The Oxtail Incident

I had a client meeting in Pasadena this morning with a couple coworkers, and afterward we went to this barbecue place, Hutch's, that one of my coworkers, Jeff, recommennded. His job is such that he's in the field a lot and he finds all the good places to eat.

It turns out that since the last time he was there, Hutch's had acquired a new chef, so in addition to the bbq favorites, there was a decidedly Jamaican slant to the menu. We had arrived at the nearly empty restaurant, in a very quaint, 60 year old brick building in the middle of what appeared to be fairly prime Pasadena commercial real estate, at about 10:25, which meant breakfast was being served for another five minutes, but lunch would take a little while to set up, one of the managers explained. We talked about the menu and because I was paying such attention to him, I didn't notice that the yello packet I emptied into my iced tea was not Splenda at all but non-dairy creamer. So that had to be sent back. We received some complimentary tortilla soup for our wait that was outstanding--you'd come back for this soup.

I've always been a "when in Rome" kind of guy, at least when it comes to food, meaning that I'd rather take a chance and order something unusual I may never have again, than have the same old thing. I couldn't even tell you what the barbecue items were, but the choices for me were between the jerk chicken (either sandwich or in linguini), the curry goat, or the oxtail in brown sauce. I've had jerk chicken many times and like it, so it was between the goat and oxtail, neither of which are meats that exactly make me salivate, but hey, life should be an adventure, right? I wasn't really in the mood for curry, so I chose the oxtail, which sauteed vegetables and roasted potatoes on the side. When it came, I was a little thrown off, because man, that is some fatty meat. Oxtail looks like pot roast, only with more marbled fat, and the meat is around segments of bone about an inch-and-a-half long. The meat is stewed slowly in this brown sauce, so it's very tender, but it takes a bit of work to extricate it not only from the bone but from the fat. It's actually not dissimilar from the veal osso bucco I had a couple weeks ago, but more of a peasant version. The manager said it's a delicacy in Europe, and quite expensive. Well, I'd like to report it was amazing, but while I'm glad I tried it, it wasn't that big a deal. Little different taste than beef, and good, but the bones and fat are a bit of a turnoff, and the sauce is not especially rich or anything. It's a good, standard kind of brown sauce. The vegetables were burned in some spots--still tasty but aesthetically compromised, and the potatoes were very good--crisp on the outside but willing to absorb the sauce--though the "garlic" part of the title was absent as far as I could tell. I tried a bite of my friend's jerk chicken, and it was good but not very spicy. So...ox and veal--this is shaping up to be a strange month for food.