food therapy

Just before Christmas, my mom and I flew down to Albuquerque to spend a few days with my grandfather surrounding the one-year anniversary of my grandmother's death. This trip was a homecoming, but to a home that is different without Granny B around. I was born in Albuquerque and spent much of my childhood at my grandparents' home, so when I stepped off of the airplane and into the house, I was struck with how similar it felt...and how different. The house smells the same and my grandmother's imprint is felt almost everywhere as her crafts and thrift store finds - including a stuffed duck that quacks at eerily random times - are scattered around every room. Walking in, I expected to see her wander out of her craft room and greet my mom and I with her distinct southern accent (ever-strong, though she hadn't lived in the South since her early twenties). The craft room had been turned into a guest room and the southern accent was sadly absent.

After the initial shock of seeing the house without 2/3 of its former inhabitants (my grandparents' long-time dog, Bernie, also passed away this year), I began honoring my grandmother in a way that, for me, seemed fitting. While I don't believe she would have considered herself a chef, my grandma's food has had a profound effect on my life. I can trace much of my early love of food to her hand - boiled peanuts at her dining room table, fried fresh-caught catfish for breakfast, her famous Velveeta macaroni and cheese (I know, I know, but I stand by this one), pimento cheese sandwiches, and garden fresh tomatoes eaten like apples with salt (come on, this makes up for the mac & cheese, right?). She even taught me great life skills like how to peel grapes before eating them (not one I've kept up, but I'm sure this will be very useful when preparing those gooey "eyes" on Halloween) and how to store gravy for later use (Ice trays! I swear, she could have marketed this one).

The first day we were in Albuquerque, I spent a few hours pouring over her many cookbooks, searching for a few remnants of her to take home to my kitchen. I chose a South Carolina cookbook with check-marked recipes and page numbers of favorites on the front cover, a book of New Mexican cooking, and a few handwritten recipes (she didn't write down many, but I managed to find a few scraps of paper here and there). Then, of course, I ate. Lunch one day was BLT's, a sandwich I had countless times at her home. The day of the anniversary we ate posole, cooked with pork she had purchased just before her death (frozen!) and earmarked specifically for this purpose. I know this probably seems a little strange and maybe, to some, morbid, but it felt truly right to turn this meat into soup - a way of following her wishes, I suppose.

While silently toasting my grandmother with foods that reminded me of her, I felt periods of sadness. But, writing this post I can't find myself feeling anything but joy. I am so grateful that I lived near her as a child and that I saw so much of her as I grew older. And, I am eagerly looking forward to trying out some of the recipes that she cherished, as if in some small way to get closer to my memory of her.

***

Of course, I could not have returned to New Mexico without sampling the quintessential meal, at least once. A bowl of green (chile, that is), warm, fresh flour tortillas and a sopaipilla for dessert. This is the New Mexico that I long for and that I cannot quite re-create, no matter how many "hatch" style chilis I buy at the Portland farmer's market. It's comfort food at its finest, despite the fact that the green chili burns the tip of your tongue and everywhere else as it makes its warming trek through your body. In New Mexico, I find satisfaction in the ever-present burn. The distinct spiciness of a bowl of green brings me back to a womb-like state of calm and delight the way that chicken and dumplings or mashed potatoes may transport a more northerly American (though, of course, I do not deny these foods their virtues).

I had my bowl of green at Cervantes, a family favorite blocks from my grandfathers' house. The video below is already my favorite video of all time - instructions for all who may wish to properly eat a sopapilla. Isn't my granddad amazing? Notice the elegant camera shakes as I can't help but laugh...


How to eat a sopapilla from stumptownpanda on Vimeo.

I stumbled onto jars of Cervantes hot green chile sauce at a grocery store in Albuquerque and cradled my own jar home with me. P and I tried our hands at making a bowl of green a few nights ago and, while it was delicious, it did not totally measure up to the original. Not quite spicy enough, not quite rich enough. I am starting to check our calendar for dates to return to the Land of Enchantment. Besides, P has never been and who am I to deny him this unparalleled satisfaction? I think my grandmother would agree with me there.

