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Fish House

Fish_house_facadeIs there a food you like to eat even though it makes you sick? Battered, fried shellfish tends to make me a little queasy but I love it. I steer clear of coated, fried fish, though. I don’t know if it’s bad Gorton’s (check out their Halloween Fish Sticks Graveyard—spoooky) or Filet-O-Fish memories or what but I can’t handle it. Even in England, I eat chips and do without the fish part (it’s ok because I like meat pies).

So, I was a little bummed that since it wasn’t stone crab season I was kind of stuck with lots of places known for fish sandwiches. I’m sure The Keys are filled with great fish sandwiches but coupled with the long car ride, it would be courting digestive disaster.

Fish_house_crab_quesadillaWe stopped at the aptly named Fish House in Key Largo. In my mind I had pictured a breezy spot with picnic tables on the water. In actuality, the seating is indoors (I couldn’t have stood the humidity anyway) and full of dark wood, fishing nets and maritime kitsch.

I went unorthodox and split a crab quesadilla. At least it wasn’t bulging with surimi. Crab is always either pricy or dubious here.

Fish_house_shrimp_crab_po_boy I was also swayed by an oyster and shrimp po boy, which despite the name was nothing like you’d find in New Orleans. For one, the bread was encrusted with melted cheddar. That seemed kind of wrong, especially since I’d just been barraged with oozing dairy in the quesadilla. The sandwich was more like seafood on garlic cheese bread topped with shredded lettuce, and then it kind of grew on me even though I got all dainty and had to use a knife and fork. Then I became concerned over the decadence and scared myself into only gnawing on one half of the roll. Like the damage hadn’t already been done.

My only regret is not trying the key lime pie. I was plagued by the same problem that always thwarts me in Southeast Asia: the too hot to be hungry syndrome.

Fish House * 102341 Overseas Hwy., Key Largo, FL

My Babybel

BabybelI can’t tell whether Babybel is going for the bizarre foreign type humor intentionally or not. Every time the ad with the parachuters jumping out of a plane for the tiny wax covered cheese wedges comes on, I’m unable to tear my eyes from the horribly unfunny spectacle on screen.

Unfortunately, I can only find the UK version online, which is shorter and more restrained. The US one has the Rusty Griswold-looking kid making expressions a bit more manically and the song rocks out with more emphatic shouting at the end.

I don’t want to live in a world where Sally Field’s censored Emmy acceptance speech and a man on an elephant being attacked by a tiger are all over YouTube, yet American Babybel ads are nowhere to be found.

No Name Pub

Pizza in Florida? I know, it doesn’t make any sense. And it’s not like Pizzeria Bianco in Arizona where you’re like, “wha?” but it’s all artisanal and quite possibly the best pizza in the entire nation (not that I know this first hand).

PubpizzaNo, this was total childhood pizza, neither deep dish thick nor NYC skinny. ‘80s pizza is doughy yet still fairly crispy on the bottom. Kind of stiff, some might say cardboard-like. And there’s a buttload of cheese, what would pass for extra cheese anywhere else.

Despite being touristy as anything, No Name Pub where the gimmick is to inexplicably staple a dollar bill on any surface, became our Keys dinner destination. The little I saw of Key West was scary in a Beale St./Bourbon St., whatever other B street filled with frozen drink revelers, way. We didn’t have time to dig for charm. And it took so long to get there that by the time we turned around and left it was already approaching 10pm. I feared it might be slim pickings on Rt. 1 Sunday night. So, we hightailed it to Big Pine Key hoping that the pub in their name might save us with a reasonable closing time (11pm, as it turned out).

PubwallWrong as it seemed, pizza definitely appeared to be their thing. Everyone had pies on their tables, along with pitchers of beer. I always take the opportunity to order a pitcher since they tend to be scarce in NYC. Plus, they’d already turned off the deep fryer, which ruled out most of the seafood side of the menu. It was our second attempt that day to try conch fritters. A pier side bar we’d stopped at earlier claimed to have run out. It was very suspicious. Did we look like people who should be denied conch fritters?

