November 6
Well, my latest poll was a dud. I asked readers of this blog if they or their customers had changed their food-sharing habits due to fears of the H1N1 virus. Only seven people responded. Five said no, two said yes, everyone else, by their lack of response, I guess were indicating that they hadn’t thought about it or weren’t interested in the question.
That’s fair.
Here’s another one for you, from another of my colleagues, about restaurants’ moves to engage in more environmentally sound practices.
As always, feel free to comment below.
Friday, November 06, 2009
Tuesday, November 03, 2009
erratum
November 3
Clark Mitchell does not, I repeat does not, drink vodka Martinis. I’m not sure why I thought he did, or why I said he did in this recent blog entry, but I have fixed the mistake and thought I should let you know.
Normally I’d just fix the mistake and go on with my life, and Clark certainly didn't grouse about my error, but, well, vodka and gin Martinis illustrate people in very different ways.
Clark Mitchell does not, I repeat does not, drink vodka Martinis. I’m not sure why I thought he did, or why I said he did in this recent blog entry, but I have fixed the mistake and thought I should let you know.
Normally I’d just fix the mistake and go on with my life, and Clark certainly didn't grouse about my error, but, well, vodka and gin Martinis illustrate people in very different ways.
Monday, November 02, 2009
Books, Southeast Asian food and what not to say at dinner
November 2
I went to some good parties last week, including two book parties.
I don’t go to book parties much, because we don’t have much use for cookbooks at NRN — occasionally we can use art from them, but that’s about it — and I personally like to cook based on what’s on hand. If I have questions about specific technique I just grab my battered copy of The Joy of Cooking.
But on Wednesday, after going to the see-and-be-seen party at The Four Seasons to welcome its new chef, Fabio Trabocchi (the most interesting person I met was a writer and publicist with the unlikely name of Paxton Quigley, author of Armed and Female, a self-help book instructing women how to use guns to protect themselves), I went to the East Village for the launch of the Veselka cookbook. So I went from really lovely Champagne and foie gras and truffles to cheap red wine and pierogis, but I like pierogis and haven’t met many wines I can’t drink (I do remember one, boasting that it was made from 100 percent grapes! that was kind of hard to get down). So I chowed down on pierogies and borscht and meatballs and ran into my old colleague Craig Waters (his byline is C. Dickinson Waters, in case you want to look for it), who now works on the business end of Macmillan, which published the Veselka book.
Then yesterday I went to a packed event celebrating Marcus Samuelsson’s new book, New American Table. The party was sponsored and thrown by HSBC bank, which I remember from back when it went by its full name, Hongkong Shanghai Banking Corporation. Now, of course, it’s going for more universal appeal.
A lot of bankers were at the party, including a nice one with whom I spoke about travel to Southeast Asia. But some chefs were there, too, including Alfred Portale from Gotham Bar & Grill and Nils Noren from the French Culinary Institute, who for many years was Marcus' executive chef at Aquavit. Anita Lo, of the once and perhaps future Annisa and the current Rickshaw Dumpling Bar, was there, too, and I had a long chat with chef, consultant, writer, etc. Robert Danhi, who moderated a panel I was on a couple of years ago at the National Restaurant Show. It was about Asian food trends. Robert, who's based in Southern California, is married to a Malaysian woman and travels back and forth to Southeast Asia a lot. So we talked about his love for durian, my inability to appreciate it so far, the joy of a good mangosteen, and other things.
Marcus came by and ripped off my nametag in disgust, wondering why a bank would make us wear such things. He did it in a really friendly way, though. Marcus is good people.
I wasn’t so sure about people I’d met earlier in the week. At one dinner I sat next to a woman who expressed shock and almost disgust that I would admit to liking science fiction. She liked realistic things, she said, because she was a Virgo. I asked her, then, about her belief in astrology, and she readily acknowledged the contradiction, so maybe she wasn’t so bad. But still, who at a civilized dinner would show disgust for someone else’s taste? It’s not nice.
But speaking of Robert Danhi, I did have good Southeast Asian food at the Beard House last week, where Mohan Ismail, the chef of Rock Sugar, was cooking.
Rock Sugar’s a Southeast Asian restaurant in Los Angeles that’s the little brother of Cheesecake Factory. Ismail, who’s originally from Singapore — click here if you’d like to read a whole profile and interview of the guy, written by my colleague Lisa Jennings — but the salient point for this story is that he was on the opening team of Spice Market in New York’s Meatpacking District, and so was Pichet Ong, who was also at the Beard House, helping Mohan.
Pichet told me a little about his new dessert shop that’s opening soon on St. Mark's Place. He said it would be a masculine dessert shop, rather than all the frilly and feminine ones that are out there.
He said the only other masculine dessert place in town was Max Brenner’s, but Pichet’s consulting with Max these days, so he’s biased.
