new york

Final New York notes

maki — Sat, 22 Jul 2006 09:02:07 +0200

Dim Sum

I understand that there are supposedly better-quality places for dim sum in New York nowadays, but those gringo-run and/or uptown restaurants require bothersome things like reservations, and personally, making reservations for dim sum just seems wrong. Waiting for a table at a garishly lit noisy restaurant with cafeteria atmosphere is part of the fun. Besides, what non-Chinese-run dim sum palace would serve stewed tripe?

The picture is scaled small so as not to scare people too much.

Therefore I stick to my old standby, the Golden Unicorn on East Broadway. An added benefit of going there for dim sum is that there is a branch of Aji Ichiban on the other side of the street to peruse afterwards.

Supermarkets, no thanks

New York is a wonderful place. It offers people a myriad of choices for all kinds of activities, including eating and food shopping. There are terrific gourmet markets, great speciality stores for just about every kind of food you can imagine, and farmer's markets are sprouting like weeds after a rainstorm all over the city.

So then, why do the regular supermarkets suck so badly, and how can they hope to survive? How do they survive at all?

The produce is usually rock-hard or simply flavorless, and it's quite often as expensive as the much better quality stuff at Whole Foods or the mega-gourmet markets, not to mention the green markets. The meat is industrial. There are half-hearted attempts at gourmet-ism, like expensive selections of dried herbs and salt and oils. The staff is usually bored and could care less.

The only reason to go to a New York supermarket seems to me to be to get things that even they can't screw up, like detergent and bottled drinks. The only reason to buy food at a supermarket would be if you just can't be bothered - especially since ordering takeout isn't that much more expensive.

WTC

Finally...this is not food related, but we just happened to be staying in an apartment just a block from the World Trade Center site. Despite the fact that the construction people were on strike the first few days we were there, the progress on the site since I saw it last was quite cheering.

I had a hard time even thinking about going near the site for at least two years after 9/11. I used to commute through the World Trade Center concourse via PATH and the E train when I lived for a year in Jersey City, and seeing my former haunts simply gone, and thinking of the people who were killed, was too much to bear. But New York always manages to survive, rebound and thrive.

New York food shopping fun: Trader Joe's

maki — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 16:14:03 +0200

OMG, the line...

For anyone who is not familiar with Trader Joe's, it's a West Coast based grocery chain known for its quirkiness, that sells a lot of house-brand items. Since our company did some work as for them recently (no we didn't bag groceries, we did some specialized forms), I somehow felt obligated to make a pilgrimage to their new store near Union Square in Manhattan. (I make it a top priority to peruse any local food emporia wherever I travel anyway. It's a disease.)

We went there twice, and both times it was absolutely packed. I guess one reason is because it is pretty new, but I think the main reason is the overall fun marketing. The second time we went was around seven in the evening on a Thursday, and the lines for the cash registers were so long that they started at the end of the first aisle, with two employees acting as lollipop ladies directing traffic to the express or regular lines. Being New York where people line up without complaining for anything, everyone continued browsing the ailes as they inched forward in the queue. This is pretty amazing especially if you consider the local competition: there's the Greenmarket of course, and a Whole Foods just a couple of blocks east on 14th street.

Trader Joe's to me has a lot of similarities to Migros, the leading supermarket chain in Switzerland. Both concentrate on house brands, with only a limited selection of the usual national/international brands. Both have managed to convince their customers that house brands can mean quality that is just as good as general brands, that offer better value. Migros, for instance, only carries house brands of chocolate, which is a pretty astonishing feat in a country that consumes so much chocolate and where major manufacturers like Nestlé/Cailler and Lindt compete so fiercely against each other. Also, both manage to inject some fun into the mundane process of supermarket-shopping. The merchandising in the bigger branches such as Migros City in Zürich is pretty nice, and their TV ads are hilarious.

Migros however is a much more comprehensive supermarket - after all, it does command at least 30% of the Swiss grocery supply chain. It has great meat and fish departments (ostrich steaks! real mortadella! sushi-grade tuna!) and well stocked produce aisles. Trader Joe's seems to be strong on dry and packaged goods but weak on the fresh stuff. With the exception of the terrific salad packs, the produce selection is quite sad.

