Ruddy Duck Tavern in Morehead City

Ruddy Duck Tavern on the Morehead City waterfront is one of my favorite places, for food as well as ambience. Portions are generous. My wife and I like to start with fried Amberjack bites, accented with Creole mustard sauce. A combination fried seafood platter- Scallops and Shrimp- is large enough to share.  We get an extra order of cole slaw.

Fried Amberjack Bites

Fried Scallops and Shrimp, with French fries

Cole Slaw

Magnolia Blue in High Point

Full review appeared in Yes! Weekly last spring. Great food, Southern influenced. Happy after recent return visit!

Their website: https://www.magnoliabluehighpoint.com/

Blackened Mahi

Chicken and Dumplings with andouille sausage

Shrimp and Crab Pasta

Christmas Gifts (for others and for yourself)

Back in the good old days, when I was writing a weekly column for The News and Record, I always posted a recommended gifts column about this time every year. Since I don't have that venue anymore, I'll provide a general recommendation here: my favorite place for food and cooking related purchases is The Extra Ingredient in Friendly Shopping Center. If they don't have it, you don't need it! Also, take a look at Chad Smith's website, GuilfordHillSpice.com. He blends salt-free spices, which are sold at The Extra Ingredient as well as online, and he is an excellent waiter at Salvino, one of my favorite area restaurants. Consider a gift certficate from a local restaurant as a gift!

Pimiento Cheese

Local product, highly recommended: Howling Good Pimiento Cheese, from Wolf Daddy Foods (wolfdaddyfoods.com). This comes from Amanda and Richard Lucas, who formerly owned a restaurant that I really liked. Go online, or pick up in person from Amanda at the Greensboro Farmers' Market on Yanceyville Street, Saturday mornings.

Christmas Season at Butcher and Bull in Winston-Salem

I wrote about a meal at Butcher and Bull (in downtown Marriott) in June (see "Older Posts" below). Starting today (December 3) through the end of the year, the restaurant is displayng Christmas decor developed in collaboration with Miracle pop-up bar. In addition, the bar and kitchen are introducing a new menu of Holiday cocktails and small-plate entrees.  (Photos below provided by restaurant.)

Here's the Snowball Old Fashioned drink on display.

This is Jingle Balls Nog.

And here's the Christmapolitan cocktail

Holiday food items include festive small plates such as crisp Elf Ornaments of fried macaroni and cheese balls topped with tomato jam, Reindeer Food charcuterie plate, Christmas in Hawaii wagyu beef sliders, and North Pole Steakhouse bistro steak and fries.

The Katharine Brasserie in Winston-Salem

The Katharine Brasserie & Bar (401 North Main Street, Winston-Salem 27101, (336) 761-0203, katharinebrasserie.com) is located in the historic Reynolds Building, now the Kimpton Cardinal luxury hotel. Ambience is unique- an art deco French brasserie, the concept chosen in homage to and named after Katherine Reynolds, who loved her travels in France.

Dining Room, photo by Amber Renea Photography

Executive Chef Adam Barnett, who trained under illustrious names such as Eric Ripert and Patrick O’Connell, introduces new menus every quarter. Additional, special menus will be in place for Thanksgiving and Christmas. The fall-winter menu is stellar. This restaurant is hitting its stride. I now rank it among the elite.

Executive Chef Adam Barnett, photo  by Amber Renea Photography

(Food photos below by John Batchelor, just cell phone shots from table.)

My wife and I started a tasting meal with a cheese plate. French styles are sourced in the US, from Georgia and North Carolina. These are all pleasantly mellow in flavor. The arugula salad in the center is lightly dressed, the toasts crisp.

The Crab Salad is flavored with preserved lemon, herb aioli, and celery root. It is light, the taste of fresh crab subtly undergirded by chives, sharpened by the lemon. This is really special!

Mussels Mariniere are delightfully fresh and tender, no grit, no muddy taste, resting in broth of white wine, garlic, and creme fraiche, with slices of celery and fennel. Seriously flavorful!

(Note that the entrees below are part of a tasting menu, therefore small portions; 

if you order as a main course, the serving size is larger.)

Salmon is sauteed, its crisp crust giving way to tender interior. It is surrounded by melted leeks and celery, red and purple potatoes, all accented with a mustard buerre blanc.

