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FORK PLAY April 13, 2010
Bravo Moi. The Collective. Aldea. Summer Hunger. Daniel Dinner.
Dear Friends and Family,
It seemed like a good idea at the time. I would live tweet the first show of the new season of Top Chef Masters (and hope someone was logged on to Twitter at that hour). The
 challenge for the master chefs was to cook a romantic duo of dishes for a couple on their first date. It wasn't easy tweeting live and it made for more than the usual typos. Anyway, in the middle of the sturm, a voice on my telly asked, "Who would you rather have dinner with: Gael Greene, James Oseland, Jay Rayner or Kelly Choi?"
I would have stuffed the ballot boxes if I knew how but I didn't so all I could do was keep tweeting. Maybe I tweeted what fun I can be at dinner. At the end when the forks were counted, I was ahead. Thirty per cent chose me. A great Sally Fields moment. Only then I began to brood. Just 30  percent? How could that be? In my 42 years as a restaurant critic, I've had strangers begging to have dinner with me. At charity auctions, Citymeals once collected $11,000 from three different bidders to have a dinner out and breakfast in bed delivered by me. Yes yes yes, I was a bit younger than. But hey. Stay tuned for more Top Chef Mastersevery Wednesday at 10PM on Bravo. P.S. Today's colors are asparagus green and sweet pea green. Last time we gave you forsythia yellow and crocus orchid. And the time before that we just couldn't control ourselves.
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The Collectors
Thrift shop décor is not unheard of in restaurants, especially in do-it-yourself pinch-penny jobs. But I've never seen anything quite like the madness at The Collective, a makeover of One Little West 12th Street, in the
Meatpacking District. You can find everything you and your mom ever threw out in the 70's and 80's wrapped around  columns, hanging from the ceiling or inviting you to perch. Lawn furniture. Road signs. Rhinestone jewelry. Parking meters. Bottle caps. License plates cut and twisted into a flight of seagulls over the corner bar are mesmerizing. The hostess greets you from behind a salvaged airplane fuselage. It's fun over function: Our companions don't look exactly comfortable perched on the edge of a sofa tufted with beer bottle caps at our tabletop made from an auto hood. It's goofy. Right down to the truffled devilled eggs propped in a cardboard egg carton surrunded by stale popcorn. Not bad at all considering I can't taste the truffle.
Some of this food is perfectly fine, though pricey -- $14 for a spinach salad with fried won tons, ten bucks for those
 three eggs. Seared tuna with slivers of mango, primitive rigatoni with veal meat balls and the very decent burger are
my favorites tonight. We're split on the ribs (they're too sweet for me). As for blue cheese tater tots, nice try but not thrilling. If you're in a junk food funk you'll gobble disco fries with cheddar in two colors until you hate yourself. Desserts are cute and sweet. Amazingly, for a normally quiet Monday, even the sidewalk tables are crowded. When I say we're in a time warp I might be saying, maybe I am warped by time but... Well, it's a perfect spot for a Sweet Sixteen or after the prom, maybe even a bridal shower. 1 Little West 12th Street. 212 255 9717
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Stepping up to The Mark
With Jean-Georges Vongerichten often invisible swinging from tree to tree in his global empire, it has been a treat to watch him launching two restaurants in Manhattan just two weeks apart. I raced to write about ABC Kitchenbecause I love it - we went back two nights in a row.
 But an early dinner and even the chef's "decadent" Croque M at lunch in The Mark by Jean-Georgesleft me lukewarm.
Turns out I was wise to let the place simmer awhile even as the upper east side throngs pour in. Saturday night Steven and I popped in without a reservation, settled into what was possibly the worst table in the lounge and discovered what a difference a few weeks can make: Spring green in a soup bowl. Real pow in the clam linguine. A perfectly cooked veal chop. And stepped up service, friendly but still dignified. Click hereto read more about what to order at The Mark.
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BITE and OverBITE
I meant to write about Aldea long ago: stylish look in a challenging space, pleasant service, some wonderful food.  And I appreciated the carpet upstairs, muffling noise that
made it easy to talk. Even when my second meal (October 2) exactly mirrored the first -- a few dishes I loved, some I never needed to see again -- I still didn't write. It's because everyone was raving about chef-owner George Mendes' take on Portuguese cooking. Then Alan Richman called it one of the "10 Best New Restaurants of 2009" in Gentleman's Quarterly. Maybe there's something wrong with me. Or is everyone just plain hypnotized by the sea urchin toast with cauliflower cream  and "sea lettuce," a sublime but ditzy little munchkin for
$9? Doll food. And the sardines were equally dainty. The razor clams were inedible, the monkfish was boring, and the pork steak eminently forgettable. In fact, I have forgotten it. I am not going to cheat and look it up online.
What I loved both times was exquisitely cooked garlic shrimp, the soft-poached egg on peas with green garlic and Migliorelli Farms bacon, and everyone's favorite, arroz de pato, a kind of paella with duck confit, chorizo, olives and duck cracklings. No one pretended to be polite when the arroz came near. We even discussed
 ordering an encore when the plate was scraped clean.
Actually the desserts are impressive, and should be at $9 and $10: chevre cheese parfait with poached plums and nectarines, a strawberry tasting, sonhors (little dream puffs) with spiced chocolate, smoked paprika apricot and hazelnut praline. Hmm. Maybe I should go back. Sit at the counter. I just spoke to a foodie friend who was there last week. "Well I love it," she said, "But then again, I don't. Is that strange?" Not really. 31 West 17th Street. 212 675 7223.
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Cookbooks for your Weekend Host
Sitting right next to me, making me hungry, nagging me to entertain again are a couple of cookbooks I am planning to
 give away to any summer host rash enough to invite me. Just out from Rodale, Michel Nichan's "Sustainably Delicious" is not preachy at all if you can get by the coverline: "Making the World a Better Place, One Recipe at a Time." I like the sound of his Nantucket scallops with grano or spelt, his foraged frittata, and the quince, pear and goat cheese tart. I wish he'd given us more ideas for corn which he crowns the national vegetable ("although it's a grain"). And knowing he created the Dressing Roomrestaurant in Westport for Paul Newman
 adds an extra dimension, I like that reverie. Buy it from Amazon by
clicking here.
I've written about Florence Fabricant's "Park Avenue Celebrations" (Rizzoli) before but it strikes me as a perfect seasonal provocateur, full of ideas from great hostesses, some of them, the ideas, that is, painless and summery. After all, doesn't Park Avenue move en masse to the Hamptons for the summer?
If it's a potluck, you can count on me to do a dish. Click here to buy it from Amazon.
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Fat Duck Look Good in Blue Jeans?
Last chance to snare a seat at "Burgundy, Bordeaux, Blue Jeans and Blues," Daniel Boulud's casual Sunday supper and auction to benefit Citymeals-on-Wheels. Casual, yes, but it's Daniel, after all, with Heston Blumenthal from The Fat Duck as guest chef, an hors d'oeuvre reception by Asiate from the Mandarin Oriental, fine Burgundy and Bordeaux wines, and live music by the Chris Bergson Band. Yes, you can wear blue jeans or sequins. Whatever your mood. One hundred percent of event and auction proceeds go only for the preparation and delivery of meals to the city's needy homebound elderly. I'd love to see you there. Say hello. For information call 212 687 1290.
| Photographs of The Collective's bar, room and dishes, The Mark's veal chop, Aldea's sea urchin, room and duck may not be used without permission from
Steven Richter.
| Fork Play copyright Gael Greene 2010.
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