Chang on the Run

fig. a: Chasing the Dragon*

Let's hear it for Southern cuisine!

One of the best pieces of food writing I've read in a while, by one of the best in the biz on one of the best (and most elusive) in the biz:

Todd Kliman on Peter Chang in the Oxford American's 2010 Southern Food Issue, edited by John T. Edge.

aj

* photo by Dan Chung

Mexican Standoff

I'm just going to go ahead and throw down...













With all due respect to this city's full-fledged Mexican restaurants, Montreal's best tacos are currently being served...

a) in some hole-in-the-wall in the Little Italy-Rosemont-Petite Patrie axis?

b) in the back of a Latino grocery store in the Plateau?

c) in some flashy Nuevo Latino restaurant in the Downtown core?

d) at Carlo's & Pepe's?

No. Nope. Nada. None of the above.

They're being served out of a place that should be familiar to many of you longtime readers, and a place where you might least expect them: McKiernan. That's right, McKiernan.

Okay, it's possible that there is a Mexican place hidden somewhere in deepest, darkest Montreal that's serving tacos that can compete with the finest purveyors from across the North American continent (with the multicultural explosion of creativity that Food & Wine has labeled "Taco World")--hell, I suppose it's possible that there's also a ghost taco truck making its way across the cityscape under darkness of night and operating in full contravention of the city's perverse anti-street food bylaws--but, if so, we've yet to uncover these Mexican treasures. All I can tell you is that by far and away the best tacos that we've had here in Montreal in a very long time (outside of our AEB test kitchen, that is) were served to us by our friend Marc-André at McKiernan. We were hoping for shrimp, or maybe even snow crab--it being the season for both--but what we got was a selection of the traditional and the patently non-traditional that just blew us away. Perfectly braised beef tongue (tacos de lengua) & exquisite duck confit (tacos de canard confit). Served on homemade corn tortillas (!). Topped with roasted tomato salsa, julienned radishes, and cilantro. Accompanied with limes, refried black beans, and a limited, but tasty selection of Valentina hot sauces ("hot" & "extra hot").

They've always got a trick or two up their sleeves, but we didn't exactly go to McKiernan looking for tacos. Luckily, they found us.

Casa McKiernan, 2485 Nuestra Señora O., 759-6677

Three Great Tastes That Taste Great Together

fig. a: pretty on pink

When a certain someone requested a Smith Island Cake for a certain special occasion, Michelle rolled up her sleeves. She consulted a number of recipes, including one she found on Saveur.com, and what she found was that it was not uncommon to build Smith Island Cakes out of thin layers of cake-mix cake. Now Michelle being Michelle, she decided to try to create her own yellow cake from scratch because, well... Just because.*

But the problem with making your own yellow cake is that it's tough to create one that's capable of being baked in a thin layer and then moved. All those fancy ingredients in a box of Duncan Hines mix (emulsifiers, etc.) give cake-mix cake properties that are difficult to duplicate without being a molecular gastronomist. What Michelle determined was that it would take a yellow cake batter that was something like pancake batter to get the right architecture.

In the end, however, Michelle decided that it was a whole lot easier and not at all inauthentic to fall back on the expertise of Duncan Hines and the food empire he brought into being. In the end, Michelle followed Saveur's recipe (which is based on a recipe from Smith Island native Mary Ada Marshall) to a T.

Well, almost.

Saveur's recipe calls for the cake to be constructed out of eight layers--a nice even number. Traditional Smith Island Cakes have been known to have been constructed out of twelve layers or more. Michelle being Michelle, she built hers out of nine. Nine fun-loving layers of cake. Count 'em. She also used really good cocoa. On its own, Michelle's three-flavor, nine-layer Smith Island Cake was an out-and-out sensation. With the addition of a scoop of vanilla ice cream, it got pushed into the fourth dimension.

So what exactly is Smith Island Cake? Well, in case you haven't figured it out, it's a tall, traditional, Southern layer cake that's composed of ultra-thin layers of cake (not unlike a torte) and that hails from Smith Island, Maryland. Icings and fillings can vary, but many feature chocolate icing and a combination of chocolate and peanuts as the filling (hence the Reese's peanut butter cups). Smith Island is located in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay, and it's famous for its cake--in fact, Smith Island Cake became Maryland's state cake (!) just a couple of years ago--but it's also famous for its dialect. Smith Island was settled in the seventeenth century, but existed in relative isolation well into the twentieth century. More regular contact with the mainland has eroded Smith Island's rather distinct culture, but a dialect with strong roots in seventeenth-century English is still spoken there.

You could just click on the link above to access Saveur.com's original recipe, but with Carpal Tunnel Syndrome rampant, we decided to save you any unnecessary clicking.

