More Luster than Bluster

It's often hard extracting the hip from the hype, deciding what's luster and what's bluster. Initial raves for a place always lead to some bitter backlash, and where the truth lies amidst those typical tides of opinion is never easy to tell. Welcome to Mohawk Bend in LA's trendy but still a bit edgy (which makes it trendier, I guess), Echo Park. Lovingly built into the bones of a century-old vaudeville theater, it's the kind of places that touts "our philosophy" on its website, with lines like, "We care about your food choices, which is why our menu has vegan, vegetarian, and non-vegan options. We have dedicated food prep stations for our vegan fare. Our goal is to make sure EVERYONE can eat at our restaurant without having to sacrifice quality or taste," that are both encouraging and a bit sanctimonious. You have to deliver if you're going to make such statements, especially when you extol your all-California produce-products and a 72-tap beer list that's also all California, plus one out-of-state guest brewer a month.

The good news is (based on one visit, so small sample error is certainly possible) Mohawk Bend earned any of its possible pretension. It was great that the staff certainly didn't pull any superior airs--we got seated (with reservations), within a few minutes of arriving, our waiter knew his stuff and offered up a free taster of Craftsman Acorn Saison that I did go nuts for (you never know with Craftsman crazy brews--that Aurora Borealis with persimmon and mint tasted of toothpaste while the Holiday Spruce, made with actual spruce, is delish and not like drinking your Christmas tree water, brewed). The waiter did look very LA hiply handsome, but I admit I'm superficial and want all the servers in LA to look like they just came off their commercial shoot; it might be because one of my first meals in Los Angeles years ago an agent at the table next to mine actually connected with the actress-waitress serving us both, although it might all have been a set-up to impress me, living in Iowa at the time.

Meanwhile, back at the Mohawk...that's one impressive and ever-moving beer list, enough to make you proud you're a Californian. The pub's owner Tony Yanow also owns Golden Road Brewery, and we tasted on of their beers to keep it all in the family, namely the Point the Way IPA that manages to do the righteous hoppy do it has to for an IPA and clock in at a mere 5.2% ABV. Expect DUI rates in LA to drop precipitously. But there was plenty of more great beer to be had, like a High Water Hop Riot (had had that in bottle, but as usual, tap is head and suds better), the jokingly named but yummy Lagunitas Sucks, and then for dessert a Bootlegger's Black Phoenix Chipotle Coffee Ale with just enough heat and just enough coffee kick.

As for the food, there is vegan poutine--even the cheese is animal-product free. But how can one go wrong with fries properly crisp, that then get to soak a bit in a mushroom-rich gravy, so the cheese is pretty much just a bonus? My partner was pleased with her JJ Kale Salad (that JJ is for the julienned jicama, not Hunsecker) but we were both bowled over by the mussels, fine farmed bivalves from Carlbad, in a terrific vadouvan. Don't worry, I had to Google it too--it's a French take on Indian curry, one more of the many reasons colonialism shouldn't have quite the bad rap it does. (I mean, tasty food gone global makes up for years of oppression and often outright slavery, right?) You will order extra bread if you get this dish. You will wish you had a hip flask to take any remaining juices home with you.

WineBistro Goes Montecito

It’s one thing to tout California cuisine and name your restaurants WineBistros, but it’s another to do so as Pierre Lafond has, given his winemaking roots go back to 1962. That’s more than a track record for Santa Barbara County — it’s like being able to say you saw the rib get ripped from Adam way back when. And it probably takes that much gravitas to move into the Montecito Upper Village location that was home to the much-loved Italian trattoria Piatti for 21 years.

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

On a Year of the Dragon Roll

Somehow it is not just 2012 but ten days into the year and I haven't blogged since going cocktail crazy December 21st. (There's really no connection, promise.) I've got plenty I want to write about, from praising places I took too long to ever enjoy (Petit Valentien) to damning with faint so-so's (Ladyface Ale Companie in Agoura Hills). There's out of town good to go's--Mohawk Bend and palate food + wine. There's that essay about service three ways in Maui (and that goes all the way back to July).

So here's to a Georgeeats resoultion for 2012--at least 2 blog entries a week, plus a link to an Indy story (not always the feech, even).

Sound good? Well, eat up, then.

Gomme Sweet Gomme

Perhaps I feel cowed by the creativity cocktail makers seem able to offer so simply with just a shake of the wrist. Perhaps I am dulled by consuming too many of their drinks. But it's seemed hard to write this entry I've been meaning to get to since December 6, as December 5 is a day that should live in famy (isn't that the opposite of infamy?)--the repeal of the 18th Amendment. For 13 long years our poor country was dry and not high. That stretch even includes some Depression years, and if you can't drown away your centless sorrows, how miserable must life be? No wonder it was also the era of the great Dust Bowl.

But is it perfume from a bitters, that makes my entry all a-skitter? Indeed, for today we are in a perfect storm of cocktailiana--everything's legal (even absinthe), history is lovingly excavated by artful archaeologists, and then there's the fine fuel of the local-artisanal food movement turning its eye to craft distilling. Add in global influences as if sprinkling with fairy dust that's actually ground crickets and pretty much anything can happen in a cocktail glass.

Some of it's quite tasty, too, not just novelty, and that's crucial as a cocktail is nothing if it's not tradition. When you toast, it's not just to the person or people you're with, it's a cheers to every drinker ever, a sign of civilization at its most civil: we have tamed this firewater, made it beautiful, and will share it peacefully while even better doing our best to make witty and wise.

