You Ate A Mouth Full

Just a quick one to alert you to one of the best sandwiches you can have without traveling to Pittsburgh, and who wants to do that anyway.* Hollister Brewing Company is offering my favorite special of theirs, a Primanti Bros. Sandwich.What is that, you may ask, and you couldn't ask if you were eating one as it's a true mouth-fuller: Niman Ranch ham, melted Fontina cheese, coleslaw, sliced tomatoes, aioli and HBC duck fat fries sandwiched between Texas toast. To do it right you have to get the optional fried egg on top, too, because, really, are you suddenly counting calories? Plus you need the soft yolk to ooze out and coat everything, helping it keep deliciously together. Somehow the Primanti Bros. legend is they started putting everything on the sandwich as it was easier for truckers on the go to eat them, which just means it's very easy to spot the truckers in Pennsylvania--they're the ones with the food-stained pants.

I'm not usually into the food-as-dare kind of thing, but the co-mingling of all those flavors is spectacular, especially when washed down with a pint of one of Eric and Noah's fine ales--the batch of White Star XPA right now is creamy and light and would make a fine balance with the bulk of a Primanti Bros. sandwich. Or perhaps go with one of the two slightly unusual Belgian-ish beers on right now, the 5th Anniversary Ale (it's got flowers and honey and is neither too floral or too sweet) or the Here and There (a mild Belgian, if that makes sense, all about elegance, and not too alcohol-heavy, either).

*I kid Pittsburgh, having been there a bunch from 88-94 and liking it, especially Kennywood. Plus I really want to make it to what looks like a beautiful ballpark PNC (no stadium this). Three Rivers was a football concrete doughnut, but I did get to see Barry Bonds pre-Clear a bunch. I wonder if a roided Bonds would have thrown out Sid Bream in 1992? More likely he would have launched one to the backstop.

I Drink, Therefore Iamb

So John Milton, Edgar Allen Poe, Edwin Arnold, Robert Frost, Stevie Smith, and Shel Silverstein walk into a bar. Well, they don’t actually walk, as they’re all versifying in the hereafter now, but poems by all six are being celebrated by Santa Barbara mixologists in honor of National Poetry Month. After all, for centuries the arts have inspired, intertwined, and cross-pollinated in a host of scared and profane ways, so what seems more natural than flipping the typical paradigm and having poetry lead to some cocktails?

Want to read the rest, then do so at the Indy's site.

But What If I Do It Every Day Anyway?

In case you didn't know, it's #IPA Day, so, at last, Twitter has served some useful function.

Georgeeats is particularly fond of IPAs, and not really just the hoppier the better, although I positively swill in the ale of the big boys. But balance, my friends, balance. You need that malt, the depth, the sweet, to make the bitter sing its terrifically trebly part. Plus hops is half as fun on the nose--forest of pine, groves of citrus. So if you want to make quick work of #IPA Day and opt for a double, you can never beat the best Russian River Brewing's Pliny the Elder. Not that Alpine's Pure Hoppiness or even, if you want to go local, Firestone's Double Jack, are anything to sneeze at (they are something to sniff at, though--breathe deep before you quaff).

As for single IPAs, it's hard to beat Hollister's Hippie Kicker, as fresh as its playful name.

On a side note, does anyone else find it funny that Wikipedia illustrates its IPA page with a photo of Fuller's IPA, when Fuller's flagship ale is its ESB? Oh well. Drink while we can, as the economy is only going to go further and further into the shitter thanks to dirty deeds done debt deal deep.

The Chef, My Friends, Is Blowing to Los Alamos

It's called George Eats, not George Writes, but you know that, of late. After all, it's not George Monetizes (and has there ever been an uglier word for an uglier thing? it's practically onomatopoetic), so all the stuff I need to do to make some money has sort of taken up the time that I'd love to use instead to be doing this. But there is a lot of news, isn't there....

Starting with the big changes at two of my favorite places (just ask Visa) to eat in the county--Hollister Brewing Company and Full of Life Flatbreads. As you might have read elsewhere, after a couple of years making HBC not just a beer mecca both a food one, too, Dylan Fultineer has moved on to Full of Life Flatbreads, and the weekend meals there are as luscious as ever, with flatbreads combining the best of the market (a recent one with grilled to perfection peaches, grilled chicken, and arugula knocked me out) and special apps and a main course the table next to us gushed about. So, the rich just get richer. There's just two too bads: 1) Los Alamos can seem far away, especially given the wine list is so fine, and 2) it's only a restaurant on weekends. But here's to all the best success for Dylan up in Wine Country, especially as he and his wife start a family.

