A little relief for all!

After a seemingly endless wait we finally got a good rain. The forecast for the week is lovely AND bearable. In fact, I expect to see quite a few folks enjoying lunch al fresco this week. It will be interesting to see how the local flora responds to the sudden influx of water in abundance. Will there be the flowers we missed due to dryness early on? Will we skip right to the late summer sunflowers and asters? Watch and see.

We have music this week. Look for details at the end of my blog.

We are celebrating all sorts of happy harvesting right now. The tomatoes have finally started coming in. We are getting fabulous ones from Maranatha Farm as well as some heirloom locals. There's a no more classic way to celebrate the fresh tomatoes than a panzanella salad. Lots of fresh chopped tomatoes, toasted homemade bread soaked in tomato juices, wine vinegar and garlic, lemon and capers. I'll grill some lovely squash and bell peppers to top it off. That will kick the lunch menu off on Tuesday. $6.99

Wednesday we celebrate the classic combination of fresh green beans, ham, black-eyed peas, bell pepper and rice in the form of Hoppin' John. The name is thought to come from a bastardization of the Haitian Creole term for black-eyed peas: pois pigeons (pronounced: [pwapiˈjawn]). I'll serve it with a side for $6.99

Thursday brings on a celebration of another sort—fresh mozzarella! We have begun to use fresh mozzarella on our pesto pizzas now. They will also have fresh Roma tomatoes, fresh in-house pesto, wood-fired chicken and sliced mushrooms and onions. $6.99 includes a side.

Friday brings back the 1905 Salad from the Columbia Restaurant in Tampa. To Romaine lettuce we add ham, turkey, swiss cheese, tomatoes, romano cheese, Kalamata Olives (the original had green olives) and a dressing featuring worchestershire and lemon juice and an oregano vinaigrette. This salad has developed a strong folowing with our customers. $6.99

Thank you to those who took the time to give me feedback on an upcoming Flavor Journey. Your feedback strongly directs our actions and we DO care about what you have to say. I'll try to schedule a special dinner in the next month or so.

In the meantime, due to one response, I have planned a Flavor Journey this week. The focus will be Cubano. I am still trying to locate one of the major ingredients and will add it if we can locate it—that ingredient is plantains. The influence of fresh ingredients is very key to Cuban cuisine. Pork, chicken and fish/ seafood are the primary meats. In this case we are going to use chicken breasts marinated in a mojo sauce. Mojo's major flavor influences are cumin seeds, fresh orange juice, fresh lime juice, garlic and chilis. We'll start the meal with a salad made of Chayote squash which has been peeled and boiled then tossed with a light oil and mustard sauce. The main course is Spicy Cuban mojo chicken with warm mango and avocado salsa. It will be sided with black beans and yellow rice. For dessert I'll make a traditional flan—a caramel-topped custard. IF I can locate any plantains I'll add in chichachirritos or fried plantains served with a mojo sauce. The dinner is $11.99 and the flan is $4.

My seafood this week is two-fold. The first starting Tuesday night is shrimp, scallop and grouper cheek kabobs. My kabobs will be assembled with onion, red peppers, squash, cherry tomatoes and marinated seafoods. We'll grill them and serve them atop rice with "sea sauce", fresh citrus slices and with a side salad. You'll get 2 kabobs for $14.99. Add a third for $4 more. The second is Mussels!!!!! We'll have fresh mussels straight from Prince Edward Island delivered Thursday afternoon. I'll make a curried shallot wine sauce to braise them in. They'll be served with a rice pilaf and stir-fried squash, onions and tomatoes and come with a side salad. $14.99.

The music this week comes from a new source for us. State fiddling champion Vinny Ray will be this Friday's musical entertainment. Vinny will be playing original jazz compositions with his trio. Several of our customers asked if we had heard Vinny play and suggested he would be a great fit for our Friday night music.  You may have heard him at the recent Old time music festival where he played on the OMC stage with 2 other band members. Don't miss out! Reservations strongly recommended. No cover charge but you are expected to tip the band and we prefer that you join us for dinner. As always—we never try to "turn the tables." You are welcome to stay through all the music.

Have you tried our new key-lime bar with coconut ice cream? Here's a photo of it. It is rich and cool and refreshing—all in one piece. We make the coconut ice cream in house as well as the key-lime bar. It is one of our new line of "grown-up" desserts. Another is the grilled pound cake with grilled fresh peaches, whipped cream and caramel. $5.

