Queens Tweet

I was invited to a Queens tweet-up last night at Dutch Kills, the bar that mimics its sister and brother bars in the city: Milk and Honey and Little Branch. In keeping with the Prohibition-era theme of these Manhattan bars, Dutch Kills is dark and wooden with mustachioed barkeeps in suspenders. In the bar's rear, the floor is covered in sawdust like the butcher shops I remember from my youth.

Cocktails are slightly less pricey than in the city at ten bucks a pop and you should order one for the aesthetic alone. The bar produces four separate kinds of ice: chunky granules of even shape and size; smooth cubes; one large block for scotches and other brown spirits; and crushed ice for shaking and muddling. My Marie Antoinette resembled a pretty little sno-cone and came topped with a chilly raspberry. The drink itself, in fading shades of red and pink, was a sweet and tart combination of crushed berries, creme de cacao, and light rum. Regrettably, I kept forgetting that Dutch Kills serves its libations with metal spoons and more than once found my teeth clicking against the straw.

As a follow up to our Queens tipple, we headed over to Sweet Afton, which really looks like the type of place you would find in Brooklyn, not Queens. There is exposed brick and all the food and drink is local and the hipsters seem to have invaded from Williamsburg. The Brooklyn vibe doesn't change the fact that Queens is clearly the borough of choice for ethnic food, but it is nice to feel like Astoria is getting some locavore chops. Finally.

The fried pickles are McClure's, of course, and come with a mayonnaise-based dipping sauce. They erred a bit too far on the side of doughy, but I'll take my pickles any way I can get them, which is why I doused my spicy hot pickle bites with a McClure's pickle martini, one of the house cocktails. Next arrived a truly transcendent grilled cheese sandwich. You can choose your cheese and we chose muenster. We also chose to add to our sando caramelized onions and chewy, smoky bacon. The sandwich's strongest asset is the tasty whole-grain mustard and side of pickles (yes, I'm obsessed).

The French fries that came with our perfect burger were an unnecessary addition to an already-full meal. But that burger... mid-sized patty on white bread with lettuce, tomato, red onion, pickle, and cheese. No mayonnaise, but I can live without. The burger had the oniony seasoning I love. I'll be back for the Irish sausage next time: sausages wrapped in puff pastry and baked until brown. Sounds right up my alley.

*

Dutch Kills

27-24 Jackson Avenue

Long Island City, NY 11101

718.383.2724

*

Sweet Afton

30-09 34th Street

Astoria, NY 11103

718.777.2570

Meat To Beat The Heat

Counterintuitive, isn't it? But then, steakhouses are always well air-conditioned, so steak it was this past Wednesday evening. I had read Alex Witchel's rave reviews of the old school joint Frankie and Johnnie's in the Times a few months back, so it seemed the perfect place to dig into a dry-aged rib-eye. Also, I find an unusual and somewhat secret comfort in traditional steakhouses. I love the leather and the white linen and the dim lights and the booming voices of fat businessmen. This must make me an American.

Pine Island oysters, hailing from Oyster Bay on Long Island, were buttery and fat specimens, even if they came sparsely adorned with lemon, horseradish, and cocktail sauce. I'm a mignonette girl myself, but I'll pardon the omission because the oysters were clean and substantial. A crab cake duo surprised us with a crunch of potato. The outer layer of the cake, generally breaded in something like panko, was sheathed in a mini potato hash brown that was all snap but still yielded to the fork. Okay, the crab itself--the real deal--didn't have enough binding to it and fell apart into shreds of crab and crunch, but I'll forgive that misstep, too.

I can't really forgive the distracted waiter who brought my warm half-bottle of Sauvignon Blanc twenty minutes after I had ordered it, but even he is a distant memory in the face of the massive cut of beef that appeared before me. Frankie and Johnnie's makes their own steak sauce, but there's no need; the fatty dickle and salty crust provided all the condiment this steak required. I prefer my rib-eyes bone-in and this baby was no disappointment. Garlic mashed potatoes were pedestrian, at best, and the mint jelly served with my co-eater's lamb jobs was just gross. But the asparagus, shaved expertly at the ends and sauteed in hot oil with slices of brown garlic, more than fulfilled our quest for a decent green vegetable.

But Frankie and Johnnie's was closing all around us, even though it was just ten o'clock, so we decamped for Keens Steakhouse, home to over 250 single-malt and blended scotches. Laphroaig 10 with a hand-cut ice cube was my particular brand of poison, but the bartender could have pointed me in any direction at all. "Drink what you like," he said. "That's what I tell people all the time."

The morning after, in need of more meat to sop up that lingering Laphroaig, I headed to the end of my street, where there's a Bosnian restaurant that I have, embarrassingly, never visited in my five years living in Astoria. The place is called Old Bridge Restaurant and serves "traditional" Bosnian cuisine, which, nearest I can tell, is a combination of meat, meat, and more meat. I started with a Cockta soda, made with real sugar and "natural plant extracts" (for what it's worth) and no caffeine or phosphoric acid. It tasted like a marriage between Moxie and Coke, and I'm sure it isn't for everyone.

