March 9, 2010
When Casablanca moved from its Nifong location to near campus, we thought: new place for lunch. And it seemed, after watching the restaurant renovate an old dry cleaners, that much work would go in to creating a high quality Middle Eastern restaurant. Even with two other such restaurants, Columbia is the bastion of mediocrity. This town suffers from ethnicity. Not a lack of people, but a lack of quality so-called ethnic food. The challenge was there. Do just a bit better.
We ate dinner at Casablanca tonight. In fact, my wife has claim to being the first person to eat at the new setup. She showed up for lunch yesterday. They remembered her when we walked in.
When you see someone put what looks like a great deal of money into a renovation, you expect quality in return. After all, why spend at least six figures to serve average fare? And yet, average is what we got. The dishes came out in scattered order. The waitress, obviously new to this work, still wasn’t sure of what she was serving. And the food…..hot dolmas are ok. On a bed of rice, a bit too much. Still, the dolmas may have been the second best thing we ordered. The schwarma plate was served with the typical factory wedge pita you do your best to avoid at all costs. The place we sometimes ate at in Royal Oak served them in the plastic wrapper the factory ships them in. Tiny pieces of meat littered my plate. Tough and chewy. The lamb plate we ordered for my daughter came with four tough pieces of (maybe) shoulder that were spiced and grilled, but they needed to sit in a marinade for a day. My wife’s falafel was fine. Maybe the best thing we had. And the lamb soup….this was not soup. Maybe a jar of tomato soup with Barilla orzo and tiny tiny tiny pieces of lamb. Awful.
But here is the real enigma of this meal. After all this money, the interior decorating, the obvious effort to make a living….they serve frozen french fries. “Are these frozen?” I asked the waitress. “Let me check,” she said. She came back a minute later and confirmed my suspicions. If you are going to spend all this money to move and renovate, can you also buy bags of potatoes, a french fry cutter, and a deep fryer worth a damn? “It’s like a Gordon Ramsey moment,” my wife said. Cutting corners is a sure way to closing quickly.
And the pita? Before we discovered that La Shish was a terrorist supporter, we used to go to Dearborn to eat there. A big wood burning oven sat in the middle of the restaurant. A women made fresh pita. The pita came to your table steaming inside. Few things are more wonderful than fresh pita. I could buy a bag of ten for a dollar or so in the Carmel Market in Tel Aviv. I loved the smell of the warm bread. The taste of warmth.
Spend a little more money. Stop ordering cardboard from Chicago. Make your own pita. Don’t cut corners. Stay open a long time. Do better. Much, much better. In other words, Casablanca suffers from an identity problem. Or a lack of.
And then I will talk to you about dessert. I have ideas. You’ll need pistachios. Rose water. Honey. And a trip to Shatila bakery in Dearborn for pointers.
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March 7, 2010
In The Taste of Place, Amy Trubek writes of French food and drinking habits: “When you eat or drink, it needs to be a shared experience that incorporates sensory analysis and sensory pleasure” (46). I drink coffee alone. Five a.m. Everyone else is sleeping. I drink water alone. In my office. Working. For the next several months and then some, at home, I will drink beer alone.
There are, indeed, few occasions for the shared experience. Workloads. Commitments. Schedules. Desire or lack of. One could construct an inventory of why shared drinking seldom occurs. I, for one, resist the late night drinking experience. I shun crowds. I prefer localized environments.
The style we might ambiguously identify as “blend” might very well be enjoyed alone. There is, at times, so little to share after all. The nuances of the blend and the subtle mix of barrel and flavor layered with other flavor, however, encourage shared discussion. It is easy to finish 12.7 ounces alone. It is more difficult to make 12.7 ounce the focus of shared sensory pleasure. “Plumbs, tobacco….” “No, I also get oak, a little bit of the ‘08 in there as well…” “The chocolate hovers on your tongue.” Conversation builds pleasure.
Notice the images I post. A beer often stands alone, or almost alone. The same glass usually is posed alongside the beer. Here is the perfect pairing: Bottle and glass. Even in that gesture, there is solitude. Always the same glass or two. Always the same pose. A bottle on the counter. A glass by its side. Staged sharing.
“I’m ready for my close-up,” Nora Desmond declared. 12.7 ounces now seem big when we zoom in on the label. “I am big!” Desmond yelled. “It’s the pictures that got small!” How small do we feel reaching for the unshared bottle? “But maybe this pleasure can be experienced with others later….I should wait.” Maybe. Maybe not. Even alone, there is sensory experience. Sensory pleasure of a different sort.
