June 30
When the topic of New York neighborhood restaurants comes up, I never think of North Square, and I don't know why. It's a nice place on the northwest corner of Washington Square Park whose chef, Yoël Cruz, has been the chef there for more than four years, and he was sous chef there before that. I must have eaten there half a dozen times by now and I always think I should write about it, and then it slips my mind.
I wrote about their tea service once, and I ran the announcement of Yoël's promotion, but I haven't actually written about the food since John McGrath was chef and the restaurant was named C3 (its address is 103 Waverly Place, get it?).
Anyway, I went there again last night with the restaurant's publicists to sample some new menu items.
We sampled a lot of them:
•Rosemary seafood salad — scallops, shrimp, mussels, calamari, romaine lettuce, onions, radish, crispy shoestring potatoes, lemon shallot dressing.
•Pan-roasted lobster served over a wild mushroom tamal with steamed asparagus and green pea sauce
•Porcini-dusted halibut with baby bok choy, chanterelle mushrooms, fava beans, pearl onion marmalade, red pepper and tarragon sauce
•Crisp Long Island duck breast with sautéed spinach, baby beets, steamed snow peas, roasted eggplant quinoa, tamarind and apricot demi-glace
•Citrus-rubbed seared tuna with vegetable couscous, baby herb salad, lime curry and shallot sauce
•Marinated pork tenderloin with mashed plantain and yuca, baby broccoli florets, red wine and ginger-fig sauce
•Tortilla-crusted snapper with sautéed Swiss chard, creamed corn and dried chile sauce.
And for dessert (obviously we were jonesing for chocolate):
•Caramel and chocolate parfait with pecan chocolate topping, served with a chocolate brownie
•Pecan pie triangles with rum cream, chocolate sauce, nut tuile and chocolate
•Chocolate mousse cake with caramel Heath Bar ice cream, chocolate and caramel sauces and chopped Heath Bar.
Friday, June 30, 2006
Thursday, June 29, 2006
Fillilp’s
June 29
After the rooftop party (see the entry below), I had dinner at Fillip’s, a year-old place in Chelsea that I’d never heard of until the publicist invited me there. She likes to throw press dinners, at which 6 or 8 or a dozen people sit at a long table and theoretically get to know one another in a convivial environment. It’s a hit-or-miss proposition.
Tonight, though, Kathryn and Chris Matthews (not that Chris Mathews), were there. Kathryn’s a food writer and Chris writes about wine, and they’re both very good dinner companions.
I’m not a wine writer, and I find some of them to be rather elitist and insufferable, but I like Chris and spent most of the night talking to him and Fillip’s sommelier about the wines.
After dinner, the chef, Brian Bieler, came out and chatted. He’s a Kansas farm boy who managed to finagle his way to New York. He says he changes the menu pretty much every day.
What I ate and drank:
Vichyssoise with osetra caviar and nutmeg
2004 Domaine de la Batardière Muscadet Sur Lie, Loire, France
Roasted Maine diver sea scallops with citrus suprème salad and coriander
NV Gruet Blanc de Noir, Brut, Albuquerque, New Mexico
Warm early summer asparagus with baby arugula and frisée salad, romesco and sherry vinaigrette
2003 Raymond Reserve Chardonnay, Napa Valley, California
Flying Pig Farms braised pork belly with granny smith apple, wild arugula and French lentil
2003 Jaboulet Isnard, Côtes Du Ventoux, Rhone, France
Crispy Long Island duck breast with Broccoli raab, pine nuts, Vermont baby carrot confit and natural reduction
2004 Heron Pinot Noir, American Canyon, California
(American Canyon, the sommelier discovered after I asked him, is a sort of broad appelation allowing for grapes to come from many parts of the state).
Warm heirloom apple tart with vanilla bean ice cream and caramel
2004 Pirramimma Late Harvest Riesling, South Australia
After the rooftop party (see the entry below), I had dinner at Fillip’s, a year-old place in Chelsea that I’d never heard of until the publicist invited me there. She likes to throw press dinners, at which 6 or 8 or a dozen people sit at a long table and theoretically get to know one another in a convivial environment. It’s a hit-or-miss proposition.
Tonight, though, Kathryn and Chris Matthews (not that Chris Mathews), were there. Kathryn’s a food writer and Chris writes about wine, and they’re both very good dinner companions.
I’m not a wine writer, and I find some of them to be rather elitist and insufferable, but I like Chris and spent most of the night talking to him and Fillip’s sommelier about the wines.
After dinner, the chef, Brian Bieler, came out and chatted. He’s a Kansas farm boy who managed to finagle his way to New York. He says he changes the menu pretty much every day.
What I ate and drank:
Vichyssoise with osetra caviar and nutmeg
2004 Domaine de la Batardière Muscadet Sur Lie, Loire, France
Roasted Maine diver sea scallops with citrus suprème salad and coriander
NV Gruet Blanc de Noir, Brut, Albuquerque, New Mexico
Warm early summer asparagus with baby arugula and frisée salad, romesco and sherry vinaigrette
2003 Raymond Reserve Chardonnay, Napa Valley, California
Flying Pig Farms braised pork belly with granny smith apple, wild arugula and French lentil
2003 Jaboulet Isnard, Côtes Du Ventoux, Rhone, France
Crispy Long Island duck breast with Broccoli raab, pine nuts, Vermont baby carrot confit and natural reduction
2004 Heron Pinot Noir, American Canyon, California
(American Canyon, the sommelier discovered after I asked him, is a sort of broad appelation allowing for grapes to come from many parts of the state).
Warm heirloom apple tart with vanilla bean ice cream and caramel
2004 Pirramimma Late Harvest Riesling, South Australia
Pick something for me
June 29
I asked the bartender at the rooftop party I went to last night what the cool people were drinking.
"What, here? In New York? In the World?" he asked. The tone was flip, but I think he really was trying to be helpful.
Obviously, cool people drink whatever they want, but I like to take suggestions from bartenders. I might discover a new drink that way, or I might get something the bartender likes, and thus probably makes well.
But the youngster at this particular bar suggested that perhaps I would like an Apple Martini or a Cosmopolitan.
For a bartender at a chic Midtown boutique hotel to recommend something that was trendy five years ago is, well, sad, especially at a press event attended by food and beverage writers whose tastes tend to veer toward the experimental.
I tried a different tack and asked for a refreshing glass of white wine.
He gave me a California Chardonnay, which is not refreshing. It's rich and sort of creamy, but on a hot summer day, something more acidic, a crisp Sauvignon Blanc, say, would have been the thing.
To be fair, it might not have been the young bartender's fault. Sometimes when you say: “Pick something for me,” even though you might mean, “I have confidence that you, as a professional, will use your best judgment in selecting something really good for me," they interpret it as, "I don’t care, just give me a drink!”
I asked the bartender at the rooftop party I went to last night what the cool people were drinking.
"What, here? In New York? In the World?" he asked. The tone was flip, but I think he really was trying to be helpful.
Obviously, cool people drink whatever they want, but I like to take suggestions from bartenders. I might discover a new drink that way, or I might get something the bartender likes, and thus probably makes well.
But the youngster at this particular bar suggested that perhaps I would like an Apple Martini or a Cosmopolitan.
For a bartender at a chic Midtown boutique hotel to recommend something that was trendy five years ago is, well, sad, especially at a press event attended by food and beverage writers whose tastes tend to veer toward the experimental.
I tried a different tack and asked for a refreshing glass of white wine.
He gave me a California Chardonnay, which is not refreshing. It's rich and sort of creamy, but on a hot summer day, something more acidic, a crisp Sauvignon Blanc, say, would have been the thing.
To be fair, it might not have been the young bartender's fault. Sometimes when you say: “Pick something for me,” even though you might mean, “I have confidence that you, as a professional, will use your best judgment in selecting something really good for me," they interpret it as, "I don’t care, just give me a drink!”
Minnesota
June 26
I love living in New York, but I also love leaving it from time to time to see what‘s happening out in the world. So I was delighted to spend the past four days in Minnesota hanging out with corporate chefs from chain restaurants, a couple of CEOs from small chains, and officials from Hormel, which sponsored a meeting about pork, coordinated by Nation's Restaurant News' extraordinary event planner (really, she is) Monique Monaco.
We talked about how pork fits into current menu trends and toured one of Hormel’s plants on the Minnesota-Iowa border. The restaurant people flew from Minneapolis in a Hormel corporate jet, the NRN people took a road trip in which I learned that our publisher loves to sing along with the radio. He plays a bit of air-guitar, too.
We also had two nights to dine out in Minneapolis and had truly great meals at a tapas place called Solera and a chef-driven, ingredient focused restaurant called Cafe Lurcat.
Given how much pork we had consumed in the days leading up to our dinner at Cafe Lurcat, we managed to pack away an impressive amount of food.
Qdoba chef Ted Stoner proved to be a particularly good eater: Unbeknownst to him, a porked-out Jeff Sinelli, top dog at Which ’Wich?, slipped half of his wagyu beef onto Ted’s plate.
I love living in New York, but I also love leaving it from time to time to see what‘s happening out in the world. So I was delighted to spend the past four days in Minnesota hanging out with corporate chefs from chain restaurants, a couple of CEOs from small chains, and officials from Hormel, which sponsored a meeting about pork, coordinated by Nation's Restaurant News' extraordinary event planner (really, she is) Monique Monaco.
We talked about how pork fits into current menu trends and toured one of Hormel’s plants on the Minnesota-Iowa border. The restaurant people flew from Minneapolis in a Hormel corporate jet, the NRN people took a road trip in which I learned that our publisher loves to sing along with the radio. He plays a bit of air-guitar, too.
We also had two nights to dine out in Minneapolis and had truly great meals at a tapas place called Solera and a chef-driven, ingredient focused restaurant called Cafe Lurcat.
Given how much pork we had consumed in the days leading up to our dinner at Cafe Lurcat, we managed to pack away an impressive amount of food.
Qdoba chef Ted Stoner proved to be a particularly good eater: Unbeknownst to him, a porked-out Jeff Sinelli, top dog at Which ’Wich?, slipped half of his wagyu beef onto Ted’s plate.
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
I don’t like standing in line
June 21
Summer is upon us here in New York, and I don't like it one bit. Being outside sort of makes me feel like I'm being poached.
And yet last night and the night before I went to events that required me to stand in line to get into parties whose hosts seemed disinclined to use their air conditioning.
I think it stands to reason that the first few minutes of any event can make or break it. A seemingly minor thing like the ability of list checkers to do their job efficiently can cause a major attitude shift, especially if sweat beads have started to form on your forehead.
Monday’s event wasn’t bad. It was Pastry Arts & Designs' 10 Best Pastry Chefs party, held at the Institute of Culinary Education.
But the hallway leading to the school's entrance, which is on the 5th floor of a building in Chelsea across from Rickshaw Dumpling Bar, was untreated by air conditioning, and a bunch of us were standing there waiting to get into the school.
As my hair (of which I have very little) started to moisten I entered the lobby to see a table strewn with nametags in vaguely alphabetical order. Approximately three young women were sorting through them as they tried to check people in. It seemed like an odd way to do it.
The crowd, which was ample, but not insanely so, nonetheless seemed to overstretch the air-conditioner, which just managed to keep the place below sweltering as we tried, at least for a few minutes, to listen to the speeches being made using audio equipment that sounded like it had been swiped from the nearby subway station.
Some people left early, others wandered off to less crowded rooms where wine was being poured and the packaged cookies of one of the awards' sponsors were out on plates. Considering that we were about to sample desserts from actual pastry chefs, it seemed like an uninspired move on the part of the sponsors.
But I had a nice time, anyway, and in the course of several conversations I was reminded of some restaurant-industry rumors that I was supposed to follow up on. I made note of them as I sampled mostly overwrought, excessively complicated desserts, two (2!) of which featured basil seeds.
Then last night I stood in line on East 48th Street as I waited to be let in to the opening party of Alma Grill, a restaurant owned by music mogul Ralph Mercado and Union Telecard Alliance multi-millionaire Carlos Gomez (I thought it was character actor Carlos Gomez, but apparently not).
The party was hosted by Lisa Lisa, which would have been really excellent if this were 1983. But in 2006, if the best a music mogul and telecom mogul can scare up in Midtown Manhattan is a 1980s pop-star, it's a red flag.
The line was slow-moving and people were being turned away. Apparently, they had only been invited to the afterparty.
That's interesting because many of the regular restaurant-party crashers got in: Weird Shaggy Haired Guy was sitting at a table, and Slightly Creepy Italian Guy was wandering around the cramped space. I didn't see Eccentric Cookbook Thief, but she might have been there, too.
They poured so-so Chardonnay and Chianti. I drank the former because I was wearing my cream-colored sports coat, and sweating in it — it wasn't that hot out, so I'm not sure why the air conditioner couldn't handle the crowd.
My colleague, Molly Gise, came to the party, too, so we had fun chatting, otherwise I would have left. As at most bad parties, they seemed unaware of how to pass hors d'oeuvres efficiently, so I had a good time watching guests, who surely had $1.50 to buy a slice of pizza if they needed to, pounce on the food as if they'd just been let out of concentration camps.
