Grifone (New York, Midtown East)

Grifone is proof, if any was needed, that spending a lot of money doesn’t mean you’re going to get a good meal. I’ve got to say; I’ve never gotten so little for a $60 lunch before in my life.

Having said that, lovers of stodgy un-inventiveness will be richly rewarded by Grifone. Most of the menu is packed with old style veal parmesan like dishes; I think I counted at least 8 breaded veal chops, another 8 breaded chicken, and a whole host of lamb cutlets, all differentiated only by their overenthusiastic smothering in different poorly executed sauces. The pasta dishes were no more enlightening. I don’t think I’ve ever been told that a $25 entrée was “pasta with meat sauce” before, but the vagueness of the mumbling quasi-Italian waiter’s description was almost Scottish in its incomprehensibility. I wish I could say that the appetizers or desserts saved the show, because I’ve bought better stuff from one of those German discount supermarkets where they don’t have scanners and make you buy your own plastic bags. Still, the opening and ending of the meal (parma ham & figs, and a vaguely interesting pistachio/hazelnut cake) were at least presentable, in marked contrast to the 1950’s era debacle that was the main course.

I suppose there are some people who like this kind of place, what with its mahogany paneling and “grazie-ing” waiters. It’s not for me, though. Nor for anyone who’s eaten Italian food elsewhere in the last three decades. And don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean to say that all traditional Italian-American food is bad. It’s not. I like breaded veal cutlets as much as the next food obsessive. But that point of food particularly needs to be done well, and this just was not. Ah, well, though. It makes for a good story.

White’s (London, The City)

In marked contrast to Grifone, White’s is actually quite a good restaurant. The brainchild of oft-berated super-chef Marco Pierre White, it lives up to its promise of pricey French sophistication. It really isn’t hard to see the differences in quality between this place and some of the other places I visited on my trip, honestly. Makes you wonder how hard the professional reviewer’s job actually is.

For example, I’m a complete sucker for amuses bouches, those little snacks you get before you order at more enterprising restaurants. They remind me of the tasting menus I can’t afford in both scale and surprise. What better way to eat then to be left in the hands of the kitchen? Anyway, White’s amuse bouche was perfect for the restaurant and the season, as exemplified by the mild chill outside. Served in a small expresso glass, I’ve seldom had a pumpkin soup of that depth or interest. Of course, I’ve rarely had a pumpkin soup made predominantly of cream and butter either, but that’s besides the point. You can’t just dump butter into a pan with pumpkin puree and expect it to taste good automatically. Cooking is about balance and artistry, and you can see it most clearly in the simplest dishes.

This isn’t to say that the other dishes lacked skill. Far from it. The starter I chose, a tarte tatin layered with delicate slices of sea scallop, was simply brilliant, featuring delicately charred pastry and yet still quivering mollusk lying over a mound of thinly sliced and sautéed leek. Nor did my main course disappoint, despite ample opportunity. You see, one of my other obsessions is coq au vin, that is to say, chicken stew with wine. I like both the red and the white kind, with cream and without. Actually, my only requirement is that the chicken be good and the stew include interesting (preferably wild) mushrooms. White’s poulet noir stew with freshly picked wild morels in a white wine and cream sauce, then, really had a head start with me, but even so, I doubt it would have disappointed anyone. The only negative I can imagine, actually, is that every bite was a reminder of the kind of chicken you can’t get over here in the US, except by occasionally paying some extortionate price for a top of the line free range monstrosity.

If left to my own devices, I would probably say that dessert was the weakest part of White’s efforts on my visit. Lemon tart is certainly a favorite dessert of mine, and this one was quite good, but I actually expected the traditional kind of lemon tart (that is to say, a circular sweet shortcrust filled with uncreamed lemon filling) rather then the slice of a larger tart filled with creamy curd that I did get. I’m not complaining, though. It was still excellent, and finishing off my slice the rapt gazes of my co-diners probably changed my mind about the tart.

In any case, White’s is a definite go in my book. I’d even pay for it myself.

Wagamama (London, Canary Wharf and elsewhere)

Not quite in the august category, either in price or quality, of the restaurants above, Wagamama is actually a chain operating throughout London, purporting to serve noodles in a relaxed and efficient atmosphere suitable for the lunchtime business diner. This commitment is well demonstrated by the super modern service, which included the relaying of your order back to the kitchen via palm pilot.

Just as an interlude, I’m still a little baffled why I was taken to this restaurant during a job interview, for one rather obvious reason. Asian noodles bars are not the best places for an incompetent eater wearing a suit. I mean, no kind of noodle is great for the clumsy suit wearer, but the multicoloured efforts of the East make it particularly embarrassing, especially when the final interview happens to be the hiring partner of the entire firm.

Anyway, giant splotches of yellow on my shirt aside, Wagamama is actually a great example of what it purports to be. My dumpling like gyoza (or in fact, my gyoza dumplings) were hot, fresh and each stuffed with a formidable prawn, while the aforementioned noodles, floating in a sharply flavoured curry amid grilled chicken managed to be both original and tasty at the same time. I wouldn’t particularly recommend Wagamama for a formal business meeting then, especially given the slightly brusqye service and almost shared benches/tables, but I rather appreciated the complete lack of pretension displayed by both the restaurant and the firm taking me there. This place is a go for me too, and paying my own way wouldn’t even be that painful.

Angelo’s (New York, Midtown East)

I don’t think it’s right to leave New York without having pizza at least once, so I stopped at the Barnes & Noble closest my hotel to leaf through the the restaurant guides for a pizza place in proximity. What I found was Angelo’s, not at all an outrageous hoof from my place over on Second Avenue.

There isn’t much to say about pizza, is there? Especially when you insist, as I tend to do, on the most basic of pizzas, topped with only tomato sauce, basil, and cheese. (don’t you hate people who call pizzas “pies”? Drives me nuts for some reason). But Angelo’s is good. Really good. Aside from what I thought was a slight oversweetness in the sauce , in fact, I thought it was almost perfect. A crunchy and chewy thin crust, that doesn’t get soggy after fifteen seconds? Check. Judiciously spread sweet globs of delicious mozzarella? Check. Large blatantly fresh leaves of basil? Check also. All in all, a great place to eat. I’ve got envy New York that one, at least.


Buttercup Bakery & Ess-a-Bagel (New York, Mid-town East)

I’m dealing with these two together because they demonstrate precisely the problems and glories of American baking. First, as I keep saying, no one in this country can bake cakes of any real sophistication. Sure, the brownies at Buttercup tasted good. So what? I can bake perfectly nice brownies at home. What I want at a bakery is something beyond what I can do at home, something that only training and skill (neither of which I have) can produce. So by all means, eat their 7 dollars lime pies or equally banal chocolate frosted cupcakes. I’ll save my money from now on.

