fwords

Your Own Worst Enemy

I do it to myself.

Fact: I prefer Joe's coffee to all other options that fall within a three block radius.

And yet, when I saw the line snaking outside the Grand Central Terminal outpost practically into the main concourse...I balked. Turning on my heel, I retreated to the sidewalk and considered the alternatives. NO. NOT STARBUCKS. IT TOOK TOO LONG TO WEAN MYSELF FROM THAT DEVIL JUICE. So I marched toward Macchiato, the exuberantly Italian coffee purveyor on 44th street between Lexington and Third. Why did I stop going to Macchiato? Could it be the too-bright lighting? The flat-screen TV in the corner set to soccer somewhere in another timezone? The omnipresence of UN staffers speaking in various thick accents always, seemingly, with a coffee already in hand from some other establishment? The pulsing, bmmmping of Euroblechtronica being played at a hostile decibel?

Trick question. The answer is all of the above. But the most annoying reason I stopped going to Macchiato is because the service is weird. One time, I was mocked for requesting soy milk by an Antonio Sabbato Jr-wannabe steaming lattes. Today, I experienced this:

Me: Hi, I'll have a medium drip with soy milk and....(pause) a cappuccino muffin.

Cashier: No.

(I stare at her, then look again at the rows of cappuccino muffins lined up behind her head. Confusion. Did she say something in Italian?)

Me: Um, what?

Cashier: No. It's disgusting. It doesn't taste like cappuccino. Don't get it.

Me: Oh. Ummmmmm, ok, ummmmm, how about blueberry?

Cashier: Yes, good. It's delicious. Sorry, I just didn't want you to have a bad experience.

Me: Thanks.

EXCEPT that when I returned to my office and peeled off the top of said blueberry muffin, I found the interior to have been injected with about 90 gallons of oil. I mean, it must have been, because there is no other reason why my muffin contained more liquid than my coffee.

Epic fail. And weird. Again.

Play With Fire

News Flash: Just read on Eater that Houston's Chef Monica Pope will be competing in season two of Top Chef Masters! Because some of my coolest friends in the world happen to live in Houston, I actually have eaten at two of Pope's restaurants (T'afia and Beaver's) and can say with some authority that she is a creative culinary force to be reckoned with. One of the more exciting things I was introduced to on my trip were her ratafias, exotic infused wines. You can read more about them and Houston in my post from March 2009.

In the meantime, I will be donning my t-shirt and rooting for you, Chef Pope!

Mamma Mia!

Last week my father sent me an e-mail imploring me to write a letter to the landlord of an Italian market, Leonardo's, in Rhinebeck, N.Y., that is in danger of closing. Due to high rents, a somewhat visually obscured location in a courtyard behind the main drag—Route 9—and poor publicity on the part of the landlord, this independent store and cafe has not seen a profit in more than 36 months.

Having been to the market myself, I know that the lack of business is due in no part to poor product. Leonardo's offers mouth-watering imported cheeses and cured meats such as Aged Pepato and Mortadella. On a recent visit, a round table was piled high with artisanal pastas and rich Perugina chocolates. Ciao Bella Gelato and L&B Spumoni Gardens ice cream are driven straight up from Brooklyn in small, fresh batches. And the prepared foods behind the deli counter are equally as enticing:

polenta slathered with sun-dried tomato sauce

perfectly browned, breaded chicken cutlets

meatballs the size of my fist

There is a wide selection of made-to-order sandwiches and hand-tossed 14" pizzas named after famous Italian celebrities like "The Al Pacino: Leonardo’s homemade marinara sauce with fresh mozzarella, sautéed mushrooms and sweet peppers" followed by quotes that make-cute on popular films or songs i.e. 'Keep your friends close but your pizza even closer.'"

The owners even offer inspired free cinema nights in their cafe area, six-course prix-fixes with entertainment for just $70, AND what is probably the best recession special I have yet to read about—Pensione Dinners (or Soup Kitchen Dinners): From 6-7 p.m. Mondays thru Fridays, you can have a three-course meal including a heaping bowl of pasta or soup primo piatti, a meat or fish secondo piatti, and a coffee or tea with biscotti as a finale...all for just $7.50. I think it costs more than that just to park at a meter in Rhinebeck!

This is all to say that to enter Leonardo's hungry is to basically give them the pin number to your checking account because you will want to buy, try, and trek home everything. So the only reason that they are doing poorly is that the landlord has really done a crap job of promoting them to the surrounding community as she promised to do upon signing a lease.

So what can you do and why should you care? An article in The New York Times today spotlights the dying number of Jewish delis throughout New Jersey and New York City. Italian markets are no different. In fact, it's fair to say that all small-business owners that offer an authentic ethnic culinary experience are in danger of fading away these days because they are constantly competing with chainlets that use cheaper ingredients and watered-down recipes. You can do something by writing a short letter to this leach of a landlord—even something as quick as "We Want Leonardo's to Survive." You can do something by frequenting Leonardo's (if you live in the Hudson Valley) or other small delis and markets in NYC and essentially voting with your dollar—and, for that matter, your stomach!

It would be a shame to see another specialty store go under because not enough patrons showed their support. If you can help in any way, now is the time. Do it for me, do it for them, do it for yourself.

Put the Lime in the Coconut

Can I just say that it is mega, uber, ultra, way frustrating starting trends all around New York City and never ever receiving credit. Take for instance young coconuts. I was cracking and sipping from young coconuts as far back as May this year, after noticing them at the Park Slope Food Co-op and having a pleasant memory of the same you-break-it-you-drink-it ritual in Singapore so many years ago. Now, naturally I didn't flaunt it, because mega, uber, ultra, way cool people just don't do that. But to read in this morning's Sunday Style section that hipsters from LIC to Staten Island have taken the white bowling-ball like juice vessels as their latest fave accessories AND NOT EVEN GET A NAME CHECK, well I could just spit.

