Monthly Archives: August 2015

Sushi Sushi (Beverly Hills)

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Sushi Sushi: Sashimi Course
I have a large number of meal reports left from my Los Angeles trip which ended two weeks ago, a number of them of sushi lunches. So as to not give you mercury poisoning from too many sushi meal reports in a row, I’m going to space them out. Here first is a brief account of a lunch omakase at Sushi Sushi in Beverly Hills.

Sushi Sushi is located right off Robertson on Beverly Drive. While there are some who praise it highly, it’s not really in the upper echelons of Los Angeles’ sushi scene; but we can’t afford to eat only at that level. As it happens, we liked our meal fine but it had the unexpected effect of making us appreciate all the more our more expensive omakase at Sushi Tsujita. Continue reading →

Clynelish 18, 1996 (Signatory for TWE)

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Clynelish 18, 1996, Signatory
Behold the handiwork of Sku, that magnificent bastard. When we met for lunch in Los Angeles, he handed over the box of samples he had for me and said, “After all the grief you gave me last time, I made a real effort with the labels this time”. Of course, when I got home I discovered that while he had indeed made clear labels, he’d put some of them at the base of the bottles and some over the lids; and others (like last week’s Laphroaig 16) over older labels that were still visible. A true artist, I expect his work will soon be featured at MOMA.

Like the aforementioned Laphroaig 16, this Clynelish was also bottled by Signatory for The Whisky Exchange. An 18 yo, this is also from a sherry cask. Let’s see if this is as good as that Laphroaig.  Continue reading →

Travail (Robbinsdale, MN)

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Travail
Towards the end of my recent dinner at Travail, while waiting for the next course in what had long before begun to feel like an interminable meal, I began to idly try to come up with versions of book titles to describe the meal so far. Here are the best I could manage: A Series of Unfortunate Courses and A Supposedly Fun Meal I’ll Never Eat Again. No, I really did not enjoy my meal. Yes, I actively disliked it. Before I get into the details of the meal and the very basic reasons for my lack of enjoyment of it, a little bit of background on and description of the restaurant for those who don’t follow these things. Continue reading →

Kilchoman 5, 2008 (for K&L)

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Kilchoman 5, 2008, K&L
This is one of K&L’s exclusive bottlings of Kilchoman and therefore THE GREATEST WHISKY FROM THE GREATEST DISTILLERY EVER! Well, I don’t know what Driscoll actually said about it as I don’t really read him regularly anymore—you can let me know if I’m very far off the mark.

Michael K., the depraved bastard who writes Diving for Pearls, proposed a bottle split of this some time ago. I’d completely forgotten about it till I got to Los Angeles and then he accused me of trying to renege on the deal and it got kind of ugly. Anyway, as recompense I had to agree to simul-review this, and I believe Jordan of Chemistry of the Cocktail is also doing one. So, after reading this you should go to their blogs and see exactly how they got it wrong. I’ll provide the links once I have them. As always, we won’t see each others’ reviews till they go up.

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Blueberry-Plum Jam

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Blueberry-Plum Jam
I have this terrible fear that I missed peach and apricot season entirely while in Los Angeles. Missed from the point of view of jam making, that is. At least the local co-op had only very sad looking peaches and apricots when I went in late last week. What they did have though were attractive Dapple Dandy pluots/plums and blueberries. And so, here is a recipe for an improvised blueberry-plum jam.

As I’ve said before, one of the great attractions of making your own jam is that you can create chimerical combinations that you don’t usually see in stores. As it turns out, this is a combination that seems to have occurred to many jam makers—the web is lousy with recipes (and far more attractive photographs than mine).

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Laphroaig 16, 1998 (Signatory for TWE)

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Laphroaig 16, 1998, Signatory for TWE
Let’s keep the Laphroaig thing going and let’s keep the timely review thing going too. This was bottled by Signatory for the Whisky Exchange—one of three selections in Signatory’s signature decanters, with green labels on this occasion. The other two were a 33 yo Glenlivet and a 18 yo Clynelish. All are still available.

I got samples of the Clynelish and Laphroaig from Sku in L.A (as you probably guessed by looking at the quality of the label). I figured if I liked them I might consider ordering them but the steep shipping price from the Whisky Exchange—especially for these Signatory decanters—is a hard obstacle to overcome. On the other hand, this is a Laphroaig from a sherry cask, and a high quality sherried Laphroaig is, for me, an even harder proposition to turn down. Well, let’s see if this is going to cause me to make any difficult decisions.
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Laphroaig Cairdeas 2015, 200th Anniversary

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Laphroaig Cairdeas 2015
Here’s a timely review for a change. I got word while I was in Los Angeles that the 2015 Cairdeas was already in Minnesota. The first thing I did upon getting back last week was to go and secure some bottles for myself.

As you probably know, the Cairdeas is Laphroaig’s bottling for Feis Ile, the annual Islay festival. It’s a different whisky each year (see here and here for my reviews of the 2013 and 2014 releases, which were from port and amontillado sherry casks respectively). This year saw a return to bourbon cask basics with an 11 yo whisky, made in small pot stills from floor malted barley from the distillery itself, and matured in their No. 1 warehouse down by the sea—all this information is from the back of the tube; well, the age isn’t on there but I’ve seen a number of references to that online. As 2015 is the bicentenary of this great distillery, the intent apparently was to produce a version of Laphroaig that looked back to the older style of whisky once produced here. As to whether they have succeeded in doing this is not something I will be able to judge as I have not had too much of that older Laphroaig (though I do very much encourage anyone who wants to help me educate myself to get in touch).

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Coming Soon…

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Eric-Ravilious
Before I get to the usual long list of potential whisky reviews for the month let me first thank all those who responded to my poll about relative interest in the whisky and food content on the blog. With more than 125 responses in a week, I received far more feedback than I thought I would (perhaps even achieving statistical significance given the number of unique visitors each day). In fact, I must admit that when I first set up the poll I did not set it to display the actual number of votes cast (in total or for each option) as I had thought that number might be embarrassingly low (that fear, embarrassing in itself, was proven unfounded within a few hours). While this was not in any way a goal of the poll, it has had the unexpected effect of indicating that I do in fact have a readership beyond the few who comment from time to time. And this is is nice to know.

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