Highs and Lows

I went to New York with two goals – to eat at Mario Batali’s Babbo and to stuff myself silly with the best street food that NY has to offer. I think I did pretty well on both fronts, straddling two extremes of the gastronomic spectrum.

Babbo was as great as I remembered it (I went there for the first time about 4-5 years ago). They serve some of the best octopus I have had to this day, simmered in white wine and charred on a super hot grill. It is so creamy and soft, so full of flavor, and so impossible to reproduce or find anywhere else. I had my very first squab, which to my surprise and delight was cooked to medium rare and tasted exactly like a dense calf’s liver. Totally bizarre, incongruous, and un-bird-like, but also wonderfully delicious.

We ate in good company – besides my friends Kanchan and Shariff, who were celebrating their newly-acquired marriage license (though not yet the marriage itself) we had REM’s Michael Stipe sitting at a table on our left, and Jim Nelson, the editor-in-chief of GQ, sitting on our right. I was feeling very VIP that evening. We totally spent the whole night drinking with Michael Stipe and then Jim Nelson gave me some women’s clothes that had been bumping around the GQ stockrooms… you know, some Prada, some Miu Miu, nothing special. And then I woke up from my octopus-induced coma and realized I should probably stop staring and/or drooling over the famous people.

The rest of the weekend was spent in the pursuit of less refined, though no less complex street food. 1) Pizza at Lombardi’s in SoHo – thin crust (wish it had been more charred), nicely melted mozzarella, anchovies on one half (my half), not too much sauce, way too many tourists with fanny packs;


2) A beautiful skirt steak sandwich at a flea market in the depths of Brooklyn (perhaps my new favorite place). The steak was well-marinated and tender, topped with a spicy aioli and stuffed into a crusty ciabatta roll.


It was horrifically messy, left everything orange and slightly sticky, yet completely happy. The grilled corn on the side though… oh the corn. It was candy sweet and charred from the grill, every kernel so full of juice that it felt like little balls of caviar exploding with every bite. It was amazing and bordeline dessert-like.


Oh but that’s not all. There was also 3) a NY street hot dog (meh), 4) a street cart soft pretzel (meh), 5) some fresh canoli (yay), 6) bison jerky from the Union Sq farmer’s market, and so on and so forth. I think I have only recounted 1/10th of everything I ate in those three days. I am still in recovery from all the eating, but I still love eating vacations. You can get the high-end and the everyday, and each tastes awesome and unique in its own way.






P.S. Next on my NY list – really good Mexican tacos, Chinese dumplings, and hot chocolate form Jacques Torres. Oh, and a really good Rueben, Cubano, a decent margarita would be nice…. And I could go on. My food fantasies tend to run amok.

A New York State of Mind

The story I am about to tell starts on an up note and ends in a bit of a fart, to be completely blunt. Here is how it went.

I went to New York for a job interview. I was bright eyed and not at all bushy tailed. Actually, I was pretty well-groomed. I was really intent on landing the job in question, I had spent an entire week on preparing for the interview (instead of writing my dissertation. Oops), and tossing and turning all night because I am just compulsive like that.

I arrived in New York with a Boston chip on my shoulder. While I usually have an ok time in NY, I am very happy to get home to Boston – clean, unsmelly, comfortable Boston. Well, this time was a little different. This time, I walked the streets constantly trying the city on for size and summing up, trying to decide if I could live there, for real. This time was different in that I loved it.

The Hudson

I don’t know what changed. I loved New York best when I was walking around the city by myself, most of the time with very little idea of where I am. I loved all the shops and all the little (and big) streets, the amazing food, and the people. Aaah, the people. I, for one, don’t need strangers to smile and say hello to me. It weirds me out.

Well, if this preamble hasn’t been foreshadowing enough, let me cut this short by saying that the whole job business crashed and burned (no, I am pretty sure I did not get the job. No, I do not know what/who I am going to be if/when I grow up). Herein lies the fart of this story. It has got to be the peak of irony that the moment I become completely excited about moving to New York is the moment where my chances to do so fall through. I don’t get it. Bah.

I do have some awesome food to remember New York by, however. Kalustyan’s was the result of lone city wanderings, carried out on approximately 5 hours of sleep after closing down a couple of bars the night (ok, morning) before.

The little Middle Eastern spice shop is packed to the gills. There is practically no air left inside. It’s filled with spices and ingredients I have only read about and never seen. Huge raisins in clear glass bins, teas made of barely distressed whole tea leaves, and something like twenty different sugars. OMG. There is a teeny café upstairs with just three tables lining the window.

Even the salt n pepa shakers were adorable. Film-covered, worn, and beaten, yes, but adorable and antiquey, like they came over from the old country along with the owner/cook.

