grubbus

The Test Kitchen. Life in a Corporate Apartment.

2012-02-02T14:25:00.001-06:00

I eat out less than I used to. Not that I'm not on the road all the time, or that I don't love to stumble upon a genius chef in an unexpected corner of the world, it's just that now, I have a corporate apartment.

Living out of hotel rooms has its perks in small doses, but when I figured out that my current project was going to keep me going back and forth to Lansing for a good long while, it was time to get a little more settled in. My place in Lansing is right downtown, plenty comfortable, but most importantly, it has a downright livable kitchen.

I thought I'd take a quick moment to post a few of my experiments that worked out particularly well. These are not ambitious meals - noting more than 30 or 40 minutes to make, and generally a serving or two. I won't go into the recipes here, just a few notes on the modifications I made to Mark Bittman's fantastic recipes from How To Cook Everything (I use the iPad app, which is awesome)

Beef with Basil

Could not be an easier dish to make, and the flavors were surprisingly engaging for such a simple combination. Starting from the Bittman recipe, I added about 1/2 tbs of finely chopped ginger with the garlic, and I doubled the amount of lime juice and then some. Basic process: marinate the beef in the basil and little oil, get a pan hot, and add a little oil, ginger, garlic, the beef, and fresh basil. End with lime juice and a little soy. Amazing flavors, and once everything is chopped and prepped, it's literally a 5 minute operation.

Chicken in Wine Sauce

This one is cheating, really. Because this much butter just makes anything awesome. Basic approach here is to fry breaded chicken in butter and olive oil, and build a reduced wine/butter sauce once you're done. It was awesome. My main change to Bittman was to use egg to get the breadcrumbs to adhere to the chicken before frying. From a steps perspective, I did as told, but added a step to filter the oil/butter after the chicken was done to get rid of breadcrumb bits. And when I added the extra butter (I used about 6 tbs all told) and the wine, I also added a tiny drop of honey, which helped soften the intense savory flavors. I served this over pasta, which was kind of awesome tossed in the sauce. Not healthy. Not even a little bit.

Eggs Benedict
This was my first attempt at hollandaise, and, though the flavor was spot on, it was a little thin in the final analysis. A little more heat near the end would have helped. Still, the outcome was lovely. I followed the instructions here to a tee, no adds or removals. Since Lansing is a little light on high-quality meats, I just went with a shaved Boars Head ham from the deli counter at the Krogers. Would have been better with a homemade english muffin or some really hot-shot cured meat, but this was very tasty, and came out pretty as well. Side note: poached eggs are awesome. I learned how to make them for this meal, and now eat them all the time.

Back to our regularly scheduled program next time, but I thought some homemade treats might be fun.

Shiraz Grill: Persian in Unexpected Places

2012-01-28T22:09:00.000-06:00

Shiraz Grille is not far from where I grew up - set back in the parking lot, a little off the corner of Breton and 28th Street in Grand Rapids. It's a nice neighborhood, but not a glamorous location. Shiraz has many things. Curb appeal is not one of them.

The interior is well appointed, but also a little awkward, maybe twice as large as it needs to be for any of the crowds I've seen. Bigger is not always better; the nights I've visited have never been more than 50% full - making the lively crowd there for dinner seem a little isolated.

What Shriaz lacks in ambiance it makes up for in taste. Beautifully presented, the food Shiraz puts out is ambitious and absolutely on point, with surprising flourishes and attention to detail.

I've started with a few different things, but the Shirazi Salad is the name of the game here. This is going to be a seriously intense meal - so best to start light, and with mint. The salad - tomato, cucumber, parsley and a simple, fresh mint vinaigrette - leaves you perked up for what's to come. If you end up getting a soup (they vary, I've never had a bad one), you get these little slices of a yeasted flat bread - not altogether dissimilar from the bread pillows at Sultan's in Lansing. The soups are good. The bread is dynamite. My recommendation: Get the Shirazi Salad, and ask for a few pieces of the dynamite toast.

After that, rhe feel of the place starts to warm up - the soul of Shiraz is invisible until you start to eat.

Out comes a little chef's treat - something small and artful, and generally involving a scallion. Wait staff here are attentive, in sync with the kitchen, and no sooner have you polished off the treat, then other pieces start to arrive.

The presentation is not lavish, but it's precise and beautiful for both of the entree styles - Khoreshes (stews) and Kabobs. Both are impressive, but I found the Gheymeh Bodemjon Khoresh particularly lovely. Braised beef works its way through cinnamon, lentils and tomato to come away both deeply savory and complex, with tastes that unfold one-by-one with each bite. I love spices like that - where the taste is tied up in timing of the flavors. Kabobs, well spiced by any measure, lack the depth of the Khoreshes, but are beautifully done. I am especially fond of the Chicken Koubide, a ground, spiced chicken, far superior to the simple tender chicken breast. Basically, you want the kitchen at Shiraz to do as much as possible to the food that you're eating. They do miraculous things.

This goes for the rice as well, where you can get one of a handful of variations. Favorite: Shirin Pol, where barberries and almonds work with the saffron into a tart, almost sweet rice; amazing with the sharper flavors of the entrees.

By the end of the meal, enveloped in the warmth of the food, the coldness of the place is totally evaporated. Shiraz is an ambitious place - not perfect, but pretty damn good - and I sincerely hope they draw in the crowds that they merit.

Grateful: Austin to Boston Foodswap and a New Friend

2011-12-19T23:14:00.002-06:00

It's late on a Monday night, and I'm sipping coffee from a brand new Dunkin Donuts mug, thinking how happy I am to be part of an expanding network of food communities.

The latest expansion, and the source of the mug, is through the Austin to Boston Gift Swap, lovingly organized by the Austin Food Blogger Alliance and the Boston Food Bloggers. I was lucky enough to be matched up with the exceptionally thoughtful and interesting Kat Lynch, a blogger and soon-to-be-dietician. Kat is super inspiring - she runs; she lives her dreams; she makes nut butters at home. And she sends awesome gifts.

#ATXBOS: What I Received

Kat's box was stuffed with red-wrapped packages, each topped by a different iconic map of Boston and each containing little treasures, all packed together. Four of the cutest chocolate mice you could imagine, made by Burdick Chocolate in Harvard Square, peeked out of a squat mason jar. A signed picture book, adored by my 6-year old, told the story of Zachary's magic baseball and the Red Sox game it came from. Nut butter, full and fresh and wholesome came with a little note welcoming my family to some of the good stuff to come out of the Eating the Week kitchen. And my Dunkin mug, the one I'm drinking from now, showed up begging to be filled with good coffee. I am lucky to know Kat, and lucky to have gotten to know her better through the Boston goodies we've so enjoyed having in our home (and in our bellies)

#ATXBOS: What I Gave

It's a hard business figuring out what encapsulates Austin food. Breakfast tacos just don't travel that well, and Salt Lick rubs are not particularly useful to a vegetarian. Luckily, I am married to a woman of truly astounding creative inspiration, and together Tracy and I pulled (and stitched) together a box for Kat and her family. Round Rock Honey, from the farmers market near our house seemed like a good place to start; a little bottle of concentrated Austin wildflowers. And pecans, which, at least for me, suggest walks through Hyde Park in the summer, the nuts so plentiful that they crunch underfoot. It's not Austin without the Longhorns, and it's not a Christmas box if there's not chocolate, so Lamme's Candies Longhorns went in next, both dark and milk varieties. Then there's the Texas Olive Ranch Olive Oil, not from Austin, but from a little South of here, which I hadn't planned on at all, but which was just so suprising and lush when I encountered it at the Farmers Market that it had to make it in. Finally, in went a custom hand-made waitress-apron from Fair Morning Blue. Doesn't get much more local than that, since FairMorningBlue is Tracy's Etsy shop, with production facilities in our dining room.

I love being part of this community of food, love seeing the passion and openness that people on both sides of the exchange have given. I love the chance this process gave for some real collaboration with Tracy - who in addition to making the apron was the woman behind the camera for all these photos and the fingers behind the packaging. And I love that I got a chance to make a connection with someone living and working and writing out East. I travel every week, but rarely do I get to see into the life of the locals. This experience gave me a little taste of that. For all of these things, I'm grateful. Thank you to the AFBA, to Kat, and to Tracy for making the Grubbus/Eating The Week swap such a pleasure.

Delicious Comes in a Box: La Boite Cafe

2011-12-12T22:59:00.000-06:00

La Boite was selling dynamite pastries out of a shipping container before shipping container construction was cool. They've recently expanded to two boxes - one on South Lamar a few blocks south of the Highball, and the other on Congress, just across the street from the Capitol.

