If you take Brooklyn’s shuttle train south to Botanic Garden stop you’ll come on Eastern Parkway between the intersection of Franklin Avenue and the St. Francis de Sales School for the Deaf. There’s a huge tree that has been propped up with a fifteen-foot-high cone of poured concrete and a great bicycle and pedestrian lane, canopied by trees, that runs almost all the way to Coney Island.
A bit to the right of that stop, you’ll find PitchKnives’ most recent installation of English Peas
While eating breakfast tacos at our heavenly neighborhood taqueria, Gueros, this weekend, I began to muse on fat. After all, I could think of many reasons why the tacos were delicious (The tang of those pickled onion! The salt of that queso fresco! The bite of that habanera sauce!), but the plain tortilla chips were just as irresistible, and I had a feeling that it was because of the sheen of glistening oil that they wore after their bath in the deep fryer.
I formed an extemporaneous theory that this must be because of some evolutionary phenomenon. After all, it’s not that fat is bad, necessarily, just that it packs a huge wallop of calories and energy all at once, which was probably quite helpful if you were trying to, say, survive a famine. Jason was skeptical of this thinking—if fat was actually good, then why did his stomach feel so lousy after eating all that grease? If he had stalked a wooly tortilla chip across the icy tundra for four days, I retorted, his stomach would probably feel just fine.
While little information is available about the elusive wild tortilla chip, I did find some interesting evidence that scientific thought about fat is still evolving. Continue reading
One of my pleasures in life—one that combines in a strategic way my humanistic impulses with my unbecoming “Told ya so!” competitiveness—is proving to people that they will in fact enjoy foods they now despise, so long as they have them my way.
Dark greens like kale and collards are prime catalysts for achieving this conflation of the altruistic and the vain, but so are peas, an early treat from the year’s bounty.
Most of us know peas as at best little green balls filling up a freezer bag best used as an ice pack and at worst mushy gray globs taking up plate space next to the mashed potatoes. This is a travesty.
After last week’s ocean of loneliness, I thought that perhaps it was time to admit some basic facts about human nature—strangers in New York do not seem to want to eat lunch with me and asking them fills me with dread. As I headed to Bay Ridge, the end of the R line, I decided upon yet another strategy. I would canvass the streets, asking people what their favorite lunch spot was, and when a consensus emerged, I would go there.
This new plan filled me with fresh optimism and brazenness, and I immediately got a few recommendations for a couple of Irish restaurants on 3rd Avenue (O’Sullivan’s and Chadwick’s). And then I happened upon John, a sad-eyed Syrian man who considered my question long and hard.
“What country are you from?” he asked.
“Um, America,” I replied.
“No, no, I mean, what kind of food do you eat?” He eyed my dark hair and made a tentative guess. “You like Italian food?” Continue reading
And here’s a little fact sheet, too.
And in this corner of the Grub Match ring, it’s Roger LaMarque (in the photo, he’s the one in the sweater). His pick is Saint Anselm, home of the Axe Handle Rib Eye and the Bourbon Brined Chop. Here’s more from Roger:
You’re on death row and they’re warming up the chair—what’s your final meal? They warm up electric chairs? I guess something that would take a long time to arrive. The Indian joint near my house takes forever. I could get another appeal in.
What’s the single most memorable meal you’ve ever eaten? The most memorable meal would be my most recent one, since I have a terrible memory. And it was…er… Continue reading