I’m not quite sure how our weekend turned into a whirlwind of food and socializing, but somehow it did — not that have anything against a good meal and good company.

Saturday morning I thought C and I could try out Broders, the new Scandinavian-themed restaurant on Clinton that took over the old Henry’s spot. I thought it was very big of me not to hold the displacement of my beloved Henry’s against this new place, but I have to admit to some serious pangs of melancholy and resentment when I peeped in the windows of Broders and saw the place re-done in the hues of the Norwegian flag. Sigh… I know, I know. Change is inevitable, and even more so in the restaurant biz.

But we wouldn’t actually get to try the food at the Henry’s usurper — they weren’t open quite yet (apparently their first day of business is today). We’ll have to try again some time soon. Instead we went across the street to SubRosa (which bills itself, not inaccurately, as “A Friendly Neighborhood Joint”). The space is bright and cheery and the servers were, as advertised, very friendly. I got the “NoPo Benedict” — a concoction with spinach and veggie sausage — and Chris got the misspelled frittata, “the Riveria” (we think they meant “Riviera”) which had goat cheese, sundried tomatoes and something else I can’t quite remember. The coffee was good and there was plenty of it (+1 point) and the food arrived swiftly (+1 more). The eggs on my benedict were perfect — whites set, but yolks still runny (+2), but sadly the hollandaise was pretty lackluster (-2): it just didn’t seem to have any flavor or depth to it at all. The potatoes pretty well rocked, though (+3!) — they were done in the same style as Henry’s (quartered red potatoes with onions and rosemary), but with a better crust on them. Very nice. The eggs in C’s fritatta were way overdone and rubbery (-2) but the goat cheese was really fresh-tasting and delicious (+2).

So what’s that add up to? I don’t know, I wasn’t keeping track, but it comes down to this: it’s a plenty fine place if you’re in the neighborhood, but I probably wouldn’t go out of my way to make it down there again. If I still lived in the hood I would totally put SubRosa into regular rotation.

it’s a good-looking benny, but too bad about that hollandaise.

it’s a so-so frittata, but…

rockin’ potatoes

It was a muggy, sunny afternoon and what better place to go on such a day than the Avalon, our local nickel arcade? It wasn’t just that we wanted to Dance Dance Revolution our day away — it was the location of our niece’s 11th birthday party. She and her friends were already there when we arrived, knee deep in pizza and soda and skee ball tickets. We did our best to add to the birthday girl’s ticket booty and we wound with a whopping total of 1,700 tickets. Hot damn! You can get one of those glow-in-the-dark fake fish aquariums for that many tickets.

just a small part of the arcade extravaganza

After too much sugar and electronic cacophony we went home to change for our big Caturday event: dinner at Simpatica.

As you may recall, we have had a long and meaningful relationship with Simpatica. They catered our wedding. They introduced us to porchetta. They brought chicken and waffles back to Portland. We had one of the most ridiculously over-indulgent meals of our lives there (and you know that’s saying something — this was the fabled multi-dozen course antipasti dinner). Suffice it to say that I really love these guys. They are passionate about food, care deeply about the quality of their ingredients and are just about the nicest guys you’d ever want to meet. Oh and they cook like freakin’ geniuses.

So dinner. We’ve been thinking about heading back to Simpatica for dinner for some time. We hadn’t been back for dinner since our last meal shortly before New Years when we met a fun group of foodies with whom we’ve had a few meals since. When I saw the menu for this Saturday’s meal, I knew it would be our next opportunity for Simpatica brand deliciousness.

We pulled up to the building and were greeted with the heady aroma of grilling fish. A lot of fish. They’d pulled out their 6 foot grill and were grilling up dozens of chubby sardines, enough for two-a-diner. I stopped and chatted with Jason, one of the owners and told him about our recent re-acquaintance with our wedding porchetta. We watched the grilling process for a while and I skipped giddily into the dining room.

sardine awaiting the heat

fishies on the grill

They’ve recently done some work to dampen the deafening sound levels in the dining room. They recovered all walls with sound absorbing panels and added more acoustical tiling. It’s helped, I think, but once the wine gets flowing, the dining room still gets pretty raucous and echo-y.

