at the sign of The Pink Pig

Quick Bites: Pot Roast At Northeast Kingdon

[Pigging by Wilfrid: October 28, 2011]

It's that time of year, isn't it? Thinking about onion soup and cassoulet rather than sushi and lobster rolls. How about a pot roast?

I found a good one at NorthEast Kingdom.  Now The Morgan has given up and started serving a cheap Thai menu, Northeast Kingdom is back to being the other restaurant in that grim, industrial corner of Bushwick.

Quick Bites: Brooklyn Star Shines More Brightly

[Pigging by Wilfrid: October 24, 2011]

This was an entirely impromptu drop in.   So much so that I didn't even have my camera with me (pictures are from early last year). 

I was headed somewhere else to do something different, when I thought - hey, let's at least go and take a look at Brooklyn Star's new premises.   I looked, I entered, I ordered.

Quiet Week Except For The Baseball: Ten Years Ago

 

[Pink Pig Time Machine:  October 24, 2011]

Was it really ten years ago that New York's collective knuckles were whitened as the Yankees fought a close World Series with the Diamondbacks, pushed to late October/November by 9/11?

I still remember Mariano's three ball ninth inning to win one of the games, and then his furious throw to second which Jeter couldn't hold and which pretty much lost another.  And the relentlessly oncoming Schilling and Johnson.   But the Yankees almost did it.

New York Journal Sifts Sifton

[Pigging by Wilfrid:  October 20, 2011]

I can always find things to disagree about with my Mouthfuls colleague Marc  Shepherd, although I think we share similar views about where the New York dining scene is headed.  Where Marc is eminently reliable, however, is in his detailed assessments of the New York Times' restaurant critic -- in this case, the outgoing Sam Sifton:  "vacuous, bored and intellectually lazy."

Read the arguments -- and facts and figures -- which support that conclusion right here.

A Blow Out At Union Pacific: Ten Years Ago

[Pink Pig Time Machine by Wilfrid:  October 19, 2011]

Where were we?  Oh yes, mid-October 2000.  A quiet week during which I found time to be sick, but also to eat myself silly in a good cause at Union Pacific, that fine and sadly missed restaurant.

I lived five minutes from it and always paused to check the constantly changing menu posted outside.  It was authentically responsive to the market and the seasons when that wasn't yet a universal catchword.  I wish Rocco di Spirito was still cooking in a New York restaurant kitchen.

Isa Is Important

[Pigging by Wilfrid:  October 17, 2011]

There was a time (2008, in fact) when I thought it might still be possible to defend the barricades of gastronomy and grown-up dining against the assault of the comfort-food-smackdown barbarians.

 

I was wrong.  The walls fell and we are now overrun with the amateurish posing as the hip, the infantile as the casual, and the obvious as the novel, all dressed up in PR rages and even talked up by people like Andrew Carmellini who should know much better.

Is there a light glimmering in the darkness?

Alewife Comes To LIC

[Free Stuff by Wilfrid: October 13, 2011]

A shimmering red glow on a dark sidestreet off Vernon Boulevard. That must be the place I'm looking for. But it's huge, like a warehouse from outside. It's Alewife, alright.

An alewife, properly speaking, is a type of herring, but I didn't see it on the opening menu here.  Perhaps more relevantly, it's a Baltimore restaurant and beerhouse, now come to Queens.

The Cheese: Roomano

[Pigging by Wilfrid:  October 17, 2011]

I eat a lot of soft, funky cheese, but recently I was in the mood for something firm and nutty.  Nobody, I think, eats enough aged Gouda.  Sounds kind of boring, Gouda, doesn't it?  But an old Gouda can compete with Parmiggiano for depth and complexity.

So did I buy some Gouda?  No, I bought something else.  Roomano, in fact.

Quick Bites: San Marzano

[Pigging by Wilfrid: October 11, 2011] Fatigue, the late hour and convenience lured us into San Marzano on Clinton Street, which has been purveying brick-oven pizza in neat premises for some time now, and which closes late. My first visit

(Rapini pizza)

Just a pizza each and we'll eat them right here before we fall asleep.  Thanks.  Oh, and a couple of glasses of Italian red.

La Promenade des Anglais: A Very Nice Start

[Pigging by Wilfrid: October 10, 2011]

Long time readers will remember how I went crazy for Allegretti in 2008, with two rave reviews.  Not so much crazy for Alain Allegretti himself, Eater's "Sexiest Chef," but for his lovely restaurant.

A comfortable room, professional service, beautifully plated food which also tasted great, confidently rooted in a coherent cooking tradition.  Wonderful fish cooking, intriguing pastas, a well-priced wine-lists.  Of course, some derided it as stuffy or over-fussy or even too expensive, and it didn't last.  Well, he's back.