Category: Restaurants

Drunk Dinner Notes

Because I’m dealing with my incoherent notes from my notebook two nights ago, this post borders on telling you about a weird dream I had. In the same way, it may be just as boring.

My notebook says:

“Here I am at the Coyote Cafe, ground zero of SF trendiness. I am optimistic.”

(The back story: Eric DiStefano, adored/reviled restaurateur of Santa Fe, has bought the place from 1980s celeb Mark Miller, the guy who did haute Southwest way before Bobby Flay. There are no more deconstructed pumpkin empanadas, but the place is hot again.)

On the next page of the notebook, all I see is the word “nosedives.”

What’s odd is that I actually remember that meal fondly–I mean, the taste of it was fine, and there was a general glow to the evening: some amiable chatting with strangers, some occasional expressions of “Mm!” But deep at the core I had some terrible misgivings.

I sat at the “chef’s bar” or whatever they called the counter in front of the open kitchen. A brilliant invention for people eating alone, and also for people who are used to watching TV while they eat, and need some distraction. Another solo woman was sitting next to me. I was planning to chat with her after I’d finished perusing the menu, but then I noticed that she got her short ribs, ate two bites, and then put down her silverware and gestured for the waitress to take it away. She turned to me and swooned about how delicious the food was. I couldn’t think of anything to say to her except, “Then why didn’t you eat it?” Which I didn’t actually say, so I just went back to inspecting the menu until she paid up and left.

After I ate my dinner, though, I was a little more sympathetic to her plight. I saw the gargantuanity of the portions (quadruple-thick porkchops slapped on the grill, three handfuls of gnocchi lobbed in the skillet, etc) and stuck to appetizers. But even so, I could barely finish. The constant smell of fat wafting off the skillets on the saute line in front of me deadened my palate.

The real deterrent to enjoying my foie gras with smoked duck, and my butter-lettuce salad with warm fig dressing was that the grim reality of restaurant line cooking was right there in front of me. So much parcooked risotto, squeeze bottles of sauce, little prepped cups of salmon steak marched before my eyes. So many portions of wasabi mashed potatoes (Whose horrible idea?! Will a food historian please track down the inventor and strangle him with his chili-pepper pants?), green-chile mac-and-cheese and agave-sweetened yams dispensed in massive bowls with an ice-cream scoop. Nothing pleases like soft, butter-laden pap, and seeing it all lined up like that sent me into a spiral of existential despair.

Restaurants have this fiction of “cooked to order.” But what’s really happening is that a number of different pre-cooked or prepped components are quickly combined in a skillet, blasted with heat, arranged on an oversize plate (usually stacked, these days) and topped with minced chives. Voila. Some restaurants do more of this, and some do less, but they all have to do it for simple logistical reasons–or else be like Spicy Mina, where you just know you have to wait an hour while everything’s done from scratch.

And while it may taste pretty good, it just doesn’t seem real–especially when I’m forced to look behind the curtain, from my little perch at the chef’s counter. It’s too obvious this food is not cooked with love–it’s assembled in haste. I’m fine with my meat coming from a living animal–but please do not destroy the illusion that someone has carefully crafted my meal just for me.

This is why open kitchens are a horrible idea. They make people like me kind of queasy. And they make people who don’t know how to cook think that’s the way cooking works. It never occurs to them that someone (someone not cool enough, fast enough or English-speaking enough to work in the open kitchen) spent all afternoon making the gnocchi.

After that, my wine and the high altitude must’ve gone straight to my head, because my notebook moves on from concrete things (the “audible squelch” of the too-gelatin-y panna cotta) to the more abstract.

Here’s where it gets like me telling you about my crazy dream: I devise a grand theory of authenticity, using parallels with current politics! The only thing I can decipher, however, is that The Queen’s Hideaway is the culinary keepin’-it-real equivalent of Dennis Kucinich…except so not vegan, obviously. And Prune is Obama (somehow, it hinges on Goya canned chickpeas, and whether you admit to using them). And my meal at Coyote Cafe was Hillary–nothing really to object to, but trying too hard.

If you’re confused, so am I. Having eaten restaurant meals three times daily since Monday, I am feeling overfed, bloated, greasy, cranky and totally un-smart. Last night I was talking with a painter friend who’s worried that maybe he has effectively spent the last fifteen years huffing solvents, and secretly likes it even as it makes him increasingly stupid. I wonder if I have the same relationship with butter.

