Weekend in Stratford

We were looking forward to good food as well as good theater when we planned to go to Stratford from Detroit this weekend. Following some suggestions from chowhound.com, we ate pretty well. Saturday evening, between plays, we ate at Down the Street, 30 Ontario St.

Overall opinion, good food, and exceptional service. This is a bit funky but very convivial and warm restaurant. The owner knew we were new (who new?) and we were taken care of well, with concern and humor.

Appetizers included bruschetta and pork pot-stickers. The bruschetta was OK - the toasted bread was light on the garlic and overall nothing great, the tomato/basil mixture was fresh and bright, but a little watery. Bruschetta doesn't require cheese, but DTS's version includes a small pot of goat cheese - which my co-diner hates. I sort of enjoyed slathering a bunch on the bread before applying the tomato mixture. The pork potstickers came from the "100 mile menu" - all items on it are organic and sourced within 100 miles. Anyway the potstickers were very nice - crispy fried packages of a tasty mildly-spicy sausage-like mixture of local pork But, there were three for $9..way over priced.

My beef ribeye was perfectly cooked and nicely charred on the outside and very flavorful. The accompanying caramelized shallot and mushroom was sweet and lovely, but for some reason was served cold atop the steak. We were told it was supposed to that way. The potato gratin with goat cheese was kind of OK, nothing bad, but not very exciting and not particularly flavorful.

My companion had the crispy duck, also from the 100 mile menu. Skin not so crispy, but lovely flavored and huge hunks of duck. The kimchi slaw was crispy and flavorful with a slow heat. And the pho jus was very pho... which is good. The millet cake was....our first millet cake. I guess it was sort of interesting as an experience - lots of folks around the world eat millet regularly.

We also tried our first Niagara wine - Henry of Pelham Baco Noir. A sturdy, quiet strong wine that supported the steak nicely.

It's not cheap, in fact a bit pricey, but it's a wonderful experience in hospitality and and good food. We'd go back on another trip, and understand it's even better after the plays.

Breakfast the next morning was at Tango, also on Ontario near Downie. We liked it. As at Down the Street, the staff was friendly and helpful as can be. Tango also is proud of their pork - the bacon was thin and little crispy on the edges, the sausage links particularly were really porky - though we aren't sure what that means. They were meaty, not spicy and not particularly fatty. The home fries were crispy chunks, a little spicy and soft and warm inside. Excellent.

One other note - we arrived at the Arden Park Hotel later than we expected, less than an hour before the King Lear curtain. Could they manage a quick lunch for us? They did - a nice club sandwich with real turkey breast chunks was on the table in 5 minutes. I wouldn't have expected a lot from a small hotel dining room. It wasn't the most imaginative menu, but the food was well-prepared from good ingredients, served by cheerful, more than competent staff.

All in all, a nice experience in Stratford. Oh, and Brian Bedford as Lear was truly something special.

Serendipitous Asian Salad

So it was regular Costco visit...heavy on homekeeping goods, less on food items. But, the new Asian salad mix was intruiging. Large bag for under five bucks; finely sliced cabbage, chow mein noodles, dried pineapple, orange sesame dressing. Could have been cliched or blah. BUT, a trip to Trader Joe's yielded the new peanut satay sauce in a jar.

Oh, and we had just roasted two small, juicy chickens. The answer: mix up the Asian Chicken salad, adding some extra sunflower seeds, toss with dressing.

Heat the chunked chicken with the satay sauce--richly flavorful and a bit of heat. Toss the warm chicken over the cool salad.

This was a great meal! Proving you can cook great food, but also assemble great ingredients and make a hit. We all ate leftovers for lunch...it's good cool/cold as well.

I'll now try and make it without the mix...but it was a great "mentor" for an alternative to lettuce salad. The dried pineapple was really key, as were the sunflower seeds.

You can do it, too!

A new world of salads - scary? or exciting?

Great dinner tonight - distant family visiting, lovely rotisserie chicken from Holiday Market in RO, an interesting wine - Renaissance Reserve cab - Sierra Hills 1998 - perhaps past its prime, but it had the memory within of a decent bottle. The big treat - besides the family - was the salad variety. Start with the corn (fresh off the cob), red onion, chopped tomato, olive oil, balsamic and mustard. A simple salad to be sure but the fresh sweet corn provided a foundation of incomparable light and sweetness. Just perfect.

