Movable Feast

Happy First Day of Spring! Today's the Vernal Equinox, Northern Hemispherically speaking, so naturally I can't stop thinking about this fertile season's symbols: eggs.

Bear eggs, that is.

Not the eggs of bears, which do sound like an illegal Chinese delicacy, but rare breed chicken eggs from Sawmill Farm at my beloved bear sanctuary, the Fortress of the Bear, in Sitka, Alaska.

During the fishing season, Farm and Fortress founder Les Kinnear gave me dozens of beautiful blue-green Araucana and speckled brown Rhode Island Red eggs like the ones you see above. I gave him compost and lodge leftovers. Hardly a fair exchange, I know.

Geisha boys. An Eric Ripert, Anthony Bourdain, and Laurent Gras triple-decker beef-daddy sandwich. In the private tatami room at L20. Do Tony and Eric look a little wasted? They are completely. I had to drive back to the hotel.

Come and get it. I got your food porn right here.

L20's bread service. From left to right, from top to flaky and buttery bottom. Plump whole wheat loaves. Sultry anchovy brioche. Coarse pain de Campagne. Firm demi-baguettes. Tender pain au lait. Smoky bacon-mustard epi.

Ramova Grill's saucy and spiced chili omelet. Meaty ham omelet. Golden-fried hash browns. Double toast. Freshly-squeezed to your order orange juice.

Fat Johnnie's MILF. The Mother-in-Law [F*%!]. Soft tamale. Nestled in a steamed bun. Slathered with chili. Dressed like a raunchy Chicago red hot with mouth-tingling sport peppers.

Hot Doug's barely legal foie gras. Thick and juicy foie gras and Sauternes duck sausage. Slick truffle mustard. Triple slabs of foie gras au torchon.

Hot Doug's dominatrix duck fat fries. You WILL only eat them Fridays and Saturdays.

Thank you all so much for watching the No Reservations Chicago episode last week - and the repeats today. Tonight Tony's running a very special XXX hardcore food porn only episode. For more food porn, check out Tony's personal Chicago photo journal and more of Diane's from-behind-the-scenes money shots in Chicago. (I should note that while those are Diane's photos, she did not write the goofy captions.)

Congratulations to Eric on his new PBS series Avec Eric premiering this fall.

Brown-chicken-brown-cow.

Tony and I at Calumet Fisheries.
(Tony: "I said I was going to wear the sunglasses, black top, and jeans!" - photo courtesy of the fabulous Diane Schutz/Travel Channel)

I'm on Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations tonight, Monday, February 2, at 9 p.m. CT/10 p.m. ET on the Travel Channel!

It's the long-awaited Chicago episode.

I've also got a post up on the No Reservations Crew's Blog. Tony's got one up on Chicago too: Tube City. In it he calls Eric Ripert the "third wheel" at our dinner at L20. That Tony. He loco.

Tony also mentions the upcoming book The Foie Gras Wars: How a 5,000-Year-Old Delicacy Inspired the World's Fiercest Food Fight by Tribune reporter Mark Caro. Mark and I once had a surreal dinner together with Albert Adrià and Jeffrey Steingarten at Charlie Trotter's at the height of the wars, on one of the primary battlegrounds.

I wrote a behind-the-scenes article for the Sun-Times with a bonus list of everywhere and everything Tony ate for the show. I strongly suggest you do not watch this show hungry.

Check out Travel Channel's No Reservations in Chicago guide with links to the elusive Missing Scenes at Ramova Grill and Tom Tom Tamale & Bakery.

Plus I spoke at length about ABNR BTS on a Chicagoist podcast interview - my segment starts at 11:00 - thank you so much Karl - that was really terrific and am so happy to have you on any air.

The Silver Palm, where Tony reveals himself as an "egg slut" with the Three Little Piggy sandwich is open tonight for a viewing party. Note that they're normally closed on Mondays. If you go say hola to owner David Gevercer for me and save room for his wife Jacqueline's apple pie with bacon fat crust. And have drinks at his adjoining bar Matchbox.

Below is a video clip of Burt's. I've posted the pop-up commentary. For Lost fans it's an enhanced preview. Note too that Burt's is closed tonight, Monday, and tomorrow, but open again for lunch on Wednesday. Call ahead and cash only.

Looking forward to everyone seeing the premiere. I'd love to know: What did you think of the show?

The Year of the Ox has been a lucky one for my family already. Before it even started. The Chinese Lunar New Year starts today, but about two weeks ago we hit it big.

