June 15,
As you may know, Food Writer’s Diary is a product of Nation’s Restaurant News, the great mother ship of restaurant trade magazines, the Death Star (in a good way) of reporting on the restaurant industry.
The magazine’s biggest event of the year is MUFSO (MUFF-so), a conference for multi-unit foodservice operators, being held this year on October 4-6 at the Hilton Anatole in Dallas.
This year the event is dedicated to Norm Brinker, a mentor to many, many people in the restaurant industry, who passed away last week. Plans are in the works for ways to honor him.
Last week we also confirmed some great speakers for the conference, to wit:
•William Taylor, founding editor of Fast Company and one of the shapers of the global conversation about how to compete, innovate, and succeed in modern times. He’ll be speaking as well as moderating our Hot Concepts panel.
• Nassim Taleb, author of The Black Swan:The Impact of the Highly Improbable, which is about how unpredictable, one-off events shape our world. He’s a much sought-after speaker on financial topics, having predicted the current crisis. He’ll be speaking and then running a question-and-answer breakout session afterwards.
• Frances Frei, Harvard Business School’s resident expert on service management, whose ideas on operational strategies have influenced some of the most competitive companies in the world. Her course on managing services operations is one of the most popular classes at her school, and our publisher, Tom Larrañaga, a man who is not easily impressed, says he was “blown away” by a talk she gave a few weeks ago.
“She will send folks home with ideas,” he said in a message he sent to NRN staff.
We will also have a panel featuring the winners of our “Golden Chain” awards, which go to multi-unit restaurants that have staged successful turnarounds or otherwise behaved impressively. We have six winners, and I’m going to tell you five of them (because, I mean, come on, we have to keep you guessing a little bit): Burger King, McAlister’s, Bruegger’s Bagels, Cameron Mitchell Restaurants and Burgerville.
Our editor-in-chief, Ellen Koteff, will be moderating a Q&A session with Darden Restaurants (Red Lobster, Olive Garden et al.) chief executive Clarence Otis and Domino's chief executive Dave Brandon.
So register now. Come on, it’ll be fun!
Monday, June 15, 2009
Friday, June 12, 2009
All Batterberry, all the time
June 12
What’s the plural for Batterberry? If it were a type of berry, obviously it would be Batterberries, but Michael and Ariane Batterberry are people. Indeed, they are probably the prince and princess of the New York food writing world. The archduke and archduchess at the very least. They founded Food & Wine magazine many years ago, and then founded Food Arts, where Michael is still editor-in-chief. They are gracious, warm-hearted, charming people who despite their long stint on the dining scene seem still to approach each meal with an open mind and curiosity.
I don’t see the Batterberrys all that often, but this week I dined with them, twice.
The first dinner was on Tuesday, at Sandro's, the Upper East Side Italian restaurant of Sandro Fioriti. He was celebrating the 25th anniversary of his arrival in New York.
You don't hear much about Sandro these days, but he is very much loved and appreciated by New York’s gastroscenti, for his full-figured jocularity almost as much as for his food.
It was before my time, but I’m told that Sandro introduced Roman cuisine to New York when he landed here in 1984 and opened his first restaurant, with the help of Tony May, the father, or maybe the uncle, of Italian fine dining in New York.
Since then Sandro has moved around a lot. He is famously as peripatetic as John Tesar, perhaps even more so, donning a toque, imbuing a restaurant with aromatic Roman goodness and then mysteriously doffing his toque and vanishing into the night, or to the Hamptons, or St. Martin.
He has stayed at his current restaurant for nearly two years, since he opened it in autumn of 2007.
A-List people came to the celebratory dinner, including former New York Magazine critic Gael Greene, former New York Times restaurant critic Mimi Sheraton, and the Batterberrys.
Tony May came, too. Incidentally, his new restaurant, SD-26, the Madison Square Park incarnaton of his recently shuttered flagship, San Domenico NY, is scheduled to open on September 9.
Sandro's food is still old-school Roman — fried artichokes, a light spring vegetable stew, batter-fried cuttlefish that reminded me of how pedestrian most calamari is by comparison, hunks of roasted veal in ragù.
Then the next night, I was at the James Beard house, eating the savory food of Ben Pollinger and the desserts of Jansen Chan of Oceana.
Oceana, too, is leaving its current location on E. 54th — the lease expires next month. It’s moving to the McGraw Hill Building (49th St., between Sixth and Seventh avenues, right near Del Frisco's), where it, too, is planning to open in September. The Beard House dinner was intended as a preview of what they were planning on doing at the new restaurant, which will be a bit more laid back than the current Oceana.
At Sandro's the Batterberrys and I had talked about Ben and what a fine chap he is, but for some reason I still hadn’t expected to see them at the Beard House last night. In fact, I hadn't expected to see anyone that night that I’d seen the night before, so (this is quite embarrassing), I wore the same necktie two days in a row.
What can I say? It’s my Sovereign Beck “bloom” tie, and it’s really very sharp.
Back when business attire was required in NRN’s offices, just a few months ago, I never would have worn the same tie two days in a row. I wouldn’t have worn the same tie twice in the same week. But now that our dress code has changed and I don’t wear ties that often, I have become lax.
Anyway, if the Batterberrys noticed I was wearing the same tie (different shirt, of course, I mean, come on) they didn’t say anything. They wouldn’t say anything, of course, because they’re not bad-natured jerks.
I had a good chat with Jim Poris, another Food Arts editor, who sat to my left (he scooted down when the Batterberries arrived so they could sit down more easily) and talked a bit with Nick Livanos, who owns Oceana (and Molyvos and Abboccato and a number of places in the suburbs) and was seated to my right. I made Nick laugh with my conversation with two Italians at the table, one from Florence and one from Milan. I told the Florentine what I think of Florence, which is that I understand why so many famous sculptors come from there, because Florentines are so beautiful that you want to sculpt them. I told her about one of the most flattering moments in my life: I was in Florence, strolling along the Arno River in clothing I had just bought, and some guy walked up to me and asked me directions, as though I actually looked like a local.
I loved that. Too bad I had to tell him “No Parlo Italiano.”
I told the Florentine with whom I was dining at the Beard House that I was Jewish and that I always thought that Jews looked like Italians’ ugly cousins.
That’s when Nick laughed.
What I ate and drank at the Beard House:
hors d'oeuvre:
Razor Clams with Citrus and Yuzu
House-Salted Cod Tempura
Smoked Trout with Cherry Raita
Monkfish and Shiitake Spring Rolls
Lucien Albrecht Crémant d’Alsace Blanc de Blancs Brut NV
Dinner:
Fluke sashimi with rhubarb and cucumber (the rhubarb and cucumber were a broth with just a whisper of tarragon in it)
Raymond Reserve Sauvignon Blanc 2007
Braised Widow’s Hole oysters with chanterelles and ramps
Alois Lageder Pinot Bianco 2007
Wild Alaskan coho salmon burgers (served with potato chips tossed in fines herbes, something I’d never seen before)
Cloudline Pinot Noir 2007
Whole-roasted wild striped bass stuffed with arugula, olive, tomato, and Swiss chard
Joseph Drouhin Véro Pinot Noir 2006
Lychee and raspberry salad with buttermilk sorbet
Paolo Saracco Moscato d’Asti NV DOCG
A plate of doughnuts (which Ariane declared were the best doughnuts ever, ever).
What’s the plural for Batterberry? If it were a type of berry, obviously it would be Batterberries, but Michael and Ariane Batterberry are people. Indeed, they are probably the prince and princess of the New York food writing world. The archduke and archduchess at the very least. They founded Food & Wine magazine many years ago, and then founded Food Arts, where Michael is still editor-in-chief. They are gracious, warm-hearted, charming people who despite their long stint on the dining scene seem still to approach each meal with an open mind and curiosity.
I don’t see the Batterberrys all that often, but this week I dined with them, twice.
The first dinner was on Tuesday, at Sandro's, the Upper East Side Italian restaurant of Sandro Fioriti. He was celebrating the 25th anniversary of his arrival in New York.
You don't hear much about Sandro these days, but he is very much loved and appreciated by New York’s gastroscenti, for his full-figured jocularity almost as much as for his food.
It was before my time, but I’m told that Sandro introduced Roman cuisine to New York when he landed here in 1984 and opened his first restaurant, with the help of Tony May, the father, or maybe the uncle, of Italian fine dining in New York.
Since then Sandro has moved around a lot. He is famously as peripatetic as John Tesar, perhaps even more so, donning a toque, imbuing a restaurant with aromatic Roman goodness and then mysteriously doffing his toque and vanishing into the night, or to the Hamptons, or St. Martin.
He has stayed at his current restaurant for nearly two years, since he opened it in autumn of 2007.
A-List people came to the celebratory dinner, including former New York Magazine critic Gael Greene, former New York Times restaurant critic Mimi Sheraton, and the Batterberrys.
Tony May came, too. Incidentally, his new restaurant, SD-26, the Madison Square Park incarnaton of his recently shuttered flagship, San Domenico NY, is scheduled to open on September 9.
Sandro's food is still old-school Roman — fried artichokes, a light spring vegetable stew, batter-fried cuttlefish that reminded me of how pedestrian most calamari is by comparison, hunks of roasted veal in ragù.
Then the next night, I was at the James Beard house, eating the savory food of Ben Pollinger and the desserts of Jansen Chan of Oceana.
Oceana, too, is leaving its current location on E. 54th — the lease expires next month. It’s moving to the McGraw Hill Building (49th St., between Sixth and Seventh avenues, right near Del Frisco's), where it, too, is planning to open in September. The Beard House dinner was intended as a preview of what they were planning on doing at the new restaurant, which will be a bit more laid back than the current Oceana.
At Sandro's the Batterberrys and I had talked about Ben and what a fine chap he is, but for some reason I still hadn’t expected to see them at the Beard House last night. In fact, I hadn't expected to see anyone that night that I’d seen the night before, so (this is quite embarrassing), I wore the same necktie two days in a row.
What can I say? It’s my Sovereign Beck “bloom” tie, and it’s really very sharp.
Back when business attire was required in NRN’s offices, just a few months ago, I never would have worn the same tie two days in a row. I wouldn’t have worn the same tie twice in the same week. But now that our dress code has changed and I don’t wear ties that often, I have become lax.
Anyway, if the Batterberrys noticed I was wearing the same tie (different shirt, of course, I mean, come on) they didn’t say anything. They wouldn’t say anything, of course, because they’re not bad-natured jerks.
I had a good chat with Jim Poris, another Food Arts editor, who sat to my left (he scooted down when the Batterberries arrived so they could sit down more easily) and talked a bit with Nick Livanos, who owns Oceana (and Molyvos and Abboccato and a number of places in the suburbs) and was seated to my right. I made Nick laugh with my conversation with two Italians at the table, one from Florence and one from Milan. I told the Florentine what I think of Florence, which is that I understand why so many famous sculptors come from there, because Florentines are so beautiful that you want to sculpt them. I told her about one of the most flattering moments in my life: I was in Florence, strolling along the Arno River in clothing I had just bought, and some guy walked up to me and asked me directions, as though I actually looked like a local.
I loved that. Too bad I had to tell him “No Parlo Italiano.”
I told the Florentine with whom I was dining at the Beard House that I was Jewish and that I always thought that Jews looked like Italians’ ugly cousins.
That’s when Nick laughed.
What I ate and drank at the Beard House:
hors d'oeuvre:
Razor Clams with Citrus and Yuzu
House-Salted Cod Tempura
Smoked Trout with Cherry Raita
Monkfish and Shiitake Spring Rolls
Lucien Albrecht Crémant d’Alsace Blanc de Blancs Brut NV
Dinner:
Fluke sashimi with rhubarb and cucumber (the rhubarb and cucumber were a broth with just a whisper of tarragon in it)
Raymond Reserve Sauvignon Blanc 2007
Braised Widow’s Hole oysters with chanterelles and ramps
Alois Lageder Pinot Bianco 2007
Wild Alaskan coho salmon burgers (served with potato chips tossed in fines herbes, something I’d never seen before)
Cloudline Pinot Noir 2007
Whole-roasted wild striped bass stuffed with arugula, olive, tomato, and Swiss chard
Joseph Drouhin Véro Pinot Noir 2006
Lychee and raspberry salad with buttermilk sorbet
Paolo Saracco Moscato d’Asti NV DOCG
A plate of doughnuts (which Ariane declared were the best doughnuts ever, ever).
Tuesday, June 09, 2009
The new Aureole
June 9
Restaurateur Charlie Palmer is in town, and he took the opportunity to provide a preview of his new flagship for local media.
As I mentioned when reporting on my most recent "hard hat" preview party (so named because the places are still under construction), at the much ballyhooed DBGB, it’s smart to give media a preview, because it makes us feel closer to the project.
The new Aureole is very much in line with what fine dining restaurants are doing in New York these days. I’d show you a picture, but I have no confidence in my ability to do justice to interiors with my inferior photography. The folks at eater.com took nice shots, if you’re curious.
Instead I have a couple of artist’s renderings, the first is a view from 42nd St. The second is from Anita's Way, which is the little alley next to Aureole, before Broadway.
Anyway, as I was saying, Aureole is doing what a lot of fine dining restaurants are doing these days — diversifying.
As Charlie Palmer said (after asking me where my hard hat was) the new Aureole has three dimensions: a bar, a bar-lounge area and a fine dining room. In addition, it has a private room that seats 60 and can hold 100 people for cocktails or whatever.
The restaurant, which is starting preview parties with actual food next week (we just got a glass of Champagne, and a bag of milk chocolate-covered toffee from pastry chef Jennifer Yee), has three menus: one of bar snacks, a bar menu that will basically be American brasserie food (this is a fairly new term, but it’s becoming popular; Michael Symon said something similar about the food at his new restaurant, Bar Symon, in the Cleveland suburb of Avon Lake), and a fine dining menu for the dining room, which will be an old-school prix-fixe affair at dinner. The bar and the dining room will have the same menu at lunch, and it will be à la carte, although a prix-fixe option will be available in the dining room.
In that second picture you can see that one of the design features is what they’re calling the “wine mezzanine,” which will house 3,500 of the restaurant’s 15,000 bottles — mostly French and Californian — including 100 varieties for less than $100.
The art hasn’t been installed yet, but Charlie said they’re computer enhanced images by designer Adam Tihany’s son, Bram Tihany. “This art was developed over many, many bottles of Champagne,” he assured us.
The kitchen is freakin’ huge. The picture with Jennifer Yee in the middle, a cook kind of in front of her, Charlie on the right and a bunch of media types on the left, is in the pastry kitchen. The savory kitchen is around the corner. All told, it’s three to four times the size of the old Aureole’s kitchen.
Today was the first day they had gas, so executive chef Chris Lee and his crew were starting to practice and tweak their dishes. I asked Chris how the food here would be different from his last job, at Gilt, and he said it would be pretty much the same — seasonally driven modern American.
Charlie praised Chris’s knowledge of modern kitchen technology and the fact that he doesn’t use it "to the point where it’s foolish.”
They hope to be taking paying customers by the last week of June or first week of July. Some parties are already booked for late July, and a grand opening party and fundraiser for Citymeals on Wheels will be held after Labor Day.
Commenting on the restaurant’s three dimensions, Charlie said he wasn’t looking for new customers, but for the same customers to use the restaurant on different occasions.
Aureole and its PR machine say the restaurant is in Bryant Park, but it’s quite near the corner of 42nd and Broadway, meaning it’s also in Times Square and will almost definitely have a robust pre-theater crowd. That, as Charlie said, will be a learning experience.
Management was nice enough to share with us some very early draft menus that should in no way be considered a reliable source of information on what actually will be served in the restaurant.
Here they are:
Bar Room Dinner Menu
1st Course
Heirloom Tomato Gazpacho
Canadian Lobster / Avocado / Baby Basils
Foie Gras Torchon
Wild Strawberries / Anise Hyssop / Pistachio / Brioche
Diver Sea Scallop “Sandwich”
Sugar Snap Peas / Passion Fruit / Chives
Crispy Soft Shell Blue Crab
Belgium Endive / Granny Smith Apple / Sauce Rémoulade
Pasta Garganelli
Heirloom Cherry Tomatoes / Fresh Mozzarella / Prosciutto di Parma
Yellow Fin Tuna Tartare
Diakon Radish / Nori Toast Points / Miso Sake Dressing
“House Made” Charcuterie
Onion Marmalade / Pickle Vegetables / Country Bread
Farmed Baby Green Salad
Blue Cheese / Summer Vegetables / White Balsamic Dressing
2nd Course
“Aureole” Grilled Burger
Smoked bacon, Vermont White Cheddar, Creamy Pickled Ramp Dressing
Wild Striped Bass
White Asparagus / Smoked Yellow Tomato / Watermelon
Free Range Chicken
Black Beluga Lentils / Baby Romaine / Smoked Ham Hock / Chicken Jus
Scottish Organic Salmon
Heirloom Cherry Tomatoes / Fava Beans / Pomegranate Vinaigrette
Whole Roasted Branzini
Artichokes / Capers / Black Olive / Piquillo Peppers / Anchovies
Berkshire Pork Chop
Porcini Mushrooms / Summer Squash / Peaches / Picked Ramp Pork Jus
West Coast Halibut
Sweet Yellow Corn / Potato Gnocchi / Sugar Snap Peas / Basil Pesto
NY Strip Loin
Green Asparagus / Potato Puree / Tarragon Mustard Beef Jus
Dining Room Dinner menu:
1st Course
Yellow Fin Tuna Tartare
Daikon Radish, Nori Toast Points, Aji Amarillo, Miso Sake Dressing
Artichoke Ravioli
Louisiana Crayfish, Black Olive Oil, Andouille Sausage, White Wine Caper Sauce
Diver Sea Scallop “Sandwich”
Seared Foie Gras, Sugar Snap Peas, Passion Fruit, Chives
Japanese Madai Snapper Ceviche
Summer Melons, Hearts of Peach Palm, Cucumber, Avocado, Prosciutto di Parma
Crispy Soft Shell Blue Crab
Belgium Endive, Granny Smith Apple, Smoked Paprika, “Sauce Rémoulade”
Local Heirloom Tomatoes
Sheep’s Milk Ricotta Cheese Gelato, Haricot Vert, Petite Lettuces, Pine Nut Crumble
Grilled Foie Gras
Maine Blueberries, Corn Bread, Pickled Jalapenos, Macadamia Nuts
Chilled Sweet Yellow Corn Soup
American Caviar, Vidalia Onions, Lemon Citrus, Ancho Chile Oil
2nd Course
Crispy Black Sea Bass
French White Asparagus, Smoked Yellow Tomato, Endive, Watermelon, Basil Vinaigrette
West Coast Halibut
Smoked Bacon, Baby Leeks, Haricot Vert, Preserve Lemon, Razor Clam Broth
Olive Oil Poach Alaskan King Salmon
Heirloom Cherry Tomatoes, Quinoa, Watercress, Fava Beans, Warm Pomegranate Vinaigrette
Canadian Lobster Tail vs. Berkshire Pork Belly
Summer Squash, Porcini Mushrooms, Cape Goose Berries, Jura Wine, Almond Emulsion
Label Rouge Poularde
Sweet Yellow Corn, Black Beluga Lentils, Baby Romaine, Smoked ham Hock, Foie Gras Jus
Veal Tenderloin and Sweetbreads
Wild Asparagus, Charred Onion, Georgia Peaches, Pickled Ramps, Lovage Veal Jus
21 Day Aged Beef Rib Eye
Chanterelle Mushrooms, Green Asparagus, Potato Puree, Tarragon Mustard Beef Jus
Australian Rack of Lamb
English Peas & Carrots, Cipollini Onions, Medjool Dates, Almonds, Vadouvan Devonshire Cream
As for pastry, Jennifer, like Chris, comes from Gilt where she worked at Gilt under executive pastry chef David Carmichael. She now has her own chocolate room and will be making her own ice cream.
