Taco Burger from Mike Merrill on Vimeo.
Some pictures on Flickr (with images of the finished product).
More thoughts on this at KmikeyM.
A special notice from Junior Ambassador's:
Good Day Sweet Awesomes!
Freshly churned homemade ice cream, just like i wish my grandpa used to make.
- VANILLA BEAN topped with fresh Peaches or Blackberries from the Farmers Market
- CHOCOLATE CAYENNE...a sweet and spicy rollermoster ride for your tastebuds
- GINGERSNAP COOKIES 'N BASIL...a classic
- COCONUT PEAR...vegan style ice cream
The Orange food cart is still at 4734 N. Albina, up from Mississippi, down from Alberta Across and up from the Albina Press.
Serving Scoops:
4-8 pm Wed, Thurs, Fri. &
2-6 pm on Sat. (with some Sunday surprises)
Panwiches with Daily Specials should be starting soon for the lunch hours, in September. More on what a Panwich is later...
If you do MySpace i will most likely always post bulletins and new info there. Please visit www.myspace.com/juniorambassadors.
Yummmmmmmm is the word of mouth.
I thank all of you for your patience and support while Junior Ambassador's figures out its new portal surroundings and gets this new
Mostlandian Food Cart thing going and running smoothly, just like the ice creammm...
Love and Friendship,
Junior Ambassador
On Thursday, I checked out the grand re-opening of the Gotham Building Tavern (2240 N. Interstate Ave.), which has been around for a while but just recently came under new ownership. Reviewers of the Gotham Building Tavern always take at least a moment to put down their fork and comment on the place's notable interior design. Phrases like "giant Jenga set" and "Postmodern lincoln logs" get tossed around. I was struck more forcefully, however, by Susan, the neighbor and friend of chef/owner Barry Powelson. If it's legit to talk about architecture in a food review, why can't we talk about people?
"You're from a blog?" Susan asked. "We love you!" She joked about her upcoming face-lift and asked how old I was. I told her 51, and I swear she believed me for a second. Susan then introduced me to Barry's younger sister Sherry, who is "so good with names." Sherry explained her strategy: "What I do is to remember some object related to the name," she said. "My name is spelled just like the wine, so that's what I always tell people." I asked her what object she used to remember my name, Adrian. "Avery," she said, "just like the folders!" Sherry is from Tualatin, and she and her husband just bought matching scooters to celebrate their 20-somethingth anniversary.
Finally, I was introduced to Barry, the owner and head chef of Gotham. He talked about wanting to serve high-quality, uncomplicated pub fare in the tavern, and the samples provided at the party bear this out: Tender ribs, doughy calamari, crab cakes. When Barry saw I had a camera he throws some tequila in a pan, and it flames up about 4 feet. It was a dangerous move for a man so heavily mustachioed as Barry. "I got another shot in a magazine once like this," Barry said. The shot turned out great, but the free drinks made me drunk and stupid and I lost my camera later that night.
I met Mercury food writer Allison Hallet, who's posted her recap here. I met someone who lied about being a reporter for Just Out. I also met a waitress whose name I forget, a holdover from when the Hebberoy's owned the Gotham. She definitely knew something about that whole affair, but I couldn't pry anything from her about the fall of the ripe empire and the tragedy of its founders Michael and Naomi Hebberoy. At one point she came over to the table I was sitting at. "I don't want to complain," she said with a grimace, "but we aren't getting tipped for shit."
And that was what I liked about the Gotham's re-opening: that a waitress could come up to you and dish about the other customers. It was like going to a party to which you were tangentially invited by a friend. They said to come for the free booze and food, but you stayed for the drunken conversation and a brief entree into the lives of people that have nothing to do with you. If I could offer some advice to Barry: Hire Sherry as a full-time greeter and keep the cocktails free.
WARNING: secretly giving Pepsi to a loyal Coke drinker may result in violent behavior.
So we heard about this new Pepsi flavor coming out in Japan called Cucumber Pepsi. It's the sort of drink they will never release in these fine United States, so when Jona went on tour in Japan (1, 2) we decided to check it out and had him smuggle some back to us.
We decided that Steve Schroeder, being the most knowledgeable person about sodas that we know, was the right person to test it out. We set up the following blind taste test:
The results were, "Not crisp enough." and "Too sweet." After removing the blindfold, "The color is good."
