Coffeehouse Northwest, Portland

Portland’s coffee culture is serious, and Stumptown Coffee Roasters is its mainstay. Stumptown operates a handful of Dwell­ified cafés and roasts its own beans which have won awards from such wonky outfits as Roast Magazine. By contrast, Starbucks shops are present in the high-rent, high-traffic corridors, but appear to serve only Portland’s small population of automatons.

I visited the newest Stumptown branch, near the famous Powell’s bookshop. For all of Portland’s alleged progressivism, a labor union was striking in the rain against Stumptown’s landlord for what it alleged were poor wages and benefits, but inside, with Dylan’s Mr. Tambourine Man on the sound system, the customers offered only impolite jokes and indifference while awaiting their latte art. I didn’t expect anyone to march in the rain, but at least feign some interest. (My own excuse is that I am a heinous sell-out reduced to seeking $2 fancy coffee and then blogging about it.)

There must be at least one independent café on every commercial block in Portland, and those with any pretense to quality use the Stumptown beans, which the locals prize as much as they do their Willamette Valley pinot noir. Among this bunch is Coffeehouse Northwest, located on Burnside Street between the 21st/23rd avenue corridors and downtown.

Coffeehouse Northwest is a small café in a charming old brick building and has coffeeshop-brown wood floors and bad local art on the walls with comfortable, but not too cozy chairs and tables conducive to conversation, reading, and writing. The sound system, administered by its highly tattooed employees-cum-aspiring musicians, is vintage rock 'n' roll.

The baristas at Coffeehouse Northwest might strike Al Yeganeh as anal. They will not serve a shot of espresso unless they have tasted one first due to the pernicious threat of minute interior atmospheric change on the grind which they treat as so constant and subtle as to be Heisenbergian in nature. The manager even commented that after serving consistent, great espresso on a recent Tuesday morning, the atmosphere abruptly changed at 10:30, rendering the grind imperfect and him on the verge of tears.

Coffeehouse Northwest serves fresh Stumptown beans. The lead barista explained that the beans are best on the fourth and fifth days after roasting, with contrasting flavors on each day. After that, the espresso tends, with some exceptions, not to be potable.

I fortuitously visited on the fourth day after roasting and the barista served up one of the more unorthodox espressos I have ever seen. A neat, dime-sized circle of espresso shimmered from the center of the cup, surrounded by the coffee's crema, a concentric circle of dark cappuccino-style foam around the perimeter. (Usually, the crema covers the entire contents of the cup.)

This fourth-day espresso was browner than it was black and had a soft delicious taste that, in the Coffeehouse Northwest spectrum (and lexicon), was closer to caramel or a tawny port than chocolate. I returned the next day of course to sample the fifth day espresso, which was blacker in color and had the same peculiar crema but much more of the darker “chocolate” flavor. It was just as delicious, but I have to say, if given the choice between the four or the five, I’d take the four.

Coffeehouse Northwest
1951 West Burnside Street
Portland
(503) 248-2133

Providence

I had foolishly avoided Providence since it opened in 2005 despite its proximity to our Beverly-La Brea neighborhood and its intense focus on fish, which I always prefer to meat when dining at a fancier establishment. I had looked askance at it because the positive reviews commented on its high ambition and a few acquaintances who went found the food to be precious. Moreover, I distrusted its boxy building as too large to permit exceptional quality or intimacy, feared the prices and then lost interest. In short, I prejudged the place.

So on the occasion of the annual parental visit, my father, having read about Providence in pitiful Los Angeles, asked me to make a reservation. I demurred, offering up such local gems as Soot Bull Jeep, Chung King, and La Casita Mexicana, the likes of which cannot be found in the Midwest. (Needless to say, I lost the argument though on the following day we enjoyed the barbecued quail at Marouch and the southern Thai cuisine at Jitlada.)

