sprout

had a glass of the mixed berry and lime rejuvelac at slice. it was a deep purple, but tasted strangely watery. when i got back to my desk and looked it up, i found that it was (yet another) fermented beverage made from sprouted wheatberries. definitely an acquired taste.

dickens

after almost a full week away from the fold, food of a uniformly -- and startlingly -- high quality. at charlie's, it was seafood day and red, steamed crawdads were piled high next to trays of grilled asparagus and mac and cheese. there were rumours also of broiled eel at the asian station but people were piled four-deep around it and it was clearly going to be hopeless. slice served up a smoothie today of spearmint, pineapple, strawberry, and white grape juice. the mint was key, of course.

for dinner, no-name outdid them all with a salad of greens and dried sour cherries and an enormous beef tenderloin stuffed with sauteed bloomsdale spinach and mushrooms. the roast on that had been perfectly done. in section, the slices were ovals of roseate meat studded with mushrooms, with a caramelised exterior, and no blood in sight. it was so tender i cut it with my recyclable corn spoon. raelene, the pastry chef at no-name, threw in a maple syrup and chocolate chip bundt cake splendid in the balance achieved by its moist crumb. this bundt cake was so good, in fact, that it prompted someone at table to remark that it was like sitting in a wingback chair in a warm library on a snowy day, with a cup of hot tea and a cat curled around your feet, reading dickens.

the old world

sometimes, the oddest things show up in the no-name food line. over the last couple of weeks, they've been doing classics of european comfort food. chicken chasseur/cacciatore, grilled skate with brown butter sauce, coq au vin. today, next to the grilled endive, there was a large tray of fresh bucatini all'amatriciana, fat ropes of pasta lavished with a thick, clinging sauce of tomatoes, chili-infused oil, and pork fat. scattered throughout were tiny squares of the pork that had been fried until they were crisp and the fat had rendered out into the sauce. the traditional meat used here is guanciale -- dry-cured pork jowl -- and the morning news gives instructions on making guanciale for those so inclined. if you're lazier, niman ranch makes and sells the stuff.

oyster shooters

the chefs went a bit nutty today and almost everything has a goofy name. lunch was chicken devotion,a french version of cacciatore. the chicken was moist and tender, napped with a white wine, shallot, and parsley sauce full of thin-sliced mushrooms. i also took an enchanted short rib of beef braised in red wine, mushrooms, and garlic until all the collagen and fat had dissolved into tenderness and delight.

then, after lunch, john told me that he was serving up oysters and vodka tonight. i suggested freezing the vodka into a block of ice for service and, lo!, was there not a brace of shotglasses filled with malpeque oysters and ice-cold grey goose vodka at dinner.

soup

it's not odd, i don't think, that simple things make me happy. today, at lunch, there was a bowl of chicken noodle soup full of cubes of tender (but not mushy) breast meat that had been grilled ahead of time, such is the love with which our chefs lavish us. the broth was perfectly clear, rich, round-flavoured, and meaty.

at dinner, no-name had a shipment of very young thai coconuts. in mine, the flesh gathering on the inside shell was barely opaque and was so gelatinous that it slipped up the straw like it was barely there.

cylindricality

had lunch today with meng, who always follows his stomach. we walked over to pintxo, the tapas cafe, where the meal began with a white miso soup with tiny tofu cubes. the miso was good but it's unclear if the base was dashi; its characteristic smoky, proteinaceous aroma (from the combination of sun-dried bonito and kelp) was absent. the tiny plates rapidly covered my tray: a small mound of ahi sashimi garnished with tiny alfalfa sprouts and a teriyaki sauce, two blue point oysters each with scallion diamond nestled in its folds, thai fried rice, and a slice of grapefruit-glazed teriyaki chicken. the thai fried rice was a pleasant surprise, having first been cooked in a combination of coconut milk and cream, then fried with shrimp and chinese wax sausage (a fatty, thin, air-dried sausage coated with edible wax). on the side, a small pile of baby asparagus sauteed with thin slices of shiitake mushroom and a thin, cornstarch-based mushroom sauce. dessert was a small shotglass of bananas mashed in coconut milk and a slice of green tea custard of melting consistency, perfect on its own and regrettably drenched with a lemon-honey sauce. the bananas in coconut milk in particular was a flavour of home that i'd forgotten -- the peranakans have a small dessert of coconut cream thickened to a fragile solid with tapioca flour, with slices of ripe banana embedded within, the whole deal usually wrapped in a single rectangle of banana leaf cunningly sliced and folded to form a box.

at dinner, no-name featured little cylinders of golden beets no longer than my little finger, with a small hollow scooped out in the top and filled with chevre and toasted walnuts, the whole drizzled with citrus-infused balsamic vinegar and dusted with tarragon. that was the highlight of the day.

perfect foods

holding a freshly-toasted english muffin this morning, i roamed the breakfast line until i saw a vat of whipped banana butter. it was light but full of banana flavour, and surprisingly good. they certainly hadn't acidulated it enough to create an objectionable taste (bananas and acid don't go well together) but it hadn't turned brown. quite a feat. with a smear of apricot conserve, it came close to being a perfect food. a freshly-toasted muffin half is key.

at lunch, there was a beautiful lentil stew with puy lentils, wafer-thin slices of jerusalem artichoke, and roasted mushrooms. the jerusalem artichoke, as everyone knows, is actually the enlarged storage root of the sunflower, or girasol. they're a trendy but usually charmless starch, but today they supplied a soft crunch and starchiness that went beautifully with the lentils. sometimes the chefs put neat names on dishes and they decided to name this hearty, warming dish with a slightly musty flavour haleine du hiver, or breath of winter.

