Goodies First

Mar 16

Boiling Point

Despite how it might seem, I don’t generally enjoy complaining. And I wasn’t ever going to mention how the heinous Starbucks sort of across the street from my new office makes me want to spit and scream and I’m always overly polite to customer service workers (though tonight our super late pizza delivery from Nino’s induced mild irritation mixed with light empathy because apparently the delivery guy, kind of an Italo-Mongloid hybrid, had dropped the pizza on the way over. I’d have felt bad if he had fallen but I think he was just butterfingers with the box. He was apologetic and waiting another 45-minutes, his estimate for a replacement pie, seemed unreasonable. But the pizza was all smooshed on one side of the box, like half the pie had all the fillings and the other part was mangled and topless) but today was free coffee day from 10am-12pm so it seemed timely to vent(i) my concerns.

I wouldn’t normally go to Starbucks, not because it’s inherently evil but because I’m cheap. But my mom has gone on this kick where she sends $25 Starbucks cards for holidays and I have no problem redeeming them. Since college she’s often mailed a twenty dollar bill on such occasions, I don’t know when or why the Starbucks changeover took hold.

I actually liked the “secret Starbucks,” as they’d call it, hidden in the back lobby of the building next to Newscorp with no external signage. It was never crowded and sometimes they’d give me larger coffees than I’d ordered. But the new-to-me Beaver St. location is like the setting for an episode of Boiling Points. I’ve gone about a handful of times and every time except for once I have no received my coffee. I order the simplest thing on the menu: a tall black coffee. That’s it. All they have to do is turn around and pour it from a spout or tell another worker to pour it from a spout. Yet, I pay, move to the side (not the larger area where 98% of people are waiting for fancier complicated beverages) and my coffee never arrives. On my first visit it was a solid five minutes before I realized no one was ever going to get my coffee. Frothy, whipped cream topped behemoths are flying out the door, everyone in line after me leaves, and I’m still waiting for my fucking drip coffee. I paid already, so it’s not like I can leave.

Yesterday, I lost my shit after the four women in line behind me received their drinks while I was standing inches from the gentleman who’d taken my order. I was like, “um, I ordered a coffee before all of these people” and the counter guy as well as three workers who were literally just standing behind the counter doing nothing ignored me. The one other drip coffee lady who’d arrived well after me was less polite than I. She chided everyone in the way only a middle aged woman with nothing to lose can. I would've been scared if she hadn't been on my side. Free or not, I can’t allow myself to step foot in that caffeinated hell again.

Plain black coffee is all that I want so I would be fine with the coffee cart brew. The going rate for a large (and strangely called extra large one block down) around Wall Street is $1.15. I can deal with that despite hating to dig around for the 15 cents. But I was blessed by Au Bon Pain when the other day the cashier gave me one of those plastic commuter cups for no reason whatsoever (I used to frequent the 47th and 6th branch daily and never got such treatment) I always thought their $1.72 large was a rip off since the coffee isn’t really any better than street coffee but for $1.07 with the free cup, it’s the only bargain of my day and had induced irrational loyalty. And I’m not put off by their self-serve approach, at least I have control over how quickly I get my goods. Now if they’d only bring back their half price baked goods after 4pm deal, all would be right with the world.

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Mar 15

Sweeter than Chocolate

The New York Post has it all over the New York Times for sundry superficial reasons, one of them being their spookily democratic wedding coverage. Finally, there’s a place for the girthy, college-free and the non-white to express their love.

I’m afraid the Castillo-Boneta profile won’t be up much longer, so here’s the passage that matters:

“Boneta, now a New York City police officer, proposed on Easter Sunday in 2005, but it took a little coaxing to have Castillo find something even sweeter than chocolate in her Easter basket. ‘I was totally exhausted that morning, but after he and my mom nudged me a little bit, I opened it up and found the ring,’ Castillo remembers.”

I have no visual on said romantic Easter basket so I’ll just have to imagine the beauty.

Ringegg

As a nostalgic obsessive aside, I recently couldn’t help but Google my early-teen first stalkee/near date raper who tormented me all of 8th grade and freshman year with his grotesque hotness and put me off of straight guys for years. The very first hit was a five-and-a-half-year-old New York Times wedding announcement. I hazard to guess that he’s one of the very few, possibly only Gresham, Oregon natives to make the column (ah, there is one other possible candidate from 1997). I just wanted to see a grownup photo, that’s all. Um, he does appear to be living on the Upper West Side so I guess if I was dangerously curious I could always stake out the building.

