Boots in the Oven

Is My Beverage Inappropriate?

Definitely not- but the same probably can’t be said about the man who sold it to me.

While Mme. Pants and I were in Sebastopol we went to visit a friend of ours that I’d gone to school with in Florence. It just so happens that he’s currently employed at the finest wine store in town, the Wine Emporium.

When we first walked into the place it came across as very casual and comfortable. Bottles and bottles of good looking wine lined the tall shelves and a nifty little tasting bar sat in the back corner.

As I looked around I noticed that the walls were hung with some very interesting and somewhat graphic art (I later learned that works by local artists are rotated and preference is given to pieces that spur conversation and a bit of controversy.)

We made our way back to the tasting area and took a couple seats next to two middle aged women who had obviously been there for a while and who were having a gigglingly good time. Our friend Kai or possibly Ki (proper nouns don’t count in Scrabble) poured us some samples of a few local whites.

While we were settling in, James the owner emerged from the back wearing a Bluetooth headset, shorts of a surprisingly modest size, and a somewhat absent-minded facial expression. This, I thought, is a man who should be drinking.

When he finished his phone call, he came over and introduced himself. Then he turned to the two women next to us.

• James: “Are you ladies nurses?”
• Lady #1: “No.”
• James: “You know there’s a lot of nurses striking today.”
• Lady #2: “Yeah we heard.”
• James: “Are you sure you’re not nurses?”
• Lady #1: “Really, we’re not nurses.”
• James: “You look like nurses.”
• Lady #1: “I’m a teacher and she’s an accountant.”
• Long Pause
• James (smiling to himself): “I love nurses.”

As James wondered off again I had to reassess my initial impression. This was one funny man.

This advice is not in reference to your drinking.

We stayed for an hour or so as James and Kai poured us taste after yummy taste of their impressive stock. Unlike our stores here in Texas that are limited to sampling only three or four types of wine, the Wine Emporium keeps over four cases open for your educational pleasure. God bless you California liquor laws.

As we talked, I learned that James shares an interest in delicious food (hard to believe I know.) And he actually keeps a huge book of menus from all the best places in the area just in case his customers get peckish, or in my case obsessive.

Peppered throughout our conversations, James managed to fit in multiple off color stories involving bottles, pumpkins, cork screws and time pieces- all delivered drier than a crisp pinot gris (sorry, I couldn’t help myself.)

When we were ready to leave, the man actually gave us a half dozen eggs that he’d gathered from his own hens. You’re certainly not going to get that from some big discount store. Or any store really.

So the next time you’re in Sebastopol, the Puligny-Montrachet of northern California, definitely swing by this cool little wine haven. Tell James that Mr. Pants sent you and ask to see his espresso machine. I promise it’ll make for an interesting afternoon.

The Wine Emporium, Inc.                                                                                                     125 North Main Street                                                                                                    Sebastopol , CA 95472                                                                                                            Phone : 707-823-5200                                                                                                                        

Dude, it's a Michelin one-star! K & L Bistro, Sebastopol, CA

I know some people don't put much stock by Michelin ratings, but when we found ourselves staying just down the road from a one-star in Sebastopol last week, Husbear couldn't be stopped.

After all, our last experience at a Michelin-rated restaurant was awesome.

So, between prep for last Saturday's risotto class, we walked down the block from Viva to K & L Bistro, a small restaurant that's just been recently esteemed by the powers that be.

The place has a very comfortable bistro feel, with a banquette and tables crowded along one wall and an open kitchen at the back.  Desserts and specials are written up on wall-mounted blackboards, a down-market touch that drew my eye.

Our hearts were immediately won by the presence of half-liters of house wine at $12.  We ordered a refreshing Bordeaux Blanc.

Our waitress came over to recite the specials, and two of the appetizers sounded too good to pass up - one with salt cod and one with rabbit.  I haven't seen sat cod (baccala) on a menu since Italy!

The rabbit was in mousse form and done very Frenchily.  LOTS of butter and cream, along with a very strong flavor we agreed was definitely alcohol.