First off, the container. Not the easiest thing to heat or cool, shipping containers are otherwise near zero footprint - there's millions of them floating around out there, retired from their original gig, now quietly rusting and taking up space. La Boite was at the vangaurd of a movement to upcycle these containers, and founded on the idea that you could sell good food out of a beautiful, if compact space without using up a bucket load of finite resources. The box places them in the middle ground of the trailer food scene - La Boite is not going anywhere in a hurry, but they're also not exactly brick and mortar establishment. Austin, meet pop up food.

The container is cool, but it's just, well, a box. The good stuff is the baked goods therein. For La Boite, that means baked goods from Barrie Cullinan. "Wait", you ask, "THE Barrie Cullinan? The one who was named one of the 10 best bakers in the country by Bon Appetit?" Yes. That Barrie Cullinan. La Boite is one of a very few outposts in town where you can get her goods, and they come in a very small, but very tasty selection. The standouts for me are the almond croissants and the macarons. The croissants are covered with powdered sugar and slivered almonds, and sport a million layers of butteriness inside. They hint of marzipan, and there is the faintist suggestion of a filling, but the essence of these are scented air and butter. The macarons are bolder than others I've had around town, almost iridescent in both color and flavor. When they have fruit flavors, you get a jolt of concentrated, jam-like essence. When it's salted caramel (like they had today), the salt is on equal footing with the sweet, balancing a huge amount of flavor. The salted caramel and chipotle chocolate were my faves of the current crop. The pastries are less fussy and more subtle than the also-amazing but totally-different Baguette et Chocolate, but they are on the same scale of delicious. They also make lovely sandwiches, and a handful of other pastries that rotate in and out, but to me the love is in the croissant. OK: Truth be told, I am a little nervous about a eating a sandwich from a place that has no kitchen, but people tell me they're awesome.

Coffee is good, but relative to nearby knock-your-socks-off options like Medici and Once Over Coffee, not a reason for a visit. The beans are from local roaster Casa Brasil, and they've developed a custom Mexican blend in part based on the limited carbon footprint compared to shipping beans from further away. I like the sentiment, but they'd do better with a nice pour-over rig or a french press set up and some fresh ground Cuvee.

In a town where empty lots were filled with food trucks, and are now starting to empty all over again as the trailers start to falter, I hope La Boite sticks around. It's a place that, despite its mobility, feels rooted in Austin in the simple goodness of the food, the optimism of the environmental mission, and the strong link to the local food community.

Worth noting: There's amazing stuff being done with shipping containers all over now (like this gorgeous house, or the pop-up retail mall in London, or, somewhat less amazing, the proposed Seattle Starbucks).

It Was a Dark Knight: Dinner at the Knight Cap

2011-12-08T17:22:00.001-06:00

Nestled between a dive bar and a strip club and across from the minor league ball park, The Knight Cap, in their own words, are purveyors of Liquids and Solids for Beefeaters. It says so. Right on their sign.

Walk in, and you are enveloped in a tiny dark cave of overstuffed vinyl booths and table top candles. The ambiance suggests a dive bar all dressed up for a big night out. Everything is clean, and in good repair, but shows no other indication of being touched since the place opened in 1969. In short: this place is a bucket load of awesome.

There are maybe a dozen tables, and a few stools at the bar. Despite its pint size, we were still greeted warmly by the maitre d', who took our coats, the bus boy, who placed the napkins upon our laps, and our young waitress, who very, very slowly told us about the innovations the bar was capable of. I thought she was fantastic, but my table compatriots were wishing for a little more speed.

Disclaimer: pictures on this post are of suspect quality due to the dark-of-night interior.

We asked for a wine list, and received a scrap book. I'm not making this up. On some pages there were wine labels with prices and notes. On others, cut out pictures of wine bottles entire. And here's where things start to get a little interesting: the scrap book is full of really fantastic wines. Stag's Leap. Cakebread. Jordan. Silver Oak. Mt. Veeder. Page after page after page. All big names, high productions, but these are not wines you expect when you walk in the door.

The food is similarly ambitious. We started with crayfish hush puppies. A little under-spiced, and a little over-dense, but engaging anyway, clearly fresh, with big chunks of crayfish, and a serious crunch. The gelatinous sauce that accompanied them had a little kick to it, but was too goopy to take seriously.

The soups that followed the hush puppies were, to me, highlight of the meal. I had a gumbo, rich and spicy and fabulous. The spice wasn't subtle exactly, a giant wallop of louisana hot, but the texture and the flavors in the gumbo were just dead on. Andouille sausage for the win.

The salads - and I use the term "salad" loosely here - were not as impressive. More accurately, this was a plate of crumbled bacon atop a small lake of dressing, alongside cucumbers. I love my dressing and my bacon as much as the next guy, but this was overkill.

The menu is classic fancy when it comes to entrees - mostly variations on lobsters and steaks. Not cheap, but not all that far off from other places in town that go for this kind of fare. Filet Mignon was a beautiful cut of meat, well prepared and completely unadorned. The texture was a little grainier than some of the silky smooth filets I've had before, but it was tender and cooked a perfect medium rare. By this point, I was too stuffed to finish the potato or the mushrooms that arrived on the side, but they made a nice visual.

I've had better steaks, and far better salads, even, on occasion, better gumbo; but this food, spiced with the historical brilliance of the experience, is among the best I've had in Lansing.

Killer Doughnuts. Perfect Apples. A Little Shlock. Robinette's.

2011-11-25T18:06:00.001-06:00

On a brilliant blue-sky day just after Thanksgiving, my extended family and I loaded ourselves into a couple of Subarus and made our way to the institution that is Robinette's Apple Haus, on the far north side of Grand Rapids. Robinette's has been serving fresh cider and doughnuts since 1973, and the family has been growing apples since 1911.

Today, Robinette's has spread into a small empire: a barn-sized gift shop selling all manner of occasionally charming schlock; a winery; store-branded popcorn, salad dressings, candies, and syrups; a bread bakery; a fudge-emporium. Throughout, there are constant signs of a place that has grown by addition without edit, to the point that there are no less than 11 typefaces featured on the signage at the front entrance. It's a kind of down-home country chaos that has an edge of interstate-tourist-shop overload.

But the core of the operation, at least as far as I'm concerned, is still apples, cider and doughnuts.

Apples started the ball rolling here, and they are still to die for. Like just about any other produce, apples are best when recently harvested, never trucked, and grown by people who have been growing them for generations. I bought a 1/2 peck of the best Braeburns I've ever eaten, a whole different class of rich and sweet and tart than the Braeburns that make their way here from New Zealand. They've got a half-dozen varietals, all 8 bucks for a half peck. A steal.

The apples not pretty enough to make their way into the retail or wholesale side of the business make their way into cider the old fashioned way, mashed and then squeezed between wooden pallets by an enormous, bright red press. I remember seeing this press in action on school field trip some elementary school year, and I remember that it was 30 feet tall and very scary. It turns out, returning now, that it's not. But it's still pretty damn intimidating. Cider is served in the store hot or cold, totally unadorned, and with all the sweet richness of the apples they grow. It may be the blend, or the freshness, but this is really extraordinary cider.

And the doughnuts. They make a few types, but there's just the one that's worth the time: the cinnamon-sugar. These are cake doughnuts, with all the delicate crumb and moistness that good cake doughnuts have, but they are so light and airy that they eat almost as if they are yeasted and raised, rolled in sugar and cinnamon. If you manage to get one while they are hot, they will change your life, waking you in the middle of the night with intense unrequited longing. Room temp, they're really good, but the brilliance dims a bit.

So three things that totally steal the show. Three amazing successes, exactly the same as they've been forever: apples, cider, doughnuts. And that's where my sizable love for this place ends: the expansions are something to be endured and ignored if possible: the fudge contains as many chemicals and as much corn syrup as something you might pick up at the grocery store; the chocolate icing on the doughnuts comes from a bucket shipped in from who-knows-where. I don't know about the salad dressings or the popcorn - they may very well be brilliant - but to me they chip away at the simple supremacy of the apple-cider-doughnut trinity.

All that extra stuff doesn't kill Robinettes for me. In point of fact, in barely puts a dent in it. Put the distractions out of mind for a bit, get yourself geared up for some serious country charm, partake in the glorious trinity of sweet-autumn goodness in a place that feels like they could have invented it.

The Gilmorazation of Grand Rapids: Red Jet Cafe

2011-11-18T09:36:00.001-06:00

The Gilmore Collection has taken root in West Michigan, slowly expanding an empire of upscale restaurants in gorgeous renovated settings, and adding a cosmopolitan sheen to a town that's been steadily reinventing itself for decades. Their restaurants are not the best in town, and I don't think they ever set out to be. But they are near the top of the heap, predictable, generally well managed, and heavily invested in getting the details right.