PS. We've enabled open commenting for everyone (even without blogger registration) - thanks Leenie for letting us know! Now don't rush all-at-once to put in your two cents.

262

The number of cookies and chocolates we made this weekend? The number of times that A played "Cheer Me Up, Thank You" by New Buffalo? I think it might have been both. Needless to say, it was a frantic productive weekend. Amidst a slew of busy weeks and A's trip to New Mexico, we figured out that we had about four and a half hours in fifteen-minute blocks of free time spread between three days last weekend in which to accomplish all of our holiday gift-making. That, and A decided she would squeeze in recording a song for a friend's year-end compilation.



It actually worked. And what do we have to show for it?

50 Shortbread
65 White-Chocolate-Dipped Cocoa Candy Cane Cookies
75 Buckwheat Cocoa Nib Cookies
62 Dark Chocolate Mendiants with Figs, Candied Orange Peel and Marcona Almonds
7 Bottles of Limoncello
1 New Buffalo Cover

I'm not sure whether or not I want to share this recipe - sometimes it is nice to wield the power, to have something for which other people depend on you - but these buckwheat cookies are just so good that I feel like I need to spread their gospel. We came across the recipe on Orangette, who found them in Alice Medrich's Pure Dessert. True, their name sounds deceptively wholesome, but when you bite into them, they are nutty and toasty and rich. Addictively so. Medrich's approach to desserts - simple preparations that have the concentrated flavors of their ingredients - has bumped her cookbook up on the next-to-own list. Try the recipe and you'll be in line for her cookbook, too. The cookies were good, but next year we'll be making hand-crafted ponies for all of our friends and family.

The other great weekend accomplishment was A's first go at recording. Yeah, this may have opened up whole new avenues for inane reels of her giggling to herself as she makes funny sounds, but who am I to deny her of her fun? A's friend at infiniteregress.org started up a year-end project to get folks to record cover versions of their favorite songs from 2007 for a compilation CD. With limited time, no instruments and zero knowledge of the recording equipment, A put together a really beautiful, lilting a capella take on "Cheer Me Up Thank You." While you're there, you should listen to Day 1, when A's brother Brandon (B) posted a great version of a Menomena song and Day 7, when Tim, who runs the site, performed a fantastic cover of "Saltbreakers." Seriously, my wife is good at what she does, isn't she?

Now, on the subject of music, can we all just agree on how great this song is?



Just another stock "band-in-the-recording-studio" video, right? And then come the kittens and unicorns and balloons! And rainbows! Its like a Lisa Frank Trapper Keeper exploded out of their amps; Los Campesinos! are literally overpowered by their own twee-ness. They just moved up my list to be the '08 album release I am most looking forward to. Or the only album release that I know of. Either one. But how can you not love a band who puts out songs like this and who all take Campesinos! as their last name? I feel like I missed out on something - everyone seems to be forming these new family-like groups by recasting themselves with a new last name and here, A and I got hitched and kept our names. It seems sort of cult-ish, but I think they are all too hip to be creepy. Adopting collective surnames is the new black.

sunday suppers

Sunday evenings have never been our strong suit socially. Around our home, Sundays are usually accompanied by a good deal of whining about the return to work and a throw-in-the-towel refusal leave our place or start new projects. We like to think that we are "preparing" ourselves for the coming week, but it is more likely just moodiness. It is a night to organize ourselves and get a start on meals for the week, making doughs and soaking beans, but that doesn't excuse us for behaving like shut-ins.

The pleasures of a simple Sunday supper may be just enough to shake us out of our reclusive habits. It is the perfect excuse to brush aside any thoughts of the next week for another few hours and just share in good food. When we invited two of our friends over this last Sunday for an early dinner (which it didn't end up being - sorry, guys!), we looked at it as a chance to make a warming, simple, seasonal meal. Now, I didn't say easy, because that would frankly be out of character, but our Sunday approach did mean we avoided the intensive multi-course meals we try to pull off on other weekend nights. A soup, a salad, a bread and some cookies. What could be more satisfying on a night that was just barely holding back flurries of snow?

