May 2007 Archives
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.
