And Then There Was Naan

I fear I’m setting a poor precedent for this blog – I really want to tell you how much I love naan. I want to tell you how it’s one of my favorite breads and how the idea of going out for Indian food is always exciting because it means I’ll get naan.

But I’m also remembering that I’ve (very) recently proclaimed my love for bacon and lamb, and I worry that you’ll think I’m overly prone to hyperbole. I’m really not. I just love food. And part of the fun of the start of this blog is leaping into recipes that involve foods I love. I’m sure eventually I’ll be trying recipes more for curiosity’s sake than because I’m terribly thrilled about the ingredients. But for now we’re still fresh and new. And I have a slew of foods that bring me joy that are waiting for my undivided attention. This meal happened to focus on naan.

I got off of work Wednesday night and on the way to my car I got a text from Marisa:

“Hey, what’s up? Doing anything tonight?”

“Making naan and writing a blog post. What’s up?”

“I just took down my naan mix too! Nothing – just home kinda early and in the mood to hang out with people.”

Well hey, we’re apparently of a similar mindset and it’d been a couple of months since we last saw each other. I gave her a call and we agreed that she’d come over and bring the pumpkin curry she’d been making.

The pumpkin curry was amazing and I’ll have to weasel a recipe out of her to test out for myself. We ended up eating most of it without the naan. The downside of not getting home from work until 6:30: by the time you get your dough to rise properly, it’s close to 9 pm. But that really didn’t faze us. Mainly because of a convergence of deliciousness, some wine, and a whole evening of girl talk.

When I got home, I laid out my ingredients.

I love making bread. I’ve made various breads since I was 13. There’s an element of science with getting the water to the right temperature to activate the yeast. There’s an element of art getting all of the ingredients in balance with each other. There’s an element of patience as you wait for the tiny gaseous reactions to proceed and give your dough the lightness it needs.

There’s also the wonderful element of mixing and kneading with your hands and getting “dirty.”

The yeast and water, freshly added and not quite mixed, but already bubbling.

In some ways, making breads reminds me of ceramics. Both require use of hands, patience, vision, and a heat source to finish. In the bready rendition, however, you also get to devour your creation.

There is also an upside to the amount of time required for risings; cleaning the kitchen seems almost instantaneous. Looking around and noticing everything’s clean, I found I still had an hour left of rising. Wine time!

Sitting and chatting, catching up with friends (Tiff joined us as well), I was reminded of my favorite part of cooking: the sharing. Part of it is the act of feeding people you care about. Another aspect is simply providing an impetus for people to gather. My favorite observation from past parties is the congregation of everyone in the kitchen. Even with ample seating and activities elsewhere in our condo, we tend to gather around the food. I’d look around and see friends recounting stories of travels, kids, work, and life in general. Old friends were reminiscing. New friends were bonding. And the food draws us all together.

The combination of the wine and conversation on naan night meant fewer photos of this project. But it was a wonderful experience.

We were devouring each garlicky round as it slid out of the skillet. Burning out tongues and laughing as we tried to get the naan to cool faster so we could eat it, we caught up with the newest events in our lives. I love food. I love a multitude of ingredients. But the best part of all of this is the camaraderie and the experience with friends.

They Call Me Mellow Yellow

Brick was close, but a little off. I love lamb. Love, love, love, love, LOVE lamb. It may be sacrilegious to many of my friends, but in the meat kingdom, I hold lamb in higher esteem than bacon. SRSLY. Love lamb.

So in restarting this blog, I definitely wanted to try some new lamb dishes. I’ve made some delicious racks of lamb in my day and I have been known to turn the occasional Trader Joe's leg of lamb into some great gyro filling. My friend Susanna even submitted one of her favorite lamb recipes for me to try (and that recipe will debut at a slightly later date). But this – this was new.

I was on Allrecipes.com surfing around and they had a section of recipes dedicated to the start of Ramadan. In my past life as a retail slave, Middle Eastern Arabs would come and shop with us for the month leading up to Ramadan. I met some wonderful people during those visits and the concept of Ramadan was always interesting to me. I think the most notable aspect is that it involves not only fasting from food, but from anything passing the lips. As someone who drinks a couple of liters of water a day, the thought of abstaining from any beverage from sun up to sun down is rather impressive.