Smith Island Cake

8 large Reese's peanut butter cups, frozen
nonstick cooking spray
1/4 cup flour
1 x 18 1/4-oz. box yellow cake mix, preferably Duncan Hines
2 cups plus 3 tbsp. evaporated milk
16 tbsp. butter, softened
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1/2 tsp. salt
4 eggs
6 cups confectioners' sugar
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa

Pulse 4 peanut butter cups in a food processor into small chunks; transfer to a bowl. Pulse remaining peanut butter cups into a fine powder; transfer to another bowl. Chill both until ready to use.

Heat oven to 350°. Grease four 8" round cake pans with cooking spray, dust with half the flour, and knock out any excess. Set aside. Put cake mix, 1 1/2 cups evaporated milk, half the butter, vanilla, salt, eggs, and 1/3 cup water into a large bowl; beat with an electric mixer until light and fluffy, 10–12 minutes. Divide half the batter between prepared cake pans. Set remaining batter aside. Using the back of a spoon, spread out batter so that it covers the bottom of each pan, making it slightly thicker around the edges than in the middle. Bake until cooked through and golden around edges, 12–14 minutes. Set aside to let cool slightly, then loosen cake layers with a knife and invert onto cooling racks. Wash and dry cake pans. Repeat process a second time with cooking spray and remaining flour and batter.

When all 8 cake layers have cooled, make the icing. Combine remaining milk, sugar, and cocoa in a medium pot; stir well, then add remaining butter. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until butter is melted and icing is shiny, 4–5 minutes. Let cool for 5 minutes. Stir well.

Spread a cake layer with about 1/4 cup of icing; sprinkle with about 1 tbsp. powdered peanut butter cups. Top with another cake layer and repeat process to make 8 layers in all. Frost outside of cake with remaining icing; sprinkle top with peanut butter cup chunks. Let sit for 2–3 hours before serving. The cake can be stored for up to a week refrigerated in an airtight container.

Makes one beautiful 8" Smith Island Cake.

aj

* The Saveur recipe, like many others, also called for the use of Reese's peanut butter cups. As far as I know, Michelle didn't attempt to make those from scratch, but don't push her...

Top Ten #34

1. birthday burger brunch, complete with Smith Island Cake

2. Momofuku-inspired birthday bonanza, complete with cardamom-pistachio-quince cake and lots of sake

3. eating your way across L.A.





4. Townes Van Zandt, s/t + Townes Van Zandt, In the Beginning...

5. Of Time and the City, dir. Terence Davies

6. Rabelais, Portland, ME



7. Joanna Newsom, Have One on Me

8. "Collection: MOCA's First 30 Years," Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

9. Wolf Parade + Contrived, W.W. Boyce Farmers' Market, Fredericton, NB

10. Thomas Frank, The Wrecking Crew

aj

Portland, ME in Brief

If you're looking for a definitive account of Portland, Maine, a city that's been labeled "one of America's foodiest cities," "a foodie's paradise," and "America's Foodiest Small Town 2009," this ain't it.

Not for lack of desire, or anything. It's just that three hours is hardly enough time to get the lay of the land, let alone the lowdown on the food scene. That said, three hours is long enough to have breakfast, check out a bookstore, and pick up a snack, so, for what it's worth...

fig. a: inside Rabelais

I'd read good things about Rabelais, "fine books on food & drink," but I still wasn't prepared for just how excellent this bookstore is. I wouldn't draw exact comparisons between Rabelais and New York's Kitchen Arts & Letters, or Bonnie Slotnick Cookbooks and Joanne Hendricks, but these guys are definitely in the same league. Their collection leans heavily towards the second-hand and the antiquarian, but they also carry a well-chosen selection of new and recent releases. And they're friendly, too. Really friendly. I spent a good, long while perusing Rabelais' shelves and their piles of new arrivals, and had a nice conversation with the proprietor about dessert books, reissues and reprints, and food art (prompted by a fascinating and beautiful piece of Haitian folk art on raising hogs that Rabelais has on display). I also managed to find a stack of goodies for a certain special someone who was just about to celebrate her birthday.*

fig. b: corned beef hash & eggs @ Becky's

Becky's Diner is a neighborhood diner that's located on Portland's waterfront (on Hobson's Wharf, to be exact), and that specializes in fresh seafood. They also make some pretty mean breakfasts, including the eggs & corned beef hash combo you see pictured above. I was pleased when they offered me an English muffin as one of my toast options, and I was even happier when my server asked me whether I wanted that English muffin toasted or grilled on their skillet. I chose the latter option, of course.