I got a couple of slices from my favorite neighborhood pizza place in Park Slope, Antonio's, on Flatbush, just outside the 7th Avenue B/Q subway station.
Summer is upon us here in New York, and I don't like it one bit. Being outside sort of makes me feel like I'm being poached.
And yet last night and the night before I went to events that required me to stand in line to get into parties whose hosts seemed disinclined to use their air conditioning.
I think it stands to reason that the first few minutes of any event can make or break it. A seemingly minor thing like the ability of list checkers to do their job efficiently can cause a major attitude shift, especially if sweat beads have started to form on your forehead.
Monday’s event wasn’t bad. It was Pastry Arts & Designs' 10 Best Pastry Chefs party, held at the Institute of Culinary Education.
But the hallway leading to the school's entrance, which is on the 5th floor of a building in Chelsea across from Rickshaw Dumpling Bar, was untreated by air conditioning, and a bunch of us were standing there waiting to get into the school.
As my hair (of which I have very little) started to moisten I entered the lobby to see a table strewn with nametags in vaguely alphabetical order. Approximately three young women were sorting through them as they tried to check people in. It seemed like an odd way to do it.
The crowd, which was ample, but not insanely so, nonetheless seemed to overstretch the air-conditioner, which just managed to keep the place below sweltering as we tried, at least for a few minutes, to listen to the speeches being made using audio equipment that sounded like it had been swiped from the nearby subway station.
Some people left early, others wandered off to less crowded rooms where wine was being poured and the packaged cookies of one of the awards' sponsors were out on plates. Considering that we were about to sample desserts from actual pastry chefs, it seemed like an uninspired move on the part of the sponsors.
But I had a nice time, anyway, and in the course of several conversations I was reminded of some restaurant-industry rumors that I was supposed to follow up on. I made note of them as I sampled mostly overwrought, excessively complicated desserts, two (2!) of which featured basil seeds.
Then last night I stood in line on East 48th Street as I waited to be let in to the opening party of Alma Grill, a restaurant owned by music mogul Ralph Mercado and Union Telecard Alliance multi-millionaire Carlos Gomez (I thought it was character actor Carlos Gomez, but apparently not).
The party was hosted by Lisa Lisa, which would have been really excellent if this were 1983. But in 2006, if the best a music mogul and telecom mogul can scare up in Midtown Manhattan is a 1980s pop-star, it's a red flag.
The line was slow-moving and people were being turned away. Apparently, they had only been invited to the afterparty.
That's interesting because many of the regular restaurant-party crashers got in: Weird Shaggy Haired Guy was sitting at a table, and Slightly Creepy Italian Guy was wandering around the cramped space. I didn't see Eccentric Cookbook Thief, but she might have been there, too.
They poured so-so Chardonnay and Chianti. I drank the former because I was wearing my cream-colored sports coat, and sweating in it — it wasn't that hot out, so I'm not sure why the air conditioner couldn't handle the crowd.
My colleague, Molly Gise, came to the party, too, so we had fun chatting, otherwise I would have left. As at most bad parties, they seemed unaware of how to pass hors d'oeuvres efficiently, so I had a good time watching guests, who surely had $1.50 to buy a slice of pizza if they needed to, pounce on the food as if they'd just been let out of concentration camps.
I got a couple of slices from my favorite neighborhood pizza place in Park Slope, Antonio's, on Flatbush, just outside the 7th Avenue B/Q subway station.
Thursday, June 15, 2006
The maiden from Lomzyn
June 15
Arlyn Blake lives to connect people whom she thinks should know each other, and to get all of them to try the food at Lomzynianka.
Lomzynianka (which isn't quite how it's spelled, there's a line through the L and some other things, but I'm afraid I don't know how to add Polish diacritical marks on this computer, or any computer for that matter) is a tiny restaurant in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, with the best latkes I've ever had (sorry, Dad), and pierogi, and borscht and blintzes and various other really tasty Polish food, cheap. It's BYO.
The name, I'm told, means "Maiden from Lomzyn," which I think is pronounced Wom-zin, but I'm not sure. As one of my Russian history professors in college used to joke, Polish is written in code.
The town of Lodz is pronounced "wooj." I mean, what are you supposed to do with that?
Anyway, Arlyn invited like eight people to join her for dinner at Lomzynianka last night. I arrived just as they were passing around pickled beets, cucumbers in dill, sauerkraut and various other salads. I ended up sitting between a spirits marketer from Kobrand and the owner of a magazine that profiles woman entrepreneurs. The Kobrand marketer originally was from Bulgaria, and she and the magazine owner chatted about Bulgarian wines and strategized ways to get the magazine’s readers in front of the marketer's wines.
Arlyn does that. She arranges what seem like random agglomerations of people and then it turns out that they have more in common than you'd expect. I can't say whether she does that on purpose or not.
What else I ate:
cold borscht, hot veal meatballs, wienerschnitzel with a fried egg on top, potato croquettes and blintzes.
Arlyn Blake lives to connect people whom she thinks should know each other, and to get all of them to try the food at Lomzynianka.
Lomzynianka (which isn't quite how it's spelled, there's a line through the L and some other things, but I'm afraid I don't know how to add Polish diacritical marks on this computer, or any computer for that matter) is a tiny restaurant in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, with the best latkes I've ever had (sorry, Dad), and pierogi, and borscht and blintzes and various other really tasty Polish food, cheap. It's BYO.
The name, I'm told, means "Maiden from Lomzyn," which I think is pronounced Wom-zin, but I'm not sure. As one of my Russian history professors in college used to joke, Polish is written in code.
The town of Lodz is pronounced "wooj." I mean, what are you supposed to do with that?
Anyway, Arlyn invited like eight people to join her for dinner at Lomzynianka last night. I arrived just as they were passing around pickled beets, cucumbers in dill, sauerkraut and various other salads. I ended up sitting between a spirits marketer from Kobrand and the owner of a magazine that profiles woman entrepreneurs. The Kobrand marketer originally was from Bulgaria, and she and the magazine owner chatted about Bulgarian wines and strategized ways to get the magazine’s readers in front of the marketer's wines.
Arlyn does that. She arranges what seem like random agglomerations of people and then it turns out that they have more in common than you'd expect. I can't say whether she does that on purpose or not.
What else I ate:
cold borscht, hot veal meatballs, wienerschnitzel with a fried egg on top, potato croquettes and blintzes.
vodka, chocolate and modern Peruvian food
June 13
Premium vodka again!
I went to an event thrown by the Distilled Spirits Council, which is always a good idea. In this case it was a particularly good idea: It was a seated tasting of vodka cocktails, prepared by the articulate, dapper and talented Brian Van Flandern of Per Se, and chocolates by Jacques Torres, who needs no adjectives, held at Jacques Torres Chocolate Haven in SoHo.
Unfortunately I couldn't stay long, which made me angry as I sampled a "Mango Mary" paired with a heart-shaped chocolate candy filled with passion fruit ganache.
The Mango Mary had muddled rosemary and a rosemary sprig in it, which sounds stupid at first, but if you think about it, the muskiness of a good mango has a quality that's pretty similar to rosemary, and the added rosemary accentuates that.
But I had to leave, heavy-hearted, because I also had RSVP'ed to have dinner at the Beard House. "Stupid Bret!" I thought, as my taxi took me from SoHo to 12th Street and I wondered what I would do with the two cocktail shakers in my gift bag as I resolved to stop over-booking myself.
But then the Beard dinner was great fun, too.
Dinners at the James Beard House start at 7, with a 45-minute cocktail "hour," when guests drink wine — usually sparkling — and get their first samplings of the chef's food as hors d'oeuvres are passed around. I showed up right at 7:45, delaying my arrival as long as possible so I could enjoy my passionfruit chocolate and Mango Mary. I figured I would have to sacrifice the hors d'oeuvres as penance for my overbooking, but a plate of hors d'oeuvres had been kindly saved for me, hidden away in a kitchen cupboard and presented to me when I arrived.
My guest that evening, Yishane Lee, had arrived just a few minutes earlier and observed that they hadn't saved a plate of hors d'oeuvres for her.
Yishane works for Time Inc.'s web site and deserves to be sucked up to every bit as much as I do, but what can I say? I did share my hors d'oeuvres with her, at any rate, as we sipped some Bodega Lurton Rosé from Argentina, made with a combination of Malbec and Bonarda grapes if memory serves.
If you’re wondering what Yishane looks like, you know those Visa ads that promote drinking deeply from the cup of life and letting your credit cards help you do that? Well, if you’ve ever seen the one of a pretty Asian woman floating in the Dead Sea while reading a newspaper, that's Yishane.
The chef of the evening was a Peruvian fellow by the name of Jean Paul Desmaison, who is chef at La Cofradia, a five-month-old restaurant in Coral Gables, Fla. A soft-spoken man, he charmingly had nothing to say when introduced to Beard House attendees at the end of the meal. A regular beard foundation member did coax out of him commentary on guinea pig, which is a delicacy in Peru and Ecuador. It was not served at the meal this evening.
Here's what was:
Hors d'oeuvres:
Eggplant Carpaccio with Extra-Virgin Olive Oil and Lime Juice
Causa Roll — Shrimp, Avocado, and Crab
Sole Tiradito with Yellow Chile–Mandarin Cream
Asian-Style Tuna Tartare
Bodega Lurton Rosé 2006
Salmon Carpaccio and Caviar with Lemon Cream Sauce
Gran Araucano Sauvignon Blanc 2005
Baby Octopus with Tuscan Ragoût
Gran Lurton Pinot Gris 2005
Black Grouper with Sour Orange Escabèche, Mashed Yuca with Red Peppers, and Extra-Virgin Olive Oil
Château des Erles 2003
Braised Lamb Shank with Purple Corn, Rice, Sautéed Artichoke Hearts, and Asparagus
Campo Eliseo 2003
Fig and Apple Phyllo Tart with Maple Ice Cream, Peruvian Lucuma Mousse with Chocolate Macaroons, and Suspiro de Limeña
Vignobles Lions de La Louvière 1996
The Mango Mary:
1/4 oz. Finlandia Mango Vodka
1 oz. Finlandia Vodka (here's an interesting trick from beverage guru Brian Van Flandern: some people complain that flavored vodkas have a bit of a chemical taste to them, so to retain the aromatics of the flavored vodka while cutting back on the taste, he mixes one part flavored vodka to four parts of the regular stuff).
Finlandia’s apparently the only company that makes a mango vodka
1 oz. fresh mango purée
3/4 oz. lemon juice
a splash of simple syrup
muddled rosemary
rosemary sprig to garnish
Premium vodka again!
I went to an event thrown by the Distilled Spirits Council, which is always a good idea. In this case it was a particularly good idea: It was a seated tasting of vodka cocktails, prepared by the articulate, dapper and talented Brian Van Flandern of Per Se, and chocolates by Jacques Torres, who needs no adjectives, held at Jacques Torres Chocolate Haven in SoHo.
Unfortunately I couldn't stay long, which made me angry as I sampled a "Mango Mary" paired with a heart-shaped chocolate candy filled with passion fruit ganache.
The Mango Mary had muddled rosemary and a rosemary sprig in it, which sounds stupid at first, but if you think about it, the muskiness of a good mango has a quality that's pretty similar to rosemary, and the added rosemary accentuates that.
But I had to leave, heavy-hearted, because I also had RSVP'ed to have dinner at the Beard House. "Stupid Bret!" I thought, as my taxi took me from SoHo to 12th Street and I wondered what I would do with the two cocktail shakers in my gift bag as I resolved to stop over-booking myself.
But then the Beard dinner was great fun, too.
Dinners at the James Beard House start at 7, with a 45-minute cocktail "hour," when guests drink wine — usually sparkling — and get their first samplings of the chef's food as hors d'oeuvres are passed around. I showed up right at 7:45, delaying my arrival as long as possible so I could enjoy my passionfruit chocolate and Mango Mary. I figured I would have to sacrifice the hors d'oeuvres as penance for my overbooking, but a plate of hors d'oeuvres had been kindly saved for me, hidden away in a kitchen cupboard and presented to me when I arrived.
My guest that evening, Yishane Lee, had arrived just a few minutes earlier and observed that they hadn't saved a plate of hors d'oeuvres for her.
Yishane works for Time Inc.'s web site and deserves to be sucked up to every bit as much as I do, but what can I say? I did share my hors d'oeuvres with her, at any rate, as we sipped some Bodega Lurton Rosé from Argentina, made with a combination of Malbec and Bonarda grapes if memory serves.
If you’re wondering what Yishane looks like, you know those Visa ads that promote drinking deeply from the cup of life and letting your credit cards help you do that? Well, if you’ve ever seen the one of a pretty Asian woman floating in the Dead Sea while reading a newspaper, that's Yishane.
