Augieland

The Red Wine Haiku Review

Things have gotten a little crazy in Augieland and there haven’t been many fantastic things to report on in the food world so I have been concentrating on other areas of life. However I recently received the email below from Lane at Red Wine Haiku asking for support which I think he deserves so I am posting it.

If you don’t know his awesome brand of wine appreciation the link to his site is and always has been over there on the left of this page, so click on it and judge for yourself. Otherwise when life straightens out, or someone finally does something so fantastic in food I can’t wait to report it, I am ducking my head back down. (Chefs, consider that a challenge. We need something inspirational.)

A

Hey all-

Happy New Year!

The biggest wine blog of all, Fermentation, is running a competition for the best wine blogs in six categories. The voting just started and I see that under 'Best Wine Review Blog' I already have some early support. If I win, perhaps I'll get invited to a few swanky tastings (my primary goal in this endeavor) and convince someone to put out the book. The Red Wine Haiku Review was the only blog mentioned in Wine & Spirit's year end review, and the elite on the message boards were sniffing that they would have been better served giving notice to a 'real' wine writer...

So they'll be gunning for me. I need your help. The link below takes you to the 'Best Wine Review Blog' page. In the box at the bottom of the page, you can nominate "The Red Wine Haiku Review" by simply typing the name of the blog in the 'comment' box and click send. You can mention another blog as well (below mine, of course!), and throw a praiseworthy comment to distinguish it from other posts. Thanks a lot!

http://fermentation.typepad.com/fermentation/2007/01/award_nominatio_2.html

Best,

Lane

StarChefs: New York Rising Stars Revue

At last year’s StarChefs New York Rising Stars Revue the food was great, the chefs were available, and the operations were charmingly mismanaged. Standing in a small second-story space in the twenties I perceived it as cute when those of us that paid extra money to get in early were delayed a quarter of our hour preview time while they chilled champagne and got caviar ready. We happily drank wine from coffee cups after the glasses ran out early in the evening, and all in all there was camaraderie in the small group that had assembled joining together with our hosts in the interest of celebrating the talents of the next generation of chefs in New York rather than focus on the trivial.

Apparently the last event and the ensuing year brought about some success over at StarChefs. This year those that paid more money for the early hour preview were only delayed a little over ten minutes, however this time it was outside a night club in a people corral by bouncers dressed in black, the programs for the event had color photography, and the plentiful wineglasses were etched with the event’s theme.

So as we walked in we took a step away from awkward charm and toward the dream event of a contestant on My Super Sweet Sixteen. The good news is no matter how stale the air and awkward the lighting in the room, our rising star chefs are indeed potential stars for all the right reasons and they were still very available:

Upon entering, we (Wife, Misspooz, Ringwald, Soho, Fluffy, Pichon, Helmet, Bear, Dongato, and I) met Josh Dechellis of Sumile, a face from last year’s rising stars event where his poached hamachi with pickled melon and nori salt was a definite highpoint. As host to the VIP reception, Chef Dechellis welcomed us and explained that this year they were going with a push-cart theme. From his cart, Josh was scooping a mélange based around a diced conch into lettuce leaves to produce his JAPANESE CHILI CONCH WRAPS. A bit awkward in the passing and the eating, the flavor was definitely the kind of thing Josh does well. Slight sweetness mellowed a definite chili bite centered on diced conch with a pleasing chew, wrapped in the lightening effects of a lettuce leaf.

Also in this room was a cart serving caviar on a green apple/olive oil puree, that was quite nice as an amuse for the upcoming fare.

We found our way to the main room with the savory fare by a rather circuitous route which involved walking down one flight of stairs and up another and landing squarely in the back of a huge room right next to Zak Pelaccio of 5 ninth and Fatty Crab surrounded by the most wonderful wood smoke smell and group of assistants including a face familiar from the pits at the Brooklyn Brewery Pig Fest. Chef Pelaccio’s offering was FATTY BRISKET WITH PICKLED TOMATOES. A piece of brisket about one inch cubed with the red halo of dry rub smoking on a skewer was plunged in sweet cilantro sauce, dusted with brisket floss, and topped with a pickled cherry tomato. Zak explained that brisket floss was made by immersion frying the shredded leaner end of the cut. The result was crunchy little bits highlighting the tenderness of the deep smoked meat, which was accented as well as tempered by the lightly sweet and sour sauce.

