Tag Archives: food

Brandywine Kitchen: Locavores Rejoice!

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I LOVE discovering a new restaurant with certain characteristics that keep me coming back on a regular basis. Those characteristics typically include: a nice, friendly ambiance; unique, well-prepared food; healthy options alongside more indulgent choices; some measure of organic and local ingredients; and, particularly in these tight economic times, reasonable prices.

Bellingham, Washington’s own Brandywine Kitchen simply nails it on all accounts! And while this post may seem to only be relevant for folks here in Bellingham, I actually think it speaks to a fairly universal business principle.

Now, I’m a total proponent of paying extra for organic, locally produced food. Consider it a tax I gladly pay to support a more sustainable future.

That said, it seems to me that most of the locavore restaurants that I have been to — eateries that feature locally-grown and organic food — have been of the high-end, fine dining variety. And while I like that experience from time to time, on special occasions, for instance, I simply can’t afford to eat like that regularly, and neither can most people.

Enter, Brandywine Kitchen! Their tagline: From Seed to Plate

Founded originally as a small, organic heirloom tomato farm, owners Azizi Tookas and Chris Sunde then started selling prepared foods at the Bellingham Farmers Market, and eventually opened up the restaurant last year.

The space is elegant without being stuffy, and the first economizing element you notice upon entering is that there’s no wait service. Customers simply walk up to the counter, order their food, receive a number, visit a smaller counter for napkins, water, or fountain drinks, and then select their own table. On the tail end of the dining experience, customers are asked to do their own busing.

The most expensive entrée on the menu is $10.95, and several entrées and most of their sandwiches are $8.95 to $9.95. And while this could make for a pricey lunch, it’s hard to find a good restaurant that serves dinner for less than $12.00, and locavore restaurants more typically run as high as $15.00 to $25.00, not including starters, beverages, and desserts.

So, this business principle that I was speaking of is the recognition that 99% is much, MUCH bigger than 1%, and therefore it makes more sense to cater to the 99%, with affordable prices and a relaxed, casual atmosphere.

The other notable thing about the Brandywine Kitchen menu is that it is supremely accessible. Instead of fancy, nouvelle cuisine, with tiny but gorgeous fusion concoctions, the Brandywine serves recognizable favorites, such as Mac & Cheese, Fish & Chips, and Chicken Pot Pie, all made with the best, healthiest ingredients available, mostly coming from a list of local farmers and other vendors, whose names are listed proudly on a chalkboard near the front counter.

I had the special, a bison meatball sub, and unlike most restaurants, the special was the same price as most of the other entrées. The sub was absolutely delicious!

Again, this is the kind of food that most people eat on a regular basis. It’s a brilliant, sustainable business formula, the place is packed with people raving about it, and I wish the owners continued success, for very selfish reasons, of course.

Welcome, Kulshan Brewing Company!

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It’s starting to be the case that I can measure how long I’ve lived here in Bellingham, Washington by how many breweries have started up, and, in one case, have shut down.

Back in November 2009, I wrote about the two breweries we had at the time — Boundary Bay Brewery & Chuckanut Brewery — both are still going strong, winning numerous awards for their craft beers and ales, and, according to Wikipedia, Boundary Bay has become the largest brewpub in the country based on the number of barrels sold per year.

And when I mentioned in that 2009 post that Boundary Bay better watch their backs, because Chuckanut had significantly stepped up their game, having won the 2009 Best Small Brewpub award at the Great American Beer Festival (they won the Best Small Brewing Company award in 2011), I deemed this welcome and healthy local competition.

But when I heard rumblings some months ago that another new brewery was opening up in Bellingham, I really had doubts that our small city could support three breweries, especially considering that there were also several bar/restaurants in town that served good selections of craft beer.

Enter Kulshan Brewing Company, which just opened a few weeks ago, and already all doubts have been put to rest.

I went there last night for the first time, the place was packed, everyone was raving about how good the beer is, myself included, and so it seems they will really have to screw up big time in order to fail.