Bread’s being made in-house, too, according to Chris.
Restaurateur Charlie Palmer is in town, and he took the opportunity to provide a preview of his new flagship for local media.
As I mentioned when reporting on my most recent "hard hat" preview party (so named because the places are still under construction), at the much ballyhooed DBGB, it’s smart to give media a preview, because it makes us feel closer to the project.
The new Aureole is very much in line with what fine dining restaurants are doing in New York these days. I’d show you a picture, but I have no confidence in my ability to do justice to interiors with my inferior photography. The folks at eater.com took nice shots, if you’re curious.
Instead I have a couple of artist’s renderings, the first is a view from 42nd St. The second is from Anita's Way, which is the little alley next to Aureole, before Broadway. Anyway, as I was saying, Aureole is doing what a lot of fine dining restaurants are doing these days — diversifying.
As Charlie Palmer said (after asking me where my hard hat was) the new Aureole has three dimensions: a bar, a bar-lounge area and a fine dining room. In addition, it has a private room that seats 60 and can hold 100 people for cocktails or whatever.
The restaurant, which is starting preview parties with actual food next week (we just got a glass of Champagne, and a bag of milk chocolate-covered toffee from pastry chef Jennifer Yee), has three menus: one of bar snacks, a bar menu that will basically be American brasserie food (this is a fairly new term, but it’s becoming popular; Michael Symon said something similar about the food at his new restaurant, Bar Symon, in the Cleveland suburb of Avon Lake), and a fine dining menu for the dining room, which will be an old-school prix-fixe affair at dinner. The bar and the dining room will have the same menu at lunch, and it will be à la carte, although a prix-fixe option will be available in the dining room.
In that second picture you can see that one of the design features is what they’re calling the “wine mezzanine,” which will house 3,500 of the restaurant’s 15,000 bottles — mostly French and Californian — including 100 varieties for less than $100.
The art hasn’t been installed yet, but Charlie said they’re computer enhanced images by designer Adam Tihany’s son, Bram Tihany. “This art was developed over many, many bottles of Champagne,” he assured us.
The kitchen is freakin’ huge. The picture with Jennifer Yee in the middle, a cook kind of in front of her, Charlie on the right and a bunch of media types on the left, is in the pastry kitchen. The savory kitchen is around the corner. All told, it’s three to four times the size of the old Aureole’s kitchen. Today was the first day they had gas, so executive chef Chris Lee and his crew were starting to practice and tweak their dishes. I asked Chris how the food here would be different from his last job, at Gilt, and he said it would be pretty much the same — seasonally driven modern American.
Charlie praised Chris’s knowledge of modern kitchen technology and the fact that he doesn’t use it "to the point where it’s foolish.”
They hope to be taking paying customers by the last week of June or first week of July. Some parties are already booked for late July, and a grand opening party and fundraiser for Citymeals on Wheels will be held after Labor Day.
Commenting on the restaurant’s three dimensions, Charlie said he wasn’t looking for new customers, but for the same customers to use the restaurant on different occasions.
Aureole and its PR machine say the restaurant is in Bryant Park, but it’s quite near the corner of 42nd and Broadway, meaning it’s also in Times Square and will almost definitely have a robust pre-theater crowd. That, as Charlie said, will be a learning experience.
Management was nice enough to share with us some very early draft menus that should in no way be considered a reliable source of information on what actually will be served in the restaurant.
Here they are:
Bar Room Dinner Menu
1st Course
Heirloom Tomato Gazpacho
Canadian Lobster / Avocado / Baby Basils
Foie Gras Torchon
Wild Strawberries / Anise Hyssop / Pistachio / Brioche
Diver Sea Scallop “Sandwich”
Sugar Snap Peas / Passion Fruit / Chives
Crispy Soft Shell Blue Crab
Belgium Endive / Granny Smith Apple / Sauce Rémoulade
Pasta Garganelli
Heirloom Cherry Tomatoes / Fresh Mozzarella / Prosciutto di Parma
Yellow Fin Tuna Tartare
Diakon Radish / Nori Toast Points / Miso Sake Dressing
“House Made” Charcuterie
Onion Marmalade / Pickle Vegetables / Country Bread
Farmed Baby Green Salad
Blue Cheese / Summer Vegetables / White Balsamic Dressing
2nd Course
“Aureole” Grilled Burger
Smoked bacon, Vermont White Cheddar, Creamy Pickled Ramp Dressing
Wild Striped Bass
White Asparagus / Smoked Yellow Tomato / Watermelon
Free Range Chicken
Black Beluga Lentils / Baby Romaine / Smoked Ham Hock / Chicken Jus
Scottish Organic Salmon
Heirloom Cherry Tomatoes / Fava Beans / Pomegranate Vinaigrette
Whole Roasted Branzini
Artichokes / Capers / Black Olive / Piquillo Peppers / Anchovies
Berkshire Pork Chop
Porcini Mushrooms / Summer Squash / Peaches / Picked Ramp Pork Jus
West Coast Halibut
Sweet Yellow Corn / Potato Gnocchi / Sugar Snap Peas / Basil Pesto
NY Strip Loin
Green Asparagus / Potato Puree / Tarragon Mustard Beef Jus
Dining Room Dinner menu:
1st Course
Yellow Fin Tuna Tartare
Daikon Radish, Nori Toast Points, Aji Amarillo, Miso Sake Dressing
Artichoke Ravioli
Louisiana Crayfish, Black Olive Oil, Andouille Sausage, White Wine Caper Sauce
Diver Sea Scallop “Sandwich”
Seared Foie Gras, Sugar Snap Peas, Passion Fruit, Chives
Japanese Madai Snapper Ceviche
Summer Melons, Hearts of Peach Palm, Cucumber, Avocado, Prosciutto di Parma
Crispy Soft Shell Blue Crab
Belgium Endive, Granny Smith Apple, Smoked Paprika, “Sauce Rémoulade”
Local Heirloom Tomatoes
Sheep’s Milk Ricotta Cheese Gelato, Haricot Vert, Petite Lettuces, Pine Nut Crumble
Grilled Foie Gras
Maine Blueberries, Corn Bread, Pickled Jalapenos, Macadamia Nuts
Chilled Sweet Yellow Corn Soup
American Caviar, Vidalia Onions, Lemon Citrus, Ancho Chile Oil
2nd Course
Crispy Black Sea Bass
French White Asparagus, Smoked Yellow Tomato, Endive, Watermelon, Basil Vinaigrette
West Coast Halibut
Smoked Bacon, Baby Leeks, Haricot Vert, Preserve Lemon, Razor Clam Broth
Olive Oil Poach Alaskan King Salmon
Heirloom Cherry Tomatoes, Quinoa, Watercress, Fava Beans, Warm Pomegranate Vinaigrette
Canadian Lobster Tail vs. Berkshire Pork Belly
Summer Squash, Porcini Mushrooms, Cape Goose Berries, Jura Wine, Almond Emulsion
Label Rouge Poularde
Sweet Yellow Corn, Black Beluga Lentils, Baby Romaine, Smoked ham Hock, Foie Gras Jus
Veal Tenderloin and Sweetbreads
Wild Asparagus, Charred Onion, Georgia Peaches, Pickled Ramps, Lovage Veal Jus
21 Day Aged Beef Rib Eye
Chanterelle Mushrooms, Green Asparagus, Potato Puree, Tarragon Mustard Beef Jus
Australian Rack of Lamb
English Peas & Carrots, Cipollini Onions, Medjool Dates, Almonds, Vadouvan Devonshire Cream
As for pastry, Jennifer, like Chris, comes from Gilt where she worked at Gilt under executive pastry chef David Carmichael. She now has her own chocolate room and will be making her own ice cream.
Bread’s being made in-house, too, according to Chris.
Friday, June 05, 2009
Happy Doughnut Day
June 5
June 5 is apparently National Doughnut Day, and if I were really on the ball I would have alerted you sooner that participating Dunkin’ Donuts are handing out free doughnuts with the purchase of a drink.
Please note that I wrote “participating” stores. Dunkin’ Donuts is all franchised and it’s up to each franchisee whether to participate or not.
In other Dunkin’ news, the company just announced that Jeff Hager of Hoover, Ala., is the winner of its “Create Dunkin’s Next Donut” contest. His “Toffee for your Coffee” is a glazed sour cream cake doughnut topped with chopped Heath Bar.
Hager gets $12,000, and his creation will be available at Dunkin’ Donuts (participating ones, I imagine) this fall.
I asked Dunkin’ Donuts if they made up National Doughnut Day, but they said they didn’t. I wonder if it was Winchell’s.
June 5 is apparently National Doughnut Day, and if I were really on the ball I would have alerted you sooner that participating Dunkin’ Donuts are handing out free doughnuts with the purchase of a drink.
Please note that I wrote “participating” stores. Dunkin’ Donuts is all franchised and it’s up to each franchisee whether to participate or not.
In other Dunkin’ news, the company just announced that Jeff Hager of Hoover, Ala., is the winner of its “Create Dunkin’s Next Donut” contest. His “Toffee for your Coffee” is a glazed sour cream cake doughnut topped with chopped Heath Bar.
Hager gets $12,000, and his creation will be available at Dunkin’ Donuts (participating ones, I imagine) this fall.
I asked Dunkin’ Donuts if they made up National Doughnut Day, but they said they didn’t. I wonder if it was Winchell’s.
Thursday, June 04, 2009
Ed Witt has moved to Washington
June 4
New Yorkers might remember Ed Witt as the creative chef at two short-lived restaurants, Varietal and Bloomingdale Road.
Well, he’s going to try his hand at cooking in a different city: He has moved to Washington, D.C., and he plans to open a place in Georgetown at the end of the summer called Morso. He says it will be small plate Mediterranean cuisine with a Turkish influence, and as an indication that he’s not kidding around, he’s about to leave for Turkey for three weeks of research.
This is particularly interesting to me because I’ve seen an uptick recently in cuisine of the Eastern Mediterranean. I think I’ll write a story about it.
Tuesday, June 02, 2009
a good slap in the face
June 2
I’d never been slapped in the face out of friendship before, but I liked it. Michael Pesce, who’s the presiding justice for the New York State appellate court that hears criminal and civil cases from Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island, smacked me after we had dinner at Tommaso. It was a very gentle slap, but it was a slap. It seemed oddly appropriate, too, and kind of nice — like he was saying, “your okay, kid.”
Mind you, I’m 42 years old, and thus not a kid. I’m certainly younger than Mike, though, who took on a de facto mantle of leadership during our recent trip to Puglia with the Gruppo Ristoratori Italiani. Tommaso's chef and owner, Tom Verdillo, was on the trip, too, and he’d had us over for dinner while trying to replicate some of the dishes we’d eaten on the trip.
Alan Schoenberg, whose family has been salt merchants in Brooklyn for three generations, was on the trip, too, and he has a car, so I rode with him and his wife Brenda. Also at dinner was food-writing couple Bob Lape, until very recently of Crain’s New York Business, and his wife Joanna Pruess, who has written many food books, most recently a bacon cookbook. She’s currently working on one on cast-iron pot cooking. Bob and Joanna weren’t in Italy with us, but they were invited to dinner anyway.
Mike Pesce was an enthusiastic senior aficionado on the trip. He’s a Barese, you see, a native of Bari, which is Puglia’s capital*.
Tom, being a chef, strayed a bit from his original plan, and served other dishes as well, including a sort of salt-cod pâté (not unlike a French brandade de morou, except that dish is made with potatoes, and Tom’s was all fish), and his own signature dish for the season, Nantucket Bay scallops, steamed with plenty of garlic.
Tom never fries garlic. The key, he says, is to cook it gently to tone down it’s bitter qualities.
Here’s another thing about Tom and his cooking: His family is from near Naples, in Campania — if Puglia is the heel and back ankle of the Italian boot, Campania is the lower shin — but he doesn’t like dried oregano, a key herb for the region’s food. “I prefer marjoram,” he says. And he also uses fresh oregano, from his own garden.
He served a traditional regional dish called fave e cicorie, which you'd think would mean fava beans and chicory, but in fact, it means basically any beans and any bitter green. Normally the beans are puréed, but Tom tracked down some beautiful gigante beans, which as you can imagine are gigantic (for a bean — let's say an inch and three quarters by two-thirds of an inch, or something like that) so it would have been silly to purée them. And he cooked them with dandelion greens. Then he veered away from Puglia with a Calabrese dish (Calabria is the front of the foot of the Italian boot — the part that’s kicking Sicily), because he’d procured some cod tripe from Chinese suppliers, and the Calabrese stuff that and braise it. It was very tender, and had the sort of unctuous quality that good tripe has.
I think Mike enjoyed it, but he also said that Calabrians and Sicilians aren’t really Italians, but something different, which is really what you’d expect a Barese to say.
Then we had orecchiette made with Primitivo wine (Primitivo is a grape native to southern Italy, and is in fact the same grape as Zinfandel) and a ragù of all sorts of meats, including lamb and rabbit and pork, and some veal sausages.
I ate too much of it, especially since it was followed by a black bass that had been caught the evening before. The people who caught it couldn't fit it into their fridge, because it was so big, so Mike had them call Tom and drop it off.
At that point we opened the bottle of wine that Alan had brought, a 1949 — yes, 1949 — Burgundy, a Volnay, that remained fully intact, robust and delicious.
You never know with wine that old.
And that was followed by a semifreddo topped with chocolate.
So then, full of food and wine, we slowly stood up, wandered outside into the great late-spring air and chatted a bit more, and that’s when Michael Pesce slapped me in the face before wandering off into the night with his girlfriend.
Mike moved to the U.S. as a teenager and did the typical American dream stuff, working his way through the ranks to become one of New York State’s top judges as well as a food and wine aficionado and by all accounts a respected member of the community, nice guy and all-around good person.
I couldn't decide whether it was more generational or Italian to slap someone in the face affectionately. It’s definitely an alpha male thing to do, and a product of a patron-client system: I don’t think you could slap someone who was both your social equal and of a similar age.
I imagined slapping my underlings. I don’t have any actual underlings, really, but I am the official mentor of my colleague Mike Dempsey, who likes to do food writing, and I encourage him, try to get him good assignments and give him advice when he asks for it. I think he might let me slap him, once, gently, the way Mike Pesce did, but I don’t know if I can reach that high: Mike Dempsey’s 6'5", making him 13-and-a-half inches taller than I am.
So I’ll probably never really know.
*Technically, Mike’s not from the city of Bari, but from the province of Bari, but provinces in Italy are really like U.S. counties. They’re small, and you can be counted as a Barese if you come from anywhere in the province.
I’d never been slapped in the face out of friendship before, but I liked it. Michael Pesce, who’s the presiding justice for the New York State appellate court that hears criminal and civil cases from Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island, smacked me after we had dinner at Tommaso. It was a very gentle slap, but it was a slap. It seemed oddly appropriate, too, and kind of nice — like he was saying, “your okay, kid.”
Mind you, I’m 42 years old, and thus not a kid. I’m certainly younger than Mike, though, who took on a de facto mantle of leadership during our recent trip to Puglia with the Gruppo Ristoratori Italiani. Tommaso's chef and owner, Tom Verdillo, was on the trip, too, and he’d had us over for dinner while trying to replicate some of the dishes we’d eaten on the trip.
Alan Schoenberg, whose family has been salt merchants in Brooklyn for three generations, was on the trip, too, and he has a car, so I rode with him and his wife Brenda. Also at dinner was food-writing couple Bob Lape, until very recently of Crain’s New York Business, and his wife Joanna Pruess, who has written many food books, most recently a bacon cookbook. She’s currently working on one on cast-iron pot cooking. Bob and Joanna weren’t in Italy with us, but they were invited to dinner anyway.
Mike Pesce was an enthusiastic senior aficionado on the trip. He’s a Barese, you see, a native of Bari, which is Puglia’s capital*.
Tom, being a chef, strayed a bit from his original plan, and served other dishes as well, including a sort of salt-cod pâté (not unlike a French brandade de morou, except that dish is made with potatoes, and Tom’s was all fish), and his own signature dish for the season, Nantucket Bay scallops, steamed with plenty of garlic.
Tom never fries garlic. The key, he says, is to cook it gently to tone down it’s bitter qualities.
Here’s another thing about Tom and his cooking: His family is from near Naples, in Campania — if Puglia is the heel and back ankle of the Italian boot, Campania is the lower shin — but he doesn’t like dried oregano, a key herb for the region’s food. “I prefer marjoram,” he says. And he also uses fresh oregano, from his own garden.
He served a traditional regional dish called fave e cicorie, which you'd think would mean fava beans and chicory, but in fact, it means basically any beans and any bitter green. Normally the beans are puréed, but Tom tracked down some beautiful gigante beans, which as you can imagine are gigantic (for a bean — let's say an inch and three quarters by two-thirds of an inch, or something like that) so it would have been silly to purée them. And he cooked them with dandelion greens. Then he veered away from Puglia with a Calabrese dish (Calabria is the front of the foot of the Italian boot — the part that’s kicking Sicily), because he’d procured some cod tripe from Chinese suppliers, and the Calabrese stuff that and braise it. It was very tender, and had the sort of unctuous quality that good tripe has.
