North Chicago -- Sanford Restaurant

As I frequently announce, my favorite Chicago restaurant is to be found in Milwaukee (perhaps I exaggerate, but only slightly). Sanford, the eponymous restaurant of Chef Sanford D'Amico is a gem, benefitting from its relative absence of the glare of national publicity. (It did make Gourmet magazine's list of the Top 50 American restaurants). Since 1989, Sandy D'Amico has been turning out complex, thrilling dishes in a room that is quiet and sedate. Sanford is a restaurant that doesn't feel the need to hire Norman Foster to design their toilets. After meals at Moto, Alinea, or Avenues, Sanford may seem a bit old-fashioned, but fashion is not always what it is cracked up to be. Sanford's dishes have more in common with those of Trotter, a thoughtful global cuisine, but with a penchant for game (a delightfully undercooked chargrilled loin of elk was on the menu).

My friends and I ordered from the menu (declining the seven course tasting menu at $85; most main courses at Sanford are priced in the low $30s).

My appetizer will surely make my list of the top ten dishes of the year, Lacquered Squab with Salt Cured Foie Gras, Candied Leeks, Rhubarb Compote and Maple Gel. Just like Chicago in an alternative universe that lacks a Councilman Joe Moore. As good as the slightly salted duck liver was, the squab, with its Chinese taste notes, was even better. Although the dish had a sweetness, the sugar was never overpowering. Diners may believe that they love a stark cuisine, but a little bit of maple is a joy. While I sometimes complain about excess complexity, on this plate, all the ingredients combined in exquisite harmony.

To complete the theater of culinary cruelty, only veal can match foie gras. (Once we win the battle of moulard, let us celebrate with some ortolans.) I selected Chargrilled Loin of Strauss Veal with 17 Hour Veal Breast, Crispy Onion Potatoes, Tart Apple and Endive. And no, the veal wasn't slaughtered 17 hours after its birth, that refers to the slow cooking, capturing the essential juices of meat. Here was another excellent dish that reveled in its complexity. The veal was splendid, and the accompaniments added much to each bite. The weakness of the plate was in the chef's generosity in providing accompaniments, which lacked poetry apart from the meat.

Dessert was a richly adequate Banana Butterscotch Toffee Tart with Banana Rum Ice Cream. It was precisely what one might imagine from the description. Very pretty, but more at home at a restaurant with a less creative vision. Chef D'Amico has just opened a high-end Bakery in downtown Milwaukee (Harlequin Bakery) and the dessert seemed not all that different from a tart one might purchase from an excellent public bakery.

On the basis of this recent visit Sanford D'Amico shows no sign of slowing down. His dishes seem neither stale or trendy. Perhaps being head chef in a one-veal town allows one to escape the harsh, hot spotlight of the national gourmet maw. And we Chicagoans like that just fine.

Sanford
1547 North Jackson Street
Milwaukee
414-276-9608
http://www.sanfordrestaurant.com

Butter Battle Chicago Review Butter

Three years ago molecular cuisine was but a gleam in the eye of some odd visionaries. Here and there (often here, this being Chicago) was a Grant Achatz, a Homeru Cantu, a Graham Bowles, and at a distance Ferran Adria. These Americans learned from the kitchens of Keller and Trotter (and some stages abroad), but they were creating a singular and off-kilter style in their fits and starts. They were building a new paradigm, just as the eminent historian of science Thomas Kuhn suggested was true for Newton.

Over time - and time shrinks in our media saturated era - the word spreads. Outrageous experiments are tamed and become normal cuisine. The opening of Butter in Chicago reveals, if any additional proof is needed, that the molecular virus is spreading beyond its medicinal quarters.

