OMFG!!! So gross!!!

OK, normally I wouldn't call a restaurant and ask to speak to a manager, then call Seamless Web to get a a refund and follow-up with a call to the NYC gov't to file an official complaint, but my food had a freakin' roach in it!!

EWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!

I know there are two sides to this story:

1. It's New York City. A city whose buildings are practically built on a foundation of roaches. So one got into the food... It's not the first time and it's certainly not the last. So the restaurant didn't have a watchful eye tonight. It happens. No reason to go screaming bloody murder to the Department of Health.

2. That's beyond revolting. There's no excuse and the restaurant should be immediately shut down for such gross negligence.

Granted, those are two extreme reactions, and most people's reactions would fall somewhere between the two, but tonight I was leaning toward option two and it was the manager's reaction to my phone call that pushed me over the edge.

FYI, the restaurant in question is Burritoville at 166 W 72nd St. in New York City.

I had ordered my dinner thrugh Seamless Web like I'd done on many other lazy nights when I either don't have actual food in the fridge or I'm just too lazy to cook. When the food arrived, I took a couple bites and decided that the jalepenos on my "unwrapped burrito" were too hot. Before I was able to pick them all off I saw the offending roach.

My first instinct was to take a photo. (Too many hours spent watching the various CSI and Law & Order franchises taught me to document the evidence.) Then I called the restaurant and asked to speak to the manager. I wasn't messing around!

I explained what I found and said I'd like a refund for the night's order, but the manager offered me a credit to use on my next visit. Honestly, did he really think I was going to eat there again!?!?! They served me a roach!! After explaining that to him (I shouldn't have needed to...) he said he'd do it, but he'd need proof. Fine. I have my photos. Where would you like me to send them? But hung up on me without giving me the address.

So I called Seamless Web. I figured that they'd perhaps honor my request for a refund (they did with no request for proof) and I wanted to file a complaint for the restaurant since a bug in their Website was not logging reviews properly. Score 1 for Seamless Web. Great customer service. I feel bad that they might have had to eat the cost of my meal instead of the restaurant, but they've made a loyal customer very happy. A lesson Burritoville could learn!

My next phone call was to the NYC gov't Department of Helath and Mental Health, the agency that is responsible for inspecting restaurants. I figured they should know. Normally, I wouldn't take his extra step if a restaurant was apologetic and left me with the impression that they actually cared, but the manager at this particular establishment pissed me off and then hung up on me. If you ask me, they deserve the extra scrutiny during their next inspection.

The gentleman who helped me was very polite and understading (not something you often get from government employees answering phones after hours). After he took my complaint and all my contact info to go along with it, he asked if there was anything else he could help me with. Jokingly I said, "Can you point me toward a clean restaurant?" I wasn't expecting an answer, but he gave one anyway. The Dept. of Health publishes online inspection results. Unfortunately, Burritoville wasn't listed, but I imagine they will be soonish (gov't never moves fast...).

Once I finally regained my appetite, I found I did have someting edible in the apartment: peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. But, unless you're a 7-year-old, they don't exactly fill you up like a meal or brown rice and black beans would... After a sandwich, I found some pesto sauce from the summer and some peas in the freezer. With some penne I found buried in the kitchen cabinets, it was much more satisfying than the sandwich!

Takeout (aka, pre-Thanksgiving laziness...)

Well, I got home for Thanksgiving yesterday and in preparation for the big day, we've been taking it easy in the kitchen. Tonight, that meant ordering Chinese takeout. In New York, I would have simple ordered online through Seamless Web where I have my credit card info conveniently stored in my profile for eazy ordering. But in Jefferson City, MO, that's not really an option. Imagine that... A city of less than 40,000 people, surrounded by even smaller towns. Yes, it's the state capital, but that's apparently not enough to get us an interstate highway. You have to drive 30 miles north to get to one of those...