We don't need to be too sad here at Hollister, though, for Dylan's trusty aide-de-camp Mike Coan is now executive chef. Coan moved west with Fultineer from Blackbird in Chicago to open the SB Hungry Cat, went up to San Francisco for seasoning at ace places like A16 and Delfina, but he's been back at HBC for awhile and ready to step into the lead position. Based on some recent HBC visits, we've all got nothing to worry about, and not just because the glories of the latest delicious batch of Eric's Hippie Kicker IPA smooth out the edges of anything wrong in one's day.

Four More Beers, Uh, Years!

You have to click on that menu to make it bigger, but you know you want to, and trust me, the menu made me bigger as it was wonderful through and through. But what else might one expect from the dynamic duo of brewer Eric Rose and Chef Dylan Fultineer at HBC? I won't take you through it course by course simply because I don't have the time, but I did want to point out a few things:

1) I could get very used to eating local ridgeback shrimp whole, like little softshell crabs, especially if I had Dylan's killer peanut sauce to drizzle atop.

2) I never order salmon out because it's one dish I nail at home, so why pay someone to do what I can do? This salmon, however, well, I would order it again. The slow poaching keeps it moist with all its lovely fattiness (admit it, that's why salmon is everyone's favorite fish--you get the good fat you want from a steak but get to feel virtuous eating it) but the real secret is getting a bite of everything on the extremely well-conceived plate at once, so the zip of the Meyer lemon, shaved just thin enough, cuts that fat a bit, and then the tabbouleh, made from actual malted wheat (it's a brewery after all), is a comforting sweet (that's what malt in your beer does, after all, besides process the alcohol), but then there's the parsley and Persian mint doing the great countering, centering things herbal greens do, and it's all in your mouth. At once. Which you get to follow with a healthy swig of the 4th anniversary ale, which is billed as an "American style sour ale brewed with Brettanomyces and lactobacillus," that reminds you of the old aphorism "Brett in wine, say nein, Brett in beer is the sour you'll find dear." Or something like that.

3) If a version of the red rock crab chowder doesn't end up on the menu someday, I'll be the crab. OK, having lived in Baltimore for awhile and doing my time with a bushel of crabs, I understand picking out the meat from the shell is a chore, and I only had to pick it out and feed myself, and drink lots of beer while doing it. So the kitchen prep is a bitch. But surely some other fish might work in a chowder that good. Red curry. Yum. And vegetables still with a bit of bite in them, tasting like potato and carrot and whatever they actually were, not just soup ballast. The giant hunks of crabmeat didn't hurt none neither, of course.

And then there's the one new beer of the evening, and a delightful surprise it was, the cask conditioned Pocket Full o' Green.  An India Pale Wheat, it makes me say junk all those Belgian-IPA crosses that sort of seem the platypi of brewing, and go for the wheat-IPA combo instead. Rich and full in the mouth (the cask helped that, of course, and Eric warned it will be a different beer off cask), but still, so so good.

Chicken Pot Chicken Pot Chicken Pot Pie

It's not really that I need another reason to head to Hollister Brewing Company as Eric Rose's ever-diverse and totally-tasty brews would get me in the door all by themselves. (And how wonderful it is he tweaks recipes, too, so, for instance, the current batch of White Star XPA is the creamiest ever.) But having Dylan Fultineeer in the kitchen certainly doesn't hurt HBC any. And while Dylan's mastery tends to show best at the magnificent beer dinners and on the daily specials, the latest re-vamp the regular menu helps show how comfortable he is with comfort food.Veggie lasagna. Pot roast. Cioppino. Pork belly sandwich (bacon's beefier cousin, if that's not an oxymoron).

But this entry is about the beauty photographed above, the new chicken pot pie. (And if you don't know the allusion in the title, please don't get Cross with me if you follow this link.) Get it while the weather's still a bit iffy, for it will warm you deeply, and not just because it comes piping hot from the oven and that crusty cap holds the heat. Nope, it's body-pleasing good--the kind of food we all dreamed our mothers made (instead of serving up the Swanson's frozen models). That puff pastry is flaky and layered but then doughy inside, too, cooked to perfection. And the contents, not just any chicken but the oh-so-au-courant Jidori. A luscious sauce with not trace of flour to thicken it up. Carrots and snow peas that haven't gone to mush in the saucy baking process.