Finding the next cart not yet ready for service, and knowing how quickly the ½ hour lead we had on the larger crowd would dissipate we next made a beeline up a rather grand staircase to try Gregory Brainin of Jean Georges Restaurants’ YELLOWFIN TUNA SASHIMI AND WASABI ICES. The mixture of wasabi sorbet, flakes of Maldon, olive oil, and balsamic that was left once the tuna was out of the way was the highlight of this offering. Hot in the form of spicy, cooled both by the fact that it was ice and the sweet touch of the vinegar, sharpness rounded by oil and highlighted by salt made for a very invigorating dish that made the tuna seem almost superfluous.

On the next level up on the catwalk that surrounded the large room was Iacopo Falai of Falai performing the one man show of handing out HUDSON VALLEY FOIEGRAS CANNOLI, CANDIED TAGGIASCHE OLIVES, AND SALTY SPICY VALRHONA XOCOPILI CHOCOLATE SAUCE. The flavor of the olives in the salty dark chocolate was both intense and interesting and made an exceptional foil for the richness of the foie mousse, which had been piped into baked phylo tubes and frozen. Chef Falai had packaged some of these to take home in those little jewel boxes delivery guys use for high end pot. In this apparatus the foie had time to warm, making it a much better representation than the version he hand-dipped to order which, straight from the freezer, was too cold to let the foie’s subtler flavors to shine.

Next along the catwalk was Galen Zamarra of Mas (Farmhouse) serving PORKBELLY SANDWICH, RED EYE GRAVY AND ONION MARMALADE. A sumptuous amalgam of deep simply pleasing flavors, this was a perfect little sandwich on a mini grilled bun. I assume due to fear of seeming base none of those I attended with would agree with me that this was either the first or second favorite dish of the evening, however it was the only one that each person had had twice, while some of us consumed three or four.

Almost as if a metaphor for his unassuming restaurant, around the corner and tucked out of the way in the dimly lit catwalk was Alex Ureña of Ureña, serving SALT CURED TUNA WITH CAVIAR. Much like for those who venture down the less traveled block of 28th street to try Chef Ureña’s food, those who probed the narrow, far end of the catwalk found waiting for them a delicious morsel straddling lines between traditional and modern, unlike anyone else’s in attendance. A cube of scarlet tuna made both denser and more true by the cure was topped with a dot of chorizo aioli which held in place a small bit of caviar. The caviar drew the attention to its own saltiness, leaving the fish to be about its chew and its sanguine beef-by-way-of-the-sea flavor.

A cloud of white smoke drew our attention and quickly our crowd down to Mark Andelbradt of Morimoto cart where through the haze we saw Chef Andelbradt and his assistants searing SKEWERED WAYGU BEEF, TOKYO SCALLION, MATSUTAKE MUSHROOM, AND SPICY MISO. Resting in the valleys of the waves created by running the beef along the skewer were the scallion and mushrooms. A bright orange sweet and spicy sauce was slathered over once it was off the intense heat. Eaten off the bamboo skewer while still incredibly hot, the entire package was about three bold flavors and unique textures uniting by playing off the sauce’s varying flavors – sweetness against the bite of the scallion, spiciness off the richness of the beef, and acids off the mushrooms’ earthiness.

Just a couple feet away and a couple steps up was Okuwa Makoto, also of Morimoto, doing what he does best and few do as well: sushi in the form of a roll. His SHIKAMAKI WRAPPED WITH PROSCIUTTO DI PARMA was gorgeous. In general, sushi may have been ill fit to an evening where the next most subtle cuisine was fusiony French, but Makoto rose to this challenge making a dish as beautiful and intricate in its assembly as in its harmony of subtle flavors. Sweet egg omelet, bluefin tuna, nori, and Japanese cucumber spreading out in kaleidoscopic color and pattern, bound in a thin sheet of prosciutto, dusted with panko and fried: an original and marvelous “chef’s concept” roll.

