Eating Across America

America is clearly what's temporally on my mind, surprising since I haven't had Oklahoma barbecue (and a side of fried okra) in a while (a combination of food that invigorates my faith in both humanity and dining in general). As such, I'd like to explain what I've been up instead of completing my top 100 goals. I'll spare the apologies and excuses and just say it's been a lovely non-top-100 year food-wise. There have been pounds of meat (roasted in my own oven), Tex Mex in other time zones, marriage celebrations where love of food was celebrated alongside love of spouse (in robustly tandem amounts), and lots of pictures to commemorate it all.

Most recently, my friend Allison--my high school debate partner, counterpart in Harry Connick Jr. adulation, and savory pie chef--wed in Chicago, which she also (almost entirely) catered. A woman of many talents, she had (of course) a number of delicious hand pies, in addition to exquisitely-crusted sweet pies. And colorful pickled things. I danced, I had fancy regional French specialities the next day (kouign amman at Floriole Cafe, tres bien), and had Boulevard from a hand-imported-from-Kansas-City keg.



















I also visited my brother in Georgia and tasted the culinary genius of "Cletus," the catch-all name for Georgian locals (best to stop there). There's really little better than Waffle House on a Saturday in northwest Georgia, where I just couldn't help responding in kind to our waitress' thick Southern accent, as sugary as that sticky syrup holder next to the Tabasco.



















The biggest feat of 2012 was my Easter dinner, replete with a five-pound lamb leg and pastitsio, quite possibly the most non-Greek Greek favorite. Pastitsio--a sort of Greek lasagna--requires taking one day off of work, browning meet interminably long, stirring a bechamel sauce for about 45 minutes...straight..and being comforted by female relatives (who have made pastitsio) as many times as they will pick up the phone and answer your harried queries.













I was even lucky enough to have a Yiayia who happened to have baked Greek koulourakia a few days before my party and a mother who didn't mind Fedex'ing them about seven states over.


I headed to fancy Gramercy Tavern in Manhattan sometime in March and enjoyed the simple pleasures of wine and petits fours on a Thursday afternoon. (Admittedly, not a bad gig.) I had some food for lunch but the treat was the carrot cake with butter pecan ice cream--with candied carrots--and the quarter-sized macaron. And the subtle ambiance of dining at your perfect idea of where ladies-who-lunch actually lunch.

The next day, my friend Sonia--now a recent graduate of the French Culinary Institute--and I wandered more around Manhattan. She took me to Baked By Melissa, a delicious mini-cupcake almost-stall that sells delicious cake/icing combinations like peanut butter and jelly, red velvet, and mint chocolate chip. In profile, they look like this, copyright almost certainly infringed:



I clearly enjoyed them as well. And the lamb Sonia braised, while in the kitchen at the restaurant at the French Culinary Institute, the night before.



















I was finally able to visit Philadelphia and instead of starting with a cheese steak, had a Croque Madame at the Ritz, which was surprisingly artsily photogenic (the sandwich and the hotel). Then I happily gave in and went to a cheese steak place.



















Then I watched its beautiful construction and ate every last bit.













Earlier in my eating-across-America tour, I had gone to Kansas City, visiting my old haunts (food and otherwise) with my parents to celebrate Allison's bachelorette party (like her wedding, her bachelorette party was deliberately built around food, to my satisfaction).

There was Tex Mex and a beer tour, with requisite tasting.













There was a robust appreciation for the variety of barbecue sauce at a local grocery store and envy for Boulevard's prolific beer choices and great labels a few aisles over.













And of course, farm-choked-chickens at Stroud's and BBQ-sauce-drenched chopped beef at Gate's.













I had mole enchiladas in Austin, necessitating a cowboy-size appetite.



















There was Southern food and spiked coffee (the "Irish Hangover Cure") with Sue (my favorite UGA/Oklahoma fan) at Kitchen 2404, with all manner of fried eggs, grits, and shrimp.



















And then, there was the birth of Stephanie's baby--the first of many girlfriends' lovely children--sweeter than any many-dollar Jose Andres dessert concoction.

America Eats Tavern

I love American food. I love a steamed hot dog in crinkled foil with only a few pumps of mustard from a vat to adorn it. I love McDonald's French fries: the short, pointy, crunchy ones and the long mushy ones that have absorbed generous sprinklings of salt alike. I love macaroni and cheese from a cafeteria hot bar, pineapple upside down cake with uniformly-arrayed-pineapple-from-a-can at picnics, and juicy burgers with even juicier tomatoes. I particularly like the complement beer and potato skins add to already good conversations. Real American food, however, is not improved with condescension and tradition-skewering improvements. I suppose that's my opening shot.

Christine and I this afternoon had a lovely day celebrating Western landscapes and colonial portraits at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. We admired photos of Americana by Annie Liebowitz and the juicy still lifes.














We saw portraits of Reagan, Davy Crockett, cowboys, Indians, Benjamin Franklin, and expansive landscapes of mountains and gorges, with glimmery waterfalls, idyllic little deer, and light that can't possibly exist in reality. Patriotism was clearly in no short supply, making us extremely biased toward sampling our Motherland's food.

