The weather was a bit raw and we wanted to trek around the Upper East Side.  So we did something that I have never done in NYC, we took the subway.  I have visited NYC more than twenty times and for whatever reason, have never been on the subway.  Colleen and I visit other cities often and always use their public transportation systems.  I guess in NYC the places that we visit are not too far away from one another.  With the gridded, numbered streets it seems that everything is only a few blocks away.  And I have never waited more than a minute for a taxi.  Anyway we took the subway to the Upper East Side and walked aimlessly for at least two hours.  After a cup of coffee we trained it back to mid-town.

Today’s culinary adventures started at Bobby Flay’s Bar Americain.  We wanted to begin on the lighter side, so we just two had appetizers; Alaskan Salmon Crudo with lime juice, cilantro, scallians and blue corn tortilla crunch and we also had a Crab, Mango, Coconut Cocktail.  It was a nice way to start

Our next stop was Gordon Ramsey’s Maze in the London NYC Hotel.  We did not last long there.  It was all chrome and glitz, not our style.  Though the bathrooms were pretty cool.  One over priced glass of Chardonnay and we were off to Del Posto, another Mario Batali, Joe Bastianich establishment.  Opulent is the best word to describe it.  High ceilings, dark wood, muted toned walls, not-as-comfy-as-they-look banquettes, beautiful flowers, suit wearing servers made you feel as though taking out a second mortgage to dine there would be a good idea.  Once again not really our style.  I was not trying to impress Randy.  We stayed for a glass of wine and a couple of tidbits; some very elegant and tasty lobster-tobiko tea sandwiches and these creamy yet crunchy little mozzarella things.  And we were off.

Next stop,was only a few steps away, in the same building.  Colicchio and Sons.  Yet another Tom Colicchio restaurant, was more our style with lots of brick, high ceilings, funky light fixtures and floor to ceiling windows over looking the meatpacking district.  We sat at the bar order whipped lardo on toast with some tangy yet sweet relish that I have know idea what the orange-ish main ingredient was.  Dried apricots?  We also got a bowl of slightly too lemony grilled squid and octopus with beans and watercress.  We finished our food and beer and headed back to Greenich Village.

Momofoku Ssam Bar, One of David Chang’s restaurants was our next stop.  Jon one of EVOO’s former cooks (whom I have mentioned in earlier posts) is a cook here.  We wanted to have dinner there while he was cooking.  We ordered a bunch of stuff, some of my favorites were pork buns, apple kimchee, thin sliced beef tendon and almost too spicy rice cakes.

After dinner we walked about a block, went into a random bar figuring we would have  couple of beers and to catch up with Jon.  Sitting at the bar was another former EVOO cook, Nick.  Whats even more coincidental is that Nick happens to be working the same position as Jon is at another one of David Chang’s restaurants.  It was just one of those weird things.

More tipsy than we (at least I) desired to be, we headed back to the hotel for a few hours of sleep. The morning was going to come too quickly…

In an effort to alleviate the effects of Sunday’s dinner we began our day with a long walk.  We walked from our hotel in Soho over to the Meatpacking District and up onto the High Line Park, an old elevated railroad that has been turned into a park.  It’s pretty cool.  After some coffee and continued walking we were ready for more food experiences.

The first stop was the Chelsea Market.  A quick stroll through, a couple of pastries and we were on our way.  It’s a bunch of restaurants, cafes, bakeries, cooking and food stores. An upscale Quincy Market.

Our intended next stop was the Union Square Green Market.  We had it in sight when we were sidetracked by lunch at The Union Square Bistro, a Danny Meyer restaurant that I had dined at a couple of times before.  We figured a couple of smaller dishes, then on to the market.  We ended up having a silky smooth well seasoned cauliflower soup.  Apple-beet salad.  A very pedestrian frito misto, that consisted of mostly not crisp enough squid served with a lackluster anchovy butter.  Lastly we had potato gnocchi with mushroom, if someone had tasted it, adjusted the acidity and seasoning, it could have been great.  Overall the experience was not bad, I just expected more.

The Green Market was as expected, not too busy, full of storage apples, winter squash, cabbage and greenhouse greens (sounds like the EVOO menu).