You can forgive the modest decor and scattered waitservice when you come upon your very own cevapi, ten grilled beef sausages served in something resembling muffaletta bread and served with chopped onions, cheese, and a roasted red pepper paste. The sandwich is roughly the size of a dinner plate. So, too, is the pljeskavica, a thin beef burger on that same bread with more chopped onions. As in Croatia, where every meal I ate was accompanied by a slim salad of cucumber, tomato, and vinegar, our meal came with a crisp little ode to summer: cucumber, tomato, iceberg lettuce, and mozzarella cheese with white vinegar and oil. It was crunchy and salty, like most of the food at Old Bridge. I should have eaten there years ago.

*
Frankie and Johnnie's
32 West 37th Street
New York, NY 10018
212.947.8940

*
Keens Steakhouse
72 West 36th Street
New York, NY 10018
212.947.3636

*
Old Bridge Restaurant
28-51 42nd Street
Astoria, NY 11103
718.932.7683

Fort Defiant

If Fort Defiance, in Brooklyn's newly-gentrified Red Hook, were a little more ambitious and on-point, it would be a great concept. Plates are small and inexpensive. One could order every item on the menu for under $150. Cocktails have that Prohibition-era twang.

If only.

The restaurant is unbearably cute, with fine touches here and there. I loved the brass leaf-shaped chandeliers and the lacquered tables that were covered in what best resembled shelf lining or summer picnic tablecloths. The restaurant has the spirit of eclectic Brooklyn bohemian chic down to a science. But the food--however cheap--couldn't stand up to the cuteness of the decor.

First, my drink, billed as "punch," was really just rum with simple syrup and a paltry squeeze of lime. When I asked my overburdened waiter for more lime juice, he took my glass and returned with a drink that tasted exactly the same as it had minutes earlier. Chicken liver pate, smooth and sweet, matched well with tiny slivers of baguette crostini, but deviled eggs lacked the requisite punch. Yes, they were smoky and salty, but where was the heat?

Pimento cheese on Ritz crackers would have been difficult to mess up, but the corn soup was a substantial disappointment, lacking texture and taste. Corn isn't sweet enough yet, maybe, but the dish was undersalted and overblended. I missed the subtle crunch of early season corn.

And then: pork chops. We ordered two. The meat itself was fatty and rich, but our chops, bone-in, were, sadly, overcooked. A side of grits was a little sticky for my taste and the side of squash reminded me of wan vegetable sides in bad pubs. But our side of asparagus, lightly blanched and served with a salty, creamy version of hollandaise, redeemed those soggy squash. Hen-of-the-woods mushrooms, slick with butter and woodier with thyme, almost made us forget those overcooked chops. Almost.

*

Fort Defiance

365 Van Brunt Street

Brooklyn, NY 11231

347.453.6672

Here, There, And Everywhere

Sunday night, my family and I headed out for seafood, the perfect match for a hot June night. Eastchester Fish Gourmet serves clean, honest seafood, the kinds of dishes I crave when the weather gets hot. Truth be told, I feel nostalgic for afternoons that sweep into evenings on decks above the Atlantic in Massachusetts, where lobster comes with a plastic bib and a bright cylinder of corn. New York is full of many culinary possibilities, but I've never felt that the dining scene here ever truly understood a proper New England seafood meal.

I considered the steamers, of course, but they are messy and I was wearing silk. Instead, I settled for east coast oysters, five different ones (Peconic, Blue Point, Malpeque, and Beau Soleil) that were as clean and briny as any served on any fine coastline. My softshell crab appetizer was crispy and well suited for the caper and pepper sauce that accompanied it. The bed of chopped spinach underneath was a nice final touch.

And then, my lobster. They had no chickens in house, so I bumped up to the next bracket, 1.75 lbs. of pure Maine crustacean. Any New Englander will tell you that the smaller lobsters yield the sweeter meat and the greed of diners who order the 3 or 6 or 9 lb. beasts is never rewarded. Lobster is a true measure of quality since it's eaten with nothing but drawn butter and this specimen didn't disappoint. I remember a time when I hated lobster, the one food in my home that my mother permitted me to pass up. More for her, she always figured, and now I know the error of my ways.

Dessert gilded the lily--I could have (and should have) stopped after my shellfishpalooza--but I needed that pineapple upside-down cake, didn't I? Or maybe I just needed the caramelized banana ice-cream that came with it.

From linen tablecloths to cafeteria dining, my next night out found me in Flushing, back to the Golden Mall for noodles, dumplings, and other assorted snacks. At Xi'an Famous Snacks, one must never leave without trying the Liang Pi noodles (cold, thick, glutinous noodles served in a secret sauce with slabs of tripe) or the lamb burger, a spicy combination of lamb and cumin served on a thin and crispy bun. You would never expect from the dinginess of the place that this stall has played host to Eric Ripert and Anthony Bourdain, but they know good tripe when they see it. Next door, the noodle-pullers at Lanzhou Handmade Noodles served us beef and noodles in broth, far tastier than whatever incarnation I had the last time I came (skip the gristly beef itself, but drink the cilantro-flecked broth).

