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Posts Tagged ‘seafood’

Uncategorized, whole foods

February 26, 2009

Choking Down Lunch at Byram’s

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With the weather so nice on Thursday, I took my bike for a ride down Broad Street on lunch break. Being an adventurous sort, I stopped at that mysterious anachronism known as Byram’s Lobster House , thought twice – briefly, and locked up my bike and went in. If you haven’t been inside, you need to see Byram’s interior. It’s like a Twilight Zone time warp. The web was abuzz on Thursday with the launch of EatingRichmond.com, and here I was sitting down to dine alone at Byram’s.

This story revolves around a cataclysmic event, so I don’t want to waste your time setting the scene. I know from experience, those of you that comment might zero in on the drama irregardless of context, so let’s just get on with it shall we? Um… no. On second thought, I’m gonna linger on stuff and you’re gonna like it. Now. Let’s get on with that.

Sitting in my booth, listening in on a few conversations from the scattered tables of geriatric diners, I Twittered something and played Brickbreaker on my phone. The waiter explained the seafood specials and, when I said I was vegetarian but ate fish, suggested I order the $15 seafood lasagna, or if not that, the beef. How about the specials? “We have a soft-shell crab sandwich with TWO fried crabs on it, with fries and coleslaw for $9.95.” He restated the TWO crabs part, so I went with that and a small order of calamari.

Before leaving, the waiter asked where I was from, disbelieving my response and walked way puzzled about this out of place patron with too many questions and no drink order, not even lemon in his water (!). While waiting, I tried to soak up Byram’s considerable atmosphere. It’s astounding. Really. Go see it. Love it. Hate it. No matter. The place probably should have gone under a decade or two ago, but somehow it persists. So pay your respects before it’s too late.

The calamari came and it was better than expected. Rubbery? A little. But otherwise, satisfactory: non-uniform ringlets and tender tendrils. The breading was heavy, but c’mon. I adjusted my expectations, because I’d imagined disgusting filth covered with a thick layer of dust, and Byram’s blew that image away (at first).

When my soft-shelled crab sammich came out, it looked about as ordinary as could be. Frozen fries, watery mass-produced slaw, sesame seed hamburger bun with tomato, lettuce, and two glistening and darkly golden brown fried crabs that looked like misshapen bloomin’ onions or beer battered something or others. Soft shell crabs are gonna be funny-lookin’ no matter what, so I didn’t scrutinize it. Although it was my choice to have this delicacy sandwich, I looked at the plate with some remorse. But, I hit the thing with hot sauce and a light coating of tartar sauce and went to work.

A couple bites in, I remembered why I found this special item so alluring: I very nearly like soft-shell crabs, but not quite. For an ovo-lacto-pesce vegetarian, this is about as carnivorous as food can be. I’m eating the whole animal, crunching through exoskeleton, slurping up innards, totally indiscriminate chomping. Sure, it’s efficient. No crab is wasted. It’s partially gross and sexy at the same time. Maybe I was out of my mind expecting a sexy delicacy eating experience at Byram’s. These thoughts ran through my head as I worked hard to enjoy ripping through sinews and fins and unidentifiable oozing organs. Whatever, it’s just a crab.

During one bite, I went to pull the sandwich away from my mouth and met some resistance. My mouth was full and chewing, but something was still attached between the sandwich in my hand and my mouthful of food. As I pulled harder, a bit of food started coming out of my mouth and I crossed my eyes trying to see the culprit crab appendage. Bit by bit, my mouthful was pressing against the backs of my teeth and trying to make an exit as I tried to put the sandwich down. I froze when I noticed that a long black hair was dangling from my mouth and bits of crab were tangled up in it and hanging against my chin.

Like a fish caught on a hook

This is no big deal, I thought. Just a harmless pube. I’ll work around this and keep eating. And I tugged on the hair, pulling it taut, unable to dislodge it from my mouth and the food therein. At this point, I couldn’t decide if I should spit out my food or swallow it. Then my gag reflex kicked in, forcing the issue: food in or out – decide! Now I’m chewing to get the hair dislodged and I catch a glimpse of it; thick and wiry, about six inches of it in my hand and the rest between my teeth and tangled around my tongue. Spitting out food would be conspicuous, so I clutch my mouth, trying to hold the food in, gagging some more, pulling on the hair, huffing and puffing through my nose. Inch by inch it’s coming loose as I swallow bits of chewed food, but the sensation of the long limp bristle on my lips and halfway down my throat is nauseating me to the brink. With my hand over my mouth, I’m struggling to swallow, resisting vomiting, and I can feel my throat closing and my face turning red.

