The P's have it!

Steve would not let me go through the Meat Month without visiting the San Francisco staple: The House of Prime Rib.


This place is amazing. It has been in business since 1949, and you walk in and it's just like you walked about 50 years back in time. I think I saw the Cleaver family leave just as we arrived. Dark wood trim everywhere, huge old wine room with probably 1000 bottles, and a nice old wooden bar. And you gotta sit at the bar and have a martini or a manhattan, which are served in a tall glass with a shaker top so that you can refill your empty martini glass at will. I shared a Manhattan with Maria and had a sip of Steve’s gin Martini and both were superb. As I like to say,”Good drinking is the start of a good evening…or a good morning…hell, just get me a drink already”.
This place was really cool and the menu is hilarious. It's really just a opposing faced single page guide, to tell you which cut of prime rib you might want. You are getting prime rib, see…you’re at the bloody house of prime rib. If you want anything, and I mean anything else, why are you here? Did you not see the large red glowing sign outfront? So you really don't even need a menu. Ok, I did notice they served a fish of some kind but please, that’s just silly. I think that when somebody orders fish they actually sneak a few slices of prime rib inside the fish somehow. They have 3-4 different cuts of prime rib, and we all went for the "House cut" which is about a 12 ounce slab of meat. The chef pushes this ridiculous meat cart around the room from table to table...what I've coined "The Meatinburg"...you'll see...and he cuts up the meat, and doles out the sides you've ordered, which in my case were mashed potatoes with gravy and creamed spinach (not a fan of the spinach…seriously, I’ve been a friggin vegetarian for 17 years and not once, NOT ONCE have I even heard of cream spinach, but I start eating meat and all of a sudden it’s everywhere. WTF??? No wonder meat eaters thing vegetarians are crazy, they think all we eat are things like creamed spinach all day. Yeeeech!). I got lucky and got the cut with the rib on it. Oh yeah baby. OK, so then he puts the plate in front of you. Now I'm staring at a re-F'ing-diculous slab of beef in the center of my plate, a big dallop of mashed potatoes with crater full of gravy and some creamed spinach...which I still don't get, but whatever, I’m willing to move past it for now, but I want some explanation from you meatitarians. Then they pour this sauce over the whole plate and it's like a little meat island in a little meat juice lake. I'll admit at this point I'm a little reluctant, but I deal with the astounding presence of the meat slab sitting in front of me. Ok, now I'm ready to dig in..."but wait!" says the waiter...appropriately...HAHAHAHA. NO? moving on: And he ladles on some more sauce over the top, and tops it all off with yorkshire pudding...on TOP of the meat. OK, this is wacko. I'm thinking that I need to wait another few minutes just in case he has to pile a stick of butter on the top, or sprinkle some jujubes on my mashed potatoes, but no, he's done. And here it is:



Well, and again I've never had prime rib in my life...this was unbelievably delicious. Although I have had all kinds of fancy meat that I found to be cooked perfectly, delicious for what it was, a technical achievement worthy of praise...I loved the prime rib. The meat was soft, velvety, and melted away when chewed. Oh, and it was blood red. When people talk about read meat, they are talking prime rib. Because this is not grilled like most every other meat I've ever had it doesn't have a tough grilled outside layer...it's red all the way thru to the very edge. They actually cook these things in pounds of rocksalt, so the salt flavor permeates the meat a little, and the salt keeps all the juices inside so the meat is tendered when cooked, and juicy up until the moment it lands on your plate, and in your gullet. I ate this entire thing in what felt like a matter of minutes, but it was probably longer, I was just in meat heaven. I now have my 2 favorites: pastrami and prime rib…interestingly I have a love of the p’s.

The famous Meatinburg:



and the holy meat that it contains:




That's not a light, that's a halo people.

Vegas baby, Vegas.

