Apologies, Apologies

For my extended absence. I had a wedding in Mexico, which, beyond tequila, is not worth reporting (beach was beautiful, resort food was resort food). I found myself back in professional eater-mode when I hit the city again. Actually, a trip up to Larchmont, NY, where my parents live, yielded a noteworthy dining experience on Thursday. We ate at Plates, a small restaurant run by a Per Se alum. My own personal Moment of Zen? A cru Champagne poured by the glass for--gasp!--$13. What are these guys, the Robin Hoods of restaurants? I could have scored a foie terrine for just as little, but ate the smoked chicken wings instead. They are best compared to Momofuku Noodle Bar's (I'll get to those later), but are grilled instead of seared in a pan. Who knows how they get smoky and spicy beforehand. I'm not sure I want to.

The night's special was baked ham with baked beans and cole slaw. I took the bait and was not disappointed. The slabs that made it to my plate were the fattiest and most worthwhile pieces and made an excellent breakfast the next morning. We ordered no dessert and so, in true restaurant VIP fashion, we were awarded a giant ring ding for our efforts. Somebody--I won't name names--hogged all the cream.

When we were leaving, I talked to the general manager about his suspiciously approachable prices. Champagne for $13? Was it made by trolls? No, he assured me. He just believed in charging people fair prices that would actually encourage them to become regular guests. Imagine that. A restaurant manager more concerned with guests than the almighty buck. You don't see that too often.

I guess I should compare that experience to Sunday's, in which I spirited around the city in search of gastronomical greatness. Brunch was a bowl of "rice noodle with crispy meat sauce" at Yun Nan Flavour Snack in Sunset Park. Don't go for the ambience, because there isn't any. Go for the slippery rice noodles, which are impossible to eat without chopsticks, or for the spicy chili paste that tops each bowl, or for the faint song of cilantro, or for the crispy pork bits that are either skin or belly (but I don't care what they are). Go because a huge bowl will last two days--I eat as I type--for four bucks. Just go.

In light of a great Thursday meal and a transcendent Sunday breakfast, I was hoping for more boom than whimper on Sunday night. We started with octopus and a pie (as in a pizza pie) at Motorino in the East Village. The octopus was intolerably fishy. But the pie was worth the adventure: doughy, black-bottomed, and smeared with a sweet tomato sauce.

Then came the disaster of the evening, Momofuku Noodle Bar. While we waited for our table, we drank a soju apple cider slushie, a ludicrously awesome invention that is sure to get even the most hardcore alcoholic a little buzzy. But that was the best the place had to offer. A soy sauce egg was, um, salty. Ok, fine. Our chicken wings were good, but I kept thinking about the wings at Plates, which might have been better and were definitely cheaper. Also, I happen to know that the Momofuku wings are cooked in pork fat for almost a whole day, so those calories might undo any beliefs I once held about their greatness. The rice cakes were crispy and toothsome at the same time, the perfect consistency. Too bad the sticky sauce didn't hold a candle to them. The worst tragedy of all, however, was the $22 seared foie gras. It arrived both undercooked and cold atop salty pineapple and next to a weird miso-brown butter sauce that was more savory than sweet. All that fat and you need sweet to cut it. No dice on this plate. The consistency of the lobe was so far off that we ate less than one bite apiece and then pretended to be full when the server--a former co-worker--came to collect the plates. She didn't ask any questions anyway. "If you didn't know her, I would have sent it back," my friend said.

Well, anyway. She should have noticed our apparent disgust. Also, unless those ducks are eating gold, $22 is highway robbery for four ounces of foie (and it may have been less). I'm over it. If only they sold those slushies from a street cart.

*

Plates

121 Myrtle Boulevard

Larchmont, NY 10538

914.834.1244

*

Yun Nan Flavour Snack

775A 49th Street

Brooklyn, NY 11220

718.633.3090

*

Motorino East Village

349 East 12th Street

New York, NY 10003

212.477.9950

*

Momofuku Noodle Bar

171 1st Avenue

New York, NY 10003

212.777.7773

Holidaze

On my way north from New York, my brother and I hit bad traffic on the Merritt Parkway, which somehow ended in a discussion about where we should eat. I usually don't stop at all on the four hour drive to Massachusetts, but I also usually drive alone. This time, with night approaching and my stomach forging a convincing argument about stopping for dinner, I took my brother's advice and took at detour in New Haven.