So there you have it! Cucumber Pepsi lacks enough crispness to truly be a refreshing cuke-inspired drink and follows the Pepsi formula of being way too sweet.
Yep, it's July, and that means it's time to take my monthly trip to Sweet Tomatoes. It being the middle of summer it's the perfectly appropriate All-American BBQ month! Initially when I was told that the monthly theme was BBQ I was worried. How much BBQ can you jam into pasta, salads, and breads? Turns out, quite a lot!
With three new concoctions and six other theme dishes, BBQ month gives almost too many options! It was the first time I was very full after only one trip.
(Rankings - The ranking system follows the five-star Netflix formula. 1 - Hated It, 2 - Didn't Like It, 3 - Like It, 4 - Really Liked It, 5 - Loved It. One difference is that we will be using small lemons instead of stars.)
Chili Cheeseburger Soup NEW!
This is the dish I was most excited about. The idea that you could turn a Chili Cheeseburger into a liquid is very awesome! But, it was disappointing. It tasted cheesy, and I got a little of the chili (bit not really), but there was no way it tasted anything like a burger. Too much cheese, and there was a lingering hint of school lunch (maybe powdered cheese?).
BBQ Smokehouse Tossed Salad
This salad was really good. Nothing too crazy going on, just a good salad. The BBQ aspect seemed to be limited to the addition of bacon, but I'm a sucker for bacon.
BBQ Chicken Focaccia on Honey Wheat Crust NEW!
Bread covered in BBQ sauce! This was great. The chicken was totally secondary to the thick application of BBQ. It was like eating ribs. Fantastic!
Smoky BBQ Baked Beans NEW!
These were okay. When you label a food 'smokey' there is a minimum level of flavor smokey flavor you need to add that is above what these beans had. This was more of a "hint" than anything else.
BBQ Potato Salad
Fine as potato salad, but again, not enough BBQ flavor! What are you afraid of Sweet Tomatoes!?
Old-Fashioned Macaroni Salad
When food is labeled "Old-Fashioned" I think that is code for "boring". However, I really like a macaroni salad.
Carrot Raisin Salad
Solid and good and a nice way to eat a lot of carrot. They didn't call it BBQ or smokey, so I was able to enjoy a simple salad with reasonable expectations and it paid off.
Fresh Watermelon
We've all had this, and it's good. It was actually "fresher" than I expected.
Watermelon Gelatin
This should have been terrible, or at the very least, ignorable. However, it tasted so much like a watermelon Jolly Rancher and it was maybe the best gelatin I've ever had.
Weirdness
The 'Fresh Watermelon' is listed on table menu, but has no sign at the dessert bar. Likewise, the watermelon gelatin is listed at the desert bar, but there is no mention of it on the table menu. Odd. Also, Steve got some wonderful Apple Crisp, and I can't imagine why that isn't listed as an essential part of an All-American BBQ.
Conclusion
The average score is 3.33, which is not quite a Lemon Month, but clearly better than Pineapple. It was good. I guess I'd have to say it was very good, because I want to go back and that isn't something I normally feel after tasting the special flavors of the month.Greetings from Los Angeles! Where Hot Knives are knee-deep in summer picnic season. Lately all of our recipe posts have been fixated on barbecues, pool potlucks and picnic fare. But the simple truth is that none of it — not perfect potato salads nor mystery meat burgers or even barbecued pizzas — beats packing a tiny cooler with a few choice ingredients and making a 30-second spread on a baguette.
When our friend Tom was in town last month we set our sights on the cheese store Alex helps run, picked out some condiments, packed said ‘tiny cooler’ and headed to the beach. Tom, who was on furlow from medical school in New York, kinda has a thing for baguette and cheese. He’s probably the only lactose-intolerant dude we know who eats double crème brie like its, well, non-dairy butter. The following is his evil concoction. Though it seems super simple, let us emphasis that tricky techniques in this case are replaced with the absolute necessity that the bread is perfect, the cheese bloomy and everything is fresh.
Dr. Tombo’s Sammy
Serves 4-5
1 crispy French baguette
1 avocado
4 Tbs. chipotle grain mustard
4 Tbs. butter
12 oz. morbier cheese (room temp.)
1 tsp. sea salt
1 tsp. fresh black pepper
1. Slice baguette down the side, enough to open wide but still keeping it in one piece. Slather one side with butter and the other with avocado.
