e a t e r y R O W

FIVE FRONT
5 Front Street
Brooklyn, NY 11201
(718) 625-5559

I discovered Five Front just after I got through watching an elephant paint. Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass was having an art festival and someone had shown up with an elephant that could draw. The Rents saw something similar when they were in Cambodia, and brought back one such painting... although it was painted on parchment made out of elephant manure. Now that's recycling. The street was packed with people. I would later learn that the other artists (though I use the term loosely) were upset and felt that the big elephant was a distraction demeaned their festival. That being said, I think the elephant's stick figures were a far larger display of artistic talent than the two people in their underwear sloshing around in a bathtub. But that's me.

I actually had no idea that there was even an art festival. I was really there to go to West Elm for a dining table. They were out of stock, so Bro and I instead wandered around aimlessly.

I like Dumbo. I like it a whole lot. A super whole lot. And if it were remotely affordable I'd move there. I love the warehouse lofts and cobblestone streets. I love the park right on the water. I love that it's one stop from Manhattan. That said, Dumbo is not a very livable place. There are a couple of cafes and a pizza place, a "super"market, one lonely Starbucks, and only a really small number of restaurants, many of which cater to the tourist crowd who want to eat near the water. Other than that, its shops are art galleries and real estate offices. Still. I love Dumbo.

Towards the end to this wandering came we to an isolated corner near the exit ramp of the Manhattan Bridge. The menu looked good, the prices weren't bad, and we were hungry. Bro and I asked for a table. Then we went home. We were too hungry for a forty minute wait. Clearly, someone had discovered Five Front before we did.

A few weekends later, Bro and I convinced Shrink to take a day off from watching the TV shows she'd recorded to go out to dinner with us. There was no convincing DudeMan. It was a little chilly, so the three of us sat inside, even though there is a beautiful garden dining area. I was a tad miffed that we made reservations this time, since the crowd was very light. Better safe than sorry.

Starting with drinks, I succumbed to guilt and ordered a Michelob Ultra, Shrink got herself a Riesling, and Bro ordered the worst Sauvignon blanc I've ever stolen a sip of. Then the appetizers. Shrink skipped them but picked off of what Bro and I got. Bro got the Grilled Calamari Salad. It's basically grilled calamari on a bed of greens (I forget the kind), with olive oil, lemon juice, and chilies. This was easily one of the best grilled calamaris I've ever had. Seriously delicious. I ordered the Prince Edward Island Mussels. First, this appetizer is huge. But that's good since I was hungry and sharing. Second, don't confuse this mussel dish with its European cousin. There's no wine broth or garlic butter here. Instead they cooked it in a curry sauce. I had never had it before,or even thought to pair the two, but I'll definitely have it again. Sooo good.

Bro went for the Sauteed Atlantic Salmon with a Preserved Lemon Confit. It was served alongside a bed of quinoa, spinach, and "aromatic vegetables". Aromatic vegetables? What the hell is that? But really, it was very good. De-freakin'-licious. It might have been the best entree we ordered. The salmon was so tender it was practically liquid. Order this if your diet limits you to one entree per dinner.

Shrink chose to get the New Zealand Lamb Shank with Herb Spaetzle. It had a lamb glaze and caramelized red cabbage. Yummers. I was actually expecting Bro to order it. He went to Australia for a few months, the epicenter of the lamb world, and came back a lamb-crazed fiend. As you can see below, it was quite a substantial dish. Almost like a stew with a humongous chunk of meat. She loved it. I have never been a humongous lamb guy, always choosing a beef dish (or venison if it's available) if I want my protein in red-meat form. But this was really good, and I can't say not to get it, especially if you're a lamb-crazed fiend.

Our desserts were equally good. I'm a huge cheesecake person. And so I ordered the Cheesecake. Was it as good as Junior's? No. But it was still damn good. Toss a cup of coffee next to it, as I did, and I'm a happy camper. Bro went with the Chocolate Espresso Cake (with a coffee), which he liked a lot. I had a small bite and liked it. But I'll be honest and say for the record that I don't remember much more about the cake. He says it was rich. Shrink skipped dessert and ate some of ours, but ordered a cappuccino.

A beer, two glasses of wine, two appetizers, three entrees, two desserts, two coffees, and a cappuccino came in at 131.95 plus tip.

DOS CAMINOS - MIDTOWN
825 Third Avenue
New York, NY 10022
(212) 336-5400

Man oh man was I craving a mojito. But where can a guy in midtown go when 8pm rolls along to get one? Aha! Dos Caminos. This Third Avenue branch of BRGuest's LuxoMexican brand opened up last year launching another salvo at the popular Rosa Mexicano chain. I had gone once with M and Bro back on what was, if not opening night, opening weekend. I'd also been to the louder one in the East 20s with Speeds once upon a time, but that one's cramped and you can't sit outside. This time, the weather was perfect. So I called up D, convinced her to see Blade Runner at the Ziegfeld, and told her to meet me at Dos Caminos to get a pre-movie buzz.