Listen to me New York Times, this photo was taken on 06.06.09...

You are officially behind.

Confessions on a Dancefloor

I'll admit it, ok. After getting home an hour ago, I was starving and cobbled together a plate of leftovers from the fridge so random that only a pregnant woman or former Ms. Fat Camp USA could appreciate such blind consumption.

One vegetable egg roll
A handful of crunchy fried calamari with Thai dipping sauce
Almost an entire quart container of sliced, seared, sesame-crusted tuna that The Tapeworm brought home from a buffet exhibition at FCI (amazing)
A fifth of a pint of Organic Nectars Raw Agave Gelato in Pistachio flavor

Then I made the mistake of watching The Rachel Zoe Project and now I feel, how shall I say it, UTTERLY DISGUSTED with myself. Seriously, my eyelids weigh more than that woman.

Oops! It's not the food I am disgusted with. It's the 55 minutes of my life I will never get back that was lost to bizarre catch phrases like "Buh...(long effected pause)...nanas!", "Ugh, I die!" and "Oh my God, I'm not even joking!" (Wait, you're not joking? Because, Rachel, this entire time I totally was mistaking you for Steve Martin. I'm not even joking.)

I think I need more gelato to make me feel better.

Thank God for food.

Here We Go Again

Is it just me, or was Twitter designed to fuel petty grudges? I keep reading gossip columns about how Courtney Love railed off a bunch of half-legible tweets about various Hole-wannabe bands ripping her off and not being real punk rockers. HEY COURTNEY, YOU'RE TWEETING BY THE WAY. I'm not sure, but I can guess that Lydia Lunch and Xene Cervenka are both vomiting somewhere on the remains of your "punk" corpse, which pretty much died around the time you released a song by the name of "Malibu."

Hey, hey, we're all watching you...

Celebrity chefs and food writers are not immune to this turrets-like spewing. Just yesterday Tyler Florence tweeted against The New York Times food critic Frank Bruni for giving a poor review to Govind Armstrong's restaurant Table 8. His rant was met with a backlash of comments from readers on Eater.com, calling him a bunch of names like "mannequin" and "fake chef," etc. And maybe that is what I am essentially doing to Courtney above. The differences between Tyler and Courtney, however, are manifold. As I haven't eaten at Table 8, I have no opinion on it or what Tyler said. But I can speak to his character. Some elitist foodies take issue with Tyler being on television, and having lent his name to various brands over the years. And those are facts listed on his resume for sure. But he is also developing a restaurant in San Francisco, Bar Florence, so that he can return to his roots in the kitchen. He is producing his own wine from a vineyard he acquired. He continues to travel across the U.S. and abroad to cultivate his craft and expand his breadth of food knowledge and having shared a meal with him at a very popular restaurant in the past, I actually feel like he has a much less forgiving palette than many flaks, bloggers and food writers out there. From that same dinner, I also know that he has his own gripes with Food Network and its limitations/current focus on reality competitions and that his ideal endgame does not involve cameras or stylists. If others on Eater were to speak frankly with him, I believe they would be surprised to find more of a kindred spirit than they expect.

All Courtney seems to be doing is... lots of drugs.

At the end of the day, I guess I am also thinking about this because I am struggling with the decision to put fwords on Twitter or not. On the one hand, I think it could be a great, fast way to communicate more food revelations to more people. But...it also seems to be a cesspool for navel gazing and hate-mongering.

What do you all think? Yay or nay? Would you follow me?

Fly Me Away

Remember that scene in Pretty Woman where Julia Roberts' character Vivian tries to buy some respectable clothing at a fancy boutique and no one will help her? Then, the following day, the concierge hooks her up with some of his personal connections and she returns to the store looking fabulous and this exchange takes place...

Shop assistant: Hello, can I help you?
Vivian: I was in here yesterday, you wouldn't wait on me.
Shop assistant: Oh.
Vivian: You people work on commission, right?
Shop assistant: Yes.
Vivian: Big mistake. Big. Huge. I have to go shopping now.

I always looooved that scene.

I bring it up because over the weekend, I experienced something like the foodie equivalent to Vivian's  shopping snub: On our drive back from New Hampshire where we had gone indoor skydiving (skyenturenh.com I highly recommend it), we spotted a road sign for a local winery along the highway. Us being us, we decided to get off at the next exit and track down the little vineyard to take in some Massachusetts flavor. It took us about 10 minutes to find it, not being familiar with the back roads but we were pleasantly surprised once we arrived. It was adorable and rustic, abutting a craggly orchard and offering picnic tables around a small pond. Inside, visitors were huddled up to the tasting bar sipping away at blends made from apples and pears. It seemed really cool. After perusing the wares, we sidled up to the cashier to purchase a tasting...and were denied because it was a quarter to closing time.

This was disappointing to us, naturally. But I think it was a bad move on the winery's part for a few reasons.

1. Who turns away any customers during a recession?
2. We still bought two bottles to try at home, but probably would have bought many more if we'd been given the opportunity to taste some.
3. I write about food, and might have found a good reason to write about the vineyard in a future article. Now, that's pretty unlikely.

They didn't know this, of course, but it goes to show that you never know who you are dealing with and that it never hurts to work a little overtime in the name of good customer service. It wasn't past closing time and there were plenty of other customers there who would be lingering over their glasses for a while. But apparently these folks can afford to forfeit sales and possible press.

So "big mistake" is what I say to you, Nashoba Valley Winery. Big. HUGE.