Good News/Bad News

Back in Astoria, alhamdulillah. Back in the US, meh. After eating all kinds of fresh tastiness in Mexico, I’m reminded of the idiocy of US farm subsidies by an op-ed in the New York Times: “My Forbidden Fruits (and Vegetables),” in which a Minnesota vegetable farmer relates how he actually had to pay fines for growing produce, rather than commodity crops like corn and rice. How can American government praise free markets everywhere but on the country’s own farmland? File with a similar question re: democracy. Grump, grump, grump.

In good news, however, I ate at Philoxenia last night–the reincarnated Philoxenia. The old one was up on 23rd Avenue, and it felt like eating in someone’s living room. One night I dug into a big plate of the heartiest kind of pork stew with hints of orange and cinnamon, the kind of thing you’d normally only get in someone’s house, while a table of 20 people celebrated a birthday. I thought the party was winding down when an older woman got up and put on her floor-length fur coat–but then she went on to sing and dance for the whole crowd.

Well, it turns out Philoxenia maybe was in someone’s living room–there were some permit issues, I heard. Now it’s all legit, and settled into my dream restaurant space on 34th Avenue, near 33rd Street. In the years when I was considering opening a cafe, that space seemed ideal, quiet but on a well-walked block–with an apartment above, even. It has been host to a couple of Mexican restaurants, and an excellent Peruvian bar. The whole time, the back room has been weird and shadowy and not very well used.

The Philoxenia team has opened up that back room and done it up like…a living room. Complete with a rocking chair sitting by the gas fireplace in the back. Totally adorable, and a good choice, considering it’s a pretty big space that in the wrong hands could feel a bit catering hall-y.

The menu, at first glance, looks pretty spare. Some salads, some mezze. Grilled fish. Lamb chops. If you don’t know what you’re hankering for, it might seem a little uninspiring. Fortunately, we were starving, and we also knew from our experiences in the old place that we were in good hands. We ordered a pikilia–a little mix of the spready mezze, the sort of thing where there’s always one clunker. But no–excellent fresh-and-garlicky tzatziki (up there with Kyklades’), really solid eggplant salad with a nice vinegary bite but still smooth, and good feta spread and mellow taramosalata. And we got a super-charred octopus tentacle–also nice and vinegary.

Then we moved in on the specials: avgolemono soup, ideal for my vague feeling of maybe a cold coming on, plus a main dish of rooster with pasta. How can I explain how good this was? Liberal use of chicken fat (the skin was still on) in the tomato sauce gave this an amazingly soft mouth-feel, and the cinnamon was so delicate and also soft. Perfect winter food.

To lighten up, we also had a grilled dorado, and a side of dandelion greens. Those greens were especially nice–not overcooked, good texture. I could feel the vitamins and minerals coursing through my veins.

Oh, and of course we had some french fries with cheese and oregano, and a Greek salad, a virtual bucketful. All that food fed four of us more than generously, and we didn’t even have a chance to try any of the other mezze. When we couldn’t face dessert or coffee, our waiter brought us all little tiny glasses of really nice dessert wine, which hit the spot. Total bill was just $100. Reminded me of the good old days of Astoria dining. More realistically, I guess that’s what happens when you don’t drink much, for a change–we had just a half-liter of very drinkable house red.

I went away feeling like I’d had a home-cooked meal, which is a rare and wonderful thing. The living room may be bigger, but I felt just as at home.

Yo heart Astoria mas que nunca!

Back in Astoria, and Loving It

I got over my post-patisserie-collapse trauma and went to the new Thai place, Leng, that has taken over the space at 33-09 Broadway. We were supposed to go to the new Philoxenia, which took over the space that was, for a brief and shining moment, the fantastic Peruvian bar. But it was closed on Monday (disregard what newyorkmag.com says on the subject!). Nonetheless, our friend Jenn walked into someone’s apartment upstairs by accident, asking “Is this the restaurant?” and they said, “No, but do you want some of this lamb?” Classy. And classic Astoria.

