Cafe Juanita and the Magic Beef

In Kirkland we have this foresty little trail from our apartment to the grocery store that is the best. There's a little creek with running water, and you can even pick blackberries when they're in season.

KForce was the name of the company I was contracting through at Anheuser-Busch. I'm out of their price range now so it warms my heart when they try to hit me up.

Lydia and I like to go to fancy restaurants to celebrate special events. I believe the occasion this time was that my master's in data science was completed and recently arrived in the mail. I don't like to brag but I finished with graduate honors. It's whatever. 

The fancy restaurant we decided upon on this momentous occasion was Cafe Juanita, which happens to be in Kirkland. Eater Seattle has a list of "38 Essential Restaurants in Seattle" that we are loosely trying to check off. The list changes pretty frequently so it's a moving target, but this joint is a mainstay on the list so, let's go! The article's entry for Cafe Juanita:

"Kirkland’s Northern Italian fine-dining mainstay offers several excellent seasonal tasting menus, including pescatarian, vegetarian, and vegan options. Chef Holly Smith’s omnivorous tasting menus include dishes like Anderson Valley lamb chops with turnip gratin, while the vegan tasting menu includes dishes like green garlic soup with fava bean toast."

This was a fancy joint with a vast and expensive wine list so I ordered a beer.

This was a tasting menu type place which I like because then you get to try a lot of weird stuff all at the same time. The amuse-bouche might have been sliced truffles and something but it was fun because it came with a seperate broth in a cup to sip. I like it when dishes are so odd you're not even sure if you are eating them correctly. The concept of an amuse-bouche is fun because it's a surprise, but also annoying because it's a surprise and so not usually on the menu.

The butter was sea salty and fun, and one of the breads was like an empty ravioli skin fried.

"Wagyu A5 Miyazaki cruda croccante, fermented butter, chili, wild watercress, Parmigiano-Reggiano"

This may be the first wagyu I've ever had, so it was fun that it was like rare sashimi style. Ok I just looked up Kobe beef and it turns out that is a particular kind of wagyu. So I guess I've had it once before when I visited Kobe in 2008.

Fazzoletti di seta, Jerusalem artichokes, hen's yolk, Burgundy black truffle

Belgian endive, roasted and raw, walnut anchovy salsa

Roasted veal loin, Fontina Val d'Aosta fonduta, spinach sformato, chanterelles

You often get another secret dish between the end of the food and the beginning of the dessert. It's sometimes a light sorbet as sort of a palate cleanser.

I was so excited about being at a restaurant that sold wagyu that I ordered another small dish of it cooked in a different way.

Thus far the menu has been preordained by Bacchus, god of wine and festivity. For dessert though, we had a couple of choices. Lydia went with the "vanilla bean panna cotta, Billy's honey, vanilla sea salt".

Mine had a lot more going on: "bittersweet chocolate tortino, amarena cherry-milk chocolate mousse, olive oil-cocoa chiffon, Bronte pistachio, smoked Maldon, Laudemio". I don't know what half of those words mean but my mouth still seemed to somehow understand.

The bill was staggering, but not as much as the jealously Lydia felt about the fact I'd graduated with honors. She'd never accomplished such a feat, and she loudly lamented that "her school didn't even have that". I told her she could refer to me as master or "your honor" for the rest of the year. The choice was hers.

Overall I thought the food was pretty good but was not worth the price. I didn't think that the experience/service was all that impressive. I seem to recall that our waiter was new or something and so didn't know that much about the menu, which for a place with a $155 tasting menu didn't seem like should be my problem.

The 25 course dinner we'd just eaten somehow was not enough to immunize us from the sweet smell of this cookie shack.

Going Savage in St. Louis

Every once in a while when there's a particular reason to celebrate we go to a fancy restaurant. This time we chose Savage.

The menu had a nice little blurb:

"The heart of Savage Restaurant is defined by the dramatic shift in culinary landscape that we've witnessed over the years. The biggest shift has been a look back into the past for ingredients and techniques to coax out flavors and textures with less manipulation and through more natural processes. The wine world has followed this movement with efforts to use less modern machinery in the vineyards and minimize intervention in the winemaking process. The results in both have brought excitement, challenges and purity to the dining experience. Flavors of savoriness, tartness, earthiness and a little bit of "funk": the offspring of natural, less temperature-controlled fermentations have expanded to what we consider normal flavors and textures. Much like the children from the original Willy Wonka film as they entered the gates to the chocolate factory, we gaze wide-eyed into the present and future possibilities of ingredients flavors and textures by the new vanguard of culinary and wine professionals. All of our beers, wines, and ingredients have been inspired and cultivated through years of travel, education, and personal experience.

"The strawberries taste like strawberries. The snozzberries taste like snozzberries! - Willy Wonka"

But none of this really matters unless you're having fun. So stop reading and start drinking."

I liked the layout of the place. All of the seating is in a big square around the kitchen where the chef and his helpers scurry around. I was excited because I'd read that chef-owner Logan Ely liked to cook with ants and other insects. I got there and asked my server what the bug courses would be and she said none. "Chef doesn't want to get pegged as a bug guy". Cool.

So you buy a set course menu without knowing what they are. Which is fine because I like surprises but then it's difficult to remember what the heck every was. It was fun anyway.

This was a beet chicharone.

I think this was yeast puree.

I thought the little Willy Wonka picture in the bathroom was a nice touch.

