[Pink Pig Time Machine by Wilfrid: February 8, 2010]
As chance would have it, the day after Superbowl XXXIV saw me at Strand Books picking up nice reading copies of James Gibbon Huneker's various critical essays. I happened to find a volume I was missing- The Pathos of Distance - just this week, and pretty much on the same shelf.
First restaurant of the month, Mesa Grill. It practiced its usual trick of seating my party some considerable time after the hour of our reservation had passed, but one is prepared for this at Mesa Grill, and the complimentary cocktails help with the wait.
Seated, I began with the blue corn tortilla stuffed with tender duck - a dish Bobby Flay can proudly be associated with. Then a spice-rubbed pork loin. To finish, ginger ice cream in a gingerbread shell, and something called an egg nog "Baked Alaska." Zinfandel goes with this kind of food.
And then the snow came down...
Which meant a pretty quiet time for the rest of the week. Scandalously, my diary does not record the name of the Chinatown restaurant I visited at the end of the week. It was a corner on Bayard, I know, and there were live sea creatures in a tank in the window. Fan-tailed fried shrimp to start, then a big Dungeness crab, and one of my favorite dishes - fish maw stuffed with shrimp. Fish maw is a sort of fish tripe, I suppose - it's what expands when a fish like a bloater fish blows up, and so it has a wonderful concertina-like texture and a mild flavor. We filled up on pork and rice.
Next week, home cooking mainly. Well it was cold out, wasn't it?
