Category: food

a chorus line, and ted’s, and danny’s

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

kirk and i saw the new broadway production of a chorus line last night.

and we are impressed.

kirk had seen the original production, with the original cast.

twice. sometimes i just get so jealous of him.

anyway, he thought that it compared favorably with the original. i’d never seen it live (only the movie and the soundtrack), so i was a tabula rasa in regards to my experience. standout performances for me were deidre goodwin (sheila), mara davi (maggie), jessica lee goldyn (val), but especially jason tam (paul) who gave a devastating performance that brought tears to my eyes.

it’s a bit unfair to single out people, though, because everyone in the chorus line gave outstanding performances–some ever so slightly better than others, but no one was weak or ineffective. i’m not so much impressed with michael berresse (zach) who was so great in “light in the piazza” but here is far too sensitive with his character. zach, to my mind, needs to be a svengali-ish dictatorial force of nature. and that’s not conveyed at all. maybe it was a conscious choice, but i didn’t like it. his disembodied voice was not evocative of much emotion at all, let alone the right emotion.

everything else though? magnificent. you know all the songs and most of the dialogue, but it doesn’t matter. the production sweeps you away and effectively takes you back to a specific period of time. i didn’t find the show to be dated in the least, any more than a good production of any period piece would be.

if you’ve never seen the show, it’s a must see. and if you saw the original, you won’t feel that your memory is being trampled on. it stands on its own, i think.

dinner was at the new manhattan outpost of ted’s montana grill. to paraphrase a famous lyric from “a chorus line”:

food? 10. service? 3.

well, maybe in reality it’s food: 8 service: -1. i had a new york strip bison steak, kirk had a delmonico bison steak, and we shared. both were perfectly cooked and flavorful, tender and juicy and hot off the grill. the sides were good as well–i had a squash cassserole that was particularly good.

the problem? in-your-face, overtrained, upsell-happy, corporate-approved servers and workers. i felt like i was in a tgi fridays that was on steroids. the waiter was way way too chatty; kept at us to get a bottle of wine instead of two glasses; kept asking if we wanted appetizers and sides; didn’t give us time to peruse the menu; asked less than halfway through dinner if we wanted dessert, then brought the check immediately saying that “his manager liked it that way”.

i haven’t felt so rushed, discomfited, and unrelaxed in a restaurant in ages. maybe it’s just opening week jitters, but somehow i doubt it. i think that’s just their style–everyone chatted with us constantly, from the waiter to the hostess to the busperson. i don’t care to hear that you had salad for lunch and are jealous of my dinner. i don’t care to hear that you just moved to new york, and how cool is it that you live on a street that’s the same name as the city you came from. and so on.

i want to eat my dinner at my own relaxed pace, in a relaxed atmosphere.

maybe i’ll give it another try–the food was great and the prices weren’t bad. but if that service is endemic, i’m outta there.

the end of the evening, post-theater, was spent at danny’s, our favorite piano bar/watering hole. kirk sang (expressively and beautifully, of course) and we laughed with our friend stephen until the wee hours.

what a great night.

overall.

new restaurant

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

it’s kirk’s birthday. happy birthday, baby!

we’re going to try a new restaurant: 809 restaurant. it’s a churrascaria in the hood, just a few blocks away on dyckman.

yes, that’s the name of a real street.

i’ll report back–kirk’s just getting home.

update: dinner was fantastic.  it’s not really a churrascaria–more of an upscale dominican restaurant.  i had an appetizer with a trio of tostones filled with various flavors of crab and seafood–excellent.  kirk’s appetizer was perfectly cooked shrimp on a bed of coconut risotto, and it was outstanding as well.

the entree was an enormous meat platter for two–skirt steak, filet, pork, chicken and sausage all grilled to perfection. far too much for four people to eat, let alone two.  we have leftovers for days.  and we split a huge pitcher of sangria–delicious and at $18 the deal of the century.

with two desserts the bill was under $100, which considering the level of food and the atmosphere (very cool interior design) was quite reasonable.  a starter glass of sangria each and an after dinner drink was on the house.

we’ll definitely be back.

