Posted by Adam Kuban, January 31, 2007 at 2:55 PM
Is PrimeTimeTables.com a Rip Off?
The New York Times food section today was particularly toothsome and yummy: Kim Severson's piece on Prime Time Tables, the service that allows members to pay a fee (as little as $35) to get reservations at New York's hottest restaurants on short notice, reminded me that I had this same idea a couple of years ago. It was going to be called Tough Tables. The key difference was that I was going to donate 75 percent of the proceeds to the chef or restaurateur's favorite charity. First of all, what do serious eaters think of the idea of Prime Time Tables? Is it a rip off or just capitalism at its best or worst? Should we proceed with Tough Tables at Serious Eats? We could do it at restaurants all over the country.
Cut the Line
Also, we serious eaters decided that we were going to start a like-minded service, "Cut the Line," for the foods we love to cover on this site, things like pizza, burgers, hot dogs, Asian noodles and pork buns, pastrami, and food carts. For a buck or two you'll be able to cut the line at Di Fara in Brooklyn; the Burger Joint, Momofuku, Katz's, and Gray's Papaya in Manhattan; Swan Oyster Depot in San Francisco; Pink's in Los Angeles; Johnny's in Elmwood Park, Illinois; Legal Seafoods in Boston and Washington, D.C.; Pizzeria Bianco in Phoenix; Prince's Fried Chicken in Nashville; Red Mill in Seattle; and the Cheesecake Factory in hundreds of locations. Whaddaya think? Operators are standing by.
Is Top Chef Worth Watching?
Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni's piece on Top Chef is going to force me to watch my first episode of the show this evening. Is it worth watching? Has my Law & Order addiction prevented me from sampling shows like Top Chef? Who's going to win? Are the various spoilers correct in picking the winner? Serious eaters want to know.
Posted by Ed Levine, October 25, 2006 at 9:39 AM
In Frank Bruni's entertaining and informative piece on the food of Piedmont and Emilia-Romagna in today's Times he mentions gnocco fritto, the addictive little pockets of fried dough served with salami, mortadella, sopressata, prosciutto, or stracchino cheese (or with lardo or culatello in Italy). Have you ever had gnocco fritto?
They're astonishingly good. Gnocco Fritto are one of those Italian dishes that I wish were available everywhere, but the fact of the matter is that gnocco fritto are hard to find in New York.
My favorite gnocco fritto in New York are served at Bianca,5 Bleecker Street (bet.Bowery and Elizabeth Sts.) 212-260-4666. Chef-owner Giancarlo Quaddalti's little fried pillows of dough are crisp, greaseless, and cloud-light. The man knows from gnocco fritto. He is from Emilia-Romagna.
At lunch you can get a mean gnocco fritto sandwich at Via Emilia, 47 E. 21st St. (bet. Park Ave. So. and Broadway), 212-505-3072 . Two slabs of fried dough surround pieces of prosciutto and mozzarella. The gnocco fritto here are not as light and artfully done as the ones at Bianca, but they're mightly tasty, nonetheless.
We need more gnocco fritto served in this country. Now.
