Taco Trucks

Loving street food has become a foodie cliche, thanks to the stylings of Anthony Bourdain, who has at long last confirmed that, yes, one can be both gritty and pretentious. The world had been wondering since the Marquis de Sade first raised the possibility. I like each equally. But, cliche aside, street food can be very, very good, and some of the best can be had from taco trucks. Spokane currently has a bounty of taco trucks. The question is, which is worth your time?

In the past week or so, I have been to the four trucks nearest to downtown. I ordered tacos, and when I could talk Jeremy into having mexican food again (it's not his favorite cuisine, even though we met in a Mexican restaurant and he lived in San Francisco, home of the Mission burrito), I ordered a burrito. I made sure to try the rice and beans at each place. The menus at all the trucks are pretty similar: tacos, burritos, enchiladas, tostadas, sopas, and tortas ( kind of sandwich/Mexican sloppy joe). They all have a similar selection of meats: chicken, pork, a couple of beefs, chorizo, and -- a surprise to me -- lengua, or beef tongue, which is excellent. The texture is a little like pot roast. The good news is, all four trucks are all pretty darn good. I do, of course, have some favorites and some observations.

Patty's Taco Truck, on Division just north of Garland/Empire. Of the four I visited, this is my favorite, even if the truck itself is pretty, shall we say, low impact. Their pico de gallo is wonderfully fresh and lively, the guacamole is creamy and abundant, and the refried beans are wonderful, clearly the best of any of the trucks I tried. There are (I read on-line -- not the most rock solid research I have ever done) two Pattys who co-own the truck. The woman working the counter when I was there (Patty the niece, I believe) was incredibly pleasant, and told me that they have only been open since June. On her suggestion, I tried an enchilada, which was elevated by a lovely hit of salty lime.

Tacos Tumbras: On Division, just north of Rowan. I believe there is in fact a Tumbras chain, including at least one other truck out in the valley, and a sit down restaurant. The tacos are lovely, the refried beans well seasoned, and if you prefer some texture in your refried beans, you might even prefer theirs to Patty's, which are very smooth. The pork burrito was lovely, with tender meat and a great spicy kick. I am dinging them for very bad chicken, which was rubbery, not carefully cut up, and flavorless. (Sorry, I forgot to take a picture of this one.)

Tacos el Sol: This very fancy truck is parked downtown, in a parking lot on Washington in between Sprague and First. The great news about this place is that it is open both for business lunch and for late night cravings: they are open until 3 am! Again, very good tacos, especially the beef, but the refried beans taste canned, and the salsa lacked punch and freshness. Also, as one might expect from the fancy digs, this was the most expensive of the trucks I hit, although only by a fraction of a dollar.

El Mariachi, located on Hamilton and Augusta, just north of Mission. I will admit, this was my fourth truck, and I was getting more and more adventurous. Here, I tried both the tongue and the beef cheeks, and both were excellent. The barbacoa (beef braised in chile sauce) was, in comparison, mushy and uninteresting. The burrito was Jeremy's favorite, because he prefers pinto beans to refried, but I found it bland. The big disappointment was the rice and beans, which in texture was like a Cuban rice and beans, but without the flavor. Also, as much as I appreciate the cheeky, musical theme of the truck, I was put off by the fact that you couldn't see inside to see the food prep at all, and by the length of my wait. Still, it's proximity to work means that I'm likely to return.

There are a lot of arguments to be made about taco trucks. Some say that they are an easy way for a business owner to play fast and loose with all sorts of rules that should not be played with: food safety laws, worker's benefits, even taxes. I'm sure this can happen, but I think Patty's Tacos is an example of the other side of the argument. This is a low capital way for someone to become a small business owner. To me, this sounds like a venture worth supporting. So, go out and be brave. And if they have named some of their tacos, those are the ones to get. Otherwise, try the tongue!

Bad waiter

I ate at Cafe Marron over the weekend, and it wasn't the best experience I've had there. I like Cafe Marron, even if I do find the name unfortunate, since it seems like the only options for pronouncing it are either to make it sound like Cafe Moron or to sound pretentiously French. Even they seem to struggle with the name; when they opened, they had it spelled one way on their sign and another on their menus. Nonetheless, I like the casual atmosphere, I like the brunch food a lot (especially now that Bittersuite is gone and, from what I have heard, will be reopening prohibitively far from my house), and I have had really good meals there.

