April 16
Interesting week so far. On Monday afternoon I was on a panel with some pretty intense food wonks. They included braniac pastry chef Will Goldfarb; Nils Noren, the former executive chef of Aquavit who is now vice president of culinary and pastry arts at the French Culinary Institute; David Arnold, who has the unexpected title of director of culinary technology at the FCI; and chef Heather Carlucci, who owns Lassi restaurant (and who seemed very nice and probably talented, but less wonkish). Moderating our discussion was the man who is perhaps the most intense of intense food writers, Corby Kummer.
Even as he was asking us questions, Corby had his laptop up and running and was typing notes about what we said (I could tell, because I was seated next to him).
The panel was for the monthly meeting of the Experimental Cuisine Collective.
“Just call us ECC,” Will said, pronouncing it “eck.”
Oh, that Will.
Corby started out kind of hostile to all of this new-fangled use of transglutaminase and hydrocolloids and so on, and advocated a back-to-basics approach, but I think Dave, Nils and Will convinced him that the two were in no way mutually exclusive, and that people interested in using new techniques to make the food taste better were also interested in using the best of what’s already out there.
That’s true sometimes, but I pointed out that some of this experimental stuff is executed quite badly. Will countered that there are plenty of restaurants that execute French and Italian food badly, but people don't blame French and Italian cuisines for that, nor should they blame experimental techniques for the fact that some people are bad at them.
He has a point.
Oh, Will also said that his sandwich kiosk, Picnick, would be opening for the season next week and would have a beer and wine license later in the summer, so that’s exciting.
Dave Arnold’s favorite piece of equipment: a high-tech evaporator. It seems he’s all into distillates these days. Has been for awhile, but it’s all quite experimental at the moment so he doesn’t talk about it much.
He and Nils sometimes use a centrifuge, too, which they refer to as a dangerfuge. That reminds me of how my parents, to discourage me and my siblings from sampling the juniper berries that grew on the evergreen in our front yard when we lived in Aurora, Colo. (before moving to Denver), called them "poison berries." It worked.
Okay, so berries and new-fangled things lead me into the rest of the week, because last night I went to a launch party for Plymouth’s new sloe gin. It was at The Back Room, one of those secret speakeasy-like places where you have to know what you’re looking for and explain yourself, and then an intimidating looking doorman will move aside and indicate where you need to go (in this case down the stairs and into a forbidding-looking Lower East Side alley, and then up some iron stairs and into a really very grand event space).
“Alcohol’s legal now, you know,” I said to the woman who was checking names. But I have to admit it’s a fun schtick.
Sloe is actually the berry (sort of, it’s related to a plum) of the blackthorn bush. It’s inedibly sour unless you soak it in gin for several months, diluting the whole thing with sugar and water. I sampled it and drank a couple of cocktails made from it while meeting fascinating people, such as Eric Seed, the principal in Haus Alpenz, which imports things like velvet falernum and other specialty ingredients for cocktails. It turns out he went to Kenyon College and another person at the party, who also went to Kenyon, remembered Thad Camp, who studied in Nanjing with me in 1988. Neither of them remembered my friend Wade Sheppard, which means they probably didn’t meet him, because Wade’s memorable.
I wanted to ask Eric how he got into the specialty-cocktail-ingredient importing business, but instead I ended up chatting with Matt Stinton, the service director at Hearth restaurant. I shared my experiences waiting tables at Azar’s Big Boy in Denver and how men about to get lucky tip well. Matt said that men who weren’t sure how to close the deal ended up staying until late into the night, which was not the most desirable scenario. But he seems to really like his job.
And so I was running late to have dinner at Rhong-Tiam with cousins Leonard and Stephen, Stephen’s mother Pete (yes Pete; just let it all wash over you), Stephen’s friend Patricia, and Leonard’s best friend, Glenn Collins, the New York Times features writer, and his wife Sarah.
I’d had dinner at Rhong-Tiam on Friday, too. I love the place.
But I still might not recommend it to you, not merely because I don’t make restaurant recommendations in writing (as explained here and here), but also because in my experience most New Yorkers have so little understanding of Thai food that they can’t tell good from bad and have ignorant expectations. So if I recommend the place and you don’t like it, you’ll say “that Bret, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
So, I love the place, if you don’t, that’s your problem and you probably won’t enjoy the food in Bangkok.
That was illustrated to me as I was leaving the sloe gin party, when someone exclaimed her love for Thai food, particularly pad see-ew, which is actually a Thai variation of a Chinese dish, but okay. She said she also liked pad Thai, but couldn’t eat anything remotely spicy.
“Then you don’t like Thai food,” I said, which might sound obnoxious of me (it does, I know it does), but is true nonetheless.
Despite the fact that I was late to Rhong-Tiam, my dining companions were more late, and so I sat down and had a beer as an irate woman walked in and handed her takeout food back to the owner, declaring that it was too spicy.
“Would you like us to make you something else?” Andy Yang, the chef and owner, asked very nicely.
But she said no, she wanted the same food, but less spicy.
The thing is, it’s not the same food if it’s less spicy. This is problematic, though, because people really do have different thresholds of pain when it comes to spicy food. They do. And people with low tolerance for capsaicin (the stuff in chiles that causes the chemical burn on the tongue that we call “spicy”) are no more wimpy than anyone else.
Nonetheless, that burn is part of the Thai food experience. It shouldn’t be genuinely painful, but you should feel it.
I vented to a server, asking her in Thai why that customer was ordering Thai food if she didn’t like spicy food. The server was diplomatically both sympathetic and non-committal.
But to be fair, not all Thai dishes are spicy, and we ordered a couple for Pete and Sarah.
The server recommended the lemon grass chicken, and I asked her if it was good. Diplomatic again, yet accurate, she said that people who can’t eat spicy food can eat it. And it was, in fact, a big hit.
I also ordered roasted pork neck (often just called roasted pork in the States), which comes with a firey sauce that you don't have to dip your pork into if you don’t want to. Oh, and we had khanom jeep, a Thai version of Chinese shao mai (or shumai if you’re Japanese)
We also had a couple of the specials, including what they called Thai-style buffalo wings, which were in fact a variation on gai ho bai teui — small chunks of chicken wrapped in pandan leaf and deep-fried. These were lightly breaded wings (not chunks), tied with pandan and fried.
The other special was chuchee soft shell crab — served in a rich sauce redolent of kaffir lime leaf.
Then we had fluffy catfish salad, a spicy beef salad called nam tok, which means waterfall because the oil drips down from the grill and sizzles on the coals as it cooks, chicken with crispy basil, and roasted duck in red curry.
Then Andy sent out three desserts — a sort of tofu flan, which Glenn in particular loved — fried ice cream, which isn’t Thai, but okay, and bananas in sticky rice.
All of my dining companions seemed to love the food, even as they sought cures for the fire on their tongues (Glenn found beer to be the best solution, as many people do, although sweets are good, too — Thais insist that salt on the tongue works, but I don't believe it).
As for new-fangled things, they were on display this afternoon at an Italian-American Chamber of Commerce event at Cipriani (the one on 23rd St.), at which the region of Piedmont in general and the city of Turin in particular were showing off their ability to combine design and food by serving things in truly odd looking receptacles that made the food harder to eat.
Indeed, one designer — a trim young man with a spike through his left ear, long hair and a bushy beard that made him resemble a leprechaun or small troll — explained to me that I was supposed to eat the salade Russe with a spoon, not to simply up-end the plastic cup it was in. But how is one supposed to know if we’re turning the rules on their ears? He handed me a plastic spoon, which after a few bites I surmised was actually three spoons stuck together.
I wondered when it became stylish to eat things out of plastic receptacles with plastic utensils.
We were supposed to eat a lot more items, but it turns out that the products hadn’t arrived in time for most of it, so they just sort of described how all the different bowls and plates and saucers were supposed to work, amusing us with risotto, salade Russe and what they called a deconstructed omelet, which was vegetables in kind of a watery egg concoction, served in a plastic cup that was in turn held in a trapezoidal metal container stuck onto a flat metal tray. I have no idea why.
The kicker was the way in which chocolate mousse was to be served — from a pastry bag covered with a rubber breast and nipple. Diners are supposed to suck the mousse from the breast, and this is supposed to remind them of the carefree time of babyhood.
I don’t think that would work for me.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Friday, April 11, 2008
The week in wine
April 11
I went to a couple of very different wine dinners this week. The first was at Bar Blanc in the West Village, thrown by the Loire Valley Wine Bureau and focused exclusively on Muscadet sur Lie. I ended up sitting with MSNBC columnist Ed Deitch, southern food writer etc. extraordinary Matt Lee, and a very nice wine distributor from Nantes named Claudine.
Matt is the older brother of Ted Lee, and the two share bylines in classy publications all over the country. They also won last year’s James Beard Foundation Award for the best cookbook. They are brilliant and engaging, perceptive without being condescending, and really nice.
In the past I’d had longer conversations with Ted, and they would often go in directions I wouldn’t expect. Ask Ted “How are you?” and he’ll actually tell you. It’s a nice quality, actually, at least the way he does it. The last time I spoke with him was at the announcement of this year’s Beard Award nominees — Matt and Ted announced some or all of the cookbook nominees (I don’t really remember; it was first thing in the morning), and I ended up chatting with Ted about the G train, because he lives in Bedford-Stuyvesant. He insists that the G has the potential of being the greatest subway line in New York City. I don’t completely remember his line of reasoning (as I said, it was first thing in the morning) but it made perfect sense at the time.
Matt always seemed quieter or more conventional or something. He’s super-polite in that southern way (he leaps up to pull out chairs for women, for example), but also socially astute, so that if Ed or I brought up topics that might be too parochial for Claudine to be completely up-to-date on, he’d briefly explain them to her. Simultaneously genteel and down-to-earth.
Ed seems like a good guy too. He was sure we’d met before and I trust him. It was probably at another wine dinner. Both he and Matt know a lot more about wine than I do (although I imagine they know less than Claudine). I had learned previously (at another Muscadet sur Lie lunch — at BLT fish, where we ate lobster rolls), that Muscadet is made with a grape called Melon de Bourgogne, but I had forgotten. So when I asked if it was made with Sauvignon Blanc, like Sancerre is, they both jumped in to instruct me that it wasn’t.
So now I’ll remember.
On the topic of Sauvignon Blanc, neither Matt nor Ed like New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc. As Matt described it, that wine seems to shout at you. He said he doesn’t mind what it says, he just wished it would say it more quietly.
I like New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, in case you were wondering, but it is really different from Loire whites, which are more subdued, indeed almost austere. Ed loved — loved I tell you — the 1995 Luneau-Papin Muscadet, because despite its age, it still tasted so bright and young.
Indeed, it did. I noticed that even before Ed said so (once someone I consider more knowledgeable about wine than I do says something about it, I, like pretty much everyone else, tend to just go ahead and believe him). But if 13-year-old wine tastes like a two-year-old, why not just drink a two-year-old? Surely it’s cheaper.
Then again, the ’95 Luneau-Papin certainly had more soul than the 2006 Sauvion et Fils we sampled at the same time, sort of like a sophisticated, good-looking, in-shape 42-year-old compared to a healthy 22-year old who still has a lot to learn.
So that was fun in the highbrow sort of way that wine dinners can be.
Then the next night I was on the Lower East Side at Stanton Social for a wine dinner thrown by Crush, Drew Nieporent’s wine shop, featuring the wine of The Scholium Project, a California winery run by crazy Abe Schoener. And he is crazy. He is. And some of his wine does shout. Some of it screams.
Abe makes wine like a cook cooks, rather than in the more precise, anal-retentive way that pastry chefs perform their craft, or the way winemakers normally perform theirs. He experiments. Some years he ages things in old barrels, sometimes in new ones. He uses all sorts of different techniques, just for fun, and is completely uninterested in consistency from one year to the next; he says that would be boring. He only makes small productions — and he charges for them — so he doesn’t have to appeal to a mass market.
So that was already interesting. Mix into that the fact that most of the people at the table were simply enthusiastic amateur Crush customers, and you have a fun evening.
Andrea Strong was there, too. I learned from her that she and Bullfrog & Baum publicist Katherine Bryant are getting married on exactly the same day. What is particularly interesting about that is that Katherine and Andrea worked together at Restaurant Business magazine.
But my favorite people at the table were Jason and Ryan, two young financial types. Jason develops financial instruments for mortgage securitization and Ryan works with him, but I didn’t ask in what capacity.
But what I liked about them was that they just loved food and wine. They loved it. It was all so much fun for them, especially Ryan, that it was like watching four-year-olds discover pieces of the world for the first time.
Abe came by and chatted and Ryan was in heaven, to be speaking to a genuine wine maker. And then, then, Abe said, “Let’s try a barrel sample,” and I swear Ryan’s happiness level was raised permanently.
Personally, I don’t feel a need to try barrel samples. I’d just as soon let the winemakers hold onto the juice until it’s ready to be drunk. Let them taste it.
But that’s what happens when you meet winemakers all the time and become bitter and jaded. Ryan drank it all up. He loved it.
Then on Thursday I had lunch at Graffiti, Jehangir Mehta’s shoebox of a restaurant on E. 10th St., where he was celebrating his new cookbook, Mantra. I sat next to my friend-in-law Liz Forgang (her niece Jennifer is married to my good friend Matt Shapo). She caught me up with her grand-nephew Evan while we ate Jehangir’s food and sampled the Garnacha from Hi. Wines, which are intended to be casual, friendly social wines that retail for about $10 a bottle. No pretense, just fun, easy-to-drink fermented grape juice.
It takes all kinds.
What I ate (and drank):
At Bar Blanc:
hors d’oeuvres:
ravioli of salmon with avocado, tomato and basil gelée
mushrom schnitzel with tartar sauce
sardine beignets
chicken sausage with crispy sage
Marquis de Goulaine Muscadet Sèvre et Maine Sur Lie 2006
Domaine de la Quilla Muscadet Sèvre et Maine Sur Lie 2006
live scallop carpaccio with champignons de Paris and lemon-olive oil dressing
Domaine de la Landelle Muscadet Sèvre et Maine Sur Lie Jeune Vignes 2007
Domaine des Hautes Noelles Serge Batard Muscadet Côtes de Grandlieu Sur Lie 2006
stew of Burgundy snails with razor clams, mussels and baby leeks (Matt loved the snails so much, he ate one of Claudine’s — with permission, of course).
Domaine de la Pépière Muscadet Sèvre et Maine Sur Lie 2006
Guy Bossard Domaine de l’Ecu Muscadet Sèvre et Maine Sur Lie Expression de Granite 2005
gently confit wild striped bass with porcini and oyster mushrooms in beurre blanc
Sauvion et Fils Muscadet Sèvre et Maine Sur Lie Haute Culture de Cleray 2006
Luneau-Papin Muscadet Sèvre et Maine Sur Lie Le L d’Or 1995
At Stanton Social:
sashimi of tuna with pickled jalapeño and wakame salad
Beef carpaccio with whole grain mustard crème fraîche, crispy capers and arugula
2007 Naucratis tank fermented Verdelho
thin crust grilled pizzetta with caramelized peaches, Humboldt Fog goat cheese and crispy Serrano ham
2006 La Severita di Bruto barrel fermented Sauvignon Blanc
and the same wine but from 2005, which tasted extraordinarily unlike the 2006
“purple haze” goat cheese croquettes with raspberry, chile and honey jam
and 2006 The Prince and His Caves tank fermented Sauvignon Blanc
petit pan roasted red snapper with caramelized leeks, littleneck clams, chorizo, garlic, tomato and black olives
and 2004 Scheria Hudson Vineyards Syrah
ancho caramel glazed pork tenderloin with barbecued black bean créma and vidalia tempura (which is to say, onion rings)
and 2004 Babylon ex 3 liter, Tenbrink Vineyards Petite Syrah (Ryan just about lost his mind over this one, which he described, not inaccurately, as “brambly”)
wood grilled hanger steak with crispy potato cakes, blue cheese “fondue” and double-smoked bacon glace
and 2005 Babylon, Tenbrink Vineyards
Cheese plates and chocolate tasting plate
and 2002 and 2005 Oro Puro
And at Graffiti:
green mango paneer with asafoetida, turmeric and chile
salad of beets, olive, feta, almond and grapefruit, which Jehangir serves as a dessert
pistachio-crusted foie gras that had been marinated in Riesling and flavored with whole mustard seed, served with toaste and raspberry jam
seared scallop with pickled ginger, dehydrated lentils and Thai “long chile” jam (presumably prik chee-fah)
pork dumplings with grapefruit confit, topped with fried semolina
pork buns with apricot chutney, cornflakes and peanuts (Liz, who doesn’t eat pork, had one made with eggplant)
black pepper ice cream with panko crumble
chocolate chip cookies, fresh out of the oven, served with hot chocolate flavored with Cointreau, cinnamon and a little orange zest.
lychee martinis
Hi. Garnacha — just a taste, because we were curious
I went to a couple of very different wine dinners this week. The first was at Bar Blanc in the West Village, thrown by the Loire Valley Wine Bureau and focused exclusively on Muscadet sur Lie. I ended up sitting with MSNBC columnist Ed Deitch, southern food writer etc. extraordinary Matt Lee, and a very nice wine distributor from Nantes named Claudine.
Matt is the older brother of Ted Lee, and the two share bylines in classy publications all over the country. They also won last year’s James Beard Foundation Award for the best cookbook. They are brilliant and engaging, perceptive without being condescending, and really nice.
In the past I’d had longer conversations with Ted, and they would often go in directions I wouldn’t expect. Ask Ted “How are you?” and he’ll actually tell you. It’s a nice quality, actually, at least the way he does it. The last time I spoke with him was at the announcement of this year’s Beard Award nominees — Matt and Ted announced some or all of the cookbook nominees (I don’t really remember; it was first thing in the morning), and I ended up chatting with Ted about the G train, because he lives in Bedford-Stuyvesant. He insists that the G has the potential of being the greatest subway line in New York City. I don’t completely remember his line of reasoning (as I said, it was first thing in the morning) but it made perfect sense at the time.
