Stuartblog2

Amen! I've been delinquent in my encased meat exploration.

Driving from Strongsville to Lakewood for that burger, I happened to catch a glimpse of an intriguing sign: “Juba Somali Cuisine.” Or something like that. I was lucky to see anything at all passing so quickly in the dark. So, Cleveland has a Somali restaurant? There was an article in the PeeDee about a recent policy change at the airport and how many felt that it discriminated against independent, frequently Somali cabbies. (Cleveland.com is worthless, as usual, so the article is no longer available but you can get the gist of the issue from this blog post.) My immediate concern was that this would hamper Cleveland’s chances of supporting a Somali restaurant. I’m delighted to report that Cleveland’s political establishment can’t keep a good cuisine down. Actually, I know almost nothing about Somali cuisine. Columbus has one of the country’s largest Somali (the largest?) populations and supports at least two Somali restaurants - Darbo and Marka Bistro. One interesting feature is that Somali food is influenced by Italian cuisine.

I keep track of many of these restaurants at tagzania. When tagzania finally gives up the fight against Google Maps and I loose all this data, I will cry. This blog is years behind my tagzania database so there are hundreds more restaurants there than I’ve talked about here. Hopefully, I’ll mine the list for future blog posts. And hopefully I can get some help scouting them. Even though I eat out almost every day and try to go to a new place a couple times a month, I’ve still only eaten at a small fraction of these restaurants. In the mean time, I’ll just note a couple more restaurants that I stumbled across en route to somewhere else. Angie’s Soul Cafe (name? again, driving…) is “now open” at around 79th and Carnegie.  Seti’s Sausage operates from a van in Dean Supply’s parking lot. Finally, I had to google for a while to reconstruct the details of Quisqueya La Bella.

I’m still not entirely sure how I feel about eating at random restaurants that I pass by. Normally, I get my restaurant leads from Cleveland Magazine, Northern Ohio Live, Scene Magazine, The Plain Dealer, etc. . . Obviously, this way you miss out on most of the little hole in the wall Guatemalan/Somali/Caribbean restaurants. But you also avoid all the bars frying up frozen jalapeño poppers, mozz sticks and stuffed potatoes. These three restaurants are perfect examples. Encased meats?  Clark Avenue? The papers may occasionally delve into these subjects but generally the vast majority of these restaurants languish in obscurity. Unfortunately, many of them deserve it. I’m still working on finding a balance that works for me.

When an entirely unrepresented cuisine pops up I’m not going to let my trepidation deter me. I’ll definitely find my way to Juba Somali Cuisine some time in the next couple weeks.

Stuart’s Fundamental Theorem of Ethnic Food Evolution
Obscure “ethnic” cuisine is delicious. Then we find it and bland it all up. See Chinese, Thai, etc. . .

Stuart added this event to his schedule at Upcoming.org. Click the post title to go there for more details.

Stuart added this event to his schedule at Upcoming.org. Click the post title to go there for more details.

flat iron steak

Light Bistro’s Restaurant Week special is a three course dinner for $30. You can peruse your choices at their website. I had the smoked chicken pot pie, the flat iron steak and the banana custard. The flat iron steak was perfectly cooked, well seasoned and flavorful.

Light regularly offers a $25 three course meal the details of which are also available on their website. I’ll keep it in mind when I’m looking for a light dinner.

Taste opened yesterday. According to Scene:

Anthony Vicente, a Michelin-star chef from France, has been quietly working in the pantry department at Fire Food & Drink (13220 Shaker Sq., 216.921.3473, firefoodanddrink.com) over the past few months. He is biding his time and brushing up on his English until his new restaurant debuts on Lee Road. Set in the former home of the Wine Room (2317 Lee Rd.), Taste will showcase the chef’s considerable skills when that restaurant opens next month. The Wine Room’s kitchen has been totally revamped. Vicente describes his food as “world cuisine with no restrictions.” Building upon a French-Asian foundation, the chef will prepare dishes as varied as Chinese spring rolls, coriander crab, Indian rabbit and red bell pepper cheesecake. The 80-seat restaurant will be divided into sides for the lounge and dining room. Expect a modern space with a cozy atmosphere, says the chef. The owner of Taste is Raj Singh, the man behind Café Tandoor and Atma Center. For those keeping track, the restaurant was originally to be called World Restaurant, then Bliss.

I am keeping track. I remember about a year ago when they had this to say:

Talented restaurateur Ricardo Sandoval (Fat Cats, Lava Lounge, Halite) is partnering with Raj Singh to transform the Wine Room on Lee Rd. into a sleek lounge and restaurant. A Michelin-star chef will prepare French-Vietnamese-style foods with a global reach. According to Sandoval, one side of the space will be “loungy,” the other a 65-seat dining room. 2317 Lee Rd.

Their website doesn’t have a menu (or much else ) yet but it’s been posted on the cleveland.com food forum. It’s tightly focused which is fine with me if they keep it fresh. And the prices are surprisingly reasonable. I’m looking forward to checking it out.

The Buckeye Beer Engine has tweaked their menu. Buckeye Beer Engine serves good food. A commitment to keeping their menu fresh is really the only other thing I can ask for in a restaurant. There are several new items that I’m looking forward to. Actually, I’m not sure there’s anything on the list that doesn’t look good. Mushroom stew, Italian sub, pork overload platter, chili and an eggplant sandwich… I also see they have something named the “Cleveland Cheese Steak” and I want to go on record as saying that I saw it here before I saw the article about Rocco Whalen’s “Cleveland Cheese Steak.”

