Ask Not For Whom the Bell Tolls, Chicken and Waffles. It Tolls For You.

Chicken and Waffles from the Rarebit

And, speaking of the fading of pork fat's star, one can only wonder how much longer Charleston's recent crush on chicken-and-waffles will last.

Clearly an invention from far off (there's contention over whether Atlanta or Harlem is the true birthplace), fried chicken and waffles snuck their way into Charleston less than a decade ago, with A.C.'s Bar & Grill being perhaps the first local purveyor.

Suddenly, a year or so ago, they started popping up everywhere. Early Bird Diner, true to its name, got early attention for theirs, even getting the full-on food porn treatment from Guy Fieri on Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives. The first plate I had in Charleston was from the Rarebit, and I found them pretty good. Fuel, Lowcountry Bistro, Liberty Tap Room, and Poogan's Porch all serve them on their brunch menus. And there's more coming, like the soon-to-launch Kitchen 208, which will feature a chicken and waffle sandwich.

There's nothing wrong with a good plate of chicken and waffles, but I think it's just because fried chicken is good and waffles are good. I've not experienced any sort of magic synergy between the two, despite the combination's apparent ability to send so many diners into rapturous odes.

Will they prove to have legs? Time will tell, but I'm skeptical.

The Meat of the Moment? Fish

I got a call from a reporter up in the DC area who's working on a story about what the "hot meat" is right now in various food cities around the country. She wanted to know what the meat of the moment was in Charleston. I scratched my head about it for a while and couldn't really come up with anything.

A year or two ago  I would have said, without even batting an eye, "pork, and the fattier the beter!" These days, though, pork fat is definitely on the wane. You can still find chunks of seared pork belly on one menu after another (alongside bowls of shrimp and grits, of course), but the heyday of the pig appears to be behind us.

I was out at The Grocery last night and posed the reporter's question about the hot meat of the moment to chef/owner Kevin Johnson, and he paused over that one for a couple of seconds. "You know," he said finally. "I'm really much more interested in fish and vegetables right now."

That seems to be the trend all over town. The meat of the moment is fish--good, fresh fish plucked straight from local waters. Chefs these days are getting into whole fish cookery the same way, just a few years ago, they were all atwitter about carving up whole hogs.

Skipjack Butchery

A few weeks ago at the Ordinary, chef de cuisine Geoff Rhyne invited me and visiting barbecue writer Daniel Vaughn to witness him butcher a couple of whole skipjacks  just received from Mark Marhefka. In addition to carving off long, dark red, tuna-like loins, Rhyne told us with unmistakable excitement how they would use the collars and the heads to create all sort of new and wonderful treats.

Vaughn, the newly named Barbecue Editor for Texas Monthly and the author of The Prophets of Smoked Meat: A Journey Through Texas Barbecue, is a man who knows a thing or two about beef and pork, but even he was impressed with the skipjack.

 Fish is the new pork fat. You heard it here first.     

Prognostications: Gearing Up

I've been trying to gear up for my next round of prognostications, seeing that the year 2010 is rapidly drawing to a close and 2011 is now literally just around the corner.  (Well, not literally just around the corner.  Just around the corner it is still 2010, and my neighbor Stanley still hasn't raked up any of his leaves yet this year.  For which I am thankful, since I--or, to be more accurately, various members of my family--have raked up at least SOME of the leaves in our yard so it's only ankle deep in leaves, not knee deep, and compared to Stanley's yard we look downright prim.  Raking leaves, I predict, will NOT be a big trend in 2011, in my household, at least.)

After a couple of years of great cavalierness with the timing of my predictions for the "new" year, this year I've vowed to be on top of things and get them done absolutely no later than Jan 1st or a few days or weeks thereafter.  I've scribbled a few raw notes on the back of cocktail napkins and was really about to get into the swing of things when I heard the latest Dinner Party Download (DPD) podcast from Rico Gagliano and Brendan Francis Newnam, which effectively demolishes the whole practice of predicting food trends.

