new york glimpses: farm-fresh

If you were worried that our week in New York left us starved for the bountiful Portland markets, you can rest safely assured that we did manage to find some good farm-to-table meals. While it might be hard to imagine that such a bustling metropolis leaves much room for agriculture, New York has a surprisingly vibrant farm-fresh community. Let's not forget that NYC does play home to urban CSAs, a thriving Greenmarket network, two Edible publications, and Slow Food USA's national office. We made an effort to see it all.

A lot of the sustainable food efforts begin in Brooklyn (space is, afterall, a bit more available than in Manhattan). Just a week before we arrived, the first-ever Brooklyn Food Conference drew food movement heavyweights to discuss social equity and local food access. And a week after our return, I read about a rooftop farm in industrial Greenpoint that's beginning to supply local cafes. Good things are growing.

Off a side street in Williamsburg, egg is dishing up simple, farm-fresh meals in a bright and spare space that belies its hearty Southern appetite. With crayons on the tables and groggy, bleary-eyed hipsters waiting on the sidewalk, we should have known to expect some serious hangover-busting vittles. To share, we ordered a serving of the house-made sorghum granola (a breakfast appetizer?), while A chose the biscuit sandwich and I went for the "Eggs Rothko." What a glorious mistake. Of course it was too much food, but at least it was too much delicious food. A's sandwich split a crisp, craggy biscuit to contain a mound of fried country ham, fig jam and farmhouse cheddar. My Eggs Rothko took a spin on a classic egg-in-a-basket by cooking an egg inside a thick slab of brioche, then broiling it all beneath a generous heaping of grated cheese. Taken with a forkful of country ham shavings and broiled tomatoes, every bite was a toothsome wonder.


We enjoyed our meal in the scant shelter of a small front patio, bordered by a miniature vegetable garden. To supplement their adorable street-side tomato planter, the chefs of egg have started a farm in the Catskills, which they document on their simple and engaging blog. Any size garden is an exercise in humility, but for a restaurant, it also offers a hearty dose of empathy with your suppliers.

That same in-house commitment to ingredients and artisan labor informs the staff at Diner, along with their sister restaurants Marlow & Sons and Bonita. We've written before about the Diner family of restaurants and our huge crush on their work, which ranges from in-house butchering to an awesome food journal. Well, after a long time of ogling from afar, we finally had a chance to taste their cooking. Now A and I don't cook meat all too often (even though we still have two hens and 20 lbs of pork in our freezer), but we do like to sometimes order it out if we trust the source. Given the fact that Diner buys whole-animals from local farmers and breaks them down to their chef's specifications, there was no way we were going to miss the meat when we stopped by Bonita early in the week. I had a trio of killer steak tacos, while A went for a deliciously juicy pork burrito. It was worth the wait.


A few days later, after a morning of sustainable food gab with the gracious staff at Slow Food USA, we made our way over to the train-car diner named Diner for an early lunch. The interior was bright and quiet on a weekday morning and charmingly worn-down, with old tile floors and wooden booths. A immediately zeroed in on a bowl of mussels swimming in a tomatillo and green onion broth (with a hearty helping of thick-cut fries, of course), while I ordered Diner's tomato-based risotto with housemade sausage. Both dishes were tangy and savory and completely comforting for a cool, overcast day.


Just around the corner from Diner, Marlow & Sons vends local artisan products from a specialized grocery store/oyster bar. Had we not just eaten, we probably would have grabbed a stool for some local half-shells, but as it was, we contented ourselves by purchasing a food literary magazine and a collection of local chocolates.

We were bolstered to see (and sample) so many restaurants that were emphasizing local sourcing and old-school skills, yet one establishment puts them all to shame: Blue Hill. After last year's Slow Food Nation, A and I started nursing a longtime, big-time chef crush on Dan Barber. Apparently, we weren't alone. Just a few nights prior to our reservation, the Obamas chose it for their NYC date night, garnering some big points for supporting sustainable ag in the process. You see, Blue Hill isn't just any restaurant; it's not even just any restaurant with it's own farm. It is a restaurant with a fully-fledged agricultural education center. A few years after founding Blue Hill on a side street near NYU, Dan Barber connected with the Rockefeller family to open the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, just 30 miles up the Hudson River Valley. The center runs tours and classes about four-season agriculture and livestock husbandry, while also playing home to a very farm-focused, on-site restaurant.

As much as we wanted to visit the farm, we didn't exactly want to hitchhike out to Stone Barns, so we decided to stay in town and visit the Greenwich Village restaurant. We were seated on the back patio, which has the quiet feeling of an urban greenhouse. From the moment we sat down, we knew this meal would be unique. Before we'd even ordered, our server presented us with a row of diminutive, raw vegetables suspended on a small fence of skewers. This was immediately followed by homemade butter and lardo, paired with kale- and carrot-scented salts, and two adorable asparagus "burgers" on tiny brioche buns. Currently, a lot of chefs are getting awfully coy and playful with their amuses bouches, but something about Blue Hill's approach made it clear that these starters really were an introduction to the restaurant's farm-centric philosophy. They aren't just little foodie jokes, each bite is a primer for the simple, distinct flavors to follow.



I could truly write a lot about this meal, but I'll try to just outline what A and I shared. I ordered:

Spring vegetable salad with pistachio and homemade chevre
Cobia (a firm whitefish) with ramps and prosciutto-wrapped asparagus in a pistachio-caper sauce

Steamed almond "bread" with citrus

A chose the "Farmer's Feast" tasting menu, which included:

Soft-shell crabs with rhubarb and spring lettuce salad
Poached egg in spring greens puree
Berkshire pig with burdock root and rhubarb
Chilled rhubarb soup with fromage blanc sorbet

Hazelnut Parfait with chocolate rice crispy and chocolate sauce

Everything was phenomenally fresh and displayed a complete devotion to the essence of each vegetable. Every individual component of the composed salad we shared was prepared to best show-off its flavor; some were crisp and raw, others were lightly blanched, while still other ingredients were lightly marinated. I've never had a meal that tasted to simply, so clearly of the fresh produce it used. And I can think of no higher compliment for what Blue Hill is trying to do.

new york glimpses: on the move

Chalk this one up as a victory for Portland: our food cart scene puts New York to shame. True, it's a city of 12 million people and probably 1 million food carts, but most vendors don't venture much beyond the hot nuts/soft pretzels/hot dogs triumvirate. Meanwhile, in our Portland neighborhood alone, there is a waffle taco cart, an ice cream and pancake cart, a grilled cheese bus, and a retro trailer slinging baked goods and juices. In every neighborhood, food carts circle their wagons on overgrown lots and in empty parking spaces, creating an impromptu culture of makeshift cafes. Now, that's not to say that New York doesn't have any good cart food - they do have their own awards ceremony, after all - just that they're a lot more mobile than their Portland brethren, making them harder to track down.

On our first day in town, we went with our friend Hannah down to the weekly vintage bazaar called the Brooklyn Flea. Yes, we did want to check out the mid-century baubles and funky thrift-store clothes, but we knew we wouldn't be lugging home a suitcase full of Fiestaware; we came for the food. After we returned from last year's adventure to Red Hook, we heard tell of some amazing Central American cooks grilling up food for the neighborhood's weekend ballgames. While we didn't venture to Red Hook again, the Red Hook Ball Field Vendors made the trip up to Fort Greene for the Flea. We zeroed in on their stand and ordered a bean-and-cheese pupusa, along with a sweet corn tamale. The pupusa was crisply grilled on the outside and was filled with a savory melted cheese that tasted delicious with the pickled cabbage and hot sauce mounded on top. The tamale was unlike any other we'd ever tried: it had no filling inside the soft, steamed masa, but tasted exactly like a meltingly sweet ear of mid-summer corn.


