In a killer cliffhanger of a blog post, Dave Arnold of the French Culinary Institute describes an experiment he conducted — along with Nils Noren, Mindy Lvoff, David Chang of Momofuku , and Toshio Suzuki of Sushi Zen — to determine whether or not Ike Jime , a Japanese technique for killing fish, really lives up to all the hype. The idea to test the technique came from Chang, who had heard it was “bullshit.” Describing the experiment in detail (the quest for live fish in New York, the proper way to perform Ike Jime, the control group of fish killed Western-style), Arnold leaves us all hanging at the end with a “stay tuned!” to find out the results
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Does Ike Jime Live Up to the Hype? Stay Tuned to Find Out…
Katz’s egg cream Russ and Daughters’ egg cream This week’s Battle of the Dishes concerns the most classic New York soda fountain drink–the egg cream, a simple concoction of chocolate syrup, seltzer, and milk that somehow tastes rich and creamy. There are a good handful of places to get a proper egg cream on the LES and in the East Village, including Sammy’s Roumanian, Gem Spa, B&H Dairy, and Yonah Schimmel’s. But Fork in the Road wondered how the egg creams of two iconic neighbors would stand up against each other–so off to Katz’s Deli and Russ and Daughters to suck down the magical carbonated chocolate milk.
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Battle of the Dishes: LES Egg Creams
Darco TT/flickr The Post reported yesterday that Dans Le Noir?, the Paris-based restaurant chain that hires blind waiters to serve “surprise” menus to diners under the veil of total darkness, is planning to open a New York outpost. The chain, which was founded in 2004 with funding from the Paul Guinot Foundation for Blind People, has additional locations in London, Barcelona, and Moscow. Its owners are hoping to set up shop somewhere along the Bowery or in the East or West Village, and are looking for spaces with a minimum of 3,000 square feet.
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Dans Le Noir? to Broaden List of Acceptable Things to Do in the Dark in Public
Clinton Hill Blog brings news that a new organic grocery store is opening this week in the old Chocolate Factory building on Park Avenue. The store, called Fresh Fanatic, will be situated under the BQE, on the border between Clinton Hill and the Navy Yards. According to its owner, it will have a sushi bar, fresh pasta counter, on-site nutritionist, a lot of international foods, and will be “much less expensive than Whole Foods.” The store’s opening marks another milestone in the gentrification of the neighborhood, known as Wallabout , whose residential and commercial development over the past few years have earned it comparisons to DUMBO
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Organic Groceries Come to the Other Park Avenue
When he’s not helping to bring journalists home from North Korea, Bill Clinton is helping out Tim and Nina Zagat. Serious Eats attended a press conference for the new Zagat guide to Harlem earlier today, and found Bill on hand to promote the book. The Harlem guide, which covers 323 neighborhood restaurants, was published with the assistance of the Clinton Foundation’s Economic Opportunity Initiative.
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Bill Clinton Returns to Harlem to Launch the Zagat Guide to the Neighborhood
You’re sitting at your desk dreaming of a baked potato–piping hot, crisp-skinned, white-fleshed, and surmounted by a cloud of sour cream. Somewhere in there, there’s room for a couple of pats of butter, too. Well, if this savory treat is what you crave, you’ll be totally frustrated at newcomer Cowgirl Sea-Horse , which squats at the northernmost end of the South Street Seaport.
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How Do You Spell G-U-T-B-O-M-B? "Baked Potato" at Cowgirl Sea-Horse
Bravo The sixth season of Top Chef begins next Wednesday, August 19, and Grub Street gets things rolling with an interview with the show’s lone New York contestant. Ash Fulk, a cook at Trestle on Tenth , dishes about trying to be a locavore in Las Vegas, how cooking on the show is harder than it looks, and his decision to wear a bow tie on air. Unsurprisingly, there are no spoilers — the people at Bravo guard the show’s secrets with a ferocity that would put a rabid wolverine to shame — but Fulk does offer a sartorial prediction: “My boyfriend told me the bow tie is the next big thing.”
