_______’s General Store

Out of respect for the proprietor’s hatred of publicity, I will refrain from dropping his name in this post. Just know that eating at this restaurant is probably one of the most sincere experiences you will ever have in New York City. This guy just does not give a shit, and that is something I can really get down with.

Last month, I had the pleasure of eating there with Chris and my friend Parvoneh. The fact that they were both tourists was a good enough excuse to do crazy shit like wait in an hour-long line for brunch. The wait felt so long that when someone asked me what I was waiting for I forgot for a second. Totally worth it though, and here’s why:

CHEESEBURGER SOUP!

EGGS, BARBEQUE PULLED PORK, TOAST AND MACARONI AND CHEESE!

VEGAN SAUSAGE!

MACARONI AND CHEESE AND BLACKBERRY PANCAKES!

A HUGEASS PUMPKIN SHAKE!

Bam, motherfucker.

What the hell are garlic scapes?

Guess what I found at the Union Square Greenmarket for a dollar this past Saturday?  I know, a bunch of other food bloggers and publications have probably already jumped all over these, but I doubt many non-food nerds have ever actually interacted with scapes.  You know how green onions are mostly onion shoots?  Well, garlic scapes follow pretty much the same principle, though it seems that they’re still a very seasonal vegetable.  The taste is garlicky throughout, but is obviously much, much mellower than the bulb.

You can do pretty much anything with these, but I’ve heard garlic scape pesto being bandied about a lot on these here internets, so maybe that’s the way to go.  These looked too much like alien tentacles for me to demolish them in a food processor, so I sauteed them with some leeks and lobster and put it over linguini.  I usually don’t combine garlic with lobster, but the scapes’ taste was so subtle that it really didn’t overpower the lobster flavor at all (which is saying a lot, because I used a not-too-flavorful 6-pounder that was left over from our July 4 dinner).

The NYC Foodie Roundup!

Dear Reader,

 

This winter break I’ve been kind of sluggish with updates, and for that I apologize.  As thanks for your patience, I’ll be presenting my one-day guide to getting the best and cheapest food in New York City, which is fast becoming a modern city in its own right — we’ve finally built our first public bathroom that isn’t in a Starbuck’s today!  I visited the majority of these places multiple times in the past, though the pictures were taken today as I was taking my friend Travis (of the Lone Star State) out and about the city.  Are you ready to feast your eyes on this?

 

Too late, you’re already dead!!

 

Fish & Chips from A Salt & Battery

DC FUCKING SUCKS (in terms of the culinary scene… and also everything else). So, a retrospective!

When Harry Potter 7 came out, I thought, ‘I’ve gotta do this shit right!’ I hopped onto the F train and got off at 14th & 6th, just as it was getting dark and the only people on the street were homeless folk and yuppies. A week ago, Natalie and I had been idly watching Throwdown with Bobby Flay when it dawned on us that the featured chef — who, by the way, kicked that fancypants blue cornball’s ass — worked in Greenwich Village! Late to the party as usual, we resolved to undertake the A Salt & Battery experience ourselves.

True to form, I went without her. I was foolish, impatient, proud! I had to have them. When I finally got home, white paper bag in hand, the fish had cooled somewhat and the chips had gone limp. Even so, my first bite of fish tasted the way Mario’s first bite of a 1up mushroom must have. Sexcellent.

Everything tasted fresh and handmade, except for the fish because you can’t really make a fish by hand. The chips alone were a revelation. I realized that I had become far too complacent eating frozen French fries. They were also quite dangerous as well: I almost choked on one when I found out that Hermione was a dude/Hagrid died/Harry’s pet hamster got the clap. Congratulations fish and chips, for you are delicious!

A Salt & Battery (112 Greenwich Ave., New York, NY 10011)

I almost tripped down the stairs at Per Se.

I’m going to have to put the Vietnam-related posts on hold because I FUCKING WENT TO PER SE FOR DINNER TONIGHT HOLY FUCKING SHIT!!At the moment, I am incredibly drunk, but I am writing this post now while my memory is fresh so that you can read my drunken ramblings. While normally one has to make reservations far in advance, my mom lucked out on OpenTable.com and discovered an open reservation for 9:45pm tonight. She gave me this wild look and asked, “Are you game, Vy? ARE YOU GAME??” On the way there, it felt like I was going to like, the fucking prom. It felt like one of those monumental benchmarks of adulthood, like getting a driver’s license, but much, much more hoity toity.

