Boulderites: 5 Ways People Can Spot You at Lunch in Denver

You ask to sit with strangers.
While everyone else during lunch rush hour stands around and glares at everyone who is seated, you walk right up to two business ladies and ask to sit with them. They don't hear you at first—it's like that first time someone asks you something in a foreign language you are learning, and although you know the words, they're strung in a way you haven't heard before and you need to have it repeated. They say yes, and you sit with them and get up once for your veggie sandwich, twice for your vegan soup, and a third time for your organic vegetable juice with just a touch of ginger.

You take your Chinese herbs with no shame.
At the crowded water bar, you patiently scoop out one, two, three, four teaspoons of your Chinese medicinal herbs that your acupuncturist gave you and pour a few ounces of water over them. Then you must drink them and re-pour water once again to get any remaining herbs (don't want to miss any Dong Quai), drink, then re-pour a full glass one final time, while everyone waits.

You ask too many questions at the coffee shop.
What kind of milk do you have? Oh, you don't have almond? But you have coconut... interesting, does that foam well in a latte? If I were to get whole milk, would it be Morning Fresh? Oh, yeah, Morning Fresh is a local milk... well, where does your coffee come from? And your espresso beans? I'll just have an 8-ounce.

You leave thousands of dollars of electronics unguarded.
You go to the bathroom down a long hallway and oh, how cute, a little art gallery is attached to this coffee shop! Let's just look inside. And do some email and texting in the loo. When you finally come back the girl next to you stares at you, horrified that you left your Macbook Pro alone, without it even being attached to a plug, for seven whole minutes. Then you realize you forgot your Conscious Loving book in the car and go get that—taking your purse, of course.

You do all of this in the middle of the day on Thursday.
You're an independent entrepreneurial freelance start-up professional. You have time for everything.

[Sip-spiration] Snowglobe Friday

There is no new leaf; turn yourself over.

—Stephen Elliott, The Rumpus

Three links for a snowy afternoon in Boulder:

I have great respect for Elliot and his online culture magazine, The Rumpus. Fellow artists, creators and destroyers: have a look at why he writes.

Nurse reveals top five regrets people make on their deathbed. "I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me," and "I wish I didn’t work so hard," among others. Live by these now; the universe will listen.

[Talking Pretty Today] Logical Deduction

5-year-old Oscar: "Where are you from?"
Me: "I'm from New Jersey."
Oscar: "What is your..." ::pause:: "hairtage?"
Me: "Oh. Well, I'm American and Pacific Islander."
Oscar: ::frowns:: "Did your island sink?"

Interactions with the Internet and Other Living Things

Hello! I'm starting three new things at Light on Broken Glass.

1) Sip-spiration: Link Café
In Spain, you always have a coffee after lunch, which often means your lunch has already gone on for two hours and, what the heck, why not tack on another? Some afternoons during the week (2-5 times, to be not specific) I'll be sharing links for you to enjoy as you sip your midday café cortado. They will be inspired by my own Internet meanderings, pulls and triggers, so you can trust the authenticity of their emotional fortitude and general usefulness.

2) Talking Pretty Today
Maybe I overheard something. Maybe you said something ridiculous to me and now everyone will know. Maybe you will not be able to rest until you read the next conversation I had with a five year old. You never know. I may be sneaky and back-date these.

3) Yay! Poison!
At some point, I have talked to everyone I know about dangerous additives, chemicals and preservatives in our food. I still don't think people know enough about what these ingredients do to our bodies. I could get upset or take a serious stance, but why not use the Brechtian technique? As actor/author/playwright Mike Daisy puts it: "use humor not to anesthetize, but as a tool for deepening connections, so that an audience will hear things deeply that they might not normally be willing to listen to." Inspired by the Yay! magnets, I will point you to your (not-so-)friendly neurotoxin or carcinogen of the day!

Also, isn't 2012 amazing?

Some go for the shoes; I go for the shawarma.

Last year, I went to Nicaragua with my ex. Right before our trip he expressed concern about the possibility of food poisoning.

"I might just not eat anything there," he said.
We were going to be there for two weeks. I was confused.
"What will you eat?" I asked.
"I don't know, I'll bring yogurt or something," he replied. I knew a pop culture reference was coming, something that convinced him this atrocity was pardonable. "You know, Charlotte-SATC-movie style."

It occurred to me that I wouldn't want to go if I couldn't eat the local food. If I couldn't immerse myself through taste, if I couldn't adorn my taste buds with what locals choose to nourish (or at least pleasure) their bodies… why go at all?

Since then I've come to embrace the fact that my travels revolve around food and people, with a side of alone time to write about food and people… while drinking a pourover coffee.

Photo courtesy of Tertulia

So before I visit my mother for a New Jersey Christmas, I am going to spend one full day in NYC. I am scrupulously plotting my meals, coffee breaks and wine-accompanied meriendas.