But Ess-a-bagel presents exactly the opposite impression. Bagels, obviously, are something Americans can do very well, with years of tradition and authenticity behind them. Nor can I really make them at home. I mean, sure I could make my usual bread dough, converted to whatever dough it is that bagels need, and then I could boil the yeasty rings and then throw them in an oven to firm up, but it’s really a bother I don’t have much time for. This is especially true when you can get such astonishing bagels for just $.75 over at Ess-a-bagel: crunchy outside, and in fact almost recalcitrant in their toughness, but moist and airy within. I’ve now had multiple bagels from the famed H+H (at their Upper West Side location) and from Ess-a-bagel. I’m hard pressed to say which is better, other then to note that they certainly are different in both texture and taste.

La Fromagerie

I can't say enough about this little shop in Highbury/Islington, just north of city centre london. I went in today and just put myself in what I assume was the owner's hands. I'm a student, I said. I live in America. We don't have decent cheese, and I've had nothing but over expensive Roquefort and refrigerated cream cheese impersonating brie for almost two years. Help me.

Help me he did, with a completely astonishing round of St. Felicia, a cheese whose origin I haven't yet worked out, but was so runny, so perfectly ripe, so exceptional, that he had to tip the whole thing into a small plate for me to take home. Balanced delicately on a crunchy, crusty slab of bread (made by the newly arrived in Britain Poulaine bakery of Paris), I ran it to my hotel through three changes of the underground before devouring it completely. Yeah, I'm greedy, but when the cheese is this good, what else can you do?

Funnily enough, La Fromgerie supplies the cheese for the restaurant of the hotel I'm staying at. More funnily, a small piece of the same cheese I bought for 4.10 pounds sells for 11 as a dessert. I'll take the shop, thank you.

On my other blog I’ve recently written about the brewing litigation over Fresh Del Monte’s mythical “Gold” pineapple. To those who missed it, the Del Monte Gold is supposed to be the very epitome of all pineappleness; extra sweet, extra gold, and extra expensive. All these attributes have made its genetic makeup a closely guarded and extremely valuable secret for the fruit giant, but now it seems that other companies are very close to replication. In any case, I’m not interested in the legal aspects just now- nope, I’m more interested in how it tastes. Is it worth $5-6 to buy in the store, or millions to litigate?

So I picked one up in the local Star market, for a relatively svelte $4.99. Its colour is striking, as promised by Del Monte. It’s not yellow, like most pineapples, or that yellowish green you see so often, but a deep almost burnished gold, with slivers of green nestled in between neat diamonds of proud metallic. The aroma is almost as surprising. Even in the cold supermarket, stacked among great mounds of antiseptic “fruit”, the pile of Golds gave off a terrific penetrating tang. As I took it home, stuffed unceremoniously among my other shopping in my well worn book bag, I really was looking forward to indulging.

I have to say that I was somewhat disappointed, if predictably so. I can’t say it didn’t taste good. It was the best pineapple I’ve had in a long time. But the impression I got, and perhaps this was because of its long trip to my pathetic little supermarket here in Cambridge, is that the Del Monte Gold is essentially an urban Scot’s impression of what a good pineapple might taste like. It didn’t have any of the subtlety I assume a good pineapple has- just an overpowering impression of dense sugar. Note that I don’t mind sugar. In fact, I’ve got an appalling sweet tooth, along with a fat tooth, starch tooth, and anything else you can think of. But this was almost like eating a fat cylindrical sugar cane. I also thought, though I could be wrong, that the pineapple’s texture suffered just a little bit from whatever mutation caused its colour, aroma, and sweetness.

But, one has to admire Del Monte for getting such an apparently consistently sweet pineapple from wherever it was farmed to the east coast. The Gold is certainly an improvement over what we usually have. Is it the spiny messiah of the pineapple world? No. But is it worth a gigantic law suit with huge attorneys fees? The bottom line and the Wall Street journal say yes. I, and the Waddling Kitchen in its corporate persona, will be looking forward to its competitors.

Elephant Walk

Elephant Walk is an odd sort of creature – a Cambodian restaurant in the middle of Boston, and now, it seems, in Cambridge. I’d never had Cambodian before, actually. Indian, certainly. One can hardly survive more than a month or so in Britain without becoming acquainted with the multitudinous pleasure that is the bog standard British curry. The usual kinds of Chinese I know well enough. Thai and Vietnamese, furthermore, have thankfully become more popular in the last few years, and I’ve been merrily plowing that particular furrow of culinary innovation. I’ve even had a good go at Ethiopian, folding the sponge like flat bread messily around the spicy African conglomeration. But Cambodian I’ve never done, so Elephant Walk represented an interested culinary diversion for me.

I don’t really know how to describe the cuisine, having tested it once now. The best I can do, I think, is to command the reader to imagine a mix of Thai, Indian, and Vietnamese, all lightened with French sophistication, rather like you lighten a cake mix with egg whites or tomato sauce with cream. Or perhaps the cuisine is actually French, exotified by Asian influences? You can’t really tell at Elephant Walk, a fact which adds to the restaurant’s considerable charm. This sophisticated conundrum was made particularly evident by the dessert JCA and I shared, which turned out to be a crème caramel made exceptional by its completely unexpected (and equally unfamiliar) pandan leaf flavouring, which managed to be both sweet and yet slightly radicchio bitter in the end.

The starters and main courses were perhaps more exotic in their conception, but still retained a subtlety sometimes missing from their East Asian counterparts. JCA had an interesting looking chicken curry, for example, which I was able moderately pilfer. What made it different, I thought, since the Indians do a good job with tomato based curries as well, was the sharp tang of lime and lively spice softened by rather unexpected shards of pineapple. It’s that kind of light touch that differentiates EW from Vietnamese cuisine, under which Fodor’s Boston had erroneously listed the restaurant. As for my dish, I think a lot can be said for a restaurant on the basis of its basic meat dishes, and my evocatively named Loc Lac, seared “lightly” in a soy and black pepper mixture, did the restaurant proud.

Oh, and a final note- get Naiting , the ground pork stew simmered with garlic and coconut milk, as a starter, and save the quite good French bread they bring you to sop the last dregs of it up with. There just isn’t enough of the accompanying crispy jasmine rice, and in any case, why feel any compulsion to use a tiny bit of rice to mop up mounds of stew, or even to leave some of the sweet concoction in the bowl? Spare yourself the heartache- hoard the bread.