They also have a blog. One that appears to actually be updated occasionally. You can get updates like this about there menu and there’s a separate feed for updates about their extensive beer selection. Information like this is so much easier to track via a news feed as compared to an email newsletter. I wish more restaurants would complement their newsletters with an rss feed.

Stuart added this event to his schedule at Upcoming.org. Click the post title to go there for more details.

Stuart added this event to his schedule at Upcoming.org. Click the post title to go there for more details.

Last weekend, the Cleveland Orchestra performed Mozart’s Mass in C Minor. Here’s the first movement (free, legal and complete):

I sometimes find myself interested in checking out a performance but it’s been years since I actually did it.  I’m never familiar with the music - even the stuff that everyone is supposed to know - and I’m intimidated by choosing between dozens of options which consequently seem indistinguishable. I listen to classical music. Like other genres of music, I find much of it unremarkable and some of it inspiring. But I’m a casual fan and I don’t make a point of tracking down titles and composers and remembering it all. Attending a concert would focus my attention on individual works. I’d anticipate the performance. I’d read (skim) the program notes. And I’d hear the music as it was intended, not with my $4 Boze earphones. Attending a concert would educate me and help me appreciate future concerts but I need help with the first steps.

There’s been a lot of ink spilled about the classical music community’s need to reach beyond their traditional audience. Cleveland is far from immune from these pressures. The orchestra should do all that it can to make selecting a concert as easy as possible and the biggest thing they could do would be to embed real, representative samples of the music. I have no way of knowing but I suspect that a lot of people have the same feelings as I do. So, this is an easily implemented suggestion that could have a big impact.

This post is a quick demonstration. It took enough work that I won’t be doing it often but it would still be measured in minutes. Just like when I cobbled together a post about the Kent State Folk Festival, I grabbed the first result of a search for “mass in c minor.” In the same time that this took me, someone familiar with the music could choose a section that would give the best idea of what to expect at the concert. It’s a natural evolution of program notes to the internet. The richness of the web is a huge advance over traditional program notes. One could add recordings of similar works to help illustrate musical concepts… previous works to trace musical influences… subsequent works for the same reason. There must be countless further ideas that didn’t occur to me in a few seconds of brainstorming.

Incidentally, the orchestra posts their program notes online. I was pleasantly surprised by that but disappointed that they’re presented as pdf’s. Send .pdf’s to your printer. The web uses HTML. The last time that I checked, people hated .pdf’s. Has that changed? They still annoy me. It took me a minute to repost a couple pages as a scribd widget. (Press the button at the right of the bar at the top to enlarge the document to a readable size.) It’s better but I don’t see any reason why it shouldn’t be HTML to begin with.

Mozart Mass Inc Minor

hangar steak

Bodega’s restaurant week offer is simple: any three of their tapas. Fortunately, Bodega doesn’t seem to need an excuse to offer creative specials. On each of the three occassions that I’ve visited, there have been several specials. And each time I’ve been there the food has been good with at least one particularly memorable dish. The first time I went, I had fantastic short ribs. Everything was delicious on my most recent visit: hangar steak with a wonderful chimichuri, lamb “lollipops” and chocolate banana bread pudding. The hangar steak isn’t a tapas. As at Moxie, I chose not to take advantage of the Restaurant Week offer.

At fire, I finally went with the official Restaurant Week menu. Three course with two choices for each course. The appetizers and entrees are all from the regular menu.

soup
or
mackenzie blue goat cheese, poached pears, local lettuce and shallot vinaigrette
*
“steak and eggs” (tandoor roasted hangar steak, local fried egg, “tater tot”, spinach and anticucho sauce)
or
sauteed sea scallops (butternut squash puree, braised kale, maple butter, crushed hazelnuts and vanilla salt)
*
fresh popover with salted caramel ice cream and local maple syrup
or
parfait (roasted local apple, greek yoghurt, and candied almond)

The soup on Sunday was a delicious caramelized onion. The scallops were wonderful. I’ve had the hangar steak before and it is fantastic.

scallops, kale, squash, maple butter

Stuart added this event to his schedule at Upcoming.org. Click the post title to go there for more details.

Best Food Writing 2008 (Best Food Writing)

Tuesday, November 11, Dante will host a book signing. “Italian hors d’oeuvres” will be served. Copies of Best Food Writing 2008 will be available for signing by both Chef Boccuzzi and Laura Taxel. Laura Taxel’s article Dante’s Inferno, originally published in Cleveland Magazine and available online, is featured in the book. In addition to the complimentary appetizers, the restaurant is offering a special three course wine dinner. I added the event details to Upcoming.org: Dante’s Inferno, November 11, 5:30-7:30pm.

I’ve never been disappointed by Dante’s charcuterie. It’s always great. One of Dante’s chefs who was largely responsible for the charcuterie has moved on to fire food and drink. I hope Dante’s maintains the high standards of their charcuterie and I hope that fire picks up a little something, too.

Here’s the menu copied from their email announcement:

House Cured Charcuterie
pickled vegetables, apricot mostarda

Barbera, Dino Torti, Castelrotto, Oltrepò Pavese  2005
*
Truffled Tagliatelle alla Carbonara
5 hour poached egg

Tempranillo & Graciano, Luis Alegre, Rioja, Crianza  2004
*
Leg of Lamb Confit
rosemary rissotto, forest mushroom ragout

Corvina, Rondinella, Campagnola, Caterina Zardini, Valpolicella Classico Superiore  2004

The Dante restaurant web site was just updated. It’s not great. Annoying scroll bars, frames… And a condescending little “best viewed in Safari” sticker.

Duck prosciutto at Dante