I remember one dinner, a little over a year ago, with particular fondness. The waiter not so subtly steered us toward the halibut and the top sirloin. It took no arm twisting to get me to order the halibut, a fish I adore. It arrived perfectly cooked, in that sublime nano-second when there is still a hint of translucency in the center, and in a light, citrusy cream sauce that complemented the fish without taking it over. The top sirloin was a harder sell. After all, that is no one's favorite steak, and badly done, it can be chewy, mealy, chalky, or any of the other bad beef dwarves. But, when a good waiter recommends something, you trust him (in this case, it was a him), so . . . The sirloin was also sublime: beefy and and almost meltingly tender, with a terrific sear. In fact, the beef was so good by itself that I have forgotten if it came with a sauce, and I can remember nearly every sauce I have ever tasted. Good food, good service, good atmosphere -- this was an experience to cement a restaurant in my firmament for a while.

Things were very different this weekend, and it wasn't that the food that made the difference. It was the service. Our waitress was a very nice woman on her second day, and I wish her well in her new job. I see no reason why she can't become a fine waitress. But, she wasn't for us. I want to be very clear here: I don't blame her. Service is an art form, and one so rarely practiced in Spokane that I wonder if most of the people trying to be good servers have actually experienced good service. Waiting tables, even at its most straightforward, requires an enormous amount of multi-tasking, organization, presence of mind, knowledge of the menu, of the wine list, of what the kitchen will and will not accommodate, plus tact and people skills. It is a hard, hard job, and one that takes a full apprenticeship to master.

No, I don't blame her. I blame the management. It was their decision to put a woman with little to no waiting experience on the floor on a weekend night. It was their decision not to give her a lesson in the menu with the chef, allowing her to taste all the plates on the menu. This is, by the way, standard practice in nearly all fine dining restaurants. It was their decision not to have her shadow an experienced waiter, who probably would have remembered to bring the salads before the entries. And let us remember, the management of Cafe Marron is the same as the management of Luna, so these are experienced restaurant people who ought to know better. They surely know standard industry practice in hiring and training wait staff, and they certainly ought to know the importance of service in a successful restaurant. This shows more than a momentary lapse on their part. This shows a failure of priorities.

I'll go farther than that. I think this is an ethical issue. Sure, it shows a complete lack of respect for the diners who are paying up to twenty dollars a plate and have, therefore, a reasonable expectation that what they asked to be on that plate will, in fact, be there. But, more than that, a waiting job is typically a minimum wage job, and therefore all servers rely on tips to earn a living income. Hiring a person and then not giving them the tools they need to earn the income you have told them they can expect is dirty pool, in my book. (Washington State, thankfully, both has the highest minimum wage in the country and does not have the exemption for tip earners that many states have, so the situation is not as dire here in Spokane as it is some places.)

Service tends to be bad in Spokane. We tend to accept friendly in lieu of skilled (not that the too are mutually exclusive). I had dinner at Gordy's a few weeks ago, and the our waitress knew the menu inside and out, and guided us toward ordering a great meal. But, she seemed to think that we wanted to spend our evening talking with her, when in fact I was with a group of people who did just fine creating conversation all by ourselves. It ranged from awkward to horribly uncomfortable. Wild Sage is a notable exception; I have never gotten anything but top notch service there. Luna is a, maybe the, prime culprit. There service would be great for a Denny's or a sandwich place, but not for a restaurant that charges thirty bucks a plate, a la carte. We will never have a real restaurant scene until service becomes a priority, both for restaurant owners and diners. The catch-22 is, we can't protest bad service without hurting innocent, individual servers. So, here's a call to owners and managers: train your servers. Send them to good restaurants in other cities to experience their craft. Teach them about the food they serve. (I know of one restaurant in Tacoma that sends their entire staff to Italy for a week each year to gain in knowledge and experience. Tacoma, people! Are they that much better than we are?) As for us, let's demand more than nice. We deserve it.

Pulled Pork

I've been thinking about pulled pork.

This isn't unusual. If I exerted as much brain power thinking about the impact of Protestant theology on Renaissance narrative structure as I exert thinking about pulled pork, my book would be long finished. But really, can you blame me? Is there much in the world as beautiful as the confluence of smoke and pork? I would put it right up there with Paradise Lost in terms of highly satisfying aesthetic experiences.

