Driving East on U.S. Highway 2 through Michigan’s Upper Peninsula between Naubinway and St. Ignace you are sure to see three things: a crystal blue Lake Michigan to your right, thick evergreen and hardwood forest to your left, and ahead, signs for pasties, smoked fished and fudge. How did these three distinct foods come to symbolize the north?

A Moveable Feast

Although regrettably sharing the same name as decorative nipple coverings, Michigan pasties are much tastier. Similar to pot pies but without the pot, these portable meals were a favorite of immigrants working Upper Peninsula mines before they were standard tourist fare.

Introduced in the 19th Century by Cornish miners, the hearty pasty could easily be eaten end to end, without knife or fork, and even reheated on a shovel held above a headlamp candle. Finns and Swedes, who were also working the mines, contributed their own culinary influences to the UP pasty.

The mining industry eventually collapsed but the UP pasty remained. Today, you can find pasties filled with chicken, fish, or simply vegetables. Some places will smother them in tomato sauce and melted cheese. You can even find them “Mexican style”.

The most satisfying UP pasty is filled with beef and diced vegetables (we like it with earthy, sweet rutabaga), has a solid crust, and comes with a cup of brown gravy on the side. It is best eaten on a chilly autumn day while the wind whips the Mackinac Straights into a white froth. A couple glasses of whiskey as digestif are optional though highly recommended.

Are You Calling Me a Fudgie?

The world is flooded with candy that has been processed and packaged in factories then shipped to corner convenience stores. But in Mackinac it’s old school copper kettles, marble tables, and sweet cream.

Every batch of fudge is handmade. When the syrup reaches what candymakers call the “soft ball stage” it’s poured onto marble and slowly manipulated with spatulas into logs. It’s said that this long cooling process, particularly during humid summer days, is what makes Mackinac fudge unique – its terroir, if you will.

True or not, this type of candymaking hearkens back to the days of people working with their hands and fits right into the wistful Mackinac Island experience where many a summer vacation memory has been made.

We prefer enjoying locally made fudge away from the throng of tourists in and around Mackinac. A short drive west is Wilderness State Park. Or head east to Cheboygan State Park. Both parks boast amazing forest and shoreline hiking opportunities. No better way to work off a giant hunk of fudge than a brisk few miles on foot, Bald Eagles soaring overhead.

Just Water, Salt and Smoke

It’s not so curious that a land and people surrounded by freshwater seas enjoy their fish. From Leland near the popular Sleeping Bear Dunes to remote Whitefish Bay to Houghton-Hancock and all points around and between, smoked fish finds its way into most every cabin in the northwoods.

Unlike thinly sliced lox that’s cold-smoked for preservation, northern Michigan fish are hot-smoked and thus the flesh is textured more like cooked fish. The process is simple. The fish, normally whitefish, salmon or trout, is brined in saltwater and placed in racks over smoldering logs. The wood used for smoking is often maple, another abundant local resource.

Though smoked fish can be made into a dip or even a sausage this classic northern Michigan dish is best enjoyed simply on a cracker. Pair it with a glass of crisp white wine, a lover, and the remains of a day gone orange behind the pines.

If you have but one day in Chicago this summer, I can think of no finer way to spend it than lunching at Bayless’ XOCO and having dinner at Izard’s Girl and the Goat.

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The Spirit of the Mexican Kitchen: Rick Bayless

After graduating from the College of LSA, chef Rick Bayless spent years in Mexico studying the language, the people, the food. The knowledge he brought back to the United States helped change the landscape of cuisine as we know it. The linguistics major-turned-culinary-giant gave us a seat at the table to discuss his salad days – then and now.

Chef Rick Bayless (’75, M.A.) is every bit as infatuated with Mexican cuisine today as he was in 1987 when he opened Frontera Grill in Chicago and released his first book, Authentic Mexican: Regional Cooking from the Heart of Mexico. “I can look at something I discovered 30 years ago and understand it now in such an intimate way that I could never have done at the very beginning,” he says. “That sense of deepening discovery is what keeps me going every day.”

A recent winner of Bravo’s television program Top Chef: Masters and an unquestioned legend of Chicago’s now vibrant food scene, Bayless is as big a celebrity chef as anyone in the United States. It’s hard to imagine North Clark Street without his trio of restaurants or store shelves without his salsas, but he didn’t begin his career looking to be famous. Or even to cook.

