Noir Food & Wine
40 N. Mentor Avenue, Pasadena
We visited Noir Food & Wine on Friday @ 8 pm
Dish we will try to cook – Noir Food & Wine $10
Restaurant Visit
We had to dig around a bit to come up with three N restaurants for our poll last week, which is one of our favorite parts about writing this blog. Discovering new restaurants in a city this large isn’t hard to do. But falling in love with a restaurant all the way across town in Pasadena, is a whole other issue. But that is exactly what happened.
We started our trek Friday evening after work and arrived in Pasadena around 7:30pm. Noir Food & Wine is quite easy to find, it is located directly beside the Ice House comedy club. Once again, we showed up without reservations, we just love pushing our luck, but were able to be seated right away. Reservations are recommended, especially for larger parties since the inside of the restaurant only holds about 30 people. There is a quaint patio outside that also has seating, which fills up quickly since sitting outdoors is always more fun.
Inside, 9 tables of 2 take up most of the floor space with 4 seats at the bar in the back. High ceilings with hanging fans give the place a Mediterranean feel. We were very impressed with how well lit Noir is so you can actually see your food and enjoy easy conversation with your date. Wooden floors and dark chocolate walls hung with framed vintage posters round out the ambiance.
Noir is more of a wine bar than a full restaurant, which is why it’s a smaller joint. Obviously, they therefore have a very extensive wine list and you are able to order 50 different varieties by the glass. To take advantage of the wine bar, we decided to do two of their wine flights. There are 8 flights to choose from consisting of 2oz pours of 4 different wines. We choose the Petit Sirah Flight and Piemonte Flight, $14 each. We loved how they bring out all 4 pours at one time so the table has 8 glasses of wine on it. The advantage of having them all at once is we were able to really taste the differences between the vintages of wine. It is very surprising how different the wines taste even though they were all Sirah (or Piemonte).
After our little wine tour experience, we began our meal with a bowl of their shrimp and sausage gumbo. We each have very different taste, especially when it comes to something like gumbo. One of us simply can’t have something spicy enough, while the other thinks black pepper can be too spicy. This gumbo is the perfect combination of flavors for us both. On first bite, we were confused that there isn’t much spice, or shall we say it isn’t spicy. We used ‘tangy’ as the first word we thought of to describe the dish. The spiciness is realized when you eat the sausage. It definitely has quite a punch to it (which means only one of us ate the sausage.) What surprised us the most was the flavor of mustard in the gumbo. Not being mustard fans, one flavor we can both agree to not like, we were a little taken back by the taste. However we both recognize that people who love sausage and mustard will really enjoy the uniqueness of Noir’s gumbo. Its like the taste of a good mustard hot dog, all grown up. Notice, we didn’t have too much to say about the shrimp in the shrimp and sausage gumbo. As luck would have it, our bowl only had one piece of shrimp.
For our meal, we ordered several of their small plates (the menu is made of small plate dishes, big enough to share.) We chose the roasted stuffed chicken leg ala upright clayton (stuffed with shitake mushrooms, cotija cheese, tarragon, mixed carrots and smoked tomato sauce) $15, grilled Australian lamb chops (ratatouille with tapenade puree) $19, and haricot vert (with garlic, shallots and mint) $8.
Having never heard of Noir Food & Wine, we didn’t really have huge expectations as to how the food would taste. Boy, were we quickly delighted by our little discovery. The stuffed chicken leg has become one of Romeo’s favorite dishes. To quote from the evening, “I don’t want to finish it because I don’t want it to end.” Since the chicken is leg meat, it is juicy and flavorful beyond belief. And remarkably, while the inside is tender the skin on the outside is super crispy. The roasted tomato sauce lends the dish an overall smokey touch and not a drop was left on the plate. Shaved carrots as the side is a nice addition to create a more complete feeling.
Lamb chops is one of Amanda’s favorite dishes to eat. If it’s on the menu, it will probably be what she orders. And these chops were some of the best we’ve had lately. While they are somewhat small, being a small plate dish, the chops do have a lot of meat on them. The puree has a subtle olive taste mostly lending the lamb chops a nice bit of saltiness. We ordered ours medium and they were perfectly cooked. The ratatouille, like the carrots on the stuffed chicken leg plate, gives a nice balance. Chopped tomato, zucchini, eggplant and onion combined with the lamb, leaves you completely satisfied. In fact, nice restaurant or not, Amanda picked up the lamb chops and ate the last bites using her fingertips to make sure not a bite of meat was left behind.
We shared the haricot vert and between the three small dishes, we had a remarkable meal. The mint on the beans is a subtle surprise and garlic is always appreciated. The beans have a nice char to them but are still nice and crispy.
And lastly, no one thought we could have such a good meal and not follow it up with dessert did they? Oh no, not us. While Noir offers a tempting dessert menu, we opted to order the roasted apple (bourbon ice cream and caramel sea salt) $8, from their special springtime menu. The menu was described by our waiter as special dishes created that day from whatever simply looked the best at the farmers market. The baked apple was a simple dessert, and we feel the ice cream could have had a bit more bourbon in it and the caramel needed to be a bit more salty.
Big smiles were across both our faces as we left Noir Food & Wine that evening. While it’s a bit far of a drive for us to simply swing by for dinner any night of the week, we will certainly treat ourselves at the restaurant when we are looking for a special evening out. Unfortunately, as we spoke with Chef Claud Beltran when we were leaving, he informed us that the stuffed chicken leg dish will probably be removed from the menu soon. But don’t let this deter you, we feel confident recommending this restaurant and any of their dishes. If nothing else, simply visit for some nice wine and order light food from their seasonal farmer’s market menu.
Shopping
(prices reflect the cost of the package, not the portion we used.) The rest of the ingredients we already had in the kitchen.
Whole Foods-
Gumbo File $2.99
Cayenne Pepper $2.69
Yellow Mustard $1.69
Andouille Sausage $5.99
Garlic $.56
Celery Bunch $2.49
Yellow Onion $2.96
Red Bell Pepper $2.06
Yellow Bell Pepper $3.99
Recipe
Below is our take on shrimp and sausage gumbo. While we have no idea exactly how they prepare theirs, we looked around online for traditional recipes, looked at our Commander’s Palace cookbook and then combined those with the flavors we tasted and went from there.
Makes 6 servings.
Gumbo-
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
6 cups water
3/4 pound raw shrimp, peeled and deveined
3/4 pound andouille sausage, cut in half lengthwise then sliced into 1/4 inch thick pieces
2 medium onions, chopped
3 stalks celery, cut in half lengthwise then chopped
1 yellow pepper
1 red pepper
4 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 TBSP yellow mustard
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
2 bay leaves
1/4 tsp dried oregano
1/4 tsp dried thyme
2 green onions, chopped
1/2 tsp file powder
(optional) 1/2 TBSP Louisiana hot sauce
Salt and pepper to taste
2 cups cooked white rice (such as basmati or jasmine)
In a large heavy pot, brown sausage and then drain excess fat. Set sausage aside. Begin making a roux by heating oil over high heat until reaching just about smoking point. Sift in flour and stir constantly using a wooden spoon for about 3-5 minutes, or until roux become the color of milk chocolate. Be sure to scrape bottom and sides of pot to prevent burning. Add onions (this stops the roux cooking process) and cook for 1 minute then add celery and cook for 30 seconds while stirring entire time. Add peppers, garlic, cayenne pepper, bay leaves, oregano, thyme and mustard and cook for 1 minute then add sausage and continue to stir. Slowly add in water to prevent lumps in gumbo. Stir around ingredients one last time then bring to a boil. Once at a boil, turn down heat and allow to simmer for 2-2 1/2 hours, or until mixture starts to stew and thicken.
Next, add file powder, stir around and cook until gumbo has desired consistency (add more file powder for a thicker gumbo). Add shrimp, salt and pepper and hot sauce (if desired), stir around and continue to cook until shrimp are cooked through, about 5 minutes. Remove from heat and add green onions prior to serving. Serve with white rice.
Plating
In a bowl, place serving of long grain white rice in the middle and fill with gumbo.
Rating- We give our dish3 out of 5 stars.
If you haven’t had the opportunity to cook or eat creole gumbo we highly suggest you give it a try. Not only did this seem to be one of the more surprisingly simple dishes we’ve created to date, but the depth of all the different flavors combined with relatively inexpensive ingredients made eating this dish all that more enjoyable. What we loved most is how everything is done in one pot and once a little heat comes in contact with all the ingredients you can more or less forget about it for a couple of hours until it’s done. And if you’re willing to experiment, this is the perfect way to dive into cooking and try your own spin on ingredients to see what you come up with.
So now comes the part where we have to be critical and rate how well we actually did in comparison to Noir’s gumbo. After all, this is We Can Cook That, isn’t it? We rated ourselves a 3 for a couple of reasons. The first and most important reason being the fact that we’re not completely sure if Noir actually used mustard or not (we felt we could taste mustard, but maybe it was a blend of spices.) And even if they did, we’ll never know if the mustard was your classic yellow mustard, dijon mustard, honey dijon mustard, course honey dijon… well you get the point. The second reason is something that has become a constant theme for us from week to week. Technically, we didn’t quite do some of the things that Noir was able to execute so well. Because we simmered our gumbo for so long we lost some of the crunch of the vegetables that shined through on Noir’s gumbo. The base liquid of their gumbo also had a more refined texture, which tasted much more smooth and well balanced than ours did. Lastly, our gumbo has more of a kick to it than theirs. With Noir’s, the roux was not spicy, just the sausage. Our sausage seemed to spice up the gumbo overall. In terms of the positives, we feel like we did come very close to all the rest of their flavors and we were pretty impressed with making a fairly decent roux on the first try, something that can be a daunting task.
In the end and We Can Cook That aside, we made a pretty successful gumbo and we feel that you can too. Maybe make this dish more than once and use different ingredients each time to see how much you can surprise yourself with a great meal. And if you’re in Pasadena, make sure you stop by Noir Food & Wine to taste how Chef Claud Beltran makes his delicious gumbo among his many other fabulous dishes.
Tags: gumbo, Noir Food & Wine
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