Wilfrid

I feel like I haven't cooked in a month (it's been about a week). Hope I can remember how. Planning to sear a piece of coppa tonight, then put it in a slow oven for the fat to render. Will try roasting some cabbage.

Looking at the catalog for the above led me to search for Gongora on the NY Society Library website. I discovered to my surprise that they have a copy of Picasso’s illustrated Gongora. It does not circulate but I will go and take a look. He illustrated 20 sonnets, but not all the illustrations were in the exhibit.

Yep, that works.

Only one of those two people wrote about baseball (in case not known).

Mm, exactly, I’m talking to this Black bookstore owner about how I live in Harlem and he starts telling me about the Langston Hughes house, and I am like but what about Longfellow? And he says, sure I grew up with that Acadian soul food. Kind of.

So I got back home, guys. The last night, headed for Needle & Thread, I happened on a used book store I hadn’t noticed before. Not for profit, apparently benefiting students somehow (I must look it up). The guy running it said they were closed but I should come in anyway and I had to buy something but he’d give me a 40% discount. Okay. We got into talking about where I’m “from,” then into the Harlem Renaissance, and the big picture of Langston on the wall, and how I bought a used complete poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar last week. He said he had some signed Robert Frost at $900. I walked out with a complete Francis Thompson for $12.

You remind me of my one very sad experience at Petit Crenn where the food was coming out too salty, eventually inedible so. Seated at the counter overlooking the kitchen I eventually saw what was happening. A young line cook was constantly — constantly — tasting what he was cooking and, finding it under seasoned, was adding more salt. If he’d been doing that for a couple of hours, no wonder he couldn’t taste the salt any more.

At $35 the bottle, in a restaurant, it’s great.

Yes, and nothing more than okay. The owner is going to do his limited thing and is making money from the event space upstairs. Good thing, the mark-ups on the list are minimal, as they were at Persimmon, so I had a 2017 Guigal Cotes-du-Rhône at merely double the retail price rather than a few glasses of anonymous reds at $12 each.

Three quite different cocktail bars this week. Tonight, Needle & Thread in an old tailor shop. Reservations preferred so I expected something formal. No, a large welcoming space with sports on TV. Black-owned. I haven’t had a bad drink in any of these places. Next up, out of sheer curiosity, an old French bistro I have never got to before because it is open for dinner only twice a week. How does that business model work?

The student population here does not look impoverished!

I mean, clearly students (of which there are many in the neighborhood) munching on truffle beignets. Same last time I was here.

Persimmon must be one of my favorite restaurants outside New York. An open kitchen, correct service and fine dining in a very simple space with a surprisingly young crowd. I had seen venison on the online menu but it wasn’t on the physical menu. Server said it had been taken off yesterday, but he knew the kitchen had saved some for the tasting menu; and nobody was ordering the tasting menu. I got my venison. First, oysters topped with sea urchin and caviar. Then a typical Persimmon dish. Housemade cotechino wrapped in puff pastry like a slice from a huge sausage roll; garnished with tiny balls of apple and quince and pear batons. The venison came with wild mushrooms and more little apple balls. Stilton to finish with a 20-year old tawny port. The bottles list is long and impressive but the wines by the glass had an Alain Voge cote-du-Rhône. Had there been two of me I would have been tempted by the $149 Voge Cornas.

I tried portion size and counting calories for decades. Didn’t work for me. YMMV

I always think to cook sprouts like that, I should remember to do it with cabbage.

Hemenways last night started well but got stodgy. Excellent local oysters, then a calamari appetizer that was barely average. A special of scallops “Oscar style” had a lot of good scallops, topped with lump crabmeat and lapped with Hollandaise, a battery of asparagus and a mountain of buttery potatoes. Not tweezer food. I left a lot of it. Best way to go here is probably to share oysters and a lobster. Most people were on lobster and martinis.

Rogue Island does look cute in the old Arcade building. I walked by Oberlin today; closed but the staff were busy tasting a bunch of wines. Persimmon tonight. Right now I am in The Walnut Room, a cozy cocktail bar on a night when cozy is welcome.

For sure. And Ana promises no shows on this trip.

New way to get fat and protein without carbs while out and about. Eat the filling of a quiche, leave the crust.

Mongo-matic.

Hinds are in New York to write songs. I have told Ana not to play a show while I am out of town. Because she will do what I tell her. 😠

Sure, but we both know what she is saying.

Oh yes, the massive Picasso-Miro show at Fundacio Miro in Barcelona. The show was apparently joint with the Museu Picasso, but that is always a bit of a tourist zoo.

I pushed my trip back a few days and avoided Monday’s storm. Kicking things off with a St George “Terroir” martini at The Eddy. Good decision also as some restaurants don’t open early in the week.

50th anniversary of his death so he’s ubiquitously present. The Fontainebleau show at MoMA is essential. At much more modest scale, the Met show about a commission to provide panels for a house in Brooklyn is also worth seeing (I had never heard of this commission which remained incomplete). The extant panels are lovely (Cubist period). Getting smaller, there’s a side room of delicate drawings and calligraphy focused on a 16th century Spanish lyric poet, Gongora, at the Hispanic Society Museum. Take in their good permanent collection at the same time (all free). And last day Saturday, shows at two branches of Almine Rech, “Echo of Picasso,” showing his influence on contemporary artists. The uptown branch has some Picasso’s too.