The Benefits of Hard Work

I wrote back in March of my annual ritual of pruning the roses and discussed while it is real work, it is very contemplative and satisfying work. You can see for yourself the satisfaction of hard work. Come down to the restaurant and enjoy our second bloom of, hopefully, three for the year.

A Thrill a Minute

All I wanted was a bit of hot tea. Really, it was 7:25 this morning and all I wanted was a spot of tea. Was that so much to ask? Apparently. I guess the restaurant gods had it in for me this morning.

While my computer was pulling down the overnight emails from my server, I went to make a cup of tea as I am wont to do daily. I've been off of coffee for a while; I guess I'm just bored with it or with our selection of exactly one kind.

Anyway, I went to get some hot water from the dispenser tap on the coffee maker and all I got was a dribble. Not good and so much for my plans to get anything positive accomplished today. I remembered that last night our sous chef was cleaning up a coffee spill—would you be surprised to learn that we make coffee without a pot under the brewer nozzle at least once a month?—and I warned him that the machines are hard-connected to copper and not very mobile. I asked him to be very careful not to pinch or break one of the supply lines.

This all flashed through my mind in an instant and I might have cast some mental aspersions and/or epithets in his direction. Sorry. I had to turn on all the lights and move a whole bunch of stuff to trace the copper water tubing. It sure seemed intact.

I then thought to check the water on the bar gun which comes off the same supply tube. No water. OK, I figured that he shut off the valve on the supply line for some reason. Nope, it was wide open. Major aspersions and epithets now as it looks like this might not be a trivial problem. Into the kitchen, and you're already ahead of me here, no water at all.

It was too early to call anyone about the problem and none of the other businesses around me were yet open to see if the problem were isolated to my building or if it were a more general problem. I know for a fact that the City is working on something in the street just down the way.

At 8 am, I called the City and managed to get to the Water Department just as someone was arriving. She was very nice and was concerned that they might have turned off the water yesterday as they did a bunch of cut-offs then and the management company for our building is notorious for not paying the bill until the City shows up, wrench in hand, to disconnect the water.

We decided that it probably wasn't likely that the City disconnected the water between late last night when I left and 7:30 this morning, but that it was a good idea for someone to come over and check for a break in a main. Very nice and very responsive she was, a pleasant surprise in dealing with the City.

Minutes later, one of the guys from the Water Department came through the front door and told me that the meter had not been disconnected. I nonplussed him with the question, "Yeah, but is there water at the meter?" I followed him out to the meter to see, and I could hear before he got the cover off the meter access hole that water was screaming through the meter. I don't think I've ever seen a dial rotate that fast in all my life.

Clearly we were dealing with a break in the line between the meter and the restaurant. I ran to the back of the building where the basement stairs are located to find that the neighbors have constructed a new deck blocking the doorway. Nice neighbors, huh? As I got the door open, I could hear water pouring out into very deep water. Cruddy, but better than an underground leak in the supply main coming into the building.

The landlord and his plumber were pretty responsive and the problem was repaired at 11:55am. We opened for lunch at 11, unable to make any soup or boil any water for pasta. And we used our entire supply of alcohol swabs cleaning our hands. But, we got open with some water that we cadged off of the very understanding neighboring coffee shop.

The first table was a regular customer and he was understanding that we couldn't brew his usual iced tea. The second table that arrived at 11:50 was miffed that we had no iced tea. I would think that it is easier to be understanding than to be miffed about something over which nobody has any control, but noses out of joint they did have. Par for the course.

Fortunately, we got the lines flushed, the tea brewed, toilets flushed, the pasta water hot, and generally back in action before the bulk of the lunch traffic.

Yes, the restaurant business is a thrill a minute—and I never did get that cup of tea.

Fried Green Tomatoes

Right now, just before the onset of field-ripe tomatoes is the best time for green tomatoes and that quintessential Southern comfort food, fried green tomatoes. Some nights when we have green tomatoes, fried green tomatoes account for more than half of our appetizer sales. Fried green tomatoes seem to be a food that people around here cannot live without.

I have learned over the years that the correct tomatoes make all the difference in the end product. This shouldn't be a surprise, yet it took me a while to learn it. The tomatoes in the photo above are perfect. They are just starting to blush on the outside. Tomatoes ripen from the inside out, so when they are blushing on the outside, they are getting fairly pink in the middle as you can see in this photo. This tomato, not a stone green tomato, will make excellent fried green tomatoes. It is still very firm, a requisite for frying, has good acidity, also required, and yet it has started to develop some tomato flavor. A totally green tomato will be very acid, very firm, and taste more like a tomatillo than a tomato, not what we're looking for in fried green tomatoes.

And here they are in all their glory: fried green tomatoes. Dip the slices in egg wash and then in cornmeal and fry in a hot pan. For presentation purposes, we often stack them with some kind of salsa in between the layers, shown here with a tomato salsa. Sorry for the crappy photo; my camera is sub-optimal for food photography and has no way to override the flash.

Brachetto

One of my wine reps brought by a bottle of Brachetto yesterday for me to taste and that reminded me that how much I like it. Although it is something that I am known to serve at parties at home, it is not a wine we stock here at the restaurant, but one that I really should find an excuse to bring on. But where am I going to find the cooler space? Wine reps take note: cooler space is a finite resource.

