Ploy Thai

February 6

Joe DiStefano from Gothamist said something to me the other night that I always like to hear.
He said he liked my work.
"We should go out for Thai food," I said, because Joe lives in Queens, where we New Yorkers keep most of our Thai food, and because ordering Thai food is one of the things I do best. If people like what I write, I want to order Thai food for them.
Joe liked the idea of this, because there was a place in Elmhurst, Ploy Thai, that he wanted to check out.
Actually, he'd checked it out, and was dismayed that they ignored him when he said he wanted the food to be spicy. Pehaps he would have better luck if someone ordered it in Thai.
Ploy Thai? Ploy? What the heck, I wondered, does ploy mean? So when we walked in, after saying hello in Thai, that there were two of us, and that, yes, we would eat it there, not to go, I said "Koh thot, khrap. Kham wah 'ploy' pleah wah arrai, khrap?" ("Excuse me, what does the word 'ploy' mean?")
It turns out it means gem, or jewel. Good to know.
Joe was a little bit disappointed that the specials on the board were no longer just written in Thai, but had English translations, too. But he didn't know that one of the specials, yam plah dook foo, or fluffy catfish salad, was an unusual (for New York) and fun dish to have, and that som tam pu, or green papaya salad with mud crab, was an unusual modification (for New York) of the som tam with peanuts (and ideally dried shrimp), that was more common both in the US and in Bangkok. It was a variation from Thailand's northeast.
"Isaan," Joe said, so I'd know that he was no neophyte when it comes to Thai food. Isaan is what Thais call the Northeast.
So we ordered those items, along with a couple of standards that are good markers of quality in a Thai restaurant: stir-fried pork with basil and green curry, which we got with chicken.
I insisted in Thai that they make both of the salads spicy. "Ta mai pet, mai arroy," I said -- If it's not spicy, it doesn't taste good.
They brought out the papaya salad first and waited for us to taste it to make sure it wasn't too spicy. It was, actually, but it's what we were looking for. I think flames might have shot out of poor Joe's mouth. I'm not sure. I have a pretty high threshold for capsaicin-induced pain, but I tasted the danger and avoided anything that looked like a chile. It reminded me of eating som tam in Thailand.
"Perfect," I said, and she brought out the rest of the meal.
Here's what struck me: They didn't pretend that Thai salads are like white people salads, to be eaten as a separate course. They brought every dish out the instant it was ready, as one does in Thailand. It had been so long since that had happened in New York that I had forgotten it was possible.
Joe's reviewing the place for Gothamist, so I'll leave him to it. It should be posted in a few days.

Ending a night with slimy noodles

February 5

I think Sloan “Allergic Girl” Miller gets up earlier in the morning than I do. She certainly wrote her blog entry about Padre Figlio earlier than I wrote this one. It was nice to meet her in person; we had merely e-corresponded before. She’s pretty, and looks a lot healthier than I’d imagined. We spoke about allergies, but also about other things, like Firefly, which I think was the best TV series of all time, although I just got turned onto it a few weeks ago. She has a friend who worked with its creator, Joss Whedon, who is my hero.
Padre Figlio is a brand new Italian restaurant by the people who owned Da Antonio. For their opening party they had a buffet spread that I picked at, but mostly I drank Chianti and Cabernet Sauvignon and chatted with Arlyn Blake, Francine Cohen, Joe DiStefano — a Queens expert who works for Gothamist and others — and a few other regulars of the New York restaurant opening world, and Allergic Girl. It was a good time.
I didn’t eat much, though, so I walked around the corner to Soba Totto. The full menu is in place now, and I snacked on cucumbers with red miso and a skewer of grilled shishito peppers before diving into a hot bowl of yamakake soba.
Yamakake soba has a root in it that the Japanese call nagaimo or yamaimo, and that often is translated into English as mountain yam or Japanese yam. It's a tuber, but more like a watery potato than a yam, with one big difference: It has a slimy, slippery texture that the Japanese think is just a wonderful quality in food and that Americans think is, uh, slimy and slippery. And viscous. Like saliva, but a little thicker. Or mucous.
But really, if you know that's what you’re getting, you can steel yourself and be ready for it. Or at least I can.
So they brought what I think was a raw quail egg to the table, along with a cup of puréed nagaimo and a bowl of hot soba. I was to add the egg to the purée and pour it into the bowl. Which I did.
The soba had little bits of yuzu zest in it, which I didn't expect. The broth with the added nagaimo was a little slimy, which I did expect, and I figured I’d mention it again so you know what to expect when ordering yamakake soba. No one wants that kind of a surprise in noodles.

Wolfe in sheep’s, oh never mind

February 1

Did you know that New Orleans now has 80 more restaurants than it did before “the storm” (as locals call Katrina)?
I don’t know if that’s true, but it’s what Thomas Wolfe, executive chef of Wolfe’s in the Warehouse in New Orleans, said.
It seems to me that New Orleans at the moment is trying to send out two messages:
1) Everything’s fine, y’all, come on down and laissez les bons temps rouler! and
2) We’ve been forgotten, neglected, and we need help!
I suspect both have elements of truth.
I also learned last night at the James Beard House that the next time I go to New Orleans I must have roasted oysters at Drago, near the airport, and also make the 25-mile trek across the bridge to Trey Yuen for the best Chinese food in America.
The last bit of advice was from Lynn Howard, a native of New Orleans who once was a physician but now is an international equities trader and art dealer. She met her husband Chris Howard here in New York, I think at a rugby game (excuse me, rugby match).
I find that it is practically a law of nature that if someone says something is the best, it’s usually below average. But Lynn and Chris seemed bright (he’s a biochemist and art dealer) and nice and I’ll try to get to Trey Yuen next time I’m in New Orleans.
The Howards were at the Beard House because Lynn is an old, old friend of Thomas Wolfe, who was cooking there last night.
And who do you think was photographing the event but Jamie Tiampo, whom I’d just met the other night? He looked very cute and serious.

Here’s what Thomas Wolfe and co. cooked:
hors d’oeuvre:
tuna tartare on black pepper-anchovy emulsion and lemon-caper dust
truffled tossed potato chip basket with Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, poached leeks and Madeira butter
venison terrine with peppadew jam and fennel powder
honey mustard fried catfish with Tabasco chipotle tartar sauce
Nicola Feuillatte Champagne

Gulf shrimp paillard with herb salad, lemon-caraway granité, choupiquet caviar and confit tomato vinaigrette
206 Hendry Chardonnay (Napa)

brie-enriched velouté with caramelized scallop and saffron celeriac batonnet
2005 Henri Pelle (Menetou-Salon, Loire)

foie gras torchon and pastrami cured squab gallontine with cranbery custard, smoked Viking sea salt, wild rice pilaf and tarragon cherry beurre rouge
2005 Domaine Chandon Pinot Noire (Carneros, Calif.)

Grilled wagyu strip loin with serrano ham, confit shallot and asparagus bundles, wild mushroom ceviche and classic Bordelaise
2001 Marques de Caceres Gran Reserva (Rioja, Spain)

Ellie’s white chocolate butter bars with raspberry gelato and vanilla bean anglaise
2004 J. Vidal Fleury (Beaumes de Venise, France)

flights of flavor

February 1

Yesterday I had lunch at Gilt, which was hosting an event thrown by a spice company announcing its 2008 flavor forecast, centered around 10 pairings that it has declared to be the flavors of 2008.
The lunch was developed by the spice company's corporate chef along with Gilt executive chef Chris Lee and Michael Schulson, who used to be the executive chef at Buddakan in New York, but left to do a television show called Pantry Raid. Now he’s working on opening a Japanese-oriented restaurant at Borgata in Atlantic City, in the space where Susanna Foo’s restaurant used to be.
I parked myself at a middle seat of a long table and was soon joined by Susan Westmoreland of Good Housekeeping, which is always a treat. We didn’t end up talking much, though, because after Michael finished talking about the food, he sat on the other side of me and we talked about food in East Asia and sort of gossiped about New York chefs. Mostly, he avoided giving me too much information about what other chefs were doing as I needled him for information. He did sort of nod and shrug in ways that indicated where I should follow up, so that’s what I’ll be doing.
We also talked about seasonality. One of the flavor combinations Michael had to work with for the lunch was lemon grass and lychee. But Lychees are a hot season fruit — available in Thailand in April and May, for example — and of course yesterday was the last day of January. So although canned lychees are available, Michael made a culinary statement by pickling the lychees. I thought that was a good way of serving what he needed to serve while still highlighting seasonality.
I chatted with Chris a bit after lunch. He seemed well. Apparently he was responsible for the cardamom "caviar" in the fizztini (see below), which were little green cardamom-flavored spheres made by adding sodium alginate to a flavored liquid and dripping droplets into calcium chloride solution. That’s probably the molecular gastronomy trick to go the most mainstream, unless you count using transglutaminase to hold cuts of meat together.

