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The Rolling Stones just added LV to their 2024 tour. Why you ask does that make me laugh. Because the tour is being sponsored by AARP 😁🤣🤣. Positively brilliant marketing move ⭐

pretty easy:

do people not like white men telling them what to do, like and think, anymore? how is this possible? it's the end times, for sure!

Is this the Burlap and Barrel product that advertises, and where? (I must get out more.) Regardless, your comment inspired a cooking choice yesterday: I took some warmed, leftover mild khichdi (mild because the lentil-to-rice ratio was very low), pressed it on a griddle with a dollop of ghee, spread some leftover, fatty pulled pork (pre-warmed) on top, then after it was all sizzling and crisp at the bottom, threw on top some chopped and re-crisped Shake Shack fries. It needed heat as a finishing touch, and instead of reaching reflexively for the Sicilian chili flakes, I went for the Marash. Hey, this how we 80%ers eat 80% of the time.

he's got a deluxe apartment in the sky

The shiva calls should be interesting.

I first heard of her when I was a teenager and she did that cover of Don't Mess With My Toot-Toot.

I'm sure I did, but it actually goes back further. I knew him before he was in a band. We used to go to the same gigs, notably Eddie and the Hot Rods. Nobody expected the skinny, gangly kid in the patterned shirts to become a star. I also knew him later when the Pogues used to play on the same bill as a band my friend managed. The link above is to "A Rainy Night in Soho" which is what I am playing this morning.

a good trial run for x-mas dinner. i am thinking of doing bollito misto. hubby said, “what is up with you and these dishes with many components?” to which i replied, “if we can’t travel to italia, this is replicating a slice of it at home”. sorry @voyager, hope your d-i-l gets well soon!

Thank God!

Aviation lessons - Never follow an airline to a second location - go to a hotel or airbnb of your choice (nobody forcing you to go to theirs) and hand in the receipt, along with any dining and clothing costs. You're also under no obligation to show up for the first flight they suggest. If the airline is clearly at fault insist on the first flight out on any airline, send a letter to their legal department and do not negotiate anything under $3k or $5k if it was an emergency landing.

Scallion pancakes using the Kenji Alt-Lopez's recipe. Never made them before.

Needless to say, none of this can take place at a nyc restaurant.

As the kids say, I feel seen.

That is all distressing, but I do have to ask whether Sietsema could tell the difference between antelope and beef tartare.

Thanks to our local Buy Nothing group, we now have an Instant Pot (Cuisinart version) and two Sabatier paring knives. N has successfully made beans and rice in the pot and loves it.

