Augieland

In response to Keith

I've noticed that you tend to hit different vendors in the greenmarket for different items, this one for tomatoes that one for meat etc… Besides the obvious that the guys with meat usually don't sell vegetables how do you know which farmer has the best tomatoes or mushrooms vs. the 5 or 10 others who sell similar items or which butcher to buy your steak or bacon from?

I don’t play favorites. I believe the tendency toward routine breeds apathy. Just like with restaurants, I do my best to immediately try the new guy, compare him to the existing guys, and categorize him compared to the competition. In my experience, people settle once they are established so sometimes the new guy has a welcome refreshing, enthusiastic approach, and sometimes he just gets it wrong, meaning sometimes the old standbys rest easy and sometimes they are rocked and left behind.

There are some guys with obvious specialties – Tim Stark for tomatoes, Keith Stewart for garlic, and so on. But I have a theory that since the chefs of NYC use these guys the best stuff goes to them, and we may find better by turning our back on fame. That being said, when I planned an heirloom tomato salad for the first course at my wedding I introduced a Jersey caterer to Tim so I would know I had the best (or very close to it) on the table, and no fall goes by without Keith’s garlic in our house.

So where does that leave us? We are left milling about the market touching produce; make a habit of touching produce and you will know all you need to know about who has the best what. The best indicator of freshness and ripeness for most all fruits and vegetables is water. Water will tell you all. Pick up the worst tomato at the Greenmarket and the best at Whole Foods, and for the same size the one at the market will be far heavier. Heavier because picked ripe it is juicier, and shorter travel means less time for that moisture to evaporate.

Sure, tomatoes (my whole reason for supporting a Greenmarket system in general, if there is a bigger disparity in the food world than that between the glory of farm stand/home grown tomatoes and the patheticness of every other version (be it organic or not) I have not come across it my general searching) are an easy one to pick. If the fruit is heavy, the skin is tight, the flesh is resilient when you press it with the pad of your thumb, and if the stem pulls or twists away pretty easily, you have a good candidate for purchasing. So now just walk around, see who has the best price and meets these requirements.

For other fruit I will simply say traditional farming breeds much more unique-looking specimens than the industrial monoculture people for some reason call conventional today. I find it reassuring to embrace odd-shaped fruit – the tomato that looks like it grew around a rock or the apple that looks like 1/8 of it was not exposed to the sun and as a result is shorter. When I find parts where animals have been at them I like to take a glass half full approach: cut the parts out, and be thankful that something else found my food appealing enough to eat.

For lettuces, corn, herbs and the like, look at the cut end. Is it moist? If so, it has recently been cut (soon after cutting the moisture will retract into the heart of the vegetable, and no spraying with water will fake this). Then break it. Great produce is so full of moisture even lettuce leaves will snap at the rib rather than bend. Don’t be afraid to tear a leaf from a head of lettuce and taste it, if they don’t have some out for tasting. Just do it because you want to buy, not eat.

Nothing is sillier than habits like peeling back the husk on corn. Unless you hit the exact quadrant that happens to have a worm, you won’t have learned that, so now all you’ve done is make sure there is corn inside, and since the habit for shopping means you must observe at least two ears, the farmer is left with one that has been passed on by someone who knows so little about quality that they thought they could learn something in this manner in the first place.

As far as Union Square goes, there is also the benefit of competition/knowledge of consumer to help cover your bases. Some serious chefs, as well as some people that seriously care about land stewardship, shop at that market, so if a stand isn’t good, it won’t last there. But get there early, for some reason these attentive choosers are also early risers.

So now that we know what to look for and that even if we miss the best possible offering we are pretty safe, what else can we do? Talk to the farmers, talk to each egg person, I once bought a dozen eggs because a little girl helping her parents told me the names of the chickens that laid them. I am sure it was just fun and tales being told, but I like to encourage closeness, with my farmers and by a strange urban extension my food.

I can’t stress price enough. Being at a farmers market is not a license to steal. Food should be fairly priced, and when asked any small farmer will give you a story that in the long run has him about ten thousand dollars a year in the red once he pays his organic dues. Look around the market, see what people are charging for ramps, and buy from the guy with cheaper ones. But know Organic certification does cost more, and promises more at this point.

