Chronicles Of Consumption

Fatboy's going to London

Evening all

Fatboy is, as the title suggests, going to London. I will have the extremely dubious pleasure of meeting with Nahthern for the first time since January. We will, however, have the far-less dubious pleasure of dining at The Ledbury in Notting Hill - a restaurant that recently received its second star, and scene of a legendary lunch last summer involving Fatboy, Nahthern and Kat that lasted basically through the evening service. And believe me, they really did look after us... I have high hopes for this reunion meal!

As I write this, I am supping politely on a glass or 3 of 2001 Chapoutier Hermitage Blanc Chante Alouette. This is a charming tipple, beautifully balanced and a delectable mouthful. Quite full-bodied - as most 100% Marsanne wines tend to be - it offers more on the palate than it does on the nose, which is quite restrained, betraying its youth. I was a little concerned that it was in a bit of a closed-down dead zone when I opened it, but it's developing nicely now after being open for a couple of hours. The nose is still quiet, but the mid-palate flavours of dried stone fruits, marzipan, toasted nuts and a touch of honey are really starting to shine through, and the oxidative style that characterises these Rhone whites is truly joyous! There is quite an intensity to this, a restrained kind of power, that sneaks up on you over a period of time, the kind of wine that takes you a sip or two to really appreciate, and makes you want more just as you get towards the end of the bottle. Actually I do have another bottle, so no worries there... Just as an afterthought, this wine has been consumed with Indian food, and was a very decent accompaniment, certainly not overpowered by the strong flavours of the food, testament to the depth and power of this particular libation. Splendid.

 

 

 

Giuseppe Quintarelli - Bianco Secco, Ca' del Merlo 2007 @ The Gage, Chicago

One of a relatively small number of gastropubs in Chicago, The Gage seems always to be extremely busy whenever I am there - and for good reason too. The food is good, and well-priced, and there is a pretty extensive list of libations available for one's purveyance, and in fact the wine list has quite a few gems on it (such as Dagueneau's 2006 Pouilly Fume Silex for $90 - unfortunately sold out) , sourced by their extremely knowledgeable, helpful and friendly wine director, Shebnem Ince. I was most impressed by the way she took the time to discuss our options, taking into consideration external factors such as the biodynamic calendar (it was a flower day), and also that the barometric pressure was low, and recommending wines that she thought would be the most expressive - and recommend a splendid wine she did. She steered me away from a Sancerre from Pascal Cotat (too young) and a white Chateauneuf Du Pape (too tight), and recommended a white, a Soave, from one of Italy's most revered producers, Giuseppe Quintarelli, his Bianco Secco, Ca' del Merlo 2007.

This is a blend of 5 grapes - Garganega, Trebbiano Toscano, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc and Saorin, which apparently is a Tokay clone. It has a pale straw colour (I think, it was pretty dark, and helpfully I am a little colourblind) and a lovely, but slightly muted nose of honey and white flowers, with  wet rock minerality, plus some citrus aromas too - lime and lemon zest. The palate is much weightier than I had anticipated, with more intense fruit than on the nose, plenty of citrus again, with some ripe red apple and a touch of apricot, also the honey is there and the strong mineral backbone too. There are medium levels of acidity, certainly enough to balance the weight, and it has a very clean and lengthy finish. It is quite dense with a very creamy texture, and good flavour intensity and richness to complement the weight. Overall an excellent choice, and it went very well with our crab starters and scallop and sea bream mains.

There is more to follow...

Bonsoiree - Review

So what to say about Bonsoiree? It's a small restaurant, 26 seats, near the Logan Square area of Chicago, that has to be just about the finest of Chicago's many BYOB options. I can't think of anywhere else in the city that more deserving of you digging deep into your cellar to pick out some pretty special wines than here. It has a very intimate atmosphere - a great place for a date, or a romantic evening with one's parents as we had - and being so small you are reassured that each and every dish has the chef's full attention, and it shows with the dishes that they put out. There is a choice of a 4, 7 or 13 course menu, we had the 7, and we were fully sated by the end. They do also bring you a good -sized amuse-bouche - a hazelnut encrusted with ruby-red trout in a lemon beurre blanc sauce - and there is the opportunity to purchase an additional course, what seems to be the signature dish called duck, duck, goose (duck 2 ways, confit and pan-fried breast, plus seared goose foie gras and fig preserve). Obviously we went for this option, and it was splendid, all cooked to perfection.

The chef(s) exhibit a very high level of technical expertise, from the four of us there was not a single complaint that anything was cooked any way other that perfectly. All of the meat (apple wood-smoked pork cheek bacon, grass-fed spring lamb roast, plus the duck) was beautifully tender, and the fish (Japanese sea bass, Suzuki on the menu) was perfectly moist. The standout dish for all of us, though, was without doubt the scallop and Maryland  crab in a torched ponzu aioli with a little salsify, served in a scallop shell. The sushi-grade scallops were delicious, the and the crab added texture to the rich, creamy sauce. This dish may be a permanent fixture on the menu, I'm pretty sure we had it when we went there last year. The other favourite dish was the pork cheek bacon box with quail egg, anise marshmallow, apple wood smoke and Vermont maple. Presented in a box, they remove the lid and waft some of the apple wood smoke towards you, and the combined mouthful of the maple pork, egg and marshmallow truly is something to savour, with the sweetness of the marshmallow being the perfect complement to the rusticity of the pork, and the egg adding a little richness. Yummy!

