New York City: Union Square Cafe

I'll admit that I place far less emphasis on the importance of good service than I do good food.  Many places we frequent - Spicy Hut being a very good example - usually have barely tolerable service but such good food that I'm willing to overlook small details like prompt service, full water glasses, or even the remotest hint of human warmth and kindness.  I can have a fantastic meal without it being garnished with smiles and friendly conversations.  In fact, I prefer an aloof server to a fawning one, the kind who compliments your every menu choice like you're some sort of gastronomic genius.

"Yes, excellent choice, the filet mignon is my favorite!  And you'd like it boiled, not grilled?  Oh, very good, sir!  And, sorry, what?  A bottle of...pardon me, ketchup?  We don't usually have any on hand, but only because we haven't as refined a palette as you, sir.  We'll send our chef out right away to get some.  And for you, ma'am?  Whatever is stuck to the bottom of my shoe, and you would like it well done. Brilliant!  I'll just go place your orders and will return in moment with your drinks and more insincere flattery."

However, if I am being served great food by someone who truly understands great service, then even I can recognize that a memorable meal can become something more: a memorable evening.

My wife.  Gosh, she's purty!

We had such a meal at New York's famous Union Square Cafe.  The food was fantastic, and our server, Patti, had a perfect blend of humour and cheekiness, while also taking care of the essentials.  I like someone who can serve up a witty "dig" as easily as they serve a meal.

I know it must sound a little bit masochistic, but I really do appreciate a clever put-down, even at my expense (then nobody gets hurt).  Over the years I've heard numerous attempts, mostly jabs about my (lack of) height.  The vast majority have been unimaginative and just plain irritating.  (If one more tall person leans over to rest his elbow on my head, I'm going to bite him in the ribs.)  But some have risen above the mundane and come up with some clever quips:

Once I was rejected by a prospective date when she looked down, held her arm out, and said, "Sorry, you have to be this tall to ride this ride."

More recently, I was marking attendance for our dragonboat team when one paddler asked me, "Are you making a list and checking it twice?"  To which another team member responded, "No no, Santa makes the naughty or nice list, not the elves."

These were funny, even (especially?) if I was the punch line.  So, if my waitress has similar wit and confidence to banter with good-natured barbs, there's a good chance it's going to be a fun evening.  Assuming, of course, that the food is equally impressive, as was the case at the Union Square Cafe.

I had lobster ravioli in a lemon butter sauce and was fortunately saved the embarrassment of licking the shallow bowl clean by soaking it up with a few remaining slices in our bread basket.  I was sorely tempted to order another round of ravioli, but I was trying to save myself for dessert.  And I was very grateful I did, because as much as I liked the main course, the dessert was even better!
  

I know, the focus is blurry.  Blame it on my iPhone.

 
Dessert was a two-bite Mascarpone cheesecake topped with a scoop of grapefruit sorbet. But what really made it for me was the fennel crust.  I don't know how they were able to peer into my carmelized soul and combine three of my favorite things into one dessert - cheesecake, grapefruit, and licorice - but they did.  Even though this meal was in celebration of Alison's and my anniversary, I was starting to feel something akin to love for our unseen chef.

Alison also enjoyed her meal which she finished with an intriguing dessert: a Porter Ice Cream Sundae.  This thing had pretzel-caramel popcorn and a black pepper (yes, pepper!) whipped cream topping.  Crazy good!  

It's odd.  I've read some very mixed reviews of this New York landmark, but we had nothing to complain about.

Except maybe a lack of booster seats.  (heh)


The Last Bite:
Like I said, I've heard a lot of really lame short jokes/insults, and only a few smart ones.  Have you heard any good ones?  Pass them along!  I can always use more.  After all, the best defense is a good offense.

New York City: Japadog

The Japanese are well-known for taking western ideas and developing them into something that is familiar but unmistakably Japanese.  For some things, the results have become synonymous with improved design and quality.  Sony and Honda are perfect examples.  Another lesser-known example of Japan taking a western invention and helping it fulfill its potential is the vending machine.  In Japan, people aren't content to use vending machines to just buy soft drinks and snacks.  When I lived in Hokkaido, vending machines carried a much wider assortment of products including hot coffee (or cocoa) in a can, batteries, laundry detergent, and finger puppets.  For a few thousand yen (not nearly as much money as it sounds), a five-year-old could also buy enough sake from a street-side vending machine to put her entire kindergarten class into a coma.