Before I maniacally try to cram the city's culinary craftsmanship into my belly during a 24-hour period, I am open to suggestions. So leave me a comment (mind you, my dinner slot is taken by Tertulia, recently reviewed in the Times—there's my love of Spain, ever surface level). Oh, and I will be reviewing every place I visit in a January 2012 post (and on NiftyNYC).

Pizza, Love and Jesus

This piece was also published in Yellow Scene magazine and can be found here. Enjoy!

Local food sees infusion of European culture and tradition
By: Amy Segreti

The farm-to-table concept of making a connection between farmers, food and consumers has finally, in recent years, become cherished—and people in Boulder County are taking food authenticity to a moralistic level.

Flippin' pies at Locale. Photo by: Vandenoever

When you step into Pizzeria Locale, the first thing you’ll notice is the massive 1,000-degree wood-burning oven forged together from pecan and oak wood and volcanic rock culled from Mt. Vesuvius—the only Ferrara oven in Colorado. While the folks at Locale understood the value of producing culturally authentic Italian food and incorporating tools and materials, including the Ferrara oven, the Transportation Security Administration didn’t. Stefano Ferrara originally sent over all of the materials to build the oven in Boulder, including brick, clay and dirt from the heart of Naples. But all TSA saw was raw organic material.

“They were like, ‘Why don’t you just use dirt from Boulder?’” said Chris Donato, general manager of Pizzeria Locale. “They didn’t understand that it was an authentic thing, that it was going to be more of an art piece.”

TSA destroyed those materials. What you’ll see when you walk into Locale is the second attempt, an oven made by Ferrara and shipped over, pre-made on the soil that is the home of what most agree is the best pizza in the world.

Traditional European food culture embodies the elements of simplicity and craftsmanship—a duo Americans haven’t, until recently, been accustomed to seeing served together. Only in the last several years have Americans started to value high-quality food (U.S. sales of organic food and beverages grew from $1 billion in 1990 to $26.7 billion in 2010) and make an effort to become knowledgeable about where their food comes from.

Chef Jordan Wallace of Locale spent four months in Italy working at pizzerias, studying the art of pizza-making in Naples before the restaurant opened in Boulder.

“We wanted to have the exact same thing that’s offered on the streets of Naples,” Donato said.
Everything from the V.D.F. prosciutto slicer (hand-crafted by father and son team Mirco and Gary Schnidero) to the arrival of the pizza to your table uncut—which annoys some diners—is a nod to authentic Napolitan style and tradition.

“The pizza isn’t pre-cut because there’s lot more moisture to it; our mozzerella is very fresh so it’s really watery, the San Marzano tomatoes have more water to them, and we store mushrooms in oil so they’re richer,” Donato said. “If we cut the pizza for you, the water seeps into the dough faster, compromising the integrity of the dough.”

Donato said Locale is not about kitsch, but rather, holding true to tradition.

“People have been doing things this way for hundreds of years,” Donato said. “If you do things one way for that long, you end up producing something beautiful.”

After spending two years in Girona, Spain, fiancées Coral Ferguson and Will Frischkorn opened Cured, a cheese shop, in downtown Boulder. But they haven’t left their European ideals behind.

“European culture around food is so thoughtful. It’s not convenience-focused,” Ferguson said. “It takes more time out of their day, but it’s time they enjoy because so much of their life is focused around food.”

Cured has a small-market feel, with sections of the shop dedicated to local fruit and vegetables, cheese, bread, cured meats, wine and freshly made to-go items such as salads and sandwiches.

Frischkorn said he hopes to help people become more knowledgeable about their local food and farmers through the presentation of their products (read: samples abound!) and hosting weekly classes.

“We’ll bring in different purveyors, cheese makers and brewers, and teach people how farmer’s grow things, about the composition of the soil,” he said. “None of the cheese will be cut and wrapped in plastic. You’ll be able to try everything.”

Cured isn’t about importing European delicacies, but selling specialty meats and cheeses from the states, further expanding the growing movement toward local, fresh, simple food.

“We have so many incredible restaurants here, but we want to teach people that if you have quality ingredients, you can create incredible meals anywhere,” Ferguson said. “It doesn’t take a massive amount of tools or skill.”

Sarah Amorese designed downtown Boulder’s Piece, Love & Chocolate like a European boutique based on her travels.

“There’s a chocolate shop on every block in parts of France,” Amorese said. “It’s just the way they treat food: everything is smaller, there’s more attention to detail and craft, and there’s such respect for the purveyors and the ingredients.”

Amorese said she was amazed how food—even basic staples—was revered in France.

“I was in the Camargue [region] where fleur de sel comes from, and there was this huge festival of rice going on. Just rice. There was even a rice princess,” she said.