Ohhhh yes. So, it was not initially intended, but the universe handed me a gift. Somehow a "boys trip" to Vegas intersected squarely with the Meat Month. And by "boy" I don't mean adolescent male, I mean douchebag. That's right, there was a strong db crew there last weekend, and the shenanigans began even before landing. Somehow we made friends with the stewardess. Flight attendant? Come on, it's stewardess in this case and we all know it. In fact, any flight going to Vegas should be required to call the flight staff stewardesses, even if they are male. Just my .02. So we managed to not only drink a few rounds on the plane, but Brandi, our favourite stewardess, refused to take any drink coupons or tips from us for the second round...which we didn't even order, and then as we stepped off the plane she handed Mario all the drink coupons that had been used on the flight, a big ol' stack of free drinks. Let's just say we'll be flying Southwest for a while. I'll keep the shenanigan stories to a minimum, but I will say fun was had by all. Now, one of the guys we were meeting up with is from New York, originally from Cali, and he had been craving IN-N-OUT. So we decided to head on over and get some grub. UNFORTUNATELY, they had just closed (I thought nothing closed in Vegas?!?) so we went with a backup plan and headed across the street to Jack In the Box. I'm calling first lapse in judgment right here. Next lapse was ordering what Mike suggested: A double cheeseburger. Mother of god was that thing disgusting. I mean really really bad. Who eats these things? I had enough of a struggle to keep the 1/4 of it that I ate down, and ended up throwing the rest away. It was a good college try, but I had some backup tacos that did not disappoint, so I was good. Those Jackinthebox tacos must just be horrible for you, but they have a certain trashy goodness about them, but you must absolutely use the hot sauce, with out they are dry and tasteless. The meat itself, if it is meat, is described in one of my previous posts. Alright, fast food done for the trip, thankfully.

That night we stayed with our friend that works in Vegas, Steve. He works out there during the week, but lives in the east bay, so normally he's back in the bay on the weekends, except for occasions such as this. OK, now I'll rant about the Fing TSA a little bit here. I brought in my checked in luggage all of the makings for bloody maries. Not the vodka and mix, because I knew the first stop of the night after we got off the plane was the liquor store, but all the little stuff...lemon pepper, celery salt, A1 sauce, and Worcestershire sauce, and some of Maria's bloody mary beans, which add a nice vinegar and pepper KICK! OK, she doesn't call them "bloody mary beans" but let's get real here...does anyone use these beans for anything else? I mean I'm sure they would be great as a meal, but in a bloody mary they are stellar. So there it is. Well, turns out the TSA decided that they needed to open up and search my bag. How do I know this? Well when we got to steve's that night and I pulled out my jacket from the bag I noticed that it was...wet. MMMMMMM, yes, wet. Not a good sign. I proceed to empty the entire contents of my bag to find that all of the screw tops on all of the spices and lids of the sauces had been loosened. But of course, this can happen which is why you place things in ziploc bags right? Well ziploc bags don't work to well as a secondary seal when some toadeater TSA employee searches your shite and leaves the FING BAGS OPEN!! Seriously? I was none to happy, mostly because I wanted to make myself a nice beverage in the morning. The main problem was that the here-to-fore completely full Worcestershire was now completely empty...it's contents now marinating all of my clothes, the bag, and the lovely little note the TSA left explaining that my bag had been searched. Ahhh, marinated clothes. Well, thankfully Steve had a washer and dryer, and I made bloodies the next morning sans the Worchestershire. All was A-OK.

After a few bloodies that morning we decided that since it was noon it would be a good time to get some breakfast. I say "WE" here, because I'm being polite. I did not need to go anywhere near food for another 6-8 hours because I still had that dumbbell of a double cheeseburger sitting at the bottom of my stomach and I could hear my stomach yelling at me, "What the F IS THIS thing?" And just plain refusing to digest any of it. I think it was waiting for lab results before proceeding. Anyway, 'we' decided to go to the Original Pancake House for breakfast. Yes, the chain, but at least it's not fast food. There I ordered food: a side of hashbrowns and coffee. I figure either the Irish in me would start digesting the hashbrowns, or the coffee would speed things up down below, if you know what I'm saying. Oh, and actually, since it's meat month, I had to try some bacon.