I can’t believe I got my way with the ham and pineapple, maybe James was too beat to argue. It’s not always easy convincing others of the beauty of “Hawaiian” food.

And the best part was the pitch black, windy drive on back roads back to the main highway. On the way down, I’d thought all the signs about deer crossing were bullshit (it’s not like I saw any alligators) but it turns out key deer are real, not a jackalope farce. All sorts of tiny, german shepherd-sized creatures popped into bushes as we drove past.

No Name Pub * North Watson Blvd., Big Pine Key, FL

Reading is Fundamental

BookmobileIt’s easy to be critical, not so much when it comes to defining what’s “good.” At least for me. I thought I liked food writing until I tried thinking of who my favorite food writer might be and came up empty. As it turns out, I like to read and I like reading about food but not necessarily for the writing. I’m not literary minded. Maybe I’ve been ruined by the lawless potential of blogs.

With nonfiction I would want something funny, occasionally mean-spirited, highly personal, yet also informative. Sounds simple but I’m drawing a blank. Nothing overly intellectual or earnest. And I definitely don’t like reading about upper middle class+ and/or Ivy League educated men and their families. I think I’m probably supposed to read Julie and Julia (which I see has been retitled and packaged to look more chick lit) but I’ve always avoided it for no good reason. Book suggestions anyone?

Fiction-wise, well, I rarely read anymore, but I prefer mundane and/or melancholy, preferably about fuckups or outcasts. Raymond Carver and Sherwood Anderson are nothing alike but I enjoy short stories from both authors. I have Richard Lange’s Dead Boys and Junot Diaz’s (who plays food writer in this month’s Gourmet) The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao on hold at the library (who knows when I’ll actually get them).

In the early ‘90s, The Sterns drew me in with kitsch and a tangible passion for their subjects, frequently food-related. I still read their longstanding Gourmet column and even wrote them fan letter when I was younger and less guarded.

The only book I could think of in recent history that was ostensibly about food while maintaining an entertainingly personal bent was Candy Freak. Not by a food writer. And apparently, a nut. Such strange timing that I would think of Steve Almond the same day Gawker mentions him (unflatteringly, of course). And then I remembered that he's now also a daddy blogger and I got grossed out again. 

Last night I cracked open The River Cottage Meat Book, my birthday present that showed up a month and half late because it was so massive that it had to be shipped surface from England (as a money-saver not because it HAD to be). It’s kind of cruel that I make my non-meat-eating sister send me such fleshy books as gifts. A few years back it was Nose to Tail Eating. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall definitely doesn’t fit my M.O., he’s very back to the land and posits that meat should cost twice as much for half the amount. I get his point, especially juxtaposed with slaughter photos of the livestock he’s raised (that seems so British right now, being all straightforward and graphic about animal husbandry). But it’s certainly not light reading.

Then this morning I received an email from Amazon suggesting that I preorder the Best Food Writing 2007. WTF? I haven't even looked at the list of authors yet. Am I being led to water and I just don’t want to drink? I will give it a read (via the public library again) and I’ll do so with a mind as open as I can possibly muster.

Photo from the South Carolina Library History Project

Confiteria Buenos Aires Bakery & Café

1/2 I seem to have it in my head that I love South American bakeries even though Chilean San Antonio Bakery is the only one in NYC I’ve actually been to. There’s an Uruguayan one in Woodside that’s perpetually on my to try list. In the spring, I attempted another Uruguayan bakery that I think was called La Nueva but it had turned Italian and was covered in a Grand Opening banner. I picked up a tasty mini cheesecake but that wasn’t my original goal.

Confiteria_buenos_airesSo, perhaps it’s a bit premature to declare my love of South American bakeries but Confiteria Buenos Aires in Miami certainly bolstered my feelings. I like these places because on the surface they them seem to be all about sweets, yet they also tend to have interesting sandwiches and sell imported groceries from behind the counter like an old-timey mercantile.

On Labor Day proper, The Miami café was bustling enough to require taking a number. Fine by me because I like order and it prevents awkward and frequently inaccurate NYC-style sideways lining up. I was overwhelmed with choice and could only pick a few things because a cubano was scheduled for our next stop.