Now, he claims that he didn't really know how to get to Frank Pepe's, home of Connecticut's best pizza. I remember the details differently. Regardless, we drove around on New Haven's convoluted one way streets for 45 minutes before we found the Italian district. By then, we were famished and slightly opposed to waiting in line behind yuppies buying pizza. We made a decision to take ours to go, convinced in part by the cankle-y and cantankerous waitress who barked at us to wait outside. Twenty minutes later, a pierced pizza attendant slashed our pie (half-mushroom, half-pepperoni) into odd-sized slices and we hit the road again. With no napkins.

Let it be known that I have driven without a seatbelt, have texted while driving, and have, in my youth, made other unsafe driving decisions, but deciding to drive three hours while eating a hot pizza--pizza that dripped down my shirt and onto my expensive jeans--may have been my most hazardous driving decision yet. Imagine negotiating the road, a manual transmission, and a drippy mushroom slice simultaneously. Not good. But what was good, and well worth the hazard, was the dough, giving slightly at the tooth. And my brother and I, perhaps inspired by all good American road trips, ate all but two small pieces of our large pie, furiously fighting the resultant food coma. It was the all-American lead in to the all-American holiday.

As for the holiday itself, I reigned in my over-preparatory impulses this year, sticking to basics. Appetizers may have still been over-the-top (I judge this by the amount of leftovers amassed), but no harm, no foul. My six-cheese American artisanal platter from Murray's went over well enough, even if I did find myself with too much Rogue River Blue afterwards.

Our first-course spread included sauteed jumbo shrimp with a parsley pesto (nuts omitted), a giant pickle plate (made from New York greenmarket veggies: Tokyo turnips, red ball radishes, carrots, fennel, celery, shitake mushrooms, Asian pears, pumpkin, and cucumbers), Broadbent ham with red-eye gravy and whole-grain bread, pork dumplings with a soy-ginger dipping sauce, miniature muffins from my mother, pate from Stinky Brooklyn, and a concord grape compote and fennel-pumpkin grain mustard to accompany the cheeses.

I brined a 25-pound turkey in brown sugar, salt, water, green peppercorns, rosemary, thyme, oranges and lemons. We basted with butter and the result was a brown and moist bird, one of the prettiest I've seen. Our roasted Brussels sprouts were not as charred as we would have liked, but they went over well enough. We always make too much cranberry sauce (an old family recipe), but my brother can eat it by the bucket. Caramelized onions were a modest hit. My mother made mashed sweet potatoes with sauteed apples. Pureed butternut squash and mashed potatoes came from the homes of others. Stuffing was our greatest accomplishment: three loaves of bread disappeared in minutes. The secret: Two and a half pounds of mushrooms, fresh sage/rosemary/thyme, and four or five ounces of rendered chicken fat. Even cooked outside of the bird, it tasted poultried enough.

For dessert, I used a Martha Stewart recipe for a pumpkin pudding, but the recipe, I later discovered, was wrong, requiring too much salt. The end product was a savory custard, so to cut the saltiness, I made a cocoa bourbon whipped cream and layered three inches of it atop the pudding in a trifle bowl. Family members brought chocolate farm cakes, a blueberry pie, a fruit tart, a winter fruit pie with walnut crumb topping, a cheesecake, and brownies, in addition to the butterscotch blondies baked by my mother. We're swimming in dessert here. I'm ready to go home to escape the sugar shock.

And so, I'll be dragging home some leftovers this afternoon, in addition to a lovely gift given me by a farmer friend who works at Russell Orchards: pickled dilly beans, summer squash with turmeric, blueberry jam, and apple butter. Not to mention three dozen farm cakes. So much for dieting through the holidays.

*
Frank Pepe's Pizzeria
157 Wooster Street
New Haven, CT 06501
203.865.5762

*
Russell Orchards
143 Argilla Road
Ipswich, MA 01938
978.356.5366

Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Gluttonday

You get the picture.

I guess Sundays are my "free days," in which I pay less attention to the nutritive value of what I eat. That isn't to say all bets are off (I was offered a late-afternoon cupcake by a friend and declined), but it does mean my standards are lowered a notch.

