Haiku 5/23/08

Outside Difaras with Two Slices

Amid city rush
Two-eighths of a perfect thing.
Blissful and quiet.

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NJR’S NY V LA SHOWDOWN DAY 4!!!!

Day 3 was rained out. Also, closed on Mondays, as you would expect a pizza place so deep in Brooklyn that it takes almost an hour to get there would be had you thought about it at all and not just followed your lusty tum. But onwards! And forwards! And Uptown to DAY 4! Today, we pit Ramen against Ramen in a fiery furnace test of endurance. Also—beverage against beverage in a cockfight tale for the ages! I LOVE TO PUN! I LOVE IT! PUN PUN PUN!

RAMENIA IN RAMENTOWN WITH A SIDE OF GORE GYOZA!
Daikokuya v Momofuku Noodle Shop

DAIKOKUYA
Incredibly rich pork broth
LOTS of scallions that intensify the flavor as they cook in the broth
A delicious hardboiled egg that has been pickling over night

MOMOFUKU
Very rich as well, and perhaps saltier
Two kinds of pork, both of incredibly high quality and REALLY delicious. The pork slices were mostly fat and continued to flavor the broth as it cooked, making it the porkiest porkiness ever to pork my face.
A poached egg. Cool.

This was the first real nuts-out teeth-gritted battle of the whole competition. While it was officially a ramen-off, both sides brought feisty loyal sidekicks to help wage the war. Daikokuya’s accomplice was the ever delicious, ever too-filling-to-then-try-to-eat-a-whole-bowl-of-ramen-you-crazypants gyoza. These little guys are crispy as hell on the outside, and filled with delicious porkness (yeah—there’s a theme here. Live with it.). Again, scallions are utilized to their fullest—a heaping pile of them that you pray you will trap enough of with your chopsticks to rich gyoza nirvana.

Momofuku was not going to be out done in the sidekick department, and went all out with pork steamed dumplings. These little guys sort of resemble bacos (from Lot 1). The dumpling is cut almost like a taco and wrapped about two heavenly slices of pork (I said live with it son!), some sweet plum sauce, and a few pickles. This was OUTRAGEOUSLY good. I would go back and eat six of them right now, even though I have a Batali-induced stomachache (more on that later). But this isn’t about sidekicks or costumes or catch phrases. This is about ramen.

ADVANTAGE: Daikokuya. A really tough call. Both ramens are delicious, and I have to say it’s great to know that the pigs in your soup were treated relatively well (momofuku pork comes form Neiman Ranch). But to me, Ramen is a street food and it just shouldn’t cost $16. Ramen and pork buns and beer should never set you back $48. It wasn’t just a matter of price point—I think Daikokuya’s broth is a little better—more rounded and less salty. I also think they have a better noodle to broth ratio (a few too many noodles in Momofuku’s version) and their ramen is greatly helped by the extra scallions which cut the porkiness just enough to make it totally enjoyable first bite to last.

CLASHING BEAK TO BEAK: COCKTALE FOR THE AGES!!!!
Pdt v Hungry Cat

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about myself through all of this, it’s that I like an unfair fight. Or to put it more precisely, I’m on vacation! I’m gonna go where I want and pit that place against a death match with whoever I darnit well please and thank you! Hungry Cat has my favorite cocktails in LA. Is it a bar? No. Are they the best match up in our fair city against that juggernaut of drink and milk and honey called “please don’t tell”? No. But damnit I like them! And actually, the drinks at pdt reminded me very much of hungry cat drinks.

PDT
So damn fun to walk into and in a way that just can’t really be done in LA. You go into a hotdog joint on the lower east side and walk through a PHONE BOOTH into the bar. It’s dark and sexy and old fashioned inside and damned if it doesn’t make you want to have a cocktail.
First drink was a “dewey d”: Overholt, Sherry, Aperol and bitters. It was like a very very grown up Manhattan (how appropriate. enchante). Part of wanting to try this was hubris on my part. By way of my friend Bza I had learned to make a mean mean Manhattan—one that I think is better than any variety I have ever ordered at a bar. About the time the bartender started hitting perfect cubes of ice with his stirrer I knew I might be in trouble. When he expertly squeezed a tiny round disc of orange over the drink and rubbed the outside of the class just enough to give it the perfect aromatic zesty overtone, I got down on my knees and apologized for ever having made a Manhattan to begin with. It was pretty embarrassing actually since this was a pretty cool bar and probably people don’t usually genuflect before they’ve gotten their first drink. It was out of this world good and beautiful and great to watch get made. There is a spectacle to nightlife in NYC that makes our flashy shenanigans seem like nickelodeon to their HBO. Or should I say Cinemax…
Second drink was less successful in taste—it was called The Mariner and consisted of blended scotch, cardamom syrup and some other stuff I can’t remember. Again, the preparation and presentation were exquisite, but the cardamom taste was bitter and overwhelmed everything else. Which brings us to…