“I was really interested in the relationship between language and culture,” he says of his college years spent studying Spanish and Latin American culture. After living in Mexico with his family as a teenager, Bayless became an undergraduate at the University of Oklahoma. He spent two summers in an applied linguistics  program and learned how to enter communities that lacked a written language, learn and interpret their spoken words, and ultimately understand that culture through their stories.

He followed the program’s director to LSA’s Department of Linguistics, where he began several years of doctoral work. But he found more than just scholarly interests awaiting him in Ann Arbor.

“I fell in with this group of students… we didn’t have any money at all, but we were all super into food,” Bayless recalls. “I didn’t even understand how unique the food community of Ann Arbor was then, but it was centered around the farmers’ market.” He and his friends would buy their fresh ingredients in Kerrytown and at Eastern Market in Detroit, meeting and interacting with farmers, a practice reminiscent of the everyday life he’d experienced in Mexico.

These linguistics students prepared food together regularly, exploring different cuisines from a myriad of cultures. Bayless started catering. He taught local cooking classes. Then he had an epiphany: “I was at least as interested in the relationship between culture and food as I was culture and language.”

That’s when the future James Beard National Chef of the Year stopped work on his dissertation and immersed himself in the food of Mexico.

Throughout the early 1980s, Bayless lived and traveled in Mexico with his wife, Deann Bayless (’71, ’78 M.U.S.), utilizing his academic experience to construct Authentic Mexican. Each recipe was studied using the same research methodology he learned at Michigan: He prepared each dish with three different families or cooks to grasp every nuance, every approach, every ingredient. The result was more than a cookbook; it became a comprehensive look at the cuisine of Mexico as an expression of regional culture as well as an influential guide to a burgeoning American food scene that was slowly awakening from a decade or two of hibernation.

Upon returning to the United States, Bayless found himself in the midst of a dormant food culture dominated by commoditized products and corporate wholesalers – a stark contrast to his childhood.

“I’m a child of the ’60s. I made my first compost pile when I was 16. I made salt-rising bread,” he recalls. “I went with my father to the market in Oklahoma City… and the farmers would bring their stuff and we’d buy from the farmers,” Bayless remembers. “And then, that all went away and it just went to a commercial commodity market. We never had face-to-face contact with the people who were growing our food anymore. And I had a sense of loss about that.”

A do-it-yourselfer raised in a family of restaurateurs living amongst small farmers in Oklahoma, he couldn’t abide the lack of local food he found as he began his culinary career.

So Bayless set out to do things differently. He describes his first experience as a chef engaging Chicago-area farmers: “One of the things I wanted to do was put something local on our menu…. We opened in March, and May is when we have our short, local strawberry season… so I went down to the commercial market…. And they all said, ‘No one would carry those. They’re terrible.’ Well, they’re terrible only if you’re thinking of them as a commodity. They’re phenomenal if you’re thinking of them as flavor.”

Literally laughed out of the market by wholesalers, Rick and Deann drove twice per week to farmer stands outside the city to acquire those local berries for desserts. Beyond the superior flavor, the chef regained a connection to farmers in a way he hadn’t experienced since childhood. And he became increasingly grateful for it.

When Bayless talks about food, he looks and sounds as much like a professor of art history as he does a master of the culinary arts. His conference room at Frontera doubles as a library, its 10-foot walls lined with volumes on every conceivable culinary topic, ranging from French sauces to chocolate to Mexican culture to gardening. And, indeed, he broaches the subject of food as any intellectual might – that is, from every conceivable angle: flavor, art, community engagement, eco-friendliness.

Thus it’s perhaps unsurprising that his consistently calm demeanor elevates to a passionate tone when discussing the interrelated nature of his customers, his farmers, and his food.

“I have always seen restaurants – and I guess it’s because I grew up in a family-style restaurant—as creating community,” he says in describing his family’s approach to business. Along with those childhood trips meeting farmers, the notion of community has shaped his work.

