Chain of Fools - the Wine List Version

As I stated in my main post below, I avoid chain restaurants like I avoid poisonous snakes, grizzly bears and people who haven't bathed lately, but I found myself in a regional one last night for Happy Hour.

I should have taken copious notes, but the following wines stuck out for their complete lack of reason on the price points. 

Columbia Crest Two Vines Cabernet and Chardonnay - $26/$6.50 on the wine list, routinely available in the supermarket for $5.99.

Red Diamond Merlot - $28/$7 on the wine list, routinely available in the supermarket for $6.99.

Only fools order wine off the wine list in chain restaurants, even if they've made the mistake of going there to begin with. Just sayin'.

True Wine Connoisseurs - Episode 14

Eric and Will are a little rough with the language, but not only is this entertaining they give a big shout out to all my pals at www.wineberserkers.com

Chain of Fools

Like many of us, I generally avoid chain restaurants in the same way I avoid poisonous snakes, grizzly bears and people who haven’t bathed lately. Last night, in the midst of some other drama that has contributed to my relative silence on this blog and that I may or may not detail at some later date, I had the occasion to visit an outpost of a regional chain of seafood restaurants.

They used to be owned by a Portland company and were called Newport Bay before they and their siblings were acquired by a Seattle oufit a couple of years ago. The new owners have remodeled, gussied up the décor, renamed them Newport Seafood Grille and made the menu more frou-frou.

What they haven’t done is improve the execution in the 8 or 9 years since I’ve been there. If anything, it has taken a step backward. The quality of the preparation seems to have an inverse correlation to the complexity of the recipe, a common theme at chains and certainly one that I mention to Portland visitors who want to visit one of the McCormick and Schmick’s stores that are touted by almost every guide to Portland restaurants imaginable. "Just don't order anything with a sauce. Stick with simple preparations," is my usual mantra.

I wasn’t hungry enough for a full meal but I was hungry, so I plopped myself in the bar, ordered a beer and perused the Happy Hour appetizer menu - items from two dollars to five dollars. Given that my life has been so hectic lately and my eating habits have been reduced to a lot of cheeseburgers, I decided I needed something green. I figured my digestive system, which has been severely out of whack and protesting for the past week in ways you don’t want to know about, would appreciate the effort. What to have?

Well, it was simple, at least at first. They offered an iceberg wedge with tomatoes, red onion and blue cheese dressing. Perfect! Retro as it is, it’s something I love and it’s almost impossible to screw up. Amazingly enough, they almost managed the task. 

Tomatoes? Hah! It's January, so I certainly wasn't expecting a big, juicy slice of Brandywine or Cherokee Purple, but c'mon. I didn't even get a decent chunk of Roma, having to settle for a few measly dice of what looked like Roma, and "dice" is being kind. Picture four or five little 1/4-inch squares interspersed among the wisps of thinly-sliced red onion that had probably been sliced and oxidizing since Sunday, judging by the pungent aroma. But hey, the iceberg was cold and crispy and the blue cheese dressing was pretty good, so what did I want for a lousy three bucks? So far so good.

Next up? Something a bit more challenging, the "red crab and seafood cakes". I've heard of blue crab, stone crab, Dungeness crab, rock crab, snow crab, king crab, "the crabs" and fake crab (surimi), but "red crab" isn't something with which I'm familiar. And "seafood"? What exactly is that? Could be anything from perch to pollock to plankton. So I asked my server who, in a surly fashion, replied "Red crab is like Dungeness and seafood means fish." 

Oh, sure. I get it. Either you don't have a clue or you're trying to blow smoke up my nether regions. Fine. They're four bucks, I'll roll with it. Mind you, a larger portion with a fancier presentation (one hopes) is on the regular menu for $8.50, so it's not like this is some special item they thought up just for Happy Hour. 

