#106 - Thomas Keller Chicken & Burgundian Cheese With Varnier-Fanniere Champagne

Thomas Keller Chicken again!

Because it's good.

And it's been two weeks!

It's what got us on the white Burgundy train with a delicious Viré Clessé.

And we loved it with an Auxey Duresses white Burgundy last month. While not particularly good with two Pinot Blancs, it was fine Fourth of July stuff with a Grüner Veltliner and a Hungarian white while being not too shabby with a bargain Sancerre.

Thomas Keller chicken though, transcends normal, everyday chicken. It's not just chicken. It's not even Wine Can Chicken. It's some sort of Super Chicken.

Food: Thomas Keller Chicken with Burgundian cheese and a mâche and lemon verbena salad

Virtually a carbon copy of the meal two weeks ago with a few exceptions.

Delicious chicken again. Softer, more herbal skin and the thigh won the tasty chicken battle for the second straight chicken dinner. Mouthwateringly juicy that amped up the very essence of chicken in the lining of my cheeks.

Delice de Bourgogne cheese with baguette again. It's my current favorite cheese. Perfect amount of funkiness that hangs around just long enough without staying too long at the party.

One big difference was lemon verbena instead of parsley in the mâche mix. Brought a citrus element to the plate of course, but took the cleansing-of-the-palate salad utility one step further and brought a contrasting element to the food. Doesn't necessarily brighten things up but diversified things a bit.

I implore you. Try Thomas Keller's Bouchon chicken and drink a good French white with it. It's so easy to make and the payoff is something quite over-the-top Great.

Wine: NV Varnier-Fanniere Champagne Grand Cru Blanc de Blancs Brüt ($29 - WDC)

100% Chardonnay. Disgorged in 2006. Very pale yellow in the glass. Yeast of old bread dough on the nose right away. Started out closed and DRY on the palate. Once the shock of how dry it was wore off and some food was added, the wine exploded with a solid-as-a-rock pear background fruit note with citrus notes dancing the foreground. Fine touch of yeast throughout that never turned too bready. Lively acid that played nice with everything and never demanded your attention and a very subtle almost heavily toasted almond note or dirt occasionally popped up - something dark or at least unexpectedly dark-ish that I couldn't quite put my finger on. Bone-dry in the best way.

A delicious Champagne that will be bought again.

Pairing: 94 An absolute surprise in every sense

I guess the biggest surprise was how well it fielded everything thrown at it. Best with the delice de Bourgogne with the yeasty-pear elements in the wine matching up brilliantly with the slight funk in the cheese. It was a Wow moment.

Not too shabby at all with the chicken. The herbs in the chicken accented the fruit in the Champagne, mixing and refreshing the mouth on a brutally hot and humid day. Fruit, succulent skin, herbal base and bubbles = Some great bites and drinks.

And just flat-out delicious with the lemon verbena.

Thomas Keller chicken might be spectacular with white Burgundy but neither of us wanted everything resembling butter in a wine when it was 90 degrees out and humid as *&%#.

With the Champagne, a wine that constantly changed and constantly surprised with the food, something that refreshed was called for.

And it did in spades.

#120 - Thomas Keller Chicken With An '07 Hubert Lamy "Les Frionnes"

Serious discussions are currently taking place at Food With Wine headquarters over the possible renaming of this here website to The Church Of Thomas Keller Chicken.

It's getting that ridiculous.

This pairing experiment has been settled. It's white Burgundy and its various incarnations.

Other have worked just fine but nothing touches white Burgundy.

This one fell in the upper tier of all wines with TKC and the middle of TKC and WB.

Food: Thomas Keller chicken with Delice de Bourgogne, baguette and asparagus

Mrs. Ney thought it overdone. Maybe a little but the breasts stayed moist while, oddly, the thighs came off a touch dry. We cut to eat at the table (coffee) and it made a difference, mitigating some of that.

Skin again. Skin. Again. Blend of white and black pepper this time with salt turned into skin that tasted like so much more spice than was present. Crunchy as all get-out. Great stuff. And the juice on the plate at the table was drinkable, it was that good.

Delice de bourgogne with baguette because with white Burgundy, it's...stupid good (and was again).

Asparagus drizzled with walnut oil to finish things off.

Again. Again. Ridiculous. Surprising Again. Great Again. Just what we want every time.

Wine: 2007 Hubert Lamy Saint-Aubin 1er Cru "Les Frionnes" ($35 - Howard's on Belmont)

Grape: Chardonnay

Region/Sub-Region/Appellation/Vineyard: Burgundy-Côte de Beaune-Saint-Aubin-Les Frionnes

Vintage (WS): 92 Drink or hold Precise, pure and elegant, with lively structures if harvested late; at worst unripe if picked early

Huge edge of lime acid and a green apple core right out of the bottle. A bit harsh. After an hour decant, it transformed into something nearly graceful, full of minerals and a touch of white flowers. Fruit was less distinct and a bit all over the place but in a good way, offering a blend of citrus, peach, papaya, apricots and apple that gave way to its mineral core that came off more rough but welcome instead of finer and elegant. Huge mid-palate core of nutmeg with a little smoke gave it a darker overall tone. The creamy chardonnay character mitigated its rougher edges on the finish, bringing on a lovely and medium-long finish of stones mixed with white peach creamsicle (especially with the cheese).

Jumped around nicely, complex enough and fell in the middle of our growing white Burgundy world.

We're learning.

Pairing: 90 Settled. It's white Burgundy with Thomas Keller chicken. Testify!

Drinking anything else would seem blasphemous. And the Church Of Thomas Keller Chicken cannot stand for blasphemers.

Best with the cheese with a beautiful, infinitely interesting and longer finish. Better with the thigh for me and somewhat short with the breast. Became smokier with the chicken skin.

As I said, the wine jumped around nicely, offering alternating goodness throughout the meal.

And that's best thing we liked about it. The wine never fell short of "pretty." It may have never wandered into "wow" territory but always acted like it wanted to be accepted into the Church.

The Elders met and welcomed the wine in with open arms.

#200 - Revisiting The Very First Pairing

It's fun with numbers!

Today, for the 200th post, we revisit the very first pairing we ever did for this blog, Wine Can Chicken with 1999 Prager Riesling Smaragd Steinriegl, which started out the blog with a bang and served us much better than post #2, Church Cookbook Lasagna with 2008 Castle Rock Pinot Noir.  My bowels are probably still scraping out the nastiness of that concoction.

We soon rebounded from that calamity though with pairing post #5, Wine Can Chicken and saffron risotto with 1996 Heredia Gravonia that saddled right up to the food in great Spanish ways.

Thomas Keller Chicken quickly usurped Wine Can Chicken as the chicken standard with pairing post #83, our first foray into seriously considering chardonnay as a drinkable grape and something we might actually want.  But WCC found itself left in the dust, so much so that Mrs. Ney struggled today to find her WCC mojo in the kitchen, something that once upon a time came to her quite naturally.

Since this is #200, let's look back at other number milestones in 25-post increments that starts out with a boatload of more chicken (and risotto):

#101 - Thomas Keller Chicken & Burgundian Cheese with a Burgundian White

Now over 100 posts!

Never would have guessed. It's served us well as a reference.

Thomas Keller chicken seemed appropriate after a Thomas Keller Ad Hoc visit four days before. He was at Ad Hoc the night we were there, sitting next to a guy who had the four-course Memphis BBQ dinner at 5pm and came back for it again at 9pm. Gotta say, it was that good. I'd do it.

And Burgundy was something we were going to delve deeper into instead of the recent surface play after we exhausted our love for other regions. I just never would have thought it would start with white Burgundy. But it has. And we love it.

We love Pinot Noir and have thought in the past that Chardonnay can rot on the vine (wine humor and recycled at that!) for all we cared. But something happened with the Viré Clessé from last month.