Starting with the booze, I'm gonna lay out my immediate and deeply saddened disappointment. I ordered a mojoito. It came with the sugar gritty and settling to the bottom and with way too much mint leaf. It was like a salad in a glass. There's a right way to make a mojito, and there's a wrong way. Here, fellow readers, is the right way: Start with your mint leaves. Not a ton. Just a few. Grab a knife and chop them up some. Toss them in the glass along with a splash of light rum. Start violently stirring with a spoon to mash out the oils. Add a bit more rum. Now find powdered sugar. Toss it in until you're sweet tooth's been satisfied and start stirring to blend it until dissolved. When it's smooth, add rum until the glass is 2/3 full and top that off with club soda or 7up. Ta Da. Gritless. Still, I ordered two. So read into that what you will.

In the meantime, D went for the sangria, which, last time I checked, had fruit in it. This was more like sweet, thin red wine with a few grapes tossed in. Weak. Come on guys. Backburnering a recipe, I'll give you a crucial ingredient. Fruit. Not three grapes. Maybe a hunk of orange and some cubed apple. Plus the three grapes.




For an appetizer, we decided to split a Roasted Plantain Empanda. This was delicious. If you like empanadas, which are stuffed, fried pastries filled with whatever you want them filled with (basically, a Spanish knish), you'd love this sweet, warm treat. Sure, it's about as healthy as getting punched in the kidneys, but it feels better.

For entrees, we both ordered from the taco menu. Though they're small (three five inch long mini-tacos.), we actually found them pretty filling, especially when paired with a side dish. I based my choice solely on heat and went the most allegedly spicy option, the Asada Taco. The Asada Taco has Kobe beef (though that's almost guaranteed to be American Kobe, since Japanese Kobe would be prohibitively expensive), caramelized onion, cascabel chilies, and guacamole. As I said, small, but filling. And also very good. D went with the more generic Pollo Taco, which is basically a chicken taco with tomato, avocado, and salsa. Not bad, although not something to write home about, either. I mentioned that we got a side dish: Plantains. Yum. Sticky sweet, quasi-bananas. Seriously, I love these things. I wouldn't have them every day or anything. But once in a while, I can't say no.




After dinner, but before dessert, I headed to the bathroom... pardon me, el bano. The bano. Which forces me to mention a pet-peeve that I have. My peeve is the bathroom attendant. I know that this guy exists not to be fancy, though at Cavo they offered a variety of colognes in addition to their soap and mint offerings. "Here, sir. Try washing your hands with this. It's made from a rare root grown deep in the amazon. Isn't that nice? Let me get you a towel". He's there to make sure you don't do anything you're not supposed to be doing in there. I won't mention that keeping yuppies from snorting a line off the marble sink or getting it on in the stalls are on the shortlist of his primary functions.

I wonder... do women's bathrooms have security guards in them? That mystery may never be solved. Oh wait. D went. She says they do.



For dessert we split the Raspberry Tres Leches Cheesecake, which as you can see from the photo below, was a cake with alternating layers of pastry, cheesecake, and raspberry jam with a delicately smooth frosting on top. De-lish-us. I'm definitely recommending this one.



Our meal of four drinks, an appetizer, two entrees, a side dish, and a dessert clocked in with tax and tip at $106.21.

LIFE CAFE

Life Cafe, in the East Village, its right on the edge of Tompkins Square Park. I had initially planned on meeting MLE at one of those coffee-and-books places, but we happened to pick a burning hot, humid day to get together, and the cafe had no air conditioning. We left. It was a good day to sit outside anyway. So off to Life Cafe we went, a place that I'd walked past often enough, but never bothered to actually go to.

Life Cafe is essentially the hipster version of a diner. There's no chrome or mirrors and the food, while pretty standard diner food (burgers, fries, wings, etc.) comes with a wee twist. There is a specials section to the menu that looks pretty good, but we didn't order any entrees. There's a healthy amount of streetside seating, which is where MLE and I plopped our rears, and the inside has a distinctly restauranty feeling. Most (if not all) real diners are brightly lit with the occasional miniature, tabletop jukebox, Life Cafe is pretty dark. Finally, Life Cafe has a good drink menu and I hear is a good (and crowded) weekend brunch spot.

