Nosh Pit

John Howie Steak’s Triple By-Pass Burger Offends Gabriel Claycamp

And he’s not afraid to UPCAP about it.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Oct 11, 2010 at 09:23AM 3 Comments

Name this burger and you can get six for you and your friends.

When last we saw Gabriel Claycamp, he was leaving the Swinery Part II in characteristically dramatic fashion.

Since then the controversial chef has opened Alchemy in the Kitchen, a cooking school slash consulting business slash “non restaurant.”

And on the website for this new business, he has a blog. And on this blog, well, he has decided to call out Chef John Howie, he of Steak and Seastar fame, as a “hack.”

Why go after Howie? Claycamp got offended after reading about a recent PR campaign in which Howie invited diners to come up with a new name for the burger his restaurant was calling the “Triple By-Pass.” As it turns out, that name had already been trademarked by the Heart Attack Grill in Arizona. Heart Attack got litigious; Steak came up with a naming campaign.

I got a press release about it on October 5. According to it, the burger is the creation of Mark Hipkiss, executive chef at Steak. From the release (upcaps preserved): “Hipkiss, in perhaps a supreme moment of culinary insanity, sandwiched a 12-ounce prime chuck burger, tempura fried Kurobuta bacon and ONION RINGS between two grilled cheese sandwiches oozing with Tillamook cheddar and Swiss cheese. This comes, of course, accompanied by a generous portion of crispy fries.”

The person who comes up with the extreme burger’s new name receives, in return, “a party of six,” which includes six of the burgers plus six beers. (Want to enter? See contest details here.)

Claycamp—who himself served six-ounce burgers topped with bacon at the Swinery, not to mention bacon hotdogs—calls the sandwich “the single most disgusting thing I have seen outside of a 7-11 or a KFC.” He does some expressive upcapping himself in the post; read it here.

Over the top or awesomely delicious? What do you think of the yet-to-be-renamed burger?

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Tags: Hamburgers, Chef Drama, Gabriel Claycamp, Extreme Eating,

Former Quinn’s Toque Launches Spanish Caravan Catering

Hopes to one day turn it into a restaurant or mobile kitchen.

Posted by: Christopher Werner on Aug 27, 2010 at 09:29AM 0 Comments

Peppers stuffed with herbed goat cheese. Photo courtesy Spanish Caravan Catering.

A year shy of shacking up in Seatown and taking a top kitchen gig at Quinn’s, Brian Parks got the boot from the Capitol Hill gastropub in May. While he’ll admit surprise at the dismissal, it’s paved way for Parks’s new venture: Spanish Caravan Catering.

The B-Man is better suited to Iberian eats anyways. Before relocating with his wife, Jenny, Parks spent almost a decade in New York City honing Mediterranean cuisine at several big-name establishments. Among them: the now-closed Oznot’s Dish in Brooklyn, Mario Batali’s decidedly Spanish Casa Mono, and the tapas and wine bar Buceo 95.

Though Caravan is basically a one-man-show, its ambitious menu runs deep—on it find tapas and pintxos, “bocadilllo boxes,” five-course meals, and of course, paella (six varieties, in fact). If you find the lengthy list of choices overwhelming, opt for Parks’s favorites: oxtail stuffed piquillo peppers, fideos (like a paella, but with pasta instead of rice), and grilled asparagus with egg and truffles.

The idea is to cater parties of 100 or less—kind of like Parks’s wedding, a fete of about 70 people that was “small and focused,” he says—but in due time that will likely change. Parks is already envisioning bigger things for his new biz, like converting Caravan into an actual van that would travel the city or giving it its own brick-and-mortar address.

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Tags: Chefs, Chef Drama

Cochon 555 Founder Brawls with Local Pig Advocate in Portland

Event Founder Brady Lowe hospitalized for leg fracture, according to Willamette Weekly.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on May 18, 2010 at 01:38PM 0 Comments

Can’t we all just get along?

The Portland leg of the Cochon 555 tour, held on Sunday, May 16, appears to have ended rather violently. The Willamette Weekly’s Kelly Clarke is reporting that chef Eric Bechard (of Thistle in McMinnville) and Cochon 555 founder Brady Lowe fought outside of a strip club in Old Town Portland.

Clarke says both men were arrested, and that Lowe ended up in the hospital with a leg fracture.

“Bechard, an attendee at the food event, was angry that Lowe had allowed a pig from Iowa (the winning pig, in fact) to be used as part of the Portland Cochon 555 competition” reports Clarke.

That wasn’t the only violent incident that night. “Earlier in the evening, Bechard head-butted Elk Cove Vineyards’ Craig Hedstrom before being dragged out of the Cochon 555 afterparty at Davis Street Tavern by none other than notorious chef and city-suing firefighter Tom Hurley.”

Seattle’s own Cochon 555 event takes place this Sunday, May 23. Wear a helmet?

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Tags: Pigs, Chef Drama