The shop’s open-glass chocolate case, based on that of a shop in Beaune, France, displays the truffles like jewels.

“We designed it so there would be more conversation,” Amorese said.

This sense of personal connection combined with experience of European culture provides the backbone for well-traveled locals trying to maintain the authentic experience.

“Our whole shop will be filled with products that speak to us,” Frischkorn said.

And if you don’t see the oven first in Locale, you’ll definitely see Jesus. Floating prominently above the bar and hand-carved in 1905, the piece was an opening gift representative of the religious and cultural tradition in southern Italy.

“If you walk into a pizzeria, there should be some Jesus,” Donato said.

Amy Segreti is a journalist and editor living in Boulder. She strives to live purposefully with regard to place, pleasure and palate. Especially palate.

Behind the Scenes: Being a Master Sommelier

A version of this article was published in the September 2011 issue of Rooster Magazine, of which I am the managing editor. Enjoy!

How to be a master sommelier
Your exams are nothing compared to this.
Photos and interview by: Amy Segreti

Take it from Master Sommelier Bobby Stuckey, co-owner of Frasca, winner of a James Beard Award and runner of marathons—even if you fail an exam five times, you can still be a baller. Rooster sat down with Bobby to get behind the scenes of becoming a master sommelier, which involves passing an exam that 90% of testers fail every year, due mostly to its rigorous tasting requirements. Want to try it? Let us put a glass of wine in front of you and then tell us all about it—acidity, grape, country of origin, district and appellation of origin, and vintage. Exactly.

Bobby Stuckey

What made you want to become a Master Sommelier?
 
I had been a sommelier since 1994, and when I went after the master sommelier diploma, I really struggled. So many people meet resistance with the master som degree, and a lot of my peers were wondering why I wanted to do it. I said, I’m not doing this for you or for an employer, I’m not doing it to get a raise—I’m doing it for myself. So I kept plugging away. I joke that I think I spent more on my MS degree than on my college education.

How many tries did it take you to pass the exam? 

It took me six times. If you pass [the parts of] service and theory, you have two more tries to get through tasting, or you have to give up all the parts you’ve passed and take them again.

How did you train your palate to be able to pick up incredibly subtle nuances in wine? 
 
The hardest part is recalling your olfactory memory when you’re stressed out. So I developed a new technique. The six months before my last attempt, when I passed in 2004, I totally changed how I tasted. I began tasting red wines before whites, and it made it much easier for me.

Interesting. At wine tastings, you almost always taste white wines first.

Exactly. But I felt that I personally tasted the nuances of acidity in white better after I had the red, so at the exam I asked to taste that way. It worked for me, but it was a crazy idea.

Take us behind the scenes of the tasting part of the exam. 

You walk into a room and you have six wines in front of you; there are two master sommeliers in front of you and one taking notes behind you, writing down what you say. It’s you against the clock and you have 25 minutes to get it done. Say you’re tasting a white wine—before you came in, the master soms wrote down five flavors off the palate: lemon lime, cut grass, bell pepper, etc. Then they labeled it: alcohol medium, acidity high, length long, etc. So when you’re tasting, you name those elements, and they check off those boxes [on a tasting sheet] for you.

So you don’t need to give a description of say, “mustard seed,” to gain points. 

Right. Some people will try to use shotgun descriptors trying to get a point or two, but that’s not what they’re looking for.

What was the strangest thing you had to learn in order to pass the exam? For example, we heard you get to learn about Havana cigars…? 

Yes, I had to do a whole cigar service in London. But once I learned what I was getting into, I learned it was all relevant, learning those classic things. I mean, other than the Flagstaff House, there isn’t a restaurant in Boulder that has really old dishes, like beef rossini, or an old-school prep of fish—and those are the types of questions you get asked in service. A lot of young soms haven’t worked in an environment like that, and that becomes stranger and stranger for them.

Frasca Food and Wine

Do you feel that becoming a master sommelier was worth it in terms of running Frasca? 

Worth it? Totally. There are very few master sommeliers that run a restaurant, or at least that stay on the floor. The business is tough, and it’s a young person’s activity; for example, last Saturday night [August 13] we had our busiest night in seven years, and the older you get, the harder it is to put out that wattage every night.

We overheard you talking to a table of diners who asked you what your role was at Frasca and you joked, “I’m the head bus boy.” 

There’s a lot of people who don’t even think I own this place, and that’s my style—being part of the craft of the service. Being a master sommelier definitely helps me run this restaurant, because I’m better able to deal with those thresholds of effort.

How has earning this degree affected you personally? 

It makes me more empathetic. When Matthew, my employee, didn’t pass tasting this time, it was a lot easier for me to understand what he was going through. It’s nice to mentor younger people. It also teaches you humility. You see a lot of young sommeliers who are arrogant, but very rarely do you see a master sommelier who is arrogant.