Mayme Dyslin probably should check a culinary encyclopedia.
You see, when most people mention finger foods, they are preparing you for colorful trays walked around parties — slivers of smoked salmon draped over toast points, skewered dates wrapped in bacon, crostini, spiced pecans, delicate canapes.
But the chef at Loch Lomond Roadhouse defines things a bit differently.
Instead of crafting brussels sprouts into a bite size trifle, she sends out a dish loaded with the bulbs, flash fried so the outer leaves crackle and dressed with dried cranberries and shards of bacon.
The brussels sprouts also take a turn on the grill, developing a bittersweet veneer that befriends the smoky streak from the meat. Dyslin tosses the cranberries on the heat, as well. The result is a burnished edge that again plays to the bacon and the charred greens.
It’s a compelling arrangement that requires a fork — as do her corn fritters, along with a knife.
Instead of poppable little crisps, Dyslin sears pancake rounds of creamy corn, its natural sweetness blunted neatly by a mix of herbs including cilantro.
“I wanted to do a crabcake,” she explained, “but then I thought ‘let’s make something different.’”
She dug up her father’s old corn pudding recipe, determined to pan fry it and added a little southwestern flair, not only with cilantro, but also an adobe hued tequila-lime-chipotle drizzle.
“It’s good on everything,” Dyslin said with a laugh.
The onion haystack almost qualifies as finger food, although you need all ten. Crispy straws of red onion tower over the plate, building into a structure large enough to satisfy two people (and, thus, 20 fingers).
Rather than dredge the onions through beer batter, she prefers to drizzle the stuff over strands piled onto a tray. This etches in a rustic appearance, yet a remarkably airy shell that might easily be mistaken for tempura — fragile and malty — until the rich savor of beer begins to tell.
There are other options that fall more in line with finger food tradition, including stuffed mushrooms and fried pickles. But it’s difficult to bypass the chicken wings.
Yes, the pallor of white meat is familiar. What transformed wings from a one-off experiment at a Buffalo barroom to a national obsession is the variety of clever sauces conjured by chefs.
The lineup at Loch Lomond Roadhouse includes jalepeno orange sauce, and it’s a must for those who enjoy jousts between sweet and spicy. It opens with triumphant citrus surging over the palate. The orange flavor is intense, with a muscular caramelized edge. And it runs rampant.
Dyslin creates this by charring orange zest and reducing marmalade for over an hour until the juices coil up, ready to pounce.
Of course, there is that addition of heat, which slowly builds in strength until striking through the orange on the finish.
“We put it on our ribs, too,” the chef said. “It’s amazing.”
The menu Dyslin and sous chef Zac Stark introduced last week at Loch Lomond Roadhouse reveals a thread, running from the black and white past to the high definition present.
“This is my twist on the food I grew up with,” Dyslin pointed out. “It’s what I like.”
Over the next few months she plans to add items according to the season.
“I have so many ideas,” she said.
Perhaps her first one, however, should be to flip through the encyclopedia and then change the heading on the finger foods menu to read something like “Hearty, filling, irresistible, not at all small plates.”
Dave Faries can be reached at 900-2016
