Gluten Free Restaurant Review - No. 9 Park

Cathy and I have eaten at a number of top restaurants...NOLA, Scarpetta, Oleana, Mesa Grill, Babbo…the list goes on and on.  All have been pretty good to “wow, I can’t wait to go back again” great.  However, my favorite restaurant of all is No. 9 Park.

No. 9 Park is the flagship restaurant in the growing Barbara Lynch empire.  The quality of the food at No. 9 Park continues to be consistently awesome as her businesses grow, unlike another famous chef from around these parts whose restaurants I used to love but now seem to be nothing all that special.

Recently, I celebrated my 23^rd wedding anniversary at No. 9 Park.  The evening started off with two gluten free rolls, which were delivered on a separate plate so there would be no cross contamination.  Piping hot, they were crispy on the outside and light and airy on the inside.

My appetizer was a tuna sashimi crudo.  I wanted something light that would not fill me up and this was the perfect dish.  It was beautifully plated, with very fresh tuna.

Next came the duck.  I LOVE the duck at No. 9 Park.  Why?  I find most places that serve duck don’t render the fat enough.  Thus, the skin never gets that crispy.  I don’t know how Chef Lynch instructs her chefs on how to cook duck, but I get crispy skin each and every time, while the meat of the duck remains moist.  I mean, really…what more could you ask for?

This is the gluten free dessert I had.  A chocolate fudge “round” with some ice cream on top along with some other goodies to give different textures.  

Finally, a very nice surprise.

I should also note, that the service is just as good as the food.

No. 9 Park is expensive.  For Cathy and I, it is definitely a place to go for a very special occasion.  But here’s the thing: If you want to go someplace for a very special occasion, don’t worry about spending a large amount of money for a mediocre meal at No. 9 Park.  Mediocre is obviously not in Barbara Lynch’s vocabulary.

Think Like A Chef - Saving Chicken Parm

Before I move on to artichokes, I wanted to make something a bit more familiar on my own.  I decided to make chicken parm.  Needless to say, I hadn’t intended on making this a Think Like A Chef post, but I made a HUGE culinary mistake, but I managed to save the dish!

First, I had a few questions I needed to answer.  The first was: breadcrumbs or no breadcrumbs?  This meal can be somewhat high in fat anyway, and since I want to cut down the fat, I decided to go without breadcrumbs.  If you panfry correctly, not much oil should be absorbed, however, I want to try to make this as low in calories as I could.  Making that decision then brings up a different question:  If I’m not getting texture from the breadcrumbs, where am I going to get it?

After looking through various recipes to try to get some ideas, I ended up with a hybrid of different recipes that ended up being my own. 

The first thing I did was to start on my own sauce.  I used 15 plum tomatoes and, working in batches, cut an “X” into the end, put them in boiling water for 15-20 seconds, and then put them in an ice water bath to stop the cooking.  The tomatoes that boiled for 20 seconds peeled in about 10 seconds.  The ones that boiled for 15 seconds actually took a couple of minutes.  The trick here apparently is to take them out before they start cooking.  So it took longer than I had anticipated to get this done.

Peeled Plum Tomatoes

The next step was to seed the now-peeled tomatoes, and then cut them into a large dice. 

To cook this sauce, in a pan heated to medium-high with some extra virgin olive oil, I put an onion that was finely diced in, and then seasoned it with salt.  Then I put in two pinches of crushed red pepper.  Then, after about seven minutes, I added two cloves of minced garlic and cooked that for two minutes.  Then, I added the tomatoes, and brought it to a boil.  This didn’t take very long, as a lot of the “visible” tomato liquid was lost during the seeding process.  After it boiled, I brought it down to a simmer.  It needed to cook for about twenty minutes or so.

The idea behind this type of sauce was that I felt having chucks of tomatoes would be one of the ways I would add texture to the dish.

As for the chicken, I used a few tricks that I read from Giada De Laurentis.  First, I used chicken tenders, so it would cook fairly quickly.  Second, the key to giving the chicken a “crunchy” exterior was to get the pan screaming hot, and cook them until they were actually browned.  Of course the trick here is not to overcook the chicken in the pan, because the chicken is finished in the oven, so getting them off the heat was going to be crucial.  The third trick is how to flavor the chicken since seasoned breadcrumbs won’t be used.  She used a very simple but great idea.

