Apparently Satterfield's restaurant and Royal Cup Coffee took to heart our recent review of Satterfield's, in which we lamented that about the only blot on an otherwise excellent meal was the very wimpy coffee -- which was rather a surprise considering that many coffee aficionados consider French Press method, which Satterfield's uses, the best way to make coffee. We went back to Satterfield's over the weekend to celebrate Deborah's birthday. Our server was the same as last time, and when it came time for after dinner drinks and dessert, she told us they had fixed the coffee problem. So we gave it a try, and indeed, the coffee was much better -- strong, dark and robust. As we were leaving, the dining room manager even followed us out the door to ask about the coffee. Royal Cup had come out and adjusted the measurements and a couple of other things. So bravo to both companies listening to and responding to customer complaints.

Our dinner was again excellent; a few highlights included the chilled roasted tomato soup; a warm salad of Snows Bend Farm tatsoi and asparagus, which tasted incredibly fresh yet earthy with accents of some small roasted beets and morel mushrooms; possibly the best chicken breast we've ever had; spicy crawfish tagliatele with fat crawfish tails, corn, Duroc bacon, poblano pepper, fava beans and pickled okra; pan roasted venison leg with baby carrots, Honshimeji mushrooms, apricot-raisin chutney and ancho Infused Bittersweet Chocolate; and Deborah's birthday dessert, Coconut Frangipane, a coconut cake with bittersweet chocolate center, soft bitter caramel, and coconut sorbet.

Only a couple of small things that could have been better -- the morels in the salad still had some grit in them; the coconut sorbet was largely melted by the time it got to the table (perhaps because of the time it took to write "Happy Birthday Deborah" in chocolate around the rim); and it was rather warm, with the A/C just not keeping up with the humidity (if you're planning to go in warm weather, plan to dress accordingly.) But the service was very good, wine recommendations were right on target, and we would definitely recommend Satterfield's as one of the city's best restaurants. Executive Chef Haller Magee is one to watch.

Monday, May 19, is the last day of the legislative session, and according to Free The Hops, HB196, the Gourmet Beer Bill, will be on the calendar. The organization, which is trying to get Alabama law changed to allow gourmet craft beers that are higher in alcohol than is  currently allowed, asks those who are interested to please call your senators over the next week, and politely request them to support HB196, the Gourmet Beer Bill, if you have not done so already.

You can read more about this issue in our January blog post on the subject and at www.freethehops.org.

HB196, the Gourmet Beer Bill, is up for vote in the Alabama Senate this week, most likely on Tuesday May 6, according to the Free the Hops organization, which is lobbying to get changes made to state law that will allow the sale of higher-alcohol "craft" beers.

Here's the message from Stuart Carter, president of Free the Hops: "Now is the time to call your state senator and let him or her know that you want HB196 to pass! Because the Gourmet Beer Bill has already passed the State House of Representatives, this is the final step before sending this bill to the Governor. It's very close, so please contact your senator to express your support ... When this bill was debated in the House, many legislators spoke of the dozens of phone calls they received from their constituents. Your phone calls and e-mails really do make a difference."

Here's a good article on the topc from Black & White: www.bwcitypaper.com/Articles-i-2008-03-20-215511.112112_A_Change_Is_Brewing.html

And a piece on The Terminal explaining the bill, plus another one related to homebrewing:
http://bhamterminal.com/mybirmingham/2008/03/03/free-the-hops-and-the-gourmet-beer-bills/ 

And for the view from the outside, here's a piece in the LA Times from March:
www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-beer10mar10,1,785594.story?page=1&ctrack=4&cset=true

• Spencer Clarke, owner and founder of Amizetta Vineyards, will be pouring his collection of Napa Valley wines on the patio overlooking the Cahaba River at the River Run Piggly Wiggly Saturday, May 3, from 4 to 6 p.m. Clarke will also provide the musical entertainment for the evening, playing a variety of tunes from his rock n' roll library stretching back to the 70s. Heavy hors d'oeuvres will be matched with the five wines that will be poured. Tickets for the event are $35 each and can be purchased at any Piggly Wiggly or Tria Market.
  
