Whiskey Wednesday: What do I know?

I was deeply flattered this week when John Hansell, publisher of Malt Advocate, chose my post to lead off his series of guest bloggers on his blog, What Does John Know. John's blog is one of the most influential in the whiskey industry, and I was humbled to be a part of it. As you can see, the post engendered a fair amount of discussion (over 70 comments and counting) from well known bloggers, retailers and even distillers. My goal was to spark discussion, so mission accomplished, and thanks to John for giving me a soap box.

If you haven't read it already, check it out.

Leave the Cannoli: Vito's Cannoli

I've long enjoyed the New York style pizza at Vito's on La Cienega. Their white pie, with its creamy clouds of ricotta, is one of the best pizzas in LA. Their other pies are also good, though their tomato sauce is a bit on the sweet side for me.

Recently, I ate in at Vito's and ordered a cannoli. Given how good their ricotta is on the white pie, I figured this would be a winner. I was right. The filling was fluffy and sweet and the cookie was crisp. A dusting of sugar and cinnamon makes it complete (and none of those objectionable green sprinkles). It's everything you want in a cannoli. Next time you go to Vito's, order dessert.

Vito's Pizza
846 North La Cienega Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90069
(310) 652-6859

Has Chowhound Jumped the Shark?

Over the last few years, it seems that the once great website's posts and influence are dwindling which forces me to explore the question, has Chowhound jumped the shark?


What is Chowhound?

Founded in 1997 by New York food critic and trombonist Jim Leff, Chowhound should rightly go down in history as one of the most important food websites of all time, and possibly the most important food media source of any type in the first decade of the 21st Century. Before there was Yelp or even the concept of a food blog, Chowhound was the main source for on-line food reviews and discussion.

I joined Chowhound back in 2001 and over the next five years it was a thriving community of like minded food-lovers intent on hunting down the very best of everything in every corner of the globe.


Why Chowhound was Great

During its heyday, Chowhound exemplified the best aspects of internet media. It was a free flowing, democratic community where valuable information was exchanged on a daily basis. Want to know the best Korean BBQ in the Valley? Someone on Chowhound just visited every single Korean place north of the 101. Need to know if Patina is worth the hype? Ask the Hounds, they will know. Have questions about which factory makes the best Girl Scout cookies in Brooklyn? Yeah, a Hound will tell you.

Sure, you could read postings by food luminaries like Anthony Bourdain and Jonathan Gold, but if you hung out on the site, you would get to know legions of knowledgeable posters, unknown to the general public, who could teach you just as much and lead you to some great chow. And part of what made the community work was the constant back and forth. There were distinct personalities on display, and back in the earlier days, there was a lot of cross-board pollination, partly because the layout of the boards at that time allowed you to see and comment on all active topics in a convenient way. Sure I might live in LA, but that didn't mean I wouldn't chime in about New York, New Orleans or a great discussion happening on the general board.

Things were never perfect, of course. There were the inevitable flame wars, the predictable cries of foul at this or that removed post, and the constant challenge Leff faced in maintaining the site as a labor of love, but it was a remarkable place full of remarkable voices.

Not only did I find some of the best things I ate over the past decade on Chowhound, I read some of the best food writing around. Check out Thi Nguyen's (now a frequent food writer for the LA Times) write up of his first visit to Langer's or the poster known as Minty's description of her childhood trips to Red Lobster which you will find as the seventh reply in this thread about chain restaurants. The archives of Chowhound are rich with this type of thing, and it's great fun to spend some time just reading through the cache of five to ten year old posts.


What Happened?

Today, Chowhound is a shadow of its former self. The LA board, which I spend the most time on, still has some good posters and good information, but it no longer feels like the thriving community it once was. There are many fewer posts per day than there used to be, and many of them are simply reprints of the posters' blogs (I am guilty of this myself). But more importantly, the site is simply less useful than it once was. I used to find a few great tips per week from Chowhound, now I'm lucky if I get a single great tip in any given month.

It's tempting to blame the decline on Jim Leff's decision to sell the site to CNET Networks in 2006. Leff was not only the founder and administrator of Chowhound, but the guiding force and spirit behind it. He was the Wizard of Oz, sometimes cantankerous or curmudgeonly, but ultimately there to tell you, like the Wizard told Dorothy and her friends, that you always had it in you to find the best food out there, you just had to look for it. Without Leff, the site became Chow.com, just another corporate web forum. (Jim Leff has been writing his own fascinating account of the CNET deal on his personal blog).

But while the CNET purchase may have temporally coincided with the decline of Chowhound, I'm not sure that it caused that decline. While CNET did do an aesthetic remake of the site, it left the boards pretty much in tact, and even added some cool new features like the ChowTips and Obsessions videos which complemented the on-going discussions. Even if Leff wasn't in charge anymore, CNET pretty much followed his roadmap.

Rather, I think what caused the decline was just a natural evolution of food sites. First, Yelp came along, and younger food lovers seemed to gravitate to that site with its more free form postings and snarky, self-referential style, a food site for the MySpace generation.

