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The $5.94/$41.76 Difference

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According to NPD, US restaurant spending only went up a tick (.4%) in Q2 2010 with the average check being $5.94. Nowhere do they specify fast food, but otherwise I'm having a hard time seeing how such a low figure could be true. Or maybe I'm just a big spender. China had the smallest check at $2.58, and the biggest increase in spending (15.6%). Just wait until those Hong Kong McDonald's weddings sweep the mainland.

Kurt Salmon also finds that restaurant spending is down this fall, but doesn't say by how much.

Zagat clearly tracks a more affluent user. Their 2011 New York City Restaurant Survey shows that in NYC, the average check is $41.76, down a mere five cents from 2009. For the record, a whopping 81% think it's fine to take photos of food in restaurants…so there.

La Fusta

While rustling up dishes around town made with blood for a future article, I kept thinking about morcilla, then how I would love to return to Buenos Aires and eat monstrous amounts of beef. That’s not likely to happen in the immediate future. I went as far as checking airfare (also, it’s the only city I’m aware of with a hotel bearing my name, so that gives them an edge) but in the end, I turned to La Fusta, one of a handful of Argentine steakhouses in Queens.

La fusta morcilla

I got my morcilla, a particularly messy and gooey specimen with chewy ribbons spilling from the casing after being cut open. This would not be the blood sausage to covert the squeamish. (Also, I’m still mastering the focus on this point-and-shoot, which is trickier to use than my usual dSLR. I’ve been testing it out at low-risk restaurants and not completely succeeding.)

La fusta chimichurri

A little garlic-heavy chimichurri certainly perks up any heavy, meaty item, though.

La fusta skirt steak

The half order of skirt steak was big enough to be a full serving and a bargain at $15.50. “You’ll have the mashed potatoes?” prodded our server. No, just the standard French fries.

La fusta veal parmesan

He then cajoled James, who’d gone with the Italian part of the menu, ordering a veal parmigiana/milanesa napolitana (not sure why the geography changes in Spanish) covered in possibly an entire ball of melted mozzarella. “Linguine?” I liked that the server had such strong ideas about sides…even if I didn’t follow his suggestion.

La fusta provoleta

As if that weren’t enough cheese, we also started with a proveleta, which is a grilled round of provolone. In Argentina, they always held their shape. Here, this wedge seasoned with oregano and olive oil, had oozed and crusted into a giant frico.

La fusta salad

And a La Fusta salad to pretend we were eating a balanced meal. Of course, there were chunks of ham and cheese in this, as well as anchovies, which we were needlessly warned about.

It’s rare to end up on Roosevelt Avenue not craving Southeast Asian or Latino food. I rarely stray beyond a Donovan’s burger. But it’s good to have Argentine restaurants (yet another cuisine lacking in Brooklyn for no good reason) as an option.

La Fusta * 8032 Baxter Ave., Elmhurst, NY

I’m Loving It

Apple_Pie_Cake

Many Americans (ok, probably just a few) find White Castle to be perfectly appropriate for Valentine’s Day celebrations, so it’s not that much of a stretch to see why Hong Kongers might want to get married at a McDonald’s.

For me, this might be one of the few ways that a marriage ceremony would be palatable.

Fries_Kiss

Playing Lady and the Tramp with a French fry instead of a curling string of spaghetti? Fun.

Is a cake of apple pies really that different from our ubiquitous cupcake pyramids and nearly as popular Krispy Kreme towers?

The only missing part of this story is where an onion ring was used in the marriage proposal.

Chain Links: Eat Like an Egyptian

Borgar

Heinz ad from The Inspiration Room

When you think you’ve heard of everything, you can still be caught off guard by an unknown chain like Nick-N-Willy’s. I didn’t even know that take-and-bake pizzas were still a thing, let alone that they’d want them in Egypt. [press release]

Not to be left out of the lucrative Middle Eastern market, Schlotzsky’s, a chain I know by name only, is heading to Egypt and will spread to Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. [press release]

Egypt is going for the trifecta of third-tier brands. Maybe you’ve heard of the Dixie Cream Donut Company? Magdi Rizk, co-owner of the franchise company Vision Brands astutely observes that Egypt’s doughnut market is “vastly untapped.” The bacon-on-everything market is probably also untapped in Egypt—someone should jump on that. [QSRweb]

They were lining up for Krispy Kremes in Bangkok. I guess the malls are now safe for American doughnuts. [CNNGo]

Dairy Queen is getting bigger in China and not just in the big cities. You just know they’re putting red beans on their soft serve.  [Bloomberg]

The Hurricane Club

Both refined and junky—broccoli with Cheetos? Yams with homemade ranch dressing?—at Park Avenue Autumn, chef Craig Koketsu cooks the kind of food that I like to eat.

