Happy New Year!

Yes, we're alive and well at Gastrologica, but taking a well deserved break from all the media exposure. I'm sure it hasn't gone unnoticed that we haven't recorded a damn thing in about a month, and the only articles I've written are restaurant reviews.

As I've posted everywhere (but ironically not on my own site), I have been ebbing my time away at my new job, which has resulted in devoting inhuman efforts to getting things straightened out and up and running. I now run an MIS department which has a lot of work on our plate and very little staff. That staff would be me.

So, until I hire a couple of techs, it's all up to me to keep everything running like a well oiled network. And if know anything, you know oil should never be anywhere near a network. Maybe that's my problem.

I want to thank everyone for making 2006 a downright blast! Our podcast took off and opened up some great opportunities for both myself and Dan, and now we're going to squander it by gliding along inertially until all interest fades.

No, seriously, we will be recording our next shows after the New Year when things settle down for both of us. I would also like to announce the semi-permanent addition to Gastro: Rob Schaffer aka Bob Vance, Vance Refrigeration aka Psycho Cop. But please don't tell him because he doesn't know. I usually just pour him a few drinks and he integrates his way into the show just like a natural born Gastro Host.

Thank you also for being loyal readers and bearing with me and my capricious lifestyle, I look forward to giving you food for thought in the new year. And more crappy puns like that!

Things and Stuff (and Junk)

So I had been looking for a job, and now I have a new job which has been another significant commitment of time. Dan has been ramping up for the holiday season, and tonight he catered a Hanukkah dinner for 150. I was proud he used my noodle kugel recipe, so that's cool. From what I understand, nobody died and that is a positive development.

We'll, of course, be covering Christmas food and other hearty fare to stave off the frigid LA winters. Rob has become a semi-permanent fixture for the shows, so that means there's three unworkable schedules that will conspire against us.

Birthday Celebration and Other Divine Rituals of Pain

I celebrated my 38th birthday a few weeks back, and to mitigate the pain I cooked a dinner for both me and Nayan. Her birthday is two weeks after mine and I won't go into details of her longevity, although she has stuck it out much longer than I have.

So, I figured a stuffed pork loin and lobster would cure our fear of impending doom. We took a break from choosing cemetery plots to stop by Whole Foods and (ignoring their guilt ridden marketing ploys) picked out a slender tenderloin, and several random ingredients for dinner, including a couple of frozen Australian lobster tails.

Usually, I'm a purist when I come to stabbing a lobster and throwing the half dead victim into a boiling pot of water. This time, I grabbed a 2-Pac of Lobster, which is already, well, chopped off the body, but otherwise unadulterated.

So. Lobster is a cop out, right? It's easy. So easy in fact, it can be cooked by the most criminally retarded among us. The way I prepare is easy, but a two step process, and I didn't do it right!.

First, you par-boil the lobster, then you grill it the rest of the way. If you were to fully cook the lobster, then grill the pieces, it would get tough and charred and the quality would burned away. So you only partially steam it in the water, then throw the remains on the grill. If you undercook it like I did, all the meat will stick to the shell and you'll have to scrape it out with your fingertip.



Scraping lobster from its dead carcass at the dinner table is hardly a regal way to enjoy this luxury item, so make sure you cook it well.

The centerpiece (really!) of the evening was a butterflied, stuffed pork loin. I sliced it spirally, unraveling a sheet of delicate pork with my adept carving hand. I chopped up finely a trio of mushrooms: porcini, crimini and portabello. Then, I sauteed them until nice and brownish.

But I didn't stop there. I spread the mushrooms through the sheet of pork and overlaid it all with a heaping mound of bleu cheese, roquefort in fact. I rolled it back up like a cigar (or a pork joint, if you will).



Instead of tying it with simple butcher's twine, I bound it with bacon. We will all surely die from this. I spirally blanketed the cylinder with a generous shroud of bacon, tied up with butcher's twine.



Serve with a bib. Shave truffles. Garnish with gold flake. Live it up.

Bradley Ogden

If you grew up like I grew up, you would understand the joke when I say I keep calling this place Ogden Nash, when it is really called Bradley Ogden [Nash].



The restaurant is warm and beige-mica tempered. It's inviting on the inside, but demure and obtuse from the casino. You'd be more successful spelunking the Hyperion Sewage Treatment Plant than finding Ogden among the chirping, dinging slot machines manipulated by wheezing, coughing blue hair old hags pulling those slots like a desperate prom date yanking her date's hoo-haa like she's starting a lawnmower.