Now on the topic of bacon. Everybody said, "Ooooh bacon, gotta try bacon, don't know how you can't eat bacon, god I love frigin bacon". Really? I mean OK, this bacon here was actually a thicker cut than I had before, so it was pretty good, but definitely not earth shattering in any way. Yeah, I like the juicy fatty salty, singed flavor, but really? I just don't see the draw. I guess some people just really like pig anyway they can get it. Hello, SPAM anyone? Alright. So bacon, the best I've had this month, but I still don't see why everybody is so ga-ga over it.

That night when I was laundering the marinade out of my clothes we decided to go to a good steak house for dinner Saturday night. Bill, from NYC, found a Mario Batali restaurant called Carnevino and he had already setup reservations prior to the trip cause he's one of those smarty types. For those of you, like me, who had never heard of this eye-talian before, he's some famous food network chef type. I just went on Bill's recommendation, and let me say he did not disappoint. First, the restaurant ages all of the meats on site. They also use only organic meat, no growth hormones, no anti-biotics, all from Colorado. Well, due to the HIGH price of the meals here, and in honor of meat month, and really, cause we all wanted to try everything on the menu, we decided to share everything family style. This is in fact a suggestion of the restaurant, and when they carve up the meat at your table they do so in small pieces that can be shared. Pretty smart. We got, collectively, a few appetizers like a seafood pasta that had half a lobster, so I got to try that for the first time in my life. Lobster is good, light and buttery, simliar to the crab I remember catching with my grandpa in the San Juan Islands, but a little lighter in flavor...a bit more airy. Quite velvety in texture, and it just crumbled away in my mouth. Good stuff. We also got a dried meat sampler with pancetta, beef and pork loin, and mortadella. The loins were quite good, and ridiculously thinly sliced, but a nice hint of salt. Like a very high end beef jerky. I also ordered a salad and some green beans with pork, because I felt we should have a little bit of greens with the onslaught of meat.

For dinner we got the porterhouse, the ribeye, I ordered the lamb chops, and Bill, mr. adventure, ordered the sweetbreads....which are neither sweet nor bread. In fact they smelled like chicken mc'nuggets, and tasted a bit like chef's salty balls....well, what I imagine chef's salty balls to taste like. Alright that doesn't really help does it? The outside texture was like anything breaded...namely bits of bread, and the inside, texture wise, actually reminded me a little of seafood texture. Now "seafood" is a large target, so the texture was more like calamari with different layers that had structure, but movement between the layers as you bit. The layers weren't as distinct because this is afterall just a gland, and not a whole limb. They were OK, but there's nothing that makes me want to have them again. The porterhouse and the ribeye were fantastic. We got everything cooked medium-rare and the color was just a beautiful deep redish brown. And the edges of the meat, due to the onsite drying and the salt, pepper, and rosemary rub were charred just the right amount. Crispy on the outer edges, tender in the middle, perfectly prepared, and really quite delicious. No sauces needed. The carving was pretty cool, in that this is something I've never, ever seen done before. Remember, I've been a vegetarian for 17 years, and when I was a kid we didn't have the money to go to places like this, and really who would take there kid to a place like this? The porterhouse left a HUUUUUUGE friggin captain caveman bone, which at the end of the meal, Steve gnawed on until all the meat was gone.



My lamb chops. Again, a first for me, I've never had lamb before at all, so this was something special. The waiter told me that they leave the cap of fat on the end of the chop during the aging and cooking so that the fat flavor pushes into the meat and ends up really enriching the flavor of the lamb. When I cut into the first chop the inside was a deep purple color. Quite lovely. The taste was even better, a little less overbearing a flavor than the porterhouse or ribeye. More refined, and a little more lean, although thanks to the fat, not dry at all. Again, cooked to perfection by the chef. I gnawed on these bones when I was done, which is a true complement from a vegetarian.