Across the dais was Franklin Becker of Brasserie offering HUDSON VALLEY FOIEGRAS HOT DOG, HUCKLEBERRY MUSTARD, ONION CONFIT AND A BRIOCHE BUN. To be nitpicky, the bun was too big for its contents and what you had was a very good mini hotdog-shaped brioche bun with the rest of the listed components. On my second try, I scooted the mini-wienie to the edge of the bun and ate it as well as its condiment with only about a third of the bread and it was quite good. Buttery brioche, rich, smooth, delicately spiced forcemeat, with a tart/sweet/spicy sauce and sweet cooked onions. Perfect finger food once you found a place to ditch the remains of the roll.

In the dead center of the floor Paul Liebrandt, who has recently left Gilt, was offering his FISH AND CHIPS 2006 – a small salt cod croquette made to taste more like fried cod and French fries than brandade, topped with a dot of what I believe was described as a horseradish mayo. Only having had one, I was left with the impression that this familiar thing definitely tasted more like fish & chips than any of the other croquettes I have had recently; I am still not sure whether that is impressive or not.

At the foot of the stairs was Tony Liu of August serving KING RAREBIT OVER SOLDIERS FEATURING HOOKS 10-YEAR AGED WISCONSIN CHEDDAR. August is a European restaurant, even though in most of our minds it is a Mediterranean one (there is a former Babbo sous-chef at the helm and an al forno at its center after all). As if to drive this point home, Chef Liu was making a most decidedly British dish in both name and flavor. Rarebit is basically cheddar and stout fondue (the bit that made it king was a poached quail egg) and soldiers are toast, in this case brioche. These went into a paper basket and were topped with pickled shallots and greens. This is the one I kept going back for. Sure the poached quails’ eggs were a little overdone in most cases, and putting the dishes together was a little slow, but it was melted cheese and eggs with pickled onions and the warm toasty apple finish of stout. Big, bold, pleasing flavors stealing your palate. No one could have served ten dishes like this, but just one was perfect, standing thunderously and perfectly alone while drawing attention to the skill of all the other chefs.

The final vending cart I stopped at for savories was that of Tony Esnault of Alain Ducasse at The Essex House, handing out LOLIPOP OF LAMB LOIN, APRICOT, RAISIN AND PIQUILLOS. The lamb was perfectly roasted, the lemon was only nuance, the dates and raisins were slightly savory, the piquillos were not at all hot, everything was a refined version of itself in that utmost French tradition, but refined past its ability to truly pop among the competing courses of the event.

Overlooking silly things like awkward speeches that include sentiments like "I know no one wants to stop paying attention to the food to pay attention to me, but I am going to ignore that so we can pat ourselves on the back for having enough success to throw this party" or, better, embracing the parts of the same speeches that thank the sponsors and introduce rising star chefs from other areas, this was a very fun food event. The flavors were great, the chefs were proud, the wine and liquor were plentiful, there were even desserts for those of you into that (one of which was a parfait, and everybody likes parfait).

Thoughts week ending 9/29/06

…Bill Buford’s New Yorker article about the Food Network started me wondering about things you don’t see on the Food Network any more other than chefs and dirt, like foie gras. How can a channel about food not show Foie Gras? I have to assume it stems from some ridiculous “don’t upset anyone, anywhere” approach to marketing. Add this to the list of reasons I no longer watch the Food Network. Does anyone else miss Discovery’s “Great Chefs” and Emeril before the audience???

…I just assume everyone that comes to Augieland clicks on that link to the Bruni Digest while visiting. If not, do so today. She is a very funny woman…

…Ok, clearly the whole world has gone insane. Mark it on your calendar: we are officially doomed as a race as of 9/27/06 and the exact thing to mark this event is this article by Marion Burros in the Times entitled “Tainted Spinach Brings Demands for New Rules.”

At this point we are all aware that somehow in the last month or so spinach caught a cold named E. coli O157:H7 and started giving it to humans. This particular strain is dangerous to humans and our best guess at the moment is that it got to the spinach through run-off water from factory cattle farms near the spinach fields.

