Slap happy

My son has taken to pummeling me lately. I’ll be carrying him down the street, maybe headed to the park or a local shop, remarking on the weather, pointing out semi-domesticated animal friends, when all of a sudden, he’ll rear back and crack me one across the cheek. Then he laughs. Loudly. The first time this happened, I was so shocked and taken aback that I started laughing too. Big mistake. Emboldened and encouraged by my laughter, eyes aglitter, he started whaling away with the rapidity of a lawn sprinkler. I had to put him down I was laughing so hard. 

He’s also into head-butting. This is a more serious matter, since his head is just tremendous, a real wrecking ball. He’ll lower his head into my jaw and erupt in peals of laughter. Before I can get the first “hey, stop that” out, he’s head-butted me again. And again. I try the advanced parenting stuff I think I know. “Kiddo, when you hit me with your head, that hurts me.” He responds with raucous laughter and another head-butt. My only option for preserving my jaw and his head is to carry him home under my arm, like the Sunday paper.

Eating the East Village

If I could move anywhere in the city right now, strictly for eating purposes, it would be the East Village. The diversity of the restaurant scene, the boldness of the chefs, and the accessibility of the experiences (except for Momofuku Ko, I suppose) is unmatched. If you’re young, hungry, and don’t mind dropping your hard-earned cash on night life and good meals, head on over to the land of thin jeans, cigarettes, Bustelo, and barely camouflaged yuppies. Tonight, I sampled two places that had been on my radar for some time, Setagaya Ramen on 1st Ave. at 9th St. and Crif Dogs on St. Mark’s Place near Ave. A.

Setagaya’s ramen is shio style, which means that salt is used as a key flavoring agent in the broth (as opposed to soy sauce). The broth is clear-brown with gorgeous yellow fat globules floating on top. Very flavorful and light-bodied, without the in-your-face porkiness of a tonkotsu ramen broth. After experiencing the blast furnace-heated broth at Ippudo, I was somewhat disappointed in the merely mortal temperature of Setagaya’s. The noodles were the best part of the meal, beautifully cooked, with a nice rebound after each and every chew. The accompaniments (pork, bamboo shoots, seaweed, scallions, egg) were very good but not profound. The pork slices were thin and (I felt) overcooked, but the half egg, teetering on the edge of hard/soft-boiledness (and on its way into my food item hall of fame) definitely got and kept my attention.

Crif Dogs had me at hello. But, admittedly, deep-fat fried hot dogs are not exactly the hardest sell for me. I chowed down on a Good Morning dog, which consists of a bacon-wrapped hot dog, fried egg, and slice of American cheese, on a Wonder-bread soft hot dog bun. The bacon was perfectly crisped and melded to the juicy hot dog like a second skin. The egg and cheese helped round out the subversive, breakfast-as-dinner feeling of eating this dog. Another protein rush, but no aggression this time. The waffle fries were forgettable but the RC cola, dark, lush, co-la tasting cola, was just delightful.

Falling for falafel

Watching your falafel sandwich being made at Pahal Zan on 71st Ave. (just south of Austin St.) in Forest Hills is a sensuous exercise, not unlike watching a lover get dressed for the evening. First, half a dozen or so falafel balls are expertly scooped from a mountain of spiced chick pea mixture and lofted into a vat of boiling oil. After a few minutes of tumbling and sizzling in the bubbling hot oil, the balls are beautifully browned. The server, who looks like a cross between an Israeli paratrooper and an emo rocker, now begins to assemble your sandwich. Everything is done with care and precision. Tahini, hot sauce, falafel balls, sliced cabbage, lettuce and tomato salad, hummus, and more tahini sauce are daintily tucked into the soft, grill-streaked pita bread. Nothing is spilled, or torn, or misplaced. It’s perfect. With the first bite, you’re mainly admiring the freshness of the pita and the warm oily glow of the tahini sauce. Next bite is all about the clarity of the tomato and the crisp of the cabbage against the silky richness of the hummus. In the third bite, you crunch through the fried shell of a falafel ball and on into the soft crumbly center. The flavor is complex and strangely, deliciously familiar. By your last bite, you are already checking your wallet and taking a peek around, trying to decide if anyone will notice if you order another.