What I ate at the Beard House:
Hors d’oeuvre:
Crispy imperial rolls with pork, shrimp and shiitake mushrooms
Raw hamachi with sesame and tobiko
Crispy chicken samosas with cilantro yogurt
Stuffed naan with spicy ketchup
Champagne Nicolas Feuillatte Brut Rosé NV
Dinner:
Green mango and papaya salad with crushed peanuts and crispy shallots
Cloudy Bay Sauvignon Blanc 2006
Indonesian-grilled cilantro shrimp with corn, sweet potatoes, peas, coconut milk and chiles
L’Aventure Rousanne 2007
Tai snapper with gai lan, shiitakes, and padifield sauce (a rich chile sauce reminiscent of many chile sauces that top whole in Thailand, although this fish was filleted)
Side dishes for the table: Coconut rice with lemon grass, pandan leaves and cashews, and nonya sambal eggplant with sweet soy and chiles (“Nonya” is a Malaysian word for “grandmother” and also refers to the Peranakan cuisine of what are known as the Straits Chinese of Peninsular Malaysia, and Singapore, who are the descendants mostly of Chinese immigrant men who were imported by the British to work in the tin mines and married Malay women; the food is those women’s attempts to make Chinese food, which naturally included incorporating local ingredients, techniques and sensibilities).
Robert Sinskey Vineyards Los Carneros Napa Valley Merlot 2005
Singapore black pepper filet mignon with asparagus and shiitakes (you might think of shiitakes as Japanese — I know I do — but I once visited a shiitake farm in Malaysia’s Cameron Highlands)
Roth Cabernet Estate Bottled Sauvignon 2006
Caramelized banana custard cake with milk chocolate ice cream, malted crème Anglaise and praline nut brittle
Saracco Moscato d’Asti 2007
I went to some good parties last week, including two book parties.
I don’t go to book parties much, because we don’t have much use for cookbooks at NRN — occasionally we can use art from them, but that’s about it — and I personally like to cook based on what’s on hand. If I have questions about specific technique I just grab my battered copy of The Joy of Cooking.
But on Wednesday, after going to the see-and-be-seen party at The Four Seasons to welcome its new chef, Fabio Trabocchi (the most interesting person I met was a writer and publicist with the unlikely name of Paxton Quigley, author of Armed and Female, a self-help book instructing women how to use guns to protect themselves), I went to the East Village for the launch of the Veselka cookbook. So I went from really lovely Champagne and foie gras and truffles to cheap red wine and pierogis, but I like pierogis and haven’t met many wines I can’t drink (I do remember one, boasting that it was made from 100 percent grapes! that was kind of hard to get down). So I chowed down on pierogies and borscht and meatballs and ran into my old colleague Craig Waters (his byline is C. Dickinson Waters, in case you want to look for it), who now works on the business end of Macmillan, which published the Veselka book.
Then yesterday I went to a packed event celebrating Marcus Samuelsson’s new book, New American Table. The party was sponsored and thrown by HSBC bank, which I remember from back when it went by its full name, Hongkong Shanghai Banking Corporation. Now, of course, it’s going for more universal appeal.
A lot of bankers were at the party, including a nice one with whom I spoke about travel to Southeast Asia. But some chefs were there, too, including Alfred Portale from Gotham Bar & Grill and Nils Noren from the French Culinary Institute, who for many years was Marcus' executive chef at Aquavit. Anita Lo, of the once and perhaps future Annisa and the current Rickshaw Dumpling Bar, was there, too, and I had a long chat with chef, consultant, writer, etc. Robert Danhi, who moderated a panel I was on a couple of years ago at the National Restaurant Show. It was about Asian food trends. Robert, who's based in Southern California, is married to a Malaysian woman and travels back and forth to Southeast Asia a lot. So we talked about his love for durian, my inability to appreciate it so far, the joy of a good mangosteen, and other things.
Marcus came by and ripped off my nametag in disgust, wondering why a bank would make us wear such things. He did it in a really friendly way, though. Marcus is good people.
I wasn’t so sure about people I’d met earlier in the week. At one dinner I sat next to a woman who expressed shock and almost disgust that I would admit to liking science fiction. She liked realistic things, she said, because she was a Virgo. I asked her, then, about her belief in astrology, and she readily acknowledged the contradiction, so maybe she wasn’t so bad. But still, who at a civilized dinner would show disgust for someone else’s taste? It’s not nice.
But speaking of Robert Danhi, I did have good Southeast Asian food at the Beard House last week, where Mohan Ismail, the chef of Rock Sugar, was cooking.
Rock Sugar’s a Southeast Asian restaurant in Los Angeles that’s the little brother of Cheesecake Factory. Ismail, who’s originally from Singapore — click here if you’d like to read a whole profile and interview of the guy, written by my colleague Lisa Jennings — but the salient point for this story is that he was on the opening team of Spice Market in New York’s Meatpacking District, and so was Pichet Ong, who was also at the Beard House, helping Mohan.
Pichet told me a little about his new dessert shop that’s opening soon on St. Mark's Place. He said it would be a masculine dessert shop, rather than all the frilly and feminine ones that are out there.
He said the only other masculine dessert place in town was Max Brenner’s, but Pichet’s consulting with Max these days, so he’s biased.
