Wilfrid

I've probably got an interview with him in an old copy of the rock magazine Zigzag somewhere. Well, I know where the pile is but I would have to go through it.

I suppose it's intended to be a ranking because it shows places climbing or dropping. But if so, it is indeed just silly. Maybe it's part of Pete's campaign to make stars and rankings look dumb.

Apparently everything will remain the same. Oh god.

Tenth anniversary for these wonders. https://www.instagram.com/stories/anaperrote/3337583097454675687?utm_source=ig_story_item_share&igsh=MTB6enZqdmFvcHVndg==

Ridiculously tall grissini in keeping with the height of the ceiling and a warm sourdough loaf. Red snapper "meuniere" -- not sure about the name, although there was parsley and lemon involved. Red snapper carpaccio would have fitted better. Outstanding dish: shrimp colonatta. Very good shrimp, lightly topped with lardo, some Tuscan bean action. The Domaine Sigalas Santorini Assyrtiko (Greek white) was made for this dish. Rabbit primavera. A big bowl of food. I'd say half a rabbit, but I think there's was more loin than that, as well as braised leg and neat little rabbit ravioli. The cheese thing was odd. There's no printed list. I had some rather non-specific descriptions from my server. He wondered if I wanted five cheeses. I did not. I ended up with a Selles-sur-Cher, some kind of blue, both of which were okay, and a third which was anonymous and not very good. Comp: I ordered a glass of recent vintage Domaine Huet with the cheese and my server brought me a much older and more expensive vintage to compare. Thank you. Including tax and tip, we were up around $300, but that is four courses, champagne, three glasses of wine, espresso (with rosemary cookies) and I have to admit that it seemed a fair price. ETA: Odd angle on some of these photos, not because I was slumped over, but if I took them straight my phone cast a big, dark shadow.

They had D’Artagnan duck confit as well. I rubbed one leg with rosemary, basil and sage; the other with paprika and a Mexican spice blend; and roasted them gently.

The Chartreuse situation is depressing. Price is hitting $100 at the few places that have it. Have I drunk my last Last Word?

Very good, I thought. The space is not only spectacular with a toweringly high ceiling, but fun -- buzzy without being noisy. Service was enthusiastic. The only mediocre part of the meal was the cheese service which is clearly not their focus: they would much rather serve you a sticky toffee pudding flamed at the table. More details to come.

To my surprise, I've eaten at thirty-plus of those. Partly, I guess, because some have been around a while.

I didn’t finish the Livarot from Zabar’s before my trip to LV last week. It’s still good (the exposed surface paste had dried but I cut that off). Boy does it stink. I keep cheese in my wine fridge; I really wouldn’t want this one in the regular fridge that I am opening all the time.

“What do you do with all that spare time?”

I also bought a couple of Rohan duck legs which I enjoyed the last two nights.

And that was good too. One of her older pieces featuring about 20 minutes of high-paced expressive movement, with her wonderful take on “All the Things You Are” along the way.

@rozrapp I finally got to Wegmans on Astor Place for the first time and you were right; veal stew, veal shanks as well as the more popular cuts and honestly a much wider variety of (non-offal) meat than I see in other supermarkets. Not a cheap place but impressive.

Having pain free days now. I am glad I did something about it.

Ah, okay.

By Essex Street, do you mean Formaggio?

Well at least Claud wasn’t lying about its wine stock. Chuckle.

