LOUIE AND CHAN HAPPY HOUR

As you may have guessed, K and I are fairly local creatures. We like our neighbourhood with its dogs and strollers, old people in furs, joggers running along the Hudson; we walk in Central Park and visit the Museum of Natural History; and it is close to work for me, so much so that I can get there in a half hour walk. That is a luxury in New York and it always feels relaxing to be in the Upper West Side. But, dear reader, we also like to get out of our neighbourhood, and are especially prone to visits in the Village (East, West and Greenwich).

The Village as you will know is a mythic place in a mythic city. It is curious to be living in New York when you already know so much of it before. You recognise the yellow cabs honking as soon as the light goes green, the hot dog vendors with the steam rising from their carts, the people playing baseball, the beggars with their cardboard signs, the commuters with their satchels. It feels eerily familiar and there are landmarks on my daily route, be that Tom’s, the restaurant in Seinfeld, or Columbia University itself where the names of Herodotus, Cicero, Plato loom on the library I walk into. To be certain, I had visited the City several times before this time not least when I lived in Philadelphia some years before. But it is different to be here for an extended period. Often I am reminded of Frederico Garcia Lorca when he wrote in ‘The King of Harlem’ in Poet in New York,

They.

They who drink silver whiskey by volcanoes

and swallow little pieces of heart on the frozen mountains of the bear.

With this, what I mean to say is that being in New York obeys another kind of logic, a kind of dream logic. It has a different reality to the one I am used to. That is why the Village is so appealing – for its layers of history, for its ongoing dynamism, for its wonderful stores and interesting people, for all the things that make this city great for artists and writers and diners. Here, one can wander, and forget for a moment, the divide between rich and poor or whatever else it is that seems to ail this place.

For us, the biggest challenge is living within our means and there are better deals in the Village than where we live. I have been out for cheap Vietnamese and good slices in between browsing bookstores and sitting in Union Square. For anyone interested in deals, thankfully, there are happy hours all over New York. Often beer or wine comes for $5, cocktails for a touch more, and, oysters are $1. I cannot resist that and to my mind there is not many better ways to spend $10 (plus tip).

This night we were catching up with friends before going to gallery openings in Chinatown. One of K’s friends had a show around the corner and she recommended a small, intimate, tasteful restaurant called Louie and Chan. It is darkly lit, kind of hushed and reverent. As always, we take a seat at the bar. I might add that it is dark outside, having just ticked over to five o’clock. One minute earlier and we would have been an abject couple without a sense of decorum or the punctuality to time our run for happy hour.

We settle in and, as always, our glasses are filled to the brim with ice water. The barman pours us a house red, a light, fruity Italian with echoes of cranberry. The high quality wine is why this place was recommended to us, but what sets their happy hour apart is the food on offer. For $5 one can get a wood fired pizza with buffalo mozzarella, torn basil leaves and hot salami. It is a little bigger than the slice you can get from any corner here, which sell plain cheese for between $1 and $3. But the quality at Louie and Chan is exceptional. The ingredients are fresh and the flavours mingle perfectly on the palate. This is the happiest of hours that makes one smile to be in New York. But, what is a romantic Italian meal without pasta?

This is where Louie and Chan truly excel. The pasta is chewy and dextrous, a kind of pliable noodle with a delicate tomato sugo dusted with parmesan in an umami rich splendour of flavour that is recognisable, comforting and always pleasurable. This happy hour is really worth it, and, for when we leave our little bubble, a beautiful reminder of why New York is a city to behold and savour.

Louie and Chan
303 Broome Street, New York NY 10002
Subway: B, D at Grand Street; F at Delancey; M, J, Z at Essex Street.

CITY DINER BLUEBERRY PIE

The other month, K and I went up to New England to catch up with our friends J and M. The live in Cambridge and we planned to take a trip with them through Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont, peeping at leaves, walking through woods and sampling local fare. I wanted to renew my relationship with clam chowder, cook with any number of squash that were then in season, and eat candy corn in light of Halloween. We ended up in Springfield but only after detours to Peterborough (for sandwiches) and Keene (for coffee). 

