Three Latest and Best: Tour of the North

Lunch at Bistro de Paris: Had a lovely lunch last week with fellow blogger, parent of Winecanine.com. We popped over to the new Bistro de Paris on Carmel's Main Street in the former Pizza King location. Once inside, the restaurant is a pleasant space -- if a bit noisy. We enjoyed a rich French onion soup with blue cheese and crepes. Mine was chicken and mushroom with a vevelty cream sauce all perched on a bed of shoestring sweet potatoes. Good enough to get me back for dinner.

Chicken Salad from Joe's Meat Market: I couldn't hit Carmel's Main Street without popping in to say "Hello!" to Joe Lazzara at Joe's Butcher Shop. This bustling meat market and gourmet shop is stocked with more goodies every time I stop in -- complete with a good selection of moderately priced wines. But meat here is still the star of the show here. (I even met some of the team from Morristown's Viking Lamb.) Look for his summer schedule of local chef cook-outs and his newly sourced closer-to-the-real-deal Kobe. (And of course, I've already devoured the chicken salad -- it's my favorite!)

Margaritas and Guac at Adobo Grill: Sure, their avocados come from points far south by the traincar-load, but where else can you get pretty damn good fresh gaucamole year round? After some not-so-great tableside guac at other places, I'm even more in awe of how the gauc makers at Adobo get it right pretty much all the time. Summer's coming although they've just posted new hours with no lunches except Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

Two-Minute Warning: Ladies and Gentleman, as an example of the gross mediocrity of the upscale chains populating the 86th Street corridor, I present to you El Torito Grill. Once, the elegant Keystone Grill, the interior now looks pretty much the same, only a little shabbier. Think Don Pablo's minus the fake town decor complete with waiters singing happy birthday songs and a birthday candle stuck in flan. While it's packing 'em in on the northside, like every other place at Keystone these days, there were a few strange things. It's nice that they have an extra person to open the door for customers when they come in. So, how can I say this delicately. Maybe it's not such a great idea to have your most dermatalogically-challenged teenager doing it. Not a great *face* to put on your establishment. Bar service seemed to have a blind spot on my side of the bar. I did order a drink, but could never catch the chips and salsa guy's eye although everyone else was immediately served. I did, however, get openly leered at by a server as he waited for his drink order, so there was that. Our tableside guac was way oversalted but our meals were generally fine although not like the cool presentations on their website. To his credit, our waiter was a trooper dealing with a large group, people switching seats, splitting the check in a complex number of ways. But *what* is the deal with the flour tortillas with *honey* butter? That's just plain weird.

Wine Dinners, Wild Deer, and Missing Guacamole

iMOCA Art/Wine Dinner: Bravo to Neal and his entire team for the terrific job last night on the art dinner at L'explorateur. The dishes were interesting, worthy of discussion, and most importantly delicious! My favorite? The chicken "a la King" with foie gras, green peas, and a lavender tuille inspired by Vincent Lamaroux's wavy wood floor at iMOCA two years ago. Neal sauteed the foie, then made the roux for the sauce with the foie gras fat. How can that not be good? The sweetness of the tuille and as another diner at our table noted, the peas, really made the dish a great combination of old style comfort food and new school flavors. There were also raves about the amuse (prosciutto with berry goat cheese and concord grape), the scallop (one perfect scallop, three sauces inspired by the LOVE sculpture), and the rich, braised short ribs with the chestnut panna cotta. But possibly the best of the night was the dessert based on Robert Boyd's recent visual work, Xanadu -- a pistachio custard topped with spicy bright pink cotton candy (I think Neal used ras al hanout), topped with a wonderfully light chocolate truffle "disco ball" coated in silver powder. The truffle wasn't too dense to enjoy in one bite with the cotton candy providing an almost crunchy texture. (You all know that combination of melty and airy that I mean.)

The wines were fantastic -- a step above many wine dinners and well paired. (Loved the opening Chandon Riche sparkler, the old vine carignane, and the sherry almost as old as me.) Best of all we ran into lots of iMOCA, L'explorateur, and Feed Me/Drink Me fans! (A big shout out to so many of you who said you read every day and many of you who I've seen at other dinners!) Thanks to all who attended. Maybe we'll do it again next year!

Fresh Venison, Anyone? I saw this news story over the weekend and almost posted it here in "news of the weird". Personally, I don't really care that kitchen workers in Greencastle Mexican restaurant butchered a deer in what seems like the most logical place, the kitchen where they work. What grosses me out is that the deer was roadkill!