Which of the neighborhood wine shops do you recommend? I like astor for the huge selection and great prices for everyday bottles but cant pass up stopping in Union Square Wines for those new tasting machines on my way home from work.

Wine is fun; I often wander into wine stores, ask a guy to recommend some juice, get him to tell me all he can about it, take it home and drink it. It is great if I love it. If I don’t, I must consider if it is what he said it would be, and if it is I am still positive on the shop and will just steer things better to my preference next time I’m in. In this way, I find I get the most exposure to what’s going on in the wine world.

Once I have taken someone’s suggestion and decided if they are operating at a good level of information (the web and Oxford Guide to Wine are good tools), taste, and unique approach (a test both Astor and USQ pass), I look at price. In today’s age this is as easy as putting the name and vintage into winezap.com or winesearcher.com and seeing how they stack up (Union Square only beats Sokolin and Park Ave in this game, their prices are pretty lousy, cool kegerator or not).

I am quickly becoming a fan of Bottlerocket, west of Fifth Avenue on 19th Street. They have a unique approach, an intimate feel, a good selection, they seem to see the value in developing regulars, and are always in the fair range when I double-check them on price, plus who doesn’t love a wine shop with a bottle of Ripple at the register?

So I guess in most choices I am happy to pay up for quality, authenticity and uniqueness, but only to a fair price, and the way to know where this is to be found is to spend your afternoons meeting purveyors and sampling their wares. Often when I do it leaves me with a very good feeling of appreciation for my neighborhood, and that is always nice.

I hope you find this helpful, never forget Lucy’s Greenmarket Report, an effort all of us in the vicinity of The USQ Green Market should be grateful for.

InTent: 542 ambrosillian stars

A couple of weeks ago Wife informed me that we were invited to the opening party for InTent restaurant by a friend of hers that works for their PR firm. I had been looking forward to eating there and reporting my feelings on it for a while, but that visit did not exactly fit the bill. Those parties are fun but they are distractingly social, and although you have the chance to sample food there is too much going on to assess it properly or fairly. At the end of the party I left very well entertained, appreciative, and interested in returning but had learned little more than a couple of things about the place:

1. The little bits of food I had were quite good. I particularly liked a monkfish mousse.
2. Devoid of tables and chairs, the space is very much about varying types of stonework. It feels somewhere between a modern Greek American trying to recapture the marble glories of ancient Athens, or the dream spec house of a contractor that believes the current market is pro rock.
3. The leather (or close facsimile) banquettes lining the walls of the main room are likely the most comfortable seating I have ever encountered in a restaurant.
4. Francois Payard is the owner, Craig Freeman is the chef de cuisine, and Eric Estrella is the pastry chef.

All good notions, but not enough to go on to suggest or discourage friends from trying the place out. For that, I would obviously have to go back, sit down, have full servings of the food and contemplate. Having been invited to the party by a friend, I hoped to end up on a positive slant so as not to have to apologize for my opinions. Then I had the crab…

Wife and I wandered in around eight on Sunday night without a reservation, which meant we would need to sit in the front room as every seat in the back was taken. So we traded those buttery couches for café chairs, and the river stone waterfall for the backlit red marble wine wall, as well as the removable copper-colored Bedouin tent for glass doors open to the summer evening. Since the menu is the same in both rooms, a pretty easy switch except for the chairs. (The seating in back really is that comfortable).

WARM CURRIED CRAB NAPOLEAN CRISPY POTATOES Man is this dish good. The fine fingers of crab flesh perfectly married to the flavor of clarified butter, studded with diced celery and apple and stacked on long, thin crisped potato slices, surrounded by a yellow emulsion tasting lightly of saffron and curry. However it was intended to be eaten, I went with spreading the crabmeat onto the potato chips and eating it with my hands as if it was some crab dip at a bar near the shore. The lavishness of the warm crab salad on the perfectly thin, perfectly crispy, perfectly salted, just thick enough to support the weight of the crab when covered with an equal portion of the meat, potato chip was delightful. The redolence of the sum of these parts was profound. The question of would I recommend this place to a friend was answered as I finished this dish and snuck a text to Bubby that read “if you haven’t eaten dinner yet run to InTent and get the crab appetizer.”