A place has been found for Chardonnay in our world rather quickly and nearly completely. So the retort from some was true. We just didn't have a good one. I expect our prejudice for California Chardonnay to linger for years but white Burgundy, welcome to our world. You're good stuff.

Food: Thomas Keller chicken with mâche and parsley salad and Burgundian cheese and baguette

It was a near identical match to the Chardonnay tasting last month. Same chicken, this time with a more dark chicken and a slightly higher salt level and definitely higher pepper level. Juicy with great skin with better dark meat than the breast this time. It's the best chicken on the planet. Here's the recipe.

The Burgundian cheese, delice de Bourgogne, nearly matched the chicken. Like brie without the brie-ness. Intensely creamy without choking you with its creaminess and just enough funkiness that knows when to go away. Served with LaBriola baguette. No baguette is better and it's not every close. If you don't agree, put 'em up, sport.

Mrs. Ney wasn't thrilled about the prospect of chicken. She craved it a few days before but wasn't as she was making it. But like tuna Niçoise, fish tacos, bahn mi and scores of other meals, it always turns into something delicious, absolutely wanted and always a meal that wildly exceeds every expectation. It was another "Hot Mother Damn, this is good!"

And the wine certainly helped.

Wine: 2006 Jean-Phillipe Fichet Auxey Duresses ($45 - Randolph Wine Cellars)

Grape: 100% Chardonnay

Appellation: Auxey Duresses, just west of Meursault and seemingly carved out of the Hautes-Côtes de Beaune hillside

Vintage (WS): 91 - Drink or hold - Best are pure, elegant and balanced, with plenty of mineral character

the Auxey Duresses AOC has only been around since 1970. Before that, grapes grown there sold under the Meursault and Volnay appellation labels and some mixed Villages labels. Quality and distinction has steadily increased and vineyards are using the Auxey Duresses name on the bottle more frequently.

Jean-Phillipe Fichet is a strict winemaker using slow growing and mostly organic techniques, even studying the micro-climates of micro-climates to find the true expression of the grape from the true expression of the land. He has vines all over Burgundy. This is his Auxey Duresses vines.

Tons of smoky pear on the palate with a hint of maybe (baked?) apple and chockablock with a chalky minerality on the mid-palate. In fact, that's all that was on the mid-palate. Unique, balanced and open, it just sung and was worth every bit of the $45 price tag. Beautifully subdued touch of underlying butter that left at the right time for the minerality to transition in. Nice finish with more smoky pear perking up. Layered and wonderful. More lively and refreshing than the Domaine de Roally with less funk. Two different styles, two pretty great wines.

We'll be following Mr. Fichet after this one.

Pairing: 94 Good chicken and good Chardonnay = Yes, please!

We've messed around with other whites with wine can chicken and some worked, some fell flat and many were as fair-to-middling as it gets, if pleasant enough to have around.

Many times, those average ones were wines we liked already and simply wanted to drink. They turned out fine enough, mostly because we already liked the wine.

But as a roast chicken pairing, I would venture to guess that white Burgundy wins out 80% of the time from here on out.

Probably best with the cheese and bread as the subtle funkiness in the cheese danced with the butter and minerality of the wine. Seemed made for each other and actually were. Rarely can you go wrong when you stay within the same region for food and wine. It's what they do and why they do it.

But the chicken with the wine was a close second, especially with the pepper. There was a point very early in the meal when we felt like we had to start rationing the wine as we kept grabbing for the glass after every bite. It was that good together. We constantly wanted to get that taste in our mouth back.

Thomas Keller Buttermilk Fried Chicken & Biscuits With Trader Joe's North Coast Sparkling

I really should take better pictures...

You can buy Thomas Keller's Ad Hoc At Home, or you can simply search for the recipes. But you really should buy it, because it's enormous (and fussy), and detailed (and fussy), and gets you into the head of the guy who makes damn good food (and fussy), and kinda awesome.

This is our third time taking a fatty-delicious dip into the TK buttermilk fried chicken waters (last two). A lesson to be learned with TK BFC is that you might have the urge to pop a spendy Champagne with such meticulously prepared and somewhat laborious fried chicken. You might. You say it warrants such things, you put in hard work and should be rewarded. Well, you resist that urge. We've done it and the buttermilk gobbles up much of the nuance. You end up separating bites from sips, taking a pause between, in order to find the Champagne goodness, instead of rolling up your sleeves and getting all down-and-dirty with the chicken and bubbles. Thinking about how much you spent on the wine should never enter the equation here. You want to become a remorseless eating machine with chicken like this.

Buttermilk fried chicken recipe here. Buttermilk biscuits here. A frisée salad with Rogue blue cheese, roasted tomatoes and croutons to mimic wedge salad (Ad Hoc recipe as well), because frankly, iceberg lettuce in wedge salad form is something I crave about once every two years, then I have three bites and I'm pretty much done. Frisée is a better choice here. It does a better mop-up job on your throat and tummy with the buttermilk bounty.

#115 - Thomas Keller-ish Chicken And Burgundian Cheese With An '06 Jurançon Sec

Last night's quick meal was another attempt to find the limits of Thomas Keller chicken with white wine.

We gave it a go with red two weeks ago and it only reaffirmed our love for white with the bird.

To plagiarize myself:

"TK chicken got us on the white Burgundy train with a delicious Viré Clessé.

And we loved it with an Auxey Duresses white Burgundy last month. While not particularly good with two Pinot Blancs, it was fine Fourth of July stuff with a Grüner Veltliner and a Hungarian white while being not too shabby with a bargain Sancerre."

This one fell in the middle with an '06 Clos Uroulat Jurançon Sec. Sort of a half-ass selection in many ways. It's been sitting in the fridge for weeks and had to be drunk.

Food: TK chicken with Delice de Bourgogne, baguette and mâche

Quick roasted bird with a tasty salt level and a switch-up with white pepper added. We're craaaazy. Juicy enough with the good skin. It's Thomas Keller chicken. There are times it feels just a wee bit rote. Then we eat it and love every minute of it.

Delice de Bourgogne cheese eaten the day it came in, which is different than in the past. Wasn't as magically delicious but still quality cheese. This one needs some..."house aging," we'll call it. More firm and simple instead of that slowly activated funkiness that we love so much.

Baguette with the cheese and mustard and torrontés jelly on the side, which weren't really touched. The cheese was good enough.

Mâche salad to round out the plate.

Quickly thrown together but didn't taste like it. The kind of meal that made me, at the mid-point, relish in the delicious familiarity of it all.

Wine: 2006 Charles Hours Clos Uroulat Cuvée Marie Jurançon Sec ($23 - WDC)

It's been sherry-ized! Two things. We didn't decant, which was recommended with this wine (a 2 1/2 hour decant last time) and the bottle sat in the kitchen fridge for weeks.

I don't see a decant helping the sherry quality now present but the sherry-ness may have come from the deep freeze it got since it was put in the fridge.

Who knows? One more bottle to treat better and find out.

Given all that, still not bad and kinda welcome. The sherry notes served only as a faint framework to be acknowledged more than ruining the enjoyment of anything. Subtle pineapple and orange blossom notes were still present with some dried flowers. This one already had that vicious mouthfeel and smoky notes to transition naturally to a sherry-like wine so...

Didn't hate it. Even kinda liked it for all its age and flaws most likely imposed upon it to a degree.

Pairing: 86 Not too shabby

Best with the chicken. The salt on the chicken killed the front end of the wine but as it transitioned from the front to the mid to the finish, a great progression happened with an oil and smoke middle and a surprising, yet subtle orange blossom and honeyed lemon finish. The chicken skin seemed to allow the wine to find a bit of its former self.

Disjointed and odd with the cheese. Tasted like someone took liquid smoke to a pile of crushed rocks. Nothing to recommend.

