Tag Archives: travel
Austin Dead Blog: The Finale
Tuesday: On Which We Eat Like Kings
Unquestionably the best meal I’ve had so far was at Congress. My colleague Rachel and I closed out our trip right with three great courses plus some dessert and drinks. After a sweet pea custard with Parmesan foam amuse bouche – sounded kind of showy, but the flavor was all there - we had our first course: I had a beef tartare with fried oysters, cheese, and black truffle, and Rachel had an arugula salad with beets, grapes, and a ball of burrata cheese. Both were as good as I could imagine, and the presentation was gorgeous. While it’s a little over the top to have specialized plates for virtually every possible food configuration, it’s impossible to deny that the plating induces some awe and head-shaking.
Second course. Veal shortbreads for Rachel and braised oxtail with garlic and chive gnocchi for me. Again, both amazing. For the main entree, Rachel had two preparations of veal and I had lamb chops over salsify with candied oranges and a cardamom yogurt.
Desserts produced more “wow” moments: I had sweet potato beignets that were fluffy and covered with lightly salted chicory and set aside some pecan brittle and salted butter ice cream. It’s one of the best desserts I’ve maybe ever had. Rachel’s strawberry shortcake was perfectly fine, but it was the Green Chartreuse ice cream with homemade pop rocks that had us in fits. I’m going to try and make the former.
The drinks were so good that they deserve their own post after I’ve experimented with some of them and can try to replicate them for posting, so watch for that. A few of them use some pretty outrageous ingredients — like tamarind gastrique — but they’ll be worth the effort.
It’s hard to even mention lunch with a dinner like that, but I also had lunch at Coreanos, a Korean taco cart that does some awesome stuff. I think the photo kind of speaks for itself, actually. Two bucks a pop, so four dollars total for these delicious bites.
Wednesday: On Which I Get to Sleep in My Own Bed
With SXSW Interactive now completely over, I took the morning before my flight to go walk around the U-Texas campus, which is BEAUTIFUL. Very cohesive, very classic – a little too classic in some cases, namely the Jefferson Davis statue standing near statues of George Washington and Woodrow Wilson.
They also have a great campus art museum – the Blanton Museum – most of which I covered in about an hour. Two hours would be ample time to see the whole thing, I think. Completed in 2003, there’s a contemporary installation piece done in blue acrylic that serves as the centerpiece of the whole building.
We ate lunch at Frank – the artisan hot dog place I’d been to a few nights prior – so Rachel could try it, and while sitting there eating our dogs, Jack White of the White Stripes, the Raconteurs, Dead Weather, et cetera walks right by us – no more than a foot away – and ends up hanging out at a table across the room the entire time we were there. He seemed pretty open to the dozen or so people who came over for photos and quick chats and all that, so I found it all the more hilarious that these hoochied-up two girls were literally stalking him while he was in there.
Then we got on a plane and came home. Now I get to go to bed. Thank goodness.
I imagine none of this is terribly interesting to anyone other than myself, for any readers, sorry. 
But I know that I’ll personally enjoy going back and reading over this in the future, so pardon the self-indulgence!
Austin Dead Blog: Post 5
Monday Night: On Which I’m Determined to Sleep
I didn’t stay out too late last night, trying instead to get some rest. But some weird combination of factors – noise outside, people in the halls, some sort of weird allergy thing, the time difference – has been waking me up early every morning since I got here, and last night was no exception.
So tonight, I’m determined to get some damn sleep.
As such, it’s been a pretty low key night. More drinks at Haddington’s, this time with dinner. The food there’s pretty damn good, and I just ate a pork chop almost three inches thick that was impressively moist throughout. I also drank a brand of bourbon of which I was not previously aware.
Balcones is a distillery based in Waco, Texas, which I didn’t know when I ordered their True Blue whiskey, but I do now thanks to some fine reporting.
(Interestingly enough, about an hour before I ordered it, I saw an incredibly large man out of the corner of my eye. He looked familiar. With good reason, I think. I’m about 90% sure it was fellow Michigan alumnus and NFL football player and TV star and all-around good dude, Dhani Jones. True Blue, indeed.)
Compared to my friend’s whiskey – another small batch booze, this one from Colorado – the True Blue was markedly lighter. As it turns out, that’s because it has very little age on it. You’d never know it, though, from the nose, which is initially full of cocoa to me. Unlike other young whiskeys I’ve had, this manages to imply sweetness in the form of caramel and tiny bits of vanilla flavor. I wonder if part of that is the blue corn? Either way, there’s a lot going on here for a young spirit, yet it remains dry (and drinkable, despite the 122 proof).
It’s hard to say much of anything after one glass, but these Texans at Balcones are making some solid whiskey. I have to imagine it’s impossible to get, even in a less-than-legal way, in Michigan, but if you’re a boozehound, search this one out.
Austin Dead Blog: Post 4
I suspect that as I grow weary of posting about my various adventures in Austin while half asleep (see figure 1 and figure 2), these blog entries will grow shorter. By Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, I very well may just copy a tweet for my blog post. Maybe something like “omg, #sxsw is awesome, love #austin food and drink, and I zzzzzzzzzzzz”
Sunday: On Which Meat Becomes Thy Watchword
There’s no more rousing start to one’s day than an hour-long panel on relational databases. Except, I suppose, caffeine in the form of excellent coffee. I chose to merge the two, starting with the former and ending with the latter. One of Austin’s many street side carts is Patika Coffee, which features roasted beans from Texas’ own Cuvee Coffee Roasting Company.