For lunch, I went to Sunset Park's Ba Xuyen, known for their banh mis. But instead of sandwiches, we had soups, two steamy bowls of pho filled with noodles, shrimp, boiled quail eggs, cilantro, bean sprouts, pork sausage, and boiled beef. I made mine pretty spicy with the help of some nearby chili paste, but regardless, the soup was soul-satisfying. I skipped the boiled beef, which always freaks me out a little. The shrimp was enough protein for me.

Later, I had a birthday dinner planned with a friend, but we were early for our reservation. Walking past Sushi of Gari on 77th and Columbus, we decided that we had to begin our evening with raw fish. Maybe we didn't have to order toro, snapper, and hamachi, but we did anyway. Three perfect sushi pieces came with the perfect compliments. Atop fatty toro, we received a salty radish puree. Hamachi came with lightly pickled jalapenos and my snapper was topped with something deep-fried and something else involving nuts. The pieces were perfect and I think we both wished we had time--and money--for omakase.

But we had a reservation to make down the street, at Dovetail, where the Sunday Suppah is a 3-course meal for $38 (not including extras, supplements, and alcohol). My starter of beef tartare tasted really ketchupy, which I liked, though others at my table disagreed. Perhaps they were put off by the accompanying huckleberries, but I liked the contrast of salty and sweet. Seared foie gras was by the book (served with something sweet--in this case, huckleberries again), and a salt-cooked onion was layered with unexpected shaved black truffles. It was difficult to cut, though worth the challenge. Crab ravioli sang with a smokiness imparted by diced chorizo.

My entree of chicken was tasty enough, left moist and draped with a crack-your-tooth crunch layer of skin. I could have done without feta cheese creamed spinach and I only ate the boring root veggies out of respect for the vitamins they possessed. A cheese plate did us fine. Dovetail pits old world cheeses against their Vermont counterparts. In this case, the Jasper Hill Bayley Hazen Blue lost to a runny and pungent French blue. The sheep's milk cheeses were a tad bland for my taste, though I loved the onion and black pepper jam that joined them.

I would have passed on dessert, had they not arrived in that obligatory "share all" fashion. Apple crumble was fine, though the real highlight of the plate was Calvados ice-cream. I didn't care for the peanut butter and chocolate moussy thing, and could have skipped the sorbets and ice-creams entirely. A warm bread pudding with black mission figs came with a nice glass of malted Ovaltine, not a bad way to end the evening. By then, our heads were swimming from a 2008 Brocard Chablis and a 2007 COS Nero d' Avola. The expensive wine list plundered any notions of a cheap Sunday Suppah. But then, wasn't that to be expected?

*

Ba Xuyen

4222 8th Avenue

Brooklyn, NY 11232

718.663.6601

*

Sushi of Gari

370 Columbus Avenue

New York, NY 10024

212.362.4816

*

Dovetail

103 West 77th Street

New York, NY 10024

212.362.3800

Celebrity Sighting

Saturday night is amateur night, so no, I did not expect to see any famous people, even though I had been warned that the Bowery Hotel plays host to the creme de la creme. But there I was, tucked into a cozy booth at Gemma, waiting for my sister, and when I looked up I discovered Julianne Moore and Family three tables down.

Five minutes later, Max Fischer from Rushmore (a.k.a. Jason Schwartzman) sat one table next to Julianne. I wonder if celebrities give one another the obligatory wave that I give to fellow runners I see in rural places. Probably not.

We were well cared-for at Gemma, despite how busy they were. A call to a friend meant no wait for us, a coveted position for any Saturday night diner in New York. My sister's Coca-Cola and my bellini arrived gratis, as did dessert. Our arugula salad was crisp and fresh, topped with several thin shaves of parmesan cheese. A charcuterie platter was a bit of a disappointment--the meats tasted a little process-y and the cheeses (two of them) were too similar. They were good, yes, but I would have preferred more contrast. Instead, we were met with nearly identical semi-firm cheeses, about which not much was divulged.

But nevermind. Our pasta had been thickened with starchy cooking water and the sauce stuck perfectly to coiled noodles, the name of which escapes me. Spicy sausage in the dish was neither too fiery nor too tame. Our pizza was paper thin, crispy, blackened in the right places. It never betrayed the weight of its (admittedly light) toppings: tomato sauce, cheese, and fresh basil. Maybe our bing cherry clafouti could have used a few more cherries, but the custard was buttery enough to forgive the oversight.

