Amuse bouche: Real BYOB in Texas?

There was a tremendous steak event up in Dallas this weekend -- more on that later. While there, someone mentioned what's been dubbed the "Dewhurst bill" in the Texas legislature. This would allow BYOB at all restaurants in the state. Current law makes BYOB an option only at restaurants with either no liquor license or a beer-and-wine-only license. Those with full licenses (beer, wine, and liquor) cannot legally allow BYOB. The merits (or lack thereof) of the current state of affairs will be the subject of a full post later this week. But this bill would be a major step forward for Texas restaurants. Why would anyone oppose it? People will eat out more. Is there any good reason supporting the oppostion? Nothing too legitimate comes to mind.

Review: Topolobampo

This is the best Mexican food in the country. That’s quite the statement to make for a purportedly Houston-centric blog. Mexican food in Chicago? But you probably have heard of Rick Bayless or seen his cooking show on PBS. His restaurants, the casual Frontera Grill and upscale Topolobampo, are benchmarks for authentic Mexican cuisine. That’s right. Cuisine. Not just food. This isn’t your E-Z Melt stuffed inside corn tortillas. That isn’t meant to come off as condescending as it sounds. To put it another way: this isn’t Tex-Mex.

Perhaps that’s a distinction that isn’t quite clear. Here in Texas, when we talk about “Mexican food,” it’s tacos, quesadillas, and fajitas. It’s Mama Ninfa and Joe T. Garcia. That’s Tex-Mex. And it’s awesome. One of the great things about living in Texas is that it’s so easy to be spoiled by the ready availability of marvelous Tex-Mex. There’s the queso flammeado at the Original Ninfa’s on Navigation or the fajitas at Lupe Tortilla or the margaritas at El Tiempo.

There is another type of Mexican food out there. In Houston, we are blessed with an excellent example of it, Hugo’s Restaurant. Along with Topolobampo and Frontera Grill, these three restaurants stand for a kind of authentic, creative, inspiring cuisine that honors traditional Mexican food. It goes beyond the stable, predictable, and delicious standard dishes we think of as “Mexican food.”

From Topolobampo

The most defining thing about Topolobampo, reinforced in no uncertain terms on a recent visit for dinner, is that regional Mexican cuisine is a bountiful source of creative and cutting edge cooking. The food at Topolobampo stands in line with the finest American cuisine. It is executed with the greatest skill, and the love of Rick Bayless, chef de cuisine Brian Enyart, and their kitchen brigade is evident in each dish. But the way Topolobampo achieves it results is unique in certain ways compared to its peers.

At many fine dining restaurants — the French Laundry, Daniel, Le Bernardin, Alinea, and its brethren — the buzz word seems to be “purity.” That is, the food is founded on the principle that the ingredients (often many in each dish) complement each other, allowing the components to stand out in their most pure, delicious form. This is indisputably a winning method and combination, one that has taken root at the core of American food. It is not a bad thing at all; honoring ingredients and letting them speak for themselves by expressing pure, true flavors is a noble task that produces stunning results.

At Topolobampo, however, the fundamental methodology is somewhat different. Instead of combining ingredients, often in novel ways, that allows the purity of each component to stand out, Topolobampo places greater emphasis on compound flavors. The interplay of the ingredients, combining to produce the unexpected, is the order of the day. This isn’t opposed to the method of the standard-bearers of contemporary American cuisine. It merely is a change in focus. The French Laundry, for example, doesn’t only allow individual flavors to stand out. There are creative, even counterintuitive, flavor combinations that cause an eater to marvel. But the primary emphasis is on purity of flavor.

From Topolobampo

Topolobampo offers three tasting menus, in addition to an a la carte menu, each of which stands out for the unique fusion of ingredients. The individual components are featured in their glory, but it is the interplay and strength in combination of the ingredients together that is the cornerstone of Rick Bayless’s food.

This dedication to lifting ingredients to greater highs when put together — the temptation to use the word “synergy” is embarrassing — was apparent from the first course in the Adventurer’s tasting menu available February 24 through March 21.

