The Cured Ham

Shogun, Mammoth Lakes

A first for me in Mammoth, sushi in the Mountains; perhaps risky business. I was calculated though, I went on a Saturday night with the assumption that a weekend would bring people from LA and a fresh delivery of fish. I’ll tell you what, a pleasant surprise. I dined at the sushi bar among a full house of hungry diners.

None of the rolls were elaborate, no real showmanship behind the counter either, just efficiency. The spicy tuna was a highlight, made without mayonnaise, rather with Japanese hot pepper; a nice touch. A simple ahi tuna and cucumber salad, while heavy handed with the soy, was flavorful once the tuna was removed from the bath of dressing. A yellowtail and green onion roll was another solid offering. The unagi sushi was simply glazed, rather than dredged in the sweet sauce...bravo.

I was happiest with a sashimi plate of yellowtail and albacore, both with clean flavors. I love albacore to finish. Delicious fish, creamy, and with just a hint of soy and green onion is a favorite of mine. Add one 22oz Kirin to this meal and I walked away a happy man.

If you're craving sushi, there aren't many choices in Mammoth, so who knows when the delivery days are in the middle of summer or what type of volume they do during the week, but on a Saturday in the middle of winter, it's probably a good bet your getting fresh fish and they're busy doing volume.

Lola's Market, Healdsburg

 

Continuing to eat tacos in Sonoma County, a familiar name has come to Healdsburg, Lola’s Market. I went with two carnitas tacos. Larger corn tortillas and carnitas from the full food case. The full grocery store has its advantages; from fresh salsa, chile verde, fresh carnitas, and lots of fresh tortillas. But in the end, what was served to me for lunch matters.

 

Lola’s puts a topping on their tacos I’ve never had before, oil marinated olives. I can’t say whether they helped or hurt, but I did pause and wonder what those little chopped black things were. I’d say the tacos at Lola’s were average based upon my above average experiences locally at Taco Grande and Guanajuato.The oven case doesn't keep the carnitas crisp, just warm and perhaps a bit dry on the ends. I’ll head back simply to shop at the market for speciality items or the meat counter. Pricing on pork, beef, and chicken is very competitive.

Broken Yolk, San Diego Gaslamp

My first time to a Broken Yolk and the experience was on par with Denny's. The food was brought out fast, the meal was under $10, and my choice probably was enough calories for half the day. The ham and egg breakfast sandwich was as good as any I've had. The scrambled eggs were cooked but not dry, the ham was smokey deli style, and the sourdough was grilled fresh. Hash browns were crunchy and even well salted. No complaints

 

Arterra, Marriott Del Mar

I've dined here several times over the years, the original concept designed by Bay Area restaurateur Bradley Ogden. The fish and chips have been one of my favorites over the years. But today I went with what seems to becoming my new favorite for lunch, the burger.

Brioche bun, lettuce, tomato, bacon, cheese, tasty garlic, cheese and rosemary fries and a request for a medium-rare burger. Since I'm highlighting it, no, the cow was over-cooked to a well done. As this was a business lunch, I wasn't going to send back the burger.

Every other item of the burger was good, although I do prefer a bit more mayonnaise or 'special sauce' on the burger. Certainly not the worst burger I've had and obviously not the best. I'll probably keep returning to Arterra as the food over the years have been solid, even under different chefs, the atmosphere good for business lunches, and of course as a Platinum Marriott Card Member I tend to eat in the hotel when convenient.

Acqua al 2, San Diego Gaslamp District

When I lived in Florence, I must have walked by Acqua al 2 literally everyday as I walked to the Culinary Academy. I never ate at the Florence location. However, I have recently dined at the San Diego location. Unfortunately, it did not remind me of Florence.

I ordered some basics, arugula salad and risotto with mushrooms. The arugula salad was reasonably authentic albeit out of season. I would hate to think anyone can screw up a salad in health concious San Diego. Three items on the salad plate, fresh arugula, sliced cherry tomato, large shavings of grana, dressed lightly. The Italians at this point in the season wouldn't have used tomatoes, rather they would have used citrus in the salad. It's citrus season in California, but no citrus in site.