The best part of Ramadan though (at least, to a foodie like me), is the feasting that occurs after the sun goes down. The lunar month seems to be both deprivation and excess and I was incredibly excited that Allrecipes.com had a section completely devoted to Middle Eastern/Mediterranean/Arabic dishes in celebration.

I was browsing and found a couple of bread recipes that I set aside for future blogs. And then I found the lamb. Oh, lamb. I love you so very, very much. Your delicious flavor that some may find gamey tickles my taste buds and makes my heart dance. (I was a little on the  thrilled side to find this recipe.)

Added to the benefit of making a lamb dish solely for the sake of lamb, this dish had saffron.

My first encounter with saffron was my sophomore year of college. Before a dance that year, my date and I had dinner at McCormick & Schmick’s with several friends. One of the appetizers listed (and promptly ordered) was mussels in a saffron cream sauce. Had lightning struck me down at the end of the meal, I would have died incredibly happy. For those who haven’t tried saffron, I’m hard-pressed to describe it. The best attempt I can make is the effect of the taste: it makes my tongue want to complete celebratory cartwheels while my body as a whole wants to curl up and cuddle with anything that may be in the immediate vicinity.

You can imagine my squee when I found Tunisian Lamb with Saffron.

A fair warning: this is not a cheap meal. The leg of lamb I found (My grocer didn’t have cubed lamb stew meat, which would likely be cheaper. I’m going to have to start frequenting the Farmer’s Market.) ran $18. My little jar of saffron? $21. Ouch. But at the same time, the recipe makes enough to feed four and it’s delicious. So the overall cost is about $45 (with the other ingredients) – $11.25 per person is not too shabby, especially considering how much we spend per person when we eat out. And it’s lamb… with saffron.

And all-in-all, it’s a really simple recipe to make. All of the required ingredients are pictured above. The first step for me (which I didn’t document) was the cubing of the lamb. Working around the bone in the leg was a little challenging, but I got 2-3 lbs of meat (ok, I didn’t follow the recipe exactly) that I could use for the meal. My cat was thrilled to have the remnants on the leg bone.

The first real order of business was browning the meat.

My kitchen was already smelling amazing at this point.

Getting there.

With the lamb browned, it was time to add the other ingredients – most specifically, the one that had been on my mind all week:

I’m not being cheeky with the plastic bag – the jar of saffron comes with this tiny plastic bag of the saffron threads inside. I had just enough for this recipe (with about 1/4 of a teaspoon left over). I think one of the things that fascinates me about saffron, aside from its taste, is its color transformation. You start off with red threads, but it colors the food a vibrant yellow.

And of course, at this point my mouth was watering and I was burning my tongue attempting to sample a chunk of lamb. Here the recipe instructs the addition of butter and specifies to simmer the meal until the sauce reached a desired consistency. I… took a few liberties at this point.

After I added the butter, my Paula Deen side came out. “That’s not enough butter!” And another tablespoon was added. Stirring the mixture for about five minutes, it wasn’t reaching the consistency I wanted (thick, so I could hang on to every drop of that saffron-y goodness). So I went the cream sauce route and added about 1/4 cup of heavy whipping cream. (Yes, I keep heavy whipping cream in my fridge as a kitchen staple.)

The sauce was still taking a bit of time to reduce and I didn’t want to overcook the lamb, so I came up with the following solution:

Now I could boil the sauce to reduce it faster without making the lamb completely tough.

And all of a sudden – it was dinner.

I don’t usually follow the instructions for garnishing, but in this instance, I saved the 1/4 cup of onions and I had the parsley chopped and waiting. This is a good idea. This is a very good idea. Sprinkling both over the top of the finished dish set the tastes off beautifully.

Yummmmmmm….

Even better though was remembering the lemon. This dish with a tiny bit of lemon juice squirted over it is superb. I will definitely, without hesitation or concern for cost, make this recipe again. It made my taste buds rhumba.

The only thing I’d change? I’d make sure to make a bread as well to go with it so I could sop up the wonderful sauce that’s left over. (I’m half British. We sop. It’s what we do.) It could also be really delicious over rice.

We inhaled this meal. There are only three of us (Tiff, John, and me) but we ate well and we ate gluttonously.

