FORK PLAY January 6, 2010
Eating Around. Cascabel Taqueria. The Breslin. Square Meal. Ed's Chowderhouse. Fiore.
Dear Friends and Family,
I love New York at Christmas time but this year it was so cold I rarely got out, didn't shop, never got to see the
 Rockefeller Plaza tree or my favorite windows -Bergdorf's surrealist Rorschach tests. Many of our usual dineout pals fled to warmer zip codes. That made it feel even colder. Still I dug out my ancient mink - I bought it myself in 1974 after my divorce to convince myself you don't need a man to buy you a fur. Amazing isn't it how such prefeminist synapses linger even though I shared a summer house once with Betty Freidan and hang around now and then with Gloria Steinem. You can date my greatcoat by the Dynasty shoulders which are actually back in fashion or at least they were for a few weeks this fall.
Anyway with many layers inside and a pashmina outside and a silly knit hat that I left in taxis four or five times this week (Steven always checks the taxi seat after I exit,) we managed to brave the chill for dinner. Now about my sapphire - when I realized we were going to spend a week in Sri Lanka four Januaries ago, I decided I would force my congenitally pinch penny self to buy a big, blue sapphire (see photo above).
Now that the Tamil Tigers have surrendered and the guns have stilled, Sri Lanka is once again a paradise in a lovely and accessible
 package - India light. Click here to read about Stalking the Big Blue.
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After Christmas Tag Sale
I'm selling vintage treasures from a lifetime as an incurable collector. Early American rooster weathervane, Diamond dye box with sliding doors and partitions - I used it to store spice tins in my Woodstock house. One of a kind handmade nutmeg grater. Email me if you want to come by for a look.
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Eating Around
The two of us discovered Cascabel Taqueria (1542
 Second Avenue) after a movie on the upper east side. It's a
small storefront with masked wrestlers painted on the wall
and it looked full. But we claimed two seats at the counter and shared a fatty beef rib, and sensational tacos. I ordered fried yellowtail belly with fresh palm. Steven choose carnitos - Berkshire pork belly. Tacos come in twos on freshly made corn tortillas, so we traded. I avoid places that don't take reservations but it's possible here to reserve the communal table up front for eight or more. So I did a week later and brought friends. I'll be writing more about Cascabel on BITE next week.
Obviously nobody but me cares that I boycotted The Spotted Pig, even after it scored big buzz for chef April Bloomfield and partner Ken Friedman. I refused to bow to that no reservation tyranny. But I felt deprived and I was determined to score a spot at The Breslin (20 West 29th St), their porkish new
 pub in the Ace Hotel on not-yet-totally gentrified West 29th Street. We were a food-obsessed sextet veering out of control, ordering much too much, surrendering to the chef's outrageously lush temptations. Was that the best Ceasar salad ever? To read how I scored the table (a confession) and what I am longing to go back for, click here.
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The Risk of Showing Off
What's rocky about restaurant critiquing is the impossibility of capturing a moment of performance when seasons and mood change all the time. Even after weighing the experiences of three or four meals, things go wrong. The chef moves on. Your favorite dish gets eighty-sixed. An aggressive manager decides to cut portions and up the price. I took an especially demanding Parisian friend to Ed's Chowderhouse (44 West 63rd Street) Saturday with some trepidation, given the Times recent blast. Ed's "loaded chowder" in the black iron pot and the Manhattan crab weren't hot enough but I decided to overlook it because both were so good and the winter replacement for his killer corn chowder was a triumph. It combines three squashes - banana, butternut and acorn - with leeks and aromas of star anise and cinnamon plus a garnish of crispy shallots, spiced crème fraîche, and toasted pumpkin seeds. And it was really hot. Ed himself must have cooked (or supervised) the lightly cooked dover sole fillets in Jura "yellow wine" with mussels, shallots and flutters of chervil. It was sublime. And our snooty friend loved the California Pinot Noir too.
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The Fiore Detour
Equally fussy foodie friends came with us to Fiore (284 Grand Street) in Williamsburg for the first time. We all liked the grilled pizza to start and as always, the bucatini amaticiana was first rate, but the seafood guazatto Chef Roberto sent out as an amuse bouche perked them up and the freshness and careful cooking of the orata, the exquisite citric kick of the parsley sauce, had us exclaiming addled
 foodiots that we are.
New Yorkers who live in the cocoon above 86th Street on the upper east side know all about Square Meal (130 East 92nd Street) from the look of the crowd is this clubby space on the ground floor of a 92nd Street townhouse. Local pals can't believe I've never been. I love the biscuits, the strangely battered calamari, over-sauced crab cakes and splendid organic chicken with potato pancakes. For more on why you might like to discover Square Meal, too, click here.
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Knights of the Sweet Potato
Could the battle of the Stainless Steel Titans Sunday in Food Network's Kitchen Stadium possibly live up to how much money was spent on full page print advertising as well as on
the ethernet? (Print, hooray, it isn't dead yet)
"The greatest night in culinary history?" A secret ingredient "of national importance." I would have made the ingredient "sweet potato and/or broccoli" But an invitation to ravage the White House Garden plus pillage a coldbox of popular proteins gave an easy glide to the contenders - Favorite son Bobby Flay paired with White House stalwart Cristeta Comerfield against Iron chef Mario Batali and a strangely foggy Emeril Legasse sweating like a stuck Nixon. Read more about star chefs and the sweet potato. Click here.
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Photo of Food Battle winners from The Food Network. Photos of the Sri Lankan blue sapphire, antiques, Cascabel Taqueria owner, The Breslin's burger and Square Meal's dessert may not be used without permission from Steven Richter
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Fork Play copyright Gael Greene 2009.
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