Of course, if you want a soft drink, those are also available but in intriguing varieties like Pocari Sweat (not a typo...it is Sweat, not Sweet), Muscat Melon, Calpis (say it out loud for the full effect), and Cucumber Pepsi.  And we think we're so innovative when we add a bit of cherry to Dr. Pepper.

In food, the results are a bit more mixed.  McDonald's serves a teriyaki burger in Japan that isn't too bad, and their melon flavoured milkshakes are really good.  The Batman movies are hugely popular in Japan, and just like here, each new film is accompanied by an enormous cross-promotional marketing campaign.  We've all bought snacks, usually some kind of chip, that features a movie scene on the front of the bag and a collectible card or sticker inside.  Well, I collected a few cards - featuring characters from the Batman movie - found in bags of crispy snacks when I lived in Japan.  Only instead of corn or potatoes, these were made from dried squids.  They were actually better than you would imagine.  (They would have to be, wouldn't they.)

So, when we saw a hot dog place in the East Village called Japadog, we were naturally intrigued.  Japadog, founded in Vancouver B.C., takes your traditional beef wiener and bun combination and gives it a washoku twist.  They offer over 20 varieties, half of which were available at their NYC location.  Some options sounded like crimes against nature - the Yakisoba noodle dog sounds about as appetizing as an iCarly spaghetti taco (I have kids; don't judge me) - but we each ordered different versions that looked like they had real potential.  Alison picked Japadog's signature dog, the Terimayo.  It features Japanese mayonnaise (apple cider vinegar gives it more bite than its western counterpart) and teriyaki sauce over a beef sausage, all garnished with a small nest of nori seaweed.  I selected the Tonkatsu which replaced the wiener altogether with two small breaded pork cutlets, buried under a big pile of shredded cabbage and drizzled with a sweet tonkatsu sauce. 

I'll admit I had much higher hopes for Japadog than Alison did.  I expected a culinary experience that would be both nostalgic for my days spent in Japan and exciting in a way that "adventure eaters" everywhere can appreciate.  So when I try to describe to you just how disappointing it was, English fails me and I need to use a word that has the kind of depth that can only be found in a language where each character (each "letter", if you will) in a word contains a multitude of meanings.  The Japanese have such a word.  I can't display the Japanese kanji, but I can tell you how it's pronounced:

"Blecchhh!"

Japadog's first mistake was to boil the wieners instead of grilling them.  That was followed by a bland-as-white-bread (literally) bun, untoasted and unappealing.  Finally, as fun as the  East meets West combinations sounded, the hot dogs were still very much like Skyping or phoning my parents with both of them on the line st the same time.  Separately, they're fine, but together they spend much of the time bickering with each other (usually over whose fault it is that the webcam isn't working properly), leaving us to sit back and observe the whole scene with dismay.  The two aspects of the Japadog are similarly conflicted.  Sampled separately, the flavours were fine, but together...well, you'd think they had been married for 40 years.

I thought I avoided the mystery meat scenario with my dog's pork cutlets, but the first cutlet had a bit a gristle in it, and the second cutlet had a bit of meat in it.  I ended up throwing away half of it, and we both left Japadog feeling queasy and very disappointed.

I have since learned that Japadog also serves specially spiced fries, and others who agree with our lackluster assessment of the hot dogs have admitted to loving the fries.  That just makes me even sadder;  I would have liked to have tried the wasabi fries, since I can no longer find one of my favorite snacks, wasabi potato chips, at any of Calgary's Japanese importers.

If I can offer some advice, if you find yourself in New York and feeling a bit "peckish for tubesteak" (nope, not a euphemism), skip Japadog and visit Sigmund twice instead.

New York City: Nikas versus Sigmund

Naturally, most of my restaurant reviews have been for locations found in the Calgary area, with the occasional Montanan eatery thrown in for good measure during the summer. 

That’s about to change!

For the next several blog entries I’m going to bring you along for a trip to New York City with Alison and me.  Five days.  Five reviews.  Four nights.  (Couldn’t afford the extra night.)

