Yellow Milk

Sometimes I just don't understand where my peers are coming from.

Recently, I was talking to a friend of mine who shares a similar passion for cuisine and the beauty of ingredients and he was relating to me a story about milk. A barista he knew asked him to source some milk for a competition. Being the lover of great ingredients that my friend is, he went to a local farmer who's producing some truly stellar milk - a farmer who laughed at him when he told the farmer that he would like the farmer to supply him with 40 gallons of milk per week to supply his coffee house.

Laughed at him because the farmer just didn't produce that volume of milk. He produced high quality milk but on a small scale and at serious prices. The average gallon of commercial milk is roughly $2.50. The milk I use is $5.50. The milk this farmer produces is $10.00 per gallon and, from what I'm told, is just exquisite. Rich, sweet, creamy and made from the best ingredients (i.e. pastured on grass). It's the kind of milk we dream about.

As any passionate individual, my friend packs the milk on ice and drives it to the competition. He's excited to share the milk and, from what I've been told, that's where things went awry. That's when this barista's "team" got involved.

They tasted the milk but found it "too weird" and "too different" than the commercial milk they were used to. They fretted that the judges would find the milk to be "too different" and very unlike what they were used to and expecting. Not to mention the fact that the milk looked yellow.

I realize that for most people yellow milk is an odd sight to behold. Commercial milk is alpine white and alpine white it shall be. Therefore, there must be something wrong with yellow milk.

As I listened to the story, I couldn't help but wonder if this barista and the "team" had any real exposure to this level of ingredient? Had they only been exposed to commercial ingredients? Was I expecting too much to expect that these baristas know that the "yellow" tint was due to the diet of the cows and the sweet, rich cream in the milk?

This was the point where I want to look for a concrete wall to bash my head against. Isn't the point of competition presenting judges with something they haven't tasted before? Isn't the notion of a milk that's sweet, rich and vastly different than commercial a good thing?

Which Is Worse?

I'm trying to decide which of these two events is worse:

- dumping the girl you've been seeing off and on for the past four and a half years,

OR

- finding out that the hot, fun, interesting and quirky girl you've recently met is married... with kids.









I'm leaning towards the latter...

Under The Gun

One would think that with all the travel that I manage in the course of a year that I would have it down by now.

The night before a trip is always the worst. So many things to do, so many details to settle. Inevitably, I still have a laundry list (and actual laundry) of things to complete and sit around wishing I had another week to do it all.

I leave for Atlanta in the morning to attend yet another SCAA Conference, Trade Show and World Barista Championship. Until just a few days ago, this was going to be my first SCAA since 2003 that I would be attending with nothing in particular to do. For the past six years, I've done some sort of volunteer work instructing espresso classes, calibrating espresso machines, recording podcasts, organizing a booth, competing and all sorts of miscellany. This year, I had nothing planned except to be a simple attendee wanting to see the show from a regular persons' point of view. I was excited.

That was until just the other day when Sarah Allen from Barista Magazine called me up to see if I would be a sort of roving reporter with pen in hand and ready to write about the conference from my perspective. Didn't she know that my confidence in the SCAA has been all but destroyed? Now I'm no longer just another attendee - I'm an attendee with a mission.

Back into the darkroom to dig up my old and trusty Domke F2 bag loaded with lots of photo goodies. Toss out the ginormous Canon EOS 1N body and suddenly my bag is feeling pretty lightweight.

If you happen to be in Atlanta, look for me and my camera bag roving the floors of the Georgia World Congress Center, but if you don't see me there, you can look for me at Watershed and some of the other fine eateries in Atlanta.

Pissed Off Over Ego

A couple of years ago, when LA Mill Coffee opened their Silver Lake store in Los Angeles, a discussion ensued amongst a number of us in the barista community. Turns out that LA Mill had co-opted some of our signature drinks and placed it on their menu. People wanted to know if I was pissed about it.

Quite frankly: no. It didn't bother me at all. However, some of my friends weren't as pleased. Some were upset that they didn't ask permission to use the idea for the drinks or recognize the source of the material. Some wanted their names on the menu. I didn't care.

I didn't care because I knew that there's truly very little real originality left in the world. That all of us create drinks and dishes based on our prior influences and we generate our ideas from others. To stand around an be petulant over whether or not I was given credit would demand that I list on my own menu the line of inspiration for each of my items - and that would just be ridiculous.

I'm reminded of this today as I was reading at article on Marco Pierre White on Salon.com where Marco is commenting on Marcel Vigneron's use of a Wylie Dufresne method:
"We live in a world of refinement, not invention. It's the greatest compliment he can be given, this guy. If someone takes one of your dishes and does it, it's flattery. For you to get pissed off because he didn't acknowledge you is ego. It's all too political really, isn't it? I mean, we're fucking chefs."

When I think back on all of the dishes I work on and drinks I've created, all of them fall back on inspiration and interpretation from someone else. They're springboards for, hopefully, something interesting and tasty.

Honestly, the reason I do what I do (and inevitably write at length about it) is to share the experience. To encourage others to explore for themselves. Maybe start out by recreating the recipes and then use that experience as the springboard to try something different. To create an interpretation that is their own.

On the egotistical side of things, do I really want another place to use my recipes and give me credit by blazing my name on the menu? What if they screw it up and/or present it poorly? Suddenly, a whole group of consumers never exposed to my work is left thinking that it's crap and the name is tarnished. Perhaps it's simply better for me to tarnish my reputation in person rather than a drink on a menu in some distant coffee house somewhere in the world...

Designing Kitchen

For many years now, I've been a big fan of traditional style coffee bars. Very linear designs that incorporate everything (including the kitchen sink) into them and now that it looks as though we might embark on another journey, I've been seriously thinking about them again.

Until just the other morning.

In a perfect world, you'd have cheap rent (sub $8/sq ft), lots of space (2,000+ sq ft) and the kind of volume you'd find on Main Street in Disney World's Magic Kingdom. But in the real world, you have real rent ($20+/sq ft), small spaces (600sq ft) and varying volumes. Add the downturn of the local economy and Hell has been delivered in a Hand Basket.

While sensible minds reduce their spending and shore up their defenses, the smart minds have been going to the US Congress and asking for "bailout money." And luckily for them, they've spent the last 25 years generously making campaign contributions and supporting both the Republican and Democratic parties.

Sad to say that I'm not in the "smart minds" group. Nor am I in the "sensible minds" group. Which means that I'm stuck in the ether somewhere in-between on the road to grand riches or financial ruin. Good thing I passed on that Ferrari last year...

As I was sitting around the house the other morning drinking a quite delicious french pressed Ethiopia Bonko "Black Sun" from Cafe D'Bolla and an "I am in Paris" almond croissant from Patisserie Poupon, it hit me: why am I so focused on linear coffee bars? Why? Is the linear design really that conducive to hospitality? Is that how we welcome people into our homes and our lives - by separating them with a 33" deep bar?

What I (and I think many people) enjoy is sitting around the kitchen with friends and family. Talking story, cooking, eating, drinking and even working. Kitchens are warm spaces filled with conviviality and sharing. Bars are places were creepy, cheesy guys hit on drunk women.

My home kitchen is quite spacious. It's bright and airy and tends to be the social center whenever people are gathered. The kitchen is the ideal place to welcome friends and hang out. The dining room is too formal. The living room is too detached. In the kitchen, everyone just spills out all over the place. By the stove, buy the fridge, in the breakfast nook - it's organic, it's relaxed. More importantly: it's comfortable.

Within just a fleeting moment, the question became not how to cram a linear espresso bar into the space, but rather: "how do we design and build a kitchen into a coffee environment while still meeting all of the foodservice standards and regulations imposed by the city?" Part of the reason for such a linear design is to separate the customer (public) from the work area but we want to welcome them into the work area - just as you would in your home kitchen. We want to eliminate the walls and barriers to make it open and friendly.

Oooh, it's one thing to merely design and build a great kitchen. But how does one achieve that same level of comfort and family while adhering to the regulations of the government? That's the tough proposition, and over the next few weeks, I'm going to be exploring just that conundrum.

