Stone

Coincedently, I ate at Rosa Mexicano last night. It was very good, but pricey. We started with guacamole for four. Made tableside in a molcajete. Good guac, but nothing out of the ordinary for good guac. Pricey -- $7 per person, and not very large. Mahi mahi ceviche was a bit of a disappointment. Not much fish, heavy on tomator and avocado. It say in a very tomato-y broth. Lump crab ceviche was very good. As for entrees, this is, of course, not a place for the burrito/enchilada/taco combo. I had Pescadoro Veracruzado (something like that). Delicious filets of white fish, pan fried and smothered with a tomato/olive/caper sauce. The sauce was a bit strong for my, but the fish was excellent. Others got the lump crab enchilada. Heavy, but terrific. The sauces, variations of bechamel, I think, were tasty but didn't overpower the crab meat. The other enchilada offering was chicken with mole. It was ordered, but without the mole. People like it. The grilled shrimp skewers with rice was good, but nothing special.

I called Citarella -- they have a service do their knives. It's kind of shocking that it's so hard to find a knive sharpener in Manhattan. Of course, I had the same problem when I needed to have my hat blocked and my riding crop re-leathered.

One more thing that really annoyed me. When the waiter was picking up the empty appetizer plates, a shrimp tail fell off and onto the center of the table. He continued to pick up the rest of the plates, but left the shrimp tail, sitting dead center. He even rearranged our forks and chopsticks but left the shrimp tail. Sitting. Dead center. On the table. Another waiter came by to fill up the water glasses. He, too, left the shrimp tail. In fact, I think the shrimp tail was sitting, dead center, on the table when we left. Just odd. (Now someone's going to tell me that Nam puts little realistic ceramic shrimp tails on their table.) Oh yea -- Dessert. Coconut pyramid with green tea tapioca. That was really good. A firm coconut custard pyramid. Cool and mild green tea tapioca.

Your brother is right. But SD is certainly good food. So was Nam, just nothing special. There were three of us.

Well, the usual critique of many a trendy Asian restaurant is, "it was good, but you can easily get better for a lot less." Ditto with Nam. Nam is a newish (?) Vietnamese restaurant on Reade Street in Tribeca. I nice space, with light walls and quite nifty lighting fixutes that are like back-lit drum with black and white pictures of apparently Colonial-era Vietnamese on the "skins." The menu was fairly standard for a vietnamese place, although many dishes had little twists to try to create something exceptional. It didn't. For apps we had shrimp summer rolls, green papaya salad, and a chopped monkfish app. The summer rolls were summer rolls. Light, fresh, and enjoyable. But guess what? You can get them almost anywhere else cheaper. (At least at Slanted Door in SF they add some interesting mushrooms and veggies to their over-priced summer rolls.) The green papaya salad was also crisp and fresh, in a tangy lime/cilantro dressing. Guess what? You guessed it. The monkfish was the only dish of the evening that really stood out. It looked and tasted much like the chicken side of chicken in lettuce bowls. Roughly chopped bits of monkfish, stir-fried with chopped peanuts lightly dressed in a brown sauce. The texture and flavor of the monkfish was very good. For entree we had crispy red snapper with red chilli, roast chicken and beef with string beans in curry. The snapper was quite a disappointment. I expected a whole fish, fried, topped with a red curry/chili sauce. What we got was a decent sized filet, lightly fried, sitting on a pool of sweet, orange "duck sauce." The fish was moist and tender, but the sauce was way too sweet for an entree. The beef was pretty good. Tender chunks of sirloin in a basic Vietnames curry with string beans, sweet potato and onion. Other than the quality of the beef, nothing exciting about the flavor. (Again, Slanted Door in SF sets its shaken beef apart by using filet.) The roast chicken was a good roast chicken. So the meal, with a bottle of wine and a few beers, came to $160 with tip. Not worth it.

Did somebody mention the appletini? If not, the appletini.

I thought the soup dumplings at GS 2nd Ave were pretty good.

Homeless shelter comes to mind.

Oy.

Go to the Melkors's. They're o.k. people and they'll make you a big dinner.

Toasted barley, hops, yeast. Mix well with water. Let sit.

Well, I get a half-dozen at least.

Mmmmmm, doughnuts. Mmmmmmm, bbq.

Just wait 'til you come over for Q. Then you'll be outside Max's with a picket sign.

Bullet? You'll get the hang of it quickly. Just keep smoking. Or, if you've got an extra couple a hundred buck lying around, get a BBQ Guru. And check out the Virtual Bullet website. It's got tons of info.

