Foreign and Domestic. The words capture the meaning injected into the dishes. The flavors taste freshly picked from the ground or recently taken from their animal.
Continue reading “Interview with the New Owners of Foreign and Domestic”
Co-written by Jason Salas and Ainsley Daschofsky
The interview started by saying how humbled we were to be sitting down with Chef Steve Mchugh of Cured. Chef Mchugh is a man that you want to know. A man to meet before you die, or at least try his food. In the interview, Mchugh divulged that he hopes the food speaks so loudly for him that he doesn’t even have to be at the restaurant. You taste his mind even if he is nowhere near you. For Jason, he is someone you want to aspire to be like as a chef. We knew that this couldn’t be just any type of interview. It had to be from our hearts. It had to have passion and respect for the man we were sitting with. We were nervous. Ainsley and I were ready. This one was going to matter.
Author: Ainsley Daschofsky
Every step I took away from the restaurant, concrete and bricks flashing into my eye retina, was like an interference. With a satisfaction so deep that the world couldn’t match, I licked my mind lips over and over. The match as a memory of fire hitting meat.  The memory of lamb ribs on top of me like a lass I’d been imagining for years and had finally won. The fat from the smoked rib charred my teeth with a memory’s gush as the fat spilled down my throat, swallowed into me. Eyes closed, keeping all else away from the brain memorizing every pull of lamb rib. While not memorizing. You can’t memorize what you already know. What your beast knows. Your primal DNA making the taste succulent to your inner knowledge. That’s the thing about flavor. It is no hologram. It was not factory made …until it was. Meat and its flavor is known to every creature that is human. Whether you have McDonalds or not. They can only tap into the buds that scream and dance and cry to their passion. Food. Survival. Instinct. Your brain says meat should be inside it because it is your survival. Cured’s burger was this release from being a part of the world, the modern day, and back into the being part of your insides. The known without speaking. They don’t fuck with meat until it’s a veggie burger or lay down caramelized onions to hide the blood that isn’t there.  Even the cheese goes inside the flavor. They char the blood to the perfect texture and honor its true flavor. They cure while pounding love into it. Eyes closed and mind dripping with bloody sweetness we call Cured our home.
I’ve been following the ever evolving “paleo” diet for a few years. The diet changes as we find new information out about our species and as we uncover more data. Turns out ancient cultures did eat more than bacon. Honestly diets are weird if they try to go ancient because the way people ate was based on what was around them. Most American diets try to eat the same thing year round. Us Amazon.comians.
The best among the dark java havens combine three things: fast WiFi, divine coffee and easy parking. This knocks off downtown coffee shops automatically. Work mode means hours in a place, and being able to switch environments in one place eases that mind trapped feel, so environment is the next deciding factor.
A Lick of Bliss 