Ihawan And Le Bernardin: Ten Years Ago

[Pink Pig Time Machine by Wilfrid:  August 13, 2012]

A major highlight of August 2002 was visiting the Joan Mitchell retrospective at The Whitney, a full, generous show of her big, boldly colored, furiously organized abstracts.  After the Clyfford Still retrospective I'd seen in DC, this exhibition taught me more than any other about looking at abstract art in particular, and painting in general.

Here's Mario Naves' review from ten years ago.  He argues that Mitchell's achievement remained "static."  That's true of some major artists in all fields.

As for eating, I was lured to Queens by the promise of important pig's knuckles.  They're served at Ihawan, a Filipino "BBQ" just off Roosevelt Avenue, still going strong.  Take-out downstairs, a dining room upstairs, BYO, and it doesn't keep late hours.

The knuckles are wonderful things, vast joints of pork, slow cooked, then crisped in the fryer.  We started with some egg rolls, then followed up with other meaty dishes from the long menu: stewed liver and lung, longaniza, baked tilapia, pork skewers, noodles with sausage.

At home, I grappled with a rabbit.  Normandy style one night (which I assumed means cooked in butter and cream); then a chow mein, tossing liver, kidneys, and pieces of saddle with sesame noodles.  I made my way through a slab of Époisses too.

I've long believed that time is best spent dining at the two ends of the spectrum -- high and low end.  Money is largely wasted in the middle.  A few days after eating for next to nothing at Ihawan, I was in a party at Le Bernardin, and it was pretty good too.

Shrimp, soy/ginger sauce

Geoduck clam, seaweed toast

Gamberino shrimp, garlic and parsley

Brandade de morue, frisée

Monkfish, oxtail-stuffed cabbage, oxtail sauce, pommes purées

Cheeses

Curious, looking back, to see dishes like brandade and monkfish with oxtail served in the middle of August, but I'd happily eat them again right now.

Next week: a cuy incident in Queens.