I thought their El Salvador single origin brew was remarkable on two levels: It was only $1.75 for a 12-ounce cup and it just smacked me across the face with cocoa flavors. I have no idea what experienced coffee tasters would describe with this brew, but this particular cup, to me, was rife with caramel and chocolate flavors with minimal bitterness. There was a fruitiness to it, but to me, it played second fiddle to this overwhelmingly powerful cocoa flavor. What a treat after walking past two or three Starbucks with lines to find a quick cup of coffee that was exceptionally good.
After more panels and discussions — including one about Detroit featuring several well-known local activists and artists (we’re everywhere, apparently) — it was time for a late lunch, and my colleagues Lara and Rachel and I decided it was time to try some BBQ. So we headed a few blocks north to a tiny cart operated by “the Simms brothers.” The others in my party had a couple of sandwiches, but I opted for the full-sized two meat meal plate consisting of ribs, brisket, potato salad with pickles, beans, and a couple of slices of the cheapest semi-local white bread money can buy. I’m far from a BBQ expert, but I make some damn tasty spareribs and really solid pulled pork in my estimation, and the stuff here was top notch: The brisket was tender and buttery, and the spareribs were remarkably moist. The sauce wasn’t as vinegary as a Carolina-style sauce, but I was a bit surprised to find a bit of tang in there. That’s the not the perception I had coming from Michigan.
Then, 3:30-6pm… Time for more panels and sessions.
Afterwards, I elected to catch up on sporting news — most importantly, a nice seed in the NCAA tourney for Michigan — before meeting up with colleagues Lara and Patti for a meal at Frank, an Austin artisan hot dog joint. I had the most amazing sausage, which they call the Jackelope, a medley of antelope, rabbit, pork, and sage, topped with a huckleberry compote and smoked cheddar.
I finished off the evening back at Haddington’s, part of my absurdly long, alcohol-fueled first night in Austin. It was a much less intense evening this time around, though I tried a few new drinks, including a frothy egg white drink based on rum, chartreuse, orgeat, lime, and Peychaud’s called the “Dover to Calais,” which was absolutely excellent.
Another rock star caliber day. I even had a few random, interesting, even inspiring conversations with other attendees along the way. Though sadly, unlike some other SXSW participants, I have not run into Eliza Dushku or Jake Gyllenhall or Conan, though I will say that I did attend a moderator-led discussion with Paul Reubens today that was informational, touching, and hilarious. Still, as much as I loved that, and no matter who I might have seen, I think the highlight was always destined to be the BBQ.
Can anyone blame me?
Austin Dead Blog: Post 3
Saturday: On Which the US Government Ruins My Sleep
Saw some incredible panels today at the conference ranging from integrating better business measurements into design practices to a panel with Rainn Wilson about his upcoming movie, Super (the trailer for which looks fantastic). Walking between a couple of sessions, across the river, I ran into a parade consisting of an Irish marching band, virtually every firetruck in the city, a mounted division of some military or police unit, and a few police cars. Couldn’t really find any info online about it, but they were headed toward the capital building.
After all that action, some colleagues and I hopped a cab up to a restaurant called Fino.
Very cool little menu with lots of Mediterranean-inspired dishes. It actually felt a lot like a sexy, west coast-version of Ferndale’s Assaggi back home. Unfortunately, we were’t terribly hungry as a group, so we didn’t sample more than a couple small starters and some entrees, but my Wagyu beef cheeks were pretty awesome. Whatever they put in the sauce, presumably beyond the braising liquid, was delicious – very savory and herbal but smooth in terms of texture. They also had a killer cocktail (e.g., a fantastic Campari swizzle with rum and falernum) and wine (e.g., Occhipinti, R. Lopez de Heredia) program.
We rode the bus back, and I spent most of the rest of the night at a rooftop bar with some other colleagues.
Detroit needs rooftop bars. Spring, summer, and autumn with a nice cool breeze? Must happen. Must.
We ended the night at the Driskill Hotel, which gets an A+ on its old-school, classic interior design and a firm D for the Old Fashioned with a big ass chunk of orange peel and a pile of undissolved sugar in the bottom of the glass. It’s hard to convey just how many people were in the streets, which the city closed off to allow people to roam around a bit, and how many people were packed into some of the more popular area bars.
Everything came to a screeching halt for me when a colleague remembered that today was the switch to Daylight Savings Time. Some noise outside my hotel early on and an air conditioning unit that won’t quite ever get to the near frigid temperature I want conspired to wake me more than an hour early despite the time change, so I’m now running on about 5 hours of sleep. Thank you, time change. Now go to hell.
Before bed, I did notice that someone Tweeted to the entire #sxsw hashtag that the restaurant I went on my first night for cocktails, Haddington’s, was a good place to go. I fear a return there may be impossible if the word is out.
