11
May

*17 keeps on chugging

By Misha 0 Comments
Categories: desserts, american, chefs, restaurants and houston

I have been meaning to try *17 since the Wes Morton took over the kitchen and finally got a chance this weekend. Minor flaws aside, the restaurant is in solid hands. Food seems as good as ever, serving the same brand of American cuisine that it’s became known for.

I was expecting to see at least a few changes to the style of cooking that put 17 on the map, but the menu reads as if Ryan Pera was still at the helm, right down to the poached seafood dishes served in flavored broth. No signs of Michel Richard influences on this menu. I hope *17 has a chance to evolve, now that Wes Morton has proven he can handle a kitchen on his own.

Here’s what we had:

Pork rillette amuse bouche
More toast than rillette here. It might have been good. Couldn’t tell either way.

Pan-seared ahi tuna / local beets / leeks / beurre rouge
I didn’t get a sample, but my friend liked the tuna quite a bit. I am generally bored with seared tuna, spoiled completely by tuna cheeks I had at Manresa that tasted like they were imported from another planet filled with delicious animals and fish, but this might be something I’d order myself. I’ve never had beets paired with tuna before. Seems like something worth trying.

Poached Scottish salmon / spring vegetables “a la grecque” / green garlic broth
Another dish I didn’t try, but I did catch a big whiff of the garlic broth. Any chef that completely ignores practical implications of what happens after dinner is either clueless or has a bold vision for his food. I think it’s vision in this case. Garlic makes things taste good. Keep on rocking, Chef Morton.

Moulard duck foie gras “terrine” / preserved rhubarb / organic strawberries / toasted almonds / 25-year balsamic / brioche
A very well prepared foie gras dish, marred by a couple of perplexing choices. The terrine was served on a warm plate and had began to melt by the time it hit the table. Not a major problem, but details matter when you serve premium ingredients. The strawberries were excellent, but you really couldn’t taste the balsamic vinegar, served as a microdot that had no effect on the flavor at all. I know, 25 year balsamic is expensive, but it’s not that expensive. 

Salt was a bigger problem. The first few dabs of foie seemed ok, but as you worked through the dish the salt began to overwhelm everything else. This is why in many restaurants foie gras is sometimes served with flavored salts on the side, which really helps to accentuate the subtle flavor of the liver when used in moderation. Add too much salt or even try to use a salt variety with an unusually large flake and the complexity of foie flavor is diminished, as it was in this case. 

Handcut tagliatelle / berkshire pork ragoût
Great pasta dish, not too mushy not too al dente, just right. The ragout was quite good, but seemed under seasoned. Maybe the salt assault of the foie gras ruined my taste buds.

Braised beef short rib / potato puree / sautéed arrowleaf spinach / sauce bordelaise
The waitress told us, with a certain amount of misplaced pride, that as many times as the chef has tried to remove this dish off the menu the general manager has refused. I can see why. Spring, summer or fall, when people keep on forking over almost $40 for some braised short ribs (NY Strip costs less, strangely enough), give the masses what they want.

The short ribs were well made. Then again I am no longer surprised when I find a restaurant with competently made ribs on the menu. Maybe it’s time chefs start putting "short ribs" in quotes and serving bison or kangaroo instead of beef to break the monotony a bit.

Bananas foster sundae / vanilla crème brulee / warm bananas / caramel ice cream
Mixed reviews on this one. I thought it was an interesting idea and quite good, except the creme brulee got a bit warm when the bananas were flambéed. Almost everything on the plate was too sweet, but combined with the slightly salty ice cream (hope that was intentional) it worked pretty well.

Sticky toffee pudding / candied kumquat / mascarpone gelato
I liked the gelato and the kumquat more than the pudding. Ok, but not great.

Granola petit four
A truly awful end to an otherwise good meal. This thing tasted like a slightly more edible Cliffs bar. WTF?

Downtown dining seems to be bouncing back, although I am not sure if people know or care.  By the time we left at 10 the restaurant was empty, except for some guy in a red Ferrari with a "chino-x" license plate. Just as downtown was winding down, Midtown was absolutely packed with the bar hopping types and just getting started.

If I had my choice, downtown would someday become a destination for cutting edge food and the arts, while midtown remained a great place to get drunk and laid. But before that happens, *17, The Grove and others have to step up to the level being set by Michael Kramer at Voice. Right now, downtown restaurants seem to have the talent, but maybe not the ambition to be booked out days in advance.

No photos this time, kids. Use your imagination.

