i am not a saltine wasting away

i must confess, i have eaten since my meal at butter. there have even been some good contenders, though i have been busy attending to business, so deal with it. i will do a condensed TFS review of recent foodstuffs.

LUNCH LAST WEEK
totinos pizza rolls - purchased at jewel. frozen pack - 10 for 10$ savings only with preferred card. qty purchased: 3.

i saw these in the aisle and it reminded me that this is the object that hot date continually uses to ridicule me as "stupid boy food" that is totally disgusting. for some reason i thought it'd be funny and reminded me of college days to get these. somehow, i thought it'd piss off hot date, even though i was eating them at work. we like to tease each other.

cooked those fuckers up in the toaster oven for about 8 minutes on a sheet of tin foil at 425. insides exploded. both of the pizza rolls and myself about 1.5 hrs after lunch. in the end, hot date was right. pizza rolls are fucking gross and should only be consumed whilst in college and you're too stupid to care.

DINNER THAT NIGHT
in reaction to the gross lunch, dinner was set at lula. it's impossible to have a bad meal here. the only thing that sucks is that since it's opened, word gets out how good it is, so it's harder and harder to get a table. ahhh, lula. remember when it was just a few of us and you were half the size? and the menu was cheaper? good times.

tfs meal, in sequence:
sapphire and tonic at the bar waiting for table. oasis is one of the best bands in the world. go get thier first record to be convinced of that. thier song supersonic started my gin & tonic kick, which has been going since, oh, maybe 1995 or so. if i get a mixed drink, it's usually a T&T, or in this case sapphire, or 7&7 cuz that's what my grandpa drank.
amuse fuck, i dont remember. it was good.
ceaser salad. this salad rules. made me feel better after the shit lunch. literally.
some glass of cabernet i dunno, i needed another drink.
pork special. fuck me this is the best meal ever. asapargus wrapped in bacon. just get it.
desert i cant remember now, but it was good.
coffee decaf cuz we're pussies and it was a school night.

Butter

Butter
130 S. Green St.
312-666-9813

ok, so the name is kinda stupid. i thought the whole snappy one word title thing was done a long time ago, but it keeps coming back. flare. chip. eat. fleur. crap. whatever. ok, but seriously - i found this in the new openings section of metromix and it's new american, which is one of my favorite foods, so that was promising - and then the clincher is one of the dudes worked at french laundry, which is this fancy pants place in napa valley that my brother creams his pants whenever he talks about it - so it's got some foodie cred. one christmas i got him a cookbook from there and all the stuff has these cutesy names like "peanut butter and jellys" - which i made the jelly squares, and the peanut butter was like this fancy peanut butter dipped in this stupidly good chocolate... so the gist of the aesthetic is basically - fancy pants food, but kinda funned up, or dumbed down or whatever to these classic food pairings. rather than call someing, oh i dunno... "roasted quail in red-wine and mushroom reduction sauce with seared baby carrots and parsnip and potato puree" they'd just call it QUAIL or something. essentially trying to "de-pretentious-ize" (i made that word up) food - which i'm totally about. good food rules. pretentious food is lame. although, even when it's pretentious, it's still pretty awesome... i just like the less prentenious stuff.

so, i pick out the place. we drive up and it's got a really stupid sign. and i hate the exterior color. when we walk in, the little opening hallway is nice, i really like the dark stained wood and some of the modern brushed aluminum accents. (i'm not gay, fuck off). but i don't like how big the place is. it seems a little, impresonal i guess. whatever. i like small restaurants. our hostess is nice - maybe a little overcompensating in the nice department for my tastes - clearly they're instructed to be super nice. she's ok with me though. i got no beef with her. we sit down, she hands us the menus and they're in these wierd plastic coated cover things, and they have subsections called out in these "whimsical" fonts which annoy me. i'm still getting over how i don't like how big it is (keep in mind this is relative, i'm probably making this sound like a gym or something, it's just larger than i generally like). our server comes over and introduces herself and she's real nice, i like her. she's professional enough and knows her shit, but she's also pretty down to earth. i could imagine having a beer with her bitching about shitty clients or something. a few seconds later a team swoops in with what i assume to be the amuse - it looks like potato chips, pop corn and oyster crackers. they explain: home made potato chips with sea salt cooked in fancy oil. pop corn in an herb truffle oil i think. and oyster crackers with some other fancyness. skeptical i am, then my mind flashes to french laundry. ahhh, this is exactly the same aesthetic. i take a bite, holy shit. this is good. pop corn is amazing. i keep laughing that im eating such "crappy" food at such a "nice" place, and how amazing the "crappy" food tastes compared to the normal "crappy" food.

