What Jim Had For Dinner
 
The following are NOT reviews. Reviews require thorough investigation and carefully polished writing (for examples, check out some REAL articles Jim has written). This is just an informal running diary, written on-the-fly and off-the-cuff.
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Oyster Exploration
Thursday, June 1
 
 
The Oyster Bar at Grand Central has a bunch of intriguing-sounding oysters (some of which I've never heard of before), and I'm going to try to work through them all this summer. Here are quick notes (sorry, but I forgot to note appearance...was just scrawling on the back of a cocktail napkin):
 
Fanny Bay: waves of surf crashed with each chew. Utterly, purely evocative of the sea. Ultra-long long finish with a pleasant grassy corn-on-cob flavor. Extreme freshness is clearly essential.
 
Yaquina: the staff loves these but are cautious about recommending them to customers...and I see why. They're quite small, slightly chewy, and have a subtle-but-challenging flavor that's hard to describe and not what you expect. They provide no easy catharsis, but are a more-than-worthy wild card to add to an assorted dozen. I'm not sure, though, that I'd crave a bunch of these by themselves, except as a change of pace if I were to tire of oysters (fat chance!).
 
Kumamoto: my faves, can't not order a couple. Sweet and unctuous; very deep intense flavor.
 
Moonstone: briny, meaty, a bit simple. Would have enjoyed a lot more if not in the company of these especially characterful others.
 

 
Cafe Strega (Westchester County)
Wednesday, May 24
 
 
Cafe Strega (2 Broadway, Pleasantville, NY; 914-769-4040)-- once considered a leading light in Northern Westchester -- changed owners a year ago. Our waitress insisted that the chef is the same fellow as under the previous ownership, but if so, he's grown incredibly sloppy and discontent. All the balances were off, all the ingredient choices careless.
 
There were no out-and-out gaffes, mind you. It was not a "call the manager over here this instant!" kind of meal frought with bitter indignancy, it's just that there was no care taken, no deliciousness conjured. The bruschetta with smoked salmon and marscapone cheese we fainted over under the previous regime was just ok. Tomatoes were woefully unacidic, and no steps were taken to compensate. Grilled polenta was so-so, and featured a big cluster of generic supermarket mushrooms. Same sad mushrooms on the pasta, with shrimp (some slightly overcooked, some slightly undercooked). There were nearly-raw clots of pasta that hadn't been pushed all the way into the cooking pot. Salad was oily, and doused with inferior vinegar. Decaf coffee was literally airline quality (we're talking sub-Sanka here), and we couldn't imagine broaching the hideous-sounding dessert menu (white chocolate strawberry shortcake???).
 
To place things in context, if I were to compare this to last night's dinner (sic) at the odious Macaroni Grill, our experience at Strega was fine cuisine, indeed. But considering the $50/person tab, it was a most disappointing meal. The cooking was utterly flairless, defiantly missing even the easiest of opportunities to rise above mediocrity. In any case, we couldn't call the manager over; this place is run anarchically, with absentee ownership and no manager, according to our confessionally-inclined waitress. She also mentioned that business has been light. I'll give them six months before a major shake-up or shuttered windows.
 

 
Execrable Macaroni Grill
Tuesday, May 23
 
 
In my May 1 entry, buoyed by a wave of enthusiasm for the swell shopping mall that is Palisades Center (in Nyack, just west of the Tappan Zee Bridge), I enthusiastically noted that they host a branch of Macaroni Grill restaurant
 
If I inadvertantly gave anyone the impression that this might be a place where one might conceivably choose to put food products into his/her mouth, I apologize most vehemently. I hate to even milk my experience there for shtick value; were my recap to evoke even a smirk, that would be far more positive a response than this place deserves.
 
They don't serve honest bad food (like the Rainforest Cafe, which I wrote about in that same 5/1 entry). It's nasty, evil bad food. Lowlites included freezer-burnt tortellini in a sauce so acidic and crankily peppery that it raked my esophagus and caused me eight hours of the most severe nightmares; angel hair pasta flavored with burnt garlic and tomato water; pop-n-fresh "home-baked bread", which our waitress refused to serve with a knife because "people in Italy break bread apart with their hands" (the fact that she was able to tell us this with a straight face inside a suburban shopping mall was incredible enough--but I had to be kicked under the table repeatedly, my shins rendered black and blue, rather than point out that in Italy they also really don't serve glasses of water with flexi-straws, nor do the waiters there "sign in" their names on the tablecloth with crayon).
 
Ugh.
 