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Let the (Top Chef: Las Vegas) Games Begin
Southern Foodways/flickr Farming isn’t just for locally minded chefs anymore: Bartenders, too, are now taking to the fields. An article published today on Gourmet’s website explores the growing number of barkeeps who are doing things like harvesting sugar cane and agave leaves, asking: “Just as chefs have become increasingly intimate with their ingredients (to the point where they may even grow their own), are we moving toward a time when top bartenders will be involved in selecting the grains for their whiskey, rum, or gin?”
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Bartenders Who Grow Their Own
Like any good chef, One Ring Zero partners well-honed technique with unconventional inspiration. The brainchild of Michael Hearst and Joshua Camp, the band entered the cultural consciousness in 2004 with As Smart As We Are, an album featuring lyrics written by the likes of Margaret Atwood, Rick Moody, Neil Gaiman, and Paul Auster. Hearst next turned his attentions to the Mister Softee truck — or, specifically, to its sanity-fraying jingle — with his Songs for Ice Cream Trucks , a 2007 collection of alternative tunes with titles like “Where Do Ice Cream Trucks Go in the Winter.” Now, Hearst’s following dessert with dinner: ORZ’s new album, tentatively titled The Recipe Project , sets recipes to music
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One Ring Zero Makes Ingredients Sing. Literally.
Offbeat snippets from other sources… Cats use “soliciting purrs” to manipulate their owners in order to get attention and food [ BBC ] Graphene – World’s thinnest material [ Geekologie ] Japan – Manga sketch auctioned for USD14,100 [ Animenewsnetwork ] Largest free floating bubble created ( pic ) [ Dailymail ] Seriously? 100 essential skills for geeks [ Geekdad ] USA – Jobless graduate sues college [ NYpost ] USA – Man blamed cat for downloading child p0rn [ Guardian ] Vietnam – World’s biggest cave found [ Nationalgeographic ] Offbeat roundup (August 12, 2009) from YeinJee’s Asian Blog
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Offbeat roundup (August 12, 2009)
Some more details about The Brooklyn Kitchen ‘s new cooking school, whose upcoming opening was reported by Brooklyn Based : According to Sarah, a Brooklyn Kitchen floor manager, the school, located at 100 Frost Street in Williamsburg, doesn’t yet have a firm opening date. “We’re still working out carpets and walls,” she tells Fork in the Road. “We’re shooting for late fall.” The school will be for home chefs, not would-be professionals, she adds, and classes will be the same ones already offered at the store: think ice cream making with Ben Van Leeuwen , butchery with Tom Mylan , and pickling and canning with Bob McClure .
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More About the Brooklyn Kitchen’s New Cooking School
Has Persimmon closed? The website is down and the phone is off the hook at the seasonal, prix-fixe Korean restaurant, which won a voracious following after Momofuku alum Youngsun Lee opened it in May 2008. In his one-star review of the East Village restaurant last August, Frank Bruni wrote that it “flouts any number of conventions, chief among them an obvious, all-out effort to turn a handsome profit.” Unless the restaurant’s experiencing mere technical difficulties, that now reads less like praise than sad prophecy.
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Persimmon’s Website, Phone are Kaput
The Lower East Side may have lost its second-to-last pickle peddler , but it won’t be losing its matzo factory. The Lo-Down, who last week reported that the Streit’s Matzo facility will be staying in its Rivington Street location after putting it on the market several months ago, yesterday spoke with Streit’s director of operations, Alan Adler, to get more details on the decision. Among other things, Adler revealed that the decision doesn’t preclude a possible move in the future, and that the factory just isn’t big enough for its matzo-making machinery.
