New Year’s Eve is full of magic. It’s the one night of the year where humanity shares in the biggest “goodbye” and also the “hello” that holds the most potential. We collectively countdown the last ten seconds of the year while, at the speed of light, we are catapulted into the next. For a solitary fleeting moment we are a planet of time travelers–lost in space and held in eternal return and repeat. (Weren’t we just here some three hundred odd days ago?) We quietly absolve ourselves of our pasts, while secretly hoping that the future will be better. But even those of us who study the stars, or religiously read a newspaper horoscope, or consult the cards for counsel ultimately have no more insight into the future than the rest of humanity. Nobody knows what comes next. All we can control is how we greet the masked stranger that is the New Year.
Whether you’re dancing on the bar, playing beer pong in somebody’s garage, fast asleep in your bed, watching the ball drop from the comfort of your living room sofa, or out to dinner with friends–as of the stroke of midnight, everything will be different. Carriages won’t turn into pumpkins and, if you left the house wearing glass slippers, it’s likely you’ll still have the same shoes at the end of the night. It’s nothing like a fairytale. But even so, there is undeniable magic that occurs at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve. As another page falls from the calendar, we’ll gaze with wonder at the blank canvas of a fresh year–yet untouched by the passing of time. With no memories to color the minutes not yet passed, we’re left with only one possibility: hope. Will this year be different? Perhaps better? What does the future hold? Call me superstitious if it pleases you, but I’m of the mind that how we say goodbye to one year may very well impact what comes our way in the next.
Maybe this past year was shit. It doesn’t matter anymore. So what if all of your dreams didn’t come true in the last three hundred and sixty five days? Who cares if you’re not quite the version of yourself you’d hoped to be by now? (And what’s the big deal if the person you thought you’d be kissing at midnight will be kissing someone else?) We’re all about to be granted one of the most precious gifts that we as humans can receive. It’s not something that we can give each other, barter with, or borrow as needed. It’s a gift that comes directly from the universe. It’s the gift of more time–days, hours, and minutes to spend both as we must and as we please. More time to, perhaps, make this next year our best one yet. I don’t think that sort of wondrous possibility should be greeted half asleep in old pajamas. No matter how the past year treated you, I hope that you’ll do your damndest to welcome the new one with–at very least–an open heart. Better yet: why not celebrate its coming! There’s no use fearing the unknown. Fear won’t help you to know it better–so we might as well welcome it with open arms. I couldn’t think of a better way to celebrate 2023 ending and 2024 beginning than with friends at Junk Ditch Brewing’s final tasting dinner of the year.
For our first course, we enjoyed Mushroom Veloute with Truffle, pickled Chanterelle, and brown butter. While Veloute sometimes refers to a sauce, in this instance it referred to a soup–a thick, creamy, absolutely mesmerizing mushroom soup. Bespeckled with black truffle and accented with local pickled mushrooms, this was not your typical cream of mushroom soup–this dish offered layers of flavor to be discovered. Intoxicatingly earthy, this velvety soup was paired with The Stump Jump white wine blend. This lush, fruity blend offered balance for the decadence of the soup and, without question, got our evening started off on a strong note. Brown butter makes everything better. It’s a basic bitch sentiment, but it checks out.
The next plate was a Kale and Date salad with pistachios, gouda, and orange vinaigrette. Junk Ditch is one of those special places that gets me to eat my greens eagerly and without complaint. A small salad of robust green kale was punctuated with pieces of chewy date, crunchy pistachios, and creamy gouda. Dressed with a bright citrusy vinaigrette, this plate stunned as a winter salad. The Paul Dolan Sauvignon Blanc paired with this plate was probably my favorite white wine of the evening. Typical of Sauvignon Blanc, there were notes of tree fruits and citrus fruits balanced by notes of honey and very present minerality. But that’s an old-school way to describe a wine. Like the rest of the wine world, one of my goals for 2024 is to try to move away from these hackneyed, unrelatable descriptions. I don’t want to keep using the language of the oppressor. What does minerality even mean, really? It’s this ephemeral quality–kind of stony, like sucking on a river rock or eating soil, but who fucking goes around doing that? Isn’t that a pica thing? Are we supposed to believe that old cishet white men have been shoveling dirt in their wealthy gobs for generations? Is “suck rocks, get rich” one of the secrets to success?