I know you're probably wondering what all that has to do with takeout. Well, in a city this small, there isn't exactly a thriving food delivery culture. There's certainly no centralized, Web-based takeout "middleman" service like in out nation's larger metropolitan areas. When people in Jefferson City want takeout, odds are they'll have to get in the car and pick it up themselves. It's not that big of a deal since you can drive just about anywhere in less than 15 minutes. That is, it's not that big of a deal until you order dinner and then try to pick up that order from a different restaurant. Yeah, that's right...

It was just myself and my parents (my sister stayed in Chicago for the holiday) and we had decided to order from Happy Garden. After a discussion about what to order, my mom called in the order. Five minutes later, my dad left to pick it up. But when he got there they didn't have the order. Now, normally he would have called home to see if we had made a mistake, but his phone wasn't working so he reordered on the spot and waited for it to be cooked. Mom and I didn't realize what happened until he got home. Well, turns out the menu for Hunan's was still sitting out by the phone. So out headed mom to go pick up that order.

It's still unclear where the communication breakdown happened or if the wrong menu was simply grabbed inadvertently from the file, but now we had two identical orders from our two favorite Chinese restaurants. In the eyes of a food blogger that only means one thing: side-by- side taste test.

Well, Hunan's is on the left and Happy Garden is on the right. From the top there's egg drop soup, crab rangoon (why can't you get those in New York?), fried potstickers and, in the middle, happy family is on top and chicken with broccoli is at the bottom center of the plate. In ever case except the crab rangoon, Happy Garden was the clear winner.

The Hunan's crab rangoon, which is folded in a flatter shape, actually had a smoother filling with actual crab flavor. The other simple tasted like gritty cream cheese with scallions in it. The soups were drastically different, too. The Hunan's was a celery based broth with just the slightest hint of egg sitting at the bottom, while the Happy Garden soup was a thick, gelatinous base made with real chicken fat that, according to my mom, is good for arthritis, and large, obvious ribbons of egg. The happy family from Hunan's seemed like it had all been individually frozen and then tossed into a wok after it had been given sufficient time to develop freezer burn. The Happy Garden version was much fresher. It's only bad point was the use of obviously imitation crab meat. I would have preferred they had simply omitted the "crab."

The chicken and broccoli from both were acceptable, but Hunan's used chunked chicken with bits of fat and cartilage present, while Happy Garden went with thinly sliced, perfectly trimmed chicken breast. The potstickers were both OK, but side-by-side I preferred those from Happy Garden.

So, now there's a ton of Chinse food in the spare fridge and it might not survive the day with all the refrigeration needs of the Thanksgiving holiday. And now that I've sampled the restaurants off the same plate, I can honestly say I only care to eat half of them anyway...

Super Taco

Well, after a year living at 95th St. and Riverside Dr. and walking by the place several times a year, I finally tried Super Taco—a souped up street-food operation parked outside of Gristedes on 96th St. near Broadway. Why last night and not before? Well, my date (that's right, I was on a date) brought it up in conversation and we were reasonably close, so I suggested we walk over for a late night snack. Honestly, I never stopped by before because there was always a horde of Spanish-speaking customers and a long complicated menu that I didn't want to take the time to read, but last night I was feeling bold.

In true form, once I saw that the menu went beyond the usual Americanized "Mexican" food offerings, I resolved to order the most unfamiliar item on the menu. At first, I thought that meant the goat taco, but no, there was something even more unusual—the lengua taco. If your Spanish is up to snuff, you already know what I ate, but for the linguistically challenged (that was a clue) I had tongue.

"Eww... Gross!" you say? Well, honestly this isn't my first experiene with beef tongue. One of the courses at WD-50 was pickled beef tongue, and, although it was sliced very thinly and artfully piled on the plate, it's rubbery, spongy texture was still recognizeable as were the filiform papillae—the little hairlike projections on the top of the tongue. You and I have them too, but on a cow's tongue, they're much larger and noticeable.

Getting back to Super Taco, this tongue was chopped into small pieces roughly a quarter-inch square. This highlighted its texture without making it difficult to eat. You knew you were eating tongue, but you didn't have to chew on it forever before swallowing—an important quality for street food. Two soft flour tortillas formed the taco's shell and shredded lettuce, chopped onions were added. From the self-service condiments, I added just the red salsa, but sliced radishes, green salsa and jalepeños were also available.