09
May

Guerilla warfare

By Misha 2 Comments
Categories: openings, nose-to-tail, british, restaurants and houston

Business appears to be picking up nicely at Feast, but it’s nowhere near the level it deserves. While Dolce Vita and Indika down the street are mobbed by people nightly, you can still show up at Feast and get a table without any notice. Not the end of the world, but I’d prefer to have to wait for the table behind a huge crowd, than for Feast to change it’s "take no prisoners" approach to food.

Feast doesn’t make itself terribly easy to find, either. Google searches turn up results for the Moveable Feast, but nothing for Feast itself. There appears to be a domain registered now, but it’s pointing to Googlepages, making the site entirely SEO unfriendly. There are a few reviews on B4-U-Eat (all positive), but nothing on Yelp and lesser social networking sites.  Not a great recipe for success… so I have decided to launch a guerilla effort to drum up some business for Feast.

My usual lunch crew includes a Brazilian who only seems to eat seared hunks of beef and a tall lanky fellow unnecessarily preoccupied with eating "light", so getting out to Feast as often as I’d like is a bit of a challenge. The few times I break away for lunch with unassuming civilians unaware of my my macabre eating habits I tend to drag them to Feast and force them to step out of the safety zone filled with pizza, burgers and fried chicken wings.

Lucky for me, the kitchen at Feast was in top form and produced some stunning food. One of the Feast virgins became an instant fan and ended up there for dinner the very same night, going back several times since then. Mission accomplished.

Here’s what we had:

Garlic Snails on Toast
Perfectly anti-French little nuggets of briny, garlic flavored goodness on rather terrible bread. Crappy bread aside, very nice way to start a meal.

Brawn and Cornichons
One of the best house made head cheeses I have ever head (get it?). On par with Incanto. Better than Couchon. Definitely better than… OK, I am out of places that make their own head cheese.

The Feast version of head cheese is less gelatinous than most others, with loose pieces of meat off the pig’s head bound by collagen and small bits of cartilage cooked in a terrine. I usually dislike cornichons, because they tend to be too strong for charcuterie, but these were more mild and provided a great contrast to the brawn.

Tongue Fritters, Asparagus, Roasted Potatoes
Tongue is one of the things Feast does best. On my first visit I had a big chunk of ox tongue that was both tender and had an impressive pan seared crust. This version was battered and pan fried, for a totally different flavor and texture. The only other tongue fritter I sampled in Houston was at Dolce Vita, and the Feast version bests it by a wide margin.

Pork Cheeks, Red Cabbage and Mashed Roasted Potatoes
One of the few things I dislike about Feast (same was true at Taverna) is the use of  cross cuts for cheeks and bellies, instead of the lateral cuts. The pork cheeks were good, but the meat to fat ratio was a bit out of whack, for my tastes.

Steak and Kidney Pudding, Roasted Carrots and Mashed Potatoes
Best dish at the table, with tongue fritters being close second. Maybe it’s my Eastern European background, but when I have no idea what I want to eat the first thing that comes to mind is meat stuffed in some sort of dough. The pudding at Feast does that just that.

The giant dumpling had a great mouth feel - soft, glutinous, just a little chewy and sticky. I had trouble deciding if I liked the dumpling better than the meat stuffing, but I do know that together they tasted incredible. I have a love/hate relationship with kidneys, which can be quite rancid in wrong hands.  These had a delicate flavor that combined very nicely with the perfectly braised chuck, providing a nice contrast and dimension to the whole dish. Absolutely awesome.

04
May

a taste of Voice

By Misha 6 Comments
Categories: desserts, tasting menu, american, chefs, houston and molecular gastronomy

How often can you say that a restaurant in Houston prepares something better than the French Laundry, a restaurant so critically acclaimed it seems to wobble a bit under the weight of unrealistic expectations?

Normally, I wouldn’t resort to such punditry, but I am not saying this to take anything away from Thomas Keller - 7 Michelin stars, the only chef with two Top 10 entries on World’s Best Restaurants list, countless accolades. My only point here is that Voice, the new restaurant at Hotel Icon under direction of Michael Kramer, is capable of cooking at a very high level.

Before I get flamed for a careless comparison, it’s worth noting that I visited both restaurants less than 30 days apart. While the dishes and lobster parts weren’t exactly the same, I am fairly certain that both rely on butter poaching, a technique popularized by Thomas Keller (I am sure someone from Voice will correct me if I am wrong) and both pair lobster with avocado.

There are no bad dishes at French Laundry, there are just dishes that are "less good". The lobster wasn’t botched. It’s only flaw was that it was less than perfect. I thought it was a touch underdone and a little stringy. My dinner companions agreed, having to force their knives into the tail.