At the risk of exaggeration, Michael Cimarusti’s Providence is as good a restaurant as I have been to in a long time. His ideas are as original as his execution is deft. His thoughtfulness goes well beyond the mere use of “new” ingredients or the unorthodox melding of various ingredients, although he does employ these tactics. Cimarusti, with great success, also applies traditional techniques in unorthodox ways to standard ingredients. But not once did I feel his dishes were somehow contrived or precious. It goes without saying that Cimarusti believes in fresh produce and fish. This is California after all.

I was nervous at first. The amuse was a shot of watermelon soup with lemon foam. The soup was fresh and flavorful, but the foam lumbered on top and could not be swallowed concurrently. It was also foam. I will say that Cimarusti’s attempt to pry the maligned substance from the Vigneronian bearhug was admirable if futile.

For an appetizer, I ordered the roasted spot prawn and Japanese sword squid with “provencal flavors,” a dish that immediately reminded me why I love the simplicity of southern French cooking. The kitchen placed two spot prawns at the center of the plate around which it interspersed tiny cuts of the squid. The Provençal flavors consisted of an intensely fresh tomato sauce darkened with capers and a minor chord of spiciness. The spot prawns could have been as succulent and tender as those miraculously good prawns served at L’Astrance, where only a dull spoon was really necessary to cut them. The sword squid was also very tender and delicious.

As a second appetizer, Big City and I split Providence’s foie gras parfait with gewürztraminer gelée, puréed red beet and freeze-dried cherry powder. My father chazered the powder so all I can report is that he really liked it with the foie. Cimarusti whipped the foie gras and served it vertically though not in a superficial west-of-Doheny kind of way. As a result, the texture of the foie gras “parfait,” which was served room temperature, resembled gelato (or the great ice cream at Milk). It was among the best foie gras I have ever eaten. I am sure the gewürztraminer gelée and beet puree were interesting and intelligent, but I was too focused in keeping the five other persons at my table from bogarting the foie.

For a main, I had a great roasted snapper served with roasted sweet peppers, chorizo that was served on a short bed of crushed potato with capers and olive oil. The snapper was thin and delicate though not flimsy, and had a fresh, rich flavor. Its skin was just as crispy and delicious as I would expect in a well-prepared duck dish. The snapper was so good that I paid little heed to the potato and chorizo until the fish was gone.

Marisa had the equally delicious striped bass with pistachios, porcini, carrot mousseline and wedges of mission figs. In an interesting twist, Cimarusti dusted the mission figs with salt, thereby amplifying their natural sweetness with the most basic complement.

For dessert, we liked the saffron rice pudding with Harry’s Berries strawberries and a few interesting gelati such as corn and salt & pepper. The décor was unobtrusive, as I had no clue that the following day's episode of Entourage was set at Providence until my mom called to tell me. The service was formal, even aloof.

Providence
5955 Melrose Ave.
Los Angeles
(323) 460-4170

La Gelateria, Cleveland

After a meekly executed meal at Lola in downtown Cleveland, we wanted to satisfy our collective sweet tooth and honor our longstanding tradition of completing a night on the town by eating fresh, warm doughnuts late at Presti’s eastern bakery in Little Italy. But since Presti’s mysteriously changed its name to Gilly’s of all things and then quickly closed, we stopped by La Gelateria in the adjacent Cedar Hill neighborhood.

La Gelateria is doing its utmost to make me forget about Presti’s, at least during the summer. Operated by Valerio Iorio, who reputedly learned his craft at the renown Il Gelato Vivoli in Firenze, La Gelateria is a small shop that makes splendid gelato. His gelati are very light due to the lack of cream in the recipes. He uses three basic ingredients--whole milk, sugar and water --and he keeps the gelati at a temperature slightly warmer than the typical ice cream parlor. As a result, Iorio achieves a smooth and creamy texture without using cream.

I ordered the tartufo and espresso which were especially good because of the purity of their respective flavors. For this coffee lover, the espresso gelato was notably excellent because it tasted like undiluted espresso though its basic recipe called for what is normally a perversion: the mixture of coffee, milk and sugar. The robust espresso flavor was front and center while the milk and sugar's sweetness was self-effacing, just content to let the espresso shine.

