Okay, this is getting silly.

So, Stark. Why haven't you been blogging?

Well, Internet, I've been kind of busy. In the past few months I've been moving in to an apartment in Baltimore, in a neighborhood called Bolton Hill. If you're a Baltimore person, it's right next to MICA. This past weekend was Artscape, and thusly my neighborhood was flooded with hippies of all stripes and colors. Most memorable was the homeless dude who decided to do some late-night yoga in front of our fence. Better than peeing on it, I suppose.

I've also had the opportunity to go back to Centro Tapas Bar, a narrow place in Federal Hill with astoundingly reasonable prices and absolutely amazing food. The only problem with this place is that whenever I try to get there, I end up lost and in the ghetto. This time my epic travel fail involved screwing up the light rail system and ending up in Sandtown. THAT WAS AWESOME.

Stark, you may well ask, how the hell did you end up in Sandtown trying to get from Bolton Hill to Federal Hill? I HAVE NO IDEA. I AM REALLY BAD AT THIS SORT OF THING. IT IS A SERIOUS PROBLEM.

Anyway. By the time we got to the restaurant, it was still totally worth it. The tapas at this place range from 3 dollars to 12 dollars, most of them capping out at about 8 bucks. Whenever I go, I make sure to get a plate of cabrales, a delightfully stinky blue cheese, and some boquerones, pickled and marinated white anchovies. Fabulous. The bread that comes out as an appetizer is wonderfully crusty and flaky, and it comes with a pimento and smoked-paprika olive oil for dipping, which pairs beautifully with a glass of Dibon Brut Reserves sparkling wine.

We also ordered approximately seven buckets full of red sangria. We never got water, an oversight by a frantic waitress, and so I ended up drinking sangria every time I wanted something to cool my mouth off with. I regretted this the next morning, but man, that was some good sangria. With my dinner (mussles and lamb meatball skewers, shared with Mr. India) I ordered a glass of peppery viognier, which paired fabulously with the mussels. At the end of the meal, the Boyfriend ordered a little caramel custard. It was good on its own, but if you took a bite with a mint leaf and washed it down with a spicy ale, it became the Best Desert Ever.

I recommend this place highly, the wait staff is fun, the prices reasonable (dinner and extraordinary amounts of wine for myself and the boyfriend came out to just under 75 bucks), and the food is amazing beyond belief. I recommend the Arepa Mechada, a corn cake topped with oxtail, avocado and fried egg.

In other Drink With Stark adventures, I found a liquor store on North Charles called SPIRITS and I am in love. It is full of wine, cheap wine, cheap and delicious imported wine. I got a bottle of French sparkling rose (still not champagne) and a bottle of cava, both for under 13 dollars. JACKPOT. It's not a difficult walk from the house, either, though the streets may become a little harder to cross when they're not barricaded for Artscape.

Also distracting me from updating this blog is the fact that I am engaged in writing Rising Mind again. This version is significantly darker than the NaNo. I will probably post excerpts, because I can.

Sofia blanc de blancs

Many wine bars/restaurants in my area end up feeling stodgy, aiming at a middle-aged upper-middle class clientelle. I can't really blame them, that's the group that has all the money. Still, my early-twenties broke-ass self would really appreciate a place that takes itself less seriously. Of course, that can be another trap for wine bars: becoming so trendy that they drive away older patrons.

Victoria Gastro Pub has all of the trimmings of a proper, high class wine bar and restaurant. It looks rich, but there's something about it that puts you at ease. After a while I realized that it was the radio. They were not playing the standard "top hits from the 1820's 30's and 40's" like many upscale places seem to do. It was playing alt rock intermixed with some top 40s, which took the edge off of the pretension.

One of the best things about Victoria is the food. And I am not just saying that because my direct supervisor is married to the chef. Okay, maybe that's a part of it, but not a big part. The duck fat fries specifically are the tastiest things I have ever put into my mouth, being smothered in duck gravy, gruyere cheese, and little awesome bits of ducky goodness. The tuna tartare is fabulous, with delightfully rich tuna and little pieces of apple that provide a really interesting contrast. The Boyfriend was a big fan of the banana chips that came on the side, but I am still convinced that all bananas contain spider eggs, and will not eat them.

We also had a bowl of asparagus, lemon and goat cheese soup which was possibly the best thing ever on a spring night, and a plate of frogs legs. I'm not a huge fan of frogs legs, I think they're too fiddly and the taste vs texture thing throws me a bit. Of course I won't turn up my nose at the little amphibians, but They're not my fave.

What really stole the show for me was the wine, which you knew I had to get to at some point. I was craving bubbles, so I ordered whatever sparkling came by the glass without really paying attention to it. It turned out to be Francis Coppola Sofia Blanc de Blanc, a California sparkling wine that comes in a can.

You heard me.

In a can.

With a straw.

