VOL. XIII
NO. 014
Bottle & Flame
Musings on food, wine, and more
EST. MMXIII
LAKE OSWEGO, OR
Issue 015 · June 2026
Currently drinking · Gin martini, twistOn the stove · Bangers and roast potatoes
stupid simple breakfast
Featured · Flame · Food

stupid simple breakfast

Dying bagels, Trader Joe's white cheddar, and one pack of thick-cut bacon versus three hungry teens before summer camp. Thirty minutes, one sheet pan, and enough left over for a BLT and a jar of roast-potato gold.

An aside · No. 47
“Cook for an hour and you might learn something. Cook for ten years and you might unlearn the wrong things.
— From a 2019 dispatch

Field notes.

Briefer than an essay, longer than a tweet. Updated whenever something’s worth saying.

Drinking tonight
A 2019 Bourgueil. Cool, peppery, gone in an hour.
On the stove
Brown butter with capers and toasted breadcrumbs.
Reading
Bill Buford’s Heat, again. The Babbo chapters still hold.
Listening
A David Chang interview from 2017 that holds up fine.
Brian Fenn
About the maker

Writing from Lake Oswego.

Bottle & Flame has been a notebook since 2013 — kitchens in London, Shanghai, and now Oregon. Brian cooks from memory as much as from recipes: what a market in Xintiandi taught him, what a Sunday roast in Islington required, what the pantry in Lake Oswego demands on a Tuesday night.