Red Jet Cafe is in the middle of the Gilmore pack - somewhere between the placid elegance of Rose's and the corporate-edgy Bobarinos. Like many of the other buildings in the collection, Red Jet is renovation project. History here is a little murky, but near as I can tell, this was built as a bank sometime in the early part of the last century, was converted over to the Creston Library in the 60s or 70s, and in 2007 began life as Red Ball Jet Cafe. Legal protests from the remnants of the Red Ball Jets athletic shoe company forced a name change in 2009, when it dropped the Ball and gained the name it currently holds. The building is gorgeous and modern against a backdrop of early 20th century elegance.

Red Jet sports an interesting menu - there's a lot to do with coffee, and breakfast, and wood fired pizzas, and smoothies, and crepes, some of which are on the menu, and some which aren't. And also salads. And booze. To add to the confusion, the sign still says Red Ball, and the web site says Red Jet Coffeehouse. I love all of these things, but even so, there's a lack of identity to this place that is less than ideal - it's as if the menu was designed by a committee filled equally with society types and neighborhood hipsters.

That said, what they do here, they do over the top, and they do it well. The smoothies are excellent - more like milkshakes than anything, but I'm not arguing. My eldest daughter ordered a crepe that would make the French cringe, but was very tasty - filled with scrambled eggs, sausage, maple syrup, and mozzarella. French toast here means a block of custard-coated brioche, covered in berries, drenched in Michigan maple syrup. The pizza I ordered was also well-executed, if a little less showy, with a crust that gave general appearances of being made in house and a subtle, fresh sauce. The one real miss was the arugla/artichoke dip. The dip: awesome. The bagel chips provided for dipping: sad. Would have loved a fresh sliced baguette instead.

Service was spotty, and a bit slow, but the waitstaff was friendly and engaging when they showed up. A little trouble remembering to bring the check, but given the beautiful spread of the space, and the breeze on a Grand Rapids summer afternoon, waiting was not such a painful experience.

I have seen some anger directed at Gilmore for his particular brand of corporate shellac, but I think the good here far outweighs the bad. These are good restaurants, a preservation of Grand Rapids history, and a strong benchmark against which other local restaurants will be measured.

85%: The Peached Tortilla

2011-11-04T22:12:00.004-05:00

The Twitterverse has a lot of good things to say about the Peached Tortilla. People swear allegiance to the Bahn Mi slider. They seek it out in whatever office complex parking lot it has paused. They speak of the reinvention of the taco. All that is to say that perhaps my experience was tainted by the sky-high expectations that kind of press creates. Because my experience was, in word, awful.

Not everything was bad. The Truck itself is cute, with an ambitious asian/mexican fusion menu and combos cleverly constructed to encourage experimentation. The people are efficient but friendly, and they seem like they have the routine down cold.

Beyond that, things started to fall apart. The "speciality lemonade" promised hand made goodness mixed with seasonal fruit. It delivered the distinct chalky aftertaste I have only ever tasted with the powdered crap we used to mix with water and call lemonade when I was a kid. My wife and I each took a sip, looked at each other, and said at the same time: "Countrytime."

Bad lemonade isn't easily forgivable, but this place has legions of fans. We soldiered on. The food arrived, again with great promise and flourish in presentation. We had Chicken Satay tacos, BBQ Brisket tacos, Bahn Mi sliders, and a little basket of fries. The tacos were well proportioned and sported neatly applied wiggles of a couple of different sauces. But at the first bite, there were signs of trouble. The meat in all three items was luke-warm, raising big red "keep the hot stuff hot" flags in my head. The brisket was pulled into dry clumps under the thin, sweet sauce. The "creamy coleslaw" that accompanied it was matchstick carrots and thinly sliced cabbage. Despite a pretty awesome corn tortilla, the combination was so bland and off temperature that it was nearly inedible. The Bahn Mi slider suffered even more from temperature problems and sported essentially the same construction as the brisket taco, with the carrot slaw re-purposed to provide a little asian spark. And again, those matchstick carrots showed up on the sizable chunks of barely marinated chicken that was trying to sneak by as Satay. This was the worst of the mess, the kind of weak Thai flavors that live in those little jarred bottles of curry paste at the grocery store. The fries were floppy - nice to look at, but limp and unblanched.

Tracy summed it up best on departure. When I asked her what she thought she said "I 85% hated it. 15% I just didn't like very much." Here's to hoping it was an off day, or an off order, but I won't be back to find out.

Side note: while beginning to lose faith in the Food Truck movement, I am not giving up yet: The Jalopy and The Evil Wiener rock hard enough to carry the load for them all.

The Sandwich Worth a Road Trip: Zingermans

2011-10-23T16:28:00.000-05:00

Zingerman's was not the longest I've traveled for dinner. A few years ago, while doing a short stint in Madison, my colleague insisted that the best steak in the world was just down the road, outside of Milwaukee. And while working in Oshawa, Ontario, the hour-long trip over to Toronto was rewarded with some pretty outstanding dinners.Still, it takes a mighty fine establishment to merit 3 hours of driving; and Zingerman's delivered, if not in the Pastrami than in the experience of the place, which is nothing short of brilliant, an overwhelming array of clever, cute and above obsessively food-centric. It's a compound more than a restaurant, and maybe more an empire than a compound.

The center of the Zingerman's empire is deli/cheese shop/bakery attached by a patio to a coffee shop and gelato stand, both intertwined with retail chocolate, cooking supplies, exotic dry goods, and a massive amount of exceedingly whimsical signage. Down the street is the Roadhouse, which will be the object of another road trip soon, and somewhere in the mix is a massive mail-order operation and a kitchen that I can only imagine.

Here's how it goes down. You pull into cute-as-a-button brick-street Kerrytown a few miles off the highway, far enough through nondescript neighborhoods that you begin to doubt your GPS. You look for parking. If lucky, you find it. You walk in through what looks like a regular deli entrance - large black awnings and warm window displays into a warmly lit room that redefines overstuffed. On your left, cheese. Beyond that, meats. The selections are truly mind boggling - 8 varieties of bone-in Spanish Hams. On your right, a wall of breads, fronted by friendly guys with beards. Keep walking, one very small step at a time, toward the giant menu boards that loom above the sandwich station. While you're wondering how this is all supposed to result in you getting a sandwich, a nice person with a clip-board approaches you and works with you to select the right sandwich for your particular needs and desires. You select a Pastrami, specifically the JJ's Special, with grilled onions and swiss cheese. You hope you like it, because the sucker is $16. Once you find your seat, out on the multi-level patio between the Deli and the Gelato, and pull down your drink from the all-Boylen soda fountain, your Pastrami arrives.

And that Pastrami? It sets the bar for all others. The thick slices, which I was skeptical of at first glance, showcase the delicate texture and distinct bite. This is not lean meat, but unlike most attempts at deli meat, all that fatty tasty goodness is evenly and beautifully distributed - nothing stringy, nothing to get stuck in your teeth. The bread is dense enough and has enough of a toast to it to stand up to the mass of the sandwich, waiting to fall apart until the very last bite. I've had pastrami this good only one other time, at Katzinger's in Columbus, Ohio, a much longer drive from Lansing.

After dinner, despite being completely stuffed, I managed to find room for a slice of exceptional apple pie and a decent cup of house-roasted coffee. Zingerman's has earned it's imperial stripes - they roast coffee because they wanted really good coffee, they make bread because they needed the bread to be perfect, they make cheese because all the cheese they wanted wasn't made by anyone else. I love that kind of empire - it's generous and wide-stretching, raising the bar for anyone making a sandwich and providing the resources to get there.

Comfort Food in East Lansing: What Up Dawg?

2011-10-01T15:42:00.000-05:00

There are a couple of places that are important to scout out in a new city: ice cream, doughnuts, and chicago dogs. These things are my comfort food. It would be nice if my comfort food was apples, bran muffin and wheat grass, but such is life.

Today: East Lansing Chicago Dogs at What Up Dawg, a start-up hole-in-the-wall a couple of blocks from Campus on M.A.C Ave. Though easy to miss walking by, once inside, What Up Dawg is a surprisingly put-together little space. It's sparse and modern, with dark concrete floors and halogen lighting. Not that this is elgant modern, by any stretch - there are giant flat screens, loud college music, and that faint smell of stale beer that permeates just about every one of these kind of places in College Towns. Windows look out over MAC Avenue, always bustling with the life of the town.

