We tried the kumamoto and beausoleil oysters, ankimo, lobster roll, salt and pepper shrimp, uni pasta, and rabbit cavetelli.

My photos are extra terrible because it’s darker than Mordor in there. For a real review, check out Besha’s post. But for haiku’s describing what I ate, read below.

briny and well shucked
fairly priced taste of the sea
beasoleils bested

the oceans pate
roe pops across silk liver
it was sort of bland

the musk of butter
chilly crustacean delights
I don’t deserve this

oh plump crispy prawn
you’re overcooked though piquant
slurp the pungent head

gonads I crave you
lovely fresh pasta so sweet
but not quite funky

chicken and dumplings
but pasta with cauliflower
bested the classic

I love to cook. Be it alone, where I find an afternoon of solo chopping to be quite therapeutic, or tackling major menus with friends, there’s nothing better than wielding the knife with some music blasting (dub-step was a popular cooking choice of mine this year) and a cold beer next to the cutting board. I’ve learned much more, but have so far to go. I mean, I’ve never done a souffle! Or a standing rib roast! I want to learn Indian cuisine, and how to clean and filet fish, and charcuterie, and…the list goes on. For now, here are a few of my favorite cooking lessons from 2011.

Pasta dishes like aglio e olio, cacio e pepe, and carbonara made many appearances this year. Simple enough in design, to obtain the perfect texture and sauce consistency requires experiential timing and touch. I finally feel like I can make a proper pasta. Beautiful fresh pasta nests like these definitely help.

My favorite pasta all year was a quick pan sauce of salty pasta water and ‘nduja, a hot Calabrian spreadable salami I obtained from Jason at Cured Meats. I must have made that dish four times that week. I did spare a little to make a stunning grilled cheese with basil.

Cooler sous vide – I finally got my pastured pork at that exact right temperature.

Flannery beef. Still the reigning champ of steak in my book. So expensive. But so good. Look at the marbling on this strip!

Lasagna. My ultimate comfort food. I made many in 2011, including a few vegetarian versions so Katie could enjoy it along with me. But my heart belongs to Bologna. I made the bechamel (which I’ve finally nailed) and meat ragu version a couple of times, including once with calf livers, which made it extra funky and interesting. Lasagna for breakfast (with an espresso, in this one photo) is the best. Marone!

Soups. I’m making them quite regularly these days. They used to intimidate me for whatever silly reason, but now I know I can dig around my fridge and pantry and make SOME sort of soup. The Vitamix helps (understatement). This soup below is a mix of frozen peas and water and herbs. Nothing more.

Over the last week I’ve knocked out cheese sauces. I had a mac and cheese break (greasy, grainy) a few weeks ago, so I spent some time researching why this happens, then played around with a few variations of recipes. I wanted a cheese sauce that could take a real sharp cheese, melt smoothly, and hold up even when reheated. I’ve found my easy, no cream method – bechamel held with xantham gum. Mix in small quantities of grated cheese over very low heat.

The veggie plate. Chili oil marinated squash. Gently simmered pink eye peas. Yuzo kosho mashed cauliflower. Tomatoes with chives. No recipes, just preparing things simply and properly and seasoning in a way that makes sense.

Homemade biscuits. Buttery (but not soggy), flaky, crusty on the outside, made with buttermilk and frozen butter. Maybe not the prettiest, but I nailed the texture. It made my day.

Porchetta. Or a version thereof. This one was a picnic pork shoulder, with herbs, roasted for hours, the skin finished under the broiler.

2011 was the year I broke the oven in my kitchen. I began cooking my pizzas at 800F+ on the clean cycle, which is a process that requires some trial and error. I became a little more familiar with making, aging, and working with doughs, though I still need lots of practice there.

Moving on to other people’s food – my brother made some extremely impressive gougères. Better than the last time I tried the French Laundry recipe, and better than any I’ve tried outside of my meal at Per Se.

My friend Brad and I tackled a Momofuku meal. While I wasn’t overly impressed with the dishes, it was once again a great learning experience. This time we got to break down a whole pig’s head, debone chickens, and assemble this dish with meat glue.

And while I learn a lot by trying to follow complicated recipes word for word, my friend Rowdy continues to rock it in the kitchen and be an inspiration with his freewheeling style. I still can’t touch his hot chicken. How did he know that dish of cured, but uncooked bacon with a thyme dressing would be brilliant at 1:30 in the morning? I don’t think he did. But he just gets in the kitchen and experiments, and more and more I think that’s the way to do it.