Hurricane club dining room

The food at Hurricane Club, a dark, glossy, multi-level restaurant that looks more '70s-art-deco-adaptation than Polynesian, is even more snacky. A few cocktails, a selection of pupu and a shared plate or two is more than enough. It’s a scene for nibbling not a multi-course meal.

Hurricane club pupu platter

In fact, you’re only presented with a cocktail and pupu menus when you first sit down. I would've preferred seeing the other dishes before making a choice. The Imperial Platter showcases a selection (not up to you) of five of the nine offerings ranging from Asian-ish fried, taro-wrapped shrimp to new American near-cliché in the form of beets, toasted walnuts and goat cheese tucked into cones (don’t let Andrew Knowlton and his hair hear about this). The finger sandwiches with peanut butter, guava jam, prosciutto and Thai basil were as distinct as the croque monsieur spring rolls were muddled. Devilled eggs, meant to be Samoan in some fashion, rounded out the set.

Hurricane club #17Not only are the drinks not particularly tiki (most of the rum is found on a separate list to be taken straight) they were surprisingly unsweet, so much so that it almost felt like they were making a statement with their bitters. Take us seriously, please. The only place I drink sweet, fruity cocktails is at Cheeseburger in Paradise because come on, garnishes a.k.a. garnimals wearing miniature sunglasses? I prefer a stiff drink yet my #17 (Montecristo spiced rum, coconut, lemon grass, kaffir lime and coconut nib bitters) from the Boat Drinks section, teetered so close to savory that I almost felt like I was drinking food. I’m not saying I didn’t like it.

Hurricane club peking roast pork

The peking duck-style pork was decadent, an undeniable success—and pricey. Positioned right in the center of the menu like a bull’s eye, the not-so-subtle psychological nudge worked on us. Besides the awkwardness of trying to fit angled chunks into the fluffy steamed buns, the meaty + fatty + crispy skin combination made a more than fitting substitute for the more typical rich poultry. Ginger sauce was an interesting extra, but the traditional hoisin, cucumbers and scallions did the job by themselves.

Hurricane club green glass noodles

Sides were a gut-busting mistake with the amount of food we already had ordered. The bean thread noodles with a Thai basil pesto were much heavier than I expected, thanks (or no thanks) to the parmesan.

Hurricane club asian patatas bravas

I loved the Asian patatas bravas, though. I imagined there would be a red blanket of Sriricha to mimic the spicy, Spanish-style tomato sauce but these potatoes were completely unique, fried hard for an extra crisp exterior and cut thick enough to maintain soft middles. I worry about such stubby cuts veering into horrible steak fry territory. A mystery sauce (I couldn’t see it from where I was sitting) is poured over the potatoes tableside and is pure umami. All I know is that bonito flakes are involved and that the liquid is pale, possibly clear—maybe it’s infused oil? An ultimate bar snack, these would probably be even better with beer.

Hurricane club #88

After I knew the score, I went straight to the Strong section of the cocktail list, no playing around with creamy and the fruity. The #88 (Patron Silver, kalamansi, cinnamon bitters and house made triple sec) was like a pleasingly sour, bone dry, margarita (I wasn't expecting a salted rim) with an extra cinnamon hit from the floating roll of bark. It actually paired well with the fatty and rich pork and potatoes. However, the woman sitting at the table next to me sent hers back to be sweetened up.
 
The Spanish-speaking gentlemen on my other side were sharing a bottle of Chardonnay, so obviously, not everyone was enjoying the cocktails. Much of the Friday evening crowd appeared to be kicking off their night, taking the club part of the name seriously. The wine drinkers, kind enough to offer us some of their sweet potato fries (those sides are heavy!), had Greenhouse in their future. Me, I was just trying to figure out how The Smiths snuck onto the bass-heavy play list. Sixteen, clumsy and shy? Not on Park Avenue South.

The Hurricane Club * 360 Park Avenue S., New York, NY

Tselogs

Taken separately, rice, eggs and cured meats aren’t particularly Filipino, but put them together and you have a classic Pinoy breakfast. Daly City’s Tselogs, specializes in just that: breakfast trios served all day long and till 3am on weekends.