Course one: Chilled Tomato-Mint Soup

When I first read this I assumed we’d get something gazpacho-like — a chunky soup featuring the fresh, raw flavor of summer tomatoes and a hint of mint. That sounded nice — especially in the heat we’ve been experiencing — but I’ve never been a huge gazpacho fan. After all, I’ve only gotten over my juvenile dislike of raw tomatoes in the last 10 years or so. But that wasn’t what we got at all. Instead, it was a rich, stewed soup with a flavorful chicken base. The tomatoes had been simmered long and sweet and the mint brightened it up at the end. A little crostini with a dollop of creme fraiche topped it off. Simple and oh-so-delicious.

tomato soup

Course two: Grilled Sardines with Summer Squash Salad
This was the reason I was here. The plate arrived with two long chubbers of whole sardines criss-crossed atop a bed of sliced, grilled squash. I literally clapped my hands and bounced in my seat when the plates arrived. Other diners seemed less… uh… enthused. Apparently, the diners of Portland aren’t quite ready to acknowledge that the animals they eat have heads and that some fish taste like fish. I saw a number of diners visibly recoil and one woman near us made a fuss until her husband removed the heads for her and put them on his plate. Even so, she only took a few bites before declaring the dish dead to her. Thank goodness her husband ate her rejected dish and saved me the embarrassment of asking if I could have it.

Oh, and how was it? Really amazingly wonderful. This is the kind of dish that made Simpatica the foodie darling it is: take a simple ingredient and make it taste as much like the best part of itself as possible. That was these sardines. They were grilled with just a bit olive oil and salt and were just perfect, perfect. I felt like a cartoon cat, drooping whole thing down my throat and pulling out a perfectly cleaned fish skeleton. Okay, I didn’t eat them quite that fast or thoroughly, but very near. I felt like I had to make up for the other diners’ lack of enthusiasm.

before..

… and after!

After the plates were cleared, Jason came by from the kitchen to say hi and see how things were going.

“Tell me you ate your sardines,” he said.

“Did I eat them? I licked the plate clean!”

“I was so sad to see so many plates coming back uneaten.”

I told him sotto voce about the squeamish diners I’d observed and I said, “Fish have heads! And they taste like fish! Get over it!”

“Well, I’m glad you appreciated it. We gotta keep pushing things or else we get bored.”

“Right on!”

Like I said, I love these guys.

Course 3: Bing Cherry Glazed Duck with Baby Fennel and Polenta

We order duck pretty often and, as we all know, it is often served in a sweet, fruity glaze. This is fine: sweet and gamy flavors go very nicely together. What’s not so nice is the often cloying, gooey sweetness of the glaze. Not so here. Instead of a gooey syrup, we just got the flavor of the cherries around the tender duck and a few fresh cherries thrown in at the end. And because those boys just can’t help themselves there was a little bit of bacon hiding under the duck leg — bonus. The whole dish was delicious.

Not that I ate my whole dish since I was already pretty stuffed from my sardine extravaganza. I only had a few bites and had the rest boxed. After all, I had dessert to look forward to.

duck leg — kapow!

Course four: Peach Cobbler with Creme Fraiche Ice Cream
In his opening announcement, Jason warned the diners that the farm had not been able to deliver quite enough peaches to put everyone in a cobbler state so he supplemented the supply with some blueberries and dried apricots. They were good additions, but what few peaches they did manage to get a hold of were phenomenal and made me wish for more. Not to be greedy, though: this was a heck of a lot of dessert and full of fruity goodness.

But let’s make one thing clear: this was not actually a cobbler. As the diner next to us pointed out repeatedly it was a crisp, not a cobbler. I mean, I’m as persnickety as the next person when it comes to culinary taxonomy (hell, I just wrote a paper on it!), but after a while you just have to let it go. They could have called it beef bourguignon for all I care: it still would have been pure summer yummy.

cobbler, crisp, buckle or pie — it’s delicious whatever you call it

And that was that. Another beautiful meal in the hands of Simpatica. We waddled home and I narrowly beat Chris at Scrabble, 328 to 323.

those Simpaticans work hard, bless ‘em.