Christmas chow

Tomorrow is Christmas. Christmas! I get a glow just thinking of the wonderful meals that structure Christmas day at my in-laws’ house. The eclectic menu blends American with French, Mediterranean, and Indian. Might sound a little strange, but I couldn’t imagine Christmas any other way. Quiche Lorraine and coffee cake while presents are being opened. Plenty of hot coffee. After a nap, a few chapters of a new book or DVD, and some quiet conversation, we regroup around the dinner table for leg of lamb, beef curry, mattar paneer, dolmades (which we rolled the previous day), spinach pie, nicoise salad, the secret family-recipe cheese ball, and a nice wine. Dessert could be Christmas chocolates, baklava, or ice cream. Plenty of hot coffee. Mmmm, Christmas.

Wishing you and yours a safe and restful holiday. May the new year bring you much joy.  -Eatist

Shun me

SHUN LEE. The enigmatic sign on 65th just east of Broadway looks transplanted from some suburban corporate park – all caps, block letters, betraying nothing about the goings-on inside. For years I wondered what Shun Lee was all about. Hair salon, life-extending clinic, and Shaolin temple were my best guesses, until someone eventually told me that it was actually a pricey Chinese restaurant. I dropped in for lunch today to tamp down the last remnants of my recent Chinese food craving.

What an odd odd restaurant. After you walk in the door, sunlight is a distant memory. Shun Lee is all black lacquer walls and no windows. There’s a bar on your left as you head towards the dining room. A bartender was polishing glasses with a towel under the watchful gaze of some creepy, red-eyed monkeys overhead. Made me think of the Long Island strip mall Chinese restaurants of my youth, dark, deserted places with cheesy dragon-themed decor and shady characters at the bar. Who the hell drinks at a Chinese restaurant bar, anyway? People up to no good, that’s who. The central section of the dining room is sunken, which struck me as preciously 70s. At night, I imagined the waiters walking off with the tables, a disco ball descending from the ceiling, and tubby, polyester-clad customers doing the hustle.

The a la carte lunch menu was pretty spare, perhaps half a dozen unexciting entrees per category. Very expensive. Prix fixe was $24.08 (kind of a strange, discomforting price, no?) for soup or appetizer, main course, and dessert. No thank you. We ordered the Szechuan dumplings in hot sauce appetizer, Szechuan crispy duck with scallion pancake, and Moo Shun pork with Chinese crepes. The dumplings were tender and satisfying with a memorable sauce, which tasted like soy sauce infused with chili oil. The duck was not bad, but could have been served a little hotter. The impressive layer of fat just under the crispy skin added flavor to the earthy duck meat, but this could have been even better had the fat been a little melted. The Moo Shun pork was tasty and gone in a flash, but didn’t elevate my moo shu pork consciousness. Shun Lee proudly bills itself as “haute Chinese cuisine” – yeah… no.

