John Steffen – Page 30

food

Owen & Engine

Post date 2012/04/30

Every so often I get hungry for a burger. I’m not talking every day. C’mon, maybe four or five times a week I’ll think, yeah, a burger would taste good. It’s not like I have a problem or anything. Most of the time I don’t act on these urges; I push them down into that dark, dirty place with other urges like ones to punch the loud talker on the bus or to watch ten straight hours of the NBA Playoffs.

I cracked on Sunday and went to Owen & Engine for the first time with burger meat on my mind. I showed up at around 1pm and the place was pretty full. There are maybe ten seats at the bar and I was able to get two for a friend and myself (friend and I, friend and me, what’s correct?). The place is smaller than I thought, unless they have an upstairs or something. A steady crowd of neighborhood types and movie-goers kept the staff hopping (it’s right across the street from the Regal City North 14).

I asked the bartender about the burger and he says, “It’s amazing. It’s 40% ground beef, 30% short rib, and 30% brisket and done to temperature so if you usually order it medium-rare I’d go with medium. It’s hand packed and our kitchen really knows how to cook a burger perfectly. You’ll love it.”

Okay man, I thought, I would have been okay with, “It’s good.” I certainly appreciate the passion though.

So there it is up top – burger, medium, no cheese, $14. The grilled onions came with it, I didn’t ask for them but they were a nice touch. No lettuce or tomato, but you get a pickle spear. It comes on a potato bap, which is Scottish for bun. The chips (yes, fries) are nice and come with a distinctive malt vinegar garlic aioli, which was darn good, but we aren’t going to go into that.

Let’s talk burger. Tossing short rib and brisket into the mix makes for a darker, juicier, and less dense patty when compared to standard ground beef/ground chuck/ground sirloin patty. Here’s the cross section:

It looks like a massive half pounder but doesn’t eat that way. It’s almost light and crumbly, dare I say, and melts in your mouth. It’s so juicy that you get a little premature bun saturation, which I don’t mind. It led me to ask the bartender whether it was grilled or fried. His answer was, “Grilled.”

I pressed on for some clarification because I was surprised, there was no char flavor and it was so juicy. I asked again, “So it was grilled on a big sheet of steel?”

“Yes,” was his answer.

Okay, got it now. I call that fried. This distinction between grilled and fried isn’t something that makes sense to everyone, so I’m not faulting this bartender. Be sure, this would have been a different experience had it been set on a grill where the juices dripped into a flame and were reconstituted into the meat via flame vapor/smoke/stuff. I don’t prefer one over the other, heck, I don’t even consider grilled burgers and fried burgers in the same food group. It’s kind of like pizza; thin crust, stuffed, and regular pizza are three distinct groups worthy of singular consideration.

I got a little off topic there, sorry. You need to know that I loved this burger, this place, the sides, and the atmosphere. It’s really enjoyable. I can tell because when I left I was pumped up. I was sending pictures to G and telling her all about the malt vinegar aioli and the brisket/short rib combo. Oh yeah, I didn’t even mention the great IPA from Dark Horse Brewing. I can’t blow any holes in this place at all.

I can see taking people I care about here.

screen

Bleak House

Post date 2012/04/30

This Downton Abbey thing has wet my appetite for more Brit lit classic drama stuff, so Gail and I did Bleak House together. It’s different from Downton Abbey though, it isn’t some soap opera dramatized for modern tastes. It’s a dark, scathing indictment of the British legal system based on the book written by Charles Dickens. He’s famous.

Let me be clear, if you’re in the mood for this type of Brit lit tragedy, comedy, romance, drama kind of thing, you need to head straight for this BBC version of Bleak House, now. Period. Bypass Jane Austen, bypass Merchant & Ivory, bypass Downton Abbey; nobody involved with those is worthy of carrying Charles Dickens’ undergarments. In fact, I couldn’t think of a better way to blow your two-week free trial of Netflix than taking in the seven hours or so of Bleak House.

Esther Summerson is a fictional character to hang your hat on. And Gillian Anderson knocks it out of the friggin’ park in the role of Lady Dedlock. It’s also one of Carey Mulligan’s first roles and she nails Ada Clare. I want to consume more Charles Dickens stuff soon. I’m thinking Great Expectations next.

Twice this month I’ve been half way through something and said to myself, “Man, do I really have to keep going?” Wow, what a payoff in both cases (this and A Storm of Swords). Mark my words, I will never, ever, stop a work of fiction at the half way point. Ever. I’ll either stop it at 25% or 75%, never 50%. Hold me to that.

