Frontera brunch

In past years, Conrad and I have had a tradition of sorts of joining my (now former) department head for brunch at his regular restaurant, Frontera Grill.

(and you know, if you're going to have a restaurant where you're a regular, then it's good to pick a James Beard Award winner!)

In fact, I simply love Frontera (and Topolobampo) in and of itself, not because of its star chef/owner. I've seen Rick Bayless there a number of times, and I've been introduced to him (and his wife and daughter and a number of other staff there - Conrad and I, as I think I've mentioned before, truly adore Jill, the sommelier), but I've liked the place since before ever I ate there.

A dozen years ago the owners of the restaurant in my home town where I worked for several years between degrees came back from a Chicago trip with stories of dining at Frontera. We already had a Bayless cookbook, and we used other ones as well in the wake of their trip. We were a putatively Mexican restaurant, after all, and while our menu changed daily and drew in ideas from all over the map, Mexican food was something I learned to love deeply. When I came to Chicago for a job interview in Summer 2000, I used the entire per diem amount on a meal at Frontera, and that confirmed it all for me.

Anyway, long-winded there, sorry. back to brunch with RAD. We got there just before him, and when he joined us (festive sweater in place!) at our table in a warm corner near the kitchen, we all ordered our customary margaritas (Topolo margaritas, no salt for him and Conrad, the special tamarind margarita rimmed with chipotle salt for me) and settled in to catch up on everything. RAD's birthday is Boxing Day, so ultimately Conrad and I treated him (well, Conrad did) to the meal.

A run down of what we had (with menu descriptions):

Entremés Surtido:appetizer platter of cheesy quesadillas (the little turnovers at the back end of the platter), crispy chicken taquitos with sour cream (almost hidden on the left side of the platter), tangy ceviche tostadas (on the right side of the platter), crunchy jícama salad (foreground, this time with the surprise of pineapple added), and guacamole (at the back end).

Conrad's Platillo del Día:Atlantic salmon with a tomatillo sauce and, in place of the mashed potatoes, some incredibly good green beans. Ever have a side dish/garnish that you think you could eat a ton of by itself? Yep, that's the beans!

My Papadzules Yucatecos:classic Yucatecan "enchiladas" of homemade tortillas bathed with savory, smooth pumpkinseed sauce, rolled around hardboiled egg, topped with habanero-sparked roasted tomato and pickled red onion; Frontera salad. An unctuous dish, but the sauce and onions cut the richness of it all. I was delighted with it (and it paired well with a glass of Pinot Noir rather than another margarita), but I think I'd have to be in a proper frame of mind to order it again. An unusual dish, yet utterly tasty.

Bob's Frontera "Chili":cubes of wood-grilled pork and lamb simmered with ancho chile, cumin, dark beer and red beans; topped with aged Vella Jack cheese and cilantro, served with house salad and warm tortillas for making soft tacos. I don't think he (or Conrad) ate one of the tortillas they were provided.

Not pictured are the Frijoles Charros (pinto beans simmered with bacon, poblanos, tomato and cilantro) that I ordered as a side for us to share. Bacon, of course, makes everything good.

We ate at a very leisurely pace. All of us had wine with our main course after a couple of margaritas before that. Unusual for us, we skipped dessert. The options were tempting, but we've been eating a lot of sweets this holiday season, and we're a bit worn out of them. Better, we thought to have another glass of wine (Patrón XO Café for RAD) or two each.

All in all, we were there for about three hours - when we brunch with RAD, it's a real commitment of time. Conrad and I were quite contented when we made our way over to Michigan Avenue for another venture through the post-Christmas sales. And we look forward to some weeks of good diet and exercise before we meet up at Frontera for another brunch with RAD!

taking the joke a step farther

Blame Conrad is all I can say....

Aloha bunnies?

You know that the day is ending well and that life overall is pretty good when you come to bed to find this scene:




Don't be freaked out. Conrad has a lot of work travel to Honolulu, after all, and next travels there in a few weeks. As for the other two characters, well....

comforting food (lamb shanks)

It's been a good and productive day of weeding out the closets and storage containers around the house. The Brown Elephant will get a good donation as will the building's recycle bins. The work continues tonight, but a few minutes stolen from it to blog dinner isn't out of line.

I seem to make lamb shanks a heck of a lot lately. They're not all that expensive a cut, and they have the further virtue of being something you can pop in the oven for a very long time and mostly ignore. Handy for a day when other things are on the go around the house.

In any case, given the wet, snowy weather today, some comforting food was suitable. I put each shank atop a bed of simply and lightly boiled Brussels sprouts and cauliflower and spooned over some of the reduced braising liquid.
Also on the table were a dish of olives, peppers, and walnuts as well as a plate with a couple of wedges of walnut cake and some slices of aged Mimolette cheese. As for the wine, I'm sitting here enjoying a second glass of a 2004 Montes Alpha Syrah (Chile) that someone brought to last weekend's party.

In short, I'm not too concerned about the somewhat miserable weather, and if I keep this up, I won't be too bothered with the cleaning/sorting for the rest of the night!

Christmas, sort of

Conrad and I will tease each other by imitating the Yooper accent he will occasionally slide into with his family. There are certain words that betray the accent especially well, and given where we were, the day (not that it was Christmas, but the day of the week), and the food at hand, well...



Toast on Tuesday. Or, said the Yooper way (yes, I exaggerate): toooohh-wust on Tuuuuu-wuzday.

