at the sign of The Pink Pig

Quick Bites: B&D Halal

 

[Pigging by Wilfrid:  August 30, 2012]

Mystery meat in a nut sauce?  Right this way, sir.  That's what I'm eating as I type, and it's a messy business.

I'm going to say it's ham hock (I don't have a picture); tastes like peanut sauce, but I bet it isn't. [As has now been pointed out to me, it's not going to be ham in a halal restaurant.]

Quick Bites: Back To Gwynnett Street

[Pigging by Wilfrid:  August 28, 2012]

I enjoyed my first dinner at Gwynnett Street back in March, and was resolved to return.  Spring and summer sped past, and finally I nabbed a random Open Table opportunity and went back for dinner.

The menu seemed shorter and simpler, but service and food was agreeable again.  Less so the music, which was unnecessarily pumped up at the beginning of the evening.  It became more muted towards the end; but curious to be finishing dinner with the Sex Pistols piping away softly in the background.

Surf City, Here We Come: Ten Years Ago

[Pink Pig Time Machine by Wilfrid:  August 27, 2012]

With a toddler almost two years old, a summer vacation abroad was too much to contemplate.  We decided to make a trip to the Jersey shore.

I found a nice rental, a few yards from the beach, and off we went.

All This Fall

[Pigging by Wilfrid:  August 24, 2012]

Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.  Oh, come on, it won't be that bad.  It's just fall restaurant preview season again; and there are some places with potential.

Er...no, not as pictured.  That's L'Ambroisie in Paris, and it's not coming to town.  Let's pinch our collective noses and dive in.

Ken & Cook, Cooking On Kenmare

[Free stuff by Wilfrid:  August 22, 2012]

I was pleased to accept an invitation recently to see what Ken & Cook is up to on Kenmare, described two year's ago as downtown's new "restaurant row."

That didn't quite transpire, of course.  Kenmare itself, that would be hotspot, is shuttered.  Ken & Cook occupies the space that once housed Travertine.  On the evening I was there, it seemed to pulling a young, fashionable crowd, so demand clearly exists.

Note: The lighting level defeated my surreptitious camera for the most part, but visit The Wandering Eater to see Tina Wong's always great, super-charged photos.

Cuy, Café Boulud, And London Again: Ten Years Ago

[Pink Pig Time Machine by Wilfrid:  Augiust 20, 2012]

My diary is not for the squeamish this week.  Ten years ago, it was, that I trekked out to an Ecuadorian restaurant in Corona called Salinas, to sample the house specialty.  Cuy - or guinea pig.

It took some arranging.  Phone calls in advance to ensure it would be available.

Free Lunch At NYPL

[New York Peasant by Wilfrid:  August 13, 2012]

No, I'm afraid there's nothing edible at "Lunch Hour NYC," the big, free exhibit on the ground floor of the lion building.  But there's plenty to see.

And a life-size hunk of a Horn & Hardat Automat to play with (both sides!).  More you could not wish.

My Generation: Erased From Cultural History

[Telegrams from the Street by Kim Davis:  August 13, 2012]

I guess it's better than being erased from history simpliciter, but it still stings.   I refer, of course, to the London Olympics closing ceremony, which shuttled British cultural history back and forth between the present, the 1980s, and the dawn of time (The Who), never stopping to consider what the country produced when my generation was coming of age.

Except Madness, those loveable pantomime horses.

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.

The Attractions Of Atera

 [Pigging by Wilfrid:  August 6, 2012]

See, I looked up the name "Atera" when I first heard that the itself ill-named Compose was re-booting last year.  My research led me to the Hebrew word for "pray."  Good luck, I thought.  But I was wrong.

Apparently the name is derived from a Basque word meaning "to go out."  Go out?  I could go steady with this place.  Critical reactions to chef Matthew Lightner's adventurous, there-and-back again cooking have been all over the place, although the restaurant garnered three Times stars.

The bottom line is simple, however.  Behind all the neo-Nordic hooey and foraging phooey lies some true gastronomy.  Go out and enjoy it.