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In September of last year, I was invited on an eating junket, along with a few others, to tour Germany’s top tables. The invitation came from my friend Ingo Scheuermann, author of of the blog High End Food and co-author of “bau.stil,” Christian Bau’s new cookbook, who organized this trip with the German Board of Tourism, our sponsor.

The itinerary was simple, but spectacular: Five days, five cities, and five of Germany’s best chefs. Dozens of miles, dozens of dishes, and a dozen Michelin stars.

A few of us inaugurated the trip early with dinner at Schloss Berg, Bau’s three Michelin-starred restaurant in Perl Nennig. From there, we shot across the country on the sleek deutsche bahn to Wolfsburg, where we picked up the rest of our group. Here is where I’ll start the story. I’ll rewind and forward to fill in the rest later.

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Wolfsburg is home to the Volkswagen Group (which includes Audi, Porsche, Bugatti, Lamborghini, and Bentley) and its Autostadt, an impressive complex that hosts the delivery of their cars to buyers willing to make the pilgrimage.

German innovation and engineering, this place oozes it, and the attendant money that comes with it.

Sleek silos rise around the corporate campus, stacked with cars; from afar, glass showcases of high-dollar micro machines. They are stunning and surreal to behold.

To house the company’s high-dollar executives and clients, there’s a silo too, this one more squat than tall, with Ritz Carlton’s name on it. It too, is meticulously designed (by Frenchman Andrée Putman), sleek and fetching. The rooms are generous, especially by European standards, almost fawning with footage. The lawn is mowed with little robots, that somehow mind the water’s edge, and trees, and squirrels too. And there’s a breathtaking lap pool floating in the middle of a pond out back, with a magnificent view of the old Volkswagen factory, smokestacks and all. I relished this amenity above all others.

And, of course, if no expense is to be spared, there shall be a stunning dining room, with stunning wares, and stunning food. Volkswagen delivers all of these at Aqua, Sven Elverfeld’s Michelin 3-starred restaurant.

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Of the meals I had on this junket, the one Elverfeld presented us was, for me, the most compelling example of neue deutsch.

“Neue” it is. But it does not cut loose its mooring from the mother flavors of its chef. Fat trimmed lean with acid, this is the story that makes German cuisine so readable to me. And Elverfeld narrates it wonderfully, with wit and precision.

His food is playful, like a frozen balloon of handkäs, a pungent, sour milk cheese, over which warm vinaigrette was spooned to reveal a hollow heart. Germans will know this dish – traditionally, a marinated cheese – and its amusing title – handkäs mit musik – suggestive of the tunes you’ll toot after you eat it. But not in this form, dripping and dramatic, finished with crunchy croutons. This was neue deutsch.

Or, an homage to Piet Mondrian, a gridded plate of lamb, potato, and a tangy herb sauce topped with a grassy herb salad. Its rigid, Dutch borders belied its comforting, German appeal.

And playful too is the sommelier, Jürgen Giesel, who started our dinner with a taste of wine, served in black glasses. We were asked to guess the type and origin of the wine. My table mates went all over the world, but not to South Africa, whence this juice.

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Elverfeld’s food is precise, German engineering at its finest. Every little detail was exact, every corner crimped; every pleat, pressed. Many of the service pieces were designed by Elverfeld, to ensure that his food, like little cigars of bienenstich (toasted almond and pastry cream), for example, would sit just so, and that cornettes of crab wouldn’t list or lean, soiling the magnificent tablecloth, woven to appear as if a million bubbles were surfacing on the tables at Aqua.

The meal started with a crowd of pretty canapés, a smattering of Germanic snacks, like currywurst, and konigsberger klopse (a Prussian meatball with white sauce), and “toast Hawa’ii,” a long-distance rendering of the tropics: pineapple, ham and cheese. It ended in similar fashion, with a refreshing cup of Beeren-muesli – essentially, yogurt and granola – and a parade of snacky sweets, like prinenrolle – a chocolate and biscuit club sandwich, if you will – and linzertorte – and other petits fours, including a chariot of bon bons to end all chariots of bon bons.

In between, there was a bit of this and bit of that, not all of which was entirely memorable, if I’m to be honest, although all of it was beautiful and tasty, like a cocotte of sweetbreads in a nutty sauce with potatoes and celery, and a landscape of foie gras and ham, tangy with Granny Smith apple purée and toasty with kernels of amaranth.

There was a formidable selection of cheeses; this was truly impressive. And a beautiful trompe l’oeil apple, a neue strüdel, if you will; that was fun and delicious.

But my two favorite dishes I’ve already noted above, that frozen cheese globe, and that Mondrian on a plate. These two have stayed with me the longest, despite having had the wind stolen from their sails a bit by meals I had earlier in the year.

That ball of handkäs? It was essentially that frozen balloon of Gorgonzola I had elBulli a month before, but using a different cheese, presented in a different size.

And that Piet Mondrian lamb dish? Carme Ruscalleda had already rendered that Dutch painting for me in a fairytale by the sea.

In a shrinking world, where culinary arts are overlapping and ideas are funneling at a phenomenal rate, I avoid debating derivation, or policing plagiarism. I’m simply not that expert.

But, if we are to examine the voice of neue deutsch and evaluate its contributions to the world, unique and significant, then I do think it’s important to take note of the references it makes, or claims for itself.

Doubt not, though, that Aqua is a high, German table that will fulfill the fanciest fantasies. If not for its precision, or its luxury (some of the most stunning stemware I’ve ever seen – they grew taller with each course, until we were left with an aperitif served in what seemed like a long-stem rose), or the hospitality you will surely find here, then at least for the flavors of Elverfeld’s neue deutsch, it’s worth considering.

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Canapés

“Toast Hawaii“
Cornet of Crabs from Busum
“VW-Currywurst“
Caramelized Kalamata Olive

Konigsberger Klopse
Baked Camembert with Cranberries

Tompinambour
Pumpkin Bread Chip
Pumpkin-Carrot “Exotic“

1st Course
“Handkas mit Musik“
Iced homage to my homeland.

Bruchkobeler Appelwol “süß-gespritzt”

2nd Course
Foie Gras and Marinated Iberico Ham
Onion tapioca, Granny Smith, and amaranth.

2008 Bernkasterler Doctor Riesling Spatlese, Vinery Dr. Thanisch, Mosel, Germany

3rd Course
Stewed Topside of Muritz Lamb
Frankfurter green sauce, potatoe & egg.

1995 Chateau Couhins Lurton Double Magnum, Passac-Leognan, Bordeaux

4th Course
Glazed Calf’s Sweetbreads
Nuts butter, mushrooms, celery, potato.

1995 Chateau Couhins Lurton Double Magnum, Passac-Leognan, Bordeaux

5th Course
Langoustine & Charcoal-Grilled Belly of Young Pork
Bulls heart tomato, crustacean mayonnaise, balsamico emulsion. ‘

2007 Pinot Noir, Vinery Himmeroderhof, Mosel, Germany

6th Course
Red Deer Calf from the Altmark Region
Parsley, vineyard peach, and chicory.

2007 Blaufrankisch Rusterberg

7th Course
A Selection of Cheeses

8th Course
“Apple Strudel“

2006 Chateau de Fargues, Sauternes, France

Petits Fours
Bienestich
Prinenrolle
Linzertorte
Carrot Pie & Ginger Ale
Milk Chocolate & Rosemary Caramel

Greek Yogurt
Fig, honey, & vanilla vinegar.

Chariot of Bon Bons

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To see a slideshow of all of the dishes, CLICK HERE.

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Aqua
The Ritz-Carlton, Wolfsburg
Parkstraße 1
38440 Wolfsburg, Deutschland

*** Michelin

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There aren’t many on my list of musts.  But, this past weekend, Pappy’s Smokehouse in St. Louis earned a line on it.

Gerard Craft, chef-owner of niche (and the attendant Taste and Brasserie), had commended Mike Emerson’s barbecue too many times to be ignored. So, to the smokehouse we went for lunch.

We arrived to a familiar scene there, a line snaking through the dining room, around the corner, and down a long hall.  I’m sure if it weren’t below freezing outside, it would have gone out the door too. But, here is the benefit of eating with a local celebrity chef and a friend of the owner: not two seconds at its tail, we were plucked out of line by Emerson, sat at a table, and fed generously.*

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Let me tell you about the baby back ribs here. They are delicious; glazed magazines of juicy pork so succulent that we shot off two slabs without trying, discharging the bones like cartridge shells, left and right.  These stubby, taut packets of fatty meat are firmer and pinker than the meat on the beef ribs that I’m used to eating in Kansas City. Emerson rubs his ribs with spices and leaves you to sauce it yourself at table.