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March 4, 2010
I think I have a game plan. Conclude the activity I have planned for work, leave, go to the store, buy Nemesis, go back to work.
This kind of thinking is indicative of obsession. A game plan. A strategy. How will I get to the store first? All of our styles are mere vocabularies. A is for apple. B is for…. I deal with my obsession by constructing various alphabets of desire. The greatest lesson Roland Barthes has taught me is organization. How to organize experience? Fragments. Vocabularies. Breakdowns of the elements that construct a given identity: person, moment, beer.
L is for lineup. A police lineup asks suspects and decoys to stand before an accuser. Only one person in the lineup is the possible guilty party. The witness/victim must identify the right person. Years ago, 60 Minutes ran a piece that called into question the validity of the lineup or the ability to remember a suspect accurately in a lineup. Lineups can be staged in a way as to implicate an innocent person. In my lineup, I implicate each bottle. Sour. Stout. Hops. They have caused me a great injustice. They have caused me to desire. At this point, I no longer care that they do so.
T is for trade. The spoils of the trade linger. Why trade? To collect. At some point, the trader realizes that the collection must be consumed. The wingman of the trade is the throw in or extra. When to drink what you didn’t request? Now is a good answer. Usually, the response is later. Somewhere in between, when we descend into the cellar, we notice the wingman. I should drink you, we think. At some point, I should drink you. I, after all, traded for you.
N is for night. It took two years, but eventually night time became an easy affair for our daughter. In those two years, we rocked, cradled, gave milk, patted, sang to, let her lay in our arms first, tried to sneak out of the room. . . every gesture we could imagine that would convince a child to go to sleep. Now, she crawls into bed on her own, we read three books, lilah tov, and that is it. If only every gesture was this easy. If only every attempt was this easy. I think of night as a series of attempts. In the army, our effort was “the attempt” to sleep whenever possible. During a lecture. Before patrols. Between events. Night brought activity, though, and seldom sleep. Night now brings consumption before sleep. A dark, malty beer with a touch of holiday taste. Sitting on a couch. A sitcom or a basketball game on TV. If only every gesture was this easy.
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February 27, 2010
The growler. 64 ounces of beer. A way to transport beer.
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, fresh beer was carried from the local pub to one’s home by means of a small-galvanized pail. Rumor has it that when the beer sloshed around the pail, it created a rumbling sound as the CO2 escaped through the lid, thus the term “growler” was coined.
A souvenir. “Can you bring back a growler from Free State?” Wife: “Yes.” An opportunity. “Come over and share 64 ounces of beer.” Tomme Arthur writes, “I’m living life at 222 these days. It’s more than I like to carry around but sometimes you just can’t say no.” The growler suggests weight gain. 64 ounces consumed alone. Sometimes, you can’t say no. There is just too much to enjoy.
Abundance. We live in the age of abundance. Too much information. Too much knowledge. An indiscretion serves public consumption. A grown man must apologize to strangers for how they have consumed his infidelities. A growler is a sign of abundance. I have a lot of beer. I just cannot say no. I left Cameron’s Treehouse IPA in the refrigerator for six days and then grew nervous. How long will this abundance last? I left the 2003 Old Backus Barleywine in the refrigerator for a week and felt the same. I could say “no” no longer. Abundance eventually leads to scarcity. Would my growlers lose their taste? My fears were baseless. Just as a celebrity infidelity can last in the public mind for some time after it has been revealed, so, too, did both beers last. The abundance of gossip is tasty. These beers were tasty (the barleywine exceeding expectation with its mix of fruit, sweet, malt).
The analogy is weak? Of course. But that, as well, is a sign of abundance. Examples are everywhere. In our browsers. On our TVs. In our RSS feeds. In our glass bottles. A growler is a sign of abundance.
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February 9, 2010
As this session asks: When to drink?
“The Display Shelf: When to Drink the Good Stuff.”
The question is not “when” but “which”? Which good stuff vs when the good stuff. This is an epic battle. Marvel quality. I have no answer. The session, a Web Carnival, gathers the posts around one topic. It’s been awhile since I contributed. But when I drink, I consider the shelf. It is for display, a display I want to show more of. The display is an ego trip, like a Medieval collection of the world’s trinkets: A World’s Fair. Or Citizen Kane. Look at what I have. What have I had lately? Have, had, these are terms of possession. I want to think that I owned these beers in the strictest terms. They were mine. Even if shared. At one point, I will show you both sides of the bottle (the gueuze from Upstream) just so that I can display as much as possible. When I was a kid, I talked my dad into taking me into an attraction at the Dade County Fair. The attraction promised something weird and outrageous. The display: a man in a wheelchair playing with snakes. I was embarrassed for making him pay five dollars for each of us. It was an obvious con.