The truly epic--and quite unexpected--turn of the evening came nearly at meal's end, when a familiar face appeared hovering over our corner table. It was my New Jersey-dwelling uncle, who just happened to be an hour from his home at the same restaurant as us, celebrating the 60th birthday of a friend. He and my aunt were the celebrity sighting that neither my sister nor I saw coming. I always say New York is the smallest city on earth.

*

Gemma

335 Bowery

New York, NY 10003

212.505.9100

Where It's Hip To Be... Hip

Williamsburg. Proverbial home of the hipster. If you don't have bangs and a pair of skinny jeans, may I suggest sticking to Park Slope?

I guess somewhere along the line, I, too, became a hipster. Note what my friend C. said as we walked in the door at Rye last night: "See, if you don't have a haircut like that girl [pointing at the waitress with really dark, shoulder-length hair and straight down bangs], or like Genavieve [noting that I also have really dark, shoulder-length hair and slightly overgrown straight down bangs], you'll never fit in here." That comparison scares me a little. Our waitress was dopey to the point of common thievery. Our bill, which arrived after a good long period of our party of five sitting around and staring at empty water glasses, exceeded what we had actually spent by $80.

But nevermind. The food was good. C's mother kept talking about how bare and unclean the walls were. In Williamsburg, that's cool. Maybe I would have minded if the lobster bisque hadn't been so rich and lobstery with a hint of spice at the finish. Maybe I would have been staring at the walls, too, had I not been digging into my endive/apple/bacon/walnut/blue cheese salad. Everything was julienned, turning the salad into a giant, cheesy cole slaw. Maybe I would have felt less satisfied if the meatloaf sandwich--suitable for at least three hungry eaters--hadn't actually tasted like the duck, veal, and pork from which it hailed. Or if the pickles hadn't been perfect. Or if the French fries had arrived late or cold, which they did not.

Beausoleil oysters were clean and fresh and a dozen didn't punish our pocketbooks the way a la carte oysters do in Manhattan. Our teeny tiny quail came with bittersweet radicchio and a precious mold of polenta. The only disappointment came in the form of macaroni and cheese, which is rarely a disappointment. But despite the lardon and the tasty noodles, the cheese sauce was insufficiently creamy, a rookie mistake.

For dessert, we headed to Penny Licks, a half-vegan/half-regular ice-cream shop on Bedford. Considering the fact that they still had over an hour left until close time, they were out of a good number of things, including the "penny lick" size cones and all of the sundaes. I had a half-dairy-half-vegan ice-cream, which amounted to mint chip ice-cream (regular) topped with a scoop of pumpkin pie ice-cream (vegan). I have no idea what is in vegan ice-cream and I prefer to remain in the dark. The baked goods looked promising. I probably should have gone for the red velvet cake instead. My ice-cream was fine, but nothing to write blogs about.

*

Rye

247 S. 1st Street

Brooklyn, NY 11211

718.218.8047

*

Penny Licks

158 Bedford Avenue

Brooklyn, NY 11211

718.384.0158

A Better Burger?

Lately, I've been confronted with all kinds of ethical eating issues. I've stopped eating beef and chicken without first knowing their provenance. Michael Pollan scared me, and I'm not interested in being one of the huddled masses who unthinkingly consumes chickens that have been standing around in their own waste, pecking at their own waste, yearning to breathe free. Cutting most commercial chicken and beef from my diet has some consequences. Fewer burgers, for one, not that I ate too many to begin with. But, I must confess, I've always loved a traditional American burger with the traditional American accoutrement. And these days, McDonald's just won't cut it.

On a bus ride home from the city last week, I met a fellow food liberator who happens to live in my neighborhood. She gardens, blogs, and seems to live the perfect sustainable lifestyle. I'm teeming with jealousy. She also happens to be an excellent resource for where to find local and organic stuff here in Astoria, which is, most of the time, a locavore's nightmare.

Which is how I found out about Bare Burger.

Actually, I had walked by it before, but I really just thought it was another faddy burger joint, selling patties for ten bucks. Truth be told, it's kind of an eden. The decor--including awesome light fixtures made from those metal spoons that so often disappear in restaurants--comes entirely from recycled things. The burgers (take your pick of elk, ostrich, turkey, chicken, or beef) are all organic. Instead of Heinz ketchup, which contains High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS is not organic because the corn used to produce it is genetically-modified. FYI), Bare Burger serves Annie's organic. Instead of store-bought burger buns, they offer a choice of brioche or multi-grain, both baked locally. Fries are done in peanut oil. Onion rings appear to come from real onions. The list goes on.