He also sent out a sample of smoked meats: turkey, pulled pork and brisket.  All of them were moist and tender, especially the brisket, which had a tighter grain than the brisket I’m used to having in Kansas City. Emerson’s brisket was rosy on the interior, almost like sliced steak.

On the side, we had baked beans and slaw, which I particularly liked. Emerson’s cabbage is chipped (as opposed to shredded/sliced) and tossed in a vinegary sauce flecked with celery seed.  I prefer this lighter type of coleslaw to the thicker, creamier type.  And we had a stack of sweet potato fries, seasoned with salt and sugar, if I’m not mistaken.

There were three sauces at the table. Pappy’s Original is thick, dark and tangy. Sweet Baby Jane is just as thick and dark, but sweeter. And there’s Holly’s Hot Sauce, which is thinner than the other two, high in vinegar with a mild heat; my favorite one.

I barely looked at the menu, but I did notice there was chicken on it.  I’ll have to return for it.  And Frito pie too!

After our lunch, Emerson took us back to his tiny kitchen, where he said his staff had smoked over a million pounds of meat last year to meet the demands of catering, take-out, and walk-in orders. Damn.

The attention this places is getting is not undeserved.  If you’re in St. Louis, you must to Pappy’s.

Pappy’s Smokehouse
3106 Olive Street
Saint Louis, Missouri 63103
314-535-4340

* A special thanks to Mike Emerson, for your hospitality, and to Gerard Craft and Jeff Lehman, for introducing me to Pappy’s.

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Although I’ve spent countless hours at Lambert Field (I’ve flown through it more than any other airport in the world, by far) my time in St. Louis has been slight, a half-dozen one-nighters over the past three decades: school field trips, business trips, and a quick eating trip three years ago.

So, when Gerard Craft graciously offered to host a bluestem cookbook dinner at niche this past weekend, I decided to visit for a few days.

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Drive east from Kansas City on I-70, following the Big Muddy Mo for four hours, and you’ll arrive in St. Louis, the older, slightly larger, and, in many ways, more stately city of the two.

It’s home to the Cardinals, the Blues, and the Rams; Anheuser Busch (which, sadly, is no longer locally owned) and Schlafly beers; Edward Jones and Scottrade. It has produced dozens of stars, including John Goodman, Chuck Berry, Nelly, and Mad Man Don Draper himself, Jon Hamm.

In 1904, St. Louis hosted the summer Olympics and the World’s Fair, which not only immortalized the city as the subject of the 1944 musical, “Meet Me in St. Louis,” but endowed it with Forest Park, now a public greenspace larger than Central Park and home to the city’s zoo and a handful of museums. And, in many ways, the park seems to represent the grandeur, preserved in red brick, of the rest of the city. There are universities, and wide boulevards, and, of course, the Gateway Arch, Saarinen’s sleek, silver span on the riverfront that has become the city’s symbol.

And, from what I can tell, it’s home to a fairly robust, and growing restaurant scene, with a healthy number of food writers and publications to cheer it on: Joe Bonwich, the critic of record at the Post-Dispatch; Ian Froeb at the Riverfront Times; St. Louis Magazine; Feast; and Sauce, among others.

As usual, I arrived with a longer list of restaurants than time allowed.

So, from my bucket list, I pinned Kevin Nashan’s Sidney Street Café to the top and spent the rest of my time in St. Louis getting to know the niche family of restaurants (Craft has three of them, soon to be four – Pastaria will open some time later this year).  I also squeezed in a bonus, barbecue lunch at Mike Emerson’s Pappy’s Smokehouse.

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One of the most important messages that the Garreltses wanted to convey in the bluestem cookbook is that cooking should be fun, it should be an adventure. And it should be personal. At their very least, recipes are replicable formulas with fairly predictable results, but at their very best, they become trailheads to self-scripted journeys beyond.  So, I was thrilled that the Garreltses and Craft decided to tag-team the cookbook dinner, going off-road to create a five-course menu of dishes inspired by ones in the book.

I’m probably the only person who has eaten every dish in the cookbook, and multiple times each (neither Colby nor Megan attended each other’s recipe testing sessions, so not even they have eaten every dish in the book).  So, for me, getting to see three of the Midwest’s best chefs play with the recipes with which I spent so much time was especially meaningful. Adapted and revised, focused on seasonal and local ingredients, this menu was the best possible expression of the spirit with which the Garreltses and I wrote the book.  Those who came to the dinner got a real treat.

I’ll pause briefly to compare the dinner menu with the recipes in the book. If you want to skip straight to the photos, click here.

First, let me just note that Gerard’s focaccia, sprinkled with salt, herbs, and chile flakes, is wonderful.  I could tell it was going to be great when I saw one of his line cooks patting the bubbly, slick dough onto baking sheets when we arrived at the restaurant in the early afternoon. Out of the oven, it was a golden-brown mattress with a pillowy, soft crumb in between.  It was gorgeous.

And, although I was skeptical when I saw the Gerard’s amuse bouche – a maple custard with shiitakes and dashi caviar, served in a hollowed egg shell – it turned out to be one of the most delicious things I ate on my trip to St. Louis.  The custard was more like a mousse, airy and light, flecked with bits of shiitake mushrooms, crisped in oil, and topped with pearls of dashi. Serving them slightly warm, he nailed the sweet-umami flavor beautifully with this comforting egg cup.

Gerard’s first dish took the hamachi and radishes from the recipe on page 15 and married it to the flavors of the chawanmushi on page 202: dashi, scallions, and hon shimeji mushrooms (these he turned into a chip, as a garnish). What resulted was a beautiful fish tartare, studded with meaty radishes and brightened with fresh mint.

His second dish was a variation of the cod recipe on page 220. He kept all of the flavors and ingredients, and, treating them as color spokes, turned the wheel to recreate each in a new form (it my have been a coincidence, but the plates he used for this course were a particularly witty, visual cue for his playful method).  Instead of serving the fish in brodo, with parsnips and carrots tossed in pancetta vinaigrette, Gerard poached the cod in hot pancetta fat until warm and silky, and served it with whipped carrots and a caramelized parsnip broth.

Colby’s first course was essentially the crispy sweetbreads with roasted radicchio recipe on page 206, one of my favorites.  But to it, he added the pickled apples from the rack of venison recipe on page 224, using a meatier apple so that the flesh could be scooped out into little melon balls (the recipe calls for miniature, lady apples), and a spoonful of bourbon molasses and candied pecans. A balance of fat and acid, sweet and bitter, this was my favorite course of the night.

For the meat course, Colby cross-bred the strip loin recipe (with Brussels sprouts) from page 172 with the short ribs recipe (served with grits) on page 228. To this dish, he added mustard greens, both braised (with cream and garlic) and the fresh, peppery leaves of the “Ultra Karate Kick” variety, aptly named, from Chef’s Garden.

Megan’s dessert – graham cracker pound cake with chocolate-poached pears and tangerine sorbet – was taken directly from the book (pg. 238), and so were the linzer cookies (pg. 116), which went home with guests as favors (along with a package of Kansas City Roasterie’s bluestem coffee blend). But, she substituted dates for figs in the spicy fig cakes (pg. 188) that arrived with the other petits fours, including chocolate truffles and salted caramels.

Despite the freezing drizzle that set in early on, both seatings remained sold-out.  Thank you to all who braved the slick streets to support the cookbook and make the dinner a success. We hope you find your own adventures with the recipes in it. And thank you, Gerard, and your awesome staff at niche, for hosting a wonderful event.*  I hope we continue to strengthen our cross-state ties; let’s make I-70 a culinary highway in Missouri.

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After the cookbook dinner, we ended the night at Taste by niche in the city’s Central West End district.

What I especially liked about Taste – one of those Prohibition revivalist bars – is that it also serves food.  Most bars of this caliber and type focus on drinks, offering a few snacks, or sloppy sponges at best.  But here, in addition to top-shelf cocktails, you can also get a variety of small plates, nicely cooked and presented, like chicken-fried terrine with a crunchy, breaded crust and a warm, jellied meat center, and a comforting slice of scrapple topped with a fried egg.

