ulterior epicure

You're right - pushing it, but not impossible. The 17.03 departing Euston will arrive in town at 17.23. The last train departing for Paddington is at 23.05, which puts one back in London just 8 minutes past midnight. That gives one a nice three hours at the restaurant.

How long is the train ride out to Cheltenham. Is it feasible to leave London post 5pm and return the same evening?

It's been many many moons since I last posted anything about bluestem. Since then, I've had maybe half a dozen dinners and more than a few happy hours in the lounge. With the cold wind snapping into town, I was blessedly happy to see cassoulet on the lounge menu tonight. It comes in a skillet; don't touch the skillet unless you want to leave part of your hand on it. It has a crunchy blanket of herbed breadcrumbs across the top. About eight months ago, I sat down at the bar and asked if they could make me a Sazerac. They couldn't. In part, it was because the 'tender didn't know what Peychaud bitters were. That's all been rectified. The real Sazerac is now on the cocktail menu. It is a fine specimen. Once a bar where you could find creative and innovative house cocktails, I'm thrilled that bluestem's Lounge is fast becoming a true cocktailian's (which I certainly cannot claim to be) bench with the addition of some good old boy favorites. Not being a wild fan of liberal use of anise, I was also quite shocked to have like the "Emerald City," which not only finds a whole star anise floating in a glass of prosecco, but also Chartreuse and another anise-like liquor (memory fails me at this point - maybe ChefCAG can jump in) in the mix. [Edited for spelling and grammar.]

The Bristol in the P&L downtown is offering Thanksgiving, as is Starker's Restaurant. I'm sure many other places are as well.

If we were, say, to liken ADNY to the Plaza Athenee, then I'm not sure why anyone would expect much "holdover" from ADNY on the Benoit menu - the Plaza Athenee and Benoit are totally different, and I don't think they have ever been in danger of being compared with one another. While I haven't eaten in the dining room at Adour, I have sat at the bar and peeked into the dining room. Gosh, I think he overshot (or undershot, as it were) the "less formal" target, especially with the prices.

I believe his name is Bibendum.

Platt gives Corton 4 out of 5 stars. There's a nice slideshow of every dish on the menu.

What are the dipping sauces?

I got all excited about that hedge of figs crowned with the fritter ... until I realized that was at The Ledbury. That pigeon looks particularly good and interesting. The grapes "decorating" that cheese plate are just laughable. I'm glad to hear a positive word on Marcus Wareing; thanks for the report.

Thanks for the report, Bu Pun Su. What is the thin rug of pink under the monkfish? It looks like some kind of force m eat. Dare I ask how much this meal cost? As I recall from my last romp through Europe, it was among the most expensive - outside of Paris.

I've never thought the music got in the way and the upstairs can be very elegant with fabulous service. Farallon is too limited for the steak eater, I think. And I have been a Boulevard detractor for some time as I have found it to be quite mediocre. ← Mille grazie, Carolyn.

The music doesn't get in the way? Again, there has to be steak. Although there is (one) steak on the Farallon menu, my impression of the place is that it is primarily a seafood restaurant.

Which one is more appropriate for business clientele? Boulevard looks nice, somewhat bistro, and given the tiles and ceiling, a bit loud.

I'm piggybacking on this line of inquiry and am asking on behalf of another: Business dinner, generous expense account, one diner must have steak, and preferably not too loud. Where to? Boulevard? Zuni Cafe?

Turns out Howard's choice of words ("going places") was prophetic. As some of you already know, and finally announced officially in today's Star, young Joe West is going west - to Las Vegas, specifically. Very sad for the KC diner, but I know we'll be hearing more about him for years to come. Best of luck, Chef West. You will be missed. ← Yeah, make sure that what you learn in Vegas doesn't necessarily stay in Vegas. Come back and share your experiences with Kansas City!

Turns out Howard's choice of words ("going places") was prophetic. As some of you already know, and finally announced officially in today's Star, young Joe West is going west - to Las Vegas, specifically. Very sad for the KC diner, but I know we'll be hearing more about him for years to come. Best of luck, Chef West. You will be missed. ← Best of luck, JWest! I hope moosnsqrl is right. Please do come back and share your experiences abroad with KC.

