We had a brief moment of panic Saturday night when our server at Little Savannah told us they had sold out of the herb-marinated wild boar tenderloin that Evan was salivating over. Thanks goodness chef Clif Holt had put one aside for us after his wife/partner Maureen told him we had expressed interest in it to her during a pre-dinner chat.

We've never had wild boar before (and I only got one taste!), but it was incredibly flavorful, yet not what I would call gamey. It bore very little resemblance to commercial pork. Where a domesticated pork tenderloin is light pink, fine-grained and tender, the boar was deep ruby red, coarser-grained and firmer, though not tough or chewy.

(Read more about wild boar at Chow.com)

My seared scallops, while perhaps not as adventurous, were divine, perfectly cooked and seasoned. They were served with braised pork cheeks, which was another new experience for us.

Here's what theotherwhitemeat.com has to say about pork cheeks: "As suggested by the name, pork cheek is a rich, highly flavorful cut that originates in the hog’s cheek. Because the cheek muscles do considerable chewing, the cut is typically rich in fat. Cheek also is not traditionally a tender cut, so it is best when prepared using gentle, moist-heat cooking methods such as braising and stewing." Braised as they were at Little Savannah, they fell apart into tender shreds that I ate with the wonderful grilled asparagus and some sauteed mushrooms that I could have eaten a whole plate of.

Little Savannah also has a cocktail menu that's one of our favorites, a nice mix of classics and creative originals, several using infused vodkas. I had a drink that was new, not on the list, a mojito-style drink with vodka, grapefruit juice and sage. We chuckled over the "Southern Baptist Martini" -- Absolut Mandarin, coconut and sprite.

Not everything was perfect; the red wine a bit too warm, a few dishes needed some salt, but those were fairly minor details.

We also enjoyed chatting with Clif and Maureen. (Hope they don't mind us borrowing the photo from their web site, where you'll find recent menus, cooking class schedules and a full bio.) Clif is a Cullman boy who traveled the world in the Navy; Maureen, a Birmingham native, turned to the restaurant world to finance her education but ended up staying. If you've ever found other restaurants too stuffy, chefs too full of themselves, Little Savannah is the antidote. The atmosphere is nice-casual and funky, with wine menu headings spelled out in a sort of Southern phonics ("Seer-aahhh", "Peeno-nwire"), and a logo that looks to be inspired by Harley-Davidson's.

Little Savannah is the type of neighborhood restaurant that makes us wish we lived in that neighborhood.

Years ago, before you could find anything you wanted on the Internet, we used to drool over catalogs from Salsa Express, with every sort of salsa and hot sauce imaginable. One year I even ordered hubby some habanero brittle for Christmas!

These days, we're finding some fantastic hot sauce locally. Earlier this year, we discovered African Rhino Peri-Peri Hot Sauce, made in Vestavia Hills.

Recently at the Pepper Place Market, we discovered another great local hot sauce: Not Yo Mama's, based in Homewood. Their original product is a pepper marmalade, made with red and yellow sweet bell peppers, cane sugar, cider vinegar, orange zest, mango, and serrano peppers. The slightly spicy, sweet and sour marmalade is great poured over cream cheese with crackers for a quick and easy appetizer, or as a glaze for pork or chicken or seafood. I'm not usually wild about the salsa-poured-over-cream-cheese trick, but this was really good, and I promptly bought a jar. There's also a hotter version made with habanero peppers. The marmalade was featured in Southern Living last December.

What I really loved, though, was the habanero hot sauce. Many habanero hot sauces have so much heat, it's hard to taste anything else. Not Yo Mama's is nice and hot, but also has a great flavor. We've had it on beans and rice, a spinach-and-goat-cheese quesadilla, eggs and more. 

Right now, the hot sauce is only available at the Not Yo Mama's booths at Pepper Place Market and the Ross Bridge farmers market. It should be available for retail before the end of the year. You can order the marmalades online and find it at stores, and their Bloody Mary mix will be on the site and in stores hopefully by the end of the month.

Enjoy a top-rated barbecue competition and live music this weekend at Sloss Furnaces at the fourth annual Stokin' the Fire BBQ and Music Festival.

The BBQ competition is KCBS (Kansas City Barbeque Society) professionally sanctioned and judged event. A maximum of 54 teams will compete for $20,000 in cash and prizes. Winners advance to national competition. Amateurs will be competing in a separate competition (all spot are full).

You also can buy barbecue from Nashville-based Governor's BBQ and Carolina Barbeque Company, both previous award winners, as well as shaved ice treats from Tropical Adventure and homemade ice cream and freshly roasted hot dogs.