The best experience of the trip was enjoying the strong diner game in these small towns. Perhaps the highlight was when we were at Timoleon’s and the waitress, fake lashes and all, said, ‘I don’t want you to get offended, I ask this of all the customers.’ I replied, ‘No, it’s fine go right ahead’ thinking that she would warn me off my request for a side scoop of ice-cream because of my expanding waistline. With a kind of heartfelt trepidation, she then said ‘Ice-cream costs an extra $1.75. Are you ok with that?’ Breathing a sigh of relief, I replied that I was, of course, up for the charge to which she breathed a sigh of relief. It seemed both of us were looking forward to my side of ice-cream with a slice of banoffee pie.

Timoleon’s was no exception to the rule that diners seem to come from the 1950s; a homage to an automobile, spaceship, suburban era, with curved edges and hints of chrome. The menu has inevitably changed over time but one can still expect burgers, soups, waffles, pancakes, eggs, and pie. Pie is something that has yet to really land in Australia – there has been a wave of doughnuts in the last few years covering all bases and all flavours, but pie seems to be a quintessentially American experience for me. To eat pie in a diner adds to the dish, precisely because it is American in America in America. 

In our neighbourhood, there are three diners that are close by. All three are on Broadway: Metro at 100^th; Manhattan at 95^th; City at 90^th. There is something charming about each of them, and K and I often find our selves sitting at the counter on a walk home, drinking bottomless cups of joe (her) or iced water (me).  We prefer City Diner but not for any reason in particular. We like it because it is close by but also because it has a good community feel. The other night when we were there, three or four people sat reading the Times, exchanging casual asides and bringing down hellfire on Weinstein, Spacey and Trump, in between their spaghetti bolognaise, chopped salad, sides of cottage cheese. I might add in here, that City Diner’s side of cottage cheese is generous and it is something curious to watch people scoop it into their mouth thinking nothing of what they are doing; another relic of the past alive and well right here in our neighbourhood.

Given that City Diner is open for 24 hours, the clientele changes depending on the hour. K and I have sat in a booth alone in the restaurant, or being bunched up in a line while it rains outside, and all with a wide array of people. When we were away with J and M, the appeal was in the price, a kind of Main Street hygge but here the appeal lies in how the diner mirrors public space in the city as a whole. In other words, the diner is home to diverse experiences and people that cover the whole spectrum of economic interests and tastes. It can be cheap with bottomless cups of coffee that appeal to anyone and everyone, and it can attempt to be mid-range, which in our case, is somewhat high end given that we live on a writer’s budget. You can get a hamburger as cheap as a fast food franchise or a steak that will set you back $35 including tip. It offers a real range of choice, which is what I love about it.  Often, K and I come here for a night out, reminded of Just Kids when Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe had just moved to the city and lived on tomato soup and grilled cheese at various diners. It was cheaper then, but still, diners can be a good deal, and, like I said, they are like a kind of public space that mirrors the city itself where you can sit and be warm, read the Times and put away as much cottage cheese as you will ever need for $2.99.

City Diner is a place for pie of any particular measure. Displayed in a cabinet with other sweets, there is always plenty to choose from. Today there is cherry, apple, peach, pecan, but it really is the luck of the draw depending on what day you go. I like the pie here because it seems to suit diner culture, to be a capsule from another time and the kind of middle Americana that has a retro, kitschy, foreign appeal. I get blueberry and K gets apple – they are jammy and sweet, the pastry firm and crunchy, it comes with stars of cream. It is a good spot to take a break from the cold and contemplate what ‘the  New York public’ thinks is good taste.

City Diner

2441 Broadway, New York, NY 10024

Subway: 1, 2 at 86th; ABC at 96th. 

