by Don on January 21, 2012
It’s been a while since I was last at the Voo. A couple of friends and I traveled there shortly after it had reopened under its present management. A former dive, they were upgrading the food and the atmosphere and turning The Rendezvous into a 21st century dive. I liked it, but it was clearly hadn’t gotten where it was headed yet. A Yelp review called it a “hipster kind of place” and while saying that makes me feel decidedly unhipsterish, it is an apt description.
My wife and I and some old friends had dinner there last week and the Voo has arrived. The menu was more interesting, there were a half dozen good brews on tap, and the place had a good feel. It’s the kind of place you want in your neighborhood so you can become a regular.
The menu is good: Standard and unusual appetizers (pretzel and two mustards, nachos, crostini, etc.), burgers and Panini on the lunch/quick end, some entrees for a real dinner and interesting sides like Asian Slaw and Curried Carrot Kickshaw (in Jamaican Aioli). We shared the crostini for an app and there were enough small squares to go around yet not so many to ruin an appetite. And good, too.
Sarah ordered the roasted half chicken, which turned out to be a boneless breast and a thigh/drumstick combo, smaller than the half a bird I’d envisioned, but good. (Of course the menu completely warned me it was boned, so the expectations were definitely my own.) For some reason, I wanted Mac n Cheese (perhaps the proximity to Holy Smokes BBQ and Deli, also in Turners and maker of incredible spicy mac n cheese had something to do with it), which was a large portion of good cheese and macaroni, not as soupy as I’ve come to like it, but neither dry nor overcooked. Sided with a nice mixed green salad, it made a fine course, especially when I traded some for some of Sarah’s chicken.
Our friends had a seared tuna steak and meatloaf. I didn’t get to taste Carl’s tuna, but it vanished in pretty short order. My friend Joan sent her meatloaf back for reheating. The flavor was good and the smashed potatoes under it were fine, but not the kind of hot both she and I like. We’re both hot food hot eaters—I want my pizza with the cheese melted and runny not merely warmed up—and I agreed that the meatloaf needed some more temp. Still, it was a good meal all around.
For dessert, most of the Rendezvous desserts involve chocolate. The ladies shared a flourless chocolate cake, which was deep and chocolately, but a little freezer burned. I got a slice of cherry cheesecake, with the cherries swirled into the cake rather than the usual florescent red goo atop of the cake. It was a good cheesecake, a touch creamier than a New York style, but it had heft and taste and the cherries were a good addition to the basic mix. In my opinion, when you fork off a piece of cheesecake, it should look like the side of a brick or a block of cut clay, which this one did.
They were setting up for bingo night as we left, and the place was filing up. On other nights, they have music or other entertainment. There’s a good feel to the place. Besides, the bathrooms are large and clean, which removes it from the category of dive bar, but I doubt anyone will be complaining. If you find yourself in Turners or you feel like getting out, it’s a good place to wind up.
by Don on January 13, 2012
In New England, no one gives directions to where something is, only to what used to be there. At the Lumber Yard Restaurant in Amherst, you don’t see Fenton’s, the sporting goods store that used to be there. Instead, you see a well-appointed and very calm restaurant that you’d never guess opened barely a month ago.
I’d read one review and heard some good things, but mostly people were asking each other if they’d eaten there. I did hear they had a good wine list, so while her husband and my wife were together at a UMass basketball game, I met my former business partner Kitty for dinner. Kitty appreciates wine and is one of the people most likely to understand the wine list.
Without reservations, we waited for a short 15 minutes on a comfortable couch beside the bar. The Lumberyard is not a college hangout; the couples and foursomes were generally older, with some experience, some money to spend, and nary a single baseball cap kept on inside the restaurant. I had a glass of Prosecco and Kitty had a glass of white, while we waited.
You can eat in one of two ways at the Lumber Yard, from the smaller bar menu with appetizers and smaller entrees or you can opt for the full dinner. The entrees are in the low $20s and wines by the glass are around $8, so if you go the entrée route, two things happen: you know you’re going to spend a little money and your expectations are raised. Kitty selected an Australian Shiraz and a California Rhone, both good choices.
The menu is on-line—entrees of salmon, lamb, a burger, a pan-roasted chicken breast, bolognaise sauce, and a pork chop. There was a New York Strip special, so we decided on the chicken breast and the steak, and ordered the steak “slightly past rare.” We split white bean crostini and some braised fennel as an appetizer. The white beans were smooth and creamy, but needed more seasoning, salt and definitely a little more garlic. They came with three rolled white anchovies which provided the salt, but we still wanted more garlic. A lemony salad—frisee I think—was a nice counterpoint. The fennel came topped with bread crumbs which added a nice texture to the fennel, which had a good licorice undertone.