I had a turkey burger on multi-grain with a touch of mayo and some Annie's. Okay, it tasted like turkey, but I'm not expecting miracles here. I also had a tiny cob of corn, grilled to almost-burnt, which is how I prefer it. My lunch date had a beef bacon-cheeseburger on brioche and panko-dipped onion rings. He's a tough customer, so when he deemed his burger "delicious," I had to trust that it was.

Sodas are Boylan's and coffee is direct-trade. What more could someone like me ask for in a place like this?

*

Bare Burger

3321 31st Avenue

Astoria, NY 11106

718.777.7011

Detox And Retox

I was "keeping it clean" this past week, in preparation for yesterday's ING New York Marathon. (Yes, I finished; no, I did not qualify for Boston.) That meant a bunch of whole grains, vegetables, and lean meats leading into the race. On Tuesday, a friend and I opted for nice, clean Asian cuisine, and, for lack of better ideas, stumbled upon Indonesian at Minangasli in Jackson Heights.

I've never had Indonesian food before, so I'm not sure what I would compare it to. An egg pancake was more like the delicious skin of an egg roll, deep-fried and served with a viscous soy sauce that was almost good enough to eat straight. Our satay combination platter included beef, lamb, and chicken (though the meats were virtually interchangeable) and came with the traditional accoutrement: peanut sauce, cubed cucumbers, red onion. It was tasty enough. But the true meaning of Indonesian food was best expressed to us upon the arrival of our noodles.

They were medium-width noodles like the ones you might find in Pad Thai, covered with browned mushrooms, bean sprouts, and ground meat. On top, three delicate fried wontons greeted us. They were stuffed with an equally delicate meat. On the side arrived a bowl of fragrant broth with tiny, perfect meatballs. We divided the broth, squeezed in some of whatever hot sauce happened to be on that particular table, and dumped our noodles in. The result was perfumy, light, and all in all worth the trip.

That was my last real meal of note until last night, when, in celebration of my own feat (and feet), I lined up for a rib-eye at Prime Meats in Carroll Gardens. I've written about Prime Meats in the past, but I have been waiting for the select opportunity to sample their 36-day dry-aged prime rib-eye (bone-in, of course), priced $1.80/ounce. If you know anything about steakhouses in New York, you know that this per ounce price is criminally low. I hoped it would be worth it.

We began with a crispy salad of celery and celery greens, a plate of addictive (and addictively fatty) lamb ribs, and a soft pretzel with butter and mustard. The salad was dressed with sunflower oil, showcasing the celery-ness of it. The lamb ribs were smoky, charred, and perfect, accompanied by beautiful roasted slices of local squash.

And then the steak. Nearly fifty ounces of it. By the time it arrived, by body had started to revolt. I wasn't hungry, but I soldiered on, making not even a small dent in our chop. The dickle, pure fat, melted. I skipped the chimichurri sauce--an applaudable version--in favor of the steak on its own, showcased only by Maldon salt. The char was perfect, the meat tender (it almost did not require a knife). I ate two pieces and packed the rest up, a moment of clarity that will bring much joy during tonight's Yankee game. Our big bowl of perfect French fries remained untouched and I offered it to the kitchen gods. It was my mistake for over-ordering. But I brought the tender mushroom spaetzle home; it, too, was not worth parting with.

*

Minangasli

8610 Whitney Avenue

Elmhurst, NY 11373

718.429.8207

*

Prime Meats

465 Court Street

Brooklyn, NY 11231

718.254.0327

Hungry Caterpillar

Remember Eric Carle's book The Very Hungry Caterpillar? You know, the one where the caterpillar eats through a watermelon, a sausage, a slice of Swiss cheese, and various other tasty finds, only to lead himself to a fierce tummy ache and metamorphosis? Well, I had an Eric Carle moment, sans metamorphosis. It went something like this:

I agreed to go to an early evening movie in the City and suggested a "snack" first. This was initially supposed to be a slice, probably from Artichoke, but somehow we decided that we were going to have pork buns as a snack. Only pork buns. You can get said buns at Momofuku Milk Bar, but you have to stand while you eat them. Instead, we opted for Ssam next door. Presented with a full menu, we did what any normal snackers would do. We ordered two sets of pork buns, a ham plate with red-eye gravy (mayonnaise and coffee, for the uninformed), a pickle plate, and a heaping portion of ground sausage with deep-fried rice cakes. The Edward's ham was not as rich and fatty as I remembered, though the mayonnaise would have hidden any flaw. I found the rice cakes to be overcooked and the pork buns, though still tasty, a bit heavy on the pork fat this time around. Is Ssam Bar slipping after their *** rating? Time will tell.