Tanjore

Harvard Square

Tanjore doesn't really look like much from outside, tucked underneath the advertisement for an unfindable Thai restaurant and not far from the culinary Mecca that is Dunkin' Donuts. Yet, I had been eyeing it speculatively for a while. It just sort of looked like it might be good.

Having now visited it, I can certainly vouch for at least their curries. I wasn't hungry enough to get a naan as well, so I only nosed suspiciously at my companion's competent looking loaf, but the chicken saagwalla was excellent, a creamy combination of spinach and fenugreek that tingled with a suggestion of spice. But what I thought was distinctive about the dish was the use of juicy and tender chicken thighs instead of the usual chunks of dry and uninteresting chicken breast I see so often. Sure sure, breast is more expensive- using the thighs helps the restaurant's bottom line. But thighs are also much tastier, having a deep chickeny flavour of their own instead of relying desultorily on the seasonings in the curry. If I wanted bits of syrofoamy chunks in sauce I would get tofu, or just skip the whole going to restaurant business and buy some styrofoam to swathe in a-1 sauce at home. What I want at a restaurant is flavour from every ingredient, and it just seemed to me that Tanjore understood that too.

Red Sage

Red Sage is a popular restaurant in DC, both much praised and maligned, the latter by people who think it overexposed and overhyped. I was excited to give it a whirl though. It's no fair for everyone else to get a chance to pontificate while I stay on the sidelines.

I can't say I was blown away by the cuisine. I equally can't say I was entirely dissapointed, though. Buffalo style shrimp was an unexpected sort of appetizer, exactly the sort of nosh I like; I wonder though about the bed of aioli they were sitting on, since all that seemed to do was turn the once crispy shrimp throughly soggy. One of my dining partners was right, though - the mussels we shared as an appetizer weren't only cooked in an entirely insipid sauce (and in any case, mussels are an inappropriate appetizer to share, given the need for bread sopping) but the shellfish themselves were less fresh then they could have been. Nor was the air of insipidity entirely dispelled by the main courses. My tuna was throughly fresh, and quivering red as I like it, but I was surprised to hear the waiter steer one of my friends away from the daily swordfish special and towards pecan crusted chicken breast, which not only sounded and tasted banal but was apparently cut from a chicken of truly monstrous proportions. Surely swordfish would have been better?

The dessert did manage to redeem the kitchen quite a bit. Indeed, I've been building up quite a library of sticky toffee puddings, and Red Sage's offering, topped with a quality caramel ice cream and chocolate shavings wouldn't be out of place in the upper reaches of my internal league table. On the whole, I see Red Sage as a perfectly acceptable place for a business lunch that's unlikely to go wrong- but not much more.

Butter beans, leeks, and parmesan bake

I made this in hurry last night, and it turned out really nice, except for the fact that I spilled quite a lot of it when I got a phone call.

Just take some butter beans, and if dried, soak them in water overnight and boil them for an hour or two. i don't really see any problem with tinned beans in this case- in my opinion, butter beans do reasonably well in the tin.

Take the cooked beans and throw them in a shallow dish. Bathe them in some cream; just enough, I should think,so that they're almost sumurged, but not entirely so. Throw in garlic, which you can sautee beforehand if you want a little more subtlety, some (preferably baby) leeks sliced delicately in diagonals, and the inevitable salt and pepper. Mix this all up perfunctorily, and then layer with some freshly grated parmesan. Throw into the hottest oven you can manage for 10-15 minutes, and serve with some white rice. Delicious.

Ribs

I had always been entirely terrified of Ribs. Not of eating the ribs, of course. I'm not terrified of eating any food, bar perhaps brains. (I just don't get brains. The Texture- oh, the Texture). The problem with ribs is that I simply didn't know how to properly cook them. It all seemed so arcane. Mop rags, boiling or not, indirect heat, basting, removing membranes. It was one of these terrible morasses I had no desire to go, however much I liked to slather the rib and thereby myself in sweet musky sauce.

But in honor of my friend Lewis, I decided to try ribs. So I cleaned out my barbecue, put some bricks over one side so as to coral the fire, and then let it go. I had previously, of course, made a rub for the formidable strip of meat, though I rather suspect in retrospect it had too much sugar in it and too little spice (and it definitely needed a little of the acridness donated by a dose of cumin.)

I also decided to try to simplify the whole thing by not basting the ribs during cooking except with sauce right at the end. Yes, I'm sure this makes me terribly gauche, but I just didn't want to get into the whole basting liquid debate.

So anyway, I put the rubbed rib right on the grill, fired by an indirect heat. I shut the cover of the ribs, ran upstairs to continue watching TV, and grabbed the chair I was sitting on furiously to avoid checking on the smoldering delicacies. About forty five minutes later, I went outside to take a look; and lo! They were cooking!

So I let them finish, basted them all with sauce, and munched. They were actually good. How amazing is that.

So I've got over my rib problems. Now just to "ameliorate" the style, so to speak.

Banana Pecan Strudel

Take some filo dough, and lay out half a sheet. Sprinkle it with confectioner's (powdered) sugar, and then sprinkle ground pecans on top of that. Put a quarter of a banana in one end of the dough, and roll up. Seal this all with a little honey, and what you end up with is a fat cigar looking thing. Brush with butter, and bake in an oven until golden brown.

Poached salmon in oil

This looks good, stolen from today's Washington Post. You throw some top quality olive oil in a saucepan- quite a lot of it, say two cups for two fillets. Heat the oil very slowly to about 120 degrees- the recipe notes that if you don't have a thermometer (as I don't) what you're looking for is an occasional bubble and bread that doesn't darken when you throw it in. Once the fish gets up to this level, slip the fish in gently, after salting and peppering it generously. Cook for about 9 minutes. Of course, you want a slightly rare finish on the thicker side.

I've been mildly depressed ever since Ben & Jerry's got rid of their low fat chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream. I know I normally spend enormous amounts of time complaining about the use of law fat when a smaller quantity of the proper stuff would do ten times better, but in this case I think 90% of the appeal from this ice cream is texture- the chewiness of the cookie dough playing against the cold vanilla of the ice cream.

But I've discovered a substitute! The cookie dough in the fridge section of the supermarket combined with no fat frozen yogurt works almost perfectly together. Yes, it's not completely low fat, of course- the dough is heavy duty. But you can eat a large quantity of it for a lot less damage then one might incur from a pint of the real stuff, and I don't think the taste difference in the real ice cream is enough to go for it.

But hey, do what you want. I'm going with this solution.

Toasted Ravioli?

Food blog Butterpig has a recipe for something called Toasted Ravioli. Have to say, I've never seen that before.

