AvroKO, the New York-based design and concpeting house, has begun construction on its next owned and operated venture. But this one is far from from the bright lights of the big city (even further than Brooklyn): You’ll find the new eatery in downtown Napa.

AvroKO has had a hand in such boites as The Stanton Social, European Union, and The Monday Room in New York, where it also designed and ran Double Crown, and continues to run Public. In the Bay Area, AvroKO pitched in on the concept, and designed and made custom furniture for Michael Mina’s RN-74 in San Francisco.

Butchery aficionados will, of course, recognize the company as the design force behind the meat-hook-heavy Quality Meats in midtown New York.

The new, as yet unnamed, restaurant, will occupy an old building on the increasingly revitalized stretch of Main Street Napa that also plays host to relatively new spots from Morimoto and Tyler Florence. Crews are now at work renovating and AvroKOing the building, which last housed a bar called Fagiani’s and has been shuttered for nearly 40 years. And, as can be seen from the picture AvroKO posted to its Facebook page, the spot was once home to something called Thomas Restaurant. Which is only related to that other famed Napa restaurant with a Thomas in the kitchen in that Mr. Keller unsuccessfully made a bid for the building before AvroKO snagged it.

America and Meat. The two go together like heart attacks and cholesterol. Clark Gable and misogyny. Mitt Romney and meh.

And now there is an art project and forthcoming handsome coffee table book at the nexus of these two great institutions called, appropriately, Meat America. We’re not running for office during this primary season (so please stop begging, republican party brass), but if we were, we’d have photographer and food stuffs designer Dominic Episcopo make the posters: we are thinking maybe a “Heart and Chuck” platform, just so Sarah Palin could ask us, “How’s that hearty chucky thing working out for you.” Our answer, as usual, would be a satisfied belch.

"Elvis Tenderloin" by Dominic Episcopo

Spread the bloody truth.

]]> http://thebutcherblog.com/love-me-tenderloin/feed/ 0 http://thebutcherblog.com/feeding-a-foie-gras-fancy/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feeding-a-foie-gras-fancy http://thebutcherblog.com/feeding-a-foie-gras-fancy/#comments Fri, 04 Nov 2011 18:50:08 +0000 Bill http://thebutcherblog.com/?p=2030 #leftcontainerBox { float:left; position: fixed; top: 60%; left: 70px; } #leftcontainerBox .buttons { float:left; clear:both; margin:4px 4px 4px 4px; padding-bottom:2px; } #bottomcontainerBox { height: 30px; width:50%; padding-top:1px; } #bottomcontainerBox .buttons { float:left; height: 30px; margin:4px 4px 4px 4px; }

Kudos to Plate, a magazine for food professionals, for going on an all-out foie gras onslaught today, posting recipes for twists on the divisive delectable that range from wrapping it in jerky to creative confections (foie gras cocoa Napoleon, anyone?) to an over-the-top cassoulet.

The recipes come from Simon Purvis of the Four Seasons in Jackson Hole, Pichet Ong on Pong in New York, and Mark Hopper of Bouchon of Vegas (where else would you get a foie gras cassoulet?), respectively.

Come on California chefs, get on it. Time’s a-ticking.

If you were wondering what the staff at El Bulli ate during family meal, well the answered in the video teaser for Ferran Adrià’s new book, The Family Meal. And the answer is basically the same odd goulash and stews familiar to anyone who’s eaten a staff meal at any restaurant, except since this is El Bulli, we’re talking about fish heads (without the eyeballs, which would be served later on gold-leaf flakes later on or something, of course) and the like serving as the base.

This Valentine’s Day don’t just tell your loved one they turn your heart to Jell-O — show them.

The clock above the kitchen door reads 10:30 a.m. The first wave of prep cooks — which have been here for more than five hours — are moving in accordance with Chef Thomas Keller’s simple reminder placardd beneath the second-keeping clock: “A Sense of Urgency,” it reads.

Which is exactly what is needed in order for the small, spotlessly clean kitchen to serve each of that night’s 76 guests one of two nine-course menus (“vegetable” or “chef’s”), each course containing completely different ingredients than the one preceding it. That’s a damn lot of ingredients. And while there are certain mainstays like the “oysters and pearls” — tapioca with Island Creek oysters  and white sturgeon caviar — the menu changes daily.

The kitchen and the half-bottle wine cellar — tucked between the chef’s office and the four-table portion of the dining room affectionately referred to as “the cave” where celebs like Mick Jagger like to dine — are the only modern-day additions to this 17th century cottage that has in its lifetime served as a pub and, of course, a French steam laundry before Keller bought it in 1994 and elevated its status to that of triple Michelin.

The sparse kitchen is seemingly equipped with only the most essential items, making a large flat-screen television, which hangs front and center seem all the more unusual. What’s on this morning? Not the Lakers game…nope; it’s another kitchen, which actually looks a whole lot like this one. Across the country, similarly blue-apron clad chefs are prepping for the day at Per Se in New York City — under the ever-watchful eye of Chef Keller.

