Javaher polo

Last saturday, at Paul and Ali's wedding, we had javaher polo, which means jeweled rice. The dish is made of basmati rice, rice with saffron, orange peel (though in this Wisconsin version we had caramelized julienne carrots), barberries (they reminded me of cranberries, tart and tiny), and almond and pistachios slivers. The different colors represent jewels such as diamonds, rubies and emeralds for the marriage.* That was Paul's nod to his Persian heritage: food! It was incredibly delicious.

If I may add also, it was a wonderful wedding, and I was extremely lucky to witness two of my best friends from college get hitched finally! I will get a list of the very good wines soon to post on this blog (let them finish their honeymoon!). I remember some Spanish champagne (tasty, less sparkling than what I've tasted from Reims)... And as pre-desert we had the excellent chocolates by Gail Ambrosius, with flavors like rose, passion-fruit, caramel with sea salt, and dark-dark-dark. (I also highly recommend her chocolate bars, and the green tea-infused chocolate buddhas). Hands down, the best chocolate I've ever had.

* Source: persianmirror.com

Victory Lager

I've talked a lot about Victory Prima Pils - one of my favorite beers - but had somehow never until now had a Victory Lager. Well, it was on special this week at Weaver Street, so I leapt at the opportunity. Victory describes the lager as, "Perfectly balanced, this authentic version of a German helles-style lager satisfies gloriously. Lean, German malts and fine European hops offer subtle harmony." Subtle is right - very little in the way of hoppy flavor here. It's a nice pale, straw color with little in the way of head and a hint of the similar lager'd brilliance of the Prima Pils - but only a little, accompanied by a bit of lager-y sweetness. Very refreshing, goes down easy but not quite with the full body of the Pils. Still, a solid beer.

Wild Flour - Banff's Artisan Bakery

On my initial pass-through of Banff, one place looked the likeliest for good coffee, WiFi and atmosphere - Wild Flour. I was right. High ceilings, gray floors, Scandanavian-style tables and chairs and big glass windows team with a bakery in back (also visible through a glass window), menus written in chalk on blackboard-painted cabinets and classic glass display cases for pastries. Plenty of seating inside - not cramped -and outside tables both on the streetside and as the cafe opens into a courtyard.

And the espresso (a single) was excellent - solid crema, rich and smooth. The filter coffee - all fair trade organic (as is the rest of their product "whenever possible") - was also good, and came in three gradations of darkness, all house blends (as was the espresso). Didn't have the bread but it smells excellent - everything is made in-house - and the staff is a good one. If ever you find yourself in Banff, this is

10 August 2007 - Lake Agnes Teahouse, AB

The Lake Agnes Teahouse, sitting on Lake Agnes above Lake Louise, AB, is an absolutely wonderful marriage of food and place. It takes a medium-length-but-not-strenuous hike to reach it, ascending from Lake Louise and its attendant Fairmont Hotel on the valley floor, up past the smaller Mirror Lake and the falls that feed it from Lake Agnes, to finally reach Lake Agnes and the teahouse.

aforementioned falls

Once there, the teahouse itself is homey and bustling, with a (young, of course) staff that lives in a loft in the single building and comes down once a week ("for a hot shower"), attending to all of the functions of the teahouse in the interim. The tea menu is extensive - a few dozen varieties - with a few soups, sandwiches and tea-biscuits to accompany. And of course, the tea is fresh boiled from lakewater.

interior of the teahouse

We went with the Irish Breakfast (excellent), and split-pea soup. The soup was less thick than a split-pea normally is, but then, they have to bring everything in either on their backs or a horse's. The bread was fine, but the main point of the exercise was a relaxing fill-up of hot liquids and some solids as it rained outside on top of a mountain. Not bad.

Lake Agnes - note the teahouse on the far shore, opposite Big Beehive

Evelyn’s Coffee Bar, Banff, AB

Sitting in a coffee shop, ruminating as the world goes by on a gray and rainy day - and then writing about it - is an awfully cliche way of eating the world. I’m not even, at this point, sure of where I picked it up as a habit. Was is just suffused in my by popular culture, some third-order derivative product of the Seattle scene? Did I come by it honestly? Do I even like coffee?

At any rate, I sure think I like coffee, and sitting in coffee shops contemplatively - with or without masses of people, with or without the loud noise of a city, of civilization. As it happens, I’m getting the best of all possible worlds right now, a beautiful mountain view in the distance, a busy coffee shop around me, a sidewalk full of humanity passing by outside and then, just past the sidewalk, absolutely hellish amounts of noise from a Cat shovel tearing up the street. It’s glorious - the quiet of the mountains is wonderful, but a week of it has found me craving the awful, glorious succor of humanity’s destructive noises. Trains passed by the lodge last night, and that was a start, but the diesel and electric and metal and stone and dirt is rattling the table here, and that makes me happy. And now there’s the smell of cigarette smoke wafting in from outside, which is really nice.

The coffee: I really need to stop ordering double espressos, as each one I’ve had here has been dumped into a cappuccino cup, allowing whatever crema there’s been to disperse into islands around the inky black. The taste - not bad, but I should really go with a single next time to actually judge the quality.

UPDATE: Had the single. Still not good. The baristas are... not particularly committed to their craft.

7 August 2007 - Poutine - Columbia Icefields Center, AB (between Jasper and Banff)

I knew I’d have to get some of this stuff eventually, and this seemed as good a spot as any: a tourist-trap’s cafeteria. Poutine, for those who don’t know, is one of Canada’s national dishes - fries covered in cheese curds and gravy. Served in a styrofoam tray in this particular cafeteria, food just doesn’t get much dirtier than this. And - it was delicious. Gravy tasted, as my father put it, “right out of the can” (and yes, did almost certainly violate my no-beef guidelines, but this was in the name of tourism), cheese curds got gradually meltier as time went on, and the fries were, there’s no way around it, excellent. Eaten with a plastic fork, it left me feeling satisfied and vaguely disgusting, which I think was pretty much the point.

There’s a vegetarian restaurant in Banff, and I’m curious if they’ve got a veggie poutine - maybe mushroom gravy over extra-silky tofu and fries?

UPDATE: Photo below. No veggie poutine yet.

Sortilége - Liqueur made with Canadian Whisky and Maple Syrup

Choosing a digestif after a pretty good and way-too-expensive-but-that’s-how-it-goes meal was a happily difficult task. Go with one of the two kinds of grappa? The pear eau de vie? The framboise? No, I’m in Canada - maple whiskey it is. Not only was I not disappointed, I was floored. I could drink a gallon of this stuff, drink it like juice. The nose starts with the familiar gasoline burn of whiskey but doesn’t continue to incinerate your sinuses - instead the full, sweet and malty maple takes over and glides through. The taste is even smoother, with just a hint of whiskey bit to begin with, maple throughout, but with none of the saccharine disgustingness of so many flavored liquors. Southern Comfort this ain’t. I suppose I’ll have to get around to trying some of the other Canadian whiskys while I’m here, but I don’t expect any of them will be quite so pleasant an experience as this.