Still, I don’t shy from display. This display is an obvious ego trip. Look at what I’ve been drinking. I feel like a side show attraction. There is a con here as well. The con is not that I didn’t drink these beers. I did. The con is that there is no pleasure in the ego trip. Maybe looking in. But not in putting the beers on display. I con myself. And yet I continue to be lured in my the promise of the attraction of posting…. my glass proves as such. I never tire of using it.
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January 28, 2010
Can the beer trade be a style? A matter of shipping. Box size. Choice. Styrofoam. Newspaper. Choice again. With friends, as below, we just send. What do you want, might be asked. Or we might opt to guess that we know what the other wants.
Children trade. Toys. Comics. Baseball cards. My worst memory of trading is neighborhood friends stealing cards during a trade when I was maybe 11 or 12. I felt ashamed. Duped.
The beer trade has yet to reach that stylistic disapointment for me. The thrill of selection. I am not duped. I am pleased. Can there be an aesthetic of the consumer? One of its styles might be the trade. The ISO, of course, is part of such a stylistic approach to trying new beers. But we might also include the desire to please, to provide the hard to find, to surprise. One stylistic taught in writing classes is the active or the passive voice. One shows action; one does not. The trade might be the middle voice. As others note, the middle voice is neither active nor passive. Of course, action is needed to trade and can be noted (“he traded with me”). But the stylistic of the trade is the middle. This middle is mood. The box opens, and a mood is created. Wow. Oh. Hmmm. Oh my. I have this. I have wanted this. And so on. The contents play a role, but they are not the only agents here. Anticipation, hype, knowledge, taste also play a role.
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January 17, 2010
A basic beer vocabulary might include: H is for hops, F is for fermentation, W is for wort and so on. This kind of vocabulary is a simple alphabetic listing of items and relevance. This kind of vocabulary is based on common assumptions and expectations regarding language and experience. To name something or someone, we draw from what we already know.
But any experience then becomes limited. We draw from the same experiences over and over; eventually those experiences blend into the same one. And thus, a cliche is created. “Pine, grapefruit, bitter” – tasting notes expose their limitations. “Chocolate, roast, coffee.” These kinds of notes work too hard to match a reference with its thing. Such is how taxonomies function. But if we drift too far over into the folksonomic – “Radio playing KISS, memory of Homestead, Florida, raining” the tasting notes become too idiosyncratic. They lose meaning completely to anyone but the one expressing that meaning.
Still, I am drawn to the folksonomic. A vocabulary that leans heavily on the personal, as opposed to the communal. This vocabulary is a modified Keywords. It takes Raymond Williams’ genre and makes it more like Barthes’ autobiography. I, of course, want someone else to understand the meaning. But I write first for myself so that I may understand the complex meanings I encounter.
W is for wife. When I was still learning about beer, my wife sent me a box of beer from Liquid Solutions. Not knowing what to send, she asked someone at Liquid Solutions. He suggested Fish Tale. That 12 ounce bottle of the 10th Anniversary was the greatest beer I had consumed up to that point. She sent that box to me in Michigan. Most of our memories revolve around a first. But what about a not first, but not middle either? A somewhere near the beginning experience.
G is for grammar. For most, it is a fine line between grammar and punctuation. Take the common its/it’s error as example. Is this a grammar or punctuation mistake? If a bottle of beer has the wrong “its” on its label, do we draw attention to grammar (“it’s” means it is and not the possessive) or to punctuation (that apostrophe does not belong where the writer placed it). In my line of work, such distinctions are not as important as the basic task of proofreading. Proofread your work. Revisit what you think you have experienced in writing.
M is for Michigan. My beer memories do not begin in Michigan, but are strengthened by Michigan. Michigan is somewhere near the beginning for me. I bought a six pack of Expedition soon after moving to the Detroit area. I knew what the expectation was supposed to be: Oil change. Thick. Intense. And I repeated that expectation in my notes. A friend, visiting, pulled one out of the fridge in search of a beer. I knew he wouldn’t like it. His expectations were not prefigured. He didn’t like it. But I made him drink the whole beer. Expedition, based on my then financial expectations, was too expensive to waste.
