Sheesh!

Harrisburg, Pa., is pretty much the end of the trend line. But we do get multiple versions of everything.

Currently, it’s shishkabob restaurants. Last year, none. This year, three on one street within six blocks of each other.

* Skewers is in the old Mezzaluna space in the 300 block of Second Street, near Ceoltas.
* Second Street Kabobs is at North street, where Mama Rosa Italian Cuisine was.
* La Kasbah has opened above Forster Street in midtown at 913 N. Second.

Skewers is the most inviting of the three, so I met a friend for lunch there.

The kabobs on the luncheon menu are served as wraps with soup for about $10. The lentil soup was deep and hearty, the tomato was creamy. (We swapped bowls.)

I ordered the shish kabob, which came as two wraps of minced lamb pungent with ginger and cilantro. I decided to have one and take one to go for my wife, but once I started I couldn’t stop eating.

Also, the service was great.

Ten bucks? I’ll go back.

Free Lunch

News from the Left Coast:

Our friend Heidi Cotler, a former Tower Books exec who migrated to restaurant supplies, has a son who made the pages of US News & World Report last week. His name is Nate Keller; he’s an executive chef at Google in Silicon Valley. Yeah, that Google. The one on your computer.

It's a trend story about large firms moving toward classy corporate cafeteria service. Google serves breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks to its employees.



At Google, there is free lunch – and breakfast and dinner
By Renuka Rayasam
US News & World Report

Talent for competition is fierce in Silicon Valley's high-technology industry. But Google remains the gold standard for employee perks that help lure the best and brightest to its Mountain View, Calif., headquarters and keep them working around the clock.

"We wanted to take away all the basic needs of Googlers," says Nate Keller, one of three Google executive chefs. Perks like on-site haircuts and oil changes "take away the worry of general life."

Food has been at the core of those perks from the start. Founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page used a cook-off to hire executive chef Charlie Ayers when the company reached 30 employees in 1999. Now Google has about 6,800 employees. Keller took over as an executive chef in 2005 when Ayers left to start his own restaurant.

Last year the company hired Jon Dickman for the new position of global food services manager, and it's his formidable job to expand the company's dining services from five cafeterias to 15 by the end of the year, more than doubling the cooking staff.

Google keeps its employee stomachs full with free breakfast, lunch, and dinner, not to mention fully stocked snack areas around every corner. The main dining cafeteria is a sprawling room of floor-to-ceiling glass, long communal tables, and a stage for company presentations.

The cafeteria "provides a comfortable atmosphere for people to sit together," says Dickman. There are tables set up for a "dine with a stranger program" to encourage people from different departments to mix. "You find engineers sitting with communications people, and they talk about the wildest of things," he adds. It inspires the sort of creativity that Google has become famous for. Brin and Page often mingle with employees when they are in town.

But it's the food, which rivals that of California's best eateries, that really hits the spot. While Keller has to stay within a cost-per-person range, he's otherwise given free reign over Google's edibles. The cafe is so popular in Silicon Valley that chefs prepare about 1.5 times the amount of food needed to feed local employees just to accommodate guests who routinely wangle employee invitations.

Chefs buy meat and produce daily from organic farmers and local sellers and write their own menus. Ethnic touches cater to the company's international staff, with Indian entrees and made-to-order sushi and burrito stations. A panini sandwich press, bountiful salad bar, and dessert stations make choosing what to eat at Google almost as challenging as programming a new application.

Tomato days

That wondrous annual avalanche of tomatoes from friends who have too many plants is the best gift of September. Librarian Barb Roth has blessed us with two batches from her Perry County garden. We don't know how to can, so I've spent a couple days making sauce and freezing it.

This is an easy recipe from NYT's Mark Bittman, with a puttanesca bias. I'm using a large red onion with 3 or 4 tomatoes, all else to taste.


Pasta Sauce

Red onion, chopped
Dried chile pepper flakes, handful
Mushrooms, sliced
Garlic, minced
Tomatoes, peeled
Capers
Black olives, pitted
Tomato puree (optional)

Saute onion and chile flakes in olive oil
Add mushrooms and garlic as onions soften
Crush tomatoes into pan
Add capers and olives
Cook at medium high for 10 minutes or so until tomatoes are saucy
Thicken with puree if needed

Serve over any long pasta with grated Parmesano Reggiano

Bayou

At last.

We thought we had a winner when The Quarter finally opened up downtown on Second Street after months of buildout, but the NOLA look was only a facade. No Cajun food, no Creole food, no beignets with cafe au lait.

Now then ... move on up the road to the 1500 block of Second Street, and Bayou will show you wheah y’at, darlin’. It was Chef Matthew Black’s summer entry in the city’s culinary contest.

Dee and I went for lunch with arts editor Arthi Subramaniam, who ordered the Pecan Fried Chicken. She passed some my way. It almost floated off the platter, it was so delicate. Dee had a fried oyster po boy — half the size of a New Orleans po boy, but with all the taste and a side of creole potato salad.

I looked up at the specials board and saw a softshell crab etouffee, but I gasped at the price: $27. For lunch. It’s just not soft shell season on the Susquehanna. A guy at the next table named Big Mike saw my consternation and mentioned he’d just had the dish, and it was worth the price.

It probably was, but part of my love for New Orleans food is that it’s not expensive. Oh, there’s an Emeril’s or two, but you don't have to go there to eat well.

So I went for BBQ Shrimp with Dirty Rice and a Black Pepper Biscuit.

The shrimp were wonderfully juicy, the rice tangy, the biscuit took me back to buttery breakfasts on the bay.

Yeah, baby.

Bayou