elephantwalktalk

Food Sanity in the Mad River Valley

A restaurateur myself, it's fitting - and something we've celebrated - that in pursuit of a mid-winter retreat my wife and I stumbled upon a food-lover's paradise in rural, northern Vermont. Living in Boston, we've become spoiled by the growing abundance of great restaurants, even in the suburbs these days. But for the longest time, whenever we hit the road for a long weekend escape into northern New England, we resigned ourselves to the persistent, discouraging lack of good quality meals to be had away from our hometown.

For what seems like forever the standard menu one found in most restaurants outside the major cities has been American generica: potato skins, clam chowder, Caesar salads [with grilled chicken for a small upcharge of course!], burgers, dry char-grilled chicken breast, and green beans, broccoli, or corn on the side - oh, and perhaps updated to include "ethnic twists" like burritos, quesadillas and the odd stir-fry.

You know the drill: Way too much Sysco fresh-from-a-can or boil-in-a-bag, way too little farm-fresh or local, let alone organic - neither interesting nor particularly nutritious. And this has been true even in the more touristy areas that enjoy the economic lift from well-heeled visitors. - But a recent weekend getaway convinced me that real change can come to rural America, at least as far as the availability of good food is concerned!

In mid-January we visited mid-coast Maine, Camden, Rockland and Rockport, where we were married back in '01. Rockland's Primo is one of the truly great meals anywhere, but we were deeply disappointed to find that they now close seasonally. Forced to seek out alternatives, we were further discouraged to find that a winter shut-down was common among good restaurants in the area. Although we did find a couple of good meals in our three days in the area, unfortunately, most of those restaurants still open in January were those that played it safe - familiar, unexciting, and probably not very good for us!

No doubt the ski mountains are the crucial difference between the dormancy of mid-coast Maine and the relative vitality of the Green Montains in the dead of winter. We were much more than pleasantly surprised by what we found when we returned two weeks ago to Waitsfield, Vermont and its environs! 

For starters, no one was closed. But, even more impressively, just about every restaurant, market and dry goods merchant we visited seemed very engaged in a collective push for high quality - in concept, materials, and execution - all more than happy to refer one another. 

After an all-too-quick four day stay we left having concluded: They get it in Vermont. Later this week I'll tell you why.

Vegan and Vegetarian Food in Cambodia

Last September in celebrating with you our 2008 Best of CitySearch award for Vegetarian food at The Elephant Walk I explained that putting up our vegetarian menu was no simple matter. This is due to the fact that Cambodians, though mainly Buddhist, are rarely vegetarian.

I just visited the absorbing website/blog - Verdant Reports - of a gentleman who commented on that post earlier this summer. There you'll find an excellent post on this very same subject, Vegan and Vegetarian Food in Cambodia, including a very well-produced audio-blog entry wherein the blogger interviews a Frenchman who opened a vegetarian restaurant in Siem Reap, near Angkor Wat. It's worth 5-10 minutes of your time - especially if you are an avid traveler, a foodie, or - and especially - are vegetarian.

More than up to the Challenge...

This past Tuesday's Challenging Flavors dinner at The Elephant Walk in Waltham was a lot of fun. The spirited group dove right into all the dishes, which included plenty of pork belly, tamarind, shrimp paste and, of course, prahok. In fact, nothing daunted a soul, nothing until the durian served warm over sticky rice, that is!

It's always dangerous to generalize based on feedback from a self-selected group such as ours, but my biggest take-away from our guests is that flavors that once were extreme may be much closer now to the mainstream than even 10 years ago. Diners' palates have grown so experienced and sophisticated in the modern era of so many wonderful restaurants showcasing the full rainbow of global cuisines that there's not much people really don't like or can't handle. [Except maybe durian.... ;-)]

The wine component of the dinner was matched to the family-style presentation of the food: We offered 4 wines - 2 whites, 2 reds - up to the group to taste through in random fashion. Rather than the strict "this wine goes with that dish" traditional wine dinner format, we went free-form to acknowledge the fact that pairing Western wine with Eastern food is far from an exact science, or no science at all. As I suspected, personal choice ruled, with no obvious, perfect matches.

The one wine surprise to me was that the darker and more concentrated Toro - made with tempranillo - was much preferred over the brighter and fruitier Beaujolais-Villages - made with gamay. No question the Toro was the more elegant wine but what I didn't expect was that it would find such favor with our guests in the context of an unusual meal. To me, that's robust support for this truism I personally adhere to: "Have wine you like with food you like and very likely you're going to have a meal you like." - Tuesday's Challenging Flavors dinner was a good meal indeed.

Challenging Flavors

One of the things we've been doing in recent months is trying to align our self-perception with that of our customers. Our first step down that path was recognizing that most people view us as Asian restaurants first, and not fine-dining. And since most people expect non-sushi Asian restaurants to be inexpensive, we realized that we needed to lower our prices and did so in October.

Tomorrow night's "Challenging Flavors" dinner at The Elephant Walk in Waltham is another step in the direction of seeing ourselves as others see us.  While perennial Elephant Walk favorites like Poulet à la Citronnelle, Loc Lac, and Khar Saiko are authentic Cambodian dishes, they offer fairly mainstream flavors - very approachable for the vast majority of our clientele.

Most of our Cambodian menu consists of more approachable dishes for one simple, sound business reason: People like them and rarely send them back. For a vocal minority in the dining public, however, our playing it safe has been tantamount to a betrayal of sorts.

As you probably already know, there are relatively few Cambodian restaurants in this country, and precious few with a national profile such as ours. So when some people come to The Elephant Walk and find that prahok - a fermented and salted fish paste that is Cambodian cuisine's one truly unique ingredient - has only a bit part in our play, they feel let down and really slam us for it.

Those critics make a fair point. As a more mainstream Cambodian restaurant concept, it makes good business sense for us to emphasize the flavors that we've learned our clientele wants, and avoid serving those flavors they've taught us they'd rather not try again! But what about that vocal minority that craves the rustic intensity of prahok, bitter melon, shrimp paste, tamarind, and durian? What about their needs? One answer is our Challenging Flavors dinner tomorrow night in Waltham.

It is a small irony that our Cambodian, chef-owners, Nyep and Nadsa - who are mother and daughter - themselves prefer the more challenging flavors of their cuisine even as their customers do not. So they're pretty excited about tomorrow night!

Predictably, there's still some space available if you want throw your palate for a loop. But if you want to have this experience but can't make it tomorrow, don't worry: "Challenging Flavors" is a very special theme dinner we are sure to host again soon!