Jan 29
As I’ve said many times before, the busted and chaotic Western Beef headquarters is one of my favorite grocery stores. While picking up Super Bowl provisions this weekend I came face to face with an exterior sign right next to the entrance that I’d never noticed before even though it clearly wasn’t new. The grocer sells plenty of weird bits: pig tails, fish heads and innards of all types, but cat was news to me.
Based upon causal Financial District observation, Quiznos’s Sammies are a freak hit. I usually wait until 2pm to eat because hate crowds and mobs wane by then, but at the Quiznos across the street from my office there was still a line well past normal lunch hour and every single person in it was ordering the damn Sammies.
Clearly, the $2, 200 calorie ad campaign is working. Quiznos only recently (reluctantly) started publishing nutrition information, which makes you wonder if they cooked up this product to counteract the frighteningly unhealthy bulk of their menu. Though it should be mentioned that only two of the six varieties are 200 calories.
The mini sandwiches are kind of perfect if you’re craving something junky and don’t want to completely ruin an eating or savings regimen. No, one won’t fill you up but it’s a inoffensive supplement to yogurt, fruit or granola bar, whatever you eat during the day (those are my typical daily bring alongs). For low impact fast food comparison, a McDonald’s cheeseburger is 300 calories and a plain Wendy’s baked potato is 310 calories.
I still have a tough time bringing myself to say Sammie, however. And weirdly, after looking at the photo I took of a Sammie in November I can say that the one I had today seemed larger, or maybe my hand was just really huge a few months ago.
For someone who couldn’t agree with this sentiment more, I’ve been doing an awful lot of brunching in the past week. I don’t know how I went from a few brunches a year to two in eight days. This does not bode well for 2008 and I’ll nip it in the bud pronto.
Last weekend I tried Astoria’s Time Café because I was assigned to review the restaurant. See? No say in the matter. I have no problem going to Astoria to dine, but I wouldn’t wake up early for the privilege. But the restaurant does seem like a welcome newish option for the neighborhood. Frankly, I was more interested in Issan Thai Poodam’s across the street.
My swiss cheese and tomato omelet didn’t blow me away but that’s the nature of brunch. It was satisfying. Who needs their mind blown before noon? Ok, 2pm. My egg dish plus vodka-heavy bloody mary and a basket of mini muffins was a fair deal for $12.
Today I ended up at Taco Chulo because I wanted to meet a friend’s half-sister visiting from Germany. It’s fun and informative to meet siblings of people you know. My sister will be here from England next month if anyone has the same curiosity. We are kind of opposites in that I’m brunette, brown-eyed while she’s blonde, blue-eyed, I love meat and she’s vegetarian (formerly vegan), she’s dog-crazy and I’m fond of cats, I hate nature and she’s outdoorsy, I generally loathe humans and she does social work. But other than those minor details, we’re very similar.
Huevos rancheros were ordered by four of my party of six, but I couldn’t resist the queso benedict. Who needs hollandaise when Velveeta sauce is more versatile. Swapping cornbread for english muffins was also not a bad idea. $5 two-for-one mimosas was an even better idea.
I promise to sleep in and only eat breakfast in the privacy of my home for the rest of the year. After all my boo hooing, I did get a small-squared waffle maker for Christmas.
Read my Time Cafe review for nymag.com
Time Café * 44-18 Broadway, Astoria, NY
Taco Chulo * 318 Grand St., Brooklyn, NY
I love this article, “The Myth of Fruit” from Wednesday’s Guardian. This quote sums up what I’ve thought for some time. And I can get all cranky on the subject and presumably not rile up freaks on the internet, assuming the public is less passionate about fruit than food allergies, their appearances on Jeopardy! and wine bars in Williamsburg (scroll to comments for warm fuzzy fun).
“If you believe the nutrition industry, every week produces some new superfood, often a fruit: blueberries, pomegranates, acai berries. The fact is that fruit consists of water, sugars (normally about 10%), some vitamin C, and some potassium (thought to be good for controlling blood pressure). And that’s kind of it.”