Matt always seemed quieter or more conventional or something. He’s super-polite in that southern way (he leaps up to pull out chairs for women, for example), but also socially astute, so that if Ed or I brought up topics that might be too parochial for Claudine to be completely up-to-date on, he’d briefly explain them to her. Simultaneously genteel and down-to-earth.
Ed seems like a good guy too. He was sure we’d met before and I trust him. It was probably at another wine dinner. Both he and Matt know a lot more about wine than I do (although I imagine they know less than Claudine). I had learned previously (at another Muscadet sur Lie lunch — at BLT fish, where we ate lobster rolls), that Muscadet is made with a grape called Melon de Bourgogne, but I had forgotten. So when I asked if it was made with Sauvignon Blanc, like Sancerre is, they both jumped in to instruct me that it wasn’t.
So now I’ll remember.
On the topic of Sauvignon Blanc, neither Matt nor Ed like New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc. As Matt described it, that wine seems to shout at you. He said he doesn’t mind what it says, he just wished it would say it more quietly.
I like New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, in case you were wondering, but it is really different from Loire whites, which are more subdued, indeed almost austere. Ed loved — loved I tell you — the 1995 Luneau-Papin Muscadet, because despite its age, it still tasted so bright and young.
Indeed, it did. I noticed that even before Ed said so (once someone I consider more knowledgeable about wine than I do says something about it, I, like pretty much everyone else, tend to just go ahead and believe him). But if 13-year-old wine tastes like a two-year-old, why not just drink a two-year-old? Surely it’s cheaper.
Then again, the ’95 Luneau-Papin certainly had more soul than the 2006 Sauvion et Fils we sampled at the same time, sort of like a sophisticated, good-looking, in-shape 42-year-old compared to a healthy 22-year old who still has a lot to learn.
So that was fun in the highbrow sort of way that wine dinners can be.
Then the next night I was on the Lower East Side at Stanton Social for a wine dinner thrown by Crush, Drew Nieporent’s wine shop, featuring the wine of The Scholium Project, a California winery run by crazy Abe Schoener. And he is crazy. He is. And some of his wine does shout. Some of it screams.
Abe makes wine like a cook cooks, rather than in the more precise, anal-retentive way that pastry chefs perform their craft, or the way winemakers normally perform theirs. He experiments. Some years he ages things in old barrels, sometimes in new ones. He uses all sorts of different techniques, just for fun, and is completely uninterested in consistency from one year to the next; he says that would be boring. He only makes small productions — and he charges for them — so he doesn’t have to appeal to a mass market.
So that was already interesting. Mix into that the fact that most of the people at the table were simply enthusiastic amateur Crush customers, and you have a fun evening.
Andrea Strong was there, too. I learned from her that she and Bullfrog & Baum publicist Katherine Bryant are getting married on exactly the same day. What is particularly interesting about that is that Katherine and Andrea worked together at Restaurant Business magazine.
But my favorite people at the table were Jason and Ryan, two young financial types. Jason develops financial instruments for mortgage securitization and Ryan works with him, but I didn’t ask in what capacity.
But what I liked about them was that they just loved food and wine. They loved it. It was all so much fun for them, especially Ryan, that it was like watching four-year-olds discover pieces of the world for the first time.
Abe came by and chatted and Ryan was in heaven, to be speaking to a genuine wine maker. And then, then, Abe said, “Let’s try a barrel sample,” and I swear Ryan’s happiness level was raised permanently.
Personally, I don’t feel a need to try barrel samples. I’d just as soon let the winemakers hold onto the juice until it’s ready to be drunk. Let them taste it.
But that’s what happens when you meet winemakers all the time and become bitter and jaded. Ryan drank it all up. He loved it.
Then on Thursday I had lunch at Graffiti, Jehangir Mehta’s shoebox of a restaurant on E. 10th St., where he was celebrating his new cookbook, Mantra. I sat next to my friend-in-law Liz Forgang (her niece Jennifer is married to my good friend Matt Shapo). She caught me up with her grand-nephew Evan while we ate Jehangir’s food and sampled the Garnacha from Hi. Wines, which are intended to be casual, friendly social wines that retail for about $10 a bottle. No pretense, just fun, easy-to-drink fermented grape juice.
It takes all kinds.
What I ate (and drank):
At Bar Blanc:
hors d’oeuvres:
ravioli of salmon with avocado, tomato and basil gelée
mushrom schnitzel with tartar sauce
sardine beignets
chicken sausage with crispy sage
Marquis de Goulaine Muscadet Sèvre et Maine Sur Lie 2006
Domaine de la Quilla Muscadet Sèvre et Maine Sur Lie 2006
live scallop carpaccio with champignons de Paris and lemon-olive oil dressing
Domaine de la Landelle Muscadet Sèvre et Maine Sur Lie Jeune Vignes 2007
Domaine des Hautes Noelles Serge Batard Muscadet Côtes de Grandlieu Sur Lie 2006
stew of Burgundy snails with razor clams, mussels and baby leeks (Matt loved the snails so much, he ate one of Claudine’s — with permission, of course).
Domaine de la Pépière Muscadet Sèvre et Maine Sur Lie 2006
Guy Bossard Domaine de l’Ecu Muscadet Sèvre et Maine Sur Lie Expression de Granite 2005
gently confit wild striped bass with porcini and oyster mushrooms in beurre blanc
Sauvion et Fils Muscadet Sèvre et Maine Sur Lie Haute Culture de Cleray 2006
Luneau-Papin Muscadet Sèvre et Maine Sur Lie Le L d’Or 1995
At Stanton Social:
sashimi of tuna with pickled jalapeño and wakame salad
Beef carpaccio with whole grain mustard crème fraîche, crispy capers and arugula
2007 Naucratis tank fermented Verdelho
thin crust grilled pizzetta with caramelized peaches, Humboldt Fog goat cheese and crispy Serrano ham
2006 La Severita di Bruto barrel fermented Sauvignon Blanc
and the same wine but from 2005, which tasted extraordinarily unlike the 2006
“purple haze” goat cheese croquettes with raspberry, chile and honey jam
and 2006 The Prince and His Caves tank fermented Sauvignon Blanc
petit pan roasted red snapper with caramelized leeks, littleneck clams, chorizo, garlic, tomato and black olives
and 2004 Scheria Hudson Vineyards Syrah
ancho caramel glazed pork tenderloin with barbecued black bean créma and vidalia tempura (which is to say, onion rings)
and 2004 Babylon ex 3 liter, Tenbrink Vineyards Petite Syrah (Ryan just about lost his mind over this one, which he described, not inaccurately, as “brambly”)
wood grilled hanger steak with crispy potato cakes, blue cheese “fondue” and double-smoked bacon glace
and 2005 Babylon, Tenbrink Vineyards
Cheese plates and chocolate tasting plate
and 2002 and 2005 Oro Puro
And at Graffiti:
green mango paneer with asafoetida, turmeric and chile
salad of beets, olive, feta, almond and grapefruit, which Jehangir serves as a dessert
pistachio-crusted foie gras that had been marinated in Riesling and flavored with whole mustard seed, served with toaste and raspberry jam
seared scallop with pickled ginger, dehydrated lentils and Thai “long chile” jam (presumably prik chee-fah)
pork dumplings with grapefruit confit, topped with fried semolina
pork buns with apricot chutney, cornflakes and peanuts (Liz, who doesn’t eat pork, had one made with eggplant)
black pepper ice cream with panko crumble
chocolate chip cookies, fresh out of the oven, served with hot chocolate flavored with Cointreau, cinnamon and a little orange zest.
lychee martinis
Hi. Garnacha — just a taste, because we were curious
Friday, April 04, 2008
Best New Chefs ’08
April 4
“Like the goatee. Are you riding a Harley now too?” That was Todd English. I guess I haven’t seen him in about a year-and-a-half, because that’s about how old my beard is.
“Yes, I am. Because I am a shit-kicker,” I said.
Todd English seemed shorter at Food & Wine magazine’s Best New Chefs party. Surely he hadn’t shrunk, but he wasn’t towering over the crowd the way he usually does. That’s when I realized how many extraordinarily tall people were there.
Here he is with former "Top Chef” winner Hung Huynh, who just extended his contract at Sòlo — I heard that was because the owners of that restaurant want him to be the chef of a non-Kosher restaurant they plan to open, but one hears a lot of things.
Anyway, as you can see, Todd English is pretty tall.
Starting last year, Food & Wine took to announcing who was on their career-making list of ten best new chefs on the day of the party, in the morning, rather than at the party itself. That kind of defeats the purpose of the party, but, well, it’s still often one of the New York food world’s funnest parties of the year. The crowd’s entertaining and in good cheer, the drinks are plentiful, the food’s delicious.
Anita Lo of Annisa was there early, to catch up with friends and so on, but she also has a restaurant to run so she didn’t stay long, although she was there long enough to say that her new place, Bar Q, would be opening soon (maybe next week, shh).
This year’s winner from New York (and the only one I knew, because Food & Wine really does a very good job at finding relatively unknown chefs) was Michael Psilakis,
pictured here with his wife Anna, before he put on his Best New Chef jacket.
“Busy?” he asked me.
“Medium,” I said, and he looked concerned, because, being a chef, he assumes that everyone wants to be crazy-busy with 11 million things going on at once. But I’m a food writer. Medium busy’s just right.
I didn’t take Dan Barber’s picture, but he was there. We spoke about veal that he’s using these days, which is the non-kosher part (below the 13th rib, he said) of kosher veal. I said the non-kosher part could be made kosher by removing a tendon or something, but that it was difficult and time consuming and, now that I think about it, maybe not worth it for veal.
Anyway, Dan says it’s delicious.
I definitely hadn’t seen Scott Conant in awhile (he’s on the left, next to Fiamma chef Fabio Trabocchi) and so he commented on my goatee while handing me a card for Scarpetta, his restaurant on 14th Street and Ninth Avenue that he’s working on. He said a scarpetta is like a streak of sauce that you sop up with a piece of bread, and the restaurant’s logo is, in fact, just such a streak.
Scott used to be the chef and owner of l’impero and Alto, but he sold out of those ventures and Michael White, whom I also ran into at the party, took over as chef of those restaurants. To do so he left his job at Fiamma, leaving an opening for Fabio Trabocchi to fill.
Small world.
Here’s John Besh, the chef of August in New Orleans, towering over Café Boulud’s new executive chef Gavin Kaysen. Gavin is quick-witted and good natured, and he was dishing up crayfish and quail egg en gelée with asparagus, but one of his qualities I like best is that he’s about my height.
Serving of alcohol was temporarily halted so we could watch live entertainment (I could only listen to it because Rick Bayless’s head was right in front of me) and so Food & Wine editor Dana Cowin could introduce the Best New Chefs.
Here she is, a little later in the evening, with Myriad Restaurant Group chief Drew Nieporent. Drew’s 17-year-old restaurant Tribeca Grill is finally being inducted into Nation‘s Restaurant News’ Fine Dining Hall of Fame this year, so he can finally stop asking me when it’s going to be inducted. We’re both happy about that. Drew said he cried those many years ago when Montrachet was inducted.
I asked him when that restaurant was going to reopen.
“You’ll know when I know,” he said. I didn’t ask him if Paul Liebrandt was going to be the chef. That’s the rumor, but you know how rumors are.
Among the passed hors d’oeuvres at the party were little gold boxes of candied, gilded almonds from Gilt. Both executive chef Chris Lee and sommelier Jason Ferris were there, looking pleased. Gilt took awhile to draw crowds, but both Chris and Jason say the place is on fire now, which is always good to hear.
Here’s Chris, on the left, with Tom Colicchio.
Of course plenty of journalists were at the party too. I caught up with Food & Wine intern Nick Pandolfi, brother-in-law of my friend and former colleague Erica Duecy. Nick did a lot of the fact checking for the best new chefs — making sure they fit the award’s criteria. He’s about to graduate from college and so I couldn’t help offering him avuncular advice about career choices. I seem to do that a lot with Nick, give him advice, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t need it. He takes it graciously enough, though.
Here’s a bad picture of Grub Street’s Josh Ozersky and Ben Leventhal of Eater. It seems to be saying “Here’s handsome Ben and some other guy,”
The picture below is much better, because Josh, too, is handsome in his own way and, well, why shove a guy into the background? It’s mean. And this is a better picture of Ben, too.
Rocco DiSpirito was also at the party. Can you believe it? I hadn’t seen him since December of 2005.
Some people feel bad for Rocco.
“Poor Rocco!” They say. “He had such promise as a chef, and now he’s doing all this weird celebrity stuff.”
Mm hmm. He used to spend countless hours a day in the kitchen of Union Pacific, winning the respect of his peers and nods of appreciation from Gourmet (okay, a cover story, but still) while Emeril Lagasse had cheering crowds and Bobby Flay had screaming teenage girls.
Then, after the Gourmet cover story he was in People magazine, shirt open, chest oiled, as the “sexiest chef alive” and he ran with that.
Once he became the star of the reality TV show The Restaurant, the foodservice industry started to mock him, but last night’s party was an industry event and, believe me, he had no shortage of company.
“Hey! How ya doin’?” he said to me before he was hijacked by a chef who wanted to have him in to his restaurant. I would have taken their pictures, but it seemed like a cliché. I wouldn’t have minded catching up with the guy, but I wasn’t going to stand in line to do it.
One last picture, of (from left to right) fellow journalists Jay Cheshes, Rachel Wharton and Amy Cortese
Oh, I almost forgot to list the winning chefs. Here they are: Jim Burke of James in Philadelphia, Gerard Craft of Niche in St. Louis, Tim Cushman of O Ya in Boston, Jeremy Fox of Ubuntu in Napa, Calif., Koren Grieveson of Avec in Chicago, Michael Psilakis of Anthos in New York City, Ethan Stowell of Union in Seattle, Giuseppe Tentori of Boka in Chicago, Eric Warnstedt of Hen of the Wood in Waterbury, Vt., and Sue Zemanick of Gautreau’s in New Orleans.
“Like the goatee. Are you riding a Harley now too?” That was Todd English. I guess I haven’t seen him in about a year-and-a-half, because that’s about how old my beard is.
“Yes, I am. Because I am a shit-kicker,” I said.
Todd English seemed shorter at Food & Wine magazine’s Best New Chefs party. Surely he hadn’t shrunk, but he wasn’t towering over the crowd the way he usually does. That’s when I realized how many extraordinarily tall people were there.
Here he is with former "Top Chef” winner Hung Huynh, who just extended his contract at Sòlo — I heard that was because the owners of that restaurant want him to be the chef of a non-Kosher restaurant they plan to open, but one hears a lot of things.
Anyway, as you can see, Todd English is pretty tall.
Starting last year, Food & Wine took to announcing who was on their career-making list of ten best new chefs on the day of the party, in the morning, rather than at the party itself. That kind of defeats the purpose of the party, but, well, it’s still often one of the New York food world’s funnest parties of the year. The crowd’s entertaining and in good cheer, the drinks are plentiful, the food’s delicious.
Anita Lo of Annisa was there early, to catch up with friends and so on, but she also has a restaurant to run so she didn’t stay long, although she was there long enough to say that her new place, Bar Q, would be opening soon (maybe next week, shh).
This year’s winner from New York (and the only one I knew, because Food & Wine really does a very good job at finding relatively unknown chefs) was Michael Psilakis,
pictured here with his wife Anna, before he put on his Best New Chef jacket.“Busy?” he asked me.
“Medium,” I said, and he looked concerned, because, being a chef, he assumes that everyone wants to be crazy-busy with 11 million things going on at once. But I’m a food writer. Medium busy’s just right.
I didn’t take Dan Barber’s picture, but he was there. We spoke about veal that he’s using these days, which is the non-kosher part (below the 13th rib, he said) of kosher veal. I said the non-kosher part could be made kosher by removing a tendon or something, but that it was difficult and time consuming and, now that I think about it, maybe not worth it for veal.
Anyway, Dan says it’s delicious.
I definitely hadn’t seen Scott Conant in awhile (he’s on the left, next to Fiamma chef Fabio Trabocchi) and so he commented on my goatee while handing me a card for Scarpetta, his restaurant on 14th Street and Ninth Avenue that he’s working on. He said a scarpetta is like a streak of sauce that you sop up with a piece of bread, and the restaurant’s logo is, in fact, just such a streak.Scott used to be the chef and owner of l’impero and Alto, but he sold out of those ventures and Michael White, whom I also ran into at the party, took over as chef of those restaurants. To do so he left his job at Fiamma, leaving an opening for Fabio Trabocchi to fill.
Small world.
Here’s John Besh, the chef of August in New Orleans, towering over Café Boulud’s new executive chef Gavin Kaysen. Gavin is quick-witted and good natured, and he was dishing up crayfish and quail egg en gelée with asparagus, but one of his qualities I like best is that he’s about my height. Serving of alcohol was temporarily halted so we could watch live entertainment (I could only listen to it because Rick Bayless’s head was right in front of me) and so Food & Wine editor Dana Cowin could introduce the Best New Chefs.
Here she is, a little later in the evening, with Myriad Restaurant Group chief Drew Nieporent. Drew’s 17-year-old restaurant Tribeca Grill is finally being inducted into Nation‘s Restaurant News’ Fine Dining Hall of Fame this year, so he can finally stop asking me when it’s going to be inducted. We’re both happy about that. Drew said he cried those many years ago when Montrachet was inducted. I asked him when that restaurant was going to reopen.
“You’ll know when I know,” he said. I didn’t ask him if Paul Liebrandt was going to be the chef. That’s the rumor, but you know how rumors are.
Among the passed hors d’oeuvres at the party were little gold boxes of candied, gilded almonds from Gilt. Both executive chef Chris Lee and sommelier Jason Ferris were there, looking pleased. Gilt took awhile to draw crowds, but both Chris and Jason say the place is on fire now, which is always good to hear.
Here’s Chris, on the left, with Tom Colicchio.
