The Carnivore's Dilemma

One of my more recent decisions regarding what I eat involves cutting meat from my diet. It would be a lie to say that I don't eat meat at all; in fact, I live in a culture where meat is everywhere and where avoiding it, especially at restaurants, is almost a full-time job. I'm not one of those crunchy vegans, who thinks that killing animals is wrong. I do not, for the record, have any real ethical problem with killing animals for food. I do, however, have a problem with the food system as it currently exists. I don't want to eat Purdue chickens that are buckling under the weight of their own breasts, dying in droves, and picked up and tossed by low-paid workers in middle-of-the-night raids. I don't think that commercial beef cattle, for the short time they spend on this planet, should be standing knee-deep in their own waste, eating corn, which the bovine stomach simply isn't biologically engineered to digest. When I know the provenance of my meat--when I know, for instance, that my cows had access to real pastures, that my chickens saw actual sunlight--I feel much better about being an omnivore. But when I think about the compromised ethos of the meat industry, a calculated strategy of animal-torture designed to bring this country more protein that it will ever really need, I feel safe in my decision to eat mostly vegetables.

My local grocery stores do not carry local or organic meat, so, at home, I don't eat it. The restaurants I choose to eat at usually list the farms their cuts come from. On Sunday, I went to Minetta Tavern. Even though they don't list it, I know their beef purveyor, Pat Lafrieda, takes great pride in his meat. Most of the cows are pasture-bred and fed. These days, that's the best you can hope for.

I went to Minetta Tavern because I was able to score a last-minute reservation, yes, but also because I was dying for steak, weak from iron deficiency. My friend was in the mood for bone marrow, an item featured on a handful of city restaurants. We called, they had a table, and that was that. We began with cocktails, mine a crisp cucumber number without too much sweet stuff going on. It was supposed to have rhubarb in it, but if it did, it eluded me. Three large prawns arrived atop a cocktail sauce/mayonnaise and with three delicate artichokes. When it was gone, we had time to concentrate on our 1982 Prieure-Lichine, a steal for $300. According to the wine director, (who's attention we caught after having ordered a 60 ounce steak for two and an ancient bottle of Bordeaux), auction wines are practically free these days. Three-hundred is way out of my personal budget, but dinner was on my friend, just this one time.

The cote d' boeuf was glorious, and made me glad that I still eat beef once in a while. It had a solid, crunchy crust, born of heat and butter. The meat was cool and red in the center and the steak was flanked by three long bones, cut lengthwise so we could spoon the marrow onto our steaks. The dickle was so rich, I couldn't finish even my share. We managed to complete the steak, aside from that last bit of dickle and the rib bone itself, which, in hungrier moments, I would gladly have lifted to my mouth and gnawed on, even in a fine restaurant.

For dessert, we ate coconut layer cake and a chocolate "bomb" that didn't resonate. It didn't matter, anyway. The steak was the point and it absolutely delivered, needing no sauce, but only a hefty appetite. And perhaps our crowning achievement, having impressed the old boys at "impossible-to-get-into" Minetta, was the issue of two business cards with the restaurant's private phone number on it. Our names and telephone numbers were taken at meal's end, and we were added to a list of elite who can actually get a table on a normal night. They'll be disappointed to know, at my next visit, that $300 bottles of wine usually ain't my bag.

So, the rest of the week had to be cleaner. I had a lunch date with my cousin yesterday and I was thinking comfort food, meat-free. We met at Keste, where everyone I know had been telling me to go for a good Neapolitan pie. If you're a fan of a small, doughy pie, with fresh ingredients, a slightly soggy middle (that's how they do it in Naples), and a charred crust, go here. You won't be disappointed. I could have taken down two or three margheritas. The buffalo mozzarella practically disappeared, it was so light. I love a good, crispy New York slice, but this pie, on flavor alone, outdid half the artisanal pies in NYC. I'll be going back for another meat-free adventure.

*

Minetta Tavern

113 MacDougal Street

New York, NY 10012

212.475.3850

*

Keste' Pizza and Vino

271 Bleecker Street

New York, NY 10014

212.243.1500

Return To Big Apple

It was necessary to separate the Miami trip from all other food news, so please excuse the double-post. Upon my return to the City, my bf made good on his belated Christmas gift to me: dinner at Tudor City's Convivio. It used to be L'Impero, Scott Conant's baby. I never ate at L'Impero, though I did dine once at Alto, Conant's other midtown gem (which he abandoned when he abandoned L'Impero two years ago). I was expecting good things.

Of course we ran into someone we knew there. Of course. Sometimes I think I can't go anywhere. Good thing I wasn't wearing sweatpants. Convivio has what I consider to be one of the best deals around: four courses OF YOUR CHOICE for $62.00. That means that, rather get roped into some tiny portion fixed menu in which you choose between chicken and beef (snore), you get to look at the menu and actually decide for yourself. And the portions are appropriate human portions, not those silly pixie helpings they give you on most set menus.