I think Mike enjoyed it, but he also said that Calabrians and Sicilians aren’t really Italians, but something different, which is really what you’d expect a Barese to say.
Then we had orecchiette made with Primitivo wine (Primitivo is a grape native to southern Italy, and is in fact the same grape as Zinfandel) and a ragù of all sorts of meats, including lamb and rabbit and pork, and some veal sausages.
I ate too much of it, especially since it was followed by a black bass that had been caught the evening before. The people who caught it couldn't fit it into their fridge, because it was so big, so Mike had them call Tom and drop it off.
At that point we opened the bottle of wine that Alan had brought, a 1949 — yes, 1949 — Burgundy, a Volnay, that remained fully intact, robust and delicious.
You never know with wine that old.
And that was followed by a semifreddo topped with chocolate.
So then, full of food and wine, we slowly stood up, wandered outside into the great late-spring air and chatted a bit more, and that’s when Michael Pesce slapped me in the face before wandering off into the night with his girlfriend.
Mike moved to the U.S. as a teenager and did the typical American dream stuff, working his way through the ranks to become one of New York State’s top judges as well as a food and wine aficionado and by all accounts a respected member of the community, nice guy and all-around good person.
I couldn't decide whether it was more generational or Italian to slap someone in the face affectionately. It’s definitely an alpha male thing to do, and a product of a patron-client system: I don’t think you could slap someone who was both your social equal and of a similar age.
I imagined slapping my underlings. I don’t have any actual underlings, really, but I am the official mentor of my colleague Mike Dempsey, who likes to do food writing, and I encourage him, try to get him good assignments and give him advice when he asks for it. I think he might let me slap him, once, gently, the way Mike Pesce did, but I don’t know if I can reach that high: Mike Dempsey’s 6'5", making him 13-and-a-half inches taller than I am.
So I’ll probably never really know.
*Technically, Mike’s not from the city of Bari, but from the province of Bari, but provinces in Italy are really like U.S. counties. They’re small, and you can be counted as a Barese if you come from anywhere in the province.
Friday, May 29, 2009
Crazy May
May 29
May is typically a crazy month for New York food writers, as restaurants rush to open and promote themselves before Memorial Day comes and everyone leaves during the weekends, no one dines out, no events are planned and I can try to lose some weight.
O.K., that was an exaggeration, even for typical years. But now anything goes, really, and either in spite of the lousy economy, because of it, or maybe for other reasons I don’t know about, restaurants here seem to be promoting themselves with more vigor than they have in years. I have some really spectacular-sounding parties coming up: Gourmet’s hosting a preview of the new Aureole, The Four Seasons is turning 50, The American Pork Board is hosting a lunch at the New York Stock Exchange (feel free to comment, especially about that last one, below).
And in the past couple of weeks I’ve received two (2) invitations made out of aluminum. I hadn’t seen one of those since before 9/11, when ridiculous overspending on things like aluminum invitations was the norm. Really, it was.
The May, 2000, opening of the Tribeca Grand hotel comes to mind.
Here’s a little excerpt from the story I wrote about it:
Invitations were ... sent out to rich and influential movers and shakers as well as to plenty of models, dancers, actors and folks who just looked great in black. A good 2,000 of them braved the rain to witness the launch of this new haven for the young and fashionable. They ate 6 kilos of Iranian osetra caviar.
Now that was a good party.
Speaking of 9/11, The Tribeca Grand, which is about 10 blocks from Ground Zero, became something of a refugee camp at that time as it provided temporary housing for displaced families in lower Manhattan. Rob Miketa, the chef at the time, responded to the need of the displaced children for grilled cheese sandwiches by warming the naan he had on hand for a mezze platter (bread purveyors were having trouble getting south of 14th Street — you might remember that lower Manhattan was cordoned off for a number of days) in butter and stuffing it with cheese.
(Rob, a fellow Coloradan — from Pueblo, of all places — now lives in Belgium, where he works as a private chef).
The past month or so has in some ways felt kind of September 10th, which is weird, because people are broker and gloomier than I remember them being, and businesswise, May has been pretty bad for a lot of restaurants here — worse than March and April by many accounts. Perhaps not as bad as January. But of course it depends on the restaurant.
At any rate, they’re keeping me busy, from a Cinco de Mayo dinner at Cabrito (which was packed, by the way — I mean four or five people deep at the bar packed — with people who seemed to think they absolutely needed to have Mexican food on that day), to the opening of a wine bar on the outskirts of the Meatpacking District called Entwine (the sommelier moonlights as a wine equipment merchant, meaning they have state-of-the-art technology for their wine-by-the-glass program), and George Mendes’ new restaurant, Aldea (which I already wrote about). Rink Bar opened at Rockefeller Center, too, but it does that every year.
I had a really extraordinary dinner at Eighty One with a group called the International Academy of Gastronomy, an organization I’d never heard of before. They had declared chef de cuisine Juan Jose Cuevas “Chef of the Future” and were having dinner there to celebrate.
Juan made something the likes of which I’ve never eaten before. It was a horseradish sorbet topped with a "granola" made out of dehydrated root vegetables, which sounds like a stupid, nasty-tasting dish, but it was, in fact, delicious and hard to figure out, in a really fun way, with bright, refreshing and very tangy sorbet and crunchy little vegetable cubes, served as an appetizer.
The dish got a round of applause at the end of the evening.
I also had dinner at Dirt Candy with its publicist, Philip Ruskin.
Dirt Candy’s a vegetarian restaurant, but at the moment has just one tofu dish (served crispy with a vegetable ragoût and a kaffir lime beurre blanc), because the whole point of the place is that vegetables are delicious — the candy of the earth. Hence the name.
So we ate the requisite jalapeño hush puppies with maple butter, and the portobello mousse that chef Amanda Cohen has submitted for PETA’s foie-gras substitute competition (Amanda herself is not a strident PETA-file, but that doesn’t mean she can’t enter their contests), a Greek salad with preserved lemon mayo, golden beet pappardelle with yogurt, pistachios and honey, and stone ground grits with a tempura poached egg.
Among the desserts we had was a popcorn pudding, served in a mason jar.
Serving food in mason jars is all the rage these days, by the way. My colleague Elizabeth Licata recently wrote about it.
I also had a Beard House dinner, as guest of the Denver Five, which meant I all but missed a drunken not-quite orgy at Pranna celebrating World Cocktail Day (May 13). It looked like it had been a good party, and it was still plenty full when I got there, but conversation was difficult due to the general drunkenness.
It’s a funny thing about professional drinkers. They can remain just on the edge of speech-slurringly drunk for hours without quite falling over the edge into oblivion. It’s very impressive.
Some cocktail experts, in fact, maintain high levels of sobriety much of the time, because it’s not like you have to guzzle a cocktail, and a wise drinker doesn’t shy away from water, either. I mean, it’s not like they’re drinking competitively.
And then last Sunday I finally made it down to Tommaso restaurant in Brooklyn, the 36-year-old restaurant of my new friend Thomas Verdillo, an opera singer, wine expert and aficionado of medieval symbolism. The private dining room is perhaps worth the trip to Dyker Heights just to look at the mural of a medieval Italian countryside, with unicorns and scarabs and other symbols of the day.
On the door back into the main dining room is a quote from Dante that I love. No, it’s not "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here," you rude, cynical bastard. It’s
Segui il tuo corso
Lasciare dir le genti
which means, "Follow your own path, ignore what people say.”
Tom would like more people to know about his restaurant, of course, and to head out to Dyker Heights to eat there, but he already gets a fair share of press (some of it’s posted on the restaurant’s web site, if you’re curious), and the people I’d have him contact to check out the place already seem to know about it.
“Oh yeah, Tommaso’s. That place is great! It’s been around forever,” is what they tend to say.
Soon-to-be-former New York Times critic Frank Bruni included it in a round-up of old-school Italian restaurants, and he described the food as being kind of existentially dusty — good for people seeking culinary nostalgia rather than adventure. That might have been true then, in 2006, but Thomas has done a fair amount of innovation, although it seems to me that he still stresses traditional dishes over avant-garde ones. He travels regularly to Italy to learn about the food of his ancestors — he recently added a Roman pasta dish to the menu called caccia e pepe, straight up spaghetti with Parmesan cheese and black pepper, mixed at tableside into a sauce using a smidgen of pasta water.
Tommaso’s likely to get some more attention soon. Comedy Central’s Michael and Michael recently filmed there for their new series.
What I just wrote about was not, of course, all that I’ve done since the Beard Awards, but some things in life should remain a mystery.
Not what I ate at the Beard House, though.
What the Denver Five fed me:
Hors d’Oeuvre
Ahi tuna-lobster rolls with charred jalapeños, kumquats and ramp salsa
Wild pheasant confit-filled tamalitos with apricot-güero chile jam
Braised chile-cured White Marble Farms pork belly with huitlacoche, duck egg salad and tomato-ancho chile sauce
Korean barbecued foie gras with corn shoots, cilantro, coconut rice fritters and nori-infused caramel
Mont-Marçal Brut Rosado Cava NV
Dinner:
Sweet and crunchy softshell crab with pork and adzuki beans, ginger ale ramps and chinese garlic mayonnaise
Oriel Palatina Riesling 2004
Crispy Hawaiian moi with roasted Olathe corn, Pueblo asparagus, lightly smoked trout salad, and truffled kabayaki dressing
Stonestreet Upper Barn Chardonnay 2006
Colorado lamb albóndigas with heirloom bean chile verde, smoky duck chorizo, nopale–fiddlehead escabèche and duck cracklings
Oriel Courant Côtes du Rhône 2003
USDA Prime New York strip steak with dinosaur kale–wrapped veal cheeks, smoked goat cheese–potato flan and morel jus
Martin Ray Reserve Santa Cruz Mountains Cabernet Sauvignon 2004
Honey-caramelized apples with chocolate crème chiboust and saffron cream
Santa Julia Tardio 2007
Mignardises
May is typically a crazy month for New York food writers, as restaurants rush to open and promote themselves before Memorial Day comes and everyone leaves during the weekends, no one dines out, no events are planned and I can try to lose some weight.
O.K., that was an exaggeration, even for typical years. But now anything goes, really, and either in spite of the lousy economy, because of it, or maybe for other reasons I don’t know about, restaurants here seem to be promoting themselves with more vigor than they have in years. I have some really spectacular-sounding parties coming up: Gourmet’s hosting a preview of the new Aureole, The Four Seasons is turning 50, The American Pork Board is hosting a lunch at the New York Stock Exchange (feel free to comment, especially about that last one, below).
And in the past couple of weeks I’ve received two (2) invitations made out of aluminum. I hadn’t seen one of those since before 9/11, when ridiculous overspending on things like aluminum invitations was the norm. Really, it was.
The May, 2000, opening of the Tribeca Grand hotel comes to mind.
Here’s a little excerpt from the story I wrote about it:
Invitations were ... sent out to rich and influential movers and shakers as well as to plenty of models, dancers, actors and folks who just looked great in black. A good 2,000 of them braved the rain to witness the launch of this new haven for the young and fashionable. They ate 6 kilos of Iranian osetra caviar.
Now that was a good party.
Speaking of 9/11, The Tribeca Grand, which is about 10 blocks from Ground Zero, became something of a refugee camp at that time as it provided temporary housing for displaced families in lower Manhattan. Rob Miketa, the chef at the time, responded to the need of the displaced children for grilled cheese sandwiches by warming the naan he had on hand for a mezze platter (bread purveyors were having trouble getting south of 14th Street — you might remember that lower Manhattan was cordoned off for a number of days) in butter and stuffing it with cheese.
(Rob, a fellow Coloradan — from Pueblo, of all places — now lives in Belgium, where he works as a private chef).
The past month or so has in some ways felt kind of September 10th, which is weird, because people are broker and gloomier than I remember them being, and businesswise, May has been pretty bad for a lot of restaurants here — worse than March and April by many accounts. Perhaps not as bad as January. But of course it depends on the restaurant.
At any rate, they’re keeping me busy, from a Cinco de Mayo dinner at Cabrito (which was packed, by the way — I mean four or five people deep at the bar packed — with people who seemed to think they absolutely needed to have Mexican food on that day), to the opening of a wine bar on the outskirts of the Meatpacking District called Entwine (the sommelier moonlights as a wine equipment merchant, meaning they have state-of-the-art technology for their wine-by-the-glass program), and George Mendes’ new restaurant, Aldea (which I already wrote about). Rink Bar opened at Rockefeller Center, too, but it does that every year.
I had a really extraordinary dinner at Eighty One with a group called the International Academy of Gastronomy, an organization I’d never heard of before. They had declared chef de cuisine Juan Jose Cuevas “Chef of the Future” and were having dinner there to celebrate.
Juan made something the likes of which I’ve never eaten before. It was a horseradish sorbet topped with a "granola" made out of dehydrated root vegetables, which sounds like a stupid, nasty-tasting dish, but it was, in fact, delicious and hard to figure out, in a really fun way, with bright, refreshing and very tangy sorbet and crunchy little vegetable cubes, served as an appetizer.
The dish got a round of applause at the end of the evening.
I also had dinner at Dirt Candy with its publicist, Philip Ruskin.
Dirt Candy’s a vegetarian restaurant, but at the moment has just one tofu dish (served crispy with a vegetable ragoût and a kaffir lime beurre blanc), because the whole point of the place is that vegetables are delicious — the candy of the earth. Hence the name.
So we ate the requisite jalapeño hush puppies with maple butter, and the portobello mousse that chef Amanda Cohen has submitted for PETA’s foie-gras substitute competition (Amanda herself is not a strident PETA-file, but that doesn’t mean she can’t enter their contests), a Greek salad with preserved lemon mayo, golden beet pappardelle with yogurt, pistachios and honey, and stone ground grits with a tempura poached egg.
Among the desserts we had was a popcorn pudding, served in a mason jar.
Serving food in mason jars is all the rage these days, by the way. My colleague Elizabeth Licata recently wrote about it.
I also had a Beard House dinner, as guest of the Denver Five, which meant I all but missed a drunken not-quite orgy at Pranna celebrating World Cocktail Day (May 13). It looked like it had been a good party, and it was still plenty full when I got there, but conversation was difficult due to the general drunkenness.
It’s a funny thing about professional drinkers. They can remain just on the edge of speech-slurringly drunk for hours without quite falling over the edge into oblivion. It’s very impressive.
Some cocktail experts, in fact, maintain high levels of sobriety much of the time, because it’s not like you have to guzzle a cocktail, and a wise drinker doesn’t shy away from water, either. I mean, it’s not like they’re drinking competitively.
And then last Sunday I finally made it down to Tommaso restaurant in Brooklyn, the 36-year-old restaurant of my new friend Thomas Verdillo, an opera singer, wine expert and aficionado of medieval symbolism. The private dining room is perhaps worth the trip to Dyker Heights just to look at the mural of a medieval Italian countryside, with unicorns and scarabs and other symbols of the day.
On the door back into the main dining room is a quote from Dante that I love. No, it’s not "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here," you rude, cynical bastard. It’s
Segui il tuo corso
Lasciare dir le genti
which means, "Follow your own path, ignore what people say.”
Tom would like more people to know about his restaurant, of course, and to head out to Dyker Heights to eat there, but he already gets a fair share of press (some of it’s posted on the restaurant’s web site, if you’re curious), and the people I’d have him contact to check out the place already seem to know about it.
“Oh yeah, Tommaso’s. That place is great! It’s been around forever,” is what they tend to say.
Soon-to-be-former New York Times critic Frank Bruni included it in a round-up of old-school Italian restaurants, and he described the food as being kind of existentially dusty — good for people seeking culinary nostalgia rather than adventure. That might have been true then, in 2006, but Thomas has done a fair amount of innovation, although it seems to me that he still stresses traditional dishes over avant-garde ones. He travels regularly to Italy to learn about the food of his ancestors — he recently added a Roman pasta dish to the menu called caccia e pepe, straight up spaghetti with Parmesan cheese and black pepper, mixed at tableside into a sauce using a smidgen of pasta water.
Tommaso’s likely to get some more attention soon. Comedy Central’s Michael and Michael recently filmed there for their new series.
What I just wrote about was not, of course, all that I’ve done since the Beard Awards, but some things in life should remain a mystery.
Not what I ate at the Beard House, though.
What the Denver Five fed me:
Hors d’Oeuvre
Ahi tuna-lobster rolls with charred jalapeños, kumquats and ramp salsa
Wild pheasant confit-filled tamalitos with apricot-güero chile jam
Braised chile-cured White Marble Farms pork belly with huitlacoche, duck egg salad and tomato-ancho chile sauce
Korean barbecued foie gras with corn shoots, cilantro, coconut rice fritters and nori-infused caramel
Mont-Marçal Brut Rosado Cava NV
Dinner:
Sweet and crunchy softshell crab with pork and adzuki beans, ginger ale ramps and chinese garlic mayonnaise
Oriel Palatina Riesling 2004
Crispy Hawaiian moi with roasted Olathe corn, Pueblo asparagus, lightly smoked trout salad, and truffled kabayaki dressing
Stonestreet Upper Barn Chardonnay 2006
Colorado lamb albóndigas with heirloom bean chile verde, smoky duck chorizo, nopale–fiddlehead escabèche and duck cracklings
Oriel Courant Côtes du Rhône 2003
USDA Prime New York strip steak with dinosaur kale–wrapped veal cheeks, smoked goat cheese–potato flan and morel jus
Martin Ray Reserve Santa Cruz Mountains Cabernet Sauvignon 2004
Honey-caramelized apples with chocolate crème chiboust and saffron cream
Santa Julia Tardio 2007
Mignardises
Thursday, May 28, 2009
What’s MUFSO? What’s MUFSO!?
May 28
Sorry I’ve been such a bad blogger since the preview of DBGB. I’ve been so busy I haven’t even had time to ask what is wrong with you that none of you are attending MUFSO.
Okay, maybe many of you are, but of the six people who responded to my poll asking if you were attending, two said maybe, two said no, and two asked, "What's MUFSO?"
Oh, for goodness sake.
I admit, it’s not a pretty name (it’s pronounced MUFF-so, not MOOF-so) and it stands for Multi-Unit Foodservice Operators. It’s NRN’s annual conference of restaurant operators. It’s mostly attended by chain operators, it’s true, which might be why you don’t know about it, but speakers have ranged from Union Square Hospitality Group’s Danny Meyer (himself a multi-unit operator, if not a chain operator), to author, TV star and self-proclaimed bad-boy Anthony Bourdain, to Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser (who in fact quoted in that book a speech that our recently retired group publisher, Jim Doherty, gave at MUFSO). Jay Leno has done stand-up comedy there. George H.W. Bush was a keynoter a couple years back.