Next door to Taste is Brasserie by niche, Craft’s Parisian picture postcard with scuffed wood floors and a tin-tiled ceiling. On my last day in the city, I met Gerard and a couple of his cooks there for brunch. The menu was a hit parade of classics, like salad Lyonnaise, quiche du jour, eggs Benedict, and a lovely farmhouse breakfast board with cold ham, six-minute eggs, fromage blanc, and buttery toast. I had a wonderful brisket tartine, smothered with melted fontina cheese, and a haystack of crispy pencil fries. And, to make sure I’d sleep on the flight back to Kansas City, I ended with a scoop of boozy brandy ice cream.  It did the job nicely.

In between all the nichery, I went to Pappy’s Smokehouse for lunch, and had dinner with a friend at Sidney Street Café, where chef Nashan offered to cook a tasting menu for us.  I’ll get to those two meals in later posts.  Check back for the links below.

Brasserie by niche
niche
Pappy’s Smokehouse
Sidney Street Café
Taste by niche

* A special thanks to Colby and Megan Garrelts, Gerard and Suzie Craft, David Crum, Nate and Christine Hereford, Adam Altnether, Mike Emerson, Kevin Nashan, Jeff Lehman, Chris Kelling, and Rick Nelson, for a wonderful weekend in St. Louis!

Photos: Meaghan Boyer, pastry assistant at niche, framed by one of the most beautiful kitchen windows I’ve ever seen, niche, St. Louis, Missouri; Gerard Craft with Colby and Megan Garrelts at niche, St. Louis, Missouri; Adam Altnether plating hamachi crudo at niche, St. Louis, Missouri; and “Mr. Black,” a cocktail at Taste by niche, St. Louis, Missouri.

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Genre fully matures, and, indeed, survives, when it’s able to hold a mirror up to itself, point, and laugh.

So predictable become its habits, so formulaic its courses, that to continue without acknowledging them would be suicidal, endangering its species to a hoary fate of tropes and clichés, dismissed as easy.

Why? Because a puzzle solved is a puzzle no more. Fashion becomes unfashionable, fads fade, and trends die.

Out of self-preservation, genre must break the fourth wall and address its audience directly, jumping one step ahead of its demise to acknowledge and appeal: here’s why you have loved me and why you will continue loving me – because I don’t take myself too seriously.  We know it as parody. Sometimes it’s funny, sometimes it’s profound, but it always refreshes the stale and stagnant with a candy coat of artificial reality.

I touched on this topic briefly in a previous rumination. I return to it here for a lengthier consideration, an extension to my thoughts on the edible proscenium.

So, Randy tells us what we already know about horror movies, and, suddenly, “Scream” isn’t just another cheesy example.

The Lady of the Lake and Sir Galahad harmonize a rousing Broadway show-stopper in “Spamalot” to acknowledge that “Once in every show, there comes a song like this; it starts off soft and low, and ends up with a kiss.” The song is overblown, sticky and sweet, and we love it because it’s true.*

Austin Powers, an international man of mystery, a spy for Her Majesty’s crown, is, admittedly, not as dashing as 007.  But we don’t care, because, in the end, he still gets the villain, with an arsenal of preposterous gadgetry and some scripted luck. And more importantly, in the end, he gets the babes.

Liz Lemon and Jack Donaghy, two fictional NBC executives atop 30 Rock, drop Verizon’s name repeatedly in an indiscreet product placement in an episode of their Emmy Award-winning sitcom, and then turn into the camera and ask, “when do I get my money?”  Let’s just call a spade a spade, we agree.

Picasso, who had mastered all of the masters, repainted Velazquez’s iconic Las Meninas in a new shapes, colors, and flavors, the princess of Spain in cubic form. We oooh.

Tongue-in-cheek, Roy Lichtenstein took America’s comic strip and turned it into a body of work, melodramatic, oversized, and transformative. We ahhh.

A mustachioed mixologist swings his tweeded vest into the saddle at a bar and declares, “I’ve brought my own ice.”  It’s all a farce, of course, “Shit Bartenders Say,” just one in a series of generic memes, viral now.  We cheer and clap.

Why are parodies so popular?

Because they invite us inside the genre for an intimate roast, and reward us for having done our homework. Spoofs rely on the ability of the audience to recognize a set of conventions, without which its conceit would fail. Able to register the references, keep with the curve, we become smug with savvy, proud of our intellectual prowess: we got the joke. And suddenly, we’re no longer bored with the dull and dying, because we’ve been included in the demystification of an icon, and, ultimately, we’ve had our egos stroked. Satisfied, knowing that the genre needs us, would die without us, we happily set aside our need for utility and innovation and grant clemency to an otherwise expiring set of conventions that offer no challenges or progress, renewing and revalidating them.

So, horror movies ply on with their predictable plots; Broadway keeps churning out easily digestible belters that bring down the curtain; spies keeping trapping their villains with impossible gadgetry, and their women too; products continually drop onto screen and out of actors’ mouths; and artists continue to push the boundaries of sense and sensibilities – a twelve million-dollar stuffed shark, anyone?

And chefs continue to weave their nostalgic stories, currently foraged and foamy, witty and wild.

But how much of it is actually worthwhile?  Or, are we all just gushing because we like feeling smart, proud to say that we “get it?”  Parodies are powerful like that.

I think about this a lot when eating in restaurants.

True parody in cooking is rare. Most of the culinary commentary I’ve encountered is actually quite shallow – simple imitation, attribution, or inspired variations, at best. I don’t mean this as an insult. To be sure, there’s a lot of deliciousness, and quite a bit of thought in present day cooking. But rarely does cooking step outside of itself to examine and exploit its own conventions the way other genres have done on such thrilling terms.

Trends will rise, and trends will fall, and then rise again. It was chicken kiev in 1912, and it was chicken kiev in 1961, and again, briefly, in 2008.  It was cocktail o’clock in the 1925, and again in the 1959, and again in 2007.  It was table-side Caesars in 1958, table-side carving in 1985, and table-side saucing in 2001. These are not parodies. These are facsimiles and fads. Everything is a remix.

But molecular gastronomy isn’t a remix.  It’s not just a fad, or just a “riff.” It’s much more. Molecular gastronomy (note: for fear of over-generalizing, I refer only to its very best examples) is a parody on cooking, a conceit and commentary.  It’s a contortion of cuisine, where the whole is deconstructed and examined, part for part, right in front of its audience.** And that, I’ve realized, explains why it is so popular. It demystifies and compliments all at once.  And that is also why I think molecular gastronomy has a limited run. Like all parodies, it is nothing but a splashy pause, to acknowledge and appeal, to roast and reward.  And then the show goes on.

But what happens when a parody takes itself more seriously, escaping mere commentary and endeavors to replace, or at least, equal its subject?  Has molecular gastronomy become a genre in its own right?  (I think it has, for parody is a genre too.) Will it replace cooking as we’ve known it?  (I don’t think it will.)  As a genre, will it mature and die, or will we renew it with a series of spoofs?

Only time will tell.  (I think it will die.)

In the meantime, we return to our whole-roasted beasts, pastas and fried chicken, cupcakes and donuts, cocktails and coffees, macarons and canelés. Fads though they may be, coming and going, and coming again, they comprise the staple set that we’ve renewed and revalidated against artifice. These, we have rescued from their endangered fate as mere tropes and clichés. Over the centuries, we’ve conquered them, and they’ve conquered us. We like them, and they like us. It’s a tried-true relationship, where a spade is nothing more than a spade. It’s a natural evolution, uninterrupted, but for a brief, self-aware comment, by and by, that puts it all back into perspective for us.

* “An Original Musical” from [Title of Show] is another excellent example (actually, the whole musical is a wonderful parody).  It was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical in 2009.

** Example: At alinea, Grant Achatz served a dish entitled “Beef Steak Cap with the Flavors of A1 Sauce.”  By sight, it was a collection of ingredients that seemed to make little sense together. But, all mixed up, it tasted just like A1 sauce.  This was steak and sauce, familiar to most Americans, in a different form.

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Situated somewhere in the middle of my three-week, million-calorie binge in New York last year was kajitsu, a meditative pause in an otherwise reckless episode of indulgence.