Confiteria_buenos_aires_cookiesI wish I knew what things were called but there wasn’t any signage and everyone even the least Hispanic-looking (I know that’s a ridiculous call with Argentina since the population is heavily European in origin) customers spoke fluent Spanish. That’s something that struck me about Miami compared to NYC. You certainly hear Spanish here but not to the same degree. Even in the Keys, at a seafood shack, all of the diners and waiters were speaking Spanish. I would definitely get up to speed with my language skills quicker in Florida.

We got an OK spinach empanada, a ham and cheese sandwich that was dazzlingly sweet/savory (one of the world’s best flavor duos) because it was on sugared crackly pastry like a napoleon, and an incredibly dense dulce de leche roll. You could barely even cut it with a plastic fork the caramel was so thick.

Confiteria_buenos_aires_goodies

Confiteria_buenos_aires_dulce_de_le

Others seemed to be enjoying a breaded chicken cutlet sandwich, eggy tortilla/quiche wedges, and what appeared to be croquettes of some sort. There was a stack of crustless tea sandwiches in a domed refrigerated countertop case. Those never tend to be that exciting (except for the bizarre England by way of Malaysia interpretations with prawn sambal) but I do wonder what the fillings were. I should’ve picked up some alfajores. So many should haves, would haves. I’m just glad that we didn’t skip over this seemingly non-essential shop.

Confiteria Buenos Aires Bakery & Café * 7134 Collins Ave., Miami, FL

Livin’ la Vida Local

Groan

If I have to read about one more NYC’er living off the land, I will hurl up locally sourced bile. I wish that I could care about all this stuff (I did make it about 80% of the way through The Omnivore’s Dilemma. I don’t see Animal, Vegetable, Miracle in my future) but I can’t. And being deep into my freezer scavenger project, you know I’m not living la vida local.

The New Yorker usually scares me but I was bored enough in the airport last weekend to pick up the annual food issue (and then I was still bored). I felt like a douche brandishing some “my state is better than yours” periodical badge even though obvs New Yorker readers don’t all reside in New York.

Adam Gopnik had the requisite urban locavore article, complete with precocious quips from his author’s children. Lucky for you, “New York Local: Eating the fruits of the five boroughs” is one of the few articles freely available online.

Today I was treated to the New York version of this hot earthy trend, except Manny Howard isn’t so much sourcing as doing it himself. Good for him.

There are universals in these tales. Up-for-anything male narrators, an exasperated yet understanding wife, and if at all possible small children. (I know I’ll invoke foodie wrath but I’ve never found Calvin Trillin [as well a currently high profile, self-promoting, accurately monikered blogger that shall remain nameless—what am I? Regina Schrambling?!] as hilarious as others do [plus he stole my fantasy/idea of creating a hawker center in NYC for his New Yorker piece on Singapore. He’d put his on the Hudson River while I think the waterfront along Red Hook or Sunset Park would be better suited but I suspect both suggestions are selfishly based upon proximity to the idea generator’s home]. It’s the foiblesome guy coupled with straight-man wife that fails to grab me, kind of the Larry David wife as comedic foil M.O. except that I do like Curb Your Enthusiasm. Maybe I’m more disconcerted by so much female food writing centering around nostalgia, family and recipe-driven life lessons.)

Oh, and despite never having written for The New Yorker, as his bio points out, I'd also like to add "Alternadad" Neal Pollack to the mix. Just because.

At least the New York writer lives in Kensington and not classic brownstone Brooklyn, making me sick farming in his quaint $2 mil home. In fact, it looks like he paid $830,000  for the little eight-bedroom house in 2003. Or rather his wife did, as the title appears to be in her name, which is completely unsurprising. Someone’s got to subsidize a freelance writing career in NYC.

Ok, I wasn’t going to actually read the article, but you can’t get mildly cranky over a cover a magazine without at least skimming the text. Ok, it’s actually kind of creepy. There’s a lot of accidental animal death, so I guess you could call it the story of a Brooklyn family of bunny and duck killers. Dark comedy or not, god invokes his wrath on the city slicker by sending a rare, inexplicable tornado to destroy his fecund patch of land. Now, it all makes sense. We have Manny to blame for the freak weather incident last month.