I ordered a baba ganoush sandwich and kibbe, sat by the window for a couple of hours reading another rationing of Jane Austen (Persuasion, this time), thinking about the city and trying not to think about the next couple of months. It was serene. The sandwich was amazing. Such unremarkable ingredients (pale tomatoes, iceberg lettuce, ordinary pita) blended into the best wrap I have ever had, ever. Home made hot sauce of incredible depth and complexity of taste drowned the anemic tomatoes and spilled onto the smoky, creamy baba ganoush and cooling, crunchy lettuce. It was by far the best baba ganoush I have ever had.


The kibbe was warm and moist, like a little fatty meat foil to the creamy baba ganoush sandwich. It was perfect and perfectly New York.

I may have missed my goal of relocating this time around, but I hope to my way over there eventually. Luckily, Boston is a pretty close second. I am happy here, for now.


P.S. HTML has gotten the best of me yet again. Sorry that the font looks weird. I ran out of patience while trying to fix it.

One of Those Nights

Every once in a while I have one of those meals that sticks with me. I don’t mean on the seat of my pants or the front of my shirt. I mean in my memory and subconscious as an event. A meal that sticks out as a true experience, one to be savored slowly and for years to come over and over again. an experience perfectly balanced and refined, fun and comfortable, masterfully executed and obviously, wonderful to eat. I recently had another meal that fits that description. Unfortunately, this one was a four hour flight away from my house.

Vail is not only the best place to ski in this country (in my honest and uninformed opinion) it is also one of the best places to eat. The number and caliber of restaurants in what could otherwise be a dinky ski village is dizzying. The meal of note I speak of was at Osaki's.

Osaki’s is absolutely teeny. The fact that the servers can maneuver at all makes one wonder how masterful they are on the slopes. Run by a husband and wife, Osaki's is so far beyond the spicy tuna roll that it’s almost laughable (they do have the standard sushi joint staples of course and they are wonderful, but they are not the reason I am writing this).

The proper way to enjoy Osaki’s and push the chef to exercise his imagination is to make a reservation and request omakase ahead of time, giving him the opportunity to pull together the practically unheard of ingredients that will soon come together into a meal you will remember for a long time, even after you stop grinning about it.

There were a number of things about this meal that I found striking. First and foremost, I saw (and ate) freshly grated wasabi. I was certain that I would live a long and unfulfilled life never experiencing real wasabi. I find that a lot of people are aware of the fact that the ubiquitous bright green paste included on all sushi platters in this country is little more than reconstituted colored horseradish. It is not wasabi. Real wasabi is a stout (and rather expensive) root that is not widely grown in this country.

The root in the picture is from Oregon. The piece you see was quoted at a price of $40-50. Here is a short pop quiz on wasabi root preparation. In accordance with tradition Traditionally, the root is ground and peeled on a a) metal grater, b) ceramic grater, c) the chef’s 5 o’clock shadow, or d) a shark skin grater. Contrary to your first instinct, the answer is not c. The answer is actually d, of all things. Wasabi root is traditionally finely grated on shark skin stretched over a slightly curved piece of wood. The skin ( I got to touch it!) is shockingly sharp and rough, almost as though it were studded with teeny industrial diamonds.


Next on the rarities list were real live yuzu lemons. I have never seen an actual yuzu before. I have seen the juice in stores, I know that it is used as the base for ponzu sauce, but I have never actually seen a yuzu fruit. There are a number of varieties of yuzu lemons, all small and knobby looking citrus fruit, some green, some yellow, full of little seeds. The taste is markedly acidic but much more flavorful and nuanced than straight lemon juice. It is floral and complex, like a more self-involved and less orange-tasting Meyer lemon. Combined with the sweet lobster meat, the yuzu lemon flavor will not be easily forgotten.

Broiled lobster tail with yuzu and yuzu-based sauce

Here are the rest of the dishes we had that night. While each of them warrants a couple of paragraphs of descriptions, explanations, and reactions, I will let the pictures speak for themselves. I am still thinking about this meal.

Tempura – crab claw, sea urchin in seaweed with really crisp minty/basil-like leaf; shiitake mushroom and something else

Sweet shrimp, scallops, ginko nut, mountain peach, shallot shavings

Trio of tunas with fresh wasabi

Golden eye red snapper, Red snapper, fluke with black caviar

Torched kobe with radish sprouts
Unagi (fresh water eel) – with yuzu zest or green tea salt

House made mochi – red bean, green tea, raspberry (too sweet and acrid-tasting)

Looking over it all now, I cannot believe that I managed to eat it all. Although leaving anything behind on the plate was simply out of the question, practically against my religion.

Southern Belle at Heart

Anyone who has ever been to Northern Virginia (where I grew up) can attest to the fact that it is an entity on its own, completely unrelated to the rest of the state. While the whole of Virginia is considered to be the South, Northern Virginia is most certainly not. It is as Northern, Yankee, metropolitan, and progressive as a suburban area could ever be. It is not the South, dammit. It’s different.

Please consider the evidence - there is no Southern food in Northern Virginia. None at all. There is New Mexican, Peruvian, French, French, French, and Italian, but no traditional Southern food. And yet, I somehow managed to fall in love with cornbread, greens, hushpuppies… I love it all.

