A weekly look at the draft selection in beer-friendly bars across the country.
Turning beer-fueled trips through Belgium and Amsterdam into the inspiration behind owning a bar may sound like a lot of guys' dreams. But for Aaron Porter and Chuck Stilphen, the dream came true in December of 2007 when they opened the Trappist in Oakland, Calif., attempting to bring that Belgian feel and Belgian brews to the Bay Area.
"We went to Belgium and Amsterdam for beer festivals," says co-owner Chuck Stilphen, recalling those trips he took with Porter. Upon their return, they would lament that there was "no good place to drink beer around here where we lived."
The Trappist combats that problem. The idea was "modeled around beers we like," so it's no surprise that their primary focus is on Belgian beers. But realizing that California is no small player in the world of making great beer either, they also stock plenty of brews from their home state as well.
Origins aside, one thing is always consistent: "Small brewers stuff," Stilphen says. "No InBev or even giant Belgian brewers."
See the Trappist's draft selection as of Tuesday after the jump. ...
A California company has recalled 2,268 pounds of beef and bean burritos on fears they may be contaminated with listeria monocytogenes.
Windsor Foods of Riverside, Calif., issued the recall for 18-pound bulk cases of individually wrapped Butcher Boy Red Chile Beef and Bean Burritos, the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service said. The cases contain 72 burritos each, carry the the establishment number "EST. 1905" within the USDA mark of inspection as well as the package code "1219215" and the case code "2080001."
Burritos in question were produced on Aug. 3 and delivered to a Minnesota storage facility. Consumers with questions about the recall should phone Windsor Foods at 909-477-4813.
Consuming foods contaminated with listeria monocytogenes can cause listeriosis, which can be fatal in infants and the elderly, and can cause high fever, severe headache, neck stiffness and nausea among healthy people.
Are you concerned about food safety? Let us know in the comments below.
A California lettuce producer has recalled bulk and wrapped romaine lettuce after a batch tested positive for salmonella.
Tanimura & Antle, Inc. of Salinas, Calif., issued the recall for its Tanimura & Angle wrapped single whole-head romaine lettuce, banded single whole-head romaine lettuce and naked (unwrapped) single whole-head romaine on July 21. The nationwide recall applies to lettuce purchased before July 23.
The move comes after the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture tested positive for salmonella. No illnesses have been reported. The lettuce affected by the recall was harvested between June 25 and July 2, and should be past its shelf life, company officials said.
Symptoms of salmonella poisoning include diarrhea and abdominal pain. Anyone with questions about the romaine recall should call Tanimura & Antle at 877-827-7388.
Last month, a judge in California dismissed a claim brought by a woman who believed PepsiCo, the parent company of Cap'N Crunch manufacturer Quaker Oaks, had misled "reasonable consumers" with its colorful Crunch Berries.
"Plaintiff contends that the colorful Crunchberries, combined with use of the word 'berry' in the Product name, convey the message that Cap'n Crunch is not all sugar and starch, but contains redeeming fruit," the opinion says.
Find out what Judge Morrison C. England Jr. thought after the jump.
A weekly look at the draft selection in beer-friendly bars across the country.
The San Diego area has so many great breweries -- AleSmith, Green Flash, Port, just to pull a few off a list in alphabetical order -- that it certainly needs its fair share of great beer bars to showcase the local SoCal talent. They've got the goods. Perennial powerhouse Hamilton's Tavern always keeps a mighty draft list. Significant start-ups like Toronado's recent San Diego location offers tons of taps. Even Stone Brewery gets in on the action, featuring not only their own brews but favorites from around California and beyond.
Today, however, O'Brien's Pub gets the nod for a trend worth supporting: draft beer archives! Not only do they offer up their own "On Tap" link via their website, but patrons can also view a complete list of every brew they've ever had on draft ... or at least for the past few years. "It's everything we've ever posted on the website," says owner Tom Nickel, "but the site only dates back to 2007." Still, two years of beers is the kind of comprehensive compiling that What's On Tap nerds can get behind!
