Fried Brain Sandwich

Ian Froeb got back to Cherokee Street in his RFT review on Thursday. The four or five blocks of Cherokee west of Jefferson are the nexus of Hispanic culture in St. Louis and the the kick-off point for any serious taco crawl in the region. Ian checked out two places across the street from each other in the 2800 block of Cherokee -- La Vallesana and Taqueria el Bronco. At both he sang the praises of Tacos al Pastor--spicy roast pork, grilled with onions and pineapple and served on a double corn tortilla with a bit cilantro and lime. When I read the review on Friday, I pretty much dropped what I was doing and headed over to La Vallesana. I needed a fix and I needed it bad. I had had a funky-unky pineapple taste lingering in my mouth since Monday. Really. And the restorative power of pineapple done right -- Tacos al Pastor -- was what I needed to drive it away. Here's how it had happened.

We had ended up at 1111 Mississippi last Monday. A lot of people in St. Louis are fond of this place, but I'm always a bit underwhelmed. It wasn't my first choice, but they're in the neighborhood and they were open.

One reason that restaurants close on Mondays is that it is hard to get fresh fish. Sure, you can order from the fish monger on Monday morning. But what is he sending you? Has he gotten a fresh order in since last Friday? Maybe. Maybe not. So good rules of thumb are to keep it simple on Mondays and don't order the fish. I broke both those rules.

Somehow I let my guard down. It's all a little fuzzy now, but I think It was that damned special. The salmon. Grilled salmon with a pineapple and grilled vegetable vinaigrette. On a Monday. Yep, it was the salmon that did it. All that crap about good cholesterol and omega-something-or-others. I started thinking, "I need to eat a piece of salmon." It was like my salmon reserves were a quart low.

I eyed the plate suspiciously when it arrived. Something deep in my culinary subconsciousness was trying to warn me. The salmon was pale pink, with light brown grill marks. It was propped up on a asparagus risotto chaise. Bright red peppers, onions, and thick slices of pineapple were strewn about in glazy looking sauce. I broke through the fish with my fork and a smell scampered out. There is a gap between being spoiled and being fresh and this piece of fish was sitting in that gap. It didn't exactly smell rotten. But there was a whiff of something. First rule of fish is that there shouldn't be any smell. Still, I took a couple of bites. I knew the taste right off the bat -- that fifties Polynesian theme dinner where pineapple is "exotic". All it needed was a jello chiffon salad. And then I took a couple of more bites.

No. The salmon did not undergo a magical transformation into a subliminal creation on second tasting. It remained insipid -- a dish poorly conceived and indifferently prepared. But I wanted to try and understand how a restaurant of high repute could put out such a thing. One of the most important things I try to teach in cooking (and by far the hardest) is the concept of balance. You can talk about balance in gross ways -- sweet versus sour versus hot versus salt. But the only way to really understand balance is by ostention -- a kind of culinary learning by demonstration. And while I'm always on the lookout for good examplars of balance, every once in a while I want to really get at what it is to be so woefully out of whack. My guess is that they counted too much on the acidity of the vinaigrette as a counter-balance. But the sweetness of the pineapple and of the roasted peppers overwhelmed everything else.

Anyway, I should have stopped after the first bite or two, explained that it wasn't quite what I was expecting, and gotten something else. There are some places where I will try and offer a more honest opinion, but the conceptual gulf here was too wide. The result was a pineapple aftertaste that lasted the rest of the week. Lasted until the Tacos al Pastor came to the rescue.

Tacos al Pastor

Again, it is hard to state exactly what is so very right about the balance of those three tacos I had at La Vallesana. Part of it is just portion control. Each taco was small, maybe three or four bites. And each one had just two or three thin slices of pineapple. Part of it of course is the spiciness of the chili powder that coated the pork and had been roasted. A bit of the chili powder was transferred to the fruit and provided a complex counterpoint to the simple sweetness. Part of it I think is that the pineapple was briefly caramelized when it was thrown on the grill with the pork and onions. Sugar loses sweetness as it caramelized. There was also the lime, the cilantro, the singed onions, the chewy tortillas. A simple symphony of perfection for less than five bucks. Next time I need a place to go on a Monday night, I'm heading over to Cherokee.