I’ve always hated fruit (though I love vegetables) and feel like it’s a chore to eat. The mandarin oranges (I can’t call them clementines—is this an East Coast thing?) Granny Smiths and bananas I’ve been lugging to work the past few months have been killing me.
Fruit juice feels like a total waste of calories and smoothies seem like a joke. Melon is flat-out disgusting and the only food in the entire universe that I won’t eat (well, there’s malta, but that’s a beverage). Minus melon, I don’t mind tropical fruit every now and then, but that’s all. And maybe my problem is that I was raised on bland grocery store produce, though I doubt it. People are always raving about Honeycrisp apples, but to me an apple is an apple and they’re boring.
If I want sweets, I would rather eat real desserts (poached pears and baked apples will not cut it). Nature just doesn’t make candy; that’s as sad as calling graham crackers cookies.
Bad fruit image from Lunacy Beads
I can’t believe I forgot to mention “The Jug” (I don’t know that anyone actually calls it that but it sounds like a good stoner nickname) a.k.a. Toronto’s Kom Jug Yuen. I originally intended to try dim sum, perhaps at Lai Wah Heen, something a little higher end, but as it turned out I was invited to dim sum twice in January, a very strange thing since I’d only been asked to dim sum once in the entire five years prior.
I didn’t want to o.d. on yum cha, and by the time we settled into our weird pseudo-zen-like hotel (there were self-published looking new age guides instead of bibles in the drawers, cds of supposedly relaxing music and a choice of incense to permeate your room each day) that I only picked because it was centrally located minus outrageous prices or floral bedspreads and had a full kitchen, we were dead from waking up at 5am (I usually get up at 8:30am on weekdays, which might be late by most employed people’s standards).
I just wanted something simple, possibly soupy, like the New York Noodletown of Toronto. That was totally Kom Jug Yuen, except that I don’t think strangers were seated together at the same table—I told you Canadians are sensitive about their personal space.
I always order roast pork noodle soup at Noodletown, so I did the same here. That would’ve been plenty but the glossy, unnaturally red, roast meats being brought out in plastic tubs and hacked up at the front counter couldn’t be ignored either.
Choosing just one meat was impossible. Chicken, duck pork over rice was the only way. At least we had that kitchen with a usable refrigerator for leftovers (the last time we were in Canada, our frozen horsemeat unthawed in the minibar, drenching everything with blood and we got charged for every bottle and can we temporarily removed to scrub).
I'm not sure if it was the bone chilling weather, that I was starving by 4pm after throwing up the only thing I'd eaten all day, a LaGuardia donut ,or if the soup was really amazing. I like to believe that the rich broth transcended mere cold and hunger.
Kom Jug Yuen * 371 Spadina Ave., Toronto, Canada
No matter how good they might taste, I have a knack for making my meals look sad and pathetic. This fish never stood a chance.
This three-day weekend I finally got around to looking over a Christmas present, Jose Andres’s Tapas: a Taste of Spain in America. The same day I found a recipe in the new Gourmet that was very similar to one in the book I had my eye on. Synchronicity.
Jose Andres’s recipe used spinach, apples raisins and pine nuts while Gourmet’s version called for Swiss chard, raisins, onions and almonds. I love the Spanish use of nuts and raisins (especially with morcilla–which wasn’t called for in either of these—I’m just saying). I borrowed from both sources since I prefer heartier wilted greens to wet spinach and had a container of pine nuts that needed using up. Even though I liked the idea of adding a golden delicious and creating a pine nut praline, they didn’t make it into this version.
We already had a fish dish from Cooking Light (low fat isn’t exciting but I try to reign in my impulses during the week) on the roster that incorporated mayonnaise, so it was fortuitous that Gourmet paired their Spanish-influenced chard with a garlicky faux aioli topped halibut (strange, the way they've broken out the new Gourmet.com; the chard recipe shows up on Gourmet.com while the fish only appears on Epicurious). I had to use flimsy little flounder filets because that was what the original plan entailed.