No gelateria in Los Angeles is this good though there are certainly some interesting gelati available at Pizzeria Mozza and Providence. H-Bomb and J could not think of a gelateria in their West Village neighborhood that matched La Gelateria. It just goes to show that there are some venerable treasures remaining in Cleveland, and with La Gelateria even some newer ones.

La Gelateria
12421 Cedar Road
Cleveland Heights
(216) 229-2637

Harold's Barbecue, Atlanta

After 24 hours in the capital of the syncretic “New South,” namely Atlanta’s Buckhead and Midtown sections, I felt hollow. Save their accents, the locals had excised virtually all traces of their region from the landscape and created a veritable Irvine. South of downtown, I was able to find some traditional southern charm and hospitality in the form of Harold’s Barbecue where the pleated-khaki-&-striped-blue-polo set was nowhere to be found. However, (as AO pointed out) the haggard conditions of the fences and guardrails alongside the roads leading to Harold’s Barbecue were circumstantial evidence that MADD was not particularly effective in south Atlanta.

Harold’s is set in a large shack with two no-frills dining rooms and a traditional lunch counter, which is where we sat. Anxious to try as much as possible and prodded by our affable waitress, I ordered the combination plate which came with chopped beef, chopped pork, a half dozen ribs, slaw, and as an appetizer, Brunswick stew. The stew, a cousin of American-style chili and my favorite item at Harold's, was made of pork and chicken, kernels of corn, and small shreds of tomato. The deliciously spicy and rugged pork was nicely offset by the sweet and sturdy smattering of corn. How the chicken contributed or why it was a participant in the stew are questions not easily answered.

As for the barbecue, the chopped pork was shorn of its fat and, hence on the dry side. The beef was somewhat fattier but still dry. The much more successful pork ribs were meaty and cooked with sauce on top and had just enough fat to bolster the flavor while avoiding the risk of turning into the infamous lardo pizza.

I belatedly observed that the most popular item was the sandwich of either chopped pork or beef. Harold’s Barbecue had a small smoky grill with low heat in front of the lunch counter that was dedicated to grilling the white sandwich bread and warming the chopped meat and over which the restaurant’s paterfamilias presided (though I’m not sure if he was Harold and I was too lazy to ask). The sandwich meat was chopped to order: it was taken from the kitchen, chopped at a station next to the small grill, and then placed on wax paper and onto the grill to prevent the meat from falling in the fire. With optional coleslaw, these sandwiches looked beautiful, and though I am sceptical of how the problem of dryness will be solved, I will certainly order one should I suffer the misfortune of returning to Atlanta. Harold’s homemade hot sauce was similar to a Tabasco sauce, but sweeter and more robust though its utility was to saving the dry chopped pork.

Harold’s Barbecue
171 McDonough Blvd., SE
Atlanta
(404) 627-9268

The Real Chung King: J. Gold’s Redemption

I owe my non-minyan level readership an apology, as I posted a scathing review of the wrong restaurant. There are two small restaurants with similar Sichuan menus bearing the name “Chung King” in the San Gabriel Valley. Only one has been heralded, and I, relying on the poor fact-checking skills of paid critics Jonathan Gold and Mark Bittman, went to the wrong one. In their respective reviews, Bittman and Gold incorrectly listed the heralded restaurant as being on Garfield Road in Monterey Park, which is actually the location for the outrageously bad restaurant, and not on San Gabriel Boulevard in San Gabriel, which is where I needed to be. To exacerbate matters, both critics inexplicably included a sentence on the doppelganger’s Monterey Park environs. This sloppiness led directly to my nausea and burnitz. However, Gold, in his summer survey of Los Angeles restaurants, quietly overruled himself by imploring his readers to “[m]ake sure you end up at the San Gabriel restaurant, which is vastly superior to the Monterey Park imposter of the same name.”

So Marisa and I ventured back to the San Gabriel Valley, and are now, only belatedly, on the Chung King bandwagon. We stuck to familiar territory and ordered three dishes: the fried cubes of chicken with dried Sichuan red peppers; stir fried pork with several types of pickled peppers, garlic and green onion; and the rice crusts with chicken, seafood, and vegetables in a viscous lemony sauce.