Fine enough with the greens.

Overall, it was the surprise that the wine did anything with the food after tasting the sherry-like quality right away that made it entirely acceptable and even welcome.

After Portugal, Two Meals With More Flavor

Portugal.

(Portugal, Portugal, Portugal)

We have conflicting feelings about 10 days in the Douro and Porto. Blank brains, plenty of pool time, lots of lounging, and a general sense of Vacation was nice. And needed. Very much needed.

But timid food lacking the aggressive flavors we like - food with pop, depth and surprise - left us without an element to our day that brings us joy.

Our weekends at home revolve around good food and good wine. We need it with the jobs we work. In the food-wine world, we like our vacations to be on par with our weekends. It's the essential cherry on top to all the relaxation and away-ness. Portugal wasn't that.

We dearly missed spices and herbs and the proper use of salt and pepper. And we won't be eating ham, cheese and bread in any form for months.

So two meals after our return to bring back The Flavor.

#83 - Thomas Keller Chicken, Mâche & Cheese With Two Chardonnays

We have a few prejudices that we're more than willing to let linger as we find our wine feet.

Mostly, it's "screw Cabernet and Chardonnay". We just don't enjoy their guts as much as other wines. We know good Cabernet and Chardonnay are good and have had a few good ones. And we know we'll eventually get to them more at length. But we also know that "good" costs money, especially with those two grapes.

With both of us having worked in the restaurant business/wine retail-ish world for so long, we've had tons of overpriced and bad Cab and Chard. They can wait while we spend our money getting into the nuances of wines and regions that we truly enjoy. We've opened up to virtually every style of wine. These two linger as a judgment though and we have no impulse to mess around trying to find bargains of two grapes we don't care about.

But, last night, threw a wrench into the works a bit. And both of us thought that might happen.

A wine writer for the now-defunct New York Sun quoted Henry James when discussing the Királyudvar Sec, a glorious wine that we've had on multiple occasions since November and a wine we almost switched to last night:

In a rare moment of concision, the novelist and critic Henry James observed, "There are two kinds of taste, the taste for emotions of surprise, and the taste for emotions of recognition."

We seek out surprise in wines. But, for us, the impulse hasn't been there to be surprised by Cabernet and Chardonnay.

Champagne has been recently scratched off the "don't freakin' care about" list. I can't believe I'm writing this but Chardonnay...you're now off the list. Cabernet...(and Malbec and Tannat and Zweigelt...OH!...and Pinot Grigio, something that's well ahead of Cabernet in our 'screw you' world)...you are the only ones really left.

Thanks to what might have been the perfect recipe to get into Chardonnay, the response to last night's meal was, "Why was THAT so good?!"

Food: Thomas Keller chicken with pea shoots, mâche with avocado vinaigrette and baguette with Burgundian cheese and Irish butter

Here's the recipe. Get to know it because it's stupid good. Better than Wine Can Chicken, five words I thought I'd never say, and easier to prepare.

No one element of the chicken made it delicious. It was the total product. Simply prepared and tasted exactly like what people mean when they extol the virtues of simplicity with an almost brightness in its earthy goodness. It's the new "Winner Winner" in Chicken Dinner.

The Burgundian cheese, delice de Bourgogne, nearly matched the chicken. Like brie without the brie-ness. Intensely creamy without choking you with its creaminess and just enough funkiness that knows when to go away. Served with LaBriola baguette. No baguette is better and it's not every close.

Mâche with an avocado vinaigrette made with crappy, store-bought guacamole that was used previously for a quickly whipped-together taco lunch a few days earlier. Just extra virgin oil, white wine vinegar, salt and pepper. Complimented the chicken beautifully and served to help the already present brightness in the chicken along. Pea shoots brought something more crunchy and became the bridge between the mâche and the chicken.

We could have served any of our favorite wines with this meal and would have loved it.

But it's Try New Things Summer.

Wine: 2007 Domaine de Roally Viré Clessé ($20 - WDC) and 2008 Craggy Range Chardonnay Kidnapper's Vineyard ($17 -WDC)

2007 Domaine de Roally Viré Clessé

Grape: 100% Chardonnay

AOC: Viré Clessé in the Mâconnais subregion of Burgundy

Vintage (WS): 92 Precise, pure and elegant, with lively structures if harvested late; at worst unripe if picked early

2008 Craggy Range Chardonnay Kidnapper's Vineyard

Grape: 100% Chardonnay

Region: Hawkes Bay

We sampled both wines before the meal and the Burgundy was the undisputed winner right out of the bottle. More golden yellow than the New Zealand wine, which had a crisp green in the glass, the Domaine de Roally had a huge barnyard funkiness to it that was deliciously weird. A bit of oak and butter but the hay and something that was almost lavender (without the overt lavender quality) was unique and good. Initially, the Craggy Range was all buttered toast, the exact quality that we don't enjoy at all about Chardonnay, with a wee hint of pear.

Things changed over the course of the meal though. The Craggy Range quickly showed more nuance with more expressive pear and hints of lime and a clean, refreshing acidity with the excessively buttered notes falling into the background. Almost delicate with even some limestone notes. Mrs. Ney put it perfectly. Blind, it could have been an enjoyable California Sauvignon Blanc.

Very much less acidic and more rich, the Domaine de Roally evolved into buttered baked fruits with the barnyard quality integrating more into the fruit profile and tons of minerals. A better, more interesting wine than the Craggy Range with an elegant coating of the throat as it went down.

Comparing both styles seemed apt given our aversion to the grape and we benefitted from it. It was a classic Old World/New World thing with two great examples of both. And both at or under $20.

Just really enjoyable and "surprised" the heck out of it.

Pairing: 94 As a total meal, that's the score but it's tough to score something like this

Nothing went off the rails but some things were better with a specific wine. And some things were the definition of perfect.

Eating the delice de Bourgogne and baguette with the Domaine de Roally would turn anyone skeptical of what wine does with food and what the French unequivocally get right with food and wine in about two seconds. Pure silk and made us pause.

The mâche and avocado vinaigrette with the Craggy Range did nearly as well. The lime and mineral notes in the wine exploded and together, they both sang.

The chicken played right down the middle, serving both wines well and we alternated back and forth, picking up what we wanted, when we wanted it at each particular time. Mostly, it was the nice backbone of minerality in different forms in both wines that made the chicken pairing (particularly with the nicely salted skin) work so well. Oh, and we slathered butter on the chicken because Thomas Keller told us to. You don't question Thomas Keller. Delicious with the Domaine de Roally.

I'm not going to say we going to rush out and buy up as many Chardonnays as we can as soon as possible. But in our world, it's found a small niche, made that way by what might have been the perfect meal to make that happen.

A quick note. Went to Mado Tuesday for another goshdarn good meal. Appetizer menu was meat platter of chicken liver paté, testa and copa, roasted carrots in ras el hanout goat cheese and cumin honey, farm fresh egg on toasted cornbread, citrus-cured lake perch, and asparagus and peas with Parmigiano-Reggiano. Entrees were spaghetti with spring onion, chilies and bread crumbs and eggs in purgatory, a sort of Sicilian green olive, spiced tomato and breadcrumb stew. We were happy and full.

Eaten with the 2007 Paul Hobbs Pinot Noir Ulises Valdez Vineyard ($75 - Binny's) and the 1999 Prager Riesling Smaragd Steinreigl ($16 - WDC). The Prager has been discussed here numerous times. It's almost done and the degree in which it's leaped toward its death was even more intensified since the last time we had it. All dried flowers and apricots with only a hint of sugar. Got better as it opened up. We've enjoyed every second of watching this one go. The Paul Hobbs, bought when I was in a spendy mood and apparently more open to overpriced California offerings, didn't come close to living up to its price tag however. Very Californian with that syrupy quality and pleasant enough fruit and decent balance. If I spent $30 on it, I would have thought it was a fine enough wine, even good. At $75, I was a bit pissy about it.

