Thursday, August 21, 2014

Birthday Week

While half the customers in the place resemble a Match.com commercial, Tanta, a Peruvian vittles, wine and cocktails restaurant downtown, has the pleasant aspect of not feeling like anything in Chicago. The rooftop bar feels like Spain and the restaurant feels eerily Californian in scope, minimalism, pop and chatter. Get anything ceviche-related, don't get the beef cheeks. Get the cocktails, don't look at other customers  - they're looking around enough for both of you. Eat the plantain chips, make sure your servers and bussers don't take away things that aren't finished. We went to Mr. Gastón Arcía's restaurant in Madrid and liked it muchly. Very similar punch here. We'd go again, which is saying something in our restaurant visits of late. Best thing: the rooftop opens at 3pm, has a full drink menu and enough lil noshes to make it a meal. That's probably our next play, should we return.

This week's food:

Thursday, August 14, 2014

Mid-August Mishmash of Meals

Waiting...

Still waiting...

Don't skip a spring vacation and then book your fall vacation five months ahead of time. The lack of a spring vacation, with all the attendant annoyances involved with that, along with the taxed anticipation that morphs into "GET HERE!" for the upcoming vacation is just too much. Screw you, time! Move it!

We're waiting, but it's almost here. Should be good.

A quick round-up today, mostly chronicled to make sure the Owen Roe Cabernet Franc gets a write-up. Oh, and to remind ourselves to not make Anne Burrell's falafel recipe. Too much work for too little pay-off.

Thursday, August 7, 2014

Goat Rendang With 2011 Luis Pato Fernão Pires Beira Atlântico

Indonesian goat rendang with a Portuguese red that's made with 94% white grapes.

Goofy? Nuts?

Nope.

This was a perfumey, delicious meal unlike anything we've ever had.

Saveur recipe, using goat (from Farm City on Devon), macadamia nuts, jarred lime leaf and low-fat coconut milk. Otherwise, everything else followed to the letter. Put over a pearl barley-farro mixture, topped with pomegranate seeds and mint, served with a side of roasted, multi-colored carrots spritzed with the juice of roasted lime.

We were mostly shocked with how perfumey everything was, in a good sense though, abutting the property of "Holy crap, that's perfumey!" but never falling into that lawn (really stretching it with that metaphor. Screw it. I'm leaving it).

Light, bright goat that never became overwhelmed by the healthy amount of fresh spice and four-hour simmer. This was balanced food offering fireworks in our mouths without becoming a spice bomb. Pomegranate seeds and mint freshened things up, pearl barley-farro starch tamed the rough edges. Just everything you'd want from new food. If we went to a restaurant for the first time and I ate this, 10 more visits would follow to chase that great first experience.

Served with 2011 Luis Pato Fernão Pires Beira Atlântico ($28 - Lush), a blend of 94% fernão pires and 6% baga. So...94% is the white grape, ferñao pires, and 6% is the red grape, baga. Yet this wine is a red with the color, strut, and complete feel of a floral red wine. Smelled like Oregon pinot noir (ringer for Ponzi), tasted like the fruity-floral first half of a Beaujolais, and had a bass guitar background beat of a Loire cabernet franc. Red berries and white flowers, with bitter cacao nib notes. Wet tobacco leaf at times. Medium-to-light but with wild guts and verve in every sip. Pretty finishing lift that summarized everything that came before quite beautifully. Read about it here. Luis Pato is a wonder. We might be taking a side trip in a month or so.

See that Nat Decants food and wine pairing widget to the right? Put in beef rendang and baga shows up, so we ran with it. Fernão pires is a spicy, floral white grape (maria gomes by another name). Baga is a red grape with high acidity and produces wines with surprising structure for how light it can come off. Mix those two together and we got a wine that stood up rather admirably to the spice in this dinner. It retreated from the challenge for a split-second with every bite and sip, only to come back stronger and more fully than it was by itself. It was complete, lifting, refreshing and entirely interesting with this food, changing into about eight different expressions with each slightly different food bite combination, with every expression very much welcome and fascinating, with a great Portuguese dirt note throughout.

I don't know how this worked at this level, but it did.  

Eat more goat, people. And drink wild Luis Pato wine with it.

It makes both better.

Tuesday, August 5, 2014

Lunch With 2012 Do Ferreiro & Dinner With 2009 Yves Leccia Domaine d'E Croce Patrimonio

Quickie today.

Lunch of mozzarella and tomatoes in olive oil with basil and Aleppo pepper, served with baguette to dip, top, and dunk.

House lunch favorite. It's been awhile.

The 2012 Do Ferreiro Albariño Salnés ($20 - Vin Chicago) isn't the Cepas Vellas from this winery, which is ethereal magic in a bottle. This is their basic albariño offering that gives delicate cantaloupe melon-like fruit upfront, followed by a citrus and Asian fruit number, ending with a touch of salt. Bright, tasted like a melon shooter right after opening, then transitioned to something more complete and complex as it warmed up. Do Ferreiro always seems to shoot for a more fancy, lacey acid and minerals and a more delicate albariño overall, without losing the signature guts of the grape. Saw that here. Nice. Nice with the food, as mozzarella/tomato and albariño is a frequent house pairing. Still like Orballo for all its in-your-face acid goodness more.


Dinner of Jamie Oliver piri piri chicken a side of roasted sweet and regular potatoes with feta, dill and mint. It was just chicken but, as with most Jamie Oliver things, this meal hit Every. Freakin'. Note. In his recipe, Mrs. Ney has always forgone the roasted potato side in favor of some sort of veggie salad and baguette to sop up the delicious piri piri juice. Not this time, though she roasted, instead of nuked, the potatoes (1/2 hour for sweet, hour for regular) to give them a crusty exterior. Topped with feta and a healthy amount of dill and mint, it was a crispy-crunchy, creamy, herby, fresh party in our mouths. Doin' that again, cuz it's chockablock with awesomeness. Typically happy piri piri with its spike of heat that didn't overwhelm the meatiness of the peppers and chicken. Just all-around great food.

Served with 2009 Leccia Domaine d'E Croce Patrimonio Blanc Corsica ($42 - Lush). 100% vermentino, five years old, imported by Kermit Lynch. So...yes, yes and yes. Started out rather basic and fine, offering more simple vermentino notes, but sort of exploded into a funky gooseberry and smoked apricot wonder once it had some time to open/warm up. Solid, sturdy stuff with the acid pumping along quite nicely, keeping everything right and proper. Spritely, happy, bright - creamy at times. I have a strange obsession with vermentino but, at times, it can be a bit too...vermentino-y. ALMOST saw that here. $42 is steep for what it gave, but a nice one-off. Pairing fine-ness with certain bites that didn't contain so much heat and we should have saved it for a Farmers' Market jubilee, but not too much regret here. Opened a 2013 Caves de Charmelieu Saint-Bris Sauvignon Blanc ($10 - Trader Joe's) as well. In terms of the price difference and overall enjoyment, close race, as this Saint-Bris has been the house white for the better part of the last year. We just love the snot out of it.

Up Next: Goat curry