Favorite Things: MKE-Red Light Ramen

Today is Friday.  I don't work.  I presently have more than $30.00 to my name.  This combination of things sets up the near inevitability that at 11:15, you can find me frigid and shivering, waiting in line for a bowl of pure bliss.  That bliss manifests in Chef Justin Carlisle's tonkotsu ramen, an indulgent and milky bowl of pure pork essence that just so happens to be the perfect panacea for the winter blues.

Pairing beautifully (and hilariously) with the ramen is your choice of alcoholic slushy.  The mainstay in the slushy machine is the classically sconnie brandy old fashioned, but there is also a rotating flavor to choose from.  I have consumed an unholy and irresponsible amount of frozen booze in the depths of Red Light Ramen and have never had an unsatisfactory sip, but don't go too hard because these drinks will mess you up. Cab, Lyft, Über or designated driver are highly advised.  If you're too stuffy and/or dumb, or just don't want to ruin your morning, they are also well stocked with PBR.  It should be noted though that you are allowed to be sober at Red Light Ramen, just don't expect to be in the majority.

Anyone who is a little turned off by higher end dining (why are you reading this blog?) shouldn't feel deterred by the fact that Red Light Ramen shares it's space with the also excellent Ardent. Same staff and address and exact same space aside, these are two very different places  Once the lights dim and 2Pac starts blasting you can pretty much be assured that the staff has cut loose the shackles of serenity and are ready to fill you with as much heart-stopping comfort as you can handle. Perfect for foodies and philistines alike! That being said, please for the love of God, do yourself a favor and eat at Ardent.  Both establishments are exciting and precise and worthy of our patronage.  Anyways, off to do something healthy to preemptively make up for what I'm going to do to myself tonight. See you in line!

Red Light Ramen starts at 11:30 P.M. on most Fridays and Saturdays.  Follow them for all sorts of hilarity on Twitter @RedLightRamen

Lunch With Bup: The Yen Ching Edition

This Sunday I had the pleasure of eating lunch with my grandfather at Yen Ching; a long-standing Chinese restaurant on the outskirts of Milwaukee that calls it's food "fine Mandarin cuisine".  While I think the word "fine" may be a little lofty to describe the lunch I had at Yen Ching,  I did find the overall experience to be enjoyable.  Truthfully, I think a lot of the charm of Yen Ching was how definitively not fine it was. Outdated kitsch reverberated off of the walls, the five foot tall plastic buddha, the plastic flowers and the Chinese horoscope placemats.  Everything about Yen Ching's aesthetic stokes my imagination and conjures images in my brain of the kind of family depicted in "The Wonder Years" packing in a car and traveling to that fancy exotic restaurant that just opened up on Good Hope!  I can almost see the curmudgeon of a dad staring in befuddlement at words like "kung pao" and "crab rangoon" and wondering what the hell happened to this country.  These may sound like criticisms, but to me they are sacred accolades. 

Being that this is some sort of bastardization of a food blog I will of course be talking about my meal, but first a little bit about my grandfather, who will be called "Bup" from here on out.  Bup got his name as many goofily named grandfather's do, which is as a result of my oldest brother (the first grandkid of many) being unable to pronounce "grandpa".  Bup is a veteran of the Korean war as well as a veteran of more than six decades of intense labor, working for the plumbing company his father started in 1938. He traveled the world and lived richly with the love of his life until July 2nd, 2007 when my grandmother passed away from leukemia.  At 82 years old he made the concession to move in to an independent senior's facility where he plays cards and shares Korbel with his fellow compatriots in advanced age.  The reason this relates to the lunch I shared with him is because it adds immediate significance to the meal.  Egg rolls and fried rice can have substantial meaning when you are sharing them with unquestionably one of the greatest people you've ever known, as is true with any food.  On to actual lunch, which I should introduce by saying I almost decided to pass on in exchange for some lazy alone time.

