Slope Farms Beef, Catskills NY - a Visit with Ken Jaffe.

This is the longest post ever to appear on this blog, by far, but I wanted to share all that I learned at Slope Farms. I think it's very important to engage with this - thinking about where our food comes from.
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I don't remember exactly when I began buying Slope Farms beef, but it's been over five years now. I tried several varieties sold at the Coop and found Slope Farms to be the most delicious.

The label made me feel good too - no hormones, antibiotics, grass-fed, and never confined to feedlots. Then I learned from the meat buyer at the Coop that Slope Farms is run by Ken Jaffe, a guy who was a beloved Park Slope family doctor for 25 years. He retired from his practice and moved to the Catskills to raise beef cattle. I heard that you can't buy cuts of meat from Slope Farms - you must buy the cow. That seems like a very decent way to do business. I mean, what happens to all of the shanks if you let people buy only tenderloin? And so, over the years I kept eating this beef and feeding it to my children and it really is so much better than any other beef I know of. One day it would be interesting to visit this Slope Farms, I thought. How is this guy Ken Jaffe doing this? Why is he doing this?

A few weeks ago, as summer was still vibrant but beginning to wane, I found myself in the Catskills for a few days. I emailed Ken and he welcomed me to come visit the farm. I drove west from near the Hudson River on Route 28, a gorgeous drive if ever there was one.

Eventually I found the place to turnoff, a road that used to be called the Catskills Turnpike. There was no traffic on the Turnpike on this summer afternoon. 

I stopped at the side of the road to admire the view. I hadn't been in a place that looked like this in a long, long time. 

I arrived at Ken and his wife Linda's house and Ken told me to put on a pair of the big rubber boots that sat in the garage. We would do a lot of walking on wet ground, he said. We began by going out behind his house, past his little tomato garden, and heading toward the pastures. I asked him about how it happened that he became a beef farmer.

Ken grew up in Brooklyn, in Fort Greene. He left NYC for college and went to SUNY Binghamton for college and then to SUNY Buffalo for Medical School - that's how he came to feel a connection with upstate NY. He returned to Brooklyn with his wife Linda and worked as an old fashioned family doctor for 25 years. Ken was the doctor, Linda ran the business. He was not part of a larger medical group - he had no other partners. He saw kids, old people, everyone. But eventually the necessities of the modern medical business establishment made it unfeasible for Ken and Linda to continue their business, and so they stopped. Their kids were grown. They had been visiting the Catskills for years, and decided to move there.

Okay, I said. But why beef farming? We looked out at the hills of pasture from behind Ken and Linda's house.

"I went to Columbia school of public health in 2002," he said, "and began thinking about the relationship between human health and how we raise livestock, and about environmental implications and health concerns regarding the beef industry."

Ken went on to tell me that the Catskills region used to be covered with dairy farms, now largely defunct. "NY State has abandoned factories, just like Detroit," he said. "Ours are empty plots of land that once were used for dairy farming. You can think of the beautiful unused open pastures of upstate as similar to the empty factories of Cleveland or Detroit."

Ken Jaffe doesn't strike me as a crusader. He wasn't preaching anything and didn't seem interested in converting me to any particular vein of thought. What I now realize is that I think he approaches what he is doing the way a doctor approaches a patient. He is a man of science. He knows how to help fix this problem, but he does so somewhat dispassionately. After all, a doctor cannot make a patient take their medicine.

Ken unlatched a part of the wooden fence and we walked out into the pasture.

We passed a small pond and it was beautiful to look back at the Jaffe's house, and the barn next to it. But where were the cows, I wondered. We walked through gorgeous fields of healthy looking tall grass. "Do the cows eat this grass," I asked.

Slope Farms is 97 acres on the main farm and then another 100 acres a few miles down the road. There are 160 head of cattle right now. Ken explained that his animals do eat the grass on this field, but not right now - not this month. The farmland is divided into 24 paddocks and there are thin wires separating the paddocks from one another, wires that deliver a mild electric shock when touched. 70 head of cattle eat a little under one acre of grass each day. Ken allows his cattle to graze a paddock until the grass gets low, and then he moves the animals to another paddock. They do not return to the first paddock for 6 weeks - that's how long it takes for the grass to recover to the level Ken is looking for. This system is called rotational grazing.

"Rotational grazing is the key to healthy beef agriculture," Ken said. The idea is to mirror the natural grassland ecosystem, which in nature includes large ruminants moving from one area to the next as a key component of the health of the grass and soil. In the past, between tens of millions of years ago until hundreds of years ago, large ruminants roamed the plains in the US and the eastern grasslands as well. They grazed, they used their hooves to trample some of the grass into the soil, they added excrement to fertilize/add carbon to the soil, then they moved onto other plots and returned after the grass had recovered and regrown."

"So how did you figure this out," I asked.

"Rotational grazing is not rocket science," Ken smiled. "You can learn 80% of what you need to learn in an hour or two. You can read about it in any number of books. The other 20% takes more time, observation, and practice to learn."

"What about in the winter," I said. "What do they eat then?"

Ken said that the grass in the fields doesn't grow past October, but it "stockpiles" in the pastures and the cows eat it through December - it remains nutritious into the winter. Then they eat hay produced at nearby fields until the spring. I asked if the beef finished on grass tastes different from beef finished on hay, and Ken said that it does not. 

"And where are the cows now," I asked. We walked uphill, and through a clearing in a line of trees, I saw them.

There they were, only a couple hundred yards away - the cows! We walked closer. They lifted their heads to look at us.