What I ate at the Beard House:
Hors d’oeuvre:
Crispy imperial rolls with pork, shrimp and shiitake mushrooms
Raw hamachi with sesame and tobiko
Crispy chicken samosas with cilantro yogurt
Stuffed naan with spicy ketchup
Champagne Nicolas Feuillatte Brut Rosé NV
Dinner:
Green mango and papaya salad with crushed peanuts and crispy shallots
Cloudy Bay Sauvignon Blanc 2006
Indonesian-grilled cilantro shrimp with corn, sweet potatoes, peas, coconut milk and chiles
L’Aventure Rousanne 2007
Tai snapper with gai lan, shiitakes, and padifield sauce (a rich chile sauce reminiscent of many chile sauces that top whole in Thailand, although this fish was filleted)
Side dishes for the table: Coconut rice with lemon grass, pandan leaves and cashews, and nonya sambal eggplant with sweet soy and chiles (“Nonya” is a Malaysian word for “grandmother” and also refers to the Peranakan cuisine of what are known as the Straits Chinese of Peninsular Malaysia, and Singapore, who are the descendants mostly of Chinese immigrant men who were imported by the British to work in the tin mines and married Malay women; the food is those women’s attempts to make Chinese food, which naturally included incorporating local ingredients, techniques and sensibilities).
Robert Sinskey Vineyards Los Carneros Napa Valley Merlot 2005
Singapore black pepper filet mignon with asparagus and shiitakes (you might think of shiitakes as Japanese — I know I do — but I once visited a shiitake farm in Malaysia’s Cameron Highlands)
Roth Cabernet Estate Bottled Sauvignon 2006
Caramelized banana custard cake with milk chocolate ice cream, malted crème Anglaise and praline nut brittle
Saracco Moscato d’Asti 2007
Friday, October 30, 2009
Two gay guys walk into a strip club...
October 30
Undulating. That's a good word, and one that comes to mind when I think of “gentlemen’s clubs.”
Gentlemen’s clubs are, of course, places where men, gentlemanly or otherwise, get to spend time with scantily clad, often undulating women who are paid to be there. They are usually dark places that serve expensive but ill-prepared drinks and food you might not want to eat.
There are exceptions, of course, when it comes to the food. The Diamond Cabaret, a topless bar in Denver, was for years known as having some of the best steak in town. I don’t know whether it still is, but it might be.
And here in New York Robert's, developed with the help of chef Adam Perry Lang, was opened a couple of years ago at the Penthouse Executive Club and got a positive one-star review from New York Times critic Frank Bruni. The critic also took the opportunity of the review to go ahead and more-or-less come out as a gay man.
Many people in New York tittered with glee, which, it being 2007, I thought was, well, I’m pretty sure I’ve never used the word “puerile” before, but I think this is the right place for it. News that a food writer in New York City was more-or-less openly gay in 2007 shouldn't have been worth a single titter, but there you had it.
Anyway, there’s a new Robert’s in town. The owners of the Penthouse Executive Club bought the former Scores location in west Chelsea and reopened it with a Robert's inside. In charge of the food: Will Savarese, an alumnus of Le Cirque, Aureole, La Côte Basque and Westchester County institution La Crémaillère. He was executive chef at The Tap House, too.
I ate at the new Robert’s last week and, for a laugh, I invited my friend Clark Mitchell to dine with me. We both appreciated the irony of two gay men having steak at a girly bar, especially at one just a few doors down from The Eagle, arguably the most skeevy gay leather bar in all of New York City.
General manager Ed Norwick sat down with us over Martinis (mine: gin — Hendrick's at the waiter's suggestion — with olives; Clark's: gin — Beefeater — with a twist, because they didn’t have cocktail onions) and talked about plans to open more Robert's at gentlemen's clubs across the country. He explained that strip clubs and similar venues aren’t typically the first stop in an evening, and sometimes life (traffic, a phone call from the wife, what have you) gets in the way in the middle of an evening out. If guests start the night at a place with undulating women, well, there’s a good chance that they’ll stay.
For dinner, Clark and I split a porterhouse for two and drank a big Cabernet. He had an iceberg-and-blue-cheese salad — not, to his minor dismay, in wedge form — and I tried a nightly special of field greens, balsamic vinegar etc. Dessert was a sort of chocolate brownie cake.
Clark’s an editor at Travel + Leisure, and so while the guys at the table next to us bought dinner and drinks for their undulating women, we were left alone and spoke with concern and sadness about the demise of Gourmet magazine, and shared stories of our own publications’ adjustments in these difficult times.
Here at Nation’s Restaurant News, those adjustments are big. Next year the print magazine will be bi-weekly instead of weekly, and the content will be less news and more awesome analytical stuff — not too long, but smart — as well as an easy-to-use news synopsis in the front of the book (that’s what we in the magazine business call a magazine — a book).
For breaking news, of course, you can turn to our fact-packed web site, but you might as well go ahead and subscribe to the print version. Come on, all the cool people are doing it.
Undulating. That's a good word, and one that comes to mind when I think of “gentlemen’s clubs.”
Gentlemen’s clubs are, of course, places where men, gentlemanly or otherwise, get to spend time with scantily clad, often undulating women who are paid to be there. They are usually dark places that serve expensive but ill-prepared drinks and food you might not want to eat.
There are exceptions, of course, when it comes to the food. The Diamond Cabaret, a topless bar in Denver, was for years known as having some of the best steak in town. I don’t know whether it still is, but it might be.
And here in New York Robert's, developed with the help of chef Adam Perry Lang, was opened a couple of years ago at the Penthouse Executive Club and got a positive one-star review from New York Times critic Frank Bruni. The critic also took the opportunity of the review to go ahead and more-or-less come out as a gay man.
Many people in New York tittered with glee, which, it being 2007, I thought was, well, I’m pretty sure I’ve never used the word “puerile” before, but I think this is the right place for it. News that a food writer in New York City was more-or-less openly gay in 2007 shouldn't have been worth a single titter, but there you had it.