Thinking In A Vacuum

Getting close to the action.

Now that I've returned from my trip to the Pacific Northwest for the United States Barista Championship, it's back to work. Back to doing the things we do best and part of that is getting ready to push new levels of coffee service.

For the past couple of years, while the trend of American Third Wave Coffee Shops has been to embrace automated technology (a la Clover) or low tech versions of brewing methods we've been moving away from (pour over), I've been seriously pondering the implementation of the vacuum pot brewers or "syphon" as many call them.

Wildly popular in Japan, vacuum brewing is relatively unknown in America - even though the technology itself is about 100 years old. Truth be told, it's a cumbersome, messy and somewhat lengthy method of brewing coffee. Compared to Clover's push-button simplicity and the pour over ease of use, vac pots are downright lunacy in a commercial setting - I've never said I was smart.

What I like about vac pot is the drama. The theatrics. The visual stimulation of brewing coffee. It's interactive. It's entertaing. It's educational. Instead of being a button pusher or just some knob pouring water into a paper filter, the barista is working alchemy and creating magic for the customer. There's a bit of mysticism in the whole glass contraption and boiling water thing. Best of all, the flavor in the cup can be quite stellar indeed.

But there's a downside.

Achieving that miraculous cup is elusive at best. Evidently minor variations in dose, grind and stirring technique can bring a brilliant cup of coffee crashing down around you - leaving you with a customer wondering what kind of hocus-pocus you're trying to pull on them with this dreck you call coffee.

When the time came to build a new coffee experience, I knew that we had to take our concept at The Spro and push it even further. Replicating The Spro would just be boring and wouldn't push us to grow. We needed to build something new and different and while some of my friends pushed the pour over pretty hard, I knew vac pot was the way to go.

Don't get me wrong, pour overs can make some very nice coffee. But, quite frankly, it's just boring. How much of a tool does it take for some schelp to stand in front of a cone filter and pour hot water over coffee? Yes, it's to order. But is it theatrical? Is there any drama? Does it really take that much skill? Is it even exciting? Well, it was for me back in 2005 when I saw them doing it at Royal Coffee in Berkeley. But today, in 2009, as a "new" brew method? Not so much.

Listening to the pour over pundits and you'd think pour over is the Second Coming of Christ Almighty (well, now that Clover has become their Judas). For my money, I might as well go out and buy a Fetco Extractor brewer because it delivers the same thing and faster.


A variety of tests at The Spro.

Over the past few months (and especially the last couple of days), I've been testing different vac pot brew methods and I've heard the gamut of approaches. From the seriously technical who insist that the coffee must be stirred X amount of times, to the Japanese who don't really care about the number of times stirred - just that a stirring and mixing occurs. I've tasted very light, tea-like coffees and extremely heavy, over-extracted coffees. I've read lots of online resources about technique and listened to quite a few baristas waxing poetic about their methods.

Quite frankly, it's bewildering.

Instead, I've taken the old-fashioned approach. Coming up with a baseline of standards and then running test variations from there. A little more coffee, a little less coffee. A little finer grind, a little coarser grind. Stir here, stir there. Crisscross here, make an "X" there. Some were good, some were bad - some were really bad. In the end, I decided to call up a friend.

For a long time, I knew that vac pots were the way to go. I wanted the new place to offer only vac pots. Gone would be The Spro's method of French Press coffee service. I envisioned a multi-unit vac pot station with many pots brewing simultaneously to service the morning rush. It would be immense. People would line up hungry for a cup of beautifully handcrafted coffee. Angels would trumpet our arrival and women would throw themselves at my feet and tear at my shirt.

But that location and a few others fell through and we've been in a holding pattern ever since (and I have a case of new shirts waiting to be torn).


John Piquet prepares to attack.

Fast forward to the waning hours of 2008 at the end of December when I flew out to Salt Lake City to check out what John and Yiching Piquet were doing at Cafe D'Bolla. It was there that I formed a new vision for what vac pot service could be. For Cafe D'Bolla, vac pot coffee meant you sat at the syphon bar and your coffee was made to order just for you. You sat there and conversed with John about the coffee. A dialogue ensued with one of the most hardcore operators in America.

At the D'Bolla bar, your coffee was exquisitely prepared and served in estate Noritake china cups of a very specific shape, size and porcelain density. It was specific because John had spent untold years researching and testing the proper vessel to carry your coffee and deliver maximum flavor. This was thinking about coffee beyond how I thought about coffee. This guy was operating on a wholly different level.

And when I say that John is the most hardcore operator in America, I mean it. Lots of people in this "Third Wave" of coffee position themselves as being "hardcore" - only to find out that their cafes look like hell, offer commercial syrups and 20z cup sizes just like every other Tom, Dick and Harry in the coffee business.

Piquet isn't like that. He's so focused on quality in the cup that he runs the place by himself: to control quality. Sure, you can have one of the finest brewed cups in America at Cafe D'Bolla but if you're expecting to add milk and sugar, think again. This guy has gone toe-to-toe with customers over that kind of breach. Never mind that the guy with the latte can pull some sugar and cream from the condiment bar, the vac pot customer is expected to be there for the full sensory experience of the coffee.

There are times when I know my business partners (or proposed business partners) must think I'm absolutely insane. Vac pot service has got to be one of them. Why make it more difficult? Why not just go out and get a drip brewer? Or stay with what you know and have proven (french press)?

Well, why not? Are we not striving to be the best at our craft? Are we not striving to offer the highest quality? Then why would I spend $11K on a push-button automatic machine and not a similar amount on a push-button Franke super-automatic espresso machine?

We make it harder because we strive for excellence.

I'll admit though, there is something alluring about the simplicity of pour over. Just bang, bang, bang and you've got four filters filled with a slurry of coffee and water, and a few minutes later, you've got four cups of coffee walking out the door. It's nice. It's fresh. But God, is it mind-numbingly boring to do and to watch. At least when you watch a Fetco Extractor brewer there are blinking lights to entertain you.


Jay Egami rocks the bar at SCAA Minneapolis.

Rewind a bit to early December 2008 when I took a trip out to San Francisco solely for the purpose of meeting with UCC's Jay Egami and to see the vac pot bar heating system he is currently importing into the United States. It's a very sexy-looking multi-gang halogen light heating bar that can brew three or five vac pots simultaneously. Honestly, there is no vac pot heater that looks better or dazzles people more. It is true Coffee Porn. It's Coffee Sex on Cocaine. I would love to have one, but at $20,000 for the five group, one must consider ones' money market account.

Watching a true syphon barista work one of these bars (like the Japanese Syphon Champion at last years SCAA Trade Show) is simply amazing artistry. The stirring, the motions, the pouring. It's like Coffee Kabuki. It's the kind of interaction I want to bring to the next coffee experience.

At The Spro, I'm starting to get a bit fizzy with all the coffees I'm tasting. Seven tests and counting. Soon the count will escalate to eleven and beyond, but for now, I'm feeling a bit stuck. Minor variations in grind setting and dosage are yielding wildly differing results. One notch here on the Mahlkonig Kenya and that delicate balance we might have been approaching in the last test has been lost. I'm feeling wonky and decide that I need a little help.

When one thinks of Florida one doesn't think "coffee." Gainesville has more to do with Gators than Gethwumbini but not too far off the freeway is the lair of Anthony Rue and Volta Coffee. It's about 10:30 in the morning, I give Anthony a ring and he answers on the fourth ring. Hmmm, he answers his own phone, nice touch.

Of all the people I know in the coffee business, Anthony is the only one who seems to actually "get it" when it comes to bringing together coffee and cuisine. His depth and understanding of cuisine and ingredients never fails to surprise me - and he's the only one to get that As The Veneer Of Democracy Starts To Fade is from Mark Stewart.

While in Portland for the USBC, we had some great discussions about cuisine (and sometimes about coffee). One of the most interesting discussions was the grasp of baristas over how coffee goes with cuisine and, perhaps more importantly, whether or not the judges themselves understand coffee and cuisine (and how it goes together) to accurately assess a signature drink.

