An Open Letter to McMenamins.

Greetings,

I am a long time fan of your McMenamins establishments. Your restaurants and pubs have built a well deserved reputation for quality gastropub-style cuisine and excellent microbrewed fare. I've been going to the McMenamins located here in Bend since it opened, and have generally been nothing less than pleased with my experiences.

However, the last two visits my friend and I have made to the Old St. Francis location have been off-putting to say the least, and I am deeply concerned by what I see as one of my local favorites slipping severely in quality, and unless steps are taken to significantly improve the standards of the place, neither of us foresee ever returning.

The first of these two visits, which occurred a few weeks ago, we walked out almost as soon as we entered, as from the moment we walked through the front door, we were immediately assailed by the pungent reek of what I can only identify as raw sewage. So repulsed was I that I insisted to my companion that we leave immediately, and we wound up dining elsewhere that afternoon.

Tonight however, I decided to give the place another chance, in part because it was a rather late hour, and few establishments were open at this time. This time we entered through the rear hotel entrance, and once again, upon entering, I picked up a distinctly toilet-like reek, though much milder than my previous encounter, and while my initial reaction was to leave yet again, my companion wrote it off as perhaps an overflowed toilet in one of the guest rooms, so we pressed on to the dining room proper and were relieved to be greeted with the smells of cooking food.

After a delightfully short wait we were seated, but from there, the problems began to pile up. The service was terrible. Once seated it took at least 10 minutes for our actual server to come around to take our drink orders, and it took longer still for them to actually arrive, despite the fact that both of us, from our vantage point, could see them waiting at the bar for the vast portion of this time. Our drinks themselves, a couple of root beers, were remarkably unpleasant, brackish things which I only stomached simply because the water, which didn't arrive until sometime after the soft drinks did, were significantly worse.

After a good wait further, our server again reared his head to take our dinner order. We ordered the Cajun tots as an appetizer, and two "Communication Breakdown" burgers with bacon and fries.

The Cajun tots arrived and were, for the most part, as good as always, if a bit unusually crumbly. Our burgers, on the other hand, were spectacular in no respect but in the magnitude of their mediocrity. My burger was utterly and completely tasteless, and my friend's was, in addition to tasteless, apparently dripping with a ridiculous quantity of grease. The fries, in both cases, with the same, which is to say utterly soaked in grease, and completely soggy. They honestly seemed rather more like they'd been boiled than fried, and then quickly tossed in a cold pan with some old fryer oil from the week before.

Disappointed with the quality of our meal, but still optimistic enough to brave the inevitable long wait it seemed to take the staff to accomplish anything whatsoever, we decided to order the bread pudding, a menu item that, like the tots, we've both traditionally almost always ordered, because it is generally fantastic.

It wasn't. In fact, it was the single most unpleasant thing we were served the entire evening. Presentation wise, it looked like a plate of baby vomit. Rather than the firm texture I have come to expect, it was rather a mushy pile, sitting in the midst of some curdled cream and crowned what appeared to be a to be a hastily added topping of ice cream that had completely melted to soup in the massive wait before it arrived at our table, and yet, despite it having melted, upon tasting it we were rather alarmed to discover that the dish was still ice cold in the middle. While we were warned the dish would be rather rich, an observation that bore out with previous experience and made me quite hopeful in fact, it was in fact, so mushy and bland as to be almost insubstantial.

I wish to mention further, at this point, because it surely played at least a part in how unpleasant some of the dishes served were, just how truly awful the service was through all this. Our "Server" we only encountered but a few times in the course of the evening, and only in the interest of occasionally bothering to come round with the rather ghastly excuses for beverages. Our actual food was delivered by a man who appeared to actually be one of the kitchen staff picking up the slack. Most of the waitstaff could be visibly seen gadding about socializing with their friend or other waitstaff, among them our server who at one point took a break to huddle up with several others for a long chat session that took up most of the time we were there. At another point, thanks to the visible window, we even witnessed another waitress (at least we assumed she was a waitress, even though she didn't appear to be dressed or equipped for the occasion) hanging about in the kitchen having a beer while she chatted up the only two cooks in the place, who similarly seemed to be spending most of the time horsing about.

And the resulting long waits were also all in spite of the fact that despite it being 10pm on a Saturday evening, and the downtown area being packed with people, the dining room was almost completely vacant. Not counting the waitresses socializing at a table near the entrance, I counted at most four tables besides ourselves.

As the final capper to the evening, my dining companion, whether due to the grease in his burger or the curdled nature of the dessert, or worse, some sinister and unseen microbial agent allowed to fester in the meal during it's frequent long waits under the heat lamp, became rather violently ill, and very shortly after leaving the establishment proceeded to evacuate the meal out of himself at a rather alarming rate.

