Local Roots, Roanoke VA

When we first thought about staying in Roanoke, I knew I wanted to eat at Local Roots, a restaurant that is as close in concept to my own as there is in Virginia. By reputation, they do really excellent food.

The quality of the photographs below is pretty rough. The lighting, especially after dark, was pretty poor. In contrast to the quality of the photographs, the quality of the food and the service was outstanding.

In contrast to the insipid cocktails we had in Boone, these were expertly prepared and very well balanced. I love a good cocktail if it is not sweet and it is well balanced. My grapefruit gin and juice was excellent though I might have liked about a half an ounce more St. Germain in it. After cocktails, we got a bottle of Barbaresco to go with dinner.

Cocktails

We started with a beautiful charcuterie plate. In particular the rabbit liver mousse was outstanding. It takes a lot of commitment for a restaurant to have a charcuterie program, not only in the labor and time in curing everything, but garde manger labor on the line to plate it during service.

Charcuterie

Next up was rabbit gnocchi. I never read the menu so I didn't realize that it had rabbit in it. Ann asked me what I thought it was and I was guessing chicken breast. If I could criticize one thing, I would say that they could use more flavorful rabbits. No doubt they are using what they can get. The gnocchi was made from flatbread, like Bavarian or Austrian Semmelknödel. I love this style dumpling; it wasn't Ann's favorite.

Gnocchi with Rabbit

On to my favorite dish of the night, a farrotto with an Asian flair. I love farro and this was super. The toppings were fine, but I'm all about the wheat berries.

Farro

We had a single pork entrée after our smaller courses, a duo of a piece of loin and a piece of belly. The belly was great; the loin wasn't the best I've ever had. Loin is prone to be a bit dry and though this was well cooked, about medium well, it was still a bit dry.

Pork Loin and Belly

All in all, a delightful meal with a delightful server, the best of 2017. Kudos to Local Roots.

Dogfish Head AleHouse, Chantilly VA

Sunday September 11, Ann and I were going to reprise our hike of Whiteoak Canyon, but her plantar fasciitis acted up again. We had been saving a trip in to REI Fairfax to try out some new gear for a rainy day and her lame foot provided that proverbial rainy day, so after a leisurely pot of coffee, we headed in to Fairfax.

As we drove to REI, I found it very eerily coincident that we drove directly by the building where I was hunkered down with dozens of others in the first floor gym, glued to the television, fifteen years earlier as we watched in absolute horror the second airliner plowing into the Twin Towers. I hadn't been by this building in 15 years, yet the memories are still intensely vivid.

Although we got a new backpack for Ann, the trip in to REI for my part was a bust. I wanted to look into some clothing, but they had nothing in my size. We were done shopping right around 12:30 and neither of us having eaten breakfast, were pretty famished. I had picked out a promising Chinese restaurant nearby for lunch, but that was going over not at all with my lovely spouse who kept saying the word "margarita" over and over.

Consulting the Garmin and going through the list of nearby restaurants, Ann chose the Greenbrier Dogfish Head AleHouse and so off we headed up to route 50 and west towards Chantilly. It was such a gorgeous day that we sat outside on the patio which quickly filled up with football fans looking to watch the games on the huge flatscreens and drink a beer or two.

Photobombing the Dogfish Head Sign

Ann started with a Namaste, a Belgian-style Wit that she had liked previously on tap at PaveMint. She didn't like this one as much and subsequently switched a big-girl mug of Festina, a Berliner-style Weiss flavored with peaches. I started with a big mug of 60-Minute IPA, a very known quantity to me. None of the other beers on tap seem to do it for me. Dogfish can be a little nutty when it comes to beer.

60-Minute IPA

I let Ann pick the food and soon arrived at the table a plate of fried calamari, andouille Cajun egg rolls, pork belly tacos, and some chicken wings. All the food was better than I expected. The calamari was well fried but really needed some salt. The egg rolls were kind of blah, seasoning-wise, with no apparent andouille. It's a really good bar food idea that just didn't approach in execution what it could have been. The pork belly tacos, by contrast, were fabulous. The server told Ann that the wings were indeed meaty in response to her query, but clearly we have different ideas about meaty. They were scrawny, grilled, and mostly left uneaten.

