Final Dishes From A Diary: Ten Years Ago

[Pink Pig Time Machine by Wilfrid:  April 17, 2017]

Turning the dust-encrusted heavy vellum pages of my journal, I realize with a mixture of regret and acceptance that: This is where we came in.

Ten years of meals, ten years of travel, galleries, books, and theater.  I did just celebrate twenty years of living in New York. It's simple math...

At the Sign of the Pink Pig opened for business ten years ago this month.  One of the regular features I decided to include was a look back at what I was doing and eating ten years in the past. And so, if the Pink Pig is ten years old, all that my journal does from April 2007 onward is record events already recorded right here.

There has to be some limit placed on superfluity.

As to where the rest of the blog is headed, more on that when we reach the actual tenth anniversary: but this is the last of the Ten Years Ago column, and thanks for following along.

So back to Savoy for lunch: I always liked the bacalao fritters, and I followed them with some poached eggs over frisée.

A calm dinner at Toqueville featured seasonal sautéed shad roe, a mushroom and pea risotto, lamb three ways, cheeses, and--to my surprise--a bottle of La Mission Haut Brion. Perhaps a half bottle. Not the cheapest claret.

Speaking of surprises, what on earth was Cronkte?  Research shows it was a short-lived (it was closed by July) pizzeria on the Lower East Side, opened by Michael Ayoub of the Fornino mini-chain.  I vaguely recall that it was all about truffles: or the scent of truffles, anyway.  I ate truffled polenta with shiitake mushrooms, guanciale pizza, and tartufo pizza, accompanied by a wine flight

A plethora of tapas with a party of experts at the new tapas bar Mercat: pimientos de Padrón, fried baby squid, razor clams, buñuelos de bacalao, pork belly with cherries, snails with chorizo, a surtido de embutidos, bottles of Lopez de Heredia blanco 1996 and Clos Marinet 2004.

I do remember we were served some jamón Serrano which had actually gone bad: quite rancid.  An unusual occurrence. Perhaps the rest of the meal didn't live up to expectations, because my truth-telling diary accuses me of heading for Pegu Club afterwards for duck sliders.

Bringing the curtain down, that little piece of France in the West Village, Jarnac: grilled asparagus, roast cod and mash with ramps, cheese, and a Cuvée de V Viognier by Domaine les Goubert, 2006.

Now, if you want to know what I ate the week after that, and the week after that, all you have to do is start here, and you have another ten years of reading. Good luck.