Keeping with the stuffed-and-filled theme, we queued up for two other flea market street vendors. First up was Elsa's Empanadas, where we quickly downed an order of spinach, cheese and raisin handpies. They were nice and flaky and the filling had the right balance of tangy and sweet. Tantalizingly, the Empanada stand was right next to Asia Dog, but A steered me away from a kimchi-garnished hot dog and over to dessert.

Salvatore Bklyn does handmade ricotta with hipster street cred. What caught our notice were their hand-stuffed cannoli. I have a real weakness for cannoli - we've even made them ourselves once, which entailed no small amount of deep-frying and pastry bags. Best to leave it to the experts. And these were certainly expert, with the right amount of outside crunch and a lightly sweetened, curd-y filling. The more I consider it, the more that I realize that stuffed foods are pretty much made for street carts. Well, those and foods-on-sticks. But as far as portable edibles go, it's hard to beat a cannolo.


From then on, our mobile eating stayed on a decidedly sweet note. Walking down Bedford Ave. in Williamsburg, A nearly shrieked when she saw a buttermilk-colored truck passing our dishes of small-batch ice cream. Van Leeuwen ice cream uses simple ingredients to craft simple flavors. With our friend Hannah, we ordered a peppermint-chocolate chip scoop and a dish of red currant and cream. Both flavors had a fresh creaminess, despite being custard-based, but the currant ice cream was particularly memorable for its balance between tangy fruit and sweet milk.


The next evening, after making dinner with our friends Catherine and Quincy, we were struck by two realizations: we hadn't bought dessert, and we were just a few blocks from Dessert Truck's late-night parking grounds. You might recall our nighttime sugar-fix from last-year's visit, but if not, I should fill you in: Dessert Truck sells haute cuisine desserts in paper cups for six bucks. It's a brilliant business plan. On this visit, A ordered a goat cheese cake, while I opted for the pavlova. Individually, the components of the pavlova (crisp meringue, red fruit gelee, creme fraiche) were spot-on, but for some reason, they just didn't quite jive. I'm sure some of it had to do with the difficulty of breaking a meringue with a plastic spoon. That said, A's cheesecake choice more than made up for mine: a few blackberries and a drizzle of rosemary-scented caramel were a great accompaniment to the rich cake. This is one we might have to work on re-creating at home.


After a few days of going without a mobile-food-fix, Hannah informed us of a weekly fixture just around the corner from her midtown workplace: the Treats Truck. Late one afternoon, we strolled up Lexington to where it was parked, only to be generously barraged by samples. Normally, I take a free taste (and I think most people are like me on this matter) and walk away thinking, "Sucker...you didn't trick me into buying anything!" But hell, the Treats Truck proprietess more than tricked us; she up-sold us two brownies, when we'd only meant to get a double-peanut-butter sandwich cookie. I have to hand it to her, though - she knows her product. The PB cookie was really good, but imagine downing an entire box of Girl Scout Tagalongs, and you'll begin to get a sense of its mouth-parching stickiness. We also enjoyed our Mexican chocolate brownie, which tasted more of Ibarra hot chocolate than the overly-infused chile concoctions everyone else seems to love. Of everything we ordered, though, the pecan butterscotch bar ranks among the most addictive desserts I've ever had; it was decadently sweet and sticky in that slightly under-baked way. With sweets this good, I suppose I could be okay with having to follow a moving target.

new york glimpses: written city

For an amateur type-geek, New York is a veritable specimen book of fantastically quirky found signage and lettering. There are literally entire city-blocks worth of hand-lettered signs, molded plastic type, painted announcements, and bizarrely expressive awnings. If it weren't for my overwhelming fear of looking like a tourist, I would have been walking the streets with my camera out, wildly snapping photos of every storefront we passed.

I did still manage to take a few pictures of some of the awesome vernacular type I saw on our trip, mostly in Coney Island. To be honest, that was my main impulse for heading down to the boardwalk; Coney is like a musty old collector's basement full of ephemera. The beachfront is a collision of arcade neon and hand-painted, hyperbolic side-show banners. And it sadly won't be around for much longer before it begins to look like an Atlantic City resort. I try to imagine if Coney ever looked classy, or if it always just felt like a bit of working class exoticism. Either way, it has a uniquely nostalgic feeling that I hope they can preserve.

On that note, here's a little photographic interlude between our food-fueled travel stories:



If this slideshow was a little heavy on design and a bit light on edibles, you can always see the rest of our photos here.

new york glimpses: easy-bake

As long as we're at the beginning, we might as well start with breakfast. Easily, one of the best aspects of staying with friends in the city was that we could get an early start to try a different bakery nearly every day. We've written about our wishy-washy indifference to brunch before, but baked goods we heartily support.

So as soon as we had a morning in the Lower East Side, we made a return pilgrimage to Doughnut Plant to see if it matched our sugar-coated memories from last year. Since their flavors rotate seasonally, we snagged two new creations - a creme brulée doughnut and a rose petal one - along with a classic "Blackout." Excellent doughnuts, terrible coffee. But, oh, how those pastries tasted! The creme brulée was a tall dome, glazed with a hard sugar crust and filled with a light, eggy custard. While it was good (though no comparison to it's namesake dessert), I preferred the rose petal doughnut and the heady perfume that came through in each bite of its glazed exterior. The verdict, however, relied upon the Blackout, which won us over to doughnuts when we first tried it last year. In every way, its dense, gooey, chocolate crumb held up to our memories. We spent a good 20 minutes reasoning out how they could possibly make a doughnut taste so much like flourless chocolate cake. We may never know.


As we left Doughnut Plant, I looked up at the neighboring storefront to see a sign for Kossar's Bialys. I remembered the name from Mimi Sheraton's poignant (downright sad if you're the type to cry over a food book) The Bialy Eaters, and knew that we had to stop in for a second breakfast. According to Sheraton, Kossar's is among the last places in America where you can find a decent bialy, so we selected two of their garlic versions (along with some more "nouvelle," though delicious, challah bagels). Kin to the bagel, bialys are a bit flatter and have a rougher crust and a shallow depression in the center. While bagels gain their glossy exterior from a pre-bake dip in boiling water, bialys are simply put in the oven, as-is. Nestled in its dimple, the Kossar's bialy had a smear of salty, poppy-seed studded garlic mince that made the roll absolutely addictive. With the experience of Kossar's under my belt, I can say that until now I have tasted some sorry bialy impostors.


Later in the week, we continued our search for early-morning, Yiddish baked goods; next on our list was Yonah Schimmel's Knishery. While A and I have commendable appetites, we very well may have met our match in the knish. I have to admit that prior to Schimmel's, I was as unfamiliar with a knish as most gentiles. Helpfully, Edible Manhattan just ran an article on the endangered knish - that lost icon of New York cuisine - which sheds some light on this overlooked pastry. A classic knish is composed of an imposing mound of seasoned, mashed potatoes, which is wrapped with a pastry band and baked to steaming perfection. It easily weighed a pound and even split between the two of us, that thing was a struggle to complete. That's not to say it wasn't a savory delight, particularly with a dab of deli mustard.


The further along we went in our breakfast escapades, the larger our pastry discoveries seemed to grow. On our last day in the city, our friends Macy and Annie took us to Carrot Top Pastries to witness some terrifyingly-large croissants (frisbee-sized!) and the squarest muffins I've ever seen. We smartly steered away from the croissants and ordered their signature carrot muffin, with heaping tops spilling over the lip of the muffin pan. Like a moist, lightly-spiced slab of carrot cake, the muffin was a meal unto itself and went great with some pretty decent diner coffee.