#214 - Not Thomas Keller Chicken, Chaource & Baguette With '07 Fichet Meursault

We're torn.

On the one hand, Thomas Keller chicken is chicken on crack with stupid-good crispy skin, a pool of juice that could be sold on the street and turn a tidy profit and leg and thigh meat that turns so dark and succulent.

On the other hand, due to the high cooking temperature and longer time in the oven, keeping the breast meat moist (huh-huh - I enjoy lame running gags) has been a delicate balancing act, usually just missing the mark.

So along came the Cook's Illustrated version of simple roasted chicken in this month's issue, cutting the cooking time in half while turning the oven off halfway through to allow the bird to continue cooking but at a gradual and incrementally lower temperature.  Seemed right and proper to keep the breast meat juicy.

So we gave it a go.

#144 - Thomas Keller Chicken With Two Chardonnays

Another chardonnay tasting. Another TK chicken meal.

Thomas Keller chicken is a "last meal" kinda thing for me and has been talked about here oodles of times.

Last night was a return to the Old World vs. New World chardonnay tasting promised earlier this month. That time, with two wines in the same price range, white Burgundy won hands down. Most of the time, in the same price range, white Burgundy is going to win in this house. It's what we want.

But last night offered intriguing results with an American chardonnay nearly beating a white Burgundy priced nearly four times more on its own and actually won the pairing battle.

Food: Thomas Keller Chicken, Delice de Bourgogne cheese with baguette and a mâche and radish salad

Recipe here. This time, sprinkled with freshly picked lemon thyme, sel gris & white pepper. Great chicken, this one in the upper 10% of the TKC oeuvre.

Delice de Bourgogne cheese with baguette. Cheese only four days past its expiration date this time. Beautiful stuff always. Whole Foods baguette. If you would have told me ten years ago that at some point in my life, I'd have strong feelings about baguette, I would have wondered if someone neutered me. Well, I do. I need more crusty-crustiness than the Whole Foods version offers, though this one compared to the Trader Joe's/Panera version might have been a better vehicle for sopping up the stellar chicken juice, something that should be bottled and sold as a crack accompaniment.

Now, the mâche salad. Mâche may be the default, unexciting green for us but I have a thing for it. Last night's served to round out the meal in the best way and actually add a critical element to the meal that was entirely unexpected. Blended with pea shoots and served with a grated-radish/mustard/white balsamic vinaigrette, it refreshed, cleansed and brought a surprising radishy-pea shoot greatness.

Typically great stuff overall.

But the wines served with it brought an interesting result.

Wine: 2007 Hubert Lamy Bourgogne “Les Chataigners” ($31 - Howard's) & 2007 Francis Ford Coppola Votre Santé Chardonnay Sonoma Coast ($9 - TJ's)

It's a horizontal!

Second 2007 Hubert Lamy for us, the first tasted in October. We liked that "Les Frionnes" Saint-Aubin well enough. Pretty and distinct with focused fruit. Last night's Hubert Lamy is taken from a single vineyard but is bottled under the more general Bourgogne Blanc label.

A light, sparkly yellow/green in the glass. Subtle lime peel notes upfront that transitioned into very light lemon custard. Midpalate of undistinguishable dark stones that was clouded by that basic chardonnay character's creaminess, leaving something not particularly distinct, delineated or layered. Never really went anywhere. Older French oak barrels used. A graceful hint of vanilla at times but more butterscotch than anything. It certainly was a lighter, more accessible white Burgundy but didn't offer much in the way of personality, verve or guts to take control of the tongue or direct the food. Wasn't....very dynamic.

The Votre Santé was the surprise. Much darker in the glass. I'm always leery of the wines that promote themselves as being "in the Burgundian style," but here's an $8 Trader Joe's chardonnay making valiant, if ultimately unsuccessful efforts to do such things. When you drink it though, tons of respect is given to those efforts. For $8, it's almost pretty. A grab-bag of citrus fruits that never overwhelmed anything or screamed, "Look at me!" with something in the middle that nearly came off minerally. More pronounced vanilla on the back-end than we like but less than so many other California chardonnays we've had. At times, even, that became tasty and wanted. You can taste a welcome restraint and huge efforts to keep things under control throughout.

The pairing told the story.

Pairing: 88 Back and forth, we found things to like

In the end, taking each wine on their merits and not taking price into account, the Hubert Lamy was a 10-20% better wine. But only slightly. And was only 'reminiscent' of white Burgundy goodness instead of actually bringing the goods.

It stood back and allowed the food to shine, never getting in the way and offering pleasant enough company with the food. But the Votre Santé might have been more interesting with individual bites, especially the bread-chicken juice combo and particularly with the breast meat.

First time in a long time that the breast meat outshone the leg-thigh meat with both wines. It wasn't even really close. Both became slightly bitter on the finish with the leg-thigh meat while the breast meat enhanced each wine and vice versa.

If each bottle were served separately with this meal, I think I might have liked the Votre Santé better for its playfulness and aggressiveness all wrapped in a blanket of something like restraint while the Hubert Lamy would have fell in the ho-hum category. As a pairing, gotta say, the $8 Trader Joe's bottle pretty much beat a $31 white Burgundy from a respected name.

Couldn't have predicted that.

#93 - Thomas Keller Chicken & Lyonnaise Salad With Two Whites

Another winner-winner chicken dinner.

This time coupled with the Ravenswood fireworks show. We like our neighborhood. It's quiet, easy and friendly enough.

But one day a year, the entire neighborhood converges in Winnemac Park for the best fireworks show we've ever seen.

Totally illegal, completely unsanctioned and barely a cop around with the ones that are looking the other way. It seems around 20 groups of people spend the entire year shopping, hoarding and stashing away huge fireworks nearly as big as the ones used at Navy Pier, set up and space out around the park at dusk and just start firing away for four hours. The entire neighborhood packs the park, line the fences surrounding the park, bring their dogs, bring some booze, sit down and enjoy the hell out of it.

"Oh, it's very popular, Ed. The sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wasteoids, dweebies, dickheads — they all adore it. They think it's a righteous scene."

And it's all very self-regulated. By the next morning every year, the park is magically cleaned of all the firework refuse. And every year, it gives us hope that people aren't so nuts.

Food: Thomas Keller chicken with Lyonnaise salad and Seeduction bread with Irish butter

Same chicken as before. Better (and easier) than Wine Can Chicken. This time with a little more salt and thyme. Moist, moist, moist with the extra salt drawing out tons of chicken skin flavor and the thyme bringing more of an herbal skin deliciousness. Probably the best of the three Thomas Keller chickens so far.

Lyonnaise salad consisting of frisee, thicker-cut bacon, poached egg, salt, pepper and white wine vinegar. It's one of my personal favorites. Not like the frisee offers much outside of a textural quality but something about egg yolk running into it and bacon that gets me.

Whole Foods Seeduction bread. Hearty bread with sunflower seeds, poppyseed, millet and what seems like a thousand other grains. It's the only bread at Whole Foods that ever really delivers the bready goodness when you're stuck in a pinch and have to buy bread there.

THAT was a great meal. Simple and freakin' delicious.

We kept it light and went with two whites.

Wine: 2004 Franz Hirtzberger Grüner Veltliner Smaragd Rotes Tor ($19 - WDC) & 2006 Királyudvar Tokaji Sec ($15 - Berkeley Wine)

Recommended by our favorite wine person at WDC, the Hirtzberger's been sitting around for a bit, waiting to be drunk. Looked great in the glass. Had a shimmer to it. On the palate, it's definitely transitioned into middle age. A huge, acidic brightness upfront with tangerine/Sunny D notes that immediately changed over to a smoky cooked/old peach, iron and white pepper core, finishing with a delicate touch of sweetness and white pepper again. In fact, the subtle hint of sugar mixed with a solid acidity played a graceful song throughout. Like listening to an older man who might smell a bit tell funny stories. The bottle went quickly because it was delicious. Worth the price and might even play above its price tag a bit.