At the restaurant, it felt like, I don’t know, like we had snuck into someplace where we weren’t allowed to be. The dining room was full of WASPs in tacky evening wear and I was wearing a frighteningly multicolored sweatervest. We ordered cocktails and waited for Keller’s first attack. By my third sip, I was wasted.

First, gougeres! The little fuckers were like horribly savory Cocoa Puffs; they melted in my mouth wonderfully. Cheese balls never fail to impress. NEVER!!

Following that were these crazy salmon ice cream cones which were just salmon tartare scooped on top of a dhosa-like sesame seed cone. Those were pretty good; they really reminded me of frostbitten Norway for some reason.

Keller’s signature oysters and pearls, a bang-up-the-ass fiesta of caviar, pearl tapioca and Malpeque oysters, was ridiculous, in the way that dropping LSD at the Cirque du Soleil is ridiculous. (Especially Varekai, holy shit.) As I spooned it, bit-by-bit, into my mouth, I couldn’t say anything. I just sat there, going quietly insane.

Okay, this is getting really hard. They kept plying me with wine and now I’m feeling it quite acutely. If you want to see more photos, look here, alright? So I was telling our waiter, who was a stand-up chap, that I was also a waiter back in Iowa, and my mom followed that up by letting him know that I bullshit a lot on the job. For example, she told him, whenever customers ask me to recommend wines to go with their meals, I make shit up. And somehow, they’re satisfied when I ask them about it later! So as our waiter pours my next glass of wine, he spins this crazy tale about how it’s made from grapes grown by a volcano in Italy, and that it’s the oldest sort of wine in the world. And apparently it was mentioned in The Odyssey in relation to a cyclops. So I said, “Dude, the beautiful thing is that you could have made all of that up and I’d have no idea.”

As dinner wore on, I got drunker and drunker and drunker; and subsequently, exponentially more profane. When our waiter unveiled the ultimate, 15th course, I blurted, “JESUS CHRIST!” He looked behind him and he and the other server laughed as if they were suddenly confronted with a 5-year old who has pooped itself. Then I started telling everyone stories about how everyone in the restaurant business smokes weed and/or crack. As we left the restaurant, I noticed that I had innumerable stains of strawberry consomme on my shirt. Distracted, I studied them thoroughly and almost tripped down the stairs at motherfucking Per Se.

Go! Go! Curry! I’m on fire!!

To put it bluntly, Midtown Manhattan is a barren wasteland when it comes to casual cuisine. There are the standard delis — either overpriced and “gourmet” or cheap with the strong odor of cigarettes and cooking oil — and a smattering of fast food joints. As a result, exploring the terrain to find good food has become a major part of my lunch break. And as an intern, I get TEN WHOLE DOLLARS to spend on lunch every day! Oh joy!

My favorite place to eat at the moment is Go Go Curry, a baseball-themed Japanese curry joint on 38th St. When I first ate there, I wasn’t feeling very adventurous… so I got a chicken cutlet over curry, single-sized. Oh yeah, so this place is sort of like Starbuck’s in that they use their own size classifications: from smallest to largest, you can get either a walk, a single, a double, or a triple. A Grand Slam is a katsu (pork) curry with a whole bunch of toppings on it. Kind of Denny’s, isn’t it?

In the store is a plasma TV that loops clips of rice farming, aerobics and the Go! Go! Curry theme song. THIS RESTAURANT HAS A THEME SONG! It was just some sugary denpa nonsense, but the novelty of it was appreciated by this blogger. Suck on that, Guy & Gallard! Maybe if you fucks had your own theme song I’d actually pay $2 for a bagel!

Empanadas

The empanadas at Ruben’s Empanadas are perfect for hangovers. I think I’ll leave that as both a recommendation and an explanation for the lack of updates this weekend.

This food brings me back to my inner-city youth, it does. When I worked in my mom’s boutique in Williamsburg back in high school, a certain empanada salesman would come in every day at around 4:00pm. He gave me three choices among the veritable empanada medley in his Igloo cooler: chicken, beef, or cheese; each a dollar fifty. Without fail, I would choose the cheese option (since I was a vegetarian then) and he would say, “You sure you don’t want beef?” Why beef? If someone’s really pushing the beef option, it seems kind of suspicious.

Eventually, he stopped coming around and eventually my mom’s business went under thanks to her partner’s unethical business practices. I graduated from empanadas and moved onto octopus balls. But that’s for another update.