Posts from the ‘What to Eat’ Category

Dec 12

Joe Beef

Attempts at artisanalizing the McRib wind me up a little. Yet, when it comes to cross-cultural fast food interpretations using foie gras, I’m completely open. There was no way I wasn’t ordering the Foie Gras Double Down, four very important words scrawled in chalk at the bottom of the appetizer list on Joe Beef’s wall-sized blackboard menu. Our server started explaining what a Double Down was (KFC had recently stopped selling the controversial sandwich in Canada) and I appreciated her assumption that I wouldn’t be familiar with the monstrous creation.

Two slices of foie gras are breaded in a light flaky crust, deep-fried, of course, and surround meaty slabs of bacon candied in maple syrup. I did not detect any cheese, though I’m fairly certain that was mentioned in the description. As if you would need an additional layer—this is the kind of dish the food police should fret over, not the chaste 540-calorie fried chicken as buns served at KFC, and exemplifies the Joe Beef approach to food in a tidy foil-wrapped bundle. Shared, the fork-and-knife snack is still a hefty dose of creamy fat and salty-sweet chew. Maybe that pork belly McRib isn’t so bad after all.

My venison and spaetzle was no less hearty, but a touch more traditional. Seeing my first snowfall of the season and excited by finally being able to crack out my parka, I was going wintery and filling all the way.

We first experienced venison as an amuse. Not the first meat I would think of to carpaccio, but the pink flesh was very tender and contrasted well with the sharper raw shallots and dollop of mustardy mascarpone—oh, and shaved truffles.

Not pictured is the rack of pork ribs. Full of game meat, I didn’t sample them, but James had to because he’s been dabbling with a baby-sized Bradley (a Canadian brand, of course) smoker. We were shown the built-from-scratch smoker in the back yard by co-chef/owner David McMillan. Impressive for sure, as was the bowl of vanilla soft serve topped with a burgundy wine reduction and shaved black truffles. Decadent, and once again merging disparate styles.

From start-to-finish, we got the full Montreal welcome. It was more than enough to drop my old Au Pied de Cochon grudge because I’m mature that way now.

Joe Beef * 2491 Rue Notre-Dame Ouest, Montreal, Canada

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Dec 3

Pizza Hut Saratoga Springs

A $20 Pizza Hut gift card has been stashed in the armrest of James’ car for probably the past two years. Just in case, you know? Really, it’s only a gift in the way that buying things for yourself while Christmas shopping can be considered gifts.

Unlike the cards for Olive Garden and Cheesecake Factory, also languishing in their cache between the front seats, I’ve hoped that James would forget that he bought it. Pizza Hut, like Sizzler, feels second-tier, someplace old and tired that I’ve known my whole life. Not necessarily the source of good nostalgia.

Yet during a rain storm, hungry yet hours earlier than normal dinner time you might see Pizza Hut advertised on a sign on I-87 while approaching Saratoga Springs from Montreal. This is no occasion for glitzy trappings or voluminous menus. And maybe it’s a sit-down? Standalone Pizza Huts are a rare breed, at least around NYC. We struck-out with the first location we found on the GPS. It was just a strip mall takeout version like the one I worked at in the summer of 1990. But the counter woman was nicer than I was during my stint and directed us to a full-service one just a block-and-a-half down the street. Why Saratoga Springs is so saturated with Pizza Huts is another issue.

The faded, family-friendly style that I’d been thinking of as dreary turned out to be charming in its refusal to modernize like an uppity Red Lobster. This photo could’ve been taken decades ago: '70s suburban church italics, '80s checkerboard tiles, three-bean salad. The menu wasn’t laminated and photo-driven, but simply a Xeroxed piece of paper listing the basics. There is a small salad bar and pizzas you can order half-and-half—or Hawaiian with no shame.