• May 17 is the Shelby County Art and Wine Trail. The three Shelby County wineries team up for a  wine weekend event with music and local arts.
• Starting May 1 you can pre-buy your tickets for the Second Annual Magic City Brewfest at Sloss Furnaces, May 31-June 1. It's a celebration of the great beers of the world, paired with the finest food from the Birmingham area. Come and learn about beer while sampling some of the different brews! Learn more at MagicCityBrewfest.com.
  
• Looking for Mother's Day brunch? Satterfield's restaurant in Cahaba Heights is advertising a special Mother's Day menu featuring items such as spring pea and morel soup, Caesar salad, hickory grilled pizza, bacon-and-caramelized-onion quiche, house-smoked Scottish salmon, crab cake Benedict and hickory grilled hanger steak. Veranda on Highland is also advertising a Mother's Day brunch. Reservations are recommended for both.
  
• Table restaurant in Crestline village is now serving Sunday brunch, with offerings such as chocolate beignets, banana bread French toast, buckwheat pancakes, omelettes, blue crab Benedict, grilled salmon salad, shrimp and grits, steak and eggs, fried chicken salad, tempura fish sandwich, and the Table burger (with caramelized onions, bleu cheese and oven-dried tomatoes). 
• Prairie Fire Grille in Greystone has added more tables, new flowers and new umbrellas to its patio for outdoor dining.
• Crestline Village will be getting a new restaurant in May, the second location for fledgling Italian restaurant chain MAFIAoZA's out of Nashville. The restaurant will have an outside patio, a full-service bar with an extensive wine list and menu offerings including stone-oven pizzas and New York-style Italian dishes. The Crestline Village location is the first in Alabama and the fourth location overall. It will be modeled after the original Nashville location, which caters to families - offering kids pizza dough to play with and the opportunity to watch pizzas being made - and to young professionals. The Mountain Brook location will be open until midnight on weekends and until 10:30 p.m. Sunday and Tuesday-Thursday.
  
• Whole Foods is now carrying our favorite local coffee from Primavera Coffee Roasters in Cahaba Heights. They also carry Higher Ground coffee, based in Leeds.
• Jefferson State Community College's newest building on Valleydale Road houses its Culinary & Hospitality Institute and a new endeavor, Bistro proVare, a cafe open for lunch Monday through Tursday 11:30-1 p.m. Dishes are planned, prepared and served by students as part of the curriculum. A three-course meal is $10; call 983-5214 for reservations. Also since the new facility opened, a series of single-session community culinary classes have been quite popular; for more information, go to www.jeffstateonline.com/chi or call 856-7719. 
• A well-known Bessemer restaurant that was forced to close to make way for a new Jefferson County courthouse has re-opened at a new location in Alabaster. Bevelle's Cafeteria is now serving home-style cooking at the CC Food Mart on Industrial Road, off U.S. 31 near Shelby Baptist Medical Center. The location is smaller than what owner Eddie Bevelle had in Bessemer, but he's expecting to do a lot of takeout business, reports the Birmingham News. 
• Taziki's Greek Fare is opening another location, this one in Liberty Park, next to Billy's on Overton Road. Opening date is targeted for June 15.
• Bellini's is a new Italian restaurant on Cahaba Valley Road, owned by Benard Tamburello, who also owns La Dolce Vita in Hoover. For more information call 981-5380.

The Birmingham Business Journal, it seems, can go months without having anything about the city's restaurant business, but a recent issue had two articles.

One was a look at whether Birmingham could become one of the cities to have its own Zagat Guide. As the article notes, "Birmingham has begun to make a name for itself on the culinary scene." Highlands chef/owner Frank Stitt is up for a national chef award from the James Beard Foundation, with Hot & Hot's Chris Hastings up for the regional award that Stitt won several years ago. "But despite the accolades and recognition, there is one status symbol of culinary success that has eluded the Magic City: the venerable Zagat guide," says writer Ty West. The guides feature the results of customer surveys and is regarded as a "food and travel bible."