BACON

Boat camping was my first real experience with camping. Unlike camping in the woods, your campsite is incredibly portable. Unlike using an RV, there’s significantly less storage space and a lot more exposure to the elements. When I was 13, my dad took my sister and me on our first annual boat trip. The morning we left, we piled all of our camping gear into the Jeep as Dad hooked it up to our boat’s trailer. We left home as dawn was breaking to drive up I-5 from Portland to Seattle.

Arriving in Bellingham, we transferred our gear to the boat and my sister and I started finding stowage spots for everything as Dad backed the boat into the water. It was the start of a week of adventure where we took our little 21-foot power boat through the Puget Sound. Before we knew it, we were off - bouncing across the waves with salt spray causing our hair to stand out at weird angles. Sea birds spiraled overhead as we scanned the horizon for signs of orcas. As we cruised past smaller, uninhabited islands, we imagined living there and ruling over our own little domain. We boated for hours. Who knew what would await us at our first marina?

The one guarantee no matter where we docked was food. One of the best parts of boating is the food. A combination of fresh air and isometric activity consistently left us famished by the time we reached port. On that first day, Dad fired up the barbeque grilled shish-ka-bobs for dinner. Great big hunks of steak sandwiched between onions and green bell peppers filled our bellies that night. Later in the evening, as my sister and I converted the boat’s seats into our beds for the night, we reveled in our new experiences and the future promises of the trip. We fell asleep with dreams of what awaited us in the morning.

And what awaited us was bacon.

We woke up and broke out the camp stove. As Dad was heating up the stove, we rummaged through the 150-qt ice chest for that morning’s breakfast. Eggs and pancakes were par for the course, but the prize of the morning for my 13-year-old self was the brand new pack of bacon. I come by my love of bacon naturally - Dad picked up a pack just before we left to guarantee that we’d have bacon with our breakfast every morning.

Breakfast was over too quickly. We finished our food and my stomach still complained of emptiness. “I’m just going to make a few more slices of bacon,” I informed them as I went to restart the stove. This is the point in history where Dad learned several important lessons:

1) Never leave me alone with an open pack of bacon.

2) A teenager can eat an entire pack of bacon and not only not be sick to her stomach, but still be hungry.

3) One pack of bacon may suffice for a day, but it will never last a week.

_____________________________________________________

 

As I’ve matured, I’ve gained a little more self control around bacon.  Sometimes I even remember to share. But I’m still a sucker to try any recipe that has “bacon” in the title.

I was browsing through new recipes at Allrecipes.com and I stumbled on Bacon-stuffed Ravioli. There was no way I’d pass up making this recipe.

First order of business was procuring the ingredients. My last recipe was sourced so easily I was a little disappointed. I didn’t want to have the same ordeal that I had finding coconut milk, but a little bit of adventure through the grocery store can be fun. And this recipe didn’t disappoint. I needed to find wonton wrappers. I’d brought my friend Tiff with me for company and so I could use the carpool lane on the freeway. We started off with the daunting 2’ wide section of “Asian foods” offered by our grocery store. It wasn’t there, but we weren’t exactly expecting wonton wrappers to be sitting with dried goods.

Next idea was the freezer section. I found bread dough. Aside from that, there wasn’t even a hint of phyllo pastry dough! Tiff was equally unsuccessful so we began the hunt for an employee. When we came across a guy in the dairy section we asked where we could find wonton wrappers and I was floored when he responded, “They’re on aisle one.”

We only had to ask one person! How… odd.

We made our way to aisle one (on the opposite side of the store from the Asian food display) and sitting right next to the tofu and the ricotta cheese were packages of potsticker/gyoza wrappers. I think I should have started doubting the recipe at this point.

We got home and it was time to get to work. Preheating the oven was simple. Completing step two provided a little more of a challenge.

Place a baking rack into a baking dish, and lay the bacon slices out flat onto the rack.

 

My baking rack is not fitting inside my baking dish. Maybe…

 

 

… No. How about…

 

 

BINGO.

 

It was time to bake the bacon. Take a moment, and read that last sentence aloud. Bake the bacon. Did it make you smile? I find myself giggling every time. Anyway, bacon bakin’ time:

 

 

 

I was really glad the recipe only called for eight slices – I don’t think there would have been an easy way for me to bake any more bacon. As the baking was supposed to take 25-30 minutes, I took that time to prepare everything else.

Ravioli involves lots of cheese.

 

Everything was divvied up for the filling (the clear bowl) and the Alfredo sauce (the tomato bowls)

 

 

I had everything by the stove ready and waiting. Waitin’ on the bakin’ bacon.