The segment on trends picks up around 11:45 into the podcast.  If one can predict anything about food trends in 2011, it's that the predictions about such trends are going to be really lame, as evidenced by DPD's summary of the early trends identified by food trend consulting firms (yes, there actually are such outfits, which may mean I have totally missed my calling in life.)    "Action in adult beverages?" "Frugality fatigue?" "Poutine?"  Is this really what we have to look forward to next year?

So now I'm totally deflated in my efforts to at compiling my own prognostications.  Maybe I'll just take a nap this afternoon instead.

I told you so . . . again!

It does seem that I have remarkable predictive powers. Things just take longer than I expect to develop. More than two years ago I made a set of food prognostications that I revisit now and again. Upon my first review, I found most of them unfilled. Like this one:

Prediction:Young cooks will fire their publicists, mothball the chef's table, and take their names off their restaurant's web sites . . .  Soon, America's leading chefs will not even have restaurants at all. They'll just show up randomly at various people's houses . . . and cook an unbelievable dinner for their surprised hosts.

Review: Okay, so I wasn't even remotely close on this one.  Guerilla Guerrilla Cuisine is still going strong, but we haven't seen any imitators crop up.  Unless, of course, I actually was right.  How would we know about it if the chefs don't have publicists and websites . . . maybe it's actually going on right in our own neighborhoods.  You just won't know about it until that knock comes at the door and in bustles a white-jacketed chef with obnoxious puffy patterned pants and a duffel bag full of battered cookware.  So, split the middle and call it 5 points, since I MIGHT have been right on here.

Ah. The trends may move slowly, but they will come. Now Stephanie Barna of the City Paper reports some more underground supper clubs coming to light, Renata Dos Santos' LIME here in Charleston and another up in Charlotte. The later is sponsored by Patron tequila, and if going commercial isn't the sign of a trend about to go mainstream I don't know what is.

Just three months ago I was able to declare fulfilled my prediction of heirloom ingredients being adopted by fast-casual chains.

Just waiting now on the return of Le Grande Cuisine ...

I told you so!

I called it, over TWO YEARS AGO!  If I may quote myself from one of my New Year's Predictions from 2008:

I predict you'll see similar changes [using fresh, local and/or heirloom ingredients] in the mid-market chain restaurants, in a dumbed down form. O'Charley's and T.G.I. Friday's will update their menu verbiage to proclaim stuff like "Double-Cut Smithfield Farms American Yorkshire Pork Chop" and start adding a few slices of heirloom tomatoes or Niman Ranch bacon into their chef salads.


Earlier this year, when I revisited the predictions, I had to give myself a poor mark on that particular prognostication because it just hadn't materialized.  It doesn't mean I was wrong, though, just so far out ahead of the curve that I seemed like a lunatic.  But now . . . per National Restaurant News,  Italian casual chain Pasta Pomodoro overhauls its menu to  . . . wait for it . . . emphasize fresh, local ingredients including . . . wait for it again . . . NIMAN RANCH BACON!


Could it be that eating local has finally . . .



You heard it here first!

The Old-School Beer Backlash is Coming

First is was German imports, then American microbrews, then organic artisanal craft brews and high-gravity Trappist ales.  Now you can go to Whole Foods and pay more for a bottle of beer than you would for many of the bottles of wine in the store.  There are even entire stores dedicated just to high-end beers, like the Charleston Beer Exchange.  More high-quality, rare, unusual, and just plain intriguing beer is now available than ever before.

So it's only natural there would be a backlash at some point.  It's been common for a while to see a few old-school interlopers slipped into the middle of the long beer menus at brew-conscious places, complete with the requisite place of origin--"Pabst Blue Ribbon (Milwaukee, WI) -$1.75".  But I predict you're going to see a wholesale movement of beer drinkers turning their backs on gold-rimmed goblets of high-test ales and looking to an older way of beering it up.