A Zagat's representative told the BBJ reporter that the company considers several factors to determine if there is demand for an area, including the number of reviews online at www.zagat.com, plus requests or petitions from members or from an area's culinary industry. Daniel Briggs, who runs daniel george restaurant in Mountain Brook with co-chef and co-owner George McMillan, told the BBJ that while the city is experiencing an increase in second- and third-generation chefs who are branching out from the area's established restaurants to start their own, he's not sure if the city could support its own Zagat guide just yet. Tom Robey, executive chef at the Veranda on Highland, said he believes the city will be able to support a guide in the next few years.

The other BBJ article was an interview with Robey, who became executive chef at the Veranda on Highland after spending 18 years at the Commander's Palace restaurant in New Orleans. A few tidbits: One of the things that sets Veranda apart from other restaurants in the area is its Sunday jazz brunch. When asked about his cooking style, he said, "I get the best ingredients and I let them speak for themselves. I don't feel a dish should have 17 different adjectives to make it a great dish." Favorite food at home? Grilling and a lot of Italian food (he grew up in New Jersey so ate a lot of Italian-American food. My follow-up question would have been, what's his favorite Italian restaurant in town?).

We recently spent an exquisite evening (and a lot of money) at Jinsei in downtown Homewood. This high-end, sleek, sophisticated, small Japanese restaurant is not like others in town. From the salmon skin sushi rolls to the Kobe beef mini-burgers, from the fatty tuna and salmon nigiri to the Kobe beef carpaccio, every dish was memorable. Read all about it in our review.

On a freelancer's budget, we have long been proponents of wine bargains. There's something fun about discovering a really nice wine that's only $10. In fact, it's rare we pay over $20 retail for a bottle of wine. Now some studies are confirming what we knew all along: sometimes paying a lot for a wine is overrated.

Food writer Robin Goldstein got 500 volunteers (including wine experts as well as everyday wine drinkers) to do blind tastings of more than 6,000 glasses of wine. The results? 100 wines under $15 consistently outperformed their more-expensive cousins. The results are detailed in a new book to be released May 1, "The Wine Trials: 100 Everyday Wines Under $15 that Beat $50 to $150 Wines in Brown-Bag Blind Tastings."

In another study, done by the California Institute of Technology and Stanford University, found that changes in the stated price of a  wine influenced not only how good volunteers thought it tasted, but even the activity of a brain region that is involved in our experience of pleasure. Volunteers tasted five wine samples which, they were told, were identified by their different retail prices: $5, $10, $35, $45, and $90 per bottle. While the subjects tasted and evaluated the wines, their brains were scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI. The subjects consistently reported that they liked the taste of the $90 bottle better than the $5 one, and the $45 bottle better than the $35 one.

There was a catch to the experiment, however. Although the subjects had been told that they would taste five different, variously priced wines, they actually had sampled only three. Wines 1 and 2 were used twice, but labeled with two different prices. For example, wine 2 was presented as the $90 wine (its actual retail price) and also as the $10 wine. When the subjects were told the wine cost $90 a bottle, they loved it; at $10 a bottle, not so much. In a follow-up experiment, the subjects again tasted all five wine samples, but without any price information; this time, they rated the cheapest wine as their most preferred. Here's a link to an article on the study: http://pr.caltech.edu/periodicals/CaltechNews/articles/v42/price.html

We're all for a big toast to the new Alabama Wine Trail, but apparently some teetotallers are feeling some sour grapes -- and giving Alabama another black eye, like the snickers we get for banning vibrators.

According to an Associated Press story that's popping up all over, the Alabama Wineries Association and the Alabama Mountain Lakes Tourist Association came up with the trail to attract visitor's to the state's  wineries. But the Chilton Baptist Association has spoken out against it.

Tourist brochures, the story says, will list the eight participating wineries in the state, and visitors will get a "passport" to get stamped at each winery. Anyone who visits all the wineries will get a wine glass with the logos of each company.

We'd love to know more about this wine trail, but other than this AP story, a Google search doesn't seem to pull up anything official online. In fact, when you Google "Alabama Wine Trail," the first things that come up are the articles about the Baptist protest. The Alabama Wineries Association does not appear to have a working web site. The tourist group has a web site, but if there's anything on there about the wine trail, it's well hidden. We checked out the web site of Vizzini Farms Winery, which was quoted in the AP article -- nada. So we look forward to actually getting one of these brochures and enjoying some Alabama wine. We have had a viognier from Vizzini that was quite nice, which we picked up at Tria Market. (We've also seen Alabama wines at Whole Foods and even occasionally at Publix.)

