Eat What We Say!

This may be a must-try, if I can find a place that’s demoing the device. Zabar’s, Williams Sonoma, Sur La Table, anyone? But – is it smoky? Will it taste as good without, you know, the cooking-in-its-own-fat thing?

February 7^th was French Bistro Day. At least it was for me.

A friend was in town, and suddenly had time, so we went to a little corner joint near my office, La Luncheonette that week. And on Thursday, my brother in law had free time for lunch, so again: La Luncheonette. On the corner of 18^th and 10^th, you can tell that this was an out of the way place five years ago, but much less so with Chelsea Piers, Chelsea Market, Equinox, the Gehry building and the new condos going up. I wonder, though, if they’ll survive the rent increases that drove my beloved Little Pie Company out of Chelsea.

The restaurant was low-key – not empty, but very quiet. It seems like a good place for a clandestine lunchtime rendezvous, but my friend and I talked shop and kids. I’ve had several things at La Luncheonette and enjoyed them all – as a Francophile, I love the Parisian bistro scene. I’m sorry, I dig Mongolian Hot Pot and Bibimbop and other allegedly ‘up and coming exotic foods’ but there’s something so spiritually and physically satisfying about a ’simple’ bistro meal. (I live in NYC, and am shocked that Bibimbop is considered exotic, though to be fair, I was sad to give up egg creams for crispy rice stone hotpot magic at The Mill near my alma mater. Columbia.) In fact, on our last trip in 2006, the Euro made the bistro scene basically all we could afford. We spent something like US$30/person (not including B, Jr. who hadn’t yet grown into his love of roast chicken), but Parisian bistros bear little resemblance to places like French Roast. I can say that there’s a degree of casual authenticity about La Luncheonette that, while it doesn’t architecturally resemble the archetypal Parisian Bistro (this is relevant because my dinner reservation was at Balthazar), it feels authentic. (And there were plenty of Parisian bistros that didn’t look like they were called out of central casting, either.)

Bistro food’s heavy, and I had a real date with Ms. B later in the evening, so I shied away from my usual favorites like the Steak au Poivre, and concentrated on the salad. There was the roast half chicken salad and the duck confit salad. I used to call chicken the compromise meat – it’s what you order when you think beef’s too rich, and fish too delicate. So you compromise and choose chicken. Granted this was before a close friend brought us into his family’s Sunday night roast chicken ritual, a/k/a ‘Poultistadt’, and before Ms. B mastered a lemon roast chicken recipe that involves brining. (Fried chicken is automatically exempt from any discussion of compromise meat, of course.)

I’ve had the roast chicken salad at LL before – it’s good, but you know what I really wanted to order from the salad family then: the duck confit.

Confit is a French word that means “crispy and delicious by cooking for a long time.” OK, I made that up, but it seems to be a reasonable translation. It’s a sort of cross between frying and stewing – the meat falls off the bone, yet the skin is just short of burned, crispy like a potato chip. I don’t know what’s happened to the layer of fat underneath the duck skin – I suppose that it has melted off, but somehow I fear (know) that much of it has been absorbed into the meat, thereby preserving its juicyness.

Oh, Christ, I had to look. Oh, the French are so pragmatic – it’s designed to preserve (as they said their heavy sauces were designed to cover up less than fresh beef), and look – so delicious! The Chinese bury eggs, the French soak duck in fat. French +1.

I ordered the Portobello mushroom appetizer – the mushrooms were rich and garlicky, but I was puzzled over the little bit of lettuce and radicchio that came alongside. They weren’t dressed (not even with a little oil and vinegar, that I could discern); were they meant to cleanse the palate after the mushrooms? I would have preferred a little dressing.

That wasn’t the problem with the duck confit salad, which came well dressed in a vinaigrette, covering the beets, (French) string beans. Atop the vegetative matter was the anti-vegetarian statement: the leg of duck, confit-atized. Crispy, moist, flavorful. Everything they’ve served there is competent French bistro fare – hearty, flavorful, on the rich side, simple. The dish came a bit heavy on the dressing side; I like it that way but you may not. I know LL can get smoky (stinky candles) and loud at night, but it’s the perfect quiet lunch place. The corner table in the back gets just enough daylight to combat winter gloom, and the room feels like it could be on some random sidestreet, as once made up far-west Chelsea.