Finally, our stomachs led us to Momofuku Milk Bar later that afternoon. While not technically breakfast (I'm not sure you could confidently call any of Milk Bar's offerings the best start to your day), there were early-morning staples peppered throughout a menu of decadent sweets. A branch of the David Chang's coyly inventive Momofuku mini-empire, Milk Bar was set up to showcase the creations of pastry chef Christina Tosi, who was profiled as a bit of a sugar-coated evil genius by the New York Times. In a crowded, standing-room-only space, they serve up compost cookies, crack pie, candy-infused soft-serve, and their infamous cereal milk - the infused leftovers of a bowl of soggy cereal. If we weren't down to our last few hours on the trip (and their food weren't so damn filling), we could have easily committed ourselves to slowly working our way through their Wonka-esque array of surreal sweets.


As it was, we sampled the sour gummy soft-serve (which won that hilarious remark, "It really does taste like sour gummies!") and order a serving of chocolate mint ice cream, an English muffin sandwich, a loaf of green-curry banana bread (for the plane!) and something called, "The Volcano." The soft-serve was redolent of Thin Mints and incredibly satisfying. A's English muffin cradled a poached egg, bacon and meltingly sweet onions, while my "Volcano" seemed to include a little of everything. Bacon, braised onions, gruyere, cream, potatoes were held inside of what resembled a sourdough bread bowl. Think of it as a neo-knish, stuffed with scalloped potatoes. Of course, we enjoyed everything with the ubiquitous bottles of sriracha sauce at each counter. It's really no wonder we had such stomachaches for the flight home.

new york glimpses: city living

Well, we're back at home and (mostly) caught up. We're also (mostly) recovered from all of the eating and drinking we packed into our week in New York. It's been slow getting this first post up, but that is largely because this trip was so different from the last time we visited the city. Though it also might have something to do with how lethargic we've been with all of that extra food in our system.

When we went last year, we stayed with my uncles in Jersey, just outside of the city. Their home was lovely and they couldn't have been more gracious hosts, but when a few of our friends recently moved into the city proper, we knew we couldn't turn down the offer to crash on their hide-a-beds. Anyone who knows us has heard how we prefer incognito tourism on vacation, so spending all of our time in the city let us indulge our penchant for "playing local."

I'm sure that our perennially-patient NY friends will roll their eyes and sigh at this one, but we really did feel like our trip was much closer to day-to-day life (if you didn't work) than our usual tourist blitz. I mean, we actually saw other people, and largely tried to keep our full meals to only 3-per-day. We even visited a lot of local grocery stores, though I guess that's pretty typical of our travel M.O.

Eschewing sightseeing in favor of everyday living made our trip unique; it was genuinely interesting to take stock of how our friends live and to transpose our lifestyle onto New York, imagining how we might adapt to life there. We spent a lot of our trip discretely looking for local iterations of the most important parts of our life (farms, markets, cooking shops), as well as seeking out the amenities we lack in Portland (first-class museums, new ethnic foods). In the process, we also noticed the absence of certain things that characterize our experience of Portland - easy bicycling, for one. Yeah, A and I both might walk faster than the average Portlander, but there is something to be said for Stumptown's quiet, unassuming pace-of-life.

Happily, our friends Catherine and Quincy offered an encouraging example of New York living. They had homemade stock in the fridge, dried beans in the pantry, and compost beneath the sink. When they looked in their fridge, they likely just saw the humor of trying to live the life they do in a cramped, walk-up, East Village apartment, but we saw simplicity.

Oddly, when we look back on our trip, our rose-colored visions of a dream life in New York all center on getting back to essentials. Ever since early this year, A and I have both had simplicity on the mind and have (ineffectively) dreamed of paring down our possessions. Now that we're back, we'll turn to one another and wistfully muse on our "simple" life in New York. "We'd only bring the essentials," we say, "who needs all of this extra closet space? Imagine how much free time we'd have to read and relax if we could just start over without all of these obligations to friends and volunteer commitments..." Ha. I can't imagine that "simplicity" ranks very highly on many people's reasons for moving to New York. This puts us squarely in the "idealistic dork" category.


Regardless of our naivete, it was still fun to act out local life for a week. Of everything we saw (and ate) in the city, there were two particular breakfasts that probably best encapsulated all of the quotidian romance of our New-York-living fantasy. For A, it was our early morning visit to Saxelby Cheese in the Essex Street Market. Purchasing a pint of Amish farmstead yogurt just might have made the entire trip for her. I could see the gleam in her eye as she imagined her daily trip to the fromager for a plougman's lunch of cheese and bread.


Now, as for myself, I was taken with the same place that entranced me last year: Russ & Daughters Appetizers. Brimming with unique foods and buzzing with old-world knowledge and class, this place epitomizes New York food to me. Whenever I walk in, I dream of incrementally working my way through their cases of smoked fish. Think of it: me, a modern-day Calvin Trillin, noshing my way down Houston Street. I could easily live on their smoked sturgeon alone.

But taken together, these reveries are all part of that soft-focus idealism that comes with travel (like the allure of Cleveland in 30 Rock). There's always that moment when you want to pack it all up and start a new life in an adopted hometown. It wouldn't be a good trip without it.

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Instead of our usual day-by-day breakdown, for the rest of our posts on our trip, we'll be writing up themed impressions of our best finds in the city. Hopefully it ends up being a little more engaging than a slide-by-slide narration of the museums we visited. Or, I should say, the foods we sampled.

Right upon our return, we came across a broadcast of KCRW's Good Food, which toured New York, visiting many of our favorite places (and giving us a few ideas for our next trip). It's a consistently great radio show, and this episode, in particular, is worth a listen.

new york bound

Christoph Niemann contributes to an illustrated blog in the New York Times called "Abstract City." Earlier this year, the rooted through his kids' legos to construct his quintessential New York experience. These were two of my favorites:



With that, we're off to New York for a week for a hardscrabble week of five meals a day and little else. When we return, you can expect stories of Russian Jews, cookbook stores, upstate farm cuisine, and more doughnuts.

sons & daughters

The last time we visited New York, we had wanted to stop into a small cafe and grocer called Marlow & Sons, but never made it. I guess it proved more difficult than we thought to squeeze in five or six meals each day. Now that we're headed back at the end of May, it's at the top of our list. Scrappy, bearded, and a little old-fashioned, this place totally embodies the great things happening right now in the Brooklyn food scene (just recently written up in the New York Times).

I was just talking with a friend who used to live in Brooklyn and her opinion was that the food producers were the only thing keeping Williamsburg honest. I think that's probably a pretty fair call - the brewers and picklers and chocolate makers are all crafting something really genuine, right in the middle of a lot of artificiality and gentrification. And they're forging a community that feels different from anywhere else I can think of.

With all of the farm-love and artisan processes, you could have replaced "Brooklyn" with "Portland" and left the rest of the New York Times article pretty much the same (sometimes it feels like we live in the 6th Borough). Still, I can't help but feel like Portland, for all of its raw ingredients, could really use to step up its game. And Marlow & Sons is a perfect example of how strong our food shops could be.

I first came across the restaurant through the snarky, foul-mouthed blog run by their butcher, Tom Mylan. Marlow & Sons is connected to two other places - Diner and Bonita - which realized that, together, they could get better-quality, farm-direct meat and have more control over cuts by breaking their animals down in-house. So Mylan apprenticed himself to some upstate butchers and learned the trade. That was enough to get me interested in what they were doing.

