dining niblets

(1) Whoever invented the term “niblets” is a marketing genius or a wizard or something.

(2)  Sushi-ya.  Try Sushi-no.  It opened a short while ago in the space formerly known as Misako on Willamette at 8th.  Poor quality — poor quality — tuna, soggy, tasteless and mushy.  The snapper, which I should have known was bad (given it was offered as a special with lemon and ginger) was almost dangerous.  I did like the Hawaii roll, and speaking as someone who is disgusted by most American kitchen-sink-type sushi rolls, this is high praise.  They keep that one simple, with tuna, chives, and hot peppers.  Wormy little bean sprout salad as a free starter, no thanks.  The food took forever to arrive and was disappointing when it did.  Young white men manning the sushi station: never a good sign.  Probably the worst sushi I’ve had in a very long time.

But a serious, serious problem, and one I can’t believe no health inspector has noticed, is that the sushi is served on old wooden boards that were once food-grade, but now the varnish is peeling from the corners and the wood has cracked.  We ate from one with a big hairline crack down the middle, and another one that had two significant flaws in the wood — the knots and divots that create pretty patterns on your hardwood floors, but a health hazard when on service items in a commercial kitchen.  And one featuring SUSHI?  Ugh. Two wasabi-green thumbs down.  (No, the picture isn’t the board we ate on.  It’s a used BBQ cedar plank from our woodpile.  But evocative, no?)

(3)  And a delight, for balance.  The late-night Lebanese hummus plate at Café Soriah.  Simple, fresh sliced broiled lamb, seasoned with mint and sumac, atop a big mound of delicious, creamy hummus, with pretty green marinated olives and some hot pink pickled onions on the side.  Want.

(4)  And oh heck, more delight.  Ish.  The prosciutto and fresh arugula pizza at La Perla.  The restaurant itself could use some fine tuning, but the pizza oven rocks.  The first night we went was during the Olympic Trials, and we were seated on the south side of the pizzeria, which is acoustically flawed (I fear for good) and we could hear the other tables better than our own dinner companions.  The second time was much better, with fewer kids running around and more adult noise levels on the north side.   The service was less snotty Barbie doll high school girl with attitude, too.  (Jesus, give me a fuckin’ BREAK.)

Eschew the expensive, prepackaged desserts and the pedestrian salads, and get your pizza topped with a big handful of arugula leaves.  Do salad like the Italians do.  Well, pick off the bruised and yellowing arugula leaves (La Perla, shame on you), then do it like the Italians do.  The peppery, greeny, crunchy arugula is a perfect match, dare I say synergy, with the cheese and the salty prosciutto and the blackened bits on the pizza dough.  I’ve been looking for a pizza like this since my trip to Italy in 2002.  Yum.

(5)  The laab beef salad at Aiyara Café in Springfield (in a sad little strip mall at Harlow Road and Gateway).  Finally, a Thai restaurant in the area that doesn’t over-sugar its food, gah.  This is one of my favorite Thai dishes, featuring rare beef slices, mint, cilantro, onions and fresh lettuce, tomato and cucumbers in sour and spicy lime dressing texturized with roasted rice powder, and Aiyara makes it well.

(6)  From another car on the arugula train, Midtown Bistro’s bacon, arugula and tomato sandwich with homemade mayo is really quite delicious.  Thick, chewy bacon, great bread, and a summer tomato —  ah, I’m drooling just thinking about it.  Take a hint from me and order a green salad on the side, though, to supplement the skimpy serving of arugula on the sandwich.  Or just tell them to add more.  I guess you could be less passive-aggressive.

(7)  Belly.  I haven’t been.  But a little bird told me very good things.

 

with this food i thee wed

Just returned from a sorely needed mini-vacation to the San Francisco Bay Area.  Retrogrouch was at a conference in Canada, so we had to celebrate our tenth anniversary when we returned.  And what better way to do it than by sharing a meal with friends?  Ah yes, sharing the meal we had catered for our wedding ten years ago, with the same wine.

La Méditerranée in Berkeley is still going strong, serving the same pomegranate chicken, fruited garbanzo pilaf, Middle Eastern dips and salads, dolmas and chicken filo fingers it did in 1998.  The 2006 Husch Pinot Noir from Anderson Valley was no 1995, alas, but it was still good enough to remind us of how delicious life can be together.