We were given sparkling wine to begin, an expense saved that we immediately devoted to "snacks," which are extra. We ordered green olives with lemon zest, but we also received rich, thick-cut salami, marinated shitake mushrooms, and risotto balls that could best be described as Kraft macaroni and cheese rolled into a ball and deep-fried. In a good way. For our set menu appetizers, we ordered chicken liver crostini, which was almost liquid and served with divine caramelized onions, as well as hamachi crudo with delicately chopped peppers and herbs. My pasta course, hand-cut spaghetti with mussels, clams, and shrimp, lacked flavor, but my companion's rich carbonara made up for it. And then there was the fusilli, sent from the house. It came in a rich tomato ragu of cubed pork shoulder and made me forget all about my boring little seafood pasta.

He had a piece of dorade, served with delicate mushrooms. For me, the lamb, two small chops served over a bed of white beans and tomatoes. By then, the beans were too much; I ate one chop and donated the second. I wanted room for dessert and the remainder of my 2001 Taurasi (the wine list focuses on southern Italian wines, with an estimable Taurasi list; don't waste your time looking for Barolos here), and that wasn't a mistake. A gingerbread cake was topped with a light spiced cream and poached pears. The panna cotta, served in a glass, came with lime yogurt gelato and huckleberries. And the house again sent their regards, this time in the form of a parfait made from amaro gelato and a fresh shot of espresso. Not that we needed it.

*

Convivio

45 Tudor City Place

New York, NY 10017

212.599.5045

Bienvenido A Miami, ETC.

I spent the week following Christmas in Miami with my mother. Ever wonder how long it would take for your parents to drive you insane? I estimate one week. She would probably say the same about me.

I will run through the many worthy dining experiences I enjoyed during my week in the sun, though it bears noting that the so-called "local" food movement does not exist in Florida. I understand that the climate is warmer and that produce is seasonal for more of the year, but isn't this citrus season? Why, then, were tomatoes such a prominent part of every menu? Hudson Valley foie gras down south? What's the point? When I did see the word local used--and it was few and far between--it generally referred to corvina, snapper, or grouper. Yikes.

Which isn't to say that the Miamians aren't doing good things with food, because they are. But my trip south codified my belief that New York is lightyears ahead of all other American food cultures. Argue amongst yourselves.

Our first night warranted a trip to Sra. Martinez, Michelle Bernstein's tapas restaurant in the Design District. A plate of "pickles" was hardly enough to nibble on, though I'll forgive the mistake because the deep-fried eggplant disks were so good. Korean short ribs were, indeed, Hagi-style, with the bone in and the grill marks intact. You eat them with your hands. Don't confuse these with the Americanized "fall off the bone" version. I could have done without the overly sweet duck sausage, which came with large white beans, but I never would have passed on the charred and lemony Brussels sprouts--their aioli might have made the meal. Head-on prawns were messy, but worth it. The flan was entirely ordinary (and not my first choice).

Next up: News Cafe for lunch. I was underwhelmed with my extremely expensive egg-white omelet. I did enjoy watching the Ferraris on Ocean Drive, which may be the only reason this place is full all the time.

Then it was Wish for dinner. They serve their frozen mojitos (thumbs-up) in martini glasses with glowing green ice-cubes, an ecto-cooler for adults. Sliced hamachi was heaven: fresh, complimented by the modest heat of jalapeno. My scallops drowned in a sea of squash and (gasp!) whipped cream. That turned me off. Plus, the portions were too big. Maybe I'd stick to appetizers next time, and, of course, the lovely vanilla panna cotta, which arrived with a basil reduction. Delish.

Night three: Douglas Rodriguez' Ola. Lovely ceviche of cobia over Asian pear granita. It might sound weird, but it worked. The waiter dropped the ball on our second ceviche, which arrived with our entrees (boo!), and it wasn't as good as the first, anyway: tuna, corvina, and salmon served over sweet potato. It lacked something. Our foie gras empanadas didn't sit right with me. Something about the idea of eating foie gras as a quasi-eggroll turned me off. I passed on my second half. But our pork Milanese was just as good as the best veal versions I've had. And the yelpers who recommended the deconstructed key lime pie were right on. It came with a separate crust and charred marshmallow. Not to be missed: the watermelon mojito.

For lunch the next day, I dragged my mother to little Havana for a Cuban sandwich at Versailles, the opulent Cuban diner on the far outreaches of Calle Ocho. It was the perfect sandwich (pork, ham, cheese, mustard, pickles, supple-yet-crusty white bread), complimented by sweet Cuban coffee. On the way out, I bought a buttery guava jam cookie. The caramelized sugar on top stuck to the inside of my mouth like the best peanut butter ever.

For dinner, it was Michelle Bernstein again, but this time her high-end outpost, Michy's. Brilliant concept: offer half portions of everything. This way, people like me can eat more. I had sweetbreads (fried) with mushroom escabeche, while my mother guarded her polenta/soft-cooked egg/lardon/truffles with her life--she allowed me one glorious bite. We shared a decadent carbonara, pasta made in house and decorated with crispy proscuitto and other porkiness, as well as a massive churrasco. For dessert, I insisted on jam and chocolate-filled donut holes. Pedestrian, but worth the trip down nostalgic "New York desserts of 2006" lane.