There is no marked Southern accent, certainly not one as defined as you would hear in Central or Southern VA. And yet, I use “y’all” in every day speech. My friends from home make merciless fun of me for it, but I still say it.

Perhaps Virginia seeped its way into me. Stealthily, it leaked through the Silicon Valley that is Northern VA, dripped through the massive malls with parking lots that look like Benz dealerships. Somehow, there is a little bit of the South in me.

Northern Virginia ain’t got nothin' on North Carolina (for the uninitiated, that’s pronounced Noth Caralahynah) when it comes to being the South. I had the pleasure of visiting NC for the second time this year, this time for a science blogging conference. Oh, what’s that? You didn’t know I was a giant dork? Sorry, but that’s just how it is.

There is some seriously good Southern food to be had in NC, along with people with a completely awesome Southern drawl that I could listen to all day. After the conference, at which we were served excellent pulled pork from Bullock’s and Locopops (if you have never had a Locopop, I feel very sorry for you. Check them out the NPR podcast about Locopops) my new blogger friend Aaron and I went in search of good Southern food. And we found it, at Crook’s Corner.

Nothing says Southern food like a pig up on a pole. Inside though, Crook's Corner was way more arty and urban than I predicted from the wall of hubcaps outside.


I must have stared at that menu for a good twenty minutes before deciding on shrimp and grits. I think I made the right decision. Huge shrimp, bacon, mushrooms and scallions were piled on top of cheesy, creamy grits. The grits were just stupid good. This may be because they were about 60% butter and cheese, 40% creamy white corn. Not a bad ratio.


There were also giant cheddar jalapeno hushpuppies that were just eh (innocuous cornbread more than hushpuppy) and a giant biscuit, as big as my head.




I also can’t forget to mention the infinitely polite server who looked like he had a mother of a hangover, and did I mention the giant pig on a pole? It was awesome.

There may be a bit of the Southern belle in me yet. Just don't expect me to bat my eyelashes. Or wear pastels. Or giggle. And really, I am not that friendly. So ok, maybe it's just the Southern y'all and the food that I love. I am ok with that.

I've Met My Match

Damn. I let myself down at Sichuan Village in Chantilly, VA. I finally showed my whiteness.

Wonderful, food-loving Ben took me to his favorite Sichuan-style Chinese restaurant in Virginia. He took good care of us, ordering five dishes for three people and earning a respectful (or perhaps incredulous) stare from the nice server lady. By the way, don't bother going without someone who can order off the Chinese menu, else you will be eating those beloved Chinese-American classics, chicken fried rice and lo mein. Vomit.

The first to arrive was a cold appetizer of sliced tendon, tripe, and stomach in a Sichuan chili sauce with spring onions, and peanuts. The sauce is the reason I dream about Sichuanese food. Made with dried and roasted chilis, not ground but crushed into small pieces that retain their texture, the heat and flavor of the chilis leached into the oil, coloring it red. And red is my favorite color. We were meant to be, don’t you see? Toasted, flavorful, moderately hot, with a dry crunch, the oil was painfully addictive. I could – and did – eat it with a spoon. Oh yeah, and the tendon, tripe, yeah whatever. They were good, but they were not confused. The sauce was the star of the show.


Then came the dry fried green beans, a la Shanghai Gate (perhaps even more delicious). There was also fried fish and steamed tofu, and a giant, bone-in pork shoulder with a thick fatty skin and meat so melted and tender that Ben cut it up with a spoon. A spoon, people! The rather imposing pork shoulder was surrounded by baby bok choy, reconstituted dried mushrooms, and curiously, squares of ham in a thick sauce. Forget the ham. Forget the sauce. You can most certainly forget the cabbagey bits when staring at sweet, fatty, cotton ball-soft pork that pulls away from the bone with no pressure from the chopsticks. Make sure to fight for the skin. I would have, if I had assurance I wouldn’t explode from eating too much.

Salty, garlicky, crispy green beans

Fried white fish and tofu in a chili sauce

Pork shoulder with ham squares and baby bok choy

I was so happy. So happy! We were all doing so well, happy, eating, talking… and naturally, this was around this time that it happened, that I failed. One of the chief reasons I forced Ben to take me to this place was the promise of blood tofu – congealed pork blood steamed and cut into squares. Try not to read too much into my dying to try this particular delicacy. Just let it go.

I was expecting something tinny, metallic and derr, blood-like. It wasn’t. The blood tofu was very mild. It hardly had any taste at all, with a consistency of hard tofu - creamy and silky, but drier. It was good. The blood tofu swam around with bamboo shoots and wiggly chunks of pork intestines.