It’s a terrific conference, especially for networking, which is so crucial in this stupid economy.
If you register in the next month by clicking here and following the instructions, I think you get a 50 percent discount.
Click here to learn more about MUFSO, Or you could just ask me.
Stay tuned to this blog for more tales of my culinary adventures, I promise not to be such a slacker.
Sorry I’ve been such a bad blogger since the preview of DBGB. I’ve been so busy I haven’t even had time to ask what is wrong with you that none of you are attending MUFSO.
Okay, maybe many of you are, but of the six people who responded to my poll asking if you were attending, two said maybe, two said no, and two asked, "What's MUFSO?"
Oh, for goodness sake.
I admit, it’s not a pretty name (it’s pronounced MUFF-so, not MOOF-so) and it stands for Multi-Unit Foodservice Operators. It’s NRN’s annual conference of restaurant operators. It’s mostly attended by chain operators, it’s true, which might be why you don’t know about it, but speakers have ranged from Union Square Hospitality Group’s Danny Meyer (himself a multi-unit operator, if not a chain operator), to author, TV star and self-proclaimed bad-boy Anthony Bourdain, to Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser (who in fact quoted in that book a speech that our recently retired group publisher, Jim Doherty, gave at MUFSO). Jay Leno has done stand-up comedy there. George H.W. Bush was a keynoter a couple years back.
It’s a terrific conference, especially for networking, which is so crucial in this stupid economy.
If you register in the next month by clicking here and following the instructions, I think you get a 50 percent discount.
Click here to learn more about MUFSO, Or you could just ask me.
Stay tuned to this blog for more tales of my culinary adventures, I promise not to be such a slacker.
Saturday, May 16, 2009
DBGB
May 16
It's smart to invite people to look at a restaurant before it opens. It makes them feel like insiders, and like they have a personal emotional investment in a place. So if you invite the media, they're already predisposed to like you. The media's predisposed to like Daniel Boulud, anyway, but why chance it?
A couple of years ago, when Bar Boulud was about to open, Daniel and his people had to test out the charcuterie that they were serving there, so it made sense to invite people to share their endeavors. It was a good party, and when I wrote about it this blog got more traffic in a single day than ever before (or since), even more than when I wrote about what kinds of tips Hooters girls get (about 45%, so I'm told).
I doubt this blog entry will generate that much traffic, because many bloggers were at the sneak peek of DBGB, Daniel's new eighty-seat brasserie near the Hell's Angels headquarters on Bowery (between 1st and Houston). DBGB is of course a reference to the famous club CBGB, and it means "Daniel Boulud, Great ..." fill in the blank: burgers, bangers (that's British for sausage), beer, what have you.
The space is big and festive, the culinary focus really more sausage than burger. They'll start with 14 sausages on the menu and go up from there. The beer program will be about as extensive as the wine program and will include 22 beers on tap and another 50-60 in bottles. There will be about 100 wines in bottles, and two on tap. They'll be about as local as New York City can get for wines. The wine itself is from Long Island. It will be blended and poured into kegs in Brooklyn. Beverage manger Colin Alevras, the man behind The Tasting Room, said he hasn't set a firm price on the house wine, but it will likely be more than $5 and less than $7.
What else? Oh! There will be many desserts, but a highlight will be a sundae cart, with many choices of ice creams, sauces and toppings. That'll be a hit.
Among the design elements is Daniel's copper pot collection, donated by chefs from all over the world for the restaurant. So there's a Victorian jelly mold from Heston Blumenthal, a fish poacher from Tom Colicchio, an ancient, ancient looking stock pot from Alain Ducasse, a chestnut roaster from Mario Batali.
They're planning on opening "at the end of the first week of June," but of course a place isn't open until it's open.
After the party, Daniel flew to Chicago for the national restaurant show, and he spoke about how DBGB fit with the current economic times. click here to read about what he said.
It's smart to invite people to look at a restaurant before it opens. It makes them feel like insiders, and like they have a personal emotional investment in a place. So if you invite the media, they're already predisposed to like you. The media's predisposed to like Daniel Boulud, anyway, but why chance it?
A couple of years ago, when Bar Boulud was about to open, Daniel and his people had to test out the charcuterie that they were serving there, so it made sense to invite people to share their endeavors. It was a good party, and when I wrote about it this blog got more traffic in a single day than ever before (or since), even more than when I wrote about what kinds of tips Hooters girls get (about 45%, so I'm told).
I doubt this blog entry will generate that much traffic, because many bloggers were at the sneak peek of DBGB, Daniel's new eighty-seat brasserie near the Hell's Angels headquarters on Bowery (between 1st and Houston). DBGB is of course a reference to the famous club CBGB, and it means "Daniel Boulud, Great ..." fill in the blank: burgers, bangers (that's British for sausage), beer, what have you.
The space is big and festive, the culinary focus really more sausage than burger. They'll start with 14 sausages on the menu and go up from there. The beer program will be about as extensive as the wine program and will include 22 beers on tap and another 50-60 in bottles. There will be about 100 wines in bottles, and two on tap. They'll be about as local as New York City can get for wines. The wine itself is from Long Island. It will be blended and poured into kegs in Brooklyn. Beverage manger Colin Alevras, the man behind The Tasting Room, said he hasn't set a firm price on the house wine, but it will likely be more than $5 and less than $7.
What else? Oh! There will be many desserts, but a highlight will be a sundae cart, with many choices of ice creams, sauces and toppings. That'll be a hit.
Among the design elements is Daniel's copper pot collection, donated by chefs from all over the world for the restaurant. So there's a Victorian jelly mold from Heston Blumenthal, a fish poacher from Tom Colicchio, an ancient, ancient looking stock pot from Alain Ducasse, a chestnut roaster from Mario Batali.
They're planning on opening "at the end of the first week of June," but of course a place isn't open until it's open.
After the party, Daniel flew to Chicago for the national restaurant show, and he spoke about how DBGB fit with the current economic times. click here to read about what he said.
Friday, May 15, 2009
Not at the restaurant show
May 15
I’m not going to the National Restaurant Association International Hotel/Motel show in Chicago this year. And if you’re not either but would like to know what’s going on there, my capable colleagues are on it. Click here not just to read their blog, but to catch the live news feed that all of them are tweeting into. It should be a good read, and I hope you enjoy it.
I’m not going to the National Restaurant Association International Hotel/Motel show in Chicago this year. And if you’re not either but would like to know what’s going on there, my capable colleagues are on it. Click here not just to read their blog, but to catch the live news feed that all of them are tweeting into. It should be a good read, and I hope you enjoy it.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
over the transom
May 14
Time for a bit of housekeeping and news reportage
Thanks to the 42 people who participated in the poll asking what type of blog entry you prefer to read here. A solid 16 percent said you like news, so here we go:
Item 1) For national readers, and people in Baltimore, my friend E. Michael Reidt has a new job. He has joined the San Francisco-based Kimpton Group to be the executive chef of B&O American Brasserie in Baltimore, scheduled to open this July.
I sent E. Michael an e-mail about it, and he replied, “Sssshhhh!! Don't tell anyone! It's a secret.....” but as I did, in fact, get the information in a press release I’m going to go ahead and report it.
B&O will be Kimpton's first restaurant in Maryland, and apparently the menu will be “approachable American brasserie” food, plus a pizza oven.
E. Michael's background is varied and interesting. He’s a New Englander who also spent time in Miami before heading out to California. He has a particular passion for Brazilian things (food, spouses), and recent travels include an extended excursion to Southeast Asia. He’s a Food & Wine Best New Chef, class of 2001. We met several years ago in Aspen, where I bonded with him and another 2001 Best New Chef, Randy Lewis, which leads me to
News item 2) From SF Weekly’s Sfoodie blog, Randy is going to head up the kitchen at Tavern at Lark Creek in Larkspur, Calif. I actually met Randy before meeting Michael. He spent some time as corporate chef for Kendall-Jackson winery, which for awhile was the wine sponsor of the National Pork Producers Council’s national cooking competition, Taste of Elegance, which I attend with enthusiasm whenever I can, less for the pork than for the chefs, because as great as the pork is, the chefs are greater. Mostly Midwestern salt-of-the-earth guys. Randy's not Midwestern, and he’s certainly more high-profile than most of the chefs at Taste of Elegance, but he's a good guy all the same.
And a busy guy. He’s also involved in a would-be burger chain called Best-o-Burger. It just has one unit now, so it’s not a chain, but Randy says they have signed a lease for a second location, are working on a third and are trying to move forward with licensing deals for 50 locations in Los Angeles.
Speaking of burgers, for New Yorkers, news item 3) Elevation Burger, a chain based in Arlington, Va., that serves organic hamburgers (made from grass-finished, free range cattle, thank you very much) and French fries cooked in olive oil, has its sights set on lower Manhattan. It has signed a franchising deal with Fabian Rosario and John Harris.
It might take awhile, though. Elevation Burger currently has just three locations (in Falls Church and Arlington in Virginia, and in Baltimore), but has signed deals to open 40 more throughout the mid-Atlantic as well as in Texas and Florida. It is unusual for all such deals to bear fruit. Then again, Fransmart has been put in charge of the development plans, and that’s the same company that has helped Five Guys Burgers & Fries expand so rapidly. So, you never know.
Rosario and Harris are Brooklyn restaurateurs. Rosario co-owns the Brooklyn IHOP, and Harris owns The Spot American Bistro in Prospect Heights.
Okay, finishing up, the results of my latest poll:
WHICH TYPE OF FOOD WRITER’S DIARY ENTRY DO YOU PREFER?
Quick news about restaurant openings and chef changes: 7 (16%)
Gossipy items about who shows up at what parties: 3 (7%)
Meandering think pieces on food and life in general: 11 (26%)
Personal reminiscences and thoughts of family and friends: 2 (4%)
Entries that let readers live vicariously through a New York food writer: 4 (9%)
Travel pieces: 0 (0%)
All of the above: 15 (35%)
Time for a bit of housekeeping and news reportage
Thanks to the 42 people who participated in the poll asking what type of blog entry you prefer to read here. A solid 16 percent said you like news, so here we go:
Item 1) For national readers, and people in Baltimore, my friend E. Michael Reidt has a new job. He has joined the San Francisco-based Kimpton Group to be the executive chef of B&O American Brasserie in Baltimore, scheduled to open this July.I sent E. Michael an e-mail about it, and he replied, “Sssshhhh!! Don't tell anyone! It's a secret.....” but as I did, in fact, get the information in a press release I’m going to go ahead and report it.
B&O will be Kimpton's first restaurant in Maryland, and apparently the menu will be “approachable American brasserie” food, plus a pizza oven.
E. Michael's background is varied and interesting. He’s a New Englander who also spent time in Miami before heading out to California. He has a particular passion for Brazilian things (food, spouses), and recent travels include an extended excursion to Southeast Asia. He’s a Food & Wine Best New Chef, class of 2001. We met several years ago in Aspen, where I bonded with him and another 2001 Best New Chef, Randy Lewis, which leads me to
News item 2) From SF Weekly’s Sfoodie blog, Randy is going to head up the kitchen at Tavern at Lark Creek in Larkspur, Calif. I actually met Randy before meeting Michael. He spent some time as corporate chef for Kendall-Jackson winery, which for awhile was the wine sponsor of the National Pork Producers Council’s national cooking competition, Taste of Elegance, which I attend with enthusiasm whenever I can, less for the pork than for the chefs, because as great as the pork is, the chefs are greater. Mostly Midwestern salt-of-the-earth guys. Randy's not Midwestern, and he’s certainly more high-profile than most of the chefs at Taste of Elegance, but he's a good guy all the same.
And a busy guy. He’s also involved in a would-be burger chain called Best-o-Burger. It just has one unit now, so it’s not a chain, but Randy says they have signed a lease for a second location, are working on a third and are trying to move forward with licensing deals for 50 locations in Los Angeles.
Speaking of burgers, for New Yorkers, news item 3) Elevation Burger, a chain based in Arlington, Va., that serves organic hamburgers (made from grass-finished, free range cattle, thank you very much) and French fries cooked in olive oil, has its sights set on lower Manhattan. It has signed a franchising deal with Fabian Rosario and John Harris.
It might take awhile, though. Elevation Burger currently has just three locations (in Falls Church and Arlington in Virginia, and in Baltimore), but has signed deals to open 40 more throughout the mid-Atlantic as well as in Texas and Florida. It is unusual for all such deals to bear fruit. Then again, Fransmart has been put in charge of the development plans, and that’s the same company that has helped Five Guys Burgers & Fries expand so rapidly. So, you never know.
Rosario and Harris are Brooklyn restaurateurs. Rosario co-owns the Brooklyn IHOP, and Harris owns The Spot American Bistro in Prospect Heights.
Okay, finishing up, the results of my latest poll:
WHICH TYPE OF FOOD WRITER’S DIARY ENTRY DO YOU PREFER?
Quick news about restaurant openings and chef changes: 7 (16%)
Gossipy items about who shows up at what parties: 3 (7%)
Meandering think pieces on food and life in general: 11 (26%)
Personal reminiscences and thoughts of family and friends: 2 (4%)
Entries that let readers live vicariously through a New York food writer: 4 (9%)
Travel pieces: 0 (0%)
All of the above: 15 (35%)
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Aldea opened
May 13
Sometimes it takes me a really long time to realize the obvious. Three years, usually. I think that's how long I lived in Thailand before I came to understand that rainy-season downpours are preceded by strong winds that let everyone know they should pack up their wares and go inside. I’d look around and wonder where everyone was running off to and then I’d be drenched. I finally put two and two together around 1995.
It also took me about three years to realized that many pastry chefs are gay. I had been in this job for around that long when I went to a party called the Pastry Jam, thrown by a supplier during one of the Javitz Center trade shows, and it was the gayest party I’d ever been to, with nearly naked men in body paint adorning many of the tables. Nice guys. Then I thought about the male pastry chefs I know and how many of them are gay. For awhile after that realization I used to make that observation to people in the restaurant world and they’d look at me like I was an idiot for not having noticed before. It probably took me three years to stop voicing that observation.
I don’t know how long it has taken me to realize that if you go to a restaurant opening that starts at 9pm, you're not going to be able to just pop your head in, kiss a couple of people on both cheeks, turn around and leave, because the party’s simply going to be too fun for that.
Because if a restaurant opening starts at 9, chefs are coming.
That was for sure the case on Monday, when Aldea, George Mendes's new place on W. 17th St., opened its doors. George was actually in the kitchen for much of the night. You know, cooking. It's an open kitchen, so he could briefly pause, say hi and get back to work.
For awhile it was low key. I met Txikito chef-owner Eder Montero, tweeted once, because it seemed like the right thing to do. (If you look at the time stamp, you’ll see that the message didn't actually escape my phone until I left the party) and discussed many small matters with Julian Alonzo of Brasserie 8 1/2. Then I fell in with Oceana chef Ben Pollinger and pastry chef Jansen Chan before an unusually energetic Dave Arnold, the French Culinary Institute's director of culinary technology — possibly the only director of culinary technology anywhere — bounded in with Nils Noren, the school's vice president for culinary and pastry arts. Dave's future business partner, Jean Georges pastry chef Johnny Iuzzini (not gay, by all accounts) might have arrived with them. He did appear around the same time, but I can’t say for sure. I asked Dave when he and Johnny were going to open their much anticipated bar, and he said they were still tracking down funding.
So, if you want to invest in a bar run by Dave Arnold and Johnny Iuzzini, let me know.
I’d heard that Wylie Dufresne was downstairs while I was upstairs talking to Ben and Jansen. Paul Liebrandt was there, too, but we didn’t talk. Cesare Casella came with his signature rosemary bunch in his sport coat's breast pocket, which he told me he left with George for good luck.
Wearing rosemary seemed like such a good idea that I considered starting to do it myself, but I was told that everyone would know I was copying Cesare and that I would therefore be dubbed lame, which is probably true. So I changed the subject to another fashion goal of mine. I'd like to be able to convincingly wear a cape.
Of course the problem is that I’d probably look like an idiot, and it would take me three years to realize it.
Sometimes it takes me a really long time to realize the obvious. Three years, usually. I think that's how long I lived in Thailand before I came to understand that rainy-season downpours are preceded by strong winds that let everyone know they should pack up their wares and go inside. I’d look around and wonder where everyone was running off to and then I’d be drenched. I finally put two and two together around 1995.
It also took me about three years to realized that many pastry chefs are gay. I had been in this job for around that long when I went to a party called the Pastry Jam, thrown by a supplier during one of the Javitz Center trade shows, and it was the gayest party I’d ever been to, with nearly naked men in body paint adorning many of the tables. Nice guys. Then I thought about the male pastry chefs I know and how many of them are gay. For awhile after that realization I used to make that observation to people in the restaurant world and they’d look at me like I was an idiot for not having noticed before. It probably took me three years to stop voicing that observation.
I don’t know how long it has taken me to realize that if you go to a restaurant opening that starts at 9pm, you're not going to be able to just pop your head in, kiss a couple of people on both cheeks, turn around and leave, because the party’s simply going to be too fun for that.
Because if a restaurant opening starts at 9, chefs are coming.
That was for sure the case on Monday, when Aldea, George Mendes's new place on W. 17th St., opened its doors. George was actually in the kitchen for much of the night. You know, cooking. It's an open kitchen, so he could briefly pause, say hi and get back to work.
For awhile it was low key. I met Txikito chef-owner Eder Montero, tweeted once, because it seemed like the right thing to do. (If you look at the time stamp, you’ll see that the message didn't actually escape my phone until I left the party) and discussed many small matters with Julian Alonzo of Brasserie 8 1/2. Then I fell in with Oceana chef Ben Pollinger and pastry chef Jansen Chan before an unusually energetic Dave Arnold, the French Culinary Institute's director of culinary technology — possibly the only director of culinary technology anywhere — bounded in with Nils Noren, the school's vice president for culinary and pastry arts. Dave's future business partner, Jean Georges pastry chef Johnny Iuzzini (not gay, by all accounts) might have arrived with them. He did appear around the same time, but I can’t say for sure. I asked Dave when he and Johnny were going to open their much anticipated bar, and he said they were still tracking down funding.