The chef of the evening was a Peruvian fellow by the name of Jean Paul Desmaison, who is chef at La Cofradia, a five-month-old restaurant in Coral Gables, Fla. A soft-spoken man, he charmingly had nothing to say when introduced to Beard House attendees at the end of the meal. A regular beard foundation member did coax out of him commentary on guinea pig, which is a delicacy in Peru and Ecuador. It was not served at the meal this evening.
Here's what was:
Hors d'oeuvres:
Eggplant Carpaccio with Extra-Virgin Olive Oil and Lime Juice
Causa Roll — Shrimp, Avocado, and Crab
Sole Tiradito with Yellow Chile–Mandarin Cream
Asian-Style Tuna Tartare
Bodega Lurton Rosé 2006
Salmon Carpaccio and Caviar with Lemon Cream Sauce
Gran Araucano Sauvignon Blanc 2005
Baby Octopus with Tuscan Ragoût
Gran Lurton Pinot Gris 2005
Black Grouper with Sour Orange Escabèche, Mashed Yuca with Red Peppers, and Extra-Virgin Olive Oil
Château des Erles 2003
Braised Lamb Shank with Purple Corn, Rice, Sautéed Artichoke Hearts, and Asparagus
Campo Eliseo 2003
Fig and Apple Phyllo Tart with Maple Ice Cream, Peruvian Lucuma Mousse with Chocolate Macaroons, and Suspiro de Limeña
Vignobles Lions de La Louvière 1996
The Mango Mary:
1/4 oz. Finlandia Mango Vodka
1 oz. Finlandia Vodka (here's an interesting trick from beverage guru Brian Van Flandern: some people complain that flavored vodkas have a bit of a chemical taste to them, so to retain the aromatics of the flavored vodka while cutting back on the taste, he mixes one part flavored vodka to four parts of the regular stuff).
Finlandia’s apparently the only company that makes a mango vodka
1 oz. fresh mango purée
3/4 oz. lemon juice
a splash of simple syrup
muddled rosemary
rosemary sprig to garnish
Friday, June 09, 2006
pushing my buttons
June 6
I like to think of myself as a pretty mellow, happy-go-lucky kind of guy, but then I realize what a petty, nasty little fusspot I can be if you push the wrong buttons.
Among those buttons are bad produce, premium vodka and people who see organic comestibles as a panacea for all the world’s ills.
Nonetheless, I went to the launch of an organic, premium vodka. One reason I went was because I wasn’t doing anything else at the time. The other was because it was at Blue Hill, and I hadn’t had much of chef-owner Dan Barber’s food in a long time, except for an absolutely extraordinary freshly picked radish sprinkled with salt that he served at the annual C-Cap benefit earlier this year. So I knew that at least the produce would be good in the food served at this vodka party.
I had a good time. The food was either bursting with flavor from delicious fruits and vegetables or — as in the case of the arancini topped with melting lardo, or the pork belly on skewers — great without having any fruits and vegetables. Dan Barber’s food is all about using really excellent ingredients and treating them with respect. I have no complaints about that.
And I met the nice owners of Circa Tabac, a downtown tobacco lounge. I’ll have to take my smoking friends there at some point.
The organic premium vodka that was being launched is made from rye, which apparently is desirable in a vodka — one of the PR flaks there said that was what the tsars drank — but hard to do organically.
As I sipped the very good cocktails made from the vodka — I sampled it neat first and found my single shot too boring to finish — I expressed my skepticism about premium vodka to one of the company’s marketers.
I can understand why those who sit around drinking straight vodka might want a premium vodka. I can even understand why the millions of vodka-martini drinkers would have intense brand loyalty. But vodka, by definition, is flavorless. The difference in vodkas has to do with mouth feel and a certain smoothness that can certainly be distinguished if you line up a bunch of shot glasses with different vodkas and taste them side-by-side. But I have yet to be convinced that the type of vodka used in drinks that also include lemonade or cranberry juice or Red Bull makes any difference in the quality of the cocktail.
Au contraire, said the marketing guy, as he would, of course. Since I was not in the mood to demand a taste test then and there, I didn’t press the point. Besides, that’s a very rude thing to do at a party.
Instead, I asked him about the organic qualities of said premium vodka. Did the vodka’s target audience care? He admitted that people really devoted to organic food were mostly disinclined to spend $36 (retail) for a bottle of vodka, and premium vodka aficionados were paying for taste and generally didn’t care if it was organic or not.
I kept trying to avoid one blowhard from northern Westchester county who went on an anti-non-free-range-chicken diatribe and then bad-mouthed corn-fed beef and opposed Wal-Mart’s offering organic stuff and in general kept blathering the smug manifesto of the environmentalist elite.
I believe I’ve made reference previously here to my solid granola credentials, but to reiterate:
My parents are both retired now, but my father worked for public television and my mother was a schoolteacher.
In Denver in the 1970s, when recycling services weren’t yet available, they saved their paper and aluminum and so on and, the one time a month they could schlep it to a nearby collection center and hand it all over to recyclers, they did just that.
I was weaned while wearing cloth diapers, because my mother deemed disposable stuff environmentally unsound.
My parents voted for McGovern.
They own some property in Denver, but they keep rents low so lower-middle class people can afford to live there.
A few years ago they gave up eating mammals for moral reasons.
So I get it. I understand that it’s important to know how the way you live affects the world, and as a food guy I love to eat food made from excellent ingredients.
But I also have noticed that politically correct food doesn’t necessarily taste better (although sometimes it does), and isn’t always what it purports to be.
And I have visited some of those industrial food-processing facilities and have not found them to be the chambers of horror that they’re often described to be. To be fair, I haven’t been to a chicken hatchery yet, but I hope to someday soon.
I think what really bugs me is the vilification of industries that were created for a good purpose. Food became largely industrialized in this century in an attempt to feed the hungry. To a large extent, that mission has been accomplished. Obviously there are still major distribution issues with regard to food, particularly in developing countries, but here at home, too. Nonetheless, the fact that obesity is now the most serious health issue in the developed world is a massive victory over millennia of hunger.
Now we have to address obesity while not forgetting that some people, even in developed countries, still are hungry, and we should avoid environmental damage in the process. I’m not sure how sneering at cheap, nutritious food does that.
So I did finally say with feigned respect for Ms. Blowhard that her consumption exclusively of hand-nurtured animals and produce was fine for her, but it was not an option for most Americans.
Then I tried the premium organic vodka neat for a second time. I couldn’t finish it.
One of the cocktails I had:
The Coriandrum
2 ounces Vodka
1/4 ounce vermouth
Splash of Coriander Nectar (1 cup coriander seeds, 4 cups water, 1 1/4 cups Madhava agave nectar or simple syrup, briefly heated together)
Splash of orange bitters
Lemon twist
Coriander seeds
Add first 4 ingredients to cocktail shaker. Fill with ice and shake vigorously. Strain into a chilled
martini glass. Garnish with a few coriander seeds from the nectar mix and a twist of lemon.
I like to think of myself as a pretty mellow, happy-go-lucky kind of guy, but then I realize what a petty, nasty little fusspot I can be if you push the wrong buttons.
Among those buttons are bad produce, premium vodka and people who see organic comestibles as a panacea for all the world’s ills.
Nonetheless, I went to the launch of an organic, premium vodka. One reason I went was because I wasn’t doing anything else at the time. The other was because it was at Blue Hill, and I hadn’t had much of chef-owner Dan Barber’s food in a long time, except for an absolutely extraordinary freshly picked radish sprinkled with salt that he served at the annual C-Cap benefit earlier this year. So I knew that at least the produce would be good in the food served at this vodka party.
I had a good time. The food was either bursting with flavor from delicious fruits and vegetables or — as in the case of the arancini topped with melting lardo, or the pork belly on skewers — great without having any fruits and vegetables. Dan Barber’s food is all about using really excellent ingredients and treating them with respect. I have no complaints about that.
And I met the nice owners of Circa Tabac, a downtown tobacco lounge. I’ll have to take my smoking friends there at some point.
The organic premium vodka that was being launched is made from rye, which apparently is desirable in a vodka — one of the PR flaks there said that was what the tsars drank — but hard to do organically.
As I sipped the very good cocktails made from the vodka — I sampled it neat first and found my single shot too boring to finish — I expressed my skepticism about premium vodka to one of the company’s marketers.
I can understand why those who sit around drinking straight vodka might want a premium vodka. I can even understand why the millions of vodka-martini drinkers would have intense brand loyalty. But vodka, by definition, is flavorless. The difference in vodkas has to do with mouth feel and a certain smoothness that can certainly be distinguished if you line up a bunch of shot glasses with different vodkas and taste them side-by-side. But I have yet to be convinced that the type of vodka used in drinks that also include lemonade or cranberry juice or Red Bull makes any difference in the quality of the cocktail.
Au contraire, said the marketing guy, as he would, of course. Since I was not in the mood to demand a taste test then and there, I didn’t press the point. Besides, that’s a very rude thing to do at a party.
Instead, I asked him about the organic qualities of said premium vodka. Did the vodka’s target audience care? He admitted that people really devoted to organic food were mostly disinclined to spend $36 (retail) for a bottle of vodka, and premium vodka aficionados were paying for taste and generally didn’t care if it was organic or not.
I kept trying to avoid one blowhard from northern Westchester county who went on an anti-non-free-range-chicken diatribe and then bad-mouthed corn-fed beef and opposed Wal-Mart’s offering organic stuff and in general kept blathering the smug manifesto of the environmentalist elite.
I believe I’ve made reference previously here to my solid granola credentials, but to reiterate:
My parents are both retired now, but my father worked for public television and my mother was a schoolteacher.
In Denver in the 1970s, when recycling services weren’t yet available, they saved their paper and aluminum and so on and, the one time a month they could schlep it to a nearby collection center and hand it all over to recyclers, they did just that.
I was weaned while wearing cloth diapers, because my mother deemed disposable stuff environmentally unsound.
My parents voted for McGovern.
They own some property in Denver, but they keep rents low so lower-middle class people can afford to live there.
A few years ago they gave up eating mammals for moral reasons.
So I get it. I understand that it’s important to know how the way you live affects the world, and as a food guy I love to eat food made from excellent ingredients.
But I also have noticed that politically correct food doesn’t necessarily taste better (although sometimes it does), and isn’t always what it purports to be.
And I have visited some of those industrial food-processing facilities and have not found them to be the chambers of horror that they’re often described to be. To be fair, I haven’t been to a chicken hatchery yet, but I hope to someday soon.
I think what really bugs me is the vilification of industries that were created for a good purpose. Food became largely industrialized in this century in an attempt to feed the hungry. To a large extent, that mission has been accomplished. Obviously there are still major distribution issues with regard to food, particularly in developing countries, but here at home, too. Nonetheless, the fact that obesity is now the most serious health issue in the developed world is a massive victory over millennia of hunger.
Now we have to address obesity while not forgetting that some people, even in developed countries, still are hungry, and we should avoid environmental damage in the process. I’m not sure how sneering at cheap, nutritious food does that.
So I did finally say with feigned respect for Ms. Blowhard that her consumption exclusively of hand-nurtured animals and produce was fine for her, but it was not an option for most Americans.
Then I tried the premium organic vodka neat for a second time. I couldn’t finish it.
One of the cocktails I had:
The Coriandrum
2 ounces Vodka
1/4 ounce vermouth
Splash of Coriander Nectar (1 cup coriander seeds, 4 cups water, 1 1/4 cups Madhava agave nectar or simple syrup, briefly heated together)
Splash of orange bitters
Lemon twist
Coriander seeds
Add first 4 ingredients to cocktail shaker. Fill with ice and shake vigorously. Strain into a chilled
martini glass. Garnish with a few coriander seeds from the nectar mix and a twist of lemon.
Monday, June 05, 2006
Wings, pork, Japan and a second Martini
June 5,
I woke up this morning and wondered why I thought last night that a second Martini would be a good idea.
5 Ninth restaurant was celebrating its 2nd anniversary from 6 to 8 last night, so I went to enjoy chef Zak Pelaccio’s kecap manis-glazed chicken wings and his whole roasted pig while drinking beer and hanging out mostly on the third floor with my friend Clark Mitchell at Travel + Leisure and his friend, Peter Sherwood, who’s dining editor of Next Magazine, and various members of their entourages, including two women named Alex.
I also had a couple of chats with Steven Hall, the publicist who organized the party. While standing in line for food (it was a short line; I don’t stand in long lines for food), I asked him about the music that we were listening to, which came from the late ’70s and ’80s. It was pretty typical music for New York parties in 2006, and also was played at many restaurants and bars throughout the city. Why, I wondered to him, had the music of that period taken hold so thoroughly? Growing up to this music, I naturally enjoyed it but, being a member of Generation X, I always felt that our pop culture was inferior to that of our older Baby Boomer cousins. And yet it was quite common to hear The Smiths and Erasure and REM and old U2 and so on, yet the Rolling Stones and The Who and The Beatles were comparative rarities.
So why was the music I grew up with so popular?
“Because it’s good,” he said.
Maybe the DJ — one of 5 Ninth’s bartenders, I think — was listening. He played The Kinks later on in the evening.