I never loved grüner veltliner until I had a good one last year. This is a good one.

The 2005 Királvudvar Sec might be our favorite white wine. Probably is, actually. Yeah...it is.

Last night was the first time we dived into the 2006. We've enjoyed the hell out of watching the 2005 age as it's wandered beautifully into old age. The 2006 might end up having a much longer life. Vibrant and lively in the mouth, it's chockablock with orange blossom, a touch of cream and even a wee touch of sugar (more demi-sec than sec). Felt like more herbs and oil were hidden underneath its bright fruit core with a huge minerality and creamy orange dominating.

I only know Hungarian grapes from the Királyudvars we've had. This is a slightly different blend consisting of 70% Furmint and 30% Hárslevelu compared to the 80/20 split the year before. Might have been the reason this is showing a bit different than the 2005 along with the vintage upping the acidity compared to 2005. It's brighter and more vibrant, though maybe more straightforward right now compared to when we had the 2005 at the same time out from the vintage. Great stuff. Big fan.

Pairing: 89 Fine Fourth of July stuff

Nothing went wrong with any bite. Even with the dense, hearty bread, the grüner became something oddly delicious, offering some sort of smoky lentil note that we read about in a review of the Hirtzberger.

Each wine offered a different incarnation, a different place. With the grüner and its smoky notes, it became something darker and almost brooding, more introverted and thoughtful yet offering just enough acidic lift. With the Királyudvar, everything was more bright and youthful, more vibrant and light on its feet - all of it a distinction we might not have seen without comparing two whites against each other with the food.

And the addition of more salt and thyme seemed to really help everything along, bringing out everything that probably could have been.

We'll be following the Hirtzberger in some form and it's going to be nice to watch the 2006 Királyudvar evolve.

#109 - Thomas Keller Chicken & Two Cheeses With '05 Fichet Auxey Duresses

Birthday Chicken!

We had a birthday in the Ney house yesterday. Now, usually going out for birthdays is right and proper. But both of us couldn't think of anything more awful than going out to enjoy ourselves and celebrate something than doing it on a Saturday night.

The horror!

So...home dinner. We like that best. We like our home food best, especially given the prospect of navigating Saturday night crowds, traffic and just the general weekend annoyance. Kinda food snobby but we're okay with that.

And Thomas Keller Chicken has become our meatloaf. This is the seventh time we've had it since early June. Because...especially with white Burgundy...I just can't think of something more delicious. I start to ruminate about the best bites of food with wine I've ever had when trying to think of comparisons. Just bites of food, certain elements of dishes that worked beautifully with wine. This is the whole enchilada. The entire meal that sits right up against those best bites.

It's worthy of a birthday dinner.

Food: Thomas Keller chicken, Brillat-Savarin & Cowgirl Creamery Red Hawk Cheese with baguette and a mâche and lemon balm salad

Typically great chicken. Beautiful salt level that was playful and just aggressive enough with the crispy skin. A touch more herby this time, or at least the herbs showed up more in individual bites.

Delice de bourgogne has been the standard-bearer for this meal in the past. Its creaminess with just enough funk lends an elegance and Frenchiness to the meal that's just the tops. With good baguette and TK chicken, it equals my current favorite meal.

So...variations on the delice de bourgogne style has been the thought du jour lately. Gave Port Salud a go with Pinot Blanc in mid-July. Meh. Good enough. Worked with the wine in an otherwise forgettable pairing. Staying within the cow's milk, soft to semi-soft and a touch of funk theme, we went with a Brillat-Savarin from Normandy and a Red Hawk cheese from Cowgirl Creamery in Sonoma, California.

The Brillat-Savarin won the night in the cheese category. Very soft, light on its feet, complex yet focused with an almost palate cleansing salty effect on the finish. Flashes of subtle funk that went in and out - the kind of easily accessible, welcome funk that resembled the whiff of a horse pen in a good way, the kind of smell that's carried by the wind on a farm, hits your nose and then goes on its merry way.

The Red Hawk never got out of the realm of curiosity for us. A much denser cheese here with a funk that resembled a yogurt-drenched wash cloth that fell between the washer and dryer and wasn't found for weeks afterward. Something certainly biological going on here. Not really our bag but enjoyed the first few bites as something interesting and even good at times.

A mâche and lemon balm salad with a white wine vinaigrette to finish.

Wine: 2005 Jean-Philippe Fichet Auxey Duresses ($35 - Binny's)

Grape: 100% Chardonnay

Appellation: Auxey Duresses, just west of Meursault and seemingly carved out of the Hautes-Côtes de Beaune hillside

Vintage (WS): 93 Charming, fleshy whites with juicy acidity and ripe fruit flavors; many are enjoyable now, but the best will age. More variable in Chablis

Just a month ago, we had TK chicken with a 2006 Jean-Philippe Fichet Auxey Duresses. You can read all about him and the wine there.

We promised to follow Mr. Fichet and last night, we kept our promise.

Two different wines for sure. Where the 2006 showed a core of pear/baked apple and a mid-palate beaming with a ultra-fine minerality, last night's 2005 was all pineapple cream with a rough-crushed stone minerality that also dominated the mid-palate. Wonderful depth with the 2005, more so than the 2006 in some ways as there was a more rough-and-tumble complexity that constantly changed, revealing different tropical fruit layers and a touch of vanilla on a long finish. Sits beautifully long after taking a sip with a fine gaseous residue that flutters so nicely.

Loved, loved, loved it. Comparing the years, the 2006 might have my heart with its more subtle beauty but the 2005 has a burly charm to it that can't be denied. If I had to choose which one on a particular night if both were under our roof, it would come down to mood.

I'm already looking forward to the 2007. Great wines in a great price range. We were indoctrinated to white Burgundy by the right winemakers and are quickly falling completely head over heels for them.

Pairing: 93 Just below the 2006 pairing but nonetheless spectacular

The finesse of the 2006 compared to the last night's 2005 probably wins by a hair as both of us.

We enjoyed the chicken a wee bit more last month with the 2006 as its subtlety allowed the chicken's inherent deliciousness to come through, or at least didn't stand in the way. It played nicer, gently wrapping itself around the chicken instead of having two big personalities in the room that got along swimmingly but still left a feeling that the bond came about in a rather clumsy manner.

And the simplicity (or maybe familiarity) of the meal with the 2006 allowed us to sit back and enjoy the nuances more.

A lot going on last night. Various levels of cheesy funk along with the burliness of the 2005 made for a large playing field that had to be digested and figured out.

That said, the wine with the Brillat-Savarin was gorgeous and the lemon balm at the end with the wine couldn't have been a better capper.

A great birthday meal without the Saturday night, dining-out stupidity.

#216 - San Francisco

Our third trip to the Bay Area in the last four years produced a very nice handful of highlights, a stupefyingly awful lowlight, a comfortable sense of familiarity, tons of interactions with ridiculously friendly, calm people and a relaxing feeling of escape, which was sorely needed.

So...success.  We liked it muchly.