Here’s what was on the menu:
vanilla cardamom fizztini
Venison tartare with toasted allspice bread and candied cherries
foie gras torchon with caramelized apple, whiskey cider foam and sage brioche
field salad with kumquats, crystallized rose petals and poppy vinaigrette
lemon grass poached lobster with pickled lychee
red curry shrimp and plantain tempura with sweet chile sauce and agave nectar
cornmeal crusted scallops with heirloom beans and oregano succotash
cinnamon scented pork tenderloin with tomato hazelnut pesto, crispy olives and balsamic glaze
ginger pistachio roasted sea bass with grapefruit miso sauce and blackberry-Merlot reduction
Mexican hot chocolate “cup” cakes (it was actually cake, served in a ceramic, possibly porcelain, cup) with cocoa whipped cream
guava and coconut water sorbet with coriander scented cones
smoked chocolate and candied orange bon bon


These are the ten flavor pairings that were being highlighted:

oregano and heirloom beans
vanilla bean and cardamom
chile and cocoa
coriander and coconut water
lemon grass and lychee
red curry and masa
orange peel and natural wood (or smoke)
allspice and exotic meats
poppy seed and rose
rubbed sage and rye whiskey

Bagatelle

February 1

I had 8 p.m. dinner reservations at Bagatelle on Wednesday, but I got there early, so I lingered at the bar and sipped Sauvignon Blanc as I got to know the bartender, Giuseppe, a friendly chap from Calabria who came to New York, met a woman, got married, has a kid, seems happy.
I think Clark Mitchell showed up right on time and ordered what I was having, which is of course a very quick way to get a drink. He later switched to a gin Martini — with onions, so I guess it’s technically a Gibson. He said he has made that his regular drink, a slight switch from his previous regular drink, a gin Martini with a twist.
Clark had been invited to dinner at Bagatelle separately, but he passed the invitation on to some underlings at Travel + Leisure and went as my guest instead. He brought along, at my request, a copy of an article he wrote on Gstaad (Clark's the guy in the mostly red jacket, looking very sporty).
He handed me the magazine and then went to say hello to his underlings.
I’m so proud that Clark has underlings now, not that I had anything to do with it, but it’s nice to watch people grow.
The menu at Bagatelle, which just opened in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District, is mostly simple French bistro fare, so Clark and I had mostly simple things. He ordered crudités and a filet with Béarnaise sauce, and I had leek-filled truffled ravioli and a steak au poivre. We drank Pomerol with it.

Wisdom that comes with age

January 30

“You need to stop calling people kids,” Andy Battaglia told me the other night while we had dinner at Monkey Bar.
I have taken to doing that. You might have seen me do it on this blog from time to time — I say things like "the bright kids at Eater.”
I mean it as a compliment. Kids are energetic and enthusiastic.
But Andy, who is my cultural guru, says it makes me sound old.
“I am old,” I told him.
“No you’re not,” said Andy, who just turned 33.
I’ll be 41 in April, which isn’t, you know, old old, but it means I have a little perspective. And I realized last night that it has made me slightly less stupid — my internal “you’ve had too much to drink! Stop, stop now!” alarm goes off much earlier than it used to.
Back when I was truly young, and living in Bangkok, that alarm went off when it was time to find a taxi to fall into rather than pass out on the street.
I am happy to report that I have never passed out on a Bangkok street.
Last night, it went off while I was talking to beverage writers and such at a rum party at the Brandy Library.
The party was in the bar's basement, down a spiral staircase that required some level of sobriety to navigate.
I had a mini-burger or two while chatting — mostly about world travel if I remember correctly — with assorted people from the drink world. But I didn't eat much because I'd had a meatball hero for lunch, and a meatball hero's a lot of food.
High-end VSOP rum, and an orange-flavored cordial made from rum, were being dispensed from cute little casks, and I sampled them with enthusiasm while talking about the benefits of flying business class with Jack Robertiello, what to do in Argentina with a caterer whose name I have forgotten, places to drink in New Zealand with Naren Young, while also catching up with the regular gang.
I was having a perfectly nice time when, after refilling my little snifter and taking a sip, my better self, watching me from the relative safety and objectivity of my brain, said "THIS IS YOUR LAST DRINK!"
I finished my conversations, put my glass down, said my good-byes and was able to take my gift bag, climb the stairs, get my coat and engage in what seemed like perfectly reasonable parting words with Shawn Kelley and Allen Katz, who were chatting outside the Brandy Library, and made it to my subway. I don't think my speech was even slurred.
This morning, no hangover.
Good alarm.

Clubhouse Cafe

January 29

Last night, before having dinner at Monkey Bar, I went to a party at Clubhouse Cafe, which until quite recently was Tintol, a tapas bar specializing in Portuguese wine and food. Now it’s a kosher bar and lounge. Owner Jose de Meirelles also owns Le Marais, a kosher steakhouse across the street, and he saw a demand for a more casual place for people who follow Jewish dietary laws, both for spillover from his steakhouse and, well, just because.
It was a good party. I met Beth Aretsky, who is perhaps best known a “The Grill Bitch” in Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential. It made sense that she was there, as Jose used to be partners with Philippe Lajaunie in Les Halles, where Bourdain was chef.
Since the restaurant is kosher, Andrea Strong brought her kosher-keeping mother from Queens to be her guest. That was nice, and I would have chatted more with them but I ended up mostly talking with Jamie Tiampo, who came with the ubiquitous Akiko Katayama.
Jamie's a Sino-Canadian food photographer, food enthusiast, and partner in Dell'Anima. We spoke of many things, including his background (his grandfather left China’s Fujian province at the age of 6 and was raised in the Philippines, one thing led to another and Jamie was born in Calgary and raised in Vancouver, had a career in technology, decided he wanted a career in food and moved to New York). He gave my colleague Sonya Moore pointers on photographing liquids (in brief: It’s very hard to do).
I had a glass of red wine, and then went to dinner.

Chinese Monkey Bar

January 29

I didn’t know how Chinese Monkey Bar had become.
My friend Andy Battaglia and I were actually supposed to check out a relatively new restaurant last night, but it turns out the chef there was out of town, so we changed plans to see what Chris Cheung was up to. Chris replaced Patricia Yeo, who had been hired by the Glaziers, who own Monkey Bar, to revamp the menu of this formerly old school Midtown bar and restaurant.
Andy admired the restaurant’s walls, which had been painted red with Chinese-style scenes, many involving monkeys, as is appropriate for Monkey Bar, while I assessed the menu.
Everything is served family-style, and although probably only the potstickers were actually Chinese, Chris' style of using Chinese ingredients and techniques, plus some Southeast Asian ones, in Western-looking preparations was more evident than I'd expected. And the food was some of the spiciest I’ve had in Midtown. Who knew?
Here’s what we ate:

Kaffir lime leaf curried chicken salad
Salad of baby vegetables with chile lime dressing
mini short rib spring rolls with truffled Sriracha sauce
classic Cantonese shrimp and pork potstickers
crispy duck breast, lychee, mandarin oranges and Sriracha hoisin
wok seared sirloin steak, chile, garlic and creamed chrysanthemum spinach

Stop the presses! Chef goes on vacation

January 28

I called Bún restaurant in SoHo today to see who their new chef is.
“New chef?” the person on the phone asked.
Yes, I said, because the whole New York food blog world is all in a tizzy that Michael Bao Huynh has left Bún, perhaps to open a noodle shop.
“Where did you read that?”
I told him.
“First I’ve heard of it. He is on vacation in Vietnam, though.”
Now, it’s possible that there has been a kerfuffle in upper management at Bún that hasn’t been communicated to the staff. That happens, but the blogosphere also says that Mr. Huynh is gone from Mai House, the restaurant he runs in partnership with Myriad Restaurant Group. I e-mailed them to ask what was up and got a call from Myriad chief Drew Nieporent. No, he said, he and Michael are still partners in the restaurant, they get along fine, no problems.
Well, I’ve been lied to before, plenty (though not, to my knowledge, by Drew, who can be as tight-lipped as any businessman, but he's no liar). But I still take people at their word until I can’t anymore.
So, as far as I can tell, Michael Bao Huynh is on vacation but still involved in Bún. Running the kitchen at Mai House on a day to day basis, as they have been doing all along, are Spike (not Mike) Mendelsohn and Sean Scotese. (Spike also is a contestant on the next Top Chef, so congratulations to him).
People in the restaurant industry will in no way be surprised that the executive chef isn’t working on the line every day. If someone’s chef at more than one restaurant he (or occasionally she) obviously isn’t cooking at each one every night. That’s why one develops management skills and a good staff.

Home, in bed

January 25

Okay, so maybe I shouldn't try to go to three parties in different parts of Manhattan in one night, because now I'm sick. I don't think it's anything serious -- just a bad cold that started with sinus congestion and then settled into my chest.
For almost as long as I can remember my coughs have sounded much worse than they are. I project, from the diaphragm, with great rumbling noises coming out of my lungs. It's the same cough I get any time I have a cold, and it always causes great concern among friends and colleagues.
"You sound like Hellacious," my colleague Elissa Elan said to me the other day, eliciting a confused look from Paul Frumkin. I think he was wondering who Hellacious was.
"She meant, you sound, comma, like, comma, hellacious," I explained.
That must have been on Wednesday the 23rd, because I've been at home in bed ever since. I'm well on the mend, but my cough will still likely scare people.
And my voice is hoarse -- hoarse enough that when I ordered Chinese food from my regular delivery place, Red Hot, they tossed an orange in gratis. It's nice that they care.
Normally I get shredded beef with fresh hot pepper from Red Hot, but in my weakened state I've been feeling a need for more produce, so I've been ordering vegetarian dishes, along with pork fried rice.
I've been drinking fruit smoothies, too, and they have an emotionally therapeutic effect if nothing else.
Oh, I did eat out once this week, on Tuesday. Birdman and I went to T-Bar, a steakhouse on the Upper East Side. Birdman started with the tuna tartare and I had the chopped caesar salad, and we split the porterhouse for two and a bottle of St. Estephe. Then they buried us in dessert -- strawberry shortcake, cheesecake, and a caramelized banana parfait.