2. Cut open avocado, pit it, half it and slice into about 12 pieces. Distribute evenly on bottom side of baguette.
3. Using a huge ass knife, remove exterior rind of the morbier. Don’t worry the funky middle layer of ash has little to no flavor. Its there to keep an inner rind from forming between the two layers of cheese. Place small slices along bread. Sprinkle with a mix of sea salt and black pepper. Devour.
Beverage: Lagunitas farmhouse Saison
Soundtrack: Pavement’s Brighten the Corners
Doritos X-13D Flavor Experiment is an impressive effort and a fun chip-tasting exercise. Much like Kettle's test-flavor packs, Doritos has created a new flavor of chip, but rather than let 'the people' choose which flavor to keep, Doritos has released one mystery flavor, and you have to decide what to name it. Of course, in choosing to name it, you also need to figure out what it is.
While it is clearly a marketing gimmick, and I don't like the stilted ways they have crafted to "interact with the brand" I can't help but be excited about a new chip flavor. Especially one wrapped up in blind taste-testing packaging. It's like they decided to make a chip just for me!
I can only hope this is the beginning of a new more creative push for Doritos. While they have been no doubt inspired by Kettle Chips, I would imagine that with Doritos getting into the "crazy new limited flavors" game there will be many, many followers and some truly amazing, weird, delicious, and probably wonderfully terrible new chip flavors coming soon. But back to the task at hand...
Packaging
The first thing you notice is the Darth Vader inspired packaging. X-13D is clearly a dark experiment by some mad scientist. The X-13D is very front and center, and it doesn't help that this mysterious flavor showed up when my own Lost-mania was at its peak. Clearly there are hints to its true flavor.
The most obvious clue to the flavor is what is printed as Tasting Notes: "All-American Classic".
I'm sure just from that one clue many people have an idea of where we are headed. Turning the bag over and looking at the ingredients, while revealing, is also a very scary idea. These chips are not vegan, hell, these chips aren't even vegetarian!
Tasting
The initial taste is dill, which I love in a chip! As that fades there is that familiar powdered cheese flavor, and then a rise of smokey something that is quickly killed by a very specific mustard taste. I found that it evoked an immediate sense of a guilty-pleasure. I like this chip!
Internets
The front of the package leads us to SnackStrongProductions.com, with the tagline "Take snacking to the next level" and a terrible flash-based interface that looks like a cross between an amusement park and the climatic final scene of a Bruce Willis action film. The waving lights guide us to X-13D which takes us to a new website, x13d.doritos.com where we can complete some very easy "puzzles" to get clues on what the flavor is. Here are the results I got:
The Solution
Clearly the new flavor is a cheeseburger. Pickle (dill), cheese, the smokey meat flavor and actual beef ingredients, and mustard. I think it goes beyond just 'a' burger however. I think it is 'the' burger. My belief is that this is a McDonald's cheeseburger.
What is the 13th letter of the alphabet? M. Experiment MD. Experiment McDonald's.
At the risk of jeopardizing our vegetarian credentials we just had to chronicle a recent cooking demonstration we sat in on last weekend at the annual Bug Fair at the Los Angeles Natural History Museum. The weekend insect festival is mostly a hold-the-tarantula affair where little kids still in their gross-out phase, and goth ladies with centipede tattoos, can marvel at nature’s creepiest.
For shock value, this year they hosted a bug cooking demonstration and a cockroach eating contest with the hardly-renowned cookbook author David Lowell Gordon. He’s sort of like the token stupid-insects-trick guest for talk shows. The highlight was definitely not the cooking: the “centipede pasta” was cold Ragu sauce laced with one bug, the “grasshopper kebabs” were barely cooked at all. But seeing four elementary school-aged kids scarfing down 10 whole, oven-baked American cockroaches to win an iPod, now that’s good, clean fun.