I was in NYC this past weekend, so as I’ve done before, I will photo bomb your browser with low quality camera phone shots! Let’s start extra blurry, shall we?

Why are your scallops $41 at Marea? One of many reasons is likely the single piece of golden onyx that backs the popular, social bar they have.

The crudo (raw sea creatures) menu is extensive and expensive, but no regrets on ordering these four little bites of citrus laced langoustines on cucumber. A bright flavored firmness with which my mouth was not familiar.

Uni and crab spaghetti. Excessively beautiful. Their inimitable fresh spaghetti provides a base that would amplify even the humblest of sauce.

Even more well known is Marea’s octopus and marrow fusilli. While I could not exact the marrow flavor, I’m sure it was the well-heeled benefactor behind this rich sauce, which featured suction cup free red wine braised octopus, the most tender to pass thy lips.

Three superlative scallops, seared wonderfully with salsify, hip root vegetable du jour. Quite good, but at $41 not including tax & tip, I expect the mollusks to levitate from their beautiful shells like a Criss Angel illusion (tricks are things whores do for money), right into mi boca, where the taste continues its transcendence upwards directly to my flavor brain. This culinary feat was not quite achieved.

Onwards, I tried a plainly great sausage and rabe sandwich from City Sandwich. Next time I’d go for one of the Portuguese blood sausage offerings.

Monday was Katz’s, my first try, as my family’s always been partial to the packed house (and even more packed sandwiches) at Carnegie.

Gotta say, I was a bit more smitten with Katz’s. Less stress, more open, well tested ordering format…

.. and an epic sandwich. I’m much more of a corned beef than pastrami guy, and this specimen was as good as I’ve had. Along with a Brooklyn lager, it was a fine way to spend a Monday morning.

Then we made the walk South to Chinatown, to try Xi’an Famous Foods, the darling of many food shows from No Reservations to Bizarre Foods. The spicy lamb soup in noodles was a dish to remember. The cumin/Sichuan peppercorn flavor profile is nothing new to fans of Peter Cheng’s, but the noodles are unlike those I’ve had in Atlanta, and the mix of rich broth, lamb, cabbage, herbs was just so damn well done.

$3 lamb burger. My mom considered getting one for the plane home, a move that would have surely resulted in the riot of Delta Flight 561, row 31.

OK, let’s hoof it back up to Little Italy, to check out Torrisi for a sandwich. What’s that? Your new casual fare restaurant next door just opened for the first time ever today? Well you are in luck, Parm, for I am a blogger, an expert in such early assessments. If Torriso is a step forward in the amalgam of Italian American cookery, Parm is out to prove that classics earned such labeling for a reason.

Baked clams, butter, and hot sauce converged for about 90 seconds in the space/mouth continuum.

Chicken parm hoagie. Bright sauce. Crisp hot chicken. Sesame bread especially notable.

Beet tartare at Babbo. This was the best photo I could get. Not pictured – beef cheek ravioli in squab liver sauce with black truffle, or the duck breast/duck confit dish with figs. We had an enjoyable meal for sure, fun with friends, and I mopped up my food, but in terms of pasta genius, finesse, menu interest, and overall excitement, Marea overshadowed the now mature, well oiled machine of Babbo. Though I did sit next to Isaac Mizrahi, who has been singing the praises of Babbo since 1998.

As a friend said, if you want to try Babbo, just head over to La Pietra Cucina on Peachtree. Chef Logue’s menu is of the same style, even featuring a few of the same dishes.

Sunday I dined on a half a banana, a bagel, and five caffeinated power gels as my mom and I ran the NYC marathon, along with 47k other crazies willing to travel by subway, ferry, and bus to Staten Island, than run back from whence we came (Midtown). We had a blast, a weekend to remember. Thanks Mom! Thanks for pulling me through those last few miles!

A while back I came across a recipe from a dish at The Purple Pig in Chicago, which featured pork blade steaks and nduja. Fortuitously, I had just received some blade steaks from Caw Caw, a thin, beyond fatty, delicious, and inexpensive cut of pork. But where to find nduja?

The only online source I could find was Boccalone, the famous producer of “tasty salted pig parts” in San Francisco. I further inquired with the twitterverse, and to no surprise, Cured Meats replied that I should avoid the Boccalone product which isn’t anything like the traditional Calabrian style, and if I wanted some I should go see him, as Sausage Debauchery had sent him the real deal.