Anyway, there’s a new Robert’s in town. The owners of the Penthouse Executive Club bought the former Scores location in west Chelsea and reopened it with a Robert's inside. In charge of the food: Will Savarese, an alumnus of Le Cirque, Aureole, La Côte Basque and Westchester County institution La Crémaillère. He was executive chef at The Tap House, too.
I ate at the new Robert’s last week and, for a laugh, I invited my friend Clark Mitchell to dine with me. We both appreciated the irony of two gay men having steak at a girly bar, especially at one just a few doors down from The Eagle, arguably the most skeevy gay leather bar in all of New York City.
General manager Ed Norwick sat down with us over Martinis (mine: gin — Hendrick's at the waiter's suggestion — with olives; Clark's: gin — Beefeater — with a twist, because they didn’t have cocktail onions) and talked about plans to open more Robert's at gentlemen's clubs across the country. He explained that strip clubs and similar venues aren’t typically the first stop in an evening, and sometimes life (traffic, a phone call from the wife, what have you) gets in the way in the middle of an evening out. If guests start the night at a place with undulating women, well, there’s a good chance that they’ll stay.
For dinner, Clark and I split a porterhouse for two and drank a big Cabernet. He had an iceberg-and-blue-cheese salad — not, to his minor dismay, in wedge form — and I tried a nightly special of field greens, balsamic vinegar etc. Dessert was a sort of chocolate brownie cake.
Clark’s an editor at Travel + Leisure, and so while the guys at the table next to us bought dinner and drinks for their undulating women, we were left alone and spoke with concern and sadness about the demise of Gourmet magazine, and shared stories of our own publications’ adjustments in these difficult times.
Here at Nation’s Restaurant News, those adjustments are big. Next year the print magazine will be bi-weekly instead of weekly, and the content will be less news and more awesome analytical stuff — not too long, but smart — as well as an easy-to-use news synopsis in the front of the book (that’s what we in the magazine business call a magazine — a book).
For breaking news, of course, you can turn to our fact-packed web site, but you might as well go ahead and subscribe to the print version. Come on, all the cool people are doing it.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
H1N1
October 29
I'm working on some new blog entries that I hope you’ll find fascinating, but in the meantime, I’d like to pass on to you, dear reader, a question from one of my colleagues: Has H1N1 affected the shared-plates fad (or trend, if you prefer) in restaurants?
Click on the poll to the right, and if you feel like being more detailed, please feel free to comment below.
Thank you.
I'm working on some new blog entries that I hope you’ll find fascinating, but in the meantime, I’d like to pass on to you, dear reader, a question from one of my colleagues: Has H1N1 affected the shared-plates fad (or trend, if you prefer) in restaurants?
Click on the poll to the right, and if you feel like being more detailed, please feel free to comment below.
Thank you.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
On rugby, service, and Bloomberg at Bill's Bar & Burger
October 20
Blain Howard played rugby in college.
That explains a lot about Blain, because Americans who play rugby are a little bit weird.
Normal people, mainstream people, play football or baseball or basketball. If they just want some exercise they play soccer or tennis, or they might swim. Hockey's fine in the northern states, Lacrosse is cool if you're a particular breed of white, upper-middle-class future doctor, lawyer or investment banker, or the future spouse of one.
But rugby?
Rugby players have chosen a sport that no one (in the United States) cares about but them, but it requires serious physical conditioning and is an intense, full-contact sport played without the sissy padding of football. Rugby games, I’m told, are played with brutal aggression, followed by pretty much mandatory consumption of alcohol with the other team.
In American Rugby, from what I gather, it’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how much you can drink.
But unlike other niche tribes — the computer geeks, the science fiction nerds, the comic book dorks, Red Sox Nation — rugby players are diverse and have many interests. Sure, they use their bodies as weapons and shields and then drink until they fall down, but then they’re in punk rock bands or lock themselves in their rooms to play with their new computers, or go out and socialize like mainstream people might. I met a rugby player in culinary school, I knew a few in college.
My parents were friends with one who was a special ops military guy in Cambodia in the early 1970s. His wife introduced me to the Maryland crab boil, which is still probably my favorite way to eat anything, ever.
I’ve never met one who was boring or predictable.
Which explains Blain, who used to do mixed martial arts — he's 6'4", slim but solid — and now is a publicist for video games. He thinks he's a nerd because he likes comic books (excuse me, graphic novels) and science fiction and video games. His boss told him he wasn't smart enough to be a geek.
Or maybe he thinks he’s a dork because he’s not smart enough to be a nerd. I forget.
But he’s also friends with the Los Angeles reality TV star set and socializes and dates women and knows how to carry on a conversation at a dinner table.
He’s also smart as a whip, by the way.
And he’s a willing dinner companion, and someone with whom I can have serious discussions about zombie literature (he mentioned Socrates in there at some point — something about mankind's most raw desires and how zombies exemplify them).
Blain and I have broken bread twice in the past week-and-a-half, once at 48 and, last night, at Steve Hanson’s newest restaurant, Bill’s Bar & Burger.