The steak arrived on a bed of spinach, sided with some duck fat roasted fingerlings and topped with sautéed tomato chunks. A steakhouse on a plate. The steak was flavorful and cooked as ordered, and we both enjoyed it tremendously. I didn’t get much duck fat from the potatoes, but they were also well-cooked with a nice crust. The chicken was an airplane breast, the frenched first wing bone sticking straight up out of a salt-crusted and juicy breast. One continual battle between my wife and I is that my wife likes her chicken much more well cooked than I do. I don’t know what she would have thought of this one, but I thought it was juicy, flavorful, with not a touch of pink. Since I avoid chicken breasts like pork chops because they are both usually dry no matter how much brining they undergo, this was a surprise. The chicken came with feathery light gnocchi, which I am not sure were the right side, but were very well executed.
For dessert, I had a yoghurt panna cotta, topped with some pistachios and sided with some ripe berries and a really flavorful flowery honey. Someone in the kitchen really likes textures because each dish had a noticeable play of smooth and crisp.
I haven’t eaten at the new Chez Albert yet, but I’d say this is the best restaurant in Amherst. Make a reservation. Even in January.
383 Main Street | Amherst | (413) 253-4200. Open for dinner and closed on Mondays. Plenty of parking in the lot behind the restaurant.
Charlotte’s Macaroni and Cheese
1 lb pasta – elbow macaroni, campanelle, cellentani, or other interesting shape that will hold sauce
1 lb extra sharp cheddar cheese
3 TBS flour (that’s tablespoon. Teaspoons are abbreviated tsp, but you knew that, right?)
3 TBS butter3 cups milk
Salt and pepper
1/4 tsp nutmeg
(See options below for additional spicing)
Bring pasta water to a boil in a large pot. Add a TBS salt to the water. Grate the cheese. Preheat the oven on Broil and set the rack 3 inches below the burner. Find a baking dish large enough to hold the mac n cheese and spray it with a little Pam.
Make the sauce: melt the butter in a large saucepan over medium heat. When it is melted and bubbling, add the flour and stir with a heatproof spatula until it is mixed in and lump-free. Smell it as it cooks and when the smell goes from raw flour to a bread-y smell, it is ready. It should be a little golden, but not brown. Add about a half-cup of the milk and stir it in quickly to mix it. Add some more milk, stirring to keep lumps from forming. If they do, mash them against the side of the pot. Add the rest of the milk and stir it in. Let the sauce just start to bubble, then turn it down and let it cook for 10 minutes or so. Stire it often and scrape the bottom of the pot with the spatula to keep it from sticking. Add the nutmeg and salt to taste. Start with a 1/4 tsp of salt and add it in bits until it tastes right.
Drain the pasta in a colander, but don’t rinse it off. Put about a quarter of it back in the big pot.
Pick up the cheese in pinches and add it to the sauce, stirring to mix in each pinch before you add more. When it is all melted and smooth, add it to the pasta in the big pot, using the spatula to scrape the sauce out of the pot.
Add some of the cooked pasta and mix it in. Keep adding pasta and mixing until the dish is as goopy as you like. You may not use all the pasta. On the other hand, if you’ve been nibbling on the cooked pasta as you go, you may wish you had a little more. No matter. Pour it carefully into the baking dish.
Smooth the top and put the baking dish under the broiler for 15 minutes until the top is nice and crusty. Take it out of the oven, let it sit for five or ten minutes, scoop and serve.
OPTIONS:
For a spicier cheese sauce, you can add 1/4 to 1 tsp powdered mustard and/or a few shakes of hot sauce while you are making the white sauce. If you like spicy food, add a tsp or more of sambal olek, Sriracha, or even hot pepper.
White pepper looks better than black pepper since it disappears into the sauce.
You can top the mac n cheese with Parmesan cheese, breadcrumbs or wheat germ (Sarah’s trick for making it healthier) before you put it under the broiler to give it a little crust.
You can add different cheeses to the sauce: Parmesan, asiago, pepperjack, etc. for a different flavor. Taste the cheese first to see whether you like it or not.
Mostly, we’ve been going to the Cape (Cod), but my brother offered us his condo in North Carolina and we both thought a change would be good. Not to mention water that is actually warm enough to get in. Anyway, the trip included a BBQ stop off 95 in North Carolina and then on to the home of sweet tea and fried food, Tiki bars and “Island” cuisine.
I’ll leave out the duds for the moment. We did find two places that I’d call worth visiting. Bowman’s at the Beach we found on our own. It looks old-school, a brick building nestled on the strip, and inside, it feels like it’s been there for a while. The staff is incredibly friendly and, yes, most of the food is fried, but unlike a lot of the places at the beach, the food feels like it was made in the back rather than defrosted. I had some fried oysters, with mac n cheese and fried okra. Sarah had the BBQ pork. The basket of hushpuppies accompanied the meal were the best I have had on this trip. The oysters were fried but greaseless and the BBQ pork tasted meaty. The sweet tea was also the best we’ve had this trip. Sarah, who normally eschews anything with sugar, has been scarfing down the sweet tea like a pilgrim at the holy waterfountain. Sarah pronounced the fried okra great, so I’ll go with her. She makes it rolled in cornmeal, which is the way I’ve gotten used to it. Around here, they cover the pieces in batter. Still, the frying was pretty greasefree–not much grease left on the plate when we were done and I never got the “whoa, too much grease” feeling hours later.