My first introduction to the glories of pulled pork came in the back yard of my friend George's graduate school house. He had a smoker and knew what to do with it. He would transform a big, fatty hunk of boston butt (a big cut of pork shoulder) into a minor -- make that major -- masterpiece: succulent, unctuous (a much better word than greasy, don't you think?), smoky. We would stand in his tiny kitchen together, pulling at the still steaming meat with forks, with George getting final say about how much fat and caramelized rind would make it in to the final product. Then he would top the whole thing with just enough barbeque sauce to make it sweet and spicy and moist, without covering up the taste of the pork itself. His sauce of choice was Montgomery Inn, which he would bring back from his trips home to Ohio by the caseload. I would bring the coleslaw, made very simply with cabbage (red and green when I felt fancy), mayonnaise, vinegar, sugar, pepper and celery salt. I didn't have a recipe, so I'd just taste it until it seemed right. The creaminess and fresh crispness of the coleslaw added a little balance to the rich pork.

The only pulled pork I've had that really matches George's is from Everett and Jones in Oakland, a fabulous barbeque establishment. Actually, they have two restaurants. The one in Jack London square is big and friendly, with photos of celebrities and the owners' families on the wall. The other is a hole in the wall take-out counter in Berkeley; no tables, just a counter, some hungry patrons, a whole lotta smoke and a little attitude toward the only white girl in the place.

I have not had good pulled pork in Spokane. Lonestar BBQ is highly disappointing -- the sauce there is the star, and it isn't a particularly bright one. The meat is dry and smokeless. Better is the pulled pork sandwich at the Safari Room in the Davenport Towers. The pork is truly smoked, but the sauce is overly sweet, and the sandwich as a whole seems cloying rather than succulent. Chicken-n-More doesn't have pulled pork, and given how oily and strangely flaccid their ribs are, I'm okay with that.

I had great hopes for Lazy Bones on Regal. They have pretty good baby back ribs, and their sides are a nice blend of traditional barbeque -- corn bread, beans, greens -- and healthy, although I am deeply suspicious of their decision to have vinaigrette cole slaw. But what they serve instead of pulled pork is a "smoked, chopped pork." The taste is okay, but the consistency is all wrong. It feels steamed more than smoked, and there is no caramelization. None. No crisp, no char, no intense smoke, no malliard reaction (aka that beautiful chemical voodoo that happens to meat when you brown it. Don't forget, people: Brown means flavor). In my book, this nearly disqualifies them as a barbeque joint at all.

I get it. Pulled pork is hard. It takes all day, and it requires some sort of smoker. I've never gotten great results in my Weber, because I can't keep the temperature low enough to not leave the pork tough. Alton Brown describes a great, McGyver style smoker using giant flower pots, wood chips, and (I'm not kidding here) a heating pad, but I've never tried it. If you would like, here's the clip on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ka2kpzTAL8. Let me know how it goes.

So, here's my version of "cheater" pulled pork. It isn't smoked, which would make me skeptical too, and it isn't the real thing, but it has a great texture and lots of good, brown, crispy, caramelized bits. I usually make it for sandwiches, but I've also served it on a pita chip as a cocktail nosh with just a little pickled onion on top.

One package boneless country-style ribs (between 2 1/2 and three pounds) -- DO NOT USE LEAN OR EXTRA LEAN. It just isn't the same.

2 cups water

1 1/2 cups orange juice

lots of whole, peeled garlic

1 tsp salt

Cut the pork into chunks. Don't worry about trimming it. Put it and everything else in a big pot with a lid (I use my endlessly useful Le Crueset). Boil it with the lid on for about one and a half hours, or until the pork is almost tender. Take the lid off and turn up the heat, until the pork is basically dry. This takes about half an hour to forty-five minutes. At this point, I usually have too much pork to work with in my pan (and certainly more than two people can eat at once), so I freeze half of it. The other half, I transfer to a 12 inch non-stick skillet on high heat. The fat will render out of the pork and fry the meat, and as you stir it around, the meat will basically pull itself. Fry until most of the meat is dark brown, and you have some crispy strands. It is very oily, so I usually drain it, either in a colander or on paper napkins, before I add my barbeque sauce. Then, eat it up however you like your pulled pork.