I am vacation this week. I'll be at my parent's hurricane escape home in Columbia, Mississippi for a couple of days. Then we are driving over to Birmingham, Alabama to check out the food scene and perhaps hit some Bar-B-Que in Tuscaloosa. Check back for reports on what we find.

Update:
Our restaurant schedule so far:
Saturday 7/14:
- Lunch: Frankie & Johnnies, New Orleans
- Dinner: The Backdoor Cafe, Columbia

Sunday 7/15:
- Lunch: The Round Table, Columbia
- Dinner: Chez LuLu, Birmingham

Monday 7/16:
- Lunch: Niki's West, Birmingham
- Dinner: Bottega, Birmingham

Tuesday 7/17:
- Lunch: Bettola, Birmingham
- Dinner: Highlands Bar and Grill

Wednesday 7/18
- Lunch: The Bottle Tree Cafe, Birmingham
- Dinner: The Hot and Hot Fish Club, Birmingham

Thursday 7/19
- Lunch: Archibald's Bar B. Q. Tuscaloosa

STOP THE PRESSES! Food Fit For Feasting Found in Flyover

The New York Times in an article by Joe Drape on Wednesday was Shocked! Shocked! to discover that "...smaller cities such as Kansas City, Mo., and St. Louis have sustained not just good individual restaurants but packs of them."

The article focused mainly on KC, but extrapolated its findings to other Midwest cities -- St. Louis, Milwaukee, Indianapolis, and Minneapolis. Two major themes emerged. Top quality local restaurants are springing up or are being reinvigorated -- 40 Sardines, Bluestem, and American Restaurant. And serious food outlets from the coasts are expanding into the heartland -- Dean & DeLucca and Lidia Bastianich (Lidia’s) in Kansas City, and Wolfgang Puck and Jean-Georges Vongerichten with restaurants in Minneapolis.

I had the chance to eat at Debbie Gold's 40 Sardines last summer and it was one of my top five meals of the year.

There is an old truism in business: you can make if fast, you can make it cheap, you can make it good -- pick two. Overwhelmingly in the restaurant lunch trade the choices are fast and cheap. Outside of a couple of specialized niches -- ladies who lunch, executives doing the power martini thing -- sit down restaurants must deal with the twin realities of limited time (the lunch hour) and a heightened sensitivity to price. To succeed, you have to get 'em in and get 'em out in about an hour, for less than $10 (or a nearby price point). And if you do it well, you risk being a victim of success as more and more people come pouring in at noon.

Niki's West in Birmingham, Alabama comes about as close as I have ever seen to scoring a truism trifecta. Their basic Meat and Three is $8.50, they are more efficient than a New York deli at moving people through, and the food is pretty damn good.

When we got there just around noon, a dozen cars were prowling around the block looking for a open spot like it was some kind of hot nightclub. We jumped out to get in line while Alan drove off to park. A security guy at the door is letting in a few people at a time, furthering the image that this was IT (although a sign as you go in keeps you grounded, "No Tank Tops, No Bare Feet, No Hair Rollers"). Once through the door your enter the chutes -- the wrap around lines channeling you towards the servers. The 100 people or so standing in line represented a pretty good cross section of the populace -- black / white, professional / working, men / women, young / and old. Except they weren't really standing. The line kept shuffling along and it only took us about 10 minutes to get to the front.

As you get close, you see why things are moving so quickly. In an article on Chipolte, I commented on the cheerful strategies they employed for minimizing the dawdle factor of people making choices. Niki's West makes Chipotle look like a snooze fest. A dozen big guys are standing shoulder to shoulder serving up food in a blur of ladles, spoons, and plates. A sign next to the menu on the wall sets the tone, "NO Cellphone While in Line."

"Whatllyahave?" I hadn't quite put my tray on the rails and the first counterman was already staring right through me. A gap had opened between me and the guy in front and it had to be closed up.

"What will you have?" he repeated fractionally slower. I had studied the list of the dozen or so meats on the menu board, so I had an answer, "Chicken Fried Steak". Several nano-seconds later a plate appeared on the pickup shelf about a foot past my reach. I had to move down to get it and so the gap in the line began to heal.