Some impressions:  Torta Frontera by Rick Bayless in O'Hare is the best airport eats we've ever had (and we successfully avoided Bounty Hunter in Napa and Anchor Steam Brewery in SFO.  A first.).  We won't be flying or visiting wine country in August again.  La Quinta, you're always nice and cheap.  Dodge Charger...keep it.  2011 San Francisco summer weather feels like reading the more depressing moments of Kurt Vonnegut (which isn't altogether bad, just foggy-gloomy).  Spanish Table (and the wonderful Joe) was like a candyland for us, reminding us once again that a place deeply entrenched in Spanish-Spanish is desperately needed in Chicago.  Mrs. Ney continued her string of being selected for 'extra screening.'  She's now been tested for a full-body CT scan, a shoe bomb, a liquid/gel bomb, a boob- and/or crotch-bomb (aggressively) and now explosives residue while her companion with the stoic, slightly snarly expression sails right through.  We never expected a veggie-centric lunch could have been so transcendent and a formerly favorite restaurant visited a few hours later would have been such an abomination, tasting like it came from the 'International' section at Denny's.  But easy-peasy and a calming getaway.

This trip:  Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Zuni Café in SF, C Casa Taqueria in Napa, Ubuntu in Napa and Ad Hoc in Yountville.

#85 - Thomas Keller Chicken & Market Veggies With Two Whites

I tend to recoil from the preachers of the Church of Local, Organic & Sustainable.

It's not that I don't support all of that. It's just that the bulk of the congregation doesn't ever shut the hell up about it. It's the proselytizing and the manner in which it's done.

A few years ago, we took a trip to San Francisco, got to our hotel and realized the coffee maker was too small for our needs. So, in what's become a tradition on our vacations, we drop $30 on a big coffee maker. At the nearby Trader Joe's, while picking up some other supplies, we asked the cashier if there was a place near that sold coffee makers. A woman piped up behind us, saying, "You know, french press is the best coffee." Even though we didn't drink much french press at that time, it wouldn't have mattered as the hotel didn't have a stove or a hot plate to boil water anyway. Mostly, it was the way she said it. It had nothing to do with helping us or directing us to the CVS just down the street. She just wanted the world to know that she drank quality french press coffee and she wasn't going to miss an opportunity to tell the world.

The members of the Church of LOS work in a similar vein. It's never a conversation offering real information or tips. It's an opportunity to express their bona-fides using as many superlatives as possible. It's never a real human interaction. It's a pitch and the product being pitched is themselves.

All that being said...last night's radishes and English peas from the Lincoln Square Farmer's Market were, by far, the best I've ever tasted. There. I'm one of you, if only for a brief time.

Food: Thomas Keller chicken with radishes and English peas

"Amish" Indiana chicken from Whole Foods using the new, better, easier chicken recipe from Thomas Keller on a bed of tarragon. Great chicken again.

Farmer's Market steamed English peas ($5) done in butter, mint, white pepper and salt. Never had peas like these (sing it! testify!). And I never particularly loved peas. These peas be the bee's knees. Tasted like it had a hint of great toasted breadcrumbs mixed in with the mint playing around with a natural and great mellow, subtle pea flavor beautifully. I'm a convert. When's the baptism?

Farmer's Market radishes ($1.50 per bunch!!!!) with dill in a lemon/shallot vinaigrette. Never been a huge lover of radishes either. Always liked them enough but never really sought them out. These were spicy with a deep flavor that went on forever. In fact, I was still tasting them hours later, if you get my drift. And that was welcome.

Labriola baguette and "French Pyrenees cheese" from Whole Foods ($7.99/lb!). With the Byzantine laws surrounding French food and their classifications, seeing a cheese that simply said "French Pyrenees cheese" is akin to seeing a bottle of Bordeaux wine that is labeled "French Bordeaux wine." Don't expect much. But it was cheap and actually quite nice. Very creamy, a bit like havarti with even more creaminess. Made from cow's milk which is a bit more rare in the Pyrenees where goat's milk cheese tends to dominate, from what we've read.

A fancy Midwestern meal with a southern (?) French bent. Lovely stuff.

Wine: 2006 Chateau de Maimbray Sancerre ($22 - WDC) & 2007 Chateau La Nerthe Blanc ($28 - WDC)

The Chateau de Maimbray Sancerre (100% Sauvignon Blanc) has been a favorite of mine for a couple years now. I'm under no illusions about its quality. It's a bit straight-forward and simple, more raw and obvious than better Sancerres even in the same price range. But something about its obviousness appeals to me. It misses some of that subtle minerality and grace that better Sancerres have but with food, it offers a big net and hasn't really ever disappointed.

Very pale yellow in the glass, very little nose offering lemon rind and wet stones, subtle mixture of lime, lemon and grass on the palate with some small touches of minerals (and pine tree?) mixed in. Medium finish, simple and forward. Welcome. Nice. Not really a bargain but I like what it offers. Didn't realize it was a 2006 until halfway through dinner, thinking it was an '07 the entire time. Still going strong and might be better than previous bottles drank younger.

The Chateau La Nerthe is another wine that's been sitting around, begging to be drunk just to get it out of my face. Initially, I thought this was going to be the best wine of the night but it turned into something that didn't offer much. More deep yellow in the glass with a honey and mineral nose. All dried white flowers and honey bark on the palate with maybe some star fruit (read: no fruit) mixed in. Lower acid than the Sancerre. The fruit was gone with this one, turning it into something that wasn't necessarily flabby or undrinkable, just something that sat there, offering little.

Pairing: 87 The Sancerre was the fun one at the party, playing the right tunes and making the funniest jokes

I would have thought a Châteauneuf-du-Pape white would have performed better with a simply cooked chicken but it fell a bit flat compared to the Sancerre. Drinkable but not interesting.

The Sancerre, on the other hand, did what I like about it. It cast a wide net and caught everything. The obviousness and relative rawness of this one is its strength in some ways with it being able to take its basic flavors and meld well with the radishes, peas and chicken quite nicely. Everything had a similar weight on the palate but just enough differences in flavor. Spectacular with the peas, tasty with the radishes, nice with the chicken, playful with the tarragon. Brighter, grassy wine with brighter earthy veggies picked the day before. Good stuff.

The La Nerthe was best with the cheese though. But at a $40 release price, bought at $28 and drinking like $12, we wouldn't do it again.

The Sancerre at $22, even with others in the same price range being a bit more complex, offers an appealing rawness. It's like a friend that's never had his life together but he's funny and you always have a good time when he's around.

French-Spanish-American With French-Spanish-American, Plus Other Stuff

Jolly good food week.

We had wine and food that matched up with their countries, something somewhat rare for a string of three meals in our house.

Usually, there's some crossover or playing around, just to keep it frisky.

#1 Chicken thighs, fennel and olives with crispy potato roast, served with 2010 Domaine du Vieux Télégraphe La Crau Blanc ($58 - Saratoga)

French and French. Thomas Keller recipe. Last had here with the exact same wine and vintage.

It's $8 food with spendy wine. Two changes to the recipe. Tarragon added and thighs marinated in leftover Michael Symon salsa verde (from meal below).  It is what the name of the recipe says it is, except when it comes together, it tastes like food that's been eaten and refined over the course of 200 years. That's what Thomas Keller recipes taste like. He makes food that taste...so...perfectly...in proportion. Everything serves a purpose at just the right level. That's what we found here again. Cheap food. Fairly easy food (that's saying something for Keller recipes). Utterly delicious food. This wine with this meal can't get better. Just can't. It's slap-to-the-face good.

#129 - TK Chicken, Leeks & Arugula With '06 Michel Gahier Arbois

Now that's more like it!

Nothing like Thomas Keller chicken to banish all the bad taste/thoughts that came with Tuesday's venison meal (and the election).

And there's nothing like wine that offers an explosion of creamy fruit that compliments the food while offering something extremely distinct and separate from what's on the plate.

All good pairings do that, but this one seemed to have that in spades.

Food: Thomas Keller chicken with leeks, arugula, baguette, butter and Saint Aubin cheese

The usual TK chicken, this one with copious amounts of white pepper on the chicken and all over the plate. Carved at the (coffee) table as we wanted it (makes a difference), juicy meat all around and just great stuff.

