Otter Creek, Long Trail
 

Next day, breakfast for me started off the same (pork
products and hash), but I decided to try the pastry cook's
work - a pretty okay mini sticky bun, a quite good raised
doughnut, and a nasty bear claw, of which I ate only part
- it was horrendously sweet but spoiled-tasting at the same
time; couldn't figure that out: probably made to use up
sour milk.

The guys at the next table were talking about the Culinary
Olympics; one of them was telling stories of working with
Henry Haller, back in the day, another discussing how to get
a whole batterie de cuisine into a box that would fit under
the airplane seat in front of you. Perked my ears up.

Carol had her heart set on the Vermont Soap Factory and
Museum and convinced me that I could drown my boredom at the
brewery down the street. Well. Both are north of Middlebury
on Exchange Street, which misnomerously is an ugly little
industrial road that goes through an ugly little industrial
park. The soap factory is in a big corrugated building,
quite ugly, but what the hey, they make soap, and Carol is
happy with her soap. I deigned to sit there and guard her
purse while she snuffled all the soapy scents: she ended up
spending less than $20 there, yay. And we both got to go to

Otter Creek, where we tasted several things out of wax paper
cups (the girl pourer apologized: their dishwasher was on
the fritz) -

White Sail - less objectionable than many, a mostly natural
set of tastes, coriander and citrus, quite light; I'd drink
one if it was free and it was over 99F outside;

Copper ale - yeasty, rich Altbier style, something that I've
had periodically over the years and have gotten sozzled on
more than once: I actually like the bottled version better
than this one;

Wolaver's Farmhouse - another rich brown ale, a bit too
overtly malty for my preference, but pretty respectable;

IPA - a little mild, innocuous;

and Stout, which was kind of average, maybe less stout than
usual, but with a nice creamy head.

Though growlers of the Copper were on sale for $4.50, we
left empty-handed.

Back down rte 7 to Rutland and rte 4 (quite scenic, but it
was interesting in a bad way to see that most of the inns
and restaurants along it are closed and for sale) and across
to Long Trail, where we tasted

Blackbeary [sic] wheat - pleasant if you like that sort of
soda-poppy thing, which I don't except under certain rare
circumstances;

Hefeweizen - smelly and nasty; neither of us cared for
this, and in fact it was the only one that Carol didn't
like; turns out it goes okay with popcorn (provided),
whose butyric acid masks the off-tastes of the beer;

Harvest brown - a low-hop pleasant but uncomplicated
beverage;

the regular ale - an old friend, easily quaffable, but
not so characterful as the Otter Creek Copper;

Doublebag - very brown, very bitter, like the ale, but,
as one can guess, twice as rich and twice as bitter;

and a moderately bitter IPA, which Carol liked enough
to get a whole Vermont pint of.

There's an Imperial Porter that isn't available for
tasting but available for drinking, so I had one -
rich and smooth, very coffee molasses, just what you
would expect except for a zing of sour at the finish.

We had our lunch here - my burger rare topped with Cabot
aged Cheddar was quite good; for $1.50 extra I substituted
onion rings for fries; these were hugely abundant and
very tasty but a little on the greasy side. Carol had the
Angus cheesesteak, shaved tough greasy meat with the same
Cabot cheese. For the same $1.50 she substituted a cup of
Cheddar beer soup. She asked the waitress if she could
substitute a bowl for an additional dollar (the differential
between cup and bowl on the regular menu), and the waitress
said no, but she would just give her a bowl and say it was a
cup. Deal. Actually, not such a great deal, because the soup
was so rich and salty that in order to finish it, Carol had
to sacrifice much of the crusty hoagie roll (healthier and
better) that her sandwich had come on.

The main purpose, other than the scenery, of Carol's trip
was a visit to the King Arthur factory store, another half
hour up, just north of White River.

I thought it was nasty, one step either up or down from an
outlet mall, and I don't know why people make these silly
pilgrimages anyhow.

It's an octagonal or so building that holds quantities of
most of the things available on the Website, with silly
names like Pompanoosuc Porridge, and with bread machines
cranking out reconstituted bread machine mixes and stuff.
I tried the popover, pretty average, and the potato bread,
below average. Didn't bother with the Vermont sourdough
or any of the other breads. I'm not really that much of
a starch guy.