fork in philly

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

kirk and i ate at fork (306 market street) in philadelphia on our recent long weekend getaway. it came recommended highly by philadelphia magazine in their “best 50 restaurants” issue, and a few egullet people liked it as well, so we said what the heck, and tried it.

not too happy.

for a restaurant that purports to be destination dining, there’s a lot wrong here. i’ll try to stick to criticism of my own meal, since i only had bites of kirk’s food, but i think he was even less happy than i was.

i started with ceviche. ceviche is supposed to be raw fish marinated in a citrus-based liquid that “cooks” it. what i got was pretty much sashimi in sauce. it wasn’t marinated long enough to have the flavor of the marinade penetrate. and one of the items was a raw oyster, which i’m pretty sure isn’t ceviche. to top it off, it was served slightly warmer than room temperature, which is not how i want my ceviche. at least room temperature, please. did it sit under the heat lamp? warm raw fish. ugh.

my main course was ahi tuna with vegetables. the vegetables (potato, fresh sliced heirloom tomato, slightly cooked fennel, and probably more i can’t remember) were nice in a very light and flavorful sauce, and the ahi was top-grade. the menu description mentioned cayenne, but boy did i get the cayenne. the ahi tuna was rolled in it, it got everywhere, and totally obliterated the subtlety of the rest of the dish. once i cut the outside of the tuna off, things got better, but i ended up with a little pile of uneaten tuna, which i should not have had.

dessert for me was a cheese platter. there was a nice selection of various cheeses–i like starting with mild, soft cheese and moving toward more pungent and aromatic cheeses, which is how it should be done. there was nothing great on the mild end, but i ended up choosing robiola bosina (a creamy soft cow’s cheese) for the mild end, a blu de moncensio (mildly salty cow’s blue) for the next one, and époisses for the last cheese. époisses is a very very pungent cheese–so pungent that it ruins your taste buds for anything that comes after it. but it is wonderful, in all its barnyard-tasting glory.

but you aren’t eating anything after that, at least not anything that you want to know what it tastes like.

and accompanying my cheese course was a card, listing all the cheeses and noting the ones i selected. a nice touch, if a bit expected at this level of dining. customarily, your choices are checked off, or numbered in the order in which they should be eaten. and the cheese should be arranged in order on the plate as well, from mild to pungent. my cheese was out of order.

someone moved my cheese.

and, worse, they numbered it époisses #1, robiola bosina #2, blu de moncensio #3. wow. i barely know what i’m doing on this level of dining, and i’m the first to admit i’m not a supertaster. but i know not to eat my époisses first.

and, to top it off, we had wonderful service until the waiter inexplicably stopped waiting on us just after the desserts were served. some giggly manager type came over and told us that she’d be our server from then on, except that she had to give tours of the space to some clients, but if we needed anything we should just yell.

ok then. it would have been nice if the waiter had come over himself and told us this, rather than just abruptly disappearing. and the weirdest thing was, he prepped our check and then was just hanging around the place–we saw him around for the next half-hour.

espresso at the end…giggly manager/waiter chick told us it was “on the house”, but i know that she was just too damn lazy to redo the check.

i know this all sounds a bit pretentious, and whiny. but kirk and i are not demanding diners–we’ve both spent too much time working in restaurants to be annoying when eating in one. having worked in restaurants, we have reasonable but exacting expectations, based on the level of restaurant we are in. although we don’t dine out at that level very often, we do occasionally, and we know what should happen, and what kind of food and service we should get.

and we didn’t get it, although we did get a big $200 restaurant check added to the amex, minus two cups of espresso. it’s just disappointing that, for one of the few times we splurge like this, things went so horribly wrong.

my advice to fork?

—trust your ingredients. all the ingredients were top-notch quality. don’t feel like you have to drown them in more and more spices and geegaws and thingys. i’ll let kirk tell you about the fleur-de-sel on the chocolate cake in the comments, by way of further explanation.

—train your waiters. i was the world’s worst waiter, and even i knew that you didn’t leave until your last table left the restaurant. the unannounced departure of the waiter was inexcusable, even if we had been a difficult table, which we weren’t.

