A wrap and a jam (food and music)

What a week! The Chop Chop “Feast”-ival is a wrap and it sounds like a lot of people enjoyed a lot of good food from a lot of Uptown’s diverse restaurants. Including the Urban Deli! We received some really nice compliments about our Montreal Smoked Meat pizza.

Terry WhalenAnd wow! Did we ever have fun Saturday night with Terry Whalen and his performance. Our music man Wes Jagoe joined him later, as did a few others, and they were jamming for quite some time. Here’s what our man Wes had to say:

Terry Whalen’s performance Saturday night was a roller coaster mix of good old rockin’ country and grass roots blues right from the delta itself; a one man army not afraid to chance the trenches for the sake of the song.

His own songs were well delivered pieces of love and woe tapestries, all introduced by a story. Terry performed a great range of music. Yes, from AC/DC’s “It’s a long way to the top if you want to rock and roll,” all the way to John Cougar’s “Pink Houses.”  And it was all glued together with an oozing baritone tinge.

Hats off to a great performance.

Saturday coming up, we’ll have Andrew Clark and we expect we’ll have just as much fun. Hope you can join us!

Share

Smoking good time in New York

Yesterday we mentioned that Mike and Gord had been south of the border, in New York, taking a course (Charcuterie, Smokehouse, and Condiment Workshop).

We asked Gord to tell us a bit about it, and here’s what he had to say:

It was a great experience even for a neophyte cook like me, albeit a little intimidating at times …

The school itself is amazing (The Culinary Institute of America). Located on the banks of the Hudson River, the main campus building reminded everyone of Harry Potter’s Hogwarts Hall with its high ceilings and dark rich wood paneling. The region boasts some notable estates: the Roosevelt estate and Presidential Library and the Vanderbilt estate both are within a few miles for the campus.

From a workshop perspective … the first hour or so was spent in a class room environment to understand the science of smoking, curing and sausage making, then the balance of the day (about 6 hours) was spent in the kitchen.

There were five  teams of three. We were given a progressive menu to work on through the week. Some of the items were:

  • barbequed beef brisket
  • pork loin kassler
  • carolina bbq pork
  • gravlax
  • pastrami
  • confit of duck
  • duck breast bacon
  • kansas city spareribs
  • tete pressee (prepared pig’s head)
  • beef jerky
  • tasso
  • pate campagne
  • smoke chorizo
  • kielbasa rings and links
  • garlic sausage creole beef and veal daube
  • smoked pheasant sausage
  • leberkase
  • kassler liverwurst
  • pate grand-mere

The Urban Deli's Gord.Believe it or not, that’s just a partial list. There were others on it, plus a number of condiments, marinades and rubs.

As a result of the course, we’ll likely be refining a few of the menu items plus looking at adding a few others once the recipes have been perfected in house. Yes, we had a fabulous time!

Share

Charcuterie and going to school

We went to school last week. Actually, “we” didn’t. Our cook Mike Buchanan and the Urban Deli soon-to-be in-house smoker expert Gord Hewitt went to school. They took a week long Charcuterie, Smokehouse, and Condiment Workshop at the Hyde Park Campus (New York) of The Culinary Institute of America.

If you’re unfamiliar with the term you’ll find a good deal of information on Wikipedia. Basically it means (from Wikipedia):

(Charcuterie) … is the branch of cooking devoted to prepared meat products such as bacon, ham, sausage, terrines, galantines, pâtés, and confit, primarily from pork. Charcuterie is part of the garde manger chef’s repertoire. Originally intended as a way to preserve meats before the advent of refrigeration, they are prepared today for their flavors derived from the preservation processes.

What Mike and Gord experienced in the workshop was a set up similar to Gordon Ramsay’s ‘Hells Kitchen‘ where they broke off into six teams of three each day to prepare dishes and compare finished products and to also work towards the big buffet of all the samplings on their final day, which was Friday.

And with that behind them, Gord and Mike spent the weekend in Manhattan visiting delis and restaurants that specialize in smoked foods. Those foods are very popular in New York because of the simple, economical and tasty ways of preparing foods.

Now we expect Gord and Mike will give us the best of the best for new menu ideas. And we’ll be having fun tasting what they’ve learned and testing out those new ideas. 🙂

On the subject of smokers, but of another kind, we’re expecting Terry Whalen will bring his version of smokin’ to the Deli on Saturday with his roots, rock and blues.

Related posts:

Share

So much food, so little time

We’re geared up for next week’s Chop Chop “Feast”-ival. What’s that? Have a look at Dig in at the Chop Chop Feastival! As the article says, “The concept was to celebrate local businesses, local food, and show how far the city (Saint John) has come.”

