Fork Play October 15, 2008
Eli's Health Crisps. Sticker Shock at Robuchon. A Peek at Secession. Home Again. Tuna Dish Days. Foie Gras Nights.
Dear Friends and Family,
This financial uncertainty is frazzling. Don't you find  cutting back on spending as boring as being on a diet? This morning I made my egg white scramble with no-fat cream cheese and wondered if now is the moment to conquer my dependence on Eli Zabar's Health Crisps. Have you managed to overlook this dark brown bread sliced thinner than Angelina and toasted into a Melba crisp? At Fairway, the 7 oz. package was $2.99 the first time I noticed it on a shelf, I don't recall how long ago. Suddenly, I can't quite pinpoint when, it's $4.99 and just recently up to $5.29. Today it's $5.39!
Fairway is famous for its rock bottom markup so I figure Eli - the Cartier of crackers - is up to something. "You're getting me in Florida," he says. "I'm down here looking at tomatoes, but not the kind in bikinis." Not a lot of merchants check out tomatoes en situ. You gotta give the guy credit even when he spits in your wallet while laughing at his own fiscal audacity.
"Don't blame Fairway," he says. Fairway, he and I agree, is famous for its low markup. "Between Fairway and Zabar's, we send a full truckload of baked goods. They are our best customers and they get the best price. They are tough negotiators. I am sure they both charge less than I charge in my stores. I love those crisps myself. No one else makes them. I could charge whatever I want." He talked about skyrocketing flour prices, about breakage in toasting and packing, about fuel costs. "There were four months last year I was losing money because I didn't pass increases along." Don't cry for me, Eli Zabar.
"Do prices ever come down?" I ask Mark Stewart, Eli's bakery wholesaler. "Or do they only go up? I see in the Times wheat and corn prices are down 44% and oil is down 40%."
"That's true but that's recent. We reassess what commodities cost quarterly and we'll adjust our prices accordingly," he said.
"You mean I don't get a break on my health crisps till December?"
"January," he corrects me.
Even as we speak, Fairway's warriors are arming. "We have taken on astronomical increases from our vendors," says Fairway's purchasing general, John Rossi. "Once petroleum prices are down, packaging costs will be down too. We are going back to all our vendors. We have great vendors who give us quality items. Our job is to push them now for lower prices."
"Deflation is coming," promises Fairway partner Howie Glickberg. "Meat and poultry prices are going down. Maybe it will take two months to catch up with commodities. Boneless chicken breasts are already down so low, $1.99 a lb. The chicken guys are crying the blues. I'm already seeing a half-cent drop in the price of plastic deli containers - on our profit margin, with the numbers of containers we use, half a cent means a lot. We have shoppers that go into other stores all the time. We just want to be cheaper than anyone else. Quality first," he amends, "then cheaper."
I got the whole cabal to promise I'll be the first to know when it's safe to buy Eli's health crisps again.
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Sticker Shock at Robuchon
In the last few years of her life my mom, Saralee, lived on Social Security and the modest income from a very modest inheritance. She and her sisters and their friends - widows, all of them - ate Early Bird suppers, took home half a sandwich for lunch, and got discounts equal to their age if they came for dinner on their birthday - 74% off was a thrill.
I am definitely my mom's daughter. I do look at prices. The days of my no-questions-asked-expense account are gone and it's often my own money I'm spending at dinner. Even before my IRA account took a plunge, I was looking at the right side of the menu thinking I'd be just as happy with the $22 veal cheeks as with that $27 turbot, maybe even happier, though not exactly healthier. Given the grimness of Wall Street layoffs and likely side effects, I worry about restaurants opening now and in the next several months with $45 entrees. I noticed Atelier de Robuchon was not full a week ago Tuesday. Maybe the Four Seasons guests were ordering room service to watch the debate. Chef Yosuka Suga's layered sea urchin on carrot mousse with a big plop of foie gras in its gold embossed globe had all of us uttering exclamations of ecstasy. (How can I complain that it cost $140 for four given the tiny pearls nestled in rose petals along side? But I will. A quite ordinary quail was $45 plus $10 for an espresso without pearls.) I'd definitely stumbled out of my milieu.