After the jump, a reprint of the most current draft list off their website.
A weekly look at the draft selection at beer-friendly bars across the country.
As I've mentioned before, the San Francisco Bay Area has a rich history for beer and brewing. As a result, the city sports a lot of great beer bars and brewpubs. On a recommendation from a friend who was recently in said city, this week's What's On Tap takes a look at one of the area's newer gastropubs, The Monk's Kettle.
Foodies take note: The Monk's Kettle (opened in December of 2007) really aims to put the "gastro" in gastropub. Now, I don't get paid to talk about food (I had half a boiled potato and Fun Dip for dinner), but their fries comes with something called "aioli" and they've got an $8 pretzel on the menu (not sure if that's a pro or a con to try to get beer drinkers through the door).
But food aside, The Monk's Kettle's beer list alone proves they are worthy of a stop if you happen to be in the neighborhood. Check out their entire current draft list after the jump...
Petite Sirah is a grape that belies its name--there's absolutely nothing petite about it. The wine is big, bold, robust, deep-colored, and tannic, not some mealy-mouthed little girl who sits pretty and still shops in the kids' section. I won't bore you with the complete history of Petite Sirah, which is long, convoluted, and requires an agricultural degree to get through, but instead will give you the one-sentence recap: The grape was probably originally from the Rhone in France, but is now mostly grown in California. Like Zinfandel, Petite Sirah has its own fan base: P.S. I love you. (Clever, eh?)
If you look in the California wine section, you'll likely find one or two bottles of PS to try. If you've never tried them, you should. It's an interesting grape. Sometimes PS is blended with other wines, like Zinfandel. These two grapes are a perfect pair, IMO, because the jammy Zin is bolstered up by the tannic PS, and together they make a great blend.
I've got one Petite Sirah in my wine rack--a 2004 Close LaChance ($35) that I brought home from a trip to Paso Robles last fall--but haven't had a chance to open it yet. Today, my neighbor came over with a mostly-finished-and-recorked bottle of Crane Lake Petite Sirah. "Try this," he said.
More Petite Sirah - Wine of the Week after the jump.
About a month ago, I had the opportunity to take a trip to Ojai, CA to check out the Southern California lemon groves. The trip was sponsored by Sunkist, and so I got a true insider's glimpse of how citrus goes from those beautiful California groves to the shelf in my local market. I also got a chance to pick a lemon (quite a thrill for the girl who hasn't lived in LA since she was eight), see the Pacific Ocean and get a break from the frigid January weather.
I also learned a whole lot about Sunkist. Did you know that Sunkist is actually a cooperative organization, founded 115 years ago by a collection of growers, in order to better market their produce to a broader audience? There are current members of the co-op who are the fifth or sixth generation of their family to be involved with Sunkist. Knowing that certainly helped put a human feel on what had, in my mind, been a faceless corporate entity.
The trip also broadened my thinking towards using lemons in cooking. I tasted the most delicious fried lemon slices, that were amazing with fresh goat cheese (also made with the help of lemon juice) and am currently infusing a bottle of oil with lemons for some special salad dressings come spring. All the lemon tricks and recipes came from celebrity chef Jill Davie, who is Sunkist's official Lemon Lady and was a real treat to get to know.
For more facts about Sunkist lemons and some of Jill's recipes, check after the jump.
I posted recently about investing in wine futures vs. the stock market; now a Napa wine company has tied them together. Here's how it works: you pre-buy a bottle of Napa Cabernet Sauvignon for $39, which is already a fairly good deal for that region, where most Cabs run much higher. The penny-pinchers at Bailout Wine record the Dow Jones closing value on the day you buy the bottle, and when it's officially released on August 14, 2009, you'll get $2 off for every 100 points the Dow has dropped since you first signed up.
If in the unlikely event that the Dow goes up, you're still set: the $39 price is the ceiling.