 

At the 25 minute mark, I checked on the bacon and it still looked fairly raw. I was supposed to bake the bacon until golden brown. At this rate, I’d be better off using a solar oven. So I removed the glass dish that was holding the bacon flat and reset the timer for another 10 minutes. At the 35 minute mark we were making progress, but hadn’t reached golden brown. Five more minutes. Half of the bacon was golden brown and crispy. The other half was getting there, but taking a longer route.

No amount of time delay will save you from your fate.

I removed the bacon that was done, drained the fat, and returned the undercooked bacon back to the oven.

 

Eight slices of bacon will give you almost exactly a quarter cup of drippings.

 

The remaining bacon reached appropriate crispiness at the 50-minute mark. With that wait complete, it was time to start assembly of my little ravioli minions.

 

 

In the lower right-hand corner of this picture, you’ll notice a bright white contraption with two handles. This is a ravioli/dumpling press. I have no idea where I got it. It’s been with my kitchen utensils for as long as I can remember. The press has traveled with me from Los Angeles to Oregon to Los Angeles to San Diego to Los Angeles once again. I have never used it. I don’t remember purchasing it. I’m fairly certain it spontaneously generated in my kitchen tools drawer one day. But it was here and I was making ravioli and it was amazingly useful:

 

Perfectly formed ravioli!

 

It’s a shame that the bacon was an essential part of the filling of the raviolis – the time it took to cook would have been a perfect time to be assembling all of my little decadent dumplings. Still, although it’s time consuming, there’s something remarkably peaceful about creating rows and rows of ravioli.

 

Dance my little minions!!!

 

I ended up making 40 ravioli and I set the remainder of the filling aside for an experiment later this week. It was time for the Alfredo sauce. I love a good cream sauce. Adding bacon drippings to a cream sauce? Sheer awesomeness. This was the first Alfredo recipe I’d found that called for cream cheese, but it worked well for the consistency of the sauce.

 

 

I tend to be a little more a traditionalist (says the girl happily adding bacon drippings) so I think in the future I’d prefer to forgo the cream cheese and milk and use heavy whipping cream instead. This recipe also called for adding a third of a cup of pasta water to thin the sauce. I didn’t add it because I’m a fan of a thicker Alfredo sauce, but I think again going a more traditional route for its ingredients, pasta water is unnecessary.

 

The ravioli cooked up quickly and it was time to mix everything together. And here’s where I encountered the problem. Potstickers are aptly named. When they get cooked, the dough that encapsulates them gets sticky. Using potsticker wrappers for ravioli led to bacon and cheese dumplings that stuck together in to a large congealed lump. It left a little to be desired on the presentation front.

I feel like I’m looking at a plate of schnitzel.

 

The other issue I had with the wrappers was the texture. When you’re in the mood for pasta and you’re making ravioli, you have an expectation of biting into a packet of deliciousness that’s held together by an al dente exterior. Not so much in this case.

 

Don’t get me wrong – the flavor of this was fantastic. I took a bite and I was rocketed back to childhood – not the boat trip in the San Juans, but the kitchen of our house in Arizona where we lived until I was eight. I knew this flavor. I couldn’t place it, but I knew it. So I texted my mom, “Did you ever make a meal for us when we were kids that involved bacon and cheese or a cream sauce? It would have been in the Arizona house.” She wrote back almost immediately, “Quiche Lorraine.” Ah ha. And that was it. This recipe tasted strangely like quiche. The texture wasn’t there, but the flavor was.

 

The final verdict on the recipe was that Tiff and John were fans. I was not. But I have a couple recipes planned for this week and Thursday will be the day of reckoning to determine if this recipe is salvageable as-is or if I really need to go on the search for pasta wrappers that I can use for future renditions.

An Exploration with Orzo

It's been a while, but tonight's recipe excursion seems to lack any of the drama implicit in the entertaining experience that was my pumpkin coconut milk soup. Although I do seem to already be on a subtle alliteration roll...