The menu is simple - Sausage, Hot Dogs, Fries, Beer. This is good. You want your Chicago Dogs made with the kind of single-minded focus the Sport Pepper and the Celery Salt demands

And that brings me to the innovation of What Up Dawg. I say that carefully. Innovating on Chicago Dogs is risky business. There are ingedients, and these ingredients can be amped up in size or quality, but in my experience, any attempt to modify past that detracts from the true nature of the dog. Until now. What Up Dawg. CHOPS the sport peppers. It rocks. The bite of the pepper is more evenly distributed, and eliminates the rolling sport pepper, one of the main challenges of Chicago Dog consumption.

The non Chicago Dog parts of the menu hold up well. Fries are crispy, fresh cut and a rusty reddish color when they come out. Sausages are local and juicy. The beer selection is decent, and includes my favorite go-to Michigan Brew, Bells.

Comfort Food in East Lansing. One Down. Two to go.

Village Baker - Small Town Baker Does it Big Town Right

2011-08-27T20:35:00.003-05:00

The existence of the Village Baker proves three things:

Urban artisan establishments do not have exclusive domain over super-tasty baked things.
Good things sometimes happen to good people
West Michigan is a really, really small place

1. Small Town Baker Kicks Ass

The first thing you encounter at Village Baker is a rack of completely legit baked goods in mind boggling variety. I do not know when they start baking to have this stuff ready to go each morning, or what magic they employ to get this kind of crust on a baguette.

The storefront is narrow and long – a handful of booths line the windows along one long side, and a counter, pastry cases, and a gaggle of young employees dominate the back wall. It’s light and airy, with an understated small town charm. The glass bottles of milk from a local dairy look at right at home.

Over the course of a handful of weekends out at my mom’s place in Spring Lake, we had challah (for French toast, OMG), cinnamon rolls, baguettes, poppy seed hot dog buns, French pastries, and local blueberry muffins. I think I ate more bread during July than in any previous month of my life, and I loved every minute of it. The baguettes here are crusty with a pillowy white interior and a mild sourdough bite. The hot dog buns are brilliantly squishy, what every grocery store hot dog bun aspires to be. And the pastries, created by a professor at a nearby cooking school who was wishing for a commercial kitchen, are precise and beautiful.

2. Good People

Oran Rankin and Sara Rathbun run Village Baker. They are really really nice people. When they opened the bakery, they literally scraped it together, doing a lot of the work on the place themselves, and bringing in friends (there’s a yoga studio next door, and plans for a farmers market out back) to help.

And, just as you’d like to see with something run with this much heart, this place is off-the-hook successful. I’ve never been in there where there hasn’t been a line full of locals back from church, or people passing through on the way to the beach. As word spreads, I can imagine the crowds will continue to gather, making Village Baker a sort of informal town square.

3. West Michigan Is Very Small

Back in the early 90s, fresh back in Grand Rapids from my first years in College, my dad and I used to spend the occasional lazy afternoon drinking coffee and playing chess at Socrates. It was a homey Eastown coffeeshop, with a big bright front window, some memorably named sandwiches and good coffee before most of us knew what that was. Once or twice we made the trek from there up to Ed’s Breads on Leonard to bring back a loaf of homemade cinnamon bread for French Toast.

Socrates: Sara Rathbun’s place. Ed’s Breads: that’d be Oran’s. They weren’t a couple then, but have since met and married, and showed up a few blocks away from my mom’s house.

Score one for good karma. Love this place.

Images courtesy of the gorgeous and amazing Fair Morning Blue

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Bush to Bucket to Pie. Blueberries in Summer.

2011-07-26T19:49:00.002-05:00

The summer road trip is getting to be a tradition in our family. Near the end of June, we pile everyone in the car and head in whatever direction my corporate apartment happens to be. For a glorious couple of months, I get to read bedtime stories to my kiddos on weekdays, avoid airports entirely, and sleep past 4AM on Monday Mornings. For the last few years, my client was in Tallahassee FL, so we encamped there, with weekend jaunts to Disney or St. George Island. This year: Lansing, MI, and our weekend jaunts are both more pedestrian, and, frankly, more fun.

Last weekend, we stayed out in Spring Lake with my mom, right up the street from Blueberry Hill U-Pick farm. Farm may be a bit of an overstatement – Blueberry Hill is maybe an acre of bushes tucked behind a neatly manicured ranch house, on the edge of a residential neighborhood. It’s an idyllic setting, and when we showed up on Saturday morning we had the run of the lush blueberry bushes, which were drooping with enormous blue spheres of sweet juicy goodness. We snacked profusely, thinking of Sal and his plink-plank-plunk, and stopped when we got to a bucket full – about 2 gallons – costing us all of $10. For those keeping track at home, this is about what it costs to cast a sidelong glance at Disney.

That afternoon, we headed back across the state to Lansing and got busy in my little kitchen.

First thing to note. A bucket is a mountain of blueberries. It doesn’t seem like a lot when you’re surrounded by a near infinite supply hanging off of summer-green bushes, but put it on the counter, and it’s a little shocking. Enough for a pie? Yes, I’d say so.

I don’t have any cookbooks here, but I do have my trusty Bittman To Go app, and on it was something close to this:

The Crust.

- 2 sticks of butter, cut into about 16 cubes each.

- 2 cups white flour

- 2 tablespoons sugar

- 1/2 tsp salt

- A little icewater (about 3 tbs)

That’s it. I dropped the butter in the flour, sugar and salt, and then went at it. No tabletop appliances here, so I tried it with a pair of knives, but the better approach was just to break up the pieces of butter with my fingers. I worked for a few minutes, stuck the whole bowl in the freezer to cool off, and then worked it again. Main goal is to keep the butter pieces small, but distinct, so things stay flaky and delish. Once it seemed well enough integrated, I added a couple of tablespoons of ice water, and worked it into a ball. Wax paper and washi tape was decent substitute for plastic wrap, and I popped the whole kit and caboodle in the fridge for about an hour to cool down again.

While the crust was chilling, into another bowl wen

- 5 cups fresh-picked blueberries

- 1 cup sugar

- 1 teaspoon of lemon zest

- 1 tablespoon of lemon juice

- 2 tablespoons corn starch (should have used 4, more about that below)

And by “worked”, I mean combined everything and tossed, again, with fingers.

We rolled out the top and bottom crusts, saving enough for my daughters to make their own mini pastries to bake alongside the main attraction. With the oven up at 450, we laid the first crust into a nine inch pie pan, piled in our blueberry mix, dotted with butter, crimped on the top crust and cut a few holes (I used Sugar Mama's Triple Berry pattern as an inspiration). It sat for a @morningblue photo op for a few minutes, received a quick butter brush and sprinkle of sugar, and then we popped it into the middle of the oven, dropping the temp back down to 350 as soon as the oven door was shut.

An hour later we were rewarded with a bubbling gooey mess of a blueberry pie. We tried to wait, honest, we did, but we didn’t wait long enough and were content eating a rather soupy mess of sweet luscious blueberry pie and Hudsonville vanilla ice cream.

For the next two days, we hacked away at it, relishing the way the summertime in Michigan tastes.

The side note regarding the corn starch: After the pie cooled it stayed pretty soupy. This was not all bad (with ice cream, it was actually kind of nice), but a pie of a more traditional consistency would have required about twice the thickener.

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Love and Failure: Boscos Squared in Memphis

2011-07-06T21:05:00.001-05:00

Who Needs Donuts

The best book ever written is called Who Needs Donuts When You've Got Love. It's by Mark Allen Stamaty, and it will blow your mind. The hero of the book, Sam, leaves home on a quest to find donuts. Eventually, Sam realizes that donuts without love are no fun and kind of empty. There's a climactic scene involving a bull, lukewarm coffee, and an old lady, but I won't give away the juicy bits here. It should be noted this is technically targeted at 5-year olds, but the core truth holds: love makes everything good.

And this, my friends, is why I don't love Boscos Squared, deep in Germantown on the edge of downtown Memphis. Boscos has no love.

Boscos does have great beer. It has an absolutely gorgeous building, comfortable chairs, good art on the walls, and a wood fired brick oven. It has enormous copper fermentation tanks encased behind glass and lit with a sexy yellow-tinged light. It has a kick-ass gastropub menu with little departures like smoked duck spring rolls. All that, taken together, makes for a pretty good Yelp rating, but it doesn't make for a great restaurant.

We walked in and were greeted with the strong scent of boredom. The hostess walked us to our table with a grim determination. Our waiter, when he appeared, was so apathetic he bordered on unconscious. After a long while the food arrived, showing that the kitchen was about as pleased to be there as the front-house staff. The salad - fresh from a box of field greens, was a little wilted and presented in a towering mound. If there was love in that salad, it'd have pecans and baked brie, like the house salad at Eastside Cafe. Others fared no better - the burger my wife ordered contained gristle so palpable it nearly crunched. A burger made with love would have green chile that made you cry out with pleasure as your eyes streamed tears, like The Horesman's Haven. The mini ciabatta rolls Ella's sliders came on were soft to the point of soggy, nothing at all like the ciabatta made with love and a crust at Sweetish Hill.