Calamari, Andouille Cajun Egg Rolls, Pork Belly Tacos

"Meaty" Wings

We enjoyed a nice leisurely drive back out route 50 to home past Dulles. It's a road I haven't taken in 15 years and I was shocked at the development and all the changes. I was kind of dumbfounded at the three roundabouts at Gilbert's Corner replacing the single traffic light. It seems pretty damned stupid to me, but then what do I know?

Cassoulet for a Blizzard

Well, I'm sure glad that's behind us now, the blizzard that dumped over three feet of snow on us and shut down businesses and schools for a week. This was a 48-hour weather event caused by the collision of the jet stream, a tropical air mass from the Gulf of Mexico, and a nor'easter stalled on the mid-Atlantic coast. And, it's not like we didn't see it coming for days. Even the paid weather guys that the vineyard owners all pay good money to, professional forecasters who don't like to go out on a limb, were using the term "historic" in front of the word "accumulation" as far as a week out.

Here's a little time lapse of the storm.

Friday 1:30

Saturday 8:30

Saturday 2:00

And, we got another six inches or so overnight so that when we woke up on Sunday, we had over three feet of snow, with drifts to 8 feet in places, including a 5-foot drift piled up against the sunroom window.

Five-Foot Drift Against the Sunroom

Grace Likes Being Outside, if Her Paws Don't Touch Snow or Water

But Charlie is in His Element

About to Porpoise Through the Snow

An Uneager Shoveler

All the forewarning made it easy for us to close the restaurant around noon on Friday when it started to come down hard. And I had all week to plan for food for a long, snowed-in weekend, a forced vacation if you will. Ann asked the weekend before if I would make a cassoulet on Saturday and so I prepped for that during the week, leaving the finally assembly and cooking for Saturday. Knowing it would be impossible to harvest herbs from the garden for many weeks, I went out on Thursday night and picked some parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme for the cassoulet.

I am no stranger to cassoulet and have waxed poetic about it a couple of times on this blog and have certainly made many, many of them each year at the restaurant. The thing to note about the various cassoulets that I have made is that each is different. Cassoulet is not a formulaic thing, despite many a Frenchman dictating what a cassoulet is and is not, in his not so humble opinion. Cassoulet is peasant food, a dish of beans and a little meat for those who could afford some, made from whatever was at hand. This cassoulet is no different: it is made with what I had on hand.

Mirepoix and Raw Cubed Pork Belly

I started by browning the cubes of raw pork belly and then pouring off most of the lard. Into the pan went the mirepoix to cook until soft.

Smoked Sausages

Rich Pork Neck Stock and Steuben Yellow Eye Beans

I removed two thirds of the mirepoix from the pan and then added a layer of beans topped with a layer of pork neck meat that I had pulled off the bones that I used in making the stock. The beans I soaked overnight on Thursday and cooked for about 45 minutes on Friday morning until they were not quite cooked through. Each layer of beans got a light sprinkle of salt.

I then added another third of the mirepoix and another layer of beans, then the sausages and six or seven whole cloves of garlic. Next in went the bouquet garni of fresh herbs and the remainder of the beans. I then covered the whole with a cup of the highly salty and flavorful drippings from the pork belly that we roast at the restaurant and a few quarts of the pork neck stock. I then put it into a very slow (275F) oven for about four or five hours, until a really great crust had formed over the very juicy beans.

After Assembly

Crusty and Hot out of the Oven

What a delicious and comforting dinner for a blizzard night! Remember kids, there is no definitive cassoulet. Learn the technique and use what you have at hand.

Tuscarora Mill, Leesburg VA

Friday of vacation week came way too soon. I knew we wanted to go out to lunch somewhere and I knew we wanted to stay far, far away from Winchester and the madness of the Shenandoah Apple Blossom Festival, so I suggested going to Leesburg for lunch. I had in mind one of the small ethnic restaurants there, but Ann insisted she wanted to go some place with a good wine list and she chose Tuskies. I haven't eaten there in 20 years.

