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SideDish Supper Club On Sale Now: Samar by Stephan Pyles in Dallas

Yow. Zah. I must say we have pulled together one fabulous evening. Thanks to Stephan Pyles, execuchef Vijay Sadhu, and managing partner George Majdalani, the next SideDish Supper Club at Samar by Stephan Pyles is going to be over-the-top. Not only are they opening the restaurant just for us, but they also designed a one-of-a-kind menu for SideDish Supper Clubbers.

I asked Pyles why he wanted to do the Supper Club, and he had this to say:

“Having traveled the world in search of exotic flavors and preparations, the opportunity to showcase those tastes and customs in this one-time dinner spectacle was very exciting. You will savor the cuisine and cocktails inspired by India, Spain, and the Eastern Mediterranean–think curries, garam masala, cardamom, tandoori, naan, labneh, pomegranates, and pumpkin kofte. Have you ever had a remarkable Lebanese wine? Had your fortune read from the grounds of your Turkish coffee? You will at this dinner! Revel in the unique experience with Indian and Arabic music, belly dancers, and the exotic hookah ritual of narguile shisha.”

Stephan Pyles knows how to throw a party!

During the dessert course, Kyle Stewart of the Cultured Cup will demonstrate a traditional Afghan tea ceremony, and everyone will be able to try Samar’s Afghan Tea, as well as an authentic Masala chai.

Dancing girls! Hookahs! Lebanese wine! Goody bags! Communal tables! Dancing Hookahs ? Perhaps.

The  SideDish Supper Club is not just dinner; it’s a culinary learning experience. Please join us on Sunday, December 6, for the next SideDish Supper Club. The cost is $110 per person and we have included tax, gratuity, and valet parking.

CHECK OUT THE MENU BY CLICKING ON THE SIDEDISH SUPPER CLUB LOGO TO THE RIGHT. Hurry, seating is limited. 214-922-9922. (more…)

SideDish Supper Club is Ready to Go

Want to be first to know the details? Quick, type your email in the box under the SideDish Supper Club on the right and get first dibs. You’ve got ten minutes.

SideDish Supper Club: On Sale Tomorrow

The menu has been approved and the wine pairings and cocktail pairings are almost done. Hopefully, we’ll go on sale Thursday. I will tell you this: this dinner is going to not only going to be fun, it will stretch your palate around the globe. Check back tomorrow for all of the details and reservation information.

The Next SideDish Supper Club: Save the Date

The next SideDish Supper Club will take place on the evening of Sunday, December 6. The restaurant is usually closed on Sunday, but the space is so small they are going to open  for SDSC attendees only. The details are being finalized and will be announced soon. If you would like advanced notice, type your e-mail address in the tab under the SupperClub logo on the right side of this page. If you are already on our list there is no need to redo. The seating for this exclusive experience is very limited. This special SideDish Supper Club menu will not be available in this restaurant before or after December 6.

SideDish Supper Club: Thanks to Our Sponsors

One more big thanks: Check out the new Audi I received after last night’s SideDish Supper Club! (Kidding.) But seriously, thanks to Audi for making the Supper Club happen. Also many thanks to Central Market and The Container Store for the goodies they distributed last night. (My coach has turned back into a pumpkin and reality calls.)

Friday Afternoon Food Porn: SideDish Supper Club at Nonna

From the camera of Jerry McClure

Housemade salumi, sformato of potato and ricotta, tonno del Chianti with bitter greens.

Loads more porn after the jumperoo.

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SideDish Supper Club: The Wine Recap

Andrew Chalk worked hard last night. He drank every wine. Below is his insightful look at Alfonso Cevola’s selections for the evening.

You will have read elsewhere here about the fabulous five-course meal the SideDish Supper Club enjoyed at Nonna. As luck would have it, they also served some wine! In fact, you could choose to drink wine at two quality levels for the duration of the meal. The lower level was called Borghese. I think that must be Italian for trailer park. Italian is such a beautiful language that they had no qualms allowing the opera Aida to be written by a guy named Joe Green. The upper level was termed Alto-Borghese, which I think means Fru-Fru in Italian. I went with the Borghese level, reflecting my social status, and my date went with the Alto-Borghese, thereby allowing us to swap and try all the wines. (more…)

SideDish Supper Club Report: Nonna Rocks My World

Perfect pici pasta at Nonna.

