Kiss The Cook

I really like beef. As a good Alberta boy (and those of you from the great white north will appreciate this) I know a good steak from a bad one. Try as I might, I have not mastered the art of cooking them - though I'm not bad with a grill - but I have a tremendous appreciation for them when I do find them.

Well, today was a bit of a rough day at work. I say that with a little bit of a grimace, knowing that some of you spend more hours at work in a week than I do awake, but still... it was a long day. In the interest of not losing my job should anyone who could help make that happen come across this, I won't go into any details, but let's just say that by 8 tonight my brain was full and I was ready to move on to something different.

There are about 8 of us on this project now, and a couple decided not to join in, but you know me - gotta go wherever the group is going, so I decided to head along for a meal. Honestly, it's been a couple months since I've been able to hang out with this crew, and I have missed them. As much as I truly and honestly hate trying to figure out what all my francophone friends are saying after 12 hours of work, I work with some really good people. So we went to a place I'd eaten at a couple times before, which was good news.

I noticed something tonight that I hadn't before - the music here is a lot better than it is in Geneva. We had some Toto (Africa, of course), Tracy Chapman, Natalie Imbrouglia (who I can now recognize thanks to the MNB) and a few others which, thankfully, featured more guitar and less French rap. Score one for our side.

Now, I don't know what it is about Lugano, but not only is the music vastly superior, but the beef here is way, way better than what I can find in Geneva. I don't know where it comes from, don't know if they just prepare it right, but it's good. I mean, I know three places within a 5-minute walk from my hotel where I can get an absolutely wonderful steak. And we were at one of them tonight.

The wine was a young Italian... very robust, very fruity, with a lot of plum, and a surprisingly good finish for a relatively sweet, young wine. Not particularly well-balanced, but if you like that flavor (and I do) there is a lot of it there to enjoy. It would have absolutely died with a curry, but with my steak... well, I just wanted to crawl inside it and live there forever. The filet was not too big, but, trying to keep up with local customs, I had started with pasta, anyways, so I wasn't too hungry. And the steak was amazing... just enough marbling to really give it flavor but still very lean (it was a filet) and certainly no extra fat to bother me. It was tender and cooked to very perfection... grilled and slightly charred on the outside, and then a deep, rich, beautiful dark pink all the way through. They served it with some grilled vegetables - mostly non-memorable except for the peppers; sweet, still crunchy, but grilled with a little of the sugars burned - and I finished with a nochino (or something like that) - grappa which has had walnuts marinated in it for 40 days. Wonderful.

Wow. In the end I decided it may be best if I didn't meet the chef - better to keep a little mystery in the relationship - but it was satisfying in a way that only a perfectly prepared steak can be. Happy, happy, happy.