March 21, 2010

Suffering from "Chang-itis"? Put a little Zinc in your diet


Kudos to Peter Chang for all his recent press and explosive success. I wish Zinc could get some love from anything New York. Oh wait, we did:


"Awesome=right; we LOVED every bite!! RT @bistro_zinc After over a decade of reading Dornenburg and Page, finally got to feed them. Awesome!
via web"

From the Twitter page of James Beard Award winning authors and (more importantly) New York City residents, Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page. It's not The New Yorker, but hey, baby steps. Pay no nevermind to the mention of Taste of China above.

In all seriousness though, it was a great honor to have them in Charlottesville talking up their two latest books The Flavor Bible and What to Drink With What You Eat. A greater honor was welcoming them as guests, along with author Michael Gelb, to Zinc for dinner. Everybody was nervous but they quickly put us at ease with their sincere congeniality and genuine down-to-earthness. My only regret is that I didn't challenge Michael Gelb to juggle our chef knives.

On the local front, thanks to Jed and Erin at Mas To Millers for their seal of approval.

Not all is rainbows and kittens though. I'm grateful for the unique and indispensable service he provides (thank you, thank you, thank you!) but it seems Cville Drink Specials (scroll ALL the way down) has issue with our blog:
A lot of people have expressed mock dismay at us naming the pigs. "How could you?" "Won't you get attached?". No one though, has likened eating pigs to eating children. I would not eat a child for Thanksgiving even it didn't have a name. Yes, pigs can be pets, and dogs can be meat, but we're not raising pigs to be pets nor dogs to be meat. We're raising pigs to be food, you know, like farmers.

As for Doobie and Mr. Wiggles, nothing new to report. They eat, they poop, they sleep. You know, like children.

On the food front here's what's been happening:

Confit Duck (aka Donnie) Leg Tartine, Pistachio Butter and Tarragon:

Wild Massachusettes Scallops (aka Meany, Miny, and Moe), Lemon Aioli, Braised Pistachios, Pea Shoots

Colorado Lamb (aka Shari), Asparagus, Fried Scallion, Coddled Egg

Duck (aka Howie) Breast, Janet's Garden Sunchokes, Arugula, Black Pepper Gastrique

Slow Roasted Oak Hill Farm Pork (aka Mrs. Wiggles) Shoulder
(not a menu item, chef's perks)

These were all specials last week. If you missed it, you missed out. Fear not, there is so much more in the brilliant minds of Justin Hershey and Jarrett Freeman to look forward to.
Cheers,
Vu


2 comments:

  1. When the time comes, Vu, I expect you to let me know which pig I'm eating. I find that the food tastes better when you know its name.

    Also, please do tweet the specials before they happen, or at least while they're happening. That will be much better than me learning of the tasty things that I didn't get from earlier. So… hungry…

    ReplyDelete