This really blew my mind for some reason, and I was barely able to focus for long enough to actually taste the wine inside. It was sweet, with apricot notes on the nose, but tart, with a bit more lemon than apple and very little of the yeasty flavor that one finds in some sparkling wines. I blame the Muscat. Still, it was not cloyingly sweet nor was it aggressively tart. It was clean, bright, and balanced, and it went REALLY well with that asparagus soup I mentioned earlier. I would definitely order it again.

The can, though. I still have it because it was kind of adorable. It really didn't change the taste of the wine at all, and, as the Boyfriend pointed out, it is a brilliant marketing strategy. It's a perfect club sparkling, light, easy to drink, and more important for bartenders, easy to store and easy to open. In a restaurant it's lacking a bit, I kind of like the pomp of the wine opening display, but you usually don't get that when ordering by the glass anyway. I recommend this highly!

Cazbar and Sparkling Wine!

On Thursday I had the very good luck to go to Cazbar, a delightful Afghani place in Baltimore that I have no idea how to get back to because DesignBroad took Rt. 40 into the city and I never go that way. I'm going to have to figure it out at some point though, because holy crap, what great food. I got these little tender dumplings, covered in yogurt and some kind of spicy sauce and some wicked tasty cigar pastries. Oh god, so delicious. Go there like right now if you live anywhere near Baltimore.

I also got a glass of Peared Champagne, one of Cazbar's signature cocktails. It was recommended to me by the waiter, and was, at 10 dollars, the most expensive drink on that menu. It was a mixture of Champagne and Grey Goose pear vodka, and I think a drop of pear liqueur. Luckily for me, I am pretty sure I can recreate it using delightfully cheap materials!

Last nights dinner was something less epic. Take out Chinese food paired with Gloria Ferrer Sonoma Brut sparkling wine. That's actually a pretty great pairing, the MSG and hot pepper laden General Tso's chicken brings out the tartness of the wine in a way you wouldn't expect, and the happy fizzy bubbles remove some of that sickly sweet aftertaste you get from cheap Chinese.

Also it's just a really nice bottle of wine. Sparkling anything on a Friday night is just delightful, whether it's at a bar or in your own home.

This weekend is a weekend of No Plans, which could be nice or could make me go completely mad. We'll find out which later!

The Lord is Risen! Now Let's Drink! Hallelujah!

Easter was... epic this year. Truly epic. It was a feast of gigantic proportions, and I am larger for it. Our menu was as follows:

Chili sambal shrimp, made by The Boyfriend
Jalepeno Popper Dip, made by The Smalls
Raw Oysters, served by Dad, The Boyfriend, and Mr. Small
Grilled Foie Gras, made by Dad and Mr. B
Antipasta Salad, made by The Smalls
Grilled/Smoked lamb, Small Potatoes, and Asparagus with Hollandaise, made by Dad
Cheeses selected by Me
Irish Cake Bombs, made by Me.

Oh god. So much food. The Boyfriend is a mighty fine cook, which is part of why I like him so much. Unfortunately, he also has the tendency to say things like "Hey, you know what would taste great with this? CAIPIRINHAS."

A capirinha is a wonderfully refreshing drink made with cachacas, a sort of un-clarified sugarcane rum from Brazil. The recipe on the back of the bottle calls for using raw sugar, but we substituted simple syrup, because we didn't want to spill a crapton of sugar all over the floor. Our recipe was as follows

3-4 pieces of lime
1 measure cachaca
simple syrup
lime wedge garnish
sugarcane juice (optional)

Muddle the lime in a lowball glass. Fill with ice. Add cachaca and syrup. If using it, splash a bit of sugarcane juice in. Stir. Taste. Decide it's too strong and squeeze your garnish into it. Realize that you can no longer taste the alcohol. Drink three. Make a bad decision.

You don't *need* the sugarcane juice, which really just tastes like sweetened hearts of palm, but it adds a really nice green aroma to the drink that makes it especially nice on a hot day. I'd caution against using more than a splash, though, as you want the cachaca flavor to come through too.

After a caipirinha, I had a glass of sparkling Merlot. You heard me right. The Pugliese Vinyards 2003 Sparkling Merlot, hailing from the North Fork of Long Island. It is a deep purple-red sparkling wine, that fizzed up in a way that reminded me of that scene in Fantasia where Bacchus visits the centaurs and gets everyone drunk and wine gets sloshed about pinkly. It was actually pretty good, very different. Sparkling wine is such a pleasure, and when you get something that weird that tastes that good, you've just got to go for it. I recommend it highly.

There were other wines, but I found that after a few handfulls of shrimp, a dozen oysters, a caipirinha and a few flutes of sparkling wine that I could not recall much about any of them. In all honesty though, the rum drinks and sparkling Merlot were the highlights of the alcoholic reverie. I cannot recommend these enough. Seriously, go out and get yourself some cachaca and some limes and make yourself one of these, because it's The Best.