There are eight wineries in Alabama, according to the state Department of Agriculture: Wills Creek Vineyards in Attalla, Morgan Creek Vineyards in Harpersville, Perdido Vineyards in Perdido, Bryant Vineyards in Talledega, White Oak Vineyards in Anniston, The Winery on Main in Clanton, Ozan Vineyards in Calera and Vizzini Farms Winery in Calera. (By the way, Ozan, also in Calera, is getting ready to release its Chilton County Peach, 06 Merlot, 06 Sangiovese, Shelby Blanc Scuppernong, and 06 Vidal April 17.)

Now I don't want to get into a theological discussion about wine, but even Billy Graham once pointed out that Jesus drank wine. In a Time magazine article in 1977 about new President Jimmy Carter saying he would not serve anything stronger than wine, Graham pointed out that Jesus miraculously turned six huge jars of water into wine at the wedding at Cana (John 2: 1-11). "That wasn't grape juice, as some of them try to claim," added Graham, reported Time.

And here are a few interesting insights on what the Bible says about wine, courtesy of the web site www.godandscience.org:

• "Go eat your bread with enjoyment, and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has  already approved what you do," Ecl. 9:7
• "Thou doest cause the grass to grow for the cattle....and wine to gladden the heart of man," Psalm 104 14
• Most of Jesus' parables were about vineyards. He used wine and wineskins, and vines, and winepresses to illustrate spiritual points.
  
• John the Baptist did not drink wine (Luke 1:15 & 7:33), but Jesus did drink wine, and was even accused of being a drunkard. (Luke 7:34) 
  
• Jesus gave wine the highest honour of representing His precious blood during the last  supper, and asks His followers to use wine in remembrance of His death until He comes.  (Luke 22: 18-20)

A few weeks ago, the folks from Primavera Coffee packed up and went to Atlanta's Octane Coffee Bar & Lounge for its first "Thursday Night Throwdown," a barista competition. Primavera's Brett Burton was the winner, and wife and busines partner Havila took fourth place. Even better, it was documented by a CNN reporter in a photo essay, which you can see online here: www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/04/04/coffee.art/index.html

As the Primaverans explain on their blog, each barista was given three minutes to pour one drink that embodied their skill. The drink was then photographed & projected onto a screen, accompanied by the scores of a panel of blind judges who analyzed the following: 1) Balance & Symmetry 2) Color Infusion & Definition 3) Use of Space 4) Overall Impression. Brett's winning pour was a small rosetta latte.

(Next time we're in Atlanta, we'll definitely be checking out Octane. Brett says it's the best coffee shop in the state, and we love what it says at the top of their web site: "We open early and close late. We're not sure, but we think it has something to do with the coffee.")

One complaint we sometimes see in this site's reader reviews, often about otherwise good restaurants, is a sense of being rushed. Gotta admit, this is a pet peeve of ours, especially at a higher-end establishment. I want to have time to sip on my wine and enjoy some good conversation in between courses. When entrees arrive before we've even finished appetizers or salad, that really reduces the enjoyment of our meal. If we want fast food, we'll go to Milo's.

We never have that problem anymore, because here's what we started doing: We refuse to order our entrees at the same time we order our appetizers. Even if we already know what we want for the main event, when we order the appetizer, we tell our server we haven't decided yet on the entrees and will wait to order until after we've finished our appetizer. If they don't take the hint and come ask us again for our order, we'll nicely tell them that we aren't in a hurry, that we want to take the time to really enjoy the meal. As a result, it's not unusual for us to spend two or three hours having a three-course dinner.

We enjoy each bite, each sip. In between courses we get a chance to talk, or may enjoy a chance to chat with our server or the owner or the restaurant's resident wine expert, whether it be a formal sommelier or a particularly wine-savvy server.

We've never really had any problems with this approach. In fact, servers and restaurant owners often seem to really appreciate the fact that we want to take time to fully enjoy the meal.