Absence Makes The Heart Go Hungry

I apologize for my absence in the blogosphere. Life has invariably taken over writing, filled with weddings and airport delays and all of the trappings of real versus virtual. This isn't to say that recent food adventures have not been noteworthy (some have; some haven't), but by now my mental notes have dwindled to a few dim memories.

But who can go on vacation without one last meal? I leave tonight, and last night's last supper happened to coincide with my friend's 30th birthday party. Said friend's sister and I planned a dinner for eleven people at Back Forty, known mostly for its grass-fed burger. But this was no burger-fest. Instead, it was a down-home Maryland crab boil, replete with newsprint tablecloths and wooden mallets. In New England, we eat lobster. I hadn't ever been to a crab boil, and I'm not completely sure I'd go again. It was fun, but it was also messy and complicated.

For forty bucks a person, the kind folks at Back Forty will deliver an appetizer of salt cod fritters, served with a spicy mayonnaise dip. Next comes crabs in three separate (and large) deliveries, silver buckets turned over the newsprint as Old Bay-doused suckers tumble every which way. The waitress instructs the table on proper crab-procuring procedure, which involves peeling back the outer tab of the shell "like a beer can," snapping off the shell's top, and twisting each leg off. The legs have almost no meat, and the body has slivers underneath useless gills; the spongy devils must be removed by hand. The real treasures are the claws, but the tough shells can't really be done by hand. That's what the mallets are for, but be forewarned that hitting a crab claw with a mallet forces crab juice in many directions. All my crabs seemed to squirt in the direction of my boyfriend's eyes.

With dinner came grilled corn rolled in Old Bay and boiled in salt and butter. These were fine, but no match for the fruit cobbler at meal's end, some happy combination (we think) of blueberry and peach, shortcake, and whipped cream. I don't know how many crabs I ate; we must have plowed through at least one hundred, and that's no exaggeration. And while the crustaceans were tasty enough, I'm not so sure I'd want to work that hard for my food on a regular basis.

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Back Forty

190 Avenue B

New York, NY 10009

212.388.1990

Changing Weather

On Thursday, I went out to Park Slope to see a friend's show and decided to stop for a bite on 7th Avenue at a tiny place appropriately called Little D Eatery.  Little D has all kinds of small plates, but I kept it simple.  A running nightly special includes a whole grilled fish, and on Thursday that fish was striped bass, a fish I like very much.  I asked for the bass filleted, and it came with bright green olive oil and preserved lemon.  

Pickled red cabbage was deliciously crunchy and roasted asparagus did right by us.  As a reward for such a healthy meal, I ordered the root beer float, made with root beer ice-cream and served in a cold mug with Virgil's root beer.  It was a little too root beery; it might have been more clever to serve root beer ice-cream with vanilla soda.  

Friday was a series of small meals.  I grabbed a slice at the new Roman-style pizza joint on Park Avenue called Golosi.  Roman-style means the pizza is sold by the inch, and it also means that you can get tiny portions of a lot of different varieties of pizza, which, for someone like myself, is kind of heaven.  

I only wish the pizza had been better.  It was crispy, sure, but it was also fairly flavorless.  The sauce had no bite.  It was like flatbread, only less interesting.  I thought a scoop of birthday cake gelato would redeem the mediocre pizza, but, alas, the gelato was grainy and not at all creamy like it is in Italy.  

Later in the evening, I stopped by Kampuchea on the Lower East Side for another small meal.  The pickle plate involved cucumbers, white onions, daikon, and spicy cabbage.  Yum.  Grilled corn came topped with kewpie mayonnaise, chili pepper, and toasted coconut.  Sound gross?  It isn't.  Mayonnaise and corn is effing amazing.  Kampuchea also offers, for a scant $17, a tasting of their sandwiches (choose three).  I chose a bacon sandwich, a meatball sandwich, and a barbecue pork sandwich.  All resembled the classic banh mi (baguette, pickled veg, cilantro) and none was as good as my recent banh mi adventures, but for the price, I could hardly complain.  

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Little D Eatery

434 7th Avenue

718.369.3144

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Golosi

125 Park Avenue

New York, NY 10017

212.922.1169

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Kampuchea Noodle Bar

80 Rivington Street

New York, NY 10002

212.529.3901