"Comeondown, Comondown" This was not the enthusiastic call from a Johnny Olsen or a Rod Roddy, but rather the urgings from the next block of servers. The vegetable offerings are not listed, so they understand that you need several whole seconds to look across the expansive array of choices. You want beans? There's lima beans, white beans, black eyed peas. You want greens? There's collards, and turnip greens, and cabbage. There's fried okra and stewed okra with tomatoes, and fried green tomatoes. There's at least 6 different kinds of potatoes, plus sweet potatoes, and three kinds of baked dressings, and don't forget the rutabagas. Can't forget the rutabagas. And there had to be another 20 things that didn't even register in my visual field -- rice? corn? squash? -- I'm sure they were all there with at least two or three choices each

"Anything else? Anything else?" they call back as they scoop each selection into a monkey dish and set it again about a foot down the line so that you have to keep moving. I end up with the fried green tomatoes, fried okra, black eyed peas, and sweet potatoes -- a Meat and Three plus one. I move into the cold area -- a dozen salads, and then the pies, and cakes, and cobblers. I grab some corn bread muffins and ask for a slice of blueberry pie.

"How many in your party?" the lone checker asks. Her face is a study in intensity, as though she could break rocks with a single glance. She is punching away on her register as she repeats and extends the questioning, "How many in your party? Drinks? Water?" "Three", I say and "uh, yes, a diet coke and water." I'm looking around for the sodas, but there are none. That gets taken care of later. She glances down the line to take in my group, and then I'm invisible to her; she has set her sights on the next group.

"Come on, come on. They'll catch up." It took about thirty seconds from tray down to tray up and I was now moving into traffic control. A tall man is motioning me to the right. I follow for a couple of steps until he catches the attention of his counterpart in the next dinning room. The tall guy throws up three fingers, the counterpart comes forward and acknowledges with his own 3 fingered signal. The relay completed, I follow the second guy into a large dinning room that is about half full. A moment or two later Alan and JoAnn show up at the same table. This is all the more amazing since JoAnn had stopped to ask a question, prompting the servers to urge the people behind her to "Come on around, come on around." Like data packets on the internet, we were broken apart and reassembled at the correct destination.

The dinning room wasn't much to look at, sort of a fern bar warmed over, with faux stained glass, paneled walls, and Formica tables. But it was calm and and relatively quiet. A waitress came over to take care of drinks. She had a ready smile, and cheerfully answered our questions. Yes, lunchtime was pretty intense, and they feed about, oh, maybe 1500 people a day. The food was all solidly good. Nothing exceptional, but above average versions of just about everything. The twin evils of cafeteria food is that it all tends towards the same taste and the textures suffer from being on the line too long. Niki's avoided both problems. The lima beans were distinct from the white beans and both were yummy. Each of the greens tasted as they should and were different from the rest. My sweet potatoes were wonderful, pretty much cooked on their own with no extra sugar. I realized later that instead of the large full and half sized serving pans on the line, Niki's used quarter and eighth sized pans. Nothing sat for very long. The fried okra was crisp and hot. The stewed okra and tomatoes was one of the best versions I have had, with a bit of onion and garlic, and perhaps oregano.

I likened the experience to shooting the rapids at a water theme park and I kind of wanted to go again. But by the time we had finished, the lunch rush was over. The line of a hundred had been replaced by a line of six. The white water rapids had been replaced by a slow moving bayou. To Alan it was about as close to being in a commodities pit or on the floor of a stock exchange as you might ever get. There was a flood of choices to make, and a shouted urgency to make those choices quickly.

In Bombay, the dabbawallahs deliver hot home cooked lunches to tens of thousands of office workers every day. The dabbas (lunch pails) are collected, sorted, distributed, and returned though an efficient network of relay couriers. In Birmingham, on a slightly smaller scale, Niki's West delivers hundreds of people to hot home-styled lunches through a efficient network of servers, checkers, and routers. Both systems have solved, in very different ways, the fundamental problem of lunch -- fast, good, and affordable.

It's hard to do barbecue on the road. You start with the advance intel reports on the region identifying likely targets of opportunity. Then there are the dossiers of the pit-masters that need to be collected and reviewed. You make a call to the forestry service to check on any problems with the hickory or cherry wood harvesting. Talk to the guy at the farm bureau about how the hogs have been running this year. But the advance stuff is only half the game. Most of it goes out the window when you get the real 411 from the boots-on-the-ground.

