On Monday Michael K. (of Diving for Pearls) and I disagreed a bit about the new Lagavulin 11, Offerman Edition. While he found it to be a sweeter, gentler, just good Lagavulin, I found it to be decidedly non-training wheels Lagavulin and very good. Today we’re going to try again with another simul-review. This is also of a heavily peated whisky from an island distillery. This time, however, the island is Mull, the distillery is Tobermory, the whisky is much younger, and the cask is sherry. I’m not sure what was going on with the Murray McDavid braintrust in 2010 that they didn’t feel the need to throw this into a grenache cask for 2 months—a loss of nerve? At least I think this was a full-term maturation: the source of my sample, Florin (the inventor of avocado toast) did not specify. At any rate, 6 years is pretty young (just three years older than the minimum maturation needed for Scotch whisky)—will the sherry have smoothed any rough notes of youth? Let’s see. Continue reading
The Lunch Thali at Kabob’s (Bloomington, MN)
Is this the best lunch deal in the Twin Cities metro? I think it might be. It’s certainly the best Indian lunch deal—and for that matter this was the best Indian meal of any kind I’ve had in Minnesota in 12+ years. I ate it at what is almost literally a hole in the wall in Bloomington, in the same large strip mall that houses TBS Mart. I’ve noticed it out of the corner of my eye over the years but always assumed it was a Middle Eastern place; there’s another Indian place right there and I suppose I assumed there wouldn’t be two Indian places right next to each other like that. Anyway, the lesson, as always, is that I am an idiot. And specifically an idiot who has been denying himself not just an excellent lunch thali for almost a decade now but also the nostalgic charge of eating it in a place that evokes the no-frills canteens and mess halls that are a commonplace in Indian cities. Here, specifically, is what I—and maybe you—had been missing. Continue reading
Lagavulin 11, Offerman Edition
Hello, here is a celebrity whisky! As you know, when celebrities are involved in whisky branding the whisky is always good. See Great Odin’s Raven, Haig Club etc. etc. Actually, I’ve not had either of those two blends; for all I know, they are decent. (I’ve not had the Ron Jeremy rum either; I hear that really grows on you.) Other things I have not done include watching any of Parks and Recreation. My Offerman exposure is limited to his excellent, scene-stealing turn in the second season of Fargo. This, of course, does not mean that this whisky that bears his name will be any good. On the other hand, Offerman is apparently a long time, non-stunt Lagavulin aficionado and one would hope that Diageo would not screw with his good name by scraping together warehouse detritus and vatting it together with an eye toward a simple celebrity cash-in. Or did he actually have something to do with its creation? I’ve not read any spirits marketing since 2009 and so I have no idea. If you know more about this, please write in below. Here now are my notes. Continue reading
Coming Soon…
October, 2019 may have been the month when this finally became a food blog more than a whisky blog. I don’t mean in terms of how I see it or what I post but in terms of what the blog’s readership indicates. The top 10 most-read posts this past month were food posts, either restaurant reviews or recipes. In fact, 15 out of the top 20 most-read posts were food posts. (Which were the five booze-related posts that snuck into the top 20? Port Charlotte 13, 2001, Millstone 100, Ben Nevis McDonald’s Traditional, Glen Scotia 12, and Longmorn 36, 1976.) And, of course, there are fewer and fewer comments each month on my whisky reviews. This is not very surprising. If I take my own reading habits as representative it would appear that interest in reading about whisky online has flagged considerably in recent years. ScotchWhisky.com announced its shutdown in October; I was disappointed but not shocked. I barely read any whisky sites these days—a far cry from a time just a few years ago when my morning routine involved checking in on a number of whisky blogs. Frankly, the state of the Scotch whisky industry makes it hard to stay excited—rising prices and high concept whiskies seem to be the only constants these days. I’m going to keep on doing what I do: three booze reviews a week but whisky readers, if you’re still out there and still interested, send me a sign. Continue reading
Crown Shy (New York, August 2019)
In my review of our dinner at Rezdora a few weeks ago I noted that we’d managed to a table for two at prime time on a Friday despite booking just a few weeks in advance. The same was true of Crown Shy, where we dined the next evening: we managed a table for two at 8.30 pm on a Saturday without very much fuss. Now, however, Crown Shy has picked up a star in the most recent Michelin list for New York and I’d guess tables are a much harder proposition at any time. I’d also guess that my other comment at the end of the Rezdora review—that dinner at Crown Shy was quite a bit cheaper—is probably also now not going to be true much longer. What has not changed at all, however, is our opinion of the meal: we thought it was very good indeed and a very good value—the latter of which is not something I would have expected to say of a tony restaurant in Manhattan’s financial district. Here’s how it went. Continue reading