It began with a Ceviche Rosa de Kona Kampachi, easily the most creative and delightful ceviche I’ve ever encountered. The fish, of the finest quality of course, was marinated in lime and ancho chile. Slices of baby blood oranges gave a fuller, sweeter citrus flavor. Flanking the fish on either side was an almond-infused shaved ice, which simultaneously kept the fish cold and gave a subtle sweetness that played off the hint of spice in the ancho chile, and ancho-candied kumquats, which stood up to the spice and brought out the sweetness of the fish. This dish was a revelation and set the tone for the entire meal.

Next came Chilpachole de Jaiba, a chipotle-lobster broth soup with king crab and small masa dumplings, with epazote and charales. It was a wonder how the lobster flavor came through so singularly in the broth, bolstered by the smoky and sweet chipotle and underscored by a subtle spice that belatedly came from the back of your tongue and lightly coated the palate. The masa played into these flavors perfectly, of course, a strong yet adaptable flavor. The king crab refused to get lost in these strong flavors, bolstered and carried on the strength and purity of the lobster broth.

Third, a play on traditional Mexican pibil, which is made with pork. Tonight, the Pescada “Pibil” was a black cod roasted with achiote in banana leaves, with pureed white beans, a fruity guero chile jelly, and habanero-pickled red onion. Without a doubt, this is one of the finest fish dishes in the world. With a simple pan sauce, the black cod sings. With a bit of crispy skin and a texture and flavor so buttery and decadent, it was enhanced by the earthy achiote and acidic verve and spice of the pickled onions. This dish is a profound achievement; one not to be lost in memory; one to build a menu around.

From Topolobampo

The main protein consisted of two beef preparations: slow-cooked oxtail that was then seared, giving it a deeper, caramelized richness, and braised short ribs. It was accompanied by hominy, beauty heart radish, Napa cabbage, bone marrow, and lime — the presentation was similar to that of a coleslaw, with the ingredients placed together in a way that made it unavoidable to eat them together, the Napa cabbage the conduit for the flavors. But the accompaniments were sidelights; this dish embodies the term “beefy.” The beef itself, grass-fed, had terrific texture and flavor. But the sauce, a simple jus, was pure intensity, showing all the nuance of the best beef. It was a purist’s moment in a meal of combinations, a solo by an ideal ingredient in a meal of duos and choruses.

The beef was a hard act to follow, but pastry chef Melissa Novak wasn’t about to be left out of this party. A trio of ice cream sandwiches: (1) Negro Modelo chocolate ice cream with cacao nibs; (2) buttermilk-tangerine ice cream with brown-butter pecan crunch; and (3) pistachio ice cream with pistachio-chocolate brittle. The portion was large. Each ice cream came sandwiched between triangles of chocolate cake. Normally, eating a dessert like this, I’m inclined to sample each in turn. With this, I dug into the buttermilk-tangerine and was hooked. It was impossible to stop eating it. The succulent sweetness of the tangerine got a slightly sharp note from the buttermilk, with the chocolate supporting nicely without overshadowing the more delicate flavors. The Negro Modelo was tasty, deep and rich, almost a chocolate overload. But then in swooped the pistachio, a handful of bites capping an extraordinary meal on an extraordinary high point. The gorgeous nut flavor enhanced the creamy texture of the ice cream, complemented by the slight bitterness of the chocolate. It was an inspired combination.

From Topolobampo

There is no doubt that Topolobampo, routinely mentioned among the handful of best restaurants in Chicago, surely deserves those accolades. But it is clear that the kitchen if operating at the height of its powers. Any serious nationwide discussion of best restaurants should include it.

Amuse bouche: The best beginner's wine?

It's appalling to watch people who aren't into wine order things like young Cabernet Sauvignon. There are few things that are going to turn someone off of the most heavenly of beverages more than a confusing, tannic wine like that. People sometimes ask what the best thing to give a wine novice to drink is. That's easy. Start with Sauvignon Blanc or Riesling. The fruity and acidic profile appeals to anyone. They taste good and are generally easy to understand. American tastes have trended so intensely in favor of tannic reds being drunk far too young that even wines like Sauvignon Blanc have gotten an unfair label of being "sweet." Disagree?

Amuse bouche: Why must they foodgasm?

