Augieland

Accept your-self a challange

Cru is the perfect place for a cork dork to be lazy. Firstly, even the most proud connoisseur can push aside the 35,000-label list just because he or she is not up to it. Secondly, Robert Bohr and his staff are fantastic at selecting great wine from the cellar. I almost always use Cru as an excuse to learn something new. I will say things as steeped in lethargy as, "I would like a $100 red and a lesson." Without fail, they step up and find me something that is both unique and fun to drink, as well as details down to the name and age of the dog that accompanied the vintner on his walks through the vineyard.

Well, last night it all came to a head. I had been drinking in the proximity of a guy I had met once or twice and realized to be a regular. At some point I saw him poring over the list and I asked, "you looking for a bottle?" He responded in the affirmative and I offered to split it with him, up to $50.00 (it was only Tuesday after all).  We both pretty much decided that we didn't really care white or red or part of the world, and that we were happy to serve the ball up to the staff.

Then Alex showed up and smacked the ball right back at our lazy asses. He put down an unmarked carafe of dark red juice and said, "tell me what it is." I guess some days even the workhorses of New York wine get a little fed-up with carrying you on their backs. 

This has happened to me before in other places, but it was the first time for Regular. It is very daunting facing down the fact that no matter how genuine your love of wine, and how thorough your study, a couple facts will always remain: there is too much wine at Cru (not to mention on Earth) for any one person to fully wrap there cognitive abilities around, and taste is the most subjective thing in the world. Can you trust yours? Basically, it's the question we used to love to ask when experimenting in school: is the color red the same to me as it is to you?

Alex had offered us a very good BS test for all the wine talking and drinking we had each done in our separate pasts.

So we put our noses in the glass. It was Syrah and, I thought, Old World. I can't even tell you why I thought that, except that it smelled like Syrah, chocolate, cassis, and black fruits. Done. That easy. Until the doubts set in. The first one crept in when I detected the slightest bit of green and worried it could be a Cabernet Franc-heavy blend from somewhere hot like eastern Washington State.

Then I tasted it. Definitely Syrah. Definitely Old World. Except then I detected some blueberries in my mouth which, although sometimes I taste them in Syrah, made me suspect the presence of Grenache. Keep in mind all this pressure was self-generated. All Alex said was, "you tell me about it." He was giving me the right to declare it fruity or tannic, big or light and instead I beat myself up trying not to get it wrong.

When Alex returned, Regular was outside smoking a cigarette, so he asked and I answered: Syrah from the Rhone, that I suspected it was southern and that it may have been blended with some Grenache. Alex explained it was 100% Syrah, from the southern Rhone. Typically, southern Rhones are Grenache-dominated. So I had come up with the grape and the terroir.  I would say if it were graded I probably got in the low eighties, a number that makes me proud. Maybe next time I won't rethink so much and I'll remember that games are for fun. Then again, maybe next time I'll be ballsy enough to guess a vintage.

It was an '01 Chateau de Fonsalette, labeled Cotes du Rhone and produced by Chateau Rayas, which is in Chateauneuf-du-Pape.  Chateauneuf-du-Pape is a region in southern Rhone and it allows up to thirteen grapes, three of which are white. Beaucastel is the only house that uses all of them, but it is pretty safe to say that there are always at least three in the blend, Grenache dominating Syrah and Mouvedre. So this is a unique wine, all Syrah from C-d-P.  Very hedonistic. When people talk about a Parker wine this is what I imagine.

So my years of drinking wine, seeking out wine geeks, and talking about it incessantly have gotten me to a point where I am pretty sure what Syrah from France tastes like. Four years ago I never would have believed that was possible. The best part, though, is having an awesome place to go and find guys that truly enjoy wine, just because it is Tuesday and you feel like a glass.