I decided to pick up the food when I was driving down College Avenue, and saw the restaurant.  Packed in airtight plastic containers, layered with icepacks, and carefully ensconced in the cooler I’ve started taking along with me everywhere I go in the car, it was just fine on the journey back home.  The restaurant didn’t bake the filo, so I just popped it in the oven to crisp up the top, and microwaved the other items that needed heat, and we were good to go.  May the next ten years be as easy as that.

 

billy mac’s — better than a sharp stick in the eye

They should take away my restaurant reviewing privileges.  Luckily, no one is paying me, so they can’t, muwahahaha!  But I do feel so depressed when I do Eugene restaurant reviews, because I *want* them to be good.  I really do.

That said, I’m happy to report that Billy Mac’s on 19th and Jefferson is not terrible.  (And Molly, I agree with your comments on my earlier post 100%.)  It’s a burger joint.  Do we need another burger joint?  Eh, maybe.  The burgers are pretty good.  And the fries are a world better than the jo-jo monstrosities at Mac’s at the Vet’s.  The fries are, I’d venture to say, quite good.  They are still battered, but thinner than jo-jos and done with a light hand, and served in rather appealing cone cups with ketchup and fry sauce (= vinegary Russian dressing).  The pizzas weren’t so good, but they were still edible.  I had one with gorgonzola and fresh tomatoes that was swamped with mozzarella so you couldn’t really taste the gorgonzola.  Was it supposed to have herbs?  I don’t remember, but if so, they were buried under the cheese.  The crust was crispy, but oddly tough and overbearing.

Other people seemed to be enjoying their food.  I actually almost ordered a fried calamari “tapas” when I saw it come out, because it looked as if it had been fried perfectly.  But since I was already taking a bath in cheese, I refrained.  Someone else ordered a milkshake, touted on the menu as something very rare and special.  It’s ice cream and milk blended up, and not even top quality ice cream.  But different strokes.

As for ambiance, the airflow on the otherwise congenial deck overlooking the parking lot is a problem.  Some dude nursing a soda decided to smoke two cigarettes while everyone else was having their supper, and made us all inhale his carcinogens.  Rude.  Not the restaurant’s fault, but I wish there were another place for smokers. I had momentary Bay Area dreams, where one can sit outside at a café and drink a cappuccino with a pretty girl and not be choked with cancer stick.  Ahh…

Meh.  Another minus is the service — it’s that over-friendly, chatty, ignorant-as-newfallen-snow, customer-is-always-right, folks-next-door, scatterbrained service so many places in Eugene urge upon their poor service workers.  Please, please, Eugene restaurants: train your staff about the specials and make them taste everything on the menu and even form an opinion about things on the menu…or at the very least tell them to pay attention to what people are ordering so they can at least point to some popular choices.  When we were there, the waitstaff was limited to one person, and we came just before a freak rush, so we were largely forgotten, but I forgive this situation, especially in a new restaurant.

For me, the worst thing about Billy Mac’s is the use of the word “tapas” to mean “standard mediocre pub grub appetizers like chicken fingers and cheezy toast.”   Just.  Don’t.  It’s annoying at best, and at worst, it reminds us that we don’t live in a place that has a Spanish restaurant and thinks it can cover it up by pretending we do.

So…go to Billy Mac’s and enjoy a burger.

 

sigh.

Billy Mac’s is opening June 10. I’ve already posted about my fears that this will be the same old, same old: a Eugene restaurant that serves the same stuff that every other place in town serves. It looks like I was right. But tapas, you argue, they’re serving tapas. And I say TAPAS?! Why in the ethnic-food-diverse world? Has Eugene finally caught on to the Bay Area hot trend of…1999?

I’m sorry I’m preemptively bitter. But when I see that the McCallums are redecorating with family pictures to recreate a bit of Eugene gone by, I get really grumpy, rite quick. And last week’s Register-Guard headline, “El Vaquero back to its own ways,” didn’t help much. (Maybe that’s where they got the tapas idea.) The owners of El Vaquero decided not to sell and instead dump the expensive yuppie menu (good idea) and go back to the old menu (bad idea). Eugene, Eugene, Eugene, Eugene, Eugene. There are more than two ways to skin a cat.