This was easy to do at a place like Drago Centro in downtown LA, all sleek and not at all old school Italian despite nailing Italian food with that simple made perfect from kick-ass ingredients way (tomatoes are tomatoes here, even in December, somehow). And then the brilliance of this dish il risotto allo zafferano e midollo, which just sounds beautiful (say it aloud, so your tongue gets ready for the beauty of the actual dish while eating it). That's saffron risotto and salsa verde, almost something minimalist, that is until you start to massage in the roasted bone marrow that sits atop. So much richness in each forkful.

But as to the cocktails, or the "new classics" as they put it, cleverly making oxymoronic sense (as a drink does, so very elegant as it begins to muddle your mind with its spirits). We had: the Blessed Bliss made of Karlsson’s vodka, Cardamaro, Underberg bitters, fresh ginger, fresh apple, and fresh rosemary; and the Hot Bellied .45 made of Bulleit bourbon, Del Maguey Vida mezcal, Cocchi Americano, Art in the Age snap, and Fee Bros. lemon bitters. That first led with its herbs--the very skilled waiter warned us he wasn't fond of the drink as he's not a rosemary fan--, but that's little surprise as in addition to the prominent rosemary sprig, Underberg supposedly packs in 43 herbs. So, something of surprising depth. As for the .45, the mezcal gave it a kicky smokiness, always a fine match for a bourbon, and then, again, things got complicated, what with a bit more lemon than mere bitters might make one expect and the molasses depth of the Snap (as in ginger).

Alas, this foray was nothing compared to what awaited us at Sly's on December 5 itself. It turns out the "Mix mistresses and barmen" as they bill themselves, craft a special cocktail list only for Repeal Day, and then it's your secret handshake for the year, as you can flash it and request the drink of your choice on it that no one else knows. Nothing like having your speakeasy and prohibition too. That's eleven choices I get and you don't (sorry, dear reader--go next year), including one from Chef James Sly himself, a sneaky Bloody Mary variation that swaps beet juice for tomato (it's a salad in a glass!, or, more seriously, the perfect drink to have with a salad, always a tough pairing).

And I don't mean to be coy, but I'm not going to spill any of the drinks' names, for they belong to those who are part of the secret society. Mandy Chinn, the head mix mistress there and award winner several times over for her mixology, has her team always take things one step beyond the norm. Here there's nothing so simple as simple syrup, it's gomme syrup, which with its gum Arabic emulsifying away, ends up even smoother than just sugar water. That's the way it used to be done, and still is at a place as fastidious as Sly's. Even more mysteriously, even owning the menu doesn't quite get you to the point where you can recreate the drinks at home, for key ingredients often don't make the list--is that merely a typo that there's a comma at the end of one write-up, or a sneaky hint Sly's is living up to its name? Don't worry, sip away, and watch as Chris Chinn beats a glass with sprigs of thyme like a penitent flagellating. Ah, ritual, delicious as sin, these well-balanced brilliances.

A Top Notch Idea from the Bottom of the Barrel

Sure, Thrillist can be downright Maxim-ish douchey at times, but they can also point to good new places, deals, and manage to disguise that douche in enough pop-culture obscurantism that you barely feel the need to shower afterward. All that said, here's a deal I'd jump on (ok, and now everything I write will sound like a double entendre, I know) if I lived in San Francisco: "Drink 40 Premium Bourbons at The Alembic--$250 for a passport for full pours of 40 fine bourbons, good anytime for 9 months." It's not just that I'm fond of the Alembic and have been for years as a surprisingly fine find mid-Haight. It's not just I like bourbon and would love an informal course in its barrel-aged ways. It's the sense you were part of a commitment, and then part of a community. Or maybe it just means I like to come up with ways to dress up my drunkenness.

All that said, anybody in the Santa Barbara area want to come up with a deal like this one? What's Social Living or one of those places for but some creative thinking/drinking?

(P.S. It took my amazing wife to realize I should pitch this locally. Thanks, dear!)

Downtown Dose of Mimosa

“About a year ago, when we started seeing new businesses opening up on State Street, Chris and I would say, ‘How crazy people are!’” said Derrick Melton, chef and co-owner of Restaurant Mimosa with his pastry-chef wife, Chris Melton. But that’s exactly where he is today, many blocks from the corner spot on De la Vina Street where the longtime French restaurant lived for its first 28 years. The new Mimosa’s only been open since November, but it already feels like home, said Melton, pointing to a new feature in the remodeled location, formerly home to Piranha, Matador, and Chino’s Rock & Tacos. “My wife wanted it, so I etched a compass rose into the concrete floor,” he explained. “It’s symbolic of how this place feels like home.”

If you want to read the rest do so at the Indy's site.

Holidays at the Ah-wine-ee

They call it the Great Lounge at the Ahwahnee Hotel, and that’s not even a scintilla of upsell, especially if you’re there for one of the eight annual Vintners’ Holidays held each November and December. The room itself, and the entire National Historic Landmark hotel, are what insiders dub “park-itecture,” which features lots of stone, wood (which may be fire-safe concrete made to look like wood), windows, and blazing hearths — think Frank Lloyd Wright goes Native American. But it’s not just the room that awes, for as you’re sipping your way through the seminars, you can look over your left shoulder, out the window, and indeed, that’s Half Dome fringed in snow. It’s as if both the natural and manmade worlds are conspiring to teach you a lesson in beauty.

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