Posted by Ed Levine, October 9, 2006 at 9:18 AM
I don't even like espresso 
(in fact, I don't drink hot coffee of any kind.), but reading Peter Meehan's terrific story in the Times a few weeks ago made me think I should start downing double espressos at every opportunity. Meehan reported that a few New York-based baristas are markedly improving the New York coffeescape:
Ninth Street Espresso: 700 E. 9th Street (Avenue C), 212-358-9225
Gimme Coffee!: 495 Lorimer St. (at Powers), Williamsburg, 718-388-7771
Cafe Grumpy: 193 Meserole Ave. (at Diamond), Greenpoint, Brooklyn, 718-349-7623
Oslo Coffee Company: 133-B Roebling St. (N. Fourth), and 328 Bedford Ave. (S. Third St.), 718-782-0332
It's not surprising that all the serious espresso joints are in hipster havens. Read the whole story
Posted by Ed Levine, August 22, 2006 at 7:36 AM
"SOME COOKS ONLY KNOW HOW TO COOK DELICIOUS FOOD"
Momofuku's David Chang and his talented crew of cooks are folks that seem to only know how to cook delicious food. So it should be no surprise that the brand new Momofuku Ssam Bar (there's supposed to be two dots, an umlaut, over the a in Ssam, but I can't figure out how to put it in), opening tomorrow (Wed.) at noon, serves food I would happily eat every day if it were in my neighborhood. A ssam translates in Korean into wrapped food of any kind. So what kind of wrap did I try last night? Black beans flavored with ham hocks, kimchee puree that didn't taste like any fermented cabbage salad I'd ever had before, whipped tofu that was as creamy as sour cream, rice, and toothsome Berkshire roast pork. It was the ultimate Korean burrito. I also had phenomenal chicken and pork buns, similar to the ones you get at Momofuku, but made with braised and shredded meat instead, and a vegetarian salad with roasted mushrooms that had me believing there was meat in there somewhere as I wrapped it in a whole lettuce leaf . Think of Momofuku Ssam Bar as a Korean-American version of a Chipotle Grill (and that's a compliment). And unlike Momofuku there's even a few tables for those of us old fogies who like to eat facing one another.
207 Second Avenue at 13th St. 212-254-3500.
Continue reading »
Posted by Ed Levine, August 7, 2006 at 7:30 AM
I am gathering restaurant horror stories in the next few weeks. Here's what just happened to me:
Yesterday I met my brother, his wife, and four of their friends at Cafe D'Alsace for lunch or brunch or whatever it is you call a meal eaten at 1:15 on a Sunday afternoon. Needless to say, I suggested the restaurant, which was reasonably convenient to the group's next planned activity, a visit to the Guggenheim to see an exhibition of Jackson Pollack drawings. I must have been feeling lightheaded from all the heat. Why else would I agree to go a museum instead of watching the Yankee game?
The first sign of trouble was the response from the woman that answered the phone when I inquired if they took reservations for brunch. She said that they don't take reservations, that it wasn't crowded the moment I called, and she couldn't say if it would be crowded when we got there. In other words, she made no effort to be accommodating or helpful in any way.
Seven of us (I know, I know, it's a large party. But that's exactly why even restaurants with a no reservations policy make exceptions for large parties) walked into the restaurant at 1:15, and we were told it would be about fifteen minutes before we could be seated. Fifteen minutes went by, and though no large tables became available, there were at least ten tables seating four or less standing empty. The natives (my brother and his friends) were getting restless, and I felt their restlessness keenly, as I had suggested the restaurant.
I kept going over to the podium and suggesting ways they could accommodate us by being just a little creative with their seating plan.
The officious jerks at the restaurant would have none of it. They kept telling us, "No, we can't do that." I felt like a character in that David Spade credit card commercial.
Finally, after 25 minutes they sat us at a table directly across from the swinging kitchen door. And the food was actually really, really good.
Excellent burgers, homemade pork sausage with delicious sauerkraut, even the dreaded quiche was excellent. But all we were left with was the sour taste of having been strung along by the turkeys at the podium.
Adam Platt's take on Cafe D'Alsace in NYM
Frank Bruni's take in the Times
I actually like the food at Cafe D'Alsace more than Platt or Bruni does. Which makes it even more of a pity that the folks working the front of the house behaved so badly yesterday.
Posted by Ed Levine, July 28, 2006 at 11:05 AM
In theory, the turkey club sandwich is a great idea. Turkey, bacon, lettuce, tomato, mayo, and toast; what's not to like? Yet every element of a club sandwich, except perhaps the mayo, is fraught with peril. Dry turkey or turkey roll, rigormortis-ridden bacon that was cooked and left for dead hours before it makes it into your sandwich, iceberg lettuce browned to a not-very-crisp, and woody, cardboard tomatoes that taste more like potatoes than tomatoes, often lead to a turkey club sandwich gone horribly wrong.
