Blue Duck Tavern

I used to think I had an unlikely but delightedly virulent aversion to trappings of power, prestige, and fancy-ness: I thought Rage Against the Machine was fair and balanced, I understood "the man" to be a pervasive, ubiquitous force in society, and I really liked the word Foucauldian (particularly because of that random d). My proletariarism is less evident now when I listen to Rage on pirated and burned CDs, ruthlessly support "the man" (who happens to subsidize my rent and health insurance), and patronize restaurants that appeal to the puff-chested, trophy-wife-sporting, power suits.

Sometimes in DC, this clientele and the atmosphere they create in the dining room is untenable; eating congealed butterscotch flavored bone marrow in the Capitol dining room would be more appealing and I'd see more famous people. But, at a place like Blue Duck Tavern, where in response to my telling the waiter I couldn't hear him he says, "It's my braces, isn't it? I knew it," grinning, the flowing wine, fancy but comforting food, and exquisite hospitality make bourgeoisie a nice word again.

Blue Duck Tavern is fancy, indubitably, but its staff is extremely approachable, thoughtful, and unobtrusive. I went to dine with Sue, my rich-laughed friend, and upon telling the hostess our third friend wouldn't be joining, the hostess wished that everything was alright with her. In the bar, when the waitresses realized they had overlooked me for a few more minutes than they should have (I'm sure my Jane Austen book gave away how important I was), they sent the sommelier over to take my order. After having mentioned to the hostess Sue and I would take a table earlier, if possible, she remembered to seek us out in the busy bar when one came available.


We started with one of the friendliest dishes of foie gras I've ever had; it wasn't scary or lobey at all. Plus, it was sweet--if Paula Deen became goose liver mousse, she'd taste like this. Their brûlée of foie gras has a paper-thin layer of caramelized sugar and bourbon peaches, raisins, and poppy seeds on top. The amount of toasted brioche was insufficient for the dish, but the fact that the dish seemed to reach the outer limit of deepest indulgence, reeled back only slightly with the fruit, made up for it.


Smart Sue got the duck (signature) and graciously posed with the perfectly blue-colored (fancy unintentional camera effect) fountain. We felt like princesses with our frequently refilled Cabernets and the lulling cadences of our other waiter from Spanish Galicia. Her duck was tender and rich (but not sickly so) and had a fresh but sticky whole red plum.


We had exquisite side dishes: the wood oven roasted creamed corn with tarragon (with flavors from both the country and New Mexico)...


...and a warm pie of sheeps’ milk, ricotta, Swiss chard and anise hyssop (it's in there somewhere). The pie had hints both (in size and shape) of hunger-satisfying Jumbo Slice and the homey warmth of spanakopita.


As an aside, want to see what Jumbo Slice looks like at night when you haven't been drinking?

I had fat, juicy, perfectly encrusted scallops, whose scallop crevices seemed to cleave willingly to let in the light lemon and thyme sauce.


In a bit of a pseudo indecision about which one dessert we wanted, we got two. I felt compelled to get the nectarine, blackberry and almond crumble, with a filling of fresh fruit roasted with orange, lemon peel and vanilla bean and topped with an almond crumble and crème fraîche. I was powerless to resist after seeing it posted on the Blue Duck Tavern's blog.


Cleverly thematically (blue again) Sue ordered the Straight from the Oven Chocolate Cake with a Maker’s Mark flambé. So giddy on wine, gossip and romantic insights, we forgot about the flambé part, which gave us quite a show when it did arrive.

And just because I can. What better place than here, what better time than now.

Lakeville, Connecticut

Sometimes, very rarely, if invited to a place like Lakeville, Connecticut and if I am cooked for all weekend, provided the opportunity to eat tomatoes picked right off the vine, savor temperatures never over 90 degrees, and allowed to explore the glories of pastures, haystacks, hammocks, and Ferraris, I'll write a whole entry about it. In this case, it's fairly easy to make an exception to traditionally restrictive blog-worthy categories like "top 100 restaurant" or "BBQ place in Oklahoma," particularly if the inviter exerts a bit of pressure as to the likelihood of a blog entry being created. I'm not entirely averse to being coopted.

My first trip in and out of Connecticut took me and my hospitable friends deliberately to the Red Rooster, my first of many celebrations of Americana in Connecticut (correction: a loyal New Yorker reader let me know I was, in fact, in New York not Connecticut). With no-frills burgers and fries, delicious peanut butter milkshakes, and al fresco dining (fancy picnic benches with paint that cools in-the-sun metal in a mulched courtyard), we were better able to gird ourselves for the requisite amounts of energy it would take to regularly sun ourselves, eat, and decide on which types of wine we would drink for the next four days.



















