Sneakeater

Well, there's that, but more like underthought, if that's at all communicative. Let me try this: obviously made with limited resources, without enough successful touches to overcome that.

Biesl Thomas (sp?), right across the street, is a very good Austrian restaurant. Not fancy like Wallse; more like Gutenbrunner's (sp?) new place in the Le Zinc space is described as being. Franny's, a few blocks up Flatbush, serves some of the best pizza in New York (not that I've eaten all the pizza in New York so as to qualify myself to make such a ridiculous statement). It's not a pizzeria but a sit-down restaurant, serving whole pies, great appetizers, and (for some reason I never see this mentioned) wonderful cocktails. Ici is a little bit of a walk (it's on DeKalb right before Vanderbilt), but the fancied-up bistro food is well worth it.

Why do I always hear things like this two weeks after I return home?

The cave of the mulattos? I'm SO there.

BTW, this is off-topic, theabroma, but next time you're in New York, be sure to have the stuffed pig's trotters at DB Bistro Moderne. (They've only recently been given regular status on the menu; they used to be a coveted catch-as-catch-can special.) They are seriously good (although, I must worn you, served in a tiny portion).

1. I don't know El Moro. What is it? 2. I sadly walked by the Flor de Lis at one of those rare times of the day that WASN'T A MEAL TIME. It was very frustrating, because it looked great. Next time, for sure.

5. Au Pied de Cochon. Is it stupid to go to a French bistro in Mexico City? Well, no, not if it's operated by a French bistro in Paris, France, and was convenient at the time, and is reputedly popular with actual people who actually live in Mexico City, and charges less than any similar place would in my home town. I mean, I go to Balthazaar and Pastis in New York all the time and nobody would say that that's stupid. (OK: they're brasseries.) Anyway, have you ever suffered "foreign cuisine burnout" on vacation? So there I was at Au Pied de Cochon. This is a strictly traditional place, so the only question is: were the familiar dishes done well? Why, yes. The vegetable terrine was fine. As for the main course, well, when a restaurant is in fact named after one of your very favorite dishes, there isn't going to be much room for decision in ordering, will there? It was all I could do to avoid vocalizing what kept running through my head out loud: gimme a pig foot and a . . . well, a glass of Argentine cabernet-malbec blend, if you must know. Excellent rendition (of the pied de cochon by them, not of the Bessie Smith by me). Dessert: duo of cold and hot lemon souffles. Not like I'm ever gonna make that for myself at home. As I said, there's nothing to say about a place like this, except whether or not it was good. Yes, it was. 6. Contramar. This hot spot on the cusp of Roma and La Condessa is reported to be everyone's favorite Mexico City seafood restaurant. It certainly was absolutely packed at lunch. Although it looks like a stupid trendoid watering hole, the food is actually quite good, in a middle-brow sort of way. Appetizer: scrambled eggs with tuna cured to resemble bacon in taste and texture. While it could have been merely clever, it actually tasted good. Main: shrimp in a tequila tomato sauce. No clever conceptualizing here. Just a delicious sauce on some OK shrimp. (Had the shrimp themselves been of better quality -- similar to the ones I had on the coast during the non-DF part of this trip -- my approval rating of this dish would have gone through the ceiling.) Complaint: a seafood restaurant really ought to have more white wines available by the glass than two or three chardonnays. I was forced to order a half bottle of rioja blanca (yeah, they put a gun to my head; it was ugly).

You know, the wine pairing they offered for the short ribs was a malbec. I have to say that it occurred to me that the two reds I enjoyed most over the last month or so -- the one at Compass, and one I pulled out of the closet to bring to Thanksgiving -- were Argentine malbecs. For whatever difference that makes.