I'd been looking at recipes for gougeres for quite some time now, namely because of a New Year's sandwich from the Zuni Cafe. Their photo was seductive - crackling crisp crust with bits of cheese oozing out. It didn't hurt that Judy Rodgers chose to stuff them with bacon and pickled onions, either. Knowing that I am not the baker in our relationship, I'd never gotten around to the recipe, but after having finally tried some at Beast, I had just been waiting for the right occasion. It certainly helped my confidence to have just read an eloquent explanation of gougeres on Michael Ruhlman's Elements of Cooking site - a blog filled with many other lyrical and edifying descriptions of the foundation techniques of the kitchen. At their heart, gougeres are founded on a pâte a choux - a cooked dough that is among the more interesting bits of culinary chemistry that I've seen. Essentially, the steam of the cooking and the addition of the eggs develops a gluten structure that puffs up grandly in the oven. Add cheese to your basic dough and you have gougeres; sugar, and it becomes an eclair.

Supper:
Chanterelles on Toast from Chez Panisse

Radicchio, Mint, Apple, and Asian Pear Salad with Buttermilk Dressing from Lucques

Apple and Chestnut Soup

Gougeres from Zuni Cafe

Cocoa Nib Butter Buckwheat Cookies from Pure Dessert with Fig Cake and Gorgonzola Dolce
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New Year's Eve Gougeres
Adapted from Zuni Cafe Cookbook by Judy Rodgers

Rodgers has an amazing voice that runs throughout her book - a quality that all good cookbooks should have. From her, I have perfected cooking dried beans and shelling chestnuts - reading it is like having Rodgers in your kitchen. I have been known to read this cookbook for fun.

For 20-24 Three-bite-sized gougeres:
1 cup water
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 teaspoons salt (a little more if using kosher)
4 ounces all-purpose flour (1 cup)
4 large eggs, cold
1/2 to 3/4 teaspoon freshly cracked black pepper
2 ounces Gruyere, cut into 1/4-inch cubes (about 1/2 cup) [If you are planning on piping the dough into shapes, I would recommend coarsely grating the cheese, rather than cubing it.]

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

In a 2- to 4- quart saucepan, bring the water, butter, and salt to a simmer over medium heat. Add the flour all at once and stir vigorously until the mixture masses and detaches itself from the sides of the pan. Reduce the heat to low and cook, beating constantly, until the batter is very stiff and almost shiny, usually a few minutes. Off the heat, add the eggs one by one, beating thoroughly with a wooden spoon to completely incorporate each egg before adding the next. The mixture will initially resist each addition; you'll find yourself cutting through and slapping together slabs of slippery, warm paste until it gradually absorbs the egg and becomes sticky again. [Transferring the dough to a stand mixer prior to adding the eggs will develop a better consistency and save your wrists - believe me, when Rodgers says "stiff," the dough puts up quite a struggle. Each egg will make the dough slough apart into slippery sheets, but just as quickly, it will become a thick paste.] The final mixture should be no hotter than tepid. [We found they even benefited from brief refrigeration.] Add the pepper to taste and stir in the Gruyere.

If you are proficient with one, transfer the batter to a pastry bag, and pipe 2- to 3-inch long bands onto a parchment paper-lined baking sheet about 2 inches apart. Otherwise use a spoon to scoop out a heaping tablespoon of batter per gougere and a second spoon to scrape it into a peaky mound on the prepared baking sheet.