Finally, I leave you with this inspirational ad, posted on the wall in an Austin bar:
Austin Dead Blog: Posts 1 & 2
Last night, while stumbling the streets of Austin, TX, I had what I thought was a brilliant idea. I should have known it wasn’t brilliant because brilliant ideas fueled by a freight container of alcohol rarely hold up to the scrutiny of sober eyes.
Live and learn.
Wanting to catalog my culinary adventures in town for posterity and to share with (read: brag to) my friends at home, I thought a nightly blog post about my misadventures would be appropriate. But – and here’s where my “brilliance” comes in – rather than calling it a live blog, I’d call it a dead blog. Because by the time I got back to the hotel, I’d possibly be dead to the world – drunk, tired, or otherwise in no position to form complete, properly punctuated sentences.
Terrible idea, right?
But I’m going to roll with it anyhow.
As it turns out, I’m writing my first post 20 hours late because there was no way my fingers were ever going to find the proper keys yesterday evening.
Austin is a truly awesome city. If the weather didn’t suck so badly in the summers, I’d add it to my very short list of places I’d want to live other than Detroit.
One of the reasons? A pretty solid food and drink scene.
Thursday Night: On Which I Drink My Weight Twice Over
Wine bars usually suck. Either the food isn’t any good or the vibe is too pretentious or the atmosphere is one of reverence rather than conviviality. Mulberry in Austin strikes just the right balance. The food is spectacular, the wine is decent, and it’s got all the charm of a great neighborhood bar. In fact, the staff greeted half the incoming customers by name. Seating only about 25 people inside and maybe another 20 outside, it qualifies as cozy in every sense of the word. So I was genuinely surprised when they managed to prepare some really nice food – including a roasted cauliflower salad with celery root puree, golden raisins, red onion, and crispy prosciutto that was just killer. The wines were good, and I took notes, though most of the really interesting stuff was on the bottle list, which I didn’t try, so I won’t offer any comment on them here.
I also had an interesting drink that is probably worth duplicating at home as a summer refresher. Called the Portonic, it combined white port, fino sherry, lemon, and tonic water. Very quaffable but still interesting and a little funky because of how much sherry flavor comes through.
One particularly helpful woman behind the bar, clearly a food and drink lover, clued me in to some spots to check out beyond the research I’d already done, and I headed off to one of those recommendations — a place called Haddington’s — for some cocktails.
First, I had a sazerac in which the rye had been infused with duck fat. I couldn’t really taste anything too different, but the nose was screaming with both duck and smoke from the flamed lemon peel. A very solid, well-made drink.
Electing to forgo the restraint I told myself I’d get two more before moving on, and one of those was a Haddington’s Word: single malt scotch, maraschino, strega, and lemon, presumably in equal parts. Crazy combination of smoky, sweet, and herbal.
Finally, a drink I may try to make at home some time — the Smoking Jacket. Aged rum, porter beer, amaretto, scotch, and an egg served up with fresh grated nutmeg. Seemingly disparate flavors really ended up being complimentary, and if anything, I’d say the dominant resulting flavor was “mocha latte.” Very unique, very delicious drink.
From there, I walked about a mile and a half to a local dive bar the woman at Mulberry told me about — The Liberty Bar. I was still too full from dinner to take advantage of the food cart (East Side Kings) parked behind, but apparently the chef of the high-end Japanese restaurant in town owns that cart, which allegedly kicks out some pretty amazing Asian-style street food. Austin has an lively street food and cart-based restaurant culture that, as it turns out, I’d be exploring the next day.
At Liberty, I had a Manhattan and a beer, and the bartender bought me a shot, which was a terrible idea. But how does one refuse a free shot? It can’t be done.
On the way back, I stopped in for a Vieux Carre cocktail at a place called The East Side Showroom, which is one of the coolest, most ornately decorated cocktail bars I’ve ever seen with an exceedingly eclectic mix of industrial, Victorian, and French/New Orleans-type influences. All the beer taps come from a tube that looks like it was pulled from a submarine and installed in their ceiling. Need I say more?
Friday Night: On Which There’s Dancing in the Streets
I’m in Austin for SxSW, the conference famous mostly, I think, for its long-standing history with amazing musical acts. But they also run an interactive conference full of sessions on design, the web, social media, and tech stuff, all things in which I have a great professional interest. The first sessions were set to start Friday afternoon, so I slept in a bit and then hit the conference running. After the final session for the day, I met my colleague and her friend to head to dinner.
The previous night, I’d passed these open lots with tons of food carts in them — almost like a trailer park for cooks. We decided to avail ourselves of these for dinner.
Detroit has plenty of food carts, and I’ve heard about the many stands and carts in L.A. these days, but I’ve never seen anything like this – a dozen different food cards in a semi-circle (itself only 200 yards west of another grouping of similar places).
I had grilled rice balls and some absolutely delicious takoyaki, made traditionally with octopus. Interestingly, it was a young couple running the stand and only their second-ever night doing so.
But the best part wasn’t the food. It was the street band festival we just happened to stumble into. HONK is a yearly festival of street bands, and now they’re popping up in multiple cities. We ended up seeing some of the bands that came to Austin to play for HONK Tx. (If the concept sounds familiar and you’re a Detroiter, it’s probably because you know the Detroit Party Marching Band went to play in a similar festival in Boston last fall.)
