Subject: Foods

• Xie Xie's Angelo Sosa Talks Sandwiches, Sriracha

   While the city's banh mi fever may be breaking, Angelo Sosa is betting that Asian sandwiches still have traction on our palates and in our stomachs, particularly if pork buns are involved. Yesterday, Sosa -- who was the executive sous chef at Jean-Georges and became synonymous with contemporary Chinese cuisine at Yumcha -- opened Xie Xie [645 Ninth Avenue, 212-265-2975], the first of his planned chain of fast-casual "Asian-inspired" sandwich restaurants. He shared a few opening-day thought

  July 24, 2009

• Tropical M&M's for Summer

  Coconut M&Ms​ We're a sucker for seasonal candy--red and green M&M's taste better, as do egg-shaped Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. So we snatched up this packet of coconut M&M's. The package shows one of the green candies (always the sexiest one) lounging under a coconut palm, and inside the pack, the colors are limited to white (oooh!), green, and brown, presumably the colors of coconuts and palm trees. Each one is printed with a tiny beach umbrella on the back. Crunch through the candy coa

  July 28, 2009

• Recipe: Twilight Summer Gazpacho

  ​ Caution: This delightful soup can only be eaten by the water at sunset. (Click to illuminate) Hop on your bike and ride furiously to the nearest farmers market. You have just enough time to make Fork in the Road's summer twilight gazpacho before the sun sets--and nothing goes better with the descending solar orb. Bring a bottle of fizzy white--a cava or a prosecco, preferably--and stake out a space on the Brooklyn, Queens, or Manhattan waterfronts, where expanses of grass make for soft

  July 28, 2009

• Daniel Boulud's DBGB Would Like to Pork You

  July 28, 2009

• Food That Probably Shouldn't Be Allowed to Exist

  ​You're sitting at your office desk, fluorescent light streaming around you like the heavenly illumination of a saint in a medieval manuscript. It's lunchtime, time to satisfy the animal cravings for food that have beset you all morning. You swivel in your chair, trying to decide what morsels to send down the pie hole, and how to make the most of your too-brief lunch period. Then the idea slaps you across the face. You must have a slider. And not just any slider, but one that's bedecked wi

  August 3, 2009

• Long Green Eggplants Cause an Uproar

  ​ Looking more like Indian snake squashes (or pods from another planet!) than eggplants, these veggies created a stir at the Friday Union Square farmers market. Eggplants are slow-growing, often taking three months from seed to mature fruit. So, the heyday of the eggplant season tends to be August and early September. I was strolling through the Union Square market on Friday, between cloudbursts, and saw a crowd up ahead around the Norwich Meadows Farm stall. Turns out the shoppers were g

  August 4, 2009

• The Early Word: Xie Xie Project

  Xie Xie's Asian lobster roll​ Xie Xie (pronounced "shay-shay" -- "thank you" in Mandarin) is a pan-Asian sandwich shop recently opened in Hell's Kitchen. It's opening was followed on many of the food blogs, and comments indicate that people were vaguely annoyed with this place before it even got started. Maybe it's because everyone's heard way too much about upscale Asian sandwiches this year--on the other hand, if it's a good upscale Asian sandwich, what's the problem? Sometimes the pro

  August 4, 2009

• The Early Word: Reis 100 Sandwich Factory

  A trio of tiny sandwiches. Left: White anchovy banh mi; Top: Orange-strawberry-almond jam with cream cheese: Bottom: Duck pate with pickled beets and turnips​ It's all sandwiches all the time around here. Bar Reis, a neighborhood bar in Park Slope, recently opened an annex called Reis 100 Sandwich Factory, serving, yes, 100 different mini sandwiches. It's a great business idea, since the shop is open until 2am, and you can bring the snacks into the bar with you. The diminutive, four-inch