I picked hand-tossed crust because I couldn’t handle the breadiness of pan, and not thin crust because I remember hating having to make it since it was the only style you had to roll through a machine out on demand. This is childhood pizza, sweetish sauce encased in mozzarella, completely inoffensive. The pepperoni had the perfect singed ends and pools of oil. The odd thing, and I hope it’s not a case of my palate maturing, was how bland the ham and pineapple was. Maybe it was always this way.

The most shocking part of the experience was that after paying, we still had 88 cents left on the gift card. I practically spent as much on a lobster roll and naturally sweetened blueberry soda for lunch last week. No wonder Pizza Hut is such a family favorite (with the exception of the tottering elderly couple drinking white wine and Molson in the primo corner booth, the diners were all parents and children). You might not be treated to a bubbly coal oven pie adorned with mozzarella di bufala, and who would expect to for $11.99?

Pizza Hut * 22 Congress St., Saratoga Springs, NY

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Nov 25

Alpenhaus

After so much gravy and fries, I just wanted something light and fresh like…fondue. Ok, what I really wanted was something old fashioned and festive. Alpenhaus more than met my needs.

Fondue is a confusing dish, though. I treat it as an entrée (American entrée, not entrée meaning appetizer like in the rest of the world including Canada). But it’s always on a menu with other big dishes, whether veal cordon bleu at a traditional restaurant or heritage pork cassoulet at a more modern one. Are you supposed to treat it as a starter? At Pain Béni in Quebec City (which I’m not blogging because I’m trying to be more restrained) a group ordered cheese fondue as dessert, which isn’t a bad idea.

I’ve never encountered a fondue for two as massive as the three-inches of melted Emmental and Gruyere that was presented to us in this weathered, red crock. We were warned against ordering a rosti and the large cheese-and-sausage heavy salad, and I can see why.

Nonetheless, the male half of a couple sitting nearby yelled out to the waiter, “Yes, now I do want the wienerschnitzel!” implying that his original order had been tamed, as well. He got his veal cutlet.

And we ordered the Alpenhaus salad anyway.

Alphenhaus * 1279 Rue St-Marc, Montreal, Canada

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Nov 25

Chez Ashton & Restaurant Madrid

While I do profess to be an admirer of chain restaurants, I don’t eat a lot of fast food in practice. But when I leave the US (yes, Canada counts) it’s a free for all. Canada is particularly interesting because it looks just like the US on the surface except our franchises are nearly nonexistent there. Roots not the Gap, The Bay not Macy’s, Tim Hortons not Dunkin’ Donuts. It’s all homegrown.

On our last excursion up north we discovered St-Hubert, featuring rotisserie chicken and a fondness for gravy and frozen peas (which seems more English than French). James became so enamored by the brand that on this visit we stocked up on packaged sauces. DIY hot chicken sandwiches in our future.

This time we explored Chez Ashton and all its poutiney glory. How many ways can you serve fries? Quite a few, it turns out.

Combo meals come with fries or poutine as a side. The round aluminum tin on the left accompanied a chicken sandwich (poultry on bread is as ubiquitous as poutine in this fast food canon). The gravy-softened fries and soft irregular hunks of tangy cheese would be ideal for a geriatric jaw (or my toothless cat, Caesar, who gums Doritos with fervor) but there’s nothing gruel-like about the makeshift casserole that hits the right salty and starchy notes. Snow food or drunk food, it’s hearty. What’s not, are the sodas that come with these combinations. Beverages are served in sane, un-American-sized paper cups that I don’t think we’ve had since the ‘70s.

A Dulton Saucisses adds fat wiener slices and cinnamon-spiced ground beef, the same “Michigan sauce” that you’ll find just south of the border smothering hot dogs in Plattsburgh, New York. This is an onion-topped specimen from Gus’ Red Hots. The Galvaude Fromage, which I did not try, is poutine with chicken chunks and little green peas. Featured on the tray liner is a nameless snack that’s simply cheese curds and gravy. I guess it’s no stranger than eating a bowl of cottage cheese with ketchup.

Lunch turned out to also involve fries and gravy. There was no way we weren’t stopping at Restaurant Madrid, a hotel and diner half-way between Quebec City and Montreal that’s inexplicably surrounded by dinosaur figurines, monster trucks and designed in “the Spanish style that was sweeping Quebec” in the ‘70s.

I don’t recall a Spanish revival during my childhood. If there were one, I suspect it didn’t involve a mechanical fortune teller or life-size country bumpkin dolls.

Not really hungry after a Dulton for breakfast, I just ordered the bbq chicken leg. It came on half a hamburger bun, surrounded by fries with a small dish of what I’d call gravy. Canadians make a distinction between the brown liquid served on poutine and the brown liquid served with rotisserie chicken and atop hot chicken sandwiches like in the photo above. Those peas, they’re everywhere.

Chez Ashton * 54, Côte du Palais, Quebec City, Canada
Restaurant Madrid * Autoroute 20, Exit 202, St-Léonard d’Aston, Canada

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Nov 24

Palo Cortado

Palo Cortado is an ideal restaurant in that I will be able to use my visit as fodder when asked to explain en español what I did the past week in my weekly Spanish class, two-and-a-half blocks away. It’s also the only tapas bar in the area—Reds Produce never really caught on and La Mancha, technically in Brooklyn Heights, has always seemed a bit off—so by default, it’s welcome on this burgeoning stretch of lower Court Street.

The food is traditional, straightforward, no gastronomic pyrotechnics in the modern Catalan tradition. And that’s fine. I suspect they’ll reap benefits from Buttermilk Channel’s spillover.

The small square table could barely contain our selection of meats (chorizo, jamon iberico, lomo embuchado) and cheeses (caña de cabra, idiazabal, valdeon). I had idiazabal at home in the fridge, so ordering more when out is a testament to how much I like the smoked sheep’s milk cheese. I always feel like they cut the jamon a bit too chunky in Brooklyn, but I’ve stopped caring. It doesn’t really affect the taste, and they captured enough ivory ribbons of fat in the slices.

There’s something about fried balls of mush that makes them end up tasting the same even though they were crafted from very different and often tasty base ingredients. The goat cheese with truffle honey, jamon with piquillo sauce and bacalao with salsa verde would’ve been nearly indistinguishable without their accompaniments as signals. Croquetas do beat mozzarella sticks with marinara, though.

I’ve had so many versions of patatas bravas in the US and Spain that I don’t even know what’s standard or if there is a standard. Aioli and tomato sauce, one or the other, pimenton, no pimenton, cubed, sliced thinly into rounds, sauce on the top, sauce on the side. These golden squares did have nice crispy surfaces, and a good ratio of lightly spiced tomato sauce and thin aioli. It’s hard to have a problem with a fried chunk of potato.

It’s nice having a walkable place to drink a glass of Rioja and nibble on chorizo and Marcona almonds, but I wouldn’t feel right telling anyone to travel more than a subway stop or two to pay a visit. Palo Cortado is best for lazy locals feeling tapas-deprived.

Palo Cortado * 520 Court St., Brooklyn, NY

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Nov 14

On The Border

Jose Tejas, the incongruously named Border Café that give the illusion of not being a chain, rules the Tex-Mex scene in Middlesex County. It’s always packed, the parking lot overflowing well past the time other restaurants in the area are thinning out for the night. Chevy’s in nearby Linden doesn’t really compare, so we kept going south down Route 1 until we hit On the Border in New Brunswick where you can always see a new movie in an uncrowded multiplex.

Not surprising for a Saturday night, the restaurant was bustling and we were quoted a short wait. What I was surprised by was the predominantly Indian clientele. That’s why I like New Jersey so much. Sure, it’s the suburbs but it’s not the all-American West Coast suburbs of my youth. The setting would've been ripe for painful Outsourced-style humor involving Sikh turbans.

The chicken-and-cheese stuffed jalapeños (they didn’t call them poppers) aren’t so different from mirchi bajji, really.

