So you’ve got yourself a bottle of Krug. Congratulations, you have one of the finest bottles of Champagne on the planet. Oh, what’s that? You’re inviting me over to share it with you? (You’re taking a page out of my wish book. Is this a dream?) And all I have to do is bring something to eat? No problem. I’ll be right over.

Lobster? Nope. Caviar? Sorry. I’m coming with popcorn. Yes, popcorn. Seriously. Why? I’m glad you asked.

With a Champagne redolent of yeast and toasted bread, popcorn, with it’s complimentary aroma and flavor, makes a lovely companion. And all bubbles adore salty snacks. Just keep it simple: popcorn, butter, salt. That’s it. And a modicum of butter; no need to have the popcorn swimming in a soup of dairy. I even like (dare I admit it?) the pre-popped corn you buy in a bag at the grocery store. (It doesn’t get your hands greasy with butter. You are drinking Krug, after all. You don’t want to ask for a Wet Nap; it kills the mood.)

I also like the idea of taking a luxury good like Champagne and pairing it with something humble and free of pretension like popcorn (or even potato chips). And you don’t have to have a pricey Champagne; any decent Cava, Cremant, or sparkling wine in the $15-20 range will give you reasonably similar pleasures. (If you’d like some suggestions, ask away in the comments and I’ll give you my picks.)

Just resist the temptation to gild the lily here, folks: keep it simple. Ok, I know, Foodista-ists. You really want to gild the lily a bit. OK, how about melting the butter and swirling a little curry powder into it? Curry and a rich, complex, powerful Champagne like Krug are heavenly! Or maybe get out your microplane and grate fluffy pillows of Parmesan into that butter. But that’s as far as I’ll go.

I’m firing up some Jiffy Pop for you right now; have you chilled the Champagne?

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Categories:	Snack Foods • wine	2 Comments
Tags:	champagne • krug • popcorn

The older I get, the more I prize predictable quality over the occasional excellence. Give me the ninety-ninth percentile nine over the ninety-fifth percentile nine point five any day of the week.

[In this week's installment of On Eating at the Bar, Mr. Arsenic offers some advice to all the aspiring chefs, brewers, distillers, and vintners out there. Good luck.]

That well tequila comes from the same batch as the top shelf (both are to be avoided of course, another story for another napkin), only the bottling line for the latter is checked twice as often. (Aside #1 – I’ve been told this is in fact urban legend, but I choose to believe it anyway, for the same reason I believe in Bigfoot and God — just in case.) But back to the point, the point here is not that you’re being ripped off, it’s that it’s worth it.

Thomas Keller and Johnny Walker know this, as do Ronald McDonald and Anheuser-Busch. The upside down Big Mac sends the plumber across the mall tomorrow just as sure as the the under inflated soufflé sends the eye-banker over to Bistro Jeanty for next Friday’s casual encounter.

It’s not just the occasional error to be avoided, and this is what separates Cyril Ray’s compleat imbiber from the incompleat, it’s the unexpected. There is nothing wrong with the occasional experiment, but only if the control is well established. Any Davis oenology grad worth his refractometer can spit out a 92 point California Cabernet so big and deep and bright you can paint the walls with it. But that’s not the vintner’s job. The vintner’s job is: second, don’t ruin the fruit; first, make the same bottle this year as last.

Yes, the vintage single malt is ordered by the aficionado and the tyro alike, but the seasoned drinker asks for the blended scotch, for he is far more interested in the finding the familiar than foraging the forest for something new.

And yes, James Bond can ask for a récemment dégorgé Bollinger, but remember, he is James Bond, he has forgotten more about wine and women than you or even I will ever know. Our virgin palates and un-notched bedposts are better served by the common bar wench at the pub than that foxy sommelier at Dorsia.

The pub provides us another illustration. Beer, unlike wines and conquests past, does not get better with age, in fact begins to deteriorate immediately after birth, a process accelerated by sunlight and warmth. Note here I am talking about lagers, specifically of the American style, Trappist ales to name but one category could do well with some cellaring. But here Budweiser can rightly claim to be the king of beers (one of the only three kings in this world, along with Bobby Rahal and Elvis Presley), for no other reason than its economies of scale. Go ahead, try to compete with them, they dare you, they taunt you right there on the label:

This is the famous Budweiser beer. We know of no brand produced by any other brewer which costs so much to brew and age. Our exclusive Beechwood Aging produces a taste, a smoothness, and a drinkability you will find in no other beer at any price. Brewed by our original all natural process using the choicest Hops, Rice and Best Barley Malt.

Drinkability indeed. Beechwood, hops, malt notwithstanding, what really sets Anheuser-Bush apart is their quality assurance department. Walk into any bar, crash any wedding, any day of the year, any Podunk town in the country and you can enjoy that famous Budweiser beer, and it will taste exactly like the one you had yesterday. Pike’s Peak Pale may taste great at the brewery, but I guarantee you that keg hasn’t been changed in three months.

The legions of tall can PBR drinkers and what-do-you-have-on-draught -ers will scoff at this of course. These are the same Trader Janes who will buy a case of Two Buck Chuck (your Charles Shaw will cost you a mere two bucks in the two tier states, but up to three in three tier land, write your congressman), lock it in the trunk of their sun baked daddy bought black Jetta GL for a week before bringing it to their boyfriend’s bad art reception to go with their over- olive-oiled hummus and cardboard pita.

(Aide #2 – Back at the turn of the millennium, a Mr C. Shaw produced a plonk just drinkable enough to influence some irresponsible influencer, and then pulled the ultimate bait and switch, Ponzi-ing us into innumerable unearned hangovers ever since.)