They know Ken and are not afraid of him. He walked easily among them, patting some, talking about which ones looked robust and almost "finished," which were not. I followed Ken, but uneasily. It turns out that cows are big, and when they are in a large group and unconfined, they seem very powerful.

They didn't want me too close to them, but they didn't run. The looked at me, moved away if I got close, and then kept eating.

They have cute faces. There were lots of flies, something that Ken said happens every year at this time. This is a Black Angus cow.

And this is a Hereford. I asked if the meat of a Black Angus cow tastes better. Ken said that Herefords are equal in quality, that although everyone thinks that Angus are better because they have brand recognition, Herefords really are just as good.

"And they never go inside," I asked.

"The adults are almost never indoors," Ken said. "The babies - if the rain or wind or cold is too intense, they will go inside. We leave the younger animals close to the barn so they have the option of going inside if the choose. They generally prefer to be outside, only going in if there is freezing rain or windy cold."

"And what about at night? Is there any worry about bears or any sort of predator?" 

"Not bears," Ken said, "but there are coyotes around, which the New York Department of Environmental Control reports are about 90% red wolf. They cannot hurt a full grown cow, but they could take a calf if the mother weren't vigilant. We've never lost any calves to coyotes.

"You know, I was pretty surprised when I started seeing Slope Farms veal appearing on the shelves at the Coop," I told Ken. "There's such a stigma with veal. Why did you get into that business?"

"Well, some cows make babies that take too long to 'finish,' and I learned which ones those are," Ken said. Babies from those cows become veal. We raise those calves in the fields with their mothers and the herd."

"Finish? - What do you mean by that?" I asked. I must have made a face. Because Ken said "You know, if you drink milk then you are participating in the veal industry. This is a dirty little secret. Cows must have a baby every year in order to produce milk. Of course, half of the babies are male. And in the dairy world, most male calves are raised away from their mothers in an industrial setting, and end up as veal. Our male calves become steers, and are marketed at 18 - 30 months of age."

Ken explained that a 'finished' animal is one that is ready for market. For lack of a better word, it is 'fat' enough. Animals whose ribs are showing, or whose haunches are too bony, those animals are not 'finished' and will stick around longer, eating more grass. He said that it took him a while to learn how to select good cows, when buying animals at the beginning, to predict which would 'finish' well.

"So how does it work in general - how long are the animals with you here," I asked.

"Our animals are slaughtered at an average age of two and a half years old," Ken said. Some calves become veal. Other calves that are male become steer and then are slaughtered at about two and a half years old. Female calves can be finished just as the steers, or kept as breeding stock as long as they continue to make babies that 'finish' well - often more than 10 years."

"What happens when that older cow stops making 'good' babies," I asked.

"For older animals, generally females who stop breeding, the default is ground beef because most of the meat is not very tender, but is has very good flavor," Ken said. "But the tenderloins on those animals stay very tender and have great flavor - deeply beefy. With these animals I like to take a rib steak into my 'test kitchen' and see if it's tender enough for steaks. About one in three times it is, and the Tarlow group in particular loves those steaks."

---Note to self: find out how to go to Marlow & Sons, Romans, or one of the other Tarlow joints when that kind steak is on the menu.---

As we walked away from the herd toward the other pastures, a couple of cattle hung out in the shade of some tall trees. "The land really is beautiful here," I said.

"As healthy as the grass and the cattle look," Ken said, "it's the life underneath the surface of the soil that's the richest, teeming with small animals, microorganisms, and fungi, which creates a healthy soil. When it's working, cows eat the leaves of the grass plants, use their hooves to push other grass into the soil. In the perennial pasture that develops, plants like clover work symbiotically with bacteria to move nitrogen from the air to the soil. When soil and roots are healthy, grasses will regrow and be ready for grazing again in about 6 weeks."

As we walked further through the pastures, I looked more closely at the plants I could see.

This is clover, with a Japanese beetle on it.

There were old apple trees.

And elderberry bushes. We ate some small and tasty yellow plums from a tree. The apples were delicious too, although not a variety that we find in stores or on farms - more tannic and coarse. Apparently the cows love to eat them.

We walked back to the house and got in Ken's pickup so we could see the rest of his cattle and his land. On the way we passed some fields that looked quite nice, others not as much. Ken told me that some of his neighbors noticed how healthy the Slope Farms fields look, saw what Ken is doing with rotational grazing, and adopted the practice for their own herds. Others, not.

We stopped in front of a neighbor's pasture. You can see here that the grass is way down, "like a putting green," Ken said. "There's almost nothing here for those dairy cows to eat," he said.

After touring we stood in Ken and Linda's kitchen and talked some more. "So how does this become the industry standard?" I asked. "Is it about Americans learning to eat less meat, but meat of higher quality that is farmed in a healthy way?"

"I agree that in terms of health and the environment, it is better to eat less meat that is of higher quality," Ken said. "But I feel that there is room for more than one type of beef for consumers to choose from. Its about changing our tastes, expanding our palate. The American palate currently leans towards feedlot beef that is low in flavor but extremely soft in texture. Grass fed beef has more flavor but is, on average, a bit less tender. People should have a choice rather than being stuck with the industry standard."

There is no question whatsoever in my mind that the feedlot cattle industry is harmful the health and to the environment in several important ways. At the end of this post (which by now must seem will never come) I will include Ken's analysis of the costs of industrial feedlots. Our conversation continued and I asked him more about how to scale the grass fed beef business.