I’m not as familiar with Dickens as I should be. I read Oliver Twist in the 90s but can’t recall it all that well. I remember The Artful Dodger a little but that’s about it. I was a different person then and maybe a little brain dead or something. I just don’t think I’ll forget the characters from Bleak House. I’ve mentioned a few but there are so many; Snagsby, Krook, Tulkinghorn, Guppy, Smallweed, Skimpole, Bucket, … amazing crew.

I was a little put off at first by the camera work. It’s dark and scenes open with loud, sharp noises and distant camera angles, often multiple noise/angle scene openings. I got used to it though. Such a great miniseries. It’s complicated and you’re in the dark for a big chunks of it, but clarity comes in time and the ending is heart wrenching and victorious. Despite the Netflix/Apple TV problems we’ve been having (cutting out in the middle of shows, not available), it’s been paying for itself so far.

books

A Storm of Swords

Post date 2012/04/29
Tags fantasy

This is book three of the series. I started reading it after seeing the advertisements for the start of Season Two on HBO. They are pushing this thing pretty hard in print and on TV. I don’t have HBO so I’ve only seen an episode or so on the road and it looks pretty true to the books. Not that you care, but remember, I only started reading this because I caught an episode while traveling.

So here we are.

I was bored with this book at the half way point. It just wasn’t doing anything for me. But shortly after the half it took off like a shot and never looked back. There was a frenzy of death, bloodshed, hope, sorrow, victory, and disappointment over the course of a few chapters that caused a bout of late-night reading.

The story is complicated and there are plenty of deep characters, yet it can still be treated as a guilty pleasure. It goes both ways, sci-fi and fantasy addicts can discuss the story’s social significance and people like me can bang through it because it’s a ton of fun. I forget many of the characters and I don’t have any idea where they are geographically (in a relative sense, it’s a fictional land), but I can still follow it.

I’ve heard some say this book, number three, is the best in the series. I’ll leave that to the pundits, but I will say, the ending left me in a place that makes me think I’ll read the next book soon. These things are a thousand pages a pop so they’re not small endeavors, but that second half went quickly and left me hanging. I’ll target October for the next one.

I’m worried that my trilogy rule, which says things get shaky after number three, will hold true. The Dune “trilogy” rocked until the fourth book. I tried to stay with it, but couldn’t. W.E.B. Griffin’s Presidential Agent series made it to a solid fourth book but blew up on the fifth. I’m done with that, despite the fact that I said I’d give it a chance. I won’t.

Now this Song of Ice and Fire series (TV calls it Game of Thrones series) is already five books and Martin is shooting to make it seven. That’s big. Hopefully it ends up more like the American crime or British spy series I read which seemingly extend forever without losing momentum. Martin published the first one back in 1996 and there have been five and six years between the last two books, so I have time to read the next two before the anticipatory wait period.

Yeah, the anticipatory wait period, that’s fun stuff. It’s that time of analysis, punditry, speculation, and reflection that occurs during the run-up to potential new stuff in a series of successes. I may or may not be able to enjoy it, depending on how fast I consume the next two.

food

Fumare Meats

Post date 2012/04/20

Cold meat on bread is a staple of mine. Oh sure, there was a chunk of my existence where I needed sandwiches warmed in some fashion, either via a conventional oven or one of those toaster oven things like you see at Potbelly. But I live in the now, which are simpler times, and cold meat on bread is usually what’s for lunch.

I’m not talking just any cold meat on bread. I’m talking the Gypsy & Danish Bacon, Boiled Ham sandwich from Fumare Meats in the French Market. Check out that picture and tell me it’s not a thing of beauty. At Fumare Meats they do it right so many different ways that it may take a few posts to sort through them all. And if you work in the loop and you’re not making multiple trips a month to the French Market, you’re missing out.

From what I can tell, here are the ingredients:

Gypsy Ham
Danish Ham
Boiled Ham
Lettuce
Tomato
European Butter
Roll

They give out spicy mustard on the side, which I add prodigiously.

There are a few keys to the sandwich. First, the roll is chewy but fluffy on the inside (I think it’s a ciabotta). Chewy enough that you have to hold it strategically when you get to the ends so the ingredients don’t squirt out the side. I’ve had this sandwich maybe 20 times in the last few years and every time the roll has been perfect. They may buy them from someone else in the French Market the day of. They’re always fresh.

Second, the ham is flavorful but not overpowering. You get a hit of bacon flavor so you know it’s there, and it’s enough to augment the boiled ham, but the meat doesn’t star in a sandwich like this. This sandwich is a symphony, no single ingredient will blow you away, but everything works together perfectly.