For her appetizer, Wife had ISRAELI COUSCOUS SALAD TOMATO, CUCUMBER, ONION PARSLEY OIL and liked it very much, I was to wrapped up in the crab to bothered to try it.

As an Entrée I had TANGINE STYLE EGGPLANT RAISINS, PINENUTS AND PRESERVED LEMON COUSCOUS. I like dishes that combine the richness of toasted nuts with the tangy sweetness of raisins, especially when these flavors are ameliorated by the dividing texture of the small beads of couscous. The eggplant flesh favored the meaty end of the texture spectrum, while the other components of a ratatouille combined with the disparate flavors and textures of the raisins, nuts and lemon, offering sharp peaks and broad valleys in a harmony of Moroccan fragrance that encompassed the whole dish.

As her entrée Wife had SAUTÉED FILET OF DAURADE WRAPPED IN BRIC DOUGH CRUSHED POTATOES, SPICY MEDITERRANEAN VEGETABLES AND TOMATO OIL and declared it the best piece of fish she has had this year, particularly for the textural interplay between the crisp dryness of the dough and the moist softness of the fish and pulpy potatoes. I would have to agree based on the two bites she let me steal before finishing it.

For dessert we split SUMMER FRUIT SALAD WHITE BALSAMIC VINAIGRETTE, SEA SALT AND WATERMELON GRANITE, little flakes of watermelon ice that perfectly fit into molars for crunching set in a nest spun of black cherries, apricots, figs, and strawberries. Even I, who care very little for dessert, was going to try one at a Payard restaurant, and was happy to find one as refreshing as this, allowing nature’s sugars to display without attempts to overdo it.

So I went in afraid I would not like the restaurant and was served one of the most pleasing dishes I have had in a long time, with the added benefit of Wife being delighted by one of her dishes. If there was a downside, it was the length of time between Appetizers and Entrées, but apologies were made early and the food showed before it was too late. Net-net I would consider that a positive enough experience on a restaurant’s third open night to plan a return trip, which I have done.

Cerdo Ibérico in America

“I’m invited to a tasting/launch of some of the first offerings of the world’s greatest pigs served in America, appearing only now for the first time because of years of stupid policy by the FDA? Count me in!” is what I said. To be fair, it was presented as, “Through cooperation with the USDA, one of the oldest and most respected purveyors of Cerdo Ibérico (those famous black footed Iberian pigs) will be bringing the beautiful products of Embutidos Fermin to America in association with José Andres. Come sample the first release of their charcuterie.”

So here’s what all that means. For some reason recently in American history our government saw fit to protect us from eating products made from these pigs just as they did with the pork of Parma, Italy, because thousands of years of people eating them without incident still wasn’t a good enough guarantee for us plus the fact that their diet leaves them second to only to olive oil for oleic acid. We far prefer it when our meat is so sloppily butchered it needs to be sprayed with a boiling bleach solution and then irradiated to remove any doubt that all the things our industrial processing screwed up in its haste,have been removed with the flavor and the beneficial oils (long ago thrown out on the factory farms). No way could we trust artisanal producers making food that cultures have thrived on for years. Better to destroy individuality and taste… but there I go again, ranting about the least common denominator approach to safety our government supports when my intention here is to bring good news.

So take 2….Action….So here’s what all that means. After years of work and some foreign companies jumping through our bureaucratic hoops, some people (José Andrés, and the Martin Family of Embutidos Fermin, in this case) have gained the right to bring products made of the black footed pigs of Spain (considered by many, yours truly included, to make the best charcuterie in the world) to us.

At the event we tasted three types:

Lomo: made from the loin, this is kind of the show-off piece for people that cure pig meat. Inherently the loin is a very lean cut, and since fat is what covers up the mistakes in cured meats a great luomo is sweet and soft, while a bad one is jerky. The flesh of these loins is so red it seems paprika must have been involved at some point along the way even though it probably wasn’t.