“Creepy Easter” photo borrowed from The Seven Deadly Sinners

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Mar 13

El Castillo de Jagua

It’s not like El Castillo de Jagua’s food or decor setting screams out for a photo essay (unless you were documenting the gentrification of the Lower East Side, which I’m not). You’ve likely seen fluorescently lit meat, rice and beans before. But photos are a fun crutch; it’s not always easy describing how food looks and tastes. Unfortunately, my batteries died.

I’ve always had a problem with that. I had rechargables that never stayed strong so I burn through double As now. Despite my camera being adequate (I’m fine with 3.2 megapixels. 7 and beyond is lost on me), I’d really like something smaller, lighter with a wider angle lens that can handle low light, a freaking foodie camera (actually, foodies use SLRs and mini tripods and shit). I’m acclimating to this new expendable income concept but I broke down this afternoon and bought a Canon PowerShot SD800 IS online. Whether or not the device will actually make it into my hands is the real issue (my current camera got lost in the mail the first time it was shipped, and if you don’t believe the horror that is the Brooklyn P.O. just read these accounts from last week [yes, I added my two cents]).

The restaurant’s no frills approach extends to their menu. There are only two appetizers: shrimp cocktail and chicken wings, and dessert is whatever cakes might be in the diner-style glass domes on the counter. But that’s superfluous; the main attraction are the hefty daily specials. There’s a lot of overlap between days so if you like pernil like I do, it’s available more than once a week (in fact, I think it’s on the permanent menu too). Supposedly, they also make a strong cubano but I'd just eaten one earlier in the week and couldn't justify it.

Their roast pork is super porcine, the opposite of white, bland supermarket chops and loins. A single plate is dedicated to a pile of soft, dark juicy-oily meat topped with a good sized square of crackling skin. Soupy fat brown beans and white rice (I’m not crazy about the more traditional yellow) come separately in a little bowl and on another plate. I’d ordered a very similar Cuban-style combo a few days before at Sophie’s, a block from my new office. Their version was better than acceptable and also around $8, but it couldn't compare to the old school Domincan rendition. And I tend to think that the tastiness level is directly correlated to fat grams.

El Castillo de Jagua * 113 Rivington St., New York, NY

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Mar 8

Crossed Wires

I don’t know if March 2007 is a watershed moment for internet savviness or if people are just particularly social this week, but for no reason at all I’ve been receiving more than a typical amount of email from strangers (which is to say perhaps six or seven messages rather than the usual zero). I was weirded out by someone clearly (hopefully) ESL asking why his name was on my website and where he could find this person with his name (I don't want to type the name or else there will be two hits pointing to me). I had no recollection of the name in question. After Googling it, my random mention from April 2003 was the only hit. I absolutely forget what minutiae I’ve posted over the past eight years so there was no way I’d remember something as miniscule as having my phone number accidentally swapped with someone who lived a block away from me in Sunset Park four years ago. When I called people on this particular day, a different number registered on caller I.D. I then Googled the phone number and the name I found was the same as the guy who just emailed me wanting to know why his name is on my website. I don’t know how to succinctly explain that to an eager ESL emailer. Of course, most bloggers wouldn’t bother but it’s the information professional in me that feels the need to provide answers. I’m so not service minded or helpful or caring, so it’s a mystery how I ended up as a librarian (I’ve never actually had a business card job with that title. Newly and currently, I’m a Researcher, plain and simple).

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Mar 6

Pork Loin with Fennel, Chile and Garlic Roasties

Sunday roast isn’t so much of an American thing, is it? Occasionally my mom would put a pot roast and some chopped carrots and potatoes in a crockpot before going to church so we’d have a meaty early dinner but that was infrequent. While briefly in Wales this summer, Sunday carvery seemed to be a thing; restaurants and pubs would serve lamb, beef and pork roasts with various mushy vegetables, Yorkshire puddings and sauces. This month’s Olive had a Sunday roast feature, which we attempted to adapt to American cuts and ingredients.

