Archives for the 'Restaurants' Category
Restaurant Roundup
I’ve always felt awkward recommending restaurants at Crispy since half our readership lives outside southern Connecticut and the other two are incarcerated — but what the hell. Here’s a list of good eats where I’ve dined in the last 365 days:
In South Norwalk, I highly recommend Match and its eclectic menu (Mediterranean-Asian fusion?), especially its abundant seafood offerings. I also advise starting your evening off at nearby Papaya Thai (not a bad restaurant either) and its five-seat tiki bar hidden in the back rather than having to elbow your way through Match’s mob scene of a bar. Reservations definitely suggested.
For whatever reason, I resisted going to Zinc in New Haven but when finally dragged there by Mrs. Kuhl, I was hooked by the inventiveness of the vaguely Asian menu incorporating New England produce: Vermont cheeses, Maine scallops, Connecticut vegetables and sausages. Also, the bar and its nightly specials demonstrate the value of a professional bartender (*cough, cough*) in elevating a certain reprobate’s beer-and-rum-soaked palate.
Also recommended: Lalibela in New Haven. Whenever friends and I plan to go for Ethiopian, someone has to ask, Are they still open? Yes, even though they refuse to believe in the Internet, Lalibela is as open and delicious as ever. Last time I checked.
It’s instructive that in Fairfield, the ritziest and most well-established French restaurant, La Colline Verte, went bust while the year-old bistro Cafe Lola thrives. I believe the biggest roadblock to greater acceptance of French cuisine is its association with expense (let me stress: not its association with fine dining, but its deserved perception of costliness). Cafe Lola is proof French food can be neither pretentious nor an anniversaries-birthdays-and-Mother’s-Day-only experience. The hot chocolate is real (not cocoa) and the chef (actually Belgian) puts a fried egg on my steak. That’s enough to get me in the door right there.
New Study: Menu-Labeling Laws Make People Eat More Calories
From today’s NYT (emphasis mine):
A study of New York City’s pioneering law on posting calories in restaurant chains suggests that when it comes to deciding what to order, people’s stomachs are more powerful than their brains.
April Matos, 24, bought a Happy Meal at a McDonald’s for her 3-year-old son, Amari, and a Snack Wrap for herself. “Life is short,” she said. “I started eating everything now I’m pregnant.”
The study, by several professors at New York University and Yale, tracked customers at four fast-food chains — McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King and Kentucky Fried Chicken — in poor neighborhoods of New York City where there are high rates of obesity.
It found that about half the customers noticed the calorie counts, which were prominently posted on menu boards. About 28 percent of those who noticed them said the information had influenced their ordering, and 9 out of 10 of those said they had made healthier choices as a result.
But when the researchers checked receipts afterward, they found that people had, in fact, ordered slightly more calories than the typical customer had before the labeling law went into effect, in July 2008.
All this makes the stand of the upscale (and very good) Houston’s chain against New York City’s menu-labeling requirements all the more excellent.
More from the NYT here. When I interviewed the fantastic Brian Wansink, a professor, author, and former USDA official, for Reason.com earlier this year, he noted that menu-labeling laws and other such meddling have
“…either been ineffective or disturbingly counterproductive,” he says. “All the data we’ve seen about menu labeling doesn’t show a consistent answer at all.
“Trying to change capitalism is a lot of work,” he adds, “and it won’t work.”
Indeed it won’t. Hear that, Ezra? Hear that, Mr. Brownell?
The Best New Thing in Mobile DC Food
Last night I was at an art opening on 14th Street. The art was great but I was also intrigued by the metal food trailer outside. It was broadcasting Mexican music via the speakers placed on its roof and was serving Indian food.
Curious me asked the woman behind the wheel what they are up to and then appeared a white man in a red turban, who explained that they were moved by Obama, got excited about doing a non-profit and ended up running an Indian restaurant on wheels. There are many non-sequitors in that explanation, but it is okay as the Indian food they serve up is incredibly great.