wine

we decide on our meal and pick a bottle of wine. i have a taste for the sancerre since that's one of my favorites and goes well with our respective main courses (halibut & salmon), but it's also kinda pricey. i go for the cheapest bottle of sauvignon blanc they have, since this dinner is totally blowing the fancy dinner budget for the next month or two.

wine sidebar: so, sauvignon blanc is just the type of grape. and american wines describe them by the type of grape. french wines go by the region they're in. so a sancerre is a white wine made of sauvignon blanc grapes from the sancerre region of france. easy enough right? i know i like sancerre. so i just get a cheaper american version of the same thing and boom we're off. there's also the added generalization of white for fish/chicken, red for meat. pork's kind of a fence sitter, and depends on the accompanying sauce - if of course it's prepared in a "red wine reduction" - dumbass, get a red wine with it. whatever, those are my rules anyway.

the first 10 minutes in the restaurant are always stressful for me because i'm trying really hard to come up with what i'm going to eat, and how the appetiser is going to mesh with the main course, and then how what i'm having is going to coincide with what my hot date is having, and what wine is gonna bring all those together, so i'm usually silent for the first 10 mins or so until i have this all mapped out. if people haven't eaten with me before it throws them off at first, but i really hate people asking me things before i have my plan of attack mapped out.

amuse

so the waitress comes back and we order, thank god - i can relax and enjoy myself. 30 seconds later a new amuse comes in, and i realise this is the real amuse, and the first bit was an amuse, amuse. well done butter, you had me duped. this one looked like the real deal. a cold pear and parsnip soup with an infused oil. it came in what looked like a shot glass. my hot date was confused because it was a soup and we had no spoons. i said, look, you slam it like it's a shot. she didn't believe me and waited for me to go first. it was awesome. i pretended not to hear that there was pear in it, because really, i don't like pears. but this gave you much more of parsnip-y, root vegetable flavor with a floral, kinda herb like finish. it was also lightly foamed at the top (just enough to be interesting, but not annoying - i'm not big into the foam fad.) so, all in all it was a big shot, like a shot and a half at a bar. and it totally started turning me into a believer. i started sipping on the wine and looked up and discovered an awesome view of some skyscrapers.

bread

very important to me, and usually says a lot about the resaurant. what exactly it says, i dunno. whether or not i like it i guess. and the butter they serve with it (or olive oil depending) is super important. bread here was good. grainy in a good way. i'm prejudiced to white french loaf, but i hear grains are better for you, so this was quite good. butter served in a real nice flattened off dish that looks like a candleholder for a tea light. real nice.

app

i ordered the risotto because it had the same herb truffle oil that the popcorn was in and the waitress recommended it as awesome. hot date had the ceaser salad. what struck me about both was how light they were. both can be really heavy and crappy depending on where you get them. the risotto was very airy and also had wild mushrooms and asparagus in it. the flavor was really delicate and complex at the same time - it sort of lingered with you in a smooth fonzie kind of way. the ceaser came out really uniquely - it had the leaves laid out like big steaks almost, yet it was pre-tossed. croutons were of course home made and were big and sort of flaky in a good way, not crunchy and hard. even though i hate anchovies, i tried a bit at the urging of hot date. she loves the anchovies. i must admit, it added a new, pretty good dimension to the salad.


entree

i had the halibut (also recommended by the waitress, but also what i was going to order before she recommended it) and it was awesome. the outside layer was a golden brown crispy, and had some crunch just on the very top and bottom, yet the inside wasn't overcooked at all, but was light and textural. this is just awesome, and one thing i love about cooking, when you get the contrast of textures in a single item. paired was asparagus again, this time in two very manageable spears of maybe 3", wild mushrooms amd onions, all in a light sauce. this was just stupid good. i had a bite of hot date's salmon, and it was good, but it was the halibut's night. i asked for another round of bread and polished off the wine. feelin good.

