At Michele's - Brunch

- by Brian Griffin

When I was a little kid, I used to try to find somewhere that I had never been. I would look for a place where I had never sat to see the world from a perspective that I had never experienced. I would find a small corner of the yard and look at the same trees, and the same garden hose, but with brand new eyes. I would climb a tree and look down onto the neighborhood and I would always feel like what was going on in my world back on the ground was insignificant.

Monotony has a way of consuming you. It is easy to begin to feel like your little world is all that there is, and it is all that matters. It is rare feeling when you are able to break free of that. You sit down somewhere that you have never been in your own home town, and you do not recognize what is around you. There are places to go that give you a different perspective. An elevated perspective. A slightly different view of the river. But largely, we find ourselves in a new place, overlooking the same scenery, behind the next burger and fries. But rarely have I found an environment that truly felt like I was somewhere else entirely.

At Michele’s does not remind me of Richland. It feels like a steampunk dream of an event venue. There are giant metal barn doors, and moving gears above the bar. The grand piano in the entryway feels like a relic from another time, placed in the center of a building reclaimed from the future. The front patio only provides the slightest hint of its home when you see a tumbleweed roll across the parking lot. The entire facility provides a welcoming, and pleasantly disorienting allure, with chandeliers and vintage lamps and couches. Like a passenger on the Titanic’s idea of what the future would be.

Is that whimsical enough for you? Let’s talk about brunch.

I have never been to a breakfast with Ginger at which she did not order eggs benedict. Today was no different. There are two choices, one being called simply eggs benedict, which is an upscale version of your common eggs benedict, with poached eggs, ham and hollandaise on top of an english muffin with the addition of pork belly. But she didn’t order that one. Because Ginger is special, and there is another dish called special eggs benedict. This has everything that comes on the eggs benedict with the addition of lobster, and a dungeness crab bearnaise. I am realizing now that I didn’t ask what a dungeness crab bearnaise is. I try to do these articles with as little Googling as possible, so I’m going to assume that the bearnaise is prepared by a crab. When he is finished, he clicks his claws together as if to say “voilá.”

I went the route of a traditional breakfast. Classic is the word that they use, but I would use the word ideal. There is something about the layout of eggs, sausage, potatoes and an English muffin on a plate next to a cup of coffee that warms me to my core. The variable here is in the adjectives, namely coffee spiced sausage and black garlic roasted red potatoes. As fragrant and robust as coffee tends to be, I expected a more bold presence in the sausage. It added a subtle background note to the dish that I would not have been able to identify immediately.

I have never had black garlic before. I am certain that I would have survived as a hunter gatherer. Presumably, there was a considerably dangerous process of trial and error when it came to discovering what foods were and were not edible, and I would not have participated in any manner. Three cavemen named Zog, Thag and Brian are out in the fields and they come across a variety of mushrooms. Zog grabs one and eats it, and he dies on the spot. Thag turns to Brian and says “Zog dead now. So try Thag’s black garlic. Thag heat garlic for weeks, now garlic is black.” Brian politely declines and eats lettuce and rabbits for the rest of his life. Anyway, the black garlic roasted red potatoes are excellent.

I don’t remember hearing much about brunch as a kid. I really don’t think I was aware of brunch as a concept until social media took over the world. On any given Sunday, I can scroll through my Instagram feed and see all of the perfectly dressed groups of friends out on patios across the country with their quinoa quiches. The true power of brunch is in its ability to soothe a hangover. I don’t think that avocado toast and a juice cleanse is the best way to do that, but it certainly paints a better picture of you on Instagram than a mountain of gravy an nachos at 10:30 in the morning. Brunch is more than a meal now. It is a sanctuary. A place of worship, with an altar of lipstick stained champagne flutes and avocado pits. There is something about an elegantly executed brunch on a Sunday that puts me into the perfect mood to do absolutely nothing for the rest of the day, when that was really a decision that I made the night before.

At Michele’s showed me some of the best of both worlds.

Europa - What Do You Mean Funny? Like a Clown?

- By Brian Griffin

I don’t ever intend to be negative about the past of the restaurants and nightlife of the Tri-Cities. I think that sometimes it can come across that way when all that I am trying to do is express a feeling of hope about the future. I have been watching closely as the gaps in our culinary scene have been filled in over time. For years, we have had world class wineries, where aspiring professionals could rub elbows with the drunken establishment. At the other end of the spectrum, we have long had countless taco trucks for when you needed a bite, and all you had was the change in your cup holder. Until recently, the gaps between those two were far and wide, with several intervals left unexplored. A lot of that has changed over the last few years. We now have places to get excellent barbecue. We have a place to have a cocktail overlooking the city. Granted, it is just three stories up, but we are doing what we can. Have you ever seen the roof of Lowe’s? I have. And you can too.

One thing that we have not had until now is a great place to not only get some Italian food, but to have a meeting shrouded in secrecy, or to break it off with your mistress. Where were you going to go? The Olive Garden?

If you have some business you need to handle with the family back east, there is a new spot in town. Europa is ambitious. They have a menu of blended Spanish and Italian cuisine, executed exactly the way that you want them to be. These are family recipes handed down over generations. They didn’t tell me that they sliced the garlic so thin that it liquifies in a pan with a little bit of oil, but I can tell that this is the kind of place that does. It’s a good system.

We were having a shady meeting about family business, so we popped a couple of bottles of wine and did this family style.

The Europa Trio is a seven or eight pieces of flat bread served with an olive tapenade, mozzarella, and roasted red peppers. They recommend that it be paired with a salad for a light lunch. That is an excellent suggestion, but we went the other direction. We threw on some sausage and meatballs.

We also checked out the Papas Bravas. This is as essential as you can get, with  sliced red potatoes topped with paprika and a spicy aioli.

For the main dish, I had the Spicy Chipotle Pesto Trottole, and Ginger had the Fettuccine Alfredo. The Trottole was excellent. The one that you order would look a little bit different than mine, because I had to ask them to remove the pine nuts. Nature is actively trying to remove me from the gene pool by murdering me with nuts.  

The dish that really stood out to me was the alfredo. I don’t believe that I have ever been to another restaurant that made a fettuccine alfredo that didn’t have chicken breast. Sauces are an under appreciated facet of any dish. Sure, I appreciate shoveling ranch and curly fries into my face like anybody else, but there is a refined art to the selection of sauces and proteins. The sweetness of the sausage brings a volume to an alfredo that chicken can’t. And by sweetness, I think I mean calories.

But I don’t sit down to a plate of pasta and sausage and think too much about the calories. You only have this one life. You owe it to yourself to enjoy it.