NEWS/FOOD GLENN LANDB ER G
FOOD/REVIEWS On one plate then the other ... BW sends two critics to one restaurant.
LOCAVORE Bull’s Head Station: get half off $50 gift certificates.
ALL OF THE FLAVORS OF FALL
YOU WIN SOME ... And now a quick update on the comings and goings of BW Card members. Mazzah: off. La Belle Vie in Nampa: on. Pick up $100 Smoky Mountain Pizza and Pasta gift certificates for only $60, or get $50 Bull’s Head Station gift certificates for $25. —Rachael Daigle
28 | OCTOBER 13–19, 2010 | BOISEweekly
LAU RIE PEARMAN
When we’re all flitting about on cruisers and mountain bikes until way beyond dinner hours in the glint of late-night summer sun, wine dinners taper off and go into a sort of summer hibernation. Once green gives way to the fiery colors of fall, the wine dinners start rolling back on to the calendar, begging us to pack on a little extra padding for the coming colder weather. Bella Aquila and Cafe Vicino both recently hosted two of the season’s first wine dinners and in the next few weeks wine and charity dinners start happening almost every weekend. Thursday, Oct. 14, the Basque Market goes ... Basque. What else? A braised lamb dinner served Basque style will also feature seafood-stuffed peppers on mixed greens, Spanish wine and croquettes. Dinner is $40 per person plus gratuity. More information at 208-433-1208 or thebasquemarket.com. On Saturday, Oct. 16, Life’s Kitchen and Brewforia Beer Market host Tweetoberfest. All you can eat plus three drink tickets will only set you back $15 per person or $25 per couple. Proceeds benefit Life’s Kitchen, the Boise State game will be on and Foursquare types will have a chance at a Swarm badge. Then on Friday, Oct. 22, Life’s Kitchen kicks the beer and pigskin for the chichi Arid Club, where the nonprofit will host its annual Sparkling Wine Spectacular fundraiser. The $50 per person ticket price will get you hor d’oeuvres, wine, entertainment, a silent auction and a chance to meet the students your dollars help support. More information on both events at 208331-0199 or at lifeskitchen.org. On Saturday, Oct. 23, you can ditch the vino for the brewski. Rick’s Press Room Grill and Bar in Meridian teams up with New Belgium Brewery for a four-course beer-paired meal for $22 per person. Reservations and info at 208-288-0558, rickspressroom.net.
It is a summery Saturday morning on the patio outside of Locavore The local foods movement—a social and environmental backlash restaurant. While scanning the weekend brunch options I read on against monoculture and the industrial food complex—is currently at the menu that a locavore is “one who eats only locally grown or the pinnacle of its red carpet glamour. But along with all the ideological raised food.” devotees to the movement—CSA shareholders, farmer’s market shopAs I lean back in my patio chair, eagerly anticipating a delightful pers, home gardeners—there are those who are just out to make a buck. brunch, I ask our waitress how much of the menu’s food is local. She In 2007, the Oxford English Dictionary crowned “locavore” the says that in Idaho’s climate it is difficult for any restaurant to obtain all word of the year. This past spring, Christine Reid—owner of Red of their ingredients from local sources. She tells me and my four dining Room, Pair and the now-closed City Grill—opened a restaurant of the companions that the restaurant’s goal is to look for local products first, same name in Bown Crossing. A chalkboard sign defines the term: “Lothen buy organic when it is affordable, and finally use outside sources cavore: (N.) One who eats locally grown or raised food. From local + for everything else. ending from devour.” Considering the That definition is the definition provided most specific signage on the menu and in the place. Besides that Boise’s growing R.R. Ranch beef, the season is only about tri-fold paper menu six months long, doesn’t detail where plus the apparent anything else is promingling of local and duced; it just thanks non-local foods in a handful of “local the kitchen, I wonder partners” on the back why the owner would page. As customers— give the restaurant a locavores, presumpname that carries an tively—we’re left to implied mission that take the restaurant on it seems unable to their local word. carry out. After biting into Setting the a particularly lovely discrepancy aside, pesto, onion and the five of us order a gorgonzola filled selection of brunch portobello panini dishes to share. We on a recent lunch start with a round of trip, I stopped my seasonal berry mimoserver. “Where does sas ($6). Upon their everything come arrival our waitress from in this meal?” LOCAVORE warns us about the dive-bombing gnats that our fruity I asked. “Almost 100 percent of our produce is local, 3110 S. Bown Way, drinks quickly attract. She provides us with napkins to but it’s hard to do everything 100 percent local in this 208-338-8887 cover our goblets, but, unable to converse comfortably geographic and economic climate,” she responded. Mon.-Fri. 7:30 a.m.-9:30 p.m.; Sat. 8 a.m.-10:30 p.m.; Sun. while constantly swatting away the bold little buggers, But scanning the menu, there are a number of things 8 a.m.-9:30 p.m. we abandon the sunny patio and opt for a big corner that obviously aren’t local: California avocados, Danish booth inside the lime-colored dining room. havarti, Nova Scotia smoked salmon, Bermuda onions, A tempting array of pastries and desserts beckons San Juan Island oysters. And while these items are all from the display case located near the front of the restaurant as we enter luxuries of the modern global food system, they nonetheless stick out at a light-filled space set with chairs, tables and banquettes all bearing a a restaurant named Locavore. So does the fact that the walls are lined matching espresso hue. with mass-produced vegetable-themed art. And the fact that the wine It isn’t long before we are sharing beignets ($1 each) coated in list is littered with non-local options. powdered sugar. One of my friends and I have eaten them at the beignet But perhaps the most obvious disconnect between the local foods mecca known as Cafe Du Monde in New Orleans, and another friend ideology—nourish your body with fresh food, know your farmer—and has tasted them in New York City. We all agree Locavore’s version execution at Locavore became apparent on a recent dinner trip. A friend is more cake-like than the puffy powdered sugar coated gems we’ve ordered the chicken piccata in a lemon caper beurre blanc ($12.95) and enjoyed elsewhere. her face soured after the first bite. Pushing the plate aside, she flagged Soon we are salivating over eggs Benny ($9) served with country down our server and told her the chicken was spoiled. The server took ham on homemade focaccia flecked with rosemary and fennel. A slab the plate back to the kitchen to be examined. When she reemerged, she of not-too-sweet bread pudding ($5) bathed in heavy cream and an said two of the most unsettling things I’ve ever heard in a restaurant: order of apple Danish French toast ($8) topped with sauteed apples and “The chef questioned that before he sent it out.” Yikes. And, “We have maple syrup help to oh-so-gently raise our morning blood-sugar levels. fresh chicken if you’d like him to make another.” Shudder. The San Francisco smoked salmon platter ($9) draws raves for its sliced Though my other pal’s Wimpi burger ($8.95) was top-notch, served heirloom tomatoes and dill cream cheese. And the market breakfast ($8) on toasted focaccia with red onions and cheddar, and my Hagerman of scrambled eggs, cubed potatoes and ham steak satisfies our thirdtrout ($14) was pungent but edible, topped with poached eggs and a grade companion. lemon caper beurre blanc, we had mostly lost our appetites after the Despite being perplexed about the name and having to flee a chicken debacle. Regardless of what ideology or trend a restaurant band of thirsty fruit flies, Locavore works as an East Boise eatery for espouses, or how many miles the tomatoes have traveled, a kitchen weekend brunch. should never serve questionable food. Period. —Jennifer Hernandez is more etymologist than entomologist.
—Tara Morgan prefers “ethicurean” to “locavore.” WWW. B O I S E WE E KLY. C O M