One of the popular routes this year with competition baristas was to discard that familiar chocolate and cardamom with coffee routine and go for something "culinary" - which typically meant identifying certain flavor components in the espresso, like blueberries, and then adding actual blueberries to some sort of infusion to boost that aspect of the flavor. Interesting? Well, it's cute. Compelling? Hardly. Challenging? Not at all.

After a few minutes of discussion (in the middle of Volta's service), I'm off and ready to blaze new trails in vac pot refinement. Armed with Volta's brewing standards in hand, I give it a try. Not bad. Actually, it's pretty darn good and the best results I've had all morning. A finer grind and restraint in stirring is yielding some tasty results. Not exactly the body and flavor I'd like to present but we're getting closer.


Brewing coffee at Blue Bottle in San Francisco.

Later, I'm on the email horn with John Piquet asking for his syphon wisdom. Again, the approach is a bit different but I'm starting to narrow down even further what and how we're going to do things: 3 cup vacuum pot, hot water from the water tower, boil, connect both halves, allow the water to rise, add coffee, stir to saturate, brew for 35 seconds, stir at the end of brew to create a vortex and pull from heat.

The testing continues over a couple of weeks and untold servings of coffee. During this period, I've reached a level of comfort where it's time to start getting customer feedback and start serving the actual brew to customers using whatever our pressed coffee of the day happens to be.

I've spent a lot of time in other peoples' coffeeshops over the years just hanging out or checking out what they do and no brew method captures the attention and minds of the average consumer like the halogen heated vacuum pot. "It's alchemy," they say. Or they might ask: "Is that a bong?" That, or an over-glorified crack pipe. But since there's no inlet hole, sucking any sort of burning substance out of it is an exercise in futility.

Whatever they might think it is, the important point is that it grabs their attention and they ask. The Spro is located in a public library where hundreds of non-coffee drinkers pass on a daily basis, but one look at the vac pot in action and they want to stop and ask questions It starts the conversation about coffee and what coffee can be.

Once they see the lights and the boiling water, they're fascinated. They get closer. They're ready to chat. From "is it a bong" we can go as deep as necessary to engage the public about coffee and what we do. For most people, coffee is something commercial and anonymous. It's something housed in a black and silver airpot. The brewing of coffee is typically hidden from view but with vac pot, it's front and center - and ready to mingle.

They ask. They prod. It looks cool. It stimulates an interest in the regular person that only the hardcore coffee geek would find in a Clover. And compare it to pour over where the customer has the great pleasure of watching a wet slurry of coffee and water slowly drip its' way into the cup below? Watching the blinking lights on a Fetco is more fun than that.

The attention garnered by the vac pot encourages engagement and generates questions. Suddenly, we've stumbled upon a way to talk enthusiastically about coffee with a segment of the population that had little interest in our product and our craft and now they can see it in a very visceral way. They can see for themselves that this method requires mastery of craft without us having to verbalize it (and thus cheapen its' meaning).

Even the simple and perhaps condemning "why?" is a question that can be used to bring the customer around. Why go to all this trouble? Why use this device? Now, we can discuss how different brewing methods diminish or heighten certain aspects of a coffee's flavor and how some coffees taste "better" with certain brewing methods. Now, we've just entered into a level of geekdom that most people would never have allowed us to engage - and all because its' the theatrics of the method that introduced us to them.

Sometimes as I sit around pondering the future of The Spro, our approach to craft and where we want the company to go into the future, I wonder if vac pot is just batty. It just looks difficult. It's difficult to master. It's quite expensive and I expect the on-going cost to be quite high as well. Worse: it could be absolute hell during the morning rush. And it's going to require a whole new way of thinking to approach vac pot brewing in a production environment.

A number of operators still use other brewing methods as their primary brew, and use the vac pot to augment their production and/or highlight "special" coffees. I like that approach and, if we took that path, would allow us to maintain our french press cup service while offering vac pot. But to my mind, that seems the easy way out for us. The goal is to find the way towards making vac pot service our primary method of cup brewing. That means it has to be efficient and as quick as we can do it without sacrificing quality while still allowing us to engage the customer in a manner that is meaningful to them.

It's still a long road towards that end but we're moving towards it everyday.

Fruity Pebbles Cappuccino

Fred Flintstone insisting this isn't just another faddish trend.

When I'm in town, I spend most of my days at home. Not because I'm lounging around drinking Chateau du Siroc but because I no longer have a real office somewhere else to work. Now my office is at home and I work from home. Oh, how I miss my old office for those late evening cigars while crunching numbers...

But I digress.

I'm sitting at home working a couple of weeks ago when my phone rings. It's Alex Talbot calling to check up on me and see how things are in the Land of Pleasant Living.

What are you doing? he asks.
Just doing some paperwork, what's up?
I know you've been working on a soft serve ice cream recipe but...

That's when he drops the bomb on me.

Have you seen what David [Chang] is doing?
No, why?
Look it up.

David Chang is the owner and chef of the Momofuku chain of restaurants in New York City. He's known for doing tasty and innovative foods and his pistachio soft serve ice cream is just amazing.

I pull up Google and punch in David's name and voila! I'm pissed.

I'm not mad at David. Or Alex. I'm mad at myself. For my lack of vision. For my inability to see what's been staring us in the face for the past thirty five years. I'm mad because I'm lame.

For next half an hour or so, I'm ranting about my house, cursing my existence. Why had I not been able to see this before? After eating it innumerable times?

David is making something called "cereal milk ice cream."

Just what is this cereal milk ice cream? It's milk infused with the flavor of your favorite cereal. Essentially, it's the milk left in your bowl after you've finished your cereal. It's simple. It's obvious. And I've been blind from the start.

Fast forward a few weeks, after I've recovered from the crushing blow to my food ego, and I've been playing around with how to incorporate cereal milks with coffee. Breakfast in a cup, right? It's a no-brainer.

Two weeks (or so) ago, I was at the United States Barista Championship in Portland, Oregon where they've installed a "fourth machine" for attendees and the general public to come and have a taste of great coffees roasted by some of the nations' top coffee roasting companies and prepared by the some of the nations' best baristas.

In an odd twist of events, I was asked to come and prepare coffee drinks on the fourth machine during the USBC Finals with 2004 USBC Champion Bronwen Serna. Since she's the champ and I'm not, I was relegated to steaming and pouring milk.

Quite simply, working the fourth machine is brutal. First off, you're working with a machine you're not all that familiar with and in a portable situation so you're not at your home machine and everything is just a bit out of whack. The line is at least 50 people deep and never abating - all day long. It's intense and if you screw up, the cascade effect is terrible. You've got to keep up with the flow and pace at all times unless you want to fall so far deep into the weeds that the only way to describe it is: Royally Screwed.

Most barista teams on the fourth machines offer a similar menu: espresso, macchiato, cappuccino and latte. That's it. Just those four drinks. Want something else? Sorry. Been watching all these cool signature drinks and want to try something different? Ain't gonna happen.

Which is why I was determined to offer our guests an alternative to the traditional drinks. Let them have something fun. Something interesting. Something whimsical. Fruity Pebbles Cappuccino seemed like a good idea.

It is what it sounds like, steamed milk infused with Fruity Pebbles, free poured with latte art and a sprinkling of Fruity Pebbles as a garnish. There's actually a picture of it here.

People seemed to enjoy it so I thought "why not bring it to The Spro?" Yesterday, after a couple days of testing to get the ratios correct, Fruity Pebble Cappuccino made it to the specials menu where it will run through the rest of spring.

Making the milk infusion is relatively simple, just mix milk with Fruity Pebbles in a bowl and wait. The concern is that in a production environment, how do you achieve consistent results if everyone is pouring different ratios of Fruity Pebbles to their milk? I had to develop a standard:

Fruity Pebble Milk
Yield: one half gallon

300g Fruity Pebbles
80z Whole Milk (Trickling Springs Creamery)

- Stir cereal and milk together
- Infuse and refrigerate for 20 minutes
- Strain and serve.
- Use in the same manner as regular milk

Why twenty minutes? I figured that was the average time it would take a young child to eat a normal bowl of cereal. The ratio offered by Post in their nutritional figures gave us milk that was too sweet and too powerful. It needed to be toned down with a greater ratio of milk.