Thursday night was a theme continuation.

Balthazar looks like the typical bistro; more upscale than Dôme, more like La Coupole, as I (vaguely) recall. It’s certainly way more polished than La Luncheonette – the bread’s better (they do have that little bakery next door), the butter’s soft, the service very professional. La Luncheonette’s service has always been casual – often friendly, sometimes indifferent, but still very ‘neighborhood-y’ and personal/intimate. I’m not griping – it was a semi-special evening for Ms. B and me, we were celebrating one of the anniversaries of our long courtship, which didn’t really happen on that date. We just wanted to celebrate it, having missed a few recently and seeing how Valentine’s Day was next week. So we told Balthazar that we were celebrating our anniversary (long story, and true – as Obi Wan would say – from a certain point of view. Actually, it’s way more true than telling Luke that ‘his father was killed by Darth Vader.’) The only tables open were at 6 and 9:30, and 9:30 just isn’t a childcare-friendly time (turns out having a child also limits your general restaurant-going and therefore, food blogging). 6 it was, but Ms. B was delayed by a long subway ride. We didn’t get seated till 6:40pm, and the staff took care of us – they gave us a lovely corner table, and treated us with (I imagine) a little extra solicitousness as befit the occasion.

Balthazar looks authentic, meticulously so, and watching the grande plateaus of seafood spiraling up from other tables certainly reminded me of the first time I ate at Coupole. But Coupole’s hardly just a Parisian bistro, is it? And Balthazar – packed, still a scene, noisy, with walk-in tables behind a nearly 2 hour queue – hardly just another bistro-simulacrum.

Ms. B wasn’t a fan of the entire selection of the giant seafood plateau (the clams, ferinstance), so we went for 3 orders of the oyster sampler and a shrimp cocktail. We haven’t had oysters since the Wellfleets on the Cape over the summer, and crikey, they were good. Fresh, slightly briny, nice texture. We have a strong disagreement on how to eat oysters; I like a little mignonette, maybe a dab of cocktail sauce – a tine of a fork’s trail of a streak – and slurp them up. Ms. B prefers only a squeeze of lemon, if at all, claiming my way masks the taste. We both love the liquid, though. We both are happy to eat them naked (the oysters, not us, since I don’t want to go near a shucking knife while naked, nor do I think most respectable oyster bars in the city would let us in undressed as La Luncheonette’s Portobello appetizer). We’re not good at identifying them – there were definitely the larger Wellfleets. No Kumomotos as we could see.

Ms. B had the cod – horrible food blogger that I am, I didn’t even want to try. See, e.g., analysis of ‘compromise meat’. I had the meat, why would I bother with the fish? Ms.B assured me that it was good, however. I had the special that evening, braised beef cheeks in a wine reduction. Turns out the beef cheeks had a fall of the bone (cheek) quality, like a good stew, but retained an intense beef-y flavor. Ms. B didn’t want to eat anything cheek-related in origin, so she stayed off my plate. The sauce was strong, a bit overpowering, but I associate that bistro cuisine. Desert was excellent – the carmelized banana tart was a winning selection. Ms. B had something else, I don’t remember, which was competent; she was helpfully steered away from the Upside-down Pineapple Cake, which, apparently, doesn’t benefit from the canned pineapples.

Balthazar works as a place where you’re as actively focused on your guests as well as the surroundings and food; if you’re there to reminisce or relax, its grand simulation of authenticity and volume prevent that. The food doesn’t demand the attention, and is competing with other sensory assaults. A festive group, a hearty meal, outbursts of laughter and wild gesticulation: check. A tired, married couple, looking to celebrate an important and very personal memory while trying to grab some needed mental break time – not so great.

Ms. B would likely say, however, “but the oysters were delicious!”