 
Pan-Latino Puzzler (But Great Chicken)
Friday, May 19
 
 
I hit Los Pollitos (5911 Fourth Avenue, Park Slope, Brooklyn; 718-439-9382) with chowhound (and author of a cool Cajun country photo essay Cathy Elton and technical attaché Pierre Jelenc. We ran late because of the requisite stop for rugelach at Margaret Palca (note new address: 193 Columbia Street, Brooklyn, NY; 718-802-9771). And the requisite frenzied beer purchase at Thrifty Beverage (256 Court Street, Brooklyn, NY; 718-875-0226), which has the best selection in NYC -- though Lucky Beverage (Lucky Beverage 29-10 21st St., Astoria, Queens, NY; 718-278-1500) comes close). There is more great beer than ever available, a bunch of it brought in by an importer called B. United. Look for their name on the bottle, and you can expect great and unusual brew (for a hefty price, however).
 
Cathy'd been touting Los Pollitos for some time, and I realized as we pulled up that the place had caught my eye on my previous Sunset Park runs. Places are openning so fast in the neighborhood that it's impossible to keep up; then again, I'd be more on top of the scene had I not been clinging to the hope that Taqueria El Paisano -- once NYC's best -- might magically be restored to its former grandeur.
 
There are a lot of pure-looking Mexicans around here, but this is a special case. These guys either learned to cook in a Dominican restaurant, or else they're aiming to serve both Mexican and Dominican clienteles. The rice and beans is totally Dominican, and as good as some of the best places as town, to boot. We had stewed yucca with mojo and red onion (but Dominicans, and -- even better -- Cubans make this one better), and perfect fried tostones (with a weird ersatz mojo that tasted like Italian dressing spiked with garlic). The roast chicken was more Mexican, and it's the equal of any in Brooklyn. The skin is immaculately crisp and unfatty, and though the spicing is fairly moderate, it penetrates beautifully deep into the meat. Even the white meat was totally juicy.
 
We had a somewhat soggy and bland bean gorditas (an aberration, according to Cathy), but very nice guacamole and stellar fresh limeade (which the menu mistranslates as lemonade...Mexicans for the most part don't linguistically distinguish between lemons and limes).
 
Tacos, so soulfully Mexican when done right, need to full Republica treatment to turn out right. A chorizo taco was plump, with nice herbaceous sausage, but it tasted caught on the Hispanic/Latino fence. All three of us took bites, stared into space, shrugged a bewildered shrug, and silently turned our attention back to the chicken and tostones.
 
All the staff here looks totally Mexican, and the salsa is hot with a vengeance, so I'm pretty mystified. If anyone figures this one out, please post to the Outer Borough Message Board.
 

 
Venerable Peruvian
Friday, May 12
 
 
It had been been many years since I've visited Inti Raymi (86-14 37th Avenue, Jackson Heights; 718-424-1938), the grandfaddy of NYC Peruvian restaurants. Unfortunately, it hasn't aged well.
 
Nice service, impressively extensive menu (including a rare variant of papas a la huancaina -- the Peruvian standby of cold boiled potatoes in spicy cheese sauce -- that adds something called "blackmint" to the recipe...and wasn't available tonight). Also, the breakfast menu looks pretty interesting. But the interior's creepy -- very dim and dank, and it's hard to understand how they stay afloat with a policy of opening weekends-only.
 
The food really disappointed. Tamal was dull and heavy, papas a la huancaina were fine but lacked soul, chaula de mariscos (Peru's version of fried rice) tasted dull as well, and the seafood was kind of mangy. Tacu tacu with beef stew had none of the richness of the tacu tacu at Rinconcito Peruano (803 9th Avenue @53rd Street; 212-333-5685) and the beef was vestigial. In fact, everything paled in comparison to Rinconcito, except the professional service (Rinconcito's service is sometimes friendly, but always maddening).
 
It reminded me of the faded Italian places in East Harlem (e.g. Andy's Colonial Tavern and Tony Merenda's Flash Inn), where the food's not BAD so much as faded and there are faint echoes of chow past. But you can't make a meal of echoes.
 

 
Les Halles
Wednesday, May 10
 
 
Les Halles' dining room is boxy but good-boxy; it feels convivial, with high ceilings and walls hung with framed posters. Our waiter was efficient, very good-humored and genuine (though non-regulars who don't speak French should be prepared for frosty aloofness from the slinky young maitre d' who has a bit of a Dr. Jekyll/Mademoiselle Hyde complex). But MAN, the techno music's got to go. It's not that I hate techno music (although I do), it's that this room otherwise exudes warmth and unpretentious good-cheer; the crowd's relaxed, and management has taken pains to recreate a comforting old-time French brasserie ambiance. So this coldly stylish music clashes awfully. Django Reinhart would fit the scene so much better, but the preternaturally pouty maitre d' no doubt chooses the tunes.
 
