They both weighed in on Mickey Rourke’s new movie The Wrestler: Simmons loves it, and writes too much. Mick Foley, who apparently has written several novels and a children’s book,  weighed in on Slate.

This is clearly a movie to see, but the surprise to me is that Foley is so much better spoken than Simmons.  Further proof that the jump from unknown blogger to famous blogger is easier than professional wrestler to novelist.  Both articles made me want to see the movie, for sure, but Foley’s calm and insightful article is a better evaluation, and a better read.

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Graduation dinners. The last chance you get to fleece your parents and well-wishing family members out of every dime you can. I’ll spare you on the rhetoric, and get down to cases.

I wrote to an acquaintance of mine, the venerable Jim Dixon (a.k.a the only food writer in Portland worth reading. Yes Roger, that includes you) and this is what he sent me:

clarklewis
Gotham Building Tavern (ripe’s new spot, open next week, reservations online at ripepdx.com, I think)
Navarre (a little more casual)
Tabla
Higgins
Paley’s Place
Wildwood
Genoa (for the serious eater)
The Heathman
Caprial’s (close to Reed, too)
Gino’s (good and big quantities, and I know that appeals to the post-grad)
Rivers (in the Avalon Hotel, or whatever it’s called now, off Macadam…Rollie Weisen is very good)
Basta’s (a perennially overlooked favorite)

Jim’s hasty e-mail is full of good recommendations, but short on descriptors. For some descriptions, lets turn to the equally venerable Lindsey West:
Higgins-
Higgins is very good and has delicious local northwesty food but is probably not a good place to take your family for graduation if you have rowdy relatives and or small children in the group. It does have good vegetarian options though.
Portland City Grill-
Portland City Grill offers a fantastic view of Portland and really good drinks (helpful for family visits) The food is good but not good enough for how much it costs and the ambience, while elegant is fairly bland. One of my friends, who works at another restaurant in town said they hire hot girls to sit in the lobby to attract customers. If this is true i missed them. Not so much for vegetarians since they focus on steak and seafood.
Southpark-
I really like Southpark. They have wonderful seafood and a really cool space. It is more casual (in that yuppie kind of way) than higgins and would be fine for rowdy relatives or small children, not so good for vegetarians, although I think they do have options.
Rivers-
Rivers is right on the edge of the west side of the river and looks onto Ross island. Their food is very good and all local and organicky. They have a 12 person semi-private dining room for big groups and the service is really friendly. It is also attached to the Avalon hotel and spa, which parents might be excited about.

I (we’re back to the gastronaut here) wholeheartedly endorse all these recommendations. All of these places take reservations for large groups, however many of the smaller ones will turn you down if you have a Mormon sized extended family (unless you want to rent the whole joint- it’s not unheard of). Many families have strange eaters, funky needs, etc. so I’m offering my services case by case. If you need help picking a spot, e-mail gastronaut@reed.edu and I’ll give advice.

on another note, i’d like to thank you readers and the Quest for hosting my column all year. It has been a truly strange experience to have readers for my diatribes- I hope i’ve done a wisp of good for someone, somewhere, somehow. If not, fuck it. I had a good time. Eat well, live well, and love each other.

make sure you tip well, I may well be making your food.

peace out.
Gastronaut

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I continue to amaze myself, because this is my twentieth column. You know how I manage to write a thesis, do my classwork, and contribute to the Quest each week? Coffee. it’s the breakfast of champions, yo. We run on it. If we, as a generation, hadn’t been named a thousand times over, we could be the starbucks generation. Coffee has been surfing the wave of gourmet revolution that has been sweeping the nation. Remember the good old days when you didn’t know Emeril Lagasse and Martha Stewart was confined to a magazine, not a minimum-security prison? It all really started with grunge and the Seattle Latte.

Now, it’s easier to find a latte than a burger. What was once Nescafé nation is now rife with roasteries, coffee shops, and those annoying little roadside stands that look like overgrown port-o-johns.

