Caroline and Janelle@3rd Ward

Toto, I don't think we're in Manhattan anymore.

I spent this past Sunday on a Brooklyn adventure. I rarely venture into the outer boroughs, but this is mostly an issue of time rather than of misguided snobbery.

We started out in East Williamsburg at the Huckleberry Bar, which was probably the bougie-est-looking thing in that neighborhood by a long mile. They were having a Maker's Mark sponsored "Whiskey and Milkshakes" event. The concept is this: show up and be waited on hand and foot by people making you free hot dogs and hamburgers, bringing you pitchers of ice water, and blending up delicious delicious free milkshakes spiked with free bourbon.

...What??

This would never happen in Manhattan. Not BR*, not if Goldman Sachs gave everyone a sack of dubloons, not ever.


Mmmm

The magnanimity in the air was so infectious, I actually went across the street and bought a block of American cheese and a jar of sliced pickles for the party, just so people could have free cheeseburgers with pickles rather than free hamburgers without. For this, I was dubbed both "Cheesegirl" and "The Johnny Applecheese." That's legacy, baby.

As it turns out, whiskey milkshakes are delicious! Caroline pointed out it was like eggnog, but better. Icy, creamy, and just enough kick to make it interesting. I'm never going virgin again.

Next, we went over to 3rd Ward in Bushwick for the much-hyped pig roast. I am going to sound really square for saying this, but WHOA, BUSHWICK! Creepy warehouses! Desolation! And very punny art projects!


Get it? It's park! Inside a trailer!


See the plants coming out of the top? "Someone should make it their mission to bone in there," I said. Two minutes later, the caretaker appeared and said, "I catch teenagers making out in there all the time."


This pretty much sums up my impression of Bushwick.


Naturally, we did a Derelicte photoshoot.

You may have heard already that the pig roast itself was a shitshow. 'Twas indeed. The space wasn't really structured well to have so many people go after one thing, so the line for pork tacos meandered inside and outside, around fire escapes and radiators.


Not the best space for hundreds and hundreds of people.


This is what we were all waiting for.

Truth be told, I would not have died for these tacos. The pig itself was glorious, but this assembly-line mass-production enterprise did not instill faith that its death was being treated justly. The tacos looked skimpy, the sides rote. What I really wanted to eat was an ear. The pig's ears looked gloriously browned, crispy, rich with fat, gelatin, and cartilage. Done well, ears are second only to the belly on the deliciousness scale of piggy anatomy.


"You forget that animals have ribs," said a hipster to his girlfriend.

Eventually, we grew tired, hot, bored, and sober. We decided to give up the cause and find some other taco joint. As we were leaving, I felt a last surge of determination. I stuck my head out the window, beckoned one of the knife-wielders over, and asked him if pretty please could I, may have one of the ears?

He smiled, disappeared, and returned five seconds later bearing a whole glorious pig ear, which he presented to me with a speech in Japanese, which he is not. I guess even hipsters can be woefully ignorant. Still, because he was so nice, I just smiled and said thank you - in English.


I am pretty proud of myself at this point.


Did I mention there were hundreds of people there? And that a pig only has two ears?

God, that ear was delicious. Greasily preoccupied for the next twenty minutes, even after giving some drunk guy a bite, I hardly cared when it started hailing and we had to take up siege inside. When the storm passed, Bushwick actually looked pretty good:


Janelle's photo captures the elegant wreckage well, I think.

The takeaway: Brooklyn is full of free shit. Would buy again.


*Before Recession

Gravity-Bonging With Shereen, Alex, and Janelle@Desnuda

Back in college, some of my overly intelligent classmates would put their high SAT scores to use toward crafting the most ingenious smoking devices since the dawn of Getting High. One guy even used a magnifying glass to etch an elaborate fresco onto the wood of his home-made vaporizer.

I can only hope a couple of those ambitious peers will grow up to become the next Peter Gevrekis and Christian Zammas, co-owner and executive chef at Desnuda*.