"Is this a good business, first of all," I asked. "Are you making money?"

 "Yes," said Ken. "It is very important for me to show that this is a profitable enterprise, to help create an economically viable model from grass fed beef production in our region."

"So what's stopping others from doing what you're doing," I asked. 

"The main barrier," Ken said, "is how to get a small number of finished cattle to the market of wholesale buyers. Buyers want a regular supply of high quality product. Feedlots house 10,000 - 100,000 animals. Trucks can come in, point to the animals they want, and drive away with them. Feedlots are horrible in many, many ways, but they have one advantage - they aggregate the animals so that when they are ready they can be shipped to market from a central place."

"So a small cattle farmer has a hard time getting the finished cattle to market," I said.

"Yes," Ken said. "There is a need for an aggregator. This is a crucial business player. As others start good farms, an aggregator is needed."

"Are you doing any of this now," I asked.

"I work with about a dozen farmers to help them get their beef to market. I'm at their farms constantly and I can vouch for their no hormone, no antibiotic, all grass, and animal welfare practices. They raise the cattle and I can maintain quality standards and sell their beef under my label."

---Whoa - does this remind you of anything in the wine industry?---

"So," I asked, "is this something that can happen - can grass fed beef be brought to scale?"

Ken told me that the Grassland Team at Cornell University says that there are 3 million acres of unused pasture in New York State. They wouldn't all be used for cattle farming, but that's enough pasture to finish 1 million cattle each year - enough to supply all of the demand for beef in New York City for a year.

Compelling ideas, indeed.

I love the taste of grass fed beef. At home I eat it exclusively. Whenever I happen to eat feedlot beef, I am struck by the differences in appearance, taste, and texture. I find the corn-finished feedlot beef to be pink rather than deep red, and essentially tasteless. The tenderness has no appeal to me - it's like eating a very soft wet towel. But I'm opinionated and picky, so find out for yourself. If you happen not to have tried grass fed beef, I seriously encourage you to find and buy a simple grass fed steak. It costs a bit more, but it tastes better. And you're paying for more than your beef - you're investing in something bigger than just that steak dinner.

For those of you who have made is this far, here is Ken's thinking on the costs of feedlots. 

"What are the costs of the current industrial feedlot system," I asked. Ken wrote an email to me later in which he described the costs as follows:

1) At the feedlot:

Air
     1)Regional air pollution with toxic dust and airborne bacteria.
     2) Greenhouse gasses from manure lagoons.
      
Water
     1) Runoff killing local streams and polluting larger waterways.
 
Animal Welfare
     1) Cattle each have about 100 square feet and are not able to have a normal life grazing.
     2) High grain diet leads to 'acidosis' and cattle illness.
  
Human Heath Impacts
     1) Daily antibiotic use in cattle leading to strains of bacteria in humans that are resistant to antiobiotics (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus bacteria, salmonella, E. coli, campylobacter)
     2) Hormone implants in feedlot cattle lead to hormone residue in meat.
     3) Feedlot beef has a fat profile that is less healthy than grass fed beef - there is more saturated fat, less omega-3 fatty acid, less conjugated linoleic acid).

2) Production of Grain to Feed the Feedlot Beef

Fossil Fuel Usage
     1) Use of fossil fuel to plant, fertilize, harvest, and transport grain.
     2) Use of fossil fuel in production of chemical fertilizer, herbicides, and pesticides.

Water
     1) Widespread water pollution from runoff from chemical fertilizers (the dead zone off the Gulf of Mexico, for example)

Air 
     1) Loss of carbon from the soil into the air due to plowing, as opposed to rotational grazing which moves carbon from the atmosphere into the soil.

Biodiversity
     1) Use of GMO grain.
     2) Loss of biodiversity in plants and animals from mono-crop production.

Rhode Island Wine Weekend, Part II

We drank Bordeaux on the first night, and it was a first growth kind of evening. This is because the guys we were hanging out with have been collecting wine for a long while, and they are generous people who derive pleasure from sharing cellar gems with friends.

The lineup:

1994 Château Laville Haut-Brion.
1966 Château Haut-Brion.
1970 Château Haut-Brion.
1975 Château Mouton Rothschild.
1980 Château Margaux.

Are you kidding me? Fugedaboudit.

I have so little experience with wines like these - with every sniff and sip I am experiencing new thoughts. And on this night, we also drank a great California wine. A bit younger than the Bordeaux wines, but a great wine nonetheless. The 1991 Dunn Vineyards Howell Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon. If California used such a system, this surely would be a first growth wine. We drank it last, and it was fascinating to compare it with the other wines.

First, there was this utterly stunning white wine. White Bordeaux is not something that I come across very often. This is as good as White Bordeaux gets, according to the Bordeaux cognoscenti. I've had Laville Haut-Brion one time before, the 1993 vintage, and it thrilled me. This one, the 1994, equally so. It really takes a while to open up and get going though. We saved a third of the bottle and 2 hours or so later on went back to it, and the wine was so much more energetic, pungent in its aromas, and vibrant on the palate. The particular combination of smells and tastes are unfamiliar to me - things like honeycomb and orange oil and lemon sherbert, all atop a subtle backbone of stone. Semillon is a strange grape. And this expression of Sauvignon Blanc, this is not something that you'll find elsewhere. The wine was fantastic, and a rare and true joy to drink.

We drank 1980 Château Margaux. It was ridiculously good. One of our party was absolutely smitten with this wine, and he smiled and said to everyone who walked by, including waitstaff and other random patrons of the restaurant, "Hey - want to taste the best wine in the world?" It was sweet, because when they inevitably said "well, that does indeed sound good," he would pour them a taste.

