O’Rourke’s Diner: Are diners bistros? – June 10, 2011

I had neglected, perhaps deliberately and ignorantly, the quintessential American dining institution: the Diners. I did not understand the raison d'être of diners, nor did I understand the fixation people had for diners. American food – raw or prepared – is, if euphemistically put, “unrefined,” and frankly, “bad” and truthfully, often “murderous” with all the additives and hormones. And yet, I confess that my favorite show for some time now, while on the elliptical in the gym, has been Diners, Drive-ins and Dives. The show provides me with a shot of self-righteousness to boost the ever-declining morale and takes my mind off the painful fact that I am laboring on a ridiculous exercise machine like some kind of a marmot. Despite being my favorite show on Food Channel, I had never seriously entertained the idea of ever dining in any of the featured diners, well, not until being hit in the head by Hightstown Diner.

Are diners bistros? Belatedly, I have begun now to wonder whether I had been looking in all the wrong places in the U.S. in search of good food. Given my penchant for bistro over restaurant, and trattoria over ristorante, I perhaps should have suspected that real food might be found in diners rather than fancy restaurants, which seem to be equally plastic and Botox-ed up as many of their patrons in Manhattan.

Therefore, I went to O’Rourke’s Diner with one burning suspicion, which needed confirmation: Are diners the bistros in the U.S. that I have been searching for?

Hightstown Diner - June 4, 2011

We all have our biases, preconceptions and assumptions; I certainly have more than my own shares of them. However, as long as we are aware of them, there is no problem, is there? It is like playing pool with a handicap, reversed. One of my longstanding, hardcore and absolute belief was that American food was inedible as a rule, and diners – a.k.a. greasy spoons – which serve them, could not be anything more than at most bearable and serviceable; even then, with the caveat of being equidistant from any other possible dining options.

On the other hand, I had often wondered and fantasized about the incredible and ingenuous food, which the ever-aggrandizing Wolfe had continuously wolfed down, prepared by Fritz and envisioned by Wolfe – i.e. blueberries-fed chicken – in the gastronomic world, as existed on West 35th Street (in Rex Stout’s mind, unfortunately). Was food better back then, before the mass production kicked in after World War II and sucked the United States into a gustatory Dark Age*?
*Of which I wonder if we are still in.

I had intentionally stopped by at Hightstown Diners to write it off as a joke, but now I am contently writing it up.

Northern Spy Food Co. - May 15, 2011

The Americans are a funny bunch: they can only go to the extremes. On one end of the spectrum, they are free from all -sugar-free, fat-free, caffeine-free and gluten-free (by the way, eliminating gluten for most people is simply meaningless and does not accord any health benefits); on the other end, however, they are defiant of the annual check-ups and doctors’ warnings by taking the high road – high cholesterol, high sodium and high fat in various forms of ground meat patties and fried birds: I can’t believe it’s not butter! vs. I can’t believe if it were not butter! With excess and liberalism (or libertine) as the national mottos, care and restrain are conceptually alien to the national mentality, more so than the alien themselves, with which the Americans are rather familiar, in fact. However, if enjoyed once in a while like the Thanksgiving Turkey feast, the high road is not, nonetheless, without certain pleasures.

What Happens When – April 27, 2011

We, humans, are ultimately creatures of ennui. I wonder if cockroaches ever despair of their mundane life of scuttling around and being smashed under slippers – well, I suppose it is rather thrilling to be running for your life all the time; hence, the Hollywood doomsday movies. Prozac, Zoloft, instead of introducing any more chemicals, an organic carefree and bohemian stint to sow the oats may be the antidote for a middle-age crisis. Having a limited life span, is not necessarily limiting, but can be quite liberating, as it forces one to live more fully and creatively (and here, there is the safety net in the form of Dovetail).

Recette - February 5, 2011

In Chinese, the essence of deliciousness, the elixir of gastronomic joy, is symbolized in one character – 鮮 – which is made of two parts: The left signifies “fish,” while the right “lamb.” The Chinese believed when something from the land was combined with something from the sea, the result would take on the best of both worlds; well, they wished, in any case. 鮮 is used to describe a dish that has the extra something, which elevates it to a higher plain, which mesmerizes diners for one more bite, and in short, which is what makes the dish special.