MLE, having just been relieved of the burden of pregnancy, pushed her stroller up to the table and was able to have her first glorious beer in nine months. Blue Moon. I ordered a Black and Tan. Neither of us were terribly hungry, so we stuck with appetizers. They were actually pretty big. We started with Life Cafe's 10 piece Harisa Buffalo Wings, which are African-spiced. Very often, wings come deep fried with Tobasco on top. They're greasy, tasteless, pathetic attempts at wings, demonstrative of a complete and total lack of any energy by the chef. Life Cafe's wings are not like this at all. These were big, juicy, not fatty, good-tasting wings. My one, and I mean one, complaint was that I asked for the hottest wings they had and they gave me something in the middle-zone of heat. Admittedly, my tolerance is pretty high, but there's a certain expectation that comes with the heat rating of "suicidal".



Next up came the Divvy Nachos, which is pretty much what nachos are supposed to be: a mountain of chips on which is a heaping of sour cream, guacamole, cheese, beef, olives, and salsa. If you go somewhere and order nachos, and anything comes out that isn't hufrickinmonguous, then they don't know what they're doing. At no point in time should you ever receive your nachos and think "I can finish this".

One nice thing was that we were never rushed. We could sit and drink and eat and drink and sit for as long as we liked without getting rushed to order something else or pay the bill. The other customers were nice, but I guess almost everyone is when you have a baby with you.

As hipster havens are expanding, Life Cafe has opened a second spot in Bushwick (though it's new hip name is East Williamsburg). This may come as a disappointment to those who were investing in the expansion of the Kennedy Fried Chicken franchise, but for the rest of us who'd like to be able to travel anywhere in the city and get a good meal, I rejoice.

So two Blue Moons, two black and tans, a plate of nachos, and an order of wings, with tax and tip, came just shy of $50.

JACKSON DINER
34-47 74th Street
Jackson Heights, NY
(718) 672-1232

So for Queens Restaurant Week (admittedly, this was a few weeks ago) I went with some folks from work (Prospect Parks, Cat, and Gnome) to Jackson Diner, espoused by one (I won't mention Gnome's name) to be "the best Indian food" in New York. I think she was wrong. As usual, she thinks she was right. To her credit, she eats out a lot and the food was hardly bad by any stretch. To my credit, TFB. I write the reviews. Jackson Diner is one short block from the Roosevelt Avenue train station. We took the 7 from Grand Central and it took only 15 minutes or so to get there. Anyone reading this in Manhattan who was thinking of using the excuse that it's too far away or inconvenient to try eating across the river will have to come up with a better one.

Jackson Diner is aptly named. It's a diner. It's not fancy and sure doesn't try to be. Actually, I've been in diners way fancier and with way cleaner bathrooms. But I'm not the type to judge a restaurant by its loo (unless it's totally awesome, completely different, or so bad that I'd rather use a construction site port-o-potty). Above the floor, adding to the diner feeling, a large flat-screen TV sits playing Indian music videos, which, if you're not used to them (as we weren't... aren't) are bizarrely addictive to watch.

We got a table at the wall and proceeded to order. We were not rushed by the waiter to order, as some reviews I've found have alleged, but maybe we were. We were all over the map ordering, since Cat and Parks were new to the cuisine and we were focusing on them and not Mr. Waiter (if he wasn't being driven crazy then, he surely was when we had him break all of our 20s at the end of the meal). The first thing to come, of course, was the pitcher of water and pappadum bread. And, of course, along with the pappadum bread came the tri-tray dish of dipping sauces: mango chutney, spicy onion, and hiravi chutney (which we ignorantly and consistently referred to as "the brown one").

My appetizer was the Muligatawny Soup, which was excellent and which I have a habit of having to try at every Indian place I go to. You'll like it too, specially if you like spicy pea soups. The Chicken Tikka was ordered by Cat, which she, having never ever ever had Indian food before ever, liked. I didn't try it. The other two ordered Samosas. If you like samosas, Jackson Diner's are for you. They're big though, so since the appetizer came with two, it was very filling.



The entrees were all good, but in my opinion none were great. Everyone else liked them more than I did, but no one was rolling their eyes back in their head from an orgasm on their tongue. We pretty much shared everything, so here's what we got: Lamb Roganjosh, Goat Curry, Tandoori Chicken, and Murg (Chicken) Tikka Makhanwala. Everything except the Tandoori chicken was very curry-like and needed the rice since there was a noticeable absence of veggies. I love curry and liked every dish here, but again, none of them wowed me with their perfection. I was disappointed that none of them were spicy.

Dessert came with the prix-fix meal. Half of us ordered the Mango Lassi, an awesome mango milk drink that could easily be fancied up with a mini-parasol and slice of pineapple. In fact, it almost belongs at a tiki bar, punched up with some rum and in the hand of someone in a skimpy bikini. The others ordered Gulab Jamun, which is a fried cheese ball soaked in syrup. It made it on to Gnome's "top three desserts" list. But Parks couldn't finish hers, saying "I just can't wrap my mind around this being cheese". It tastes like a pancake ball but the disconnect between the myth and the reality was too much for her. Or something.