On Wednesday, it was Emeril's, our worst meal by far. My shrimp appetizer, served with a tiny biscuit, was too sweet, owing to the over-generous helping of barbecue sauce. My whole fish--a "local" snapper--was the best part of the meal, de-boned but served with head and tail and complimented by tagiasca olives, lemon, tomatoes, and summer squash (isn't it the wrong season?). My mother's duck, however, was massive--her plate was the size of a proper Thanksgiving serving dish--and sickly sweet, served over even sweeter mashed sweet potatoes. Our banana cream pie tasted completely pre-fab and the table in front of us had an absent sense of propriety, having arrived at dinner in very, very short jean cutoffs. Worse, a table in front of us remained uncleared and dirty for over an hour. Gross. I won't be trying my luck with Mr. Bam again anytime soon.

Thursday was New Year's Eve, and we ate at La Marea at The Tides. This meal, a holiday prix fixe, was not, I don't think, representative of the restaurant's potential, and so I will not mention it here. Suffice to say that New Year's Eve is a rip-off no matter where you dine.

I had been looking forward to our last meal, at Michael's Genuine Food and Drink, all week. This place has gotten a lot of press, so I thought I would be amply impressed. Not so much. Ok, the country pate with spicy mustard and cornichon was great, but it was also pretty boring. A rice cake (kind of like a fried risotto patty) with rock shrimp and egg was confusing. Tuna tartare with a quail egg was too finely chopped and really had no taste. The double-yolk wood-oven cooked egg was good, but very basic. Crispy slivers of fried pig ears may have been the best part of the show. I liked the chicken wings, but they were kind of sweet-and-sour saucy, a bit too much "sweet" for my taste. The Mounds Bar tart was the meal's redemption, served with a miniature root-beer float (most of which my mother drank).

Conclusion: Miami ain't New York.

*

Sra. Martinez

4000 NE 2nd Avenue

Miami, FL 33137

305.573.5474

*

News Cafe

800 Ocean Drive

Miami Beach, FL 33139

305.538.6937

*

Wish

801 Collins Avenue

Miami Beach, FL 33139

305.674.9474

*

Ola

1745 James Avenue

Miami Beach, FL 33139

305.695.1925

*

Versailles Restaurant

3555 SW 8th Street

Miami, FL 33135

305.441.2500

*

Michy's

6927 Biscayne Boulevard

Miami, FL 33138

305.759.2001

*

Emeril's Miami Beach

1601 Collins Avenue

Miami Beach, FL 33139

305.695.4550

*

La Marea at The Tides

1220 Ocean Drive

Miami Beach, FL 33139

305.604.5070

*

Michael's Genuine Food and Drink

130 NE 40th Street

Miami, FL 33137

305.573.5550

Jack Frost

I should have stayed inside yesterday. I realized this after dinner, as I tried to make it home in the cold. Is it even worth it to eat out when the weather's like this?

But my friend A. was in from California, so we decided on a quick (and cheap) lunch in midtown. We went to Obao, one of Michael Huynh's restaurants (and I say "one of" because he has, like, a trillion). Obao opened in November and is a refreshing respite from the delis and sub-par dining experiences that make midtown lunch what it is. To start, we ordered pork belly skewers, which came lacquered in a salty, sticky sauce and accompanied by pickled vegetables. They were tasty, and not at all good for us. To that appetizer, we added two separate noodle dishes: radish noodles with shrimp, which were a soft, pan-seared noodle, and Singapore noodles with Chinese sausage, which were a little flavorless but improved with a helping of hoisin sauce (available at every table).

The food was a tad greasy, but satisfying enough. It's not hard to understand why Huynh has been so successful.

For dinner, I wanted seafood, but my dining companion was pregnant, which ruled out raw fish. So we headed to the East Village's Mermaid Inn, which has been around for a while. I wanted fluke ceviche, but settled for a shared crab cake. It was made with lump crab meat (delish) and served atop a very mayonnaise-y cole slaw (fine by me). All those thoughts of a nice fillet of fish were dashed in the face of a lobster sandwich, which arrived on a fresh and buttery piece of brioche. In the interest of health, I substituted grilled asparagus for my French fries and was not disappointed by the hearty, smoky spears. My sandwich was more lobster than even I could handle, and I took half home. In lieu of dessert menus, our server brought tiny cups of chocolate pudding with whipped cream on top, a slight disappointment. They tasted over-refrigerated. But no matter. Despite the cold, the lobster sandwich just might have been worth the trip.

*

Obao

222 East 53rd Street

New York, NY 10022

212.308.5588

*

Mermaid Inn

96 2nd Avenue

New York, NY 10003

212.674.5870

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.

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Rye

247 S. 1st Street

Brooklyn, NY 11211

718.218.8047

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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?

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Bare Burger

3321 31st Avenue

Astoria, NY 11106

718.777.7011