The food, thank goodness, is more in line with the restaurant's ambiance than with its ubiquitous pounding basslines. I was glad to spot Anthony Bourdain in the kitchen rather than off on a publicity tour (his book's gonna be a hot seller, so it remains to be seen how much time he actually spends here). I'd come expecting old-style French comfort food, and the menu is, indeed, defiantly conservative. They spotlight meat in a butcher case up front, and this sets the tone for the meaty, haimish preparations. It's not ALL meat, of course; we loved a special of skate, which was consummately fresh, plump, and alternately moist and crispy in all the right places. Its sauce was nicely complimentary, as were all the sauces we tried. Bourdain forges restrained sauces that work as enhancers and don't call undue attention to themselves.
 
Tiny wild mushroom raviolis attempted to compensate via over-the-top buttery/cheesy richness for their almost total lack of mushroom flavor. Potato and goat cheese salad was worse; it tasted a bit old and tired, especially in comparison to the fresh, focused flavors of everything else. Mignon de Porc "Maison" (pork tenderloin) was awesome, featuring oversized chunks of tender (but not over-tenderized, either) pork and scrumptious fat cloves of garlic confit. It came in a pool of brown sauce that looked alarmingly sweet and gloppy, but was no such thing; rather, the sauce was almost shockingly subtle and low-key and worked beautifully with the dish.
 
Boudin were excellent, served atop a generous pile of mashed potatoes that one companion considered bland. While butter might have made things more showy, the blood sausage was rich enough, and blander spuds made for better accompaniment (if these mashed potatoes came similarly unenriched with a lighter entrée, there'd be grounds for complaint, but we didn't check it out). Likewise the carmelized apple slices, which were virtually unspiced; cinnamon would have perked them up considerably, but there's a time for perk and a time for direct simplicity. Bourdain's touch was the appropriate one, and I respect his capacity for understatement.
 
It's a pleasure to find a skilled chef with the confidence not to impress with cleverness; who's unafraid to connect points with a straight line (which, of course, requires a deeper and more transparent kind of cleverness). Bourdain could cook smart-alecky if he wanted to -- I'm quite sure of it -- but chooses not to, doubtless from the same maverick attitude that makes his tell-all writings so compelling.
 
While I didn't manage to taste the steak component of steak frites, the fries are among the best in town. They come with a very nice béarnaise sauce which, I must admit, worked better for me than my beloved Belgic mayonnaise.
 
Dessert showed similarly deft treatment. A (delicious) tart was warmed to just the right temperature...which might seem a slight compliment, but that's tricky in a busy place like this. And small details do add up.
 

Full Disclosure: Bourdain is a regular on (and excellent contributor to) this site, and I'm a fan of his writing. We've corresponded via email about doing an interview on-site about his new book. I haven't met him (nor will I -- at least not in person), and I'm pretty sure none of these factors left me predisposed to liking his food.
 
Les Halles is at 411 Park Ave South (@29th); 212-679-4111, and its dinner menu (with links to lunch, dessert, and wine menues) is available online
 

 
Mediocre Pastries and Po
Saturday, May 6
 
 
For breakfast upstate, we picked up a bunch of baked goods from La Tulipe (455 Lexington Ave, Mount Kisco, NY; 914-242-4555). Sticky buns had a really coarse honey flavor that jarred, pain au chocolat sported a gloppy squirt of overly simple chocolate inside a rather heavy croissant, the almond croissant was even heavier...but at least this was a good kind of heavy, and the blueberry-filled doughnut was no good at all. This place can't compare with L'Anjou Patisserie Francaise (130 N Bedford Rd Mount Kisco, NY; 914-242-4929), which beats even La Tulipe in almond croissants, the single thing the latter seems to do well.
 
I trekked back to the city for dinner at Po (31 Cornelia St, Manhattan; 212-645-2189), which I'm like the last guy on Earth to have tried. No surprise that the cooking reminded me a lot of Babbo. In both places recipes are astutely developed and deftly executed, yet nothing evokes Italy for even a nanobite; this is Manhattan Italian (which of course has little to do with Italian-American meatballs 'n red sauce cooking). And Manhattan Italian does have its attractions.
 