To read the entire review (with hyperlinks and photos), which I have excerpted below, visit the ulterior epicure. **************************************** It is strange how consensus can sometimes run counter-intuitively to one’s gut. After an informal survey of opinions among a certain subset of Philly foodie culture, Tinto seemed to be the favored one of Chef Jose Garces’s two Philadelphia small plates-concept restaurants. Truth be told, Tinto’s menu (dominated by pintxos) seemed less interesting to me than Amada’s (see “review: subtle innovation…“). And after two meals there in late July, I concluded that this was true. Maybe it’s due to my admitted lack of expertise in Basque cuisine. Maybe I don’t inherently take to Basque cuisine as I do with others (I doubt this is the case; I’ve had it and love it.). Maybe I was unfairly judging a book by its cover. Or maybe, the food at Tinto is just less interesting than Amada’s. Is the food bad? Judging by the dozen-plus plates my friends and I tried, certainly, it is not. The Alcachofas con Trufas, for example, were excellent. The baby artichoke hearts were nicely cooked, had awesome flavor and aroma (a touch of truffle oil) and demonstrated a wonderful usage of Idiazabal, which lent a bit of smokiness. Given the amount of black truffles and work involved (peeling and prepping the artichokes), I think $12 was fair, if not just a tad over-estimated. But the large majority of what I encountered was rather forgettable. Some of Tinto’s food felt as if Garces was forcing a resisting Basque culture into a modern, trendy mold - an awkward, if not uncomfortable proposition. Take, for example, the Gateaux Basque ($8). They should put quotes around the name of this dessert. Or, at the very least, put quotes around the adjective “Traditional” on the menu description. This was gateau basque, nominally, in flavor, but certainly not in form. These one-bite florets were more like shortbread petits fours with pastry cream topped with meaty, syrupy cherries. Actually, that’s exactly what they were. So maybe we chose the wrong dessert. Or, maybe I should know better than to use a dessert as an example of the uninteresting. They rarely are interesting. And sadly, they rarely are “traditional” - especially when they say they are. Take, instead, the De Res Bocadillo, a mini sandwich with braised short rib meat, bacon, asparagus and celery root aioli ($10). Meh. The meat was soft and flavorful, but otherwise, taken as a whole, it was rather ordinary. And I’m not sure which part of the creation, other than the name, was particularly Basque. Maybe the point, which I seem to want to overlook, is that Tinto’s goal is to make Basque food look hyper-modern? Consider the Pulpo ($9). Amassed to one corner of a tubular plate streaked with pequillo pepper “paint” were slices of octopus and potatoes frothing with bubbles. A beach of lemon “powder” stretched along the northern edge. Beautiful? Yes. Like the Pulpo, many of Tinto’s dishes exhibited trendy landscaping. Good? Not bad, but not great. I’ve had much better octopus for far less. Pretty plating didn’t help the Veal with Sweetbreads either. Both, the veal and the sweetbread (what I call sweetbread schnitzel - they were flattened, breaded, and fried), were dull. The halved,lacquered fig that came as an accompaniment, however, was probably the best morsel of the evening. Sticky and sweet, the molten nugget tasted like a hundred bottles of Armagnac. Or maybe, Tinto’s purpose is to serve as a stretch of trendy turf on which Philly’s young and hip crowd can be “scene” and, conveniently, get decent food and decent drink. To this end, Tinto is successful (especially the latter of the two elements, as demonstrated by my two thirsty Wharton Executive MBA compatriots who enjoyed a couple of pitchers of the house sangria [which seemed very similar to the “red sangria” I tasted at Amada a couple days before]). Providing a social outlet is a community service project that Tinto supports with excitement. Making money, however, is goal it pursues with vigor. The wildly over-priced Brochette de Gambas ($6 per prawn) were just a smidgen dry and a tad flavorless. The luscious head cream, however, was a delight. And Berkshire pork belly has seen more tender and flavorful times. The matchbox-size cuts, riding on slices of baguette (“montaditos”) and topped with batons of Granny Smith apple, lacked any hint of the honey lacquering that had sounded so appealing on paper. At $4 apiece, I’ve had better bacon on bread for far less. By comparison, the De Pato montadito was much better ($10 for 2). Bundles of duck confit wrapped in Serrano ham teamed up with sweet, macerated black cherries on a velvety swatch of funky La Peral “spread.” The contrast was terrific. The Bacalao a la Viscaina ($16), a brick of buttery black cod on a cushion of thinly shaved Serrano ham and topped with a savory-tart olive escabeche was also tasty, although the “interpreted” combination of soft white fish with leathery ham is one that has always confounded me (click here, and here, for example). We tried three cheeses – Leonora, a semi-aged Spanish goat cheese; La Peral, a mixed-milk blue from the Northern Spain, and Le Moulis, a firm French cow milk cheese from the Pyranees – and they were all in good shape ($12 for the Queso Mixto seleciton of three - no choice). So were the tissue-thin slips of charcuterie we sampled, served with a quenelle of bland egg salad ($15 for a “mixto” plate of four - no choice). Whereas Amada defined and hit that “reinvented” Spanish target by being anchored to tradition with sensible interjections of innovation, Tinto seemed concerned more with style than substance and suffers from over-conceptualization. I returned to Tinto for brunch the next morning (on my way to the airport). The reason for this decision was primarily motivated by the same reason I chose to dine at Tinto (and not at Osteria) the night before: its proximity to Capogiro (read “gelato boy gone wild…”). I walked across the street after both of my Tinto meals and finished it off with a couple of scoops of the fluffy gelato. They ran out of lobster, so I settled for Revuelto de Cangrejo instead of Revuelto de Langosta, one of the few brunch items that is offered on their dinner menu ($12). The truffled scrambled eggs, with the simulacrum of creamy brains, were full of lump crab meat and rife with truffle oil. The eggs were served with four slices of baguette generously coated with butter flecked with black truffle. I cannot complain about the over-aggressive “truffling” of this dish, nor its buttery comfort, but two bites was all I could manage. (And this is another difference between Tinto and Amada, and, perhaps more significantly, a difference between the French-influenced Basque cuisine and the more Catalan/Iberian-minded Spanish cuisine: Tinto does not shy from using butter.) I recalled my favorite cheese from the night before, Le Moulis, for an encore. It brought with it slices of two other amiable cheeses, Abbaye de Belloc and Idiazabel, on a dish of Queso Mixto ($15). I also ordered a yard of Jamon de Campo, which, like the night before, was sliced tissue thin and served with egg salad ($8). But the ham, like the cheese, was great. And so were the two salads I had, which were refreshingly simple. In my limited experience, these - the least finessed and manipulated of Tinto’s cuisine (like the wonderful cigar-like Idiazabel “ crisps” served as a complimentary pre-cursor to our dinner) - were the restaurant’s strongest suit.