I skipped popcorn at the movies, which was a wise move, since dinner time (9pm, only a scant three hours after our "snack") found us at Daniel Boulud's new haunt, DBGB. I wore sweatpants out and hardly expected to end up at a scene-y downtown bistro. I knew that I would run into people I knew (we saw two, a waiter we knew from another restaurant, and a chef whom we had loved and lost to San Francisco) and that this familiarity would spiral into the vortex of free stuff. End tally of comps: three glasses of dessert wine, two desserts, one cheese plate, roughly $100 worth of bad-for-you goodness.

It really is appalling to think about what we ate last night, so I suppose I shouldn't have been so surprised at my own tummy's reaction. We began with veal tongue and gribiche, along with a thick and fatty chicken/pork liver pate. The pate came with too little bread, my main complaint, though I was happy to see that all the bread before us fell into the whole-wheat category. The cornichons and pickled pearl onions, though scarce, were, as always, the perfect counterpoint for good pate.

Whole-wheat bread could not prevent the descent into gluttony that came next. A very long and very deep-fried pig trotter came with some kind of mayonnaise dipping sauce. Bone marrow, sliced the long way, was topped with black mustard seeds and arrived with toast points and house-cured pastrami. Our sausages were supposed to be the highlight of the evening--the restaurant serves over ten--but I found them slightly disappointing. The Berliner, a boudin blanc served with an under-cured sauerkraut, was a touch more sweet than savory. The Vermont was nicely blistered, but I'm a little freaked out by the concept of cheese in my pork sausage. Must be a Jewish thing.

For dessert, we kept right on ordering. First, baked Alaska, since I'd never had it. It arrived with a cup of absinthe that the server poured over the meringue before setting the whole thing on fire with a blowtorch. But the server left before the fire hit the whole dessert and the fire went out before releasing all of the alcohol. What was left was a very strong absinthe dessert that happened to be filled with meringue, almond cake, vanilla ice-cream, verbena ice-cream, and raspberry sorbet. A "pear" ice-cream sandwich fell short, lacking either the proper cookie texture or the right ice-creaminess. The pear element was actually sorbet and the plating encouraged the use of a knife and fork rather than one's hands. How very un-ice-cream sandwich-like. A mocha sundae was reminiscent of the one once served at BLT Prime. There was a lot of ice-cream, brownie bits, and whipped cream. The desserts, as a whole, remained rooted in, well, ice-cream, more of a one-trick pony than anything else.

A pear sidecar left us underwhelmed, though I was happy to see the Raffault Chinon by the glass, one of my favorite, less expensive Old World reds. I was also happy to see a 750ml bottle of my favorite trappist ale, Westmalle Dubbel, for a staggeringly low $28, dark beer being the perfect companion to a festival of offal.

Our complimentary cheese plate--replete with such cliches as Humboldt Fog--was just cheese and bread, along with a paltry sprinkling of nuts. I longed for something more elaborate, like the composed plates that used to appear at Casellula, before the fromager defected. Oh, well. I shouldn't have looked a gift horse in the mouth. At three in the morning, I was regretting the cheese regardless, along with the horse it rode in on.

*

Momofuku Ssam Bar

207 2nd Avenue

New York, NY 10003

212.254.3500

*

DBGB Kitchen and Bar

299 Bowery

New York, NY 10003

212.933.5300

K-Town, Etc.

Anyone who knows me would gladly attest to the following: I am not a nice/forgiving/happy/generous/enjoyable-to-be-around human being when I am hungry. This is just fact. I get grumpy. I get hypoglycemic. I swear to whomever I'm with that I'm just going to die. I could substantiate this with a thousand vignettes from childhood and beyond, but I'll leave it up to the imagination of my readers.

Now, on Friday afternoon, I ended up in Manhattan, walking up 6th Avenue, where you ain't bound to find anything worth buying, unless you're really into plastic beads or fresh flowers. This includes anything remotely ingestible. It's a culinary wasteland. I was starting to get my familiar hypoglycemic hand shake, and became immediately convinced that if I did not stop for food RIGHT NOW, I would... well, you get the picture.