Served first, the pork was shredded and had an unexpectedly soft texture that was delicious. The different types of pickled peppers and their varying degrees of fermentation presented a continuum of flavors between fire and tanginess. Our waitress then served the fried chicken, which was served in a sea of dried red peppers and struck like a bomb. All of the Peruvian aji sauce and salsa roja in my regular diet was no preparation for the Sichuan peppers, which were so different and are as intoxicating and addictive as they are delicious. Fifteen minutes into these dishes, my entire body was stunned and in a frenzy. I felt high. Yet there would be no way I would pull away from the ever changing flavors and the fire. The rice crust was supposed to be the counterpoint, but instead intensified the heat and pushed me back to the peppers.

I hereby renounce my skepticism of Chinese food.

But Bittman can still suck it.

Chung King
1000 S. San Gabriel Blvd.
San Gabriel
(626) 286-0298

Stonehill Tavern

A Wednesday night dinner in Dana Point compelled my trip through the netherworld of Orange County, which has been criticized on so many more important fronts that its lack of culinary ambition and quality seems like an obvious logical deduction. My primary hope was that by virtue of being located in a St. Regis, Stonehill Tavern, which is part of Michael Mina’s chain of hotel restaurants, would have more in common with its praised flagship in San Francisco than the chain’s four Las Vegas restaurants or--and this is a new one--its outpost in Atlantic City. My secondary hope was that Stonehill Tavern would be immune from the garishness of, say, Mastro’s Ocean Club in Newport, where the gods of Chaos, Lunacy and Bad Taste, pace Mr. Hitchens, clearly gained ascendancy.

Upon entering this attractive restaurant, guests encounter dramatic, almost labyrinthine rows of sleek wine storage that rise up to the ceiling and yield to the compact bar. A long and comfortable dining room dining room lies just beyond and perpendicular to the bar. There are also tables on a veranda that offer ocean views during daylight.

After an unappealing and over-conceptualized amuse bouche of chilled marble-sized heirloom tomatoes, watermelon geleé and balsamic vinegar, Stonehill Tavern brought out my favorite: warmed Alpine rolls from Bread Bar, heretofore served only at my home away from home, Hatfield’s.

Stonehill Tavern has a smart menu that is at once ambitious and offers rarefied technical dishes such as pig cooked sous vide and, befitting its resort setting, sells a hamburger and fried chicken (albeit for $28 and $30, respectively). Stonehill Tavern categorizes its appetizers by culinary phylum: lobster, duck (pardon, Liberty Farms duck), tuna, shellfish, greens, and for SEC-violating expense accounts, osetra caviar. There are three preparations of each, and diners can order one or a tasting trio.

We liked the butter-poached lobster in a bisque of nettles with ricotta ravioli. With the pink lobster perched on top of the vernally green soup, the dish was very pretty. However, there was slightly too much butter in the lobster, which concealed its flavor and the ravioli were submerged and lost in the bisque. The seared foie gras with a strawberry-rhubarb relish was flawless: the foie gras was served at room temperature, maybe even a bit cool, and was so smooth and delicious that I wonder if the unconventional temperature was by design. If it were any warmer, the foie may have melted. Another success was the duck thigh with apple and a shallot jus. I only had a single bite, and while the menu advertised the dish as crispy, this usually compelling adjective did not serve the creation justice. While the skin was moderately crispy, this quality was beside the point, because the meat was tender, moist and full-flavored, which is not easy to pull off in my experience.

I then mistakenly had a lobster salad with grapefruit and avocado which was nice and light, but after the heavier appetizers got lost in the shuffle. A traditional salad--and Stonehill Tavern’s caesar and watercress salads both looked good--would have been a smarter interlude. The caesar consisted of hearts of romaine, which are smaller and more inviting than the standard romaine lettuce one finds in the majority of caesar salads.