At House of Xie, another mall stall, we sat down to julienned potato salad, slick with chili oil. Then: a perfect, sticky bun filled with savory beef and sweet onions; thin sliced kielbasa, served cold; chewy pig ear cut into fine ribbons. Nan Shian Dumpling House graced us with chive and meat dumplings, pan seared. They were soft-topped and brown-bottomed, like any good fried dumpling should be from a combination of steam and oil. A good dumpling sticks to the bottom of the pan. We ate ours with black vinegar and black garlic.

Back on the street, we stopped at the duck bun vendor for $1 duck buns, flesh and a perfect square of crisped skin served on a white, doughy bun with hoisin, scallion, and cucumber. There is no better dessert.

*

Eastchester Fish Gourmet

837 Post Road

Scarsdale, NY 10583

914.725.3450

*

Xi'an Famous Snacks

Golden Mall

41-28 Main Street

Flushing, NY 11355

*

Lanzhou Handmade Noodles

Golden Mall

41-28 Main Street

Flushing, NY 11355

*

House of Xie

Golden Mall

41-28 Main Street

Flushing, NY 11355

*

Nan Shian Dumpling House

Golden Mall

41-28 Main Street

Flushing, NY 11355

The Queens Vibe

It is a rare pleasure to spend the day at the beach and the night in a fine Italian joint, but that was the story of my Saturday. We started at Cedar Beach, past Jones in Long Island, where we arrived early and inconspicuous enough to pirate a small dog onto our private slice of sand. The heat propelled talk of ice cream and ices and we decided that a trip to Long Island would be incomplete without a pit stop at the Lemon Ice King of Corona on the way back.

The name is a misnomer, because the Lemon Ice King actually serves twenty-five different ices, and only one of them is lemon. Sizes range from pizzeria standard (a whopping $1.50) to a full gallon (price unknown) with a range in between. T. ordered mint chip, a vibrant green, but I prefer a fruitier style. I almost fell for my all-time favorite, rainbow, but I veered at the last minute and found surprising joy in fruit cocktail, which had real fruit floating around in all that ice. The Lemon Ice King is open all year long and if Corona was a little closer to Astoria, I might find myself saving my spare pennies for a daily ice. Where else can you sit in a park full of old timers watching bocce while sucking your ice from a dixie cup?

Our final stop was in Woodside, where we hit up Sapori d' Ischia, known to insiders for its incredible pasta. We could have skipped our sloppy mushroom salad (too many ingredients, we decided) and the passable carpaccio (canned truffles on top were impressive, but not that impressive), but we could go back again and again for that decadent pasta. Our pick? The restaurant's famous fettucini, made fresh and tossed with ham and cheese and heavy cream in--get this--a hollowed wheel of Parmesan. If you're wondering whether this is cheese overkill, well, it isn't. The dish never bores me and I am easily tired of dining trends. But that soft and toothy pasta in all that cheese was our perfect sunset.

*

Lemon Ice King of Corona

5202 108th Street

Corona, NY 11368

718.699.5133

*

Sapori d' Ischia

5515 37th Avenue

Woodside, NY 11377

718.446.1500

To Montauk And Back

It is worth comparing the Hamptons to other seafaring communities, since--externally, at least--this Long Island enclave bears resemblance to them. Like in Martha's Vineyard, farms and farmstands are abundant from Southampton through Amagansett. Like in northern Massachusetts, rolling, verdant hills lead to eroding (but still breathtaking) dunes. Like in most of New England, summer means a return to clams, lobster, and other shellfish.

But unlike New England, where blue collar really does still reign except for in specific places (see: Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard), a lobster roll in Montauk, while delicious, will set you back an astounding eighteen bucks. That's right. Eighteen dollars for a hot dog bun with mayo and lobster. This is even more ridiculous given the fact that last year's lobster bounty was overabundant, sending lobster rates down nationwide. In my hometown, our local grocery store sold summer soft-shell lobsters for $2.99 per pound. A lobster roll weighs in at about a quarter of that.

Of The Lobster Roll Restaurant, known by locals as Lunch because of the large sign out front, I will say this: the roll is good. The elements are mostly there (the crunch of celery, the ample but not heavy-handed application of mayonnaise, the hearty-but-not-over-chopped presence of tail and knuckle and claw, with the noted exception of the buttery bun. My bun, while traditional in style--supermarket-bought hot dog variety--was neither grilled nor slathered with warm butter. For eighteen bucks, they should have offered me a stick to go. Accompanying French fries were wan and once-frozen crinkle cut atrocities. Don't these people know that matchstick is protocol?