  August 5, 2009

• Vegetarian Delights of NYC: Bharwaan Mushroom at Bhatti Indian Grill

  ​These stuffed mushrooms ("bharwaan" means "stuffed") from Bhatti Indian Grill have more going for them that the butter-sodden Western version of the dish. Cooked over a very hot open fire, the fat mushrooms get soft and caramelized around the edges. The caps are stuffed with a thin smear of fresh cheese curds that melts into the mushroom juice that squirts out when you bite. The dish is served with a copious amount of mint chutney and a sprinkle of cilantro. Stuffed vegetable dishes are

  August 6, 2009

• What's Happening This Week: A Corn Fiesta & A Lesson in Drinking Green

  As many of you know, our weekly dining and drinking newsletter features all the coolest epicurean events in the city. Sign up for it here! Greenmarket Inspired Mixology Astor Center August 12, 6:30-8:30 p.m. Drink responsibly! No, not in moderation, silly. Drink sustainably. Drink green. Join Allen Katz, master mixologist and chairman of the Slow Food USA Board of Directors, for a discussion on sustainability in the distillery, as well as in the cocktail glass. You'll get to compare local foods

  August 10, 2009

• Recipe: Make Jawn Chasteen's Summer Tomato Salad

  ​Tomato blight may be our own faults, as Dan Barber put forth in today's Times op-ed. But, according to Jawn Chasteen, the executive chef at The Sea Grill, the severe early blight has also allowed us to more fully appreciate just how precious the juicy fruits are. "The current blight has brought even more awareness to the brevity of the tomato season," he tells Fork in the Road. Now that's a glass-half-full kind of attitude, especially considering he and other chefs from The Patina Resta

  August 10, 2009

• How Do You Spell G-U-T-B-O-M-B? "Baked Potato" at Cowgirl Sea-Horse

  ​​You're sitting at your desk dreaming of a baked potato--piping hot, crisp-skinned, white-fleshed, and surmounted by a cloud of sour cream. Somewhere in there, there's room for a couple of pats of butter, too. Well, if this savory treat is what you crave, you'll be totally frustrated at newcomer Cowgirl Sea-Horse, which squats at the northernmost end of the South Street Seaport. True to its roots, the only potatoes you'll get there are fried. The "potato" you see above is really an

  August 12, 2009

• Our 10 Best Frozen Treats

  ​Remember when you were a kid, and your summer was measured out in frozen treats? Maybe your mom kept Popsicles in the freezer, and you had to sneak through the noisy screen door to snitch one. Or maybe every Friday evening, your dad would summon the family and pile everyone into the car and go to Baskin Robbins. Maybe, like me, your folks had an old-fashioned, hand-cranked ice cream maker that looked like a small green wooden barrel, and once a month or so we'd make vanilla ice cream, and

  August 14, 2009

• Recipe Improv: Goat, Prunes, and Smoked Paprika With Craftbar's Lauren Hirschberg

  Give this man some goat​Welcome to Recipe Improv, in which Fork in the Road throws three disparate ingredients at a chef to see what he or she can come up with. (Check out the full series here.) This week's contestant is Lauren Hirschberg, chef de cuisine at Craftbar. Hirschberg has worked his way up under Tom Colicchio--as a culinary student he worked a stage at Craft, where, two years later, he was promoted to sous chef. In 2008, he moved on over to Craftbar. The ingredients: Goat, pr

  August 14, 2009

• Fork in the Road on the Road: The Cape Cod Lobster Roll

  Not the best lobster roll ever, but one of many good lobster rolls​ One-fourth of Fork in the Road just got back from Cape Cod (where this particular one-fourth grew up). And you know what's great about Cape Cod? The fact that, no matter where you are, you are never far from a decent lobster roll at a decent price. The specimen above was obtained at Seafood Sam's, a local chain with four locations on the Cape. It's the "jumbo" size, easily a half pound of lobster, for $16 (the regular rol