Butter is a sedate, contemporary, and rather elegant restaurant in Chicago's up-and-coming West Loop area. If local avenues are not yet bustling, they will be. After what was a considered a rough start (with some glowing if not overly helpful publicity in Esquire), Chef Ryan Poli, a native Chicagoan trained at the French Laundry, Le Francais, and La Broche in Madrid, has by recent accounts found his place, and perhaps that place is to be in the spotlight. When it became clear that our table had some claim to culinary sophistication, we were invited into the kitchen to meet the chef (the restaurant was about half filled on this Friday). In my year in New York, such an invitation was a rarity, outside of a few chummy West African establishments. Servers might be trained to avoid patronizing their diners, so they won't be so startled if those at the table are not the farm-fed rubes they might imagine.

I won't proclaim our tasting menu as among the truly stellar meals of the year, but it was an impressive attempt to create a menu that bowed to the creativity of a Cuisine Agape while providing enough Midwest Comfort for those who do not chose to indulge in the aromas of laughing gas. I left persuaded that if high-mid price restaurants like Butter were willing to chance avocado foam and bacon ice cream the experiment had become the establishment. (The five course tasting menu was, if memory serves, $85).

We began with a trio of snacks. Shrimp crisps, potato chips, and popcorn with truffle oil. The popcorn was terrific, stressing that truffles are to be treasured for their aroma, not for their taste, much less for texture. Any film would be recalled as a classic with enough of that corn. The other snacks, adequate, were perhaps not worth the time in preparation.

Our amuse was a quite pleasant sweet potato soup with a brown butter gelee. I wished that even in the small taste Chef Poli had ladled more gelee. It just slipped right down. If the amuse was not as elaborate as some, it did demonstrate that this was a restaurant whose jellied hopes were real.

First course was Tuna Tartare with Avocado, Mango-Yuzu Vinaigrette, and Puffed Rice. If the dish seemed tame if rich in Omega-3s, its pleasures should not be held against this chef. In its architecture, the plate bid us recall that we were experiencing a measured construction. The Mango-Yuzu dressing was sparky, enough to insure that no one would conclude that this tartare was sushi in disguise.



The risotto, bolstered with sweet corn, white truffle oil, and shaved summer truffles, was an exercise in aromatic pleasure. I would have been as pleased without the shaved fungi, but its thin presence demonstrated that the dish was what it claimed for those blessed anosmics. For the rest of us smellers the oil would have sufficed. Perhaps by so much truffle Chef Poli wished to demonstrate his concrete commitment to luxe, but simplicity would suffice.



The main fish course was a Stripped Sea Bass (with modern chefs one should never assume typos - but this striped bass was not stripped of its skin). Notable was the earthy mix of "wild mushrooms": hen of the woods, trumpet mushrooms, and - despite the claim of the kitchen - cultivated shiitakes. Many fish dishes over the years will be recalled longer than this bass - stripped or striped. Yet, the well-cooked fish matched nicely its garlicky broth, garlic scapes (not a typo), and gnocchi. Well-conceived and well-executed it suggested that the kitchen was in secure hands.



As our beef entree we were presented Kobe Beef Sirloin with Glazed Turnips and Carrots, Kobe Short Rib Ravioli, and Bordelaise Consommé. The ravioli brought the plate (slightly) above Kobe routine, but it was not a dish of remarkable vision. Like the bass, it was admirable in its competence, but lacking in the imaginative zest that one might expect from a FL-trained chef.



Throughout we were served a set of amuses, amusing, but apparently Alinea homages. The bacon ice cream exemplified cute standards of molecular cuisine, as did an earlier plate with avocado-cilantro foam, celery confit, and "guacamole and chips". It was in these bits and pieces and in his dessert that Chef Poli most clearly signaled his allegiance to a post-modern cuisine.

Dessert was an Italian deconstruction, a fugue of reds and greens - the most post-modern of the main dishes: Cream of Sicilian Pistachio with Semi-Candied Rhubarb and Strawberries and Sweet and Sour Red Pepper Sorbet. The plate was lite up like a Christmas tree in a Curry Hill diner. The pepper sorbet had the grassy tartness of peppers, but one that I found harsh against the creamy sweetness of the nuts and fruits. Where sweetness was, I was sated, but the deconstructed pieces could not easily be constructed, despite the prettiness of the conceit.



