Ling

Hi bergerka, just wanted to tell you I'm loving your blog. It's the only thing I've been checking on EG regularly in quite a few months! I have a question about the chocolate olive oil mousse...(I read the description last night and couldn't get it out of my head!) I was wondering whether it's a standard chocolate mousse with just olive oil, salt and pepper on top, or are they incorporated into the mousse itself? Also, could you describe the texture--do you think it's lightened with egg whites or whipped cream, or a combination of both? I would love to try to replicate it at home.

Yes, I was amazed! Henry said it was the best croissant he's ever had too. You must try the almond croissant and the kouign aman next time you're there!

^Yes, it's pretty new. It wasn't even listed in the Walla Walla directory yet. You'll like Saffron. I'm so glad we didn't end up going to Creektown instead. Here's our last breakfast at Maxwell House--berries on cinnamon bread pudding, a fruit cup (not pictured), and coffee Colville Patisserie is closed Monday and Tuesday, so we made it our last meal in Walla Walla. I must say I was completely blown away by the quality of the pastries. It was definiely better than anything I've eaten in Seattle, or Vancouver, or Bouchon bakery down in Napa. (L-R) canneles, palmiers, financiers, kougin aman, apricot almond danish (L-R) croissant, brioche, quickbreads, 3 types of macaroons (vanilla, chocolate lavender, orange and chocolate) (L-R) danishes, chocolate hazelnut croissant, almond croissant looks like they bake their cookies in tart rings housemade gelato, including flavours like plum, fresh fig, Earl Grey, and chocolate lavender I sampled the fig and chocolate lavender and both were excellent. The pastries were pretty, but the flavour combinations weren't as daring as what I've had in the past. Maybe because the locals are not so adventurous (according to one of the chefs we talked to.) They have standard things like chocolate caramel tarts, triple chocolate mousse cakes, fruit tartlets, etc. This was Round One. I got three pastries (kouign aman, almond croissant, and a canneles. I got Henry a plain croissant.) Can you hear the angels singing? The only minor quibble was that the canneles had too much orange blossom water for my taste. Texturally, it was perfect--crisp on the outside, and creamy moist in the middle. Almond croissants are my favourite breakfast pastry and this was hands-down the best I've had. The pastry was so incredibly buttery light that it made all the almond croissants I've eaten in the past seem leaden. The franigpane was very finely ground and not too sweet, and there wasn't a lot of it, so that contributed to the airiness of what's in reality a pretty heavy breakfast pastry. Also, the bakers had spread a layer of almond filling and then folded the dough again, so you got two thin layers of filling instead of one heavy layer. Sorry for the book, but this was just too perfect. The kouign aman was also incredible. I ate that too quickly before I could get an individual picture of it. There were large flakes of salt on the sugary top, which made the pastry extra addictive. These were probably the two best pastries I've eaten in my life. I figured that since we won't be having pastries here for awhile, I might as well try the other items in the case that caught my eye. I got the Earl Grey mousse with chocolate cremeux (and a flourless chocolate base), the eclair (with vanilla bean pastry cream), and the orange and chocolate macaroon. These were all very good (perhaps the eclair was the least exciting of the three). Interior: I spoke to the assistant baker and probably scared him a bit by going on and on about how much I loved the pastries that morning. He said the head baker used to work in NY and then was at Essential Baking Co. for awhile. I am SO glad we made it here for our last trip! The next time we're in Walla Walla, I'll have to make sure we go at the end of the week so I can visit them multiple times.

Sentiamo: Thanks for the sweet comment! I had bresaola at lunch today and I love it. (We got to eat with Faith Willinger too, so that made the meal extra nice!) Dinner that night was at Saffron. We didn't really know what to expect since I hadn't looked at a menu online or anything, but this was definitely our favourite of our Walla Walla dinners. (I was almost going to say this was our favourite meal there, but that's actually coming up in the next post. ) housemade bread with nigella seed and roasted garlic oil Appetizers: Kobe beef cheek with ratatouille This was excellent--the meat was of the perfect soft, pull-apart texture and the ratatouille was really nicely balanced with the sweet raisins and the acidity of the tomatoes/capers. Sausage and Walla Walla onion flatbread This was also very good--the crust was super crispy and there wasn't an overload of toppings. Henry got the agnolotti stuffed with spinach and Berkshire pork. The sauce was a super rich brodo and some grated Parm. This was DELICIOUS! Our favourite dish of the night. The only reason I didn't order this for myself was because the portion looked a little small and I was really hungry. This is a spiced, roasted half a pheasant. The fried thing on top is a stuffed zucchini blossom (it was stuffed with what I think is pheasant forcemeat.) On the bottom is farro, charred corn, peas, and slivered garlic. This was also very tasty. So there's Saffron. Probably the least fancy of the three restaurants, but you could definitely see that the chef put some thought and lots of love into the menu. The server told us the chef makes everything from scratch (yes, it's fresh pasta), including his own preserved lemons. He even said the chef butchered a pig back in February and is curing his own meat now. The steak seemed to be incredibly popular--I saw at least 8 plates of steak going out to different tables before we even got our appetizers.