The third plate of the evening was an artful presentation of Wood Fired Carrot with Harissa, Marcona almonds, curry, crème fraîche, and crispy rice. The woodfired oven lends a flavor to the carrot that no other cooking method can truly replicate. Dressed fancifully with microgreens, this dish was certainly one of the prettiest presentations of the evening. To pair, the Parducci Chardonnay: a very light, crisp, California Chardonnay.
While everything up to this point in the evening was delicious, the fourth plate of the night was the stunner that stopped us dead in our tracks. Little did we know that by the end of the night, we would all still be hoping that we could sneak into the kitchen and snag a second plate of Crab with XO sauce, parsnip, crispy farrow, and caviar. A delicate lump of crab was topped with XO sauce (just slightly spicy and umami rich), accompanied with parsnip, flavorful crispy farrow, and topped with a thoughtful lump of caviar–my best semi-educated guess is sturgeon. This dish was an absolute delight of texture and flavor. To pair with this well-loved dish was one of the most beloved wines of the evening: even our server said it was their favorite. The Foris Pinot Noir, a lighter bodied red, boasted a complex palate of red fruits–like raspberry–a hint of plum, earthiness–like from mushrooms–and a bit of vanilla and spice. For an affordable bottle of Pinot Noir, this is definitely a joyful sip. I will probably seek out this bottle to buy for myself and enjoy. 10/10 would sip again–but don’t let my love of this wine overshadow how good the crab dish was. Babe, it was divine.
Just when I thought that I’d eaten my favorite plate of the evening, out came the Pork Belly with apple, carrot, miso, and a polenta pancake. Like, are you kidding me, Junk Ditch? Katie Jo said that she wanted this plate again for breakfast the next morning, but I want this plate for breakfast every day for the rest of my life. (No. I will not get tired of it after three days. You don’t know me. Mind your own business.) A polenta pancake was perched atop a cozy bed of (what I believe to be) a carrot and miso purée. The pancake served as a pedestal for one of the absolute best bites of pork belly I’ve ever enjoyed. I say that a lot about pork belly, but I mean it every time. It wore apple shreddies like a party hat. This was a New Year’s Eve dish for the record books–but that doesn’t stop me from wishing I could enjoy it every day of the year. The wine pairing for this was a Napa Cut Cabernet Sauvignon. I’m honestly a huge cab fan, but I think I would have preferred this wine more with a different plate. It was bold and seriously tannic which I love. Boasting dark fruits, leather, and oak, I’d absolutely enjoy another pour of this wine, but maybe with even heavier food–like a big-ass juicy steak. Your girl’s a red wine chugging carnivorous cutie. Love me; feed me steak and wine, please. (Do not fret, dear reader, they eventually did. Just keep reading.)
As always, there’s at least one dish on every Junk Ditch tasting menu that causes me to check in with my culinary moral code, but ultimately I trust Junk Ditch’s thoughtful ethical practices in regards to selecting and procuring their proteins. I’ve already given the spiel about being a meat-eater who tries to ensure that I’m sourcing my food ethically and blah, blah, blah–look through my older blogs if you want to know more about it–I don’t want to rehash an old point. What I don’t believe I’ve shared yet is my personal rule about not eating animals I’ve previously kept as pets. It’s pretty much the only rule that stands between me and a pet potbelly pig. But tonight, I bent that rule and enjoyed a Pierogi with wild mushroom, rabbit, veal reduction, and fennel. (I had a bunny named after a famous trumpet player when I was in college–my boyfriend at the time was a jazz musician. I hope I don’t have to tell you this, but never date a jazz musician. Maybe don’t even date musicians–not even the weirdo who played clarinet in middle school band. We’re all trouble.) Somehow, up until this particular New Year’s Eve, I’d managed to go my whole life avoiding eating rabbit. I braced myself and took my first bite with as much confidence as I could muster and, you know, it really wasn’t bad at all. It’s definitely not something that I’ll seek out–but it’s also something that I feel like I could fearlessly eat in the future if an opportunity worth seizing crossed my path. This dish was paired with another notable wine of the evening: the Louis Bernard Côtes du Rhône. This wine was so well-balanced; it was tannic, fruity, acidic–a bit of everything all at once, with no particular quality overshadowing another. This is another bottle that I would absolutely purchase for the sake of revisiting. While not overly gamey, the rabbit definitely had an earthy quality that was reflected in the palate of the wine, making this an idyllic pairing. It made me feel like a French peasant. A beautiful, bougie, modern day French peasant with a lover named Philippe who rides a horse also named Philippe. Maybe I don’t need a passport after all, a tasting menu is a lot cheaper than airfare.