The rabbit mousse toasts were served on top of a delicious endive and bacon salad (what's not to like there?) and topped with a sprinkle of egg.  Yum.

The second appetizer special was a salt cod brandade.  We're both big fans of salt cod, when it's prepared well, and this definitely was.  Chunks of the fish were mixed with potatoes, along with cream and garlic and some other seasonings that weren't overly assertive.  The baccala mixture was delicious, and spreading it on toasts with a little of their outstanding tapenade made it perfection.

Plus, it had a crunchy top.

We split our entree, a house-made boudin blanc.  This is a traditional French sausage - theirs was made with chicken and pork.  The sausage itself was not the standout on this plate, since it was a little dry... but the fries, fried in rice oil.  The rice oil gave the fries a clean flavor, and they were amazingly crispy.  We asked for and received a deliciously garlicky aioli for dipping.

The salad of apples and endive was flavorful and light, a good counterpoint to the heavy sausage and fried fries.

K & L was a whole lot of fun.  It's the midrange kind of restaurant we're missing in Austin, with good, hearty French-style food at a reasonable pricepoint.  If we lived in the area, we'd definitely be back for dinner.  As it is, this made a great stop and got Husbear in a good mood for his risotto class.

K & L Bistro, 119 S. Main Street, Sebastopol CA.  707.823.6614.  Reservations recommended.

Swan Oyster Depot, plus aimless driving

Before you ask, the antipasti class went swimmingly yesterday.  Nobody cut themselves, nor did the kitchen burn down - to me, this is the mark of a good class.

Tonight - risotto! 

The day before yesterday - Swan Oyster Depot!

We landed at San Jose and grabbed our car, then merged very slowly onto the extremely backed up 101.  I called Auntie in Fremont to see how she was doing and found out that we should actually be on 280.  We don't know anything about all these crazy numbers.

Plus, I think I woke her up with my yammering.

Anyway, we made it into town and started searching for the Swan Oyster Depot, whose address we'd thankfully gotten from Auntie.  Husbear drove,and I navigated, continually thwarted by one way streets not marked on our map and those dang hills everywhere.

It is a delightfully unique town, though.

Occasionally, you couldn't actually see over a hill you were cresting.  Signs everywhere warned trucks away from particular streets.

We did eventually find the place, on the ground floor of a large building on a busy street, and we lucked out with street parking just down the block from the storefront.  Sweet!  Plus, there was no line and we had our choice of seats.

We were encouraged to sit by the fish bar, because there's apparently more leg room.

All the folks who work there seem to be incredibly friendly; a man who turned out to be one of the owners (the place has been in the hands of the same family since 1946, and open since 1912) took us under his wing and asked us what we'd like.

No idea - it's hard to narrow down the list from the enormous amount of seafood on display!  Wah! 

So he gave us some bread, a mild sourdough, to nibble on while we thought.

Seeing repeated orders of oysters being shucked gave us an idea.  Maybe at the Swan Oyster Depot, we should eat oysters?

"What kind?" asked our kind, patient helper dude.

Stumped again.

"How about I just bring you a mix of what we have today?"

YES.

So here are 7 different kinds of oysters.  Sheez.  Kumamoto, Miyagi, Drakes Bay, Bluepoint, Olympia... don't ask which is which.  Please.  The Olympias are the only oyster indigenous to the west coast, and they're not only a different species, but a different genus than the other oysters we had.

This information was all relayed to us, as we nodded enthusiastically and tried to look knowledgeable about oyster breeding.

They were all screamingly fresh, but my favorites were the Olympias with their slightly stronger taste.  I've never gotten to try that many oysters in a sitting before!  Fun.

Next?

Well, how about some clams?

I've had raw cherrystone clams (wow our blogging has come a long way), which I didn't care for too much, but not littlenecks, so we gave them a try.

These were also freshily fresh, but I'm still more of an oyster fan when we're talking raw bivalves.  Clams are chewier and stronger in flavor.  Husbear liked them lots and lots, especially their meatlike look.