Whirlwind

January 18

I did what I thought was impossible last night. I went to parties on the Upper East Side, Astor Place and Times Square, all in one evening, and was home before 11.
I wasn't even going to try to make it to all three, but by 5:30 I realized that my productivity in the office had come to an end for the day, so I hopped uptown on the 6 train and made it to 2nd Avenue and 84th by a little after 6 to witness the opening of Cafe Notte, a cafe by day, wine bar at night kind of place, with a focus on local, seasonal stuff and using recycled furniture and so on.
Just so you know, I’m sick and tired of all the green rhetoric. I was raised by dyed-in-the-wool (using environmentally safe dye, of course) environmentalists and I find many of the people jumping onto the green bandwagon (hybrid bandwagon, acoustic guitars, or perhaps solar-powered electric ones) over the past couple of years, without really knowing what they’re talking about, to be venal, insipid and kind of gross.
But Steven Salsberg seems serious about his mission at Cafe Notte. A representative from the Greenmarket was there to chat about the food, and to hand out a list of farms whose stuff was being served that evening. The soup recipes come from Steven’s wife, and so does the challah recipe. The young beverage manager seemed genuinely excited to be sharing his wine discoveries. It was really very sweet, and I was sorry to have to cut my visit short, but the Astor Center awaited. I rushed to the 6 train.
I was not actually interested in seeing the opening of a new event space, not really. But it was definitely the see-and-be-seen party of the evening. So I went, I saw, I was seen. Publicist Jesse Gerstein, the only male I know of to have worked for Philip Baltz for an extended period of time, was bragging about all the cocktail experts who were there that evening (basically, all of the New York-based ones were there except for Jerri Banks). I gave him a bored look just to be a jerk, because it was an impressive turnout. I wandered over to Dave Wondrich’s bar to drink his Manhattan, which I sipped, appreciating the lemon twist, while circulating through the party.
And then who do you think stopped me but Elizabeth Andoh?
Elizabeth is probably the most knowledgeable native English speaker about Japanese food on Earth. She enchanted the audience at NRN’s Culinary R&D conference last year when she broke down the fundamentals of the cuisine for them, and in general she is a fascinating and charming person, and I was very glad to see her. We spoke of weather and the quality of fish and what makes Japanese food so expensive in Japan (she contends that it’s the labor and serving accoutrements, not the ingredients).
So that was fun, but it was time to hop on the N train to Times Square for the opening party of Chop Suey.
Chop Suey is the really bad name for Zak Pelaccio‘s latest venture. It’s supposed to be a Koreanish restaurant and I have no idea why it’s called what it is, as chop suey is a Chinese-American dish and has nothing to do with China, let alone Korea. But it’s in the Renaissance Hotel in Times Square, so what do you want, authenticity?
I have no idea what the food is like because they had stopped serving savory food and were only passing around dessert. I guess the desserts were developed by Will Goldfarb, but I really wasn’t in the mood.
I did have a nice chat with Zak, though, and he advised me of a new Thai restaurant in Astoria to try, which I’ll have to do.
Apart from Zak, the only person I knew at the party was Tara Mastrelli of Hospitality Design magazine, so I sipped red wine and hung out with her and other design people, who didn’t seem to mind the space.
Meeting Tara late at night is potentially dangerous, as it can lead to a long night of karaoke and other things, but tonight it did not. We headed home early and, as I said, I crossed the threshold of my home before 11.
Amazing.

big food writers at Dovetail

January 17

Food writer Jane Sigal realized that she didn’t really know anything about how restaurants work. So she got herself a job as a hostess at Dovetail. She was there last night, sorting through numbered tags and associating them with my coat and bag, and with the belongings of Dovetail’s publicist, Aurora Kessler, with whom I was dining.
“Now I know what happens when someone like you walks into a restaurant,” Jane said.
Dovetail was full of people like me last night. In fact, by my reckoning, I was the least important food journalist in the dining room, behind Food & Wine's Dana Cowin, The New York Post’s Steve Cuozzo, and the inimitable James Oliver Cury of Epicurious.
So Dovetail’s in the full throes of the opening phase of “important” New York restaurants, when we in the food world check the place out (Alan Richman and Andrew Knowlton have been in, for sure — and no-doubt countless others).
I sat in the corner, in a spot that Thais might call a chaiyaphum — a fortified position suitable for making a stand in battle.
I’m thinking in Thai a bit today because Aurora, like me, lived in Thailand for about five years. We overlapped by one year — she was there from 1988 to 1993, I was there from ’92 to ’97 — but we never met. She is, like, half my age, after all.
Between Aurora's gentle pitches about Dovetail, we gossiped about chefs, publicists and food writers, reminisced about Thailand and exchanged notes on Thai food in Manhattan — Land, Won Dee Siam, Pam Real Thai Food.
We also ate and drank, starting with a glass of Prosecco.

And from there:
lamb tongue with muffaletta pressé, olives and capers
chicken and skate wings with chickpeas and oranges
Bergerie de L'Hortus Pic Saint Loup (Languedoc, France)

Salad of Brussels sprouts leaves with Serrano ham, cauliflower purée, cauliflower florettes, Bosc pears, Manchego cheese, sunflower seeds and sage vinaigrette
Vinicola Hidalgo S.A. Oloroso sherry

Cod with coco beans, saffron and crab
Jakoby Mathy Riesling Kabinett (Mosel-Saar-Ruwer, Germany)

Rack and leg of lamb with Indian spices, winter tabbouleh and yogurt
Donna Luna Aglianico (Campania, Italy)

chocolate caramel fondant with earl grey streusel, hazelnuts and yogurt sherbet
brioche bread pudding with bananas, bacon brittle and rum vanilla ice cream
La Nora Pedro Ximenez sherry

I was looking forward to giving Jane Sigal a tip for getting my coat and bag — I even broke a $20 in anticipation — but they were fetched by someone else.

Southerners at Aquavit

January 16

I can be a selfish man, so when a publicist representing the fine city of Charleston, S.C., wanted to take me to dinner this week, I suggested Aquavit, which is very convenient for me as it is across the street from my office.
There are many restaurants in New York that I’ve been meaning to try. Some, such as Monkey Bar, newly under the helm of Chris Cheung, are nearly as close to my Park Avenue office (between 55th and 56th streets, thank you very much), but I can never think of them when people ask me to dinner. I really should make a list.
But yesterday was my first day back in the office after a vacation in Denver, where I attended the Bar Mitzvah of my second cousin once-removed Micah Levi. Nice kid. The event was certainly worth a blog entry, and maybe I’ll post one later.
At any rate, I knew I would have a boatload of work to do upon my return and did not feel like a long commute to dinner. So, Aquavit.
Of course, Aquavit also, even as a 20-year-old restaurant, continues to maintain a distinctive character and interesting cuisine, and for the past year-and-a-half Johan Svensson has been in the kitchen, and I don’t have a single mean thing to say about the guy.
To the right is a picture I took of him from last year’s C-CAP gala.
I was eating with publicist Melany Mullens and a little puppy dog of an executive chef, 25-year-old Aaron Deal (favorite color: Cobalt Blue), who just recently took over the kitchen at Tristan in Charleston.
There he is on the left. I didn’t take that picture. Melany sent it to me.
He’s in town to cook at the Beard House tonight with a bunch of other Charleston chefs, including crazy molecular gastronomer Sean Brock of McCrady’s, whose food I’d had at the Beard House back when he was a chef in Tennessee.
While Melany, Aaron and I were eating in Aquavit, Sean was of course downtown eating at WD-50.
The other Charleston chefs cooking tonight, just for the record, are Marc Collins of Orca 1886, Frank McMahon of Hank’s Seafood Restaurant, Fred Neuville of Fat Hen (which actually is on John’s Island) and pastry chef Kelly Wilson of Cypress. I think some of them were eating at WD-50, too, but I can’t say for sure.
And when I call Sean crazy, he’s not really, I don’t think, and Aaron tells me he’s moved away from the molecular gastronomy and more toward the local and seasonal stuff, which is in fact more trendy at this point anyway.

Being with a chef, it seemed necessary and proper to have a tasting menu, paired with beverages. Johan sent different things to Aaron and me, but of course we shared, because that's what you do, as we talked about what we liked about our jobs, and other things.

What we ate and drank:

For Aaron:
lobster roll with trout roe and egg dressing
2006 Claar Cellars Riesling (Columbia Valley, Washington)

foie gras ganache with smoked duck tartare
2003 Alois Kracher Auslese Cuvée (Burgenland, Austria)

hot-smoked trout with sunchoke and horseradish broth
2003 Tenuta di Arceno “Primavoce” Merlot/Cabernet/Sangiovese (Tuscany, Italy)

venison with lingonberry sauce and horseradish dumplings
2006 Barrel 27 Syrah (Central Coast, California)

Fourme d'Ambert cheese with apple and date bread
Samuel Smith Imperial Stout (Yorkshire, England)

vanilla-yogurt sorbet with candied beats

ginger-chocolate mousse with glogg poached pear
Fonseca Bin 27 Port

For me:

yellowtail with sea urchin, lime and duck tongue
2006 Karl Fritsch Grüner Veltliner (Wagram, Austria)

octopus with smoked avocado and persimmons
2005 Navarro Gewürtztraminer (Mendocino County, Calif.)

seared tuna and scallop with fennel brûlée
2004 Louis Jadot “Le Vaucrain” Côte de Nuits Pinot Noir (Burgundy, France)

ribeye and (beer-braised) short rib with parsnip purée (sweet, and I think flavored with vanilla)
2005 Sirech “Deux Terroirs” Merlog (Libournais, France)

Constant Bliss cheese with apricot mustard chutney and walnut bread
Kiuchi Brewery Hitachino Nest White Ale (Ibaraki, Japan)

vanilla-yogurt sorbet with candied beets

squash bread pudding with lingonberry sorbet
2004 Oremus Late Harvest Tokaji (Tokaji, Hungary)

