FOODNOTE: Hanne på Høyden Restaurant (in Bergen, Norway)

These were my notes while dining at Hanne på Høyden a couple of weeks ago, away on a holiday:  

• Organic butter and spelt bread like a cream-lined splurge of popcorn but with rose petals notes
• Oxtail cubes with dill amuse-bouche simple standouts
• Beef tartar with fresh-cracked quail egg in mustard and herbs aioli - rawness undetected - just has a sea cucumber texture in the emulsion
• Shore crab soup - the aroma impressive: kelp wafts or a Mendocino abalone cove - a consummate consommé; the "caviar" of a mortar-and-pestle juicing of the head of shrimp in wine, with charred-flavor of bread, the bite of softened onion and fennel fronds; exquisite sophistication like dining at the elegant seafood restaurant, Hugo, in Portland, Maine
• Hake with cabbage and the Northern lamb dish (was told a "one of a kind" species)... -Disappointment - (like saying that horse will win, at the start of the race, but then with the main dish it didn't) - no where did the fish evoke the mighty scenery and postcard red farms along the fjords; the lamb - O, God - was tough - cutting it in front of the chef was embarrassing I had to change the subject; but in fairness the flavor was good, giving me an imagining of a traditional Nordic stew of reindeer meat slow-cooked in milk, water and juniper berries my host in Bergen, Aslaug, where I stayed with, talked about one night in her kitchen 
• Pre-dessert (chef been serving us since the main dish; probably informed by the waiter been engaged with us constructively about food) Brown ice cream: ha! - has an English short beard flavor in the creaminess, and its sweetness of a Spanish milk powder candy with toasted grains; and visuals aside, the mixed fruits sorbet - the main dessert - didn't come together - there was landscape planning, but all the wrong plants

With "luxury" food, I don't believe in strict consistency. I believe in the moment. Chefs should work in this ethos - arriving at the "words" reliably from a poetic voice - explain the food that way - so guests get in the idea of the taste. But no matter. The winning factor at Hanne på Høyden, albeit, was the professional and deep eye-contact hospitality to serve, to accept feedback and to intelligently converse from personal experience, expanding the table's horizons, leaving everyone satisfied with the overall production and tact.

The restaurant is located in a quiet residential hill of cobblestones and botanic gardens where the liberal arts college (Bergen University) resides, the area called Møhlenpris. You enter the premises and a useful wheelbarrow with potted plants and flowers greet you. The street-level dinning room is formal, but the ambiance comes from the northernly air outside to Scandinavia. A beautiful country. A friendly country. A food destination in the making, likely to emerge from her "forest" as Portland, Ore. did, in the U.S.A.     

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THE FOOD OF EIDFJORD, NORWAY

Fish Soup is the all-around comfort food of cold Norway, eaten with rustic, hard and chewy wheat-nut rolls and "brown" cheese from mountain goats. Fish bone stock becomes milky; adding root vegetables, onions and herbs clears and draws out its flavor, binding the salmon and cod's vitality like forest presence to glacial seas. 

Norway is a beautiful Nature. The interior of this land is ocean, and because of the fjords lush rocks rise above the country. The food of Norway is an evocation of what is caught here, is gathered, and is herded. There is light-sense in the fish, acorn and pine in the bread, and thunderstorms over the barn.

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THE FOOD OF BUSHWICK

Two blocks north of Roberta's on Thames St. just past Morgan, in one of those old, brick factories turned artist lofts building where I had moved to three years ago this summer from Portland, Ore., I remember setting my first meal over a spread of newspapers in a studio with a built-in stage. I don't remember what I had cooked then exactly - and that's not the point. What I want to write instead is about the neighborhood - gritty and tattooed - yet food and eating there are inspired. Bushwick has become New York's "culinartists'" retreat to find the voice of food. I think they have an extemporaneous style, revealing the creativity of their own disciplines, and what nature (the flavors and notes of food) can do - to sing out in us: Wow, this is good! In their own right are artists' visceral originality: they know what to do with their wares, and they know how to follow the mouths of their ingredients. When Shinobi, a ramen house, opened on Grattan Ave. west of Thames, sure it's about traditional slurps, but the vibe is more like after a band recording. Narrows, the oyster bar, is a "norm corps" dimension of cocktail cool. Roberta's world-class food is a nuance of the creative-anonymous sect. The octopus ceviche at Union restaurant was kind of what I had expected of a Brooklyn genre. My first night in Bushwick on stage eating my food under warehouse environment conditions changed my notion about food. It's not a big deal. It's who they are.

           

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SUMMER'S TWILIGHT

Guys, this is what I've written down for this Sunday's picnic, my place, waterside, from nibbles down to dessert (all ingredients from goodeggs.com coop - check it out!):

• Assorted spiced nuts
• Vermont blueberries
• Fennel and purslane lobster salad
• Heirloom tomatoes and leaf lettuce salad
• Roasted shishito and squash quiche
• Red bell peppers and chioggia beets udon 
• Fried halloumi cheese on yogurt topped with pomegranate seeds
• Peach cobbler (a Portland, Ore. recipe); and,
• Cold fresh fruits: watermelon and honeydew

Agreeable? I know what's missing. Drinks. I was actually planning to make daiquiris of the fresh fruits, as starters, blending the watermelon and honeydew with sorghum rum and a complex simple syrup infused with grapefruit and ginger - and depending on the weather and wind riverside, of course a paper straw umbrella will be provided in the glass. But the menu, I think, also calls for wine tannins with a versatile chemistry, say, a pinot noir, for the savory quiche and sweet heat and pickle of the udon. The lobster will definitely go well with the vestiges of the daiquiri. I guess I'm officially omitting the fresh fruits as dessert. And, yes, there's slow-drip coffee or fresh tarragon herb tea for the peach pie.

Looking forward to toast: To summer's twilight!

Update: Thanks for the pictures, Linda!

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SOFT MATTER

The title is inspired from my current reading of the book "Fragile Objects" by Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, a French scientist and Nobelist (1991), who has studied the quantum behaviors of long-chain molecules and their transformations. (The book wasn't technical; it was an account of his year of teaching inspirational science to high school students across France after receiving the award.) The interesting takeaway from the book, at least from the first couple of chapters I've read, is the fundamental insight into the strength of a carbon atom (not millions of atoms, of note) that's responsible for the phenomenal change from liquid or chemical state into solid form by congealing the substance and binding it, oxygenated, until achieving a pure threshold - yet at the microscopic-level, there is retained the molecular liquid strands of the original polymer. To think of my dish, Quiche - green olives, pancetta, caprino cheese with truffles and sage - Lorraine, undergoing this process, is to think of Gennes' contribution to science as regards to the nature of soft matter - or implicitly, the soft matter of nature.

To associate this quiche's "fragility" is to express the palatable and sublime quality a soufflé achieves. And by further imagination of understanding, I remember what the food goddess Nigella Lawson has said about home cooks - or because of home cooks - that the universe is alive. Gennes also talked about the overlap between fundamental versus applied research approaches, wherein the "chains" that structure the molecules have an original memory of they're utility - so I think as with the cook, knowing it's going to be this good, even before he tests it.

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