So, the verdict... I'd definitely go back. I'd like to try the goat or some of the more elaborate specials. The $2 taco was a perfectly sized late-night snack and a couple of them will make a still-cheap meal. The truck is parked on the same block as a Salvation Army donation center, so it'll be a nice treat after dropping off the clothes I plan to clean out of my wardrobe. And my date? Well he deserves the respect of not being publicly analyzed.

Alinea: Pretty Food, Strange Experience

Well, after years of looking at the food porn in countless articles on Alinea--named Best American Restaurant in the October 2006 issue of Gourmet magazine--I finally bit the bullet, plunked down my credit card and had the smaller of the two tasting menus. So strong is the restaurant's reputation, that it's name doesn't appear outside the space except for on a small sign advertising the restaurant's $10 valet parking. It's simply a non-descript, but clean and crisp, charcoal building.

When you walk in, you are in a long hallway with panels jutting out from the wall so that it looks like you are walking into a funnel. There's seemingly no place to go, but then a sliding door that looks like an elevator with no buttons opens and you are greeted by the staff. The first question I was asked was, "How did you arrive?" It threw me and I didn't answer right away, so she followed with, "Did you valet park a car?" "No..." "Did you come in a taxi?" "Yes..." "OK, then we'll have one waiting for you when you finish your meal." "OK, thanks..."

So, the first dish that came out was accompanied by very detailed instructions on not only how to eat the dish, but also how to hold the vessel it came in. "I'm going to ask for your help with this one. When I hand you the dish, pleas do not set it down on the table or on the monocle. The weight of the fork will cause the bowl to tip and spill," he said. "Please do not dip the fork into the soup below. Eat it as a single bite, set the fork down on the monocle, and them drink the soup. At that point, you can set the bowl down and it will not fall over." And that was all before he got to the description of the food in the dish. It was a surf clam with several garnishes and chilled nasturtium soup.

The rest of the evening progressed in much the same way. Everything was carefully scripted and orchestrated with perfect precision. I'm sure the staff had memorized the script and choreography much as I had done when I did musical theater during high school. Our silverware was replaced for each of the 14 courses we were served, but not in the normal way...

"As you can see, we designed the restaurant with mahogany tables and no cloths. I'm setting down this pillow so that we can rest clean silverware on it for you. We ask that as you use it, you do not replace any used silver back on the pillow so that we can keep reusing them. Please rest the used pieces on your plate and they will be removed."

Like at WD-50, I didn't enjoy every item served. The ones that failed, for me, were those that attempted too many complex treatments on a food that can be so good on its own. Specifically, the wagyu beef. It was a single bite on a pin with matsutake mushroom served in a bowl underneath a forest of cedar branches. Unfortunately, I thought the scent of the cedar was so strong that the beef and mushroom--both imported from Japan, no doubt--were overpowered.

On another occasion, though, scent was used more successfully. The tomato course, the fourth served, the plate of varied tomato preparations was placed on a pillow that had been filled with hardwood smoke. It smelled like campfire and added a pleasant dimension to the cold plate filled with several single bites, all prepared differently. The plate, balanced precariously on the pillow, caused the smoke to slowly waft out under its weight.

Chef/Owner Grant Achatz, formerly of Napa Valley's French Laundry among other top restaurants, apparently has a fondness for courses needing to be eaten as single bites, pulled off a pin or cinnamon stick with the mouth, and spheres that explode--sometimes violently--in the mouth. At least three times that I can remember, we were told to take an entire item in our mouth and then close it immediately so that nothing is spilled when it explodes.

One flavor combination, in particular, comes to mind as being unexpectedly delicious. The chocolate course, a long, winding tube of dark chocolate ganache, was served with soy sauce in three ways: as a jelly, a marshmallow and a powder. On it's own, soy sauce isn't a common dessert ingredient, but with the chocolate it worked. If you've ever had a dark chocolate covered pretzel, you already know what salt can do to chocolate. And what is soy sauce, if not a very salty ingredient?