Chorizo: the famous paprika sausage of Spain (this one needs no cooking, not to be confused with Mexican Chorizo, which is raw) it is wider in gauge and therefore more moist than the chorizos I have had before in America, pointing out the way the fat studding it translates the piquantness of the cure.

Salichon:  a pretty straightforward sausage. Moist and meaty, about half fat and half meat with detectable salt, pepper, sugar, and an herbal note I couldn’t place, with a greenish, nutty finish.

These were good examples of what you make from the other parts of a pig, those excluding the legs and shoulders. As tasty as these sausages are, though, they are not the hams of the pata negra (the black footed pigs). Clearly the work of an artisan and representational of a skill rather than a place, sausages are not what America has been missing, it is the hams. For the months leading up to slaughter, these Spanish pigs feast on acorns fallen from trees and double in weight, and the hams made from their legs are probably one of the most beautiful representations of a place and the flavor of savory there is. They also take a long time to cure, averaging around two and a half years.

In addition to the diet of acorns, another contributing factor to their flavor is the fact that the Iberian hams are cured on the bone with the foot attached. This affects the taste in two ways. First, by not cutting the ligaments at the ankle the meat stays taught and thinner during the cure, affecting the amount of water evaporating. Second, the meat cannot be cut on a machine which is of the most importance – rotating blades cause friction which causes heat and heat changes the flavor profile of the product, so perfection in any cured ham is thin, hand-cut slices from the leg. [Note: some day I’ll discuss Berkel slicers.]

Since the ok to import the Iberian products happened recently, these faster-curing sausages are here now. But for the be all end all in cured pork, we will still need to wait until spring/summer ’07 as the hams complete their cycle.

To illustrate this, our hosts brought in the “greatest ham guy in Spain” to slice a Serrano ham, not from the Cerdo Ibérico. Quite a show: a tawny gentleman with white hair set about using a fantastic collection of specialized knives (including one of the longest, thinnest, most flexible, slicing knives I have ever seen) to remove the protective fat and then began producing slices of cranberry red flesh so good I went back about four times, and this wasn’t even the ham made from the black footed pigs.

Besides these samples and the promise to regroup when the actual pata negra hams are ready, there were a collection of Spanish cheeses, Marcona almonds, tiny green olives, a very refreshing cocktail made of sherry, lemonade, and a float of Sprite, and a collection of local chefs, mostly those interested in new Spanish cuisine (like Wylie Dufresne and Wesley Genovart) and authentic product (like Zach Allen and Peter Hoffman).

The journey of a thousand miles starts with the single step. Getting these sausages indicates the promise of the hams, and the hams would seem to say to an optimist that there is hope that our food choices will not always be dictated by bureaucrats with poli- sci degrees and judges with law degrees, but rather by consumers with desires to have the best available product and producers with instincts to earn the money those people will pay. Maybe soon I’ll have raw milk from grass-fed cows at the Greenmarket. Till then, I’ll dream and appreciate being invited to cocktail parties as fun as this.

Knife + Fork brunch: 862 substantiazillian stars

Sunday Brunch is the closest thing my diverse group of friends and I have to religion. No matter how each person was raised and what we believe and practice now regarding personal faith, I think it would be safe to say that a theological scholar quietly observing our group from afar would guess us as an urban version of a Dionysian sect left over from ancient Greek times.

It being hard in this fine city to find hidden forest enclaves for frolicking and reveling in the joys of food, wine, and the unruliness of nature, we are constantly on the lookout for breezy wooded nooks in the form of a restaurant to leisurely languish over plates heaped with good food and to revel in the glories of our unruly town.

Knife + Fork makes brunch, a very good brunch, in an almost religious room. The entrance to the restaurant is an open door that comprises about half the front of the place creating a cozy, light, and airy atmosphere with tables more hewn from timber than crafted in factory and banquettes that would be pews if it weren’t for the cushions and pillows. A room that feels ethereal and frivolous on a temperate Sunday summer afternoon and that I imagine will fold its arms of lumber around you like a tavern from a Tolkien novel on a cold winter night.