So about a month ago, when ILIS held its soft-open press dinner, the experience was something like this, according to a profile in Vogue: Ilis does not serve a tasting menu. Rather, after guests are greeted by a host, they tour the open kitchen and its four stations (two dedicated to fire and two to ice) and are shown the night’s primary ingredients. They are then seated and offered a field guide that outlines potential outcomes for their forthcoming adventure. “The menu is built from maybe 10 or 12 ingredients each day,” Refslund says. From there, the experience is a la carte (with a minimum commitment of five courses). It goes on: Ilis also features a series of roving carts with snacks, bountiful in nature, from seafood towers to vegetable baskets—and once again, guests can select what they want from each. …which is all I suppose a fancy way of saying “prix fixe with supplements” There’s also a lot about how there are no waiters, how the chefs would take the orders and deliver the food themselves from the big open kitchen. By the time the website went live, it appeared that minimum commitment was gone, and it was normal a la carte / tasting menu choice: i mean, yes, the phrasing is all a bit silly. Apparently it took some effort to… have a regular menu. Are there still the roving carts? Who knew. Silliness aside, I like Refslund, I’d been looking forward to his next project. that’s what I’m there for. Of course tables were gobbled up s soon as they went live in mid-October, but I managed to snag us a prime 8:00 PM Friday slot a month out. Cool. A few days ago I got a call and an email. They’d been having some service issues. Not saying it out loud, but it was fairly easy to read between the lines that they had over-anticipated how many tables they could handle at once. Maybe not having professional waitstaff was slowing things down? Whatever the unspoken reason was, would we be amenable to changing our rez to 9:00? Sure, fine by us. We’re amenable types. So we arrive. The space is gorgeous, chic. Everything is custom by hip local artisans. It is so Greenpoint. DS & Durga soap in the bathroom with “wild Brooklyn lavender” - oo la la. We are offered seats at the bar where we can order immediately, or we can wait in the lounge and get a cocktail while we wait for our table to be ready. We choose the latter, of course, and sink into the very modern sofas. The cocktails we have (“Beet” and “Pawpaw Gimlet”) are fantastic. At some point it’s revealed that the dining room is tasting menu only now. Er… okay. I guess we’re all in, then. I ask for a bar menu to peruse, out of curiosity: i can’t possibly imagine what goes into a $110 chicken. And that’s before the truffles. It dawns on me that at no point has anyone said, or has it been started anywhere, just what this tasting menu we’re in for costs. When I made the reservation, it was a la carte. And on their own website, to this very minute, it is still a la carte. Perhaps when this change happened they should have informed customers? Just a thought. Well off we went to our table. We were offered one choice, for the main entree: whole trout, wrapped in birch bark and leaves, served with charred cabbage in a dressing with roe from “the very same trout” - or grilled quail with mushroom jus. The former sounded more interesting to both of us (also I’d spent three nights eating pheasant earlier in the week) so trout it was. More Brooklyn artisan action - these little flatware holders with everything we’d need for the course of the meal: Out came the first of those carts, laden with all sorts of raw seafood: Were these supplements? No, we’re getting them all. Or one of each. Except the scallops, which we each got two of. Clams, sealed shut with beeswax and filled with a clamato to sip. Uni custard with tomato. Moon snails in potato espuma, scallops, two kinds of oysters with different dressings, a whole fluke with one side sliced into sashimi. They are certainly starting the meal strong. It all ranges from very good to excellent. Each item very different and distinct. The fluke was a bit much - there was as much of it as everything else combined. It was nice for a few bites but then it became kind of an obligation to finish. They needed to take the bottom half back to the kitchen to cook for another course. The fluke was also sitting atop a bed of ice in a basket made of a loose open-weave of twigs. You can imagine what happened to our table about five minutes in. Okay, mistakes happen. An eel mousse with caviar and smoked quince paste follows. The texture is somewhere between marshmallow and meringue. It doesn’t especially taste like eel. In fact there’s something nutty about it. Sesame? It’s fascinating and weird and, more importantly, delicious. Then things became less interesting. Out came a scallop, diced with little citrus bits - pulp and rind - plus bits of pepper and seaweed. A sakura tea was poured over - more to warm than cook it. It was very good. It was also raw scallops and citrus, which we’d had in the first course. This was the better of the two scallop preparations, for sure, but having both on a tasting menu was not well thought out. Despite the differences in the dishes, there a sense of repetition. Moving away from the sea, a tartare of antelope was schmeared around a plate. One picked it up with thin shavings of daikon, then dragged it through a sweet sauce of which I can’t remember the details. It did involve a dusting of the shaved dried heart that is now de rigueur in all modern-rustic Scandinavian restaurants. Bison in this case, IIRC. Very good. The rest of the fluke returned. I guess we’re back to the sea? I mostly stopped taking pictures at this point. It was grilled. It was cooked very well. Every bite seemed to involve pulling tiny bones out of one’s mouth. I’m all for fish on the bone, diving in and getting messy. I’d happily gone to town on a tilefish head earlier in the week at Foxface. But it doesn’t work with a fluke this size so much, with the very small bones. It was also… just a grilled fish. There was a remoulade on the side. Nothing out of the ordinary. A small boar chop with an internal seam of inedible soft gristle came next. A little sauce on the side. It was fine. It was gone quickly. It was a grilled piece of meat with a sauce on the side. Fine. Then back to the sea again - who chose the order of these dishes? Some tuna carpaccio laid on kombu and set over the grill briefly. For some reason this was served atop a sculpture of pine cones that looked like a hedgehog. The raw-ish tuna kind of stuck to the kombu and you had to peel it off like fruit roll-ups. It was gone in three or four bites. Aside from the hedgehog, not very memorable. i wish they had let us know that the menu would be 80% seafood before we’d selected the trout. I was beginning to regret that choice. And it was … a grilled trout. Which tasted like someone had dumped an entire box of Diamonds Crystal Kosher Salt on it. We sent it back. A better trout returned. It was perfect. The birch added nothing. It was the second simply grilled whole pick-out-the-bones fish we’d had. A different fish, but… come on, Mads. For fuck’s sake. You can be more creative than this. The first course proved it. Desserts were pleasant. Pears with sake lees ice cream and a rye porridge with chocolate and hazelnuts. A couple very good bottles of wine with dinner. Some excellent grower champagne and a ten year old natty Rhone Syrah with some forest floor mushroomy truffley funk on the nose. Markup on the champagne list was very reasonable, under 2X in most cases. We got the bill and it was a little over $400. Wait a minute… that was maybe the cost of the beverages. Did they just comp us the entire meal for a salty fish and/or some melted ice? I signaled the waiter, a little confused. The check was handwritten. Maybe that 4 was a 9? “No, no that’s a four.” You couldn’t have comped the whole meal just for a salty fish? “Oh no, you pre-paid the meal.” … … uh… I what? “yeah, hold on” (brings out iPad) “card ending in xxxx…” yeah, that’s my card. But wait, it was a la carte when I booked. “Yeah, here it is… here’s the charge, two tasting menus, tax…” i pull up my bank app, there it is. So I made a reservation at an a la carte restaurant. Two days before dinner, apparently after switching to an all-tasting format, without informing us of the change (did we even want a tasting menu?) they just went ahead and charged my card via Resy without asking. I mean, holy shit FUCK THAT. And on that note, that’s the end of my review of ILIS.

