Prix Fixe

NFTL: Foodportunity post game report.

Sorry for the tardiness of this post, decided to take a couple 'mental' days.

First off, I should have taken notes, I figured with my mind being a steel trap and all (yeah right, those who know me - know how untrue that is) that I'd be able to remember and recall everything that went down my gullet. I did get pictures so that helps with the memory recall.

Lets just say that everyone involved brought their A game on Monday night. When I mean everyone, from the vendors to the volunteers to the wonderful food peeps in attendance. Not to sound cheesy or nothing but you guys should give yourselves a round of applause - because you truly showed that the food community in Portland is one hell of a class act.

It was nice to be able to put actual faces to twitter handles, or blogs for that matter.  To say it was packed, is a giant understatement. 

Here are my top three dishes from the event, in no particular order. And I will abstain from putting both of our offerings on the list. Because, you know bias and all.

1. Metrovino's Black Pepper Corn Panna Cotta w/ Foie Gras, Burbon Carmel Corn and Blue Berries. (This by the way seemed to be the hit among everyone).
2. The Gilt Club's Wild Boar rillette
3. Beaker & Flask's Gazpacho with Oregon Bay Shrimp & Smoked Scallop salad.

And now for the photographic evidence, including a nice shot of me and my friend Jen from Daily Blender.

 

NFTL: Foodportunity PDX

You've probably seen me tweet about this a lot, well more like re-tweets but you get the idea. This is going to be a great event, and the first time that it's been held in the Portland market. 

Do you want to rub elbows with the PDX food community? Are you a blogger, food writer or critic? This is the event for you. If you can't tell I'm pretty excited, as Scratch was invited to be one of the 10 or so restaurants to showcase their food and what we're about.

Some of the other restaurants include, Ten01 (hoping to see @slow_lane at the event), Beaker & Flask, and the list goes on. Not only that but there will be some great speakers on hand, who amazingly enough are Chefs. Including Naomi Pomeroy of Beast, Gabe Rucker of Le Pigeon and more. I haven't had a chance to meet either of those two chefs, and looking forward to introducing myself.

Here's some of the low down on the event:

The culinary networking event takes place at the Heathman Restaurant and Bar on Monday,September 13,2010 from 6 to 9 p.m. Tickets are $22 (including all handling fees) per person and include appetizers and a wide range of food products from local companies.

Tickets are on sale now through Brown Paper Tickets.

Here's the list of speakers for Monday Night.

They are looking for volunteer's as well, just follow @foodportunityOR and DM them with your info. This is going to be a big event, and hopefully a annual occurrence.

So either grab your tix, or sign up to lend a helping hand. Hope to see you there! 

NFTL: More from the vault..

[The restaurant is on a mini staycation, and we'll be returning to the kitchen on Friday. I've been wrapped up in the launch of Geek. Cred. and working on other projects. Things will be getting back to what I deem as 'normal' soon. So I bring you another installment of "From The Vault"]

*****

NFTL: Of wolf packs and alley menus

On Sunday night chef and the rest of the team put on a charity dinner for The Women of Vision, which is a great organization by the way, and the things they're doing for women right here in our back yard as well as internationally are nothing short of amazing. 

To you up to speed, a while back Chef was put up for charity auction for the aforementioned Women of Vision, Sunday night was the night we were putting on the auction winners and their guests.

In the week leading up to the dinner, chef had a pretty good handle on what we were going to do. He wanted to use on ingredient as a 'theme' ingredient - a little bit of Iron Chef America warm up (we're less than a month away from heading to New York, still can't believe we're going). 

So at first it was "Battle Shrimp" until, we found out that one of the diners that evening had a shell fish allergy, and the menu was scrapped.

Then he came up with "Battle Beef", and had a menu pretty much sketched out in his head. Then came the day of the event, he'd picked up some choice wagyu beef - the menu in his head? 86'd. We adjourned to the alley behind the restaurant to toss some things around.