Through an oddly shaped hole in the stucco wall, like a mushroom inclined to lean toward the sun, that faces the open door/windows is a small kitchen, and there stands Damien Brassel, an Irish born chef who spent time honing his skills with some diverse greats of the culinary world, from creative dudes like Blumenthal to classic guys like Gagnaire. At his stove you can see a future for this room where a chef cooks his whims, and diners gather and eat. This room is not going to be a fast-paced in and out NYC restaurant, but a place to linger over tasting menus (reported to me by trustworthy people as creative, affordable and of serious execution – I’ll let you know the minute I get there for dinner).

I cannot speak to what the cuisine of Knife + Fork is at dinner, but at Sunday Brunch it is exactly what I want. Inspiration and creativity applied to traditionally hearty Irish Breakfast fare rife with the aroma of truffles (the first thing that hits you walking in).

It all started with a drink. Bloody Mary with sake, pink peppercorns, and tomato juice, topped with wasabi foam. Ok, I am a classicist when it comes to cocktails and think interpretations of classics should be rebranded, so giving it a twelve word name almost fits the bill. Better would have been to name it something like The Phlebotomary or something. Names aside, it is a good drink. Knife + Fork has the wine and beer version of a liquor license so there is no vodka to thin the platelets of the standard bloody. In its place is sake bringing a sweeter thinness to tomato juice with a smooth puréed texture, the sweet piquantness of pink peppercorns pairing better with the sake than black would. For the rest, all the standard flavors are there. Celery is represented by celery seed, there is a slight lemony note, a smoky flavor of Worcestershire, the definite hint of aged pepper sauce, horseradish, and the wasabi foam. Well, what could be wrong with that? Like the six unique and separate strings of a guitar agreeing to get along to make a song.  A drink as easy to credit to a chef’s understanding of flavor as a cunning solution to giving brunchers what they expect in the face of a restrictive code. Whichever the inspiration, both point to admirable traits in a chef.

With too many desirable choices, we ordered a couple of extra to split. I had my fair share of three:
(sorry no pictures, in what Wife, Bear, and Soho suspect to be an on-purpose accident to get myself back sooner, the gorgeous sunlit pictures I took were lost in a trash removal computer incident)

Works burger with pineapple, fried egg, bacon and tomato served with polenta fries: A patty of beef with such a smooth bite I would compare it to good meatballs rather than most burgers. The definite areas of black scorching suggested that something with a sugar content beyond that of chuck was mixed in, as well as that the burger was seared on a very hot, flat thing. Topped with a fresh sunny side up egg, three strips of smoked bacon, and the kind of wild arugula I call rocket in order to differentiate it from the soulless baby arugula so popular today, a paste made of tomato (that appeared on each dish) was on the side of the plate which I spread on the roll à la ketchup, and I would love to tell you how the pineapple played from the side but Wife ate it all. Besides the pineapple, on the side were polenta fries. Warm, soft, sweet and rich, they proved the perfect medium for the tomato sauce.

Croque Madame with black forest ham, sun-dried tomato, fried egg white truffle oil and Jarlsberg cheese: Eggs, toast, ham, cheese, truffle oil and Dijon mustard stacked like a napoleon and broiled. The bare corners corners blackened just enough to add a contrast to the richness of the ham and cheese, while the cheese and egg yolk translated the truffle aroma, and the mustard kept it from going too deep into the unctuous area. Again, in that Irish tradition of tomatoes with breaky the tomato paste appeared on the corner of the plate as a ready contrast to all the profiles of the meal, should it be needed.

Knife + Fork black pudding, truffle scrambled egg, crispy bacon and breakfast sausage: This is the hearty meal a person that laughs at continental breakfast wants. Salty breakfast links fire grilled, black puddings cut on the bias and fried exuding their sanguine richness, Limerick bacon limber in the center and pitch black on the ends, a pile of earthy roasted mushrooms, the thick tomato purée again (this time offering its zing to cut the richness), all around a puddle of truffle-scrambled eggs so perfectly cooked I would assume they were made in a double boiler. (I’ve made eggs this soft and creamy at home, but I have never had them out. The time to table usually robs them of the couple minutes they are truly great). In the center of this sea of food that tended toward hearty, stick-to-your-ribs type of fare, was this perfectly delicate execution of a preparation I have trouble getting right when it is the only thing I am doing.   