Hi Rent Grocery Stores

I'm completely of two minds about the kind of upscale grocery stores that have popped up all over suburbia in the last five or ten years. On one hand, they're a great leap forward in terms of food. Sure, the stuff is way too expensive, but when no one else stocks puy lentils, it's off to Fresh Fields or Whole Foods you go. So they're certainly a good thing.

But some of the people who inhabit these places are just too much for me. They're people who mistake shopping at this supermarket for social worth, or intelligence. Take, for example, my visit to my local Fresh fields supermarket this weekend.

This place, to their credit, invites local merchants on the weekends to sell their product in store. Sometimes there will be some homemade tapenade (priced at a completely ludicrous 8 dollars a pound), perhaps some bread, or maybe an organic lemonade. This weekend there was a guy outside manning a grill. I watched a woman with two children walk up to him, say hello, and then ask if her children (pronounced in much the same tone as "The Imperial Majesties of the Universe", or "God Himself") could have ribs without sauce. "They don't eat sauce", she explained. The look on her face when she was refused was one of complete incredulity- as if someone has just offered to trade her a hyundai for one of her children.

Now, let me explain the set up. The guy behind the grill was surrounded by a bevy of signs advertising his super special rib sauce. He was wearing a hat that said "sauce" in big fiery letters. He was surrounded by multiple bottles of sauce, his t-shirt encouraged people to have some of his sauce, and even his nearby truck proclaimed the excellence of his rib sucking sauce. As if all this wasn't enough, his entire picnic table was full of bits of rib slathered in a bright red (and deliciously tangy, I later discovered) barbecue sauce. There was no way anyway with even an ounce of brain in his head could even begin to imagine that this guy was there to sell anything but sauce.

So why did this idiot and her two miniature cretins still think they could get ribs without sauce? Entitlement, maybe? Did they expect the sauce master to hand lick a rib clean of sauce for them? I just don't get it. The man sells SAUCE you idiots! You either get a rib with sauce, or you don't ask for a rib from him. How bloody hard is this to understand?!

The second episode occurred shortly thereafter, inside. An older lady with a prominantly displayed "Dean for President" button on her shirt was holding a very odd shaped tomato, full of bumps and discolorations. She found a clerk, or whatever one calls the folks at a supermarket, and began to berate him in bitter tones- "why do you have stuff like this here? Can't you see what the republicans and corporations have done to this, with all their genetic engineering? I can't believe it".

I have no problem with getting very angry about food. I do it all the time. But she was holding a damned heirloom tomato- it's supposed to look like that. It's looked like that for hundreds of years. It's the most unmucked around with tomato anyone can get hold of, resurrected from carefully horded seeds, saved from the machine of modern farming by a few conscientous holdouts. It's the very example of what we want more of in supermarkets. Does this kind of person walk around looking for ways to attack private industry? Is the supermarket itself not safe?

Anyway, I know I sound sanctimonious. Heh.

Italianish Pork Cutlets

I wanted something fried this weekend, and was about to end up at Popeye's for some chicken. But then I remembered that I hadn't had any cutlet sort of things recently, so I made these. I think they're better with lamb, but I couldn't find any appropriate cutlets.

So, get some pork cutlets or quick fry steaks, and pound them relatively thin. Meanwhile, make some fresh bread crumbs from either stale bread or some pita bread, which will dry out sufficiently if left out for just a few minutes. Just whiz them up in a food processor, add salt, pepper, and parmesan. If you like, some hot pepper might be good too.

Dip the pork or lamb in some beaten egg, throughly immersing. Then coat both sides of the meat in bread crumbs.

Fill a pan about half an inch up with oil, possibly non extra virgin olive, unless you live somewhere where good olive oil is cheap. Fry in moderate heat until crunchy, about three minutes on each side. I didn't know what to accompany this with, but I ended up with a little "reverse tabouleh" - that is, lots of bulghur wheat with specks of powerful cilantra, lemon, and olive oil. Yum.

Croissants

The important thing to understand about croissants is that they're fundamentally breads, not pastries. They're made with yeast or some other natural leaven, like breads. The dough is a fermented one, like a baguette. They're kneaded, not beaten. They're the work of a boulanger, a baker, and not a patissier, a pastry chef.

What all this means is that a good croissant tastes like bread as well. Of course, it's buttery (and the taste of the butter is so important). But it is also chewy, substantial. It is bread with butter, not filo dough in crescent shape.

Having said all that, I'm writing to praise DC baker Breadline's pain au chocolat. I had always thought they were the only baker anywhere in this area to capture something of the essence of french bread. Their potent chocolatey croissant, however, is a very close imposter indeed, resplendent with both all the bready qualities I mentioned above as well as with the taste of a rich french butter. I think it's the best $1.97 purchase in the entire city.

Man, I feel better after having eaten something like that. Wow.

The Washington Post is reporting that restaurants are finally beginning to scale back their ridiculous portions. This is undoubtedly good news. I like to eat as much as possible, like most people. This doe snot mean, however, that my steak has to be two pounds, my burder almost half that, or my salad approximately the size of a punch bowl.

The beauty of eating, the beauty of food, is to be found in the excellence of what you cook or what gets placed in front of you at restaurants. The people who say they need all this food to feel full are wrong; the reason they think they need these giant quantities of food is because the food tastes of nothing, and so they are compelled to compensate with way too much of it.

That, at least, is what I think. I know others disagree.

I'm going to try to move this blog forward very soon. Links, more posting, etc. It should move beyond being a personal journal.

M & S Grill

Almost everything I have to say about this restaurant can be summed up in my general comments about Americans and Sandwiches below. Apart from that, let me just say that M & S does a great job of what it tries, despite some sluggish service. Incidentally, this also applies to Pot Belly Sandwich Works, the franchise spreading throughout DC.

Rules of Sandwich Making, to be adopted by all American restaurants trying to make a sandwich.

1. Frying seventy second rate bread in butter does not fix the seventy second rate bread.

2. Piling three pounds of meat on a sandwich does not make uninteresting meat interesting.

3. Trying to disguise bad bread or uninteresting meat with powerful sauces, inhuman mounds of cheese, giant hot peppers, oil, vinegar, mustards, mayo, or any other condiment is not the answer.

Fancy Pants Chips and Dip

In honour of the football season restarting, I decided that I wanted something manly. However, buffalo wings were out of the question given my focus on veggies this week, so I decided to eat some chips. Luckily, Emeril (I can't believe I'm using an Emeril recipe) had this to say to say on the subject just a few days ago.

