Village Baker - Small Town Baker Does it Big Town Right

The existence of the Village Baker proves three things:

1. Urban artisan establishments do not have exclusive domain over super-tasty baked things.
2. Good things sometimes happen to good people
3. West Michigan is a really, really small place

1. Small Town Baker Kicks Ass

The first thing you encounter at Village Baker is a rack of completely legit baked goods in mind boggling variety. I do not know when they start baking to have this stuff ready to go each morning, or what magic they employ to get this kind of crust on a baguette.

The storefront is narrow and long – a handful of booths line the windows along one long side, and a counter, pastry cases, and a gaggle of young employees dominate the back wall. It’s light and airy, with an understated small town charm. The glass bottles of milk from a local dairy look at right at home.

Over the course of a handful of weekends out at my mom’s place in Spring Lake, we had challah  (for French toast, OMG), cinnamon rolls, baguettes, poppy seed hot dog buns, French pastries, and local blueberry muffins. I think I ate more bread during July than in any previous month of my life, and I loved every minute of it. The baguettes here are crusty with a pillowy white interior and a mild sourdough bite. The hot dog buns are brilliantly squishy, what every grocery store hot dog bun aspires to be. And the pastries, created by a professor at a nearby cooking school who was wishing for a commercial kitchen, are precise and beautiful.

2. Good People

Oran Rankin and Sara Rathbun run Village Baker. They are really really nice people. When they opened the bakery, they literally scraped it together, doing a lot of the work on the place themselves, and bringing in friends (there’s a yoga studio next door, and plans for a farmers market out back) to help.

And, just as you’d like to see with something run with this much heart, this place is off-the-hook successful. I’ve never been in there where there hasn’t been a line full of locals back from church, or people passing through on the way to the beach. As word spreads, I can imagine the crowds will continue to gather, making Village Baker a sort of informal town square.

3. West Michigan Is Very Small

Back in the early 90s, fresh back in Grand Rapids from my first years in College, my dad and I used to spend the occasional lazy afternoon drinking coffee and playing chess at Socrates. It was a homey Eastown coffeeshop, with a big bright front window, some memorably named sandwiches and good coffee before most of us knew what that was. Once or twice we made the trek from there up to Ed’s Breads on Leonard to bring back a loaf of homemade cinnamon bread for French Toast.

Socrates: Sara Rathbun’s place. Ed’s Breads: that’d be Oran’s. They weren’t a couple then, but have since met and married, and showed up a few blocks away from my mom’s house.

Score one for good karma. Love this place.

Images courtesy of the gorgeous and amazing Fair Morning Blue





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Bush to Bucket to Pie. Blueberries in Summer.

The summer road trip is getting to be a tradition in our family. Near the end of June, we pile everyone in the car and head in whatever direction my corporate apartment happens to be. For a glorious couple of months, I get to read bedtime stories to my kiddos on weekdays, avoid airports entirely, and sleep past 4AM on Monday Mornings. For the last few years, my client was in Tallahassee FL, so we encamped there, with weekend jaunts to Disney or St. George Island. This year: Lansing, MI, and our weekend jaunts are both more pedestrian, and, frankly, more fun.

Last weekend, we stayed out in Spring Lake with my mom, right up the street from Blueberry Hill U-Pick farm. Farm may be a bit of an overstatement – Blueberry Hill is maybe an acre of bushes tucked behind a neatly manicured ranch house, on the edge of a residential neighborhood. It’s an idyllic setting, and when we showed up on Saturday morning we had the run of the lush blueberry bushes, which were drooping with enormous blue spheres of sweet juicy goodness.  We snacked profusely, thinking of Sal and his plink-plank-plunk, and stopped when we got to a bucket full – about 2 gallons – costing us all of $10. For those keeping track at home, this is about what it costs to cast a sidelong glance at Disney.

That afternoon, we headed back across the state to Lansing and got busy in my little kitchen.

First thing to note. A bucket is a mountain of blueberries. It doesn’t seem like a lot when you’re surrounded by a near infinite supply hanging off of summer-green bushes, but put it on the counter, and it’s a little shocking. Enough for a pie? Yes, I’d say so.

I don’t have any cookbooks here, but I do have my trusty Bittman To Go app, and on it was something close to this:

The Crust. 

- 2 sticks of butter, cut into about 16 cubes each.

