Primehouse, Singaporeans and the second bottled-water event in a week

September 21

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, Greg Lindsay is one smart bastard.
We were both at last night’s opening party of Primehouse New York. That made sense since since we met during a press trip to meet the progenitor of Primehouse’s meat.
Greg’s one of those people who can follow a conversation on any topic, participate intelligently in that conversation and probably add something new to it without seeming like a smartass. It’s a quality we all should cultivate.
Now Greg’s working on a book about airports and how they are like the railroads of the 19th century. Spurring development wherever they crop up.
Somehow, as I sampled a couple of Eben Klemm’s cocktails — a drink that was like a Manhattan, but gin-based, and another made from vodka, blackberry and sage — the topic of the Bangkok airport, an ongoing project, came up and Greg talked about the corruption surrounding it. I pointed to the airport of my hometown of Denver, and how it was built on a tornado-prone flood plain in the middle of nowhere on land owned by old monied Denver families — something that everyone in the city seems to know and that no one seems to mind, even though it’s a display of corruption every bit as profound as what can be found in Bangkok.
The notion that widespread corruption only exists in developing countries astounds and annoys me, and yet people assert it a lot.
But Greg didn't. Instead he went into fascinating detail about developments around DIA (Denver International Airport) and also about the sociology of people who had settled in the new housing developments where the old Denver airport, Stapleton, once stood.
When Greg was there he knocked on the doors of new homes that resembled Brooklyn brownstones and asked the people why they’d moved there.
Anyway, it should be a good book, to be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
And that was just stop #1 of the evening.
Remember how the other day I went to a cocktail party at Daniel sponsored by Evian and then heard from some visiting chefs from Singapore while I was having lunch with them at Nobu that Fiji water also was hosting a dinner party at Daniel?
I said that I hoped it was true, and I e-mailed a Fiji representative to see if it was true. I just meant to check the facts, but they asked me if I would like to attend that dinner.
“No thank you,” I said. “I don’t want to dine at Daniel, because i’m retarded.”
Oh wait, I’m not retarded, so of course I went from Primehouse to Daniel to take them up on their offer for dinner.
There I was with all the Singapore chefs with whom I’d had lunch at Nobu. They were still guests of the poultry and egg board, but Fiji wanted to have them for dinner at Daniel.
At lunch I’d sat between Milind Sovani, a chef from Bombay who lives in Singapore and owns a high-end restaurant called The Song of India, and Christophe Megel, the head of The Singapore Culinary Academy and Spice Garden, which has some sort of affiliation with Johnson & Wales. One of his school’s graduates will be externing at Daniel soon.
At dinner, I sat between chef agent, Tufts alumnus, self-proclamed decent poker player and all-around nice guy Jeff Allen, and a Singaporean chef by the name of Mr. Puk, who specializes in Chinese seafood. He was born in Singapore, but his ancestors were from Hainan Island, so we talked about that island’s most famous dish, Hainan Chicken, which I think has been perfected in Thailand, where it is called khao man gai.
The dish is poached chicken served with rice that is cooked in the poaching broth. A bowl of the broth is also served on the side. The Thais' addition is a chile-ginger sauce.

Daniel did not serve khao man gai. After sipping some 1999 Dom Pérignon, we had:

Pressed poulard and foie gras terrine ith black truffles, young turnip salad and port reduction
2003 Au Bon Climat “Hildegard” Chardonnay, Santa Maria Valley

Warm salad of sea scallop with matsutake mushroom, Meyer lemon confit and chive oil
2006 Au Bon Climat "Daniel" Chardonnay, Santa Barbara

Duo of striped bass, slow baked with Champagne sauce, and tuna-wrapped tartare with fried oyster
2004 Au bon Climat “Old World Rules” Pinot Noir, Santa Maria Valley

Red king salmon baked in clay with roasted black mission figs and fennel confit
2005 Au Bon Climat “Le Bon Climat” Pinot Noir, Santa Maria Valley

Wild Scottish grouse with foie gras “cromequis,” rutabaga-parsnip purée, Seckel pear and black currant jus
1998 Au Bon Climat “Knox Alexander” pinot Noir, Santa Maria Valley

Tahitian vanilla bavarois with mango-cilantro gelée and passion fruit-banana sorbet
2005 Au Bon Climat “One Hand Clapping” late harvest Pinot Blanc, Bien Nacido Vineyard, Santa Maria Valley

Chocolate sablé with Colombian coffee cream, coffee ganache and hazelnut-macadamia ice cream

Chocolates, Madeleines (of course) and petits fours.