It's not traditional, but I'm proud to say that my parents have asked me to smoke briskets and chicken for the holidays. Wait. Come to think of it, I don't recall any mention of them paying for the meat. Those bastards.

Mr. Roboto's Pressed Cheese Place?

It wasn't very smokey, but I didn't use much would. Just a small handfull of chips. The steak definitely picked up a sweet, tangy flavor. I assume from the chips, perhaps just from the smoker, which has definitely developed it's own nose. Am I supposed to wash this thing?

What kind of smoker are you using?

Where?

I think it took an hour in the smoker, but I wasn't paying attention. I was lucky to find prime ribeye for about $10/lb. I smoked a brisket and two chickens the next night. How did your smoke turn out?

Thanks to Shawn at the Virtual Bullet for the idea. I started with a 3" prime ribeye. Charred it on the chimney. Put it on my Weber Bullet, with a brick of frozen Plugra on top: Smoked it at 200* to 220* with a little hickory until a center temp of 140*. Foiled it and rested for five minutes: Sliced it up: And plated it with some sauteed kale: Perhaps the most tender ribeye I've had. If you've got filet eaters in your household, try this. It was like butter. Like a prime rib. (I guess it is a prime rib.) Next time I'll skip the hickory, it added an unnecessary sweetness. And I wont rest it in tight foil, which seemed to bring it to medium instead of medium rare. A damn fine piece of meat. (Sorry, the photos aren't in imageGullet yet. I'll move them when I have some time.)

Varmint, you gotta try this: Thanks to Shawn at the Virtual Bullet for the idea. I started with a 3" prime ribeye. Charred it on the chimney. Put it on my Weber Bullet, with a brick of frozen Plugra on top: Smoked it at 200* to 220* with a little hickory until a center temp of 140*. Foiled it and rested for five minutes: Sliced it up: And plated it with some sauteed kale: Perhaps the most tender ribeye I've had. If you've got filet eaters in your household, try this. It was like butter. Like a prime rib. (I guess it is a prime rib.) Next time I'll skip the hickory, it added an unnecessary sweetness. And I wont rest it in tight foil, which seemed to bring it to medium instead of medium rare. A damn fine piece of meat. (Sorry, the photos aren't in imageGullet yet. I'll move them when I have some time.)

Max's is the place for bbq in Hudson Valley. It was won the Hudson Valley best bbq award for like a million years. It's packed. It's not good. Well, I should qualify that. It's not good bbq. That is, if you define bbq as using smoke. Now, I didn't ask anyone at Max's whether they actually smoke the meat they call bbq, but if they did, they should try moving the meat closer to the wood. The restaurant is in a beautiful old building on Route 9, just South of Red Hook. It has a very nice bar in front with large bowls of overly-salted peanuts in their shells. (Well, if you shell your peanuts you may not think there's too much salt, but I like poppin the whole thing. I could always use more fiber and aflotoxins.) Gratis. a friend and I took a break from the auction of the Bob Guccione estate and heading to Max's for dinner. We passed on the 30 minute wait cause we wanted to head back to the excitement. (Auction people are bigger freaks than food people.) I ordered the pulled pork and brisket combo, with Max's chili and collards on the side. The pork was good, just not bbq unless, as I noted, you consider any low, slow cooking to be bbq. I'm not interested in that debate. But I think that any reasonable person going into a "BBQ" establishment (this was no "joint") expects a little smoke involved. There was none. Instead, there was a pile of well-cooked, well-pulled pork shoulder already mixed with a sweet, other-wise empty tomato "bbq" sauce. It was enjoyable pork candy. The brisket was just a miss. No smoke ring. Not even a hint of red. Nor a hint of smoke flavor. Nada. And the fat? Gone. Perfectly timmed of even the slightest hint this piece of meat ever came sheathed in luscious white blubber. I can understand trimming the fat, though, to appeal to the diners. But I'm guessing that it was trimmed before, not after cooking. And in fact, I wouldn't be surprised to find that these flavorless, dry piece of meat were braised, not smoked. The brisket was served on a bed of smothered onions which gave the only hint of true flavor. The chili was, well, not chili. Let's not get started about the beans debate, because that's all this had. And I love a good vegetarian chili, but this stuff was bean soup with a heavy dash cumin. Nothing more. The collards were also pretty bad by my standards. Minced and sauteed in way too much butter and garlic that would have been good if served really hot. Instead it was served room temperature, allowing the butter to start solidifying. Ick. I think I'm going to open a weekend bbq stand up in the valley.

Why don't you just post your business plan?