We got out pretty quickly, with only a small handful of
things for Carol and another small handful of things for
her friends, which is good, as we'd whiled away extra at
Long Trail. So we hot-footed it down 91 to Connecticut
instead of doing the leisurely rte 5 thing as we'd planned.

Beau, sorry, but I don't speak text-message-ese. I have in fact
never held a Blackberry in my hand. (And my favorite movie studio
(as with Ronald Reagan) is 19th Century Fox ...);)

hahahahaha that made me laugh out loud (LOL in text message-ese)
Do yourself a favor and never pick up a Crackberry, my dad (57 years old) did once and he's hooked. If he can get into newfangled technology, anyone can.

Hopefully you can in fact make the BRT 2008 :)

Michael, I could be convinced to cut out the Starbucks stop (don't mention this to mjm,) and stop at a wine bar with you, and U, and me. ;)

Got to our buddy Dave's at dinnertime. His wife wasn't back
yet, having had to work late to get the payroll out or
something. So we noshed on appetizers, the first three on
this list made by Dave, the others synthesized in a factory:

Clam cakes, a southern New England tradition, escape me,
probably because even if they are good ones, as these were,
with a sizable population of clam bits, they are still
essentially just hush puppies. I had one and part of another
and sent the rest of it down to Zim the pit bull to fulfill
its God-given purpose.

Dave made a good thin clam chowder (whitish, as all real
clam chowders are) to go with - a traditional pairing.

He'd smoked some Russian-style bacon, with the rib bones
still attached, taking a cue from some of the delicious
charcuterie at the Russian deli in West Springfield. Good
job - I'd have thought this had come from there, except
that it wasn't quite as salty as the authentic stuff.

We had found blue razz Fizzies at the Vermont Country Store:
a pack of 8 tablets for $4. Highway robbery, and the resulting
chokerage tastes like slightly berrylike Alka-Seltzer. I tried
doctoring mine with Midori, which if anything made it worse.

I just had to try the Dakin garlic sticks and maple garlic
sticks; these were grossly overfatted and quite limp. The
garlic stick was your ordinary sausage, only you had to scrape
a fair percentage off the roof of your mouth; the maple kind
was similar but heavily mapled, the resulting flavor so strong
you'd swear it was artificial if you didn't know otherwise.

Luckily the missus came back so we could have real dinner.

Which was t-bone steak. Mine was a beautiful blue rare; hers,
though cooked at least five minutes more than mine, was not
done enough for her, so back it went. Their daughter, not
fancying steak, made a vegetable stir-fry with hoisin for
her dinner, and Carol made do with more clam cakes and
chowder. Dave, professing lack of hunger, just had bites
of things.

Dave had bailed his brother in law out of a computer crisis,
so that gentleman had presented him with one of his favorite
wines, the Geyser Peak Block Collection Kuimelis Vineyard 97
Cabernet (Alexander Valley). I was honored to be able to
partake of this. Inauspicious beginning, with a crumbly rotten
cork and a sour scent emanating from the bottle. On pouring,
the structure of the wine showed, with still good legs and a
thick almost black appearance. On the palate, harsh and acid
with some burned raisin. After sitting out a while, though,
it tamed down nicely, and we sipped a still gutsy rather
astringent typical Cab, with plum and cassis (the raisiny
aspect taking a back seat), some stems and a touch of green,
and notes of tobacco, chocolate, and mint. Turned out well.

We finished off with a bottle of Kweichow Moutai 53%,
one of my father's more recent gifts to me (though quite a
while back). We could take but one small shot each -
it's not so much the strength of the alcohol but the nastiness
of the congeners. Boy, that stuff could take paint off your
wall for sure.

Dan, I'd love to attend the Bee Arr Tee if I'm free and to
raise a glass or three of Maker's Mark with you and Beau
(speaking of which, your dad isn't substantially older than
I am - are you sure you're old enough to drink?;)).

What's the date
For 2008?

I'd finally managed to get my messages - no cell service up
in Vermont - and there was an urgent message from the night
before to call the doctor. So I called and received the
news that my father had died early that morning. There was
not much that an extra half day or day would do, so we
decided to continue driving down as planned, just not to
dawdle a whole lot. Thinking back, he had asked me to hug
him goodbye (something unheard of in a very non-touchy-feely
family) before I left on this trip.