“I’m an accidental organic farming champion,” he notes. “What I learned was that the people that cared most about what they were growing also cared most about the earth…. [Farmers] taught me about the interconnectedness of what I do as a living.” His holistic view of soil’s role in the food he serves his customers has led him to value sustainability. “If it’s local and sustainable, it’s part of that sense of community. It’s not just in putting money in the pocket of the farmer, but it’s protecting our environment that allows us all to thrive.”

Committed past the point of mere rhetoric or marketing, Bayless has maintained a laser-like focus: 25 years since he first ferreted out local strawberries, he has continued to push the boundaries of how local, sustainable food can be used. “The thing about food is that the more you’re around it, the deeper you can go,” he says.

During the late summer, 100 percent of his tomatoes and tomatillos are Chicago-raised. Even Tortas Frontera, his O’Hare Airport-based eatery, lists from where the food is sourced. His Frontera Farmer Foundation raised $180,000 last summer in support of local farms, and he’s a board member at the local Green City Market, the lone Chicago-area market dedicated solely to local, sustainable foods.

“With the strength of our local agricultural system, our food is different, and it allows a uniquely Chicago perspective on traditional Mexican flavor,” he says. So he strives to employ it often, noting that what he serves isn’t always what one might find in Oaxaca or the Yucatan. Rather, he asks himself, “How do you get local flavor on the plate without messing with the traditional soul that you find in Mexican kitchens?”

Bayless grows some of those Mexican-inspired ingredients on Frontera’s eco-friendly rooftop garden and at his own home. The only common ingredient that doesn’t occasionally come from Chicago-area farmers is dried chiles because, as he says, “the flavors just can’t be duplicated, and… we’re into making delicious food.”

In contrast to the many celebrity chefs leaving their hometowns, opening restaurants in Vegas or eating strange foods on cable television for shock value, Bayless’ three primary restaurants and offices are on a single block, and he’s entering the eighth season of Mexico – One Plate at a Time, airing locally in Chicago or on various PBS stations and often costarring his daughter.

When he does leave Chicago, it’s usually to visit other countries to study new cuisine and other cultures, and to enhance the culinary creativity on display at his restaurants.

“You can learn things that reflect back into your food, other techniques, and other ingredients that will open your mind to different flavor possibilities,” he observes. “Anything is open to us as long as it has the spirit of the Mexican kitchen.”

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Girl. Kitchen. Goat: Stephanie Izard

Chef Stephanie Izard has won Top Chef, not to mention a host of awards for her new Chicago restaurant, Girl and the Goat, but her food is neither haughty nor highbrow. Izard studies “common food” and elevates it, with a culinary result that’s like Izard herself – genuine and clever.

Soaked in syrupy lemon dressing, Chef Stephanie Izard’s eggplant is an eyeopening revelation. Eye-opening because it is a dessert; a revelation because it is the perfect acidic counterpoint to other elements on my plate: pork-fat doughnuts, ham streusel, caramelized figs, and a honey yogurt. Soft, crunchy, fatty, sweet, salty, and tart – it is an embodiment of Izard’s “make your whole mouth happy” philosophy.

The meals she prepares under that banner have garnered her and Girl and the Goat – the Chicago restaurant she opened in 2010 – national acclaim. Izard was a celebrity already, having won season four of Bravo’s wildly popular Top Chef, but it’s her work since, as chef and co-owner at the Goat, that have catapulted her to true stardom. Capturing rave reviews from the Chicago Tribune and Saveur magazine as well as a prestigious James Beard nomination, she was named a Food and Wine Best New Chef in 2011.

“If you could see me when I was on stage getting my award for that in New York, I had a gigantic perma-grin the entire time,” she recalls.

That’s hardly surprising: Izard’s a veritable ball of energy, talking fast, laughing a lot, and infusing every inch of her sizeable restaurant with every ounce of her sizeable persona. “I just wanted to take what I love about dining – which is hanging out with friends, usually quite a few drinks—and that’s why this place has a party vibe. Big fun with lots of energy.”

The space fosters that attitude with ample seating and high ceilings that echo with hundreds of voices, and a soundtrack that ranges from Johnny Cash to the Red Hot Chili Peppers to Regina Spektor. The bar is packed with tourists and regulars alike, and the atmosphere spawns conversation from the moment the front door opens.