I did a quick jump to LA to attend a panel and have dinner with two of my close friends, D and R; it was nearing his birthday and he hates celebrating, so they bought me dinner. That’s my kind of friend!

Normally we hit the master or the alternative, but this time, we opted for a place called BOA. I love staying in Santa Monica – I remember back in the good old days, I’d get the corporate rate at Shutters, stay the long weekend and the money I saved on airfare, I spent on the hotel. And my girlfriend, now Ms. B, would come out. This time I stayed at the Biltmore, a long way from Shutters, but surprisingly not bad.

BOA’s next to Sushi Roku, owned by the same folks apparently. R had recently gotten back from French Laundry, and both have eaten more Kobe and Wagyu beef than I have. On the other hand, I’ve been to the temple, Luger’s, while they haven’t. They were busy extolling the virtues of the stuff; at least once they hit the Kobe while on Microsoft’s tab. That’s the way to do it.

BOA, like LA, is a bit of a scene; the hostess, an Asian woman with cleavage (?!?!?) made me wonder as I often do in LA, if those were real. It’s loud, sort of slick, and yet the ‘heavyset’ guy with the ‘tacky’ looking date looked like then could have been from Jersey and the back of TimeOut NY, if you know what I mean. She had the practice-honed walk according to R, apparently she knows of such things.

We all split an order of raw oysters; they were pretty good. I had the Wedge, iceberg + blue cheese, you can’t go wrong with the nutritionally vapid. Sides: sautéed seasonal mushrooms, mac ‘n cheese and … I can’t remember. Jesus. I’m guessing it was a vegetable, so let’s just say asparagus. Besides, no one goes to a steakhouse for sides, right? And I do know we didn’t finish them.

D and R ordered the filet, and because I think the filet’s tender at the expense of flavor, I ordered the 40 day dry aged New York Strip. Rare, of course. It lacked the intense char of the Luger and Luger spin-off ovens, which at its best, contrasts the pungent crunch with the sweet buttery flesh. It was perfectly serviceable, and the company was great (we talked shop most of the night), and I got to see my two friends in couple-ness. (They just moved in together.)

It is a reminder that LA’s a sushi and Mexican food town. LA sushi crushes NY sushi for the most part (each sushi order is 2 pieces!), though there are some local stalwarts (including our own Sasabune). Mexican? That’s as lopsided as the recent Knicks-Celtics debacle. New York is a steak city – Old Homestead and Craftsteak are near my new office, and of course Ben & Jacks, Wolfgang’s, I’ve yet to try Blair Perrone or MarcJoseph are all offshoots of the beloved cranky Luger’s. (D did go to Ben & Jacks at our friend’s bachelor party.)

We went back to D & R’s house, I had a cellophane-wrapped Japanese cream puff (like Beard Papa) which was delicious. Hung out, then called a cab back to the hotel. Flight was delayed out of LAX, deplaned and wandered off and had a burger at Ruby’s, skipped the meal in United business class – breakfast is the worst of the food service in any class.

Once again, no camera, too dark for my phone and R didn’t bring hers, for once.

We weren’t exactly in a fight, but we were having the first major problem in our six-month-young relationship. So the first thing I did at Borough Food and Drink was order a seriously alcoholic but fruity cocktail. I can’t remember what it was, but it tasted good and worked—both to distract me and keep me from freaking out all over the table.

I admit that my mood might have colored my feelings about Borough. I’m not the hugest fan of 5 Ninth, one of consulting chef Zak Pelaccio’s other digs. But I love the super-succulent, gimme-an-extra-napkin Malaysian food he does at Fatty Crab, also over in the Meatpacking.

By the time we got to Borough, BF had eaten, so I was the only one ordering. Nice–arguing AND eating alone, all in one shot! The squash soup sounded divine, but they were all out. I opted for the seared striped bass, which comes with clams, chorizo, spring vegetables, pastis, and croutons. (It’s reasonably priced at $22, not much more than the cocktails.) I thought it was chewy, but liked the clams and couldn’t find the chorizo. BF, who was big time in the doghouse, thought it was excellent. It could be that I’m not enough of a striped bass connoisseur, but because told me two days prior that my size-four body needed to spend more time on the treadmill, we’re currently not taking his opinion into account. Verdict: chewy.