Festival hours are Friday 4pm to 11pm and Saturday 11am to 11pm.

More info at their website: http://stokin.slossfurnaces.com/index.html

In a blog entry at Epicurious.com, Michael Y. Park writes about how the author of The Wine Trials, Robin Goldstein, set out to test Wine Spectator magazine's method of determining its awards of excellence. As part of research for an academic paper, he got the magazine to give its Award of Excellence to a restaurant that doesn't exist.

Read Goldstein's blog about the experiment here. As he notes, "While Osteria L’Intrepido may be the first to win an Award of Excellence for an imaginary restaurant, it’s unlikely that it was the first submission that didn’t accurately reflect the contents of a restaurant’s wine cellar. Restaurants, like all businesses, have strong incentives to embellish their images online."

We first became skeptical of Wine Spectator's Award of Excellence nearly 10 years ago, when a visit to a local restaurant that advertised its award was so disappointing that it prompted us to start Bhamdining.com. We talked about our own concerns about the awards in this blog entry a year ago, and in a follow-up where Pardis Stitt explained her and Frank's decision to stop applying for the awards for Highlands and Bottega, which arguably have some of the best wine lists in town, several years ago.

In short, there are no doubt many restaurants that deserve their Wine Spectator award, but some don't. I wouldn't let the award be your only determining factor in deciding whether an establishment is worth trying.

After many delays, it looks like o kafés! coffeehouse will finally open in the Martin Biscuit Building at Pepper Place this weekend, assuming they pass a final Health Department inspection.
 
Owners Kirk Summers and Erin Isbell roast their coffee locally and sell it online and through local stores such as V. Richard's. If you go to Pepper Place Saturday Market, you've seen their popular booth selling hot and iced coffees.

To celebrate the coffee shop opening, the owners are holding a concert in the coffeehouse Sunday night, Aug. 24 at 7 p.m. Sally Barris from Nashville (www.myspace.com/sallybarris) will be playing and some local musicians will be joining in. A $10 donation is requested to defray the singer’s expenses.
 
"If we are officially open and operational, we will have food and drinks available for purchase," Kirk writes. "Regardless, feel free to bring your own alcoholic beverages."
 
o kafés! coffeehouse
2901 2nd Ave S.
Suite 120
Birmingham, AL  35233
www.okafes.com

Mudtown Eat & Drink in the Cahaba Heights area of Vestavia Hills has a new wine list and updated draft beer selection.

On Aug. 28, Mudtown's wine list and food will be featured at a wine tasting at the Wine Cellar in Vestavia Hills; see more info at www.thewinecellar.info.

Mudtown also has Wine Down Wednesdays every Wednesday, with ½ all bottles; ½ house wine by the glass, and Thirsty Thursdays, with $2 for everything on tap all day. 

The new draft list includes Good People Brown, which is brewed here in Birmingham, and two Emerald Coast beers, which is locally owned and brewed in Melbourne, Fla. Georgia companies Sweetwater and Terrapin are also featured on the list (including a Terrapin rye ale, which sounds interesting), with Stella Artois, Blue Moon and for you less adventurous types, Miller Light, filling out the list.

The wine list is not large but looks great -- none of those same-old-same-old mass market names you often see on smaller lists, with mouth-watering descriptions. There's wine from California, Washington, Australia and Spain. For instance, theres an Oxford Landing Sauvignon Blanc from South Australia, with "classic aromas of freshly cut grass with flavors of passionfruit, zesty citrus and green tropical fruits," and an Esperanza from Spain with "lots of mineral, fresh herbs and melons on the nose followed by concentrated fruit flavors and great balance." On the red side, the description of the Parducci Merlot from Medocino is almost enough to make me try Merlot again: "smoky black cherry, tobacco, mint and toasty oak aromas with black cherry, plum, and rich earth and clove spice flavors."

The Birmingham News has anointed Big Daddy's Bar-B-Q in Warrior with the gold medal for the "Best Ribs in Birmingham." Not sure I'd consider Warrior part of Birmingham, but it sounds like it might be worth a trip up I-65. According to last Friday's City Scene, Paul Woodard learned the art of barbecue growing up in Chicago but worked in the mortgage business before opening Big Daddy's two years ago. Judges say the ribs are "very tender and juicy."

(For those of you who may not realize they have some very good BBQ in the Midwest -- does anyone besides us remember the M*A*S*H episode where they managed to get ribs sent to Korea from Adam's Rib in Chicago?)