When I looked up from the debacle, I assumed I’d made a scene, but no one was staring at me. Before me on the plate was a 10-12 inch long mostly straight black filament, presumably a hair, with bits of chewed crab bound to it, and about a third of the soft-shell crab sandwich, fries, etc. I can’t catch my breath with a seized up throat, stomach tied in knots, blood simmering behind my eyeballs. Can’t bring myself to touch the fries or imagine eating. Surprising, cuz I’m not easily grossed out. The server was busy taking orders and busing tables, but it felt like time for me to get out of there, into the fresh air, and leave the stifling feeling of asphyxiation behind.

I moved the hair to a little plate where lemon wedges had been. I tell the server that I don’t mean to cause trouble (I really mean that, yall – just because I get off the beaten path often, doesn’t mean I want to get flat tires all the time), but there was an issue that made me stop eating. He was stunned by the sight of hair, said understood, apologized and took the little hair tapas to the front house manager, and then to the kitchen, probably to raise hell.

My server came back, apologizing profusely. He explained that no one in the back has hair that long, so they don’t know what caused this mishap. He took the sandwich off the bill as I rose and went to the front to pay. I left an undisclosed tip (sorry, exhibitionist tippers) and paid for my appetizer and left making small talk on the way out. The server was happy to be an hour or so from quitting time and I said I’d probably bring some coworkers back sometime.

Outiside, getting on my bike, I can’t decide if this is a good or bad omen for EatingRichmond.com, given that it took place on the site’s launch date. Regardless, I thought you all would enjoy this little story, at the expense of my dignity. For the rest of the day, I felt mildly queezy and eventually put the event out of my mind. Of course, now it’s immortalized, just for yall.

Not passing judgment from this experience. Maybe one day I’ll go back. Eating out is a roll of the dice, full of surprises.

fish, food

November 28, 2008

Whole Fish (Baked in Salt) pt. 2

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Too often, Thanksgiving takes us through familiar culinary paces, a tired turkey routine and other half-hearted traditions. A total bore, that I usually eat too much of all the same. But not this time. While watching my in-laws reenact the usual dishes, I pursued my own inspiration by attempting salt crusted whole fish for the first time. Check out the previous post showing my preparations for the event.


This pictorial story could serve as a “how to” on salt crust fish baking, but before you go out and mimic my technique, read closely for the many details that I wish had gone differently (and the numerous links in the previous post). In the end, I was glad to have given this a shot and I’m sure I’ll be doing it again soon. Next time, I want to use a larger fish and a larger pan. Two at once in a small pan is a tough scenario for a first-timer. The lighting for these shots was awful (and flash doesn’t help food fotos much – see sauce pic below), but thanks to Karen for taking pictures while my hands were covered with salt, oil, and fishiness.

I stuffed them with lemons, rosemary, thyme, garlic cloves, peppercorns, fennel seeds, and as many olives as I could fit in each cavity. That’s the Royal Dorade on top and the Branzino on bottom. Both are just over a pound. In case I needed to pick them up out of the salt, I put down a little parchment cut-out like a fish beneath each of these guys. They got slathered in the sauce (described below) before burial.

I almost didn’t have enough salt to cover the two fish. In retrospect, I don’t think I needed that layer on the bottom, at least not that thick.

While the mound baked for 30 mins, I stirred my olive oil together with fresh lemon juice, parsley, (no sage), rosemary, and thyme, capers, garlic clove, a few dashes of white wine vinegar, and some lemon zest. Actually, I did this over night, but I adjusted the juice/oil ratio to get the flavor right at the last minute. Karen says it was almost as good as D’aqua.

The finished product doesn’t look much different than it did when it went in. One recipe said to cook until the salt turns golden brown, but that makes no sense. It’s 15 minutes per pound of fish (at the most). I stuck a thin bladed knife in to test the temp against my lip, a la Eric Ripert. That’s the hole there. To my surprise, the salt was rock hard, just as the recipes say. The knife was HOT. And the edge of the salt was in fact golden brown. (for those cooking along with me, I used egg whites in the top layer of salt, but I hear you don’t have to)

After hacking through the scalding hot igloo made of salt, I found these two fishies. They were super hot and it was a real pain to excavate them without getting salt on the meat. The high sides of the pan didn’t help. I’m sure it gets easier with practice, but… next time less salt and a bigger pan with low sides.

The skin comes right off, either with the salt or after you take the salt off. One time, on Iron Chef, Bobby Flay put parchment on both sides to make clean up and plating quicker and easier. I think that’s cheating, but maybe I’m just determined to get it right according to the traditional method before incorporating shortcuts.

I coulda swore I buried a couple fish in this here pile of salt. Seriously though, this is what was left after I transferred them to another plate where Karen and I could de-bone without four pounds of salt in our way.