Scary. Just... scary

The pork inside bits? Not so much. Without going into too much detail, they tasted just like the substance it is their job to convey. Yep, they had a certain tint of poo. And here’s the thing. You can’t really bite through a chunk of pork intestine. You kinda have to take the whole piece given into your mouth and pray that it stays there as you work on it, with pained focus and rigid concentration. I know that not everything I ate after the poo conveyor tasted the same, but I’ll be damned if I wasn’t looking for that flavor in every subsequent bite. That's an acquired taste if I ever experienced one.

I totally failed. I thought myself all kinds of badass. I was psyched about the blood tofu, the tendon and stomach frankly rocked (and rocked hard). The poo conveyor, however? It almost did me in. My whiteness got the best of me. I deduct ten badass points from myself. Sigh.





Sichuan Village
14005 Lee Jackson Highway
Chantilly VA 20151
(703) 631- 5888

Shanghai Gate

My friends tell me that the surest way to tell if a Chinese (or other variety of Asian) restaurant is any good is to assess its Asian Quotient (AQ), otherwise known as the number of Asian diners. If the number of Asian diners far outweighs the number of white ones, it is a safe bet that the restaurant knows what they are doing. If however, the restaurant is full of plain old white people, there is a high chance that it is as authentic as the Italian food at Bertucci’s. Which is to say, not at all.

This past week I had the marked pleasure and honor of being one of four white people at Shanghai Gate (very high AQ). Notably, the other three white people happened to be sitting at my table, even more notable was the fact that one of the above mentioned white people was a fluent Chinese speaker that spends a large part of her time working and living in China and Taiwan (she also happens to be Elizabeth, the perfectly lovely fiancée of a perfectly lovely friend and lab mate, Allen. Say hi, Allen).

Elizabeth took up the reigns and ordered for all of us (in Chinese, natch) impressing both myself and our servers in equal measure. The double take the server did when addressed in perfect Chinese was something to behold. Made me feel all important too. I would have never known to order the stuff she did because I would have no idea.


Twice fried green beans in garlic sauce – salty, crunchy, a little spicy, and fried. Mmm.
Lion’s head casserole (in the background) - very finely ground pork meatball spiced with soy sauce and sherry, in a deep brown broth and baby bok choy. I did not know why it is called that – Elizabeth had no answer for me. It doesn’t look like a lion’s head. I think it is safe to assume that it doesn’t taste like one either. Apparently, the name is derived from the fact that its accompanying cooked bok choy or napa cabbage looks like the mane on the meatball lion head. I admit that I failed to see the resemblance.


Black bean chicken wraps – minced chicken, sweet perfectly balanced with sour, set off by the fresh crunch of the lettuce.


Yu Xiang Pork – shredded pork in fish sauce with bamboo shoots, served with steamed bread. The bread was light, slightly sweet, and kinda sticky on the outside, making for an airy, fishy pork umami bomb of a sandwich (way better than it sounds).

And the thing that I was most excited about. The thing that made my long, shit day seem just a little bit shorter – soup dumplings (photo at head of post). The most brilliant invention of all time. Soup inside a dumpling. Bite through the wrapper for a giant gush of super hot broth and a small pork meatball. The key is catching the dumpling at the correct temperature – cool enough that it won’t burn the first eight layers of flesh off your mouth but not so cold that the broth begins to congeal.



Standing out in a room had never tasted so good.

---
Shanghai Gate
204 Harvard Avenue
Allston, MA 02134
(617) 566-7344

End of the Line

The last installment of my restaurant reviews for Nature Network Boston has been posted. As I predicted, I have eaten myself out of a job. I covered all the areas around major research and convention centers, a scientist’s natural habitat. There is nothing left for me to explore.

On the positive side, I can now eat at restaurants that I want to eat at, as opposed to where I think other people may want to eat. I no longer have to dictate where we go when out to dinner with friends (they are all so wonderfully patient but I can see it getting irritating).

Writing and eating for these reviews has been so much fun. It also taught me a whole lot about writing for a major publication. I got a taste (pun intended) of food writing as a profession and I have to say, I liked it. I want more.

The Humanity!

There is no use in denying it – autumn has descended upon Boston. The leaves have changed color and are swirling down to the ground into messy piles, the squirrels have gone crazy and spastic getting ready for the next nine months of winter… and the nutjobs have come out to dine. That is not necessarily an indicator of a change in seasons, but it has come to my attention.

There I was, sitting in a perfectly cozy subterranean Italian restaurant in Beacon Hill (for an NNB review) when I happened to glance over at the next table… and gasped. Loudly. I then proceeded to stare and shoot threatening looks at the woman at that table, trying to make her aware of her incredibly inappropriate and disturbing behavior.

What was she doing? Dancing on the table? No, but that would have been cool. Flossing her teeth with her hair? Nope. Completely revolting, but not unheard of. You know what she did? Get ready for this. She poured ice water into her glass of RED WINE. She really did. I couldn’t make this shit up if I tried. I was floored. I may have been the only one at my table to have such a violent reaction, but that's beside the point.