Forty-Eight’s a new lounge on the ground floor of the McGraw Hill Building. That’s 6th Avenue and 48th Street, which is sort of no man's land for nightlife. West of Rockefeller Center, East of Times Square, where tourists fear to tread and locals wouldn’t bother. But many New Yorkers work there, and they could use a place to drink, and 48’s open until 2 a.m. during the week and 4 a.m. on weekends — something to remember if you ever need a nightcap after partying with a bunch of Midtown investment bankers.
Its owners had invited me in to check it out.
We had a terrific waitress — professionally chatty and alert, but she didn’t hover — and then we had all of the owners and management.
Individually, they were lovely, nice people who wanted to make sure we enjoyed ourselves, but as a group it seemed like one of them came by every 45 seconds to ask us something.
“Would you like a drink?”
“I just ordered one."
"Something to eat?”
“Yes, let me take a look at the menu.”
“How’s your drink?”
“I just got it, but it looks great.”
“How's the pizza?”
“I'm in the middle of my first bite right now, but I’ll keep you posted.”
Really, that’s the main theme of this entire blog — isn’t it? — where I eat and how I’m treated differently from the average diner. But it’s usually not quite as intense as that. Usually Blain and I have time to finish our reminiscences about Firefly or to assess the development of the Starbuck character in the last episodes of Battlestar Galactica without being interrupted with questions about how our bourbon is.
So I thought it was just an unusual fluke from overenthusiastic management on a relatively quiet Wednesday night in a lounge in a paradoxically remote part of central Midtown Manhattan.
And then we went to Bill’s Bar & Burger.
Bill's is in a very accessible part of the Meatpacking District and, although it just officially opened last Thursday, has already been the subject of much adulation.
A word about Steve Hanson and the restaurants in his BR Guest group: These are places like Blue Fin and Dos Caminos and Ruby Foo's — places that are good, but you don’t go there for the food (Fiamma, now closed, was an exception). You go because of the service and the drinks and the general vibe of the place. I think it was in one of Steve Hanson’s places that I realized what’s important to most guests in a restaurant. The most important part of a meal is who you eat with, next most important is the Steve Hanson stuff — service, ambience, vibe. Then, as long as the food is good enough, as long as it meets expectations, the customers will have a good time.
That’s not to say that BR Guest food isn’t good — and some of it’s terrific — it’s just not the point of those restaurants. Service and vibe are paramount.
So Blain and I were at a crowded but not packed BR Guest restaurant at 8 p.m. I was there a few minutes earlier and had already decided what I wanted, but the minute Blain sat down we were beset with questions about our drink order, which is, you know, reasonable and even desirable in a restaurant, and Blain, being a grown man and rugby player and thus capable of quickly scanning a beer menu, settled on the Ommegang, and I ordered an IPA.
“Are you ready to order your food?” our server asked.
I suggested that we might take a couple of minutes to do that.
Our server was great, and just like at 48, everyone else was gracious, but we had at least two managers covering for our server, who seemed perfectly capable of doing it himself.
I started to think maybe they just wanted to hang out with Blain, too, or perhaps they wanted to have an intellectual conversation about zombies as well. I mean, who doesn’t?
Or maybe they were particularly attentive because the man, Steve Hanson, was in the restaurant.
I didn’t notice him at first, or maybe he arrived later. But he was pretty low-key. I think I'd only seen him in a sharp business suit before. But he was casual last night, wandering around, fiddling with thermostats and such.
And then Michael Bloomberg walked in.
I’m usually not taken aback when celebrities walk into a restaurant. Well, okay, I’m a little taken aback, but there’s something thrilling and odd about having the mayor of New York come into the burger bar where you’re eating. He and Steve Hanson hugged and sat down to talk, and everyone else, being New Yorkers, went on enjoying their meal.
Although I couldn't help but tweet about it. Nor could this kid.
Blain, being a rugby player, had the good sense to take a picture
The mayor is the gray-haired guy in the window. Steve Hanson's to the left. The people in the foreground are probably perfectly nice people, but not germane to this blog entry.
What we ate and drank:
at 48,
meatballs with honey and pineapple glaze
seared skirt steak skewers with roasted red onion, grilled portobello, romaine lettuce and goat cheese vinaigrette
mini Cuban sandwiches (roasted pork, fontina, cotto ham, pickles, mustard and mayonnaise)
mini grilled cheese sandwiches (fontina and manchego with tomato and roasted tomato mayonnaise on challah)
mini pesto pizza with fresh mozzarella and Roma tomato
Bread pudding with almonds and cranberries
French Forty Eight (Hendrick's Gin, Canton ginger liqueur, lemon juice, sparkling wine, rosewater and strawberries)
St. Zipang (St. Germain elderflower liqueur, sparkling sake and yuzu)
Steve Collins (a sugar-free Tom Collins made with Bombay Sapphire, stevia, lemon juice, lime juice and ginger)
assorted whiskys
At Bill's,
French fries
Disco fries (smothered with gravy and melted cheese)
beer battered onion rings
The Bobcat (Bill's classic burger topped with New Mexico green chile and jack cheese)
The Fat Cat (a hamburger with caramelized onion and American cheese on an English muffin with lettuce, tomato and pickles on the side)
Key Lime Pie
assorted beers
Oreo (a milkshake of vanilla ice cream with Oreos chocolate syrup and a shot of Amaretto)
Peanut Butter Fluff (a milkshake of vanilla ice cream, peanut butter and banana with a shot of Frangelico)
Blain Howard played rugby in college.
