Lunch at Kellari

I blogged a few days ago about a new, upscale Greek restaurant that has opened in downtown Washington, D.C. It's called Kellari. There are three Kellari locations in New York City, and I ate lunch at the new D.C. outpost yesterday.

The menu at Kellari is seafood-centered menu, and several fresh fish are available (grilled) each day. The grilled Dover sole was excellent, very flaky. Yet, at the price that I paid ($40) for it, there should have been some roasted potatoes or frites served alongside it.

I started my meal with a bowl of the classic Greek soup called Avgolemono, and it was fine but not impressive. I'd give it a grade of a B.

I was told that Kellari's baklava was exceptional, but it was one of more bland baklavas that I've ever eaten -- not as flaky as baklava typically is, and the sweetness seemed to smack more of sugar, not honey. The flavor lacked sophistication.

I really liked the dish of diced radish, hummus and olives that was served gratis as a kind of antipasta-appetizer. The hummus tasted great on the grilled bread that was served with it. There is a good, diverse selection of wines by the glass, including a few Greek wines.

Although Kellari is a very nice space, the price point is going to be a stretch for anyone who isn't on an expense-account lunch. Those kinds of lunches are still had in the K Street corridor, but it's a limited market. And the food I ate didn't "wow" me enough to make the price point seem reasonable.

Rudnick's Halloween Diet

In a newly released book, playwright-screenwriter Paul Rudnick reveals his unconventional diet. According to the N.Y. Times:

... (Rudnick's new book) reveals a horrible truth no parent wants published: It is possible, it seems, to live on candy.

Mr. Rudnick is the living proof. At 51, 5-foot-10 and an enviably lean 150 pounds, Mr. Rudnick does not square with the inevitable mental image of a man who has barely touched a vegetable other than candy corn in nearly a half-century.

“People always assume I’m lying,” said Mr. Rudnick earlier this month in his West Village apartment packed from ceiling to floor with Gothic ornamentation. “They always say: ‘That can’t be true. You’d be dead. Or huge.’"

... He doesn’t like gelato; he likes ice cream. He doesn’t like Maison du Chocolat or Godiva. He likes Kit Kats.

Tinkering With a French Classic

Cassoulet is one of my favorite dishes, especially this time of the year. It's the quintessential French "peasant entree." Leftovers from larger meals -- usually pork shoulder and duck legs -- are combined with white beans, chopped tomato and garlic in a large crock, which is covered with bread crumbs and baked.

Cassoulet originates from the southwest region of France, where three cities claim to be the sites where the dish was first prepared. Does it contain lamb sausage or not? Should it contain mutton or even partridge? It seems that every restauranteur or family in this part of France has a strong opinion on such questions.

As much as I like the food at La Chaumiere in D.C.'s Georgetown, I was disappointed by the cassoulet that I ate there a month or so ago. The beans were overcooked and they got skimpy on the meat. On the other hand, the cassoulet that I had last week at Bistrot d'Oc in downtown was superb.

Cassoulet is a labor-intensive meal to prepare. There's a lot of cooking, cutting, dicing and assembling. This recipe for cassoulet from Food & Wine magazine looks good, but I doubt that I will ever go to the trouble of trying to cook this at home.

If you'd like to make cassoulet at home, you're better off relying on this recipe that Adam Roberts adapted and posted on his blog, The Amateur Gourmet.

If you really want to simplify the recipe, then try this one from the N.Y. Times' Mark Bittman, although even he calls it a "heresy" compared to the original restaurant version of cassoulet.

I even found this recipe for chicken cassoulet. Knowledge of its existence would probably cause convulsions at a Cordon Bleu cooking school. Using an Italian cheese in a French entree? Incroyable!

This Cookie Crumbles

In the past few years, a few diet gurus have gained traction by pushing a new weight-loss concept based around eating cookies.

One of those diets, Dr. Siegal's Cookie Diet, has been around since the 1970s. His website touts a "secret amino acid protein blend" as the vehicle for weight loss.

This recent N.Y. Times article examined these diets and their claims. The theory behind these diets is that high-protein foods curb hunger. Yet, according to the Times, none of these cookie diets is supported by a clinical study. No surprise there.

More Than Mussels

Mention "Prince Edward Island" to anyone who loves shellfish, and the first thing they'll think about is mussels. And for good reason. PEI mussels are the most tender and tasty.

