Delicious Weekend

One of the things I will miss most about New York is the food. There are a lot of wonderful restaurants here, great food is only part of the story. There is a diversity here that can't be beat. This weekend was a case in point.

Stock photo. It wasn't *this* empty.

Saturday night we joined our friends Maggie and Leonard for a memorable meal at Jungsik, an elegant Korean restaurant in TriBeCa. Jungsik is the only Korean restaurant in the United States to receive any Michelin stars, and it happens to have two. Apparently it was quite difficult for Maggie to secure the reservation there, but the place had few other tables throughout the evening. If this is typical, I'd recommend simply trying to walk in on weekends. We opted to order the set tasting menu and worked our way through many tiny, intricate, and delicious dishes. Everyone's favorite were the fried oysters, which were breaded with squid ink and seaweed and were absolutely heavenly. Maggie and Leonard added the wine pairing to their meals and, as Maggie was kind enough to let me taste each of her pourings, I can assure you that the choices were thoughtful and added a great deal to the food. The service was impeccable as well. When our waiter asked Maggie if we were celebrating something, she told him that Ed and I had "just" gotten engaged. We didn't get any freebies, but the kitchen did write a message on one of my dessert plates.

Sunday morning Ed and I had hoped to take my brother to a restaurant we love called the Tipsy Parson for breakfast, but there were no open tables. So within several minutes of strolling we happened upon a great French restaurant just down the block. We'd never heard of it, but in no time we were being served plates of poached eggs perched atop piles of ratatouille and potato pancakes. In many other cities this restaurant would probably be one of the best in town, but in New York great places like this are so common that I didn't even make note of its name.

We met our friends Mary and Rasool for drinks and dinner on Sunday night. The first stop was a bar called the Pegu Club that has been on my to-do list for several years. Backstory: When Ed and I went to Berlin a few years ago, we arrived too early at a restaurant where we were supposed to meet Anthony and Jane and so went to the cocktail bar next door to wait. The bartender made great drinks and spoke good English. We started talking about craft cocktails and he told us that his favorite place in New York was the Pegu Club. I wish I'd taken him at his word before this because he was right; it was great. The bar is named for a British officers' club that used to exist in Pegu, Burma. The space felt at once refined and tropical. We sat in chairs upholstered in pale green velvet next to a wall covered with green and gold wallpaper with a leaf motif. I ordered from the colada menu and immediately felt terrible about it because my drink took the poor bartender almost ten minutes to prepare. (When I apologized, he shrugged and said only, "It's really good.") Most of that time was devoted to shaking and shaking and shaking the drink until a layer of frost formed on the outside of the metal. Then the concoction was poured into a glass to sit for a while between occasional thumps from the bartenter. A layer of foam eventually floated to the top. He removed a straw-full of the drink, tasted it, then poured a bit of sparkling water into the hole in the foam and finished it off with a few dropperfuls of liquid cardamom. Needless to say, it was absolutely wonderful. As if the atmosphere weren't appealing enough, a jazz band had started to play silkily in the background while we sipped. I was sorry to leave.

Another stock photo. This place was hoppin' when we left.

But I wasn't sorry for long, because our next stop was equally great, if completely different. On our way to the Mermaid for dinner, we passed Miss Lily's and were enticed to change course. And I'm so glad we did. I've been hearing about how great this place is for a while, and it did not disappoint. Miss Lily's is a Jamaican restaurant with a funky vibe that made me feel as though I was on vacation. We ordered with abandon, starting with grilled corn on the cob, spicy shrimp, and plantain chips with akee dip. Everyone else ordered something with jerk sauce for their entrees (jerk chicken, jerk salmon, and jerk pork) and I ordered the wonderfully (if bafflingly) named Buss Up Shut, a popular Carribean dish made of pan-fried bread dough. Like many of the things on the menu, I had to google it. It came with shrimp and vegetable curry and was heavenly. "I'm really full and I can't stop eating," Ed complained, and we all nodded emphatically and kept stabbing with our forks. Rasool, who played professional soccer, reminisced about living with several Jamaican soccer players in college who used to make this kind of food all the time. We washed it all down with Red Stripe and listened to old-school hip-hop. It was awesome.