A leading indicator: Cork Bistro down in North Charleston has, in addition to its tony craft beer selections, a separate "Beers of Our Fathers" menu, which entreats you to "Enjoy the beer you dad used to love."  The lineup includes Old Milwaukee, Ballantine XXX Ale, Miller High Life, PBR, Coors (the original stuff, not that Lite water),  Dixie Lager, Budweiser, and Genesee Cream Ale.

And while bottles of craft beer at $9 and $12 might have an influence, the backlash is not necessarily about price.  It's more a conscious effort to turn back the clock and drink old-school American lagers.  Full Sail Brewing in Hood River, Oregon, for example, has its Session Lager, "a classic all-malt pre-Prohibition style lager that reminds us of what American lagers used to taste like."  The company just started distributing to South Carolina, and you pay a premium price for the history lesson (over five bucks for the eleven ounce bottle I had a bar the other night--and what's with the ELEVEN ounce thing?  I'd pay 8.3% more for a full glass!).  It's a crisp, tasty brew, one that's very reminiscent of, say . . . Old Milwaukee and PBR.

Old-style American lagers are coming back in a big way.  You heard it here first.

2008 (yes, '08) Food Predictions: A Retrospective

So, now everyone's looking back on 2009 and making their predictions for 2010.  I was very lazy in 2009 and didn't make any predictions about what the year in food would look like.  I did, however, make a bunch of predictions for 2008 two New Years ago (and maybe I did procrastinate a little and didn't get them posted until well into February).  About this time last year, I started a "how did I do" post to revisit and score them, and it's sat in my "Drafts" folder ever since.  Clearly my 2010 New Year's resolutions should include something about finishing what I start . . .  but I'll get to that later.

After all, it's really better to give yourself two years to look at predictions, because sometimes it takes more than twelve months for nascent trends to gel.  And, when your "what's hot" sensors are a finely-tuned as mine, it's quite easy to see things coming a full eighteen months before anyone else notices them.  Really.

So, how did I do with my 2008 forecast?  Let's run them down one-by-one.


Prognostication:

You'll see more chefs planting their own gardens, carving up whole pigs, and making pates, rillets, and terrines.

Result:

As I pointed out in the original prediction, this one was pretty much a layup.  But, despite the ease with which "farm-to-table" drops from their lips, not that many chefs have dived in neck deep in this.  I was surprised to find a charcuterie plate on the menu at Neil Jordan's Steakhouse, which opened in the fall of 2008 way up Highway 17 at the top of Mount Pleasant. That's got to be the farthest from East Bay and Market Street that the word has been uttered (It's farther up to Neil Jordan's than out to the Fat Hen on John's Island--I checked on Google Maps!). A lot of places may have an herb garden or tomato vine, and 2009 newcomers Vespa Pizzeria on Daniel Island (Jon Banta's place) and 17 North in Mount Pleasant (the new comfort food outpost by Brett McKee of Oak fame) both have their own garden plots where they grow (or will grow, once things warm up) fresh produce for their kitchens.  Sean Brock at McCrady's, with his John's Island farm, remains the only chef I'm aware of growing vegetables on a really large scale. I guess that on the one hand fresh produce is really tasty but, on the other hand, farming is really hard. 7 points.



Prognostication:

I predict you'll see similar changes [using fresh, local and/or heirloom ingredients] in the mid-market chain restaurants, in a dumbed down form. O'Charley's and T.G.I. Friday's will update their menu verbiage to proclaim stuff like "Double-Cut Smithfield Farms American Yorkshire Pork Chop" and start adding a few slices of heirloom tomatoes or Niman Ranch bacon into their chef salads.


Result:

Some of the fast-casual chains--like Bennigans and Steak-and-Ale--surprised me altogether not by going local but by going belly up. Of those that are still around, T.G.I. Fridays (which didn't, as far as I am aware, win an award for Most Obnoxious Website Ever but certainly should have) did NOT introduce any heirloom or boutique ingredients to their ridiculously complicated menu, and neither did O'Charley's. O'well.