That explains a lot about Blain, because Americans who play rugby are a little bit weird.
Normal people, mainstream people, play football or baseball or basketball. If they just want some exercise they play soccer or tennis, or they might swim. Hockey's fine in the northern states, Lacrosse is cool if you're a particular breed of white, upper-middle-class future doctor, lawyer or investment banker, or the future spouse of one.
But rugby?
Rugby players have chosen a sport that no one (in the United States) cares about but them, but it requires serious physical conditioning and is an intense, full-contact sport played without the sissy padding of football. Rugby games, I’m told, are played with brutal aggression, followed by pretty much mandatory consumption of alcohol with the other team.
In American Rugby, from what I gather, it’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how much you can drink.
But unlike other niche tribes — the computer geeks, the science fiction nerds, the comic book dorks, Red Sox Nation — rugby players are diverse and have many interests. Sure, they use their bodies as weapons and shields and then drink until they fall down, but then they’re in punk rock bands or lock themselves in their rooms to play with their new computers, or go out and socialize like mainstream people might. I met a rugby player in culinary school, I knew a few in college.
My parents were friends with one who was a special ops military guy in Cambodia in the early 1970s. His wife introduced me to the Maryland crab boil, which is still probably my favorite way to eat anything, ever.
I’ve never met one who was boring or predictable.
Which explains Blain, who used to do mixed martial arts — he's 6'4", slim but solid — and now is a publicist for video games. He thinks he's a nerd because he likes comic books (excuse me, graphic novels) and science fiction and video games. His boss told him he wasn't smart enough to be a geek.
Or maybe he thinks he’s a dork because he’s not smart enough to be a nerd. I forget.
But he’s also friends with the Los Angeles reality TV star set and socializes and dates women and knows how to carry on a conversation at a dinner table.
He’s also smart as a whip, by the way.
And he’s a willing dinner companion, and someone with whom I can have serious discussions about zombie literature (he mentioned Socrates in there at some point — something about mankind's most raw desires and how zombies exemplify them).
Blain and I have broken bread twice in the past week-and-a-half, once at 48 and, last night, at Steve Hanson’s newest restaurant, Bill’s Bar & Burger.
Forty-Eight’s a new lounge on the ground floor of the McGraw Hill Building. That’s 6th Avenue and 48th Street, which is sort of no man's land for nightlife. West of Rockefeller Center, East of Times Square, where tourists fear to tread and locals wouldn’t bother. But many New Yorkers work there, and they could use a place to drink, and 48’s open until 2 a.m. during the week and 4 a.m. on weekends — something to remember if you ever need a nightcap after partying with a bunch of Midtown investment bankers.
Its owners had invited me in to check it out.
We had a terrific waitress — professionally chatty and alert, but she didn’t hover — and then we had all of the owners and management.
Individually, they were lovely, nice people who wanted to make sure we enjoyed ourselves, but as a group it seemed like one of them came by every 45 seconds to ask us something.
“Would you like a drink?”
“I just ordered one."
"Something to eat?”
“Yes, let me take a look at the menu.”
“How’s your drink?”
“I just got it, but it looks great.”
“How's the pizza?”
“I'm in the middle of my first bite right now, but I’ll keep you posted.”
Really, that’s the main theme of this entire blog — isn’t it? — where I eat and how I’m treated differently from the average diner. But it’s usually not quite as intense as that. Usually Blain and I have time to finish our reminiscences about Firefly or to assess the development of the Starbuck character in the last episodes of Battlestar Galactica without being interrupted with questions about how our bourbon is.
So I thought it was just an unusual fluke from overenthusiastic management on a relatively quiet Wednesday night in a lounge in a paradoxically remote part of central Midtown Manhattan.
And then we went to Bill’s Bar & Burger.
Bill's is in a very accessible part of the Meatpacking District and, although it just officially opened last Thursday, has already been the subject of much adulation.
A word about Steve Hanson and the restaurants in his BR Guest group: These are places like Blue Fin and Dos Caminos and Ruby Foo's — places that are good, but you don’t go there for the food (Fiamma, now closed, was an exception). You go because of the service and the drinks and the general vibe of the place. I think it was in one of Steve Hanson’s places that I realized what’s important to most guests in a restaurant. The most important part of a meal is who you eat with, next most important is the Steve Hanson stuff — service, ambience, vibe. Then, as long as the food is good enough, as long as it meets expectations, the customers will have a good time.
That’s not to say that BR Guest food isn’t good — and some of it’s terrific — it’s just not the point of those restaurants. Service and vibe are paramount.
So Blain and I were at a crowded but not packed BR Guest restaurant at 8 p.m. I was there a few minutes earlier and had already decided what I wanted, but the minute Blain sat down we were beset with questions about our drink order, which is, you know, reasonable and even desirable in a restaurant, and Blain, being a grown man and rugby player and thus capable of quickly scanning a beer menu, settled on the Ommegang, and I ordered an IPA.
“Are you ready to order your food?” our server asked.
I suggested that we might take a couple of minutes to do that.
Our server was great, and just like at 48, everyone else was gracious, but we had at least two managers covering for our server, who seemed perfectly capable of doing it himself.
I started to think maybe they just wanted to hang out with Blain, too, or perhaps they wanted to have an intellectual conversation about zombies as well. I mean, who doesn’t?