A few hours later, me and Jane Austen were here.


Foreign to an amateur food writer was the dearth of restaurant-going: we had ice cream at Sweet Williams and of course, the Red Rooster Drive In and Mini Golf, but we focused our culinary attentions on preparing a variety of delicious meals. I was on vacation so didn't know where my phone was most of the time, reducing my propensity both to remember and be able to take photographs of my meals. But, if there is little difference between the quality of the dish when I randomly remembered my camera and the culinary highlights of the weekend, that delta means my meals were uniformly delicious.

We had swordfish steaks and fresh corn...


















And caprese salad...


Double cheeseburgers...


And our final evening, a tiki-lit dinner in the middle of a field...


I did a fair amount of slow meandering and engaged in a bit of casual pensiveness.



















In the equally superlative tier of what else was good to eat was the garden, the source of the best parts of meals: fresh rosemary in the potatoes; tomatoes on the sandwiches, in salads, and absconded on the way to the pool; mint in the cocktails and water; and basil in the salads.






































We also stuffed tomatoes with Black Cats for post-meal shows (we needed shorter wicks for in-air explosions; the contiguous cans of Whoop Ass gave a more reliable show).


In between all the relaxing, we managed to find a few spare moments for a trip to the races. Ferrari, not horse. We saw the pretty Ferraris...



















And the ones emanating heat, just having completed their laps minutes earlier.



















For a cinematic, automotive masterpiece, watch this (it will make you feel like Dale Earnhart, William Wallace, and a Roman gladiator all at once):



Top 100, I'll be back tomorrow.

Equinox

There's something clever women like about being taught something. Whether it's Jane Eyre devouring the contents of Mr. Rochester's library, the Princess Bride learning about the Dread Pirate Roberts, or a girl discovering the difference between bourbon and whiskey, a woman likes to know she's associating herself with intelligence. Which, is why on Friday night I knew I was falling for the tender culinary caresses of Equinox when gougères were wantonly put on the table almost immediately.

The night before, I spent the better part of an evening, a bottle of white wine, and my patience making gougères, a deceivingly complex gruyère cheese/choux pastry served typically during a cocktail hour or as an amuse bouche. They're airy yet leaden and saturated with butter, cheese, and more gruyère.

My endeavor started well enough, with a glass of chilled white and a "simple" one page recipe.....

....that yielded a cheese-confettied kitchen and 2-dimensional cheese blobs.

In the end I made three tiers of gougères: ones that would not agree to separate from the cookie sheet, the majority of which crisped up unsophisticatedly and crunched, and the precious eight that turned out at least the commonly-agreed upon color of gougères.

So, imagine my chagrin when I was immediately put in my place with a properly-consisted gougère at Equinox. Combine this with my realization that I was eating my final Andy-and-Kerry blog-worthy meal and a resolved solemnity overtook my regret at deflated gougères. How far we've come from the Cowboy Cafe.

We started with three exquisite cocktails, both Kerry and mine featuring subtly sophisticated accouterments: a slice of cucumber to accompany her gin cocktail and candied ginger on mine, complementing the citrus and vodka.


Those drinks tasted delicious both because of their quality and our need; our arrival at the restaurant an hour before wasn't entirely certain. Andy and Kerry, on their final stateside days, were busy with a variety of other departure preparations and suffered a minor-yet-wheel-debilitating car mishap, seconds after their voyage to the restaurant commenced. After some quick thinking, tires were replaced, carpools established, and valet parking capitalized on. Merely one hour after the threat of take-out seemed imminent, we were back on track.

The alcohol rushed to our fingertips as we used them to scan the menu and we started ordering, beginning with the risotto fritters and the gazpacho. Kerry's risotto fritters were creamy with stalwart grains that combined long enough to be fried. Andy's gazpacho tasted smooth, had a bit of vegetable chunk, and a hint of citrus (orange juice?) woven through.



















I had stuffed squash blossoms, which are fairly easy to obtain but hard to find on menus. These were stuffed with goat cheese, fried tempura style, and propped on olive tapenade; fried so delicately, their waving petals seemed to be frozen in motion. Our appetizers were a testament to the chef that despite the sweltering weather, appropriately flavored fried foods could satisfy in 100-plus degree heat.