In my defense, it's important to note that even though T.G.I. Friday's did not adopt my heirloom-ingredient strategy, they certainly should have. Their financials have been flagging for the past two years, according to Research & Markets, because "they lack sufficient differentiation to attract higher-end clientele against a backdrop of increasing niche competition." Rival outlet Applebee's is faring pretty poorly, too. It was acquired by the IHOP folks, who promised to turn things around by remodeling the buildings and sprucing up the menu. As best as I can tell, that means just little tweaks like adding a "quesadilla burger" and panko-breaded calamari.

Of all the mid-market chains, Ruby Tuesday has come closest to my prediction (which, really, when you think about it, is less a prediction than free good advice for struggling restaurant corporations).  Founder and CEO Sandy Beall has made a determined effort over the past few years to overhaul the restaurant chain's image, resulting in, as the corporate website proclaims, "No more walls as attic clean-out, not a stained-glass lamp in sight, just fresh, great-tasting food expertly prepared with the highest-quality ingredients."  The menu now boasts jumbo lump crab cakes, broiled tilapi, and a bunch of lobster dishes.  Alas, same store sales are down 8% over last year.

Not aggressive enough, folks: only Berkshire pork and artisanal cheese can save you now. 1 sympathy point.


Prognostication:

The high-end boys will have to take it up a notch . . . Sean Brock at McCrady's will establish a machine shop where he will assemble vacuum cookers, foam extruders, and other singular kitchen devices of his own design . . . at High Cotton, Anthony Gray . . . will build an on-premise abattoir where he will slaughter cattle . . . Mike Lata will go in a different direction, providing patrons at FIG with hand-woven baskets and handwritten guides to all the secret spots on the Peninsula where they can forage for their own nuts, berries, and edible weeds, which he will prepare for them back at the restaurant in awe-inspiring combinations

Result:

Okay, so Sean Brock did not set up the machine shop, and as far as I am aware no one is slaughtering animals on the Peninsula (yet).  A bunch of restaurants started buying full sides of beef from grass-fed cows slaughtered right out on Wadmalaw Island.  And, Brock did venture out into raising pigs and totally remodeled the McCrady's kitchen, which is enough of an extension of his existing repertoire to qualify as "taking it up a notch."  But, most notable of all, Mike Lata was . . . drumroll . . . the guest chef at a FORAGING trip down the May River at Bluffton's Inn at Palmetto Bluff!!!  Man, did I call that one.  8 points.



Prognostication:

Just as the low-fat diet craze was supplanted by the low-carb diet craze . . . I am officially projecting that the next new health craze will be the low-protein diet. All the sugar and pork fat you can eat, but stay away from lean beef, chicken breasts, and skim milk!

Result:

Okay, so I totally blew that one. Turns out there is a low-protein diet out there, but it's really designed for folks with liver disease, kidney failure, or "toxic bowel" (yikes!), not folks who need to lose a pound or ten. But that doesn't mean its time won't come around for the general public, despite the attendant danger of "muscle wasting"--or perhaps because of that: what better way to achieve that gaunt Hollywood look that's so in vogue? I'm leaving it on the list for 2010, but it gets 0 points for this tally.


Prognostication:

The next big thing . . . will be the return of grande cuisine. Restaurants will ditch their mismatched chairs and rustic farmhouse decor and buy a truckload of fine old Chippendale furniture and velvet curtains, then triple their waitstaff and put them back in coats with tails. Meals will last six hours with a no fewer than fourteen courses. The hot menu items will be Beef Wellington and Steak Diane and Duck a'la Orange, with a dessert of Baked Alaska followed by brandy and cigars.

Result:

Okay, that one's out in left field.  But wouldn't it be really cool if it happened?  0 points.


Prognostication:

The celebrity chef thing will run its course, too. Diners will grow weary of plunking down 200 bucks for a meal at a restaurant where the supposed "chef" has actually set foot in the building just once . .