My favorite part was the caveat at the bottom of the "How it Works" page: "Note that if the price per bottle should go below $9, we have to charge you $9/bottle for legal reasons. But that will be the least of our concerns." Umm, yeah. At least you'll have a nice Cab to drown your sorrows in.
A weekly look at the draft selection at beer-friendly bars across the country.
This week, we jump entirely across the country from our nation's right coast to our nation's left coast landing at Father's Office in Santa Monica, California.
You might be familiar with this L.A. area gastropub for their near legendary Office Burger. (I swear I walked in one afternoon and saw Brooke Shields sitting at the bar eating one quietly by herself.) The "pub food" is superb -- gourmet even by gourmet pub food standards -- but as Father's Office clearly claims on their website: "Our focus is craft beer and its pairing with food."
How do you pull off such a feat? Have 36 taps of seasonally selected beer flowing at all times backed up with a few solid bottled selections (not listed here, of course!) and a few hand-picked wines to appease those who are too snobby even to be beer snobs.
For a bar that is so shamelessly aimed at upmarket tastes, FO is surprisingly down-to-earth (with helpful and friendly bartenders) and cozy (often to the point of being cramped). A new larger location (opened earlier in 2008) in Culver City will hopefully take some of the pressure off the the Santa Monica spot and spread burger and beer love to more of city.
After the jump, see what 36 selections Father's Office is currently offering.
Wine lovers all over the country have reason to celebrate tomorrow: December 5, 1933, marked the end of the 13-year Prohibition on alcohol in the U.S. (Of course the resulting state-by-state laws are still confusing, cumbersome, and laden with politics, but individuals can speak up to their legislative representatives through the nonprofit organization Free the Grapes.)
During those long thirteen years of Prohibition, the California wine industry suffered. Most wineries were forced to close their doors, and those who remained open produced wines for medicinal and religious use. Farmers willing to ride out Prohibition fared a little better: each male was allowed to make 200 gallons of wine each year for personal use, so the demand for grapes around the country was fairly high, even as commercial winemaking all but disappeared.
This year, a new line of wines called Festival 34 was released to commemorate California's first harvest following the repeal of Prohibition 75 years ago. The wines include a Chardonnay, Merlot, and Cabernet Sauvignon, all sourced from California's Central Coast and made by C & B Vintage Cellars in Napa.
I'm usually skeptical of fancy marketing ploys when it comes to wine, because there's often an inverse relationship between the quality of the wine and the cleverness of the label. Festival 34 is an exception for three reasons. One, the concept is truly clever, as it calls attention to and celebrates the end of a terrible era for wine lovers; two, the label art is gorgeous and practically collectible; and three, the wines are quite good. The Chardonnay was too oaky for my taste, but I loved the Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon. Both are a great value for around $12-15.
I absolutely believe that moderation (called "temperance" in the old days), not prohibition, should be the buzzword with alcohol, and on the 75th anniversary of the repeal of Prohibition in the United States, I raise my glass to the liberation of the vineyards.
While visiting Paso Robles, California, last week, we took a day to explore the coast, including the gorgeous Hearst Castle--a must-see for anyone who loves art, not to mention 30s-era Hollywood gossip--and the surrounding land, Hearst Ranch. The ranch has been a cow-calf operation since 1865, but recently Hearst Corporation changed the business model so the cows would use the resources of the land (i.e., they reduced the number of cattle to 800, the number the land will support, and let the cows graze for food).
I talk a lot about the concept of terroir in wine--the wine's sense of place from the soil, climate, and region, but Brian Kenny, division manager at Hearst Ranch Beef, says terroir goes beyond wine. "Grass fed beef is the ultimate expression of terroir. The cattle eat grass, and the flavor result in the meat is an expression of the land."
Kenny remembers the time he gave Alice Waters some rib-eye to sample (Chez Panisse is a customer). She asked, "What do I taste? It's amazing." Kenny replied, "You taste the Central Coast."
