FORK PLAY April 05, 2011 Eating in the Dark. David Burke on Stage. Pier 9. From Roof to Table. Agua Fresca. Martha's Popup. Jonathan's Italian. Dear Friends and Family,
I can't remember the last time my vote counted. Clearly the country is run by lobbyists and the obsessively self-serving entities that bankroll them. And the  government is for sale. One minute financial institutions are limping and whimpering and grubbing for bailouts. A year later they're pouring millions into lobbying against spankings and regulations to curtail dubious practices. Now we have the amazing popcorn lobbyist, financed by your neighborhood movie theater. Who did they get to? What head-of-a-pin tap dance did it take to convince the nutritional police that movie theater snacks should be exempt from the laws requiring food manufacturers and restaurant chains to post calorie counts?
Never mind that the Center for Science in the Public Interest has warned that packing in a typical refreshment stand medium popcorn and soda combo is the equivalent of eating three McDonald's Quarter Pounders with 12 pats of butter.
Maybe the lobbyist passed along my nutritional rules. Nothing you eat in the dark has calories. Calories don't count if you eat standing up or leaning over the sink or grabbing just a smidgen at the fridge. Crumbs on the cake plate and run-off pie filling when you neaten it up are calorie free too. They don't count if you just eat half the fruit filling and not the crust (as long as you're standing).
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I didn't know kumquats had a season but apparently they do and this is it, voila our colors today, kumquat hues inside and out.
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Peanut Butter Fog
I'm not sure I would have embraced David Burke Kitchen with instant critical abandon if I had not been carried away by the enthusiasm of our companion, wedding-bar-mitzvah-events planner, Harriette  Rose Katz. I was almost ready to leave at the first full blast of noise when I opened the door. But she was immediately charmed by the youth and energy in the room, the faux barn look, and the thrill of spotting chef David Burke himself in the middle of the melee, crushing prawn heads in a duck press. There was the inevitable kiss kiss and some giveaways from the chef. Well, shut my mouth! Peanut butter stuffed dates wrapped in bacon has my senses reeling.
Not that Harriette or I fell for all of the chef-jokester's tricks. There were some excess salt issues and over-caramelized sludge. But what was good was good enough that I plan to return. Take the astonishing wedge salad you see in the photo alongside - not a wedge at all, but an iceberg core decked out like a Carmen Miranda hat. If you're old enough to remember Carmen Miranda, bring some ear plugs and click here to know what to order. 23 Grand Street in the James Hotel.
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Pier 9 on Landlocked Ninth
The following Saturday Harriette led us to Eric Hara's new Pier 9, an upscale-but-not-too-aggressive seafood emporium on landlocked Ninth Avenue, right next door to his noisy and jam packed Restaurant Nine. White  tablecloths make the point. Pier 9 filled up latish that evening, about the time we were all swooning over the chef's triumph in a fryer basket: wonderfully crunchy rings of calamari, plump blue points and Ipswich clams, with big fat bellies and four sauces to dip them in. I found them a bit over-crumbed. She disagreed. The Road Food Warrior watched fascinated as, one bite after another, the two of us polished off Hara's big yeasty donut filled with marshmallow and s'mores ice cream. I'll be back for both the fabulous fritto and that donut. What else to taste? Click here for more. 802 Ninth Avenue between 53rd and 54th Street.
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The Foaming Meanies
Are you as foam-phobic as I am? I love writer Barry Foy's definition in "The Devil's Food Dictionary: A Pioneering Culinary Reference Work Consisting Entirely of Lies." (Frogchart Press $17.95)
"Foam is a sauce infused with tiny gas bubbles, so that it approximates the look of something that might ooze from the blowhole of a tubercular sperm whale. This once wildly fashionable technique was invented by a Barcelona chef after a restaurant critic wrote that one of his dishes couldn't look less appetizing if it was covered in saliva. Inspired, the Spaniard set out to create precisely that effect, and to the delight of bored chefs worldwide, he succeeded." Want to read more lies? Click here to buy it now from Amazon.
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Roof to Table Greening
What keeps me eating out eight nights a week is that I wake up each morning full of hope that I will eat something supernal, or at least sublime, and possibly discover a new talent. That's the thrill as it was at both David Burke Kitchen and Pier 9.
Sometimes a place is just half-baked and I decide to postpone comment till the chef gets it together. Too often there is little or no hope. It's not for me. It's not for you. At best, it might be embraced by the neighborhood. There's no point and no pleasure for me in crushing a modest effort with a truck.