Melany had a vegetarian tasting, and I didn’t note all of the items

Free food at BarFry

January 11

Here’s the thing about Eater.com’s Deathwatch: It would be an amusing little feature except for the fact that many New York diners don’t have any more confidence in their taste in restaurants than 14-year-olds have in their taste in music or fashion or pop idols or whatever. If the cool people say you’re not supposed to like something anymore, the cool-people-wannabes stop liking it.
And so, I’m told by some insiders in the New York restaurant scene, Deathwatch can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. When a restaurant is given the kiss of Deathwatch, customers stop going. This is extraordinary and sad, and I don’t blame Eater for it — Eater’s reporting on restaurant news as it sees fit. I blame people who go to restaurants because they’re told to, not because they like them.
But with every culture there is also a counter-culture, with every fallen stock price the opportunity for bargain hunting, with every deathwatch the hope of renewed life.
And this brings us to the latest target of Deathwatch, Josh DeChellis' BarFry. The reason for the Deathwatch: BarFry is going to be handing out free food during happy hour (hours really: 4-6 p.m., and then again from 11 p.m. to closing). Sounds to Eater like a desperate measure to drum up business. Sounds to me like an opportunity for Josh to experiment and use his drinking customers as willing guinea pigs.
Josh loves experimenting with food — and with drinks, actually, such as the extraordinary rhubarb Manhattan he made for me years ago when he was at Sumile, even before it had been renamed Sumile Sushi. They don’t all make sense economically or from the perspective of kitchen logistics, and I imagine not all of them will taste terrific, but perhaps he’s giving guests an inside look into his creative mind.
Oh, and BarFry’s launching a new cocktail menu, too, and a signature beer that Josh developed over two years in cooperation with Rogue Brewery of Newport, Ore.
But I’m getting off the topic. Here’s my point: When a restaurant is hit with Deathwatch, it’s diners' chance to be the goths, mods and punks instead of the preppies, to go counter-culture and patronize those restaurants that Eater has declared no longer to be cool.
If nothing else, the lines will be shorter.

The things I do for my job

StarChefs.com is conducting its fourth annual salary survey among foodservice professionals, and I can get the results if I mention it to you, dear reader.
And so click here to take the survey. If you do, you will be entered for a chance to win four chef passes to StarChefs' International Chefs Congress this September 14-16. So that’s something.

Denver

January 10

My cousin Micah Levi’s Bar Mitzvah is on Saturday, so I’m in Denver to go to that, and to take a week to hang out with family. I’m staying in my old room in my parents’ house on 12th and Race (the blue house; you'll know it if you walk by — it has little white gargoyles on the second story balcony and butterflies are painted on the front porch). For breakfast here I pretty much always have an egg fried over easy and served on a bagel with melted cheese. The yolk runs through the hole in the bagel, which is a problem. I tried blocking the hole with the cheese, but it just melted down the hole too. There's a way around this, I know, such as using an English muffin. But I prefer bagels.
Anyway, apart from Micah’s Bar Mitzvah, the main point of the visit is to hang out with nephew Harrison (8) and niece Tahirah (12). I also have a niece Alia, Harrison’s sister, but she’s a year-and-a-half old and, though cute as a button, not a great conversationalist, and I can't really bond with her yet.
Our big outing, at Harrison’s suggestion, was to a place called Monkey Bizness, which is sort of an indoor playground with giant soft slides and obstacle courses and such. Air hockey, too. I did the obstacle course once and was reminded that, despite being a Colorado native, I am no longer acclimated to high altitude. It reminded me of when cousin Joe Levi, Micah’s dad, moved to Denver in the 1970s and would go running and then come back to the house panting and doubled over. It was funny. Silly lowlanders running around like it’s no big deal to be at 5,000 feet.
Joe’s fine now, though.
After Monkey Bizness I took Harrison to Arby’s (he had chicken fingers and curly fries; I had a super roast beef sandwich and potato cakes) and took Tahirah across the parking lot to Subway (she had a turkey sandwich with mayonnaise and assorted vegetables). The kids had never had Arby’s potato cakes before but I convinced them to try them and they agreed that they were a good idea.
Then it was off to Starbucks for a tall double chocolate chip Frappucino for Tahirah, a tall vanilla crème for Harrison, and a short cappuccino for me.
So I’d had dinner, taken the kids home and was hanging out with my folks, having had a full day and realized it was only 8:30 p.m. So I checked out a new restaurant attached to The Tattered Cover on Colfax called Encore where I had a Manhattan. Then I wandered down Colfax to the Satire Lounge. If I'd been hungry I would have had a bowl of their green chili, but instead I drank Newcastle Brown Ale and chatted with a guy named Ray who, from what I could surmise, had just been thrown out of his house in Conifer by his wife and was staying at the Ramada Inn nearby. He'd just been to his first AA meeting. I guess it didn't take as he was drinking beer with me, but he planned on going to seven meetings the following day. Nice guy. A bit troubled.
Then I wandered up to 13th Avenue, to Wyman's, which is conveniently less than a block away from my folks' house. I drank Smithwick's and assorted microbrews and conversed a bit with people who were playing Scrabble with an open dictionary. Friendly group.
Other restaurant meals have included a combination meal at Las Delicias (a burrito, a tostada, a taco, something else — you get the idea), and sushi at Japon with my sister Courtney and her friend Chrissy (I had some some snapper and horse mackerel nigiri sushi and something called a Denver Roll, which had fresh water eel, albacore tuna, cucumber, avocado & flying fish roe.
Last night brother Todd, sister-in-law Helen, their son Harrison and my sister Courtney to nine 75 (Courtney's daughter Tahirah had Hebrew school, my parents stayed home).
Nine 75 is one of the Sullivan Group’s restaurants, whose chef is Troy Guard. Troy and I go back quite a way. You can read about it here if you’re curious, but I don’t like to alert chefs about my arrival because I worry that it implies that I’m asking for free stuff, and I’m not.
As far as I could tell, we got in and out of the restaurant unnoticed. [January 12: We sure did — I just got an e-mail from Troy's wife, Leigh Sullivan-Guard, and it turns out that Troy and Leigh left the Sullivan group in June of last year].
We decided to eat all small plates, except for a chopped salad and a bowl of corn bisque.
Here’s what else we had:
Charred edamame
popcorn shrimp
crunchy calamari
chipotle lobster tacos
bbq pork sliders

And for dessert:
house made cotton candy
rice krispie treats
Belgian waffle with maple custard

I also had an espresso, and Courtney and I split a bottle of Carro Tinto (mostly Tempranillo).

Caucus food

January 4

The ListServ of the Association for the Study of Food and Society discusses many things. This week one topic was food served at the Iowa Caucus.
Here are some reports:

From freelance writer, photographer and editor Cathy Wilkinson Barash:

Reporting from the 65th precinct in Des Moines. We had three times the number of caucus attendees as 4 years ago; 207. The meeting room was jammed with people. Hillary had a relative "spread" with mini ham sandwiches (good Iowa pork), fruit salad (no spoons), chocolate chip cookies, M&M cookies, and bottled water. Since the food was set out on the only large table in the room, others besides Hillary supporters helped themselves. Reportedly the Obama group had plenty of cookies, but they were such a large group, I saw no evidence of it. The Edwards coalition had homemade fudge and caramels, which weren't brought out until the head count was over.

From Warren Belasco:

NPR's Linda Wertheimer, reporting from the town of Nevada, Iowa,
observed that while cookies were allowed inside, sandwiches were not.
Obama's supporters brought cookies. Clinton's brought sandwiches. Draw your own conclusions.

From Robin Kline of Savvy Food Communications:

The town of Nevada (pronounced Nuh-VAY-duh) has some weird rules. I think they were caucusing at the county USDA Extension Building so maybe only 4H-sanctioned cookies (snickerdoodles, etc.) were "allowed".

In the 74th precinct we had 532 registered caucus attendees....Obama had really cute homemade sugar cookies decorated with the Obama "logo" red-white-blue "O" in colored frosting. Edwards had some fine looking cookies and salty snacks; Clinton offered the ham-and-cheese sandwiches, fruit salad (with forks), chips and water.

Here’s another one, sent second hand:

(A) Hillary supporter[s] brought bun sandwiches with some meat filling and some cookies, and bottles of drinking water. An Edwards supporter brought small pretzels with some kind of frosting (cream cheese?) topped off with an M&M. And some Obama supporter brought some Brachs, individually-wrapped Milk Maid fruit-flavored candies.
I did hear several say that they were surprised to get caucus literature suggesting bringing snack foods for attendees, a first in their memories.
That's the short story on a small Iowa (mostly rural) Caucus food offerings.

The ASFS being what it is, I’m not expecting any reports from the Republican front.

January 5

More rapportage:

From Rachelle H. Saltzman of the Iowa Arts Council

69th precinct reporting in--there was an organized effort on the part of Hillary and Obama folks to bring food (the same [catered] ham/cheese on little buns reported by others for Hillary; Obama's folks had boxes of large sugar cookies iced w/the Obama logo [and clearly catered from one of the local supermarkets]). Not sure who brought the water bottles, but the Edwards folks brought all sorts of homemade cookies (peanut butter, chocolate chip, etc.) plus excellent brownies, and quick breads (cranberry and I think banana).

results--we had over twice the numbers from 4 years ago w/a total of 480 (209/Obama, 100/Edwards, 87/Hillary, and 72/Richardson--these were the final results; we started w/fewer for the top three and 50 for Richardson, 30 for Biden, and 1 for Kucinich, and some undecideds).

To echo my Iowa colleagues, it was a great night for caucusing here--crowded and enthusiastic and very congenial.

Riki

ps--I strongly suspect the food bringing was driven by the Wash Post story as well as the catered efforts by the Hillary and Obama folks--not sure what the deal was w/the Edwards homemade contingent (and everyone shared w/everyone). I did ask a neighbor who grew up in NW (VERY rural) Iowa, where people really do/did caucus in private homes about food when she was a kid (she's a boomer), and she said that folks definitely brought food, much like a potluck (didn't have time to get into details as to the kinds of foods).

More from Cathy Wilkinson Barash:

In talking with friends today, Hillary's staple was what was at my caucus.
However, caucuses that met in school and some libraries did not allow any
food or drink. Wonder what they did with the trays of food—instant frozen
sandwiches?