PAUL ISKOV'S DIALECTICAL GASTRONOMY

The struggle in food today is not between Paris and the peripheries, Michelin and San Pellegrino, slow and fast, Old World and New, El Bulli and El Celler, foraging and farming, tradition and experimentation, haute cuisine and home cooking, thin crust and deep dish, or Daniel Humm and Daniel Barber. No, it is between the chef and their ingredients, between palate and terroir, between the subject and the object of the art itself. This might appear to be a simple enough proposition; a proposition that seems unremarkable. But, the reader who thinks this way may also be thinking: hasn’t that always been the struggle? Isn’t the entire history of food a series of incidents like this from the caveman’s roasted yam to the superstar’s postmodern tagliatelle? What other banality could be offered? If you asked any of those questions, maybe it is best to look away now, to go back to your cereal or stir that casserole. This, after all, is a naval gazing exercise. In articulating world cuisine today, it is necessary to break down each brick that forms the walls that continue to divide bread from gold. That is surely the utopian task before us; surely that is the role for the diner as critic. 

I was thinking of all this, of the struggle that is food, of the future of world cuisine, as I ate a slice of apple pie remembering a meal cooked for me by Paul Iskov. Iskov has staged at Pujol, Noma, DOM. His regular gig is Fervor, a self-run, high end, pop-up dining experience in remote locations on the west coast of Australia. But tonight, this night, as I sat here in the concrete jungle of New York, that world capital which is its own island, eating things that were totemic, it seemed appropriate to think about the future of cooking. Tonight, I came out from habit, came into something wholly new because it was unfamiliar. Simply the memory of Iskov’s food scraped away the winter shell I had made; removing the calcified funk that one creates in preparation for the February snows that are yet to come. So, what is this cuisine, what is the movement Fervor belongs to and why is it like finding a ray of sunshine on a winter day?

It is, of course, about tradition and the new, quality and taste, balance and impact. In that way, we have become accustomed to ‘deconstruction’ in food, as both a technical feat and a critical paradigm. You see it in everyday kinds of places now, where brownie a la mode is turned into its parts, a crumb here, a schmear there, ‘deconstructed’ as the everyman might say.  But what is the truth of particularity in our day and age? To my mind, it is about dissemblance, which is what comes after deconstruction. This is the systematic breakdown of the dish into its essence using a family resemblance of ingredients, a logic that is a poetic diremption rather than a scientific undoing that reaches its apotheosis in molecular gastronomy. It was there when I tasted Iskov’s ‘macadamia lotsa ways’, which prepares macadamia in five different ways to be a textural sensation at once creamy, crunchy, chewy, fluid, crisp. Its ultimate reconciliation comes in ‘nuttiness’, which is the category to which macadamia belongs. Iskov’s dish calls forth the inwardness of the ingredient in such a way that we catch sight of a new reality.

We might not recognise that new reality at first, instead thinking that it is familiar, or old, or even something habitual. But through a process of reduplication we can find ourselves changed in a changing context. That is why Iskov’s marron matters. A freshwater crayfish from the south west of Western Austraila, this is both a reflection of the classic langoustine et buerre, and the popular shrimp on the barbie. But it does not chart the middle way. Instead, it is a reduplication, which in its very process makes material from a higher spirit. Simply charred over wood coals and served with a lemon myrtle emulsion, the dish is a shadow of a madeleine, a kind of spectre haunting the tongue that one might be tempted to say is ‘European’. In this dish, you realise what might be the localised expression of universal spirit. It lays claim to objective good taste.

That is where the multifaceted lime sorbet with green ants enters play. Composed of several different varieties of lime you find in drier regions of the Australian interior, this dish is simply ice-cream with sprinkles for the contemporary age. You might call this harmony, and it has that, but in harmony one tends to taste the elements that make up the dish in a balanced way, drawing on the palate to do the labour of bringing it all together. In this case, the taste is uniform and only the texture would suggest that it is not entirely singular. Iskov has synthesised in a complete way what is a new way to think of and through ice-cream, gelato, sorbet; a dish of the world that sees itself in chef and ingredient alike and alive today.

And so, Iskov’s is dialectical gastronomy.* I mean dialectical as movement, and dialectical as being a part of a  sub-language, of being how a particular people in a particular place at a particular time speak about who they are and what they imagine they can become. In this case, it is a language of food that does not stay still and has no claim on being a lingua franca of mac ‘n’ cheese, chicken nuggets or cola. Nor is this place as a nation, of responding to an established set of flavours that one thinks of as ‘Australian’. Instead, it is an expression of geist from a unique location, which is a deeper engagement with country than that commonly expressed in ‘regional cuisine’.

