October 2008 Archives

After returning from my first-ever visit to the Slow Food Salone del Gusto in Torino, Italy, on Monday, I began writing up the event, and looking at the photos I'd taken. As I wrote, I found myself writing a but at length of what this event was, and wasn't, and how people (including me) perceive these kinds of events. I didn't go with any agenda; I was simply interested in seeing what the Salone was all about, as I'd heard it was very interesting from some people I respected in the food world.

Unlike the perception I, and other folks have, the Salone del Gusto was not a bunch of rich, elitist folks swilling wine and congratulating themselves on what fabulous folks they were for going "green" or indulging in "peasant foods."

I hate to say I told you so.

But...

When everyone around here was telling me my glass dish was used for garlic, and I disagreed, insisting it's for butter. I finally got proof-positive.

Last week, I was shopping at Zabar's, hoping actually to pick up a few more of my favorite knives.

It's considered rude in France to ask people who you've just met—"What do you do?"

It's kinda like asking someone how much money they make.

We Americans are used to freely discussing money, or anything financial, and have no qualms about admiring someone's new shirt, and in the next breath asking them how much it cost. Or walking into someone's apartment and asking them how much they pay in rent. My pet peeve is when people take you on The Tour of their remodeled house and tell you how much everything cost. I always feel like they want me to chip in or something.

Around here, the most common question seems to be—"Where are you from?" In France, people seems to move much less than Americans: we're often born in one place, go to college in another, then move somewhere else after that. Plus in France, people always want to know your genealogy; like where your parents and grandparents are all from, and all that kinda stuff. Since America is a jumbo melting pot, and few of our relatives hopped off the Mayflower together, it can get a bit complicated.

So when I'm asked "Where are you from?", I never quite know what to answer.

Here's what I like best about The City Bakery: anything you order is going to be first-rate. There's a thin, flaky apple tart with a hint of tangy lemon and lots of crackly sugar. The chocolate cookie is soft and bursting with deep, dark chocolate flavor. And the dreamy chocolate tartlet is simple and direct: a bittersweet chocolate shell encircling a dense, chocolate pudding-like filling. No unnecessary garnishes like cream or frosting. Just chocolate, and lots of it.

(And don't even get me started about those Pretzel Croissants. If I could find a way—or space, to haul a few back to Paris, I would.)

We've been doing quite a bit of shopping here in New York. Romain has been here before, but never with an 'almost' local. (I grew up next door.) Sure, he's been all the museums, but he's never been to places as uniquely American as Bed, Bath & Beyond, TJ Maxx, and Old Navy, where we saw the woman who played Janice on The Sopranos loading up on bargains.

I guess since she's now unemployed, she's watching her finances, too.

He was absolutely bewildered that one could buy a shirt for $10 or pay just $25 for a pair of sneakers, which, in euros, cost a third of that. We've both been loading up on Levi's at Dave's for $32, or €20. And my once-empty suitcases are now bulging at the seams.

Everything is so cheap here, and no tax, either—God bless America!

Oddly, the same jeans I bought in France cost €72 ($100), and that was when they were on sale.(Although I didn't get the same personal attention that I did in Paris, which, arguably, is worth the extra cost—at least at my age.)

After all that bargain hunting, what could plus obligatoire than a cup of good, strong coffee?

So we stopped in at Joe The Art of Coffee. Although I've always found their espresso a bit murky, Romain's declared his espresso macchiato, "Le meilleur café de ma vie", the best coffee of his life. I took a sip of his, and indeed, it was amazing.

I don't quite know what to write about French coffee that I haven't written about before, but after he was done, he wondered why he couldn't get coffee like back home. So now he's hooked, and so am I.

And not just on the coffee, but the bargains. We're going to need an intervention to get us to leave.

Joe The Art of Coffee
405 West 23rd Street
New York City
(212) 206-0669

(Other locations throughout Manhattan)

If there's anyone out there who likes homemade candy more than I do, I would like to meet that person. I used to have a dream about opening a shop that sold nothing but confections made by my own two hands: chocolate-covered marshmallows, twisty peppermint sticks, naturally-flavored lollypops, sugary orange slices (god, I love those...), and chewy red licorice whips.

I even went so far as to go to take courses in candymaking, which was a lot of fun. But ultimately I decided that candy was too finicky, and that not only would few people buy it, but with my luck, I'd probably get picketed by the local dentists for making all that chewy stuff.

It's a very good sign, when I'm handed a menu in a restaurant, and everything on it looks so good to me, I can't decide what to order. Such was the case with the menu at ubuntu, one of the most highly-lauded restaurants in America, which wasn't just famous for creating innovative food, but also because it's entirely vegetarian.

Luckily there were six of us, so we tried almost everything on the menu, which included lots of oddities and items so unusual, we had to ask what they were.

Donuts! Now there's a new concept.

Actually there's nothing new about donuts, and places like Krispy Kreme have come, and (almost) gone. But tucked away in a sunny corner of 24th Street in the Mission is the Dynamo Donut & Coffee shop.

I feel like I deserve a majority of the credit (or blame...depending on how you look at it) for the cupcake craze. I was eating them decades ago, when no one gave them a second thought. And now, as someone who teaches baking told me, making and selling cupcakes in America is like printing money.

I'm not much for trendy foods, but for some reason, mid-day yesterday, right in the middle of my Japanese bento box lunch of chicken katsu and seaweed salad, I was seized with the overwhelming desire for a cupcake.

Stop the presses!

Although I think in this day and age of online publishing, what do we now say—stop the downloading? Somehow, that doesn't have the same sense of urgency to it.

Still, this is important.

I know you're going to find this hard to believe, but my search for the perfect burger was not to be resolved in Paris.

Is PPQ the best Vietnamese restaurant in San Francisco?

I used to be in the camp of Vietnam II for the longest time, mainly because when I worked at a Southeast Asian restaurant, that's where almost all of my co-workers ate.

That is, until I discovered Pho Phú Quôc, otherwise known as PPQ. Which is funny: I always guessed that they had to shorten their name since I'm probably not the only one that doesn't know how to really pronounce "pho".

After a couple of too-lengthy flights, I finally landed in San Francisco. I arrived with a full agenda of things to do, and fortunately got all the not-so-fun stuff completely out of the way by the end of Day #2.

So now I have nothing to do for a whole week here—except eat!

One of the least expensive, and most effective, things you can do to improve the taste of your cakes, quick breads, cookies, and muffins is to switch to aluminum-free baking powder right away.

Baking powder a leavening agent, and it's usually called for in recipes where there are alkaline (as opposed to acidic) ingredients. In actuality, baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) is one of the ingredients in baking powder, which, when moistened, releases carbon dioxide, which causes baked goods to rise.

Even though no definitive correlation has been found regarding health problems arising from using regular baking powder and cooking with non-anondized aluminum pots and pans, I use it for the taste.

If you want to see a normally placid French person go into a crazed frenzy, you don't need to watch their reaction to me mercilessly butcher their language.

One just needs to utter a single word—cheesecake.

I've never met a French person whose face didn't soften and melt at the mere utterance of the word, and le cheesecake is always spoken of with a reverence normally reserved for the finest cheeses and most exclusive wines.

Although can you find Philadelphia cream cheese here at various outlets in Paris, when you do find it, it's prohibitively expensive. If you were to make your own cheesecake using four packages of the stuff, it'd run you about €20, which is nearly $30. Holy mother of Bristol Palin!