Life has been interesting. Since I last attempted cooking and blogging in a desperate attempt to maintain my sanity I quit my job. Leaving did far more for my sanity that cooking and blogging could have ever achieved. An added bonus was I landed a new job that is perfectly tailored to my neuroses. I may be the only person at the office who's not stressed, but I actually enjoy my job! Instead of spending my day approaching strangers, attempting to get them to open their wallets (and I swear I was not a prostitute), I now sit in a cozy overly air-conditioned office, at a computer, and pore over perfecting points of minutiae on customer orders. Similar to the feeling of satisfaction I get from occasionally hand-scrubbing my floors, the persistent attention to detail makes my strange little brain happy. So I'm not cooking/blogging for stress relief this time - I'm cooking/blogging because I actually have the time and energy!

That said, I have a tendency to notice free time in my life and eliminate it fairly quickly. I have about five million projects around the condo that I need to start and/or finish. My high school reunion is in a little over a week (eep!) and I'm finalizing details from 900 miles away. This week has also included a whirlwind of doctors' appointments while I was coordinating future travel plans with a group of friends. And somewhere in all of this, I decided it was time to start blogging again.

To ease my way back into a shaky control of written word, I looked for a "cooking with your eyes closed" recipe. Sun-Dried Tomato Basil Orzo is the remarkably simple recipe that ended up gracing our table tonight. Prep time is about 5 minutes, orzo cooking time is about 9 minutes, and although I made the pesto before I boiled the orzo, you have more than enough time while the pasta's cooking to do all of your non-water-boiling prep.

I stopped by the grocery store on the way home tonight and purchased two containers of basil. With contents from both packages chopped, I just met the half-cut measurement for the recipe. Basil and I are old friends. We've known each other for years and work together frequently making pizzas and caprese salad.

With the sun-dried tomatoes, I had a whole new experience! Although I've eaten sun-dried tomatoes in recipes, I've never cooked with them. Even opening the jar was a joy as their scent bounded out to happily greet my nostrils. Pungent with a hint of sweetness, the tomatoes got my mouth watering long before there was a chance of food on the table. Cutting them up was a bit like dealing with over-sized, oily raisins, but the smell was glorious.

The basil and sun-dried tomatoes spent a very brief period in this bowl before they were transferred to the food processing attachment on my Cuisinart stick blender (this was the same tool I used to puree my pumpkin soup - it's seriously my favorite kitchen gadget). The recipe calls for processing the basil and tomatoes together and then tossing it with the cooked pasta, salt, pepper, and olive oil. I didn't want to follow the recipe that way and blended the basil, tomatoes, salt, pepper, and olive oil together. Personally, I think I got a more uniform blend and that it ensured that all of the seasoning was evenly distributed through the pasta when it was stirred in.

Oh yeah! I forgot to mention the pasta - if you're not familiar with orzo, it's the pasta that looks like rice but isn't. This is not to be confused with risotto which is a rice that cooks up to a pasta-like texture. Although the recipe calls for 2 cups of uncooked orzo, I found that the box I got from the grocery store contained 2-1/4 cups. Knowing that I was never going to cook 1/4 cup orzo, I made the entire box.

2-1/4 cups uncooked orzo

Nine minutes later, the orzo was cooked, drained, and ready to be mixed with the "pesto."

The basil/tomato mix distributed nicely throughout the pasta, but I found myself wishing that I had increased the pesto quantities slightly to match the extra quarter cup of pasta. Sprinkling the grated parmesan cheese on top, dinner was ready. We had bowls for John, Tiff, and me with enough left over to feed all three of us again.

Overall, a really quick recipe. This will be a permanent addition to my dinner repertoire, but I'll make some changes in the future.

Change 1: More sun-dried tomatoes. I went easy on them this time because they can be overwhelming if you use too many. There is a happy medium, but I haven't reached it yet. I'm just going to have to keep making and eating until I perfect that ratio.

Change 2: Garlic. Admittedly, I am a garlic fiend. This dish is delicious without garlic and adding a couple cloves would overwhelm the fresh taste of the basil and the tang of the tomatoes. I'd probably start with a half a clove minced just for really subtle flavor. If that wasn't noticeable enough, I might mince a whole clove for the dish, but I don't think I'd go beyond that point.

Change 3: More salt. The recipe called for a half teaspoon. I do love my salt almost as much as I love my garlic, but I like to try to follow recipe proportions the first time I'm making a recipe. This could use 3/4 to 1 teaspoon of salt instead of just a half.

