A San Diego Trail Blais-er

Like no doubt most of you, I don't want to be one of those people. For instance, when I do go to a regular supermarket (and just by making that distinction you know more about me than you need to), it's stunningly clear the checkout aisle magazines are not for me. I do not know who any of these people are, the ones on the covers we're all supposed to be so worried about (are they too skinny, fat, unloved, overloved, under-pregnant, a Duggar?). "Celebrity" culture makes little sense to me. OK, I'd probably get tongue-tied in the presence of an Elizabeth Warren or a Brian Eno, but again, there you go.

All this is prelude to say, the title celebrity chef doesn't mean too much to me, unless said chef can bring the bona fides. It might not hurt if he's endearingly self-doubting and it looks like he's used a trick of molecular gastronomy to make his hair stand up just so. Of course I'm talking about Richard Blais, winner of Top Chef: All Stars but probably more importantly not-winner of season 4. Everybody loves a redemption story, and the man came back and did it.

So when I heard he'd opened a place in San Diego, I wanted to go. It took a year, but we got to Juniper & Ivy recently and in short, he's running an amazing place, even if he wasn't in sight that night--a recent Eater interview suggested "Richard, Anthony [Wells, chef de cuisine] and I [Jon Sloan, executive chef] aren't on the line, we're coming up with the dishes and our staff's executing it."

That quote isn't precise, though--they're killing it. We hadn't had a meal so tasty, clever, and inventive in a long time, and we do a lot of good eating. It starts with the space, surprisingly large (seats 300), but spread out over levels and zones, so things end up intimate anyway. The staff is surprisingly young (especially the "should they be out on a school night?" hostesses) but well-trained and professional. At one point a guy next to us bumped his knife off his table and a server practically picked it up before it hit the floor. Even better, it wasn't that table's server; it's kind of a professional swarm that appears when needed, yet doesn't hover. People who can describe the menu, and make you want everything.

The menu is split up into Snacks, Raw, Pasta, Toast, Small Plates, Plates, and if you turn it upside-down, Last Chance (aka dessert). Wines are on the back, split by red and white, but also by Tried & True and Leap of Faith (and there's Special Acquisitions for the high rollers, and I assume some La Jollans love to splurge). Despite, wait, because we wanted everything, we decided to build a meal out of as many Small Plates or smaller as we could. And despite seeing our knife-dropping neighbors get amazing-looking (and soon clean, so probably amazing tasting) bigs of Alaskan halibut and beef shortrib, we didn't regret.

For example, consider the raw razor clams. I've never had a clam that tender, that melt in your mouth. And its seemingly odd accompaniment of oro blanco grapefruit (perfect citrus zip), raspberry (clever color and an acid on its way to sweet), and white Swiss chard (cooked but providing the plate's chew, too) all made for a series of angles totally complementary.

A toast on some serious, tasty bread might seem the most typical of dishes--isn't this just dressed up bruschetta?--was nonetheless dressed in unique style. Green tomatoes (a perfect promise of summer coming), burrata (in all its creamy goodness), and ice wine verjus (since just regular wine verjus is so passe already).

English pea captured winter into spring on a plate, as the peas where paired with some garbanzos, too, and mint (even when being inventive, classics are classics folks, and that's a sign for Blais form follows flavor), but also green hummus for depth. And then what's billed as feta snow, perhaps blasted with liquid nitro to get suitably cold, but a vivid way to concentrate the cheese and chill the entire plate.

Then there was the molcajete (yeah, things all came served unusual--lots of boards, etc.) with Orchard Morels. As if the mushrooms' own fabulous funk wasn't enough (perhaps there's dried morel in the sauce alongside the fresh? just a guess), the dish features "burnt bread," too, that makes you think maybe a kitchen disaster got rescued one night when someone over-toasted the toast. That char and crunch is everything in this dark dish, laced with some chevre and adorned with "onion glass"--think onion sliced membrane thin, then made into something like brittle. Sure, it looks cool, but it provides a sharp onion shock with a minimum of material.