Of course plenty of journalists were at the party too. I caught up with Food & Wine intern Nick Pandolfi, brother-in-law of my friend and former colleague Erica Duecy. Nick did a lot of the fact checking for the best new chefs — making sure they fit the award’s criteria. He’s about to graduate from college and so I couldn’t help offering him avuncular advice about career choices. I seem to do that a lot with Nick, give him advice, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t need it. He takes it graciously enough, though.
Here’s a bad picture of Grub Street’s Josh Ozersky and Ben Leventhal of Eater. It seems to be saying “Here’s handsome Ben and some other guy,”
The picture below is much better, because Josh, too, is handsome in his own way and, well, why shove a guy into the background? It’s mean. And this is a better picture of Ben, too.
Rocco DiSpirito was also at the party. Can you believe it? I hadn’t seen him since December of 2005.
Some people feel bad for Rocco.
“Poor Rocco!” They say. “He had such promise as a chef, and now he’s doing all this weird celebrity stuff.”
Mm hmm. He used to spend countless hours a day in the kitchen of Union Pacific, winning the respect of his peers and nods of appreciation from Gourmet (okay, a cover story, but still) while Emeril Lagasse had cheering crowds and Bobby Flay had screaming teenage girls.
Then, after the Gourmet cover story he was in People magazine, shirt open, chest oiled, as the “sexiest chef alive” and he ran with that.
Once he became the star of the reality TV show The Restaurant, the foodservice industry started to mock him, but last night’s party was an industry event and, believe me, he had no shortage of company.
“Hey! How ya doin’?” he said to me before he was hijacked by a chef who wanted to have him in to his restaurant. I would have taken their pictures, but it seemed like a cliché. I wouldn’t have minded catching up with the guy, but I wasn’t going to stand in line to do it.
One last picture, of (from left to right) fellow journalists Jay Cheshes, Rachel Wharton and Amy Cortese
Oh, I almost forgot to list the winning chefs. Here they are: Jim Burke of James in Philadelphia, Gerard Craft of Niche in St. Louis, Tim Cushman of O Ya in Boston, Jeremy Fox of Ubuntu in Napa, Calif., Koren Grieveson of Avec in Chicago, Michael Psilakis of Anthos in New York City, Ethan Stowell of Union in Seattle, Giuseppe Tentori of Boka in Chicago, Eric Warnstedt of Hen of the Wood in Waterbury, Vt., and Sue Zemanick of Gautreau’s in New Orleans.
Thursday, April 03, 2008
Birdman’s comfort food
April 3
My old college friend Birdman aka David Krauss seems lately to have been in the mood for the straight-up food of his youth. But Birdman was raised on the Upper East Side, so his comfort food isn't oatmeal or meatloaf or macaroni and cheese or burgers-fries-and-shakes.
No, for Birdman it's high-end sushi and the food of Daniel Boulud. And expensive alcohol.
So last Saturday we went to Bar Boulud, Daniel’s first Upper West Side venture, which opened at the very end of last year. We sat at the communal table and got the charcuterie tasting, followed by a plate of grilled Maine sardines and then the cheese tasting, sampling the wine-by-the-glass menu along the way, until the end when we splurged on a glass of fine de bourgogne for Birdman and one of calvados for me.
Birdman and I have mostly similar tastes, although he has an aversion to sweet elements in savory food, or cocktails, and he likes more subtle wine than I do, with a distinct dislike for earthy, flinty flavors which I enjoy. He doesn’t like “jammy” wines, either. When I drink Rhône, he's likely to have Beaujolais.
During dinner, he expressed an interest in having another meal this week.
“I’m in the mood for sushi,” he said.
When Birdman is interested in something, he learns everything there is to learn about it. When he decided — many years ago, of course — that he liked The Lord of the Rings, he went on to read The Hobbit, of course, but then continued with the Silmarillion (as I did, too, I admit) and then went on to find Tolkien’s unfinished works and read them, too. That’s just the way he is.
Birdman is interested in Japanese food.
He’s also a purist, so the rock-and-roll sushi with multicolored roe and diced mango and plum sauce and melted cheese holds no appeal for him.
And so the people at Sushi Yasuda know him.
We had 9:15 p.m. reservations because, well, sometimes that’s just the way it is when you call on Monday for a Wednesday reservation at Yasuda. Birdman’s shtick at Yasuda is simply to sit down and put himself in the hands of the sushi chef to feed us as he sees fit. And so we had, among other things, raw scallops and yellowtail and octopus and shrimp and lean tuna (akami) and fatty tuna (toro) and — and this was interesting — two kinds of uni (sea urchin), one from Santa Barbara and one from Maine.
What do you suppose Japan would be like if it were in the North Atlantic rather than the North Pacific?
My old college friend Birdman aka David Krauss seems lately to have been in the mood for the straight-up food of his youth. But Birdman was raised on the Upper East Side, so his comfort food isn't oatmeal or meatloaf or macaroni and cheese or burgers-fries-and-shakes.
No, for Birdman it's high-end sushi and the food of Daniel Boulud. And expensive alcohol.
So last Saturday we went to Bar Boulud, Daniel’s first Upper West Side venture, which opened at the very end of last year. We sat at the communal table and got the charcuterie tasting, followed by a plate of grilled Maine sardines and then the cheese tasting, sampling the wine-by-the-glass menu along the way, until the end when we splurged on a glass of fine de bourgogne for Birdman and one of calvados for me.
Birdman and I have mostly similar tastes, although he has an aversion to sweet elements in savory food, or cocktails, and he likes more subtle wine than I do, with a distinct dislike for earthy, flinty flavors which I enjoy. He doesn’t like “jammy” wines, either. When I drink Rhône, he's likely to have Beaujolais.
During dinner, he expressed an interest in having another meal this week.
“I’m in the mood for sushi,” he said.
When Birdman is interested in something, he learns everything there is to learn about it. When he decided — many years ago, of course — that he liked The Lord of the Rings, he went on to read The Hobbit, of course, but then continued with the Silmarillion (as I did, too, I admit) and then went on to find Tolkien’s unfinished works and read them, too. That’s just the way he is.
Birdman is interested in Japanese food.
He’s also a purist, so the rock-and-roll sushi with multicolored roe and diced mango and plum sauce and melted cheese holds no appeal for him.
And so the people at Sushi Yasuda know him.
We had 9:15 p.m. reservations because, well, sometimes that’s just the way it is when you call on Monday for a Wednesday reservation at Yasuda. Birdman’s shtick at Yasuda is simply to sit down and put himself in the hands of the sushi chef to feed us as he sees fit. And so we had, among other things, raw scallops and yellowtail and octopus and shrimp and lean tuna (akami) and fatty tuna (toro) and — and this was interesting — two kinds of uni (sea urchin), one from Santa Barbara and one from Maine.
What do you suppose Japan would be like if it were in the North Atlantic rather than the North Pacific?
Wednesday, April 02, 2008
Introducing Gavin Kaysen
April 2
I had no idea Kevin Patricio had tied the knot! I sat next to his wife on Monday at Café Boulud, where a press lunch was being held to introduce that restaurant’s new executive chef, Gavin Kaysen, to New York food media.
I actually first interviewed Gavin back in 2004 for an article I was writing about popcorn. Gavin was chef de cuisine of El Bizcocho at the Rancho Bernardo Inn in San Diego, and he was drizzling popcorn with foie gras fat.
I interviewed him a couple of years later about basil seeds, which soak up liquid and get all gelatinous (but not if you use citrus juice). He was using them in raw fish preparations at the time.
He represented the United States in the most recent Bocuse D’Or competition in Lyon. He came in 14th out of 24, which isn't bad, especially since his French assistant, Kevin, for some unknown reason ate the chicken wings that were supposed to garnish one of Gavin’s plates.
I mean, who does that?
Also, the United States doesn’t take the Bocuse d'Or seriously. Daniel said that Norway, by contrast, has a $1 million budget for its competitor.
It did get Gavin to meet Daniel, however, and landed him a high-profile job at Café Boulud (although Gavin also was a Food & Wine Best New Chef last year, so he was already doing well).
Anyway, Kevin Patricio, who is a cook, a marketer and is currently working on opening a restaurant with cocktail guy Jim Meehan, is married to Maite Montenegro, the Maître d' at Daniel. And she sat to my right at lunch. To my left was freelancer Kathleen Squires, who was recently in Japan for three months and shared many stories of it. She also recommended that I check out Soto restaurant here in New York, which she says is doing things very much in line with what the avant-garde restaurants in Tokyo are doing.
Next to Kathleen was engaging conversationalist and talented photographer Michael Harlan Turkell. We also had a Brazilian journalist and a guy from Wine Spectator at the table. So it was a good table. But the dining room was full of cool people. At least one of the Batterburys was there, and Regina Schrambling, and Jennifer Leuzzi, who actually videotaped Daniel’s introduction of Gavin. Daniel said Gavin had worked with Jennifer’s husband, Laurent Gras.
I think it was Gavin. Daniel actually introduced a bunch of chefs, including db Bistro Moderne executive sous chef Jim Leiken, who, he announced, will be heading up the chef’s new burger restaurant downtown, whenever it opens [indeed, it turns out that it was Eddy Leroux, co-chef de cuisine at Daniel, who worked with Laurent -- see comment #1 below]..
In the meantime, at lunch we ate:
Kona Kampachi sashimi with gingered carrot purée, lime gelée, avocado and coriander blossoms
2006 Beringer Napa Valley Sauvignon Blanc
Yukon gold potato gnocchi with butter poached shrimp and green asparagus
2005 Beringer private reserve Napa Valley Chardonnay
Jamison Farms roasted saddle of spring lamb with sugar snap peas, flageolets, tomato confit and morel jus
1995 Beringer private reserve Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon
Chocolate-hazelnut bar with meyer lemon marmalade, rice crispy and perrier lemon sorbet
2003 Beringer “Nightingale” botrytised Napa Valley
(By the way, that picture is of Gavin in 2006, posing for publicity for a 17-course dinner that he and 16 of his chef friends did to help raise money for the Bocuse d’Or competition).
I had no idea Kevin Patricio had tied the knot! I sat next to his wife on Monday at Café Boulud, where a press lunch was being held to introduce that restaurant’s new executive chef, Gavin Kaysen, to New York food media.I actually first interviewed Gavin back in 2004 for an article I was writing about popcorn. Gavin was chef de cuisine of El Bizcocho at the Rancho Bernardo Inn in San Diego, and he was drizzling popcorn with foie gras fat.
I interviewed him a couple of years later about basil seeds, which soak up liquid and get all gelatinous (but not if you use citrus juice). He was using them in raw fish preparations at the time.
He represented the United States in the most recent Bocuse D’Or competition in Lyon. He came in 14th out of 24, which isn't bad, especially since his French assistant, Kevin, for some unknown reason ate the chicken wings that were supposed to garnish one of Gavin’s plates.
I mean, who does that?
Also, the United States doesn’t take the Bocuse d'Or seriously. Daniel said that Norway, by contrast, has a $1 million budget for its competitor.
It did get Gavin to meet Daniel, however, and landed him a high-profile job at Café Boulud (although Gavin also was a Food & Wine Best New Chef last year, so he was already doing well).
Anyway, Kevin Patricio, who is a cook, a marketer and is currently working on opening a restaurant with cocktail guy Jim Meehan, is married to Maite Montenegro, the Maître d' at Daniel. And she sat to my right at lunch. To my left was freelancer Kathleen Squires, who was recently in Japan for three months and shared many stories of it. She also recommended that I check out Soto restaurant here in New York, which she says is doing things very much in line with what the avant-garde restaurants in Tokyo are doing.
Next to Kathleen was engaging conversationalist and talented photographer Michael Harlan Turkell. We also had a Brazilian journalist and a guy from Wine Spectator at the table. So it was a good table. But the dining room was full of cool people. At least one of the Batterburys was there, and Regina Schrambling, and Jennifer Leuzzi, who actually videotaped Daniel’s introduction of Gavin. Daniel said Gavin had worked with Jennifer’s husband, Laurent Gras.
I think it was Gavin. Daniel actually introduced a bunch of chefs, including db Bistro Moderne executive sous chef Jim Leiken, who, he announced, will be heading up the chef’s new burger restaurant downtown, whenever it opens [indeed, it turns out that it was Eddy Leroux, co-chef de cuisine at Daniel, who worked with Laurent -- see comment #1 below]..
In the meantime, at lunch we ate:
Kona Kampachi sashimi with gingered carrot purée, lime gelée, avocado and coriander blossoms
2006 Beringer Napa Valley Sauvignon Blanc
Yukon gold potato gnocchi with butter poached shrimp and green asparagus
2005 Beringer private reserve Napa Valley Chardonnay
Jamison Farms roasted saddle of spring lamb with sugar snap peas, flageolets, tomato confit and morel jus
1995 Beringer private reserve Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon
Chocolate-hazelnut bar with meyer lemon marmalade, rice crispy and perrier lemon sorbet
2003 Beringer “Nightingale” botrytised Napa Valley
(By the way, that picture is of Gavin in 2006, posing for publicity for a 17-course dinner that he and 16 of his chef friends did to help raise money for the Bocuse d’Or competition).
Monday, March 31, 2008
podcast time
March 31
My latest podcast is up, ready for your listening pleasure.
Comments on its content, including our new and funky music, is most welcome.
My latest podcast is up, ready for your listening pleasure.
Comments on its content, including our new and funky music, is most welcome.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Commerce
March 26
Last night, walking from Commerce restaurant down Seventh Avenue South to the 2 train, I was approached by a scruffy, probably somewhat drugged-out gentleman who struck up a conversation with me — I learned that he lives with his mother and is not a McCain fan.
As we walked he made sidelong glances at parked cars and bikes that we passed, in case there were something in or on them to steal.
He asked if I had ever smoked cocaine and if I’d like a hit.
I said “No,” and “No, thank you,” and then we parted ways.
I wanted to tell him that this was the West Village in 2008, not in 1978, and that conversations with potentially dangerous drugged out ne'er-do-wells just wasn’t done, but he seemed harmless enough as long as I didn't give him an entrée.
Today I checked with my baby-boomer colleagues — who, being from the era that they’re from, are drug experts, one and all — to see if smoking cocaine was by definition smoking crack, or if un-crackified coke could be smoked. They didn’t know, but one did a web search and told me that yes, cocaine can be smoked in its powdered form.
So I guess that’s good to know. You never know when a fact might come in handy.
But are scruffy druggies in the West Village a sign of bad economic times, or was this just one of those anachronisms that big, complex cities like New York inevitably produce?
At any rate, dinner at Commerce was fun. I ate with one of the restaurant’s publicists, Katherine Bryant, who, apart from being a publicist, also is in a sketch comedy troupe called Fearsome. Her fiancé, David Flaherty, is a sometimes-actor and budding wine expert originally from Fort Colins, Colo. I occasionally think of him as “the smart barista” from a role he played for, oh, probably less than a minute, on an episode of Law & Order Criminal Intent. He totally helped solved the case, though.
So Katherine knows various comedy actors, including Kristen Schaal, who plays Flight of the Conchords’ only fan and recently had her debut on The Daily Show, one would assume to the delight of her friends and fans. I know I was pleased. So was Katherine.
It was a theater-oriented evening in my mind anyway, as the last time I’d been in the space currently occupied by Commerce it was Grange Hall, where I’d eaten before seeing the play Fully Committed.
I’d been meaning to eat the food of Harold Moore, Commerce’s chef, for years and years.
And this is what we had (paired with wines by sommelier Justin Coleman):
Beef tataki with ginger, soy and shiso
Marinated fluke sashimi with chile lime and petit radish salad
a Torrontes from Mendoza in Argentina
Porcini and fontina ravioli with caramelized salsify and Parmesan emulsion
Green and white asparagus fricassée with mushrooms, truffle and a poached egg
Pelisero 2006 Dolcetto d’Alba (Piedmont, Italy)
Whole roasted chicken for two, with potato purée and foie gras bread stuffing
2003 Domaine du Gour de Chaulé Gigondas (Rhône, France)
Tropical fruit pavlova with Greek yogurt and lychee sorbet
Chocolate peanut butter marquise with celery salad and salty peanuts
Chocolate soufflé with coffee crème Anglaise
Tiramisu
Last night, walking from Commerce restaurant down Seventh Avenue South to the 2 train, I was approached by a scruffy, probably somewhat drugged-out gentleman who struck up a conversation with me — I learned that he lives with his mother and is not a McCain fan.
As we walked he made sidelong glances at parked cars and bikes that we passed, in case there were something in or on them to steal.
He asked if I had ever smoked cocaine and if I’d like a hit.
I said “No,” and “No, thank you,” and then we parted ways.
I wanted to tell him that this was the West Village in 2008, not in 1978, and that conversations with potentially dangerous drugged out ne'er-do-wells just wasn’t done, but he seemed harmless enough as long as I didn't give him an entrée.
Today I checked with my baby-boomer colleagues — who, being from the era that they’re from, are drug experts, one and all — to see if smoking cocaine was by definition smoking crack, or if un-crackified coke could be smoked. They didn’t know, but one did a web search and told me that yes, cocaine can be smoked in its powdered form.
So I guess that’s good to know. You never know when a fact might come in handy.
But are scruffy druggies in the West Village a sign of bad economic times, or was this just one of those anachronisms that big, complex cities like New York inevitably produce?
At any rate, dinner at Commerce was fun. I ate with one of the restaurant’s publicists, Katherine Bryant, who, apart from being a publicist, also is in a sketch comedy troupe called Fearsome. Her fiancé, David Flaherty, is a sometimes-actor and budding wine expert originally from Fort Colins, Colo. I occasionally think of him as “the smart barista” from a role he played for, oh, probably less than a minute, on an episode of Law & Order Criminal Intent. He totally helped solved the case, though.
So Katherine knows various comedy actors, including Kristen Schaal, who plays Flight of the Conchords’ only fan and recently had her debut on The Daily Show, one would assume to the delight of her friends and fans. I know I was pleased. So was Katherine.
It was a theater-oriented evening in my mind anyway, as the last time I’d been in the space currently occupied by Commerce it was Grange Hall, where I’d eaten before seeing the play Fully Committed.
