Thirsty Thursday: Dogfish Head Palo Santo Marron

Yeah, I know it's not Thursday. But it was a boring, rainy, Cowboyless Sunday. So what better way to end a dreary Sunday and prepare for the coming week than to try a new brew.

When I first heard about this beer I was very excited to try it. So when I saw it at the Whole Foods Wall of Beer I had to grab a 4-pack even though I was not in beer drinking mode.

So let's start off with the flowery prose of the Dogfish Head website:

An unfiltered, unfettered, unprecedented brown ale aged in handmade wooden brewing vessels. The caramel and vanilla complexity unique to this beer comes from the exotic Paraguayan Palo Santo wood from which these tanks were crafted. Palo Santo means "holy tree" and it's wood has been used in South American wine-making communities.

Wow. How could you not want to try that. Oh, did I mention it's 12% ABV? Interested now?

Palo Santo Marron pours and almost headless dark, dark brown. It's aroma is that of a rich porter. The first taste is that of bitter chocolate. I do taste a bit of caramel. But i'm not feeling the vanilla.

This is the very definition of a dessert beer. In fact it would probably be very tasty over a premium vanilla ice cream.

A good beer, but not one I would drink a lot of. If you're looking for something interesting to drink after a fine meal, I would highly recommend Palo Santo Marron.

B

Area Dog Enjoys Local Mudhole

Stuff I’m Thankful For

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. It's Christmas without all the shopping and horrible music. So here's my quasi-snarky list of the things I'm thankful of in no particular order:

• That people don't get their panties in a bunch when you end a sentence in a preposition anymore. Otherwise there would be literally hundreds of comments complaining that I've done it twice already. Oh, and that people don't complain about using "literally" when you exaggerate.
  
• The Soup – it gives me the cultural knowledge of the goings-on of the horrible Kardashians and the Gosslins without having to sit through hours of dreadful television. It's homeopathic TV. It's greatly diluted, but still makes you just as sick as if you had taken the full dose.
  
• My iPhone – most of the time whenever I get a new play-pretty, it is quickly tossed aside and largely forgotten. But there are very few waking or even sleeping hours that go by without some contact with my iPhone. And having spent a week outside of Dallas, I now appreciate how great it is live in the city in which AT&T is headquartered. The rest of the country has terrible service, but not here! – well usually.
  
• White Rock Lake/Trail – I've bike 2200 miles this year (so far) the vast majority of which was done here. It's a beautiful enclave within the blandness of Dallas. It truly is one of the few things Dallas does right. Sorry, I guess that was a serious one.
  
• Facebook – it reminds me why I lost contact with so many people. Oh, and if you're reading this on Facebook, I don't mean you. I mean those other people.
  
• Yeast – My favorite activities these days are brewing beer and baking bread. Neither of which you can do without the greatness of yeast. Fresh baked bread and brewing beer are some of the great smells of all time. And those wonderful little critters also bring us wine and scotch. Yeast, is there nothing you can't do???
  
• The Internet – with Christmas shopping season kicking off the day after Thanksgiving, I am more thankful than ever that the internet exists. Why do people camp out at Best Buy at 5am Friday to get $20 off an Xbox? Is your time worth nothing??? Is your sanity worth nothing?? You can get anything you want on the internet and usually at a good price. And you don't have to spend an hour looking for a parking spot.
  
• U Fleků – up until I went there I was thinking I never had to go back to Prague. Been there, done it. But this place was special. Plus it introduced me to the greatness of pig knuckle and Bercherovka.
  
• The Ticket – My buddies on the radio that I've never actually met. Well, except for running into Gordo a few times walking to or from brunch at Terrilli's. Without The Ticket I'm not sure how I would get through the day. It (they?) are my constant companion at work and working out. Without them I would be left with only my own thoughts to occupy the dull parts of the day. What a horrifying prospect!!!
  
• Blogging – it allows me to bellyache about everything around me. And since no one reads it, I can't offend anyone.
  

  
  

Happy Thanksgiving

Eating Dallas: R&D Kitchen

There has been a near constant grumble emanating from Germany about the lack of content on this blog. Pretty much, if I'm stuck in Dallas there's not much getting written about. The problem is largely that in order for something to be blogworthy, it must be awesomely awesome or abjectly awful. So the vast mediocre in-between gets no mention on these pages.

I spend a lot of keystrokes complaining about shit. I'll be honest. It's more fun that way.

So please be patient with me as I gush some praise on R&D Kitchen. Or is it R&D Café? It's called both, but I like the Kitchen better.

Since it was born from the minds that gave us Houston's, I wasn't expecting much. That's not a knock on Houston's. I've never had a bad meal there. But it's always been nothing more than an Applebees done right to me.

