Sriracha

It gets an article at the NYT today. It's good reading. Here's a list of facts not entirely within the article.

• The sauce operation shares my birth-month.


• I like it on macaroni and cheese.


• Yuka, which I'm surprised I haven't mentioned here yet, uses it extensively: Like many sushi places, their spicy sauce is a blend of sriracha and Japanese (probably Kewpie) mayo, but unlike most their spicy tuna omits the mayo and is just tuna mixed with sriracha, giving a more intense heat and much better texture than the gloppy spicy tuna most places serve.


• Their coarser chili-garlic sauce is also very good, I use it when cooking and the sriracha at the table.

Brunch at Fairway Cafe

I've been looking for an opportunity to check out brunch at Fairway Cafe for a while now because the last time I had dinner there - I must admit, months ago - I was very impressed with their tasty, affordable food and free flowing, delicious focaccia and savory spreads. So when Emily and I met up early at the Whitney on Sunday and then wanted to work our way back to the West Side to do some grocery shopping and grab a bite, I suggested we check out the restaurant on the second floor of the market at 74th and Broadway.

The trip started out well. Although the place was packed, we only waited about three minutes for a table and even snagged one right next to a big, sunny window overlooking the street. There were flowers on all the tables and even though the place is big and crowded (not to mention above a popular grocery store) the background noise didn’t interrupt us much at all.

Our waiter appeared quickly to take our orders and discouraged me from ordering the Corned Beef Hash since it takes 20 minutes. Instead, I ordered scrambled egg whites with chorizo, roasted tomatoes, and chipotle. Emily went for a burger, medium rare, with grilled onions and a side salad. Dreaming of the warm, chewy bread from my last visit, I also asked for bread and we each requested water.

Twenty minutes later there was neither bread nor water, despite the waiter's occasional promises that they were "on the way!" When the bread finally did arrive, it was brioche and seven grain toast, one slice of each. It’s certainly wasn’t bad but it wasn’t the focaccia I’d come looking for. Water came in plastic cups.

Continued...

After another ten minutes our food arrived. Emily had no complaints about her burger, she liked it quite a lot, but my eggs came sitting in a pool of yellowy liquid which seeped into my (second) piece of brioche. The chorizo was abundant and delightfully chewy, the eggs pretty fluffy considering they lacked yokes, and the tomatoes were sweet. You’d think it would have been a successful dish but there was something about the lack of heat from the chipotle (if someone told me they were bell peppers I would have believed them) that left the scramble tasting incomplete. There was no unifying flavor. I wish I'd gone for the corned beef hash. When the waiter said it took twenty minutes, I didn't realize that he meant ONLY twenty minutes.

The one thing to arrive promptly was the check. And imagine my surprise when they charged us $1.50 for the toast and another $1 for the egg whites. I'm used to paying extra for egg whites but they should have at least mentioned it on the menu, not to mention warned me about the bread surcharge! If I'd known what to expect from it, I'd have thought twice.

Rather than waste more time, we paid the bill and left, passing up some yummy looking desserts on our way out because by this point it had already been close to an hour and a half.

Moral of the story, the best ingredients on earth can't compensate for the worst service.

Baoguette

It seems I might be a bit behind, as their website indicates they've already won a couple of awards, but last night I chanced upon (literally, I was hoping to hit Gem Spa for my after-show snack, but see previous post) Baoguette's St. Marks Place (East Village) location. I'm not a banh mi authority, but I've certainly had my share and I'm quite fond of them. I can honestly say that theirs is tops.

While I may try some of the other fillings in the future, last night I had their version of the basic banh mi: pork, pork pate, minced pork, and pickled carrots and cucumbers. It stood above the other banh mi I've had in the city in nearly every way. Hot ingredients were hot, cold ingredients were cold; the baguette was fresh-baked (around 12:30am. I asked, and they bake small batches throughout the day), and one I would have been happy getting had I just gone to a bakery for a baguette; the pork was very good, all three kinds; and they offered a sliding scale of spice, going "none"->"sriracha only"->"sriracha and jalapenos"->"sriracha and thai chiles". Definitely a very good sandwich.

I also tried a small sample of their soft serve ice cream, which comes in interesting flavors. They were out of Durian, so I tried Pandan, which had a very interesting, subtle taste.

Also on the menu is some good-smelling pho, some good looking stewed beef belly, and bun (noodle) dishes endorsed by other patrons.

Gem Spa PSA

Quick bit of info -- Gem Spa is currently without a freezer (they plan to replace it, but no ETA), so currently neither shakes nor ice cream are available, and egg creams are not being made with superchilled milk.

Hopefully, it won't be long.