Check out http://www.myspace.com/bdbbq407 for the menu and video of the ribs judging.

The silver medal went to Dreamland Bar-B-Que, bronze to Jim 'N Nick's.

Monday, Aug. 25, more than 50 of Birmingham’s finest restaurants will join together for a one-night culinary extravaganza to help end childhood hunger. 

Share our Strength's Taste of the Nation's Birmingham event will be held at McWane Science Center from 6-9 p.m. Enjoy food and cocktail tastings, browse auction items, and mingle with area chefs.

A sampling of participating restaurants, caterers and beverage companies: Anchorage, Brock's, Buttermilk Hill, Cafe Iz, daniel george, Demitri's BBQ, Franklin’s Homewod Gourmet, GianMarco’s, Icon, Kathy G & Co., La Dolce Vita/Bellini’s, MudTown Eat & Drink Open Door Café, Salem’s Diner, Savage’s, Shula’s, the Veranda on Highland, Internaitonal Wines, Milo’s Tea, Morgan Creek Vineyards, Royal Cup.

For more information and to buy tickets, click here. 

No, there's no food, unless you count trail mix or bags of Zapp's potato chips, or takeout from O.T.'s  next door, but Lou's Pub & Package Store in the Lakeview area was for years a big part of our evenings out -- and now it will never be the same, with the death of owner and founder Lou Zaden this week.

Zaden, who was 59, greeted customers with "Hey, Baby!" and was known for giving customer a hard time -- all in fun. The bar was named by Esquire magazine last year as one of the Best Bars in America, and celebrated its 21st anniversary this month.

Lou's Pub has often been compared to bar in the TV show "Cheers," where "everybody knows your name."

We haven't been to Lou's as often in recent years, as having a preschooler does put a damper on alcoholic binges. Last time I was there, with my sister, Lou put on a big act of acting hurt, putting his nose up in the air and ignoring me before giving me a big smile.

As the Birmingham Business Journal noted in a 2003 article, Lou's had a major role in the Lakeview renaissance, which began in the mid-1980s and has expanded in recent years.

Some links to articles old and new:

• Birmingham News' story by Bob Carlton on Zaden's death
  
• Bob Carlton's AL.com blog, with lots of tributes from readers
• Video on CBS 42 on Zaden's death
• "In Memory of Lou" at the blog DrinkatWork.com
  
• "Shut up and Drink a Beer," Birmingham Business Journal, May 2003

Melanie Safka , famous for the No. 1 hit “Brand New Key,” “Beautiful People” and “Lay Down (Candles in the Rain),” will perform at Veranda on Highland restaurant Aug. 19 as part of the “Veranda Summer Singer and Songwriter Series.”

Accompanying Melanie’s performance are selections from an exclusive “Songwriter menu” created by Veranda’s executive chef Tom Robey. The menu features appetizers such as a crab, watermelon and tomato salad, and main courses like grilled Duroc pork tenderloin with a sweet potato and smoked mushroom hash.

“Melanie, a legendary performer and songwriter, became the voice of an era,” Robey said. “It’s a rare opportunity to experience one of the best in the business in a personal venue like Veranda on Highland. Offering the finest quality is our mantra for both food and entertainment. Whether I’m preparing fresh seafood or homegrown vegetables or a famous artist is on the stage, our customers are offered nothing but excellence.”

Melanie’s career took flight after playing at Woodstock, where her song “Beautiful People” inspired listeners to begin the tradition of holding candles or lighters in the air. This led the young performer to write one of her most recognizable songs, “Lay Down (Candles in the Rain).” It sold over one million copies in 1970 and earned her “ Female Vocalist of the Year” honors from Billboard, Cashbox, Melody Maker, Record World and Bravo.

Another signature tune, “Brand New Key,” topped the charts in 1971. A year later, she was the second artist after the Beatles to have three separate singles on Billboard magazine’s hot 100 chart simultaneously (“Brand New Key,” “Ring The Living Bell” and “The Nickel Song”).

Cocktails are available beginning at 5:30 p.m., followed by dinner at 6:45 p.m. and the show at 8:15 p.m. The cost is $75, which includes a three course meal and the show. Seats are limited and require reservations, which can be made by calling Veranda on Highland at (205) 939-5551. Additional information is available at www.verandaonhighland.com .

For more information on the artist and her latest projects, visit www.melaniesmusic.com .

The “Veranda Summer Singer and Songwriter Series” concludes on September 2 with No. 1 songwriter Richard Leigh .