In Iskov’s case, his art is a shared process of reconciled futuring between Indigenous, settler and migrant that connects with food traditions that are 60,000 years old. It is a type of utopian dreaming. It is that belief, that optimism, which makes his work that of a genius. With him, we can respond to Brillat Savarin when he said ‘the discovery of a new dish confers more happiness on humanity than the discovery of a new star’. Fervor asks us to shout from the rooftops of the Upper West Side that we can catch sight of a new gastronomic universe that we must find our very selves in once more.

* I prefer gastronomy to cuisine because of the etymological roots of each word, the former coming from the Greek word for 'stomach', the latter from the French word for 'kitchen'. Given that Iskov is often cooking over fires outdoors, it seems important that we use the reference to stomach as an organ of the body than a built location precisely because the body travels to places the kitchen cannot.

Fervor comes to New York City for one night only thanks to VICE.

See details at: www.fervor.com.au 

December 19^th 2017.

Photograph by Chris Gurney.

PEACEFOOD ROASTED PUMPKIN SANDWICH

Q: How do you know someone is a _______  ?

A: They tell you.

Q: What do you call 1000 _______ at the bottom of the ocean?

A: A good start.

Q: What’s the difference between _______ and _______  ?

A: _______ knows they are a dickhead.

In versions of these jokes, I have heard the person in question be Harvard alumni, corporate lawyers, and vegans. I am sympathetic to the vegan cause and with K being an aspiring one, we mainly have a plant based diet at home. Yet, it will be noted from the first post that I do not count myself among their ranks and in future posts there will be meat involved. If I were going to advocate an ethical style of eating, it would be one that was resolutely local and involved some killing and butchering of wild meat myself. In that way, I take deep pleasure in eating the fish, lobster or abalone I catch down on the south west coast back home.

But in New York, the options for eating meat are somewhat different. Meat here runs from factory farmed, agribusiness, monstrous flesh to the pasture raised, locally sourced, organic varieties that one purchases from local markets where you know the farmer’s name. When dining out, it is harder to determine meat’s provenance, and sometimes that causes concern or changes our choice of dishes. This brings me to one of our favourite places to eat lunch – Peacefood Café. K and I prefer it to nearby vegan restaurants Mana and Blossom du Jour, though all of them have appealing qualities.

Peacefood serves a menu that is all American café – Caesar salad, gyoza, corn chowder, cheeseburger, not-chicken tenders, sushi, fries. The staff are friendly in an absent-minded way, kind of gentle and fluid, never rushed or hurrying, daggy too in sweatpants and joggers, or socks and sandals. Over the speakers they play an eclectic selection of music from slow and smooth R'n'B to jangling freeform jazz. On one wall, there are old posters and Disney figurines, near the window a large round table and plants. It is lived in like a sharehouse, reminiscent of undergraduate lentil stew that was eaten while you spend hours in a fire bath humming reggae tunes. Peacefood is a restaurant paved with good intentions. It is charming in the way that one’s local pub is charming, rather than being a magnetic destination that pulls one from miles away, and we like it because it is close by.

I have eaten their soup and their salad, but what I like best of all are their sandwiches. They bear very little resemblance to the stacks of meat, cheese, sauces found in delis right across New York. At Peacefood, they are made of crumbling house-baked brown bread that tastes like reason in a society high on sugar and missing fibre. Mine is filled with roasted pumpkin puree, caramelised onions, ground walnuts, cashew cheese and greens. As a whole, it is sweet and jammy, kind of soft and welcoming in a pliable, mushy way. The pumpkin is rich and has been roasted brown before being mashed, the onions cooked low and slow so they complement it with an intense depth of flavour, the greens are fresh and crispy, and the nuts do the work of flavourful condiments. It is served with a side of pickled jicama and a bunch of alfalfa sprouts, both of which lift and refresh.

The effect of eating here matters. One feels satisfied and somehow enlightened as though the tasty good times have become tasty good vibes, that one has taken into the body the peace that the café is trying to cultivate. When it comes to walking out the door, one does so with a spring in the step. You feel uplifted in your body, clean if somewhat self-congratulatory, and in very different shape than if you had downed a stack of cold cuts slathered in creamy dressing on white bread. Maybe now you can do 100 sun salutations and greet the stranger on the street with smiles that are beatific, and all because of a $12 sandwich.