I, too, ate there recently, in their new post-Bruni era. I'd like to emphasize your point that the prix fixe is a really good deal. Especially with the wine pairings (I think it's like $10 for two no-worse-than-decent glasses -- and they threw in a post-dessert sparkling wine, too). I, too, had the short ribs. While I liked them fine (as one of my friends said, how many times haven't you liked something braised?), I think they suffered in comparison to the brisket I recently had at Uovo, which was truly ambrosial (and Uovo's prix fixe is an even better deal than Compass's -- rising, in my view, from the level of "really good deal" to the level of the astonishing). The appetizer was some kind of really thick tubular pasta (thicker than buccatini even) with a duck sauce that, frankly, tasted a little bit odd to me. It must have been whatever tart fruit it had in it. This all sounds critical, but the fact is, this was a fine meal at a more-than-fair price. The only thing wrong with Compass's prix fixe is that it didn't include what to me were clearly the most enticing dishes on the menu (like the special venison appetizer I somehow forebore from ordering, or the halibut confit special main dish). But that's often the case. If a restaurant of this quality fails on the Upper West Side, it only shows that the Upper West Side doesn't want good restaurants.

I think the problem people are having here isn't so much with "marketing wine to women" as with "marketing wine" period. Have any of you ever really bought a bottle of wine because you saw an ad for it or liked the name or the label? That kind of marketing isn't directed at people like us.

Did I misspell it? It's a fruit. Up here in New York, I'm used to having it in milkshakes.

Thank you so much for all the information you're providing. I wish you were there with me when I was eating all this stuff. I couldn't agree with you more. A wine requirement seems so arbitrary. I don't know about this. Trying to taste it mentally, I would think that Bull's Blood would be even worse with Mexican food than the Ribera del Duero I had with this particular meal, because it's even more assertively rich. (I know Ribera isn't in Mexico, BTW.) If a red were going to work with this food, I would think it would have to be a thin, sharp red: in other words, the kind you normally avoid. Maybe something slightly sweet? But really, if you have to work that hard to find a pairing, why bother?

4. Aguila y Sol. Aguila y Sol was in some ways a corrective to Izote. I liked it very much. It may seem shallow to begin with this, but the first striking difference was in their respective physical plants. Izote looks like a storefront restaurant in a strip mall (which is what it is, although being on Av. Presidente Mazaryk in Polanca it's a very ritzy strip mall). Aguila y Sol looks like a place to dine, with a nice multi-leveled interior, a beautiful bar, and at least two attractive dining rooms. Maybe we shouldn't care about such things, but some of us do. But the real difference is in the food concept. Izote's menu is essentially a bunch of gussied-up versions of regional specialties, along with a few trendy international-style dishes (such as theabroma's Tina Turner foie gras appetizer). What Aguila y Sol appears to be attempting to do, in contrast, is to take characteristic Mexican ingredients and see what can be done with them. To use foreign cooking methods on local ingredients. And to subject foreign ingredients to local cooking methods. The goal seemed to be to expand Mexican cuisine by creating good and interesting new dishes, rather than by tarting up old ones. Well, there was another, probably more important difference. The level of excution at Aguila y Sol seemed miles ahead to me of the level of execution at Izote. I get the feeling from reading here that Izote is inconsistent. The night I was there, the food seemed indifferently attended to, almost like chain food. At Aguila y Sol, each dish seemed to be cooked and assembled with great care. My appetizer was a vegetable tart featuring an unfamilar green vegetable whose name began with "h", with a chile sauce and a lot of gunky cheese (parmesan with some goat for that all-important gunk factor). (I love gunky cheese, and any cuisine that will give it to me.) Here, the primary interest was in the unfamiliar green vegetable -- but the point is how well it was set off. My main was a fillet of beef. What's good about fillet of beef, of course, is that when properly prepared it's meltingly tender and has great mouth feel. And what's bad about it, of course, is that it doesn't have a whole heck of lot of flavor. No problem here. They topped the fillet (excellently prepared, as I'd come to expect by that point) with not one but two sauces: a chile sauce in which it apparently was cooked, and a cheese sauce ladelled on at the table. There was a real depth of flavor here. And on the side, more gunky cheese! This time a sort of gratin, although of what I can't tell you. (I should note here that there were a lot of ingredients and things I'm leaving out, both because I've forgotten about them in the weeks since this meal and because I don't have enough Spanish, or sufficient familiarity with Mexican cooking, to have known what they were in the first place.) I found desserts throughout Mexico City to be pretty unmemorable, so I was surprised here both at how hard it was to choose from the dessert menu at Aguila y Sol, and at how good my choice turned out to be. It was a mamey creme brulee accompanied by a carnation petal jelly (sometimes I was shocked at how far my halting Spanish took me). A total success. One thing that this meal drove home is that Mexican Nueva Cucina DOES NOT GO WITH WINE. Or, to be more accurate, it doesn't go with red wine. It's too rich and spicy. A good sharp white can cut the cream and fat in a creamy fatty fish dish. But the meat dishes (unlike, say, some Indian meat dishes) aren't the type that you can drink a white with (even a heavy one), and reds just don't taste good with this kind of food. I note this here because, if there's any Mexican restaurant whose food seems to call out for wine, it's this one. But it just didn't work. I know there are interesting reds coming out of Baja California. But I'm going to give up trying to pair them with Mexican food.