So afternoon my afternoon nap, we poked around downtown Walla Walla again. This is a little foodshop called "Rare Finds". That's canned, smoked Copper River. Waterbrook wasn't on our list, but it was open so we tasted wine there as well. We had 2 hours to kill before dinner, so I got some roasted cashews at Bright's Candy shop. They make their own chocolates and fudge, and they also sell Dreyer's ice-cream and one other brand...maybe Grand's? old-fashioned candy jars decent selection of chocolate bars, including Valrhona We also killed some time at Coffee Perk, which I think is a local coffee shop. It was pretty empty, while the Starbuck's next to it was packed. Injustice! I don't usually drink those blended coffee drinks, but Henry got one and it was really quite good! It wasn't very icy, but very rich and not too sweet. I had my regular iced Americano but I should've gotten my own blended coffee.

No, we didn't end up going to Yellow Hawk. I don't remember anyone mentioning it in the thread (I may be mistaken?), and it wasn't circled on my Walla Walla map. Next time we'll know! I read your blog before our trip so we knew Cayuse is never open. It's a very cute storefront. We drove out to Oregon on our last day to look at the vines, which someone told us were planted near boulders...either we saw the wrong vines, or it was a little bit of an overstatement. We did see some vines planted in rows and rows of rocks, though.

Have you been to Saffron? Those pictures are coming up soon. It was by far our favourite meal in Walla Walla, and they did seem to take more advantage of the local produce (e.g. not everything on the menu was served with Walla Walla onions and/or cherries. ) You are too kind with my very amateur comments about the wine. I do think I tried my best to consider everything when tasting--the nose, the weight of the wine in my mouth, the different flavour profiles, the finish, etc. I learned a lot, definitely.

Hi Ling and Henry, Do you happen to know which place in NY this came from - Salumeria Biellese, perhaps... Click Herre for Biellese ← Yes! That's the place. I couldn't remember how to spell it. Have you had it before? ← Oh yeah - some of the best cured pork, certainly here in NY - I believe they even make a fine guanciale (cured pork jowl) - a classic Roman ingredient! ← I've had locally-made guanciale and am curious how it compares to the stuff at Salumeria Biellese. Would it be disgusting to say I'm considering ordering the 8-9lb Petit Jesu for myself, haha!

Breakfast the next morning was a little fruit cup with blueberries and cantaloupe, ham, a baked egg and cheese dish, and a pecan and cranberry scone. We headed off to Walla Walla Vintners, which is located in the same area as Abeja and aMaurice. Unfortunately, we couldn't make it into Abeja (closed for tasting) or aMaurice (winemaker's trip to the fermenters). This was definitely the prettiest area in Walla Walla. random cool car in the parking lot, and I'm holding my purchase, which I believe is another Cab This picture was taken at "Scenic Loop". Next up was Dunham and Buty. The girl who poured our wine at Dunham told us she also worked at Saffron, a new-ish Mediterranean restaurant in town. The winemaker at Va Piano also told us he worked there, and so we opted to have dinner at Saffron that night. Anyway, we've both had Dunham wines before and I like their Cab, but I didn't like it as much as the other Cabs we were tasting at the same price point, so I just got a Riesling. It is their first release and it was pretty good. (Plus, I didn't want to give the impression that all I drink is Cab. ) Buty was our friends at Pike and Western's #1 pick when I asked for winery recs. Unfortunately, they're really popular and only had two wines for us to taste since they were sold out of everything else. They'll be coming out with new stuff in the fall. I bought a bottle of each wine--"The Beast" is a blend that's not available in Seattle. I liked it, but it was quite astringent so we'll probably let it sit for awhile before we open it. Lunch was at Onion World, which serves Walla Walla sweet onion sausages. I gotta say, we were both pretty disappointed by these sausages. The onion flavour was really mild, so it was basically no better than your average mildly spiced pork sausage.