After a soft billet for the night, we were out of there at
9:30. My original thought was to take the Merritt, but I
mused that last time it wasn't so nice a drive as it'd been
when I was a kid, so the path of least resistance was 84 to
684 to 287, or so I recalled. Unfortunately, we missed the
684 sign, so instead of a quick freeway ride, we crossed
over at Newburgh and took the surprisingly scenic 9W down
the river. In any case, our destination was Piermont, a
waterside community of new affluence and moderate charm but
now well known as a minor culinary destination. We got there
20 minutes later than we would have had we found our turn.
Xaviar's, the local mecca, was closed for lunch (apparently
serves lunch only Friday and Sunday), but the place next
door, the equally touted but less formal Freelance Cafe
and Wine Bar, was open. Both are operated by that X-prodigy
Peter X. Kelly, who once conquered Kitchen Stadium (what a
lode of horsecrap is that) and sent Bobby Flay fleeing with
his tail between his legs.

Estival (Vinedo de los Vientos, Uruguay) looked interesting,
so I ordered it. It was pleasantly full-bodied, a tad off
dry, somewhat floral but not overtly so, with muted citrus
and stone fruit. Certainly not a Chard, nor a Rhine variety.
Viognier? Never had one like it. I couldn't figure it out
and had to look it up - it's 60 Gewurz, 30 Chard, and a tiny
bit of Moscato.

Carol had the smoked trout and horseradish salad with
celeriac julienne - good but not stellar, the presentation
more interesting than the dish itself. A pair of fried dough
things as the base, then the celery root (good), then the
fish - rather too thick pieces I thought, a little fibrous,
but at least not oversmoked. Drool around the plate. The
whole was not more than the sum of the parts.

She then chose a daily special, pasta alla chitarra with
shrimp, scallops, swordfish, spinach, and lobster sauce.

I ordered just the "moules marinieres with vermouth & pommes
frites" and a Yuengling, asking the waitress if that would
be enough for lunch. She opined that it was definitely an
appetizer, "but a large appetizer." As it appeared that we'd
be a low-ticket table, her level of interest in us declined
at that point, which is fine, as I prefer slightly cool to
overheated. It turned out a largish serving of not what I'd
expected at all, as there was nothing mariniere about the
preparation. It was a bowlful of mussels steamed in cream
with a big pile of allumettes blopped on top. I ate most
of the fries first, then the mussels (delicious), then the
cream sauce (delicious too, but the wine was on the fugitive
side), then the few potatoes that had fallen into the sauce
and plumped up like a weird kind of pasta.

At this point I flagged the waitress and changed our order.
I told her to split the special and put in another order (to
split) of a main course off the regular menu, Montauk fluke
with lump crabmeat and green onion risotto. She danced away
and Carol noticed her gesturing in a chopping way at some
unknown person in the distance.

A couple minutes later, the pasta came out. It was perfect,
just the right size, al dente, a generous serving of seafood
atop each of the splits. The shrimp were good; the scallops
were very good, tender and sweet (Carol, who is sensitive to
grit, got a little, though); but the chunks of swordfish,
two each, a tad under an ounce each, were sublime - tender,
rich, and hugely flavorful. The sauce reminded me of lobster
bisque, which it perhaps was, as the bisque is on the menu.
Some wilted spinach here and there and a few bits of tomato
did no harm to the dish.

As soon as we were done with that, the fluke came out, two
4-oz fillets bedded with a jumbo number of jumbo crab lumps
and a little bit of almost perfect (I got a seed or two)
risotto nestled down by the bottom. Quite wonderful, and a
generous serving.

The wine went nicely with everything except the trout, which
would have been tough to match with anything but Champagne.

Another special of the day was an "individual Callebaut
chocolate cake," which I figured was one of those molten
things: it was. In order to underscore the bitterness of
the bitter chocolate, there was minimal sugar in the dish,
fine with me, but there was also a considerable amount of
salt, which was a little jarring. A scoop of pistachio ice
cream on the side (also a balancing act of salty nuts and
sweet ice cream) provided a dialogue.