So, if you want to invest in a bar run by Dave Arnold and Johnny Iuzzini, let me know.
I’d heard that Wylie Dufresne was downstairs while I was upstairs talking to Ben and Jansen. Paul Liebrandt was there, too, but we didn’t talk. Cesare Casella came with his signature rosemary bunch in his sport coat's breast pocket, which he told me he left with George for good luck.
Wearing rosemary seemed like such a good idea that I considered starting to do it myself, but I was told that everyone would know I was copying Cesare and that I would therefore be dubbed lame, which is probably true. So I changed the subject to another fashion goal of mine. I'd like to be able to convincingly wear a cape.
Of course the problem is that I’d probably look like an idiot, and it would take me three years to realize it.
Wednesday, May 06, 2009
Not the Oscars
May 6
“Who are those two skinny fucking bastards?”
That was Myriad Restaurant Group chief Drew Nieporent, on stage at Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall on Monday for what some people insist on calling the Oscars of the restaurant world. They are, of course, the James Beard Foundation Awards, and they’re not the Oscars, not least because it’s perfectly fine for Drew to call Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich skinny fucking bastards at them. Because these are the awards for the restaurant industry, and restaurant people talk like that.
Well, not all of them. If Danny Meyer does talk like that, he doesn’t do so on stage.
Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich have trimmed down in recent years, especially Bastianich, and they had just announced that Drew had been named Restaurateur of the Year. So I imagine that Drew was giddy. I imagine that he also was sorely disappointed, because, minutes before, his restaurant Corton was not named best new restaurant. David Chang’s Momofuku Ko was. (I also imagine Drew reading this and asking me why I didn’t just call him and ask him how he felt, but that takes all the fun out of it).
“Next he’s going to say, ‘Fuck you. David Chang!‘” I said to John T. Edge, an extremely engaging man whom I’d never met before but whose company in the press room I availed myself of and enjoyed very much — particularly in the mysterious absence of Bon Appétit restaurant editor Andrew Knowlton, who had told me the night before at Chefs Night Out that he’d be in the press room.
And Drew pretty much did say that to David Chang, but much more tactfully, by saying the very hard-working chef, Corton’s Paul Liebrandt, deserved recognition.
These were my eleventh Beard awards, and I thought of skipping them. My boss, Pamela Parseghian, was there taking pictures, and I knew I’d get a press release in the morning listing the winners even if I didn’t feel like following any of the live tweets of the legion of people who were tweeting the winners (Lockhart Steele, looking unusually bleary eyed, was typing away at a laptop; and Amanda Kludt of Eater seemed to be alternately interviewing, blogging and tweeting, which is appropriate).
(I tweeted random observations until my cell phone died. you can follow my tweets here if you’re curious.)
But the Beard Awards are still a good party. And I like the fact that most of the chefs don’t seem to feel comfortable on stage. The men mostly look awkward in their tuxedos. The women mostly don’t look like they enjoy walking in heels. They’re back-of-the-house people and that’s where they feel most at home. And that’s why the Beard Awards always will be different from and better than the Oscars.
The press room has become something of a madhouse, although it was either less of a zoo this year or I simply anticipated that it would be more of a zoo than it was. While the audience in Avery Fisher Hall sat and starved over the several hours that the awards ceremony lasted (I lost track of time), we sampled cheese and drank cocktails, Champagne and coffee.
The awards are traditionally followed by a large reception, but this year, for some reason, they started serving early, and people left the ceremony without listening to the speech of Dan Barber, who at the end of the evening was named this year’s outstanding chef. I thought that was mighty rude.
I didn’t eat much at the reception, because I like to let the paying guests eat. I did have a cocktail, some wine, a bit of duck hot dog with foie gras mustard, some cheese and another nibble or two.
So I had a miniburger at the after-party in the basement of Bar Boulud, plus some cruditées and aïoli that were in a room on the left side of the basement. The middle room and the room on the right were packed, but for some reason people had stayed out of the room with the cruditées. It was strange.
Then I went with my new friend, food scientist and aspiring writer Rachel Zemser, and her brother Robert, to Terroir, which had been nominated for a design award but didn’t win.
Not to be dismayed so easily, they threw a party anyway, and I hung out with their operations manager, my friend and fellow Coloradan David Flaherty, husband of my other friend, Bullfrog & Baum’s own Katherine Bryant. That’s her back there, on the left. She’s standing next to Katie Grieco, wife of Terroir’s co-owner, Paul Grieco.
In Nation’s Restaurant News: NYC restaurants take top honors at Beard Awards
Plus: a slide show from Pam!
“Who are those two skinny fucking bastards?”
That was Myriad Restaurant Group chief Drew Nieporent, on stage at Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall on Monday for what some people insist on calling the Oscars of the restaurant world. They are, of course, the James Beard Foundation Awards, and they’re not the Oscars, not least because it’s perfectly fine for Drew to call Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich skinny fucking bastards at them. Because these are the awards for the restaurant industry, and restaurant people talk like that.
Well, not all of them. If Danny Meyer does talk like that, he doesn’t do so on stage.
Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich have trimmed down in recent years, especially Bastianich, and they had just announced that Drew had been named Restaurateur of the Year. So I imagine that Drew was giddy. I imagine that he also was sorely disappointed, because, minutes before, his restaurant Corton was not named best new restaurant. David Chang’s Momofuku Ko was. (I also imagine Drew reading this and asking me why I didn’t just call him and ask him how he felt, but that takes all the fun out of it).
“Next he’s going to say, ‘Fuck you. David Chang!‘” I said to John T. Edge, an extremely engaging man whom I’d never met before but whose company in the press room I availed myself of and enjoyed very much — particularly in the mysterious absence of Bon Appétit restaurant editor Andrew Knowlton, who had told me the night before at Chefs Night Out that he’d be in the press room.
And Drew pretty much did say that to David Chang, but much more tactfully, by saying the very hard-working chef, Corton’s Paul Liebrandt, deserved recognition.
These were my eleventh Beard awards, and I thought of skipping them. My boss, Pamela Parseghian, was there taking pictures, and I knew I’d get a press release in the morning listing the winners even if I didn’t feel like following any of the live tweets of the legion of people who were tweeting the winners (Lockhart Steele, looking unusually bleary eyed, was typing away at a laptop; and Amanda Kludt of Eater seemed to be alternately interviewing, blogging and tweeting, which is appropriate).
(I tweeted random observations until my cell phone died. you can follow my tweets here if you’re curious.)
But the Beard Awards are still a good party. And I like the fact that most of the chefs don’t seem to feel comfortable on stage. The men mostly look awkward in their tuxedos. The women mostly don’t look like they enjoy walking in heels. They’re back-of-the-house people and that’s where they feel most at home. And that’s why the Beard Awards always will be different from and better than the Oscars.
The press room has become something of a madhouse, although it was either less of a zoo this year or I simply anticipated that it would be more of a zoo than it was. While the audience in Avery Fisher Hall sat and starved over the several hours that the awards ceremony lasted (I lost track of time), we sampled cheese and drank cocktails, Champagne and coffee.
The awards are traditionally followed by a large reception, but this year, for some reason, they started serving early, and people left the ceremony without listening to the speech of Dan Barber, who at the end of the evening was named this year’s outstanding chef. I thought that was mighty rude.
I didn’t eat much at the reception, because I like to let the paying guests eat. I did have a cocktail, some wine, a bit of duck hot dog with foie gras mustard, some cheese and another nibble or two.
So I had a miniburger at the after-party in the basement of Bar Boulud, plus some cruditées and aïoli that were in a room on the left side of the basement. The middle room and the room on the right were packed, but for some reason people had stayed out of the room with the cruditées. It was strange.
Then I went with my new friend, food scientist and aspiring writer Rachel Zemser, and her brother Robert, to Terroir, which had been nominated for a design award but didn’t win.
Not to be dismayed so easily, they threw a party anyway, and I hung out with their operations manager, my friend and fellow Coloradan David Flaherty, husband of my other friend, Bullfrog & Baum’s own Katherine Bryant. That’s her back there, on the left. She’s standing next to Katie Grieco, wife of Terroir’s co-owner, Paul Grieco.In Nation’s Restaurant News: NYC restaurants take top honors at Beard Awards
Plus: a slide show from Pam!
Tuesday, May 05, 2009
Getting better
May 5 (happy birthday Mom!),
I did slightly better at predicting the Beard Award winners this year than I have in previous years. I guessed eight out of 19 correctly. For the previous two years I’d gotten seven right each year. So my batting average has gone from .368 to .421.
I guessed correctly that Jean Georges would be named outstanding restaurant, that Drew Nieporent would be named restaurateur of the year, that Momofuku Ko would win the best new restaurant award and that Le Bernardin would win for wine service. I correctly guessed that Tim McKee would win in the Midwest, Jose Garces in the Mid-Atlantic and Paul Bartolotta in the Southwest.
I hope to give you more observations once I finish my regular work. in the meantime, the full results for the restaurant awards can be found here, and the results for all of the awards (cookbooks, journalism etc.) are here.
I did slightly better at predicting the Beard Award winners this year than I have in previous years. I guessed eight out of 19 correctly. For the previous two years I’d gotten seven right each year. So my batting average has gone from .368 to .421.
I guessed correctly that Jean Georges would be named outstanding restaurant, that Drew Nieporent would be named restaurateur of the year, that Momofuku Ko would win the best new restaurant award and that Le Bernardin would win for wine service. I correctly guessed that Tim McKee would win in the Midwest, Jose Garces in the Mid-Atlantic and Paul Bartolotta in the Southwest.
I hope to give you more observations once I finish my regular work. in the meantime, the full results for the restaurant awards can be found here, and the results for all of the awards (cookbooks, journalism etc.) are here.
Friday, May 01, 2009
the new team at Gilt
May 1
Chris Day messed up his ankle. He was practicing some sort of Japanese sword play, as he does, and it gave out.
So he was hobbling around on crutches (quite ably, I must say) at Gilt, where he’s the restaurant director. He bound through the restaurant’s front door to greet me, escorted me to the bar, took my drink order (following his suggestion, I ordered the Mariposa, a sort of smoky Margarita made from high-end mezcal and flavored with candied violets).
I told him to get off his feet and go home. He could have told me that I’m not the boss of him, because of course I’m not, but he said he would leave soon. Then he continued to zip around the place, picking up dropped napkins and otherwise displaying considerable skill in maneuvering on crutches.
My guest, Yishane Lee, arrived 14 minutes late, except that she’d told me she’d be 15 minutes late, so she was right on time.
Chris escorted us to the dining room and introduced us to beverage director Patrick Cappiello.
Patrick had a lot to prove, because he was replacing the talented, engaging and quite tall Jason Ferris, who left to study for the master sommelier exam. I think he’s still looking for work, in case you’re looking to hire.
I think Patrick’s pretty tall, too, but I don’t really know because (a) I was seated most of the time when talking to him and (b) everyone seems tall to me.
Chris then took his leave, and I hope he went home.
Yishane — freelance writer, mom, and friend from my Bangkok days (which means we have known each other for 14 years, believe it or not) — and I were there to sample the food of Justin Bogle, who like Patrick had a lot to prove, as he replaces Chris Lee, a Food & Wine Best New Chef, James Beard Rising Star Chef, and fun person to drink with. He had been hired away to be executive chef of Aureole. Justin had worked under Chris Lee, and I expected his food to be similar, but it wasn’t, not at all.
Chris’s food, as I remember it, is comparatively earthy. Refined, but in an accessible, modern-American sort of way (click here if you’re curious to know what I ate at Gilt when Chris was the chef).
Justin’s food seemed more cerebral, with unusual flavor combinations and textures that in some ways harkened back to Chris’s predecessor, Paul Liebrandt, who is currently enjoying much more success as executive chef of Corton than he managed to do at Gilt.
Speaking of success, Gilt seemed to be doing fairly well. The dining room was about half full, which is good for New York these days, and the bar scene was hopping when Yishane and I left some time after 11.
11! you exclaim.
Well, we didn’t sit down until around 8:30, and Justin and Patrick (and pastry chef David Carmichael, who met Chris Lee when they both worked at Oceana) had quite an evening in store for us. So did Chris Day, who had left instructions to finish our meal with a tasting of five different teas. They were mostly oolongs, including an aged one, vintage 1994, but one was a Japanese sencha.
I’m not sure why Gilt’s tea menu hasn’t gotten more coverage than it has. It’s so much more extensive than any other tea menu I’ve ever seen, and that doesn’t even include the reserve tea menu, which they present if you ask for it. Chris Day is in charge of all of that.
What Justin Bogle, Patrick Capiello and David Carmichael did to us (I mean that in a good way):
Cured Wagyu beef with Parmesan gelato, pine nut dust and arugula
Crispy escargot with black truffle vinaigrette and parsley (and some sort of crushed mushroom and chocolate “dirt,” an addition that’s all the rage these days)
NV Pierre Peters Brut Blanc de Blancs, Le Mesnil-sur-Oger Champagne
Bay scallop ceviche with pink grapefruit, hearts of palm, ginger, yogurt and shiso
2007 Lafage Grenache Blanc, VDP, Roussillon, France (Patrick’s a big francophile, but he did serve us an Austrian Gruner Veltliner along with the Champage — a 2006 Sighardt Donabaum, “Aztberg” from Wachau)
English pea ravioli with ricotta, pickled ramps, speck, buttermilk and mint
2007 Weinbach Pinot Blanc reserve, Alsace, France
Halibut with spring vegetables, horseradish, oysters and American caviar
2007 Boisson Côtes du Rhone Villages Cairann “L’Exigence,” France
Pancetta spiced foie gras with kumquat mostarda, candied black olive, fennel and pine nut
2001 Cauhape Jurançon “Noblesse du Temps,” Southwest France
Lamb loin with wihte asparagus, Vadouvan, black sesame paste with squid ink, preserved lemon and duka flavored chick peas
2006 Luis & Michel Bronzo, Bandol, “Le Bastide Blanche” Provence, France
Strawberry sorbet with frozen buttermilk strawberries
Mint chocolate chip stacked with thin crispy meringue, topped with strega gelée and a fine mint chiffonade
Chocolate soufflé with caramelized chocolate almond cake
Neapolitan sundae
2006 Clos de Paulilles Banyuls, Roussillon, France
Chris Day messed up his ankle. He was practicing some sort of Japanese sword play, as he does, and it gave out.
So he was hobbling around on crutches (quite ably, I must say) at Gilt, where he’s the restaurant director. He bound through the restaurant’s front door to greet me, escorted me to the bar, took my drink order (following his suggestion, I ordered the Mariposa, a sort of smoky Margarita made from high-end mezcal and flavored with candied violets).
I told him to get off his feet and go home. He could have told me that I’m not the boss of him, because of course I’m not, but he said he would leave soon. Then he continued to zip around the place, picking up dropped napkins and otherwise displaying considerable skill in maneuvering on crutches.
My guest, Yishane Lee, arrived 14 minutes late, except that she’d told me she’d be 15 minutes late, so she was right on time.
Chris escorted us to the dining room and introduced us to beverage director Patrick Cappiello.
Patrick had a lot to prove, because he was replacing the talented, engaging and quite tall Jason Ferris, who left to study for the master sommelier exam. I think he’s still looking for work, in case you’re looking to hire.
I think Patrick’s pretty tall, too, but I don’t really know because (a) I was seated most of the time when talking to him and (b) everyone seems tall to me.
Chris then took his leave, and I hope he went home.
Yishane — freelance writer, mom, and friend from my Bangkok days (which means we have known each other for 14 years, believe it or not) — and I were there to sample the food of Justin Bogle, who like Patrick had a lot to prove, as he replaces Chris Lee, a Food & Wine Best New Chef, James Beard Rising Star Chef, and fun person to drink with. He had been hired away to be executive chef of Aureole. Justin had worked under Chris Lee, and I expected his food to be similar, but it wasn’t, not at all.
Chris’s food, as I remember it, is comparatively earthy. Refined, but in an accessible, modern-American sort of way (click here if you’re curious to know what I ate at Gilt when Chris was the chef).
Justin’s food seemed more cerebral, with unusual flavor combinations and textures that in some ways harkened back to Chris’s predecessor, Paul Liebrandt, who is currently enjoying much more success as executive chef of Corton than he managed to do at Gilt.
Speaking of success, Gilt seemed to be doing fairly well. The dining room was about half full, which is good for New York these days, and the bar scene was hopping when Yishane and I left some time after 11.
11! you exclaim.
Well, we didn’t sit down until around 8:30, and Justin and Patrick (and pastry chef David Carmichael, who met Chris Lee when they both worked at Oceana) had quite an evening in store for us. So did Chris Day, who had left instructions to finish our meal with a tasting of five different teas. They were mostly oolongs, including an aged one, vintage 1994, but one was a Japanese sencha.
I’m not sure why Gilt’s tea menu hasn’t gotten more coverage than it has. It’s so much more extensive than any other tea menu I’ve ever seen, and that doesn’t even include the reserve tea menu, which they present if you ask for it. Chris Day is in charge of all of that.
What Justin Bogle, Patrick Capiello and David Carmichael did to us (I mean that in a good way):
Cured Wagyu beef with Parmesan gelato, pine nut dust and arugula
Crispy escargot with black truffle vinaigrette and parsley (and some sort of crushed mushroom and chocolate “dirt,” an addition that’s all the rage these days)
NV Pierre Peters Brut Blanc de Blancs, Le Mesnil-sur-Oger Champagne
Bay scallop ceviche with pink grapefruit, hearts of palm, ginger, yogurt and shiso
2007 Lafage Grenache Blanc, VDP, Roussillon, France (Patrick’s a big francophile, but he did serve us an Austrian Gruner Veltliner along with the Champage — a 2006 Sighardt Donabaum, “Aztberg” from Wachau)
English pea ravioli with ricotta, pickled ramps, speck, buttermilk and mint
2007 Weinbach Pinot Blanc reserve, Alsace, France
Halibut with spring vegetables, horseradish, oysters and American caviar
2007 Boisson Côtes du Rhone Villages Cairann “L’Exigence,” France
Pancetta spiced foie gras with kumquat mostarda, candied black olive, fennel and pine nut
2001 Cauhape Jurançon “Noblesse du Temps,” Southwest France
Lamb loin with wihte asparagus, Vadouvan, black sesame paste with squid ink, preserved lemon and duka flavored chick peas
2006 Luis & Michel Bronzo, Bandol, “Le Bastide Blanche” Provence, France
Strawberry sorbet with frozen buttermilk strawberries
Mint chocolate chip stacked with thin crispy meringue, topped with strega gelée and a fine mint chiffonade
Chocolate soufflé with caramelized chocolate almond cake
Neapolitan sundae
2006 Clos de Paulilles Banyuls, Roussillon, France
Tru dat
April 30
“The table doesn’t make you. You make the table.”