Food Network isn't what it used to be. No more Ming Tsai. No more Anthony Bourdain. Barely any Tyler Florence. Tons of Guy Fieri, the man who believes every dish must have sausage and cheese mixed in it and probably can't even spell "subtle." The most troubling trend, however, is that all the hosts, when they taste their food, go into hysterics at their own cooking efforts. They have a foodgasm. Giada is a horrendous offender, as is Paula Deen. No one is immune. There is no humility in tasting anymore, only shameless self-aggrandizement. Give me Jacques Pepin or Julia Child -- chefs who frequently went on camera and admitted their food needs a dash of this or pinch of that. Even the best don't always get it perfect the first time; why pretend?

Review: Little Bigs

You can hardly walk inside a restaurant without being accosted by a plate of sliders these days. It’s hard to understand where this started, but it’s not the most horrific trend to come about in food. What could be bad about adding more ground beef to the table?

What could indicate that sliders have arrived on the big, trendy stage better than Bryan Caswell, chef at the much-acclaimed REEF, has given Houston its very own slider-only restaurant named Little Bigs. Bryan Caswell is an excellent chef. REEF is a terrific place: their menu is fresh with solid creativity, and the wine program is one of the top three in the city in large part because of its eminently reasonable pricing.

The concept of Little Bigs is quality. Take REEF’s signature dish — reserving for a later time the discussion of beef being the most famous thing on the menu at what allegedly is the best seafood house in the country — put in fresh fries, milk shakes, a nice wine list, and an attractive patio, and there you have it. Late-night eats for the trendy.

There is one problem. The beef slider isn’t all that good. The bun is terrific, baked on-site, and adds value to the sandwich instead of just serving as a bland meat-holder. The caramelized onions are done well, and the Sriracha remoulade is a nice twist. That’s all well and good, but such things are sidelights.


The problem is the patty itself. While it’s great that they grind their meat fresh daily and never freeze it, a half dozen encounters with Caswell’s sliders over the past several months confirm that the patty need improvement. The meat routinely is overworked, making it rubbery, chewy, and tough. The texture ends up making the burgers seem too greasy. And the sliders also never have the proper seasoning; they are either oversalted or undersalted. That is a mortal sin for any dish.

On a higher note, the chicken slider is pretty good. They do a nice job making a crispy, juicy hunk of chicken breast on that tasty bun. The fries are terrific, some of the best in the city. They are properly double-fried giving a nice crunch and pure potato flavor.

The atmosphere is also good. It reminds me a touch of the phenomenal Taylor’s Automatic Refresher in the Napa Valley, although the burger quality at Little Big’s isn’t in the same league. The outdoor area is laid back. The wine list is smart and reasonably priced. It’s open late and better than Taco Cabana or Jack in the Box. And, most importantly, the sins of that slider patty are easily correctable. The only fear is that because of Caswell’s success and the acclaim the sliders have gotten, he won’t bother to make them better than they need to be.

Amuse bouche: Houston's food strength

Every week, this feature will give you a quick bite to chew on. To kick it off, what is Houston’s biggest food strength? It’s hard to make the case for barbecue, since it seems like Lockhart, Texas, wins there. Mexican food? That’s more of a statewide thing. For my money, Houston excels above all else at the mid-level restaurant. These are places with entrees that run $18 to $30, give or take a few bucks. It can’t compete at the high end. But in the middle range? This is a fantastic city.

First look: Anvil Bar & Refuge

This bar just opened up at 1424 Westheimer in Houston, and the early look has it shaping up as a solid joint. And how can you not dig the name? Anvil Bar & Refuge. To relax, it behooves folks to look for a spirited refuge. Anvil is a welcome addition to the Houston bar scene -- a scene that, incidentally, is so much more attractive since the advent of the smoking ban a couple years ago. Who wants to go to happy hour after work, only to get your suit infused with Marlboro stink?

Anyway, aside from the extreme decibel level (will someone, somewhere please invest in acoustic panels?), Anvil is a terrific, relaxing bar. A lot of reclaimed materials have gone into the bar, its decor, and the furniture. But it's a comfortable, dark, leather-sofa kind of atmosphere with plenty of candlelight. Perhaps a bit noisy for a romantic after-dinner stop, but certainly a good place to unwind with coworkers or friends anytime.