Yow. Zah. What a night the SideDish Supper Club had at Nonna: Two sold-out seatings, five fabulous Tuscan-inspired courses, 12 wines, and absolutely marvelous company. Detailed reports and pictures will follow throughout the day, but I wanted to thank the chef Julian Barsotti and the Nonna staff for putting on a flawless performance. The star dish of the night, IMO, was the pici pasta with wild boar ragu, fennel pollen, and pecorino. It took two people three days to make enough for the Supper Club. And I bet there is not one noodle left in the kitchen.

However, there were a lot of empty wine bottles. Italian Wine Guy, Alfonso Cevola will attest to that. He and I sat down with few satisfied customers last night—my post-Supper Club posse—and drained the last of the 2003 Sassetti Brunello di Montalcino. (Somebody had to do it.)

Anywhoo, thanks to those who attended. I’d love to hear your thoughts. It is wonderful to share fine food with people who love to share fine food. That is always my goal behind the Supper Club. Finché incontriamo di nuovo!

SideDish Supper Club at Nonna: First Look

Zucchini blossoms from Nonna. Last night’s SideDish Supper Club at Nonna was a delicious success. We hope you will chime in with comments if you were there. I’ve got photos after the jump, but this is a picture of the first course, the antipasti. The baked zucchini blossoms (from Tom Spicer, as chef Barsotti explained to us before we ate) stuffed with Paula Lambert’s goat’s milk ricotta were one of my favorite dishes of the night.

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Don’t Cook Tonight: Pig Out With Us

See Evan Grant? In the photo, he is literally pigging out on Italian pork products in a small restaurant in San Gusme, Italy. Tonight, Mr. Grant will also be pigging out on Italian pork products and more at Nonna. Those pork products, along with the pici pasta and stuffed squash blossoms pictured below, inspired execuchef Julian Barsotti’s menu for tonight’s SideDish SupperClub at Nonna. A few people canceled this morning. If you’re in the mood for a first class Tuscan supper, join us. 214-521-1800.

Stuffed squash blossoms made by me and Karen. (She'll be there too!)

Pici pasta will be served! Great Scott!

SideDish Supper Club Set for Thursday at Nonna in Dallas

We still have six seats left for the 6:00 p.m. seating of the SideDish Supper Club this Thursday at Nonna. In case you missed the earlier announcement and details of the festivities, you can read them here. We will be celebrating the flavors of Tuscany on the plate and in the glass— chef Julian Barsotti will be in the kitchen creating a wonderful menu of Tuscan delicacies, Italian wine guy Alfonso Cevola will be on the floor pouring and talking about Tuscan wine, and I will be roaming about doing very little. It will be a meal to remember. Call now. 214-521-1800.

What is the Worst Meal You Ever Ate in a Dallas Restaurant?

I am asked this question many times. My taste memory is alive and not-so-well with memories of malicious meals that I not only ate, I paid good money to “eat.” So far, the worst meal I have ever experienced was served to me at gone-and-hopefully-forgotten Traci’s: scorched lobster shepherd’s pie and a spinach salad covered with old cheese and broiled. This year I’d have to say that the slices of dry pork fanned over a fistful of steamed cauliflower rolled in an ancho chile cream sauce I was served (twice) at Rathbun’s Blue Plate is now on my list along with a piece of wretchedly old bronzini at Bolla.  Et tu, Disher?

(Sign and T-shirts by Ellen Gribbs of Austin.)

SideDish Supper Club: On Sale Now

A few months ago, I wrote about my yearning for great Tuscan food in Dallas. Where does a girl go for wild boar and pici pasta?  I am not alone. Many locals return from feasting in Tuscany and go into gastronomic withdrawal upon return.

On September 17, I will offer you the perfect cure. Nonna chef Julian Barsotti and I have been digging through Tuscan cookbooks for months.  We have come up with a dazzling menu. We asked The Italian Wine Guy, Alfonso Cevola, to come up with some fantastic wines and he did. Click on the SideDish Supper Club icon to the right for the menu. (Or click here.)  We will be discussing the menu and wine in more detail soon.  Hurry, the seating is limited. Go. 214-521-1800.

Update: SideDish Supper Club

The menu has been approved and the wine pairings (two levels) are almost done. Hopefully, we’ll get it together in time to release full details early next week. I will tell you this: you will never find a meal like this in Dallas ever again unless something drastic happens and one category of our dining scene does a complete about-face.

If you want to be the first to know, add your e-mail address to the list under the SideDish Supper Club icon to the right. (No need to repeat if you’ve already done so.) The details will go to that list first. The restaurant is small and it will sell out fast. The evening, September 17th, will be peachy.