3 guesses which winery we stopped at next... It was, of course, the very popular L'ecole 41. Maybe I was feeling a bit under the weather due to the heat, but I didn't particularly enjoy any of these wines. Most of them tasted a bit watery to me. Woodward Canyon in Lowden was next. We spent quite a bit of time tasting here, but I found most of the wines very alcoholic (hot?) That was pretty much all I could detect on the nose. The lady did pull out a special Cab for us from under the table that was pretty nice. I asked the lady about the amount of alcohol and she said their wines did used to contain less alcohol in past years, but everything we were tasting was at 14.6%. Reininger was next door, so we stopped in there as well. By now, we were ready for more Petit Jesu so we went back to Salumiere Cesario. We asked pretty much everyone we met where their favourite places to eat where, and Luscious by Nature came up pretty often. It's part-gourmet grocery, part-deli/restaurant. I had to take a nap after this to escape the heat. A few hours later, we walked back downtown to 26 brix for dinner. The scenic route: There are chalk drawings on the sidewalks all over downtown Walla Walla. I guess Whitehouse Crawford and 26 brix are the two favourites of Walla Walla. I had a glass of the reserve Cab from Tamarack and Henry had the Sangiovese from Yellow Hawk. The server said they bake their own bread. We ate at the bar (open 4:30pm-9pm) Henry got the double cut pork chop with grits, apple, and grilled Walla Walla sweets. The pork was nicely pink, and the sauce was great. This was probably better than anything we ate last night, although I shouldn't recommend one restaurant over the other based on so few dishes. I got the gumbo, which was much runnier and less substantial than I imagined it to be. The chef de cuisine sent us some duck prosciutto too, which was DELICIOUS! I asked him if he had used the Michael Ruhlmann recipe and he said no, he just kind of came up with it on his own. He said he brined it for 7-10 days, and hung it for 2-3 weeks. I am so excited to make my own duck prosciutto after tasting this! Larkin was a really nice guy and spent a good 20 minutes talking to us at our table when our server told him she thought we were kinda into food. After dinner, the only place open was Vintages, a wine bar that the assistant wine maker at Waters had told us about. It's located on 2nd and Main. We squeaked in right before 10pm, when they close. They serve a bunch of local wines, so we got three glasses. I remember I drank something from Russel Creek and we forget the rest, sorry. (Too much wine at that point.) They also sell a bunch of wine. This was a really cool place that deserves to be checked out! I bought two bottles from Abeja here--the Cab and the Beekeeper's Blend (which I understand is no longer available.)

Yes, I liked the B&B a lot. We went Sunday-Wednesday and they had a great deal (3 nights, any room, $333.) vengroff: heh heh, I think I had read that Bouchon used Sysco fries. Really disappointing! The tenderloin dish was $37, which is pretty spendy to be using Sysco fries, I think.

Hi Ling and Henry, Do you happen to know which place in NY this came from - Salumeria Biellese, perhaps... Click Herre for Biellese ← Yes! That's the place. I couldn't remember how to spell it. Have you had it before?

Maxwell House sitting room: Charming, yes? Here's our breakfast on the first day: maple sausages, puffed pancakes, and berries Rulo Tasting room Rulo oak barrels (all French oak, except for a few stainless steel ones) backyard/winery (the owners live next door! The lady actually gave us a tour of her house too so we could see her kitchen--we had told her we liked to cook.) Waters (a boutique tasting room in town. Their new winery will be out in the same area as Va Piano/Pepper Bridge.) Unfortunately, I only got this one picture at Waters. I wanted to get a picture of the tasting room but I guess we were too busy chatting. I thought the wine here was a great deal--the Cab was $40 and he gave us a pretty nice discount. At this point, we stopped by Salumiere Cesario and I got one of the BEST cured meat products I've ever tasted in my life. It comes from a place in NY and the meat was called "Petit Jesu". Absolutely delicious! We went to Tino's hoping to get beef cheek tacos but they don't serve those anymore. Henry got a steak and onion burrito and I got a carne asada. Henry liked his but I thought these were just OK... So we got a 1/4 lb. of the Petit Jesus with lunch, and inhaled it so quickly we had to stop at Salumiere Cesario again AFTER lunch to pick up another 1/4 lb for our afternoon snack. I also had these chocolates from Bright's, an old-fashioned candy store in downtown Walla Walla. I got the Earl Grey, the lavender, an English toffee, and a caramel almond chocolate. The fudge is brown sugar/walnut. My carne asada...this monster must've weighed over a pound! Henry's steak and onion.