Have a lovely week!~~

Susan

Anticipation...

We are eagerly awaiting the receipt in the mail of our new permit to serve beer and wine. If you have been a customer of ours all along, you know what a long runway this has been. If you are new to us, welcome to the new era.  We are hoping to make readily available wines and beers from local wineries and breweries. We realize this may take awhile to educate our palates and discover how things are distributed. As with everthing we've done thus far, this is a new learning curve. Bear with us. If you have strong regional preferences NOW is the time to speak up. We may be a bit clumsy as we learn about each pour, but the chance to learn about such a new and vast arena is a very exciting, if daunting. Initially we will be working only with breweries that can provide beers in bottles or cans as the cost of taps is up there! With over 75 wineries in Missouiri we should be able to have quite the route to discovery. Our funds to stock up on the front end is, so far, limited. So, we will keep our selections narrow to begin with. Your input will dictate our direction of expansion. So get to in-putting!

This week's FRESH fish is salmon (available Wednesday - Friday at dinner). Between us, Bruce and I decided that a blackened version with a kicky salsa would be the best way to go. I'll do a stir-fry using primarily baby bok-choy, yellow onions, garlic and cabbage. The rice will have a sofrito (crucial to most Caribbean dishes, sofrito is made up of peppers, onions, garlic, cilantro and tomatoes) finish. The salmon will be offered with a choice of salad or soup. Market price will be determined later in the week when I learn my cost. The mahi-mahi last week was quite a bargain as I listed the price before I learned my cost. Ouch. Lesson learned.

The Flavor Journey (available Tuesday - Friday at dinner)will be a traditional Malaysian dish in which beef is simmered in a fragrant combination of coconut milk, chiles, and spices. The recipe came right out of my recent issue of Fine Cooking. This issue has so many interesting recipes that I am chomping at the bit to try them all out. One aspect of the the Beef Rendang (pronouced rehn-dong') that especially appealed to me was the layering of flavors—six layers! The dish begins by roasting whole spices of cloves, cardamon pods, cinnamon sticks and star anise in oil. To that is added even more spices in the form of ground coriander, cumin, fennel seed, tumeric and black pepper. Another layer with shallots, dried chiles, ginger. Then comes coconut milk, lemongrass and tamarind and fresh cilantro. If we had access to them, I would have added galangal, keffir lime leaves and unsweetened coconut. Sadly, without ordering those ingredients via the internet or making a trek to St. Louis, I'll have to pass. We'll serve this dish with a choice of soup or salad and a side of coconut rice.  I think you'll enjoy the complexity of the flavors as much as I do. The cost will be $11.99

Soups this week will begin with French Onion Soup and Miso Soup. I make the miso with white miso and hon dashi plus strips of seaweed, tofu, green onion and thin sliced mushrooms. Later in the week I'll also do a Greek Lemon chicken and rice soup.

The desserts should be fun. I have a crepe cake that is layered with a pastry cream and chocolate and hazelnut between chocolate crepes. Only 10 servings of that puppy. Maybe I should make it twice....
Bruce has another mocha ice cream pie ready to go.

Now here is this week's lunch menu~~

Tuesday~ Introducing the new Spring Salad 50 cents off~Spinach or arugula, snowpeas, alfalfa sprouts, feta, strawberries, red onion, walnuts and wood-fired chicken. Recommended dressing is our spinach dressing which has a pronounced toasted sesame flavor. $5.99
Wednesday~Greek Excursion~Spanakopita (spinach/ feta turnover), small Greek salad, lemon chicken kabobs over white rice. $7.99
Thursday~Vietnamese pork tamales, red curry sauce and pineapple salsa with Vietnamese fried rice. $6.75
Friday~Chicken Cacciatore Crepes with parmesan cream sauce. Crepes are filled with fragrant chicken, tomato and mushrooms and topped with a parmesan cheese sauce. Served with a side salad and buttered noodles $6.99

Remember~ until the permit to serve beer and wine is in our hands, we'll be serving only the usual beverages of iced green tea with jasmine, lemonade, pomegranate blueberry lemonade, soft drinks, coffee and hot teas. It'll happen soon enough.

We have no music booked this week. However, a rollicking good time should be had by all next Friday when Rick Mize and Dustin Collins join us again as Chief Wahoo and the Electric Tonic. I have no idea what that name means but the sound is decidedly Irish Folk. We SHOULD be able to serve beer and wine that night. Yee-haw! Okay. My Texas roots are showing.