I should have ordered the sliders, even though they're burgers. They couldn't have been as bad as these patties of mush. Although crab cakes are generally browned in hot fat (oil or butter) these things were not brown, though someone had made an effort. In fact, I've seen Brits in January with better tans. They were greasy, they were tasteless and the only texture they had was delivered by the large chunks of under-cooked celery interspersed among the puree of miscellaneous, unidentified seafood and bread crumbs. In fact, oddly for a restaurant meal, they were severely lacking in salt, but I don't like to salt food at  the table (it's disgusting) so I didn't bother. 

Worse, they sat on a big, gloppy pool of what was supposed to be a roasted red pepper sauce of sorts. Pale pink, cold and almost tasteless, it only added to the sensation of greasiness in the cakes, caused mostly by the sautéing fat congealing as it hit the cold sauce. Accompanied by a slim wedge of lemon and not even a sprinkling of parsley to make them at least look good, they had all the appeal of a couple of hockey pucks. Still, I was hungry enough that I ate them, but if I'd made them at home I think the cat - the one I don't have - would have turned her nose up at them. 

Okay . . . dessert. Let's keep this short and put it this way: By scraping the frosting off a Hostess chocolate cupcake, inverting it and spreading some Smucker's raspberry jam and Hershey's syrup around the plate, I could make something that tastes just as good. If I were to put the jam and syrup in squeeze bottles it would look just as good. Just sayin'. 

So, dear peeps, todays lesson is that only fools go to chain restaurants if they're expecting food beyond what they can get at Mickey D's or BK. Stay away, stay very far away.

Just for fun!

A year of fail in review. Funny stuff! Sorry, I tried to embed the video but it didn't work. Guess I need tech lessons. http://withleather.uproxx.com/2010/01/a-year-of-fail-in-review

A Merry Christmas To All

I managed to miss Chanukah, so apologies to my Jewish friends and readers. For the rest of you who aren't Muslim, Hindu or Shinto, please accept my best wishes for a very merry Christmas - and a happy and healthy New Year to everyone. 

Let us know what you ate!

Bob

A Family Tradition for the Holidays - Baklava

I'm not making any this year so there are no pictures, but it's always been a tradition in my Greek family (Iatropoulos) to make baklava and various other Greek pastries for the holidays. I've never managed to master the cookies, but the baklava is much simpler than you'd think. It's like building lasagne, just more tedious.

You'll need a package of phyllo dough, thawed according to the package directions. Melt 3/4 pound of unsalted butter and make a simple syrup by boiling 1 cup of sugar with one cup of water and the juice of half a lemon. Boil the rind from the half lemon in the syrup, stir in 1 cup of honey and allow to cool completely. Finely chop 1 pound of walnuts and mix with 2 teaspoons of cinnamon.

Unwrap the phyllo and spread it out, covered with a lightly damp kitchen towel. This is critical to keep the phyllo from drying out and becoming brittle.

Using a pastry brush or small paintbrush (preferred), butter the bottom and sides of a roasting pan or pyrex dish. The size isn't critical but your job will be easier if you choose a pan approximately the size of the sheets of phyllo. Layer 6 sheets of phyllo in the bottom of the pan, brushing each sheet with melted butter and re-covering the remaining phyllo as you work. From there, sprinkle a good handful of the nut mixture on the phyllo and cover with another sheet, butter and repeat until all the nuts are gone. If your sheets of phyllo are a little larger than your pan, just tuck the ends under.

When you're done, cut on the diagonal in one direction and bake in a 350-degree oven until golden brown. Remove from the oven and immediately pour the cooled syrup (remove the lemon rind, silly!) over the hot baklava. Stop pouring when it becomes saturated to the point where you have a little extra syrup in the bottom of the pan. Allow to cool completely and then cut on the other diagonal to form diamon-shaped pieces.

The baklava will keep nicely for several days at room temperature, covered loosely with plastic wrap. If you're going to give it away, putting each piece in a paper muffin cup works nicely.

Enjoy!

One of the Austalian "stickies" (dessert wines, muscat or tawny "port) works really well with this - Buller is a good brand, as is the Yalumba Museum Muscat. If you don't want wine just serve coffee - or maybe a second piece of baklava.