Look, you don’t have to like red wine, or wine at all for that matter. I mean, I probably won’t have much respect for you, but it’s still ok not to like it. You don’t have to order red wine with dinner. Have a beer, a vodka martini (or four), a Shirley Temple, anything!, but do not order a glass of red wine and proceed to defile it by adding water (especially ice water). I can’t imagine a more perfect way to ruin something complex, alive and breathing, beautiful and warming than by diluting and chilling it with ice water.

You know what the lesson here is? Embrace your tastes, your likes and dislikes. At dinner, order a drink you will enjoy, one that will enhance your meal and your evening, no matter what that drink is. But don’t, for the love of all that is holy, order a glass of red wine simply because you think that you should, because it’s the grown-up thing to do, or because everyone else is doing it and then humiliate that wine in front of ardent and emotional fans such as myself. That’s just wrong.




Rant over. Thank you for your attention.

On the Road to Improvement

On the road to Durham

A week ago I listened close to my gut instinct and took in its constant scream of, “Science ties me up in knots, get me out of here!” I took three days off lab, rearranged and rebooked travel plans and attended a food blogging event in Durham, North Carolina, organized by the wonderful folks at BlogTogether. A food blogging event alone would have been enough to send my instincts into convulsions but with Michael Ruhlman as the guest of honor/speaker/author/blogger idol, I had no hope of resisting.

The first part of the event was a book reading at the Regulator Bookshop. Michael Ruhlman read an excerpt from his book, talked about writing books and blogs, the direction of American cuisine, cooking, eating and generally enjoying life to its fullest. He then signed books for a line of eager blogger worshippers such as myself, taking time to chat with every one of them.


When my turn came I was awkward and tongue tied, due no doubt to stress and science (I blame everything on science these days). Happily, Bora covered by saying that I am shy. Thank you! We bloggers need to stick together. [As an aside, I may be a great many things but shy I am not. Inarticulate and unsociable at times, yes. Shy? Not so much.] I did manage to squawk out a bit about my own blog and food writing, which Michael sat through with all his composure and obscene patience.

The next day was spent in anticipation of dinner at Piedmont. Chefs Drew Brown and Andy Magowan based practically the entire dinner on one heirloom pig that was raised on a local farm. I don’t know if it was the knowledge that all the ingredients save for the olive oil were born and raised in locally or that the execution of the dishes was flawless, but the food was rich, alive, fresh, simple, and cared for. In other words, it was great.


First
Housemade charcuterie and local cheeses: pate, lomo, rillette, head cheese, new moon, chevre camembert and accompaniments
Le Colture Fagher Prosecco

Second
White sweet potato puree with pancetta
Pierre Henri Chardonnay 2006

Third
Arugula salad with cherry tomatoes, pickled oak-grown shiitakes and herbs (basil, tarragon, fennel fronds and dill were all I could pick out)

Fourth
Pork loin with butternut squash polenta, braised chard and jus
La Gironnere Cotes do Bordeaux 2003

Fifth
Scuppernong* granita with moscato d’asti, cookies

---------

Michael took a look at my blog and was kind enough to give me his opinion on how I can improve. I have to be more me, he said, have to give the reader a better sense of my voice minus the snarky, to which I am massively prone. Good idea? Yes. Easy to execute? Nope. I’ll be working on it, over the next 20 years or so.



Pictures from the dinner here, courtesy of Anton Zuiker.

*Don’t know what scuppernong is? I didn’t either. It’s a large grape with a thick skin that is grown in NC and is used to make a sweet wine. The granita was pale green, smooth, and almost creamy. The taste came forward in stages – sweet at first, perfumey and floral last.




P.S. Impressions? Michael Ruhlman is a pretty neat (and tall!) guy - well-spoken, attentive, with a barely concealed edge (always the best part of a person) which I unintentionally coaxed out at dinner. I have a tendency to do that. That’s another bit of me that may need to be kept in check.

Review Time

It is that time of the month again. My reviews of restaurants around Kenmore Sq/Fenway Park are up for Nature Network Boston.

I have a really bad feeling that I am about to eat myself out of a job. These reviews are supposed to cover restaurants around major research sites in Boston. Not surprisingly, research sites are far more limited than the restaurants ... In other words, I am almost out of research areas. If anyone wants to come over here and start a new institute/research facility so that I can eat all around it, please do! I don't know what I am going to do with all my free time if I don't have these reviews to write!

Note the Audubon review. I went public with my love for Audubon. Sigh. Now everyone knows.

The Chef Show

Every once in a while, I have a really great dinner. I mean the kind of dinner that reminds me why I love to eat out, to think about food, look at food. Every once in a while I have a meal that leaves me with a grin on my face.

Food alone is not enough to achieve this level of culinary euphoria. It requires a combination of factors, sensations, and experiences. It depends on the staff of the restaurant, its ambiance, lighting, smell, decor… When all those things click into place, I am left sated and re-energized in my devotion to this hobby of mine that is beginning to take over my life.