I could’ve predicted that I’d like the sweet and oily Swiss chard more than the fish, but that’s mostly because I have a fear of mayonnaise even when I know rationally that it’s just eggs and oil. I think my perfect version of the vegetable dish would keep the chard, onions and smoked paprika I used in this one, add the apples and swap the pine nuts for almonds. Next time.
Thinking Twice About That $400 Handbag? Pshaw, hundreds are for
bourgeois losers; get back to me when you’ve made the leap into the
thousands.
Actually, I contemplated that leap for about two minutes yesterday. I doubt I’ve ever spent more than $40 on a purse so it was a remarkable thing to realistically ponder. I do not covet expensive items (well, minus Richard Woods’s colorful block printed woodgrain furniture. I can’t conjure up any way to justify $5,500 for a plywood dresser at this point in my life) and have never understood followers of brands like Gucci and Louis Vuitton. I can’t think of anything less imaginative.
I don’t like aspirational status symbols. But I do like these Richard Prince for Louis Vuitton bags. I don’t follow art and wouldn’t go so far as to say I’m a Richard Prince fan or else I would’ve gone to his Guggenheim retrospective that ended a few weeks ago. Yet, it was his ‘80s work, especially the joke paintings, tickled me as an art student in the early ‘90s. I wasn’t old enough to appreciate them during their heyday (though I imagine a young Manhattan teen might be so savvy or are Gossip Girl types a modern invention?)
Or at least I like the idea of these $2,000+ bags, which is why I will wait and see what the counterfeiters do with these designs. Isn’t buying a reproduction of an appropriation artist’s joke-themed “art” the ultimate joke?
No more P*ONG (1/20/09)
My friend Sherri and I early birded it at P*ONG on a weeknight. Perhaps that’s why our waiter called me madam? Ma’am is one thing, and I hate it, but I’m not sure if madam is more offensive or plain goofy (I'd say gay but I don't think that's allowed anymore, especially from a grown woman in 2008. Just don't take away my ability to use retarded, ok?).
We ordered the smallest suite, as they have dubbed their tasting menus, seven courses at $63. Wine pairings always entice me, but I wasn’t up for that much of a splurge. I’m also not a fan of the mid-teens-priced cocktail, uh, because I like to drink and there’s no justifying $50 for a few Tuesday night beverages. A sweet wine seemed in order with this style of food so a bottle of Gewürztraminer it was.
I hate to admit that this meal is now a total blur, which isn’t necessarily a reflection of the quality of food. It’s more an indicator of dining partner. I tend to eat at pricier restaurants with James, not so much because he occasionally subsidizes me but because he’s not high maintenance (I recently did group dim sum and there were non-meat eaters, meat-eaters who didn’t eat shrimp, meat-eaters who didn’t eat pork, and well, let’s just say dining with others can be treacherous). And for no reason whatsoever we eat horrifically slow (which is more acute in casual settings where every table near us turns over in thirty minutes. Last night I was watching a grotesque Travel Channel infomercial masquerading as informative show called Cruising Do’s & Don’ts, which unfortunately had nothing to do with anonymous sex and everything to do with eking value from Disney cruises. My point is that they had to explain that the “specialty” restaurants for 18+ patrons require extra time and that a meal might take two-and-a-half hours like this was something unusual and a little outrageous. Then, I flipped over to Fast Times at Ridgemont High and un-ironically reveled in a simpler time) This isn’t some intentional savoring technique, it just happens. The main upside is that I tend to recall what I’ve eaten after the fact.
So, the pacing at P*ONG was jauntier and than usual because the conversation was animated which translated to quick consumption. This wasn’t an occasion for overanalyzing ingredients. And it’s not like the portions are exactly demanding of one’s time. It’s the kind of preciousness that could prompt totally cliché “dude, I could eat a hamburger” after seven courses. However, I’ve never left a tasting menu hungry, so I call bullshit on this sort of hysteria.