As you may already know, my vision of this place has always been as a sidewalk cafe. Sadly, we seem to have a wind tunnel in just the place where tables would most likely go. That has put more than a few people off. I am actively seeking a wind abatement solution. So far, I have comeup with the idea of a stack of straw bales to block the wind up to a height level with the top of a sitting person. Do you have any bright ideas? I'd love to hear them. We can't do anything permanent and I don't want to haggle with permits and zoning.

Thank you, as always for traveling this journey with us. I, personally, think we are all benefitting. Have a joyous week. Don't forget to take a moment to notice spring is bursting out all over. I know that Mom will be thrilled when I take her for a drive later this week.

~~Susan

Getting the swing of things

The last two weeks have been pretty exciting. By adding dinner three more nights per week and closing on Mondays we've really shaken things up. Now dinner orders are prepared to order rather than in the batches I was doing previously on Friday nights. You have an entire menu from which you may choose.

With the fresh fish available Wednesday through Friday we are in uncharted territory for most of West Plains. One customer last week told me she had never ordered fresh fish in West Plains. It just hasn't been available. Usually, I'll concentrate on fishes that are highly sustainable. This week, due to confusions with my new supplier we'll have Mako shark. While highly desirable for its flavor, shark is generally considered one of the fishes to avoid if one's focus is on sustainability. But this week we'll have it. The dense meat has a texture more like beef or chicken than what one normally thinks of as fish. The flavor profile is quite mild, most often being compared to swordfish. It stands up well to broiling, pan sautéeing or baking. This week we'll pan cook it and top it with grilled pineapple salsa. I have some lovely tatsoi to sauté and serve along side with some rice. It'll be served with a choice of soup or salad. $14.99  Wednesday through Friday nights.

The steelhead salmon was truly spectacular last week. Since we had 2 large fillets left on Friday night Jon went ahead and wood-fired them. They will be featured as the Flavor Journey this week. Frankly, I don't know where geographically this recipe originated except it has been in my repertoire for about a decade. I had this dish at a lovely resort in Florida in the 90s. It is pasta with roasted red pepper sauce, topped with wood-fired salmon and chopped fresh Romas. Try it out. I'll serve it with a choice of soup or salad. Available Tuesday - Friday at dinner for $9.99.

We have a new addition to our daily lunch menu— pulled pork on ciabatti. Served with Cajun home fries and pickled onion. $6.49. The ciabatti roll is quite sizable and the portion of pork is, too.

This week's dishes~~
Tuesday~ Pulled pork on ciabatti. A new everyday lunch dish. $6.49

Dinner~ You may order off our menu or take advantage of this special dinner:

 our St. Valentine's menu has for $35/ couple you get
amuse bouche

Fig and Olive Tapenade with whipped cream cheese and tortilla crisps

appetizer

choice of shrimp bisque or spinach salad

entrée

Pepper-crusted tuna mignon with potato cranberry corn galette and portabella mushroom braise

dessert

Crépe cup filled with vanilla ice cream and Bananas Foster

Wednesday~Lunch~ Black olive and oven roasted turkey curry crépes with side salad and garlic mashed potatoes. $6.75
Dinner~ Flavor Journey~pasta with roasted red pepper sauce, wood-fired steelhead salmon and diced roma tomatoes. $9.99; Fresh fish~Mako shark with grilled pineapple salsa; soup or salad plus stir-fried tatsoi and rice. $14.99

Thursday~Lunch~Wood-fired chicken and black bean tamales with salsa verde/ avocado sauce plus fried rice. $6.75 

Friday~Lunch~Lemon Fusilli (pasta) with arugula pesto and wood-fired chicken. Served with side salad $7.00

Regarding the tavern permit~ we are in the "wait-and-see" stage for the city. Assuming it all comes back as expected we can then move onto the State's stage of the process. Hoops!

This week we'll be handing out "Buy one/get one" coupons at lunch. They will be good for dinner Tuesday (except St. V's Day) through Thursday anytime in the month of February. We are about to launch a new marketing campaign that will give us more visibility in the area. Please let us know when you have seen these new marketing efforts so we know it is working. A new lighted sign is also in the works. It is because of your loyal support that we are able to make these expansions. You give us the faith we need to make these leaps. Thank you.

~~Susan