So wine is supposed to enhance the food experience.  At a minimum it adds an additional layer of complexity by adding a new element, and in a fine dining context that element brings along its own internal complexities.  A wine paring has the additional advantage that it can, in principle, be more targeted.  This all depends on the somelier doing a good job, of course; all that complexity can easily turn into a muddle.  But if it works it can really elevate the experience.  At least it can for those who have a more specific impression of the wines than alcohol burn.

The complexity and diversity of a non-alcoholic pairing are interestingly different.  On the one hand, there is not the huge industry or long history associated with wine making.  And most of the individual products are fresh; aged food are (all things being equal) more complex.  On the other hand, the non-alcoholic menu can take the advantage of more fundamentally different kinds of beverage.  Here we had bottled soft drinks, fruit juices, a tea, and the made-at-your-table “chartruese spritz” (disclosure: that last contained a tiny amount of alcohol).  A wider range of infusions could have opened up things even more, but as it was there was a great range: different temperatures, levels of dryness, even differences in body.  The pairing were all accurate.  The very light, slightly bitter and herbal spritz, for instance, was a good counterpoint to the rich cream around the gnocchi while harmonizing with the garden  vegetables in the dish.  The only one I didn’t care for was the salted grapefruit juice, but I have to admit that I’d been so taken with the accompanying soup that finished it before I even tasted the glass.

Beyond the  virtues of individual wine-food combinations, there are special attractions to the parings for a whole menu.  Like many things in a good fine dining restaurant they provide experiences you couldn’t normally have at home.  With both wine and non-wine, the sheer variety of eight separate beverages would be impractical in most home dining rooms.  The small quantities involved also mean you can try vintages that might otherwise be out of reach; this is less of an issue for non-alcoholic beverages.  (On the other hand, our menu was a bargain.  Wine pairing typically start at a major fraction of the food price and go up from there.)  A tasting menu is also an opportunity to maximize your access to a more sophisticated wine cellar than your local store’s, regardless of price.  My home grocery store is one of the best in the country, and I could probably only get half the items on this menu (and conceivebly a fifth at the local tea emporium).  Finally, a restaurant pairing often gives you running commentary from the somelier.  Wine experts often work near the edge of self-parody, and it was initially odd to hear non-wine beverages being described in similar terms, but it became clear through the evening that this guy knew what he was talking about.

Non-alcoholic pairings certainly lack the tradition that wines have.  Chefs are not trained to think in those terms.  Customer demand is probably low, especially in restaurants that are places of special celebration anyway.  And it can hardly be unimportant that there just isn’t the money to be made on non-alcoholic beverages.  But we are in an age where fine dining recognizes a greater diversity of diets: raw in Los Angeles, celiac-friendly in England, vegetarian nearly everywhere.  Why not a serious beverage menu without alcohol?  Cheers to the Inn at Dos Brisas!

I prefer my gazpacho as I’ve usually had it in Spain: very smooth and emuslified, so I blend a long time.  One could even strain this soup, but that seems unnecessary.  You could also add a slice of bread if you like it thicker, but I’ve never felt the need.

1/2 cantaloupe, flesh only
1 cucumber, peeled
handful grape tomatoes
1/4+ large sweet onion
1/2 large jar roasted red peppers
1+ Thai chiles
1 tangerine, zest and juice
1/4 c. olive oil
1+ Tbs. sherry vinegar
2+ tsp. salt
pimenton

Chop all larger ingredients, then blend until smooth.  Adjust (+) ingredients to taste.  Chill several hours.

This was easiest to see in action in the appetizer I had at the restaurant: sopes [masa disks] topped with achiote-marinated duck confit, and garnished with a fine dice of pickled vegetables.  How is this Yucatecan?  Let me count the ways.

• Meat, especially game, marinated with achiote, slow cooked, then shredded.  Cochinita Pibil is the most famous dish of this sort, but there are numerous variations on the theme.  Here we had long poaching in fat instead of long pit-BBQ (and achiote takes the place of the French spice rub) but otherwise the same.
• All regions of Mexico have their characteristic masa-based snacks.  The Yucatan favors panuchos and salbutes: full-sized, open-faced, fried tortillas topped with (among other things) shredded chicken and pickled onions.  Nectar moves down in size for an appetizer and up-scale to duck as befits an elevated restaurant.  In fact, chicken is presumably a post-conquest replacement for game.
• And about those vegetables…  Many Yucatecan dishes (even beyond panuchos/salbutes) come with those pickled onions, but they’re also just the tip of the iceberg.  In fact, we were often presented with great bowls of mixed vegetables en escabeche: vinegary and  often hot and herb-y brine.  This, too, was shrunk and regularized for restaurant presentation.

All of this might have been just clever except that it tasted so good.   (The reader may have to take my word for it.  There is a different, somewhat less traditional version of this dish on the current menu.  A local reviewer suggests that this culinary restlessness is also typical of Solis.)  It was hardly the only example on the menu; the cheese traditionally accompanying the papaya desert was happily reduced to its essence in a foam.  The sopes, however, were a real triumph of the “deconstruction” and reassembly of multiple sources into a really well crafted dish.

Bonus: Solis is one of the chefs featured in Fiona Dunlop’s recent cookbook documenting Mexican Modern cuisine, and several of his recipes there show the same kind of traditionalist fusion.