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Peeping Toms at Secession
I was so intent on getting to David Bouley's new Secession (30 Hudson Street), where Danube used to be  in Bouley's Tribeca fiefdom, that I managed to arrive very rudely on the chef's fraught first night. I loved Danube. With its gold touched faux Klimts, Venetian egg shell finish walls, and bouffant velvet at the windows, the room was wonderfully sexy and romantic. But you know how fickle New Yorkers are. I guess we just stopped coming after Mario Lohninger, the gifted chef de cuisine left. So the silver bells on the butter are gone and the starched cream colored cloths too. Flimsy half curtains let us see into apartments across the way - and vice versa no doubt. Bouley sees this new less expensive bistro "with everything I love to eat" as a hangout for the neighborhood. There was a meltdown in the kitchen that opening night and an insurrection at the next table. I'll tell you what I ate - though I won't make a judgment this soon. Click here to learn more about the menu at Secession.
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Going Home Again
It can be unnerving when you pass by the house you grew up in and the new people have painted it a strange color or sawed off the bay window. That wasn't the only reason I didn't rush down to see the new deal at sweet little Home (20 Cornelia Street). It was that dratted no-reservation policy. I try to avoid a $20 taxi ride to stand in line for a table.
But on one of the great balmy nights of autumn in New York, we had no problem at all claiming a table in the near-empty garden. Perhaps Home is a little pricey for the neighborhood. And granted, the waiter might seem not-that-interested. But the food is really good. Click here for an account of our first tasting.
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Tunafish Days, Foie Gras Night
No telling which side is up right now or for how long. Some of us remain shell-shocked and are pinching those pennies.So thanks for your emails on cutting down food bills. Eric writes that reading food blogs has made  his food life fuller, leading him to "Clinton Street Bakery" and the Momofukus and to other food blogs that led him to places like Azuri and Levain Bakery. Sharing his finds with friends makes "every meal meaningful whether its Daniel or Kwik Meal." Rhea Albert "never bought into the Starbucks, Dunkin' Donuts trend." She suggests taking coffee to work in a travel mug or thermos and recommends an MTA senior card that lets you on the subway or bus for just $1. Alas, you do have to admit you're 65.
The prolific food writer Molly O'Neill advises hitting the boroughs, "where a new generation of chefs, who value having a life more than they value a $5 million dollar dining room are opening teeny, bare bones mom and pop shops with terrific cooking."
I just had to award personal trainer Che Florio the dinner with me and the Road Food Warrior for vowing to leave her pad each day without any credit cards and just $5 in her pocket while eating what she has stashed in her freezer as long as she can. This morning Florio - who bikes across town on her fitness route -- noted that she'd only spent $2.70 Monday. "I think I'll take whatever I save and have breakfast in a diner on Saturday," she decided.
I liked Lauren Lederhead's four step plan too. But it seemed a bit stretched with variable unknown factors at play. Step 1. Pick a restaurant. Step 2. Become a 'regular.' Step 3. Get chummy with the chef and/or GM. Step 4. Make a deal with him/her that if you tattoo the restaurant's name on your person you eat for free.
The day after seeking the best idea for cutting back on food, the city was paralyzed by a freeze on spending. So I offered a second dinner for two for the best food splurge idea. Cheryl Greenhill won for her suggestion to recreate Craig Claiborne's infamous $4000 dinner of 1975 with its excesses of truffles, foie gras and caviar. She fantasized reliving that Marie Antoninette exercise in the skybox overlooking the kitchen at Daniel. If you're curious about Craig and the outrage that greeted his dinner, please go to my website Insatiable Critic by clicking here and scrolling down toward the bottom of BITE.
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Photos of Relief, Eli Zabar, Robuchon's sea urchin globe, the new look at Secession, fabulous scallops at Home and Daniel's skybox may not be used without permission from Steven Richter.Fork Play by Gael Greene, copyright 2008
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