I also made a trip to Gosman's, sort of the Disney World of Montauk, where I drank a bad mojito (made with too much Rose's lime juice) and sat out on the water and munched on Blue Points. Blue Point oysters are native to Long Island and were impressive in their own right, much more than the baked clam (which was a Cherrystone, or Quahog, a bit more than I'd bargained for in the chewy department) and the crunchless crab cake (which I'm pretty sure featured Maryland--and not Long Island--crab). Go for the oysters and the oysters alone.

Farther into Amagansett, though, you might find one place worth your mighty dollar. La Fondita sells convincingly good tacos for a small price. They also sell traditional Mexican drinks like watermelon juice and horchata. My watermelon juice could have benefitted from the tart presence of lime, but I will let it slide. La Fondita hawks all different kinds of tacos, but I ordered soft-shell crab ('tis the season) and carne asada (always a good representation of a taco joint's abilities). Limes and various salsas are available in a corner near the pick up station. I brought to my table all shades and varieties of red and green with the exception of habanero, too spicy for this gringa. Tacos arrive open-faced on corn tortillas with a variety of accoutrement. Soft-shell came with mayonnaise and cabbage slaw, while carne asada was graced with cilantro and chopped onions. I could have eaten twenty of these suckers had my diet provided for it.

Still, I was glad for my return to the mainland and its less expensive and hard-to-reach sweet eats. On Wednesday, that meant oysters and scallops at the Grand Central Oyster Bar. Oysters here are still plentiful and inexpensive enough, coming in at just under two bucks apiece, depending on the variety. We ate our way through two dozen of the smaller ones, a mix of both east and west coast. I suggest finding a friendly bartender who will see you through three hours of your evening, and relying on his oyster-y expertise. We did. Of course, oysters aren't the best food for sopping up alcohol, so for that, we turned to a big plate of McDonald's-type French fries and a scallop pan-roast that was a little too goopy for my taste. Certainly Grand Central's lobster is more fiscally approachable than the lobsters of Montauk and that will be the road I head down the next time I find myself waiting for a commuter train.

Yesterday, two friends and I took an adventure to the new Hester Street Fair on the Lower East Side, where we shmoozed with banh mi from An Choi NYC (pork meatballs as well as the rest of the traditional toppings) a chili kimchi dog made with sausage from Williamsburg's Meat Hook, fresh lemonade from Too Good Traders, maple-bacon-cream cheese macarons from Macaron Parlour, and pineapple-mint popsicles from La Newyorkina. Vendors change from Saturday to Sunday and I'm excited to go back some weekend for Luke's Lobster Rolls, meatballs from Meatball Shop, and other tasties. It was a good way to spend an admittedly hot afternoon and it cost nearly nothing for all our treats.

Would that it were all the damage I could do in one day, but evening found us at Kanoyama, one of the most astoundingly awesome sushi places I've found in recent days. For the good stuff, you will pay the price, and some day, when I'm rich and famous, I will sit at the bar and order omakase, but for now, I can live with an a la carte lifestyle, especially if it includes Japanese baby red snapper. Why? Because this snapper, thin-sliced, raw, and skin on, comes with a tuille of fish carcass that our server generously offered to deep fry after we had eaten our meat. First, the fish was impeccable: clean, redolent of a fine ocean, and salty in a splash of ponzu. But the bones, which I have only had once before, were battered (along with head and eyeballs) and fried and served to us with salty green tea powder. It was like the best, crunchiest potato chip you've ever had and not at all gross, if that's what you're thinking. Impressive, too, was a light and peanuty watercress salad, a thin slice of duck breast rolled and served warm, a pan-fried pork gyoza with more ponzu, a roll of spicy tuna and cucumber, an eel roll with cucumber instead of rice as the binder. Hemlock oysters, hailing from Connecticut and arriving with their own version of ponzu and scallions, were as fresh as any others I had in the past few weeks. But the snapper was its own delight and I would return just for it and the other sashimi that I was too poor to try. Next time. Next time.

For dessert, we disappointed ourselves with cupcakes from ChickaLicious, which had turned soggy and sticky in the June heat wave. Our s'more stuck to our hands and faces and the carrot cake cupcake wasn't tart enough on top for my liking. I'm told that this was one poor performance and that I owe it to myself to return on a cooler evening, when the cupcakes are showing better. We'll see if that's in the cards.

*

The Lobster Roll Restaurant

1980 Montauk Highway

Amagansett, NY 11930

631.267.3740

*

Gosman's Restaurant

500 West Lake Drive

Montauk, NY 11954

631.668.5330

*

La Fondita

74 Montauk Highway

Amagansett, NY 11930

631.267.8800

*

Grand Central Oyster Bar & Restaurant

Grand Central Terminal

15 Vanderbilt Avenue

New York, NY 10017

212.490.6650

*

Hester Street Fair

Saturdays and Sundays, 10am to 6pm

Hester and Essex Streets

New York, NY 10002

*

Kanoyama

175 2nd Avenue

New York, NY 10003

212.777.5266

*

ChickaLicious Dessert Bar

203 East 10th Street

New York, NY 10003

212.475.0929

Downtown Is For Hipsters

And I'm no hipster. Maybe the lack of a truly entrenched "hipster scene" is what left Village Tart empty at eight o'clock on a balmy Friday night. Who knows. Surely it isn't the tasty food that's keeping the masses away.

