Posted by Anita on 09.10.05 10:12 AM
Another unfortunate instance of a Top 50 restaurant that isn’t even close to hitting the mark: Town Hall.
Our server was nowhere to be found for the first 15 minutes we were seated. We weren’t even offered water or drinks. When he finally did appear, he brought the cocktail list (oh, so they do have one! why wasn’t it left with the menus?) that listed some pretty bizarre combinations, including a gin-based drink called The Big Easy — um, gin? New Orleans? — and a margarita-like tequila concotion made with cointreau, lime juice, and Falernum. They all sounded so poorly conceived that we stuck with wines by the glass.
My starter was Smithfield ham and cheese toast with jalapeno cream…. which really tasted like something you’d get at TGI Friday’s. It was positively sodden with pepper-infused bechamel (interesting but about 10 times the amount needed) and sprinkled with cold, flabby rings of jalapenos that had been breaded in the style of fried green tomatoes. Cameron’s appetizer, billed as “barbeque shrimp” was also served on toast, also with a drenching of sauce. He definitely got the worse end of the deal: his pool of brown sauce tasted of nothing except salt and worcestershire. Ew.
My main was a peanut-and-tasso-crusted Niman Ranch pork chop. The chop itself was brined to within an inch of its life… it was overcooked but still eerily moist…. spongy, salty, blech. The elements of the crust were so large that they fell off as soon as I cut into the chop. The accompanying mashed potatoes were good, but such a small serving that I literally had to lift up the pork chop to see if they’d been forgotten.
Cameron had a a trio of rabbit: hilariously tiny frenched rack of ribs, roulade of breast with unidentifiable stuffing, and another roulade of leg wrapped in bacon. What was billed as mustard spaetzle were scattered across the top as garnish. The vegetable was lightly-mashed peas and a celeriac puree. All of the meat was completely unsalted and basically tasteless, and the breast roulade was utterly overcooked and dry. Needless to say, neither of us ate much of our mains aside from the vegetables.
Since we were still hungry at this point, we split a butterscotch-chocolate pot de creme, garnished with buttercrunch. Sadly, this as the highlight of our meal, and it wasn’t even good. The “pot” was actually a two-layered cereal-size bowl of pudding (nothing creme-y about it) and the top layer tasted exactly like butterscotch pudding from a box.
Service never improved from the early missteps: Plates were dropped off uncerimoniously — it might have been nice to have an explanation of what the trio of rabbit included, for example — and we got the distinct impression that our server would have rather been somewhere else for the evening. At least we had that in common.
The high-ceilinged space is decorated in an eclectic vein that feels historic without degenerating into old-timey kitsch. The light fixtures in particular — including a Rube Goldberg-esque chandelier over the bar — are particularly striking. The entry area was jammed with people waiting for tables and having drinks at the ill-placed bar, but the restaurant tables were only a little bit crowded. On the downside, the lack of booths and window coverings combined with brick walls makes for a very loud space with unforgiving acoustics — there’s no prayer of ignoring the coversations of the people on either side of you. Still, it managed to feel warm and urban and inviting… I only wish the food had been the equal of the space.
Town Hall
342 Howard Street
San Francisco, CA 94105
415.908.3900
downtown SF, restaurants
Comments Off on How now, Town Hall?
Posted by Anita on 07.03.05 2:05 PM
All of these from the same table last night, sitting next to us at Blue Plate:
Diner: “What’s this guanciale stuff?” [fair question, so far]
Server: “It’s the cured jowl of the pig.”
Diner: “Ew, OK, I’m gonna not let that freak me out.”
He proceeded to order the dish in question, then muttered through the whole meal how he didn’t know his dish was going to have BACON in it.
Two other gems:
“Tuna loin?! How can a fish have a loin?” (while smirking and gesturing to his crotch)
“Halibut cheeks? Who would want to eat cheeks. And, aren’t they kinda small?”