Then came the deluge of food blogs. Nearly every regular poster on Chowhound, present company included, now seems to have a food blog. We spend our time on our blogs rather than posting on Chowhound. Sure, once in a while, we might cross-post a particularly worthy review on Chowhound, but our priority is our blogs, which must be supplied with regular content, and that takes up most of our food writing energy.

The proliferation of blogs has its positives and is in some ways the logical extension of Chowhound, but it came at the expense of community. In speaking through many different blogs, the conversation among those who consider themselves chowhounds has become more disperse. We talk less to each other and more around each other. Instead of a linear conversation, we are now many voices shouting in the cyber-wilderness.

Surprisingly, with all of the blogs out there, it can actually be more difficult to get reliable food tips. Finding large volumes of information about a particular restaurant or type of cuisine is easier than it was in the pre-blog era, but finding quality information and trying to determine whether there is any consensus is more difficult precisely because of that lack of direct communication. I pine for the days of a Chowhound post about a new find with 135 responses pro and con.


The Legacy of Chowhound

No medium lasts forever and perhaps Chowhound has just outlived its usefulness, but it leaves behind a lasting legacy. Chowhound was the training ground for a whole generation of food lovers. I doubt that food blogs, as we know them today, could have happened without Chowhound and its dose of direct food democracy. All of us in the food blogosphere owe some of our existence to this groudbreaking site. And I wouldn't be surprised if the next generation of professional food writers are people who spent the early years of the century posting on Chowhound. Chowhound may not be what it once was, but it has served us well, and I'm thankful, if a bit nostalgic, for the time before it jumped the proverbial shark.

Whiskey Wednesday: Glimmering Glencairn Glasses

When tasting whiskey, like many whiskey fans, I use the Glencairn glass. Designed specifically for whiskey, the Glencairn glass has a tulip shape which concentrates aromas; it's narrower and has a sturdier base than a brandy snifter. It's a great glass and an easy one to hold, smell and taste with.

There is no better place to buy Glencairn glasses on-line then Cobhthaigh Celtique. Marty and Dave Coffey are huge Celti-philes and have traveled and photographed extensively in Scotland and Ireland. Their website offers music, shirts, artwork and other Celtic themed merchandise, but for whiskey fans, it's all about the glasses.

The Coffeys offer one glass for a bargain price of $8.00 with discounts for orders of multiple glasses. A set of four glasses costs $29. Other sites sell the same glasses for as much as $16 per glass. For just a few dollars more, they also sell etched glasses with a number of designs and will do custom etchings (see my "sku" glasses above).

The Coffeys are a pleasure to deal with and offer old-fashioned, personalized service. If you need some whiskey glasses, this is the place to go.

RIP Dumpling Master

Restaurants come and restaurants go, and that's life, but I'm deeply saddened by the closure of Dumpling Master in Monterey Park. I can't count the number of times I stopped in (or took home) their great lamb dishes and dumplings: the nicely sour Napa soup, the gamey boiled lamb dumplings, the crisply fried pork dumplings and the lamb chow mein with hand pulled noodles and succulent, juicy strips of lamb. Sure it wasn't the cleanest restaurant around, and yes, I'd noticed some decline in quality of late, but it still had a lot going for it. The only solace is that at least there are lots of other dumpling houses in the San Gabriel Valley and a handful of other Northern Chinese places that have good lamb dishes. I'll take any recommendations starting now.

RIP Dumpling Master. You will be missed.

Hilo Sweets

Part two of my Hilo, Hawaii Report focuses on desserts.


SHAVE ICE

Wilson's By the Bay aka Wilson's Ice Shave

That most popular of Hawaii frozen treats, the shave ice, is referred to in Hilo as ice shave. Wilson's, located in the touristy strip of Kamehameha Avenue, had fabulous shave ice, certainly comparable to the best I've had on Oahu. Wilson's had everything you want in great shave ice: soft ice with the texture of fresh snow, strong flavors and goodly portions of ice cream and sweet azuki beans. Like most shave ice places, it takes its time but is definitely worth the wait.

Wilson's By the Bay
224 Kamehameha Ave.
Hilo, HI 96720
(808) 969-9191


Kawate Seed Shop

Kawate Seed Shop, for some inexplicable reason, seems to have a better reputation for shave ice than Wilson's. I thought it was just okay. The ice was more coarse than I like and the flavors were lacking, with the exception of their li hing mui, the sour/salty/sweet dried plum that is probably the most popular variety of the Hawaiian snack known as "crackseed." My standard shave ice flavors are strawberry, coconut and li hing mui. While most li hing mui syrups are sweet with a vague saltiness, Kawate's version was boldly sweet, sour and salty with little bits of li hing mui in it; it gave you the true flavor of the real LHM. You would expect that, I suppose, from a crackseed shop with such a wide variety of plums and powders (the picture above is from Kawate). Now if I could only get their li hing mui on a Wilson's ice shave...that would be icy heaven.

