Easter Menu for any Special Occasion

Several of the recipes in this story were among my absolute favorite to research, write and test. Special occasion foods are just that; meant for special occasions. Just like the occasions themselves, they are often labor intensive but worth every minute in the end. From this Mediterranean Easter Menu, published in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review on March 27, 2013, I highly recommend trying any or all of the recipes for your next special occasion meal. The Italian Easter Pie will knock your socks off! The Spanish Potatoes of Importance are decadent and mouth watering. The Roman Lamb Stew is delicate and velvety smooth. The Warm Brussels Sprouts Slaw is good for any meal. And the Asparagus with Leeks and Spanish Easter Cakes are simple to prepare and incredibly delicious. Savor the time it takes to prepare a meal like this for the people close to you, whether it's a holiday or just a weekday and enjoy every bite!

Easter Menu Features Recipes from Italy, Spain and France
http://triblive.com/lifestyles/fooddrink/3647985-74/pan-asparagus-add#axzz2PQI55y1g

First Day of Spring? Finally!

There are government officials in Ohio who want to kill Phil, the groundhog. But Pittsburghers know this extended winter is nothing new at all and can certainly not be blamed on an uneducated little critter like Phil. There are certified meteorologists out there that didn't predict this correctly either. What should we do with them? Regardless of where you stand on the groundhog death penalty, the fact that spring is a little late this year, only means that we have to wait a bit longer before enjoying the first, young "fruits" of the season. This "First Day of Spring Menu" was published in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review on March 20, 2013. But now that it's April 3, the local ingredients should actually start to become available locally. Enjoy!!

Welcome the Season with this Bright and Light Menu

http://triblive.com/lifestyles/fooddrink/3609040-74/green-chicken-spring#axzz2PQI55y1g 

A Handy Guide to Not Being an Ass on St. Patty's Day

Not a Party for Everyone

For some restaurant staffers, St. Patrick’s Day is the most dreaded day of the year. As the head chef of an Irish pub for several years, for me it always meant a very long and laborious week that ended with a trip to the chiropractor. For the Irish and Irish themed bars in Pittsburgh as well as all of the bars and restaurants in Market Square, the day of the St. Patrick’s Day parade is as completely insane a party as on St. Patrick’s Day itself. This year both events fall on the same day and I am positively elated that I won’t be anywhere near Market Square or any Irish pub to witness the madness. My sympathy will be with my friends in the industry who have no choice but to be in the thick of it, up to their knees in mayhem and drunks. Working in the “Irish for a day” hot spots, you experience the worst of people on this one day on a level unlike the worst of any other day. Customers that you only see once a year, customers that you’ll never see again and often customers that you see on a regular basis throw all decorum out the window and tie one on like it’s their first and last day of drinking on this earth. The unfortunate few that have to attend to the inebriated hordes will have front row seats for fist fights and face-plants. They’ll have to clean up puke and remove one or many revelers from their premises. They’ll cut many people off from alcohol service and may have to call the police to handle a belligerent customer more than once. They’ll be covered in beer and onion gravy and all manner of unidentifiable substances. Yes, they’ll make some money but they’ll have earned every penny of it, particularly as a more than a few of you will be too drunk to remember to tip properly if you remember to tip at all. And by the end of the day, they will hate you with a passion that is white hot. Many of them will consider new careers and a few will leave the restaurant industry in a spontaneous and dramatic March 17th departure. It is with these service industry workers in mind that I offer up this guide to not making an ass of yourself to everyone planning to partake in the party of all Pittsburgh parties that is St. Patrick’s Day.

St. Patrick’s Day Guide to Not Making an Ass of Yourself

1.      Have a designated driver prearranged or a safe escape plan.

If nobody in your group is willing to be the DD then plan to spend money on a cab or car service or reserve a hotel room. If you’re downtown and need a cab then your best bet is not to call the Yellow Cab number but to walk to one of the hotels, tip the doorman ($5or more) and ask him/her to get you a taxi to wherever you’re going. Calling for a cab in Pittsburgh is, under normal circumstances, an exercise in futility. Walk to a hotel and make the doorman your new best friend. If you drive into town, don’t park illegally.