If I have to agree with one sentiment, it’s the final sentences:

“It wasn’t just a matter of buying regionally, or seasonally, or organically—the important thing was to consume responsibly. ‘I’ll never be as wasteful,’ she said. ‘We throw away more food than we eat.’”

That’s a lesson I don’t need to learn from growing my own food, and it’s exactly why I have to eat all the crap stored in my freezers. There’ll be no waste (or bunny or duck maiming) in this household.

*Hilarious non-New Yorker cartoon lifted from CartoonStock. I wish I knew who Dave was.

Sunday Night Special: Birria de Chivo

Birria

It’s fall freezer cleaning time, which means going through all the crap that’s accumulated in both of them (yes, two) since lord knows when and no, not tossing it, cooking it. Maybe I’ll get food poisoned but it looks like I won’t need to buy any proteins (ew, I hate it when chefs and whoever else use that unappetizing term) for a couple weeks. Here’s the gruesome break down:

-Pork ribs were grilled Saturday night
-Chicken wings were buffalo-ized Sunday afternoon
-Lamb roast will become mutton kolhapuri (from a mix—we also have enough dried and canned goods to last into 2008)
-Lamb chops will be barbecued yueyang style
-Beef roast will be turned into rending
-Ground beef will transform into American hard shell tacos with cheddar cheese and lettuce
-Ground pork? I’m not sure yet, maybe ma po tofu

I also found a bag of cheese curds I bought in Montreal Labor Day weekend ’06. Sad as it makes me, I’m not sure how great year-old frozen cheese is. They do sell curds in the neighborhood so my eventual poutine experiment won’t be a total bust.

[written on Sunday] But presently, I’m only concerned with the goat chunks I’m turning into birria this evening. I went with a Rick Bayless recipe, but quickly realized I had the wrong cut of meat. I have bone-in hunks made for stewing while he requires a five-pound solid mass of meat. I’m not sure how well the steaming approach will work with my tougher bits of goat.

[back to the past tense] Well, it succeeded in using up freezer meat and a bag of guajillo chiles that have been neglected for months, but didn’t quite succeed as an amazingly tasty meal. You’re supposed to skim fat from the broth but there didn’t even appear to be any broth; it all looked like orange oil. I did what I could to clean it up. The flavor was there but the meat was like jerky. I almost lost a tooth. Americans seem to hate goat meat, and this use of the gamey flesh would only succeed in scaring most people further. I’ve only eaten birria once in Chicago so I’m hardly a connoisseur, but wrong is wrong. Lesson learned: do not attempt to steam stew meat.

At least my evening was salvaged by the pretty as a pastel rainbow mithai I picked up at Dehli Palace earlier in the day. I love their box decorated with photo collage of the goods.

Mithai

Clearly, there is no throwing out of food in my household, so I shouldn’t have been surprised that while James was home sick yesterday that he attempted salvaging the birria. After sitting in the refrigerator overnight, the fat had congealed enough to easily remove. That was a start, and then he stewed the whole thing within an inch of its life (after giving up on steaming, I let the meaty bones cook in the broth for about an hour the night before to no avail). And it succeeded. I had un-bad birria waiting for me when I came home from work. A squeeze of lime and a few corn tortillas enhanced the new and improved meal. I didn’t take any photos of round two, though.

Habanos Cafe

A cubano at Latin American Cafeteria was first on my agenda, post-disembarkment. But it wasn’t meant to be. I’ve never experienced a two-plus hour wait for a rental car, and I’m still not sure if that was a uniquely Miami pain in the ass or a typical Labor Day weekend trauma. Not only was I starving by 4pm but also concerned that we were going to ruin our 9pm dinner appetites with hefty sandwiches (assuming we eventually got them).

Habanos_cafeWell, we followed the directions to the address I had looked up and there was no Latin American Cafeteria to be found (though we did pass one about twenty blocks before reaching our intended destination). Being exhausted, sweaty and defeated, we gave up and decided to eat at Habanos Café, the casual Cuban restaurant residing at the address. Driving back twenty blocks would've been too ennervating at this point. After taking a seat on the more formal side, which was hardly stuffy; it was simply tables and chairs rather than counter and stools, we discovered that cubanos weren’t on the menu. Argh. My first impressions of Miami were not stellar.