For love, I'm willing to put up with dumpy buildings, impossible parking, long waits and limited menus. My Spectacularly Good columns are filled with places that vary widely on available budget, but have in common a love of food and a passion for building an experience that transcends sustenance and invites you in to play. Places like Veritable Quandry in Portland, East End Eatery in Gainesville, Sugar Mama's Bakeshop in Austin, Madcap Coffee in Grand Rapids.

In the end, Boscos wasn't the worst place I've eaten - they make an extraordinary pale ale and do enough things right for me to believe that they could have been a kind of OK place having an off night. But they will not be getting a repeat visit from me. For that, you need love.

Check out more photos on the Grubbus Facebook Page

The Best Pie in Austin

2011-06-27T22:25:00.003-05:00

The Pie Society - Buttermilk

Pie is a scrappy, American staple. It's a recession dessert, simple, flexible and celebratory. It also looks like it's mounting an impressive comeback.

Recently I helped pull together a Pie Tasting for about 50 Austin colleagues. We collected in our biggest conference room (the one that's about to get new carpet. Oops), and lined up a dozen of the best pies going in Austin: The Pie Society, Sweetish Hill, Texas Pie Company, and Sugar Mama's Bakeshop. Coffee came courtesy of our friends at Chameleon Cold Brew, and Amy's provided the Mexican Vanilla. Killer sugar rush, #ATX style.

A couple of general findings before I get into the real results.

Crust is king - Basic pie crust has essentially two ingredients - flour and butter. Flourishes may add an item or two. But how crust is handled, how the butter is integrated, how long it's chilled before baking, how thinly it's rolled - is key to making a great pie. Also good - whatever voodoo Sugar Mama's does to make the crispy butter dream that is the Triple Berry crust.
Fruit wins - This is a fact. We voted. It may just be the string of triple-digit days, but given the choice of pie style, fruit beat cream by a 6 to 1 margin. Not many folks I know are going to turn down a coconut cream if it's the only thing on the table, but given the choice, looks like they'll opt for the oozing berries with a scoop of vanilla ice cream over mounds of whipped cream.
The prettiest ones give a little peek - We did an informal poll on the prettiest pies, and first, second and third place were the pies with lattice top crusts (Sweetish Hill blueberry, Pie Society cherry, Pie Society strawberry-rhubarb). I'm kind of a crumble guy, myself, but looking at everything lined up, it was hard to deny the visual supremacy of the near iconic Pie Socieity Cherry.

The Pie Society - Cherry

So there's the findings. On to the results.

Third place

Tie: Sweetish Hill Chocolate Rum Pecan and The Pie Society Strawberry rhubarb. These couldn't be more different pies. Each has it's roots in a classic, but where Sweetish Hill veers to the innovative side of things, The Pie Society is keeping it classic. Strawberry Rhubarb was stunning and had a lovely rhubarb tang against the sweet strawberries. Filling consistency is always tricky with pies - and the only point that this one lost ground was on that front, a little runnier than most of us would have liked. Chocolate Pecan was also beautiful, and pulled in the chocolate fanatics in the group. I thought it rocked, but in the end, I was unsold on the drizzle of chocolate. It's like nuts in chocolate chip cookies or raisins in bread pudding. Some people love it. It's just not the way I roll.

Second Place

The Texas Pie Company Chocolate Fudge. No question that this was a tasty desert, that it rocked the Mexican Vanilla, that it sliced as easy as a, well, brownie. Because, truth be told, that's what it was. A giant brownie in a pie crust. At first, I dismissed it as gimmick, but this was a damn good brownie in a damn good crust. Populist win for second place.

First Place

Best Pie in Austin

Sugar Mama's Triple Berry. There were a lot of really good pies for the taking, but the top spot was pretty lonely for the Triple Berry, which took nearly 70% of the votes for best pie, and 80% of the votes for best crust. No argument from me on this one. I'm a die hard triple berry fan, have been for ages, and this full size pie took all the jammy cobbler-like goodness of the mini one Sugar Mama's has in the case, multiplied it by 50, topped it with ice cream and made an entire room of corporate denizens a little weak in the knees. People who didn't like pie loved this pie. People who had given up sugar, given up gluten loved this pie. This is crazy pie.

I have no idea if Pie is a trend that's going to stick, no idea if Sugar Mama's mini-pies or The Pie Society's Crimps will streak past cakeballs to steal the mighty cupcake thunder, but I hope they do. I love that some of the best bakers in town are turning their prodigious talents to the humble pie. If there's a time to think about our history, Independence Day is a good one. And if there's a food to eat while thinking about it, it's a slice of pie.

Sugar Mama's - Triple Berry w/Amy's Mexican Vanilla

Side note: Our friends (and rock-star talented bakers) at The Pie Society were recently selected to provide pies for "A Christmas Affair" in Austin. Big show. Lots of pie. As a startup, this kind of volume doesn't come easy. They've turned to innovative micro-funding site KickStarter to raise funds for the big effort. Go ahead and check it out. Tell 'em Grubbus sent you.

More pictures are up on the Grubbus Facebook page

Caffe Medici Builds Temple to Coffee in the Heart of Austin

2011-06-06T15:30:00.002-05:00

My first cup of coffee was at a dinner party at our house in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I was 10 years old, and I remember not so much the way it tasted, but the way it felt to be in grown up conversations with this deep rich coffee smell all around and a plate of Italian cookies on the table. I remember the warmth of the cup in my hands, the inky cold blackness outside the dining room windows, and the sophistication of the whole experience. Coffee was special-occasion-only until high school and a regular daily ritual after that. By the time I finished college and moved to DC, I’d figured out the importance of fresh ground beans, had the epiphany of espresso, and had started hanging out at Quartermaine, my local coffee shop, rather than staying holed up in my apartment.

It took until 2007, 24 years after that first cup, to discover really good coffee, at Caffe Medici, on West Lynn. Medici opened up a whole new level of coffee in town, and served as Austin’s gateway drug to some pretty extraordinary highs: Once Over, Houndstooth and half a dozen other top-level shops are turning out amazing drinks, Austin baristas are placing at the top of US Barista Guild national competitions, latte art has become commonplace, and Mike McKim has taken Cuvee Coffee Roasters to national relevance.

The only thing left was to build a space sleek and sophisticated enough to hold this sleek, sophisticated Austin coffee experience. And Medici has now done it, on the ground floor of the Austonian. We now not only have good coffee, we have erected a temple to it.

The space is light and airy – two stories of glass with loft seating and warm colors. There is a clean modern aesthetic to it all, but the basic design is all about theater. After entering the front door you walk past a massive square espresso bar housing two complete espresso work stations to the back of the store to order. You place your order and pay up, and then head back up front, where shots are pulled on a pair of gleaming red 3-group La Marzoccos. It made for a good show when Starbucks first tried layout this in the 80s at Pikes Place, and it makes for a good show now.

There are seats outside, on the wide sidewalk next to Congress Avenue, inside along the windows, and upstairs in a gorgeously engineered loft. A benevolent Medici looks down from a mural on the back wall.

The space is fantastic, but the key to what Medici is doing now is in the cup. Medici has been using the same Espresso Medici blend from Cuvee Coffee since the get go. Every Barista there knows exactly how these beans want to be treated, and they have dialed in the temperature and the grind to impossible precision. The resulting espresso is rich and winey, with a chocolaty first taste and a long, lingering almost tart bite at the finish. Alone, it’s fantastic, though ristrettos can pack a puckering wallop.

With milk it’s out of this world. I would happily drink anything they make, but my go-to drink is the Espresso Macchiato, where just a few ounces of perfectly steamed milk tops the espresso. If I’m there for a little longer, I’ll get the small latte and linger on the silky roasted marshmallow flavors that come out when the milk is taken to just the right temperature. They have food, and it’s good enough, but the action is universally and unapologetically the coffee.

I came to coffee for the smell and the taste, but mostly for the experience. This most recent Medici outpost has brought that back home more directly, and more elegantly than any place else I’ve been.

More pictures are up on the Grubbus Facebook page

For a historical trip back in time: My original review of Medici, back in 2007 is here.