General Greene Ice Cream

After reading in Grub Street today that, "General Greene is following in the footsteps of Jacques Torres and opening an ice-cream cart… Five flavors will be on offer at any one time, rotating throughout the summer (‘Additional flavors will be added as we come up with them!’). There may be a test run as early as this weekend —look for scoops of burnt-honey vanilla, pistachio mocha chip, pretzel salted caramel and chocolate banana with peanuts," I just so happened to be in the neighborhood and sampled some. $3 bought me two scoops in either a cup or a cone. In an attempt to compare them with two well-loved Haagen Dazs flavors in my house, I went for one scoop of pretzel salted caramel and another of burnt-honey vanilla in a cup.

The pretzel salted caramel was a little too heavy on the salt and a little too light on the caramel and I wish the pretzels had been crunchier. Between it and Fleur de Sel Caramel, Haagaen Daz wins hands down. I mean their version has chocolate! I don't think I'd get this General Greene flavor again.

The burnt-honey vanilla, on the other hand, was a dream! Rich honey flavor, but not too sweet. There was a subtle distinction between the honey bites and the vanilla bites, unlike in Haagen Dazs' Vanilla Honey Bee, which all tastes like honey and vanilla and is a little too sweet for my liking. Aside from the General's lightly powdery texture (Emily liked it, thought it tasted homemade), I call it the winner.

So we're at a draw.

I guess I'll have to go back (if I'm in the neighborhood, not worth going out of my way) to try the other flavors. Matcha pistachio was on the menu tonight and Haagen Dazs makes a mean Pistachio and Green Tea!

Don't Believe the Hype Vol.1

I really don't understand why so many people are all jazzed up about Artichoke. You can barely find a food blog these days without some mention of the place, citing either how delicious and unique it is or, conversely, comparing it to the scores of imitation shops popping up across the city. Well let me be the first to tell you, Artichoke is a huge disappointment. After dragging my friends to wait in line for twenty minutes late on a Saturday night, I was expecting a slice like I'd never tasted. Instead, I was left with a heavy weight in my stomach and the realization that either we'd come on an off-night or that most food writers value kitsch over taste.

For those of you who haven't been, Artichoke is a pizza place on East 14th Street between 1st and 2nd. They serve pizza, stuffed artichokes, and beer. Don't ask for water, they won't give it to you. Don't expect to sit, there are no seats. And don't go expecting fast food. It took us twenty minutes to order and another ten to wait for our food.

After a quick walk to Union Square so that we could sit and eat, the crust on both varieties of pizza (Margarita and artichoke, we passed up crab) were tough and doughy, not to mention tasteless. The toppings, however, were plenty tasty. If you consider salt a taste. Or grease. The slices were both so heavy that none of us could finish them, not a good sign in this crowd.

Next time you're on 14th Street looking for a bite, avoid Artichoke. You'll have better luck at Chickpea - shorter lines and the advantage of not leaving feeling like you've just eaten a six pack of Play-Doh.

Bayan Cafe

I haven't had professional Filipino (Philipino? I'm not sure what the distinction is) in about a decade, and I'm sad I waited so long. Bayan Cafe (212 E45th) is very good. Pork dishes stand out, but the chicken adobo is very good too, and the eggplant omelet is only marred by the inclusion of my personal bete noire, frozen peas and carrot-cubes. Lumpia are almost as good as homemade, if slightly burnt. The only dish I regret is the milkfish.

The restaurant is small, but has a spacious outdoor patio, which meshes incredibly with the food (I've felt Filipino food has a "summery" quality -- the halo halo which just arrived only reinforces that).

I hear it's also good for breakfast.

What's in a name?

A lot, it turns out, or at least that's my opinion of Shake Shack.

Everyone talks about their burgers; they seem to have become the NYC standard for burgers; all season long, Madison Square Park is mobbed with lunchers. Surprisingly, I'd never actually had a Shake Shack burger until yesterday, when I found myself around there on errands. So I had a burger (and fries, and a malt).

It was a very good, perhaps great, burger, but I don't understand the cultlike devotion. Joy is better, Blue9 is better, even some of the remaining outposts of Soup Burg (whatever they call themselves now) have served me better burgers. The meat, I could tell, was definitely something special, and there was good char, but it just didn't come together as a spectacular burger. It was, in an inversion of my comments on Joy, juicy but not moist, the bun was overly dense, and while the lettuce was nice, the tomato was just unappealing.

On the other hand, the fries were quite good, and the shake was phenomenal. I like frozen custard, they actually had malt, they found the proper consistency point between the overly-thinned shakes one often gets and the barely-loosened cups of ice cream one sometimes gets, and it was just a well made shake.

So yes, if that's where you are, I would certainly suggest getting a burger at Shake Shack (if the line isn't currently visible from space), but I wouldn't suggest traveling for their burger.

I might, however, suggest traveling for their shakes.