One more important bit of information is that this dangerous strain of E. coli only comes from corn-fed cows, or more accurately stops existing in cows that are fed grass for as little as five days.

Now here is where the insanity starts. You ready for this??? Brace yourself… the proposed issue and solution, from a microbiologist at UC Davis named Dr. Trevor Suslow is, get this, “Should cows be raised in close proximity to produce? Ideally, you would like to see them well separated.” And the FDA has this to offer, “I’m speculating, but there is a logical link between cattle and manure getting into the water.” Can you smack a whole government department for being stupid?

So rather than stop creating the poison by ending the practice of feeding cows poison (yes corn is poisonous to cows) even though E. coli and all the other poisons current cattle farming practices create obviously will find ways into our lives no matter where we put the feedlots (it is spread through the water table), we will separate spinach and cows as if it were insane to assume animals and vegetables could coexist and that we have just been dodging a bullet for the thousands of years we have luckily gotten away with these crazy death-traps called farms.

Here is the solution I offer free of charge: STOP POISONING YOUR FOOD. How? The simple fact that the idea being put forth as problematic is that farm animals and farm vegetables need be separated makes it pretty clear the corn subsidies that are actually the root of this poisoning will not be ended. So what’s left? Avoid buying standard beef in the supermarket, restaurants or fast-food chains as much as possible. No kidding. Make steak a special thing, pay a little more for grass-fed beef raised on pasture, and enjoy it, it actually tastes far better. Tell your restaurants why you are eating less, they will get you what you want.

The ultimate irony is that if we fed all the tainted spinach we are throwing out to the cows rather than what we are currently feeding them the E. coli issue would probably clear up…

…So in the middle of an E. coli issue clearly tied to spinach four kids who regularly drink raw milk get E. coli and the milk is blamed and a recall enacted. Well the milk has been tested and proven not to have E. coli. Yet the recall stands. We all know where I stand on raw milk, and it is hard to talk about this without sounding like a strange paranoid conspiracy theorist. But here is an example of the result of years of demonization of raw milk by an industry that only stays hugely profitable if pasteurization stays the status quo. During a spinach-related E. coli outbreak in the part of the world the spinach is from, raw milk is the first assumed infector…

…I saw a post on The Gurgling Cod I felt inspired to comment on about snapping pictures in restaurants, which in turn led me to this article by Molly O’Neill in The Columbia Journalism Review, which I very much enjoyed because of writing like this:

From the beginning of newspaper food coverage, the pages have been home to dietary fads and weight-loss schemes. Horace Greeley was himself an acolyte of Sylvester Graham, whose vegetarian moralism makes that of say, Dr. Dean Ornish, appear to be downright sybaritic. But it may be nothing more than the mists of time that differentiate the dietary faddism of that era from the fads promulgated by food writers today. After being diagnosed with hypertension and counseled to reduce his salt intake, for instance, Claiborne wrote a guide to cooking without salt called Craig Claiborne's Gourmet Diet in 1980. Based on the medical establishment's assumption that foreswearing salt could stave off hypertension, Claiborne echoed the American Heart Association's position and rallied the public to join his low-salt life-style. Thus was a low-salt food industry born before further research revealed that although cutting salt consumption is critical for people who have high blood pressure, reducing it prior to the onset of high blood pressure generally does little to lower the chance of developing the disease.

Interesting, no???

...What good is lamenting the scourge of factory farms and sick cows without offering a viable and accessible alternative?

Wife and I have been heartily enjoying our weekly CSA vegetables from Stoneledge Farms and, saddened that our summers’ share will soon be drawing to a close, were delighted to learn that the Washington Square CSA will be offering a winter share this year consisting of winter vegetables, organic chicken, grass-fed beef, organic eggs and dairy products and assorted dry goods (beans, granola and the like) from local farms. Unlike our summer share, this will be a once-monthly pick-up and runs from December through April. We are looking forward to seeing what the winter brings…

Assemblymember Deborah J. Glick responded to Blind Tiger concerns

September 26, 2006

Thank you for writing about Blind Tiger Ale House. I am mystified that people were informed that the State Liquor Authority (SLA) denied the establishment's liquor license based on a letter from my office. While I appreciate the implied notion that a single letter from my office could have this effect, it is simply not the case.