there were also beef cheeks supplied by the harris ranch beef company and braised to the point of collapse with guinness stout and the traditional vegetables. these beef cheeks were brilliant too, with a mellow, round flavour, and they were a startling shade of mauve; the onions, carrots, celery, and tomatoes had melted away into the gravy. the salad of frisee, gojiberries, and toasted hazelnuts, lightly dressed with a lavender-infused vinaigrette; that didn't hurt either.

capsaicin

lunch was seared tiger prawns with a guajillo chiffonade and a salad of oiled, chargrilled leeks. guajillo is a chile native to mexico, of medium heat. the chiffonade wasn't really a chiffonade, but it did add an interestingly smokey flavour to the perfectly-cooked prawns. they were so fresh, tender (but firm) that they squeaked and crunched under my teeth. (it sounds unappetising, but these were some very good prawns). the grilled leek salad was a brilliant move: bright, verdant green with hashmarks of black, and with just enough bite to be interesting. the high heat had made the leeks tender and wilty and perfect.

chervil, chervil

the abundance of chervil continues. this morning, next to the omelet station, there was a scattering of small plates each bearing a half of a toasted english muffin saturated with salted butter (oh yes.) and topped with dungeness crab, avocado, and a poached egg. the chervil and chive hollandaise was marvellous, but the yolk of the egg alone would have been sauce enough.

volatile flavour compounds

the prawns in thai green curry were tasty; they were squeakily crunchy, perfectly done having probably been thrown into the curry just before service to cook in its residual heat. as a rule of thumb, the green curry is the spiciest of the thai curries but this was not the case here. there was mild, mellow heat, and then a gentle retreat. the chocolate chip banana bread muffins on the dessert line were great -- light and deeply-flavoured with zones of liquidy banana and chunks of chocolate (guittard, for the chocolate snobs). raelene has a light hand with the spices, and the cassia and nutmeg were just barely detectable. cassia is a type of cinnamon (Cinnamomum cassia) with a generally higher concentration of the volatile flavour compounds than the variety of cinnamon used in European cookery (C. zeylanicum). cassia is generally more pungent than Ceylon cinnamon, and tends to be the variety used in north american cooking. the abominable flavoured gums that reek of cinnamon and proliferate so inexplicably here are the archetypal cassia product -- a heavy hand with an already formidable spice -- so Raelene's variety of restraint is always welcome.

maillard reactions

mashed potato covered in browned cheese must be one of the original comfort foods. warm, moist, crunchy and soft at once, and milky on the tongue, yet with the complex flavours that browning gives. for these flavours, born from the interaction of amino acids and reducing sugars in the presence of heat, we have the maillard reaction to thank. no-name stuffed this into balsamic-marinated baby portabella mushrooms and they were really good.

the pastry chef at charlie's reached a new state of divinity today with a caramel chestnut marjolaine. seeing it on the menu, i stopped by on my way to an afternoon meeting and it was, verily, a dacquoise -- two layers of surprisingly stable meringue sandwiching a filling of heavy cream, chestnuts, and hazelnut. also, the whipper of the cream in the no-name creme chantilly bowl struck today, for the first time in weeks, that happy medium of a slightly-sweetened, soft, unctuous colloidal suspension of air in fat. the two went very well together.

sandwich

no-name features flank steak at lunch this week, rubbed in cocoa and roasted ancho chile powder. they cook it medium-rare and slice it thin across the grain. my relentless pedantry has borne fruit! of this i made a sandwich with 7-grain bread, smoked cheddar, spicy dijon mustard, and sunflower sprouts -- the best sandwiches always are exercises in restraint and moderation. mysteriously, there were also trays and trays of what were billed "wild mushroom bouchees," puff pastry shells filled with mushrooms shredded and cooked with garlic and creme fraiche (and, the sign claimed, thyme, although i didn't taste it). these were good -- flaky, buttery, meaty, garlicky -- but seemed more like hors d'oeuvres than lunch food. as a token concession to balanced nutrition, i scooped up a poblano chile stuffed with brown rice and tomatoes, then lavished with jack cheese, and an egg salad sandwich garnished with a small half-round of cucumber and a sprig of the aforementioned and ubiquitous chervil.

when i walked through after lunch service, a plate of soda bread had been thoughtfully placed on a side counter. it was full of chocolate chunks and dried strawberries and had a beautiful, slightly burnt crust.

an embarrassment of riches

as i proceeded back from my sojourn to distant buildings, i snagged dessert first from cafe7 (the one with the good pastry selection). they had a camembert out that was appropriately liquid and mushroomy in flavour, as well as a reconstructed strawberry shortcake: two pieces of cream biscuit sandwiching a white chocolate mousse and a strawberry mousse filled with chunks of fruit.

at no-name, there was oven-roasted butterfish marinated in soy sauce and chinese rice wine, just on the right side of being undercooked. there was also a brilliant salad of arugula, baby dandelion leaves, pine nuts, and parmesan, dressed in a chervil-tinged vinaigrette. the parmesan and pine nuts make it deeply satisfying (being meaty and salty), the dandelion leaves and arugula keep it real. the chervil (which is all over the place, there must be a glut. it's even in the egg salad sandwiches) makes the vinaigrette bright, sparkly, and faintly lemony. it was good times.