File under "When in Rome": when I asked for hot sauce to go with my breakfast, one of the options that was presented to me was a local variety of hot sauce: Captain Mowatt's Canceaux Sauce. Spicy and sweet, Captain Mowatt's special blend was like a Northeastern sriracha sauce, but with a lot more body to it. Win-win-win: delicious on my eggs, delicious on my potatoes, and delicious on my corned beef hash, too.

fig. c: whoopie!

Michelle tells me that whoopie pies are the new cupcakes. I'm not 100% sure what she means by that (is Manhattan now littered with boutiquey whoopie pie specialists? are whoopie pies on the verge of sweeping over Montreal?). Whatever the case, at the time that I walked into Two Fat Cats Bakery looking for a simple snack to hit the road with, I had no idea that whoopie pies were trendy. I'd heard of whoopie pies before, of course--I knew they had a following that stretched from the Mid-Atlantic to the Northeast--but I certainly wasn't on the hunt for one. When I saw that chocolate cake and marshmallow sandwich staring back at me, however, I knew I'd found what I was looking for. Tasted great with my cup of coffee, gave me a heavy-duty sugar buzz that lasted for the next 5 hours, and it made for a much more manageable roadfood than, say, a cupcake or a muffin.

Not that I needed any more sugar or chocolate in my system, but Two Fat Cats makes a pretty good chocolate chip cookie, too.

Rabelais, 86 Middle Street, Portland, ME, (207) 774-1044

Becky's Diner, 390 Commercial Street, Portland, ME, (207) 773-7070

Two Fat Cats, 47 India Street, Portland, ME, (207) 347-5144

aj

* Among other treasures:

C. Anne Wilson's The Book of Marmalade: Its Antecedents, its History, and its Role in the World Today...

fig. d: The Book of Marmalade 1

Check out the spine!

fig. e: The Book of Marmalade 2

St. Martin's/Marek!

Escape to L.A., rev. ed.

fig. a: L.A. by night

It took about 18 hours, but, suddenly, there I was, in Downtown L.A.

fig. b: continental divide

I'd had a particularly scenic transcontinental flight, one that provided stunning views of the Rockies, and an equally stunning sunset descent over L.A. county and into LAX.

fig. c: Standing Rib, 1962

I didn't fully realize it at the time, but a print by Roy Lichtenstein that I saw in the Museum of Contemporary Art's 30-year retrospective on my first day in L.A. proved to be emblematic, as you'll see.

fig. d: Cole's by night

For my very first meal, I walked from my hotel on South Grand to Cole's on 6th to have my very first authentic L.A. French Dip sandwich. Cole's is one of the two Downtown L.A. establishments that claims to have invented the French Dip sandwich over a century ago now, back in 1908.

fig. e: Cole's by Cole's

Cole's is definitely the hipper of the two, and the joint was jumping when I arrived: the stereo was cranked up, the drinks were flowing, and the crowd was young and happening. Despite their insistence that the City of Los Angeles authenticated their claim to being the "originators of the French dip" back in the 1970s, Cole's definitely comes across as the challenger at the moment. This isn't a bad thing. It's made them hungrier to assert themselves. So the place was given a loving restoration a few years ago. And they also picked up an executive chef. But, more importantly, it's made them very assertive with their menu. Their house mustard is a potent, horseradish-laced, "Atomic" concoction. Their pickles are homemade, half-sour, and chili-laced--not for the faint of heart. They, too, have been given the (well-deserved) "Atomic" moniker. Their beef French dip sandwich is a hefty, freshly carved number that comes with the jus served demurely on the side. In other words, here you dip the sandwich yourself, according to your whims. Beer selection is good, with three Germans (Bitburger, Spaten, and Franziskaner) and Anchor Steam (on tap) being among the highlights. The bar is an early-20th-century classic and it's fully loaded to boot.

fig. f: neon market

The Grand Central Market has been a Downtown L.A. institution for roughly 90 years now. My camera might have been attracted to the China Cafe and its iconic, Edward Hopper-esque

CHOP SUEY
CHOW MEIN

sign, but I was on the prowl for tacos--fish tacos, quite specifically--so I made a beeline to Maria's Fresh Seafood. The majority of my compadres were having seafood caldos, and they looked and smelled delicious, but I went with the fish taco special: two fish tacos, salad, salsa, crema, beans, and rice, all for a fiver. So simple, so satisfying, so good.

fig. g: all aboard!