The wine list is small but intelligently selected, without ridiculous markups. For example, the excellent 2007 W.H. Smith Pinot Noir Sonoma Coast is $48. You can pick up the same bottle at Spec's for a hair under $30. The beer list is a strength. Everything is from bottle, and the selection is superb -- from a handful of the usual big brew suspects to a big selection of microbrews and genuine ales. There is even a barleywine/strong ale section on the menu.

Anvil's purported speciality, however, is cocktails. They are going for a throwback cocktail style, with current selections listed on on a chalkboard. Each of them is interesting and true to its ingredients. Some of them are intense without being overbearing. Particularly good are the Mexican Fizz, Bee's Knees, and First Growth (beware of the potent St. Germain liqueur here). They are made smartly and priced at $8 each. Not too outrageous, although per ounce of alcohol, you probably do better with wine.

The crowd was mostly professional, with a lot of sportcoats in attendance. That's kind of expected since the buzz for this place seems to have been generated mostly on Twitter. In any case, Anvil is here. It's worth a look.

An appetizer to start the blogging meal

I dig sliders. The first time I had them was at the Cheesecake Factory during college in Baltimore. How utterly American to enable its people to have a miniature hamburger before shoveling down their bacon double cheeseburgers. This is something I can support. An important part of this blog, too, is to not just be critical. It’s to emphasize the cooperative nature of food. You can’t just be a food critic. You have to love food. It’s a participatory exercise. So here is a slider recipe, in the spirit of creating something, as well as critiquing it.

The key to a good slider is bun-to-meat ratio. Too much bread masks and dulls the beef flavor. Too little bread turns into a greasy mess. A bun on a slider, or any burger for that matter, needs to add to the overall combination; in the alternative, it needs to at least not detract. It’s kind of hard to screw up a slider, come to think of it. Cheesecake Factory always had good ones. Crystal Burger is the king of the fast food slider. White Castle belongs only in a movie with Harold and Kumar.

When doing burgers of any sort, start with whole steak, preferably New York strip. This is extravagant, but when you can pick up the entire top loin at Costco for $4.35 a pound give or take a couple bucks, it is totally worth it. Grind a couple pounds of that up with four ounces of pancetta. This gives enough extra fat content to satisfy people who complain that you can’t just grind up steak because it’s too lean. Make it into three-ounce patties, careful not to overwork the meat. Pan fry them (iron skillet, please) for two minutes on one side, then one minute on the other. Top with cheese after they’re flipped.

But what about that all-important bun? Something too yeasty can be a touch overbearing; it’s like a champagne that has yeasty overtones that stomp all over the fruit. No, you need something else. Something with substance to it but that doesn’t intrude. My solution? Turn to a master. In this case, Joel Robuchon.


If you haven’t seen it or heard about it, Robuchon has an amazing new cookbook out, The Complete Robuchon. The general idea behind this book is to provide a method of French home cooking that is doable, more or less, for us servant-less American cooks. This book is executed with passion, skill, and precision. By reading the clear recipes, you can see it is done by someone with a true love of and respect for food.

As it happens, Robuchon produces a recipe that makes the ideal bread complement for sliders. It is his insanely simple recipe for brioche. The butter and egg of the brioche provide a richness and body that enhances but doesn’t intrude too much upon the slider patty, allowing the meat flavor to sing. To cut the heavier elements slightly, add some caramelized onions, which give an earthy flavor, and a ketchup made out tomatoes slow-roasted in the oven for four hours at 250 degrees and refreshed with a little champagne vinegar, which adds acidity.

That’s a lot of words. This wasn’t meant to be a full-bore recipe or detailed overview of these sliders. It’s supposed to be an appetizer. Let’s let a couple pictures do the talking and then get to the meal that is this blog started.

Do we really need another food blog?

That question is the most appropriate place to start. The Internet has become a haven for, among myriad other things, food blogs. Some of these are the products of amateurs with dreams of becoming the next Julie Powell, skyrocketing to fame and a cushy life writing and wearing pajamas. Others perhaps want to be the next Ruth Reichl or Jeffrey Steingarten or Molly O’Neill or Anthony Bourdain or Frank Bruni. Well, maybe not Frank Bruni.

In any case, there has been a proliferation of online food discussions, rants, and information. Why not get in while the getting is good? No, just adding another voice to an expanding chorus isn’t reason enough. The quality of food writing on the Internet is increasingly good. Every new entry must have — and should have — something worthy to offer.

