July 2007 – Page 3

Madison: Quivey’s Grove Stone House

July 5, 2007 mmm-yoso American/New American Restaurants, Madison, Wisconsin, Travel

During our third day in Madison, I decided to ask and find out where the "locals" ate. I asked our friendly and gracious "Host", Ryan to recommend a place that served "Wisconsin" cuisine. His recommendation? Quivey’s Grove, his favorite local restaurant. It really wasn’t a hard sell, he started a sentence with, "they make a really good duck….", and the rest of the sentence was lost to time and space. In other words, I was sold! So, after a busy day, we headed off, GPS in tow, and set out to find Quivey’s Grove. After a few lucky guesses on direction(gotta love that GPS), we saw the simple roadside sign, and headed up the drive, past the lovely manicured lawn, to our destination.

We had been told that Quivey’s Grove consisted of two restaurants, the Stable Grill ("really, you won’t be eating in the stable" he assured the tin horns from Cali-for-ni-ay – just in case we didn’t know…), which serves up more casual fare(anyone for Morona Meatloaf, Pork Hanerloaf, or the very classic Friday Fish Fry?) along with beverages from Wisconsin Microbreweries such as Capital, Sprecher Brewing Company, and New Glarus.

We had been tempted, but decided on the more formal fare served in the beautiful Stone House.

This beautiful mansion was built in 1855, and except for the entrance, kitchen, and bathroom (whew…) has been kept in almost its original state. Each room in the mansion has a theme, such as the Valentine Room…there’s also a (not-so) secret tunnel under the Stone House, more about that later…..

We were seated quite promptly, and our very pleasant Server, Anne provided us with menus. To quote, ""Preparing the wholesome food of our forebears requires sweet butter, fresh potatoes, and heavy cream." You gotta love this place!

I decided to start with the "King" James Strang Tarts ($6.50). To quote the menu, "commemorates the founder of a Mormon community on Beaver Island in 1847 where he declared himself king."

I thought these a bit low on flavor for such a rich concoction of cream, cheese, onions, and leeks. It was pretty heavy and I thought the cheese pastry crust to be too soft. Not quite fit for a king…….even a self declared king.

In anticipation for a pretty rich and heavy meal, I ordered the salad.

I’m not big on fruits on my salad, but in this case the salad was dressed with a lively vinaigrette, which did a fine job of balancing out the sweetness of the fruit.

About that time the muffins arrived:

You’ll notice only 2 of the original 3 muffins in the photo. In the ultimate showdown of speed shooting versus grabbing reflex, the highly motivated "grabber" won. And with good reason. These Strawberry Muffins were outstanding. Served warm, the muffins were moist, without being too dense, and slightly crunchy on the outside.

It seemed that the meal was slowly gaining momentum. By this time I was really looking forward to my Duck Wilcox ($24.50 ):

The half roast duck with dried cherry and port wine sauce was served with some very pedestrian sauteed apples, and the wild rice, though nice and nutty was a bit on the soft side for my taste.

The duck was roasted to perfection, the skin crisp, with some nice caramelization. The duck was almost fork tender, and very moist. The dried cherry and port sauce had nice balance, and I detected some additional spice(thyme??) that added to the flavor. I’ve had cherry and port wine sauced dishes twice before (both pork), and have found them to be either to much on the bitter side or too sweet. This was very nice. I’d have this dish again without hesitation.

Thanks for the recommendation Ryan!

Oh yes, the "tunnel". Well, good ol’ Ryan decided to have a little fun at my expense. He told me that Quivey’s Grove had a special tunnel that was built to hide and transport slaves from building to building during the Civil War.

So of course during dinner I had to ask our Server about it. She replied with a wry smile, "you’ve been taken in….the tunnel was built in 1980, to connect the Stone House with the Stable". Hah, so dear old Ryan sucker’d me in pretty good! I did have a chance to check out the tunnel.

Looks like a nice setting for an Urban Legend, or at least a set for an upcoming horror flick.

In the end, I guess I had it coming……I shouldn’t have mentioned that "Happy cows really come from California, don’t they?" Just kidding! Really!

Quivey’s Grove Stone House
6261 Nesbitt Rd.
Madison(actually Fitchburg, I’ve been told), WI 53719

Have a safe and Happy Fourth!