Tiny recap with less-than-ideal photos:
burrata and american paddlefish caviar, frozen roasted red pepper, foccacia chip
The ice-cold pepper fluff kind of freaked me out and made the cheese seem like it had been over-refrigerated. Hot/cold interplays are interesting, they did it a lot at Moto, but I’m not sure if they’re the tastiest.
kabocha squash coconut soup, tonka bean, cinnamon, white chocolate, amaretti
I didn’t even realize there was white chocolate in this. The overall effect wasn’t as sweet as these ingredients would imply.
fresh yellowtail tartare, grapefruit, guava, ichimi pepper, avocado crème, beet oil
house cured arctic char, aniseed pastry, mission figs, maple mustard emulsion (oops, I forgot to take a photo of this)
chocolate and pinot noir braised duck, kabocha tapioca, raisin, oyster mushroom
There’s no indication from the description that this is a pastry-topped item, but it was a happy surprise because I love pot pie. If what I read somewhere is true, the dishes progress from least sweet to sweetest. This would be the point where I’m good since I have a sweet meat tooth (b'stilla being the ultimate in this realm). Still savory but on the verge of tipping into desserts.
warm date cake, rum toffee, black mission figs, orange sugar, citrus crème fraiche
Ah, sticky toffee pudding—another favorite.
chocolate marquis, hazelnut, aleppo pepper, honey, green apple mousse
As I didn’t detect all the sweet ingredients in the earlier courses, I did not taste the pepper in this.
There were also cookies at the end and a course with two sorbet-like blobs somewhere in all of this. I know Pichet Ong is a pastry chef by training hence the sugary leanings but I might have preferred one more savory dish in lieu of a sweet one. Plus, I don't know how to categorize the cuisine using my limited self-created choices; it's not Asian or Thai despite others describing it as so, but I wouldn't feel right saying it's American either.
P*ONG * 150 W. Tenth St., New York, NY
Even though I have an irrational fascination with chains (yesterday on my way to see Cloverfield in Astoria I noticed a brand new Panera Bread and Applebee's set to grand open tomorrow. Along with the pre-existing Pizzeria Uno across the street, this micro-suburbia off Northern Blvd. is simultaneously soothing and baffling), Fuddruckers has never been part of my repertoire.
To my recollection, I'd only dined at one once in my life, at least twenty-five years ago. I know I was wowed by all the diy condiments, and I believe that I begged for a repeat performance whenever driving past the 82nd Street location on route to Clackamas Town Center. But I could just be imagining the longing and letdown because this was a common routine; my family rarely ate out, which was more a standard of the times than a commitment to thriftiness. I really don't think that children raised pre-'90s went out to eat, fast food included, frequently as they do now.
So, Saturday night Fuddruckers in Bridgewater was an accident (that we would drive 45 miles and spend $15 in tolls to return a defective mail-ordered Best Buy Dust Devil is a testament to how much NYC box stores suck). Red Lobster was our intended target, but even I can't justify a 75-minute wait for Cheddar Bay biscuits. Just on the other side of the Red Bull Motel (do you think they petitioned for another Red business in their parking lot?) was Fuddruckers, a total mystery to me.
I didn't know the menu and I completely didn't understand the ordering process. I felt feeble-minded standing just shy of the line-up maze, gaping at the wall. The clatter, balloons and children (don't be fooled by the false calmness in the above photo) didn't help my decision making but I figured out that there are lots of things other than burgers but it would be ridiculous to try them on a maiden visit and that burgers come in combo meals with the specialty variations listed on another panel.
Ok, I chose The Inferno, a 1/3-pounder with jalapenos, fried onions and pepper jack. And a Heineken because even though Fuddruckers is fast food-like, they do serve beer. I guess that makes it more fast-casual, in industry parlance. I was not allowed my requested medium-rare, medium is the needlessly strict minimum, though not as harsh as Five Guys well-done only rule.
You then get a beeper and are left to hunt down an open table. After settling for about ten minutes later you'll be summoned to the side counter, handed your food and set loose on the condiments. I took a few pumps of nacho cheese, chipotle mayonnaise for my fries and added a smear of spicy bbq sauces to my burger. I'm fairly sparing with add ons.