R&D is no Applebees!

I immediately fell in love when told that their beers on tap were: Pilsner Urquell, Chimay White, Spaten Optimator and two or three equally worthy beers. Granted, this is not The Gingerman or The Flying Saucer. But most restaurants don't bother to have one good beer much less six.

The special of the day was a pan seared Barramundi with a butternut squash sauce on mashed potatoes. The fish was as fresh and delicious as I've ever had in Dallas. For a few seconds I felt like I was in Seattle. The slight drizzle on the patio also helped.

I'm very proud of my mashed potatoes. And these were worthy competitors to my mashed tater supremacy.

Since I need to complain about something, it would have to be their signature appetizer – deviled eggs. I'm not a fan of deviled eggs in general. And while they were edible, unlike most, they did not seem to me anything special. The tuna mango roll was something special. Its freshness and lightness would make a delightful summer appetizer its own self.

So it really can't get any better than this, right? How about carrot cake with mascarpone icing? Yeah, it was as good as it sounds.

R&D Kitchen is what every restaurant should strive to be. Everything about the place was geared toward maximizing customer experience and maximizing deliciousness.

A stark contrast to Bella.



A

8308 Preston Center Plz
Dallas, TX 75225-5304


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Eating Uptown: Bella

I am seldom here to shock you. I am here to entertain and quasi-enlighten. So please brace yourself for a truly shocking revelation.

I'm not exactly the trendiest dude.

If, by the time I've spotted a trend, then chances are that trend is probably three trends ago. Shit, now I've wasted my allotment of "trends".

So it is with some measure of sadness that I must place Bella into a what appears to be a growing fashion in Dallas of having "restaurants" with impressive looking menus but really people just go there to drink – and, of course, to be seen. Let's call these places Doucheterias.

It was, after all, the impressive looking menu that drew me to Bella – lambburger, seafood trio, chili rubbed pork chop. It all sounded good.

And, while waiting a substantially long time for our meals, we observed from our patio table, a veritable parade of overly tanned, roided up, faux hawked "gentlemen" drive up in high end automobiles with their "dates" replete with double Ds. So, in other words, they looked like me on Halloween.

If only the food could make up for the stench of douchebagguery.

After taking well over 30 minutes to present our meals (in a nearly empty restaurant when we placed our order) we were finally presented with our slop.

The seafood trio was like something one might expect at Captain D's. The shrimp were simply horrible – rubber little beasts tasting of yesterday. But to make up for the bad flavor of the shrimp, the scallops were simply flavorless, but also rubbery. The only pleasant part of the dish was the seabass. It was perfectly flacky and tasty. But it's fucking seabass. It's hard to screw up.

But as bad as the seafood trio was, the chili rubbed pork chop was the real star of the show. But by star of the show, I mean it in the way that Mike Myers was the star of The Love Guru. If you're a restaurateur and care so little about food as to serve something that resembled a flattened (yes I said "flattened") McRib, then just serve your silly expensive drinks and maybe some finger foods.

Do yourself a favor and just get some fish and chips at Black Friar a few blocks away.



D

2626 Howell St. Suite 100 Dallas, TX 75204


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But Will They Still Serve Car Bombs There?

Well this is disappointing -- a mediocre sangwuch shop taking over the old Blarney Stone. So many good times to be swept away like so much shredded lettuce.

clipped from www.barkingdogs.org Jimmy John's Sandwiches coming to Lower Greenville.... Jimmy John's Gourmet Sandwiches will open a store on Lowest Greenville Avenue in the former Blarney Stone space within the next few months.

He's So Ronrey

I'm not sure why I thought this picture was so funny.

If anyone has a hilarious caption to offer, please do so.

File Under DUH!

This article from Ad Age describes the personality of a person based on the beer he/she drinks.

Here's the funny stuff:

Michelob Ultra drinkers rate high in superiority; that is, they think highly of themselves and can be a little bit conceited.

Heineken: There's a slang term that could sum up Heineken drinkers: posers. These self-assured people believe they are exceptional, get low scores on modesty and high scores on self-esteem. They love their brand badges

The personality traits of people who prefer Blue Moon, a Belgian style wheat beer, tracked similarly to the same type of people who prefer craft beers—which means Blue Moon drinkers probably don't know it's a Molson Coors Brewing Co. family product made in Colorado.

These specialty made beers get lumped into one category both because there are fewer fans (and thus less statistically significant data) of them, but also because the personalities of one type fairly well describe another. This group is more likely to spend time thinking about beer rather than work. They are more open-minded than most people, seek out interesting and varied experiences and are intellectually curious. Craft-beer drinkers also skew as having a lower sense of responsibility—they don't stress about missed deadlines and tend to be happy-go-lucky about life.