This wine was 33 years old, give or take, and it was fresh as a daisy. The fruit is still vibrant and sweet. The wine was knit together perfectly, with a rich bouquet of fruit and flowers, and although it felt exuberant, it was also entirely focused and perfectly harmonious in its balance.

We drank the 1970 Château Haut-Brion. The 1966 was flawed. Not corked, but green and weird and entirely unappealing. But let's focus on the good news though, shall we? The 1970 was as great a Bordeaux wine as any I've ever tasted (not that that's saying all that much). There was less fruit, which makes sense - the wine is 11 years older. But somehow the wine felt more complete to me, even more perfect, if possible. The nose was just a grand thing, pointless to try and describe it. Full of energy, great depth and complexity, and a minerality that was so intense it practically shimmered. I know why our pal at the table was calling the Margaux "the best wine in the world." And I cannot say that one was better than the other because I do not possess the experience necessary to make such a statement. But I did agree with one friend at the table who said "I might have an affair with the Margaux, but I would marry the Haut-Brion."

1975 Château Mouton Rothschild was a very fine wine, but it suffered for its company. Next to phenomenal wines like the Margaux and Haut-Brion, to me it simply was outclassed. Not that Mouton wasn't good, it's just that those other two were ridiculously great. I would be curious to drink it again on its own (or next to some less illustrious wines), as in this company it seemed to have less breadth, less overall impact.

By the way, the chef prepared Beef Wellington for us to enjoy with our fine old clarets. I'm still not sure how this happened, but I now speak with a British accent. Could you tell from reading this that I have an accent now?

And then, we drank 1991 Dunn Vineyards Howell Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon. It was my first taste, as far as I can recall, of Dunn. Everyone at the table - everyone, spoke very highly of the producer, saying that the wine maker Randy Dunn does everything the right way, and that this is one of the great wines of California. And the wine was great, it really was. And I loved it. Again, I cannot say anything worth listening to about relative quality, that Dunn was better or worse than Haut-Brion, for example. But I can tell you what I learned by drinking them together.

Haut-Brion's beauty, to me, comes from its complete and perfect harmony. The component parts are gorgeous - the fruit is pure and delicious, and musky in its age. The minerals shimmer, the finish has a life of its own. And the overall effect is of great intensity, showcasing all of the component parts, and also somehow this quiet sort of harmony. Dunn, and we are talking about a wine that is twenty-one (21) years younger here, does not feel to me as though it will ever have a quiet aspect to it, the way Haut-Brion, or even the more seductive and charismatic Margaux, are quiet.

Dunn's fruit was darker, more brambly, and the acidity was younger, more intense. The thing that stuck out for me, however, was the structure - Dunn was structured differently from the Bordeaux wines. It has bigger bones, literally. The wine is built on a larger frame and then the fruit that goes on that frame is bigger. It's like comparing an offensive lineman with a tight-end. They play the same game, and at times perform similar functions. They can both be great football players. But in the end, they are best at doing different things, and maybe this fascination with declaring one as better than the other is misguided. We are luckly to have both. Especially on a gorgeous summer night in Rhode Island, with friends.

Rhode Island Wine Weekend, Part I

You know how you have those weekends where you go out of town to a friend's house where a bunch of serious wine lovers gather over a few dinners to open and share truly great old wines?

Yeah, me neither. But this past weekend was exactly that for me. I spent time with old friends, met some excellent new friends, and drank some incredible things. On Sunday, on the way home in the car, I drowsily told Peter that there were three major things I learned about wine during the weekend. And so, dear reader, I will now present part 1 of what I think likely will become a syndicated sensation known as Rhode Island Wine Weekend...

Big House Champagne and Grower Champagne are very Different from one Anther, and Big House Champagne is Good Too. 

We arrived after a long and traffic-filled drive, washed up, and joined forces with our friends at the Hourglass Brasserie in Bristol. We were visiting a friend from our Burgundy Wine Club. He and several of his wine pals set up a 5-course dinner at Hourglass so that we could enjoy good food and wine together.

These gentlemen are an organized bunch. The very first thing we drank was a bottle of recently released NV Pol Roger Brut Réserve Champagne. Smelling and drinking this wine, I had a mini-epiphany about Champagne. It's not so easy to explain why this felt like a deep thought, but it did: big house Champagne and grower Champagne are very different from one another, and big house Champagne is good too. They are trying to do different things, and both types of wine have value. Sure, I prefer one style over the other, in general, but there are great wines made in each style.

Pol Roger is a grand old Champagne house with a rich history, and a cuvée named after a British former head of state. I do not have a lot of experience with the wines - I've had maybe 4 or 5 bottles before this evening. But I drank this wine and I felt as though I finally understood something about the nature of big house Champagne. The wine is not trying to showcase purity of fruit, as do the wines of Cédric Bouchard, for example. The wines are not trying for a uniqueness in expression of character or terroir. When well made, a big house wine like Pol Roger's NV Brut achieves a striking balance, a focused harmony, a fine-ness of construction. The point of the wine is how well made it is, how fine it is, and that it is made in the Pol Roger house style.

