Aug 12
It's a fast food bonanza over at Esquire.com. The best. The worst. And sure, lots of usual suspects…does an In-N-Out hater even exist? Lurking on slide 21 of fast food faves is Rick Bayless' pick, Birreria Reyes de Ocotlan in Chicago, illustrated with one of my very own photos. Go goat meat!
Ok, I'm breaking my August silence to mention a story I have on Metromix about oddball frosty treats in NYC. It's hot enough today to warrant them. I could even ignore my self-imposed sugar-free mandate for a Colombian cholado about now.
Six new Applebee’s are slated for the NYC metro area by the end of 2009. Manhattan needn't fear—Flushing, Harlem, The Bronx and Westchester will be the recipients. [Crain's]
Manhattan is not completely safe. Currently, they have 149 Subway shops, two are on their way and there is no end in sight. [Grub Street]
California Pizza Kitchen is coming to India. With carne asada, jerk chicken, Greek and Thai chicken pizzas already in existence, tandoori can only be in the works. [Forbes]
"My attraction to the Gates-arrest narrative — with its potential for curiosity, surprise, indignation and pedantry on themes from race to police procedure to academia to the history of Boston — struck me as a craving induced by industrial design, like Southwestern egg rolls at Chili’s." —Virginia Heffernan, New York Times
I'm a little surprised at the backlash that has begun over the Julie half of Julie & Julia, a film for which I’m probably an intended target but have zero interest in seeing. I was one of those people who kind of groaned over the blog to book deal way back in the ancient days of 2003 before bloggers got book deals for compiling photos of food emailed to them. I scoffed because I'm a bitch who often begrudges the (undeserved) success of others, but what I didn’t realize was how bitchy the general public had become.
Jealous much? Hater. Ick, I keep seeing that catty shorthand in comments (not here, I don't garner comments) when anyone is critical of anyone online. For me, at least, that's not usually the case. I can separate loathing and annoyance from jealousy. And I can admit when I'm envious. That's why I never read the Julie/Julia Project.
We often hate in others what we see in ourselves and the Julie reminded me of me. We were about the same age, lived in crappy outerborough neighborhoods (Sunset Park for me), drank too much, had dull dead end jobs (I was unemployed/temped through much of the early '00s—though I was spurred to go to grad school, which landed me a slightly better paying, slightly more stable, slightly more satisfying career that I sometimes enjoy but am certainly not passionate about), were fairly domesticated (though I would never marry in my 20s, heck, I'm still not in my late 30s even though a ten-year dating anniversary is only a month away) and we both blogged about food and our personal lives, she with the focus of a single-minded project and me in the same rambling scattershot fashion I still can't shake.
She struck a chord with the public and for that I was jealous. Not in an all-consuming way, certainly but it crossed my mind. Cooking has a way of doing that, though. I'm always surprised at the number of comments, sense of camaraderie, rah rah-ness, and sharing I see on recipe-centric blogs (at least the popular ones) compared to restaurant-ish sites full of douche-slinging insults. I wonder if it's a female/male divide. Writing about cooking has never my thing, I only dabble in it occasionally, though there are plenty of meals from scratch in my household—I’m not trying to make Michael Pollan cry.
Cream rises even if that cream is now being derided as a talentless hack.
"Her writing is hollow, narcissistic, and unforgivably lazy—qualities so foreign to Julia that it’s not at all surprising that she once said she couldn’t abide Powell’s work…The idea of Powell as a contemporary heir to this personal and culinary epic is absurd."—Laura Shapiro, Julia Child's biographer
“Flinging around four-letter words when cooking isn’t attractive, to me or Julia. She didn’t want to endorse it. What came through on the blog was somebody who was doing it almost for the sake of a stunt. She would never really describe the end results, how delicious it was, and what she learned. Julia didn’t like what she called ‘the flimsies.’ She didn’t suffer fools, if you know what I mean.” — Judith Jones, Julia Child's editor
"I also read the Julie/Julia Project blog and for a time…Good for her, I thought. What an undertaking. But one day she made a comment implying a recipe being wrong for roast chicken. I honestly don’t remember what it was, but it struck me as being so disrespectful, completely without deference to Julia Child, that I stopped. What the hell did she know about food? Had she even heard of poulet au Bresse? Didn’t go back. No malice. Just didn’t want to follow anymore."