My companion did not much care for my theatrics and kept telling me to pick a place, but what was there to pick? A corner bodega? A McDonald's? None of this jived with my "local foods" or "homemade" mantra that I've been espousing since August.

Inevitably, we ended up on 32nd Street, home to Korea Town, commonly referred to by drunks and foodies as K-Town. We were reminded of a place recommended to us by a friend of mine a few months ago, but before we made it I saw signs for Pho32 & Shabu and decided that we need walk no farther: Pho it was.

Pho32 & Shabu specializes in two things: pho (duh), and shabu shabu. Pho is a delicious Vietnamese soup, and Shabu Shabu is this method of cooking wherein a pot of steaming broth is lit on fire before you and you dip assorted things (a.k.a. meat, vegetables, tofu) into this broth until they cook. I opted for pho, since I've never been able to get shabu shabu down.

First, a salad of cabbage and ginger dressing arrived. It was slightly bitter, crisp, salty, perfect. Next, a plate of lime, bean sprouts, shaved green peppers, basil. Finally the soup, a large bowl of beef broth, thin-sliced flank steak cooked rare, beef brisket, rice noodles. I was instructed to spill my plate of stuff into the broth "to taste" (that meant spilling the whole thing in). A condiment caddy displayed sriracha, hoisin, and chili paste. I dumped that in, too. What resulted was a rich, meaty, basil-y, crunchy, chewy, satisfying bowl of stuff. True pho eaters will tell you that tripe is a very important part of the pho experience. But I will tell you that I think tripe is disgusting and I don't like the way it looks like cotton or spun sugar, sitting out on the butcher display in my neighborhood, so I will never order my pho with tripe.

My dining companion ordered great fried chicken potstickers, but I wouldn't go back just for those. I would, however, go back for that soup, which may have been the most transcendent bowl of Asian noodles ever, aside, of course, from those pork-perfect ramen bowls at Ippudo. Slurp, slurp.

*
Pho32 & Shabu
2 W. 32nd Street
New York, NY 10001
212.695.0888

A Spanish Inquisition

I apologize to my readers for a lack of promptness in retelling tales of my recent travel to Barcelona and the Costa Brava. There were so many memorable meals and so much worth processing that it feels impossible to distill the five day trip into one mere blog post. Obviously, El Bulli and my night there deserves an unhealthy cut of attention here, as does El Celler Can Roca, where I enjoyed dinner the night before heading to Roses for my 35-course feast. I should, however, mention in the meantime that Spain was full of culinary possibility. My first meal in Barcelona was enjoyed on my 29th birthday at a small restaurant within Barcelona's famous Boqueria. Seated at the bar, we ate a plate of fish cooked a la plancha--prawns, razor clams, manilla clams, firm white fish, squid. We ate mushrooms and asparagus tips drenched in good olive oil and we ate pan con tomate (which we would eat much more of in days to come) and a rib steak grilled on the flattop and dusted with Maldon salt. We ate French fries and, finally, creme caramel with a candle in it. It was our best meal in Spain.

Other great meals followed. At Els Pescadors, the daily catch arrived atop gorgeous scalloped potatoes and roasted onions. A snack of brined baby garlic made most of us swoon, and we could have asked for no better treat than a plate of 'Joselito' Iberico ham, straight from the pata negras.

One night, in Barcelona, we were taken out to dine with wine friends, who lamented the fact that good restaurants were mostly closed on Mondays. No matter. He found a traditional Catalan space for us, ordered peppers a la plancha, fried lamb brains, various cured meats. But the restaurant's claim to fame was its massive wine list, more of a tome than anything, and through dinner seven diners were treated to seven impressive bottles of wine. Some wine got lost in the recesses of a wine-logged brain, but not to be forgotten were a 1998 Chateau Latour, deemed corked by some (I argued that 1998 was an off-vintage and that now, ten years later, inadequate grapes were showing signs of the weakness of the year, tasting green. We split our opinions down the middle; I drank what others passed up.) and a 1987 Vega Sicilia 'Unico,' demonstrably better than the pricier first-growth.

Our kind friend picked up the check. But there were more surprises ahead.