Bake until firm and a rich golden brown, about 25 minutes [They will likely need the full time to get crisp and retain their height - any of ours that we prematurely removed deflated quickly.] Inevitably, some bits of cheese will ooze and form a delicious, crispy bib on the edges of the gougeres. To check doneness, remove 1 gougere and pry open. The interior strands of dough should be tender and moist, but not mushy; if they are, close the gougere and return it to the oven to bake with the rest for another few minutes. If you are concerned that they may overbrown, simply turn off the oven and leave to finish cooking in the ambient heat.
_________________

Perhaps we should make a habit of such Sunday evenings.

gingerblaze of glory

A few weeks ago, my co-worker, Nancy, stopped by my desk with a flier in hand. A local art school, PNCA, was hosting a gingerbread contest (Rip City Gingerblaze 2007) and a team from Ecotrust planned to enter. Would I be interested in joining the team? Faster than you can say gingerhaus, I had agreed and even threw P's services into the deal. (I like to think that in speaking his vows to me, P intimated his cheerful willingness to go along with any hair-brained scheme I managed to hatch or get us into.)

It was another week before team Ecotrust had its first formal meeting, during which we accomplished roughly the following:
-We would make the Natural Capital Center.
-We would build it out of gingerbread.
-Some of us had gingerbread recipes that *might* work.
-We would need candy.
Beaming from what we imagined to be a thoroughly successful meeting, we all proceeded to tuck the idea into cozy corners way (way) in the back of our minds. Mine slept soundly there, snugly sandwiched between "learning guitar" and "writing a food-based memoir," until it was rudely awakened by Nancy's panic-stricken voice. The contest was a week away. We had not even begun planning (much less building) in earnest and Ecotrust's very reputation was at stake.

Meeting number two was frantically arranged, at which we accomplished the following (in summary):
-We would make the building in a 2:1 rectangular shape.
-Some of us would make gingerbread over the course of the week.
-We would gather to assemble the Natural Capital Center on Saturday, exactly one day before the deadline.
-We would need candy.

When Saturday arrived in dreary drizzle (this was the day the clouds let loose, signaling the most intense three days of rain I have yet to experience in Portland) I hoped for the rain to turn to a blizzard into which I simply could not venture. Unfortunately the weather, though irritating and more than a little wet, was not enough to justify playing hooky. I dragged myself to our gingerbread construction site and prepared myself for disaster - crumbling gingerbread, garish candy designs, total disorganization, even a food fight or two. I would have been happy leaving the event still on speaking terms with all of my co-workers.

In 7 1/2 hours, I was amazed by the transformation. Like the gingerbread, I was covered in many-colored frosting, seeds, wheat grass, licorice and bits of seaweed; but, believe me, I looked far worse than my architectural counterpart. Furthermore, we merry workers were laughing and joking, not arguing over the sour straws and jellied eyes. Towards the end of the evening, I declared without hesitation that this was, in fact, the best thing that I had ever done. Better than graduating college. Better than getting a job at Ecotrust in the first place. Better than our wedding? P inquired. Maybe. This pronouncement may have been induced by the thin layer of candy dust in the air, or perhaps it was pure exhaustion. Whatever the cause, there was something magical about that afternoon of construction and creative energy. I only pray that the magic holds on just a little longer and cements that gingerbread in place through to the end of the competition.

a very bloggy thanksgiving

Did you seriously think we would let Turkey Day pass without a mention on the good ol' blog?
Of course you didn't. And of course we wouldn't.

Thanksgiving commands a very important place in my year. Forgive the apocryphal origins and bad pilgrim celebration stories. Ignore the football and the sometimes-awkward family and the fact that we usually end up wolfing-down our meals. And while it's true that for many families, Thanksgiving is more likely to come from cans and boxes than farmer's market stalls, it is still one of the few (only?) American holidays devoted to food. No matter whether that food is fresh or packaged, nearly everyone that I talk with has strong memories (usually fond) of the holiday primarily because of the central place that food takes in all the festivities. Food makes memories stronger.

One day in the year that we get off of work and focus on food. Maybe everyone doesn't have a gourmet feast, but as a victory for eating, I'll take what I can get.

A and I rarely make the same meal twice. The same holds true for Thanksgiving. A part of me always wants to revive old meals and continue traditions, but part of me is so curious about new tastes. So we strike a balance. We do some dishes from family recipes, we create some from memory and we make a few new ones from recipes that we've culled over the past few lead-up months.