We were still a little peckish, plus we wanted to give the boston-style clam chowder a try.  And I'm a huge fan of cured salmon of all stripes and wanted to rate theirs.

A half-order of salmon arrived at the table, laid out on more of that tasty bread.  I was asked if I wanted capers (duh!  of course!) and was presented with a big ol' jar and a spoon. 

The salmon was delicious, very lightly smoked and still with its delicious salmon texture and flavor.  It beat the pants off that mass-produced crap you get at Einstein Brothers.  Really, I know you're shocked.

The clam chowder was unspectacular.  I like it pretty thick, and this was thin.  I wouldn't say watery, exactly, but more milky than I prefer.  Husbear adds that it had good clam flavor, but not a lot of actual clam pieces, and additionally he was a little thrown by the curdled appearance.

It was tasty, though, we're just picky.

You know what washed this meal down perfectly?  A locally brewed Anchor Steam.  Yum.  I'm normally not the biggest fan of this beer, but just miles from the source, everything tastes better. 

By this time, the lunch rush was on, and if we weren't exactly being rushed, we were certainly being edged out the door.  We settled up our bill (cash only, please!)

Here's the inside of the place as we were leaving.  Nineteen stools only, folks! 

The line at this point was out the door.  Apparently it sometimes stretches down the block.

Bottom line, the Swan Oyster Depot was great.  It wasn't cheap, but we were paying for great quality.  There are also a number of seafood salads and cocktails on the menu, for people who like their seafood in cocktail sauce.

If we lived in San Fran or environs, we'd be back for lunch.

As it is, we had to leave to go to Sonoma County.  We're a little concerned about the state of the Golden Gate Bridge as we saw it from our car - does this seem lopsided to you?

Don't worry - I took the picture while Husbear drove.

Now, it's time for me to watch Husbear impart the risotto knowledge!

Swan Oyster Depot, 1517 Polk Street. 415.673.1101.  Monday-Saturday 8-5:30; no reservations, no credit cards.

If it's Friday, we must be...

Well, guess!

In what's become hopefully a short-lived tradition of excessive travel, we woke up Wednesday in Mandeville at the Husbear's folks' house, drove to Austin where we picked up the keys to our new apartment (! YAY !), moved mattresses into the new place, ate Mexican food at a chain restaurant out of Washington State, and fell over.  Really, really early Thursday, we woke up, drove to the airport, boarded a half-empty plane to San Jose, California, picked up our bizarre Dodge Avenger - if you need anything avenged in the next few days, call us - and drove to Sebastopol, California, in the heart of Sonoma County.

And we ate at the Swan Oyster Depot!  And took pictures!  Of the SEVEN different types of oysters we tried!

We're here in rainy California because Husbear was invited to lead two classes this weekend at Viva, a sister program to Apicius in Florence, where Husbear of course spent the last year.  Tonight, he'll be teaching knowledgeable Californians to make four different antipasti, while tomorrow he will be showing off his favorite risotto method.

While he's running around tomorrow, I'll put up a Swan Oyster review! 

Big shoulders, gale force winds off the lake, Oprah, blizzards, and Daleys.

Guess where I've been this past weekend!

OK, I'll give you a clue.

That's right, Saveur!  I ditched the Husbear and plopped myself down in the middle of row 29, on my way to Chicago.

After 2.5 hours of holding my elbows very close to my sides, I landed in significantly larger and cooler Chicago.  A friend from high school, that I haven't seen since 1999, came to pick me up.  Wow.

I should probably mention that what brought me into town was my high school reunion.  Eep.  You can probably guess what year we graduated...

Hey!  I wasn't even born in 1977!  Not cool, readerperson.

Anyway, d picked me up and we went to the mall.  Wait a minute, this is sort of like high school!

Not so much that evening, when we picked up the first boy I ever dated (seriously, we were twelve) and drove to the Hopleaf to check out their huge beer selection and chat about what we'd all been up to for the last eight years or so.