I don't know which of the pair conceived the idea of smoking oysters with Sichuan peppercorns and Lapsang souchong tea leaves via gravity bong, but on the night I was there, I asked Peter with all the wide-eyed earnestness of a school-newspaper reporter,

"So what was your inspiration for this dish?" And he just smirked. Okay then.

He'd already indulged me by whipping out the apparatus in the first place. The oysters were not on the menu that night, but I'd read so much about them that I had to ask. He warned me that he didn't have the right kind of tea that night - his new supply was a mistake: more expensive, not smoky enough - but I didn't care, I just wanted to see how one smokes a bivalve.

So behold, I have the first (really shitty) video clip of the Desnuda smoked oyster!



The finished product:

I think you could read fortunes in those spheres

He was right: the oyster was delicious, and definitely the most interesting I've had, but I could see its potential for improvement. However, the uncommon act of inhaling deeply and then swallowing a slippery body is a novel enough experience that I'd recommend this imperfect oyster to anybody. We get used to certain acts associated with eating - cut, spear, stab, lift, bite, chew. I think it's safe to say the old inhale-n-shoot a la cannonball (uh, definition number 2) is a new verb in fine-dining.

But if you want a real gastronomic reason, Desnuda has that as well. All of the ceviches I tasted were good, but the composition with deep sea scallops was one of the best dishes I've had in recent memory, including Le Bernardin. I'm not going to try to describe all the components of that dish, because I can't remember them all, but I think Desnuda's menu is pretty open to night-by-night improvisation anyway.


As you can see, it includes mandarin oranges and avocado

Full disclosure: I tend to be a sucker for places where I can interact with the person making me food. I'm annoying. I like asking questions and digging for personal opinions. Sitting at a bar and talking to the owner about his inspirations makes me feel hip.

Here's my one complaint. If you're like me, in that you have a bottomless capacity for raw fish, you're just not going to get full here. Even if you bought, like, all six things on the menu. I probably had four of these free cones of truffled popcorn:



But then, Desnuda is mostly a drink and nibble kind of place, and the edibles are lush, the vibe groovy. It'd be a great second date location to bring and impress your cosmopolitan yet slightly anorexic pickup from the previous weekend.


See those straw fans along the ceiling? They are mechanized to sway back and forth. Groovy.

The takeaway: smoke+ gadgets+cannonballing oysters+delicious seafood+acting like you know the chef = panty-dropper.


*Winner of TONY's 2008 Eat Out Award for Most Inventive Use of Drug Paraphernalia.

Do I come off as the Simon Cowell of food or something?

alex: come by here

my office

we're ordering food

me: i cant

jim wants to meet with me

alex: lamesauce

me: just order something for me

alex: for how long

me: dunno

alex: I CANT DO TIHS BY MYSELF

okay

i'll try

me: dude i'll eat anything

Here's something you should know about me.

I judge food, and I judge what other people are eating. If I don't know you, I'm probably not going to want to know you if I see you order sesame chicken and a California roll at a sushi bar. But if you're ordering for ME, have no fear. I would never look unkindly on another person's efforts to provide me sustenance. In fact, I hate people who complain about a meal while they're still eating it. It ruins the atmosphere and boosts nobody's ego but the complainer's. When I'm out eating with friends, I rarely talk about what's being served, and if I'm asked what I think, I'll just say it's good.

Because, in truth, it's hard for food to be not good. I'm Chinese and I eat everything - there is that. But more importantly, I'm Chinese and my Dad, who lived through some of the worst food times in Chinese history, instilled me with gratitude for anything I have the privilege of eating. I have the tapes to prove it, courtesy of a 7th-grade oral history project: "I should really send you off to the nong cun, starve you for a few years so you'll know what it's like. Then, you eat anything, everything tastes good."

So, in the spirit of "eat anything, everything tastes good," Alex's choice of "1 burger, 1 steak, 1 yellotail scallion roll, and 1 chicken wings - i hope youre hungry" will do just fine for lunch.