Oh and the last bit that I really enjoyed was the Sommelier, and he chose a great pairing for my lamb. I'd never been to a restaurant with a Sommelier before so I took full advantage. He suggested a spanish wine called Aragone which had a nice spice that went well with the mint rub on the lamb.

That's about it for Vegas this time around. There are more details, but nothing as good as Carnevino.

The how and the why?

Alright, I got a little off message there. Or perhaps on message? Whatever it was, it wasn't about me eating meat, so let's correct that shall we? Over the last few weeks I've had a LOT of meat. I don't remember it all but here's the short list:

Carne Asada taco salad at Mondo Burrito.- not a ton of flavor, just tasted like bits of steak..i guess that’s what carne asada is?

Chicken Tiki Masala, and Lamb Briyani at some Indian restaurant whose name I cannot pronounce in Burlingame.-oooh, the Chicken Masala was lovely, and the lamb had a rich irony flavor, a little bit heading toward liver flavor, but enjoyable, in that it was more balanced with some pepper and other spices.

The ubiquitous pepperoni and sausage pizza at our favourite monday night football haunt in Sunnyvale, Tasty Subs and Pizza.

Pastrami sandwich at the Togos in the Sharktank and today at Copenhagen Bakery in Burlingame.- dee-lishious all around. The togos version was thinly sliced mounds of pastrami and the Copenhagen was thicker sliced stacked pastrami.

Andy's BBQ sampler with: Baby back ribs, BBQ chicken, smoked pork shoulder (really?...really?), beef brisket, eye-talian sausage, and lots of BBQ sauce.


OK, first of all this just looks wrong. Let's move past that shall we?

Andy's was a highlight because I've been waiting for years to have some good ribs. In fact ribs are the only thing that I've craved for the last 17 years. BBQ ribs. If there's one food on earth that could make me no longer be a vegetarian that's it. Oh right, to answer your question, yes, I still am a vegetarian even though I'm eating meat. I mean, as much as I ever have been. You see, it's a label that roughly describes my tendencies. Damn, ok, so here we go down this rabbit hole:

WHY I AM A VEGETARIAN:

No, I'm not religious about it...in fact I suppose given my previous post I'm more religious about meat. I think the clearest way to say it is that I'm not a fundamentalist in any way. I typically don't eat meat because of many reasons. The majority of friends are at first surprised when they hear I don’t eat meat because it’s such an enjoyable part of their eating lifestyle they just can’t imagine life without it. I’ll admit now, it is damn tasty, but what I’ve really found is that it’s all about the stuff you put on the meat. Meat by itself isn’t all that great. OK, a goooood cut of steak has a particular richness that is enjoyable, but the majority of dishes have a sauce, a rub, or something extra that carries the majority of the dish’s flavor. The meat seems in most of these to be added just as a side. This applies to everything but Pastrami, which I believe was brought to this earth by aliens several hundred years ago as a particular plot to make us all destroy the planet with deforestation in order to graze the animals that it takes to make the heavenly Pastrami, and, if my calculations are correct, they will return in the year 1123 AD to graze us.

A good number of times when people hear I don't eat meat I get the feeling they take it personally, as an affront. Some say something clever, and half the time there is just an obvious shift in their attitude toward me. I think this reaction has its roots in culture. Food is such a huge part of the collective that when someone excludes that voluntarily they are taken as challenging the whole system. Some people think that by not eating meat I am effectively saying that their way of living is stupid... I guess we all need validation on some level, but the amount changes from person to person. I equate it to that feeling when you meet a fan of a sports team rival team.

So how did it all begin? The first thing, when I was 18, was that I figured out that if I didn't need to kill something, another creature, to survive, why would I ever? Then I studied the environmental impacts of the meat industry, especially in that era and found the practices of the meat and dairy industry to be pretty upsetting. The meat industry is typically worse on the localized environment, and the dairy industry is typically worse on the animal husbandry side. Dude, animal husbandry...come on, they could have thought of a much better name for that. So, I eat dairy, but not meat. Ideally I'd like to exclude both from my culinary repertoire, but I'm not there yet. Next month people, come on, I've got 3 days of meat eating left and tonight it's PRIME RIB!!! MMMMmm. Damn, I am a bad vegetarian.