Hearth 712 bohjillian stars

A sure thing. Last week, in the throes of my stomach flu, I was forced to bag out of a dinner at Hearth. Ever the trooper, Wife went and came back with the news that for a $50 supplement they were shaving white truffles on the gnocchi side dish. I am a person that believes in absolutes, and in my mind Marco Canora's gnocchi are the best. Gorgeous little pillows simply adorned with a little butter, a little Parmigiano, and a grind of pepper, they are truly sublime. I have been known to grab a barstool, an order of these little treasures, and a bottle of wine to kick off a good run of wine-wandering through the East Village. Imagine my heartbreak at not only missing a Hearth dinner, which always pleases, but missing white truffle on those gnocchi. I mean how unfair can a flu be?

Last night Bear was dining at Hearth with a group of co-workers. I explained that that was fine, but we would have to go again later in the week so I could have the truffle gnocchi. At 6:45 last night Bear called, explaining that there was a surprise extra seat at their table and that, if I ran, I could join them and get the truffle pasta. Just like Gib in The Sure Thing, I started my cross-country trip (well, across town) with guaranteed satisfaction on the other side, my Bikini-clad girl the white truffle gnocchi.

Well, I got there in about fifteen minutes, was introduced all around, took my seat, started planning truffle wines and, to be honest, felt a little giddy. Then it happened. Our server explained that there were no truffles. There I was, journey finished and no Nicollette Sheridan. What was I to do? To be fair, Paul and Marco had made no promises. It was my Lance, Wife, who had promised me The Sure Thing, and getting mad at her never works.

The nice part is, if any restaurant is my Alison Bradbury -- totally cute, actually interested in my company, always there, and absolutely dependable -- it is Hearth. I looked at the menu last night and realized that at this point I have had everything on it at least once, and I love it all. So what did I do? I asked the manager, server, food runner, busboy, and anyone else that happened by our table, in one of those Tommy Hilfiger striped shirts the staff wears, if they had found any truffles, then ordered things I knew I would love.

For wine, we did a white and a red. For the red we went with an '04 Mitolo "Jester" Shiraz. A perfect cocktail wine, it is big, extracted, fruity, and fun to drink. As for white, Paul Grieco keeps some amazing, aromatic whites. After much deliberation, we settled on a '03 Dézaley "Médinette" by Bovard, crisp with nice washing acids, all lemon and mineral on the palate.  Dézaley is a grand Cru region of Switzerland and the grape they grow is Chasselas. In most places Chasselas is considered inconsequential, but on the wickedly steep slopes of Dézaley it is supposed to make its most interesting wines, so I grab them whenever a beverage director has the stones to put them on the list.

For the second wine round, we had the Jester again but got an '03 Chateau de la Maltroye Chassagne-Montracchet for the white. Served a little cold, it needed time to show but once it did it was a very youthful, fruity Burgundy. I'll look for it again in twelve years to see what it has become.

We were a la carte for dinner. I started with the Ribollita, which was a very authentic version of the Tuscan bean soup made with black cabbage, white beans, Parmigiano, and very thin slices of toast on top. What a great, hearty, clean-tasting soup. I poured a little olive oil over it and it did that wondrous thing hot Italian bean soup does when olive oil is added, which alone was worth the trip.

For an entrée, I chose the Monkfish Osso Buco. Marco Canora has a gift with monkfish. That may sound weird to say, but I have had about four versions at Hearth and without fail they are wonderful. He makes it hard to stick by my eco-friendly intentions to avoid fish caught in destructive manners. The Osso Buco is my favorite of the four preparations. It is really Osso Buco, with all the richness of veal stock and the liveliness of the gremolata. The texture is of the tight, toothsome, monkfish, as opposed to the falling apart stringy bits of veal shanks. Veal shanks are awesome but, just like Wide Spread Panic's cover of And It Stoned Me, it is possible this version is better then the original.

The monkfish is served with a Calamari Saffron Risotto that is so good it deserves its own paragraph. It joins the salinity of the squid with that awesome aroma of saffron. It is at once rich and fresh. It counters the robustness of the Osso Buco perfectly and somehow reminds you that this dish started in the sea. It also happens to go exceedingly well with the Montrachet we were drinking.