All that being said, this plate is where the business plan of Knife + Fork shone through. A small room with its chef in its center for all intents and purposes, the chef saw four people eating about six breakfasts, drinking our way through all the bloody fixings he had, and decided to send along with it a piece of grilled foie gras to round out the Irish breakfast plate as well as some white asparagus spears. Later, my conversation of thanks with Damien bore out that he plans to change his menu every week, a plan I endorse because even the best chefs’ food gets boring when they get bored by it, a fact often exacerbated by the usual simplicity of the earlier meals of the day.

Truth is, before the foie and the news of ever-changing options we probably would have been back soon anyway, but that kind of sealed it up.  An intimate place making great food that appreciates the type of diners that revel in food is perfect for us.

Cher & Calderone

One of the joys of keeping a food blog is the people I see in my everyday life and their reactions to it. Some love it, some appreciate it, some get it, some don’t, and some have never thought enough about food to understand it as a concept. Some people check in regularly and some periodically ask to be reminded of the address, and some of the people closest to me say things like “you have a blog? What’s a blog?” about four times a year when they hear someone else discussing it.

Calderone is one of the people I see on an everyday basis who fits nicely in the middle of the group. He knows about augieland, he has appeared in it, (he has paid for one of the meals reported on), and when we talk food he seems to respect me as someone with an opinion; not much more, but not less. Kind of how I wish all people would view my opinions and me. They are informed, thought through, genuine, honest, and above all just the thoughts of a guy who places a great priority on the joys of food and wine in his life.

Yesterday Calderone married Cher and Wife and I were delighted to be in attendance. It was a beautiful affair, the kind of thing everyone should get to do once a summer; gather with friends, acquaintances, and friends of acquaintances, under a tent on a beautiful summer’s eve, with music suited to dancing, and an open bar.  Here is the porn of their meal:

Degustation: still 392 progeniturillian stars

Good restaurants deserve and need good customers. The prime trait that separates good customers from bad, regulars from tourists is the frequency of their visits. I don’t have a strict rule for calculating this (it would have to include proximity as well as price), but in New York where it is possible to eat out every night and never repeat, it is important to support places you feel are of merit, especially when they are new. Doing so gives them a more promising future and makes you a valued guest.

Degustation and Wesley Genovart have been getting good enough press (two stars from the Times among others) that it would be safe to call their future bright enough that they don’t need us. So when Wife and I popped in last night there were really only a couple of motivations: we hadn’t been in a couple months and wanted to eat Wesley’s food, it was a new season and the menu had probably changed, and last time the young toque had made us feel so welcome we wanted to visit again.

The food is still creative -- small plates, combining modern technique and established flavor profiles to generate stimulating constructs whose potentials are realizable in a few simple bites. The setting is still an intimate little bar with the chef and his team never more than about fifteen feet away. The prices are still fair. The glass wine is still largely Spanish and pretty cheap. And the menu seems to be evolving. Here is the porn and some observations:

CROQUETAS light and crispy on the outside and soft on the inside, filled with Serrano ham, green olive purée, and whipped potato, and resting on red pepper aioli. So pleasing at a base level that we almost got more at the end of dinner, and again at the end of dessert.

SPANISH TORTILLA, QUAIL EGG AND SHALLOT CONFIT If you like tortillas in Spain you should try this interpretation. Then again, if you just like breakfast in America you should try this. It’s all there, all the flavors of the simple two egg and hash brown breakfast delivered in an easy to eat envelope. Here, Wesley roasts a thin slice of a waxy potato, builds a little nest of the poached shallots, cracks a quail egg into it, folds the potato around all, scores it on la plancha and then does a quick round of immersion frying. After the three short rounds of cooking, it is topped with a thin slice of jalapeño and a teepee of Maldon sea salt. I know all this because I asked (boy do I love having the chef trapped in front of me) to see if there was any cheese inside (there wasn’t but the richness of it was). The onion confit and the soft cooked egg pocketed in the potato, highlighted by the salt and the capsicum greenness of the pepper, combined to taste like all the flavors of breakfast. Larger and this dish is just a plate of eggs, here it is an elegant study in a comfort meal.

