Maui, Part 2: Going Native

Read Maui, Part 1

Before coming to Maui, the only agricultural product I associated with the island was the Maui onion. And then only because they make Maui Style onion-flavored potato chips. When I say "they make," I am referring to the Frito-Lay division of PepsiCo. in Plano, Texas. (If you want to find any of their "Hometown Favorites" products, use their nifty item locator.) According to the ingredients list, there is indeed some Maui onion powder in the Maui Onion-flavored chips. It's the 13th of 15th ingredient listed, ahead of Hydrolyzed Proteins and Caramel Color, but behind Corn Maltodextrin, Monosodium Glutamate, Malic Acid, and that classic and most sacred of culinary components, "Natural Flavor."

I don't necessarily have a problem with eating mass-processed junk food. After all, Camille and I stayed in early on our first night, our jet lag-induced slumber interrupted by a dinner that consisted of a bag of Natural Flavor and Maui Onion Powder. But there is something to eating fresh and local, as I found out.

Of course, this is the tourist's dilemna: to find that definitively, quintessentially local thing before it gets dolled up, appropriated, outsourced, and repackaged as Totally Local, Brah! Some recreations are worthwhile (like, say, a luau), but others, not so much (floral golf ball 3-pack). What I'll take away the most from Maui is a sense of what it truly means to go local, at least as far as food is concerned. Nevermind where the purveyors, chefs, and waiters came from. Much of the best stuff Camille and I ate was from the land and waters of Maui.

Imagine that, eating food before it gets packed and shipped off to Plano.

I was never really a farmer's market guy before. I simply didn't understand the difference between what Albertson's, Ralph's, and Von's featured in their produce section versus stuff that had not traveled thousands of miles. Before our trip to Hawaii, I had some gnarly peaches and pears that came from my local Los Angeles Albertson's via Chile. Certainly, I've had perfectly decent fruit from faraway lands before, but it's easy to accept "pretty good" when you haven't had "frakking fantastic" on a semi-normal basis. It helps when that frakking fantastic fruit is exotic and tropical, as with the cherimoya and papaya we procured from the weekly Maui Swap Meet. (Also picked up some cool and, yes, local t-shirts.)

I'd never even heard of a cherimoya before this trip. It's a custard apple with a sweet, semi-pungent smell, and soft, sweet, white flesh that truly has the texture of soft custard. I spent the entire trip in Maui hoping to get a taste of fresh passion fruit, but the cherimoya sated my exotic fruit desires. Frankly, it's the damnedest thing I've ever eaten. It's Jell-o grown by a tree. And you know what they say about Jell-o.

By the way, you can thank Google for Calimoya, a cherimoya, passion fruit, avocado, and dragon fruit grower in the Santa Barbara area. Expensive, but will ship 2-day UPS when the fruits are in season. Have I overused the phrase "frakking fantastic" yet?

One of the most popular ways to take in the local scenery of Maui is to drive the road to Hana, a twisting road along Maui's eastern coast that includes lots of lush greenery, hiking trails, waterfalls, and fruit stands that operate on the honor system. Sadly, I did not snap a picture of one of these fruit stands that consist simply of a shelf or two of produce, a menu listing prices, and a lock box with a slot for money. The best spur-of-the-moment purchase on the trip was at the Halfway to Hana stand (which also contained people -- boo), where we'd stopped for their much-lauded banana bread. A free sampling of toasted coconut was placed in front of me as my purchase was rung up. I'm not a huge coconut fan, especially dried coconut, but this stuff was something else. The perfect balance of that nutty coconut flavor with (light brown?) sugar. The banana bread was really good, but this sweetened toasted coconut stuff alone was worth half the trip to Hana.

However, unless you're satisfied grazing on mysteriously orphaned fruit at a fruit stand, you'll want to grab a picnic lunch before embarking on the Hana trip. We hit up the Hana Bay Juice Co. in Paia, which has scrumptious sandwiches and really tasty smoothies. They even offer coolers and ice packs. What I remember most about the sandwiches other than them tasting really good was the bread. Sure, I suppose eating a sandwich on a beautiful peninsula in paradise helps, but all the great sandwiches that stick out in my mind have had one thing in common: perfect bread that's crunchy on the outside, soft and moist on the inside, and holds up to the rigors of sandwich eating without spilling its innards everywhere. Camille had a smoked salmon sandwich with cream cheese and capers. I had roast beef. Good ingredients all around, but again, when it comes to sandwiches, it's all about the bread.

Returning from Hana, we stopped in Paia again to eat at Paia Fish Market. It's a casual, lively place that features some strong European accents from both customers and employees. The vibe is that of a quaint, all-night diner, with the cook having to shout order numbers over the loud din of conversation at shared tables.