N is for narrative. The story of under-carbonation is already a common Web tale. Lost Abbey under-carbonated their special release beers last year. Most narratives are based on expectation. A particular moment opened one’s eyes to beer (childhood memories, gift box, moving to an area where new beers were available). We know others too: down and out kid makes good, boy meets girl/boy loses girl/boy gets girl, a movie car chase will usually include a car knocking over a produce cart. If the narrative is already familiar, the experience either is confirmed (the beer is too flat) or accepted (I know what the story is supposed to be, but look at what else I have discovered). I choose the second approach to narrative. What other details, other than the known story, might I find? Common narratives help us make sense of the world. I need to draw out alternatives to those narratives, however, in order to make my own sense of the world. Otherwise, my experiences are yours. Otherwise, we live in the cliche. Such is how politics work.
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January 9, 2010
The trade. It is a dominant feature of craft obsession. Swapping possessions. Like swap meets, or baseball card conventions, or even comic book gatherings. I have something. You have something. We both believe that our “something” is of value to the other. Let’s swap. The online forum facilitates the swap. We trust each other based on the premise that we are willing to swap in a forum. Social networking is all we need to cultivate that trust.
The conclusion to the trade is the feeling of trophy hunting. I want to display the results. Beers do not hang well from the mantle. The photograph, however, frames our achievements, our glories. We take great pride in what we own. With beer, some ownership is fleeting. At some point, the possession will be consumed. Another reason why not to hang your trade trophy from the mantle. You have to take it down and drink it at some point.
A gallery of ownership is a gallery of pride. And boasting. Look what I have bagged. My camera held on to some of these baggings until yesterday, when I downloaded my achievements onto my computer. In the display is also worry. I am not an alcoholic. These trophies were collected over time. I didn’t do all this drinking at once. The fear reflects other false perceptions, like a hunter is not necessarily brutal (the way some think). Whenever I see Ted Nugent shoot game with a bow and arrow, I do not think he is savage for killing. My wife, however, does. We read the achievement differently. We read his captures differently. We read his boasting differently. I read: I am capable of hunting my own food, food that is more natural than what you buy at a supermarket (which is typically full of hormones and drugs). My wife reads: cruelty.
Still, despite such perception risks, I am drawn to the display. When you are obsessed, you are not ashamed to share that obsession. This past week, we watched two movies about nerdly obsession: Monster Camp and Wordplay. I love movies about nerds. I see my own nerd behavior in that of people playing the Nero game or competing to do crossword puzzles in record times.
My nerd-behavior is not without self questioning. Can I continue this forever? At one point do I stop collecting, even if for a short period of time? Why is it so difficult to share my collections?
Did I just look at the trade forum again?
On with this recent display of trophy hunting before I make yet another trade:
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December 30, 2009
Our last day, we ventured to Berkeley to dine at Chez Panisse for lunch. I’m drawn to reputation. I would have preferred to eat at the French Laundry – where reputation dominates almost all dining experiences – but not only is it not kid friendly, it would probably cost $200 or more. At 11:30 a.m., almost two hours before our reservation, we went to Triple Rock.
I first visited Berkeley when I was 16. A friend had a family friend there he wanted to visit. My friend’s friend had AIDS. No one would go with. I said I would go. We went to the campus where I bought a sweatshirt I still own and wear to the gym each day. His friend died years ago. I remember him as very kind and very open about his life and experiences. Berkeley, like San Francisco, is a city of homeless people. Outside the McDonald’s they congregate. Talking to people walking by. Changing clothes in the restroom inside. Eating food that poisons them. These are the experiences of the homeless.
The last Vered menu of the trip. One day I will publish an academic article based only on the pictures of my daughter reading menus. From one years old to fifteen years old. A rhetorical exploration of her menu reading. From this menu, she ordered nachos. It’s a fine line between snack and the poison called fast food. Is it snobbery to belittle the dining habits of the unfortunate, particularly on a day that we ate at Chez Panisse? This is a beer blog. I drink and write about expensive beer. Of course, it is snobbery.
I enjoyed an XIPA. It’s been said many, many times. The West Coast invented the floral, hoppy IPA. Grapefruit and pine. The oddest and most enjoyable of all IPA flavors. If there exists a topos of the IPA, it is the West Coast IPA. This topos is the place where all IPA meaning resides. The strong ale I had, Titanium, lacked the dark malty color of an American Strong Ale, but nevertheless was enjoyable.
This chalkboard provides a spreadsheet breakdown of style, description, ABV, etc. Excel meets chalk.
A pony tailed man checks the wort.