I often hear from residents in opposition to either the oversaturation of liquor licenses or past behavior of a particular owner and try to take a balanced approach. I have written to the SLA in opposition to the granting of some of these liquor licenses, especially when I've received complaints or when an area is heavily impacted. Although I did write to the SLA regarding Blind Tiger Ale House, I am not aware of any instance when a single letter written by an elected official has sufficient weight to cause the denial of a license.

Regardless, after making inquiries with the SLA, it seems clear that Blind Tiger was denied a liquor license based on misrepresentations provided in its application and because the establishment's proximity to a house of worship violates a strictly-interpreted state statute. I cannot imagine a situation in which the SLA could or would grant a liquor license that contradicts this statute.

Thank you again for writing to share your views with me.

Sincerely,

<>Deborah J. Glick
Assemblymember

To which I responded

Dear Ms. Glick,

Thank you very much for your letter.

I am sure at this point you realize I am not alone amongst your constituents in wanting The Blind Tiger to have a liquor license. There is a petition here I am sure you are already aware of.

You seem to claim that although you have written a specific letter regarding the Blind Tiger to the SLA which the folks at The Tiger contend the SLA offered them as the primary reason for their denial, you wrote it knowing nothing about the establishment per se but as part of a series of general letters to the SLA regarding a general problem. If this is true, you have clearly missed the crux of my point entirely.

As far as your contention that there were “misrepresentations in their application,” without you providing said misrepresentations I must assume you are just politicking.  I would very much like to know what they were and how many other small businesses in the area were cited for similar misrepresentations in the past and whether or not they were granted licenses.

As cloudy as your allusion to specific complaints is, I have to assume that none were made regarding the actual new Blind Tiger at its current location. If, however, there were I would hope you would have disregarded them since The Blind Tiger has no track record at this location and any complaints would therefore be speculative and based on prejudiced assumptions. With your personal past and being someone upholding our innocent until proven guilty method of government, I assume the dismissal of such unfounded complaints would come naturally.

As far as your claim that a government body wouldn’t weigh the input of a government official so heavily, I will simply look past this as an attempt at some kind of “little old me” defense that rings false. You considered yourself important enough to write a letter to the SLA in the first place; to be surprised it had an effect seems disingenuous.

The contention “the establishment's proximity to a house of worship violates a strictly-interpreted state statute. I cannot imagine a situation in which the SLA could or would grant a liquor license that contradicts this statute,” is absurd and only serves to highlight the Assembly’s poor performance up to this point. The establishment at this location prior to The Blind Tiger had a liquor license, as do many of the establishments between The Blind Tiger and the local house of worship.

You work for me and as your employer, the taxpayer, I expect far more from you on our community level than blanket opinions on anything, especially something as significant to the success of a small business as a liquor license. One of the few businesses left in New York, especially in our little part of it, that local people still open are restaurants, and due to the cost of food, the prevailing market for it, and real-estate in our community there is no small business plan for a restaurant that survives let alone thrives without the markups that are available on beer, wine, and liquor.

If you want to represent me well, as well as have my vote in your next running, not only will you ask the SLA to ignore your previous letters, you will do your best to judge on a case by case basis the small businesses trying to start in our community. You can start by joining me for a coffee at The Blind Tiger so we can discuss this supposed threat to the standards so well upheld in our community.

Best,
Augieland

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.

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:

The Whole Foods live lobster poppycock

So Whole Foods has banned the sale of live lobsters in its stores nationwide and PETA applauds this action. I know this because people are asking my opinion.

Here is my opinion: a stupid, simple case of a corporation trying to distract consumers from its shortcomings.

Here is my elaboration:

In general, I am of the opinion that food should be locally sourced and should be bought as locally as possible. For many ingredients, Whole Foods comes pretty early on my list of places to shop because I want to send the message with my spent food dollar that I would prefer more organic choices. But more than organic I would prefer food grown as close to me as possible, and if that is not possible I would rather keep my dollars in my community. I will go to Whole Foods for things not readily available at a local store, but only after checking. So it is far less than likely I was ever going to buy a lobster at Whole Foods (that's what the local fish guy is there for, so BFD).