Seated at the far end of that very bar, I was quickly befriended by a 40-something professional Chicagoan awaiting some friends. Within 45 minutes, I was sharing my cauliflower with pickled peppers and mint – portions at Girl and the Goat are naturally designed for sharing with friends both old and new – and she was sharing her goat chorizo flatbread.

The shareable, approachable food is just as driven by Izard’s demeanor as the palpable friendliness imbued throughout the dining room. Signature dishes like roasted pig face, a dramatically more interesting variation on traditional head cheese, elevate comfort food and ostensibly simple ingredients to haute cuisine, without even a hint of the snobbery that sometimes pervades the restaurant world.

“I’ve been lucky and have eaten at some amazing restaurants,” says Izard, “and I enjoy it, but I don’t enjoy the stuffiness of it.I just don’t think one has to come hand in hand with the other.” She adds, “I’ve definitely always been anti-pretense.”

That attitude is exemplified in her thorough, hands-on approach. Izard doesn’t just prepare a meal; she studies each component of it. Before opening the Goat, she took the time to visit local farms, getting to know the farmers and learning everything from how the animals are treated to how goat cheese is made. “Now [the farmers are] my friends. I call them up, we hang out,” she says. Izard contracts with farms “where we liked the farmers themselves and respect what they’re doing. We only get animals from farms where we know they’re raised properly.”

Her commitment to that depth of understanding extends to every aspect of the restaurant, which includes having an inhouse baker and butcher. She’s explored an interest in beer (the lone piece of art in the restaurant features a girl, a goat, and dancing beer bottles) by visiting Indiana’s Three Floyds Brewing and by actually making beer with Chicago-based Goose Island. “I’ve gotten to brew beer a couple times. I don’t think it’s anything I could do by myself, but it’s really cool to know more about it. And we make our own wine in Walla Walla (Washington). We make our own cheese. I just kind of want to learn how to do everything.”

Izard’s curiosity about food began early at her childhood home in Connecticut, where her parents enjoyed a wide range of cuisine. She earned a sociology degree from LSA in 1998, and if there were any hint at her future, it lay in evenings out with friends.”We would go through and order all these different beers, and I remember [learning] about it and thinking, “this is cool.’”

After graduation, she enrolled in Le Cordon Bleu in Arizona, where she learned the skills that later took her to several acclaimed Chicago establishments before opening her first restaurant, Scylla, in 2006. Despite rave reviews, she opted to close in 2008, not long after which she joined Top Chef. The prize money helped pave the way to her current endeavor.

From day one, Izard has insisted on staff sharing her excitement for their ingredients, drinks, and food.

“We interviewed over 1,000 people,” she says, “and we’ve interviewed people who worked at some of the best restaurants in the city, and I’m like ‘yeah, you’re a great server, but still, you’re not getting it. You need to have the enthusiasm, and you need to want to make someone feel comfortable as soon as they walk in the door.’”

Izard’s a master at lending that sense of comfort to her patrons: Sitting at the bar, looking toward the kitchen, I could see fans approaching her to say hi or take pictures, which often end up on the restaurant’s website. She’s become widely known for being one of the most sociable “celebrity chefs” in the country, someone who hasn’t changed as a result of her fame.”Even if I’m sick at the store and a fan comes up, I’m still going to talk to them. [Some chefs] get annoyed by people… but someone coming up to you and saying they love you? I mean, that’s pretty nice. Be happy about it.”

That connection with her devotees achieved new heights last summer when Izard launched a fundraiser for Share Our Strength, an organization fighting childhood hunger: “We’re doing these benefit dinners called Supper at Steph’s where I invite eight strangers into my house and cook dinner for them, and my staff said, ‘Seriously, Stephanie, what if they look through your underwear drawer?’ And I’m like, well, they’ll look through my underwear drawer. I don’t care.”

She’s laughing as a cook brings her a spoon covered in ginger dressing destined for the crunchy raw kohlrabi salad. “As long as I’m not in the bathroom, they’re supposed to bring me a taste.”

Izard’s well-known for carrying her upbeat persona and positive demeanor into the kitchen, a place notorious for hot tempers and demeaning attitudes. “I think that my cooks genuinely enjoy coming to work. Of course, they’re often hungover and tired and don’t really want to get here in the morning. But we have fun. We sing and dance all day. Having someone yell at me doesn’t make me want to work harder for them, it makes me want to have them not be around anymore.”