The best part of coffee culture is that save the green-headed monster and a few others, coffee shops tend to be local operations. Coffee-culture is a big part of Portland, and a really fun way to see the city. Neighborhood coffeeshops are great ways to get the feel for different neighborhoods here. Portland is, at its core, a city of neighborhoods. They are also often great places to study, hang out, apply for jobs, and neutral places for all you crazies who do that friendster-dating thing. Of course, this list will be incomplete. Nevertheless, here are some places that serve up a mean cuppa joe:
southeast
K & F cafe: 2706 SE 26TH Ave. K & F is in the heart of the tiny Clinton St. district. They make great coffee in a really funky neighborhood. Spitting distance away is the Red and Black Cafe, which is there just for you crazy anarchists. There is even a starbucks across the street towards which you can channel you anger while you sip your joe.
Just up division is the closest outpost of the Stumptown variety, on 45th and Division. (there is another on 3rd and Belmont) If there were a Nobel Prize for coffee, they’d win it. Damn fine coffee, it is. Hipster-filled to the point of nausea, it is. Worth it anyway? yes. Tiny’s, on the corner of 12th and Hawthorne, is a great little place, with free Wi-fi and pinball. PINBALL. There are a ton of other places on Hawthorne as well. There is the Pied Cow, which is a hooka-coffee-date place, so i wouldn’t try studying there.

North/Northeast
There is Beulahland on NE 28th, just off Burnside. When you go there, ask about the name. Speaking of Burnside, on the corner at 23rd is the Burnside Bean coffee club. Another dessert and coffee place is Marsee baking, 935 NE Broadway St. There is the Fresh Pot, on Mississippi, and a really funky one on Alberta and 30th that I can’t find in the yellow pages anywhere.

I’d go on to the other side of the river, but no one needs more than 500 words on coffee. least of all me. I’ve got an ulcer.

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So kids, some of you are moving out of your dorms and into the scaaaaaary world of communal living in a house you can’t burn down without terrible consequences. The problem is, you don’t have a damn thing to put in all those clean new cabinets, and the once common practice of assuming leases from exiting seniors is less common, so inheriting cut-rate kitchen supplies doesn’t happen as much as you’d like. I have led many a startled sophomore through the process of outfitting a kitchen, so I’ll bestow a little advice upon you youngsters.
Things you absolutely positively need to feed yourself:
1) A large cheap stockpot. You need this because you will be eating pasta and noodles for most of your college career. You need a large one because noodles need more space to cook than things like Ramen. Italian pasta people have a simple formula: 1lb dry noodles to 4 qts of water. Pasta needs space (p.s. salty water is good. It should ‘taste like the sea’ but only in the abstract sense of being salty, not full of trash and fecal matter.) Also, once you get old and wise, you’ll realize that large batches of soup will save your life.

2) A cast iron pan. I warned all of you about Teflon many moons ago. A cast iron pan will put up with your neglect and misuse, and none of you are going to drop the coin necessary to get a worthwhile non-stick pan. Plus, cast iron can be found at any garage sale, thrift store, or better yet, in the back of your parent’s cupboards.

3) Knife. You only really need one knife, if you’re good with a blade. I’m going to assume none of you are, (even those of you who think you may be) so you actually need 3: a chefs knife, or something with a large enough blade so that you don’t bank your knuckles slicing onions, a serrated blade for bagels and bread, and a paring knife for the small stuff. Only one of these need be quality, the chef’s knife, because it’s the only one you’re not going to throw away when it gets dull. Knife sharpening is complicated, and much too much of a task to cover in a column, so I’ll dig up some web sources for next week.

4) A peeler: you thought you’d never forget a peeler. But chances are if I hadn’t reminded you, you’d be wasting your life peeling potatoes with a bird’s beak.

5) Can opener, corkscrew and cutting board: duh… I suggest plastic cutting boards: they’re easier to clean and nicer to your knife-edge, which translates to less sharpening.

6) Rice cooker: rice is a finicky thing to master. Take the worry out of it and buy a cheap one.

Things you don’t need, but think you do:
1) A Wok. Unless you have a natural gas jet engine, there ain’t no point. The appeal of a wok is that the curves surface is uniformly hot, and thus no matter where the food touches the surface, it’s exposed to the same heat. This does not compute on an electric stove, or on a low BTU gas stove. Trust me; just use your cast iron. You can make Asian food in a normal pan
2) A food processor: trust me. If you’ve got the time to put one to good use, you’re not doing your homework. If you really want something that ‘only a food processor can do,’ remind yourself that whatever recipe you want to make is a lot older than plastics and electricity. Get a mortar and pestle from an Asian market (around $20) and take your aggression out by doing it the old fashion way.

3) Anything smaller than a 1qt saucepan: what are you going to do, make a delicate saffron butter sauce? Fuck off and save your money.

Places to go:
Pans: thrift stores
knives: George and Son cutlery, Anzen, or Freddy’’s if you’re really not picky. The internet is a possibility, but DONT BUY SOMETHING YOU HAVEN”T HELD IN YOUR HAND. That’s a great way to end up with a dangerous knife.
Remember, this is stuff that is supposed to wear out or be given away in 3 years. There is no reason to lug a $10 rice cooker cross-country.