Oh yeah, and for the record, pepperoni and sausage pizza just does bad things to you. It's just not right.

More to follow, next post will be of the Vegas exploits.

I'll take it from here Jesus,

Alright, I'm under the gun here. It's my last week as a meat eater, and I have been SERIOUSLY slacking on the reportation of the meatitudes. Or, if you prefer the more religious Meatatitudes. In fact, damn, that is a good idea...OK hold up here: It has been written, and so shall it be done:

"Blessed are the poor in spirits,
for theirs is the kingdom of heavenly delicious baby back ribs.

Blessed are they who mourn,
for they shall be comforted by huge large racks of lamb.

Blessed are the meek,
for they shall inherit the earth and squander said inheritance on single malt scotch, cuban cigars, and porterhouse steaks.

Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they shall be satisfied with the holiest of holies: the pastrami sandwich.

Blessed are the merciful,
for they shall obtain mercy with an endless supply of BBQ sauce.

Blessed are the pure of heart,
for they shall see God every weekend at the angel’s BBQ (BYOB people, the big man is generous but he’s not stupid).

Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they shall be called children of God, and beef jerky shall be their reward.

Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heavenly mounds of beef brisket."

Gospel of St. Meathew 5:3-10

The Meat-i-que

It's been a few weeks, but I must present the story of the famous meat-i-que. First, let me state that I know there will be some amount of controversy about the name...should it be meat-i-que or meat-a-que? Well, I've deliberated on this and have decided that although the 'a' sounds more natural, Englsh is an F'ed up language that rarely is written how it sounds, and for some reason I know that 'i' is just the right way to go. So the i's have it.

The premise: I don't know where or how it started, or who was the brain child, but this idea perculated to the surface of our collective conscious, and came about the day after our Halloween party. Now, as you all know I did not drink at our party. Water. Sorry...I did not drink water at our party, I did drink a sheetload of alcohol. So the next day, was a slow one to start. We all headed over to the Sturgmeo palace. The trick is that everybody that came brought their favorite meat, or at least something they thought I should try. I was the guest of honor, and in my wake was left a huge selection of meaty goodness. There was some yummy chicken cooked in what I believe was a Filipino style, with some kind of light sauce, like a vinagrette or something of that ilk. That was pretty much the lightest thing we ate. Next was the rich, thick Irish beef stew. I call it Irish because there were also mashed potatoes that, when added to the stew, went amazingly well. I really enjoyed the stew, it was it bit strange picking bits of stringy cow muscle out of my teeth, but it was good. Brian brought some Kobe beef which I cooked on the bbq, and that was well marbled, and fatty goodness ensued. I'm sure I've forgotten something, but what I could not forget was my favorite of the day....Korean BBQ short ribs. MMMMMMMMMMM F'ING MMM. Marinated for 2 days, sticky and sweet, and not hardly any fat on the meat. I probably had a pound of this stuff. Damn it was good. I had never had short ribs before and it was just ribs cut in the other direction, across the rib, instead of in line with it. I wonder how they actually cut the meat that thin with the rib there and keep the rib connected. They must have a really sharp knife. I visual a cow essentially being run through a large industrial fan, with these rib bits flying around and being caught by professional rib catchers. With rib catcher mits of course. We all ate so much meat that even the strongest of the meat eaters couldn't even stomach eating any meat the following day. You see, it's like that old idea of when your pop catches you smoking and he locks you up in the closet with a full pack and won't let you out until you finish the whole thing. If PETA was serious about their shite that's what they'd do....force people to actually eat nothing but that kentucky fried chicken crap for DAAAAAYS.

LEt me know if I missed anything, oh there were some nice salads and veggies, but come on, it was a meat-i-que ya'll.