I’d been meaning to eat the food of Harold Moore, Commerce’s chef, for years and years.
And this is what we had (paired with wines by sommelier Justin Coleman):
Beef tataki with ginger, soy and shiso
Marinated fluke sashimi with chile lime and petit radish salad
a Torrontes from Mendoza in Argentina
Porcini and fontina ravioli with caramelized salsify and Parmesan emulsion
Green and white asparagus fricassée with mushrooms, truffle and a poached egg
Pelisero 2006 Dolcetto d’Alba (Piedmont, Italy)
Whole roasted chicken for two, with potato purée and foie gras bread stuffing
2003 Domaine du Gour de Chaulé Gigondas (Rhône, France)
Tropical fruit pavlova with Greek yogurt and lychee sorbet
Chocolate peanut butter marquise with celery salad and salty peanuts
Chocolate soufflé with coffee crème Anglaise
Tiramisu
Monday, March 24, 2008
Beard Handicapping ’08
March 24
The James Beard Foundation has announced its list of nominees for its annual awards, which people in the restaurant world take quite seriously. Awards are strange, though. The results are capricious, the meaning unclear. Nonetheless, I shall now take a shot at predicting the winners.
I did this last year and ended up getting seven out of 19 right, which is a failing grade except in baseball, when I would have batted 367.
I have made my predictions in boldface. They are my predictions, not my votes. I’m not saying that I would be happy about these results, but they are the people and restaurants I expect to win.
I’m only predicting in restaurant and chef categories. For a full list of nominees, visit jbfawards.com.
Here now, my predictions for the 2008 James Beard Foundation Awards:
[March 26 update: Oops, the Beard Foundation forgot that Gary Danko won the outstanding service award in 2006, so they took that restaurant off the list and replaced it with La Grenouille in New York. Also, I’ve been asked why I picked who I picked and if I’m crazy, so I have added reasons for my predictions]:
Best new restaurant:
Anthos in New York
Central Michel Richard in Washington, D.C.
Fearing’s at the Ritz-Carlton in Dallas
Osteria Mozza in Los Angeles
Osteria in Philadelphia
reason: I think the star effect of Mario Batali and Nancy Silverton will put it over the top
“Rising Star Chef” (aged 30 years or younger):
Nate Appleman of A 16 in San Francisco
Sean Brock of McCrady’s in Charleston, S.C.
Gavin Kaysen of Café Boulud in New York
Johnny Monis of Komi in Washington, D.C.
Matt Molina of Osteria Mozza in Los Angeles
Gabriel Rucker of Le Pigeon in Portland, Ore.
reason: see above
Outstanding chef:
Grant Achatz of Alinea in Chicago
José Andres of Minibar in Washington, D.C.
Dan Barber of Blue Hill in New York
Suzanne Goin of Lucques in Los Angeles
Frank Stitt of Highlands Bar & Grill in Birmingham, Ala.
reason: All of these chefs are very highly regarded, but Grant has been battling cancer. To call his victory a sympathy vote would make it sound like he’s not deserving, so let’s call it a hero vote.
Outstanding restaurant (these tend to go to old, well-established restaurants with a lot of history):
Boulevard in San Francisco
The Slanted Door in San Francisco
Gramercy Tavern in New York
Jean Georges in New York
Campanile in Los Angeles
reason: This one is always tricky, because more than any of the other awards it seems to be based on sentiment and a sense of the nominee’s place in the restaurant firmament. But I’ve never heard an unkind word said about Gramercy Tavern.
Outstanding pastry chef:
Gina DePalma of Babbo Ristorante e Enoteca in New York
Pichet Ong of P*ONG in New York
Elisabeth Prueitt and Chad Robertson of Tartine Bakery in San Francisco
Mindy Segal of HotChocolate in Chicago
Nicole Plue of Redd in Yountville, Calif.
reason: combination of name recognition of Gina herself and Batali star power
Outstanding wine service:
Aureole in Las Vegas
Picasso in Las Vegas
Bin 36 in Chicago
Eleven Madison Park in New York
Blackberry Farm in Walland, Tenn.
reason: Blackberry Farm gets nominated often enough in enough different categories (it was nominated for both best chef and best service last year). It just feels like this is its year.
Outstanding restaurateur:
Joe Bastianich and Mario Batali in New York
Tom Douglas in Seattle
Richard Melman in Chicago
Wolfgang Puck in Los Angeles
Jean-Georges Vongerichten in New York
Reason: Jean-Georges' restaurants are the most high-end in this group, for the most part, and I think Beard judges still have a weakness for that.
Outstanding wine and spirits professional:
Dale DeGroff of Beverage Alcohol Resource in New York
Merry Edwards of Merry Edwards Wines in Sebastopol, Calif.
David Lett of The Eyrie Vineyards in McMinnville, Ore.
Bobby Stuckey of Frasca Food and Wine in Boulder, Colo.
Terry Theise of Terry Theise Estate Selections in Silver Spring, Md.
Reason: Frasca’s hot.
Outstanding service:
Canlis in Seattle
La Grenouille in New York
Spiaggia in Chicago
Vetri in Philadelphia
Terra in St. Helena, Calif.
Reason: Canlis has a reputation for being classic and likeable that I think will appeal to judges.
My picks for the regional awards, except for New York which is the market I live in and thus the one I know best, are based purely on gut reaction having to do with name recognition and general reputation. In the case of New York, people in the food world here can’t help themselves — if there’s an award, they’ll give it to David Chang.
Pacific (California and Hawaii):
Douglas Keane of Cyrus in Healdsburg, Calif.
David Kinch of Manresa in Los Gatos, Calif.
David Myers of Sona in Los Angeles
Craig Stoll of Delfina in San Francisco
Michael Tusk of Quince in San Francisco.
Mid-Atlantic (including Washington, D.C., Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Virginia):
Cathal Armstong of Restaurant Eve in Alexandria, Va.
Jose Garces of Amada in Philadelphia
Maricel Presilla of Cucharamama in Hoboken, N.J.
Cindy Wolf of Charleston in Baltimore
Eric Ziebold of CityZen in Washington, D.C.
Midwest (Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin):
Isaac Becker of 112 Eatery in Minneapolis
Colby Garrelts of Bluestem in Kansas City
Tim McKee of La Belle Vie in Minneapolis
Alex Roberts of Restaurant Alma in Minneapolis
Adam Siegal of Bartolotta’s Lake Park Bistro in Milwaukee
Great Lakes (Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio):
Graham Elliot Bowles of Avenues in Chicago
Carrie Nahabedian of Naha in Chicago
Bruce Sherman of North Pond in Chicago
Michael Symon of Lola in Cleveland
Alex Young of Zingerman’s Roadhouse in Ann Arbor, Mich.
New York City:
Michael Anthony of Gramercy Tavern
Terrance Brennan of Picholine
David Chang of the Momofuku restaurants
Wylie Dufresne of WD-50
Gabriel Kreuther of The Modern.
Northeast (Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, New York excluding New York City, Rhode Island and Vermont):
Patrick Connolly of Radius in Boston
Rob Evans of Hugo’s in Portland, Maine
Clark Frasier and Mark Gaier of Arrows in Ogunquit, Maine
Michael Leviton of Lumière in West Newton, Mass.
Marc Orfaly of Pigalle in Boston.
Northwest (Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Washington and Wyoming):
Scott Dolich of Park Kitchen in Portland, Ore.
Maria Hines of Tilth in Seattle
Holly Smith of Café Juanita in Kirkland, Wash.
Ethan Stowell of Union in Seattle
Jason Wilson of Crush in Seattle
Southeast (Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia):
Hugh Acheson of Five and Ten in Athens, Ga.
Arnaud Berthelier of The Dining Room at The Ritz-Carlton Buckhead in Atlanta
Linton Hopkins of Restaurant Eugene in Atlanta
Mike Lata of Fig in Charleston, S.C.
Robert Stehling of Hominy Grill in Charleston, S.C.
Southwest (Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Oklahoma, Texas and Utah):
Saipin Chutima of Lotus of Siam in Las Vegas
Sharon Hage of York Street in Dallas
Ryan Hardy of Montagna in Aspen, Colo.
Lachlan Mackinnon-Patterson of Frasca Food and Wine in Boulder, Colo.
Andrew Weissman of Restaurant La Rêve in San Antonio, Texas.
South (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi):
Zach Bell of Café Boulud in Palm Beach, Fla.
Michelle Bernstein of Michy’s in Miami
John Currence of City Grocery in Oxford, Miss.
Chris Hastings of Hot and Hot Fish Club in Birmingham, Ala.
Douglas Rodriguez of Ola in Miami.
The James Beard Foundation has announced its list of nominees for its annual awards, which people in the restaurant world take quite seriously. Awards are strange, though. The results are capricious, the meaning unclear. Nonetheless, I shall now take a shot at predicting the winners.
I did this last year and ended up getting seven out of 19 right, which is a failing grade except in baseball, when I would have batted 367.
I have made my predictions in boldface. They are my predictions, not my votes. I’m not saying that I would be happy about these results, but they are the people and restaurants I expect to win.
I’m only predicting in restaurant and chef categories. For a full list of nominees, visit jbfawards.com.
Here now, my predictions for the 2008 James Beard Foundation Awards:
[March 26 update: Oops, the Beard Foundation forgot that Gary Danko won the outstanding service award in 2006, so they took that restaurant off the list and replaced it with La Grenouille in New York. Also, I’ve been asked why I picked who I picked and if I’m crazy, so I have added reasons for my predictions]:
Best new restaurant:
Anthos in New York
Central Michel Richard in Washington, D.C.
Fearing’s at the Ritz-Carlton in Dallas
Osteria Mozza in Los Angeles
Osteria in Philadelphia
reason: I think the star effect of Mario Batali and Nancy Silverton will put it over the top
“Rising Star Chef” (aged 30 years or younger):
Nate Appleman of A 16 in San Francisco
Sean Brock of McCrady’s in Charleston, S.C.
Gavin Kaysen of Café Boulud in New York
Johnny Monis of Komi in Washington, D.C.
Matt Molina of Osteria Mozza in Los Angeles
Gabriel Rucker of Le Pigeon in Portland, Ore.
reason: see above
Outstanding chef:
Grant Achatz of Alinea in Chicago
José Andres of Minibar in Washington, D.C.
Dan Barber of Blue Hill in New York
Suzanne Goin of Lucques in Los Angeles
Frank Stitt of Highlands Bar & Grill in Birmingham, Ala.
reason: All of these chefs are very highly regarded, but Grant has been battling cancer. To call his victory a sympathy vote would make it sound like he’s not deserving, so let’s call it a hero vote.
Outstanding restaurant (these tend to go to old, well-established restaurants with a lot of history):
Boulevard in San Francisco
The Slanted Door in San Francisco
Gramercy Tavern in New York
Jean Georges in New York
Campanile in Los Angeles
reason: This one is always tricky, because more than any of the other awards it seems to be based on sentiment and a sense of the nominee’s place in the restaurant firmament. But I’ve never heard an unkind word said about Gramercy Tavern.
Outstanding pastry chef:
Gina DePalma of Babbo Ristorante e Enoteca in New York
Pichet Ong of P*ONG in New York
Elisabeth Prueitt and Chad Robertson of Tartine Bakery in San Francisco
Mindy Segal of HotChocolate in Chicago
Nicole Plue of Redd in Yountville, Calif.
reason: combination of name recognition of Gina herself and Batali star power
Outstanding wine service:
Aureole in Las Vegas
Picasso in Las Vegas
Bin 36 in Chicago
Eleven Madison Park in New York
Blackberry Farm in Walland, Tenn.
reason: Blackberry Farm gets nominated often enough in enough different categories (it was nominated for both best chef and best service last year). It just feels like this is its year.
Outstanding restaurateur:
Joe Bastianich and Mario Batali in New York
Tom Douglas in Seattle
Richard Melman in Chicago
Wolfgang Puck in Los Angeles
Jean-Georges Vongerichten in New York
Reason: Jean-Georges' restaurants are the most high-end in this group, for the most part, and I think Beard judges still have a weakness for that.
Outstanding wine and spirits professional:
Dale DeGroff of Beverage Alcohol Resource in New York
Merry Edwards of Merry Edwards Wines in Sebastopol, Calif.
David Lett of The Eyrie Vineyards in McMinnville, Ore.
Bobby Stuckey of Frasca Food and Wine in Boulder, Colo.
Terry Theise of Terry Theise Estate Selections in Silver Spring, Md.
Reason: Frasca’s hot.
Outstanding service:
Canlis in Seattle
La Grenouille in New York
Spiaggia in Chicago
Vetri in Philadelphia
Terra in St. Helena, Calif.
Reason: Canlis has a reputation for being classic and likeable that I think will appeal to judges.
My picks for the regional awards, except for New York which is the market I live in and thus the one I know best, are based purely on gut reaction having to do with name recognition and general reputation. In the case of New York, people in the food world here can’t help themselves — if there’s an award, they’ll give it to David Chang.
Pacific (California and Hawaii):
Douglas Keane of Cyrus in Healdsburg, Calif.
David Kinch of Manresa in Los Gatos, Calif.
David Myers of Sona in Los Angeles
Craig Stoll of Delfina in San Francisco
Michael Tusk of Quince in San Francisco.
Mid-Atlantic (including Washington, D.C., Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Virginia):
Cathal Armstong of Restaurant Eve in Alexandria, Va.
Jose Garces of Amada in Philadelphia
Maricel Presilla of Cucharamama in Hoboken, N.J.
Cindy Wolf of Charleston in Baltimore
Eric Ziebold of CityZen in Washington, D.C.
Midwest (Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin):
Isaac Becker of 112 Eatery in Minneapolis
Colby Garrelts of Bluestem in Kansas City
Tim McKee of La Belle Vie in Minneapolis
Alex Roberts of Restaurant Alma in Minneapolis
Adam Siegal of Bartolotta’s Lake Park Bistro in Milwaukee
Great Lakes (Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio):
Graham Elliot Bowles of Avenues in Chicago
Carrie Nahabedian of Naha in Chicago
Bruce Sherman of North Pond in Chicago
Michael Symon of Lola in Cleveland
Alex Young of Zingerman’s Roadhouse in Ann Arbor, Mich.
New York City:
Michael Anthony of Gramercy Tavern
Terrance Brennan of Picholine
David Chang of the Momofuku restaurants
Wylie Dufresne of WD-50
Gabriel Kreuther of The Modern.
Northeast (Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, New York excluding New York City, Rhode Island and Vermont):
Patrick Connolly of Radius in Boston
Rob Evans of Hugo’s in Portland, Maine
Clark Frasier and Mark Gaier of Arrows in Ogunquit, Maine
Michael Leviton of Lumière in West Newton, Mass.
Marc Orfaly of Pigalle in Boston.
Northwest (Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Washington and Wyoming):
Scott Dolich of Park Kitchen in Portland, Ore.
Maria Hines of Tilth in Seattle
Holly Smith of Café Juanita in Kirkland, Wash.
Ethan Stowell of Union in Seattle
Jason Wilson of Crush in Seattle
Southeast (Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia):
Hugh Acheson of Five and Ten in Athens, Ga.
Arnaud Berthelier of The Dining Room at The Ritz-Carlton Buckhead in Atlanta
Linton Hopkins of Restaurant Eugene in Atlanta
Mike Lata of Fig in Charleston, S.C.
Robert Stehling of Hominy Grill in Charleston, S.C.
Southwest (Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Oklahoma, Texas and Utah):
Saipin Chutima of Lotus of Siam in Las Vegas
Sharon Hage of York Street in Dallas
Ryan Hardy of Montagna in Aspen, Colo.
Lachlan Mackinnon-Patterson of Frasca Food and Wine in Boulder, Colo.
Andrew Weissman of Restaurant La Rêve in San Antonio, Texas.
South (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi):
Zach Bell of Café Boulud in Palm Beach, Fla.
Michelle Bernstein of Michy’s in Miami
John Currence of City Grocery in Oxford, Miss.
Chris Hastings of Hot and Hot Fish Club in Birmingham, Ala.
Douglas Rodriguez of Ola in Miami.
Friday, March 21, 2008
Organic
March 21
“The cheesecake is Argentinean-style, which is like Italian-style.”
“Then why are you calling it Argentinean? Why not just call it Italian?”
“Most people don’t know what Argentinean-style cheesecake is, so I’m just saying it’s like Italian.”
“But what’s Argentinean about it?”
“I’m saying it’s like Italian so people will understand.”
This conversation was going on between my friend Birdman and our waiter at GustOrganics last night. It could have gone on all night, so I thought I’d intervene.
“Is the pastry chef Argentine?” I asked (I prefer “Argentine” to “Argentinean,” for no logical reason).
“The whole restaurant is Argentine.”
Aha!
Birdman, aka David Krauss, is a science professor. He likes to get his facts straight, and he’s a stickler for clarity. He’s also a stickler for proper use of the English language, and woe unto students who can’t use it properly. Indeed, I’m sure they look at their graded tests and say “woah!”
Like pretty much any scientist I’ve ever met, Birdman, who’s a biologist with specialization in paleontology, is easily irritated by the fast-and-loose usage of scientific terms — such as organic.
GustOrganics says it’s the first Certified Organic restaurant in New York City and the first one in the country to use 100 percent USDA Certified Organic ingredients (I’m not saying that it’s not, but I haven’t confirmed it). The owner, Alberto Gonzalez, is from Argentina, and he is apparently so excited about his restaurant being organic that he didn’t bother to mention that it was Argentine, although the press materials do call the food ”Latin-inspired.”
Now, to be Certified Organic, you have to follow all sorts of regulations and jump through a bunch of administrative hoops. To be organic in common parlance you have to be grown or raised without the use of chemical fertilizers or pesticides.
But from a scientific perspective, “organic” just means formerly alive. So petroleum, which is former dinosaurs, is organic and therefore so is plastic. Glass, on the other hand, being silicon-based, is not. Neither is table salt (which is sodium based). Bug parts and mammalian excretia: organic. Water: not organic (or more precisely, inorganic).