Holiday "Prime" Rib Roast

Thinking of a big slab o' beef for Christmas? Want to do a rib roast, but you're afraid to for fear you'll screw it up? Don't feel like you're alone. It's actually quite simple - a matter of putting the roast in the oven and taking it out when it's done, but somehow that intimidates people, probably because they're concerned that they'll spend a big chunk of dough on a roast and that something will somehow go wrong. Fear not.Your first step is to get the right roast. Rib roasts are generally sold as "prime rib", but finding USDA Prime beef is gonna be difficult and you'll probably have to settle for USDA Choice. No worries, it's still going to be good. Get one rib for every two people unless you want lots of sandwiches - in which case you'll want a larger roast.

After that, it's a simple matter of following the instructions on the accompanying videos from Alton Brown. I'm shamelessly stealing from him because he's already done all my work for me and gone into his typical excruciating detail in the process. Yes, I know the instructions are bass-ackward from every recipe you've ever seen except perhaps in Cook's Illustrated. They're also foolproof. Just ignore all your cookbooks and you'll have a roast that looks like this one I cooked at my daughter's last Christmas. Beautifully rare to medium rare all the way through, with no well-done parts on the outside of the roast. WooHOO!

Just a few caveats. If you're fortunate enough to find dry-aged beef you can eliminate Alton's aging step. Here's a shameless plug for Wegmans if you have one near you - I've never seen so many dry-aged roasts in one place. This is also where I plug the finest beef you'll buy, which is expensive and more challenging to get than running down to the supermarket but worth every penny. Just call Bryan Flannery and order one. If you do it by Tuesday you can have it for Christmas because he'll overnight it to you and you'll still have a day for it to thaw. Tell him you read about him here. His phone number is on his website.

A second caveat is that you can eliminate the terra cotta pot. Its purpose is to stablize the heat in your oven but it's not really necessary. There will be some fluctuations as the oven cycles on and off, but I've done about a dozen rib roasts without the pot and they've all been perfect. Oh - - - one more piece of information. Your roast will take about 4 to 4 1/2 hours to cook no matter how large it is, because the diameter remains constant and it's just the length that changes. Add the resting time and the blasting time and you're up to somewhere around 5 hours. No matter what, though, get yourself a probe thermometer. There's a link under my favorites on the right-hand side of the page so you can get a Polder from Amazon and I'll make a few pennies.

If you're worried that dinner might get delayed, give yourself 6 hours start to finish and you should be fine. It takes a long time for a roast to cool down after cooking, so you can always hold it for a bit. Oh, and one more thing. There's no way a roast that weighs more than a couple of pounds will warm to room temperature in an hour, so pay no attention to that little instruction from Alton. Take it out of the fridge AT LEAST 3 hours before you plan to cook it.

Here are the two videos that make up the show Alton did on rib roasts. Make notes if you must, but watch them and follow the directions. You won't be sorry. Serve with a nice cabernet or, better yet, a Bordeaux with a few years of age on it. Or something with a lot of syrah in it, as I did last year.

An Editorial On The Abuse of Money and Power

I don't normally get very serious in my posts. I try to be informative and inject a little humor, but I'm moved to go on a little rant.


In September, it was reported that Tony Rynders, the former winemaker at Domaine Serene, was being sued by his former employer. Why? Well, in addition to a bunch of extraneous and ridiculous "filler" claims, the bottom line was that Domaine Serene accused him of stealing "trade secrets", specifically their method for producing a white wine from pinot noir, a black grape that makes red wine under normal circumstances. 


Now, before I go too much farther, let me say that Domaine Serene doesn't rate highly on my dance card. Ken and Grace Evenstad, the owners, are the antithesis of everything that makes the Willamette Valley wine scene so appealing - at least to me. Their story is fairly well-chronicled, but the essence is that they bought a family pharmaceutical manufacturing company in Minnesota for the outrageous sum of $1,500 in the late sixties and built it into a major player in the generic drug market - allegedly grossing $250 million per year. They then used that money to fulfill a dream of owning a winery. So far so good, right? It's the American dream.