In terms of their food, they feature a lot of fresh and tasty fish. I had ono tacos. The slaw of roughage in the tacos was, as you can see, a little overwhelming, but it was all good. A fine, messy meal. Bonus points for heating the tortilla so it was slightly crunchy. Camille's opah sauteed in butter, white wine, lemon, and garlic was good if a tad too well done. (Fine woman that she is, she chose the meaty opah in anticipation that it'd be overcooked, knowing it'd retain some moistness.) Okay, so ono fish tacos aren't quintessentially Hawaiian. And God knows who was the first to saute fish in garlic, butter, white wine, and lemon. But there isn't easy access to stuff like this in Los Angeles, so, in my mind, it's explicitly local to these islands. (Nevermind the fries and rice accompanying our dishes.)

No, the truly local part of our trip didn't begin until our tours into Kula.The Ali'i Kula Lavender Farm is a nifty place to start. (Or the 'AKL.' Not to be confused with the ATL.) Incidentally, Ali'i is a Hawaiian term for royalty or noble class. And the dude who started the farm goes by the name of Ali'i. Seriously, who names their kid "royalty?" Other than Michael Jackson? Moving on...

The AKL is 10.5 acres of serene, manicured gardens containing something like a kajillion types of lavender. Tours range from the free, self-guided variety (highly recommended) to a $12, 30-minuted guided walk and, lastly, an exclusive golf cart tour with grower Alii Chang. This last one is limited to five people per day, and for $25 bucks you'll have a dude whose first name is literally royalty talk your head off about a kajillion types of lavender.

The place is beautiful, don't get me wrong. There's something kind of mystical about Kula, all the lush, green rural land halfway up the slopes of a dormant volcano, and this farm is a fine place to stop and take it all in. But you can certainly do it for free with one of their photocopied guides to lavender, which we did. Camille and I had fun eating lavender scones and drinking lavender tea on the AKL Farm's quaint patio after perusing the many lavender-infused items in the gift shop. I recently used some AKL Farm lavender pepper to coat the skin on some pan-roasted chicken and also on shrimp, and it was good stuff -- a wise investment.

As for the scones... well, okay, they taste like scones. The lavender flavor in them could easily by in my mind. No, a more palpable and enjoyable way to eat the scones is to slather them with lavender lilikoi jelly. It's more than a dollar per ounce and we bought two jars. Sweet, tangy, and fragrant, it made the scones a delectable experience. Washing it down with lavender tea, which certainly does not skimp on the lavender, made for a wonderfully calming afternoon.

Lavender, by the way, is native to the Mediterranean, not Hawai'i. Strictly speaking, next to nothing is native to Hawai'i except dried lava. But one of the fantastic things about Hawaii that's very evident in Maui -- and especially in Kula -- is the fertility of the land. I couldn't really tell you what a microclimate is (though I'd hazard a guess that it means "really small climate"), but they got 'em in spades in Maui. Which is a good thing for farmers.The Surfing Goat Dairy is a fun little diversion. It was founded by two German expatriates (seriously, what is it about Maui that attracts the Europeans?), but we were toured around by a kindly, portly, limping Polynesian lady wearing a muumuu. She reminded me of the cafe owner in 50 First Dates. Hopefully, no one has said this to her face, but hey, I don't have a lot of pop culture references for kindly, big-boned Polynesians.

The tour is short and sweet: see milking equipment, see baby goats, see adult goats, see pot-bellied pig humping rocks, taste cheese. If we had the means to keep it cool, we would have definitely bought some cheese to bring home. Not to belabor the point, but all the cheese was super fresh, and in their relatively short time as a dairy, the Surfing Goat has certainly mastered ways to combine their creamy cheeses with some local flavors, like the lilikoi quark.

What I really liked more than anything else was realizing just how small an operation the Surfing Goat Dairy is. It really is just one family with a few hired hands, and in this day and age, it's admirable to see them pull that off. They even resist selling their older goats for meat, simply letting them retire to pasture for the rest of their natural lives. I have no idea if there are undiscovered local farms in the Los Angeles area, but I sure hope so, because it's something I'd definitely support.
The lavender farm features a very specific food chain. If you're not interested in any type of lavender, much less countless variations of them, but you are interested in really good food and the food chain that supports it, then you owe it to yourself to take the tour and have lunch on the O'o Farm (which is literally down the road from the AKL). It's an organic farm growing much of the produce served at two of Maui's acclaimed, upscale restaurants, Pacific'O and I'O. They'll take you around and teach you about their organic practices, let you taste stuff straight out of the ground, and then serve you a lunch prepared almost entirely with ingredients they've grown (the exceptions being bread and fish, which cannot be grown in dirt).