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Lobster preparations at French Laundry (left) and Voice (right)

The lobster served at the degustation arranged for us by Randy Rucker (who deserves loads of credit for dragging us out on a school night) was cooked perfectly and had a delicate texture I have trouble describing without resorting to really silly adjectives. The orange drizzle became a subtle backdrop, rather than take center stage. The avocado provided just the right amount of creamy texture to boost the lobster with more body. It all worked flawlessly.

This is as good as lobster gets. Your only problem is that you won’t find it on the regular menu and there is no guarantee that you’ll see it in your tasting, which seems to be an ingredients driven affair.

There are already several posts about Voice, so I’ll focus mostly on food. It may be worth your time to check out the photos on Flickr, if you are into full resolution food porn. There are over 90 shots in all, some quite nice.

Quartet of Amuse Bouche
Mushroom Soup "Cappuccino", Truffles, Truffle Foam - could have easily come across as gimmicky and trite, but it really worked. Perfect facsimile of the cappuccino texture with a deep mushroom flavor. I think more dinners should start with a soup shooter. This is one recent trend worth overusing.
Quail, Pomegranate, Crispy Quail Egg - typically quail is under or over cooked, this one was just right. Pomegranate added just the right amount of acid without overpowering the dish. A soft boiled quail egg with a bigger crunch would seriously put this dish over the top.
English Pea Risotto - if the peas had flavor it was mostly lost in the rice. Not bad, but seemed more like a side than an amuse. 
Maine Lobster, Pushed Avocado, Orange - best dish of the night. See above.

Patchwork of Baby Beets, Texas Goat Cheese, Micro Arugula, Beet Caramel
One of those dishes where everything comes together and nothing seems out of place. Although far from simple, it didn’t seem overworked either, layering several beet preparations to create multiple dimensions of flavor. Even the cheese seemed to have more body and air than usual, having an almost elastic quality. Although not listed on the menu, I seem to remember a few cubes of beet gelee that, along with micro arugula, put the dish over the top. Plus, I just really love beets. Excellent.

Sashimi of Yellowfin Tuna, Mango, Watermelon Radish, Yuzu Juice
Crudo and sashimi are almost a bad cliche, going hard on sugar or acid in even in the most experienced kitchens (like Da Marco). Voice goes with the mainstream here, but the flavors are extremely well balanced, with just enough acid from yuzu, texture from watermelon radish and sugar from mango. The only real problem is that the thin strip of tuna can’t quite carry all the flavors. It’s close though. Very close.

Potato Gnocchi, Morels, Asparagus, Prosciutto 
Very much a California dish, where superior produce is often in the foreground. I know Alison Cook took exception with the way this dish reads, but that’s not the way it tasted. Normally served with shiitake mushrooms, this version came with more seasonal morels, which were easily the best thing on the plate. The dominant ingredients were morels and asparagus, while the gnocchi was little more than a delivery system. Excellent.

Foie Gras, Medjool Date, Pistachio Emulsion
Either I was still processing the morel explosion or maybe I am just spoiled by the mind blowing foie gras at Le Reve several months ago, but I didn’t get the typical rush I get from eating this stuff. I think I prefer my seared foie gras a bit more rare. Good overall, especially the pistachio emulsion pairing. 

Alaskan Halibut, Fennel, Baby Carrots, Truffle Emulsion
Everything worked in this dish. Halibut was exceptional, baby carrots tender and sweet. Even the truffle emulsion wasn’t obnoxious as truffle sauces can often be, adding to the overall composition, rather than distract from it. I don’t know what the little petal looking things were, but they were a most excellent touch.

Pork Belly, Heirloom Potato, Cippolini, Truffle
This little piggy wanted to be more seasoned. With a little salt this could be a great dish, especially served with something fresh and crisp, like English cucumber. (I add these little notes so people who cook for a living can have a good laugh at my attempts to engineer recipes) 

Honey Lacquered Duck Breast, Morels, Fava Beans, Black Pepper Gastrique
Another dish that felt like a throwback to California, with big morel and fava bean flavors. Fava beans, in season and seemingly at their peak, were especially great here. Oh, and the duck was great too. Out of the three meat courses I think I prefer this one. (BTW, I am glad Kramer’s kitchen doesn’t have any silly rules about using an ingredient only once in a tasting menu)

Venison Sous Vide, Caramelized Apples, Spring Onions, Sour Cherry Sauce
Very nice venison preparation. Chefs often use sous vide as a blunt force weapon in the kitchen, but it really is perfect for venison. I rarely order lean game, because it’s nearly impossible to cook without drying out a good portion of the meat.  Sous vide solves that whole problem in a spectacular way. The venison was uniformly rare, with all the complex notes of game perfectly in tact. Sour cherry provided such a bright and unexpected contrast to the meat that I didn’t even realize what I was eating at first. A cube of a caramelized apple and a sweet onion off on the side was a perfect addition. Most excellent.