Obviously, I wouldn’t be rambling on about this if I didn’t recently have just such an experience. I did, at Ten Tables in Jamaica Plain.

Ten Tables is a misnomer. They have delusions of grandeur – it’s seven tables, max. There is just one server (because frankly, there is no room for another one) and two chefs in the tiny kitchen. The food philosophy at Ten Tables is simple – use the highest quality ingredients, organic and sourced locally, whenever possible, prepare them simply, without fuss and pretense in order to showcase the ingredients, not the chef. In other words, they don’t mess with your food.


Kanchan and I got to sit at the chef’s table. Again, this is a misnomer. It’s not a table so much as a narrow bar with two very tall bar stools quite literally in the kitchen. It was awesome and voyeuristic. There was no rushing, no yelling, no frenetic movement or apparent stress in the kitchen. There was calm quiet, logic, and calculated movement. When the chef set out to do something so simple as slice an heirloom tomato, he looked at it from all angles, found the spot to cut that would showcase the tomato to its best advantage, and cut slowly, deliberately and precisely. It was amazing to watch.

The whole meal - a four course chef’s tasting menu, in our case - was prepared in much the same fashion. Calmly, respectfully, and dare I say it? Lovingly. The chef did something I have never experienced before – Kanchan and I were not served the same dishes during the tasting menu. Confused, we asked why. The answer was so simple and obvious that it made me wonder why every tasting menu isn’t done this way – the chef said that it allows us to taste more, to experience more. Obvious and genius.


So that was it, my glimpse of a professional kitchen, of a person who loves what he does, who gets to have his hobby be his work. Curious concept, that.




P.S. Some of what we were served:

Heirloom tomatoes with white anchovies and arugula

Poached hake with farro risotto and sweet pepper relish

Perfectly salted, crusty coulotte steak with a truffled white bean puree, shaved fennel, and paper thin radish slices (my favorite course, by far)

Wicked Good

People who live in Boston are intimately familiar with the MassHole accent. It is highly specific to Mass, perhaps just to the areas immediately surrounding Boston. MassHole is characterized by a complete absence of R’s and the promiscuous use of the word “wicked” - and not for its intended meaning. In MassHole, wicked means super, or extra. As in, “Oh, that guy is wicked smaaht.” This accent is most often found in combination with track pants, T shirt, and a baseball hat.

Nowhere is MassHole more prevalent than in Medford (pronounced Medfud, of course), a neighborhood North of Boston that happens to be Melissa’s new home. Have y’all seen Mystic River? It’s kind of like that (correct me if I am wrong, Melissa). Medford is a heavily Italian Catholic town where every carefully manicured front lawn features a Mary statuette in a strange little enclosure resembling a vertical scalloped bathtub. Dubbed by Melissa, Bathtub Mary. I don’t know what’s more irreverent – to make fun of Bathtub Mary or to actually have one in the yard, like a somber Christmas reindeer.

Caffé Baccini is the best venue in which to observe Medford dwellers in their natural habitat. It’s a real neighborhood place where everyone knows each other and all are welcome. The café has a full bar, hot pressed sandwiches and pastas, gelato and pastries. The music is the best of the 80s, from Bryan Adams to Walk Like an Egyptian. It’s brilliant. Melissa and I walked over for an after dinner coffee and dessert, and ordered the almond cake. Almond it was, and potently so. Layers of white fluffy cake were soaked through with amaretto and almond extract, covered in a thick pastry cream, all topped with crushed toasted almonds. It was wicked good.



Caffe Baccini
394B Main Street
Medford, MA 02155
(781) 393-9333

In-N-Out of the Googleplex

In the world of food blogging (and among my friends) In-N-Out Burger is second only to the French Laundry. While I love reading about the French Laundry, dining (if I may call it that) at In-N-Out seemed a much more feasible proposition.

This past weekend, I had the still-unexplained privilege of attending a Science Foo Camp organized by O’Reilly Media and Nature Publishing Group. The small, invitation only meeting was hosted by Google, held at the Googleplex, and drew a few CEOs, a smattering of Nobel Prize winners, a handful of editors-in-chief of major publications, a Microsoft big wig, Martha Stewart (??) and, umm... me. Don't ask, I don't know why I was invited either. To say that I was intimidated to the point of blindness would be like calling the ocean a little watery.

First, a word about the Googleplex – it’s fantasy land. It’s a grown up amusement park. It’s the Googledom. Googlevana. They do anything they can to keep they employees at work, and I suspect it works. It would for me. I shit you not, they have a massage parlor on the campus. Along with a laundromat, a volleyball court, dry cleaner, hair dresser, a dog- and booze-friendly policy (they can drink on the job. Seriously), and 14 cafes, most of which aim to be organic and local. They are big on food at Google. There were stations with snacks set out for us whenever we were not stuffing ourselves (myself) past the limit of reason with the most delicious food. The fact that they maintain that level of quality on such a huge scale of preparation is mind boggling.