The tour is really informative and the meal is great, deliberately kept simple to highlight the assorted harvest. The place attracts a really interesting crowd, too, from agriculture and nutrition students to foodies on the hunt. The tour/lunch is limited to about 15-20 people, so do make a reservation early. It's a little pricey at $50 a person, but this is a whole lot more than gawking at lavender. This is food at its most elemental. The label "organic" gets tossed around so easily, so to see a living, breathing example of an organic farm is incredibly edifying. I had no idea what "compost tea" was, but I do now, and I think I'm a better eater for it. To see everything go from the ground to the table is more fun than I could have imagined. Beets never tasted so good.

Plus, how often do you get a chef de cuisine from a highly rated restaurant to cook everything for you on an outdoor, wood-burning stove? Seriously, how cool is that?
Coming soon in Maui, Part 3: The other end of the O'o Farm food chain, plus the stuff I couldn't neatly tie into Parts 1 or 2.

Hana Bay Juice Co.
111A Hana Highway
Paia, HI 96779
(808) 579-8686

Paia Fish Market
110 Hana Highway
Paia, HI 96779
(808) 579-8030
paiafishmarket.com

Ali'i Kula Lavender Farm
1100 Waipoli Road
Kula, HI 96790
(808) 878-3004
www.aliikulalavender.com

Surfing Goat Dairy
3651 Omaopio Road
Kula, HI 96790
(808) 878-2870
surfinggoatdairy.com

O'o Farm (reservation required)
Waipoli Road
Kula, HI 96790
(808) 667-4341
www.oofarm.com

Capellini Shrimp

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Consider yourself flattered, C&O Cucina.

One of my favorite things to make at home is "inspired by" (or, in Hollywood-speak, "a homage to") the Capellini Shrimp dish at the Marina Del Rey ristorante. My take on it is a tad different, but still beautifully simple, sublime, sweet, and easy. I overload it with garlic because, seriously, is there such thing as too much garlic? However, the real kicker is the sun-dried tomatoes. DO NOT make it without sun-dried tomatoes. Shrimp is inherently light, almost bland. Sun-dried tomatoes give the dish the proper richness it needs to enhance all the other light flavors.

I think I almost made this in thirty minutes once. Eat it, Rachael Ray!

The software...

~1 package (16 oz.) capellini
~2/3-ish lb. shrimp, roughly chopped
~5-10 garlic cloves, minced (I don't give myself points for subtlety, so I use 10+)
~a handful (hell, I dunno, 3/4 cup?) of sun-dried tomatoes, chopped
~one package (hell, I dunno, 1 1/2 cups?) grape or cherry tomatoes
~olive oil
~grated parmesan or romano cheese

The hardware...

~one large frying pan
~one pot 'o boiling water

The program...

I should mention that I use the sun-dried tomatoes that are stored in a jar with olive oil and herbs. I guess you could use the truly dried ones that need re-hydrating, but for me "re-hydrating" is the exclusive domain of astronauts and marathon runners.

Okay, so, get some salted water into the pot and throw it on high heat. I use frozen shrimp (this dish is always on-call in my home), so now's a good time to throw those in a bowl of water to defrost. Chop up all that needs chopping, which is everything. I usually have medium-sized shrimp that I chop into thirds. This way, you can evenly disperse the shrimp throughout the plate and, hopefully, have some shrimp with every bite.

Heat the frying pan and olive oil. I usually cover the majority of the pan with olive oil. I know that sounds like a lot. You could make a white wine butter sauce like C&O does, if you know how. Or you could use a buttload of olive oil. I bet you the buttload of olive oil is healthier. And olive oil tastes good, anyway.

So, get the olive oil up to temperature. Unless you're a meth addict or an Iron Chef, the water should be boiling by now. Capellini cooks fast compared to other pasta. Time it so you finish cooking everything else at the same time as the pasta, like so: Drop the minced garlic into the olive oil and let it cook for about thirty seconds, then get the chopped sun-dried tomatoes in. The olive oil should soak up all those lovely flavors, and you'll definitely be smelling it. Please resist the urge to lap up that piping hot oil.

Throw the shrimp on there and cook, killing the heat as the shrimp gets close to opaque. Shrimp also cooks fast and gets rubbery when overcooked. Keep in mind that it'll sit in the piping hot oil until you dump in into the pot of steaming hot pasta, so don't worry about serving a lukewarm salmonella factory. It'll cook through.

Reserve a cup or so of the starchy pasta water before draining, so you can add as necessary later if the pasta gets too dry. After draining, return the capellini and then dump the whole works from the pan into the pot. Mix it as best you can (I find this to be the hardest part, actually) and then plate what you need.
Now add the fresh tomatoes. I drop a healthy handful onto each plate, so you get the light, juicy sweetness of the fresh tomatoes against the richer flavor of the sun-dried ones. Sprinkle the cheese, as parmesan and/or romano cheese will add a nice undertone of saltiness. And there it is. If you're feeling saucy, you can chiffonade some basil for garnish (also known as the "rolling a joint and chopping it" technique). But really, it's pretty enough, so have at it. Enjoy the tomatoes and get ready to breathe garlic for about an hour.

