Los Mariachis

This is the lengua de res, or beef tongue steak, at Los Mariachis restaurant in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. It was nicely seared on the outside and came with a light mole sauce that complemented the beef really well. I’ve had tongue before, but never in steak form, so it was strange to feel all the papillae that line the surface of the beef tongue actually causing friction with one’s own tongue. I’ll skip whatever philosophical analysis could be induced from that statement and end by simply saying: this was really really delicious.

La Buca

This was my third visit to La Buca. Now, I was hoping to write that it is without a doubt my favorite restaurant in the city at the moment. My first two experiences were perfect – I couldn’t wait to return. Every single dish was flawless, service was great, wine was delicious (as I wrote) all tucked away in an intimate little room in a residential neighbourhood.

Unfortunately, our visit last night was less than stellar. In our disappointment, we were trying to figure out why. Was it because it was a Sunday? Was it because it was a holiday?! Was the chef away? Was it the game?!!!? I am hardly a hockey enthusiast, but I could hear the game from the radio in the kitchen. While our food was being prepared, the Canucks were losing game 6 (whatever that means). Later, after they lost, I overheard the waiter saying “I’m surprised the staff could even concentrate“. Well, maybe they couldn’t ….

Not that it was horrible. Far from it in fact. The experience just deflated our high expectations based on the two stellar meals we had there previously.

So we started with the Spicy Garlic Shrimp with Lemon Butter, Tomato, Parsley and Black Olive Crostini. This was great, definitely the highlight of the meal. They were incredibly generous with the shrimp for a $13 starter – at least seven pieces of shrimp, well prawns really, piled high top a nice crostini with black olive tapenade. There were crispy capers, a delicate sweet drizzling of lemon butter and tomatoes which brought a nice tartness to the plate. SO mentioned that it takes skill to take so many salty elements – shrimps, olives, capers, etc – and not let the dish become oversalted. Very happy with this.

We also ordered a quartino of the Apollonio Squinzano 2003 to share. Always delicious.

I ordered the Centre Cut Osso Buco Milanese with Saffron Risotto. It seemed apt to order “bone with a hole” in the restaurant called “The Hole”. Now I’m not stringent about my presentation – to be honest it’s the least important part of my eating experience – but I was pretty disappointed with this. The yellow from the saffron juxtaposed to the green from the beans and the red from the sauce just looked garish on the plate. And it was all quite rustic. Rustic is fine. Osso buco is a rustic dish. But for a $27 plate at La Buca, I was expecting a bit more than just rustic.

Now my meal was far from horrible. The risotto was delicious (I can say that La Buca’s risottos are consistently fantastic). The meat itself was falling off the bone, but it was a bit dry and lacking in flavour. It was a bit stringy – I’m guessing it wasn’t kept covered during the cooking process. The sauce didn’t really do anything to help flavour the meat.

There was a little spoon to scoop out the marrow. However, it was all quite greasy! I love me some marrow, but this was just too much.

All in all, my meal wasn’t bad but there wasn’t anything that encouraged me to keep coming back to my plate. Unlike our last experience when I wanted to finish every morsel of food … this time I was more than content to leave food on my plate.

SO ordered the Tagliatelle Bolognese. He was quite disappointed. He ordered this on our first visit and it was so memorable. Perfect, rich meat sauce. It felt like it had been cooking, simmering, developing flavours for hours while staying moist and rich. It was a bolognese that neither of us could figure out how to reproduce and that alone was a reason for returning.

This time, not so much. The meat sauce was meh – dry, one note, not really anything you couldn’t create in your own kitchen. SO’s real issue with that his dish somehow also tasted of clams. Clams! We saw a table across from us receive linguine alle vongole so were trying to hypothesize how their dish could have somehow imparted a clam essence that ended up in his dish. Unwashed pots? Mixing of serving spoons? It was strange. We blamed it on game 6.

So now, I have to repeat, our meal was not horrible. It was just a bit of a let down compared to our two previous visits. The last time I came I was very eager to return. This time, I don’t think I’ll be as antsy to revisit. Maybe when hockey season is over.

Seattle Day 2

We woke up to waffles – complements of the Ace.

Post-breakfast drinks at the Pike Brewing Company. Hidden away in the recesses of Pike Place Market was this massive maze of a brew-pub with hops and malt related paraphernalia decorating every inch of wall space.

The bar area was quite busy. It was reassuring to see others aside from ourselves getting drunk at noon on a Tuesday.

Not food related but I couldn’t help but post this. Cat on a boat. You can imagine my squeals when I saw this.

The highlight: Salumi.

Anthony Bourdain on Salumi: “That is a holy place for me. I love that place. I’ve jokingly said, but I’m half serious it should be a UNESCO site. It should be a landmark.”

We decided to skip the notorious line and aim to be there for a late lunch. This also meant that the majority of dishes/cured meats were sold out.

What an amazing little place. You walk through the narrow deli/front counter where you order your sandwich. We decided to split (!) a meatball sandwich. You wouldn’t think a meatball sandwich could amaze you but this one did. Three of the biggest, juiciest, most amazing meatballs you’ll ever taste slathered with the simplest, most perfect tomato sauce stuffed into a baguette. We split this sandwich between the two of us and we were stuffed. Regrettably, this is all we had for lunch. I wish we ordered about every single thing they made!

But! After lunch, they let us try all the varieties of salami they make and we brought home a souvenir:

The Mole Salami. I carried this around in my bag for the rest of the day and now my bag and all its contents smells like cured pork – not that that’s a bad thing!

Bourdain concludes his trip to the Pacific Northwest with Salumi around the 9 minute mark:

So come dinnertime we were pretty food tour-ed out. We decided to find an easy pub to have a beer and a snack and prepare for our return journey home. Luckily there was one next to our hotel:

Beers and my new favorite cider at Cyclops.