The beauty of lobsters has always been:
1. They are pot caught so there is very little by-catch.
2. Being very low on the food chain, the PCB and Mercury concerns are much lower than other sea life popular with consumers at the moment.
3. They are fished by fisherman not farmed by corporations
4. They are purchased live, there are little processing concerns and even less freshness concerns.
5. Their cost to customers makes over-fishing prohibitive
6. They are why we know about good cholesterol.
7. They taste amazing, but only if they start live.

As for Whole Foods, they care about actual localness or quality of fish only in as much as they strive to be better rather than good, not the loftiest of ambitions. Just look at salmon. Although Whole Foods was one of the first to label farmed salmon as artificially colored, they did so only after the Times wrote the color wheel article. As far as pre-packaged smoked salmon, they offer about one wild-caught option for about every nine farmed. Although Whole Foods is very good at paying lip service to the belief in better choices and remains a far better choice than most super market options, it has clearly moved far away from its roots and at this point in its evolution seems to be doing more to arrest the progress of the organic and local movements than advance it.

All of these realities lead us to the reason Whole Foods has actually decided to stop selling lobsters at this point in time. Michael Pollan has written a book called "An Omnivore's Dilemma" that sheds light on the shortcomings of the realities of large scale organics, and since Whole Foods is as big as large-scale organic gets at the moment, they are the benchmark. Pollan simply points out things like how grass-finished beef from New Zealand, although better than corn-fed from Texas, may not be all that can be done by the industry leader to move us away from the horrible corn-based system prevalent at the moment.

Much like G.W. Bush pandering to his zealot base by suggesting a same-sex marriage amendment to distract from his needed house cleaning, Whole Foods is indulging its fanatic base by seeking PETA approval. In both cases, what is in order is addressing new issues that arise as the world changes and in both cases distraction is being used in order to maintain a status quo.

As far as PETA goes, I can't even begin to address their headline-seeking, donations-mongering, accomplish-nothing tactics. It is a bad organization that has constantly, for years, done nothing but hurt the cause of ethical treatment for animals. Their mission has seldom been more than to get fifteen year old girls to use words like lacto-ovo and nag their parents about the cruelty of gelatin in Jell-o. To these ends, they are constantly claiming insignificant victories like this.

No one buys lobster at Whole Foods really, unless there is a sale. Whole Foods has not chosen a higher ground. What has been accomplished is PETA has gotten air time on CNBC. PETA's petty and false victories are on easy to target luxury items, and in no way change the supply or demand for the items. As far as lobsters and foie gras go, these are both industries that support small sensible production with little environmental impact, the type to be embraced if what you care about is the health and welfare of all the animals on earth.

If the people at PETA actually cared about ethical treatment of animals, they would focus every single dollar and minute on the gross abuses that actually exist in the food world today. Like that corn is poisonous to cows, so much so that we need to fill them so full of antibiotics to keep them alive in spite of the poison diet we feed them that humans are developing antibiotic resistance as a result of consuming standard commercial beef. Through our unethical poisoning of cattle, we have created new sicknesses and the need to cook (pasteurize) our milk before we consume it. If PETA wanted to do the most good for the most animals, they would entirely focus their lobbying on ending government subsidies of corn. It causes far more problems for all life on earth than almost any thing other than fossil fuel dependence.

At best, PETA and Whole Foods have advanced the idea that lobsters have a central nervous system, equating them with earthworms. Pigs have such developed brains that the common industry practice of weaning them a few weeks early in order to get a head start on their hormone-laden fattening diet leaves them so distraught they develop an oral fixation that causes them to incessantly suck on each other's tails until they fall off, leaving sores that get infected. The pork industries solution? Cut the tails off (tail docking) at the time of the early weaning. But pay no attention to these grievous violations of ethical animal treatment, you can rest easy because PETA has convinced Whole Foods to stop selling the live version of what are essentially bugs.

