The Restaurant Guys

Marc Sarrazin & George Faison of DeBragga on Stage Left's Burger

Marc Sarrazin and George Faison are the co-owners of DeBragga, a meat purveyor that sells a lot of ground beef to many of the city's most popular restaurants, including Colicchio & Sons and DBGB. Marc has been working at the company's Meatpacking District facility for most of his adult life, and George came to DeBragga from D'Artagnan, a luxury goods purveyor that he founded in the 1980s. Neither of them eat very much ground beef, but they sure know a lot about burgers.

What's your favorite burger outside of NYC? GF: Stage Left in New Brunswick. That's where I had a burger the last time. It's a really great little restaurant — great wine list, great food, and they do a stupendous burger. They use their own homemade bun, they use a little chipotle ketchup that brings a little heat into the mixture, the use really fresh vegetables, and they made their own pickles. It is a well thought-out burger.

Read the full article: 
http://ny.eater.com/archives/2011/04/marc_sarrazin_and_george_faison_of_debragga.php

Podcast: Bob Waggoner

Today's show is all about chefs.

Mark and Francis start the show by discussing a reviewer who wasn't as impartial as he should have been when reviewing restaurants for his college newspaper.

Their guest is Bob Waggoner, host of the new PBS show, U Cook! with Chef Bob. Chef Waggoner has run restaurants in France and the United States and has been nominated for several James Beard awards.

The discussion moves from how one studies to be a chef, cooking and living in France in the 1980s, moving to the US and learning how to cook Southern food, and then how all of that led to a show on PBS.

MP3 Available: Click here to listen, right click to download. 

See also:

• www.chefbobwaggoner.com
• www.ucook.com

Podcast Date: 4/28/2011

http://www.restaurantguysradio.com/sle/rg/content/shows/index.asp?show_id=529

The Wines of David O’Reilly

I'm known in the business as a rather tough customer. Mark and I will go to the ends of the earth for our guests, but that also means that we are quite demanding of our suppliers. We buy fewer than 1% of the wines we taste during the course of a year.

So in April 2003, when my friend Martial asked me to meet a winemaker for lunch in Manhattan, I was less than enthusiastic: In big tastings, you can power through 200 wines in an afternoon, all in the hopes of finding just one or two to buy.

A wine business lunch with a single producer takes time-- and, if the wines are horrible or even just not good enough, you're still committed to a couple of hours or more.  Lord knows I love to while away time at table with friends and family; but a wine lunch with a producer whose wines you have realized in the first five minutes that you're not interested in: Now that's painful.

But Martial knew me well, and he knew my palate, and then he played the Irish card as well (this winemaker was born in Belfast).  Before I knew it, I had committed to lunch.

Well, I was never more pleasantly surprised, oenologically speaking, in all my life. The winemaker was David O'Reilly, a wonderful, soft-spoken, charming, and witty man. He showed me ten wines that day and I fell in love with most of them. His wines were not available yet in NJ, but I could not wait to start carrying them.

Despite distribution problems over the years, we've brought you David's wines whenever we could. David has visited and hosted wine dinners in the past, but the current portfolio is the best collection of wines he's ever had.

We love that this charming and talented man has agreed to come help us celebrate the close of our 19th year and the dawn of our 20th! We will begin with an hour tasting, followed by a sit down dinner.

Stage Left 19th Anniversary Wine Dinner 
The Wines of David O’Reilly

Special Guest: David O’Reilly

Friday, May 20th 2011
Tasting 6:30 PM; Dinner 7:30 PM

Hors d’Oeuvres & Tasting
Pinot Gris 2009; O'Reilly's; Oregon
Syrah Ex Umbris 2008; Owen Roe; Yakima Valley, Washington
Cabernet Sauvignon 'Sharecropper's' 2009; Owen Roe; Columbia Valley, Washington
Cabernet Franc “The Keeper” 2009; Corvidae; Washington
Cabernet Franc “Slide Mountain Vineyard” 2009; Owen Roe, Yakima, Washington  

Long Island Oyster Pan Roast 
Pinot Gris “Crawford Beck” 2008; Owen Roe; Willamette, Oregon 

Griggstown Quail
Stuffed with Black Beluga Lentils and Foie Butter
Sinister Hand 'Grenache - Syrah - Mourvedre' 2009; Owen Roe; Columbia Valley, Washington 

Braised Suckling Pig
with Berkshire Pork Belly, Sun-chokes & Toasted Hazelnuts
Abbot's Table Red 'Zinfandel - Sangiovese - Cabernet Sauvignon - Syrah - Grenache ' 2009; Owen Roe; Oregon 

Nature Veal Sirloin
with Local Morels and New York State Cayuga Polenta
Cabernet Franc 'Rosa Mystica' 2007; Owen Roe; Yakima Valley, Washington 

House-Made Shortbread Lemon Curd and Indyk Farm Strawberries  

$129 per person

To reserve, call 732.828.4444 ext 200
or email [email protected].

A Wine Dinner Six Years in the Making: Long Meadow Ranch at Stage Left

Long Meadow Ranch is a family operation. It's also an amazing, amazing place. It's 650 acres are located way up in the Mayacamas Mountains over Napa Valley. They have the oldest commercial olive grove in Sonoma County. Their olive oil is consistently ranked best in America. They sustainably raise produce and chickens and grass fed beef cattle. They raise two breeds of horses. And yes, they make some great wine from the mountain vineyards located on their property.

We carried the wines years ago and proprietor Ted Hall was one of the first guests on our radio program back in 2005! Check out the show here. Ted is the guy who gave us the idea to put solar panels on our roof. When we learned that Long Meadow produces all of its own energy from a field of solar panels, we felt compelled to do the same. We then became the first restaurant in NJ to do so.

We've been trying to make a wine dinner happen since that time. Finally the stars are aligned. Ted has turned over a lot of the operations to his son Chris.  On May 6, 2011, Chris will be flying out here along with every single one of his delicious wines. He'll be bringing some of that best olive oil in America; and we're also going to feature their Long Meadow Ranch pasture-raised beef. There are few operations like Long Meadow Ranch and we've never done a dinner quite like this. The wines are amazing and we'll do them justice. View the menu.

Morels Are Here!!!!!

Fiddlehead ferns are nice.  The first local asparagus is delicious of course.  But for me the first really exciting food to sprout out of the ground and announce the arrival of the growing season is the morel mushroom.  

The truffle must be hunted in winter with specially trained dogs and pigs.  It then has to be dug from the ground (before the dogs or pigs eat it) and brought to the kitchen.  The truffle rules over our winter plates and palates with heady, dark, deep and funky aromas that add depth and character to winter foods.  

 The morel is hunted in summer.  No one has been able to reproduce the complexity of wild morels.  The factors that control when and where they grow are little understood, having to do with very particular temperature, humidity, nutrition and carbon dioxide levels.  We do know that there is often great success in areas of woodland that were burned in forest fires the previous summer.  Hunters don't need dogs, pigs or shovels; just a mushrooming knife and a basket.  The scent of the morel is that of spring itself: woodsy and smoky.  

Well, morels are here!  They're still a bit expensive as the first always are, but a few warm days have forced this first fruiting and we just can't wait.  At Stage Left, we're celebrating with a Morel Tasting Menu all week, and a special Morel Tasting Menu for Good Friday!