Isn’t that a good line? That was Penny Trenk quoting Myriad Restaurant Group grand poobah Drew Nieporent. Penny loves going out, she loves restaurants, she loves having a good time, and she's never sat at a bad table. She doesn’t know what one looks like.
Neither do I. If you get to sit down and people bring you food and drink, that, to me, is a good table.
Last night Penny, one of Drew’s investors and more importantly an all-around great dining companion, and I were having dinner with about eight other people at table #5 at the James Beard House.
I’m pretty sure that I’ve sat at all ten dining room tables in the Beard House — including the long table #1 on the ground floor, and table #10 in the room with mirrored ceilings that was once James Beard’s bedroom (if you think mirrored ceilings are weird, don’t even ask me about the bathroom). I’ve eaten in the board room, too, and at the supplemental tables sometimes set in the foyer (or is it a parlor?). But usually I am seated at table #5, which is generally reserved for the press and/or friends of the restaurant.
Last night I was there to enjoy the food of Tru restaurant in Chicago. Chef-owner Rick Tramonto was there, although his business partner Gale Gand was in Louisville, making desserts for the Kentucky Derby.
But we were there to sample the culinary stylings of the restaurant’s executive chef, Tim Graham, and executive pastry chef Meg Galus. Tim Graham, apparently being a good Chicagoan, likes to play with the molecular gastronomy quite a little bit, so the Margherita Martini cocktail had a spherified globule of mozzarella floating in it that exploded in the mouth. Also on offer was a creamy apéritif that was supposed to taste like an Alsatian tarte flambée.
What else we ate and drank:
tête de cochon with truffle powder and lentil salad
white gazpacho with grape
smoked dome (that molecular gastronomy again) with cauliflower and caviar
charred fluke sashimi with corn pudding, pickled leeks, popcorn and nasturtium
2007 Auvique Cuvée Hors Classe Pouilly-Fuisseé
Artichoke consommé with spring flavors (that included cinnamon and mustard and a variety of other things you wouldn’t have expected — but not in a bad way)
Lustau Papirusa Manzanilla Sherry
olive oil-poached salmon with daikon noodles and long peppercorn jus
Duchesse de Bourgogne Brouwerije Verhaeghe (that’s a rich Belgian beer, much loved at my table)
Braised beef short rib with unagi, miso emulsion and scallion pistou
2004 Cadozos Tinta Fina y Pinot Noir
Smoked Valrhona guanaja crémeux with mandarin orange, vanilla salted hazelnut and stout caramel
1999 Château Pajzos Takaji Aszu 5 Puttonyos
Mignardises, including salted caramel, macaroons and pâte de fruit
“The table doesn’t make you. You make the table.”
Isn’t that a good line? That was Penny Trenk quoting Myriad Restaurant Group grand poobah Drew Nieporent. Penny loves going out, she loves restaurants, she loves having a good time, and she's never sat at a bad table. She doesn’t know what one looks like.
Neither do I. If you get to sit down and people bring you food and drink, that, to me, is a good table.
Last night Penny, one of Drew’s investors and more importantly an all-around great dining companion, and I were having dinner with about eight other people at table #5 at the James Beard House.
I’m pretty sure that I’ve sat at all ten dining room tables in the Beard House — including the long table #1 on the ground floor, and table #10 in the room with mirrored ceilings that was once James Beard’s bedroom (if you think mirrored ceilings are weird, don’t even ask me about the bathroom). I’ve eaten in the board room, too, and at the supplemental tables sometimes set in the foyer (or is it a parlor?). But usually I am seated at table #5, which is generally reserved for the press and/or friends of the restaurant.
Last night I was there to enjoy the food of Tru restaurant in Chicago. Chef-owner Rick Tramonto was there, although his business partner Gale Gand was in Louisville, making desserts for the Kentucky Derby.
But we were there to sample the culinary stylings of the restaurant’s executive chef, Tim Graham, and executive pastry chef Meg Galus. Tim Graham, apparently being a good Chicagoan, likes to play with the molecular gastronomy quite a little bit, so the Margherita Martini cocktail had a spherified globule of mozzarella floating in it that exploded in the mouth. Also on offer was a creamy apéritif that was supposed to taste like an Alsatian tarte flambée.
What else we ate and drank:
tête de cochon with truffle powder and lentil salad
white gazpacho with grape
smoked dome (that molecular gastronomy again) with cauliflower and caviar
charred fluke sashimi with corn pudding, pickled leeks, popcorn and nasturtium
2007 Auvique Cuvée Hors Classe Pouilly-Fuisseé
Artichoke consommé with spring flavors (that included cinnamon and mustard and a variety of other things you wouldn’t have expected — but not in a bad way)
Lustau Papirusa Manzanilla Sherry
olive oil-poached salmon with daikon noodles and long peppercorn jus
Duchesse de Bourgogne Brouwerije Verhaeghe (that’s a rich Belgian beer, much loved at my table)
Braised beef short rib with unagi, miso emulsion and scallion pistou
2004 Cadozos Tinta Fina y Pinot Noir
Smoked Valrhona guanaja crémeux with mandarin orange, vanilla salted hazelnut and stout caramel
1999 Château Pajzos Takaji Aszu 5 Puttonyos
Mignardises, including salted caramel, macaroons and pâte de fruit
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Fusia at Luxor closed
April 30
Two e-mails about restaurants closing in one day. What a drag. And unusual. Restaurants love to tell you when they’re opening, but they usually close quietly.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 30, 2009
Listing Information
Name: Luxor
Address: 3900 Las Vegas Blvd. South
Las Vegas, NV 89119
Phone: (702) 262-4000
Toll Free: (800) 557-7428
Website Address: www.luxor.com <http://www.luxor.com/>
FUSIA AT LUXOR CLOSED
Effective Immediately
Fusia at Luxor is permanently closed. Future plans for the space will be released at a later date. Please remove Fusia from all listings.
Two e-mails about restaurants closing in one day. What a drag. And unusual. Restaurants love to tell you when they’re opening, but they usually close quietly.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 30, 2009
Listing Information
Name: Luxor
Address: 3900 Las Vegas Blvd. South
Las Vegas, NV 89119
Phone: (702) 262-4000
Toll Free: (800) 557-7428
Website Address: www.luxor.com <http://www.luxor.com/>
FUSIA AT LUXOR CLOSED
Effective Immediately
Fusia at Luxor is permanently closed. Future plans for the space will be released at a later date. Please remove Fusia from all listings.
Atria closed
April 30
Damn it! I really liked this place:
To All Our Friends,
Thank you for all your support. We are all very proud of Atria. Unfortunately, Atria is no longer open. Please direct all questions to the following people:
Accounts Payable: Main Street Restaurant Group 212.223.6432
All Other: Adam Landsman adamslandsman@gmail.com
Kind Regards,
All of us from Atria
It was in the space that once was Aquavit, and then became Grayz, and for a short while was Atria, serving delicious sausages and assorted Asian-inflected central European fare by chef Martin Brock. Good cocktails, too.
Damn it! I really liked this place:
To All Our Friends,
Thank you for all your support. We are all very proud of Atria. Unfortunately, Atria is no longer open. Please direct all questions to the following people:
Accounts Payable: Main Street Restaurant Group 212.223.6432
All Other: Adam Landsman adamslandsman@gmail.com
Kind Regards,
All of us from Atria
It was in the space that once was Aquavit, and then became Grayz, and for a short while was Atria, serving delicious sausages and assorted Asian-inflected central European fare by chef Martin Brock. Good cocktails, too.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Thanks for coming
April 28
Food Writer’s Diary is enjoying robust traffic today, thanks to links from the talented and I’m just going to go ahead and say good-looking people at Eater, Grub Street, Midtown Lunch, Cityfile and elsewhere, so I’d like to take the opportunity to welcome new visitors, ask one and all to participate in the poll on the right of this page, and to be as kind to strangers as is reasonable.
I’d love to write a fascinating new blog entry today, but I’m on 19 different deadlines and am about to be late for a staff meeting, so instead, and in honor of iced coffee season, here’s a link to a blog entry of yesteryear about the language of Starbucks and assorted other things. It’s not too long, and it’s an enjoyable read. I would add a coda, and that’s just a mention of the new Comedy Central show, Kröd Mändoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire, showing that the use of redundancy in language as a humorous device continues.
Food Writer’s Diary is enjoying robust traffic today, thanks to links from the talented and I’m just going to go ahead and say good-looking people at Eater, Grub Street, Midtown Lunch, Cityfile and elsewhere, so I’d like to take the opportunity to welcome new visitors, ask one and all to participate in the poll on the right of this page, and to be as kind to strangers as is reasonable.
I’d love to write a fascinating new blog entry today, but I’m on 19 different deadlines and am about to be late for a staff meeting, so instead, and in honor of iced coffee season, here’s a link to a blog entry of yesteryear about the language of Starbucks and assorted other things. It’s not too long, and it’s an enjoyable read. I would add a coda, and that’s just a mention of the new Comedy Central show, Kröd Mändoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire, showing that the use of redundancy in language as a humorous device continues.
Monday, April 27, 2009
off the record
April 27
If someone tells you something in confidence, it’s in confidence. You have to respect that or you’re a jerk. I’ve had colleagues in the past who have insisted that we shouldn’t have off the record conversations at all, because they just get you into trouble. But sometimes interviewees let things out that you can talk about, and that’s how I learned of the tentative opening date (okay, opening week) of New York City’s first ever Baja Fresh, at 465 Lexington Ave. (between 45th and 46th streets if Google Maps is to be believed). If all goes as planned, Qdoba and Chipotle will have new competition starting the week of May 11.
Mark your calendars.
April 30 update: I guess all didn't go as planned, as Eater.com is now reporting that Baja Fresh won’t be opening until the week of the 19th at the earliest. No big shocker there — the only New York restaurant I can recall opening on time was the original Tasting Room.
If someone tells you something in confidence, it’s in confidence. You have to respect that or you’re a jerk. I’ve had colleagues in the past who have insisted that we shouldn’t have off the record conversations at all, because they just get you into trouble. But sometimes interviewees let things out that you can talk about, and that’s how I learned of the tentative opening date (okay, opening week) of New York City’s first ever Baja Fresh, at 465 Lexington Ave. (between 45th and 46th streets if Google Maps is to be believed). If all goes as planned, Qdoba and Chipotle will have new competition starting the week of May 11.
Mark your calendars.
April 30 update: I guess all didn't go as planned, as Eater.com is now reporting that Baja Fresh won’t be opening until the week of the 19th at the earliest. No big shocker there — the only New York restaurant I can recall opening on time was the original Tasting Room.
Marcus in the kitchen, at Aquavit, on Monday, during lunch
April 27
Marcus Samuelsson was actually in the kitchen at Aquavit, on Monday, during lunch.
That might sound a little condescending, but Marcus is the chef-owner of Aquavit, not the executive chef (that would be the able and always-gracious Johan Svensson), so he doesn't really need to be there.
But he came out, said hello and chatted a bit with me and my lunch companions, publicist Jeffrey Ward and chef Rodelio Aglibot. Jeffrey's from Rockit Ranch Productions, a restaurant company based in the Chicago area. One of its newer restaurants is Sunda, where Rodelio's the chef. He calls his food “New Asian,” which he thinks sounds less hackneyed than "pan-Asian" and less lame than "fusion," and I think he's right.
I'd interviewed Rodelio before, when he was at Yi Cuisine in Los Angeles, and he always was doing interesting things with food
(sweet avocado mousse with lychee sorbet and raspberry sauce, garnished with candied jalapeño; eggs benedict with kurobuta pork adobo, instead of Canadian bacon, in puff pastry — this was back in 2004-2005), so it was good to finally meet him.
He's about to add a lunch menu that will have ramen and his own take on such Hawaiian items as plate lunch and loco moco. He also does a great-sounding Thai fried chicken, which he marinates in coconut milk with various Thai flavors, simmers it to an internal temperature of 160, and then coats it in rice flour and deep fries it.
But today, this is what I ate:
chilled watercress soup with tuna tartare, watermelon, egg and caviar
a mid-course sent out by Marcus of braised short ribs with leeks, pumpkin seed pesto and sweet potato
Gravlax and shrimp sandwich with avocado, egg and espresso mustard sauce,
then we split an Arctic Circle (goat cheese parfait with blueberry sorbet and passionfruit curd)
and I finished it off with an expresso.
Marcus Samuelsson was actually in the kitchen at Aquavit, on Monday, during lunch.
That might sound a little condescending, but Marcus is the chef-owner of Aquavit, not the executive chef (that would be the able and always-gracious Johan Svensson), so he doesn't really need to be there.
But he came out, said hello and chatted a bit with me and my lunch companions, publicist Jeffrey Ward and chef Rodelio Aglibot. Jeffrey's from Rockit Ranch Productions, a restaurant company based in the Chicago area. One of its newer restaurants is Sunda, where Rodelio's the chef. He calls his food “New Asian,” which he thinks sounds less hackneyed than "pan-Asian" and less lame than "fusion," and I think he's right.
I'd interviewed Rodelio before, when he was at Yi Cuisine in Los Angeles, and he always was doing interesting things with food
(sweet avocado mousse with lychee sorbet and raspberry sauce, garnished with candied jalapeño; eggs benedict with kurobuta pork adobo, instead of Canadian bacon, in puff pastry — this was back in 2004-2005), so it was good to finally meet him.
He's about to add a lunch menu that will have ramen and his own take on such Hawaiian items as plate lunch and loco moco. He also does a great-sounding Thai fried chicken, which he marinates in coconut milk with various Thai flavors, simmers it to an internal temperature of 160, and then coats it in rice flour and deep fries it.
But today, this is what I ate:
chilled watercress soup with tuna tartare, watermelon, egg and caviar
a mid-course sent out by Marcus of braised short ribs with leeks, pumpkin seed pesto and sweet potato
Gravlax and shrimp sandwich with avocado, egg and espresso mustard sauce,
then we split an Arctic Circle (goat cheese parfait with blueberry sorbet and passionfruit curd)
and I finished it off with an expresso.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Absinthe at l’Absinthe
April 24
Fox News and a Zen Buddhist temple are both on the same street as l'Absinthe, an old-school Upper East Side French restaurant that last night had a tasting of the liqueur after which the restaurant is named, the one that once was banned, ostensibly because of the thujone in the wormwood used to make it, but that was really hip among 19th Century Parisian artists and is now hip among hipster wannabes, but among some cool people as well.
I imagine the restaurant gets more business from the network than the temple, although I couldn’t tell last night, when before the 9pm tasting I had dinner with two of L'Absinthe’s publicists.
The restaurant was about half full, which isn’t bad.
We spoke mostly of simple things, like reality television, although as more people arrived and the Absinthe tasting began the subject moved on to other things, although I’m not sure what, because I drank something like six Absinthes, administered by our able server, Steve Bucheli.
I woke miraculously without a hangover.
What I ate and drank (besides Absinthe):
2006 Newton Chardonnay
Guacamole terrine with salmon tartare and poached lobster
duck foie gras seared with mango
2005 Hautes-Côtes de Nuits
pan-seared skate with pine nuts and capers, served with seared zucchini and confit tomato skin
braised chicken paillard with white wine and truffle
Apple tarte.
Fox News and a Zen Buddhist temple are both on the same street as l'Absinthe, an old-school Upper East Side French restaurant that last night had a tasting of the liqueur after which the restaurant is named, the one that once was banned, ostensibly because of the thujone in the wormwood used to make it, but that was really hip among 19th Century Parisian artists and is now hip among hipster wannabes, but among some cool people as well.
I imagine the restaurant gets more business from the network than the temple, although I couldn’t tell last night, when before the 9pm tasting I had dinner with two of L'Absinthe’s publicists.
The restaurant was about half full, which isn’t bad.
We spoke mostly of simple things, like reality television, although as more people arrived and the Absinthe tasting began the subject moved on to other things, although I’m not sure what, because I drank something like six Absinthes, administered by our able server, Steve Bucheli.
I woke miraculously without a hangover.
What I ate and drank (besides Absinthe):
2006 Newton Chardonnay
Guacamole terrine with salmon tartare and poached lobster
duck foie gras seared with mango
2005 Hautes-Côtes de Nuits
pan-seared skate with pine nuts and capers, served with seared zucchini and confit tomato skin
braised chicken paillard with white wine and truffle
Apple tarte.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
First City Harvest, then narcissism
April 23
Yesterday was my birthday, so it seems like a good moment to be briefly narcissistic. I would have been narcissistic last night, but instead I attended a fundraiser for City Harvest, a very nice organization that tries to feed New York's growing ranks of hungry people. Since I am the opposite of hungry, navel-gazing was simply out of the question.
My boss, Pam Parseghian, and I were last-minute guests at the American Express table. Some people find it undignified to be invited to events at the last minute, but as American Express' restaurant liaison, the always dapper Hans Lindh, pointed out, NRN and American Express have a good relationship.
Besides, it’s not exactly a hardship to sit with good company (Hans, a couple of editors from Food & Wine — which as you might know is owned by American Express — and other good people, including perhaps the greatest publicist on earth, Daniel Boulud’s own Georgette Farkas) and be moved by speeches and videos about feeding hungry people.
In the picture above and on the right, which Pam took, are (left to right) Food & Wine editor-in-chief Dana Cowin with Hans and Georgette.
New York is in the grips of the worst recession in memory, but the attendees of the dinner seemed to be doing all right. One of them bid $45,000 for a dinner for 26 people to be cooked by Eric Ripert in their home.
When auctioneer George McNeely and the recently crowned Miss USA, Kristen Dalton from North Carolina, asked people to raise a hand if they wanted to give $500 to City Harvest’s Drivers Fund, for the people who deliver the food, 55 people raised their hands. That was more than 10 percent of the audience, and of course it means they raised $27,500, just like that. Those are the drivers, above and to the left. Pam took that picture, too.
here’s a link to some more pictures of the event.
Here’s another link,
and here’s a third one.
Okay, and now a little narcissism, in the form of my next poll.
