The Boulder Passport: Rueben’s Burger Bistro

Our first stop for our Boulder Passport was Rueben’s Burger Bistro. I hadn’t been there in a while and am really glad I went back. We enjoyed their Passport special of two for one Brother Rueben’s Tripel, and were reminded of their very extensive beer selection. What impressed me most about sitting at the bar was not just the 42 beer taps, but the twelve wines on tap as well. In my opinion, wine on tap = very cool.

Sean and I decided to try one of their burgers because they have a house made veggie patty. We ordered the Hampsten which comes topped with arugula, sprouts, avocado, cucumber, and toasted pumpkin seeds. Our bartender asked if we were splitting it, and it was served cut in half on two plates. Nice touch.

Stop one on the Boulder Passport was a success.

The Boulder Passport

2014 is the first year of The Boulder Passport, a 2-for-1 drink specials booklet valid at 40 establishments (chosen by yours truly). The Passport launched in Denver last summer and was hugely successful, so this summer, valid Memorial Weekend through Labor Day Weekend, there are passports a plenty in Denver, Boulder, Fort Collins, and Brooklyn.

I was hired to get the Boulder Passport up and running, which was hugely gratifying once I got to hold it in my hands and see 40 kickass establishments offering great drink specials. I decided that since I was going to visit all 40, why not write about each of them?

Get your Boulder Passport before they sell out.  Cheers to a fun summer!

Pizzicletta- Quite possibly my favorite place ever…

It’s been well over a month since Sean and I visited Flagstaff, AZ, for a taste of Pizzicletta, and writing this article has been on the top of my “to do” list for weeks now. My paying jobs have kept me busy, so every day I look at my list and reminisce on quite possibly one of my favorite places I’ve ever dined.

Caleb Schiff, owner and pizzaiolo of Pizzicletta, came to Boulder in the fall of 2013 to be a guest chef at the original Pizzeria Locale. We got some great friends together in the caffe space (which has now been renovated into a private dining room), and had a private room to drink fun wines, enjoy one of the best meals of the year, and meet Caleb. You can read all about that fine meal on my business site, Local Table Tours.  As much as I’d love to relive that meal, I have another story to tell here… And so, we were so impressed by this chef and his food that Sean decided to surprise me for my birthday with a trip to Flagstaff to dine at Pizzicletta and ski the Arizona Snowbowl. Greatest birthday present ever! He’s a total keeper.

Pizzicletta is a really small, triangular shaped restaurant, in the same building as Mother Road Brewing, which we visited, of course. The Stefano Ferrara oven, a staple for chefs who are serious about wood-fired cooking, is the centerpiece of the kitchen.

We entered that evening to find more than one familiar face. Our server had also been our server earlier that day at Diablo Burger (a place Caleb suggested we experience), so it felt like walking into our neighborhood pizzeria on the first night we arrived in town.

Sean and I ordered the formaggi with focaccia to start the evening and a bottle of Verdicchio. The cheeses, as expected, were delightful. But, the green hue to the freshly pressed olive oil drizzled over the mozzarella was most impressive to me. Green-grass-fresh-pressed olive oil… You’ve got to love that!

Caleb is an artisan, and the featured olive oils from Casa Pau Hana Olive Farm in Paso Robles is just one of his carefully selected ingredients that help make Pizzicletta the finely put together casual dining establishment that it is. But more on our respect for this chef later. Back to our meal…

Our next plate was a salad of greens, toasted pine nuts, and chevre. And, here’s a fun fact: Pizzicletta only has itsy bitsy saucers or large pizza plates, so our salad was served on a rather substantial piece of ceramic. But, the veggie lover in me couldn’t resist something green, so I made sure to lick this platter clean (Jack Sprat, anyone? ), which was not challenging at all despite it’s large size.

We ordered two pizzas that evening- The SS145- a Bianca with roasted almonds, charred kale, gorgonzola, olive oil, and lemon juice, which, by the way, completely blew our minds! We also ordered a special of the evening that had Caleb’s special touch- Calabrian Chilis, and broccoli rabe, a personal favorite of mine in Italian cooking. Both pizzas, with their “leopard-spotted” crust of wild sour dough yeast were next to impossible to put down, despite our full bellies telling us otherwise. Caleb’s pizza, quite simply, is something you must try, as it’s incredibly difficult to explain perfection to someone who hasn’t tasted it before.

Despite the fact that we were literally stuffing ourselves at this point, we both thought Caleb’s house made gelatto was a good idea… and it WAS! There was no olive oil gelatto offered that evening as we had enjoyed at his guest event at Locale, but the chocolate and vanilla were, like all other dishes at Pizzicletta, perfect.

Talking to Caleb made it abundantly clear that he’s not just some guy who likes to cook, or likes pizza, so he opened a pizzeria. He is a man (geologist, actually), who rode a bike around Italy, found inspiration to open a pizzeria, and pays attention to every single detail. The olive oil is one example. Another is the wood he burns in his artisanal oven that comes from southern AZ and is dried for years before reaching Pizzicletta. This particularly dry wood allows his oven to reach a very high temperature that creates the well known leopard spots on his crust. Caleb’s dough, by the way, doesn’t even make it into the oven until the wild yeast sour dough ferments for days, sometimes upwards of a week. He hand crafts every pie to order topping them with very few ingredients.

And, I must admit the notice on the menu of “No Substitutions Please” was very much appreciated, coming from the substitution or ingredient exclusion capital of the world, Boulder CO.