Maybe in the fall we'll give the Cocoa Puff-A-Chino a try...

Can't Sleep

It's nearly 3:30 in the morning and I can't sleep.

Not because I'm an insomniac or high or drunk or pumped up on caffeine (or taurine, for that matter). I can't sleep because I'm just generally pumped up tonight. The creative juices are running full bore and I'm raring to go.

I've been sitting around writing project proposals, staff schedules, flight reservations and reviewing images from Amy Ferraris movie The Perfect Cappuccino from which I'm trying to glean design ideas from the Italian cafes featured in her movie.

My mind is racing and I can't keep up with it. So much is occupying my thoughts but I can't jot them all down.

I'm wondering just what time I'll wind down and get some sleep. I've got a bunch of meetings starting in the morning.

Buying Books at the Library

One of the great advantages of having an espresso bar located inside a library is the incredible amount of resources just a few steps away. Need to research current law or look up words in Croatian? They've got the texts. Maybe the plumbing has been getting wonky and you need to know how to re-plumb the espresso machine? No problem. Getting sued for inappropriate conduct and need to work up a defense? Check that too.

The best part for is the library's sizable collection of food-related books and cookbooks. Need to reference Diana Kennedy? She's in there. Want to peruse Robouchon? He's hanging out in aisle nine. From the simple (Rachael Ray) to the fancy (Jacques Pepin) to the classic (Julia Child) to the mundane (Padma Lakshmi), the library has got it.

Even when I need to reference some of my own cherished tomes, like Thomas Keller's The French Laundry Cookbook or Grant Achatz's Alinea, they've got those too.

But, every once in a while, the library goes through its' collection and weeds out the books that aren't circulating enough. And while this can be a boon to the collector, it also means that my reference material is constantly at some level of jeopardy. To combat this, I routinely check out and return my favorite tomes just to keep them circulating and off the chopping block.

Then there's days like today when the library has gone through its' stacks, chopped a number of books, withdrawn them from the collection and put them up for public sale. Hopefully I'm there to swoop in on the deals and just go crazy. Good thing I scheduled myself to close and was able to obtain the following:

In Pursuit of Flavor - Edna Lewis
I Love Crab Cakes! - Tom Douglas
Burgers - Rebecca Bent
Cooking with Faith - Faith Ford
Uncle Bubba's Savannah Seafood - Earl "Bubba" Hiers
Cheese, Glorious Cheese! - Paula Lambert
In a Vermont Kitchen - Lyon & Andreen
A Great American Cook - Jonathan Waxman
The New American Cooking - Joan Nathan
Liquid Mexico - Youman & Estep
Race Day Grub - Angela Skinner
The Palm Restaurant Cookbook - Legere Binns
The Perfect Recipe - Pam Anderson
American Home Cooking - Cheryl & Bill Jamison
Cooking One On One - John Ash
Rosa's New Mexican Table - Robert Santibanez
Emeril's Delmonico - Emeril Lagasse
The New California Cook - Diane Worthington

While perhaps not all of them are classic tomes like The French Laundry Cookbook, there's definitely some solid cookery going on in a number of them. I'm especially looking forward to reading more Edna Lewis and Jonathan Waxman.

Friends often ask me why I have such a large collection of books. How can I possibly cook my way through all of them. Truth be told, I hardly cook the recipes in any of them. I use the books as springboards for ideas and utilize their thoughts to help shape my own. There's lots to learn about flavors from any of these books - even the ones that seem quite pedestrian (like Race Day Grub) offer insight in the flavor palates of the average consumer who, in turn, tend to be our largest clientele base. The quest lies in how to offer top quality and interesting ingredients to these people without completely jumping the shark in terms of their palates.

And all of those books for merely eighteen dollars...

I'll report later as I discover more.

Lobster and the USBC

It's way late at night here in Portland and I'm still awake after partying at the American Barista and Coffee School, dinner with Eton Tsuno and a drink with Duane, Aleco and Kyle from Stumptown, Drew from Ecco Caffe and Sarah from Barista Magazine. Tomorrow is my time to perform at the USBC (that's United States Barista Championship, not United States Bowling Congress) and I'm still trying to figure out exactly what to do.

I have decided one thing: it's gonna be lobster all the way.

Lobster. Homarus Americanus. North Atlantic cold lobster, a.k.a. Maine Lobster. I spent Wednesday afternoon in Glenn and Beta's kitchen cooking it all up. Celeriac base and cold-infused lobster cream. It takes 48 hours to make this drink correctly and it's still evolving.

Tuesday afternoon, my first stop from the airport was The Meadow where I spied on the Taha'a Vanilla Salt. I'll take a vial of that, please. Add a bar of Askinosie San Jose Del Tambo White Chocolate and I'm good to go.

This morning, I made a jaunt out the New Seasons Market in Concordia because I heard they had a stash of fresh Oregon Black Truffles. Grabbed a couple of knobs.

All of this will go together in a drink that is basically the craziest, most off-kilter drink I've ever developed. It's wild. It's weird. It's intriguing. It's complex and confusing. It, without a doubt, pushes the limits of what we think goes with coffee: the balance between the lobster and coffee is compelling with the white chocolate subtly smoothening out the blend, but is it "good"? Is it "delicious"?

I don't know if even I can say that it's "delicious".

Oddly compelling, yes - but delicious?

Hmmm, that's a tough one.

The drink is meant to be an amuse bouche to a larger body of work. A larger tasting menu that will someday hit The Spro. It's a drink that announces that this isn't going to be your typical coffee with chocolate, cardamom, sugar and cream kind of experience. It's gonna be different. It's going to push, prod and challenge you and your preconceptions about coffee and how it fits in the world. The judges are gonna taste it and may not know how to react. It's distinctly savory with a cloying sweetness undercurrent. Shocking? Perhaps. Appalling? Maybe...

Whatever the case may be, it's going to be celeriac, lobster and coffee with chopped cold lobster tail meat and garnished with freshly grated Oregon Black Truffles. Come down to the Oregon Convention Center and maybe taste it yourself, or tune into www.usbc2009.com and check out the live feed. I'm scheduled to go on around 4pm Pacific Daylight Time.

Musique de USBC

Once again, the United States Barista Championship is upon us. On Tuesday, I'll fly to Portland to compete in what may be my last barista competition. I've got some fun things in mind for my presentation Friday afternoon and I thought I would share my playlist for Friday. The final mix uses tracks or elements from the music listed below. I'll let you guess what made it into the final mix and maybe I'll even post an mp3 of it later. But for now, chew on this:


Genius of Love - Tom Tom Club
Billie Jean - Michael Jackson
Im Nin'Alu - Ofra Haza
Cities In Dust - Siouxsie and the Banshees
Gypsy Woman (She's Homeless) - Crystal Waters
I Know You Got Soul - Eric B. and Rakim
L'Autre Valse D'Amelie - Yann Tiersen
Electric Kingdom - Twilight 22
Break Dance - Electric Boogie - West Street Mob
Still D.R.E. - Dr. Dre
World Destruction - Time Zone
Fuck The Police - N.W.A.
Age Of Consent - New Order
Enter Sandman - Metallica
Life Is Life - Laibach
A Deadly Catch - Paul Hepker
Heroes Theme - Wendy and Lisa
Paid In Full - Eric B. and Rakim
Set Adrift On Memory Bliss - P.M. Dawn

Chicago: Smoque

A nice layout and presentation at Smoque.

Two years ago, when I was last in Chicago, I had heard much hoopla about a barbecue joint called Smoque. So much so that I went out of my way to visit - on the one day of the week they were closed (Mondays). Disappointed, I flew home without having so much as a taste.