Being a BYOB we took along several bottles. We started with champagne, a favourite that I discovered recently, NV Varnier-Fanniere Grand Cru Brut Rose, which tasted much better this time around with all its fine characteristics fully evident. We followed this with an Austrian Riesling, a 2001 FX Pichler Riesling Loibner Steinertal, which was probably the wine of the evening for me. It had a very intensely floral nose, with plenty of apples and stone fruit, a touch of kerosene and gobs of stony minerality - you really can smell the terroir on this one - all of which was reflected on the palate beautifully, which, combined with its full-bodied mouthfeel, fine acidity, a little residual sugar (it stated 'trocken' on the label, but it was definitely off-dry) and very long finish, provided a superlative wine-drinking experience - absolutely outstanding. After that we had an old favourite, the 2004 Tardieu-Laurent Gigondas Vieilles Vignes to go with the meat and cheese courses.

My only regret (apart from not having another bottle of the Riesling) was not bringing a half bottle of dessert wine to go with dessert, a schoolboy error, but it didn't detract from what was an absolutely splendid meal with beautiful wines, and a most entertaining evening - in fact it's pretty much my perfect evening, fine food and wine shared with some of the people I care about the most.

Bonsoiree - A Soupcon...

And lo, verily we sallied forth, taking with us the parents of Fatboy, and they did voyage with us unto that most holy of places beknownst to us only as Bonsoiree; and hence it was proclaimed by us to have effectuated that most sacred of results: an orotund and emphatic triumph. And we proclaimed it thus.

I will author a critique presently...

Sorry for the bollocks, we really enjoyed it!

Bonsoiree, And The Arrival Of My Folks

Tomorrow sees the arrival of my parents from England (not sure if I should call them Fatmum and Fatdad, I don't think they would be too thrilled...) and to celebrate we will be going to one of the best BYOBs that Chicago has to offer, Bonsoiree, which is out towards Logan Square on Armitage. We went there once before and it was splendid, so we are very excited. I will report back forthwith...

British chefs are the best - follow up

Just a quick follow up  on your post 'The British are better chefs' I would like to illustrate my comment on this with a quick review of a 'classic British sunday roast' I had recently at a pub in a fashionable-ish area of London - The Defectors Weld in Sheperds Bush - packed most nights its a blend of traditional looking wood flooring comfy booths and open fire thats undergone a successful refit with modern furnishings - a decent pint and good tunes can be found along with a 'traditional' pub menu boasting organic this, handmade that and locally sourced environmentally friendly yadda yadda. Just because its written doesn't make it so - 3 choices of sunday roast were available - one beef one pork and one vege option - we opted for the delicious sounding pork belly, only to be told they had run out, so to the beef option. What arrived was an abomination. While the roast potatoes and carrots were acceptable enough, the addition of curly cale sounded cool but was uninspiring, the cubes of swede were uniformally undercooked and the meagre offering of gravy was thin and insipid. The meat however was spectacularly bad, apart from the fact what we received were actually steaks and not cut from a roast at all - it was grey, grisly, tasteless and tough, bad cuts of meat cooked badly. At least they were consistent in that all 3 plates for the group were identical. Awful!

Now I would normally reserve such vitriol for bad food served in a venue with loftier pretensions, (at least in bothering to write about it) but the point here is that that this is standard fare served in a popular venue in trendy central London, and the place is packed with 20-30 somethings with clean plates. Contrast this to my meal at the kitsch little eatery of Restaurant Pirate in Champagnole which is loosely comparable, simple food of beef chips and mushroom sauce in a cheap setting but cooked really well and we see an essential difference between mainstream food in the 2 countries. If that rubbish was served in France they would be throwing it around the room - here? no complaints. Though its funny to see anything that winds the French up concerning their superiority in the food world, I think we've still got a long way to go before we can get too smug

The Counter: Custom Built Burgers - Review

This weekends major consumption occurred last night at a burger joint in Lakeview (just down from the Half Shell), which, as the title of the post suggests, is a place where you can custom build your own called The Counter. It seems to be a good place to go if you have a hangover, as there were plenty of very sketchy-looking people there in their tracksuits (sweatpants to the yanks), with their faces buried in giant burgers, who seemed to have just rolled out of bed following another tough night out in Wrigleyville (possibly my least favourite are of the north side of Chicago). Anyway, ignoring them, we ordered ourselves a couple of burgers with various trimmings. Now you get to choose the size of the burger that you want, either a 1/3lb, 2/3lb or 1lb. Being Fatboy I ordered a 2/3lb, and Mrs Fatboy, because she is a dainty little thing, ordered a 1/3lb, and now having seen the size of the 2/3 lb one, I can't even imagine what a 1lb burger looks like, especially with all the trimmings - that has to be a sure-fire way to morbid obesity. Anyway, they were splendid burgers indeed, moist, cooked just right, and incredibly filling. I think I went for Swiss cheese, mushrooms, grilled onions, spicy pepperoncinis and roasted jalapenos, with horseradish mayo and a little ketchup (Fatboy...), and I can imagine that it must be awesome if you have a filthy hangover. To sum up: excellent burgers with lots of options.