I have to admit, meat dishes rarely get me going on tasting menus. Maybe it’s worth reversing the order, starting with heavy proteins first, working your way down to vegetable dishes and amuses? A regressive degustation. How about it? A whole restaurant dedicated to regressive dining.

Dessert Wave
Peanut Butter Custard, Caramelized Banana, Hazelnut Crunch - ridiculously good in every way. Not sure if I would have ordered this on my own, but this dessert landed in front of me and I had a really tough time passing it around for others to sample. Something this good makes your mind wander a bit and I started thinking about Elvis, for some reason. I don’t even like Elvis.
Warm Chocolate Cake, Crunchy Vanilla Ice Cream - great molten cake with a really good  ice cream, although after visiting tasting some of Elizabeth Faulkner’s desserts at Orson I’d like to see something a bit more fun than vanilla. Jalapeno, cayenne, BBQ sauce or avocado, maybe. We’re in Texas after all.
Study in Chocolate, Warm Cake, Mousse, Milkshake, Mint Ice Cream Cookie - I didn’t try the mint ice cream cookie, but the mousse and milkshake were really nice. Second best chocoholic dessert in town, after the C5 at Catalan.
Warm Apple Crisp - ok, but somewhat overshadowed by all the others

Mignardises - another signature sign of a well put together tasting menu. Nice bit of lagniappe for those intent on going all the way. I did.

I like Voice. I like it a lot.

Closest proxy I can draw to Voice is Restaurant August in New Orleans, where John Besh creates some of the most interesting and regionally focused food in the country with far less fanfare than you might see in New York or San Francisco. Besh uses advanced technique as a means to an end and that’s what makes Restaurant August very special. Kramer’s Voice seems to be cut from the same cloth.

I expect Voice to get better and better. I also expect to see Michael Kramer’s menu reflect more of Houston as he becomes a Houstonian himself and discovers the wild palette of cuisines and flavors that make this a great city to love good.

What I like most about Voice is that it isn’t hell bent on proving a point. Order a tasting menu at Nana in Dallas and you will find yourself wondering why there seems to be an irrelevant dab of foam on almost every plate. At Voice, the foam isn’t even called "foam" - it’s an emulsion (which may or may not be foamy) and it’s as integral part of the dish as any other element on the plate. A means to an end.

Kramer is smart enough to combine tongue in cheek concepts (mushroom cappuccino) with down to earth dishes that won’t scare the natives (rack of lamb). You find complex technique right next to tried and true classics. Yes, there is a thermal circulator in the kitchen, but they also seem to use pots and pans.

And that’s a good thing.

 

(Justin: thank you for taking care of us. You and Michael are doing excellent work.)

01
May

Albert Roux to open a new restaurant in Houston

By Misha 6 Comments
Categories: news, openings, London, french, restaurants, chefs and houston

Fascinating bit of news today - Albert Roux will soon open his first US restaurant and he will be doing so in Houston. Chez Roux will anchor a collection of 10 restaurants at the La Torretta Del Lago Resort & Spa, a $130 million project that will incorporate an 18 hole golf course, a upscale spa, fine dining and a luxury hotel. image_thumb24

La Torretta will be located on Lake Conroe. While not exactly in Houston, it’s no further than certain destination restaurants are from San Francisco. I’d say an hour is more than a reasonable drive for a Michelin star level restaurant.

According to the release Albert Roux has no plans to become a full time Texan, but will pay special attention to the project as his first entry into the US market. Some stories mention Michel Roux Jr, Albert’s son and current chef de cuisine at a two Michelin star rated Le Gavroche in London, as a possible executive chef. Albert Roux himself will be appearing in the kitchen regularly and stage special culinary events throughout 2009 (awesome!).

Albert Roux and his brother are considered luminaries of French cuisine in England, opening Le Gavroche in London in the 60’s and single handedly putting England on the culinary map. The restaurant received the first three Michelin star award in the UK and has placed regularly on the Restaurant Magazine Top 50 list since.  

The Le Gavroche influence on food in London is profound - it’s kitchen has produced some of the biggest names in food, including Gordon Ramsey and Marco Pierre White among many others.