Tucked below street level in the East Village, kajitsu is quiet and clean, not unlike the food it serves, a series of vignettes in kaiseki form. Here, chef Masato Nishihara adheres to ahimsa, the dietary devotion of Zen Buddhists, and defies the current, meat-macho mindset with a vegan – yes, vegan, not vegetarian – menu. And, apparently, he does so with such deft and consistency that he has become favored among some of America’s best chefs, and Michelin has deemed his food worthy of two stars.

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Kajitsu offers two kaisekis – Hana is the longer of the two ($70), Kaze the shorter one ($50).  My friend and I ordered the Hana, with sake pairings (additional $36).  Here is what we had:

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1st Course
Salad of Cucumber
Rikyu-Fu and Fiddlehead Fern.
Grated cucumber, celery, dark night carrot, pearl onion, glass noodles.

Kawacho sake (Gunma)

2nd Course
Clear Soup with Grilled Cabbage Ball
Leeks and mitsuba.

3rd Course
“Vegetable Bento“

Baby Artichoke Agebitashi
Grated Fuji apple and onion, purple potato.

Chilled English Pea Soup
Frozen English peas.

Sushi with Green Tea Leaves and Pickled Green Plum

Matsunomidori sake (Kyoto).

4th Course
House-Made Soba
Warm dipping sauce, herbs, and wasabi.

Kokurya sake (Fukui) 

5th Course
White Asparagus Tempura with Irakusa Sauce
Grilled Nama-Fu with Soy Morel Mushroom Sauce; Grilled Garbanzo Beans.

Suehiro sake (Fukushima)

6th Course
Steamed Rice
Diced sunchokes and fennel puree; house-made pickles.

Sasaichi sake (Yamanashi)

7th Course
Yatsuhashi
Azuki bean paste, cardamom.

Matcha Tea and Candies by Kyoto Shioyoshiken

8th Course
Azuki Bean Sorbet

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To see a slideshow of all of the photos from this meal, CLICK HERE.

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Can there be joy in asceticism?

Is there reward, beyond the religious or spiritual, in abstaining or denying oneself worldly pleasure?

Is meat a worldly pleasure?  And is a meal without meat an act of asceticism?

Each of us brings a different perspective and set of expectations to the dinner table, and I couldn’t help but evaluate mine at kajitsu.

I grew up in a Chinese-American household, eating traditional Chinese food. By America’s label-obsessed standards, I suppose I was raised a flexitarian, focused more on vegetables and grains, with meat being used primarily for flavoring rather than sustenance.  If nothing else, rice was the one ingredient that that couldn’t be spared (in Chinese, “rice” is synonymous with “food,” and to “eat rice” is synonymous with “to eat.”)

We ate high and low, and all around, with great variety.  So, even though my family is not Buddhist, the vegan foods of Zen Buddhists were not foreign to me as a child. In addition to meat, we ate spongey mian jing (wheat gluten), cooked with lily stalks, black mushrooms, wood ear mushrooms, and peanuts (kao fu, one of my favorite Chinese dishes); and what we call in Chinese “vegan chicken” and “vegan duck” (in English, it is called “mock” chicken/duck, a telling difference in cultural perspective). And it was not uncommon for bamboo shoots, black mushrooms, and tofu to be the star ingredient of a meal at home.

So, my approach to eating has always been rather open. There are few rules at my table, and fewer expectations. For me, veganism was less the elephant in the room at kajitsu, and more of a detail.

When sitting down to eat, I can only hope that what alights is well-prepared and tastes good.  And at kajitsu, it was both, and more.

* * *

* * *

Arriving in Japan from China over a millennium ago, shojin cuisine, like all aspects of Japanese cooking, has been refined into an art form. And, like almost any other subset of Japanese cuisine, it is slowly bleeding into the mainstream.

Nishihara was not trained in shojin cookery, and he freely admits that his version of shojin is not entirely traditional. However, he remains faithful to its artistry and focuses on the ingredient quality, staying seasonal.  Our meal reflected this. Everything was beautifully presented in dioramas of the season, vegetables were pristine and fresh, and the cooking was precise and flawless.

Straddling spring and summer, we had tender fiddleheads, served with spongey rikyu fu (pure gluten), baby root vegetables, and a light cucumber salad, flecked with jellied strands of glass noodles. There was chilled pea soup, topped with frozen spring peas, and young artichoke hearts topped with a frothy purée of onions. And there was a fat log of white asparagus, tempura-fried, with a shiso leaf wrapped around its base, a refreshing surprise at the end of the stalk.

Courses alternated between hot and cold, a therapeutic succession of temperature changes to comfort and refresh.  Even within a course, there might be a spectrum, or juxtaposition of temperatures, like our fourth one, a plate of cold soba noodles accompanied by a warm, dipping broth.  Nishinara did train in a soba restaurant in Japan. His soba is very good.

And, in accordance with Asian sensibilities, this meal presented a mosaic of textures. Rice was not only perfectly cooked – pearly and tender – but in one instance, flecked with crunchy bits of pickled green gage plums, and in another, topped with a fried chrysanthemum leaf, flaky and crisp, and meaty dices of sunchoke.  Our fifth course – the one with the tempura white asparagus – coupled grilled garbanzo beans, still chalky and green in their pods, with namu-fu, a soft, almost gelatinous gluten product, glazed with a rich morel sauce. And for dessert, there was mochi, that mastic, sweet rice confection that, here, was used as wrapper for a “raviolo” with a surprisingly sweet, red bean paste filling.

* * *

* * *

My favorite course of the night was our second one, a warm, vegetable broth that was so intensely xian, that it was hard to believe it wasn’t shellfish stock.  In it sat a meteor comprised of grilled cabbage, tofu, and vegetables, magically held together by a gossamer, fried shell that seemed unaffected by the liquid around it. The outside stayed crisp and light, and the ingredients inside, tender and warm. It was immensely satisfying.

And, surprisingly, I really enjoyed our last course, a bowl of hot matcha, roasty and toasty, served with hard candies and sweet rice wafers. The contrast of bitter, hot tea against the sweet crunch of the candies and wafers was simple and lean.  Maybe there is joy in asceticism.

If there is rhythm to a meal, then the one I had at kajitsu was a series of pauses. In a world where dining is theatre, and where diners often demand a faster plot, a livelier story, kajitsu offers a refuge, a time-out, an intermission. Quiet yourself and consider each bite, Nishihara’s cooking demands. Here, every course is a vignette, every vignette a conversation. If you move too quickly, you’ll miss it entirely.

Set aside your expectations, or reevaluate them at kajitsu, and you may leave, as I did, refreshed, reset, and reflective.

kajitsu
414 East 9th Street
New York, New York 10009
212.228.4873

I recently launched my own photography website (www.bonjwing.com).  It will not, as some readers have inquired, replace my Flickr account.  Instead, it will serve as a gallery of my professional work, a sampling rather than a library.

Since that site launched, I’ve received a few emails asking about the watermark on the photographs on that website. The “seal” is my “chop,” an engraved stamp of my name in Chinese. Traditionally, Chinese chops are made of stone, with the owner’s name etched into the flat, polished surface of the chop’s underside (luxe ones can be made of precious metals and stones, like gold and jade). The chop is first stamped in a red stain, which is a moist, clay-like substance, and then onto paper to make its mark. Chops can be plain – simply a baton of stone with the name engraved at one end – polished or rough, round or square, or carved with decorations.

Although it is not always the case, Chinese names usually have three characters (some people only have two – their first and last). The surname comes first, always. Then, the first name, which is traditionally the same for all of the children of the same generation in a family (which makes tracing lineage and identifying cousins of the same generation in Chinese families easier). And, lastly, the given name.

I was born in the  year of the horse, and the character for horse is embedded into my given name. So, my chop is an engraving of a horse. I purchased it in Hong Kong, when I worked there, over a decade ago. The engraver, an old man, offered to carve my name in ancient Chinese calligraphy, a dying art. I was thrilled to have it so.

When I sent out the link to my photography website to a few friends to get their feedback, my friend Gavin wrote back and encouraged me to incorporate my chop onto the site, either as a logo or a brand image. I thought it was a great idea.

There you have it, the watermark.

For this thirty-eighth photo of the week, I give you my chop.  To see a photo of the underside, click here.

* * *

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I was 27, and I was crazy.

Two years of imprisonment in the ivy halls of law school begged for an adventure. So off to the Netherlands I went for a change of scene, under the pretense of studying law in the Dutchmen’s ivy halls. Don’t tell anyone, but I was really there to travel and eat.

