FORK PLAY May 27, 2009
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Eating Out. Smiley
Face. Pho Sure. Table 8. Street Food.
Dear Friends and Family,
It breaks my heart to read NY1's poll showing that almost
half of all New Yorkers they asked have STOPPED
 eating out. In my crowd that rings in the end of the world as we know it. In
the small print NY1 points out that it is mostly the poorest New Yorkers who
say they no longer eat out but many of the more affluent are staying home too.
That means those of us with cash flow and only slightly
battered retirement accounts have more of an obligation than ever to save our
city. New York
is theatre, restaurants, media-city, design center, even Wall Street battered
and limping. We need to eat out as often
as possible. We must stop giving in to totally unjustified urges to economize
just because it's the new morality, the new chic. Saving your favorite
restaurant from bankruptcy...keeping your favorite waiter from the unemployment
roll is not the same as buying a $ 12,000 lizard satchel. Eating out is
patriotic. It's even okay to buy a bottle of wine. Buy American wine if it makes you feel cozy.
Go for Long Island wine for a surge of local virtue. Go
to Gotham or Jean Georges. Go to the new Marea. Go to
Nobu or Daniel. Go to the place that knows your name. Click here to see and
memorize my 12 Reasons to Splurge on Dinner Tonight.
***
No Smiley Faces Here
Leave it to the Times
Style Section to detect a certain creeping niceness fogging our town. I
am not a smiley face person. Critics are, after all, critical. I have
never advocated smashing a fly with a tank though I have tried to be
nastier to blend into the nastiness of the blogosphere. Still, I see no
reason to bomb a small mom and pop diner or a sincere restaurant effort
that's mildly misguided. I figure it will find a following or wither
soon enough without my toxic metaphors. If it's hot, ambitious,
celebrity-run, unreasonably winning raves, then it's worth a shot with
both barrels. As for Miss Smiley Face. You can watch me in action on Bravo's new series, "Top Chef Masters," airing June 10. Read my thoughts on Sex and Chocolate at More magazine's
new web site. And check out Pamela Morgan's blog on the amazing
lunch she cooked for us last Saturday using products from her Hampton
zip code.
***
BITE Alert: Pho Sure Pho Now and Table 8
 Last time I checked in for my favorite rice cake with
Chinese sausage and duck egg, Michael Huynh's new Pho Sure had yet to be discovered. It's the Vietnamese soup station
with savory noodles and salads and a bargain sandwich counter up front you wish
would land in your neighborhood. And it delivers. Indeed, if the flighty and
ambitious chef has his way, it will land in your zip code soon. Read this week's BITE to see what
you want to order.
I'll be going back to Table
8 soon again for deeper research into what's emerging from the Cooper
Square kitchen of LA transplant Govind Armstrong.
"Contentment creeps in
gradually," I wrote, "with the first bite of lime-marinated fluke crudo with a
surprise chili kick, and the crunch of crisp soft shell crab with a tangy salad
of shaved asparagus and ramp aioli." For
more on Table 8, click here.
***
Street & Savory
The Garden and restaurants at Rockefeller
Center will burst into a global
street food festival Monday June 8 produced by Patina Group to benefit
Citymeals-on-Wheels. If eating out in New
York restaurants is heroic these days, helping to
feed the city's frail homebound elderly is an act of unconditional love. Here's a chance to honor both traditions as
great chefs from across the country gather to recreate the street food of their
heritage or do a delicious riff on memory. Taste Ed Brown's Jersey
Shore clam roll and Alfred
Portale's corndog, Cesare Casella's porchetta and sausages from Daniel's new DBGB.
For information and tickets, call 212 687 1290. Or click here.
***
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Photographs of Marea's crudo, Michael Hunyh and the lamb at Table 8 may not be used without permission from Steven Richter.
Fork Play copyright Gael Greene 2009.
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