  August 17, 2009

• At the Greenmarket: Tomatoes, Pimientos de Padron

  Incredibly sweet, low-acid cherry tomatoes from Norwich Meadows Farm​ Despite the tomato blight, the juicy fruits are plentiful at the Union Square Greenmarket right now, and not all of them will cost you your first-born child. Quality New Jersey beefsteaks and brandywines are going for $2.50 a pound at several farms, although these gorgeous cherry tomatoes at left cost $9 for two pints. Knobby, multi-colored heirloom varieties are going for about $4.50 a pound. In fact, if

  August 18, 2009

• Bacon Is Alive, Well, and Versatile

  Yogma/flickr​For the past couple of years, food blogger types have treated bacon a little like that band we used to like before everyone else thought it was cool: It used to be so great, but now we're, like, so over it, even if we still wear the concert T-shirt in an offhand, ironic sort of way. Endless Simmer, however, is having none of it. Declaring that "Bacon. Will. Never. Die.," they've got a post today that charts 100 uses for a stick of bacon, from bacon cups and bacon apple pie to

  August 18, 2009

• Xie Xie Now Delivers, Adds Salads to Menu

  Xie Xie, Angelo Sosa's Ninth Avenue Asian sandwich shop, is now delivering throughout Midtown West. It's also added salads to its menu, though they contain more or less the exact ingredients found in the shop's sandwiches (Vietnamese BBQ Beef, Sweet Glazed Pork), only with, well, greens.

  August 18, 2009

• Revisit: The General Greene

  ​ A few blocks east of Ft. Greene Park, the General Greene and its ice cream cart are a prominent fixture of the DeKalb dining scene. The General Greene came out of the paddock at a trot last August, then vaguely disappointed everyone with interesting-sounding food that was often poorly executed. When I checked the place out at lunch a few months ago, I lamented: "The pulled pork sandwich...organized something like a Cuban sandwich, was a colossal disappointment, since the pork had been r

  August 24, 2009

• Cookbook Tester: Hudson Valley Mediterranean by Laura Pensiero

  Watermelon fennel salad with bluefish dijonnaise​ Hudson Valley Mediterranean is written by Laura Pensiero, the chef/owner of Gigi Trattoria in Rhinebeck, NY, and Gigi Market in Red Hook (not Brooklyn), NY. Pensiero presents the Hudson Valley as the "Napa of the East," and the book's recipes, which are categorized by season, are accordingly Alice Waters-esque. So for summer, we get panzanella, tomato-basil soup, grilled steak and arugula, and so on. It's a little bit dull, but if you need

  August 27, 2009

• Bia Garden Opens Tonight at 6 p.m.

  The wait is no more: A rep for Michael Huynh's Bia Garden confirms it will indeed open tonight at 6 p.m. A roster of Asian beers will be available by the six-pack, dozen, and case. Click through for a look at the menu, which, in addition to the expected roster of Vietnamese bar food, contains less typical (for this stretch of Orchard Street, anyway) dishes like shaking beef and spicy curry frog. And nope, there's no banh mi.  

  August 28, 2009

• Grim News at Mari Vanna

  September 8, 2009

• Orange 'Tomato' Eggplant Appears

  ​ Small pumpkins? No, eggplants! Recently arrived in area farmers markets is the orange Turkish eggplant, also known as the tomato eggplant for its resemblance to a tomato. The specimens gathered at Abingdon Square this past Saturday are firm-fleshed, and had to be set aside for a few days to ripen. Soil conditions determine whether the fruit has sweet or bitter juices (which must be evacuated by osmosis, by slicing the eggplant and covering the exposed interior with salt, then squeezing

  September 9, 2009

• In Which We Discover Husk Cherries

  Husk cherries on the left, baby bell peppers on the right​ Browsing the Union Square Greenmarket today, we came across a large heap of parchment-colored, papery-husked fruits that seemed, at first glance, to be some sort of gooseberry. Actually, they're husk cherries, a fruit in the nightshade family, like tomatoes and tomatillos. Pop the small, canary yellow sphere out of the husk, and pop it in your mouth, where it gushes like a cherry tomato. But that's where the similarity to tomatoes

  September 14, 2009

• Cookbook Tester: Japanese Hot Pots

  Salmon hot pot--made with arctic char​ One of the only good things about summer's passing is the arrival of soup season. Just in time, Japanese Hot Pots: Comforting One-Pot Meals by Matsuri chef Tadashi Ono and writer Harris Salat comes out a week from today. Japanese hot pot, or nabemono, is different from the Chinese sort that you might be thinking of, for which the table receives a bubbling bowl of broth in which each person cooks bits of meat and vegetables (although, in that same v

  September 15, 2009

• Chatting with Mathieu Palombino on the New Motorino, Pizza Fetishes, and Classic French Food

  Mathieu Palombino​Belgian-born chef Mathieu Palombino's culinary roots are in classic French cuisine. He was the chef de cuisine at BLT Fish when the restaurant was awarded a Michelin star, and three stars in the New York Times. But he harbored a secret passion for Neapolitan pizza, and left fine dining to open Motorino, a wood-oven pizza place that has earned a rabid following. This week, he opened a second Motorino in the East Village, in the old Una Pizza Napoletana space. Last night,

  September 16, 2009

• At Bark, All Veggie Dogs Are Not Created Equal

  Thefastertimes.com​Yesterday, while skimming the Bark Hot Dogs take-out menu, something caught our eye. The veggie dog costs $7, a full 75 cents more than the most expensive of the regular hot dog variations. At any other hot dog joint, veggie dogs, if they're on the menu at all, are less expensive than their all-beef brethren, making them the natural choice for vegetarians and cheapskates alike. True, Bark's veggie dog comes with roasted mushrooms, chickpeas, lentils, and pickled garlic m

  September 18, 2009

• Battle of the Dishes: Veggie Dogs From Crif Dogs and Bark

  Bark's dog is on the left, Crif's is on the right.​ Ordering a veggie dog from a hot dog shack is a bit like ordering roast chicken at a seafood restaurant: Unless dietary constraints demand it, why bother? At most wiener establishments, they're treated at best as a consolation prize and at worst as a punishment. But when Bark opened its doors in Park Slope and news spread of its $7 veggie dog, it seemed as though the bar (as well as price tag) had been raised. Crif Dogs, on the other ha

  October 1, 2009

• David Sax Talks About Saving the Deli and the Enduring Appeal of Hot, Fatty Meat

  Tabletmag.com​Two years before David Sax was born, his paternal grandfather died while eating a smoked meat sandwich from Schwartz's Hebrew Delicatessen in Montreal. But the food that caused his grandfather's literal downfall was also his legacy: it "pickled my soul with a craving for salt, garlic, and secret spices," Sax writes. "My birthright was an unconditional love of deli." This unconditional, even lethal love is in part what inspired Sax to write Save the Deli, a book that has its

  October 13, 2009

• HOT MEAT

  October 13, 2009

• A Sneak Peak of What'll be Cooking at No. 7's Sub Shop

  The towering Tyler Kord​Although his new sub shop is at least three months away from opening, No. 7's chef, Tyler Kord, was able to offer FiTR a few savory tidbits about the place, which will be located cheek by jowl with Stumptown and the Breslin at the Ace Hotel. The take-out only shop "is all boarded up right now," says Kord. "They're doing the plumbing and electrical work," which he expects to take two months. After that, it'll take another month to open the shop, which he's hoping wil

  October 20, 2009

• This Week in Dear God, Why? A Cupcake Lounge for the LES

  papertrailsleaver.blogspot.com​What's the only thing less necessary than another cupcake shop? A cupcake lounge serving booze-laced cupcakes to be paired with more booze. Per Eater, that's what the Lower East Side is in for, courtesy of two of the dudes responsible for bringing the neighborhood the Eldridge, the bar whose owner last year set new records in the Douchebag Olympics. The new place, to be called Red Velvet, will have a door policy to go along with the buttercream, suggesting th

