Get in my belly

This, this (and by extension, this), this (one of the many things I miss about the Boot), and — just nine minutes ago — this:

Totally NOT awesome: this. (Fucking terrible, in fact.)

So awesome you don’t even know: Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics. (In fact, why didn’t I know sooner?) For anyone who likes stories (telling them, reading them), writing, art, semiotics, communication theory, and, oh yeah, comic books.

15 East’s uni.

Deviled eggs.

Zabb’s fish with lime.

What is it about deviled eggs and meatloaf that fascinates me so? Must be because I never had either of them until I was well away from home and probably out of college too. These foods carry with them all the cultural trappings and meaning of whole decades that I wasn’t yet alive to experience, which somehow makes them as exciting to eat as my mom’s dumplings (which is pretty damn exciting). Know what I mean?

Department of WTF: this insanity. (Or should it be the Department of Misspent Tax Dollars? You decide.) (Thanks, Joyce.)

Connie and I headed up to the farthest reaches of New Hampshire (also known as Vermont) for Turkey Day this year, and it was good because

1. Lauren’s mom is an awesome cook.

2. We got to play Nintendo for two days straight. Man, the Legend of Zelda is definitely one of the best games ever made. I spent eight hours playing it with Lauren and Connie (and occasionally Michael and Jeff, since somehow they were less obsessed than we were) — not even playing 80% of the time but pointing out bushes to burn and rocks to push — and it never got old. I couldn’t ever play, much less watch, any of those newfangled games (and Wii boxing would just wear me out after an hour). I don’t know if it’s because I was trained at a young age to appreciate the lo-tech magic of the NES or if it’s just an excellent gaming system in and of itself, but man, that thing is FUN. My dreams will be populated by bleeps and bloops for the next week.

A week of gastronomical adventures of Paleolithic proportions starts at Tia Pol,

where everything is a little underseasoned, except these patatas bravas. Boquería and Casa Mono are better for the food, but TP is the place where you want to be a regular. And where they’ll know your name even if you just left it the one time late on a packed Wednesday night the week before and then ended up at Cookshop instead.

Then there’s Pacificana, the superlative Cantonese banquet hall in Sunset Park. You’re greeted with those nasty fried wonton skins with sweet-and-sour sauce and cheap fortune cookies (with, yes, that amazing fortune above) that recall a 1986, suburban St. Louis Hunan Empress. But every dish in between is better than the last, and you find yourself fighting urges to keep eating when you’re just TOO FULL ALREADY, it’s that good. Too many favorites, really, but that stewed pork with preserved vegetable (thanks for the rec, Ganda) is the winner. Also: seafood and veg in broth, Portuguese rice (which tastes an awful lot like Japanese curry), and crispy, meltingly greasy, pork-saturated, taro-stuffed tofu skins (I think, though this resembles no tofu skin I’ve ever had before). Best Cantonese I’ve ever had in New York.

Brunch at Stanton Social was as good as ever. The only thing that didn’t measure up, sadly, was the meatballs, which were mushy and flavorless.

And yes, between throwdowns at Marlow & Sons and Casa Mono with the out-of-towners, I found some time to actually cook a few things.

Finally, no-knead bread. This recipe is miraculous. And nearly unfuckupable. I was a little too free-and-easy with the yeast, unable to shape the loaf properly, and ultimately stuck a really flaccid pile of goo in the very hot oven, but I still got good crust and crumb (flavor was a little one-dimensional, but I’ll tackle that in the next round).

me: hey here’s a picture of me eating an empanada at the mar vista farmers market
w: you look like an empanada

And if by that, Winnie, you mean I look like a nicely deep fried nugget of goodness, I’ll accept. Upon returning from NY, I found myself deeply missing how close and convenient everything was in NY as well as the PeopleTV (the constant stream of interesting and not so interesting looking people, especially while taking the subway) and decrying how far apart everything was in LA. So just when things were looking dire, I had a fantastically-LA LA weekend.