Nevertheless I really liked Trader Joe's. There's something quite addictive about the place, and it's always nice to get that feeling that you're getting a bargain, even if you aren't all the time.

New York food shopping fun: Japanese groceries

maki — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 15:33:23 +0200

[Update:] See this more up-to-date and comprehensive listing of Japanese groceries and other related stores in the New York area.

Whenever I go to New York I stock up on as much Japanese groceries as I can manage. Prices there are cheaper and the selection much bigger than at the tiny Japanese grocery in Zürich, Nishi's Japan Shop. Here's a biased overview of the Japanese grocery stores and other places to get Japanese foodstuffs in the New York City area that I have been to. (I haven't listed addresses since you are probably better off looking them up via your favorite mapping site.)

Mitsuwa

If you can spare the time, it is well worth making the trek across the Hudson to Mitsuwa, formerly Yaohan, the big Japanese supermarket in Edgewater, New Jersey. (It was built here because Fort Lee used to be a favorite location for Japanese business men on temporary assignment to live with their families.) It has the biggest selection by far, especially of staple items like rice, soy sauce, and sesame oil. The mini-restaurant row in the back of the store, complete with plastic versions of the dishes on offer, is quite entertaining if you've never been to Japan. It's much more convenient with a car, but there is a shuttle bus from the Port Authority Bus Terminal. Most of the major signage for specials and such is in Japanese only, but individual items are usually labeled in English. The book/stationery store in the adjacent mini-mall is nice too.

Manhattan Japanese grocery stores

The selection at all of the Manhattan Japanese grocery stores is pretty much the same. Of these, I like JAS Mart a bit more than Katagiri for overall quality and friendliness. However, Katagiri may have the edge on raw sashimi-quality fish and the like. It's also the priciest.

The very popular Sunrise Mart is my least favorite Japanese grocery mini-chain. They over refrigerate all of their readymade obento and other meals to the point of making them hard and inedible; if you make the mistake of buying their onigiri, be sure you have access to a microwave oven, though that won't really make the badly cooked rice that much better. Still it is fine for your Japanese grocery basics, and since it is quite popular the stock is usually fresh.

Incidentally, Katagiri seems to have the most helpful-to-hapless-non-Japanese Japanese-expat customers from what I've observed, possibly because of its midtown location and the fact that the store has been around for decades.

Korean grocery stores such as Han Ah Rheum and m2m also carry a big selection of Japanese groceries.

The 'burbs

The grocery stores in the suburbs, including Mitsuwa, tend to maintain a higher level of quality than the ones in the city, especially for fresh produce and readymade meals. I think this is because the ones in the city cater to a student and young-people customer base, and the suburban ones have more wives of businessmen as customers. Housewives are usually pickier than students.

I go to two of them fairly often since I have family on Long Island: Nara Foods in Port Washington, and Shin Nihondo in Roslyn. Both are very good small stores.

Snacks and other speciality items

Beard Papa is a Japanese chain that sells cream puffs. See my previous comments.

Panya Bakery sells Japanese baked goods. Japanese sliced white bread is the best sliced white bread in the world, simply delicious for delicate English-style tea sandwiches and as buttered toast. Just about everything they carry is authentic middlebrow Japanese-style; melon pan, anpan, cream horn, etc. (The store name bugs me: since Panya means bakery in Japanese, the full name is Bakery Bakery. Anyway...)

Aji Ichiban (which means 'taste number one' in Japanese), the fun Hong Kong based snack store chain, sells a lot of prepackaged Japanese-style house brand snacks, plus a big variety of interesting dried fruits and things. (Note: The first time I went here they were very friendly, but the second time they were decidedly not. They were outright rude actually. So, I guess it's good to watch out. And they do __not__ like you taking pictures. I guess they don't realize it's free publicity for them, but oh well. Incidentally, a reader pointed out correctly that this is not the place to go if you want Japanese brand snacks. Aji Ichiban sticks strictly to house brands.)

Minamoto Kitchoan carries traditional Japanese snacks, most of which are bean-paste based. It's inferior in quality to Toraya, which sadly closed a few years ago. Toraya used to make all of their fresh snacks in-house, but Minamoto Kitchoan only sells pre-packaged goods.

The tiny Oms/B store near Grand Central Station makes quite edible onigiri/omusubi (rice balls). Their nori-wrapped ones are made to order with warm rice.