I opted to call my glass of Moscato d'Asti dessert. In spite of this, a sampling of the whole menu showed up (Bear loves to see people eat dessert after saying they won't). The big news was not only that the Cider Doughnuts are back, but that they had them. These often run out and I was almost convinced that, in spite of several tries, Bear might die having never tried them. Ultimately, three orders were had so everyone got to try the elusive little buggers. Everybody loved them, as well as everything else, including the glasses of Mead (how amny places let you say that?).

So, in the end, I traveled for the temptress and found myself in love with the ones I had been traveling with, once again living the lessons Rob Reiner taught me in my youth. I can't wait to see where the quest for the six-fingered man leads me...

Lupa 322 magillian stars

Did you know that Savoy's super awesome cheeseburger is only available till 6 pm? I didn't. It broke my heart. Octopus, Wife, and myself were aimlessly wandering Soho last night with two out-of-towners. We all got hungry around 6:15 and decided the best thing around for an easy, small dinner would be Peter Hoffman's cheeseburger. We walked in to Savoy at around 6:30, found five barstools together, and considered ourselves the luckiest people alive. A burger at the bar at Savoy is one of New York's great pleasures on the cheap. We walked up and declared our intention to take "these five stools and have four cheeseburgers and some vegetarian option." That's when I learned that the sandwich I had touted so much had been missed by 30 minutes.

Of course, just as you would have done in the face of such heartbreak, we decided to hightail it over to Lupa and grab some seats before it got later and they became unattainable. Lupa is, in my opinion, the best place for a quick, cheap bottle of wine and bowl of pasta in town (once you have gotten a seat) and definitely a place out-of-town guest should be taken. As luck would have it, the north end of the communal table was free, and the five of us planted ourselves for a small, early supper.

Our out-of-town friend had spent the day discussing wine with me and we had reached the point at which I suspected she liked lighter-bodied reds. To test/illustrate this assumption, I chose a rather young '03 Terra Borolo Dolcetto D'Alba. For twenty-seven bucks it was exactly right for the ensuing meal and she loved it.

First the big news: the Focaccia is back. After a foray into Pizza Bianca as the table bread, the Lupa team has gone back to the light, fluffy, rosemary and sea salt bread they had that was so exceptional at mopping up the awesome neon green Piazzano olive oil it is served with. The Pizza Bianca was great and I swing by Sullivan Street for it regularly, but the Focaccia simply holds more olive oil, and that olive oil kicks ass.

Having spent the day making and consuming a lot of potato pancakes at our long, leisurely brunch, I was neither in the mood for pasta, nor slow roasted meats, the things Mark Ladner and his boys really excel at on Sundays. So I took the easy way out. I got a verdura, a salad and two of the vegetable contorni.

First was the verdura Charred Radiccio. It was served with Saba. [Saba would be real balsamic vinegar, Aceto di Modena, if it had been put in varying casks of varying sizes and woods for varying numbers of years and then it passed the judgment of the proper consortium. As I am sure you can deduce, Saba is far cheaper than Aceto di Modena.] Then some croutons, some toasted hazelnuts and some pecorino were tossed in. It is bitter and sweet and tart all at the same time and even had a hint of truffle in it.

Second was the Punterreli Salad, a verbal special. It was described as a bitter green of Rome, with an aggressive dressing of anchovy, garlic, lemon, and some chilies. The word aggressive scared everyone, so I was the only person to order it. Then I encouraged everyone to taste it and it was decided the best dish of all those we had ordered. I considered the green itself more spicy then bitter, which made the addition of chili a very cool choice. I get anchovy/garlic dressing almost every time I see it and I would consider this the best one I have had this bitter greens season. Lively from the lemon and well-balanced between the remaining three flavors of garlic, olive oil, and anchovy.

The first of my two contorni was Brussel Sprouts. They had been deep fried in olive oil and had that awesome almost marijuana flavor that comes when the outer leaves scorch. The second was Braised Escarole. It was dressed with lemon and some vinegar. Both were simple, both green, both good.