We stayed at a really cute B&B called Maxwell House. I'll post a photo later when I show you the breakfasts we ate there. After setting down our luggage, we ventured down to downtown Walla Walla. Denied! We had dinner reservations at Whitehouse Crawford, which I gather is the "fanciest" restaurant in town. We both thought the menu was a bit strange--they have stuff like Vietnamese fried calamari, Asian "Shaking Beef" and French bistro-style stuff like steak frites and beef bourguinon on the same menu. They also had cherries as a component on no fewer than four of the dishes...I'm all about supporting local produce, but that seemed kind of excessive, no? I did love the open kitchen and the high ceilings. The room was very airy and open and a nice reprieve from the 100 degree weather. I believe the amuse bouche was spinach, cilantro, and toasted pinenuts. Heavy on the cilantro, but quite refreshing. Henry got the grilled quail and it came with Walla Walla sweets and some sort of rustic ancho sauce. I got the paté with pickled cherries and cornichons. Very heavy on the liver. My squab with roasted Ranier cherries and gaufrettes. This was nicely done--simple ingredients treated simply. Henry's tenderloin with Sysco fries? The sauce was very tasty. Actually, all the sauces at dinner were very nicely prepared. Henry's strawberry ginger sorbet. This was good--not quite as smooth as some of the sorbets I've had, but the flavour was nicely balanced. Twice-baked flourless Cacao Berry chocolate cake with vanilla bean ice-cream. The outer ring was more set, and the center was semi-runny. We drank the Abeja Syrah with dinner, which was good for the price (only $53 on the wine list, so I'm guessing it retails for $25-ish?) All in all, we both thought the food was above average but nothing to get excited over. We soon noticed that there is no night life in Walla Walla. All the major restaurants close at 9pm (I guess last call is 8:45pm or so.) There was one wine bar that closed at 10pm, but other than that, most of the shops close by 6pm so there wasn't much to do after dinner. Goodnight!

Thanks to all who chimed in and helped us with winery/food recs for our Walla Walla trip! It was definitely a lot of fun, but the wine buying put a huge dent in my savings. I previoiusly thought I was fine with drinking bottles around $20, but the difference between a $20 and a $35-$50 bottle was really apparent at most of the wineries we visited. So I came away with 12 bottles of the slightly more expensive stuff from the following wineries: Abeja, Pepper Bridge, Waters, Portteus, Buty, and Walla Walla Vintners. Of the local wine I drank in restaurants, my favourites were the Tamarack reserve Cab and the Amavi rosé. First, provisions for the drive at Glondo's. They were out of the beef jerky, but we stopped in again on our way home and picked some up, along with the landjaeger, a rather generous sample of the pepperoni and more of the salami. I liked the landjaeger the best. The drive: We got into town at around 2:30 pm on Sunday, and hit 4 wineries in the same area: Va Piano, Saviah, Pepper Bridge, and Tertulia. Va Piano Saviah The tasting room is a garage. Pepper Bridge They charge the same price ($50) for all their Cabs from 2002, 2003, and 2004. I definitely liked the 2002 the best, and 2004 second best. I believe they lost their crop in 2004 and sourced grapes elsewhere (as did many of the Walla Walla wineries we visited.) Tertulia They have an upcoming wine dinner at Smash in Seattle in case anyone's interested.

I think we're going to indeed skip Creektown as per Abra's suggestion. The locals seem to love this little market/restaurant called Luscious by Nature. It's really cute--we stopped in for a drink and I'll post pictures soon. We ended up hitting a lot more wineries than planned--we went to 4 on Sunday, and 4 yesterday (plus we've had a bunch of Walla Walla wines in restaurants when we couldn't get into the winery.) A winemaker turned us onto a wine bar called Vintage on 2nd and Main and it's terrific. The girl who works there sold us the last of the Beekeeper's Blend out of her own private stash when I mentioned we couldn't get into Abeja. I had the Abeja Syrah at dinner--it was good, but it didn't blow me away. We also bought their cab sauv. as well. My favourite wines so far have been the Waters cab, the 2002 Pepperbridge Cab, and the cab from Tamarack (drank this at 26 brix.)