Finding France in the Suburbs: Baguette et Chocolat

2011-06-01T20:48:00.000-05:00

I should be totally clear here. I have no basis for judging French pastries authentic. I have never been to France. In high school, I opted for Spanish. I’ve only been to Europe once, and I stayed in Italy. I do have some basis for judging them awesome though. And Baguette et Chocolat is nothing if not awesome. Their site is here. It is very loud.

Tucked away next to a brand new strip mall all the way out Bee Caves road near highway 71, Baguette is a little square stone structure. It looks kind of lonely and sterile there in the parking lot, and the outdoor tables seem a little misplaced perched on the narrow sidewalk separating the building from the cars parked out front. Once you get inside and take a deep breath, though, the experience is transformed.

There are about 10 tables scattered inside, white, scrubbed clean and set simply, and far enough apart to create a clear unencumbered path to the pastry case.

But this is not somewhere you visit for the ambience. This is a place you visit for the food.

French pastries are, by definition, pretty. These go beyond that, crafted so delicately and with such attention to detail that they cross the line to from pretty to flat-out stunning. There are rows of brightly colored French macaroons – all the rage everywhere; totally at home here. Meringues, Operas, Chocolate Mousse, and scores of gorgeous tarts share space with croissants and brioche. Above the case are baskets of crusty, flour dusted breads. And above that, an impressive menu board: salads, sandwiches, and crepes. The menu is so extensive that the drinks are listed on the adjacent wall.

Every time I’ve been I’ve tried something different, and I’ve never been disappointed. The croissants are ethereal. A couple of times they were a little overly crisp on the bottom, but it barely detracted from the meltingly tender, buttery layers. The entrée salads are fresh and beautifully arranged, with a tangy white-wine vinaigrette. The crepes are simple and rich: I am especially fond of the Crepe Complete, where eggs, ham and swiss cheese are folded inside a surprisingly rich, impossibly thin crepe. The saltiness of this gets a little overwhelming by the end, but it’s an amazing meal, especially framed next to the tender little salad that shares the plate.

The desserts are no less brilliant: Nothing overly cloying or sweet, everything balanced. We tried the lemon and raspberry macaroons (the raspberry featuring a surprising hint of chocolate), the opera, an apple tart and the chocolate mousse. The macaroons were among the best I’ve ever had, with just enough crisp bite to set off the crème between the layers. The mousse, simply presented, was lovely and light. The opera and the apple tart fared a little less well: the opera could not have been more stunning, but the precisely assembled cake layers were a touch dry; the apple tart, while delicious, lacked the contrast between the soft sweetness of the apple and the crisp of the crust I’d have liked to see.

It should also be noted that Baguette is not a place to visit when you’re in a hurry. Food created this carefully is not created quickly, and when I went in with Tracy and the kids of lunch I was suspicious they had forgotten us before our food arrived.

Baguette is a lovely experience - at the same time a sunny little neighborhood spot and a serious bakery turning out some of the best sweets in Austin. It's not trendy or even particularly high-style, but it is pure pleasure to be there.

More photos of Baguette et Chocolat are up on Grubbus's Facebook Home

A Trip on the BBQ Bus: Sam's, Vic's and Willie's

2011-05-23T23:46:00.001-05:00

On Saturday, I got the chance to ride along on a BBQ bus of epic proportions, courtesy of a contest put on by the good people at Google Places and ManUpTexasBBQ. We hit 3 joints I’d never heard of, ate meats I’d never encountered, and drank our fair share of Lone Star beer on a school bus outfitted with blacked out windows, disco lighting and a stripper pole. Memorable.

Sam's

We started at Austin legend Sam’s, on East 11^th. A massive pit just behind the register kicks out enough heat to render meats nearly to the melting point, and to bump the ambient heat in the place to sauna-esque levels. The walls are yellow, I think, but so covered in faded peeling photographs, pages ripped from magazines, and record covers that it’s a little hard to tell. We sampled both the brisket and the mutton. Both were as moist as any meat I’ve tasted. If you have no teeth, and you would like to enjoy a meal of brisket, this place is your ticket. I found the brisket tasty, but a little bland – just meat and smoke going on here. The mutton – first I’ve ever had – was better, blackened and crispy on the edges, incredibly tender, and just a touch gamy. This stuff is seriously rich eating - a few bites and I was stuffed.

Perk: we actually got to go back stage at Sam’s and take a peek at the pit. Literally, this is a brick wall with a grate on top and fire underneath. That’s it. Asked how he avoided overcooking the meat, the man running the pit said “this is barbeque, there is no such thing as overcooked” Indeed.

Willie's

Stop two was Willies, way out at Springdale and MLK. We outnumbered the seats at Willies by a good margin, but thankfully they had the meat, and the bottles of Big Red to handle us. Brisket was good, but unmemorable, with more unrendered fat than I like. The score here was the boudin. I only know boudin from the hundreds of billboards dotting I-40 between Beaumont and Mobile, often featured next to an alligator and promising parts of animals I’d never really planned on eating. I had no idea what it was - alligator foot sausage? Turns out I was wrong - boudin is pork and rice sausage, different than any sausage I’ve ever had, and, as Willie's does it, totally delicious. Texture-wise it’s almost like a Greek dolma, heavy on the meat. But the taste is another thing entirely, starting mild and a little peppery, and ending with a kick (maybe jalepeno?) that just made me want another bite.

Vic's

Our last stop for the day was also the highlight. Vic’s, off of 71 just east of I-35, is in a different league than Sam’s and Willie’s – bright, well air-conditioned, and spacious. It’s no Lambert’s, but it's also not a dive. The walls here are decorated with row after row of awards – best pork ribs, best beef ribs, best brisket. We did all three at Vic’s, and each one outdid the last. The brisket was cut thin and brilliantly spiced, tender, but not so greasy that you couldn’t dig in. The beef ribs, glazed with a sweet and slightly spicy crust were monumental and amazing – the meat fell off the bone and the flavor just went on and on. But the final play here, and the best thing I ate all day, hands down, was the pork ribs. These may be the best ribs I’ve ever bit into, even after a day of eating BBQ. The intense flavor in the crust, especially the blackened bits contrasted gorgeously with the slightly salty, tender bites of pork.

Four hours after we set out, in the quiet haze of a meat coma, we arrived back at our starting point. Mad props to Whitney and the gang at ManUp for making this happen. It's a Saturday I'm not going to forget.

More pictures from the BBQ Bus are up on the Grubbus FaceBook Page

Sushi Hiding in the Strangest of Places: Maru Rocks Okemos

2011-05-04T23:07:00.007-05:00

Lansing is a long way from the ocean. And a suburb of Lansing is the last place on earth I expected to find innovative, beautifully executed, piercingly fresh, creatively presented sushi. But I did.

Maru takes up a hidden corner of a non-descript strip mall. You could be in the parking lot and still not find it. But ho-hum disappears the minute you open the door. The ceiling rises a good 30 feet over the bar, the wall covered in an enormous wave-like bas-relief sculpture. The tiny space unfolds in a range of tricky little twists and turns - full of natural light and simple modern lines.

Take your seat, and the wait staff appear. I don't know where they get the wait staff here, honestly. This was my third visit, and each time, the service at this place has run at a different level than anywhere else in town. Crisp, earnest, intelligent, present.

The menu is a bit of a shock as well. This is not a sushi-deluxe+salad-with-ginger-dressing+miso soup kind of a place. This is full on ala-carte, and the carte is pretty wild. Case in point: the best roll I've had here is the Sexy Bacon, featuring ultra crisp thick sliced bacon alongside cucumber, asparagus, crab and shredded seaweed. This last time my little group started with the ceviche. Like the bacon, this is sushi re-imagined - a cylinder of rice, topped with brunoise tomato, topped with creme fraiche, topped with roe, surrounded by tuna, surrounded by enormous wonton wrapper chips. With a lime. It works.

We followed the ceviche with the big-daddy Omakase - bascially carte blanche for the chef to send us whatever he felt like sending us. First: a delicate salad topped with just a little smidge of escolar. Haven't had much escolar? Neither had I, since it's essentially banned from most parts of the world due to some iffy digestive consequences if eaten in large amounts. But it's here, and it's unbelievably rich and silky.

Next round was what I can only describe as jalepeno poppers. Together with the ceviche, it was a neat little riff on what tex mex would be if it were made by sushi chefs. I can't quite tell what all was in these. Definitely jalepeno, definitely something killer tasty and related to cream cheese, definitely something with a little kick. All of this, sparsely tempura battered and fried. Again - lots and lots going on here, and it came together well.

Nigiri and Sashami followed: tuna, halibut, escolar and octopus with little cucumber salads. Excellent, but not perfect. The octopus especially was a little tougher than I would have liked. And word to the wise: go for escolar on the salad, but skip the sashimi. Delicious? Yep. But not worth the pain. Trust me on this one.

