Carousel Bar - New Orleans - 7/12/10

The Carousel Bar is somewhat well known - the patrons at the bar rotate, the bar and room itself do not. I'd call it more disorienting than anything else.



The left is a Vieux Carre (vue cuh-ray) and the right is a Pimm's Cup. The Vieux is whiskey, vermouth, cognac, and bitters. The Pimm's contains Pimm's (a gin based liqueur), lemon lime soda, and cucumber. This particular Pimm's Cup is dangerous - there was no discernible alcohol in the drink.

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Another traditional drink is the Sazerac - rye whiskey, absinthe (or herbsaint), bitters, and simple syrup. Not unlike a Manhattan only absinthe instead of vermouth. A bit of a black jelly bean flavor going on, slightly sweet, not offputting by any means, I enjoyed this but don't foresee drinking another.

Acme Oyster House - New Orleans - 7/12/10

Alright, Acme. No wait, but this place was packed at 3 pm on a Monday...crazy! Our waiter/bartender/shucker was so surly you couldn't help but love him.



A dozen raw oysters. Slightly larger than the oysters at Felix and you get a cocktail sauce (with tons of horseradish in it, rather than pure horseradish). Good stuff.

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Half dozen chargrilled oysters.

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Well....if you twisted my arm and forced me to pick one, I'd rather go back to Felix because of the atmosphere. Acme was good too...it is little more than personal preference I suppose, but I'm a Felix man. Thank the cat.

Old New Orleans Rum - New Orleans - 7/12/10

The Old New Orleans Rum Distillery (which may or may not be known as "Celebration Distillation") is a bit out of town, a roughly $13 cab ride from the French Quarter.



The building is non-descript and it's pretty much in the middle of nowhere. There's not a whole lot nearby and it's not the kind of place you'll just stumble upon. In other words, if you're going, get directions/a map/GPS - you won't "just find it" if you drive around.



We arrived slightly late. I didn't hear anything about pictures, but people weren't taking any and I know there are certain "trade secrets" with places like this, even if the public allowed to look. It's like a grocery store, you know? Competitors can look all the way, but take a picture and people freak out.

The tour is five bucks a head. When you arrive you get a spiced rum/tea cocktail which is quite good. After the tour you get four samples of the various rums they make - all are worth trying and high quality. I liked the 10 Year Rum the best ($55 a bottle was a tad steep) and the spiced (which I bought a bottle for around $20). The distillery is owned by a local artist and is more of a "bragging rights" kinda place than a "let's make money" kinda place, so the product is high quality, priced right, and small batched. I dig it. In fact, after we finish our bottle I'd be more than willing to call them up and have another shipped.

The tour lasted around an hour and was well worth the cab rides and modest fee. Everyone was friendly and if you get there, they will call a cab for you to get you back to where you're staying.

Can I just say cab drivers in New Orleans are the polar opposite of cab drivers in Chicago? Friendly. Local. Chatty. Hilarious. I dig it.

Mila - New Orleans - 7/12/10

Mila....oh, sweet Mila. New Orleans is known for food, here's why - food, service, wine, all phenomenal. The sort of place that makes me want to pack up and move down to Louisiana, if it weren't for that whole Bobby Jindal thing.

We had a bottle of Rose that cost $24...awesome. There's a whole page of wine that's under $30 a bottle. I'm beyond down.

(More detailed food descrips coming soon.....)

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Sweet potato rolls...butter and pureed fava beans. Awesome.

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This was not part of the prix-fixe, we had it added on as a supplement.

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Squash soup.

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Hangar steak with broccoli rabe, and pearl onions.

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Rice pudding with brandied raisins.

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Coconut panna cotta with cherries.

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This menu (minus the duck liver) was $20. A bargain and a half and my highest recommendation. I love you Mila.

Antoine's Annex - New Orleans - 7/12/10

So it's 350 degrees, humidity is 900%, we walk to Cafe du Monde, I spot it from a distance and there's no one sitting in the outdoor cafe...."awesome, no wait!" I exclaim to the wife. Then we get a bit closer and see the "Closed due to equipment failure" sign. Well, fiddlesticks.

I knew where Antoine's Annex was, so we hit this up....



So we got one Cafe Au Lait with coffee, one with chicory, one chocolate croissant, and one banana nut muffin. The pastries were excellent, the coffee did not convince....we shall see what further examples bring. They do offer wine/Champagne at quite reasonable prices - worth a shot.

Felix - New Orleans - 7/11/10

We skipped dessert at Stella! and figured we'd grab something savory elsewhere. I knew we were going to hit both Acme and Felix but figured we'd wander by and see what the scene looked like. Acme had a line of at least forty people out the door - insanity. Felix, located across the street, had plenty of open seats. Strange.