Wine and beer have no reason to fight. All of our pleasures deserve their occasions. If there is a fight to be had, it should be with fine dining and fast food. Fine dining still prefers to favor the wine over the beer. Reading Calvin Trillin’s Feeding a Yen, I notice his reference to ordering a “microbrew” instead of wine at a fine dining establishment. But which beer did he order? Hopefully, as Trillin might say, one he wouldn’t throw rocks at.
Fast food, on the other hand, offers neither. When I lived abroad at 16, I remember, however, a McDavid’s that sold Budweiser. We went into town to buy the awful hamburgers so that we could also order beer. Could beer save fast food in America? Probably not. The poisoned hamburgers and fries would be accompanied by the tasteless and mass produced Budweiser. The quality would remain at the level of the disadvantaged.
And our destination. Quail. Simple done well. By no means the meal of the disadvantaged. Alice Waters sat behind us in another booth. She was eating at her restaurant with her friends. We were eating at her restaurant by ourselves. We never spoke. Her email is hard to locate. Maybe I should have asked her then to contribute to the special journal issue on Food Theory I am editing. But I hate speaking. I prefer to write. That is my rhetorical and professional disadvantage.
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December 24, 2009
Our night at the Metro Hotel and Cafe in Petaluma finished with a bottle of Firestone Walker 13 I spotted at the Petaluma Market. “I want this,” I said to my wife as she scooped out some mac and cheese out of the prepared foods selections for our little girl. My box to ship beer home was already taped up and in the trunk. This would have to be consumed during the trip. We had lunch at an In N Out in order to see if fast food, indeed, could be good. In N Out is celebrated as California’s fresh alternative to the fast food hamburger. It was my first fast food experience in maybe 20 years. The restaurant was clean (cleaner than the McDonald’s in Berkeley I used in order to urinate. A sign on the woman’s door in that fast food establishment read: “Please respect the gender assignments of these bathrooms.” In the men’s room were a pair of pants on the floor).
13’s bourbon reminded me of the Abacus that I had once had at the Toronado in San Francisco. Or did it remind me of the barrel aged Firestone (what was its name?) that I had as a guest tap at Dark Lord this year? The barrel age beers blend together in memory as much as they do in the barrel. I do not mind. Roll out the barrel. Roll it out. Beer sometimes feels like a fast food experience. From one beer to the next.
We arrived the next day in Novato in order to visit Moylans (after a trek up and down the mountain to tour the Muir woods).
The brewery is located in a non-descriptive business park. The brewpub is equally non-descriptive. Along the rafters hung kitsch and Direct TV advertisements. Grateful Dead posters were framed against the wall where we sat. The food was uninspiring. Despite my pledge to not try every hamburger and fries at every brewpub I visit, I broke down and ordered a burger and fries. I soon regretted that collapse in will. Unimpressive. As tasty as any heavy meal can make itself be. I felt bloated and weighed down. A fast food chain had done better than Moylans.
The traditional menu picture – Vered holding a menu – ruined by a nap.
Water.
Barrel aged Hopsickle? I can’t tell. Whatever barrel it sat in, it acquired little addition. The alcohol, however, was pronounced.
Chelsea’s Porter. Decent and creamy. But not exceptional.
The return of the chalkboard. I must setup my chalkboard again. Our kitchen, however, has no identifiable space for a chalkboard. My wife has hung her pictures up on the walls. A chalkboard could hang in the dining room, but the effect would be ruined. I need a stainless steel refrigerator with a chalkboard built into the door. The kitchen at In N Out was all stainless steel.
When Moylans came to Missouri, I felt the excitement as well. The brewpub generated less excitement. As did Novato. If our hotel had not been paid, I would have continued on to San Francisco early. All travel is met with excitement and regret. Regret comes with the planning mistakes we inevitably make. I am an excellent planner in all things but travel. I say this in the age of the Internet when planning is easier than ever. How did my parents plan their family vacations with only a map and no Internet? How did they find anything without GPS? Grand tourist visits: Disneyworld. Busch Gardens. Denny’s. We are dependent on Google Maps and GPS now; Yelp and Chowhound guide our dining plans. Today, we would have travelled to Lincoln for a visit. The Internet warned us not to: snowstorm still active. We stayed home. I’m now drinking a beer as I write this rather than battling I-70 and a blizzard.
Marin IPA in the hotel room.
Alesmith X in the hotel room. We watched Office reruns while the little girl slept. The room was dark. We sipped our beers out of water glasses.
In downtown Novato, my name serves as graffiti tag on an old public phone. I have marked my space by accident. GPS will not find my mark. I found it by accident. “Look!” my wife called out. I snapped the picture.
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