I don't think the issue is whether the article should have been written, but rather whether it should have been written by the paper's principal reviewer.

I never thought to notice this, but in the Arts Section of the Times, do they ever let the same writer write the preview and the review of the same event? To be sure, sometimes events that have gotten favorable before-the-fact build-up pieces get unfavorable after-the-fact reviews, but it would still look strange if they came from the same pen. If the Times doesn't let the same writer write both pieces in the Arts Section -- and I strongly suspect they don't -- it makes this practice in the Food Section seem doubly questionable.

No El Cardenal, I'm afraid. (Next time: thanks.) But as for Tezka, there was NO WAY I was going to be in a North American city with a restaurant affiliated with Juan Mari Arzak and not eat there.

This is one restaurant that I just don't get. The wine list is fabulous, of course, but I found the food pretentious and underpowered. (Oh, and don't forget overpriced.) It's rare that I just completely miss the appeal of someplace so many tasteful people like.

Thanks. For better or worse, you will (when I'm more awake). Several restaurants to go.

3. Izote. Add me to the list of people who find this restaurant vaguely disappointing. I didn't notice if Patricia Quintana (maybe more an approximation than her actual name) was there or not the night I was there, but I'm of the school that holds that it shouldn't be determinative. Anyway, I think that part of my problem with this restaurant was a problem I have with Mexican Nueva Cocina -- and I'm not sure I'm being fair about that. My appetizer was shredded venison (maybe tartare) with seville oranges and pickled onions. The menu didn't say as much, but it was clearly based on the Yucatecan pork dish pibil. It was good, although I (suffering at the time from altitude sickness and a large late lunch before this medium-late supper) I found it almost too strongly flavored. My main was shrimp in hibiscus mole, along with a corncake stuffed with a different but similar mole -- obviously, a Oaxacan or Pueblen derivation. It was pretty good. I think my problem with this food is that it seemed a bit deracinated to me. It was clear from a review of the menu that the cuisine borrowed from, and elaborated on, the cooking of regions all over Mexico. But the thing is, as I understand it, that there isn't really a "Mexican" cuisine any more than there's an "Italian" cuisine or a "Chinese" cuisine. There are the cuisines of a bunch of different regions, which happen to find themselves in the same nation. The kind of intra-national fusion practiced at Izote, it seems to me, risks taking the food away from its roots and miring it in pretension. (Note, for example, that Arzak's food is recognizably Basque, and not some kind of pan-Spanish fusion.) To be more specific, contrast a place like Izote with El Naranjo in Oaxaca. El Naranjo is a development of a specific regional cuisine, cooked with great care and using better ingredients than one tends to find in purely local places. To me, El Naranjo, rooted in a specific cuisine, is more satisfying than the relatively untethered cooking at Izote. Having said all that, though, I have to wonder how much of my response is a function of a sort of culinary tourism. As a traveler, I want to experience "real" "native" cuisine. But in a big cosmopolitan city like Mexico City, maybe this intra-national fusion stuff is "real" "native" cuisine. I mean, I never complained when Ann Rosensweig made a similar use of various kinds of vernacular American cooking at Arcadia in Manhattan. To the contrary, at the time, that was about my favorite restaurant. (Or, to be fairer to myself, maybe it's that I can appreciate the creativity in a cuisine I know well, but resent it in a cuisine I want to learn about.) I felt a bit better about some of the theoretical issues raised above when I ate at Aguila y Sol and found that I liked it better than Izote (although again not unreservedly). But that's a later post.