Trout is served with its crisp skin side up, over horseradish creme fraiche, braised greens, and sweet potato hash. The trout itself is moist and tender; it picks up a subtle accent from the mild horseradish.

Ricotta Gnudi combines tender duck confit and gnudi- similar to gnocchi but based on ricotta cheese- plus greens, butternut squash, and hen of the woods mushroom on top. The mushroom looks weird and tastes great!

Creme Brulee is both light and rich. Couldn't wait to take that first bite!

LSU Press

LSU Press is launching a crowdfunding campaign to  support their academic publishing. They published one of my books, Race and Education in North Carolina: from Segregation to Desegregation. (Let me know if you want an autographed copy. I sell for $35, which is $10 off list price of $45.) This is one of the best academic publishers in the US, and LSU's football team is pretty good, too! What a game with Alabama! Go to link above to join me in contributing.

Taco Mama

Had dinner at Taco Mama (2168 Lawndale Drive, Greensboro 27408, 336-790-1987, tacomamaonline.com), a very casual, college neighborhood feeling sort of place. You order and pay at counter, then they deliver to your table. It's a chain/franchise operation that started in Alabama.

It's a no-risk experience. A long list of margaritas made me indecisive. Server said, "No problem." I told them I just wanted a simple, traditional margarita, not one of the fancy variations on the list. "Try this," she replied, handing me a little taste. The frozen margaritas come out of machines that constantly stir the ingredients. I did not like them. Everybody at my table identified a chemical aftertaste. So we all opted for beer, and that's easy to choose. (They had also provided a little taste of the wines.)

But we did like the food. It's simple and inexpensive. Deliveries come out fast. I got The Hippie Fisherman, a burrito filled with flounder, shrimp, ancho chile slaw, avocado chunks, tomatoes, and a poblano pepper tartar sauce. My wife tried the ground chorizo sausage tacos, and we both really liked those. Thin chips, not heavily salted, and tomato salsa round out the servings.

I'll go back on occasion to try other things. Taco Mama seems to be a good choice for an inexpensive, casual meal. 

Sokol Blosser Wine Dinner at Cafe Pasta (updated after event)

On November 5, I hosted a wine dinner at Cafe Pasta and Grille (305 State Street, 336-272-1308, cafepasta.com), featuring selections from Sokol Blosser, an Oregon winery. This is one of my favorites! Their wines are enjoyable by themselves, but they are especially food friendly, and not expensive. Wines were available to order at the end of the dinner. (PS- at a great VALUE !)

Here is a link to a Sokol Blosser winery video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVK1ihsr0YM

Cost for dinner, including wines, was $50. Watch this space for future such events!

First course- Artichoke and Spinach dip, with Pinot Gris wine.

 

Second course- Chicken Piccatta over linguine, with Evolution white. I love this wine!

We moved on to Seared Salmon and mixed fall vegetables, with Dundee Hills pinot noir. This embodies the unique qualities of Oregon pinot noir.

Dessert was cheesecake, made by Ray Essa's mother. 

My favorite cheesecake with a wine that is really special.

Triad Margarita Wars

How I Spent Saturday (9/21/19)

My wife and I judged the Yes! Weekly margarita wars on Saturday afternoon. For us, this was a blind tasting. Personnel from the newspaper brought margaritas from each of the sixteen restaurants that entered the competition, and we labelled them by number. At no time, until the end, did we know who made what. We did not try to drink all of sixteen full sized drinks- a recipe for disaster. Instead, a sip or two established a clear initial impression.We marked each number on our score sheet with two ratings- one from my wife, the other from me. As it turned out, we agreed each time (unusual for us!).

Two criteria emerged right away. Some were just too sweet for our taste. And others just did not taste like a margarita. Drinks with upfront cucumber flavor might well be very good drinks, and we thought they were very good, but we just did not consider cucumber the appropriate primary flavor for a margarita. This Round One sampling eliminated ten of the sixteen entries. We tasted the other six in more detail, and that left us with two clear finalists- number 3 and number 10.

But both were getting a little watery by this time, especially number 3, since it was one of the first to arrive, vs. number 10, which was served to us about 15 minutes later. Ice melts. So we asked for a second serving of those two. Both were quite good. But halfway into this tasting round, a clear winner emerged. We found out after we turned in our scorecard that The Treasure Club had landed in second place, and Frida's, a new Mexican restaurant in Kernersville, had won.

It's a tough job, but somebody has to do it.

The lineup!