I hopped in my sister's car and started our trek towards Yen Ching, a solid fifteen to twenty minute hike from our home in Milwaukee's Riverwest neighborhood.  After ten minutes on the freeway we got off on the paradoxically named Good Hope Road exit.  The paradox is the result of Yen Ching existing in the middle of a huge stretch of homogeny and empty abandoned lots, the type of landscape I find to be exact opposite of "hopeful".  Bleakness aside, Yen Ching breaks up the monotony with it's signature old school Chinese restaurant exterior.  Walking in to Yen Ching was instantly charming for me.  The restaurant decor is about as on-the-nose as you can get, even by Chinese restaurant standards.  To my left I noticed a decades old restaurant award from the Shepard Express, to my right, an enormous plastic Buddha.  When we were seated, given our menus and ordered all within about eight minutes.

For starters my grandfather and I got the obligatory egg drop soup. My sister ordered hot and sour soup, which we are pretty certain was just egg drop soup with a healthy pour of soy sauced added in. We also ordered egg rolls which were decent and entirely unremarkable; which is to say, exactly what I want in a spot like Yen Ching.  My sister and I were ensconced in some gossip when my grandpa, with a hint of dejection on his face, exclaimed at his egg roll "So what's supposed to be so good about these!?" My initial response was a polite snicker, but after mining my brain for merit, I came up completely empty.  The typical egg roll is really nothing but a big tube of bland that has a pleasant crunch-to-slime ratio, but that's about as big of a compliment I could up with the Chinese-American classic.  Thanks for unintentionally demystifying the egg roll for me Bup, I am happier and sadder as a result.

Oh, Tso Shiny

Next came my main course, the almost impressively reflective General Tso's Chicken.  I swear to God, I took at least ten other pictures of my lunch and this was the least glossy one of the bunch.  The lunch menu was pretty limited, keeping me from my usual vegetarian go-to when it comes to eating Chinese food.  My choice to eat primarily vegetarian when I eat Chinese isn't an ethical one, I just take great pleasure in the texture of crispy bean curd.  Anyhow, not wanting to just eat green beans in sauce I opted for the classic General Tso's Chicken.  I'm not going to lie, it was pretty damn delicious.  There was nothing delicate or refined about it, and I'm pretty sure it was absolutely hammered with taste enhancers, but it was a slightly elevated version of what is often consumed by blacked out nineteen year olds at four in the morning.

Frog and vase are friends

Uncharacteristic of me and my voracity I couldn't finish my lunch, so I sat there and nursed green tea and conversed with Bup and my sister while they picked at their sweet and sour shrimp and kung pao chicken.  It was at that moment that I decided that the lunch was entry worthy.  Simply sitting, having lazy conversation and a full belly, no particular urgency.  Sometimes life just feels warm and gratitude for one's own existence emerges out of the little things.  For me, I often find that feeling when I'm sitting around a bunch of empty plates and am stricken with the implicit coziness of a food coma.  It's something I could just as easily have not absorbed at all; hearing my Bup go in to extreme detail about a plumbing job he did fifteen years prior, then shifting conversation in to what we think the Brewers are going to do this year, and most sweetly hearing him give accounts of all of the things "Grandma used to like", but much like the lunch itself, I'm so glad I chose to participate.

After twenty or so minutes of priceless and irreplaceable small talk, it was time for us to part ways. Bup grabbed his cane and slowly made his way to his truck while Cait and I packed back in her car for the trip back to the city. It felt good to remind myself that the experience of eating can be as much about the quality of your company as it is the quality of the ingredients themselves.  It also felt good to be given the position to realize that you shouldn't reflexively pass up on great lunches with your grandfather, you little ingrate. Anyhow, the whole ride back we talked about what we always talk about; what we just ate and who we were hanging out with.  Today, it was Yen Ching with Bup, and it was fantastic.  

Four Hours And Fifteen Minutes In A Different Dimension: My Dinner At Alinea

If you're reading Rough Chop it's for one of two reasons.