Now the potato salad is a different story. How to say this? Try this - I am a man of too many years as middle-aged. Can I learn something new still? I think I can. This potato salad included perfectly done spuds and the ideal PS herb - dill. The scary part is the buttermilk in the dressing. Can I handle this? I love buttermilk in so many things - pancakes, biscuits, even greens dressing. But b-milk on potatoes? I'm not there yet, but I will be. I can do this.

Not available in stores!

We had a marvelous dinner tonight, but, alas, the same is not readily available to the general public.

After the big storm Friday, a friend who lost power gave us a partially thawed pork loin. (We are saving 20 pounds of frozen food for her in our freezer.)

We pan-browned the loin, then put it in a 325 degree oven for a couple hours with a maple syrup, ketchup and garlic glaze. We finished the loin under the broiler for a few minutes. The sweet glaze permeated the loin. It was succulent, tender and sweet. Sides included a sweet pepper, cucumber and onion salad, fresh sweet corn from the RO farmers market and new potatoes boiled and then grilled with a coating of olive oil and salt. Dessert was Trader Joe's lemon pound cake with a sauce of fresh Michigan raspberries and whipped cream. All this was accompaied by a modest pinot grigio and Chateau St Jean 2006 Chardonnay. Neither was incredible but both were certainly drinkable; they were not the star of the show - the loin was.

The food was terrific, but as is often the case the company - Tom and Emily - truly made the meal. They are young and interesting and energetic. Our children - Tom is one of them - are smart and kind and have good work ethics amd we are quite proud of them. One exciting side note is that both enjoy good food, can identify good food and often seek out interesting foods and wine. Emily's dad is a food pro and she knows and enjoys good food as well. One of my best memories of my dad is in the years after my brothers and I had left home, when my parents were making decent money, and my dad enjoyed taking us to great restaurants. He wasn't a foodie, but he enjoyed entertaining us and he certainy recognized quality. I hope we and our kids can enjoy similar good times in the next few years.

Thank you Marcella

Having picked up some new green beans at the RO Farmer's Market this morning and having participated in making some homemade pesto*, I suggested that we might try a pasta with green beans and pesto dish for dinner. No, no, said the Irish/Austrian roommate, no, no.

OK, says I. I'll just check Marcella Hazan's Essentials to see if she has any green bean and pasta recipes. She does.

"When serving pesto on spaghetti or noodles, the full Genoese treatment calls for the addition of boiled new potatoes and green beans. When all its components are right, there is no single dish more delicious in the entire Italian pasta repertory."

We collaborated on making the meal and both of us did our jobs well. It was tasty indeed.

*Our pesto was made with fresh basil from the garden, walnuts, parmesan reggiano, olive oil, garlic and salt.

Slow train to heaven

Can you get better ribs around here than Slows? Wow! They're terrrific. We had both the baby back and the St Louis style this week. They don't make ribs better than these. Plenty of flavor, no grease, none of that skinstuff you sometimes get on the underside of ribs. Nothing but juicyness, tenderness, and flavor, flavor, flavor. I cleaned mine all the way to the bone.

I liked the dry rub seasoning. I particularly enjoyed the separate sauces offered on the side. The Michigan apple based sauce balanced sweet apple and a vinegar bite.

The sides are worth noting as well. All were good - the baked beans had a bit of spicy heat. We shared the potato salad, Mama's green beans and the coleslaw. All excellent, though I would have liked larger portions.

Slows is on Michigan Avenus, a couple blocks west of the old Tiger Stadium. The door to Slows is actually the wood horizontal=slatted section of wall next to the big windows. It took me a minute to figure it out.

Such a sausage!

We occasionally pick up some sausage from the Suchman folk at the Royal Oak Farmers' Market. Tonight's dinner was a grill of Suchman's sweet Italian sausage with grilled onions, carrots and peppers complimented by a caprese salad of tomato, mozzarella (fresh tiny balls of mozz' stored in salt water from Trader Joe's) and basil from our garden.

I like this sausage - it's flavorful without being overpowering. My wife thought it was a little too lean, though I thought it was just fine. Darling daughter liked it. All of us thought the flavor was excellent, subtle but clear.

Suchman's usually has a half dozen or so types of sausage and meats at the RO market, including rabbit. It's frozen and our Italian sausage was $5 a pound. They are in the northeast corner of the market which is on 11 Mile, east of Main Street. The Suchman firm is out of Tipton, MI, a bit south of Manchester, south of I-94, west of Ann Arbor.