But the food isn’t the problem—or the reason I think Borough is not long for this world. Neither is the block. Across the street is one of my favorite places, Bolo. (Part of a secret relationship took place there.) Tamarind, with its lovely upscale Indian food, is a tad farther east. Right by that is Beppe. (Where I lunched with a slightly crazy woman who had briefly pursued my then-boyfriend, and I knew that, but she didn’t know that I knew, and it gets even more complicated after that…)

Thing is, 12 East 22nd Street is cursed.

Before it was Borough Food and Drink, it was the unfortunately named Caviar and Bananas, which I (and lots of other people) never set foot in. It lasted two years. Before that it was Rocco’s on 22nd, the setting for Rocco DiSpirito’s reality television show. Life span: about a year. And before that it was Russian-themed bar called Commune. It was dark and sleek and kind of cool (Though maybe I think that because I associate it with a man I had a drink with in 2002, not having any clue that we’d be in a relationship four years later. And he is quite the snob.) but often empty.

So it’s not the fault of the owners that Borough is big and open and relatively high-ceilinged, and that its shape doesn’t match the farmhouse décor—open shelves and rough wood paneling—or the Hot97 music or the many dowdy, slightly heavyset women at the tables. (I know how rude and snotty that sounds. But least the place could offer some good gawking.) That address has some bad juju.

Of course, maybe I am the problem. Maybe me and my relationship drama just need to stay off 22nd Street.

My friend, J, was in town for a rare visit, and the last time we had lunch was quite memorable - Balthazar, and we saw Bobby Valentine. Kenny Rogers had walked in the winning run.

Craftsteak doesn’t serve lunch, which deflated us for a moment. We decided to go to Spice Market, also near my office. We walked east on 13th street, ignoring the smell, and were the first people seated at 12:15pm. The interior was lovely, airy, open, very southeast Asia by way of Meatpacking district (clean, architected), of course. (Not that I know, I’m mostly a China/Korea/Japan kind of traveler.)

Indecision must have been obvious since our server hurried over, and were sold on the tasting menu, $58/pp. “It’s a sampling of our the best dishes,” she said. It occurred to me that we might look like tourists.

We had a shaved tuna sashimi dish, the lobster summer roll, shrimp with pineapple, avocado salad, samosas, pork satay, cod, corn and broccoli, fried rice (with a fried egg, yolk still runny), chicken, and two desserts - a chocolate brownie with carmelized banana, and a coconut fruit thing.

Family style, the server said, it’s meant to be shared and comes out as it’s done. I had no problem with this, as it’s the way I ate growing up. Which was sort of the problem, in the end.

What did I love?

The black pepper shrimp and sun-dried pineapple. It might be a bit sweet, but I liked the shrimp (which seemed to use a hoisin sauce). The chilled, tapioca dessert with the mango. Man, I wish I wasn’t so full at the end of the meal. The fried rice with egg yolk reminded me of something my grandma made, a fried egg, soy sauce over fried or white rice. The pork satay was tender, and the avocado salad had a Chinese mustard sauce, I think, that was delicious.

What would I skip? The chicken, while tasty, was kinda dry. The broccoli and baby corn (which I thought was not corn at all, but apparently it is) was a throwaway - why not use pea pod shoots? Something a little less ‘La Choy makes Chinese food’.

So I’ve eaten around Asia and Chinatown, and I found Spice Market pretty good - though I actually preferred the Chinatown Brasserie reimagination of the cuisine. And I left with that familiar aftertaste in my mouth, which was both familiar and disconcerting - never thought I’d have that leaving a JGV restaurant. Ultimately, it may be the disconnect of Asian stall/street food in a high end MePa eatery - if my expectations weren’t as high, given Spice Market’s parentage, I would have been happier. When food’s elevated to event/cultural/celebrity status, it has to bear the weight of sometimes unreasonable, or uneducated expectations.