Speaking of water, a chemical is anything that can be described using a chemical formula, such as dihydrogen oxide (water). It is impossible to grow any plant or raise any animal without chemicals.
Most European languages that I know of use the term “biological” instead of “organic” (biologique in French, for example), which makes no more sense than “organic.”
Perhaps we should just call a spade a small shovel and label some foods as politically correct and others as not.
At the moment, GustOrganics is BYO, so Birdman picked up a bottle of Côtes du Rhône, which we drank from stemless glasses (inorganic) as we ate a spinach salad topped with strawberries and peanuts and a beet salad (made with raw beets), and then beef stew (which tasted like beef stew but was more like braised brisket, really) with a side of grilled vegetables, and vegan risotto with endive.
For dessert we had a “tortita,” which was sort of an Argentine-style strawberry shortcake, and dulce de leche ice cream.
I asked Birdman why we couldn't eat petroleum products but we can consume vegetable oil (for example). He said that the “oils” we eat are actually fatty acids, not true oils, but he couldn’t say whether a teaspoon of motor oil, say, would be harmful in any way, so he didn’t.
“The cheesecake is Argentinean-style, which is like Italian-style.”
“Then why are you calling it Argentinean? Why not just call it Italian?”
“Most people don’t know what Argentinean-style cheesecake is, so I’m just saying it’s like Italian.”
“But what’s Argentinean about it?”
“I’m saying it’s like Italian so people will understand.”
This conversation was going on between my friend Birdman and our waiter at GustOrganics last night. It could have gone on all night, so I thought I’d intervene.
“Is the pastry chef Argentine?” I asked (I prefer “Argentine” to “Argentinean,” for no logical reason).
“The whole restaurant is Argentine.”
Aha!
Birdman, aka David Krauss, is a science professor. He likes to get his facts straight, and he’s a stickler for clarity. He’s also a stickler for proper use of the English language, and woe unto students who can’t use it properly. Indeed, I’m sure they look at their graded tests and say “woah!”
Like pretty much any scientist I’ve ever met, Birdman, who’s a biologist with specialization in paleontology, is easily irritated by the fast-and-loose usage of scientific terms — such as organic.
GustOrganics says it’s the first Certified Organic restaurant in New York City and the first one in the country to use 100 percent USDA Certified Organic ingredients (I’m not saying that it’s not, but I haven’t confirmed it). The owner, Alberto Gonzalez, is from Argentina, and he is apparently so excited about his restaurant being organic that he didn’t bother to mention that it was Argentine, although the press materials do call the food ”Latin-inspired.”
Now, to be Certified Organic, you have to follow all sorts of regulations and jump through a bunch of administrative hoops. To be organic in common parlance you have to be grown or raised without the use of chemical fertilizers or pesticides.
But from a scientific perspective, “organic” just means formerly alive. So petroleum, which is former dinosaurs, is organic and therefore so is plastic. Glass, on the other hand, being silicon-based, is not. Neither is table salt (which is sodium based). Bug parts and mammalian excretia: organic. Water: not organic (or more precisely, inorganic).
Speaking of water, a chemical is anything that can be described using a chemical formula, such as dihydrogen oxide (water). It is impossible to grow any plant or raise any animal without chemicals.
Most European languages that I know of use the term “biological” instead of “organic” (biologique in French, for example), which makes no more sense than “organic.”
Perhaps we should just call a spade a small shovel and label some foods as politically correct and others as not.
At the moment, GustOrganics is BYO, so Birdman picked up a bottle of Côtes du Rhône, which we drank from stemless glasses (inorganic) as we ate a spinach salad topped with strawberries and peanuts and a beet salad (made with raw beets), and then beef stew (which tasted like beef stew but was more like braised brisket, really) with a side of grilled vegetables, and vegan risotto with endive.
For dessert we had a “tortita,” which was sort of an Argentine-style strawberry shortcake, and dulce de leche ice cream.
I asked Birdman why we couldn't eat petroleum products but we can consume vegetable oil (for example). He said that the “oils” we eat are actually fatty acids, not true oils, but he couldn’t say whether a teaspoon of motor oil, say, would be harmful in any way, so he didn’t.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
cocktails and vegetarian food
March 20
Rarely have two parties held so closely together had such a similar crowd as the ones held at Tailor on Tuesday and The Bikini Bar on Wednesday. One was promoting a wine-based apéritif, the other promoting tiki rum cocktails. Jim Meehan was making cocktails at both of them. At Tailor Toby Cecchini of Passerby, Brian Miller of Death & Co. and host Eben Freeman were making drinks, too.
I started with Brian Miller’s drink.
“What are you shaking?” I asked him.
“I’m stirring a Fat Like Buddha,” he said, which had said apéritif, rum, benedictine, orange liqueur and an orange twist.
I do respect a mixologist who takes himself seriously.
Beverage, wine and food writer Jack Robertiello and I continued our ongoing discussion of which types of writers are the most insufferable. He has had horrible experiences with food writers, whom he has seen engaging in high-school like acts of cliqueyness and one-upsmanship (or one-upspersonship as most food writers are women). I contend that wine writers, as a general rule of course, are trapped farther up their own personal orifices than food writers, whom I find generally act in just the friendly, contented way that well-fed people with slight wine buzzes should behave.
But I still think travel writers are the worst.
We continue to agree that virtually everyone involved in the hard-liquor world is gracious and fun to spend time with.
I caught up with Darrell Hartman, which didn’t take long as I’ve seen him in the past couple of weeks, but I think I spent most of my time with James Oliver Cury and Jay Cheshes, who both exemplify how nice food writers are.
Come to think of it, I didn’t see James at the party the following night — although I definitely saw Jack, and I’m pretty sure I saw Jay — but I wasn’t there for very long. Bikini Bar is in Tribeca, and I took the E train to Chambers Street, a huge subway stop with many exits, and I selected the one farthest away from Bikini Bar. I still managed to get there just 15 minutes after the party had started, but that still just gave me 15 minutes before I had to trek to the opening party at Broadway East.
Still, that gave me enough time to sample a rum I hadn't tried before, drink Jim Meehan’s cocktail and chat with a couple representatives from a major Puerto Rico-based rum company (can you guess which one?).
I talked with them about rum and its potential for growth in the American market. Rum as we drink it here is generally light and sweet, and people think of it as festive. The proliferation of infused rums further brings it into competition with the United States' favorite spirit, vodka.
The guys seemed eager to point out the distinctions between rum and vodka, which I found interesting since if I were trying to sell alcohol in the United States, I’d try to underscore its similarities to vodka because, despite all the efforts of the country’s “mixologists” and “cocktailians” to promote gin, brown spirits and, well, anything but vodka, vodka remains king.
I wasn’t at the party long, but I’m afraid I did manage to hurt the feelings of a representative from the Distilled Spirits Council, which was throwing the party. He suggested we write a story about all the different safe-drinking programs the various liquor companies had (which of course they do), and even though I’d had only one drink, I told him that was a boring story, which was mean of me (but true).
So I felt bad about that as I left that party, passing Bon Appétit restaurant editor Andrew Knowlton on my way out, sorry we didn’t have a chance to catch up, as I hardly ever see him anymore and I enjoy his company.
So I had two things to regret as I walked to Broadway East, the new mostly vegetarian restaurant, where I was meeting my vegetarian friend Kenyon, for whom it is worth leaving a party.
Kenyon is not only a vegetarian but a straight-edge one, and yet I still enjoy his company. I think that’s quite a tribute to him (or maybe the fact that I think so means that I’m a narrow-minded schnook).
It was a star-studded party. Not only were Kenyon and I there, but so, I was told, was Tatum O’Neal, although I didn't see her. She’s supposedly dating the owner or something.
I did see Kristen Johnston, from Third Rock from the Sun. She definitely looks vegetarian.
So I drank Pinot Noir and ate tempura vegetables and tandoori tofu and non-meat sliders and whatnot, and Kenyon ate the same stuff (but not the mackerel) and introduced himself to the random beautiful women who walked by and introduced themselves to him first.
I asked if people frequently introduced themselves to him because he was hot (I get mistaken for Jason Alexander — especially in profile — he gets mistaken for Jared Leto).
“Is that why?” he asked and shrugged.
Kenyon’s best friend and ex-girlfriend was performing that night at a place on Avenue B that used to be called Club Midway but that now apparently is Rehab.
I bought a Guinness and then who did we see but a girl named Michael, whom you might recall from a couple of weeks ago.
We were early, so we hung out with the band and I felt very hip and insidery.
The bands, Saints & Lovers, Neimo, and The Go Station, were all a lot of fun — Saints & Lovers mostly for the bassist/lead singer’s great voice, Neimo for the lead singer’s stage presence, and The Go Station for the overall music and the lead singer’s doleful facial expressions.
Kenyon, in fact, left before The Go Station came on stage, but I figured I’d stick around, although I switched from Guinness to Bass.
Rarely have two parties held so closely together had such a similar crowd as the ones held at Tailor on Tuesday and The Bikini Bar on Wednesday. One was promoting a wine-based apéritif, the other promoting tiki rum cocktails. Jim Meehan was making cocktails at both of them. At Tailor Toby Cecchini of Passerby, Brian Miller of Death & Co. and host Eben Freeman were making drinks, too.
I started with Brian Miller’s drink.
“What are you shaking?” I asked him.
“I’m stirring a Fat Like Buddha,” he said, which had said apéritif, rum, benedictine, orange liqueur and an orange twist.
I do respect a mixologist who takes himself seriously.
Beverage, wine and food writer Jack Robertiello and I continued our ongoing discussion of which types of writers are the most insufferable. He has had horrible experiences with food writers, whom he has seen engaging in high-school like acts of cliqueyness and one-upsmanship (or one-upspersonship as most food writers are women). I contend that wine writers, as a general rule of course, are trapped farther up their own personal orifices than food writers, whom I find generally act in just the friendly, contented way that well-fed people with slight wine buzzes should behave.
But I still think travel writers are the worst.
We continue to agree that virtually everyone involved in the hard-liquor world is gracious and fun to spend time with.
I caught up with Darrell Hartman, which didn’t take long as I’ve seen him in the past couple of weeks, but I think I spent most of my time with James Oliver Cury and Jay Cheshes, who both exemplify how nice food writers are.
Come to think of it, I didn’t see James at the party the following night — although I definitely saw Jack, and I’m pretty sure I saw Jay — but I wasn’t there for very long. Bikini Bar is in Tribeca, and I took the E train to Chambers Street, a huge subway stop with many exits, and I selected the one farthest away from Bikini Bar. I still managed to get there just 15 minutes after the party had started, but that still just gave me 15 minutes before I had to trek to the opening party at Broadway East.
Still, that gave me enough time to sample a rum I hadn't tried before, drink Jim Meehan’s cocktail and chat with a couple representatives from a major Puerto Rico-based rum company (can you guess which one?).
I talked with them about rum and its potential for growth in the American market. Rum as we drink it here is generally light and sweet, and people think of it as festive. The proliferation of infused rums further brings it into competition with the United States' favorite spirit, vodka.
The guys seemed eager to point out the distinctions between rum and vodka, which I found interesting since if I were trying to sell alcohol in the United States, I’d try to underscore its similarities to vodka because, despite all the efforts of the country’s “mixologists” and “cocktailians” to promote gin, brown spirits and, well, anything but vodka, vodka remains king.
I wasn’t at the party long, but I’m afraid I did manage to hurt the feelings of a representative from the Distilled Spirits Council, which was throwing the party. He suggested we write a story about all the different safe-drinking programs the various liquor companies had (which of course they do), and even though I’d had only one drink, I told him that was a boring story, which was mean of me (but true).
So I felt bad about that as I left that party, passing Bon Appétit restaurant editor Andrew Knowlton on my way out, sorry we didn’t have a chance to catch up, as I hardly ever see him anymore and I enjoy his company.
So I had two things to regret as I walked to Broadway East, the new mostly vegetarian restaurant, where I was meeting my vegetarian friend Kenyon, for whom it is worth leaving a party.
Kenyon is not only a vegetarian but a straight-edge one, and yet I still enjoy his company. I think that’s quite a tribute to him (or maybe the fact that I think so means that I’m a narrow-minded schnook).
It was a star-studded party. Not only were Kenyon and I there, but so, I was told, was Tatum O’Neal, although I didn't see her. She’s supposedly dating the owner or something.
I did see Kristen Johnston, from Third Rock from the Sun. She definitely looks vegetarian.
So I drank Pinot Noir and ate tempura vegetables and tandoori tofu and non-meat sliders and whatnot, and Kenyon ate the same stuff (but not the mackerel) and introduced himself to the random beautiful women who walked by and introduced themselves to him first.
I asked if people frequently introduced themselves to him because he was hot (I get mistaken for Jason Alexander — especially in profile — he gets mistaken for Jared Leto).
“Is that why?” he asked and shrugged.
Kenyon’s best friend and ex-girlfriend was performing that night at a place on Avenue B that used to be called Club Midway but that now apparently is Rehab.
I bought a Guinness and then who did we see but a girl named Michael, whom you might recall from a couple of weeks ago.
We were early, so we hung out with the band and I felt very hip and insidery.
The bands, Saints & Lovers, Neimo, and The Go Station, were all a lot of fun — Saints & Lovers mostly for the bassist/lead singer’s great voice, Neimo for the lead singer’s stage presence, and The Go Station for the overall music and the lead singer’s doleful facial expressions.
Kenyon, in fact, left before The Go Station came on stage, but I figured I’d stick around, although I switched from Guinness to Bass.
Bouley
March 20
I got an invitation yesterday afternoon for an event this morning. It was to visit David Bouley’s test kitchen and then get a preview of his new restaurant, Bouley, which will open in the building he bought after closing his original Bouley in 1996, sold after September 11, 2001, and then bought again recently (161 Duane St.).
I met David Bouley back in 1996, just as he was getting ready to close his restaurant, in part to travel the world in search of new flavors. I lived in Bangkok at the time, and Bouley was doing a brief guest-chef stint at The Regent hotel there (which is now a Four Seasons). His food was so good it made me want to giggle, and I have been paying attention to him ever since.
The chef was very chipper today, wearing pin-stripe trousers and an elegant sport coat over an open collared, French-cuffed light blue shirt (or possibly violet, but I think light blue). He chatted about the ripening apples that gave the original Bouley its distinctive smell and that will also be placed in the new restaurant’s foyer.
On the floor of the lounge at the moment are beams that were installed in a French château in 1751. They will adorn the lounge’s ceiling once the restaurant opens. The dining room is on the other side of doors from the 1760s. The floor — the parts that aren’t walnut and oak parkade made by craftsmen in Brooklyn, is 18th century Burgundian stone.
(stone, of course, is millions of years old, but I imagine it was hewn in the 18th century).
David Bouley said he would be back in the kitchen for this restaurant, cooking every day, looking at every plate, “like I was in ’96,” he said.
The new restaurant will have about 30 seats fewer than the original, so, somewhere in the 70-80 seat range.
Then Bouley waxed poetic about a wide range of topics, mostly the joy of really excellent ingredients, and how visits to Japan over the past decade have taught him how American restaurants’ own movement toward connection to farms is still very much in its infancy, even though when the first Bouley closed he was working with 2,000 farmers, some of whom could only supply him for about three weeks, when, for example, their peaches were at their best.
Then Bouley changed into his chef jacket and we headed into his test kitchen to snack on things like silken tofu with mushrooms and black truffle (soy bean, mushroom and truffle all taste of the earth, and so go together very well, he said), while he reflected on food in the way that geniuses reflect on things.
The session ended on time — five minutes early, even — which is extraordinary considering how famously uninterested in timing the chef is. His handlers were very interested in timing, however, with one agitated young man muttering in Bouley’s ear about the absolute urgency with which he needed to wrap things up. The chef listened politely and kept talking, but we were eventually politely shooed out anyway.
Bouley’s publicists said the restaurant would open in six to eight weeks. I would suspect it won’t be ready until mid-summer, and who open’s a restaurant in New York in the middle of summer?
So expect a fall opening.
I got an invitation yesterday afternoon for an event this morning. It was to visit David Bouley’s test kitchen and then get a preview of his new restaurant, Bouley, which will open in the building he bought after closing his original Bouley in 1996, sold after September 11, 2001, and then bought again recently (161 Duane St.).
I met David Bouley back in 1996, just as he was getting ready to close his restaurant, in part to travel the world in search of new flavors. I lived in Bangkok at the time, and Bouley was doing a brief guest-chef stint at The Regent hotel there (which is now a Four Seasons). His food was so good it made me want to giggle, and I have been paying attention to him ever since.
The chef was very chipper today, wearing pin-stripe trousers and an elegant sport coat over an open collared, French-cuffed light blue shirt (or possibly violet, but I think light blue). He chatted about the ripening apples that gave the original Bouley its distinctive smell and that will also be placed in the new restaurant’s foyer.
On the floor of the lounge at the moment are beams that were installed in a French château in 1751. They will adorn the lounge’s ceiling once the restaurant opens. The dining room is on the other side of doors from the 1760s. The floor — the parts that aren’t walnut and oak parkade made by craftsmen in Brooklyn, is 18th century Burgundian stone.
(stone, of course, is millions of years old, but I imagine it was hewn in the 18th century).
David Bouley said he would be back in the kitchen for this restaurant, cooking every day, looking at every plate, “like I was in ’96,” he said.
The new restaurant will have about 30 seats fewer than the original, so, somewhere in the 70-80 seat range.
Then Bouley waxed poetic about a wide range of topics, mostly the joy of really excellent ingredients, and how visits to Japan over the past decade have taught him how American restaurants’ own movement toward connection to farms is still very much in its infancy, even though when the first Bouley closed he was working with 2,000 farmers, some of whom could only supply him for about three weeks, when, for example, their peaches were at their best.
Then Bouley changed into his chef jacket and we headed into his test kitchen to snack on things like silken tofu with mushrooms and black truffle (soy bean, mushroom and truffle all taste of the earth, and so go together very well, he said), while he reflected on food in the way that geniuses reflect on things.