We enjoyed the tunes for a while and in looking around a bit for another colleague and her friend who were trying to meet up with, we discovered a food cart that made ice cream sandwiches to order. 5 kinds of homemade cookies with about a dozen kinds of crazy ice cream: candied bacon and brown sugar, Mexican chocolate, balsamic fig and marscapone, et cetera. So,so good. I opted for ginger cookies around the Mexican chocolate ice cream, which had a nice cayenne kick at the end.
(The woman who was working the cart demonstrated another thing I love about Austin – the people. She was so very genuine and nice, riding high from serving an ice cream sandwich to Elvis Costello earlier in the day, and she had a really great story. She and her husband moved out of Austin a year ago and now run a farm north of the city, and she works the cart a couple of nights a week now serving amazing ice cream.)
We went back to the East Side Showroom for some more cocktails before calling it a night. One particularly balanced digestif-style drink was called the “attaboy!” Not at all the same as the classic Atta Boy, theirs featured Amaro Nonino and Campari.
I’m really digging this town. With a population of fewer than 800,000, it’s just a bit bigger than Seattle and not all that large by major city standards, but the downtown area along the river is vibrant and full of interesting places to eat and drink, and the amount of convention space in the convention center and hotels is ridiculous. I’ve heard that there are 11,000 people here just for the interactive conference alone. Don’t know if that’s true or not, but if it is, I’m stunned, because things are running so smoothly.
Tomorrow, we have dinner reservations after the final sessions. I’m geeked.
The Hospitality of Spirits: A Journey to Eastern Europe and the Celebration of Booze, Family, and Life
Serbian Spirits
My true love of Eastern European hospitality sprang up in Belgrade, Serbia in 2007. My last aunt born in Serbia had died and left my dad a small sum of money. Being a generous and sentimental fellow, Dad planned an expedition to Serbia and Romania for the family. I’d been to Romania before but never Serbia due to the incessant conflicts during the 90s. Mom, Dad, brother and I set out for the ancestral villages on both sides of the border.
We flew into Belgrade and our cousin Ovidiu, or Ovi, met us at the airport. Dressed in all black with black hair and a stocky frame, Ovi looked much like an Eastern European gangster, or at the very least, our protection from Eastern European gangsters. It’s fortunate that my dad had met him before.
Being Romanian American in Serbia would have been a challenge, as we don’t speak Serbian. Serbian died out with my grandmother who was born there but ethnically Romanian. Ovi was the language link to our own past.
We checked into a hotel for the night and headed to the Shadorska, the Bohemian district of Belgrade, for dinner. You could tell Ovi didn’t make it into the city often. He was as excited as we were. As we walked down the curving cobblestone street, two women called out from the restaurant Dva Jelena. They were framed in the restaurant entrance by a mass of cascading flowers. This was the place we were meant to be.
The interior was all inlaid woods and mystery. Drinks were needed. I wanted to try some slivovitz. It was only normal and the list of brandies was no smaller than an entire page. I looked to Ovi to translate. As his eyes scanned down the page through the selection of slivos, he paused. He turned towards me and in a reverent tone said, “zuta osa.”
I had no frame of reference for what those two words meant, nor what they would later mean. I did not expect them to signal a shift in how I viewed the world. Ovi explained that zuta osa was special slivo. It meant yellow wasp but had another meaning. Yellow wasps were an indicator to the plum farmer that the plums were ripe for picking. The secondary meaning was due to the color of the plum brandy once it had been distilled and aged in oak barrels. The color was as yellow as the wasps. We ordered a round.
Ovi had a simpler rakija. He wanted us to have the best out of respect. A tray of shot glasses was brought out with no fanfare. Amber in color and fragrant as an orchard in autumn, the zuta osa beckoned. As I lifted the glass to my mouth, I felt connected with another world, with my family, with my forebears, with this new, old land.
My mouth burned with alcohol as I took a sip. Then the fruit exploded on the finish as the heat migrated into my stomach. Noroc, the ancient Romanian toast hung in the air then disappeared. Plates appeared laden with peppers of all shapes and colors. I was home.
It was a feast. Musicians entered the scene. As they struck the first chords, the man at the adjacent table began to sing. The songs were melancholic, nostalgic, the same feelings I was beginning to understand about a place I’d never known but now occupied.
Family Spirits
We arrived at the farm in Sutjeska the following day. The land was flat and wide, full of sunflowers, corn and fisheries along the Danube. The houses of the village were huddled together as if for protection. We pulled in the drive and stopped at a rusty, metal gate behind which was a courtyard full of strutting chickens. Could they be dinner?
Silos of dried corn framed out the courtyard. I could see around me all the simple signs of sustainable living we have become so enamored with in the West. We entered the main house, put on slippers and entered the living room. A family waited.
As I was introduced to these wonderful people, a tray of slivo was produced, this time homemade. Noroc! While the men toasted each other the women brought out plate after plate of food like bees returning with pollen to the hive: pork schnitzel, roasted potatoes, red pepper salad, fresh bread, on it went.