I adapted this recipe from one for Carnitas (mexican fried pork), and the meat works brilliantly for any number of mexican meals as well, without the barbeque sauce, of course. I like it just on a crisped corn tortilla, with a little fresh salsa and guacamole.

By the way, has any one tried the faux-log barbeque cart, seen sometimes on North Division? I would gladly trade my fake pork for a good version of the real thing!

Mercado Ambrogio

Here are some beautiful photographs of the Mercado Ambrogio, the Sant Ambrogio market near my apartment in Florence.

This last one is actually from a market in Pistoia. That's my zucchini a fiori, a vegetable I love so much I tried to smuggle its seeds into the US. Damn you, conscientious border guards!

Thank you, Chris, for these beautiful images.

Stores I love

Spokane does not have a Trader Joe's, a fact much bewailed by my foodie and faux foodie friends. I'm not so cut up about this -- while it was nice to have a handy supply of cleaned, frozen calamari rings for spontaneous frying, for the most part Trader Joe's supplies pre-made food. Sure, their dips and frozen entries are better than what you can find at the supermarket, but they are not nearly as good as dips I can make on my own. And their hummus stinks. There, I said it. Spokane does, however, have a number of food stores and stores with food gems that I frequent as often as time and budget allow.

Saunder's Cheese Market. I love this place. I love the beautiful woman who seems to always be working when I come in. Yesterday, she remembered that I was on a raw sheep's milk cheese kick. I love that she wouldn't dream of selling you cheese without offering you a sample, and that she understands the beauty of really good cheese. I love that she recently described a lovely semi-soft goat's milk cheese as "my crack cocaine." That's how I feel about cheese. I love their cheese boards, and that they let you bring in a bottle of wine from Vino's next door. I even love the look of the store: crisp, clean design, completely functional and completely keeping with their older building.

Bollywood. I love this place, too. Sure, the front half is a particular skeezy Quik-E mart on yet to be gentrified section of Sprague, and only the back (and to the left) couple of aisles are devoted to Indian food. But, come on, we have our own Indian food store! Between Bollywood and the bulk spice rack of Huckleberry's, real curry is within easy reach. I mean the kind you roast and mix and grind yourself. And about ten different kinds of dal. And frozen curry leaves! Spokane does not have a great Indian restaurant. It doesn't even have a good Indian restuarant. It has an "okay if you haven't really eaten Indian food before" restaurant. (I would say the same about our Thai selections). But with Bollywood and a good cookbook, outstanding Indian food is within reach. I strongly recommend the following cookbooks: Mangoes and Curry Leaves, by Alford and Duguid, the lovely people who brought us Hot, Sour Salty, Sweet, and Indian Cooking by Marhur Jaffrey. And, you can get a wonderful Bollywood video to accompany your meal!

Cassano's Italian Food. When I was in Italy (and, no, I won't stop talking about Italy for a while), I learned some stuff about pasta. We can't make it here in America. Not really. Maybe it's the wheat, or the water, or the type of press they use, but al dente there means this amazing chewiness, combined with a porous texture that has an incredible ability to hold onto sauce. For American pasta, al dente means kinda hard in the middle. But Casello's sells imported pasta that allows us to come pretty close to what real pasta should taste like. So does Rocket Market, by the way. Casello's also has truffle oil, a lot of balsamic, and a nice selection of cured meats. They do not, alas, sell Bresaola, but I will try not to hold that against them. Much.

DeLeon's Mexican food. I have to confess, I don't get here much, since it's north and I'm not. And, honestly, I'm not much of a Mexican cook. But, I do know that their fresh tortillas are superb, and that without them, my enchiladas are always disappointing. And I know that this is the place to get Latin ingredients that can be hard to find elsewhere. Maybe I'll go on a Mexican cooking adventure just so I can do this place justice.

Egger's Meats. Every good cook needs a good butcher. Except for vegetarian cooks. I suppose. See the name of the blog. The nice men at Egger's will, on request, cut you a pork chop of Fred Flintstone proportions. They are the most likely place in town to have lamb shoulder (although I've learned to call ahead before I get my heart set on lamb curry). They have the most delicious smoked turkey breast that they will slice thin for sandwiches. They have duck, ground veal, and perhaps most importantly, they have bones. Can't make stock without bones. In short, this place is essential.