Not being familiar with the latter, and barely with the former, can someone please enlighten me as to why the comparison between Hibiscus and Foliage has been drawn?

Gracious. They let you book THAT far in advance?

Oh. Okay. Then group hug?

Before we get too carried away, I'm not arguing with anyone here. I pay to eat omakase and I do. However, for those who are not willing, I can respect and completely understand the a la carte format.

My Dear Katie, Well, then, as my friend and I only sampled from the two sangrias, it seems we got the best of the original program. Yes, I knew you *were* at Chick's Cafe & Wine Bar, and would have noted as such on my blog if it were not for the fact that I did not see it on your user profile. It's good to hear that they're still benefiting from your cocktailian prowess. Congratulations on the "Best of Philly!"

Gorgeous, Moby.

I don't know that I agree with this. For a restaurant cookbook, I find most of the recipes easily attainable by an avid home cook. Maybe you've gotten too distracted by the Dude to have paid much attention to the recipes?

Long overdue, but for what it's worth, below is an excerpt from the ulterior epicure of my meal at Amada in late July. Click here to see all the photos from this meal. Take note of the asterisked footnote. Ms. Loeb, where are you now? ****************************************************** I don’t think any other threesome could have ordered more food than we did. We sampled four cheeses, assorted “charcuteria,” and nine other plates of food. We were actually trying to eat light. We were having a big dinner at Zahav later. Oh well. The quality of the ingredients - as evidenced by an immensely fresh “Ensalade Verde” (dressed greens on green: avocado, favas, and green beans ($9)) – coupled with simple, yet perfect treatments and beautiful presentations made the experience of dining at Amada rewarding. The creative culinary twists – like pairing chocolate-hazelnut puree with a funky cow’s milk cheese (Cadi Urgelia from the Spanish Pyranees) – made Garces’s food thrilling. ... Instead of leaving octopus well enough on its own after boiling, like the traditional method of making Pulpo a la Gallega ($11), Garces throws the coins of cross-cut tentacles in a screeching hot skillet just long enough for the edges to form a crisp, lacy skirt. He dusts them with paprika and scatters them on a wooden plate along with sliced fingerling potatoes. With a squeeze of fresh lemon, it’s great. Our server (and the kitchen) was very accommodating, allowing us to deviate from less extensive lunch menu and select a few items from the restaurant’s dinner menu. The service was pleasantly laid-back, attentive, and knowledgeable. I especially commend the staff for its wonderful sense of pacing. We asked that dishes be sent out in progression and at no point was our table over-crowded. Never mind that the plate of charcuteria ($12) was picture-perfect – Peppery salchichon, spicy-sweet chorizo Pamplona, and waxy Serrano all thinly sliced and served with garnishes and slices of baguette. Or that the Escalivada, a stretch of silken grilled vegetables bathing in fruity olive oil, was in fine form. I want to talk more about the cheeses. I’m always on the look-out for an interesting selection of cheeses. While I get that (in spades) at high-end places like Picholine, rarely do such interesting and diverse selections appear in more casual settings. Not only does Amada have a fine selection of region-specific cheeses, Garces pairs them with the most amazing condiments. As mentioned above, a pungent cow’s milk cheese, Cadi Urgelia, was paired with the equivalent of home-made Nutella. You wouldn’t think the two would taste good together, but I found the coupling wildly successful – the toasted hazelnut and funkiness in the cheese finding uncommonly common ground. To a lesser degree, the Aragones, which was paired with golden raisins soaking in a “white Sangria honey,” was also very successful. And Queso de Cabra, a fresh goat’s milk cheese, took on a dessert-like quality with the help of an accompanying strawberry jam made from balsamic vinegar. But the cheeses were just the tip of the iceberg. There was a wonderfully fragrant plate of