Conference menu highlights:

Dinner, Friday night
Theme: Food on a stick.
Chicken and tofu kebabs
Grilled corn on the cob (on a stick), candy sweet, moist and crisp.
Pressed sandwiches (don’t know how these fit into the stick scheme but they were fantastic, especially the ones with banana and cardamom-scented peanut butter pressed between a crispy rosemary roll)
S’mores (get it? Stick? Fire? Yep, it’s clever)

Breakfast Saturday
Brie and dried cherry stuffed French Toast, which apparently, did not pass muster with Martha Stewart who was, for some unexplained reason, in attendance.

Breakfast Sunday
Eggs Florentine, with marinated heirloom tomatoes, sauteed spinach, and a light cheddary hollandaise sauce all atop an English muffin that miraculously avoided becoming soggy - until you spilled the yolky contents of perfectly poached fresh eggs, that is.

Lunch Sunday
The best falafel I have ever had – browned yet not too fried, creamy and moist with the slightest hint of curry flavor. I suspect they were hybrid falafels, chickpeas spiked with peas.
Lamb gyro pitas, marinated chunks of lamb in a yogurt and mint sauce
Salad of heirloom tomatoes, English cucumbers, kalamata olives and firm feta cubes.

The food alone at this conference was worth the cross-country flight.

Onto the burger experience. After the conference disbanded, I coerced a new friend (and owner of the coolest of all design firms in NY) to drive my SciFoo-ed out self to In-N-Out. To be fair, Phillip was a willing participant in my burger quest – everyone seems to love that place.

In-N-Out is a true fast food burger place, but without the heavy grease and processed food smell searing your lungs upon entry. It was clean. It smelled clean. They cut their own French fries in each store – I know because I took the trouble to photograph the slicer!

The slicer is on the left wall, after the tidy frier baskets.

Everything is made fresh, making the process not terribly fast, which I greatly appreciate. Their meat is made out of meat, not grey bits of horse snouts, or whatever it is that goes into McCrappie’s “burgers”. The bun was buttered and toasted to a crispy, buttery edge, the lettuce was crisp, and the tomato was not.

The meat patty, while thin (I should’ve gotten the double) tasted like beef, and fresh beef at that. The fries were a little anemic in color but tasted as they should, like potatoes and not chemicals. It was great. A perfect fast food meal, with none of the fast food hangover two hours later. I am almost (almost) glad there aren’t any In-N-Outs round these parts – I would be in big, burger-eating trouble. As Martha would’ve put it, they’re a good thing.

Bartender Andy

Next to eating, drinking is a favorite pastime of mine. It seemed only logical I should talk to a bartender and learn a little more about the thing that I love so dearly.

Meet Bartender Andy. He is a (most excellent and wonderfully nice) bartender at Eastern Standard (one of my all-time favorites) who used to work at the B-Side (yet another favorite). Andy let me have a glimpse of restaurant life and told me what bartenders drink, both before and after a hangover.

Thank you so very much, Andy, for taking the time to chat. It was great fun.


SND : How does one get a job as a bar tender? What’s the process?
BA : I get a lot of guests who ask me “Did you go to bar tending school?” No I didn’t. I think the best experience is bar backing. I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to bar back at the B-Side. People tell me they want to be a bar tender and they say “Oh I am going to bar tending school” and I say don’t do that, because people will laugh at you.

SND : Do you ever drink while on the shift?
BA : I have definitely had a drink while working before, but you don’t want to get drunk while you’re working. I mean, it’s not like Coyote Ugly. You figure out pretty quickly that you can’t get wasted all the time while you’re working. It’s not very productive.

SND : I would be an alcoholic if I worked at a bar.
BA : [Complete silence… guess it’s just me then.]

SND : Do you eye how much you’re pouring? How do you do it?
BA : Mostly we use jiggers, for consistency’s sake. If I make you a cosmo on a Monday and you come in on a Thursday and [someone else] makes it, it’s going to taste the same. Consistency is a big part of cocktails, an important part, definitely. If I had a bar I would definitely use jiggers… and no Bloody Mary’s past five o’clock. It’s my bartender pet peeve.

SND : Why is that you get a can get a regular Grey Goose martini, slightly dirty, and it tastes so good but you order it somewhere else and it tastes like ___. What is the difference?
BA : They probably out too much olive brine in, maybe they shake it and not stir it. You should always stir. One of the first things that Pat Sullivan, the owner of the B-Side, told me is that if it’s all liquor you stir it, if there is any juice or syrup in it you can shake it. Stirring the ice doesn’t let it melt as fast [as when you shake it], it doesn’t chip. If you ever get a shaken martini you will notice there is a layer of little ice chips at the top, which a lot of people are into and like.