Save The Date: The SideDish Supper Club

The next SideDish Supper Club will take place on the evening of September 17, 2009. If you want to be one of the first to get the official word, sign up for the SDSC newsletter under the logo on the right side of the page. I promise the evening will be “boar-ing.” I can already taste it.

Hey Jennifer, Why Did You Let Tom Colicchio Throw Me Under a Bus?

I was out of the office all day yesterday and returned to find an inbox with several notes from upset friends. The messages basically said “I can’t believe what Jennifer did to you in the Tom Colicchio interview” and “DallasFood.org said Tom Colicchio threw you under a bus!”

So, I just sat down and read Jennifer’s interview with Craft Dallas’ Tom Colicchio in which he says that last year I printed “some gossip that wasn’t accurate at all.”

This is a long story and  it goes back to last spring when rumors were swirling around Dallas that N9NE and Craft were in trouble. I was in Aspen for the Food and Wine Festival. At the opening night soiree, a lot of Dallas folks in attendance and several big names in the Dallas restaurant biz came up to me and said, “Craft is changing to Craftbar.”

The next morning, I went straight to Tom Colicchio and asked him point blank. I printed his reply verbatim. Two weeks later, my cell phone rings and it is TC. He calls me a rumormonger because I speculated that something might change. Read the old report. What? I can’t voice an opinion? I don’t think I printed “some gossip that wasn’t accurate at all.”

What. Ever. So, we talked about an hour–specifically about blogging and how it differs from print product and how things on the Internet can get out of hand so fast–and ended on nice terms. He said if I ever needed to ask him a question, fire away. He is a man of his word.

Fast forward to a month or so ago. I get an e-mail from Craft’s local PR firm. They are interested in holding the SideDish Supper Club at Craft. I wrote (paraphrasing) “I called you folks before to get TC to do a SDSC and nobody called me back.” PR gal says lemme get back to you. She e-mails back and says TC is coming to town to do a wine dinner. Do I wanna talk to him? I say, sure.

Then a SideDish reader leaves a comment under the announcement of said wine dinner intimating that TC is no longer the owner of Craft Dallas. It reads, “Now that he [Colicchio] no longer owns the place, and signed a licensing agreement with the owners of the hotel, he is contractually obligated to be at the restaurant X times per year. What a shame.”

SO, as a recovering rumormonger and a woman of my word, I e-mailed the PR gal and asked her to verify or deny what the commenter said. I copy and pasted the comment and wrote: “Someone left this comment on the blog. Could you confirm or deny. I don’t want to leave comment out there if it isn’t true. Thanks, Nancy.”

The next day I get this reply from local PR gal: “I want to be sure to clarify that Tom is not doing a series of dinners at Craft. He’ll be part of the wine dinner next week, but each time he’s in Dallas, we expect his agenda to be different. In fact, with the filming of “Top Chef,” we’re not even sure when he’ll be able to make it back to Dallas again this year. Also, Tom’s name is still on the restaurant, and he is very much involved with the concept and menu. We would love to talk more about hosting SideDish’s Supper Club at Craft!”

I took a pass on talking to Colicchio because I originally (January) wanted to explore the idea of doing a Supper Club and that wasn’t going to happen  because he would have just thrown his own wine dinner. And frankly, I didn’t appreciate getting such a flabby answer from the  TC folks.

And that’s the facts.

The Next SideDish Supper Club is Simmering

After the first SideDish Supper Club at the Mercury, a sometimes polite young man asked me how we were going to top the all sous vide menu. Frankly, the meal was so good, I didn’t think we could. Then came the over-the-top kaiseki dinner paired with sake presented by Kenichi.  I can still taste the strawberry with sansho, black pepper, and granita. Tough to top that.

But Dishers, I think I have. We had a great meeting yesterday and I can already smell the menu. The restaurant is teeny and the meal will, once again, be created especially for SideDish readers. It will sell out fast so we may do two seatings. Tentative date is September 17.

Want to be the first to find out the details of the next SideDish Supper Club? Type your e-mail address under the SupperClub logo on the right side of this page. Or join us on Twitter (DSideDish). I could spill the beans at any time. (Whoops.)

(Probably The Last) SideDish Supper Club Review

It comes from the Law Reviewers. Read it here.