Five minutes, BLAMMO! Seven course menu, including desert and every damn dish had beef in it. I should mention right now it just wasn't me and chef. We've taken on our next extern, the former is now in France working the Cannes Film Festival, and then to stay in Europe for a while. Oh, and yeah Daniel was there too....

This marks our third extern, so for color me impressed - he fits in well and the passion he has is frakkin' great. So a new member to the wolfpack and from what I understand he'll be with us for 3 months. 

Anyways, back to our story.

NFTL: Wylie Dufresne droppin' knowledge.

If there is one video you watch today, make it this one.

Wylie is firing on all cylinders and tackles a lot of subjects, he's well informed - great speaker. This is well worth the time investment, it will take you watch this.

 

I think one of my favorite parts, is his take on "Farm To Table"..and to that all I have to say is - A-Frakkin'-Men brotha - go preach it on the mountain.

NFTL: From The Vault

[Just like any good T.V. show, or any show for that matter there are re-runs. So I figured while my son is still in town, I'd dip into the 'vault', so please enjoy this one from July 8th, 2010.]

****

NFTL: Drop Dead Legs

Remember those Saturday mornings after a football game? You sleep a bit later than normal, but when you decided to rise from your football induced coma - your legs feel as though they just don't want to work?

That's what I felt like on Wednesday morning after a long Tuesday in the kitchen.

Just let me say I'm not whining at all, to me it was a 'good' pain so to speak. As I've mentioned in my previous post, we started lunch service on Tuesday. While it's only a 3 hour endeavor, it was also menu change day, which included a pretty big over-haul of June's menu.

We're also in the midst of our first heat wave of the summer, which when you add it to a kitchen the size of a closet it can become very draining and that didn't really come into play until yesterday. I'm pretty good about getting my second wind on those 10+ hour days.

Yesterday? Not so much.

I did get a full 8 hours sleep and while my legs are still telling me that whatever it is I'm doing to them isn't very nice. More sore than dead, but like all things I know that my body (as old as it is) will adjust and it will become second nature.

"Wrecking Ball"

That seems to be my new nickname, better than "Lump" if you ask me. To be honest it is a well deserved nickname. The havoc I've wreaked upon kitchen equipment is becoming things of legend. There will be songs sung, and sonnets written.

Here's a quick list, not a list I'm proud of mind you, but a list none the less.

• 2 Induction Burners: The first one, I swear wasn't my fault -but Chef likes to blame me anyways because I was using said burner when it just quite working, all I was doing was searing off veal. 
  
  Now, the second one I take full responsibility for. Our crock-pots are located just above and to the left of our 3 induction burners. I use it for making chicken stock (works like a champ) over night, and maybe it wasn't a good idea to strain stock on an induction burner. Lets just say I splashed the stock big time, trust me the damn thing was hot. 
  
  Thus ending the life of one induction burner just an hour or so before service.

• Glasses: Wine, water or otherwise.

• 1 Infra-red convection oven: Only in what I can describe as - "The Great Demi-Glace Debacle of  '10"

Needless to say I've learned my lesson from the above list: first and foremost - no straining the stock around the induction burners, period.

[ETA: I did just a tad bit of revising on this piece. Found some things that stuck out like a sore thumb (to me anyways) so I "fixed" it.]

NFTL: Deus ex machina

Yes it's been a bit quiet.

But I've got an good excuse, really. For some reason though the word 'excuse' makes me cringe, but there is a viable reason - why Notes is two days late and silence yesterday. As you most likely read on Tuesday I was up at Ft. Stevens camping with my parents and teenage son.

I only get to see him a few times a year - and what little precious time we have together, we make the most of. The nerd is strong in this one, and might vary well be the chosen one. It's either that or he's just going to turn into a giant methane cloud and disappear. Either way he's my methane cloud.