Reason One: You're a fellow food geek.  If that's the case, you've seen the taffy apple balloons and the majesty that is hot potato, cold potato.  You've seen the YouTube clips of Chef Achatz deftly constructing desserts for his guests on their table, moving and creating in equal parts rapidity and precision.  If you've been to Alinea then you know the emotions that separate online spectator from actual diner; if you haven't been then you probably are the walking embodiment of anticipation I was a week ago, just waiting for your chance to experience what really goes down at 1723 N. Halsted Street.  Either way you don't need anymore food porn, so I won't be delivering any.

Reason Two: You know me.  If that's the case I've probably already harangued you with details about my experience.  Some of you have lectured me on the "insanity" of investing so much time and money and energy in to a meal.  Some of you have indulged me with relative disinterest as I prattled on about all the twists and turns my epic meal took over the sixteen courses I had the pleasure of experiencing... thank you for your patience. Still others of you relished in the details and geeked out with me about the taffy apple balloons and majesty that is hot potato, cold potato; which are realistically the only two courses we've shared.

It could be a combination of the two reasons.  Either way, you don't need to see another article with a course-by-course assault of pictures laden with superlatives and whimsical praise.  Don't get me wrong, I am packed to the gills with an almost maniacal level of appreciation for everything Grant Achatz does.  The man is worth every accolade, ever Michelin star, every bit of lionization that he's received.  He is a genius who's restaurant gave me, unequivocally, the greatest meal of my life thus far. But I don't want to simply review Alinea from the perspective of a diner, because that wasn't what I was when I was eating there.  Alinea was much more than that.

I want to begin the review portion of this entry with a preface that contains one overarching sentiment that I want to be considered throughout the rest of the post: to each their own.  It feels a little funny to begin discussing a revolutionary and game changing restaurant with what could be considered a trite and played out platitude, but I think it's appropriate.  Alinea may not be for everyone, and I understand that.  It's certainly not my job, as a guy who lives in dual-income household with no kids, to outrightly oblige anyone to spend hundreds of dollars on a meal.  That being said, I do oblige absolutely everyone to consider what's at stake by categorically shunning experiences like this one out.

The solitary shared experience for all Alinea diners. The napkin.

Preface aside, the meaningful part of my review is essentially this: what I experienced at Alinea in a sensory sense was unprecedented up until the moment it happened, on almost every level.   There were so many tastes, smells, textures and ideas that I had never even approximated in my life that by the tenth course I felt literally stoned.  Try as you want to analyze the flavors as they happen, predict the next move by the kitchen or the waitstaff, guess in what capacity the next course will arrive or even come close to what it will taste like; you will run in to failure at an overwhelming capacity over and over again.  Alinea is not about analyzing, it is about experiencing the ride as it happens.  Even if words could do the meal justice (they can't), the ever-evolving nature of the establishment wouldn't allow it to be duplicated, so there is literally almost no point in reflecting my personal experience on to you, because it won't happen for either of us ever again.

Hence my urgent suggestion that you consider what you'd be missing if you never invested in an experience like this.  The willful forfeiture of non-replicable experience feels like a tragedy to me. Simply describing Alinea to another person is like describing a color they've never seen before, it's simply something that must be experienced in order to be understood. Perhaps affording yourself a meal like this seems ludicrous if you reduce the logic down to "it's just food", but that logic is dangerous.  That same train of thought would suggest that Beethoven or Miles Davis are just musicians, not giving any credence to the complexities and genius that set them apart from the pack.  It's that genius and those complexities that forge the enormous chasm between what simply consuming food and what Alinea is.  Again, it's not for me to tell you what you or anyone else should invest your money and time in; but if you are going to give yourself a fair assessment of what "worth it" is, attempt to consider everything that a restaurant like this is.

Owen and the Incredible Taffy Apple Balloon Montage

I leave you with a couple pieces of advice if you do decide to take the plunge and purchase tickets to the best meal of your life.

First: go with people you truly love, who you know will appreciate what's going on.  Of all the pictures I took that night, the one headlining this article is my favorite.  My wife smiling, a glass of chablis in one hand and chopsticks used to pluck gurnard lionfish off of a plank of a barrel that was used to age brandy, and later fish sauce.  One of the funnest parts of the night was watching her and my friends faces as they explored the uncharted frontier of flavor that I myself was enjoying for the first time ever.