Despite the fact that British Airlines lost half my luggage on the way over (never recovered, and never recompensed, by the way), my first purchase upon arrival was not underwear or a jacket or a bicycle. I bought a copy of Michelin’s Main Cities of Europe guide and a Eurail pass.

Using Leiden as my base and Schipol as my portal, I embarked on the greatest eating escapade of my life.

Orchestrating my own culinary coming of age, in the span of one semester, I explored the tables of Ireland, Turkey, Sweden, Finland, Luxembourg, Germany, Belgium, France, Spain, Norway, Austria, Poland, and all over the Dutch countryside. And I did it all on a shoestring budget.

Don’t believe me?  I’ll tell you the craziest thing I did for food.

* * *

* * *

Based on a brief, two-sentence description of Jean Klein’s food in my dog-eared Michelin guide, I set my sights on his three-starred restaurant l’Arnsbourg, high in the Vosges mountains of Alsace, near the German border.

I did my research. I could fly to Strasbourg and take a train north to Niederbronn-les-Bains. From there, it got tricky. I could call a taxi to take me that last 15 kilometers to the restaurant. But that round trip ride would cost me nearly double the price of my meal there (as would a two-day car rental).  That made no financial sense to me at the time, nor was it in my budget.

Or, I could bike it.  Fifteen kilometers is barely ten miles. I could do that.

But, upon arriving in Strasbourg, I realized that this was a foolish and impractical idea. First, it was December. It was freezing.

Second, Niederbronn-les-Bains was a summer resort for bathers, so the train service to that little town was severely reduced in wintertime.  Staying overnight in the Vosges was out of the question, so, due to the limited train schedule, dinner at l’Arnsbourg would not be an option. I’d have to go for lunch, which meant catching the 6 a.m. train out.

Lastly, where would I find a bike?  And even if I found a bike, what would guarantee that I could peddle the mountainous terrain?

What if it snowed?  Or iced?

Better to enjoy Strasbourg and its festive chriskindlmarkts instead, I convinced myself.  After all, Strasbourg was the universally crowned capital of Christmas. And it was gorgeous, a yuletide postcard decked like no other.

But then, I found an advert for bike rentals. Out of curiosity, I stopped by the shop.

Due to the high rate of bike theft in the city, they didn’t allow overnight rentals. And they didn’t open until 9 in the morning, making my 6 a.m. departure an impossibility. As I turned to leave, the girl at the counter grabbed my arm. She wanted to know why I needed the bike overnight. I told her. She told me I was crazy, but that she would help me.  She had never heard of l’Arsnbourg (or Michelin, for that matter), but, she was fascinated by my obsession. She asked for a handsome deposit, told me to sleep with the bike locked to my ankle in my hostel that night, and insisted that I return it the next day before they closed, so the owner wouldn’t find out. Sworn to secrecy, I handed over my money and thanked her.

The train left me on the platform at Niederbronn-les-Bains at 7 a.m.  The summer resort having been vacated by the locals, I was alone, with a map that I hadn’t studied.

The sun hadn’t arrived yet. And even if it had, there wouldn’t have been much light. The sky was thick. It was snowing.

Should I wait for the next train and turn back?

But, in that moment of doubt, there appeared a station attendant out of nowhere. He spoke no English, so we proceeded in French, mine more American, his more German. I told him I needed to get to Baerenthal, the town closest to the restaurant, where, surely, I could kill time at a café until my noon reservation.  He pointed to a small bus parked in the dark distance and told me to talk to the driver.

A bus? I was overjoyed.

It didn’t go to Baerenthal, but the driver was happy to take me as far as Philippsbourg, about half the distance. As I later realized, to my great luck, it was the steepest part of the road to l’Arnsbourg.

Philippsbourg looked more like an intersection than a town.  The bus driver pointed down one road and told me to follow it for 6 kilometers, and I’d find Baerenthal.

To my astonishment, Philippsbourg had a city hall that doubled as its bureau of tourism. I pinched myself.

The lights were on, so I rang the bell.  A young man answered. He welcomed me inside.

I don’t know which one of us surprised the other more in that remote corner of the world that morning: me, the culturally misplaced Asian in a puffy down jacket and a ski cap on a bike with a basket (I looked ridiculous), or he, the city’s mayor, post master general, and head of tourism, who spoke pitch-perfect American English (it reminded me of that episode of “I Love Lucy” where the small town city hall was run by one man, who changed his hat according to his job and task). We marveled at each other for a moment, as I told him my story and he told me his. After studying for years in America, he had returned to his birthplace to take care of family business, and to run the town, apparently. He told me that I wasn’t far from the restaurant, and that I’d surely find a café in Baerenthal where I could rest until my reservation.  And the best news: the road would remain relatively level for the rest of my journey.

* * *

* * *

Baerenthal was somewhere between Niederbronn-les-Bains and Philippsbourg in size, but seemed just as abandoned.

I found a butchery that was open. The woman behind the counter, thrice my size, was hammering away at a carcass with a cleaver when I walked in. Without looking up, she grunted, a signal to her husband, who soon appeared from the back, a grizzly bear in a singlet, hair everywhere. They both looked annoyed.  I asked them if there was a café in town where I could get a something warm to drink. He told me to walk around the corner and I’d find a bakery.  I didn’t need to ask twice.

When I turned the corner, I realized why the rest of the town was so quiet – everyone was at the bakery, getting their bread for the day. Daniel and Carine Fellrath’s place was more than a bakery, though. There was a small market inside, with sundry pantry items and a refrigerated dairy case. And, on that icy morning, it was paradise to me, a far-flung traveler chased by frostbite.

Carine noticed me (well, they all did), of course, because I was the only one in the place she didn’t know. Bright and cheery, with sparkly blue eyes and a glossy smile, she was like technicolor in a world of grey.  Through eye signals, we somehow mutually agreed to let the crowd clear.  After the last baguette walked out, she waved me up to the counter.  I asked if they served coffee.  They didn’t, but she asked me to wait.  She called to her husband in the back, and for a moment, I had a flashback to the butcher counter around the corner.  A big burly man, also in a singlet, Daniel didn’t look so happy to see me.  He disappeared for a moment, and then reappeared in the kitchen door with a cup of steaming coffee and motioned me to follow him. Carine nodded, pushing me with her eyes.

The blazing warmth of a hearth awaited me. And next to it, a table and chairs, where I would spend the next two hours getting to know the Fellraths. Their morning bread having been sold, shades drawn, door locked, the bakery was closed until lunchtime. And so, they took the luxury of hosting a stranger in a strange land. Actually, they did so with such care that it was almost as if they had adopted me for the morning. Like parents, Daniel congratulated me and Carine chided me for my foolish and crazy bid.

They spoke little English – actually, Carine spoke and understood none – and I spoke no German. So, we met in French, mine clunky and awkward, theirs gutteral and gruff. And yet I don’t recall any wrinkles in our conversation at all, smoothed over by time and memory. We talked about l’Arnsbourg (It turns out that Carine was a childhood friend of Kathy Klein’s, chef Jean Klein’s sister, and the proprietress of the restaurant), and family (The Fellrath’s have a son, Cedric, a gangly teen at the time, who was apprenticing in a bakery two towns over.  He came down to say hello before leaving for the day), and America, where the two hoped to visit soon.

It was two weeks to Christmas, and Daniel was rushed with cake orders, including a number of bûches de noël. He asked me if I’d help him. More than happy to lend a hand, I rolled up my sleeves and followed him about the kitchen, more an observer than a helper really, until it was time for me to go.

We exchanged contact information and promised to keep in touch.  On my way out, Carine gave me two large brioche loaves for the road. Against my protest, she insisted that I take them – in case I got lost, which they both assured me wouldn’t happen.  I put them in my basket, next to my backpack with my change of clothes, and thanked them both for saving my life.

I’ll never forget that ride between Baerenthal and l’Arnsbourg, a breathtaking stretch of pavement winding its way through the Vosges. I was alone, and all was silent and still, save a babbling brook that ran alongside of me, keeping me company as the clouds parted and sunlight filtering through the pine trees, casting streamers of light across the snow, as if to congratulate me on my luck. And, at a bend, a herd of cattle lowed by the roadside, as if cheering me on at the final stretch. I stopped to marvel at them, doe-eyed and beautiful, and to thank them for their support.