Lastly though, if I were to pick a star, I’d go with the European butter. If you look closely just underneath the lettuce, you can see a thin layer of butter. Butter? Yeah, butter. They just say butter on their menu, but when you ask them they refer to it as European butter, which, I’ve heard, is popular in Europe. It finishes off the texture of this sandwich perfectly. You have the chewy bread, the cold meat, the crunchy lettuce, the spongy tomato, then the dense creaminess of the butter. Amazing for such simple ingredients.

It’s a $7 sandwich and worth every cent.

So this thing is great, but there’s more. Don’t even get me started on the pastrami done in the Montreal-style. We’ll save that for another time my friends, another time.

golf

Hickory Hills

Post date 2012/04/20

I played Hickory Hills Golf Club last Sunday and found it somewhat odd, but priced in the ballpark and with some unique features. It was the first time I’ve played here and the first round this year, so it’s appropriate that it will be my first review in the re-purposed Chicago Public Golf/@golfjstef quest for interweb golf glory.

I knew all last week that Sunday had the potential for being a good day to hit it, but my foursome didn’t get around to deciding to play for sure until Saturday. It’s always risky trying to get a weekend prime tee time the day before, but pretty doable in this day and age. Here’s roughly how my call to Hickory Hills went:

Me: Hi, do you have space for four tomorrow, say around 8am?

HH staff: Yes we do, how about 8:00am?

Me: Wow, cool, actually, what about a little later, say 8:30 or 9:00?

HH staff: Yes, we can do 8:32 or 9:00.

Me: Great, I’ll take the 8:32. Now it may be only three because we have one guy on the fence. Are you going to hit my credit card if I don’t show up with all four?

HH staff: We don’t need a credit card. I’ll put you down for four and if you show up with less that’s fine.

I couldn’t envision a tee-time conversation going any better than that. It’s actually one of the greatest tee-time discussions I’ve ever had. I’m going to pause a moment and savor it, then let’s get to some details.

The price was $42 with cart on April 15th on Sunday morning. It took us about 30 minutes to get there from downtown by taking I55 to Harlem south to 95th west. It’s barely over 6,000 yards from the back tees (the only measured tee box) and comprised of bluegrass mown to about two different levels. The putting surfaces may have been a finer type of grass but it wasn’t cut very short so they were pretty slow. It’s a par 71 but the rating runs 67.9. There isn’t much trouble and there isn’t much of a crowd. These could be related. I shot an 80 so I was pretty happy.

It sounds a little bland thus far but it’s really not. It’s actually a pretty decent value. Things are kept interesting with a serious of ridges and embankments often used to elevate greens and tee boxes. The picture at the top of this post is taken from the first tee, a straight, trouble-free par 5 which sits atop a ridge and greets players when they exit the clubhouse. You pay a reasonable price and walk out and see this, which portends that you may have gotten a pretty darn good deal.

This feeling ebbs and flows throughout the round though and by the time the disappointing 18th hole rolls around (277 yard par four) you aren’t quite sure how good the deal was. The low price and lack of crowds are great, but boredom sets in by the turn and some aesthetic fumbles begin to set you off, like cart paths down the center of fairways and large, unsightly signs behind each green with the hole number.

I’ll tell you what though, I feel like I’ve found a workout course – a hassle-free place to go and carry your clubs for a great workout. Here are the features of a great workout course for me:

Proximate (relatively, by Chicago standards that means < 30 min)
Cheap
Hilly
Uncrowded

This place does fit the bill in that respect and if I play it again it will be for the workout value. Check out my photo set on Flickr. It was a cloudy so there aren’t many good pics, but they give you a feel for the place.

music

Tunnel Blanket – This Will Destroy You

Post date 2012/04/14

This group was one of my earliest forays into instrumental rock along with Explosions in the Sky (EITS). I first started dabbling in this stuff during my music renaissance about seven years ago (that’s when I discovered Pandora). I no longer actively pursue new music via Pandora because it had such a one-time broadening effect on my musical tastes that I can discover stuff on my own via friends now. Or, ah, via Amazon.

Yep, this album popped up in a targeted add from Amazon during a $5 sale and I just clicked “buy with one-click” like a fool. I’m not disappointed that I did so because it’s pretty cool stuff, but it was probably a superfluous buy. By that I mean that it will sit in my “instrumental” playlist which I’ll shuffle often when I’m working. It won’t hit the regular album rotation.

