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Beer-brined Pork Chops from Karl Strauss Brewing Company, San Diego
One of the cities to which I travel regularly is San Diego, to teach for Hitachi Data Systems. The HDS office is up the road from downtown, off of I-15, making the drive over to La Jolla in the evening after class fairly easy. Since the airport is right downtown and I usually try to take a redeye flight home at the end of the week, I get one evening in that part of town.
The Karl Strauss Brewing Co. is a small chain. I ate first at the La Jolla brewpub, and enjoyed it enough to try the one near the old Santa Fe (now Amtrak) train station. I'd spent the afternoon walking around the Embarcadero, noticed a Starbucks across the street from the train and trolley stations, so I parked nearby and did the coffee shop thing to check e-mail and twitter. While sipping my venti black tea lemonade, I googled the location, did a "search nearby" on "restaurants," and found Karl Strauss in the first hits. It was just a walk around the corner.
The location on Columbia Street was a good choice. The place had a good crowd, and the bartender was cheerful. I started with their red, aptly named "Red Trolley Ale." (The trolleys in the city's light rail system are indeed red). It was a flavorful, full-bodied ale, just as I remembered it from La Jolla. The Olympics were on one boobtoob, the Padres on another, as I enjoyed the pint and perused the dinner menu. None of the starters moved the earth for me, so I went straight for the entrees.
I'd had the "Lemon Hef Chicken" for my meal in La Jolla, grilled chicken with a glaze made with their "Windansea Wheat Hefeweizen" beer. It was a tasty combination that inspired me to try another entree that had a beer-based sauce. This time it was the Beer-brined Pork Chops. The chops came with a glaze made with Strauss' Scottish Ale (and the menu suggested that brew to accompany the dish, of course). As I ordered up the meal, the bartender didn't merely parrot the menu's beverage suggestion; before going over to key the order in, she stopped at the taps and drew a sample of the Scottish Ale for me, saying "you're going to want to try this, it goes really well with the pork chops."
The Scottish was tasty in its own right, so I let her pour me that for my next pint, as I we chatted casually and I twittered on the phone. My plate came out in due course, prompt service from the kitchen. The presentation was nice, the chops stood up on their sides, resting on a scoop of mashed potatoes, along with a side of skinny green beans. The glaze was lightly drizzled on the chops, and then a generous helping spooned onto the plate in front. Some mustard was squirted along the edge of the plate, an excellent addition to any grilled pork dish (and a nice color addition to the plating).
The pork chops were cooked just right and the mustard/glaze went well with them. The mashed potatoes weren't all that thrilling, but that's OK, I didn't need the calories of those and the baguette bread served with the meal anyway. The veggies were nicely steamed, crispy and tasty. The bartender was right, the Scottish Ale went well with the meal.
Even though she tried to tempt me with dessert, I decided to pass. After a good meal and good beer, it was time to head off to the airport, where I slept comfortably on the redeye, another successful trip to San Diego.
I've flown enough ion Delta Air Lines n the last two years that I get upgraded to first class fairly regularly, and this morning is no exception. This was my second trip in a month to New York City; HDS juggled teaching assignments last week, so I didn't go to Santa Clara as planned.
Delta has resumed non-stop service from New Orleans (MSY) to LaGuardia Airport (LGA) in New York. the MSY-LGA leg deaprts at 5:30pm. The LGA-MSY flight is at 7:30am, so I usually stay over after class is finished rather than have to put up with the hassle of both LaGuardia and ATL in the same evening. I get up around 5:30am, leave the hotel (in midtown Manhattan) around 6am, and am at LGA just about 6:30am.
When I'm fortunate to be upgraded for this leg, that means breakfast on a MD88. This plane, along with the B757 is the backbone of Delta's fleet. There are three and a half rows of front-cabin seats on a MD88, for a total of 14. The galley space isn't very extensive, but they're still able to put on a decent cold breakast.
Breakfast consisted of a bowl of sliced fresh fruit, canteloupe, grapefruit, and pineapple on this flight. Last time there were fresh strawberries. Then there's either a bagel or scone, warmed, but not toasted. When it's a bagel, there's plain Kraft cream cheese and jelly, when a scone, butter and jelly. One flight offered strawberry-flavored yogurt, and the other applesauce. There's also an individual box of cereal, usually Kellogg's Corn Flakes, along with half a pint of white milk and sugar.