The session ended on time — five minutes early, even — which is extraordinary considering how famously uninterested in timing the chef is. His handlers were very interested in timing, however, with one agitated young man muttering in Bouley’s ear about the absolute urgency with which he needed to wrap things up. The chef listened politely and kept talking, but we were eventually politely shooed out anyway.
Bouley’s publicists said the restaurant would open in six to eight weeks. I would suspect it won’t be ready until mid-summer, and who open’s a restaurant in New York in the middle of summer?
So expect a fall opening.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Il Giorno di San Patrizio
March 18
What can I say? I’m not Irish, even on St. Patrick’s Day, so I spent yesterday evening, the 17th, with Jamie Tiampo, budding food writer and food photographer and a partner in Dell’anima, where we ate.
Jamie used to work in technology, but decided his real love was food, so he made a career change, something his wife — who works in finance or banking or something and clearly makes a good living — clearly supports. Jamie acknowledges that he’s a fortunate man.
We spent about four hours chatting — and eating grilled sweetbreads with celery root purée, lemon and capers; salad of chicories with Campari-honey dressing; tagliatella alla bolognese risotto alla pilota (chef Gabriel Thompson’s specialty) with housemade sausage, salumi and pecorino romano; a special ricotta-stuffed ravioli that wasn’t on the menu but that Jamie loves, and he’s an owner; chicken al diavolo with roasted sweet potato and chicken sugo; and barramundi with spring onions, Parmigiano brodo and saba (grape must reduction) — about politics and food and so on. So I sent him home late to pack for his trip the next day to New Orleans (some sort of gumbo expedition associated with the IACP).
What can I say? I’m not Irish, even on St. Patrick’s Day, so I spent yesterday evening, the 17th, with Jamie Tiampo, budding food writer and food photographer and a partner in Dell’anima, where we ate.
Jamie used to work in technology, but decided his real love was food, so he made a career change, something his wife — who works in finance or banking or something and clearly makes a good living — clearly supports. Jamie acknowledges that he’s a fortunate man.
We spent about four hours chatting — and eating grilled sweetbreads with celery root purée, lemon and capers; salad of chicories with Campari-honey dressing; tagliatella alla bolognese risotto alla pilota (chef Gabriel Thompson’s specialty) with housemade sausage, salumi and pecorino romano; a special ricotta-stuffed ravioli that wasn’t on the menu but that Jamie loves, and he’s an owner; chicken al diavolo with roasted sweet potato and chicken sugo; and barramundi with spring onions, Parmigiano brodo and saba (grape must reduction) — about politics and food and so on. So I sent him home late to pack for his trip the next day to New Orleans (some sort of gumbo expedition associated with the IACP).
Monday, March 17, 2008
Too many fancy events
March 17
“GET A DOO-WOG!” said this truly horrible woman with a heavy New York accent to a blind man at the James Beard House last Wednesday. She was one of those people who thinks it’s actually okay to tell other people, unbidden, how to live their lives, as if a blind man carrying a white cane and being escorted by his companion (maybe his wife, but one mustn’t assume) hasn’t examined his options and chosen to live his life as he sees fit.
“You get a dog,” he said, which of course was a mistake because then she kept talking (excuse me, too-wahking) about her own stupid cur. And I was not in the mood for it last week.
“I’m having existential ennui,” I later told my friend Jonathan Ray, who teaches history at Georgetown. I’m a New York City food writer, so I’m allowed to use pompous words to express melancholy. It’s what we do.
“That’s because you go to too many fancy shmancy events,” he said.
Jonathan’s one of my favorite people in the world.
That was on Friday. He’d called me the day before just as I was tying my matte silver tie for my tuxedo.
It was a long tie, which it seems to me is more in vogue than bow ties for tuxedos these days, although I think the pendulum is swinging back. We’ll see what people are wearing at the Beard Awards in June.
The material on this particular tie is pretty thick, so a full Windsor knot would have looked bulky. I settled on a half Windsor as I chatted with Jonathan.
“You’re busy. I’ll let you go. We’ll talk soon,” he said.
Too many fancy shmancy events can lead to existential ennui, because if you think life is about fancy events and you go to a lot of them, you realize that they don’t contribute to your emotional well-being. That comes from inside.
I don’t think that was what was irritating me last week. Sometimes you just feel annoyed.
The week started with a fundraising dinner for the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, which might have been the only fundraising dinner in the history of the world to have no chicken or steak, but escargots, bone marrow, sweetbreads and rabbit. They raised $650,000.
As a member of the media, I was seated at a table with seats to spare, where I could be easily slotted in. My particular table had mostly been bought by Washington Mutual, and so I asked one of their financial analysts to apportion blame for the sub-prime mortgage crisis while we assessed the makeup of the emcee, food-TV personality Ted Allen.
The honoree of the evening was Urvashi Vaid, executive director of The Arcus Foundation.
“Revolution is Fun,” she said, which is my quotation of the week.
I did also have an amusing but brief exchange at the bar with a tall gentleman who was ordering a bourbon to soothe his throat, coughed raw by an illness from which he was recovering.
“Tuberculosis,” he said, to no one in particular.
“Hey, it beats lung cancer,” I said, not that I have lung cancer or anything — I just wanted him to look on the bright side.
“I’m working on that. Do you have a cigarette?”
Tuesday at lunchtime found me downtown at a somewhat New Zealand-themed place called Nelson Blue. I was having lunch with Jay Louisson of New Zealand Trade & Enterprise, the people who took me down under recently (and I’ve finally finished updating my blog about it. Click here for the final installment). I debriefed her on the trip while I ate a lamb curry pie. The restaurant choice was mine; it seemed appropriate.
That night I went to an absinthe tasting, at which Lance Winters of St. George Spirits spoke about the stuff. I was late and feeling harried, and the event was in a dimly lit room in the bar named Little Branch, and so I reintroduced myself to Kate Goldstein-Breyer, with whom I had just been dining a few days before at The Monday Room. So that was awkward and I decided to bury my embarrassment under Thai food. I walked to my new favorite downtown Thai restaurant, Rhong-Tiam, and ate Thai comfort food. I had khai-jiew woon-sen, which is a sort of deep-fried omelet, and a bowl of guay-tiew tom yam, which is a type of noodle dish from Sukhothai that we used to eat in Bangkok, walking from our offices on Phra-Arthit road across a little canal, past a small ice plant to a little noodle shop.
At Rhong-Tiam a scene that could have been in Bangkok unfolded for me. A middle aged white man came in (it occurs to me that I, too, am middle aged, but that’s all right) and spoke in fairly decent Thai to the waitresses as he asked them what food they recommended. He took a particular shine to one waitress who was clearly a tenor. She didn’t have a low voice, but it certainly was a masculine one, and she was obviously a man (why, then, am I referring to him as a she? Well, I think you should refer to someone as he or she would like to be addressed).
Transvestites are really quite common in Thailand, and so it was refreshing to see one in a Thai restaurant, and amusing to see the customer fall for her, going as far as complimenting her voice and comparing it to Marlena Dietrich’s.
So that was fun, and yet on Wednesday I was grumpy anyway and not in any mood to hear a loud mouth tell a blind man how to live his life.
He (the blind man) told the idiot that the problem with dogs is they don’t actually know where things are.
“You tell them, ‘go to the bank!’ They don’t know where the bank is. You still have to find your own way.”
Blind men were, in fact, the topic of conversation last week as New York’s lying hypocrite of a governor, Eliot Spitzer, was about to be replaced by New York’s first legally blind African-American governor, David Paterson.
One person said she wasn’t concerned about his being black (as of course that would be racist and therefore inappropriate to say), but it seemed wrong for him to be blind (a fair indicator of what prejudices remain socially acceptable).
Someone else wondered if all of our sighted governors were so great, implying that perhaps it was time to give the blind people a crack at it.
Apart from the dog-loving idiot, also at the Beard House on Wednesday was a simpleton who had, on a previous night, gone from table to table soliciting recommendations for restaurants in Barcelona. I recommended Rincón de Aragon for its roasted goat leg and she shuttered and acted like I was ridiculous for recommending such a thing. What’s wrong with goat leg, especially if you’re the sort of person who frequents the Beard House?
Believe it or not, that same simpleton was at the European Wine Council’s gala dinner at Le Cirque on Thursday as the escort of a truly unpleasant man I’d met at the gala about five years before.
He has a new food network. Actually, at the moment it’s a web site.
“It’s a network. I’m very sensitive about that,” he said, bristling at the word “web site.”
Oh, brother.
My date was Yishane Lee. I think I’ve gone to three European Wine Council gala dinners and Yishane has been my date at all three of them. Also at our table was Michael Aaron, chairman of Sherry-Lehman Wine & Spirits, whom I had met at that same gala some years before, when it was at Le Cirque 2000. I remembered him because of the bejeweled tuxedo studs he was wearing. They are family heirlooms.
Seated between us on Thursday was his wife Christine, a former interior designer who carries her own peppermill with her everywhere she goes. It contains a blend of five different peppers. I got a whiff of nutmeg in there, so I suspect that one of those five is Szechwan peppercorns, but Christine wasn't sure. She passed it around the table for people to use, and I said that if one were to have an eccentric affectation, carrying around ones own peppermill was a charming one.
The wine gala is an A-list event. So Food & Wine founders Michael and Ariane Batterbury were there. So was Nation’s Restaurant News (and New York Times) columnist Florence Fabricant, and Leonard Lopate and Rose Levy Beranbaum and many other people.
At one point some years ago, Rose Levy Beranbaum had the eccentric affectation of carrying around a tiny wooden box filled with fleur de sel.
If I were to have such an affectation, it would be to carry a mother-of-pearl caviar spoon with me at all times, so that if caviar were on hand I’d have the right utensil.
You don’t want to be caught off-guard on such occasions.
Michael Aaron performed an amazing feat at dinner. One of the gentlemen at our table was wearing a tuxedo, but with an open collar. Michael asked if that were some new sort of style from Los Angeles and the gentleman said that his bow tie had simply been too tight to fasten. He held it up for us to see and Michael expressed disappointment that it was one of those wrap-around ties.
Then, to show how simple tying a bow tie was, he untied his at the table and retied it again perfectly.
Let me repeat that: He untied his bow tie at the table and retied it again, perfectly. Without a mirror.
Better yet, he said he was taught to do that by Jonas Salk’s wife, Françoise, a former mistress of Picasso’s.
I suppose it wouldn’t be ennui if there were a reason for it.
But what, you wonder, did I eat at these events?
At the Gay Men’s Health Crisis event at Skyline Studios:
Escargots Saint Honoré with marrow and sweetbread cervelas (by Orsay executive chef Jason Hicks)
Slowly simmered rabbit raviolo in white burgundy with winter vegetables (by Aureole executive chef Tony Aiazzi)
Braised short ribs with butternut squash risotto (by Galen Zamarra of Mas — and it actually was risotto, not butternut squash cooked like risotto, which people were doing a few years ago, causing me to wonder why they called it risotto)
Chocolate meringue roches, Lillet gelée, nougat glacé with lavender honey (by Water Club executive pastry chef Victoria Love)
At the Beard House, by chef Jean Paul Desmaison of La Cofradia Restaurant in Coral Cables, Fla.:
Passed Hors d’Oeuvres:
Peruvian corn anticucho with huancaina sauce (a somewhat spicy cheese sauce)
Scallop Bloody Mary
Slow braised pork and grapes with pisco
Gosset Brut Excellence NV Champagne (France, obviously)
Lemon sole, octopus and shrimp ceviche
S.A. Prüm, Wehlener Sonnenuhr, Riesling Kabinett, 2003 (Mosel-Saar-Ruwer, Germany)
Piquillo peppers stuffed with beef, pork, peanuts and raisins, with a creamy rosemary Parmesan sauce
Marchesi di Barolo, “Ruvei” 2005, Barbera d'Alba (Piedmont, Italy)
Peruvian yellow chile risotto with sautéed Florida lobster tail and coral crème sauce
Jean Luc Colombo “La Bell de Mai” 2004, Saint Peray (Rhone, France)
Duck Confit with spinach and sweet corn couscous and black currant gastrique
Goat cheese ice cream with satuéed berries in port-balsamic reduction
Cellers Fuentes, Finca el Puig 2002, Priorat (Spain)
At the European Wine Council gala at Le Cirque:
Hors d’oeuvre:
Ratatouille tart with poached quail egg
Branzino tartare
Asian tuna roll with dipping sauce
Crab cakes with Béarnaise
Pierre Sparr mèthode Traditionnelle d'Alsace Brud Réserve
Don Olegario Albariño, Rías Baixas, 2006
Pfeffinger Riesling Kabinett Halbtrocken Pfalz 2006
Ayios Andronicos, Monte Royia Winery
Proseco Aneri
Shrimp with Asian mixed vegetables and cocnut jus
Schloss Schonborn Riesling Rudesheimer Berg Roseneck “Erstes Gewachs” Rheingau, 2004
Foie gras ravioli with green cabbage marmalade and black truffle emulsion (Yishane’s favorite; Christine’s, too)
Château des Capitan Julienas 2006
Roasted loin of veal with haricots verts en persillad and morel cream sauce
Malleolus de Sancho Martin 2005, Ribera del Duero
Vamvakada red wine, 2004
Gorgonzola, Parmesan and Brie de Nangis with honey and assorted breads
Bolla Amarone DOC 2004
Dessert buffet of milk chocolate mille-feuille, pear tart, mini crème brûlée, crokenbush, tiramisu tart and petits fours
Commandaria Saint John, Keo Winery
JJ Prum Riesling Wehlener Sonnenuhr Auslese, Mosel 1994
J. Vidal-Fleury Muscat de Beaumes de Venise (Yishane’s favorite)
González Byass Matusalem, DO Jerez
Arèle Vin Santo
“GET A DOO-WOG!” said this truly horrible woman with a heavy New York accent to a blind man at the James Beard House last Wednesday. She was one of those people who thinks it’s actually okay to tell other people, unbidden, how to live their lives, as if a blind man carrying a white cane and being escorted by his companion (maybe his wife, but one mustn’t assume) hasn’t examined his options and chosen to live his life as he sees fit.
“You get a dog,” he said, which of course was a mistake because then she kept talking (excuse me, too-wahking) about her own stupid cur. And I was not in the mood for it last week.
“I’m having existential ennui,” I later told my friend Jonathan Ray, who teaches history at Georgetown. I’m a New York City food writer, so I’m allowed to use pompous words to express melancholy. It’s what we do.
“That’s because you go to too many fancy shmancy events,” he said.
Jonathan’s one of my favorite people in the world.
That was on Friday. He’d called me the day before just as I was tying my matte silver tie for my tuxedo.
It was a long tie, which it seems to me is more in vogue than bow ties for tuxedos these days, although I think the pendulum is swinging back. We’ll see what people are wearing at the Beard Awards in June.
The material on this particular tie is pretty thick, so a full Windsor knot would have looked bulky. I settled on a half Windsor as I chatted with Jonathan.
“You’re busy. I’ll let you go. We’ll talk soon,” he said.
Too many fancy shmancy events can lead to existential ennui, because if you think life is about fancy events and you go to a lot of them, you realize that they don’t contribute to your emotional well-being. That comes from inside.
I don’t think that was what was irritating me last week. Sometimes you just feel annoyed.
The week started with a fundraising dinner for the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, which might have been the only fundraising dinner in the history of the world to have no chicken or steak, but escargots, bone marrow, sweetbreads and rabbit. They raised $650,000.
As a member of the media, I was seated at a table with seats to spare, where I could be easily slotted in. My particular table had mostly been bought by Washington Mutual, and so I asked one of their financial analysts to apportion blame for the sub-prime mortgage crisis while we assessed the makeup of the emcee, food-TV personality Ted Allen.
The honoree of the evening was Urvashi Vaid, executive director of The Arcus Foundation.
“Revolution is Fun,” she said, which is my quotation of the week.
I did also have an amusing but brief exchange at the bar with a tall gentleman who was ordering a bourbon to soothe his throat, coughed raw by an illness from which he was recovering.
“Tuberculosis,” he said, to no one in particular.
“Hey, it beats lung cancer,” I said, not that I have lung cancer or anything — I just wanted him to look on the bright side.
“I’m working on that. Do you have a cigarette?”
Tuesday at lunchtime found me downtown at a somewhat New Zealand-themed place called Nelson Blue. I was having lunch with Jay Louisson of New Zealand Trade & Enterprise, the people who took me down under recently (and I’ve finally finished updating my blog about it. Click here for the final installment). I debriefed her on the trip while I ate a lamb curry pie. The restaurant choice was mine; it seemed appropriate.
That night I went to an absinthe tasting, at which Lance Winters of St. George Spirits spoke about the stuff. I was late and feeling harried, and the event was in a dimly lit room in the bar named Little Branch, and so I reintroduced myself to Kate Goldstein-Breyer, with whom I had just been dining a few days before at The Monday Room. So that was awkward and I decided to bury my embarrassment under Thai food. I walked to my new favorite downtown Thai restaurant, Rhong-Tiam, and ate Thai comfort food. I had khai-jiew woon-sen, which is a sort of deep-fried omelet, and a bowl of guay-tiew tom yam, which is a type of noodle dish from Sukhothai that we used to eat in Bangkok, walking from our offices on Phra-Arthit road across a little canal, past a small ice plant to a little noodle shop.
At Rhong-Tiam a scene that could have been in Bangkok unfolded for me. A middle aged white man came in (it occurs to me that I, too, am middle aged, but that’s all right) and spoke in fairly decent Thai to the waitresses as he asked them what food they recommended. He took a particular shine to one waitress who was clearly a tenor. She didn’t have a low voice, but it certainly was a masculine one, and she was obviously a man (why, then, am I referring to him as a she? Well, I think you should refer to someone as he or she would like to be addressed).
Transvestites are really quite common in Thailand, and so it was refreshing to see one in a Thai restaurant, and amusing to see the customer fall for her, going as far as complimenting her voice and comparing it to Marlena Dietrich’s.