Put some extra virgin olive oil in a bowl.  To the bowl, add some freshly chopped rosemary, freshly chopped thyme, and some freshly chopped Italian parsley.  (As an aside, I think it’s interesting how many recipes call for thyme as an ingredient.  I have come to love the smell of it!)  Mix that together, and then season with salt and pepper.  Then take a brush, and brush the mixture on both sides of the chicken.

Then, into the very hot pan went the chicken.  I added just a tiny bit more oil to the pan, then I started to brown the chicken on both sides.  So far, so good.

Here’s where I made the mistake:

It was time to check on the sauce.  It looked great and when I tasted it, it was pretty good, but it was kind of acidic.  So I added a sweetener.  It is here that I made a Culinary 101 mistake:  Instead of adding a little bit at a time, and tasting until it was right, I added WAY too much all at once.  So much, in fact, that it was sickeningly sweet!

Time to go into Think Like A Chef mode:  How am I going to save the sauce and not forget about the chicken?????

First thing I did was to add some salt to the sauce.  Not sure if that was right, but it seemed like a good thing to do.  The main thing is, it seemed to me that I needed to add back in some acidity.  Luckily, I had some tomato juice left over when I was working with tomatoes from a few recipes ago.  In went approx. 24 ounces of tomato juice.  This time, I tasted as I went along, while at the same time, turning the chicken that had now been nicely browned on one side.  After the last bit of tomato juice went in, I thought…”Hmm…not bad!”  Then I brought it up to a boil so I could get some heat back into the sauce, and at the last second, added some basil.

Now, the chicken had browned on the other side, so I took it off the heat, and put the sauce on top of the chicken, sprinkled on a bit of low fat mozzarella cheese, grated a small amount of parmesan reggiano on top of that, then put a small amount of butter-olive oil product on top of each piece, and then put the whole thing into a pre-heated 500 degree oven.

As for a side dish, I went with my new favorite gluten free pasta, which is made by Rustichella D’Abruzzo.  It is corn based, and it is the first gluten free pasta not made by Mario Batali that Cathy can actually eat with me.

Time for plating.

So, anyone that has read the Think Like A Chef posts has seen that I have had an issue with plating.  One of my readers has been very helpful in that area and I used one of his/her ideas.  

First, I put the chicken in the center of the plate.  I surrounded it with sauce (though maybe I should have covered the whole plate), and then used the stems from the thyme and the rosemary on top as garnish.  Not great, but certainly a step in the right direction.

The ideas for texture worked.  While I did miss the crunch from the breadcrumbs, the chunkiness of the sauce and the well-browned chicken were a good substitute.  The chicken was not over cooked, and still quite juicy inside.

As for nutrition, including the pasta, the calories are approximately 494 per serving, with 11 grams of fat, or about 20%.  Not bad.  The key was no breadcrumbs, using a minimal amount of oil, using the low fat mozzarella, not going overboard on the parmesan reggiano, and making my own sauce instead of using canned.

So overall, despite the mistake, I somehow managed to save the dish, make the plating better (I think) and have a good tasting meal.

Now to learn about artichokes.

Gluten Free and Me...in Las Vegas!

Any place where tourism is big, most of the restaurants have to have some type of gluten free meals.  Here are a few places I ate at while in Las Vegas this past week:

Cat Cora – Actually, this wasn’t in Vegas, this was in the airport at San Francisco, where I had my connection to Vegas.  I got a plain burger, with some mushrooms.  The burger was cooked medium, with lots of good char from the grill marks, perfectly cooked, seasoned well, and full of flavor.

Mon Ami Gabi – If you read any blogs at all about being gluten free in Las Vegas, they all talk about Mon Ami Gabi in the Paris Hotel.  I will be no different.  First of all, they have gluten free bread, which they bring out separately from the regular bread to ensure no contamination.  They also brought out separate butter, along with olives.  For my entrée, I chose the chicken breast paillard.  It was well seasoned and juicy, which I imagine must be a bit hard to do considering how thin it was.  FYI, they also have a gluten free breakfast, which is quite good.

Border Grill – I first went to the Border Grill at Mandalay Bay many years ago, just after we got the Food Network on our cable system.  The restaurant is owned the “Two Hot Tamales,” otherwise known as Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger.  I remember not liking it when I went.  Then, as I saw both of them cook on Top Chef Masters, and saw how the judges raved about their food, I thought I must have been wrong; perhaps my pallet wasn’t as sophisticated back then.  So it was with great excitement that I went back.  You know what?  I still didn’t like it.  I ordered the Yucatan Pork.  One of the ingredients is cinnamon, which I like, but I think it completely overpowered the dish.  It was all I could taste.  My dinner partner is also gluten free, and she got the Kobe Beef Tacos, which she said were quite good.  That being said, the guacamole and the corn tortilla chips we got were also very good.

