Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Lunch at Claire's on Cedros

Today, we had lunch at Claire's on Cedros.  It was awful.  Let me tell you how. I walk in, and the decor is very rustic.  Cute, but you can't eat the decor.  I sit down. They emphasize the fact that they are a bakery, and that they bake all their bread on-site. There are rolls on the table.  I split and butter one. I bite in, it's been microwaved.  Eww.  Well, after one bite, I give up. Eventually, our waitress shows up.  I order the steak sandwich.  It's skirt steak, along with cheese, onion jam, arugula, and tomato.  It was awful.  The sandwich was served at room temperature, the meat was tough, bland, and mostly gristle.  Not only that, the roll was doughy.  All in all, a ripoff.  My mother had the duck confit salad.  A standard spring mix with a vinegary dressing.  The small piece of duck was tough and under-cooked.  Also, there was nothing confit about it. 

Epicurious.com defines confit thusly: This specialty of Gascony, France, is derived from an ancient method of preserving meat (usually goose, duck or pork) whereby it is salted and slowly cooked in its own fat. The cooked meat is then packed into a crock or pot and covered with its cooking fat, which acts as a seal and preservative. Confit  can be refrigerated up to 6 months. Confit d'oie and confit de canard are preserved goose and preserved duck, respectively.

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