Then came the rolls. The first round was a neat little package, mostly veggies with thin strips of tuna and salmon. Beautifully presented, this would have been an ideal way to end. In fact, we ended with round two of the rolls, which was the one place I think the meal really went astray. Oversize, with salmon tempura and a dab of cream cheese, these were an altogether too heavy finish for a meal drenched in light. Still - all in all a brilliant meal, and hands down the most innovative, creative culinary work I've seen anywhere near here. Given that this is virtually the only place in Lansing with a wait at 7:30 on a weekday, I'm not the only one that's made the discovery.

More photos of Maru are up on Grubbus's Facebook Home

Palatable Airport Food, Part III: Vino Volo @ DTW

2011-04-28T20:03:00.004-05:00

Back in 2007, I put up a post on Pappadeux, the best thing going at IAH Terminal E. In 2010, it was tasty little ATL gem, Cafe Intermezzo. Over the last few weeks I've found Vino Volo, bringing the Grubbus palatable-food total in our nations air travel system to three.

Vino Volo is a small chain of wine bars in a dozen airports across the country, and a pretty radical departure for airport food. It's probably good to note here that the unexpected joy of this place comes partly from it's surroundings: against standard airport food, this place is a blowout success. Put it downtown Austin, and it's a little more run of the mill.

The Wines are the name of the game here, and they've got a remarkably good selection. It's not many places you can find Silver Oak Cabernet or an '05 Brunello di Montalcino by the glass. The wine menu is split into about a dozen sections of 2-3 wines each: California Cabs, Sparkling Whites, Tour of Spain. Each wine is available by the glass, the bottle, or as part of a flight with its compatriots. I tried an Elusiv Pinot from Monterey this time, and it was beautiful - strawberries and a little peppery on the finish.

soapbox One nit to pick here: each wine comes with a customized coaster featuring tasting notes and placing it along a spectrum from light to brooding. Brooding. Brooding is not a taste. It is a thing that teenagers do when they don't get the car. And unless this wine tastes like what teenagers do, and I sure hope it doesn't - please, please don't say that it does. There are plenty of good words that describe taste. Use those. /soapbox

Enough with the wines - on to the food. The food is a blast. Not genius food, but really tasty. I had the cured meat plate, and while it was no Olympic Provisions, it was really pretty delicious, down to the lovely tart pickles and coarse ground spicy mustard. The olive plate is a great starter, beautifully arranged and pungent. The cheese plate was tempting (people the next table over were raving), and they've got a couple of really nice looking sandwiches on good bread. The food is also in remarkably constrained proportions, a nice contrast to the pounds of meat that make up the burgers down the way at Fuddruckers.

All this lovely sipping and tasting, in a tasteful, quiet, well lit space comes at a price, however. Tasty, yes, but not a cheap lunch. A glass of wine and a sandwich can set you back $30, easy. More if you drink the really choice stuff.

For me, it's my delayed-flight treat, a little extra kick when the hours drag on - a place as far away from the airport as you can get on DTW's A-Concourse.

More photos up on Grubbus's Facebook Home

The Best Sausage in the World Is the Sausage After a Long Ride

2011-04-18T22:45:00.001-05:00

On April 16 and 17th, I joined about 13,000 other people on bikes, and about 5,000 volunteers on a 170 mile ride from Houston to Austin to raise money for Multiple Sclerosis research. It's a two day ride, with a stop over at La Grange. It is on this ride that I discovered perfect sausage. Here's what I learned: sausage is best hot off the grill, with friends and with mustard, with the sun dipping down over the Texas hills, and with 85 miles of rolling land behind you. It's best when handed to you by fantastic volunteers, after a line of people have cheered your last half mile. It's best when you're dog tired, and looking forward to a cot and a sleeping bag as soon as it gets dark.

On day one, we gathered up, pre-dawn in the blistering cold, at a Stadium in Katy, TX. What seemed to me an impossible number of bikers grew as riders from the other start points merged in. A few hours later, around 9:15, the sun finally starting to warm everything up, we stopped for lunch. I've never seen an operation at this scale - a massive tent, with thousands and thousands of identical turkey sandwiches, cans of fruit, bags of chips. It was impressive in scale, and mind-blowing in efficiency, but I will report honestly that no matter how many miles were covered before lunch, I did not find the best Turkey Sandwich.

By 2:30, 85 miles from where we started, we rolled into La Grange - the middle of pack that started arriving before noon, and kept on coming until after 6:00. What had been, I presume, a typical fairgrounds was converted into a decent size little town. Bike stores, showers, massage studios, music venues, and row after row of tents housing riders and volunteers. Behind each tent, varying in ambition and execution, was a kitchen. Ours was a simple pair of gas grills cooking beef and jalepeno Costco sausage. Down the way a bit was the Continental Airlines tent. Their setup was a little more extreme - a 30 foot scale replica 777 with a 6-burner Vulcan range on the side. Others were more humble, like the little table-top Weber set up down the hill from us in front of one of the dozens of RV's. I'm working on a plan to get The Jalopy to set up outside our tent next year. Will keep you posted on that one.

Next morning, we lined up early - getting our place in line at about 4:30, taking turns watching bikes and running back to the tent for more coffee. At 6:45, as the sun was coming up, we rolled out for Bastrop, and ultimately, back home to Austin. Where more sausage was waiting for us.

I learned a lot on this ride and in the year I spent training for it. I learned that food is actually pretty central to the whole endeavor. At least for me, the trick to riding for this kind of mileage is remembering to eat all the time. Sport Beans, Honey Stingers, Clif Goo - all this junk I would never have touched a year ago, is my new comfort food. Gatorade is now appealing. I packed Starbucks Via.

I also learned about bravery and commitment. I met riders in their 70s and riders in elementary school. I met riders who had loved ones with MS, or who suffered from it themselves. And throughout, I saw a group of people committed to doing this to help find a cure. It was an inspiring thing (if you'd like to contribute to the cause, we're still taking donations).

And I learned about the patience of my family, who put up with my training rides every weekend, who drove me down to Houston the day before the ride, and who cheered for me when I rolled back into Austin.

Posted more pictures over on Grubbus' home on Facebook.

Making Maple Syrup: Sugarbush Revisited

2011-04-06T11:31:00.002-05:00

It's Spring in Michigan. And by Spring, I mean the snow is only sporadic, and sometimes it's kind of sunny. That blustery combination of cold nights and not-quite-as-cold days can be a little jarring for an Austinite, but it's perfect for Sugar Maples. Those few weeks when the sap is flowing and the sugar house is all fired up is Sugarbush. My first time through was a long, long time ago, when I was 11 and going to school at Blandford, on the north side of Grand Rapids. Last month, I brought the whole family up to the very same spot. It's still going strong.

Maple syrup gets it start as sap. It's extracted, traditionally, by way of a small hole drilled an inch or so into the tree, into which a small metal tube is tapped, off of which hangs a big bucket, into which the sap drips. When I think of sap, I think of the tarry sticky stuff that comes out of pine trees. This is totally different. It's water, more or less, with just slightest hint of sugary goodness.

Little known fact: sap is totally delicious. Actually, maple syrup anywhere in the process from sap to syrup to maple sugar candy is delicious. When I was doing this for real, as a 6th grader, I used to take surreptitious slurps of the stuff between trees.

The buckets hang there, collecting sap, drip by drip by drip. To watch the sap flow, it seems like it would take weeks to get an appreciable amount, but they drip drip on, and in a few hours the buckets start to visibly fill. Every day or so, the buckets are collected, consolidated, and hauled back up the sugar house.

I love the sugar house. Even just the name rocks. At Blandford, the sugar house is totally cutting edge, circa 1890. It's not particularly high capacity, but it's totally high drama. The buckets, now emptied into still larger containers, are emptied into a trough in the back of the sugarhouse. They pass through a filter, and into a shallow metal tub, separated into a dozen different channels, atop a seriously roaring fire. As the water is boiled off, over the course of several hours, the sap slowly thickens into syrup. Measurement comes by way of a thermometer-like device that measures sugar solids, but you can see the difference just looking - sap is clear at the start, and golden at the finish.

In all, 40 gallons of sap make a single gallon of syrup. Early harvest, when the sugar is in higher concentration, yields the light colored extra-fancy grade A syrup. As the season wanes - just a few weeks later, there's less sugar in sap, meaning a longer time over the fire. That extra time means extra carmelized sugars, hence the darker color. Me? I'm a grade B guy all the way. Better flavor.

If you keep boiling after syrup you get the absolute primo treat of my childhood - maple sugar candy. The flavors in these things will knock you flat - rich and almost buttery, with a slight woody tinge from the open fire.