From there, I found out about Mylan's role in the UnFancy Food Show, which acts as an antidote to the bloated annual Fancy Food trade show. Instead of featuring high-dollar booths hawking goji berry power bars, the UnFancy party invited a slew of local artisans to share their handmade foods. Among the participants was The Diner Journal, a food lit-mag published by the Marlow & Sons owners. Sort of like a low-budget Gastronomica, the Journal approaches food from a very different direction than your standard 15-minute-meals-and-travel-porn food magazine. In the last issue, one of their editors painstakingly detailed every step and utensil involved in one of Elizabeth David's famously terse recipes. A ten-page essay written on a single paragraph of instructions - the sort of writing that gets you thinking about food.

As for the restaurant itself, Saveur just featured Marlow & Sons in their latest issue, with some great pictures of the oyster-bar/grocery store. Based on our experience this week with the chocolate caramel tart recipe, there is no way we'll miss them this trip. But when we finally visit, we'll also have to make a detour up the street to visit their newest venture.

After beginning a butchering program, it was only a matter of time until the owners would go and start up an old-school meat shop. Now open for business, Marlow & Daughters was just featured in a nice little video from Coolhunting. And that video is what kicked off this post, making this the most circuitous lead-in ever to a 3-minute clip. Watching it made me want to carve a steer, but then I remembered the remaining 1/4 hog we have in our chest freezer and thought better of it.



(Coolhunting regularly posts fantastic video profiles - just take a look at this feature on another "UnFancy" Brooklyn-based kitchen business: knives from Cut Brooklyn)

chef crush

I love Dan Barber and I don't care who knows it. Maybe I identify with something about his geeky demeanor, but I swear, the guy could put dirt on a plate and I'd probably think it was clever cooking. A, loving wife that she is, is indulgent (and I have a hunch she finds him pretty cool, too). I think it probably all started with this story about a girl he once dated:



Or maybe it began with seeing him at Slow Food Nation when he recounted his visit to a Spanish farmer who raises "natural" foie gras geese without the use of gauvage (watch this video of the same speech at a different conference).

Then again, my fascination could have stemmed from this review of a dinner at his restaurant, Blue Hill at Stone Barns, which claimed the breathtakingly fresh courses made it the "most important Restaurant in America."

Actually, it could just be his dedication to forging a new relationship between farmers and chefs. As the Creative Director for the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, Barber helps guide the educational efforts on the working farm that supplies the majority of produce to his two restaurants. Not only that, but one of his restaurants is directly on the farm, allowing his chefs to pick their own greens and work directly with the animal husbands. The Blue Hill website features video profiles of some of their providers and the story of Barber's efforts to restore his family's farm.

And he's an keen thinker and polished writer, to boot.

Cooking is just about the most macho thing I do. In spite of being a pretty slight, geeky guy, I'm still drawn to the knives and heat and swagger of the kitchen. That's not to say I'm running six flame burners at home every night, just that kitchen manliness is one of the few places I'll throw down and jump at the chance to consult on grilling or carve something with a big knife. (Truth be told, I've got some chef crushes on the ladies, too.)

Still, I'm probably not kidding anyone with my kitchen posturing. And I think that is what attracts me to Barber's cooking - there is an intellect behind his efforts and something very gentle about what he's doing with food. At the Stone Barns Restaurant, there are two menu choices: five-course or more courses. In place of a list of dishes, they offer a chart of what is in season, from which the chefs will create the nightly meals. The results, from what I've seen and read, are really stunning, like this salad of a hazelnut-crusted poached egg with matsutake mushrooms, pistachios and garden gazpacho:


For a sense of the kinds of simple, clear flavors Barber coaxes out of his ingredients, just have a look at this fennel soup from New York Magazine. Now we only need to figure out how to get up the Hudson Valley the next time we visit New York...

the city that never sleeps is always eating, the last meals

It's been many days since we last spoke of New York. But that's because our last day was so good that we had to build up to it a little. Get your pants on, 'cause here we go again...

While we were disappointed that we had missed out on Barney Greengrass ("The Sturgeon King"), we more than made up for it with our visit to the "Queens of Lake Sturgeon," Russ and Daughters. Located in the Lower East Side, Russ & Daughters is a holdout in what used to be a largely Jewish neighborhood. This is the kind of shop that we definitely don't have in Portland. Sure, Kenny & Zukes opened last year to our immense delight and sure, their Jewish deli fare is top notch, but it just doesn't have quite the same feel as a New York institution like Russ & Daughters. From the decor to the product to the staff, Russ & Daughters operates on a different level than anything we've ever experienced. The cases are crammed with smoked and pickled fish, with easily ten types of salmon alone, and watching over it all is a line of portraits of Russ and his daughters. Ordering felt a little like being in another country; we were crowded in by a set of regulars shouting their orders to the bustling staff behind the counter. It all sounded so foreign to our smoked-fish deprived ears.

We managed to get our order in and retreated from the store with our booty. After grabbing some fresh-squeezed orange-mango juice from a cart across the street, we settled down on a park bench to try the smoked sable and sturgeon we'd selected. The sable was very fishy and ocean-y sweet. It was quite good on its cream cheese-slathered bagel, but we must say that it was no better than the sable we'd had from Kenny & Zukes. But the sturgeon, oh, the sturgeon, was a different story altogether. Incredibly tender, but equally meaty, almost like tuna, it really tasted sublime. Perhaps we'll never know how it stands up to Barney's kingly offerings, but in this case we're inclined to say that Russ' sturgeon is a Queen to be reckoned with.

On our way out of Russ', we impulsively grabbed a chocolate-covered halvah bar. Yes, it was only breakfast, but we had a feeling we'd need a snack later. It just happened that "later" meant "after breakfast." The purchase turned out to be serendipitous; when we popped into a nearby exhibit of the traveling NY Food Museum, we discovered it was focused entirely on the history of the Joyva Candy Company, the maker of our halvah. See, candy for breakfast can be educational.

From there, we hopped on the train to midtown to visit what may be the holy grail of import shops, Kalustyans. The store's small square footage belies its unbelievable selection - the place feels like an endless labyrinth of floor-to-ceiling shelves packed tightly with an array of spices, herbs, beans, pulses, grains, fruits, nuts, oils, sauces, and snacks. After we recovered from our awe, we set about stuffing our shopping basket with oddities for which we had no specific plans. If we hadn't been concerned about carry-on liquid restrictions from the airline, we most certainly would have weighed down our bags with:
1. ghee
2. argan oil
3. elderflower cordial
4. any other pastes and syrups we could stuff in

Instead, we contented ourselves with:
1. Four kinds of exotic rice
2. An assortment of spices including black cardamom, mahleb cherry pits, and dried limes
3. Dried, stuffed Indian peppers and birdseye chiles
4. Indian palm sugar
5. Chestnut paste (we figured we'd mail it home if necessary)

Shopping at Kalustyans revived our appetites, so we headed over to our lunch destination, a Japanese noodle bar in the East Village named Rai Rai Ken. Neither of us have been to Japan, so while we'd like to say the place was authentic, we can't really be sure - except that the cramped noodle bar looked almost exactly like the one in Tampopo, which should count for something, right? Most of the restaurant was taken up with a long narrow counter, behind which three chefs - a grill man, a broth man, and a noodle man - served up all of the dishes the restaurant had to offer.

While everything on the menu looked tasty, we had come for noodles and noodles we would eat. What you need to understand is that A dreams of noodles and insists on trying them whenever she has the opportunity. In truth, what she dreams of is Hamura's Saimin in Kaua'i, about which she could rave for hours. So far, nothing else has matched up, but A did affirm that the noodles we ordered at Rai Rai Ken came close. P got the shio ramen, a subtle seafood-based broth, while A went for the standard shoyu ramen, which is soy based and savory. Both had top-notch, fresh, toothy noodles; a hard-boiled egg; a slab of cooked pork; and those alien-looking pink-swirled fish cakes. The soup was soothing and incredibly filling, but A could have ordered another bowl if P hadn't restrained her. After all, P was still holding out for some dumplings in the afternoon.

While walking around the Lower East Side to work off our lunch, we stumbled upon Economy Candy, a wonderland of chocolate nostalgia. As both of us tend to horde our candy (we're still working on our Easter candy and only recently tossed out the remaining Christmas chocolates), the sheer amount of sugar in this store could have lasted us twenty lifetimes. P recognized candies from his childhood on the East coast that are difficult to find on the west side. We were attracted by the retro wrapper of the Valomilk, so we picked one up to compare to P's childhood favorite, the Mallo Cup. With our choices in hand, we quickly paid and left before we got a second-hand sugar rush.

Given how beautiful the weather was, we decided to stop into Schiller's Liquor bar for a lazy, afternoon drink. Schiller's has absolutely fabulous design with a custom typeface that looks like casually imperfect handwriting and an interior that looks like a unkempt Parisian cafe. As we sat in the breeze from the open doors, P enjoyed a crisp and refreshing Pimm's Cup while A had a glass of a dry rosé. Still longing for those nearby dumplings, we politely declined any food (even after spying a basket of frites passing our table). It may sound like an odd recommendation, but if you ever get there, make sure to check out the bathrooms, which have great old tile work and amazing, restored, antique fixtures.

We passed Vanessa's three times before checking the address and realizing it was the former #1 Dumpling House, for which we had been searching. Really, though, the crowds of people should have tipped us off. Inside, there were easily two dozen women steadily working to prepare the dumplings - one team assembled the raw ingredients in a back production room while another team manned the fryers and steaming pots. We ordered 4 pork & chive dumplings and 8 steamed veggie ones. Total bill? $4! We had been snacking pretty steadily all day, so 12 dumplings was really more than we needed, but we still were bummed when we saw other patrons leaving with giant sesame pancake sandwiches (only $2!) in hand. However, we were consoled by the fact that both varieties of dumplings were so delicious. The pork and chive were clearly the stand-outs, bursting with flavor and so juicy that we barely kept our chins clean.

We were planning on cooking dinner for P's uncles that night, so we had still had some shopping to do. As we headed up to the greenmarket at Union Square, we walked through the ever-expanding Chinatown, past the remaining block of little Italy, and ducked into the Soho Dean & Deluca, just to take a peek. When we passed by, their cheesemonger was raving about a Willamette Valley Cheese named Perrydale. We'll say it one last time: NYC *hearts* PDX (and greater Or-y-gone).

One of the difficulties of our style of traveling is that we tend to treat grocery stores, butchers and markets as tourist attractions, leaving us disappointed that we can't purchase food from them as though we were locals. So we were excited for the chance to patronize some of the farm stands at the greenmarket that we had browsed through earlier in the week. The warm weather we'd had all week had brought out the first of the spring greens; raab, mustard, and kale were piled high beside the bundled asparagus spears. We reminded ourselves that we only needed fixings for one meal and limited our purchases to some beautifully-flowered broccoli raab and nice, thin asparagus. If we hadn't been avoiding liquids for our flight home, we'd easily have splurged on:
1. local maple syrup
2. artisan honey
3. Rick's Picks pickled beets and okra

Even though we love first-of-the-season-asparagus all on its own, we needed a few more things for our meal. We returned to Murray's Cheese to round out the makings for our dinner, enticed by a product we'd spied earlier in the week. Amongst their dried pasta offerings, they had a bin of toasted orecchiette. Quite recently, we had tried our hand at making our own orecchiette and, even more recently, read about the old Italian practice of lightly toasting flour before using it in a recipe. We were intrigued. So, we picked up a hefty bag of this Puglian specialty and began building a meal around it; our just-bought asparagus, a little prosciutto and some wood-smoked, fresh mozzarella from New York's Joe's Dairy.
As P picked up the ingredients, A scanned the shelves for Ronnybrook's yogurt, nearly squealing with delight when she spied the coconut flavor. She made sure to snag one for breakfast in the morning (or maybe for a late-night snack).

On the train back to P's uncles' home, we listed off the places we hadn't had a chance to see; we knew that we'd need to plan another trip to New York to taste everything we'd missed. Four weeks should be about enough time to try it all, right?
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Toasted Orecchiette with Asparagus, Smoked Mozzarella, and Prosciutto

1 lb. dried toasted orecchiette (a Puglian specialty made with lightly baked flour)
1 lb. fresh asparagus spears
1/2 lb. freshly smoked mozzarella
1/4 lb. thinly sliced prosciutto (go for domestic, which is cheaper, as you'll be cooking it)
olive oil
flat-leaf parsley
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Bring a large pot of heavily salted water to a boil. As the water is heating for the pasta, snap off the woody ends of the asparagus and slice the soft green stems on the bias into 1 inch segments. When the water begins to boil, toss the asparagus into the pot and blanch for 30 seconds to 1 minute, testing to make sure they are cooked, but not soft. Remove the asparagus from the water with a slotted spoon and run under cold water to arrest the cooking.

Add the orecchiette to the boiling water from which you've just removed the asparagus. Cook for 11 to 12 minutes, until al dente.

Roughly tear the mozzarella into 1/2 inch pieces and the prosciutto into thin ribbons.

Before draining the orecchiette, reserve a 1/2 cup of the cooking liquid from the pot. Drain the cooked pasta in a colander and add a few good glugs of olive oil to the pot. Return it to the stove over medium heat, and add the prosciutto, cooking lightly for less than a minute. Add the asparagus and toss with some salt and pepper to taste. Throw the orecchiette back in the pot with the asparagus and prosciutto and toss to coat pasta, adding a little of the reserved water if it seems dry. Add the mozzarella and, working quickly (it will start melt!), stir the cheese into the dressed pasta. Transfer to deep pasta bowls and sprinkle with finely chopped flat-leaf parsley.
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Russ & Daughters - 179 E. Houston St; F,V @ Lower East Side/Second Ave; J,M,Z @ Essex
Kalustyans - 123 Lexington Ave; 6 @ 28th St
Rai Rai Ken - 214 E. 10th St; 6 @ Astor Pl; L @ First Ave
Schiller's Liquor Bar - 131 Rivington St; J,M,Z @ Essex; F @ Delancey
Economy Candy - 108 Rivington St; F @ Delancey
Vanessa's Dumpling House - 220 E. 14th St; L @ Third Ave; 4,5,6,L,N,Q,R,W @ 14th St/Union Square
Union Square Greenmarket - Union Square between 14th and 17th Streets
Murray's Cheese - 254 Bleecker Street; 1 @ Christopher St/Sheridan Square; A,B,C,D,E,F,V @ W. 4th St. Washington Square

the city that never sleeps is always eating, pt. 4

Now that we had tasted breakfast in the city, our appetite for morning snacks was insatiable. We've mentioned before that we want to like doughnuts more than we do. Our recent trip to Top Pot in Seattle had seemed promising, but was a little disappointing. We still hadn't found our gateway doughnut. Doughnut Plant caught our eye when we first read about their seasonal flavors like strawberry and toasted chestnut and the high-quality, organic ingredients. We thought we might as well give it a chance.

Before we had even set foot inside the doorway, the counterman had our number. He laughed, "I saw you two from a block away and knew you were coming here, smiling like that. I was going to tell you, 'Oh, sorry man, we're closed today." He then proceeded to ask us where we came from and when we mentioned Portland, he didn't miss a beat before saying, "Oh, Voodoo Doughnuts, right?" See? New York *hearts* Portland. We ordered a bag with a chocolate-glazed, a square coconut cream, and something called a "Blackout" before heading over to a Chinatown soccer field to see what we'd gotten ourselves into.

The regular chocolate-glazed doughnut had an amazing, yeasty crumb. It was fluffy and not-too-sweet (the chocolate was Valrhona). Right off the bat, it was the best doughnut either of us had ever tasted. In fact, we hesitate to call these doughnuts, given how far they were from our previous conceptions of the food. We'd mainly gotten the coconut cream one because it was square, and we're suckers for gimmicks, but it was a real knock-out. It had the same airy, yeasty taste and was filled with a perfectly light and sweet cream. Even though we both avoid cake doughnuts, we got a "blackout" because it was the house specialty. It turned out to be an unbelievable surprise. This doughnut was far more like a dense, moist cupcake than the dry cake dougnnuts we were used to. Plus, the fudge swirl and chocolate crumbs only made the entire thing all the more decadent. These doughnuts were like having a peak-of-the-season tomato and realizing, "This is what it is supposed to taste like; this is what people are talking about." We are not exaggerating when we say we'd consider moving to New York for Doughnut Plant alone.

Having thus expanded our minds (and bellies) we decided to spend some time away from food. The Brooklyn Museum, which at one time was almost the largest museum in the world, is now relatively under-appreciated, given all of the local competition. The museum itself is beautiful and even though much of it was under renovation as part of a hip re-design, there was still plenty on display to see. It also draws some real heavy-hitting exhibits, like the Takashi Murakami show, ©MURAKAMI, which had brought us there. Murakami is a very clever contemporary artist, who blends anime, otaku culture, manga, sex, urban vinyl, classical scroll painting, and a heaping dose of commercialism. We spent the first twenty minutes watching a stream of videos - everything from Kaikai & Kiki cartoons to Kanye West's recent music video. If you take a look at that cartoon link, it captures most of the exhibit's content (apart from the sexually explicit life-size action figures). Murakami is actually a very proficient painter and fills his hyperkinetic, color-saturated canvas with allusions to Japanese culture like two massive paintings of pop-art daruma figures. Throughout his career, Murakami has always been quick to capitalize on the touchy relationship between art and commerce, editioning miniatures of his sculpture and merchandising all of his characters. It all blends so thoroughly that when you see the lines of people queuing up to buy plush cartoon flowers, it's difficult to tell whether Murakami is making a statement or just a buck. Still, if you'd like a more exclusive souvenir, there was a full, working Vuitton store selling Murakami-branded purses in the middle of the exhibit.

After a large helping of pop-culture and consumerism, it is only fitting that we immersed ourselves in feminist art and politics. Judy Chicago's sculpture, The Dinner Party, is often regarded as the defining work of the 1970s' feminist art movement, but was kept in storage until the Brooklyn Museum dedicated a wing to it in 2007. Just another example of the marginalization and trivialization of women's production, but we'll save that for another time. It was incredibly refreshing to see a museum gallery full of vulvas, when most of the history of art is peppered with phalluses. The Dinner Party is a very commanding piece and it was cool to see groups of school children engaging with the symbolism, while docents gingerly prodded the kids in the right direction. A was thoroughly inspired.

So many vulvas, not enough wieners. So we went to Willie's Dawg's, the New York source for "Let's be frank" hot dogs (a provider founded by the former Chez Panisse "meat forager"). Now, if we may talk about ourselves in the third person for a moment, P&A love hot dogs, but worry about their sustainability. Niman ranch grass-fed beef solves that. Why can't all hot dogs be so tasty and morally sound? To make matters even better, Willie's supports the Humane Society and crowds the walls with pictures of rescue dogs. Adorable. P chose the "Mutto de Mayo," which was topped with chipotle mayo, onions, tomatoes, chiles, and "tortilla dust." Meanwhile, A's "Murray" dog tasted like a seven-layer casserole, with avocado, beans, sour cream, tomato...and now we've lost count. We are, however, counting the days until we can order online.

Afterwards, we rode up north and walked down through Greenpoint to Williamsburg. Greenpoint is a large Polish neighborhood bustling with activity and Eastern European food. It stuck P as being close to what Scranton would have been like back in its hey-day. We wished we could have spent more time there and we very much wished we could have tried the pirogies at Lomzynianka. If you live in New York and are reading this, it is your duty to try them on our behalf. We lingered outside staring at the menu for ten minutes before we conquered our desire in favor of our health and well-being.

If we couldn't let ourselves eat for a little while, we might as well exercise our sense of smell. So we went to check out CB I hate perfume, an inventive and irreverent perfumer. A while back, P had bought A a perfume from them that smelled like smoky tea, musty shelves and leather book bindings called "Russian Caravan Tea." Believe us - it smells amazing. A has never liked perfume, but CB's memory-based approach to scent appealed to her, particularly their hyper-accurate food scents. Pimm's Cup. California roll. French Bread. Imagine the possibilities... We probably sounded like fools as we kept inhaling aromas and exclaiming, "Whoa, it smells exactly like what the label says!" That might be the point. Hopefully we made up for our remedial scent identification with A's purchase, "To See a Flower," a scent that changes from the dirt and chlorophyll of just-cut stems to a light floral petal aroma. We're sorry our blog isn't scratch n' sniff.

We wandered around Williamsburg a little longer, as we still had over an hour before we were meeting our friend Hannah at our dinner destination. It was 4:00. 5:15 may seem a ridiculous time to meet for dinner (and it was, a little), but we were a bit nervous about getting into Una Pizza Napoletana. They are only open four days a week, and only then from five until they run out of dough. Any talk of food "running out" gets us panicked, so we arrived at 5:15, waited until Hannah showed up at 5:45 and easily sat down in a half-full restaurant. Better safe than sorry.

The pizza was well worth our embarrassing eagerness. Namely because this pizza would be worth any sort of tribulation. Anthony Mangieri, the pizzaiolo (with a great name), makes only four pizzas. He has no takeout menu (why would you need one with four options?), but rather a manifesto outlining his technique and his chosen ingredients. For a sense of his attitude, he was recently featured in a CHOW video series called, "Obsessives."

Each pizza is incredibly simple, essentially a variation on the same handful of ingredients. Between the three of us, we split a margherita (tomato sauce, buffalo mozzarella, basil), a filletti (fresh tomatoes, buffalo mozzarella, basil), and a special fifth (!) pizza of argula, parmiggiano, and buffalo mozarella. All three pies were drizzled with high-quality olive oil and a sprinkling of sea salt crystals, a combination that heightened the other flavors. They really were unlike any pizza we'd ever had. The crust was charred, but retained its lightness and was incredibly flavorful (it's naturally leavened and takes 36 hours to make); every bite was a burst of concentrated tastes. With pizza like this it's hard to pick a favorite, but the margherita definitely topped the list, the arugula pie close behind. You might scoff when Mangieri claims, "Nothing... purer or [more] honestly wholesome can be bought at any price," but if you've had his pizza, his cockiness is well-warranted.

In the last few years, there has been a huge surge in speakeasy style bars - places that focus on classic cocktails in "hidden" locations. PDT is hidden inside a hot dog joint; to be precise, it is through the phone booth of Crif Dogs. A dialed the phone to the restaurant and we managed to sneak in through the false wall just before the rush of reservations began. Swankily appointed with wooden panels, leather banquettes and taxidermied animals, the bar looked like the Doug Fir had crossed with a Rat-Pack-era lounge. Their drink menu was full of unique combinations such as P's choice: an old-fashioned with bacon-infused bourbon and maple syrup. It wasn't just breakfast in a glass; it was much more balanced and complex than you'd expect and had some of the qualities of a scotch. A ordered a concoction of port, cab franc, egg, cherry, lillet and who knows what else. It was rich, frothy and delicious. We only had time for one drink before our seats were promised to someone with reservations, so P couldn't order the bar-special hot dog, a deep-fried, bacon-and-kimchi-wrapped frank invented by David Chang of Momofuku fame. It was a great disappointment for P and posed yet another in a string of reasons to move to New York.