You can go to a reputable non-Japanese fishmonger like Citarella nowadays for sashimi-quality fish. You can also special order very thinly sliced beef for sukiyaki and shabu-shabu from a good butcher like Lobels or Schaller and Weber. (Note: to buy meat at Lobels, you will need to take out a second mortgage on your house.)

Technorati Tags: advertising, japanese, shopping

My new New York sushi home (probably) is...

maki — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 10:55:44 +0200

I am back home now after my trip to New York. Work demands, the quite unbearable heat (I am just very wimpy when it comes to hot, steamy summer weather) and an air-conditioning induced summer cold that hit on Saturday afternoon and is still with me, prevented me from ticking off all of the food-related agenda items I had. I did get to do quite a few things though, and I'll be writing them up here in the next few days.

I think that I may have found my new NYC sushi home though - something that's been high on my New York-Food Priority List for some time. I say "may have" since I did not get to try all of the places on my list of new-to-me sushi restaurants to try. Still, I liked this place well enough to go back twice in a week, and would go back again next time I'm in New York for sure.

And so, the Just Hungry 2006 favorite sushi restaurant in NYC is... (drumroll)...Sushi Seki.

It's ironic that Sushi Seki would be my pick, because I really liked the previous sushi restaurant that occupied the premises too, Sushi Hatsu. Sushi Hatsu closed about 5 years ago, when the owners retired. As far as I know, Sushi Seki is in no way related to Sushi Hatsu, although they are also open until 3 AM. The minimalist interior is almost unchanged except for a brown-beige paint job. This is not a place to go and ooh and aah at the decor, though it's all impeccably clean and tasteful and all that. What more do you want from a sushi place? To my way of thinking, going for great sushi is sort of like going for a great steak; the raw ingredients are pricey enough, so you don't want to be paying extra for stuff like fancy decor. Therefore, Sushi Seki works as well for me as Peter Luger does for steak. (However, the Sushi Seki waitpersons are cute, young and smile a lot.)

Sushi Hatsu was a really traditional, old-school edo-mae (Tokyo-style) sushi place. Sushi Seki on the other hand is not totally traditional.

If can see enough of the photo of their Sushi Special For Two, taken in very dimly lit conditions, you will things like tomato sushi and grilled egglant sushi. The maguro has (gasp!) mayo on it! As a matter of fact, most of the sushi in the Special were already flavored in some way so that no dip in soy sauce is needed. The non-traditional sushi was done very well though, acceptable even for a traditionalist like me - though, your really die-hard traditionalist Japanese relatives may object. The shari (sushi rice) is flavored just right for me, unlike the rather salty shari of Sushi Yasuda. The size of each sushi piece is just right too; not tiny like Sushi Yasuda, and not oversized and unwieldly like Tomoe Sushi.

The price - well, it's not cheap, but really good sushi is never cheap simply because good raw fish is expensive. You can of course save money by not eating at the counter, and not ordering omakase (chef's choice), but as any sushi afficionado know, omakase is the best way to go. Dinner for two at a table, ording the Special plus a couple of a la carte items was about $130 including drinks, tax and tip; omakase at the counter was about $220. Service here is super-efficient so you can even eat here when you are in a hurry to get somewhere else. It's certainly not the best sushi I've ever had but it's really very nice.

So there you have it. If you simply must stay downtown, Tomoe Sushi is fine (though the decor is still dingy and scruffy.) But if you can make it to the East 60s and you love sushi, Sushi Seki is really worth a try.

Sushi Seki, 1143 First Avenue, between 62nd and 63rd Streets. Tel 212-371-0238. Open for dinner only, 5:30pm to 3am. They do have a web site but it's a horrendous, useless Flash jobbie, so check out the menupages.com page instead.

Technorati Tags: newyork, nyc, restaurants, sushi

Papaya King: the best hot dog / juice joint in New York

maki — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 19:47:24 +0200

There is one food pilgrimage that I make without fail every time I'm in New York. It's not a visit to a famous, expensive restaurant. It's not even a bagel stop at my favorite bagel place (Ess-a-Bagel) or a trot around my favorite gourmet mega-mart (Fairway). It's a stop at the best hot dog joint in the city, if not the world, Papaya King.