Here’s the dish as it went to the table. That’s the dorade in the front. We decided we liked it best (firm “chicken-y” meat that’s a little sweet and nuanced). The branzino (at the top of that pic) was very mild and maybe slightly overcooked. Perhaps it didn’t need as long as the dorade, but they were both buried and resurrected at the same time (another miscalculation). The olives from the fish cavity were extra succulent. Both fish, as predicted, were unbelievably moist. Hey! Ya know what that dish of fish needs? “Good quali-y oli-oil,” says Jamie Oliver. Don’t mind if I do. Happy un-Turkey Day, yall.


Moments after this picture was taken, Jasper soiled three diapers in five minutes and everyone got a little less hungry.

fish, food, holidays

November 26, 2008

Whole Fish (Baked in Salt) on Turkey Day

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Every year, my in-laws get spiral cut ham for Thanksgiving dinner and I’m generally left to fend for myself. To make the meal special for this ovo-lacto-pesca vegetarian, I decided to try the salt crusted method of cooking fish. I’ve done a lot of planning and gathering of supplies. This right here is basically all I need to bring with me to the in-law’s house tomorrow:


If you don’t know what I’m talking about when I say “salt crusted,” just picture a fish buried in a big mound of salt, kinda like you would bake a fish fillet in a sealed parchment/foil pouch (and it steams while it’s in there). They say there’s nothing like the moistness of salt crusted fish. Here are a few sites that have inspired me so far (some of them have pics of the bizarre-ness):

My first big decision was to pick out a fish. But, since you want the freshest possible fish for this preparation, it’s hard to know who’s gonna have what on the day before Thanksgiving. I called PT Hastings. I visited Tan-A. And I was prepared to go to that awesome place at Hull and Belt Blvd (can’t remember the name). But, I wound up going with the sure thing: the otherwise prohibitively expensive Yellow Umbrella on Patterson (price was less of an barrier considering the occasion, and the fact that they speak English – but for red snapper or rock fish/striped bass, hit up Tan-A). It was really an easy choice, since Matthew Tlusty (of Limani fame) has sorta endorsed the Yellow Umbrella as the best/freshest fishmonger in Richmond (supplied by the same distributor as Limani – RIP). I went with a Branzino (lupe de mar, the one in the back) and a Royal Dorado (the fatty in the front – which I can’t find any info about online).

The only other time I’ve had fish baked in salt was Branzino at D’aqua in DC and we liked it a great deal. One of the best parts was this sauce they drizzled over top of the meat when plating. At Karen’s request, I’ll be trying to duplicate that sauce. All we know is that it had EVOO, lemon juice, lemon rind, and herbs. I’ll be adding some capers in my rendition and maybe a couple other things. The most important component was surely “good quality oli-oil,” as Jamie Oliver says). So, since it’s a special occasion, I splurged on the pictured bottle of Lucini from Kroger. It’s really fruity and peppery, almost as good as my favorite EVOO from California. I’m so glad that it lived up to the hype, because there was a wide variety of brands and prices at the store (including some Rachel Ray yummo crap).

I’ll be cramming the insides of the fish with lemon slices, fresh thyme, garlic cloves, parsley, rosemary, olives, peppercorns, fennel seeds, and probably some crushed fennel seeds. Hmmm, maybe that’s too many of the ideas from those links above. It’s up in the air, really. This is a “before post.” I’ll bring my camera to the spiral ham fest and amuse myself by documenting my cooking process.

Come on back later in the week! (here’s Part 2)
———————–

UPDATE:

“Royal Dorado” (or Tsipoura or Aurata/Orata or Gilthead seabream) is extremely moist with a mild sweet flavor, firm and flaky flesh. For way too much info about this fish, click here, or here for a recipe.

bacchus, calamari, food, jasper, skate wing

April 28, 2008

Bacchus: Seafood Supper and Six Pounds of Satan

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I don’t usually revisit restaurants to amend my “reviews,” but tonight was an exception. I’ve done it before with Cajun Bangkok, but I didn’t think my Bacchus brunch experience needed updating (even after the 2nd visit). As a weekend treat, I made reservations at Bacchus for dinner, telling Karen, “let’s order whatever we want and just enjoy the experience.”

For the past three years, I’ve avoided dining at Bacchus because it seems too popular despite its high prices. Brandon at Style was puzzled by the place’s success as well, and she’s probably not as apt to make superficial judgments of clustering bourgeois bunches of bistro diners. But, the throngs turned me off, because I assumed that they were seeking status and lacked discriminating palates. On this night, I planned to shelve my predispositions and accompany my wife and child for a meal, regardless of the quality or value of the meal.

After a slew of preventative measures, we successfully pacified our three-week old Jasper and started pushing him down Meadow Street for our 6:30pm reservation. We passed a few cop cars pulled over with flashing lights and crossed busy streets with some trepidation. Once inside, we were seated by the window at a booth bathed in sunlight. The helpful server stowed our stroller with ease and we put Jasper’s carseat up against the window with the hood up, so he could enjoy the relative darkness.