we have a lot to learn about Japanese food

September 20

“Thank you for come, I’m so appreciate!” my friend Shigeko Fuke said as I arrived at Ono last night, forgoing the big restaurant opening of the evening (it might have been BLT Market, I don’t remember because the New York restaurant scene in September is a blur, even as it’s happening) to attend The 2nd Fundraising Event for the Japanese Culinary and Cultural Association of America.
I think I met Shigeko and her husband Miguel Cardona five or six years ago at the relaunching of one of the dusty midsize Midtown hotels that get refurbished every once in awhile and throw a press party about it.
Somehow we’ve been friendly ever since. Because of Shigeko I have judged sushi competitions alongside chefs Daniel Boulud and Gabriel Kreuther, spoken to groups of visiting Japanese restaurateurs about food trends in New York, and appeared in the Japanese version of Playboy.
Playboy spelled my last name Thom instead of Thorn, but they really do look similar. As you would expect, I was not the centerfold, but an interviewee. I was recommending restaurants for visiting Japanese tourists.
So how could I turn down Shigeko’s invitation for dinner, especially as I’ll be moderating a talk on all things Japanese and foodish in LA next weekend.
Having sampled a sparkling sake and then switched to Asahi Select, I found myself in a conversation circle with Peacock Alley chef Cedric Tovar, who was sharing stories about his time in basic training in the French army. After that he cooked for the prime minister, so his year's service wasn’t so bad.
Then Lee Jones from Chefs Garden arrived and railed against those who insisted on using local produce whether it was any good or not. Naturally he would rail against that as his super-high-end produce is shipped nationwide. Lee was in town to talk to the Experimental Cuisine Collective about soil today. I tried to make it, but my job and a misbehaving computer foiled my attempts.
I did have time to speak to chef Andre Christopher of Pops For Champagne in Chicago, but he came to my office, which makes it easier. He showed me some photos of his food, one dish of which was garnished with Chefs Garden's super-expensive Mimo chives. Seeing the chives was like seeing an old friend.
Anyway, Lee and I sat at the same table, but I was between the charming food and travel writer Karen Tina and journalist and Iron Chef judge Akiko Katayama, whom you might recall arranged for me to visit Japan’s Niigata prefecture earlier this year.

What I ate and drank:

First course by Nobuo Fukuda of Sea Saw restaurant
Assorted sashimi plate:
Aji/grapefruit, avocado, ginger, yuzukosho, ponzu oil, white truffle oil
Sockeye salmon gravlax/soy roasted almonds, Pecorino-Romano cheese, basil oil, soy and balsamic reduction
Maguro akami/roasted beet purée and Pinot Noir reduction
Tako-ashi/small heirloom tomatoes, yuzu, shallots, wasabi aïoli, pink peppercorn, mozzarella cheese
Madai/ceviche-style miyoga, taro and shiso
Hirame/kobujima and yuzu
Otokoyama sake (tokubetsu junmaishu)

Second course by Kazuhiko Hashimoto of Ono:
Cold egg custard with sea urchin, nagaimo, white truffle-scented edamame soup, sea grapes and shiso bulb

Third course by Akio Saito of the Conrad Tokyo:
Overnight dried barracuda with pickled Daitokuji natto miso paste with grated radish, black vinegar and black rice
Steamed lobster with akatuchi shimeji mushroom, grilled chestnut, fried ginko and leaf-shaped sweet potato chip
Pine needle shaped fried thin wheat noodles with leaf-shaped ginger
Nanotuki organic junmai ginjo sake

Fourth course by takashi Yagihashi of Takashi Restaurant (which isn’t open yet but will be in Chicago):
Seared Washugyu New York strip and braised short ribs with confit Japanese eggplant and caramelized gobo
Taiheizan Kimoto sake (Junmai Kimoto)

Dessert by Kiyomi Toda-Burke and Sandra Palmer of Three Tarts:
Chocolate Bar/bruléed ganache with sansho caramel
Lychée Gelée with goji berries and tarragon
Black + Blonde/black sesame ice cream sandwich and miso blondie
Hanahato Kijoshu aged sake