Personally, I find it fascinating how much technology and culture have intertwined over the course of even my life (A finds it slightly less interesting when I wax philosophical on this subject). I never would have expected that so much of our family's meal would come from the internet and yet, last Thursday, we were cooking a recipe from A's grandmother alongside new favorites we'd found online. Luddism is far from my mindset, hell, we bought our pie from a blog, but there is a part of me that wants for the marginalia of old handwritten recipes. Maybe I'll scrawl the web recipes onto index cards and spill some leftover gravy on them to make them look well-loved. Or maybe I'll just start looking for new recipes for next year.

So, with links when appropriate, here was the P & A 2007 Thanksgiving:

Mesclun salad with dates, goat cheese & molasses-garam masala vinaigrette
(with adjustments to the recipe's dressing)
________

Cider-glazed carrots
________

Brussels sprouts with Renee's chipotle-glazed nuts
________

Coconut curried uchiki kuri squash (from Viridian Farms)
________

Calmyrna fig and walnut dressing
________

Mushroom & Fennel Bread Pudding
________

Granny B's Velveeta Mac & Cheese (we're not all highbrow around here)
________

Mashed potatoes from memory
________

Mushroom Country Gravy
________

Bacon-Wrapped Turkey with Pear Cider Gravy
________

Cranberry Sauce with Orange Bitters & Harlequin
________

Buttermilk Pie with Cardamom and Nutmeg from The Acorn
________

Marty's Sweet Potato Pie

The standouts were definitely the bread pudding, which was a great (richer) take on traditional stuffing and the turkey gravy, which was worth all of the extra effort of pureeing roasted pears and cooking down the turkey-bacon drippings with hard cider. This was A's first time helping to cook the majority (read: all) of Thanksgiving. Perhaps I got us in over both of our heads, but we managed to get through it with only minor gravy scalds on our legs. The end count: 13 dishes for 8 people.

the belly of the beast, pt. 2

Now, on to the food, already!

P: Walking into Beast, the interior is fantastically cool. The decor was like the kitchen we've always dreamed of - a little bit industrial, a little bit farmhouse, a little bit NoPo hipster. Beside a wall of blue tile, pots and pans were stacked on open metal post shelving with burners and ovens wedged within. All that separates the two spacious group tables (8-person and 16-person) from Pomeroy and her sous-chef is a large wooden butcher block island, upon which they do all of their preparations and platings. This space puts other "open kitchens" to shame - it feels more like sitting at a farmhouse table in the middle of a large country (albeit chic) kitchen.

Covering the full back wall of the restaurant is a blackboard of scribbled food quotes (from the anonymous "Praise the lard!" to De la Soul: "I've been know to sample soul food off the old school plates"), recipes (creme fraiche dough), lists of favorite local restaurants, phone numbers, and restaurant mile stones. It reads like a peek inside the inner workings of the chefs' minds. I think that the effect of restaurant's decor was best captured by what one of the gentlemen sitting at our table said to us. His fourth trip in as many weeks, he described his attitude toward the bistro as feeling like, "the 11th hour guest at a party full of strangers; you can come and enjoy your meal or you can reach across the table and meet someone new." While it isn't family style like some of Pomeroy's last ventures - the common menu and communal tables invite connections. It is an incredibly warm and casual place with just enough of an edge to draw the right mix of people for lovely conversations.

A: Before we dive into the food, we should mention that the service was the perfect compliment both to the warm and convivial atmosphere and to the perfectly synchronized meal. This, like the restaurant itself, is due to years of preparation. Our waiter, Daniel, has worked with Naomi for over ten years and is as much a part of this current project as she is. This experience makes him a friendly and attentive waiter, but also perfectly suited to the style of restaurant that Beast is trying to be.

Wait staff here (of which there are only two) are friendly in an extremely genuine way that I haven't experienced in other restaurants. Adding to the sense of eating in someone's home, both Daniel and Tracy spoke to us like friends, rather than customers. Upon first walking in, we immediately recognized Daniel and quickly realized that he had been working the Unearth dinner we had attended. Only after seeing him with Tracy did we realize that we had seen both of them somewhere else - the two had danced in "Ten Tiny Dances" for TBA 2007. In between courses, we talked about their choreography, TBA, and Daniel's experience working with food. Leaving Beast, we felt like we wanted to return just as much for the people as to taste a new menu.