That’s not idle talk. The restaurant’s open kitchen allows patrons to peer inside. “You can see all the cooks smiling and enjoying each other’s company, which I just think is so important. If you’re putting out food that’s supposed to have all this love in it and you’re pissed off, it’s probably not going to taste as good.”

Her cooks must have an awful lot of love, because the lengthy menu is delicious from top to bottom. In her inimitable style, she doesn’t overthink it. “If I try too hard to make new menu items – like, all right, I must make a new fish dish this week, then it never works. So for me, it’s waiting to see if something just hits and something clicks. Like if I walk in the cooler and see some vegetable next to another one, and I’m like, ‘Yeah!’” That revelation explains her cross-cultural influences – for example, Izard’s crudo, an Italian-inspired raw fish dish, puts buttery Pacific hiramasa under bits of pork belly, Peruvian chiles, and caperberries.

That culinary creativity is showcased in Girl in the Kitchen, a book of recipes from her home kitchen released last October. She toured all winter to support the cookbook, while simultaneously planning her version of a classic diner, which she’s calling The Little Goat. She’s constantly busy, but she admits that’s how she likes it. “I’ve always been really driven and want to be as successful as possible. And I’m hoping to retire in 10 years, so I’ve got a lot to do.”

I always understood that on an intellectual level. But my most recent trip there felt so completely different from any other I’ve made.

For my thoroughly awesome job, I was sent to Chicago to interview two of its finest chefs – Rick Bayless and Stephanie Izard – for a couple of upcoming magazine articles. I tried to prepare the best I could, of course. But no amount of pre-work could have readied me for how genuine and personable they are. I suppose I should have expected it – I’m sure there’s a bumper sticker somewhere that reads “Chefs are people too” – but for whatever reason, their celebrity had sort of created this mental distance between me and the notion that they had, you know, actual personalities. Duh.

These chefs could open restaurants anywhere, I’m sure, but they fit in Chicago.

We’d arranged to have some photographs taken of both chefs, so I was also meeting our photographer for the first time, a Chicago-based food and lifestyle specialist named Huge Galdones. All I knew previously was that I liked his portfolio and my colleague had chosen him for the project after comparing him to others.

It turns out he’s one of the friendliest guys pretty much ever, and we grabbed some dinner after our work was done. Interestingly enough, it turns out we also had a mutual friend via food and wine circles.

Along those lines, when dining at Girl & the Goat the night before, I ran into a former Detroit area resident who had moved to Chicago two years ago, who in turn introduced me to a couple of the bartenders at Goat, both of whom were knowledgeable, interesting, nice people. While aggressively consuming their alcoholic wares, I also got to know a woman at the bar who had friends in southeast Michigan and who, upon learning why I was there, shared all of her dishes with me so I could try more of the menu.

So after two days, all the people I’d met – from bartenders to world famous chefs – were universally kind, thoughtful people. And the whole Small World thing was in full effect. I might as well have been hanging out at Astro in Detroit for how at home I suddenly felt.

After Huge and I had eaten dinner, I closed out my trip by hiking out to Bar DeVille on Chef Izard’s recommendation. I’d already been to the great cocktail bars that are decorated by interior designers. I wanted something a bit simpler, and she came through with the perfect suggestion. I drank (a Vieux Carre, a Weller 12 year, two beers, and two unnamed cocktails) while He-Man DVDs played on the TV and Nirvana and Raekwon blared over the speakers. A local liquor rep sat down next to me and unloaded a day’s worth of bad luck and a few jokes as though we were Norm and Cliff in some sort of weird hipster reboot of Cheers.

The whole night was like a big blanket wrapped around my soul. A bourbon soaked blanket. But a blanket nonetheless.

Having a better time on that trip would have been pretty much impossible. Unsurprisingly, it heightened my appreciation for Chicago. But after some reflection, I realized that (aside from the exquisite, incomparable food experience at Girl & the Goat) all the things that I really loved about my trip are exactly the things I love about Detroit and about Michigan – the people I’ve met, the small town feel where everyone somehow knows everyone else, and sharing good drinks and good food with good people, whether they become friends for a night or a lifetime.

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!

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.

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?

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:

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.

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.

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.