Yet, the blogger at Traveler's Lunch Box has identified a few other culinary treats if you ever happen to visit PEI.

Dreaming of Avgolemono

Just yesterday, I passed a newly opened Greek restaurant at 17th and K Streets in Washington, D.C. It's called Kellari Taverna, and here's a Zagat interview of Kellari's owner. It's an upscale restaurant with a virtually all-seafood menu (which, combined with the recession, may pose a challenge to its success).

Anyway, I stopped to peek inside. Very handsome decor. Then I read the restaurant's menu, which was posted outside.

My eyes immediately stopped at the word Avgolemono, a pale yellow soup made with lemon and chicken stock that sure warms you up on a chilly evening. I've always enjoyed eating that soup, but it is not an item that every Greek restaurant prepares. As far as I'm concerned, Avgolemono is Greek for "comfort food." I still have fond memories of the first time I ordered Avgolemono. It was at a Greek restaurant in Chicago.

Once I got home, I went online and started looking for Avgolemono recipes. They aren't easy to find.

I found this article on the website Serious Eats, which is accompanied by a recipe. The egg yolk addition looks a bit tricky. I've made Bearnaise sauce before so I know I'm capable of doing it, but there's simply no margin for error when it comes to incorporating egg yolks into a hot dish.

Maybe I'll try it sometime. Better yet, maybe I'll just let the chef at Kellari make it for me.

An Enticing Donut Recipe

Check out the cover of the latest edition of the magazine Edible Chesapeake. (No, not the cover pictured to the right.) Yes, that wonderful photo on the cover is of apple cider donuts.

Anyone who reads my blog knows that I adore apple cider donuts. A friend who has the October issue informs me that the donut recipe is inside.

Hmmm . . . considering that the forecast calls for a rainy Saturday, this could be an ideal weekend to park myself in the kitchen and give that recipe a try.

That Ain't No Starbucks

Mention the country of Rwanda, and most anyone who hears it will immediately think of the 1994 genocide in which 800,000 people were killed.

As the Rwandan people have restored peace and civility in their land, they are banking on coffee to bring in much-needed revenue and a stable prosperity. Most coffee in the East African nation is grown and harvested by families or small cooperatives.

Today's Washington Post reports on Bourbon, a newly opened coffee shop in downtown D.C. -- the first U.S. outlet of a Rwandan coffee chain.

"If done right, it could be the platform to re-brand the country," says (Bourbon owner Arthur) Karuletwa, former chief executive and now a shareholder in the company. Coffee can "create awareness that there's recovery, there's trade, there's investment opportunities, there's tourism. There's life after death."

After opening three stores in Kigali, Rwanda, over the past three years, Bourbon expanded operations to Washington in July, taking over a converted Starbucks at 21st and L streets NW. The cafe is furnished with dark wood tables and red-leather-upholstered chairs; the walls are painted gold, moss green and burnt orange; woven baskets and traditional African motifs decorate the shelves and walls.

... Plans call for Bourbon to open a cafe in Boston at the end of the year, and later a New York location. Unlike the D.C. shop, those stores will offer on-site roasting and daily cuppings.

... "Rwanda is a very wanted origin," says Susie Spindler, executive director of the Alliance for Coffee Excellence, which runs the Cup of Excellence competition. She says coffee traders and roasters visiting Rwanda are discovering unusual flavor profiles they never knew existed.

"It mixes a lot of regular characteristics that you usually only find in one area," agrees Stacey Manley, Bourbon's barista. "Latin American coffees tend to be lighter-bodied and kind of nutty with cocoa. But you almost never find an earthy, really heavy-bodied Latin American coffee. Those are typically Indonesian characteristics. And in Indonesia, coffee is very rarely bright. So the weird thing about Rwandan coffee is it'll have all these different characteristics in one coffee."

Not So Locally Sourced

From the N.Y. Times:

Restaurants (in the San Francisco Bay area) that so prominently credit their local food purveyors on their menus no doubt feature local wines loudly and proudly, right?

Not quite. A surprising number of Bay Area restaurants, including many dedicated to cooking with local ingredients, offer wine lists dominated by European bottles.

... “Though I love a lot of California winemakers and try to support them wherever possible,” (said Chris Deegan, sommelier of the restaurant Nopa). “I find myself drinking European wines most of the time and pairing European wines more successfully with the food.”