You see bright yellow hot dog slash juice joints occupying many a New York street corner. They look suspiciously the same: garish printed or neon signs stuck all over proclaiming it to be the Best in New York, little if any space to sit inside, an assortment of fruit juices.

I have tried many of these others. Gray's Papaya may claim to be the same, and they are darned good. But nay, Papaya King rules them all.

The Papaya King I have to go to is in my old neighborhood on the Upper East Side, on the corner of 86th Street and Third Avenue. Apparently there are other Papaya Kings around the city, but I am drawn, like a moth to a flame, to the one I used to stop by at least once a week, back in the day.

What do I have there? Always the exact same thing. Two grilled hotdogs, just slightly blackened, on buns that are just a bit toasted so that they are crusty at the edges. Toppings? Not for me. I love the juicy meatiness of those "Tastier Than Filet Mignon" franks unadorned or with just a controlled squirt of brown mustard. And of course, a genuine papaya juice to go with it. The Papaya King papaya juice is more like a nectar than a watery juice, thick, fruity, cool and delicious.

I would ponder on the perfect pairing of two hot dogs and papaya juice, such as the digestive powers of papain (a main ingredient in commercial meat tenderizers), but the bottom line is they just go so perfectly together. It's the perfect snack or small meal. Okay, not the healthiest perhaps but hey, you gotta live on the edge sometimes.

I know, sausages in general are much better over on the other side of the Atlantic, especially on the streets of Swiss and German towns. But there's nothing to match Papaya King anywhere else.

Related: The Papaya King website includes a great history of the company.

Technorati Tags: hotdog, newyork, nyc, papaya, papaya king, street food

A Celebration of Life's Simple Pleasures at the 92nd Street Y

maki — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 08:57:15 +0200

This evening I went to a panel discussion about food writing at the 92nd Street Y on the Upper East Side of New York. The title of the program was "A Celebration of Life's Simple Pleasures: Good Food and Good Writing". The discussion was moderated by radio talk show host Leonard Lopate, and the panelists were the Editor in Chief of Gourmet, author of three food memoirs including Garlic and Sapphires, and former New York Times restaurant critic Ruth Reichl; novelist Ann Patchett; humorist David Rakoff; and the famed authors of several books on American road food Jane and Michael Stern - who have written a memoir about their adventures called Two For The Road.

The main objective of the evening was to talk about the food writing supplement to the August issue of Gourmet Magazine (everyone got a free copy of that issue in a goodie bag), but the conversation, skillfully guided by Leonard Lopate, ranged quite widely over the food spectrum. Some of the topics brought up included:

Ethical eating, organic eating, and industrially produced food. Michael Pollan and his book The Omnivore's Dilemma came up here, of course. Who hasn't heard of this book lately?
How we are so removed from our food sources compared to our ancestors, and how we might make better food choices if we knew how it was produced and where it came from. If we could see the animals we were going to consume alive before we ate them we might make better choices... and so on.
The outrageousness of expensive 'gourmet' foods, specifically the myriad of special salts (I touched on this subject briefly a couple of days ago).
Foods that you love even if it's not high-brow (Ann Patchett confessed to loving Spaghetti-Os), food that you just can't eat. (Ruth Reichl said she can't stand..honey! I think I understand Michael Stern's unwillingness to stomach chitlins in vinegar a bit better.)
Since David Rakoff's Gourmet supplement essay is about Pork and Jewish food rules, and also maybe because all but one of the panelists were Jewish, the discussion of "Pork and Jews" as Mr. Rakoff put it, went on for quite a bit. He mentioned a Rabbi X who he interviewed for his article, and said that this culinarically progressive (well, he eats pork sometimes, especially during Purim) rabbi told him that the eating of veal cannot be justified as being kosher, since the way veal is brought up is in no way 'clean' or ethical. I thought this was the most interesting statement of the evening.
Everyone seemed to agree that Americans are the most adventurous eaters in the world, most willing to accept all kinds of different cuisines. Ruth Reichl declared sushi to be an American food now. I guess I would have said, some Americans are very adventurous eaters...some other Americans are the least adventurous eaters I've ever encountered. Actually...Ann Patchett, who confessed that she was no foodie and that she didn't anything "with a hoof" since been given a pet pig when she was nine years old, is probably not a very adventurous eater. Not that I hold that against her - she was actually quite adorable.