Anyway, the Thai: Whaddya know–that storefront goes back for miles, and there’s even a yard. I had to admit that the patisserie had just not been using the place to its full potential. It looks gorgeous inside (“Mob money laundering,” hissed Tamara; “Uh, underwriting from the Thai government’s food promotion program?” I countered hopefully), although the waste-not-want-not part of me cringes when I see huge jars of spices being used as decoration. I had to keep telling myself, They’re pretty. They grow on trees. No biggie. Just breathe deep. They are really gorgeous.

And while the food is no Sripraphai (but what is?) it’s certainly a lot better than any other Thai place in Astoria. Fo’ instance, there is actual ground rice on the beef salad, as should be standard for a larb. I love that gritty crunch. The steamed dumpling apps had some powerful flavors in–I was expecting them to be dull, but no. Unfortunately, I’m a bad reviewer because this was essentially my first time seeing everyone since my month away, so I got a little distracted. Oh, and good grilled eggplant.

The other thing I do remember: the humongo slab of Junior’s cheesecake for dessert. Not traditional, but so what? Turns out the owner is Jewish. Thai-Indian-Chinese-Jewish, as far as I understood. She said to us, “That’s why I’m always asking, ‘Do you have enough food? Are you comfortable?'” Portions are indeed mega-size, and the cushions are comfy, and she is truly hilarious and hospitable. And she has adorable photos of her mother and father on the wall (not the king of Thailand, as you usually get).

A huge bonus: It’s BYO. At least for now.

So–I highly recommend. It’s good to be back in the hood.

Also, happy to see Ali interviewed over on Joey in Astoria…

It’s Snowing!

The last few winters have been so creepily warm, then just gray and dreary, and then when it finally gets around to snowing, in February, all you can think is, Well, thank _God_, because the apocalypse isn’t coming quite yet.

But snow in December! After it’d actually been cold for a few days! I am genuinely excited.

Last night we had great pre-snow-it’s-effing-freezing food at Kabab Cafe: Ali is doing this lamb cheek appetizer now that is so amazingly good, spiced almost Christmas-y…I don’t know what’s in it. And the poached egg on top doesn’t hurt either.

Oh, and he has a _real_ waiter. Not that Peter and Tamara and Katie aren’t also real waiters, who helped Ali in time of need, but now there’s one guy, who shows up every night and treats it like it’s his job, because it is. His name’s Freddy (Alfredo), and he made me remember what it’s like to even _have_ a waiter: like, he asks if you want water, and he brings you a fork without you having to ask for one. It’s amazing!

Now…what to eat on the day of the snow? I’m going to nip downstairs and make an apple pancake, and maybe even some hot chocolate. (Alas, I have no marshmallows…of any size.)

Blog Expansion: Sripraphai Database

Peter and I ate at Sripraphai last night. I think it’s been eight years since I’ve been going there. I remember when it was one room, with mirrors on one wall. I once saw a Thai customer pick up the sugar dispenser on his table and pour sugar all over his noodles. Enlightening.

Anyway, we realized there are just swaths of the menu we’ve never tried, or don’t remember trying, at least. So now I’m making a compulsive list, starting now. Go here to see (sorry–too lazy to fiddle with Blogger templates–this is function, kids, not form).

Kabab Cafe Reopening!

Hooray! Ali is getting back in action as of tomorrow, Saturday, 7/7/07. Unfortunately I, like probably everyone else in the US, have to go to a wedding, so I won’t be there to check it out myself.

Thanks to meddlesome fire inspectors, Ali has had to totally revamp his kitchen. I’m very curious what the new menu will involve… Please, someone go and report back! I won’t be able to go until at least Tuesday.

“The saving grace is the food.”

Peter found this review of Aces yesterday. Utterly slams the place, and then says:

The saving grace is the food.

Uh. Thank goodness, considering it’s a restaurant. For all the space aliens reading, that’s a place where you go to eat food.

This does point to a fundamental schism in the world of restaurant customers. On the one hand, you have people who look at a restaurant as a whole event, with items like maitre d’s attitude, choice of flatware and music all weighted evenly with what is on the plate and in what form. These people tend to write most of the world’s restaurant reviews, and also include my former roommate Aaron, who’s willing to blackball a place for good if the servers seem uppity.

On the other hand, you have people for whom the food takes up 90 percent of the scorecard, if not 99 percent. Again, for the benefit of the space aliens, these people tend to call themselves “chowhounds.”