Setas perfumed with truffle oil ($14). These weren’t the crisped, griddled fans of oysters I was expecting. Rather, it was a silky assortment of wild mushrooms – oysters, beech, shiitake, and what appeared to be cuts of king oyster mushrooms. There were also incredibly tender morsels of Chiporones a la Planca ($5), caps and tentacles, strewn along a strip of white enamel dappled with parsley oil. As with the octopus, both the mushrooms and squid benefited from a last-minute inoculation of fresh lemon. And there was a comforting bowl of Habas a la Catalana ($8), probably better suited to a wintry night than a balmy late-summer lunch. Nevertheless, the hearty heap of perfectly cooked favas and giant white lima beans in a warm ham-infused broth, was appreciated with gusto. The “Patatas Bravas” at Amada weren’t the chunks and wedges I’m used to seeing ($4). These baton-cut sticks weren’t afraid of being more American in form and, as a result, managed to achieve crispness not common to traditional patatas bravas. As alluring as the structure of these patatas was, these zippy fries weren’t anything particularly memorable, not aided much, either, by the spicy paprika-spiked aioli, which was liberally drizzled over the heap. By comparison, that same aioli was more successfully used to enhance two crab-stuffed piquillo peppers ($12) served in a cazuela. The smoldering, silky, and sweet peppers, bulging with a molten, creamy mix of crab – not unlike thick brandade – were sparingly topped and spiced with the paprika sauce and flocked with crisp, slivered almonds. If there was one disappointment, it was the Lamb Chops a la Plancha ($14). Two to an order, these Frenched lollipops were slightly overcooked for my taste, and slightly boring. I’ll also note that none of the three desserts available raised enough curiosity to warrant a venture in that direction - not that Spanish desserts (Spanish desserts “reinvented” no less) ever really excite me. Flan is (usually just) flan is (usually just) flan no matter how much one tries to über-flan flan. And rice pudding is (usually just) rice pudding is (usually just) rice pudding no matter how much one tries to über-rice pudding rice pudding. We headed to Capogiro afterward and were, blissfully, none the wiser. As early as late 2005, shortly after the Amada first opened, I was already receiving enthusiastic missives about the restaurant from fanatic friends. Although the uniqueness of the restaurant has undoubtedly diminished over the past three years, due to an invasion of multifarious tapas-pedaling palaces and dives, I’m still excited by what Garces offers at Amada. ... The level of execution of the food at Amada was superb, the ingredients were incredibly fresh, and the inventiveness of the cuisine - like the “White Sangria,” a refreshing citrus-kissed white wine nectar perfumed with rosemary, originally created by Ms. Katie Loeb, Philadelphia’s bartendrix extraordinaire* - managed to escape the cheapened, hackneyed stab at “different” that has infected so many of these types of establishments. Amada practices subtle innovation while leaving much - the most important parts - of the traditional charm of Spanish cuisine intact. Although I can’t say that the awkwardly combined storefronts which comprise Amada’s facade is particularly attractive, the interior has a rustic austerity that I find particularly agreeable. The dining area is quite open, and given the wood floors, wood cabinetry, and sparse upholstery, I can see how, during peak hours, the volume could be quite loud, as some have forewarned. I can easily justify return visits to Amada - if not to try more of the menu, or for more setas, more octopus, or much, much more cheese - for the opportunity to drag three others along to experience the “Cochinillo Asado,” a whole, roasted suckling pig served with an assortment of side dishes ($32 per person). Heck, I’d return just to sit at the bar and watch them slice ham on that beautiful red-enameled jamon-slicer (I’m not sure if it was a Berkel, but it looked like one). * Although Ms. Loeb helped design Amada’s beverage program, she has since moved on to other endeavors, leaving a sweet and tasty trail of drinks, mixed and otherwise, in her wake.