Pol Roger NV Brut did not thrill me (and that is a subjective comment), but I understood immediately that this is a well made wine. It was entirely focused and fine in its texture and flow throughout the palate, well balanced, and chalky and long on the finish. The wine had no deficits, it was not lacking in anything, and it was pleasing. And in this way it is successful. It reminded me of the Henriot Blanc de Blancs I drank in San Francisco a few months ago at Hog Island Oyster Company. A delicious, focused, and classic Blanc de Blancs Champagne. It did not thrill me the way certain other Blanc de Blancs wines thrill me, but its quality was unmistakable. It is classic, and speaks the language of Champage in its focus, balance, finesse, and chalky minerality.

If I were at a wine store or restaurant and faced with a broad selection of non-vintage Champagnes, I would not choose Pol Roger's over Bereche's or Chartogne-Taillet's. But that is because I prefer those other wines, not because Pol Roger's is of lesser quality. This is the thing that became crystal clear for me this weekend at Hourglass. Pol Roger is also a very high quality wine. We've been conditioned in the past decade to think otherwise, as grower Champagnes fought for their place in the US market and as supporters of grower Champagne sought to define their niche. Appreciating these very different styles of wine need not be mutually exclusive.

After we drank Pol Roger, we moved onto a bottle of Lanson NV Black Label from the 1960's - we were not certain of the exact vintage of the base wines. Lanson is another big house with a rich (and rocky) history. These are not wines that I would buy today, but older wines from the 60's and 70's are supposed to be of very high quality. This bottle was a great example - the wine was legitimately great. So well put together, so complex, so long, such great poise and charm. To hear Peter talk about it, he wine is was made in an era when grapes were picked at lower levels of ripeness than they are today, and at higher levels of acidity. And they did not go through malolactic fermentation, so the acidity is untamed, if you will. A wine made like this should age well, and this one has, feeling fresh and vibrant, with a mature and potent character. And by the way, this wine paired beautifully with almost everything we ate, from oysters to duck. It's absurd to think that a modern grower NV Brut would show this same character after 40-plus years in the bottle. But it wouldn't be trying to - they are different, and both have value.

The following evening we began our dinner with a magnum of 1981 Lanson Brut Champagne. Initially I found the toasty notes to be distracting and I was not enjoying the wine so much. But an hour or so later, after letting it relax in the glass, the wine was delicious. It was deeply saline, focused and well balanced, and it felt completely harmonious.

There is one thing that I've not said about the 1981 or the NV from the 60's (or the Pol Roger). To my inexperienced palate, neither wine expressed much in the way of terroir, not the way some grower Champagnes can. Peter Liem could make a convincing case for how the Pol Roger and the Lanson wines express terroir, and he is correct. But to my palate, relative to today's grower Champagnes of similar quality, the wines are more about other things and less about terroir expression. They are about fineness of construction, and this is a valuable thing too.

During dinner Peter said "Understanding these wines is part of understanding Champagne. Drinking grower wines without drinking and understanding these wines is like looking at modern art without having seem the classics."

More soon - we drank loads of amazing wine and I learned several other scintillating things, which are sure to titillate you. 

A Night in Detroit - Slows BBQ and The Sugar House Bar

I recently spent a day in Detroit. It was a work trip. But two old college friends live in the area and so after work there was an evening of Detroit fun. And we had a great evening, which I will tell you about in a moment. But first, you may have heard something about Detroit in the news recently, something about bankruptcy. It's true, the city filed for bankruptcy. The thing is, and I can say this with only a little bit of familiarity with the city, Detroit has been a mess for at least 15 years now, and probably longer.

Office buildings in the downtown area sit abandoned. Entire office buildings. Neighborhoods are depleted of people, home after home burned out or boarded up, huge weeds and other greenery rising up and reclaiming the space. The new urban jungle. Maybe 600,000 people live in Detroit now, down from 2 million at peak, maybe 50 years ago. There are almost no new jobs. There is no smart way for the city to provide basic services, like picking up garbage, when perhaps only ten families live in a 5 square block radius.

Detroiters like to tell you that their city is so big that San Francisco, Boston, and Manhattan combined would fit within its borders. And yet many of its residents do not own a sea-worthy automobile. But there are new sports stadiums, casinos, and a convention center. I hear about how the South Bronx is the poorest urban congressional district in the US, but it cannot be - it must be Detroit (or New Orleans?). Driving though this city made me feel like I was in a forgotten place, a place that was devastated and then never rebuilt. There is a set of large housing project buildings you see when you arrive from the airport on the main highway, all completely abandoned. Graffiti on top of one reads, in huge white block letters, "Zombie Land."

And yet the people I met at work were people who believe in their city and are working to help rebuild. And my friend from college who now lives in Detroit with his wife and two sons - he loves it. He says that he has learned to appreciate the beauty of the barren cityscape, the bones of the old buildings. He showed me the new park/performance space in the city center, office buildings that are now occupied after sitting vacant for 20 years, and new hotels, cafes, and restaurants. He told me that there are people investing in Detroit, and that there are good things happening, that this place is full of potential. After 24 hours and a bit of a tour, I can feel it in my gut - I agree with my friend. It is an oddly beautiful place. And there is plenty of room for intrepid and creative people to make their dream a reality.  Detroit is urban America at rock bottom, and so there is no where to go but up.