Get some white russet potatoes. Peel (obviously) and then slice very thinly (again obviously, slicing them with a mandolin is best. But if you have no money, like me, then just get a sharp knife and have at it.) Toss the potato slices in olive oil, sprinkle with salt and black pepper, and then layer them on an oiled sheet of parchment paper, which you've put in a baking tray. Then oil another sheet, put it on top of the potatoes, and crush the chips with another tray on top. (of course, this works best if you've got two identical trays.).

Bake in the oven for 15-30 minutes, until crisp and as brown as you might like. While that's happened, throw some goat cheese in a food processsor with some sour cream, salt, pepper, basil, and lemon juice. Pulse until smooth.

Serve, dipping chips in cheese like substance. Very simple and excellent.

Salad Nicoise


There are as many ways to make salad nicoise as to get into trouble with the federal government, but the follwoing is what I made last week end. Like other summery recipes, this is definitely meant to be eaten outside, preferably on a french beach with cheap beach french fries, but otherwise, outside at least.

Lettuce, hopefully an interesting mix
green beans
1 egg
tomato
tuna (tinned, though real tuna works as well, fiercely seared)
small nicoise olives (available, these days, at most supermarkets)
mustard, oil, vinegar, salt, pepper
perhaps a red onion, though this isn't necessary.


Simmer the egg until done (you're looking hard boiled, of course). Get an ice bath ready, and then throw the green beans in some more boiling water for just a minute or two. You're looking basically to blanch them. Then put them in the ice bath to maintain color and crispness as soon as possible.

Put the lettuce on the place. Then layer other ingredients on. I usually stick the green beans on one corner, some slices of tomato on another quarter, slices of eggs in the two remaining corners, then tuna on top, olives on top of them, and a few slices of red onion on top of that.

Then make a sauce with a little mustard, olive oil, and vinegar. Remember to dissolve the salt in the mustard and vinegar, then add the oil. Douse the dry salad with this sauce, heavily. You need some left over for bread mopping, if you're looking for actual authenticity.

Enjoy.

The trials and tribulations of the suburban virginia sushi muncher never end, it seems. Is this place good? Usually, the answer is no.

But I'm glad to report an exception to the rule, in Blue Ocean Sushi Restaurant. No, it's not quite Kaz Sushi, having neither the elegance nor the quality of the DC hot spot. But it is good, it is pretty authentically Japanese, and the fish is fresh.

Additionally, unlikely so many other Sushi restaurants I've been too, the fellow behind the bar at Blue Ocean is suprisingly generous. Indeed, the sushi deluxe was almost too much for me. Do you understand? Too much. For me. It's like Saddam saying he had murdered too many innocents.

Old Ebbitt Grill

After walking into the Old Ebbit Grill, it's hard to believe that the food is going to be anything more then an afterthought. The restaurant positively oozes Washington at its clubby, political, relationship driven best or worst, depending on how you see it. No herb garden here, let me assure you; but there are lots of politicans, lawyers, and lobbyists, if that kind of thing catches your fancy.

But in reality, Old Ebbit does quite a good job feeding its elite clientelle as well. No, it's no 2941, or other such temple of innovative cooking. It wouldn't want to be. Rather, the staff at the huge DC restaurant serves up simple but high quality American food, carefully calculated to please its steak chomping constituency. It is no surprise, in other words, that they serve a top quality hamburger, or a wide array of oysters.

But I don't think anyone goes to the Grill for the food, honestly. If the food were bad, assuredly, they wouldn't go. But barring that unlikely eventuality, they go to cement relationships, trade countries, sell souls, and all the other things politicans in this city do. And if you want a little theatre with your meal, this is just the place to get it.

DC Coast

I had long meant to eat something at DC Coast, having heard of owner/chef Jeff Tunks' skill with fancified southern food. I finally got the opportunity to do some overly belated troughing just today. Since I don't like to "review" restaurants where I haven't dined multiple times or with a large party (enough for me to get tastes of a wide range of the menu), I'll restrain myself to what I had for lunch.

I have a thing for sandwiches stuffed with fried things, and then served with other fried things. It doesn't have to be as barbaric as all that sounds, though, as DC Coast's shrimp "po boy" demonstrates. Delicately fried cornmeal encrusted shrimp, stuffed generously into an elongated sort of floury bread that the British would call a bap, spicey remoulade, home made ketchup? I'm happy. When all this is accompanied by some good (if not magnificent) handcut french fries (which also found themselves being luxuriously dipped in the remoulade) and you've got a distinctly pleased law student. So what if I need to go out for a long run and eat nothing but a few slices of smoked salmon tonight, in order to make up for the debauchery at lunch? It was worth it.

Monkfish kebabs

Recipe shamelessly stolen from Jamie "I've doctoring my accent to sell more TV shows" Oliver.

Chop monkfish into delicious chunks, and throw in a marinade with rosemary, garlic, and so on. By the way, when you remove the rosemary leaves from the stalks, leave a few leaves right at the top for the next step.

Thread the monkfish onto the rosemary skewers, which you've sharpened by cutting diagonally at the end. Alternate monkfish with a nice smoked bacon, and think slices of courgette, which you can use to envelop the fish.

Throw on a grill for a few minutes, and serve with one of the salads below.

Summery Arugula Salad

I made this yesterday after a trip to the farmer's market. Eat outside with a cool drink and a smug attitude.

Wash some arugula (i.e roquette). Make sure they're dry before using, though, either putting them through a spinner of layering them in a bowl with paper towels.

Slice up some nice summer squashes, and toss with a tablespoon or so of flavorful olive oil and garlic, and also salt and pepper. Throw in a roasting pan with lots of space, and cook for about 10-15 minutes on 350 degrees fahrenheit. Let these folks cool while you get the rest of the salad ready. Also, pan fry some turkey or chicken marinated in some way you like.

Let all the ingredients cool (though the chicken can be slightly warm if you like- the only worry is that the salad might wilt). Toss together, with a generous amount of salt, lemon, pepper, and olive oil (seeing a pattern). Follow instructions for eating above.

Two bean salad

Trim some green beans and salt some boiling water heavily. Boil for two minutes.

Finely slice some shallots, and throw them in the water with the beans. After four minutes or so remove and shock in an ice bath. Pat dry.

Throw some canned cannelini beans in a bowl, and add the shallots and beans.

Make a dressing with sherry vinegar, olive oil, and salt and pepper, perhaps some mustard as well. A standard dressing, with about 2.5 oil to vinegar.

Grilled Veggie Salad

Pulled this off from TV yesterday.

Aubergine (aka eggplant)
courgette (aka zuchini)
fennel root
asparagus
many peppers, red, yellow, orange. Whatever you can find.
little squashes
possibly mushrooms?

Slice all these things into relatively thin slices, unless they're too small. Grill on the barbecue. Only the peppers are slightly tricky- for them, just grill until black all over, and then pull skin off with hands before tearing apart and de-seeding.

