Friday, July 13, 2007

pizza barbecue

July 12

Oh what fun last night. My friend Julie Besonen, who assigns stories for Paper, and her friend Tobey Grumet, who has an apartment with a backyard in Cobble Hilll, Brooklyn, joined forces to throw a grilled-pizza party.
Tobey supplied the venue, Julie supplied her husband, Jim Knapp, who made the pizza — crunchy, barely smokey, with good, simple ingredients (I don’t like to comment on the quality of the restaurant food, because that’s a slippery slope toward becoming a “critic” — imagine Alfred Hitchcock saying “actor” — but I love to comment on my friends’ cooking, as long as it’s good). Punch was made using leftover free stuff sent to Julie — coconut-infused vodka, pineapple juice and something else, so it was a sort of non-frozen Piña Colada with vodka instead of rum (later we drank pineapple-infused rum as a cordial).
Dave Wondrich, a nicer person than whom I don’t think exists, made some sort of delicious classic punch, but I spent more time with the rosé wines that
Alice Feiring brought. I sipped them as she broke down her strategies for giving away all the wine sent to her that she deems unworthy of her palate.
Dave and Steve Kelley — formerly of the Institute of Culinary Education and now a wine merchant — exchanged stories of extreme drunkenness in their youth and stories in their recent past of dealing with a particularly dishonest, unpleasant and darkhearted co-owner of a trendy pizza place on Flatbush. Andrea Strong and I exchanged opinions of the food blog world.
I kept meaning to leave but insead stayed and munched on pickled garlic and olives as the hosts opened a forgotten bottle of rosé.
I finally left later than I care to admit, it being a school night, but I had good subway mojo; the 2 train arrived just as I made it to the subway platform

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