From here, the drinks got less classy and the food disappeared. Hannah showed us Beauty Bar, a rehabbed salon that offered discount cocktails with manicures during happy hour. Luckily, it ended up being much more punk than P had expected. We drank some Brooklyn lagers under the beehive hairdryers and took enough flash-photos that we are surprised we weren't kicked out. After that, all we can remember is that we ended up in a Ukranian bar in the East Village called the Sly Fox, drinking bombers of Obolon beer while suited mob-types paced in the back hall. All and all, a successful Thursday.

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Doughnut Plant - 379 Grand St, New York; J,M,Z @ Essex; F @ Delancey
Brooklyn Museum - 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn; 2,3 @ Eastern Parkway/Brooklyn Museum
Willie's Dawgs - 351 Fifth Ave, Brooklyn; F,M,R @ Fourth Ave/9th St.
CB I Hate Perfume - 93 Wythe Ave, Brooklyn; L @ Bedford
Una Pizza Napoletana - 349 E. 12th St, New York; L @ First Ave; 6 @ Astor Pl.
PDT - Inside Crif Dogs at 113 St. Marks Pl, New York; 6 @ Astor Pl.; L @ First Ave
Beauty Bar - 231 E. 14th St, New York; 4, 5, 6, L, N, Q, R, W @ 14th St.-Union Sq.; L @ Third Ave

the city that never sleeps is always eating, pt. 3

Tuesday night, we had a revelation. Why eat breakfast at P's uncles' in New Jersey when we could go straight into the city for this most important of meals, thereby fitting in one extra restaurant each day? If we were going to start having city breakfasts, we decided we might as well start big. And surly. We decided to start at Shopsin's.

Ever since P read a Calvin Trillin article on the cafe, it had become a must-eat attraction for our New York trip. Each time he talked about it, A became more and more terrified of the inevitable experience. You see, Shopsin's is not your ordinary, touchy-feely, mom's home cooking kind of cafe; there are rules at Shopsin's. No parties of five. No copying your neighbor's order. There was even a proscription against writing about Shopsin's (which we believe has *hopefully* been lifted). And, as rumor had it, those who broke the rules in Shopsin's original location could be banned for life. A did not want to be banned from any food establishment for life.

After a tumultuous upheaval from their original location, Shopsin's set down roots in a new location inside the Essex Street Market, a wonderful working market full of everyday grocers and a handful of slightly-more-gourmet vendors (we wish we could have seen more of it, but we were on a tight schedule). When we came in the door of the market, we nearly passed the restaurant, wedged as it is in a cramped corner behind an adorable cheesemonger. Essentially, the place is three two-tops hidden under high shelves of ingredients, with the rest of the tables spilling out into the entryway. From a chair in the center of the cluster, Kenny Shopsin presides over it all, like the foreman of a 19th century factory. When it was time to order, he merely turned and took our requests from where he sat, yelling them out to the cook.

Now, A had worked herself up into a tizzy over the prospect of ordering, because Shopsin's menu is arcane and genre-defying. There are a few hundred options and everything is made-to-order. So A planned ahead and had a print-out of the menu from their website, from which she picked a few choices. When the time approached, she didn't choke, but rather admirably ordered the "Diego," while P ordered some pancakes. What was the Diego? Oh, just a mammoth bowl of poutine with poached eggs - perfect fries, brown gravy and egg yolk. Pancakes sounds awfully dull for such a storied place, eh? Not when they are made of mac & cheese suspended in a fluffy, sweet batter and served with hot sauce and maple syrup. Based on our best estimate, there were about ten of them, and we ate 'em all (and neither of us like pancakes! [as you roll your eyes]). The salty tang of the cheddar cheese went really well with the sweetness of the pancake and we both agree that they were best with just the syrup. Nothing could have prepared us for Shopsin's - what we'd read about it sounded gimmicky and sure, the cook did tell some women next to us to "stop fucking saying thank you," but there are few restaurants we've been to that have been more comfortable. Maybe it was the tattooed couple sitting at the counter whose wedding photo was tacked to the back of the kitchen door, but in a strange way, we felt like we were part of a dysfunctional and charming family for the hour.

We headed uptown for a lunch before going to the natural history museum. When our plans fell through for Barney Greengrass ("The Stugeon King"), which was closed recovering from Passover, we thought we'd try Bouchon Bakery. Run by Thomas Keller, this lunchtime bakery is probably the closest we'll get to his French Laundry until we renew our vows in a few years and "register" for a meal there. We ordered at the counter and took our meal outside to eat in Central Park, along with the rest of New York. While people watching in the park, we unpacked our lunch and got to work. We'd heard that Bouchon's tuna salad sandwich, a twist on a salade nicoise, was something of a marvel. As a friend of ours makes what is arguably the best tuna sandwich in the world, we thought we'd be pretty good judges. How did Bouchon's sandwich stack up? It was pretty decent for what it was - a tuna sandwich - but it didn't approach our friend Molly's creation, which transcends tuna sandwich-dom (her mix is a secret, but we know there is a little salmon thrown in for extra richness).

So, we went to a famous chef's casual cafe and we ordered a tuna sandwich. Boorrrinnggg. Our other choices were perhaps a little more inspired. Even though the guy at the counter looked at us like we were crazy when we ordered it to go, we were sure we wanted to try the asparagus soup. Topped with citrus creme fraiche and hazlenuts, the bright green soup was the essence of spring and was a perfect complement to the beautiful weather. For dessert, we couldn't decide between the pistachio cherry brioche and the brown butter macaroon, so we got them both. They were each great, but the macaroon consisted of such pillowy and delightfully chewy cookies that the brioche was almost eclipsed.


From the moment we entered the American Museum of Natural History and saw the first dinosaur, A had to steady P to keep him from having a major stoke. (!) Oh, but there was much more than dinosaurs here - we also saw dinosaurs, animals, meteorites and dinosaurs. Look, people: there's nothing wrong with liking dinosaurs. Or wishing they were your friends so that you can talk to them.

To be perfectly honest (and serious), we were both enthralled and could have spent two days there, rather than the three hours we had allotted for the museum. There was so much to see that we practically had to run through the exhibits, though we did catch a few highlights:

1. One wing boasts a nice new exhibit design that charts evolution based on common bone structures of diverse species. Cool.

2. The underwater room was truly spectacular and the famous blue whale looked even larger in life.

3. Dinosaurs. We felt this point needed emphasis.

4. We saw a 200 ton meteorite. Fun fact!: It is so heavy that its support pylons extend all the way into the bedrock below the museum.

5. A found 3 manatees and this made her happy. One in the subway tiles, one skeleton and one underwater diorama.

6. In the "African peoples" exhibit, we noticed that one of the mannequins had jeans and sneakers. The odd clothing made it seem like a live person was beneath the costume. Unfortunately, this felt less like a scene out of a slapstick Peter Sellers film than like something from a horror movie. It only cemented our shared belief that museums (or all places of learning, for that matter) are creepy.


Before heading back to P's uncles' house for dinner, we took a stroll through Central Park, making sure to first grab an overpriced coconut popsicle in case we got lost. We didn't, but the popsicle still came in handy.