- 2 cups white flour

- 2 tablespoons sugar

- 1/2 tsp salt

- A little icewater (about 3 tbs)

That’s it. I dropped the butter in the flour, sugar and salt, and then went at it. No tabletop appliances here, so I tried it with a pair of knives, but the better approach was just to break up the pieces of butter with my fingers. I worked for a few minutes, stuck the whole bowl in the freezer to cool off, and then worked it again. Main goal is to keep the butter pieces small, but distinct, so things stay flaky and delish. Once it seemed well enough integrated, I added a couple of tablespoons of ice water, and worked it into a ball. Wax paper and washi tape was decent substitute for plastic wrap, and I popped the whole kit and caboodle in the fridge for about an hour to cool down again.

While the crust was chilling, into another bowl wen

- 5 cups fresh-picked blueberries

- 1 cup sugar

- 1 teaspoon of lemon zest

- 1 tablespoon of lemon juice

- 2 tablespoons corn starch (should have used 4, more about that below)

And by “worked”, I mean combined everything and tossed, again, with fingers.

We rolled out the top and bottom crusts, saving enough for my daughters to make their own mini pastries to bake alongside the main attraction. With the oven up at 450, we laid the first crust into a nine inch pie pan, piled in our blueberry mix, dotted with butter, crimped on the top crust and cut a few holes (I used Sugar Mama's Triple Berry pattern as an inspiration). It sat for a @morningblue photo op for a few minutes, received a quick butter brush and sprinkle of sugar, and then we popped it into the middle of the oven, dropping the temp back down to 350 as soon as the oven door was shut.

An hour later we were rewarded with a bubbling gooey mess of a blueberry pie. We tried to wait, honest, we did, but we didn’t wait long enough and were content eating a rather soupy mess of sweet luscious blueberry pie and Hudsonville vanilla ice cream.

For the next two days, we hacked away at it, relishing the way the summertime in Michigan tastes.

The side note regarding the corn starch: After the pie cooled it stayed pretty soupy. This was not all bad (with ice cream, it was actually kind of nice), but a pie of a more traditional consistency would have required about twice the thickener.

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Love and Failure: Boscos Squared in Memphis

Who Needs Donuts

The best book ever written is called Who Needs Donuts When You've Got Love. It's by Mark Allen Stamaty, and it will blow your mind. The hero of the book, Sam, leaves home on a quest to find donuts. Eventually, Sam realizes that donuts without love are no fun and kind of empty. There's a climactic scene involving a bull, lukewarm coffee, and an old lady, but I won't give away the juicy bits here. It should be noted this is technically targeted at 5-year olds, but the core truth holds: love makes everything good.

And this, my friends, is why I don't love Boscos Squared, deep in Germantown on the edge of downtown Memphis. Boscos has no love.

Boscos does have great beer. It has an absolutely gorgeous building, comfortable chairs, good art on the walls, and a wood fired brick oven. It has enormous copper fermentation tanks encased behind glass and lit with a sexy yellow-tinged light. It has a kick-ass gastropub menu with little departures like smoked duck spring rolls. All that, taken together, makes for a pretty good Yelp rating, but it doesn't make for a great restaurant.

We walked in and were greeted with the strong scent of boredom. The hostess walked us to our table with a grim determination. Our waiter, when he appeared, was so apathetic he bordered on unconscious. After a long while the food arrived, showing that the kitchen was about as pleased to be there as the front-house staff. The salad - fresh from a box of field greens, was a little wilted and presented in a towering mound. If there was love in that salad, it'd have pecans and baked brie, like the house salad at Eastside Cafe. Others fared no better - the burger my wife ordered contained gristle so palpable it nearly crunched. A burger made with love would have green chile that made you cry out with pleasure as your eyes streamed tears, like The Horesman's Haven. The mini ciabatta rolls Ella's sliders came on were soft to the point of soggy, nothing at all like the ciabatta made with love and a crust at Sweetish Hill.

For love, I'm willing to put up with dumpy buildings, impossible parking, long waits and limited menus. My Spectacularly Good columns are filled with places that vary widely on available budget, but have in common a love of food and a passion for building an experience that transcends sustenance and invites you in to play. Places like Veritable Quandry in Portland, East End Eatery in Gainesville, Sugar Mama's Bakeshop in Austin, Madcap Coffee in Grand Rapids.

In the end, Boscos wasn't the worst place I've eaten - they make an extraordinary pale ale and do enough things right for me to believe that they could have been a kind of OK place having an off night. But they will not be getting a repeat visit from me. For that, you need love.

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The Best Pie in Austin

The Pie Society - Buttermilk

Pie is a scrappy, American staple. It's a recession dessert, simple, flexible and celebratory. It also looks like it's mounting an impressive comeback.