Later that day was the splurge of the trip: dinner for three at the Pacific Dining Car. At 89 years old, the Pacific Dining Car is another venerable L.A. institution. The Pacific Dining Car has a reputation for being one of the city's finest steakhouses, but it's also known for its main dining room, which simulates the interior of an early-20th-century railway dining car, as well as its associations with the writer James Ellroy. The Pacific Dining Car is something of an anomaly among high-class restaurants: it's open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and it has a special late-night menu that's made it popular with the city's nighthawks. Dinner consisting of a 16-ounce ribeye (cooked a perfect medium-rare), creamed spinach, a salad, a nice bottle of wine, and some impeccable service was pricey, but, man, did it ever hit the spot. The only disappointment: no sign of the "demon dog of American crime fiction."

fig. h: the big and the small 1

Bottega Louie is an oddly named restaurant with a choice Downtown location, a fancy Italian pizza oven, a full-size, open-format kitchen, an open-format pastry kitchen, a bar/café area, a massive, sprawling floor plan, towering 50-foot ceilings, and a veritable army of waitstaff. How they've managed to survive the Great Recession, I have no idea. Must have something to do with their appealing menu, because Bottega Louie is packing 'em in. I was so overwhelmed by the immensity of the operation, that the only photograph I took was of the miniature Tabasco sauce bottle that came with my brunch.

The brunch menu had so many tantalizing options that I actually had a hard time making a selection. I ended up settling on the scrambled eggs with burrata, pancetta, caramelized cippolini onions, and oyster mushrooms, and I was happy I did.

fig. i: étude en jaune

Bottega Louie's pastry division specializes in macarons. Our favorite was the lemon, which also made for a good photograph.

fig. j: Park's by Park's

Between Saveur's Los Angeles issue and my friend MS's 411, I had more Koreatown tips than I knew what to do with. Never did get around for going for KFC (Korean fried chicken), but I did make it out for Korean BBQ with a gang of fellow travelers. We could see and smell all kinds of delicacies as we waited to be seated. (Actually, the wonderful aromas began from the moment we got out of our taxi.) But Park's marbled short ribs looked particularly tantalizing and came highly recommended. In addition to the short ribs, we ordered marinated shrimp and bulgogi. Later, I was kicking myself for not ordering the pork belly, which got raves in Saveur. There was a moment there, right after we ordered, when we panicked, thinking we needed to order some vegetables to go along with all that meat. Then I realized, this is a Korean BBQ restaurant--the condiments are coming. In fact, the folks at Park's covered our table with more condiments than I've ever seen. And seconds later the first of our mains--the short ribs--were sizzling away on our tables built-in grill. From the moment we wrapped our first lettuce leaves and rice wrappers around those tender morsels of meat smothered in Korean pickles of all sorts, we were hooked.

fig. k: orange, bowl

Coming from the relative deprivation of Canada in late-winter, the Hollywood Farmers' Market was a vision of plenitude that I found a bit overwhelming. Just the citrus alone was more than I could handle. All those varieties of oranges, tangerines, grapefruit, and lemons, all ripe and sweet and bursting with flavor. The daisy tangerines, in particular, tasted like nectar. Then there were the nuts--pistachios and almonds, in particular. And the dried fruit, including Mission figs the likes of which I'd never had before. And then there was all the stuff I couldn't even bear to look at--fruits, vegetables, herbs, cheeses, etc.--seeing as I was going to be back on a plane 12 hours later. What I did take advantage of were the tamales with green chiles, ricotta, and queso, and a rich, expertly made macchiato from Cafécito Organico, who have a shop in Silver Lake, but who go to the trouble of setting up an espresso machine on wheels, as it were, at the market. Ah, California!

fig. l: showtime!

Buzzing with vitamin C and high on caffeine, I made my way into Hollywood. The L.A. Marathon was on and the tail end of the pack was making its way down Hollywood Boulevard, so the streets were closed off to anything but pedestrian traffic.

fig. m: transference

I checked out a few Hollywood pilgrimage points, like the Egyptian/American Cinémathèque and Musso & Frank's Grill, and when I got to Grauman's Chinese Theater I witnessed a peculiar act of transference: a man was posing for a photograph in the Forecourt of the Stars, his hand placed carefully in Al Pacino's handprint.

fig. n: burger by Umami Burger

A couple of hours later, I'd made my way back to Space 15Twenty, adjacent to the Hollywood Farmer's Market, so that I could experience my very first Umami Burger. I considered having the signature Umami Burger, with its famed "umami x 6" flavor explosion, and I contemplated the SoCal Burger, with butter lettuce, oven-dried tomato spread, house-made American cheese, and caramelized, but ultimately I went with the Hatch Burger, which marries 4 different types of roasted green chiles with UB's house cheese. I'm happy to say that Umami Burger's Hatch Burger lived up to all expectations (and with all the hype surrounding UB these days, expectations were high). The patty was gigantic, tender, barely holding together, nice and rare, and juicy as all get-out. The bun was simple, but fresh, toasted, and tasty, and perfectly capable of holding the contents together. The toppings were dreamy. I ate the whole thing in about 32.3 seconds, and that was only because I made a conscious effort to "take my time." I had to restrain myself from ordering a second burger for dessert.