I don't want this to read like a diss; I really enjoyed the meal, and some things were memorably good. But I can't get past one thing: this kitchen uses prodigious amounts of oil and salt, and for me to say so really means something, as I am no shrinking violet when it comes to either. The trick to their much-touted white bean bruschetta, for example, is far, far more oil than you'd ever dare to use at home. The salt was equally out of control. But I'll move on....
 
Gnocchi with artichokes sounds like a rather bland combination, but the artichokes mellow the acidity of the tomato sauce, leaving a soft-edged sauce that allows the potato flavor in the gnocchi sing out. Unfortunately, the gnocchi were too fat (thus starchy), and that factor did tip the scale toward pejorative blandness.
 
Baby octopus was nicely crunchy/chewy, and came in a beautiful bed of radicchio with cipolline and crunchy bits of skin (pork? duck? sorry, I didn't have my reviewer hat on, so I wasn't eating particularly analytically). The simplest thing, a plate of linguini with baby clams, was sublime (though, like nearly everything else here, insidiously salty and oily). The clammy brine perked up the pasta, and the mollusks were sweet and extremely intense.
 
Batali's signature white bean ravioli (with balsamic brown butter) were awesome; the filling just sharp enough to make an impact through the soft, tender pasta and the (salty, oily, delicious) drapery of brown butter.
 
Desserts were skippable; grapefruit sorbet might have come from Baskin Robbins, a sweet crepe with goat cheese didn't need the goat cheese but did need to provide some reason for the eater to take a second bite, and a square of chocolate studded with crunchy cake (forgive me for not having noted precise names) didn't thrill, though it was interesting for its close resemblance to the flavor of Jewish marble pound cake (but with proportion of cake and chocolate reversed).
 
Five hours after the meal, I'm gulping down water like a Chevy Nova with a radiator leak, and I think I gained about eight pounds. Well, I can't complain too much when I've eaten this well. But the authentic Italian meals I've enjoyed never left me feeling as though I'd tackled a Szechuan banquet.
 

 
Eating In a Fish Market
Friday, May 5
 
 
I'd been meaning to hit Conte's Fish Market (448 Main Street, Mt. Kisco, NY; 914-666-6929) for the longest time. It's not the best fish market in Mt. Kisco (Mt. Kisco Seafood takes that honor, for far better service and marginally better fish), but it's certainly the best restaurant in a fish market (Mt. Kisco Seafood runs an off-premise restaurant, The Fish Cellar, but reliable reports say that they've never managed to get their act together). We had a pretty great meal, though we were definitely charged for it.
 
They close the place down after hours and transform it into a rollicking (if unluxe) eatery, with fast-paced waitresses and boisterous crowds (they're apparently always full). Appetizer of cold shrimp was the shrug-worthy offering. Crab claws with Dijon dipping sauce were better, but pan fried Chilean sea bass marinated in miso was GREAT. They really laid on the salty/funky miso, and it rocked. Wow.
 
Best of all was a dish of linguini with shrimp and scallops (the menu's only pasta dish). Its lemon/oil sauce was succulent, pasta was perfectly cooked, and the scallops had vast depths of flavor. They weren't consummately tender, but I kind of appreciated being forced to chew and extract every bit of deliciousness. Chilean sea bass with bread crumbs and grapefruit was impeccably fresh and impeccably cooked. Not much in the way of sides, but we never felt lacking. Oh, and the place is bring-you-own.
 
Key lime tarts, made on-premises, are as good as any I've ever had; there was lots of true Key lime flavor, and the crust was nice moist graham cracker crumbs. Other desserts are by La Tulipe (tiramisu looked good but we skipped it), which we'll try for breakfast tomorrow.
 

 
Huge Shopping Mall Upstate
Monday, May 1
 
 
I really dig the Palisade Center, an enormous shopping mall just west of the Tappan Zee Bridge (near Nyack, NY). Don't smirk and dismiss me for having shown my suburbanite Long Island kid colors; a shopping mall needn't be nightmarish (though most, of course, are). And if this mall represents the future of mass consumerism, I'm ok with that.
 
First of all, I must confess that I have a certain insider familiarity with this place because I played a gig here while they were still welding beams and pouring concrete. Both band and audience wore hard hats for the performance, which was a political speech-'n-eat opportunity that felt pretty surrealistic. I still have my hard hat.
 