Bottles of homemade wine accompanied the feast. I realized I might never have a meal again as fresh as this. I was home. As the celebration continued, more and more relatives arrived. Meal one was followed by meal two after an interlude of intense conversation: more schnitzel, roasted chicken (aha) and a plate of house cured pork beyond imagining. We slept a country sleep.
The next morning more relatives came. One guy, when offered coffee, then beer, said yes to both. After that, we went to the big town of Ecka where my paternal grandmother was born. We cautiously drove down a road of uneven, hand laid bricks. A short man in all black and a fedora haled us from his bicycle. He invited us into his house.
We sat at a simple kitchen table and were offered quince brandy and a plate of cured pork. Noroc! They had been waiting. As we discussed the brandy, the man agreed to take us down the street to see the local brandy distiller.
The distiller was a Serb who greeted us at his gate. He explained the process and showed us the copper alembic still assembled in his garage. The Serb mainly made plum and apricot brandies and proceeded to produce two clear bottles. He commanded us to drink in Serbian. Though we couldn’t understand the precise words, we knew exactly what he meant.
We took deep swigs and passed the bottles around. The fiery fruit greeted us like a slap and a hug. We were flying. Beware of Eastern European men bearing clear unlabelled bottles.
Simple Spirits
As the crow flies, my grandfather’s village Guilvaz is only 40km from my grandmother’s village in Serbia. What God had joined together in geography man can somehow sever. Banat, the region, straddles the border of Romania and Serbia. Through communism, wars and Romania’s ascension to the European Union, now it takes about 3.5 hours to drive between villages, past closed borders, and through nonsensical zigzagging turns in the road.
Ovi drove us to the border after a random stop at an official’s house for what I assumed was a furtive payment to let us cross the border. Our Romanian driver, also named Ovi, met us on the Serbian side. Hello Ovi, goodbye Ovi.
Guilvaz is much poorer than Ecka and Sutjeska. An E.U. sign met us on the outskirts of town. A new lamb abattoir had been built. Our cousin in the village later told us the owners wouldn’t hire local Romanians because they feared the locals would steal the meat.
As we drew close to the village a train rumbled by with its doors flapping open and closed. Another man in a fedora on a bicycle caught up to us and showed us the way to our destination. Where do these guys come from?
The road had never been paved. It was rutted as if a meteor shower had rained down and grass had grown over the enduring indentations. We passed a ruined church, abandoned buildings, a horse grazing in front of a house, and an old woman planting seeds.
After reaching my cousin’s house the road gave out to farmland. Nearby, a healthy, white pit bull sat in the driver’s seat of an old Dacia car. We ducked to enter the doorframe of the house. Not just the big news in the village, we were the tallest people by a foot.
We walked through a small room with a tile furnace and a low wood ceiling before entering a dining room where a colorful table had been set. After being poked and prodded by the newfound relatives, a clear bottle of tuica (Romanian for plum brandy) was produced and glasses raised.
This time the brandy was all fire and brimstone, hellfire and damnation to follow — rustic, you might say. The food was simple and fresh: house-cured pork, sausages, tomatoes, cheese, peppers, roasted chicken and potatoes. More relatives arrived from Timisoara, the big city. More glasses were raised and drained.
We went to see my grandfather’s house and were met by a couple of squatters who were ill prepared for my dad’s arrival and story. They were from an even poorer region called Oltenia and insisted that they had paid money for the house. It was rather unlikely since my grandfather had bought the house when he went back in the 50s. Moreover, they were the second couple I’d met in the same house with the same story. My dad could have reclaimed it post communism but he wasn’t going to kick these people out. For what good?
Sophisticated Spirits
From village relatives to the city relatives, we drove from Giulvaz to Deva, a mid-sized Romanian city in the mountains best known as the headquarters for Romania’s powerhouse gymnastics program. Dan, Rodica and their daughter Tana have stayed with us in the U.S. and we know them in a less awkward way than the man-on-a-bike-style relatives from the villages.
Dan is an architect and had redone their Communist-era condominium apartment since last I had darkened the doorstep in 1993. Walking up the uneven steps in the dark stairwell I smelled the signs of communist construction. I wasn’t prepared for the marvel of design that lay behind door #26.
Dan had gutted the small kitchen, living room and one bedroom to install a completely open floor plan. One side featured a plaster wall with asymmetrical cubbies housing Romanian art. The other side was a curving kitchen bar and a backsplash made of limestone from a local quarry.
Next stop was the liquor cabinet. There was Tuica and a toast from Dan. It seems that the German toast “prost” actually means dumbass in Romanian and Dan made full use of this fact. But then, Dan is also a part-time comedian and a chain-smoking ringer for Vladimir Lenin.
We ate beet soup with sour cream, spit-grilled lamb and a macedoine of vegetables. Then Rodica brought out a papricas of mushrooms served over a bed of mamaliga, the Romanian national dish or cornmeal mush or polenta if you prefer. A bottle of Feteasca Neagra complimented the spicy paprika dish.
After the meal, Dan wanted to show off his new Audi and some of the buildings he’d designed around Deva. We blew through the empty streets with the ominous Deva sign shining on top of the citadel, Hollywood-style. He showed us a hotel, church and a bank, all very modern in contrast to the crumbling apartment blocks and remnants of traditional structures. The only sounds heard above the hum of the A6 engine were the barking of stray dogs.