Once we tackled the demons of the highway leading north from Barcelona--a flat tire befell us mid-trip--we tucked in to our first of two long and undulating meals, this one at Michelin two-star El Celler de Can Roca. We ate nineteen courses, seven of which were deemed "snacks." We drank a bottle of vintage Cava (1999), a 2007 Egon Muller Spatlese Riesling, a 2001 Donhoff Riesling, and, our most impressive of the evening, a 1999 Jacques Prieur Le Musigny. Memorable delights of the evening included a bright cherry broth filled with one halved cherry, a slice of smoked eel, and a scoop of ginger ice-cream that resembled a cherry completely; a preparation of sole that involved pairing the fish with five descending sauces (olive oil, pine nut, fennel, bergamot, and orange), a steak tartar that played on sweet and savory elements; and an apricot made of blown sugar, airbrushed pink and orange and dusted with sugar and releasing, at the tap of a spoon, a creamy interior of apricot nectar.

A trip through the wine cellar with one of the Roca brothers (Josep, the sommelier), revealed a mind-blowing dedication to the regions of Sherry, Priorat, Champagne, Burgundy, and the Mosel. The cellar consisted of five separate rooms, all built from old wine boxes. In them, Josep described the virtues of his favorite regions, showed videos from prize vineyards, and involved us in tactile games (in one such moment, he pulled a piece of green silk from a worn wooden bowl and lifted it, stretched it, urged us to touch; it was riesling, he said: strong, resilient, elegant, not ruined by age).

We left dinner at two in the morning, after arguing with our server about the meal charge: it was noticeably absent. But no, they told us; the food, a total of $1,000 Euro, was a gift. Our only expense was our six bottles.

I suppose El Celler set an impossibly high standard for fine dining, but if any restaurant could rise to the challenge, it is El Bulli, the notoriously impossible-to-get-into hotspot for molecular gastronomy on the beach. When we arrived, we were immediately brought to the kitchen to meet Ferran Adria. We took pictures and stumbled back to the sweeping vistas of the patio, where we would have our snacks in clear view of the Mediterranean.

There were snacks, and there were cocktails, all of them conventional-ish, none of them conventional. Mojitos arrived in pure cane sugar sticks. We chewed them to release the rum and lime. "Mimetic" peanuts looked like the whole suckers found at baseball stadiums, but when they hit the mouth they turned into very cold peanut butter. A milky cocktail came with the pleasant addition of candied pine needles ("eat the needle and then take a sip," our waiter instructed; El Bulli has many, many instructions) and tasted the way you would imagine very sweet and delicate pine sap would taste.

It would be silly for me to describe all 35 courses. For one, they weren't all good; two were actually inedible and several inspired a lot of laughter. The most memorable parts of the meal included three fun and different bottles of Champagne (NV Diebolt-Vallois 'Prestige' Gran Cru Cramant, NV Jacques Selosse 'Blanc de Blancs' Gran Cru Avize, 1998 Paul Bara 'Comtesse Marie de France' Gran Cru Bouzy); a course entitled "Margarita Cactus," which was really a cactus leaf infused with tequila, lime, and salt (we ate the leaf); a course entitled "Oyster Leaf," which was an actual edible leaf that came from Norway and, amazingly, tasted exactly like an oyster (it came with a mignonette); a dish called "Coco," a giant frozen dinosaur egg (but not really) that the server broke at our table and told us to eat with our hands, as the shell was a melty cool-cold Coco Lopez-type concoction; a dish that was a dessert but that looked exactly like shellfish innards (it was supposed to); tea service, wheeled over and prepared by a woman who clipped herbs from live sage, basil, thyme, mint, and tarragon plants; a cardboard pop-up birthday cake that came replete with a real, lit candle at my very own place setting; a box of forty or more assorted handmade chocolates (I sampled them all); and, finally, Cuban cigar service on the terrace as the punctuation mark to our meal.

Our bill was outrageous. But what's more outrageous than seven hours of gluttony? As a token of appreciation, the staff gave us each copies of A Day At El Bulli, a color book showing the crazy workings of the oiled machine. Not that I would have forgotten. Not in a million years.

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Els Pescadors

Placa Prim 1

08005 Barcelona, Spain

34.932.252.018

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El Celler de Can Roca

Can Sunyer, 48

17007 Girona, Spain

34.972.222.157

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El Bulli

Caja Montjoi

Roses, Spain

34.972.150.457