HUNGRY CAT
St. Andrews is also a drink that blends scotch, lemon juice and other stuff. The whole time I was drinking The Mariner, I was wishing it had ginger simple syrup and candied ginger instead of cardamom in it. Hungry cat wins the drink v drink sprint off here.
I also often get the Pimlico. Like a julep but better. All their drinks are so fresh and the bartenders are so awesome.

ADVANTAGE: pdt. No question. We just can’t hold a candle to exciting bars in NYC. Because of our cars, because of our culture. LA is having a fancy drink renaissance right now, but even with it I highly doubt we can do what pdt does: by affordable, not overly exclusive, exciting, and delicious all in the same little spot. Prove me wrong LA! Make me a drink to forget pdt. My little caveat here is that just because Hungry Cat lost, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go there. In fact, if you’re in LA and reading this and haven’t been there you should feel a little embarrassed and then go take pride in the kind of place we do have in LA and the kind of place we should be proud of.

A draw! A draw! Today we have a draw! It was a good eating day, or rather night. Also, I saw my first play. I mention this because I deeply love the theater and while I’ve tried to carry my excitement for it to LA, it hasn’t worked. I fear I may give NYC extra points just for having plays like “Body Awareness”, which I saw at the Atlantic Second Stage sitting on a pillow. If you know of great exciting new theater in LA, tell me about it so I can go. Otherwise, eat your face off world!

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Surf's Up

Hot dogs-- the white tuxedo of my culinary world.  I like to bust it out every once in while when the setting is right-- like at a dodger game or on a first date down to the pier (one of those is hypothetical).  Sadly, these kinds of settings are few and far between in LA (disclaimer: I have yet to try Let's Be Frank but have heard good things.) That's why we were so excited when we visited Surf Dog up north.  It is a truly great hot dog stand, one that really embodies all the characteristics of the hot dog-- simple, bold, eccentric.

The stand is located on the edge of a softball field, just off the 101 freeway in Carpinteria.   The man who runs it-- I don't know his name-- is what people over fifty call "a real character." If you told me he was homeless and slept under the cart I wouldn't be surprised, yet it's also plausible that he's a movie producer who sells hot dogs in his spare time.  Either way, he's clearly not in it for the money.  When we arrived with a mere 50 cents in our pocket, he insisted we still take a dog and "pay him back later," a practice we later learned was a common occurrence. Are you listening, Robin Williams? Your next role is right here waiting for you.



Now, I should probably admit that when it comes to hot dogs I'm pretty easy to please. Give me a Hebrew National, a good bun, maybe a little sauerkraut and that's it, I'm happy. And that's exactly what you get at surf dog: no gourmet fixings, no artisanal ingredients, just a guy doling out decent hot dogs and a lot of good karma. And after your dog fix you get to walk down to the seal rookery and watch baby seals hang ten on poseidon's glorious waves. what more could you ask for on a saturday afternoon?

Surf Dog
Between the softball field and the driving range
Off the Casitas Pass exit of the 101
Carpinteria CA

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NJR’S NY V. LA SHOWDOWN DAY 2!!!!

Otherwise known as THE RECKONING!

I felt sort of bad after LA’s sweep in day one, so I decided to go get a bagel.

BAGEL TAR AND FEATHER JACUZZI BOUT
Bergen Bagels v Bagel Broker

BERGEN BAGELS
Sesame Bagel with Cream Cheese
Hellz yes.

BAGEL BROKER
The same.
Bleh.