Tselogs counter

Earth-toned with faux bricks and well, bric-a-brac like old books and metal vessels on wall-mounted shelves, the restaurant feels like a friend’s house (if you grew up in the ‘70s) mixed with a dash of pizza parlor. 

Ordering is simple; pick your meat from the list of ten dishes with mashed-up names. For instance, tapsilog is tapa (soft beef jerky) + sinagag (fried rice) + itlog (egg). Cornbisilog? Corned beef. You can probably guess what spamsilog contains.

Tselogs tocilog

I wanted tocilog for the sweet, fatty cured pork, glazed red. Interspersed with bites of chewy garlicky rice and a runny yolk, this was breakfast perfection. I like Sriricha with mine, though vinegar might be more traditional.

Tselogs longsilog

Longsilog with links of longganisa.

Tselogs chicken sisig

Their signature is the sisigsilog, but we just got an a la carte order on the side. I’ve never had chicken sisig, as the ears-and-snouts style is more common in NYC. I feared it would be boring in comparison, but what it lacked in gooey cartilage-y bits, it made up for in caramelized char.

Tselogs buko pie

I got a slice of buko pie to go. It fortified me on the not-that-long drive to Santa Cruz. 

My familiarity with the Bay Area is next to nil, but it seems like the East Bay is more like a Brooklyn (ha, “the Brooklyn of…” problem) and Daly City and the southern outskirts are the Queens, uncool with better food—assuming Burmese tea leaf salad or even puff pasty-topped balut is your idea of better than freshly plucked chervil and purslane. I would absolutely live in Daly City if I ever settled into that part of the country (I actually think I have a cousin and aunt who live there but it would be weird to look them up since I haven’t seen them in 30 years). One, because I’m fixated on the suburbs, and this barely qualifies—only seven miles and four stops on the BART to the Mission District?—and two, I love the rows of colorful boxy houses, so incongruously tropical in the chill and the fog.

Tselogs * 6055 Mission St., Daly City, CA

National Coffee Day Has Come and Gone

According to Dunkin’ Donuts and CareerBuilder nurses and doctors, workers who live in the Northeast and Americans ages 18-24 need coffee the most. Thirty-seven percent drink more than two cups during the day.

The 2010 Filterfresh Coffee Report finds an even more caffeinated population with 59% drinking two-three cups of coffee a day. Also, nearly a third (32%) of the respondents would tell someone if they had coffee breath. Really?

Bread Bowls ‘R’ Us

Like taco salads served in fried tortilla shells, it’s hard to take a bread bowl seriously.

The starchy serving device was the butt of a joke on Weeds a few weeks ago. In what will likely be the only amusing blip of the entire season, Andy remarked to his new boss, a snobby French hotel chef in Seattle, “I noticed you’re still serving things in bread bowls. That is so ‘80s.”

A few months ago on the JFK Airtrain, a loud man with a heavy Brooklyn accent discussing where to eat on the way home, described a chicken salad in a bread bowl as “bangin’.” I immediately wanted to know where they were going and swear I heard “Jordan’s.” The only Jordan’s I know is a lobster place, promisingly near the airport, but there’s no bread bowl on the menu that I can see.

In August I read Tao Lin’s Richard Yates (as part of the Rumpus Book Club, which has been some of the smartest money spent in recent history. I’ve read more fiction in 2010 than I have in over a decade, years lost to the internet. Don’t tell anyone, but I only thought to read anything by Richard Yates because of this title. Last night I finished The Easter Parade and am still processing it. I only watched Revolutionary Road on the flight from Bangkok in March because I was so bored and had so much time to kill—I had no idea the story was so bleak. I wonder if everything Yates wrote is full of the kind of loneliness and despair you shouldn’t curl up with on a 20-hour-flight) and liked the book more than I thought I would even though I probably wouldn’t like the author who seemed to be very much present in the protagonist, Haley Joel Osment. Uh, but he and Dakota Fanning refer to bougie, white trash types as “cheese beasts” initiated by Dakota Fanning’s mom bringing home crab Rangoon, pretty much my favorite junk food ever. Being a major cheese beast, I took offense. The shorthand could’ve easily been replaced with bread bowls.

But to the point, I had no idea that San Francisco is the epicenter of bread bowl culture. I knew better than to stroll around Fishermen’s Wharf, but it had to be done, if only to try and dredge up some tucked away nostalgia from barely remembered childhood visits.

Fishermen's wharf bread bowls

I don’t remember all of these hawker-type stalls with pre-scooped loaves of sourdough waiting to be filled with chowder and shrimp salads.

