Carnal Food: Looking for the American Bar

What does it take to follow the illustrious Chef Nordo around in search of the perfect cocktail, the perfect bartender, and the perfect bar food? First, you have to resign yourself to lost evenings and foggy, thunderous hangovers. Then, you have to accept the nacho plate, the jalapeno poppers, the atomic chicken wings, the chili dusted nuts, the fried oysters, the deviled egg, the pickled... and so on and so on. Who knows where you may wake up and what dribble of sordid ranch dressing may cling to your chin. I believe that Chef Nordo has a wooden leg. Or two.

Do not worry though. You do not have to follow in these footsteps. Your experience will be of the finest quality using only the best spirits, the finest ingredients, and the re-imagined essence of what bar food should be. Nordo will not stoop to hack pop-art. As always he will strive to provide the highest level of satiation and satisfaction. If you leave a little pickled and wake up in the arms of a co-worker, well, that is your decision and hopefully a nice addition to a wonderful dining experience.

What lurks in the laboratory besides a mess of cookbooks, food magazines, and scraps of paper with crudely drawn renditions of food? Well, in honor of our brothers in Siberia who have given us such wonderful foods that accompany alcohol, we labor on a pickled plate in the zaruski fashion. We begin with a home made cream cheese. (Note: Do not mistake half and half for buttermilk. Once the half and half is in you must add the buttermilk, and well, this is not low fat cream cheese.) Why most of us just buy such things like cream cheese once you endeavor to make your own is beyond us. Learn your food we say. What else are doing with your time?

Now, the roasted beets. Florescent pink and full of juice, hands are stained red with the blood of vegetables. Some are thrown on the stove with vinegar, salt, and sugar to create a pickling concoction while others are sliced into long rectangular spears. Up next is the darling quail egg. Very difficult to peel, we need tiny elf fingers, they are pickled in a beet bath until these little fuschia gems literally glow on the plate. Now, remove the pickled salmon from the fridge and slice thin sheafs of flesh. Almost all the ingredients are on hand.

But there is the coup de grace- a carrot saffron sheet. Here shines the genius of the modern kitchen. Imagination and experimentation collide. Once the juice of the carrot is boiled and slowly whisked with gelatin and agar agar it is poured over an acetate sheet. With small shifts of the sheet the substance pools outward into a thin (1/16") puddle. Chilled for no less than 15 min. this sheet can then be pulled free, and like delicious gummy rubber that tastes like the essence of carrot, it can be sliced, rolled and wrapped about a pickled beet slathered in cream cheese. Perfection. It is carrot incarnate.

Next, the salmon wraps a barely pickled cucumber. The quail eggs are stood on end. And over the entire setting a dill and lemon sauce is applied for dipping. Toss some fresh dill, a few fried capers, and voila. I think we have stumbled upon something here. Something clear but potent, standing tall beside a cocktail, and intriguing to eat. We have a winner in the lab.