Food Writer’s Diary readers were not too excited about my last poll, asking them what the biggest trend was in Spanish cuisine in the United States, but the results were conclusive:
Ingredients from Spain 0 (0%)
Peasant cooking 1 (9%)
Molecular gastronomy (Ferran Adrià and others) 0 (0%)
Tapas 9 (81%)
Traditional dishes 1 (9%
So let’s talk about me, or more accurately, my blog. My next question is, which type of Food Writer’s Diary entries do you prefer most?
Obviously, comments are welcome below as well.
Yesterday was my birthday, so it seems like a good moment to be briefly narcissistic. I would have been narcissistic last night, but instead I attended a fundraiser for City Harvest, a very nice organization that tries to feed New York's growing ranks of hungry people. Since I am the opposite of hungry, navel-gazing was simply out of the question.
My boss, Pam Parseghian, and I were last-minute guests at the American Express table. Some people find it undignified to be invited to events at the last minute, but as American Express' restaurant liaison, the always dapper Hans Lindh, pointed out, NRN and American Express have a good relationship.
Besides, it’s not exactly a hardship to sit with good company (Hans, a couple of editors from Food & Wine — which as you might know is owned by American Express — and other good people, including perhaps the greatest publicist on earth, Daniel Boulud’s own Georgette Farkas) and be moved by speeches and videos about feeding hungry people.
In the picture above and on the right, which Pam took, are (left to right) Food & Wine editor-in-chief Dana Cowin with Hans and Georgette.
New York is in the grips of the worst recession in memory, but the attendees of the dinner seemed to be doing all right. One of them bid $45,000 for a dinner for 26 people to be cooked by Eric Ripert in their home.
When auctioneer George McNeely and the recently crowned Miss USA, Kristen Dalton from North Carolina, asked people to raise a hand if they wanted to give $500 to City Harvest’s Drivers Fund, for the people who deliver the food, 55 people raised their hands. That was more than 10 percent of the audience, and of course it means they raised $27,500, just like that. Those are the drivers, above and to the left. Pam took that picture, too.here’s a link to some more pictures of the event.
Here’s another link,
and here’s a third one.
Okay, and now a little narcissism, in the form of my next poll.
Food Writer’s Diary readers were not too excited about my last poll, asking them what the biggest trend was in Spanish cuisine in the United States, but the results were conclusive:
Ingredients from Spain 0 (0%)
Peasant cooking 1 (9%)
Molecular gastronomy (Ferran Adrià and others) 0 (0%)
Tapas 9 (81%)
Traditional dishes 1 (9%
So let’s talk about me, or more accurately, my blog. My next question is, which type of Food Writer’s Diary entries do you prefer most?
Obviously, comments are welcome below as well.
Friday, April 17, 2009
Smiling at tragedy
April 17
We Jews are well known for our sense of humor — wry, ironic, self-deprecating. Except for when it comes to the Holocaust. The Holocaust isn’t funny, and we know very well to be somber when it’s mentioned. Once someone says “Treblinka,” you can’t joke anymore.
In the West that seems obvious and self-evident, but many people do laugh at tragedy. Go to China and watch movies that have scenes from the Cultural Revolution, the period from 1966 to around 1972 when chaos reigned. Schools were closed, precious artifacts were destroyed, people were tortured, humiliated, exiled to the countryside, driven to suicide, and society in general was in the grip of a combination of personality worship, paranoia, mass hysteria and other things that I don't understand.
But watch those movies with a Chinese audience, and they will laugh uproariously.
When I was a student in China, I asked one of my professors about that and she said that it just all seemed so absurd and ridiculous. Even though she was there and remembers it well, she laughed about it.
“Oh, silly, silly us, torturing and humiliating each other. Ha ha ha ha ha."
I was reminded of that last night at the 2nd Annual Taste of Southeast Asia, a celebration of the Therevada Buddhist New Year (celebrated in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar — and presumably in the Xishaungbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture of China’s Yunnan province) and a fundraiser for Khmer Legacies, an organization whose mission is to remember the 1975-79 genocide in Cambodia, when it was estimated that between one million and two million people were killed.
That was in a country of around eight million people.
Khmer Legacies is doing that by videotaping the younger generation of Cambodians interviewing their parents about the genocide, with the goal of collecting thousands of stories that bear witness to the atrocities of that period.
It was a fun party. Cedric Tovar, former chef of Peacock Alley, was there helping out. He says he’s negotiating a lease for his own restaurant and hopes the ink will be dry in a few weeks. If all goes as planned, it will be a relatively small, neighborhood place featuring the sort of French-influenced modern American cuisine de chef that you’d expect from him. Singha beer from Thailand (it’s pronounced “Sing”; the “ha” is silent — just trust me on this) was being poured on the ground flour while Beer Lao was available in the basement, along with really hard-core authentic Southeast Asian food, including a sort of Thai/Lao beef jerky called neua taet tio (which basically means sun-dried beef), a chile-and-lime marinated shrimp, green curry with tofu (tofu is not a traditional protein in green curry, but you have to give the vegetarians something to eat, and one of the sponsors sells a lot of tofu), curry puffs and assorted steamed and pan-fried dumplings, as well as a pre-packaged dessert that was simply unsweetened coconut and coconut jelly frozen and served in coconut shells.
Upstairs with the Singha were Vietnamese spring rolls, a hamburger served with hoisin sauce and mango, and assorted other goodies. I also sampled the first carbonated green tea I’d ever seen. It was flavored with jasmine and sweetened with sugar cane syrup. It was tasty and refreshing.
I met American film makers who had lived in Cambodia for four years, talked about opium with a young Jewish lawyer, and otherwise mingled with an interesting cosmopolitan crowd.
The emcee for the evening was my friend Jamie Tiampo, who you’d probably like, because he’s a sweet guy.
When it was time for the evening’s presentation, he bounded on-stage, all smiles, welcomed everyone and talked cheerily about Khmer Legacies and how it was appropriate to have a fundraiser for it during the Buddhist New Year because it was during that period that the Khmer Rouge marched into Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Pehn, in 1975, completing its takeover of the country and (he didn’t say this) beginning its ruthless extermination of intellectuals, people who wore glasses, anyone who spoke a foreign language and basically anyone who they felt like killing.
I thought his ebullient, good-natured approach to the whole thing was a tad inappropriate until he introduced Khmer Legacies founder Socheata Poeuv, who showed a video of one of the interviews she was collecting.
A woman spoke of the Khmer Rouge takeover of Phnom Penh and its inhabitants' forced march into the countryside. She said even the hospitals were emptied, and invalids were crawling on the ground until they couldn’t go on. She said everyone just expected to die.
Then the video switched to the daughter of the woman who had been interviewed, who was all smiles and just delighted that she’d had a chance to learn about all of those things from her mother.
Yay!
What can I say? People deal with tragedy differently.
I went downstairs for more Beer Lao and met a young Thai-American NYU student who had formed an organization to encourage Asian women to be more expressive — to speak their minds more and stop second-guessing themselves.
That’s a worthy cause. I’ve met plenty of East Asian women both in North America and in East Asia who are whip-smart but who hesitate to express their opinions in public. It’s a cultural thing, but I think it can be a hindrance in these women achieving their full potential. She wanted to meet Jamie, so I took her upstairs to introduce them, and we both met a young Sino-Indonesian who worked for an advertising agency but who also was an independent film maker.
I asked if he were Hokkien, and he acted impressed that I knew that most of the Chinese in Indonesia (and Malaysia and the Philippines, for that matter) were Hokkien. It turns out that he’s half Hokkien and half Taechiew. The latter make up the bulk of the Chinese population in Thailand’s central plains, while the Hokkien are the dominant group in southern Thailand. That country also has plenty of Hainanese and Hakkas.
Anyway, one thing led to another and for some reason I talked about the cultural divide that splits Southeast Asia into two regions, the Buddhist north and the Muslim south. The border actually runs through Thailand, which has a population that’s something like 95 percent Buddhist, but its five southernmost provinces are majority-Muslim.
The young Thai-American woman was about to say something but then stopped. I chastised her and asked if her entire organization wasn’t about getting Asian women to speak their mind, so she said she was going to joke that that cultural divide was why everyone in Muslim Southeast Asia should be killed.
“Nice,” I said (sarcastically, obviously). “Nice joke at a genocide party.”
Sometimes self-censorship is a good thing.
We Jews are well known for our sense of humor — wry, ironic, self-deprecating. Except for when it comes to the Holocaust. The Holocaust isn’t funny, and we know very well to be somber when it’s mentioned. Once someone says “Treblinka,” you can’t joke anymore.
In the West that seems obvious and self-evident, but many people do laugh at tragedy. Go to China and watch movies that have scenes from the Cultural Revolution, the period from 1966 to around 1972 when chaos reigned. Schools were closed, precious artifacts were destroyed, people were tortured, humiliated, exiled to the countryside, driven to suicide, and society in general was in the grip of a combination of personality worship, paranoia, mass hysteria and other things that I don't understand.
But watch those movies with a Chinese audience, and they will laugh uproariously.
When I was a student in China, I asked one of my professors about that and she said that it just all seemed so absurd and ridiculous. Even though she was there and remembers it well, she laughed about it.
“Oh, silly, silly us, torturing and humiliating each other. Ha ha ha ha ha."
I was reminded of that last night at the 2nd Annual Taste of Southeast Asia, a celebration of the Therevada Buddhist New Year (celebrated in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar — and presumably in the Xishaungbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture of China’s Yunnan province) and a fundraiser for Khmer Legacies, an organization whose mission is to remember the 1975-79 genocide in Cambodia, when it was estimated that between one million and two million people were killed.
That was in a country of around eight million people.
Khmer Legacies is doing that by videotaping the younger generation of Cambodians interviewing their parents about the genocide, with the goal of collecting thousands of stories that bear witness to the atrocities of that period.
It was a fun party. Cedric Tovar, former chef of Peacock Alley, was there helping out. He says he’s negotiating a lease for his own restaurant and hopes the ink will be dry in a few weeks. If all goes as planned, it will be a relatively small, neighborhood place featuring the sort of French-influenced modern American cuisine de chef that you’d expect from him. Singha beer from Thailand (it’s pronounced “Sing”; the “ha” is silent — just trust me on this) was being poured on the ground flour while Beer Lao was available in the basement, along with really hard-core authentic Southeast Asian food, including a sort of Thai/Lao beef jerky called neua taet tio (which basically means sun-dried beef), a chile-and-lime marinated shrimp, green curry with tofu (tofu is not a traditional protein in green curry, but you have to give the vegetarians something to eat, and one of the sponsors sells a lot of tofu), curry puffs and assorted steamed and pan-fried dumplings, as well as a pre-packaged dessert that was simply unsweetened coconut and coconut jelly frozen and served in coconut shells.
Upstairs with the Singha were Vietnamese spring rolls, a hamburger served with hoisin sauce and mango, and assorted other goodies. I also sampled the first carbonated green tea I’d ever seen. It was flavored with jasmine and sweetened with sugar cane syrup. It was tasty and refreshing.
I met American film makers who had lived in Cambodia for four years, talked about opium with a young Jewish lawyer, and otherwise mingled with an interesting cosmopolitan crowd.
The emcee for the evening was my friend Jamie Tiampo, who you’d probably like, because he’s a sweet guy.
When it was time for the evening’s presentation, he bounded on-stage, all smiles, welcomed everyone and talked cheerily about Khmer Legacies and how it was appropriate to have a fundraiser for it during the Buddhist New Year because it was during that period that the Khmer Rouge marched into Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Pehn, in 1975, completing its takeover of the country and (he didn’t say this) beginning its ruthless extermination of intellectuals, people who wore glasses, anyone who spoke a foreign language and basically anyone who they felt like killing.
I thought his ebullient, good-natured approach to the whole thing was a tad inappropriate until he introduced Khmer Legacies founder Socheata Poeuv, who showed a video of one of the interviews she was collecting.
A woman spoke of the Khmer Rouge takeover of Phnom Penh and its inhabitants' forced march into the countryside. She said even the hospitals were emptied, and invalids were crawling on the ground until they couldn’t go on. She said everyone just expected to die.
Then the video switched to the daughter of the woman who had been interviewed, who was all smiles and just delighted that she’d had a chance to learn about all of those things from her mother.
Yay!
What can I say? People deal with tragedy differently.
I went downstairs for more Beer Lao and met a young Thai-American NYU student who had formed an organization to encourage Asian women to be more expressive — to speak their minds more and stop second-guessing themselves.
That’s a worthy cause. I’ve met plenty of East Asian women both in North America and in East Asia who are whip-smart but who hesitate to express their opinions in public. It’s a cultural thing, but I think it can be a hindrance in these women achieving their full potential. She wanted to meet Jamie, so I took her upstairs to introduce them, and we both met a young Sino-Indonesian who worked for an advertising agency but who also was an independent film maker.
I asked if he were Hokkien, and he acted impressed that I knew that most of the Chinese in Indonesia (and Malaysia and the Philippines, for that matter) were Hokkien. It turns out that he’s half Hokkien and half Taechiew. The latter make up the bulk of the Chinese population in Thailand’s central plains, while the Hokkien are the dominant group in southern Thailand. That country also has plenty of Hainanese and Hakkas.
Anyway, one thing led to another and for some reason I talked about the cultural divide that splits Southeast Asia into two regions, the Buddhist north and the Muslim south. The border actually runs through Thailand, which has a population that’s something like 95 percent Buddhist, but its five southernmost provinces are majority-Muslim.
The young Thai-American woman was about to say something but then stopped. I chastised her and asked if her entire organization wasn’t about getting Asian women to speak their mind, so she said she was going to joke that that cultural divide was why everyone in Muslim Southeast Asia should be killed.
“Nice,” I said (sarcastically, obviously). “Nice joke at a genocide party.”
Sometimes self-censorship is a good thing.
Monday, April 13, 2009
A very Top Chef Passover
April 13
Regular readers of this blog will know Top Chef and other shows that have created legions of fans that seem more interested in celebrity than food. My cousins don’t care much what I think of the broader effects of the celebrity phenomenon on food in America, but they sure like Top Chef.
Cousin Nancy Brodovsky (née Lackner) can’t get enough of it, nor can young Yael Kornfeld.
We were all in Denver at the home of Yael’s uncle Richard (my first cousin, and Nancy’s but from opposite sides of the family tree) for Passover.
It’s the custom in many Jewish families to discuss the Haggadah, the book from which we read the Passover story, at length, interrupting whenever a question arises. For the entire Passover seder is intended to be a learning experience.
That’s definitely the custom in my family. In fact, we discuss everything, whether it’s during a seder or not, at length, interrupting whenever a question arises. For life is intended to be a learning experience (and because we all tend to have strong opinions and were never encouraged to keep them to ourselves).
So some of us also debated Top Chef.
I don’t watch the show, but I’m rather familiar with it because I’m in the food world, just like I don’t ski but, being from Colorado, I know how to say things like, “that was some sweet powder.”
I think the fact that I know who many of the chefs are on the show but have no idea what kind of food they cook illustrates my problem with it — that it stresses personality over food.
Ah, cousin Joe Levi said, but when eating in a restaurant the ambience is important, right?
Joe’s an architect, so he thinks about things like that.
And the presentation of the food, and the lighting and the music? Can’t the personality of the chef also be a factor in the enjoyment of the meal?
He has a point.
Yael is the third daughter of Tom Kornfeld and his wife Sarah. He is Richard’s older brother. Their oldest brother is artist Doug Kornfeld, who lives in Cambridge, Mass., and would have been at the seder, but he hurt his back. So Yael’s little brother, 10-year-old David, brought his laptop and set up a video link, allowing Doug and his wife Susan to enjoy the festivities.
Richard, who has hosted a family seder for years now, insisted that this was not intended as a new tradition.
Regular readers of this blog will know Top Chef and other shows that have created legions of fans that seem more interested in celebrity than food. My cousins don’t care much what I think of the broader effects of the celebrity phenomenon on food in America, but they sure like Top Chef.
Cousin Nancy Brodovsky (née Lackner) can’t get enough of it, nor can young Yael Kornfeld.
We were all in Denver at the home of Yael’s uncle Richard (my first cousin, and Nancy’s but from opposite sides of the family tree) for Passover.
It’s the custom in many Jewish families to discuss the Haggadah, the book from which we read the Passover story, at length, interrupting whenever a question arises. For the entire Passover seder is intended to be a learning experience.
That’s definitely the custom in my family. In fact, we discuss everything, whether it’s during a seder or not, at length, interrupting whenever a question arises. For life is intended to be a learning experience (and because we all tend to have strong opinions and were never encouraged to keep them to ourselves).
So some of us also debated Top Chef.
I don’t watch the show, but I’m rather familiar with it because I’m in the food world, just like I don’t ski but, being from Colorado, I know how to say things like, “that was some sweet powder.”
I think the fact that I know who many of the chefs are on the show but have no idea what kind of food they cook illustrates my problem with it — that it stresses personality over food.
Ah, cousin Joe Levi said, but when eating in a restaurant the ambience is important, right?
Joe’s an architect, so he thinks about things like that.
And the presentation of the food, and the lighting and the music? Can’t the personality of the chef also be a factor in the enjoyment of the meal?
He has a point.
Yael is the third daughter of Tom Kornfeld and his wife Sarah. He is Richard’s older brother. Their oldest brother is artist Doug Kornfeld, who lives in Cambridge, Mass., and would have been at the seder, but he hurt his back. So Yael’s little brother, 10-year-old David, brought his laptop and set up a video link, allowing Doug and his wife Susan to enjoy the festivities.
Richard, who has hosted a family seder for years now, insisted that this was not intended as a new tradition.
What are you doing with Spanish food?
April 13
In my latest poll, I’d like to help out my boss, Pamela Parseghian, who's working on an article about Spanish cuisine and how it’s being interpreted in professional American kitchens.
So, if you’re a chef who's doing something interesting with Spanish food, e-mail her by Wednesday, April 15.
Whether you’re a chef or not, feel free to respond to this week’s poll about Spanish food.
Below are the results of last week’s poll. You might notice that there are 17 responses from just 16 people. That’s because I let peole vote more than once.
WHAT DO YOU THINK THE END OF THE RECESSION WILL BE MARKED BY IN FOODSERVICE?
A totally different foodservice landscape: 3 (18%)
A return to the modest growth patterns of the recent past: 7 (43%)
Consumers trading up: 4 (25%)
A resurgence in menu innovation: 3 (18%)
Total Votes: 16
A new, proper blog entry is on its way soon. My apologies for my reticence of late.
In my latest poll, I’d like to help out my boss, Pamela Parseghian, who's working on an article about Spanish cuisine and how it’s being interpreted in professional American kitchens.
