"You're a food critic? What's your favorite restaurant?" is typically followed by disappointment bordering on argumentativeness when you name well-known restaurants universally thought to be excellent. People are hoping that, despite New York City's off-the-charts saturation of food media, some secret restaurant nobody has heard of is going to be the best restaurant in New York, and they think less of you for not having that inside scoop.
"Do you know Frank Bruni?" No, I don't. "Oh."
And then there are the fingernails-on-the-chalkboard words spoken by so many hosts: "I hope you're going to give this dinner a good review!" It's unfortunate that, even though I'm just about the least picky dinner guest in the world, and even though I'm a food critic nobody has ever heard of who doesn't know Frank Bruni, my presence causes the host that sort of minor discomfort. I have various ways of reassuring people, depending on when they introduce the subject and how worried they really seem to be. But come on, folks, do you really think I'm going to go home after a dinner party and write a review? Of all the ungrateful, uncouth, uncultured things I could do, that would surely be the lowest. I could scarcely think of a situation where it would be socially acceptable to return somebody's hospitality by writing a critical review.
Until now.
A few weeks back I crossed paths with Alan Richman at a James Beard House event. Richman and I don't know each other all that well -- we've had a couple of dinners together and exchanged the occasional email -- but I'm quite fond of him not least because when I stand next to him I don't seem particularly grouchy or cranky by comparison. It's similar to the appreciation I feel when I go to Applebee's and no longer feel fat.
Richman was complaining -- no surprise there -- that nobody comes up from the city to visit him in Westchester, where he lives. So I said I'd come visit him. Initially he said he'd take me out for lunch, then somehow the invitation evolved into him cooking dinner at his house for me and a couple of other guests. I said fine, but I'm going to write about it.
As the date approached, Richman displayed increasing regret in his emails. However, unlike the pity I feel when a normal host says "I hope you're going to give this dinner a good review," I positively reveled in Richman's discomfort. I even decided to bring my camera.
What follows is my review of dinner at Alan Richman's House.
By the time you get any actual food at Alan Richman's House, you've already been through three ordeals. First, there's getting there. Access to Alan Richman's House is via a dirt road in the back country of Mamaroneck, New York. The road is so narrow and foreboding that I drove past it twice before coming to terms with the need to drive down it. Barely wide enough to accommodate my car and maintained by people who were fired from the Cross Bronx Expressway construction project for being too careless, the path proceeds under looming trees and terminates in a clearing. Second, there are issues with the greeting. When we arrived at Alan Richman's House, our host (Alan Richman) appeared in the doorway wearing a plaid bathrobe and flanked by two Welsh Corgis sounding the alert. It took about 45 minutes for Richman to hit his stride, a process that included showering, opening a bottle of wine, and preparing pigs in blankets. Third and finally, never have I dined at an establishment that so aggressively undersold itself (with one exception that we'll get to later). Most chefs try to prepare you for a culinary experience by building your anticipation. Not so Richman. For example, he repeatedly claimed "I know nothing about cooking!" in the manner of a German philosopher announcing "I know nothing of philosophy!"
Having lowered our expectations to Ron Paul-campaign levels, Richman proceeded to impress. We started out with three appetizer courses served in the kitchen. He began by making traditional pigs in blankets. As he made them, still wearing his plaid bathrobe and with his Welsh Corgis at his feet, he explained his two tactics for improving pigs in blankets: first, use very little dough cut into narrow strips (Richman prefers Pillsbury, from the refrigerator section of the supermarket); second, briefly poach and then drain the frankfurters before wrapping them in the dough (his position is that this removes the "package taste" from the meat). I can't say I've ever had better pigs in blankets. I've even had pigs in blankets at cocktail receptions at the Four Seasons restaurant, where they make them with fancy dough produced by a professional pastry kitchen, and they're no better than Richman's.
Next we had a tempura course, which was one of the more impressive Richman accomplishments of the evening. Having just returned from Japan, where he was working on a story for GQ, Richman has upped his tempura game to quite a high level. The first batch of tempura, introduced as "a little undercooked" was cooked exactly right -- beautifully crispy and crunchy but short of browning -- and was as good as most any restaurant tempura I've had and better than most. A subsequent batch, which Richman felt was not undercooked, was to my mind a bit overdone by tempura standards -- it strayed more into American-style fried-zucchini territory. Throughout, Richman was apologetic that he hadn't been able to procure a Japanese yam, but apparently Mamaroneck is not the garden spot of New York. He quipped, "Mamaroneck is an old Indian word for 'no vegetables grow here.'"
