He Knew All The Words

This woman is a Thanksgiving Genius:

Every time I go to Atlanta I gain five pounds. Stephanie’s cooking skillz are second-to-none. She made a very traditional, and absolutely perfect, holiday meal — turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, green beans, brussels sprouts, stuffing, cranberry chutney, and popovers. Oh, and she made an appetizer of succulent shrimp cocktail with champagne, you know, just in case we weren’t gonna have enough food! Insane. And awesome. Of course, it’s easy to see where she gets it. My parents arrived from North Carolina with a lasagna, stuffed shells, sausage, braccioles, wedding soup, and tarrales. Good lord it was all heavenly.

For most of the weekend I did what I always do at Stephanie’s house: I alternated between sitting on the sofa and going to the kitchen to make cocktails between feedings. I love going there.

We did venture out to the mall on the Friday after Thanksgiving. It was crowded, but not insane. And amazingly everyone who works at that mall was all trained at the same stupidity factory. So after very light shopping (including oohing and ahhing over a black diamond bracelet at David Yurman — sigh…), we cut our losses and headed home for cocktails, Scrabble, and Wii. We also played Pictionary, which was weird.

But you know what’s even weirder? We went bowling late Friday night! It had only been, oh, fifty years or so since Mom went bowling. And maybe 30 or so for Dad. Things have changed — now it’s all black-light and disco, automatic scorekeeping and beer! We had a ball. Bah-dum-bah!

I got pictures of everyone in action:

And I got a great sequence of Stephanie getting a spare:

And then Thanksgiving was over as quickly as it came. But Christmas comes. Here it comes!

I am not a vodka drinker. But Adrienne Colla is.

On the occasion of my 38th birthday, Adrienne (née Zaza) bought me six elegant little apéritif glasses (five of which survive to this day). I promised I’d invent a drink in her honor to serve in these glasses. Well you can file this one under “Better Late Than Never,” as three-and-a-half years later I have finally (!) completed my task.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I offer you the Virgin Zazaura Apéritif.

Cin-cin!

This is the first ad in a long long long time that actually makes me want to eat at McDonald’s (don’t worry, I’m not going to):

One can’t imagine an ad like this airing in the United States. Though who knows? Maybe it could run in local markets in NY, SF, or LA? Anyway, it made me laugh out loud, and the look on this kid’s face is so cute.

It’s Friday. Make-a-chart Day. Mmmmmmm, cherries!

Well it’s been years since we made Episode 1 of this series, so I guess we’re on a roll. The first “La Zaza Vita” video was a half-hour cooking show where Marco taught us how to make tarrales. In Episode 2, we see Marco and Marie making homemade pasta. But this time, we’ve shortened our playtime to 5-1/2 minutes to make a real web-style show, rather than mimicking the pacing and tones of the Food Network like we did last time. Technological note: I’m still learning the ins and outs of compressing video to Flash — so bear with me. The quality here is not nearly as good as the raw Flip video I’m using for editing. But I’ll learn more as I go and hopefully the video quality will improve. Nothing, however, can improve upon the delicious meal Mom and Dad made on Boxing Day 2009. Here’s how they did it:

Check back soon for a special archived video: La Zaza Vita Episode 1: Tarrales

After work on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, I had a tough dilemma.

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Should I eat one of the tarrales Mom and Dad sent me?

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Or should I eat one of the cartadats Aunt Joyce and Uncle Jerry sent me?

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Aha! I found the answer. EAT THEM BOTH and feel the Zazaura!!

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With beautiful autumn weather, and having finished my planned errands of the day, I set out in the late afternoon into the sunshine, with no destination in mind.

I started by walking across Atlantic Avenue through what many people consider the best street fair of the year, the Atlantic Antic. I hate to be a killjoy, but I don’t get it. Sure, it’s bigger than most street fairs, and it’s nicer than most in that it has special booths from all the wonderful vendors that line Atlantic Avenue. But those restaurants and shops are always on Atlantic Avenue — so I don’t see how adding some sock vendors, corn on the cob stands, and an Italian sausage or two makes it so special (except of course that I highly support adding Italian sausage to anything :). Anyway, it looked just like any other ol’ street fair and I quickly left it and hopped on the 2 train at Borough Hall.