High Octane Spirits
The next day a long drive took us out of the mountains and back towards the Danube River and its delta. The hills were terraced with vines. Turkish and Tatar villages occupied the land amid the reeds and wetlands. We ferried the Danube at Galati. The land was losing sway to water and thatch appeared as a roofing material.
We drove a single-track road until it ended in the middle of a field. We were lost. Someone produced a phone number for the boat launch and we made our way back to a beach-like pond area filled with boats, rusty buildings and lazy dogs. We clambered aboard an open-air skiff. The luggage was casually tossed in the back of the boat causing the boat to sink within an inch of the river level. Meanwhile, darkness prevailed.
The boatman pushed off from the shore, opened up the motor and we were hauling ass in the dark through a narrow channel as trees whizzed by. The luggage shifted and I had to wrap my arms around it before it slid into the Danube. We started letting out whoops of excitement as we banked from the narrow channel to the wide-open Danube. You could feel the immensity of it even if you couldn’t see it. The sound shifted, the wind shifted, the boatman was guiding us through pure experience.
Nothing was visible either in front of us or on the shore for that matter, wherever it might have been. We were fully at warp speed. At a certain point our eyes adjusted to the darkness and we could make out the faint outline of trees lining the riverside. The only light we saw before the hotel was a fire someone had lit.
As we approached the hotel, the light grew but it still felt lonely. The light was dim. The darkness was great. There was no doubt that nature was in charge out here. The boatman guided us expertly alongside the dock and, like a gymnast dismounting from a pommel horse, jumped out of the boat and tossed our luggage on the quay in one fell swoop.
In the shadows was a man holding a platter. He was dressed in a bowtie and vest with an immaculate and majestic walrus mustache. Poftim, he said. Please drink. On the platter were shot glasses filled with palinca, the even more fiery sister to tuica. We all did rapid-fire shots, including my mom, a lifelong teetotaler, and the boatman.
Artistic Spirits
Believe it or not, a trip lasting from the hinterlands of Serbia to the Black Sea coast would end up in Bucharest at the exact same time as a NATO meeting featuring then-President Bush. The streets were clean (unusual for Bucharest), quarantined and quiet. It took some logistics just to reach our hotel. What was even more surprising was a blanket ban on alcohol sales along the diplomatic route. The only time I’d encountered such a prohibition was in India during election voting and after a tour of the Labrot Graham distillery in Kentucky. But we were in Bucharest, not Bourbon County.
We checked into our hotel near Piata Victoriei and walked around the corner to Ioan Nemtoi’s studio. Ioan is a friend of my dads and an expert glassblower whose glass art we import into the U.S. His studio has an ‘Alice in Wonderland’ aspect to it with crashing colors and myriad shapes arranged on pedestals fabricated from metal and wood.
Ioan was late so I waited out on the street. A leggy woman approached with a head of blonde hair so thick I couldn’t see her face. She greeted me with “buna” and slipped by into the gallery. The woman was Ioan’s stepdaughter who I was being fixed up with later.
Ioan arrived shortly, squat and bearded like an Orthodox priest. Typically only priests wear beards in Romania, so with Ioan, my dad and I similarly bearded, it was like an Ecumenical Council of the Patriarchs. It ended up being a species of communion. Ioan’s eyes danced as we recounted our exploits and inability to get a drink in Bucharest. Not to worry, he exclaimed, and disappeared into a room at the back of the gallery. Out he came with a two liter plastic bottle filled with crystal clear liquid. We toasted to life, art and matchmaking. He and my dad laughed the loudest.
Home Spirits
My dad and I import art from Romania and hope to expand into wine in the near future. The main thing I have imported thus far is the disposition of the hospitality of spirits.
With this outlook, I had a basement party last year filled with house-cured pork, plum brandy (zuta osa is available locally) and Romanian music. This is the ethos of the Gourmet Underground Detroit: curing pork, making sausage, fermenting vegetables and beverages, canning, toasting, and celebrating. All these iterations were in evidence at the Holiday Food Bazaar last December organized by Noelle Lothamer. It was as much social as commercial.
At some point all of our ancestors brought their traditions to this area. Sadly much of our handed-down knowledge has been severed by corporate food business and the desire to make money above all else. But there is something inside us which longs to be in touch with nature and other people. This spirit cannot be bought or sold. It can only be celebrated. Noroc.
No Place Like Home
A little more than a week ago, I was at Ten Bells in New York, sipping on a fantastic Paolo Bea Sagrantino di Montefalco Secco. It’s one of the most delicious, surprising, flavorful wines I’ve had in the past few months. At the moment, I was so thankful to be in Manhattan, drinking this amazing thing that isn’t to my knowledge available anywhere in Michigan. I kept marveling — at drinks when visiting Pegu Club and Death & Company, at food when visiting Momofuku and Kyo Ya.
But arriving home this past weekend, I was so thankful to be home. I’m convinced that the relief isn’t just because home is where you hang your hat. It’s because I like home — I like Michigan, I like Detroit, I like Ferndale.