So, if you’re a chef who's doing something interesting with Spanish food, e-mail her by Wednesday, April 15.
Whether you’re a chef or not, feel free to respond to this week’s poll about Spanish food.
Below are the results of last week’s poll. You might notice that there are 17 responses from just 16 people. That’s because I let peole vote more than once.
WHAT DO YOU THINK THE END OF THE RECESSION WILL BE MARKED BY IN FOODSERVICE?
A totally different foodservice landscape: 3 (18%)
A return to the modest growth patterns of the recent past: 7 (43%)
Consumers trading up: 4 (25%)
A resurgence in menu innovation: 3 (18%)
Total Votes: 16
A new, proper blog entry is on its way soon. My apologies for my reticence of late.
Friday, April 03, 2009
York Grill
March 4
One of the benefits of this crappy economy is that it’s easier to get high-powered food writers like me to show up at events.
Okay, maybe not food writers like me, because it has never been hard to get me to show up at events, but you didn’t used to see people like Jane Sigal and Lettie Teague at Susan Rike’s dinners.
Susan’s way of introducing food writers to her clients is to invite a handful of them to sit around at a table at one of her client’s restaurants, eat a meal and meet the chef.
I have met many interesting people at these dinners over the years, including big-time players like Amanda Hesser and James Oliver Cury.
But usually my fellow guests are an eclectic mix of not-so-big names from across the board, quite often including one or more of the young women newly arrived at the revolving door that is Star Chefs (not to say that it can't be a fine jumping off point).
It is rare, indeed, to see two people of Jane’s and Lettie’s caliber at such a dinner, especially if the restaurant that Susan is showcasing is an old neighborhood place like York Grill.
There’s nothing wrong with old neighborhood places like York Grill, but it can be challenging to get big-name writers to cross their thresholds
So after the departure of Jane and Lettie and that evening’s other guest, food writer, cookbook author and Bay Ridge dining scene expert Marian Betancourt (she says Gino’s in that neighborhood is the best Italian restaurant in Brooklyn), I asked Susan if it was easier to get the A-list writers to come to her dinner parties these days, and she said emphatically that it was.
I’m not exactly sure why that is. Lettie’s status recently changed from staff member to freelancer (her wine blog is about to debut on Robert Parker’s web site, by the way), but Jane has been a freelancer for years now.
You might surmise that we were being invited to fewer events these days, but if my e-mail inbox and calendar are any indication, that’s not the case.
Maybe it's the new generosity of spirit in the air that I wrote about awhile back that makes us feel like if we’ve been invited out the only decent thing to do is to accept.
I don't have the answer, but it’s a phenomenon worth noting.
What we ate:
House-made gorgonzola-potato gnocchi tossed with blistered grape tomatoes and baby spinach in light Chardonnay broth topped with crumbled gorgonzola
Grilled Atlantic salmon over crispy Idaho potato-bacon-arugula cake topped with shaved carrot salad, with a drizzle of arugula emulsion
Pan roasted diver sea scallops over sautéed baby candy cane beets, shiitake mushrooms, dandelion greens and fingerling potatoes, and a verjus reduction
Sweet serrano chile glazed grilled pork loin with saffron jasmine rice and sour tomatillo compote
Grilled marinated skirt steak with caramelized onions, baby carrots and garlic mashed potatoes
Mini panna cotta, molten chocolate cake and crème brûlée.
One of the benefits of this crappy economy is that it’s easier to get high-powered food writers like me to show up at events.
Okay, maybe not food writers like me, because it has never been hard to get me to show up at events, but you didn’t used to see people like Jane Sigal and Lettie Teague at Susan Rike’s dinners.
Susan’s way of introducing food writers to her clients is to invite a handful of them to sit around at a table at one of her client’s restaurants, eat a meal and meet the chef.
I have met many interesting people at these dinners over the years, including big-time players like Amanda Hesser and James Oliver Cury.
But usually my fellow guests are an eclectic mix of not-so-big names from across the board, quite often including one or more of the young women newly arrived at the revolving door that is Star Chefs (not to say that it can't be a fine jumping off point).
It is rare, indeed, to see two people of Jane’s and Lettie’s caliber at such a dinner, especially if the restaurant that Susan is showcasing is an old neighborhood place like York Grill.
There’s nothing wrong with old neighborhood places like York Grill, but it can be challenging to get big-name writers to cross their thresholds
So after the departure of Jane and Lettie and that evening’s other guest, food writer, cookbook author and Bay Ridge dining scene expert Marian Betancourt (she says Gino’s in that neighborhood is the best Italian restaurant in Brooklyn), I asked Susan if it was easier to get the A-list writers to come to her dinner parties these days, and she said emphatically that it was.
I’m not exactly sure why that is. Lettie’s status recently changed from staff member to freelancer (her wine blog is about to debut on Robert Parker’s web site, by the way), but Jane has been a freelancer for years now.
You might surmise that we were being invited to fewer events these days, but if my e-mail inbox and calendar are any indication, that’s not the case.
Maybe it's the new generosity of spirit in the air that I wrote about awhile back that makes us feel like if we’ve been invited out the only decent thing to do is to accept.
I don't have the answer, but it’s a phenomenon worth noting.
What we ate:
House-made gorgonzola-potato gnocchi tossed with blistered grape tomatoes and baby spinach in light Chardonnay broth topped with crumbled gorgonzola
Grilled Atlantic salmon over crispy Idaho potato-bacon-arugula cake topped with shaved carrot salad, with a drizzle of arugula emulsion
Pan roasted diver sea scallops over sautéed baby candy cane beets, shiitake mushrooms, dandelion greens and fingerling potatoes, and a verjus reduction
Sweet serrano chile glazed grilled pork loin with saffron jasmine rice and sour tomatillo compote
Grilled marinated skirt steak with caramelized onions, baby carrots and garlic mashed potatoes
Mini panna cotta, molten chocolate cake and crème brûlée.
Thursday, April 02, 2009
Montenapo
April 2
Montenapo, a restaurant planned for the the New York Times building that Eater.com mentioned more than a year ago, now has an opening date: April 29 (according to its publicists). The chef is German Lucarelli, formerly of Bice. The food is “authentic modern and traditional Italian.” The name comes from Via Montenapoleone in Milan.
What else? 200 seats, 5,200 square feet. That's about it. Oh, except for the web site.
Montenapo, a restaurant planned for the the New York Times building that Eater.com mentioned more than a year ago, now has an opening date: April 29 (according to its publicists). The chef is German Lucarelli, formerly of Bice. The food is “authentic modern and traditional Italian.” The name comes from Via Montenapoleone in Milan.
What else? 200 seats, 5,200 square feet. That's about it. Oh, except for the web site.
Anyone looking for a chef in Sioux Falls?
April 2
Tre Restaurant & Lounge in Sioux Falls, S.D., has cut some of its staff, which of course is what companies do these days. In this case it means that a talented young chef by the name of Tyler Honke (pronounced Honkey) is on the job market.
I met Tyler at last year’s Taste of Elegance, a competition sponsored by the American Pork Board, and he cooked a whole freakin’ pig's head, dusting the temples with fennel,
rubbing the cheeks with garlic, coating the neck (a cut very much appreciated in Latin America and Southeast Asia) with Piave cheese. He was Tre’s executive chef, so one would assume he knows how to run a kitchen.
Let me know if you’d like to reach him.
Update, July 1: In case you were wondering, Tyler recently landed a job at the Minnehaha Country Club.
Tre Restaurant & Lounge in Sioux Falls, S.D., has cut some of its staff, which of course is what companies do these days. In this case it means that a talented young chef by the name of Tyler Honke (pronounced Honkey) is on the job market.
I met Tyler at last year’s Taste of Elegance, a competition sponsored by the American Pork Board, and he cooked a whole freakin’ pig's head, dusting the temples with fennel,
rubbing the cheeks with garlic, coating the neck (a cut very much appreciated in Latin America and Southeast Asia) with Piave cheese. He was Tre’s executive chef, so one would assume he knows how to run a kitchen.
Let me know if you’d like to reach him.
Update, July 1: In case you were wondering, Tyler recently landed a job at the Minnehaha Country Club.
And now, a more serious poll
April 2
April Fool's Day is no time to ask serious questions, so I just asked you what you thought of the day. Now I'm asking you to prognosticate about what the foodservice landscape will look like at the end of this recession. You may choose more than one answer. As always, feel free to add further comments below, or e-mail me if you like.
Not many people participated in yesterday’s poll, but it was only up for about 12 hours.
The results:
How do you feel about April Fool’s Day?
It’s a time-honored tradition that reminds people to lighten up: 3 (75%)
It's a dangerous custom that can cause misunderstanding and tragedy: 0 (0%)
It's a great opportunity for me to get back at my enemies: 0 (0%)
I hadn’t really thought about it: 1 (25%)
I don't click buttons on April 1st: 0 (0%)
April Fool's Day is no time to ask serious questions, so I just asked you what you thought of the day. Now I'm asking you to prognosticate about what the foodservice landscape will look like at the end of this recession. You may choose more than one answer. As always, feel free to add further comments below, or e-mail me if you like.
Not many people participated in yesterday’s poll, but it was only up for about 12 hours.
The results:
How do you feel about April Fool’s Day?
It’s a time-honored tradition that reminds people to lighten up: 3 (75%)
It's a dangerous custom that can cause misunderstanding and tragedy: 0 (0%)
It's a great opportunity for me to get back at my enemies: 0 (0%)
I hadn’t really thought about it: 1 (25%)
I don't click buttons on April 1st: 0 (0%)
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
Names, Thai factions, cocktails and other Tuesday things
April 1 (but there’s no foolseys in this post)
Doni (pronounced like “Donny”), was our waiter at Delicatessen last night.
“It’s short for Adonai!” he said. “And I’m not even Jewish.”
Well, of course he wasn’t Jewish. A strictly observant Jew wouldn’t even pronounce “Adonai” except during prayer, let alone give it to someone as a name. A strictly observant Jew definitely wouldn’t write it in a blog.
It’s God’s name, or as close as we can get to God’s name, which is actually unknown according to Jewish custom. Naming your kid “Adonai” isn’t like naming him “Jesus.” It’s like naming him “the all-knowing, unknowable Source, the creator of all.”
That’s a lot of pressure to put on a kid.
“They didn’t put it on him, you did,” said Andy Battaglia, my dinner guest for the evening.
Andy’s a genius, a hell of a nice guy and an editor at The Onion; he’s in charge of its New York Decider section. We met back when he, too, worked at NRN, and have now been friends for 10 years, a fact that blows our minds.
And he’s right about Doni’s name, of course. It’s just six letters. The meaning of the name is what we give it. If parents want to name their kid Adonai, that’s up to them.
My parents have a German shepherd mutt named Cassandra. I still don’t understand why they named the poor girl after the Greek prophetess of doom, but she is awfully skittish. I think maybe she knows something is amiss. She’s the beta dog to the house alpha, Mikhaila, a robust Australian shepherd mutt who goes by ”Mike.“
Anyway, Doni seemed nice enough. He recommended food to us and brought us whatever we ordered. He never once tried to be omnipotent.
Andy was not, in fact, the first or oldest friend I hung out with that evening. I came to Delicatessen from Atria, where I had drinks with Craig Stuart, who has been a good friend since, like, 1992. Maybe 1993. We worked together at a bizarre but truly hilarious magazine in Bangkok called Manager, the English-language version of a Thai business magazine called Phoojadkan, which is the Thai word for “manager.”
The English version started out running translations from the Thai magazine, but by the time Craig got there — I think a year or so after I did — the magazine had been handed over as a plaything to a then-once and future senior government advisor by the name of Pansak Vinyaratn, which I only point out because the magazine was owned by Sondhi Limthongkul, who would go on to become the monarchist rabble-rouser who has helped screw up Thailand while opposing former (and dare I suspect future) prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, whose senior advisor was our friend Pansak.
Pansak transformed Manager into a mercurial, opinionated magazine that commented on the politics, economics and social movements of Thailand in general and Bangkok in particular. I was, among other things, its restaurant critic. I also remember writing an eight-page article on Japanese banks' activities in Thailand. I used to know the Thai word for “derivative.”
Craig’s activities included writing a media column and reviewing cars (it was a brilliant and in no way veiled excuse to test-drive extremely expensive vehicles on the Bangkok roadways — I assume in the less-congested suburbs, but I wasn’t really paying attention).
Craig is now a banking vice president for Wells Fargo and was in town for a conference on money transfer regulation or some such thing.
I think he and Andy would get along well.
Andy and I weren’t finished having fun when dinner was over at Delicatessen, so we went on to Tailor, where we met his girlfriend Jennifer, who does documentary film work and wears excellent glasses.
What I drank and ate (mostly drank):
At Atria:
Lion’s Tail: Buffalo Trace bourbon, Allspice Dram, Angostura bitters and lime juice
The Brunette: An infusion of orange and espresso beans in rum
At Delicatessen:
Cardamom GreyHound: Gin, ruby red grapefruit, cardamom syrup and grapefruit bitters
Grilled fish tacos with cabbage, tomato salsa and chipotle crema
“Sticky” ribs with hoisin glaze and pickled slaw
2006 Columbia Crest Two Vines Riesling
Chatham Cod with lentils, chorizo and pearl onions
Fried chicken in a bucket with coleslaw, corn biscuit & ranch dressing
espresso
"The Candy Bar": Milk chocolate, salted peanuts and milk gelato and (at Doni’s suggestion)
"Slice of Birthday Cake": Chocolate layer cake and vanilla ice cream
At Tailor:
Bohemio: Tequila, Becherovka and blood orange
Cedar White Russian: Cedar milk, shochu, malt syrup
Doni (pronounced like “Donny”), was our waiter at Delicatessen last night.
“It’s short for Adonai!” he said. “And I’m not even Jewish.”
Well, of course he wasn’t Jewish. A strictly observant Jew wouldn’t even pronounce “Adonai” except during prayer, let alone give it to someone as a name. A strictly observant Jew definitely wouldn’t write it in a blog.
It’s God’s name, or as close as we can get to God’s name, which is actually unknown according to Jewish custom. Naming your kid “Adonai” isn’t like naming him “Jesus.” It’s like naming him “the all-knowing, unknowable Source, the creator of all.”
That’s a lot of pressure to put on a kid.
“They didn’t put it on him, you did,” said Andy Battaglia, my dinner guest for the evening.
Andy’s a genius, a hell of a nice guy and an editor at The Onion; he’s in charge of its New York Decider section. We met back when he, too, worked at NRN, and have now been friends for 10 years, a fact that blows our minds.
And he’s right about Doni’s name, of course. It’s just six letters. The meaning of the name is what we give it. If parents want to name their kid Adonai, that’s up to them.
My parents have a German shepherd mutt named Cassandra. I still don’t understand why they named the poor girl after the Greek prophetess of doom, but she is awfully skittish. I think maybe she knows something is amiss. She’s the beta dog to the house alpha, Mikhaila, a robust Australian shepherd mutt who goes by ”Mike.“
Anyway, Doni seemed nice enough. He recommended food to us and brought us whatever we ordered. He never once tried to be omnipotent.
Andy was not, in fact, the first or oldest friend I hung out with that evening. I came to Delicatessen from Atria, where I had drinks with Craig Stuart, who has been a good friend since, like, 1992. Maybe 1993. We worked together at a bizarre but truly hilarious magazine in Bangkok called Manager, the English-language version of a Thai business magazine called Phoojadkan, which is the Thai word for “manager.”
The English version started out running translations from the Thai magazine, but by the time Craig got there — I think a year or so after I did — the magazine had been handed over as a plaything to a then-once and future senior government advisor by the name of Pansak Vinyaratn, which I only point out because the magazine was owned by Sondhi Limthongkul, who would go on to become the monarchist rabble-rouser who has helped screw up Thailand while opposing former (and dare I suspect future) prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, whose senior advisor was our friend Pansak.
Pansak transformed Manager into a mercurial, opinionated magazine that commented on the politics, economics and social movements of Thailand in general and Bangkok in particular. I was, among other things, its restaurant critic. I also remember writing an eight-page article on Japanese banks' activities in Thailand. I used to know the Thai word for “derivative.”
Craig’s activities included writing a media column and reviewing cars (it was a brilliant and in no way veiled excuse to test-drive extremely expensive vehicles on the Bangkok roadways — I assume in the less-congested suburbs, but I wasn’t really paying attention).
Craig is now a banking vice president for Wells Fargo and was in town for a conference on money transfer regulation or some such thing.
I think he and Andy would get along well.
Andy and I weren’t finished having fun when dinner was over at Delicatessen, so we went on to Tailor, where we met his girlfriend Jennifer, who does documentary film work and wears excellent glasses.
What I drank and ate (mostly drank):
At Atria:
Lion’s Tail: Buffalo Trace bourbon, Allspice Dram, Angostura bitters and lime juice
The Brunette: An infusion of orange and espresso beans in rum
At Delicatessen:
Cardamom GreyHound: Gin, ruby red grapefruit, cardamom syrup and grapefruit bitters
Grilled fish tacos with cabbage, tomato salsa and chipotle crema
“Sticky” ribs with hoisin glaze and pickled slaw
2006 Columbia Crest Two Vines Riesling
Chatham Cod with lentils, chorizo and pearl onions
Fried chicken in a bucket with coleslaw, corn biscuit & ranch dressing
espresso
"The Candy Bar": Milk chocolate, salted peanuts and milk gelato and (at Doni’s suggestion)
"Slice of Birthday Cake": Chocolate layer cake and vanilla ice cream
At Tailor:
Bohemio: Tequila, Becherovka and blood orange
Cedar White Russian: Cedar milk, shochu, malt syrup
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Thanks for playing
March 31
For the past two weeks I've been asking Food Writer's Diary readers to guess about what percentage of Dunkin’ Donuts’ revenue comes from donuts.
Here’s how many of you guessed what:
12 percent: 10 (26%)
28 percent: 19 (50%)
53 percent: 8 (21%)
82 percent: 1 (2%)
The answer, according to recent information from Dunkin’ Donuts, is 12 percent.
So now you know.
For the past two weeks I've been asking Food Writer's Diary readers to guess about what percentage of Dunkin’ Donuts’ revenue comes from donuts.
Here’s how many of you guessed what:
12 percent: 10 (26%)
28 percent: 19 (50%)
53 percent: 8 (21%)
82 percent: 1 (2%)
The answer, according to recent information from Dunkin’ Donuts, is 12 percent.
So now you know.
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