The boy and I made challah last night. It's been so long since we've used the yeast I needed to make a recipe which required a pre-ferment to see if the yeast was still alive. He made the dough and did most of the kneading. I braided and baked since the rise finished after he was asleep. Sprinkled everything but the bagel seasoning on it.

As always, I am expected to cook the dinner for family and friends. And I like it. This year, it happens that I will be returning from Europe two days before and thus not keen to be shopping and prepping. We don’t do turkey any more. I just ordered a bunch of rabbit options from D’Artagnan. Thinking of some kind of Conejo Malo theme.

Oh I think I see what you meant! I have no idea where my mother sourced her margarine. (That was a joke. But I do think I see what you meant.)

So, not Sietsema fans? I can't tell.

I write from a tiny bar up behind my hotel drinking a very large conac and wondering what it will cost. In good news, Bar Celta still exists. Maybe it is the only old school tapas bar left in the central city. Still serving Albariño in little stone cups. Bunuelos, orejas, morcilla. I couldn’t finish the orejas, drowned in paprika and so rich. Funny, I said “Dame una morcilla,” and the owner checked in with “You mean blood sausage?” as if I might know the word “morcilla” but not what it was.

I am indebted to @GerryOlds2TheReturnofGerry for both Casa Maians and Estimar, although both in the same day was ambitious. One great merit of cocktails is that they can make you feel peckish even though you had thought you would never eat again.

Cinnamon crumb challah. Another joint effort between me and the kid.

Thus Spake Sietsema: https://archives.cjr.org/feature/everyone_eats.php?page=all

I very much doubt that was the only reason. More likely Eater didn't want to pay a moderator, and its comments section was a homophobic cesspool.

One of the more disturbed paintings! Another… With a murder of crows. Another of his 3 final painting.

I've been mocking him for years with no personal reasons.

In my apartment, about two hours.

This is weird. By drunkenly inattentively clicking on stuff, I just found myself in a pre-apocalypse thread. I clicked away from it before I quite realized what I was seeing. And of course now I can't figure out how to get back in. But this gives me hope for the future.

We can only dream.