Yet condiment-abusers abounded. I was disproportionately grossed out by a college aged girl with her family at a nearby table who overfilled two giant plastic containers (larger than the little ones everyone else had) with ketchup. Actually, I more grossed out by her scrunchy-tamed pontytail, sweats and sporty rubber slip on sandals. I have a violent inexplicable aversion to that half-athletic/half-schlubby look. These are the same girls who wear flannel pajama bottoms with cartoon characters on them in public and think fleece is dressy. I had to avert my eyes every time she went for a ketchup dip.
After I got over the perceived sloppiness and topping spillage, I was faced with a pretty good burger that held its shape and retained enough juiciness despite the longer cooking time. The peppers were surprisingly hot, hence The Inferno moniker. The fries fell into the mealy steak fry camp, which I'll certainly eat even though I prefer thin, crispy strips (but not shoestring) over hefty wedges.
It was satisfying without crossing over into monstrous territory (though they do offer a one-pound burger). I do fear the Baconators of the world. On that note, Portfolio just published a substantial article and interesting sidebars on the unabashed gluttony trend touted in particular by Carl Jr's and Hardee's. Knowing that the Double Six Dollar Burger contains around 95% of my recommended daily calories almost makes me want to try it, so clearly their backwards marketing works.
Fuddruckers * 1271 Route 22 W., Bridgewater, New Jersey
Newish Kuta Satay House and year-old Kampuchea Noodle Bar seem cut from the same ikat cloth. Both are on Rivington St. and serve less-than-common Southeast Asian cuisines in modern settings. Sounds like trouble. I’ve meant to try semi-Cambodian Kampuchea since it opened late 2006, yet I made it to the semi-Indonesian restaurant first.
You could survive on plates of multiculti satays (Korean kalbi and rosemary tandoori lamb are on the list) and sake cocktails (not my favorite beverage breed) or eat a full meal, presented Western-style, entrees for one with sides. They were promoting a four-course $25 prix fixe which isn’t a bad deal but I’ve been trying to tone down my consumption.
We easily could’ve ordered another dish or at least another pair of satays. Malaysian curry chicken was kind of uninteresting while the Indonesian Madura flank steak was sweet with kecap manis (one of my favorite condiments) and genuinely spicy. I don’t take heat warnings from waiters in Lower East Side restaurants seriously, but the beef had enough kick that it could set off sensitive palates. It didn’t occur to me at the time, but I feel like there should’ve been dipping sauces not just cucumber relish. Strangely, their menu notes three sauces if you order the twelve-skewer platter.
"Bandung" duck salad is completely not an Asian salad, which I understood from the description listing spring greens, grape tomatoes, goat cheese and walnut pomegranate vinaigrette. James doesn’t read so he asked, “what’s the white stuff?” It’s clearly a vexing addition because I got the same question from Bill, who I can’t blame because he didn’t have a menu in front of him, regarding my Flickr photo.
The goat cheese sounds strange but it’s not grotesque. If anything, duck is the oddity. I like making seemingly healthy things like salads unhealthy, so this worked for me.
If I hadn’t started with fatty poultry I would’ve tried the duck curry. Instead, we split the crispy striped bass a.ka.ikan goreng asam manis. I know enough Malay food words that I could deduce this would be fried fish in a sweet and sour sauce. I love the Vietnamese version, and I was sick of steaming and baking seafood at home. Crunchy skin is where it’s at. And 1/3 of the three potatoes was purple, so that made my night.
We arrived early on a Friday and the only other diners were a loud already drunk (seriously, how are you trashed by 7pm?) work party, so I can’t speak to the atmosphere. However, the food was a little better than I’d anticipated, based on the surroundings (and shrieking office ladies). From the open rectangular slit in the wall, I could see an older gentleman doing all the cooking. Perhaps, I shouldn’t assume that wizened Asians in the kitchen guarantee goodness, but it made me feel a little better about what I was eating.
Kuta Satay House * 65 Rivington St., New York, NY
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