Boulder has some great restaurants, but it's a fairly safe bet that places like Jungsik, the Pegu Club, and Miss Lily's won't be there. Of course, few cities can boast this kind of restaurant scene. Ed and I had better prepare to return from our visits to New York several pounds heavier.

Dinner with The Chef

Preamble: I am sworn to secrecy about certain aspects of last night's events, so today's post is necessarily cryptic. Because at least a few of you will know one of the characters below and be able to put the pieces together, I will refer to him, and his associates, with pseudonyms. My apologies. I'll let the cat out of the bag as soon as I'm able.

My hometown friend, whom I'll call The Chef here, went to culinary school and spent the years thereafter slaving away in kitchens under the command of other chefs. His hard work finally paid off about a year and a half ago when he answered, of all things, a Craigslist ad seeking a head chef for a new restaurant in California. He was hired and the restaurant opened its doors several months later. Since then, the restaurant has been receiving rave review from professional food critics and patrons alike. I hadn't seen The Chef in years but had followed his successes on Facebook and was very happy for him.

I was even happier when he sent me a message to say that he'd be in New York and would like to meet up. The "we" in the email turned out not to mean The Chef and his very  nice wife but instead The Chef, The Owner (of the restaurant) and The Pastry Chef. I was eager to catch up with The Chef and meet his coworkers, and we made arrangements to meet at Peasant, a restaurant downtown.

Ed and I arrived at Peasant first to find it looking decidedly closed. The Chef and entourage showed up moments later, and since The Chef, it seemed, had accidentally booked our table for Tuesday instead of Monday night, we altered course. It turns out that The Owner had lived in New York for years and he and Ed had a favorite French restaurant, Lucien, in common.

Lucien

As we walked to Lucien (here comes the secret), The Owner asked The Chef if he'd told us why they were in New York. It turns out that The Chef's restaurant has been chosen by the Bravo network to compete in a TV series called Best New Restaurant (or something like that) that will air in January. Their restaurant and 15 others selected from LA, Miami, Austin, and New York, were selected to compete in a series of challenges. The first taping was done in their restaurant a while ago: cameras filmed the cooks in the kitchen, the service staff delivering the dishes, and The Owner running the show. They'd traveled to New York for the first official challenge and were due to be picked up by a van at their hotel at 8:30 the next morning to be taken to an undisclosed location. There, they were to cook and serve a three-course meal to a panel of judges alongside chefs from another restaurant in the competition. A coin flip would decide who cooked and served first, and they weren't yet sure whom they'd be competing against. They were, however, allowed to plan the menu themselves instead of being made to incorporate bizarre ingredients or do everything in only half an hour like on some cooking competitions. All three were nervous about the outcome, but they said they'd rehearsed everything enough times that they were confident that they'd perform well.

We stayed at Lucien for more than three hours. The Owner ordered several hors d'oeuvres that he shared with everyone, and The Chef ordered a large bowl of mussels that he declared some of the best he'd ever eaten. (I sneaked a piece of baguette into the broth and agreed that it was sublime.) Everyone, even the sweet and soft-spoken Pastry Chef, deemed all three desserts wonderful. We talked and talked and talked about food. The Owner, it seems, knows his way around a plate but has very little input in the decisions that take place in the kitchen. He leaves all that up to The Chef's good judgement. The menu changes about every six weeks and is inspired by seasonal offerings. The Chef visits the local farmers' market and uses whatever fresh ingredients he can. The Pastry Chef referred to The Chef as "Chef'" instead of by his first name (e.g. "Chef tried it and made some suggestions."), which I found rather amusing. The three seemed to have a friendly, functional working relationship and their enthusiasm about their restaurant and food in general was infectious.

By the way, I asked The Chef for the most common mistake home cooks make and he said, after some thought, that it all has to do with salt. Kosher salt, not the little iodized grains, is his seasoning of choice during cooking, and he said that failing to season throughout the cooking process and instead waiting until the end results in flat flavor. Before serving a dish, he likes to add fleur de sel.

I'll be anxious to hear about the results of the first competition, which they'll learn at the end of taping today. If the other restaurant beats them, they'll be eliminated from the competition and go back to running their highly successful restaurant without lights and cameras. If they win, they'll be promoted to the next round. Regardless of how it turns out, Ed and I already have plans to be in their city in a few months from now, and I look forward to plunking myself down in the restaurant and letting The Chef and The Pastry Chef work their magic.