The food really is tasty. Ok, the parmesan popcorn, served in a wax paper sleeve, tastes little of cheese and a lot of drippy movie butter (and I mean that in a good way). I'll take my butter where I can find it. A salad of golden and red beets comes together with the help of unctuous Greek yogurt. And while the enormous Wagyu pig in a blanket, shrouded in buttery croissant, needs no help, the spicy mustard it comes with would be delicious even on toast.

Brussels sprouts with bacon and honey were too heavy-handed and sweet and not charred enough to my liking. I was hoping for some salt from the bacon, but sugar was the name of that veggie game, and next time I'll pass. I will order, however, the mushroom tart, thin sliced cooked beauties over another flaky open-faced croissant. The arugula salad that joins it, full of lemon and pepper, is just an added bonus.

Village Tart is the handiwork of pastry chef Pichet Ong, so one would expect pastry to reign supreme. We took our strawberry tart to go, and by the time we ate it, over an hour later, the cream had redistributed and the pastry was hard to get at. I'm not sure if that was a reflection of a chef's misstep or ours, so I'll make my way back, eventually, to indulge my sweet tooth.

*

Village Tart

86 Kenmare Street

New York, NY 10012

212.226.4980

Pizza Party

Pulino's, Nate Appleman's New York venture, opened a few months ago. It's the only pizza place I know of that has brunch service, which should come as no surprise to anyone who has been to collaborator Keith McNally's Balthazar. Appleman used to work at San Francisco's A16, which he abandoned last year when he decided to come east. I've been to Balthazar and Minetta Tavern and I've never felt terribly inclined to give a transcendent review. McNally's restaurants are always busy and fun to eat at, but I've never left one of his spots thinking it was the best meal I'd ever had. Yes, the steak at Minetta Tavern ranks high on my all-time list, but the other food was just adequate.

So I was pretty surprised by how much I liked Pulino's, despite the hype and the hour wait, despite the fact that the restaurant looks vaguely similar to Balthazar inside. Cocktails were fine--I had the house julep--if on the weak-and-miserly side. The menu offered more than just pizza. We started with two crispy pieces of pork belly and a pear mostarda, which I could have ordered again and again. Next came grilled asparagus spears with rhubarb, charred and perfect. Pasta courses are offered in small and large (we chose small) and ours, a large noodle stuffed with lamb ragu, was toothsome and earthy. Nduja sausage isn't for everyone; it's served on the cool side and is the texture of loose pate. But I was happy to spread it on crispy bread. It was studded with red peppers.

The pizzas are thin and crispy and cut into squares so that some slices have no crust. Discard your notions of the Neapolitan pie, or the New York pie, or the Chicago pie, since the Pulino's pie is none of the above. It's wafer-thin and charred and the toppings stay put and don't well up the dough with moisture. We had a meaty combination of meatballs and sausage, though basil leaves provided a vegetal respite from so much protein.

It isn't like me to skip dessert, but skip we did. We didn't need the calories anyway. I'm going to have to go back to Pulino's for brunch (who doesn't want and excuse to eat pizza in the morning?), or, better yet, for their late night menu, which features a burger notably absent from the regular nightly menu. Go now. It's worth the wait.

*

Pulino's Bar and Pizzeria

282 Bowery

New York, NY 10012

212.226.1966

The San Francisco Treats

I put my heels back on for some serious, mindful west coast dining. I tackled Manresa first, which I've heard loads about. I actually watched David Kinch cook--and lose--to Bobby Flay on Iron Chef America. I remember thinking that his plating was pristine and unique, but I didn't really know the level of precision exacted until I went up to Los Gatos on Thursday night. It's amazing I survived the red eye and didn't fall asleep in my veloute. But I didn't.

The dining room is intimate and warm, with red walls and dark wood. Somewhere, there's a garden, but night hid it from us, which is a shame. I would love to see where the produce comes from. Amuse bouche included crispy kale chips (similar to a recipe from The New York Times that I recently oversalted and consequently botched), warm savory beignets filled with chard and cheese, and an impossibly delicious egg; it somehow arrived in its shell, soft cooked and blended with creme fraiche and maple syrup. We had to dig deep and get each yolky combination on the spoon. It tasted like a condensation of breakfast, like we had mistakenly blended our eggs with our French toast, and in the best possible way.