While all this is still hot, sprinkle with as much garlic as you like, chopped up finely, and then dress with salt, pepper, and great glugs of top quality olive oil. Finish with some red wine vinegar, and toss while the last tendrils of warmth leave the salad.

I'm looking forward to this with a grilled flank steak.

Blueberry Shortcake

This is really a nice dessert for the summer; simple, light, and delicious.

2.75 cups flour
a little salt
1 cup butter
1/2 cup light (single) cream or half and half (they both work)
1 egg
1 egg white
5 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder

2.5 cups blueberries
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup water
tiny amount of lemon.

To make the shortcakes, sift a little salt, all the flour, and the baking powder into a bowl. Add 3 tablespoons of granulated sugar and mix well (make them big tablespoons, incidentally). Freeze the butter, and then grate into the flour using the coarse end of the grater. Quickly work the frozen butter into the flour using your fingers. Crack the egg into the cream and mix well, and then tip the eggy cream into the dry ingredients, bringing the dough together. When this is well done, roll the dough out carefully to a relatively thick 3/4 of an inch, cut out whatever shapes you want, brush the top with an egg white, sprinkle with a little more granulated sugar, and then cook in a pre-heated 325 oven for 10-15 minutes.

As for the blueberry sauce, combine half the berries with all the other ingredients except the lemon. Cook for 10 minutes, bringing to a slow boil. Add the rest of the berries and simmer for another 8 minutes or so; just long enough for the new berries to be soft, but not to have lost their shape. Throw in some lemon for taste, let cool to just warm, and serve on top of the warm shortcakes with a scant scoop of preferably almond ice cream (vanilla, of course, will do).

An interesting sauce for shrimp....

minced garlic, lemon, hot sauce, and sherry. Mix all together..

It's a little spicy, though.

Woh.
One man’s description of how he used to gain 17 pounds in a week at home

Well, for breakfast I’d have two eggs, six biscuits with butter an jelly, half a quart of milk, six sausages, six strips of bacon, and a couple of homemade cinnamon rolls. Then I’d hit Maclean’s Bakery. They have a kind of fried cinnamon roll I love. Maybe I’d have two or three of them. Then , on the way downtown to have lunch, I might stop at Kresge’s and have two chili dogs and couple of root beers. . . Then I’d go to lunch. What I really like for lunch is something like a hot beef sandwich or a hot turkey sandwich. Open faced, loaded with that flour gravy. With mashed potatoes. Then dutch apple pie. . Then sometimes in the afternoon I’d pick up a pie and go to my friend’s house, and we’d cut the pie down the middle and put half in a bowl for each of us, and then take a quart of ice cream and cut that down the middle and put it on top of the pie. We’d wash it down with Pepsi. Then that would be it until I stopped at my sister’s house. She’s very big on crunchy peanut butter. . . .Then for dinner we’d maybe go to Charlie Bryant’s or one of the barbecues out on the highway. At the movies I’d always have a bag of corn and a big Coke and knock off a Payday candy bar. Then we’d always end up at Winstead’s, of course. Two double cheeseburgers with everything but onions, a fresh lime coke, and a frostry malt. It is was before eleven, I’d stop at the Zarda dairy for one of their 49 cent banana splits. Then I’d get home maybe some cherry pie and a 16 ounce pepsi.

From "The Tummy Trilogy" by Calvin Trillin

Damn Hot Peppers

Chop jalapenos into rings, and add at low heat to a sauté pan with lots of green peppers. Fry at low heat until very soft, and fiery hot. In the meantime, chop potatoes into 1 cm cubes, and boil, starting in cold water. When parboiled, remove, and then put immediately into very hot sauté pan with olive oil, and fry till crisp. Add a good amount of tomato puree to the peppers,and continue to cook. When the potatoes are crispy, add them to the peppers. If you want, you can add an egg to the mixture, right on top, and put in oven. Otherwise, you’re done.

The potatoes alone look nice too.

Steak Diane

Smash a steak of some sort to about half an inch thick. Fry it up in a little butter, until medium.

Remove steak. Add chopped shallots, and then either brandy or broth to deglaze. Add English mustard, cream, and parsley, and let it all bubble until reduced. Add to steak, and in my opinion eat with some decent crusty bread.

Peanut Sauce

Chop a challot. Crush garlic. Peel some ginger, and grate. Seed and chop some chilies. Fry all of these until soft in a little vegtable oil. Season with coriander, add crunchy peanut butter and a little water, and bring it to the boil.

I bet this can be used equally well with a sort of noodle dish with maybe some shrimp as well as on chicken kebab things.

Peanut Sauce

Chop a challot. Crush garlic. Peel some ginger, and grate. Seed and chop some chilies. Fry all of these until soft in a little vegtable oil. Season with coriander, add crunchy peanut butter and a little water, and bring it to the boil.

I bet this can be used equally well with a sort of noodle dish with maybe some shrimp as well as on chicken kebab things.

Lamb with Egg Sauce

Fry up some young lamb. Deglaze the pan with white wine and chicken broth. Reduce. Remove from pan. Then fry up some garlic and parsley, put the reduced sauce back in, and add two eggs and lemon. Take the pan off the heat, stir like a carbonara, and serve with lamb chops.

Capelletti in brodo

Fry up a little beef, pork, and veal. (if you have it). Grind it up after cooking. Add an egg, and some parmesan cheese to the ground meat. Then add some lemon zest. Add a little nutmeg, if you’ve got it. Chop up some flat leaf parsley, and add that to the whole mix. Mix it all well. You want a fairly moist meet mixture here. You want it to be able to hold together, so if you want to add some water or egg, go ahead.

Make some pasta, with whatever recipe you like. Roll the pasta out thinly, or use a pasta machine. Cut small circles out of the dough. Put a little bit of filling in the middle, and fold in half. Then fold so that the two edges touch, making a sort of hat shape.

Boil all the capelleti in fresh delicious chicken broth. Boil. Three minutes later, you have yourself some wonderful food.

[this recipe looks like it would be nice with ready made wonton wrappers as well, if you need something that can be done more quickly.

This is also closely related to the Armenian dish called menthe, which is made with a non-egg dough. For menthe, however, use raw meat, bake the menthe first in the oven, then simmer in a little chicken broth and serve with garlicky yogurt.

Nice idea for a quick salad

Roast some artichokes. Mix with black olives, red onions, and lots of Italian parsley. Mix with a a lot of lemon, and eat with crunchy fish.