Incredibly, this isn’t all working toward how this latter category is vastly superior, because of course I’m in this category.

For one thing, the chowhounds tend to develop this dangerously martyrlike and even competitive tendency to avoid atmosphere in favor of flavor: The place that sells 89 cent noodles in a literal hole-in-the-wall just behind where the Chinatown bus backs in and lets its engine idle–now that’s the ultimate restaurant! You might die of carbon monoxide poisoning, but, dude, those noodles are just like they make ’em in Peking–and I do mean Peking, because that’s how old-school I am!

Whatever.

I learned my lesson about atmosphere vs. food several years ago, when a passing Spanish acquaintance was in town. We decided he should come to Astoria for dinner, just to get another perspective on the city. His other New York friend wanted to take him to Uncle George’s, the 24-hour greasy-spoon par excellence that hasn’t been good since the eponymous uncle died, probably four decades ago now. I argued strenuously against, and instead dragged them to S’agapo, because it had “interesting things you don’t see on a lot of Greek menus.”

BFD, I realized, as we ate some cheese pies dipped in honey…in total silence. There was no one else in the restaurant, and all the tastiness in the world, and the general niceness of the staff, didn’t make up for the fact that this place was not exuding the energy that I love about Astoria.

Later, I walked past Uncle George’s–it was packed with people, barely visible through the steamed-up windows, but I could tell they were good, New York-y looking people, talking loud and generally creating a vibe that would’ve made a Spaniard really see what Astoria was all about. He wouldn’t have noticed the oven potatoes were mealy, or that the gigantes probably came from a can.

I’ve been in this exact same position when I’m on vacation. Sure, I try to find the hardcore chow, practically peering under the wheels of the second-class bus to see if some overlooked street vendor is workin’ his magic down there. But some of my most memorable meals haven’t been about the food at all, but about the energy and vibrancy and the people all around me, where I felt at once in the middle of everything and outside, witnessing a foreign culture at work. (Perversely, bad food can even enhance this thrilling feeling of foreignness…except maybe in Cuba, where it’s just depressing.)

And of course I think of this every time I write a travel guide. When I get too chow-y, I have to actively remind myself that many tourists will not be pleased if they walk 20 blocks to reach the Casa de Unrecognized Taco Genius, where an arrogant bastard dishes out superlative tongue tacos–honest, try ’em, you’ll love ’em!

In fact, the Uncle George’s Dilemma came up again just last year, when I was finishing the Rough Guide to New York City. I’d done all the outer-borough restaurant reviews, a great opportunity to boost all my beloved haunts, and carefully put “author’s pick” stars next to my very, very favorites. Turns out there’d been some miscommunication, and some other author also updated the outer-borough restaurants–he barely touched the existing listings, but he did star his own favorites.

When I got the chapter back to proof, Uncle George’s was all aglow with a big fat “author’s pick.”

I immediately wrote a huffy email about what dreck the place churned out, and how I couldn’t bear to see the Queens dining list–and by extension my very own reputation as a food critic!–cheapened and dragged through the gutter in this way.

And then 20 minutes later, after recalling the Night of the Visiting Spaniard, I wrote an apology.

The saving grace of Uncle George’s is the atmosphere–and that’s a valid line in a restaurant review.

“Aces!”

With jaunty thumbs-up, that’s Peter’s salient review of Aces (36th Ave. between 32nd and 33rd Sts), Astoria’s new(ish) styley restaurant. I’m just getting that joke out of the way right at the start, so we can move on to more important things.

Like drinks!

I said in an earlier post that Miguel makes a mean mojito. This time I ordered one, and then thought I should try something else, but while I was mulling, he mentioned he was doing a passionfruit mojito. I loves me some passionfruit, but I still said nah, and ordered an old-fashioned, for variety. Minutes later, in swoops my drink. “I did something special to it,” says Miguel. I managed a weak, dishonest smile. This always seems to spell disaster.

But no! He’d muddled a little passionfruit in my drink. And he’d used Peychaud’s bitters. Daaaaang, it was good. So good, in fact, I didn’t even realize till I was typing this that there was no maraschino cherry in it–and that cherry is half the reason I order an old-fashioned.

“My companion” (uh, Peter) and I proceeded to order a tasty endive-and-arugula salad, very tastefully dressed in something creamy and garnished with pecans and avocado–a great combo of crispy-crunchy and supa-smooth. Butternut squash soup had a nice dollop of brown butter and little bits of apple on top.

