'Cue

I stopped by Fette Sau in Billyburg last night, but the long line and lack of seating pointed me elsewhere. But when you're in the mood for 'cue, you're in the mood for 'cue, so to South Williamsburg we ventured, miraculously snagging a vacant table at Fatty 'Cue in under ten minutes.

The spot, in aesthetic and execution, isn't so different from Zak Pelaccio's Fatty Crabs, which is to say that the food is spicy, sweet, salty, textured and, above all else, full of fat. The best exemplar of "fat is flavor" comes across in the Dragon Pullman Toast with Master Fat. What is it? Slices of that well-known and pillow-soft bread with grill marks and a salt crust, served with a side of fat drippings from the barbecue. It's like eating the deckle of a rib-eye on toast, if that deckle had been rendered into a dippable liquid. Not half bad, I say.

We ate lamb ribs, off the bone and crisp, with a mackerel aioli, which sounds gross but isn't. Two mammoth pork ribs came with a palm sugar glaze that's stickier, sweeter, and more appealing than the best Texas red sauce. Pork bone broth is basically a rich consomme with sliced crunchy celery. In the context of all this meat, it almost reads like health food. So, too, do the habit-forming black eyed peas, served with the traditional addition of burnt ends and the not-so-traditional slickening of yellow curry. Grilled bacon, leaning towards the fatty, comes with a curry mustard and toast points, a modern take on charcuterie that doesn't feel too haute or out of place.

I would have ordered the crab for a shareable entree, but one of our party members is allergic, so we settled on brisket instead, which didn't disappoint. Fatty 'Cue serves the lean, pink slices alongside the dense, fatty ones. The brisket comes with mayonnaise, chili sauce, steamed buns (Peking duck style), cilantro, pickled red onions, and a bone broth for dipping. It's a rendering of make-your-own pork buns, or a French dip. And it's really, really good. Cutting all that fat with sugar and acid (found everywhere in accompanying sauces and in the vinegar and fish sauce container left on the table for each party's personal use) works so well, one wonders why Malaysian barbecue isn't already a "thing" in the city.

Then again, these treats are probably best enjoyed in moderation.

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Fatty 'Cue

91 South 6th Street

Brooklyn, NY 11211

718.599.3090

All You Can Eat. No, Really.

Hill Country inaugurated "all you can eat Mondays" last night, a deal that will extend until the end of February. And what a deal it is. For the paltry admission price of $25, you get as much BBQ chicken, lean brisket, and pork ribs as you can eat. And then there are the sides. Choose from German potatoes, sweet bourbon mashed potatoes, cucumber salad, cole slaw, pinto beans, black eyed peas, green bean casserole, skillet cornbread with ancho honey butter, and, for two additional dollars, macaroni and cheese, Texas red chili, and bacon baked beans.

Not to mention all the white bread and fountain soda you want.

It was an excellent deal, I discovered last night. The pork ribs were dry rubbed and you could supplement the smoky, peppery flavor with Hill Country's barbecue and hot sauces. Chicken was fall-off-the-bone tender and the brisket was... well, we had to ask for more brisket. And even then, it wasn't enough for my carnivore companions.

I would have loved some beef ribs, pulled pork, and Kreuz sausage to round out the meatfest, but that probably would have been overkill.

I was surprised that our all you can eat menu offered so many unlimited sides. German potatoes resembled a cream-less smashed, with the welcome addition of some kind of crumbled meat. Sweet potatoes were more of a dessert like a side, and the cucumber salad was essentially a welcome cup of pickled cucumbers buttressed by thin slices of pickled white onion.

Baked beans with bacon were smoky and sweet. One member of our party, a Houston native, happily pronounced the experience authentic and praised the restaurant's brisket. That's a big deal, coming from a Texan.

Hill Country serves Texan delicacies all around. Peruse the beer list and you'll find Lone Star, the Texas canned shlock, and Dos Equis, a Mexican beer favored in the south and southwest. On the sweeter side, they serve Blue Bell ice cream, a company that has been churning out high-fat favorites in Brenham, Texas since 1907.

And there's always sweet tea, served in a mason jar, which, the Texan informed me, is not what Texans actually drink out of down south. But hey, it's all part of the rolicking theme-park atmosphere that is Hill Country, a slice of the Texas pits all the way up here on our little island.

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Hill Country
30 West 26th Street
New York, NY 10010
212.255.4544

Latke Vs. Latke

To celebrate the so-called Festival of Lights, I took a trip to Stamford, CT, where my aunt promised Jewish vittles. For the sake of our respective places in heaven, I'll ignore the fact that she served shrimp cocktail (gasp!) alongside a giant cheese board (double gasp!) and latkes with sour cream alongside brisket and turkey. You can't win them all.

This year, my aunt embarked on project "no frying pan," meaning she was going to attempt to replicate the crispiness of the traditional holiday latke without using a skillet. Instead, she took baking sheets and covered them with vegetable oil, cooked those lovely pankakes on one side at 400 degrees for 20 minutes, flipped them, gave them another 10 in the oven, and served them hot.

The key to good latkes, I learned from my father, is the squeezing. The potatoes and onions, which are grated together in one unruly mess before the egg-ing/seasoning/frying begins, must be as dry as is humanly possible. The drier the latke batter, the browner the latke, or so I've been told. My aunt's experiment proved successful; our latkes were brown and crispy on the outside and pliant within.

Today, I found myself in midtown for lunch. I'll skip the brutal details, including the many tourists I dodged through homicidal thoughts, the mayhem that is Rockefeller Center, and the congestion of Fifth Avenue.

I will mention, however, that I was taken to Carnegie Deli to eat, a stunt I haven't attempted since my childhood, when my grandmother took me whenever we came into the City to see a show. Pickles still get an enthusiastic thumbs-up (I prefer the half-sours), and the chicken soup was good, if undersalted and a disquieting shade of yellow. Matzo balls were fluffy but ill-flavored; they didn't hit me over the head with schmalz (for all the non-Jews out there, that means rendered chicken fat) and they weren't particularly well-seasoned. Then again, they didn't stick in my throat like some matzo balls do. I will not name names.

But my main point of comparison dining was the latkes, which arrived a little too light and a little too large. They were breakfast pancake-sized and when it comes to latkes I am a purist. Give me tiny pancakes that I can eat six or seven of, not one giant potato pancake that dominates my plate. These latkes, which Carnegie calls famous, were under-crisped and under squeezed. Enthusiastic thumbs-down.

Here's a few other things about Carnegie that drove me absolutely insane: they don't accept credit cards; they require a $12.50 per person minimum and only allow you to share their enormous sandwiches for an additional fee of $3; they sell latkes for $15 a plate; their servers are rude and angry; the food arrives whenever they feel like sending it out. In times of economic crisis, I understand minimums. I understand wanting a guest to spend at least enough money so that the gratuity covers the server's subway ride to work. I do not, however, understand why I would want to pay so much for so much excess. The food is indulgent enough. I don't need more of it. And gruff service doesn't get you anywhere these days. For the same amount of calories, I could have been sitting at Burger Joint in the Parker Meridien having a much better--and cheaper--meal.

I'm done with the New York deli scene. Sorry, Grandma. I hope you can forgive me but on Jew food, my aunt takes the cake. And while Carnegie Deli may be a "New York institution," it really needs to clean up its act.

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Carnegie Deli
854 7th Avenue
New York, NY 10019
212.757.2245