Also interesting to note that the sandwiches were not typical for Iowa, as
they were meat only—no cheese....

Cheers,
Cathy

Cathy Wilkinson Barash

From Stasi McAteer:

Reporting from Davenport, my parents informed me that the Clinton camp there also provided the ham sandwiches, but they had chips instead of fruit salad (hmmm...city folk = less healthy?), and water and dessert. They were impressed with her spread (but not enough to go to her camp).

"Somebody" had granola bars, which my folks thought was silly in comparison to the sandwiches. No report of cookies. A few other candidates had provided drinks.

Obama's people, realizing that it was expected, ran out last minute to buy water. Didn't matter though - 2/3 of the room was in his camp already anyway.

On a non-food note, it was really neat to hear from my mom (who called during the event) and her voice was so excited. She hadn't ever gone to a caucus and had voted Republican in the last several elections. She was definitely "fired up."

And here’s a peach from pescatarian, high-fructose-corn-syrup-hating Doris Witt:

I can indeed offer an at least partial report from my local (Democratic)
caucus venue here in Iowa City, which was, appropriately enough, the
City High School cafeteria. The caucusing process usually begins at
7:00 p.m. and ends around 9:00 p.m., and therefore I think most
caucus-goers have probably already eaten before arriving. In the past I
have occasionally seen individuals carrying bagged dinners. Last night
was the first time I can recall seeing food provided by campaign
workers, but I am admittedly usually so busy checking out the political
loyalties of my more discreet neighbors that I might simply not have
noticed.

Last night, though, food was definitely being used as bait by at least
some of the campaigns, which when I realized it had the effect of
reinforcing my decision to at least begin the evening as an "undecided."
Accordingly, I spent the first few minutes chatting with various friends
sporting Kucinich, Obama, and/or Richardson buttons who offered solely
food for thought. I complimented them on their idealism and dropped
hints that I might return later before following my eyes (there was,
alas, no "real food" smell associated with the things I am about to
describe) to more gastronomically interesting parts of the room--the
Clinton and Edwards tables, in particular. Visibly unmarked by my lack
of lapel paraphernalia, I was almost immediately cornered by a
Bundt-cake wielding woman sporting an Edwards sticker. Lemon or vanilla
pound cake with high-fructose corn syrup glaze, if I had to guess--very
possibly from the local employee-owned Hy-Vee. I'll probably be fueling
my car with the leftovers in a few days. As the evening progressed, I
continued to see Edwards workers distributing similarly
quasi-Southern/populist sweets--more Bundt-cakes sliced into (reasonably
thin) single serving wedges, pans of brownies, chocolate chip cookies in
plastic packaging of the sort one finds inside, say, a Chips Ahoy bag.
Before I had time to decide whether accepting the Bundt cake was
tantamount to promising to caucus for Edwards, a Clinton precinct chair
tried to tempt me over with an entire bagged dinner--roast beef or
turkey sandwich, chips, cookie, soda. I graciously explained, using my
strongest lingering rural Kentucky accent, that I eat fish but not meat
or chicken. The chair's facial expression started to plummet, and his
eyes flitted forlornly over my plaid flannel shirt. He quickly
recovered, however, having perhaps recognized the tell-tale fleece
lining of costly winter-weight LL Bean jeans, by abandoning the food
lure, gesturing toward the Clinton crowd, and shamelessly reminding me
of key elements of my demographic profile: middle-aged, middle class
white female. "But one who has spent much of the past 15 years teaching
African American literature and culture," I added, having not
coincidentally just noticed that pizza was now being dished out at the
Obama tables. Over I scurried, but with 700 plus people (a record
number) packed into a room designed for about 350, over half of whom
were supporting Obama, I failed in my quest and therefore am unable to
report with any accuracy the brand of pizza or types of toppings--though
it did appear to be regular rather than thin or thick crust, and I think
at least some of the toppings were intended to pass as vegetables.
Perhaps not surprisingly, no tempting smell emanated from the pizza
either. (One wonders whether in 2012 the Kucinich camp will seize the
opening by recruiting CSA affiliates to serve up freshly baked whole
grain bread filled with locally-grown organic sprouts and locally
produced goat cheese.) But by that point the Edwards and Clinton
supporters, who were sitting on the side of the unbearably stuffy room
nearest the windows, had decided to open them in a largely fruitless
effort to lure more supporters ("Come on over and join the cool
campaigns"), so it might just have been that my nasal passages were
rendered useless by the sudden blast of sub-zero air.

As for Dodd and Biden, by the way, it is possible that food was
circulating among their small numbers of supporters, but, alas, neither
campaign even managed to garner seats at any of the cafeteria tables,
and so if they did eat it had to have been while standing up. During
the realignment portion of the evening (in our precinct, candidates
needed a minimum of 108 supporters by the end of the two alignments to
win any delegates), the Richardson supporters mostly went over to Obama,
and the Dodd and Biden supporters redistributed themselves among the
Obama, Edwards, and Clinton camps. Not being ethnographically inclined,
I cannot report with any accuracy as to whether the culinary offerings
had anything to do with their choices. One suspects that exit poll data
on this very issue will be available next time out, though.

I myself left the caucus at the end of the evening without having
partaken of any of the (pseudo-)food offerings. As for what that means
with respect to my choice of presidential candidate, only my 700 plus
neighbors know for sure . . . .

Signing off until November 2011,
Doris

January 7: Word from the Republicans

From the ever-intrepid Cathy Wilkinson Barash:

I spoke to a Republican friend over the weekend. It seems a representative
from each candidate gave a 10 to 15 minute speech. Asked about food, she
replied that after half an hour they switched the meeting rooms (Democrats &
Republicans were both in same building) as the Dems needed a bigger space.
Apparently they left their food behind, so the Republicans happily chowed
down on Hillary's sandwiches, chips, cookies and water, Obama's logo-ed
cookies, and Edward's home-made brownies and fudge!

And a point of clarification from Joseph Mutz, RD

Perhaps we haven't heard much of Republican Iowa Caucus food because of the nature of their caucus. The Republican process is much simpler than that of the Democrats. The Republicans vote via private ballot and have "no second round/15% viability rule." There is no "standing" with a certain candidate or repeated head counts for the republicans. Thus, most republican caucus go-ers, vote via private ballot and then return home, while the Democrats' event can go on for several hours. 

I have an aunt in Iowa who caucused with the republicans and she said she was in and out in well under a half an hour, leaving little time or necessitation for sustenance in the form of rivaling Giuliani sandwiches, Huckabee cookies, or McCain muffins.


Soba Totto two

January 3, 2008

Freezing night, just freezing, so I popped back into Soba Totto for warming soba before hopping on the subway. I noticed a couple of things I hadn't seen before. Actually, now that I think about it, I noticed just one new thing: In back of the line where all the yakitori chefs are grilling their meats there are a bunch of crocks of shochu with little spigots for dispensing.
As I finished slurping my noodles and was relaxing with my tea (toasty hojicha — very classy), Bobby, the owner (Ryuichi Munekata, actually, but he goes by Bobby) noticed me and immediately apologized that the menu was so limited. He said the soba chef was from Japan and was still working out the kinks of New York water. He said a bigger menu would be in place in the next two to four weeks, and then he apologized again.
Not that there was anything to apologize about. I was just having plain old $10 hot kake soba.
And the menu's not exactly limited. There are four other hot soba options (with (1) egg, (2) chicken breast, (3) "Japanese yam" — which I'm guessing is nagaimo — and egg, and (4) tempura) as well as six cold soba options, plus all sorts of pickles, three salads, cheese-stuffed deep-fried wontons, Japanese-style fried chicken and a couple of dozen types of yakitori.
He also has seven appetizers with either soba or "soba seed," by which I think he means buckwheat groats, which we Jews call kasha.

Soba Totto

December 28

Hungry for a little something after work last night, I popped my head into a new place that the very enterprising people at Urban Daddy alerted me to, Soba Totto (211 East 43rd Street, between Second and Third avenues, 212-557-8200. For more descriptions of the place, please take a look at this entry and this one. Thank you).
Not surprisingly, the restaurant’s specialty is Japanese buckwheat noodles, called soba. Also not surprisingly, sitting with the owner and some guy from Chicago, was Grub Street’s Josh Ozersky.
Josh seemed, oh, I don’t know, maybe just a tiny bit troubled that I, too, had heard of Soba Totto, which had just opened a couple of days earlier. Maybe he doesn’t subscribe to Urban Daddy, or maybe it’s his week off and he hasn’t been reading his e-newsletters. People do need a week off from time to time, you know.
Josh is probably best known for his job as editor of New York magazine’s food blog, but what he really is is a meat expert — hence his nickname, Mr. Cutlets — and he was gracious enough to send me a galley of his soon-to-be-published book, The Hamburger: A History, for an article I’m working on. It’s a terrific read, clever and witty, informative and sometimes strident in that way that Josh can be with regard to subjects pertaining to meat (I think we amused casual listeners with our conversation about deckle at the reopening-party of Picholine).
To wit (from his book):
"To admit ground beef on toast as a hamburger is to make the idea of a ‘hamburger’ so loose, so abstract, so semiotically promiscuous as to have no meaning."
Because hamburgers come on a bun, you see.
He's right, of course.
Anyway, I ate at Soba Totto’s bar, which is sleek and decked out in earth and wood tones. Behind it are young, hip-looking Japanese chefs, heads covered with urbane-Japanese-looking versions of do-rags, grilling things with a sort of casual earnestness.
Soba Totto is owned by the same people as Yakitori Totto, and so grilled meats are another restaurant specialty.
I had two draft beers (Kirin, I believe) assorted Japanese pickles, a skewer of chicken oysters (the “oyster” is the bit of meat on the chicken’s lower back, just above the thigh, that is highly prized by certain meat aficionados, maybe including Josh, although I can’t say for sure) and a bowl of hot soba with "poached egg” although really it was more of a swirled egg in the style of egg drop soup.