This group hit me when I started putting EITS into Pandora after seeing the movie Friday Night Lights. This Will Destroy You (TWDY) started popping up consistently, as did Pelican. I bought TWDY’s first album called Young Mountain. They’re just about all instrumental but a little more funkier than EITS. They layer in some digitized background sound behind the guitars, drums, and keyboards. They also toss in some vocal stuff. It’s not necessarily background vocals, it could just be people talking (I even once thought I heard a death metal style grunt).

It’s difficult to pick out a best song. That’s just not how I listen to most of these instrumental-only artists. I rarely pay much attention individually to songs unless it’s Pelican. I have plenty of instrumental stuff to last me for awhile so I need to be more selective in the future.

Cool note: these guys are from San Marcos, Texas, a neat small town about 50 miles northwest of San Antonio. I’ve actually been to this town before and had some great doughnuts at this little shop called Dixie Cream Doughnuts. I’m just keeping track of my doughnut life. That’s not too abnormal, is it?

food

Revolution Brewing

Post date 2012/04/14

I often partake in what I think many refer to as the “classic American breakfast.” It consists of two eggs, a hunk of meat, some potatoes, and a grain of some sort. It usually runs about 1200–1500 kcal and can easily satisfy two meals. The problem many have is that it doesn’t contain much innate sweetness, so if you need a sugar fix, you have to get a side of pancakes or wrestle with the cheap, plastic, single-serving packs of Smucker’s jelly. Neither of these are good options; the former because it’s just too much and the latter because it’s just not enough.

Revolution Brewing has figured things out. They’ve addressed this problem to near perfection. The grain of some sort is a fluffy biscuit and if you throw on some of the syrupy, fruity concoction that they serve in a little chrome sauce cup your sweetness cravings are satisified. Not too much, not too little, just right baby.

It’s all there in the picture above. That’s two eggs over easy, a sausage patty, fried potatoes, and the biscuit thing. Not bad for $10. Great stuff, but only one of the many reasons to visit this Logan Square gem. There’s beer. Lot’s of it.

I grabbed a beer since it was after noon and it was a holiday (NYE). I ordered a golden lager or IPA, unfortunately I can’t remember which and I don’t have the ability to tell by looking at it. I’m colorblind when it comes to browns and oranges.

Gail and I did try a little something special. We got a tasting of the B.A. Baracus, their Russian Imperial Stout aged in bourbon barrels for a year. It’s intense. I’m not a liquor drinker at all and I don’t particularly like bourbon or whiskey, but I found this sort of drinkable. I need to try it again, knowing that it could lead to a bad place. I dabbled in coffee back in the 90s by starting with cappuccinos and lattes, and now I’m a black coffee addict. You can see the parallels, not good.

This place is conveniently located on Milwaukee Ave just south of Fullerton. The 56 Bus goes right by it and it’s near the California Blue Line stop. You know what, if you have three hours and you’re stuck at O’hare, this would be an awesome quick trip. It’s a unique place in a cool Chicago neighborhood. In fact, I’m going to start tagging things with ORD layover so I can accumulate ideas for people stuck at O’hare for a while.

It’s bright and modern with a cool logo. I find myself raising my fist in defiance for no reason at all. I will be back.

screen

Dangerously Delicious

Post date 2012/04/12

We officially have a trend in the stand-up comedy industry. Louis CK started it with his highly successful Live at the Beacon Theatre show that he released on his own and Aziz Ansari has followed suit. He released Dangerously Delicious for $5 a few weeks ago and I grabbed it after seeing an article in the NY Times. This trend shows no signs of stopping. Heck, I’ll buy the Jim Gaffigan show soon.

I buy these because I love the delivery model, which circumvents big media companies and eschews digital rights management. Oh sure, I also like stand-up comedy, but not really enough to actually go to a comedy club. In fact, I had never even heard of Aziz Ansari before that NY Times article. Evidently he’s on some TV show kind of like The Office, that’s all I know.

It was funny stuff. Not Louis CK funny, but pretty funny. It’s profane and rude, on par with Louis CK in that respect, so beware. It’s pretty sophomoric, Ansari is young and does a lot of self-deprecating stuff about dating and technology.

I do struggle with his method of incorporating other people into his routine. He uses his Cousin Harris, a friend named Brian, and miscellaneous unnamed people as a vehicle for some of his humor. This doesn’t always work for me. I keep thinking, are those people real? Did that really happen to him? Because it would be really funny if it did, but not so funny if it didn’t. He does mention his Cousin Harris in the credits, so maybe they are real.

Louis CK incorporates others, but not in the same way. It’s more about himself so it seems a little more genuine.

It’s still great stuff. Ansari mocks racism a lot and that makes for some really funny bits. That’s the best way to criticize racism I think, make fun of it with humor. He has this nailed.