* * *

* * *

A caravan of luxury cars rolled past me as I turned that last corner before arriving at the bright, pink house I had seen on the restaurant’s website.  They parked. I parked. With two brioche buns in my basket, I’m sure they thought I was the bread boy, making my delivery late that day. A stream of tailored suits and mink coats filed into the restaurant, and I followed behind, at a distance, with my backpack, feeling unexpectedly confident.

Surprisingly, the hostess didn’t bat a lash when I told her I had a reservation. She found me in her book immediately. But when she asked me how I got to the restaurant, and I told her that I had biked, her jaw dropped. I pointed to my ride outside the window. From where? Niederbronn-les-Bains, more or less, I told her, though really from Philippsbourg. It didn’t matter, she became hysterical, insisting on calling a doctor and having me lay down in their lounge. I reassured her that I needed no medical attention, asking only for the restroom, where I might freshen up a bit and change my clothes.

When I came out, a bit wrinkly, but groomed, the entire front of the house lined the hall from the reception to the dining room, staring at me. I’m sure that the hostess had told them I had biked from China.

They sent their only Japanese staff member, a young woman, to greet me in Japanese. When they discovered that I spoke neither Japanese nor Germany, we all agreed on French, since no one on their staff spoke English or Chinese.

I won’t recount the entire meal (I can name almost every dish by memory, especially a warm chestnut soup that was generously shaved with white truffles. It was so pungent that I smelled it halfway across the dining room, as it made its way to me.  Here are the photos – hold your nose, these were taken before my DSLR days.), but suffice it to say, my incredulous adventure was not for naught. Imaginative, whimsical, beautiful, and delicious, Jean Klein’s food that day was a paragon of Michelin three-starred dining – it was “exceptional cuisine, worth a special journey.”  This meal was no less memorable than the journey that got me there.

Kathy Klein came out to say hello, with her brother, Jean, beside her. She had heard that I had come a long distance, and with a special effort, to l’Arnsbourg, and she and the chef wanted to thank me in person. I passed along the Fellraths’s greetings, pausing to explain my meeting with them that morning.

As I left, Ms. Klein showered me with bags of chocolate truffles and Jean Klein’s sunflower seeds, “sucré et salé,” which they sold in their lounge at great cost. Against my protest, she insisted – echoing Carine, she wanted me to take them in case I got lost, but reassured me that I would not. Pressing them into my hands, she told me to share them with my friends.

I took a different road back to Niederbronn-les-Bains, this one shorter, but with one large hill in between.  I had to make the 6 o’clock train, so that I could return the bike before the rental shop closed at 8. With more than an hour, everyone on staff at l’Arnsbourg said that I’d have plenty of time (getting me back to Strasbourg had become a team effort).

I peddled my little heart out, working up enough heat to keep me warm.

The hill seemed insurmountable at first.  There was no way I could conquer it on a one-speed bike.  So I got off and walked. What time I lost going up, I gained back on the way down, coasting at break-neck speed down to Niederbronn-les-Bains, which looked no different at sunset than at sunrise: quiet, still, empty.

* * *

* * *

The girl at the shop nearly jumped out of her chair when I walked through the door.  She wanted to know everything. She was so excited, that she pulled her co-workers out of the back to hear my story, no longer interested in discretion.  So, I told them, with their eyes bugging, mouths agape, and showed them photos of the food on my camera. They had never imagined that anything like that existed. At the end, she turned to them and declared with a smile, “I knew he was crazy the moment he walked through that door!”  And we all had a good laugh.

She returned my deposit, and in exchange, I presented her with the bags of truffles and sunflower seeds that Kathy Klein had given me. I’ll never forget the sight of them on that counter in that dingy rental shop that night, how they glowed likes bags of ambrosia dropped from Mount Olympus, ingots from another world, shiny and gilded. I told them that they were gifts from the Kleins, to be shared with my friends. They were theirs to enjoy, an insufficient thanks for their help, without which none of it would have been possible.  The sight of their faces at that moment, alone, made every risk, every doubt, every freezing minute of that day worthwhile.

I took Carine’s two frozen brioche loaves with me, thawed them out, and shared them with the other kids in my hostel that night.

I awoke the next morning convinced it was all a dream. But in my backpack, I found the menu from the day before, and in my camera, evidence of my adventure.

I shudder to think how many things could have gone wrong that day. But, even though I was undeserving and reckless, the universe conspired to help make l’Arnsbourg happen for me.  And it was a magical and unforgettable journey, epic and lovely all at once.

* * *

* * *

In January of last year (2011), I returned to l’Arnsbourg, this time with a slightly longer shoestring, and with more responsible conduct and carriage. Retracing my steps, I found that intersection in Philippsbourg, where I turned left, not right.  I dropped by the bakery to say hello to the Fellraths, with whom I had kept in touch over the six years in between. Cedric, now a baker too, was engaged, living on his own, not far from his parents. But otherwise, the Fellraths, and all three blocks of Baerenthal, for that matter, seemed untouched, just as I remembered it.

And that team of cattle was right where I left it, lowing at the bend, cheering me to the end.  I stopped to thank them once again.

After lunch at l’Arnsbourg, I had dinner with the Fellraths before returning to Strasbourg.

Carine’s entire clan – siblings and parents – live on the same street. So, it wasn’t hard to gather them all for a tarte flambée party, a true Alsatian treat.

That night, as they raised their glasses to toast my return, I marveled at the scene before me, proof that food is a universal language. The Fellraths and I are the most unlikely friends, divided by culture and language, and so much more.  And yet, we met because of my crazy quest for food. Despite our many differences, they understood and appreciated my insanity and welcomed me back with open arms.  This, I reminded myself, is why I do the crazy things I do, and, above all, why I love to eat.

I can’t wait to go back.

* * *

Photos: Tarte flambée in the oven at the Fellraths’, Baerenthal, France; my trusty “Main Cities of Europe” Michelin Guide from 2005; Daniel Fellrath’s bakery, Baerenthal, France; L’Arnsbourg, near Baerenthal, France; a stream at the woods’ edge behind l’Arnsbourg, near Baerenthal, France; Baerenthal, France; a toast by Carine Fellrath’s family, Baerenthal, France.

I’m surprised no one has mentioned it yet.

What is it?

Well, it’s basically the equivalent of umami in Chinese, with a discriminating factor.

First, a little etymology from someone who is not an etymologist:

Whereas the word “umami” was invented in the early 1900s by Kikunae Ikeda, the Japanese chemist who first isolated and identified monosodium glutamate (or, MSG), to describe the “meaty savoriness” of his discovery, xian is much older.  I don’t know exactly how old it is, but I do know that the word is part of the ancient Chinese name for Korea (朝鮮; in pinyin ”chao xian”), which dates back at least a few centuries (it is still used today to refer to the country of North Korea).

The most helpful clue to understanding its meaning is found in the way the character for xian is written in Chinese. It’s a portmanteau, if you will, of the character for fish –  魚 (in pinyin, ”yu;” phonetically, “yü”) – and the character for lamb –  羊 (in pinyin, “yang,” phonetically, “yong”). Together, they become xian - 鮮 (phonetically, “shien”); with the character for fish on the left, and the character for lamb on the right.*

So, what does it mean?  Well, as I said above, the simple answer is that it’s the Chinese equivalent of umami, which we know refers to the “meaty savoriness” of MSG, a flavor that claims no English word. However, if I’m to be entirely accurate, xian is more specific. It is a subset of umami. Whereas umami is attached to monosodium glutamate, and thus applies to everything that has its flavor, xian sits to the more delicate side of that flavor spectrum.

While a plate of cured meats may be umami, it would not be xian. Neither would a bowl of spaghetti and meatballs, though it be smothered with umami-rich tomato sauce and showered with Parmesan cheese. But pasta alle vongole would be xian, so would young spring lamb, or drunken chicken, or Chinese salt-cured cockles, which are usually served cold. Xian is temperature blind. There’s even a Chinese dish called yang yu xian - 羊魚鮮 (or lamb-fish xian) – surely someone’s witty, if not too-literal attempt at culinary poetry (I’ve never had it, and I’d be curious if anyone could ever convince me that it could possibly work).

But above all, xian seems most commonly used to describe broths and soups.  Its truest examples are chicken stock and steamed clam juice.  After all, the word xian is the second half of the Chinese word for “fresh” – xin xian - 新鮮 (phonetically, “shing shien”). There something light and cheery about it.

