Archive for the 'nose-to-tail' Category

26
May

Food in Houston sneaks into Feast for another taste

By Misha 2 Comments
Categories: british, houston, nasty bits, nose-to-tail, offal, polish and restaurants

The stealthy food guy over at Food in Houston made another incognito visit to Feast and he likes it even more than before. Naturally, I couldn’t stop myself from whipping out yet another set of Feast photos.

I’ve been trying to come up with a way to appear slightly less Feast obsessed than I really am, but it’s proving difficult. Maybe it’s time to start a booster club. This is what happens when a restaurant doesn’t require a dress code (a rather idiotic concept in hotter than hell Houston) and serves up a constantly changing menu put together by people who really care about food.

Feast has finally began to tweak their original concept and it’s heading in the right direction. Lunch now offers 3 courses for $22, which speaks right to my sensibilities. I am utterly unable to order in moderation, so I end up with these massive lunches, simply because there are so many things I want to try on the menu. Now I can go to Feast even more frequently and not go broke or have a heart attack in the process. 

Better still, at least at lunch the giant entrees have been sized down a bit and lighter dishes are beginning to appear more and more. I was really worried what would happen to this restaurant when people refused to eat pork cheeks and braised lamb shanks in the middle of the summer. Apparently they are going to eat skate salad and stuffed squid. Brilliant!

 

On the menu:

Spicy Lamb Sausage Cous Cous - I thought a larger variety of cour cous or grain might have worked slightly better in this dish, but the lamb sausage was stellar.

Whole Shrimp with Garlic and Butter - full of flavor and very teder, but a bit hard to peel; doesn’t the book say you have to shock shellfish after cooking?

Squid stuffed with chorizo - cooked whole and stuffed with cured Spanish chorizo, this thing looked glorious on the plate and was absolutely delicious.

Beef Braised with Steelcut Oats and Chocolate served with Potatoes and Carrots - I got to try a bit of this and it was quite good and had an unusual taste I have never encountered before. Much closer to some of the flavors you find in roux-based Louisiana dishes, than Mexican mole’s made with chocolate.

Skate Salad with Caperberries - excellent dish, very simply and lightly dressed with a vinaigrette and flavored further by pickled caperberries, which I have never had before in this particular form. I don’t know if people consider this a summer dish, but I have no trouble eating this as a starter or a main this time a year.

Pork Cheeks, Pierogies and Red Cabbage - more cheeks with that peculiar cross cut the Feast guys seem to love, but the pierogi stuffed with cheese and pan roasted were the real deal. The guy who ordered it wasn’t really into them, so I ended eating most of what was left. Our waitress quite pleased with her self when she came by and found me fighting over the scraps with one of my other friends.

Turns out she made the pierogies using an old family recipe from her Polish grandmother, which had a different texture and filling to dough ratio than  the more traditional version served at Polonia. Dumplings are a staple of eastern European cuisine, but in the US you rarely come across the full range of what you mind find in Polish, Ukranian and Russian homes that use recipes handed down through generations. Yet another reason I love Feast.

Maybe they can do some sour cherry stuffed vareniki for an encore? I NEVER see this stuff stateside.

Desserts - good, but no major fireworks here. I had Spotted Dick with Custard, my friends had Bread and Whisky Pudding and Honey and Cinnamon Ice Cream.

21
May

Another photo set from Feast

By Misha 3 Comments
Categories: british, houston, nasty bits, nose-to-tail, offal and restaurants

It may seem that I eat at Feast almost every day, but that’s not exactly true. Feast just happens to capture my attention the way few restaurants do.

Here’s another set of pictures from a recent lunch at Feast:

Chicken Livers - these got a mark of approval from my friend who grew up in Eastern Europe, where people consume their fair share of chicken livers. I had a taste and thought they were great, especially offset by the plump raisins; a pairing I have never had before. If I could change one thing about it would be serving the livers slightly more rare, rather than medium. I know most people completely lose it when they think about undercooked poultry, but I rarely allow USDA recommendations to ruin my meals.

Pork Spleen - The only dish I have ordered at Feast that disappointed me. I had no idea spleen was even edible and just could not resist ordering it. To my surprise spleen really doesn’t have a very distinctive flavor on it’s own, which may have been the problem. The bright yellow apples provided some sweetness and a crunchy texture, so if the spleen was seasoned a bit more aggressively it would have been a fantastic dish. Still, how often do you find spleen on the menu?

Braised Oxtails - Feast executes braised meats better than any restaurant in Houston, and this was no exception. The roasted, almost charred zucchini slices were one of the best parts of the dish and made me wish that more vegetables and greens in general appeared in the Feast dishes.

Stuffed Trout - by the time the trout hit the table I was wishing that I had ordered it instead. Rather than a serve a boring filet, this was a masterfully dressed down whole fish stuffed with something really delicious that I cannot remember at this point. From presentation to flavor, it was a truly striking preparation unlike any I have seen before.

I have heard from a friend that a skate wing was another standout dish at Feast, so I am starting to think that I am missing out by sticking to meat dishes and obscure organ meats. I think I am going to hit the seafood side of the menu on my next visit.

09
May

Guerilla warfare

By Misha 3 Comments
Categories: british, houston, nose-to-tail, openings and restaurants

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.