But lest we bore you excessively with the background, onto the juicy (and salty, and richly buttery) details...

So the meal was five-courses. And to most, that would be enough. But at a place this fine, there's always a little something extra. The amuse bouche for our meal was a gougere - a rich, bread-pudding-like roll with a salty gruyere crust. Forgetting that after finishing these, we still had five courses to go, we each ate the entire thing, including any pesky crumbs that dared to clutter our plates.

P: When the first official course came, it was a steaming mug of French onion soup, which may well be my favorite soup. For some reason, A and I have gotten out of the habit of using beef stock when we make it and this bowl reminded us of why we that is an unforgivable concession to healthfulness. The broth tasted like the drippings from a perfect Sunday roast (or, at least, it would have if we hadn't scalded our mouths with the first bite [and the second and third]). It is just so classic, this dish, that you wouldn't want a single thing to be changed. I love the rich salty broth, A loves the way the gruyere leaves an impenetrably sticky coating on the spoon.

A: The second course was a Charcuterie plate with some old standards - country pate, chicken and duck liver mousse, cornichon, and stone-ground mustard - and some tasty standouts (new to us, at least) - steak tartare with a quail egg toast and some pickled vegetables that tasted distinctly indian (mustard seed, fenugreek and turmeric?). It was a nice, country-french addition to the hearty meal.


The main course for the evening was short ribs braised in armagnac prunes and aged balsamic vinegar with potatoes aligot and cabbage with bacon and shallots. meet fell off the bone, rich, dark sauce, potatoes were creamy and cheesy, like the potatoes at pied du cochon. I know P doesn't agree with me, but I think the short ribs were actually my least favorite part of the meal (which isn't to say they weren't tasty). I've strayed further and further from enjoying a cut of beef and, while the meat was cooked to perfection in a truly fantastic sauce (the armagnac prunes were a perfect, tangy accompaniment to the richly salty quality of the meat), I spent most of my time savoring the potatoes aligot. But seriously, who wouldn't? These potatoes were soooo creamy.

P: I wouldn't. I mean, I did, because the potatoes were good, but damn, those short ribs were tender and the armagnac/prune/aged balsamic combo was to-die-for. Only half-way through the courses, I mentioned to A how sick I was, and A, true to form, licked the sauce off her plate. "I feel like I could go for a run," she said. And then another course came to the table. A mache salad vermouth vinaigrette was paired with baby carrots and herbed creme fraiche. Tasting this dish, I felt like I'd taken the waters at Lourdes. Alone, it was an unremarkable dish, but it was such a contrast to the richness of the previous courses that it re-invigorated my appetite enough to fit in two more courses. It was clear that just like the competitive eater who falters on his 99th hot dog, I too had been a victim of flavor fatigue.

A cheese course of 4-year aged gouda, pink lady apples and pistachio shortbread followed the salad. While it was a pretty basic cheese pairing, the pistachio shortbreads were a nice buttery and nutty substitute for nuts. And when it comes down to it, I cannot get enough of that aged gouda - it has this rich caramel flavor and these great crunchy crystals in the shards, its like cheese candy. That has got to be my favorite cheese (Everything here seems to be P's favorite. I thought this was my birthday meal. -A).

Finally, out came the dessert: a lemon pudding cake with thyme tuille and soft vanilla whipped cream. For some reason we never order dishes like this in restaurants - we always gravitate towards the nut or chocolate desserts. But this cake was moist and topped by an incredibly light custard, like a softer lemon curd. Paired with the light herbal bite of the cookie, it could change our minds about lemon desserts.

On our way out, we noticed a copy of the Au Pied du Cochon album up on a shelf of other cookbooks and we immediately saw an affinity between the two restaurants. Both chefs take classic preparations and break them down into their comfort food basics, serving them in the atmosphere of a friend's home. We asked Naomi if she had been to Au Pied and told her of our recent trip to Montreal. She and her sous-chef's eyes widened and we left them scheming up a way to call a flight to Montreal a "business trip."