Later I talked to Steven about some of his latest ventures and a trip he took to Japan. To summarize what he said, basically, notice that the company formerly known as Restaurant Associates recently bought itself back from Compass with the help of a Japanese company (but not the name “Restaurant Associates,” according to a spokeswoman from the company, hence the pending name change), and keep your eyes open for opportunities both to open Japanese restaurants in New York and American ones in Japan.
I had that chat while finishing a weisbier and then I headed to the bar at the terrace of the Maritime hotel and had Martinis with Clark, Peter and one of the women named Alex (although she had water). We stayed until, I don’t know, late, and Clark had a 10:15 a.m. radio interview to prepare for. I e-mailed him today and he, too wondered why we thought we should have that second Martini.
I woke up this morning and wondered why I thought last night that a second Martini would be a good idea.
5 Ninth restaurant was celebrating its 2nd anniversary from 6 to 8 last night, so I went to enjoy chef Zak Pelaccio’s kecap manis-glazed chicken wings and his whole roasted pig while drinking beer and hanging out mostly on the third floor with my friend Clark Mitchell at Travel + Leisure and his friend, Peter Sherwood, who’s dining editor of Next Magazine, and various members of their entourages, including two women named Alex.
I also had a couple of chats with Steven Hall, the publicist who organized the party. While standing in line for food (it was a short line; I don’t stand in long lines for food), I asked him about the music that we were listening to, which came from the late ’70s and ’80s. It was pretty typical music for New York parties in 2006, and also was played at many restaurants and bars throughout the city. Why, I wondered to him, had the music of that period taken hold so thoroughly? Growing up to this music, I naturally enjoyed it but, being a member of Generation X, I always felt that our pop culture was inferior to that of our older Baby Boomer cousins. And yet it was quite common to hear The Smiths and Erasure and REM and old U2 and so on, yet the Rolling Stones and The Who and The Beatles were comparative rarities.
So why was the music I grew up with so popular?
“Because it’s good,” he said.
Maybe the DJ — one of 5 Ninth’s bartenders, I think — was listening. He played The Kinks later on in the evening.
Later I talked to Steven about some of his latest ventures and a trip he took to Japan. To summarize what he said, basically, notice that the company formerly known as Restaurant Associates recently bought itself back from Compass with the help of a Japanese company (but not the name “Restaurant Associates,” according to a spokeswoman from the company, hence the pending name change), and keep your eyes open for opportunities both to open Japanese restaurants in New York and American ones in Japan.
I had that chat while finishing a weisbier and then I headed to the bar at the terrace of the Maritime hotel and had Martinis with Clark, Peter and one of the women named Alex (although she had water). We stayed until, I don’t know, late, and Clark had a 10:15 a.m. radio interview to prepare for. I e-mailed him today and he, too wondered why we thought we should have that second Martini.
Thursday, June 01, 2006
dumb sushi
June 1
Got an e-mail to day from what appears to be another newsletter explaining to me how to be a trendy New Yorker. It told me about a $68 sushi roll at a restaurant I won't name because it happens to be a very good restaurant that doesn't deserve the embarrassment.
There's nothing wrong $68 sushi. If a restaurant wants to charge it and people want to pay it, who am I to argue? But this one is a spicy tuna roll made from hon maguro, rare blackfin tuna. I'm all for eating blackfin tuna. But if you're eating such a great piece of fish, why on earth would you wrap it up in a roll and drench it with spicy mayonnaise? What a waste of a good piece of fish.
Here's some trivia: The spicy tuna roll was invented by a Mexican-American in Los Angeles, according to Michael Cardenas, a sushi pioneer in that city.
Got an e-mail to day from what appears to be another newsletter explaining to me how to be a trendy New Yorker. It told me about a $68 sushi roll at a restaurant I won't name because it happens to be a very good restaurant that doesn't deserve the embarrassment.
There's nothing wrong $68 sushi. If a restaurant wants to charge it and people want to pay it, who am I to argue? But this one is a spicy tuna roll made from hon maguro, rare blackfin tuna. I'm all for eating blackfin tuna. But if you're eating such a great piece of fish, why on earth would you wrap it up in a roll and drench it with spicy mayonnaise? What a waste of a good piece of fish.
Here's some trivia: The spicy tuna roll was invented by a Mexican-American in Los Angeles, according to Michael Cardenas, a sushi pioneer in that city.
Restaurants and their previous names, and fugu
May 31
Brasserie Ruhlmann has a new chef, and it threw a party to celebrate. Laurent Tourondel now is in charge of the kitchen there as well as at his three BLT (Bistro Laurent Tourondel) restaurants (listed in the order they opened): BLT Steak (at the space that housed, over the past decade, Le Chantilly, Restaurant David Ruggerio, Sono and Pazo), BLT Fish (which was AZ) and BLT Prime (where Union Pacific once stood).
Brasserie Ruhlmann opened, for breakfast at least, at the end of January, when Georges Masraff, formerly of Tavern on the Green, was in charge of the kitchen. Laurent Tourondel's involvement in the place was announced in April.
It was a crowded but convivial party, with many of my favorite food-scene people in attendance. I spent the first half hour or so trying to remember the name of the restaurant that occupied the space previously. It was a Provençal-Tuscan restaurant that was a joint venture among celebrated French chef Roger Vergé Roberto Ruggeri's Bice Restaurant Group, and Italian fast-food chain Sbarro. It was a cheery place with bright yellows and blues, but despite its choice location, just north of the Rockefeller Center skating rink, it failed to thrive. It opened in late 2001, which of course was bad timing, and limped along for a while before shutting its doors. The space remained vacant until Brasserie Ruhlmann opened this year, according to a guy I talked to at the party who's involved in operations of Rockefeller Center. He also was nice enough to remind me of the former restaurant's name: Medi.
I also ran into my friends Shigeko Fuke and Miguel Cardona. Somehow the subject of fugu, Japanese blowfish, came up. Fugu's famous for being potentially poisonous if not prepared properly. I've never had it, but I'd love to give it a try. Shigeko said a Japanese company was trying to find export markets for pre-prepared, pre-sliced fugu that already has been sliced properly to remove the poisonous bits.
So it was a fun party, but, it being my first post-Memorial Day party, I was wearing an off-white sport coat and felt disinclined to battle crowds and risk spilling things on it, so after Champagne and a few nibbles, I left and contemplated dinner as I wandered to the subway.
I had long known that Carnegie Deli was very close to a Q train station, but for some reason — its iconic status, maybe — I had never thought of it as a dinner option until tonight. I got a corned-beef sandwich on rye and had half of it for dinner, which was a very big dinner. The rest will make for a fine lunch, maybe two.
Brasserie Ruhlmann has a new chef, and it threw a party to celebrate. Laurent Tourondel now is in charge of the kitchen there as well as at his three BLT (Bistro Laurent Tourondel) restaurants (listed in the order they opened): BLT Steak (at the space that housed, over the past decade, Le Chantilly, Restaurant David Ruggerio, Sono and Pazo), BLT Fish (which was AZ) and BLT Prime (where Union Pacific once stood).
Brasserie Ruhlmann opened, for breakfast at least, at the end of January, when Georges Masraff, formerly of Tavern on the Green, was in charge of the kitchen. Laurent Tourondel's involvement in the place was announced in April.
It was a crowded but convivial party, with many of my favorite food-scene people in attendance. I spent the first half hour or so trying to remember the name of the restaurant that occupied the space previously. It was a Provençal-Tuscan restaurant that was a joint venture among celebrated French chef Roger Vergé Roberto Ruggeri's Bice Restaurant Group, and Italian fast-food chain Sbarro. It was a cheery place with bright yellows and blues, but despite its choice location, just north of the Rockefeller Center skating rink, it failed to thrive. It opened in late 2001, which of course was bad timing, and limped along for a while before shutting its doors. The space remained vacant until Brasserie Ruhlmann opened this year, according to a guy I talked to at the party who's involved in operations of Rockefeller Center. He also was nice enough to remind me of the former restaurant's name: Medi.
I also ran into my friends Shigeko Fuke and Miguel Cardona. Somehow the subject of fugu, Japanese blowfish, came up. Fugu's famous for being potentially poisonous if not prepared properly. I've never had it, but I'd love to give it a try. Shigeko said a Japanese company was trying to find export markets for pre-prepared, pre-sliced fugu that already has been sliced properly to remove the poisonous bits.
So it was a fun party, but, it being my first post-Memorial Day party, I was wearing an off-white sport coat and felt disinclined to battle crowds and risk spilling things on it, so after Champagne and a few nibbles, I left and contemplated dinner as I wandered to the subway.
I had long known that Carnegie Deli was very close to a Q train station, but for some reason — its iconic status, maybe — I had never thought of it as a dinner option until tonight. I got a corned-beef sandwich on rye and had half of it for dinner, which was a very big dinner. The rest will make for a fine lunch, maybe two.
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
Help Jeff & Susie
May 30
One of the bonuses of getting married during a holiday weekend (all the rage this year, apparently) is that you always will have a long weekend to celebrate your anniversary. So my friends Jeff and Susie, now living in San Francisco, were in New York this weekend, celebrating their anniversary and attending the nuptials of one of Jeff's college friends at the quite posh Blue Hill at Stone Barns. Before they had to get on the train to head to the wedding, however, we met for lunch at Sobaya, a Japanese restaurant in the East Village specializing in the buckwheat noodles, soba.
I have long been under the impression that, when it comes to Asian foods, the West Coast, for reasons of geography and demographics, have the Northeast beat, hands down. So I wondered why visitors from San Francisco would need to find Japanese food in New York.
My friends said that, although San Francisco did indeed have much better Southeast Asian food than New York did, and LA has fantastic sushi, they had yet to find Japanese food they liked in San Francisco.
So I'm looking for recommendations for Japanese food, specifically sushi, in San Francisco.
Please post comments below.
Thank you.
One of the bonuses of getting married during a holiday weekend (all the rage this year, apparently) is that you always will have a long weekend to celebrate your anniversary. So my friends Jeff and Susie, now living in San Francisco, were in New York this weekend, celebrating their anniversary and attending the nuptials of one of Jeff's college friends at the quite posh Blue Hill at Stone Barns. Before they had to get on the train to head to the wedding, however, we met for lunch at Sobaya, a Japanese restaurant in the East Village specializing in the buckwheat noodles, soba.
I have long been under the impression that, when it comes to Asian foods, the West Coast, for reasons of geography and demographics, have the Northeast beat, hands down. So I wondered why visitors from San Francisco would need to find Japanese food in New York.
My friends said that, although San Francisco did indeed have much better Southeast Asian food than New York did, and LA has fantastic sushi, they had yet to find Japanese food they liked in San Francisco.
So I'm looking for recommendations for Japanese food, specifically sushi, in San Francisco.
Please post comments below.
Thank you.
Friday, May 26, 2006
Different types of angels
May 26
Perhaps my favorite way to start the day is to go to the annual C-CAP awards breakfast.
The Careers through Culinary Arts Program is an amazingly cool organization that supports generally underprivileged students interested in cooking for a living, or being involved in related fields. Today they gave out hundreds of thousands of dollars in scholarships, but they don't just throw money at the kids. C-CAP's founder and president, Richard Grausman, insists that the beneficiaries stay in touch so that he and his associates can nurture and foster them and help them out should they get in over their heads or otherwise come on hard times.
The result is a group of articulate, intelligent, capable and productive members of society.
I'm usually misty throughout the whole breakfast, because while I drink my coffee and eat my berries and potatoes and bacon in a ballroom at the Pierre hotel, I actually get to watch kids' dreams come true.
I think I went to my first C-CAP awards breakfast about four years ago, and sat at a table with other press people as well as a student and her mother. We chatted with the student and asked her what her goals were (we would have talked to her mother, too, but she didn't speak much English). She said she'd really love to go to The Culinary Institute of America, a very expensive school in idyllic Hyde Park, N.Y. But of course, unless you come from big money or have parents that have both the wherewithal and the desire to take on pretty heavy debt for you, going to The CIA is not a reasonable aspiration.
It's nice to dream, though.
We members of the press already had folders with press releases announcing the scholarship winners, so we knew that our breakfast companion had won one to attend the CIA. I thought it was hard not to give away the secret, but boy, was it fun to watch her when her name was announced.
There are a few tears every year as the C-CAP members announce winners whose struggles have been particularly difficult, or as they hand out scholarships named after C-CAP alumni and others whose lives were cut short. The whole experience is really elevating.
But today I'm sleepy, because the breakfast starts at 8:45 (I was late), and last night I was at the European Wine Council's 10th annual black tie gala, which this year was held at the new, not yet open, Le Cirque.
We were upstairs in the private dining room, which has as one of its design features a wine tower. One of the Maccioni boys — Marco, I think — told our table the story of the tower:
Years ago as they were discussing the design of Circo — a more casual restaurant than the Maccioni flagship — with designer Adam Tihany, they conceived of the idea of a wall of wine, on which the most expensive wines would be at the top. Sirio Maccioni joked that the wines should be fetched by waitresses in short skirts, providing a bonus for those who ordered particularly expensive bottles.