" The incredible proliferation and self-indulgent blabber of many food blogs has given people the freedom to hallucinate, 'I can type and I eat, therefore I am a food journalist'!"–Virginia Willis, writer/blogger previously unknown to me
Wow. Time change things. I'm now able to appreciate Julie's success more (especially since I embody emptiness, narcissism and laziness) and feel a little sympathy over the growing animosity. I can also appreciate the following she amassed using just words, no photos. It’s hard to imagine anyone reading a blog without pictures now. I felt like a latecomer not having a digital camera until 2006 but that was then the norm.
And apparently the foodie intelligentsia have come to the conclusion that she's all that's wrong with the world and an insult to Julia Child's memory. Even I, who never actually read the blog or the book, don't think that Julie saw herself as an heir to Julia. That's the movie's problem. Actually, I think it's an old person's problem and this is coming from someone who just turned 37 (old!). The cranks all seem to be middle aged women, I'm afraid. I do think there still is a print/online generational divide, though it appears to be shrinking with the mainstreaming of blogging. Ruth Reichl immediately comes to mind as a woman who has a good grasp on both print and social media (heck, television, too).
If anything, the Nora Ephron rom-com has created a new younger audience for Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Sure, the movie tie-in wrap around dust jacket is corny. But the book is selling. It's as of this writing, the fifth bestselling book in Amazon's Cooking, Food and Wine section, behind the bizarre two versions each of Omnivore's Dilemma and Hungry Girl: 200 Recipes Under 200 Calories. Americans are clearly conflicted.
Maybe I'm burying the lede in this jumble, but for the month of August I will be taking a break from being whatever it is that sits at the bottom of the bottle refusing to rise. Is that milk? And I like to think I know about food. Anyway, a lot has changed since the early '00s. The world, specifically my world, NYC, is now deluged with food blogs. I can barely keep up with my RSS feeds and skim at best. It's hard to care about what hundreds of strangers are eating and cooking every day and in turn I can't expect anyone to care about what I write here. If I never read about another food truck, pig roast, $100 fried chicken dinner or DiFara again, I’ll…well, I’ll be fine.
So, I’m taking August off from food blogging and as ridiculous as it sounds (though slightly less so than juicing fasts or lemonade cleanses) I’m also going completely sugar, bread and alcohol-free. A little detoxing never hurt anyone and even though I already limit my sugar and starch as it is (and so far it has successfully kept my diabetes at bay) I feel like I could be tougher. I’ve slowly let bagels, fries and ice cream to creep back into my life but I don’t want them taking over. Thirty-one carbless days never killed anyone, right?
See you in September.
I completely missed Gourmet.com's Another Offal Monday series that began in June when recently surveying the sudden proliferation of organ worship on the web. So far, they have four diverse entries: Mexican tongue tacos, southern-fried sweetbreads, dim sum-style spicy tripe (pictured above) and dowdy American classic liver and onions Spanished-up with a little sherry vinegar. I'm liking these recipes very much.
They'd better be careful, though, with all those international flavors or they're going to get more angry letters from the crackpots like Marlynn Marroso who don't want unpatriotic food in their July issues, or any issues for that matter. Who knew that adobo and black beans could muster such ire?
Oh right, we did know after all the letter-writers equating a love of tacos, pupusas and pollo a al la brasa with glorifying illegal immigration crawled out of the woodwork after Gourmet published its September 2007 Latin American food issue.
Cowgirl Hall of Fame will always be the '90s to me–squarely in the same camp as Moustache or Mugs Ale House–places I ate when I first moved to New York and didn't give much serious thought to food. Cowgirl Hall of Fame is where birthdays tended to be celebrated or large groups would convene. Just last month a vegetarian friend (I point this out because people who can only eat a small proportion of the menu don't always have the best sense of what's generally good) asked for restaurant advice to give to visitors from Germany. She had steered them to toward Cowgirl, among others. Eh, if they wanted "American" food, The Redhead might be a better choice. Clearly, Cowgirl still holds sway with many, though.
2009 or not, I, myself, was curious about Cowgirl Sea-Horse (I’m still not clear why seahorse is hyphenated—would you say cow-girl?). It's quintessential Friday night fare. By 6pm I've all but given up and fried food and beer walking distance from my office sounds like the best idea I've had in ages.
A week after opening, the restaurant, on a lonesome corner across from the Brooklyn Bridge's underbelly, was hopping. An enormous party of 25+ youngsters were attempting to take over the back room (where we were seated), little kids were running around and falling over each other, a few of James' coworkers even randomly stopped in. Service was upbeat but clearly overwhelmed. I wouldn't want to make any strong judgments about the slow as molasses pacing so soon. I expected as much on a weekend.