I totally understand what he means. For example, most pinot noirs produced in California and Oregon taste thin and lack structure -- too heavy to work well with pasta or seafood, but not enough backbone to make a good fit with beef or pork.

The Gender Gap of Cooking

In this amusing column, Washington Post columnist John Kelly exposes the gender divide in the kitchen. One spouse or partner generally cooks the day-in, day-out meals, while the other one cooks only when he or she is in the mood to dabble.

But that may not be the only difference. Does the kitchen also feed men's addiction to gadgets? Apparently.

Kelly writes:

... most men approach cooking as though it was a hobby, not an obligation. To us, cooking -- just like golf or woodworking or photography -- involves getting to buy stuff -- not stuff you can eat, but stuff you can play with. Tools.

Sometimes, I'll want to cook something but am stymied by the lack of proper equipment. I'll sigh loudly as I open drawers and cupboards, searching in vain for the exotic device I saw on TV. I think I might cook more often if only I had a ceramic ginger grater, a stainless-steel cream-whipper and my own collection of brining bags. And I'll never understand how we've lived all these years without a salad spinner. All that wet lettuce. . . . The horror!

For the family's main mealmaker, however, cooking isn't a hobby. It's a relentless grind. It's the perpetual acquisition of ingredients, the unceasing sweep of the minute hand as dinner time draws near, the constant reminder that not every person likes every thing.

This is why My Lovely Wife gives me the looks. I'm a dabbler, a poseur. I can painstakingly create the occasional meal but I can't be depended upon to regularly feed my family. And yet I want extra validation for my feeble efforts.

Last year, I bought the largest Dutch oven Le Creuset makes. This was ostensibly a gift for my wife, but really it was something I lusted after. This was the apotheosis of my tool lust: expensive, heavy, hewn from the virgin iron escarpments of France. It was so big a circus family could live inside.

The entire column is worth reading. For what it's worth, I take issue with one of Kelly's observations: everyone does not add vanilla extract to pancake batter.

Quick and Tasty

"Even the best cooks have a handful of meals they can whip up on automatic pilot."

So writes the N.Y. Times' Melissa Clark. In this article, Clark offers one example of her own: a recipe for Sauteed Wild Salmon with Brown Butter Cucumbers. I like wild salmon so this recipe may be worth a try.

A Worthy Choice?

Esquire magazine has named Barton Seaver as its 2009 chef of the year. Seaver is the chef at Blue Ridge, a restaurant in the Glover Park neighborhood of Washington, D.C. After eating two meals at Blue Ridge, this decision makes me shrug my shoulders.

Did Esquire's critic ever eat at Seaver's Blue Ridge? Don't get me wrong. I had good meals there, but they were far from exceptional. Far from what you'd expect from the chef of the year.

Although I think Tom Sietsema's 1.5 star rating (out of 4 stars) for Blue Ridge may be a little low, I share some of his observations about Blue Ridge.

The housemade potato chips with charred onion dip were excellent. My trout was good, but the burger I ordered the next time was totally blah. The sweet potato fritters were okay, but they were misnamed. They were more like dumplings than fritters. And the apple pie turned out to be more of a crumble and was mediocre -- especially considering how much our server praised that dessert.

I will probably dine at Blue Ridge again at some point, but it won't be a "destination restaurant" for me. And if Seaver is as talented as they say he is, then he must not be a regular presence in Blue Ridge's kitchen. Anyway, I'm not the only one who's raining on Seaver's parade.

Cutting Costs in a Recession

Across the country, many restaurants have taken a financial beating during this recession. It stands to reason that their owners would be looking for new ways to economize.

Sure, you could replace the cloth napkins with paper ones, but patrons will notice that right away. Moreover, it's the kind of switch that risks cheapening your restaurant's image.

According to the Wall Street Journal, many restaurants are being visited these days by "efficiency experts" who look for ways these establishments can cut costs. The WSJ says that these experts work

... by carefully pricing out a kitchen's every move — like making ranch dressing every three days instead of daily, which can shave prep time by 15 to 18 minutes. They help fine-tune recipes to economize on ingredients. (Taking olive oil out of the marinara sauce saved one chain $17,000 a year.) And they "engineer" menus to spotlight the highest-margin offerings. Forget soda; iced tea costs a restaurant as little as a nickel a glass.

... one tip comes with a spritz of controversy: Don't automatically serve patrons water, so they're more likely to order soda, beer or wine.