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A few of you kind souls came to my rescue and sent in suggestions for things to cover, but first, i feel it necessary to address the ones that are not covered in this column. To the person who wants a review of Fat Albert’s, the next time I manage something other than 40oz of coffee for breakfast, it’s at the top of the list. To the person who wishes i’d leave food writing to the talented professionals, I know it’s you Roger: you have offended my honor and I challenge you to a duel. To the girl who sent me panties… as touching as that gesture is, it’s creepy, especially by e-mail.

One kind soul suggested I publish my bagel recipe. I’d love to, but that’d be plagiarism, since it isn’t really mine but from a fantastic cookbook called The Bread Baker’s Apprentice by Peter Reinhart. In order to make his bagels, you have to absorb a hundred pages of wheat wisdom and gluten grandeur from the sage of sourdough before even beginning the exhaustive process. This, however, is a great topic by itself: my columns are equivalent to culinary chicken scratch. What a lot of you need is good, structured advice from a professional. Enter books like Reinhart’s (actually he has 4 or 5, and they’re all good), the words of the experts. I know that the thought of intense lucubration preceding dinner will get Reedies more than angsty, so I’ve assembled some print and web sources that will help you answer all those questions you’ve never bothered to ask because you didn’t know where to look.

The Cookbook section of a bookstore is a strange experience: there are dog-eared copies of Fanny Farmer, a million copies of the Frugal Gourmet (his career nose-dived after his michael jackson-style sex scandal) and the antiquated advice of Reed reject James Beard (he was kicked out for being openly gay, of all things) to the newest celebrity cookbooks, which– like all products produced by celebrities– are shamelessly produced and are best evaluated on the ’shill continuum’. Then there is the Food porn. Food porn belongs on Jan’s coffee table, not in a kitchen. I have a few food porn books, like Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet by Jeff Alford. It is one hot book, but i’ve never made a recipe from it that i liked.

The really useful ones are hard to find: they are intermixed with the aforementioned poseurs and paperbacks. For those of you who have yet to master Top Ramen or kraft dinner, I recommend How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman. The name is self-explanatory. I’m not in love with this book; i actually disagree with a lot of it, but my problems are pedantic. Bittman has a food column in the New York Times called the Minimalist. He hasn’t been laughed off the page, so he can cut muster with the haute cuisinaires of Manhattan.

I am physically incapable of suggesting any bread books other than Reinhart. The man is a fucking genius, and his methods will make your grandma start calling you when her starter doesn’t rise right.

If you’re one of those people who won’t let it go until you understand the how and the why of every dietary debacle, head straight for On Food and Cooking by Howard McGee. It is the bible of food science. Yes, i see the irony in the last sentence.

As for sweeter baking methods, i’m not the person to ask. But Gastro, you’re thinking, what about good vegetarian cookbooks? There aren’t any. They’re worthless. how to make meatless cuisine is the dumbest thing ever. Want vegetarian food? leave out the meat. You don’t need your own cookbook. Vegetarian cookbooks are infamously poorly researched, and are pretty much guaranteed to leave you with unpalatable products. The Millennium Restaurant Cookbooks, however, are fabulous, but they have a steep learning curve, so they’re not recommended for people without a vita-mix and a food dehydrator, which none of you have.

I really can’t take more of the Quest’s precious inches with more specific recommendations, so i’ll point you to the internet experts:
http://www.egullet.org is an online community full of food-experts of all varieties, people who think they are, guest Q&A luminaries (most recently Eric Asimov) and foodies of all denominations. The moderators and management do a pretty good job of containing the floating ego-blimps, and their online ‘culinary institute’ is a great resource for learners.
http://www.epicurious.com: This is the base community of Gourmet Magazine. i hate them. you don’t have to.
I love cooking, at http://ilx.wh3rd.net/newquestions.php?board=98 is a nice, small place to ask silly questions. For restaurant reviews/recommendations, there are three places I go:
http://chowhound.com
http://portland.citysearch.com (a great source for the practicalities too, like directions)
http://portlandfood.org

Call for help: I am embarking on the rather exhaustive process of creating a good list of restaurants for those graduation dinners. Anyone with recommendations or opinions on restaurants that should (or shouldn’t) be on the list, send ‘em all my way!
–gastronaut out

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my god, I have absolutely nothing to say. Nothing. Not a god damn thing, other than expressing my utter and complete confusion over ‘medieval night (knight?)’ that took over commons on thursday night. While i respect the desire to ‘mix things up’ and try jiggle the freshman out of their corn-oil and rockstar induced aphasia, i hardly think that turning Commons into a theme restaurant that previously starred in the Simpsons Divorce Episode #1 and three Rick Moranis movies is the way to go. For the record, the only missing utensil from the era was the fork; knives and spoons were as common as the plague and inbred royalty.