They provide three options: the taste ($3), the two things ($6) and three things ($9). I opted for the two things and got spinach with cheese and chicken tikka masala. A generous portion of basmati rice came with it.
I was blown away by the quality of the food. I love Indian and this was among the best that I have tasted. If you see this truck, run it down and eat dinner.
Ask the Readers: What the Shell?
The family and I spent the holiday weekend in Boston where the missus PRed a half-marathon and I set new personal records in consumption: Legal Seafoods, The Barking Crab, Kingfish Hall. I can’t say I’m ever truly tired of seafood but it will be nice to go a couple of meals without having to rip the carapace off something.
One of the dinner specials at Todd English’s Kingfish was a pound of shrimp boiled with Old Bay, red potatoes, a half cob of corn, and a ham steak. The shrimp were served with everything except the heads so I sat there and methodically cleaned them, which brought me to this dilemma of decorum: is it gross to de-vein your shrimp at the table? The legs and tails have to go, obviously, but should you then just pop them in, predigested zooplankton and all?
Quick Bites: What Is Best in Life? Edition
The May/June issue of Yankee Magazine offers the best of New England plus their favorites for ethnic food. Alas, said lists are only available in the hard copy (remember those?). Console yourself with the best Ethnic Food Festivals in New England.
Meanwhile Coastal Living catalogs their favorite seafood dives. Gotta catch ‘em all!
So This Goat Walks Into a Carl’s Jr.
Happened yesterday in Riverdale, CA. So what was he looking for?
A kid’s hamburger. What else? Ba-dum-bum.
Via NRN.
A “notoriously cryptic and unobtrusive family of birds”
More from the Dept. of Eating Strange Beasties:
A rare quail from the Philippines was photographed for the first time before being sold as food at a poultry market, experts say.
Found only on the island of Luzon, Worcester’s buttonquail was known solely through drawings based on dated museum specimens collected several decades ago.
Scientists had suspected the species—listed as “data deficient” on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s 2008 Red List—was extinct….However, the buttonquail is from a “notoriously cryptic and unobtrusive family of birds,” according to the nonprofit Birdlife International, so the species may survive undetected in other regions.
He did not add: “Also, they are delicious with a little cumin, so I sort of understand why you’d want to eat the last one.”
The whole thing is reminiscent of the pretty great/terrible 1990 Marlon Brando/Matthew Broderick movie The Freshman, which features a club of the ’80s ultra-wealthy organized around consuming the final specimens of endangered animals while wearing velvet mini dresses and black tie.
Clark Kellogg (Broderick): But it’s an endangered species!
Carmine Sabatini (Brando): Not any more. It’s in New Jersey, it’s fine.
Rent it today, and enjoy the next best thing to roasted endangered buttonquail.
Diners Hash Out Plans to Weather Recession
I love me a good diner. And I’m even willing to tolerate a subpar one if the structure is as ancient as the waitresses–who must be named something like Bertha, and the kitchen staff something like Hank–and they’ll let me sit there for a while.
Thus I was pleased to see the Washington City Paper’s Tim Carman has a nice piece up today on the place of diners in tough economic times. Right off the bat, Carman nails why anyone worth knowing loves a diner:
There’s something about sitting in a diner, sipping coal-black coffee and shoveling down a syrupy stack of silver-dollar pancakes, that makes you want to spill your guts for hours.
Carman points out that though diners aren’t totally recession-proof, they are (like McDonald’s) capable of and experienced at weathering the financial storm.
If you’re the owner of a restaurant in a recession,” says [American City Diner's Jeffrey] Gildenhorn, “you want to own a diner.”
My favorite diner of all time–my favorite place of all time, ahead of, say, the Duomo in Florence, or Fenway Park–was the old Post Office Diner in Beverly, Mass., where I grew up. I’d go every Sunday morning, without fail, with my grandmother.
Best eggs, toast, home fries, and coffee–which I started drinking at age six–ever. Some Sundays, I’d make my parents take me back for a lunch of lightly salted tuna on a top-split hot dog bun, fries, and a coffee frappe.
