Restaurant Review: Black Dog - Truth in Advertising

Finally, I went to a restaurant where the food matched up with the name of the restaurant. Unfortunately, the name of the place was Black Dog. Technically, it's Black Dog Smoke and Ale House, but whatever. There were a couple reviews from local food writers about the place - the sort who just can't help but rave about everything. After I ate there, I was on the phone with CJ, and I explained that while I was in there, I was trying to keep from channeling my inner Gordon Ramsey.

As you walk toward the place, it seems promising. There's a nice smoke smell coming from the place. But as you walk in, you start to see some cracks in the veneer, particularly in terms of service. Basically, the service sucks, as one of the comments on Yelp suggest. Basically, it goes like this. You have a dive bar, where crusty old servers have worked forever. They didn't have to have a clue because you basically had locals who were low maintenance ordering PBR in cans or Bud Heavy on draft and maybe some fries on occasion. Now, ownership transforms dive bar into restaurant that wants to do modern barbecue and microbrew. But ownership doesn't have the will or the insight to get new staff. You end up with crappy servers who take their time, and basically suck.

But I can live with lousy service, to some extent, if the food makes up for it. The Black Dog didn't. I ordered a large amount of food, and I found that two things were good, and the rest was subpar. Here's the rundown:

Appetizer - a stuffed cornbread sort of thing (forget the label they used). A very generous wedge of cornbread that has chopped jalapenos, cheese, chopped barbecue, and beans mixed in. It was dense, almost like a casserole. Reasonably tasty and a good value ($2.95).

Soup - chili. Not good. Beans, leftover chopped barbecue, and some tomatoes, with some water, and (not enough) seasoning. No depth of flavor. No heat. Needed salt. If this was a dog, it needed to be put down. On the bright side, it was pretty filling. And if you add a little salt, some black pepper, and the chipotle Tabasco they have on the table, it becomes a little more edible. But really, if you have to season the dish yourself, the back of the house is underperforming ($2.50/cup; $4/bowl).

Meal - combo platter w/ brisket and pulled pork ($10.99). The brisket was mushy. It was hard to tell if it was slice brisket or chopped brisket. That's a bad sign. Plus, the trim was terrible. My first slide was like 90% fat. I like a little extra fat left on the brisket, but this was ridiculous. When I have brisket, I look for 2 things. The first is the red smoke ring around the meat (more or less absent). The second is when you pick up and slice of brisket and pull it with minimal force, does it come apart, or does it accordion back? If the brisket just comes apart, then you've killed it. Good brisket should have a little elasticity. I could tell just by looking at the presentation - definitely not clean slices, almost a pile of chopped brisket. This was going to be a loser. Unfortunately, the pork was just as bad. This stuff was dry and stringy. There was a nice smoke flavor there, so at some point (probably about 2 hours before I arrived), this was probably very tasty. Unfortunately, by the time it showed up on my table, it was like jerky. Not good. They also served a little cole slaw with the meat, which was actually reasonable, though I'd argue that it wasn't a cole slaw so much as it was pickled cabbage. The look was a bit off - it's strange having this magenta pile of shredded cabbage on your plate. The taste was a little strong for eating on its own (only one note to the slaw - just vinegar, no sugar, no heat, nothing else). But when you paired it with the pork, it was actually decent. My best guess was that the cabbage makes you salivate, which helps the dry pork go down, while the smoky flavor in the pork keeps you from noticing the lack of complexity in the slaw. Perhaps two wrongs can make for a relative right.

The sides that I got with my meal were the pit beans and the potato salad. The pit beans were actually good. Nice flavor. Some chunks of chopped barbecue. Maybe a little too sweet, but I enjoyed eating them. The potato salad was perhaps the biggest disaster, which is saying something. The flavor of the dressing was bland, but even worse was that the potatoes were really undercooked. Al dente is not how you want your potatoes. And these weren't even al dente. They were crunchy. Terrible effort, overall.

In this town, I've been lamenting the lack of good brisket for years now. Longhorn Smokehouse (which is now Hickory River) had some very good brisket, but that changed a few years ago. Black Dog totally whiffed on this effort. Smoky Bones (now closed) had awful brisket. Right now, the best brisket in town is actually at Famous Dave's. Go figure. Of course, the basic litmus test for me is whether or not the brisket is better than what I could get at a HEB supermarket down in Texas. If a restaurant can't beat what you can get for $5.99/lb at a supermarket deli counter (though Whole Foods may be reshaping that idea), then it's not worth going to.