Fast forward to present day and after I had secured my trusty Chevy HHT from Alamo, I was on my way once again to visit Smoque. One would think that traffic should be smooth at 1:30pm but no, traffic along the highway into the city was hellish. Backup upon backup. Not fun.

Once inside, Smoque is a nice little place that serves their barbecue on those silver mini baking trays. It's a nice touch and they actually lay out the bbq pretty nicely. Since it was my first time, I had to order a sampling of their wares. A few careful questions of the cashier led me to order a 1/2 rack of their St. Louis ribs with cole slaw, mac n cheese and french fries. Smoque has a great idea by offering "tastes" of their meats for three dollars each. Add on a "taste" of both the brisket and pulled pork with that and I've got a representative sample of their offerings.


Ribs, fries, mac and slaw.

Smoque is highly touted here in Chicago but I'm sad to report that it wasn't superb. Both the pulled pork and brisket were overcooked. The pulled pork was mushy and mealy and lacked distinct flavor, and the brisket was dry. Whether this issue was due to merely being overcooked in the smoker or held too long, I can't say. It just wasn't a great example of either.

The ribs were decent. Nice flavor, a little bit of spice and a good amount of bite to the meat. However, I have to say that it was slightly on the not quite finished side of cooking. What do I mean by this? Many people think that ribs should be falling off the bone, not true. We want to see a nice bite to the meat that requires some amount of effort to pull away from the bone. These ribs required a bit more than some amount of effort.

On the plus side, the french fries were perfectly done. Crisp on the outside, fluffy and tender on the inside. The Mac and Cheese was decent enough but lacked seasoning to make the flavor really shine. The interesting side was the cole slaw. Typical, as far as the shredded cabbage and sliced red onions go, but it's the dressing that really makes it. Light, citrus, acidic - just delightfully surprising without the heaviness that mayonnaise brings to cole slaw. It was the highlight of the meal.


Pulled pork and beef brisket.

The space is nicely decorated and you share table space with other diners. Drinks are a simple affair: just one size cup and drink all you want. Coke, Diet Coke and the usual Coke offerings plus a non-stop dispenser of sweet tea and unsweetened tea. I couldn't help myself.


Smoque BBQ
3800 North Pulaski Road
Chicago, IL 60641
773-545-7427
www.smoquebbq.com

If Only Summers Were Like This

The pretty quiet D Pier at Baltimore-Washington International Airport.

After a month relatively relaxing at home, I'm back on the road again. First, a road trip to Pittsburgh earlier this month and now it's back on United for the short jaunt to Chicago.

I'm in Chicago and Milwaukee for the weekend to visit with friends, take factory tours, hang out with industry buddies, become a certified judge and taste all kinds of wonderful goodies.

I'll report back soon.

Hario In A Box

Good things come in big boxes.

The joys of going to work are highlighted when boxes filled with goodies are waiting for me. Yesterday, that which was awaiting me was a new Hario halogen beam heater and Tokio vacuum pot from our friends at Cafe D'Bolla in Salt Lake City.

In due time I'll be firing up the unit and brewing coffee at home in a very high tech fashion. Then, once we figure out our brewing standards for the devices and train our baristas, I plan on bringing vacuum brewed coffee to order at The Spro!

Of course, there's a kink in the plans. The power converter for the heater doesn't arrive until Tuesday...

Honolulu 1995 or so

Bringing light to Polynesia.

Once upon a time, I used to shoot. Sometimes the images were picked up for publication, other times they weren't. Day in and day out, my Domke F2 bag loaded with a Canon F1N and a large assortment of lenses was never out of reach. Captured some great moments and captured some tragic ones.

I've been thinking about digitizing my large library of images and I've been debating on whether to farm the work out to a local lab or just by a film scanner and do it myself. The local lab charges $.95 per slide or frame. I've got thousands. Without a doubt, it's cheaper by the dollar to buy a nice Nikon scanner but I'd have to do it myself. This means cleaning the slides/negatives, setting up the session, scanning and correcting. With the time I have available, it would probably take me years (or never) to digitize my library.

Conversely, it will end up costing thousands to farm out the work. So I did a test run. I grabbed two random sheets of slides and sent them off. This was one of the images from that set, and one of my favorite images.

There's a pull off on Roundtop Drive just below Tantalus that overlooks the eastern half of Honolulu from the tall buildings of Waikiki to the neighborhood of Moi'ili'ili and the entrance of Manoa Valley and the University of Hawaii (Punahou School, where Barack Obama attended is just below the railing right where I'm standing).

That pull-off is famous on the island for it's tantalizing view and as a favored make out point for locals. On any given night, you'll find an assortment of tourist gawkers, couples and voyeurs milling about.

To create this image, we set up the F1N set on the Domke bag on the hood of my Karmann Ghia with 20mm prime lens set to F16 and did a 30 second exposure using Fuji Velvia 50 slide film. In the middle of the exposure, I fired the Vivitar 185 flash at full power pointed at the lens.

Giving the Gift of Ice Cream

The book I've been waiting for.

My aunt is a highly-regarded chemists who has had a hand in developing some of the significant food advances in the past forty years (Equal anyone?). Along with her commercial research, she spent quite a bit of time researching and deducing the finer points of broccoli and was featured in the Wall Street Journal back in the 1990s.

During my youth, this meant a never-ending parade of unique and interesting foodstuffs from her day job - none of which struck my fancy more than the box of blueberry muffins she would bring with her from Marshall-Fields. Those were the hallmark of my youth and the barometer against which I hold all other blueberry muffins. So far, none suffices.

As I got older and opened Jay's Shave Ice, things started to come together. Instead of sitting around buying other peoples' product, why not manufacture our own? My aunt was a big proponent of this and after a couple of years, I decided that our volume had reached a point where it made sense to do so. Soon, I was in her Massachusetts lab trying not to drown in a sea of food science.

Being of the artsy set (read: slacker), I worked very hard to avoid science in high school. Chemistry was cool when you got to do experiments, but was otherwise boring. Physics was just too mentally physical. Instead, I pursued the arts and creative fields. But now that I was embarking on food manufacturing, I was woefully unprepared.

There I was, in Boston and swimming hard. The lessons were fast-paced and high-flying. My aunt and uncle are serious chemists. They know their stuff inside and out, and I was the elementary level chemistry student trying to understand concepts and designs they took for granted. It was mind-boggling but exhilarating, all at the same time.

We worked on a myriad of syrup formulations, each with minute differences in formulation but, sometimes, major differences in flavor, texure or mouthfeel. We were working with industrial hydrocolloids and chemicals to formulate a syrup with the right properties of mouthfeel, texture, "clingy-ness" to ice particles, viscosity, flavor and shelf life.


More science than you ever thought went into frozen milk, cream and eggs.

I toured and tasted flavors from a variety of flavor houses. The assortment of offerings are dizzying. One flavor house had 225 variations on cherry alone. Two Hundred Twenty Five flavors of cherry. And, if you didn't like any of those, they would formulate your own recipe of cherry. Amazing. At McCormick's research center, they showed me how they could take a strawberry and breakdown it's aromatics into chemical compounds in a gas chromatograph and then re-create that aroma by compiling the essential chemicals in the specified ratios. Who knew?

During the day, we would test and experiment. Late at night, I would peruse their library and read. One of my favorite books in their collection was the 1977 Third Edition of "Ice Cream" by Wendell S. Arbuckle of the University of Maryland. It's a detailed manual on the manufacture and production of ice creams.

At the time, we had just started to move into offering soft serve at Jays Shave Ice. I had always wanted to make our own ice cream mixes but we just didn't have the capability to do so back then. I just wasn't ready.

About two years ago, I decided that it was time to start thinking about soft serve ice cream. Problem was, I had just closed Jays and the soft serve machine went into storage.

Fast forward to modern day and I'm asking my aunt about ice cream formulations, specifically for soft serve. I want to know how a soft serve mix can churn in a machine day-in and day-out without the mix breaking down into butter, like it would in a batch freezer. She promised to send me some information.