The price for such an endeavor was not in synch with the budget for Circo, however.
Then Tihany was contracted to design Aureole in Las Vegas, which has the standout design feature of a wine tower, with wine stacked by price and fetched by lovely "wine angels."
Perhaps my favorite way to start the day is to go to the annual C-CAP awards breakfast.
The Careers through Culinary Arts Program is an amazingly cool organization that supports generally underprivileged students interested in cooking for a living, or being involved in related fields. Today they gave out hundreds of thousands of dollars in scholarships, but they don't just throw money at the kids. C-CAP's founder and president, Richard Grausman, insists that the beneficiaries stay in touch so that he and his associates can nurture and foster them and help them out should they get in over their heads or otherwise come on hard times.
The result is a group of articulate, intelligent, capable and productive members of society.
I'm usually misty throughout the whole breakfast, because while I drink my coffee and eat my berries and potatoes and bacon in a ballroom at the Pierre hotel, I actually get to watch kids' dreams come true.
I think I went to my first C-CAP awards breakfast about four years ago, and sat at a table with other press people as well as a student and her mother. We chatted with the student and asked her what her goals were (we would have talked to her mother, too, but she didn't speak much English). She said she'd really love to go to The Culinary Institute of America, a very expensive school in idyllic Hyde Park, N.Y. But of course, unless you come from big money or have parents that have both the wherewithal and the desire to take on pretty heavy debt for you, going to The CIA is not a reasonable aspiration.
It's nice to dream, though.
We members of the press already had folders with press releases announcing the scholarship winners, so we knew that our breakfast companion had won one to attend the CIA. I thought it was hard not to give away the secret, but boy, was it fun to watch her when her name was announced.
There are a few tears every year as the C-CAP members announce winners whose struggles have been particularly difficult, or as they hand out scholarships named after C-CAP alumni and others whose lives were cut short. The whole experience is really elevating.
But today I'm sleepy, because the breakfast starts at 8:45 (I was late), and last night I was at the European Wine Council's 10th annual black tie gala, which this year was held at the new, not yet open, Le Cirque.
We were upstairs in the private dining room, which has as one of its design features a wine tower. One of the Maccioni boys — Marco, I think — told our table the story of the tower:
Years ago as they were discussing the design of Circo — a more casual restaurant than the Maccioni flagship — with designer Adam Tihany, they conceived of the idea of a wall of wine, on which the most expensive wines would be at the top. Sirio Maccioni joked that the wines should be fetched by waitresses in short skirts, providing a bonus for those who ordered particularly expensive bottles.
The price for such an endeavor was not in synch with the budget for Circo, however.
Then Tihany was contracted to design Aureole in Las Vegas, which has the standout design feature of a wine tower, with wine stacked by price and fetched by lovely "wine angels."
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
It’s who you eat with
May 23
I think for most people, the most important part of a meal is who they're eating with. Obviously, it's my job to be more food-focused than that, but either way a meal is better when shared with my friend Andy Battaglia (who, though a music writer, reported on the clear meat we were served at one meal in his own blog; keep an eye out for him as his responsibilities at The Onion expand to cover restaurants and other excellent things to see and do in New York).
Andy's a genuine sensualist, for whom every bite of food and whiff of wine is a discovery. So it's especially fun to take him to places where the chef enjoys playing with unusual textures and flavor combinations. Pair it all with wine and he's in heaven. Add to that a bird's eye view of Central Park and, well, that's what we did on Friday night, when we had dinner at Asiate, in the Mandarin Oriental hotel, on the 35th floor of the Time Warner Center, where chef Noriyuki Sugie's experimental fusion food was paired with sakes and Slovenian dessert wines, Spätlese-style Viogners (I'm not making that up) and all sorts of weird stuff.
On Monday we had drinks and bar food at PS450, where we half-watched the Yankees get clobbered by the Red Sox and I commented on the music that was being played, which was pretty much what I listened to in high school and college in the 1980s.
I wondered aloud if perhaps the person who picked the music, was, like me, a Denver Jew born in 1967. Andy suggested that perhaps my taste and upbringing were not unique, and that in fact we were listening to the relatively cheesy music — Joan Jett, Steve Miller, John Cougar (with or without the Mellencamp), Lynyrd Skynyrd (not from the ’80s, but still popular at the time) that not only I, but also he, eight years my junior and raised in the suburbs north of Atlanta, and millions of other people heard during our formative years.
Of course he had a point.
I then learned from Andy about the origins of Disco and the fight currently going on in the world of music criticism regarding the legitimacy of criticising music because of its provenance (e.g., complaints that the artist has gone "commercial,") rather than because of the quality of the music itself, among other things.
What I ate and drank at Asiate:
Warm Slow Poached Egg, Bonito, Ginko Nut
Perrier Jouet "Fleur" Rosé 1997
A variety of seafood morsels the exact nature of which I don't recall at the moment, but check back for updates.
Harushika “Shiboribana”, Junmai Ginjo Nama Sake
Eric Texier Viognier ‘Ô Pâle’ 2005, Rhône Valley, France
Caesar Salad Soup
Surf and Turf
Zilliken Riesling Kabinett ‘Ockfener Bockstein’ 2001,
Mosel-Saar-Ruwer, Germany
Marble Beef
Yakiniku Short Rib,Smoked Potato Purée, Potato Chips, Beef Consommé
Water Chestnuts, Barley fried Rice
Ojai Syrah “Bien Nacido Vineyard” 2002, Santa Barbara County
Berry-Greek Yogurt, Olive Oil Marinated Grape Salad, Grape Granité
Vietnamese Café
Coffee Mousse, Caramelized Sweetened Condensed Milk Ice Cream,
Almond and Amaretto Dust
Tilia Rumeni Musˇkat ‘Galileus’ 2004, Slovenia
And at PS450:
Mac ’n' Cheese pops
Buffalo pops with spicy hollandaise
Steak quesadilla with smoked bacon, spinach and blue cheese
Steak and creamed spinach canapés on baguette toast
Slider sampler of burgers, cheese burgers, barbecue burgers and pulled pork
I think for most people, the most important part of a meal is who they're eating with. Obviously, it's my job to be more food-focused than that, but either way a meal is better when shared with my friend Andy Battaglia (who, though a music writer, reported on the clear meat we were served at one meal in his own blog; keep an eye out for him as his responsibilities at The Onion expand to cover restaurants and other excellent things to see and do in New York).
Andy's a genuine sensualist, for whom every bite of food and whiff of wine is a discovery. So it's especially fun to take him to places where the chef enjoys playing with unusual textures and flavor combinations. Pair it all with wine and he's in heaven. Add to that a bird's eye view of Central Park and, well, that's what we did on Friday night, when we had dinner at Asiate, in the Mandarin Oriental hotel, on the 35th floor of the Time Warner Center, where chef Noriyuki Sugie's experimental fusion food was paired with sakes and Slovenian dessert wines, Spätlese-style Viogners (I'm not making that up) and all sorts of weird stuff.
On Monday we had drinks and bar food at PS450, where we half-watched the Yankees get clobbered by the Red Sox and I commented on the music that was being played, which was pretty much what I listened to in high school and college in the 1980s.
I wondered aloud if perhaps the person who picked the music, was, like me, a Denver Jew born in 1967. Andy suggested that perhaps my taste and upbringing were not unique, and that in fact we were listening to the relatively cheesy music — Joan Jett, Steve Miller, John Cougar (with or without the Mellencamp), Lynyrd Skynyrd (not from the ’80s, but still popular at the time) that not only I, but also he, eight years my junior and raised in the suburbs north of Atlanta, and millions of other people heard during our formative years.
Of course he had a point.
I then learned from Andy about the origins of Disco and the fight currently going on in the world of music criticism regarding the legitimacy of criticising music because of its provenance (e.g., complaints that the artist has gone "commercial,") rather than because of the quality of the music itself, among other things.
What I ate and drank at Asiate:
Warm Slow Poached Egg, Bonito, Ginko Nut
Perrier Jouet "Fleur" Rosé 1997
A variety of seafood morsels the exact nature of which I don't recall at the moment, but check back for updates.
Harushika “Shiboribana”, Junmai Ginjo Nama Sake
Eric Texier Viognier ‘Ô Pâle’ 2005, Rhône Valley, France
Caesar Salad Soup
Surf and Turf
Zilliken Riesling Kabinett ‘Ockfener Bockstein’ 2001,
Mosel-Saar-Ruwer, Germany
Marble Beef
Yakiniku Short Rib,Smoked Potato Purée, Potato Chips, Beef Consommé
Water Chestnuts, Barley fried Rice
Ojai Syrah “Bien Nacido Vineyard” 2002, Santa Barbara County
Berry-Greek Yogurt, Olive Oil Marinated Grape Salad, Grape Granité
Vietnamese Café
Coffee Mousse, Caramelized Sweetened Condensed Milk Ice Cream,
Almond and Amaretto Dust
Tilia Rumeni Musˇkat ‘Galileus’ 2004, Slovenia
And at PS450:
Mac ’n' Cheese pops
Buffalo pops with spicy hollandaise
Steak quesadilla with smoked bacon, spinach and blue cheese
Steak and creamed spinach canapés on baguette toast
Slider sampler of burgers, cheese burgers, barbecue burgers and pulled pork
Thursday, May 18, 2006
The Circus
May 18
To see the hype surrounding the opening of the third incarnation of Le Cirque, you'd think New York City had never had a restaurant before. There were items about it on national news programs. At least one daily newspaper started a feature about the restaurant on Page 1.
Le Cirque's heyday was before my time, but even when I arrived in New York in 1999, in time to see the restaurant's second version, Le Cirque 2000, the staff had enough gall to look me up and down when I showed up, wearing a suit, to an event I had been invited to, and then glance at me with the implicit inquiry: "What are you doing here?" It reminded me of when I stood too near the cool kids in junior high.
I guess I should have worn a better suit. And better shoes. I'm told shoes are a dead giveaway.
At tonight's opening party, I found myself talking about plastic surgery a lot. So much of it was in evidence, so many people with stretched out skin and unblinking eyes. I guess in a way there's a certain implicit grandeur to being so mangled. If your looks are that important, certainly you must play some pivotal role in some social circle, somewhere, or did at one time.
I don't recognize many famous people. I'm oblivious to New York socialites, and you have to be a pretty famous movie star for me to recognize you out of context, unless you're involved in the restaurant world in some way.
I did recognize Bill Cosby, however, and I was told that Billy Joel was there, and Mayor Michael Bloomberg and, well, "everybody" was a word often repeated in describing the crowd. Le Cirque's patriarch, Sirio Maccioni, reportedly spent the early portion of the party at a hidden private table with Woody Allen and Soon-Yi. I saw him later sitting at a banquette with many young women.
There weren't many chefs, but the party started at 6:30 and was winding down when I left shortly after 9, and chefs are busy during dinnertime.
I did greet Jean-Georges Vongerichten and his business partner, Phil Suarez, but mostly I talked to publicists, who complained about the publicist who threw the party, saying that she only knew how to throw big, crowded parties at which you spend most of the time battling your way from one crowded space to another.
I had a some nice chats with a few journalists, including the always entertaining Regina Schrambling, who made a passing comment on the staircase about prostitutes upstairs, WNYC's Leonard Lopate and food writer extraordinaire Jeffrey Steingarten, but I probably had the most fun talking to Mr. Steingarten's wife, Caron Smith, who is chief curator of the Rubin Museum of Art, which specializes in Himalayan works.
She was a China scholar, and I lived in China for a year, so we bonded.
I was in China in 1988-89, and was in Beijing during the Tiananmen Square massacre of June 4, 1989. Ms. Smith told me something I didn't know about the events leading up to the protests that ended in bloodshed.
What I did know was that in the months preceding it the national art museum in Beijing featured its first exhibit of modern Chinese art. What I didn't know was that artists had seized the museum and forced the exhibit into existence. Ms. Smith said it was the first signs of the intellectual rebellion that burst into the open following the April death of former president Hu Yaobang — who was widely regarded as a sympathizer of reformers — and then gained steam with the arrival of Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev that May.
That was more interesting than the talk of plastic surgery.
I eventually ended up in Le Cirque's kitchen, where mild mayhem ensued as the husband of one of Martha Stewart's TV executives tried to find dates for the executive's son.
They had been drinking, and the food to party-attendee ratio was quite low. So after the party I ate:
A quarter pounder with cheese,
a large order of fries and
a Diet Coke
To see the hype surrounding the opening of the third incarnation of Le Cirque, you'd think New York City had never had a restaurant before. There were items about it on national news programs. At least one daily newspaper started a feature about the restaurant on Page 1.
Le Cirque's heyday was before my time, but even when I arrived in New York in 1999, in time to see the restaurant's second version, Le Cirque 2000, the staff had enough gall to look me up and down when I showed up, wearing a suit, to an event I had been invited to, and then glance at me with the implicit inquiry: "What are you doing here?" It reminded me of when I stood too near the cool kids in junior high.