It starts Sunday (November 1) and runs through Saturday (November 7) and it’s a fine opportunity to get a taste of Uptown Saint John. Of course, we’re not open on Sundays so the Urban Deli will be getting underway on Monday (November 2). And what does all this mean?

It means all of the participating restaurants (including the Urban Deli) will feature something as we show the world what Uptown Saint John has to offer by way of food. Here’s what we at the Deli have planned:

Urban Deli 2 course lunch or dinner for $12:
– Soup or Salad and a Montreal Smoked Meat Pizza (Vegetarian Pizza also available)

Our Chop Chop Plate for $10:
– The Trio:  Hummus, Roasted Garlic & Artichoke Dip & Chicken Liver Pate served with Seasoned Pita Chips

If you’re a foodie, you may want to keep your calendar open next week so you can try all the features at our Uptown restaurants. And even if you aren’t a foodie, it’s a good bet you’ll discover something or someplace new.

How many places can you visit in a week?

Urban Deli - Chop Chop Feastival

Share

Music on Saturday and our hours get tweaked

We just wanted to remind you that we’re introducing live music. Mike Biggar will be at the Deli tomorrow evening (Saturday) starting at 8:00pm. Have a look at our Live Music page for more info. We’ve also arranged to team up with Wes Jagoe who will be helping us by handling our live music nights. We’re pretty excited about all of this and can’t wait to get the ball rolling (which will be Saturday).

Our hours have had a bit of tweaking as well to accomodate our Live Music. On Saturdays we’ll be open till 10:00pm (or when the music wraps). However, our full menu we’ll be available till 8:00pm, after which we’ll have a limited menu available.

We hope to see you! The last word goes to Liz, who says:

I’m very excited about this part of the business….this is FUN!  Yipee, Yoo, Yaaa, Yeah 🙂

Share

Week long Chop Chop festival coming

Uptown Saint John Chop Chop festival, Nov. 1 to 7, 2009.In case you missed it, the Telegraph-Journal had a story this week about an upcoming food festival we’ll be taking part in: Chop, chop food fans, fun festival is coming. To quote from the article:

“The idea behind the week is to put us on the food map,” said Margret Begner, co-owner of Opera Bistro and a member of the festival organizing committee.

“It should showcase how proud we can be of the different restaurants and businesses that we do have in this area.”

During the Chop-Chop festival, foodies will have the chance to sample from 22 participating restaurants in the uptown with a set pricing menu.

So from November 1 through 7, Uptown Saint John is where you’re going to want to be to give your taste buds the time of their life. We’re very excited to be part of this! Let’s help make Saint John’s uptown one of Canada’s great food destinations!

Share

Menus, resolutions and playing catch up

Can this be? Are we actually posting something? The answer is yes. The answer is also yes to, “Do you have that new menu yet?”

As you probably have figured out, putting the new menu together involved a lot more time and work than we expected. And we’ve learned something …Never say something will be ready around a certain date unless you’re 100% sure it will be. (Mind you, we did say we were “aiming at …”) So, we resolve that in the future we’ll say we’re working on something but not specify a date for readiness.

A couple of things contributed to the delay. The biggest one was getting it right. We kept tweaking until the taste was what we thought it should be and it seemed quite often the feeling was, “… it could be better.” So we kept tweaking.

We also mentioned we wanted to include gluten free items in the menu, which we have (bread, ribs, chowder, pasta and sauces etc.) though we want to do much more. We’ll be working with the Saint John chapter of the Canadian Celiac Association going through the entire menu to see what is necessary to broaden what we can offer. Of course, it can’t just be gluten free. It also has to taste good and we want to ensure that what we offer does.

You’ll be happy to know we have a second menu now, one that outlines our beverages and desserts. Yes, we have a dessert menu now. (A number of people have asked about that.) We’ve been working on that one for quite a while now.

While we’ve been on a kind of working hiatus, we’ve had a great number of compliments and other kind words and want to thank all of you for them.

Live music

Mike BiggarWe’ll also be introducing live music at the Deli starting Saturday, October 24th from 8-10 pm. Mike Biggar will be joining us. You may know Mike from the open mike night at the VintagE Bistro and Lounge in Hampton, which he hosts.

Our goal is to bring in some local talent (guitar/acoustic) between now and Christmas and then set a schedule for the new year for it to be a regular thing.

And finally

Just a reminder (since we just referred to Christmas) … if you’re planning a group Christmas thing, like a company Christmas get-together and want to have it at the Urban Deli, or if you’re interested in having us do some catering for your Christmas thing, just give us a call at 506.652.3354 (that’s 506.652.DELI). We can probably arrange something!

Share