I purposefully pitted arguably LA’s best bagel place against the closest neighborhood spot to where I’m staying in Brooklyn so NY could really dish out an ass whooping. I mean—what is it? Why are the bagel’s so much better? Am I the first to ponder this question? No. Do I ponder it all the same? Hell yes I do, with my face covered in cream cheese. Boom. The texture; the present but not overpowering saltiness; the whipiness of the cream cheese. Goddamn I love bagels. There’s that experience of being really in to someone but then only seeing them in bad contexts and taking them for granted and kind of being done with them but then something happens and you really get the chance to appreciate them again and man—they’re awesome peeps. Everytime I come to NYC I get to have this experience with bagels. How cool is that? It used to be thus with pizza, but LA’s a little less useless in this department these days. So thank god for bagels, and a good old fashion ass whooping.

ADVANTAGE: Bagel Broker! Just kidding. Bergen Bagels made the Broker cry like a little baby lamb with no milk.

MOLECULAR GASTRONOMY THROW DOWN— IT WILL FLAY YOUR BOBBY!
WD 50 v

WD 50
Exciting, thoughtful, and to top it all off—delicious!

LA had a big time no-show on this one, and it’s probably for the best. In a city where there’s always a struggle to privilidge substance far enough above style to get really top quality food, a kind of cooking that supremely elevates a kind of “style” would have a real possibility of going off the deep end. Maybe you could stick Ciramusti in there just because of his inventiveness, but really we don't have a counterpart. I’ve been dying to try a so called “molecular gastronomy” hot spot for a while. WD 50 did not disappoint. Many reviews have said that this place is really coming into it’s own in the last couple of years. I didn’t try it in its early days so I can’t comment on where it’s been, but I can tell you that where it’s gotten is a very special place.

I took so long ordering that the bartender started teasing me about it. I finally decided on a richly flavored meal, but one without any heavy red meat:

Smoked eel, salsify, guava, puffed yuzu

Duck breast, spaghetti squash, almond polenta, pomelo molasses

Warm gianduja, ice milk, hazelnut, fennel

If you know anything about the restaurant going in, then the menu is a wonderful kind of puzzle. Little vignettes that clue you in to the flavor profile of a given dish, but give you very little insight into the crazy preparation that will go into its presentation. It’s exciting! I’ll probably write a full review later, but I here’s an amuse bouche, if you will, in the form of the email note I sent myself while eating:

Textures become sensual. So smokey. Beautiful- like a love letter. Feminine, flirtatious, and consummated with smoke and deep yuzu flavor

Huge duck breasts. Spaghewtti is the perfect textual and taste counterpart, adding a slight bitterness and crucnhinesss to the duck. Pomelo is the sweet you need with duck deepend by the delicious almond polenta, which I coulf eat a bowl of.

Duck skin perfectly cooked. Salty and crunchy put also chewy. Maybe too chewy but when you have almond polenta, who's gonna argue.

Dessert crazy looking! Delicious. How could you make choco hazelnut better? This is how! Like a monster mix.

Every hazelnutt fantasy I've ever had realized. I'm so glad I didn't have to share this. Lady next to me says powder like gunpowder. I don't know wbat she means but I say I agree but come on! All is right with the world!

Don't want to leave. Want to get desseert tasting menu.

--------------------------
Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld

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HAIKU 6/16/08

Smoked Eel Appetizer at WD 50

Flirtatiously form'd,
So smokey at your essence,
Perfect Valentine.

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NJR’S NY V. LA SHOWDOWN!!!!

I’m in NYC for the week with a list of places to eat as long as Rapunzel’s bangs. I was thinking last night while walking in the hot rain (LA 1, NY 0), past the beautiful brownstones of the lower west side (NY ties it up!) how so far everything I’d eaten in New York (and everything on my list) had an obvious counterpart in LA. I didn’t feel this way a few years ago, so either LA’s food scene has expanded to incorporate more comparable options, or I’ve expanded (which you have, in the belly! NY Zinger!). Then I thought, why not make this a competition? That way, at the end of the day someone can feel bad.

But seriously, it’s interesting to compare some of these dishes. And as I go through my week here, I’m gonna try to keep posting some of my thoughts. Please excuse the sloppy grammar—Imapostin on the road!:

JUICY PORK DUMPLINGS STREET FIGHT WITH HAMMERS!
Din Tai Fung v. Joe’s Shanghai

I love me some soup dumplings aka juicy dumpling aka xiao long bao. When living in New York, I used to frequent New Green Bo on a very regular basis, and also had some killer dumplings at Shanghai Café. When I returned to LA a few years ago, I thought I would never again experience these little wonders. But then I discovered the San Gabriel Valley, and that on the West Coast they’re not called soup dumplings and wallah! Din Tai Fung. A friend from Shanghai swears by the Joe’s Shanghai variety in NYC overall others—I think I smell a death match.