The risotto was far less inspiring. Virtually no presentation on a wide, long plate. The plate itself is part of the presentation and vessel for keeping the rice warm. The dish was brought out warm, but certainly not hot to the table. The dish itself didn't really pop, undersalted, and lacked any real depth of flavor. It was rice cooked with mushrooms, not risotto con funghi. I've made the dish far too many times to cut some slack for a nostalgic trip down memory lane.

I had higher hopes for a restaurant that has origins in a city so close to my heart.

Scopa, Healdsburg

I've eaten at Scopa a couple of times, both for dinner. I have no intention of detailing both meals (sometimes I shut off the critic in me on a Friday) and I don't have pictures because I sat at the bar both times (where the bartender took good care of me). The menu changes often and it's one of the toughest places in town to get into. I will however point out one dish which has a special place in my heart, Tripe.

I love a well made tripe dish. I've often made reference to Diavola in Geyserville as having a superlative tripe when Chef decides to offer it. Of course I can blabber on about the tripe stands in Florence as well. I'm pleased to say that Scopa also has a wonderful tripe dish, although more Southern Italian in preperation than Diavola. The addition of chili peppers adds a wonderful spicy component to the dish. The whole, squatty pepper is presented on top of the dish with a warning, eat at your own peril. The addition of some grilled bread is offered with the steaming bowl of tripe. The tripe itself was tender, incorporated well with the tomato based sauce, and had no 'stink' that lesser tripe dishes are known to have. I really enjoyed my tripe.

Be warned, Scopa is a small restaurant in the Healdsburg town square and can be nearly impossible some days to get a table or one of the less than 8 seats at the bar. They do take reservations. I tend to eat when they open at 5:30. 

Fuy Jou, Miraflores, Lima, Peru

 

Fuy Jou in Lima came recommended to us by a Chinese-American Seattle family visiting relatives in Lima that we met at dinner the night before at Panchita. The joys of being a friendly traveler.

A good walk from the hotel, Fuy Jou in located on the fifth floor of a multi-use commercial building in the Miraflores District of Lima. Not easy to find as we wouldn’t have thought to look up to the 5^th floor, we walked up the stairs to a good size dining facility, with seating for over 120 people, set up that afternoon buffet style. Sure enough, for 35 soles a person about $13, it was all-you-can-eat Chifa. Not what I expected, but certainly welcome as a stage to try a variety of Chifa in Peru. One other thing, this place went from empty to fully booked in about 20 minutes at lunch, with several 6,8,and 10 top tables making more visits to the cold and hot station than I did. The difference here in Lima compared to the buffet line in Vegas, the lack of the grossly obese.

I made about 5 rounds of visits to the cold, hot, and dessert areas. The dim sum area of the hot section was a regular stop with classic pork shu mai and shrimp dumplings in mass supply. In the cold section, a simple sliced cucumber and garlic dish was one of my favorites; along with a Thai glass noodle salad which had some heat. In the hot section, stir fried green beans and garlic was tasty, as were the shitakes stir fried with soy and garlic. 

The flan to end my buffet fest was a surprising sweet treat. I real good flan, not over-gelatinized, or over-sweet, the flan was delicious.

Certainly didn’t expect a Chinese buffet for our afternoon lunch, but considering the variety and regular fresh plates coming from the kitchen, the afternoon turned out great.

Dick's Smoke Wagon, Big Pine, CA

 

Dick’s Smoke Wagon, Big Pine. While I didn’t get a chance to head to the East Side of California over the summer, I was lucky enough to break away during the winter. However, that means going “around the horn” through Mojave. There are benefits to this route, one being the Indian Wells Brewery in Inyokern the second includes driving through the towns of Lone Pine, Independence, Big Pine and Bishop.

Big Pine, gateway to the Palisades Mountain Range and the Ancient Bristlecone Forest is home to one more local treasure, Dick’s Smoke Wagon. Driving North, on the East Side of Main Street in Big Pine is a large mobile trailer parked on a concrete slab. The trailer is familiar to me, but it’s out of place. This trailer has been parked in Bishop for as long as I can remember. So why is it parked here in Big Pine and why is it parked next to what appears to be a renovated commercial kitchen?