Szechuan de vivre

After you read this, turn off your computer, slip on your shoes, pet the dog, lock the door, and head into midtown. Just south of Bryant Park, on 39th Street between 5th and 6th Aves., you’ll find Szechuan Gourmet. Go inside and request a table for one. Start perusing the dozens of achingly wonderful selections on the menu. Instinctively pull back out of self-preservation. Creep back in. Think how cool and daring you’d seem if you ordered one of the many frog or eel dishes in the Delicacy section, but chicken out in the end. Scratch your head. Look important. Start to check your email but think better of it. Wave off the server as you request a few more minutes to study the menu in silent contemplation, a foodie monk. When the server returns, order (with gusto) a mix of old and new, safe and spunky. To start, pork belly with chili-garlic soy and honey-glazed spare ribs. For your main course, stir-fried sea scallops with roasted chili peanut, wok tossed crispy beef filets with roasted chili cumin, and sliced chicken with mixed vegetables. Make a mental note about ordering a hot pot dish the next time you’re here, because there will be a next time and a time after that. Admire the orange sheen and fiery tang of the chili-garlic soy reduction and how it pumps up the meaty fatty bass notes of the pork belly. Dismiss the honey-glazed spare ribs as too damned sweet. Take them away! Marvel at the scallops, translucent scallopy flesh glistening with peanuts and red chilis. They’re huge. Their sheer reality is an affront to all that you know. Chopstick them down to half-size and send them down your gullet. Squint suspiciously at the crispy beef filets, without a doubt the fugliest dish on the table. But feel the pop-rocks sparkle of the cumin and imagine the beef filets alight in your mouth, up to god knows what. Ignore the chicken with a haughty sniff as you take the last pull on your Tsingtao. Put your shoes on. Exit the restaurant and head back home. You’ve done more than enough for one night.

Bruised Rego

I often tell people that the town I live in, Rego Park, Queens, is the worst place in the world. It’s a bit of an exaggeration, but that’s the way I feel about it, especially where restaurants are concerned. There are numerous joints in the neighborhood that function as de facto social clubs for the dominant ethnic group, the Bukharian Jews from Uzbekistan. The cooking smells amazing (spicy and meaty), but I’ve never set foot in one of these places because every dinner service looks like an off-limits private party. Very “whatta you looking at, pal?” Being bum-rushed by Uzbeks is not my idea of a relaxing evening. Unfortunately, all of the other restaurants in town are shockingly, brazenly bad. One violation from being shut down from health department bad. Rego Park seems to specialize in one type of restaurant:  hole in the wall. We’ve got hole the the wall Chinese, Mexican-Chinese, Japanese, Italian, Turkish, Indian, you name it. Lots of different cuisines, one nasty standard. Foodie despair sets in.

But there’s actually one place where you can get an interesting and decent meal in Rego Park: Ben’s Best deli on Queens Boulevard at 63rd Drive. Ben’s is a traditional Jewish deli, serving hearty helpings of New York deli standards like pastrami/corned beef/tongue/brisket sandwiches, matzoh ball soup, kreplach, and chopped liver. The pastrami is great, not quite Katz’s or 2nd Ave. Deli great, but worth the trip. For brunch today, I wolfed down Ben’s pastrami and eggs, which is one of those “heart attack on a plate” dishes that just works so well on Sundays. A ream of peppery pastrami mixed into a fluffy, three-egg, pancake-style omelette. The accompanying fries were wonders of the spud world – one was as big as my thumb (starting at the base of my wrist)! After that prodigious infusion of protein, fat, and starch, I walked home in a seriously aggressive mood. I kept wanting to pop passers-by in the jaw and see if I could “take them.” Well, I didn’t act on these feelings, and instead channeled my surplus energy into helping my two-year old fill bucketful after bucketful of lightly melted snow.

Making my list, checking it twice

Caught a half hour of The Bucket List on cable tonight. The whole concept of this movie just makes me queasy. A billionaire and a mechanic, both dying, become friends in a cancer ward and then proceed to jet all over the world, crossing off items on their grandiose list of things to do before… kicking the bucket. As if doing this would allow these men to find joy in their lives, die happy, go to heaven, get reincarnated, what have you. There’s a whole crass-ass industry built around this idea (have you seen the 1,000 Places to See Before You Die series of books?) that masquerades as inspiration. It used to be that “he who dies with the most toys wins” but now it seems that “he who dies having had the most peak experiences wins.” Puh-lease. I have no trouble grasping the concept of wanting to squeeze some extra sweetness out of life, especially when things get dire. Believe me, I get this. However, why do these lists always seem to involve herding wildebeests in Kenya or biking the Great Wall or skiing down Mount Everest? What in the name of Sarah Palin would an average Joe get from seeing the pyramids?