I have vehemently hated the French (all of them) since the local Franco-American Club–the landowner–evicted the P.O.D. to make room for parking.
After French people ruined my childhood, I’d have to settle on the Agawam Diner in Rowley, Mass., or the Portside Diner (in nearby Danvers, where my parents now live).
Anyone else have a favorite diner? (Hint: if you are worth talking to, the answer is “yes.”) Where’s it at?
You say “tomato,” I say “foreign and evil!”
We’ve covered a lot of stupid bans here, but I don’t think any of them can match the absurdity of this one:
… the “foreign” kebab [...] is being kicked out of Italian cities as it becomes the target of a campaign against ethnic food, backed by the centre-right Government of Silvio Berlusconi.
The drive to make Italians eat Italian, which was described by the Left and leading chefs as gastronomic racism, began in the town of Lucca this week, where the council banned any new ethnic food outlets from opening within the ancient city walls.
Yesterday it spread to Lombardy and its regional capital, Milan, which is also run by the centre Right. The antiimmigrant Northern League party brought in the restrictions “to protect local specialities from the growing popularity of ethnic cuisines”.
When Macking on Deadly Fish Balls Goes Wrong
Eating fugu is a ballsy pursuit that every once in a while goes terribly wrong.
Blowfish testicles prepared by an unauthorized chef sickened seven diners in northern Japan and three remained hospitalized Tuesday after eating the poisonous delicacy.
[...]
[Police official Yoshihito] Iwase said the seven men ordered sashimi and grilled blowfish testicles at the restaurant Monday night.
Shortly after, they developed limb paralysis and breathing trouble and started to lose consciousness — typical signs of blowfish poisoning — and were rushed to a hospital for treatment, Iwase said.
More here. Homer Simpson suffers the same fate below.
via videosift.com
The Wonders of “Take and Bake” Pizza
This weekend, Washington, D.C. is packed with enthusiastic Obama supporters, hopeful to catch a glimpse of our nation’s newly-elected president on Tuesday, the day of his inauguration. On the one hand, it is exciting and heartwarming to see the masses of people who have traveled hundreds or thousands of miles to witness this historic moment. On the other hand, every street is filled with cars and tour buses driven by drivers who can’t figure out the one-way streets, who don’t realize that 25 mph really means 35 mph, and who “block the box.” Even worse, though, it seems that every restaurant is booked solid. I live in the Dupont area, and I walked into at least six restaurants yesterday – even the hole in the walls – and they were all filled, with thirty to forty to fifty minute waits. In this frigid thirteen degree weather, all I wanted was something warm and delicious to eat – and I wanted to eat in the comfort of my own home, away from the tourists and visitors. Not much of a cook, actually making my dinner was out of the question. So, I went home and, sadly, ate Ramen noodles.
Today, I refused to make the same mistake. I was at school (AU Law), which is located in Spring Valley, a quiet, wealthy (yet not pretentious) neighborhood in Northwest, D.C. As I was contemplating my options for dinner – taking into account that I did not want to be around people, deal with a wait, or take out (because the food sometimes just doesn’t taste the same after a 10-minute walk or drive) – I remembered a new little gem just down the street from school: Homemade Pizza Co. This was truly the perfect solution to my laziness, my hunger, my impatience, and my anti-social tendencies.
Take and bake pizza: It is an odd concept, I admit. You buy a pizza – fresh (not frozen) dough and a variety of fresh ingredients – but the pizza is uncooked. The place has no oven, so you take the pizza home and bake it yourself. So, you have restaurant-style pizza – not comparable to Two Amys, but I would say on par with Pizzeria Paradiso (although there are less ingredients available at HPC), and definitely healthier – but you can enjoy it at home! The idea is perfect for people with busy schedules – you want to enjoy a delicious dinner, but do not have the time to cook a full meal, do not feel like waiting for delivery, and are kind of over Chinese or Thai takeout. And, honestly, I feel a sense of accomplishment after placing the pizza in the oven and baking it for fifteen minutes. It is as if I cooked dinner, but without the mess. I mean, I chose all the ingredients, right? Also, for kids, there is a “cutie pie kit”, which includes chef hats, pepperonis, and cheese, so that the entire family can have fun at dinnertime!
