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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Chef Reny Alfonso at Bog & Barley

Reny Alfonso’s favorite catch phrase — “Does not suck yo!” — could apply to his career choice.

He almost had to become a chef.

“My grandmother, I remember vividly, every week we would pick a different country we were learning about and she would make something from that country,” says Alfonso, director of operations at Celtic Crossing and Bog & Barley.

Born in San José, Costa Rica, Alfonso remembers his grandmother making “straight-up paella” from Spain one time. “When we did the United States, she made apple pie.”

Alfonso loved being in the kitchen. “I’ve always liked the heart of where all the parties were.”

His father’s best friend, who held all-day cookouts at his house, taught Alfonso how to grill. “It would start out with sausage on the grill. And you’d eat that with some bread and some chimichurri. Someone would throw on some sweet breads and some octopus after that. A short rib would go on. Then a prime rib.

“The kids would be in the pool swimming and I’d be on the grill.”

Alfonso’s first restaurant job was Mark’s on the Grove in Coral Gables, Florida. One night, his brother-in-law couldn’t pick him up after work. “The chef said he would take me home. On the way home, we went to a bar. And I stood there at a bar having a beer with all the cooks and shit. And I said, ‘I definitely want to do this for the rest of my life.’

“For me, it was almost like finding a second family. A bunch of people with one direction and one goal. And just having a good time doing it at the same time.”

Alfonso, who went to culinary school at Johnson & Wales University – North Miami, worked his way through some of the top restaurants in Florida and New York.

In 2005, he became executive chef of Chez Philippe at The Peabody. “We changed the menu, the whole format, to a French-Asian concept.”

He began doing charcuterie after a trip to Austria, where he watched The Peabody’s pastry chef Konrad Spitzbart’s family cure meat. “I converted my house in Mud Island to a cure room. I had two cure boxes set up in my garage, three set up in The Peabody, and then I built a giant smoker in the garage at my house for cold smoking.”

The Chez Philippe menu featured “whatever was coming out of the cure box at the time of service. We did from snout to tail.”

In 2010, Alfonso moved to Philadelphia to work for Starr Restaurants for the next decade.

Alfonso’s friend DJ Naylor, who owns Celtic Crossing, told him his new restaurant idea. “He always had a dream to build something bigger than what a traditional Irish pub would be, but still with the heart and feel of an Irish pub.”

In 2021, Naylor and Alfonso began working on Naylor’s dream restaurant: Bog & Barley. “‘Bog’ is ‘from the earth.’ And ‘barley’ is for the whiskey aspect.

“The idea I had for this is, ‘Yes, it’s an Irish restaurant. And, yes, we have Irish dishes on the menu. But I don’t want to do them the way they’re stereotypically portrayed.’ I had managed so many different restaurants over the last 10, 15 years, I wanted to incorporate a little bit of what I learned at those restaurants.”

Alfonso keeps a little bit of Ireland in his non-Irish dishes. “I took steak au poivre and, instead of using brandy, we’re using Irish whiskey in the sauce. For the pork porterhouse, I’ve got an Irish cider glaze on it.”

Alfonse hired Joel Lemay as Bog & Barley’s executive chef and Max Williams as Celtic Crossing’s executive chef. “I’m in the kitchen with both of them.”

Alfonso doesn’t want Bog & Barley to be stuffy. “This restaurant, as fancy as it may look, is not a fancy restaurant. You can come in whenever you want and have whatever you want. It’s affordable.”

The restaurant is “approachable on a regular basis, not just a special occasion.”

Bog & Barley is at 6150 Poplar Avenue, Suite 124, in Regalia Shopping Center.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Brown Water Weather

It’s still cold and wet, and you’re still broke. The romantics and better halves may call it “snuggle weather,” but you and I know better. You’re possibly on the end of a Dry January, but now those bills are starting to show up and, well, you need a bracer. This, my friend, is “whiskey weather.”

When is it not? We are living in a golden age of bourbon: Distillers have elevated America’s spirit from rotgut to an art form, and they should be proud of themselves. And to look at the price point of some of these artisan products, they really are. To wit: Here are some exceptional whiskeys for the enthusiast whose credit limit isn’t quite what it was on Black Friday:

Old Forester’s flagship bourbon retails for about $19 and is not rotgut, but it is your grandfather’s bourbon. When my friend Tom Morris became master distiller (he started working for the former master distiller in high school), he wanted to up the brand’s game. And he has. Old Forester has several expressions in the $55 to $65 range, and some higher. Every bottle I’ve ever had has been worth the money (assuming that you have it). Hidden among these boozy gems is Old Forester Signature — which will cost you about $26. A friend of mine and I had a side by side with Old Forester’s Signature and the coveted Birthday expression, which was about $55 at the time. We both agreed that the Birthday was the better whiskey, but was it twice as good? What we decided was that Signature was one of the best bourbons for the price.