The article did fail to acknowlege the obvious awesomeness of lovers of craft beers.

Vermont 2009 Pix: Days 2 and 3

Sorry these took so long to put up. I'm not gonna lie, I forgot about them.

FYI.

If you're looking at this "Note" from Facebook and not seeing any pictures it's because Facebook doesn't import the Flash based slideshow. Likewise, iPhone users will not be able to see them.

Therefore:
Facebook viewers go here.
iPhone viewers go here.

Worst Product Ever?

Or further evidence as to the craziness of the Japanese? Placenta-Pro (I would hate to try the amateur version of this product) uses only high quality Kyrgyz horse-origin placenta product. Which sounds a bit too legalese for my "tastes". Is this the Cool Whip -- non-dairy whipped topping -- of horse placenta based softdrinks? For shame Placenta-Pro for cutting corners!!

The Neverending Flight that Never Ended (Almost)

I should have know that this was going to be long night from the moment of my first disappointment.

Within Terminal D in Cleveland's airport, there resides a typical airport type "sports bar" -- lot's of TVs showing various games from around the country. This would be perfect. I can still watch the last quarter of the Cowboy game.

Not so fast.

"We only get some games here." the waitress offered after I requested the Jets/Raiders blowout be switched to Cowboys/Falcons.

OK. I can "watch" the remainder of the game on ESPN Gamecast on my iPhone. I'll drown my disappointment in a large Samuel Adams draft that was surprisingly on their menu.

"Sorry, we ran out of that earlier today."

Scanning the draft menu, I saw there was Budweiser's American Ale. I never thought there would be a reason to drink that. And not wanting to drink a shitty American yellow beer, this would be there perfect opportunity to see what a big "American" brewery would do with an ale.

"Oh, we stopped carrying that months ago."

"I'll have a large Budweiser then.", I replied with shoulders slumping from defeat.

As a world class beer sommelier, I knew instinctively that Budweiser pairs perfectly with a pulled pork sandwich and onion rings.

I was quickly presented with a pulled pork sandwich with french fries. Alerted to her mistake, the waitress made sure to finally present my onion rings once I had finished my sandwich. And don't get me started on that sandwich, but where do you find BBQ sauce that sweet and flavorless? Was it just colored corn syrup?

Well, at least the Cowboys won.

And these annoyances turned out to be minor in comparison as to what would later transpire.

The flight from Cleveland to DFW was mostly annoyance free -- as annoyance free as any flight in a cramped 50 seater can be. Towards the end of the flight I could see an abundance of lightning in the distance and wondered if that would be a problem.

It would be.

Just as we were about to approach DFW for landing, microbursts were detected and no one would be allowed to land. Low on fuel, we ended up landing at Love Field.

At almost 11pm, there would be no ground support for this flight at Love. Those of us who wanted to get off the plane could, but any checked baggage could not be obtained. I figured that since my car was at DFW and that I would probably need that in the morning, I would go ahead and wait it out. Plus I wanted to be able to get my luggage.

After a little over an hour, we finally were refueled and took off for our short trip to DFW. Now, you can't just take off from Love and land in DFW. You have to fly out a ways to make the proper approach. Which we did, all up in the clouds with lightning flashing all around us. Certainly I would be rewarded for my patience by having one of our engines struck thus exploding our freshly refueled jet.

Obviously, since there is no internet in Hell (it is Hell, afterall), we did land safely and I am able to blog semi-amusingly about my adventure.

But it doesn't end there.

Federal law dictates that no one shall take off from one terminal at DFW and land at that same terminal. Usually this is just American Airline's final "fuck you" to their customers, but this time it was self imposed. We flew out originally from DFW to DC out of terminal C. But since I continued on to Vermont, that part of the trip was on Continental, which is right next door in terminal E.

That's fine, I've had to deal with this many times before. And since I hate lugging my luggage (which is obviously what one does with luggage) on and off the terminal shuttles, I usually take the SkyLink to my car, and drive to my landing terminal. By that time I get to the terminal, my bag is usually revolving on the carousel for a quick retrieval and getaway.

Well who knew that they only run the SkyLink one way late at night. And while my landing terminal was right next to the terminal where my car was (that is, just one stop on the SkyLink away), the lone SkyLink train was going the opposite way. So instead of taking one stop, I had to take ALL of the stops.

So instead of a 3 minute trip to my car, it turned into a 20 minute trip around the airport. By the time I got to the carousel, it was empty. I was informed that "the lady" put all the remaining bags away and went home for the night.

Well, I'm glad someone got home early.

I finally made it home around 2am.