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CHAPTER TEN
SUPPORTING THE LOCAL FARMER
(AND BUTCHER AND BAKER AND BLACKBERRY MAKER)
Luckily, the mall in downtown Providence hasn't totally wiped out the small retailers and restaurants in the neighborhood. First on my list of restaurants to try: Local 121. When you look at Local 121's website, the photographs of the establishment make it look like an old pub. They do in fact have a bar but the real eating (and drinking) goes on in the highly (and well) designed dining room adjacent to the bar. The room, decorated in shades of black, white and gray has a very comfortable feel to it. When we were seated in white leather chairs nearly the size of small loveseats, we regretted we still had a four hour drive back to New York. We could have easily settled in for more than a lunch time hour.
In the last few years, there has been a trend among chefs to hop on the "locally grown" bandwagon. In Europe, this has been a standard for years. Let's say you order a simple meal of sausage, cheese and bread. The guy (or girl) making the sausage will get a credit, as will the baker baking the bread and the dairy farmer making the cheese. (One day I'm convinced they'll credit the particular cow, sheep or goat by name for the milk that made the cheese.) While I have seen this on many Californian menus, East Coast restaurants have just picked up on this trend.
Reading Local 121's menu that day, there were no fewer than 25 purveyors listed -- from poultry breeders to fish mongers to vineyards, creameries and plain old vegetable farms. Who was responsible for what out of the way, we started with grilled bacon-wrapped scallops with fresh parsley, celery and red onion in a tangy vinaigrette. Lynn moved on to the lunch special of boneless short ribs on a roll with cheese and hand cut fries. I opted for the homemade spinach pappardelle with onions, shreds of eggplant, sausage and ricotta salata.
It was an awesome but dauntingly heavy lunch in the middle of the afternoon. A nap would have been in order; instead we got back in the car and headed towards Tarrytown, New York. As opposed to our drive yesterday, there was surprisingly little traffic that Friday afternoon on I-95. Surely we would hit some congestion ahead. But we didn't. This gave Lynn ample time to drive and read his blackberry. This would be an appropriate point in time to talk about the curse of the blackberry.
Let me start with a strange household fact. We don't answer our house phone. Years ago when we had signed up (or so we thought) for the "do not call list," our house phone began to ring day and night with people wanting to sell us stuff: home equity loans, car insurance, mortgages, dental whitening, financial planning, etc., etc. (Sitting at home today as I was writing this chapter, the phone rang and someone was offering me free satellite TV with a cruise to the Bahamas thrown in; people must really be desperate.) The people who need to reach us have our cell phone numbers. Enough said.
Lynn's blackberry, while perfect for emails and texting, is not great if you actually want to have a conversation with someone. He always sounds like he's in a tunnel or on the top of a very windy mountain. Because he works for an institution where people don't actually like to talk to each other face to face, they email day and night. Which means he reads his emails day and night; he is never ever free from work and never knows the meaning of a "true" vacation.
After watching him read and drive and read and drive, I decided to call a few shots. It was my birthday weekend this part of the road trip and we were heading to Dan Barber's restaurant Blue Hill at Stone Barns to celebrate. We had been there twice before and the food, most of it grown or raised at Stone Barns, is top notch gourmet. It's also very expensive. This was supposed to be the "budget" vacation but eating at Blue Hill was going to be my birthday present. Plus, we had a gift certificate from my brother and his wife to offset part of the expense.
Over the years, we've done away with almost all of the birthday and Christmas gift giving. If one of us wants to buy the other one a gift, we do so, if we don't, we don't. If I suggest we don't buy each other gifts but instead do a weekend trip, we usually always opt for the weekend trip. Lynn didn't have time before we left to get me a birthday gift and I had already asked him not to spend any money on me. That gave me quite a bit to work with.
"I have a special birthday request," I said as he looked at his blackberry one too many times.
He smiled. He was thinking it was sexual.
"Well, that would be nice, too," I countered.
"No, this is a really special request," I continued.
"What?" he asked.
"Do you think you could maybe not look at your blackberry for the entire time we are at dinner?" I asked
You would have thought I had asked him to run naked through his office as his staff pelted him with bad Chinese eggrolls.
"What?" He was actually stammering.
"I bet you can't do it, can you?" I said.
I wasn't angry but I decided to taunt him a little.
"Your undivided attention would be a great birthday present. A gift actually," I said smiling at him.
He sighed.
We were staying at a Marriott in Tarrytown about a 10 minute drive from Blue Hill. We checked into the hotel and had enough time to have drinks (plural) at the bar, iron our clothes, shower, shave and blow dry my hair. We were still 15 minutes early for our 8 p.m. dinner reservation.
In the month of August, Blue Hill goes menuless. That means there are no a la carte offerings, you are basically at the hands of the chef and are asked to let your servers know of any food allergies. We don't have any food allergies or dislike any particular food groups so I like to think of our little party of two as a chef's dream table.
At night, Blue Hill takes on a bit of a magical quality. Once owned by David Rockefeller as an estate and farm, many of the old stone buildings are still there. At night, the buildings are gently illuminated and to get to the main entrance, you walk through a beautiful cobblestone courtyard. If you came upon this place unexpectedly, (it's pretty remote) you could swear you were in France.