You think I'm kidding, son? You think this is all fun and games? Barbecue is SER-I-OUS business.

Well maybe I stretched a little with the forestry thing. And I don't recall actually talking to anybody about hogs. But scouting out the best barbecue is a serious thing. The classic method can be pretty time consuming -- drive around looking for a shack with the Mercedes and the F-150s parked out front. The best barbecue places tend to cut across class lines.

This being the age of the internet, we started with Chowhound and the debate about the best barbecue in Tuscaloosa -- Archibald's vs. Dreamland. The edge seemed to be towards Archibald's, so we checked out an interview Amy Evans did with George Archibald Jr. as part of the Southern Foodways Alliance series The Southern BBQ Trail. Finally, we asked around while we were in Birmingham. Carol Griffin of Chez LuLu was a bit taken aback, "Y'all have heard of Archibald's?" but said that was the place to go.

The second great contribution of the modern era to the barbecue search is the GPS navigator. No more of those instructions that start out, "You go down the road a piece, till you see some cows on the left, then you ..." We punched in the address and were quickly led the back edge of little bedroom community in Northport, across the Black Warrior river from Tuscaloosa.

You pull up into a driveway on an embankment and you know you're in the right spot because there's a large pile of split hickory logs standing next to a tall gray chimney. On the other side of the chimney is a little shack. Inside the screen door is a counter with three or four stools, two refrigerators and a sink. If ten people came in at the same time the fire marshal might have to close the joint down. On the far wall ("far" being about 6 feet) is a large metal door built into the side of the chimney that slides open to reveal a grate sitting about waist high over the pit. Slabs of ribs and mounds of pork shoulder stretch back into the darkness. There's a garden hose with a spray nozzle hanging from the pit door handle. A counterman is taking orders and there's a woman tending the pit. I'm guessing she's Mrs. Paulette Washington, George Jr.'s sister. According to the dossier she takes over in the late morning and works till George comes back at three. Every five minutes or so, she takes that hose and sprays it into the pit, kicking up a cloud of smoke. That's when you realize that the pit / restaurant distinction is a false dichotomy. There is just the single edifice -- the smokehouse -- part of which is more accommodating to people wanting some 'cue and the other part more accommodating to pork in the process of becoming 'cue,

Archibald's Rib Platter

We ordered two large rib platters and a sliced pork platter. The counterman sets out three paper plates on a little table next to the pit door and covers each with a couple of slices of Sunbeam bread. Miss. Paulette grabs a wicked looking polearm, (actually a kitchen fork clamped onto the end of broom handle) and begins wrangling in the pork. She does all of her work right there at the edge of pit. She chops up the ribs on a block of wood set into the brick lip and piles them on to the plates. From a piece of shoulder she slices off meat and weighs it out on a little kitchen scale. She takes each plate and ladles on the sauce from a pot sitting on the grate. The counterman piles on two or three more pieces of bread, covers each plate with a sheet of butcher paper and sticks in a couple of toothpicks to keep it all together.

We sit at the counter and eat our pork. The ribs are large and meaty, crisper at the thin end and still a little fatty at the thick end. The flesh comes off easily enough, but I wouldn't say that it just falls apart. Sitting there that afternoon, I couldn't really taste any smoke, which I thought was kind of odd. It was clear that they cook over a hotter fire for a shorter period of time than some folks do. We got a couple of orders to take back to Columbia and I tried some later that night. Nice smoky flavor, not dominating; but a clear compliment to the pork flavor. Very nice balance with the nod being given more to the pig than to the wood. What had changed? Then I realized the futility of trying to taste a subtle hickory smoke flavor while sitting in a smokehouse. When everything tastes of smoke, nothing tastes of smoke.

The sauce is a thin vinegar base, with some ketchup, mustard, and a fiery pepper kick. More like a North Carolina sauce, which narrows it down to about 3,000 possibilities. I believe I read somewhere that North Carolina has more barbecue styles per capita than anywhere else on earth. If I could get hold of Hoppin' John Taylor, expert on all things in the Carolinas, he might be able point me to someone who could determine that Archibald's sauce was closest in style to those restaurants on the right hand side of Highway One (going south) between mile markers 43 and 57. Which of course is all the difference in the world from those restaurants on the left hand side.