For her entrée Wife had the market fish of the day, wild striped bass, which (we learned later) is on the consumer watch lists for being so full of pollutants as to not be consumable by humans. This frustrated her greatly, as she likes to avoid such things. Other then that, all in all it was an excellent meal on a not very hungry stomach. Man I love that place.

Potato Pancakes

These are not Latkes, they are potato pancakes. Latkes are a thing that can only be made well by grandmothers. No catholic-raised Jersey boy would be dumb enough to make anything and call them Latkes, and definitely wouldn't write up a recipe for them. When guys like me make Latkes we call them Rostis and do things like trap chorizo in the interlocking branches of shredded potato.

 

This is a way to use leftover mashed potatoes and was developed on the day after Thanksgiving about six years ago, to help Wife get over the inevitable hangover of spending a holiday with my family.

 

Wife thought it would be good this year if we had some friends over for brunch as people returned to the city from their respective holidays and, if we were going to do so, that Potato Pancakes would be the thing to serve, so:

 

Saturday night we returned to the city and whipped up ten pounds of mashed potatoes. Then Sunday morning I started the pancakes around 10am, expecting about 20 people to wander in any time between noon-ish and four-ish. In the interest of variety I made three versions.

 

The first was scallion; I separated about 1/3^rd of the potatoes out into their own bowl. To this, I added 5 standard matzos I had whizzed up in the food processor. I dumped the matzo on top of the potatoes and cracked in 5 large eggs. I then chopped the white part of 2 bunches of scallions, brought this all together with a wooden spoon, and started frying them about 5 at a time in a 12" nonstick skillet on medium high heat with a ½ tablespoon of butter and splash of olive oil. Just fill your wooden spoon with the mix and push the resulting dollop into the pan and pat them flattish with your fingers. Do not stress: the more ragged the edges, the more your guests feel loved by your effort. Basically, when I saw a color brown I liked start creeping up the edge, I flipped them and waited until the centers became a little resilient to the touch. I transferred them to a parchment-lined baking dish and threw them in a 200º oven once I finished the batch to keep them warm while I moved on to...

The next third was prepared in much the same way, except I added 5 frozen summer truffles to the food processor with the matzo and ¼ cup of white truffle oil into the mix.

The last third was same as the scallion batch except, instead of scallions, I added the shredded remains of a Gruyere and an Emmentaller that I had in the fridge (probably 2 cups together).

For garnish, I threw the chopped green portion of the scallions on the scallion batch. I also put out a bowl of applesauce and a bowl of sour cream on the table I was serving the pancakes on. For a little gilding-the-lily touch, I put a small jar of Iranian Osetra out to top the truffle version if that suited one's taste. All this, next to some cheap Cava and a pitcher of OJ I spiked with Cointreau and a pot of coffee. Fun fun fun.

Since this is a recipe for leftovers and the portions I am usually dealing with are far smaller, the guidelines as I see them after some experimenting are: 1 matzo and 1 egg for every 2 cups of mashed potato. Then add anything you like, crumbled bacon maybe.

Fluffy-White-Mashed-Potatoes

I love when people fool around with mashed potatoes. I once went to a Thanksgiving dinner that had three versions of mashed sweet potatoes and no fluffy-white-mashed-potatoes. This seemed a crime to me. I love the wasabi mashed at Union Square and I loved the truffle mashed I had somewhere else some time. However at most times, and especially at Thanksgiving, there is just too much to be said for an awesome bunch of whipped potatoes.

I remember the big punishment for low-ranking military personnel on the sitcoms of my youth being peeling potatoes. I have also peeled potatoes with cheap peelers and paring knives, so I see that for a long time this must have been an arduous task. It seems silly to say, but I believe we must have made huge jumps in peeler technology. I actually have two, a Good Grips and an OXO. I timed it last night, and it took me fifteen minutes to peel ten pounds of potatoes. I timed it because, for the last ten or so years, my contention that real mashed potatoes are so much better than fake has fallen on the deaf ears of my family. At all holidays they are happy to let me make them, and they eat them, and praise them, however they keep instant in their homes.