Look, it ain't easy to know exactly what to do. I find it best to focus on getting the best, most tasty food available. I believe organic vegetables taste better than conventional, that wild salmon tastes better than farmed goes without saying. Although their legs are more sinewy, free range chickens have more flavor than Perdue, and grass-fed beef, although not quite as tender in many cases as corn-fed, has many more layers of flavor as well as six times the omega-3s of corn-fed beef.

My plan in reaction to this news? I suggest you try it. I am going to the Union Square Greenmarket to buy some grass-fed beef from Elk Trails Farm. Then, I'll stop at Flying Pigs Farms' stand and purchase some bacon to wrap around it. Once that is in the fridge, I'll call some local fishmongers to see who has the best price on live 1.5 pound lobsters and make Wife surf and turf for dinner.

Not lucky enough to have these options near you? Make a round of phone calls to your local purveyors and tell them you would be stopping in with money to spend if they did. They will get the message. By supporting small producers with better, more whole food, we have created such a network here in New York that I have many choices for all of the above. You can do the same.

Thoughts on the 4th Annual Big Apple BBQ Party

• 4^th Annual Big Apple BBQ Party in a row. From the first little one where only those who loved cue enough to stand in the rain were on line to last year, which had such perfect hot weather that the lines got as long as two hours, to this one in which cooler temps made the hour wait seem longer, the best part of the BABBQP is meeting other people willing to brave such conditions on line.
• It is a great thing that there are now three places making BBQ in NYC of a standard that they could hold a place at this event. And it is gracious of Danny to include them in an event he started to draw attention to the ground-breaking place he and Ken Callaghan had opened back when no one would invest in the apparatus required by local statutes to properly smoke things here. But the truth is we can get the food of the other places every day, let Blue Smoke have their stand out of respect for the work done and round out the other very limited space with people a little farther away than Harlem.
• People will stand on line for up to an hour to get food from places that range in distance from a 5 minute walk to a 9 minute walk to a 25 minute A train ride.
• Confining beer drinking to the circle set up in Madison Square Park was silly, when EMP was selling very tasty spiked lemonade to all those with six bucks in their entrance.
• The best showing on both Saturday and Sunday this year was Southside Market, amazing ¾ inch smoke ring on the brisket and some of the tastiest smoked sausage ever.
• Ed Mitchell's whole hog pulled itself back up with the leaders (where it has been in prior years) Sunday morning with beautiful, simple chopped pork interspersed with crackling after running out about two hours early Saturday and having one of the all-time rudest servers in history manning the Bubba line.
• Ubon's shoulder is a great saucy sandwich.
• As good as the rib tips are at Smokey O's, the snoots are what all the other attendees should copy. Somewhere between pork rinds and crackling with a very nice sauce.
• Feel like I do and think it is silly to get ribs on the street from a place a little more than 4 blocks away that you all ready eat at about 10 times a year, yet want to give patronage to the locals? Got to Blue Smoke once you are full and wash it all down properly with a little Bourbon. This year Bear, Bubby, Pichon, Ringwald, Vee, Wife and I got rather julepy Sunday evening with bellies full of BBQ from parts far and wide, and a good time was had by all.

Morimoto NYC: Omakase bar night 10, the porn

Night 10 (yes night 9 is missing, it was a late evening impromptu that was of course both creative and fantastic but I didn't have the camera and my senses were well dulled by the time we walked in, so not much to report). Whether or not you count the in-between sushi pieces along the way, I think we are in the area of about a century of dishes without repeat here is the porn...

Baby white shrimp tempura with sudachi the tiny little piece of sudachi adding a bright ascorbic zing when squeezed over these sweet, miniscule shrimp.

Conger Eel with a sweet and sour dipping sauce

Blue crab with apricot sorbet and Japanese vinaigrette espuma an interesting play between the sweet meat, the zing of yuzu in the foam, the nectarous sorbet, and the briny crab roe. (Yes that is a bowl made of ice).

Sashimi: Okoze (scorpion fish), otoro, katsuo with 10 yr soy a very spicy yellow mustard was served with traditional soy for the katsuo (bonito). The 10-year soy thickly clung to the most marbled toro I have seen.