We headed over to Mario Batali’s and Joe Bastianich’s Eataly, their house of worship to everything Italian.  It was pretty cool, at first I had a little bit of sensory overload.  It’s several restaurants, a book store and a market all wrapped into one large space.  We walked around checking out the different menus, watching a woman make perfect looking agnoletti at a painfully slow pace.  We decided to have a chacuterie-cheese board and a glass of wine.  It was really good and quite reasonably priced.

With the need of more walking we moved on.  Times Square.  Wow, what trip that place is.  We didn’t last too long there, our quest for more food kept us moving.

We ended up at The Oyster Bar at Grand Central Station.  It’s worth going there just to have an excuse to walk around inside Grand Central Station.  The architecture, the hustle and bustle are a sight to see.  The Oyster Bar is another one of those places that I have been to before and always look forward to returning.  It hasn’t changed, a wide selection of oysters and good draught beer. We enjoyed both.

Les Halles, Anthony Bourdain’s brassiere was next.  Just a glass of wine at the bar.  We happened to walk by and had to go in. I was pretty full and knew that there was still more food to be consumed.  It seemed like a nice place.  Not at all adventurous, just well prepared basic french food.

We continued on to Gramercy Park area, not sure if we would end up at Gramercy Tavern or Craft.  It ended up being neither.  Both seamed a little too uptight for what we were looking for.  We ended up at craftbar Tom Colicchio’s bustling restaurant around the corner from Craft.  We had smoked pigs head terrine, duck hearts and chicken wings.  Overall it was good, even Randy liked it.

It was once again time to walk.  I had already eating way more than any one person should on any given day.   And, we still had 10:45pm dinner reservations at Mario Batali’s flagship restaurant  Babbo.   I had been looking forward to dining there since 1998 when they were named by Bon Appetit Magazine (in the same article as EVOO), one of the best new restaurants in America.

Boy was I disappointed.  It all began with the music, AC/DC being played at levels that I haven’t listened to since college.  After a while you become accustomed to either not speaking or yelling to be heard.  We were seated in a back corner near the kitchen entrance not a great seat, but that’s OK.  The problem was that the seat cushions were worn out.  Randy said “I’m sitting in a hole”.  It only got worse from there.  The music went from too loud old school rock to some Alice in Chains wanna be’s.

We were obviously one of the last, if not the last table to be sat.  One of the consequences of this is that the staff is hovering to get your order.  Within our first ten minutes we had no less than five table visits from at least three different staff members.  We ordered food and with the help of the sommelier chose a bottle of wine from their imposing fifteen plus page all Italian wine list.  Prices  on the list ranged from fifty-ish dollars to several thousand dollars.

The food started arriving, my hopes were temporarily lifted, seared pigs foot terrine was by far the best dish of the meal.  I plan on trying to emulate it.  Cockles were served  in a delicious spiced tomato broth, the problem was that they were sandy and overcooked. Grilled octopus was good, a little salt and a squeeze of lemon would have gone a long way to making it great.

Around the time we were served our next course the music got re-markedly better.  They blared Wilco’s Yankee, Hotel, Foxtrot in its entirety.  I wish the food improved as the music did.  Squid ink pasta with rock shrimp and sausage, consisted of under-cooked pasta, over-cooked shrimp and so much sausage that the it overpowered the other flavors and made it greasy.  The other pasta dish we ordered was lamb brain ravioli.  It fared better than the other, though it lacked seasoning and could have had more brains in the ravioli, which tasted mostly like ricotta.

Our main course was next grilled whole branzino was good, slightly overcooked and some course salt would have helped.  The other main course was a disappointment of epic proportions  braised beef.  The beef itself was cooked to the correct doneness, but lacked the meaty richness that  I was expecting, no seasoning, no love!  The polenta served with it, oh my, the only thing I can think of a is that the cook ran out of the good stuff and made some “on the fly” with just water.  It sucked!  There was a vegetable salad served on top of the short rib.  I remember nothing of it.

On to dessert. The Velvet underground is now blaring, good music, too loud. We an apple croustada and a date-walnut cake. With the exception of the croustada pastry (soggy) they weren’t bad, not memorable either.

I had wanted to go to this restaurant for many years and have the utmost respect for Mario all that he has accomplished is amazing.  He is always great to watch on Iron Chef, the food that he produced in those short hour-long programs was always impressive. I have and use several of his cookbooks.  I understand that restaurants have bad nights, It happens to us.  Given the price and the expectations it was far and away one the worst restaurant experiences that I have ever had. With my high expectations and the three hundred plus dollars the dinner costed, it should have been a lot better.