Second: Don't overthink it.  Don't linger on anything too long. My specific menu took four hours and fifteen minutes to get through but that time flew by.  The menu is impeccably paced, and part of the fun of everything is letting yourself be surprised every now and then

Third: Don't consider the expense, at all.  Once you click "purchase" just let any financial tension drift away.  The ticket system is implemented to make the actual dining experience completely stress free.  As soon as you get to the door, just let the restaurant go to work.  Money comes and goes, once in a life time experiences are titled as such for a reason

Fourth: Reflecting the third thought-if you are a drinker, GET THE WINE PAIRINGS.  I can't stress enough how much an additional $150.00 investment enhanced my dinner.  Again, if you've already made the investment, I highly highly recommend going a little further.

So, that wraps up my thoughts on dining at Alinea.  I will concede that eating such an establishment may not be for anyone.  That being said, and assuming you have the means, if you've already decided that it's not for you, I implore you to take a step back, consider what you are choosing to miss out on. There are a whole lot of things happening in that unassuming building in Lincoln Park, I'm incredibly grateful to have been a part of them.

Begin Again

I'm going to preface this post by saying that you really, really don't have to read this specific entry. This is mainly me talking to myself and laying out what's taken me so long to write another post.  If you are interested in that specific process, please read ahead.

Alright, I've decided that, after some necessary reconfiguration and perspective tweaking that it would be worth it to do this again.  I realize that it might seem silly to mentally restart a blog that was only three posts in to begin with, but a lot has happened in between the now obliterated "Weekend In Wicker Park: Day One" post and the post that will follow this one.  I've decided not to lock down mentally on writing from the character I'd established myself as; which is to say a jaded and aging semi-functioning member of the service industry.  Frankly speaking I felt that that specific role was a dull caricature that undermined my ambitions and perspectives.  I currently am still making a living in the role of marginally competent kitchen worker, but that is not something I see as a fixture in my life, even for the short term.  When I locked in to that perspective to write my initial entries I burned out quickly.  Writing non-fiction from a mindset that is even remotely disingenuous burns you out really quickly.

So, here goes nothing... or maybe something... or maybe a million things.

Last Night's Dinner-Sean Brock's Roasted Chicken

Just a mini-update with a little bit of food porn so I can brag about what I ate last night.  We wanted something simple and cozy so we pulled Sean Brock's roasted chicken recipe out of his beautiful and engaging new cookbook, Heritage.  I'm not going to post the recipe because that would essentially be plagiarism, but I will say that if you have a young or beginner cook who's looking to move beyond the novice level, this would be a great gift idea.  The one caveat is that a lot of the recipes include ingredients that you aren't going to find in every standard grocery store, but there is a handy resource guide in the back of the book.  

Memories In Gustation: Primo's Pizza (Rockford, IL)

Rockford Illinois... The birthplace and hometown of my father, the third largest city in Illinois, and also ranked by Forbes as the third most miserable city to inhabit in America in 2013.  As evidenced by the photograph below, Rockford struggles when it comes to finding pride in itself.  The culinary landscape has improved vastly in the past half a decade, but still exists amorphously and without that certain defined feeling of confidence or permanence.  

This is real.

This story isn't about the restaurants who are accountable for shouldering the weight of changing the game anyway.  It's not about a young restauranteur who is eager to bring light to the bleakness of Rockford's decaying landscape.  This isn't about the intimate beer bar that has a selection which rivals that of any place in Milwaukee or Chicago that I've ever walked in to.  This isn't about the ambitious and ever changing farm-to-table restaurant that's always packed to the gills on the weekend. Rockford has all of those things, and by no means is this post meant to diminish all of the awesome things they are doing, but Rockford also has Primo's Pizza.