If you follow food blogs most of the topics would have been familiar, but it was interesting to listen to them being discussed nevertheless. I really liked the Sterns, who both came across as being warm and funny. David Rakoff was hilarious, Ann Patchett was, as I said, adorable, and Leonard Lopate was also pretty funny as well as being an excellent discussion leader. I have to say the least entertaining person was unfortunately Ruth Reichl herself, but I think this is primarily due to her speaking style which is sort of slow and laid back. She's probably a writer that's much better in writing - I've enjoyed all of her memoirs.

I did rather disagree with her very last statement though. On the subject of ethical eating, she said that as consumers we can vote with our money by buying organically, but (paraphrasing here) we should avoid buying organically produced non-American food even if it was less expensive. Basically she touted the Buy American line, which sounded a lot like the similar lines uttered in earlier years by the American automobile industry. The subject of ethical/organic eating and food cost is a lot more involved than I can discuss here though, so I'll have to leave it for another time.

Although the content of a few of the articles in the Gourmet magazine supplement were discussed, one topic that wasn't talked about much at all was food writing itself. There was one audience question about 'how to get into food writing', which was answered a bit vaguely by Ruth Reichl with the answer 'you have to be very lucky' and by Ann Patchett with 'do a lot of writing you don't care about, and gradually work towards the kind you do care about'. Probably both statements are very true. The writers who were included in the food writing supplement had to be lucky to have caught the eye of the Gourmet editors, for example, with the exception of the famous ones like Calvin Trillin and the Sterns.

All in all, the 90+ minutes went by way too quickly. A panel discussion about food writing...this is the kind of thing that makes New York a great place. The 92nd Street Y has similar lectures and such on their program throughout the year, so if you're visiting be sure to look up their schedule for the time you'll be here. And to keep up with upcoming food-related events in New York, be sure to check out Josh Friedland's excellent The Food Section.

NB: Prior to this evening, I hadn't really looked at Gourmet magazine in years - if I buy a food magazine in the U.S. I graviatate towards Cooks Illustrated, Food and Wine, and sometimes Epicurious and Saveur. Gourmet just seemed so stodgy to me. Flipping through the free issue we were given, it doesn't seem as stodgy and old-fashioned as I thought...but I think they sure do need a design makeover. The food writing supplement is terrific though.

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Craft and 'wichcraft: two sides of Tom Colicchio

maki — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 22:34:01 +0200

Yes, I admit it - my intensive viewing of the Top Chef reality show gave me a renewed interest in Tom Colicchio. I have been to Gramercy Tavern, but I'd never had a chance to go to Craft, which presumably is his more personal vision of what American cuisine should be. I'd also never made it to 'wichcraft, his growing mini-chain of take-out sandwich joints.

Yesterday I ended up having a Tom Colicchio Appreciation Day. We already had dinner reservations for Craft, and we happened to pass by Bryant Park around lunchtime.

'wiches and more

Bryant Park, which is behind the New York Public Library on 42nd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, used to be a really nasty place, but has been totally transformed in the last decade or so. It's now arguably the most attractive small park in the city, and a true oasis in this noisy and hectic part of the city. 'wichcraft has 4 small booths at the Sixth Avenue end; one dedicated to sandwiches, one to coffee and pastries, one to ice cream, and one to soups and salads. There are plenty of chairs and tables around at which to enjoy the goodies.

Since it is after all called 'wichcraft, we headed straight for the sandwich booth. The booth itself, shaded by big trees, is one of the prettiest food booths I've ever seen.

The sandwich selection is not huge - about 12 in all, some cold and some warm. (Their menu is on their web site.) I decided to go for the onion fritatta on a ciabatta roll, and my lunch buddy went for the pastrami on rye bread; this one was basically a pastrami panini (a grilled/pressed sandwich). These sandwiches are pictured in the photo at the top of this article. The verdict was mixed - we both loved the frittata sandwich, though it was just a trifle greasy. The pastrami, while tasty, was a bit too greasy, and also quite small. It didn't really compare favorably with the myriad of good pastrami sandwiches available around the city. The lunch buddy was still hungry after devouring that plus a big bite of my frittata sandwich, and went to order a second sandwich, the grilled gruyère & caramelized onions on rye bread.