Manresa offers two different tasting menus and we opted for the less pricey of the two. For that, we were able to choose an appetizer, a fish course, a meat course, and a dessert. As there were three of us, we decided to order twelve different dishes, a good representation of the restaurant. Appetizers included a light and delicate sea bream sashimi, with olive oil and chives; a verdant soup poured table side with tiny purple flowers and ground mustard; and battered, fried mussels with stacked stalks of asparagus. Flowers are abundant in every dish, a reminder of warmer weather. For fish: diver scallops seared and only slightly memorable; cod with a rich and salty brown sauce; seared sea bass with pureed parsnip. A fine nod to the sea, if not anything particularly mind-blowing. Our meat courses were larger than we expected, especially given the price to food ratio usually observed in fine dining (the larger the price tag, the smaller the meal). Duck breast came with an over oranged glaze but an addictive mashed beet side. Beef bavettes were fine, as were the accompanying grain, but the lamb won the show--loin and tongue, in a sea of spring ramps, mint, pea puree. We couldn't finish.

Manresa's wine list is manageable enough and we drank Sekt to begin and then a bottle of Brewer Clifton "Ashley's" pinot noir, cheap by New York standards. Drinking California in California is a bargain. We chose three cheeses for an extra fee, and the fromager, impressed by my limited but existent knowledge of American artisanal cheeses, brought over three extra, aged provolone and parmesan and creamy unnamed sheep's cheese from the back. Pre-dessert, a buttermilk sorbet with tangy foam. Desserts were combination plates, full of beignets with powdered sugar, ice-cream, caramelized banana, cake, nougat, mint panna cotta, and caramel. My favorite was a limey semifreddo served with strawberries. I could have done without the truffles that signified the meal's end, and even without the soft caramels that came as we walked to the car. But each plate maintained the signature of Kinch's sure hand, a delicacy and a beauty that only comes with a deep love of the craft. So I admire the ambition, even if I won't ever return.

For lunch on Friday, I headed to Japantown with my friend A. We went to Tanpopo, for pork broth ramen and then to a crepe place in the Japanese mall for crepes with banana and cinnamon and sugar and butter. Later, I met up with an old friend who, for several years now, has worked as a server at Traci des Jardin's Jardiniere. After a lot of complimentary Laurent-Perrier, we moved on to a complimentary charcuterie plate, the winner of which was the stellar pate and cornichon. We shared salty, pan-seared quail and diver scallops with fava beans and an uni emulsion that mostly tasted of butter. Next came a mid-course of gnocchi and mint and stewed lamb, extremely soft pasta that still took ample space in my stomach. I had to stop before I finished to save room for the next course, halibut and a pork tasting. The pork was rich, but once again too much on my plate. We washed this down with a Littorai pinot noir. Dessert remains a wide gap in my memory, which leads me to believe it wasn't particularly memorable. But the macarons that came with our check were chewy and sweet, a nice end.

Saturday found me first at the Japantown cherry blossom festival, where I watched my friend A. obsess over spam musubi and these little pancakes filled with red bean paste. We went to Absinthe for a drink and bowl of onion soup, a decidedly good version of one of my old favorites. By dinner, we were bored with nice restaurants and had decamped for the Mission, where we ate tacos and burritos and fine guacamole at Puerto Allegre. We ended the day of gluttony with cakes and puddings at Tartine, where I've heard they make a mean croissant (they were out). Instead, I had a lackluster and very sweet lemon meringue cake and a taste of a friend's smooth chocolate pudding, the surefire dessert winner.

Finally, for my last moments in the Bay Area, I pushed through rain and cold in a panda hat to the Ferry Building for lunch at the long-lauded Slanted Door. Thank heavens for my hearty eater friend N., who was up for the challenge of eating through the menu. And thank heavens for our server, who suggested half-portions of some dishes to save room in our stomachs and wallets. As a result, we had room for yellowtail sashimi with Thai basil and fried shallots; spring rolls with pork and prawns and peanut sauce; wood-fired Manila clams in broth with sliced green peppers, onions, and pork belly; sticky pork spareribs; a large daikon rice cake, swimming in soy sauce and cilantro; cellophane noodles with dungeness crab; and sugar snap peas with hen-of-the-woods mushrooms. We drank a surprisingly reasonable 1992 Zilliken spatlese riesling and came out in the clear. So long, San Francisco. Thanks for all the fish.

*

Manresa

320 Village Lane

Los Gatos, CA 95030

408.354.4330

*

Tanpopo

1740 Buchanan Street

San Francisco, CA 94115

415.346.7132

*

Jardiniere

300 Grove Street

San Francisco, CA 94102

415.861.5555

*

Absinthe Brasserie and Bar

398 Hayes Street

San Francisco, CA 94102

415.551.1590

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Puerto Allegre

546 Valencia Street

San Francisco, CA 94110

415.255.8201

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Tartine Bakery

600 Guerrero Street

San Francisco, CA 94110

415.487.2600

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The Slanted Door

1 Ferry Building

San Francisco, CA 94111

415.861.8032

Aloha

If you're wondering where I've been, I slipped off to the west, first to Hawaii and then to San Francisco (where I'm currently typing). San Francisco deserves its own proper blog, and I'll commit to that task later in the week. As for now, I give Oahu its due.