Chicago, Part II

Click here to read Part I.

Even though it's a pretty widespread chain, Lonely Planet recommended we eat at The Original Pancake House for breakfast. And whatever Lonely Planet wants, Lonely Planet gets, so Camille and I went in our Sunday Best and trekked to the closest one.

If the name Pancake House doesn't give it away, they're known for breakfast, specifically pancakes. They have all the standards (buttermilk, silver dollar, short stacks, etc.), but their specialties caught our attention. Camille ordered the Apple Pancake, which is a dense pancake with granny smith apples piled high and smothered with a cinnamon glaze. It looks like a deflated football steaming with apple-cinnamon goodness. I went for the Dutch Baby, a pancake that's baked until the edges shrivel and reach toward the sky, effectively making a huge bowl that gets slathered with butter, lemon juice, and powdered sugar. These might be the two tallest pancakes in existence.
It's good. It's heavy. It's like a genuine, long-term relationship in that they demand attention and hard work on your part. Dear God Almighty, it's an assload of pancake. Despite the heaviness, the Dutch Baby has a relatively light flavor thanks to the lemon juice. It's as simple as you can get, and if this is how they eat in... um... Dutchland, then I'm definitely hitting them up at some point in my life. (Wikipedia claims the country of the Dutch is called the Netherlands. It should be noted that Wikipedia isn't always accurate.)

We ended up skipping lunch due to The Original Pancake House's cargo now in our stomachs. We took a long, slow walk down Michigan Avenue towards the Theatre District to catch a show, along the way crossing paths with a long line awaiting the opening of local franchise Garrett's Popcorn, apparently the popcorn of choice for Chicago local Oprah. As luck would have it, there's a Garrett's right next to the theatre where we watched Wicked (I'm not a musical guy, but good stuff). After the show, we ended up with a combo bag of caramel and cheddar popcorn. We also stopped by local coffee chain Intelligentsia, where they have a fine collection of organic coffees, and headed east to Millennium Park to snack away. I didn't think caramel and cheddar popcorn would go together, but the combination of the salty and the sweet was insanely addicting. I've never tried any form of crack, but I think this is the culinary equivalent. It's like the only way to counter the salty cheese is to swamp your mouth with the sugar. And when that's too sweet, more salt! It's a vicious cycle.

After walking west to Sears Tower (which was deceivingly far. Stupid big building looked so stupidly close...), we decided to head back toward our hotel. Over the course of the day, we'd walked pretty much the length of central Chicago and didn't want to go too far for dinner. Since Garrett's pretty much refilled us to post-Pancake House levels, we wanted something easy.

Portillo's Hot Dogs is across from the biggest McDonald's I've ever seen, a two-story, two-drive-thru-lane monstrosity that was calling to us with it's slick convenience. But we were in Chicago and it'd been over twenty-four hours since we'd had encased meat of some kind. While the sign outside the building proclaims Portillo's, the space is actually a food court with a number of fast food options to peruse. Not that we did much perusing. We had hot dogs on the brain and complete and utter trust in our Lonely Planet guide. Has it steered us wrong yet?

Not really. Portillo's is pretty straightforward. Chicago-style hot dog with all the fixings, crinkle cut fries with a cheese dipping sauce. Not spectacular, but it's fast and it hit the spot. The hot dog itself is pretty nondescript. I guess that's where the avalanche of toppings comes in. Hey, not everything can be fabulous. Fed, bed, next.

The next day we enjoyed our hotel's continental breakfast. Someone please tell me what makes these things "continental." Does every continent serve a variety of pastries for breakfast? Is that the tie that binds humanity across the face of the earth? There's got to be at least a sub-continent somewhere that goes carb free in the morning. Wikipedia's breakfast article lists continental breakfasts under the European region, but what have we learned about Wikipedia?

After visiting the fantastically free Lincoln Park Zoo, which I should stress is a free zoo, we hit up the Pasta Bowl for lunch. Normally, I stay away from pasta at restaurants since pasta is the simplest, easiest cuisine to throw together at home. Some people think bottled water is a con. Me? Pasta Roni, total scam. If I do ever order pasta, the ingredients should shine together, and they had better be good ingredients. Grilled chicken linguine alfredo? Please, I can smother Ralph's-brand alfredo over some noodles and frozen tenders at home, thank you. But I digress.
The Pasta Bowl is the kind of place I sometimes idly dream of having if lack of money, middling work ethic, limited skill set, and other, more pressing dreams were not an issue. The space is really cool, one of those long, thin dining rooms dominated by a counter, kitchen in full view behind it, and the manager doing double duty as our waiter. It's the kind of chill restaurant you see in mobster movies where the local don holds court in the back booth... except there wasn't a local don holding court. And the neighborhood is really nice. Again, I digress.