In looking over the menu, I regretted not getting the deviled crabs, so I ordered one as a side. Bready, shot through with shredded crab meat, celery and red bell peppers, it was good but not very “deviled.” I’m kind of a snob about crab anyway, and outside of Maryland, I avoid crab cakes because I can get breadcrumbs whenever I want. These were fine, though. As I write this, we’re planning on a return visit before we leave.
The other place we liked was Gulfstream Restaurant, another old-time place. We got that recommendation off of chowhound.com and it was good. I’m a little overloaded on fried food, so I opted for the broiled flounder covered with deviled crab stuffing. Not exactly diet food, but the broiled fish at the previous night’s Deck House had left me ready for something with a little flair. The fish was fresh and the crab stuffing had crisped up nicely without extending the cooking time into the overdone phase. Good cole slaw and the baked potato I opted for over the french fries was wrapped in foil but OK. Hushpuppies and sweet tea not as good as Bowmans, but there was a Shrimp Creole on the menu that I want to try. There is someone cooking out back, not just some college kid with a fryolator and a freezer.
OK, in both cases “old-time” means since the 1970’s, but I’ll take it. There are few high end restaurants in the area and, to be honest, the Cape Clam shacks like P.J.’s tend to have more variety, but we’re doing OK. Even the Deck House, which was undistingushed, had a good Manhattan Clam Chowder. You take it where you find it.
Thursday nights there are fireworks on the boardwalk. The boardwalk is small and slightly seedy, like all boardwalks I’ve been to since I was a boy. But there is live music. A good Southern rock n roll band was playing before and during the fireworks which were going off behind their stage. The fireworks were low and some of the shells seemed packed with a little more explosives, leading to a big POW as it blew apart the chrysamthum shells. But listening to good rock n roll while they were going off was a real treat. Aside from some choreographed fireworks in New Orleans that were “big city” fireworks, this is the first time I’ve heard that at local fireworks. Highly recommended.
Crab Cakes, Eggplant, and Unexpected Surprises
by Don on December 31, 2011
So what do you say when you don’t cook much anymore? When you find yourself falling back on the now tired recipes that you’ve lovingly developed over the years, that ones that reflect your style and how you want your food to taste, but that now seem as boring as the roads you’ve driven on for the last 30 years?
When cookbooks all seem like product and the magic of discovery in magazine recipes just looks like the business of content and successful pitches?
When all of the local restaurants serve standard variations on the same common ingredients and if you get a side of broccoli one more time, you’re going to scream? When the places you eat at out of town serve pale reflections of the latest trends?
When none of your ideas seem to generate much passion and your agent’s only comment is that she can’t sell 30,000 copies and try again?
When you are in love with words and the thought of not writing something of value is as unthinkable as is the thought of having no words to polish.
I suppose you write about what’s in front of you. The crab cakes you cooked the other night, using jumbo lump crabmeat and a recipe from the Annapolis Junior League, that came out crisp and filled with pieces of crab with no taste of breading, sided with a remoulade/cocktail sauce combination. They were the kind of crab cakes that you always want to get when the server tells you the kitchen makes the best crabcakes she’s ever had and you know that you know better, but hope springs eternal and no matter how filled with shreds of crab they are, they arrive tasting only of breading.
You think about the shrimp that you shallow poached in a thick soup of Old Bay and lemon juice, omitting the hot peppers in the faint hope that small children might be tempted to try them, that came out cooked a point and tasting equally strongly of Old Bay and shrimp. You slide by the less successful, the albodigas that had too much coriander for your taste and give another wry smile at the crudites you served with a roasted onion dip from Whole Foods that was an organic version of French Onion soup dip.
Or, you think about the scallop appetizer that you ate in at The Evening Star a couple of nights ago. One bite of the smooth, confident, gently-pickled eggplant that the scallop was sitting on and suddenly you were tasting shulutah again, the eggplant, carrot, celery, and garlic pickle that your Romanian grandmother simmered in half white vinegar and half water, keeping a quart mayonnaise jar in her refrigerator at all times. Talking with the service manager at the restaurant, she said the chef had based it on a version of chow chow that had originally come from France (chou chou?) and from Eastern Europe before that. It’s not that I have become someone who rails about the present and wants only what he used to have—it was just that it was so good, so familiar and so unexpected. And so tasty.
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