Cheers!

We arrived for a late lunch around 1:30 and started with a glass of sparkling wine while I looked over the wine list. I really wanted a nice Pinot for lunch but their Pinot list is not good. I did spy a bottle of Vietti Perbacco Nebbiolo which is always a nice buy. Vietti always chooses some of its precocious barrels of Barolo Castiglione and bottles them early as Perbacco. Baby read-to-drink Barolo at a great price, what is not to like?

Vietti Perbacco, Always a Great Buy

While I looked at the wine list, Ann picked a bunch of small plates from the menu for us to eat, five appetizers and an entrée.


Flatbread with Chorizo, Spinach, Provolone and Balsamic Glaze

The most successful dish of the day was this flatbread which with its super thin crust was really outstanding pizza. I was a little leery of the balsamic reduction on the pizza, but it worked really well. This is the best pizza I've had in a long time and is better than anything we've had at their sister restaurant next door, Fireworks Pizza.



Tuna, Seaweed Salad, Daikon



Country Pâté and Duck Rillettes with Onion Jam

The tuna was OK for the price, but it is not something I would have chosen for myself. Anybody can scoop seaweed salad out of a container and on to a plate. The pâté was pretty good, but I wonder if it was made in house. The rillettes needed some seasoning. We always make ours from duck confit with copious amounts of nutmeg and thyme. The smoked onion jam was delicious, but really super (i.e., too) smoky as if the onions weren't smoked at all and were flavored with smoked salt after being caramelized.


Crispy Pork Belly Tacos, Scallion Pancakes, Korean Slaw

And last was this plate. It looks a mess and unfortunately tasted a mess and we were highly disappointed. The scallion pancake and crispy pork belly tacos were put into a mini taco stand and then buried in a heap of overly sweet slaw. As a result, the pancakes were soggy and the pork belly no longer crispy. Our restaurant has some acclaim on the East Coast for our pork belly and I have yet to find a restaurant that does it even half as well as we do. Pity. We also got a crab dip that was pretty mediocre, so mediocre that I didn't feel the need to waste storage on a photo of it.

We are used to food not being up to our admittedly exceedingly high standards, so that didn't really dampen our day. In all, the experience was pleasant and we had a great time.

After lunch, I suggested that we pick up a couple of pizzas next door to take home for dinner. And we did. Not remembering that we ordered the Barcelona pizza on our previous visit and found that it wasn't as delicious as it sounded on paper, Ann ordered another. And we had the same experience. The roasted red peppers dominated all the other toppings. Blah.

Thanksgiving 2014

And another Thanksgiving is in the books, for Ann and me, our 6th, this one a good bit smaller than in years past. But though it was smaller, it is always a pleasure to gather with friends and family at the table to celebrate another year. It was really easy this year. With it snowing on Wednesday, there wasn't any business at the restaurant and I was able to prep most of the meal at work, letting us go slow and relax on Thanksgiving itself.

Ann and her Parents

Who is That Photo Bombing the Girls?

Appetizers: Turkey Rillettes, Galantine, and Cornichons

A Really Nice Right Bank Bordeaux

Ann Always Sets a Beautiful Table



Apple Cider-Brined Turkey Thighs Only This Year; No White Meat for Us

Ann's Bread and Saltine Cracker Dressing

Ann's Bistro Mash: Half Sweet Potatoes, Half Red Skin Potatoes

Sweet and Sour Brussels Sprouts with Pork Belly

The Obligatory Cranberry-Orange Sauce

Sweet Potato Tart with Cassis Cream and Black Walnut Streusel

And a 1991 Port to Finish off the Meal

Breakfast

Our friends Pete and Laurie, with whom we visited in Fredericksburg back in December, came up for the weekend to stay with us. After they and Ann dined at the restaurant on Saturday night, I cooked breakfast for all of us back at the house on Sunday morning. It might have been nice to go out for a good breakfast, but good breakfasts are in very short supply in Winchester.