Or maybe they were particularly attentive because the man, Steve Hanson, was in the restaurant.
I didn’t notice him at first, or maybe he arrived later. But he was pretty low-key. I think I'd only seen him in a sharp business suit before. But he was casual last night, wandering around, fiddling with thermostats and such.
And then Michael Bloomberg walked in.
I’m usually not taken aback when celebrities walk into a restaurant. Well, okay, I’m a little taken aback, but there’s something thrilling and odd about having the mayor of New York come into the burger bar where you’re eating. He and Steve Hanson hugged and sat down to talk, and everyone else, being New Yorkers, went on enjoying their meal.
Although I couldn't help but tweet about it. Nor could this kid.
Blain, being a rugby player, had the good sense to take a picture
The mayor is the gray-haired guy in the window. Steve Hanson's to the left. The people in the foreground are probably perfectly nice people, but not germane to this blog entry.
What we ate and drank:
at 48,
meatballs with honey and pineapple glaze
seared skirt steak skewers with roasted red onion, grilled portobello, romaine lettuce and goat cheese vinaigrette
mini Cuban sandwiches (roasted pork, fontina, cotto ham, pickles, mustard and mayonnaise)
mini grilled cheese sandwiches (fontina and manchego with tomato and roasted tomato mayonnaise on challah)
mini pesto pizza with fresh mozzarella and Roma tomato
Bread pudding with almonds and cranberries
French Forty Eight (Hendrick's Gin, Canton ginger liqueur, lemon juice, sparkling wine, rosewater and strawberries)
St. Zipang (St. Germain elderflower liqueur, sparkling sake and yuzu)
Steve Collins (a sugar-free Tom Collins made with Bombay Sapphire, stevia, lemon juice, lime juice and ginger)
assorted whiskys
At Bill's,
French fries
Disco fries (smothered with gravy and melted cheese)
beer battered onion rings
The Bobcat (Bill's classic burger topped with New Mexico green chile and jack cheese)
The Fat Cat (a hamburger with caramelized onion and American cheese on an English muffin with lettuce, tomato and pickles on the side)
Key Lime Pie
assorted beers
Oreo (a milkshake of vanilla ice cream with Oreos chocolate syrup and a shot of Amaretto)
Peanut Butter Fluff (a milkshake of vanilla ice cream, peanut butter and banana with a shot of Frangelico)
Friday, October 16, 2009
Lying low, in public
October 16
Sometimes it’s simply more work than I want it to be to find someone to join me for dinner. Maybe I’ve been invited to something at the last minute, maybe I can’t figure out which of my friends would be most suitable to join me at a particular restaurant, maybe I don’t feel like strong-arming someone into joining me in Queens. But twice this week I’ve dined solo.
I have no qualms about eating alone. I enjoy my own company, and it let’s me focus on the food or my surroundings, or to stare out the window and watch the people go by.
Actually, yesterday I didn’t watch people go by, I tried to piece together the drama that seemed to be unfolding across the street from ’wichcraft on 20th St.
That unit of Tom Colicchio’s fast-casual sandwich chain has been serving dinner, full-on dinner with servers and beer and wine and cloth napkins, since April — quietly, for regular customers, to see if it would work.
It seems to have worked, because they’ve decided to go public with it and will likely be offering dinner at some other ’wichcraft units soon.
They got a good turnout for their press dinner. I arrived early, at 6, because I was tardy in RSVPing to the invitation to dine there and was told that all the prime time tables were booked.
Dinner is being served upstairs at that ’wichcraft, and I was seated at the window. I had a micro-brew pale ale from Maine and sampled an avocado-and-radish salad as the sun set. It was getting pretty dark by the time I was having my anchovies and gruyère on grilled bread, and by the time my pork and pickle had arrived (pulled pork with slightly sweet dill pickles and brown grainy mustard on thick bread), I had become fascinated by the activity in the building across the street, where everyone apparently belongs to a religion whose practitioners don’t believe in curtains or window shades of any kind.
One window was the locker room for the Equinox gym, so that was fun, and the other seemed to be some sort of office, but with bookcases and a couch. Not only was it lighted as though it were a stage, but everyone in there gesticulated like they were on stage. One woman walked in and dramatically plopped herself in a chair that looked like it was at a desk with a computer, although I couldn't be sure. A guy walked in and spoke using grand gestures, and laughed big laughs, leaning back for dramatic effect. Another guy walked in and got the first guy briefly in a playful fake headlock in the way that they do in TV and movies but not very often at all in real life.
I was fascinated, and continued to watch as eye ate my walnut-apple crumble with vanilla ice cream and drank my espresso.
I was sorry to leave, but I imagined my table was reserved for someone else soon, so I got up and chatted briefly with Matt Lee, who was two tables away with his wife and five-week-old son, Arthur, who was resting peacefully in his stroller in the way that babies usually don’t.
My colleagues Elissa Elan and Ellen Koteff had RSVPed earlier, and so they had just recently sat down and were snacking on shishito peppers as I was leaving. I joined them briefly to give them ordering advice and to discuss Balloon Boy Falcon Heene (or I guess, really, Non-Balloon Boy, since the kid was never in the runaway balloon to begin with).
Two nights before that I went to Cávo, a 10-year-old restaurant in Queens (Astoria, to be more precise) that had recently hired a pretty big gun to be its chef, Richard Farnabe.