EuRoad Trip 2018: Swedish IKEA, Volvo Museum, then Denmark

When I considered the excitement of first visiting a new country, exploring it, then it inevitably becoming time to depart I recalled a poem we read in high school.

"Nothing Gold Can Stay"

Nature’s first green is gold, 

Her hardest hue to hold. 

Her early leaf's a flower; 

But only so an hour. 

Then leaf subsides to leaf. 

So Eden sank to grief, 

So dawn goes down to day. 

Nothing gold can stay.

-Robert Frost

I'm so deep.

Norway was over and we were headed to Denmark next. We had to double back through Sweden to make that happen.

I think we realized this was our last chance to explore a genuine Swedish IKEA.

It was pretty much the same.

IKEA in Sweden has cinnamon rolls too but they look way better. These have that classy rock salt sugar on them while in the US it's that sugary snot icing. Sad.

We had a snack.

I had hoped that those IKEA hotdogs might have satisfied my fellow travelers but they had only served to stoke the fires in their hearts for processed animal lips and sphincters. "Meat tubes! Meat tubes!" they chanted. I could've sworn I heard one of them sniffing my fingers from the back seat as my hand rested on the vehicle's center console.

I took them to where a hungry family of such distinction as mine deserved to eat lunch: a mall food court.

Nordstan in Gothenburg, Sweden had many mall-like qualities.

For some reason Gourmet Korv, a hotdog restaurant, showed up on our culinary radar. It was pretty good.

Good advice.

It was here that I made a startling discovery. Tom is scared of sauerkraut.

Also in Gothenburg is a Volvo factory with a Volvo Museum attached.

Someday I hope to have a scene of me crushing it at Xbox immortalized in bronze. I really need to write a will.

There was a huge section of the museum devoted to the Volvo Ocean Race which I thought was odd because it seems to have very little to do with Volvo.

There was a LEGO car.

An underwater tunnel connects Sweden to Denmark.

Denmark was our last new country before returning home. I was sad about that but we had a ton of stuff planned to do that I was excited about.

Driving in Copenhagen was terrifying. It's a very bike friendly city and there were bikes whizzing all around me. I had to drive really really slow to avoid getting any Danish fruit filling on my windshield.

Our hotel had more Scandinavian wit to offer.

We did some more Firk Loving in the room before hitting the streets.

New Nordic is a culinary movement that began in Denmark that involves using traditional ingredients in new ways. The movement also puts an emphasis on foraging for ingredients, which I think is awesome. Reminds me of the time I had that great idea to eat Soulard acorns.

Well the place where New Nordic was born is a restaurant called NOMA. First of all dinner there was like $300 a person. We tried to book a table anyway and despite calling a month in advance the best they could do for us was put us on a waiting list. Sad. Luckily there's more than one restaurant in this country.

The four of us walked to Höst, a little place near the hotel.

I think that this was my first interaction with a restaurant in the Michelin Guide. This place didn't have a coveted star but it had a "plate". According to Michelin:

"The Michelin Plate is the symbol for those restaurants that have neither a star nor a Bib Gourmand. For restaurants, being in the selection is the sign of very good food, and the Michelin Plate is the symbol for that. Many restaurants start off by entering the guide and then moving up to getting a star in following years. Some of the factors that may contribute to moving up from a Plate to a star include having talent in the kitchen, ambition and resources, like good suppliers to get the products needed."

The Guide's entry for Höst was pretty simple:

"A busy neighbourhood bistro with fun staff and a lively atmosphere; sit in the Garden Room. The great value monthly set menu comprises 3 courses but comes with lots of extras. Modern Nordic cooking is seasonal and boldly flavoured."

"Høst 

To Høst is to harvest, and as the name suggests, the ever-changing menu presents seasonal ingredients that combine to create the rustic and the elegant. Located on the corner of Nørre Farimagsgade and Ahlefeldtsgade in Copenhagen, Danish midcentury-modern furnishings sit amongst centuries-old brickwork that reflect a kitchen traditional in its heritage, yet bustling with an idealism for the New Nordic experience. The restaurant has won several international design awards, among them 'World's Best Designed Restaurant' with the Restaurant & Bar Design Awards, and 'World's Most Beautiful Restaurant' in American travel magazine Travel+Leisure."

Man, I don't know. It's hard to live up to most beautiful restaurant in the world. 

There were two set menus to choose from: a 3 course and a 5 course. I think I was the only person to pick the 5 course. Hey, I was on vacation.

The restaurant was just so beautiful that everyone inside of it looked hideous by comparison.

These foods were so frou-frou that it's difficult to identify them even with the menu as a guide.

I think this was "witch flounder with fried chicken skin and sauce made from fermented asparagus."

"Smoked scallops with ramson capers and tomato."

Both on the No Reservations episode I watched and now here in real life, there were a lot of dishes that included hay ash which I found very amusing.

I was entranced by the way this soup's green oil floated atop the creamy broth.

"Grilled Norwegian Lobster with juniper pancake and pointed cabbage."

"Pepper glazed beef tenderloin with Black Trumpet Mushroom, corn and smoked sauce."

There were a few secret dishes that weren't even on the menu, which I thought added a little more adventure to the experience. This was like nitro freeze ice cream with freeze dried raspberry dust sprinkled on top.

Dessert was pretty fun. "Raspberry sorbet with Norwegian Brown cheese and crispy caramel."

The bill came out to be about $250 for the four of us including a beer and 4 waters. I thought it was a good investment. I think my mom was less enthused.

Back at the hotel we put our pun-filled do not disturb sign on the door and hit the sheets.