Within 24 hours from Saturday to Sunday, we hit up 3 farmers markets—Santa Monica, West LA, and Mar Vista—loading up on passionfruit, persimmons, plums, leeks, baby bok choy, pistachio nuts, apples, and more. Our usual Sunday ritual of yoga then West LA farmers market (see, told you it was ueber-LA) was disrupted when we couldn’t find the necessary ingredients for our contributions to porkday #6 at our very small and very cute farmers market. To which, up until Sunday, we had been fiercely loyal. Heeding the call of necessity, we drove to the Mar Vista market and were amazed. And felt betrayed. And delighted. Our Sundays will never be the same again. An empanada stand! A coffee cart! A knife sharpener! A cheese stall! Three blocks of beautiful vegetables and fruits! The French bread dude with the Frenchiest accent ever who disappeared from our WLA market weeks ago! Yes, we’ll feel guilty and yes, we’ll have to sneak back to our old market for Mr. Ha’s apples, but who can resist the clarion call of better selection and fatty fried things, both, at once? Not us.

(You’re thinking why don’t you just go to the Santa Monica market which’ll have everything? The answer, my friend, is that there’s a great small-market vibe in MV where you can sit back and take in the scene, which SM lacks despite its largesse. Plus, SM has a more upscale vibe best described with three words: designer baby strollers.)

Porkday #6, Kristin’s second dress rehearsal for her family’s Thanksgiving, was quite a spread and saw the west coast implementation of food vogue. There, I named it. What’s your pose?

I got to spend the afternoon at the Google NY offices, and oh man, it’s as awesome as you’ve heard. Besides all the stations set up with old computer models (the Apple IIe and the ‘84 Macintosh were definitely there, but I’ll bet there was an Amiga and some other stuff too that I’d never seen in person before — and all of it was functional!) and various ancient tech paraphernalia (HUGE floppies), nerds scootering down the hall, and a lego station in one of the many, many snack areas, there was a wall with two posters, this O’Reilly one with a timeline of the history of programming languages and another timeline of the history of operating systems. So cool, right?

(And yeah, I ate there too. More about that later.)

The mercury is dropping steadily, and the best way I know to address that and this head cold I can’t seem to shake is to eat my new favorite Southern food:

Southern Indian, that is: utthappam, a rice-lentil pancake that tastes like neither rice nor lentils but like the savory Subcontinent ideal comfort food. There’s an appetizing tanginess to it, as with other dosas, that makes it seem possible to eat a pile of these (but I think a large one usually suffices for a single person). The tomato, onion, and chile combination is as good as it looks.

Who needs chicken noodle soup when there’s ramen to be had? With fatty slices of roast pork, no less. This is the miso ramen at Minca. Ryan insisted I try their noodles after he went to Setagaya on my suggestion. Look, I’m no authority on ramen (I grew up on Maruchan, and I think my father still buys crates of that shit from Sam’s Club), but I have to say, though this was pretty unusual broth (substantial, almost thick for a non-viscous liquid, with heavy flavor — and the overall heaviness, no doubt — imparted by doses of peanut butter and sesame paste. It was a little like drinking warm, salty, watered-down tahini. But not in a bad way.), there was still something missing, something that Setagaya’s shio ramen’s got.

If I had to plot the flavor trajectory of each, Minca’s miso ramen would look like this:

And Setagaya’s shio ramen would look like this:

Or, as my mom would say, “This one is more flavory.” Minca’s isn’t bad, really, it’s just not as good. If I return, I’ll have to try the shoyu version. Still, though, Setagaya’s noodles have that lovely, toothsome springiness. Minca’s are just, well, wet noodles.

[Thanks for the graphs, Connie.]

A few things I neglected to say in my previous post:

What’s so great about the pigs-in-a-blanket amuse? I forget if it was Bruni or someone else who wrote recently about how the whole amuse-bouche/welcome-from-the-kitchen thing was getting out of hand, but, while as a Midwesterner and child of poor immigrants, I like a freebie now and then, I don’t really want one any more unless it’s relevant to my meal. Especially if the freebie’s going to drive up menu prices for everything else (more to prep, more to wash — who’s really winning here?). Anyway, nothing about the pig-in-a-blanket that I ate said “market,” much less “local” or “seasonal,” etc. The sauerkraut was a nice touch, but come on — that’s a hot dog in there. It’s wrapped in puff pastry. I could make that at home, and it tastes like something I could make at home.

