My First Post and a Weekend of Eating

Well, here I am. Starting a blog. I decided I would do this over a bowl of noodles at Soba-Ya following a suggestion by my decidedly tech-savvy and arguably uber-nerdy boyfriend. I already talk/think/read about restaurants and recipes an excessive amount, the reasoning went: I may as well start writing about them. Besides, what better way to mark my slow but unwavering two-year decline from well-heeled socialite to aproned home-body than to embrace the ultimate dork-pastime – blogging – about the ultimate domestic-pastime – eating.

Here, then, are my thoughts on home-cooking , low-brow gorging, hi-brow dining and everything in between:

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An Epicurean Weekend

The amount and variety of delicious food I consumed this weekend in New York was pretty astounding. Started the visit off at Chinoyo on East 6th. Why more people don’t know about this place is simply beyond me. It’s one of those little restaurants you hope will remain a hidden gem while simultaneously fretting an imminent shut-down unless crowds pick up. The head chef and owner – Chinoyo herself – is also the main hostess, and is very attentive and sweet (she recognized N. and was more than happy to offer suggestions).

Her suggestions were all very, very yummy. The food at Chinoyo is essentially Japanese home-style cooking: the type of food Murakami writes about and I imagine my Japanese grandmother might prepare (if I had a Japanese grandmother). A welcome respite from all the bastardized sushi restaurants on every corner of America. The dishes – just like the restaurant – are small, delicate, and unpretentious. We started with perfect, deceptively simple miso-glazed eggplant (a dish I’ve tried to recreate at home but ended with a sticky, miso-y mess) and an octopus-and-seaweed dish that was well-prepared but not especially exciting. I had the cod, which was sweet and flakey (not to be missed), and N. the mackerel, slightly less flavorful but definitely more refined. All this and a bottle of unfiltered sake (which I’ve recently discovered to great delight) for about $30 a person. Lovely. I’d eat there every day.

On Friday we had dinner with a bigger group at Perbacco, A.’s excellent suggestion. I was really excited since I’ve been wanting to try it for a while, and it definitely didn’t disappoint. The atmosphere is perfect for a larger group: it’s loud, fun, slightly tipsy and definitely feels like being back in Italy.

Rare to find a place where six people can eat equally well, but not a single dish at Perbacco was flawed. We started by sharing pepper-crusted scallops on a bed of spicy arugula and fagioli: simple enough to be classic and different enough to be memorable. N. and I shared tagliatelle in a duck stew and the special pasta, parsley bigoli with shrimp. The tagliatelle were perfect, and the sauce very duck-y without being overpowering. The dish definitely demonstrated the importance of proper shape-and-sauce pairings: I don’t think the dense, flavorful sauce would have worked quite as well with anything else. Yummm. And why are bigoli such an underused pasta? I generally eschew the meaningless adjective “authentic” when describing food or restaurants, but just a bite transported me to a tiny restaurant in Siena where I got stuffed and slightly drunk by myself while reading Sons and Lovers. Others at the table had pork belly, which was luscious and slightly sweet (a sidenote: K. is the only girl I know whose idea of a ‘diet’ is foregoing the pasta but ordering the fattiest piece of meat I can think of), and steak, which I sadly couldn’t eat but which was purportedly delicious (sidenote #2: my inability to enjoy beef has been very distressing in my life. I feel like people who love steak really LOVE steak in the same way that people who love dessert LOVE dessert: more than anyone loves, say, chicken or root vegetables. The fact that I am unable to partake in this steak-love-a-thon has bothered me for years). My only complaints were that a “carafe” of wine (a youngish Vapolicella) really meant 3.5 glasses – something restaurants really need to standardize – and that our server was erratic and stressed. Then again, he seemed to be serving the whole room, so a forgivable offense and all in all a fantastic meal.

On Saturday N. and I walked across the Brooklyn Bridge and got pizza from Grimaldi’s. Despite the winding line, we only had to wait about 15 minutes because we opted for take-out and ate our pizza in the park. Besides, the wait was well worth the delicious pizza. I ordered a small with extra ricotta and sun-dried tomatoes and N. a large pepperoni. While the fresh basil, sauce and cheese – and the ever-important sauce-to-cheese ratio – were all great, what really makes this pizza is the crust. It was crunchy but not cracker-y and almost smoky-flavored…delicious. We ordered far, far too much. This was only the second time I’ve heard N. proclaim he was full (after eating all but one slice of his supplemented with some of mine; the first time was after he ate an entire pork tenderloin with fig sauce made for 6 people).

Finished the visit with noodles at the aforementioned Soba-Ya on East 9th. We both ordered the special: large bowls of hot soba with tiny shrimp tempura, egg, mushrooms, and other delicious things I couldn’t really identify. I generally love soba, but this was really exceptional. The broth was very unusual, complex, and not too salty. Definitely not the typical noodle-broth and one that I would LOVE to know how to prepare. The noodles were perfectly al-dente (how do they stay like that in the hot soup??) and the add-ons tender and delectable. We had a late lunch/early dinner at 5:30 and by the time we left the restaurant was already packed. Actually I’m really craving some of those noodles now.

A slightly embarrassing admission: I went to Pinkberry three times this weekend. I have a tendency to jump on these types of trends very late as I often refuse to try things that everybody else likes. What usually ends up happening is that I finally succumb and then proceed to talk about these new ‘trends’ several months late. Good examples are my initial refusal to watch/read/try and subsequent near-obsession with the Lord of the Rings movies, the O.C., Everything is Illuminated, and now Pinkberry. But seriously. How good is that stuff?!