I guess I should have worn a better suit. And better shoes. I'm told shoes are a dead giveaway.
At tonight's opening party, I found myself talking about plastic surgery a lot. So much of it was in evidence, so many people with stretched out skin and unblinking eyes. I guess in a way there's a certain implicit grandeur to being so mangled. If your looks are that important, certainly you must play some pivotal role in some social circle, somewhere, or did at one time.
I don't recognize many famous people. I'm oblivious to New York socialites, and you have to be a pretty famous movie star for me to recognize you out of context, unless you're involved in the restaurant world in some way.
I did recognize Bill Cosby, however, and I was told that Billy Joel was there, and Mayor Michael Bloomberg and, well, "everybody" was a word often repeated in describing the crowd. Le Cirque's patriarch, Sirio Maccioni, reportedly spent the early portion of the party at a hidden private table with Woody Allen and Soon-Yi. I saw him later sitting at a banquette with many young women.
There weren't many chefs, but the party started at 6:30 and was winding down when I left shortly after 9, and chefs are busy during dinnertime.
I did greet Jean-Georges Vongerichten and his business partner, Phil Suarez, but mostly I talked to publicists, who complained about the publicist who threw the party, saying that she only knew how to throw big, crowded parties at which you spend most of the time battling your way from one crowded space to another.
I had a some nice chats with a few journalists, including the always entertaining Regina Schrambling, who made a passing comment on the staircase about prostitutes upstairs, WNYC's Leonard Lopate and food writer extraordinaire Jeffrey Steingarten, but I probably had the most fun talking to Mr. Steingarten's wife, Caron Smith, who is chief curator of the Rubin Museum of Art, which specializes in Himalayan works.
She was a China scholar, and I lived in China for a year, so we bonded.
I was in China in 1988-89, and was in Beijing during the Tiananmen Square massacre of June 4, 1989. Ms. Smith told me something I didn't know about the events leading up to the protests that ended in bloodshed.
What I did know was that in the months preceding it the national art museum in Beijing featured its first exhibit of modern Chinese art. What I didn't know was that artists had seized the museum and forced the exhibit into existence. Ms. Smith said it was the first signs of the intellectual rebellion that burst into the open following the April death of former president Hu Yaobang — who was widely regarded as a sympathizer of reformers — and then gained steam with the arrival of Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev that May.
That was more interesting than the talk of plastic surgery.
I eventually ended up in Le Cirque's kitchen, where mild mayhem ensued as the husband of one of Martha Stewart's TV executives tried to find dates for the executive's son.
They had been drinking, and the food to party-attendee ratio was quite low. So after the party I ate:
A quarter pounder with cheese,
a large order of fries and
a Diet Coke
All Waldorf, all the time
May 18
I have been eating at the Waldorf-Astoria a lot lately. Two Sundays ago I had brunch at Peacock Alley there with Kenny Lao. It's a gigantic buffet, so we had to strategize. We started with seafood — oysters on the half shell, lobster, king crab legs — and then moved on to breakfast, into which I argued the Italian cold cuts should be included, because they're like ham, sort of. We only had savory stuff for breakfast; it seems neither of us is much of a waffle eater. Next came lunch, which for me was mostly salad (including Waldorf salad) and fruit, because I had eggs Benedict with breakfast, but Kenny went straight for Prime rib, and we mostly sat dessert out.
Then two nights ago I found myself back in Peacock Alley, having dinner with one of the hotel's publicists, sampling the food of chef Cedric Tovar, whose food I realized I'd never had before. The Waldorf's executive chef, John Doherty, stopped by and had a glass of Woodford Reserve with us while we finished our dinner. He'd just been at the hotel's service awards party (you know, the event at which staff members are given gifts for having stayed in their jobs for so long), so he was in a suit. I'd never seen him in a suit before.
Another PR company, this one representing the Waldorf's cookbook, had asked me to the chef's table the following night. I mentioned that to John, and he suggested I also ask my boss, Pam Parseghian, to come along. John gives Pam credit for discovering him. He was already executive chef of the Waldorf, so it wasn't necessarily a profound discovery, but apparently she was the first person ever to write about him, 14 or so years ago.
So there I was at the Waldorf again, last night, with Pam, at the chef's table, which is in one of the hotel's kitchens. The chef's table has been used for special events for a long time, but for the past two years John has been serving dinner there regularly twice a month, and it has evolved into the hotel's test kitchen. It also gives his banquet chefs (banquets and catering make up about 75 percent of the hotel's food sales) a chance to be a bit more creative.
John invites family, friends and media to the chef's table, but anyone can go; they just have to call up, make a reservation, and pay $150 (plus tax and tip).
what I ate at Peacock Alley (don't worry, everything was small):
amuse bouche trio: Alaskan king crab salad, pea soup, ricotta cheese with asparagus and strawberry vinaigrette
tuna and green apple tartare, tangerine vinaigrette and American sturgeon caviar Maine lobster salad with spring vegetables and lemon vinaigrette
pistachio-crusted foie gras with lychee caramel and lychee jalapeño
jumbo white asparagus from Carpentras with blood orange reduction
black cardamom-dusted John Dory, matsutake mushrooms and curry sauce
ramp-wrapped monkfish loin, sautéed Savoy cabbage, yellow tomato and olive vinaigrette
wild pepper roasted Niman ranch pork loin, bock choy and braised onions
ginger-crusted New Zealand rack of lamb, pickled Japanese eggplant, heirloom tomatoes
roasted fresh apricot, vanilla and peanut sauce, almond sherbet
strawberry rhubarb craquelin, strawberry sorbet, chocolate feuillantine, lemon soufflé
What I ate and drank at the chef's table:
Champagne with various hors d'oeuvres
Strawberry conserve, duck confit and foie gras terrine with poached rhubarb and cracklings
Champagne Napoleon Rosé, Brut, France
Crispy soft shell crab with fresh hearts of palm salad, kumquats, grapes and rose petals.
Lambert Bridge Sauvignon Blanc, Dry Creek Valley 2003, California
Mediterranean daurade with Portuguese chickpea and chorizo stew and Romesco sauce
Cristom Pinot Noir, Willamette Valley, 2004, Oregon
Aged rib eye of Angus beef with asparagus, gnocchi and morels, radish and pea shoot salad
Audesirk Signature, Cabernet Sauvignon, 2002, Napa Valley
Peanut Butter Sundae
Vanilla tapioca, salty caramel sauce and peanut butter ice cream
Muscat de Beaumes de Venise Paul Jaboulet Aine, 2003, France
I have been eating at the Waldorf-Astoria a lot lately. Two Sundays ago I had brunch at Peacock Alley there with Kenny Lao. It's a gigantic buffet, so we had to strategize. We started with seafood — oysters on the half shell, lobster, king crab legs — and then moved on to breakfast, into which I argued the Italian cold cuts should be included, because they're like ham, sort of. We only had savory stuff for breakfast; it seems neither of us is much of a waffle eater. Next came lunch, which for me was mostly salad (including Waldorf salad) and fruit, because I had eggs Benedict with breakfast, but Kenny went straight for Prime rib, and we mostly sat dessert out.
Then two nights ago I found myself back in Peacock Alley, having dinner with one of the hotel's publicists, sampling the food of chef Cedric Tovar, whose food I realized I'd never had before. The Waldorf's executive chef, John Doherty, stopped by and had a glass of Woodford Reserve with us while we finished our dinner. He'd just been at the hotel's service awards party (you know, the event at which staff members are given gifts for having stayed in their jobs for so long), so he was in a suit. I'd never seen him in a suit before.
Another PR company, this one representing the Waldorf's cookbook, had asked me to the chef's table the following night. I mentioned that to John, and he suggested I also ask my boss, Pam Parseghian, to come along. John gives Pam credit for discovering him. He was already executive chef of the Waldorf, so it wasn't necessarily a profound discovery, but apparently she was the first person ever to write about him, 14 or so years ago.
So there I was at the Waldorf again, last night, with Pam, at the chef's table, which is in one of the hotel's kitchens. The chef's table has been used for special events for a long time, but for the past two years John has been serving dinner there regularly twice a month, and it has evolved into the hotel's test kitchen. It also gives his banquet chefs (banquets and catering make up about 75 percent of the hotel's food sales) a chance to be a bit more creative.
John invites family, friends and media to the chef's table, but anyone can go; they just have to call up, make a reservation, and pay $150 (plus tax and tip).
what I ate at Peacock Alley (don't worry, everything was small):
amuse bouche trio: Alaskan king crab salad, pea soup, ricotta cheese with asparagus and strawberry vinaigrette
tuna and green apple tartare, tangerine vinaigrette and American sturgeon caviar Maine lobster salad with spring vegetables and lemon vinaigrette
pistachio-crusted foie gras with lychee caramel and lychee jalapeño
jumbo white asparagus from Carpentras with blood orange reduction
black cardamom-dusted John Dory, matsutake mushrooms and curry sauce
ramp-wrapped monkfish loin, sautéed Savoy cabbage, yellow tomato and olive vinaigrette
wild pepper roasted Niman ranch pork loin, bock choy and braised onions
ginger-crusted New Zealand rack of lamb, pickled Japanese eggplant, heirloom tomatoes
roasted fresh apricot, vanilla and peanut sauce, almond sherbet
strawberry rhubarb craquelin, strawberry sorbet, chocolate feuillantine, lemon soufflé
What I ate and drank at the chef's table:
Champagne with various hors d'oeuvres
Strawberry conserve, duck confit and foie gras terrine with poached rhubarb and cracklings
Champagne Napoleon Rosé, Brut, France
Crispy soft shell crab with fresh hearts of palm salad, kumquats, grapes and rose petals.
Lambert Bridge Sauvignon Blanc, Dry Creek Valley 2003, California
Mediterranean daurade with Portuguese chickpea and chorizo stew and Romesco sauce
Cristom Pinot Noir, Willamette Valley, 2004, Oregon
Aged rib eye of Angus beef with asparagus, gnocchi and morels, radish and pea shoot salad
Audesirk Signature, Cabernet Sauvignon, 2002, Napa Valley
Peanut Butter Sundae
Vanilla tapioca, salty caramel sauce and peanut butter ice cream
Muscat de Beaumes de Venise Paul Jaboulet Aine, 2003, France
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
Yin and Yang
May 17
The Jivamukti yoga school near Union Square has a vegan cafe that opened last week, called JivamukTea (get it?). They got who I believe is America's only vegan celebrity chef, Matthew Kenney, to run it, but I still couldn't convince my friend Clark Mitchell to leave his cozy Brooklyn confines on a Saturday night for a meal that wouldn't have animal protein ("Don't go getting all vegetarian and downward dog on me!" he later text-messaged me). I had a bunch of scholarship applications to read, so I brought them with me for company as I took the Q train to 14th St.
JivamukTea reminded me of my granola past, when in the early 1970s my lefty mother introduced us to wheat germ and carob. I kind of like wheat germ. It's crunchy. But whoever thought carob was a suitable substitute for chocolate — I suppose because it's brown — should have his or here tastebuds revoked.
Jivamukti had an open house or something for its students that night, and the place was packed. In one room people were all sitting in what I think were lotus and half-lotus positions on the floor, swaying in a sort of chant-a-long, I suppose in Sanskrit. The line to eat Matthew Kenney's food was long and moving remarkably slowly, but that meant I did have time to talk to James Cury from Time Out NY and his wife Dorothy, who I think is still at US Weekly, who were on their way out. James is smart and good-natured, and one of my favorite people to see on the restaurant circuit. I asked if JivamukTea also reminded him of his lefty upbringing, but he didn't really answer.
The woman in front of me in line expressed grave distress ("then we have a problem," I think is how she phrased it), that the dressing in the salad had lemon juice. "I can't eat that," she said. I'm not sure what she thought would be in a salad dressing, since as her conversation with various staff members unfolded it emerged that she was unwilling to eat anything high in acid — vinegar, or even tomatoes.
I wondered what she meant by "can't." Did she not know how to eat it?
If it were peanuts or shellfish or some other item that causes some people to swell up and die, I'd understand, but I don't think acid does that.
I think "won't" is the word she was looking for.
I'm now going to break my self-proclaimed prime directive of this blog and comment on what I thought of the food, because the raw lasagna with sun dried tomato puree, mint-basil pesto and macadamia "ricotta," was absolutely out of this world. Tasty, invigorating, filling. I was embarrassed by my surprise at that.
I also drank a Lotus Pond ("All Greens with Lemon and Ginger puts you at peace") and for dessert I had a raw strawberry cheesecake.
To give a little bit of yang to Saturday's yin, I took up Clark, who is an editor at Travel + Leisure, on his invitation to join him on Monday at Frankie & Johnnie's Steakhouse to celebrate their 80th anniversary. So we had steak and a veal chop and creamed spinach and two kinds of potatoes, bringing equilibrium back to my inner omnivore.