We passed through the unassuming door into the restaurant, and the din of fetid desperation dissolved into the background. Once in, there was not even static background noise. Ogden is minimal but artistic. Brightly highlighted panoramic seascapes hug each wall, compartmentalized in each booth.



Service was friendly and cute. I don't know her name, so I dub her 'Service'. The first course tease, AKA bread, was a plain buttery roll, a savory blueberry muffin (as opposed to the overexposed and overrated pinkberry trough of tangy sludge) and a competently spiced roll crowned with salt, fennel seed, curry and pepper.



The staff was accommodating and sexy. If those two adjectives don't seem congruous, it's only because I'm a guy, I factor in sex appeal to everything when a girl is involved. I liked her boobs. This girl spritely rattled off the highlights and specials. I decided I would have the chestnut soup and my wife ordered the blue cheese souffle.

What? Don't look at me like that. I was staring at her boobs. Diligently. I was reaming through her flimsy blouse with a searing intensity. Wifey knew the piece of garbage she married, and she's cool with it. She'd rather be married to a guy to salivates over women than flitting around the city checking out other men, like SOME guys in *cough, tomcruise, cough,* LA.

What was I talking about? Oh right, breasts. She described the specials, which all sounded breasts. I was fairly hungry, so for my entree, I ordered the 24 hour braised Duroc pork breasts. Sorry, pork shoulder.

She took our order and walked away. We sat and talked about stuff and things. Way in the back of my mind, I was thinking about them. You know what I'm talking about. THOSE.

Job related small talk, which is what we were jabbering about between my taking pictures, became next to impossible:

"Oh yes, your patient has a bratty kid?" Inflated, sweaty cleavage.
"Sucks, doesn't it? I'd love to have a customer that looked like they had unlimited funding." Plunging neckline.

"Well, yeah, the mojito could be more tart." Seriously, it could have been.

That aside, every shred of food was brilliant. My soup was rich but bright, and the compliment of seared foie gras, duck croquette..more on that in a minute. Mine was good, but hers blew me away.



Maytag Blue cheese souffle. Goddamn great. Not punchy and sharp, but mellow, nutty and regal. We got two 1"x1" baby souflees, with an accompaniment of endive, crumbled blue cheese (this had punch), candied walnuts and honey. Perfection.

My soup was a little sweeter than I imagined. It was a hearty puree, but light in mouth texture. It came with a couple of goodies as well. The seared foie gras was a nice addition to the bright taste, as well as the duck croquette, which would have been salty on its own. There were also some sauteed Hedge Hog mushrooms thrown in for extra texture and nuttiness.



Now, this is always in interesting phenomena. I go to pee, and when I come back, there's an orgami arrangement of what was my crumpled pile of napkin.



What is it with the napkin fairy? Every restaurant has its own unique way of elaborately folding and tucking it so when I get back I have a piece of art sitting in front of me.

For our entrees, her scallops were rich and sweet, but I can only eat a few scallops before they overwhelm me.



I horded my braised pork. Tender and dripping with flavor, it had a great ostentatious -yet stable- flavor. Shredded apples pinpointed a semi-sweet contrast. At first, we both thought we'd be a bit hungry when we left, but each entree was uniquely delicious, that I hardly realized I was starting to get full.




Somebody, me, made the mistake of saying who we were and what we were doing. Not a big secret since I was taking pictures of everything from the coffee service to the bathroom. Evidently, being a food writer and photographer buys you a one-way ticket to a grand tour of the kitchen and several desserts.



What cordiality! I chatted with Executive Chef Bryan Ogden, son of Bradley (and Slayer of Tiamot the Mendicant) for a few minutes, hung out on the line and pastry station. Got a tour of the cold walk-in and the frozen walk-in.



Swung by the griddle and the wood fired grill. Everything was immaculate: they work clean. I believe in working clean, scrubbing up as you go along, preparing the meal.



When we got back to the table, we were going to get the check and move on. Nope, they insisted on giving us a few desserts. The first one was a duo: a terrine of pumpkin pudding topped with pie crisps and a spiced pumpkin cake. The cake was a holiday inspired pastry that was rich and moist, accompanied by unsweetened, tart cranberries. The Pumpkin pudding was dense with flavor, but light in texture, much lighter than a pumpkin pie. I loved the crumble on top.





I was joking at how stuffed we were, but probably had to 'suffer' through a petit fours. Just as we were anticipating the check, sure enough, they served us petit fours: a shot glass of butterscotch pudding topped with vanilla bean whipped cream and praline.



Holy Mother Of God. I didn't think I could even take a bite of this, but how did they know butterscotch was my favorite pudding? I was compelled to eat the entire thing, and although it wasn't photographically documented, I rammed my tongue in the glass and licked it clean.