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November 8, 2007
Soup Opera at Bun, Turnip Sculptor at Shun Lee, Tasting Chocolate
Dear Friends and Family,
In my memoir, Insatiable: "Tales from a Life of Delicious Excess," a chapter is devoted to three young American couples who fell in love with France and cooking in the 70's and abandoned careers in law, marine biology and dance to open restaurants. I waxed lyrical (my style in those heady days) over all three restaurants -- Chanterelle, Dodin Bouffant and The Quilted Giraffe.
Now of course, only one restaurant and one marriage survive.
What is the prognosis for couples who cook together?
I am sure the ambitious architect- contractor turned chef, Michael Huynh (Bao 111 and Mai House), and the charming chef-wife he wooed in Saigon, are too busy simmering pho and stuffing rice paper at their brand new Bun/Soho (143 Grand Street at Lafayette, 212 431 7999) to dwell on domestic traps at this moment.
But I could feel vibrations of drama at the small Vietnamese noodle shop, on its last Friends and Family tasting before its official opening. It made me think of those other bake-and-serve young marriages.
Michael raced and whirled from counter to oven, ladling soup, crying out cues for his student chefs from the nearby French Culinary Institute. My guy, Steven Richter, finally managed to catch him with the camera in a fleeting pause.
And there was the bride, Thao Nguyen, standing at the counter in a world of her own, seemingly wrapped in serenity, her hair tightly bound, eyes black with mascara, as she fashioned classic spring rolls in fragile paper, two by two, for waiters to carry away.
"He doesn't like my food," she whispered. "He criticizes my food."
Click here to go to BITE: My Journal for more.
143 Grand St., betwn Layfayette and Crosby. 212 431 7999
The Old Côte Basque Magic
I've been adding old New York restaurant reviews from the 70s and 80s to Vintage Insatiable on my site. Read about the week Jean Jacques Rachou took over La Côte Basque from Henri Soule's aging, tyrannical mistress.
The Rodin of Shun Lee
Michael Tong occasionally broods about the need to redo the interior of Shun Lee across from Lincoln Center. I always try to persuade him not to. I love the tall booths padded in black wool -- really sexy, muffling the sound like an isolation booth on the "$64,000 Question." The papier maché dragons are fun and the red-eyed monkeys at the bar remind me of the evil monkeys in The Wizard of Oz and that I was once married to a man who, like Tong, was born in the Year of the Monkey.
The setting may be vintage but the menu is always evolving as Tong responds to new products in the market and a growing clientele from Asia who want serious Chinese food. I must admit I never cease to be charmed by the decorative carvings that come to each table - frogs and swans cut out of turnips, rollicking pandas, water lilies of turnip, rutabaga and carrot. Huan Fu Zwang from Chendu in Szchuan province is the house Rodin. I was shocked when a Neanderthal at my own table once lopped off a wing and chomped on it. But it seems these sculptures last only a few hours and need constantly to be replaced. So maybe it wasn't a serious felony.
Given the evolution in Shun Lee's ambitions, I was happy to find all the classic cold appetizers on the menu, including hacked chicken (though it doesn't have the pain-inducing chili heat it once had - even the chili sauce on the side has been tamed. And I discovered you can order egg foo yung. It's not on the menu -- Michael's crowd-wooing mind set doesn't accommodate low-brow gestures. But my friend Susan, a Shun Lee habitué, assures me all you have to do is ask. She refuses to share hers so I order a pork foo yung for our sixsome, sauce on the side, just like my mother liked it. I'm not officially recommending it, unless you're desperate to relive childhood days.
43 West 65th Street, just east of Broadway 212 769 3888
Immersion in Chocolate
As if the 10th annual Chocolate Show -- three days of total immersion in chocolate at the Metropolitan Pavilion and Altman Building -- weren't enough, an eager coven of restaurants and shops have succumbed to the madness. Artisanal, Le Cirque, The Beard House, Brasserie 8 ½, Per Se, Country, David Burke and Donatella - the list keeps growing.
Invitations have been streaming in. I feel fat just reading them. But yesterday I found I couldn't resist when the people promoting Green & Black's organic chocolate from London offered to do a tasting in my office. I don't usually invite strangers to my office for fear they'll fathom its dysfunction and my eccentricities. I hoped the chocolate would distract. Micah Carr-Hill, "head of taste," sensibly wearing sneakers, set up several white dishes with bite size chunks of chocolate, milk and dark, with almonds and hazelnuts. He brought along a Lindt's almond bar and I threw in a bar of Ghirardelli's "Twilight Delight", 72% cacao to taste against Green & Black's 85%.
You can guess how it went. The visiting team's chocolate was smartly less sweet, "less sickly," as Carr-Hill put it. Their almonds were Sicilian, whole, skin-on but he had to admit the Lindt's was not bad at all. His currents were better than anyone's raisins - more intense flavor or so he observed.
Then we came to the sour cherry studded dark chocolate, new this year. I held my nose and dropped a chunk in my mouth to melt on the tongue (as instructed) and then bit into it. "Ohhhhhh, ohhhhh my" I couldn't help myself. That tangy, sour cherry taste, tempered with vanilla. It was fabulous.
I invited my new intern to taste too. She yearns to be a food writer. Here's her first critique.
"Eleven o'clock. Standing in front of a table spread with seven different chocolates, I nervously tried on, for the first time, the role of professional critical taster.
The man from Green & Black began with a discussion of when is best for tasting chocolate,'Ideally on an empty stomach,' he said. Recording this note, I regretted the coffee I'd been sipping all morning. The pumpkin scone became my dirty little secret.
We tasted the first chocolate, simple, milk. 'Yum,' was my private initial reaction. I listened to the others discuss cocoa solid percentages, the effect of the amount of milk added on the sweetness of the chocolate. The second item: a milk chocolate with roasted, whole almonds. I crunched, watching the critical tasters around me consider the nuts. 'Yum,' my simple inner monologue dictated again. My notepad begged for more.
Moving from a hazelnut currant chocolate ('yum') to a dark chocolate with sour cherries ('yum, yum, yum'), my notepad was full of comments from the other tasters and the humble realization of myself as more of an eater than a taster. I felt myself at the very start of a journey to becoming a hungry critic versus just hungry."
For a list of chocolate events at the show and elsewhere click on chocolateshow.com or chocolateweekny.com
Copyright pending: Gael Greene 2007
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