I'm a Mexicant

Ok, so I've been slacking with the Mexican food. This I know. I tried going to some places around my work for Al Pastor and Carnitas...places that I've gone before and had pretty good veggie burritos at. Not so much. The Al Pastor at El Super Burrito was El Super Greasy. The Carnitas at another little taqueria in Burlingame were a bit dry and flavorless. Again, it's taking some re-training on my part, that good food is hard to find. There is a sea of average food, and a few islands of really good food with great distances in between. Amazingly, the best carnitas I've had was at the Penalty Box at the Tied house in San jose. That's a deal the Tied house puts on every home game for the San Jose Sharks. 2 hours before the game they open the patio, and for $20 it's all you can drink beer and all you can eat taco bar, with chicken, carnitas, and carne asada. Damn, did I get my money's worth at that gig. This week I am going to make a concerted effort to hit up Taqueria Latina in Sunnyvale, which supposedly has amazing Al Pastor, and Tlaquepaque, which is just really good all around family style Mexican in San Jose. Oh yeah, then it's one to the taco trucks. Please let me know if you know of any good ones and I will try to find them.

Pho in Hollywood

I forgot to mention that when we were in Hollywood we tried a tiny little Pho place called the Pho Cafe. Yep, very creative that one. I had some basic steak Pho. I've had Pho plenty of times before, but never with meat in it. I guess I was expecting a little bit more WOW factor with the meat, but I found out that, like all of the other meats I've tried, it all comes down to the basics, and with Pho, the basics are the soup stock. The Pho places I've been to in San Jose are just way better. So, given that, I now know my charge is to go to one of the Pho place in SJ and get a pile o' meat thrown in there as well.
Now, one thing that this place did have is Vietnamese beer, and that is something I've never tried either. The Hue Beer was nothing amazing, much like a MGD, but it was fun to try.
Got any suggestions for good Pho?

A.P. Stump's Chophouse, Ralph's birthday dinner

Back on Oct. 28th we took Maria's dad to AP Stumps chophouse in San Jose. I got myself a real, honest to Jehovah steak baby! It was a Rib Eye, with a simple rub, no silly sauce, medium rare, cause I want to taste that lovely cow. BTW, for the meat eaters in the crowd: Why cow? I mean is it just that the females are more docile and easy to corrale? The steer...is that the name for the male cow?...is the steer just too damn onry? Or is it that the females taste different? I mean we all know that ladies are more tender creatures...OK, so back to the meat. And no, I wasn't directly relating to the sexual politics of meat there, you can read what Ms. Adams has to say about that if you're interested. Damn, now that I'm on this tangent, I might as well continue...do you think that the women were the first to go in the Donner party? I'm not talking about who is more frail here, I'm talking about who tastes better. All leudness aside, when you really are eating someone, you gotta wonder how the flavor changes. I mean here I am eating a friggin cow, and is it really that far off from Donner meat....really?

OK, damn, you see what you made me do? I was just talking about a nice dinner and here we go on the Donner party. Let's move on. I had the rib-eye, which was, well, very clean tastings. Clean in that it had the flavor I remember of the cow from when I was a kid, that sticky, grainy, juicy flavor, with the slight punch of the blood, a little sulphery maybe? Very good, excellently prepared, and just a very singular taste...like when you drink mixed red table wine every day and then finally try a single estate Cab or Pinot. It just hits you right between the eyes with it's singularity of being. COW. Nothing else. Straight and to the point. I also tried a bit of Maria's Fillet Mignon. That was soooo melty, gooey, tender. I think that any herbivore, with or without teeth, could successfully eat and digest that delicacy.

Oh, and both of these are things I have never tried before. They both went very well with the Ledson Pinot we had with the meal. Wine and steak go very well together.

After such a manly meal what more could we do? Off to Sharktank for hockey of course! I did find myself yelling particularly loudly that evening. Maybe there is something to this testosterone stuff...