In food-conscious circles, it’s not hard to find general agreement on what’s wrong with conventional food and conventional food delivery in this country.  “Bad” food is highly processed (from fertilizer and pesticide driven farms to industrialized feedlots to the chemical break-down and recombination of those products), well-traveled, relies on a limited set of foodstuff recombined in various ways, values only the production of the cheapest possible calories, and is ultimately unsustainable.  What to look for in a “good” grocery store is a little more complicated.  Fixing one of these problems won’t necessarily fix the others, and may even make them worse.  “Whole” Foods  stresses organic, chemical-free foods.  “Gourmet” Central Market is more committed to variety.  But these and other local stores (Wheatsville Coop, Sun Harvest) are fairly small variations on the same theme.  The new Natural Grocers goes out on a limb, or rather on two opposite limbs at the same time.

One the one hand, it is rigorously organic.  The website promises no “artificial flavors, colors or sweeteners, hydrogenated oils or added trans fats, artificial preservatives, artificial growth hormones, irradiated foods, antibiotics,artificial hormone implants, or animal by-products.”  A few trips through the store suggest that they are serious about this agenda.  Every fruit and vegetable seemed to be marked organic, and the official USDA label popped up on products all over the store.

Less clear from the mission statement, but equally obvious on inspection is how firmly counter-cultural Natural Grocers is.  For every conventional foodstuff, there are multiple non-standard alternatives.  Stevia for sweetening, ostrich meat, flour from more than a dozen non-wheat/rice grains and legumes, gluten-free, dairy-free, and soy-free versions of almost everything that might contain those main-stream ingredients.  (The shelf space devoted to products like soy milk and tofu suggests this is primarily a cultural issue.)  They won’t even ask you “paper or plastic”; bags have been entirely replaced by recycled cardboard cartons.  (Again, there is some inconsistency here.  The same store sells nut butters in single-serving foil packets.)

On the other hand, the same store is a textbook example of “nutritionism.”  Nutriionism is the idea that food is precisely equal to the sum of its nutrient parts and that nutrition can be optimized by consuming the proper levels (whether high or low) of those individual nutrients.  The idea was developed by Gyorgy Scrinis to describe one of the ideological bases of the modern, industrial food system.  Nutritionism justifies the existence of a food industry that puts as much space as possible between farmer and consumer.  Food as grown leaves too much to chance; it takes chemists and processors to guarantee the right combination of nutrients.   This notion has recently gotten a good popular treatment in Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food, where he proposes a more holistic approach to good eating.  In addition to the basic rules (“Eat food.  Not too much.  Mostly plants.”), Pollan has been offering some rules of thumb to help with specific food choices.  Among these are:

• Don’t eat anything with more than five ingredients.
• Don’t eat anything your grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.
• Eat from around the edges of the store.
• Don’t eat any product that makes health claims.

What is remarkable about Natural Grocer is that it almost seems to have been engineered by looking at this list of rules only to break all of them.

• Bread really only needs about four ingredients (flour, water, yeast, salt), but I bought a bag of rolls that have 19, including soy Lecithin, guar and xanthan gums, and calcium diphospate.  Or what about the 14 ingredients in ready-to eat chicken nuggets (including tapioca dextrin and an undisclosed range of “spice extractives”)?
• Would your grandmother recognize any of the dozens of varieties of energy bar or “lowfat yogurt Tuberz” (tubes of yogurt enhanced with pectin, starch, two gums, and tricalcium phosphate)?
• Only a tiny segment of the periphery is given over to fresh produce.  There is a small case for frozen meat.  Fish tends to come in the form of sticks.  Dairy is slightly larger, though not impressive.  Conversely, something like half the store (including much of the edge) is given over to a staggering variety of concentrates, supplements, homeopathic remedies, and other extracts.
• And, of course, the principal reasons for the existence of the store is its health claims (see, for instance, the “Health Hotline” link at the top of the company’s web page.  Whole sections are labelled by the health issues they are meant to address: immune system, cough and cold, men’s glandular, sleep, glucose levels, etc.

Whatever its other virtues might be, the place represents the ultimate triumph of nutritionalism.  Maybe that shouldn’t be surprising in a store whose full name is “Natural Grocers by Vitamin Cottage.”  Groceries are just another vitamin—or more generally “nutrient”—delivery device.

So here is the choice for shoppers.  By some measures, like those the USDA uses to certify organics, this is almost certainly the most “natural” store around.  And, for all I know, this may really be the path to healthy eating.  But I still have a hard time wrapping my mind around the idea that store where nearly everything is in a box or bottle, and most of those boxes and bottles contain tablets, powders, capsules, and solutions, is really what anyone means by “natural.”  And the counter-cultural aspects of the store, while they may make some feel better, don’t really address this issue.  My gut reaction is that Natural Grocers is less “natural” than my neighborhood mini-mart, or at least the conventional supermarket down the street.

So is this the best or the worst?  Time to go find a Farmer’s Market, or maybe a nice CSA.

1 c. each two vegetables, already cooked in bite-sized pieces (see * below)
2 med. tomatoes, pureed
1 med. onion, rough chopped
1/2 c. yogurt (full-fat is best)
2 Tbs. curry powder (or see ** below)
1 tsp. sugar
1 tsp. salt

Sautee onion over medium-high until somewhat browned.
Add spices and sugar and cook for a few seconds.
Add tomato puree and reduce over medium heat until fairly thick and dry.  Add yogurt and incorporate fully.
Stir in vegetables and heat through.

Serve with rice or soft Indian breads.  Serves 2, but multiplies easily.

* I’ve had success with a variety of different vegetables:

• haricots verts, asparagus, or spring onions a la plancha
• cubed, sauteed eggplant
• cubed, steamed winter squash
• new potatoes, cut small and roasted

**  Commercial curry powder generally works fine here, but as always, your own mixture is better.  For fresh spices, toast and grind: 1 tsp. fenugreek, 1/2 tsp. each cardamom, clove, mustard seeds, kala jeera; plus 1/2 tsp. black pepper., 1/2 tsp. turmeric