I wish I could recount each of the dishes, but it would take far too long. Instead, be sure to look at the restaurant's photo gallery. For me, the presentation was almost more exciting than the food, anyway.

TONY's Eat Out 2007

Tonight I attended Time Out New York magazine's Eat Out 2007. It's an event to benefit the Food Bank for New York City while giving attendees an opportunity to sample food from 40 different New York restaurants. I tried my best, but I only managed to sample food from 17 of the restaurants. That's a 17 course tasting menu... And boy am I stuffed!

I think my favorite was the Spicy Beef and Pomelo Salad from Mai House Vietnamese. Another memorable dish was the Rabbit anticuchos from Palo Santo. Now, I've had rabbot before. Hell, I've even cut up a whole rabbit and cooked it. Multiple times... But I'd never had rabbit heart before. Luckily, I'd eaten various chicken organs growing up in the Midwest and the idea of eating an animal's heart doesn't horribly disgust me. Anyway, my point is that rabbit heart tastes just like chicken heart. In case you were curious...

For the record, anticuchos is a Quechuan word for kebab. And the Quechua people are an Andean ethnic group that lives throughout South America in places where the previous Incan Empire extended.

Mayonnaise Kitchen -- My personal hell...

Honestly, Stephen Colbert said it so perfectly in the following video clip that I really don't have anything to add. You know I don't like mayo (unless it's fried by Wylie Dufresne) and Tokyo's Mayonnaise Kitchen restaurant isn't likely to change my mind!!

Wylie Dufresne, Mad Scientist

Last September, as a full-time student at the Institute for Culinary Education, I was given the opportunity to volunteer at the 1st Annual StarChefs.com: International Chef's Congress in NYC. Specifically, I was supposed to be helping out backstage in the staging area for the various chefs' demonstrations. It turned out that my most important job as a volunteer was to stay out of the way (every chef brought their own assistants). I didn't mind, though, since I did get to meet some really cool chefs and watch all their demos. Susur Lee was there—he was only one to engage me in conversation. And so was Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto. I got a photo with him even though I hesitate to show it off since my culinary school uniform was an unflattering eight sizes too big for me. (Shaq could probably fit into it...) Among many other chefs that I got to meet was Wylie Dufresne, Chef/Owner of WD-50. And that is where I had dinner last night.

After Dufresne's name came up during a freelance project I was working on recently, my editor and I decided to try the restaurant's tasting menu since neither of us had been to the hot spot before. The tasting menu consisted of a dozen courses: eight savory and four sweet, but I'll spare you the play-by-play and stick to what was truly memorable a day later:

Pizza pebbles, pepperoni, shiitake
"These taste like Combos," said one of my dinner companions mere seconds after the plate was set down and before our server had left the table. "Many people say that," he admitted. Well, I wasn't about to argue. They did have a taste very reminiscent of the not-so-healthy, guilty-pleasure, gas station fare. Nevermind that the "pepperoni" component of the dish was a few small dollops of sauce, the "pizza pebbles" were loosely held-together spheres of bread and cheese flavored powder, and the shiitakes were paper-thin slices of dehydrated mushroom. A couple oregano leaves added a green touch to the plate which was resembled nothing even close to an actual pizza.

Knot Foie
This had to be my least favorite dish of the night. Now, I love foie gras and I don't plan on ever caving in to the claims that PETA and other save-the-animals types make about the "inhumane" treatment involved in foie gras production, but PLEASE don't reduce foie gras to something that could pass as the love child of bologna and Spam. I don't care if you have managed to take the normally fragile offal and shape it into a clean knot. Unfortunately this interpretation of foie gras smelled like "cat food" according to others at my table and, in my opinion, hardly had any of the rich flavor that I normally associate with the delicacy. Not even the quince sauce or cilantro stems could rescue the dish. Sorry, Wylie, but this one earns an F from me.

Beef tongue, fried mayo, tomato molasses
Again not a favorite of mine and it had nothing to do with the fact that I was eating pickled beef tongue. Those of you who know me, know that I have an aversion to mayonnaise. Plain and simple, I'll avoid it given the option. Now, I could have told our server that I didn't eat mayo or I could have left it untouched on my plate, but—if for no reason other than to satisfy my curiosity—I ate the fried mayo. I can happily report that the process of deep frying can make almost any food delicious. So, while I still may not care for cold, gloppy mayo from a jar or squeeze bottle, I am a fan of warm, fried mayo. Even if it does contain a secret ingredient or two from WD-50's famed wall of food-grade chemicals.

Lamb belly, black chickpea, cherried cucumber
Did you know that "lamb belly" is just a confusing way of saying "bacon"? Granted at least one of my many food reference books probably defines "bacon" as something uniquely porcine, but, for the sake of argument, if you take the fatty belly of an animal, cure it, slice it thinly and then fry it, it's going to resemble bacon. And bacon makes me happy. End of story.

Fried butterscotch pudding, mango, taro, smoked macadamia
Again with the frying. Frying, if done well, takes anything up at least one notch. (Several in the case of mayo.)

Soft chocolate, avocado, licorice, lime
Chocolate isn't my favorite (unless it's a nice piece of unadultered dark chocolate) and I tend to find it boring, but there's a photo of this dish on the restaurant's Web site, so I thought I'd include it so you can get a taste of how the various dishes are presented.

In such an experimental place, it's no surprise that even the restrooms are worth mentioning. We were lucky (smart?) enough to ask about them before embarking on an exploratory jaunt around the restaurant. The conversation went something like this: "Where is the women's room?" "Oh, they're downstairs." "They? There's more than one women's room?" "Well, just go downstairs and push on the wood panels." "OK..."

Turns out, the restroom is a set of unisex restrooms with communal sinks nestled in a basement nook. The doors to the stalls are flush with the wall and, aside from seams in the wood paneling, more or less hidden. Nice touch.

That's all folks. I've already rambled on for far too long.

Haute Barnyard, not Haute Couture

Today I had some time to kill while I waited in my doctor's waiting room. I had intended to do the crossword puzzle in my New York magazine, but I didn't have a pen and the receptionist was nowhere to be found. So I flipped to the restaurant reviews and started scanning. My eyes stopped at Perilla because it was one of the few review-worthy restaurants I've eaten at so far. New York only gave Top Chef Harold Dieterle's West Village restaurant one star out of five, but I can honestly say that my parents and I had an absolutely wonderful meal.

Anyway, part of the review reads, "The menu is dotted with the kind of pretentiously unpretentious specialties we've become accustomed to in the Haute Barnyard era." And it's this concept of "Haute Barnyard" that I'd like to talk about.

"Haute Barnyard" is, to me, a nice way to describe my love of pork products, fancy fowl, chicken pieces other than skinless chicken breast. To some, eating saturated fat-laden meats is considered to be a very masculine thing. Women should order salads and other dainty foods and leave the pork belly to the guys, right?

WRONG!! Certainly not now, when so much care is being taken by certain small-scale producers to build awareness of heritage breeds and to raise them in generally "greener" ways by using less or no antibiotics, giving them more room to roam and a more varied diet. To pass up a chance to taste something so lovingly created is blasphemous in my eyes. It has more calories, you say? Well, it also has a hell of a lot more taste, too! It costs too much? Fine, I'll brew my own coffee and lay off the venti, non-fat, sugar-free, vanilla lattes that also cost too much. Nothing is going to stand between me and a perfectly good opportunity to eat some good food. Not even a first date. And yes, I know that "pork belly" is just uncured, unsliced bacon. (Mmm... Bacon...)

And it's the higher-quality products that allow for simple recipes that shift the focus back to the ingredients themselves. And this is where Harold Dieterle's cooking is successful. Creamed corn? Doesn't sound special, but he uses only the best ingredients and takes the time to prepare them perfectly. He doesn't rely on some convoluted, experimental combination of ingredients to impress people and I appreciate that confidence and simplicity.