And then at the very end of the meal, he pronounced his dinner “the absolute best meal I have ever eaten.” Uh, dude, you need to get out more often.
levity, restaurants
Comments Off on Overheard…
Posted by Anita on 04.11.05 3:41 PM
Oaxacan Black Bean: it was delicious. Cam just finished the last of it for lunch today. (Well, not quite… there’s another 2 servings in the freezer for one of those “I dunno, what do you feel like eating” nights.)
Next time I would probably add a bit more chorizo, or perhaps sautee another 1/4 pound of it for garnish… most of the long-cooked stuff simmered down and/or got pureed so smoothly that you didn’t know it was there. Garnished with some mexican cheese, crisp tortillas, and a little bit of avocado. Mmm….
There’s a really dumbed-down version of the recipe I used here. The real version calls for avocado leaf instead of fennel, and pasilla oaxaquena instead of chipotles; the shrimp (which I didn’t use) are optional.
cooking, Mexican, recipes, Soup o' the Fortnight
Comments Off on Soup of the Fortnight: Bean
Posted by Anita on 03.27.05 10:54 PM
Was sitting here, jonesing for Mexican food — even though I have dinner already prepped to go in the oven in a few hours — and I thought of my friend Jaymes’ quicky chilaquiles. Boy, am I glad I did! They’ve been the subject of some serious “more Mexican than the Mexicanos” backchat on Mouthfuls, as they’re made in the microwave with storebought ingredients.
I just have one word for the naysayers: Yum.
Salsa verde (tomatilla sauce); torn tortilla chips; queso manchego (or asadero, or ranchero, or fresco, or any other Mexican white cheese that you like); and sour cream.
In bottom of microwaveable dish, spread a little tomatilla sauce, then layer of tostadas or Fritos, then more sauce, then sour cream, then “bastante queso.” Repeat, until dish is full or ingredients are all used up, finishing with cheese. Microwave one minute, or till chilaquiles are heated through and cheese is melted. You’ll probably have to experiment a time or two in order to get all of the proportions just right. Use as much salsa verde as you wish in order to get it as ‘wet’ as you like.
I used a small rectangular pyrex dish (I’d say 5 x 7″), half a cup of the salsa, three handfuls of chips, and two or three tablespoons of the faux-crema. It took about 2-1/2 minutes, all together, for the cheese to melt and the chips to soften a bit. These quantities made a nice snack for two.
I wasn’t planning to share, but Cam came in and said “Mmm, that smells good” so I gave him half, and still ended up having plenty. (Of course, he has a batch of shortbread cooling on the counter right now, so I know which side my bread is buttered on!) For a full meal, I might try making about 2/3 this much and eating it with an egg. Hmm, that’s a good idea for breakfast tomorrow. I can only imagine how good it would be with the right cheese and homemade salsa…!
I had a bag of going-stale blue corn tortilla chips in the pantry, along with a small can of Embasa salsa verde. Good cultured sour cream (which I thinned a bit with half-and-half) in the fridge; alas, no Mexican cheese, so I had to make due with mild cheddar for this try.
Muchas gracias, Jaymes. It’d never occured to me to try doing chilaquiles the shortcut way, and now I can see this becoming a house favorite.
cooking, food boards, Mexican
Comments Off on Heyyy… ¡Chilaquiles!
Posted by Anita on 03.26.05 11:04 PM
Originally posted on Mouthfuls’ Perfect Seattle Food Day thread
My perfect day would have to be a weekday (Tue-Fri) because it would involve lunch at Salumi. But if we’re talking about weekend-days, here are two itineraries we’ve done numerous times:
Down to the market, brunch at Cafe Campagne. Spend the middle of the day shopping for dinner fixings, then return to the car and stash the perishables in the cooler (or the chilly car, in winter). Wander around Belltown and the Market area — sorry, I just can’t type ‘West Edge’ with a straight face — browsing and grazing as we go. Perhaps stop by Beecher’s for some mac-n-cheese for late lunch. Wind up for an aperitif at Zig Zag right when they open, then back to the car and home to cook. If we’re having too much fun, they we end up hanging out for another drink (or two), and thn taking a taxi to Palace or walking to a nearby restaurant, and leaving the foraged items for Sunday dinner.