Fish Tag - January 15, 2011

I am an aberration in a fast-paced city like New York: I never attend any openings, never manage to catch a movie while it is still in the cinemas (although I did manage Black Swan), never know what line is fashionable this Fall, never know which chef has moved on where and I do not even have a cable subscription. As a general observation, I prefer art produced by artists who are thoroughly and unmistakenly dead. Therefore, although I had been meaning to try the gastropub that opened on 79th Street, by the time I finally got up to go, it had already morphed into Fish Tag. Life is full of surprises; and occasionally if luck will have it, the surprise is a welcome one.

Sarabeth's - December 31, 2010

I do not do brunches; I have never understood the point of having brunches with people on the weekends. I am barely human at any time appropriate for brunch, not to mention that I cannot talk nicely or look nicely. Moreover, this is the critical issue: if you eat brunch, what about lunch? I would like to squeeze in as many instances of gastronomic delights in my day; therefore, I do not like to be cheated out of a meal, if I can help it. On the other hand, breakfast in bed, now that I can understand. It even carries a hint of the decadent eroticism - feathered slippers and silky dressing gowns…too many French movies, I agree.

Dirt Candy - December 22, 2010

I confess: I am a queue mania. When there is a line forming (a rare sight in North America somehow – not enough good restaurants or not enough enthusiasm?), I lose control of my faculties and better judgments and end up at the end of the queue, quite involuntarily, I must add. Even in the virtual world that we live in these days, there is not escape for a queue mania. Whenever the apologetic little window pops up on Opentable.com informing me that there were no tables available in any of the days or times I have grudgingly offered as substitutes, I take it personally and, very badly, at best: There is a queue and I am not getting what they are getting. A capricious clicking then becomes an obsessive stalking – Operation Outsmarting Opentable.com. Dirt Candy had become one of the hardest tables to snatch, so snatching I had to do. (The poor quality of photographs is not due to my lack of skill, although truly wanting, but because of the eerie lighting of the restaurant.)

Recipe - December 21, 2010

Recipe was suspicious. It hid behind a cloak of decency and respectability, but I knew better: The yuppy Thai one door down was owned by the same owner. A New American and a Thai places, sandwiching a card shop in the middle, seemed as innocent as a drug cartel and a factory, connected underground by a cross-border tunnel.

Gotham Bar and Grill - December 9, 2010

Dining at Gotham is like slipping on a suit of silk satin pajamas: Smooth, luxurious and beseeching for relaxation. There will be no nerves, no worries and no premonitions that something unpredictable, unavoidable and totally unsavory will materialize to ruin your night, well, perhaps except for their appalling tap water for it thoroughly shamed the claim New York had enjoyed on having the best tap water of all the fifty states (not that I believed it for a minute).

Momofuku Má Pêche - November 7, 2010

You cannot really blame me, can you, for being a little bit skeptical – or truth be told, very skeptical – about a restaurant named Momofuku, which is not a real word in any language, including Japanese? A shake of the head followed by an immediate dismissal was my reaction, even after a perusal of a rather intriguing article in the New York Times. I was not about to jump onto the bandwagon and join the mad clicking contest, with wrists arched and shoulders tight, to snatch up the next available reservation at Ko. Times passed and now we are in 2010; Momofuku has aggrandized into yet another superpower on the gastronomic map of New York. Being a staunch opponent against restaurant empires and chef-turned CEOs, I preferred to live in a quiet contentment outside of David Chang’s territory.

However, that is all history now: Things dramatically changed when I stumbled upon the “epic” Beef Seven Ways. I could not not try it; there are a few moments in life where you have to prove yourself, rise up to the occasion and show the world what you have got – like singing the first karaoke or taking the bar exam. iPads, I could do without; but Beef Seven Ways, I had to have it. So, I gathered up six volunteers to embark on this ambitious adventure into the bovine wildness.

Telepan - July 16, 2010

House-Smoked Brook Trout

The layers of flavors in this dish are a pleasure. I would start from the top: Take a mouthful of the cool smoked trout and savor its gentle smokiness and the melting flesh; for the second bite, cut into the corn blini and enjoy the sweet starchiness; for the third bite, now put a piece of the smoked trout on top of a dainty square (or not so dainty), dab a bit of sour cream, and carry this sweet, smoky, tender and solid mound on the folk (don't drop any now!) into the mouth...and just say "Ahhhh..." You can then start from step 1 again. Or you can be masochistic and bide your time and eat the sweet crunchy corn adorning the plate, before you lose control and attack this trout mountain head on...

Eggplant Parmigiano

The execution of food at Telepan is admirably constant and precise. One of these two adjectives alone is already a feat; to manage two says something about the achievement of the restaurant.