fig. o: the big and the small 2

Just when you thought I couldn't possibly eat any more beef on a 3-day furlough, I closed out my all-too-brief culinary tour of Los Angeles with a trip to Philippe's to try out their interpretation of the French Dip sandwich. Yes, Philippe's is the other Downtown L.A. establishment that claims to have invented the French Dip or French-dipped sandwich back in 1908, the place the folks at Cole's refer to as "that other downtown sandwich shop." Philippe's functions counter-style, they have sawdust on the floor, they house a satellite exhibit of the Los Angeles Railroad Heritage Foundation in their back room, and they serve their sandwiches pre-dipped (to order). The vibe is both more family-friendly and more old-school than Cole's; it's not nearly as hip. Philippe's mustard may not be "atomic," but, by God, it too is "hot... but good!" And their French-dipped beef sandwich was delicious--a little messier than their competitor's, perhaps, but it didn't last long enough to become an issue. I'm not one to waffle when it comes to these kinds of debates--I tend to have strong opinions about such things--but, I have to say: I liked them both, they both had their charms. And, to be honest, I don't really care who the true originator is. I'm not an Angeleno, so I'm not all that invested in the issue. I'm just glad they're both still around, still a vital part of L.A.'s downtown dining scene over 100 years after they first opened their doors.

I really didn't intend for my Escape to L.A. to turn into a 3-day beef binge (with just a couple brief interludes), but sometimes you just gotta go with the flow. Plus, maybe this is could be the beginning of a themed series on L.A. Here's hoping. Think of the possibilities: L.A. Pork, L.A. Fish, L.A. Vegetables, L.A. Bread...

Addendum:

fig. p: chocoholics, report!

If you're in Los Angeles in the next little while, do make a point of visiting the Museum of Contemporary Art's phenomenally rich and varied "Collection: MOCA's First 30 Years." Not only will you get to see Lichtenstein's Standing Rib, alongside works by Warhol, Arbus, Frank, Stella, Levitt, Rauschenberg, Matta-Clark, Goldin, Judd, Smithson, Baltz, Berman, and many, many others, but you'll have the opportunity to immerse yourself in the considerable sensorial pleasures of Ed Ruscha's Chocolate Room (yes, that's actual chocolate lining the walls).

fig. q: the gang's all here!

And if you're already Downtown, and you're something of a film buff, you might want to pop in to the Biltmore Hotel to visit their gallery of photographs documenting the many Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awards ceremonies that were held there between the early 1930s and the early 1940s.

Cole's, 118 East 6th Street, Los Angeles (Downtown), (213) 622-4090

Maria's Fresh Seafood, Grand Central Market, 317 S. Broadway, Los Angeles (Downtown), (213) 624-2378

Pacific Dining Car, 1310 West 6th Street, Los Angeles (Downtown), (213) 483-6000

Bottega Louie, 700 South Grand Avenue, Los Angeles (Downtown), (213) 802-1470

Park's BBQ, 955 South Vermont Avenue, Los Angeles (Koreatown), (213) 380-1717

Hollywood Farmers' Market, Ivar & Selma Avenue, Los Angeles (Hollywood), (323) 463-3171

Umami Burger, 1520 North Cahuenga Blvd., Los Angeles (Hollywood), (323) 469-3100 [with other locations on South LaBrea and on Hollywood Blvd.]

Philippe's, a.k.a. Philippe The Original, 1001 North Alameda St., Los Angeles (Downtown), (213) 628-3781

aj

New York Winterlude 3

Sadly, day 3 of New York Winterlude 2009 was only a half day. For a good reason, though. We had plans to make it to the Catskills by mid-afternoon, so that we could relax and have dinner and an overnight with friends in the country. So we got up early, picked up our car, and made our way down to Greenwich Village.

There we paid quick visits to two Greenwich Village classics for the very first time. Both had been part of our constellation of New York pilgrimage destinations for years, but "our constellation of New York pilgrimage destinations" looks a little like the Milky Way--it could keep us busy for years. Plus, it's always changing.

fig. a: two little birds

Anyway, first on our itinerary was the legendary O. Ottomanelli & Sons on Bleecker Street, a true neighborhood butcher famed for their meat-cutting prowess and the superior quality of their meats (including free-range, organic, and pastured). We were on the lookout for osso buco, and osso buco was what we found. They weren't cheap, but these were big, meaty shanks, and our butcher was all too happy to talk technique with us. We gazed longingly at O. Ottomanelli & Sons' famous aged steaks, but the only cooler we'd brought along was our Igloo Playmate, so we had to limit ourselves to those shanks.

fig. b: we know cheese!