While normally I would share pictures of the event, be ever being a knucklehead - I forgot to bring my camera. It's still at work, right behind the pantry station. One of our camping traditions, is "Hobo Dinners" - I know not very PC but as long as I can remember it's been on the camping menu.

Basically you take a large hamburger patty, top it with things like onions, potato, and tomato (which you really need more for moisture sake than anything). Cook them over the camp fire, wrapped in aluminum foil. It's great because you've got control of what you put in it, and it's full meal deal.

Again, I wish I had, had my camera to have photographic evidence.

While I've had most of the week off, I return to the kitchen for weekend service.

Getting back into a groove should be interesting. Speaking of grooves, need to get back into the blogging groove as well. Which shouldn't be a problem, though I'm going to spend as much time with the spawn as possible.

 

NFTL: Nothing but net?

As far as human's go, we have our ups and downs; the good and the bad. While things haven't been entirely bad - I know that I needed something good, or positive to happen (I've just felt a bit bogged down lately).

Maybe that was the only thing that was going to break me out of the funk I've been in.

And then, this happened.

It was nearing the end of lunch service on Saturday, I was back in the kitchen finishing up some tasks.

The time on my phone read 1:53.

"Better go tell Rob to lock it up" I thought to myself as I headed up the small submarine type corridor (minus the knee knockers) to the front of the house.

As I rounded the corner; I could see Rob at the door engaged in conversation with four people that showed up just as he was about to put the key in the deadbolt.

Three were done up all business like, the other was dressed in a Trail Blazers long sleeve shirt - basketball shorts and Nike sandals.

I groaned a bit, unsure if it was audible or not. You see; Saturdays = our Fridays and I was a tad on the cranky side. So a part of me was hoping that they just wanted to look at a menu.

Whatever they wanted, Rob had it handled.

So I headed back down the hallway into the kitchen, I had enough things to keep me busy.

A few seconds later Rob came down the hall, walking with a purpose.

"Way to seat a four top at the ass end of service" I said, not trying to conceal my acute irritation.

"Um, I've got a pretty good reason" he replied.

"And that is?"

"Sitting at that table is the General Manager and Assistant General Manager of the Portland Trail Blazers", a certain 'aw shucks' grin played across his face (something that he does often, and I think it's because he's from Wyoming).

"Holy....shit.." was all I could manage.

.....

So there you have it, I got to cook for Rich Cho the guy who's got some big shoes to fill - getting hired after the Blazers kicked Kevin Prichard to the curb. While I didn't have a whole lot of interaction with him until after his meal; when he came up to me, shook my hand - made sure to ask my name; then proceeded to tell me that was the best fish he's ever had (he had the Black Cod dish, if you're curious).

No matter what happened after that moment - I would not have a bad day. It was shortly after that, that chef presented 6" Shun chef knives to Rob, Joel and myself. Things just kept getting better.

If I'm being totally honest with myself, I needed a day like that. Not that things had been going badly, but surely things could be a lot better than they were up to that point. Not to mention nothing is more satisfying, than when someone enjoy's the meal you've just cooked for them.

NFTL: The D List, Tonya Harding and hubcaps

It's not often you get someone famous into the restaurant, (though I would give my right you know what to have some of the Leverage cast in for dinner while they shoot in Portland. I'll admit I have a pretty good sized crush on Beth Riesgraf, who plays the "20 pounds of crazy, in a 5 pound sack" Parker - the thief). 

That's Beth over there on the left.

Well, I take that back Matt Wagner is a regular. So if you're a big comic geek then you know who Matt is. One night all of the kitchen staff (which consists of me, chef and Rob) were wearing our Super Hero shirts (it was a Saturday, natch) and asked chef if part of the requirement to work at Scratch involved wearing a super hero shirt.

Being the geek I am, I would not rate Matt as a D-Lister . My inner geek tells me he's a A-Lister - as it should be; in my multi-verse.

OK, on to our story.

