Dinner with Jumbos

February 9

I had dinner at Novo with my friend David Krauss, who I call Birdman. He got the nickname in college for his interest in ornithology. Really he's more of a paleontologist, and for many years has been a university professor of biology. He's my go-to guy when I have questions about human physiology for something I'm writing. If I need to know the difference between peptide and steroid hormones, I go to him.
Lots of food people were at the press dinner at Novo, including my friend-in-law Liz Forgang. Apart from writing for the New York Daily News, Liz also is the aunt of the wife of one of my best friends from college. She was sitting next to cookbook writer etc. Rozanne Gold and her husband, Michael Whiteman, and so in the course of our pre-dinner conversation I learned that Rozanne Gold, like Birdman, Liz's niece (and nephew) and me, went to Tufts!
Back at our table, Birdman and I talked about the study that was just released indicating, basically, that women on low-fat diets were no healthier than those who weren't on low-fat diets. A listserv I participate in was complaining about flaws in the study, but Birdman - who really hates this type of study - said it was much better than most. It was performed over a longer period of time and included many more participants than most.

Novo is in that neighborhood west of Soho whose name hasn't quite solidified yet. I'd call it Soho West, but no one else is doing that, so in print I've started referring to it as Hudson Square. Novo is the only restaurant I remember going to that offers a wider variety of coffee than regular, decaf and espresso. They serve one coffee from Sumatra, one from Brazil and an organic Costa Rican as well as an estate decafe from Nicaragua.

What I ate:
hamachi ceviche with yuzu juice, serrano chiles, and roasted sweet cherry tomato
octopus ceviche with lime, mint, cucumber and olive chimichurri
lobster ceviche with lime, orange juice, horseradish and pickled jalapeños
tuna ceviche with shaved chiles, coconut water, ginger and aji amazonica
grilled white asparagus, pan-roasted creminis and tetilla cheese gratin
braised oxtail, bucatini pasta, manchego cheese, garlic and truffle oil
creamy flan