“Would it be bad if I just ordered a burger?” Peter wondered. As it turned out, not bad in the least. Because that burger (for only $8!) was, as he said, “the best piece of chopped sirloin” he’d ever had–not the best burger, mind you, because in Peter’s mind, that requires char-broiling, which was not the case here. It was, nonetheless, crazy succulent and oozing medium-rare-ness, just as ordered, and served on a little English muffin that was almost comically smaller than the big slab o’ meat itself. Thickish-cut fries came on the side.

I went a little more highbrow, with the short ribs, and they were good, though Peter dubbed it “70s beef,” by which I think he means not rare in the least. Which, of course, your short ribs would never be, so never mind. These were done in a nice peppery, rich mole sauce that coated the beef but didn’t smother it. (Mole, huitlacoche, nopales–all these nice little Mexican details show up in a handful of dishes, but don’t dominate the menu.) But I got even more satisfaction out of my side of roasted carrots and parsnips–I fucking love parsnips, and these were almost candy-like. The sauteed spinach was great too. Aces has some really good produce purveyors, it seems.

To wrap up, we had a couple glasses of tasty red wine, and then we had a very buttery apple tart for dessert.

That’s the obligatory meal description. Now let’s talk about the bigger picture: Astoria needs Aces, and it had better not fail because people don’t walk down to this unfashionable edge of barely-Astoria (where I’ve lived twice during my nine years here, thank you very much), or because they think $18 is too much to pay for an entree “in Queens.” Fuck that. If you want good food, you should have good food, and be willing to pay for it wherever you are. (Or, if you’re really on a budget, order the burger.)

It was interesting to examine Aces and try to figure out why it’s different from, say, Li’l Bistro 33, 718, the Brick, or even that French bistro on Broadway that is no more. All of these places have/had their merits (um, except 718–talk about fucking up an old-fashioned), and none of them are quite right. The French bistro seemed the closest to offering genuine, soulfully cooked food, though I had that unfortunate incident with my lost duck. Li’l Bistro 33 had a nice mom-and-pop feel (when the owners weren’t bitching out the staff, v. v. audibly), but the food was way too fussy, and the wine list was execrable (Gato Negro?! Really?). 718 not only fucked up my drink and dropped a fly on my pizza, but it has absurdly pretentious dinnerware. The Brick may do grilled sardines, but it also seems to cater to a certain guys-in-tracksuits clientele.

Maybe this is the larger issue with Astoria restos of the “bistro” category: They’re trying to serve both Astorian “hipsters” (for want of a better word) and the Queens glitterati, which appreciates things like valet parking. It worries me that the one place that didn’t, the French place, has closed. And at this point, if a gorgeous little Brooklyn-style modern bistro sprang up, I’d also be skeptical of that–it doesn’t quite belong here. I want grassroots, and I want food cooked with care. I shouldn’t complain, because we have Kabab Cafe, but sometimes I want a little variety.

But maybe I’m over-analyzing. Maybe it’s really all about the drinks. I can’t tell you how a really solid cocktail–one that doesn’t involve Earl Grey infusions or rose petals or -tini tacked on the end–can inspire hope in my bosom that the food I’m about to eat will also be honest, gimmick-free and really, really cooked with flavor, not appearance, in mind. A good drink can override some other details that otherwise would cause me to worry: odd use of quotation marks on the menu (I think that’s just my problem), a borderline-trying-to-be-loungey-cool soundtrack (only at first, though–later we got the Arabic version of “Shaft”!), a not-quite-there back waiter.

Or maybe it just gets me drunk, and that much less critical. Still, I came away from that dinner with no misgivings, no “pretty good, for Queens” feeling. I came away full and happy and wishing those guys the best with their new project. When you stop in, look for me–I’ll be propping up the bar.

[UPDATE: Peter went in yesterday, a Monday, only to find out there were no cocktails, because it was Miguel’s night off. Peter was impressed that they didn’t attempt to make him what would likely be a bad cocktail, but still disappointed. So, maybe Monday isn’t the best night for boozing at Aces. Ooh, also he ordered the tres leches cake for dessert–straight out of a Mexican bakery, complete with that fluffy, glossy frosting. Mmmmm.]