Thursday, January 31, 2008
Slight Return
Where does one begin after such a lengthy period of sustained silence? My last post was written on June 3rd 2007, well over six months ago and that is a long time. I know that in the grand scheme of things it isn’t a long time – the lower Palaeolithic lasted approximately two million years, the Mesozoic Era spanned a whopping 186 million years. Even the gestation period of the hippopotamus is eight months so there may well be baby hippos conceived before I penned my last entry that are yet to enter the world – however, since I was just beginning to get into a stride, get the hang of this writing lark and start to compose some seriously regular culinary musings, six months is a long time.
I knew it would happen. There was simply no way I was ever going to find the motivation (or time, or desire for that matter) to work full time for ‘the man’ and continue to live the life of an out of work food writer. The creative muscle just wouldn’t have time to exercise and by June the muscle was fast wasting away. Which is a shame because I was at the start of quite an interesting culinary adventure. I’d just cooked pigs’ feet for the first time and was happily ready to move onwards to the head. I had grand plans to make my own salamis and air-dried hams, I’d planned out a vegetable patch for the back garden and growing timetable to yield fresh fruits and vegetables for the whole year. I’d bought a book on how to make your own cheese. My bread baking skills had even progressed from woeful to merely inadequate. And then it all stopped.
The cooking didn’t stop. Or, at least, not entirely. I still found the time to create and research and taste and improve and make notes and cook old favourites. What stopped was the meticulous recording of what was being cooked. The words that seemed to flow out freely in the wake of every successful and non-successful epicurean experiment just dried up and I kept kidding myself that it was just a temporary lull – that after a holiday I would happily type out five thousand words about the incredible food I enjoyed in Thailand or that a brief trip to the Smokehouse or butcher or fishmonger would not only inspire me to cook but also to write about it. Alas, no and now my memory fails in providing me with the requisite amount of information to recall all the things I’ve cooked since ‘Trotter Day’. The cause of this drought was not lack of desire per se, it was a lack of desire brought on my acute boredom of doing a job that I simply did not want to do, and after spending eight brain-numbing, mind-melting, eye-bleedingly dull hours sat in front of a computer screen the last thing one wants to do is spend further time staring at a VDU. Couple that with a jaded lack of motivation and fear that I’d ‘sold-out’ and I just could not bring myself to write about food and cooking and eating and all the things I loved. I almost felt as if I was an adulterer, like I was cheating on my passion, my life, with a cheap slut – one that I had no real desire or reason to spend any time with at all but doing so left me feeling too guilty to enable me to go back to what I loved without first knocking it on the head.
And so I did. I left my job. And here I am, ever-so-slightly unemployed but deliriously happy. And there is so, so much to tell you about. If only I had the time…
Comments, feedback, thoughts, ideas et cetera are all welcome.
I knew it would happen. There was simply no way I was ever going to find the motivation (or time, or desire for that matter) to work full time for ‘the man’ and continue to live the life of an out of work food writer. The creative muscle just wouldn’t have time to exercise and by June the muscle was fast wasting away. Which is a shame because I was at the start of quite an interesting culinary adventure. I’d just cooked pigs’ feet for the first time and was happily ready to move onwards to the head. I had grand plans to make my own salamis and air-dried hams, I’d planned out a vegetable patch for the back garden and growing timetable to yield fresh fruits and vegetables for the whole year. I’d bought a book on how to make your own cheese. My bread baking skills had even progressed from woeful to merely inadequate. And then it all stopped.
The cooking didn’t stop. Or, at least, not entirely. I still found the time to create and research and taste and improve and make notes and cook old favourites. What stopped was the meticulous recording of what was being cooked. The words that seemed to flow out freely in the wake of every successful and non-successful epicurean experiment just dried up and I kept kidding myself that it was just a temporary lull – that after a holiday I would happily type out five thousand words about the incredible food I enjoyed in Thailand or that a brief trip to the Smokehouse or butcher or fishmonger would not only inspire me to cook but also to write about it. Alas, no and now my memory fails in providing me with the requisite amount of information to recall all the things I’ve cooked since ‘Trotter Day’. The cause of this drought was not lack of desire per se, it was a lack of desire brought on my acute boredom of doing a job that I simply did not want to do, and after spending eight brain-numbing, mind-melting, eye-bleedingly dull hours sat in front of a computer screen the last thing one wants to do is spend further time staring at a VDU. Couple that with a jaded lack of motivation and fear that I’d ‘sold-out’ and I just could not bring myself to write about food and cooking and eating and all the things I loved. I almost felt as if I was an adulterer, like I was cheating on my passion, my life, with a cheap slut – one that I had no real desire or reason to spend any time with at all but doing so left me feeling too guilty to enable me to go back to what I loved without first knocking it on the head.