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Streit’s Matzo is Here to Stay, at Least for Now
Vue, the restaurant and lounge perched atop Gowanus’ very own Hotel Le Bleu, has just debuted a lunch and brunch menu. Chef Chris Cheung will offer such apps as a Samurai spiked crab cake and chilled butternut squash soup, and such entrees as Denmark baby back ribs with macaroni and bleu cheese and the somewhat hilariously named “The Garden of Dreams, too Many Vegetables to List.” When the Early Word visited Vue last month, it observed the restaurant’s similarity to Kurve and bemoaned its “deeply dated, hotel-ish” food; time will tell if its lunch menu can throw a curve ball of its own.
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Lunch, Garden of Dreams, Comes to Vue
Local and organic is everywhere in Manhattan and Brooklyn, but less so in Queens, partly because of the rare, ethnic ingredients used there. CSAs and Greenmarkets in Queens are now, however, starting to carry local and organic specialty foods, like tomatillos, ancho peppers, and verdolaga. [ NY Daily News ] Five popular diet myths get debunked on MSNBC, including “dairy is bloating” (nope, unless you are lactose intolerant or suffer from an irritable bowel), and “alcohol turns to sugar” (nu-uh: the calories in booze come from alcohol and the only sugar is in the mixer)
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Queens Residents Get Exotic CSA Veggies; Smith Street May Get a Mickey D’s
macrofarm/flickr This month’s issue of Esquire devotes considerable coverage to the topic of fast food, with a round-up of the country’s best ( In-N-Out ) and worst ( Taco Bell ) chains, thoughts about burger joints, and chef confessionals about the last time they ate fast food. Our fair city’s culinary elite are certainly not immune to the lure of the gastro-gutter: Michael Psilakis reveals he ate at Cinnabon just yesterday, while David Burke patronized KFC a mere three weeks ago to sample the Kentucky Grilled Chicken.
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Esquire Serves a Super-Sized Fast Food Feature
Margherita pizza from Two Amys Pistachio gelato from Dolcezza This weekend, one-forth of Fork in the Road was hanging around our nation’s capital and ate some good food along the way. Two Amys is D.C’s answer to Keste, a pizzeria certified by the Verace Pizza Napoletana Association–meaning that the pizza must meet the guidelines set forth by that organization. Only certain ingredients are allowed, such as Italian tomatoes, and the pizza must be cooked in a wood-burning oven
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Fork in the Road on the Road: Good Eats in D.C.
According to Bowery Boogie , a new Subway location will open this Wednesday on the corner of Grand and Ludlow Streets. The fact that New York is getting yet another fast-food franchise is less notable than the fact that this particular franchise is situated on the ground floor of a the Palazzo Grey, a so-called luxury development that was undoubtedly angling for a restaurant more in line with the rarefied aesthetics and budgets of its private tenants. Sometimes, it seems, signs of the times come drenched in bacon ranch dressing with a side of Lay’s.
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Reality Check, Please: Subway Will Open Grand Street Store on Wednesday
Heart-kun, the chihuahua that made headlines in 2007 with his perfect heart-shaped birthmark, is having a brother that shares similar cuteness… Named Love-kun, the new puppy was also born in Odate, northern Japan. The pet owner must have done something good in her past-life; having a cute dog like this is quite a blessing, having two is just heaven [image via Petsugar ] Heart-marked chihuahua gets identical brother from YeinJee’s Asian Blog
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Heart-marked chihuahua gets identical brother
This remote cove can be attained only by cluching a nylon rope and rappelling down a steep cliff face. The area surrounding San Francisco Bay–anchored by the city of San Francisco in the north and San Jose in the south–is a welter of densely populated towns and superhighways and high-tech companies, but climb westward over the San Cruz Mountains and find a shelf of land along the Pacific Ocean that’s sparsely populated and given to agricultural useages. It’s a land of old pickup trucks, lonely redwood preserves, expansive vistas, and secluded coves that can be accessed only by vigorous and sometimes treacherous climbs.
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Weekend Special: Fish-Head Fence in San Gregorio, California