Dear Feastlings,
Every May when I write to ask you all what you’d like us to make during this, the long hot period of request menus and hoping for a monsoon, something happens that’s become downright predictable. Yes, some of you wax rhapsodic about some obscure dish that we offered for one fleeting night as a special, and one or two of you request a dish from so long ago that I’d forgotten we ever made it. After all, we’ve now offered you nearly 250 different menus over the years. But what’s all but guaranteed to happen is the onslaught of requests for lobster, corn and scallion bread pudding. I seldom understand the desire for comfort food in the Arizona summer, but I do understand the need for what comfort we can get in these stressful times. So this week, there’ll be no shortage of this, the most requested dish in Feast’s 18-plus years, and there’ll be more comforts as well: braised short ribs with Port, bacon and shallots, and saffron ice cream with a tempura fig and honey. There’ll be lighter, brighter fare as well: buttermilk panna cotta with watermelon and seeded crackers, and trout stuffed with bananas, avocados, cilantro and chilies. The details of this week’s request menu can be discovered here.
And there’s a little note as well about this week’s wine tasting– what Kevin is calling “Cafe” wines- this Saturday at 2:00.
And don’t fret; there’ll be more to know about Feast in just a few short days. Soon you’ll know about the August menu, and about Ferragosto, the holiday we celebrate here as an homage to classic Italian dishes and Italian wines old and new. But that won’t happen until Tuesday. It’s good. It’ll give you something to look forward to.
Love,
Doug and everyone else at Feast