And so I did. I left my job. And here I am, ever-so-slightly unemployed but deliriously happy. And there is so, so much to tell you about. If only I had the time…
Comments, feedback, thoughts, ideas et cetera are all welcome.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Wisdom that comes with age
January 30
“You need to stop calling people kids,” Andy Battaglia told me the other night while we had dinner at Monkey Bar.
I have taken to doing that. You might have seen me do it on this blog from time to time — I say things like "the bright kids at Eater.”
I mean it as a compliment. Kids are energetic and enthusiastic.
But Andy, who is my cultural guru, says it makes me sound old.
“I am old,” I told him.
“No you’re not,” said Andy, who just turned 33.
I’ll be 41 in April, which isn’t, you know, old old, but it means I have a little perspective. And I realized last night that it has made me slightly less stupid — my internal “you’ve had too much to drink! Stop, stop now!” alarm goes off much earlier than it used to.
Back when I was truly young, and living in Bangkok, that alarm went off when it was time to find a taxi to fall into rather than pass out on the street.
I am happy to report that I have never passed out on a Bangkok street.
Last night, it went off while I was talking to beverage writers and such at a rum party at the Brandy Library.
The party was in the bar's basement, down a spiral staircase that required some level of sobriety to navigate.
I had a mini-burger or two while chatting — mostly about world travel if I remember correctly — with assorted people from the drink world. But I didn't eat much because I'd had a meatball hero for lunch, and a meatball hero's a lot of food.
High-end VSOP rum, and an orange-flavored cordial made from rum, were being dispensed from cute little casks, and I sampled them with enthusiasm while talking about the benefits of flying business class with Jack Robertiello, what to do in Argentina with a caterer whose name I have forgotten, places to drink in New Zealand with Naren Young, while also catching up with the regular gang.
I was having a perfectly nice time when, after refilling my little snifter and taking a sip, my better self, watching me from the relative safety and objectivity of my brain, said "THIS IS YOUR LAST DRINK!"
I finished my conversations, put my glass down, said my good-byes and was able to take my gift bag, climb the stairs, get my coat and engage in what seemed like perfectly reasonable parting words with Shawn Kelley and Allen Katz, who were chatting outside the Brandy Library, and made it to my subway. I don't think my speech was even slurred.
This morning, no hangover.
Good alarm.
“You need to stop calling people kids,” Andy Battaglia told me the other night while we had dinner at Monkey Bar.
I have taken to doing that. You might have seen me do it on this blog from time to time — I say things like "the bright kids at Eater.”
I mean it as a compliment. Kids are energetic and enthusiastic.
But Andy, who is my cultural guru, says it makes me sound old.
“I am old,” I told him.
“No you’re not,” said Andy, who just turned 33.
I’ll be 41 in April, which isn’t, you know, old old, but it means I have a little perspective. And I realized last night that it has made me slightly less stupid — my internal “you’ve had too much to drink! Stop, stop now!” alarm goes off much earlier than it used to.
Back when I was truly young, and living in Bangkok, that alarm went off when it was time to find a taxi to fall into rather than pass out on the street.
I am happy to report that I have never passed out on a Bangkok street.
Last night, it went off while I was talking to beverage writers and such at a rum party at the Brandy Library.
The party was in the bar's basement, down a spiral staircase that required some level of sobriety to navigate.
I had a mini-burger or two while chatting — mostly about world travel if I remember correctly — with assorted people from the drink world. But I didn't eat much because I'd had a meatball hero for lunch, and a meatball hero's a lot of food.
High-end VSOP rum, and an orange-flavored cordial made from rum, were being dispensed from cute little casks, and I sampled them with enthusiasm while talking about the benefits of flying business class with Jack Robertiello, what to do in Argentina with a caterer whose name I have forgotten, places to drink in New Zealand with Naren Young, while also catching up with the regular gang.
I was having a perfectly nice time when, after refilling my little snifter and taking a sip, my better self, watching me from the relative safety and objectivity of my brain, said "THIS IS YOUR LAST DRINK!"
I finished my conversations, put my glass down, said my good-byes and was able to take my gift bag, climb the stairs, get my coat and engage in what seemed like perfectly reasonable parting words with Shawn Kelley and Allen Katz, who were chatting outside the Brandy Library, and made it to my subway. I don't think my speech was even slurred.
This morning, no hangover.
Good alarm.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Clubhouse Cafe
January 29
Last night, before having dinner at Monkey Bar, I went to a party at Clubhouse Cafe, which until quite recently was Tintol, a tapas bar specializing in Portuguese wine and food. Now it’s a kosher bar and lounge. Owner Jose de Meirelles also owns Le Marais, a kosher steakhouse across the street, and he saw a demand for a more casual place for people who follow Jewish dietary laws, both for spillover from his steakhouse and, well, just because.