If you are angling for a local favorite, Blue Note has a couple of expressions that won’t break the bank: Juke Joint comes in at $29. Like Old Forester, Blue Note has some bourbons at a higher price point, and they’ve been worth the money. While Juke Joint has a touch of heat, it really is a great value. Blue Note’s Crossroads comes in at $39, is finished in French oak barrels, and, at 100 proof, I don’t guess you need that much to forget your problems. Either will warm your cockles when you start getting miserly about the thermostat.

If you want to try something a little outside that classic bourbon taste profile, a favorite that I’ve written about before is Old Dominick’s Bourbon Whiskey at $39. What gets me excited is the high rye content, which gives it wonderful spice pepper notes. For a whiskey to be legally called bourbon, it must have at least 51 percent corn — so there is that round sweetness from the corn, but at 44 percent rye, the sweet is balanced with spice.

If you were carousing at a Bobby Burns dinner last week, you might be thinking that you want to give Scotch whiskey a whirl. (Do it for me!) If nothing else, it will wash the taste of haggis out of your mouth. A word of caution — if you love those peaty Islay whiskeys, sadly, you are just going to have to pay up. Going cheap here is awful. If you are looking for a solid drinkable Scotch, stick to Speyside and Highland whiskeys. Without all the peat and smoke, there is a lot less to go horribly wrong. Besides, there is also less to freak the seasoned bourbon drinker out.

Tomatin has a 12-year-old single malt finished in a cherry cask that will cost only $39. It’s a Highland Scotch, but light enough to where I’d initially thought it was Speyside. It is soft, with some notes of crème brûlée, and if you are looking for a single malt under $40 these days, this is about the best you are going to get.

At any rate, cheer up: Warm weather is around the corner, and they just might raise your credit limit.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Whiskey Barrel Beers

On a ramble through Kentucky’s Bourbon Fest a few years ago, I happened across a most Kentuckian innovation: ale aged in bourbon barrels. These days, it isn’t as random — or Kentucky — as it seems. Goose Island Brewing has been monkeying around with a Bourbon County Stout since the 1990s. So, bourbon-barrel beer? It’s worth a try.

Likely as a result of the bourbon boom in the last decade, brewers have been trying the same technique with lighter styles. With the surge of popularity for bourbon, a “two great tastes that taste great together” experiment seems to be happening, making bourbon-barrel beer the boozy version of a peanut butter cup. The bourbon boom has also done something else — made used whiskey barrels a lot cheaper.

This is because bourbon distillers, by law, can use those charred white-oak barrels for mellowing moonshine into the nectar of the Gods only one time. Making beer, on the other hand, is a short-term process; no one wants a beer that’s a couple of years old. Whiskey needs several years in barrels to take away the harshness of the freshly made stuff. The barrels expand and contract with seasonal temperature fluctuations, so that the whiskey soaks into and out of the charred wood — which makes Kentucky, with its hot summers and cold winters, the perfect place to make the stuff. Wood is porous, so there is evaporation — called the “angels’ share” — of up to 1 percent of the volume per year. The angels’ share doesn’t all go into the air, however; a fair bit stays in the wooden staves.

The barrels are perfectly good, but can’t be reused if the product is going to legally be classed as bourbon. Traditionally, these gently used barrels were sold to Scotch distillers to help recoup costs. That still happens, but bourbon production is now so high that there are more barrels than the Scots need, so they are being used to age sherry, brandy, tequila, and, yes, beer.

Storing beer in whiskey barrels draws that angels’ share out and into the beer. Traditional stainless steel vats provide more precision in the beer-brewing process. No two used barrels are exactly alike, so what you get when you pull the bung and pour out the beer is always going to be a bit of a mystery. Which is a great story of craft, but how does it taste?

Brewery Ommegang out of New York has a smoked vanilla porter made with light, smoked malt as well as chocolate malt. The porter is aged in bourbon barrels for six months with whole vanilla beans. It sounds expensive, and it is expensive. It is also very deep and — words fail me — luscious. But with an ABV of 8.9 percent, no one is going to be funneling this stuff. It pours and looks like a Guinness, but although rich, sits a lot lighter. The weather and the seasons being what they are in Memphis, I was looking for a lighter version. Which led me to Boulevard Brewing Company’s Rye on Rye out of Kansas City. While I’m not a huge fan of rye ales, this one doubled down, aged in whiskey barrels from Templton Rye — which I really do like. Over all, it hit the spot. It was light enough, but had that lovely rye spice imparted by those wonderful whiskey-logged barrel staves. Spicy yes, with vanilla and hops, and a nice clean finish that doesn’t leave you looking for a toothbrush.

The great thing is that these two beers taste nothing alike. Barrel-aged beers are all different. To Memphis’ craft brewers, I say this: In a few years, Old Dominick is probably going to have a lot of whiskey barrels it can no longer use. Now you know what to do with them.