Eating and Dining

Review #14- Toro Bravo

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Where:  Toro Bravo,

120 NE RUSSELL STREET
PORTLAND, OR, 97212
(503)281-4464

Everyone’s trying to save a buck these days.

Restaurants, cooks, workers, all of us. Even bakers- ironically- are having trouble making a little dough.

Sadly, when belts get tighter, it invites fewer opportunities to loosen them. You start finding ways to bring in a little cash- and moments when you get to spend that cash are limited to special occasions.

That’s why I’ve been pretty light on the restaurant reviews as of late.

It’s also why I’m writing this one on my wife’s insistence.

It was our anniversary, after all- and she loves watching me be a food nerd.

The author and his wife at Toro Bravo in Portland Oregon

Yep, still adorable.

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“Vox Populi, Vox Dei”- Yelp and the Future of Food Writing

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Good evening, friends and neighbors.

I like going out to eat as much as the next guy. I make my decisions on a bunch of criteria-

  • What am I tasting?
  • Price point
  • Locality
  • Did I discover it and it looks interesting/ did a friend suggest it personally?

You will notice something missing on that list- I don’t really give a crap about internet reviews.

Broken iPhone

from pexels.com

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The BHB’s Top 10 Cookbooks That Are Just Plain Good Reads

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Good afternoon, friends and neighbors!

Did you know that a cookbook can be more than a collection of recipes? It can actually be… A BOOK.

Yes, yes, how shocking.

 

If you think about it for longer than a second, cookbooks don’t need to as dry and dull as your college textbooks. Food is an extremely personal and social thing, and so people who choose to write a book of recipes have the opportunity to fill in the gap, so to speak.

A cookbook can absolutely instruct- “This is how you make my favorite jambalaya.” Much more interesting and enjoyable, however, is “I make this jambalaya especially for rainy, crappy days, because it reminds me of when I worked in this great restaurant in New Orleans. Let me tell you, the chef there was so particular….”

See that? The recipe became a story. It had a background, and a special meaning for the writer, which they just offered to you. Maybe you’ll never make that jambalaya except once or twice? Maybe it’ll become your favorite, and you’ll want to go to NOLA yourself one day, find the authors old restaurant, and taste the real deal.

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A Trip Home(s)

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Good evening, friends and neighbors.

The flight in was abysmal. Normally, I don’t truly care one way or another for air travel- I usually have enough of SOMETHING to make being stuck in the same seat for hours on end manageable- reading material, writing work, podcasts, exhaustion, something to make the hours a little shorter.

For some reason, though, the red-eye out of Portland International drove me mad. I’d been tired enough to sleep, but not exhausted enough to sleep for very long. Nothing distracted me long enough that I could ignore my legs getting twitchy and anxious.

Granted, that had been my entire body and mind for the last week or so, and this plane trip was meant partially to help me relax and get ready for a new job to start the next week. What better way to relax than ten days of family and food- and what better place to do it?

Philadelphia.
Hello, you f***ed up little city. Good to see you again.

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A Sense of Taste- Things That’ll Make Your Tongue Lie to You

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 Good evening, friends and neighbors.

To quote my wife, “Cooking with a cold must be like being a musician that can’t hear.”
This may or may not be because we went out to dinner once when I was dealing with some nasal congestion and couldn’t taste anything. My favorite beers, deep-fried brussels sprouts, and smoked ribs were utterly tasteless. It was frustration bordering on heartbreak.

The senses of smell and taste are obviously deeply connected- informing and influencing each other in one of our most primal survival mechanisms- when something smells off, it probably IS off.

When you’re a cook, though, not being able to taste things is not an option. You might know the recipes by heart, you may measure and cook everything perfectly- but if you aren’t tasting (or able to taste) as you go, it’s like driving down the highway with only one eye. Yes, you can do it- but you wouldn’t unless had to, and there are a LOT of things that can mess with your ability to detect flavors.

Here’s some of them:

Illustration of Beethoven composing

Supposedly, when his hearing loss was nearly total, Beethoven would put a pencil in his teeth and press the end to the soundboard of his piano so he could feel the vibration of the notes. Nothing quite like that for taste though.

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Special Post: Excerpts from the coming BHB Book!

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Good evening, friends and neighbors!

This week has been more than a little crazymaking and exhausting, and as such, I don’t have a really solid blog post ready for today.

Animated GIF of a baby asleep on a toy train

Footage of me biking home today…
I’m sure I’ll have something a bit better next week.
In the meantime though, as a way of recompense, here are a couple excerpts from my upcoming book!

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Dealing With Cravings

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Good evening, friends and neighbors.

The bike ride to the cafe is only about 10 minutes on the way there, and 15 or so on the way back because of hills. There’s a certain part of it that I really enjoy- it’s when I

“BAGEL.”

pass by Laurelhurst park. Sometimes I cut through and then I can ride a long-bomb hill right down to the

“BAGEL WITH CREAM CHEESE AND LOX. AND CAPERS.”

cafe. It’s an exhilarating part of the morning. On Thursdays and Fridays, Chris the bread guy is on and usually leaves a freshly-made plain bagel on my work bench

“YOU ARE MY GOD.

WHERE’S THE GODDAMN LOX. AND CAPERS.

F*&*ING TEASE.”​

… It’s a good way to get the day started.

Sesame bagel with lox, cream cheese, capers, red onion, and dill

Pic from MyJewishLearning.com

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