26
Apr

Wild romp through Catalan

By Misha 9 Comments
Categories: american, chefs, houston, nose-to-tail and restaurants

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.

07
Apr

British invasion: Feast brings Nose-to-Tail cooking to Houston

By Misha 2 Comments
Categories: british, chefs, houston, nasty bits, nose-to-tail, offal and restaurants

I couldn’t make it to Feast for almost week after opening day. Every day another dish that normally requires a trip to London would appear on the menu. The next day it was gone. Knowing that some of the most interesting cooking is entirely inaccessible across the ocean is one thing. Knowing that it’s across town is quite another. So after a string of unfortunate events that kept me away from duck hearts, livers, tongues and other unmentionables I dragged three of my friends to Feast for lunch.

It was a little odd to see the space recently occupied by Chez George transformed so much. A few months ago it was a charming old house with creaky floors and ancient diners in suits eating continental food. Walk into Feast today you might think you’re in a neighborhood diner on Notting Hill. The space looks more open and full of light. Where a place like Ristorante Cavour feels like a facsimile created by an interior designer, Feast with it’s dark woods, family photos and subtle touches throughout the restaurant make it feel as if someone actually lives there. It’s a great place to eat.

I was a little apprehensive about my fist visit to Feast. Would it live up to my expectations? More important, would it meet the expectations of the other three people I took with me or would this be yet another place everyone except for me hates? I need not have worried. Feast is spectacular. And it pulls off broad appeal far better than I expected.

I had an rather uneven experience at St John, where one of the chefs behind Feast spent some time and perhaps the closest proxy to what Feast is bringing to Houston. My food was better than good. It was special. Fergus Henderson may not have invented whole beast eating - people have been doing that for centuries - but he did take "nose to tail" cooking to the level previosly found only in fine dining. What Henderson is doing is very bit as important to evolution of what and how we eat as Ferran Adrià. While St John is far from a high end restaurant, it is ground zero for people interested more in eating than dining. Problem was that while I was digging into brain terrine and deviled kidneys at St John, my dining companions were rather miserable.

deviled kidneys

Deviled Kidneys at St John

St John caters to the faithful and it’s small menu lacks reasonably safe options for a diner that stops by for a casual meal. It’s a destination restaurant and the menu choices reflect that. Feast succeeds in being a neighborhood joint on the cutting edge, delivering interesting options with rare cuts and unusual ingredients alongside non-threatening dishes most people would can easily identify as "normal food". A vegetarian at St John feels like an unwilling participant in a cannibal dinner party. At Feast you find not one, but two vegetarian dishes that look like they took far more thought than the "veggie surprise" platter that most restaurants serve.

My first lunch at Feast visit drew rave reviews from everyone at the table, which didn’t happen at St John (which is not to say one is better than the other, they operate in different worlds). Juniper braised lamb shank with mashed potatoes and carrots was executed well enough that my friend declared that he could easily go for 3-4 more and not get tired of it. Shepherds pie wasn’t met with quite the same enthusiasm, but I was assured it was an excellent shepherds pie as far as shepherd pies go. I had a chance to try the cabbage stuffed with braised oxtail and it had a very nicely balanced flavor. Wine based braises tend to be strong, but the charred cabbage provided a slightly bitter contrast in both texture and flavor to the meat.  Very nice dish.

Not one for restraint I discarded the "have a small lunch" logic and ordered an appetizer and a main dish. Although not on the menu that day, I was lucky enough to score the last few servings of duck hearts and liver, which came out with on top of a few slices of grilled bread and served with an almost viscous reduction sauce. Livers and hearts have long been my favorite part of making roast chicken, which along with the oysters become the cook’s spoils. Toss the contents of the gizzard bag with some salt and pepper, throw it into the roasting pan once the chicken begins to release the juices and within 15-20 minutes you have yourself a perfectly cooked appetizer of tasty bits that require nothing more than some french bread to soak up the drippings. The duck heart at Feast was good and reasonably well cooked, but hearts typically require either aggressive seasoning or some other flavoring agent, like the chicken hearts at Nelore that come marinated in wine. By the time I figured out that the red wine reduction could have solved the flavor problem for me, the lonely duck heart I got was long gone.

The duck livers delivered a much bigger flavor hit. Duck liver is a bit more mild and much more smooth than chicken livers, giving it a great texture that works very well with bigger flavors in rustic cooking. Few places cook liver right (even Da Marco falters here sometimes), but the liver at Feast came out pink and perfectly tender. It’s overcooked liver that people most often have such a revolting reaction to, so if you want to try it again look no further than Feast. These people know their liver.

My entree of Ox Tongue delivered on every point. The tongue was braised just long enough to soften the meat fibers, but not turn them into mush. The tongue was pan fried, giving it a nice brown crust with not a hint of oil or grease. The combination of mashed potatoes and the sweet savoy cabbage was a spectacular side. The cabbage was too sweet to eat on its own, but combining the two in the right proportions gave you just the right flavor that didn’t overwhelm the subtle flavor of the tongue.

So, we finally have a place in Houston where you can get some testicles or pigeon to start, order a swordfish for dinner and finish with a perfectly unassuming chocolate cake. Whether you like offal or more "normal" food, go to Feast before it gets mobbed like all hot new restaurants tend to. You won’t be sorry for long.