FORK PLAY June 10, 2008
Seeking Harlem's Restaurant Row. Reality Strikes. Eloise at the Peninsula. Chicago Grazing. Delicious Excess in Chocolate.
Dear Friends and Family,
Don't think you can drive west on 135th Street to find brand new Talay in West Harlem. That would be logical,  but it just takes you to a dead end above the 1926 freight house that houses this virtually undiscovered Thai-Latino duplex north of Fairway. (Take the West Side Highway, get off at 125th Street and head north.) Look for fierce stone Dragons with golden toenails guarding the door and discover Kuma Inn's King Phojanakong co-chefing in the open kitchen. Our eaters, feeling pleasantly Marco Poloesque just having found the place, liked tuna and avocado summer roll, Thai beef on spicy green papaya salad, garlicky lemongrass barbecued ribs, but most of all, the sensation of being off the radar. And you can hit Fairway for groceries after dinner.
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Reality Strikes
And sinks in. Ed Brown's $3.4 million dream of Upper West Side luxury and delicious indulgence when he left The Sea Grill to build EightyOne was in sync with a buoyant Dow. Not that Central Park West lacks bonus babies and Wall Street shakers and chronically wealthy sybarites who aren't feeling much pain so far. But Brown's new $42 prix fixe Sunday in the dining room and any night at the bar is meant to tempt locals to stop by often, before and after Shakespeare in the Park, just off the jitney. In the Village, the old Provence gives way to Hundred Acres where Marc Meyer and Vicki Freeman want to turn locals into habitués too with fine comfort food and pared-down prices.
The owners of Sfoglia may be off in Nantucket. Who knows? I didn't see any sign of Ron or Colleen Saturday night - but I detected Ron Suhansky's Renaissance thought process in the marvelous artichoke and chive manicotti with ricotta, a clever crunch of fried chick peas and lemon zabaglione. Swoonfood - soooo rich, but so what? We deserve it.
Eloise at the Peninsula
I rarely get to stay in legendary five-star hotels. I'm just too tight, as those who know me will tell me when I forget. I tend to hoard my travel dollars to eat extravagantly and perhaps splurge on a vintage bauble.
But there we were in a corner suite at the Peninsula Hotel on Chicago's Michigan Avenue, greeted, as we entered our room, with rare parrot tulips, fruit and chocolate dipped apricots - a welcome from the chef. I couldn't even grump about bad decorating. The suite was exceedingly discreet, except for the telly looking down over a giant tub - sand and beige in the bedroom, satin-padded hangers, a bedside light actually meant for reading. First time in years I didn't have to call down for more pillows.
"Let's move in," said Steven. "It's bigger than our apartment."
Messages from the front desk came by fax, hidden in a drawer spitting out advisories: "We were unable to deliver an amenity the chef prepared for you because your 'privacy' light was on."
I'd never encountered such obsequious demeanor from Americans. The housekeepers reminded me of hotel staff in India, quickly backing away to let us pass, head bobbing in a near bow. It almost made up for the annoying need to change elevators after reaching the second story lobby. I even adjusted to the $42.80 for my continental breakfast with yogurt. (Steven's green tea and granola was an extra $29.07.) It arrived promptly, after all, with an orchid in a bud vase. Funny how gracious a penny pincher can be when someone else is paying.
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A New Deal for Veal
I felt like a hypocrite letting the team launching a new politically-correct veal bring me and the Road Food Warrior to Chicago when I'm not exactly a big fan of veal. Unless you count sweetbreads, the prize I can never resist in any guise (although I'm often disappointed when that unctuous satiny texture gets lost in deep-frying and too small nuggets). Who do you think does the best sweetbreads in New York? Email me, please.
It seems that Devi chef Suvir Saran, my longtime co-conspirator in gourmand excess (read about our snacking in Delhi, had come to Chicago with Devi partner  Hemant Mathur to grill a few fatted calves in spicy Indian variations. He simply decided I should come too. After all, we hadn't shared a major eating binge in months. A crowd of the local fooderati, seventy strong, converged in the back yard of Art Smith, best known as Oprah's chef, Florida-born, bigger than life. After a deluge of veal snacks, dollops of Art's deep-fried cat fish, and a four minute spiel on Strauss Meadow Reserve Veal and what makes a calf "green"- mother's milk, free range pastures, no hormones or antibiotics - we stormed the buffet. At our table, Smith's cronies speculated about his possible future in Obama's White House Kitchen.
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Chicago Grazing
I've read so many raves for dining out in Chicago. Grant Achatz at Alinea is always cited as proof that molecular cooking's second coming is in the Midwest. But my guy and I only had two nights free for dinner. I didn't want a performance. I wanted to eat without a waiter instructing me to sniff a vanilla bean. The new sensation, Takashi, in Buck Town, was a must, I was told, and I got my brother, a doctor of emergency medicine in Chicago, to reserve early. Boka, a last minute compromise when we couldn't get into Laurent Gras's new L2O was a delicious surprise. What did we eat and why was it so dark? See BITE on Insatiable Critic.
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Chocolate Excess
I don't get asked often enough to conjure up a food fantasy for a chef to deliver on. Andre Soltner once asked a friend what I would like for dessert. Something with  slices of lemon, I asked her to tell him. Being Andre, and a bit stubborn, he ignored the lemon request and created his extraordinary "Sunshine Tart" - layers of sliced raw orange on crumbs to protect his orange crème anglaise in a perfect pastry. When Serendipity asked me to come up with a dream sundae to celebrate their new cookbook, Serendipity Parties (Rizzoli), visions of sour cherries and butterscotch and key lime curd danced in my head, but I always knew it would be chocolate. Actually, it's triple chocolate "Delicious Excess" - dark chocolate chunk and fudge swirl in dark chocolate ice cream layered with crème fraîche and topped with candied orange, doubly delicious because all proceeds go to Citymeals-on-Wheels.
By the way, there are still tickets available for Citymeals annual garden party in Rockefeller Center next Monday June 16. We are honoring the legends of French cuisine with the star chefs who worked in their kitchens preparing the masters' signature dishes. The sons of Paul Bocuse, Pierre Troisgros and Gaston Lenôtre will cook a dish of their fathers. Call 212-687-1290.
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Photographs of Talay's dragon, Hundred Acres clams, veal osso buco, Boka's scallop and my Delicious Excess sundae may not be used without permission from Steven Richter.
Fork Play by Gael Greene, copyright pending 2008
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