Amazing Gruner Veltliner - Hiedler, 'Maximum', 2007; And The Sunshine Cafe, Andersonville

This is about as good a Gruner Veltliner as I have tasted in a long while, and seeing as though it is supposed to be a 'fashionable' wine at the moment, I thought I'd mention it.  Here's a quick tasting note:

This is a splendidly rich and pretty full bodied wine; it is medium gold in colour and has strong floral aromatics with plenty of melon, peach and apricot, a hint of pepper and a wet rock minerality, giving the impression of a lush, full wine - in fact you can almost smell the body and texture! This is confirmed on the palate with very intense flavours, a creamy texture and very well-balanced acidity, with a long finish. This is about as big a GV as I have tasted. It will also probably keep for 10 years or more with structure and flavour intensity like that. Outstanding. I want more like this - luckily I have several more bottles, which I'll keep for a while I think, I want to see how they evolve.

We took this to a small, no-frills, family-run Japanese place called the Sunshine Cafe in Andersonville. We've walked past it a number of times in the few months that we've lived around here and it's almost always packed full of Japanese folk - clearly a very good sign. After some slightly indifferent starters, we had a couple of excellent mains: cold udon noodles with spring onions and seaweed, with a savoury soy and dashi-based dipping sauce, and katsudon pork over rice - breaded pork tenderloin, fried and served with spring onions and egg and a sweet but savoury sauce (dashi, sugar, soy sauce, mirin) over rice. And the grand total for our meal? $31 for both of us. It's pretty much the ideal neighbourhood restaurant, and it makes a pleasant and refreshing change from all the sushi-orientated Japanese restaurants around here - I'll just have different starters next time. More please!

The Half Shell, Chicago - Review

Ah, the Half Shell, I love this place - one of first places I ever went to in Chicago on my first visit. It's a dark, dingy hole-in-the-wall joint that serves the best king crab legs ever. They give you 6-7 huge limbs/claws, steamed to perfection, on a bed of frites, with a garlic-butter sauce into which to dip the rich, sweet flesh of the beast that has sacrificed itself so that I might be sated - and trust me, after all that meat one truly is sated. It costs around $27 for this ethereal experience, but it is worth every penny. The service is excellent too, our man was great - you order a drink and he shouts at the bar and you have your drink in 20 seconds. The only downside of the place is the abysmal oysters they have, absolutely tasteless and very rubbery, but I'm not going to dwell on that, I'm just not going to order them again. They also only have a few wines by the glass, but it doesn't matter either, it's really not the kind of place that should have a big list - not least because the servers wouldn't be interested in selling them to you, they're too casual and too 'Chicago' for that! In the summer they put tables outside on the pavement (sidewalk) too for the full-on Chicago dining experience. Fortunately, also, it's the kind of place that, unless you live in Chicago and you know about it, you would never go into, which is fine by me as it would be busier than it already is. Highly recommended.

Blackbird - Restaurant Review; Domaine Tempier, Bandol

Restaurant week in Chicago gave us the opportunity to go to one of the city's best-known restaurants - Blackbird. For those not familiar with restaurant week, various eateries in Chicago (I don't know if it happens in other cities, I assume it must do) do a 3-course prix-fixe menu for $32, which ought to allow the discerning diner to sample their food at reduced rates - our food costs would have almost doubled had we paid the full price for our dishes. In reality, though, you don't really save much as one tends to think that one can spend more on wine as a result.

The restaurant: Quite small, minimalist decor (which I like) and brightly-lit (though I did have dilated pupils following a visit to the eye doctor, which probably affected my judgement), and unfortunately not very intimate. In fact the only way it could be described as intimate is the way they allow you to get intimate with your neighbours, since there is only about a foot between the tables. If you look at their website, I'm sure that they have taken out a couple of tables for the main picture to give you a different impression. We had the first seating at 5pm though (the only time we could get in - not necessarily a bad thing though, as it allows for extra time for consumption for the rest of the evening) which meant that the place was pretty quiet to start with. BUT... even with the place 80% empty, when another couple came in around 30 mins after we started, they were seated right next to us when there were plenty of other seats they could have had away from anyone - a very strange call IMHO. And later on when it filled up the place was pretty loud. The service was excellent too, our server was attentive without being overbearing, very knowledgeable, and suggested some good wines for us.