Change 4: This change will increase prep and cooking time and is not necessary to make the meal delicious, but I think it adds a nice variation - sauteed vegetables. I think the vegetables need to be fairly light and have a "green" flavor to work with the other flavors in the recipe. As I was eating my dinner, I was thinking how well little sauteed cubes of zucchini would taste with the pasta. I think freshly sauteed or grilled asparagus spears would also be awesome. 

Okay, world. Post one of my return to food blogging is complete. I plan on updating at least weekly - possibly bi-weekly. If you have any recipes you think I should try, please feel free to send them my way!

Edit 8/5/11:
The recipe mentions that this dish can be served hot or cold. To experiment with that, I brought leftovers for lunch today.

It's a perfect summer pasta salad when chilled. It also helped me determine Change 5: add pancetta. Not big chunks, not pureed nothingness. But little 1/8" square pieces of pancetta would be an amazing addition of flavor and texture.

Once Again - a Blog Overhaul

I really need to get blogging again with some consistency. I enjoy cooking; I enjoy eating. Yet somehow my food-based blog gets terribly neglected. So we're going to try this again. As a restaurant critic, it takes a lot of effort for me to rein in my snark and I am trying to de-snark my life. To help with that, I'm going to flip-flop and take this blog back to being a cooking blog.

I recently subscribed to the daily recipe emails from Allrecipes.com. My goal is to make (and blog about, natch) 1-2 recipes per week. I have the time to cook at least a meal or two a week and I have the need to continue writing. Now, it's all a matter of discipline.

Review Grading Guide

For ease of reviews, I will post the following grades:

Price: included in the post title, it will be for an approximate two-person check (including alcohol if it is available)
$ - $5 to $25
$$ - $30 to $75
$$$ - $80 to $145
$$$$ - $150 to $300
$$$$$ - $300 and above (we are not at this dining level yet... but I'm not excluding the possibility of it in the future)

Service, Food (includes presentation), Value, and Overall will be graded (with pluses and minuses) based on the following, completely subjective scale:
A - Write-home worthy. Exceeds expectations and could have me driving across several states to attain again.
B - Could become a dining staple. Fun on occasion.
C - May have redeeming qualities, but more likely not to return. Like in school and health inspections, average is not a good grade to get.
D - Deliver us from evil. Will avoid in the future.
F - Epic Fail. Will warn any person within earshot as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Please feel free to let me know if you feel I should add anything else to grading criteria!

Porterhouse Bistro - $$$

Ok, I believe we have established that I apparently fail as an Iron Chef Blogger. Admittedly, I have actually made two other recipes that I haven't gotten around to posting (Cranberry and Gorgonzola Tart and Bacon Pumpkin Pie). Three cheers for holiday procrastination overflowing into the new year! It seems that while I do occasionally get the desire to cook strange and occasionally elaborate meals, the weekly occurrence of cooking and blogging doesn't quite fit with everything else I try to cram in to my non-work time (school, eating out, spending time with friends, pestering the boyfriend, watching way too much Law & Order: SVU...). Last night, I came up with a new idea.

For the sake of narrative, I am going to introduce J-squared (and if anyone can tell me how to format superscript on Blogger, I'll love you forever). I, myself, am J-one. My darling, love-of-my-life, patience-of-Job boyfriend is J-two. He also gets the benefit of joining me for dinner pretty much every night. Every once in a while, our dinners include a guest appearance by the room mate, J-three (no joke!). Last night, however, it was just an outing for J-squared.

I helped a client at work recently with a big purchase. During our chatting we both raved over how much we love Groupon. (Disclaimer: I was not recruited to tout them but they do give a $10 credit for each new friend who signs up. I frankly just think they're awesome and we've had a lot of fun with their discounted products.) As a thank you for assistance with the purchase, my client passed on a Groupon that he had that was about to expire - it was good for a sizable portion of dinner at The Porterhouse Bistro. I'd never tried the restaurant before and I'm always game for a new experience!

I left a message with Porterhouse on Saturday to make reservations for 8 pm on Tuesday. They called me back and confirmed the reservation and we were good to go.