Apparently the only way to get a true Calabrian nduja in the US is to make it yourself. The ingredients are simple: very fatty pork cuts (often jowl, belly, and head), chili powder, salt, cure, and maybe some other spices. Stuff in a hog casing, ferment, dry in a curing chamber. More info can be found in the book My Calabria (related nduja website by the cookbook’s author here).

So the other weekend I went to go see the “pork Godfather” to give it a try. The nduja was the heat, in the badass colloquial sense, but also quite literally. Spicy and fatty and rich, it’s spreadable consistency means it can be used in a wide variety of applications. I first tried it simply spread on some bread. Later at home I used it to make a savory grilled cheese with cheddar, feta, and basil.

Per Cured Meat’s instructions, I’ve been making an amazing pasta with the nduja as well.

While boiling some noodles in very salty water, I saute sliced onions in a small amount of oil, later adding the mostly cooked pasta, cherry tomatoes, torn basil, 1/2 cup of pasta water, and a healthy dollop of nduja to the pan. Then toss (with tongs, or a nice wrist flip if you got that in your bag) until the nduja literally melts, coating the pasta and creating an instant sauce, rich with fat and fiery flavor.

The sad part is, I only have one tablespoon left. As they say, ’tis better to have loved spicy cured pork fat, than to never have loved at all.

Bonus photo! Check out Cured Meat’s new meat slicer, the hand crank design is a work of art.

My buddy Matt and I cooked up some dinner for a party this past weekend, which I was calling my “Spring Meal”. The focus was to complete more recipes from Chez Panisse Vegetables, but to also use a few elements from the new cookbook Ideas In Food. Featured vegetables were asparagus, artichokes (which we completely screwed up during prep), fennel, and carrot. But the main proteins were seafood – sushi grade yellowtail (hamachi), uni, and halibut. I believe yellowtail can be found in the Atlanta area, and halibut is here and there, but I couldn’t find a viable uni source. So I decided to order all three from Catalina Offshore Products.

I had previously browsed their website, but had been hesitant to make a purchase due to the $20 overnight shipping. But when purchasing four items (I also picked up soft shell crabs), the freight per unit is greatly diminished and the prices become more reasonable. Also, based on their geography and volume, I assumed (and hoped) the quality would exceed anything at local grocers.

The morning after ordering, a cooler arrived Fedex. The hamachi was still frozen solid. Yes, this is Japanese fish, and no, I’m not worried about radioactive fallout. Besides my recent acquisition of super human strength, I feel fine.

The hamachi had some really nice looking marbling, especially obvious on the belly side. Half the yellowtail was served completely raw with a lemon and olive oil dressing, the other half was cured for three hours in Sichuan pepper, sugar, and salt ala the Momofuku cookbook.

The tray of uni was small, but quite affordable at $20. It was enough to garnish nine plates of pasta, plus have enough leftover for the dish at the top of this post, which I prepared for lunch the next day. As far as quality goes the flavor was excellent and on most pieces the texture was spot-on (a few on the bottom were slightly compressed). I’d order this again without question.

I made a crab stock for the pasta sauce, and I just like this photo. It’s fun as hell hacking up shells with my big Chinese cleaver, which I picked up for < $20 in the grocery store in Chinatown.

I made the asparagus soup from Chez Panisse, but used the cryo-blanche method from Ideas in Food for the garnish. The asparagus were peeled, soaked in a brine, frozen in an airtight bag for 24 hours, then defrosted in the fridge. Read the book for the science behind it, but the ice crystals basically tenderize the asparagus, which can then be eaten immediately without further “cooking”. I think 24 hours was too long as they were a bit mushy, but definitely tender and edible. Next time I’d like to try 6-12 hours and see if my results change.

Here’s the soup, before plating and garnish. We served it cold. People really enjoyed it, and I’d make it again.

On accident I didn’t order enough halibut from Catalina, so I went to Fresh Market for another pound. The Fresh Market Alaskan halibut ($24/lb) is on top, the Catalina Pacific Halibut ($14) is below. Both were cooked in the oven in a fennel infused fish broth. They are slightly different fish, but the Catalina was much cleaner tasting and more tender than its meatier and flakier counterpart, and obviously much less expensive.

Just had to shout out to Star Provisions. The Italian buffalo butter, truffled ham, and baguette is a fine snack while waiting to serve the first course.