around now i start to soak up the atmosphere a bit. there's a table to the right of us with 9 trixies that look like they'd be a pain in the ass to wait on, and another table to the left of older people who look a little uncomfortable in a place that's trying to be sort of young and cool yet down to earth. ubiquitous dance music is playing in the background, i can't place it - but it's that anonymous sounding music that says "we're young and cool, but still sorta have money" - it sounds like the soundtrack to the l word (shane is such a bad-ass, fuck jenny-she sucks. i also like alice and dana). but i'm definitely feeling this place the more we're here.

desert

desert menu comes and we pick a flight of cremes. vanilla, chocolate & pistachio, and cappucino, and a pair of coffees. there's a lot of fruit on the menu (hot date speculates "that's cuz chick's like fruit") but as you know i'm not down with that. the flight of cremes is totally down my alley. it's light and cleanses the pallete. salute butter! despite all these bad first impressions, you have slayed/melted my face indeed! it leaves me with a totally different taste in the pallete and i've experienced 5 (7 counting picking off hot dates plate) significantly different, yet all very good flavors/experiences/quasi-courses.

hot date runs to the bathroom to checkitout and reports that it's awesome, and they even have free tampons and perfume and crap in there. i can't believe it and run to the guys room and it's just like a crappy(fancy) airport bathroom. they clearly spent time catering to the ladies on this one, dudes - we're left out, but our dates will love it. this makes sense in retrospect i guess. the owners wanted butter to feel like the places you'd see the girls in sex & the city hang out at, and well - i think they suceeded.

get the bill and it hits... whoooa. ok. that was super rad, but it also is gonna hafta tide my over for a while. dinner for 2: $175 inc tip & wine. (remember i got the cheap wine too). it's back to the taqueria and KOB tonight.

while we're leaving, the douchebag at the table next to us mentions to his not very attractive lady companion "when i was A&R at a major label blah blah blah". so that's the kind of company that's there if you know what i'm saying. we walked out and were greeted by a bently in valet in front. i was really looking forward to having a night with nothing to do with the music business, and there we go - just as we're walking out.

so, in summation. if you're one of my friends, and have money saved to go out, it is worth it. this is a "eat here like once a year kinda place". i like to go to fancy places like once a month or so, and this one can stay on the list for revisits, though it's a hair over what i usually like to spend on my fancy pants meals - there are a TON of great restaurants in this city. they made a big to do in thier menu about being not pretentious food and being accesible and all that, and i think they suceeded nicely. if you're a kid who hangs at the empty bottle and club foot a lot, it still very well seem pretentious, but it ain't no trotters. for your avergage trashy food eater, this place is still pretty fancy pants, make no mistake - but as far as fancy pants restaurants goes, this does real nice at merging the two. hot date picks the next destination, which will probably be one of her hole-in-the-wall neoghborhood places which are super rad too. and much cheaper! we complement each other nicely.

length of dining experience: 2 hrs
length of to write this post: 1.5 hrs
winner in fun factor: dining

my trip to cub foods

people have told me repeatedly that i'd be a good food critic. the idea of being a food critic seems a little wierd to me, i never really see myself being in a magazine or something - i just like good food, critics generally piss me off anyway, especially music critics, so why would i want to be a food critic? critics are generally critics cuz they've failed at whatever they're critiqueing. i guess that makes this ok, since i really have no desire to be a chef or anything. but anyway - i really enjoy talking about food after i eat it, and i really like eating it. contrary to what that lead-in may imply, i'm not a fat-ass. but i really like the details of food, be it something trashy or fancy-pants.

the other day at the grocery store we were getting some essentials (read: steak, some potatoes, beer (KOB) and some wine.) for the inagural bbq of the season. there was some deliberation about burger vs chicken vs steak, and it seemed to me steak was in order for such a monumental occasion. a quick perusal of the steak section... hmm. strip steak? nah. too thin and not worthy of the occasion. filet? hmmm. is that a little extravagent? nah, fuck it. it's the first bbq of the season. filet it is.