Recently I helped pull together a Pie Tasting for about 50 Austin colleagues. We collected in our biggest conference room (the one that's about to get new carpet. Oops), and lined up a dozen of the best pies going in Austin: The Pie Society, Sweetish Hill, Texas Pie Company, and Sugar Mama's Bakeshop. Coffee came courtesy of our friends at Chameleon Cold Brew, and Amy's provided the Mexican Vanilla. Killer sugar rush, #ATX style.

A couple of general findings before I get into the real results.

1. Crust is king - Basic pie crust has essentially two ingredients - flour and butter. Flourishes may add an item or two. But how crust is handled, how the butter is integrated, how long it's chilled before baking, how thinly it's rolled - is key to making a great pie. Also good - whatever voodoo Sugar Mama's does to make the crispy butter dream that is the Triple Berry crust.
   
2. Fruit wins - This is a fact. We voted. It may just be the string of triple-digit days, but given the choice of pie style, fruit beat cream by a 6 to 1 margin. Not many folks I know are going to turn down a coconut cream if it's the only thing on the table, but given the choice, looks like they'll opt for the oozing berries with a scoop of vanilla ice cream over mounds of whipped cream.
   
3. The prettiest ones give a little peek - We did an informal poll on the prettiest pies, and first, second and third place were the pies with lattice top crusts (Sweetish Hill blueberry, Pie Society cherry, Pie Society strawberry-rhubarb). I'm kind of a crumble guy, myself, but looking at everything lined up, it was hard to deny the visual supremacy of the near iconic Pie Socieity Cherry.

The Pie Society - Cherry 

So there's the findings. On to the results.

Third place

Tie: Sweetish Hill Chocolate Rum Pecan and The Pie Society Strawberry rhubarb. These couldn't be more different pies. Each has it's roots in a classic, but where Sweetish Hill veers to the innovative side of things, The Pie Society is keeping it classic. Strawberry Rhubarb was stunning and had a lovely rhubarb tang against the sweet strawberries. Filling consistency is always tricky with pies - and the only point that this one lost ground was on that front, a little runnier than most of us would have liked. Chocolate Pecan was also beautiful, and pulled in the chocolate fanatics in the group. I thought it rocked, but in the end, I was unsold on the drizzle of chocolate. It's like nuts in chocolate chip cookies or raisins in bread pudding. Some people love it. It's just not the way I roll.

Second Place 

The Texas Pie Company Chocolate Fudge. No question that this was a tasty desert, that it rocked the Mexican Vanilla, that it sliced as easy as a, well, brownie. Because, truth be told, that's what it was. A giant brownie in a pie crust. At first, I dismissed it as gimmick, but this was a damn good brownie in a damn good crust. Populist win for second place.

First Place

Best Pie in Austin

Sugar Mama's Triple Berry. There were a lot of really good pies for the taking, but the top spot was pretty lonely for the Triple Berry, which took nearly 70% of the votes for best pie, and 80% of the votes for best crust. No argument from me on this one. I'm a die hard triple berry fan, have been for ages, and this full size pie took all the jammy cobbler-like goodness of the mini one Sugar Mama's has in the case, multiplied it by 50, topped it with ice cream and made an entire room of corporate denizens a little weak in the knees. People who didn't like pie loved this pie. People who had given up sugar, given up gluten loved this pie. This is crazy pie.

I have no idea if Pie is a trend that's going to stick, no idea if Sugar Mama's mini-pies or The Pie Society's Crimps will streak past cakeballs to steal the mighty cupcake thunder, but I hope they do. I love that some of the best bakers in town are turning their prodigious talents to the humble pie. If there's a time to think about our history, Independence Day is a good one. And if there's a food to eat while thinking about it, it's a slice of pie.

Sugar Mama's - Triple Berry w/Amy's Mexican Vanilla

Side note: Our friends (and rock-star talented bakers) at The Pie Society were recently selected to provide pies for "A Christmas Affair" in Austin. Big show. Lots of pie. As a startup, this kind of volume doesn't come easy. They've turned to innovative micro-funding site KickStarter to raise funds for the big effort. Go ahead and check it out. Tell 'em Grubbus sent you.

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Caffe Medici Builds Temple to Coffee in the Heart of Austin

My first cup of coffee was at a dinner party at our house in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I was 10 years old, and I remember not so much the way it tasted, but the way it felt to be in grown up conversations with this deep rich coffee smell all around and a plate of Italian cookies on the table. I remember the warmth of the cup in my hands, the inky cold blackness outside the dining room windows, and the sophistication of the whole experience. Coffee was special-occasion-only until high school and a regular daily ritual after that. By the time I finished college and moved to DC, I’d figured out the importance of fresh ground beans, had the epiphany of espresso, and had started hanging out at Quartermaine, my local coffee shop, rather than staying holed up in my apartment.