So that was fun, and yet on Wednesday I was grumpy anyway and not in any mood to hear a loud mouth tell a blind man how to live his life.
He (the blind man) told the idiot that the problem with dogs is they don’t actually know where things are.
“You tell them, ‘go to the bank!’ They don’t know where the bank is. You still have to find your own way.”
Blind men were, in fact, the topic of conversation last week as New York’s lying hypocrite of a governor, Eliot Spitzer, was about to be replaced by New York’s first legally blind African-American governor, David Paterson.
One person said she wasn’t concerned about his being black (as of course that would be racist and therefore inappropriate to say), but it seemed wrong for him to be blind (a fair indicator of what prejudices remain socially acceptable).
Someone else wondered if all of our sighted governors were so great, implying that perhaps it was time to give the blind people a crack at it.
Apart from the dog-loving idiot, also at the Beard House on Wednesday was a simpleton who had, on a previous night, gone from table to table soliciting recommendations for restaurants in Barcelona. I recommended Rincón de Aragon for its roasted goat leg and she shuttered and acted like I was ridiculous for recommending such a thing. What’s wrong with goat leg, especially if you’re the sort of person who frequents the Beard House?
Believe it or not, that same simpleton was at the European Wine Council’s gala dinner at Le Cirque on Thursday as the escort of a truly unpleasant man I’d met at the gala about five years before.
He has a new food network. Actually, at the moment it’s a web site.
“It’s a network. I’m very sensitive about that,” he said, bristling at the word “web site.”
Oh, brother.
My date was Yishane Lee. I think I’ve gone to three European Wine Council gala dinners and Yishane has been my date at all three of them. Also at our table was Michael Aaron, chairman of Sherry-Lehman Wine & Spirits, whom I had met at that same gala some years before, when it was at Le Cirque 2000. I remembered him because of the bejeweled tuxedo studs he was wearing. They are family heirlooms.
Seated between us on Thursday was his wife Christine, a former interior designer who carries her own peppermill with her everywhere she goes. It contains a blend of five different peppers. I got a whiff of nutmeg in there, so I suspect that one of those five is Szechwan peppercorns, but Christine wasn't sure. She passed it around the table for people to use, and I said that if one were to have an eccentric affectation, carrying around ones own peppermill was a charming one.
The wine gala is an A-list event. So Food & Wine founders Michael and Ariane Batterbury were there. So was Nation’s Restaurant News (and New York Times) columnist Florence Fabricant, and Leonard Lopate and Rose Levy Beranbaum and many other people.
At one point some years ago, Rose Levy Beranbaum had the eccentric affectation of carrying around a tiny wooden box filled with fleur de sel.
If I were to have such an affectation, it would be to carry a mother-of-pearl caviar spoon with me at all times, so that if caviar were on hand I’d have the right utensil.
You don’t want to be caught off-guard on such occasions.
Michael Aaron performed an amazing feat at dinner. One of the gentlemen at our table was wearing a tuxedo, but with an open collar. Michael asked if that were some new sort of style from Los Angeles and the gentleman said that his bow tie had simply been too tight to fasten. He held it up for us to see and Michael expressed disappointment that it was one of those wrap-around ties.
Then, to show how simple tying a bow tie was, he untied his at the table and retied it again perfectly.
Let me repeat that: He untied his bow tie at the table and retied it again, perfectly. Without a mirror.
Better yet, he said he was taught to do that by Jonas Salk’s wife, Françoise, a former mistress of Picasso’s.
I suppose it wouldn’t be ennui if there were a reason for it.
But what, you wonder, did I eat at these events?
At the Gay Men’s Health Crisis event at Skyline Studios:
Escargots Saint Honoré with marrow and sweetbread cervelas (by Orsay executive chef Jason Hicks)
Slowly simmered rabbit raviolo in white burgundy with winter vegetables (by Aureole executive chef Tony Aiazzi)
Braised short ribs with butternut squash risotto (by Galen Zamarra of Mas — and it actually was risotto, not butternut squash cooked like risotto, which people were doing a few years ago, causing me to wonder why they called it risotto)
Chocolate meringue roches, Lillet gelée, nougat glacé with lavender honey (by Water Club executive pastry chef Victoria Love)
At the Beard House, by chef Jean Paul Desmaison of La Cofradia Restaurant in Coral Cables, Fla.:
Passed Hors d’Oeuvres:
Peruvian corn anticucho with huancaina sauce (a somewhat spicy cheese sauce)
Scallop Bloody Mary
Slow braised pork and grapes with pisco
Gosset Brut Excellence NV Champagne (France, obviously)
Lemon sole, octopus and shrimp ceviche
S.A. Prüm, Wehlener Sonnenuhr, Riesling Kabinett, 2003 (Mosel-Saar-Ruwer, Germany)
Piquillo peppers stuffed with beef, pork, peanuts and raisins, with a creamy rosemary Parmesan sauce
Marchesi di Barolo, “Ruvei” 2005, Barbera d'Alba (Piedmont, Italy)
Peruvian yellow chile risotto with sautéed Florida lobster tail and coral crème sauce
Jean Luc Colombo “La Bell de Mai” 2004, Saint Peray (Rhone, France)
Duck Confit with spinach and sweet corn couscous and black currant gastrique
Goat cheese ice cream with satuéed berries in port-balsamic reduction
Cellers Fuentes, Finca el Puig 2002, Priorat (Spain)
At the European Wine Council gala at Le Cirque:
Hors d’oeuvre:
Ratatouille tart with poached quail egg
Branzino tartare
Asian tuna roll with dipping sauce
Crab cakes with Béarnaise
Pierre Sparr mèthode Traditionnelle d'Alsace Brud Réserve
Don Olegario Albariño, Rías Baixas, 2006
Pfeffinger Riesling Kabinett Halbtrocken Pfalz 2006
Ayios Andronicos, Monte Royia Winery
Proseco Aneri
Shrimp with Asian mixed vegetables and cocnut jus
Schloss Schonborn Riesling Rudesheimer Berg Roseneck “Erstes Gewachs” Rheingau, 2004
Foie gras ravioli with green cabbage marmalade and black truffle emulsion (Yishane’s favorite; Christine’s, too)
Château des Capitan Julienas 2006
Roasted loin of veal with haricots verts en persillad and morel cream sauce
Malleolus de Sancho Martin 2005, Ribera del Duero
Vamvakada red wine, 2004
Gorgonzola, Parmesan and Brie de Nangis with honey and assorted breads
Bolla Amarone DOC 2004
Dessert buffet of milk chocolate mille-feuille, pear tart, mini crème brûlée, crokenbush, tiramisu tart and petits fours
Commandaria Saint John, Keo Winery
JJ Prum Riesling Wehlener Sonnenuhr Auslese, Mosel 1994
J. Vidal-Fleury Muscat de Beaumes de Venise (Yishane’s favorite)
González Byass Matusalem, DO Jerez
Arèle Vin Santo
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Fatty ’Cue
March 13
The charming and barbecue-obsessed people of Grub Street dropped a Leap Day bombshell a couple of weeks ago that Zak Pelaccio would be opening a barbecue joint with Robbie Richter, the former pitmaster of Hill Country, a barbecue restaurant in Manhattan that has adoring fans.
Zak has his fans, too, of course, particularly for Fatty Crab, his mostly Malaysian restaurant in the Meatpacking District. But he has been picking up some local detractors, too, for all the consulting work he has been taking on.
I was poking my nose around one of those projects — a vaguely mused-about venture, perhaps called The Windsor and also maybe involving experiential pastry chef Will Goldfarb, Japanophile Josh DeChellis, and Robert Truitt, a former pastry chef at Will’s former restaurant, Room 4 Dessert.
The vague musings seem credible. A blog called The Life Vicarious noticed a listing in The James Beard Foundation’s event calendar that promised to introduce us to “the Windsor, the cozy yet elegant collaboration they [the chefs above] hope will become a hangout for chefs and food lovers alike.”
But the principals are mum. I called Josh, who said he’d keep me posted once there was something to keep me posted about. I e-mailed Will. He e-mailed back:
rumours abound
thats all they are
its a concept that we are working on
Zak heard I was snooping and he e-mailed me this (boldface added by me for your convenience):
I'd like you to know...and feel free to spread the gospel...that i will not be involved as consulting chef in any more projects for quite a while and I will only be focusing on fatty related projects: Fatty Crab and a new concept: fatty 'cue (bbq with a southeast asian palate, with a particlar focus on thai and malay flavors).
The address will be 91 South 6th St. in Williamsburg, and Zak hopes to open it by late spring or early summer.
Oh, he's also opening another Fatty Crab, on Broadway near 77th street, in June (2170 Broadway).
The charming and barbecue-obsessed people of Grub Street dropped a Leap Day bombshell a couple of weeks ago that Zak Pelaccio would be opening a barbecue joint with Robbie Richter, the former pitmaster of Hill Country, a barbecue restaurant in Manhattan that has adoring fans.
Zak has his fans, too, of course, particularly for Fatty Crab, his mostly Malaysian restaurant in the Meatpacking District. But he has been picking up some local detractors, too, for all the consulting work he has been taking on.
I was poking my nose around one of those projects — a vaguely mused-about venture, perhaps called The Windsor and also maybe involving experiential pastry chef Will Goldfarb, Japanophile Josh DeChellis, and Robert Truitt, a former pastry chef at Will’s former restaurant, Room 4 Dessert.
The vague musings seem credible. A blog called The Life Vicarious noticed a listing in The James Beard Foundation’s event calendar that promised to introduce us to “the Windsor, the cozy yet elegant collaboration they [the chefs above] hope will become a hangout for chefs and food lovers alike.”
But the principals are mum. I called Josh, who said he’d keep me posted once there was something to keep me posted about. I e-mailed Will. He e-mailed back:
rumours abound
thats all they are
its a concept that we are working on
Zak heard I was snooping and he e-mailed me this (boldface added by me for your convenience):
I'd like you to know...and feel free to spread the gospel...that i will not be involved as consulting chef in any more projects for quite a while and I will only be focusing on fatty related projects: Fatty Crab and a new concept: fatty 'cue (bbq with a southeast asian palate, with a particlar focus on thai and malay flavors).
The address will be 91 South 6th St. in Williamsburg, and Zak hopes to open it by late spring or early summer.
Oh, he's also opening another Fatty Crab, on Broadway near 77th street, in June (2170 Broadway).
Sunday, March 09, 2008
Comfort Food
March 9
(summary for news hounds: a new Thai restaurant in the touristy, NYU part of the Village, a frozen yogurt shop in Park Slope, Red Hot is closed.)
"Comfort food" is a very much overused, misused and surprisingly ill-understood term. It refers to simple, unpretentious food that makes you feel good. Very often it's the food of one's childhood, but it depends. If you're an American, think about the food you ate, or wanted to eat, in the days that followed September 11, 2001. I ate meatball heros, barbecued pork sandwiches, Big-Mac-large-fries-diet-Coke, Singapore mai fun, Thai food. I drank beer.
This last Friday evening was miserable and rainy and a good night for comfort food, so after going to a photography show opening that included some of the work of my friend Ray Garcia, I met my friend Chandler and his friend Marty at Rhong-Tiam, a new Thai place near NYU that claims to have the only "authentic" Thai food in New York City.
Now, I could go on and on for far longer than you'd like about the notion of authenticity and food, but suffice it to say that, although there is a lot of bad Thai food in New York, there's plenty of good Thai food, including some that would fit just about anybody's definition of authentic. But I respect a bold claim and figured the place was worth checking out.
Rhong-Tiam, whose name translates to something akin to "inn," is owned by a Thai chap who goes by Andy Yang, although his actual name is Rachapas Yangeksakul, and Erik Cheah, a Malaysian who's an owner of a bunch of the Penang restaurants in New York City. Andy himself comes from a restaurant family. His father owns a couple of Thai restaurants in Bangkok as well as two Taechiew restaurants -- one in Bangkok and one in Hong Kong.
Briefly, the Taechiew, also known as Chao Zhou, Chao Chao etc., come from the area around the city of Shantou, also called Swatow, and are the largest Chinese group in central Thailand. I'm told many Taechiew live in western Hong Kong, too. Their food is regarded as some of the finest of all Chinese cuisines.
I arrived before Chandler and Marty, so I had plenty of time to chat with Andy about the challenges of making great Thai food, in particular the great duck dish pet yang nam pueng (honey roasted duck), which he says requires a Chinese ingredient called yet sae to make properly. Neither of us is sure exactly what yet sae is (I'd never heard of it before), but we agreed that we had yet to enjoy proper pet yang nam pueng in the United States. This is particularly annoying in that you can't swing a dead cat in Bangkok without finding a decent version of the dish.
Andy also shared his philosophy about spiciness when it comes to Thai food: Some Thai dishes are spicy. They have to be. If you don't like spicy food, order something else because he's not going to tone it down for you.
When Chandler and Marty arrived Andy promptly sent out a banquet, which I'll list below.
Some notes on the ambience at Rhong-Tiam: A motorcycle sits in the foyer, the banquettes are upholstered with wide vertical black stripes. A railing is decorated in fake greenery and Christmas lights. The sound system was playing classic jazz vocals. In essence, it was an extremely authentic Bangkok-style setting, like a restaurant set up by a bunch of friends from Thammasat University on Phra-Arthit Road that reflected the personal, whimsical tastes of its owners.
My comfort-food mood continued the next day, and so I sent Clark Mitchell a text-message, wondering if he might want to have lunch at Lobo, a Tex-Mex place on Fifth Avenue in Park Slope that he loves.
"That's a genius idea," he wrote, and so we drank Margaritas and ordered what to us was the essential comfort food in the Tex-Mex repertoire. For Clark that must include queso dip, and he also had a chicken quesadilla. I had a combination platter (this particular one included a couple of different enchiladas and a beef taco, but it doesn't really matter; any combination platter will do).
I tried to continue the comfort food theme into the night by ordering from Red Hot, my go-to Chinese delivery place in Park Slope, from which I would order shredded beef with fresh hot pepper and pork fried rice, but they didn't answer the phone. This left me feeling bereft, so I went for a walk to see what would strike my fancy, and noticed that a new frozen yogurt place, Yogo Monster, had just opened on Seventh Avenue between Union St., and Berkeley Pl. I'd seen the sign earlier, but I'd misread it as Yoga Monster and imagined it would be one among 10,000 other yoga studios in Park Slope. I had visualized zombies doing yoga.
But no, it's a Pinkberry knock-off, with plain and blueberry flavors. I had a plain topped with raspberry, blueberry, blackberry and kiwifruit and decided that would do for dinner.
This evening I walked the 16 blocks to Red Hot to see what was up. It was locked, secure behind its grates. It looked intact, but it was closed and I was crestfallen.
Okay, now for what we ate at Rhong-Tiam (541 LaGuarda Pl., between Bleecker and W. 3rd streets):
Chicken and shrimp khanom jeep (similar to shumai)
kho mu yang (roasted pork neck strips with a spicy sauce flavored with roasted rice)
yam pla duk foo (fluffy catfish salad)
yam makhuea (salad of smoky roasted eggplant with chicken and shrimp)
duck and vegetarian spring rolls
Mu narok ("pork from hell" a sort of roasted pork with kaffir lime)
khua glin gai (a very spicy southern Thai dish -- even other Thais consider the food of their southern cousins too spicy for words -- of minced chicken with curry spices).
khai jiew woon sen (a deep-fried omelet mixed with glass noodles and, in this case, minced chicken, served with Sriracha sauce; this particular one brought me right back to Bangkok)
Tom yam gung (the classic shrimp soup served with lemon grass, kaffir lime leaf and galangal, although in this case the inedible aromatics have been removed, replaced by edible vegetables, and all of them topped with chile oil)
Ped chu chee (duck cooked with a southern Thai curry)
and for dessert:
sangkhaya fak tong (sweetened pumpkin with custard and coconut cream)
Mexican mangoes and sticky rice
a roti drizzled with condensed milk
orange-ginger tea
(summary for news hounds: a new Thai restaurant in the touristy, NYU part of the Village, a frozen yogurt shop in Park Slope, Red Hot is closed.)
"Comfort food" is a very much overused, misused and surprisingly ill-understood term. It refers to simple, unpretentious food that makes you feel good. Very often it's the food of one's childhood, but it depends. If you're an American, think about the food you ate, or wanted to eat, in the days that followed September 11, 2001. I ate meatball heros, barbecued pork sandwiches, Big-Mac-large-fries-diet-Coke, Singapore mai fun, Thai food. I drank beer.
This last Friday evening was miserable and rainy and a good night for comfort food, so after going to a photography show opening that included some of the work of my friend Ray Garcia, I met my friend Chandler and his friend Marty at Rhong-Tiam, a new Thai place near NYU that claims to have the only "authentic" Thai food in New York City.
Now, I could go on and on for far longer than you'd like about the notion of authenticity and food, but suffice it to say that, although there is a lot of bad Thai food in New York, there's plenty of good Thai food, including some that would fit just about anybody's definition of authentic. But I respect a bold claim and figured the place was worth checking out.
Rhong-Tiam, whose name translates to something akin to "inn," is owned by a Thai chap who goes by Andy Yang, although his actual name is Rachapas Yangeksakul, and Erik Cheah, a Malaysian who's an owner of a bunch of the Penang restaurants in New York City. Andy himself comes from a restaurant family. His father owns a couple of Thai restaurants in Bangkok as well as two Taechiew restaurants -- one in Bangkok and one in Hong Kong.
Briefly, the Taechiew, also known as Chao Zhou, Chao Chao etc., come from the area around the city of Shantou, also called Swatow, and are the largest Chinese group in central Thailand. I'm told many Taechiew live in western Hong Kong, too. Their food is regarded as some of the finest of all Chinese cuisines.
I arrived before Chandler and Marty, so I had plenty of time to chat with Andy about the challenges of making great Thai food, in particular the great duck dish pet yang nam pueng (honey roasted duck), which he says requires a Chinese ingredient called yet sae to make properly. Neither of us is sure exactly what yet sae is (I'd never heard of it before), but we agreed that we had yet to enjoy proper pet yang nam pueng in the United States. This is particularly annoying in that you can't swing a dead cat in Bangkok without finding a decent version of the dish.