Nice job. Definitely worth $5.

books

A Murder of Quality

Post date 2012/04/01
Tags pop-fiction, spy

Oh yeah baby, this is George Smiley number two. I’m so close to Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy I can taste it. Yet it feels so far away because this book isn’t what I expected. It’s basically a murder mystery as opposed to the spy novel I was expecting.

Smiley is retired and gets a call from a friend about a murder at an elite boarding school. He gets on it right away because that’s what Smiley does, he figures stuff out, right away. In that way, he’s not much different from many spy novel heroes.

But Smiley, considering his outward appearance, is not your average spy novel hero. Le Carre, in fact, goes through great pains to portray him as overweight, clumsy, and downright ugly. I felt this in the first book, but not quite as acutely as in this book. Here is a passage describing Smiley scurrying up an escalator on his way to a meeting:

The descending escalator was packed with the staff of Unipress, homebound and heavy-eyed. To them, the sight of a fat, middle-aged gentleman bounding up the adjoining staircase provided unexpected entertainment, so that Smiley was hastened on his way by the jeers of officeboys and the laughter of typists. (pg 134)

That’s rough, almost mean. Le Carre also brings up similar sentiments when discussing Smiley’s ex-wife, a socialite who ran out on him and seems to have made a mockery of Smiley. This novel is set in his ex-wife’s childhood home and there’s a particularly cruel exchange with a socialite who, not acknowledging that Smiley is the actually ‘that Smiley’, makes note of how “quite unsuitable” the match was.

But the guy is competent. He’s a genius and has an admirable amount of spareness and frugality, in both his thoughts and actions. Here’s an example:

It had been one of Smiley’s cardinal principles in research, whether among the incunabula of an obscure poet or the laboriously gathered fragments intelligence, not to proceed beyond the evidence. A fact, once logically arrived at, should not be extended beyond its natural significance. Accordingly, he did not speculate with the remarkable discovery he had made, but turned his mind to the most obscure problem of all: motive for murder. (pg 92)

All this, I think, makes Smiley into an endearing, vulnerable, highly competent hero who I’m expecting to dominate Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. I’m just fired up for the book movie/combination sometime in 2012.

screen

The Hunger Games

Post date 2012/04/01

After this movie, I left the theatre and went to a bar a block away and sat down just as Louisville and Kentucky tipped off in game 1 of the Final Four. It was as if the movie never stopped.

If you’ve been living in a cave without electricity, you may not know the plot of The Hunger Games. Here it is: To atone for their rebellion, each year twelve downtrodden districts send two kids (boy and girl) to play a death game in a stadium-like setting until only one kid survives. The state rigs it for maximum entertainment value, the elite watch and cheer because they think it’s glorious sport, and the kids do it for free because they have no choice or because they fantasize about the fame and fortune that only one kid can achieve.

If you’re still in that cave without electricity, you may not know the plot of the NCAA Tournament either. Here it is: To make money for big corporations and keep college costs low (jk), each year hundreds of educational institutions vie for the chance to send their basketball team to a huge tournament played in stadiums across the country until only one team is left. The not-for-profit NCAA and the TV networks commercialize it to maximize profits, people who can afford cable and have lots of leisure time watch and cheer because they think it’s glorious sport, and the kids do it for free because they have no choice or because they fantasize about fame and fortune attained only by a few.

So I rebelled. I watched the NCAA Tournament at PJ Clarkes, drinking Guinness and shoveling mini-cheeseburgers, chicken quesadillas, and warm cinnamon cookies with caramel sauce and ice cream down my throat. What I’m saying, silly, is that I rebelled against the depressing feelings brought on by The Hunger Games, not against the injustices done to college athletes.

After I got past the self-loathing, I had a constructive discussion about the movie with my wife. The conversation ranged from comparing it to Star Wars, to asking “What is happening to this world?,” to “hey man, The Road Runner had plenty of gratuitous violence.”

The movie prompts some good discussion.

It was enjoyable and it made me think, but I thought it was just an okay movie. It felt a little slow at times and the characters didn’t engage me for some reason. I didn’t read the books and I went in with very high expectations, the death knell for any movie for me. I did think the ending was cool and I liked the political undertones a lot.

I don’t know why Gail and I decided to see this. It’s basically the same genre as Harry Potter and the Twilight stuff, isn’t it? We had no compunction to see those whatsoever, yet The Hunger Games was on our screen from the get-go. Is it just a little more adult than those mentioned? Were we affected by the overt and subtle media push? Or is it just a better story? I’m going with the better story route.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to discussing it with my nieces.

Further reading: