JoJo

I’ve been to a number of Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s restaurants over the years, but never to JoJo, his first venture into the New York restaurant scene he would later dominate as lord and emperor.

Since it was restaurant week, Steven, Chrissy, Courtney and I decided to give it a whirl.  Jojo first opened its doors in 1991 when my friends and I were nine years old.  I was tempted to ask Steven to wear his fishnet shirt so that I could don my neon yellow biker shorts and we’d do the running man to Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch’s “Good Vibrations” all the way there.

Mercifully, JoJo, like Cindy Crawford, has aged fairly gracefully.  Not exactly the fresh-faced hottie she once was, but still a striking beauty.  The restaurant is in a townhouse in the East 60’s and attracts the expected old, crusty UES crowd.  It’s very dark and there are candles glowing in niches on the walls.  The upholstery is salmon-hued and the chairs are enormous.

The service was fine.  Our waitress was very tall and pretty and charming, if not the most attentive or adept.  (When we told her our fifth would not be joining us, she knocked over a wine glass while clearing the place setting and dropped a knife onto my foot, which was unfortunately exposed in a strappy stiletto.  She didn’t apologize.)

I usually collect menus from restaurants I’ve visited, but I forgot to ask, so I’ll be doing this from memory.  We had three courses:

Asparagus with mesclun salad, white button mushrooms and avocado
Salmon with cherry tomatoes and mashed sweet corn
Warm chocolate cake

The salad was quite remarkable.  (Sorry I forgot to snap a picture!)  Very generous portions and well-composed.  The dressing was lovely.  It was very creamy, but not as thick as the Hollandaise they put on the asparagus at Jean Georges, tasted slightly of truffle oil and is the kind of sauce so delectable, I like to say you could put it on a piece of poo and I’d eat it.

The salmon was also quite nice.  I’m usually not that thrilled by salmon.  I’ll have lox on bagels or sashimi fairly regularly, but it never really excites me.  But the vinegary dressing on the onions and very tart tomatoes was a nice contrast with the creamy sweet corn and the salmon was not that dry, flaky thing you eat simply for the omega 3 fatty acids, but had a nice, tender texture when cooked medium-rare.

The warm chocolate cake was pleasant in a generic sort of way.  It tasted about as good as any warm chocolate cake might at any other restaurant.

Chrissy had a chilled berry “soup” that was comprised of seasonal Greenmarket berries and lady fingers.  I might have gotten it if I had known there would be so many whole berries.  I imagined it was going to be some awful puree/juice passed off as a dessert course.

Overall, I’d say JoJo is pretty good.  It didn’t blow my mind, but I didn’t really expect it to.  It’s not the most exciting restaurant in the world, but it’s very satisfying.  Oh, and try the homemade ginger soda.

My Last Meal

I had lunch last week with someone who asked me what my last meal would be. If you’ve ever watched Anthony Bourdain’s show No Reservations, you’d know that he always claims it’s a little game chefs like to play.   (I like to imagine they just get into pillow fights or play spin the bottle because chefs are behind only Postwar Jewish-American writers and pro tennis players in terms of sexiness in my book.)

I didn’t have an answer.  It’s not that I haven’t thought about it because, believe me, I have.  And it’s not that I’m an indecisive person because believe me, I’m not.  I suppose food is as important to me as life itself and the idea of actually choosing the last meal I’d ever eat seems like too overwhelming a decision.

My theory is that you can go one of three ways:

A) Low brow

B) Nostalgic

C) Extravagant

People sometimes decide they want something cheap but satisfying and usually fattening.  This usually means fast food– something people can obviously afford to eat regularly in the economic sense but can’t really afford to eat regularly because of whatever tolls it might take on one’s health and appearance.

I was surprised by his answer.  From what I gathered, he’s something of a foodie (though I hate that term and find it as embarrassing a label as “fashionista.”)  He chose White Castle hamburgers, which I found endearing, perhaps because I have been known to make trips to Brooklyn especially for them and also because he probably has the means to eat whatever he wants and it seemed like an unpretentious choice.

Sometimes, people choose something close to home, their mother’s [insert  ethnic specialty.]  I understand this on an emotional level because food has the ability to transport us between cultures and time.  I think one of the best scenes in Ratatouille is when Anton Ego, the ornery food critic, takes one bite of the ratatouille and is magically lifted to his sunny, idyllic childhood in Provence and his mother’s lovingly prepared food.

I credit my own mother for inspiring my love of food.  She’s an excellent cook and truly loves eating, but I couldn’t think of one of her dishes in particular that would comfort me or send me skipping down memory lane on the eve of my death.

The last route, extravagant, is for those who would probably also want to go skydiving if they found out they were dying because they want to throw caution into the wind and live it up  in a way they wouldn’t normally.  I think I’m lucky in that I get to eat very well on a fairly regular basis, so this option isn’t as appealing to me.  (Nor is skydiving, to be honest.  If I die having never done it, I will still feel as though I had a very rich and full life.  Not sure why people imagine it is the one component their life is missing whenever they face their own mortality.)

So I was stumped… but I think I’ve finally reached my decision.  Last night, I was participating in a regular ritual I have with my dear friend John.  We get Popeye’s fried chicken and we watch The Wire. I used to be really into pairing foods and movies like I was a cinematic sommelier… Popeye’s goes with most everything, Rocky IV in particular; another great combo is Thai food/Thai boxing (Bloodsport).

Maybe it was seeing so many deaths (it’s what happens when you snitch), but I started think about my own death and came to the conclusion that my last meal would surely have to be Popeye’s.  That crispy, spicy batter, the juicy meat, those unbelievably buttery biscuits and the cajun rice.  I could die a happy girl.

I suppose I might wash it all down with a good bottle of champagne, so perhaps I would give a nod to extravagance.  Unfortunately for prisoners on death row, however, I learned that alcohol is usually verboten before executions because it dulls the senses.  Wikipedia has a whole page on famous inmates’ last meals.  (You might be surprised as I was to learn that many of them declined a special meal.)

So there you go.  Hopefully, I won’t have to think about my own death for a very long time, but in the unlikely event that I get into some freak accident, be a dear and pass me a leg and a biscuit, won’t you?

Things Get Steamy

I haven’t cooked very much lately because it’s been so hot, but I finally bought an air conditioner and am luxuriating in the splendor of controlled climate. Fire up the stove!

This afternoon, Mark and I were at Sunrise Mart, a Japanese market in the East Village and I noticed some black cod fillets. I decided to give myself a little challenge.

Back in 2004, the model Carolyn Murphy and a vineyard owner named Randall Graham both told the New York Times (in separate sections in the same Sunday issue) that their last meal would be the black cod with miso at Nobu.

It was Nobu’s signature dish. Unfortunately, the restaurant, a great empire like Rome or Portugal before it, was filled with hubris and ambitions to colonize beyond its reach and is now on the decline and some might even say dead.

Staring at that raw black cod fillet in the market, I thought back to Nobu’s heyday when I first had the dish and I imagined myself a sort of culinary Russell Crowe in Gladiator trying to bring back the glory of Rome from the evil snatches of weirdo usurper Joaquin Phoenix.

So here it is. My own version of black cod with miso.  Are you not entertained?!

Joyce Wu’s Black Cod with Miso
(Serves one cocky amateur cook)

Ingredients:
1 black cod fillet
1 cup seafood stock
1 tbsp cream sherry
1/8 cup soy sauce
3 tbsp organic cane sugar
2 packets of miso paste (I accidentally got the kind with seaweed in it)
1/4 Asian pear, thinly sliced

Special tools:
Steamer

Combine stock, sherry, soy sauce, sugar and miso paste in a small sauce pan and simmer until miso paste is dissolved, stirring occasionally with a wooden spoon.

Place the fillet on a steam-proof plate and place inside steamer.  Place the steamer atop a large pot of boiling water and steam for approximately 6 minutes.

Remove the fillet from the plate. (I know the impulse is to save anything juicy, but make sure you discard the liquid on the plate because it’s very fishy and unpleasant-tasting.)  Arrange the pear slices by the fish and spoon the sauce over everything.  Garnish with cilantro.

I also bought some Japanese eggplant to make as a side dish and I would’ve steamed them at the same time as the fish, but alas, I have a bizarre contraption of an oven that hangs above my stove, so I can only steam one thing at time, rendering my stacking bamboo steamer pretty useless.  Oh, well.

My eggplant dish wasn’t the best complement to the fish, but it was fairly tasty, so I’ll share the recipe and for those of you lucky enough to have a kitchen that wasn’t constructed of refuse appliances from the 70’s, feel free to do them at the same time.

Spicy Steamed Eggplant
(serves 2 as a side dish)

Ingredients:
2 small Japanese eggplants
1 tbsp harissa
1 tbsp fresh mint, chopped
2 tbsp cilantro, chopped
1 scallion, thinly sliced
salt to taste

Slice off the tops of the eggplant, then slice them in half, lengthwise.  Cut each of the long pieces into smaller slices (about an inch long).  Place the eggplant slices inside the steamer and place the steamer on top of a large pot of boiling water (or on top of the fish if you’re stacking).  Steam for about 8 or 9 minutes for tender eggplant.

Place the eggplant in a bowl and cover with harissa and mix.  Gently fold in mint and cilantro.  Sprinkle a couple pinches of salt and scallion slices on top.

Androopy’s Visit

Andrew came to town for 4 short nights and one of the first places we went to was Brighton Beach in search of Kazakh food (he’s leaving for KZ in August). We didn’t find anything but Andrew did find this fantastic Uyghur place called Cafe Kashkar at 1141 Brighton Beach Avenue. I posted some pictures of the manty and the Borjomi water below but I had to start with this picture of the churchkhela we got at Brighton Beach Bazaar. It was walnuts sewn together and then dipped in reduced grape juice until it takes on this sausage shape. I had one only once before when I was in Sevastopol, Ukraine.

Churchkhela

Here is it dangling on the B train.

The next day we went to Nyonya at 194 Grand Street in Manhattan because Joyce had recommended it. It was phenomenal. The Hainanese chicken, served at room temperature, was very tasty.

Hainanese chicken

On the menu, there were many things listed with the warning “Please ask your server for advice before you order!” We ordered the Nyonya rojak, “Nyonya famous fruit salad served w. squid shrimp paste sauce, sesame seed, peanut” (without a warning) and our server tried to talk us out of it saying it was really too fishy for us. I convinced him that we really did want it and that we liked fishy things and he gave in finally. It turned out to be a jicama, cucumber, and pineapple salad coated in a black, squid-shrimp paste. It truly was very fishy, especially for my white American palate, and we wound up finishing it all out of pride.

Rojak

Back in Brighton Beach I was shocked to find that Vyerka Serdyuchka is coming to Brooklyn. HAHAHAAH. She is a drag queen from Ukraine who has found incredible mainstream success in former USSR countries. When I taught in an elementary school in rural Ukraine, the 5th grade straight boys would hum her songs in class. She was always the star on TV Christmas specials. Let me see if I can find something good on Youtube.

Vyerka Serdyuchka

Here’s a video of her speaking English. I love her.

Borjomi water from Georgia

Here’s the Borjomi water I got at cafe Kashkar. It is my favorite mineral water that is from the glaciers at the top of the Bakuriani mountains in Georgia. Delicious, melting glaciers.

lamb manty with celery

I couldn’t figure out what was on top of the manty. Andrew took one bite and immediately recognized it as celery leaves. I’m going to miss that guy.

Blue Hill at Stone Barns… finally

Last week, my friend Genevieve went to Blue Hill at Stone Barns and it reminded me of a post I started writing in October but never finished because I was in the middle of a production period. 14 hours of standing on your feet and lifting heavy things in the freezing cold doesn’t leave you with much energy to blog at night.  (Making movies is really hard work and I mean that in the most literal sense.)  Anyway, I’ve decided to finish it finally, if only because I’m supposed to be writing a script and love nothing more than to procrastinate.

So here we go… better late than never:

(started October 2008)

One of my favorite men in my life is my eating partner.  Every girl should be so lucky to have an eating partner like mine.  He loves food as much as I do and when we go out to dinner, he orders everything appealing on a menu just so we can taste it.

For his 30th birthday, he put worries of a global economic collapse aside and invited me and my brother to an intimate birthday brunch at Blue Hill at Stone Barns.  For those of you who’ve heard of the place, its reputation precedes itself.  For those of you who haven’t, Serious Eats dubbed it (in all seriousness and sincerity) “The Most Important Restaurant in America.”

First of all, let’s talk about the place itself.  It’s amazing how, if you live in New York for a long time, how unwittingly isolated you become.  You forget there is anything outside of the city and as soon as you start to see trees, you feel like you’ve been magically transported to some other world.  The drive was lovely and just the right length– long enough so that we could enjoy the foliage and the experience of being in a car that didn’t smell like b.o. and wasn’t screeching to a jerky stop every five seconds and short enough that we didn’t feel antsy or have to stop to use the bathroom.  (A small bladder like mine is a real liability on road trips.)

When we arrived, we were led to a lovely private room and greeted with champagne.  The waiter invited us to enjoy the terrace.  Glasses in hand, we walked outside and strolled around the grounds.  I saw the most beautiful cows I’ve ever seen.  They looked like they were wrapped in black velvet.  When we returned, the birthday boy, his boyfriend Patrick and the other guests were already enjoying hors d’oeuvres, my favorite being homemade pancetta wrapped around eggplant and coated in sesame seeds.

The lunch menu (handpicked by my eating partner) was as follows:

Maine crabmeat salad with green tomato marmalade

Stone Barns chicken with butternut squash and farro

Roasted black mission figs with lemon verbena and pecan ice cream for dessert.

The chicken was unlike any chicken I’d ever had.  It almost didn’t even taste like chicken.  It was glistening and so juicy and so tender, it almost tasted  like an entirely different animal… it almost had the consistency of pork and I mean that in the best way possible.

Because the chickens are from the farm on the restaurant’s grounds, only a couple days pass from when the chicken is running around and when it ends up on your plate tasting like no chicken you’ve ever eaten.  The extraordinary skin was paper thin and crispy and a great complement to the juicy meat.

After lunch, we toured the rest of the farm, which is an absolute must.  Eating at Blue Hill at Stone Barns is an experience that fills you full of Marie-Antoinette-type fantasies of being a milkmaid enjoying the simple pleasures of a pastoral life.  I personally don’t have the heaving bosoms nessary to entertain such fantasies seriously.  What is a milkmaid (even a pretend one) without gigantic milky white breasts stuffed into a peasant blouse?

A greenhouse at Stone Barns

Scarily human-faced sheep at Stone Barns

Stone Barns Chickens

I’m not sure if you can tell from this photo, but these things were really well-fed and bigger than an NBA regulation-size basketball.  The best was the pimp rooster who, with his crazy mane of long feathers, looked like John Travolta in Battlefield Earth.

Stone Barns piggies

The great thing about Stone Barns is that they have a snout to tail approach to cooking, so nothing is really wasted and each pig yields a tremendous amount of food.  Genevieve had the pig ear and said it was nice and crispy and not cartilagey.  I’ll have to try that the next time I go.

I learned a great lesson about persistence from the adorable tiny piglets.  Two  enormous sows were each nursing half a dozen piglets and one of them apparently had enough and rolled over so her teats were on the ground.

Not to be denied, two of the piglets ran up and kept bothering her and trying to nurse until she finally gave up and turned on her side.  Those two had a satisfying and stress-free lunch, unlike the ones struggling and crowded at the other sow like suckers (no pun intended.)  The next time I go to a restaurant and I can’t get reservations or they’re “closed,” I’m just going to employ the techniques I gleaned from infant swine. They don’t take no for an answer.

Sripraphai

One of my dearest friends Nana, who is currently living in Bangkok, and I were once talking about the Thai food in New York. What it lacked, she said, was the playfulness of authentic Thai cuisine.

It’s not that New York is lacking for Thai places. Like sushi restaurants, you can’t really walk more than a block without encountering at least four or five, but they’re all kind of the same, serving the same mediocre food that people come to expect with consistency the way they expect to order a Big Mac at McDonald’s.

I imagine the typical conversation that leads up to dinner at one of these places goes something like this:

Guy #1: What do you feel like eating?

Guy #2: I dunno… I’ve kinda been craving Thai food.

Guy #1: Oh, yeah, me too. Let’s do that.

Guy #2: Okay.

[They happen to be standing in front of a Thai restaurant, so they go in. They order pad Thai and Singhas and talk about whatever straight guys talk about.]

But then, of course, there is Sripraphai. I’d long heard of this distant, mythologized place like it was Shangri-la. All the way out in Woodside, Queens (it took me about 45 minutes on the R from 8th Street), it’s worth the trip and probably (I’m just gonna say it) the best Thai in New York.

I was editing a video I shot for my fashion designer friend, Chrissy, so she joined me and Courtney as well as our two handsome male companions Mike (back from Israel for the summer) and Sami. I normally hate eating with people who have dietary restrictions (Courtney doesn’t eat beef and Sami doesn’t eat pork), but we still had plenty of options and Courtney was willing to risk some stomach pains for the experience (my kind of girl!)

For me, the best thing we had was the crispy Chinese watercress salad with shrimp, squid and chicken. Every bite was a bit of a delightful surprise. Sometimes, I got tangy citrus from lime, sometimes fragrant freshness from cilantro, sometimes mint, combined with distinctive salty and spicy tastes. It was a carnival of different colors, textures, and tastes.

We also had something called boo doo, a fermented fish sauce, from the south of Thailand that is mixed with rice to create a dish called khao yum. It came to the table with a mound of rice surrounded by little piles of lemon grass, scallions and other things and you pour the boo doo over everything and mix it all together. Very tasty.

Other notable dishes: fried fish topped with chili sauce and sauteed pork with chili and basil (this was recommended by NY Mag, but we substituted beef for the pork.)

For dessert, we opted for classic mango and sticky rice and while they were out of most desserts, we lucked out with a coconut confection whose name escapes me. They were warm, mini-muffin-shaped cakes made from coconut milk, I think and had a warm gooey center. I’ve been dreaming about them ever since.

64-13 39th Ave., Queens, NY
nr. 64th St.
718-899-9599

Jean-Georges and DBGB in 72 Hours

I’m sorry I haven’t posted much here lately.  Mark has been kind enough to hold down the fort while I’ve dealt with some personal issues.  To me, food is one of the greatest pleasures in life and when I’m sad, it just doesn’t appeal to me.  It’s like trying to go to a party when you’re depressed.  You know you’ll just sit there and have a miserable time, so you’d rather just stay home and watch movies in bed.

I’ve never been the kind of person who finds comfort in food, who eats to make herself feel better.  Quite the opposite and just as unhealthy: when I’m unhappy, I stop eating.  For weeks, I couldn’t bring myself to cook.  My refrigerator was empty.  I wouldn’t eat until three in the afternoon when I started to feel dizzy and faint because I was so hungry.

But the last 72 hours have been a food reawakening for me.  My mother came to visit this weekend and knowing how depressed I had been, told me that her purpose was to love me and spoil me as much as possible and let me eat whatever I wanted.  (This is a lot coming from an Asian mother, a rare, sometimes bizarre creature who, all the while stuffing you full of food, mercilessly criticizes your physique and gives you incisive pointers about where you need improvement.)

Saturday night, she, my brother and I went to Jean-Georges for dinner.  There are a hand full of restaurants in the city that might be described as perfect.  Nothing and no one in life, of course, is, but allowing for human error and the occasional misstep, Jean-Georges is one of those places where the service is impeccable and the food is divine and you want for nothing.

The only mistake was one that I made in ordering.  My brother had the Jean-Georges menu, while I and my mother had the Spring Menu, which was composed of seasonal ingredients.  Like the rest of the world, I was taken in by the idea of seasonal ingredients and I was also intrigued by the idea of mace-scented lobster in an ice wine reduction with fresh lychees.

I have a big bag of mace in my pantry.  Several people have come over, picked up the bag and asked what it was for.  I tell them I usually just mull wine with it.  I would never think to “scent” lobster with it and I would probably be right.

Perhaps I’m too “in the box” with my thinking about lobster, but I want it to be cooked with something fresh, something bright.  The mace just made it taste… musty.  I felt like I was eating a beautiful lobster dish in someone’s grandma’s dusty old attic with the trace of her old lady perfume lingering in the air.  (Pardon the iPhone pictures, by the way, I need to start carrying around a better camera)

The first few dishes on the spring menu seemed just as good as the Jean-Georges menu, but it started to became painfully clear that I had made the wrong decision.  And while the asparagus with the morels in hollandaise sauce was quite good, I looked on enviously as my brother had a garlic soup with frog legs that were meant to be dipped in it.

While we had a rather mundane veal dish, my brother had squab with foie gras.  That isn’t to say the spring menu wasn’t excellent, it just didn’t look or smell or sound as good as the Jean-Georges menu and if I had to do it over again, I would have chosen the latter.  Basically, dish to dish, pound to pound, if you were to pit the Jean-Georges menu up against the spring menu, the Jean-Georges menu kicks its ass.

What I would recommend from the spring menu, however, are the caviar dish (with two perfectly cooked egg yolks and fresh dill) and the sashimi (with cilantro sauce and sour cherries).

Dessert was quite amazing.  You pick a category: rhubarb, strawberry, caramel or chocolate and get a delightful plate of things made with that ingredient, sort of like Iron Chef.  I had the strawberry.

The highlight was watching my brother take a shot of something that had a “caramel bubble” inside.  My mother and I watched while he drank it slowly and all of a sudden, his eyes widened for a second and a smile appeared on his face.  I wish I could show you his hand gestures for describing the experience.  (”I thought it would be like this [abrupt bursting motion], but it was like this [slow, flowery, fluid, spreading motion]“)

And after dessert was done, they came around the tables with a jar of homemade marshmallows, which they take out with a pair of tongs and cut with scissors at the table.  The flavors were rose, ginger and vanilla.  Yummy.  They were incredibly fluffy.  You haven’t had marshmallows until you’ve had these.  I snuck the ones we didn’t eat in the tiny bags of chocolate they gave us to take home.

All in all, a lovely experience.  Click here for another food blogger’s take on the two menus from last year (with much better photos):http://yaokui.blogspot.com/2008/06/jean-georges.html

Yesterday night was a much different experience in a different part of town.  My friends Chrissy, Steven and I went to DBGB, Daniel Boulud’s casual venture mere blocks away from the former home of the legendary rock club CBGB on the Bowery.

I used to live around the block and during the few years I lived there, what was once a real estate no man’s land, was suddenly home to Whole Foods and the Avalon high rise luxury rental complex.  I’m not trying to make a statement about gentrification, as my living there was surely a sign that the area had long been gentrified.

I only mean to say the area has changed a great deal in recent years, so Daniel Boulud opening a burger joint on the Bowery might have seemed unthinkable several years ago, but makes perfect sense given the way the neighborhood, and let’s face it: the economy, has changed.  A $19 burger still ain’t cheap, but it seems more plausible these days than a $25,000 closing dinner at Daniel.

First of all, it’s a great space.  NY Mag posted photos before the restaurant opened.  There’s nothing really like it in the area.  Prune, one of the neighborhood’s gems, just down the street, can’t have more than eight tables.

The place was packed.  It was a strange mix of older, gray-haired Daniel devotees and young downtown types, all enjoying themselves and the food.  Steven and I shared the Vermont sausage which is a smoked pork & cheddar link, served with hash browns (more like a dense latke), red onion crème frache.  Amazing!  It was probably one of the best sausages I’ve ever had.

Steven, with his particular extreme high and low tastes, has a special place in his heart for Hilshire Farms cheddar lit’l smokies and in a fantasy world, if you were the type of nouveau riche billionaire who wanted the world’s best chef to recreate a dish like the one you loved when you were nothing but a poor boy in a trailer park, then this would be it.  It is just bliss in the most comforting, nostalgic and just plain satisfyingly delicious way possible.

We also had the Piggie burger (w/ Daisy May’s pulled pork, jalapeño mayo, lettuce, Cheddar-cornbread bun with mustard vinegar slaw).   Very tasty.  In some other reviews, people said the mayo was very spicy, but I didn’t think so and ended up putting the jalapeño slice, which may or may not have been a garnish placed atop the bun, inside the burger and it was much better that way. 

We also ordered a side of ratatouille, which was very good (and DBGB is probably one of the few places where you can order excellent ratatouille as a side dish to your burger.)  For dessert, Chrissy and I shared an ice cream sundae with apricot, pistachio and marshmallows.  Yum.

The real highlight of the evening (besides the cute guy in the navy sweater with whom I am sure I had a moment… are you reading this, Missed Connections?) was seeing silver fox super hottie chef of Le Bernadin, Eric Ripert, dining with Tom Colicchio (of Craft and the Head Judge of Top chef.)  I was giggling like a school girl and didn’t think it could get any better when Daniel Boulud himself went by their table to say hello.  Wow.

So, all in all, another really wonderful evening with good food and good company.  Am I still sad?  Sure, but how sad can a girl be when surrounded by such an amazing family, such incredible friends and the best food in the world?

Mamoncillos, Seoul Station, Stogo, and Kamui Den

Friday was my last night with Aida and Carlos so I took them and Erica out to Kamui Den at 186 Avenue A for shabu shabu.  We had planned to eat at 6:30 because I needed to get to bed super early but they didn’t open until 7 so Erica and I went over to Thompson Square Park to watch the skaters and fantasize about being able to skate.  Aida and Carlos didn’t show up until 7 though because Carlos insisted on walking to the restaurant from the Museum of Natural History (which is like 5 miles away on the Upper West Side)!

Everything was fine until someone (Aida) dropped a piece of beef onto the center exhaust cone of the table top stove.  At first the meat just sizzled as we tried to scrape it off and into the broth but then it started to burn and smoke.  I looked over at our server and she was cracking up, in a cute way.  Eventually the stray piece of beef was burnt to a crisp and its ashes slid down into the water.  I guess I was blushing  terribly during the whole incident.

You can kind of see the ashes in this picture.  It looks like we were not doing a very good job of skimming the scum.

For dessert we went to Stogo, a “gourmet, organic, dairy-free” ice cream shop.  I tried the red velvet ice cream and really liked it.  It had huge chunks of red velvet cake mixed in with the ice cream.  Erica said she didn’t like hers though.  I think she got chocolate hazelnut.  Aida and Carlos got the regular size in order to be able to mix two flavors but I don’t think they finished theirs.  Mine was gone in like 2 seconds.

I forgot to mention that the other day I had Korean tacos for the first time.  I saw on CNN.com this story about two Kogi taco trucks that tweet about their location and how huge lines form in advance.  I guess it sounds like fun but I’m glad there’s a permanent location here in New York, Seoul Station.  I think it’s on Saint Marks near 1st Avenue.  I got two beef and one pork taco.

They were kind of amazing.  I would definitely get them again.  They come with shredded purple cabbage and a cilantro sauce only.  I had to add the sriracha.

I didn’t get to say goodbye to Aida and Carlos before they left on Saturday but when I got home I found that they had left a giant spread of fruit.  Among the fruits was a little green fruit that I assumed was a key lime.  However, when I went to slice one open to add to my (non-alcoholic) spritzer, it turned out not to be a citrus fruit at all!  It’s skin broke like the shell of a longan and inside was a large pit covered by a thin, white membrane that was only slightly sweet but mostly bitter.  I just found out it is a mamoncillo.

Courtney and I found this bottle of Fred water for sale at a Duane Reade today.  It looks like it’s shampoo or astringent or something.

Arepa Arepa

Tanja came over to the new apartment last night and we were just kind of exploring the neighborhood, looking for some coffee (for her) when we found Arepa Arepa, a new restaurant at 160 Havemeyer (between S 2nd and S 3rd) in Brooklyn.  The interior was so beautiful and our server was mellowly attentive… it was just what the doctor ordered basically.  I got the ceviche arepa and she got the reina pepeada with chicken, avocado, lime, and cilantro.  They came with a little mojo sauce that was bell-pepper based.  When he set it down on our table he said, “It’s not spicy.”  I thought that was kind of funny.  Anyway, we kind of sat there forever talking about the pervasive developmental disorders we’ve diagnosed our friends, lovers, and family members with until the guy brought us over some complimentary plantain bread, which was delicious.

In other news, we found out that there is supposed to be a Pies ‘n’ Thighs opening in the space beneath our apartment.  Last week this reporter from Time Out New York was snooping around our door and then asked me a million questions about the unoccupied store front.  The next day I noticed she had dropped this card:

I Googled Pies ‘n’ Thighs and this article appeared: http://eater.com/archives/2009/06/pies_n_thighs_update_still_no_opening_in_sight.php  It must have been Amanda who was asking all those questions.  I wonder when they’re going to open. 

I thought this comment from DooChuck  in the link above was of note.

WOW!

As I sit here studying your photo of that magnificent New Yawk City structure, I can visualize huge rats and cockroaches running here and there (not to mention the muggers around the corner).

If you don’t mind, Amanda, when I need my ’southern food fix’, I think I will stay here in the South (in favor of retaining my good health).

I’m sorry, and in no way do I mean to be disrespectful of you folks’ choice to live in that cesspool, but I have to sympathize with your plight.

Perhaps one would be better off returning to one’s country of origin instead of eating in an establishment that looks like the one above.

PS: Amanda, when using the term ’southern’, I really would appreciate it if you capitalize the “S.”

OMFG

Cuando llegaron los españoles…

Carlos (of Aida and Carlos) brought a boat load of fantastic treats from Spain for me and Erica.

morcilla de Burgos

I almost peed my pants when he pulled out two morcillas, one of my favorite Iberian treats that I wrote about before in this post.  Aida told me I should coat slices of this blood sausage in flour before frying them in olive oil until crisp.  Lunch tomorrow?  I don’t know how Carlos got this through customs.

nicanores de Boñar

These hojaldres are kind of like sfogliatelle puff pastries.  They are delicious… and they’re almost gone already.

pickled eggplant

A very special kind of pickled baby eggplant from Castilla-La Mancha.  It has Euopean Union protected geographical origin.

After all that, Carlos pulled out three bottles of Spanish wines!

I almost forgot the sobaos, Cantabrian Twinkies (without the high fructose corn syrup and red 40/yellow 5).