The first thing I did was to stick a bread-butter-and-jelly bread pudding in the oven to bake while I made and we ate breakfast proper, so that the bread pudding would be just done when we were done with the savory part of breakfast which was basically leftovers from the restaurant, repackaged as breakfast.

Grits, Chile Verde, Pork Belly, Poached Egg, Pimentón Sauce, Radishes

Breakfast proper was a pile of golden Anson Mills grits topped with a strip of crispy pork belly and a little pork chile verde. On top I perched a poached egg and garnished with pimentón sauce, fresh baby radishes from the farmers market, and cilantro. Yeah! When I eat breakfast, this is howI like to eat.

Focaccia and Cassis Jam Bread Pudding

I have been missing my maternal grandmother of late, though she has been dead for around a quarter century. When I would come visit her during college in the last years of her life, she would often make me a simple bread pudding by buttering white bread, smearing it with jam, layering it in a gratin, and pouring a custard over it. Louise, this bread pudding of focaccia smeared with butter and cassis jam is for you!

Breakfast for Dinner

Don't you just love breakfast for dinner? Isn't there something fun about eating so-called breakfast foods for dinner? I'm not sure why this appeals to us so, maybe it's just a non-conformist kind of thing, or a reversion to childhood thing, but for whatever reason, I just love savory breakfast foods for my evening meal every once and a while.

Devastatingly Awesome Pork Belly and Grits

Sunday morning, I had planned to serve pork and grits, a dish that regularly features as an appetizer on the restaurant menu, but one that merely because it is restaurant food, I never eat, ever. For some reason, I just got a hankering to taste the pork and grits that our customers love so much, so I brought home some pork belly, some grits, and a little maple syrup to make the dish for Sunday breakfast with our coffee before we headed out to Linden to drink some wine.

Long story short, I got a crappy night's sleep (I lay awake and poured the same four wines into glasses every minute or two between 2 and 5am, a sommelier's nightmare) and so I didn't awaken until 9am or slightly after. I have to be up a couple of hours before I tuck into breakfast (I cannot face the thought of eating before then). Had we eaten at 11, we wouldn't have wanted lunch at around 2 when we planned to eat with friends at the winery. So, we punted on the breakfast and pushed it off to dinner.

Doesn't a big old bowl of warm breakfasty food sound awesome after a hard afternoon's drinking? You bet!

As currently incarnated at the restaurant, pork and grits is a bowl of course yellow grits, topped with a slice of crispy pork belly—belly that we cure in house from awesome Berkshire hogs, topped with a poached egg, and ringed with local hickory syrup. I brought all of this home, except I brought maple syrup instead of hickory, for our breakfast. But by dinner time, we were not all that keen on the sweet component, so I rewarmed and poured over some awesome green chile left from last weekend's breakfast-for-dinner debauchery.

This is manna from the food gods. Praise be to them!

Honeymoon: Whiskey Soda Lounge and Pok Pok, SE Portland OR

Friday May 3, SE Portland OR

After our scenic tour of SE looking for an open bar earlier where we could get a bottle of wine, we pretty much had the lay of the land and finding our B&B, The Clinton Street Guesthouse, was a breeze. It's one of many nicely updated and well cared for Craftsman-style cottages along Clinton Street, this one built in 1913. After we let ourselves in with the key code, we made our way to our second floor room and found that the room has a private balcony overlooking the back yard, which is complete with a large fig tree and a chicken coop with several Barred Rock chickens, which we heard from inside the room long before we ever saw them. We wouldn't meet our hosts, Jason and Ann, until the following morning.

Given our very close proximity to the universally acclaimed Thai restaurant Pok Pok, which like Lardo also started as a food cart, I wanted to go, not because everyone has to go here—I don't give a crap about that, but because Andy Ricker is doing food there that is unknown in this country and barely known in most of Thailand. This is an opportunity that a chef doesn't willingly give up and so we planned to walk there around dinner time.

