximum rating. Michelin just started rating American restaurants in recent years. Nine other U.S. restaurants have 3 stars...world renowned Charlie Trotter has only 2.

The 16-Course degustation menu is $385 per person plus supplements for caviar and French truffles. We didn't do that!

We chose a 4-Course menu at $180 per person. When it was all over I would have gladly given twice that. The experience we had was beyond value and without peer!

The night before we had dined at Thomas Keller's Bouchon. Bouchon is Keller's more informal bistro, and though I don't doubt that America's most revered chef is at the helm on occasion and has well trained chefs doing his bidding in Vegas, I have to wonder if it would match what happened on the same night at the original in Napa Valley.

The menu certainly interesting. The service fantastic. But the noise in the place from 200 or so happy travelers and convention attendees was deafening. Robuchon only seats 60, and they don't come to party.


Every protein at our table at Bouchon was overcooked. Scallops were deeply over-seared on one side and a lighter caramel on the other. Chicken breast was dry. Sweetbreads still had some membrane in them and were crumbly in texture.

A fantastic display of paper-thin sliced cured meats were all store-bought. Duck confit was missing the robust, melt-in-your-mouth flavors of herbs, garlic, juniper, and pepper. Foie gras vinaigrette didn't taste like foie gras.

I do however applaud the Peanut Butter & Jelly Pot de Creme and the Ile Flotante, which is the Keller version of the old-school "Floating Island", consisting of poached meringue atop a sea of Creme Anglaise. While both were excellent, they both lacked just one minimal twist that would have rocketed them to perfection.

The first night in town we dined at Jaleo which is Jose Andres' tapas restaurant in our hotel, the $8.4 billion, two-month old Cosmopolitan. I recalled that I saw Anthony Bourdain interview Chef Andres at his home restaurant in Washington, DC. Andres trained under Ferran Adria at El Bulli in Catalonia, Spain, so one might expect that he knows his stuff. I have not since learned otherwise. Jaleo was perhaps our unified favorite--until last night.

Entering Jaleo one is greeted by a sea of partying diners spilling out into the hotel lobby, some begging for a table. In the back a large circular cooking area contains 3 or 4 separate wood fires atop which are huge pans of authentic paella that are made fresh throughout the evening. It was like being in the fields of Spain where paella is made at lunchtime over open fires to feed farm workers. Unbelievable! The sights...the smells!

We feasted upon 3 or 4 different types of ham made from the famous black-footed pigs of Iberia. Bourdain toured the ham making facilities in Spain with Adria! Honestly, I wasn't terribly impressed. Tasted like a good old-fashioned Virgina ham to me, but what do I know? I have had some pretty good Serrano hams before, and the one we had at Jaleo I felt was better than the high-dollar acorn-fed black-footed varieties. Serrano is nothing to sneeze at, and not remotely cheap itself.

The selection of Spanish cheeses was excellent, but cheese nonetheless.

We must have tried and shared 20 different small plates, each one a painstaking lesson in passion for food that is clearly shared by Andres' huge staff of culinarians. There were scallops, mushrooms, octopus, asparagus, romesco, olive oil, shrimp and much much more. Veal cheeks with morels was a must-try, but though the veal was so delicately and deliciously flavored, it was like chewing something that spent its short life chewing.

An amazingly simple salad of warm brussels sprout leaves with ham and apricots will undoubtedly find its way to one of my future menus in some form or another.

Then came dessert...

A friend had recently told me about a combination of vanilla ice cream, sea salt, and olive oil. I thought to myself, "YUK!" Chef Jose put together a couple things that sounded so wild that we couldn't resist. One in particular, Olive Oil Ice Cream with Grapefruit.

New paragraph...

When in Las Vegas go to Jaleo and order olive oil ice cream with grapefruit. I don't care if you don't like grapefruit. Most people don't. I don't care if you don't like olives or olive oil. It doesn't matter that you can't get your head around this concept. Buy it and eat it. It doesn't taste like olive oil or grapefruit. It has a texture that you've never experienced before if you've only ever been to planet Earth. I will spend the next weeks and months obsessed with duplicating this dish because it was the best, most sensational, most delicious, most unique thing I've ever eaten...until last night.

The next night had us at Alain Ducasse's MIX in THEHotel at Mandalay Bay. Ducasse has always been one of my idols because 1) He's one of the world's best chefs, and 2) He once said, "If you want art go to a museum, food is meant to be eaten." I love his attitude towards contrived, over-handled food.

We climbed (well we didn't climb, we took a terrifying ride on a glass elevator) to the top of the hotel where we were treated to an amazing view of the Vegas "strip" and a stylishly ill-lit table surrounded by an enormous and surreal mobile of hand-blown glass spheres that conjured images of jellyfish silently, gracefully floating through a tranquil sea.

An incredible assortment of freshly baked bread was brought out with perfect squares of butter and homemade peanut butter (butter blended with hand-ground roasted peanuts). My first pet peeve in a fine restaurant is when butter is brought out that is too cold to spread. Table butter should be just below room temperature. This wasn't, but I couldn't stop sampling the peanut butter. What a great idea! It warmed up eventually and we kept asking for more bread.

Slabs of perfectly seasoned foie gras were displayed cold with toast points and then hot with roasted green papaya. I had a dish of soft potato gnocchi that mingled with veal jus and Parmesan cheese producing a flavor with such depth that I was seduced by each bite to take the next one. This was one of the most sensuously flavored dishes I'd had in years, if ever!

A roasted lobster was taken out of its shell, stacked, and covered with an equally seductive sauce of curry in an Asian or Thai style. Paper thin shavings of toasted hazelnuts completed the dish both texturally and flavor-wise. The lobster was a little tough and I wondered how this could be in an era of sous vide cookery and "butter poaching" at low temperatures to keep proteins silky smooth. Alas, the lobster was yummy and no tougher than I would have probably made with no more forethought than I gave it at the time.

My dining companions had sea bass and fresh hearts of palm, and roasted rack of lamb with quinoa. All were simple but elegant presentations with flavors that made us all wanting more long after the plates were licked clean!

Dessert brought a chocolate souflee with pistachio ice cream, a caramelized apple napoleon "tatin", and my MIX Candy Bar--a handmade bar of chocolate, hazelnuts, and crispy feuilletine enrobed in ganache and accompanied by a quenelle of intensely flavored coconut/lime sorbet. Light and refreshing as dessert should be.

With the check came freshly baked madeleines with a dish of warm chocolate/hazelnut Gianduja (similar to Nutella) for dipping or spreading.

I would go back to MIX! I might go back to Bouchon to see if we just hit a bad night. Jaleo would be an oft visited culinary refuge were I living in Sin City. And you should come back tomorrow to read more about the most fabulous food experience this chef has ever had!

Until then...

* Photos (not necessarily well-made) of all of the dishes we tried are available on my Facebook page!