I visited Brasserie Roux in the Sofitel St. James Hotel (located next to the Texas Embassy, strangely enough) last August and had one of the most memorable meals I had in London. Brasserie Roux is an upscale, but casual restaurant with relatively simple, almost rustic food. Despite being a rather low key outpost of the Roux empire, the quality of cooking and freshness of the ingredients were higher than I encountered in many upscale restaurants in London.

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Lunch at Brasserie Roux begins in a most civilized way - with an basket of crusty bread, soft butter and a plate of absolutely pristine radishes. In addition to classic brasserie dishes, the menu had an all-French section that roughly translated to a "taste of the times gone past", featuring forgotten recipes served in brasseries of old.

I opted for the duck liver terrine and the stewed rabbit leg served over pasta, off the old school menu. The terrine was incredibly smooth and had a much more pronounced liver flavor than commonly found in upscale French restaurants. The rabbit was even more impressive. Although I was questioning whether pasta dishes in fact appeared on brasserie menus in the past, and have since disappeared, it was a near flawless dish served with a sauce that was decidedly French in preparation and was a perfect backdrop for the rabbit and finely cubed vegetables from the braise.

If the quality of cooking I encountered at Brasserie Roux is any indication of what Chez Roux will deliver when it opens in Conroe, the restaurant will be a most impressive addition to the dining scene in Houston.

29
Apr

Good things happening at Cafe Annie

By Misha 3 Comments
Categories: southwestern, chefs, restaurants and houston

I have been mostly disinterested in Cafe Annie for the last several years. The food just didn’t seem to get quite to the level of other top restaurants in Houston and the menu was getting long in the tooth. There are only so many times you can see "wood grilled this" and "pan roasted that" on the menu before falling sound asleep.

Lately, a couple of good lunches have made me wonder if I was just making poor menu choices or if perhaps Cafe Annie is going through a renaissance of sorts. To be clear, the menu is still way too formulaic, especially so at lunch, but the flavors are brighter and the more refined. Overall, the food seems to be at a much higher level than before. Or is it just me?

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While the tortilla soup seemed perfectly average a bit less than a year ago, the mushroom soup with truffle croutons and the chilled potato with leeks and watercress I had recently were both exceptional. The potato soup today, served just a touch below room temperature over a chilled potatoes cubes, was delicate and perfectly balanced. A great spring dish. The mushroom soup a few months ago was just as good of a fit for winter - smooth, deeply flavored with actual mushrooms, rather than chicken broth and salt. Added bonus? The word "foraged" was nowhere to be found on the menu. How’s that for understated?

After striking out with lackluster entrees like buttermilk fried chicken salad, wood grilled shrimp with potato enchiladas and wood grilled skirt steak with yet more potato enchiladas (see the trend here?), I changed my strategy and started paying more attention to the daily specials instead. On both of my recent visits the specials was pan roasted sea bass, but they were served with sides and sauces interesting enough to make them stand out as distinct dishes. Both times the fish was simply prepared, with a perfectly crisp skin and very delicate texture. Reef offers a similar preparation with their Crispy Skin Snapper, but Cafe Annie seems to execute it with far more precision worthy of the acclaim the restaurant usually receives and maybe just a little beyond.

Another thing I have noticed recently (unless I just missed it before) is that every meal begins with an amuse. I know it’s not a big deal, but it’s a nice way to start anything. A good amuse bouche is the difference between a well thought out gift and a generic gift certificate - something selected for you by the chef that you might not otherwise order yourself.

The amuse for one of my lunch in February was the classic gulf crab tostada  w/ avocado relish served on a single tortilla chip. Today it was a bite sized serving of shrimp wrapped around a green chile pepper served on a bed of creamy grits, which does not appear on the regular menu. I thought the shrimp was over seasoned for a split second, until I realized that I really should be eating the whole thing in one bite. After that, everything fell in it’s place.

Another sign Cafe Annie is heading in the right direction?

27
Apr

All sizzle, no steak at Open City

By Misha 0 Comments
Categories: american, restaurants and houston

Finding a restaurant that a half dozen people can agree on isn’t always easy. Open City may not seem like a great dinner destination, but the menu is full of non-threatening dishes and it was sure to draw the least controversy. I have read a few positive reviews of the place and was curious, if anything else. Big mistake.

Things went wrong before we even sat down - the hostess lost our reservation, but assured us in a rather snarky tone that she’d find a way to squeeze us in anyway. The five of us ended up being crammed into a four seater booth and a side chair. To call the whole thing unreasonable would be an understatement - we were the only people in the downstairs dining room. The vaunted rooftop had plenty of tables too, so the crappy attitude was hardly necessary.