I spent the week with an outpost in Waikiki and from there I explored the leeward and windward sides of the island as well as the island's north shore. On my first afternoon in Waikiki, I ate lunch at Todai, at the suggestion of a friend. Todai is an all-you-can-eat sushi buffet that charges a minimally-invasive $15 at lunch. Sound gross? It wasn't. The sushi bar featured everything from shrimp tempura maki rolls to fresh tuna and avocado maki rolls. Individual pieces of sushi ran the gamut from ama ebi (sweet shrimp) to octopus. Even non-sushi-eaters would find this place a bargain. The cold bar included a range of pickled salads, like kimchi and taro root. The hot bar serves ramen and udon made to order, steamed and fried dumplings, shrimp tempura, addictive barbecue pork, glazed chicken, beef, and other delights. The dessert bar features all those weird and crazy desserts you get at dim sum brunch: gelatin cubes in varying colors, mango pudding, miniature pumpkin pies, crepes with cream. Dinner is $30, but for that still reasonable price, you get sashimi, too. In the late afternoon, I walked to the International Market in Waikiki, where a farmer's market was taking place. I had a pineapple to end all other pineapple-eating--they cut it up for you fresh and deliver it in a plastic bag--and bought some brown fruits called "chicos" and some fresh litchi and green mangoes. I also bought a red papaya, because I could. The chicos are like a sweeter version of a pear.

For dinner that night, we ventured to BLT Steak, where my friend is chef. I've written of the BLTs before, so I won't go into much detail here, though I will say that the Hawaii-inspired grilled corn with barbecue sauce is a nice side, the tomatoes in the tomato and stilton salad are the kind of tomatoes that remind one why all supermarket tomatoes should be permanently banned from sale, and the rib-eye was transcendent, as usual, marked by a thick sear crust and rarety rare in the middle. Chef sent a kurobuta pork belly, braised and served over risotto, a decadent and worthwhile trinket of tastiness. Later, we ate the blackboard special desserts: light steamed chocolate pudding and a coconut mango concoction that I can't explain but enjoyed eating.

The next day's lunchtime found us on the windward side of the island, near Lanikai and Kailua. There's only one place to eat over there and that place is Buzz's Steak House. At lunch, they feature less steak and more stuff. I made the mistake of ordering the house specialty, the "Big F*cking Rum Drink," a mai tai that tastes of diesel fuel and had me sleepy and inebriated for the remainder of the day. I also had a surprisingly great prawn salad. Buzz's was generous and gave me five big, smoky Hawaiian prawns, shell-on. Fresher is always better.

On the first Friday of every month, the art galleries in Honolulu's Chinatown open their doors late and allow in curious wanderers. So after a snorkel trip to famous Hanauma Bay, we headed to Chinatown, for art and Chinese. Chinese was a stop at Little Village Noodle House for fatty steamed pork dumplings, fried rice with tiny shrimp and roast pork, and a dish simply called "volcano." Pork chops are cut and flattened and battered in wondra and then dusted with five spice powder and flash fried. Then, they are put into a large aluminum foil egg, along with garlic, and set on fire at the table. The result is crisped pork and crisped garlic. It could have used an accompanying sauce, and the portion was so large it was almost ridiculous, but it made for good leftovers; I seared the pork in oil Sunday morning for my own personal Easter brunch.

On Saturday, I met up with friends of my father and we went to the Kapiulani Community College where, on Saturday mornings, a fine market opens and closes before eleven. We arrived in the nick of time and scored fried green tomatoes with wasabi aioli, tall glasses of fresh lemonade, butterfish (known to easterners as black cod) over salmon fried rice, curried rice with dried cranberries, and fried rice with some kind of sausage. It was a fine way to start the morning and sustenance for our long drive to the often unvisited leeward side of the island.

I met back up with my host for dinner and we hunted down Irefune, known by everyone for their "garlic ahi." Irefune offers a variety of combination plates that feature the ahi, so I ordered the garlic king crab legs (messy, but sublime) along with my ahi. The dish also came with miso soup, a salad, Asian cole slaw, and rice. For $17. And the ahi? It was cooked through and tasted of a fine marinated steak. You really have to like garlic, which, in my case, is no real dilemma. For dessert, we drove a little farther down the road to famous Leonard's for malasadas, a type of Portuguese donut that somehow made it to the island years ago. Leonard's has a few different varieties, including a "flavor of the month," which rotates seasonally between mango, lilikoi (passion fruit), pineapple, and some kind of nut. We are in mango season now, so mango it was, along with plain (dusted with Li Hing Mui sugar, or the island's well-known "salted plum sugar") and custard. Custard and mango won the battle. The donuts are round and leak cream when you bite into them and are best eaten hot or warm. The mango cream is less like a jam and more like a decadent custard that just happens to have mango in it. I'm glad there is no Leonard's near where I live or I would weigh 300 pounds.