Fine. I was hungry enough to eat a full on meal anyway. And frankly, the food was considerably better than the frumpy décor and geriatric clientele belied. Not to say that old frumps necessarily have bad taste, but it’s hard to banish the cranky early bird special stereotypes.

Habanos_cafe_lechon_and_moros For me, keeping it light involved beans, rice, yuca and roast pork, just eschewing an appetizer for good measure. The moros had to have had pork fat in them because instead of dry graininess, they were soft and dare I say succulent (ok, I don’t dare—that word drives me crazy even when it involves plants). They weren’t like filler, the way I usually treat them, but could be a meal alone. The fried yuca was different that I was accustomed to, also. Usually, the starchiness requires a glass of water nearby. These were creamy inside rather than chewy and the exterior crackingly crisp. I was only going to eat half of my lechon, but that didn’t happen either; there wasn’t a dry strip in the pile or pork.

I attempted to revive myself with a cafecito and marveled at what tasty food could be found at unremarkable restaurants. Perhaps Miami could redeem itself.

Habanos Café * 9796 SW 24th St., Miami, FL

Michy’s

At least one “nice” dinner should be squeezed into a vacation, even if it’s just an extended weekend jaunt. But where in Miami? No offense to savvy residents but message boards weren’t much help. I couldn’t trust the posters’ judgment and knew I was in trouble when I glanced at the top five most booked restaurants on Open Table and three were Seasons 52, a Darden chain (Red Lobster, Olive Garden, et al.), a fact strategically absent from their website. Sure, I love me some chains but this wasn’t what I’d had in mind.

Not good, and I wasn’t about to touch a flashy clone like Nobu or Table 8 either. In fact, I wasn’t gung ho on South Beach at all. We never set foot or tire within the area, at least not that I was aware of. I did look at the ocean and walked in sand for maybe 60 seconds near a mini South American enclave, though.

I eventually settled on Michy’s, a restaurant I hadn’t initially considered because of the celebrity chef. But then I had to remind myself of how stupid that was considering that Michelle Bernstein hasn’t been on Food Network in a million years and her guest judge appearance on season two’s Top Chef hardly tarnished her image. Melting Pot was from a different era. Michelle Bernstein wouldn’t pose covered in tomato sauce or demonstrate her Latina-ness by becoming the Colombian Rachael Ray.

I think the restaurant is in what they call the design district, but it just looked like a commercial strip with lots of low rent motels advertising HBO and waterbeds like you find in downtown Las Vegas. The young, bossy M.B.A. seated next to us (I’m always seated next to an M.B.A., it seems) described the area as “gritty” to his date that he was only mildly impressing. Maybe it had something to do with his telling her what she was going to eat and insisting on doing all the ordering. I’d describe the décor more beyond being cheerily stylish and cozy but apparently they’re closing and remodeling in the middle of this month. It could be wildly different in October. Even though the restaurant was hardly a scene, it was packed and there were plenty of dresses barely covering ass cheeks and skin tanned to shades of wet clay.

Earlier, James had been grilling me about what kind of food Michy’s served and I couldn’t answer. It’s not like anything, no one ethnicity or style. New American? Small Plates? That tells you nothing other than the aesthetic. I’d hate to label the cuisine as comfort food, though that’s close; it’s the kind of food that’s good to eat, uh, ok? Rich and decadent…or maybe that’s just how I ordered.

Portions are available in full and halves and since we still had moros, yucca and lechon yet to be digested, we ordered four half sizes. Plus a shared dessert, it was right on. We, which is to say I, also chose a bottle of Albariño, which seemed to garner a strong approval from our waitress. But it also wrongly pegged James as knowing something about wine so he did the tasting and all of that and when I ordered an after dinner glass of Moscato d'Asti I was informed that it was sparkling like I was a know nothing. Ahem.