The Jivamukti yoga school near Union Square has a vegan cafe that opened last week, called JivamukTea (get it?). They got who I believe is America's only vegan celebrity chef, Matthew Kenney, to run it, but I still couldn't convince my friend Clark Mitchell to leave his cozy Brooklyn confines on a Saturday night for a meal that wouldn't have animal protein ("Don't go getting all vegetarian and downward dog on me!" he later text-messaged me). I had a bunch of scholarship applications to read, so I brought them with me for company as I took the Q train to 14th St.
JivamukTea reminded me of my granola past, when in the early 1970s my lefty mother introduced us to wheat germ and carob. I kind of like wheat germ. It's crunchy. But whoever thought carob was a suitable substitute for chocolate — I suppose because it's brown — should have his or here tastebuds revoked.
Jivamukti had an open house or something for its students that night, and the place was packed. In one room people were all sitting in what I think were lotus and half-lotus positions on the floor, swaying in a sort of chant-a-long, I suppose in Sanskrit. The line to eat Matthew Kenney's food was long and moving remarkably slowly, but that meant I did have time to talk to James Cury from Time Out NY and his wife Dorothy, who I think is still at US Weekly, who were on their way out. James is smart and good-natured, and one of my favorite people to see on the restaurant circuit. I asked if JivamukTea also reminded him of his lefty upbringing, but he didn't really answer.
The woman in front of me in line expressed grave distress ("then we have a problem," I think is how she phrased it), that the dressing in the salad had lemon juice. "I can't eat that," she said. I'm not sure what she thought would be in a salad dressing, since as her conversation with various staff members unfolded it emerged that she was unwilling to eat anything high in acid — vinegar, or even tomatoes.
I wondered what she meant by "can't." Did she not know how to eat it?
If it were peanuts or shellfish or some other item that causes some people to swell up and die, I'd understand, but I don't think acid does that.
I think "won't" is the word she was looking for.
I'm now going to break my self-proclaimed prime directive of this blog and comment on what I thought of the food, because the raw lasagna with sun dried tomato puree, mint-basil pesto and macadamia "ricotta," was absolutely out of this world. Tasty, invigorating, filling. I was embarrassed by my surprise at that.
I also drank a Lotus Pond ("All Greens with Lemon and Ginger puts you at peace") and for dessert I had a raw strawberry cheesecake.
To give a little bit of yang to Saturday's yin, I took up Clark, who is an editor at Travel + Leisure, on his invitation to join him on Monday at Frankie & Johnnie's Steakhouse to celebrate their 80th anniversary. So we had steak and a veal chop and creamed spinach and two kinds of potatoes, bringing equilibrium back to my inner omnivore.
Friday, May 12, 2006
Reputations at Stake
May 10
I got two (2) e-mails today sent by people who said they would put their reputations on the line. One was from a publicist who wants me (and the countless others he no-doubt e-mailed) to check out the bar food at some restaurant. Two days ago a colleague of his said in an e-mail that this restaurant had "by far the best bar food in the city." He went a step further and said "I’ll stake my rep on the fact that you have not had better bar/lounge food in New York City!!!"
Or did he really go a step further? I was unaware that this guy — a nice enough fellow, I'll admit — had a rep. So what exactly is he staking?
Then later today I got a gem that, after an unusual salutation, began: "Your friend and occasional bedmate [an obvious pseudonym] has been asked by a good friend to help him promote his latest venture."
Occasional bedmate, really? Hmm. That really narrows the scope of who it could be. I suspect it’s not true.
He wouldn't provide details, but it's clearly part of a viral (and virulent) marketing campaign that's wending its way, quite effectively, I must say, through the New York restaurant world, with the eager help of a couple of popular blogs.
"Unfortunately, I'm not at liberty to discuss exactly what this venture is at this time," he wrote, "but suffice it to say that i would not attach my reputation to something I didn't think was in the interest of my friends and fellow New Yorkers. "
I’m intrigued, since the guy was using the fake name of Richard Nouveau (I hope it’s fake, since a google search turned up nada, which would be truly pathetic.)
And if I don’t recall having him as a bedmate, what kind of reputation is he really putting at risk?
I got two (2) e-mails today sent by people who said they would put their reputations on the line. One was from a publicist who wants me (and the countless others he no-doubt e-mailed) to check out the bar food at some restaurant. Two days ago a colleague of his said in an e-mail that this restaurant had "by far the best bar food in the city." He went a step further and said "I’ll stake my rep on the fact that you have not had better bar/lounge food in New York City!!!"
Or did he really go a step further? I was unaware that this guy — a nice enough fellow, I'll admit — had a rep. So what exactly is he staking?
Then later today I got a gem that, after an unusual salutation, began: "Your friend and occasional bedmate [an obvious pseudonym] has been asked by a good friend to help him promote his latest venture."
Occasional bedmate, really? Hmm. That really narrows the scope of who it could be. I suspect it’s not true.
He wouldn't provide details, but it's clearly part of a viral (and virulent) marketing campaign that's wending its way, quite effectively, I must say, through the New York restaurant world, with the eager help of a couple of popular blogs.
"Unfortunately, I'm not at liberty to discuss exactly what this venture is at this time," he wrote, "but suffice it to say that i would not attach my reputation to something I didn't think was in the interest of my friends and fellow New Yorkers. "
I’m intrigued, since the guy was using the fake name of Richard Nouveau (I hope it’s fake, since a google search turned up nada, which would be truly pathetic.)
And if I don’t recall having him as a bedmate, what kind of reputation is he really putting at risk?
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
The Beard Awards
May 9
I should be over the James Beard Foundation Awards. This was my eighth consecutive year attending them, and they don't change much from year to year. Even the nominees don't change much: Last year's winner is replaced by a newcomer, but often the other nominees are the same (this year that was literally true for two categories, and just about every category had at least two chefs who also were nominated last year — out of five). And that's for the chef awards, the only ones I write about. The same cookbook authors, journalists and broadcasters win awards in their category year after year. Chicago TV personality Steve Dolinsky won his 12th award this year, and the awards are only 16 years old. Steve's a good guy, but come on: This is the most dynamic era of food — scholarship, cooking, reporting — in living memory in the United States. Surely there are more players out there.
Most years I hunker down in the pressroom, where we can watch the ceremony on a TV monitor and photograph and interview chefs after they win.
That was a mistake this year. The theme of the 16th annual awards was a tribute to the culinary legacy of New Orleans (New Orleans native Cokie Robers was the MC), and there were several video presentations along those lines that I heard were just terrific. But in the pressroom, the monitors stayed focused on the podium from which the presenters introduced the videos. Mysteriously, this was a problem that no one seemed able to solve during the four-hour ceremony.
So as I said, I shouldn't be interested in going any more, and there are certainly plenty of other very capable journalists at NRN who could cover it. In fact, two of us went this year — me and my boss, executive food editor Pamela Parseghian, who took pictures while I took notes. I could have stayed home.
But there's something about the awards that I think are just great. I think part of it is simply that it's the only truly grand, black-tie occasion I get to attend. There's a certain grandeur that I like about the way the United States' fine dining world chooses to honor itself.
Part of it is also that the chefs and other restaurant folks who attend (and cookbook authors and journalists) are psyched to be there. My job is to write objectively about what restaurant chefs are cooking, so it's unprofessional of me to admit this: but I really like these people. I admire what they do, I benefit from it, and most of them have a warmth that I think comes from the same place as their cooking: A genuine desire to make people happy.
This year the awards were more moving than usual, of course: New Orleans holds a very special place in the hearts of food-focused Americans.
Cokie Roberts said that New Orleans' culture was distinctive. "Without it, America is not the same country," she said, and in no area is that more true than food (except, some people would argue, music, which is fair enough).
People were griping this year about the interminable length of the awards, which were about an hour longer than usual for some reason. In part it was due to the extra presentations regarding New Orleans. In part it was due to the fact that eight restaurants instead of four were named American Classics, and those presentations involve videos and acceptance speeches.
But part of it was that people accepting their awards wouldn't shut up.
Remember, next time you get an award and are expected to make an acceptance speech: Brevity is the soul of wit. In fact, I'll write your speech for you right now. Here it is: "Thank you very much."
Take your loved ones and friends out to dinner, give bonuses to your staff members, or e-mail your thanks to them, but if you don't have anything really profound to say, just accept your award graciously and sit down.
My favorite part of the whole Beard weekend is the afterparties. There are several each year, but the best one I know of this year was at The Lounge at The Hotel on Rivington, hosted by chef Kurt Gutenbrunner, of Wallsé and Blaue Gans.
Chefs work hard, and they know how to party. To get a bunch of them together in one room with dancing and Champagne — especially after sitting for four hours but then getting prestigious awards — is a sight to behold.
I ended up chatting with Thai chefs for awhile, again, including Tyson Wong Ophaso of the soon-to-open Chinatown Brasserie and David Banks (his mother's Thai and he was raised in Thailand) of Land, on New York's Upper West Side. I also talked to some visiting Chicagoans and New Orleanians, including Melvin Rodrigue, who manages Galatoire's. We met at the Beard Awards last year, when his restaurant won the award for Outstanding Restaurant. They've opened a restaurant in Baton Rouge, and I met their chef there, young Brian Landry.
A highlight of the evening came when I was chatting with an editor from Boston Magazine who, like me, is a Tufts alumn. Daniel Boulud — having just been named Outstanding Restaurateur ("I thought I was only a chef," he said in his acceptance speech), climbed onto the bar, danced a bit, and then, no lie, grabbed a Champagne bottle, shook it up and sprayed everyone in the room with it. Andrew Carmellini, who was executive chef at Cafe Boulud before he left to open A Voce, made a half-hearted attempt to spray him back, but Daniel, after giving the crowd another spray, scampered off the bar just as a bouncer was getting ready to take him out.
Good times.
The restaurant award winners:
Outstanding restaurant: The French Laundry, Yountville, Calif.
Outstanding chef: Alfred Portale
Outstanding restaurateur: Daniel Boulud, New York (and Vegas and Palm Beach, Fla.)
Best new restaurant: The Modern, New York City
Outstanding pastry chef: Johnny Iuzzini, Jean Georges, New York City
Rising Star Chef: Corey Lee, The French Laundry
Outstanding Service: Gary Danko, San Francisco
Outstanding wine service: Aureole, Las Vegas
Outstanding wine and spirits professional: Daniel Johnnes, wine director of the Dinex Group (Daniel Boulud's restaurants)
Outstanding restaurant design: Bentel & Bentel Architects/Planners, for The Modern
Outstanding restaurant graphics: Mucca Design Corporation for Sant Ambroeus in New York City.
Best chef in California: Suzanne Goin of Lucques in West Hollywood, Calif.
Best chef in the Mid-Atlantic: Fabio Trabocchi of Maestro at The Ritz-Carlton in Tyson’s Corner, Va.
Best chef in the Midwest: Shawn McClain of Spring and Green Zebra in Chicago
Best chef in New York City: Dan Barber of Blue Hill
Best chef in the Northeast: Jean-Louis Gerin of Jean-Louis in Greenwich, Conn.
Best chef in the Northwest and Hawaii: Scott Carsberg of Lampreia in Seattle
Best chef in the Southeast: John Besh of Restaurant August in New Orleans
Best chef in the Southwest: Bradford Thompson of Mary Elaine’s at The Phoenician in Scottsdale, Ariz., for the Southwest.
I should be over the James Beard Foundation Awards. This was my eighth consecutive year attending them, and they don't change much from year to year. Even the nominees don't change much: Last year's winner is replaced by a newcomer, but often the other nominees are the same (this year that was literally true for two categories, and just about every category had at least two chefs who also were nominated last year — out of five). And that's for the chef awards, the only ones I write about. The same cookbook authors, journalists and broadcasters win awards in their category year after year. Chicago TV personality Steve Dolinsky won his 12th award this year, and the awards are only 16 years old. Steve's a good guy, but come on: This is the most dynamic era of food — scholarship, cooking, reporting — in living memory in the United States. Surely there are more players out there.
Most years I hunker down in the pressroom, where we can watch the ceremony on a TV monitor and photograph and interview chefs after they win.
That was a mistake this year. The theme of the 16th annual awards was a tribute to the culinary legacy of New Orleans (New Orleans native Cokie Robers was the MC), and there were several video presentations along those lines that I heard were just terrific. But in the pressroom, the monitors stayed focused on the podium from which the presenters introduced the videos. Mysteriously, this was a problem that no one seemed able to solve during the four-hour ceremony.
So as I said, I shouldn't be interested in going any more, and there are certainly plenty of other very capable journalists at NRN who could cover it. In fact, two of us went this year — me and my boss, executive food editor Pamela Parseghian, who took pictures while I took notes. I could have stayed home.
But there's something about the awards that I think are just great. I think part of it is simply that it's the only truly grand, black-tie occasion I get to attend. There's a certain grandeur that I like about the way the United States' fine dining world chooses to honor itself.