Oops. Sorry about that. At least now I know where I'd heard Centrico dismissed (or more like potentially dismissed) as a margarita mill.

I was surprised at how good Centrico was. Centrico is Aaron Sanchez's new restaurant in the old Layla space at Franklin and West Broadway in Tribeca. It's owned by Drew Nieporent. The concept is Mexican nuevo cucina. I'd heard this restaurant dismissed as a margerita mill, but it didn't seem that way to me at all. This is a real food place (although to me the margeritas were about the best in the City). So as for the food. I recently visited Mexico City, and based on eating around there, I'm somewhat suspicious of Nueva Cucina as a concept. There, it struck me as a bit too deracinated. Maybe it's because here in New York my expectations for Mexican food are lower, but while I'm not claiming that Centrico is as good a restaurant as Aguila y Sol, I was unreservedly impressed with the food here. If there's a signature dish here, it's proably the appetiser of fried frog's legs with cilantro on top of succotash with gunky cheese. The idea is supposed to be that frog's legs aren't an ingredient typically used in Mexican cooking -- but the cilantro and the succotash with gunky cheese are. Whatever. It's just very good. I'm sure the same thing goes for the fried sweetbreads with bacon, also very good. Now let me talk about my main dish. It was a pibil that was better than any I've had in the Yucatan. And the reason it was better is that the quality of the pork was far better than that used at any restaurant at which I've had this dish in Mexico. (To be fair, I didn't order it any of the fancy "nuevo" restaurants in Mexico City.) So let's forget authenticity (whatever that is) for a minute and remember that raw materials really count. As for New York comparisons, I'd say that Centrico has its own niche among the "fancy" Mexican restaurants in New York. The food is more determinately "creative" than at Maya, Rosa Mexicana, Alma, or Sanchez's mom's place. (And, unlike Maya and Rosa Mexicana, Centrico isn't tired.) "Creative" doesn't necessarily mean better, but the food here is sufficiently well thought out and well executed to make it work. Also, the margeritas are really good. Not one of the best restaurants around, or one of my top favorites. But definitely worth a return visit.