I recommend the Spinach pie – spinach, feta, kalamata olives, pine nuts, and sun-dried tomatoes. While you’re at it, you can get dessert too (which you also have to bake) – the oatmeal raisin cookies are AMAZING, and you can pair it with the pints of ice-cream that are sold in their freezer (I say, go for the strawberry). Also, I give the place an A+ for the staff, who is friendly, helpful, and patient. The downsides? I am not crazy about the salads – the pizza is really the specialty and the focus, hence the name. And, for a poor student like myself, I can’t say I can go too often because it is a little on the pricey side. But, it fits perfectly into the neighborhood. For more locations, click here. Next time you’re jonesin’ for a delicious, fresh restaurant-style pizza, try Homemade Pizza Co. It won’t disappoint.
2009 Brings a New Trend in Bacon
Pork bacon won the trendiest ingredient of the year for 2008, but now that we are in a whole new year, pork bacon is so passé. Welcome to 2009. It’s a new year, and with it comes a new trend and a new type of bacon – lamb bacon (a.k.a. lamb belly):
Cured lamb belly is showing up on menus all over, cozying up to eggs at breakfast and standing in for its porcine counterpart in wintry dinners. Because it has a lower fat, lamb bacon doesn’t crisp up as well as pork. But chefs like its meaty texture and the rich, gamey flavor it adds to hearty winter dishes.
Looks and sounds delicious, but I think the crisp of pork bacon is my favorite part of eating bacon. If one of your New Year’s resolutions is to try to eat healthier, however, lamb bacon might be the way to go. If you’re in the New York area and want a little taste, try: Boqueria, where my friend tasted (and raved about) the delicious lamb bacon sandwich.
**Thanks to Alex for the tip!
NYT Lets You Take a Spin (Literally) in the Peter Luger Meat Locker
What’s it feel like to stand in the middle of several tons of aging meat bliss? Click on the steaks to take a spin. Related NYT article here. Peter Luger’s story here.
BK Lets You Smell Like Seared Meat for Just $3
Who but the odd vegan doesn’t love the smell of a flame-broiled burger? Lots of hands. I see lots of hands up.
Now who doesn’t want to smell like a flame-broiled burger?
Just in time for the festive season, [Burger King] has released its very own men’s body spray, Flame.
Not recommended for vegetarians, Flame is being promoted as “the scent of seduction with a hint of flame-broilled meat”.
While the smell itself might not inspire confidence, the price will.
Flame is on sale for the credit crunch-busting sum of just $3.99 (£2.65), suggesting the Burger King promotions department has realised their contribution to the fragrance market might work best as a novelty stocking-filler.
Fewer hands.
More here. Buy online at the Barry White-ified firemeatsdesire.com firemeetsdesire.com.
Thanks to Emory Law 2L, fellow IJ conference attendee, and Old Style scriptwriter Brian Ewart for the tip.
My response, BTW, to the link Ewart sent: “I and thousands of others like me are finally vindicated after having been criticized for so many years for using meat patties as cologne.”
KFC Employees Don Bikinis, Bathe in Sink
A KFC kitchen apparently comes equipped with a dishwashing sink about as big as a hot tub. Which got some Anderson, Cal. KFC employees to thinking…
Two female employees of the Anderson Kentucky Fried Chicken have been fired for bathing in a deep sink used to clean dishes, while a third earlier quit her job.
One of the young women posted photos on MySpace.com of the trio posing in underwear and swimwear, KCRA-TV reported.
The photos were filed under a gallery called “KFC moments.” Captions included “haha KFC showers!” and “haha we turned on the jets.”