I wanted to post about our trip, not bitch about the experience. But I can’t get over how disappointing Babbo was.  If we get a bad comment or letter it can ruin my day.  We look for any trends in our customers comments and use them to evaluate our performance. I hope they do the same.

Taste, adjust, don’t forget the love.

I am off to try more of the city’s offerings.

Took Amtrak and arrived just in time to watch the Patriots game.  Randy is not really a football fan, so he had to suffer through the first couple of hours in NY, finding the right bar, which took three attempts.  The first bar Firefly, was too in your face with projection TV’s covering every wall and really lame food and a barely adequate beer selection.  We left at half time.  Across the street to what appeared as a promising Irish bar Gatsby’s, the only thing great about it was the urinal puck stench…?  We left immedietaly in search out another place.  Within a couple of blocks Randy eyed Toby’s Public House.  Toby’s was not what I think of in a Public House, it was a brick oven pizzeria with a decent beer selection 2 flat screens TV’s with the Patriots beating some Texan butt on them.   Jon and Chloe two former EVOO employees met up with us there and we talked about all the places that we, in no way will have the time or belly capacity to try while we are in NY.  It was nice to catch up with them.

At Toby’s with Chloe and Jon

We left Jon and Chloe at Toby’s and hurried off to our Dinner reservation at Blue Hill.  It was awesome.  Chloe had called in advance telling them that we were hot-shot chefs from Boston (she exaggerated).  We were surprised that they knew who we were. I made a reservation on line with no indication that we were chefs.  We were very well taken care of.  Champagne to start followed by a chefs tasting menu consisting of 12ish items.  I don’t want to call them courses as many of them were little tidbits.  I am not even going to try to describe all 12 “courses”.  I will mention some of the highlights; an espresso cup full of meaty, smoky sunchoke soup, caper and parsley studded venison tartar, a mushroom-mung bean-pistachio thing (it had the consistency of  loose risotto) and a sous vide farm egg with beautiful smoked-cured pork.  It was an awesome succession of dishes, truly a great experience. Randy got a tour of the kitchen and after dinner we spoke with the chef de cuisine.  The service was precise and very friendly.  The host was particularly gracious, she supplied us with even more ideas of places that we will never have the time to try.

Well enough of this blogging, I need to stuff my face.

Tomorrow, Randy and I are off to New York City for a food adventure. So far we have reservations at Dan Barber’s restaurant Blue Hill, Mario Batali’s restaurant Babbo and David Chang’s Momofuku, where one of EVOO’s former cooks, John Short is working. We will fill our days with food oriented excursions to places like Eataly, Union Square Greenmarket and J.B. Prince restaurant equipment store. I am sure we will check out many other restaurants; an appitizer or two at several different places each day. I can feel my gut expanding as write this. 

One of the great things about our bar is that you have so many menu choices.  You can order from the EVOO menu, Za menu or the chalkboard menu which includes an extensive list of homemade charcuterie, local artisanal cheeses and “other stuff”.  All these choices together are only available at the bar.  When dining in either EVOO or Za those are the menus that are available to you.  However, at the bar you can have pizza from Za and our famous Chinese box from EVOO, or anything else that is available from either restaurant.

I want to say more about our chalkboard menu. It features homemade charcuterie that we lovingly produced from those beautiful farm animals provided to us from local livestock farmers. New England dairy farmers provide us with our wide selection of artisanal cheeses. Some of the typical “other stuff” items are spiced pecans, marinated olives, Pete and Randy’s pickles, homemade french fries with homemade ketchup and habanero-cornbread coleslaw. All of the chalkboard Items (with the exclusion of our chicken sausage sandwich) are only $5 each or 5 for $20. It is not uncommon for people to come in and share some chalkboard items with a glass or two of wine.

The food should not get all of the glory, especially at the bar. The bar staff comes up with some great seasonally inspired mixed drinks. We offer 8 local beers on tap, more local beers in cans and bottles (if you want beer with fillers, adjunct ingredients and no flavor, you will have to go elsewhere) and an eclectic wine list put together by our resident wine geek, Dan.