I recently returned from Mexico City. I ate a lot. Since I didn't take any notes, this round-up will be more impressionistic and less detailed than would perhaps be optimal. I'll list places in the order I ate in them. 1. Hacienda de los Morales. This is the kind of place that always gets dissed by people like us. You walk onto their property, and there are signposts pointing your way to the various different banquet rooms. My seat in the dining room looked out a window at a huge wedding party in an outdoor area. The table next to me was occupied by a sweatsuited, obviously culinarily inexperienced, couple from some American suburb. But I think it would be wrong to dismiss this place. When I saw the breadth of the tequila selection at the bar, and -- more important -- tasted the delicious and well-made sangrita that accompanied my shot of Riserva de la Familia (who knew that Cuervo made a good tequila, BTW?), I began to get the feeling that maybe someone at Hacienda de los Morales cared about quality. When I had my first taste of the cold walnut soup, I was convinced. This isn't earthshakingly innovative cuisine, but it is very well executed. It can't be easy to make something so light and yet simultaneously so hearty. Similarly as to the barbacoa. It couldn't have been better prepared, and I've never had this dish with such good raw materials. It makes a big difference to use top grade meat. And it also makes a big difference to use mutton rather than lamb. Searching for an analog, although it looks like it could be Tavern on the Green or One If By Land, Two If By Sea (all my analogies will come from New York City), maybe Hacienda de los Morales could more accurately be compared to the old Coach House. It's been there forever, it's almost offensive in the old school fanciness of its cuisine and presentation, and its menu probably hasn't changed in decades. On the other hand, it still seems serious about its food, and it's hard to imagine that anybody's making this kind of food much better. 2. Chon. I think I can state categorically that I will never visit Mexico City without eating at this well-known restaurant. An unprepossessing place in an unprepossessing neighborhood, it specializes in pre-Hispanic cuisine. It's one of those places where the whole menu is so interesting that you find it hard to choose. And everything I had was a winner. Having already had fried grasshoppers and maguey worms in my life, I opted to start with the red ant eggs (escamoles). They were sauteed in butter with mushrooms and served with a green sauce and a bunch of tortillas in which to roll them. Fooled by a false analogy to fish eggs, I expected them to be salty. They weren't. If anything, the main flavor was the butter they were sauteed in, with a slight overtone that I can't describe because it wasn't like anything else I've had. The texture was soft but not gummy or mushy. Like any dish that tastes mainly of butter, it was absolutely delicious. For my main course, I chose the venison in green pipian, mainly because I'd never had mexican venison before (a lack to be corrected in spades before this trip was over) and because I find it hard not to order venison during its season no matter where I am. This dish was very good, but mainly because of the tangy, ever-so-slightly-sour pipian that covered it. As for the venison itself, well, that's the problem with inexpensive restaurants like this one: the meat usually isn't very good. (I've often thought that if that if some investor would go in and make it possible for that Pueblan/Oaxacan restaurant on 10th Ave. near 46th St. in Manhattan -- the one whose name is "[Word beginning with a 'T'] del Valle" -- to serve quality meats to go with their fabulous moles, it would be one of the best restaurants in Manhattan, instead of just being one of the best values.) Of course, I suppose it's possible that these are poverty cuisines that developed all these great sauces to compensate for the low quality of the available meat. Anyway, I can't wait to return to Chon. (more restaurants later)

I'd never heard of this product before, but oddly enough I've often referred to it. Every time I order a martini, I feel constrained to add: "'Martini' means a drink made with gin -- I don't want no effen vodka."

I've lived in Brooklyn for almost 25 years now, and pizza has been my single favorite food for as long as I can remember. But until recently I was never able to make it over to DiFara. Well, that's not quite right. I made it over a couple of times, but for one reason or another they were never times when I could handle the wait. Until, as I said, a few months ago. It was at a time when I needed a good slice. My wife had just died. Young. Not Ali-McGraw-in-Love Story young, but you-shouldn't-die-when-you're-middle-aged young. The funeral home through which I was arranging her cremation was on Flatbush Avenue, a reasonable walk from DiFara. I figured I could walk over and have a couple of slices after completing the arrangements. As with so many things having to do with this experience, I underestimated how hard it would be. Under New York law, you have to identify the body before it can be sent for cremation. I'd seen her right after she died, but this was different. She was ice cold. Like a corpse. I kissed her forehead and it felt like my spirit was being sucked out of my body. I sleepwalked over to DiFara. Never having tried their pizza, I figured I should order common things so I'd have an easy basis for comparison. I had a plain slice and a sausage slice. Now obviously I was in extremis. But this was like the ur-pizza of my dreams. I understand that Mr. DeMarco has made certain choices -- thin crust, emphasis on toppings -- but these are exactly my preferences. To fasten on one detail, the oil in the sauce sort of irrigated the crust -- an effect I like very much in pizza -- but this time it was done with great olive oil. The sauce itself was beyond praise, as was the cheese, and the cheese ratio. Everything. I sat there eating this wonderful pizza and was transported back to childhood, back to high school. I remembered why I loved this dish so much. This was like all the pizza I've ever really liked, but better. Just the way I would want it. I felt my spirit coming back. I don't want to devalue this superlative cooking by making it seem like cheap pop music, good not in itself but because it makes you remember happy times. But responses are complex. You don't only relate to things in the abstract, but also emotionally. And sometimes, obviously, more emotionally than other times. Those two slices I had at DiFara that day were not only the best pizza I've ever had, but were also an intense and restorative experience. All in all, a good deal for a few dollars.