I didn't take any notes, so forgive the vagueness. I did take notes for ten years when I was blogging. Amuse was a bite of scallop. A crunchy nest was formed on a base of bigeye tuna; I think that was a pea puree on top. I already described the third dish, a knockout combination of very eel-like eel in a cruncy ball atop of moist, tender torchon or rabbit loin. This was a cornichon sauce. Hen egg yolk to be broken over Serrano ham with some Spanish cheese puffs. A bit salty. Those were my three appetizers. Fish course was halibut with a halibut-stuffed morel and a tortellino stuffed with "I can't remember." Meat course: Duck breast (danger!). It was good enough, a little chewy at one end, but perfectly acceptable. Above it a kind of squash-stuffed squash sausage which was very good, and above that some mixed, diced vegetables on a crispbread. Cheese course: Slices of Beaufort over some kind of Beaufort fondant with crushed nuts. Dessert course: I had seen massive plates of chocolate three ways served to diners around me. I just apologized and said I wasn't going to eat it. After a conference with the kitchen they came up with a kinder mascarpone and pastry thing and I did my best. Wines: A 2019 Chablis Premier Cru, a 2021 white Cotes-du-Rhone (La Nerthe, Les Cassagnes), a 2021 Faiveley Mercurey and a really good 2019 Gigiondas (Semelles de Vent) that was generously topped up. I am missing the fifth wine. Oh well. A cocktail to begin, an Armagnac to end. With tax and tip, on the way to $300. This is very fine dining and I am sure you could do much worse on the Strip at a higher price. BTW, they have extended on one side to open a wine bar, and plan to extend into the property on the other side to increase kitchen size and covers.

The last time I went to Partage must have been 2019. It was still à la carte. That changed a while back. It's all tasting menu now, but with some flexibility. Five, seven or nine courses ranging from $110 to $175. You can add foie gras, caviar or truffles to things at a supplement of course. There are wine pairings matching the numbers of courses; some flexibility here too, I ordered the 7 course menu and 5 glasses of wine. You can upgrade all the wine pairings to "premium." If you ate the top end tasting menu, threw ome luxury supplements on it and added a premium wine pairing, your check would be remarkable. But at least it's all laid out transparently. The chef is Yuri Szarzewski and despite the name he is French from a small town in France. I was introduced to him after my meal. I suspect the reason is that the two bartenders (solo gets seated at the bar) and I got into some fairly granular conversations about New York restaurants and chefs, and with me still in the habit of photographing food they may have thought I was someone. It is hard to do justice to the food. The menus have descriptions like "three appetizers" and "meat course," so the countless ingredients and accents are rattled off quickly by the person delivering the plate and you'd need shorthand to get a record of them. There was a lot going on in every dish.

I do like traveling but the great part is when you really love home and you head back. Trouble-free flying and JetBlue bought me a number of free drinks because the crew can’t be bothered with the whole charging thing. I really will write up Partage which was excellent. The filet at Herbs & Rye was meh, but it was a $30 steak rather than a $60 steak, see above. I thought I had already posted this but they couldn’t offer any cocktails with Chartreuse. The supply is so restricted that most of it goes to the casino-resorts and they have a small allowance every month. If I posted that in some other thread forgive me, having deja vu.

As reported on the Las Vegas thread, the classic cocktail bar I visited was out of Chartreuse. I discovered that because I ordered a Bijou (c.1900 but revived by Dale DeGroff). Home this evening I made one myself and it’s very good. But I made it with the last of my Chartreuse. Chartreuse hunt is on. Oh, equal parts gin, Chartreuse and sweet vermouth, but some of us nudge the gin up a little.

People have an opinion about where you live. I am not innocent. I work with a company where everyone is remote and I constantly ask myself, why would you live *there*? But we’re all different. I have lived in Harlem for four years. I have lived in a bunch of places in the city that no one has opinions about. Boy do people have opinions about Harlem. All smiley-face positive. The most frequent response when I tell people where I’m from is “Oh, I hear it’s a good place now.” These are white people of course. I also get, “Oh, interesting.” Yesterday I did get a recommendation for Harlem Biscuit Co from an Atlanta native who had visited recently and was a plausible judge of biscuits. In an Uber tonight, a centro-European guy who had been to NYC once said, “So it’s no ghetto any more? When did it stop being ghetto?” At least that’s direct. Tomorrow morning, home to Harlem.

Years of walking around his torques and trying to grasp how they actually powerfully charge and change the space around them. And then there’s the infinitely beautiful and long-term changing surfaces. But also the dramatic black paint stick works on (I think) paper that one of my artist friends understatedly described as “very strong.”