The ambiance is casual and comfortable, the crowd was a nice Bellingham cross-section, and they have a novel approach to food that I was initially skeptical about: food trucks.

They currently have three different trucks that rotate throughout the week, offering sandwiches, BBQ, and pizza depending on the day, and they plan to eventually widen the selection. Early criticism of the idea suggested that people won’t want to eat out of to-go boxes when they are out drinking $4+/pint beer, but the folks I talked to LOVED the idea, reported that the food was great, and, best of all, considering how pricey the beer is, the food was cheap! (My friends had the Cuban Dog from StrEAT Food last night, which was huge, delicious, and only $4.50!)

Finally, the beer.

I sampled all of the brews that they had flowing and was VERY impressed with how consistently good they were. Not all of them were unique or stood out, but they seemed solid, delicious examples of the styles they represented.

American Wheat Ale: Let’s just get this out of the way: I don’t like wheat beers. I tasted it, didn’t care for it, but folks who I talked to who were drinking it said that they liked it.

Bastard Kat IPA: I was doubtful when it was poured, because it was so light in color. Other light-colored IPAs I’ve had were WAY out of balance, insane hops and not enough malt, resulting in a beer that is too bitter for me. Bastard Kat, on the other hand, was a good example of a standard Pacific Northwest IPA, with great, citrusy hops and plenty of them, but balanced nicely with just enough malty goodness to make it HIGHLY drinkable. Yum!

Midnight CDA (Cascadian Dark Ale): Basically a dark IPA, this was my favorite of the bunch. Pours almost black, and has a really nice, full viscosity without being syrupy. The hops weren’t as dominant as the IPA, but nor were the malts overbearing. It was surprising how drinkable it was. I’m not sure what the ABV is, but the alcohol was not overpowering (nor was it for any of the beers, for that matter).

Porter: Probably the most unremarkable of the bunch, but not in a bad way. It’s simply a good example of a Porter, with very tasty roasted malts, a light, drinkable body, and a dark, rich color. Porters aren’t my favorites, but I think that a Porter fan would enjoy it very much.

Russian Imperial Stout: This, to me, was nearly an exact copy of my favorite imperial stout, Lost Coast Brewing’s Old Rasputin, but that’s not a bad thing at all. Kulshan’s is undeniably delicious, with a high alcohol content nestled in heavily roasted malts. Not a beer for sunny weather, in my opinion, so I’d be surprised if they kept it on tap for much longer.

Sadly, they had just run out of their other beer — Good Ol’ Boy Pale Ale — so I wasn’t able to try it, but people were talking about it and saying it was a great session beer.

I’ll be returning to Kulshan for sure, and I recommend it heartily!

Celebrating Eco-Progress: Guiness

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I confess.

I did not wear green on St. Patrick’s Day.

Nor did I attend any St. Patrick’s Day event.

I ate no corned beef and cabbage, and I raised no pint of Guiness.

But, I did read, much to my environmentalist delight, that Guiness, the legendary Irish brewing company, has made significant commitments to sustainable practices, earning them an installment in my Celebrating Eco-Progress series.

Via the National Resources Defense Council blog:

“Sustainability and enhancing the environment of the Dublin communities has been a core philosophy of the Guinness Company since it was founded,” said Paul Carty, Managing Director at the Guinness Storehouse, the brewery’s large and historic facility at St. James’s Gate in the Irish capital. Last year the Storehouse, now a major tourist attraction hosting a million visitors annually, received a three-star accreditation from Sustainable Travel International for its environmental commitment. (The actual brewing was moved from the old facility in 1988.)

Among the highlights recognized by the award are these:

  • Adoption of environmental performance indicators
  • Measures to reduce waste, chemical use, and energy consumption
  • Use of paper products derived from sustainably managed forests
  • Advanced lighting technology
  • Local food sourcing
  • Locally sourced construction materials
  • Sustainability training for staff

That parenthetical note, that the actual brewing is done at a different facility, does seem a bit of a letdown, and of course the Guiness we drink here in the States necessarily has a regrettably large carbon footprint just for being shipped here.