Butter finds a niche slightly below the temples of Chicago cuisine, and this may be proper as Chef Poli weighs his allegiance to Midwestern haute cuisine and to his outrageous brethren. Butter is not yet a destination restaurant, but it is a serious, energetic one. With time, Swanson may produce molecular TV dinners. By then we can think back to Butter and realize that chefs like Ryan Poli helped make these culinary test less fearful, more heartland. Whether we will be grateful as we wolf down Puffed Salisbury Steak with Mashed Potato Foam and Nitrogenated Peas while ogling Rachel Ray staging on Survivor: Joliet, only time will tell.

Butter
130 South Green
Chicago (West Loop)
312-666-9813
www.butterchicago.com

Will the Frog & Owl Be Reborn? Oak Street Grill, Highlands, NC

About thirty years a young chef - along with her husband - opened a restaurant on the back road between Highlands and Franklin, North Carolina. The restaurant, the Frog and Owl Café, owed a lot to Alice Waters and her revolutionary tradition. The young chef, Jerri Broyles, was clearly learning from Ms. Waters. The F&O was Chez Panisse without the heavy weight of Alice's ideological baggage. And I preferred the Frog and Owl to its Berkeley progenitor. Jerri cooked simply and elegantly, a minimalist cuisine. Each dish had a few herbs or spices to show the master's hand, but it was a pure as a western Carolina spring. My in-laws own a home in the region, and my wife and I made the pilgrimage to the F&O each year. The dozen or so meals that I ate persuaded me that the Frog and Owl Café was among the ten best restaurants in the United States. I have never eaten a better meal in the former Confederacy. (Macon County had designs on seceding from the Confederacy. These mountain communities had little sympathy for the plantation economy of the rest of the south). Her lamb rack and her trout in a court bouillon were definitive. The fact that the restaurant was located in a former grist mill along a serene stream certainly contributed, but I would have appreciated her cuisine if it had been located in an old paint factory along Greenpoint's Newtown Creek.

I imagined that a meal with Chef Broyles would be a part of my life for eternity. However, in the early 1990s, the Frog and Owl was shuttered, and I shattered. Whether because of a busted septic tank or the challenges of raising a family, Chef Broyles opened a lunch place - the Frog and Owl Bistro in Franklin, the local county seat, about dozen miles from nirvana. The food, lunches only most years, reflected a cuisine than most chefs could prepare. Salads and simple preparations. It was as if Heifetz decided to play bar mitzvahs. Yes, the Bistro was the best restaurant in Franklin, but that is rather like saying that Applebee's is the finest restaurant on the way to the airport. Every time I ate there, I cried.

However, Jerri is back, at least part way. As of last year, she is no longer involved in the Bistro, and is now cooking at the Oak Street Café in Highlands (although she is not the proprietor). The OSC is a nice, casual restaurant with touches of inspiration. One can see Chef Broyles' hand, even if the restaurant is not yet sufficiently serious as to deserve a long detour. Some friends and I ate brunch there. I was particularly impressed by a friend's trout in court bouillon served over curls of carrots. It was perfectly cooked and the carrots spoke of a sense of balance. My low-country shrimp, served over creamy cheese grits, was an excellent dish - moist and buttery, and prettily presented with a richly flavored seafood sauce. I have been eating at the OSC grill for some years, and the step up is welcome. The restaurant is too casual for fine dining and the prices too modest (and I imagine the kitchen staff too small).

When I returned for dinner, I was less impressed. The appetizer was first rate, Fried Green Tomatoes with Goat Cheese slices, Shoestring Beets and a lively horseradish tomato sauce. It was a nice and attractive twist on a southern classic, a plate most often found in Fannie Flagg's roadside cafes.

The main courses were less successful, and both deviated from the purity of the preparations at the Frog and Owl. A rack of lamb in a minted demi-glaze ($29) sounded fine, until the dish appeared. The lamb, somewhat overcooked, was sitting in an overly sweet minty gravy-soup, served with some colorful but uninspiring broccoli florets and overcooked squash. The garlic mashed potatoes were fresh and pungent.