Results:


I definitely see this in the works, it's just taking a little while longer to unwind itself.  Las Vegas is hurting, Dubai is hurting.  It's only a matter of time.  But, 0 points for now.



Prognostication:

Bobby Flay will endorse Spam (it's great on the grill!). Mario Batali will hold out as long as he can, but he'll end up on a nationwide tour of shopping malls whipping up "genuine Italian recipes in 15 minutes" using Rice-a-Roni.

Results:

Well, maybe the details aren't right, but the spirit is.  So, far, Bobby Flay has endorsed a line of cookware for the Kohl's discount department store.  Mario Batali endorses GladWare .  Most telling: all these guys are represented by TSE Sports & Entertainment, putting them in the same league of promotion representation as football heroes like Joe Namath and comedians like Billy Crystal.  5 points.


Prognostication:


Young cooks will fire their publicists, mothball the chef's table, and take their names off their restaurant's web sites . . .  Soon, America's leading chefs will not even have restaurants at all. They'll just show up randomly at various people's houses . . . and cook an unbelievable dinner for their surpised hosts

Results:


Okay, so I wasn't even remotely close on this one.  Guerilla Cuisine is still going strong, but we haven't seen any imitators crop up.  Unless, of course, I actually was right.  How would we know about it if the chefs don't have publicists and websites . . . maybe it's actually going on right in our own neighborhoods.  You just won't know about it until that knock comes at the down and in bustles a white-jacketed chef with obnoxious puffy patterned pants and a duffel bag full of battered cookware.  So, split the middle and call it 5 points, since I MIGHT have been right on here.

The tally:

Possible points: 80
Points earned: 26

Okay, so that's just a smidge under 33%.  But if it was easy telling the future we'd all be rich.

Here's to a prosperous and intriguing 2010.  I predict big things are in the works.

Prognostications

We've gotten through January, which means the full run of "let's predict what's going to be hot in the food world in 2008" pieces have now been published, circulated, and forgotten. I prefer to wait a little while to make my own predictions not only because it gives me an extra month of observation but also so I can crib off of smarter, more in-touch commentators.

So, without further ado, here are the official Al Forno prognostications of what's gonna be hot and what's gonna be not in the world of food (particularly the world of Lowcountry food) in 2008:

Anything harkening back to old, original preparations and heirloom ingredients is going to be huge in 2008. You'll see more chef's planting their own gardens, carving up whole pigs, and making pates, rillets, and terrines. But that's an easy call. These things have been hot for months and the trend still has room to grow.

Charcuterie and cooking with the whole animal and seasonal heirloom vegetables is both an extension of and a reaction against the "use the best ingredients" school of thought, which was in turn a reaction against the older "technique is everything" philosophy which used so many creamy sauces and complex preparations that it didn't matter all that much whether the meat it covered was top-notch or just fair-to-middlin.

When cooks started seeking out only the very best cuts of meat to use, you saw a lot of filet and pork tenderloin medallions and tuna medallions. But after a while it got a little dull--sure, you serve the finest imported foie gras and Wagyu beef, all the very best stuff, but isn't that sort cheating? I mean, how much of a compliment to the chef is it to say that he really knows how to "source" the best ingredients? "That isn't cooking, it's shopping," the old sneer goes.

The response has been to take a look backwards to traditional, local, and seasonal ingredients--still seeking to use "the best ingedients", but redefining what that means. The chef's challenge now is not just to find a reliable distributor; instead, it is to take what's fresh and locally available and make great meals out of it. This is a blend of good shopping--that is, seeking out local artisanal and heirloom producers--and good cooking--the traditional techniques of hog butchering and sausage making, for instance.