Petit-fours by Chika Tillman of ChikaLicious

It’s after Labor Day, so I must be insane

September 19

I meant to sto`p by the International Chefs Congress at some point over the past couple of days, but it proved to be impossible. I worked all day Monday but wanted to at least stop by the evening reception, but first it made sense to make an appearance at a reception in the Sutton Place home of Jan and Mitsuko Shrem, who own the Clos Pegase Winery in Napa and, it turns out, the best view of Midtown Manhattan and the East River I’ve ever seen.
I ran into Crain's New York writer Louise Kramer on the way to the party and we caught up during the ride to the 32nd floor (don’t pass up time to chat in elevators; time is money).
Publicist Michael Gitter opened the door for us and I looked to the left to see a painting of a woman in profile, but with two eyes.
And I said to myself, “No, that’s not a Picasso. Are you crazy? It’s probably just a Braque or something."
But Braque did cubist stuff, not two-eyed profiles. Of course it was a picasso. I felt like a bumpkin.
Then I glanced past the painting to the windows and saw the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, Sutton Place and the rest of New York south of 58th Street stretching gloriously before me, the stately East River flowing by its side.
The East River is, too, stately. Don’t be such a snob. And in my view were at least two of the engineering triumphs that span its width to connect Manhattan and Brooklyn.
I’d meant just to pop my head in, sip a glass of wine, say "hi, hi," and go on either to the Chefs Congress reception or The Tasting Room, whose owners were celebrating the restaurant’s first anniversary in its new space. But as Jan Shrem began to hold court and the hors d'oeuvre from Le Périgord were passed, I realized that I was where I needed to be for the evening.
So the press party at The Tasting Room was over by the time I got there, but the family-and-friends party was going on and I ended up staying for that.
Wine was being served, but the food was gone, so I went from there to a Chinese hole-in-the-wall for noodles and got home at around 1 a.m.
I checked my e-mail and learned that the culinary pages in Nation’s Restaurant News would be closing on Tuesday instead of the usual Wednesday.
So the Chefs Congress for Tuesday was out and I was actually at my desk at 8:45 Tuesday morning.
If you don’t work with me, you don’t know how rare a thing it is to see me sitting at my desk at 8:45 a.m. (8:45 p.m. is less rare), but it had to be done.
It had to be done partly because I’d RSVPed for a lunch at the ‘21’ Club (I don’t know why the 21 is in single quotation marks, but it always is) featuring Bob Waggoner from Charleston, whom I hadn’t seen in awhile.
My table was awesome, with Regina Schrambling and Arlyn Blake and Laurie Woolever all seated there.
Laurie was at the Shrem’s party, too. All the more reason to stay.
I still had pages to read at 6:30 that night, but there was a lull in activity in the office, so I popped up to Daniel, which happily is just half a mile away from NRN’s offices, for a party that Evian was throwing.
They’d sent me an invitation in one of those fancy wooden boxes in which good alcohol is often sold, which was a mistake: If you’re going to send someone a fancy wooden box of the sort in which good alcohol is often sold, there’d better be good alcohol in it or the recipient will be disappointed.
Still, I went to the party (free hors d'oeuvre at Daniel? Of course I’ll go), just as I would have if they'd just e-mailed me an invitation.
The invitation in the box said the hors d’oeuvre would be infused with Evian, and I asked Daniel about that as I didn't know what that meant, and he said that they had planned to cook some of the appetizers in Evian, but ultimately he decided to use regular water, as Evian, as he said it, is for drinking, "not for playing."
I was still in the office at around 9 p.m., and decided that enough was enough and I should go home rather than to any International Chefs Congress parties, especially since I had lunch today at Nobu with a bunch of visiting chefs from Singapore who were being hosted by the American Egg Board. I’m not exactly sure what I was doing there, but I enjoyed myself, and was told from one of the chefs that Daniel was hosting a Fiji Water party later this week.
I don’t know if that’s true, but I hope it is.

Farmer Daniel (no, not that farmer Daniel)

September 18



New Yorkers might remember Daniel Orr either as the executive chef of La Grenouille or, later, as the executive chef of Guastavino, Terence Conran’s failed experiment under the Queensboro Bridge.
Guastavino was open for quite a few years, but it never really found its way, and Daniel eventually moved to the tropics, where he worked in Antigua for a time.
He has now returned to his native Indiana to open a local-produce-oriented restaurant in Bloomington, called Farm.
He grew up in nearby Columbus, Ind.
I reported this fact in Nation’s Restaurant News a little over a month ago, but I just got a press release reminding me of it, so I thought I’d pass the news on.
But you might consider subscribing to NRN. It’s a good read.

Foxwoods

September 16

“Welcome to Aspen East!” one of the publicists for the Foxwoods second annual Food & Wine Festival said as she greeted people on Friday.
You gotta love plucky marketing.
The event, like Aspen, was something of a reunion, and I had yet to put down my bags when I ran into Steve Shipley from Johnson & Wales and minor celebrity chef Michel Nischan (minor but as warm and good-natured as any chef I know).

