Playing With My Friends

Another stress fracture has me grounded, which means less time with my running sneakers and more time doing... something else. I have to remember to exercise restraint with food during the next two months, or I'll be forced to wear nothing but leggings while my skinny jeans writhe in protest. Yesterday wasn't a good start to period of said restraint.

I was invited to see my favorite married couple for bloody marys and burgers. In addition to burgers--ground beef, short rib, and chorizo--we ate pizza pomodoro from the Jim Lahey bread book and cookies from City Bakery and these weird cheesy balls that came from a packaged Brazilian bread mix. That, paired with the leftover cookie dough I ate for breakfast (give me a break--it was whole-wheat dough) would have probably racked up enough calories for the day, but I was hungry, hungry, hungry by the time I made it to Mad for Chicken in Koreatown at ten o'clock.

Mad for Chicken is like the worst nightclub you've ever been to that also happens to sell the best fried chicken. You have to wait for an hour for your table. The bartenders are beyond incompetent. The drinks--a lychee mojito for me--are doused in sugar and bad rum. The clientele is "Asian club kid." If you aren't familiar with that clientele, no need to be.

But then, you sit at one of the Mad for Chicken tables and they bring you insanely spicy crunchy kimchi chicken wings with pickled daikon and celery sticks and this weird cheese and rice-cake casserole that kind of tastes like Spaghetti O's and larger plates of non-spicy-but-equally-crunchy drumsticks and Mexican corn rolled in mayonnaise and queso and chili powder and pretty much everything is okay with the world. In our case, they also brought these ridiculous glass kegs of beer that were topped with dry ice, creating the illusion that the beer was smoking. Each keg was five liters. Our group drank three of them. I won't get into the mathematical possibilities of that, but suffice to say that our bill came to a whopping thirty bucks a person, including tip, so if you want to eat really good fried chicken and drink until you think that playing dominoes is normal and socially acceptable dinner behavior (as two of my co-eaters did), head to K-town asap.

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Mad for Chicken

314 5th Avenue, 2nd floor

New York, NY 10001

212.221.2222

I Can't Get Enough

Pizza.  That's right: pizza.  I wouldn't want to miss paying my respects to the establishments I visited during my sojourn upstate earlier this week.  On Wednesday night, I dined at Schlesinger's, the kind of steakhouse that reminds me of what steakhouses were like when I was younger.  A shared French onion soup was sufficiently cheesy and bready and terribly unhealthy.  A Ball canning jar on our table housed over a dozen tiny half-sour pickles. My complimentary salad was large, crunchy, and judiciously dressed.  And my ribeye, 20 ounces without a bone and a good inch-plus thick, came with the requisite grill marks and deckle fat.  What it didn't come with was the New York City price tag (this baby only cost a paltry $24).

The next afternoon, it was more meat, this time at Richard's Dairy Shed, where I enjoyed a burger on a plain roll with lettuce, tomato, onion, ketchup, and mayo.  It would have been better with pickles, but it was fresh and hot and wrapped in wax paper.  In my hands, it didn't last long.

For an evening snack, we visited Wildfire Grill in downtown Montgomery.  Somewhat rubbery calamari and decent Southwest "wontons" (egg roll wrappers filled with chicken, cheese, corn, and black beans) gave way to sublime tail-on shrimp wrapped in crisp bacon and roasted.  It was a shame to see so few on the plate. 

But back in the city, it was pizza time.  We headed to Franny's in Park Slope, where I had heard the pizzas were too good to keep secret.  Marinated pickling cucumbers came with delicate and perfect buffalo ricotta and sliced red onions.  Sugar snap peas, blanched and served cold, had been dressed with a mint-infused oil and lemon juice and topped with fresh cracked pepper.  They were highly addictive.  A piece of crostini with ramp butter and thin strips of pancetta tasted like the best garlic bread I have ever eaten.  

So the pizzas?  They were okay.  We ordered a pie and a pasta.  The Franny's go-to is the clam pie, but I ate a clam pie two weeks ago at Tarry Lodge and was feeling a tomato base.  So we had pizza with buffalo mozzarella and sausage and it was crispy and black at the edges and that was lovely.  But the pizza's center was soggy and didn't hold up to meager toppings.  I found myself a little disappointed. 

The pasta was tasty enough, peppered with sweet peas and chiffonades of salami.  The sauce was green, but less overtly vegetal than a basil pesto.  The spaghetti itself, cooked very al dente, picked up the sauce well.  It could have used a few more peas.

For dessert, we ate almond pound cake (impressively moist) with macerated tristar strawberries and a spoonful of whipped cream.  It was the perfect June dessert, even if the pizza wasn't all that. 

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Schlesinger's Steak House 

475 Temple Hill Road

New Windsor, NY 12553 

845.561.1762

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Richard's Dairy Shed

1103 State Route 17k

Montgomery, NY 12549

845.457.5112

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Wildfire Grill

74 Clinton Street

Montgomery, NY 12549

845.457.3770

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Franny's

295 Flatbush Avenue

Brooklyn, NY 11217

718.230.0221