And since I’m bitter today, I’ll just make a brief comment about a restaurant owned by another group of locals who is trying to do the same old, same old with pizzas and pastas…or rather trying to make meals you can make at home and charge restaurant prices for them. We finally made it to Pasta Ravello. Good god. I haven’t had a meal that dreadful in a long time. The space is nice, but it ends there. Indifferent service, slow kitchen (on a night where we were one of two couples in the restaurant), a wine “special” that was a scant glass of the dregs of a bottle of their priciest wine, a pizza with sauce so sweet it was like candied tomatoes, a spaghetti and meatballs special that was large, boiled (??) grey, under-seasoned meatballs with no more than a third of a cup of sauce over a huge mound of pasta, and Caesar salad that was nothing short of revolting. Thank god they served a lemon with it; we squeezed it on top and pretended it was wilted greens. Unsalted. Peh.

New blood, Eugene Restaurant Powers-That-Be, new blood!

 

nuovo casual italian in whiteaker?

Please please please let me get what I want; lord knows, it would be the first time.

The Register-Guard reports that the owners of the Red Barn Natural Grocery have opened a casual Italian restaurant, Pasta Ravello, next to the grocery, at 345 Van Buren St. It’s open for dinner, 5-10 pm, seven nights a week. I’m too jaded and bitter to be hopeful, but could this be the one restaurant in Eugene that gets it right? The owners say it is “very simple, but very warm,” and that they’re trying to do Oregon ingredients with an Italian theme. The opening was reported in the Business section, not the really awful Entree section, which features no restaurants at all (???????????), so it doesn’t provide dishes to exemplify exactly what they mean by “Italian theme,” and it spells the name of the restaurant wrong. So yes, it could go horribly, horribly wrong. But the Red Barn (not to be confused with the Red Apple Market, a different animal altogether) is actually not a bad place, so I will go take a looksee. Plus, the Eugene Weekly had a positive review before the place really got going, so keep yer fingers crossed.

And, if you are strong enough for potential heartbreak, Eugenia Bob sez check it out.

 

jefferson street grill becomes billy mac’s bar and grill

Hrm. We eat at Mac’s at the Vet’s (as unpalatable as the apostrophes are*) not infrequently. Untenured professors (and a few hoity-toity elite tenured types) like to gather there because it’s a strange and unique Eugene institution: part small-town male social club watering hole with period decor, part fancy menu, part live music, part lottery machines in the back. The food is OK, but oddly (but not for Eugene, sigh) too “upscale” and pricey for the venue. But it’s quirky enough to be enjoyable, and there’s a great Wednesday burger and brew special.

Note to Chef Bill McCallum, though, before we proceed: the jo-jo potato things that you serve as french fries…please, man, for the love of god, cease and desist. Give us an honest french fry. Those things are almost inedible.

OK, sorry, off track here. As I was saying, we eat at Mac’s at the Vet’s not infrequently, so we know it’s not that bad, and certainly better than Jake’s Place, which was Chef Bill’s previous venue. Jake’s Place, a schizophrenic restaurant with a vaguely Hawaiin motif and a fancy menu, was sold and turned into Jefferson Street Grill, a place for which we had great hopes because it is in our neighborhood and the perfect venue for a neighborhood pub with light, fresh, creative food. Alas, it was not to be. They tried the more formal restaurant with a similar, inappropriate menu featuring dinosaurs like prime rib and low lighting, and it failed quickly.

I was excited to see the new sign — Billy Mac’s Bar and Grill opening in June! Then I figured out that the place was going back to its OLD vision of Jake’s Place with the same chef. I don’t have anything AGAINST Chef Bill, but for Chrissake, Eugene, give us some new blood! I’m frustrated to think that nothing’s going to change with this little place that holds so much promise.

So. Do I speak for other Eugeniuses when I say WE DON’T NEED ANOTHER BAR AND GRILL? I hope I do. Let the people speak!