My parents split up when I was very young and every other weekend my brother, my sister and I would head down to Rockford.  Initially my mom and dad would meet half way in Delavan, Wisconsin for the exchange. After about a decade of that my brother turned sixteen and took on the responsibility of driving us, blasting ska the whole way down.  It was about that time in my life that my first memories of Primo's are from.  In fact, I have a particularly fond memory of a 15 year old me waking up from a nap at my dad's house to an empty home and a note with a ten dollar bill and instructions to go get a pizza for my self.  I called my order in, popped Goldfinger's Hang Ups album in to my Walkman, and picked up my pizza.  Then I watched All In The Family for hours, nursing a large cheese pizza all by myself.  I was a very, very cool 15 year old boy.

Alright so what's the big fuss?  It's a modest, maybe even generic looking, Italian restaurant.  It can't possibly possess anything so astonishingly special or different that it warrants this much attention, right? No, not right, and stop being snotty.  But Primo's magic doesn't lie in technique or presentation, it's hewn from decades of consistency and precision.  It comes from not trying to do anything riveting or innovative, just making the same thing really good, and making that thing good every single time. What's especially noteworthy about this restaurant is that it's able to sustain itself in a veritable hornet's nest of cheaper, faster competition.  

Wife+Pizza=Truest love

It's hard to say what the key to Primo's persistence is, but the fruits one yields from the labor of love probably have something to do with it.  Ann and Dominic Loria are transplants from Sicily (since 1969 and 1953, respectively) and have owned the unassuming pizza restaurant for 24 years.  Day in and day out for over two decades Primo's has been producing the same brilliant, delicious pizza. That type of steadfast dedication and pride is a scarce and priceless thing in a world increasingly looking to make every part of there day as efficient, small and cheap as possible. Primo's Pizza in Rockford, Illinois stands as one of those rare testaments to a good product actualizing a sustainable business, a sentiment that feels more and more like a bygone era as time goes on.

A scene from literally every time I've visited Rockford in the past 15 years

This post isn't to suggest that you should immediately get in to your car and drive to Rockford and pick up a Primo's pizza, though honestly it wouldn't be the most insane thing you've ever done.  This post is meant to pay tribute to those restaurants that exist everywhere that aren't trying to change the landscape of food, but want to make one thing great, because they absolutely love it. If you don't have your version of that place, find it and patronize unconditionally.  For me, that place is on 1710 N. Rural Street in Rockford Illinois. 

Oh, and by the way, that beer bar and farm-to-table restaurant I mentioned up there are The Oasis Micropub and The Social respectively. They are both awesome and worth your money.

First Things First

I'd like to begin our journey together with a touch of elegance.

BEGIN TRANSMISSION

Not too long ago I asked my friend Dan Jacobs, executive chef at Odd Duck here in the beautiful city of Milwaukee, if he knew anywhere that was hiring.  I was desperate. I was desperate enough to, to the complete horror of my own eyes, type the word "dishwasher" in to the text box that contained my maudlin inquiry.  For those of you who are lucky enough to have never worked as a dishwasher in a busy restaurant,  allow me to give you some perspective.  Dishwashing is the sole job that exists in the kitchen that you can't possibly source any inspiration from.  Unlike other cripplingly dull jobs, you can't use your imagination to get out of it because it requires a rigid, mechanical and relatively focused mind. Things happen when you are washing dishes that knock you out of your escapist stupor. A clog, a sudden rush, a broken glass, some clunky cumbersome object that breaks the flow you've developed over the course of your shift.  Trust me, a Hobart claw amidst the homogenized ocean of silverware and plates can fuck your whole day up.

Washing dishes is not dirty, it's completely filthy.  It's not hard, it's agonizing.  It dulls the mind and crushes the body all at once.  This in no way meant to delegitimize dishwashing as good honest work.  If anything, a good dishwasher ranks high on the hard workers list. However, to the overprivileged, lily white, suburban bred porcelain doll that was 17 year old Tommy Ciaccio, it felt utterly Sisyphean.  In short, I think dishwashers shouldn't be employed; I think they should be drafted out of a pool of distracted high school students who are given six months stints in the dish pit, so as to give them some perspective on what life is like when you don't go to college.  But that's not the case.  They are employed, and the requisite years one spends in the dish pit before moving up in the kitchen make peeling potatoes and grinding meat seem like some kind of sweet heaven.