Here is what I did last night and, in about one hour, mostly in front of the TV, I made a huge batch of fluffy-white-mashed-potatoes.

10pm: threw 10 pounds of potatoes in the sink and rinsed them, placing the rinsed ones on the cutting board.

10:02pm: started peeling, letting the peelings fall on 3 paper towels I put on the counter and placing the peeled potatoes in a large bowl of cold water.

10:17pm: transferred the peeled potatoes to my 2 largest pots (unless you have one pot that fits 10 lbs) cutting them to roughly the size of the smallest whole potato. Rolled the peelings up in the 3 towels they were on and threw them in the garbage.

10:18pm: put a fistful of kosher salt in both pots and put in enough cold water to cover.

10:20pm: put lids on both pots and placed on high heat.

10:22pm: put 3 cups heavy cream and 3 cups milk on a low flame in a saucepan.

10:24pm: pulled 2 sticks of butter from fridge and sliced each into about 8 slices that I left on the counter.

10:25pm: went to sit on the couch.

10:32pm: first pot starts boiling over, backed the flame off a little and started a 20-minute counter. Back to couch.

10:40pm: second pot starts boiling, back off flame and start another 20-minute timer. (The joy of stainless over anodized aluminum, boils 8 minutes faster) Back to couch.

10:52pm: pulled the first pot off the, flame dumped into a colander with a slotted spoon, moved hot potatoes from colander to potato ricer and riced them. (This was the first time I ever used a ricer; I was a masher guy. The Good Grips ricer was $19.95 and as far as ease/resulting texture, I gotta tell you, money very well spent.)

10:56pm: put the bits of one stick of butter and half the warm cream/milk combo in and stirred with a wooden spoon, salted aggressively.

11:00pm: repeated with pot 2 except now salt and ground pepper to taste.

11:05pm: called Wife in to taste and started to worry there would be none left for the next day, when they can just be reheated in a 350° oven.

For the one hour spent while watching TV, the resulting batch of mashed potatoes feeds about 20 people and is, literally, the kind of thing that makes more poetic people talk about crawling up inside and going to sleep.

Make your-self some cellar tags

Inevitably, the night before Thanksgiving is a time for Bestman and I to get together, way over imbibe, and catch up on all the things going on in our lives. This ritual is born from the years when we were at college and various other places, in reality we grew up around the corner from each other and he currently resides on the upper west so, except for those years, it has been a while since so much time passed that an entire dedicated evening of drinking was merited. This year, however there is a lot going on and it seemed right to meet at the traditional watering hole, and get started on way overdoing it.

When we were finally kicked out of the bar at two am in the greatest of New Jersey traditions, we made our way back to the homes of our parents (still right around the corner) and still having more to argue, Bestman suggested we head over to his folk’s place and raid a bottle from his dad’s cellar.

Bestman’s dad Up has been collecting wine for quite a while and has an awesome collection that involves many pitfalls for a very drunk cork-dork headed in with the direction to pick the best wine in there. There was no way I would have picked the best bottle. First, it would not be fair to drink it without its proper owner. Second, the collection is almost entirely Bordeaux and Bordeaux blends and there was no way we were going to pay proper attention to decanting and glasses standing in the 55˚ cellar till all hours of the morning. Third, and probably most significant, Up has amassed quite a collection of very good wines from the 2nd and 3rd vineyards in less good vintages that never really cost more than roughly $35 at the time of release, so it is hard to know without a quick reference of vintage by area if you are grabbing a good bottle or maybe a treasure he plucked before the pundits figured it to actually be good, thereby presenting a more significant value then expected.

Here is where a genius steps in and, to be honest, a lesson is to be learned by all of us aspiring to wine education. CP, Bestman’s oldest brother, lives very far away and gets out for visits about once a year. He loves wine like you and me and had found himself frustrated by the fact that, when he would visit and go into the cellar, he would often find wines on the decline of their optimum drinking period slope. So on his last visit he spent about six hours with the guides and marked up the cellar with drinking notes. Some simply citing the best years to drink the wines. Some with photocopied notes from Parker. Some as simple as “this is special.”