Edited to add: OK, OK, one person (my husband) spoke, and he said that I haven’t even tried the place yet, so I should wait to release the hounds. Yeah, good point. So I amend my rant thusly: CHEF BILL, PLEASE SURPRISE US WITH THE BEST BAR AND GRILL IN EUGENE WITH A COMPLETELY NEW VISION!

* Mac’s is OK, as it is short for McCallum’s, I assume. Vet’s is not so kosher, as it is housed in the Veterans’ Club, not the singular, only veteran in Eugene’s establishment.

 

reuben blasphemy?

I would never, never, ever disrespect corned beef. Ever. Corned beef on rye is my favorite sandwich, and I respect it so much I won’t even EAT it at a West Coast deli. I’m not joking. And I take it even purer than the New Yorkers do — without even a hint of mustard. Nothing but corned beef and rye.

So why would someone like me even dare to discuss a tempeh reuben? Well, because they’re actually good. As much as I love corned beef, and as fat-soaked greasy meaty delicious as a corned beef reuben is, I know that I can eat half before my stomach starts to rebel against me.

Enter (1) a sometime-vegetarian, meat-lovin’ husband, (2) Eugene, Oregon, and (3) a hippy-friendly local neighborhood pub, Cornucopia. Cornucopia is one of the only local places we like for the ambiance. The beer’s great, but the food is hit-or-miss. Their ingredients are fresh, and some dishes are really good, but the menu seems a bit lazy to me — there’s someone creative back there, and I wish they’d give the menu a good scrubdown and coat of paint just like they did the restaurant a couple of months ago.

One of the hits is their tempeh reuben. It’s exactly like a reuben but the corned beef is replaced with tempeh.

Tempeh is a vegan fetish object. If vegans flew a flag, it would be made of tempeh. And with good reason. These little soybean cakes are better than tofu, a similar product, because the soybeans are fermented and processed quite differently, leaving whole beans or chunks in the mixture. The intarnets tell me that it is not only high in protein, but also in several other vitamins and minerals, and the fermentation aids digestion.

What does tempeh bring to the table in terms of deliciousness? Well, texture, mainly. A corned beef reuben falls apart and is generally kind of mushy and oozy. Not that there’s anything WRONG with that, but it relies on bread to keep it all together, and we all know bread doesn’t do that altogether too well.

With a tempeh reuben, you get a bit of backbone. The soybean chunks in the tempeh give the sauerkraut, cheese, and dressing something to cling to. Sure, the smoky, meaty taste of the corned beef goes missing, but the tempeh has mouthfeel and a slightly nutty taste, and it soaks up the other flavors in the sandwich.

I fry up the tempeh in a bit of oil until crispy. I’m not in this for the health. I suppose you could bake it with a bit of soy and brushed with vegetable oil. In the picture, we have tempeh chunks, but I’d recommend leaving it in larger pieces, like maybe 3 x 3 or 4 x 4 inch-squares, so the cubes don’t fall out of the sandwich. You may also want to experiment with slicing the entire cake in half widthwise, so it’s only about 1/2 inch thick. It’s all a matter of preference.

I’m not going to get all crazy-granola on you, but if you do partake in a vegan diet, you can certainly substitute the delicious cheese and russian dressing with soy versions of both.

Tempeh Reuben

Serves 2

4 slices New York rye bread

2 t. butter, softened

1-2 T. vegetable oil

1 cake tempeh (plain, not flavored), cut into squares large enough to cover your slice of bread (3 x 3″?)

1/2 cup raw sauerkraut, drained and squeezed as dry as possible

6-8 thin slices of a good mild cheese, like Noris Farmhouse (our house cheese) or Jarlsberg

Russian Dressing

1 T. sour cream or mayonnaise (mayo will be sweeter)

1-2 t. ketchup

1 t. srirachi or other chili sauce

1 T. dill pickle relish, or chopped dill pickles

Mix ingredients for Russian dressing in a small bowl and set aside. In a skillet on medium-high heat, add 1-2 T. of vegetable oil, and fry tempeh cake until golden brown.  Add more oil if necessary.  Remove from heat and blot excess oil. This step can be done ahead of time and tempeh stored in the refrigerator, but be sure tempeh is at room temperature before you assemble the sandwiches. Wipe excess oil from skillet if you are preceding immediately to make sandwiches.