BurGR – BurGR is - yes, you guessed right – a burger place by Gordon Ramsey in the Planet Hollywood Hotel.  No gluten free buns, but they did offer to wrap up the burger in a lettuce wrap which I thought was pretty cool.  I got the Hells Kitchen burger (what else?)  Needless to say, it was quite hot.  As for the burger itself, it was fine, but I didn’t think it was any better than many of the burgers I have gotten in Las Vegas, and the others were cheaper. 

Nine Fine Irishmen - The next dinner was at a restaurant called Nine Fine Irishmen in the New York, New York Hotel.  As the name indicates, it is an Irish Pub.  Unfortunately, no gluten free beers, which surprised me a little, but they did have apple cider.  I got the gluten free lamb stew.  The lamb was very juicy, the potatoes still had some tooth to them, and the broth was nice and salty.  Half way through my meal, my gluten free dinner partner and I switched meals, so I also got to have the gluten free shepards pie.  The beef tips were cooked quite nicely, the mashed potatoes were nice and creamy with the top having a nice crust to it.  These two meals were great comfort food. 

Scarpetta – Scarpetta is a restaurant that is owned by Scott Conant.  You most often see him as a judge on Chopped.  He not only has a gluten free menu, but a vegetarian menu as well.  I started off with the white asparagus soup with blue crab.  It was good, with the texture coming from small pieces of whole asparagus.  I do wish it had been a little hotter.  For my entrée I got the spaghetti tomato basil.  This was homemade gluten free pasta, so extra props to Scarpetta for that.  I thought the spaghetti was very good, and the sauce – though simple- was really delicious.

I will also say that all of the places we ate had very good service, which always makes the meal more enjoyable.

So don't be nervous about gluten free eating in Las Vegas.  There are plenty of places to choose from.

Tourneau Makes It Right

A couple of days after my ranting about the Tourneau incident (if you missed it, you can read about it here), I received this response from them on my blog:

Tourneau April 30, 2013 at 12:01 PM

We are sorry for any inconvenience and frustration this has caused. It is our understanding that this was resolved to your satisfaction however if you still have outstanding concerns or needs, please feels free to contact us. It would be our pleasure to assist you further.

The following was my response:

I'm not really sure how it is you think that you were of assistance, or that I ended up satisfied. I "resolved" this because I felt that, if I didn't take the gift certificates, I would end up with nothing. No one from your customer service ever contacted me. If you want me to be satisfied, I would like to turn in my $500 gift certificate for cash or a credit to my credit card.

I also received an email dated May 1 from Tourneau, saying that they could not find my wife’s original e-mail, and then going over their return policy and, once again, saying that they thought I was satisfied with the result.  I explained in a response back that just because I didn’t go ballistic in their store didn’t mean I was satisfied.  Again, I asked for flexibility in their policy.  In addition, @Tourneautimes asked me to DM them so we could go into more depth about the problem.  I did not respond to that.

In any case, later that same day, the Tourneau GM of my area called me, but I could not speak to her then, as I was in the middle of a project at work, and I asked if we could speak Friday.  She said that would be fine.  In the meantime, I received e-mail from Tourneau saying that, when I spoke to this person, I would be getting a $500 credit on the credit card that I made the purchase on.  On Friday, May 3, that transaction took place.

Those are the facts.  Now my commentary:

First, as I said in my previous post, I do not blame anyone at the Tourneau store or the GM.  I think they were very professional.  The GM apologized to me on the phone, and I told her it wasn’t her fault; she was just doing her job.  I believed that when she couldn’t help me, and I believe it now.

Second, I do believe that Tourneau ultimately did the right thing.  Whether they did that because I was tweeting about them, or they finally agreed that, given the circumstances, there should be flexibility on their part, I don’t know. 

Third, I can’t say I would ever buy a watch from them again, but I can’t say I wouldn’t either.  I think I would just be much more aware of their policies, and I would caution anyone buying anything expensive from any company to be aware of that company’s return policies before they complete the transaction.

But, I have to say that this ended up being a good learning experience, and I most definitely have a better taste in my mouth about Tourneau than I did a couple of weeks ago.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have gluten free polenta mushroom bolognese to make.