Not long after, a brown box arrives at the house. Inside is the Arbuckle book on ice cream and it's better than I remember. It covers the usual stuff like ingredients, flavors, emlusifiers and stabilizers but, more importantly, there's an entire chapter on "Soft-Serve Frozen Dairy Products and Formulas." Happy, happy, joy, joy!

I will report back later as things develop.

Fanatics and Fanaticism: A Cosmic Supernova

Just wanted to make a post advocating the need for fanatics and fanaticism in our world.

I'm sitting here drinking a quite lovely Clayhouse Adobe Red Central Valley 2006 out of a ten ounce rocks glass that we use here at The Spro for cuppings. It's chock full of currant, black cherry, spice, pepper and fruit. A wonderful wine for fifteen bucks. On the way to work this afternoon, I had a hankering for some nice wine and decided to make a stop at my local wine shop where the owners are just as crazy as the coffee fanatics.

I wanted a nice drinking red for my evening shift that was under $20 a bottle. Off James (the owner, not The Hoffmann) goes, scurrying back and forth along the expanse of their show wall, looking over the various regions from France, Spain, Italy, Australia and the United States before selecting the Clayhouse as one of my bottles. When he gets into his mode, he's obsessed. He knows the wine and yet he still runs the stack like a madman obsessed with great wine. I'm captivated and enchanted by his enthusiasm, passion and fanaticism.

The first time I went by their shop, I was looking for something special. That was the first time I saw this crazy wine guy running back and forth to find something worthy. Then, when he spotted the object of his affection, a 2005 Chateauneuf-du-Pape Chateau de Beaucastel, he suddenly went into a trance. His eyes rolled into the back of his head and his body started in slight convulsions from the overwhelming joy he was feeling about the wine. "Good Lord, what is wrong with this guy?" I thought - almost scared that cosmic forces might combine into a supernova.

But is this a bad thing? Certainly, one can see it as odd. But do we need this level of psychosis and fanaticism in modern-day society?

I say: YES, WE DO!

It's this level of obsession that fosters excellence. I see it wherever I go and I'm warmed by it. I want to patronize those places where the people give a damn about their product. I want to listen to the expert. I want to learn and be guided by that person who sees amazing beauty in what might seem like an innate and inane object to me. I want that person to gently guide my course so that I too can learn to be nearly as fanatical - or at least, have an appreciation for that fanaticism.

So bring it on, people! Let that exuberance show through. Be fanatical. Be crazy. Be passionate. And let me know where you are because I want to visit!

The Weekend Geek

Battlestar represent!

Every once in a while, I indulge myself.

This past weekend, instead of jetting off to Africa, I decided to stay home and hang out at the local science fiction convention (or "con" in geek parlance). If you've ever enjoyed sci-fi, then I think you'll find something to your liking at these events. Luckily, at least four of these cons are held in Baltimore - three of them are held within just a couple of miles from my house, which makes geeking it out cheap and easy.

Where else in the world can you go dressed in costume all day and not receive strange looks from people? Want to be a Klingon or anime character? No problem. Fancy yourself an Imperial Stormtrooper crushing the rebellion? It's easy - especially since Darth Vader is here too. Or maybe you imagine yourself jumping through the Stargate? You can go by yourself or join up with a group and make yourself a team.


These are the actual costumes worn in the movie Serenity.

Cons such as this one (Farpoint) have discussion sessions, podcasts, art shows, autograph sessions, but if you really want to get the full con experience, you must attend the "masquerade." Truth be told, I've only been to one (Farpoint 2006) but I'm told all of them are similar.

The masquerade is basically a big show where anyone and everyone gets their moment on stage to show off their costume. Appearing before you will be a spectacle of costuming. Some amazing and truly authentic, others not so much. The magic of it all is the enjoyment and camaraderie of those participating and in the audience.


Yes, those people are fighting with light sabers.

But a con wouldn't be a con without the sessions. And here you'll find all sorts of topics for discussion. From The 4400 to Stargate to Browncoats bemoaning the demise of their beloved Firefly and of course, the staple of science fiction conventions: Star Trek, in all its' iterations.

Star Trek defined the genre and Star Trek is everywhere. Romulans, Vulcans, Klingons and Federation officers commingling. Second to Star Trek is Star Wars. With so many Stormtroopers about, you'd think the Emperor dispatched a Battalion expecting the Rebel Alliance to show up.


Act up and you'll be questioned by Stormtroopers.

While I grew up on Star Wars and tremendously enjoyed Firefly and Star Trek Voyager, I'm really here for Battlestar Galactica. Problem is, the number of people at these cons who are dedicated to Galactica always seem underrepresented. I don't know if Galactica attracts a more "mature" audience that doesn't go for the sci-fi con thing, or if the show is too serious and without the proper camp and fun that shows such as Stargate showcase, but the ranks of Galactica people compared to the rest is pretty small.

Usually, I come to these events to buy some patches, pins and maybe a prop or two. This time, I ran into some people who not only were Galactica fans but they had the uniforms to prove it. Fantastic. Yellow deck gang uniforms, green BDUs and blue dress uniforms. Very cool indeed. And all I had was my simple BSG grey sweatshirt. Time to get rolling on my costume for DragonCon.


The guy on the left pulled the trigger that destroyed Alderaan. The guy on the right is from Caprica.

Now, I don't mean to disparage anyone, but at these sci-fi cons you'll find the people that you would typically associate with sci-fi. Geeky types who don't quite fit in. This is their domain. But, these are the people you expect to find here. The ones I find most surprising are the people who don't fit the achetypical sci-fi mold. Like this couple in later Star Trek uniforms. They were pretty normal people. Older, mature - if it weren't for the Federation uniforms you would have thought this couple to be from the average suburban-dwelling, SUV driving, private school set. Their uniforms were authentically correct and of great quality. A happy couple that enjoys dressing up and going to a sci-fi con - that that is fantasy!

Maybe I can find me a woman like that...


Even sci-fi people love a good bar. Check out the couple on the left. They had the coolest Star Trek uniforms.

minibar

Chef Ryan welcomes us to minibar.

minibar by Jose Andres in Cafe Atlantico has to be some of the most difficult seats to reserve in the entire mid-Atlantic. Actually, the difficulty I've had reserving a seat is second only to Andres' mentors' restaurant: El Bulli in Roses, Spain.

It works like this: on any given morning, at 10am Eastern time, you must call quickly and speak with Bonji to reserve your seats exactly one month ahead of time. It's a lot of precision and planning, which just runs against the core of my existence. I'm not very good at planning where I'm going to be one month from today, much less where I'm going to eat.

It also requires mental acuity in understanding the dynamics of the time-space continuum. Just because you're calling Bonji on a Saturday doesn't mean you're reserving for that Saturday a month away. It's exactly one month, which means the day you're calling to reserve is actually a Tuesday. That could be a problem

You have to remember to call at exactly 10am. Exactly. A minute later and "game over" - all the seats will be filled. Everyone and their mother is trying to get a seat at minibar and they go extremely quickly. Afterall, there's only six seats. Add another six because there's two seatings per night and you're fighting that guys' mother for a total of twelve seats. It's vicious.


Pisco Sour

I obtained my reservation with my usual M.O. - I had remembered to call two weeks ago after the designated time but called Bonji anyway at 11:30am one morning. I told her I would like to eat at the minibar. I expected her to get rid of me. She asked how many? I told her I'll take whatever she could give me, from one seat to the whole minibar. She came back with an offer of one seat at the 8:30pm second seating. I'll take it!

The first part of the reservation process is relatively simple compared to the second part. They email you a confirmation form to print out, complete with credit card info and signature, then fax back to them. It's a ridiculous practice that's just dumb. You've got my Amex number, what's the deal with the paperwork for my left kidney? But, I had heard so much about minibar that I wanted to check it out and complied. Left kidney and all.


Olive Oil "Bon Bon"

minibar is just that. A small bar for six people on the upper level of Cafe Atlantico. A restaurant within a restaurant. And while it's considered the showpiece in Jose Andres' empire of cuisine that stretches across America, from sea to shining sea, it's also the red headed stepchild. The crown jewel that shines brightly but doesn't make them money.