Glen Grant 37, 1974 (Berry Bros. & Rudd)
Okay, let’s do one more old Glen Grant to close out the month. This one is two years older than Monday’s 35 yo and was distilled four years later, in 1974. The bottler, the venerable Berry Bros. & Rudd, put out one more 37 yo cask from 1974 (cask 7643). There have also been a large number of Duncan Taylor releases of older Glen Grants from 1974—including two bottled in the Lonach range. There are a few more releases from other independent bottlers as well. Clearly, there was a time when a large number of these casks were available to the indies—a broker or a blender’s surplus stock? In 2011, when this one was bottled, these could still be found at reasonable prices (which look like steals in today’s market where teenaged whiskies command more than $200). Anyway, I quite liked Monday’s 35 yo, despite its low bottling strength. This one is a single sherry cask and was bottled at closer to 50%. Let’s see if those things make any meaningful difference. Continue reading
Joan’s in the Park (St. Paul, MN)
The first thing to know about Joan’s in the Park is that it is not in fact in a park. The only park-related space near them is their parking lot. One of the owners, who serves as the maitre d’, is named Joan but the second half of the name comes not from some bucolic setting—they’re across the street from a Domino’s—but from the fact that they’re in the Highland Park neighbourhood of St. Paul. They opened there in 2011, the proprietors having met while working in other restaurants in the Cities. Their food is in the general “New American” genre—which means you can expect to see a bit of everything. We’ve been meaning to eat there for a while but only got around to doing so a couple of weekends ago. We were joined at this meal by another couple who we’ve eaten with before. Between the four of us we ate a goodly portion of their current menu. Herewith my thoughts. Continue reading
Glen Grant 35, 1970 (Lonach)
Here’s a Glen Grant distilled the year I was born. Alas, it’s quite a bit younger than me, having been bottled in 2005. The bottler was the now defunct Duncan Taylor, responsible for a great number of older whiskies from the 1960s and 1970s that used to be available widely for very reasonable prices till just about seven or eight years ago. Of the various series of older whiskies they put out in that era the ones bottled under the Lonach label were usually the cheapest. These were also usually all very close to the legal minimum alcohol content of 40% for Scotch whisky. The thinking among whisky geeks was that these were put together by vatting casks, some of which had probably slipped below that threshold, bringing the whole just up above 40% and allowing them to be retrieved for the single malt market. Then again that kind of thing probably happens a lot with more prestigious releases as well. What matters finally is what the whisky is like in the glass. Let’s find out. Continue reading
Wandering and Eating at Chelsea Market (New York, August 2019)
This was actually our second full day in New York, and our first Sunday. The major plans for the day involved a walk on the High Line followed by a production of Puffs (a Harry Potter parody/tribute we took the boys too and which they loved). After that we were scheduled for early dinner with an old friend at Bombay Bread Bar. Those dinner plans changed later—we ended up at Ippudo Ramen instead and ate at Bombay Bread Bar the following weekend—but we needed to grab an early lunch before getting on the High Line. Looking around on Google Maps, Chelsea Market looked like a good place to get a range of things we might all like. Continue reading
Red Masala Fish
I’ve written before about how I came to start cooking with pompano as a substitute for white pomfret, the somewhat un-Bengali fish my sister and I have loved since our childhood. Pomfret is actually available quite easily now in freezers in Indian groceries in the US. However, as I’ve also said before, I stopped buying frozen Indian fish a while ago, having grown increasingly dubious about the ecological cost of feeding the nostalgia of the diaspora. Luckily, pompano, easily found in Southeast Asian stores in the Twin Cities, is very similar. Like pomfret it has firm but mild and sweet flesh which goes really well in spicy and non-spicy curries alike, and it’s also very good simply marinated and fried. I assume it comes to the local markets from Florida—and given the affordable cost I’d assume it’s probably farmed. At Shuang Hur on University Avenue in St. Paul you can even have the fishmongers clean and cut it for you. I prefer to do that myself at home so as to cut it exactly how I want it. Continue reading
Bowmore 10, 1999 (Murray McDavid)
Let’s close out the week with another wine cask-finished whisky, another peated whisky, and yet another Bowmore bottled by Murray McDavid. This was distilled and released a few years after Wednesday’s Viognier finish. And unlike the other Bowmore and Monday’s Port Charlotte 13 the wine casks used for this whisky’s finish had previously held red wine—syrah to be exact. Even though I really liked that Port Charlotte and also thought the Viognier-finish Bowmore was quite pleasant, I am a bit apprehensive about this one as red wine finishes are the source of my prejudice against wine cask finished whisky. Anyway, let’s see what this is like.
