Diancecht

tuna “salade niçoise” tuna from h&h fresh fish - baked at 350 f/175 c with olive oil, rosemary, salt, and pepper; then combined with blanched green beans, sliced boiled potatoes, sliced tomatoes (including some early girl tomatoes from yesterday’s farmers market), and hard-cooked eggs. vinaigrette - chopped parsley, thyme leaves, chopped cilantro, meyer lemon juice, extra-virgin olive oil, grated garlic cloves, salt, pepper, and a large pinch of sugar.

an all-day cafe in prospect heights sounds like if zuni cafè reinvented itself and relocated to brooklyn —— At Oxalis, with its preset menus, you didn’t have to think about what to order because the decisions had been made for you. At Cafe Mado, you can order anything you want. But it turns out that what you want is very likely to be whatever the kitchen has dreamed up. You just don’t know it yet.

steak, salad, broccolini with lemon to go along with the steak, a mixture of low-sugar ketchup and worcestershire sauce. i thought i took a pic of the meat, but i must have forgotten…oops

hubby says the coffee was simultaneously smooth and not as strong as he likes. he gives them props though for having a conversation/showstopper piece.

perhaps tangential - you can read the job posting for the nyt’s main restaurant critic here. the salary range seems less than i had expected for a position with such influence and power. thoughts?

the caviar on its own was outstanding without the potato cream the venison was just fine. it helped that there was barely any acidity in the sauce. hubby liked the scallop presentation more so than i did. so three out of 15. 😬 not sure which place we’ll go to next. hubby’s birthday is in june, so there’s time to look at options. i wanted to reserve at quince but all the tables were booked when i last checked.

2 1/2 hours we were the next to last seating

ha ha that works too

after we got home last night, i ordered a mcrib sandwich and a small sprite 🤣

i really wanted to like this place because this type of food checks all my boxes, but sometimes “michelin doesn’t mean it’s automatically amazing”. chef really likes his acidic flavors because almost every course featured something on that flavor scale; i guess i should have paid closer attention to the review in october 2024. some pix for your consideration. i’ll edit this post later with the details. anyway, i’m glad we went…but i do not think a return visit is in the cards. roasted root vegetable and toasted grain consommé raw prawn, swedish crisp bread, gooseberry garum. i wish the acidity were less pronounced because it masked the flavors in the filling. 42 day dry aged beef with elderberries, coastal redwood and grilled butter cured and dried lamb heart, horseradish, creme fraiche, sorrel. cured trout, fermented root vegetable, currant wood oil osetra caviar from germany, lactic fermented potatoes, summer preserves house-milled rye tunnbröd, smoked scallops, kale and wood sorrel “taco”, served with scallops and burnt green apples and pickled seeds. i would have liked this more if the acidity from the apple broth didn’t overwhelm the delicate seafood. at this point, i had mentally categorized the restaurant in the “disappointing” column, on par with my experience at atelier crenn. all that was missing was a glass beet that we would be asked to contemplate. 🤔 spelt bread, fresh cheese, raw pine mushroom. the cheese was supposed to remind you of “butter”. black cod with sunchokes, tallow, roasted barley. rutabaga, smoked and aged pork fat sprouted and toasted buckwheat, raw chestnuts, cauliflower mushroom lobster grilled over applewood, young onions, quail garum, yellowfoot chanterelles, savory venison, beets, lovage, preserved berries, caramelized cream fermented crab apples, preserved rose petals, strawberry vinegar. hubby hated this dessert and that is saying something. i don’t remember much about it. there was a sorbet of some kind on top that didn’t taste like anything. 😬 it’s a coffee maker. the chamber on top sucks all the water from the bottom, and boils the contents. then add ground coffee, and stir. when the process is complete, the liquid filters back down. sheep’s yogurt, quince, fermented celery root, grilled cream, served with a quince singoalla. mignardises - frozen acorn cake miso, sweet wheat bun with birch syrup and brown butter, kombucha jellies

sweet - assorted cookies, fruit, the aforementioned cake, homemade rugelach (chocolate, fruit and nut, fig), chocolate and cardamom cookies. and some sufganiyot. at foreground left is a giant tub of swedish meatballs. i have to figure out how to reverse engineer this because they were awesome.