Slows Bar BQ is part of the upswing. We went for dinner on a Thursday night and there was a 90 minute wait for a table. In NYC that would be a big turn off, but here in Detroit we were happy to hang out at the bar and enjoy a few pints of locally brewed pilsner. In NYC, why wait for food - there are 6 gajillion places with interesting food here. In Detroit it felt great to be in this airy and beautiful space bustling with people of all ages and types, woodsmoke in the air, good music and good vibes too. And then the food came, and it was genuinely excellent. Slows is serious BBQ, without question. We ate baby back ribs, tasty sides, and my friend had a pit smoked ham sandwich that was ridiculous. My favorite part of our dinner was when our community table neighbors saw me staring longingly at their St. Louis style rack of ribs, and insisted on sharing with us. Yes, they ripped a hunk of ribs off their own plate and passed it on down. There was also the check, which came to something like 75 bucks for four pints, a big dinner, and a few glasses of good rye whiskey which we shared with our generous new St. Louis ribs friends. Slows. I'm in, hook line and sinker.

After dinner we went next door for a last drink to a bar called the Sugar House. Photo above courtesy of Hell Yeah Detroit. Now, if you've been reading my blog for a little while, you know that I like to poke fun at the whole cocktail craze thing, in all of its hipster insanity. I mean, I like a good cocktail because I enjoy the way it tastes and feels, and I like the act of drinking it with friends. The idea of going to a hipster joint to drink a foodster drink, merely for the purpose of being a foodster...that doesn't excite me. So in NYC I would poke fun at the guy in the picture above, the dude in the top hat. In NYC it would be trying too hard. Although it does have a certain vampirish quality to it that might make it okay.

This guy, Yani Frye is his name, made us our drinks at Sugar House. He was disarmingly friendly and he exuded this happy-as-a-clam aura. He is a guy who is genuinely happy to be making serious cocktails for Detroit. And without a trace of attitude, regardless of what the top hat might lead you to expect. His bar has no fewer than 6 big game busts on the wall including several bucks with complicated antlers. The lighting is mason jars, the vibe is unmistakably Brooklyn. But why shouldn't Detroit have a spot that uses this atmosphere (and top hat style costuming) to communicate its aspirations as a serious cocktail bar? It's all part of the Detroit upswing.The drinks were really good, by the way, by any standard.

And then we walked past the abandoned train station to our car and I slept in a hotel connected to a casino. Slows was my idea, by the way. My friend tells me there are other places that I would love. Next time I'm in Detroit, which I hope is soon, I will take him up on that.

My San Francisco Restaurant Experience

Thanks again to you all for your thoughtful recommendations. General impressions? From the very small sample I experienced, SF chefs are clearly concerned with the freshest and most seasonal of produce, and they clearly have access to high quality material. Seafood was uniformly excellent. Service was uniformly friendly and competent. Reservations were uniformly hard to come by. Wine lists were not terribly exciting, but there was almost always something good to drink. Very high quality food is available, and if it were NYC, it would be two-three times more expensive and created in a far more precious atmosphere. Overall, I had a great eating experience and look forward eagerly to the day I can go back.

I ate dinner at Bar Tartine and it was outstanding. It's a comfortable and stylish space without any pretense. We tried 8 dishes and all but one was excellent, a few were superb. The assortment of pickles was skillfully done - the apex of pickling, if you will. Red cabbage, for example, was enlivened with just the right touch of ginger. Mushrooms were toothsome and not oily at all, chioggia beets were draped in buttermilk and the result was thick but lively, and completely delicious. Terrine of beef tendon with horseradish and fresh greens was complex and delicious. Raw halibut with seaweed was excellent, so was fisherman's stew with green chili, so was spätzle - the lightest I've ever had. We drank two excellent wines with this feast. 2004 Karthäuserhof Eitelsbacher Karthäuserhofberg Riesling Spätlese was in a great place for drinking, so balanced and lovely, so good with the food. And 2010 Knoll Riesling Smaragd Ried Schütt, which was young, reduced, and altogether reticent, but still after 45 minutes showed how good it's going to be. We loved our dinner at Tartine and I would recommend it to anyone without hesitation, and I cannot wait to go back myself.

I ate lunch at Hog Island Oyster Company before heading to the airport on a Sunday, and it was outstanding. Now, none of you mentined Hog Island in your recommendations - you said Swan Oyster Depot (which I drove by one evening and looked great). But I met a guy who left NYC in '06, a guy who had been one of my closest friends and who I haven't seen since then. We were near the Ferry building and that's where we went.

We ate oysters - couldn't tell you what kind, other than that some were Kumamoto. They honestly were as fine as any oysters I've had. So fresh and briny sweet. There was nothing terribly compelling to drink. I went with a bottle of Henriot NV Blanc de Blancs, and I must say that it was great. Focused, chalky, classic. Clam chowder was delicious too. This was a lunch I would happily eat once a week for the rest of my life, and my excitement would never ebb.

That same buddy and I ate an impromptu early dinner at Commonwealth one night. We tried to go to State Bird Provisions, but could not get in. We arrived at 5:07, the restaurant opens at 5:30, and there was already a line of about 24 people in front of us, none with reservations. That place must be interesting, and probably quite good, and one day I will try again. Commonwealth was a fantastic replacement. Okay, so I was with a good old pal and we would have had fun wherever we went, but Commonwealth really delivered. So comfortable and airy, everything so beautifully presented, so fresh and balanced in flavor. We had the tasting menu and it was a perfect meal. Yup, I said perfect and I mean it.

Not a whole lot of wine that I wanted to drink, and I was warned that this would be the case. But then I noticed they had Philipponnat Champagne NV Brut Royale Reserve, the entry level wine from this great house. I'm pretty sure this was based on the excellent 2008 vintage, it is predominantly Pinot Noir and like the Henriot, it was a reminder of how great even basic "big house" Champagne can be, when made by the right folks. This wine was excellent, something to seek out and drink for yourself. The commonwealth folks put a bowl of homemade potato chips sprinkled with seaweed in front of us as the wine was opened. Not an entirely bad combination. Then they came with an amuse of raw yellowtail with thinly sliced jalapeno, also pretty good with the Champagne.