 

I approach the trailer, walk up the ramp and talk with the sole occupant. After a ‘hello’ the man in the trailer rolls right into telling me the finishing times of each of the things he’s smoking, ribs, ribs, ribs; all several hours away from tender completion. Not good for my time schedule. “But if you’re here for lunch, I’ve got all my sandwiches ready, along with beans, coleslaw, and home-made jalapeno poppers.” Oh yes, I’m ready for lunch.

 

I proceed to order the bbq pulled pork sandwich with bbq baked beans and a vinegar based coleslaw. But is this a sandwich? The bottom of a small white dinner roll is placed in the middle of the center island of the take-away container and covered with a heaping portion of pork, bbq sauce, and topped with simple slivered cabbage. The top of the bun is laid to rest on the mass of pork. It is as though Dali has influenced the construction and inspiration for the surreal pork sandwich. The perfect unblemished little bun riding on top of pork carnage, underneath, the bun’s other half, immersed in a sea of bbq sauce and pork. Technically a sandwich, meat sandwiched in between two pieces of bread, yet unworkable as a sandwich eaten with your hands. Adding to the total experience and scene, a converted mobile trailer with smoke billowing from the front, parked on an industrial concrete slab, with a view of the snowcapped Sierra Nevada range. A surreal masterpiece!

Normally, people get lazy when they pull pork and allow large hunks of fat to mix in with pure meat. Not at Dick’s Smoke Wagon. Pure meat in my sandwich. The sauce is tangy, not too sweet, with nice spice notes. It’s a balance moment, all the aspects of great sauce. The beans and slaw were very tasty. The coleslaw had more vinegar than mayo, crispy, well integrated and offered a bit of cutting acid to the sweet bbq sauce and the richness of the pork.

 

I chatted with the pit master a bit after eating my sandwich. We discussed who made the Smoke Wagon, the development of the commercial kitchen, and the upcoming trout season. Before I continued my drive, I figured I’d ask if I could take a bottle of his BBQ sauce.

“Excuse me. Do you bottle your sauce?”

“No, just make it fresh each day depending on what I think I need. If I bottle it, it wouldn’t be fresh would it?”

Now how can I disagree with that?! I hope my readers can make it to Big Pine and try Dick’s Smoke Wagon. They are also on FACEBOOK.

The Mad Duck, Fresno / Clovis

Mad. When one looks at the dictionary definitions of "Mad", the words Harebrained, Uncontrollably Foolish, Mentally Disturbed are all possibilities. I must have been a little mad that day to have suggested dining at The Mad Duck.

So let's start the review off with some basics about The Mad Duck:

Plastic utensils, plastic trays (I'm sure they're high quality plastic), no coasters for drinks, no greeting either upon arrival or departure (problematic when there is no host station at the front door, only awkward empty space and a distracted bartender who eventually greeted us when we sat down at an available table), no explanation or menu indicators that sides do not accompany the main dishes (such as fries or onion rings), no additional offer of condiments such as ketchup, mustard, or mayo with our onion rings (just in case I may not care for the onion ring sauce provided, I shouldn't have to ask), and no break in between our appetizer and main course arrival. The room temperature was cold enough for me to keep my jacket on. On the upside, our beers were served in glass pints, not red plastic cups used at fraternity parties and tailgates and all of the flat screen TVs were working.

We ordered deviled eggs to start (and at this point no utensils or napkins on the table) Simple and classic, The Mad Duck version were classically seasoned, however the eggs were topped with tiny pieces of bacon, real tiny pieces, that tasted like over cooked bacon crumbs rather than a garnish that was additive. Remove the bacon and the deviled eggs were good, not earth-shatteringly good, but certainly good.

As for main courses, I ordered the LuLu burger while my colleague ordered the spicy shrimp baguette. The baguette's center was hollowed out and shrimp was stuffed in the open core of the bread. No incisions to the sides or the top, just a hollowed out bread core. The shrimp were seasoned with a very heavy hand of black pepper and accompanied by a sauce labeled as a brown butter. The resulting shrimp and loose sauce were then shoveled into the baguette's visually unappealing cavernous hole, creating a dirt-brown hole filled with pepper shrimp. The flavors and textures were equally unappealing to my guest, with the black pepper overwhelming the flavor of the shrimp. The sauce consistency was that of near water rather than a constructed brown butter sauce, thus secreting the brown liquid into a pool underneath the bread, turning it soggy and wet. This was labeled as a Mad Duck specialty.