A 16-ounce Dunkin’ Donuts iced coffee is 16 ounces

December 27

If I’m doing the math right, only about 11 percent of you come here unbidden, just clicking on your bookmark and landing here. A fair amount, but fewer than half on most days, are referred here by one of the nice web sites that link to this blog. The rest come because of keyword searches — because some combination of words I used match the ones that you typed into a search window.
Sometimes I think that my blog delivers what you’re looking for. If you’re interested in finding out more about the bull named Prime in Kentucky, I’ve written about that. If the keyword search prime the bull ky had another meaning that I choose not to speculate about, well, then I’m sorry. If you have been wondering about James Bond’s taste in Martinis I’ve written about that, too. Curious to find others who prefer their tomatoes cooked? You’ve found one here.
But I don’t know when popcorn was invented or what Jimi Hendrix liked to eat. I don’t know about the sexual orientation of Mario Batali (not that it’s any of your business), but I do know that he has thanked his wife (“without whom I would be nothing,” he said) at award ceremonies.
Incidentally, "Mario Batali" and "gay" apparently are referred to in close proximity fairly often. One person who used those key words made it to this blog, even though it was the 40th entry in a Google search.
As for Pedro Yanowitz, I heard that he recently married (a woman).
A disconcertingly common keyword search that brings people here is dog fuke woman. I don’t know exactly what you’re looking for with that search, but I hope you spelled it right.
Let me take a brief moment to answer some other questions implied by the searches.
I think I’d like a creamy gorgonzola with Poire William.
Jeans can count as smart casual, depending on how you wear them.
Anything will help you lose weight if you just eat less of it, but I'm not sure how to loose weight.
I’m not sure how you comb a fauxhawk (pronounced fo-hock), but I believe it requires a lot of gel.
Tony Esnault is a man.
As for the other keyword searches listed below, well, I just don’t know what to say (I apologize for the first one, but it did lead some troubled soul to this blog entry):

after dinner seduction mother
are laura cunningham and thomas keller back together
bad booths at the national restaurant show
bathroom plants
candied sturgeon
cheese to pair with poire william
cork braised octopus
do jeans count as smart casual
does chrysanthemums,walnut, rose, green raisin help loosing weight
dog fuke woman
estrogen food
forehead sweating standing in line
fuke woman
give me a speech on tomato ceviche apptezier
hate raw tomato
how does james bond order his martini, shaken, not stirred
how to arrange bongos for wow
how to comb faux hawk
how to eat eggplant?
how to seem smarter than you are
i grew a goatee
interesting words about chrysanthemums
is pedro yanowitz gay?
james bond martini vespa
jean-georges chef what is his wifes name and is she black
jimi hendrix favorite foods
mario batali gay
metallic body paint
molecular gastronomy dragonfruit
people who have met bobby flay
prime the bull ky
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rocco dispirito implosion
rocco dispirito list of girlfriends 2007
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tony esnault sex
truffled popcorn
uses for ranch dressing
what happened to rocco dispirito
what size is a 16 ounce dunkin donuts iced coffee
what was jimi hendrix's' favorite food
when was popcorn invented

A thinking man’s chef

December 21

Sometimes when I interview a chef, I diligently write down everything he (or she, but usually he) says, and then look at my notes and throw them away because everything he said was a load of gibbering nonsense. Those chefs wax philosophical about their food or life or some pseudo-intellectual topic, get lost in their own train of thought and never come back to Earth.
It happens more often than you might think.
Others just aren’t very articulate. They know how to cook, but are neither capable nor interested in describing what they do. That's great for their guests, but bad for food writers. I remember interviewing a really talented chef in Texas who made a delicious galangal panna cotta. I tried to get him to wax philosophical about galangal, which is a rhizome related to ginger but with a distinct taste that’s spicier and I think a bit less aromatic, used in various Southeast Asian cuisines.
All he could say was that it was like ginger, but a little different. That’s true, but it makes for really dull copy.
Then there’s Michael Psilakis, who thinks a lot about his food, reflects on it, can talk your head off about it, but at the end of the day it makes sense.
Michael got started in the restaurant business as a manager of TGI Friday’s on Long Island, but he made a splash on the New York City food scene a few years back with Onera, a Greek-inspired restaurant on the Upper West Side. Then he opened the more Mediterranean-inspired Dona in Midtown East to wild acclaim, only to close it because of construction on and around the restaurant property. But soon after that he opened Anthos, in Central Midtown, which was Greek-inspired but fancier than Onera. To further distinguish Onera from Anthos, he rechristened the Upper West Side place as Kefi and made it traditional Greek food.
Now, as Grub Street reported, Michael is going to open a new version of Dona, with a slightly different name, a more casual environment, and, he told me, a menu that’s more distinctly Italian-influenced, rather than Italian-Greek, Mediterranean or whatever. He says it’s on track to open sometime in the second half of January.
There will be some Greek and Spanish stuff in there, but he wants the new restaurant to be more approachable than the old Dona. That’s very much in line with current food trends. So is a fine-dining chef opening a more casual restaurant, but Michael has already done that with Kefi, anyway.
His reasoning behind the Italian orientation of Dona, however, is that New Yorkers are well acquainted with Italian food, which means if he does a riff on a tried-and-true Italian dish, his guests will get the joke. Something Greek or Spanish might go over their heads.
So although some of the new Dona’s food will not be traditional Italian dishes — he might bring influences from different Italian regions into a single dish, for example — he expects that his guests will have the eating background “to understand what the food is on a cerebral level.”
Michael talks that way, but it makes sense.
He also likes to talk like this: “I’m hoping it’s just a fun place that you can come and eat.”

This picture of Michael, provided by his publicists, was taken by Battman.

The non-open opening

December 19

You must keep your eyes peeled as you walk down West 77th Street, west of Columbus Avenue, on the north side of the street, to spot Dovetail, the new restaurant of chef John Fraser (age: 31; favorite color: green). The entrance is easy to miss.
That might change once the restaurant is actually open. That was slated to happen last weekend, but you know how that goes. They’re still working on some gas issues — John says that at the moment they don’t have enough gas to both run the kitchen and heat the dining room, but they’re getting there.
The sherry cave isn’t set up yet, either.
But the opening party happened as scheduled, so there I was last night, sampling hors d'oeuvres of fish roe and cubed vodka gelée on spoons, of skewered duck, of little cucumber sandwiches to be served during afternoon tea service, of tiny puff pastry filled with truffled scrambled eggs.
There was plenty of heat, so I guess the kitchen wasn’t operating at full power.
John is a big fan of both sherry and tea, and so they have prominent roles in the restaurant.
I brought my friend Yishane Lee with me to the party. It was her first night out without a baby strapped to her body in five-and-a-half weeks, since her daughter Tashi Ming Lee-Garcia was born. Click here to learn a lot about Tashi and her family and their friends, and to see many pictures.
Yishane found it extremely amusing and interesting that Dovetail’s tea supplier is owned by a former boyfriend of hers. It’s not that interesting — he supplies many fine dining restaurants — but I suppose it is kind of interesting. And it’s very good tea.
It was a good party, too. Yishane and I were among the first to arrive, and John gave us a tour of the basement, where the kitchen and sherry cave are. Then I caught up with Chris and Catherine Matthews, a handsome, charming couple — he writes about wine and spirits, she about food. Thrillist’s David Blend was there, chatting with Jesse Gerstein, a publicist who worked with John when he was the chef at Snack Taverna some years ago. He also worked with John’s current publicist, Aurora Kessler, when she was at Baltz & Co., where Jesse still works to this day.
Penny and Peter Glazier, owners of Monkey Bar, Michael Jordan’s The Steakhouse, the country's various Strip House restaurants and other things, also were there. Penny says she doesn’t often go to restaurant openings, because she wants to give the restaurateurs space to spend time with the press. That’s nice of her.
The Glaziers gave me good information for some stories I’m working on. Pity that I didn’t have a pen, but I’ll give them a call.
Erica Duecy, formerly of Nation’s Restaurant News and now of Fodor’s, was there, too, and, because I asked, she updated us on her husband and his brothers, the Pandolfi boys. Husband Jono is working for a design company. Banjo playing brother Chris is doing well, too. His band, The Infamous Stringdusters, won all sorts of awards this year.
Littlest brother Nick has had his internship at Food & Wine extended, which is great news. That magazine’s Nick Fauchald was at the party, too, although I didn’t catch up with him until we were leaving. He expressed fondness for young Nick Pandolfi, which is always nice.

Oh happy day

December 18



It looks like Grant Achatz is better.

Grant, the chef-owner of Alinea in Chicago, was diagnosed with advanced squamous cell carcinoma in his mouth earlier this year. That’s bad news for anyone, but for a chef — and the chef of one of the most avant-garde restaurants in the country — the implications of anything going wrong with your mouth are horrible.

But here’s a note he just sent out:

It is with a tremendous sense of gratitude and relief that I have successfully completed my course of therapy at the University of Chicago. It was incredibly important to me to remain as engaged as possible at Alinea while receiving treatment, and during that time I only missed 14 services. I continue to stand committed to innovating fine dining long into the future.

At this time I want to thank everyone at Alinea -- the staff, investors, and patrons of the restaurant have offered their unwavering commitment and support in ways large and small. The community of restaurants, chefs, and industry professionals who reached out to us was exceptionally gratifying.

Most of all, I must make special mention of doctors Vokes, Blair, and Haraf at the University of Chicago Medical Center, as well as the countless number of medical professionals and support staff there who cared for me. Where other doctors at prominent institutions saw little hope of a normal life, let alone a cure, these doctors saw an opportunity to think differently, preserve my tongue and taste, and maintain a long term high quality of life. Through the use of a new and rigorous Chemotherapy and Radiation protocol, they were able achieve a full remission while ensuring that the use of invasive surgery on my tongue was not needed.