The portabello burger listed on the menu online was nowhere to be found in print. Our waitress returned from the kitchen with the explanation that the portabello burger is on the menu at lunch, but not served during dinner. The rest of the conversation went something like this:

Sad vegetarian: "What vegetarian dishes do you offer"
Hapless waitress: "Oh we can make pretty much anything"
Me: "How about a portabello burger?"
Hapless waitress: "Anything, but that"

Cue the scene where the vegetarian orders yet another house salad.

The Open Faced Lamb Slider starter was the lone bright spot. The lamb patty was excellent. Nicely seasoned, grilled to medium rare with pink center and charred crust. I could have eaten a whole plate of the stuff all by itself, especially if I knew what was coming. It was a decent enough of a dish - it just wasn’t a slider in any sense of the word. An open faced slider is already a stretch, but its a stupid stretch when the bun turns out to be a toast point.

The whole grain roll, served with disgusting sweet butter, seemed like something you’d find in a middle school cafeteria. The crab cakes were over seasoned. The steak was serviceable, but completely unseasoned. The fries were so salty that most of them remained uneaten. Images of wild baboons running the kitchen were appearing in my head.

The problems didn’t end there. My chicken fried chicken looked golden brown and crispy, but turned out to be soggy and flavorless. The side of macaroni and cheese was inedible. I couldn’t force more than a few bites of the undercooked pasta coated in a rancid combination of smoked gouda and gruyere cheese down before giving up. I’d forgotten about the entire thing, until I noticed a $4 substitution charge the waitress tacked on to the bill without mentioning it to us.

The consensus around the table was that you can eat better at Luby’s, which has a surprisingly decent chicken fried chicken that bests the Open City version by a mile. By the time we were wrapping up it became apparent that people really don’t go to Open City for the food. The bar was beginning to swell with "engineered" ladies and international male studs for action. Who cares what the food tastes like when the drinks are good and there is plenty of ass at the bar?

Houston Chronicle confirmed my suspicions a couple of days later, when they profiled Open City as the hottest scene in town:

 

Open City may draw huge crowds, but the kitchen is a mess. Does a great space and strong drinks make up for crap food? Not in my book. We’ll see what happens when the fickle party crowd finds another venue to show off their assets.

26
Apr

Wild romp through Catalan

By Misha 7 Comments
Categories: nose-to-tail, american, chefs, restaurants and houston

I really don’t make it out to Catalan enough. They refuse to acknowledge that vegetarians have to eat too, so my wife won’t go there. The few lunches I have had there have been hit and miss, although on good days Catalan can be exceptional, so I have been looking for an opportunity visit at dinner for a very long time. Every couple of months I arrange a business dinner, but those fall mostly on Monday when the restaurant is closed. So when a scheduling change pushed my plans by a couple of days, I jumped on the opportunity and headed down to Catalan with 10 people and an expense account.

Turns out Catalan is a great place for a business dinner. There is a private room that stays quiet even with the doors open. The wine list is more than reasonably priced and reads like a Tom Clancy novel to the wine geek. The menu is incredibly well put together. You can easily have some of the most innovative food in Houston, while everyone else gets by on well executed staples like salmon or steak. Everyone is happy.

My game plan? Order the most interesting dishes, caloric caution and logic be damned. Here’s what I had:

Foie gras bon bons served with house-made local strawberry and black pepper jelly
I have been eating a good deal of less than traditionally prepared fois lately, so this was my second fois gras bon bon dish in as many weeks. Although I have to give the "completeness of vision" nod to the chocolate covered fois bon bon at Orson that came finished with salt and cocoa powder, the deep fried version at Catalan was more fun to eat. Although the strawberry jelly is an entirely unnecessary distraction, I’d recommend starting with this as an appetizer anyway.

Right after the initial crunch, the bon bon explodes in your mouth with a shot of liquefied fois. The effect is an entirely unexpected rush of textures and flavor so intense that one of the guys that tried it said that it felt like he had just cheated on his wife (I don’t pretend to understand what that means). If you are expecting any of the adjectives normally associated with fois - delicate, subtle, velvety, buttery, luscious - prepared to be surprised. This is what food would taste like if Texas invaded France and turned it into a vacation getaway for rich oil executives.

Roasted bone marrow with Maldon salt
Probably the dish I was most looking forward to, especially since Catalan is the only place that serves it in Houston. If you love bone marrow and don’t care about living a long, healthy life, order this without any reservations. Though not perfect, this is a nice presentation with all the right things in the right places and should deliver a perfectly decadent experience. The toast was just thin and crispy enough. The big flakes of Maldon salt were superb and pickled onions were just mildly acidic enough to make this dish a winner, overall.