—sweat the details. on this level, you present the cheese correctly. the waiter stays. the crumbs get swept. the ceviche isn’t really warm. i don’t ask for anything–you anticipate it. i don’t get told to “yell if i need anything”.

loved philly. hated this restaurant.

bbq block party pt. 2

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

we went back yesterday for day two of the bbq block party–we had nearly $90 left on our stored value card so getting more bbq was not a problem.

except for my stomach, of course.

we had ubon’s bbq from yazoo, mississippi. it was a shredded pork sandwich in large chunks. the end bits were burned and crispy and tasty, but the taste got a bit lost for me in the long striated strips of meat at the other end. it might have been better chopped up more finely…just a personal preference for me.

we had brisket and sausage from the salt lick bbq in driftwood, texas. going head to head with brisket and sausage from southside market in elgin is risky business for me, but it held up surprisingly well. a nice smoke line on the brisket, and the sausage was juicy and delicious. still, second place behind elgin for me.

i of course made a return trip for more southside market brisket and sausage, just to make sure. as i suspected, my memory hadn’t failed me. it’s still my favorite bbq of the weekend. kirk may have liked the 17th street ribs a bit better, and we would have tried more of that, but they were sold out by the time we got there in mid-afternoon.

we finished up with more smoki o’s rib tips and, god bless that woman, they still had some pig snoot in reserve so i got more of that. and it was still just as good as it was on the previous day. just the best version of pork rinds you’ve ever had.

we never did bother with dinosaur or with blue smoke. not that they aren’t good–they are–but they are in new york so why bother. we still had $30 on our card after all that, and our stomachs were crying uncle, so we got two $15 t-shirts and called it a day.

if you look for me at the gym, i’ll be the one in the black smoki o’s t-shirt.

if you didn’t go this year, you had better get there next year. it’s my favorite weekend of the whole year. love it love it love it.

bbq block party 2006

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

southside bbq from elgin, tx
perfect brisket

smokios bbq from kansas city
smokios goodness

my favorite day of the year is bbq block party weekend. which is, of course two days. i can’t decide if the first day or the second day is my favorite day, so i’ll just call it a draw.

the first picture above is the brisket from southside market in elgin, texas. oh. my. goodness. the picture doesn’t do it justice. there’s the clearly defined smoke ring, the succulent juicy meat, and the generous layer of fat at the bottom. you can’t even begin to imagine how good this was. and it came with a sausage link that puts any sausage you’ve ever had to shame. and very good coleslaw, and potato bread to mop it up. there were two sauces, one hot and vinagery and one mild and more tomatoey, but you really didn’t need them.

and, to whom it may concern, you know who you are, mr. show-off cut the line with my media pass foodie expert, elgin is pronounced with a hard “g”, not like the watch company.

definitely going back here today for more.

my other favorite stop (and my first stop, first in line yesterday) was smoki o’s bbq from kansas city. every year she has pig snoot. that’s right, snoot. the nose. and it is so good. this year they had rib tips and told her not to bring snoot, but she brought a little bit anyway and i got some. it was even better than before–it’s like pork rinds only this time fresher and better. and the rib tips were great too–some crunchy and some tender and all marvelous. and good baked beans too.

we sampled rub bbq, which has an outpost in new york now. it was brisket–ice cold with the worst cole slaw (basically just shredded cabbage) you have ever had. and their new york bbq restaurant is the most expensive bbq place you will ever see. the brisket might have been decent when hot, but no way would it rise to the level of the elgin southside market bbq. if i ever had any thoughts of paying upwards of $100 for a bbq dinner at this place, which i really didn’t anyway, there’s no way i’d do it now.

we had 17th street bar and grill baby back ribs–it’s memphis bbq. best ribs i’ve had in a long time. chewy and tender and flavorful and crusty and fatty all at once. and they win, once again, for best baked beans. it’s a mixture of several different types of bean in a perfectly balanced tangy sauce. not too sweet. i’d go to memphis just for the beans. and the perfect ribs are just a bonus.