A dozen raw oysters. If you take a look, there are more than a dozen, presumably because of the whole lagniappe thing. Fine by me. These were tasty - small, but quite good.

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Believe it or not, I don't think we've ever had grilled oysters before...if this is an typical prep, I'm beyond sold. Butter, cheese, breadcrumbs, parsley - phenomenal.

Pat O'Brien's - New Orleans - 7/11/10

A hurricane.

I don't get it. Fran doesn't get it. If you "can't taste the alcohol" then you were probably drunk before you had one. It is absurdly sweet - which I do not criticize, but these ultra sugarfied drinks don't suit me.

I didn't take a photo of it, but I had a New Orleans Gin Fizz. Gin, lime juice, egg white, sugar, and milk shaken together....if that sounds unappealing to you, don't bother.

Stella! - New Orleans - 7/11/10

Stella! is a restaurant that comes highly recommended from every angle - personal word of mouth, that crazy thing called the internet, guide books, etc. For our first meal in NOLA we didn't know if we should go ultra high end or more traditional, we went the former. You know a place is fancy when plates are served in a synchronized manner (ie, each person has a food runner who places your plates down at the exact same moment).

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Amuse bouche with some sort of mango and kimchi sauce and a small shrimp. Tasty.

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Canadian Lobster and Wild Mississippi Chanterelle Mushroom Risotto with White Asparagus, Scallions and Virgin Olive Oil with Australian Black Winter Truffles. Check out that photo - look at all those freakin truffles. I don't think either one of us has ever had truffle beyond just the tiniest shaving - this was insanely good.

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Hudson Valley Foie Gras BLT with Foie Gras Confit, Truffle Mayonnaise, Sour Cream and Onion Potato Chips and Sweet Persian Cucumber Pickles. High quality ingredients to be sure.

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Fish and Chips ~Tempura Beer Battered Japanese Anago with Sweet Potato Purée, Curried Taro Root Chips and Spicy Red Chili Caramel. This was insanely delicious. If anything on the trip comes close to this we're in for a treat...

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Porcini Crusted Dutch Valley Veal Tenderloin Medallions with Fingerling Potato Confit, Roasted Root Vegetables and Escargot, Calvados and Herb Reduction. An preparation so traditional it disappointed. I mean, everything was good, but compared to the fish and chips it just seemed kinda tame.


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So there you go. When Stella! is on it's amazing, when it's not, it's good. Service left something to be desired...meh.

2007 Wollersheim Pinot Noir

A Wisconsin Pinot Noir - yep. Who knew? Fifteen bucks with some distribution in Illinois, I snagged this at Binny's.

Cherry cola and a bit of trashy funkiness on the nose - good stuff.

A bit bigger than I expected, a bit sweeter, but at the same time undeniably Pinot Noir. Cherry, cola, a bit of cedar, and a big punch of black licorice.

Black licorice - quite strongly in fact - lingers on the finish.

I can see this wine polarizing people - it has some of the varietal funk I like, but it's likely a tad too big and sweet for most fans. That being said, if you're interested in trying a wine from Wisconsin you could do much worse. When you consider that this is a $15 Pinot Noir from an odd region, this is a solid deal.

Score: 86

2003 Leroy Savigny-les-Beaune Les Ratausses

This retails for $65 and has been on the wine rack for quite a while. What better way to celebrate the birth of America than with a French wine? Sound like irony? Hardly.

A bit of a fruit leather thing on the nose - which is sort of a bit of raspberry, blackberry, and a vaguely apple thing.

Black cherry and blackberry at the first - startlingly simple at first - but after a while it opens up with a mid-palate of menthol, cedar, and some funky earthy qualities. Dried brown spices, perhaps some green as well, even some red pepper. A nice drinking wine, to be sure, everything is nicely integrated but I'm not getting any wow factor.

Cherry on the finish with lingering menthol and mint, but surprisingly short.

This wine either needs a few more years or a few hours in a decanter - it's actually quite drinkable at first pour, but it's overly simple. It was not until about four hours in that it came to life. Still a pass though. You let me down France....thanks for the copper statue though, sorry for keeping it outdoors...

Score: 87

2008 Madame Fleur 365 Whole Foods Rose

I hate to admit it, but I've come around to the Whole Foods thing. It's hard for me to drop a grudge, but I'll look past the snarky 'anonymous' comments on this blog that came from Whole Foods corporate offices.