As such, we decided to try Jose Andres' new restaurant, America Eats Tavern. The space that previously housed Cafe Atlantico and its swankier 6-seat restaurant-within-a-restaurant upstairs, Minibar (both top 100s), has been converted to a dining room "that brings the history of America to life on your plate." It's like a food Epcot, without any animatronic Presidents.

You can tell from the subtle derision I've already exhibited that the concept didn't fly like Old Glory on a windy day, for a variety of reasons. One, Americans don't really eat like this (you'll see). Two, American food is significantly cheaper that the prices we were charged (our bill was $100+). And three, our waiter's puritanical view of food (he invoked the glories of the restaurant's "catsup" while freely admitting there was nothing on the menu to put it on) coupled with his latent snootiness (he called me out for rolling my eyes when he mechanically said the strawberry shortcake's selling point was that the berries came from the nearby farmer's market). Christine wisely noted that there is no point changing something that's already good if you're not making it better.

After 10 minutes of perusing the menu (each item had a small paragraph more focused on food history than actual ingredients), we were exhausted and needed a drink. I had the Moscow Mule with lime, ginger beer, and vodka and Christine had the French 75, a cocktail created at Harry's New York Bar in Paris (with gin, lemon and sparkling wine). We split biscuits with blackberry butter.



















Clearly, we were looking past our slightly intrusive waiter (who readily admitted to listening to our conversation--quite a juicy one at that) and enjoying our cocktails and sweet things.


With our first dish, we realized that really delicious classics--the historic culinary favorites a restaurant like this is both celebrating and capitalizing on--oftentimes can't or shouldn't be improved upon. Case in point: Waldorf salad is good because of the creamy mayonnaise, the grassy and nutty crunch of celery and nuts, and the tart apples ubiquitous in each bite. Instead, the potent integration of the various textures and tastes today was watered down and deconstructed with layers and lettuce for a reasonable $12.


Christine wanted a burger, but the filet-mignon-grind was mixed with bone marrow. Instead, she had the fried hot dog on a crusty roll and relish. It was tasty but, well, a $10 hot dog.

I didn't fare much better: I had the peanut butter and jelly sandwich with foie gras. The sandwiches were charmingly pocketed into little pouches but they were heavy and, I found, an unappetizing mish-mash that went half eaten. The milk and the chips were good, but I guess they were the only parts that made me successfully and sufficiently nostalgic.



















We had dessert, largely driven by the fact that I was still hungry. Since American Express and Dole are sponsors of America Eats (not sure how this works since you'd think the patrons were being sufficiently financially extorted), pineapple was on the menu. It was admittedly beautiful, but was a little too sugary, lacked sufficient amounts of pineapple in the cake, and missed a tacky maraschino cherry on top (ok, I'm not judging them there but who thought I'd miss it). Next time I have American, it will be in baseball stands, on a paper plate, or on a stick, please.

Marvin

I have eaten in 2012. You wouldn't think so due to the non-prolificness of the blog. But I have dined (and not written about a handful of restaurants) to put myself at a mere nine restaurants away from completing the top 100. It's like baby weight or something: the last 10 are the hard ones. Or the nine years it takes to undue the freshman 15. Maybe a Coleridge reference to albatrosses-around-necks is more cultured and germane. I think so.

Anyway, this blog has been about catching-up: a night of excess over fancy wines and multi-compartmented dessert plates still goes undocumented (from the pre-30 era), as does a Sunday Indian buffet I almost indulged in alone--in, you guessed it, Rockville--where I instead awkwardly took a self-portrait. In good time.

Since I'm only a mere two weeks out from eating at Marvin, that is where I will being catching up. And this will be quick since nearly all my photos look exactly the same: dark. Dotti acquiesced to another top 100 foray: our last was in October, which I wrote up in January. Alas.

We wanted to go because Marvin has chicken and waffles. A few weeks prior, we went to Tabaq, that also had chicken and waffles but with an inadvisable ketchupy gravy. That caloric Southern devil is in the details. Leading up to our reason for being there (the whole top 100 thing aside), we began with the baby back pork ribs. Our table, comprised of an Oklahoman, a North Carolinian, and our friend Brian, a newly baptized Tarheel, extracted every bit of meat from those ribs.

We also had cheese croquettes, which, unsurprisingly look like ribs in low light. With both goat and ricotta cheeses, they were delicious. Taste was about the only sense we could experience the whole night though: we only knew our waiter was asking questions if he stayed inordinately long at the table, we could barely hear each other, and the muddled mix of the Belgian wine and the dark made the dining room a bit indistinct.


Dotti's chicken and waffles were delicious, with plenty of meat, rich collards, and a good-looking, crispy waffle. Brian had a southern burger topped with avocado, bacon, and a jalapeno spread. Who would have thought votives would be such abysmal light sources.



















I had softshell crab, one of my new favorite dishes, that here more closely resembles a 1950s horror sea creature. The andouille, grilled asparagus, and tarragon aioli had as much heft in the dish as Belgium has esteem for anything beyond its waffles on the world stage. That's to say, it was fine.