That's why I am thrilled to report that there's finally a great turkey club sandwich in NY, at Cookshop. There chef Joel Hough constructs his club sandwich with gently house-smoked turkey, smokey and just sweet enough Hatfield Farms bacon from New Hampshire, ripe avocados, baby lettuces, housemade mayo, and Balthazar toasted potato batard. Each bite of this sandwich gives you smokey, sweet, creamy, tender, crisp, fresh-tasting pleasure. And isn't that what we're all looking for?
The Times take on Cookshop.
NYM's take by Hal Rubenstein.
Cookshop is at 156 10th Avenue (20th St.) 212-924-4440
Posted by Ed Levine, July 4, 2006 at 11:15 AM
When it's July 4th weekend and it's this hot, a man's thoughts turn to ice cream.
With the temperature and humidity levels ridiculously high this weekend, I am pleased to report that the Otto ice cream cart is back at the NW corner of Washington Square Park. I ordered a half lemon, half coconut cup last week and got a half lemon, half vanilla instead, but it didn't matter. This is truly great ice cream, made by Meredith Kurtzman at Otto, where the gelati and sorbetti are almost uniformly sublime. Otto is definitely one of the great NY ice cream spots.
Here are my other favorites:
Continue reading »
Posted by Ed Levine, May 15, 2006 at 10:22 PM
THE WEEK IN FOOD IN NEW YORK MAGAZINE AND THE NEW YORKER
- I've already posted about Cafe D'Alsace (_1695 Second Ave., 88th St., 212-722-5133_), which Adam Platt gave one star in this week's New York Magazine. Using his rating system (1-5 Stars, with five being the impossibly perfect restaurant) I would have given CD two stars. Stick to the rib-sticking fare like the housemade sausages, choucroute garni, and the killer hangar steak served with great, just salty enough, french fries, and you'll eat very well indeed.
- Friends' early reports on Sascha have not been positive, so Platt's no star rating is no surprise. The double cheeseburger does sound promising, and I will have one and a couple of the baked goods from the Sascha Bakery in the near future. Based on Gael Greene's typically evocative description the cheeseburger is the only thing I would order at Barmarche (_14 Spring St., nr. Elizabeth, 212-219-2399_).
- Finally, how can you not want to love any restaurant called Pies-N-Thighs (_351 Kent Ave., entrance on S. 5th Street, 347-282-6005_). The savory dishes include all my favorites: pit-smoked pulled pork, fried chicken, mac and cheese and biscuits. For dessert, why pie of course. Double-crusted pie to be exact, something many NY pastry chefs shy away from. Of course the picture of the strawberry rhubarb pie looked pretty soupy. I don't think I'm going to get to Pies-N-Thighs for a couple of weeks, so I need a Serious Eats food explorer to check it out and post about it.
- The New Yorker restaurant reviews have been getting better and better, but this week's review of Momofuku (Momofuku photo courtesy of amateurgourmet), by Lauren Collins, is particularly wonderful. She not only nails the food (she describes it as carbs and animal fat), she describes the energy of the place perfectly. I love Momofuku, and so does Lauren Collins. Go for lunch, when it is a far more relaxed experience than dinner.
Do have the pork buns, a noodle soup, and any vegetable they cook up, because they always seem to put bacon in their vegetables. Here's the Times' review of Momofuku, and New York Magazine's as well. All three are raves, but Lauren Collins seems to articulate the charms of Momofuku most succinctly.
Posted by Ed Levine, May 10, 2006 at 6:50 AM
ELE's Jeff asked for my list of the best hot dogs in Manhattan:
Photo courtesy of liaoyusheng.com
Gray's Papaya: Great natural casing, all-beef dog made by Marathon, Sabrett's parent company. I ask for mine well-done, not that any of the counterpeople listen. Many locations, I go to the one on 72nd and Broadway.
Papaya King: Virtually the same hot dog as Gray's (there's one secret spice added), but the mustard is spicier and the bun is more or less toasted. Multiple locations, but I go to the one on 86th and Third Avenue.