The main course special was pan-seared scallops with a prima vera angel hair pasta, mushrooms, tomatoes, spinach and squash ($22). Too much, too much. The dish consisted of some sweet (but still rather gritty) scallops atop what can only be described as a mash of pasta and vegetables. As at many middle-brow outposts, quantity overwhelmed quality.

If brunch is an indication, Oak Street Café will be a nice local addition; if dinner is the model, Chef Broyles has not yet regained her touch. However, the Frog and Owl Café was so splendid that one can only hope that next year will increase the care and vision revealed in the evening entrees.

Currently the high-end restaurant in Highlands, a resort community in the southern Appalachians, is a hotel restaurant named Madison's (part of the renovated Old Edwards Inn), a restaurant with New York pretensions and New York prices. This is a restaurant that serves, as appetizer, "Peanut Dusted Breast of Quail with Seared Foie Gras, Vanilla Braised Cabbage, and Blueberry Scented Duck Essence ($19.00, mains run to twice that). Had I not eaten there (last year), I might have assumed that this was a parody. But it is real, and as misguided as might be imagined. You can't construct a menu by placing gourmet magazine in a blender.

Oak Street Café
322 Main Street
Highlands, North Carolina
828-787-2200

Madison's
Old Edwards Inn
445 Main Street
Highlands, North Carolina
828-526-5477

Shellfish's Bitch New York City Entry #110 Jordan's Lobster Dock, Grand Central Oyster Bar, Per Se, Eleven Madison Park

For most Americans July is hot dogs and apple pie, for me it is lobster and drawn better. Even since I vacationed on the Cape as a tot, lobster announces the heights of summer. And now the divines at Whole Foods damn me as a sadistic cad for my overheated pleasure. Perhaps I should stick to foie gras and placenta. But the truth is that I am shellfish's bitch.

In the past week I have repeatedly indulged in my cruel sport within our city limits: Per Se, Eleven Madison Park, Grand Central Oyster Bar, and Jordan's Lobster Dock. I regret not traveling to Nick's Lobster Restaurant on Jamaica Bay and the Lobster Box on City Island. Both Nick's and the Box may share the Down East ambiance I crave.

Jordan's Lobster Dock is a real estate tragedy. The restaurant and seafood market are situated in a fetching saltbox house on Shellbank Creek off Sheepshead Bay. Once diners could relax on a deck with a stunning view of the creek with its lobster skiffs. However, the damnable owners sold the half of the restaurant with the view to T.G.I.Friday's. Oy! Diners must choose between a sublime view and some pretty fine lobster. We chose the lobster, but it was served in one of the most depressing lunchrooms in seafaring history. The room, closed in and windowless might have served as an ethnic outpost if someone had cared to decorate it. For $60 for a three pound lobster, the industrial space was crushing. The staff matched the decor. No bibs, insufficient napkins and silverware, and astonishingly we were forced to leave a $3.00 deposit for a lobster cracker when we requested one. I grant that the clientele was more happily diverse than at most lobster shacks (a one pounder was $15.95), but it is hard to imagine a black market in plastic crackers.

The only worthy offering at Jordan's was the lobster, a very moist, tender, and creamy crustacean. Boiled simply, if not to the lobster's preference, it was excellent for an urban market. The cole slaw and French Fried potatoes were a wan afterthought.

Grand Central Oyster Bar, opened in 1913, has a different problem. The space in the bowels of Grand Central with its tile-lined vaulted ceilings is one of the treasures of New York culinary architecture. Service was friendly and efficient. We enjoyed our oysters (a mixture of excellent Kumamotos and good Blue Points). The Cajun sauteed moonfish (opah) was passable, and the string beans didn't even reach that level. The lobster (a two pounder) was satisfactory, but not at the level of tenderness one might discover on the coast. The meat did not match the room.

In the last month I have been returning to some of my most treasured restaurants to give my memory a jolt. This week it was Per Se and Eleven Madison Park.