Kawate Seed Shop
1990 Kinoole St
Hilo, HI 96720
(808) 959-8313


NUTS AND SNACKS

Mauna Loa Visitor Center

I don't tend to frequent tourist traps or factory tours, and I didn't have much in the way of expectations for the Hershey-owned Mauna Loa Macadamia Nut Visitor Center, but it's actually fairly unobtrusive. The Visitor Center is a three mile drive through the Mac Nut fileds off Highway 11, south of Hilo. The Visitor Center experience is a fairly simple affair, including (1) a self-guided factory tour in which you get to look through the factory windows and watch videos narrated by an animated, talking Mac Nut; (2) a small garden of unlabeled tropical plants and Mac Nut trees; and (3) a large store stocked with every imaginable flavor of Mac Nuts and a few choice samples. The whole experience takes only 15 to 20 minutes, so if you love Mac Nuts, why not do it.

Mauna Loa Visitor Center
16-701 Macadamia Road (off Hwy 11 - you'll see the sign)
Keaau, Hawaii 96749
(888) 628-6256


Big Island Candies

Big Island Candies is sort of a local version of the Mauna Loa Center. Big Island Candies specializes in shortbread and assorted chocolate dipped snacks. The factory includes a large store with a window onto the factory floor where you can see workers dipping all manner of things in chocolate. The store is as big as Mauna Loa's, but Big Island Candies is more generous with the samples. The shortbread is excellent, sweet and vanillay with that melt-in-your-mouth quality that great shortbread has. They have it in a variety of flavors, such as guava, ginger and olive oil, all of which were good, but I think I liked the plain shortbread the best. Oh, and when I said they have all manner of chocolate dipped snacks, did I mention the chocolate dipped dried squid? Sorry folks, I left it on the shelf for braver souls than I.

Big Island Candies
585 Hinano Street
Hilo, HI 96720
(800) 935-5510


PASTRIES

Puff City



One of my favorite Hilo finds was Puff City, a downtown pastry shop specializing in cream puffs. Their standard puff is a chocoalte custard with a chantilly topping. Hawaii locals and frequent visitors will immediately recognize this as a direct challenge to the famous Liliha Bakery and their famous coco puffs. So how did Puff City compare? Well, their pastry was excellent. Liliha is so big now that most of their puffs come out of the fridge and the pastry gets soggy, but Puff City's pastry was fresh and had more flavor than the Liliha standard. The Puff City chocolate filling was good but a bit too sweet for me, and while I liked Puff City's chantilly topping, it didn't have the complex sweet/salty flavor that makes Liliha's chantilly so compelling, but hey, you're in Hilo so it's not like you're going to fly out to Lilhia, so you should enjoy these puffs. Puff City also makes an excellent lilikoi puff with a fabulous lilikoi cream filling and a nice mini-chocolate silk pie with a well made, sweet pie crust filled with chocolate cream and whipped cream. Puff City has some lunch items as well, but I stuck to the sweets.

Puff City
187 Kilauea Ave.
Hilo, HI 96720
(808) 961-6964

Whiskey Wednesday: The United Colors of Bruichladdich

You need a scorecard to keep up with the output from Bruichladdich these days. The proudly independent Islay distillery puts out dozens of whiskies per year and seems to be increasing their output. They have expressions that are peated, unpeated, sherried, Bourbon matured, wine finished and pretty much everything else you can think of, mostly in their distinct "dumpy" bottles, sometimes with elaborate designs or opaque coloring.

Today we will try two of the more visually striking new Bruichladdichs: Resurrection and Black Art.

Bruichladdich's The Resurrection Dram is a seven year old whisky. The name refers to the resurrection of the distillery which was closed in 1995 and reopened, under new ownership, in 2001. The Resurrection Dram was distilled right after the reopening, in October 2001. It maintains the traditional lightly peated Bruichladdich profile. It is 46% abv and goes for around $80.

The nose on this is malt and fruit juice with some light peat. The palate begins with a pure, sweet, malty flavor with some grass then some slight sherry. Midpalate the peat sets in. For a fairly light peating level, the peat is noticeable throughout, though it doesn't dominate. Malt is the key characteristic here. It's not an overly complex malt, but not an unpleasant one either. A good, light drinker.



Bruichladdich Black Art 1989 is a 19 year old whisky bottled at 51.1% abv and available for $150. It is finished in a combination of different wine casks, the specific nature of which the distillery is not revealing. The bottle styling is similar to the very popular sherry aged Blacker Still. Cynics may wonder whether they are using the bottle design to capitalize off of the reputation of Blacker Still in selling this new, unrelated malt. I never tried Blacker Still, so I'm afraid I won't be able to compare.

Nose is dry sherry or port with some plums and raisins. It really retains that dry wine note on the palate. There are port like flavors and even some Zinfandel and other tannic red wines with just a slight bit of sweetness. As you sip on, there are layers of flavors here that include chocolate, orange and a bit of tin; the mouthful is syrupy. The finish is all port. It's and interesting mix of wine flavors that shows great promise, but it's a bit flat on the palate; a hint more sweetness would add some needed depth. Still, I keep drinking this and chewing over the flavor; it's definitely holding my interest.

Both of these are fine malts, but neither blew me away. Do you have a favorite Bruichladdich?