Stuartblog2

Or: Why won’t Chicago stop picking on Cleveland?

New York is sui generis. The New York metro area has more than 100% higher population than the Chicago Metro and  Nearly 50% higher than the Los Angeles Metro. New York also has nearly 500% higher foreign tourist visits than Chicago and nearly 200% higher than Los Angeles. It’s also worth noting that Michelin has done New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Las Vegas but not Chicago.  New York has 31 Michelin starred restaurants. Los Angeles and Las Vegas have 18 and 16 respectively.

It’s not simply that New York has more. If any other American city made a case to be singled out by Beard, they would have to make a case by drawing favorable comparisons to other cities but New York is so different that they’re unique (at least in the United States). Furthermore, if Chicago were the city making such comparisons then I think they’d have a tough job convincing a neutral observer that they were more worthy than Los Angeles or San Francisco.

The fact is that someone has to be stuck competing Chicago. It’s natural for those cities to look across the border of and complain about how arbitrary it is Kansas City and Milwaukee have the relatively lucky assignment of competing with one another while Cleveland and Cincinnati have to compete with Chicago but the line has to be drawn somewhere.

Just like last year, I’ve added all the Beard award nominees to my restaurant map. I added 14 categories which includes 71 nominations. The map you see includes 68 restaurants. I think the discrepancy is a result of individual restaurants earning multiple nominations. I didn’t double check. Categories I omitted include best restaurateur, best service, best wine, best wine and liquor professional…. I included all the regional categories, outstanding chef, outstanding restaurant and rising star. I was going to tell you how many restaurants were carried over from 2008 but Tagzania failed at giving me that answer and I don’t want to count by hand. Over course of entering these restaurants, I got the impression that the number of restaurants that carried over was high. In fact, I think every regional category had either three or four repeaters.

beard2008 tagged map by user - Tagzania

Didn’t Esquire already cheer some restaurant from Cleveland recently? Anyway, they’ve done it again. There’s no better place than Esquire for hard hitting sandwich journalism. Esquire’s recent rundown of the best sandwiches in America includes many of the usual suspects - po’ boys, jibaritos, cubanos, banh mis and such recognizable purveyors as Al’s #1, Zingerman’s, Katz’s, Guy Savoy, Bouchon, John’s Roast Pork, Primati’s, etc. . . But the list also includes three contenders from Cleveland, Ohio. Slyman’s inclusion should be no surprise to anyone after they were featured on $40 a Day. I was pleased to see The Beachland Ballroom recognized for their “trailer park monte cristo.” Our third honoree was Freddie’s Rib House for their Polish Boy.

It wasn’t entirely clear who was responsible for compiling the list and specifically who might have been responsible for choosing Cleveland’s representatives. I like to think of myself as pretty wired-in to the restaurant scene in Cleveland and I’d never heard of Freddie’s. And it’s not like I haven’t enjoyed my fair share of Polish Boys. I recommend Hot Sauce Williams for what it’s worth. And, for those concerned, Esquire met their legal obligation of mentioning Michael Symon in every Cleveland food article in a national media outlet. Iron Chef Michael Symon contributed a recipe for a pancetta and egg sandwich. Finally, just to prove that they’re cool like that, they included the McRib.

The Best Sandwiches in America. Esquire.com.

They accept recommendations at editor@esquire.com. I’d start with this one from my very own kitchen:

Besides that and the aforementioned Hot Sauce Williams Polish Boy, if I were to recommend sandwiches in Cleveland I might start with some of these:

1. Presto. Everything is good. Sandwiches, soups, sides. I wish it were closer.
2. Superior Pho. A very good banh mi.
3. Ferrara’s. Good cold cut and sausage and peppers subs. I used to make some substitutions when I ordered to get a sandwich that I really preferred but it’s been so long that I can’t remember.
4. Appetite. My experience there was mixed but I admire their dedication to fresh, from-scratch cooking. I really want them to do well. I had some good, house-made roast beef and now I understand they’re making more of their meats in house.
5. La Bodega. I meant to explore the large and interesting menu but while I’ve always been satisfied I was never wowed. Still, I hope to return.

I was involved in a discussion of the somewhat desolate appearance of the neighborhoods along my route to Pho Que Huong on Detroit Ave. Afterwards I collected and emailed some related tidbits that were still fresh in my mind. I hope the promise reflected in these plans is realized. After I sent the email, I heard that Venezia is retooling. The rumor is that they’ll reopen with an upscale burger concept. Burgers seem to be hot in other parts of the country and I think that concept could do really well here. It would certainly get me to give this operation another visit. Anyway, here’s that email with some nice, meaty links:

 I’ve been hearing a steady stream of encouraging things about the section of Detroit that we were talking about. Of course, I do have to admit that when I drive to Pho Que Huong it looks depressed and desolate. Still, Kitsch City and The Cleveland Shop (maybe a little outside this exact neighborhood but close) just opened recently. Latitude 41n and Gypsy Beans and Baking just opened recently. A new jazz venue and Irish pub are coming. I’m not really excited about either of those concepts but they’re both ambitious projects. The pub reflects a $3.5m investment and everything I hear about it suggests that it’s worth going just to see it. They’ll be putting $24.5m into the Gordon Square Arts District which will include some 14 different projects including restaurants and the three anchor theaters plus some welcome streetscape improvements. There will be a three screen art house theater so West-siders won’t have to come to the Cinematheque or the Cedar Lee. Maybe they’ll even get some releases that the others don’t. I’d cross the river for that.  I heard that Chef Kaplan was working on a project in that area which I think is on top of the restaurants in the theater complex. There are hundreds of rental units included in Gordon Square plus several other projects including the Cleveland EcoVillage.