My desire to start this blog stems from two central complaints about a lot of today’s food writing, on the Internet and beyond. First, and this is a grievance surely shared by many, is that food writers tend to not be much on the writing part of their jobs. No, that puts too fine a point on it. Auberon Waugh would not approve. Far too frequently, food writers are like hobby writers who thought being an English or creative writing major in college was a good idea but never had the dedication to craft that it took to truly succeed. As a result, food writers, along with other critics, have garnered the (sometimes deserving) stereotype that they are talentless, arrogant hacks more interested in being an adversary, judging what they themselves cannot do. Naturally, as with all stereotypes, this classification of critics is both overbroad and frequently unfair. Nevertheless, the complaints against food critics aren’t entirely without substance, as a few examples illustrate:

“Chef John DeLucie is doing some of the best tuna tartare in town (all that creamy avocado and zingy heat!), plus a hefty and juicy pork chop, a classically blissful Dover sole, an addictive clam chowder, a gorgeous fillet of wild salmon (with those adorable little beluga lentils) and . . . feloniously fatty short ribs . . . .”

Or, “There’s another tension at work, too: the contrast between the crisp, highly structured grid, singed by the waffle iron, and the tender, steamy, nursery-time interior.”

Now, who wrote these particular passages is irrelevant. That isn’t the point; the point is that food critics habitually overwrite their prose. They are bakers of prose frosted in adjectives — those adorable little adjectives. It can reach the point where the writing overshadows the content, where observation is subordinated to language without due attention paid to the meaning words convey. Take “feloniously fatty short ribs.” I would think “felonious” amounts of fat in short ribs would mean that they aren’t good, rather than indicate admiration. And descriptions like “nursery-time interior” make me want to enjoy some nursery time so I can fall asleep rather than figure out what the words try to convey.

You likely have noticed that this complaint is rooted in writing. I don’t mind that restaurant critics often are adversarial or judgmental. That comes with the territory. Something would be wrong if critics hesitated when confronting their subjects. But overwritten restaurant reviews thrust the language (and its writer) to the forefront of the piece. (I realize that, writing in the first-person here and thrusting myself into the forefront of this post makes me look hypocritical. So be it; I’ll use as my defense that this is an introductory post meant to clarify this blog’s goals.) This confuses what food writing is truly about. The food. The service. The atmosphere. The wine. It’s not about ego — although sometimes there is something undeniably delicious about seeing an egomaniacal chef being cut down to size. In the end, however, that appeals to base emotions. It subordinates the important core, the food and wine. The writer and his writing has to be cloaked to the extent possible.

As for the second complaint, it involves the virtually invisible role of wine in food discussions. Too much food writing is just that — purely about the food. Perhaps you might take this opportunity to point out that, like a nincompoop, I am writing about food here. Where does the wine come into play? To me, food and wine is inseparable. To divorce them — or shortchange one at the expense of the other — is the equivalent of requesting Spam substituted in the meat course at the French Laundry. You shouldn’t think of it, and even if you do, decency forbids you from acting on the thought.

Much of the food writing I read makes no mention at all of wine or, if it does, the discussion is cursory and amateurish at best. It’s hard to even know what to say about that. Wine is food. If you’re having a serious meal, in a restaurant or at home, you’ve got to have wine with it. (Medical conditions and religious objections excepted, of course.) Yet there is a strange dichotomy in gastronomic writing that separates the two. You have food critics (Frank Bruni and his ilk) and wine critics (Robert Parker and his disciples). It is rare to find someone who unifies passion for both in a single medium, yet I can’t think of a single gourmand who willingly gives up pairing wine with food.

In any case, the goal of this blog is two-fold, as you might have guessed given the complaints explicated above. First, I want to take back the realm of food writing from the traditional critic. I want this site to be about the food (including wine), with minimal intrusions of self-serving and heavy-handed wording. This will not be a site that’s the product of a creative writing masters program Second, I want the posts to honor the interaction of wine and food. As James Beard said, “Food is our common ground, a universal experience.” Above all, this blog intends to be a celebration of food and wine. No frills. No snobbery. And certainly fewer adjectives.