Camille and I are both suckers for seafood, and she especially for frutti di mare. The Pasta Bowl cooks shrimp, scallops, and mussels in white wine before serving with marinara and spaghetti. I went for clams capellini, the shellfish also cooked in white wine before being tossed in some angel hair with red pepper flakes. Now, having said all I've just said about how easy pasta is, there is some skill in making really good pasta, and this is really good pasta that's also really fast and really cheap. My clams were perfect, soft but not rubbery, and the red pepper really pops in the white wine. It's a nice, smooth spiciness. It did built as I ate, getting spicier and spicier, but nothing a fork full of angel hair couldn't handle. Camille's was equally good. I might sprinkle red pepper flakes over every pasta meal I do from now on. It's a nice, ass-kicking compliment to what is otherwise sublime food.


We had some time to kill before heading up to Wrigley, so we went west to Sweet Mandy B's, a bakery with some terrific cupcakes. I had the peanut butter and jelly, which is yellow cake filled with strawberry jelly and a peanut butter cream frosting. If ever the phrase "sweet Jesus!" was apropos, it is here. The frosting is decadent, creamy without diluting the peanut butter taste, the cake is moist, and the jelly brings it all home. I actually wish there was more jelly, as it was really just a drop, but oh well. I resisted the urge to order another since there was more encased meat to devour.


Wrigley Field was everything I hoped it would be. As intimate as ballparks can get, sunk right into an old Chicago neighborhood. You literally leave the rail station, turn a corner, and you're there. And the fans in the bleachers were the best, well deserving of their fevered reputation. Probably the funniest thing I've ever seen at a sporting event took place during Giants batting practice. Every fly ball into the deep outfield elicited a cry from the crowd for Giants players to throw up a souvenir. Most of the players turned a deaf ear, but one eventually gave in and lobbed the ball up into the center field bleachers. Though they had pleaded shamelessly for the ball, these were Cubs fans and this was a baseball from the Giants, and so, they threw it right back onto the field and cheered mightily.

Stadium food is always a risky proposition, but Wrigley had foot-long brats with grilled onions, plus all the toppings one could want off to the side. It was the eighth inning by the time I got to them, so the brats were nice and seared and wrinkly. Fantastic stuff. The sweet relish, the tomatoes, the grilled onions, the fact that it was 12 inches long, plus the friendly confines of Wrigley all make for some good eating. I love you Hot Doug's, but this is some sausage right here. My hands were sticky with mustard/relish/brat juice all the way back to the hotel. If there's one true test of a hot dog, it's got to be hand stink. Wrigley brats just set the high water mark for sticky stankiness.

The next day brought us to The Billy Goat Tavern, a restaurant bar most famous for inspiring an old Saturday Night Live sketch with John Belushi telling customers the only available item on the menu is the "cheezborger." The place is a true dive, in an area around the Chicago River where there are two street levels, the lower perpetually in the orange glow of artificial lighting. It's grimy, it's dark. And the guy taking orders is a true character. I don't know if he's The Guy that inspired the sketch or if he's just keeping up the reputation, but he's a goof. Despite the decent number of items on the menu, every transaction with customers, including us, goes like this...

"Cheeseburger."
"Double cheeseburger's the best."
"Okay, double cheeseburger."
"Double cheeseburger!"

A bit later, the following was overheard...

"Double cheeseburger's the best."
"Double cheeseburger."
"Triple cheeseburger's better."

The cook, of course, has a line of burgers going on the grill. They put the burgers on kaiser rolls instead of standard buns, which is a nice touch. Service is pretty straightforward. You order at one end of the counter and slide down to the other. There's a pile of butcher paper on the counter where he assembles your burger and nudges it over to you. Toppings to the side. The walls are adorned with news articles detailing the billy goat curse that supposedly haunts the Cubs. During our meal the guy turned to two customers sitting at a table without food.

"Can I help you guys?"
"We're just waiting for someone."
"Well, I get off in a couple of hours."

It's that kind of the place. Not the best burger ever. In fact, it's not too far above cafeteria food. But that'd make this the coolest cafeteria ever.