Michys_croquetas

Blue cheese and jamon croquetas with fig marmalade. For some reason I thought these contained smoked duck, but that is not so according to MenuPages (restaurants with no websites stymie me). I’m relieved because I couldn’t taste any duck. The ham was just a hint. Really, these were like awesome, sophisticated mozzarella sticks. Fig jam blows marinara away for its dipping properties.

Michys_orchiette

Orecchiette with duck sausage and herbed ricotta. This isn’t listed online so I could be off. I never order pasta at restaurants because it seems like a boring carby waste but this was reasonably sized and it’s kind of hard to resist game sausage.

Michys_steak_frites

Steak frite, a.k.a. churrasco with fries and béarnaise and au poivre dipping sauces. Yes, fries and béarnaise, not to mention steak, are heavy as heck. But all three were nearly rendered cute in this abbreviated form. A few slices of beef and a handful of fries never killed anyone. The béarnaise was much preferred over the au poivre.

Michys_yellowtail

Yellowtail with bok choy and shiitake broth. We stepped out of the fatty, creamy theme with this one. I think the bok choy was the only substantial vegetable we ate during this meal. The tuna was flaky and as delicate as it looked.

Michys_cuatro_leches

I wasn’t about to try the warn a.k.a. molten chocolate cake and didn’t want to do the bread pudding even though it seemed like their signature. The cuatro leches caught my attention because four is better than three, right? If I’m correct, dulce de leche is the extra dairy component. And coupled with baked Alaska? It was a must. The meringue was described as soft, which I didn’t understand until I poked it. The edges were all toasted golden but the mushroom-like mound was pliable, not chalky like those fat free meringue cookies you find at Trader Joe’s. The light egg white blob went well with the caramelly cake and pool of fruit-studded sauce. My bubbly Italian wine wasn’t so bad with it either.

Michy's * 6927 Biscayne Blvd. Miami, FL 

XXtra, XXtra, Read All About It

CheetosxxtrafhCheetos are the only chips I like (yeah, yeah, they’re not really chips in the potato sense) and it’s not like I’m presented with Cheeto-snacking opportunities on a regular basis. But there’s something about road trips that brings out my true junk-loving nature. As kids, whenever my dad (never my mom) would stop at a convenie nce store/gas station , he’d invariably come back to the car with treats not allowed during day to day life, like Hostess pudding pies (do they still make those? Er, apparently not), mini Bama pecan pies (no, I didn’t grow up in the south) and it might have only happened once but I will always remember a can of tooth pain sweet Nehi Strawberry soda. Mars bars were his candy of choice, which have been transformed into the modern Snickers with almonds.

On the longer than anticipated drive down to Key West from Miami (Google estimated three hours, but it took more like five because people drive so freaking slow, which is to say exactly the speed limit. I’ve never seen such a thing around here, and even though it’s infuriating to get mowed down by New Jersey drivers when you’re going 80 m.p.h., it’s more excruciating to be stuck on a one-lane highway doing 35) I managed to avoid gas station candy (but I was lucky enough to run into a CVS and find Great Lash Blackest Black mascara, an item I forgot to pack, mere feet from the entrance and with a dollar off coupon attached to it. You don’t know how good it feels to spend less than four bucks with zero legwork to pick up a necessity). However, we didn’t avoid fried seafood but that’s not for now.

Chicko_2

On the way back to Miami, I picked up a Chick-O-Stick, which was kind of blander than I remember and I swear, slightly cinnamon tinged. I love limited edition snacks (they also had blue cheese and buffalo flavored Doritos packed together in the same bag, which was kind of clever) so I was happy to see James pick up a 99-cent bag of XXTRA Flamin’ Cheetos at a mini mart. I hate food that claims to be hot and isn’t. Wow, their “twice as hot!” was no hyperbole. These fiery nuggets were way more heated than either of us anticipated and possibly not good driving food. They induced coughing and I was afraid James might veer off the dimly lit highway into a manatee laden swamp or something.

Five days later, last night, the bag was still in our apartment, maybe ¼ full. I started picking at the Cheetos and they were hot but not as wildly punishing as they seemed on the weekend. Had my palate toughened up or had they lost their kick?