Their fall Hatch chiles menu is kind of on trend. This year in particular, they’ve been getting a lot of press. The weird thing was that I didn’t really taste the green chile and I didn’t expect cheese on my grilled meat. Of course, melted cheese in the trademark of any fine chain, but I was asked if I wanted cheese or guacamole, and I went for the latter if only to lower my cholesterol marginally.

I ordered one agave margarita, which tasted bitter and lingered like it contained artificial sweetener. My second, a standard version, tasted exactly the same, so then I was confused. I will say that one thing Jose Tejas definitely has over On the Border is the margaritas.

On The Border * 51 US 1, New Brunswick, NJ

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Nov 7

You Completo Me

Ease up, New York Post. You too would think New York City hot dogs were only “so-so” if you were used to eating them Chilean-style, smothered in mayonnaise and mashed avocados.

Try a completo for yourself at Astoria’s San Antonio Bakery. I forgot to take a photo of the hot dog, though. (I'm not a big hot dog eater.)

Luckily, Robyn Lee's (that's her pic above) Chilean sandwich post on Serious Eats provides some nice visual evidence.

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Nov 6

Lotus of Siam NY

1/2 Assessing a restaurant like Lotus of Siam, which popped up out of nowhere in a shocking I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant style, is problematic. Do you compare it to the Las Vegas original even though it’s a different beast? I prefer the strip mall version. Do you match it against the existing Thai restaurants in the city? I still favor Chao Thai or Sripraphai in Queens.

Based on the opening week tasting menu—yes, I’m curious to see the variety and pricing of the regular entrees—Lotus of Siam presents Thai food that ranges the gamut from regional Issan specialties to fancified inventions. And they’re most successful when focusing on those two ends of the spectrum. The most disappointing dish turned out to be a generic green curry, something I wouldn’t normally order anywhere of my own accord even in Thailand.

Tuna koi soy, a tartare, was the dish I was most concerned about when looking at the menu online, and it ended up being one of the most distinctly Thai flavored things I ate all night. Herby with vegetal lime leaf undertones, toasted rice powder chalkiness and a powerfully hot chile punch, this was a promising start. If this was what they could create with done to death tuna tartare (I really hope there’s not a molten cake on the menu) my fears would all be misplaced.

Two of the four starters–nam kao tod and koong sarong–were things I’d eaten before in Vegas, so that was also a good sign. The tangy crispy rice with sausage that’s really more like cubed ham was fun and so were the tiki-esque fried bacon-wrapped shrimp enrobed in wonton skins with sweet-chile dipping sauce.

The satay was perfunctory (it’s also one of those items I never order because it’s rarely exciting and well, Malaysians and Singaporeans just do it better because they own it) and the pik kai yao sai, crispy chicken stuffed with its own meat and vegetables was solid, if not a bit Chinese in nature.

The rest of the tasting menu, two choices per course, was arbitrarily dispensed. I sampled both but only took photos of what was put in front of me first. Oddly enough, in nearly every case I was given the dish I would’ve chosen for myself.

The tom yum koong was appropriately salty, spicy and funky. I was pleased to see the shrimp head bobbing in the amber broth. It adds a welcome bitterness.

The soft shell crab yum using julienned green and red apples instead of shredded papaya is where they started to lose me. I might’ve been sold if the dish had heat to balance the fruit’s sweetness but there wasn’t even a speck of chile, fresh, powdered or flaked. If someone presented this to me as a nice salad and didn’t say it was Thai, I would’ve liked it more.

Scallops krathiam prik thai were an interesting diversion that came across as refined in presentation yet still Thai in flavor. The swamp green sludge was a viscous paste of cilantro, garlic and black pepper that was pungent but didn’t overwhelm the seafood.

