Reverb 10: Soul Food
This? This is a tough one. I’ve eaten well this year. That’s just how I roll. The best overall meal I had in 20101 was, without question, at Woodfire Grill. All of the flavors were simple, but complemented each other well, and everything was prepared with an expert hand.
And OMFG the cocktails. They had two drinks containing shrubs on the menu. Violet’s Vice was a spectacular concoction of blueberry vodka, blueberry shrub and a touch of cream. Heavenly. The other was a Bradley: Wathen’s bourbon, ginger shrub, ginger syrup, and if I recall correctly, peach bitters. Yum.
But the best single dish I ate in 2010? It’s a toss up between the hand-made potato gnocchi tossed with blue crab and Perigold truffle (and cream, and I think a touch of garlic, and maybe some shaved hard cheese, possibly pecorino) at Restaurant August and my daddy’s ribs.
I can’t even describe how good the gnocchi was, except to say that if you go to August and the gnocchi is on the menu GET. IT.
But my daddy’s ribs? I will tell you about those. His recipe is based on a Kansas City-style one found in the New York Daily News about 20, maybe 25 years ago. It starts with a dry rub mix of white sugar, brown sugar, cumin, chili powder, salt, pepper, and cayenne, though he has discovered the awesomeness of chipotle pepper and uses that instead. I think there’s some other stuff in it too (oregano maybe?). He slow roasts them in an oven for 6-8 hours. The fat basically melts off, leaving the ribs tender, moist, full of flavor, and likely to incite a riot over who gets the last one.
In the summer time, he finishes them off over a coal-fire grill, basting them with some otherworldly vinegar-black pepper mixture. In the winter, we just splash the ribs with this vinegar sauce and go all in.
I think I am going to make a batch New Year’s day.
Honorable mentions: The housemade sodas — especially the plum and pear-anise ones — at Miller Union.