Part of it is also that the chefs and other restaurant folks who attend (and cookbook authors and journalists) are psyched to be there. My job is to write objectively about what restaurant chefs are cooking, so it's unprofessional of me to admit this: but I really like these people. I admire what they do, I benefit from it, and most of them have a warmth that I think comes from the same place as their cooking: A genuine desire to make people happy.
This year the awards were more moving than usual, of course: New Orleans holds a very special place in the hearts of food-focused Americans.
Cokie Roberts said that New Orleans' culture was distinctive. "Without it, America is not the same country," she said, and in no area is that more true than food (except, some people would argue, music, which is fair enough).
People were griping this year about the interminable length of the awards, which were about an hour longer than usual for some reason. In part it was due to the extra presentations regarding New Orleans. In part it was due to the fact that eight restaurants instead of four were named American Classics, and those presentations involve videos and acceptance speeches.
But part of it was that people accepting their awards wouldn't shut up.
Remember, next time you get an award and are expected to make an acceptance speech: Brevity is the soul of wit. In fact, I'll write your speech for you right now. Here it is: "Thank you very much."
Take your loved ones and friends out to dinner, give bonuses to your staff members, or e-mail your thanks to them, but if you don't have anything really profound to say, just accept your award graciously and sit down.
My favorite part of the whole Beard weekend is the afterparties. There are several each year, but the best one I know of this year was at The Lounge at The Hotel on Rivington, hosted by chef Kurt Gutenbrunner, of Wallsé and Blaue Gans.
Chefs work hard, and they know how to party. To get a bunch of them together in one room with dancing and Champagne — especially after sitting for four hours but then getting prestigious awards — is a sight to behold.
I ended up chatting with Thai chefs for awhile, again, including Tyson Wong Ophaso of the soon-to-open Chinatown Brasserie and David Banks (his mother's Thai and he was raised in Thailand) of Land, on New York's Upper West Side. I also talked to some visiting Chicagoans and New Orleanians, including Melvin Rodrigue, who manages Galatoire's. We met at the Beard Awards last year, when his restaurant won the award for Outstanding Restaurant. They've opened a restaurant in Baton Rouge, and I met their chef there, young Brian Landry.
A highlight of the evening came when I was chatting with an editor from Boston Magazine who, like me, is a Tufts alumn. Daniel Boulud — having just been named Outstanding Restaurateur ("I thought I was only a chef," he said in his acceptance speech), climbed onto the bar, danced a bit, and then, no lie, grabbed a Champagne bottle, shook it up and sprayed everyone in the room with it. Andrew Carmellini, who was executive chef at Cafe Boulud before he left to open A Voce, made a half-hearted attempt to spray him back, but Daniel, after giving the crowd another spray, scampered off the bar just as a bouncer was getting ready to take him out.
Good times.
The restaurant award winners:
Outstanding restaurant: The French Laundry, Yountville, Calif.
Outstanding chef: Alfred Portale
Outstanding restaurateur: Daniel Boulud, New York (and Vegas and Palm Beach, Fla.)
Best new restaurant: The Modern, New York City
Outstanding pastry chef: Johnny Iuzzini, Jean Georges, New York City
Rising Star Chef: Corey Lee, The French Laundry
Outstanding Service: Gary Danko, San Francisco
Outstanding wine service: Aureole, Las Vegas
Outstanding wine and spirits professional: Daniel Johnnes, wine director of the Dinex Group (Daniel Boulud's restaurants)
Outstanding restaurant design: Bentel & Bentel Architects/Planners, for The Modern
Outstanding restaurant graphics: Mucca Design Corporation for Sant Ambroeus in New York City.
Best chef in California: Suzanne Goin of Lucques in West Hollywood, Calif.
Best chef in the Mid-Atlantic: Fabio Trabocchi of Maestro at The Ritz-Carlton in Tyson’s Corner, Va.
Best chef in the Midwest: Shawn McClain of Spring and Green Zebra in Chicago
Best chef in New York City: Dan Barber of Blue Hill
Best chef in the Northeast: Jean-Louis Gerin of Jean-Louis in Greenwich, Conn.
Best chef in the Northwest and Hawaii: Scott Carsberg of Lampreia in Seattle
Best chef in the Southeast: John Besh of Restaurant August in New Orleans
Best chef in the Southwest: Bradford Thompson of Mary Elaine’s at The Phoenician in Scottsdale, Ariz., for the Southwest.
Monday, May 08, 2006
Chefs' Night Out
May 9
Mild controversy accompanied Chefs' Night Out this year, because not very many people were invited.
The annual pre-Beard Awards event, thrown by Bon Appétit magazine, is traditionally the big blowout to welcome chefs from out of town. Generally it's at a large, new restaurant, giving chefs and food media a chance to check out the place. Last year it was at Ono, in the Meatpacking District. Last night it was at Chinatown Brasserie, which hasn't even opened yet, and won't for another four to five weeks, according to Ed Schoenfeld, a consultant for the restaurant, who created the culinary program there, finding the chefs and so on.
Someone from Bon Appétit called me last Monday to ask if I'd received my invitation. I had not.
Her response, paraphrased: Yeah, we cut way back this year because we want it to be more intimate. But we meant to invite you; I'll messenger a ticket over right away. You'll be writing something about it, right?
Wow, such a hard-sell for a party, I thought.
"I'll bring a camera," I said, among other things.
She had asked me to come early so I could take pictures of lots of chefs, which I did: What else was I going to be doing on Sunday at 9:30 p.m., when the party started?
I had forgotten that chefs were unlikely to show up in significant numbers until after 11, but my early arrival gave me time to sample all of the hors d'oeuvres that were being passed and catch up with some other non-chefs. I had a brief chat with Gael Greene, and another one with Ed Schoenfeld. And I got to know some consultants and whatnot.
"How did you get in?" I asked a few people who would know I was joking, as well as a wine writer who had expressed surprise a couple of weeks earlier that she hadn't been invited. She said she got a phone call on Monday, too.
An insider gave me the scuttlebutt: Bon Appétit had planned on having the party at one of Stephen Starr's new restaurants, Morimoto or Buddakan, but he wanted something like $100,000 to do it. So they went with Plan B: a smaller space, a smaller guest list.
The result was a good party, but not the sort of see-everyone-and-catch-up/aren't-we-cool-for-being-here? type of event it usually is. Then again, it wasn't really like that last year, either: It was too crowded, too dark, and with too many people I didn't really feel like meeting. So maybe a shake-up of sorts was in order.
This year's party had fewer chefs, seemingly as many publicists, and about the same ratio of people I didn't feel like meeting. But I had good bonding time with Ian Chalermkittichai from Kittichai, and with John Mooney, who, with Michel Nischan, is involved with organic-oriented restaurants with the Taj group in India. They have an organic farm outside of Bangalore.
Cesare Casella of Maremma updated me on his plans, and so did Lonesome Dove chef Tim Love, from Fort Worth.
I met Chinatown Brasserie's chef, Tyson Wong Ophaso. He's from Thailand, so we talked in Thai about his plans. It was good practice for me. I don't get to speak Thai very often, except when I'm ordering food in Thai restaurants, and that's not very hard.
Other big chefs were there, too, including Gary Danko, who's eponymous restaurant in San Francisco is being inducted into the Nation's Restaurant News Fine Dining Hall of Fame in a couple of weeks. From New York were Anita Lo from Annisa; Spice Market pastry chef Pichet Ong; the very tall Paul Liebrandt of Gilt (and his sommelier Jason Ferris, who said that they do, in fact, sell quite a few Château d'Yquem flights); Dan Barber from Blue Hill; Aaron Sanchez from Paladar; Wylie Dufresne from WD-50; Daniel Boulud of Daniel, Café Boulud and db Bistro Moderne, Patricia Yeo from Sapa (a knit cap pulled almost to eye-level; she gave no response when I asked why she was trying to be incognito), and Michael Laiskonis, pastry chef at Le Bernardin. Don Yamauchi from Tribute in Farmington Hills, Mich., was there, too. So was Lee Hefter of Spago Beverly Hills (who, with his wife Sharon was hanging out with Koi New York maitre d' Stephanie Chang and Nick Fielding, the future general manager of Table 8 in South Beach who insisted on dancing with me). Spago Pastry chef Sherry Yard was there, too.
Chicago chef Shawn McClain from Spring and Green Zebra seemed to be enjoying himself. Thierry Rautureau of Rover's in Seattle — who has dubbed himself the "Chef in the Hat" — was palling around with beret bedecked Joseba Jiménez de Jiménez of The Harvest Vine, also in Seattle. John Besh from August, in New Orleans, was looking well. He said the restaurant had closed for a month after Katrina, but was up and running again.
A number of attendees had the impressive skill of being voice-slurringly drunk and maintaining that level of drunkenness for several hours without falling down.
That's not easy to do.
Mild controversy accompanied Chefs' Night Out this year, because not very many people were invited.
The annual pre-Beard Awards event, thrown by Bon Appétit magazine, is traditionally the big blowout to welcome chefs from out of town. Generally it's at a large, new restaurant, giving chefs and food media a chance to check out the place. Last year it was at Ono, in the Meatpacking District. Last night it was at Chinatown Brasserie, which hasn't even opened yet, and won't for another four to five weeks, according to Ed Schoenfeld, a consultant for the restaurant, who created the culinary program there, finding the chefs and so on.
Someone from Bon Appétit called me last Monday to ask if I'd received my invitation. I had not.
Her response, paraphrased: Yeah, we cut way back this year because we want it to be more intimate. But we meant to invite you; I'll messenger a ticket over right away. You'll be writing something about it, right?
Wow, such a hard-sell for a party, I thought.
"I'll bring a camera," I said, among other things.
She had asked me to come early so I could take pictures of lots of chefs, which I did: What else was I going to be doing on Sunday at 9:30 p.m., when the party started?
I had forgotten that chefs were unlikely to show up in significant numbers until after 11, but my early arrival gave me time to sample all of the hors d'oeuvres that were being passed and catch up with some other non-chefs. I had a brief chat with Gael Greene, and another one with Ed Schoenfeld. And I got to know some consultants and whatnot.
"How did you get in?" I asked a few people who would know I was joking, as well as a wine writer who had expressed surprise a couple of weeks earlier that she hadn't been invited. She said she got a phone call on Monday, too.
An insider gave me the scuttlebutt: Bon Appétit had planned on having the party at one of Stephen Starr's new restaurants, Morimoto or Buddakan, but he wanted something like $100,000 to do it. So they went with Plan B: a smaller space, a smaller guest list.
The result was a good party, but not the sort of see-everyone-and-catch-up/aren't-we-cool-for-being-here? type of event it usually is. Then again, it wasn't really like that last year, either: It was too crowded, too dark, and with too many people I didn't really feel like meeting. So maybe a shake-up of sorts was in order.
This year's party had fewer chefs, seemingly as many publicists, and about the same ratio of people I didn't feel like meeting. But I had good bonding time with Ian Chalermkittichai from Kittichai, and with John Mooney, who, with Michel Nischan, is involved with organic-oriented restaurants with the Taj group in India. They have an organic farm outside of Bangalore.
Cesare Casella of Maremma updated me on his plans, and so did Lonesome Dove chef Tim Love, from Fort Worth.
I met Chinatown Brasserie's chef, Tyson Wong Ophaso. He's from Thailand, so we talked in Thai about his plans. It was good practice for me. I don't get to speak Thai very often, except when I'm ordering food in Thai restaurants, and that's not very hard.
Other big chefs were there, too, including Gary Danko, who's eponymous restaurant in San Francisco is being inducted into the Nation's Restaurant News Fine Dining Hall of Fame in a couple of weeks. From New York were Anita Lo from Annisa; Spice Market pastry chef Pichet Ong; the very tall Paul Liebrandt of Gilt (and his sommelier Jason Ferris, who said that they do, in fact, sell quite a few Château d'Yquem flights); Dan Barber from Blue Hill; Aaron Sanchez from Paladar; Wylie Dufresne from WD-50; Daniel Boulud of Daniel, Café Boulud and db Bistro Moderne, Patricia Yeo from Sapa (a knit cap pulled almost to eye-level; she gave no response when I asked why she was trying to be incognito), and Michael Laiskonis, pastry chef at Le Bernardin. Don Yamauchi from Tribute in Farmington Hills, Mich., was there, too. So was Lee Hefter of Spago Beverly Hills (who, with his wife Sharon was hanging out with Koi New York maitre d' Stephanie Chang and Nick Fielding, the future general manager of Table 8 in South Beach who insisted on dancing with me). Spago Pastry chef Sherry Yard was there, too.
Chicago chef Shawn McClain from Spring and Green Zebra seemed to be enjoying himself. Thierry Rautureau of Rover's in Seattle — who has dubbed himself the "Chef in the Hat" — was palling around with beret bedecked Joseba Jiménez de Jiménez of The Harvest Vine, also in Seattle. John Besh from August, in New Orleans, was looking well. He said the restaurant had closed for a month after Katrina, but was up and running again.
A number of attendees had the impressive skill of being voice-slurringly drunk and maintaining that level of drunkenness for several hours without falling down.
That's not easy to do.
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