Bar Review: Wilfie & Nell

The Short of it...
This is a great place to go with some friends for some bar food and beer. Early arrivals mean quiet space, as the night drags on it fills and gets too loud to have a conversation below a soft shout. The food is hit or miss, but when its a hit it's great. The decor is that contrived gastro-pub/urban farmhouse oasis that one can't seem to get away from, but it's a good little spot.

EAT: Amazing sliders, great grilled cheese, good fries, good salad.

DRINK: Great beers, good wine, whiskey tea, and they will make spiked Arnold Palmers (hooray!)

AVOID: Anything with sausage, I mean it.

Some interior decorator took 3 weeks planning the "haphazard" box pile.

And the Long...

The owner of this place is buddies with Joaquin Baca (the guy behind Momofuku and Rusty Knot), who put the menu together. So I was not surprised to see written on the menu "Wilfie & Nell prides itself on sourcing foods from the following local purveyors (ostentatious for nearby suppliers): Bread: Blue Ribbon Bakery. Cheese: Murray’s Cheese Shop Chutneys and preserves: Beth's Farm Kitchen. Meat: Piccinini Brothers. Pickles: Bob McClure".

Wood slats, mismatched tables, mason jars, you get the idea.

These are good places to be buying stuff from, so we can overlook the culinary equivalent of name dropping at a party and get down to brass tacks. The menu looks like the kiddies at top chef were told to make pub food. The roots are there, and there is special attention paid to the ingredients. Farmhouse cheddar, gruyere (these are my favorite cheeses) and tallegio (its good too). You can have your choice in their excellent grilled cheese. These are thick, buttery, crisp, gooey bombs of cheezy goodness. I recommend any, but I especially like the ham and cheddar. These guys do know how to get a crisp buttery surface on a slice of toast, that's for sure.

Great bread and cheese, skip the corned beef.

Oddly enough, the Corned Beef and Gruyere was a huge fail. The gruyere simply overpowered it (or the corned beef is underwhelming), so instead of any flavor from the meat all you get is salt. This makes the cheese even more robust, but too salty, and just doesn't quite do it. If you're gonna intake that much cheese, meat and butter it had better be worth every single calorie.


The salad is delicious, and the fries are great. The real super star(s) here though is (are) the Berkshire Pork sliders. The meat is perfect, the pickles a little spicy, and the cut surface of the brioche bun has been subjected to that same heavenly treatment as the grilled cheese; the insides of the bun have an amazingly satisfying buttery crisp bite that offsets the soft texture of the pork.

These are good, really, really good.

On a high from the pork sliders (or perhaps all that Smithwick's Ale...) I thought it prudent to sample the pigs in blankets. These little pork sausages are not wrapped in your run of the mill pastry dough my friends, they are wrapped in BACON.

Wait, do I smell bacon?!?!

Sadly, I did not plunge to uncharted depths of deliciousness, discovering a new, delectable, diet-damming dish. I am of the opinion that bacon is one of the most perfect foods ever, so these little things are a travesty. The sausage is like a stick of greasy chewy salt, wrapped in a piece of bacon so overly cooked that it tastes like charcoal; the cook should be scolded.

You may need to avert your eyes.

They look like cat poop, and they are so greasy they actually stained the granite bar through the wax paper and the basket they came in. The poor HP sauce they come with, that has been bravely masking horrible English pub food for centuries, tries in vain to overcome these little burnt salt licks from hell. Looking at my neighbors Scotch Egg and its charred beyond taste sausage shell, I abstained from ordering one. Anything with sausage is a no no at Wilfie and Nell's.

This bar is a good place to be.

The only drink worth mentioning is the whiskey tea. The others are Kool-Aid with booze (the bramble especially) or glorified gin and tonics. Great beers, good wines.

Wilfie and Nell: 2/5 bacon strips

This concludes Gastroliaison's review of Wilfie and Nell.

Recipie: Buerre Maître d'Hôtel

This is a classic, must have, for anyone who wants to grill or roast or broil just about anything. It will add a delicious citrus herb finish to everything from mushrooms to broccoli to shellfish. You can keep it in the freezer for months, slicing off as much as you need per meal. Trust me, it's great to keep on hand.

Background
Buerre Maître d'Hôtel (Buerre Maître D') is a classic french invention. The Maître D' is the master of the hotel or restaurant, assigned with making sure everything goes smoothly, getting people seated, etc... Did a Maître D' first make this butter up to sooth disgruntled patrons, unhappy with their hangar steak? I have no idea, but I do know that any bistro worth its salt in Paris has a great one, ready to slap onto your steak as it rests. Ummm, butter, on top of steak? Isn't that the French acting all stereotypical and making my food too rich? Dairy fat on meat fat? Gross. Oh, wait, cheeseburgers...