  October 20, 2009

• Vegetarian Delights of NYC: Achar

  Laut's achar​ This Malaysian salad is made of lightly pickled vegetables, like carrot, cucumber, and cabbage, plus pineapple for sweetness. The sticky dressing is based on fried sesame seeds and peanuts, pounded together with shallots, galangal, lemongrass, chiles, and candlenuts. Sweet and tangy, it's a delicious way to cool your mouth while eating spicy Malaysian food. This rendition--very tasty, but a bit miserly on the portion size--came from Laut, a strange restaurant where--if you pi

  October 22, 2009

• At Highlands, Andrew Hamilton Brings the Haggis

  zoonabar/flickrA haggis herd.​ When Highlands opens this weekend, the Scottish gastropub's menu will go where scant few others have dared: to the haggis, the most revered and reviled of Scotland's traditional foods. That the mention of the dish, which is made by boiling a sheep's organs in its stomach, still invokes disgust among Americans now accustomed to offal-saturated menus is due in part to the fact that it's been illegal to import haggis since the British mad cow scare of the early

  October 23, 2009

• Battle of the Dishes: Asian Fish Sandwiches

  Xie Xie's Fish Cha Ca La Vong​ The effects of the Asian sandwich explosion can be glimpsed most poignantly in the Pygmalion-like transformation of the lowly fish sandwich. Once synonymous with thickly battered, mercilessly deep-fried square patties squished between a styrofoam bun and further humiliated by a piece of orange plastic cheese, the filet-o-fish has become, in the hands of the sandwich revisionists, a different beast entirely. Flattered, caressed, and embellished by cilantro bo

  October 27, 2009

• DEATH BY CHOCOLATE

  October 27, 2009

• Wild Game Festival at Henry's End in Brooklyn Heights

  ​ Last week, the Wall Street Journal ran a piece on the wild game renaissance in British restaurants. Apparently, younger chefs across the pond are creating modern, accessible game dishes, leaving aside heavy sauces, and boning small game birds for customers who don't want to be bothered picking through the carcass. And lean game meats like venison, rabbit, grouse, and elk have become attractive to consumers who are trying to avoid industrially produced beef and poultry. But you'd be har

  October 28, 2009

• Recipe: Make David Suarez's Panzanella de Calabaza con Hongos (Chopped Bread Salad with Pumpkin and Mushrooms)

  ​Halloween may have come and gone, but that doesn't mean it's time to start hanging Christmas decoration just yet. The Pan de Muerto is a traditional Day of the Dead recipe, ritually made every year in the weeks leading up to All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day on the first and second of November, respectively. It also happens to make a tasty salad when combined with fresh pumpkin, radicchio, and queso fresco. "Chopping up the Pan de Muerto and using it in a Panzanella is an easy way to m

  November 2, 2009

• Recapping the Chocolate Show, Morsel by Morsel

  One of William Dean's delectables.​Bowls of cacao beans, vats of liquid chocolate, and stacks of truffles invaded the Metropolitan Pavilion in Chelsea this past weekend as the Chocolate Show touched down in New York. French event planners Sylvie Douce and Francoise Jeantet have taken their trade show around the world in order to give the public a glimpse into the inner workings of gourmet chocolate. The 12th-annual event featured exhibits from international chocolatiers, as well as chocola

  November 3, 2009

• Rum Along to Ambiance

  November 3, 2009

• SD26: Food in Need of Love

  November 3, 2009

• Battle of the Dishes: Grass-Fed, Local Steak Versus Supermarket Steak

  Left: Kinderhook Farm rib steak from Marlow and Daughters; Right: Key Foods rib steak​ As retail experiences go, they were as different as it gets: I walked into Key Foods and found a bone-in rib steak in the refrigerated section, packaged in a Styrofoam container and covered in plastic. The label provided no information other than the cut, the weight (.80 pound), and the price ($7.90 at $9.99 per pound). Then I headed to Williamsburg and asked the bearded butcher behind the counter at Mar