Well, what they built is not just a winery, it's a showplace and a monument to their own egos. It's a 50,000 square foot yellow Italianate villa on a hilltop, filled with art and statuary and floored in terrazo; a study in excess surrounded by part of the 300+ acres of vineyard land they own. It's even gotten its own nickname: "Domaine Obscene".

While it's said that Grace worked her tail off to build the winery business and even pruned the vineyards, they remain aloof and disconnected from the wine community and are viewed as arrogant outsiders who are the ultimate in "hobbyist" winery owners. After all, they don't even live here full time, dividing time among their residences in Minnesota, Florida and Oregon.

They like to give the impression that everyone in Oregon learned to grow quality fruit and make quality wine from them, conveniently ignoring those who came before them, from David Lett, David Adelsheim and Dick Ponzi to their first consulting winemaker, Ken Wright and their long-time vineyard manager, Joel Myers. By doing that they alienate most everyone else in what's a fairly closely-knit industry, but they don't seem to care. What's worse is that their wines are over-done, over-oaked and over-priced for my palate and pocketbook, reaching almost-unprecedented levels. But enough of that.

I'm not going to defend Tony here. I don't know Tony and I don't know his motives, but he's involved in a venture with Laurent Montalieu called Grand Cru Estates where interested individuals can pay some outrageous sum ($25,000 if memory serves) to have one barrel of wine made for them every year and access to a swank party facility. Especially in this economic environment, that speaks to his ego (and Laurent's) almost as much as the villa does to the Evenstads'.

Nonetheless, Tony wanted to do something on his own (understandable) and - according the the complaint, which I've read - planned it while working for the Evenstads. They evidently viewed this as disloyalty and a violation of their trust, if not his employment contract which doesn't seem to exist. Okay, I get it in part, but here's what I don't get. After what was apparently an acrimonious parting of the ways, they sued him several months later. In Federal Court. In Minnesota, not Oregon. For the grand sum of $75,000. WHAT?

Their big "secret" - how to make white wine from black grapes, which the Champenoise have been doing for centuries and which I could do in my sleep because the methods are common knowledge - is worth $75,000? Is that all? When the winery is grossing somewhere well north of $20 million per year (and reportedly just showed its first profit after 20 years - a clear indicator of just how much money the Evenstads have thrown at it)? When there are at least 4 other wineries in Oregon who have made the same thing? That's the sum total of how much Lord and Lady Evenstad feel they were damaged? Please.

To make matters worse, they allegedly scheduled depositions with people who allegedly had knowledge of Tony's "indiscretions" (I'm doing my Tiger Woods imitation here) during harvest when their attentions were justifiably on anything but a spiteful lawsuit, just to be . . . well . . . spiteful.

Well, here's the good news. The case has been settled. I don't know if any money changed hands and no one is talking, but the legal fees had to have been substantial and the gist of the settlement is that they all agree to disagree about whether white pinot noir is made through the use of trade secrets that are exclusive to Domaine Serene - the Champenoise be damned. Oh, and Tony can't make any white pinot for three years. Big deal. The stuff sells about as fast as sea water or ham-flavored Gatorade. It's an oddity . . . a curiosity.

What we have is a case where Ken and Grace Evenstad sued Tony Rynders, who served them admirably for more than ten years and helped multiply their business more than tenfold, for the same reason a male dog licks himself. Because they could. To be a nuisance and annoying. It's an abuse of all good reason and a clear case of using their considerable resources in an attempt to intimidate someone for whom $75,000 is a much more princely sum than it is to them.

They'll never see a nickel of my money and I hope they'll never see any of yours.

Hah!

Pumpkin Cheesecake!

I love this because after more years than I'd like to count, regular pumpkin pie is boring. Recipe here.