A: We think (know) we'll have to go back soon. Besides, the three-course meal for $32 a person, where you can share a charcuterie plate and a salad, and each get a first course, main course, and a choice of dessert or cheese plate, sounds like a pretty great week night deal to us. Maybe just about every night of the week. Anyway, we're pretty tired of cooking after that extravagant Thanksgiving meal we made. But that's a story for another day...

the belly of the beast, pt. 1

A great painting by Evan B. Harris
Since we don't want any of you to forget just how much this blog is a joint effort between P & A (often necessitating awkward 3rd person grammatical ploys), we're going to be tag-teaming this one. We wrote all of our Montreal posts together and we always bounce ideas for posts off of one another; so just ignore those little "posted by" tag lines at the bottom. It is a funny experience to co-author writings - we see the differences in our voices while trying to make them blend into something coherent. If it was snarky, it was probably P; if it was punny, it was
probably A's doing. So for this one, we're going to try a little back-and-forth, which may just degrade into bickering.

P: Right after saying how infrequently we get to new restaurants, we're at it again. Just a little over a month ago, Naomi Pomeroy (formerly of Ripe and Supper fame) opened a new restaurant, BEAST, with an intriguing premise - one prix-fixe menu per night of her signature French by-way-of-Portland-farmer's market fare.

Apparently, it was so intriguing that it turned up in Willamette Week's 100 best restaurants in Portland after only a few weeks of service. The early accolades made me skeptical - not necessarily about the caliber of BEAST, but about WW's standards. Just skimming through this year's guide, A and I immediately came across a handful of such poor editorial calls. Too many of the reviews sounded like apologies for the poor quality of a restaurant (Nostrana, Red Star, and don't even get me started about how mediocre Pinocchio sounds) and one review was even of a place that had sadly closed prior to publication.

I love Portland, and I love Portland restaurants, but I'm sorry, there are not 100 superlatively good upscale restaurants in town. Don't scrape the barrel just to get a newsstand worthy number; including sub-par restaurants only makes Portland look like we have a poverty of worthwhile food, which is far from the truth.

A: The reason for Beast's immediate success requires back-story, because unlike other restaurants that might falter out of the gate, Beast is the product of the continual refinement and clarification of a culinary idea. We've had Naomi Pomeroy's food a few times before, but never in a restaurant setting. Naomi used to be half of Portland's epicurean dynamic duo, arguably a major impetus behind Portland's push into the food scene big leagues.

In addition to a handful of restaurants, Naomi and her ex-husband started Ripe, a family-style supper that began in their home as an invitation only event. In the very beginning, guests brought a chair to the table in exchange for their meal. Oh, how we longed to attend. We eventually got to a Ripe dinner when they were a part of TBA in 2005. The meal was amazing - I still can't get the cherry tomato, haricot verts, and shell bean salad with pounded basil and aoili out of my head - and sharing meals with strangers really does make one feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

The next time we had the pleasure of tasting Naomi's food was much more recently, after her empire had a sucker-punch of a collapse. (This may sound like a lot of gossip, but this is Portland after all, and these are the closest we have to celebrities. -P) About a month after I started working at Ecotrust, the events staff re-introduced an event called the Unearth dinner. While the name was a little obtuse, the concept of the dinner was intriguing - a local and highly seasonal dinner made by a Portland chef. This time, the chef was Naomi Pomeroy. The cuisine was the essence of late spring with copper river salmon, early summer berries, chicories, spring lamb, braised baby fennel and cherries. Again, the food was served family style and we spent the evening eating our fill, drinking good wine (with the wine makers) and quickly becoming friends (or maybe just drunk) with everyone around us.

For us, these two meals captured two themes that make Beast what it is: a place that emphasizes both the seasonality of food and the conviviality of sharing it with others.

After P's rant and A's little history lesson, we've realized it is late and this post is running long - we'll devote our entire next post to the actual food....