Katz's: The best deli dog in lower Manhattan. They give you more sauerkraut than either of the above-mentioned spots, and the hot grill gives the hot dogs a great crust. Houston Street and
The Shake Shack: The SS serves the only true Chicago-style dog in NYC: A Vienna Beef hot dog, poppy seed bun, and sport peppers as one of the condiments. I wish they would grill the hot dogs instead of steaming them. Have the frozen custard for dessert. In Madison Square Park at 23rd and Madison.
Artie's: A big kosher-style deli dog properly grilled. It would be hard to finish two hot dogs here. At Artie's I get cole slaw and sauerkraut on the dog. 82nd and Broadway.
Brooklyn Diner: A humongous (easily sharable), expensive, natural casing, all-beef dog served with crispy, wispery onion rings and very good sauerkraut. 57th Street between Broadway and 7th Avenue.
For more on NYC hot dogs check out my Times story.
Posted by Ed Levine, April 23, 2006 at 1:07 PM
Generic Japanese restaurants are ubiquitous in Manhattan, so when I discover one that is not generic and has a very fine $10 lunch it's worth mentioning.
Momoya (185 Seventh Avenue, at 21st St., 212-989-4466) has a ten dollar chicken teriyaki lunch that is a steal. It's served with the usual soup or salad, but the soup is a better than average miso soup, and the salad is comprised of greens that are not wilted or brown. The chicken teriyaki itself has crisp skin, moist chicken meat (even the white meat) and a clearly housemade, not excessively sweet, teriyaki sauce. For two bucks more you can get salmon teriyaki instead or for five bucks more you can get rib eye teriyaki.
For a more extensive review of Momoya check out Bruni's NY Times review.
Posted by Ed Levine, April 9, 2006 at 12:16 PM
In New York it's easy to forget about certain restaurants and chefs. Take the Sea Grill and Ed Brown. It's a corporate spot, owned and operated by Restaurant Associates, and though the well-spaced tables overlook the Rockefeller Center skating rink, the Sea Grill feels like a corporate spot, at least it did when I had lunch there last Friday (at dinner I presume there are fewer suits and a little more soul). But Ed Brown is a first-rate chef who uses his corporate resources wisely to buy the best ingredients on the planet. He then does his level-headed best not to mess with those ingredients very much. His food is disarmingly simple, his flavors direct and vivid. My lunch was very tasty indeed. I started with a snapper carpaccio with pickled red onions and baby cilantro, and then proceeded to a wonderfully meaty plate of sturgeon cooked a la plancha served with wilted spinach. The sturgeon had a lovely caramelized crust and the spinach delivered a surprising flavor punch. For dessert we had a palette of mini-ice cream cones and a couple of chocolate-covered banana mini-ice cream bars. There's not much new going on at the Sea Grill. When William Grimes last reviewed the restaurant for the Times, in 2000, he wrote about the same carpaccio presentation I alluded to above, and the same set of mini-ice cream cones. But it's still a treat to eat well-executed food prepared by a talented chef who still seems to care. Ed Levine Eats gives the Sea Grill a 90. The Sea Grill is at 19 W. 49th Street, 212-332-7610.
Posted by Ed Levine, April 8, 2006 at 12:17 PM
It's really interesting to find out what you learn when you dine at the same restaurant two days in a row. You begin to see what it's like to be a restaurant critic at a serious publication like the New York Times, New York Magazine or the Los Angeles Times. Publications of that caliber give their critics the financial resources and the time to visit restaurants at least three times before writing their review.
So I had my Frank Bruni (currently the restaurant critic at the NY Times) moment this week when I ate dinner on consecutive nights at the "newish" casual German restaurant (maybe gastropub would be a better descriptor), Blaue Gans, owned by chef-restaurateur Kurt Gutenbrunner, who also co-owns Wallse,Thor, and Cafe Sabarsky. At dinner on Thursday night, I loved just about everything we ate at Blaue Gans. The Burenwurst was a pork and beef sausage positively bursting with flavor, accompanied by delicious sauerkraut, a not too spicy mustard and pungent horseradish. The bread that showed up at our table was kind of a limp, wan version of German dark rye bread, and even though it was accompanied by a tasty, smooth liptauer spread (made of farmer's cheese, paprika, and onion) we ordered a pretzel to accompany our sausage and the terrific smoked trout that was more terrine than filet. The pretzel was a revelation: crisp enough on the outside, tender on the inside, with just enough interior and exterior salt. If it had been baked a little longer I would have declared it the best soft pretzel I have ever eaten.