My love of Western Beef is no secret, it’s my go-to all-purpose supermarket. They were hyping up pork shoulders for 68 cents per pound over the PA, but they were paired two to bag, which is excessive even for a household with two fridges. But damn, that’s cheap. Think of all the carnitas you could fry up. (I know, I know, low cost meat equals grotesque practices but I’m a grocery store girl. As charming as they sound I’m phobic of $8.50/lb humane organics as well as old school butchers. What you never hear about are those live animal markets scattered throughout the outer boroughs.)

Where else can you find prepped, ready-to-use goat meat, tripe and cow feet plus red currant jam (the makings of future cooking projects) all under one roof? Western Beef’s apt slogan “We know the neighborhood” plays out in Polish shelves stocked with jellies in hard-to-find flavors (currants are totally un-American) and the recent addition of Bosnian canned goods. No fresh tarragon or Yukon gold potatoes, though.

James was convinced that they wouldn’t have fennel. I guessed that they would but that there would be trouble at the checkout. Cashiers not recognizing lesser purchased produce can sometimes work in your favor, they’ll just give it to you cheap. As our cashier was ringing up our goods, I caught her glancing at the frondy bulb and stealthily avoiding it. Eventually she had to pick it up and asked, “What is this?”

Me: Fennel. F-E-N-N-E-L
Cashier: F what?
Me, slower: um, F-E-N-N-E-L

No luck, she finally had to ask another cashier who tried to ignore her question then admitted that she didn’t know what it was called. After a spell a male employee sauntered over and bluntly declared, “Anise, it’s under A” That’s so not right and everyone looked at us like we were delusional and making words up. I guessed maybe anise was a Caribbean misnomer since even in Spanish fennel isn’t anise, it’s hinojo.

Bastardized terminology was the theme of this meal. I can’t bear to type chilli so I’m sticking with chile but I’ll leave their roasties, which appear to be roasted potatoes. And the recipe called for maris piper potatoes, a British spud. I also substituted baking dish or roasting pan for roasting tin. That’s just wrong. Pork loin on the bone that’s been “chined” was too esoteric so we substituted a boneless, skin on pork loin and cooked it for a shorter time. And don’t get me started on Celsius oven temperatures and milliliters (or calling desserts puddings then shortening that to pud).

When all was said and done, we ended up with an unusually seasoned roast, very spice rich but not spicy hot. It might’ve been slightly overcooked, partially due to tweaking the cooking time and not having the bone-in cut. The potatoes were actually the best part of the meal but anything slowly browned in large quantities of butter olive oil is bound to be pleasing.

P.S. A few slices of pork, a couple fennel wedges and a swipe of Dijon mustard between two slices of french bread makes a great lunch sandwich. I'm saving $7 by avoiding Pret a Manger this very minute.

There's nothing like the glow of a TV to illumimate a plate of food.

Pork Loin with Fennel, Chile and Garlic Roasties

2 pounds boneless pork loin with skin scored
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
½ teaspoon, crushed dried chiles
1 teaspoon black peppercorns
2 garlic cloves
Zest of one lemon
Maldon sea salt flakes
3 fennel bulbs, trimmed and cut into wedges
1 tablespoon olive oil

Garlicky Roasties
3 pounds firm white potatoes, peeled and quartered
4 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 crushed garlic cloves
1 tablespoon chopped parsley

Gravy
1 tablespoon flour
1 ½ cups Marsala or white wine
2 ½ cups chicken or vegetable stock

Heat oven to 350 F. Pat the pork dry with paper towels and put into roasting pan. Using a mortar and pestle, pound together the fennel seeds, chiles, peppercorns, garlic and lemon zest and work the mixture into the slashes on the pork skin. Sprinkle the salt, rubbing well into the skin.

Boil the potatoes in salted water for 10 minutes and drain well. Give them a really good shake to rough up the edges. Heat the butter and olive oil in a separate baking pan. Add the potatoes, season with salt and toss to coat in the hot fat. Roast the pork and potatoes for 20 minutes then arrange the fennel around the pork and drizzle with olive oil. Cook for a further 20. Add the crushed garlic and parsley to the potatoes and cook for a further 10 minutes until golden brown and crisp.