In other news, we must mourn the loss of a great and close friend of the Reed community: Pizza Timé. Now, I know that it technically hasn’t existed for a while now, having been sold to the luminaries who thought they could compete with Pizzacato for the Gourmet market, Rosetta Pizza has shut its doors and cancelled their phone line.

As of today, friday the 25th, I am declaring Tani’s dead. The coming soon sign has been ubiquitous since that stripmall was completed, but nothing’s doing. I’m actually kind of glad about that; the prospect of tanning spray in my inari isn’t appealing.

I have received numerous warnings recently about Assaggio, the Italian restaurant on 13th in Sellwood. I’ve never been, but these comments are pretty scathing, and the fact that Assaggio isn’t actually a word in Italian, I’d suggest staying the course on 13th and going to Portofinos. Cross this one off the places-to-take-your-parents list.

Come on people… i can’t keep pulling stuff outta my ass every week.

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The strangest thing happened to me a few days ago. I was in a Best Buy, that store with so many blinking, hypnotic lights even the most hardcore anarcho-syndicalist could find themselves dropping a few grand on an HDTV and a satellite system. Anyway, I was perusing the videogames when I stumbled on something I didn’t think could exist. I’m saying unconscionable here. It was a fitness video game. Let me repeat that a FITNESS VIDEO GAME. The premise is as such: Mya, the fitness character, does exercises on the screen, and the player mimics them in real life. The game also offers meal planning, recipes and ‘positive re-enforcement.’

Other than the shockingly backwards logic from which this game sprang, the whole encounter reminded me of the uncomfortable relationship our nation has with food. We look to the very box responsible for our sedentary lifestyles to make us thin again. But Mya is just a symptom of a pandemic. I believe fundamental problem with diners and dining these days comes down to portion size. It is all out of whack. More and more, when I ask people about dining experiences (which I do often… the quest doesn’t finance me, so I get a lot of feedback and intel from other diners instead of draining my bank account going one place 5 times) I hear this a lot: “The food was fantastic, but I expected more for the prices.” This entire nation is gripped with portion-mania, and it is a big problem.

Portions from the Chef’s perspective: portion size is largely a nutritional and economic concern. A good chef will consider a lot of factors: calories, food cost, presentation, plating, and positioning. Remember American Psycho? Those restaurants negate the first category, but must pay attention to the last one, because they would be having 5-8 course meals. How one orders dishes is more important than you think: long meals mean that the chef has control of a diner’s consumption, which includes fat consumption, blood sugar, etc. Portion size is still key because the diner should eat everything on the plate. If there is too much, the restaurant literally throws money away. At the same time, the diner wants to feel they are receiving enough on each plate. Enter tall food and extravagant garnish. There is a system to it all, a French one, but that system is falling apart.

I blame the Buffet. I do. It is spawn of Satan. The mere fact that it no longer bothers most people that places like Golden Corral and Sweet Tomatoes are bursting at the seams with the morbidly obese like so many fattened pigs at the trough scares the fucking hell out of me. Competitive eating is now a sport. ‘All you can eat’ is now treated more like a challenge than a promise. The pasta course, traditionally no more than 400 starch calories, is typically a mammoth serving about equal to three portions. Our eyes have become permanently larger than our stomachs. Even in the land of small servings and multiple courses, the all you can eat concept has reared it’s ugly head: the ‘small plates’ phenomenon, borrowed from tapas, encourages the same kind of unchecked consumption. We’ve convinced ourselves we’re satisfied only when the plate is clean and the belt unbuckled. Anything short of that is not worth the money.

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Hey kids, I’m back for another semester of food and food related drivel. I don’t really feel like writing too much this week, so I’m going to run down a little bit of food news and new restaurants (well, at least new to me) from our little ’hood.

Sunday: The funky little breakfast spot in the old kupie kone has hit its stride; portion sizes are now predictable and appropriate and the service is smooth. I still don’t like the garage sale furniture; it seems as though their attempt at hipster chic went a bit too far and they’ve landed squarely in ghetto-fabulous territory. Still, it’s a walking distance hangover breakfast that is on par with or better than the Hawthorne/Belmont breakfast circuit, which in my opinion, has been going downhill for years. They get extra credit for brewing strong coffee. I’m serious, their coffee is Stumptown, and it’s about as strong as I like it… any stronger and you could turn the mug over and not lose a drop.

