About the OK Supper Club, it has been asked "what's it all about and how'd it come about?!" This is touched on in our first review, by Mr. Bradley Cooper wherein he astutely offers the following
One of the toughest transitions you'll ever make is the one from big city urban living to small city semi-rural living. I've been in Penticton for most of the last 16 years and it still surprises me at how hard you have to work to make 'off-season' life stimulating.
In the city we were used to everything being right at our doorstep. There were many times when we would just go 'out', to wander down a busy street and wait until something caught our interest enough to make us pause and perhaps engage. Restaurants, clubs, galleries, shops; all vying for your attention and wallet.
Not so much in Penticton and other small BC interior cities. You could wander around plenty but all you might engage is a little frostbite.
Stimulation has its ups and downs to be sure, but who can deny the essence of mausoleum that overcomes our fair hamlet between November and May?
The OK Supper Club is your culinary alternative to total, complete, sweatpants wearing, DVD watching, couch bound, all inclusive, trembling capitulation before the black hole of Okanagan Winter.
Get up off of that thing and dance till you feel better and/or Get yourself a whistle and blow.
The idea of a supper club is an old one. It would break my heart if I knew this was the first in our glorious Okanagan valley. The idea to have it at the Elite was, in small part, an extension of a humble little party called Meat Fest. As far as I am aware, a good time was had by all at Meat Fest; if it ain't broke don't fix it. Besides, The Elite--it's awesome!
While it is safe to say "OK Supper Club" means different things to different people for different reasons, it is equally safe to say that even in this embryonic stage, a unifying ethos is emerging--one enunciated quite handily by everyone's favourite Frankfurt School Critical Theorist and Negative Dialectician Theodore Adorno:
Rule: go towards extremes. The expansion of the dynamic scale through new music (food) is of benefit to everyone. The wider the scale, the greater the possibilities of modelling the structure through dynamic degrees, of constructing it dynamically. And in conjunction with this possibility of attaining extreme characters (tastes.) This applies no only to ppp (Elvis Sandwich), but also to fff (the home-made kim chi garnish on the brisket.) The sensitivity to loudness (big tastes) is the musicality (taste) of the unmusical (tasteless). In some Mahler (Chicken soup with Chitara cut noodles) and Schonberg (brined, smoked, sous-vide Okanagans Finest Angus Beef Brisket), also Strauss (Burbon Milkshake), it is necessary -- for the music's sense -- to overstep the boundary of what is bearable dynamically: a declaration of war on the culinary ideal. Of course 'classical' dynamics (traditional intensities and combinations of flavour) were different -- but now that the other exists, the old form cannot be restored.
Theodor W. Adorno, Towards a Theory of Musical Reproduction
Further on in his much appreciated review, Mr. Cooper points out the deficiency of information regarding the dishes. Point well taken.
1. Elvis Sandwich. The Elite has a proud array of Elvis memorabilia, so we thought it was only right and natural to pay tribute to The King. The Fools Gold sandwich, (a favourite of the The King) however is neither right nor natural as a starter in its original conception. The charm of the sandwich was the bacon jam. When was the last time you had bacon jam?
2. Maker's Mark Bourbon Milk Shake. One question we received about the Burbon Milkshake was "is it all burbon?" No, it wasn't straight bourbon put in a blender, but instead a milkshake (made with Island Farms ice-cream) with a hint of bourbon and a caramel topping. One day when the world is sane, there will be a dairy in the Okanagan, and in that sane day, there will be sane laws regarding the sale and consumption of whole milk. Until sanity is restored, Island Farms does just fine.
3. Chicken Noodle Soup. This featured dark meat, schmaltz, noodles cut on a Chitarra, oyster mushrooms, lemon and ginger. When was the last time you had noodles cut on a Chitarra? If it's been a long time, you no doubt enjoyed the unique shape and delightful mouth-feel of the noodle.
4. Homemade Root Beer. Before we get into the particulars, let us quickly meditate on a central contradiction that faces us all. In life there are two kinds of archers. Those fixated on hitting the same target, in the same place, the exacty same way, time after time. Bulls eye! Then there are those archers who are fixated on shooting there arrow as far as possible beyond the target. Maybe the homemade root beer didn't hit the bulls eye, but it did to far beyond the target of brown corn syrup in the A&W tradition, eventually landing in virgin territory. When will the Okanagan have its own, real, fermented soft drink? Will it have Astragalus, Burdock, Licorice and Ginger? Ours did.
5. Rick Reuben. Chicken-fried smoked beef brisket with rye breading, kimchi, nostrala & mustard with potato salad. GIT YER DYNAMIC BOLD TASTES RIGHT HERE! The beef brisket was Okanagan's Finest Angus Beef, born, raised, processed right here in BC, drinking 1500ml of Okanagan wine a day...you know, the ususal. The brisket was brined, then smoked with Okanagan grape, apple and pear wood. The kim-chi topping was home made, as per the previous post, to a spicyness of between 1.5 and 2 on a scale of 1 - 10. We also decided not to include raw oysters or an over abundance of daikon in the kim-chi mix (as per tradition), so I can understand why some people didn't know what it was.
6. Tallow Fries. Ah tallow, how do I love thee? Well, I do know why I love thee--it's because you're not canola. Don't get me wrong, canola is great for keeping rust off of pans...certainly there must be other industrial lubrication or cleaning applications...but for deep frying and human consumption? Please. Doesn't anyone else pause at the thought that they use the same frying medium at the Greyhound Bus Station as they are at the finest restaurants in the Okanagan? So, like, what's up with the price difference? What's more, if you are sincere about wanting to "help agriculture," namely the cattle sector of the agriculture industry, (which is a big part of BC Agricultural picture) you would buy the fat. We have cattle in this valley and some of them are very fat. With a minimum of effort "we" could re-introduce this delicious, healthy lipid to our culinary palettes and kitchen pantries. After all, the fries were great, right?
7. Banana Cream Pie. Any questions?
Feb 14th is the next event. Call the Elite or send us an email at oksupperclub [at] gmail ]dot[ com.
Thank you again for coming out, hope to see you at the next one.
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