Anyways, yes, it is expensive but almost always far less than I expect it to be and frequently on par with big name grocers. As an example, just today I spotted an entire display of nice looking strawberries for the same price as some rather suspect looking ones at the Jewels. And where else can you get a slice of vegan sausage pizza? I mean, it's terrible (the cheese, not the sausage), but for the vegan in your life that's astounding. This wine, a rose from France itself, was ten bucks and is part of the 365 Whole Foods house brand.

A somewhat mild nose, with watermelon notes coming through. I wonder if anyone has ever done analysis on these things - is there any chemical part to roses that have something that would suggest watermelon or is it just color? I've never hit watermelon on a white wine. I may have to do a tasting or two blindfolded.

An argument can be made that any sort of formal tasting notes on a $10 store brand rose is silly. I agree. I do it anyway, because that's what blogging is about. Quite light in body, bone dry, a bit of fruit, some mild suggestions of tannins, a bit of that strawberry seed thing - not strawberries the fruit itself, but just shave off some of those tiny seats and chew them up (obviously you are getting the essence of strawberry in the seed, but it's more of an almost floral thing - maybe I should be going with strawberry tea).

This is the kind of wine where it's tough to do notes because you sit there, you take a sip, you put it down, you lean back, think about how glad you are that it's Friday, then take another sip, and the next thing you know the bottle's gone and you don't where you left your pants. No complaints at all - this is as good as you should expect for ten bones. I may have to investigate some of the other 365 offerings.

Score: 87

Topolobampo - Lunch 7/1/10

Dinner reservations at the Rick Bayless's high end place Topolobampo have been fairly difficult to come by. How difficult? In June I tried to get a table on the last Friday in August and the restaurant was booked - more than 11 weeks in the future. Lunches are easier to get into and the menu prices are far lower than dinner - roughly the same pricepoint as Frontera actually.

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Lake Okeechobee frog legs with chipotle-black bean sauce and creamy polenta-style tamal infused with red guajillo chile. Nichols Farm snap peas, crispy potato ring, Bayless Garden microgreens.



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Roasted Gunthorp pork tenderloin and crispy carnitas with Xico-style mole (dark chiles, dried fruit). Nichols Farm fingerlings (cooked carnita-style), braised Mexican wild greens (quelites), orange-pickled rhubarb, cilantro crunch.



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Klug Farm apricots (poached in Xtabentun honey liqueur), yogurt-honey ice cream, cinnamon-fennel seed cookies, tangy green apricots.



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There ya go! The food was excellent. Service wasn't. The food made up for it, but there were more than a few WTF moments. We're going back in a few months and if we're in the same guy's section I'm requesting a new waiter.

2007 Woot Cellars Boss Monster

Woot Cellars. If you don't know them, you can find them at wine.woot.com. Most of the time they sell discounted wine (only one item every few days) but a few times a year they sell six packs of their own private label for sixty-five bucks with shipping. This was offered a bit before Christmas.

Red and especially black licorice on the nose.

Quite a bit of black licorice on this one - not anise, but actual licorice candy. I'm getting ultraripe black strawberry for fruit with an array of dried green spices that are integrated nicely, mint and basil specifically. It's all balanced and quite tasty. Nothing groundbreaking but solid all around.

Sour cherry on the finish with some blackberry fading in the distance.

I think so....ten bucks is a very good price for a wine of this quality. Well played....

Score: 88

update

Not many posts lately - there are quite a few in the pipeline. Blame beer and gin.

We had tentatively planned a run up to Traverse City this week but that is 99% not happening, nothing's booked so you know, but hey...maybe...


In two weeks, however, we are 100% booked on hitting up New Orleans. We've never been, so it will be quite the scene.

We'll be hitting a number of the big name institutions - photos of food and beverages will be posted sporadically the week of July 11.

2008 Chateau Grand Traverse Whole Cluster Riesling

This goes for fourteen bones through the winery. A "whole cluster" Riesling means bunches of grapes - stems and all are pressed without crushing.

Pear mostly on the nose.

Nice balance, definitely on the sweet side but enough acid to bring it all together. I'm getting red and pink apple, a bit of vanilla, green grape, white grapefruit, and even a bit of a stemmy quality.

Green apple and pear on the finish.

Nice balance, good depth, some odd things come out - presumably from the whole cluster aspect - but it all works nicely. Though this bottle was comped, it was tasted and reviewed blind.

Score: 88

Tweet and Taste Michigan - 6/7/10

The Tweet and Taste Michigan for the Old Mission Peninsula was a success and a half.

The seven reviews below this are writeups for the wine tasted. All were, at a minimum, very good with some being truly excellent. If I didn't care for a wine I'd say so, or I simply wouldn't post a review, but they were uniformly SOLID.

