[Pink Pig Time Machine by Wilfrid: August 5, 2013]
It was a busy end to July, ten years ago. Multiple dinners in New York sandwiched one of those exhausting 48-hour business trips to London.
And is it really ten years since MoMA was temporarily located in Queens? I can hardly remember the old Manhattan MoMA, before the major changes.
It was almost empty when we dined there (I later found out that one of the few other occupied tables was hosting members of Mr Treboux's family). The owner and host pulled up a chair at our table, sat down, and dismissed some of our initial choices from the menu. Somehow, I persuaded him to serve me the tripes à la mode de Caen. For the most part, he was keen to select our meal for us.
I ate some warm saucisson before the tripe. Nothing was more than passable. This was the restaurant time had already forgotten. From the list, mainly of clarets, there was a 1996 Connétable Talbot.
It was a recommendation from a fellow food worrier that took me to Giorgio's, a small Italian dining room on the Upper West Side, where the traditional trattoria "fare" was indeed somewhat better than the average. Three (or was it four?) of us put away a large part of the menu.
Artichokes, eggplants, polenta with Gorgonzola sauce, soft shell crabs, orechiette with tomato sauce. A deep breath, then chicken scarpiello, spaghetti carbonara, and lamb chops. To finish, tiramisu, panna cotta with chocolate syrup, and tartufo.
I can't imagine how I made it to Micky's Blue Room for after dinner drinks, but my diary tells me I did, and after all, my stomach was well lined.
Then I hopped on a plane with Tom Clark's biography of Charles Olson, and bang--there I was in London again. Just for a day, so only for meetings, but I managed to make it to Shoreditch with friends for drinks at the Barley Mow, then dinner at South (which might still be open, but just try googling it). A nice plate of guinea fowl after some cold cuts, and a bottle of Coteaux de Languedoc.
New York, on my return, presented an educational contrast. Where Le Veau D'Or had been a disappointment, the noisy, ramshackle, boisterous Flea Market on Avenue A turned out to be serving simple, but really good, French food. The kind of food you'd find at an ordinary bistro du coin in Paris. Accompanied by truly dreadful wine.
I was duly amazed by the tasty duck pâté in a mason jar, the warm chèvre salad, the generous and bloody hanger steak with gratin dauphinois, the tarte tatin. Food which a restaurant like Le Veau D'Or had somehow become too self-conscious to offer.
And finally, with a couple of fine-becs, to Il Buco--that "r0mantic," antique-ridden room of communal tables, years before the owners grabbed the critics' attention with Il Buco V&A. We toured the menu extensively without being especially amazed by anything:
Maine diver scallops with summer truffles and passion fruit salad
Terrine of foie gras, blackberries
Bolsitos of fresh peas and mint, sautéed cuttlefish
Gambas a la plancha
Porchetta
Cheeses
Chocolate cake
Palo Cortado, Riesling, Ribera del Duero, Chianti
And I went home and watched an old Pagnol movie. Mediterranean, you know.
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