Our pre-dinner salads and dishes were delicious and mostly remarkable, but lacked the proper fanfare to introduce the next course. Andy, who had ordered the tasting menu, had a pickled cabbage salad with a single shrimp on top and a drenched spinach salad with a citrus vinaigrette. I had a chopped salad with fresh figs, candied walnuts, roasted beets and a quail egg cooked up in the hole of a buttered piece of brioche. Kerry and I shared it but didn't realize the good stuff was in the middle of the salad until most of the frisée was gone. Andy also had a swordfish steak with tomatillo salsa, juicy and summer-complementarily tart.

Despite the seven preceding plates, we each ate all of our entrees. Kerry had the hand cut fazzoletti with poached lobster, fresh fava beans, charred farm corn, and smoked bacon. Andy had the grilled tenderloin of Pennsylvania pork with caramelized chanterelles.



















Kerry also ordered a delightful side of roasted beets and peaches, topped with a chilled, raw fennel salad on top. That's a summer salad that vaccinates against heat exhaustion.


I had soft shell crab, a food that has historically intimidated me like steak tartare did. Would it be like eating crab battered in egg shells? Like eating shrimp with the tails on? Would I have the same aggravation the remainder of the evening as I did when after a movie with stubborn popcorn hulls stuck in my teeth?

Apparently not: every part of the crab, from its spiny legs to its meaty body was rich in flavor and crunched delightfully and the tomatillo-based salad underneath cut the delicate sweetness of the crab. Ah well, better late than never.


Dessert was a bit of a disappointment, but after a few hours of rich conversation and a good bottle of red (from Virginia!) we didn't notice much. Andy had the pot de creme, a bit annoying in its trendy foam and missing a proper proportion of berries to cream. Kerry and I split the bread pudding. It was dense, as promised, but more like a very moist flourless cake than a homey, gooey bread pudding. The salted caramel ice cream was delicious, but wasn't salty or enough to match up bite-for-bite to the chocolate.

Dinner, as a whole, was tremendous and featured all the hallmarks of an Andy/Kerry dinner: good conversation, good food choices, good plate diversity, good food-observing, good plate-passing, and another good memory of dining together. The BocaSola and I will miss you.

Art and Soul

I'm starting to be skeptical of soul food, particularly when two girls with soul go to restaurants that serve it. And me and Dotti know soul: from her love of fried chicken, to my love of shrimp and grits and BBQ, and to our collective passion for a variety of undeserving objects, we got soul and some to spare. But copiously butter-drizzled cuisine soul food does not make. Particularly, when this soul food prompts not-seen-since-elementary-school visceral reactions to both butter and vegetables.

Dotti and I headed to Art and Soul on Capitol Hill last weekend, a bar and restaurant claiming southern influences to its food. It started off promising enough with homemade barbecue chips at the bar and butter rolls and some dark (not tasty) sweet bread on the table. This iteration of butter was measured, appropriate, and proportional.


Next, we had shrimp and grits, the first of the weekend and second in a row for this publication. The shrimp glistened with a butter glaze and each hominy of grit was infused with garlic, with a shallow pool of butter hovering above them. If you can have brain freeze from popsicles, can you you have catatonia from butter?


Butter's cousin, cheese, starred in the highlight of the evening, the macaroni and cheese. I consider the pasta noodle almost as important as the sauce and here both shone: tight spirals caught as much of the cheese as possible in its threads, as well as the breadcrumb crunch on top.


Dotti ordered her fried (nearly whole) chicken with greens and mashed potatoes. She cleverly got a real Southern dish. There was gravy, sort of like butter, but no visibly extraneous butter.


I opted for fancy (that was silly): rabbit stuffed with spinach (I believe), garlic/cheese biscuits, and an unappetizing mix of my least favorite combination of vegetables: fava beans (too much like the lima kind), carrots, and pearl onions. The rabbit was chewy and eating the vegetables seemed obligatory rather than pleasurable, so I re-feasted on macaroni and cheese and waited for the dessert menu.


I hate to be dismissive of Oprah's former personal chef, but it's almost a farce to serve soul food--a comfort enjoyed by families on Sundays--in the shadow of the Capitol, in a sleek, modern, deliberately-dramatically-lit restaurant.

Dessert, like a dinner triangle being rung, woke up the rest of the meal. We had a pecan pie the likes of which I've never had, with a dense, praline-like pecan filling on the bottom and a chocolate ganache-like top. We also had a multi-berry cobbler with ice cream. They both had butter but thankfully we couldn't taste it.



















Dessert turned out to be exquisite but as a whole, dinner wasn't exceptional..and afterwards I didn't much hope the South would rise again. That is, unless I knew Clifton would be its capital and butter wouldn't be used with Paula Deen-like abandon.