Oh, and one more thing: in Chinese, you say that something is xian, instead of saying that something has xian – it’s no different than saying something is salty, or sweet, or bitter (even though in English, you could also say that something has saltiness, or sweetness, or bitterness).

* I’ve also heard xian pronounced xuan (that’s pinyin; phonetically, it sounds something more like “shoe in” at ten times its normal speed).

But this time, I’m not just going to throw you a list of my favorite places to eat. This time, I’m going slightly deeper than that.

Recently, Saveur Magazine’s editor in chief, James Oseland, put Kansas City on the horizon of America’s culinary landscape.

As a native and resident, I reserve celebration, but hope for its arrival. Oseland’s portension is no fait accompli.

Yes, we have come quite a ways, here in the heartland of America. Never mind the eighties or nineties, not even a decade ago, Kansas City’s food scene was fairly desolate.

And now, it’s burgeoning.

Yet, despite its recent growth, if I am to take an honest look at what has changed, I’m not sure that many of my fellow Kansas Citians would want to know my conclusions.

But, I care. So, at the risk being branded an elitist, a self-styled prophet without honor, I’ll tell you what I really think.  This is not the first time I’ve raised this issue on my blog.  But this time, I do so with heightened scrutiny.

* * *

* * *

Sadly, the dining public here remains relatively myopic, concerned more with hype than quality. And, quite frankly, few in the food and beverage industry here have done much to change that, complacent to feed the complacent. Sure, the middle tier has widened, the competency has increased. We are looking, ever more, like a big city.

But the problem is that we’re not looking like our own city. There is little here that you won’t find elsewhere, done just as well, or better, or without confusion. We are not growing our own culinary identity the way other cities our size, or smaller, have: Portland, Austin, Charleston, New Orleans.  We have not their character nor personality. Few rise to the top.

Why is this?  Is the land between our coasts forever doomed to suburban mediocrity, a field of wallflowers to be overlooked and over-flown?  Have we no stories to tell, no soul to share?  Are we bound by some irrational and puritanical asceticism that makes us resist the pleasures of eating?  Judging by our waistlines, I think not.

I won’t speak for other cities in the Midwest, but I’ll tell you what I think of my city’s culinary scene: it’s fractured, detached from itself. I see very little meaningful dialogue or interaction happening here. Less time seems to be spent on building a community together, and more of it devoted to trying to recreate another’s, each clamoring to be the first to bring us what the world has already offered elsewhere. We deserve better than big city leftovers.  Where’s Team Kansas City?

While many of my readers may think of me as a champion for my hometown, a bridge for its virtues abroad, most who know me in Kansas City would call me its harshest critic.  I would like to think that I’m both for same reason: I want to see Kansas City become a more exciting and diverse place to eat and drink.  After all, it is my most frequent destination.

But, more importantly, it is my home.

After sifting through the noise, only a few among our local foodways really stood out. Their passion and devotion is evident in their product. They chase neither fame nor fortune, but rather quality, or their own voice, at the very least. Fearless and fierce, they each produce something that is unique, something that is both theirs and Kansas City’s, and no one else’s.

Don’t misunderstand me – we have a lot of good chefs, restaurants, and food producers in Kansas City who serve our city well, who make a quality product. But the following roster makes me especially proud to be a Kansas Citian, which is why many listed below are my first stop or mention when visitors arrive from afield.  Should our city ever be your destination, I commend them to you.

* * *

Barbecue

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The field is wide, your options are many. We are the capital of barbecue, after all. But there is one barbecue restaurant to rule them all: Oklahoma Joe’s. Nowhere else in our city will you find such a fine collection of smoked meats and sides all in one place.  LC’s on Blue Parkway is famous for their burnt ends – and indeed, they are very good, as are their wedge fries, which have a crust-lover’s crust. Not a mile down the road from LC’s, Big T’s has amazing burnt ends as well, plus fat, juicy rib tips. And I probably prefer the coleslaw and baked beans at Arthur Bryant’s to an other’s.  But at Oklahoma Joe’s, you’ll find the most consistent and satisfying barbecue in our city. Their chicken is amazing – it’s so juicy you’d think it was cooked sous vide. Their ribs are a must. And their pulled pork and burnt ends, which I hadn’t tried until recently, are just as good as any in our city, if not better. Ask anyone I know and they’ll tell you that I don’t wait for food. But I’ve waited on line – often for more than an hour at a time – for Oklahoma Joe’s; be prepared. There are two locations. The one inside of a gas station on the corner of 47th Avenue and Mission is iconic. If you’re in Kansas City, go.

* * *

Bread

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You must go early or go not at all. Fred Spompinato makes the finest bread in Kansas City. But he only bakes three days out of the week (Thursday, Friday, and Saturday). And he closes his little bread shop, Fervere, as soon as he has sold his last loaf, which is often quite early – sometimes, before noon. I rarely eat bread in the U.S., because it’s rarely worth its weight in calories. But the bread at Fervere is worth the early morning rise. He makes about a dozen different loaves.  My two favorite are the “Whole Grain Travel” – dense but soft, nearly all grains and seeds – and the “Orchard” – a hearty, caramelized, almond-shaped loaf with meaty pockets of dried fruit and walnuts.

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Sheep

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“Sustainable” is not just a word that Sarah Hoffman and Jackie Smith carelessly throw about on those velvety, green bluffs above Weston, Missouri (a forty-minute drive north of the city). It’s a way of living for them and their sheep at Green Dirt Farm. And it means a lot of hard work. But, for their efforts, they have to show the finest lamb meat and sheeps’ milk cheese in our area. If you’re a passerby, you can find their cheeses (I love them all) and lamb products at local stores and farmers’ markets (or order their meat, by the locker, from their website). But, the best way to have them both, and experience the farm, is to attend one of their Farm Table dinners. Tony Glamcevski oversees this series, which draws some of Kansas City’s best chefs out of their kitchens to cook at the farm almost weekly throughout the temperate months. Guests eat communally at one long table in a barn, with a view of the setting sun and the sound of bleeting sheep. It’s truly a farm table.

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Beer

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Passing downtown Kansas City, heading southbound on I-35, look to your right and you’ll see a smokestack rising proud and tall above the rest. This is home to Boulevard Brewing Company, one of Kansas City’s finest companies. Founded in 1989 by John McDonald, Boulevard now distributes its rainbow of bottles – everything from ales to stouts, wheat beers to porters – all over the United States. You won’t have a problem finding their beer, both bottled and on tap, in our city. You can also take a tour of their brewing plant and get a taste of their beers at the home office.  I particularly like their Smokestack Series, especially the Tank 7 Farmhouse Ale and the Sixth Glass Belgian Ale.

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Comfort

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I love restaurants that unpackage childhood for you. They’re not concerned with the fancies, or the trends. They feed you and make you long for a nap. You’ll find many simple luncheonettes and eateries in Kansas City, and my very favorites include the siblings, Happy Gillis (in Columbus Park) and Genessee Royale (in the Stockyards District, f.k.a. West Bottoms), both owned by Todd Schulte and Tracy Zinn, and Kitty’s Café on 31st Street in Midtown.  The first two are akin, although Happy Gillis, which started out as a soup delivery, is slightly more bohemian than Genessee Royale, which, despite being located in a refurbished gas station in our city’s charmless warehouse district, manages to be quite winsome. Both serve the kind of food only a sick or snow day would justify, but better: fluffy Monte Cristos, warm egg and cheese sandwiches on English muffins, velvety tomato soup with thick and gooey grilled cheese sandwiches, corned beef and potato hash, blondies, and Mississippi mud pies. Both also serve breakfast.  Kitty’s is crankier, more blunt. You order your pork tenderloin sandwich – two battered (not breaded) and fried cutlets – with or without hot sauce, with or without pickles, and with or without fries, and to go or not to go. That is all. If you don’t take it away, you’ll be eating it at a short counter with a half-dozen people hovering over you. There would be more of them, but they’re standing outside because they can’t fit inside. This place is small, and it’s only open for lunch.

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Milk

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You can pet the calves at Shatto Milk Company, and learn about how Leroy and Barb Shatto’s family-run and owned company produces its dairy products at their farm in Osborn, Missouri (about a 40 minute drive north of the city). You’ll find their dairy in almost ever grocery store in the city. It has a sweet, butterfat content that is richer and fresher than most of what I find in the cartons and bottles nearby (their dairy can go from cow to shelf in little as 12 hours).  I drink it, make ice cream with it, and bake with it.

