at the sign of The Pink Pig

Quick Bites: Unsmashing Smashburger

[Pigging by Wilfrid:  April 27, 2015]

So you have twenty minutes or so around City Hall to grab a bite, and you're both tired of GRK, and don't want dollar pizza slices.  Smashburger--why not?

Well first of all, why?  Because the service is smashing.  Yes, this is a clean, friendly, well-lit, well-kept, well-swept fast food franchise, based on the William Street location, anyway.

The Cheese: Lamb Chopper

[Pigging by Wilfrid: April 27, 2015]

Unusual name for a very pleasant sheep milk cheese.  I couldn't figure out the name, but apparently, if you get to see the entirety of that label, it features a sheep on a motorbike.  Okay.

It's a collaboration between Cypress Grove and a Dutch cheesemaker, made in Holland and aged before crossing the ocean.

Spring Traditions: Ten Years Ago

[Pink Pig Time Machine by Wilfrid: April 27, 2015]

Spring arrived, and along with it shad roe, one of my favorite seasonal ingredients, as well as duck eggs and ramps at the greenmarket.  A good time of year to cook at home.

Also, just about warm enough to get up to Yankee stadium (yes, the old one) for the first time in the season.

Mulino A Vino: A Village Wine Mill

[Pigging by Wilfrid:  April 22, 2015]

My Italian is limited, so I had to look this one up. Mulino a vento is a windmill, so I guess this is kind of wine mill. Certainly this is a wine restaurant where the wine element of the meal is front and center, and rightly so because the wine is very good.

The food isn't chopped liver either--literally or metaphorically--the menu, if not always the cooking, being the work of Michelin-starred chef David Scabin, of Combal.Zero outside Turin.

Ponty Bistro: French On Third

[Free stuff by Wilfrid:  April 22, 2015]

I used to live just down the street from Ponty Bistro, except it wasn't Ponty Bistro then.  But what was it?  I've wracked my brains (and wrestled with Google), but I can't tell you.  There were certainly one or two French and/or Italian joints on that strip, a step or two down from veteran sportsbar Barfly, back in the '90s.

But never mind my memory.  Since 2008, this has been Ponty Bistro (French-African-Mediterranean, the website says, and it was an inadvertent trip down memory lane to be invited to dine there recently.

Bouley And So On: Ten Years Ago

[Pink Pig Time Machine by Wilfrid:  April 20, 2015]

I've said before that Bouley became a regular haunt for a number of us, ten years ago. Many inventive and interesting dinners there, not least because there were people in the kitchen who were also in online forums, and one kind of got to know them, and...well, you know.  The menu was often departed from.

Apart from another happy visit to that place, one of two casual meals in mid-April, 2005.

Willow, L'Antagoniste: New In Bed-Stuy

[Pigging by Wilfrid:  April 13, 2015]

We're past the point--or should be--of being amazed when an interesting or moderately ambitious restaurant opens in Bed-Stuy, the still gritty lop-sided pentagon of an inner city neighborhood, crushed along its north-eastern border by Broadway, supported at its base by Atlantic Avenue, framed--but not well-served-- by the A,C and J,M subway lines.

The reputation of Peaches' hot chicken extends beyond the borough, there's the pubby Black Swan, and there's even a wacky place called Do-or-Dine (frog's legs with Dr Pepper glaze). But lobster thermidor?

Quick Bites: Demarchelier

[Pigging by Wilfrid:  April 13, 2015]

So there we were on the Upper East Side, and my daughter made the unarguable case that we hadn't been to Demarchelier in a long-time. It's one of those persuasively Parisian-looking little brasseries that survived the several years of disdain for traditional French food in the early '00s.

Strange to remember that transient horror of old Europe--the days of "freedom fries," and a revolt against tocques and tastevins which polished off La Caravelle and other veterans. Yet today you can't move for new French openings, from Lafayette and Le Philosophe, to Racines, Dirty French, Beaubourg, and the forthcoming La Gamelle and Chevalier. Henri Soulé would feel quite at home.

Theatricals: Ten Years Ago

[Pink Pig Time Machine: April 13, 2015]

With some decent spring weather in April 2005, I spent a Friday evening wandering around Bay Ridge, a neighborhood with some interesting real estate and some grand old bars. I called in at the Three Jolly Pigeons, one of the city's loveliest bars (it's still there, go and see it).

Then dinner at Tanoreen, a middle eastern standby run by a Palestinian family.  Choose appetizers from the display in the cold case, then go for grilled meats.

Amazon's Kindle Swindle

[The Cunning Tower by Wilfrid:  April 9, 2015]

The hidden costs of relying on Amazon's fragile Kindle e-reader are becoming clear.

I don't have an e-reader right now.  Oh sure, I had one up to a couple of weeks ago, and I've had one since 2011, when I attended a presentation by Jeff Bezos announcing the Kindle Fire. 

 

No, I never had a Kindle Fire.  I just wanted the most basic Kindle--affordable, easy to use, pocket-sized, and convenient. Like the Everyman Library, I hoped it would go with me and be my guide, in my most need go by my side. As it turned out, it wouldn't.