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Essex Street Market - 120 Essex Street (at Delancey Street); J,M,Z @ Essex; F,V @ Delancey
Bouchon Bakery - Time Warner Center, 10 Columbus Center, 3rd Floor;
American Museum of Natural History - 79th St. at Central Park West; B,C @ 81st; 1 @ Broadway & W. 79th

the city that never sleeps is always eating, pt. 2

Glad to be back in New York, we set out for our day biting off more than we could chew. Given how beautiful the weather was Tuesday morning, we started out with a walk across the Brooklyn bridge. It was only after we had gotten halfway over the span that we realized we had chosen the "wrong" direction; rather than walking towards a beautiful view of Manhattan, we were headed to a cluster of Jehovah's Witness "Watchtower" office buildings in downtown Brooklyn. This mistake made it pretty difficult to remain inconspicuous as tourists (something we always - probably naively - strive for when traveling), seeing as we kept turning around to take photos. Then again, how many locals really keep stopping by scenic views for the classic stretched-out-arm self-portrait?

On the Brooklyn side of the bridge, we ventured down into DUMBO in a futile search for coffee and for the Slow Food USA headquarters. We're not sure what we would have done if we'd found their offices, but that is just kind of the way we travel. We think that we located the building, even if the offices were ten stories above us, but we never found that coffee. On the subway over to the Brooklyn museum, we saw an ad that the museum was closed on Tuesdays (thank you, subway sign) and promptly switched lines to return back to the Manhattan. This may make us sound like bumpkins, but it was par-for-the-course for the first few days; a lot of going one direction, realizing our mistake, and turning around.

That the museum was closed was a disappointment, but it meant we could get started eating even sooner. We headed to the East Village to grab some lunch at Momofuku Ssam Bar, where chef David Chang has gotten a lot of accolades (he's a recent James Beard award nominee) for his pork-saturated, witty Korean mash-ups. For being the middle of a lunch hour, the chic, wooden space was surprisingly empty, though we'd later realize that the lunch menu is just a tamed-down version of the food that draws culinary adventurers in the evenings. Because P loves cha siu bao, we had to order the famous pork buns. When they came to the table, they were practically de-constructed - simple, pillowy buns folded over slow-cooked pork belly with scallions and a sweet glaze. Top that with a bit of chili paste and man, they were succulent.

Since we'd heard tales of Korean burritos (ssam means "wrapped"), we went for the lemongrass pork sausage ssam. We were presented with a plate of condiments and savory sausage, which we wrapped up in lettuce leaves into little bites. Unfortunately, Momofuku had recently abandoned their practice of rolling all of the ingredients up in a rice pancake and wrapping it in aluminum foil like a mission burrito so, while still delicious, the ssam ended up being like many dishes we'd tried at other Asian restaurants. Luckily for us, the sandwich and our sides delivered much bolder flavors. Remember A's obsession with bahn mi? Well couple that with P's obsession with French offal and you'll understand why we got the "three-terrine" bahn-mi, which was recently selected as one of Esquire magazine's best sandwiches in America. We recalled something about veal face, but couldn't guess what the other two terrines could be. It was squeaky, fatty, crunchy, and fish sauce-y; everything bahn-mi should be. Pair that sandwich with a selection of seasonal pickles (sweet cucumbers; sharp, tangy radish; salty mushrooms) and a generous bowl of "kewpie slaw" for some pure, MSG gold, and we had a very rich, tasty meal.

Waddling away from Ssam bar, we took a train over to the Chelsea Market, a Disney-fied concept of an urban market concourse. While there are some very cool vendors, the building has been rehabbed in such a way as to look really "raw" and "edgy," which ends up giving it a fake quality. In the middle of the shops, we stumbled upon a coffee shop that was boasting about their new, exclusive product: Stumptown coffee. This was only the first instance of what would become a very common theme throughout the week - NYC has a big crush on PDX.

The reason we went to Chelsea Market was to visit Ronnybrook Milk Bar, an upstate dairy that has opened a hip soda fountain to sling its farm-fresh milks, yogurts, ice creams. Ronnybrook has an incredibly cool interior - the walls are built out of re-purposed, vintage milk crates that can be pulled out to make extra seating/tables. As great as the decor is, the emphasis is really (clearly) on the dairy products. P ordered a birch beer float with some smooth vanilla ice cream. If you've never had birch beer, it is has a sharper bite than root beer and paired just perfectly with the ice cream. A got a "milk and honey," which was really just that. The milk was thick and rich and it tasted like a precursor to the milkshake. A was so thrilled with Ronnybrook's milk that she spent the rest of the trip pining for their coconut yogurt that she noticed as we were leaving their shop.

Afterwards, we walked through Chelsea down to Greenwich Village (ask us about our amazing celebrity sighting sometime), enjoying the charming brownstones and little boutiques. A few days before our trip, a friend at P's work had told us about a cupcake bakery that was the stuff of legend (the story involved someone eating two cupcakes in spite of a stomach flu). We knew it was near a Marc Jacobs, but had otherwise failed to get the address. As we passed a playground, P noticed a Marc Jacobs store and pointed it out, upon which, A demanded, "Where are the cupcakes?!" Right beyond the line of people waiting to get into Magnolia Bakery, that's where. This was definitely the first bakery either of us had ever seen with a bouncer. A couldn't believe it and, in the end, got denied for trying to sneak in. We eventually jostled for position inside and brought out two mighty-fine looking cupcakes - red velvet and chocolate-chocolate. Both of us love red velvet (remember our wedding cake?), but we have to admit, Magnolia's was disappointing - where was the cream cheese frosting!? The frosting was a too-sweet sugar frosting, though we'll admit that it was a very moist, delicious cake. We liked the chocolate cupcake much more, which had a great, rich cocoa frosting; one of the best chocolate frostings we'd ever had.

Seeing how sticky we were with icing, it seemed like a good time to thumb through some antique books. Bonnie Slotnick Cookbooks is a real treasure trove, matched only by its charming owner. Filled with great history, first editions, and lots of ephemera, we easily could have spent all day there. In the end, we came away with American Taste by James Villas, Jeanne Lesem's book on preserving, and a first edition Beard on Pasta. If we had allowed ourselves a few more hours, we probably would have emerged with one book from every shelf the shop.

We caught a train to Brooklyn to meet up with two of A's older brother's friends for dinner. Having gone to a real institution for pizza in Scranton (Revello's), we went to a slew of up-start, pizza throne usurpers in New York. Franny's is a hip, sustainably-focused pizza place that reminded us a lot of Ken's back in Portland. They had a great bar with Italian-inflected drinks (we tried a prosecco and lovage (wild celery) syrup mix, and the Twice Bitter - fernet branca, Sanbitter soda, lime, and mint). Never mind the drinks, though; the pizza was solid. A ordered a tomato, olive and garlic pie, which was tangy and crisp with a nice, light hand on the sauce. P got the clam, parsley and pepper flake pizza, a pie we'd read about that caused us to seek out Franny's. It was superlatively good - creamy, salty, briny, rich and graced with the same pour of olive oil that enriched each of the pizzas leaving the oven. Even though we'd each gotten our own pizza, we saved room for dessert: a citrus and cinnamon-inflected canolo and a chocolate gelato that tasted like frozen brownie batter.

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Momofuku Ssam Bar - 207 Second Ave; L @ First St or Third St
Ronnybrook Dairy Bar - inside Chelsea Market, 75 Ninth Ave; A,C,E @ 14th St; L @ Eight Ave
Magnolia Bakery - 401 Bleecker St; 1,2,3,F,V @ 14th St; L @ Sixth Ave
Bonnie Slotnick Cookbooks - 163 W. 10th Street; 1 @ Christopher St.-Sheridan Sq.; A,B,C,D,E,F,V @ W. 4th St.-Washington Sq.
Franny's - 295 Flatbush Ave, Brooklyn; B,Q @ Seventh Ave.; 2,3 @ Bergen St.