Brachetto is the name of a red grape that is most commonly grown in the Piedmont of Italy, but a little bit is also grown in Provence around Nice where it is known as Braquet and the wines are labelled Bellet AOC. Bellet is bottled in both red and rosé forms. I have mostly drunk the rosé in Provence, but the red can be quite solid.

The most well known Italian appellation is Brachetto d'Acqui DOCG, which although made in still and sparkling wines, is almost always seen here in the US in its lightly sparkling (frizzante) form.

The wine I tasted yesterday was of the lesser appellation Piemonte Brachetto DOC, but it was as good as any wine from Acqui that I have ever tasted. Brachetto in its most common frizzante form is a low alcohol, slightly sweet, slightly sparkling light red wine with a bouquet and palate of strawberries and sweet cherries. I find it very refreshing.

I like to serve it at brunch over fresh strawberries in the spring and fresh raspberries or wineberries in the summer. And we always seem to end our Piemontese wine dinners here at the restaurant with a glass of Brachetto d'Acqui. It's a wine you should add to your vocabulary.

Served Raw or Undercooked

On October 16, 2007, the Virginia Department of Health required all restaurants in the state to help protect the citizens of the Commonwealth from themselves. We, the restaurants that is, are now required to tell our customers that items are served raw or undercooked might be hazardous with a statement such as the following:

*Served raw or undercooked or may be ordered undercooked. The Virginia Department of Health warns you that raw or undercooked meat, poultry, seafood, shellfish, or eggs may increase your risk of foodborne illness.

I have put the blame for this nonsense squarely on the VDH by stating that they are the ones warning you. I operate from the premise that my customers are adults and do not need or want me helping them to decide what is appropriate for their diets.

Do I have to tell you how stupid this warning looks taped to the front of the display case at my favorite sushi bar?

Do you have any idea what a nightmare this verbiage at the bottom of our menus has been for our servers? Can you imagine how many times a shift they must answer the question, "Does this mean that the quail is served raw?"

The VDH, following the lead of the FDA, has decided that most proteins and potentially harmful foods must be cooked to an internal temperature of at least 155 degrees. Have you ever had a steak cooked to 155 degrees? It's a travesty, a lump of shoe leather, and a dishonor to the cow that died so that we could eat it.

The required statement on our menu merely articulates that for certain food items such as steaks, you may order it rare if you like, but don't say that the VDH didn't warn you that you might get sick. They don't bother to mention that you have a higher chance of getting killed by a drunk driver on the way home from the restaurant, do they?

And for other foods where we don't give you the choice of how you want it cooked, the warning is stating that we're not going to make shoe leather out of that duck, because you're either going to send it back or go tell everyone you know how bad it was.

I've been in restaurants long enough to know that bad things can happen when people handle food and I know that the VDH is sincerely trying to help prevent that. But, guys, a regulation that causes more confusion on the part of the consumer is not helping.

It's Vegetable Time

Although I hate the terribly hot kitchen this time of year, I love the constant stream of vegetables that are coming in now through frost. These vegetables never fail to inspire me to create something really beautiful from them.

Here's a case in point: a napoleon made from layers of fresh corn pancakes and sliced tomatoes, sitting on a bed of sautéed spinach, topped with a little mousse of herbed goat cheese. The pancakes are made from raw kernels of local bi-color corn, a bit of stone-ground blue corn meal, and flour.

The Chef is an *sshole

You might as well read about it here first. I caused a table of eight boors to leave the restaurant tonight. I didn't actually tell them to leave, but they were smart enough to understand my intent. No doubt, the encounter will be plastered around a bunch of Internet review sites by morning and the world will know that I am an *sshole.

You've seen people like this: fairly young, know-it-alls, with huge chips on their shoulders. Really, after being seated in a nice restaurant, who asks oh-so-snidely, "Does anyone here know anything about wine?"

The party ordered a bottle of Burgundian style Pinot Noir, accepted it, had it poured around the table, and then called the server back over to send it back because it was "musty." Actually, I smelled and tasted the rejected wine and it was gorgeous.

They decided to replace it with a Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc, which the taster rejected as "vinegar." Again, I tasted the wine and it was totally tropical dead-on NZ SB. If it wasn't clear before this point, it was certainly obvious that we were dealing with poseurs.

At this point, I had lost just about all my profit on this table, but in the spirit of hospitality, we were still gracious and got them wine and took their order. The appetizer order came and went and then we cooked the entrée order. Immediately, three of the fish plates came back as being overcooked.

I looked at the plates and they were perfect. The fish was still just a little translucent in the center of each. I tasted each to be sure and they were beautiful.

I went to the dining room to see what we could do to appease the table and all I could hear was this party talking so loudly about what terrible wine and food we had. You've heard them before: the ones that talk so that everyone must hear them, the ones that want everyone to know how important they are.

I could see the eyes rolling on the table just behind them and that's when I knew I had to do something. These boors were intruding on the evenings of our other guests.

After they left, I went to the other table to apologize to them for the intrusion of this other party on their evening, but before I could say anything, the woman at the table asked, "What was their problem?"

I learned a long time ago, the hard way, that in the long run, you lose a lot less by making offensive tables leave, than by letting them stay and offending other guests. Sad, but true. I guess that makes me an *sshole.