SND : You don’t have Jager at Eastern Standard?
BA : No we have Fernet-Branca, Jagersmeister for grown ups. It’s an Italian digestif. If you go to a bar and they have Fernet-Branca, you know you are in a pretty decent bar. I think it’s the best thing to happen to alcohol since bourbon. It’s amazing. It’s a secret blend of over 100 herbs and bitters. Most digestifs, liquors and cordials are 35 - 40 proof, this one is 80. It’s an amazing blend of flavors and probably the best hangover cure I have ever found, and the best after dinner drink, ever. The first time I had it I thought it tasted horrible, but after two or three times you pick up all these subtle flavors in it like liquorish, mint, and tart berries. As far as staff drinks, it’s the most consumed drink at Eastern Standard.

Editorial note: I have tried Fernet-Branca. It may take me more than two or three tries to stop wishing for death immediately after swallowing it.

SND : Does it mess with your day to work so late at night? Are you completely nocturnal?
BA : Yea, pretty much. We work pretty long shifts, 3 or 4 till 3 or 4 in the morning. I think most people who work in restaurants are pretty nocturnal. It’s the nature of the beast. We all work a lot but it’s worth it. I don’t want to sound like a cliché but it is like a big family. It’s a massive staff and it’s a big place, it’s really intense, and it’s a lot of fun. It’s a restaurant job and anyone that has done it knows, there is a certain fraternity. You want to pull your hair out sometimes but the same time, some of the best moments I have had were working with people behind the bar or at a restaurant, or not even working, just hanging out with the people. You develop a certain bond. It’s a lot of fun.

SND : I really want to quit my job now.

Going Underground

I started school in the 5th grade when I came to the States. I was never the cool kid. This may be an understatement. Where do I even start… I had a perm (why lord, why), braces, glasses, and absolutely no idea of what kids are supposed to wear. Oh yes, there was also that pesky Russian accent and difficulty understanding humor, sarcasm, and idioms.

I came a relatively long way in a few years. I lost the accent, outlived the braces, grew out the perm, got contacts… things were looking up. I figured out that shopping only at thrift stores made me interesting and alternateen (it also irritated my mother to no end, unfortunately) and that being funny and sarcastic was way easier than being open and nice. I mastered sarcasm, bleached hair, and torn jeans. By the time I was ready to graduate high school I was voted most sarcastic in my class, infuriating my poor mother once again.

It was around this time that I thoroughly stopped caring about whether or not people considered me cool. It helped that there weren’t really cool kids in my school. We were all dorks in equal measure. There were kids who thought they were cool, but mostly they were just drunk and slutty and no one cared about them.

I am now ten years out of high school (and trying not to hyperventilate). There is no longer such a thing as cool kids. We are all on an even playing field, no one is better or worse (although some have clear asshole tendencies). Except me. I am cool, now more than ever. Why? My friend Maiya and I raided the food underground, an emerging species of restaurant - a supper club run by fellow (but far superior) food bloggers out of their own home.

Love and Butter has the air of a speakeasy, full of secrecy and quiet planning. The weekly menu is posted online, inspired by what’s in season, locally grown, or simply great to eat. The address is sent out shortly before the dinner, the attendants are limited to 6-8, you bring your own booze, sit with strangers and eat really good food made with copious amounts of attention, care, and time. They make the food just for you, taking as much time as it requires. The monetary compensation asked for is absurd. I don’t see how it could even cover the cost of the high quality ingredients used to prepare the meal. The supper club cannot possibly be for profit. It has to be for the love of food. And that, people, is cool.

Maiya and I attended the first lunch put on by the wonderful L&B folks. We sat on the patio on the most beautiful Boston day is recent memory – perfect mid 70s, blue sky, tons of sunshine and trees for shade. Everything was so well thought out, treated with much respect and care. Fresh dense bread and butter waited on the table, along with fresh zucchini heavily salted and spiced with cumin and other things I could not identify.

Shredded radicchio with white beans - bitter, slightly sour, the beans were little soft packets infused with herb and stock flavor; melted leeks in a mustard vinaigrette. It's too bad there were people watching me - I could have eaten all the sweet, soft leeks on the table.



Chicken is boring, boring and ordinary. Love and Butter chicken, however, was most memorable - with herbs and garlic stuffed under the crispy skin, it was some of the most moist chicken I have ever had (brined before roasting? Forgot to ask). Served with a salad of supremely fresh mixed greens with large crystals of salt and linguine dressed with chicken juice. [Never thought that would sound appetizing. Chicken juice…]


Spot of dessert – deep fried ripe peaches with marjoram.

Mead sorbet (sounds remarkably like MEAT sorbet when said aloud – even I didn’t think that sounded good), and addictive, crispy butter cookies that were more butter than cookie (picture at head of post).

Next time (oh there will be a next time) I hope to bother the hosts a little more, get to ask more questions, figure out why they do what they do and how they see it evolving. Right now I am just happy knowing something others do not – I have a way into the food underground, where all the cool kids hang out.


P.S. I pleaded to be let into the kitchen to help out whenever they needed a hand. Somehow, I don't think I am cool enough. It's never going to happen.