Quick Hits

Three meals, three $20 wines.

Many people think $20 is the sweet spot for wine - that place where quality meets price.

I think that's mostly true. Sometimes though, that $20 place can leave you wanting more from the wine. Just a touch more. It's so close.

Here's three.

Meal #1: Celery root brandade and fennel-blood orange salad with 2012 Mark Herold Acha Blanca Albariño California ($21 - Binny's)

Jacques Pepin brandade, swapping out most of the red potatoes for celery root, just for funnies, and using rice milk instead of dairy. The result was a lighter, less POTATO!-y brandade with subtle hints of celery root mingling with salt pollack (Devon Market) in pleasant ways. Fennel-blood orange salad mixed with arugula and topped with pecorino. We loved this salad before mixing it with the arugula. Big blast of licorice freshness. The arugula took that down a notch. But this salad will see a lot of play this summer if blood oranges are somehow still around. Baguette to dip and dunk. Happy meal here.

Goat Inspired By Komi With 2006 Prager Riesling Smaragd Bodenstein And 2012 Bastianich Rosato di Refosco

Last year, we had two meals out in the world that brought us such utter face-slapping joy, when we received the bill and saw what they were charging us for the face-slap, we both screamed, "I need to pay more!"

One was in Cihuri, Spain, at El Trujal del Abuelo, where a five-course meal featuring the best fat-slathered beef I've ever had and two pitchers of their stunningly fresh rosado cost a stupid-cheap 75 Euros. For both of us.

The other was in D.C., at Komi, a place that, if we were into ranking stuff, which we do on occasion just for funnsies, sits mere baby steps behind Etxebarri as the best meal of our lives. If you should be in D.C., eating at Komi will remind you--and if it doesn't, you're doing it wrong--why eating out can be an experience that feels like a gift, a feeling that seems to be fading in the current restaurant environment that too often feels like a calculated cash grab. "This chef wants out in....6 1/2 years...and he's retiring to...Majorca."

In our one experience there last June - a number that will change to two within the next year or so - Komi is the furthest thing from that.

Flap Meat, Arancini And Kale With 2004 Two Hands Beautiful Stranger

"What the hell is that?"

"Olives! Olives everywhere!"

"That's...sparkling wine acid!"

"Grapefruit. Geesh! Grape. Fruit."

"Like grilled grapefruit."

"Tons of it."

"My God. There's so much acid and it's freakin' awesome!"

"All acid and still balanced at tens years old!"

"Didn't get this the last time."

"Is that chinotto? Some sort of weirdly delicious bitter peel."

"It wouldn't be a white wine if I drank it blind but...maybe an orange wine?"

"Yeah...there's dark cherry at its very narrow core but..."

"Sassafras."

"Ash."

"And olives. So many black olives!"

"This might be my favorite wine ever. Probably not but it might be. It's up there."

"It's real close. So strangely delicious!"

A Week Of One-Offs

This week's food and wine is brought to you by the letter 'P.'

And taking days off work.

One of those days including working the coupons to get $45 off a Target trip. Another was making pasteis de nata, little Portuguese tarts  brought to you by a shortcut Jamie Oliver recipe, resulting in silly-great little nuggets of delights that for some ungodly reason we didn't get while in Portugal. So...winner week in our book.

Plus, there was partridge, peas, pancetta, pearl barley, all paired with a potent potable from Pfalz. And pizza.

"Don't practice your alliteration on me!"

Sunday "Off for Oscars" Dinner: Chorizo-stuffed dates, Uruguayan baked cheese, baguette and arugula, served with 2009 Pingus PSI Ribera del Duero ($35 - Binny's)