Butter one side of all four slices of bread. Preheat skillet on medium heat, if necessary. If you have a large pan, you can make both sandwiches at once, but it might be easier to make one at a time. To make one sandwich, place one slice of bread butter-side down in the preheated skillet, then add a wide swath of Russian dressing, tempeh cake, half of the sauerkraut, enough cheese to cover the sauerkraut, and the second slice of bread, butter-side up (you’ll be flipping the sandwich in a moment).

After 3-4 minutes, or until bread on bottom is golden, crusty brown, flip sandwich carefully, using a wide spatula and your hand as a guide. Flip the sandwich in one, quick motion so it doesn’t fall apart. Cook until cheese is melted and sandwich is heated through, another 3-4 minutes. If bread starts to burn, turn down heat, or, if you’re in dire trouble, take it off the burner, put it on a plate, and microwave for 20 seconds or so to melt the cheese (this is what we did for the picture above, since the heat was too high).  Don’t forget you need to make another sandwich for your partner, as much as you want to eat your sandwich immediately.

You’ve now achieved the blissfully ambivalent state of being partly healthy, partly super-fattening; partly green, partly sickeningly-overindulgent; partly Asian, partly New York Jew.  Enjoy this liminality, savoring each bite.  Congrats: you’re an American.

 

dandelion dyed eggs

Retrogrouch is away at a conference and I’m enjoying the quiet house.  Didn’t do a thing for Easter, even make my grandma’s Easter soup with kielbasa (though I may still do it, having the ingredients in the refrigerator).  I just don’t feel like cooking for myself.  I did take one for the team and attempt to eat at Kowloon in North Eugene this afternoon.  Now I’m so sick to my stomach I can’t even fathom dinner.  Ugh.  That is NOT a good restaurant.  I should have known it wouldn’t be good when I saw that all of the lunch specials were either chow mein, fried rice, fried things, or a combination of the three.

So, I’ll give you a Easter Monday story and a recipe for next year.  First, the story.  In Hungary, on Easter Monday, the boys sprinkle perfume on the girls and sometimes douse them with water, chanting a little rhyme that claims the girls are flowers and they need water so they’ll bloom and not wilt.  A reminder to drink your 8 glasses a day, if you don’t live in Hungary.

Second, a recipe.  Easter was too early this year to take full advantage of an old way to dye Easter eggs.  Apparently, the old-timers used dandelions to dye their eggs. After my sister told me last year that her husband’s grandfather’s favorite eggs were the dandelion-yellow ones, I went out and did a U-pick on my garden in the rain. It solved two problems: getting rid of the seed heads from those lawn-gobbling dinner plate-sized weeds, which grow monstrous in Eugene, and it gave me purty pale yellow Easter eggs. I boiled about two cups of the flower tops for about 15 minutes, then added the cooked eggs and let them soak for about 6 hours. The picture doesn’t really show the color well, but they were a lovely pale yellowy green with slight mottling from contact with the dandelion heads. The granola sites say that if you boil the root of the dandelion plant, you’ll get magenta dye, by the way. Maybe next year.

 

jefferson street grill?

What happened to the Jefferson St. Grill on Jefferson and W. 19th, and even more importantly, what will happen with the space? It just opened last year and friends say it’s now closed. We have eaten there a couple of times, and although it’s unquestionably nicer than Jake’s Place, which preceded it, there was something dissonant about a moderately upscale restaurant (e.g., prime rib, full bar) next to a convenience store. Or maybe it was the big OREGON LOTTERY sign on the restaurant marquee.

I’m going to cross my fingers that a neighborhood restaurant will open up that has more of a neighborhood feel — a lower-priced menu, more casual food (but not pub food, or wraps-n-sprouts in them, since we have way more than we need of those types of restaurants). It always felt too formal for us to eat there mid-week, on a budget, and yet too casual to go there when we wanted to splurge. It just didn’t fit the space. I guess others agreed.

Why not a sweet little bistro along the lines of The Vintage? Or even a café that serves soups and sandwiches? It’s too far away from downtown to be a bar of any weight or traffic, but it’s a busy and central enough location for folks commuting from work downtown or from the university to grab a bite.