Tuesday arrives and I make the mad dash to get from Beverly Hills to Downtown, pick up J-two, get changed, and then trek back to Beverly Hills. We get to Porterhouse slightly early and, luck of luck! find street parking right out front. (Which is especially lucky because while I'm not sure what the valet situation is on the weekends - there is no valet during the week.) We're walking towards the front door, passing the windows into the dining room and it's looking lovely - wood, muted colors, mood lighting, linen table cloths... the works. Getting to the front door, we open and enter and are assailed by a wall of noise. Apparently, Porterhouse was having a corporate dinner that evening that took up the majority of the main dining room. Now, I know it's Los Angeles and sometimes corporate dinners are thrown together the day before they occur. But, I'm guessing the temporary wall set up to block off the main dining room meant that Porterhouse had a little advance notice. Gripe #1 - if a client is calling to make a reservation on a night that one assumes will be fairly dead and you have a large, noisy group scheduled to be in the restaurant, you should let the client know so she can decide if she wants to keep her reservation on that night or move it to another night.

So it goes.

We entered the restaurant and... had to search for the host/hostess stand? Admittedly, it wasn't that hard to find, but we did have to pass both the bar and the entrance to the dining room to reach the unmanned station. Where we stood. For seven minutes. (Ok, it was probably 5, but I'm not terribly forgiving of making people wait to have their presence acknowledged.) At one point, a man who ended up being our waiter showed up nearby at the bar to get drinks. "I'll have someone right with you." And then we were alone again. For a couple more minutes. Eventually, someone showed up to show us to seats. We were shuttled back into what is most likely their dining room that is normally reserved for private parties - the doors can close off to fully enclose the area and the decor is slightly different than the main dining room. It has the feeling of the cross between an upscale den and a wine cellar with significantly brighter lighting. But so far, so good. We're being seated... wait, by the kitchen?!? J-two was slightly appalled. I played the "Well, this is the only table for two they have set up in here and we are a party of two." But the restaurant refuted this theory when the next three couples all got tables originally designed for four people. In theory, save your worst table for the people who come late and without reservations. Better idea, don't have a table by the kitchen.

However, we were having a night out with the majority comped by a fantastic client, so who were we to complain? (At least, too loudly ^.^) We sat down and perused the drool-worthy menu. (I also cringed over the horrible homonym confusion in the description of the "Ravioli of the Day" in the appetizers section.) The prix fixe menu grabbed us. We were oohing and ahh-ing over our choices and marveling in the fact that the meal would also include two drinks. Not too shabby! So we're looking around, trying to figure out when someone is going to come over and take our orders. Or, hey, could we at least get some drinks?

J-two randomly makes eye contact with a guy wearing a sweater vest and slacks. I figured he was one of the corporate guys coming through the dining room to use the restroom .(One-person-at-a-time style, the decor attempted to match the feel of the restaurant but failed miserably. The restroom of the 76 station on Wilshire just west of the Beverly Hilton is classier.) No, apparently the guys is the manager. Since our waiter isn't around, he can take our order.

"Okay, what is the soup of the day?"
"Um... let me go find out," and he scurries off to the kitchen.

...Really?!?

We had service issues throughout the evening which led to J-two's musing (and inspired this blog), "You know, we've had some great food in Los Angeles, but the service sucks!" The manager did come back with the soup of the day. We gave him our orders and he left before we could tell him what we wanted to drink. There were long waits in between courses (about 15-20 minutes between the end of our appetizers and the appearance of our entrees). J-two's glass was sitting empty for about 5-10 minutes after he finished his first cocktail before the waiter was close enough to our vicinity to flag down. I was amazed to see a bus boy bringing out four appetizers on a large tray, Denny's-style. To make it even better, two appetizers were for one table and two were for a separate table. The waiter, when clearing his table also would only remove two items at a time and stack them on the large tray before going back for more. Dear manager: your staff lack training in general food service and in client interaction. Toward the end of the meal, our waiter showed up with two complimentary glasses of dessert wine. Nice gesture, but it definitely fell into the "too little too late category". It was also the only time I noticed him attempt a smile the whole evening.

We ended up ordering the following:

For me: 
House Pinot Noir- Acceptable wine. Not amazing. Not terrible. About as memorable as a glass of filtered water with a (thankfully) different taste.

Bread course - Presentation: spreads were nicely presented, bread was in a basket as per usual.
I don't think it's fair to claim a four-course meal when one of those "courses" is the bread that you're going to put on the table anyway. That said, the olive tapenade was pretty tasty (from a girl who doesn't care for olives), the roasted garlic made me smile (although it wasn't very pungent), and the bruschetta was very well executed. Even the butter provided was soft. Now if only they had warmed the bread...