Now that the Bybee bridge is back in action, and ugly as sin, I feel it necessary to remind you of some choice spots a skip or a jump further a field from milwaukie row.

Portofinos is an oft-endorsed jersey-style Italian restaurant. Think red sauce, meatballs, the works, and every imaginable ‘a la parmigiana.’ The last time I was there the pasta was homemade. I love homemade pasta so much, I nearly cried. Okay, that’s hyperbole, but still, it is an extra step that so few restaurants do not take.

Sweet Basil Thai is another prime spot on 13th. A reedie, who shall remain anonymous, has been on the line there for a few months, and will vouch for their catering to vegan/vegetarian diets. Their house special curry is an interesting, and delicious marriage of red curry and peanut sauce. Their best dish happens to be their vegetarian take on my favorite Thai dish of all time. It’s so good I ripped of Ren and Stimpy:

Its larb, its larb, its rice its chili its lime
Its larb, its larb, its better than nice it’s divine!

Sweet Basil makes their veggie larb out of Portobello mushrooms. Hot damn it’s good. Larb also has the distinction of being one of the few foodstuffs I can think of that can be used as a verb: I larbed my leftover chicken today. Anther member of this group is curry. If you can think of some others, I’d like to hear them: Gastronaut@reed.edu.

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Well kids, this will be the last installment of the Gastronaut for this semester, and I’d like to thank any and all of you who have bothered to read my columns, despite their occasional shitty quality. Long-live last minute writing, right? Anyway, I’ve got a lot of other shit I should be doing right now, so I’ll crank out this one and call it a year.

The bybee bridge has re-opened, so now, dear readers, it’s much less of a pain in the ass to reach the many fine restaurants that dot Milwaukie, from Holgate to Tacoma. I realize that there are many of you who have never wandered that general direction in search of sustenance, so I’ll list off some of the good ones:

Papa Haydn East (5829 SE Milwaukie Ave) and Caprial’s Bistro (7015 SE Milwaukie Ave): Pricy northwest cuisine. Wine lists, waiters who have more expensive pants than you do. I mentioned Papa Haydn in the ‘date’ column three weeks ago. A Reed professor, who shall remain nameless, confessed to me that the only time he’s had fun at Caprial’s was while ‘totally drunk.’ That, and if you’ve ever seen her show on PBS, you’ll want to kill her, not eat her food.

Papaya Thai (7202 SE Milwaukee) & Stickers (6808 SE Milwaukie Ave): I’d pick Stickers over Papaya any day, because Stickers has a much more innovative approach to their food: they actually serve things you can’t get elsewhere, and they have different ideas about the ‘standards’ of south Asian cuisine. The owners of Stickers say their restaurant is based on south Asian street food. Any traveler will tell you, street food is where the fun is.

Springwater Grill (6716 SE Milwaukie Ave), Adobe Rose Café (1634 SE Bybee Blvd), & Taqueria San Felipe (6221 SE Milwaukie Ave): Springwater serves really eclectic food, but the décor is sickeningly southwestern kitch, to the point that I’ve only eaten there once, and I wasn’t greatly impressed. If you’re a good chess player, go beat the bartender and get a free drink. Speaking of southwestern kitsch, Adobe Rose serves ‘New Mexican’ food (in the sense of the state of America, not some kind of Bobby Flay new (modern) Mexican cuisine). I can’t bring myself to eat there. They use the Tohono O’o’dham symbol for ‘boner’ as their sign. I can’t handle it. Someone told me their chili con queso was good. As for San Felipe, it’s the best Mexican food within waking distance of Reed.

Saburos (1667 SE Bybee Blvd): I’ve mentioned Saburos numerous times. It’s nice to have good cheap sushi available again. Visit them.

A cautionary note about Tartine (1621 SE Bybee Blvd): A little birdie (actually, a flock of birdies) informed me that it has changed management, the prices have risen (significantly) and the portions have shrunk (considerably). The Turkish birdie told me his food looked comically small on his oversized plate. Note to any restaurant owners who might read this. If you’re going to chop portion sizes, get new plates. Oh, and quality, service and general atmosphere has suffered as well. (update: Tartine is now closed)

I bid you all goodbye for the winter, and thanks for reading.

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