The hill ate at a restaurant you won’t soon be able to write about

Some fixation for them with those Sundays. Soon we will hear again rumors that supermarkets must also be closed to allow workers to rest (those communist plurals already existed). And how are they going to rest without a bottle, and for what person is such a celebration, when you are not even going shopping, you did not think? Then. The Seimas don’t care about ordinary people.

The bans on the advertising of alcoholic beverages, which we have become accustomed to as in Iran or Afghanistan (nothing, now we will have a lot of new people from those countries for which we care to bring our order to the healthy traditional standards of the traditional Islamic family ) will soon attract new ideas. For example, it will no longer be possible not only to speak and write, but also to think about the supposed benefits of alcohol. Or, for example, it will prohibit the mention not only of drinks but also of restaurants that sell them. Then I will have forks, I will have to write about Lithuanian restaurants in a foreign publication, as a dissident.

Have you noticed that when I write about food, I never write anything about alcoholic beverages? Because you can not. I hope my prophecy is not fulfilled, and it will still be possible to write about food; no “Food Control Act” will be passed that makes it impossible to talk about shashlik on the bright side, as the article can be read by minors and those who suspect shashlik. And then make kebabs that are only sold to people over the age of 20 because they are a potential threat to a growing organism. And Kiev chops, which are so buttery, will generally be equated with peppermint cigarettes and outlawed.

I went to Klaipeda for a couple of days to see what was good there. Do not go to the beach: there is a real family march without clothes. On the beach at Melnrage, the secret of the beer is sucked by the bellies, which are already well tanned and look around with soaked eyes, adorned with triangles. rabbitsand their traditional wives throwing towels away like a flock of sea lions. It’s very hot and a voice echoes through the speaker saying that you can’t drink alcohol on the beach. The call gets as much attention as if someone invited them to get vaccinated.

However, all is not well by the sea. We went to see what happened after the quarantine of the horrors and hardships of the gastropab (it’s a buzzword for a brewery that has serious cuisine, not just fries) that I wrote about in 2018: Lighthouse BHouse. In that hooligan article, I said I was a Michelin restaurant inspector, only better, and gave it a rating of four geese.

I must declare my interest: the founders of this restaurant, the Švyturys brewers, are partners of UŽKALNIS magazine and advertise their non-alcoholic beer in the magazine. However, of course, the content of my review does not depend on that friendship, but I must speak.

Klaipėda, I will remind you, is in second place in Lithuania after Vilnius in terms of concentration of good restaurants: pearls like Pepper Gray, Monai or Momo Grill (about which I wrote in the distant 2015, when I did not write to DELFI yet) they prepare stage.

Lighthouse BHouse is just a seemingly strange name, it’s an abbreviation for the word “brewhouse.” Behind the glass wall you can see the capacity of the brewery, you can get there when you come with a tour and chat with the brewer, and behind the other glass wall is a kitchen where I prepare the food that I will talk about. A list of beers that I cannot tell you about is provided in the airport style marker, where the minimum information is also, according to current law, only the name, type and concentration of the beer. Well, you can’t tell us about the properties of taste, you can’t. Here we are protected from ourselves.

Since I was there in 2018, the restaurant has grown and matured significantly. The presentation of the dishes was refined and became “Instagram-friendly” (this is an important thing in today’s kitchen: to think about how the dishes will be photographed, I will write about another restaurant in Klaipeda, which has achieved a lot in this direction. , a little later this month) With whom and congratulations. It’s natural: America is the world leader in brewing innovation today, and beer by beer: expressive, hearty, understandable, it’s an expression of American tradition.

Although the first course, cold beets, was definitely not American (maybe just in the sense that in America we are used to having all our friends with them all the time). I learned from Fausta to order cold borscht everywhere and always. They were great here: creamy, not too acidic, lots of egg and fried potato wedges like from the “Cold Borscht Encyclopedia.” What is the Cold Beetle Encyclopedia? This is a book that is not yet available, but I will publish it sometime. There will be a hundred pages of cold beets alone, at different angles and with different accessories, and in different parts of the world. The plate costs € 4.50, as you can see on the check. Why does the check show a 100 EUR bill? For beauty. It is green, like a great Lithuanian summer.

Halloumi (sheep’s cheese and goat’s milk from Cyprus, the most delicious, grilled), 6 euros, is the simplest dish in the world, but if it were my will, it would be mandatory in all restaurants, because for me it is a divine snack. Sometimes when I don’t come home with what I should eat, I bake a piece of halloumi, cut into slices, in a pan, with olive oil, and there is a feast for me, especially when I sprinkle snowflakes in super English – coarse salt. I am, you know, a great cook. I also know how to make ribs, steaks, lasagna, and baking is my specialty at all: pork rinds, pretzels, sasyski buns, the whole symphony of healthy food.

The smoked sausages (here in your photo, with a large mashed potatoes and a thick sauce, as in England) were maybe twice as intense as last time (now 10 euros), it is a pity that we have ordered everything in both, that we couldn’t eat even half of it.

The New York-style ribs in a thick glaze and with sweet potato (€ 11.50) were made as it should be done: the meat came off the bone, the bones could be removed with two fingers (if you’re not afraid to spread). There is no boiled bacon, called ribs, that unskilled producers often think of (there is no such restaurant left, it is an eternal rest for him). There could be more corn (that chunk of corn just looked just), and the coleslaw was crispy and didn’t fall apart in the sauce. Is it a complicated dish? No. Is it appropriate for the context? Great. I would very much like to teach all Lithuanians to see beauty in simplicity. And see how you think about the colored spots and the dark bottom of the plate. This is a job for Instagram: turning guests into food advertisers, because Lithuanians act on the recommendations of friends (well, and sometimes according to Užkalnis).

But for me, the star of the night and the last nail in today’s qualifying, nailed another hen on the honor board, it was a huge tray of fried nachos, corn chips (€ 10.50) filled with everything: cheese , sweet and spicy chorizo. Hot sausages, beans and halapas peppers, which is the correct Lithuanian name for these green peppers. For the love of God, don’t call them “jalapens” or “jalapens”, because it sounds as horrible as the name of the state of Texas “Techasu” or the city of Cambridge “Cambridge”, because that’s what the English school taught Soviet.

For me, those corn chips were my America: when there were many, when there was both sour cream and sweets, and that feeling when you ordered their sandwich and realized that not even that sandwich could be served anymore, much less the plate principal. Here is that American abundance (everything: salty, crunchy, spicy, sour cream freshness, sausage meatiness), the generosity, the intensity of the taste that I am willing to pray for, as my courage and my ideological disposition, because a person without convictions and without values ​​is weak and easy to hook up and get distracted.

The same is transmitted inside: space, volume, high ceilings, especially when it is so hot, better indoors than outdoors.

We paid € 59.10 for dinner for two and left another € 10 in tip.

Well, Klaipeda brewers and their chefs. You say to me (at the highway post) “Welcome (no alcohol)”, and I say to you, thank you for reiterating the American sentiment in the port city, and five geese out of five.

Faro Bhouse, Kūlių Vartų str. 7, Klaipeda. Tel. +370 648 43 555. Facebook profile HERE. Website HERE.