Spectacular leeks: "melted" in bacon fat and muscadet with tarragon and a glop of green peppercorn mustard and last night's celery root pureé added. Creamy, deep flavors jumping everywhere and finishing with the celery root. Blended beautifully with the breast meat, both bright, delicious and seemed made for each other. But with the thigh, the contrast of the leek's creamy brightness and the darkness of the meat was the winner. More complex and tasted thoughtful.

Big, honkin' pile of arugula with tarragon and lemon balm, white balsamic vinegar and extra virgin olive oil to finish.

Baguette and butter on the side with Saint Aubin cheese. Given as a gift to expand our stinky cheese horizons, we respected what was being offered, even liked the idea of it and willingly swallowed it. But after a few bites, we were done.

Food is more than just food because of food like this food.

Wine: 2006 Michel Gahier Chardonnay "Les Crêts" Arbois Jura ($19 - WDC)

Picked up on a Wine Discount Center run more as a catalog wine that was cheap and highly recommended by our favorite wine person at the store. Didn't think much of it as it got lost in the shuffle a little bit.

We'll be buying more very soon.

Shockingly well composed. Starts and ends with pear custard. ALL pear custard with a hint of fine minerals and some sort of a wee touch of baking spice (nutmeg?). Changed but always stayed within the pear custard framework. Sometimes, it seemed like the pears became smoked and/or poached pears and, at times, especially by itself, the minerality and smoky notes exploded with the custard receding into the background.

Sufficient enough depth to offer so much and unbelievably cheap - thought if I spent $40-50 for this, I'd be thrilled.

May be the perfect place to start if you're interested in Jura whites.

Pairing: 93 It was like the pear custard was something solid on the plate

It offered that much.

With anything creamy - the butter, the leeks - so much pear custard that it tasted like it was part of the ingredients in the food as opposed to merely complimenting the flavors in liquid form.

Probably liked it best with a bite of breast meat and leeks. It made the wine taste like freshly-made custard and oh, so shiny. But it was more complex and kinda brooding, darker, deeper and luscious with a thigh and leeks bite.

Even solid with the arugula, showing a ton of minerals and smoky pears, though the finish was a tad short.

Tasted like old milk poured from a rusty bucket with the cheese...but...not...in a...bad way.

Beautiful! Beautiful! Beautiful! Beauty everywhere.

Crap, this was good food and wine.

#124 - TK Chicken, Hummus & Kumatoes With '07 Guiberteau Saumur Blanc

Here's a $58 meal that surpassed (by a HUGE margin) a recent $300 meal out in the world.

Chicken = $11

Hummus from Semiramis = $10

Kumatoes = $4

Pea shoots and Pomegrante = $4

Wine = $29

The entire meal last night, beginning to end, wine and all, cost the same as the bottle of the decent little albariño drank last week at a restaurant that I could have bought at Binny's for $22.

Far be it for me to discourage dining out at the new and hip. I work in the industry. But doing the math on occasion and taking the time to research food with wine pairings makes it hardly an argument.

Also, with Joe Bastianich now telling us that the proper restaurant business model demands a wine mark-up of FOUR TIMES, the "fabulous" tax on dining out continues to go up.

Food: Thomas Keller Chicken, Hummus and Pita and a Kumato-Pea Shoot Salad

Thomas Keller chicken. Taken out a little earlier than usual to experiment with resting temps and levels of juiciness. Worked. Only ate the leg and thigh and left the breast for lunch sandwiches due to the ton of food on the (coffee) table. Great skin again and moist meat ("giggity"). There's chicken. There's wine can chicken. And then there's TK chicken.

Two orders of hummus from Semiramis because their hummus and the wine drank with this meal in April was Devin Hester on kick returns. "You are ridiculous!" The rest of the pairing in April at Semiramis was much like the rest of the Bears (ugh - but I'm a Browns fan so...) but the hummus and Saumur pairing shocked us. It's great hummus.

Kumatoes (brown tomato hybrid) dressed with olive oil, white wine vinegar, salt and pepper. It's a new tomato creation with a higher sugar content that taste almost meaty, plummy and like a drizzle of balsamic was slapped on them. Still the great tomato acid but darker and magically delicious. Can't recommend them more highly. Great stuff.

Pea shoot and pomegranate seeds with the kumatoes.

The meal had everything for about $15 a person. Hate to beat a dead horse here, but that got us about six bites of food each last week.

Wine: 2007 Domaine Guiberteau Saumur Blanc ($29 - Red & White)

Tough one to find on a consistent basis. Red & White usually has it. Cellar Rat as well, IIRC. Flickinger Wines in the South Loop has many of the single-vineyard offerings from Domaine Guiberteau. Flickinger does a spectacular job. Get to know it. Scored a 2005 Sanguis Bossman there last year for $50 (rare then and now and no cheaper than $70 elsewhere).

Dried honey and chalk on the nose. Half-stewed pears on the palate with a load of beeswax-honey surrounding it on the palate. Medium depth on the finish with something that resembled plum (?) on the way down with a graceful acidity. Little spikes of apple, citrus and nuts here and there that may not have been consistent or focused but lovely in the way Chenin Blanc can surprise.

And I guess that's the rub. Chenin Blanc continues to be the white grape that defines elegant for us. It's just so gorgeous in nearly every form. Get out of the bargain offerings that tend to be inconsistent and unremarkable, spent just a few dollars more (mediocre movie), and you consistently wander into the realm of silk freakin' magic.

Domaine Guiberteau practices natural wine-making in all its glory, letting much of their wine rest of its lees and...heck...just go here because WickerParker was there.

Pairing: 94 Fit like a glove

Medium depth all over the place. In the food and in the wine as both, instead of offering little jumps of goodness in that medium depth range, exploring every nook and cranny of what a medium depth meal can bring. Tasted purposeful.

Best with just a bite of pita, but the hummus and pita followed right behind. The wine turned the hummus into something much more than its previous self, becoming hummus with a (pea)nutty tone and drawing out more of the nuttiness in the wine.

Salty skin on the chicken turned the wine into a minerally-yeasty pear-honey wonder and played beautifully with the darker meat.

Held up admirably with the kumatoes but lost its way with the pea shoots, bringing out too much unwelcome lime and a short finish.

The entire meal hopped and jumped, changed and surprised, all within an entirely beautiful tight box ("giggity"). Everything become more heightened and vivid versions of themselves, seeming made for each other with flavors stacked upon flavors stacked upon flavors.

$58. Beat that at even a low-cost, quality restaurant and you win my undying affection.

#169 - Coco Pazzo, Gunthorp Farms Chicken & Melon-Queue-Rouge

What is Melon-Queue-Rouge? After thirty minutes of research on these here internets, my definitive answer is...I don't know. Don't know for sure, anyway.

It's chardonnay in origin. That's one fact that isn't disputed. Is it still chardonnay? Maybe. More a cousin by most opinions. It's red-stemmed, hence the name and only grown in the Jura region of eastern France with the Arbois AOC being its traditional home. It's also pretty rare even for the Jura wine geeks out there and typically manifests itself in a uniquely oxidative, sherry-like aroma and taste.

And it's not used to make vin jaune, a wine from the Jura that goes through a process similar as sherry, comes off like sherry but is made from the savagnin grape. Though the particular bottle we drank last night could be an approximation of such things as it did come off intensely sherry-like and winemakers in the Jura have been experimenting with the vin jaune style using chardonnay grapes, which MQR is...and isn't, really. And MQR usually comes off sherry-like and since I've never had one until last night, how do I know?

Confusing. Let's move on.

Gunthorp Farms in Lagrange, Indiana has a huge following among the chef-types in Chicago and rightfully so. They can't come more highly praised by anybody and everybody that brings them up for their tasty, fresh, sustainable and organic wares. We have eaten a good amount of their products in various forms out in the Chicago restaurant world and partook in other products in sliced meat form from City Provisions.