A reader asked me for a more appetizing photo of the blood sausage. So, here it is…

Tonight we served it with white bean-carrot salad, pickled ramps and sweet garlic syrup.

Last night I had rare opportunity to make something that I have never made before and Randy has never eaten before.  Blood sausage. We are always trying new preparations, flavor combinations etc.  But it is not often that we have the opportunity to use something that we have never used before. Especially because we limit ourselves to as many local ingredients as possible. We don’t use many esoteric or exotic ingredients. When Paula the pig arrived with a dripping bag full of  blood (I assume that  it is Paula’s blood). I knew that I would soon be attempting to make blood sausage.

Researching  a recipe that I wanted to try was a chore. Most of the recipes that I encountered had fillers such as oatmeal, breadcrumbs or flour in them. Many had dry fruit such as raisins and currants in them.  While others contained toasted nuts and still others contained both dry fruit and nuts.  The only consistent ingredient (excluding blood) was onions.  The recipe I chose to guide me through making my first batch was from one of my favorite food bloggers Hank Shaw.  His blog  Hunter, Gardener, Angler, Cook has often been a source for us.  His recipe does not contain any fillers it; it ‘s just pig meat, pig fat and pig blood with a lot of spices. I took my liberties with the spices; adding sugar, ancho chili powder, garlic, doubling the pepper and  increasing the salt by 25%.

I have had blood sausage several times including in Spain, Ireland, France and some fancy-ass American restaurants. Some of them were vile tasting like chalky liver (blah), some pretty good and one or two very good.  I remember one very good one in particular. It was while traveling in Ireland staying at a bed and breakfast in Connemara. It was one of those moments, where you realise “hey I really do like that” (whatever “that” may be).  They served a blood sausage patty that full flavored and rich, quite enjoyable.

In all the years I have been purchasing whole animals I have never received the animal’s blood. I am glad that Paula graced us with hers.  The resulting sausage we made came out excellent.  At the end of the shift last night Randy, Russel (one of the lead cooks), Kristen (manager) and I cooked up a couple of the sausages.  It was unanimous they are delicious. We will be serving them with white bean puree, wilted kale and pickled ramps.

The photos are in succession starting with the blood being strained, then the sausage mix(blood, meat, fat and spices), next the sausage mix is filled into casings, followed by tied into links, then being poached and finally seared, on a plate moments before we ate them.

Randy is our affable sous chef, not another farm animal.  I say sous chef, though Randy is so much more than that. I am not big on titles, in some restaurants he may be called the executive sous chef, but that just sounds pretentious.  In others he may be referred to as the chef de cuisine, to me that infers that he is writing the menu.  That is something I do with Randy’s help.  He is in charge of the kitchens daily operations, including writing the schedule (something I loath), most of the food ordering (he shares that responsibility with Michelle, another sous chef), He maintains the kitchen, cleans the walk-in coolers etc. He is often here until the wee hours of the morning working on some task or other, making sure that everything is all set.

Randy started working at EVOO in 1998, within a few months of our opening. He was attending The Cambridge School of Culinary Arts and lived a few blocks away from the original EVOO location. He stopped in one day asking about a job, what I offered him was barely minimum wage to work on the cold line. He accepted it, worked his ass off, trained on and worked all stations and somewhere around 2005 he became the sous chef. Taking on additional responsibilities while I worked on opening Za and then moving EVOO and opening another Za.

Randy is my righthand man, a pleasure to work with and a damn good cook.

Paula, a 260 pound fat pig, has joined us today. She comes to us by way of Pete & Jen’s Backyard Birds in Concord, MA. As I mentioned in a previous blog that mangalitsas are renowned for their fat. Look at the pictures and note the 3-4 inch thick back fat and the 100 plus pound bin of silky white fat.

In other breeds such as berkshire or tamworth the back fat is not even half as thick or close to as smooth. The fat that we get from the two mangalitsas we received this year will provide us with enough fat for a years worth of sausage making and more lardo than we can even try to use. I do not want mangalitsas every time we get a pig (every 6 weeks or so), there would be way too much fat to try to use. For a 260 pound pig there is really not that much meat, you end up with 40% fat, 25% meat, 25% bones and 10% skin. Every bit will be used, it will just take us a while. Other breeds the meat ratio is much higher and quicker if not easier to utilize.