danyoung

The Margherita pizza (£6) I had at Pizza East (56 Shoreditch High Street, London – Tel 020 7729 1888) was the best I’ve ever had in London. It was more distinctive, stylistically, than the pizzas at all but one of London’s more accomplished pizzerias, Story Deli. Rather than merely emulate the Neapolitans, Australian chef Bernie Plaisted has looked to pizzerias in Sydney, New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles for some crisp thinking. His pizza is crisp to the core, unlike its soft-centered counterparts in Naples, yet extremely light and delicately chewy. Evidence suggests that the charred, bubbly and blistered cornicione was inspired by the sourdough crust at Pizzeria Mozza in LA. The English difference entails dusting the dough with fine Maldon sea salt. It the pizza too salty? Maybe. Would I like them to use less salt? No. The Maldon almost becomes a flavour as much as a seasoning. I love it. The mozzarella is Mozzarella di Bufala Campana DOP – the best that GBP can buy. Pizza East drains the cheese, as it must, only not excessively so. The scattered patches of cheese do melt and ooze some as the pizza bakes in the wood-and-gas-fired oven, but the transformation from solid state towards a liquid one does not turn the whole disk into one milky mess.

No New York eating experience in recent memory has upset me as much as BLT Burger. It frightens me that such an abomination is possible in New York, with the initials of an accomplished chef all over it. (I'm surprised BLT is not embossed on the toilet paper, too, so proud is this man of his name and reputation.) I was hopeful, not fearful, the burger efforts of so accomplished a chef as Laurent Tourondel would produce either a great success or, at worst, an intriguing and even commendable failure. But this is neither. It's too pricey, too inauthentic and too pretentious in its calculation to qualify as a burger joint, yet the small burger, poor fries, hapless onion rings and desultory accessories fall far of anything resembling a serious burger experience. Moreover, the design and execution are entirely oblivious to the New York burger experience. Is it possible that Tourondel has never sampled a good or merely representative New York burger or golden, twice-fried, hand-cut frites? This shameful effort tarnishes two brands: "BLT" and "NYC" It is the damage to the latter that concerns me.

The grind for "Turkish," "Greek," or "Arabian" coffee should be much finer than it is for espresso. Whereas the fine grind required for espresso should be between 250 and 350 microns (100 millionths of a meter), the grind for Turkish-style boiling should be 100 microns -- thicker than flour but thinner than sugar. Because the ibrik or briki does not have a filtering device, its coffee grind must be powdery enough for the coffee to dissolve in the hot water yet just weighty enough to sink to the bottom of the cup and not be ingested by the drinker.

Prior to the 1970s, "Greek coffee" was known as "Turkish coffee." Furthermore, this brewing style originated in the Middle East (specifically Yemen and Egypt) and is employed throughout the Near and Middle East. The true Greek coffee, I would argue, is frappé, a sensationally frothy iced coffee that was invented in Greece in 1957 and has since become something of a national drink. I've co-written FRAPPE NATION, a new book about the frappé phenomenon. You can learn more about it at Frappe Nation - cool coffee culture But here I would hope to hear from those of you who know, love, or hate Greek-style frappé.

Zora's article is just terrific. You may notice that the falafel at Ali's place is green. That's because it is made with fava rather than chickpeas. Chickpeas, I've been told, were introduced as a substitute for fava in Middle Eastern countries were much of the population has a congenital intolerance for fava. Another distinguishing characteric is that the falafel is pan-fried rather than deep-fried. I can only assume (hope? pray?) that trans fat or palm oil is not used. Speaking of which, could you imagine the collective horreur if it were learned that L'As du Falafel in Paris used trans fats to fry theirs?