Not a bad start to the morning!
I go up to the counter and order "Menu 2" which is the Quarter Pounder Value meal. (And no, unlike the French and "Pulp Fiction," the Dutch call it a "Quarter Pounder." The assistant manager rings me up (€ 5.50), and says something foreign to me, in English:
"We are cooking your Quarter Pounder, please have a seat and we will bring it to you."
whoa :-)
Then, when I stopped at Cafe Charlie (9 E. 40th St.) to pick up some sushi, I saw these:
I had already bought the Starbucks cookies, but these look pretty good as well. :-)
One of New Orleans food critic Tom Fitzmorris' cardinal rules is that diners should "eat it where it lives." Eat Maine lobstah in Maine, for example, gulf shrimp on the gulf coast, you get the idea. Sure, we can flash-freeze and overnight ship just about anything these days, but it's just not the same as eating whatever it is locally. The influx of Asian seafood on the market, even here in New Orleans, is a good example of this. We've discussed the bland lack-of-flavor to flash-frozen Asian shrimp or crawfish previously. Once shellfish are cooked, you can put flavor on them, but you can't put it in them. Crab boil is concentrated to the point of borderline toxic so that all those spices and flavors seep through the shells while shrimp are boiling. No way mass-market producers are going to use the stuff.
Location and atmosphere often go a long way in terms of making mediocre food seem like the best meals we've ever had in our lives. Let's face it, classic English fish and chips is a boring meal. Eat it in a pub near Hyde Park and it becomes a memory. That's one of the reasons I never argue with visitors to New Orleans when they told me they had such a fantastic meal at a place where I'd never spend my own money. There's just no value in trying to shoot down the memory.
If you think meals can create memories, booze is makes the memory even fonder. A common theme among travelers who go to France or Italy is that they will remember a fantastic red table wine in a bistro in Paris, Florence, or Naples. It was part of a fantastic al fresco meal, one of the most wonderful evenings of their lives. They come back to New Orleans and go to Martin Wine Cellar in search of the wine that made them feel so good. They find it, get it home, grill up some steaks, open the bottle, and take a sip. Unfortunately, a bottle of mid-tier house wine doesn't engage a Star Trek-style holodeck, and they're not transported to their bistro. The wine is what it is, a mid-tier table wine. It gave them a great buzz at the time, though, and that's what the memory is all about. Now, have a martini or three before those steaks, and odds are that the wine will taste just as good to the dulled senses.
So, yeah, Guinness does taste better in Ireland. Or so they say, I've never been. But I can attest that Bavaria tastes so much better sitting outside at a pub in Utrecht. Jug-quality Riesling is fantastic with lunch at small restaurants in Koblenz.
Feel free to share your own "tastes better" memories in comments!
Some shots from dinner last night and Monday.
West Town Tavern, 1329 Chicago Ave.:
I started with the "summer corn bisque"
The fried chicken was good and I was hungry, so I forgot to take a shot before I started demolition. I blame it on this lovely Austrian riesling:
But I managed to recover and remember to take a picture of dessert, which was angel food cake and strawberry sorbet:
Last night, I went to Chief O'Neill's Pub, which is at 3471 N. Elston. I started with the Guinness and cheddar soup:
Since I was in a pub and I didn't want to burger-out, I opted for the chicken-and-mushroom pie:
Dessert was Guinness, the Cubs game, and some interesting banter with folks at the bar.
I know the quality of the pics isn't up to snuff (sorry, Sajini), but that's because I used the phone in dark places. I'm going to a tapas place tonight, I'll bring the digital cam if I remembered to pack it. :-)
I'm teaching in Berkeley Heights, NJ this week. The hotel where I'm staying is in Basking Ridge, NJ, and there's an interesting Italian place down the street called "Ciao." It's an upscale-but-casual place. I grabbed a seat at the bar rather than a table for one.
I started with a glass of Pinot Noir that was suggested by the bartender, Meredith. After I decided on tuna for dinner, she suggested a white made from Malbec. The Malbec grape usually makes a full-bodied red, but this was wine was made from "skinless" Malbec grapes (her description). I think what she meant was the wine is pressed and the skins are immediately discarded. With red grapes, the skins are usually left in contact with the juice, so the tannin in the skin enriches the wine. It was a good choice, full and fruity.
Apologies for the quality of these photos; they're from my phone and lighting was poor
My first course was cream of asparagus soup:
It was subtle, with thin slices of asparagus throughout.