Anyway, the place looks a lot nicer now. They've designed a mall that's not at all claustrophobic (VERY wide spaces with tons of natural light and no crowding). And they've found a snappy middle ground in renting out the stores Their brand line-up is neither trashily low-brow nor stuffily high-brow, and there are outlets here of some hard-to-find places (Best Buy, Restoration Hardware, The Store of Knowledge, an IMAX theater, Eastern Mountain Sports, and a VERY cool store selling all the gizmos advertised on late night TV -- I bought a Ginsu Bagel Cutting Device and some AMBERVISION clip-on shades). Maybe it's just my taste, but if I'm going to delve into the muck of corporate retail, I consider these kinds of places best of type. And anywhere there's a Sharper Image, I can be counted on to monopolize the $3000 massage chair until the remote control is pried from my fingers.
 
The food court itself is a veritable sea of inedibility, but there are some interesting spots scattered elsewhere around the mall. Macaroni Grill (a particular rarity) may have manipulatively corporate decor, but even manipulatively corporate has its pleasures. Their design is striking (yes, we're in a whole new era if a mall franchise eatery can be described as "striking", but that's truly what it is), and I've heard the food's actually good [WRONG!!! See entry for 5/23, above].
 
The chow looked pretty deadly at Dave and Buster's, but their huge Atlantic City casino style game room has skee bowl (skee bowl!!), laser tag, an amazing video game called Brave Firefighters where you douse blazes with a fire hose, an old fashioned shooting gallery, and a huge handsome bar right in the middle (well-stocked with several Brooklyn beers). They also have a very attractive old-time pool room featuring one of those long, long tabletop shuffleboard games. No "Whack the Mayor", though, alas (see my October 28 entry).
 
I'd heard cool things about Rainforest Cafe and it was truly cool. It's the kind of theme joint that you're positive you'll despise, but I was won over. It's REALLY well done. You are in a steaming jungle, with elephants trumpeting, drums beating spicy rhythms, and decor that requires surprisingly little suspension of disbelief.
 
We were lucky: as we arrived, they were bringing out the resident (real live) parrots, and a fellow dressed in park ranger khakis gave an off-the-cuff demonstration/lecture about the birds. He was terrific, as were the birds. We stuck around for half an hour, as the parrots screamed and generally proved themselves startlingly sentient wise guys. Then we dove for cover as a storm broke inside the restaurant.
 
The lights dimmed, thunder crashed, and the all-prevalent steam turned to torrent. We huddled for shelter in the bar -- on stools that looked like zebras and giraffes -- where we drank good fresh-squeezed juices and confronted menus that seemed impossibly ambitious. "What do you have that someone over the age of 14 might enjoy?" we asked our ranger/waiter, who recommended a "Rasta Pasta" dish that had about six hundred ingredients. We also had a stir fry (only two hundred ingredients, unfortunately featuring hoisen sauce -- which, The Creators of this menu apparently failed to grok, is not like the smartest base for a stir fry of chicken and shrimp) and pot stickers.
 
What can I say. Nothing was by any means delicious; everything was too sweet and somehow managed to taste dull in spite of being way way way too complicated. I actually suspect the less complex dishes are worse; the cumulative buzz of all these ingredients is counted on to fill in for actual preparation talent. My ordering advice: keep it complicated.
 
I realize that I'm spoiled, enjoying as I do the very best and most evocative chow. But the shopping mall crowd never had it this good. For American corporate food dreamt up by consultants 1500 miles away, executed by bored $12 an hour local dudes and eaten between Talbot's and Staples, this is a four-star repast. And, seriously, an awful lot of fun. The pot stickers -- sweet and coated with goopy sauce -- were actually pretty good in their way, and both pasta and stir fry were survivable. Everything we ate was entirely un-evil (if generally un-yummy), and the Disneyworldish jungle vibe was entirely uncheesy, and the parrot guy was entirely unjaded. I do feel guilty saying so, but I had FUN, and didn't have to fall into Mall Mind to do so.
 
One more thing: I had an awesomely delicious blueberry lemonade at a stand called Mr. Smoothie". They hand squeeze fresh lemons (beautifully fresh and plump), and blend with fresh berries. Not too sweet, and no phony touches.
 

 
- - -
 
Previous Dinners
Follow along and see where else I've been by clicking a link below:  
 
April 2000
 
 
March 2000
 
 
February 2000
 
 
January 2000
 
 
December 1999
 
 
November 1999
 
 
October 1999
 
 
August through September 1999
 
 
February through March 1999
 
 
October and November 1998
 
 
June through July 1998
 
 
January 1998
 
 
The Sarcophagus of Really Old (But Not Forgotten) Dinners