Farnabe was the chef of a restaurant that Drew Nieporent opened in Midtown about 10 years ago called Berkeley — serving California cuisine and playing music from the 1960s. It only lasted for about 10 minutes. But Farnabe landed on his feet as chef of Lotus, which was one of the hottest tickets in town in the pre-9/11 era. He then worked at Bruno Jamais, and was also corporate chef for Milos.
I hadn’t heard about him in awhile when I was told he was at Cávo, and it seemed reasonable to check him out on a quiet Tuesday night.
Cávo’s big and beautiful, with a lounge that’s like a glamorous cavern and a spacious, dark-colored, big-shouldered dining room in the back. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised when I find grand and beautiful places in Queens, and it just shows that I am a parochial boob of a Brooklynite, because I was surprised.
Manager Jesse Normand entertained me between courses of fried stuffed zuchinni blossoms, a chicken-and-leek pie that was Farnabe's take on Spanakopita, and a grilled, pepper-crusted tuna loin that tasted just like steak au poivre.
Dessert was cheesecake with sour cherries.
I noticed sour cherries were served with the chocolate dessert on ’wichcraft's dinner menu, too. I think that just might be the fruit of this autumn.
Sometimes it’s simply more work than I want it to be to find someone to join me for dinner. Maybe I’ve been invited to something at the last minute, maybe I can’t figure out which of my friends would be most suitable to join me at a particular restaurant, maybe I don’t feel like strong-arming someone into joining me in Queens. But twice this week I’ve dined solo.
I have no qualms about eating alone. I enjoy my own company, and it let’s me focus on the food or my surroundings, or to stare out the window and watch the people go by.
Actually, yesterday I didn’t watch people go by, I tried to piece together the drama that seemed to be unfolding across the street from ’wichcraft on 20th St.
That unit of Tom Colicchio’s fast-casual sandwich chain has been serving dinner, full-on dinner with servers and beer and wine and cloth napkins, since April — quietly, for regular customers, to see if it would work.
It seems to have worked, because they’ve decided to go public with it and will likely be offering dinner at some other ’wichcraft units soon.
They got a good turnout for their press dinner. I arrived early, at 6, because I was tardy in RSVPing to the invitation to dine there and was told that all the prime time tables were booked.
Dinner is being served upstairs at that ’wichcraft, and I was seated at the window. I had a micro-brew pale ale from Maine and sampled an avocado-and-radish salad as the sun set. It was getting pretty dark by the time I was having my anchovies and gruyère on grilled bread, and by the time my pork and pickle had arrived (pulled pork with slightly sweet dill pickles and brown grainy mustard on thick bread), I had become fascinated by the activity in the building across the street, where everyone apparently belongs to a religion whose practitioners don’t believe in curtains or window shades of any kind.
One window was the locker room for the Equinox gym, so that was fun, and the other seemed to be some sort of office, but with bookcases and a couch. Not only was it lighted as though it were a stage, but everyone in there gesticulated like they were on stage. One woman walked in and dramatically plopped herself in a chair that looked like it was at a desk with a computer, although I couldn't be sure. A guy walked in and spoke using grand gestures, and laughed big laughs, leaning back for dramatic effect. Another guy walked in and got the first guy briefly in a playful fake headlock in the way that they do in TV and movies but not very often at all in real life.
I was fascinated, and continued to watch as eye ate my walnut-apple crumble with vanilla ice cream and drank my espresso.
I was sorry to leave, but I imagined my table was reserved for someone else soon, so I got up and chatted briefly with Matt Lee, who was two tables away with his wife and five-week-old son, Arthur, who was resting peacefully in his stroller in the way that babies usually don’t.
My colleagues Elissa Elan and Ellen Koteff had RSVPed earlier, and so they had just recently sat down and were snacking on shishito peppers as I was leaving. I joined them briefly to give them ordering advice and to discuss Balloon Boy Falcon Heene (or I guess, really, Non-Balloon Boy, since the kid was never in the runaway balloon to begin with).
Two nights before that I went to Cávo, a 10-year-old restaurant in Queens (Astoria, to be more precise) that had recently hired a pretty big gun to be its chef, Richard Farnabe.
Farnabe was the chef of a restaurant that Drew Nieporent opened in Midtown about 10 years ago called Berkeley — serving California cuisine and playing music from the 1960s. It only lasted for about 10 minutes. But Farnabe landed on his feet as chef of Lotus, which was one of the hottest tickets in town in the pre-9/11 era. He then worked at Bruno Jamais, and was also corporate chef for Milos.
I hadn’t heard about him in awhile when I was told he was at Cávo, and it seemed reasonable to check him out on a quiet Tuesday night.
Cávo’s big and beautiful, with a lounge that’s like a glamorous cavern and a spacious, dark-colored, big-shouldered dining room in the back. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised when I find grand and beautiful places in Queens, and it just shows that I am a parochial boob of a Brooklynite, because I was surprised.
Manager Jesse Normand entertained me between courses of fried stuffed zuchinni blossoms, a chicken-and-leek pie that was Farnabe's take on Spanakopita, and a grilled, pepper-crusted tuna loin that tasted just like steak au poivre.
Dessert was cheesecake with sour cherries.
I noticed sour cherries were served with the chocolate dessert on ’wichcraft's dinner menu, too. I think that just might be the fruit of this autumn.
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