While traveling, domestically or abroad, is an awesome experience, the midwesterner in me digs my flat, reasonably priced parcel of Michigan earth, hanging out in my basketball shorts drinking my own wine, making my own food, and not worrying about bumping into any one of 900 people around me on the sidewalk.
I’m not sure why I felt compelled to post that here, but it was such a potent emotional reaction for me arriving home that it seemed to deserve a shout out.
The Month of May
May began for me at the stroke of midnight on the first with a gathering of friends, some new and some old, hosted by James Cadariu, the green coffee buyer and blender for Great Lakes Coffee. And it’s coming to an end shortly, likely with some sort of family gathering over Memorial Day. In between, it’s been a good time for all my gustatory habits.
James poured us a Romanian rosé from Davino that I believe is a blend of cab and merlot aged in stainless. It was delicious, semi-dry stuff with a tremendous amount of body and flavor.
Jared Gild at Western Market in Ferndale has spurred the brilliant addition of a natural meat freezer at the store. From it, I plucked a pound of frozen buffalo meat. It made delicious burgers, closer to a typical beef patty than anything else but much, much lighter feeling. Almost airy, if such a thing is possible.
I decided to play around one night, muddling rhubarb with just a bit of simple syrup and to it adding aquavit, sloe gin, limoncello, and lemon juice. The resulting drink tasted quite a bit like tart cranberry. Something in me likes the paradox in the name “European Cranberry” for the drink, but that’s a mouthful and a rather dull mouthful at that.
I went to Chicago for a wedding, arriving a few days early to sample some of the city’s culinary offerings. The Purple Pig on Michigan Avenue served me a nice glass of burgundy with this whipped goat cheese and roasted beet salad as well as a glass tub of pork rillettes accompanied by toast and preserved apricot.
Dinner that same evening was at Longman & Eagle, where I had a Zabuton of Dietzler Farms beef — essentially a steak prepared sous vide and then seared. It was served over asparagus, morels, and gnocchi with bone marrow on top and a black olive caramel to the side. Yes, black olive caramel. Don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it.
I also drank a few cocktails, including a unique creation of the bartender, Derek, called the Carpathian that consisted of Aperol and Fernet Branca topped with birch beer over ice. It was too strange to pass up (much like the black olive caramel sauce) and too delicious to last more than 5 minutes sitting on the bar in front of me.
I could live entirely off of places within stumbling distance of the blue line of Chicago’s “L.” I wandered parallel to the tracks, down Milwaukee Avenue, until I hit The Whistler, a small cocktail bar serving lovely drinks. I haven’t tried to replicate them yet, but they were delicious. The “Slippery Slope” featured bourbon, Punt e Mes, Apricot Liqueur, some kind of amaro, and lemon juice. And the “Fig Leaf” was made from Carpano Antica, rum, lime juice, and bitters.
The Violet Hour was a highlight for me. Over two nights, I had nine drinks at this posh Bucktown/Wicker Park spot, but it was the first hour of the first night that really sticks out. In glancing at the menu, I noticed a drink that used Cherry Heering and egg yolk. Not white. Yolk. I understand that yolks played some role in early variants of a gin fizz among other things, but not in one of the 6 or 8 first-rate cocktail bars that I’ve visited had I seen a contemporary drink that made use of the generally discarded fatty cousin of the egg white. And Cherry Heering? Other than a singapore sling, who the hell uses that as an ingredient, let alone a primary ingredient? The beverage, termed “The Golden Age,” came to me in a tall glass with crushed ice and drank like a cherry milkshake. A few rounds of back and forth with the bartender over the various qualities of the drink, and I was hooked for the next three or four hours… and another two-and-a-half hours the next night. (The drink pictured is a Bitter Giuseppe, 1/3 Carpano and 2/3 Cynar with, I believe, a very gentle dose of citrus as well as the lemon peel garnish.)
Red & White is a small, brilliantly stocked wine shop several long blocks northwest of The Violet Hour. Natural wine and small production stuff from around the world, all generally priced from 15-50 dollars a bottle, is pretty much all they do — save for the occasional obscure spirit, like the bottle of Ransom Old Tom gin I bought. One of the proprietors, Nathan, took a few moments to chat, and I had to push my burgeoning sense of jealousy back into the pit of my stomach from whence it came. Several of the wines from Domaine de Briseau/Christian Chaussard were stocked, and I couldn’t resist purchasing a bottle of Patapon, made exclusively from Pineau d’Aunis. I want all of this in Detroit.
While at Longman & Eagle, I’d been alternating between conversations with the bartenders and other patrons and reading the most recent issue of The Art of Eating. The cover story was about Iowa pork. The first thing mentioned was the prosciutto-style ham aged by La Quercia. So when I visited the uber-popular restaurant The Publican the next night and saw La Quercia Rossa among their charcuterie offerings, I had to get it. Mild yet clear and focused, the flavor is outstanding. Very delicate. I’m not any sort of expert, but it’s certainly the best American-made product of this style that I’ve ever had. From what I gather, the ham is made not from the whole leg but only from the best part along the femur. The rest of the dinner was excellent as well, but the sheer coincidence (and the thinly sliced fatty goodness) made the ham memorable.