Continue reading »
Posted by Ed Levine, April 7, 2006 at 12:18 PM
When you order a burger in a fancy-pants environment and it turns out to be great, it's a sure sign that the fancy-pants chef in charge of the kitchen loves a good burger as much as the rest of us. So the only conclusion I can draw after having a burger at Country is that the chef there, Doug Psaltis, has eaten his share of burgers once he takes off his toque and chef whites. The burger at Country is served on a homemade English muffin (it tasted like a brioche roll to me) with special sauce and French Fries Provencal. All pretensions aside, this burger is terrific. It has a properly charred and seared exterior and a wonderfully juicy and meaty interior. The special sauce is a fairly nondescript thousand island dressing that doesn't do much for the burger either way. The french fries provencal were just great french fries, crispy on the outside, soft and tender on the inside, with just the right amount of fancy-pants pimenton salt. The burger at Country is fifteen bucks without cheese, but it's a worthwhile plate of food. On the fancy-pants Burger scale, Country's burger gets a 9 out of 10. For more on burgers fancy-pants and otherwise check out my piece on burgers in the Times.
Posted by Ed Levine, April 6, 2006 at 12:19 PM
I had a terrific 'Cueban sandwich yesterday at Blue Smoke for lunch, made with smoked instead of roast pork, and I was reminded that I had not included the "Cueban" in my New York Times Hot Heroes roundup. There were a number of other fine hot sandwiches on long rolls that I didn't have the space to write about, so my next few posts will highlight my favorites: The best fried seafood'poboys I have found in New York are at Jacque-Imo's NYC at 366 Columbus (77th Street) 212-799-0150. Decent roll, crisp, greaselessly fried seafood, and properly dressed New Orleans-style with shredded lettuce and dressing. Please note that the Jacque-Imo's To Geaux in Grand Central's subterranean food hall serves truly awful fried seafood 'po boys that have clearly not been cooked to order.
Posted by Ed Levine, April 2, 2006 at 12:24 PM
Money is tight in the Levine household these days, so when we meet friends for dinner we don't go to expensive restaurants. In fact, we look for restaurants where we can both eat for $35 or less. The night before last we ended up at Saravanaas, a relatively new South Indian restaurant in Manhattan's Little India. Saravanaas is a branch of Saravana Bhavan, a 40 location chain based in Chennai in South India. I don't know about the other 39 locations, but this branch turned out to be a pretty enough, comfortable to talk in, restaurant that serves terrific South Indian vegetarian food. The New York Times' Peter Meehan had reviewed the restaurant seven months ago, so we just followed his instructions about what to order. Sambar Vada were lentil-flour doughnuts plopped into a lentil-based gravy studded with fresh cilantro and onions. Slightly weird but very tasty. Channa Batura was a supersized poori-like bread that came with a bowl of delicious and complex chickpea curry. Why should I describe the food when Meehan has already done so beautifully. Just read his review and follow his lead. Suffice to say you will eat very well and cheaply at Saravanaas.
Posted by Ed Levine, March 26, 2006 at 12:44 PM
First of all it's Sunday in New York. That means it's brunch and bagels time. I wrote a bagels piece for the New York Times a few years ago, and my favorite bagels in the country back then were made by a Thai family at Absolute Bagels. After a return visit this past Friday, I am happy to report that the bagels there are better than ever. I bought a dozen mini-bagels, and though I have not had a bagel in months because of my ongoing diet (27 pounds down so far) I managed to polish off five of them in the ensuing 24 hours. Absolute's mini-bagels are paradigmatic; they are crusty and crunchy on the outside, just tender enough on the inside, and (thank God) not too sweet.