It took until 2007, 24 years after that first cup, to discover really good coffee, at Caffe Medici, on West Lynn. Medici opened up a whole new level of coffee in town, and served as Austin’s gateway drug to some pretty extraordinary highs: Once Over, Houndstooth and half a dozen other top-level shops are turning out amazing drinks, Austin baristas are placing at the top of US Barista Guild national competitions, latte art has become commonplace, and Mike McKim has taken Cuvee Coffee Roasters to national relevance.

The only thing left was to build a space sleek and sophisticated enough to hold this sleek, sophisticated Austin coffee experience. And Medici has now done it, on the ground floor of the Austonian. We now not only have good coffee, we have erected a temple to it.

The space is light and airy – two stories of glass with loft seating and warm colors. There is a clean modern aesthetic to it all, but the basic design is all about theater. After entering the front door you walk past a massive square espresso bar housing two complete espresso work stations to the back of the store to order. You place your order and pay up, and then head back up front, where shots are pulled on a pair of gleaming red 3-group La Marzoccos. It made for a good show when Starbucks first tried layout this in the 80s at Pikes Place, and it makes for a good show now.

There are seats outside, on the wide sidewalk next to Congress Avenue, inside along the windows, and upstairs in a gorgeously engineered loft. A benevolent Medici looks down from a mural on the back wall.

The space is fantastic, but the key to what Medici is doing now is in the cup. Medici has been using the same Espresso Medici blend from Cuvee Coffee since the get go. Every Barista there knows exactly how these beans want to be treated, and they have dialed in the temperature and the grind to impossible precision. The resulting espresso is rich and winey, with a chocolaty first taste and a long, lingering almost tart bite at the finish. Alone, it’s fantastic, though ristrettos can pack a puckering wallop.

With milk it’s out of this world. I would happily drink anything they make, but my go-to drink is the Espresso Macchiato, where just a few ounces of perfectly steamed milk tops the espresso. If I’m there for a little longer, I’ll get the small latte and linger on the silky roasted marshmallow flavors that come out when the milk is taken to just the right temperature. They have food, and it’s good enough, but the action is universally and unapologetically the coffee.

I came to coffee for the smell and the taste, but mostly for the experience. This most recent Medici outpost has brought that back home more directly, and more elegantly than any place else I’ve been.

More pictures are up on the Grubbus Facebook page

For a historical trip back in time: My original review of Medici, back in 2007 is here.

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Finding France in the Suburbs: Baguette et Chocolat

I should be totally clear here. I have no basis for judging French pastries authentic. I have never been to France. In high school, I opted for Spanish. I’ve only been to Europe once, and I stayed in Italy. I do have some basis for judging them awesome though. And Baguette et Chocolat is nothing if not awesome. Their site is here. It is very loud.

Tucked away next to a brand new strip mall all the way out Bee Caves road near highway 71, Baguette is a little square stone structure. It looks kind of lonely and sterile there in the parking lot, and the outdoor tables seem a little misplaced perched on the narrow sidewalk separating the building from the cars parked out front. Once you get inside and take a deep breath, though, the experience is transformed.

There are about 10 tables scattered inside, white, scrubbed clean and set simply, and far enough apart to create a clear unencumbered path to the pastry case.

But this is not somewhere you visit for the ambience. This is a place you visit for the food.

French pastries are, by definition, pretty. These go beyond that, crafted so delicately and with such attention to detail that they cross the line to from pretty to flat-out stunning. There are rows of brightly colored French macaroons – all the rage everywhere; totally at home here. Meringues, Operas, Chocolate Mousse, and scores of gorgeous tarts share space with croissants and brioche. Above the case are baskets of crusty, flour dusted breads. And above that, an impressive menu board: salads, sandwiches, and crepes. The menu is so extensive that the drinks are listed on the adjacent wall.

Every time I’ve been I’ve tried something different, and I’ve never been disappointed. The croissants are ethereal. A couple of times they were a little overly crisp on the bottom, but it barely detracted from the meltingly tender, buttery layers. The entrée salads are fresh and beautifully arranged, with a tangy white-wine vinaigrette. The crepes are simple and rich: I am especially fond of the Crepe Complete, where eggs, ham and swiss cheese are folded inside a surprisingly rich, impossibly thin crepe. The saltiness of this gets a little overwhelming by the end, but it’s an amazing meal, especially framed next to the tender little salad that shares the plate.