Texas caviar, a.ka. black eyed peas in a vinaigrette, were a gratis starter despite being listed on the menu for $3.50.
Rattlesnake bites are grilled bacon-wrapped jalapenos stuffed with shrimp. These smokey vegetal poppers are a form of Russian roulette, every third one you get a seriously hot chile. As you can also see, some are more done than others.
I wouldn't have ordered the clam fritters, not only because we already had plenty of starters but because inevitably you end up with a mouthful of bready filler. There was a decent amount of firm meat in these, though. More jalapeno in the tartar sauce.
Trying to avoid any more oil-bathed items (James had the oyster po boy and onion rings) I went for the tacos. Weird, yes. Sometimes I like the American shredded lettuce and cheddar style, but hard shells would've been too much. I wasn't expecting wheat tortillas as the "soft" option, though. These were floppy fun handheld drinking snacks. The pulled pork was on the dry side, even if it wasn't sharply obvious with all the accouterments.
Afterward, I wandered over to the Water Taxi Beach to see how it compared to Long Island City’s version. Well, for one you don't have to pay $10 to enter in Queens. At umbrella’d tables on the other side of the barrier next to the shops, groups had set up their own party complete with R&B blasting from a boom box. Smart? And as you continued around the back of the shopping center, the crowd became whiter and whiter until it suddenly became very '90s for the second time in one hour. The big stage was encircled by a tightly-packed crowd, disproportionately gray-haired and crows-feeted, bobbing up and down to Superchunk. Yes, Brooklyn babysitters must've made a killing that night. Despite being of that demographic, I was never a fan, but that didn’t stop me from grabbing a $6 plastic cup of beer just to stand a while and ponder the state of 2009.
Cowgirl Sea-Horse * 259 Front St., New York, NY
Yes, the August Gourmet has already arrived, which means that I’ve been slacking on my alfresco porn-monitoring duties. July had me spoilt for choice, though.
Blue Skies Ahead, the tale of a weekend lunch with friends at your farmhouse, was tempting. And I could definitely go for some grilled Buffalo shrimp with a few black and tans. Or course, the beer bottles would have to be removed from their cardboard carrying case and transplanted into an antique metal basket with handle. “You never know who might drop by?” If I had a farmhouse in the country, that would be no one. It’s hard enough to get people on the F train.
Sail on Home suggested that instead of meeting friends at a restaurant, you invite them over for a Mediterranean meal served on your lakeside table crafted from a wooden slab placed atop lobster traps weighted down with beach ball-sized glass buoys in weathered fishing nets. It actually looks kind of chilly and lonely.
Clearly, the best time is being had over at American Idyll where the young folks are stuffing themselves silly on honey caramel peach pie while swinging in hammocks. Flip flops, fedoras and suspenders, oh my!
Feeling flush, more from birthday week high than from financial windfall, I sprung for three see-through slices of $159/lb bellota jamon iberico at Despaña yesterday. That worked out to approximately 80-cents per bite.
I don’t know that I could immediately discern the difference between this coveted ham and a good quality Serrano. But it’s very distinct and more desirable to me than ordinary prosciutto. Is it unfair to compare Spanish and Italian cured meats? The texture is firmer and overall meatier with substantial stripes of fat, less salty and almost blood-metallic with a strong flavor that’s on the verge of decay. Yet not gross at all. The taste lingers with you and something (I really need to look into this) causes a mild tingly sensation in the mouth, sort of the way some aged cheeses do.
You can get a bocadillo using the pata negra ham for $25 but I opted for the more pedestrian Gallego at $8.50. It uses Serrano ham, chorizon and a cow’s milk cheese I wasn’t familiar with called Arzuea Ullloa. I love ham and cheese, though this is one of those rare sandwiches that could just as strong through the power of meat alone. This is a sandwich worthy of more than a camera phone shot but believe it or not I don't typically carry a camera on me.
One of my favorite May-December romances of 2008 was the pretty boy teen and the not-so-pretty 37-year-old teacher. Does, "I'm tapping that ass and there's nothing you can do about it" ring any bells?
Former model, Joshua Walter, has now been arrested for participating in a crime spree that ended this weekend at a Queens Dunkin' Donuts with a pistol-whipping instead of an ass-tapping. Thankfully, it was not a Tim Hortons.
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