And yet, as I’ve always said about the companies I feature in Celebrating Eco-Progress, in recognition that every little bit of effort does indeed help, I applaud the measures that have been taken, and I encourage us all to applaud them as well, indicating loud and clear that this is, indeed, a direction their customers would like to see them continue going in.

I’ve written before of my fondness for being down at the pub, having a pint with the lads, so I’m looking forward to, first chance I get, lifting a glass of Guiness stout and drinking it with hope for a sustainable future.

Leftoverture: The Pun That Slept For 36 Years

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Listen, I’m not ashamed to admit it.

For about a year in the mid 1970s, I was a fan of U.S. prog rock band Kansas.

What I am a little embarrassed to admit, however, is that it took me 36 years to finally get the pun in the title of their 1976 breakthrough album: Leftoverture.

My son and I were eating at our favorite fast food joint, Bellingham’s own Pel Meni. And, as I wrote a couple of years ago, besides the food the main attraction of Pel Meni is the massive vinyl record collection they have and the turntable sitting out so that guests can choose their own music.

Anyway, Leftoverture was the record playing when we arrived, someone had propped up the album cover in the “Now Playing” position, and as we waited for our dumplings I stared at the album cover and it’s Michelangelo-esque artwork and…

…it hit me. Leftover…ture.

See, I’d always pronounced the title, as did everybody else, with a slight pause between “left” and “overture.” My friends pronounced it like this. DJs on the radio pronounced it like this. And I was a rabid music geek, reading everything I could get my hands on about the bands I discovered, and I never came across a reference to the pun in Leftoverture.

So, there it is. One part embarrassing admission, two parts rationalization, three parts…well, arguably WAY too much time spent on the subject.

I’ll wrap up by spending a little more time with it.

Kansas was a highly unlikely success. A band without pedigree (no members had had any prior success worth mentioning in any prior group), a rag tag group of Midwesterners riding a genre wave set in motion in the late 1960s and early 1970s by bands like Pink Floyd, Yes, and Genesis, but by the mid 1970s a wave that had already crashed on the shores and was about to break apart.

You can say what you want about the band, about how cheesy the music sounds today, but you can’t watch the following video of them in action and NOT admire their total commitment, and how thoroughly keyboardist/singer Kerry Livgren rocks the short running shorts and sweat socks!

The Escargot Revolution Begins

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Too long have humans, particularly those voracious French humans, feasted on snails, a veritable mollusk genocide, if you will.

Now, the snails are fighting back!

Via Gizmodo:

Ok, so, these are sea snails, not land snails like those ingested in fine restaurants. But, this could be an evolutionary trait that land snails will also develop at some point, one day, perhaps, when they get fed up with the humiliation of adorning fine china swimming in garlic butter.

Personally, this scares the hell out of me!

Stuff We Don’t Need: Caffeinated Waffles

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So, it was time for my morning coffee, and I was on my way to the Viking Union (student center), at my place of employment, Western Washington University, when I came across a vendor on Vendor’s Row selling what you see here in the photo to the right. (Click photo to enlarge to better read the label.)

That’s right. Caffeinated waffles from the people at WiredWaffles.com.

Context: It’s finals week at the university, a time of deadlines, all-nighters and sleep deprivation.

I continued on to my favorite vendor, The Coffee Lady, and as I filled my 16-oz. reusable mug I asked her, “Did you ever think that your competition would come in the form of a waffle?”

The Coffee Lady replied, “No, I can’t say that I saw that coming.”

I know it seems mighty hypocritical of me, a daily coffee drinker, to give a thumbs-down to the Wired Waffle, but there’s something so blatantly and disturbingly exploitative about it. At least from my experience, the vast majority of coffee advertising has nothing to do with the caffeine and everything to do with the flavor.

Finally, the fact that the WiredWaffles.com website BADLY needs proofreading, well, as a former English major, sorry, I can’t abide.