Another variation on this theme: We go to Essential for a great latte and something from the pastry case for a light breakfast, then back home for menu planning, with the entire dining room table buried by cookbooks and magazines. Then we spend mid-day shopping for dinner stuff, and ingredients for the rest of the week’s meals. In the right season, the first stop would be the U District farmers’ market to get the majority of the produce and anything else we can get find there; this time of year, it’s either Whole Paycheck, Uwajimaya, or Central Market, depending on what else we need to get — WF has good cheese, CM has better deli meats, etc. Lunch is grabbed when we start to feel peckish; a recent favorite has been splitting a cheesesteak and an order of fries at Philadelphia Fevre, or each of us going our own way at the Uwajimaya food court. A new find I’m looking forward to adding to this plan: If we’ve got a Mutual Fish (aka ‘Smoochable Fish’) stop planned, I’ll agitate for lunch at the taco bus, El Asadero on Rainier, before heading home to prep dinner.
There’s usually a cheese plate or some other nibbles on the counter while we’re chopping, dicing, fileting, etc. Lately our weekend meals have been big, multi-hour projects: the latest mexican cooking project from the Mexico forum, Cam’s newfound love of wok-frying whole fish on the turkey-fryer burner outside, etc. It’s comforting to me to have a homey project to fill a winter afternoon. I know when summer comes, the meals will be simpler, less constructed… which I am also looking forward to, in its own way.
There aren’t any particularly surprising finds in these ideas, I’m afraid. Still, reading them over pleases me. We’re actually going to do an abridged version of #1 today, so it was fresh in my mind.
bar culture, drinks, farmers markets, restaurants, Seattle, shopping, travel
Comments Off on Perfect day in Seattle
Posted by Anita on 03.23.05 3:37 PM
We made the broth for our beef soup yesterday. It’s chillin’ (along with half of the beef used to make it) in the downstairs fridge now, ready to have its fat layer peeled away. I think it’s destined for Beef Barley later in the week, unless I change my mind again.
Update: We finished making our beef-barley soup last night. The photo was kinda dodgy, so I don’t think it will add much to the story.
We tried Pam Anderson‘s recipe, since we’d always wondered if it was good, using the “2 pounds marrow bones plus 4 pounds chuck meat” option — there were no beef shanks to be found in the area without ordering them. The rest of the ingredients couldn’t be simpler: carrot, onion, 1/2 cup chopped canned tomatoes, a bit of barley, and some fresh thyme.
The broth was good and beefy, though I don’t know if it was worth using 6 pounds of meat and bones to get it! Unlike Anderson’s chicken broth, you do end up with usable meat at the end of the process. And since the recipe itself only calls for half of the meat, I used some of the rest for the picadillo project, and expect to make some sort of italian stew with the remainder. But all in all, I don’t think it was much better than what I’ve made in the past with beef stock, and it was a lot more trouble. And it also made a LOT more than then 6 servings she said it would, so we’ve got about 4 servings in the freezer, even after setting aside 3 lunches.
cooking, recipes, Soup o' the Fortnight
Comments Off on Soup of the Fortnight: Beef
Posted by Anita on 03.15.05 11:15 PM
So, I did a mini-crawl today (help, I’m eating tacos and I can’t stop!), hitting the two taco trucks in the Bel-Red zone. The first was Tacos San Clemente, on the northeast corner of Bel-Red and 140th in a service station lot, across the street from the Safeway gas station. Tacos are $1 plus tax, as are sodas. Excellent (tied with Asador) carnitas, pretty good pollo, lightly toasted toritillas, nice selection of squirt-bottle salsas, no garnish except 1 lime and 1 radish. The cashier was nice enough. Two tables with plastic chairs, in the shade of the wagon’s awning… probably seating for 10 or 12, all together.
I didn’t see Rancho Bravo Tacos — the PI says it’s on the northwest corner of 140th and Bel-Red Road at Bel-Red 76 Auto Service, but unless I am totally mistaken, that’s where the Safeway is, and the Union 76 is (a) where I was and (b) on the northeast corner of said intersection.
From there, I proceeded to Taqueria Guadalajara — aka the Microsoft Taco Truck — at the northwest corner of 148th Ave and 24th Street (another Union 76). Tacos here came in 2 sizes: $1.25 and $1.50, and all they had was Asada, Pastor (like all the others this weekend, this was pork adobada, not mexican-style pastor), Pollo, and Lengua. I had a pastor and a pollo, both were merely OK. The pork was tiny bits, nicely spiced but needing salt; the pollo also lacked salt, but was nice and juicy. They did toast the tortillas, but they still fell apart. The people weren’t very pleasant here. Only garnish was a lime and a radish, again, plus a not-good red salsa and a passable green one. Seating was at a bar built into the side of the truck itself, maybe 5 or 6 seats.
On the way back to the office, I had to satisfy my curiosity to see if the Bellevue El Rinconsito’s carnitas were really bad, or if it was just a fluke when Jan and I went. Nope, still really bad — the worst of all of ’em over the past 3 days: simmered pulled pork, no spice at all, lots of chunks of fat. Ick. I actually threw out the taco, having eaten enough. The cashier here, like all the previous times I visited, was curt and unsmiling.
Both of the trucks were crawl-worthy, but I’d skip El Rinconsito when we do this for real.
Mexican, Seattle
Comments Off on Seattle Eastside Mini-Crawl
Posted by Anita on 03.15.05 3:32 PM
I made a pot of Pam Anderson’s chicken soup from The Perfect Recipe. I don’t think my batch came out as good as Cameron’s usually does — he is the designated chicken souper of our clan — but I compensated by adding my own homemade farfalle pasta.
I love this soup because it doesn’t deplete my stock stash: you use a whole chicken, cutting all but the breast into tiny bits to make broth, then add breast meat poached in the broth, and veggies sauteed in the chicken fat. It turns out really chicken-y, even more than you’d expect from such a reasonably quick preparation.
cooking, recipes, Soup o' the Fortnight
Comments Off on Soup of the Fortnight: Chicken
Posted by Anita on 03.14.05 6:02 PM
(Excerpted from the MouthfulsFood Taco Truck thread)
Another fabuloso day of taco-ness…
Cam and I had our tamales from Carniceria El Paisano for breakfast this morning… mmmm! Then we headed down Rainier and met up with Lauren and Rocky at the first taco truck on Rainier, Taqueria Dos Hermanos. Once again, I kept things simple and had a carnitas taco at every stop. Lauren stuck mostly with pork adobada / al pastor for the day; Cam was cabeza-boy; Rocky had lengua, substituting buche when available. (I had nibbles of lots of things, but I’ll let the others give you the round-up on their choices.) The carnitas at Dos Hermanos were good, not great. Tacos came in at $1, good mexican soda selection, super-hot (but flavorful) pickled peppers and carrots.
The next stop, the taco bus called El Asadero, was the best of show for me today, probably tied for best carnitas with El Milagro (the market next to Oberto — thanks for remembering, Rocky!). They weren’t quite as crispy or salty, but they were shreds rather than tiny cubes, which makes a difference to me. Asadero wins high marks for its garnish bar (rather than the standard 1 lime, 1 carrot, 1 chile that you get at most places) and for a good assortment of beverages. The imported Mexican coke and pepsi were expensive ($1.50, I think) but at least they had them. The oddball thing about this place was they didn’t include tax in the prices, so a taco comes out to $1.09. 
Our next stop was supposed to be Gorditos II, but they weren’t open (my fault, I see now that the P-I list says “Monday through Saturday”), so we proceeded to Malena’s in Ballard. As Lauren said when we were discussing it later, it feels odd to call something that costs $2.79 ‘expensive’, but there you have it. Malena’s had very limited taco choices (pork, fish, and I think chicken), they were more than twice the price of any others, they were made with standard supermarket corn tortillas, and loaded up with not-good guacamole, pallid pico de gallo, and shredded lettuce. Carnitas were slightly crispy but totally flavorless. The place was empty, not surprisingly. Another Seattle sacred cow bites the dust for me…
Onward to Taqueria Tequila in Greenwood. Nice selection of tacos, various prices from $0.99 to $1.50-ish depending on the filling. Carnitas were good but unremarkable; other items ranged from just OK to very nice. (I think Rocky liked the lengua and Lauren liked the chorizo, which I agree was tasty.)
We met up with Jan (SeaGal) and her husband Gary at Pancho Villa — the menu now says “Mr. Villa”, but otherwise it remains as I remember it. We’d earned our cervezas by this point, so we took a load off and ate there. Even though it’s a sit-down place, you can order just a single taco, if you like; I think they were $1.50 each. Carnitas were flavorful and slightly crisp, still good. Nice handmade tortillas, lightly griddled. I also couldn’t resist trying a chile relleno, which was tasty but needed more sauce.
Our last stop was the taco truck at Northgate and I-5, which we now know is called La Pasadita. A few folks opted for tortas here, which were huge ($4); I stuck with my program and had a carnitas taco (I think they were $1). These were probably the worst of the trip… even Rinconsito’s yesterday were better. The pork was flavorful, but the taco was probably half-filled with unrendered fat blobs and not a hint of golden crispiness was to be found. I believe the lengua was spoken of highly here, by Rocky and Gary.
Thanks to everyone for a great day. We’re definitely going to have to do another crawl to get the rest of the south end under our belts (literally!), and there was talk of a combined Eastside/Northside crawl, too.
food boards, Mexican, Seattle
1 Comment »
Posted by Anita on 03.13.05 6:01 PM
(Excerpted from the MouthfulsFood Taco Truck thread)
Man oh man…
What a great day we had! Jan and Rocky and I even got to bust out with our spanish at a couple of stops where there wasn’t much english goin’ on.
The best thing I learned today: Ambaum Avenue is taqueria central. On the way from Zacatecas in ‘downtown’ Burien to the taco truck in White Center (Fondita II) we passed no less than 6 taquerias — including one with an outdoor parilla — plus a taco bus, and a mexican bakery. The saddest thing was passing them by!
Second best thing I learned today: chicharron doesn’t always mean just fried pork rind. There’s a meaty kind that they sell at Carniceria El Paisano that’s like the best carnitas you ever had. Oh, man. I am regretting not waiting in line to buy some. As it is, we’re looking lovingly at the two tamales in the fridge, waiting to get hungry again…
Here are my votes…
Best carnitas: the ones at the market in Kent, next to the Oberto Factory Outlet
Best tortillas: Zacatecas, where they make them fresh
Favorite overall experience: La Fondita II (“with two, you get garnish!”)
Saddest slide into mediocrity: El Rinconsito
Best thing I put in my mouth this month: Chicharron at El Paisano
Sue, you have to post all of the names of the places we went to, since we did so many substituions.
We definitely need to do another southside crawl: We hardly touched the P-I’s list of trucks, and we literally could do a crawl up and down Ambaum (with a 2-block detour over to 15th for chicharron and tamales at El Paisano).
I’m looking forward to seeing the crew at 11 tomorrow at the first stop on the Seattle tour. We’ll wait there until 11:15 or so in case of stragglers, but if we’ve gone, you can just meet up with us at the next stop.
food boards, Mexican, Seattle
Comments Off on Seattle South-End Taco Crawl
