FoodMayhem

Wildwood Wildwood, the latest notch on the B.R. Guest belt, is a welcomed BBQ addition to our neighborhood. My friend Angie accompanied Lon and I to this well designed space where everything simply made sense: the country music, the aged windows above the bar, the fun t-shirts on the wait staff, and the barn latches in the bathrooms.

We started with the recommended Bottle Caps, beer battered jalapeno slices, a simple and delicious appetizer. I’m surprised I haven’t seen it done before. The ranch dressing was also excellent, wonderfully cool and creamy, off-setting the heat that builds slowly.

The Chipotle Raspberry Chicken Wings were also a hit, very crispy on the outside, tender on the inside, and the sauce was a perfect balance of salty, sweet (not too sweet), and just a little heat.

This being our first visit, we completely over-ordered, 2 rib samplers, and one other mixed sampler, each with two sides. It barely fit on our table but we were well prepared to feast, with paper towels, a clothe towel, and moist towelettes. We thought that was brilliant of management because you’ll need it! The rib platter was generally very popular with us, smoky beef ribs, nicely rubbed pork ribs, and the really unique lambs ribs (which none of us have seen before). Lon wasn’t a fan of the enormous amount of fat on it, but Angie and I didn’t mind cutting it off to get to the tasty and moist meat. (Sorry for the dark pic.)

The other sampler platter wasn’t as good. The chicken was dry, so was the brisket, but the pulled pork was good. (Sorry for the bad pic again.) Our waitress reminded us to try all the house-made sauces on the table and it’s definitely a life-saver for anything dry. We loved the Raspberry Chipotle Sauce and the Dirty Dick’s Hot Pepper Sauce. We heard that these may be for sale in the near future and we would definitely by them!

We enjoyed all the sides but one. The sweet potato fries were one of the best I’ve had, managing to be crispy on the outside and soft on the inside.

The Skillet Cornbread was a nice traditional cornbread.

Lon kept raving about the not too creamy Creamed Spinach, that actually tasted like spinach.

The Bacon Baked Beans were certainly tasty and again, not too sweet, when this dish often is.

The peppery Onion Rings were super hot, crispy, and oddly juicy on the inside. Be careful as you bite in, cause juice spurted out of mine. Lucky for Wildwood, I care more about food than my shirt.

The big disappointment was the Cheddar Mac & Cheese. We loved the idea of cornbread crumbs on top but the cheese mixture was powdery, tasting like a box mix that wasn’t well dissolved.

We were stuffed but really wanted to try a dessert. We compromised with our stomachs and ordered one to share, the Bourbon Banana Sundae. It was a very enjoyable dessert and fit the theme well, but not very memorable.

There were a few disappointments but if you know what to order, it’s a great deal. The staff is wonderful, the atmosphere works, the overly generous portions are priced well. We’ll probably be back AFTER the wedding.

This is our seventh installment on our favorite sushi restaurant — Sushi Yasuda Sushi Yasuda (if you haven’t already, make sure to catch article #6). To help provide further perspective for those of you not lucky enough to have visited Chef Yasuda’s land of delicacies, I will tell you about my experience there.

My taste in sushi is different than Jessica’s in several ways. First, I prefer rolls: maki (the common, small rolls of nori and sushi rice), futomaki (the large rolls with unusual fillings), and my favorite, temaki (the hand rolls, typically in the shape of a cone). Not that I don’t love sashimi (thin slices of fish without rice) or nigiri (fish atop a hand-formed bed of sushi rice), but I just love the mix of the nori (seaweed), rice, and seafood. Second, I prefer firmer flesh and fattier taste, with less brine. Salmon is perhaps my favorite, but I love fatty tuna, and other similar fish. And third, I tend to enjoy picking my own items, whereas, Jessica really enjoys omakase (Chef’s choice).

One of the best, non-food aspects of visiting Sushi Yasuda is sitting at the bar and watching Chef Tomura (and the other Chefs, including Chef Yasuda) preparing sushi. Watching them roll the nigiri beds, slicing fish, or carefully brushing sushi with their delicious shoyu (soy sauce) or wasabi is awe-inspiring. The precision is truly art.

The art and tradition of sushi is a special relationship between itamae (sushi chef) and patron. When sitting at the bar, one can truly enjoy okonomi, the practice of ordering/receiving a few pieces at a time. This allows the itamae to gauge your taste preference and hunger. The style also emphasizes the focus on each morsel. Notice the precision cuts made in the kohada (above). Those slices allow shoyu to seep in and make chewing the fish easier, allowing the focus to be on flavor. Different seafood will receive different cuts depending on texture, or none at all. The tuna (left, below) has a single incision down the center, while the gensaba (on the right) has no cut.

There were two types of fatty bluefin tuna listed on the menu. Chef Tomura explained that the latter was fattier; of course, I was sold. It was exceptional. The flesh was perfectly firm and the fat was distributed throughout the meat, so the whole piece melted in my mouth as I bit into it.

On the right (above) is gensaba, a type of mackerel that blows away any other I’ve had. Japanese know how to work miracles with mackerel, an otherwise mediocre fish. When grilled and lightly seasoned, it can taste remarkable. But gensaba needs no more help than a few quick slices of a master’s blade. It is fatty and fine, with just a hint of sea brine.

Jessica and I usually have the Peace Passage Oyster, prepared nigiri style. What we hadn’t realized is that what we were eating is a slice out of a much larger piece of meat (shown below, next to an uncut piece of bonito tuna for reference). Wow!

Before wrapping up this post, the rice (for which Yasuda is famous) and the nori must receive a bit of attention. No one should think they have truly tasted maki unless having enjoyed a hand roll from Sushi Yasuda. A simple grilled salmon skin hand roll will forever change your impression about what sushi can be. Speaking of rice, as an example of the beauty and perfection behind the work at Yasuda, here is an extract from their website:

The rice is cooked evenly, is subtly sweet and is the ideal “stickiness” to conform to the shape of the inside of Yasuda’s hand. He applies six swift strokes and a delicate pressure to the rice to control the amount of space between the grains and to achieve the particular density, size and shape he deems suitable for the kind of fish or vegetable to be placed upon it.