Why can’t we instead focus on the countless moments in every day when we don’t take risks, when we deny ourselves, when we hurt ourselves and others? I would pay good money for any book that could teach me to go a whole day, just one day, without feeling mortified or embarrassed. My all-time favorite vision of life after death is Albert Brooks’ Defending Your Life. In this 1991 comedy, heaven is a cross between Disneyland and city hall, where your life is judged on the basis of whether you lived fearlessly or not. It’s beautiful because it’s simple. Doesn’t matter if you are a lawyer or a street cleaner, if you’re afraid, you’re not living the life you can and should be living.

Comfort this

If you ever find yourself in Kips Bay, a neighborhood of aging frat boys just south of the UN, be sure to check out Penelope restaurant at Lexington and 30th. Penelope is the epitome of the kind of restaurant that proliferated in New York over the last eight years of Republican rule, the comfort food restaurant. What gives with comfort food?  Don’t get me wrong, I’m a devotee of the stuff, will eat it morning, noon, and night, but with all of the comfort food that is being pushed out there right now, I have to wonder – why in heaven’s name do we all need so much comforting? Are things so bad that the only way we can feel good about ourselves is by cramming down donuts, mac and cheese, cheeseburgers, and hot fudge sundaes? There’s something slightly juvenile – scratch that – infantile about this type of eating that is impossible to ignore. Sometimes, I just want to scream “put the freaking red velvet cupcake down and start dealing with your issues!”

All of this being said, I can’t help but love Penelope. A true neighborhood joint that offers quality, home cooking in a warm and welcoming atmosphere. The servers are all young, attractive, and approachable. Slightly granola, but not in an off-putting way (except for that one guy in the sarong). For the Kips Bay twenty-somethings that wish they were back in mommy’s kitchen, Penelope offers updated comfort classics, bang-up baked goods, endless refills of coffee, and plenty of booze. I recommend the fontina and white cheddar mac and cheese, as far as I’m concerned, the best mac and cheese in the city. The “nice” meatballs is another favorite – chicken meatballs, melted fontina (love that fontina), tomato, and pesto mayo on a hollowed out baguette. Vegetarian? My wife rocks the warm brie and green apple sandwich with honey mustard on seven-grain toast. You will not be disappointed, my friend. But after the last plate has been cleared, promise me you’ll go back to being the grown-up I know and love.

Nice buns

This year, I had a burger that was so good it made me cry. No joke. The greatest burger of my life so far. I was sitting at the bar in Palace Kitchen in Seattle, thoroughly enjoying my palace burger royale (with cheddar), when tears welled in my eyes. My theory is that I was simply having an emotional reaction to something that was overwhelmingly good, like you might on your wedding day, when you get your dream job, or when your child is born. The universe just clicked for me in that place. Meat sizzled over the roaring applewood fire grill. Frothy beer sluiced into frosty glasses. I know that if I ever go back, it probably won’t be the same. Makes that memory all the more special to me.

In NYC, there are plenty of options for extremely good (though perhaps not universe-clicking) burgers. At the top of my list is Burger Joint at the Parker Meridien hotel. The burgers are compact, cooked perfectly, and bursting with flavor. Fries are terrific there, too. Then there’s Brooklyn Diner’s cheeseburger deluxe, which is broken down in the menu as “custom ground beef, Vermont cheddar cheese, smokehouse bacon, and frizzled onion rings.” Mmm. A stunning and juicy burger and the only reason I’ll ever break my no-theme-restaurants oath. Like any proper foodie, I tried the burger with Roquefort cheese at The Spotted Pig gastropub. Found it truly disappointing (no gasps, please, SP poseurs). The patty was perfectly pink and juicy… and utterly without flavor. The only thing I remember tasting was a mound of melty Roquefort. That’s right, a mound of melty Roquefort. A mound of melty Roquefort.