They even had the dark Leffe, that I haven't seen since Belgium!  I was happy and prattling away and then we ordered smelts to go with our fancy beers.  Smelts are a family of small anadromous fish, you know.

They were fried quite well, with a crunchy outside and soft fishmeat interior - the bones had been removed.  The pickles topping the dish were deliciously vinegary, and though I wanted a giant pile of them, I couldn't figure out a way to ask for a satchel of pickled onions without sounding completely insane.  Oh well.

Instead, I got a beer with a wooden handle.  My friends had to slap my hands away to keep me from trying to separate the beer from its holder.  Kwak, you are so yummy, and easy to drink once you get the hang of the external contraption.

I also had a duck confit salad with frisee, stilton, almonds, and peach segments.  The idea was great, but the peaches were really under-ripe.  Maybe Chicago isn't the best place to order peaches in September?  Huh.  Perhaps stewing them for a little while would help, or changing out the fruit - apples are in season, and they grow all over the Midwest.

Moving along, I ordered fermented pickle juice.

That wasn't what I was expecting from this beer, which on the menu is described as being brewed with mustard seed, spices, and sugar.  The taste is strangely reminiscent of pickled cabbage - not in a bad way, though.  It was odd, but I find myself wanting to try it again.  Plus, it's from Brugge (Bruges), where our friend Meglets spent 6 months working in a hostel!

Day One down, I slept in on Friday before going to see my aunt, uncle, and cousins out in Western Springs.  At it turned out, the friend I was staying with lived a hop, skip, and a short drive down the road from them, so it was a simple thing to get together.

My aunt knew just what had been missing from my diet down here - polish food, copious polish food!  Check out the amazing variety she put together.

Not only were there blintzes and kugelis and potato pancakes, and sausage with sauerkraut and sausage stuffed into cabbage, there were (count them if you don't believe me) THREE different types of pierogies!  She kept having to remind us which was which, since our family is apparently lacking in the x-ray pierogi skill set.

My cousin has been participating in the 365-day photo project people are working on on Flickr - I'm day 270!  Here's a moment of meta:

We sat down at the table with huge bags of old family pictures and spent a couple of hours reminiscing about family times.  You don't get to see it, but there's a great picture I was allowed to take home where I'm wearing high-waisted pleated-front lavender koolats with a matching shirt, and Shelley up there is in turquoise overalls.  Yipes!

Lots of fun, that we should do again sooner.

Later that evening, we headed out to a cocktail reception in our old gym.  It's now been refurbished, equipped with new rooms and carpets and paint, and whole areas we weren't allowed in have been thrown open to the air.

The new gym is being menaced by that denizen of grammar, the apostrophe.  Look at what it's done to this poor sign.  d offered to pose as South Girl.

The only other classmate to show for this leg of the reunion made the kind offer to show us what a North Boy looks like.

So, you know, that was fun - walking around the gym with a glass of Delicato, catching up with teachers, standing in a knot of three, snickering about grammatical mistakes (there was also a sign pointing the way to the teacher's offices).  Turns out the school already knew of the mistake.  I wonder how long the signs hung without people noticing, though?

That evening went on fairly late, too, continuing up on the North Side somewhere at another bar with a huge beer selection.  I'm not much of a beer drinker down here in Texas, but when in Rome surrounded by delicious Belgian and German brews, why the heck not?

Back to skool the next day - we gained one classmate.  Now, while that does mean that over 10% of our graduating class of 39 were there, it was still pretty sad. 

There were turkey legs, though - great for a food fight that never materialized.

So, we wandered the small homecoming carnival with old classmates, bitching about how things were so new and shiny.

After making a few phone calls and twisting the knife a little, I was able to get a couple more people from our class to show up.  Even if it normally was their day to sleep in.  (I'm looking at YOU, Joe!)

We were all sort of surprised how many teachers remembered us, by name if not by face.