This is a like-minded post, relating to a series we (Hot Knives) are doing on our blog about the best beer stores on our drunken radar. While we certainly won’t be biking to P-town on our upcoming Great L.A. Beer Run, you should hop on two wheels and book it to Southeast Portland to revel in the glory of your region, and our favorite drink…
Portland is known the world over to be a haven for beer and its drinkers. From pub-cinemas to epic brewers’ festivals, PDX is all about our favorite elixir. We have a bit of a “love/hate” feeling about the insanely available and affordable wealth of ale that extends from outside Beaverton to Troutdale, mostly from our city’s lack of love for beer on the mass-movement scale that Portlanders share. In L.A., the beer lover is separated from her lifeblood and her brethren by an endless city of cities, most of which have no definitive beer store, and no bars with brews of higher caliber than Stella Artois (now property of England). In Portland, every convenience store has a beautiful bomber for a bargain; every grocery store’s refrigerated section leaves us breathless.
On our recent foray in your city the need for a beer store visit was unquestionable. After seeing Yacht on a Yacht, getting drunk with said maritime namesake after disembarking from his namesake, and knocking out a super radical brunch for 20 plus hung-over compatriots, we only had one destination in mind.
Our trip to Belmont Station reinvigorated our conception of Portland as Mecca. It is a quaint shop, filled to the proverbial brim with exceptional beers both known and new. What’s more, we arrived at the beginning of a seven course beer tasting and lecture by the head importer for Shelton Brothers, a specialty distributor of very special beers. At first our throbbing heads kept us anchored to pub stools, drooling over lambics and golden ales brewed at night by dudes with day jobs. After seven rounds of the rare and expensive at no charge, and some cold air from an older beer hack, we shook ourselves out of the hangover and mustered the guts to shop.
The selection at Belmont is outstanding. It took us a good twenty minutes to take in the three walls of reachin fridges and even longer to decide what the hell we were going to cram into our suitcases. The inventory was completely refrigerated, save a few aisles of six-pack overflow in the center of the store. Each reachin was organized according to country of origin: 2 domestic-micro, 2 Belgian, 1 German, 1 Bavarian, 1 English and one more (which housed the seemingly inconsequential). We heard whispering at the bar that most of the regular stock was kept in a low light basement lock up, to protect the integrity of the brews. Shit, these people advertise using special UV filtered lights in the show room to deter early oxidation.
Two sentences ago, we noted something that heretofore had been unknown and impossible for our squeaky little brains to conceive: the über beer store has a bar attached. Not only can you waltz into this place and find the best beers available in our giant unappreciative-of-anything-more-than-piss-colored-fizz country, but you can drink them…in…the…store. Every one of 700 beers advertised has a listed sales price for both takeout and sit-down. So, you’d rather not commit to a draft pint of Stone’s Imperial Russian Stout on that has been aging in quiet darkness under the watchful eye of the Belmont crew for a full year? How about a 750 of De Ranke’s XX bitter? Or a 12oz of dry hopped St. Rouge’s Red, or a goddamn Dogfish Head 120 Minute IPA (20% alc. by volume)? Whatever you want: pull it from the fridge and sidle up to the bar. Proper glassware will be provided by the barkeep.
This store should be your new destination for party fuel, your shopping center for liquid accompaniments to great food, and your pre-dusk haunt for after work unwinding. The closest thing to a flaw that we found at Belmont was empty spaces where wonderful beers (Pizza Port, Great Divide, Lagunitas etc.) would have been. Lack of such solid stock in a place like this can mean only one thing: that beer freaks abound in Portland and they know where to go for drink.
Go to Belmont Station, grab a cold Hair of the Dog, think of us.
Staff: Notably siked enthusiasts who look and feel dearly familiar.
Refrigeration: Nearly everything, except the over-stock shelves, and the seceret underworld, ostensibly cooled by moist North Western soil.
Split Six Packs: Absolutley.
Belgians: Strong focus on micro-belgians like De Ranke.
Micro-Brews: Fantastic selection, all major states and breweries accounted for.
Special Powers: Did we mention the bar?
Achillies Heel: We live in L.A. (you do not).
Location: Here.
You may remember a Hot Knives post from back in February when we competed in one of the most amazing cooking contests there is: the 4th 2nd Annual Grilled Cheese Invitational. Well, our good buddy Drew, who is currently undergoing shock therapy in journalism school to try and kill his sense of humor, finally wrapped up production on his 3-minute documentary on the subject.
Although it’s ostensibly on the event in general, he used our desire to conquer the desert category to cue the proverbial heartstrings, as it were. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll really want a sandwich.
The finish line results are all here. Peep other photos here. And starting training for the 4th 3rd Annual GCI now.