After visiting the Art Institute and the Married... With Children fountain a.k.a. Buckingham Fountain, where I paid a homeless guy five bucks for a free newspaper after he took our picture (he was a salesman, what can I say), we went to a place right down the street from The Billy Goat, Shaw's Crab House.
Up to this point, all of our food had been, for lack of a better term, peasant food. Pizza, hot dogs, pastas, burgers -- I feel like we got a fairly representative take of how locals eat on a semi-regular basis. Shaw's Crab House is in that same vein, except people here are wearing suits. Seafood tends to demand a higher price, but again, Camille and I are suckers. And Shaw's had an oyster bar with a happy hour. When in Rome...
It's overwhelming how many different types of oysters Shaw's has. And if that wasn't enough of a drain on the wallet, we had a terrific waitress who was friendly and quick with suggestions. I couldn't begin to tell you what was what, but they tended to be smaller oysters, all delicate, sweet, briny, but not too gritty. We downed two dozen of them before even so much as perusing the rest of the menu. If the thought of oysters scares you as it did me once, then suck it up. Literally. Use the little tinny fork, drink the juices in and suck up the meat. It's easy. Sure, it's a little slimy and cold and mushy. It's kinda like sweetened seawater. Suck it up!

We followed up the oysters with a creamy, savory lobster bisque before getting to our separate entrees. Camille had a combo plate of grilled shrimp, scallops, and a crab cake. I had a less inspired soft shell crab sandwich, which continues my love-hate of soft shell crab. The bread was a little charred and the soft shell was way too overcooked. I will forever be wary of soft shell in the future. It's an almost exotic food with the pricetag to match since farming them is so delicate, but even when it's cooked correctly, there isn't a lot of meat and there's a whole lot of edible but bland shell to chew on. No matter. I was on an oyster high. And we had a really good key lime pie for dessert.

The next day was our last, and between Shaw's and The Parthenon, we finished our food adventure on a real high note. The Parthenon is a Greektown requirement. Not that we visited any other Greek restaurants, but the place was so good I was truly blown away. The meal starts with the pizzaz of saganaki, which is a platter of kasseri cheese that gets doused with brandy and set aflame right at your table. It's warm and gooey and, like any flame-cooked food, a tad crispy on the outside. The burned parts are, naturally, the best. We also started with pan-fried baby eggplant, which probably takes the cake over Giordano's zucchini fritters for battered and fried appetizers. Crispy, that peculiar sweetness of eggplant, juicy, not excessively oily. It also came with some kind of mashed something. We think cauliflower. Whatever, I'm eating it. When in Athens...

The menu is absolutely loaded with lots of tempting food that was completely foreign to me. We thought we'd go with the ever-popular gyros, savory roasted slices of lamb and beef with onions to be eaten with pitas. In my mind, The Parthenon can do no wrong after those appetizers, but this was right on. We stuffed ourselves silly, all the better to fly home.

Thank you, Chicago. Rich, flavorful food. As many encased meats as one could dream of. And, oh yeah, a beautiful city to boot. We left heavier than we came.

FYI: we brought two half-cooked Giordano's pizzas onto the plane for consumption at home. So, when packing for a trip, keep in mind that you cannot hand carry more than three ounces of hair gel or toothpaste, but you can bring almost five pounds worth of deep dish pizza. Because if we can't bring pizza onto planes, then the terrorists have won.

Chicago, Part I

Chicago takes its name from a French mis-transcription of a Native American word for leeks. In other words, Chicago is named after food. So, when Camille, the lovely girlfriend of Butter Flavored Topping, redeemed a free Southwest ticket to the Windy City, it's only natural that we immediately started to salivate in anticipation.

Our primary planning tool for exploring the city was, of course, movies. Sadly, two out of three movie-inspired tours fell through. The High Fidelity tour of hipster hood Wicker Park was doomed from the start due to a lack of big tourist attractions. Sorry, Rob Gordon, but when it's your first time in a city, you've got to stick to the big draws, don't ya? Camille's intended My Best Friend's Wedding tour of Chicago was rendered incomplete, with only photo stops outside the Drake Hotel and inside Union Station accomplished. It's a shame as I really wanted to do the Chicago River tour. I privately considered Union Station to be a part of The Untouchables tour, anyway, so a Julia Roberts-inspired excursion will have to wait until next time.

Which leaves us with the Ferris Bueller's Day Off tour, which was a success. We hit the Art Institute of Chicago (where Ferris kisses Sloan and Cameron is hypnotized by a girl in Seurat's "A Sunday Afternoon on La Grand Jatte"); Wrigley Field to watch my lowly Giants lose ("Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Suh-WING batta!"); Sear's Tower ("I think I see my dad."); and Chez Quis, where I proclaimed myself the Sausage King of Chicago. Actually, Chez Quis isn't real, but we had some good eatin'. Speaking of which...
The first thing we ate was pizza. People speak of Chicago's deep dish pizza as if it were the little baby Jesus holding his own Holy Grail. After weighing various opinions about which restaurant makes the best pie, we decided to hit up Giordano's Pizza. We pre-ordered and put our names in line for the requisite hour-plus wait, cruised up and down Michigan Ave to kill some time, cursed the fact that we opted for a rental car with our travel package (parking is expensive, pay by the hour hell in this city of fine public transportation), and finally got our table.