The meal started with a bang: Karen’s first G&T in ten months and a rusty nail for me. She was loopy after two sips. We ordered the house-cured salmon gravlax to start and proceeded into an animated discussion of our past stresses that once caused us to seek out these very same beverages back in the pre-preganancy days. The drinks were strong, satisfying, and cathartic, and Jasper didn’t stir once. A toast: To new stresses.

Somewhere in the middle of our emancipation celebration we were served a beautiful plate of salmon slivers, swimming in olive oil and herbs. It was terrific, if a bit salty. A pretty good $6 plate for nibbling along side our biscuits and olive oil. (this reminds me that I asked for butter with my rolls at my last brunch visit with Bookstore Piet. He mentioned this detail in his entry, but he didn’t mention that olive oil is present on the table, typical of any Italian place. So, I don’t mean to correct Piet’s critique, because these seemingly home-baked rolls are crying out for butter – not olive oil. Add in the circumstance of brunch and you’ve got an airtight case for butter over olive oil. Anyhow, enough about that. Billy Bread would be an improvement, but then every customer would compare Bacchus to Edo’s, and that’s some stiff competition.)

The Edo’s comparision continues because we ordered items that were similar to dishes we’ve had there. Also, the menu featured many of the same Mediterranean items found on the brunch menu, with a heavy focus on seafood. For entrees, Karen and I got the skate wing with Virginia morrells and cream sauce, as well as the rigatoni with stir-fried calamari and of course. At Edo’s we always get the calamari and we’ve recently tried skate wing for the first time there as well.

Karen’s skate wing was beautiful to look at, laid on top of a pile of flavorful mashed potatoes and perfect tender-crisp veggies. All around was a shallow moat of cream sauce made deep tan with several dark and sinister looking super-contoured morrell mushrooms. We both loved this dish. It was pricey at $24, but we ate up every bite and mopped up every drop of sauce. Where Edo’s skate wing was oversalted, this one was right on, only slightly mushy in a few spots. We were both surprised at ourselves for discovering this new fish (new for us). We were first exposed to skate during a fantastic episode of Jamie Oliver’s reality food show “Jamie’s Kitchen” (one of my fave reality cooking shows) and now two successful face-to-face encounters. Please, no one tell me that the skate is a being that should inspire my empathy and not my appetite.

We wound up with the calamari pasta because we’d already chosen one creamy dish and everything else we wanted was creamy as well (and I have this OCD insistence on a variety of flavors and styles of dishes whenever). The dish was an enormous steaming pile of noodles, curlicue squid parts, and an inch deep pool of buttery sauce. The sea-creatures were tender and not rubbery. There were loads of purple tentacles on the plate, which would delight of my fellow foodies. The pasta was appropriately cooked and the sauce was light but briny. Nonetheless, it didn’t really hold my attention. Karen skipped the solid ingredients and used a spoon to drain the sauce pool.

By the end, we both fessed up that we’re not really squid people. Calamari is fun for us if there’s a light and crunchy batter and even then, we’ll focus on the sauce (marinera at Edo’s, tangy Asian broth at Mom Siam, and Thai chili garlic at Cajun Bangkok). We wound up taking more than half of it home. At $16, it was kinda high for a bowl of noodles and squid, but on par with the range on the menu.

By this point, a group of dark gray clouds were gathering overhead, worrying Karen half to death (she’d only had one drink to my two). Jasper still slept soundly and I was 100% certain that we’d him the eight blocks home before the downpour began. The server, a total sweetheart, offered to drive us home. I paid the tab and we ducked out. Pleasant surprise: The drinks were under $7 each and they were strong. It all added up to an above average expenditure for us, but we found a dish we loved, singled out one that we don’t need to try again, and I may have discovered my new walking distance watering hole of choice. By the way, a lot of people have told me in the past, that the prices at Bacchus can be moderated by ordering half-portions of pasta. I’d seen those on the menu in the window, but they weren’t on there now. Hmmmm…

On the way back, we passed more cops pulling people over. We narrowly avoided the rain, but Jasper did start to wake up from the bumpy ride. Once inside, he started into his newfound shrieks at unholy decibels. Karen was biding her time on nursing him, waiting for the G&T to clear out of her system. As I bounced and shushed him, I got an idea to try a new calming experiment, even though Jasper was summoning demons from the depths with his ear-shattering siren sounds. I broke out a brand new pacifier and dropped it into the gapping hole in Jasper’s beet red face. Wow, did that stun him. The audacity of a mere mortal to disturb baby Jasper’s transformation from human larve into six pounds of satan. I can still feel the wrath coming out of those eyes as my ears recovered from the shock of his guttural screams. This was Jasper’s first experience with a pacifier and it worked (for about 15 seconds).

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