What is most exciting about Bell, Book and Candle in a West Village cellar is chef-owner John Mooney's attempt to grow enough produce aeroponically on the roof to feed 80 seats ten months of the year. Extre me cold foiled his hopes for March. But he was planning a big planting last Sunday of sprouts seeded in Lancaster, PA., where his greenhouse partners provide product off-season for his "Living Leaf Salads," like this frisée and fennel toss with warm pork belly and julienne of apple (see photo). Onions, chive, lettuces, everything grows more quickly in the hydroponic towers six floors above, he says. Soon he'll be harvesting tomatoes, strawberries, eventually melons too, small-size cantaloupe and honeydew.
It may not matter that I found the food primitive, salty, deeply unsatisfying. Hot young people descending the steep steps from the sidewalk crowd the bar and keep the tables turning in the two back dining rooms. I came because Tasting Table newsletter praised Mooney's "genius" onion soup - made with dried shiitake stock and topped with the Irish Knockamore smoked cheddar as well as Gruyere. Interesting, but hardly genius in my mouth. 141 West 10th Street near Greenwich Avenue.
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Like a Sip of Cool Water
Friends were excited to meet us at Agua Fresca, a new Mexican-Latino restaurant in Spanish Harlem. The place glowed spic and span, a beacon of optimism on a drab cross street, with only one other table occupied. And the chef Adrian Leon's food was remarkably clean too. A small portion of good but rather tame guacamole disappears quickly. We're hungry. We order a second, "spicier, please." It's mild too. Ceviche mixtos in a sherbet glass has no chile oomph at all. Leon worked with Nuevo Latino master Douglas Rodriguez for years, yet seems afraid of unleashing a full frontal chile, though there was one side of salsa with bite.
To sum it up: chicken gujillo on masa flatbread with green salsa, queso fresca and sour cream is pretty and good enough. Vegetarian tacos (see photo) are a surprising triumph, better than the carne asada tacos that desperately need a splash of something. And a side of sweet caramelized plantains plus a really moist tres leches cake and frosted chocolate kisses from the chef end the evening on a high. Agua Fresca, not really worth a long detour, is a gift for the neighborhood. 207 East 117th Street. 212 996 2500. ***
Jonathan's Way
Were you there when Jonathan Waxman and young English wino Melvyn Masters brought us that stark white California look at Jams on West 79th Street in 1984? Do you remember the flash of his salads -- warm game and greens, lobster with a crunch of lettuces and homemade potato chips -- the  sweetbreads with wild mushrooms on endive, Jonathan, fast cooking at the grill over mesquite and the bitingly tart sorbets? After many ups and downs and detours, Waxman found his way at Barbuto where I love his cooking. As Rick Moonen puts it on the cover of Waxman's new "Italian My Way" (Simon and Schuster $32), "Jonathan understands ingredients on a level that captures the soul of cuisine."
You'll find his great ingredients and honest treatment here in dishes like his famous raw shaved Brussels sprouts with pecorino and toasted walnuts. Disdaining the usual co-author, the words are Waxman's too. "Wild is a somewhat loose term in the culinary world. We buy wild salmon knowing that its trips to the ocean were minimal. Same with field greens. Arugula was a field green. Today it's cultivated. So I mean cultivated wild, like Bob Dylan in a Brioni tuxedo." It's really sad Simon and Schuster wastes Christopher Hershheimer's photos by printing them in black and white. But you'll want vintage Waxman anyway. Click here to buy it now from Amazon.
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Can You Bake a Cherry Pie?
As soon as I saw the sour cherry pie on "Martha Stewart's new Pies & Tarts" (Potter $27.99), I was hoo ked. I couldn't make it to the press party for Martha's popup shop in the Village, so I sent my intern, thinking she might be inspired to pick up a few tarts for me. I'd kept the book close to my keyboard. I'd already devoured both covers, cherry pie on the front, espresso chocolate tart on the back. Alissa's report came at 3:18 pm, Sunday before last. I was still slaving away over Monday's new BITE and didn't dare stop to race downtown.
Alissa had tasted a leek and black olive tart with Pave d'Affinois and parmesan at the shop. "Flaky, dare I say, 'perfect' crust," she wrote. "Everyone was raving about the crust." She'd bought a rhubarb tart to take home. Her home. Rhubarb, my second favorite. And nothing for me.
I picked up the book and flipped through the pages, slowly: pear and almond tart, hazelnut frangipane with apricots. I stared longingly at the Port Caramel Chocolate Tartlets, thick and fudgy. Like a horny adolescent making his way through Penthouse in the 80s, the thought occurred. I managed to not actually lick the pages. Several thousand calories contemplated and conquered. Not quite the same as a cherry pie in the hand, but actually very filling. Click here to buy it now from Amazon.
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Photographs of the Fritto at Pier 9, the Carmen Miranda wedge at David Burke Kitchen, Bell, Book and Candle's "Living Leaf" frisee with pork belly, and the vegetarian tacos at Agua Frescamay not be used without permission from Steven Richter.
Fork Play copyright Gael Greene 2011. |