Sunday's meals are not worth a mention, so I'll soldier on to Monday. For a late dinner, we headed to Side Street Inn, which is really a local outpost and also where people in the restaurant industry eat after work. Side Street is really a dive, which is part of what I loved about it. Pulled pork buns came with grilled pineapple and a sticky, yummy barbecue sauce. A salad of shrimp and dressed greens satisfied my healthy impulses, as did some of the finest poke I've had: cubed raw ahi tuna with soy sauce, Maui onions, and seaweed. The tuna is impossibly red. Kal-bi, or marinated bone-in short ribs, on the other hand, satisfied my unhealthy impulses. We could have skipped the massive plate of fried rice, which had spam hidden somewhere in it. But I would go back for the buns and short ribs.

On Tuesday, I took a trip alone to the north shore. The car rental people ran out of compact cars and gave me a convertible instead. My first stop in Hale'iwa was Aoki Shave Ice, not as famous as the idolized Matsumoto's, but equally good. They make their own syrups and keep them cold. I got rainbow. I don't know what flavors they put in there, but it was the perfect breakfast, regardless. (Please, don't judge.) As I made my way up and back around the leeward side, I stopped first at Giovanni's Shrimp Truck for six garlic shrimp in hot oil over rice. The shrimp trucks are world-famous, and there are many of them, but I was told to stick to Giovanni's. Next time, I'll do some comparison shopping. The shrimp were shell-on and scalding hot, but were also completely delicious and dripping in garlicky oil. I saved room for Uncle Bobo's, right outside of the Polynesian Cultural Center, where I ate a pulled pork sandwich with homemade barbecue sauce that was roughly the size and shape of a nerf football. They gave me all the crispy bits, and for this I thank them.

I had dinner alone at the Honolulu version of Matsugen, the noodle master's first restaurant in the United States. Unlike the Manhattan restaurant, which is in conjunction with Jean Georges and which charges an outrageous $30 to $50 a plate, Honolulu's modest Matsugen charges a more reasonable $13. I ate soy-pickled cucumbers and drank a glass of plum wine on ice (a taste for which I share with a family member) and had fresh buckwheat soba, cold, dipped in a soup of pureed daikon and perfect Japanese mushrooms. The restaurant was filled with Japanese, slurping their soba and udon. I can't think of a more modest decent meal in Waikiki.

On my final afternoon in Hawaii, I went to the Asian grocery store near where I stayed, Don Quijote. Don't ask me why the name is Mexican; I have no idea. In the store's fish department, they sell ten different types of ahi poke and a bunch of different kinds of kimchi. The fish counter guy will let you try whichever one you want with a toothpick. I bought a quarter pound of fresh ahi tossed in soy sauce and green onion for a staggering $2.50. Add to that a quarter pound of cucumber kimchi for $1.00 and you have the perfect poor man's meal. I met back up with my father's friends for dinner and we went for Korean barbecue at Gyu-Kaku. It was one of the craziest, most frenetic meals of my life. Like me, my father's friend has an impulse to order everything, and does. We ate fried calamari and edamame and deep-fried cheese dumplings and ahi poke and bibimbap (Korean rice pot with soft cooked egg) and kimchi ramen and seaweed soup. And then the barbecue came: two different types of marinated skirt steak, scallops, shrimp, filet mignon, zucchini, eggplant, corn, onions, tuna, enoki mushrooms, white button mushrooms. We dipped everything in sauce and finished every bite and then, when dessert came, we finished that, too. Dessert, tiny pancakes grilled on the barbecue and topped with azuki bean and green tea ice-creams and maple syrup, was the perfect sweet goodbye to Honolulu.

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Todai Restaurant

1910 Ala Moana Boulevard

Honolulu, HI 96815

808.947.1000

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BLT Steak

223 Saratoga Road

Honolulu, HI 96815

808.683.7440

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Buzz's Original Steak House

413 Kawailoa Road

Kailua, HI 96734

808.261.4661

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Little Village Noodle House

1113 Smith Street

Honolulu, HI 96817

808.545.3008

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Irefune

563 Kapahulu Avenue

Honolulu, HI 96816

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Leonard's Bakery

933 Kapahulu Avenue

Honolulu, HI 96816

808.737.5591

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Side Street Inn

1225 Hopaka Street

Honolulu, HI 96814

808.591.0253

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Aoki Shave Ice

66-117 Kamehameha Highway

Hale'iwa, HI 96712

808.637.7017

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Giovanni's Shrimp Truck

83 Kamehameha Highway

Kahuku, HI 96731

808.293.1839

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Uncle Bobo's

51-480 Kamehameha Highway

Kaaawa, HI 96730

808.206.7479

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Matsugen

255 Beach Walk

Honolulu, HI 96815

808.926.0255

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Don Quijote

801 Kaheka Street

Honolulu, HI 96814

808.973.4800

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Gyu-Kaku

1221 Kapiolani Boulevard

Honolulu, HI 96814

808.589.2989