Remove the fennel from the pork dish and keep warm. Transfer the pork to a clean pan, turn the oven up to high and return the pork to the oven for 10 minutes to crisp up the skin. Meanwhile make the gravy. Drain all but 1 tablespoon of fat from the pork roasting pan and put over low heat. Add the flour and cook for 30 seconds. Pour the wine into the pan and bring to a boil scraping any carmelized bits from the bottom of the pan. Reduce by half and then add the stock and simmer for 5 minutes. Season and serve with the pork, fennel and potatoes.

Serves 6

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Mar 5

Chiles & Chocolate

I can’t think of a restaurant in recent history with such surface potential that’s so horrendous in practice. I knew better too. I was intrigued by reports of Oaxacan food on bland Seventh Avenue back in January but thought I’d wait a few months to pay a weeknight visit. We still weren’t safe from overcrowding due to the studio-sized dining room.

They were at full capacity around 8:30pm on a chilly Thursday. The cheerful hostess/waitress proclaimed a little too loudly “This table will be leaving soon,” indicating the only table for four and prompting nasty glares from the lounging middle aged women. That’s exactly the cunty type of attitude I expect from Park Slope. It’s impossible to even stand in the restaurant without sucking up precious space so we killed a good twenty minutes, getting BYOB St. Peter’s stouts up the street, smoking a cigarette, then hovering near the door in artic temperatures. No one inside was going anywhere anytime soon. In fact, the huffy lingerers refused to get up until we were eventually seated at a tiny circular table in the back. We were irked that the next twosome that showed up was almost immediately seated in the spacious four top.

The waiters were really trying, and were way friendlier than you’d anticipate in such harried environs. The female was strangely upbeat, the male positive and frank enough to steer us away from the chicken mole because it had been coming out overcooked. I feared as much actually, though I was a little bummed because moles oaxaqueños: negro, verde and coloradito seemed like a feature to try. The menu is very appealing and they’re using non-mainstream ingredients like chapolín, dried grasshoppers, huitlacoche and serving drinks like atole and champurrado. Almost everything sounds good, and so staunchly professing regional allegiance, “we are not a Mexican restaurant,” you would expect them to deliver.

Appetizers fared better than the entrees. My cheese and huitlacoche quesadilla and James’s tacos dorados were enjoyable, at least initially. Chiles & Chocolate would fail a basic Top Design (I only half-watch this show but I find Matt strangely attractive, though it's worrisome to me that he's 32 and has been married for ten years) challenge due to crazy poor planning. In a best case scenario involving their circular tables being bare, two huge white square plates couldn’t possibly fit in the two-foot circumference. With a candle, daffodil in a vase, salsa, chips, two tumblers of beer, two beer bottles and two appetizer plates, there was absolutely nowhere to put our main dishes when they appeared before we’d adequately wrapped up our first course. More and more I’m realizing we’re slow eaters. This constantly happens at chains, we throw off their timing but I don’t expect much from Applebee’s, plus booths allow for multiple plates. But at a “real” restaurant it’s disastrous.

Cramped quarters, rushed courses, unpleasant patrons could all be excused if the food transcends the circumstances. Alas, it didn’t. Dry and flavorless seemed to be the M.O. The chaos also worked as a natural appetite suppressant. I’m rarely un-hungry so that was quite a feat. Pato cacahuate y chocolate, a grilled duck breast with peanut-chocolate-chipotle sauce somehow blended those three ingredients to create a watery yellow paste that genuinely tasted like nothing. The duck was cooked more than I would’ve liked, only one slice had any hint of pink. James got the mole negro with stewed pork after being scared away from the poultry. Eh, the pork was about as blah as a frozen chicken breast.

There was no way we were risking dessert though we could’ve partaken out of spite, just to pass along the torture to another waiting couple.

Chiles & Chocolate * 54 Seventh Ave., Brooklyn, NY

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Mar 5

Barzola

I’ll admit that Bushwick isn’t a neighborhood I’ve ever frequented. When I moved here nearly nine years ago, I briefly slept on the couch of a zine penpal and her roommates, smack up against the BQE off the Graham stop on the L. I didn’t know the first thing about New York City, let alone Brooklyn neighborhoods so I’d walk around a lot, almost autistically. I was fascinated by those uniquely NYC shopping strips containing Radio Shack, Petland, Jimmy Jazz, Pretty Girl and similar nowbrow chains but after the girls I was staying with semi-seriously warned, “Don’t go past Grand Street,” I became skittish and began heading the opposite direction up Manhattan Avenue into Greenpoint where they had a classy Rainbow and Genovese (now Eckerd).

