Boutari Moschofilero (Μπουτάρη Μοσχοφίλερο) & the Hungry Cat

For her birthday we took my mom to the Hungry Cat, a restaurant I've been wanting to try for a while now. The rationale, by the way, was interesting: she wanted crab, but the only other place to get fresh crab in town is the crabshack on the pier, and we had too many people for that. I would never have thought there would be only two places serving whole crab in SB! Anyway, she had the local crab and my dad had Alaskan crab legs. Hers was apparently tasteless, but Dan and I both thought my dad's was amazing! I had Hope Ranch oysters, Savas had the burger and Dan had the home made chorizo with mussels (which I will have to try my hand at). We paired it all with the Boutari Moschofilero, a dry white wine from Southern Greece, made by a Northern Greece vineyard (incidentally owned by the mayor of Thessaloniki, my home town). The wine was really really good, but in general I expect Greeks to make better white than they do red, so... In any case, I needed a martini with my oysters, but it would have been anti-social to indulge myself. Next time ;-) Overall it was an amazing outing!

Dinner at Epiphany

Epiphany is a restaurant in the same block as another couple of SB's best restaurants (none of which have I been to). One of Dan's colleagues is a foodie, so when it came time to schedule the company Christmas dinner, he picked Epiphany. I had a white bean and duck confit soup, tried the Dan's foie gras, had a roast duck entree and tried Dan's scallops. Dinner was paired with the Ghost Tree Cabernet Sauvignon, which was a great choice but a little inconsistent from bottle to bottle. Everything was off the charts good, except for the martini I had before dinner which was nothing to write home about. I highly recommend the place.

Dinner @ Noriega's in Bakersfield

We drove through Bakersfield on the way back from the Sierras last night, and stopped to have dinner with a friend. We went to the Noriega hotel, which serves Basque dinner at 7pm sharp every night. The hotel is in a rundown part of town, next to the train tracks, which reminds me a little bit of the area around Iggy's (my favorite late night joint, on Milwaukee) in Chicago.

Promptly at 7, we were herded into an old dining room set with three long, 50-person tables. She declared "two on one side, one on the other", and seated us right up against the people who'd arrived just before us. Apparently seating people without leaving gaps is a big deal, because someone who arrived after us and wanted to move had to whisper conspiratorially with our friend until they converged on an exit strategy.

The table had already been set with soup (chopped angel hair, hot salsa, and beans, in separate big bowls each, so you could ladle as much of each ingredient as you like), pickled tongue, boiled beets, and potato salad. I had a dry red house wine that went really well. Then out came the cottage cheese, then the first course, beef stew. French fries and baked chicken followed. Then there was amazing bleu cheese, and I had flan -- which I called creme caramele, for which I got a huh? Dinner was $20 a head.

I loved the dingy ambiance, the seating Gestapo, the family style arrangement, and most of all the old Basque gauchos who showed up a little after us to sit down and eat their home-style meal. It was all made even better by the fact that I had no idea at all what I was getting into when I walked in the door.

Per Se

Per Se reminds the CC of why he doesn't go out to eat in the "white tablecloth" restaurants.

Pitch perfect food but emotionally frigid.

The CC assumes readers have heard of the above restaurant and Thomas Keller. There was a 9-course menu, etc. and it was excellent. However, it was the equivalent of dancing with someone who spends all their time more concerned about their hair not falling out of place than having a good time.

The CC will also note the nosebleed borderline-larcenious prices.

Mr. Keller should note that at those prices errors are not forgiven. A waiter trying to take away a course before the diner has finished not once but four times is clearly not acceptable particularly when the restaurant is 60% empty for "second seating" on a Saturday!

Leaning over to refill water and coffee in front of the diner while he/she is speaking is pretty much a no-no straight out of the Culinary School 101. That it happened repeatedly is simply unforgivable.

The idea isn't that Mr. Keller isn't brilliant (he is, and the CC is competely and utterly in awe!) It's that now that "sous vide" and "shaved salt" has spread far and wide into the repertoire of the average talented culinary student, and that Mr. Keller's discoveries are accessible to the average homecook, he needs to amp up his game, or drop the prices (or both.)

Let's turn to some current pop songs to finish the review.

Is the CC sorry he went?

Non, je ne regrette rien!

Would the CC go again?

Don't take me back to Per Se, no, No, NO!

Father's office -- Santa Monica, CA

Returning from a conference last week, we stopped for a burger at "Father's Office" in Santa Monica. This place has apparently won every award imaginable for the quality of its burgers, and though the Florian burger circa '99-'02 has a special place in my heart, this was in fact the best burger I've *ever* had. The place has open seating, meaning you have to wait until someone leaves and then fight everyone else who's milling about for a seat. It's also very very loud, so it's not a great place to have a conversation -- but they bill themselves as a reimagining of the local pub, and when did you go to one of those to talk?