Next was the main course, seared tuna with a ginger-soy sauce:
That's an arugla and onion salad on either side, grilled asparagus on top, and the tuna was sitting on top of a scoop of wasabi mashed potatoes. The tuna was perfect, the salad and asparagus wonderful. The wasabi mashed potatoes were just a bit odd to my taste. They weren't bad, I just didn't quite know how to process the taste at the same time as the tuna. I didn't eat all that much of the potatoes, which was my rationalization for dessert. I don't totally subscribe to Sajini's theory that dessert is most important, but I don't want to be a glutton, either.
I asked Meredith to pick between a brownie cheesecake, tiramisu, and orange mousse, and she suggested the Orange Mousse:
My guess is that the mousse was the only one of the three made in-house. It was a winner, a tasty combination of orange with blackberries.
I capped off dinner with a cappucino.
Overall, this was a good meal. Given the overall dearth of places to eat near here, I may go back and try Ciao's pizza later this week.
Max Lagers
320 Peachtree St. NW
Atlanta (Downtown)
Max Lagers is an interesting brewpub in Atlanta's downtown section. The menu is not as ambitious as some brewpubs, but what they do, they do well. I had dinner there last night with a friend. We started with a "Maxatizer" of Duck Spring Rolls. They were fried well and came on a bed of "Asian Slaw," along with some "sweet chili" dipping sauce. The slaw was very spicy, but the chili sauce was much milder, and had a touch of honey.
For entrees, my friend had the "Max Burger," which is a half-pound Angus hamburger. It came as ordered, well done, and was tasty by all reports.
I had a calzone, with sausage and tomato. Their Italian sausage contained a lot of fennel, was tasty, and not greasy at all. The dipping sauce was extremely thick, to the point where it was easier to scoop it onto the calzone with a fork rather than just dip.
For dessert, we split a piece of "mile-high chocolate cake." Wonderful!
My friend was quite disappointed that they were out of the root beer they claimed to brew on the premises, and drank water. I, on the other hand, was all about the beer. I sampled their IPA, Honey Lager, and Max Black, and opted for the Black. While this beer was as dark as a stout, it was more the thickness and taste of a dark ale or a light porter. It was very tasty and was a good complement to the calzone.
Good food, good beer, tasty dessert, and splendid conversation make for a wonderful evening on the road!
My trip to Singapore last week was primarily focused on business, so I wasn't able to wander off outside the covention/geek area of town, Suntec City. Still, I was able to eat some pretty good food while there.
After arriving at the Pan Pacific Hotel around 3am, I immediately went to bed, then had breakfast in the hotel's "Executive Lounge" a few hours later. The lounge was most definitely a cut above the lounges on "concierge" floors of American hotels. This lounge's breakfast featured a chef cooking up eggs to order.
Like many other places in Asia, the Pan Pacific did their best to offer both "American" and "Asian" options for breakfast. In addition to the chef whipping up fried eggs and omlets, the buffet offered Asian selections, sometimes dim sum, fried noodles, rice dishes, and steamed fish. Guests opting for a more Western breakfast can have bacon, chicken sausage, hash browns, and other classic sides.
Like most hotels at this level, the buffet includes a nice selection of breads and pastiries, cold meats (salami, ham, smoked salmon), cheeses, jellies, and butter. There also was a table with cereal and a good selection of fresh fruit and yogurt.
Coffee isn't up to American standards, but there's a good selection of teas, fruit juices, and fresh milk.
Outside the hotel's restaurants, the malls in between the hotel and Suntec Tower 4 (where I was working) had a number of coffee and pastry shoppes, starting with the hotel's lobby and including chains such as Starbucks and The Coffee Bean. Most of the traditional Chinese and Japanese places didn't open up for breakfast, though.
am in a TownePlace Suites this week in Indianapolis, so I've got a kitchen. Nothing too fancy for dinner tonight:
I picked up one of those rotisserie chickens that some supermarkets do, along with some pre-packaged caesar salad. The dressing caught my eye, "Honey Mustard & Wasabi" from Gallas Gorumet. Some baguette bread on the side. Orange juice to drink--i picked up a couple of bottles of wine, but they wouldn't sell them to me, Indiana liquor laws. And these people will talk about southern rednecks!
For dessert, a french vanilla yogurt and an orange.