Cheddar’s, Snickers, Reddstone (another ambitious pub project), Happy Dog, a half dozen art galleries, Saigon Plaza are all there already and I think I read something about a new RTA terminal. Parkview Nite Club, The City Grille (upscale pizza), Greenwich Village Cafe… The West 58th Lofts and the Federal Mills Knitting building renovation are both new, right? Every time I go back to one of these web pages to copy a web address I get caught up adding another list of spots to this email. If I don’t send this message now, I’ll never finish it.

These lamb chops were one of the day’s specials. The round object is potatoes rosti.

This butternut squash soup had chunks of squash and shrimp.

This is a banana cream pie with a pizelle crust.

Noodlepie posted a compilation of his fascinating Vietnamese street food videos. It’s not very convenient to view however because they’re all linked individually. You have to click, watch, go back and then click again. I wanted to make a playlist on youtube and this seemed like a natural choice for the subject matter.

I eat out almost every night. When I’m not eating out, I’m eating take out. That’s been my lifestyle for as long as I can remember with only a couple minor disruptions. And yet, I’m not sure that very many of the restaurant staff that I’m so familiar with actually know my name. I’m like an eating assassin. Wait, eat, leave. No distractions. It’s exactly the same except instead of being an assassin I’m just a little introverted. In any case, I’m not very good at introducing myself to people. So, there’s the Chinese take out restaurant that I patronized for more than a decade where they thought they knew my name but didn’t quite. Despite all that over the years I have become welcomed at a number of restaurants and somehow or other without actually exchanging the information names have magically become known to both parties of the restaurant-patron relationship. I’ve grown familiar with the food and the restaurant and with the chefs, cooks and servers. And I think they know that I appreciate the dedication that they show in their work. After all, what chef wouldn’t like an enthusiastic and adventurous eater?

Every bite of the chop is unique. The fat, the char, the seasoning and the meat all mix. The spoonbread is phenomenal.

I remember eating at fire the first week that they were open. Was it the first day? I think I was excited to eat there because I had the chef confused with someone else. I immediately became a regular. I frequently ate there several times in a week and occasionally a couple days in a row. The pork chop and the chicken liver appetizer debuted with the restaurant and they’ve been a fixture on the menu ever since. I’m naturally inclined to wander through all of the new items on each season’s fresh menu but every so often I feel the pull of those livers and that pork chop. I’ve had the livers recently and I think I may be due for another pork chop very soon. What happened to the banana bread pudding? I bet Chef Katz will be answering that question for decades to come.

Awww… so cute!

A couple months ago fire turned five and they had a celebration. It was an honor to be invited. And, of course, there was delicious food.

Pork… pork… pork… DUCK!

Recently, fire has added some impressive new talent in the kitchen. Chef Tom K. is a Tribute alumnus. His addition has produced wonderful charcuterie and a seemingly ever more ambitious series of wine dinner menus. All the while, fire remains fire - a friendly home for Chef Katz’s fresh, ingredient driven, expertly preprared cuisine.

And because I’m late, here’s some fire choco-porn. I wrote this to submit it in the Food Destinations blog event hosted at From Our Kitchen and the deadline was yesterday. I have no excuse for my tardiness but I hope this humble offering will set things right.

Nothing better than fresh whipped cream. Super chocolately. Very straightforward, bold. Delicious.

Choc-tastic!

I know there’s a lot of non-chocolate in this picture, but trust me. This was chocolate-y. The other stuff did taste good, too.

Bonus! The story of Howard Chacowicz is one of my absolute favorite stories. I’m not sure I can be trusted not to shoehorn this story in at the slightest opportunity. I think it might really be relevant in this case. Because of Howard’s charming, ingratiating nature everyone knows him at every restaurant. Broadcast on This American Life and archived at their website. The relevant portion starts about nine minutes into the program. Here’s their blurb:

Lunchtime with the King of Ketchup. Jonathan Goldstein with a story of the kind of preferential treatment we all dream of, where waiters routinely bring us extra appetizers on the house, delivery men throw a little something special into our take-out orders and deli owners regularly comp us free pickles and chips. He talks with his friend Howard, who lives this dream, about all the work that went into making it a reality. (16 minutes)

beard2007 tagged map by user - Tagzania

So far this includes the Pacific, Midwest, Great Lakes, Mid-Atlantic, Rising Star, New Restaurant and Outstanding Restaurant.

Update: The map now includes the Northeast, Northwest, Southeast, Southwest and South. I think that’s all it will ever include. So, no pastry, no service, no restaurateur and neither of the two wine categories.

The Beard Foundation announced their 2007 book award nominees. The list is unfortunately only available as a PDF. Here are a couple of the books that had caught my attention earlier in the year as well as a couple notable books that probably caught yours as well. I’ve had some pastry from Tartine so I’d guess that this is an excellent cookbook. It’s nominated in the photography category so it might even be appropriate for the rest of us. King Arthur Flour is a worker run company. Cradle of Flavor was written by a man whose been obsessed with authentic food from Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia for decades.

The entire list of 39 Beard nominated books can be browsed here.

Magazine and newspapers:

1. Creative Loafing : Atlanta’s food issue
   
2. Turkey Training Camp
3. Bringing Duck Home
4. Cleveland Scene. Elaine Cicora. Soul Kitchen.

There are a lot of these awards. The point of these posts is really just to show that a PDF is a pretty bad way of making this announcement. After 39 books, 4 articles and 35 restaurants I think I’m satisfied. If there’s a particularly noteworthy article please let me know.

Lucky’s