We quenched our thirst with some pretty solid mid-west beer, Leinenkugel's Honey Weiss. I actually didn't have much beer here, sadly, so who knows how this compares, but we were thirsty, it went down easy, and it's called Leinenkugel's. Seriously, with a name like Leinenkugel's in the capital of the mid-west, how can you go wrong? They get bonus points for spelling it "bier."

We ordered zucchini fritters as an appetizer. Crispy but not oily, kinda burns your mouth like good, freshly deep fried food should, the mild sweetness of zucchini with the bread crumbs... I'm not sure I can fully encapsulate how good these were except to say that the little baby Jesus drinking Leinenkugel's Honey Weiss from his Holy Grail would be pleased.

We ordered the special stuffed pizza, which has sausage, mushrooms, peppers, and onions, plus we added pepperoni because, hey, why not? It's very good, although I didn't have the religious orgasm that most people do. The pizza is stuffed mostly with mozzarella. A lot of mozzarella. It's pretty much like eating a wheel of mozzarella cheese that's been breaded, then covered with a thin layer of sauce. It's good mozzarella, but I was hoping for a little more tomato sauce. The sausage is good stuff, though. Cheese and sausage just might do it for me next time.

We ended up with leftovers that we took back to the hotel. Oddly, our reasonably-priced fancy dancy hotel didn't have a microwave. Ideal location, complimentary breakfast, free happy hour, no microwave. When we wanted to finish off our pizza a couple of nights later, we tried vainly to heat it with a hair dryer. Yeah, not so much. But it did taste mighty good cold. In fact, almost as good as when it was hot, which is a testament to the quality of the ingredients Giordano's uses.
The one time in five days I was happy to have a car was our trip out to see Frank Lloyd Wright's home and studio. Along the way (in a roundabout, let's-use-our-car-damnit kinda way) is Hot Doug's, a popular joint that cheerfully refers to itself as "The Sausage Superstore and Encased Meat Emporium." It's the kind of place that has a table for local bands to dump flyers about upcoming gigs or to sell used instruments. There was a line wrapped around the building, but not the same tourist line mobbed around Giordano's. No, with my eavesdropping skills, I knew I was among locals (or, at least, other tourists who chose the cooler, more discriminating Lonely Planet over Let's Go! when buying their travel guides).

Other than pizza, the most talked about Chi Town food is the hot dog, which has a strict recipe of toppings: onions, tomatoes, sometimes cucumbers, sometimes lettuce, sometimes bell pepper, pepperoncini, relish, mustard, and celery salt. Considering the semi-gourmet treatment Hot Doug's has with their various dogs, it can be a little intimidating, but thankfully Hot Doug's loses all pretense of snobbery with kitschy decor and hot dogs wryly named after celebrities. The Keira Knightley is a "fire dog" described as "formerly the Jennifer Garner and Britney Spears." They have fries cooked in duck fat on Fridays and Saturdays. You get the feeling the owner -- I'm gonna go out on a limb and call him Doug -- went to culinary school, got exposed to high end ingredients, then realized, "Wait, I like hot dogs," and created this place.
Camille had The Dog with all the proper fixings while I went for The Elvis, a polish sausage with all the fixings, plus sauerkraut. The duck fat fries were a bizarre creation. Camille said she could taste the duck in them. Me, not so much, but the texture of the fries was definitely different. Duck fat is richer, and the fries reflect that. Still crispy, but rich and somehow thick, even though it's a standard cut. If McDonald's fries are a light beer, these duck fat fries are Guinness. Take from that what you will.

The Elvis was juicy, good stuff. The Chicago mix of toppings is all well and good, but the real clincher? The celery salt. Seriously, this is what sets everything apart. It's the icing on a sweet and salty mess of slop. Kinda tangy and sweet, the celery salt really jumps out from the assault of other condiments.

For dinner, we hit up Navy Pier, where there's a cool and, more importantly, free stained glass museum beneath the carnival setting. There's also a free fireworks show. A lot of the food choices were kinda generic (nothing says Chicago like Bubba Gump Shrimp!), but thankfully there was the southern-style Joe's Be Bop Cafe, which enticed me with jambalaya and a live band. Our plans to hit up a genuine Chicago jazz club were pretty low on the list, so we settled in. The Jambalaya was nice with a good amount of spice and great sausage, though everyone around us was having ribs, so I was having buyer's remorse. Camille had the crawfish etouffee, a creamy, buttery, and spicy cousin of gumbo that was very, very good. Now I was downright jealous. Considering the tourist-centric locale, I was afraid the place was going to be flavorless and plain, but the food was good and, surprisingly, so was the jazz. No elevator music here, the place was rockin'.

