The foie gras brûlée on Tony Conte’s menu last week at The Oval Room was too tempting to pass up, no matter how many imaginary animal-welfare protesters I had dancing in my head. I say that even though the appetizer that landed on my table wasn’t custard-based at all. It was, in fact, a small cap of foie gras terrine perched on a round of toasted brioche and served with Meyer lemon and lavender.

As a final touch, Conte’s team had sprinkled Sugar in the Raw on top of the fatty liver and caramelized it, hence the brûlée descriptor. The starter was pure, unfiltered sensuousness — rich, smooth, crunchy, crackly, sweet, and tart. It was also suffused with the undeniable aroma of guilt.

Read More “The Ongoing Dilemma on Whether to Eat Foie Gras” »

Everyone’s favorite ruggedly-handsome, confident, opinionated, ever-so-slightly condescending former junkie/chef has published a bucket list. I won’t spoil the photo essay by duplicating the list here, but Anthony Bourdain’s “13 Places to Eat Before You Die” includes restaurants on three continents: one in London, two in Spain, one in Napa Valley, one in Singapore, one in Seattle, one in Tokyo, one in Chicago, one in Kansas City, and four in New York City (that’s almost 25% of the list in good olde NYC – it always was a hell of a town!). So, if one trusts Bourdain’s palate (and who wouldn’t trust this charming bastard?), that means that you don’t really need to visit South America, Africa, or Australia before you die, which is a relief, because two of those continents specialize in water-borne diseases, and the third boasts of its famous kangaroos which, as far as I’m concerned, are really just enormous rats.

As Arnold Schwarzenegger memorably learned in Ivan Reitman’s Kindergarten Cop (1990), “Boys have and penis, [but] girls have a vagina.” Throughout human history, various thinkers (including Jews, Christians, Muslims, the Founding Fathers, Sigmund Freud, the Rolling Stones, Valerie Solanas, Susan Sontag, and Dr. Dre) have gone to great lengths to differentiate between penis-havers (men) and vagina-havers (women) in their ideologies and art. Would one expect the kitchen to be any different?

To further unravel the mysterious role gender plays in food preparation, New York’s Astor Center is hosting a roundtable discussion featuring Food & Wine’s editor-in-chief, a James Beard outstanding chef, and other members of the Big Apple’s foodie cognoscenti. A heady discussion of perceived truths about the ways “the fellaz” handle open flames, ingredients, recipes, plating, customer service, heat lamps, deep fryers, and cutting boards differently than “the ladeez” will follow a blind taste-test in which panel members will attempt to guess the gender of participating chefs by tasting their gustatory creations. Sound fun? It only costs $35, or much less than four tickets to see Terminator: Salvation. Since one female local chef was recently referred to as “bitchy” by a commenter on this blog when everyone knows that the vast majority of male chefs in this world are not held accountable for being egomaniacal, overbearing assholes, I think that we would all benefit from said discussion – were we in New York on June 8th with $35 to spare, and had we not already seen Terminator: Salvation.

The Atlantic reports that 70% of complaints about restaurants relate not to food, but service. 70%! This number astounds because:

1. more Americans can agree that waiters suck than can agree who should be President, whether abortion should be legal, and whether Night at the Museum 2: Escape from the Smithsonian is a good movie. Which means…sorry waiters, I guess you must really, in general, suck! I suppose more Americans can agree that God exists, but I’m not sure why.

2. my longstanding perception that the employees of Soul Vegetarian on Georgia Avenue don’t like me because I’m white (though I suppose, they may not like me because they perceive I am an asshole, though, in general, I must take the position that I am not an asshole) is not influenced by the (in my opinion) mediocre quality of their food. In fact, I may find Soul Veg’s food mediocre simply because I perceive that its staff does not like me! In addition, I may find Harmony Cafe’s food mediocre not because it is mediocre, but because I always feel bad for the one woman who has waited tables there every day, alone, for as long as I can remember, which is at least 10 years, and probably longer. Maybe if Harmony Cafe had a larger staff and this poor woman had some goddamned help for once, I might, in fact, perceive that Harmony is the best Chinese restaurant on the East Coast! Though I doubt it, as Harmony is mediocre (at best).

3. If 70% of the waaa-waaa-waaa about this-or-that restaurant isn’t food related, but service related, that means that presentation isn’t 50% of the meal (as a boss of mine once told me), but 70% of the meal, aka the majority. In other words, our senses are easily influenced or, as Ebenezer Scrooge explained in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, “a little thing affects them.” In other, other words, the whole concept of a palate is a sham perpetrated by the sensuality industry, aka the Food Network, Food and Wine Magazine, The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, the food sections of all surviving American newspaper, the producers of the 2000 film Chocolat, my favorite big grrl Paula Dean, New Yorkers generally, high end grocers (aka Whole Foods), the “foodie” contigent of our society, all of our mothers, and this blog.