Peacefood Café

460 Amsterdam Ave, New York, NY 10024

10 AM – 10 PM

Subway: 1 at 79th Street; C, B at 81st Street. 

DUANE READE ROLLING ROCK

If you swing a cat in Manhattan, you will hit a bar. There are that many of them here. Near us there are sports bars (Blondie’s), family bars (Fred’s), bistro bars (Hi Life), dive bars (Dive Bar) and, as always, Irish bars (Dead Poet, St. James Gate, McAleer’s). We have come a long way from when Benjamin Franklin went to London to work in a printery, commenting that:

We had an alehouse boy who attended always in the house to supply the workmen. My companion at the Press, drank every day a pint before breakfast; a pint at breakfast with his bread and cheese; a pint between breakfast and dinner; a pint at dinner; a pint in the afternoon about six o’clock, and another when he had done his day’s work. I thought it a detestable custom.

Sounds about right. Since then the water has improved in London and perhaps Americans have learned to enjoy beer a little more, notwithstanding hiccups along the way (Prohibition Era as you might remember). Although everywhere has a happy hour and there are some very good deals, drinking in my neighbourhood is expensive. Once you add in tips and settling in, it can often add up in a way that I find hard to justify on a writer’s budget. But, one has to have a drink, so what should it be?

Of course, that depends on what has happened during the day and on the weather to a large extent. In terms of work, it runs soft to hard depending on the number of rejections I have been sent or the time spent with philosophy or if you read something that drove you to liquor in the first place. In terms of weather, this time of year, we have been drinking more hot toddies than usual, spiking our local apple cider with whiskey and spices, and we have put down quite a few bottles of cheap shiraz as we dine at home. Nevertheless, I still like a nice cold beer, maybe after walking home from the office  as I hear about K’s day and the progress of her novel. For me, it is a toss up between three brands that I buy from the pharmacy, or what Americans call ‘drug store’, on the route home. For $2.19 you can get a tallboy can of Rolling Rock, Pabst Blue Ribbon and Coors Banquet.

It goes without saying that these are ‘entry level’ beers when judged by price, and when I caught up with an old friend R the other night, he said he had not drunk Rolling Rock since high school. Pabst Blue Ribbon has been enjoying a global renaissance amongst hipsters, and in Australia, one can find it there in the newly minted Southern restaurants alongside buttermilk fried chicken. As for Coors Banquet, I have no reference. I only thought that Coors was not a beer for me given that it advertised itself to mainstream tastes. I knew the brand alongside that of Budweiser, Sam Adams and Natty Light. But the Banquet on the other hand, seemed like a variety I could drink. And it was the right price.

As you may have guessed from our beer choice, we are retrofitting our well to do neighbourhood with a certain spirit of bohemia. We drink beers with beans and rice at home, or a bowl of crisps, or even roasted veggies sometimes. At this point in time, it might be worth pointing out that these beers are not as cheap as one can go. You can, of course, buy ‘40s’ of malt liquor that have names such as Colt 45, Black Fist and Country Club. But the world of malt liquor is another world entirely.  At the other end of the spectrum might be the blossoming new craft beers from small breweries, hoppy numbers, malty draughts, molassesy vials. That is where the beer market has grown in recent years, and there is no shortage of that close to us. Mine is the world of beer from the pharmacy.

For everyday drinking, I like Rolling Rock the most. It is crisp and even, always refreshing when served cold, it is easy lager that is not overproduced, presumptuous or pontificating. It settles in the mouth but comes out clear and friendly, a flavour that simply says ‘beer’. If one wanted to one could jazz it up with lemon, turn it into something resembling a fiesta. Or, one could pair it with a pot pie to thicken it up, and echo an ale from a heartier time. In any case, it is admirably dextrous and fun to boot. I for one, always stop myself, at just a few.

Duane Reade, 2409 Broadway, New York, NY 10024

Open 24 hours.

Subway: 1 at 86th St.