Lacking those resources and left to my own devices, I can only add some general observations about the sauce. The fieryness suggested to me a pepper vinegar, either store bought or made themselves. I suspect they are adding their own peppers and letting them steep, in part because the heat is fairly intense, while the acidity is fairly low. There's just a bit of body to the sauce, suggesting perhaps some kind of culinary gum. This might come from ketchup or from certain kinds of hot sauce. When we got our order to go, they gave us two large (16 oz) Styrofoam cups of sauce. Looking into the cup, I was reminded of art class and the cup of water I used to clean my brushes after painting a sunset. Its a ruddy orangey, red, with flecks of yellow. However it is made, it is to my mind just what you want in a sauce. Thicker sauces take over, obscuring the meat. The pure vinegar sauces lack enough body to really add anything.

Since we didn't get to Dreamland, I can't chime in on which is better. I can say that this the way I think barbecue should be. The pig is primary. The smoke and the sauce is secondary. When you start selling the smoke or hyping the sauce, you have lost the main focus. As for technology, I suspect that it is still possible to find great 'cue without the internet and GPS, but one day we will look back and wonder how we ever did it.

All this week (July 23 through 27, 2007) the New York Times is inviting questions from readers to Pete Wells, the Dinning Editor. Click here to go to the NYT website and ask your question. Below is mine:

My basic question is who will replace R.W. "Johnny" Apple. The easy answer, of course, is that no one can. Mr. Apple ranged from Sydney to Oxford (MS and Eng.) to Walla Walla, going where the food was. His death last fall has left something of a gap in national (and international) food coverage. Perhaps not coincidentally, there appears to be a new voice on the food page. Joe Drape wrote about horse racing on the sports page up until June 15. After a month "off" his byline has now appeared twice in the food pages, both on articles about food (or least restaurants) in other parts of the country. What exactly is Mr. Drape's beat, and does it focus more on food (which Mr. Apple tended to do) or more on the business of food.

Follow Up: Here is the answer to my question from Mr. Wells.
You're right, I'm sorry to say. R.W. Apple Jr. truly was irreplaceable. He died the week before I started here, and I'll always regret missing my chance to work with him.

Joe Drape isn't trying to fill those big shoes but I'm happy he's here. He is pinch-hitting for Dining while Julia Moskin is on maternity leave. The summer is a quiet period on the horse beat, apart from the races in Saratoga, so Joe is working some new muscles as a food reporter. (And now I will stop using inappropriate sports metaphors.) He and I are looking together for stories about the culture of food and dining; the piece he wrote about Tao Las Vegas was, it's true, a bit of a business story, but I think he'll get a chance to explore some other ways into the subject we cover. I've never thought that one needed to be a "food writer" to write about food.

August is tough on restaurants. The heat, the vacations, and the looming start of school conspire to make August the worst month for most restaurants. One solution is to close up and go on vacation yourself (the French proprietaires do this en masse in August, to the consternation of everyone else). The American solution is to rally around the Chamber of Commerce (or something similar) and have a sale. Thus we have the third annual St. Louis Downtown Restaurant Week.

Running from August 13 through August 18 2007, 25 downtown restaurants are doing 3 course meals (tax and tip not included) for $25. There are no tickets to buy, no coupons to clip. Just show up at your favorite restaurant. Better yet, call and make a reservation. (Let's see, 12,500 people showed up last year at 25 different restaurants over 6 nights and left Cahokia at 1:15 traveling west at 53 miles per hour. Yeah, according to my math, reservations are a really good idea).

Even better yet, make reservations at 6 of your favorite restaurants on 6 different nights. Or 5 on 5 nights. Or even 4 on 4 nights. The list of 25 is solid from top to bottom and it includes some of the stellar spots in the city -- An American Place, Lucas Park Grille, Mosaic, Red Moon, and Wasabi. A $25 three course dinner is a very good deal these days and this is your chance to get downtown and see what all the buzz is about.