we had pulled pork shoulder from big bob gibson in decatur, alabama. i love coming to this stand every year, because he brings his genial neighbor who pours the sauce on your sandwich at the end, and he’s a very typical southern gentleman who i really like a lot. we always have a little conversation and he’s a great guy. i’d like to buy him a beer sometime. the sauces were mild and hot, and i liked both. good coleslaw too, but a little too vinagery for kirk.

as good as the pulled pork shoulder sandwich is here, my favorite is still the whole hog from mitchell’s bbq in wilson, north carolina. no you don’t get the entire hog, just a portion of it. but your sandwich is filled with meat from everywhere in the hog, so you get a wonderful mixture of different types and textures of meat on your bun, which is so so yummy. and their “sauce” is basically vinegar with spices, which to me is the best sauce in the place. it perfectly complements the meat and makes for the best bbq sandwich you’ve ever had. and i have a sneaking suspicion that ed mitchell is a cool guy, because he cooks his whole hog and when it’s gone for the day, it’s gone and there’s no more bbq. he’s not bringing out the backup tupperware full of meat from home. so you have to get there early if you want it. good for him. don’t compromise your bbq integrity for these demanding new yorkers.

and his coleslaw was the best. just enough yellow mustard, but not too much.

we skipped blue smoke and dinosaur. it’s great bbq, but they are from new york and i can get it anytime, so why wait on the lines, even if they are much shorter than the others. today we’re going back to get salt lick brisket and sausage, which isn’t usually as good as southside market for me but is still much, much better than you’ll get at, say, virgil’s or dallas bbq in the city. and we’ll get ubon’s pulled pork shoulder, which if i remember correctly is very good as well.

we bought the bubba fast pass again, which is basically a stored value card that lets you skip the main lines and get in what are supposed to be shorter “vip” lines. last year they sold far fewer of them i think, because i don’t remember any lines at all, or at least very short ones. this year the avereage wait in the vip lines was about 45 minutes, which i’m betting is still much quicker than the main lines. and half the time the registers don’t work, so they just give you bbq. with all the “free” bbq, for two servings of most of the bbq listed above, we paid a total of about $35, which is i think what rub bbq charges for their iced tea.

i could almost forget i was in new york, except for the whiny man and his limousine liberal girlfriend/wife behind us for 45 minutes in the mitchell’s line. god were they annoying. and the woman who stormed to the front of the line and screamed at the 17th street bbq people because her “fast pass” wasn’t fast enough. the 17th street bbq people are the most laid-back people you can imagine, and their shirts all say “peace, love and barbecue”. this woman clearly didn’t get the concept. but otherwise, everyone was very laid back. we’d get food from one place and eat it in line for the next place, and everyone asked you about your food and where you got it and how did you like it and such. it was a lot of fun.

and we ran into our friend suzanne who was, of course, waiting to ask about pig snoot at the start of the whole thing, just like we were. we’re very predictable people that way. great sharing snoot with you again, suzanne!

we’re gonna end up having tons of stored value left on our card, and we’ll probably get more merchandise to burn off the value just like we did last year. which is fine…i like having a stack of t-shirts around and the various bbq joints have pretty cool ones.

all the money goes to the parks conservancy or something, so it’s good for the karma as well.

or at least as good for the karma as eating pounds of meat can be.

going gluten-free

~ jamie ~ 2 Comments

kirk is. i’m not going gluten-free, except that i kind of am, just by virtue of inhabiting space with him.

turns out that, ironically enough for someone who bakes constantly, he is allergic, or whatever, to gluten. the stuff that’s in wheat and oats and i don’t know what all else that holds it all together.

he hasn’t had any gluten for two weeks, and feels much better for it.
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mchale’s closed

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

mchale’s is gone forever.

it had the best burger in new york, i thought. i blogged about it previously, and have raved about it to many, many friends.

my work group had set a calendar date for today to go have one last lunch. last time i was there, in mid-december, the waitress told us that they’d be open through the end of january.

but no lunch for us today. last night was last call for mchale’s.

along with the second avenue deli, cbgb’s, astray cafe, and so many others, another landmark lost to the greed of new york developers.

grrrrrrr.