I emerged in the West Village, at 12th Street and 7th Avenue. I walked west and when I got near to Gansevoort Street I realized how close I was to the entrance to the High Line, our new elevated park that I hadn’t yet been to see. So I ascended to the old abandoned railway tracks and experienced this unlikely success story for the first time. The park is wonderful. It’s beautifully designed with a crazy combination of nods to the site’s industrial past, the wildlife that overtook the tracks when it fell into disuse, and the slick urban hipness of the (overly) revitalized Meat Packing District. Because the weather was beautiful and because it was near sunset, I assumed the park would be packed with people. But it wasn’t. There were plenty of people there, but it felt very relaxed and very much like a park. In a few places where cafe tables or chaise lounges appeared, it was easy to forget you were on an elevated train track at all — it simply felt like a very peaceful urban park. It’s hard to believe this project came through with such perfection, especially given the fact that when it was first proposed then-Mayor Giulinani played Grinch by signing demolition orders for the tracks, and then of course he was replaced by Mayor Bloomberg who’s overseen one great failure of city development after another. That this project didn’t turn into another botched Coney Island or Atlantic Yards is nothing short of a miracle.

Only the first section of the High Line is completed, so I after walking the whole length I exited at the for-now north end, at 20th Street. I continued to wander, heading east toward Madison Square, then turning north toward midtown. My goodness, the beautiful people were out and about tonight. On the subways, all along the High Line, in the parks, on the streets. I stopped for a hot dog at a papaya place and as I ate my dog in the window two cute 18-year-old Mormon Missionary boys walked by and flashed adorable smiles at me and nodded. I’m a believer!

I pressed on along 6th and stopped for a rest when I came to Bryant Park. This is my favorite urban park — it’s filled with cafe chairs and tables, paths of pebbles, a big formal grassy square at its center, and it sits at the foot of the main building of the New York Public Library. It’s a rather grand park, despite its small size. I sat at a table on the lawn for a while, then continued north to find the Big Gay Ice Cream Truck, which Twitter told me was parked a mere six blocks away!

This is the last week the Big Gay Ice Cream Truck will be operating for the season, so even though I wanted to try something new I felt I should have the Choinkwich bacon/ice cream sandwich before it disappears for 6 months or more. But the decision wasn’t mine to make: the ice cream man had no bacon today, so I got to try the new concoction I’d read about a couple weeks ago: The Salty Pimp. Oh lord — a cone with vanilla ice cream, drizzled with dolce di lecce, then salted with sea salt, then dipped in chocolate. Sweat heaven, I tell you, I am a believer!

I finished my ice cream just as I arrived at the steps to the Rockefeller Center subway station, where I descended to the underground and returned home. On the train, I realized something wonderful had happened — something truly signaling the change of seasons. Falling leaves? Nope. Cool breezes? Nope. Stylish scarves on young girls in swing coats? Nope. The summer has ended and the fall has begun and to make everything right with the world the city no longer stinks to high heaven. Tonight I didn’t smell piss, body odor, dog shit, rotting fish slime, or putrid garbage. I smelled cupcakes. I smelled a faint scent of someone’s perfume on the street. I smelled frying meat from a street vendor. I smelled some car exhaust and cigarette smoke, but it didn’t hang in the air and force itself into my lungs the way it does in humid July. I smelled fresh air. And as I turned the corner onto my breezy street, I smelled the water of New York Harbor.

I hope spring never comes again.

Stephanie, I’ve been biting my tongue for over a week because I just had to be sure about this before I said anything. Deep breath.

I’m moving on from Maker’s Mark as my preferred whiskey for Manhattans.

I know!

And here’s the kicker — and don’t be mad because history’s on my side! — I’m switching to rye.

I know!!

At Clover Club I asked the bartender to make me a Manhattan with a whiskey of his choosing. He informed me of what I already knew: that Manhattans were traditionally made with rye, not bourbon. (I let him think he was schooling me, but in cocktail culture even neophytes know that…). He said he likes the “booziness” of Rittenhouse rye. (I love it when bartenders get all technical!). The Manhattan was superb. Another bartender there that night, my current “bartender crush” actually, was taken aback when I told him his colleague was giving him a run for his money in the Best Manhattan departments. He asked his friend what he did to make it so good and we were both delighted with the response: “I used a secret ingredient. Unicorn tears.”

So last weekend I invited some friends over for Manhattans. I had some Makers in the bar already, but I also bought a bottle of Woodford Reserve bourbon and a bottle of Rittenhouse rye. In back-to-back tastings, I had to confess that my two bourbon stand-bys were just not living up to the Rittenhouse. And you know why? “Booziness.” Seriously.

But that night I was playing host and had numerous drinks — not to mention that I only had maraschino cherries not big black bings soaking in brandy — and I didn’t trust myself to make a final commitment on such a momentous life change. So tonight, in the privacy of my living room, with hulu.com blaring at me for entertainment purposes, I made myself a single Rittenhouse Manhattan, hold the cherry.