A Lost California Avocado Crop: Last night, at our table, we were discussing the loss of the California avocado crop due to the wildfires in and around San Diego. Dallas Eats has more on that very topic this morning citing reports that due to unseasonal freezes in S. America and fires in S. California, avocados may be in short supply over the winter. Nearly 40% of the S. American crop is lost along with 30% or more of the crop in California.

Three Latest and Best

After the last month's whirlwind of eating, drinking, and people, I've been hibernating! Ahh, sweet, blessed silence with no obligations of events, cocktails, or dinner. I'm *almost* ready to jump back in the fray, but in the meantime, here are my three dishes or ingredients of the week (and one two-minute warning):

Guacamole: Whether it's the simple diced avocado salad from El Maguey or my own tomatillo loaded, limey goodness, I am in love with avocados this summer. A little salt, a little acid, add some onion, pepper, and even tomato and with a boat load of cilantro, you're in business. And just remember, it's all *good* fat.

Mashed Potatoes: Most people either grew up in a mashed potato family or didn't. I didn't. We were a white rice family (because my parents lived in the south for a long time) and then later, when my mother discovered the microwave or they'd grill steaks every night, we were a baked potato family. My only exposure to mashed potatoes were the terrible kind we got with school lunches -- no wonder I didn't like them! A friend in the same situation but married to a dedicated mashed potato eater gave me a hint: Use the *good* instant kind, doctor them up with bacon, butter, and sour cream and they'll usually never know the difference. After the excellent mashed potatoes I gorged on at Ruth's Chris last week (which were real, natch), now I'm craving them but who wants to spend the time making the real deal? I know, instant mashed potatoes are so declasse, but doctored up, they've satisfied my own little mashed potato craving. I can hardly wait until winter for mashed sweet potatoes (which sadly, I'll probably have to do by hand.)

Corn, Sweet, Corn: I've enjoyed the hell out of fresh corn this summer. I like corn on the cob but get sick of picking it out of my teeth all the time. So, my favorite technique has been to boil water, drop in the cob, quick cook it -- that is less than five minutes, until it turns bright yellow, then cut the corn off the cob and mix it with butter and a little sea salt. Mmmm. Sweet, crunchy goodness. Makes a helluva mess, but hey, I have to clean the kitchen some time, right?

Two Minute Warning: This isn't a full two-minute warning, but just a general note about Weber Grill. I was expecting something else, maybe another nice-ish steakhouse, but was surprised to find it's the Cheesecake Factory of downtown. If you try to go on, say, a Saturday night, expect to find a restaurant full of tourists wearing shorts and golf shirts, holding souvenir bags, and stacked like cord wood in the front entry way, waiting area, and even outside. You'll know them by the plastic buzzers they're holding while they wait endless hours for a table. (The wait was close to two hours the night we were there.) They take reservations, but 9:00 or later was the first they could take us the day we called. The bar is not really conducive to drinking or waiting (unless you can get a table and then you might as well eat), so don't expect to sit and cocktail while you're waiting your two hours for a cheeseburger. With so many fantastic steakhouses downtown ready to fill that craving for meat, we left the tourists to their wait lines, and opted for steak somewhere a little more upscale. And, we got a table right away.

Three Latest and Best

Yellow Curry at Jasmine Thai: "Which strip mall?" Only on 96th Street do you find yourself wondering which generic strip mall contains the restaurant you're eating in. This one happens to be in the same strip mall as Moon Dog Tavern. But having had some really awful experiences at other Thai restaurants in the past, I was pleasantly surprised when our curries where quite tasty. My green curry had green beans in it (strange) but tasted good. My friend's yellow curry, however, was sublime. It doesn't displace Sawasdee for me, but provides another northside option.

Pastries from Rene's Bakery: O, dearest chocolate bourbon pecan pie, how do I love thee? I love thee almost as much as I love the lemony blueberry bread pudding with its crusty sugar coated top. I love thee almost as much as the rich ganache-covered chocolate torte. OK, no way do I love you as much as that chocolate torte from Rene's in Broad Ripple, but still, I like you. Really, I like you a lot.

Food of the Week: Guacamole! When I stumbled across that Costco bag of perfectly ripe avocados last weekend, I didn't know what I was getting myself into. OK, I knew, but I went for it anyway. Four days and five batches of guacamole later, I'm ready for summer! How do I make it? Ripe avocados, tangy tomatillos, juicy tomato, chopped cilantro, and lots of lime and sea salt. Everything chunky and mixed just enough. With fresh, crunchy chips, nothing could be better!