update: playbill.com’s story of the closing

food network thanksgiving

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

kirk and i love to cook, so thanksgiving is just about our favorite holiday. here are the links to some of what’s for dinner at the howard-lawrence or, if you will, lawrence-howard household.

green beans with apple cider

good eats roast turkey

cranberry conserve

good old country stuffing

apple butter pumpkin pie

we’re also having cope’s corn and potato filling, which is a secret recipe from kirk’s mom and you can’t have it.

happy thanksgiving to all my readers!

the spontaneous giggle test

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

lunch yesterday was one of those quintessential new york experiences, one that i feel extremely lucky to have had.

it was lunch in the basement speakeasy wine cellar room of the “21” club, the secret room hidden behind a brick wall accessible only by pushing a thin wire into just the right hole. click on the link if you don’t know anything about this–it’s fascinating.

and the food was surprisingly solid and good–nothing that passed the spontaneous giggle test, but really enjoyable nevertheless.
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the gayest entree ever

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

the gayest entree ever
it’s masak nenas
photo courtesy of kelly

well, it was delicious. the menu describes it as “your choice of shrimp, chicken, or beef,” (i chose chicken) “with pineapple chunks, bell pepper, mint, and scallions in a spicy curry sauce.”

actually, to be completely accurate, the menu should read, “your choice of shrimp, chicken, or beef with pineapple chunks, bell pepper, mint, and scallions in a spicy curry sauce, in a hollowed-out half pineapple garnished with a paper tiki umbrella from our bar. it’s not flaming, but you are.”

as bill maher might say, i kid the malaysians. it was a very tasty entree, and the accompanying green tea and ginger bubble tea was sublime. the restaurant is called satay malaysian cuisine; our friend kelly took kirk and i there before we went to see rasputina on thursday, and it was a good choice.

my last mchale’s burger?

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

i’m hoping it’s not true, or hoping for a reprieve, or hoping that someone gets some sense, or something.

mchale’s, a perfectly wonderful open secret of a bar, is set to close soon, according to the new york times, which by the way will make you pay $3.95 to read about it.

but trust me. it says that the building was sold and the new owners are kicking them out. which really ticks me off.
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grease

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

sometimes you just gotta have it.

most days i eat a very healthy diet. after all, i was a vegetarian for over ten years, and was even completely vegan for about three of those, and even though i’ve given up on that, i still don’t eat much meat. the majority of our meals at home are vegetarian, and when we do have meat, it’s most likely kirk and i splitting a can of tuna atop a salad, or a bit of salt pork in the green beans, and stuff like that.

today, though, i got the craving.
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nice long weekend

~ jamie ~ 1 Comment

i have friday off. whoo hooo. so a nice long three-day weekend.

that’s the one thing i love about working in new york–summer fridays. for those who aren’t in the loop about this, and i wasn’t in the loop until i got here, lots of new york city businesses give their employees paid half-day early dismissal times on fridays between memorial day and labor day. my particular workgroup chooses to take the entire day every other friday, so there are always people in the office.

does any other area of the country do this? is it a big-city thing? not sure. all i know is, i love it and it’s one more reason to stay in new york, because i never had bonus paid vacation time anywhere else ever.

i think for the big shot types, it gives them a head start to the hamptons or whatever. as i have not yet closed on my southhampton mansion, i shall remain in the city on weekends.

and this weekend?
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yuppie fool

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

stayed up too late last night. after midnight, which is late for me. i usually go to bed at 10:00, preceded by falling asleep at 9:00 in front of the tv.

anyway, that has nothing to do with anything, except to explain mood: exhausted.

we just got back from our local pub, which has smithwick’s on tap (a very nice brew, new to me, flavorful but a bit lighter than a guinness) and has great burgers.

and, in the corner, was the yuppie fool.
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hutt of rutt

~ jamie ~ 1 Comment

today i’m going to eat at rutt’s hut, which i saw on a tv show about hot dogs and is, coincidentally, in clifton, nj which is mere miles from my boss’s house, so she is taking me, and her husband and young daughter are going as well. and kirk too.

the hot dogs are deep fried. i’m hoping that there are other deep fried items as well…maybe a snickers bar. that would be optimal.
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