Finally, my dear sweet pescatarian wife let me order one small all my own--foie gras and duck confit terrine. It was my first foie since the ban lifted, and while I had a soft spot for the luscious liver, I forgot how much I missed it until the first taste of this incredible dish hit my tongue. With the vein of confit running through it to add a bass note, it couldn't be better, especially when you scooped a bit of the quenelle of mustard ice cream with it. Yep, you heard right, and it wasn't just frozen mustard, this just-a-touch sweet custard. A dish to prove there is no too rich, if people make things right, and then give you some caraway rye bread to devour it all upon.

Sure, there were fine cocktails, and a Leap of Faith white 2013 Alain Graillot Crozes-Hermitage, because if you want to blend Marsanne and Roussanne well for me, I will say oui. (And then stop trying to say anything else in French, promise.) We didn't have room for any Last Chance, even after we had run in a 15K earlier that morning.

We left delighted, sated, provoked, pleased. That Blais really is a top chef.

This Post Took Weeks to Write, So I'm Not Going to Sweat for a Witty Title and Just Hit "Publish"

If you name your establishment The Barrymore, you're nodding to Hollywood Art Deco chic, an era before even what passed for swank in Las Vegas existed. You have to be talking about John; sorry Lionel, Ethel, and of course Drew, who might fit in again in that everything that goes around is hip once around again way. That's John romancing Lombard On the Twentieth Century, oddly avuncular to Claudette Colbert in Midnight, but an ever-elegant, witty, well-cleaned-up lush. As something to aspire to in Vegas, you could do much worse--if Barrymore sang (even a bit--right Deano?), and lived past 1942--he'd have made for an apt Rat Pack granddad, teaching Sinatra et al. some class.

This kind of "just being a little bit off it's on" is at the heart of The Barrymore, which isn't even Downtown, let alone on The Strip. If you walk there from what seems like civilization (down Caesar's way) you get into that creepy convenience store no man's land of Las Vegas Blvd. and Convention Center Drive where you half expect some meth heads to burst out a store's doors, trailing bills they've pilfered and peeling out in some ill-kept hot-rod. And The Royal Resort, the hotel that houses The Barrymore, is one of those motor lodge fixer-uppers that from the outside appears only to be a Days Inn with hipper lighting on its balconies.

Luckily, the Barrymore's got better things in store for you to the left off the hotel's lobby. You walk into the bar that's somehow both dim and glittery (they've got their lighting down). It's marble-topped, backed by a mirror (and booze of course), and the stools are leather and plush and you might even consider just stopping there. Particularly in December (sorry, I'm way behind in writing this entry), as there's an aluminum Xmas tree in one corner, ablaze in a rainbow thanks to that essential spotlight with its rotating color gels of magenta and carrot and lime and blue Yule cheer. It's worth heading into the dining room, though, with more mirrors with lamps bursting through to provide the perfect reflected light for you and your equally glammed out date. And the ceiling, best of all, is covered with 35mm film take up reels, just enough odd and even more so Hollywood.

That bar, by the way, isn't just for show--they've got an incredible cocktail program, one with respect for the classics and a yen for innovation (you can get a Bloody Mary with beef brisket infused vodka, a Margarita with St. Germain). I had a Barrymore--Gentleman Jack, Solerno Blood Orange liqueur, orange marmalade, Cocchi Vermouth di Torino, orange bitters, orange zest--which sounds like too much but melded wonderfully (especially on a chill desert eve) and Chryss enjoyed the cleverly billed Basil ²--Basil Hayden, Dolin Dry vermouth, fresh sour, basil, and lemon syrup. 

Your server--perhaps you'll be lucky enough to get someone like Kendra, who waited on us--will be quick to figure out what you want and how that matches with what they have. That menu, if you look at the website, is relatively focused, but based on our admittedly just one visit, they like to augment that with specials perfect for the season.

