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FORK PLAY December 2, 2010
Fairway vs Trader Joe's. Lincoln. Rouge et Blanc. That Vegetarian is Back. Yours, Julia.
Dear Friends and Family,
I was excited when I learned Trader Joe's was landing two blocks from my fridge on the corner of Broadway and 72nd  Street. I'd never been to a Trader Joe's, but fans extolled its goodies: the muffins, nuts, potstickers, the cheap olive oil. I worried Fairway, at 74th, would take a blow. I'm addicted to Fairway's house made cole slaw, spicy tofu salad and healthy tuna fish (though mercury with mayo doesn't get less toxic just by grating a carrot into the mix). The grim truth is Fairway's carryout cooked foods are mostly fair, satisfactory, awful, or worse. I felt I should call someone and suggest they hire a consultant, fast. But critics are not supposed to butt in. Clearly the store brass was anxious too and floated the idea of shutting down Fairway Cafe to make room for more organic groceries upstairs. When protests came in from as far away as Madrid, that half-baked plan was shelved - at least temporarily.
I caught some classic Fairway types checking out the action at Joe's that first week. "What do you think?" I asked one woman toting the distinctive shopping bag.
"I'm going back to Fairway," she said. "It's not for me."
Fairway brass on undercover reconnaissance was not impressed either. Ed Burke, manager of the Upper West Side flagship, gives Trader Joe's less than a year. Burke may run a runaway madhouse where you risk a bruising if you shop after 9 am, but on his gossipy blog, "The View from the Floor," he is a poet, a wit, an urban Thoreau. Check out his Fall musings.
Trader Joe's was a shock to me. It's clean. It's roomy. It doesn't feel crowded. I missed the narrow blocked aisles I get a perverse pleasure battering my way through. TJ's house bran flakes were really cheap (you know how I love a bargain) and I have not been happy watching the upward price creep at Fairway. Joe's egg white salad with chives was inedible. Frozen eggplant pasta, pathetic. I grabbed a big bag of dried apricots, half the price of Fairway's Turkish variety. It was like chewing a shoe. I don't buy frozen food anyway except for Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia  Yogurt. If I want a muffin, I'll buy one at Fairway, not four.
There's no deli counter, no fresh fish. As my intern Alissa Merksamer observed, it's sterile. Odorless. You can't smell anything cooking or get a big whiff of coffee beans in the grinder. Germans from California? What do they know about New York? The store is so generic it doesn't have babka or black and white cookies. Bagged bargains and cheap dairy are definitely the draw.
I grabbed some garlic hummus and raspberries that looked good one unusually hot day (Fairway's often rot outside in the heat). The line was not very long. But it didn't move. I surrendered my groceries to the clerk at the end of the line and fled. Fairway's express line can stretch around the corner and out the door but a dozen checkout clerks are ka-chinging and bagging away.
For a week after TJs opened, the Fairway crew was greeting me: "Good morning." One somber guy I've seen for twenty years actually spoke for the first time. "Thank you," he said. But they're silent again. I guess they know Fairway has already won.
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We desperately needed tropical colors after this week. This week's colors are aquamarine and sky blue.
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Lincoln Heads and Tales
Stunned by a barrage of less than lyrical reviews for its $20 million Lincoln - all in the space of three days - the powers at the reins could only reel and say: "It's too soon. Give us time."
As Patina Group boss Nick Valenti told the troops assembled in the modern swoosh of the Diller Scofidio + Renfro designed space after the first hit, a scathing notice from Adam Platt: "It's just the seventh week of a 20 year contract."
Last Monday's BITE -- "Possibly not since Windows-on-the-World has a restaurant arrived with such high expectation" put some of the gripes in perspective. The  Sifton two stars in the Times had its measured balm.
But the on-line blogging debate surged. Should Lincoln be an affordable fueling station for the middle-class masses who want a bowl of pasta before the concert or after class at Juilliard? Or should it aim to be a sublime evening for the affluent, fat cats and expense accounts? Click here to read my review. 142 West 65th Street.
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A Civilized Oasis in Soho
The first pleasant shock at Rouge et Blanc is the subdued chatter. Sound-proofing paves the ceiling and the bar is draped to catch and muffle the uninhibited yap of the well-oiled. I can read the menu too - without a flashlight. Though the stiff Chinese-style chair is hard on my bottom and hits my spine in the wrong place, I'm enchanted by the abbreviated menu - not the copycat listings you find everywhere right now. And the food itself, mostly delicious. Even our Francophilic food writer companion is impressed. Check out what we ate by clicking here. 48 MacDougal Street.