2.      Pace yourself.

Drinking all day requires some planning.  If you’re not accustomed to drinking from breakfast to last call then the fact alone that it is St. Patrick’s Day will not improve your tolerance. Eat breakfast and avoid doing shots. One drink an hour is enough if you’re in for the long haul. Also try to drink a glass of water or other non-alcoholic beverage between each round.

3.      Have your credit card or cash in hand and at the ready.

There is no “honor system” on St. Patrick’s Day. No bartender in their right mind is going to trust you to pay at your leisure so be prepared. You’ll speed up service for everyone.

4.      Don’t forget your manners.

A “please” and “thank you”, not positioning yourself in the middle of the service bar area and resisting the urge to scream song requests at the band or bang your glass on the bar for the bartender’s attention will go a long way in creating good will between you and the staff at any bar.

5.      Keep your group together.

If you’re out with a group, make sure everyone is accounted for when leaving one place and heading to another. This will eliminate a lot of the potential for drama later in the night. Nobody wants to be interviewed on the news the day after an outing because a friend went missing. And for goodness sake, if one of the members of your group is too trashed to continue to the next stop, please send him or her home. If you can’t put them in a cab then it’s time for you to call it a night. There will be another St. Patrick’s Day and parade day next year but you can’t replace a friend. And cab fare is much cheaper than bail. Do the responsible thing and look out for your buddy’s safety and well being as well as your own.

6.      The most basic, everything you learned in kindergarten, rules of acceptable behavior should be observed.

No pushing and shoving, no fighting, no stripping or urinating in public, no spitting, no screaming, no leaving the party with strangers, no driving while under the influence and no lewd and lascivious public displays of affection. Do not attempt to sit-in with the band, get behind the bar or walk into the kitchen or venture into any other “employees only” area of any bar or restaurant. Don’t touch anyone without his or her permission, don’t drink from anyone else’s glass, use your indoor voices and don’t forget to tip servers, bartenders, valets, doormen and the like.

7.  Finally, have a happy, safe and enjoyable St. Patrick’s Day without risking incident, injury or incarceration. Sláinte! Lá Fhéile Pádraig Sona Daoibh!

Fat Tuesday; Decadence is Key
http://triblive.com/lifestyles/fooddrink/3357215-74/tuesday-fat-dinner#axzz2Ktwn6NmN

Nobody Cares; Pro Restaurant Reviewers are Obsolete; Abridged

The professional restaurant reviewer is as relevant to today's dining masses as the rotary phone is to the social lives of today's teens. When most of us decide to try a new restaurant, we typically rely on the recommendations of those close to us or online resources like Urban Spoon, Yelp and Google Reviews. We all have the opportunity to wade through the ocean of information and opinions offered by a multitude of fellow consumers in order to determine which food and beverage retailers will be the recipients of our hard earned dollars. The more consumer reviews available, the better. The diversity of those sharing their experiences allows for a much broader and more objective picture of what can be expected from one's visit to any given venue; thus rendering the traditional role of the professional food critic obsolete.

A few days ago, Melissa McCart, the new dining critic for the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, wrote what can only be loosely defined as a "story" about her visit to the Monterey Pub; a quaint and cozy little Irish themed pub in the Mexican War Streets section of Pittsburgh's north side. Had I no history with or connection to this establishment, I would have only read this piece of journalistic offal, one eyebrow raised in confusion and wonderment, and discarded it along with the rest of the day's trash. However, as the previous head chef at the pub (that's chef, not cook, Ms. McCart) and the wife of the bartender, that's the Pittsburgh City Paper's Best Bartender in Pittsburgh, I had to, most unfortunately, give it a second and third read and did so while in a state of utter amazement. Monterey Pub Visit by Melissa McCart.