We then had a shockingly good salad, basically a variant of Caesar salad, with a dressing made from red-wine vinegar, mayonnaise and vegetable oil, topped with quite a bit of Parmigiano Reggiano. Advertised as "over-dressed," it was dressed just right. I had seconds, then finished someone else's. Richman has promised the exact salad-dressing formula, which I'll provide later. The salads were served at the little table at the end of the kitchen, where I set my plate among a pile of magazines, a Zagat survey and Alan Richman's wallet.
We then repaired to the elegant dining-room at Alan Richman's House for the main course, which involved three components. The centerpiece was braised beef, cooked in equal parts red wine and tomato puree. Richman prepared two different cuts: chuck and top sirloin, and served each of us some of both. Advertised as "undersalted," it was seasoned just right.
In addition he prepared two vegetable garnishes: potatoes and Brussels sprouts. Richman cooks potatoes with the rigor of a Shanghainese chef, in a three-step process that yields a tender, crispy, well-seasoned final product. He begins by boiling the potatoes for a few minutes, then sautees them and finally roasts them in the oven.
Richman got his Brussels sprouts recipe from Marc Vetri of Philadelphia (Richman hails from Philadelphia). It basically involves sauteeing the heck out of them.
That last photo shows the dish at the exact moment of readiness. Unfortunately, due to the chef's inattention -- prompted no doubt by the presence of two pretty girls -- the Brussels sprouts were forgotten on the heat and the finished batch tended towards burnt. Still, if you picked out the good ones, they were delicious. Here's a finished plate of beef, potatoes and Brussels sprouts as served at Alan Richman's House:
There was one more course to come, and this course had not been undersold. Several times over the course of the past few weeks, Richman had claimed that he makes great blintzes. Indeed, the whole evening was positioned as buildup to the blintzes: "We're going to have a bunch of things to eat and then we'll have the blintzes." Needless to say, by the time the blintz course was upon us, the anticipation was nearly unbearable.
Richman had made the crepe wrappers in advance and stuffed them with a mixture of farmer's cheese, pot cheese and cream cheese. Just prior to service he browned the blintzes in butter. The tension was glorious: a few drops of perspiration beaded up on Richman's forehead as he worried out loud that his blintzes might not live up to the hype. One of them opened when he turned it over, causing a human-canine panic in the kitchen. Richman seemed to care deeply what we thought of his blintzes. I thought to myself, "If these blintzes suck, even I'm going to feel bad." But I affirmed my commitment to write about it even if the blintzes were lousy.
I was both pleased and disappointed that the blintzes were so great. You'll never get blintzes this good in a restaurant because they're too fragile for commercial food-service. The paper-thin wrappers and fluffy cheese filling give the Richman blintzes the elegance of an haute-cuisine dish while still maintaining the rustic shtetl underpinnings that make blintzes so satisfying. A triumph.
After dinner we had a tour of Alan Richman's House. He lives alone with his dogs Sophie and Rudy -- he's recently divorced from Food & Wine magazine columnist Lettie Teague and has no children -- in a rambling three-story 1870s house that could accommodate three families with kids. He works in an office on the top floor, sleeps in a bedroom on the middle floor, and cooks in the kitchen on the ground floor. The rest of the house doesn't appear to get much use, so if you're looking to rent a few rooms you may want to contact the man.
Of course the best thing about dinner at Alan Richman's House is that you get to listen to Alan Richman talk for several hours. Richman is a wonderfully cranky, grouchy complainer in the tradition of the great American cranky, grouchy complainers from W.C. Fields to Lenny Bruce. He never lets up. He has no secrets and his forthrightness is disarming, charming and exhausting. You don't want to be on the wrong end of Richman's pen, but in person he radiates warmth and it becomes clear that the Groucho Marx act is the protective layer around a soft, almost vulnerable core. I plan to recover from dinner by 2009 and hope to be invited back.
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