I’m glad they incorporated Thai apple eggplant (I wouldn’t been ecstatic over those little pea-shaped ones) and that’s the only nice thing I can say about the kang khiao wan. It was like a bowl of water with stuff in it and even the stuff tasted like water. Then again, I just really dislike chicken breast. (This didn’t even come close to the anger-inducing chicken breast I was served at Spoon Thai in Chicago, though.) Tofu would’ve had more appeal. The packet of (unopened) curry paste I bought at Aw Taw Kaw eight months ago and rediscovered in my fridge’s crisper drawer the night before this meal made a better curry. The red curry beef, the other option for this course, was much more robust so I am not completely writing off Lotus of Siam’s curries.

Thankfully, we were served a nice traditional scoop of coconut ice cream topped with strips of coconut meat, mango and “red rubies,” a.k.a. water chestnuts coated in gelatinous pink tapioca starch and not molten cake. The common street vendor dessert might seem out of place on Fifth Avenue, but it brought me back to what Lotus of Siam is about.

Lotus of Siam is also a wine conscious restaurant, one of the strongest differentiators from NYC Thai, and I was happy to drink a few glasses of Reinhold Haart Riesling with my meal. There is also an on trend cocktail list, which I don’t think exists in Vegas.

I have not tried Kin Shop yet, but it will be interesting to compare it to this experience since I think Lotus of Siam is closer in intent to that restaurant than most of the existing Thai venues in NYC.

Lotus of Siam * 248 Fifth Ave., New York, NY

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Oct 27

Tadich Grill

Tadich Grill, said to be the oldest restaurant in San Francisco, reminded me a bit of the Grand Central Oyster Bar. It’s certainly not as loud and sprawling, but it’s a seafood-centric icon, not as inexpensive as the surroundings might suggest, and favored by both tourists and commuters.

During my late lunch at the bar, solo men close to retirement age and older with a newspaper and a martini for company, filled empty counter seats on my right and left. They were there for dinner, seemingly clocked out at five on the dot. It could’ve been 1960 or 1980; the only thing missing being clouds of cigarette smoke.

This is the San Francisco that I enjoyed the most, not the local, seasonal ethos that’s an obvious culinary draw, but lazing about in eateries that haven’t firmly settled into the twenty-first century yet. Just a few hours earlier at proper lunch time, I’d taken in the bar scene at Fishermen’s Grotto, another reassuring time capsule.

Cioppino is a big thing at Tadich Grill, but it’s not what I ordered.

Sand dabs (or sanddabs, depending) are a regional flat fish. I just liked the sound of their name. Served breaded and pan fried, drizzled with a thin white sauce (homemade tartar sauce on the side), steak fries (my enemy) and institutional steamed cauliflower and broccoli, my meal could be construed as bland and geriatric—at least in comparison to how I might normally prefer my seafood.

But this is exactly what I’d want to be served at a 161-year-old restaurant. Just as a Harvey Wallbanger would be appropriate at Eddie Rickenbacker’s and nearly no place else. It’s just the way it’s supposed to be.

Tadich Grill * 240 California St., San Francisco, CA

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Oct 27

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Preview: Graffit

There’s still a lot of hubbub surrounding Spanish food (or have we moved on to Scandinavia?). Yet, for such a de moda cuisine, there are many swaths of the city lacking a single Spanish restaurant, modern or traditional. I can’t believe it took until last week for South Brooklyn to get a tapas bar (no, La Mancha doesn’t count).

Maybe I’m geographically biased, but the dining diversity on the Upper West Side has always felt a bit bleak. That’s why it’s surprising that Spanish chef, Jesús Nuñez, has decided to open his first New York restaurant on W. 69th Street. Known for deconstructions, playful presentations…and a penchant for graffiti art (hence, the name, not to be confused with Jehangir Mehta’s Graffiti) hopefully his vision will translate in this staid neighborhood.

This is a preview of what Graffit will be serving when they open in November. As this dinner was hosted at Compass, chef Milton Enriquez contributed dishes, as well. Free food clouds one’s judgment so this is by no means a review. Just the facts. I will say that I would likely return on my own. Mercat, Txikito, Casa Mono and countless other tapas bars are justifiably popular, but I would say that we haven’t had a creative full-on Spanish restaurant since Ureña.

Sangria in Six Textures