Needless to say, I was mortified by the experience. The server was, at least, kind enough to credit us the amount of that truly godawful dessert, but the whole of the experience left me feeling more than a bit burned, and I am disappointed to say I will not be returning until I hear some form of report indicating that the restaurant has put due effort into mending its ways. I am sad to lose such a once wonderful spot in the Central Oregon dining scene, but it seems as if it is already on it's way out, if tonight's turnout was any indication.

I appreciate your time, and hope that in due haste your organization can remedy the deep problems that seem to be apparent in this once fine establishment.

Sincerely,
J Arcane*
jarcane@gmail.com

This is the actual letter sent to both McMenamins in Bend, as well as the home office, minus my actual name, which I do not use in public online discourse. Needless to say I was less than pleased with my experience.

I'm back on Blogger.

Well, it seems that not only did the Mac I was using to build the website at jarcane.info die, but my server host apparently died as well, and I can't even get ahold of the owner right now to find out what the hell's wrong.

So I'm back on blogger, and working to set up a redirect to bring jarcane.info traffic back here.  

I'm also back cooking again, so maybe I'll start writing about food and such again.  

The site to end all sites.

So, I have a new website.

It's at http://jarcane.info

It is, essentially, an attempt to consolidate all my various scattered blogs and web presences, as well as serve as a single repository for any future writing, of which I hope to make quite a lot more, as I intend to actually keep up with content updates in this new venture. I've also added a forum, with the hope of making it a great place to hang out and talk about food and games and things with all my various online friends and readers, and anyone else who happens to pop by.

Check it out, add it to your bookmarks, subscribe with your favorite feed reader. See you there!

Puerco al disco, sorta.

Last night, I caught a snippet of the Argentina episode of No Reservations, in which he visits a sort of commune there, where they prepared a rather magnificent looking dish, carne al disco, a dish of sliced beef, onions and peppers, cooked in garlic oil over an open flame in a shallow cast iron pan.

It looked absolutely amazing. So, naturally, I had to rip off the concept as best I could, and create a dish of my own inspired by what I saw. After a bit of fruitless searching on the internet for a recipe, I ultimately decided to just wing it, and we headed off to the store.

I wandered about, rounding up ingredients as inspiration struck me. I grabbed a yellow onion, a red bell pepper, one each of anaheim, habanero and yellow chiles, a can of coconut milk, a bag of key limes, a pound of linguica, and some corn tortillas.

The vegetables all got thinly sliced with a mandolin, except the habanero, which I diced. The linguica I cut into thin rounds as well. I also took out 4 thin sliced pork chops from the fridge, pounded them a bit, then seasoned with salt and lime juice and left to rest.

Come cooking time, I quickly seared the chops, then took them from the pan and tossed in the linguica, heating them a bit before tossing in all the vegetables, reducing the heat, and letting them sweat a bit, just long enough for the juices to start deglazing the pan. Then, in went the can of coconut milk, the juice of 4 of the key limes, and the pork chops. I threw a lid on top, and let them simmer on about medium heat for a bit.

For serving, the pork chops were served just with a bit of the resulting coconut sauce, while the remaining mixture of sausage and vegetables was served on tortillas as tacos. The pork was a bit dry, I think it would've been better if I'd basically poached it in the cocount milk without searing first, but the tacos were absolutely excellent. Rich, flavorful, truly a dish to be proud of.

Something to make again, that's for sure, and another pork recipe for that restaurant concept I've been pondering about lately . . .

A peace offering.

http://xkcd.com/418/

I haven't posted in even longer than usual. I haven't honestly done much lately I felt worthy of writing about. I've been on tighter finances than usual, and it's left my diet consisting of a hell of a lot of pasta and ramen.

There have been a few highlights. Homemade orichiette with butter and parmesan, for instance, probably the best damn pasta I've ever had, and I didn't even do that great a job with it. The esteemed Mr. Batali is right on when he says it's always better homemade with love, and he's equally dead on when he talks of the beauty of simplicity. Of all the pasta dishes I've prepared of late, that one was, without doubt in my mind, the absolute best.

I've also been playing with a Yucatan inspired ramen soup, made with shrimp broth and a healthy dosage of achiote. It develops this amazing, rich flavor and texture, and a gorgeous deep red color. It actually coats the side of the bowl. I also made a pretty damn nice turkey ramen with black pepper the other day.