I eventually moved six stops plus a transfer from Graham Avenue and always wondered what the landscape was like above ground between the two. I’m sure things have changed, but in the late ‘90s stops like Morgan, DeKalb and Jefferson (I’m still not sure what Jefferson looks like from the outside) seemed desolate and unpopulated like the eerie Bowery M station.

Barzola isn’t quite that remote, optimists/liars might even try describing that pocket as East Williamsburg. The restaurant is almost randomly placed on a quiet sort of residential street, and on my Sunday afternoon visit was teeming like an Ecuadorian Cheesecake Factory (sure, I could’ve referenced Little Owl but I’d actually attempted CF the night before and the mob was so thick that there was a line just to put your name on the list and be quoted an hour and 40-minute-wait. WTF? We then tried Benihana across the street and risked death on a pedestrian unfriendly service road with no stoplights just to be faced with an equally ugly crowd with slightly fewer strollers. We ended up at the weirdly appealing Skylark Diner again where you can at least drink cocktails while waiting).

I’ve always wondered why young white folks, college kids, vegetarians who are old enough to know better but only seem to eat pasta and burritos, embrace pseudo-Mexican food but rarely go further geographically. No Williamsburg trickle was in evidence. I’m guessing that the average person isn’t clear what Ecuadorian food is exactly. I’m still figuring it out. I’ve experienced meatier fare, not the famed cuy, but Barzola is seafood-centric.

We stuck to ceviches, pink, soupy affairs with tomatoes, onions and cilantro. I tried for the black clam, which sounded unusual. They didn’t have it. I never have much luck when ordering the mildly offbeat option. Instead, I ended up with shrimp and octopus, which seemed to be lightly cooked rather than raw. There was a competing hot and cold sensation depending where I dipped my spoon but the dish settled on a consistent temperature after a few minutes.

I have a serious sweet and savory tooth so the dulce humita, a sugared corn and cheese tamale was a perfect treat. Our waitress seemed a little perplexed that we didn’t want any sides like plantains or rice (they also had fried rice, which I’m starting to realize is a South American favorite) but corn tamales are just enough starch for me.

Barzola * 197 Meserole St., Brooklyn, NY

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Feb 28

Margon

1/2 I spent the past five months working one block from Margon and yet I never made it over until my final day. It’s wasn’t a laziness issue (though I did find myself in the ground floor Au Bon Pain more than I’d like to admit—hey, I had a discount). I just try to go easy calorically during the day (after 6pm I go nuts). If I had a guy metabolism I swear I’d eat a cubano at least weekly. It’s not like roast pork, ham, swiss cheese, mustard and pickles should kill you. Oh yeah, and the salami, Margon’s wild card touch. I would’ve liked to have tried the tripe steam table special but it wasn’t on Wednesday’s list (that’s Monday or Thursday), plus the office was populated by culinary joykills (I suspect my new office contains more of the same—where are the coworkers who appreciate a fine spleen or somesuch?). It’s for the best that I’m no longer employed near midtown because now that I’ve given in I doubt I could resist the little lunch counter’s pull.

Funny, I just looked at Midtown Lunch and their person on the street interview jumped out because there aren’t many news librarians in the world. Then I realized the woman being questioned had listed my old intersection, the Newscorp building, but didn’t work at the New York Post. Ah yes, Fox News. Those freaks put me through three interviews, three months apart for a weekend freelance job. I lost interest about half way through the process because I like my Sundays more than I like extra spending money. I’m so done with news librarianship. For real. But now I’m in the Financial District—and I thought midtown was bleak food-wise…

Margon * 176 W. 46th St., New York, NY

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Feb 28

Gino’s

Frankly, I would’ve been fine sampling neither deep dish pizza nor Chicago style hotdogs, but if I had to choose one regional specialty it would be the pie. I envisioned a circular, super dense lasagna that would be bready rather than noodly, and that wasn’t too far off. Deep dish isn’t terribly different from Middle American thick crust though the layering is reversed with cheese on the bottom, a sausage strata (assuming you order that meat) and a slew of red sauce the crowning glory.