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Which Came First?

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Jay and Carol Maddick raise some of the finest looking hens I’ve ever seen at Campo Lindo Farm. Free to roam, their birds are healthy, happy, and delicious, full of flavor that makes stocks stewed with them brim with what the Chinese call xuan (apologies, but English has no such equivalent, and umami isn’t accurate). The demand for them among local chefs is often so high that Campo Lindo chickens are a scarce commodity.  That’s because the Maddicks insist on doing it all themselves – everything from raising the chickens to processing them – to ensure quality.  They also harvest, weigh, and package their eggs, which can be found at local farmers’ market.

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Heirlooms

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We are surrounded by the farmland of America. It is not as lush or forgiving as the region below us, nor the paradise that is California to the West. But our fields are sown with seeds yearly, all the same. Thankfully, a few farmers do so responsibly and sustainably, against the weight of commodity and subsidized giants. Thane Palmberg’s family started selling their vegetables at Kansas City’s City Market in 1932.  And you’ll find him there, still, arriving faithfully every weekend from DeSoto, Kansas with crates of produce stacked in the bed of a grizzly green behemoth that might have driven off the set of *M*A*S*H*.  At other farmer’s markets around town, you’ll find Jim and Deb Crum of Crum’s Heirlooms Farm in Bonner Springs, Kansas. Both Jim and Deb manage full time jobs and still find time to till the land. I don’t know how they do it. I guess passion is a fine substitute for sleep. Their produce is prized, but they’re most famous for their tomatoes, which are annually showcased by Kansas City’s chefs, some of who have been known to devote entire menus to them. Both the Crums’ and Palmberg’s vegetables and fruits can be found on the menus of almost every locally owned restaurant in the city.

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Fine Dining

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One is an institution, commissioned by Hallmark, designed by Warren Plattner, and ordained by James Beard. It is The American Restaurant, now in its thirty-eighth year, a stately ship of classics with curved brass railings and James Beard Award-winning chef Debbie Gold at its helm.  The other is a youngster by comparison, but no less important to Kansas City’s dining scene. It is bluestem, Colby and Megan Garrelts’s seasonal reminder that the Midwest is just as far or close as you want it to be.* Both are standard bearers for excellence in cooking in Kansas City, continually ranking among their national peers.  They make Kansas Citians demand for better elsewhere.  If you’re in the mood for refinement, start here, at the top.

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Ice Cream

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I love ice cream. And, against the tide of plasticky frozen yogurt shops filled with squealing preteens on their mobiles (which threatens to drown Johnson County), swim Christopher Elbow’s glacé (two locations), and Murray’s Ice Cream (in Westport). Both are locally owned and operated and use high quality ingredients (glacé uses local, Shatto dairy – see above), and offer creative and delicious flavors.  Murray’s have more wit, with names like ”One Drunk Monk” (Frangelico ice cream with hazelnuts and chocolate flecks) and “3 Nuts in a Tub” (vanilla ice cream with chocolate covered peanuts, walnuts and almonds).  Elbow’s flavors are more self-explanatory: Gorgonzola, pretzel, and goat cheese & fig, for example. Of course, you’ll find your vanillas and chocolates too – Elbow’s chocolate ice cream and sorbet are particularly good (formerly the pastry chef of The American Restaurant, Christopher Elbow is probably more well-known in Kansas City for his chocolates, which are excellent too).

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* Is it fair that I mention bluestem, since I co-authored and photographed the restaurant’s cookbook with the Garreltses? I’ll let you decide.

But I have used them for years, referring to them for dining advice in dozens of countries across three continents.  And, in my limited experience, I’ve found them generally reliable in Europe (though it varies with each country), less so in the United States, and nearly useless in Hong Kong (I have not been to Japan to test the guide there, although I’ve heard that it comports with the vetted consensus).  It goes without saying that I make these claims based on my personal experience in Michelin-rated restaurants, and not out of some non-existent, subjective standard.

Who cares?  Yes, I know there are many who are indifferent (whether real or feigned) about the Michelin guide. If you’re one of them, feel free to stop reading here.

But the fact remains, those little guides rouges are still one of the most powerful and influential authorities in dining today. Every year, Bibendum’s announcements cause a flurry and fluster among the very best in the food and beverage industry across the world.  And, despite wide-spread cynicism, Michelin’s constellations are still weighty and important, if not the weightiest and most important.  Unlike the voting body for the San Pellegrino’s list of 50 Best Restaurants in the World (which I personally find to be a cloutless club, perpetuated and preserved by members within), Michelin’s inspectors are unassociated with the restaurant industry, and remain anonymous. And, if we are to believe their claims, they eat extensively and repeatedly at restaurants before arriving at their ratings.

But I’ve become increasingly disillusioned with the Michelin guides in the U.S. since they first arrived on our shores in 2006.  My primary problem with their ratings here stems from the fact that Michelin maintains that their standard of review is the same around the world. After having eaten well over two hundred Michelin stars in the past seven years, I don’t think this is true.* There is star inflation in the U.S., at all levels.  This is not to say that there aren’t restaurants in the U.S. that merit their ratings – many of them do. But I find a lot of restaurants in the U.S. guides are overrated, diluting Michelin’s reputation and authority.

Why stir the pot?

Because, I do think the Michelin guide could be made more useful, and more legitimate, in the U.S.  Whether or not it is feasible for the company to make it so is another matter entirely.  I’m no numbers man, and I won’t pretend to know how Michelin’s business works, so all I can offer is an idealistic solution from the user’s end.

In my opinion, Michelin would be more useful if it rated the entire United States. Currently, it only rates restaurants in three cities (New York City; Chicago; and San Francisco, Bay Area, and Wine Country*). Why is this?  I’ll dismiss, for now, the thought that they do so out of cultural ignorance and arrogance, disregarding the spaces in between the large cities as unworthy. In the beginning, Michelin may have wanted to first test its viability in America in a few select cities before expanding (who knows, maybe they’re still in this phase of testing and we just don’t know it). More likely, they simply don’t have the resources to canvass the entire country comprehensively. Regardless, in limiting their ratings to three cities, Michelin has made its guide less useful in a market with tremendous potential, and, I do think, less financially viable in the long run (it has already withdrawn both the Los Angeles and Las Vegas guides due to “the bad economy”).

Originally, the Michelin guides were a marketing tool and accessory to selling rubber. What better way to increase tire sales than to encourage people to explore their country by car, to eat and sleep well on the road? The guide has no such purpose now in the U.S. (which has rendered some of their ratings rather silly – what does it mean that a restaurant is “worth a detour” within New York City, or Chicago?). Ironically, instead of encouraging Americans to get on the road to explore their country, Michelin encourages us to buy plane tickets to one of three cities.

So, Michelin is now in the business of selling guides, apart from selling tires. Times have changed; they’ve developed a new product. That doesn’t make them useless.

But, in order to justify the publication of their guides in these three cities, to make them more exciting and more sellable year after year, I feel that Michelin is compelled to award more stars (star inflation was also noticeable in a few Europe countries this year). That’s the only explanation I can muster to reason their generous ratings in America thus far.

I know it sounds absurd to suggest that Michelin should rate our entire country, a more vast territory than all of their others combined. It is a daunting task. But what about starting with regions? Imagine if Michelin were able to send inspectors across America, even if only in limited batches. They’d find quite a few restaurants meriting stars outside of the big cities, relieving the pressure to stuff the ballot in three, already over-saturated and concentrated markets. And, who knows, they might sell more guides to a larger audience willing to make that road trip to Boulder, or La Jolla, or Chilhowie, or Charleston?  Michelin would then have a national presence and influence, instead of parochial one, as it does now.

Or maybe not. I have to believe that Michelin has done its homework and found this to be an infeasible business choice.

But, until they reform their system – either admit that their standard of ratings in the U.S. is not on par with their standard of ratings abroad, or adjust their ratings accordingly – Michelin continues to erode its credibility in my eyes. Stars are quickly losing their weight and worth in the U.S.  And this diner is growing ever more disinterested in what Michelin has to say here.  As a blogger, maybe I should be happy about this, as it leaves people like me to fill in the gaps and become a more legitimate source of dining advice.

* I arrived at this number counting each starred restaurant that I’ve visited only once (i.e. multiple visits did not count) and taking the highest number of stars that the restaurant had when I ate there. Therefore, I did not count restaurants that were starred after my visit, like Charlie Trotters.