If you're not keeping score, the standout ingredient after a day and a half of eating is sausage.

I like Chicago.

Click here for Part II.

Pseudo-Memories of France

Ah, comfort food. I love a dish that's warm, hearty, savory, and brings back fond memories of my childhood in provincial France playing marbles, cycling, and thumbing my nose at those dimwit American tourists.

By France I am actually referring to quaint little San Lorenzo, California and quaint, ridiculously suburbanized Castro Valley, California (East Bay!) where I never so much as sniffed a French bistro. Probably a good thing as San Lorenzo and Castro Valley are not exactly culinary havens. I did trek to Paris (among other European stops) after graduating college, though. Here's a tip if you're backpacking through Europe on the cheap: Don't go to the Moulin Rouge. I know, I know... I, too, loved Baz Luhrmann's filmic ode to bohemian love, and I, too, have a silly man-crush on Ewan McGregor. Just keep in mind that Montmartre is on the outskirts of Paris, so when you finally get to the Moulin Rouge and realize it costs at least $200 for dinner and the show, you'll smack yourself in the head, decide to pass, and look around and see that there's merde to do in the immediate vicinity. My buddy and I visited the various souvenir shops and settled in at a restaurant across the street that, judging by the English menu, catered to tourists. It was here I had my first croque monsieur, the egg-less sibling of the croque madame. I've tried to replicate it in the past without making bechamel sauce, one of those French "mother" sauces that scare the bejeezus out of a novice cook like me, and boy is that a mistake. Without bechamel sauce, the croque monsieur/madame is just a dry sandwich. So, grab your whisk, it's sauce making time. Your wrist will hurt, but you'll feel like a chef afterwards.

Before you start the sauce, though, start your broiler and place your oven rack right up under it. Huzzah for pretty blue flames!

I used a bechamel recipe from Williams-Sonoma. You're basically going to make a roux (French word alert! It's the thickening agent behind every sauce and gravy made from butter and flour. And it's pronounced "rue.") and then whisk in milk and cheese. The recipe calls for gruyere cheese, which is some salty good stuff. If you're wondering if you have to continuously whisk the entire time... yes, absolutely. Do NOT stop whisking! I stopped for ten seconds to peruse the recipe and the sauce burned slightly. Since I'm a lazy mofo, I pushed on with the lightly toasted bechamel. It's still good, it's still good.

If you're saying to yourself, "Butter! Milk! Cheese! How healthy is this?!" The answer to your question is: You clearly don't love food. Go eat a carrot.

After making the bechamel sauce, the hard work is done. All that's left is to do the math, as we used to say in Calculus (not bragging, I barely passed). Assemble your dish.

Don't buy sliced bread for this. You're not eating it with your hands, so get a nice, fresh bread that'll sop up the sauce but still hold together. In other words, slice it thick. I bought some organic deal from Whole Foods, not because it was organic so much as it was round. Thems round loafs is fancy! It smelled good and was slightly soft. It ended up being some kind of sourdough, which wasn't in the recipe but works splendidly.

I used a croque madame recipe from, yes, Williams-Sonoma, but it called for black forest ham, which I didn't have. I did have a bunch of leftover rotisserie chicken from Costco... perfecto! (Perfecto is not a French word.) Toast the bread first, then pile on chunks of chicken and ladle the bechamel over the whole thing. Top with more grated cheese. Throw it back in the broiler until the cheese begins to melt and brown. At this point, you've pretty much got a croque monsieur that's waiting to be madame-ed. Get a pan with oil going and fry an egg.
You probably think you can fry an egg. I used to think so, too. But I never did it the same way twice. Then I realized that once the egg is down in the pan and frying... leave it the hell alone. Let it cook. Don't flip it yet. Just don't do it. Leave it be until the whites are all, you know, actually white. Not partially white. White. If you want over-easy, flip it once. It's not a steak, there's no reason to flip and flip and flip. Cook it through on one side, flip once, cook it to your desired doneness on the other. Camille doesn't like runny yolks, so I let hers go a little longer before flipping to make sure the bottom of the yolk is cooked.

Okay, so the broiler has probably done it's business by now. Take out the sandwich, plate it, top it with an egg. That's it. The recipe calls for topping each piece with another slice of bread to make a sandwich, but the tourist trap eatery across from the Moulin Rouge made it open-faced, and since I'm sentimental, I did the same.
The bechamel turns what is otherwise a mundane, dry meat and cheese combination into a rich, creamy, hearty, comforting dish. Savory chicken, tangy bread, cheese... that stuff hits the spot. Even better, as hearty as it is, it doesn't weigh you down. It brings back fond memories of France that I don't really have (damn you, Moulin Rouge! Damn you to hell!). Mmmmm, sentimental sandwich.