Let's start with the knish. 

I will freely admit I had heard of knish, but knew nothing more than the following: it's edible and...well, that's about it.  Calgary just doesn't have a large enough Jewish community to support a dedicated knish food cart, let alone achieving the market penetration of, say, the Tim Hortons chain of Canadian coffee and baked goods.  And the Ukrainians who immigrated to Alberta generations ago have been really (some might say obsessively) focused on dominating the perogy niche.  So, having access to knish on just about every street corner in Manhattan was a clear sign we needed to give it a try. We decided on a late lunch/snack after building appetites navigating 6 floors of the Museum of Modern Art.  (When even a Mondrian starts to look like a cheeseburger, it’s time to eat.)

Now I know that buying food off the street can be a risky proposition, but the vendor we chose had bright, cheerful umbrellas; and just because his name was Nikas didn't mean we weren't going to get authentic traditional Hebrew cuisine.  He could have been Jewish.  Why not?  You would never guess I was part Welsh, wouldja?  I don’t have long blond hair, pointed ears, or magical powers.  (Wait, maybe I’m thinking of Elves.  Hmm...no, I was right the first time; that’s definitely the Welsh.)   Sure, my middle name, Lloyd (the double "L" signals the mandatory addition of phlegm to the pronunciation and gives the name more “impact”) is a dead giveaway, but it's not like I share that information with just anyone.

Well, I don't know how typical our knishes (pluralized like "fishes", right?) were as far as preparation and presentation, but we each received a slightly grainy, doughy dumpling filled with mustard.  The knish itself was pretty bland and its mild flavor was completely overwhelmed by the mustardy center.  As a whole, it reminded me of an undercooked jelly donut filled with whatever could be found in the fridge when the raspberry jam ran out.  Oh look, another reference to Tim Hortons!

If we had left the experience there, with indifference, that would have been fine.  But within 15 minutes of eating our street dumplings, we were both feeling pretty queasy.  (No, I'm not holding all knish-mongers responsible for our rumbly tumblies.  Like I said before, we knew there were risks eating something found, as it were, "on the street".  If everyone subscribed to such a negative attitude, people in the southern United States would have quit barbecuing armadillo after just their first roadkill.)  So, we weren't exactly racing each other to the next street vendor, but we also weren’t about to let some mild stomach upset keep us from trying another one if the opportunity arose to sample a higher grade of knish.

At least that was my philosophy until later that evening.  Both of our unsettled bellies - and appetites - had returned to normal by dinner time, so we kept our reservation at a restaurant recommended by friends.  I don't want this restaurant painted with the same brush as Nikas’ unfortunate delicacy ("best paired with a red, may I recommend a late 2011 Pepto Bismal?"), so I'll  save this restaurant's name for another blog entry.  Alison and I both had wonderful evening meals, but my nausea from earlier in the day returned with a vengeance, and in homage to the action painters of the early 20th century we had seen at the MOMA that very morning, I proceeded to create my very own Jackson Pollack in the hotel bathroom after we returned to our room.

You probably think I got what I deserved.  A pretty umbrella has never been a guaranteed seal of approval from the local health inspector, so what the hell were we thinking? 

Our expectations were actually set pretty high because of the street meat we had enjoyed just the day before in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  Sigmund is a well-known purveyor of pretzels in the New York City area.  They are also known to sell the occasional tubesteak.  But when they combine their specialties into a single product,  you get the best hot dog I have ever eaten. 

Imagine an all beef wiener (stop snickering right now; I'm not going there) couched in, not a half-soggy half-stale hot dog bun, but a fresh bun-shaped pretzel.  Then smother it in fresh ground mustard and spiced sauerkraut.  Before I had tried this...this miracle, I barely tolerated regular hot dogs.  Now Simund has rendered the standard variety nearly inedible for me.

I mean think about it:  Pretzel. Hot dog. Together!  It's as inspired a combination as root beer & ice cream, Captain & Tenille, or volleyball & nude beaches.

It does make me wonder what other alternatives to unappealing hot dog buns we might be able to wrap around a pork sausage....pizza crust?  French toast?  Garlic bread?  Or...(wait for it)....knish!

Hmm, something tells me that might not be exactly kosher with a lot of customers.