Huh? How could you say that, you ask? Don't they charge $120 per person at minibar? Isn't that a bit insane? Well, maybe. According to the staff, the ingredient costs are pretty high - out of whack with the margins restaurants normally operate, which means that while minibar may cover their expenses, they don't necessarily generate profit.

And this is kinda reflected in the minibar itself. The immersion circulator they're using is old and crusted with mineral deposits. The workspace itself is made up of haphazard remnants of underbar equipment, including an old, beat up glass washer. They're using electric hot plates instead of the now chic induction. After hearing so much about the food, I had expected minibar to be outfitted slick and beautiful. Like a mini Alinea or per se. Instead, the chefs were making do with cutting boards stacked on bus tubs, stacked on boxes that are stacked on equipment stands.

They may be using wild chemicals to create the cuisine and have a PacoJet stashed in a cabinet, but outside of the patina'd All Clan stainless saute pans, minibar is decidedly lowbrow in its' equipment and setup. While this may seem like an indictment of minibar, it's not. When you see and experience the cuisine at minibar, you really can't believe they're doing all of that with such equipment. It proves you don't have to have the fanciest of gear to produce truly excellent food.


Beet "Tumbleweed"

I arrived at Cafe Atlantico at least a half hour early because one never knows how the traffic between Baltimore and Washington DC will flow in the evenings. Sometimes it's smooth sailing. Other times, you're dead. Happily, this trip was the former. The hostesses greeted me then led me to the bar to cool my jets where I started off with "A New Americano" - touting itself as "A new all-American twist on Barack Obama's Favorite Cocktail 'The Americano.'" I had never heard of it, so I was game.

This is where it started. It was now 8pm and I hadn't eaten since 2pm. I was hungry. My stomach was empty. Perhaps this was not the time to consume a beverage of gin, vermouth and campari. By the time we headed upstairs, I was feeling it.

Our servers' name was Dan but for the life of me, I don't know why we would need a server at minibar. It's extraneous and a waste. To be quite frank, the presence of a server did nothing to enhance the experience. His interaction was limited to greeting us at the bar, giving us the wine menu, taking our wine order, pouring the wines and clearing plates as we ate and collecting the bill (with tip) at the end. I paid a $45 tip to a guy who really didn't do much of anything all night. As I drove home later, I couldn't help but think that this guy, who did practically nothing except stand there all night doing not much of anything just made a $45 tip from me while everyone else did the work.

An evening at minibar means you're interacting with the chefs preparing your meal. They're telling you how things were made, describing the dishes and serving them to you. All you really need is a busser to clear the plates, reset silverware and pour wine. While I never confirmed it, I certainly hope that the chefs got a cut of my tip 'cause they did all the work.


"Mojito"

When it comes to imbibing at minibar, there are several options: wines by the glass, wines in half bottles, wines in whole bottles and flights of wines, with the highlight of the flights being presented in their "Grand Progression - a tour highlighting selections from our extensive half-bottle collection." It cost $90 and I decided that I would go for it. These are the wines in order of presentation:

GASTON CHIQUET
Tradition Brut, Premier Cru
Dizy, France - Non-Vintage

NIGL
Gruner Veltliner Privat
Kremstal, Austria - 2007

QUPE
Marsanne/Roussanne Blend
Santa Ynez Valley, California 2007

MERRY EDWARDS
Pinot Noir
Russian River Valley, California 2006

ERRAZURIZ
Late Harvest Sauvignon Blanc
Casablanca Valley, Chile 2006

They were nice wines, but I really didn't fancy any of them. I tend to like big, fruity, oak-y wines. These may have been some great wines but I just wasn't into them that much. Sadly, it make me realize once again that maybe I really don't like wines with my meals. Maybe I just don't "get it." Maybe I'm just a charlatan. These were wine flights and not wine pairings, so they weren't designed to be perfect to any one dish, just a flight of wines and I'm just not feeling it.

I've only had one (maybe two) experiences where the wine paired brilliantly with the food. Usually, they're just there. Not necessarily clashing but not quite complimenting each other either. I've found greater joy in wine by ordering a bottle that I enjoy and drinking it through most or the entire meal. Forget the wine/red rules. Just drink what you enjoy and all is well.

Along with the wine was the choice of still, sparkling or iced water. Judging from the bill later, the latter must have been plain tap water because my water cost me six dollars. It wasn't bad nor too expensive but I always think it's not very clever to present water in this fashion - as though you're making a choice when really the server is steering you towards padding your bill (and their tip).


"Bagels and Lox"

The highlight of the minibar experience is the food and the presenting chefs. Ryan and Lyndon were great in preparing our meal, telling us about the dishes, answering our never-ending questions about the ingredients and techniques involved. The stuff they're doing is absolutely amazing. It's technically brilliant. Like the carbonated mojito sphere - that's cool. Or the zucchini textures - wow.

The progression goes from the technically wild, like the parmesan "egg", to the relatively simple breaded cigala. Both of which were delicious and amazing to watch being created.

Which is how it goes at minibar. They prepare the dishes right in front of you. You see everything. From the prep to the cooking to the plating. For someone who's interested in this level of preparation, it's stunning. You want to burn the memory card on your camera using the video mode. You wish you had a video camera - or at least audio recorder. The amount of information on everything that these guys are willing to share is massive.


"Dragon's Breath" Popcorn

Just from chatting with them, I sense that they share the same sensibilities as many of my friends and peers: there are no secrets. They engaged in open discussion about everything. Ask them about technique and they tell you. How long do you bathe the sphere in the chloride bath? One minute. And then they tell you what happens if you hold it longer, or too long.

Within the group, there's an open dialogue. A dialogue that, ostensibly, extends itself from the minibar to the larger world of cuisine where they discuss trials and techniques with Grant Achatz of Alinea, or Wylie Dufresne of WD-50, all the way to the Grand Master himself: Ferran Adria of El Bulli. Oooh. Aaaah. Of course, there's the stories about that guy from Moto in Chicago who won't talk to anyone, where everything is a secret and people have to sign a non-disclosure agreement before stepping into Moto's kitchen under penalty of civil lawsuit. Sounds like a friendly guy, that one.


"Cornbread"

Our meal was comprised of twenty-six courses. Some really fantastic (like the cigala), some really cool ("Dragon's Breath" Popcorn), and others were just not to my tastes (New England Clam Chowder). In fact, I really disliked the clam chowder. There was something about the flavor of the clam that just turned me off and stayed on my palate for quite a while. Unpleasant would be the best description.

Of course, in 26 courses, not all of them can be perfect. There will be courses you hate (like the clam chowder). That should be expected since you're pushing the boundaries.


Steamed Brioche Bun with Osetra Caviar

I really enjoyed the Beet "Tumbleweed", "Bagels and Lox" and "Dragon's Breath" Popcorn. The tumbleweed was essentially a friend ball of beet string. Fantastic. Bagels and lox was very reminiscent of Thomas Kellers' amuse bouche at both The French Laundry and per se, though I have to say that the salmon roe used at minibar was so vibrant and full of flavor that it really did the trick. Dragon's Breath was just cool. A cake of popcorn dipped in liquid nitrogen so that while you ate it, chilled "smoke" would emanate from your mouth and/or nose.

For me, the steamed brioche bun was slightly sweet and pillowy soft. It reminded me of a rather expensive sio pao, and being topped with osetra caviar reminded me of that extravagant weekend in Moscow a year ago. The cornbread was pretty good but it tasted so strongly of roasted cornnuts that it overwhelmed any connection to actual cornbread. Not to say that it was bad, it just didn't connect as strongly - even though I loved eating CornNuts as a child.


Boneless Chicken Wing


Blue Cheese and Almond


Cotton Candy Eel

When you see them start to spin the little tub contraption, you wonder what is going on? There's some nice slices of eel. He's taking some shiso leaf and adding thin slices of cucumber and pickled ginger but what is with the tub? Once he wraps the eel with the leaf and sauce, he plunges it (along with his hand) into the spinning tub and out comes a cotton candy coated eel. Lovely. I really like roasted eel in a soy based sauce but wrapped in cotton candy is just wild.