WE WON A TRIP TO SHANGHAI!

Technically it was my mom who won. She and my dad attended their annual New Year banquet at a Chicago area Hilton and as always she bought raffle tickets. She's Chinese. Which by definition means she loves to gamble. This time she bought $10 worth of $2 raffle tickets.

In years past the most they'd ever won was a disposable plastic camera about 10 years ago. Definitely not digital. And in the last few years, while I've had some great work, we've had a streak of bad family luck and health.

Now, miraculously, everyone is well.

And we won the Grand Prize! Two roundtrip tickets from Chicago to Shanghai on American Airlines!

My parents are going on the winning tickets. But I'm taking them.

As a professional fixer and obsessive compulsive adventurer of course I've started planning everything from their flights' seat assignments to every single bite they and my long lost family will eat.

This will be my parents' first time back to China. My father grew up in Shanghai. My mother, in a small village in Guangdong that I hope we can visit too. They worked together in Beijing, my mom inside the Forbidden City. This will be my first trip ever to the mainland, though I was born in Hong Kong.

The Year of the Ox is said to be one of prosperity through hard work and stoic endurance.

I expect this trip to be no less.

I met the little guy pictured above when he was just 90 minutes old. We were shooting Gourmet's Diary of a Foodie in Wisconsin for a story about the beautiful Normande breed and their France-born, Minneappolis-based champion Jerome Chateau.

I do have a Wagyu "oxtail" in my refrigerator, from Savery Creek. Savery Creek raises exquisite Wagyu beef in Wyoming and is owned by my longtime family friend Tom Seitz. Or rather Dr. Thomas Seitz, professor of Political Science at the University of Wyoming. Tom sent me a care package of solely grass-fed Wagyu offal. You heard me. Grass-fed Wagyu offal.

But as luck - again! - would have it, I was invited to a special sake dinner at L20 tonight so I will be celebrating the first dinner of the Chinese Lunar New Year there. L20 will be featured on next Monday's No Reservations. You'll see me eating there with Tony and Eric Ripert.

And yes, if you could hear me, I'm squealling with girlish delight.

I hope a lot of that's going to happen this year. I wish the same for you and yours!

I'm proud to have worked in and called Alaska my home this year. Before I arrived, like most people Down South, I'd never tasted much less cooked moose. Alaskans are just as serious about food as we are in Chicago, New York City, or San Francisco. Demographers should note that my Alaskan friends watch more Food Network and Top Chef too. When it gets pitch-black by 3:00 p.m. in the winter, you watch a lot of cable.

As the chef for a fishing boat and lodge, whose predecessor was suddenly extradited, I inherited a kitchen with the ubiquitous Alaskan chest freezers, complete with freezer-burned mystery meat. When you hunt, fish, and have to travel at least five hours by ferry to the nearest Costco, you stock in bulk.

In nearly every other kitchen in this country, that meat would have ended up in the trash.

I donated mine to the raptors.

The Alaska Raptor Center is a rehab house. Instead of celebrities, they take in injured birds of prey. The Raptor Center exists thanks solely to volunteers and donations, of cash and food.

The Center's goal is to release birds back into the wild, but that's not always possible, depending on injuries. Some birds live out their lives in the educational habitats open to visitors.

When a bird can be released, the Raptor Center announces the event in the paper, the Daily Sitka Sentinel, and on the local NPR station, KCAW. Not that it's necessary. If you grocery shop regularly, at Seamart or Lakeside, you'll hear all the news before it's announced.

I was lucky enough to witness an eagle release this summer.

This eagle was named Aunt B. She had been hit by a car in April on the other side of town, on Halibut Point Road, near the other end of Sitka's 14 miles of road. She'd suffered a broken wing, embedded with a fish hook, and a broken foot. By the time she was ready for release she had doubled in weight, which was only about 12 pounds. Eagles have an average wing span of 6 to 8 feet, but only weigh 7 to 15 pounds because their bones are hollow. Females are larger.

The sight of a hooded bald eagle cradled in someone's lap is both piteous and awesome. This magnificent creature was created to soar.

And thanks to volunteers, donations, and more than just a little bit of pure faith, she did.

If this vision of our national symbol plus the campaigns that have bombarded us for two years have not yet stirred you to vote, then let me just say it.

Vote.

And while I'm at it, vote for Barack Obama.

By the way this last photo below from the above photoset is of another eagle. Yes, I'm having fun with our national symbol. Because I can. That's what's great about America. Even Alaska.