SLOWLY POACHED EGG WITH JAMÓN, SMOKED CHEESE AND RICE CRACKER CRUSTED ASPARAGUS If you know people who disparage foam, take them to Degustation and for seven measly dollars show them how any other way of adding the lactic smoky notes of this cheese would goo up the light and perfectly analogous consistency of the preparation of this egg. Then, for fun, point out the discernable types of crunch between crisped rice and the blanched asparagus you can only realize because the foam is so much lighter than any other creamy (hollandaise) sauce that could be paired.

KAMPACHI WITH CHAMPAGNE MANGO, CHERRY TOMATOES AND THAI CHILE The richness of the fish drawn out by the tangy, caramelized sugars of roasted tomato with touches of heat in the tiniest slices of Thai chilies and the sweetness of the mango sauce. The fish was honestly already exceptional in its preparation (not sure but it had the thin white/tight halo of searing, roasting, or poaching, without surface discoloration) with just the chopped chive and salt dressing it.

ROAST BEEF SANDWICH WITH FOIE GRAS MAYO AND HERB SALAD
Again, the herb salad steals what should be an unstealable show. Flawlessly medium-rare roasted beef shaved thin on a toast round, topped with a mélange of herbs and served with a smear of foie mayo.

CRISPY PORK BELLY WITH GRILLED SCALLIONS, SHIMEJI MUSHROOMS, AND PICKLED JALAPEÑOS IN A SHERRY GASTRIQUE When I read that again I realized I was way overdoing it with my descriptions. Read that dish. How awesome and simple is it in its likeliness to please? I think the story here is that simple things, well handled, and elevated by creative execution are inspirational, end of rant.

GRILLED STRAWBERRIES, GINGER GRANITA AND BASIL MINT

TARTE TATIN WITH GREEK YOGURT

Gotham: 523 sangfroidillian stars

Asam has recently arrived from London, and Bear’s divine inspiration for a truly authentic New York place to take him, before the standard Luger’s, Katz’s and so on was Gotham. Makes sense. Gotham was instrumental at shaping and definitely excels at that part of American cuisine most clearly born of the New York of our life times – her products, her history, her use of an open loft-like interior, and her love of towering structures.

Walking down Fifth and talking about Strip House, Cru, Babbo, Blue Hill, and the many other fabulous eateries within six blocks of Gotham’s front door, we got to discuss how groundbreaking it was for a good restaurant to even open in the neighborhood back when Gotham did, let alone fight it out to become a well-established destination standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the old guard, and at this point to have lasted long enough to become a benchmark for others.

So there we sat in a room typically full and bustling, at a table for four, me, Asam, Bear, and Pebbles, the two of us who had dined here before explaining that there was no bad choice to be made, and to pick freely. For wine we had an ’03 Martinelli Three Sisters Chardonnay and a ’97 Turley Zinfandel, as well as a glass each of a pink champers that was sent to welcome us. At a place as decidedly American as Gotham even I, the devout Old World cork-dork, bend to the big wines of California, “what grows… goes.”

Our Meal started with an amuse of sorts, the nicest amuse I have ever been given: a butter-poached lobster claw with tomato broth and local tomato. In a shallow pool of tomato water sat a touch of olive oil, some finely chopped chives, basil tops, half a yellow cherry tomato, and the claw of an Atlantic lobster. If there is an ingredient in the world you want your chef to have confidence in it is a good tomato. The best tomatoes are perfect with nothing more than a sprinkling of sea salt and a little olive oil. The amount of ingredients a chef adds to a tomato dish speaks to his faith in his product. At this time of year, smaller tomatoes are coming in. The slight addition of herbs here served only to point out the beautifully sweet acids of the tomato water, which in turn showed off the sweetness of the lobster, highlighting clarity in its aplomb.