But alas, we are here to talk about wine, so the impeccable and gregarious head sommelier, Dennis Kelly, leads us from the kitchen (without, sigh, even an amuse bouche) and outside through the garden — where they plan to have a few tables for the first time next season — into the property’s tool-shed of a wine cellar containing primarily French and Napa Valley wines (what do you drink when in Bordeaux? Burgundy? And what should you drink when in Napa? goes the local mantra — though some local somms still quip “Bordeaux,” or “Burgandy,” with eyebrow firmly raised, to that last rhetorical query). This time of year however, with truffle season in full swing, the Italian portion of the cellar begins to swell (“truffles and Barolla are an obvious pairing,” says Kelly — obviously).

Of the 20,000 wines they have on inventory, only a fraction are stored on premise (the rest are relegated to the off-site storage facility known as Siberia). Kelly proudly shows us the latest addition to the Laundry’s wine program, an iPad in a custom-designed leather binder.

And what is in Keller’s drawer? “Probably Zinfandel,” laughs Kelly as if to say, these chefs…such sophisticated palates, such simple tastes. (It does pair nicely with a roast suckling pig.) “If Ridge ever ran out of wine, the chef’s private collection could probably keep them in business for years.”

Jonathan Gold has taught us many things, chief among them that LA is not the culinary wasteland we had always suspected. Well, not if you know what you’re doing and you have a good guide. A guide like, well, Jonathan Gold. His column in LA Weekly actually makes us excited about going to LA, which is the highest praise we can pay him, sort of like when Gold writes that Rustic Canyon’s Roasted Root Shepard’s Pie “couldn’t have been better if it were made with hare or blood sausage rather than roasted turnips and parsnips, and I don’t think I have a higher compliment I can pay.”

Each year Gold’s list of the the 99 Essential Restaurants in LA is an event. And we are not here to quibble with his choices or his methods (only a fool would do that), but we are here to quibble with the presentation online: 24 awkward and and impenetrable pages of straight prose rife with formatting mistakes — so that at times one entry runs right into the next — and navigable only by clicking through the alphabetical list numerically.

We thought Gold deserved better, so we created a sortable list of all the restaurants for you to more easily see them all in one place in what ever order you like. We know that people spend a great deal of time eating through Gold’s lists, and this is a pastime we heartily encourage. Port the list over to your spreadsheet and add your own notes and rankings, port it into Google maps. Our only wish is that unless you happen to be THE Jonathan Gold, you not edit the synopsis we pulled from Mr. Gold’s text.

You’ll find all of the restaurants on one Google Docs spreadsheet, currently in alphabetical order by name with location, a short excerpt from Gold’s list, restaurant type, contact information, a link to the full LA Weekly review, and important notes such as hours and whether or not that particular place serves alcohol. You may notice that there are only 98 restaurants on our list. This isn’t because we are saving a place for Scott Conant’s Scarpetta (though maybe Gold is). We are not sure if the error was ours or LA Weekly’s, but if you want to tell us email us or send a message to @thebutcherblog on Twitter.

We’d encourage you to use this as a resource to navigate the list and that you not rob yourself of the pleasure of actually reading the full write-ups and miss Garcia Lorca references, the story of a woman whose life’s goal it is to eat through the numerous and arcane and nearly mythical dishes listed in the back of one particular Thai restaurant’s menu, a comparison of a dining experience to a Kyrygyz production of Hamlet, an ode to a maple bacon glazed doughnut and brilliant turns of prose too numerous to mention.

Check out this sprawling (we love that joke) Google Map of the 99 Essentials for 2010, created by Miss Fruitfly.

View 2010 Jonathan Gold’s 99 Essential L.A. Restaurants in a larger map

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Sortable spreadsheet of Jonathan Gold’s 99 Essential LA Restaurants

A Movable Beast: LA Weekly’s 99 Essential LA Restaurants

At an annual Robert Parker-led fundraiser dinner last week — where the guest list could easily be mistaken for a Napa Valley-based wine list, such was the celebrity status of the evening’s attendees — amidst the cork-popping,  schmoozing, pouring, and spitting, America’s first ever 100-point butcher was named by the point-pontificator himself.

Parker (who, incidentally, started the evening with a bone-dry martini) bequeathed the distinction upon Bryan Flannery, a second-generation butcher and San Francisco-based meat purveyor who supplied (as he does every evening at the event’s venue, Press St. Helena in the heart of Napa Valley) the cuts to wash down the evening’s full-bodied Cabs. Along with a dry-aged ribeye cooked over a cherry-wood fire to a perfectly red rare, Flannery brought a hard-to-come-by side of wagyu, the well-marbled meat protecting the palate from the onslaught of teeth-chatteringly-dry tannins.

Clinking his wine glass with a steak knife, Parker paused conversations about sugar levels, vintages, soil types and the Giant’s recent World Series victory to thank the guests for paying the obscene admission price and to announce the only points to be awarded that evening — to Flannery — who received the envied prize with a laugh and a nod.