Onward.

Grant’s a former protégé of Thomas Keller and he seemed to learn more during his stay at El Bulli — the crucible of much of the most experimental cuisine in the world — than most chefs who have spent time there. I’m sure I’m one of many, many people who are delighted by his good health and looking forward to what he’s planning next.

Playing with The Sun

December 18

Last Thursday I had dinner at Sanctuary T with its publicist and then walked the brief mile to QDT, a narrow corridor of a bar where the arts section of The New York Sun was having a holiday gathering.
I was there because my very kind bosses at Nation’s Restaurant News let me have a steady freelance gig at the Sun, where I write the weekly Kitchen Dish column about restaurants in New York that are opening or closing or changing their chefs or offering special deals or festive menus or otherwise behaving in ways that might be of interest to Sun readers.
QDT is a long corridor of a bar and more than one impromptu holiday party was being held there. It was packed, and I was being jostled, elbowed and knocked around by purses more than I’m accustomed to.
I brought this up with some of the Sun revelers and I fear I might possibly have been rude to the paper's new book review editor, David Wallace-Wells. He observed that this was typical New Yorker behavior, and I remarked rather obtusely that that seemed like an outsider’s view of New Yorkers, who I have found are better at managing crowds than most other Americans.
“But David’s a native New Yorker,” someone observed.
Oops.
David didn’t seem to mind, but I wouldn't stop being annoying for some reason and asked him for book recommendations (he suggested Tree of Smoke). Asking a book review editor for book recommendations is very much like asking a food writer for restaurant recommendations. It’s a tedious question. But at least I didn’t ask him what his favorite book was. The only question more tiresome to a food writer than “what restaurants do you recommend?” is “What’s your favorite restaurant?” How could I have a single favorite restaurant? Why would I want one?
But he was curious to get recommendations for restaurants near The Sun's offices, so I gave him some.
He seemed like a nice chap, tolerant of loud-mouth smart asses like me. Quite coincidentally, he went to high school with Eater’s Ben Leventhal.
Small world.

What I ate at Sactuary T:
amuse-bouche fo grilled gulf shrimp with fired shallots, truffle honey and cantaloupe
bread with lapsang-souchong-smoked oil for dipping
bruschetta with heirloom tomatoes
lamb with blue foot mushrooms, hazelnuts and banana-vanilla bean paste
slow-cooked black cod with lychee tea, asparagus, feta and saffron sauce
gnocchi ccoked in brown butter with Hudson Valley black tea, grilled pumpkin and cranberries
fingerling potatoes cooked in Belgian beer with apple-smoked bacon and shallots
salmon poached in Red Moon tea with caramelized Brussels sprouts, cucumber and kaffir lime sauce
free range chicken ballotine with chanterelles, prosciutto, smoked paprika and goat cheese paste

meringue cloud with tiramisu rooibos in condensed milk
doughnuts (doughnut holes, really) with chocolate and strawberry dipping sauces
cheesecake infused with jasmine tea and topped with Moroccan mint whipped cream

Playing with Rickshaw

December 13

“Kenny, how long has it been since I’ve seen you? Have you gotten taller? Have you grown a beard? How are you?”
It’s possible that I haven’t seen Kenny Lao in eight months, which is a crime. He’s smart, entertaining, and worth spending time with. However he’s also the managing partner of Rickshaw Dumpling Bar and has spent a good chunk of the past eight months getting his second unit open. The original restaurant is on 23rd Street in Chelsea. The new one, near NYU, is on 8th.
I received invitations yesterday to check out several restaurants. One seemed particularly uninteresting but I thought it might amuse Kenny, and so I sent the e-mail that started with the words in quotes above, followed by an invitation to dinner.
Kenny ignored the dinner invitation, but wrote:
”Haven't seen you in so long!
“You should come to rickshaw holiday party tonight at 8th street store. Double the employees double the fun.”
So I went.
I think it was my third Rickshaw holiday party. Kenny had not gotten taller nor grown a beard. He claims he'd lost weight with the restaurant opening, which would be bad since he doesn’t have any body fat to speak of. He paused between serving his staff to gobble down a plate of chicken and rice from Chipotle, which catered the party. Or maybe he had grilled steak and rice. Those were the choices. He said he’d had La Esquina cater the party, but he was joking.
One of Chipotle’s 20 or so New York units is next to the 8th Street Rickshaw, and Kenny met Chipotle’s president, Steve Ells, one day when Steve was cleaning the front of his not-yet-open restaurant. They apparently hit it off.
Anyway, the party was fun. I met a member of the family that owns the Chinese restaurant Pig Heaven who insisted I check it out, so I will someday, and I enjoyed the staff puppet show, which depicted a typical dumpling-ordering experience at the new restaurant.
Apparently, NYU students who patronize Rickshaw are significantly more self-obsessed and ignorant than the Chelsea customers at the Rickshaw there. They also don’t all eat lunch at the same time, so there’s less of a lunch rush, but steadier business and also more evening business. No surprises there.

Playing with Curbed

December 11

Josh Stein is quite good at riding mechanical bulls.
At least from the perspective of a bunch of New Yorkers affiliated with curbed.com. Curbed (which also owns eater.com) had its holiday party last night at a Lower East Side place called Mason Dixon, which serves fried chicken and pulled pork and grits and mac & cheese, and plays country & western music and has a mechanical bull.
Josh Stein, who for a little while longer yet covers restaurants and nightlife at Gawker (he is leaving soon to follow his destiny to London), must have good balance and strong thighs, because he stayed on that bull for much longer than most of the other white collar New Yorkers who gave it a try.
Ever since I was a young kid in Denver and witnessed from a distance the cowboy-boot craze that swept New York in, I believe, the 1970s, I have been fascinated by the desire of the denizens of Gotham to partake — without, it seems to me, understanding the social implications — in working-class cultures from other parts of the country. I talked about this a little bit with Amy Smith, who works at the Oxygen network and is originally from a remote part of northeastern Oklahoma. She was wearing a skirt, but otherwise, she said, she’d be riding the mechanical bull. Fair enough; she says she’s related to Merle Haggard and has no reason to lie to me.
As a Denver Jew, I grew up too far from red-neck culture to be part of it, but close enough to know that I don’t want to be part of it. I don’t want to ride a mechanical bull.
Eater’s Ben Leventhal did, though — twice. He’s no Josh Stein, but he’s not bad at all.

Ben’s the guy in the picture. It didn’t occur to me to take out my camera until Josh was done (he was good, but you can only stay on a mechanical bull for so long).
It was a good party. I met Peter Meehan from The New York Times, which I hadn’t done before, so that was cool. We talked about insane mutual acquaintances, which is always fun. I munched on Buffalo wings with Kate Krader from Food & Wine, Jennifer Leuzzi and Robin Insley.
I had a good chat with Eater's Lockhart Steele. We talked about Chicago dining and observed that we both had the names of porn stars or romance novel characters.

Here’s a picture of what happened when partygoers got frisky with the menu board. Perhaps they were thinking of different meanings of the word “pork.”

Dovetail

December 7

There’s been a lot of buzz lately about New York’s Upper West Side being the city’s next neighborhood for great restaurants. It’s possible. It seems to me that the neighborhood is loaded with foodies and aspiring foodies with disposable income.
There was talk of an Upper West Side renaissance back when Ouest opened, and again when Telepan opened. I think the Post’s Steve Cuozzo started the buzz this time around.
At any rate, the next chef-focused, culinarily adventurous restaurant — with an “excellence-minded staff,” as the chef and owner puts it — to open there will very likely be Dovetail, chef John Fraser’s first restaurant. (That’s him, above).
He hopes to start serving food there next weekend.
“I don’t want to open with a staff that’s not totally comfortable with the space,” he says. So, they’ll open when they’re ready.
Fraser says the restaurant’s name comes from his desire to have great wine dovetail with great food and great service, for an overall great restaurant experience.
You might have had his food at Snack Taverna or Compass, but Fraser points out that at that first restaurant, he had limited space and budget, at the latter, the restaurant was too big to spend the time he wanted to on each dish.
Dovetail will have 90 seats, including the 20-seat sherry cave.
The menu will change all the time, and even the opening one isn’t set yet, but here are some things he has in mind:
Gnocchi with duck confit, apples and foie gras butter
Creamy clam chowder with smoked potatoes, chorizo and sourdough gougères (that’s a cheese puff);
Rabbit and foie gras terrine with candied kumquats
Bagna cauda-poached cod with broccoli en papillote
His house-made "tater tots" will be made by slowly cooking potatoes in olive oil, crushing them, shaping them into nuggets and then deep-frying them.

I’ll be writing a bit more about the restaurant in other outlets, so stay tuned...

