the underbelly

Yesterday I saw this in my local California (I’m home for the holidays) grocery store:

I don’t….get….it. Is it for people who want to keep their energy up but don’t like coffee and really want people to know that they’re still huge douche bags? Or is it just aimed at naked girls wearing bands of denim as “skirts” bending over? What’s your target demographic Playboy energy drink?! Answer me!

Did I buy it?

No.

Do I regret it?

Yes.

Will I buy it tomorrow despite my utter embarrassment?

Indeed.

Walking on the street the other day, I believe it was 18th street, I saw this fridge:

It’s tiny and baby blue and inside there are built in wine racks. Some people pine for tiny kittens and fawn over puppies. I coo at baby retro fridges.

While the family was here for Thanksgiving we decided to brave the Museum of Natural History on Thanksgiving Eve. This was a daring feat due to the fact that the balloons were being blown up right around the corner meaning that there were children galore on the Upper West Side.

But before we entered the museum and learned all sorts of fun dino-facts we had a spot of lunch at the UWS Shake Shack, which happened to be where all the children were lunching as well. But the shack has you covered for that. Here’s my meal:

There’s the famed Shack Burger, which for me still can’t compare with the In-N-Out burger of my teen years but is still crispy and delicious. There’s the order of fries, which as always are crinkle up, not my favorite cut but they serve their purpose. And there’s…wait…that’s not a soda…that’s not water…that’s….wine! Yup. That’s how you deal with a burger shack full of screaming babies: You order a bottle of rose. Thank you Danny Meyer. Good thinking.

The other day I ate live octopus.

Ok.

Not really alive. But freshly killed so that the little pieces continued to move long after being hacked up. They tried to crawl off the plate. They stuck to the plate. If you managed to get them into your mouth they stuck to your mouth. I had to attack them with my wolf-like jaws in order to fully incapacitate them. But they were tasty. Actually they were kind of tasteless – but in a really pleasing way.

Imagine this image squirming and undulating:

Would I do it again? In a heartbeat. I’d do it for lunch today.

Where did I get said live cephalopod? Why, Flushing, Queens of course. What was the name of the restaurant? I forget. And I can’t find it. So for now we’ll call it ghost restaurant. If I went back I’m sure all that would be there would be an empty lot and an old Korean man would tell me that a restaurant hasn’t been there for yeeeeaaarsss. And then he would disappear into the ether.

Yesterday someone searched the words “i ate steak tartare and i am nervous” and found their way to my little site. I just want say, hey guy, it’s gonna be okay. Steak tartare is a beautiful thing. It wants to be loved and enjoyed, not feared. Don’t be nervous, little man. Be happy. Then get some more toast points and whip up another batch.

There are many things in life I fear: heights, cockroaches, flying, sharks, gum, centipedes. No food was ever on that list. As a young child I regularly ate raw hamburger meat off the counter. I am not proud to say that I sampled many a cat food. I ate ants off a Los Angeles sidewalk (I was three at the time and curious). I’ve eaten cheap sushi, cafeteria food, fast food, pizza that sat in a fraternity basement for hours. And I have never gotten food poisoning. Well…had never gotten food poisoning. While on assignment for a certain weekly New York publication I was dining at an Upper East Side establishment (I won’t say where on this blog but if you really want to know leave a comment and I will email you) where I ordered the tuna tartare. The first bite I had I thought, that doesn’t taste right. So, having no fear of food, I took another bite. Nope, I thought, definitely doesn’t taste right. Is it the weird avocado accompaniment? I asked myself and took another bite. No, I answered. That is most definitely not fresh fish. And then I finally stopped eating it. 

Cut to the next morning at the gym when i am collapsed on a mat, feeling like my stomach is trying to rip itself from my body. I spent the rest of the day either in bed or vomiting or on the floor when the bed seemed too far to return to. Damn you, Tuna, I thought. Well at least I’ll get some work done…oh wait! My work entirely revolves around writing about food or booze, the two things that caused my stomach to attempt to jump out the window. So I laid there and watched reruns of Dharma and Greg (the stark differences between them are just so hilarious! She’s a free spirit and he’s  a conservative! Pure creative genius!) and sleeping. The next day I woke up and had a deadline to meet. I wrote about food, but without any joy. I let my blog readings pile up. I tried to eat a pretzel and failed. 

The next day faired a little better. I was able to eat a pretzel. 

Two weeks later I have obviously recovered physically but mentally I’m not sure if I’ll ever be the same fearless eater. Sushi still holds no appeal for me and I love sushi like I love, well….sushi. There’s not many things that top my love of sushi. Street carts make me slightly nervous now. I am also hesitant to order steak tartare. And I love steak tartare more than I love sushi – it’s one of those not many things that tops that love. There is hope for the future, though. I was able to order and enjoy a rare burger (post coming) the other day. Don’t worry, my friends. One day I will eat recklessly again. Or I’ll die from salmonella. Either or.