And that, ultimately, is his goal. "When people come to visit the coast, we want them to go away with a sense of flavor," he says. I tried some Hearst Ranch Braised Brisket in Oaxacan Chile Gravy at Villa Creek in Paso and brought some jerky home with me. As to describing its taste, I can't do better than another of Kenny's customers: "It tastes like beef used to taste."
Click on the gallery to see photos of the beautiful castle and ranch.
I'm taking a break from my usual wine beat for the next few posts to tell you about some foodie treasures I found on the California coast last week. Abalone has been prized in Asia for centuries. Its iridescent shell is beautiful; the firm-textured fresh meat inside is delicious in everything from a stir fry (baby abalone) to a meaty full-size steak (a six-year-old abalone). Every part of the abalone is used--the shells for jewelry and furniture and guitar inlays, the viscera in pharmaceutical research, and of course the meat for food.
When The Abalone Farm was founded off of California's central coast in 1969, researchers hadn't even studied the abalone's life cycle in enough detail to discover that they would soon have a serious underpopulation problem on their hands. Abalone was once plentiful along the west coast, but harvesters and researchers didn't know it can take up to five years for a single abalone to reach full size. Overharvesting and pollution caused the eventual ban of commercial wild harvest, but there's still high demand for abalone, says Brad Buckley, sales manager at The Abalone Farm, mostly in the U.S. for sushi and steaks. The company raises more than 1 million abalone each year, but because abalone take about four years to reach full size, the Farm has around four million abalone in various stages of production.
There's a lot of talk about sustainable seafood versus farm-raised, but with abalone, you don't have to choose the lesser of two evils. The Abalone Farm is a part of the Monterrey Bay Aquarium's Sustainable Seafood Watch program, where it's rated a "Best Choice." I had a breaded and fried version while there, but some say the ultimate expression of abalone is in sushi, raw, crunchy, and tasting of the sea.
I'm just back home from a trip to Paso Robles, California, an adorable little town halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles. It's not a simple direct flight from anywhere--you pretty much have to come in through either LA or San Jose, then drive or take Amtrack to Paso Robles (or fly another leg to San Luis Obispo on one of those rickety little planes), but if you rented a car from a major airport and drove, you could stop at the Monterey Aquarium and Steinbeck Museum from the north or the Santa Barbara Mission from the south. There's also a service called The Wine Wrangler that will do pickups from the San Luis Obispo airport and drive groups around on wine and coastal tours, so no drinking and driving is required.
Frank Mecham, Paso Robles' mayor and a fifth generation resident, said 10 years ago you could throw a bowling ball downtown and not hit anyone, but that's all changed. As the wine region has grown, so has the town, from upscale, fresh- and locally- sourced restaurants like Artisan and Villa Creek to sweet little boutique hotels like Hotel Cheval to quaint, quirky shops and wine tasting rooms surrounding the town square.
The Paso Robles AVA (American Viticultural Area), established in 1983, is the largest in the county at 614,000 acres, which, along with its youth, makes the region hard to characterize. About 38 percent of its acreage is devoted to Cabernet Sauvignon, but there's a fairly large contingent of (mostly younger) winemakers bent on producing more esoteric varietals and blends from the Rhone, Italy, and Spain, including Syrah, Petite Sirah, Grenache, Malbec, Mourvedre, and Tempranillo. Some of these younger winemakers break plenty of traditional blending rules--like Joe Barton's Syrah, Zinfandel, and Petite Sirah "Chanticleer-Cuvee" blend for Grey Wolf Cellars--but in this renegade region, it works.
Continue reading "Wine (Region) of the Week: Paso Robles" after the jump.
I'm posting images of sausage counters the world over each weeknight (and occasionally weekend) witching hour (until I run out), so please use the comments section to post links to your Flickr or personal site faves, and perhaps you'll see 'em posted here late some evening.
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