When the tortillas get hard, the hard make chilaquiles. Chilaquiles verdes con chorizo. Amazingly, this was a less greasy pork dish than what I had last night. I wonder how many times in history that was able to be said about chilaquiles con chorizo? (In a way, that's a trick question, cuz in Mexico chilaquiles are a breakfast food.) There's no glory in being able to say that you really know how to make chilaquiles -- but I can now say that. Calabasitas on the side. One of the good things about having a mind-deadening day job is that it leaves you plenty of bandwidth to think in the background about important things, like the night's wine pairing. When this one came to me, it was like a jolt. 2014 Cruse Wine Co. St. Laurent Believe it or not, St. Laurent with mildly spicy Mexican meat dishes is kind of A Thing (at least among those who know and appreciate St. Laurent). That's because St. Laurent is typically a low-tannin low-alcohol wine with plenty of flavor and a good amount of acid. The potential fly in tonight's ointment is that this isn't a St. Laurent from the grape's native Austria. It's from Sonoma. Which makes you worry about the alcohol level. (You want low alcohol because alcohol makes spices taste materially spicier.) And the acid. (You need acid in the wine for the same reason you spritz the food with lime juice.) Well, no worries about the alcohol level: this clocks in at a highly reasonable 10.95% ABV (they must have really wanted to report something less than 11%). Worries about the acid were warranted, though: this had less kick than an Austrian one would -- noticeably less. Just had to squeeze more lime juice on the chilaquiles. It's definitely fuller in flavor and texture than an Austrian. That has its good aspects and its bad, but with this food I'd say that net-net it was an advantage. I could taste it over those chorizo-ridden chilaquiles. And it bears emphasizing that while this might be fuller-flavored than an Austrian St. Laurent, that's still St. Laurent flavor: you could almost identify this blind. To me, that flavor is charactherized by dark dark fruit tempered by dark dark herbs and smoky tobacco. It's a very stern wine. You often hear people say that St. Laurent is for no more than medium-term (6-7 yrs.) aging. Which is nonsense: I've had 12-year-olds I thought were lovely. The nine years on this bottle certainly did it no harm.

It's fine. A restaurant I worked in recently abused it in so many dishes. The name is the best thing about it.

I mean I've been using fresh Aleppo peppers in season for years. They're delicious: a great heat level (high for low, but not anything like high).

well, you're never going to become editor-in-chief of eater at this rate.

A Persian-inspired stew of lamb shoulder, eggplant, and RG Alubia Blancas, topped with pomegranate seeds and a tahini-yogurt sauce. Couscous with dried cranberries and parsley on the side.

See this is the kind of place Sietsema is qualified to write about. https://ny.eater.com/2023/11/13/23922620/da-andrea-greenwich-village-review It's when he writes about ambitious places that he says stupid, inaccurate, and indeed uncomprehending shit (and it's not just Foxface Natural). So this is what Eater is good for now.

The majestic Romanesco. which I definitely intended to char like that. With a nice ground almond sauce. And a shrimp / tomato stew.

That’s a great list. Thanks for getting this thread underway again. Casa Maians looks like a good replacement for Can Lluis.

After several years of either complete absence or diminished supply, bay scallops are plentiful on Long Island this season!

+1

It’s good, and yeah they sure like to advertise!

It wasn’t that one. 😅

And a pre-dinner drink at the nearby Sacred Junk Bar (open air).

Well, you never know. One of my best restaurant meals of the year. Scrolling through possibilities, the Michelin website offered me Poppy & Seed in the Packing District, a short car trip from my hotel. The other option that kept coming up was The Ranch, but that was a steakhouse and P&S looked more imaginative. It was set in a small building, open on all sides to a small park with outdoor tables. Attractive but informal but with perfect service. It's Black-owned, the chef is Michael Reed. Pork belly to start with figs over a really interesting salad, a lot of flavors and a few fierce peppers. Then smoked duck breast. Now this wasn't 100% chew free, but the chew was minimal. It did come with the same salad as the first plate, but I had ordered a side of mushrooms (hen of the woods and others), served over a pea puree with a soft egg yolk on top to break over it. This was really good food. Champagne; red wines. They didn't have a list of dessert wines but found a bottle of Iniskillen and basically emptied it into my glass. Excellent espresso. FOH was utterly charming. The maitre d' was all over my jacket but I told her that her hair was better. Great night, and if any of you are going to Anaheim next week... Photos will follow.

As if Cyril Jordan thought that writing a song about me would upset me!

I have a birthday coming up. And a Big Life Change. Which has me hopeful. And scared shitless. And we get an extra hour of sleep this night. All of which convinced me I could treat myself to a nightcap after my Supper w/Wine, no matter how much work I have left for tomorrow. There was one cocktail I was overwhelmingly in the mood for. I just wrote it up in my newsletter, and I just wanted to drink one. Vieux Carré 3/4 oz. Rye 3/4 oz. Cognac 3/4 oz. sweet Vermouth 1/2 oz. Bénédictine 2 dashes Angostura bitters 2 dashes Peychaud's bitters Combine in cocktail shaker. Stir. Strain into an Old Fashioned glass over ice. Garnish with a cocktail cherry. What a great cocktail. Wonder if I'll be able to stop at one.