The gnocchi. The gnocchi were also only okay. Not the best gnocchi I’ve ever had, not even particularly good gnocchi. They were a little on the dense and chewy side. The sauce they were in was flavorful and well seasoned but thin and soupy.

I guess I just can’t believe the LT in BLT is the same Tourondel I’ve always heard and read about. The flavor and ingredient combinations weren’t particularly inspired, new, or even interesting, and the execution was flawed, to say the least.

Blue Hill sets the example for market restaurant, and they do it in a quiet, elegant way. It’s clear that everything is local and seasonal when you look at the menu, and they don’t need to make a list for you to see that. Apparently, at last year’s Taste of New York, Dan Barber stuck some raw cauliflower on the little wood block with metal sticks that he likes to use for amuses, and he got skewered by more than a few people for doing that. Granted, I prefer Barber’s cauliflower in soup or other preparations, but that, more than “cauliflower” etched into the wall and a trowel hung up next to my table, demonstrates true love for local. I run into Barber at the Greenmarket, chuckling to himself as he smells and prods the produce, and that speaks volumes more than any PR bullshit ever could.

I went to Cookshop last night, and it drove home just how wide of the mark(et, har har) BLT is. They resort to a pretty hokey decoration scheme too, what with the harvest bouquets uplit around the perimeter of the room. And my dinner there wasn’t really stellar — the mushroom pot pie was pretty soupy inside and a little parsimoniously filled, it and the steamed broccoli that came alongside could have used some salt, and the chicken wings they brought us by mistake were tasty but nothing special — but Matt’s pork chop was porky, meaty, choppy, and Andrew’s porgy was perfectly grilled. The menu lifted my spirits; it did not make me full of hate. And when I left, I felt sated and content. Maybe they’re just better or less crass about selling the concept, but the food and the experience at Cookshop feel honest, where at BLT Market they did not.

As unhappy as I was about my meal at BLT Market, I really didn’t want to write about it here, but it was driving me batshit crazy seeing all the positive reviews. And to be fair, a cook friend and a food-industry acquaintance both found no fault (but the former knows LT and the crew and was treated thusly, while the latter had only been there for some industry event), and the people next to us, as Steven reminds me, loved the place (but they were BLT regulars we surmised, given how many compliments-of-the-chef items were carted to their table). Ultimately, though, there are many, many places in this city I can go to and leave not feeling angry, and I think I’ll just stick with those.

I remember hearing about Laurent Tourondel’s culinary magic back when I was washing lettuce and slicing grapes into teeny, tiny little segments in a Boston kitchen. The cooks around me were unstinting in their adulation. And then I remember being disappointed to have moved to NYC after Cello’s untimely and much-lamented demise and not having the chance to taste Tourondel’s food. I was glad to see him resurface but had no intention of ever visiting the first of his BLT establishments, which was, of all things, a steakhouse. I’m wary of the whole restaurant-empire enterprise — especially one that would stake its first claim with a steakhouse, not to mention one that’s so baldly brand-focused. And it was fine: other BLTs opened up, I heard good and bad things about each, and I didn’t bother going to any of them.

But when BLT Market opened up, the reviews were pretty much all positive: two stars here, two stars there, five stars over there, and a pretty ridiculous example of how PR is running “journalism” these days here. And we were curious. I mean, this market concept is what I’m all about, right? I liked the idea of taking this trend of recognizing farmers and producers to the next level and plastering the dining room with photos of them proudly holding their wares. I liked that they made a point of highlighting what’s in season on the menu. But then we went.

And everything was wrong, wrong, wrong.

So much of BLT Market screams suburban mall restaurant, from the cheesy “BEET-yam-MUSHROOM” etc. printed all over the (paper) placemat and, even cheesier, writ large on the mirrors behind us. Okay, I GET that you’re about fresh, seasonal, local — hell, “market” is in your name — does it really need to be spelled out for me? Same with the menu. Something about actually seeing the way the in-season produce was listed on it provoked the gag reflex. And back to those paper placemats: I know that the dining scene is getting more casual all the time, but seriously, if I’m paying $30+ for an entree, I want to see some real linen somewhere. (And this is the restaurant they put in the Ritz-Carlton?) I guess the real linen went to the servers so they could sport proper market-inspired aprons. We got the long baguette-shaped (that’s no real baguette) bread slathered with pesto butter. It was okay bread (made better than not-so-great bread because it was warm and covered with garlicky butter, but it lacked a decent crumb and was fairly insipid in flavor), but reminded me of the refrigerated garlic bread we used to get at the supermarket in Chesterfield, Missouri, which we’d heat up in the oven to go with spaghetti-and-meatball dinners. Actually the supermarket bread might have been better, since there was more butter on it. All of these things weren’t so bad; the cheesiness was just a minor annoyance, and the bread at least was warm.

But then it got nasty.

My langoustines came. All three of their tails. And they were okay. Not stellar, not even particularly excellent — just okay. (But to be fair, they had to compete with my memory of St John’s langoustines, about a dozen of which came heaped on a plate, whole, with just a little cup of mayonnaise or aioli to dip them in. Perfectly, perfectly cooked langoustines they were.) And I looked over at Steven’s sizeable duck salad and was a little jealous. Until I tried it. Lovely fresh greens and ostensibly tasty duck, but it was drenched in such a cloyingly sweet dressing that we couldn’t even bring ourselves to finish it. My immediate thought after trying it was, should I downgrade my gnocchi order from entree to appetizer size? Maybe I don’t want a big portion if it’s going to suck. But Steven reassured me that he’d eat the leftovers, and I didn’t want to cause trouble, so I left it.

Only to wonder, once the pasta came, whether I had mistakenly ordered the appetizer portion to begin with. Especially when I compared it with Steven’s arctic char, which looked to be at least 8 ounces, maybe a good 10, of the fish. The char was okay — nothing special, and nothing, certainly, that would hold a candle to Aquavit’s treatment of the same. It could have been less cooked, but overall it was acceptable. Back to that gnocchi, though: the pasta came in a small bowl and filled it maybe a third of the way. I was so astounded by the portioning that I actually had to count how many gnocchi they gave me. 14 gnocchi. For $25. That’s TWENTY-FIVE DOLLARS. And this is gnocchi with lamb sausage (that they don’t even make in-house) and FENNEL, for god’s sake (both not particularly pricey ingredients, for those of you wondering). I was offended. I was pissed. I didn’t get it.

That might be one of the only meals I’ve had in this city where I felt like I’d been totally duped. And I take back the suburban mall restaurant qualifier; it’s more like a Disney approximation of what some advertising exec thinks a “market restaurant” should be, only instead of selling key chains and hats, you’ve got honey and Staub. I know the whole co-opting of local, seasonal, family farms, etc. has been going on for a while, but at this level, to this extent, and with so many people swallowing it wholesale, it really has me scratching my head (these last two reviews especially). Do I go back to see if I just missed something the first time? Dare I plunk down another $70 to give BLT Market the benefit of the doubt? I don’t know.

And I still don’t get it.

No more mucking about.
No more manicotti distractions or slumming ducks.

It’s time to get serious.

Lunetta (Brooklyn, yo)
[5-point scale scorecard]
Size: 4.5 [about 2" in diameter; forgot the tape measure]
Consistency: 3.5 [dense crumb, yet still tender, with discernible grind; could be juicier]
Flavor: 3.5 [could use more salt, but good umami]
Sauce: 2 [thin in every possible way, but nice festive green flecks]
Integrity: 4.5 [holds together under duress]
Secret category: 3.5
Overall: 21.5/30

Even though Perilla’s meatballs are disqualified because of their main ingredient (not to mention the egg), I’d rank them ahead of these. These are about even with Frankies 457 (but with much different scores, it must be said).

What other meatballs are worthy contenders, in your estimation? Feel free to make suggestions in the comments. (And note that this quest knows no bounds: for good meatballs, I will travel.)