I don't know if my kids will take home the same memories I've stored away since my time at Blandford, but I'm glad they got a taste.

Sugarbush is over this year, but the candy's still available at the Blandford General Store.

Sultan's: Taste Over Glitz in a Lansing Strip Mall

2011-03-29T22:12:00.001-05:00

When I walked to my elementary school in winter, I used to hold my breath. I was convinced that the steam I exhaled was a limited quantity, that I might run out of it if I was too careless. This is basically the same reason I don't spend more time at Sultans that I already do. I don't want to run out of the pleasure of it.

Sultans occupies the back corner of My Favorite Parking Lot, and has a sort of neglected charm. Where Chapelure and Sansu are slick, up-to-the-minute establishments, Sultan's is a little dated and a little dusty. But what it lacks in glitz, it makes up for in taste.

Start with the cocktails. Or rather, start with the absence of cocktails. Sultan's is a no-alcohol establishment. Instead of mixed drinks, there's mixed juices, all fresh squeezed. I generally opt for the Sunset - strawberries, apple juice, grapefruit juice, and honey. This is not a smoothie - it's juice, light, frothy, and sweet, and it compliments the middle-eastern tang of the marinades and sauces nicely.

And then with the rolls. If you're lucky. The rolls are these little pillows of bread, so airy, they're nearly hollow. They are addictive, which is a bad thing, since they often run out, leaving late-comers with dry, bland triangles of pita bread. The first time I encountered the pita, I nearly cried.

And then with the massive quantity of goodness that constitutes a Sultan's entree. I ususally stick with the chicken kabobs - grilled until they're almost crispy, and full of some fantastic marinade that I can't even start to figure out. Skip the tzatziki-like sauce (it's sort of bland), but make haste for the rice and the grilled tomato. I've also had the kibbeh (heavenly) and the schwarma (so-so). The Kabob, though, that's my go-to dish.

The hummus and tabbouleh, both beautiful, are overkill. It looks like you might want a little extra bit when you're checking out the menu, but once the bread comes out and the food starts piling up, you realize that this is not a place you'll leave hungry.

It should be noted that I found this place through its cousin downtown, a complete dive that goes by the same name. If the strip-mall Sultan's is a little dusty, the downtown one is downright meager. Of course, the food is amazing there too, and the place is packed to the door every lunch hour. A couple more food finds to add to the Lansing repertoire.

MadCap Coffee - Grand Rapids Enters the Big Leagues

2011-03-20T23:31:00.007-05:00

In what's quickly becoming a school-vacation tradition, I brought the family along to work with me this week. Rather than camp out in Lansing, where my client is, we picked up a room in Grand Rapids. Nothing against Lansing, which is kind of a neat place in it's own right, but Grand Rapids just has a lot more going on.

One of best things Grand Rapids has going on is some seriously bad-ass coffee at MadCap, downtown. Some seriously bad-ass US Barista Jam first-place regional finishing single origin espresso custom built pour over rig super-sweet latte art coffee. The place was packed, too. Grand Rapids has come a long way since I was last hanging out downtown.

A lot of things give MadCap major street cred - the beans are directly sourced and roasted in house. (The roaster is housed in the basement of the shop, visible through a cleverly designed cutout in the floor). Coffee is ground and brewed for each cup, one at a time, in a very, very slick custom made pour over station. The latte art is gorgeous.

With the girls sipping hot chocolates in the two last available seats (they both said the hot chocolates were better than Intelligentsia, which is saying something), Tracy and I chatted with the baristas. They're deeply committed to making this work, and you can see it in the way the whole place comes together. It's not a high budget enterprise exactly - the tables and chairs are all stock Ikea, the slick wood veneer lamp shades are coming a little loose in the corners, and the roaster looks like it could put out 10 lbs at a time, tops - but they've invested where it counts: skilled people, top-notch machinery, and hands-on international sourcing of some really good beans.

But the thing that matters most is in the cup, and MadCap does this on par with the best places I've been - my single-origin shot was powerfully tart, and a little sweet - reminiscent of Stumptown more than anything else. And the lattes, where that tartness was softened by the milk but punchy enough to still show through, were spectacular. I work an hour from here, but this is coffee I might be willing to drive 60 miles to get my hands on.

Chapelure: The Sweet Side of My Favorite Parking Lot in Lansing

2011-03-10T18:12:00.012-06:00

My days of the endless back and forth to Tallahassee have been replaced by endless days back and forth to Lansing, Michigan. I miss Tally, but Lansing has it's own charm. As I write this, large soft snowflakes are curling their way down outside. You don't get this in Tallahassee.

When it comes to food, the two towns have a lot more in common: Wendy's recently took home top prize for Chili in the Lansing city magazine.

This makes Chapelure all the more fabulous to find, nestled in the back corner of a parking lot that also includes the best Sushi and the best Middle Eastern food I've come across here (it's a really good parking lot). Windows stretch across the whole length of the cafe, especially pretty on a night like this when the warm light of the pendant lamps contrast with the view of the snow falling outside.

The inside is dominated by a glass case full of stunning cakes - drizzled with chocolate, topped with fruit, covered in slivered almonds. They advertise themselves as sort of Asian/French

fusion, but it all seems pretty straight up French to me. I guess they've got a lot of loose leaf tea. That's kind of Asian.

It's a hard thing to narrow yourself down faced with case like that, but I managed to get myself all the way to an order of mocha layer cake. As it was handed to me across the counter with a giant mug of black coffee, the woman working here said to me - "it's butter cream, and it's a little chilled now - best to wait a minute before you eat it." Good sign. I love being told to wait before I eat something. Every time that happens a fairy gets her wings and Burger King cries.

I waited as long as I could (not very long) and dug in. Cake: moist and tender, with an exceptionally fine crumb. Frosting. OMG. Frosting was amazing - just a hint of mocha and as silky as any I remember. The slice was, thankfully, small. I'd have eaten more, but why? The joy at the end of a mountain of cake is blunted. The first few bites is the key, when you get transported a little by the balance of sugar and silk. And maybe a little lost in the depth of the fresh, almost grassy coffee.

I picked up a loyalty card when I stopped in. It's one point for every dollar you spend. When you hit 500 - free 6" cake. I have some confidence that there is a free cake in my future.

Veritable Quandary Issues Grubbus Wake Up Call

2011-02-25T22:24:00.021-06:00

It took some seriously amazing Eggs Benedict to wake Grubbus from a months-long slumber.

Veritable Quandary is a gorgeous little restaurant in an out of the way corner in downtown Portland. It's a strange sight, a cozy little restaurant there by the river and the highway, surrounded by parking garages and nondescript office buildings. Tracy and I walked the 10 blocks or so from our hotel, and the closer we got, the more certain I was that we'd taken a wrong turn.

Then - around that last turn - it appeared, a little black and gold house emblazoned with its clever mouthful of a name.

When we showed up for brunch on Saturday morning it was still 30 minutes before their unambitious 10AM opening time. But not long after we sat down at a little table out front to wait, a man - newspaper in hand - walked right in. We followed him, and were greeted by the warm sounds of a restaurant getting ready for the day. Rather than shoo us out, they offered us a cup of coffee (Stumptown, natch) and a seat at the bar. It was brilliant - Tracy and I, a gorgeous interior space filled with deep leather booths and a long polished wood bar, the flaming lips, a huge bay window out on the street.

A few minutes later, we were whisked off to a table in a sunroom off the main dining room, coffee refilled, and handed a short brunch menu. People were filtering in, and the Flaming Lips was replaced by a more "we're open now" Miles Davis. I ordered Eggs Benedict, Tracy got the french toast.

The first thing that hits you with these eggs is the color. Before VQ, the brightest yolks I'd seen were Jerimiah Cunningham's. These made those look pale and listless by comparison. Amazing, gorgeous, yellow-orange yolks. Then, you notice the tall cylinders of homemade english muffin. The smoked pork tenderloin. The frothy hollandaise. And the perfectly geometric, perfectly browned block of hashbrowns. It's a remarkable thing, this Benedict. Second best I've ever had, in fact. (East End Eatery in Gainesville, FL still holds the title for the best).

If I could have tweaked, it'd be little things - homemade english muffins are hard to do well, and are a bit heavy at this height. And while the eggs were truly stunning, the hollandaise could have been just a bit lighter. But I quibble. This was the best breakfast I've had in the last 6 months, easy. And Tracy's French toast was no less impressive - the bacon crispy and substantial, the bread etherial.

VQ was our last stop in Portland, a pause on our way out to the airport to catch the flight home. I can't think of a better way to remember a city that I fall in love with a little more every time I go.