Do I smell cheesesteak?

Butter (fat) is a great way to finish grilled meats. It adds a depth of flavor that is subtle, yet delicious. Take note, Peter Lugers finishes every single steak with a big old pat of butter (fat). Authentic Bistecca alla Fiorentina is finished with olive oil (fat) and lemon. Authentic steak frites is finished with, well you get the picture.

Gastroliaison's Buerre Maître D'

So what you are doing is mixing parsley, garlic (or shallot for a nice, mild twist), lemon and ground pepper into softened butter. It takes a little patience, but is well worth the effort, and keeps for a few months in your freezer. A garlic press really comes in handy here. Note- If you freeze it, make sure you cut off the slabs you need ahead of time, so they can thaw.

Use unsalted butter, that way you can judge your salt easier because the butter won't add any to the dish. Since fat is such a good conductor of flavor for spices, adding the black pepper to the butter gives a really fresh pepper flavor. This is especially true of grilled meats, where the high heat of the grill actually diminishes the punch of the pepper.

Red wine/beer/any cocktail is optional equipment...

Ingredients

• 1/4 a small bunch of parsley
• 1 clove of garlic
• 1 stick of unsalted butter at room temperature
• 1 lemon (the juice only)
• About 8 twists on the grinder of black pepper
  

Equipment

• Garlic press
• Knife & Board
• Mixing bowl
• Flat wood spoon
• Parchment paper or plastic wrap
  

Here is a tip for getting the skin off your cloves easy-










Cut the top and bottom off the clove









Smash it with the side of your knife









Done.









Preparation

1. Crush skinned garlic in a press.
2. Chop parsley fairly fine.
3. Juice the lemon.
4. Cut the butter into small cubes (it makes the stirring easier).
5. Combine in a bowl with the pepper too (pictured below is waaaaay to much parsley)
6. Stir. It takes a while, but that lemon juice will incorporate! Again, I used too much parsley here.
7. Lay it out on parchment paper
8. Roll it up into a little log, and twist the ends. then stick it in the fridge or freezer. I won't ask how you got good at that...

Try roasting clams with this, or fish in a packet with a splash of wine, put it on some asparagus, or on a portobello mushroom cap as it grills. Melt it for your lobster, stuff snails with it, spread it on a hot baguette, stuff it under the skin of a chicken before you roast it. The possibilities are endless.

This concludes Gastroliaison's recipe for Buerre Maître d'Hôtel

Recipie: Grilled Snow Peas

Want to impress your better half? Take them to a farmers market on the weekend.
Then cook for them.

Ahhh, summer. It means so many things my stomach. Drinking outside, cooking outside, shopping outside, eating outside, wait I see a theme. So in my constant effort to combine as many of the above actions as possible, I made a trip to my local farmers market.

Summer also means peas are nice and fresh up here in the N.E. because they're in season. Season? Yes, even though the giant industrial food machine has done its best to one up mother nature and erase the whole idea of foods growing during a certain time of the year thing, it still exists.

Today we all live in a world where one can have any type of produce at any time of the year. I think its a little out of control. I mean really, do you honestly think it's responsible to put peas on a jet in Guatemala and fly them to your local supermarket? That makes about as much sense as offering massive tax breaks on ridiculously inefficient, obscenely heavy vehicles that in the event of an accident tend to kill anyone not driving one. Oh, wait...

I love hummers too you know...

Lets get a little local
Buying locally is a good idea, it reduces the amount of energy used to get the food to your plate. A Boeing 727 cargo jet burns around 1250 gallons per hour of flight. More on take off, landing, idling, but let's not split hairs. The flight from Guatemala is about 4.5 hours so that's 5625 gallons of super refined, JA-1 aviation fuel used, just in the air. There's lots of trucks involved too, loading of the airplane, moving of containers, that's a lot of energy for a pea, huh?

Waiting for things to be in season increases your appreciation of them. It can also create more responsible practices by our food producers. If you don't demand beef all year round and wait until the winter, producers might just let them eat grass all summer. That would be good for the planet, and your taste-buds.


Gastroliaison's Grilled Snow Peas
The snow pea is an immature pea. Picked early, its pods are tender and delicious. Get nice green ones that snap crisply when you break them. Wash them and eat them right away, they won't last more than 2-3 days in the fridge (in a plastic bag).

Throw them on a hot hot grill, about 3 minutes per side till they get nice charred spots on them.

Sprinkle with a nice sea salt, like fleur de sel, and viola!