Next stop: Murray's. We'd visited Murray's Grand Central location, but this was our very first time visiting the flagship store, and it was just as mind-blowing as we expected. The selection was unreal--including dozens of artisanal American cheeses from the mid-Atlantic and the Northeast that we'd never heard of--but even better was the service. These people knew their cheeses. These people were passionate. They also knew their pairings. And they were generous. We sampled so many cheeses, and so many wonderfully complex cheeses, that our tongues were positively tingling afterwards. We picked out a couple of New York cheeses and a heady Basque number, scribbled down some wine notes, and somehow we managed to pull ourselves away...

...to Brooklyn. There we'd decided to finish our pizza tour with a visit to a (then) recently opened pizzeria that had been highly recommended to us by some of our readers (you know who you are). Now, Motorino has since climbed to the upper echelons of New York's pizza world--hell, they even took over Una Pizza Napoletana's fabled East Village location when Anthony Mangieri decided to leave New York for sunnier climes--but at the time they were still relatively under the radar (i.e., all the hardcore NY pizzaheads had at least heard about them, Pete Wells had written a "dining brief" about them for the New York Times, but Frank Bruni had yet to put them at the top of his list of New York's best "New-Generation Pizzerias," and Sam Sifton's review was still a year away).

fig. c: mmmmotorino

We had two stunning pizzas there, including the Margherita DOC you see pictured above, and we couldn't believe our eyes when we saw their insanely generous lunchtime prix fixe menu, but what really impressed us was the single-minded determination of Motorino's chef and chief pizzaiolo, Mathieu Palombino. He was busy training a couple of new hires that day and all I'm going to say is that he knew exactly what characterized a Motorino pizza and he was absolutely unwilling to accept anything less. No wonder our pies were so damn perfect.

fig. d: sage advice

We left Brooklyn totally satisfied and utterly convinced that, if anything, New York's Pizza Revival was picking up steam, and we made our way onto the Palisades Parkway and headed north.

fig. e: winterlude's end

O. Ottomanelli & Sons, 285 Bleecker Street, New York, (212) 675-4217

Murray's Cheese, 254 Bleecker St., New York, 888.MY.CHEEZ or (212) 243-3289

Motorino, 319 Graham Avenue, Brooklyn, (718) 599-8899 & 349 East 12th Street, East Village, Manhattan, (212) 777-2644

New York Winterlude 2, rev. ed.

Day 2 of our Winterlude began with us roughing it on breakfast (we packed a makeshift Schaller & Weber sausage special), and hitting the pavement. I had some business to attend to, so I dragged Michelle on an architectural tour of Lower Manhattan that began with us emerging from the subway underneath the Municipal Building,

fig. a: up from the underground

and focused on an area around the intersection of Broadway and Wall Street.

fig. b: cloud-scrapers of New York

It also involved me posing Michelle in front of locations from old films and tempting her with hot dog carts.


figs. c & d: Wall Street

By lunchtime, we'd made our way back to Midtown and had the time to check out Raymond Hood's News Building en route to a lunch date Michelle had arranged for us.

fig. e: under the Hood

I'd read a fair bit about Tudor City over the years, but I'd never seen it up close until this visit, in February 2009.

fig. f: cloud-scrapers of Midtown

It took a reservation at Michael White's Convivio to finally get up close and personal with Fred C. French's strange Tudor Modern (Early Modern Modern?).

fig. g: Early Modern Mod

New York magazine described White as "the Mario of Midtown." As much as we may be big fans of Mario Batali's cookbooks, we wouldn't know. One visit to Batali's Otto hardly seems like enough of a measuring stick. What we can tell you, however, is that Convivio is a true jewel.

fig. h: the writing is on the wall

In fact, it's quite likely the finest Italian restaurant either of us has ever visited. Expert antipasti featuring house salumi, a supernaturally plump, juicy grilled quail appetizer, homemade pasta with crab and a truly luscious sea urchin-based sauce, and a utterly superior grilled bistecca were just some of the pleasures of one of our absolute top meals of 2010.