 

pomegranates market: harissa for your carrots

What with the announcement of a new Moroccan restaurant planned for Eugene, I knew I had to go buy some harissa at our local Middle East market, Pomegranates, to celebrate with a big pot of couscous. I don’t have anything against musty, dusty ethnic grocery stores with bottles of mysterious sticky rat-chewed-labeled substances that no one has bought in at least 10 years, and I patronize them frequently. But Pomegranates is a different game. Owned and run by Julie Lenox-Sharifi, this clean, bright little store has lines of products that are clearly lovingly hand-selected. It has dry goods from Lebanon, Israel, Spain and Italy, among other places, and a full line of Persian packaged goods, plus Middle East-inflected spices from abroad and domestic companies, sweets from a variety of places, and a nice selection of Middle East cookbooks. Offered for tasting when I went last week was Turkish delight, Persian tea, regional Italian olive oils at excellent prices, and a pomegranate vinegar highly recommended by the delightful Ms. Lenox-Sharifi.

Now, on to the complainin’.

New Moroccan restaurant = good. The owner of Adam’$ Place running it = not $o good. When I look at a menu and see uninteresting dishes I can easily make at home with a few trendy geegaw garnishes and buzzwords ensuring price points that exclude academics from any more than an occasional evening out, I don’t have any interest in the place. Adam’s Place makes that mistake, and thus misses the opportunity to grab the market share for the university community.

But if the food is unusual, we’ll part with our coins. Moroccan food is always expensive, so that will keep the crowd in the economic bracket they seem to want, but I’m excited that the new restaurant is unusual enough to make US see the need to go out to eat there. I just really, really, really hope that the folks in charge will make good on their promise in the Register-Guard that it will aim to be authentic Moroccan, and not a mishmash of Middle Eastern cuisine “inspired” by the strong flavors of that huge, diverse area.

In any case, it will drum up an interest in Middle Eastern cooking, so I hope that Pomegranates will become more well-known and patronized in Eugene. So I’d advise you to get in on the action early. On March 15, at 6:00 pm, Ms. Lenox-Sharifi will be offering a Persian New Year (Na Rooz) cooking class at the fabulous kitchen in our local kitchen superstore, Hartwick’s. Call Hartwick’s at (541) 686-0126 for reservations. Classes fill up quickly and the price is great, so don’t hesitate if you’re interested.

At the market, I purchased Mustapha’s Moroccan harissa, highly recommended by Ms. Lenox-Sharifi, who also gave me her recipe for Carrot and Harissa Purée. This harissa is unusual in that it contains preserved lemons, and it isn’t nearly as spicy as other packaged harissas I’ve tried (e.g., the stuff in the tube they sell at Newman’s and Marché Provisions). If you try the recipe below and have a different harissa, please be sure to taste for spiciness and adjust accordingly.

Moroccan Carrot Purée with Harissa

(adapted from Julie Lenox-Sharifi’s recipe)

I hate carrots. They are one of the only foods that I actively dislike, and the only vegetable. I’ve searched long and hard for a carrot recipe that I like. This is it. I can’t get enough of this stuff. The carrots are bright and spunky, their natural sweetness counteracted by the lemon and chile in the harissa, and made smooth by the olive oil base. I used half a bag of old, leftover grocery store carrots, but I’m sure it would be even more brilliant with fresh garden carrots, especially the varieties good for roasting, such as Atomic Red.

1 lb. carrots, peeled and cut in 1-inch slices

3 cloves garlic, peeled

1/3 cup olive oil, plus extra for drizzling on carrots before roasting

1 T. Mustapha’s Moroccan harissa (or substitute 1 t. other harissa plus 1 t. chopped preserved lemons or 1 t. lemon juice plus some zest), or to taste

1/4 t. cumin

salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Place carrots and garlic in baking dish, and drizzle with some olive oil. Roast until you see some dark brown spots, about 30 minutes depending on the water content in the carrots.

Let carrots cool to warm, then process them with harissa, cumin, salt and pepper in a food processor. Pour in 1/3 cup of olive oil as you process. Adjust seasonings. Serve at room temperature on slices of baguette, crackers, pita bread. Also would work well as a side dish or as a stuffing.

Yield: about 2 cups.