And then we ate a ton. This is now a meal over 2 months ago, and while it was memorable, aren't even good meals more about moments than precise recall? And, of course, I remember my food more than my wife's, even getting a taste of everything she ordered. For instance, freed from California's stupidity about outlawing a food, I started with foie gras. A lovely lobe, pan seared,  atop some sweet potato pudding, and drizzled with maple glazed pecans and whiskey gastrique. Think of it as liver perched between dessert and Thanksgiving and enjoy it with a Sauterne by the glass. Chryss had a salad with a twist, featuring puntarella, which reads more suggestively than it tastes. She followed that with Mediterranean Sea Bass all done up for fall/winter, with crushed potato, roasted brussel sprouts, leeks, and a horseradish vichyssoise that was less soup than a fancy saucing. I ordered off menu, enjoying a homemade pasta with oxtail ragu and truffle, a dish so deep Carlos Castaneda might have been buried in there, tripping. It could have heavied-out, if you know what I mean--carbs with so much richness--but managed to hold the line at full of flavor without making me just full. The Altos Malbec might have helped--consider it, in this case, and as a compliment, Cab-light traipsing in with its Argentinian dust. We ended with a creme brulee for free as it was my lovely wife's birthday. So thanks, Barrymore, a class act that manages to ape an era without any irony.

The Island of Misfit Torchon

A couple of observations from this week's Top Chef (spoilers, sort of)--Season 10, Episode 15.

First, and maybe it was just the dog-sledding and the glaciers and snow, but were these two separated at birth? And sorry I couldn't find a screen cap of Josh in the snow.

Second, was the Quickfire Challenge nothing more than an excuse to fly in a helicopter? Brooke won, and got nothing for it. No moolah, no year's supply of plastic wrap, not even a sled dog puppy (which, no doubt, she would turn out to be afraid of). No advantage going into the Elimination Challenge. Have they ever done that before on TC?

Gold and the Doughnut Factory

You really don't need me to point out what a talented writer Jonathan Gold is--the Pulitzer committee has already done that for you. His appetite seems voracious; his desire to share infectious; his ability to be pals-y without being pushy helps create an "us" of folks serious about food high and low--the only necessary commonality is for everything to be delicious.

As, for instance, in the closing of his LA Times article on Saturday about Umamicatessen, a new downtown spot that features several different vendors in one space, not the least of which is the twee-ly named "& a [drawing of a donut]." The review's finish goes like this:

You should try the foie gras* doughnut at least once: round, hot and crisp, dusted with ground peanuts. One end leaks jam — "forest berry"' from the cult jelly man Robert Lambert in the Bay Area, which tastes like what the Wine Spectator means when they describe the jammy notes in a $150 Napa Cabernet Sauvignon — and the other a loose, mild foie gras mousse.

A cynical man might insist that the foie gras was put into the doughnut mostly to justify the cost of the jam: Nobody is going to pay $8 for a jelly doughnut, no matter how life-changing. But there is that sweet spot in the middle of the doughnut where foie meets jam, the peanut dust comes into play and you are essentially dealing with the most luxurious peanut butter and jelly sandwich in the world. It is an extraordinarily good bite. Then you're left with the rest of what is merely an extremely good doughnut, but somehow that's OK too.

There is a bemusement that's utterly delightful in these two paragraphs, a sense Gold is both in on a joke but willing to laugh at himself, too. (He's anything but pretentious, even if it often seems he's not just tasted but studied the peasant cuisines of countries that haven't even been founded yet, not to mention all those of countries forgotten, too.) He is both that cynical man (a useful trait for a critic) and one who is ever on the search for enjoyment (the most important trait for a critic). His sentences are wonderfully rhythmic--voiced, which is no surprise if you've heard him on KCRW with Evan Kleiman--and note how the short sentence in paragraph two gets to deliver the punchline, punchy as it is. But think of all the other things he does for you here--makes Wine Spectator-speak make sense, helps you taste a $150 cab for a mere $8, gives you an excuse to purchase a doughnut for $8 (remember when you used to get a cocktail for that much?), leaves you wanting that extraordinarily good bite, teaches you to bite petitely and taste slowly, even makes you pleased with an OK world that's not just filled with extraordinary, if fleeting and rare, mouthfuls of doughnut. That's probably most of our lives.

I have a sneaking suspicion it's not Jonathan Gold's, though.

*And I'll be getting back to the foie gras issue and the ban soon on this blog, as long as I don't choke on the foie, as one commenter to Gold's article, who clearly loves all living things, suggested.