Feaster Sunday@Claire's Apartment

My favorite Christians are the once-a-year ones. My friend Claire, wanting to do her first Easter in NYC right, made vague promises of egg-dying at her place in Williamsburg. She didn't ask anyone to bring anything, but we all somehow knew to show up with yummy tidbits and soon we had a Feaster. Jesus has risen indeed.

I always use visits to Claire as a convenient excuse to stop in the Union Square area to buy things for eating or for wearing. This time, I made a beeline for Momofuku Milk Bar.

I don't really like baked goods, or sweets in general, but when I see something like Chinese sausage* focaccia or green curry banana bread, I have to try it. Asians don't bake, so Asian ingredients+yeast+heat is mindblowing to me. Also, AZN pride and stuff.


Chinese sausage focaccia


Green curry banana bread

I also got the pork buns for good measure. People think David Chang is a genius for the pork bun, but I think it seriously needs scallion (the menu says it's supposed to have scallions, but mine did not).

My mother would have keeled over if she'd seen me pay $9 for two tiny pork buns. Therefore, Chang is not a genius for creating this pork bun (nothing in there is particularly new), he is a genius for making basic Chinese ingredients sexy to white people. I don't mean that as either criticism or dismissal; after all, I plan on doing the same and only resent him for getting there before me.



Nevertheless, I got nothing but love for the way the grease ran down my arm.


Small girl, smaller bun, big fatty

The focaccia was good but I wish it had been fuller, crazier. Why stop at sausage? Throw some tea eggs in there! Bits of browned guotie rice! In the end we were trying to figure out how to divvy up the last piece according to where the two last morsels of sausage were buried.

Conversation at one point turned to food neuroses, like how there are people who only eat white colored foods (ask me about this sometime and I'll make like Freud and expound.) Claire and Janelle wanted me to blog a week of eating nothing but green foods. I decided green curry is the only way I'd survive such a sentence. I'd put it in everything, because this banana bread has proven you can:


I regret not getting the kimchi butter to go with this.

I can't be the only one with a face-stuffing pic:




Notice the mountain of individually-wrapped croissants in the back. They did not go unloved.

Eventually we got around to dyeing eggs. Craftmaster Claire found a method that involved wrapping silk ties (or scarves) around the eggs and boiling them so that the pattern from the ties transfers onto the shells.

How cool is this?!



Why would you dye eggs any other way?

Hope everyone's Easters were just as awesome. I decided to go to Casa Mono with StephenB tomorrow night after all. It was kind of a done deal after peeking at the menu, but none of y'all tried to dissuade me anyway. Your collective fault if I get creeped on. Stay tuned.



*Officially making a list of overlooked foods that I will singlehandedly popularize someday. Considering American highbrow obsession with salumi/charcuterie, it's only a matter of time before Chinese sausage gets its moment in the sun. I'll be there to see it happen, my porky pretty.

Coworkers@Joe's Shanghai (Midtown)

I had a devastating late-week craving for soup dumplings, so I dragged my coworkers to Joe's Shanghai for dinner on Friday.

We kept it simple:



Four orders of pork, two orders of crab and pork. Being from Nanjing, four hours away from Shanghai, I've been eating soup dumplings since birth, so I will now stop calling them by this bullshit name. Xiao long bao is what they are.


Alex demonstrates the correct way to eat xiaolongbao.

Did it stack up to the xiao long bao of my childhood? Of the touristy Nan Xiang in Shanghai or Din Tai Fung in Hong Kong? Eeeehhhh, what's the point in comparing a xiao long bao with the Platonic Ideal of a xiao long bao, which can only be found in China? Doing so would just make me sad. Suffice to say it is hard not to love a xiao long bao that is done even remotely correctly. I've made many a meal from the frozen supermarket ones.

Joe's Shanghai satisfied my craving. That was enough. The skins were a tiny bit tough and I found the dumplings a little too big - I like them small and dainty so they don't seem like giant meatballs once the soup and wrapper are gone. The boys loved the pork ones and said the crab ones were too salty and "too crabby." I thought both were equally delicious.