A cocktail party and dinner were supposed to start at 5, so the representatives of the c/o '97 that showed wandered over that way.  None of us had paid to actually enter the dinner, but we figured we could act as a dragnet if anyone else from our class showed up.

We got a picture while we milled around.

One of our teachers made fun of us mercilessly for standing outside.  He told us we should just walk on in and get a drink, and after some consultation we did.  (Getting our grade to do anything has always been like herding cats.  Or maybe sloths.)  We looked at the yearbooks out on display and had wine in the dining hall - it was really, really surreal.  I poked around a little in the room where we used to get our pizzas and fries and warmed-over green beef-ish patties.

When it came time for the alumni coordinator to give her speech welcoming everyone to the $50 per head dinner, she encouraged us all to sit.  We reminded her that none of us had paid, but she got very insistent...

So we crashed our own reunion.

Yup.

We sat and talked and drank and listened to a speech from the new Headmaster and remarked on how little the room has actually changed.

It also turned out that the DJ was a guy who'd gone to the same temple as me when we were kids. 

There was a sticky moment or two, when we were made to tell the waitrons what we'd ordered... I guessed chicken.  Sure!

It was, you know, better than the cafeteria food I had when I was going to school there.  Yes, they did hire caterers. 

One of our English teachers produced a sheaf of class pictures from somewhere back in a storage vault.  So many 90s ties!  We checked off the missing people. 

We ended up staying at the school until pretty late, and we would have continued the party downtown except the traffic on the Dan Ryan was backed up almost down to Austin. 

The next day, awesomely, I got to see my daddy and my brudda!  They came out to the suburbs to pick me up, and we went to a Texas-style steakhouse called Al's Char House.  Sort of hilarious. 

My brudda really, really wanted a plate of cheese fries.  Who are we to hold a kid back from his dream?

The servings here are sort of novelty-sized, I'd say even more so than usual.  Dad ordered a 56-ounce steak!  (Don't be alarmed - most of it was so he could bring food home to my mom, who wasn't able to make it out to the 'burbs.)

Here he is, showing off his find.  I thought it was hilarious that there's a three dollar charge for sharing - this brings up the question of how often people finish this steak.  I need statistics.

I was also able to donate to the keep Mom fed fund, since my lambchops were huge.  And came with mint jelly!  So traditional.

I think Dad packed up five or six pounds of food to go.  I'm still waiting on my brudda to email me the family portrait we corralled a waitress into taking.

Again, we had a great time and did a lot of catching up.  I hope I can make it back to Chicago with Husbear in the next few months.  After the winter, please Gd.

My family dropped me back off at d's house, where she was ready to get out and get some dinner.  Not me, I said, having just eaten seventyleven pounds of lamb.  So she talked big D into going again, and we went to Moonshine.

Both of the Ds have spent time in New Mexico for school, where apparently the green chile's reign extends to pizza.  Moonshine does a green chile pizza, so... we had to go.

And sit under a stop sign.

I do have to say, the green chile pizza was quite good.  (I only had a small piece.  It was probably a good thing I didn't stay in Chicago longer, eating like this!)

Plus, we got one last catchup session before I left in the morning.

Ah, the morning.  My plane didn't leave until early afternoon.  Since I was leaving from O'Hare, though, I got there with two hours to kill.  (Thanks again for the ride, d's mom!) 

Security and checkin went really quickly, so having had nothing to eat yet, I stopped off at some bar or other inside the airport and ordered a $9 burger.

Here it is - a study in airport bars.  Traveler, meet cheezeborger.

The plane ride, unlike the one up to Chicago, was nice - I had a window seat and lots of room and a book that d lent me.  And a ginger ale.

Thanks, Chicago, for the memories, and for hooking me up with so many old friends!  We should do this again sometime, preferably before my 20th reunion.

Hopleaf: 5148 N. Clark St., Chicago, 773.334.9851

Al's Char House: 32 S. Lagrange Rd., Lagrange, 708.354.6255 (Careful - their site plays music!)

Moonshine: 1824 N. Division, Chicago, 773.862.8686