When yours truly stormed through the cellar doors I was faced with some very helpful scrawling. I found about four bottles with notes that said “drink by ’04” and from them found the one with multiples in it and then just leaped.  We went with an ’88 Rausan-Ségla. I would love to tell you it truly got all the appreciation it deserved. I will say that it was very well balanced with great notes of kirsch. To the vodka-soaked palate I was putting it up against it tasted like it was bordering on over-the-top extraction without real acid or tannin to balance, but the whole time my real thoughts were, “I’m pretty sure I would like to taste this again with a clearer head.” Thanks to CP’s notes we will be able to.

There is nothing better than drinking good wine with great friends and family, whether it is at dinner, in a formal tasting, or after way too much. Lets face it, if you keep wine around the house and get a couple of drinks in you; it is likely someone will be grabbing bottles out of the cellar. Hell, you may even be silly enough to say to your cohorts “go ahead, grab whatever you feel like.” Spending a little time on labeling may save them some embarrassment and you the bottle you assumed they would know you didn’t mean.

If you are sober and pulling a good one, the notes will make for interesting contemplation while you drink. The labeling process may also make you aware of some wines you forgot were in there that may be in their prime. If it is late on a bender and you and your more hedonistic friends are scavenging for “the right bottle to cap such a great evening,” it will either save your most cherished bottles or at least make everyone aware they are taking down the great one. Seems like time well spent in the process of learning wine. 

What Happened to Food TV?

I have spent the last two days home very sick with a stomach flu. I find it hard to believe that it has been so long since I spent two straight days entirely confined to the couch watching TV, but I guess it has. Eighteen odd hours of sofa living and TV watching leave me with one question. What happened to the Food Network?

I used to be able to sit home and watch a couple of hours of some very talented chefs sharing insights on how to greatly increase the quality of my culinary life. I can’t tell you how much I learned from Emeril, Mario, Ming, and Sarah Mouton in a couple of simple hours in front of the TV. Back then, it was a bummer if Bobby came on and turned the focus on cuteness rather than cuisine. Yesterday and today the shows were uniformly embarrassing, the only saving grace being Mario whipping up a cardoon dish one day and a ravioli dish the other.

All of a sudden there is some woman named Rachel Ray who, as best I can tell, is reinventing ways to make casseroles easy by adding soup to frozen vegetables. Isn’t that exactly where the whole world went wrong in the fifties? Wasn’t America’s belief in these quick, timesaving steps exactly what led us to a world where a tomato is a crunchy fruit from Florida that’s always available in the same size and shade of what can only be called off red?

Then there is some really hot woman named DeLaurentis sharing her vast insights on ways to chop garlic and add vinegar to salad dressings, and some Paula lady overcooking vegetables from some nameless supermarket and calling it home cooking.

 

My hope has been that, with Americans realizing their food has been so manipulated to fit packaging that there are hardly any nutrients left in it, and that we are getting fatter from not cooking for ourselves, Food TV would help. The Food channel was a place that pointed out there was still one butcher left in most areas and that introducing yourself and making friends with him would amazingly improve the quality of all of your dishes involving meat.

Food TV started with group of very talented chefs showing us that it was not too hard to make the wonderful dishes of the better restaurants of America at home, we just needed to learn some simple techniques and improve the produce we were getting. Mario would tell us of the wonders of guanciale and explain that pancetta or even good quality bacon could play the role. All of a sudden we were looking past the Oscar Meyer packages and noticing that some places actually had bacon in their fridges. These places were doing better business on better product, and a simple solution was rolling in. The stage was set for Whole Foods and all the others to sweep in because now at least those of us that would listen were looking for more authentic product.

Now there is some very nice-seeming, cheery woman touting the genius of canned beets. Can anything be more antithetical to moving away from the dilemma of the American diet then encouraging the use of canned beets?