The final savory plate of the evening was Roasted Strip Steak with potato rosti, winter vegetables, and Béarnaise sauce. Your girl is never, ever mad about a plate of steak and potatoes being presented to her. The strip steak was surprisingly tender and cooked to perfect pink perfection. I could have enjoyed three or four plates of this–but that’s a personal problem, I think. This was paired with the second Cabernet Sauvignon of the evening: a bottle by Kiona. This Washington State cab was significantly less tannic than our first cab. Velvety tannins, dark fruit, hints of leather and smoke–there are no bad words for this pairing. All I’ve got left are good vibes and high praise. When it comes to wine, Washington state’s cooler than California. I said what I said. Home of the world’s first queer wine festival, a trip to Washington state should absolutely surpass any dreams you once had of riding a wine train through Napa Valley. In the New Year, we’re no longer doing snobbery and status quo. We want more gay wine and good times.
I was beyond excited to try the dessert course after watching plates be carried to other tables throughout the night. (That and I’d heard rave reviews of the Fromage Blanc ice cream which was previously featured on another tasting dinner menu.) The Warm Donut with Persian spiced apples, Fromage Blanc ice cream, and crumble was a scrumptious way to end our evening. Paired with a Frisk Riesling, this was–without a doubt–the most beautiful way to say goodbye to 2023. Fuck kissing some dingus at midnight: the pro move is a warm donut, a bit of Fromage Blanc ice cream, and a little sippy-sip of a stone-fruit, citrus, and honey forward Riesling. (No petrol in this pour–but it’s definitely for the best with this pairing.) Kissing an idiot will leave a sour taste in your mouth. You want to head into the New Year with nothing but sweetness on your tongue. You want this dessert course to be what launches you into the future.
I think 2024 will be the year of the mushroom and the fish. These are two foods that younger me believed I did not like. When I read them on a menu, I would simply continue reading until I got to dishes only comprised of the pre-approved list of ingredients from which my brain insisted I must not deviate lest I risk having a yucky time. Over the past year, I have been learning one plate a time that younger me was flat-out wrong. Short of severe allergies, there is not a single foodstuff on the face of this planet which you can’t appreciate at least one bite of when carefully prepared by industry professionals in controlled conditions. The tasting dinners at Junk Ditch Brewing are the perfect playground for this sort of courageous odyssey of the palate. I urge you to explore with me–I promise you will not regret it. Trust your chef. With trust, an adventurous spirit, and a worthy guide we can learn to love anything–even things we once believed ourselves to hate. It’s time we taste every wonderous flavor this universe has to offer: preconceived notions be damned and promptly forgotten. Let’s let 2024 be the year that we explore and discover–with chefs as our sherpas and our tastebuds serving as our only compass. The future is a blank canvas. Let’s choose to fill it with the most delicious adventures. We’re brave enough. We’re bold enough. We can do it if we decide to. Afterall, we’re time travelers. We can’t see the future, but we can shape it. I don’t know what the next year will bring, but I know one thing with absolute certainty–my life will be so fucking delicious.
Plonk & Pleasure 
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