July 4, 2007 mmm-yoso Blog

Have a very safe, fun, and happy Independence Day!

Not much to say, and I’m recycling a photo.

I’m currently experiencing Internet connectivity issues, which I hope to resolve soon.

Wait, I know I’m breaking a rule here….need a food photo!!!

Can you guess where this is from?

Here’s a hint:

Crab Hut

July 2, 2007 mmm-yoso Cajun, Southern, and Soul Food, Seafood

*** An updated post can be found here

I remember first reading about Vietnamese Owned, Cajun Seafood restaurants on my good blogging buddy Elmo of Monster Munching‘s site. He wrote about his meal at the Boiling Crab in Garden Grove. On future trips to the area I soon noticed several other of these Crab/Crawfish Boil places with names like the Cajun Corner and Rockin’ Crawfish popping up. And so it seems a new "fad" was founded. Not quite as popular as the current Fro-Yo craze, but quite popular nonetheless.

If you think that a Vietnamese Owned Crab Boil restaurant is a bit of an odd combination, you wouldn’t be the only one. But after considering that there are over 5,000 Vietnamese, and Vietnamese Americans Shrimpers fishing the Gulf of Mexico, it is much easier to connect the dots. According to this article, the Owners of a restaurant called Cafe Artist in Garden Grove decided to see how well crawfish would do in their restaurant, and the rest as they say, is history….. So I guess it just makes sense that the former Pho restaurant Bolsaa, has now become Crab Hut.

The Missus, a big fan of crawfish, displayed amazing restraint, by resisting the urge to be the very first customer when Crab Hut opened its doors. Instead, she decided to wait a few weeks, to let the restaurant settle into a "groove". So when the time finally arrived, She could hardly contain Herself.

On our visit to Crab Hut we found the restaurant’s interior and environment to be…well, an interesting combination of various themes. First off, the ex-Pho(faux-Pho???) restaurant meets Gilligan’s Island motif was a bit odd, but it could be because I had eaten at Bolsaa a few times. The ubiquitous Pho restaurant counter was still visible, and all the tables looked the same, except that they were covered with brown butcher paper.

Add to that, the loud techno pop music, combined with the large Plasma television showing Sponge Bob Squarepants, and you get a pretty surreal experience. There was a group of Young Men and Women working, all of whom were very nice and helpful.

You’ll notice right off, that the prices are very reasonable; crawfish at $7.99/lb, shrimp at $8.99/lb. The process is simple you order seafood by the pound, and select a flavoring, "Cajun Sensation", "Garlic Butter", "Lemon Pepper", or "Full House"(which I think is akin to taking your cup and working your way down the soda dispenser at the 7-11). A roll of paper towels is deliver to your table, along with some lime and a container of ground black pepper.

On this visit, along with our seafood we also ordered the Catfish with Fries($8.99). After all, why not finish the job off with something fried?

First off, I need to say that whoever fried this up deserves a raise! Or at least some praise. The round cigar shaped pieces of fish was breaded and fried perfectly, crunchy on the outside, and uber-moist.

The Cajun Fries were also fried perfectly. Both the fish and the fries were dusted with Cajun seasoning, but you could still taste the fish and potato. The only thing I didn’t care for was the overly mayonais-sey tartar sauce. I wish Malt Vinegar was available…maybe next time I’ll bring my own bottle.

Soon enough our seafood arrived in large plastic bags, first the Crawfish ($7.99/lb) ordered with "Cajun Sensation" at medium heat.

This pile of bugs included one piece of corn on the cob, and a few slices of sausage. The crawfish were cooked perfectly, though we found the tails to be on the small side. Not the meatiest, nor tastiest crawfish I’ve had, but pretty good overall. The flesh of the crawfish showed no signs of being frozen, that would be mushy, lumpy, dried out meat, or meat that had shrunk away from the shell. The medium spicy was more hotter than I thought it would be, and at times the flavor of the crawfish was lost.

This was still much better than we had anticipated.

I had a pound of Shrimp ($8.99/lb) with the same seasoning. Like the crawfish, this was cooked perfectly, the shrimp was nice and moist, and very tender.