And then another amuse of lovage stems with some sort of whey/herb frothy situation, and it was very, very good. And only after these items did our 6-course tasting menu ($70, $10 of which is donated to charity !) begin.

We ate smoked sea trout with trout eggs and horseradish buttermilk powder - chemical cookery there, and quite delicious. These portions, by the way, were generous. This meal would have cost $175 at least, before wine, in NYC. I hate that.

Then we ate what I would say is the single best thing I ate in SF, called eggs and asparagus on the menu, but it was about the sea urchin. Served atop a seaweed brioche with asparagus, egg mousse, pickled horseradish leaves, and whey foam - I think it was whey foam.

The salad of mizuna, black radish, and goat cheese with green strawberries (the new hottest food item?) and fennel pollen was mild, earthy, and delicious. My friend didn't love it, and I can see how that is possible, as it wasn't a viscerally delicious thing. But I thought it made sense in its own composition, and in the place it was served in our meal - after the amuses and the seafood courses, almost to calm us down, to recalibrate us, before the sweetbreads.

Which were excellent, perfectly cooked, served on fava and nettle porridge and topped with pickled mustard seeds. I'm not a huge sweetbread fan, but I was sold on these. And this was followed by the most perfect small glass of celery sorbet. I don't even need to describe it further - perfect. The peanut butter ice cream bar with salt caramel sauce and "frozen popcorn" was seriously excellent too, but the sorbet stole my heart, in the sweet department. Wow - Commonwealth.

I took a long walk from the Embarcadero to the Mission one day and ate lunch at Local's Corner. Everyone I mentioned this to said they like Local's Corner, and I liked it too, but I didn't love it. There was no wine I wanted to drink and the beer taps were down, but my lemonade was very good. People were genuinely friendly, and it felt good to be there.

The pickles I ordered were excellent, but mostly it was the tart, sweet, green strawberries - filled with fresh strawberry taste, but green and pickled. Spring garlic soup was the emperor's new clothes, so mild and milky that there was nothing to latch onto. And trout with spring peas and pea tendrils was admirable in its simplicity and freshness, but was under-seasoned. Salt would have been enough (but there was none on the table, of course). The earnest chefs in the open kitchen looked like they stepped right out of Taconic on Bedford, so that's something. I would go back if some one else suggested it, but I doubt I would return on my own.

Zuni Cafe was a bit disappointing.The food was tired, that's the best way to describe it. Nothing was plated in a terribly attractive way, salads were overdressed, lamb was underwhelming, but none of this mattered one bit because I was with good friends and had a ball. I don't remember what I had for dessert but it was delicious. But I suspect that this place is past its prime. One thing - we drank very well at Zuni - Larmandier-Bernier Blanc de Blancs was delicious, as was 2010 Roulot Meursault (!). We had a weird experience with our red wine, but that's a story for another time.

Oh, and by the way, I stopped by Terroir one late afternoon, not having planned to, but I was 3/4 of the way through a tremendous walk, and it was relaxing and nice. The dudes who worked there were friendly and there was a load of enticing wine on the wall. Not a lot of which was actually for sale at Terroir, but that's fine. After asking for 5 different wines that turned out not to be available, I took the guy's recommendation and drank a glass of 2009 Puffeney Savagnin. It was delicious and I enjoyed taking it upstairs and lounging on a comfy club chair, leafing through Jay McInerney's wine book.

Local's Corner and Zuni aside, it's obvious to me from Tartine, Commonwealth, and Hog Island that there is fantastic eating to be had in SF. Thanks again for your recommendations.

Stony Hill - A Visit to the Iconic Napa Valley Winery

It was a glorious Saturday, sunny and warm but not too hot, clear blue skies, and I was with people I work with, people who have over the years become good friends. I had never before been to the Napa Valley, or to any California wine region. We drove north from San Francisco and at times it was startling in how lovely it was. As we approached Napa we hit traffic, the first sign of the popularity of this place as a tourist destination. I saw a sign for Domaine Carneros and then another for Beaulieu Vineyards. We saw large flat vineyards with rows of skinny vines supported by posts and wires, all draped with thin hoses for irrigation purposes - it gets very hot in the Napa Valley and months can go by in the summer without rain.

We, however, were going to visit Stony Hill, the iconic Chardonnay producer, physically located in the tourist carnival that is the modern Napa Valley, but philosophically located somewhere else entirely. Sarah McCrea, the granddaughter of the founders of Stony Hill Winery, and its current Sales and Marketing Director, told us to drive through St. Helena 3 miles past the Chevron station and onto Bale Grist Mill road to find Stony Hill. We literally inched through traffic, finally reaching the town of St. Helena. It took us almost an hour on a Saturday early afternoon to drive perhaps 10 miles, allowing us plenty of time to look at the various shops of St Helena. I saw that I could buy some very cool and fancy outfits for my dog, if I wanted. I'd have to get a dog first, I suppose. I saw a restaurant that looked like what a Hollywood producer's stylized image of a rural California lunch counter should have looked like circa 1972. It looked good.

And then, finally, Bale Grist Mill Road. We began to climb and immediately we left the tourist world behind for this one lane country road.

Luckily one of us saw the sign for Stony Hill.