I became well acquainted with thick crusts during a summer stint between high school and college as dough maker at a takeout-only Pizza Hut. I wasn’t crazy about the style then either (at the time there were two other crust options: hand tossed and thin but we didn’t promote them because they were a pain in the ass to prep and couldn’t be made in advance). The 7am start time was a killer but working alone in wee hours I made a few adjustments like using two squirts of oil instead of three in the big metal pie pans. My brilliant health-inducing plan only succeeded in getting me into trouble when the pizzas all stuck that evening. I seriously don’t think I’ve touched a thick crust pizza since 1990.

To be fair, I couldn’t give our large, which we were warned away from by our beefy ponytailed waiter, my full attention since I’d been on a Mexican food binge earlier in the day. One slice was all I could muster. Maybe I was distracted by all the Blues Brothers memorabilia, Thompson Twins tunes and writing on the wall (I couldn’t figure out if the reason why none of the graffiti predated 2006 was because the location was new or because they periodically paint over all the scribbling and start fresh). We’d intentionally over ordered so we could transport our leftovers back to NYC. Heck, they’re charging $26.97 plus $18 shipping for the same service. And I will say that Saturday evening after returning home, I really enjoyed the pizza. The hefty, buttery crust had held up well. The toppings also survived suitcase transit. Chicago makes one tough pie. A perfect New York slice would’ve been soggy, flimsy mess.

Gino’s * 633 N. Wells St., Chicago, IL

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Feb 24

Chao Thai

Read my Nymag.com review.

Phew, I was finally able to squeeze in some non-Latin food (I was getting a little plaintained-out). Thai is my go-to happy cuisine (I really want to delve into Korean food because what I know of it I like but I just can’t figure out where to jump in. I need to find a place that wouldn’t be intimidating to newcomers but goes beyond basic kalbi and bibimbob) but there was no way I was going to attempt Sripraphai on a Friday night. I’d only been once before but recalled tiny Chao Thai having serious potential.
There was an empty table amongst the five or so on offer (unfortunately, it was closest to the frequently opened front door. Even though they had a space heater whirring, by the end of our meal we were practically frost bitten from our knees down) so it started well. It didn’t kill me but I was freaked out the vanilla scented Glade candle sitting in front of me, next to the napkin dispenser. James loves those artificial smelly things so I kept sticking it on his side of the table and he’d torment me my putting it back in its original spot. I find air fresheners to be headache-inducing, I’d much rather smell fried fish, cigarette smoke, wet dogs (ok, maybe not the canines) and the like. Luckily, this was low on the offensive scale. If it were one of those Thomas Kinkade monstrosities (two of which reside in my home), I might’ve lost my shit.
I was immediately agog over a dish on the specials list called Three Buddies Crispy Salad. They already had me at crispy because I can’t resist that fatty style of pork coming from any ethnicity. But buddies? That was the cutest thing I’d ever heard. I’m not sure what the three edible pals were exactly. The pig and the fish were the only two living components—could they be buddies with vegetables? The ingredients were fish maw, crispy pork, cashews, red onions and kind of Chinesey scallions and celery leaves. There weren’t expected herbs like mint of cilantro, though the dressing was explosively Thai with roughly chopped orange, green and red bird chiles peeping out from the pile of mysterious buddies.
A basil chile duck we ordered was also very Chinese in flavor, with a prominent star anise perfume. We had pad prik king with chicken (I got irked over James ordering a second poultry dish, but the other two items were my doing so I had to relent control, plus it was good).
It’s easy to forget about Chao Thai, and if you’re on that stretch of Whitney Avenue you might be tempted to try one of the two Indonesian restaurants across the street instead. But it’s worth a stop. The food is way better than typical Ameri-Thai, very close to Sripraphai’s caliber with a lot of different dishes. I gave it 2 1/2 shovels last time and I'm nearly inclined to bump that to 3 (if you haven't already noticed, my shovels tend to be fairly arbitrary). My only complaint would be no dessert case. Just like last time I picked up some galub jamun from Bappy Sweets up the street. Buddies and Bappy are a great combo. (2/23/07)

Boiling Point

Sweeter than Chocolate

El Castillo de Jagua

Crossed Wires

Pork Loin with Fennel, Chile and Garlic Roasties

Chiles & Chocolate

Barzola

Margon

Gino’s

Chao Thai

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