at the sign of The Pink Pig

O South Beach, My South Beach: Wine And Food '08

[A Pig At Large by Wilfrid: February 29, 2008]

Rachael!  Wait!  Dontcha know me?

I'm your little Piggy! Okay, enough with the cheesy celeb sightings.

(Part one of the Pig in Florida; on Monday, dinner at Table 8.)

Toloache: Love Potion (Comes With Bugs)

[Pigging by Wilfrid: February 29, 2008]

The Toloache website sources the restaurant's name to a flowering plant used in love potions.

Wiktionary has it as a psychoactive hallucinogen.  But I wasn't seeing things: those were bugs.

Sell Me A Rainbow: "Color Chart" At MOMA

[New York Peasant by Wilfrid: February 29, 2008]

At some moment in modernity, according to MOMA, color became "a mass-produced and standardized commercial product" - and, so this show implies, some artists responded accordingly.

Now we can certainly call color "a commodity" - as the commentary here does - and swan around feeling radical and post-Marxist.  But of course it isn't.  Paint certainly is, and no less is the art-work.  Color, however, is something quite different, and it's worth pausing to wonder what it is.

It's a property, I'd suggest, and a property of something. 

Grilling St Paul: Ten Years Ago

[Pink Pig Time Machine by Wilfrid: February 22, 2008]

Where were we?  Yes, in icy Minnesota, eating walleye "fingers" at a bar which, when I returned the next night, had ominously closed down.

We should learn more of the legendary walleye, for we shall meet it again before my tale is done.  It is a freshwater, pike-like fish, native to Canada and the northern United States.  It has no fingers. 

The Riches Of Humm: Eleven Madison Park

[Pigging by Wilfrid: February 22, 2008]

Daniel Humm is well-established as one of the most gifted young chefs in the city, who elevated Eleven Madison Park (EMP) from a palatial dining room delivering competent, interesting new American cuisine to simply one of the best restaurants in the city.

I visited frequently in chef Daniel's early days, and only desisted as the menu paused on a number of well-considered signature dishes.  But it has continued to evolve of course, so I returned...

(Above: foie in a pain d'epices millefeuille; tuna-radish with hint of fennel; crisp sweetbread cone - slightly oily, a little bouche the filling of which I forget.  Then the same again, backwards.)

Martin Brock At Grayz

[Pigging by Wilfrid: February 22, 2008]

Since I boost Grayz every chance I get, I should mention that the organization doesn't pay me.  I just keep eating there.  And this week I can add a new comment: Martin Brock is a chef to watch.

I merely play my humble role in helping you all to understand what you may be missing.  Wow, wow.

Archive Horror At The ICP

[New York Peasant by Wilfrid: February 22, 2008]

I spent an uncomfortable hour at the misleadingly, almost jauntily named "Archive Fever" exhibition at the ICP on 6th Avenue this week.  The title of the exhibition is borrowed, as much artworld discourse now is, from Derrida

The Slow Death of Live Performance

[The War on Fun by Wilfrid: February 22, 2008]

Maybe this shouldn't be in the War on Fun Department, as I can't place all the blame the evil alliance of unelected Community Boards and New Puritans for these problems.  But I wanted to draw attention to this article in the New York Observer...

Parigot - Qui Lui?

[Pigging by Wilfrid: February 15, 2008]

If you thought a duck was out of the question...

I mean an old-fashioned roast duck à l'Orange...think again.

Lunchtime Grayzing And Skewered At Tropical

[Pigging by Wilfrid: February 15, 2008]

Partly because I have been involved in an endless and inconclusive argument about whether Gray Kunz's $39 signature shortribs are over-priced on the Grayz evening menu.

(Scroll down for Tropical)