Despite all that, that's where I was.  If I didn't have a wife and mouths to feed (dog mouths, specifically), I probably would have chosen an easier route, like driving my car in one direction until it ran out of gas, and then just living in the woods forever.  But I have shackled myself to responsibility and thusly found myself in a pathetic plea for a dishwashing position.  I was sure somewhere had a vacancy that would allow me to fulfill my manic and admittedly baseless need for a change of scenery.

Dan knew better than to be deceived by my cunning wiles.  For a brief, humiliating period of my life, Dan had been my boss at Wolf Peach.  My arrival at Wolf Peach, appropriately enough, was too a product of desperation.  The restaurant I was working at had to suddenly shut down leaving both me and my then-fiancee-now-wife out of work.  Wolf Peach was close to opening and was hurriedly filling in it's last few opening positions. Determined not to be impoverished, I decided to snap one up. With an illegitimate amount of confidence, and opportunistic deceitfulness raging harmoniously together in my heart, I bluffed my way in to a cooking position at Wolf Peach. Bad move.

Twelve combined hours and five or six threats of physical violence later, Dan quickly and deservedly dispatched me to the dish pit.  It was only by virtue of his true benevolence that my frustrated boss didn't just straight up fire (or murder) me.  It didn't take long for me to break.  I just couldn't do it. Eight to ten hours of sweating through dirty, physically challenging work was just too much for me to handle. I was 26 years old and on the verge of getting married. I was fast approaching (and have since surpassed) one decade in the service industry and I wasn't even treading water, I was flailing and abjectly plummeting headlong back in to the goddamned dish pit.  Crestfallen, I quit, with a personal vow to never return to the service industry.

I decided to take a stab at normalcy, which manifested itself in working in retail at a major electronics chain in the wealthy suburb of Fox Point. After six months I felt it was time to move on.  And by "felt it was time to move on" I mean I could either quit working retail or experience what it's like when your soul bleeds out through your nose and ears and dies in a puddle on the floor in front of your eyes.  And there, as ever, was the service industry, ready to break my fall.  While I have returned to the kitchen, I do so with a forcibly ambition-less shroud cast over me.  Clumsiness and anxiety aside, I never want to be a chef, and while I love the place I work, a sense of permanence feels defeating when my face is already smashed against the ceiling of the potential it has as it pertains to me.

What makes the decision so heartbreaking for me was the fact that I passionately and truly love food.  Generally speaking I'm wildly intrigued by cuisine and spend hours poring over cookbooks and wistfully watching Anthony Bourdain live out every sane human being's fantasy.  I adore the vibe of a bustling restaurant kitchen, even to the point where I love the stereotypically sociopathic behaviors of the chefs I've worked for.  I've also had the privilege of being raised by two parents who cooked home cooked meals for us almost every single night of the week.  Food is as central as anything to my happiness. So what's the problem? Behind all the platitudinous gastronomic fantasizing that lives in my heart lies a clumsy and befuddled guy with comically imprecise motor skills and an anxiety disorder.  These traits are not conducive to a hot, fast and hostile environment that requires you to be fast on your toes and has zero room for error.

Which leads me to here, the birth of Rough Chop.  I felt the name appropriate as these are perspectives written by an unbridled epicurean who also happens to be an inept cook in a restaurant kitchen. Incidentally, this blog's existence should be at least partially credited to the same chef who verbally eviscerated me and sent me to the dish dungeon.  The reply I got in response to my counterintuitive plea for additional kitchen work was not a job, but a push in a more appropriate direction. Disparate from the unfortunate soul that is "Kitchen Tommy" is the (hopefully) more capable and confident "Blogging Tommy".  Frankly I have no idea where this little project will lead or how it will evolve.  At the very least I hope to illustrate to you, the reader, why the world of food and everything it entails is so absolutely important and powerful to me. I mean, if I can't cook food I might as well blather on incessantly about it.