Lunch was especially great time to eat there - the space really shines with some daylight, and I presume way easier to get a reservation than some dinner seatings.

We decided to have our own thanksgiving this year, rather than profit from the labor of friends and family. Our meal was done entirely from the pages of Cooks Illustrated, the sort of gadget guide for the relentless kitchen optimizer. We live off of CI and Bittman’s How to Cook Everything for 90% of our cooking.

We didn’t brine our own turkey this year (Fairway sold Murray’s pre-brined turkey but ours came sans neck, which affected gravy plans), but we let it air dry for maximum crispy skin action. B Jr. loves the crispy skin. Despite me screwing up and starting it breast side up (which resulted in a little torn skin), it turned out delicious. The skin definitely had a separate, Peking Duck quality to it.

We hacked it up according to the butcher’s method, though we didn’t do any carving off the legs and wing. I grew up with my dad using his electric carving knife.

We used CI’s Giblet Gravy, Smashed Potatoes (using mostly truffle butter instead of regular butter - a substitution which received a big thumbs up), stuffing (8. Sticks. Of. Butter. And homemade chicken stock, but no celery, Ms. B hates celery.) Green beans with lemon and breadcrumbs. Apple pie from City Bakery (breaking my streak of Little Pie Company sour cream walnut apple pies, to excellent result), and of course, Ocean Spray Cranberry Sauce jelly, which is too good to resist and nostalgically lowbrow.

It turned out very well, though we started the stuffing too early and as a result, the crispy topping got soggy. I also think I could have cooked the potatoes a bit longer. The gravy turned out too watery, which required further reduction in the roasting pan and a little more flour. End result? Awesome! But Ms. B wasn’t so into the giblets after seeing them uncooked, so we had two gravies - one with minced giblets, one without.

I almost moved to Austin on the strength of the BBQ at Salt Lick. It was the tipping point that I thought might slightly ameliorate the loss of Chinese food, pizza, Indian food, steak, sushi…. uhh, WTF was I thinking?

I’ve only tried a few of the new BBQ joints here - the birth of decent BBQ is right up there in cultural/culinary import with the proliferation of cupcakes and burgers. Dinosaur BBQ was really unremarkable, to me. Dry, flavorless and overrated. Rack & Soul and Charles’ Southern Kitchen has excellent ribs (and the latter, all you can eat!), but all heavy sauce style. I prefer his fried chicken. Blue Smoke, I dig; more upscale, wider variety menu (for Ms. B and B, Jr.), though I have found it to be uneven. Daisy May’s takeout hasn’t disappointed, but lack of a sit down location for a long time prevented more regular visits. (Their whole pig challenge will be answered one day by my hand-picked crew, but what the hell is up with that commercial during all those Mets games? How horrible is that accent? Are those real? Who’s eyes are those?)

Pearson’s, we miss the idea of you, but we don’t miss how the food spiraled down at their East Side location.

RUB and Bone Lick Park are on my list to visit.

But nothing came close to Salt Lick (or Rudy’s) because I loves the dry rub. Sitting on the deck, in the early Austin summer, eating Salt Lick brisket…

Last night, I went to Hill Country for the second time - this time, with a friend I haven’t seen in a while who was one of my compatriots in bad-food-eating. Ms. B and I went to her place once, and she served fried chicken. Ahh, a woman who doesn’t shy away from the comfort food. (To be fair, Ms. B’s idea of comfort food is Sushi Yasuda, which is also mightily powerful.)

8:20pm, Tuesday , no wait. I had me the pork ribs (3 of ‘em) and the moist brisket; my friend had the same (but fewer ribs). We split the mac and cheese, corn pudding and the green beans. Like the first time we went, I didn’t eat much of the sides. They were fine, but certainly nothing special. I still bristle at the idea of paying for the corn bread (Dirty Bird to Go sends it free!), but I think I would have preferred that. Still, I love corn in all forms.

The food. Oh, yeah.