The eggplant was perfectly crispy and, combined with the salad, must be the healthiest eggplant parmigiano I have ever had - regrettably, if not the best eggplant parmigiano or even the second-best. Is this one of those vain attempts to make over traditional recipes? The reason that a particular recipe survives over time despite the superficiality of fashion, lack of commitment and general forgetfulness of the human race is because it is good. When it is good, leave it alone. On the other hand, should I give credit to the spirit of challenge? After all, civilization moves forward (most of the time) due to the relentless pursuit of novelty (because human beings get so bored, easily). Nonetheless, when it comes to food, effort alone is not enough to please, is it?

Quail

Typically Telepan, the quail was well-executed on a bed of light salad. But does it have room for innovation? Absolutely. How about a few slivers of grapefruit in the salad, or a few pistachios, or both, I wonder?

Fazzoletti with Pork Ragu

Wider than pappardelle, fazzoletti with ragu is like lasagna without baking.

It would still have been a beautiful dish, albeit a little overly generous by a few pinches of salt, if the fazzoletti got out of the hot water bath 60 seconds earlier. Even human beings get wrinkly when you stay too long in the tub; imagine what water can do to the fazzoletti.

Spaghetti with Lobster Bolognese

Bolognese is a meat sauce or, ragu, predominently tomato-based from, where else but Bologna. Bologna is in Emilia Romana, the grain capital of Italy. Bologna is endowed with many agricultural delights, but agricultural products are from the land, not the sea. A good ragu uses a combination of beef and pork - either animal lives on land - with tomatoes grown on land.

On the other hand, let's face it - lobster is really about the texture. If you truly enjoy the crustacean family, there are many other more interesting creatures under the sea, starting with the langostini. You know where this is going: When you take this lobster and put it into a Bolognese sauce, whom would you bet your money on? Put another way, lobster + tomato = tomato with chunks. There is one solution, mind you: Just add a lot of lobster and lobster shells (like when you make the stock for lobster bisque) into the base. Then we can talk about Lobster Bolognese.

While we are at it, one more thing: I am not eating lobster lo mein but spaghetti, I think. Please take my poor long friends out of the pot 60 seconds earlier.

Striped Bass with Pickled Beets

Did the words, "pickled beets," rouse your skepticism? I totally understand and sympathize if they did. But rest assured, I can tell you that it was a surprisingly complementary. Fleshy and flaky, striped bass does not have a pronounced flavor: If we do a blind test, can you really tell the difference between a striped bass and, let's say, the sea bass? (Well, let me think about this again as I may just be able to...) Here, the beets come in: The earthiness and the sourness of the pickled beets, cool on the palate, contrast interestingly with the striped bass - both in taste and touch.

High praise for the chef for combining these two ingredients.

Salmon with Lobster Succotash

Now, salmon is a fish with unmistakeably salmony taste: Many times, cooking skill depends on balancing off the abundant fattiness of the salmon with something showing the creativity of the chef. Sometimes, the chefs go slightly overboard, however. Balancing does not mean killing the distinct flavor of a tricky, albeit unique, ingredient. If you have ever dined at Modern, you know what I mean: It was a testament to the "modern" culinary technology because it somehow managed to erase the original flavor of each ingredient.

This salmon was thus "modern" in such a way in being totally unmemorable. What is memorable then, you may ask. A dish can be good but yet easily forgotten, like a nice guy that you went out a few times with but you would not be able to remember the name 12 months later. A truly remarkable, life-changing, and beautiful dish has the power to evoke the taste and texture (and the pleasure) upon recollection - i.e. total recall (such as the Chateaubriand Rossini at Chez Matsuo in Tokyo). Total recall, this was not.

Stuffed Zucchini Flower

Telepan always provides a satisfying and enjoyable meal: Good in the average, within expectation, does-not-interrupt-dinner-conversation kind of way. Occasionally, it rises up to a few "Hm? This is good!" moments; and other times, "Hm...what is this?" moments as well.

This salad of stuffed zucchini flower was the latter "Hm?" moment. Adequately edible, but if you ask me what the difference was between this dish and the eggplant parmigiano, I would not be able to tell you, really.

Strawberry Granita Parfait

Unfailingly my favorite dessert at Telepan. It is refreshing, full of fragrant strawberries and cream and attractive until the last bite for its bubbles on the tongue and crunchy almonds.

Other desserts - good and very signature Telepan.

Crunchy Peanut Butter and Milk Chocolate Giuanduja

Tres Leches Cake