Melissa McCart

I have since taken the time to reveiw some of Ms. McCart's other handy work and have done a bit of research into her career. Melissa McCart was a blogger from the Washington D.C. area who turned professional critic after somehow landing a job with Ft. Lauderdale's New Times. Her imminent arrival was skeptically announced on the Inside Ft. Lauderdale website in July 2011. The same website bade her goodbye and good riddance less than a year later in May of 2012. Melissa McCart is Gone. 

Ms. McCart's retelling of her visit to the pub is nothing if not lacking in relevant content and teeming with gossip, misinformation, thinly veiled insults, catty and snide remarks, unenlightened observations and unethical violations of the privacy of the pub's customers. My overall feeling about this so called story, which is really only a vehicle for the conveyance of eavesdropped private conversations, is that Melissa found herself alone at the bar in a popular neighborhood pub and feeling quite the outsider in a place where everybody really does know everybody else by name. And although I can guarantee that her service was friendly and efficient, it appears that she decided to paint a snarky portrait of the pub and the pub patrons; a warm and tight-knit group of friends and neighbors in which she was not and now, probably will not ever be included. If her goal was for everyone at the pub to know her name, well then- mission accomplished lady.

In her story, Ms. McCart refers to the neighborhood as stately and grand while sharing that she finds the pub to possess neither of those attributes. She refers to the customers and staff as all alike in that they are neither young nor old. She names names and shamelessly and carelessly shares tidbits of conversations in which she was not included or invited or given consent to repeat. She insults the menu, implying that it is pedestrian and not thoughtfully constructed, referring to only one section of the whole menu, not the section from which she ordered mind you, as "pseudo-novel".  Through such implications she further insults the customers, many of whom are real journalists by the way, in stating that this carb and meat heavy menu is suited to fit the pub's regulars. 

McCart goes on to proclaim that the pub is "NO gastropub" by her definition. This detail, in particular, is one I'd like to address. First of all, the term "gastropub" is one that is used by self-important and annoying foodie types who like to hear themselves talk about things they don't completely understand. Nobody in their right mind, in a proper neighborhood pub, in this down to earth city where she now resides, would want to be labeled a "gastropub". It is a pretentious and stupid word, the definition of which is subject to a wide variety of interpretation. One man's gastropub can easily be another man's dive.

 Ms. McCart also somehow determined that there couldn't possibly be a real chef in the pub kitchen. Let me correct that misconception for her as well. In the Monterey Pub kitchen is Chef Michael Crawford, formerly the chef and owner of Southwest Bistro, which was located on 6th Avenue in downtown Pittsburgh. Not only is Chef Crawford a "real chef", he's an award winning chef with extensive and impressive credentials and experience. 

Clearly and unfortunately for her, Ms. McCart doesn't "get" the pub. That being the case, she probably doesn't "get" Pittsburgh either. The Monterey Pub is a great representation of the people and the spirit of our city. It is an unpretentious, charming and comfortable environment that welcomes all alike; young, old, black, white, gay, straight, strangers and familiars. Based on her body of work, my opinion is that our newest dining critic is far from qualified to offer an informed, objective and insightful review for purposes of "educating" Pittsburgh's dining public. 

There are, without a doubt, more qualified and far more talented people in the immediate area who would do a vastly better job as the PG's dining critic, however obsolete a job it may be. I can immediately think of 100 people who are more intellectually and technically prepared to fill this position. Hell, I know a couple of fifth graders who would have written a more informative and content rich story about the pub than this pile of dung that somehow made it past editing.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the intent. Maybe Ms. McCart meant for this to read like a gossip column. I can't say for sure. I can only suppose that the pub isn't quite up to the high falutin' standards and greatly refined palate of one Melissa McCart. Get a look at the picture folks. If you see Ms. McCart sitting next to you the when she's out on the town, by herself, enjoying an Irish pint and a couple of chicken wings, be sure to keep your voices down. 

I'd rather go blind

Watch "Olga singing some Etta James" on YouTube

Holiday apps: Welcome guests with small bites of big flavor | TribLIVE