Sneakeater

It's one of the ironies of nature that artichokes, which are delicious, are such a total pain in the butt.

The guy who runs Sette Mezzo has a name like a Bond Girl. https://www.grubstreet.com/article/oriente-mania-leaves-sette-mezzo.html

Are you gonna go cash-only now?

(Of course, they're never gonna revive the original 1970s menu that made them so famous among food people, so fuck em.)

https://ny.eater.com/2024/4/2/24118844/sammys-roumanian-opening-stanton-street

I’ve been! It was too out of my way for Sunday though.

I really do commend it to you.

And their Saint Matthew Passion really IS good.

Speaking of Rafaël Pichon and Pygmalian, their recording from last year of the Monteverdi Vespers is spectacular. I urge you to check it out.

If there's any Other People's Holiday that bodes ill for My Own People, it's Easter. But I'm not gonna let a chance to have a holiday dinner pass me by. So I put on some blatantly anti-Semitic Bach (the Saint John Passion) (and then some more sublime, and less anti-Semitic, Bach [the Saint Matthew Passion], this one in the great newish recording by Rafaël Pichon and Pygmalian) and away I went. I'm not here to tell other people how to interpret their traditions. But at least in Anglo-America, the trad Easter dinner main dishes are lamb or ham. So when I saw that the Ridgewood Pork Store had made a ham out of lamb, I saw exactly what they were doing. I made a maple-mustard glaze for it, and roasted some potatoes along with it. No white asparagus yet. I had the rattiest supermarket Mexican green asparagus you could imagine. It was not a treat. Ham made from lamb called for either a Burgundy or a heavier Beaujolais. You can guess which I chose. 2022 Domaine du Bon Pas "Derrière les Fagots" This is labeled a Vin de France, but it's made from Gamay in Beaujolais. I guess the producer is another maverick who can't be arsed. This is very much a Natural wine: more funk than fruit, and mucky funk at that. If, like me, you like that style, you'll like this. But I wouldn't blame anyone for not liking it.

Yup that's what I mean.

I wonder where Terroir fits into that movement/framework.

It HAPPENED. (Or at least John Lahr says it did.)

My sick-food dinner last (Thursday) night was a Gyspy Ham sandwich (on She Wolf Bakery's unbelievable Sprouted Rye Bread with L'amuse Signature Gouda and Polish whole-grain mustard. The Gypsy Ham (a sort of ham loaf seasoned judiciously with paprika) was great. And She Wolf's Sprouted Rye Bread bests any German/Nordic rye bread I've heretofore gotten in New York. But I want to talk about L'amuse Signature Gouda. This Netherlands product is quite simply the richest, most complex Gouda I've ever had -- and I've been to actual Gouda (maybe I just visited the wrong stalls). It has a strongly nutty undercurrent beneath some sharpish top notes. It is delicious. I got it from Farm to People, but they seem to have sourced it from Essex Street Cheese. I can't recommend it highly enough.

Pineberries are pretty great, BTW, if you're ever able to get some.

For some reason, I just found myself rereading John Lahr's 1997 New Yorker piece about Frank Sinatra. It closes with an account of a 1995 dinner party at Sinatra's house in Beverley Hills. The guests gathered around the piano to sing. Among them were Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Steve Lawrence, and Eydie Gormé. I am still trying to wrap my mind around how awesome this is.

I'm sure they'll be giving me their favored Matzoh Ball recipe.

I've not been well for a few days. So this was the first non-sick-food dinner I've had in a minute. It was also the first smoking I've done in my new apartment. A big day here. Smoked (Crescent) duck breast. On fried rice. Aside from some greens (overwintered spinach -- YUM -- and wild broccoli rabe), garlic, and scallion, the fried rice contained some pineberries (strawberries that are somehow cultivated to taste heavily of pineapple): a pretty great idea, if I say so myself. I used the basmati rice left over from my Purim dinner (my rice cooker won't make less than a full cup of it) -- which meant it had a sizeable glob of the pomegranate-based gravy from that dinner on it (great with duck, and a wonderful foil for the pineberries). And in place of an egg, I fried in some duck blood. This worked so well that I'm afraid of what the reason is you never hear of its being done. It seemed to me that a tart light Beaujolais would work here. 2022 Elisa Guerin Beaujolais Villages Elisa Guerin is new Beaujolais producer who's getting a lot of love from Beaujie crowd. Well new in a way. She comes from an established family in Moulin a Vent, albeit not in the very very front rank. Nevertheless, her childhood playmates were Jean Foillard's son and Jean-Louis Dutraive's daughter. She originally had thought she'd do something other than winemaking with her life, but the family vines called. After a very short apprenticeship, she was handed her family's properties a few years ago. This label, however, comes from purchased grapes. Guerin intends to buy a (high altitude) Beaujolais Villages vineyard when an appropriate one comes available, but for now she's sourcing her Village grapes from others (all high altitude). While Guerin's excellent Moulins are clearly meant for aging, this wine just as clearly isn't. It's her FUN cuvée. It snaps. It crackles. It POPS. This is very evidently a Natural wine -- and not one that will appeal to people who don't like that style. It has a sour finish, and the fruit is underlain with funk. But there's TONS of that fruit, and it vibrates. Yet you can tell this wine comes from the environs of Moulin a Vent: it's not all THAT light. Which, despite my intentions in selecting it, worked very nicely with the full-flavored smoked duck (there's a reason that smoking duck is one of Mrs. Donabe's favorite uses of the Ibushi Gin). Still, don't drink this a degree above cellar temp.

Can you eat Humpback Whales?

Who’s saury now?

The New York Philharmonic heads uptown to do a concert on the Great Lawn.

Seriously.

I guess Daniel Boulud "headed uptown" to reopen Café Boulud.

Up until today I had no idea there was such a thing as saury. Thanks.

I'm actually more pissed off at somebody else's "Vongerichten heads uptown".