I have said to all who listen that my two best meals in New York this year were at Per Se. However, after eating the Chef's Tasting Menu recently, I can't claim that Per Se wins, places, and shows. My meal was exceedingly pleasing, and it is only in comparison with Per Se 1 and 2 that I must subtract a star. There was much complexity and many quotation marks. However, fortunately for my story, the best dish of the evening was Chef Benno's lobster, described with quotation marks included as: Sweet Butter Poached Nova Scotia Lobster, "Ragoût" of "Ris de Veau," Corn Kernels and Morel Mushrooms with Watercress "Leaves" and Corn "Pudding." It was a sweetheart of a dish and exquisite in design. Its tragic flaw was its size, one reason that I have shied away from long tasting menus. This dish would have been a memory-maker had it been doubled and astounding had it been tripled. A plate with this much complexity needs to give the diner time to cogitate and masticate. We were eventually served some fourteen courses. If I could have selected a four course menu, what a meal it would have been, and the lobster would have been the star.



Eleven Madison Park was the most pleasant surprise of the year: some friends consider Danny Meyer's haute restaurant the comeback kid under the brilliant Chef Daniel Humm. On this second visit, I was convinced, until I reached dessert, that this might be the meal of the year. (There is no restaurant with more congenial or happier service: not in the Alain Ducasse metier). The cheese course and two desserts were not as assured or compelling. Cornbread ice cream might seem like a good idea on paper, but it is less inspired on the plate. However, our text for this sermon is lobster.

Chef Humm's lobster dish was the equal to Chef Benno's: Orange-Broth Poached Nova Scotia Lobster with Purée of Chantenay Carrots and Gewürztraminer Foam(and think of the savings on quotation marks!). Dining at Per Se and Eleven Madison Park reveals that while both are influenced by a Molecular (Agape) Cuisine, Chef Humm is the more experimental, and yet throughout there is a confidence that flows from a chef who persuades us that he knows what he is doing. Of the chefs working in this vein - tradition not quite the most apt word - it is Chef Humm who has transcended the constraints of this style. Never attempt flinging paint until you can a limn a portrait. The lobster chunks were surrounded by large squares of carrot (one might call them dice a la Las Vegas craps). The orange sauce, carrot puree and a foamy swig of Gewürztraminer was an ideal mix. And it was one of four astounding dishes that night.



Yet, despite these triumphs, I ache for a buttery New England boiled dinner served with sea spray on the Cape: God's lobster. Is He shellfish's bitch? If if He is, do crustaceans damn him too?

And, now, home to Chicago. That's all folks!

Eleven Madison Park
11 Madison Avenue (at 24th Street)
Manhattan (Flatiron)
212-889-0905

Oyster Bar
Grand Central Station, Lower Level (42nd St. and Vanderbilt Ave.)
Manhattan (Midtown)
212-490-6650

Jordan's Lobster Dock
Knapp Street and Harkness Avenue
Brooklyn (Sheepshead Bay)
800-404-CLAW

Per Se
Time Warner Center
Manhattan (Columbus Circle)
212-823-9335

Four Asian Spots New York Entry #109

Over the past weeks I have traveled the silk roads of New York, bolstering my culinary memories. I recently dined at a Malaysian restaurant (Skyway) in east Chinatown, a Javanese restaurant (Mie Jakarta) in Elmhurst, a northern Chinese dumpling shop on the same Elmhurst avenue (Lao Bei Fang Dumpling House), and a Sri Lankan restaurant in Staten Island (New Asha Café).

Skyway is a well-designed space, more airy than is typical for the area, and one of several Chinatown establishments that serve Malaysian food, some of which are reported to be mediocre. Skyway is impressive. I understand from Pan that the provenance of the dishes vary widely, some being street food, others breakfast cuisine, and still others more elaborate presentations. They originate in several corners of Malaysia - from the more Thai-influenced west to the more Chinese east. Most dishes were highly satisfying, and I was startled that the sauces were far less fiery than I expected, but revelatory in their complexity of spices.