The lowdown:

sfizi: marinated shitaakes, mellow pickled cucumbers, spicy olives w/ spicy salami, burrata with tomatoes and herbed oil w/ toasts

antipasto: grilled quail skewer, bacon, onions, shitakes, chives, vin cotto

primi: cod-stuffed ravioli, many egg-yolk pasta, sausage, rapini, herbed oil; saffron gnocchetti, crab, sea urchin, breadcrumbs

secondo: bistecca, grilled, w/ winter vegetables (carrots, brussels sprouts leaves, etc.) and a peppery wine sauce

dessert: lemon semifreddo, pistachio sablé, candied pistachios, acacia honey wafer, candied citrus peel, acacia honey ring with vanilla bean

fig. i: Convivio dreaming

And while on this particular occasion we'd decided to cut loose and splurge a little, we realized that lunch at Convivio had the potential to be very affordable indeed. Portions were surprisingly generous, and we pictured ourselves returning and having a (transcendental) pasta lunch at Convivio's bar.

fig. j: exterior, Bonnie Slotnick

As you know, we've scoured other New York bastions of culinary arts & letters before, but, oddly, this was the first time we'd visited Bonnie Slotnick. Not for lack of trying, though. We'd tried to visit on two or three occasions, but had always managed to swing by on days where the store happened to be closed (in spite of its well-deserved notoriety, Bonnie Slotnick remains a very small operation, so hours can be irregular).

fig. k: interior, Bonnie Slotnick

Anyway, we were happy to finally get a chance to explore Bonnie Slotnick. Not surprisingly, we found plenty of material to keep us occupied and broaden our horizons, so we ended up spending about two hours there. We also had a long conversation with the chatty, gracious clerk (Bonnie passed through at one point to drop off her latest haul of books, but otherwise she was on the hunt). We could have easily spent another two hours. It felt like a home away from home.

fig. l: electric Company

That night we met R & M at Jim “Our pies are not always round" Lahey's (then) newly opened Company (a.k.a. Co., but not to be confused with David Chang's Ko). We'd heard great things, our Sullivan Street slices the day before had gotten us good and primed, and Co. didn't let us down in the least. Okay, so the pies weren't always round, but we found them perfectly cooked with great structure and just the right amount of blistering, with a tomato sauce that was tangy and bright, and toppings that were novel without being too "fusion." As is so often the case with top-notch pizza (and the pies we had that night were definitely top-notch), the simplest pies are often the most satisfying. So, for instance, as much as we appreciated Co.'s Flambé, with béchamel, lardons, and caramelized onions, it was their Margherita that really stood out for us. In fact, Co.'s margherita was so lovely, so perfect, we opted for a second one "for dessert." We loved the space, the service, and the buzz of the place too.

The lowdown:

appetizers: pizza bianca; toasts, e.g. with lemony chicken liver paté; butter lettuce salad w/ roasted squash, pumpkin seeds, lemon, olive oil

mains: 2 x margherita; 1 pie w/ anchovies, green olives, olive oil, tomatoes; 1 "santo" w/ shaved radicchio, parmesan, taleggio, mozzarella; 1 special w/ bechamel, leek, spicy sausage

desert: homemade blood orange gelato; homemade chocolate gelato; a generous banana split w/ homemade ice cream and candied walnuts

We haven't to spend a lot of time on this stretch of 9th Avenue when we visit New York, but, here too, we swore we'd be back.

Convivio, 5 Tudor City Pl., New York, NY, (212) 599-5045

Bonnie Slotnick Cookbooks, 163 W 10th St # Ge, New York, NY, (212) 989-8962

Company, a.k.a. Co., 230 9th Ave., New York, NY (212) 243-1105

aj

New York Winterlude 1, rev. ed.

fig. a: several large men's footprints, one giant shadow

Maybe it's the fact that Snowpocalypse 2010 has had me thinking of our friends to the south. Then again, maybe it's just that Sam Sifton's review of Motorino this week has left me in a tizzy--a pizza tizzy. Whatever, the case, I finally got around to revising a post that got started about a year ago, not long after a short, sweet mid-February New York Winterlude in early 2009.

It went something like this:

Day 1 began with us having to move our car out of our Midtown, 2nd Ave. parking spot by 8:00 am to avoid getting a nasty ticket. We weren't planning on using the car while we were in New York, but once we got in the car, we figured, "if we have to move it anyway, might as well get some use out of it, right?" So we went about as far crosstown as you could possibly go, to Jim Lahey's Sullivan Street Bakery on W. 47th near 11th Ave. A little crazy, I know, especially when you're on vacation, but Michelle had a hankering for croissants and I had designs on some of their famous flatbreads, so... Plus, we had plans to visit Lahey’s just-opened Co. later in the trip, so this was research.