the spread from tonight’s event savory - noodle kugel, salmon dip with crackers, olives, chicken wings with ranch, brie with pastry, crudités, rollups, egg salad. shortly after i took this pic, the first of several trays of latkes were set out. there’s a selection of toppings at top left - sour cream, applesauce, and jalapeño applesauce. i think this is the first time i’ve had kugel. not bad…

olive oil, lemon, and ricotta bundt cake. we’re going to a latke party tonight for hannukah and this is our contribution.

a friend who now lives in the u.k. gifted these to us a while ago. we haven’t used them yet, and keep the bottles out of sentiment.

the pièce de résistance

thanks folks xmas/birthday dinner for four sauteed scallops and braised endive coq au vin roasted potatoes green salad sachertorte chocolates dessert wine, tea and coffee the chicken was marinated in red wine with onion and garlic for 3 days. chicken broth - chicken wings, chicken back, onion, leek, carrot, celery, black peppercorns, thyme, parsley, cloves, water after the three days, i browned the chicken in unsalted butter and bacon drippings, then browned the garlic and onion in the same fat, then returned the chicken to the pot along with the bacon. added some cognac and flambéed everything. then added the wine the chicken was marinated in and the broth. i added some dried porcini and braised the chicken for 1 hour. added some pearl onions and sliced champignon mushrooms i had sautéed in butter halfway through the braise. then reduced the sauce.

i decided to make coq au vin for my birthday/xmas dinner and coquilles st. jacques so hubby picked up some essential ingredients. in other news, i finally got a u.s. passport after procrastinating for the past several years. so now we just have to think where we want to go next year. i’ve never been to europe…

melissa had a similar interview re her per se review. curious about your take. ===== “You know, the word fussy, it's a funny word because I mean, much of fine dining, of course, as we were saying, is fussy. A lot of work goes into these dishes, right? There's a lot of fussing. That's the point. This is food that you don't make at home. You want professionals to make it. But it shouldn't feel fussy. It should feel like you're eating, you know, just... Like you're eating the sunshine, or you're eating, you know, just something magnificent and easy. And this felt worked over, you know? It felt like you could see the effort almost. It's hard to describe how...”

i know it’s a slow news day so here is an excerpt from an interview priya had in august 2024 with this is taste: “How do you feel about criticism specifically as a genre? How are you approaching it?” “It's really stressful, honestly. My first review came out yesterday, and I was kind of like shitting my pants and losing sleep over it for weeks. When you're writing a review, you really can't hide behind other people's quotes. You can't hide behind reporting as much. I've always approached reporting as like, I don't want to center myself, I want to center the subjects. And when you're writing a review, in a way you are centering yourself and centering your perspective. And that's scary to me. Like really, really scary to me because I'm also just like, what do I know? Of course, I've eaten at a lot of restaurants, but I'm like, I don't know everything about everything. So all I can do is approach this job with just like a deep sense of curiosity and a desire to learn. That's what I'm trying to do. I wonder if in this world of restaurant TikTok and social media, like how criticism needs to evolve, but that's something I am thinking about. And I don't yet know what that looks like, but I do think criticism needs to evolve.”

some previews of coming attractions

penny for your thoughts: Q: What gets too much attention? A: Tasting menus, for sure, and the self-conscious chef class. The fancy restaurant sector gets too much attention relative to everything else—to places that are not living by those values, necessarily, but they’re still trying to be excellent. And new places versus old places. ======== there’s lots more here. the interview was about a month ago.

Ice-cream spaghetti under berry marinara was one of three desserts on the menu, next to a mysterious fourth item called Razzle Dazzle. “What’s a Razzle Dazzle?” I asked. “That’s all three desserts,” the server said. He gave a small shrug that meant, “It is what it is.” 😬 the new yorkiest room in new york

ha ha that would be something, wouldn’t it?

some more pix

someone brought a herrentorte - six layers of white sponge with brandy and white wine infused cream, surrounded by apricot jam and a dark chocolate marzipan shell. of course, you know i just had to have a piece. the cake was from hahdough (1221 fell (divisadero))