And then the infamous spotlight whore, former investment banker and all-around asshole, Jayson Woodbridge of the bafflingly expensive Hundred Acres wines, seized the opportunity to push his oh-so-cutely-named “Cherry Pie” Pinot Noir, but, thankfully, was largely ignored. Because, really, even a Pinot that acts like a Cab can’t stand up to genuine wagyu.

Careful readers of this space might know of our affinity for the poet Tony Hoagland, and his latest collection “Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty” has further stoked the flames of our admiration. One poem in particular, the poem from which the book likely takes its title, is especially relevant to our mission here: The poem, titled “Dialectical Materialism” begins “I was thinking about dialectical materialism at the supermarket,” and continues with as lovely and gruesomely jarring description of a middle-American supermarket as you are ever likely to find (if you’ve read better, please let us know). This supermarket is nowhere near California.

the complete poem, after the jump

Dialectical Materialism

By Tony Hoagland

I was thinking about dialectical materialism at the supermarket,

strolling among the Chilean tomatoes and the Filipino pineapples,

admiring the Washington-state apples stacked in perfect pyramid displays
by the ebony man from Zimbabwe wearing the Chicago Bulls t-shirt.

I was seeing the whole produce section
as a system of cross-referenced signifiers
in a textbook of historical economics

and the fine spray that misted the vegetables
was like the cool mist of style imposed on meaning.

It was one of those days
when interpretation is brushing its varnish over everything

when even the birds are speaking complete sentences

and the sun is a brassy blond novelist of immense accomplishment
dictating her new blockbuster
to a stenographer who types at the speed of light
and publishes each page as fast as it is written.

There was cornbread rising in the bakery department
and in its warm aroma I believed that I could smell
the exhaled breath of vanished Iroquois,
their journey west and
delicate withdrawal into the forests,

whereas by comparison
the coarse-grained wheat baguettes

seemed to irrepressibly exude
the sturdy sweat and labor of eighteenth-century Europe.

My god there is so much sorrow in the grocery store!
You would have to be high
on the fumes of the piped-in pan flutes
of commodified Peruvian folk music

not to be driven practically crazy
with awe and shame,
not to weep at the scale of subjugated matter:

the ripped-up etymologies of kiwi fruit and bratwurst,
the roads paved with dead languages,
the jungles digested by foreign money.

It’s the owners, I said to myself;
it’s the horrible juggernaut of progress;

but the cilantro in my hand
opened up its bitter minty ampoule underneath my nose

and the bossa nova muzak charmed me like a hypnotist
and he pretty cashier with the shaved head and nose ring
said, Have a nice day.

as I burst with my groceries through the automatic doors
into the open air,

where I found myself in a giant parking lot
at a mega-mall outside of Minneapolis,

where in row E 87
a Ford Escort from Mankato
had just had a fender-bender with a Honda from Miami;

and these personified portions of my heart, the drivers,
were standing there
in the gathering Midwestern granular descending dusk

waiting for the troopers to fill out the accident report,

with the rotating red light of the squad car
whipping in circles above them,
splashing their shopped-out middle-aged faces
with war paint the hue of cherry Gatorade

and each of them was thinking
how with dialectical materialism, accidents happen:

how at any minute,
convenience can turn
into a kind of trouble you never wanted.

Most New Yorkers are surely familiar with Simon Oren’s Tour de France group of restaurants, including Nice Matin, Marseille, Le Monde and L’Express. You may not always notice them, but you know they’re there, a part of the fabric of the city like green and white subway lamps, hot dog vendors, or that guy who walks around squawking like a bird. You’ve likely had brunch with an eccentric old aunt at Cafe D’Asace uptown, stopped into Pigalle when you found yourself trapped in midtown for a meeting or some such nonsense, and, of course, you’ve noshed on some late-late-night cheese and charcuterie over a glass or two of wine at one of the 24-hour French Roasts.

Every October the group celebrates two of our favorite things, beer and sausage, with a pairing festival at all nine of its restaurants. This year marks the 14th such festival. For the first time, though, the boîtes will be pouring so-called “large format” (you know, the big bottles topped with corks) — and, in some cases, vintage — beers by the glass, all selected by Gianni Cavicchi, the group’s Beer Sommelier. Cavicchi says he hopes to show off the complexity of the bottle-fermented beers.

So, for instance, a Chimay Grand Reserve 2010 pairs with the roasted pork shank confit sausage at Pigalle, and the Stillwater Saison pairs with the grilled Moroccan merguez at Maison; while at Marseille Chef Andy D’Amico’s sausage tart with crispy sweetbreads pairs with Trois Monts Golden Ale and at Le Monde Chef Regis’s house-made boudin blanc, prepared in the traditional Loire Valley style, pairs with Loriette Biere de Blanche. Like many of the chefs, Chef Regis will be making some of his sausages in-house.

The sausage plates vary in price, but all beers by the glass will be $6 (qu’elle bargain!). The Sausage and Beer Festival runs from October 20–30. Check out the menus here to plan your tour.