The high-end chefs in Charleston have been doing this stuff for a while, but in 2008 you're going to see it going much more mainstream. T-Bonz in Mount Pleasant, for instance, was a pretty ordinary steak-and-chicken brew pub kind of place, but it just closed down for renovations and will soon reemerge as "Liberty Taproom & Grill" with a theme of "celebrating the American farmer and the rich bounty they put on our tables." I predict you'll see similar changes in the mid-market chain restaurants, in a dumbed down form. O'Charley's and T.G.I. Friday's will update their menu verbiage to proclaim stuff like "Double-Cut Smithfield Farms American Yorkshire Pork Chop" and start adding a few slices of heirloom tomatoes or Niman Ranch bacon into their chef salads.

Which means the high-end boys will have to take it up a notch. I predict:

Sean Brock at McCrady's will establish a machine shop where he will assemble vaccum cookers, foam extruders, and other singular kitchen devices of his own design that will allow him to create a deconstructed a chef salad with "lettuce leaves" made out of spun turkey, "cheddar cheese" created from carrot essence, and "bacon bits" that are actually freeze dried tomatoes.

Down the street at High Cotton, Anthony Gray, in defiant violation of outdated 19th Century "health" codes, with build an on-premise abattoir where he will slaughter cattle that have been grass-fed in specially-contructed paddocks in Hampton Park.

Mike Lata will go in a different direction, providing patrons at FIG with hand-woven baskets and handwritten guides to all the secret spots on the Peninsula where they can forage for their own nuts, berries, and edible weeds, which he will prepare for them back at the restaurant in awe-inspiring combinations.

But, with time, these trends will be displaced, too, just as the low-fat diet craze was supplanted by the low-carb diet craze. (And, by the way, I am officially projecting that the next new health craze will be the low-protein diet. All the sugar and pork fat you can eat, but stay away from lean beef, chicken breasts, and skim milk!) The pendulum can only swing far enough in one direction before it has to come back the other way. The old classics of haute cuisine have been thoroughly pooped on, and soon cooks will start picking up their old Escoffier and saying, wait a minute . . . what about these old classics of high dining? Hey, maybe a little flour in a sauce isn't such a bad thing . . .

That's right, I'm calling it: the next big thing by the end of 2008, or maybe in 2009 if it's slow to develop, will be the return of grande cuisine. Restaurants will ditch their mismatched chairs and rustic farmhouse decor and buy a truckload of fine old Chippendale furniture and velvet curtains, then triple their waitstaff and put them back in coats with tails. Meals will last six hours with a no fewer than fourteen courses. The hot menu items will be Beef Wellington and Steak Diane and Duck a'la Orange, with a dessert of Baked Alaska followed by brandy and cigars.

The celebrity chef thing will run its course, too. Diners will grow weary of plunking down 200 bucks for a meal at a restaurant where the supposed "chef" has actually set foot in the building just once--to cut the ribbon at the grand openingbefore hopping a private jet to the next outlet. One by one, these name-driven high-end "concepts" will start to close their doors.

Highly-leveraged and cash-poor, formerly high-flying chefs will start shilling even more for prepackaged food products and schlocky restaurants. Bobby Flay will endorse Spam (it's great on the grill!). Mario Batali will hold out as long as he can, but he'll end up on a nationwide tour of shopping malls whipping up "genuine Italian recipes in 15 minutes" using Rice-a-Roni. Most pathetic of all, Tyler Florence will cut a deal with the Applebees chain "to bring the culinary creativity of a celebrity chef" to their menu. (I feel really confident in that last one.)

And there will be a backlash. Young cooks will fire their publicists, mothball the chef's table, and take their names off their restaurant's web sites, preferring instead to practice their art in obscurity behind opaque kitchen doors. This trend is already underway--see, for example, Charleston's Guerilla Cuisine--but it will continue.

Soon, America's leading chefs will not even have restaurants at all. They'll just show up randomly at various people's houses with a few sous chefs and waiters in tow and cook an unbelievable dinner for their surpised hosts, accepting in return whatever honorarium the diners think meal deserves. Like modernist poets and atonal composers, these cooks and waiters will lead a life of relative obscurity and poverty, working dull office jobs during the day and maybe even taking up acting to pay the bills while perfecting their art.

You heard it here first.