Fish, Chips, And Café Boulud: Ten Years Ago

[Pink Pig Time Machine:  June 17, 2013]

Ten years ago I was embarked, for better or worse, on reading all of Faulkner, more or less in order, so I'd started on his little-read second novel set in New Orleans bohemia, Mosquitoes.  Aldous Huxley with a southern drawl.  In other culture news, Robert Kushner's screens and sliding doors for John Cage, at the DC Moore Gallery, were lovely.

And then there were new Frank Stella sculptures at Kasmin, and--less interesting--Larry Clark's argumentative "pUnk Picasso" series at Lurhing Augustine.  And food?

I started the week with A Salt & Battery's reproduction of traditional English fish'n'chips.  Haddock in this case, served with the all-important sweet pickled onions.

Much less fun was an awful, bland, tasteless mélange of hors d'oeuvres at Zen Palate, followed by a depressing tofu-stuffed crêpe--and I like tofu.  The restaurant--the dim, downbeat west midtown branch--went on the never-again list.

And then there was a very good day of eating, beginning at home with buttermilk biscuits, Baudat honey, and St Dalfour's mirabelle plum marmalade.  In the evening, Taittinger at Bemelmans Bar was the overture to a nice, straightforward dinner at Café Boulud:

Veal tongue salad with tête de veau Ste Menehould

Hanger steak, potato gratin, beet purée

Cheeses

1994 Cornas

The next night, dinner was a roast brook trout, cooked while I packed for an early flight to London,