Some thoughts about the eating of offal from Speorri

The aim here is not to make a study of the magico-religous significance of the interest man everywhere and at all times has shown in viscera. But to talk about cooking is automatically to talk about the digestive system, and in this sense Diphilus of Siphnos is right in describing the digestive properties of each vegetable; but the question goes much deeper, back to the soothsayers and hierophants of antiquity . . . And If were asked why Christian traditions in France involve eating of blood pudding at Christmas, and of mayeritsa at Easter in Greece, I would say because these are the feasts of birth and rebirth.

I'm currently reading Mythology & Meatballs, which is a distilled version of Daniel Spoerri's original travelogue of his time on the Greek island of Symi. It is a fascinating read, sporting a bizarre combination of ancient erudition, stories about 1960's era Greek sanitation, and food. I'm not really sure what to call it, honestly; it's not entirely a cookbook, but neither is it purely a travelogue. In any case, here is the first installment of things I've drawn from it as interesting.

sporelio, apparently, is a kind of very cheap oil drawn from the seeds of an olive. It comes up in Spoerri's story in a bowl of rice and mackerel he made for his attendant cats.

When in Greece, do not but the herb mazidi for culinary purposes, lest you be made fun of by Greek women. As a passing priest apparently told Speorri, it has a lot of uses, but none of them involve food.

Mayeritsa

This is something I am terribly unlikely to make. Nonetheless, here is my version of his recipe.

Boil the offal of a lamb for half an hour. Remove and chop finely. Replace in the bouillon, adding two or three quarts of water, with absolutely no other seasoning. [one of spoerri's companions breaks in here to note that seasoning it, especially with either onion or dill, will only succeed in sickening the soup, making it fit only for mainlanders] . Add a little salt. cook for an hour, then thicken the soup with a mixture of egg yolks and juice of a lemon.

Salt Cod (baracala) with tomato sauce

Prepare the salt cod in water as below. Fry up until crunchy. In another pan, prepare a tomato sauce with san marzano tinned plum tomatoes, olives, garlic, basil, and dried red pepper. DO NOT salt sauce. Serve the two together and enjoy.

A bread crumb topping for fish

Mix dried bread crumbs and fresh thyme in a bowl. Add olive oil, in which garlic has been left for an hour or two (remember not to leave it in there too long for fear of botulism). Add the olive oil to the crumbs, and top the fish. Stuff all in oven.

Here are some recipes from Richard Olney's Simple French Food. This book, incidentally, is a perfect example of the kind of book I wouldn't have given a second look normally. After all, the gloriously buxom Nigella Lawson isn't on the cover. (yes, yes, it's sarcasm). But guided by John Thorne, I heard about this apparent classic. In any case, it's a terrific book, filled with interesting recipes. Some of them are beyond me (I'm not going to find fresh pork fat to line terrines), but they're interesting to read about nonetheless.

Potatoes in Beer

Finely slice some onions and potatoes. Put them in a dish, alternating layers of onion and potato. Pour over some beer and bake for one hour, starting with a hot oven and turning down to about 350 after ten minutes. Ten minutes before finishing, pour over some cream.

Eggplant Custard

Saute thinly sliced mushrooms in olive oil, finishing them with a little lemon juice. Fry a few tomatoes until nearly dry. Fry 1/3 inch slices of aubergine until golden, and then arrange all ingredients in a dish. Pour over a mixture of egg, milk (2 eggs/1 cup of milk for 1.5 pounds of aubergine) and salt, and then bake for 30 minutes at about 375, or until the custard is set in the middle.

Beef and Onions in Beer
Carbonnade du Nord

Cook one pound of sliced onions in oil until softened and lightly caramelized. Brown 2 pounds of beef cut into slices. When all the steaks have been browned turn the flame low and add 2 teaspoons of brown sugar into the empty skillet.Add 3 TB of flour, and cook for a few minutes. Finally, deglaze with 2 cups of beer, stir in 1 cup of stock, and bring the whole thing to a boil. Now arrange the slices of meat in alternatve layers with the fried onions and pour over the loquid. Cook, tightly covered, in a 300 degree oven for three hours.

I didn't know about this, but apparently boiled or fried salt cod with garlic mayo and steamed or boiled veggies is a famous meal in France and Spain. Sounds interesting. Remember to soak the cod in water for 24-36 hours before doing this.

Hmm. Clearly, I hadn't worked the starter into enough of a lather, because it didn't really work. It tastes exactly right, but the bread didn't rise. So, a few more days of feeding, and then I'll try yet again.

My apartment smells of sourdough. Or, more accurately, just of sour, since the bread hasn't been made yet. It's been smelling for three days, as the starter sitting in a bowl on top of my books has got more and and more tart. And the worst part is that I'm not sure it's going to work. Well, the moment of truth is tonight. For the first time, I'm going to try out this sourdough starter, and see if it actually raises anything. In all honesty, I'm a little sceptical, not just of my own effort, but of the concept itself. How, exactly, is a little flour left to soak in bottled water for a couple of days doing to produce yeast? Apparently, however, it works, because people seem to have produced bread before any sort of leaven came in convenient little bags. My fingers are crossed!

Here's a list of some more interesting tidbits from John Thorne.

Cookbooks

< Simple French Food by Richard Olney
Mythology and Meatballs: A Greek Island Diary- this sounds particularly fascinating, though where I'm going to find it is beyond me.

I'll type up more later.

I found this recipe for lemon ice cream in a book called "The Outlaw Cook", by John Thorne. The clever thing about it is that you don't need to make a custard first, and you certainly don't need an ice cream maker. I'm not sure it will come out smooth enough, but let's try it out.

Lemon Ice Cream

1 cup of superfine (caster) sugar
2 cups of cream
Juice of 1 lemon and its zest.

Zabar's and Fairway Market
80th/74th Street and Broadway

From the description in my guide book, it sounded like these two "super" markets were rather like Hediard in Paris, or the food area of Harrod's in London. Namely, snobby wildly overpriced gougathons, replete with $5000 wines and $41 truffle hamburger mix.

As I walked into one or the other (I don't remember now), I realized I couldn't have been more wrong. This was no upper-brow Hediard, suffocated by its own superiority.

What it was, in reality, was a microcosm of the wonderful markets that make Parisian food so rewarding, tinged with a bit of Notting Hill market's mad bohemia. Over in produce, Hispanic restaurant employees were tussling with wealthy upper west side women for Italian parsley, each stuffing prodigous amounts almost angrily into their respective bags. The man behind the bread counter kept yelling at the shoppers. I saw a couple of people fighting over the day's last rugelach, people almost brutally trying to jump the queue for meats despite it all being with numbers, and one old lady in a wheelchair desperately trying to be noticed when her turn for fish came around. People were running, and dashing, and bowling each other over, all the while buying and buying and buying.