For those unlucky souls who don't have access to great smoked salmon, cream cheese and bagels you can order a terrific complete New York brunch at Russ and Daughters, which has been dispensing extraordinary smoked fish and life advice for nearly a hundred years now. You can't get advice concerning your career or your love life from the Russ and Daughters' wisecracking counter people when you order on-line. That will have to wait until you visit the store. But the smoked salmon is as good as you'll find anywhere, as is the herring, whitefish and sturgeon.
Absolute Bagels
Address:788 Broadway, New York, NY 10025-2827
Phone: (212) 932-2052
Russ and Daughters
Address:179 E. Houston St., New York, NY 10002
Phone: 212-475-4880
Posted by Ed Levine, March 7, 2006 at 12:48 PM
I really enjoyed Kim Severson's poignant piece on hospital food in today's NY Times, in part because I just spent the better part of two days at New York-Presbyterian Hospital (formerly Columbia Presbyterian) in upper Manhattan tending to my son, who had an emergency appendectomy. He's fine now, but it was a rough 48 hours. Within hours of the surgery, his appetite came back with a vengeance. I asked the doctor if I could go get him some great fried chicken at New Caporal, a mere ten blacks from the hospital. To my surprise, the doctor said I could get Will whatever he wanted, that by the time whatever he was going to eat made its way to his intestinal tract it would be the same. I was on my way to New Caporal when I spotted the Jou Jou Cafe kiosk in the lobby of the hospital. I was delighted to find sandwiches and salads that looked really good. I ordered a grilled Vermont Cheddar with chipotle on good bread, and a grilled mixed Italian cold cut sandwich (both sandwiches were made in one of those Italian sandwich presses). My son was thrilled when I returned to the room with the two sandwiches. His jello period had come to a premature end. So if you or a loved one find yourself at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, head for the Jou Jou Cafe kiosk. It closes at 3:30 every day, but the original Jou Jou Cafe serves the same food at 603 W. 168th Street, right around the corner from the hospital, and it's open until 4 a.m. every day. By the way, don't be tempted by a slice of pizza at Famiglia, on Broadway between 168th and 169th Sts. It's NY street pizza at its most generic. Note to Kim: The hospital lasagna didn't look too bad. The string beans looked very tired. What my son really feasted on was the wireless keyboard in the hospital room that he used to change channels, play video games, and watch movies on demand.
Posted by Ed Levine, February 24, 2006 at 1:01 PM
Three months in the slurping, my chicken soup piece came out Wednesday in the NYTimes. For those of you who don't read the Times, I am going to list my ten favorite chicken soups (I sampled a hundred) here, along with a few others I really liked that just failed to crack the top ten:
- Blue Ribbon Bakery 33 Downing Street (Bedford Street), (212) 337-0404. Matzo ball soup, $7.75.
- Cubana Café 110 Thompson Street (Prince Street), (212) 966-5366. Chicken soup with avocado, tomato, cilantro and yuca (cassava), $5.
- Fred's at Barneys New York 660 Madison Avenue (60th Street), ninth floor, (212) 833-2200.
- Estelle's chicken soup $8.
- Grand Sichuan International 229 Ninth Avenue (24th Street), (212) 620-5200. Chicken and pea shoots, $8.95; chicken with pickled cabbage, $7.95.
- Hearth 403 East 12th Street (First Avenue), (646) 602-1300. Chicken soup with escarole, chicken dumplings and pastina, $12.
- Momofuku Noodle Bar 163 First Avenue (10th Street), (212) 475-7899. Chicken noodle soup with Shanghai thick noodles, onions and scallions, $11.
- New Chao Chow Restaurant 111 Mott Street (between Canal and Hester Streets), (212) 226-2590. Chao Chow wonton soup, $3.50.
- Perry St. 176 Perry Street (West Street), (212) 352-1900. Chicken soup with vegetables, avocado and dill, $13.50.