They'd just opened when we arrived, and they were still very much in the process of setting up shop, but they had plenty of fresh croissants on hand and their counter display already looked pretty appealing.

fig. b: display case, Sullivan St. Bakery

So we grabbed a couple of croissants, and a couple of slices and headed back through the crosstown traffic and the mayhem in search of coffee.

fig. c: Michelle & Juan

We didn't find any of New York's "serious" coffee shops, but we did find Juan Valdez, and he was happy to serve us.

fig. d: sous les pavés, la forêt

Day 1 was all about Midtown and the Upper East Side. We were lucky enough to be staying with friends on E. 57th, and we had museums we wanted to visit, so we put our car in long-term parking and hit the pavement.

fig. e: Sullivan St. Bakery's potato pie

By the time we reached the Met, we were a little peckish again, so Michelle pulled out a slice of Sullivan Street's lovely potato pie that she'd wisely stashed in her backpack, and we refueled in Central Park. We love their basic marinara slice, but those guys definitely have a way with potatoes. Look how golden they are!

fig. f: one in a thousand

Our main reason for going to the Met was to check out their "Walker Evans and the Picture Postcard" exhibition, which displayed hundreds of artifacts from Evans' gargantuan personal collection of early 20th-century postcards (including this beauty depicting plums being dried into prunes in Campbell, CA) and made a very interesting argument about how this collection influenced his work. It was a phenomenal exhibit, but, I have to say, it attracted a strange crowd. It was a compact exhibition too, so it wasn't as though you could get away from all those weird people with their loud voices and their bad attitudes. It felt more like an antiques show than that contemplative museum experience I've heard so much about.

fig. g: To: Walker Evans; From: Diane Arbus

Even with all those difficult people, we still had a great time, and we particularly liked this postcard from Diane Arbus to Walker in particular, with its idiosyncratic script and its curious left field reference to Evans' talents in the kitchen (and his way with potatoes).

fig. h: fancy feet 1

Afterwards, we made the most of our donation and toured a fairly wide cross-section of the Met's collection, but we were particularly taken by the Medieval tapestries.

fig. i: fancy feet 2

By mid-afternoon, we had made our way up the street to the Neue Galerie. In part, so that we could immerse ourselves in its Mitteleuropean splendor.

fig. j: return to Café Sabarsky

But mostly, so that we could pay a repeat visit to our friends at Café Sabarsky. This was our first time having a full meal at Café Sabarsky, and I suspect it won't be our last. Goulash, sausage and rotkohl, beer, kaffee und kuchen--we were in Hapsburg Heaven.

The lowdown:

mains: weisswurst w/ potato salad and mustard; goulash soup w/ potatoes

desserts: sabarsky torte; milchrahmstrudel

fig. k: Schaller und Weber

So much so, in fact, that when we asked about our amazing weisswurst and found out it came from the legendary Schaller & Weber, we made that our very next stop. There we bought some more weisswurst and some frankfurters, and some of their famously spicy house mustard, and we admired their whimsical beer paraphernalia.

fig. l: Shad is here!

Speaking of repeat visits and old favorites, that night we had a hankering for seafood, so we went back to visit our friends at the Grand Central Oyster Bar. We love the atmosphere at the bar--the mix of regulars, tourists, and the seasoned staff, the banter, the repartee--and GCOB’s selection of oysters on the half-shell is always impressive. We ordered a cross-section of house specialties--baked, fried, stewed, and raw (representing Long Island, the Chesapeake, Nova Scotia, and Washington)--and a round of beers, and we settled right in.

The lowdown:

appetizer: clams casino

raw bar: blue points; bras d'or; kumimoto; royal miyagi

hot dishes: oyster stew; clam pan roast

fig. m: inside the Campbell Apartment

Afterwards, we found out our friends R & M had a little surprise in store for us: a nightcap at the Campbell Apartment, the cocktail bar that occupies the former office of William J. Campbell, a financier and railroad tycoon. A former office in a railway station. Sounds glamorous, right? Well, this was no ordinary office. Campbell evidently had a thing for the Northern Italian culture of the late Middle Ages--he spent loads to have the place decked out in medieval Florentine splendor, and just to make sure everyone understood that he had money to burn, he placed a huge, imposing safe in his sizable fireplace. Campbell’s 3,500 sq. ft. office has been fully renovated to its previous splendor (including the safe), but now much of the space is taken up by a big, old bar, and the Campbell Apartment functions as a swanky cocktail bar. Talk about a nightcap!

To be continued...

Sullivan Street Bakery, 533 West 47th Street, New York, NY (212) 265-5580

Colombian Coffee Federation/Juan Valdez Coffee, 140 East 57th Street, New York, NY (917) 289-0981

Café Sabarsky, 1048 5th Avenue, New York, NY (212) 288-0665

Schaller & Weber, 1654 2nd Avenue, New York, NY (212) 879-3047

The Grand Central Oyster Bar, 89 East 42nd Street, New York, NY (212) 490-6653

The Campbell Apartment, 15 Vanderbilt Ave., New York, NY (212) 953-0409