From the Beard House to the Waldorf, with stops on the way

December 6,

Where did the time go? It’s been a busy week of much adventure, luxury, friends and dare I say better conversation than usual, and except for a brief comment on the changing menu at Focolare, I’ve left you out of the loop, for which I apologize.
After throwing away the unwanted Magnolia Bakery cupcake, I hopped down to the James Beard House where I was meeting my profound and excellent friend Andy Battaglia, of The Onion, to sample the food of husband-and-wife team Andrea Curto-Randazzo and Frank Randazzo from Talula restaurant in Miami Beach. I was earlier than Andy, so among other things I chatted with chef Don Pintabona, currently of Dani, but previously of Tribeca Grill, where Andrea and Frank worked for him. In fact, they met there.
They did their Beard Dinner prep work at Dani, and Don was helping out in the kitchen, as chefs do.
Andy and I spoke of visual art, among other things. He chastised me, and sort of accused me of revisionism, for expressing delight and surprise at the early 20th century artists who seemed so capable of breaking boundaries and ignoring convention.
He took most exception to the fact that I said modern art today was not as creative.
How did I know? An artistic school can easily just be a few artists in a room who haven’t received any attention. Many of the profound work of earlier generations was done on a very small scale and wasn’t recognized until long after the artists’ time. Such things are likely going on now, too, he said.
He had a point. Andy usually has a point, even when he’s coming down with a cold, which he was that evening, so after dinner he did not accompany me to the Brooklyn home of Greg Lindsay and Sophie Donelson, who were throwing their annual holiday party.
I feel cool just by dint of being invited to the newly married couple’s annual holiday fête, at which only interesting people seem to be welcome. I sipped wine while discussing vegetarianism with a reluctant carnivore who had a masters degree in philosophy but was nonetheless a nice guy, and then Greg introduced me to a new hire at Time Out New York who had just started in the world of food writing, and she asked me for advice, which I gave her.
Then I ended up hanging out with a novelist who was writing about the time she spent in northern Thailand — writing it from the perspective of a Western guy she despised who had married into a hill tribe family.
I ended up closing down the party as Sophie and Greg shared their perspective on being mocked in Gawker, which Gawker does to them from time to time, especially Greg.
I have been in Gawker with very little fanfare or attention, twice, both thanks to Josh Stein.
Once he simply mentioned me as one of the people in the press room at the Beard Awards, part of the — what did he call us? — “sum total of New York’s food scene”. That’s kind of nice, actually, even though he said the place resembled a feed lot, which it kind of did.
Then he placed me at a Paris Commune party with some very fancy people. Apparently we were all, let’s see, “grasping hefty noon Bloody Marys,” which I suppose we were. Unfortunately he spelled my name wrong in that one, tossing extra t's and e's around as though they were free.
So that was Friday. Saturday I lay low, emerging from my apartment just to pick up produce from the Grand Army Plaza greenmarket, a scant half-block from my apartment.
I spent Sunday at the Upper East Side home of my editor-in-chief, Ellen Koteff, who has a beautiful apartment that, unlike my apartment, does not need to be cleaned, fumigated and redecorated before it’s worthy of guests.
I should probably get my place blessed by Buddhist monks while I’m at it. It couldn’t hurt.
I was making dinner for executive food editor Pam Parseghian and her husband, George Arpajian, because they have hosted me and Ellen on many occasions. We thought it only fair to host them back.
On Monday I had dinner at Fiamma with publicist Amanda Hathaway. Fiamma has a new, high-profile chef: Fabio Trabocchi, originally from Italy’s Le Marche region, and recently of Maestro of the Ritz-Carlton Tysons Corner in McLean, Va.
I’ve known Fabio or years, but had never had his food.
Amanda and I spoke of many things, one of which was Italian food and the fact that many people had very narrow opinions of what Italian food is. Fabio is, after all, an Italian, trained in Italy on Italian food, a dynamic cuisine that continues to evolve. That Fabio’s food doesn’t resemble Italian food that most New Yorkers have seen is really beside the point.
Although of course other people enjoy codifying food more. Some years ago I got into quite a little argument with my friend, historian Jonathan Ray, about the Molecular Gastronomy of Catalonia, which I insisted could be called Catalonian cuisine and he insisted could not be. We’re still friends, though.
Then on Tuesday I went to a party in Soho at Corio, thrown by Thrillist and paid for by a large Irish whiskey company. The highlight was a hoola-hoop performance by Miss Saturn (rings, get it?), who I'm pretty sure was a transvestite. She had great triceps.
I hadn’t seen a hoola-hoop performance in, like, 20 years, and she was very good at it.
I met some youngsters, learned that Nivea was launching a men's lotion, which is apparently a big deal, and then I headed to New Bo Ky restaurant in Chinatown, because there was a lot of whiskey at the party, but no food. I had a bowl of noodles with what Thais call look chin, a spongy, rubbery type of meatball with very little appeal the first time you eat it, but now it’s a comfort food for me and hit the spot after all that distilled spirit.
I was curious about the name, Bo Ky, whose Chinese characters, if I read them right, mean "broken story."
I’d first been to Bo Ky some years ago with Howard Helmer the egg man and Jim Schiltz, head and sole member of the National Goose Council, to sample their lo soy goose.
(Lo soy is Cantonese for the Mandarin lao shui, or "old water" and refers to a stock, often heady with cinnamon and the like, that has been simmering constantly, in some cases for many years).
Anyway, I asked one of the owners about the restaurant’s name as I was paying, and uttered a couple of words in Chinese (Mandarin) that made her assume I speak the language fluently, which of course I do not. So she launched into a long tale about their journey from Vietnam. Their family is Taechiew, also known as Chaozhou — pronounced chow-joe — originally from the area around Shantou in China's Guangdong province, but they had apparently been in Vietnam for some time until they fled in 1978, spending a year in the southern Thai city of Songkhla before moving on to the United States. I didn't get all of the details, but there were leaky boats and drowning and hardship.
"Hen Xinku," we agreed, which sort of means wracked with hardship.
But Bo is just the family's surname, and Ky apparently in this case also means "family" or something like that.
So that was that.
And then last night my friend Birdman and I had dinner at the Chef's Table of the Waldorf=Astoria, where the food pretty much spoke for itself.
Here’s what we had:

Hors d'oeuvres with Laurent Perrier Champagne, including foie gras terrine with pear, and smoked salmon around a quail egg topped with American white sturgeon caviar
lobster consommé with garlic flan and fennel salad (about which Birdman impressed executive chef John Doherty by asking if there weren't some sort of meat stock also in the consommé, and indeed ground beef had been used in the raft)
Sautéed turbot with potato and wild mushroom hash and parsley coulis
2006 “Le MD” Henri Bourgeois Sancerre (Loire)
Gnocchi with white truffle, Parmesan cream and watercress
2003 Frank Wood Ranch Gargiulo Vinyeards Chardonnay (Rutherford, Napa Valley)
Red wine poached pheasant with black truffle-liver crostini and apple parsnip purée
2003 Paradigm Cabernet Sauvignon (Oakville, Napa)
Warm pumpkin bread pudding with prune-Armagnac ice cream and cider sauce
NV Brut Demoiselle Rosé Champagne

What I ate at Fiamma:
Casserole of snails with Taylor Bay scallop, pig trotters and flat parsley butter
2005 Inama ‘Foscarino’, Soave Classico
Tortellini with cotechino sausage, wood ear mushroom and brodo
Cappelini with goat ragù, chestnut cream and ricottasalata
2005 Château des Rontets ‘Pierrefolle’ Pouilly Fuissé
Duck with endives, pomegranate and spice pesto
2003 Pelissero ‘Nubiola’, Barbaresco `
Chocolate with pistachios and basil ice cream
2004 Tuilles Sauternes `

What I served my bosses:
Baked haloumi cheese topped with Sicilian almonds
Green mango with sugar-salt dip
Challah topped with sesame seeds
Roasted prime rib with natural jus
Mashed potatoes with a lot of butter, cream, salt and pepper
Mashed turnips with olive oil
Some sort of grilled eggplant, pepper and onion dish that I served warm, tossed with some balsamic vinegar
Steamed purple cauliflower
Chocolate mousse, with Sicilian almonds and chilled pomegranate seeds and pomelo sections on the side.

And what Andy and I had at the Beard House:
Wagyu beef carpaccio with Asian pears and baby watercress
Foie gras torchon with aged balsamic-fig ham
Deconstructed spicy ahi tuna rolls
White root vegetable and mascarpone bisque with crispy pancetta and truffle
Mionetto Prosecco di Valdobbiadene Brut NV
Kona kampachi ceviche with Florida key lime-soy marinade, avocado, Asian greens, crispy malanga and wasabi tobiko
Salomon Undhof Gruner Veltliner (Hochterrassen, Austria)
Cork-braised octopus (really, they add cork to the braising liquid because it’s suppose to make the octopus tender) with Costa Rican hearts of palm, artichokes, organic arugula, and lemon-cracked black pepper vinaigrette
LeMessi Pinot Grigio (Friuli-Venezia-Giulia)
Slow roasted Berkshire pork belly with calabaza-chèvre fregola sarda “risotto,” fall mushroom ragoût and Florida orange gremolata
La Matassine Sangiovese (Montescudaio)
Charred marinated prime aged rib “spinalis” with pan-roasted Brussels sprouts, three-cheese-baked cavatelli with apple wood smoked bacon
Felciatello Bibo (Super Tuscan, from Tuscany, obviously)
Lavender-vanilla bean panna cotta with balsamic macerated fall pears, Tupelo honey and toasted chocolate nib tuile
Dolce, by Far Niente (Napa)

Foco-less

December 5

On Monday a noble idea will die as Little Italy restaurant Focolare refocuses its menu to cater to what people want to eat in Little Italy. Gone will be the duck with chocolate, the beet-stuffed ravioli in Champagne sauce, the octopus. I’m told that Chef Frank Lania, who wanted to bring creative Italian food to a neighborhood that didn’t have any, is adding pizza to the menu, and more pasta, (but apparently not chicken Parmigiana).
I guess that means the re-Italianization of New York’s Little Italy will have to wait.
Whether that’s a bad thing or not is really in the eye of the beholder, though. Lots of people like Italian-American cuisine, and it can be perfectly tasty, although not particularly related to modern Italian food.
And this shift at Focolare is a reminder that you can’t cook food that’s too far over the heads of your guests. If they want spaghetti and meatballs, tagliatele alla Bolognese isn’t going to cut it.
I think that’s why good Mexican food and good barbecue are so hard (but not impossible) to find in New York. Most New Yorkers are unaccustomed to those foods and so they can’t tell the difference. Ditto for many Asian cuisines here.