This was was quite tasty - maybe even more so than the frittata, though it was close. It was a bit heavy on the onion and light on the cheese.

Instead of another sandwich, I decided to have a chocolate cupcake. It came in this adorable plastic container - which is basically an upside down plastic cup container, but putting the logo sticker on the bottom and presenting it so is a neat idea.

The cupcake itself, a glorified version of a Hostess cupcake, was dense, moist and delicious.

I think the biggest problem with 'wichcraft in New York is that this is a city that simply abounds with good to great delis and sandwich places. 'wichcraft to me seems just a tad too pricey in that context. The sandwiches are very good though, and the concept of standardized, freshly made sandwiches, salads and related items that are several cuts above your average fast food, should be a successful formula. The packaging of the product is very attractive - and you can't discount the power of attractive design...just look at Starbuck's. I can imagine a 'wichcraft in upscale shopping malls all over the country. They already have a mall location in their Las Vegas branch (you do know that the Las Vegas Strip is one big mall, with some casinos) and their San Francisco store is going to be in a mall too.

Incidentally, Top Chef fans may remember the sandwich challenge in Episode 7, won by Harold. [Edit: As Kymm points out in the comments, it was Miguel who came up with the deconstructed falafel sandwich idea.] The "chopped chickpea" sandwich on the current New York menu sounds a bit like that the falafel sandwich. Otherwise though the menu is a bit thin on really vegetarian options, though there are a couple of cheese based sandwiches.

Crafting American cuisine

I just love the atmosphere of Craft. The dining room is not too large, nor is it over-decorated in the way some other restaurants in the city are. It was pretty full when we got there, and quite lively, but the noise level is not so high that you have to shout at your dining partners. The piped in jazzy-swingy music adds to the convival atmosphere. The lighting is also quite dark but not so dark that you have to peer at your food to see what you were eating. It's a very adult place, but still young.

I also love the whole concept of fairly small portions of food, each dish served on its own plate, that you are encouraged to share. Whenever I eat out I share anyway, but it's a bit more relaxing when the restaurant says it's a good thing to do so.

The menu itself, printed on a single sheet of landscape mode paper, is divided into four columns: the first column is first courses, the second is main dishes, and the last two columns are side dishes. As someone who usually likes and remembers the side dishes more than the main meat or fish, this made me smile too. At our very friendly (yet not over-friendly, important that) waitress's suggestion, we ordered a first course each, a main each, and two side dishes. This was just the right amount, even though we were starving since got there at 9:30. (We had an earlier reservation, but there was a flash rainstorm in the evening yesterday that drenched us from head to toe.) The wine list was fairly reasonably priced, extensive and interesting. We had a very nice, dry rosé from North Fork, Long Island, by the way, which fitted very well.

Okay, so what about the food? Well, it was very good. It's quite obvious the chef is using fresh, in-season ingredients. The highlights for me were the beet salad, a colorful melange of red, yellow, white and spiral-colored chiogga beets, and the fava bean side dish which had macadamia nuts in it. We also had an artichoke salad with duck ham and cheese, scallops, sweetbread, and salt cod and eggplant risotto. For dessert, we had an assortment of ice creams and sorbets, and a sour cherry almond tart. A very nice touch was the blueberry muffins we received as a going-home gift of sorts. They were delicious for breakfast.

It was all excellent, really - but did it reach orgasmic heights? Well, no. There was an unfortunate tendency to give just about every dish a sort of sweetish-sour flavor for one thing - I suspect an overuse of balsamic vinegar and maybe ponzu. I can understand that with the salads, and possibly with the sweetbreads, but the salt cod and eggplant risotto, the only dish that was actually bit of a disappointment, also had that flavor. There was a bit too much sameness to everything. I think that may be why the fava beans stood out for me, because they didn't have that flavoring. If I were a Michelin critic (one that's not overly biased towards French cuisine, mind you) I think I would give the place one star, or maybe make it a provisional one star worth revisiting next year.

Still, I would go back there again in a heartbeat. If you have overseas guests and you want to take them to a really good restaurant that serves top notch American cuisine, you can't go wrong with Craft.

So, all in all my Tom Colicchio day was pretty successful, and tasty. It's very interesting to see how a chef's vision is being played out from different vantage points and price ranges.