The entrées were excellent. I enjoyed the dover sole, which the menu described too fancifully as being in a phyllo-crust and with crab and Dijon-butter. In actuality, the dish was simple: namely, fresh fish, expertly cooked with a little butter. From what I understand, the sole is a Mina staple and justly so. I sampled the roasted lamb, which was accompanied by braised artichokes, and it was equally delicious and simple.

The beef filet, the first steak I’ve sampled since celebrating Marisa’s birthday at Chez L’Ami Louis, served medium rare or medium proved decisively that “saignant” or underdone is the only way to eat it. I have long eschewed ordering steak, and now I know why. For restaurants not to cook steak rare (while getting away with serving raw fish) is offensive, and insofar as restaurants have adopted this policy out of a fear of liability, our system of torts has run amok and our health codes have become too stringent.

Stonehill Tavern unexpectedly had an excellent personality and was by no means a mere Orange County outpost of a successful San Francisco restaurant. It was not just an overpriced, vacuously formal restaurant at the St. Regis. Stonehill Tavern was very busy and I observed only one septuagenarian with an ingénue. The restaurant showed off its insouciance by playing, however softly, “Smells Like Teen Spirit” on its sound system. Our waiter respected the niceties of the business dinner, but was pleased to interject his opinions in an appropriate and personable fashion. He was neither aloof nor ubiquitous.

Living in a geeky post-Sideways world, we tried our hand at pinot noir tasting. We stared with the 2005 Sea Smoke Ten from Santa Barbara, followed with the 2005 Beaux Frères "Beaux Freres Vineyard," a favorite from the Willamette Valley, and concluded with an anonymous Nuit St. Georges selected by the sommelier. I liked the Sea Smoke the most, though the Burgundy didn’t get a fair shake because of my excessive tippling which by the end nullified any sensory discernment. Since writing about wine seems to be a futile exercise for those not capable of authoring The Last of the Savages, I will only say that the Sea Smoke was like Miles Davis in that it had a sense of style and was tight. The Beaux Freres was the rock-‘n’-roller, and the Nuits St. Georges was much subtler, the Bill Evans of the group.

Stonehill Tavern
1 Monarch Beach Resort
Dana Point
(949) 234-3318

Intelligentsia Coffee: As Overrated as Chicago

With Los Angeles blogdom all agog about the imminent arrival in Silverlake of Intelligentsia Coffee*, the pretentiously named Chicago café-cum-roaster, a weekend sojourn to the Second City was the perfect time to preview its espresso. After walking around Lincoln Park, a section of Chicago that only P.W. Botha could appreciate, it was time to return to a semblance of civilization and caffeinate.

Intelligentsia is a nice café, and for north Chicago probably the most similar in personality to the old Coventry and Shaker Square Arabica locations (Arafreaka and Arachica, respectively) which, with their brown clunky mugs, remain the ne plus ultra of Midwestern coffee houses. On a Saturday afternoon, the atmosphere was relaxed and spacious with comfortable, but not sloth-inducing chairs, and tables with diameters sufficient to pour over the Gray Lady. People were reading, discussing, and catching up. The café, for the half hour we were there, was spared the nuisance of excess laptop-wielding solipsists.

The espresso was good and while I would return if in the neighborhood, it did have a harshness that undermined my overall enjoyment. This harshness is too common in U.S. espresso with high aspirations and good publicity. Alphabet City's Ninth Street Espresso, which was lauded in the New York Times last September, has the same problem. Intellgentsia's affable baraistas drew good looking and tasty shots with nice crema, but they inartfully suppressed espresso's intrinic sweetness. In my estimation, the Italophilic Euro Caffé remains the standard bearer for espresso in Los Angeles, and Intelligentsia's arrival will not dissuade me from continuing to redline Silverlake.

Intelligentsia Coffee
3123 N. Braodway St.
Chicago
(773) 348-8058

opening at Sunset Junction (3922 Sunset Blvd.) at some point this summer

* “We are absolutely stoked beyond exuberance to report that the Chicago-based Intelligentsia Coffee is slated to initiate what EaterLA is calling their "West Coast domination" at an outpost in the Sunset Junction part of Silverlake in April.” Lindsay William-Ross of LAist.com.