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That Vegetarian Is Back
Where to take our small family reunion for a faux Thanksgiving was easy. Nobody honors vegetables with quite the passion of Jean-Georges and chef de cuisine Dan Kluger at ABC Kitchen (35 East 18th Street). At last, freedom from turkey. We reveled in it. I insisted everyone taste the spiced carrot and avocado salad and the heirloom beets with homemade yogurt. Steven gave up the clam pizza in favor of the truffled mushroom pie, a little soggy in the middle. You have to take my word for it, the thrill of the evening was eating four different squashes done four different ways: the deep fried delicata rings with threads of aged goat cheese, roasted kabocha toasts with fresh ricotta and apple cider vinegar, spaghetti with spaghetti squash, and an amazing side, a kind of butternut squash crumble.
Cascabel Tacqueria, in its new expanded space on the corner of Second Avenue at 80th, had a lineup of  vegetable sides and salads, but by the time Dana had sipped her Margarita (with salt), nibbled guacamole, and tackled two vegetable tacos (oyster mushroom, fingerling potato, poblano, cheese and house made crema), she wasn't compelled to try the quinoa.
There is a slight loss of refinement in the kitchen since chef partner Todd Mitgang moved on, if you can think of a taco as refined. My only serious grumble was that the silver-dollar sized corn cakes sandwiching fabulous pork belly gorditas could not be cut with a knife. 1538 2nd Avenue at 80th Street.
Devi, with its equal opportunity for vegetarians and fiery chiles, is a favorite of Dana's. Steven and I loved the spicy edge and soft frying of shrimp and calamari Masala fritto misto while Dana was ecstatic over sprouted mung beans chaat. And she was so taken by chef-partner Suvir Saran's new Indian Sloppy Joes - a smash of potatoes, onions, cauliflower, tomatoes, peas and carrots on spiced bread - she took the leftover home for breakfast before her yoga class the next morning. Click here to read about Devi's fabulous new inexpensive prix fixes. 8 East 18th Street between 5th Avenue and Broadway.
I was sad Dana ignored the fiery hot chicken wings at Spice Market. Actually, I can't help wishing she'd wake up one morning and forget about the cow that was fleeing the butcher's knife that drove her back to vegetarianism. The spicy Thai slaw with Asian pear was fine, but nothing compared to the red curried duck. We all shared spicy Shanghai noodles with tofu and garlic and, praise be, she still eats eggs - so she got to taste my favorite ginger fried rice with a fried egg on top. There are no mournful eyes at dessert time. Out came a wave of sweets as a gift. Sticky pecan apple bun with brown butter ice cream and the caramelized Ovaltine Kulfi were the favorites. And I had lusciously sticky Thai jewels and fruits with crushed coconut ice all to myself. 403 West 13th Street at Ninth Avenue.
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As Always, Julia
I imagine there are people, even the grand gourmands among us, who have had enough of Julia. The movie. The Meryl Streep. The autobiography published after her death. The rage for boeuf bourguignon. They can live happily without reading the latest Julia-Ana.
But for those of us who can never get quite enough, there is this irresistible book, As Always, Julia (Houghton  Mifflin $35), her correspondence with Avis DeVoto, the woman who fell in love with Julia long distance, without whom Mastering the Art of Cooking might never have been published. It's pure unadulterated Julia, venting her rage in a time when women were to be seen and not heard. But otherwise totally smitten with the people of France. Blasting 80 year-old French food deity Maurice Curnonsky as a "dogmatic meatball." Exasperated with her co-author Simone Beck over what makes an authentic cassoulet. And Avis, the cheerful, accepting, unrecognized slavey to her husband Bernard DeVoto, who makes Julia's revolutionary book her crusade, finally bringing it to Knopf. It's especially poignant to relive those years before Cuisinart, the ubiquity of shallots and the 1970's march for Women's equal rights. And a revelation if you weren't there with us. Click here to buy it now.
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Gifts for Collectors
Like a museum that has outgrown its storage area, I am forced to de-accession the overflow of my treasured collections. I can't quite believe I am willing to part with these vintage cooking tools, the pewter platter, or the whimsical grocery store tins I simply had to have, or the vintage costume jewelry and the serious American folk art, a transfer painting, a rooster weathervane and a ship's figurehead of an Indian woman. But now that the Road Food Warrior and I have moved out of the house in Aspen and sold the little church on the hill outside Woodstock, there just isn't room. Even the precious eight foot by eight foot Russian Amur Raccoon rug-bedcover backed with brown velvet has to go. Email me if you want to do some Christmas shopping or indulge your own insatiability in my storeroom.
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Photographs of Fairway, Lincoln's seafood brodetto, Rouge et Blanc's rib eye and fries, Cascabel's tacos and Spice Market's fiery chicken wings may not be used without permission of Steven Richter.
Photographs of Trader's Joe's customer and TJ's end-of-the-line man may not be used without permission of Gael Greene.
Fork Play copyright Gael Greene 2010.
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