Here he is (on the right), with chef Jean-Pierre Vuillermet.
But Aspen’s Food & Wine Magazine Classic is the mother of American food and wine festivals, and the town itself is a luxurious resort in the beautiful Rocky Mountains.
Foxwoods is a gigantic casino for the masses. It’s in the pretty countryside of the Mashantucket-Pequot nation’s section of Connecticut, and it was the largest casino in the world until recently, when a bigger one opened in Macao, but it ain’t Aspen.
Still, the turnout wasn’t bad. Exhibitors in the banquet hall where the “grand tasting” was held said attenance was way up from last year. And the event did draw some big-name celebrities in the food world.
I heard two things over and over again: “Mutton Man!” from Grub Street’s Josh Ozersky, who calls me that for reasons lost to history; and “This is off the record!” from chef agent Scott Feldman.
Scott is my networking role model. He’s a genius and, it turns out, old high school friends with my freshman year college roommate, Michael Yudell, who now is a professor of public health at Drexel. Roslyn, N.Y., raised some good people. Better than you’d expect, really.
Not off the record and from Scott: Rocco Laterzo no longer works for American Express.
I had my first dinner of the festival at Al Dente, an old school American-style Italianish restaurant, with journalists, mostly travel writers, whom I hadn’t met before, except for Andrew Linick of The Practical Gourmet, whom I’m pretty sure I met many years ago at the opening of Lundy’s in Times Square (which closed shortly thereafter).
I had arugula salad with endive, lemon and olive oil topped with Parmesan cheese, followed by halibut sautéed with lemon, capers and shaved fennel, while sharing life stories with Los Angeles-based freelance writer Earl Heath and his wife (I think wife; I don't really know) Rita. He’s from nearby Waterford, Conn., and she’s from Wyoming, so we had amusing high-altitude stories to share.
Then at the afterparty that night I reconnected with some more New England chefs, like Andy Husbands, the chef of Tremont 647 in Boston, whom I’d met some years ago when he was one of the “celebrated chefs” of the National Pork Producers Council, a year-long gig that by all accounts is a lot of fun.

Here’s Andy (on the right) with restaurant consultant Ed Doyle
Michael Schlow, one of the featured celebrity chefs of the event, was there and confirmed a rumor that he was opening a restaurant in Foxwoods. It will be an incarnation of Alta Strada, his Italian restaurant in Wellesley, Mass., and will be at Foxwoods’ MGM Grand, which is slated to open in May.
I was wondering why Michael Schlow was listed as a celebrity chef and Michael Symon, whom I think enjoys about similar celebrity, was just listed as a chef, but the Foxwoods connection kind of explains it I think. And Mr. Schlow probably is more of a celebrity in New England, since Michael Symon is based in Cleveland and his New York venture, Parea, didn’t last too long.
New York Restaurateur Jimmy Bradley was there, too, and I learned that he and Danny Abrams were no longer partners — something I apparently should have known a long time ago.
In fact, it was reported in The New York Times in May of 2006. But hey, you can’t remember everything.
One of the very nice things about the Foxwoods festival is that nothing much was scheduled before noon. So I slept in until it was time to go to the Grand Tasting, which mostly featured wine and spirits, and beer, including a gluten-free sorghum beer which Ming Tsai’s chefs found interesting.
Ming Tsai’s big on catering to customers with allergies, because his son has many of them. I learned this later in the afternoon when I wandered into the press room while he was being interviewed. What else I learned: Iron Chef provides contestants with three possible mystery items, so they have some warning of what they might have to work with. When Ming Tsai had to cook duck on the show, he knew it would be duck, chicken or squab.
Squab. I used to see squab on a lot of menus, I really did, just a few years ago. These days, not so much. I wonder why.
Speaking of Iron Chef, I sat in on Morimoto’s demonstration, because he’ll be cooking at the Nation’s Restaurant News Culinary R&D conference in a couple of weeks. (The conference is September 28 and 29 at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles and is free to restaurant operators. Register now).
Dinner that night was a gala masquerade, and then there was an afterparty on the 24th floor, at Foxwoods’ fine dining restaurant, Paragon.
David Burke was at both of those (he’s opening three restaurants at Foxwoods when the MGM Grand opens). He also participated in the celebrity chef poker game on Sunday, which New York chef Franklin Becker of Brasserie won — and so $15,000 will go to a charity to treat autism. Ming Tsai came in second.

Here’s Franklin (on the left), with his agent, Scott Feldman.
At Saturday’s afterparty I met Junior’s owner Alan Rosen (Junior’s is opening a restaurant off of the MGM lobby and a coffee bar on the casino floor), and Top Chef’s Sam Talbot.
I’m going to have to start watching that show. I hate reality TV, and I don’t like to watch food TV because I like to turn off my brain when I watch TV, and if food’s involved I feel like I have to pay attention. But the show’s stars are becoming part of my world, and they seem to be good people. I could take being-nice lessons from Sam Talbot.
Harold Dieterle, formerly of Top Chef and now of Perilla restaurant in New York, was at Foxwoods, too. I saw him posing for a picture with fans at the Grand Tasting and I asked him if that happens a lot.
“Yeah, man, where’s my security?” he said (he was joking).
Following the afterparty, which ended promptly at 1 a.m. as that’s last call in Connecticut (I was told that last call was 2 a.m. on weekends, but it isn’t at Foxwoods), we went downstairs and...
“This is off the record!”
Sorry Scott.
Never mind.