I have to admit that I expected a deeper flavor from the marrow. I can’t quite put my finger on what went wrong, but it could have been the cooking temperature. The bones came out in a pool of fat and one had to be sent back to the kitchen because there was nothing left in the cavity. I am only guessing, but there is a good chance the oven was running too hot to deliver the optimal marrow consistency and flavor. I don’t have the Whole Beast to reference, but some of the recipes I have come across confirm my suspicions.

Crispy lamb sweetbreads tossed with tomato, cipollini onions and mint emulsion
This was probably the best dish of the night. The mint emulsion had a pronounced green color, so I was worried that the mint would overwhelm everything else. In fact I tasted very little mint and the emulsion combined seamlessly with the tomato and onions. The sweetbreads were perfectly cooked and became part of the dish, rather than just be a hunk of fried protein dressed up with irrelevant sauces. The dish is a winner on every level.

Crab and grits, fried crab claw
This was an off the menu special, so there is a good chance I botched the description. I am not even sure what I was eating were really grits, but it tasted like crabmeat folded into a perfectly cooked corn meal, with a fried crab claw perched on top. I know it’s not supposed to be cool to eat dishes made with cream or butter, but I thought the dish worked quite well.

C5: chocolate panna cotta, chocolate milkshake, chocolate cake, chocolate ice cream, chocolate ganache:
No description of this on the online menu either, so this may not be 100% accurate. If I was a prick judge on Top Chef I’d say that there was no continuity here, but individually everything tasted great, so who cares? One thing I really appreciated was that, though served with a trendy drink in a shot glass, no one told me which order I should eat the dessert in.
Great way to finish a meal at Catalan? $12. Being treated as an adult? Priceless.

Few logistical and execution issues can take away from the experience at Catalan. Overcooking is sometimes a problem. A tuna requested medium rare came out medium well. I’ve had the same problem myself when I ordered a salmon in cauliflower puree that was overcooked at the edges, yet quite nice in the middle. The bone marrow comes with a teaspoon that doesn’t quite fit the bone cavity. If wrestling with a greasy bone isn’t your idea of a good time, you might get pretty ticked off.

It sounds as if I am complaining, but hear this - Catalan is one of the best places to eat in Houston. You can find a better dining experience elsewhere, but good eating is what Catalan does best. I’d be there several times a month working my way through the fascinating menu if they didn’t ignore the 2.5% of Americans who don’t eat meat. Here’s to hoping that situation is remedied soon.

22
Apr

Dao xiao mian action shot

By Misha 2 Comments
Categories: noodles and chinese

Yesterday I wrote about Paradise Cafe, which serves hand made noodles called dao xiao mian, made by rapidly shaving strips of dough into a boiling pot of water.

Here’s an a live action sequence of dao xiao mian preparation.

Fracking awesome.

(you’ll have to expand the post until I replace this idiotic theme)

22
Apr

Hand chopped noodles at Paradise Cafe

By Misha 3 Comments
Categories: noodles, chinese and chinatown

I came across Paradise Cafe several weeks ago after a lunch at a nearby Fu Fu Cafe that left me wanting more. My beef tendon and pork dumplings at Fu Fu were pretty good, but you can find better cooking in the Bellaire Chinatown. While many cities struggle with too few choices, our problem in Houston is exactly the opposite - the choices are too many.

Within feet of Fu Fu Cafe are something like 7 or 8 eateries offering a bewildering range of options in just a single shopping strip. The gelato shop is right next to a bakery that sells French desserts, Chinese pastries and rice cakes that look like guerilla hand grenades. A restaurant a few doors down serves Braised Lion Head, a Shanghai pork meatball specialty cooked with Napa cabbage I have never come across and have yet to sample (no, it’s not made with real lion meat, I checked). Noodle House 88, which Robb Walsh swears serves some of the best Indonesian food in the country, is in the very same strip. If Indonesian food doesn’t suit you, you can order sushi from the same menu. A new dim sum place opened just days ago and already looks packed.

One of many hidden treasures in the food
shops surrounding Fu Fu Cafe.

Tucked in at the end of the strip Paradise Cafe looks almost impenetrable to a non-Chinese American. Other than the name and descriptive signs such as "noodles" and "soups", the only real clue as to what is inside is a magazine article pasted in the window showing a chef pulling noodles by hand. I got a blank stare when I asked for a to go menu, making me even more curious. For all I know the article could have been about the importance of keeping a tidy kitchen, but the promise of hand made noodles was too much to ignore, so I made it my mission to figure out what was behind the iron curtain.