These were meant to be eaten shell and all. I thought there was a bit too much sauce, and like the crawfish I thought the flavor of the shrimp was overshadowed. The Missus thought these were good, though She preferred the Crawfish. I thought the shrimp were much better.

In the end, we felt like this meal was an excellent value. I’d recommend that you NOT wear anything that will not survive stains(of course bibs are provided!). The service was good, and so was the food. We found the hours to be a bit odd, Crab Hut opens at 2pm during the week, too late for lunch, and too early for dinner. Of course, I’m not sure that you’d want to deal with a pound of bugs, and return to work with shrimpy hands and stained clothes. We were ever so thankful for the entire roll of paper towels and the towelettes at the end…..but Sammy and Frankie still kept sniffing at my hands for the entire evening!

Crab Hut
4646 Convoy St
San Diego, CA 92111
858-565-1678

Borders Cafe – Yuma

July 1, 2007 ed fromyuma Mexican Restaurants, What Ed Eats -You too can be like Ed!, Yuma

No, Kirk has not moved to Yuma. This is just Ed from Yuma doing another post for mmm-yoso!!! Hope you all don’t mind.

Just a brief update – I dropped into Border’s last week (Jan 21, 2008) and didn’t recognize anybody there. Tried to order a couple of my favorites (fish ball soup and sting ray soup) and were told that they no longer made those. Found out that a new family was running the place. I did have a bowl of rightous, beefy albondigas de res, but this post is no longer a useful guide to the place. R.I.P.

I feel a little strange writing another post about Yuma for Kirk’s marvelous blog that generally centers on San Diego dining. I guess my justification is that in my mind Yuma is just a distant suburb of San Diego – it is thinking like this that keeps me sane when it’s 115° here. In this post, I’d like to focus on a small, family run Mexican restaurant in which the chef, the grandmother of the family, has around 30 years of experience of cooking in Cabo. The place is called Borders and located on Yuma’s main drag 4th ave.

Many of the items available here are fairly standard dishes found in many Mexican restaurants, although always done very effectively at Borders. For example, the chiles rellenos here are long and beautiful to look at:

Although the chilies themselves are not especially picante, they have a good flavor and the rellenos are not lost in a thick layer of breading, a soup of sauce, or a mound of cheese. Even the cheese stuffing is fairly thin so that the overall effect is a balanced flavor.

Another standard dish done very well here is the taco salad with carne asada:

The flavorful slices of steak were not just the topping of the salad but extended all the way through. Yum. The fish tacos are another treat:

Each taco contains two small crunchy fish fillets. These are as good as you would get in Yuma. While lengua is found in many Mexican restaurants in town, Borders serves it as lengua estofada – or lengua stew.

My friend Betsy raved about this molé after she had it, so I had to order it also and I agree with everything that she said. It is easily the best in town. Most moles are too sweet, and sometimes plain boiled chicken is just topped with sauce. In this case the mole sauce is nicely balanced, slightly spicy, and full flavored. The chicken is fall apart tender.

Borders also offers some interesting dishes that cannot be found in another Mexican restaurant in Yuma.

Caguamanta, or stingray soup, has been heretofore available only at Deliciosos del Mar, a taco truck. Borders’ version is rich and deeply flavorful, if a touch too salty for my taste.

It is full of small chunks of the stingray and various vegetables, such as potatoes, carrots, onions, tomatoes, green peppers, and olives. Another amazing dish here is albondigas de pescado. The deeply flavorful and chili infused broth is full of pale and mildly fishy meatballs along with some veggies. Unlike fishballs in Chinese cuisine, these balls have a texture more like meatballs and a taste that is enhanced by the wonderfully rich and tasty stock:

My only concern about this restaurant is that it contains only about 10 tables, and it seems like every time I come there it is busier than it was the last time. I guess that’s good for the restaurant, but I always worry that I may have to stand and wait if the customer base continues to grow and if winter visitors find out about it. Prices are very reasonable. Most medium soups (lunch size) are 4.99. I believe all the entrees are under $8. While there is minimal atmosphere, the service is efficient and caring. Another reason to visit Yuma, the great metropolis of Southwest Arizona.

OK, the only metropolis of Southwest Arizona.