DIN TAI FUNG
About the size of an apricot
Light, delicate skin
Flavorful broth- salty with some sweetness and a light pork taste- but not much broth.
Small flavorful piece of pork up in there
One dumpling=one bite

JOE’S SHANGHAI
About the size of a plum
Thick skin
Intense rich thick flavorful broth and almost 2 spoons fulls!
Big chunk of meaty pork inside
One dumpling=3 bites!

This is like pitting Hulk Hogan against Natalie Portman in a death match. It’s all about personal preference. That said, Joe’s Shanghai didn’t even hold a candle for me. I can see why my Shanghai friend loves them—they are rich and intense and would be delicious on a cold night. They’re like a great huge hamburger, but I guess I’ve lived in LA too long and I’d usually prefer some good sushi. I thought Joe’s Shanghai lacked the subtlety and specificity of the Din Tai Fung variety.

ADVANTAGE: Din Tai Fung (Booyah NYC! Who needs a tummy tuck now?!)


SHEA METS STADIUM CLUB V. DODGERS STADIUM CLUB CAGE THROWDOWN
Shea Stadium Players Club v. Dodgers Dugout Club
2nd billing: Shea Stadium v. Dodgers Stadium

Shea had to cancel both fights due to anemia and gonorrhea. Shea said call back next year and then we’ll see whose big papi then.

CUPCAKE SCISSORFEST ’09!
Magnolia Bakery v. Auntie Em's

I’ve really grown to dislike cupcakes, but there was a time living in NYC when nothing made me happier than a late night trip to Magnolia. It would a stop for my nostalgia more than for my stomach. Also, the kick ass looking dessert truck (check it: www.desserttruck.com) wasn’t there because of the rain.

MAGNOLIA BAKERY
I stick to the classic vanilla cake with buttercream frosting.
A great flavor to the cake. Not too sweet. A small cupcake.
What happened to all the frosting? There’s less on there now, right? And damn it’s sweet! I used to take down 2 of these puppies and now I have to scrape off half the frosting on one of them.

AUNTIE EM’S
If you live in LA and haven't been to this bakery/breakfast spot in Eagle Rock you should go for brunch today. If you get there early, you might even be able to have the biscuits and gravy.
Red Velvet Cupakes
F’ing delicious!
Great Creamcheese frosting
A sweet light cake with that mystery flavor that turns out to be chocolate but I always thought was the “red” part.

ADVANTAGE: Auntie Em’s. I realize most NYCers wouldn’t pick Magnolia to rep them in a cupcake war. I probably should have pitted it against Sprinkles in LA, but that would be like watching two squids fight to the death in a pool of jello. Actually, that sounds kind of cool, but hopefully you get my point: who cares who’s a little less mediocre. And who really cares about cupcakes anymore-- Froyo Bareknuckle Brawl!

DAY ONE:
LA SWEEP! And yes, I realize that this isn’t a fair fight so far, but don’t worry NYCers: pizza, bagels, Italian food to come. And really, there’s no winners and losers here except my stomach, which was already forced to endure gross hot wings at Shea, soup dumplings, and a cupcake on the same night. And in case it seems like I'm unfairly biased to LA let me just say: Man New York is great. I'm feeling a real warmth from a lot of the people this time here, and not just because everyone is sweating. Everyone not in a car has been totally wonderful to me (maybe that's the trick...) and it's such a beautiful city to walk around in. Also, you should see what Hip Hop at 4 in the morning is doing to my dreams.

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Haiku 6/9/08

Eating in Portland

Food wet with food-love,
Prepared without pretensions--
Get in my belly!

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Poking Around

You know when you have those serendipitous moments while traveling, when that place you wanted to find is suddenly right in front of you, and then right across the street is that other little place you'd heard about, and it seems as if some invisible hand is guiding you to exactly where you want to be? Those moments happened a lot in Portland.

