Priorities..

Hello, in a beneficial turn of events, I have had the opportunity to apply my flutter brain lately and get a few billable hours.  Since that pays way more (monetarily, not necessarily emotionally) than blogs I’ve been kind of wrapped up in that..

And, in fact I don’t really have too much to pass on, just a couple of little snippets.

 

Iron Chef, NOT!

While I don’t much care for hokey cooking competitions (back to that best phobia of mine), I do have to pay respect to the Bocuse d’Or, commonly known as the world cooking championship.  Kind of the Olympics of cooking.  It is held biannually, and is recognized as one of the highest honors a chef can achieve.  Teams representing nations from all over the world compete to get the coveted Bocuse d’Or, with second and third places awarded the Silver and Bronze Bocuse.  It began in 1987, and since then France has won the Gold seven of the fourteen total competitions.  That includes this year as the French team led by Thibaut Ruggeri again took the gold with Denmark and Japan in second and third.  Stodgy, classical old me kind of likes to see France at the top of the culinary world (by some measure).  The team from the USA led by Richard Rosendale included my hero, Thomas Keller.  They placed seventh this year, coming up from tenth at the previous competition. 

Just to give you a feel, the USA meat course, (which called for Irish beef), was “Hickory Grilled Beef Filet with Asparagus and Horseradish; Fried Hollandaise; Beef Oxtail ‘Yankee Pot Roast’ with Spiced Red Wine Sauce; Potato Dumplings, Bone Marrow and Thyme Infused Beef Broth with Crispy Beef Filet; Slowly Roasted Carrots.”  Not sure why he called for Irish Beef… what happened to buy local or at least nationally?  I dunno, not really inspiring..

Anyway as always displaying class, Keller said the following:

 “We're proud of the team's performance. We increased three positions from the competition in 2011, so we are moving in the right direction. Congratulations to France, Denmark, and Japan for their strong showing today.”  We’ll get ‘em next time!

 

More rankings

And since we’re skirting around “best” here, I might mention that the February 13th  issue of the Washingtonian Magazine contains their annual "100 Very Best (not just "best" mind you, but very best) Restaurants". Sometimes these things get goofy, but I can’t quarrel with their top three:  Inn at Little Washington; Komi; Cityzen; all recognized nationally.   Gone was the now shuttered Kinkeads, and the closed "temporarily" Cintronelle.  I was really pleased to see that my gem on the Eastern Shore, Bartlett Pear Inn, received three stars (out of four), and a very positive write up.. You are really missing an experience if you don't go there sometime..

 

Bottom of the Bottom Feeder

At the other end of the spectrum, MFO is joining some of her historical buddies for dinner tonight following the Historic Preservation Commission meeting.  She just phoned and said they were going to LoneHorn!!  Report to follow..

 

and yes, MFO was indeed,

 

DFD