Gentle reader, you may not pay attention to what you put in your mouth, and if so, more power to you.

But don’t let me down.

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Categories:	Beverages • On Eating at the Bar	Leave a Comment
Tags:	beer • bollinger • budweiser • champagne • johnny walker • McDonald's • plonk • whisky • wine

After a long hard move  from San Francisco to Seattle, nothing soothed the soul more than a fine bottle of champagne and some good aged goat’s milk cheese.  Our dear friend provided the champagne and we plated the cheese. Now, I use the term “plate” loosely since the only thing I could find that resembled a flat surface was a Tupperware lid. Oh well…

We sat on the bare oak floors and dined in front of our fire. The pièce de résistance of our cheese selection were two beautifully aged goat’s milk chèvres. The first was Humboldt Fog, the signature cheese from Cypress Grove Chèvre. Humboldt Fog is a divine semi-gooey, creamy chèvre with an edible vegetable ash stripe that runs down its center. Delicious served with almonds drizzled with a bit of honey and worth lifting a ton of boxes for!

The other cheese was Sunset Bay from River’s Edge Chèvre. Another dense, creamy chèvre; this one with a ribbon of smoked paprika (a.k.a pimentón) down its middle. Sunset Bay is aged for three weeks, giving it time to absorb the smoky flavors of the pimentón and the vegetable ash that coats the rind.  As the cheese ripens the texture becomes creamier.

Both these cheeses, combined with a couple of glasses of a crisp champagne (who cares if we drank out of mugs!), had us grinning like a happy new home owners!

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Categories:	Beverages • Cheese • Seasoning & Spices	2 Comments
Tags:	champagne • Cheese • chevre • Food • foodista • goats milk cheese • humboldt fog • pimenton • seattle • smoked paprika • sunset bay • vegetable ash

Continuing the bubbly talk….this morning’s Wall Street Journal has a great article on the Champagne industry in France. Focused on the strategy of LVMH, I highly recommend the article to anyone who enjoys Moët, Veuve, or Dom … all owned by the same house.

If you are like me, you may have assumed that the grape farmers of the region must be rather well off, given the average price of their product and limited supply of source material. As the article points out, the truth is very diferent for many of Champagne’s growers:

René Dessaint says he wouldn’t have been able to survive on income from his vineyard alone. A retired teacher and current mayor of the small town of Pargny-lès-Reims, Mr. Dessaint uses the $17,500 a year he gets from selling grapes to champagne houses as a way to round out retirement benefits. At 62, Mr. Dessaint has increasingly needed outside help for field tasks such as fertilization.

Filled with facts, figures and graphs; this story contains a lot of interesting info on the past, present and future of tiny bubbles.

Champagne Tarlant is one of the better Champagne related blogs I’ve found. I haven’t tasted Tarlant Champagne, but will be looking to get some.

Marisa D’Vari has an interesting blog post in which she talks about the curious practice of Decanting Champagne.

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Categories:	Beverages	3 Comments
Tags:	champagne • Dom Pérignon • France • LVMH • Moët & Chandon • Veuve Clicquot

What rings in the New Year better than a splendid champagne and some fine caviar? We started our celebrations with this delicious little appetizer thoughtfully prepared by Barnaby. Little 1.5″rounds of buttermilk bread (a fine substitution for blini) were cut out and toasted. He substituted mascarpone for crème fraîche, carefully piped it on top and finished with a healthy dollop of American Malossol Sevruga caviar. He then pulled out his grandparents’ Bohemian Czech cut-crystal wine glasses and filled them with Piper-Heidsieck Brut Rosé Sauvage champagne. Purrrr…

Cheers to 2008!

For further reading pleasure check out this much more ambitious approach to caviar documented by 100 Blogging Babes. And Secrets to Choosing Champagne.

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Categories:	Beverages • Fish & Seafood • Holiday	1 Comment
Tags:	caviar • champagne • creme fraiche • mascarpone

‘Tis the day after Christmas and I’ve been eating constantly! We’ve been spreading ourselves around among family and friends with a number of interesting culinary events. On Christmas Eve Eve (aka last Sunday), we had a cocktail party with Potato Pancakes (Latkes), a variety of smoked fish, caviar and some really nice champagne. Being only half-Jewish, potato pancakes are only a cultural & culinary tradition for me. In fact, it’s more tied to Christmas than Hanukkah because I learned to make them from my Jewish grandfather who celebrated Christmas. For a nice post and recipe for Latkes, visit The Blog that Ate Manhattan.

On the actual Eve of Christmas, we prepared a goose, which is pretty rare among American households nowadays, but a food I love. We ordered it in advance from Draeger’s in San Mateo, but they called the morning it was supposed to arrive and informed us that “it wasn’t on the truck,” with a suggestion that we have “Christmas Duck”…Sheri said “what the Dickens!!” and I set about finding a goose elsewhere. We got lucky and Whole Foods had a beautiful one from the Amish country. Had I been even more organized, I would have ordered from Amazon.com in advance.

I meant to take pictures, write down my recipes and be a good blogger, but wound up too engrossed in the actual cooking, drinking and stuffing of face to do any of that. Luckily, Wendy Cooper, of the Cooking Blog, did a great post on Christmas Goose.

Recipes indexed at Foodista.com:

Goose

Latkes

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Categories:	Holiday	1 Comment
Tags:	caviar • champagne • Christmas • Food • foodista • Goose • Hanukkah • Holiday • holidays • Latkes • meals • recipe • recipes