- Pio Maya 40 West Eighth Street (Avenue of the Americas), (212) 254-2277. Chicken soup, $3.25.
- Sripraphai 64-13 39th Avenue, Woodside, Queens, (718) 899-9599. Chicken soup with mushrooms, coconut milk and galangal; Cornish hen in hot and sour soup (tom-zap), both $7.
A few others I really enjoyed:
- Akdeniz 19 W. 46th Street (bet. Fifth and Sixth Aves.) 212-575-2307; Slightly creamy chicken soup that comes to life with a squeeze of the lemon they serve it with.
- Al Bustan 827 Third Avenue (bet. 50th and 51st Sts.) 212-759-5933 Lebanese Chicken soup enlivened with the same lemon squeeze and, surprisingly, a touch of cinnamon.
- Azuri Cafe 465 W.51st (between 9th and 10th Aves.) 212-265-2920; I was lovin' the chicken soup here until I put the first piece of matzo ball in my mouth. It was ice cold. So I cut up the matzo balls into little pieces and let them sit in the soup for a minute or two to heat them up. Brilliant!
- Brooklyn Diner USA: 212 W. 57th Street (between Broadway and Seventh Ave.) 212-977-2280; Fine classic chicken soup with moist chicken and a toothsome broth.
- Teresa's 103 First Avenue (between 6th and 7th Sts.) 212-228-0604; If the noodles were al dente at this Polish coffee shop, this bargain chicken soup ($2.75) would have cracked the top ten.
Posted by Ed Levine, February 17, 2006 at 1:09 PM
My friend Adam asked me for places to eat in Amsterdam. I used to go to Amsterdam on business four times a year. There's a lot of bad food in what is a lovely city. There's a great sandwich place I always used to go to called Loekie (ph:31-20) 624-4370),that has the justifiably legendary pata negra (Black Foot) ham from Spain. My friend Mark Bittman had a piece 3 1/2 years ago in the Times that mentioned a few nifty places. He talked about De Kas (ph: (31-20) 462-4562), which serves mostly local and organic food in a greenhouse surrounded by a garden; a nouvelle Indonesian place called Blue Pepper (ph:(31-20) 489-7039), owned by a Michelin-starred chef; Balthazar's Kitchen (open Wed.-Fri. only), located in the hipster neighborhood called The Jordann (ph:(31-20)420-2114 , with a single reasonably priced prix fixe menu; and De Reiger (ph:(31-20) 624-7426, a neighborhood bar also in Jordann that serves "the Platonic ideal of cafe food." Adam, do not wander into any old restaurant in Amsterdam. You will be sorry.
Posted by Ed Levine, December 11, 2005 at 1:30 PM
When you're on a diet, and you love food as much as I do, you find yourself living (and eating) vicariously through other people's experiences and stories. Last Thursday New York Times reporter James Barron wrote a hilarious and sharp-eyed piece about mallomars , those superb chocolate-covered marshmallow cookies only available in the cooler months. His lead: "Proust had his madeleines. Douglas Boxer had his Mallomars." He then goes on to write: "like Beaujolais nouveau, Mallomars are not a year-round delicacy....Mallomars return to supermarket in the fall after a warm-weather break. But Mallomars connoisseurs do not celebrate by holding tastings of the new batch or by calling friends to announce "les Mallomars sont arrives."
Barron called me for a comment on the story, but I returned his call after the story was put to bed. I told him that he should have gotten a quote from Alice Waters. After all, Alice, as a huge proponent of seasonal foods and cooking, should appreciate the seasonal nature of Mallomars, even if it is a packaged, processed food made by Kraft.
Barron then goes on to pose a series of cosmically hilarious Mallomars questions:
"What is the singular of Mallomars, anyway?"
"If they can produce chocolate that can survive in Saudi Arabia, why don't they do that with Mallomars?"
Now I really like Mallomars, though I'm not as passionate about them as many of the people Barron interviewed. But when you're on a diet, a Mallomar (I have made an executive decision that Mallomar is singular) sounds just about perfect.