So, if you’re on  a food quest of some kind, please add Pizzicletta to your list. And if you’re even just passing by Flagstaff, perhaps on Route 66, I suggest a brief detour to enjoy some of Americas best pizza.

Pizzicletta

203 W Phoenix Ave, Flagstaff, AZ

928.774.3242

The Worst Thing I’ve Tasted- The Paleo Diet is Ridiculous.

The first bite I had of this “Shortbread Sandie” Gluten Free, Dairy Free, High Protein, Low Sugar, Vegan, Almond Flour “Cookie” was without a doubt the worst bite of “food” I’d had in a while. In fact, I woke up this morning wondering if perhaps I had been a bit overly zealous in my abhorrence of Paleo foods last night, so I just took another bite before sitting down to write, and this “cookie” is in fact disgusting. It’s so disgusting that it inspired me to jot down my thoughts on this bullshit Paleo Diet sweeping our humble little town of Boulder.

This cookie is made to look like a cookie. But there’s nothing “cookie” going on here. The ingredient list is Almonds, Unrefined Virgin Coconut Oil, Agave, Walnuts, Coconut, Cocoa Nibs, Vanilla Extract, Baking Soda, and Sea Salt. There’s a whopping 317 calories and 29 grams of fat in one cookie, so this is not the type of cookie mom made at home that you’d eat 3 or 4 and giggle with guilty pleasure. This cookie, besides being disgusting, is loaded with fat and calories.

Oh, but they’re GOOD fat and calories you Paleo brain-washed people say. Someone actually funded this company and somehow they’re actually selling this crap and probably making a profit off of really gross snacks. The Paleo eating craze has swept Boulder and I really don’t understand how such an intelligent community could be acting so foolishly. Avoiding all foods not present during our paleo phase in evolution is ridiculous, and even more so when you then try to make something that looks like a modern day food item out of those limited ingredients. This is essentially a processed food. It’s a pre-made, packaged food item.  I don’t see you people out there hunting and foraging to supply your Paleo needs. We’re past that. We’re a hyper modern society that can research health and the human body and we’ve essentially concluded that Paleo diets are a silly fad, so why continue on this path, friends?

As humans evolved, became sedentary, developed agriculture and communities, we started eating grains, legumes, dairy products, and every fruit and vegetable under the sun.  In our modern society of the 365 days of summer in the produce section of the supermarket, we can make anything to eat at any time without ever thinking about seasonality of products. Does it make Paleo dieters feel mentally stronger somehow because they are constantly resisting urges to eat real cookies that actually taste good so they’ll spend money on something that sucks but feign satisfaction because they indulged in a cookie? Our Paleo ancestors weren’t eating agave sickly sweet sweeteners. They weren’t eating baking soda. Walnuts, almonds, and coconut probably weren’t all found in the same regions where Paleo people lived. So why does putting all that together make it a tempting treat to someone on a super restrictive diet?

There’s nothing indulgent in a gluten free, low sodium, no cholesterol, dairy free, soy free, corn free, grain free, no preservative, agave-sweetened not-good-tasting cookie. Why not just have a handful of roasted almonds?

Veggie Shepherd’s Pot Pie

I must admit- I’ve really started slacking at cooking since Sean and I met. He’s such a talented chef and spent the last year cooking for us many nights each week, regardless of his work schedule. All of that changed since taking on his new role as Kitchen Manager at Zeal. He spent a month getting the place up and running and now, almost two months into his new job, is hardly ever at home, so I have stepped back into my role as an avid home cook. He deserves it, and it’s fun for me, too.

As it’s winter, I thought something hearty would be enjoyed for dinner. I’m calling this one a Veggie Shepherd’s Pot Pie. It is pretty easy to prepare, but takes some time, so allow a few hours from start to finish.

First, I made the pie crust by basically following THIS RECIPE but adjusting it for just one cup of flower. After making the dough, I let it sit in the fridge for a little over an hour to chill.

While the dough was chilling in the fridge, I started chopping a yellow onion, four or five stalks of celery, four rather large carrots, and a peeled garnet yam. I added these to a sauté pan with a little olive oil and let them slowly start to cook. Next, I chopped up two Smoked Apple Sage Sausages (vegan sausages, of course) made by Field Roast, an artisan grain meat company. Sean introduced me to this company and I’ve come to really enjoy some of their products. It’s not typical fake meat trying to imitate meat and meat products. Field Roast makes a variety of sausages that are clearly not meat, yet are versatile and tasty additions that complete many of our vegetarian dishes here at home. And, the ingredient list on their sausages meets my high standards.

So, into the pan went the chopped sausage, a few splashes of homemade veggie broth, and I let this all cook on medium for thirty or forty minutes. Then I salted and peppered to taste, added a pinch of dried crumpled sage, a little parsley and thyme. I chopped a handful of kale and added it to the mix at the end and took my pan off the heat. It was now time to roll out my dough, make my bottom crust in a pie pan, and add the filling.

Don’t forget to PREHEAT THE OVEN, by the way, to 350 degrees.

I boiled water and cooked a white Hannah yam while making the filling, but set it to the side for the first 15 minutes the pie was in the oven. When the yam was cool enough to touch, I mashed it and spread it over the pie (which I had briefly taken out of the oven, of course) and then let it bake until the top was starting to develop a crust and turn brown and the pie crust was golden and crispy (20 more minutes or so). The look on Sean’s face when he returned home after another fifteen hour work day was all I needed to know I had really shown him how much I care. After all, we all know the way to a man’s heart…

One slice of this was definitely not enough for either of us. I must admit- this was one of my best dishes in a long time.