En retard Jour de Valentines

When one travels to a different city, or country even, there are expectations, like the kind of cuisine, the types of people, the landmarks, and so on. There is inevitability that there will be things that no one can expect, my favorite includes smells. The smell or combination of smells of a place is not only related to what's going on in the city (construction, landscaping) but also to the food that is cooking on the street corners, in bakeries or chocolate shops, BBQ and chicken shacks.

France to me has one of the greatest smells, of course, depending on where you are you get different facets. You get stinky cheese, and sweet grapes, the smell of fresh bread (which is not easy to make - entry to follow regarding), olives, meat roasting, fish being sold. These are things I miss when I walk around Chicago - unless, however, you find yourself walking downtown on a day when the wind has strewn about the smell of baking chocolate confections from near by candy and cookie emporiums.

The husband told me the other day, said he, "We live in the Paris of the US."

I had to think about it for a second. I mean, yes, I live within a large pool of minorities, just like where I would be able to afford to live in Paris. There are frequent street vendors. The mid-eastern cuisine in this town is amazing, just like the gaye-olde. And the Trump town is just like dear Eiffel... well maybe not quite.

On valentine's day the husband and I went to one of our favorite French spots in town. Bistro Campagne to me is so French it hurts. Not only does it smell great both inside and outside, but I ache to be back in la belle F. after sitting in this place for 10 minutes. My favorite time to go is in the winter - when the seasonal menu includes Cassoulet, a spanker to make (3 Days), but well worth the effort I'm sure. I'd rather just get it from these chefs, it's so much easier and you get a whole duck confit leg on top too! What's not to love?

We started out with a great bottle of vin rouge, their Chinon 2005, yummy. Then we ordered something I now know cannot live without.

Roasted bone marrow.

This stuff is like beef butter, scooped out of the bones, spread on toast with a little sea salt shavings. So good, so rich. I know some of you might be like, "dear baby jesus, no, she can't be serious." This dish is other-worldly. I love now that where Anthony Bourdain talks about it I can say to myself "Preach it, Tony. Amen."

Then I did something unorthodox (because the marrow wasn't enough). I ordered the chicken.

A good friend of our always gets the chicken here. He's a chef and foodie, and makes a great one himself. But he says B.C. has the best in the city. I am inclined to agree. The husband, who in the past has only ordered the chicken here, requests my beloved Cassoulet and though I was ethereally happy with my chicken...I was jealous. Beaucoup.

We ended the night ordering dessert, I a lush 4 tablespoons of Chocolate sabayon and cookies. Mmmm! tiny desserts!

Then something a bit odd happened...

The table next to us became full of that certain kind of person that goes out on Vday, you know that one I mean. The people that come to a fancy restaurant and order a house salad...only. Two couples, nice enough people, I'm sure, but would have been much happier at a bar. (there is nothing wrong with a good bar, I love bar food)

One of the guys told our waiter "I don't eat anything with butter or cream. Oh, and I don't eat bacon."

Hold Up.

You're in a froofy frog shop and you don't eat butter, cream or... bacon?

I might have asked them to leave, or at least questioned their aims of the evening....and I think any Frenchy would have too. I am happy they tried a new place to dine, the experience is everything. But they will need to develop that butter-fetish before making the leap across the pond.

Vegetarians are odd ducks, they baffle me. Someone somewhere gave this definition : VEGETARIAN. ANCIENT TRIBAL SLANG FOR THE VILLAGE IDIOT WHO CAN'T HUNT, FISH, OR RIDE

It seems to me that the gods gave us brains, and those brains said "here's how you make a tool to stab things," and so we did. Granted, it eventually led to war and such, but that's beside the point.

The point is meat is good! And we should eat it. At least I think so.

The art of vegetarian cooking is an unknown to me. I world of mystery and adventure, because let's face it, if you don't have succulent meat juices to liven thing up it's going to be an adventure getting people to eat it and enjoy. And yet I am becoming antsy with my meaty ingredients and wish to broaden my horizons.

Yesterday, a foodie companion graciously treated me to lunch at a Mediterranean joint, Sultan's Market. Now, I know you think I might have slipped on a piece of bacon and hit my head; but one of the things I love most in the culinary world is falafel. It's great! and it's usually completely veg solid. I love this stuff, and can't get enough. And at this place they put this great cucumber salad on the falafel sandwich. Yum... Another (and I think, frankly, better) place to get falafel in the city is taste of Lebanon. Oh man I crave that place on at least a bi-weekly basis.