My LuLu burger was cooked as requested medium-rare, a bonus. The burger was good, each individual element was fine, but like the day before at Pismo's and their Ahi Tower, flavorful yet uninspired, bordering on simple crude assembly of ingredients placed in a plastic tray lined with wax paper...wait, that's exactly what it was.

When I think of hand made onion rings, I think of my early childhood and those formative years in the kitchen under the watchful eye of my mother. Armed with safety scissors, I would run to the freezer to pull out a plastic bag filled with onion rings, industrially crafted to perfection. Each perfectly golden onion ring was thinly sliced, slightly frost-bitten, looked suspiciously similar to the other onion rings in the pile with a minimal amount of variation in color or texture. My Dad told me each onion ring was ISO compliant, whatever that meant. With my juvenile hand, I would cut the plastic bag with care and reverence just prior to my mother dropping them in the hot oil. 100% hand made. I cut the plastic bag by hand and my mother placed each ring by hand into the hot oil. Ah, the fond memories of childhood.

We ordered a side of hand-made onion rings at The Mad Duck since we were not aware that neither fries nor rings came with our sandwich or burger. We were presented with our hand-made onion rings within 3 minutes after we ordered them. I love hand-made onion rings.

For this level of attention and food quality, I'd rather go back to a food stand at the bus station in Arequipa, Peru. For a more local example, there's no great expectations at Dog House Grille or grandiose statements that lead you to believe you're going to be ordering anything but inexpensive human fuel in a very casual environment and as a reminder, I like Dog House Grille.

If you really want food served in a plastic tray lined with wax paper, wait for the Big Fresno Fair and buy a corndog or a soft taco...And you don't have to ask for condiments at the Fair.

Pismo's Coastal Grill, Fresno

I’ve been to Pismo’s a few times in the last 12 months and at this point. The menu, while no longer a hand-written mess, has become a combination of full color and copied collage of menu items on several pages instead of one page and just as confusing as before. Luckily, it’s easy to find what fish is available and the cooking method employed.

Ahi Poke Tower, probably our highlight, suggested by our server since I didn’t know where to look on the menu for it. Confusingly, she regarded the Tower as a main dish, when it’s actually an appetizer. Layers of avocado, ahi, edamame, fried wonton flakes, topped with sprouts made for what is fast becoming a staple in many restaurants. Flavored with sesame and soy, while crude in terms of the chop and basic presentation, the overall flavor was good, just not refined. The Yard House and D&B’s serves something like this. I could have easily eaten this just as easily as a main course, as the server suggested.

Fish and chips, the fries were well seasoned and crispy. The fish, however, was a bit of a disappointment. Firstly, there was no paper or cloth to absorb excess grease from the deep fry. Secondly, batter to fish ratio, heavy batter and as a result a slightly doughy core. Really good fish and chips is not easy, which is why I like to order it; it’s a real test for the kitchen. Probably wouldn’t order it again at Pismo’s as this is my second go around with consistently below average results. 

Blackened Sturgeon with coleslaw was straightforward and satisfying. The fish was cooked through and moist and tasted fresh, while the coleslaw was crisp and not heavily dressed. For $17, the portion size is about 4 oz, with small portions of slaw. Not value for the money, but reasonably well prepared. 

I had no issues with service or being seated, but we were being seated at the tail-end of lunch service. Is there value for the money? Tough call really. At $46 lunch tab for one appetizer, 2 entrée’s and one iced tea is probably on the high side for the portion size. The equivalency test would come from Tadich Grill in San Francisco for a simple grilled fish and one or more sides. As Pismo’s does not serve Loch Duart Scottish Salmon (Pismo’s serves farmed, color added Atlantic Salmon but any decent supplier can get Loch Duart) there isn’t perfect equivalency. Nor does Pismo’s pay rent for a prime Financial District location or Bay Area taxes or salary. Yet, an 8oz cut of Duart Salmon with potatoes and vegetables run $23.75.   

…And we’re all entitled to make a profit and serve farmed fish if we’re smart enough to do so.