fruits and vegetables aren't my forte. i like vegetables more than fruits and have a complex set of qualifications of which fruits and vegetables are ok under varying circumstances. it's way too complex to spell out here, but i have a system. it makes sense to me, and it probably won't make sense to you. i'm sure i'll talk about it later. suffice to say i wasn't on vegetable duty.

plug time: if you're in new york, check out my boy hansen, he and i have had many a conversation about these very topics, and we have similar tastes alternating between high brow and white trash. (can't escape our midwestern roots).

went over to pick up some beer (how can you grill w/o beer?) and the KOB was on sale. KOB is one of my favorite beers. i used to be a beer snob, but that was when i was on the dole still. you can drink KOB fast, it doesnt give you shitty hangovers like old style/pbr/et al, and it's totally ubiquitous and american which i like.

in one of my pretentious art classes in college (my favorite classes - i was a master at this sort of rhetoric, and could write myself an "A" bluebook exam in my sleep) my professor had a real interesting lecture about coke [the soft drink, not drug], and how it was the great leveller of social classes and structures. this kind of academic rhetoric tends to piss me off when i hear it on NPR these days (terry gross annoys the fuck out of me), but back then, and still now i buy this argument. the theory went, basically that the awesome thing about coke, is that if you're a millionaire drinking a glass, and you quantified your satisfaction, the result of your drinking that glass - you'd get the exact same result as a third world person drinking a coke. some dude making 6 cents a day can enjoy something just as much as a go-zillionaire. this is just a fantastic concept in my book. the go-zillionaire receives the exact same pleasure out of said consumption as this super poor guy - for that one moment, and in that act of consuming a soft drink - the two opposite worlds are equalled and the two are eye to eye in this act. my love for the KOB is essentially and extension of this - except you can get drunk on beer, not coke - and i enjoy a slight jag. (the wisco definition of jag, not chicago)

eventually i moved to the wine section at cub foods, and found some shiraz. while sitting looking at the wines, i thought to myself - you know, i've lived a pretty big lie on the wine front, and most people i know think i know a shitload about it. i know what i like. i know what regions produce whatever. i can totally hold my own with a sommolier, but really - fuck, i dunno. it's just wine right? i thought of dinners where my brother (a total food snob in the bay area) has served $400 bottles of wine with one course. it was good. yeah, real good. but was it so good TO ME that it warrented that price? not really. was it to my brother? hell yeah. he also would never buy a 800$ microphone - so whatever. anyway, i try and get one shit bottle of shiraz as an option for the steak. found some nice looking label for 4.99, and then grabbed another because it had a penfolds logo on it. it was apparantly thier off brand. but anyway - i knew the label and bought the wine. it's not so much that i know wines well, but i have a decent memory for the details and create relationships that i remember. if at a fancy restaurant my brother or hansen orders such and such type of wine with xyz pairing, i'll remember that - and get whatever's close to what's available at the restaurant. the ability to fake french is useful too. but at the store, the KOB philosophy holds true. don't need the absolute best, but don't get the bottom barrel crap either.

writing this is taking longer than the entire trip did. so we check out and something catches my eye. this is somewhat important as this is what led to creating this blog. butterfinger just came out with a new butterfinger that is so fucking awesome. it's called butterfinger crisp. you know how when you eat a butterfinger, it tastes awesome - but after like 2 bites you get these big buildups of sugery crap on your molars, so that you keep having to scrape your teeth off after ever few bites, and that just sucks and is gross, so you never get them. not this. not anymore. these geniuses combined the TASTE of a butterfinger by making it in these cool little thin layers of "butterfingerness" and crossed it with the consistancy of a kit-kat (another big favorite of mine - great texture and crunch, but not too sweet, and besides most american chocolate and candy sucks. sorry, it just does.) so, it's like the new generation of candy is taking place right in front of us. hershey's hit a home run with it's new take 5 with this same concept. but, i gotta go with the butterfinger crisp in the end because the take 5 can be too heavy - and you can only eat 1 half without starting to feel gross, or needing something to wash it down.

so after describing my reaction as such to the new butterfinger, a friend suggested i start a blog talking about this crap and you just read the first post.