The pasta was another Ideas in Food recipe, from their blog. The pasta is from their cookbook, which is interesting as it includes milk and olive oil. The filling is ricotta, parm, uni, and yuzo kosho. The sauce is crab stock with xanthan gum and butter. I found the pasta to be a little heavy, maybe it wasn’t rolled thin enough, and the filling flavor didn’t emerge as much as I’d like, but it was a really fun dish and peopled enjoyed it. The little bit of uni went really well with the dish. I’d do it again, though I want it to feel lighter. I look forward to playing around with xanthan gum too.

Katie and I just had a quick trip to NYC over the weekend, as could be surmised from my gloating twitter stream the last few days. We went for a concert – LCD Soundsystem, their last show ever, a crazy 3.5 hour marathon that I’m so glad I saw. We left at 1AM, the picture above is right outside of Madison Square Garden around that time. I love how the street is packed and lit up late into the morning in the city.

Thinking about it last night on the flight back, I love visiting NYC, and the restaurants are mind bending (“why can’t we have ___ in Atlanta!?!) and there is always something interesting or exciting to do, but I’m not built long-term for that city. Or maybe it’s just that I’m used to Atlanta. I’m too accustomed to the quality and pace of life down here. Atlanta is a relatively big city, but it doesn’t feel that way. I don’t have to put up with the concrete jungle. People aren’t as pissed off and it doesn’t feel like everything’s a hustle. It feels like home, and I wonder if transplant New Yorkers feel that way about their city?

I’m happy living in the South, paying a fair price for a comfortable lifestyle, and NYC is less than two hours away via a $300 flight.

So yeah, we ate a ton, per usual. A few of the highlight photos are below. Complete photo slideshow below.

Oh, and how I ended up in the ER at 7AM on Saturday? Let’s just say I might be a battered husband. But I’m ok.

$5 Amazing Pat La Frieda burgers in the Delta terminal. I had one coming and going. Best airport deal ever, and possibly the most memorable burger of the trip, including a Minetta Tavern Black Label Burger (also La Frieda beef, but it costs $27) at 1AM.

The big food thrill of the weekend was our epic lunch at Eleven Madison Park. Lunch is a bit more affordable, though we managed to blow it out pretty good. Everything was as perfect as is expected for a restaurant of this caliber, including the service. Before the meal we ran through dietary restrictions and allergies, including Katie being a vegetarian, and they didn’t make it feel like the tiniest bit of a nuisance. How this place is only 1 Michelin star is ridiculous. Around this time last year I ate at Per Se and Le Bernardin, and this experience bested both. I think the comparison would vary by personal preference, but for me, the people, the environment, the wine list, and the type of cuisine – a bit of complexity with a comforting and seasonal feel – is what I desire in fine dining.

My beef with sweetbreads, spring onions, potatoes, and green onions sure was purty, and damned fine, though the lobster dish I had was probably the best dish of the day.

Katie’s roasted cross section of cauliflower was brilliant. No one uses the cauliflower core – why not?  Everything about this was beautiful, hearty, and delicious. Of course, there were a few other preparations of cauliflower on the plate as well.

I could go on and on about this meal. The halibut dashi, the sturgeon foam, the wine, it was quite the memorable experience.

Dinner was at Soto, whose restaurant I never tried back in Atlanta. It was before my time (read: before I had sufficient funds). I’ve heard stories of him being…difficult, but he was quite kind to us. I had a few drinks in me and and thus the courage to try to thank him in Japanese, which I think he liked. He seemed very pleased that we were from Atlanta and that I apparently had an endless desire for his perfect nigiri.

Photo from the Emergency Room at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt hospital. As you can see, I rocked that ER.

Pizza at Co. While a different style from the bevy of neo-Neopolitan style places popping up (think Motorino), I thought this pizza was excellent. Stretchy, salty, puffy thin dough/crust, smattering of simple but vibrant sauce and cheese, and not overly filling/doughy, it was really, really good.

Toasts are all the rage up that way too. The broccoli rabe and bean versions were a worthwhile starter.

From 12AM to 2AM at the John Dory Oyster house in the Ace Hotel in Chelsea, 6 oysters and a beer are $15. Despite almost getting assaulted by a tiny employee who thought I was banging on the bathroom door, I highly recommend this popular spot for some late night eats.

And by the way bro, I would have immediately ripped your eye brow ring right outcha face. Hardcore.

English breakfast at the Breslin, also at the Ace Hotel. Crispy outside/creamy inside blood sausage, homemade bacon, and the juiciest pork sausage will do amazing things for a hangover.

Frozen hot chocolate at the wildly popular and touristy Serendipity 3. Good, maybe not worth a 90 minute wait. Unless of course you head to Patsy’s across the street and try some pizza to kill time. The pizza was ok at Patsy’s, nothing amazing. It is plain to see they cook in a coal oven, a decently crispy crust, but this pizza has no love in it.