It’s true. It’s the booziness. Or it’s the unicorn tears. Or it’s the relative straightforward bluntness of rye compared to the coy playfulness of corn. Or it’s that having reached the scarily mature years of my [ahem] 40s I am simply having a midlife crisis. Whatever it is, I’m here to tell you, change has come to America. Or at least this little second-floor two-bedroom part of western Long Island.

Please, Stephanie, back me up here. Buy yourself a bottle and do us up a little experiment, all scientific-like. Do a back-to-back taste test. And then some subsequent night, alone, in front of a movie, make one more nice well-chilled one for yourself. And then report back here. I’d hate to think I’m either crazy or that I’ve fallen victim to a sinister spell of unicorn tears. I must know if it’s the booziness that makes it so right.

Love, David

I hope this one comes true.

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I was in Union Square tonight, so I found the Big Gay Ice Cream Truck again. This time I had a dish of chocolate ice cream, dipped in chocolate, with cayenne pepper on top. Mom, you were right — hot and sweet can’t be beat!

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They say poor people don’t take care of their shoes and that rich people do. At least that’s what rich people say. I have a pair of rather expensive shoes whose toes are splitting from their soles and need to be repaired, and I brought them to work today to take them to the cobbler.

I’ve always loved the word cobbler, and I’m always delighted by it’s three rather unrelated meanings. So if I may recommend a cobbler of each kind, you too may find fascination in the word (and the cobblers themselves, no doubt).

1. For NYC shoe repair, I cannot recommend Continental Shoe Repair, at 2 Barclay Street, highly enough. These guys can resurrect shoes that are literally on their last legs. I trust them with my zippered ankle boots that I’ve been wearing for 14 years. I trust them with my $650 Dior boots (which I didn’t pay for, don’t worry, Dad). I’ve had shoes that were unwearable, worn-soled, ripped-leathered, and split-heeled — they’ve fixed them all.

2. For alcoholic cobblers, go visit Clover Club on Smith Street in Brooklyn. Take a look at their menu and turn to the “Cobblers and Highballs” page. All their drinks are delicious, and all their bartenders are experts. It’s wonderful.

3. For a cobbler dessert, you might try Schiller’s Liquor Bar. Balthazar’s little hipster sister is great for steaks and noise and cheap wine — and apple cobbler! Smile when you go there — it’s the best way to get a table quickly.

The wonderful world of Twitter has provided me with a new friend, some insights into some of my favorite politicians, and now, finally, wonderfully, the ultimate ice cream sandwich. Someone tweeted something about a so-called “Big Gay Ice Cream Truck” and well, what more did I need to hear? I started following the tweets of this man who drives a Mr. Softee truck but covers up it’s signage with his own BIG GAY signs, and who indulges his patrons’ desires for ever-more exotic, fun, and over-the-top toppings for their ice cream.

The first thing I read about was a contest to see who could name his new bacon-chocolate ice cream sandwich. I’m sorry, did you say BACON ICE CREAM SANDWICH?! Yes. Yes I did. This man — this genius — carmelizes bacon and then sticks it into ice cream sandwiches, like a BLT with a chipwich replacing the LT! I had to try it.

So one afternoon, Michelle and I had to go shoot some photos for a project we’re doing at work, and I suggested that on the way back we take a detour to Union Square where the Big Gay Ice Cream Truck was parked that day (You see, he updates Twitter every day with his location so his regulars can track him down wherever he may be in the city. Like I said, the guy’s a freaking genius).

Before I tell you about it, perhaps you should have a look:

So the night before he goes out, this guy camelizes bacon in brown sugar and maple syrup. Then when he makes your cartwheel he takes a thin chocolate wafer, layers it with the bacon, covers it with chocolate soft-serve, then tops it with a second wafer. Holy shit. It’s so sinful and so amazing. It’s got that salt-sweet thing that chocolate covered pretzels have. But with the smoked flavor of bacon! This ice cream sandwich makes me love life. (The best part? The bacon is only for those in the know — he leaves it off the menu so he doesn’t run out before his regulars have a chance to order it. You have to know to ask for it.) Michelle had a different, also delicious concoction: vanilla ice cream dipped in dulce de leche and then covered with crumbled Nilla wafers. It was freakin’ awesome.

Oh, so back to the bacon-ice-cream-sandwich-naming contest: I didn’t win. I suggested BLC, as a take-off on BLT, but standing for Bacon Loves Cream. Didn’t fly. I saw someone suggested “Kosher Killer” which I thought was a riot, but probably not the best for marketing in NYC. Someone suggested “Pig Cream” but I think that’s just gross. A couple days ago, a winner was announced. It’s now called The Choinkwich. To be honest, I don’t love the name, but hell, they could call it Arthur and I wouldn’t care!