Bowmore 10, 1999 (46%; Murray McDavid; bourbon and syrah casks; from a bottle split) Continue reading
Sushi of Gari, UES (New York, August 2019)
My thoughts about sushi in Minnesota have been aired so often even I am sick of hearing about them. Suffice it to say that whenever we are in a city that presents the chance of eating actually decent sushi we take it. New York is such a city. We can’t afford Manhattan’s high-end sushi bars, so there was no question of a no-holds-barred omakase experience. In fact with our evenings pretty booked there was no chance of sushi dinner at all. And with the days dictated by things we were taking the boys to see and do the challenge was to find a decently rated but not extravagantly expensive place we could go for lunch without making it a destination in itself. The Sushi of Gari location on the Upper East Side fit that bill perfectly with its relative proximity to the Met. How did it pan out? Well, it was, as expected, much better than anything in the Twin Cities, but it wasn’t anything so very special either. Details follow. Continue reading
Bowmore 11, 1995 (Murray McDavid)
As I noted in passing in my review on Monday of a wine cask-finished Port Charlotte, I am not generally a fan of wine cask-finished whiskies. Most of the ones I have had—like that Port Charlotte—have emerged from Bruichladdich. So too in a sense has this Bowmore. It was bottled by Murray McDavid, the indie bottling arm of Mark Reynier-era Bruichladdich, and a label that put out a large number of wine cask- finished or, as they liked to call them, “ACE’d” whiskies. This particular release started out in bourbon casks and ended up in viognier casks. Well, Monday’s Port Charlotte was from French white wine casks as well and I unexpectedly quite liked it. Will the positivity continue with this one? Let’s see.
Bowmore 11, 1995 (46%; Murray McDavid; bourbon & viognier casks; from a bottle split) Continue reading
Cook St. Paul (St. Paul, MN)
When last seen on these pages Cook St. Paul was the location of Golden Horseshoe, a Sichuan “residency” that ran for two months this summer, whose passing we are still mourning (my second review is here). At the time Cook St. Paul was essentially a diner, with breakfast their largest draw and no dinner service—which left room for them to host pop-ups. Not too long after the end of the Golden Horseshoe run the proprietor, Eddie Wu announced on Facebook that the restaurant was going to change form in October, now serving only lunch and dinner. This was greeted with some ambivalence by their patrons who were attached to their breakfast offerings. We, however, were intrigued. We live too far away to have ever made it there for breakfast and were interested to see what the new incarnation would be. Continue reading
Port Charlotte 13, 2001 (Rest & Be Thankful)
As long-time readers of the blog—the few, the ashamed—know, I almost always pick up a strong butyric note on Bruichladdich’s whiskies. Ranging from scalded milk to sour butter to parmesan rind all the way to more vomitous associations, this quality is not my favourite. I find it more pronounced, ususally, in the unpeated Bruichladdich line. In the heavily peated Port Charlotte the peat and smoke tend to neutralize it after a while. In the case of this release, a 13 yo bottled by an indie outfit named Rest & Be Thankful, there is also a wine cask involved. This is rarely good news when you’re dealing with Bruichladdich who’ve made a lot of wineskys. I had not heard of Jurançon wine before looking this cask up. Jurançon is a French AOC that produces white wines, dry and sweet, apparently known for their tropical fruity character. I’ve no idea which kind of Jurançon wine this cask had previously held but a) I’m glad this is not from a red wine cask and b) I’m intrigued by the theoretical promise of fruit. Let’s see how it goes in practice. Continue reading
Ippudo Ramen (New York, August 2019)
As you ritually commit all my posts to memory you do not need me to remind you that we were rebuffed on our first attempt to eat at the 51st St. location of Ippudo Ramen. Well, not so much rebuffed as hit in the face by a minimum wait of an hour at 5.15 pm on a Saturday. On that occasion we decided not to chance the missus getting late for her theatre date and ended up eating a nice if expensive for what it was dinner at Empire Diner. And given the fact that Ippudo does not take reservations we resigned ourselves to probably not being able to eat there at all on this trip. One hour waits with young children are no fun for anyone and our weekday dinner plans for the next week were pretty set anyway. As it happened, though, we got in without any wait at all just the next day. Continue reading
Oats Pongal
Pongal is in a genre of rice porridge made in parts of South India, often with some lentils added. Usually eaten at breakfast, it’s a savoury porridge. Though I’ve always enjoyed it when I’ve had it, it’s not something I’ve been very drawn to in the past and in recent years I’ve been trying to limit my white rice intake in order to try to make a dent in my high triglyceride levels. Related concerns have also had me trying to increase my consumption of oats. But every time I try to make a habit of eating a bowl of oatmeal every morning I run out of steam in about a week. I’ve tried counter-programming with oats upma (upma with roasted oats in place of sooji/rava) but for whatever reason that never feels like breakfast food to me. However, about 10 days ago when I posted a picture of my latest iteration of oats upma on Facebook a friend recommended I try making oats pongal as well. She gave me her basic recipe which I tinkered with a little bit and now present here. I am not exaggerating when I say that I actually look forward to eating this every morning. Continue reading