Lobster salad -- took a picture and had a taste but this was wife's supplement for the sashimi course so not much more to say than the lobster was sweet and the other ingredients had varying levels of pickley acidity to contrast it.

Wild Japanese striped bass with plum paste in bonito broth the way good bonito broth can thoroughly contribute an aroma to a dish while staying out of the way of the flavors is an amazing thing.

Sweetfish with plum and tadai pepper sauce skewered to appear as if it were swimming and grilled, it tasted of scorched river silt while you chewed. After, though, a fascinating and building aroma developed that made me wish I had eaten more slowly.

Japanese beef with summer truffles the next time someone tells you meat (whether or not they are calling Kobe, or Waygu) from America, New Zealand or Australia is remotely in the realm of Japanese beef as far as aroma flavor and texture go, just assume everything said after that is stupid. Best or not is inconsequential, this is unlike everything else across the board. The summer truffles, although pretty, brought little to this party.

Sushi: uni, maguro, kohada, kinmeidai, shima aji, baby ginger

Simmered cherries with earl grey icecream god these guys are good at not screwing up a meal with overly sweet stuff at the end. The cherries had their own subtle sweetness with nothing extra and the ice-cream had all the aspects of a perfect cup of earl grey -- color, tannin, sweetness.

Basil sorbet with strawberry salad and balsamic reduction the sorbet tasted of basil, not basil sorbet, but basil the aroma of torn leaves. The crackers had licorice notes, the strawberries were sweet, and the balsamic thick, sweet, dark and woody. Officially according to Wife the greatest dessert ever.

BLT, it's about time

Once the ramps’ fronds have grown too fibrous to be good any more and the fiddleheads have opened to become the ferns they were destined to be, the next things I look forward to at the Greenmarket are tomatoes. I am one of the people who actually waits for tomato season to eat tomatoes because they just make little sense to me at other times. Sure that red thing they put on my sandwich at the deli adds moisture, a slight sweetness, and a slight acidity, but for me to buy tomatoes and consider them an ingredient they have to be locally grown, sweet, and juicy.

Saturday, while wandering around the Union Square Greenmarket I came across one of the two farmers I buy tomatoes from in the summer (the Jersey guys on the east side of the park, Tim Stark is the other) with the first taste of tomatoes cut up for sampling. I approached with great skepticism and tasted. Maybe it was because it has been a long rather mild boring winter since last I had one, or maybe the spring was so mild and wet they somehow got real beefsteak tomatoes to mature on the vine even before the smaller, faster-ripening heirloom varieties, but either way I was definitely pleased. Not as ecstatic as I would have been with a truly great picked-that-morning, fully ripe tomato in August, but pleased in the fact that this was a juicy, meaty tomato with genuine sugar development that had never been made dumb through refrigeration, even if the stems still clung.

So with four good-sized tomatoes in hand, I had a plan. I stopped at the bread guy and got a loaf of farm bread, then the lettuce and greens guys that have no signs for a head of oak lettuce, and the “seriously good bacon” guys for a pound of black boar bacon.

Walking home, I stopped at the 14th street Garden Of Eden and grabbed a 500 cl bottle of Catalonian organic olive oil made from the Arbequina olive because these tomatoes were finally my excuse to make the allioli on page 20 of José Andrés’ “Tapas: A Taste of Spain in America.” This book is inspirational enough that I wanted to set about the task of slowly drizzling a cup and a half of olive oil into a mortar while pestling four cloves of garlic, a pinch of sea salt, and the juice of a lemon wedge. But what I needed was the time and proper ingredient for inspiration.

These tomatoes were very good, not great (great tomatoes only want olive oil and salt, maybe a torn basil leaf and a twist of black pepper, little more). Very good tomatoes can use a little help and work better as part of an ensemble then in a solo. So here I was with rain starting outside, very good tomatoes, fresh lettuce, fresh allioli, a pound of bacon browning in a pan, a loaf of fresh bread to toast, and Pichon, Ringwald, and Vee on their way over for first of the season Greenmarket BLT’s. That’s what I call a good Saturday afternoon.