Rocket Market. This place has really turned into a foodie dream -- they do a lot of things well. They sell locally farmed produce, and have a nice little grocery section, with a fantastic selection of balsamic and olive oil, including my favorite, Columela from Spain. Their deli serves pretty consistently tasty, healthy food, and some of their soups are great. I had a tomato, arugula and goat cheese penne there last week which was rich, fresh, and complex all at the same time -- not bad for a three dollar lunch for the lazy! And the wine . . . They have a great selection, and Carl Carlsteen personally tastes, selects, and then writes up tags for each wine there. Sure, every one of his tags tends towards the hyperbolic, but you can read past that for a solid description of the flavor. Oh, and Jeremy wouldn't let me forget it if I didn't mention their selection of cakes; he is particularly fond of Frey's Paris cake, on sale there.

Super 1. A surprise entry, I know, but did you know they make and smoke their own sausage? At least the one on the corner of 29th and Grand has a great meat department for when you can't make it to (or can't afford it at) Eggers, and they have the best smoked sausages for grilling I've had. I particularly like the Hot Beer sausage. I've never heard of these before; perhaps they are a mid-West thing? The beautiful creation of a local genius? Is there beer in the sausage, or is it just that they go well with beer? Because they do.

You may notice Huckleberry's is not on my list. I used to go there a lot, and I still go there for their bulk spices and takeout sushi, but for the most part, I'm over them. They are high priced, and there is nothing there I can't get somewhere else, either better, cheaper, or at least with a sense that I'm supporting a local small business instead of a big local business. Not that I have anything against Rosauer's (they own both Huckleberry's and Super 1). They seem to treat their employees well, they are big donors to Gonzaga, and I'm considering writing an ode to their deli fried chicken. But they get enough of my money without me supporting their high seeming mark-ups.

So, guys, what have I missed?

Produce and Fresh Abundance!

I had the amazing opportunity to live in Florence, Italy for seven weeks this spring, and it has totally changed my attitude toward cooking. I had an apartment with a small kitchen (and, for a while, every time I turned on the air conditioner and the stove at the same time, I blew the electricity for the entire apartment!). It was about four blocks from the Sant Ambrogio market. Six days a week, until about two in the afternoon, the outside part of the market is filled with the most beautiful produce. The inside is filled with butchers, fish mongers, cheese and fresh pasta. It is a foodies' fantasy land.

The Italians just don't sell produce if it isn't fresh, local, picked ripe, and therefore intensely flavorful. I was there when the zucchini a fiori were in season -- these beautiful, long, ribbed zucchini with big, orange flowers still attached and stuffable. They were so sweet that I didn't have to do anything to make them delicious. I just sliced them thick, sauteed them in olive oil, seasoned, and that was it. Sometimes I tossed them with fresh pasta and some cheese. Seriously, my boyfriend (a full fledged foodie in his own right) and I ate them nearly every night for three weeks. When they were out of season, they disappeared from the market. Fortunately, by that time, the tomatoes were ripe . . .

I grew up eating French food, and before going to Italy, I don' t think I'd met a meal that I didn't think would be improved by a nice sauce. I now see the Italian attitude, that a sauce is cheating, covering up bad ingredients. I did the best and the simplest cooking of my life there. A pork loin, already herbed and tied by the butcher, some fresh noodles, and whatever caught my eye from the produce venders. That kind of food needs very little cooking -- just a little oil and salt, and not to be over- or under-cooked.

Since coming back to beautiful Spokane, I've been on a mission to try to recreate at least some of that cooking. The thing is, it is pretty hard work. I won't repeat what we all know about the evils of American supermarkets: produce from South America, picked green and gassed in ripeness, varieties developed for durability and aesthetics rather than taste, etc., etc. etc. The farmers markets are good, and I go regularly both to the Downtown and South Perry market (although, let's be honest, the South Perry market is pretty small). Rocket Market and Huckleberries can help out. When I can stomach the drive north up division, GreenBluff is wonderful?