Pok Pok is situated about a 10-minute walk in the absolutely perfect spring weather from where we were staying. During the walk to the restaurant along Clinton Street, we marveled at all the gardens in full bloom and at the swarms of bicyclists traveling along Clinton Street, designated a Bike Boulevard where bicycles have priority to motor vehicles. The poppies and the lilacs are all bursting forth in full bloom now along with dozens of other plants that being from the East Coast, I don't recognize.

When we arrived at Pok Pok at 6:45, we checked in and were told that we were looking at a 60-90 minute wait, which on a pretty night was not a horrible thing, but certainly not something that we are accustomed to. I generally wouldn't wait this long at a restaurant, but this was the one restaurant that I came to Portland to visit. We walked across the street to their bar, the Whiskey Soda Lounge, and commandeered a picnic table on the sidewalk of 32nd at Division and watched a veritable parade of people, mostly youngsters. Portland proper appears to be a young person's town. In fact, one young waitress told us, "This is where 30-year olds go to retire."


Punny Khing and I

Parked outside on the street beside a drinking establishment on a phenomenal spring day is rough duty, I know. But we suffered through it by ordering drinks, my favorite Asian lager, a Singha for me and one of the house specialty drinks, a Khing and I for Ann, and settling in to watch the people go by. Ann's cocktail was mekong (a sugar cane whisky much like rum), lime, ginger, and ginger syrup, the pun being that ginger in Thai is khing. I doubt a lot of people get that little pun, but I have cooked a ton of Thai food in my life, albeit southern Thai food and not the northern and Chiang Mai-style food served at Pok Pok.


My Favorite for Spicy Food

And what is the point of being at a drinking establishment at happy hour without having some drinking food? A dish on the menu caught my eye: Som Tam Thawt. I know enough to know that this is the traditional green papaya salad, but the last word—thawt—got my chef wheels spinning. That's one transliteration of the Thai word for deep-fried. Deep-fried green papaya salad?!?!! Gotta have it! And what a beautiful sight it was too. The papaya and long beans were battered very lightly and fried gently and the traditional dressing was served on the side. Too awesome!


Som Tam Thawt (Deep Fried Som Tam): How Freaking Awesome!

Sitting on the sidewalk, we have passed the hour mark and are now at an hour and fifteen-minute wait for Pok Pok. Ann, who has been suffering silently for weeks, can no longer suffer in silence and it is perfectly clear that she is feeling poorly and needs to go back to the B&B. I know this and I resign myself to asking for the check and passing up on the one restaurant that I came to Portland for. I would do this for her. Just at that moment, a server came up to us and asked us to cash out, that our table at Pok Pok was ready to go. Knowing how much I wanted to go, Ann put a brave face on it and we walked across the street and entered the bedlam that is Pok Pok on a Friday night. She would do that for me.

Because Ann wasn't feeling well, we ordered in a hurry and ate in a hurry. We ordered an appetizer and two main dishes to be delivered at the same time. Like everyone else in the place, we ordered a plate of Ike's Vietnamese Fish Sauce Wings, huge fried wings tossed in a gooey fish sauce caramel. I won't do that again. I liked the wings, but they weren't stellar. They were huge to be sure, but I have made lots better fish sauce caramels in my life. Chicken wing box now ticked off, I would explore the rest of the menu if I ever had the chance again. If you are visiting Portland and want the wings, go to Whiskey Soda Bar and grab a couple drinks and some wings. You won't have to wait on line.


Ike's Vietnamese Fish Sauce Wings

The two main dishes we ordered were Da Chom's Laap Meuang, a Chiang Mai-style spicy minced pork dish, and Kaeng Hung Leh, a Chiang Mai-style pork belly and pork shoulder curry of Burmese origin. The Burmese curry powder tastes predominantly of coriander and I noted lots of long thin strips of ginger in the curry as well; it had a slight sourness that I attribute to tamarind though I could be wrong about that. The laap/larb was exquisitely superior to any other I have ever eaten in my life. I would have liked less oil in the dish, but the flavor was incredible. I have had lots of larbs and lots of curries from all over Asia, but nothing like these two dishes. And that's why I came to Pok Pok. Mission accomplished.