Cappellitti at Osteria Morini, the most casual of restaurants in pasta-wizard Michael White’s empire. The word ethereal is too often used when describing light and amazing dumplings such as these mascarpone fille specimens, but all I can say is wow. A light emulsification of butter, what I believe was chicken stock, and some pancetta were all these needed to send me over the top. Highly recommended.

The last six months I’ve begun to dabble in simple cured meats like the pancetta pictured above. The local blog Cured Meats (thanks Jason) has been my main resource for all the how-to, but really these are stupid easy once you understand the basics.

Below is the pork belly going in the cure. Salt, pepper, and some herbs. You can use cure #2 (aka pink salt aka nitrates) to prevent botulism and retain color but it isn’t really necessary for these types of cured meats. Of course, this is just my basic understanding and I am still alive.

After a few days in the cure, turning every couple days, the seasonings are rinsed off and the belly is dried. At this point you can hang it in your fridge, or if you don’t have space like me, you can set it on a plate or rig some sort of setup to allow air to circulate around the meat. In a few weeks it will have dried significantly and you are done. If you aren’t hanging it, you will need to turn it every few days. Below is a belly I just rinsed and is getting ready to dry in my fridge. Look at the cute little pig whiskers.

If you were to smoke the belly after the cure, it’s American bacon. If it goes straight to drying, it’s pancetta. Then pancetta does not need to be cooked to eat it. After curing and drying, it is effectively “cooked”. Slice it thin and eat it like salumi.

This same process can be done with jowl to create guanciale. Below is completed half jowl from a large pig. Once I cut into it, I noticed some parts of the fat had taken on a pinkish hue, but I’m not sure why. There is more fat in the guanciale, and the fat tastes different and becomes translucent when cooked. It also has more of a crunchy than chewy fat texture.

Below is the raw jowl.

Jowl in the cure.

Jowl drying in the fridge.

There was one litte piece of jowl that I ended up smoking after the cure. It was pretty good.

My favorite dish for using guanciale is pasta all’amatriciana. The rendered fat from the guanciale is the oil used to cook the garlic and onion and lends an unmatched flavor to the sauce. You will see pancetta or bacon in some all’amatriciana receipes, but this is a fairly unacceptable bastardization. Then again, many people get crazy caught up in authenticity of Italian dishes. The Babbo recipe I linked above uses red onion, which is a debated addition.

Food & Wine had the Babbo-based recipe in an issue and not only tells you to replace guanciale with pancetta, but also says you should save time by purchasing sauce, which is dumb. The basic tomato sauce from Babbo is fantastic and takes less than forty-five minutes from start to finish. Buy the 106oz can of San Marzano tomatoes from Costco for $4 and make a bunch and save it.

One of my favorite homemade pasta sauce tricks lately is right when ready to plate my final dish, I take my sauce, my pasta, and toss them both in a hot sauce pan with a moderately sized chunk of butter. Toss until the butter is melted and incorporated. Obviously it will add richness and flavor, but also creates a more cohesive sauce.

Another easy cured recipe to try is duck bresaola. I tried a batch of Rowdy’s the other day, sliced super thin and served over seared duck breast. It’s the same process as above, with different spices.

Never again should anyone reading this purchase that mushy Boar’s head pancetta-like stuff. Make your own, it’s easy and more gratifying.

I made Timpano for the first time last night, a dish I first read about on The Food in My Beard. It’s like an Italian pie, filled with all the cheesy, savory Italian dishes you love. The great part about this dish is you can riff on it any way you want.

I still follow recipes quite a bit, but I’m trying to get better about cooking from feel. I just start cooking and do what I think is right. Sometimes it works out well, sometimes…it’s chalked up to a learning experience. People don’t trust themselves enough in the kitchen. Recipes are often created for print, for revenue. It’s often the case that an interesting recipe is just a base recipe and technique, with variations applied at different phases. Learning the fundamentals will allow you to come up with your own variations and interesting dishes, and will make you a better cook. That’s what I’m working on. There is a great article on this topic with Thomas Keller in Food and Wine, I highly recommend reading it.