Then we get home last night and what is waiting for us, but a divine box from my mother (Thanks Mom!) And in it among other lovely treats is a cookbook. A really amazing cookbook, Moosewood Restaurant, new classics. I mean, I've eaten I eaten things made from this book and they are all pretty fantastic. And it's based on the concept of cooking for those with food allergies and sensitivities. So only a few of the recipes have non-vegetarian inclusions, usually fish based. If memory serves, their tapenad is very tasty. I think I will make it soon.

So will I become vegetarian friendly? I hope so. All this animosity I have for their lack of bacon eating needs to end. As someone once asked me, "Where's the love?"

Only time will tell, and then I'll let you know.

 

Porky Publican

The Publican. Chicago.

One of the places the husband and I have been itching to visit. We had been given several chances to go in the past and when they fell through we sadly cried ourselves through dinner in front of our plates at home.

Not this time. This time we went. Post Schubert concertings, it was the obvious choice to go. We were on a budget but the choice of eatery tipped us into it. None of us had been and all of us had it on our lists. And this is what happened.

We waited in the bar for our table of 6 - though it might have well been 8 or 12. This joint has communal long table seating that extends around the room in front of their pen-like booths (complete with swinging doors). Ordering our beers, we chose frites with garlic a., a sliced ham sampling, and house made pork rinds. You heard right. And they were, as one diner put it, "lovely fat popcorns," sprinkled with cayenne or some other spicy red spice combo.

Here's where we should have seen the soon to come challenge. Pork rinds, ham, fatty fried frites. Getting the picture??

Once seated at the table, we get a heads up that one in our dining party, let's call him OC, had a connection with members of the restaurant's team and we might get a few perks. Briefly after fanny met chair, what arrived at our table? Why, more pork rinds and frites. A lot more. So we're already porked up and we get more. Awesome, we think, this is going to be awesome.

Note: this is the kind of place you share everything, so we ordered for the table and shared like good little first graders.

OC ordered wisely some apps.: Grilled octopus, beet salad and yellow fin tuna. These were great. The tuna was a little tough for my tastes, especially for how thin it was cut, but it had good flavor with diced kohlrabi on top - though I thought something like a granny smith apple would have been a more interesting flavor with the same texture element.

Grilled octopus was pretty standard, everyone seems to be doing the same thing with some kind of white bean variant, pretty standard. Yet really, really great. I wonder if there's any other way to have octopus other than grilled that would be just as interesting...

The beet salad. Okay. This was amazing. The chef used golden beets, grapefruit, avocado, red onion, red watercress, and something else I cant remember because the beets were too good, and they have blocked out my memory. Those of you who were there, please remember and tell me. Soon. So I can recreate it at home.

OC expertly ordered a couple of bottles of wine to follow our beers (I had drunk a Matilda, as it is so tasty). Then things got crazy.

Pork. Hmmm. This place has giant pictures on the wall of the fattest pigs you've ever seen. Looking at the menu you see a lot of non-vegetarian choices. In fact, there are no. vegetarian. choices. I think even the beet salad uses pork fat in the dressing.

We ordered the lamb curry, pork belly, sardines (actually an app), and the country ribs for the table.

This was THE fattiest meal I've had eaten.

The pork belly was really well cooked, except the crust was a bit to sweet for me. It was kind of like candied bacon. Still very tender, and had a really nice accomp of roasted cauliflower. The sardines were very good, looked like they were roasted whole...mmmmm. The ribs were HUGE. and very good, though with a thematically large amount of fat present with the meat.

The lamb curry was also made with belly. Lamb belly. And only lamb belly. These lambs were the fattiest little buggers ever created by the maker. At one point, with still three pieces of lamb in the bowl, no actual lamb meat was present. It was all fat. I mean, this was delicious fat, if you could get past the point of it being fat and actually put it in your mouth. And the curry was fine, I guess. Not really a curry, kind of a curry-like infused broth. It did have Jerusalem artichokes in it, which were great and totally complimented the lamb-fattiness.

Now, we had all been waiting to come to this place since its inception. And what did we think? Well. It was good. It was alright. Okay, as one of our fellow diners Lance Manyon said, "It's...it's not worth it." I think Lance was referring to the fact that not only was he gypped on his portion of the octopus being served last, but also that after only a few bites of the lamb, there was no actual lamb meat on the plate. I have to concur on the lamb bit. Though my piece of octopus was great.

So, what did we have for finishings? What else, a waffle. And what was on top? A big, luscious scoop of butter.

Are your arteries hard yet?