Anyway, at $4 a pop, that was the best $8 I’ve spent in a long long long long time. Thank you, Big Gay Ice Cream Man!!

Aside to Adrienne Colla: “New York misses you, Girl.”

Cotton candy at the Easter Parade. Click all images for larger….And many more pictures of the weekend can be found here.

I love Easter because I love family, I love food, and I love Peeps! For family and food, my sister played Easter Bunny this year and came hippity-hoppity up from Washington. For Peeps, well, I still have some stale ones in the cupboard!

Stephanie arrived on Friday night. Patsy and I were both home and the three of us shared a cocktail and caught up a bit before dinner. We went to Frankies Spuntino in Carroll Gardens. I love this place. I’ve been three or four times in the last few weeks. Their food is fresh, carefully prepared, and basic in all the right ways. Stephanie had the homemade pappardelle with rabbit, and Patsy and I both had the pork brasciola. It was all divine. Their house wine is 12 bucks for half-liter carafe, and it’s delicious. Best wine bargain this side of the East River. Yummy!

The next morning, after coffee and cereal at home, Stephanie and I headed into the city. I had tickets for the opera, which Laura was attending with me. So I kissed Stephanie goodbye at 34th Street as she headed out for a day of shopping. She hit Macy’s then buzzed down to Century 21, stopping for a French lunch at Les Halles. I met Laura at the Met and we indulged in five sublime hours of Wagner. I’d never seen Die Walkure before. My god it was great (I’m going to blog about the opera separately, so stay tuned…). Laura brought us muffins and doughnuts from the farmers market. Mmmmmm — cider doughnuts!

Miss Howell arrives at the Met

We left Lincoln Center five hours later full of music and sturm und drang and met Stephanie at Alta for a cocktail and some bacon-wrapped dates (the fruit, not men). Our bartender was horrified by the idea of a five-hour opera, let alone a five-hour shopping spree, though he seemed to quite like Laura’s rather, uh, physically illustrated telling of how her bra wasn’t feeling so balanced (he feigned embarrassment, but his macho demeanor and his Boston accent gave him away–he loved it).

Amy and I sharing a laugh

We kissed Miss Howell goodnight and headed east to meet Jim & Alex and Phil & Amy for dinner. Phil and Amy are back in town from London for a few weeks, and it was wonderful to catch up with them and enjoy a nice dinner together. Felt like old times–happy laughter and food and wine.

Stephanie and I at dinner

Easter Sunday arrived with a crisp sunshine and a stiff breeze. Stephanie and I brunched at Clover Club on Smith Street, which is now my favorite place for brunch. Patsy and I went there a couple weeks ago and both times have been spectacular. Let’s just put it this way: one of the brunch entrees is called “Bacon tasting.” Oh yes indeed I had it! Stephanie and I split it, actually, along with an order of four yummy deviled eggs, which we thought was a funny thing to eat on Easter morning. Then we each had an order of ricotta pancakes. Oh my. I’m a believer again!

After brunch it was time for the traditional Easter Parade!

Fabulous folks dressed to the nines for Easter Sunday’s promenade

Scary characters at the Easter Parade!

Now the Easter Parade is not a parade at all–it’s a promenade. They close off 5th Avenue in Midtown and the people are free to simply mill about. The bonnets, the bunnies, the bon vivants! Some people are dressed in their Sunday best, arriving at the parade just after church. Some are turned out in fancy bonnets–homemade affairs of eggs and plastic flowers and fur and everything spring. Some are dressed up in costume–Easter rabbits, Alice in Wonderland characters, and all kinds of wacko freaky things you’d expect from an “only in New York” kind of event. We had a blast checking out all the funny hats, all the freaks, all the cute kids. And I took lots of pictures.

Sweet family on parade

Pastelly fellies at the parade

The Easter Bunny takes a break from parading

MoMA is conveniently half a block from the parade, and it’s somewhat of a tradition for me to go there afterward. We saw a fascinating photography show of the American West, as well as a nice small show about paper in the drawing galleries. We took in the main painting and sculpture galleries, then we followed another Easter tradition and found ourselves a couple of seats at the bar at The Modern. Along with cocktails we ate some homemade country sausage and an order of liverwurst which the bartender claimed was the “best wurst” in the city. (It was delicious, but I personally think the best wurst is to be found at Cafe Katja on the Lower East Side).

Stephanie and I in the sculpture garden at MoMA
Many more pictures of the weekend can be found here.

Easter is all about eternity, but Easter weekends always come to an end sometime. Stephanie went back to Penn Station to catch a train back to DC, and I picked up my lonely bicycle at the office and enjoyed a nice but windy 6-mile ride just before sunset.