Anyways, this was a lot of fun, though a lot of work. Here are the steps involved:

• Make the sauce (San Marzanos, garlic, onion, shredded carrot, olive oil)
• Cook the pastas
• Pan fry the Italian sausage
• Create the cream sauce (onion, garlic, fresh herbs, flour, cream, milk)
• Toss the pastas in the sauces
• Make bread crumbs in food processor, soak in milk
• Mix the three meats with egg, parsley, Parmesan, bread crumbs
• Poach the meatballs in some reserved red sauce
• For eggplant and boneless chicken thighs – dredge in egg, bread crumbs, cheese, parsley, pan fry
• Roll out the puff pastry, fill as desired
• Cook for 40-45 minutes, let it rest for 10 minutes

It was as stupifyingly good as it looks. The only thing I would have done different is take the pastas out of the fridge at least 30 minutes before I was ready to fill the pastry. The cold pasta kept the whole dish from being warm enough inside when the pastry was done cooking.

The cook time could be cut down significantly if you purchased some store bought sauces and bread crumbs, but I love spending an afternoon in the kitchen, listening to music, and drinking wine(s). Then of course, sharing the food with friends and family is great. Best Saturday in a while.

I made these gnocchi last weekend based on a technique I saw on Ozersky TV. It seemed so simple, I couldn’t wait to try it. Gnocchi can easily get too overworked and gummy and this method reduces the chance of that happening.

If a recipe says to use two pounds of potatoes and two cups of flour, to follow that blindly makes no sense. You aren’t going to have exactly two pounds of potato. Even if you manage that, the potato will have different levels of starch. Flours vary greatly too. You just have to add flour to feel, a little at a time, similar to making pizza dough. This recipe helps with that process as you spread the potato out it’s easy to see how much flour you need to dust on the potato, and it’s easy to determine when the dough is coming together.

I don’t have a ricer or a food mill, so I use a food processor with a grater blade attachment. While not ideal, it produces a light, loose potato like below.

Then I used my dough scraper to chop out the potato, Scarface style, and dust with the flour. Once the dough came together, I wrapped it and let it rest for twenty minutes. The rest time makes it more workable when it comes time to roll out the dough.

I froze a bunch of the gnocchi. They freeze fairly well, though the texture wasn’t as smooth and pillowy after freezing. They became slightly grainy and the integrity of the gnocchi was slightly disintegrating, I believe due to the amount of time it takes to cook them from frozen vs fresh.

This method is highly recommended. Video below.

Yet another recent Scoutmob inspired meal was at Pacci in Midtown. I attended a media brunch months ago, but this was my first visit to Pacci for dinner. I’ve heard good things about Pacci lately, so I was very much looking forward to this dinner with my friend Brandon, also a wino. I’m actually meeting up with Brandon (and then later, Hardy of Dirty South Wine) in Napa Valley & Sonoma this weekend for a quick post-race vacation. I plan on getting fat and highfalutin drunk. If Hardy has to “shush” me in the middle of a meal at a 2 star Michelin restaurant such as Cyrus, I’ll know I’ve achieved my goal.

Which brings me to my appetizer, the kobe beef carpaccio, which is super thin, meltingly tender, and dreamy. The salad atop these heavenly cuts can be pushed aside easily.

We also tried a hot appetizer with clams and mussels in a bread-friendly sweet and creamy anise flavored broth. This was another winner with plenty of tasty shellfish, even if the sauce was a touch too sweet.

What could be deemed the simplest dish we sampled, the papardelle bolognese, is in my running for dish of the evening. Fresh al dente ribbons of pasta, hearty and tangy sauce, and some cheese…that’s it. The sauce wasn’t really quite that color, this is just the best I could do with my camera considering how low the lighting was in the plush bromantic booth we shared.

Similar to my risotto at Sotto Sotto, the mushroom risotto distracted me with its banal use of truffle oil. The fried egg was an unorthodox but welcome addition though.

The short rib dish was…a braised short rib. I don’t order them often lately. Short ribs are good but tend to be very similar from restaurant to restaurant. But if you are feeling like a short rib, it won’t disappoint.

The veal chop special with quinoa and a questionable amount of hollandaise was something to be seen. The amazingly large hunk of tender calf was cooked wonderfully, and really I would have been pleased if they had just served me this steak on its own, maybe with an accompaniment of asparagus with that hollandaise diverted to some place where it belongs. Or perhaps a side of their finest jelly beans.

We brought in our own wine, including this ’07 Copain James Berry Syrah. Quite elegant Cali syrah, though young. I also brought in one of Sebastien Riffault’s crazy freaky unfiltered Sancerres. Rich honey, acid, and fun in a glass.

When Brandon made the reservation, they told us they’d waive corkage. I’m not sure why, but I’ll take it.