Slight contretemps when I pulled my Visa card out: they
don't take Visa, just AmEx, and I had just the one credit
card with me. Thank heaven for mad money, I told the
waitress, pulling out a traveler's check.

Mr. Kelly was there - I saw some guy on my way to the
restroom: he looked rather like a tired and dissipated young
Kevin Symons. The loud lady down the way confirmed this was
he, telling her table that she'd seen him talking to some
woman (the nerve of him) in the closed restaurant next door.

After that quick 150-minute lunch, it was back southward:
Palisades Parkway, Jersey Pike, and 301 to the Bay Bridge.

Somehow, we found ourselves at dinnertime in the vicinity of
a place Carol had wanted to show me - Lisa's Small Plates
and Wine Bar, in an ugly strip mall beside rte 50 just
before the bridge. She and her friend Eden had eaten there
not long ago on their way back from the beach, and I'd heard
much (mostly good, all amusing) about the place.

When we were seated, Carol asked about the specials, which
on this night, Ladies' Night, were $3 Martini drinks
(Cosmos, real or fancy Martinis, apparently anything in
that shape glass) and $3-a-glass house wine.

I ordered calamari with Thai dipping sauce, which turned out
to be a dish of slightly oily fried rings with the usual
thick sweet-hot vinegar sauce; decent, would have been
better if fried in hotter oil.

Carol countered with oyster sliders, one apiece for $7 -
a bit of hoagie bread, lettuce, tomato, and a big oyster,
also fried in not-quite-hot-enough oil; on the side
remoulade (decent), cocktail sauce (didn't try), and
something that was between Essence and Old Bay.

My duck breast on apple-cranberry chutney came rare as
ordered, plopped atop a bed of not-too-sweet, fairly tart,
not spicy at all fruit sauce: a nice dish even at $11 for
one breast half and no sides.

Chicken pot pie was definite comfort food, mildly seasoned,
the chicken and veggies in tiny tender bits, appropriately
gummable, the pastry also tender. Not my thing, but I guess
good for what it was.

We tried all the house wines but two (the Nathanson Creek
Sauvignon Blanc and the Modifier Noun Cabernet did not
seem to appeal).

Sycamore Lane Pinot Grigio was a totally neutral wine: one
could drink lots of this lemon water and not get buzzed and
perhaps not remember that one had been drinking at all. As
such, it washed down the food nicely but did nothing else.

I asked for the Sutter Home Moscato (yes, that Sutter Home).
The waitress asked if I was familiar with Moscato. I said,
yes, why? She said, some people find it a bit sweet. I said,
put it this way, what would you drink with fried calamari
with Thai dipping sauce? She said, point taken.

With the duck, the Leaping Horse Merlot was surprisingly
decent, with not only the expected massive amount of fruit
but a bit of tannin and structure as well.

Redwood Creek Chardonnay was lightly oaked, a little off
dry, and good with the chicken pot pie (neither of which
I ordered).

Desserts didn't call our name, so I asked for two glasses of
white Port.

Churchill was only a little sweet, quite acid, maybe a tad
corky. Searingly hot, and when I said it had a caramel
aspect, Carol said no, butterscotch, because of the alcohol.
Also white pepper, raisin stems, other harsh things.

Rozes was quite a contrast: unctuously sweet, very smooth,
no alcoholic kick. Flowers and fruits as opposed to spices,
and here was real caramel (we agreed). It was also crystal
clear, while the Churchill was rather turbid.

Halfway through our investigations, the waitress complicated
things by coming back with another glass - she said that
they'd found another bottle of Churchill in the back and had
tasted both, and they thought that the first one they'd
brought had gone off, so here was another. It was very
similar except that it was smoother and not so boozy - we
thought that the first one tasted like the second with a
tot of raw brandy added.

Turns out the specials for Ladies' Night are good only for
Ladies (duh!), and we were charged full boat ($6) for my
glasses of house wine. Not a great tragedy, except that
that brought the price of Sutter Home to $24 a bottle, a
bit much considering that the stuff retails for $5.

From there it was a mere hop, skip, and jump across the
Bay Bridge and home with the top down.

LOL (you do know what that means, right? :p)
I'm old enough to drink, yes sir, but you did just age yourself considerably!

As for the meal description..wow. My mouth is watering, awesome job, I admire your eloquence.