I may give the Black Dog another visit down the road, to see if they've smoothed things out. But given the lousy service and the lousy food, I may not even bother.

-foodgeek

Kitchen Happenings: Shakin' and Bacon

In the past, I've always thought that bacon was overrated. The stuff you get in national breakfast chains is generally just thin, salty, greasy, limp, and not particularly appetizing. We never really did bacon in my house growing up. We used to braise pork belly (soy sauce, sugar, star anise, etc.) and eat it with steamed buns, but we basically never did the bacon thing. I've played around a little bit with bacon the last few months, and have decided that I like bacon.

Basically, I saw bacon on sale, so I picked up a package, figuring that I'd do something cool with it, but I wasn't exactly sure what. With regards to the bacon itself, the one thing that figured out was that if you fry it up in the pan, and then right at the end, add on some sort of syrup, you create an extra crunchy, sweet coating on the bacon. Candied bacon, if you will. Incredible. I've had some sage syrup and some ginger syrup. Both work very will for this by adding something more than just sweet. This is sort of that sweet-salty thing that's been in vogue (think salted caramel).

I also figured out that you can make anything better by wrapping it up in bacon and frying it up. People have been wrapping scallops and shrimp forever. I discovered that hot dogs become much tastier once you wrap them up and fry them. Some grilled onions, cheddar cheese, and barbecue sauce finish off something that's really tasty and extra bad for you.

But the most interesting thing that I discovered was that it wasn't just the bacon that was of use. Bacon drippings were also there in abundance. And using the drippings effectively became one of my projects. If you remember from Top Chef a couple seasons ago, they marinated tofu in beef fat, to rave reviews.

I started with the idea of making an improved BLT. The bacon is still there, just like it should be. And you can drop the lettuce, which is just filler, anyway. But the tomato? A nice slice of raw tomato has it's merits. But what I think is even better is a quick sear on both sides, in the bacon drippings, with a quick grind of salt and pepper. You're still definitely eating tomato. But you get a little more flavor out of the tomato by cooking, and you also add on a little of that smoky bacon flavor. I also liked that idea of frying up eggs over easy in the bacon dripping, as well. The runny yolk thing is something that I've always like, and fits in nicely with the sandwich, giving the sandwich a sauce-like effect (in place of mayo). Finally, I added grilled onions, also done in the bacon drippings, with salt and pepper. Put it all between some nice bread (something soft and a little sweet like a brioche or a good bun). Result? Money sandwich.

The other sandwich that I was playing with was a grilled cheese with bacon and grilled onions. Same story as before, with the grilled onions. But the big thing? Using bacon dripping for grilling the sandwich. Finish with a little salt and pepper, and you get an added flavor to the bread that's definitely helped change my position on bacon.

The final verdict? Bacon is definitely not overrated, and figuring out what to do with the drippings makes bacon anything but ordinary.

-foodgeek

Kitchen Happenings: Faux Sous-Vide

So, sous-vide cooking is basically vacuum sealing food, and then cooking it in a controlled, relatively low-temperature water bath. What this lets you do is to get food to exactly the right temperature, no matter how long it cooks. You can also seal in other ingredients to add flavor to the cooking process.

I buy a decent amount of frozen fish, and a lot of is is packaged in individually sealed, packages. Normally, I take it out, and then steam, bake, sautee, or do whatever to the fish, and it turns out alright. But, the other day, I took a look at the packaging and just thought, "boy, this is like they're taking the work out of sous-vide cooking."

This ended up being the easiest thing in the world. I filled a 2 qt. sauce pot halfway with water. Put it on my burner at high for a couple minutes, covered. Basically, as the water was getting hot (not to a boil, maybe to 180F), I put in the fish, still in the vacuum package. I assumed that the water dropped in temperature, maybe down to 150F, and I wanted to keep the water at that temperature. So, I put the burner to "warm," and then put the cover on the pot. A few minutes later, you see the fish turn opaque, and you're good to go.

Of course, you'll need to season the fish again, but I find that a simple seasoning (just salt and pepper, or maybe some soy sauce and ginger) works great. The fish is incredibly tender, and still has a great flavor to it.

I'd recommend using fish that are a little fatty (I've used halibut and flounder fillets, both of which were great). They tried to sous-vide salmon on Top Chef, which was disastrous, so I'll probably avoid that. But at some point, I'll give this technique a shot for whatever fish that I can find at the store, and see what works. I'm guessing that tilapia and other lean fish won't be so hot, but you never know.

Anyway, it's about to be grilling season, so I'll probably be moving away from this sous-vide thing for a while :-)

-foodgeek