The desserts are no less brilliant: Nothing overly cloying or sweet, everything balanced. We tried the lemon and raspberry macaroons (the raspberry featuring a surprising hint of chocolate), the opera, an apple tart and the chocolate mousse. The macaroons were among the best I’ve ever had, with just enough crisp bite to set off the crème between the layers. The mousse, simply presented, was lovely and light. The opera and the apple tart fared a little less well: the opera could not have been more stunning, but the precisely assembled cake layers were a touch dry; the apple tart, while delicious, lacked the contrast between the soft sweetness of the apple and the crisp of the crust I’d have liked to see.

It should also be noted that Baguette is not a place to visit when you’re in a hurry. Food created this carefully is not created quickly, and when I went in with Tracy and the kids of lunch I was suspicious they had forgotten us before our food arrived.

Baguette is a lovely experience - at the same time a sunny little neighborhood spot and a serious bakery turning out some of the best sweets in Austin. It's not trendy or even particularly high-style, but it is pure pleasure to be there.

More photos of Baguette et Chocolat are up on Grubbus's Facebook Home

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A Trip on the BBQ Bus: Sam's, Vic's and Willie's

On Saturday, I got the chance to ride along on a BBQ bus of epic proportions, courtesy of a contest put on by the good people at Google Places and ManUpTexasBBQ. We hit 3 joints I’d never heard of, ate meats I’d never encountered, and drank our fair share of Lone Star beer on a school bus outfitted with blacked out windows, disco lighting and a stripper pole. Memorable.

Sam's

We started at Austin legend Sam’s, on East 11^th. A massive pit  just behind the register kicks out enough heat to render meats nearly to the melting point, and to bump the ambient heat in the place to sauna-esque levels. The walls are yellow, I think, but so covered in faded peeling photographs, pages ripped from magazines, and record covers that it’s a little hard to tell. We sampled both the brisket and the mutton. Both were as moist as any meat I’ve tasted. If you have no teeth, and you would like to enjoy a meal of brisket, this place is your ticket. I found the brisket tasty, but a little bland – just meat and smoke going on here. The mutton – first I’ve ever had – was better, blackened and crispy on the edges, incredibly tender, and just a touch gamy. This stuff is seriously rich eating - a few bites and I was stuffed.

Perk: we actually got to go back stage at Sam’s and take a peek at the pit. Literally, this is a brick wall with a grate on top and fire underneath. That’s it. Asked how he avoided overcooking the meat, the man running the pit said “this is barbeque, there is no such thing as overcooked” Indeed.

Willie's

Stop two was Willies, way out at Springdale and MLK. We outnumbered the seats at Willies by a good margin, but thankfully they had the meat, and the bottles of Big Red to handle us. Brisket was good, but unmemorable, with more unrendered fat than I like. The score here was the boudin. I only know boudin from the hundreds of billboards dotting I-40 between Beaumont and Mobile, often featured next to an alligator and promising parts of animals I’d never really planned on eating. I had no idea what it was - alligator foot sausage? Turns out I was wrong - boudin is pork and rice sausage, different than any sausage I’ve ever had, and, as Willie's does it, totally delicious. Texture-wise it’s almost like a Greek dolma, heavy on the meat. But the taste is another thing entirely, starting mild and a little peppery, and ending with a kick (maybe jalepeno?) that just made me want another bite.

Vic's

Our last stop for  the day was also the highlight. Vic’s, off of 71 just east of I-35, is in a different league than Sam’s and Willie’s – bright, well air-conditioned, and spacious. It’s no Lambert’s, but it's also not a dive. The walls here are decorated with row after row of awards – best pork ribs, best beef ribs, best brisket. We did all three at Vic’s, and each one outdid the last. The brisket was cut thin and brilliantly spiced, tender, but not so greasy that you couldn’t dig in. The beef ribs, glazed with a sweet and slightly spicy crust were monumental and amazing – the meat fell off the bone and the flavor just went on and on. But the final play here, and the best thing I ate all day, hands down, was the pork ribs. These may be the best ribs I’ve ever bit into, even after a day of eating BBQ. The intense flavor in the crust, especially the blackened bits contrasted gorgeously with the slightly salty, tender bites of pork.

Four hours after we set out, in the quiet haze of a meat coma, we arrived back at our starting point. Mad props to Whitney and the gang at ManUp for making this happen. It's a Saturday I'm not going to forget.

More pictures from the BBQ Bus are up on the Grubbus FaceBook Page