weinoo

I have friends with propane grills who, after I showed them the method, use it all the time. Everyone loves it.

Right, There is a pretty damn tasty, and I shudder to say this, Alton Brown "method"/recipe that I've doctored a bit and used with great success. Potato salad, cole slaw, baked beans, corn on the cob - or off the cob and browned in butter, chips, salsa, guac, etc. Beer. Sangria.

Did anyone see Bourdain's No Reservations show where he visited Naples? It seems as if it was often the practice to leave the very outer crust..and of course, most Neapolitans were eating the pizza with a knife and fork.

You gotta get to Economy Candy...click it.

That was sympathy .

Makes perfect sense and it also makes perfect sense to give more explicit instructions to the person who goes over to get the knish while one is waiting to order his/her pastrami sandwich!

Yes, they are still good. But everything has gone downhill in the last ten years, hasn't it?

So I found out that IF & L stands for Interstate Food & Liquor...who knew? Of course, Shecky's review claims that a pickle back shot is made with whiskey and pickle juice, whereas I thought it was a shot of whiskey followed by a shot of pickle juice.

Lower Orchard (and I define lower Orchard as being anything below Delancey St.) has a few new places that have just opened. They should be added to what's already there; for instance, on the block between Grand and Broome, we've got, in no particular order: Little Giant - #85 88 Orchard - #88 Casa Mezcal - 86 An Choi - #85 Some Thai joint Roasting Plant Coffee - #81 Cafe Katja - #79 Spur Tree lounge - #76 A place that sells clothes and is also a bar. Then, skipping a block to the block between Hester and Canal, we've got... Fat Radish - #17 Sweet Paradise Lounge - #14 MY recommendations from the above continue to be Cafe Katja and The Fat Radish, with Austrian/Germanic Katja still offering some of the best value food around. Fat Radish is a little more of a scene and more expensive, but I do love their burger served with what they call duck fat fries, and some of the more adventurous, farmer's market driven items are well executed. Now, add a few more places to the above, both of which I stopped into at different times yesterday. IF&L 74 now occupies the space that was a South-African restaurant called Bunny Chow, and I don't know that I've heard 2 weirder restaurant names following one another in the same space. The "pre-opening" menu leans towards burgers, sandwiches, mac and cheese, wings, etc., and the drinks menu has the I guess by-now obligatory pickle-back shot, PBRs, bacon-infused vodka blood Mary's and a few other drinks that will never cross my lips, but that's just me. My burger last night (yes, La Freida) was quite good, if slightly over-cooked for medium-rare. I liked the brioche bun, which held up nicely, and the couple of slices of tomato actually had some flavor. Bacon was good too. At $11 for a bacon-cheeseburger ($2 extra for fries, which I didn't order), a reasonably priced burger for the 'hood is always nice. Our shared order of chicken wings was fine too, so I'm looking forward to going back and trying a few of the other offerings on the menu. I did ask the owner how the "real" menu will differ from the "pre-opening" menu and he mentioned that they will remove the words "pre-opening" from the menu. They are open now but they will really open on September 7th. At #45 Orchard, which is on the block between Grand and Hester, The Lost Weekend has opened. They're pouring, dripping, pulling and selling Blue Bottle coffee and my espresso yesterday afternoon was well made, though it gets my goat to pay $2.75 for an espresso. The've also got some Mast Brothers chocolate cookies and bars (yawn) and like a few other places on Orchard St., they seem to sell some clothing as well. It might be a bit of a gallery too - I really can't figure it all out, but now that I can score some Blue Bottle in the 'hood, along with Counter Culture, Stumptown and Grumpy, it makes my jittery self happy.

Funny, that's exactly what I said to my wife. And it's doubly sad about the knishes, since Yonah Schimmel's is right down the block. A state of affairs I've often wondered about too. How do you have lousy doughy bland knishes when the temple of all Knishness is a stone's throw away?? Never made sense to me. You could send a busboy every morning to pick up the order or have it walked over and hand delivered. What's up with that?? Very interesting, right. It certainly looks like Katz's uses a "commercial" type of knish, the ones you see on pretzel/hot dog/knish carts all over the city, probably from a company like Gabila's. They can be good, but they really have to be prepared properly, and I don't know if sitting on a warm griddle all day is the best way to do that. I would venture a guess that economics enters into it. Of course, maybe there's an age-old feud at the bottom of it all .

It's going to be interesting to see how the torrential rains affect the crops and their availability at the greenmarket from this point forward. I would imagine there are lots of flooded fields in upstate NY, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and New Jersey - some of the main sources of vegetables and fruits. It might be a lean year too for the autumn and winter squashes, grapes, etc.

I just had a Saturday lunch last week at Adrienne's Pizzabar on Stone Street. Decent pizza, especially the old-fashioned pie, the sides are acceptable, the mark-up on some of the wines is unconscionable...and they take reservations! It's also on one of the coolest, oldest streets in Manhattan. Quite a zoo after office-hours,too.

Funny, that's exactly what I said to my wife. And it's doubly sad about the knishes, since Yonah Schimmel's is right down the block.

Tonight roasting stuff. Roasted quail with roasted vegetables... Roasted peaches with walnuts and smoked ricotta...

And what else would you put on pastrami?

Unless, of course, it's a pastrami sandwich. The nuance and balance comes from the mustard and pickle. And the CelRay ... .

Looks like we have the same taste . Gotta ask - did you eat the WHOLE sandwich?

Full-sour, pickled green tomato indeed! That's the hand sliced pastrami - but it's so tender, it doesn't matter.

After a pseudo-cane, what could be better? And today's pastrami was a thing of beauty.

That's excellent, Ed. Sorry to hear that the weekend plans went awry.

Pomp and Sustenance, by Mary Taylor Simeti, is about the history of Sicilian Food over 25 centuries.

I definitely thought of Otto except for the business dinner part; when was the last conversation you had at Otto?!

I've been asked by a friend what my choice would be for the best place to go for pizza, but it has to take reservations because it will probably be a business dinner. And it must have a wine list, too. My first thought was, well...I didn't really have a first thought. Any help?

I guess this is all part of the reason why a decent slice (and there are only a few) of pizza here in NYC can approach $5, and a good, whole pie is easily $20 or more.

That's exactly it, MaxH. No one is paying anyone or soliciting anyone to write reviews here on eG like they are on sites like Yelp. While you might get a review that's considered bad advice here, it is still posted by a well-meaning society member who hasn't been paid or comped, or has made those facts known. Shills are usually quickly ferreted out.