I finally arrived at Paradise Cafe last week after being turned away on my first attempt to come in on a Wednesday, when the restaurant is closed for a day right in the middle of the week. Inside, the restaurant looks more like a smoothie shop than anything else, with the entire menu on the wall dedicated to drinks. Smoothies, coffee, juices, fruit cocktails, tapioca drinks. The whole spread. Expecting to finally find some answers about the food at Paradise Cafe on the menu, instead all I found were more questions

The much smaller section of the menu dedicated to food was confounding, to say the least. Noodle dishes, soups, fried rice and several hot pots, right next to Americanized standards you might expect to find at Gen. Joe’s Chopstix, plus a selection of more exotic sounding Chinese specials AND a few Japanese selections, just to make things interesting.

Undeterred, I decided to go for the noodle dishes and ordered two entrees to take home, along with an order of vegetable dumplings. Although the filling was overwhelmed by what tasted like orange rind, the dumplings were serviceable. The two noodle dishes were far more interesting.

Both dishes had noodles I have not come across before. Not exactly the type of stuff you expect when a guy pulls dough by hand, as I imagined, but clearly freshly made and with a lot more character than what you find in a typical noodle shop.

Mutton La Noodle, a last minute addition to the menu scribbled in pen, came with a deeply flavored beef broth and noodles of uniform length and somewhat uneven edges. I’d guess they were hand made and cut earlier in the day, and starting to dry out a little by the time they were cooked. The width and thickness was close to a slightly wider fettuccine and stood up nicely to other ingredients - steamed bok choy, pickled ginger, cilantro and hunks of braised mutton.

I was prepared for the mutton to be tough and stringy, as it often is in Chinese soups in Houston, but it was excellent. Instead of badly trimmed cheap cuts sold in many Asian groceries, these were carefully cross cut with just enough meat and fat to produce good texture after long cooking without giving you a mouth full of sheep grease. After steeping in the hot broth for a few minutes all the flavors were fully activated. Mutton La Noodle a hell of a dish.

The strangely named House Special Hand Chopped Noodles were even better. Although the dish came with a typical "house special" assortment of shrimp, pork and chicken, the meats were not very interesting; mostly an unnecessary distraction. The noodles were the real star of the show - soaking up the soy based sauce they formed a delicious gooey mess. I’d love to see these noodles in capable hands served up with a more collagen rich meat, such as pork knuckle, veal cheek or beef tendon.

Nothing about these noodles was uniform. These things were shorter, thicker and more dense than the noodles served with the mutton. Looking like a sliced up dumpling on the plate and peeled apart layer by layer they resembled jaggy edged, irregular blades of grass made of dough. Best part about this dish was the incredible texture - glutinous and sticky enough to carry the sauce, chewy and tender enough for a great mouth feel. As good as my mutton noodles were, I completely forgot about them once I dug into the hand chopped noodles.

I know very little about Chinese noodles, but my guess is that hand chopped noodles at Paradise Cafe are of the "dao xiao mian" variety. Dao xiao mian are fresh noodles made of wheat and prepared by rapidly slicing slivers of pasta into boiling water off a ball of dough. Paradise Cafe just might be the only place that makes this stuff in Houston, or LA or Ontario, for that matter.

Dao xiao mian preparation in action

Paradise Cafe is an interesting place. Dishes are cooked with care, the ingredients are fresh, noodles seem to be hand made and the menu looks delightfully offbeat. I think I’ll play the field for at least a few more visits to see if anything else pops out. If nothing else, I now know where to get some of the best chopped noodles in town.

Mission accomplished.

18
Apr

Cure for Passover blues

By Misha 3 Comments
Categories: holidays and desserts

Ask your Jewish friends about Passover and you’ll see a grimace of pain wash over their face. Seven solid days of mandated Atkins regiment (yes, ancient Hebrews were doing crash diets some 3,000 years before they were cool) means almost all sweets are off limits.

There just isn’t much you can do without flour, so the dessert selection at grocery stores that stock Passover supplies is abysmal. Even at Three Brothers Bakery, where I worked for years in high school, we had few things that qualified as an actual dessert for Passover.

A few days ago I noticed this sign at the Dessert Gallery that should solve the problem in a spectacular way, at least for people willing to bend the rules a little bit:

Brilliant!

While not quite Kosher (hence the Passover style disclaimer), this stuff should clear the bar for people content with staying away from leavened breads and flours. The full list includes something like 7-9 desserts, which look far better than anything I have come across in the past.

Now you just need to figure out how to make flourless pizza dough and swineless pepperoni, but you’re on your own there.

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