Wings and fries.

This was Day 2 in Seattle. You can see Day 1 here! All in all – a lovely little trip!

Seattle Day 1

So we took a little city break down to Seattle where it was all about breweries, bookshops, cocktails and carnivorous appetites. We arrived at the Ace around noon, dropped off our bags and promptly went on a two-day food tour of the city.

Above is the view from our table at Matt’s in the Market where we had lunch.

How lovely is this room?! The light! The view!

It was so obvious that one of us was going to need to order the Stumptown BBQ Pulled Pork Sandwich …

… and so we did. Look at that thing! Layers and layers of pork, slathered with sauce and slaw. It was a ridiculously generous serving. So incredibly good.

Apologies for the state of the photos. We quickly realized there is such a thing as too much light.

And on top of all that pork, a generous serving of potato salad. Yes, with more pork. Lovely bits of bacon throughout.

I ordered the Catfish Sandwich. Unfortunately they ran out of the potato bread and offered me a baguette instead.

It was deeelish! And again, so incredibly generous with the catfish! I found that the catfish fell out of its batter and made the bread quite moist, but I don’t think it would have been different with the potato bread. I saw most patrons in the restaurant eating their catfish sandwich with a knife and fork.

Very happy with our experience at Matt’s. So incredibly filling though, I could only finish half my sandwich and the SO – taking one of the team – finished mine on top of his mountain of BBQ pork.

I should mention that we had a little snack in the market before our meal which would have contributed to our feelings of being overstuffed so satisfied.

Mac and cheese from Beecher’s Handmade Cheese – the “World’s Best” Mac and Cheese!

Wow, I don’t know about world’s best (will have to do a food tour) but this was pretty damn good. Definitely tempted to order a tray of this stuff shipped priority overnight.

You can grab a seat at the “bar” and watch Beecher’s cheesemakers separate the curds from the whey. It was pretty fascinating for me since I remembered all the steps from that food science course I took for my science credit at UBC. See Dad my BA was useful!

After a stroll through the market, we walked to up Capital Hill to burn off lunch, have a wander and decide where we wanted to go for dinner (this food tour stuff is tough)! We were deciding between Quinn’s and Sitka and Spruce – the latter has traditional Mexican comidas every Monday (the night we were there).

Sitka and Spruce is located in this gorgeous food/other things less important than food market called Melrose Market. I wish we had a destination like this in Vancouver. A lovely assembly of a butcher shop, cheesemonger, wine shop, and places to eat and have a drink. There are seats outside, but with nice big windows the market gets tons of light so it’s just as nice to sit indoors.

Soon it was drinking time. First stop: happy hour at Elysian Brewing Company.

Cocktails at Zig Zag Cafe.

So we decided on dinner at Quinn’s.

Whoa, salt! This place has salting issues that reminded me of Refuel (and why we never went back to Refuel!) which is unfortunate because the flavours were all there, the service was amazing and the drinks were delicious. I had a quaffable Spire Mountain Dark and Dry Cider that would result in another and had the consequence of me passing out in my clothes in the hotel room.

Anyways, on to the food!

We shared the bone marrow and escargot starter. This was delicious. The bone marrow was rich, creamy and melted in your mouth. The escargot was earthy with a nice bite. We scooped up the sauce with the bread. I was very happy with this.

My warning of salt to come was the little bit of lettuce than it came with. What the fuck? That thing was so so salty it was ridiculous!

SO ordered the burger.

It came medium rare as requested which was nice.

But damn – salt! SO took the bacon off his burger and left it on the plate. Removing bacon – blasphemous! That’s how salty it was!

I was still pretty full from lunch so I ordered a small plate. Above is the oxtail, gnocchi, roasted corn, fontina, and crispy marrow. This was rich, delicious with wonderful meaty flavours from the oxtail, but again, salt! It was a small portion, but I left half of it on my plate because of the salt content.

Our sodium overload was unfortunate because we really wanted to love Quinn’s. After doing a bit more research post-meal it seems like inconsistency with salting has been an issue at the restaurant – sometimes over salting, sometimes under salting. Too bad.

That was our first day in Seattle. Day 2 here!

Obtaining an Honours Degree Warrants Pulled Pork

Wednesday was the last day of my undergraduate career at UBC! Before heading to my last class, we journeyed downtown to grab a pulled pork sandwich. This thing is so good, my mouth is watering as a type this.

Okay, nobody told me how difficult this blogging business would be. It’s so hard not to attack your food when it’s in such a vulnerable and delicious position like this sandwich.

The line up at Re-Up.

We were planning on hitting up Roaming Dragon after but they weren’t there!

We’ve been trying to plan a food cart tour since last summer! Now it looks like it will have to expand to 35 stops!

Student Supper

Thrifty dinner: baked rigatoni with chorizo, button mushrooms and grana padano (aka the poor man’s parmigiano reggiano). Lots leftover for today’s lunch.

Favorite place to buy any and all sorts of cured meat/meat paté/meat in casing: Oyama Sausage Co.

The money shot.

Hearty dinner deserves an equally hearty wine. One of my favorites.

The SO was reading about Stump Jump/d’Arenberg wines: “Made exclusively from vines that have been affected by the fungal disease Eutypa dieback, the wine is amazingly concentrated and powerful.  Eutypa dieback, or “Dead Arm”, is an infection that suddenly kills grapevine shoots or limbs.  While most vineyards would rip out these vines, which produce a pittance of fruit, D’Arenberg hand-harvests the grapes from the diseased vines. The grape clusters, though small in number, are enormously flavorful, as the vine has been concentrating all of it’s remaining energy into the few clusters on it’s surviving shoots”. Fascinating!

Perfect TV dinner.