So, I've joined Fresh Abundance. They deliver organic and, when possible, local produce to your house once a week. The price is high -- thirty five dollars a week for their standard basket -- and you don't select what is in your basket. When there isn't much in season in Spokane, they supplement with organic produce from elsewhere, which is no better than what you can find in the organic section of Super 1 for a good deal less. Since our growing season is short, our harvests tend to all happen in late July through early September, so there seems to be a lot of non-local stuff in my baskets: romas from Mexico; nectarines from California. But, it's a start. The stuff that is local is ugly and dirty and flavorful; just what I wanted. This week's basket had the most tender butter lettuce, and last week's sugar snap peas were a treat, raw and sauteed with a little butter and garlic. Also, I like the cooking challenge. How am I going to use five apricots? (Answer: apricot barbecue sauce on smoked pork chops.)

It's a start, and since I was in Italy when I should have been planting my own garden, I'm happy to have it as an option. What I would really like to find is a reliable CSA (community supported agriculture). But I'm just starting that hunt, so I'll leave that for another post. In the meantime, I'm off to order zucchini fiorentini seeds from the internet for next year.

Hello and Sante!

I am a food lover, living in the Inland Empire, otherwise known as Spokane, Washington. Even though Spokane is surrounded by amazing agriculture, it does not have much of a foodie reputation. Nor does it particularly deserve one. But there is good food to be had in Spokane: some of it in restaurants, some of it from shops and markets around town, much of it being made in home kitchens. I am writing this blog to chronicle one foodies successes and failures, surprises and disappointments living in the inland Northwest.

I have no particular credentials as a food expert, unless one counts my great-grandmother on my father's side, who was a professional chef in Bar Harbor and Bermuda. I wish I had known her. My father is a pretty good cook of the french persuasion, and some of my most cherished childhood memories are of watching The French Chef with him. I am a good home cook, and I have eaten in some very good restaurants (I even worked in one, once, but only as a waitress). Mostly, I just like food. There is nearly nothing I won't eat (except Doritos, licorice, and any candy whose name begins with "gummy").

For my inaugural entry, I want to talk about the meal I just had at Sante, the new restaurant in the Aunties bookstore building. I like it. I think this is exactly the kind of restaurant that Spokane needs, and that those of us who like food should support. The menu is thoughtful if not adventurous Northwest fare: steak, pork, salmon. I had the wild boar roulade, which was sausage-like and meaty, served on a disc of mashed potatoes so rich they were almost too much, with a lovely demi-glace jus. I also tasted the pork chop and the chicken, both of which were perfectly cooked and juicy. And herein are the two reasons why I like this place: first, the food is carefully and respectfully prepared. A juicy porkchop can be sublime, but it takes good seasoning, better sourcing, and perfect timing. Second, everything else on the plate adds to the meal, rather than competing or detracting from it. The chicken came with a spring pea and morel risotto (which avoided all hints of mushiness). The entrees were the work of a chef who knows how to work with fresh, seasonal ingredients and put them together so that the total is greater than the sum of the parts.

I also like that Sante has charcuterie roots. The first and cold courses include duck confit, their own sausage (they called in salami, but it was really more of a tasty summer sausage), and house-cured duck prosciutto. These are not items that are typical of Spokane menus, and I am happy they are around. Indeed, my entire time in the restaurant said that these people like food, and like people who like food. The waitress encouraged us to ask questions, and seemed happy when we did. This attitude seemed to fit with their commitment to local farmers and produce, and well as their "slow food" orientation. The service was pleasant and enthusiastic, if not four-star polished.

A final word: the wine list is really interesting. Not in the "faint praise," I don't know what else to say way, but legitimately interesting. Our waitress said that because so many of their diners choose the three or seven course option with wine pairing, they don't feel as constrained to offer recognizable labels. We ordered a French varietal that I have never seen as a varietal (it's usually blended), but it was exactly what we said we wanted. None of the wines on the menu were above fifty dollars a bottle and all were available by the glass, although I believe there were more bottles available on request.

Sante began as a daytime lunch/snack place, and now offers dinner Wednesday through Saturdays. It's dinners are definitely going for fine dining. Meals are expensive by Spokane standards: twenty-five to thirty dollar entries, with tempting first and cold courses running around ten dollars. They offer a three and seven course menu, with wine pairings. Given my current respect for the kitchen, I would hazard that they are options worth exploring.

I wouldn't call Sante a world-class restaurant, but it does seem to be a place that is serious and sophisticated about food. At this point, I'm hoping Spokane can show itself to be the same.