Our waiter non-committal-y (and unadvisedly) suggested the toffee cake with a salted caramel ice cream. The ice cream was delicious but the cake was dense and sticky, more Fran Drescher than Grace Kelly in tone.


There's always a silver lining, though. Over ribs and many fried things, we discussed the secrets of the romantic universe--resolving some--trying out our theories on Brian while fielding inquiries back. And, I remembered the subtle but discernible pleasure of photographing my food before eating it.

Volt

In my top 100 quest, it's proving impossible to sprint to the finish: I'm ending not with a bang but with a whimper. It's ok, though, because so are my restaurants. Today I took my second trip to the Rockville area in as many weeks (the top 100 list is the only reason I know Rockville exists). I bundled myself up, braved leaf-swirling winds, prepared myself with only Cheerios for breakfast, and parallel parked in quaint historic Frederick, Maryland (Frederick is past Rockville, or a mere 53 miles away from my apartment) to dine at Volt.

This is a restaurant where you anticipate going and the dining room is charged with excitement. The staff over the past week has called me twice to confirm my reservation. The restaurant even has a separate voice mail box where you confirm your reservation via answering machine. I found this silly and onerous, but I'm crotchety in my old age.

I arrived early--I superficially perused Frederick's charming main street, including an artisinal tea shop--and relaxed briefly in the leather-clad bar. The atmosphere at Volt is formal yet warm; the staff wear uniform semi-formal attire with the same dark Converse low-tops.

It's easy to relate my experience at Volt today with the sometimes disappointing romantic trajectory of a single girl, though: the first few culinary forays were exciting, breathtaking, and whimsical, while the final engagements were mediocre and a tinge uninspired. The food was never bad, but the dating equivalent trajectory for the meal would be a great mini-golf first date with a two-straw-shared strawberry milkshake to cardboard-crust pizza with watered down beer in a dingy bowling alley a few weeks later. I'll explain myself.

Delicious fennel pollen-ed and sea-salted breadsticks arrived first and I ordered the leña cocktail with mezcal, allspice dram, orange, lemon, mole bitters, spiced salt. I didn't like it but was warned of its uniqueness; while I couldn't resist trying a drink with mole in it, I sent it back. That was my fault, not the restaurant's, as that's a clever cocktail.



















The amuse bouche was a delicious beet macaron with foie gras mousse. The texture wasn't completely and convincingly macaron-esque, but it was delicious, beautifully constructed, and quite clever.. and I was delighted.

A generous and pleasant treat around brunch time is good and plentiful bread, particularly in a tasting menu (I ordered the five-course variety) where bread can calibrate one's stomach to tolerable levels of hungry and full. A server would regularly come around with beautiful breads-- chocolate croissants, bacon scones, cheese/chive biscuits, and a traditional sea salt rolls--which all helped either curb the pre-meal hunger, sop up sauce, or permit nibbling while waiting. I took three.

The first course was hamachi, or raw yellowtail. It was beautiful and covered in ribbons of fennel and crunchy ginger, as well as sprinkled blood orange vesicles (don't worry, I had to look that up). If My Little Ponies and Barbie invented the perfect color scheme, this would be it and that's not an insult. This was tremendously good.


Next, I had a signature Volt dish, goat cheese ravioli atop a parsley root purée with vegetable ash and black trumpet mushrooms. A year ago (fine, in Paris) intimidation turned to respect for these mushrooms, which in French translate as "trumpets of death." Now I am compelled to always order dishes with them. The flavors were exquisite--rich and new (vegetable ash was tasty)--and the textures of foam, grainy ash, al dente pasta and creamy cheese kept my eyes from rising once from my dish until I finished.

Unfortunately, in subsequent dishes, my brunch branched off from exquisite: it became standard trending toward mediocre. I had rockfish--smooth and flavorful with a crisp skin--with a tablespoon's worth of farro, butternut squash, and half a mini brussels sprout. The next course was beef cheek with cippolini onions and yukon potatoes. The first bite was very hard to cut off and a gelatinous ribbon running through the middle was off-putting. It was pretty, but disappointing. Both dishes tasted fine, but paled in creativity, flavor, and spirit from the previous ones.




















I sorted out my thoughts over an espresso, opting for a haphazardly artistic self-portrait via the sugar bowl. I was already a bit discombobulated because I pushed on the wall thinking it was the bathroom door and when trying to get out, kept pushing and pulling before someone outside slid the pocket door open for me. Take my critique with a grain of salt as my anecdote may be an indicator of my intelligence.


For the dessert course, I was expecting a simple marshmallow (another thing I learned in Paris is that marshmallows or grimauves can be arts unto themselves) but I had a plate of five desserts in one (it's uncharitable to call it a mess; I'll just say it's a pastiche). The textures were delightful-- gooey marshmallow beneath, crumbled textured chocolate, a crispy baked bark, ice cream, and frozen cocoa balls--but nothing was particularly or exquisitely delicious or memorable.

I wanted to like everything, really--at each course, I reverentially listened to the rapid-fire description of the dish--but I just couldn't. I returned to my car, peeled yet another top-100-induced-parking-ticket from my windshield, and wished I had waved the white flag after course two.