Amid the chaos was a bevy of terrific products. Spicy sausage, aged beef, vegetables as good as I've seen in America save during my brief trip to California, all sorts of foreign and interesting bits and pieces, and great looking bread. Even the prepared foods looked good; I can now see how people in New York manage without doing much cooking. No, it's still not Paris, I have to say. I bet any little town in Italy would be better. But for America, both these stores are damned good, and have a lot to teach those ridiculous "organic" outlets which have now so heavily esconsed themselves in the dreariness of suburban American. Hail to Zabar's and Fairway! Praise them with great praise!

(Ten points for catching the reference that sentence makes!)

A recipe I read for french fries, instead of doing the whole double frying thing. Just fry them in cold oil to begin with. The time it takes to warm up does the job of the double frying...

from "The Man who Ate Everything"' by Steingarten.

Lombardi's
32 Spring Street, Little Italy
New York, NY

Lombardi's is apparently one of the most famous pizza joints in New York. It certainly looks like one, with tightly spaced tables spread through a narrow and somewhat labrythine restaurant.

I probably don't need to say that I went there with some anticipation. Ever since I visited their apparent competitors in the poorly named New Haven, I've been wondering whether the real New York deal was any better.

I emerged both disappointed and satisfied. The latter because of the wonderful fresh mozarrella spread sparingly over the pizza, and because of the crispiness of the crust and the friendly chewy crackle as I guzzled down piece after piece.

I was disappointed, however, by the actual taste of the crust. Yes, it was well fermented, and so the pungency of a good crust was there without question. The problem, however, was salt. I don't know whether I got a bad batch,or the second string dough maker was on the job that night, but the crust was salty to distraction. I've never had crust like this, I thought, as I hurled cups of water down my throat. Actually, now that I think of it, I've had crust like this once; early on in my pizza making experiments, I once got frustrated with my insufficiently salted efforts and unceremoniously dumped a whole lot of the stuff into the dough. That pizza tasted exactly like this one.

So, salt aside, Lombardi's makes an excellent pizza. Hopefully I just caught an off night.

Artie's Deli

Artie's is a charming little deli on the Upper West Side, like everything else I've listed here. The service was excellent and friendly, while the sour and dill pickles and coleslaw brought to accompany my sandwich were also excellent examples of their kind.

I think, though, I made a wrong turn on the sandwich choice. It wasn't Artie's fault. The corned beef arrived piled almost impossibily high on what turned out to be excellent rye bread. But what I've discovered, finally, is that I don't particularly like corned beef. Not that I have any problem with it, or won't eat it or anything, but it just isn't that good, both tasteless and fatty at the same time.

Having been disappointed by the famous beef, I've now taken a quick detour to Foodtv to find out exactly what the stuff is. According to them, it'sbrisket cured in a brine. Frankly, I'd rather have the brisket sans brine any day.


As I say, however, the non-tastiness of corned beef shouldn't be counted against the restaurant. All the soups and other sandwiches looked lovely. They had a great selection of desserts as well. But in the end I don't think I would make a special trip to eat there. A deli, it seems to me is a neighborhood kind of thing, and I bet there is the equal of Artie's spread all throughout New York.

H & H Bagels
UPDATE: This branch of H & H is apparently connected to Seinfeld as well.

I'm used to Bagel shops as full service sandwich dispensers/cafes, given my experiences in DC and around my law school. Therefore, when I walked into H & H and saw nothing but a counter, a kettle, and a giant oven frantically being fed with newly boiled bagels, I was a little surprised.

I was even more surprised when my first order was rejected by the cashier. Looking as if I had justed asked for newborn rather then a blueberry bagel, he stammered the terrible news; "Those aren't hot!". Properly chastized, I had him bring me some raisin bagels, which he assured me were appropriately fresh. And they were terrific.

My only note is to bring something less then a $20 bill. The frazzled employees looked a little annoyed with me the next morning. But hey, I got my bagel.

Gray's Papaya
72nd Street & Broadway
New York, NY

As I walked closer to Gray's Papaya, I noticed their motto emblazoned across the top of the restaurant. "Nature's own revitalizer!". Given that Gray's sells only hot dogs, I was initially confused.

But no! Gray's sells more then hotdogs. Within a small, cramped, seatless restaurant, filled with entirely incomprehensible wait staff (I eluded difficulty by answering "yes" to every query, and got roughly what I wanted) and equally strange customers, the good owners of Gray's also sell a range of exotic fruit juices, the leader among them being their apparently famous papaya juice drink. In reality, for just $2.40 you get two beautifully charred and juicy dogs plus a generous serving of the juice. Given the impossibility of finding anything non-toxic to eat in Manhattan for that price, combined with the excellence of Gray's product, including the juice, I recommend a quick stop next time you're in town. As an added bonus, the location I tried was only blocks from the Lincoln Center; pre-opera hot dogs, anyone?

Lupa
147 Thompson Street,
New York, NY

Lupa is meant to be super-chef Mario Batali’s downmarket foil to the ultra sophisticated Babbo. After having had lunch there, all I can say is that Luppa must have a serious problem with false modesty.

I can, at least, guarantee that the cheese course wouldn’t be out of place in any big deal restaurant. Particularly excellent was a deeply flavourful soft cheese that screamed “goat” in loud, guttural, delicious tones. For those uncomfortable with the luxurious taste of goat, Batali also offers a subtle locally made ricotta, drizzled with an excellent fragrant honey.

Lupa also boasts an in house charcuterie, for lack of the Italian word. I only had the salumi, so I can’t speak to the entire selection, but I rather suspect all the rest is just as good as the juicy robustly spiced and generously fatted sausage.

There was more sausage to come in my main course, for which I chose an understated gnocchi with fennel sausage. The small ricotto and semolina dumpling were both creamy and chewy, substantial enough to stand up to the spicy sauce. Swirling some of the kitchen’s excellent crunchy loaf and foccaccia around in the remaining sauce was only the icing on the cake.

Indeed, as far as I could tell, the only time Lupa fails is when it tries to bring in actual Italian ingredients, and particularly in the cheese department. A sheep and cow’s milk Italian brie look-alike was, just like every other cheese imported to this country, almost tasteless outside the rind. I suspect, however, that the parmesan or the pecorino would have been better, given the looser restrictions on aged cheeses. And I should probably castigate them about the price; it’s an expensive lunch if you want a couple of courses and wine. On the other hand, I ate quite a lot, and the food is truly excellent.

So, Lupa isn’t perfect. Very few things are. Save up your money and go.

Note to self: the keyword to search for a food vacation is "cooking vacation", if that job works out this summer.