Ploafmaster General

I know. I've written about Secco a few times. I've been there over 25 times since May, and I gush to nearly everyone I know about the place. So please, for your own sake, take what follows with a healthy dose of Maldon sea salt...

I wasn't expecting to dine at Secco for Restaurant Week. What, after all, is the point of going somewhere you already know and love when there are untested (untasted?) restaurants to explore? Tonight, however, was Valerie's last night of a class at The Visual Arts Center and, as she's only halfway able to taste anything while she recovers from a cold, she gave me the all-clear to get in one extra night of dining by myself. Fortunately I was able to score a table when I arrived just after 6:30, and I came ready to order from their Restaurant Week menu (though they appear to be serving from their standard menu as well).

I started with the velvety cream of cauliflower soup, poured over brown butter, sweet curry, and dark chocolate. I've had this soup before, and tonight was an improvement on what I already enjoyed. The curry stood out a little more and the chocolate was just subdued enough not to overpower the light flavor of the other ingredients. I had a glass of pinot blanc from Alsace to wash it down, and it really brought out the butter in the soup nicely.

Secco's special menu allows you to choose two items for the second course. This is, I'm sure, because of the "small plates" nature of their offerings, but it also makes for a serious value at the restaurant week price. I went with the braised octopus and the lemon-infused maltagliati with duck ragu. I'll start, as I did while dining, with the octopus.

This was the third or fourth time I've eaten octopus in any form, and I suppose it comes with the territory that it's a little chewy. I'm not talking rubber bands now, but it does require a little more jaw work than most seafood. That's not to say it wasn't delicious. The braise added plenty of flavor, and it was clearly finished over some fire which gave it a nice crisp exterior. My cephalopod was accompanied by Yukon Gold potatoes that Tim smoked using a nifty kitchen gadget. Lovage, a green in the celery family, rounded out the dish and balanced the smoky flavor of the potatoes.

This was the second time I've had the maltagliati, a rough cut pasta that, in this case, was served with lemon zest and a rich duck ragu. This dish is one of my favorites at Secco because it's simultaneously complex, fragrant, and comforting; the perfect cold weather dish. I'm not sure whether it's duck confit or braised, but it's super tender and generously applied.

My dessert was completely new to me, however. A chilled plate arrived with a scoop each of olive oil gelato and rosemary sorbet. Holy daring flavors, Batman! Tim informed me that he used a nice sweet finishing olive oil in the gelato, and it added just the right hint of fruitiness. But oh my, the star of the plate was that rosemary sorbet. Full disclosure - there was a bit of a frozen chunk in the middle. That was small, though, and it still tasted wonderful. The rest of the sorbet was as smooth as you could ask for, and the aroma and flavor of rosemary was just right. I'd love to stir a healthy dose of this stuff into a quality gin to make a cocktail :-)

Sadly, I have class tomorrow and Thursday, so my next (and final) Restaurant Week adventure won't be until Friday, but I'll be sure to report on that excursion as well.

I'll keep this simple and to-the-point. Dinner at Six Burner, for the first night of Richmond Restaurant Week, was awesome.

My appetizer was snail risotto. Yes, there were land mollusks in my rice. There was also deliciousness in my rice. Warm, tender arborio, just the right amount of what I think was wine in the mix, and oh my, the snails were delicate and flavorful.

I went for the 56-hour braised short ribs. Gimmick? Maybe. Bursting with richness and complexity? Absolutely. These were short ribs as tender as a perfectly-cooked piece of sirloin at least, and the crispy/browned bits on the outside of the meat were the Maillard icing on the beefy cake.

Dessert came with a bonus - I'd ordered the panna cotta with local honey and fresh fruit (baby kiwi in this case!), but the waitress accidentally dropped off the arroz con leche - an incredible rice pudding tasting of cinnamon with fresh raspberries on top. The waitress realized her error and dropped off my proper dessert which was, in fact, superior.

Recap: super tasty from start to finish.
Coming soon: Acacia on Friday. But I already know I love that place :-)

Taken in a parking lot at the corner of Virginia and Cary during InLight 2010 in Shockoe Slip.

Fantastic short film shot on Super 8 using - apparently - a single cartridge. Seems a little long for that to be true, but it doesn't change how good this is:

[vimeo 15601149 w=640 h=480]

out of time - a straight 8 film by duncan wellaway from straight eight on Vimeo.

There's a 2-day-old pizza place in town, Belmont Pizzeria, near Patterson.

RVAfoodie mentioned it this afternoon after West of the Boulevard News linked to an initial review from One Way Richmond. So I checked out the place tonight.

It looks like a real pizzeria - only a counter for sitting, a drink cooler, and a menu with typical pizzeria fare. Meatballs for a topping, garlic knots! The pizza wasn't bad, but on reflection there are issues.

RVAfoodie later described the pizza as "... huge, thin, greasy, + cheesy So... New Yorky. The crust is light, limp. More spongy than chewy." I agree with most of his assessment except for the light, spongy, and "New Yorky" parts. My medium was a bit too dense (perhaps too much dough for that size pie), and hence kinda toothy in the wrong way. Not the chewiness I love in good crust. And the "New Yorky" part, well, if all these dings are true about a pizza, it's not representative of New York pizza (not to this Jersey boy, at least). There's bad pizza everywhere, even New York, but even touristy Little Italy in Manhattan has more good pizza than bad, using better mozzarella, just the right amount of sauce, and crust that holds up when it's folded in half.