We drove by a vineyard whose vines were thick and gnarly, old-looking, without irrigation hoses - just vines.

We arrived and were greeted by the very friendly and genuine Sarah McCrea, and her mother Willinda, who said hello and went back to work in the office.

Stony Hill Winery was created when Fred and Eleanor McCrea bought this land in 1943. They planted Chardonnay grapes in 1947 and offered their first wines to friends in 1952. The vines are a lot older now, younger McCreas run the place, there is some new equipment and the barrels turn over, but not a whole lot else has changed. Obviously this in itself says nothing about the quality of Stony Hill wine, but it happens that Fred and Eleanor got it right in the first place. The vineyard plots are mostly exposed to the east, and are on hills with natural springs running underneath - this is how they avoid having to irrigate in the intense heat and dry Napa summers. They ferment and age their Chardonnay in old neutral wood, preferring to highlight the natural aromas and flavors of their grapes, and they avoid malolactic fermentation, preserving the intensity of the acidity in their grapes. People who know about Stony Hill have for decades prized their Chardonnay for its purity and grace, its unadorned intensity and complexity, and have appreciated its ability to improve with time in the cellar.

Sarah took us to see the vineyards and the barrel room, and Milo the Stony Hill springer spaniel accompanied us on our walk.

As we walked from the offices, it was immediate and apparent how far away I felt from the tourist road, how bucolic the scene was.

We walked past a plot of Chardonnay vines and saw beyond that another plot of old Riesling vines.

I looked back at the offices and tasting room and thought, "I could live here."

The old vines were vaguely anthropomorphic in appearance.

They seemed so sturdy and weathered, such beasts compared to the delicate grapes they would give forth, to my untrained but highly opinionated eye.

I looked closely at a Riesling vine and saw that budding had actually begun - early this year, Sarah said.

We reached the barrel room and press. Stony Hill is famous for Chardonnay and produces about 3,000 cases in a typical vintage. There is also a Riesling, a Gewurztraminer, a Semillon sweet wine, and now a Cabernet Sauvignon - first commercial vintage is 2009. There's not a lot of wine, and unbelievably to me, Sarah says they still sell the majority via their mailing list. I guess that makes sense, actually. Why give money to a middleman if people are willing to buy direct?

  

Inside the barrel room we sampled the new Chardonnay vintage, the 2012. Sarah said it was a great year for Stony Hill, as opposed to 2011, which was very hard for everyone in the Napa Valley. 2012 produced balanced wines that show the typical Stony Hill intensity and purity, she said. If the barrel sample I tasted is representative, I wholeheartedly agree. The wine was fragrant and intense with fruit and rock and left a lingering spicy and almost grassy taste after swallowing.

I have been drinking Stony Hill wines, when I can find them, for a few years now. I love the Chardonnay because it is delicious and unadorned and it seems to me that it expresses the greatest aspects of Napa Valley terroir. It is rich and intense - this is a hot place. But it is also acidic and finessed - Stony Hill vineyards are 600 feet above the valley floor. I asked Sarah why her family chose to plant Chardonnay instead of Cabernet, the more popular grape.

"At the time we first planted Stony Hill, no one had really given much thought to where certain grapes should be planted," Sarah's father wrote in an email. "My father just planted what he liked, which was Chardonnay, and three other varieties that U.C. Davis suggested - Pinot Blanc, White Riesling (then known as Johannesburg Riesling), and Gewurztraminer. It turned out that because of the eastern exposure the property was ideally suited for growing white grapes. By the time we needed to replant the vineyard, we had already become quite famous for our white wines, so changing to reds didn't make much sense. It is worth noting that our new Cabernet comes from a relatively new vineyard that has a western exposure that is more suitable for growing red grapes."

We walked a different path back to the tasting room and again I marveled at the scenery - we were way up in the hills here. Does wine made here, in this style, resemble the more industrial wines made on the valley floor?

If you visit Stony Hill you will not taste old vintages, it's not that kind of place. You will taste whatever is current, whatever they still have in stock. And as fun as it is to taste the wines, the viscerally moving aspect of the visit is walking the vineyards with Sarah, Milo, and whoever you came with, experiencing this place high in the hills.

But taste you will, and we did this in a lovely outdoor garden in back of the office area. A happy little pig watched over us from the side of the office.

We tasted 2010 Chardonnay (utterly delicious - the best of the recent Stony Hill vintages I've tasted), 2011 White Riesling, 2009 Cabernet Sauvignon (restrained and expressive, very impressive!), and the 2010 Semillon sweet wine.

As we sipped and talked, we looked out onto a plot of Syrah, relatively young, planted in 1998. This is sold only to wine club members, along with another rarity - a rosé of Cabernet Sauvignon. I've often thought that Syrah and other Rhône grapes should do very well in the intense heat of the Napa Valley - I bet that Stony Hill's Syrah is excellent and I hope to taste it one day.

Tasting these wines I could feel how different they are from the typical Napa wine. These are made to showcase the juice from the grapes grown on their hillside vines, and the soils they come from. Nothing more, nothing less. Now that I've seen the gorgeous setting where these wines are grown and made, I feel like I have a richer understanding of why these wines smell and taste the way they do.  And the prices are quite reasonable - current release Chardonnay shouldn't cost more than $45. I think of Stony Hill Chardonnay as the best wine, dollar for dollar, that's made in the US, but take that with a grain of salt, as I have less experience with California wine than some who are better qualified to make such a statement.

If you haven't tasted a Stony Hill wine, you should. It may change your mind about what the Napa Valley is capable of.