  November 5, 2009

• Our 10 Best Cheeses

  ​ ​Is it a piece of marble or a blue cheese? And did it make the list of Our 10 Best Cheeses? Who doesn't love cheese? A friend says she administers a cheese test to potential boyfriends. If the guy doesn't crave the coagulated milk products of cows, sheep, goats, or water buffalo, it's no dice! (Why is there no such thing as pig's milk cheese? And what about llama cheese?)

  November 6, 2009

• Abe & Arthur's Says Goodbye to Disco, Hello to Comfort Food

  November 10, 2009

• Incredibly Cheap Eats: Bulgogi Sandwich at Sukarak

  ​Salted away in a U-shaped strip mall in the eastern area of Flushing known as Murray Hill, Sukarak is a Korean snack shop and lunch counter that isn't afraid to fuse Korean and American food, with a little Japanese thrown in for good measure...

  November 12, 2009

• Pichet Ong Gets Ready to Open Spot on November 17

  Pichet OngPichet Ong at the soon-to-open Spot.​ Although Batch may have closed in March, Pichet Ong has been busier than ever these past few months. In addition to opening Spot, his Asian dessert bar with the owners of Michael Huynh's OBAO, next Tuesday, the 17th, the pastry chef plans to re-open Batch next spring, is working on a new cookbook he'll publish in 2011, and has two other projects in the works that he'd rather not discuss at the present time. Fork in the Road got a preview of w

  November 13, 2009

• Battle of the Dishes: Bean to Bar Chocolate Bars From Jacques Torres and Mast Brothers

  ​ There's a reason that very few chocolatiers can claim to manufacture their chocolate from bean to bar. Transforming raw cacao beans to molded bars is a time- and space-consuming process that doesn't lend itself to the snug confines of most New York chocolate shops. The fact that it takes about 400 beans to make one pound of chocolate is in itself a deterrent to manufacture, and that's before you begin to factor in all of the equipment needed for cleaning, bean and nib roasting, liquor m

  November 13, 2009

• Vegetarian Delights of NYC: The Clean Slate at Saltie

  ​The "clean slate" at Saltie is one of the few sandwiches not made with focaccia. Saltie is a new sandwich shop (mainly carryout but with some counter seating) that seeks to redefine what a sandwich is. Above is the "clean slate," a vegetarian sandwich made with a homemade naan, which has a crisp surface and spongy interior.

  November 17, 2009

• An Early Look at East Village Asian Dessert Place, Spot: Serving Ovaltine Ice Cream, Chinese Walnut Cookies

  Ovaltine ice cream with "walnut soil"​ This week, Ace Watanasuparp and Chai Huadwattana opened Spot, a modern Asian dessert bar on St. Marks, with Pichet Ong as consulting chef. Last night, they were offering six different "seasonal dessert tapas," like white miso semifreddo and jackfruit cake with rum toffee. To-go options included cupcakes (flavors like chocolate-apricot-green tea, and vanilla-almond-coconut), several cookies, and a slew of ice creams and sorbets, including Vietnamese co

  November 19, 2009

• Vegetarian Delights of NYC: Roasted Cauliflower Sandwich at Num Pang

  ​ ​Even though there's seating upstairs in the tiny shop, many would prefer to eat their sandwich al fresco. Num Pang is a sandwich shop whose purpose is to tweak the banh mi formula in unexpected directions. If you go there jonesing for a traditional banh mi, you'll be sadly disappointed, but many of the sandwiches have an exciting traction all their own. Because chef Ratha Chau was born in Cambodia, some of the sandwiches swing in that direction, tastewise. Somewhat paradoxically

  November 20, 2009