That aside, though, there are real problems. It's a shame, too, because it looked and smelled pretty good. But let's start with what was right on top. The cheese. I always order a plain cheese pizza when I try out a new pizza joint because I figure they oughtta be able to get the basics right. Well the cheese on this pizza was some seriously low-grade mozzarella. The pool of grease was a big tip-off, and unfortunate.

The sauce was forgettable - literally, because I don't remember anything about it. At least there wasn't too much.

And the crust...well, that's the most troubling part. There's some actual decent flavor to the crust, but beyond that the texture isn't right. Whether that's from my suspicion of too much dough in the medium pie, or because they didn't give the dough enough time to rise, it still means it's kinda dense.

I'm not throwing out the leftovers, but this doesn't replace Capriccios, JoJo's, or Carini for me. Maybe I'll try out Arianna's next, since it's a block over from Belmont.

Check out the video for Harper Simon's Berkeley Girl, shot entirely on an assortment of Super 8 film stocks. There's a little extra significance to my posting this, but I'll get to that later this evening.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfXv6RBPEdI?fs=1&hl=en_US&hd=1&w=640&h=385]

I've been waiting to write about this until I had this photo back from the lab. Alamo BBQ in Church Hill has been open for a few years already, and I'm ashamed it's taken me this long to stop by. I went once a couple of weeks ago on word that their brisket was supreme in the River City, but they were out when I was there (to be fair, mid-afternoon - they were waiting for another brisket to finish), so I had what I felt was so-so pulled pork.

Last weekend, however, I took Valerie up the hill for lunch, and I finally had my brisket. I skipped the default onions and jalapeños (not a fan of the flavor), but the sandwich still had plenty of zing, no doubt from copious amounts of black pepper in the rub.

I still like Buz and Ned's pulled pork better, but this is a new winner for brisket in my book. Beats Ronnie's, too (though I still really need to try those ribs...). Get it.

Tonight Valerie and I were privileged to attend "A Conversation with Chuck Close" at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts here in Richmond. Preceding the event was a book signing wherein the artist and his biographer signed my newly-acquired copy of Chuck Close: Work. That was one of my gifts from Valerie for our 6th wedding anniversary, which is tomorrow :-)

At any rate, the conversation itself also featured the artist and his biographer, alternating between anecdotes, personal history, technique, and opinion. Everything was so engrossing for both my wife and me that I found it jarring when an official from the museum walked on stage to inform Mr. Close that they were essentially out of time. I don't think I'm the only one in the sold-out auditorium that would happily have stayed another hour.

It was a real thrill to have a living treasure of the art world in my fair River City. I look forward to the arrival of the Picasso exhibit this winter.

Boy, howdy, does this movie look good...and part of its concept, at least as provided by the trailer, reminds me of the play, The Madness of King George III.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aS4hoOSlzo&rel=0&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&version=3&w=640&h=390]

So I don't expect it to be heavily updated, but there's now a website for the Edgehill Civic Association. I put together this little Wordpress blog so the neighborhood organization could be a bit less reliant on paper flyers, and, if we're lucky, act as a source of information about our little corner of Richmond.

Jerod Gibson created a whole series of posters for a number of movies (and one TV show, so far). Each poster contains the silhouette of an iconic image from that film with a host of quotes contained therein. From the faux distressed backgrounds (which are tastefully muted colors) to the choice of typeface for the quotes, these are real gems.

There are only 12 posters available now, but I look forward to what he might add in the future.
(via Quipsologies)

The restaurant kitchen may indeed be the last, glorious meritocracy—where anybody with the skills and the heart is welcomed.

Michael Ruhlman was able to post a complete chapter from Anthony Bourdain's book, Medium Raw, on his website. It's a fine read and certainly makes the book sound enticing.

check boxes

lists of action items and discussions offline
that started offline in a meeting around a conference table to begin with

goals with no purpose beyond self-congratulatory displays
of business acumen

check dem boxes so you can keep your job

check dem boxes so your boss can check his boxes
so your boss can check her boxes
so his boss
her boss
can deliver a pat on the back

so you can get a pat on the back
with all the force of a golf clap

check dem boxes so you can prove you did something this year
so you can earn your paycheck
so you can climb that ladder
so you can check different boxes
on a different list

Carytown, Richmond, VA.

A friend of mine recently told me that his wife saw a yet-to-be-opened bagel shop on Cary Street. Well today I saw it for myself in Carytown on my way from the bank to the farmers' market.

Jaks Bagels & Deli is expecting to open late October, and I'm pretty pumped. All you have to do is search my site for "bagel" and you'll get the picture. They're not likely to supplant my craving for porkroll, egg, and cheese sandwiches on poppy seed bagels that only Cupertino's can fulfill (in the Richmond area), but having a bagel shop closer to home has me pretty excited.

I laughed so hard at this I almost wet my pants:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2yD4yDsiP4?fs=1&hl=en_US&hd=1&w=640&h=385]
(via jnonfiction)

As of today it seems you can listen to/download two tracks for free from the upcoming Sufjan Stevens album, The Age of Adz.

Check it:

http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer.swf/album=4246425639/size=venti/bgcol=FFFFFF/linkcol=000000/

Tonight marks the start of the 2010 season of the National Football League, and last year's champions, the New Orleans Saints, face Brett Favre and the Vikings. I'll be sitting in class for at least the first quarter, but I'm excited for the return of my favorite sport, even if it looks like my New York Football Giants are in for a mixed season...again.