I'm hoping soon to actually finally find a new kitchen to cook in, it's just a matter of finding the right opportunity. I stupidly let a shot at the Blacksmith slip by me out of lazyness and I'll regret that one forever. I'd really like to get a spot in a real haute cuisine sort of establishment, somewhere I can really learn the ropes, instead of the amateur fumbling about in the dark I do now.

Today's important culinary tip.

Stay away from the cheap Mexican sardines.

Thanks to a can of El Mexicano sardines, I've spent the last few days in general misery. I knew I should've stuck with a more traditional puttanesca recipe.

The folks over at Chowhound described them as "last on the list of over 39 canned sardines sampled. If I ever do buy a worse tasting sardine, it will go directly in the garbage." I can certainly attest to their foulness, indeed, it was rather apparent upon opening the can even, but I figured the rest of the dish would balance their overt fishyness. Indeed, the final dish was much more mild, though still a bit strong.

I didn't expect to actually get sick from the damn things though.

Catching up on events.

So the last week or so has been an almost exhausting cavalcade of new recipes and experiments, as well as an interesting new development in the form of me actually getting paid for doing this now.

Yup, that's right. The folks at Bend's Source Weekly have seen fit to give me irregular column space. The first piece, a profile of cook/owner Tammy Mills of Cross Creek Cafe, ran a few weeks ago, though due to some confusion had to be cut down considerably. I hope to post the extended profile soon.

Walking back through the menu over the last week, the biggest adventure was the smoke roasted pork tacos, for last weekend's D&D game.

I started with two roughly 6.5 lb boneless pork shoulder roasts, and brined them for two days in a brine seasons with whole dried japonica chiles, peppercorns, mustard and coriander seed, lime juice, and bistek.

This then got thrown on my smoker over hickory chips at about 250-300 for two hours, topping them off with a few slices of fresh pineapple. However, the temperature proved insufficient to get them done in a reasonable amount of time, a fact that was unfortunately largely the fault of the weather.

So I brought them inside and threw them both on a cookie sheet, and popped them in the oven for a bit. Unfortunately, I'd neglected to consider that the pan I'd grabbed had no edges on it, and the running molten fat from the pork wound up starting a bit of a fire in the bottom of the oven.

So the pig got yanked back out, and the oven left alone for a bit, and some rapid brainstorming occurred. One of my fellow players, and also a fellow cook, spotted a crock pot on the counter, and upon pointing it out, it occurred to me that if we were going to finish one of the roasts in that, we should take advantage of all the beer lying about, and cook it off in that with some more of the pineapple slices. The other roast meanwhile, went back on a proper baking sheet this time, and back in the oven at 350 degrees.

The oven roast went in for another hour, before, all of us quite hungry, we decided to pull that one out and carve into it. The thickest portion in the middle was still a bit rare in the center, but a good two thirds of it was quite done at this point, so we went ahead and carved off a healthy portion, and went about making tacos of it, served on corn tortillas with some fresh pico de gallo and a squeeze of lime. The oven pork was absolutely fantastic, moist, salty, rich with fat. The flavor was sort of like a pastrami, crossed with bacon, and the texture was perfect.

The remainder went back in the oven for another hour or so to finish, at which point we returned again to crack into both the oven and crockpot versions, which were both well and cooked by this point. The crockpot version, by contrast to it's oven compatriot, was almost a totally different animal. It was moist and tender, and the flavor of the smoke had mellowed and blended with the bite and the acidity from the beer and pineapple to create a whole different flavor from it's dry roasted counterpart.

It was well more food than any of us actually needed of course, and I wound up still having a third of the oven roast to take home, sadly leaving the crockpot one behind, having only really had the chance to give it a taste.

This wound up finding it's way into many of my recipes the following week. The next morning, we decided to make sandwiches with it, and I discovered that, now that it had chilled, I could slice it and use it rather like bacon, and so made some open faced sandwiches, by placing slices of the pork on a baking sheet under the broiler, before putting that back onto some bread with some healthy slices of pepper jack over the top. I served this with some Campbell's tomato soup, itself seasoned with a bit more of the pork, sliced thin, broiled until crisp, and then tossed back in the soup for flavor.

I also used it, sliced, then chopped into smaller pieces, to add some extra body and flavor to a few other dishes, like chicken and rice with sauce veloute, and a southwestern chicken lime pot pie. The last bit of it wound up coming full circle, and again being turned into tacos, this time diced, tossed with bistek and Tapatio, and then refried in butter on a flattop griddle.

I had considered repeating the experiment on a much smaller scale this weekend, but ultimately wound up taking a bit of a break from cooking over the last few days. However, tonight, my break ends, and I shall be returning to the kitchen to prepare a lovely spaghetti puttanesca with sardines.