Andy also shared his philosophy about spiciness when it comes to Thai food: Some Thai dishes are spicy. They have to be. If you don't like spicy food, order something else because he's not going to tone it down for you.
When Chandler and Marty arrived Andy promptly sent out a banquet, which I'll list below.
Some notes on the ambience at Rhong-Tiam: A motorcycle sits in the foyer, the banquettes are upholstered with wide vertical black stripes. A railing is decorated in fake greenery and Christmas lights. The sound system was playing classic jazz vocals. In essence, it was an extremely authentic Bangkok-style setting, like a restaurant set up by a bunch of friends from Thammasat University on Phra-Arthit Road that reflected the personal, whimsical tastes of its owners.
My comfort-food mood continued the next day, and so I sent Clark Mitchell a text-message, wondering if he might want to have lunch at Lobo, a Tex-Mex place on Fifth Avenue in Park Slope that he loves.
"That's a genius idea," he wrote, and so we drank Margaritas and ordered what to us was the essential comfort food in the Tex-Mex repertoire. For Clark that must include queso dip, and he also had a chicken quesadilla. I had a combination platter (this particular one included a couple of different enchiladas and a beef taco, but it doesn't really matter; any combination platter will do).
I tried to continue the comfort food theme into the night by ordering from Red Hot, my go-to Chinese delivery place in Park Slope, from which I would order shredded beef with fresh hot pepper and pork fried rice, but they didn't answer the phone. This left me feeling bereft, so I went for a walk to see what would strike my fancy, and noticed that a new frozen yogurt place, Yogo Monster, had just opened on Seventh Avenue between Union St., and Berkeley Pl. I'd seen the sign earlier, but I'd misread it as Yoga Monster and imagined it would be one among 10,000 other yoga studios in Park Slope. I had visualized zombies doing yoga.
But no, it's a Pinkberry knock-off, with plain and blueberry flavors. I had a plain topped with raspberry, blueberry, blackberry and kiwifruit and decided that would do for dinner.
This evening I walked the 16 blocks to Red Hot to see what was up. It was locked, secure behind its grates. It looked intact, but it was closed and I was crestfallen.
Okay, now for what we ate at Rhong-Tiam (541 LaGuarda Pl., between Bleecker and W. 3rd streets):
Chicken and shrimp khanom jeep (similar to shumai)
kho mu yang (roasted pork neck strips with a spicy sauce flavored with roasted rice)
yam pla duk foo (fluffy catfish salad)
yam makhuea (salad of smoky roasted eggplant with chicken and shrimp)
duck and vegetarian spring rolls
Mu narok ("pork from hell" a sort of roasted pork with kaffir lime)
khua glin gai (a very spicy southern Thai dish -- even other Thais consider the food of their southern cousins too spicy for words -- of minced chicken with curry spices).
khai jiew woon sen (a deep-fried omelet mixed with glass noodles and, in this case, minced chicken, served with Sriracha sauce; this particular one brought me right back to Bangkok)
Tom yam gung (the classic shrimp soup served with lemon grass, kaffir lime leaf and galangal, although in this case the inedible aromatics have been removed, replaced by edible vegetables, and all of them topped with chile oil)
Ped chu chee (duck cooked with a southern Thai curry)
and for dessert:
sangkhaya fak tong (sweetened pumpkin with custard and coconut cream)
Mexican mangoes and sticky rice
a roti drizzled with condensed milk
orange-ginger tea
Friday, March 07, 2008
The Monday Room
March 7
Last night I had dinner with Olga Katsnelson and Kate Goldstein-Breyer. I’d never met Kate before, but I’ve known Olga for years and years, from back when she worked in New York for KB Network News, and later for Bullfrog & Baum.
Now she and Kate have their own PR business based in the San Francisco Bay Area, but nonetheless they work with AvroKO, the design company that owns Public restaurant here in New York and its little sister chamber The Monday Room, where we had dinner.
The Monday Room is based on the notion that the first day of the work week is not generally an enjoyable one. In the hopes of making it, or any day, better, this little lounge is a hideaway where the weary can retreat and enjoy food and drink — food prepared by chef Brad Farmerie (favorite color: “If I had to say, I’d say green”) and paired with drinks picked by sommelier Ruben Sanz Ramiro.
Or you can do it the other way around — pick the wines you want to drink and have Brad make food to go with it. Either way.
But before I digress further, I have news. The AvroKO gang is taking over the space on Bleecker and Bowery that is currently Mannahatta and plan to turn it into, well, they’re not sure what yet. Certainly it will be a restaurant, but the democratic folk at Avro Ko are still hashing out most of the details. Brad knows that he wants to have house-churned butter there, and that the chef de cuisine will be Chris Rendell, whom he knows from the time he spent in London.
“He’s just a rock star,” Brad said.
Other than that, well, we’ll see. The wheels of democracy turn slowly, but they still hope to open the place sometime this spring. Avro Ko designs lots of places. But this will be the first expansion of the company’s own restaurant empire since The Monday Room opened.
Brad and I last saw each other in the Blenheim airport in the New Zealand region of Malrborough. So I showed off my new New Zealand cufflinks (North island on the left cuff, South Island on the right). We spoke of Lauraine Jacobs, the food editor of Cuisine magazine in New Zealand, for whom Brad had cooked dinner and with whom I dined. I mentioned that she said he made the best blood pudding she’d ever had. I asked if he was putting it on his brunch menu, and in fact he is, as part of a traditional Irish breakfast with an egg, maple-roasted apple and slow-roasted tomatoes.
The sausage itself is actually a venison sausage (although the blood is from pigs), flavored with cumin, coriander, turmeric and cinnamon.
Here’s a picture of Brad. I left the dinner menu up to him, asking him to send out whatever he thought was interesting these days.
And this is what he thought (and what Ruben thought we should drink):
Manzanilla Pasada, Pastrana Vinícola Hidalgo, Sherry
Glazed eel with pickled bean sprouts and soft boiled quail egg
Tokaji Furmint, Mandolás, Oremus, 2004
Miso baked bone marrow with blood orange-olive marmalade and five-spice brioche
Amontillado, Contrabandista, Bodegas Valdespino
Old school pig’s head terrine, guindilla gribiche and radish salad
Vouvray, Demi Sec, Vignobles Brisebarre, 1985
Raw Tasmanian sea trout with piccalilli, shichimi and three slice pile up
Arbois Pupillin, Emmanuel Houillon —M. Pierre Overnoy, 2006
All day breakfast (the blood pudding, roasted apple, eggs etc.)
Pinot Noir, Martinborough Vineyards, 2004
Wattleseed braised short rib with vanilla celeriac purée and spiced broccoli raab
Cabernet Sauvignon, Margaret River, Moss Wood, 2004
Saxelby's selection of six American farmstead cheeses
Cour-Cheverny, Cuvée Renaissance, François Cazin, 2002
Last night I had dinner with Olga Katsnelson and Kate Goldstein-Breyer. I’d never met Kate before, but I’ve known Olga for years and years, from back when she worked in New York for KB Network News, and later for Bullfrog & Baum.
Now she and Kate have their own PR business based in the San Francisco Bay Area, but nonetheless they work with AvroKO, the design company that owns Public restaurant here in New York and its little sister chamber The Monday Room, where we had dinner.
The Monday Room is based on the notion that the first day of the work week is not generally an enjoyable one. In the hopes of making it, or any day, better, this little lounge is a hideaway where the weary can retreat and enjoy food and drink — food prepared by chef Brad Farmerie (favorite color: “If I had to say, I’d say green”) and paired with drinks picked by sommelier Ruben Sanz Ramiro.
Or you can do it the other way around — pick the wines you want to drink and have Brad make food to go with it. Either way.
But before I digress further, I have news. The AvroKO gang is taking over the space on Bleecker and Bowery that is currently Mannahatta and plan to turn it into, well, they’re not sure what yet. Certainly it will be a restaurant, but the democratic folk at Avro Ko are still hashing out most of the details. Brad knows that he wants to have house-churned butter there, and that the chef de cuisine will be Chris Rendell, whom he knows from the time he spent in London.
“He’s just a rock star,” Brad said.
Other than that, well, we’ll see. The wheels of democracy turn slowly, but they still hope to open the place sometime this spring. Avro Ko designs lots of places. But this will be the first expansion of the company’s own restaurant empire since The Monday Room opened.
Brad and I last saw each other in the Blenheim airport in the New Zealand region of Malrborough. So I showed off my new New Zealand cufflinks (North island on the left cuff, South Island on the right). We spoke of Lauraine Jacobs, the food editor of Cuisine magazine in New Zealand, for whom Brad had cooked dinner and with whom I dined. I mentioned that she said he made the best blood pudding she’d ever had. I asked if he was putting it on his brunch menu, and in fact he is, as part of a traditional Irish breakfast with an egg, maple-roasted apple and slow-roasted tomatoes.
The sausage itself is actually a venison sausage (although the blood is from pigs), flavored with cumin, coriander, turmeric and cinnamon.
Here’s a picture of Brad. I left the dinner menu up to him, asking him to send out whatever he thought was interesting these days. And this is what he thought (and what Ruben thought we should drink):
Manzanilla Pasada, Pastrana Vinícola Hidalgo, Sherry
Glazed eel with pickled bean sprouts and soft boiled quail egg
Tokaji Furmint, Mandolás, Oremus, 2004
Miso baked bone marrow with blood orange-olive marmalade and five-spice brioche
Amontillado, Contrabandista, Bodegas Valdespino
Old school pig’s head terrine, guindilla gribiche and radish salad
Vouvray, Demi Sec, Vignobles Brisebarre, 1985
Raw Tasmanian sea trout with piccalilli, shichimi and three slice pile up
Arbois Pupillin, Emmanuel Houillon —M. Pierre Overnoy, 2006
All day breakfast (the blood pudding, roasted apple, eggs etc.)
Pinot Noir, Martinborough Vineyards, 2004
Wattleseed braised short rib with vanilla celeriac purée and spiced broccoli raab
Cabernet Sauvignon, Margaret River, Moss Wood, 2004
Saxelby's selection of six American farmstead cheeses
Cour-Cheverny, Cuvée Renaissance, François Cazin, 2002
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
Sake, cocktails and Spanish food
March 3
Full day. It started with, you know, work, but by 2pm Sonya Moore and I were at the residence of the Japanese consul general for a seminar on sake, followed by a trade-show style tasting event.
The seminar was to-the-point and straightforward — appropriate, since it was called Saké 101 — highlighting the rice, water, yeast and mold that make up Japan's national beverage. One thing I learned: After rice is steamed, it is mechanically cooled and picked a part in such a way that the outside of the polished kernels dry while the inside stays wet. This is essential, as mold, speaker Michael John Simkin pointed out, is water-seeking, and making sure that the grain is moist only in the middle ensures that the mold penetrates the grain.
I love stuff like that.
The seminar had a good turnout. Of course, Sonya and I were there, which should have been enough, as was our boss's boss's boss's boss's son, Lebhar-Friedman heir Randall Friedman, who speaks Japanese and has displayed a fondness for sake. USA Today’s Jerry Shriver was there, too. So was Alain Sailhac, dean emeritus of the French Culinary Institute. Cocktail maven Audrey Saunders was there, so were Zak Pelaccio of Fatty Crab, Chop Suey etc., and Michael Schulson, formerly of Buddakan, currently, I guess, of the reality TV show Pantry Raid, and very soon of an as-yet-unnamed Japanese restaurant at Borgata in Atlantic City. Nice guy.
Rita Jammet was there, which was interesting. She might have just been there to drink sake, but she says that she is doing some restaurant consulting, so who knows? Rita, who with her husband André owned La Caravelle for many years until it closed, actually had an early hand at subtly introducing Japanese influence into American cuisine as she hired Tadashi Ono as chef of La Caravelle in the early 1990s.
(The Jammets and Tadashi also teamed up, along with Union Square Hospitality Group veteran Larry Goldenberg, in the ill-fated Sono, which was replaced by the worse-fated pAZo, in the space now occupied by BLT Steak — the first restaurant in Laurent Tourondel’s empire — so much for cursed spaces).
I had a nice chat, as I always do, with Steve Mumford, who sells ads for Gourmet. He's now the magazine’s wine and spirits director.
Randall noticed at the tasting that the sakes were set up according to the trading company that imported them. That’s confusing for tasters, but Randall pointed out that it was logical for the potential buyers who were the target market for the event.
Sonya and I found ourselves at the same event later that evening, a jam-packed Tales of the Cocktail preview at Flatiron Lounge. I never made it to the actual bar, because I'm no longer interested in fighting through a crowd just for a free drink. Besides, servers were passing drinks around with some frequency. If people wanted to talk to me, they could find me closer to the door.
I caught up with Jay Cheshes and Darrell Hartman. I think maybe Darrell has gotten even taller.
Perhaps the treat of the party was running into Colleen Curtis, former managing editor for features at the New York Daily News. Colleen was the first person, lo these many years ago, to tell me after William Grimes' departure as The New York Times' restaurant critic, that his replacement would be a political reporter by the name of Frank Bruni, then based in Rome.
Anyway, she has just started working at AOL. Good for her.
Erica Duecy and her husband Jono Pandolfi were there, too, and she insisted that we must eat at Terroir, once it opens. So I suppose we will.
Of course it was a treat to see Erica and Jono (you might recall that I attended their wedding and wrote about it at some length). But I’ve seen them in the past few months. I hadn’t seen Colleen in years.
That party was followed by dinner at Pamplona with the restaurant’s publicist, Gail Schoenberg, at which we ate the following:
Chickpea fries with guindilla pepper emulsuion
Braised duck leg bocadillos (grilled sandwiches) with crema de cabra
Crab lasagna (spelled “lasaña” because Pamplona’s a Spanish restaurant) with salsa verde
Chicken stuffed with chciken-cauliflower purée and morcilla
Paella with braised short ribs, chicken, crayfish, fresh cilantro and mussels
Bouillabaisse (called “sopa de marisco”) with salmon, cod, mussels, shrimp, fish sausage, purple potatoes and savoy cabbage
Full day. It started with, you know, work, but by 2pm Sonya Moore and I were at the residence of the Japanese consul general for a seminar on sake, followed by a trade-show style tasting event.
The seminar was to-the-point and straightforward — appropriate, since it was called Saké 101 — highlighting the rice, water, yeast and mold that make up Japan's national beverage. One thing I learned: After rice is steamed, it is mechanically cooled and picked a part in such a way that the outside of the polished kernels dry while the inside stays wet. This is essential, as mold, speaker Michael John Simkin pointed out, is water-seeking, and making sure that the grain is moist only in the middle ensures that the mold penetrates the grain.
I love stuff like that.
The seminar had a good turnout. Of course, Sonya and I were there, which should have been enough, as was our boss's boss's boss's boss's son, Lebhar-Friedman heir Randall Friedman, who speaks Japanese and has displayed a fondness for sake. USA Today’s Jerry Shriver was there, too. So was Alain Sailhac, dean emeritus of the French Culinary Institute. Cocktail maven Audrey Saunders was there, so were Zak Pelaccio of Fatty Crab, Chop Suey etc., and Michael Schulson, formerly of Buddakan, currently, I guess, of the reality TV show Pantry Raid, and very soon of an as-yet-unnamed Japanese restaurant at Borgata in Atlantic City. Nice guy.
Rita Jammet was there, which was interesting. She might have just been there to drink sake, but she says that she is doing some restaurant consulting, so who knows? Rita, who with her husband André owned La Caravelle for many years until it closed, actually had an early hand at subtly introducing Japanese influence into American cuisine as she hired Tadashi Ono as chef of La Caravelle in the early 1990s.
(The Jammets and Tadashi also teamed up, along with Union Square Hospitality Group veteran Larry Goldenberg, in the ill-fated Sono, which was replaced by the worse-fated pAZo, in the space now occupied by BLT Steak — the first restaurant in Laurent Tourondel’s empire — so much for cursed spaces).
I had a nice chat, as I always do, with Steve Mumford, who sells ads for Gourmet. He's now the magazine’s wine and spirits director.
Randall noticed at the tasting that the sakes were set up according to the trading company that imported them. That’s confusing for tasters, but Randall pointed out that it was logical for the potential buyers who were the target market for the event.
Sonya and I found ourselves at the same event later that evening, a jam-packed Tales of the Cocktail preview at Flatiron Lounge. I never made it to the actual bar, because I'm no longer interested in fighting through a crowd just for a free drink. Besides, servers were passing drinks around with some frequency. If people wanted to talk to me, they could find me closer to the door.
I caught up with Jay Cheshes and Darrell Hartman. I think maybe Darrell has gotten even taller.
Perhaps the treat of the party was running into Colleen Curtis, former managing editor for features at the New York Daily News. Colleen was the first person, lo these many years ago, to tell me after William Grimes' departure as The New York Times' restaurant critic, that his replacement would be a political reporter by the name of Frank Bruni, then based in Rome.
Anyway, she has just started working at AOL. Good for her.
Erica Duecy and her husband Jono Pandolfi were there, too, and she insisted that we must eat at Terroir, once it opens. So I suppose we will.
Of course it was a treat to see Erica and Jono (you might recall that I attended their wedding and wrote about it at some length). But I’ve seen them in the past few months. I hadn’t seen Colleen in years.
That party was followed by dinner at Pamplona with the restaurant’s publicist, Gail Schoenberg, at which we ate the following:
Chickpea fries with guindilla pepper emulsuion
Braised duck leg bocadillos (grilled sandwiches) with crema de cabra
Crab lasagna (spelled “lasaña” because Pamplona’s a Spanish restaurant) with salsa verde
Chicken stuffed with chciken-cauliflower purée and morcilla
Paella with braised short ribs, chicken, crayfish, fresh cilantro and mussels
Bouillabaisse (called “sopa de marisco”) with salmon, cod, mussels, shrimp, fish sausage, purple potatoes and savoy cabbage
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