Steak Tartare – one of the many, many bites of the morning 

Check out my posts over on Time Out New York’s Feed Blog: 

Sunday’s AM grand tasting: 

http://www3.timeoutny.com/newyork/the-feed-blog/restaurants-bars/2009/10/nycwff-iron-chef-wannabes-battle-it-out-in-the-dry-tasting-tent/

Tom Colicchio’s confit demo:
http://www3.timeoutny.com/newyork/the-feed-blog/restaurants-bars/2009/10/nycwff-tom-colicchio—a-cook-who-cooks-and-confits/

Two of my favorite people abandoned me for better things at the end of last month. So in one last effort to bribe them into staying I took them to one of my favorite New York restaurants: Prune. We started with cocktails: an awesome Pimm’s Cup for me, followed by a really fantastic Sidecar that made me want to invest in some shmancy martini glasses so I could make my own. And then we went on to the best part of the meal, the appetizers. 

First up, bone marrow. 

Oh how I love thee, marrow. I tried to explain bone marrow to a friend this past weekend and the best I could do was say that it was “like butter, but better.” I think that really still doesn’t do it justice. Spread on crusty, thick pieces of toast and topped with coarse sea salt and a sprig of parsley, it’s as close to perfection as a humble meal can get. If my new place had an oven, I would be attempting to make it this coming winter. But alas. No oven. Do you think small bones would work in a toaster oven? hmm….I see an upcoming post in the future…or an upcoming visit from the fire department! 

Along with the bone marrow we ordered some nice sardines, which were tasty but a bit pickly for my taste. And we also had an order of the gods of offal: sweetbreads. 

Fried sweetbreads with bacon, capers and brown butter. They’re the small kind so they were thymus glands (right, Papa?) rather than the pancreas. Regardless of what gland they were, they were delicious. So rich and creamy and crisp. They will be what gives me an inevitable case of gout later in life. 

Alas, my friends were wooed by the food but not enough to stay. Sniff. Ah well, at least I still have Prune.

A while back a few friends and I got together for a dinner party. Because we’re adults, damnit, and adults have dinner parties. There were a few differences between this dinner party and one my parents would have. For one, it was a potluck. Secondly, there were no assigned dishes or courses. So we ended up with a hodgepodge of a feast. I made homemade ravioli and pesto, which was quite an ordeal. I own a pasta maker but seem to have misplaced the crank. This leaves me with what can only be seen as a very large metal paper weight until I replace the crank. Anyway, I had all the ingredients and an entire day ahead of me so I decided to go through with the ravioli. This meant rolling the dough out by hand. Sounds fine…hard but fine. Except I don’t own a rolling pin. I do own a muddler though (I have my priorities straight) so that’s what I used. If you value your palms, don’t do what I did. After rolling out small portions of dough as thinly as possible, the palms of my hands were literally bruised. All worth it though, the raviolis were a hit. As were the dumplings (frozen from ….shoot, Tasty Dumpling? One of those dumpling specialists in Chinatown), the “Asian Tacos,” and crepes. But for me, the best dish was the spam sliders made by our host. 

I had never had spam before. It’s meat in a can. And it’s not even refrigerated. That makes me very nervous. Also there was a girl in college who used to just eat it with a spoon straight from the can, which was an image that haunted me. You shouldn’t be able to eat meat from a can with spoon. But our host is a spam fanatic and foodwise I trust her to the end of the earth. She introduced me to chicken feet and duck feet and all sorts of other dim sum delights. 

And she didn’t steer me wrong this time either. The sliders were awesome. Spam is awesome. It’s like a lean version of scrapple. Paired with cheese (American…of course) and sauteed onions, it was salty and fatty and the texture was only slightly off putting. I can’t say that I’ll be cooking up any for myself any time soon – having to slide meat out of a can is still something I can’t get used to. But I won’t turn down a breakfast of spam and eggs or an onigiri stuffed with spamity spam.

I don’t need to eat another burger ever again. I found my burger soulmate. Unfortunately it’s $26. It’s Minetta Tavern’s Black Label Burger, made with a special blend of meat from Pat LaFrieda. 

I came into the restaurant having read extensively about the burger and honestly believing that it was probably overhyped. It was a burger, how awesome could it be? But then it arrived. I ordered it rare, rare, rare. And that’s how it arrived, which is important. I need for a restaurant to respect my order. I know you’re supposed to order a burger medium rare but I like raw meat. The meat was perfectly charred with a wonderful crust. It’s topped with caramelized onions and nothing else–though I did add tomato, lettuce and, gasp, ketchup. While the burger in no way needed any extra flavor, for me a burger is not a burger without ketchup. But let’s talk about the meat. This was meat at its best. It’s been said that this burger is more like a steak than a burger. I disagree. I just think this is what a burger always longed to be and has only now just become. It was fatty and juicy and you could taste the grassy, bloodiness that is what meat should be. I finished it easily though it was a messy ordeal. And I was utterly satisfied afterwards. I’m not exaggerating when I say that I felt this burger’s deliciousness in my heart. It was like a meaty hug from the inside. I’m sorry, I’m getting a little emotional over this. 

I’m now ruined for all other burgers. 

I don’t have a picture of the burger because the lighting in Minetta was so dim. So instead here’s a picture of one of my cats. 

I think it’s Dieter.