If you like typically Indian dishes that basically exist so you can sponge the sauce up with your naan bread, then Jackson Diner will definitely fill that want for a good price (oh, and we also ordered the Naan Bread. They make great naan). But if you're looking for anything remotely upscale, cool, or different, then you should look elsewhere. On the other hand, if you want mild, cheap Indian comfort food conveniently steps from the train, then you can't go wrong.

Our four prix-fix meals (appetizer, entree, dessert), three beers (2 Kingfishers and a Bud light), and one soda, plus tax and tip clocked in at $132. But it was restaurant week, so expect it to be slightly higher for you. Jackson Diner is cash only.

If you read me regularly (all four of you), you know that I've thus far restricted myself to the boroughs of New York City... and I haven't even gotten as far as eating in all five yet. Sad but true. But whatever. This time I'm heading upstate to midstate. Orange County to be precise. Warwick, to be more precise.I'd been itching to go to some vineyards all summer. But each and every time I brought it up, which was at least every two weeks, each and every friend I spoke to about it gave me one excuse after another as to why they couldn't go.

Eventually, fall had come, and even apple picking season was starting to fall away. If I didn't want to just write 2007 off as a lost opportunity, I'd have to just go. D was the only one who could make it, so it was just the two of us, and we headed northwest over the Tappan Zee Bridge to Warwick.

Warwick is a pleasant, small, upscale town that boasts a healthy number of NYC expats, restaurants, large houses, and antique stores. Surrounding this small town is farmland, vineyard, apple orchards, and the twisty, winding roads that made me wish I owned a convertible roadster (top down, heater blasting). It is gorgeous country, and only and hour and a half away.

The kitchen, which is quite bustling by the way, makes salads, sandwiches, and small pizzas good for two regular people or one hungry Jon. D ordered a sandwich, which she liked but that I didn't try, and I ordered a Margherita pizza that was excellent. They also brew Starbucks coffees and have Tazo teas. Definitely eat before you're hungry, otherwise you'll be starving by the time the food's ready. We found a tall bar area that wasn't being used and stood up as we ate. No biggie though. Would it have been nice to have sat outside in the back under the umbrellas? Yeah, but it was still fun and we got to listen to the live folk singers playing.

WORLD FOOD DAY
Tuesday, October 16, 2007

This coming Tuesday is World Food Day. It’s a day whose mere existence is both a sad statement of the conditions that exist on this planet as well as perhaps a condemnation of the priorities of those who live upon it. World Food Day recognizes the millions of people starving across the globe.

In many respects, it borders on disgraceful that that there are so many blogs like mine that discuss restaurants or others that talk about cooking and recipes. We talk about who makes the best Cornish hen or how we can go about making the best Cornish hen. Or maybe we talk about how we thought about making that Cornish hen, but got lazy and sat in front of the TV instead and vegged out on cheese doodles until our fingers turned orange.

While we may not be as gratuitous as the guy driving the Bentley or the woman wearing the seven hundred dollar pair of Jimmy Choos, we’re way more common.

As Americans in general, and as New Yorkers in specific, we are amongst the luckiest people the world has ever known. Despite what makes for a good protest march, we live with personal freedoms and rights that other people on earth could never hope to have in their lifetimes. The simplest items from a KMart represent luxuries that half of the rest of the planet would look at with unimagined awe. And the ability to eat what we want, at any time we want isn't even an option. Food that isn't dropped out of the back of a white C-130 doesn't necessarily even exist. We take food for granted so much that we buy candles just so we can have a home that smells like apple pie or vanilla latte or blackberry cobbler. And they don’t even get us hungry.

Don't get me wrong, I know that you've heard this all before, and I'm not planning on stopping my culinary excursions any time soon. But I will try to guilt you just a bit since it’s the right thing to do.

For my part, I am going to pause and think about the world beyond the bistro door. I had plans to eat out this weekend, but instead, I'm going to walk to the next restaurant on my list, look at the menu in the window, and to write down what I would have ordered. Then I'm going to add it up, tip and all, and donate that money to a food-related charity. It ain’t much, and I’m not going to say that it is, but if you do it too, it’ll add up.

In the meantime, I'll finish up the reviews I have floating around that I haven't gotten to.

Be careful though. Choose the target of your generosity wisely. There are plenty of charities to give to and if Hurricane Katrina taught us nothing else, there are also plenty of scumbags with fake charities trying to take advantage of us. And the help needed isn't all abroad, either. If you believe that charity begins at home, City Harvest is a great place to start.


Update 10/18/07:
My restaurant pick is Craftbar. Escarole and Cannellini Soup, Short Ribs, Cream Cheese Panna Cotti, a glass of wine and a cup of coffee would run, according to my tally, around $60.