Da Chom's Laap Meuang

Kaeng Hung Leh

One thing about the Pok Pok business model confused me. Rice costs extra and the servers are constantly hawking rice, it seems as a ticket builder. The three kinds of rice are all around $2 a portion. I'm not looking to cheap out and I want rice with my meal, so ordering rice wasn't a big deal, but it was an issue for several tables that I saw. Why not build the rice into the price of the meal and save the servers the song and dance and having to deal with pissed off wannabe cheap customers?

If I lived in Portland, Pok Pok is where I would hang out on my days off. I would finagle my way into the kitchen and would happily pound chiles in the pok pok all day long just to see how the dishes are made and to start picking some brains about northern Thai cooking.

[Note: Andy Ricker closed his entire Pok Pok empire as of the fall of 2020. I'm sad.]

Honeymoon: Nick's Italian Cafe, McMinnville OR

Thursday May 2, McMinnville OR

After tasting at Eyrie we drove a very few blocks to the very nearby Nick's Italian Café where I haven't visited since the mid-1980s. We wanted to order everything on the menu. Seriously. Look at it. We also got a look at the dinner menu, which is almost identical, with the addition of a few secondi. Seriously, look at this menu and drool. I changed my mind: try not to drool. I bet you can't.


Droolfest!

So the place isn't a whole lot to look at. If you're expecting something other than a café, you'd be disappointed, but we really don't give a crap what the inside of a restaurant looks like. We're there for the food. The décor is gravy. At Nick's we really like the one long wall of barrel staves: that's a pretty cool statement of where the restaurant is located.


Not Much to Look at

Cool Wall of Barrel Staves

Nick's has a hell of a wine list for a small café and the list of Pinots is a veritable who's who of the Willamette Valley. Ann's favorite wine of our Wednesday tasting was the 2011 Ayres "Perspective" and so I ordered a bottle for her. Not that I minded in the least. This is one great wine!

Yes, Please!

We started with panzanella which turned out to be more of a green salad than a bread salad, but who cares. This mixture of Arugula, grilled bread, tapenade, and mozzarella in a lemony dressing was a great, honest salad. I would have been happy with just that for lunch. This is Ed food: direct, clean, honest, and flavorful. I don't think I have words for how pleasing this salad was to me.

Simple, Bold, Direct, and Awesome!

Ann was hell bent on pizza and I don't blame her. The potato pizza with sautéed stinging nettles and red chile flakes was as good a pizza as I have had in years. You could have put dog poop on a crust that good and it still would have been a great pie! Pretty cool to be serving the pizzas on barrel lids. Our health inspector would have a cow!

For those of you reading along who wonder about stinging nettles, their nasty stinging habit aside, they could be spinach or any mild green. At the restaurant, we use them every spring when they are in season.


Potato and Stinging Nettle Pizza

And we ordered a pork panino of slow-roasted pork belly, fennel seed, chili flakes, sage, rosemary, and braised rapini. The bread was awesome and the sandwich was tasty, but we are spoiled by my off-the-hook pork belly and this wasn't even close. On the plate also were homemade potato chips (a tad over-fried) and homemade giardiniera that was outstanding. [Psst. Nick's: I'll come out and show you how to make really phenomenal pork belly. You show me how to work a wood-fired oven that makes crust that freaking awesome! Deal? Call me.]


The Giardiniera was the Highlight of This Plate

Because One Photo is not Enough

After lunch, despite our plans to hit the Dundee Hills and visit White Rose and Durant, I guess it all caught up with me and we headed back to the B&B where I took a long nap before cleaning up for dinner. I was at the point where I just couldn't and didn't want to visit another winery or taste another wine. It happens.

This would prove to be the second best meal we ate in Oregon and I would love to go back and eat my way through the entire menu.

[Note, August 2023: McMinnville icon Nick's inevitably closed in July 2023 after struggling for at least a decade. Because of the unpredictable quality of the food after Nick retired, we rarely visited this landmark during the five years that we lived in McMinnville.]