Fine, enough gentle mocking for now (though given the number of times I get idiots trying out their best Ontario accent - what's that all aboat, eh? - on me when they learn I'm Canadian - no such thing as a single Canadian accent, people! - it is nice to have some payback, misdirected as it may be).

I left it up to Conrad to take photos of his family's celebration on Christmas day, and in the end, he didn't bother taking any. I have no shots of the ham for lunch, of the opening of presents, of his family. I managed to get a few shots in a quiet time late in the morning, though, of him and his Mom by the tree so at least some Yuletide souvenir makes it on to the blog.

Escanaba

This, friends, is a glimpse (and neither a fair nor flattering one, I admit) of the town where we spent Christmas: Escanaba.

Like my own hometown, it's small, isolated, resource-based, and kind of dying. Christmas Eve was a somber day in terms of weather, alas, so the appeal of the town is all the less apparent.




But there are good things about the place (see? I can be Canadian about these things!) such as the gorgeous old homes (adorned with Christmas lights - it made for pleasant evening drives), pasties, and a coffee shop where we didn't have the best coffee we'd ever had, but where the wireless worked real fine and freely!

Milwaukee/Kohler

Reaching all the way back to last Sunday for this posting, just to add some photos from Milwaukee and Kohler to the blog.

We dawdled a bit on the drive up north last weekend even after a later-than-expected start to our drive. It was 1:00 and still kind of sunny when we drove in to Milwaukee.





Nice city - I rather like the place. Lunch was at a coffee shop we like in the loft district, the Third Ward,
and we poked briefly in the nearby Market after that.

(The Market is a nice little place with some little treasures like the St. Paul Fish Company and the Spice House. We stopped in at the Fish company's oyster bar for some lunch on our return trip to Chicago and picked up a few things to replenish the seasonings and flavourings in my kitchen cupboard.)

Our stop in Kohler was much shorter: some fuel and a bit of fruit and water from the grocery store at Woodlake.




The weather, as you can see, was not as good by that point, and though we usually take our time in the little town, this time we got back on the road again quickly.

Boxing Day dinner (NoMI)

It's just gone midnight, no longer Boxing Day. The party photos from last weekend took some time to post, and I want to get tonight's dinner blogged before bed.

Conrad and I did have a nice time in the UP, all things considered. I was altogether anxious about the trip for various family reasons, but the dread I felt never lived up to the pleasant actuality of the time spent there. I'm not about to sing the praises of semi-rural northern Michigan on the street corners, but it was a nice Christmas all in all.

And yet, Conrad and I still wanted something special for ourselves. A handful of years ago we had a Boxing Day dinner at Seasons that ranks among the best meals I've ever had in Chicago (halibut on choucroute garni - YUM!), and tonight was a worthy successor to that first Boxing Day dinner.

We got in the door around 4:00. Unpacked, relaxed. Went for a brief swim, came home, unwrapped all the presents from friends. Got dressed. Caught a cab down to the Park Hyatt Hotel for dinner at NoMI.

It had been a couple of years since last we were there. The last time was the first annual splurge meal with CG, and the service was disappointing that night. The food was solid, not great, save for the quintet of quince desserts. I'm a sucker for quince.

This time we arrived early and settled into the lounge. Conrad had a French Pinot Noir, I had a French Chenin Blanc. Neither was remarkable, but each was fine for relaxing before dinner. Before too long the staff brought us to our table.

NoMI is a gorgeous room, and if most fortunate, one can get a table in the window, overlooking the Water Tower. Alas, though we've had that experience long ago, not tonight. No matter, though. Food was the important thing, until we saw the wine list, that is.

Unsurprisingly, the list is quite large. Happily, it includes a wide variety including several New Zealand reds. I spied 3 Otago Pinot Noirs on the list, all of them a little pricey but not horribly so for a celebratory dinner. One of them was familiar from a recent Wine Spectator "best of the year" list, and we took a chance on it. WOW. Smart move.The Amisfield 2005 Pinot Noir was a delight from the first sniff to the last taste in our glasses. I was sad to see it done.

The food? Excellent as well. We shared two starters:

Winter lettuce and chicories with roasted sunchoke purée and vegetables crudité
Jamon Iberico with toast and complimentary flavours (hilarious description for some cheese shavings plus a few other tidbits!)

The ham? Kicked serious butt. We've enjoyed jamon serrano a lot since our 2004 trip to Spain. This is a finer type of that ham, and the difference is notable.

Oh, before the appetizers came out we received an amuse-bouche of a lobster salad with an avocado mousse.Fine enough.

For our meal we each had the Four Story Hill Farm Pheasant with chestnuts, fall vegetables, and pheasant jus.The pheasant - and the thin slabs of squash anchoring the plate - were cooked sous-vide. The meal went very nicely with the wine.

We opened presents to each other in between courses and otherwise sat and were all mushy with each other. As usual!

:-)

No dessert for us, tempting as it was. Instead we opted to share the trio of cheeses (and I wish I could tell you what all three were) served with apple butter, pecans, and cherries poached in their own juice.And of course, all three went down too fast, too easily.

After that came a dish of sweets compliments of the kitchen:

coconut marshmallow
rosewater macaroons
a type of chocolate macaroon
Darjeeling tea caramel
fruit tart



And then, of course, the bill.

Service was terrific - just formal enough, just informal enough. We couldn't have asked for a better night, really.

Conrad is in bed, and I must soon be on my way there. It's great not to have to work tomorrow, I must confess. I think a sleep-in will be just the thing!