It was a good party. I met Beth Aretsky, who is perhaps best known a “The Grill Bitch” in Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential. It made sense that she was there, as Jose used to be partners with Philippe Lajaunie in Les Halles, where Bourdain was chef.
Since the restaurant is kosher, Andrea Strong brought her kosher-keeping mother from Queens to be her guest. That was nice, and I would have chatted more with them but I ended up mostly talking with Jamie Tiampo, who came with the ubiquitous Akiko Katayama.
Jamie's a Sino-Canadian food photographer, food enthusiast, and partner in Dell'Anima. We spoke of many things, including his background (his grandfather left China’s Fujian province at the age of 6 and was raised in the Philippines, one thing led to another and Jamie was born in Calgary and raised in Vancouver, had a career in technology, decided he wanted a career in food and moved to New York). He gave my colleague Sonya Moore pointers on photographing liquids (in brief: It’s very hard to do).
I had a glass of red wine, and then went to dinner.
Last night, before having dinner at Monkey Bar, I went to a party at Clubhouse Cafe, which until quite recently was Tintol, a tapas bar specializing in Portuguese wine and food. Now it’s a kosher bar and lounge. Owner Jose de Meirelles also owns Le Marais, a kosher steakhouse across the street, and he saw a demand for a more casual place for people who follow Jewish dietary laws, both for spillover from his steakhouse and, well, just because.
It was a good party. I met Beth Aretsky, who is perhaps best known a “The Grill Bitch” in Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential. It made sense that she was there, as Jose used to be partners with Philippe Lajaunie in Les Halles, where Bourdain was chef.
Since the restaurant is kosher, Andrea Strong brought her kosher-keeping mother from Queens to be her guest. That was nice, and I would have chatted more with them but I ended up mostly talking with Jamie Tiampo, who came with the ubiquitous Akiko Katayama.
Jamie's a Sino-Canadian food photographer, food enthusiast, and partner in Dell'Anima. We spoke of many things, including his background (his grandfather left China’s Fujian province at the age of 6 and was raised in the Philippines, one thing led to another and Jamie was born in Calgary and raised in Vancouver, had a career in technology, decided he wanted a career in food and moved to New York). He gave my colleague Sonya Moore pointers on photographing liquids (in brief: It’s very hard to do).
I had a glass of red wine, and then went to dinner.
Chinese Monkey Bar
January 29
I didn’t know how Chinese Monkey Bar had become.
My friend Andy Battaglia and I were actually supposed to check out a relatively new restaurant last night, but it turns out the chef there was out of town, so we changed plans to see what Chris Cheung was up to. Chris replaced Patricia Yeo, who had been hired by the Glaziers, who own Monkey Bar, to revamp the menu of this formerly old school Midtown bar and restaurant.
Andy admired the restaurant’s walls, which had been painted red with Chinese-style scenes, many involving monkeys, as is appropriate for Monkey Bar, while I assessed the menu.
Everything is served family-style, and although probably only the potstickers were actually Chinese, Chris' style of using Chinese ingredients and techniques, plus some Southeast Asian ones, in Western-looking preparations was more evident than I'd expected. And the food was some of the spiciest I’ve had in Midtown. Who knew?
Here’s what we ate:
Kaffir lime leaf curried chicken salad
Salad of baby vegetables with chile lime dressing
mini short rib spring rolls with truffled Sriracha sauce
classic Cantonese shrimp and pork potstickers
crispy duck breast, lychee, mandarin oranges and Sriracha hoisin
wok seared sirloin steak, chile, garlic and creamed chrysanthemum spinach
I didn’t know how Chinese Monkey Bar had become.
My friend Andy Battaglia and I were actually supposed to check out a relatively new restaurant last night, but it turns out the chef there was out of town, so we changed plans to see what Chris Cheung was up to. Chris replaced Patricia Yeo, who had been hired by the Glaziers, who own Monkey Bar, to revamp the menu of this formerly old school Midtown bar and restaurant.
Andy admired the restaurant’s walls, which had been painted red with Chinese-style scenes, many involving monkeys, as is appropriate for Monkey Bar, while I assessed the menu.
Everything is served family-style, and although probably only the potstickers were actually Chinese, Chris' style of using Chinese ingredients and techniques, plus some Southeast Asian ones, in Western-looking preparations was more evident than I'd expected. And the food was some of the spiciest I’ve had in Midtown. Who knew?
Here’s what we ate:
Kaffir lime leaf curried chicken salad
Salad of baby vegetables with chile lime dressing
mini short rib spring rolls with truffled Sriracha sauce
classic Cantonese shrimp and pork potstickers
crispy duck breast, lychee, mandarin oranges and Sriracha hoisin
wok seared sirloin steak, chile, garlic and creamed chrysanthemum spinach
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