We'll post all our pictures as soon as we get back into town, but we found the food at Whitehouse Crawford pretty good, not great. I see how some people (myself included) would describe it as a "steak/salmon/potato" restaurant as those things were certainly on the menu, but they did have a few more interesting offerings (I got the squab with roasted cherries, for example.) Abra--apparently the chef changed at Creektown 2 months ago (according to a winemaker we met who also works there one night a week.) Maybe we'll stop in for lunch but we'll probably do dinner at Saffron (which comes very highly recommended by locals).

Hi everyone! We are actually leaving for Walla Walla tomorrow (got our vacation dates mixed up, oops.) I was excited to see that most of the suggestions I got from Pike and Western were similar to the ones in this thread. Here's our rough itinerary: Sunday afternoon: Va Piano (closes at 4pm) Pepperbridge (closes at 4pm) Tertulia (closes at 5pm) These three wineries are located in the same area and are only open on the weekends, so this was the only time we could fit them in. Monday: Rulo Waters Winery Ash Hollow tasting room We had to book an appointment at both these wineries. Tuesday: Amavi (open daily) Buty (open almost daily) Spring Valley/Patit Creek Tasting rooms We'll have to get Abeja at Whitehouse Crawford or Creektown, as their tasting room is now closed. Unfortunately, aMaurice is closed for a few days when we're in town as they are making a trip to the fermenters, but their wines are available at Whitehouse Crawford, 26brix, and Saffron, in case anyone else is interested. I know Abra didn't particularly enjoy Whitehouse Crawford, and Ledlund's "meat/salmon/potatoes" description kind of put me off, but perhaps they've changed the menu as this was almost everyone's top pick in Walla Walla when I asked for restaurant recommendations. I think we'll stop in for a meal there, and also eat at 26brix bar. Creektown also comes highly recommended, so we'll give that a try too and taste the wines at the same time. Thanks for all your help!

Well, the bars I made certainly had a brighter, fresher flavour since I had the luxury of eating them right after they were made, and I think the dates I used were likely better quality. I made a good guess at the amount of sugar, orange zest, and cinnamon to use, so I wouldn't make any modifications there. Since this was my first attempt and I guessed at the proportion of oats to flour, my bars ended up tasting like it had more oatmeal than the version I fell in love with back in school. To make them more like the ones I remember, I'd just cut back on the oatmeal a bit and use more flour. I happen to like this version a lot, though, so I might just keep this recipe. I can't really think of anything I could do to improve it.

I just made a batch of date bars. I didn't use a recipe, but here is roughly what I did. I was trying to replicate the date bars I liked so much in university. It has cinnamon, orange zest, and a thicker cookie base than most recipes. Also, I decided to pulse most of the oatmeal in the food processor so the cookie is smoother in texture, but still nice and nutty from the higher proportion of oats. Base: 3 sticks butter, softened (= 1.5 cups) 2 3/4 cups rolled oats, pulsed in food processor 1/4 cup rolled oats (left whole) 1 3/4 cups flour 1 cup sugar 2-3 tbsp molasses (or you can sub the sugar + molasses for brown sugar) 1 tsp cinnamon 1/2 tsp salt 1/2 tsp baking soda Date filling: 3 cups (1.5 lbs) pitted Medjool dates zest of 1 small orange 1 3/4 cup water 1. Simmer dates in water with the orange zest until soft, about 5 minutes. Blend in food processor until smooth. 2. Combine all base ingredients into large mixing bowl. Spread 2/3 of the mixture on the bottom of a baking pan, spread the date mixture over top, then crumble the rest of the base mixture on top of the date filling. 3. Bake at 350 for about 40 minutes or until golden brown.

Thanks for all the wonderful info, especially about the tips on which wineries to visit! We are booked for Sunday-Wednesday so it looks like we'll have a fair bit of time to visit many of the recommended wineries. Also, I found the Italian meat/cheese shop I was reading about: Salumiere Cesario

^Ahh...I was thinking that 7 starch balls at 100 calories is pretty high. I'm wondering where you got the number from, GlorifiedRice?

Oh my...date bars were my #1 favourite snack in university. They sold great date bars at this little store in the Student Union Building. The shortbread crust was very thick, and there were plenty of oats in the topping, and cinnamon/nutmeg too. I think I remember a bit of orange zest in the filling (just a hint) as well. I am so ready to make these this week!

1100 calories in a regular bubble tea drink? And I guess my prefered flavours like taro and pudding would pack in even more calories! I had no idea. Asian kids drink these all the time and they're still teeny! And I usually eat the thick toast with condensed milk as a snack whenever I have one of these drinks! Oops.