Technorati Tags: craft, newyork, nyc, restaurants, tom collicchio, wichcraft

New York, New York - and where's the domestic olive oil?

maki — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 23:02:51 +0200

My great plans for attacking the NYC food scene haven't gone that well, due to work and family commitments. I didn't make it to the Fancy Food Show after all (today is the last day but I had meetings...) So far my exploring has been limited to evening forays to local eateries, but since this is, after all, New York, that's no hardship at all.

I've lived in the New York City area off and on for 10+ years, but being here less frequently have made me look at the city from a different perspective. This time I'm staying downtown, near the World Financial Center in Battery Park City. When I lived in New York, my neighborhoods were first Flushing, Queens, a great enclave of Asian food; then the Murray Hill area (that's the East 30s), then the Upper East and West Sides, not to mention Midtown East where I worked. So to me, this downtown area is like a totally foreign city.

It's true when they say that New Yorkers stick to their own neighborhoods - you have to consume the city in small chunks or it can overwhelm you. I've found myself taking the subway uptown to go to the bank branch I was familiar with, even though my bank has at least 3 branches right in this area. I just feel more at home at the other location! I know exactly where everything is at the Duane Reade there (Duane Reade, a drugstore and more, is a NYC institution), which building lobbies I can take air-conditioned shortcuts through, and where to go for bagels. It was like coming home in a way that the downtown area just isn't.

Still, it's been fun exploring this "new" city too. I have to say that I do salute everyone who lives in a typical tiny New York apartment, with the typical tiny, unventilated kitchen, who bravely attempts to cook at home. The place we are staying in now is very nice and spacious, but the kitchen is windowless, weeny and lacks an exhaust fan. (My last NYC apartment on the UES did at least have an exhaust fan.) The guy who rented this place to us while he's away on vacation himself doesn't seem to do any cooking - I can only find one sort of working pan of any sort, and no spatulas or anything - so any sort of serious cooking is rather out of the question. Besides, with so many great takeout places all around, not to mention the world of restaurants in all price ranges, you really need to be determined to actually cook something. I'm already addicted to the multigrain crust pizza from the small pizza place right in the building, and the ramen place around the corner isn't too bad either.

Another reason why it's hard to be a home cook in New York City is the price of the raw materials. I wanted to get some salt and pepper, so I went to the nearest supermarket (not a Gourmet Market) - where I was confronted with an array of Special Salts: French sea salt (at 3 times what it costs in France), coarse sea salt with a special grinder, and on and on. Hidden in this array was good old basic Morton's Salt at 80 cents per carton - which is all I wanted, since I don't think Special Salt should be wasted on something like pasta cooking water...even though I am a bit of a salt freak, with at last count 6 different kinds of it in my pantry! Still, I really felt a intimidated by that array of salts that seemed to be saying to me, If You Call Yourself A Gourmet You Must Buy Me.

The most puzzling thing to me that I somehow failed to notice when I lived here, is the price of olive oil and the total lack of any domestic varieties of this essential ingredient at the stores. Every cooking show and magazine on earth seems to take the use for Extra Virgin Olive Oil (ye old EVOO, a la Rachael Ray) for granted. Now...I do not believe that EVOO needs to be used for every single frying task, but I do use it quite a lot. But the price of even the most mundane EVOO - that brand that begins with a B that you see everywhere - is really expensive, even, dare I say, overpriced. And every brand that I've seen so far at the non-gourmet supermarkets as well as the Gourmet Markets (well, so far I have only stepped briefly into Whole Foods and Amish Market) are imported. What gives? A quick Google search shows that there are indeed California olive oil growers (maybe I would have seen them at the Fancy Food Show, baah) but at least in NYC so far they are nowhere to be found.

Someone should do what Migros (the biggest supermarket chain in Switzerland) has done: they have installed a house brand of EVOO, imported from Spain, (but remember, Spain is much closer to Switzerland than California is to New York!) sold in a plain, olive-colored opaque plastic bottle. It's 9 Swiss Francs for a litre (about $7), is peppery and flavorful, and very acceptable for most cooking. I reserve the better class of cold-pressed EVOO for dressings and things and use Migros EVOO for everything else. Mind you, this is in a country that everyone says is so expensive! Isn't it time to strip all the chi-chi from EVOO and make it affordable for everyone?