I particularly enjoyed the Nasi Lemak, rice cooked in coconut milk, a very luxurious taste, served with an array of accompaniments, including mashed anchovies, potatoes, and peanuts. Roti telur, roti with fried eggs, is a Malaysian breakfast dish. Quite pleasant if not startling. The beef and satays were fine, particularly their smoky peanut sauce. The two dishes that benefitted most from the rich blend of spices - what I gather is labeled rempah (spicy mixture) - were a squid with "special sauce" and "aromatic crab" (a Dungeness crab, baked in a combination of spices). The crab was particularly remarkable, worth its $25 pricetag. Finally Kang Kung Balacan, Chinese water spinach with shrimp paste, was one of the most compelling Asain vegetable dishes I have had in some time. For this banquet for four (including the crab), the price/person was a remarkable $21.00.

I understand from the ever intrepid Robert Sietsema that Mie Jakarta is a rare Javanese restaurant that competes against several rival Sumatran establishments (including one on the same black, of which MJ is an offshoot). Although the restaurant is rather tight, it is also serene in its shades of pink and tan. Mie Jakarta means Jakarta Noodles (Jakarta is Indonesia's capital and financial center), and the restaurant, lacking an extensive menu specializes in "Mie" or noodles. It is the Queens equivalent of a warung or hawker stall. Price/person was $8.00.

The most startling pleasure was the Sio Mie - rice noodle dumplings surrounded by a peanut sauce with palm sugar (although pronounced like the Chinese Shu-mei, it is quite distinct). The noodles were compelling and addictive, and I left musing on how to create a Sio Mie pipeline to the Midwest. Also delightful were Mie Goreng, the traditional Indonesian fried noodles, and a lovely, frothy, fruity, pink cream drink with tapioca and avocado. I was less taken with the fried wontons, more snacks than food and the Ayam Rica, Chicken covered with a red sauce of pickled chilies - although not super-hot, and surrounded with egg, rice, cucumber slices, and shrimp chips. Mie Jakarta is a choice restaurant hidden in plain sight that every chowist hopes to discover. I did.

A few doors down from Mie Jakarta is Lao Bei Fang Dumpling House, a modest stand with a few tables, serving Northern Chinese dumplings. Happily we were able to watch a noodle master stretching and shaping dough for our repast. Most striking among a triad of dumplings was boiled Celery Dumplings which I found surprisingly evocative and a very good version of Fresh Pork and Chive dumplings. Our long noodles with beef and herbs was fulfilling. And as pleasurable was the food (a few dollars/person) - and the company - we chose to eat at the diverse and busy local park, a block from the restaurant, the one-time homestead of Clement Moore, the Nineteenth Century Episcopal leader and poet, best known for "The Night Before Christmas." Consuming superb dumplings on a warm July evening in a charming park, I was receiving my presents under the tree.

The fourth restaurant is a small Sri Lankan café that I visited for lunch on my trip to Staten Island. Tiny and modest with four tables, this is not a restaurant for a large crowd, and the food is aimed at the working Sri Lanka community. I enjoyed talking with the proprietor (a friend is Sri Lankan), and relished the mutton and chicken dishes. Lamb (or mutton) roti, a rich, dark chicken curry, and samosas were all good with the curry worth a repeat. (Perhaps $10.00 for my meal). The dosas (thosas) and bowl-shaped breads called hoppers were not available that Sunday. Along with Italian food, Sri Lanka cuisine is characteristic of Staten Island, and justifies a ferry ride on a lovely summer day.

Lao Bei Fang Dumpling House
86-08 Whitney Avenue (at Broadway)
Queens (Elmhurst)
718-639-3996

Mie Jakarta
86-20 Whitney Avenue (at Broadway)
Queens (Elmhurst)
718-606-8025

New Asha Café
322 Victory Boulevard (at Cebra Avenue)
Staten Island (Tompkinsville)
718-420-0649

Skyway Malaysian Restaurant
11 Allen Street (at Canal)
Manhattan (Chinatown)
212-625-1163