Bread bowl birds

The pigeons might love bread bowls even more than the tourists. 

Pigeon in a bread bowl

This bird was using a stale loaf as an edible perch.

Seafood salad bread bowls

One cheese beasty/bread bowl-esque activity I long grew out of is buying souvenir t-shirts on vacation. Then again, I just don’t wear t-shirts.

1983: I was bought a lavender sweatshirt that read San Francisco in an electric ’80s script and had geometric shapes floating in the background. I loved it so much that I completely over-wore it in sixth grade. A fact directly broadcast to me by Nathan, a biracial popular kid (his being the only black male student in our class raised his social standing) who punched me his first week as a new kid in third grade because I corrected him when he asked, “Where’s the libary?” No one likes a goodie two shoes (even my mom who replied, “that’s their business” when I told her that Nathan said his parents smoked pot—and they were cops!). “How many years have you been wearing that sweatshirt?!” he chided. It totally hadn’t been more than a year; it probably just seemed longer. Thanks to the magic of Facebook, I saw photos from my double-decade high school reunion earlier this month and he was the only youthful-looking, non-obese person in the bunch. I imagine he’s still popular.

1987: During a San Francisco pit stop on the way to Patterson that only involved my dad and sister, I bought an oversized Fido Dido t-shirt featuring the Coit Tower and some loopy text that ended with the line “sometimes I get lost but it’s ok.” That shirt never got made fun of (at least not to my face). Even though there isn’t a Wendy’s on the wharf now, I’m 90% sure that’s where we ate that afternoon. I skimmed through some local alt-newspaper and fixated on a photo of a man in a band called Pray for Rain that I’d never heard of (I suspect this is the same person) and thought San Francisco must have much cooler guys than Gresham, Oregon. My sister and I tried tracking down a postcard with a photo of Andy Warhol to mail to our friend who insisted she didn’t know who he was. He’d just died. Later, we got called “punkers” at a mall in Santa Rosa while eating See’s candy on a bench, which is kind of the opposite of punk.

Fishermen's grotto

On this bright and cool 2010 afternoon, I wasn’t planning on eating anything at Fishermen’s Wharf. We still had a late lunch planned for Tadich Grill and Laotian food in Oakland for dinner. Yet I couldn’t resist the lure of the festive, candy cane striped poles decorating Fisherman’s Grotto, standing out like little rainbow beacons among bread bowls. I remembered those carnival-esque, giant birthday candles from an earlier visit, when they already seemed of another time, as anachronistic as the “hamburger sandwich” still being served on the Little Fisherman’s section of their menu.

Fishermen's grotto bar

Fishermen's grotto beer First, we peeked upstairs at the enormous near-empty dining room. The adjoining bar is amazing with shiny, blue tufted chairs, but it wasn’t open. I’m certain nothing but the prices have changed since 1983, or even 1953, the date on the painting in the small ground floor bar where we settled into stools in the back and ordered two pints of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.

A raucous crew of middle-aged men (truly middle aged, 59-61, give or take, not the current anyone-over-35 usage) ordering lunch and drinking red wine (wine is so not an elite thing on many pockets of the west coast) were hamming it up with the bartender, obviously a careerist, adept at engaging tourists as well as holding his own with locals. I never wanted to leave. The only thing missing was the presence of cigarettes, though the musty scent still lingered in the wood paneled pores of the narrow room, impossible to Febreeze away even 12 years after the 1998 ban decreed on a piece of paper tacked below the bowling trophies and above the busts of composers.

If I were unable to see the bay outside the open doors, I would’ve sworn we were in a classier Carroll Gardens social club. “Sicilian” was bandied about; some were Italian, some of their wives were from the Mediterranean island. Turns out that everyone including the bartender had grown up together in San Francisco and were having a reunion and seemed to be having a hell of a lot more fun that I would’ve at my high school meet-up that as going on this very same weekend.

Apparently, the wharf used be dominated by vendors with fresh crab. I did not ask about when bread bowls came on the scene.

Fishermen's grotto bread bowl clam chowder

We did order one, though. No disdain. Why was I feeling sheepish? It’s merely thick, starched up clam chowder surrounded by baked sourdough, not a foodie scarlet letter necessitating BB to be scrawled across my chest.

We spent so much time soaking up the scenery that we threw off our whole day’s schedule, barely making it in the door of Vientian Café before closing. I wouldn’t have said that a bread bowl was a fair culinary trade for a plastic container of tripe-filled beef larb with fermented fish sauce, but the experience would’ve been.