The brisket was tender, but super fatty, more fatty than I remembered at Salt Lick. Flavorful, for sure, and the best tasting brisket I’ve ever had in NYC, by a long mile. I think I should order the lean brisket next time, because this brisket was so fatty that it was actually distracting. I’m not a fat guy like the dude who runs Midtown Lunch (shout out to you, nonetheless) but I’m certainly not skinny and fat-phobic. I know the skin’s the best part (ahh, Peking Duck). But this was a bit more in-your-greasy-face than I would have liked. So next time, lean brisket.

I picked the pork ribs ($11/lb) over the beef ribs ($9/lb) because I was hoping they’d be meatier, and they were a bit more gristle-y and cartilage-y that I would have hoped. Still good, but lacking in the giant chunks of fall-off meat that I wanted. Still, at this point, I was pretty full. Tip: take the white bread, it’s a great little in-between-meat cleanser. (Note: a colleague, a transplanted Austin resident, also gave the BBQ a thumbs up, but actually said the bread was horrible, not mushy enough to bend around the sausage.)

Gold stars to Hill Country for leaving lots of big Wet-Nap-like hand towels around. I liked the big jar of iced tea (no thanks to the Daisy May commercial), and we skipped dessert. Shiner Bock apparently will appear on the menu soon. I’m just hoping Lance Armstrong stays away.

Next time: fewer sides, lean brisket, and leave room for some dessert sampling. So there will be a next time, even if I need to get on my bike for some exercise first. Though next time, sadly, won’t involve Ms. B (who is trying to avoid stuff like, oh, “moist” brisket. Because, as we all know, it’s moist from the FAT).

(Sorry, no photos - too dark to even use the crappy Cingular 8525 camera phone I’ve been ‘rocking’. But check out the photos here.)

B, Ms. B and B, Jr., spent 10 days in the Cape this summer. We ate plenty of lobster rolls - like here, here, and here . All pretty good (well, JT’s was just OK, but it was very kid-friendly). But the best lobster roll I had was, blasphemously, not on a hot dog-esque roll at all, but on a big, fresh piece of white bread at a little ice cream joint called Four Seas. Just the right amount of mayo, lots of lobster, spectacular ice cream (better than Sundae School) - but no fries, just potato chips. We have one friend who orchestrates their yearly get-away to the Cape to make sure they hit Four Seas at 2pm, because they stop serving their godlike lobster roll/sandwich at 3pm. And at $13, it’s cheaper than every other lobster roll we had.

I tried to replicate that summer vacation feeling by my first work-week visit to Chelsea Market. Lobster Place has a highly regarded lobster roll, which was $16.95. This location is a market, not a restaurant, so no indoor nautical decor to litigate. Our loss.

Lobster Place’s lobster roll wasn’t nearly as good as Four Seas. This roll was light on the mayo, which was OK by me (though I prefer mayo to butter in these situations), and while there was plenty of tasty lobster meat, the major failing was the bun. Not toasted (Four Seas eschews toasting), but not feeling especially fresh.

Served in a plastic take out container.

We went outside and sat at the counter, and perhaps not being on vacation on a lovely summer day had something to do with it, but the lobster roll seemed a little hurried and anemic. I’m not saying it doesn’t hold its own vs. Mary/Pearl/ Ditch/Ed’s rolls - I haven’t sampled all of them, nor have I been to Mary/Pearl, post-Four Seas. I am saying that presentation might help things along, and better bread. Ms. B swears that the right bread is critical to the lobster roll experience, and I would have to agree.

In an effort to recreate the summertime experience, I had the chocolate ice cream at Ronnybook. It was pretty good, but not the superdense, superpremium or homemade experience that I would have liked. I’d stick with Cones or Chinatown Ice Cream Factory (almond cookie!).

Went to Singapore last year, mileage run and business trip combined. Chowhounders pointed me to No Signboard for the chili crab, though one advisor told me to skip to the pepper crab instead. I ignored the advice, and ate the chili crab. So here’s the test post including a picture.

OK, this is going to be YAFB.

Yet another food blog.

Man, do we love good food, though.