My one major gripe was with the service. I do not require much. I even think shitty service in Chinese restaurants is kind of charming, in a perversely authenticating sort of way. But when you give the four people who order six baskets of soup dumplings one tiny little soy sauce dish, and then stingily bring over one more when they ask for more sauce dishes, I get a little insulted. (Listen, I may be sitting with the baiguis, and your other customers may all be tourists, but I will not be taken for a pushover.) Also, your sauce isn't even very good, because it's been sitting around pre-mixed until the ginger goes soggy and tasteless, so really, you can afford to give it up.


Alex enjoys his xiao long bao

We also ordered salt and pepper squid, which is kind of my benchmark dish for judging Chinese restaurants. At $17, it was the most expensive I've ever encountered, and the portion was small. It was a solid fry job, if a bit under-salted. As usual, my favorite part was mixing the jalapeños, scallions, and lettuce bed with rice. Too bad they were even stingier with the peppers than the squid.

The takeaway: go in times of desperation. Be disciplined and just order the xiaolongbao.

Jen and Friends@Emporio

On Thursday night I went to Emporio with my good friend Jen and a chain-link assortment of other acquaintances. On Wednesday night, Emporio opened its doors for the first time.

Jen had suggested the place because it its liquor-license-pending embryonic stage, we thought we could BYOW. Turns out that was false advertisement. No matter, like I've ever let the lack of alcohol get in the way of my ability to taste food. This was a special challenge. Newly opened! No reviews to dissect yet! Who knows what Frank Bruni thinks!

Good thing Jen casually mentioned to chef/owner Riccardo Buitoni (also of Aurora) that I was a "food writer" within two minutes of being seated. I kind of stammered "well...actually...food blogger," but he had already pulled up a chair and started telling me that he uses all parts of the farm-raised pigs on his menu.

I asked what was good. He said everything. He's opening in the dead of recession and he wants to sell, but that's just frustrating. I can't order everything, so tell me SOMETHING.

Eventually, he gave us some ideas, and we followed them. The appetizers:


Grilled lamb spiedini, ceci beans, rosemary.


Wood fired octopus, risina beans, preserved lemon.


Home made testa (headcheese).

I don't know if the lamb was good, because I didn't get to try it, but I know we were all surprised by how small the skewers were. The octopus was deliciously savory and smoky, but again, there was very little of it. I'd forgotten it came with preserved lemon until I found a piece under all the beans - an afterthought. The testa was good when combined with the pickled onion, but I found myself wishing for more spice. I also had to order it twice - it didn't come with the other appetizers so I got it as kind of an awkward halfway course between appetizer and entree. The one other appetizer I ordered, fava beans, mint, and pea shoots with pecorino, was also bland. The greens needed a unifier; the cheese couldn't accomplish the task alone. Maybe if there had been more mint, the dish would've had more tang. As it was, I forgot there was supposed to be mint at all until I reread the menu just now.

My favorite thing all night was probably this:


Grilled (or fried?) polenta with some kind of creamy, spicy, spread.

It was a dish sent over on the house due to my food writerly status. I genuinely felt bad about this until I tasted it. Completely addictive. Will be an awesome bar snack once the bar gets going.


My entrée, the frascati braised local rabbit.

The rabbit was dry; I wanted to drown it in the delicate frascati sauce but there wasn't enough of it. My favorite parts of this dish were the rabbit liver pâté and the salty bed of greens, both of which gave my palate the flavor it had been craving all night. But still, a spread and a side of greens should not outshine the literal meat of the dish!



The other entrée I tasted was the 32oz porterhouse these two shared. It was a great steak, made more impressive by the fact that the kitchen had actually managed to accommodate their odd, uncompromising request for half-medium, half-medium rare. But I know the boys weren't full after eating it (32 ounces apparently goes by fast).

Basically, there are some kinks here, which is reasonable considering they'd only opened the night before. It was all just a bit anemic for my taste. But then, cautiously seasoned small portions shouldn't really suit anyone's taste. I hope Mr Buitoni - who was very kind - realizes it before the real food writers come along.