"Sun Dried" Tomato Salad

I found the "sun dried tomatoes" in the salad to be just fantastic. They basically take tomato juice, make it into spheres and then dehydrate to create a pseudo sun dried tomato. Very cool. The Zucchini in Textures had to be one of my favorite dishes of the evening. Puree of zucchini at the bottom, stewed zucchini seeds and a top layer of gelatinized zucchini juice. Wonderful. The flavors were nice but the textures were so dramatic. Well played guys, well played.


Zucchini in Textures


"Caesar Salad"


Parmesan "Egg" with Migas

One of the most powerful presentations was the parmesan "egg". I believe it was poached egg yolk enrobed in a parmesan, egg white mixture that encapsulated the yolk. Brilliant. Someday, I want to rip that idea off of these guys. Maybe they'll share with me their technique. It would be a great homage to them. The "guacamole" was interesting with a tomato sorbet wrapped by avocado slices but it just didn't have enough "pop" to connect me with real guacamole. I like boldly seasoned guacamole - let the salt, lime, cilantro and peppers flow, baby - and this interpretation just didn't catch me.


Smoked Oysters with Apples and Juniper


"Guacamole"


Salmon-Pineapple "Ravioli" with Crispy Quinoa


New England Clam Chowder

As I said earlier, it was the clam chowder that I couldn't connect with. Just something about that clammy, briny flavor that I just didn't like. While I love raw oysters, I don't think I'm a raw clam fan, and this dish just didn't click with me. The smoked oyster was nice with the apple and juniper but it definitely wasn't a strong player in the presentation.


Breaded Cigala with Sea Salad

After two courses of rocky dishes, they sprung back with a monster: the breaded cigala was killer. Prepared oh so simply with a little breading and sauteed in olive oil, it was smashing - and it was the most traditionally prepared method of all the dishes. Just simple and stellar ingredients to mark the hallmark course of the evening.


"Philly Cheesesteak"


Kumquats and Pumpkin Seed Oil

Our "Pre-Dessert" course of kumquats and pumpkin seed oil was captivating to watch them prepare. Alternating circles of pumpkin oil and kumquat puree dotted with candied pumpkin seed, centered around a kumquat filled with kumquat sorbet. Nice idea, nice execution and the tartness of the dish prepared the palate for the sweet courses to come.

The first dessert course, Thai Dessert, was a mixture of peanuts and curry and ice cream. It captured the main flavor elements of a well-made Pad Thai: peanuts, curry, cilantro. I almost thought I was eating a sweet Pad Thai. It was very good.

Thai Dessert


Frozen Yogurt and Honey

The next course was a technical stunner. Evidently, if you balance the water and fat ratio in yogurt, freeze it and then spin it in a PacoJet (doesn't everyone have these in their kitchen?) you can create a frozen powder. Take that frozen powder and heap it with a powdered honey from Ferran Adria and you've got a truly space-age dessert. It's kind of like NASA freeze-dried ice cream meets El Bulli. Tantalizing on your tongue but you better hurry because the yogurt will thaw into liquid form.


Mango Box, Saffron Gumdrop with Edible Wrapper and Chocolate Covered Corn Nuts.


Brewed coffee - can you spell B-O-R-I-N-G?

The final course of the night was a trio of chocolate covered corn nuts (curious), saffron gumdrop wrapped in edible paper (cool) and a mango box (good). This was served along with rather unremarkable coffee. Actually, I had a choice between regular (or decaf) coffee and espresso. I chose the former since I figured I would be gambling less. Sadly, the coffee was unremarkable and not worth the three dollar charge.

Maybe I shouldn't complain. Maybe I should just be thankful. But really, serving such lackluster quality after presenting thoughtful, locally sourced cocktails and exquisite food is just insulting. Why not toss a McDonald's cheeseburger as a minibar course? Sounds ludicrous, doesn't it? But dropping coffee this plain and lame is akin to doing just that.

Three dollars....please... My dad can brew better coffee than this - and he likes Taster's Choice.


Breaking my heart. And the bank.

And that was it. My entire minibar experience was wrapped in an egg - that they crushed in front of you with a big BAM! Inside the egg was The Bill. Time for The Reckoning.

So, how much did this gastronomic escapade cost me? Curiously, there is a thread on egullet.com where a reader was asking people how much it really costs to eat at these kinds of places. Sure, the menu says $120, but how much does it really cost after adding everything together? Can you truly get away eating (relatively) cheaply? Yes and No.


The Bill.

Here's the breakdown:

minibar Tasting $120.00
Nuevo American cocktail $ 12.00
Grand Procession Wine $ 90.00
Still Water $ 6.00
Coffee $ 3.00
DC Tax $ 23.10
Tip- 18% $ 45.00

TOTAL $299.10

Three hundred dollars for the meal at minibar. It's not cheap but it's not as expensive as some other places I've eaten. Though I'm still confounded by why they need a server for the minibar. Let the cooks and bussers handle it. Let them earn the tips. They're the ones doing all the work.


Lyndon and Ryan bid a fond adieu.

Let's do the math. Let's pretend that twelve people come in for the minibar experience and only pay $120 per person. That's revenue of $1,440 per night. If they tipped out just the minimum amount of 15%, that would be $216 in tips. Even with a five percent tip out ($11) for the bussers, they're still going home with a minimum of $205 a night. Not bad for just hanging out in the background while the chefs engage the customers the entire time.

Consider that my bill was more than twice that and that most people eating at minibar will spend more than $120 per person and you can see that as a minibar server you can make a good amount of cash for doing very little. Which is why I think they should eliminate the minibar server and let the bussers and chefs keep the tips.

I'll probably get hate mail from servers because of this but that's my observation and I'm sticking with it.

Now that you know the cost, you're probably wondering if it was worth it. Again, my answer is: Yes and No. Actually, there is no "no" answer. Only yes. It's worth it for the experience. To see the cutting edge of cuisine presented in a way that you wouldn't experience at places like Alinea or El Bulli. The chefs are right there, in front of you. You watch them prepare and create your courses. You can ask them questions and they'll tell you just about everything you need to know to mimic the technique at home - even down to the length of time they steep the encapsulation in the chloride.

It's an opportunity to see what you would never see anywhere else and to try new flavors and textures that you wouldn't be able to try in the majority of restaurants worldwide, which makes it so worth the money. In fact, it's relatively so cheap that it makes the rest look like robbers. Of course, one should remember that minibar doesn't really make a profit and that Jose Andres is offering the experience essentially at cost because his restaurant empire supports this expression of his cuisine. The other places do this on a restaurant scale and, therefore, have to charge more to recoup their costs and make money.

A fun story the chefs related to us is that since minibar doesn't turn a profit, they don't always get the latest and greatest equipment and often have to resort to raiding the kitchens of Andres' other restaurants for certain supplies when necessary.

My problem with meals like this is that they're technically brilliant and I learn and experience so much from just eating there, asking questions, and observing, Friends ask me if it was "good" and certainly it was - in fact, it's brilliant. However, it's just not "nourishing." It satisfies my soul and my desire to expand my craft, but it doesn't nourish my soul. It's like dating an incredibly hot model but having no internal connection. Beautiful. Stunning. Your friends envy you. But it's still hollow. You're left unfulfilled on a certain level. That's how I feel after eating these brilliant meals.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not bashing. I love what they do and I'll continue to eat and explore similar restaurants, but is this the level of cuisine that I want to pursue? Maybe. Years ago, I thought this was the level of coffee I wanted to present. Now, I'm not so sure. There's a gut connection that I feel is missing. I want there to be a link between the amazing and fascinating to the fulfilling and nourishing to the soul.

Thanks guys, I had a great time.


minibar
Cafe Atlantico
405 8th Street NW
Washington, DC 20004
202-393-0812
www.cafeatlantico.com