SideDish Supper Club Kenichi: Dallasfood.org Review

Copper River salmon nigiri, ramps, and takuan. Photo by Jerry McClure

Yesterday I was cruising around some of the local food blogs and came across this exquisite review of last week’s SDSC dinner on Dallasfood.org. The recap, with delicious photographs, was penned by Gavlist. While most of the crowd, including me, was busy learning about sake pairings and delighting in new flavors, Gavlist’s experienced palate allowed him to write a meticulous and insightful report.  For his efforts, Gavlist was given the DallasFood Meritorious Posting Award by the site’s chief, known in foodie circles as Scott. In Scott’s presentation paragraph he notes:

Gavlist got better photos of the dishes than anyone at D Magazine. (What were they thinking? The Internet is a visual medium. Couldn’t they have sent a staff photographer into the kitchen to get shots of dishes in good lighting, instead of noisy, washed-out-by-flash, cell phone shots?) His descriptions of the ingredients, tastes, and textures were more detailed (and accurate) than those in any other report on the meal.

Yes, Gavlist’s report is the most detailed and accurate and I thank Dallasfood.org for drawing attention to it. Our photo editor, Kyle Kearbey, promises to have our pictures up soon.

Updated photo album.

More Pictures From SideDish Supper Club

Here are a few more photos taken by a real photographer, Jerry McClure. Click on the picture of a slide show. Enjoy.

RE: SideDish Supper Club Recap: Photos Added

Evan is here. He took approx 200 photos. Oh boy, is there some blackmail material on his memory card, too. But anyway. Here is the first course: a yellow tomato confit with yuzu and chives. Jump for the next eight, and a photo of one gorgeous geisha girl.

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SideDish Supper Club at Kenichi: A Photo Recap

Yow. Zah. The folks at Kenichi really pulled off an incredible evening. The food was exquisite, the sake was perfectly paired, and the staff was superb. Here is a quick photo recap. Thanks to all of you. It was one of the best meals of my life.

SideDish Supper Club: The Recap

Last night’s SideDish Supper Club event at Kenichi restaurant was a huge success. We ate nine courses, drank a lot of sake, watched some Memoirs of a Geisha, and generally had a fantastic time. Major kudos to Chef Hung and his Kenichi crew. Even with so many courses, the meal moved quickly and servers and chefs were extremely friendly. InsideCorner’s Evan Grant took photos of each gorgeous dish, and I’ll post them as soon as I get them (yes Evan, this is a hint). My favorite course? The simple “green vegetable soup” with fiddlehead ferns.

SideDish Supper Club is Tomorrow Night

Dishers, we have a couple of seats left for tomorrow’s SideDish Supper Club. The staff at Kenichi has gone out of their way to put on a spectacular display. The chefs are designing a modern take on Kaiseki, the traditional, regimented, and highly ritualized formal meal served to nobles, emperors, and wealthy elite. Sake sommelier Chef Hung has handpicked exotic and rare sakes to pair with the nine-course meal. If you aren’t a sake lover, he has wines for you.  Live Japanese music, roaming Geisha girls, and free valet parking. More details here.  214-871-8883.

SideDish Supper Club: Chef Hung (Finally) Releases Sake List

Chef Hung of Kenichi is one persnickety dude. No disrespect, I mean the guy didn’t get to be a Level II sake sommelier  for slinging hot futsuu. Next Tuesday evening, Chef Hung and the Kenichi staff of chefs are designing a modern take on Kaiseki, the traditional, regimented, and highly ritualized formal meal served to nobles, emperors, and wealthy elite. (Hi, Tony B!) Chef Hung has handpicked exotic and rare sakes to pair with the nine-course meal. Today, he spills the sake list:

The saké lineup for Tuesday is about ready and kicks 尻〔的.

Daishichi Minowamon “The Gate” Junmai Daiginjo from Fukushima – unique and very rare “kimoto” style daiginjo

Kamoizumi “Summer Snow” Nigori Junmai Ginjo unpasteurized from Hiroshima

Watari Bune “55″ Junmai Ginjo – a superstar saké from Ibakari, a Kenichi staff favorite

Ama no to “Time of Reflection” Junmai Daiginjo from Akita – a superb entry from Akita

The gist is: these sakés all come from the top 4% of sakés worldwide. I’ve assembled saké to represent different regionalities and different styles. These will hopefully be pleasing to new drinkers but their finesse will challenge even the most experienced connoisseur.

So here is the deal—we know you don’t  love saké. Yet. This is your chance to taste the very best at a very low cost. If you ordered these sakés alone, you would pay more than the price of the SideDish Supper Club Dinner. And we’ve thrown in roaming Geisha girls, live Japanese music, and, drum roll please, free ($8) valet parking. We have 10 spaces left. Live a little, learn a lot.