Some would say, “it is a step in the right direction that people are cooking at home at all.” I have to disagree. If what you are learning is to simply combine prepackaged ingredients to mimic a chicken tetrazzini by Stouffer’s, with nothing more then a recipe that is “a snap to do in under 30 minutes,” you still have to clean, and what you are making is not uniquely better then its prepackaged counterpart.

Simple diets that show us “by slightly modifying our lives away from processed carbs and flour our quality of health will improve” fail because, in reality, we stray from their simplicity for the more simple alternative when time runs short, we are too lazy, or worst of all a “Domino’s craving” strikes (I swear I have been told these exist). For people to want to cook at home it doesn’t need to be easy it needs be good. We need to realize that life gets better when what we are cooking at home with a modicum of effort and time is exceedingly better than what we can get at the local chain restaurant, or from the freezers in the middle of the store. When we see that, for the cost of two adults and two children to sit down to an all-you-can-eat pasta and salad at the Olive Garden, you can make a better version yourself and even pay up for better ingredients at the market. Best of all, the dish won’t be a glop of glue flown in from Ohio and “authentically” reheated in your town.

What this channel used to offer was a glimpse into the method of thinking of good chefs. By watching them work and listening to their thought processes you were learning to think like the chefs rather then mimic them. When you worked in your own kitchen, what you had picked up was a technique rather then a recipe. Not only has all this been lost, they have gone backwards; they now have food talking-heads with no comprehension of process looking for an easy way out of the chore of cooking.

I can’t wait till next time I am sick, maybe by then I will watch some pundit arguing from behind some set made to look like a news show that “cooking in pans is for dilettantes,” “real Americans cook in microwaves,” and “all the fat-cat foodocrats have to put their ears to the pulse of the heartland and give the people what they want,” all while some crawl goes along the bottom about how 75 more cases of mad cow have been discovered in chickens at the Tyson packaging plant.

It happened

It happened. Today it happened. I got my reservation for el bulli. I am going to the best restaurant in the world on April 26th 2006 at 9pm.

best dish ever

Sister went to law school in Camden, New Jersey. On the day my dad and I helped her move out, we had lunch at The Fountain restaurant in the Four Seasons Hotel in Philadelphia. To this day, the single greatest plate of food I have ever been served was the crab cakes at this lunch. Although I had already had my first meal at Trotter’s and was well on my way to pursuing fine dining wherever it was to be found, at this point it hadn’t occurred to me that I could be in for such a dish, in the middle of the afternoon in Philly.

 I am sure that surprise added to the memory but, whenever I am asked for my “all-time bests,” the crab cakes at The Fountain always top the list. Up to that point, all the crab cakes I had had were a made with a cracker-mayo combo, and ended up tasting more like fried crab salad. This one was just a showcase for crab meat; it was bound with the fish mousse and served in a lobster jus. The chef sautéed the cakes in clarified butter, crisping up the edges without too much browning and the entire dish was just about the sweetness of the lump meat from blue-claw crabs.

 Before then, I had pretty much given up on crab cakes. As it often goes, once I had had such a great example of the dish I was reinvigorated and started trying it all over the world again. Sadly, I was disappointed. Only twice since that day in Philly have I found chefs that are making this style cake as opposed to the mayo-cracker one, and both times I was let down. Crofton-on-Wells, in Chicago, has a crab cake bound in a shrimp mousse but there is too much yolk and, ultimately, it ends up tasting like a crab meat omelet.  The other one was served to me at Papillon in Denver. It was very close but was over-browned and dried out from its time in the sauté pan.

 

You never know what you will find when you aren’t looking. When in Philly, try the crab cakes. Who knew?

 

Don Pepi stars

I grew up in New Jersey, taking NJ Transit to and from the city. Now that I live in the City, when I travel home I have been taking the fast ferries back and forth and, for convenience, they really can't be beat. Today, I chose to take the train again and was reminded of of one of the greatest things about the train commute. Don Pepi pizzeria, on the main rotunda floor of the Amtrak/NJ Transit section of Penn Station. It is an awesome slice. Try it.