From the Appetizer section of the menu I opted for the seafood salad. On top of a lobster claw wrapped in thin slices of avocado were ribbons of calamari and shrimp, with tobiko, lettuces, herbs, and peppers. A salad so simple that the tobiko got to show off a little, popping and adding its dimension much like a well placed poppy-seed will on the roll of a roast beef sandwich.

I support becoming a regular at any restaurant you like; it is a nicer way of life, being familiar with the people who put their time into making the things you love. When ordering came around, it was strongly suggested by one of the staff I consider a friend we go with pasta, and of course we ignored such advice for the first and probably last time. As if to say “look schnook, we know what you want far better than you do,” we were sent a small between-course of goat cheese tortellini in truffle brodo, with morels and corn. They were right, and we were wrong, which is almost inevitable; the pasta was not to be missed. A toothsome noodle contained a creamy yet still tangy goat cheese floating in the truffleiest substance I have ever tasted in summer. The thinness of the stock kept the dish from rooting too far in the earth and light enough for the season, and its point was driven home by the sweet snap of fresh corn kernels popping in your mouth.

For my entrée, I chose the soft shell crabs. I love fried soft shell crabs, in spite of the fact that most of the preparations I have had tend toward the greasy. At Gotham, the crabs are dredged in what must be a slurry of some kind of incredibly light starch. A thin and resistant shell is formed, with raised nubs that seem like they could be puffed rice as much as anything else. It is a treatment that somehow shirks the greasiness almost expected in soft shells these days and is so light, in fact, that even its dressing of spring onion, capers, and brown butter in no way acts as ballast. This dish is rounded out in a nouvelle manner in as much as the ingredients are all those of a New England crab boil, although each has its own unique preparation. Sections of corn off the cob, almost raw in their crispness; blanched sections of waxy potato; roasted vinegary bell peppers, and on and on. There were so many components and layers to the flavors of onion, herbs, and roasted tomatoes that each bite was entirely different from the one before, while always being about the crab.

Talk to any New Yorker and they will tell you about how they lived in such and such neighborhood long before it was gentrified. They will tell you that even though there are taller towers out there, ours are by far the best; that although California may grow more produce, ours is more flavorful; and, no matter what trend you are addressing, they will let you know that even if it didn’t start here it wasn’t real till we got hold of it. I can’t say what Gotham was like 25 years ago. All I know for sure is that it was popular enough to get people to brave the trip below 14th street for dinner when that was something that just wasn’t done. At this point, it is the consummate New York restaurant. It blazed a path to become a place rooted in its neighborhood and goes out of its way to make locals feel appreciated, while all the while exuding an easy confidence and seeming almost unaware of those that emulate it; a place with a long history of doing just what it does and doing it well.

Strip House Redux

I pretty much feel I said all I have to say in my last report on The Strip House, but due to camera issues at the time I swore I would re-shoot the dishes in all their non-camera-phone glory. This time I went with six guests, all of whom agreed at the end of the meal that this is by far the best steak they have had on the island of Manhattan, and these are the kind of people that do much business over charred bovine flesh.

I strayed from my standard food order this time as far as soup goes. Rather than my typical Lobster Bisque, I tried the Crabmeat Gazpacho. The soup itself had been pureed and passed through a chinois so it was beautifully and uniformly smooth. The flavors favored red pepper and sherry vinegar a little much for me. I expect light acidic sweet tomato flavors to dominate gazpacho and felt the acerbic sugars in pimento worked to mask whatever sweet or iodine flavors the crab might have brought to the dish.

I also diverged from my standard wine path when I discovered a “last bottle” sales page in the back of the wine list that had a ’00 Ridge Montebello on it at what seemed a fair price. If you go and it is still there, pay up a little for it. It is amazing with the chop.

As far as the rest of my order, the Bone-in Rib Chop cooked medium-rare was perfect as always and the Truffled Creamed Spinach was as spoon-sticking, mouth-stainingly rich as ever. Here is the better porn: