Sad occassion, happy results

We're just back from Cleveland, where Julie and I attended her grandmother's funeral. We miss her terribly, and this was a largely somber few days. However, we also wanted to take advantage of what Cleveland had to offer us during "down times". So, in that spirit, we sought out a good place for dinner last night, and also sought out some good Polish food to bring home to cook.

Dinner last night was at Lola -- a "high end" downtown restaurant run by Michael Symon, whom you may know from his frequent appearances on Food Network. So, the good, bad, and ugly. The food itself was good. Very, very good. We started with a charcuterie platter, some, but not all, of which were "house-made" by the restaurant. Amazing sausages and other cured meats. Julie had a smoked pork chop that was cooked to perfection--juicy, sweet smoky flavor--with polenta and assorted other goodies. I had squab (pigeon) with foie gras, sweet potato puree, etc. Very tasty, in both cases. Dessert was also good--I had a 'french toast with bacon-maple ice cream'--good, but not amazing, humorous combination, as it was served on a skillet shaped plate. Julie had a sweet potato smores sundae--sweet potato sorbet, chocolate cake, house-made marshmallows. THe flavors were good, but the textures really made the dish. So, really good, creative food. The not so good: The wine experience, and at the start, the service. After we were seated, it must have been 15 minutes before we even got menus. Then, our server seemed insistent that we needed cocktails right away. Well, no, not so much, and no apology for the delay. After that, though, our server was really good, by and large. We also wanted wine with dinner. Now, we weren't sure if we could find a good pairing for both our dishes to share a bottle, but my mind immediately jumped to Rhone, as the mix of softer fruits, earth notes, and herb tones might work with both smoky flavors and the roasted poultry. So, I picked a couple that seemed like good options. Our waitress first suggested we should instead go with an Argentine malbec--not my style of wine, not a very good buy, and honestly, better suited to steaks than poultry. But she did seek out input on the Rhone wines, and suggested another (cheaper) option that would be more fruit-driven and softer than the others we looked at, and sold it as a "Great buy". Now, it was a fine wine, and it paired fairly well. nothing exquisite, but decent. My issue was the misrepresentation of it as a good buy--the menu price was 3.5 X the retail price of the wine (usually, it's more like a 2X markup). I didn't know the specific wine, but the price was reasonable for the AOC (on the high end, but good wines do tend to command more $). I'd have been fine with the situation if either 1. we'd specifically selected this to start with, and 2. if we'd not been sold on it being a great deal. As it is, I felt somewhat taken advantage of, basically being sold something it wasn't (the others we looked at thatr would've worked well were more in line with the typical 2X restaurant mark up, and only about $4-5 more than what e ordered). So, buyer beware. My other overall complaint with the list was a large number of high quality, high price wines on the list. Is that bad, per se? No. The problem is, most were very young--much too young to be really good, in some cases probably down-right shut down in style. I don't really WANT to think aobut drinking a 2005 Chateauneuf in 2009--try me again in 2019. I understnad that it takes work and money and time to age wine properly. But to sell some of these things for hundreds of $ a pop for current consumption is just disingenuous. It might be fine for status seekers, but it'd be a real disappointment to drink.

This morning, we stopped by Jaworski Meats (see earlier post from prior visit), picked up more sausages, house-made sauerkraut, pierogis, and more. In all, many tasty goodies. The Easter loaf (a sort of Polish-seasoned meatloaf) was an especially nice dinner tonight. quick to cook, great tastes. Paired with cottage-cheese stuffed pierogi (seasoned iwth nutmeg) and sauerkraut, it was a nice dinner, indeed. And, very easy to fix!

Kielbasa, challenging times

So, I've been a terrible blogger for the last nearly 10 days. I have an excuse, really! Busy time at work (manuscript revisions due imminently, undergrad research posters due), plus at home. Julie's grandma was moved to a nursing home recently, and we've been to Cleveland to see her... which brings me to happier news--tonight's dinner.

Cleveland, as you may know, has a large Polish-American community. And, having worked in politics nationally for a time, I got to know some of those Polish Democrats, including some from Cleveland. As it turns out, one of those friends' family own Jaworski Meats, the best butcher/meat market in Cleveland. Years ago, I was at a party at the family store in the old Polish village. When we tried stopping by a couple years ago, the store had been closed down due to crime in the neighborhood, and moved to some suburb. Lacking time, we didn't track it down. On Saturday, en route to a non-descript suburban nursing home in Cleveland, we exit off of I-71, and there's the store, on our right. Naturally, after the visit to grandma, we had to stop a the store. As it turns out, Nikki's dad was there, said "hi" to him, and he got me in touch with Nikki--who I hadn't talked to since probably 2003 or so.

Even better, we brought home 3 lbs. of homemade kielbasa and a bunch of handmade pierogi from the shop. Ate some of that tonight, in fact. It's the most lovely spiced kielbasa you could hope for. Lots of garlic, some juniper hints, I"d say, and goodness knows what all else. And the pierogi were among the biggest I"ve seen--some stuffed with kraut, some with potato and cheese. Yum! Had a nice beer with it, and life is good.

We also had to stop for dinner in Cleveland; we thought we'd try to get reservations at Lola, a top-rated place wiht an emphasis on pork products. Sadly, no luck on short notice. We tried to stop at their bar for seating, but also, no luck. So, we went across the street to Saigon, a nice Vietnamese restaurant, and I'm SO glad we did. Good prices, great food. Pork egg-rolls were just right, and the baked/stir-fried squid was simply amazing! What flavor! And pho for the main course -- that's beef broth with thin slivers of beef, rice noodles, bean sprouts, lime, peppers. It's the best I've EVER had -- subtle, delicate, WOW! And, best of all--they had "33" beer--a Vietnamese beer with fascinating fruit overnotes--lychee and guava, if you can believe it. No, it's not sickeningly sweet fruit beer--not even a fruit beer at all. Just a regular ol' beer with amazing flavor. Get it if you can.