About 2p yesterday we got a call for a 2 top at 7:30, under the name Tonya Harding - I've got a shot of the phones caller ID with her name on it.  The first thought both Rob and I had was - "Yeah, right".  When chef arrived I informed him of the news and he confirmed it. Her PR people called him to let us know she was going to make a reservation for dinner that night.

I couldn't resist posting it to Twitter that she had made a rez and as you can imagine there was hilarity to be had. The jokes of the day involved funnel cake and party pizza. I'm sure most of you know of Tonya's checkered past, starting and really ending with having Nancy Kerrigan attacked so she couldn't skate. It reminded me of a time when I was working at Z100, Tonya had another brush with the law - this time throwing hub caps at her boyfriend (I think). 

The Morning Zoo thought it would be a great idea to send Skippy (the street guy) out with a cardboard stand up of Ms. Harding, and a pile of hubcaps. The deal was to win cash and prizes by using hub caps like Frisbee's and throw them at the life size stand up of Tonya.  

Needless to say it was a fun time to be had by all, and made for some hilarious radio.

I'll go on record to say that she hasn't aged gracefully and it didn't really look like her (at first). With but a glance you'd never know, but once you fully see her face - it's her. With that said; her and her dining companion kept to themselves, enjoyed dinner and called it an evening. 

I wish I could report that something wacky, zany and Tonya Harding like went down last night, but it didn't.

NFTL: Yes, he calls it his tiny chef.

I think I'm finally adjusting to the new schedule (which was re-worked again last night..). Yesterday was our best lunch yet, we've only been doing it for a couple weeks now; but still. Honestly, the way things were yesterday - we could see more of that in the very near future. 

Once people realize we're open for lunch (11a-2p in case you were wondering), we could see a big up tick in business (not that there was any doubt really, people had been asking for lunch for sometime since we opened back in December.).

I'm glad my body is starting to adjust, cause I know by the end of last week I was a tad cranky. Mentally and physically I was worn down (by Saturday it was hard to focus, and my memory really went down the toilet) - hadn't felt that way since I first started. I spent all of Sunday basically sleeping, only being awake a few hours at a time. 

I didn't want to sleep that much, but alas my body had other plans. Like I said yesterday on twitter, whilst not 100% feeling a lot better than I had.

They (whoever 'they' are) weren't kidding when they said cooking is a humbling experience. I know I've written about it before, but it never rang more true than towards the end of last week. Just when you think you've got a leg up, something comes along and does a Hank Aaron number upside your cranium. 

It's at that point you hope some sort of instinct or survival mechanism kicks in to get you through the fog.

And now onto what is quickly becoming my favorite part of Wednesdays: 

"Shit That Rob Says"

Rob: What day is today?
Me: Thursday
Rob: Every Thursdays should be punch Joel in the throat day.
Me: I might need to run that by chef. But I don't see why not.
Rob: Sweet!

I really don't think I'll run out of stuff for that portion of the program. Though there are a few that I haven't been able to post - but I've got them jotted down and maybe they make an appearance in book form (maybe..).

Bonus points for any of you that can guess what movie today's title is from.

NFTL: Scarface Style...

Sometimes the comedy writes itself, or in this case - Scarface references. When you have an extra few hours to mess around once you've got your mise out of the way - fun things like bacon powder come a long. 

We used it for a "BLT" amuse bouche for a 8 top last night that went all in, and got the tasting menu.

I'm also going to introduce a new semi-feature for Notes From The Line. We're going to call it "Shit that Rob Says". Rob is our Pantry Chef, a great guy who hails from Wyoming (we wont hold that against him...for now). So lets kick things off shall we?

A word of warning though, if your the PC type person - this is probably not for you. As most conversations in the kitchen aren't usually of the politically correct sort.

Shit that Rob Says: Midgets you say?

Rob: I wish you could farm midgets.
Me: I'm pretty sure you can't do that, Rob.
Rob: It would be great! Rent them out for parties and such.
Me: Dude, there is something seriously wrong with you.