Oysters on the half-shell - Presentation: classic on crushed ice, but nicely laid out.
An additional $8 on the prix fixe. The manager warned me that they are X variety, so they are very small. I interpret this as "you're paying a lot of money for very little food and most people are disappointed by this." I order it anyway. It is a lot of money for a little bit of food, but they were delicious.
I was left wondering though... they were served with two sauces - cocktail and a thin, clearish-red liquid with bits of finely chopped something floating in it that tasted a bit sweet. When the plate was brought to the table, it was set in front of me and then nothing. No "here are your oysters," no "this is cocktail sauce, this is Mystery Sauce of Doom!", nothing. But they were delicious all the same. Even if they did lack horseradish. The tiny bottle of Tabasco was still cute.

Rack of lamb - Presentation: beautiful - a ramekin was filled with the puff potatoes, the green beans were laid next to it in the center of the plate and the two cuts of the rack (two chops each) were tee-peed against the ramekin, sheltering the green beans. Au jus added color and completion to the plate.
This almost made me cry. Hands down, the best rack of lamb I've had. Ordered medium-rare, it was a little closer to medium, but the outside had a thin char while the interior was beautifully juicy. The texture was so smooth, it almost dissolved in my mouth. Served with sauteed green beans (note: I hate green beans and I ate almost every single one of these) and puff potatoes (Strange, risotto ball-looking things. I think they may have been balls of deep-fried mashed potatoes. Not bad, not worth ordering again.).

Creme brulee & dessert wine - Presentation: average. Served in ramekins that gave generous portion sizes. Mine could have easily fed both of us. My ramekin also apparently got tipped during caramelization as my "brulee" was actually sloping at about a 10-degree angle.
A restaurant staple, you can get a decent gauge of the skill level of the pastry chef and also get a feel for how daring the restaurant is as a whole. This was a solidly average brulee. The sugar was nicely caramelized about 1.5mm thick. It was thick enough that you got an audible crack, but not so thick that you had to hack away at it. The custard wasn't too sugary, but it may have been a little bland. I'm used to most creme brulee involving at least vanilla bean in the custard (my favorite used lavender essence), but this was just custard.
The wine was incredible sweet. The nose had me backing away with a, "Woah! That will mess with my blood sugar..." But it did go very well with the creme brulee. The wine itself was incredibly floral so while the custard was bland, the wine supplemented a bit of flavor.

J-two's dinner:
Rum & Coke - Heavy on the "Coke" which, upon sipping, turned out to be Pepsi.

Onion soup - Presentation: enchanting. An individual soup tureen with a puff pastry crust baked on top.
The soup was amazing. I couldn't quite place the alcohol they used in the broth, but I think it was sherry. It was a great compliment to the onions and the cheese (guessing provolone on that one). The tureen was large enough for an entree though. J-two ate his fill and I then helped myself until I realized that if I kept eating, I'd have no room for the main course. There was still half the tureen left after both of us were done.

20-ounce T-bone steak - Presentation: surprisingly rustic steak house-style on a semi-triangular speckled plate.
A $10 up-charge on the prix fixe, but definitely worth it. It's a beautiful steak with a rich body of flavor. Not quite as tender as the lamb, but we are dealing with different animals here. J-two ordered the garlic mashed potatoes. I found them acceptable, but not amazing. I also tacked on the side of Porterhouse fries as I'd promised my client that I'd try them. Now here's something interesting: the fries were not just fried... they were battered and fried. Definitely different. I could see craving those as a meal in their own right. It was a little much with all of the rest of the food we were plowing through.

Creme brulee & dessert wine - See rating above.

Overall verdict?
Service: D (The only thing keeping them from an F was the large party in the other room but that still shouldn't be an excuse for most of the service we experienced)
Food: A- (I vacillated between a B+ and an A-, but the lamb's amazingness pushed it up even if the menu itself isn't the most challenging)
Value: B
Overall grade: C+

The lamb itself is good enough to go back for...but I likely won't return simply because the service really was THAT HORRIBLE.

Dear restaurant managers of LA: While there should be no price minimum for good service, if I am shelling out at least $50 for dinner, I expect an experience. J-squared may indulge in gluttony, but we believe that an amazing meal is made all the better when the waitstaff are as talented as the kitchen staff. Porterhouse Bistro, you were found lacking.