Or..maybe it has been done here in the U.S. already too? I'm going to Trader Joe's at Union Square tomorrow...maybe they have something like that. We'll see!

Going to New York for...sushi!

maki — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 10:38:37 +0200

I found out this week that I will have to go to New York in a week for about 10 days for work reasons. As much as I love New York I am sort of dreading the hot weather. But on the brighter side of course, New York is nirvana for a foodie and I plan to enjoy that side of the city as much as time and budget allow.

I was idly thinking of what restaurants to try while I'm there. Sam recently went to New York and her descriptions sounded yummy. Balthazar? Babbo? WD50? Which ones can I afford to try? (You know that planning these things is half the fun.)

But then I slapped myself. What's the food I miss the most here? It's sushi.

I've yet to find sushi that's anything more than simply okay here in Switzerland. As a whole, New York sushi is much, much better. (Yes I know, Tokyo is better, but we don't have any clients there.) So, given a limited food budget, I'm going to spend most of it on sushi. Sushi. Sushi! (I may leave a bit for a visit to Craft though. Oh yes, and there have to be several lobster roll sessions. Land-bound Switzerland is not big on seafood.)

I'm going to one of my favorite old haunts, Tomoe Sushi for sure (to put it in geeky terms, it has a great price-performance ratio), but I'm open to suggestions for other places. I was not impressed by Sushi Yasuda (rated as best sushi by Zagat's), by the way, and I am a sushi purist...no funky nouveau sushi for me. And gasp, horror, Nobu is sort of "eh" for me. Is the new Morimoto restaurant worth a try?

Technorati Tags: japanese, newyork, nyc, restaurants, sushi

Reading: Michelin Red Guide New York

maki — Sun, 18 Dec 2005 19:02:45 +0100

The Michelin Red Guides are considered to be bibles for dining and hotels throughout many European countries - France in particular of course, but also in the U.K., Germany, and other places. Their first North American edition is out now, for - where else - New York City. I picked it up a couple of weeks ago when I was in New York, and I've had a chance finally to peruse it thoroughly.

I have to say I'm quite disappointed.

For one thing, there is a glaring mistake: it states that Sushi Ann, the sushi restaurant that occupies the premises that were previously Sushisay New York, on East 51st Street near Park Avenue, is run by the same people that used to run Sushisay This is quite untrue. I know this since my mother used to run Sushisay and she's retired to a quiet life of knitting lessons and latin dance aerobics in Yokohama. (Tsukiji Sushisei, the Tokyo-based sushi chain company was the sole owner of Sushisay New York - it wasn't a franchise in the McDonald's sense - and it sold the remainder of the lease and the fixtures to the current owners. There's no relationship whatsoever left between Sushisei and the current ownership. That doesn't mean Sushi Ann is a bad restaurant - I've never tried it myself so I can't comment.)

This kind of factual mistake in this type of book sort of makes me dubious about the whole thing. However, this isn't the main reason why I'm disappointed. There is just too much emphasis on French restaurants. Given that Michelin is a French company, and presumably those famous anonymous reviewers are French, perhaps I should not be surprised at this. But it's just too unbalanced. 3 of the 4 3-star restaurants are French: the venerable Le Bernadin, Jean-Georges (which is admittedly sort of fusion-nouveau-French), and god forbid, Alain Ducasse. I'm not saying that Alain Ducasse does not deserve 3 stars but it sort of smacks of the Michelin reviewers saying how superior a home-grown Paris chef is. Lower down the ranks also more emphasis seems to be placed on French restaurants over other types of cuisine. This may work for France, but in New York where French cuisine is only one of several dozen types of cuisine it just doesn't make much sense.

I'm not even sure if the Michelin stars, so coveted in France (and, if you believe the hype surrounding people like Gordon Ramsay in the U.K., in some other European regions too) would reallly be worth that much in the NYC restaurant scene... or whether for instance being in the Top 50 of the Zagats Survey, being chosen Best of by New York Magazine, or getting a starred review in the New York Times, might be more highly regarded. As a matter of fact ...why is there a need for a Michelin Red Guide for NYC anyway?

The Michelin Red guides aren't too usable for Italy either, come to think of it....