Which is how we happened to eat lunch at Pok Pok not 2 hours after touching down at the airport (which is lovely, by the way, and possibly from the future). Looking for a place to get Z's hair cut led us to Division St and Rudy's barber shop; Pok Pok, the restaurant that sat atop our list of places to try, just happened to be right down the street. This felt like an auspicious sign, but it turned out to be life as usual chez Portland, where on good thing is never far away from another.

Pok Pok is nominally a Thai restaurant, but it's not like any Thai place I've been to. The chef is a white guy named Andy Ricker who decided to take on Thai street food after becoming obsessed with it on his travels. The menu changes according to what ingredients he and his staff can find, or riffs on esoteric local specialties; sometimes a family recipe from the sous-chef's village, or a version of some noodle dish prepared by a favorite Chiang Mai street hawker. There's also (this being Portland) a mouth-watering array of imbibables, and even though i hadn't ever thought of pairing whiskey with thai food, in the chill and rain of Portland it began to make sense.

So it happened that by 2pm we were sipping pandan-flavored water on the benches of the Pok Pok patio, perusing the lengthy cocktail menu (have i mentioned that portlanders like to drink?) and figuring out how the 2 of us could eat through at least half of the menu without compromising our dinner.

That translated to an order of fish-sauce chicken wings, herbal salad, and dry noodles with a salmagundi of delightful treats, including pork cracklings, pickled vegetables, sprouted and long beans, and bbq-ed pork. The fish sauce wings were a wonder: crazily flavorful, with that signature thai mix of sweet, sour, and spicy. The herbal salad, a jullienned array of veggies and herbs tossed with a lemongrassy dressing, came on tangy and finished with a nice twist of slow heat, taking the edge off the salty bomb of the chicken wing. And the dry noodles? There were about five layers of flavor and texture in there, which I think is what all good Thai cooking is supposed to deliver, but rarely does. It was my favorite among 3 superb plates of food.



Pok Pok is the kind of place that, to my mind, typifies everything that's great about the Portland food scene: personal, seasonal, relaxed, (dare I say homey?), and unpretentious. As we were eating, a couple showed up with their dog in tow; it looked like they'd walked from home. They plunked themselves down on a bench, looped fido's leash around the gate, and tucked in to their feast. I felt a pang of jealousy; I wanted to be their neighbor, to trot in with the dog or stop by on my bike and grab a whole roasted game hen (!!) with sticky rice for lunch. So why does my new favorite neighborhood joint exist 1000 miles north of home? More importantly, how does a place like Pok Pok not exist in Los Angeles? Can someone fix that, please?



pok pok
3226 se division st
portland or
503 232 1387
www.pokpokpdx.com

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Portland: a prelude

Last weekend we got to spend a few days in Portland before crossing the border for a wedding in Washington. We're still waiting for our photos to be developed at which point longer, more stimulating posts will be written. But for now I wanted to report on one of my favorite parts of the trip, our unexpected visit to Pastaworks in SE Portland. Like so many of my favorite travel moments, this one was a complete accident. We had walked in to the Powell's Books on Hawthorne in search of cookbooks but were soon distracted by the beautiful row of produce that was in the adjoining room. Intrigued, we quickly left the cookbooks to explore the market next door, which turned out to be one of the best gourmet markets I've been to in the states. It was like someone had hunted around for my most favorite items and kindly placed them all in one store for me. Most impressive was the range of products and services, which went far beyond your standard wine and cheese operation. There was a butcher cutting beautifully marbled dry-aged ribeyes the color of deep crimson (when I asked him how long they had been hanging he said, "oh, we don't sell anything that hasn't hung for at least 30 days") across from him there was a girl cutting fresh pasta for a customer, next to her someone was replenishing a pile of landjäger sausages (my favorite,) and to top it all off they had a wonderful organic produce section. It's definitely the kind of place you want to live down the street from, or above, or in. Which brings me to an important question: how is it that nothing like this exists in Los Angeles? We have access to all the components, someone just needs to put them all together in one place. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for the village lifestyle-- I would love nothing more than to spend my days traipsing about town visiting each of my favorite shops, like Belle in the opening scene of Beauty and the Beast. But urban sprawl and rising fuel costs make traipsing hard in LA, which is why having a store like Pastaworks would make so much sense. Of course, I could also just move to Portland...

Pastaworks
3735 SE Hawthorne Blvd.
Portland, Oregan 97214
503.232.1010
www.pastaworks.com

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