Below is the complete list of restaurants. Click here to check out the menu that each is offering. Rosemount wines is helping to sponsor Downtown Restaurant Week, and most of the participating restaurants are offering pours at $5 a glass. You can also make a donation to Operation Food Search, by including a $5 Extra Helping on your final bill.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about an emergency run I made to La Vallesana on Cherokee Street. I was in such a hurry to score some Tacos al Pastor that I didn't bring my camera. Shooting some good food porn is surely enough of a reason to go back.

Tacos at Pastor

I went inside to place my order and noticed some shrimp on the grilled. They had been marinated in oil and chili paste and had some onion tossed in. It reminded me of a dish I created many years ago at The Upperline -- Grilled Shrimp on Cornbread with Garlic Mayo. I asked for an order whatever it was they were making and they brought out a Quesadilla Camarones. The flour tortilla was grilled crispy on one side and had some melted cheese, the shrimp, lettuce, and a dab of sour cream on the other. The textual contrast between the crispiness of the shell and the softness of the shrimp was good. But the creaminess of the cheese and sour cream tended to over-envelope the flavor the shrimp.

Quesadilla Camarones

It's been about two months since I started this blog and I thought I should take a moment to see what I've done and to perhaps say something about what I'm trying to do.

According to my blogging software I've posted eighteen articles (this one will be the nineteenth). Most have been substantial; either recipes, commentaries, or reviews. A minority have been shorter pieces; food news or plugs for upcoming events. This is about right. It is not one of my goals to be a food news relay. Ian Froeb's blog Gut Check at the Riverfront Times is doing a good job of that (along with many other things).

I am surprised that I have only done three recipes so far. I started off thinking that it would be the main focus. The twin punches of summer heat and vacation have kept me out of the kitchen, so I think the balance will shift. The flip side is that I have done more review articles. St. Louis already has a number of review alternatives. Ian puts out one a week at the RFT as does Joe Bonwich in the Post Dispatch. Joe and Ann Pollack do a sort of dinning journal on their blog. And Sauce Magazine has any number of features promoting restaurants. I don't feel compelled to offer a regular review. But when I get excited about places I visit (new or old) I will share it.

A couple of friends have asked why I have written so much about Hispanic food in the first two months. That's easy. I got excited. I found El Scorcho, for example, to be innovative, imaginative, and fun. The place has a clear conception of what it wants to be and executes that conception well. The fact that it also happens to be a hole-in-the-wall taqueria shouldn't get in the way of it being a really good restaurant. The vision thing (as Bush the Elder use to say) in particular is something that I think is under-represented in restaurant evaluation. The best restaurants without exception embody a clear and compelling vision that can be seen in details at every level. And of course the very best restaurants execute those details to perfection. On the other hand, I have the most disconcerting experiences were the vision is confused, faded, farmed out, or simply missing. I have eaten in more places that I care to think about where the simple act of pairing an appetizer with an entree is best done by throwing two darts at the menu.

So a clear vision of what you are combined with good execution gets me excited about a restaurant. A great example is my piece on Archibald's Bar B. Q. in Tuscaloosa. But of course not all visions are the same, so there are bonus points to be awarded for the quality of the vision -- the equivalent in diving to the degree-of-difficulty multiplier.

Going forward, I have a number of pieces in different stages of completeness -- an article on why you think more broadly about food brands, some thoughts about the movie Ratatouille, and some troubling news about food in New Orleans. I have a recipe I'm working on for an Oyster and Jerusalem Artichoke Bisque. There are plenty of notes on the "fancy" places we ate at in Columbia and Birmingham. And I also want to write about the Australian Wine meal I had at the Ritz.

Finally, some background about me. When I wrote to Alanna Kellogg asking her to include me on her blog A Veggie Venture, she wrote back a sweet note asking, "Um, who are you?" I am from New Orleans. I came to St. Louis in 1992 to attend graduate school at Washington University and have lived here since. I started in the restaurant business out of high school at the elegant Pontchartrain Hotel. I moved on to a restaurant in the French Quarter called Cafe Sbisa and became the head chef there when I was 21. My mother and I opened a restaurant together in uptown New Orleans called The Upperline. It will celebrate its 25th anniversary in January 2008. I left the restaurant business to return to school and because I think it is for the young of knee and back.