holy m

this morning, we had a small regiment of smoked mackerel benedict plates in the specials line at no-name -- mackerel hot-smoked long enough for the fat to render, then topped with a poached egg (admittedly, a little over-cooked) and a perfect hollandaise, all on a piece of tender biscuit. coconut water goes very well with smoked mackerel. who knew?

salad days

there was barely time for lunch today, but what food! when i ducked into no-name towards the close of service, the grill line was unstaffed but there was a heaping tray of strips of perfectly-cooked beef tenderloin and a thick, softly-crunchy sauce of yogurt, cardamom, and pistachios to go with. the only salad left was of arugula and rocket, dressed with pine nuts, olive oil, some champagne vinegar, and shavings of pecorino.

beef

kobe beef burgers at lunch today. they taste more like normal beef burgers than i'd thought. these also had remarkably little flavour -- my hypothesis is that they weren't cooked enough. burgers need a total of a half inch or more of cooked meat in them, so a half-inch burger needs to be almost fully-cooked, with only a thin stripe of pink in the middle in order to have a rich, round, beef-y taste to them.

excellence in flavour awards

excellence in flavour award goes to the roasted mushrooms -- crimini, beech (hon-shimeji, apparently), and porcini -- glazed in white miso. these were cold, crunchy (but not crisp, an important distinction), and just salty enough. tonight, we are especially looking forward to the minted lamb burgers. i would have served them with a yogurt, cucumber, and cumin sauce, but i guess feta and hummus are good choices too.

zucchini

in no-name there were small pancakes of shredded zucchini and a little bit of thyme, browned on the flat-top and served with a large bowl of creme fraiche. zucchini is a great vegetable to grate -- it's got more body than cucumbers and doesn't collapse into a soggy pile, and it also has the most beautiful colour transition between the deep green skin and the paler inside. shredded, individual sticks of zucchini go from forest, through chartreuse, to avocado.

cod

everyone's favourite thing should be a well-cooked (which is to say, just barely cooked) piece of fish. tonight, at no-name, thick filets of black cod, pan-fried with matchsticks of carrot and bean sprouts. these were crusty and caramelized on the outside and, at the centre, nearly translucent. the salad of roasted golden beets, toasted walnuts, and goat milk creme fraiche was also very good. in the dessert line, there were halved passionfruit looking unfamiliar and mildly disturbing (after the initial confusion about what they were, the tray was mobbed) and cups of goat milk yogurt with toasted almonds and dried blueberries.

proche-orient

the foods of the near east: this was today's theme in no-name. there were slim filets of swordfish, hashmarked from the grill and marinated in a turkish mix of paprika, parsley powder, and lemon juice. i don't really understand the appeal of swordfish. on the side, a salad of fingerling potatoes, boiled, then grilled and tossed with olive oil, roasted tomatoes, garlic, and wine vinegar. the real winners were oven-roasted kale (crunchy, light, slightly smoky -- they have enough internal structure to not wilt in the oven, and a low enough water content that they dry out quickly enough to not scorch) and adas bil siq. this last was a lebanese soup of green lentils, chard, cilantro, onions. warm, slightly grainy, comforting, and full of soft shreds of chard, and with a bright note of lemon.

whirled peas

as i said to john tonight, as he was shucking oysters, the chefs in no-name make me happy more regularly than the prospect of world peace. tonight, for the third day running, they were ploughing through what must have been a monster shipment of some sort of canadian oyster with a large, lumpy shell; they tasted like the sea -- salt, with damp limestone and the smell of cold iron. they were so good they were better without the persillade of chopped onions and jalapenos.

these, with sam's green onion rice cakes, made dinner superlative: discs of cooked brown rice, garlic, and scallions toasted on the flat-top then brushed with mae ploy (brilliant!) and topped with ruby-red micro-greens. dessert tonight was better in the vegan bar, since they had sliced bananas and almond butter, and a salad of strawberries, navel and blood oranges*, and spearmint.

* i don't understand the continued appeal of these apart from the striking visual and the high levels of antioxidant anthocyanin pigmentation. blood oranges almost always taste vaguely like small animals, say, rabbits and they make everything they're mixed with taste like rabbits too.

healthfest

we had an author and his wife in for a talk about healthcare and i brought them in to no-name for lunch. they were (rightly, i think) blown away by the food. the salads are always interesting and tasty. today, the best of them was raw tatsoi with matchsticks of carrots, golden beets, and parsnips -- three different kinds of crunch, and the particularly woody taste of parsnips -- dressed with a creamy hempseed dressing and topped with soy-toasted pumpkin seeds. these last were thin-shelled, like double-fried potato puffs. to balance this healthfest, there was also a tray of pork and veal swedish meatballs in white gravy, thin slices of yogurt and cumin marinated leg of lamb, and buttermilk biscuits of startling delicacy.