I even mentioned at one point in the discussion that I was hoping to dislike at least one. I'm not going to say all were awesomely outrageous and you should buy all seven, but the fact that I liked all seven - and to be blunt I've been kind of aggravated with a lot of wine lately - says a lot. (An argument can be made that obviously all seven showed well since the wineries themselves chose the bottles to sample and one would think they'd choose what they feel strongly about and not their plonk, not that they make plonk of course, no sir.)

Kudos to Shannon and Cortney from Michigan By the Bottle for all their work in putting it together.

I wanted to get the reviews up asap (due to the fact that I won't be able to post much in the next few days) - if there are glaring typos I hope to have them fixed by the end of the week, in the mean time, thanks for reading.

2007 Black Star Farms Sirius Cherry Dessert Wine

This retails for $18.50 at the winery and that is a 375ml bottle. I will say this right off the bat - I find cherry wine next to impossible to describe so bear with me.

Black cherry on the nose - like, ultraripe, BLACK cherry, the sort of cherry you find in black cherry ice cream where you're not 100% sure they're actually cherries.

Quite sweet, cherry obviously dominate, but I do get cinnamon and clove on the mid palate. There's even a ripe red apple thing going on, peel an apple and dip it in cherry juice, there ya go.

I like this a lot, and I mean no disrespect when I say I'd just as soon put this on pancakes, pour this into a milkshake - or hell, even add a splash to a Manhattan. Of course, I won't, but I could see it. The winery suggested drinking it somewhat chilled which seemed wrong to me, but I'll be damned if it didn't work almost perfectly.

This bottle was comped as part of the Tweet and Taste Michigan virtual Twitter tasting which took place on Monday, June 7, 2010. All attempts have been made to be honest and unbiased.

Score: N/A - I have no idea how to score this.

2007 Brys Estate Signature Red

This retails for $30 at the winery. It's a blend of Cab Franc, Merlot, and Pinot Noir.

A trashy sort of nose with a good dash of cherry.

Another wine I want to force down the throat of anti-Michigan snobs. Seriously, now, find me a $30 wine from anywhere that's shockingly better than this. Yes yes, every producer is different and some things are better than others, but if I drop thirty bucks from Bordeaux or California or Washington or where ever and get a wine of this quality I'm content. I'd call this more Old World in style, it has a bit more earth and funk, but it's not harshly acidic as some can be. Cedar, tobacco, a touch of cola, beautiful tannins - very nice.

Cedar and mild strawberry on the finish - this one lingers for a striking amount.

This bottle was comped as part of the Tweet and Taste Michigan virtual Twitter tasting which took place on Monday, June 7, 2010. All attempts have been made to be honest and unbiased.

Score: 91

2006 Bowers Harbor 2896 Langley

This retails for $40 through the winery. It's a blend of mostly Cab Franc with Merlot and a bit of Cab Sauv.

Plum, tobacco, and cedar on the nose.

A few months back I had a Cab Franc from Two Lads blind that, having had it blind, thought was a far more expensive, well crafted, lighter bodied California Cab. This would have been no different. Cherry, oak, vanilla, tobacco, cedar, black strawberry - almost perfectly integrated tannins and acid.

Cherry and vanilla linger for some time on the finish.

The sort of bottle I want to shove down the throat to everyone unwilling to give Michigan reds a chance.

This bottle was comped as part of the Tweet and Taste Michigan virtual Twitter tasting which took place on Monday, June 7, 2010. All attempts have been made to be honest and unbiased.

Score: 92

2006 Peninsula Cellars Gewurztraminer

This retails for $15 through the winery.

White tea and floral qualities on the nose.

In a word - floral. In two words - herbal tea. In three words - I'm digging it. That's really 3 1/2 words isn't it? I once had an Alsatian Gewurz at a tasting (it was $70, so I passed on buying a bottle) that was pungent, bone dry, like drinking perfume straight - it was borderline obscene but it was one of the most fascinating wines I've ever had. This isn't quite that crazy, but it's the closest thing I've had. Bone dry and floral - rosewater, chamomile, vanilla bean - with a touch of underripe pineapple for fruit,

The finish is borderline Chardonnay like - pineapple, vanilla, hints of oak.

This one might be polarizing, I can see why someone wouldn't care for it, but to my palate, this wins the Old Mission Peninsula Tweet and Taste. Kudos.

This bottle was comped as part of the Tweet and Taste Michigan virtual Twitter tasting which took place on Monday, June 7, 2010. All attempts have been made to be honest and unbiased.

Score: 92