What we haven't done is go the whole animal route. Seemed right and proper to give a Gunthorp Farms chicken the Thomas Keller treatment, especially given the fact that the bird comes at the same $13 price for a four-pound bird (City Provisions) compared to a Trader Joe's chicken.

Appeared smallish for four pounds. Weighed it. Exactly four pounds.

For Thomas Keller chicken, that tightness and muscle was most likely the problem.

Here we had a very pretty bird from a great farm - sustainable, organic, all that stuff - cooked up and served with a mâche salad and tarragon vinaigrette with radish slices, Uplands Pleasant Ridge Reserve Cheese, a cheese similar to the tomme-style cheese from Savoie but made in Wisconsin, Kerrygold butter and LaBriola baguette.

A well-sourced meal that should have been, in the least, tasty.

Nope.

Terrible bird for this preparation.

This is TK chicken, my friends. TK Chicken needs a fatty bird, it needs the sizzle that jumps off it at 450 degrees in the oven, that sizzle you listen to for an hour and realize that your oven will never be a clean oven again and that's entirely okay with you. TK Chicken needs that fat to baste itself and bleed deep into itself, turning it into something so goshdarn succulent that no other chicken will do. It needs that fat that creates a plume of smoke that engulfs the entire apartment.

It can't abide these birds that get all this exercise and sunlight and are fed proper, diet-driven feed. TK Chicken needs a bird that downs an entire bag of Cheetos while watching a Top Chef marathon. It needs that fat that only comes from years of sedentary, couch-loving behavior.

In other words, the chicken blew. Edible? Sure. I didn't want anymore after about eight bites, though. It wasn't TK Chicken.

It was just chicken. And that don't fly in this house.

Mâche, tarragon and radish = good. Cheese tasted like it came from a cow that ate grass all its life and then for one week decided that horse crap tasted like heaven...in a good way. Sound foundation of grassy cheese goodness with a bit of a welcome background funk coupled with floral, moldy orange rind.

The wine served was the aforementioned melon-queue-rouge, the 2005 Jacques Puffeney Melon-Queue-Rouge Arbois ($32 - WDC) along with a completely forgettable 2009 Tasca d'Almerita Leone ($12), which I don't feel the need to chronicle.

Liquified nuts, nail polish remover, some gasoline and maybe a touch of pear on the nose. Huge acid on the palate with similar flavors from the aroma. Tasted younger than I expected from the nose with a little touch of lemon lift on occasion. Sherry-like in every way. Oxidized as all get-out. Not something I wanted more than a few sips of by itself but this one changed dramatically with food, settling into something entirely interesting, especially with the cheese and greens, bringing about a finish that came off less sherry-like and more like a chardonnay past its prime but entirely interesting to try. Comte cheese is the quintessential pairing according to many people. Maybe we'll give this one another go with that. I wasn't in love with it while drinking it. One-trick pony in many ways. But I certainly kept thinking about it.

Pairing Score: 60 Tough to go any higher with such a bad chicken experience.

Ever have a restaurant on your list of places you'd like to go for years? Coco Pazzo (300 W. Hubbard) has been on our list for about seven years now. Two days ago, we went.

It should have stayed on the list. It tasted Timid. For $300, I got a clam pasta I enjoyed, Mrs. Ney got a very fresh ricotta she enjoyed, we had a nice, cheap, dry bottle of Tocai that we enjoyed.

Other than that, we ate good food that never even briefly wandered into the realm of great, surprising, inventive, evocative or even marginally memorable. Nice enough staff and pretty enough space that, by 7pm, was populated with more older men in suits than I can ever remember dining among.

Certainly not similar to Vanity Fair's A.A. Gill's experience at the worst restaurant in the world but, for the money, stood up and screamed mediocre.

We can cross the place off the list.

Best that can be said.

#133 - Two Cheap Meals With Two Bargain Wines

'99 Prager Smaragd Steinreigl's done!

Smelled like rotten milk left in dumpster juice last night. Or wet wool blankets that someone forgot about in the basement for 87 years. Didn't taste much better either.

Sad. Our first post here was describing that wine with Wine Can Chicken.

A sick Mrs. Ney meant no family visit for Thanksgiving.

Food: Thomas Keller chicken with mustard asparagus, herb cheese, La Quercia prosciutto and Seeduction bread

Quick and easy meal, nothing out of the ordinary compared to other Thomas Keller chicken meals with a few notes.

$8 Whole Foods non-organic chicken isn't as good as $14 Trader Joe's organic chicken. We learned that. In an attempt to keep the meal cheap, that's what we got - a chicken that tasted cheap. If you told me a few years ago that I'd have strong opinions about chicken, I'd have said you be crazy, fool. We got sum opinions. Tasted boring and a tad chemical-y. Edible, just dull, dull, dull.

But...La Quercia and Seeduction bread can lift any meal out of the world of cheap and dull to something resembling goodness. Even cheap $5 herb cheese from Whole Foods has its complimentary and "good creamy quality" merits. Mustard asparagus = always good.

We counted our blessings on what we didn't experience yesterday, like the rest of the Prager...and other things.

Wine: 2006 Jean-Philippe Fichet Bourgogne Blanc Vieilles Vignes ($24 - WDC)

Got $100, don't know anything about white Burgundy and want to?

Go buy three bottles of anything by Jean-Philippe Fichet. The guy makes delicious wine from plots straddling the big names/plots and pumps out wines with balance, beauty and none of the boring butteriness that comes from chardonnay in the same price range.

Just tons of mineral character that makes you want tons more.

We recently had the 2005 and 2006 Auxey Duresses from Fichet, both with TK chicken and both were sublime. This one was less so, showing more typical character of solid white Burgundy but never really getting out of that box. Pineapple and white peach notes with a touch of cream that never overtook a pronounced and tasty minerality at its core. Structured and balanced with nice acidity. Tasted proper but never stretched its legs to show anything greatly distinct. Tasted more "beautifully representative" than particularly interesting. That's okay, though. At $24, we never felt cheated, but it's one of those situations where for $10 more, going up a notch would yield something twice as good from Fichet.

Pairing: 86 A meal that again informed us on exactly what we want

Like better quality chicken and a white Burgundy that's maybe a notch up the pole.

That said, I liked this wine. It's like buying a 10 year-old used Honda. Might not be shiny, sparkly, new, pretty or full of personality, but it's a Honda, damn it. It's gonna run just fine.

Best with the bread and cheese, bringing out some delicious Burgundy funk, itself with the chicken and not so great at all with the mustard asparagus. Which was expected. That's what the Prager was for. But mustard asparagus with rotten milk/old wet wool blankets isn't good in anybody's world.

A quick note: Wednesday night's meal needed cheap wine with a meatloaf and roasted potato meal as Mrs. Ney was just starting to get sick. Served with a bottle of 2007 Chateau Beauchêne Premier Terrior ($15 - Binny's), a wine highly recommended on a Chicago Frenchman's blog that chronicles French food and wine in the Chicago area. You go check out that blog now. Go! Get! It's good stuff - informative, exhaustive and downright interesting.

A lot to like with this wine. Black tea and black cherry intermingle with nice earth. Good minimum quality for the price that tasted like vacation in France where the table wine turns out to be something that defines the meal. The Domaine Des Tours Vaucluse in the same basic price range beats it but everyone's on that bandwagon, making it difficult to reliably find.

Tasted rather ordinary with the veal, beef and pork meatloaf (a recipe that will end your search for a good meatloaf, BTW) but turned into something that tasted well above $15 price tag with the rosemary potatoes, showing great structure and cherry and tea notes that sparkled and changed rather beautifully.

Not too shabby. Not too shabby at all. (Pairing Score: 87)