We did the wedding on Friday and Saturday, and that was a treat — including the seemingly non-stop parade of Indian food. After gorging myself for four days, I vowed to take it easy on Monday — until I remembered that we’d decided to meet my grandparents and dad at Slows BBQ in Detroit Monday evening. While some brisket was melting on my tongue, my grandmother told me she’d left a gift at my house for me. When I got home, I discovered Treasured Polish Recipes for Americans.
My grandma is the one who taught me how to make pierogi that my co-blogger saw fit to mention in the Metro Times, and she’s an eager proponent of the recipes contained within this Other Little Red Book. Someday, I hope to make Beggar’s Cake — a rich construction built from 40 eggs and 12 sticks of butter, among other things, that gets roasted on a wooden rod over open flame. Intense. For now, I’ll stick to pierogi, beets, cabbage, and maybe some tripe if I’m feeling “old country.”
Complaints? Not a one. Here’s to May.
How Easily Can One Speak After a Visit to The Gibson?
Among the traditions associated (for some) with Thanksgiving, the one that annoys me the most is the notion of forcing each of those seated around a well-provisioned table to recount a single thing for which a person is thankful. It’s not that being grateful or demonstrating appreciation are offensive sentiments. But to my mind, being goaded into a sappy public display is, no matter the intent, irritating, boring, and dare I say contrived.
So in lieu of that particular custom, I shall instead confess to the public some of the things for which I am thankful in the most privately publicm, egomaniacal fashion of them all — a blog post.
This year, my wife and I set sail — or more accurately, boarded a flight — bound for Baltimore in order to visit family. The day before Thanksgiving, we were to meet up with our good friends who live near DC, my brother, and his fiancée for dinner and drinks. After doing some research and consulting the natives, we elected to dine at Masa 14, an inexpensive Latin+Japanese fusion place that serves small plates, and to drink at The Gibson, a speakeasy-style joint down the block which nearly always requires reservations to get past the doorman.
Dinner was wonderful — I particularly enjoyed the yucca fries, the pork belly “tacos,” some mussels, and some of their flatbreads — but this is a drinks blog, and we’re more than mere casual drinkers, so let’s focus our attention on The Gibson, shall we?
During Prohibition, I’m sure it would have taken quite a bit to gain entrance to The Gibson. Knowing the proprietor, perhaps. Knowing a codeword, probably. But today, we have Google. Following the recent trend of modeling sophisticated watering holes after the speakeasys of yesteryear, this establishment is virtually invisible from 14th Street NW. Only a single light bulb, a single doorknob, and a single door buzzer sandwiched between two other businesses alert you that there might be life inside the otherwise decrepit-looking building. But after perusing reviews on Yelp, we were on the phone to The Gibson, making reservations.
Once we were done with dinner and wandered up the street to that barely lit entrance, we headed in, initially greeted by a young potbellied man dressed in all black, his face adorned with mutton chops that threatened to engulf his face. He led us through a second door to a dimly lit, beautifully decorated room. Standing isn’t allowed — the bar has 48 chairs, and if you’re not in one of them, you’re not in the bar — and half the tables are set aside for those who call in advance to make reservations.
We took our seats, looked over the menus, and ordered some damn fine drinks.
Among our more memorable drinks were a Blue Blood (Laphroaig 10-Year Single Malt, Leopold Bros Tart Cherry Liqueur, Grand Marnier, and Dolin Dry Vermouth), a Bittered Rye Sling (Old Overholt Rye, bitters, lime, Dolin sweet vermouth, and Fever Tree ginger ale), and a Brunswick Sour (Appleton white rum and lime juice with merlot floated on top).
My brother’s fiancee described the Blue Blood as “feet wrapped in bacon.” Sounds ideal to me, and indeed it is: The smoky flavor from the scotch certainly dominates the drink, but it’s made balanced by the tart cherry and orange. My personal favorite, though, was the Bittered Rye Sling I ordered. Tart, drinkable, and surprisingly aromatic, it was served in a Collins glass and garnished with a cherry and a lemon twist.
The waitstaff was pleasant and felt comfortable questioning odd orders, hoping to save both him and us from having to deal with a drink that didn’t match up to our party’s tastes. The Brunswick Sour and a few others were recommendations of his throughout the evening, and he did well. And of course, the drinks were absolutely delicious.
Atmosphere is a focal point for The Gibson: Beautifully stained wood is accented with regal reds and golds on cieling inlays, and red velvet covers the back of the bench seating. Orange peel garnishes were brought to the table and, when squeezed, lit on fire for every drink. Showmanship is fun, but on more than one occasion, we sat waiting awkwardly for a minute while our waiter tried to flame the peel. And truth be told, our second round came a bit late in the evening because of the slow pace of service.
Nonetheless, The Gibson was a great drink experience. It would be easy to over-consume there: The bartenders are the real asset at this establishment as the drinks were universally well-made. Even the strongest, booziest cocktails were eminantly drinkable. And prices were fair and reasonable. If driving 50 minutes back to Baltimore hadn’t been a concern, I would have been joyfully slurring and stumbling my way out of The Gibson as my mutton-chopped doorman friend booted my ass to the curb at closing time. If you’re in DC, you owe yourself a trip.