Inside the furthest building from the entrance, we saw a whole entourage of young chefs cooking and prepping. Outside we saw a "lowly" intern whose sole responsibility that night was to grill tomatoes. Tomatoes we would soon discover would be a major portion of what we consumed that evening.
We were seated side by side for dinner. Lynn looked at his blackberry once. When he did so, I didn't yell at him. I simply said in a very calm voice.
"I didn't think you could do it."
The blackberry was put away and low and behold wasn't taken out the rest of the meal. This meant Lynn also had nothing to do with his hands. This may sound strange but it must be some sort of tactile thing with him. Some people always have to have something in their mouth, whether they are chewing gum or snacking or smoking. Lynn likes to push buttons.
Sitting next to me that evening, he decided with nothing else to fondle, I was game to be touched, stroked and kissed. Trust me, even after 29 years it was wonderful. As we made our way through the meal though I kept wondering what the wait staff was thinking. Surely this was the mistress, no husband would be that affectionate towards his wife!
The Food and the Wine
As Lynn and I have aged, we've had problems reading restaurant menus. The type is too small or the lighting is too low. I know this happens to many people but for Lynn it has become truly annoying especially because he has resisted getting glasses. I've worn contact lenses since I was 10 but even with a new multi-focal prescription, I was having trouble seeing the menu. I looked around the room and saw the Sommelier pointing a pen-like flashlight over the pages of the wine list. Ok, so it wasn't just us.
The wine list at Blue Hill is very expensive, annoyingly so. We struggled to find a decent bottle for under $100 until the Sommelier came to our rescue. Unlike the "Young One" who had memorized the wine list at Amalfi in Narragansett, this Sommelier was paging through the wine list as if he were reading it for the first time. Since we didn't know what we were eating, we finally settled on a Crocker Starr Pinot Noir. Which begs the question, why is the wait staff so eager to take a drink order before you've even had a chance to look at the menu? On special occasions (i.e., birthdays, anniversaries, or surviving the week also qualifies) we order something bubbly. That night we toasted each other with two glasses of Prosecco, followed by an assortment of amuse bouche:
Fried zucchini coated with panko breadcrumbs
Mini tomato burgers on homemade rolls (A recipe that was featured in an issue of Gourmet I found out later when I caught up with my food magazines.)
Shots glasses filled with corn chowder
Homemade beet chips with fried sage leaves
Then we had the charcuterie. Living in Munich where cold cuts are king, it's one of the few food items I'm fussy about. They have to be homemade with the proper accompaniments. Blue Hill's charcuterie had homemade prosciutto (sorry Rachel, it was damn good), bologna (really!) made from veal and pork, salami and a pork liver terrine. There was a pat of homemade butter, eggplant puree, some flavored sea salt and bread to round it out. There was also a spicy mustard that overwhelmed the integrity of the dish. A sweeter mustard, I thought would have worked better.
To clear our palette we had a tomato watermelon gazpacho followed by an heirloom tomato salad with homemade yogurt. We also had one of Chef Barber's signature salads: greens with a farm fresh egg that's poached but then fried in panko breadcrumbs. Next up was something described as a "weak" fish in a variation of the corn chowder we'd consumed before. Researching "weak" fish, it's similar to halibut and mild and tasty. Then there was a bit of a delay.
Everyone around us was eating a different dish (since there was no menu) so I couldn't even begin to guess what might be next. At Blue Hill they are very big on "educating the consumer." Throughout various stages of the meal, we were given tutorials by staff members regarding different varieties of tomatoes and the pairing of old and new world cheeses. This could be immensely annoying to some diners; I actually thought it was interesting. It also got Lynn to keep his hands to himself for 30 seconds since I was starting to giggle from all the touching. I was after all having fun; the ambience was excellent and so far the food had been delicious.
Next course up: small beet flavored tortellini with homemade ricotta. We ate, they cleared our plates and then brought us the next course.
At this point I need to talk a little bit about sous vide cooking. I know this is the wave of the future for many chefs and the press has jumped on it as the ultimate cooking technique to "concentrate flavors so nothing is lost." This technique however, does not work with all food groups. Turkey to be precise.
Our final dish that night was turkey sous vide with a few vegetables on the side. The turkey was so white it looked raw. Guess what, it was nearly raw. I actually couldn't eat it I thought it was so disgusting. I know there are many people who send things back that a) they don't like or b) are not cooked the way they like it. We are not those people. I can count on one hand the number of times I've sent a dish back (usually an undercooked steak). We both inevitably eat a dish even if we don't like it, the rationale being: this is how the chef wanted it to be..
When I spoke to one of the waiters who had enthusiastically brought out the charcuterie platter we had devoured at the beginning of the meal and told him my disappointment with this dish, he whispered to us.
"Poultry shouldn't be done sous vide," he said.
I wonder if enough people complain will chefs stop cooking certain dishes this way? We thought we'd get the cheese plate for dessert since we were intrigued by our previous tutorial but before we knew it they put numerous desserts in front of us: olive oil ice cream with fresh berries, poached apricots, and the ever popular but overly copied individual molten chocolate cakes with even more ice cream.
We'd had enough; we'd eaten for three hours. And except for the turkey, it had been exceptional. So if anyone ever asks me if I have any food allergies, I now have one. I don't eat turkey sous vide!
P.S. On the drive back to the Marriott, Lynn didn't look at his blackberry once.
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