Happy Brunch

Earlier this week, the family went for Mother's Day Brunch at Amanda's in Hoboken. It was delightful, and clearly even my main course (crab hash with poached eggs and hollandaise) was having a fun time.



(If you don't see the smiley face, you need to go back to kindergarten and repeat the day where they teach you how to use your imagination.)

A Tale Of Two (Huge) Sandwiches: Part The Second

A couple of weeks after eating the White House sandwiches I mentioned in the first part of this post, I found myself in Brooklyn on a weekday afternoon in need of lunch. On days like that, sometimes I'll make a trip out to DeFonte's in Red Hook. While I was disappointed to learn that the DeFonte's hot roast beef hero is not, in fact, the sandwich featured in the "Sandwich Day" episode of 30 Rock (and, note to self, go to Fiore's next time I'm in Hoboken), it remains well worth the trip.

On a couple of previous visits, I've ordered the aforementioned hot roast beef hero (with fried eggplant, fresh mozzarella and cooking juices from the roast beef, delicious) and taken it to eat in nearby Red Hook Park. However, on this particular day the weather was unpleasant, so my plan was to get a sandwich and bus it back to my apartment before digging in. I wasn't sure a hot sandwich was the best choice given the anticipated delay of about 30 minutes, so I decided to go with a Nicky's Special.

This delicious sandwich has ham, capicola, salami, fried eggplant, provolone, hot salad (more on this in a moment), marinated mushrooms, lettuce, tomato, oil and vinegar. Because the small size sandwich (on 1/3 loaf of italian bread, $10) is too much food for one meal, but not enough for two, I decided to order the large size (on 1/2 loaf of italian bread, $12) and be sure to get two solid meals out of it. I'm afraid to say that the picture I took doesn't remotely do this sandwich justice, but take a look anyway:



If you're curious, there are better pictures on the web if you do a Google image search for "defonte's nicky special". You can't really tell from my picture, but half of the large sandwich is so much food that I wasn't hungry for dinner both days when I had the sandwich for lunch.

The hot salad is really what knocks this sandwich out of the park. Mixed spicy vegetables (probably marinated in a vinegar/peppers mix) provide some bite to cut the richness of the meat and the cheese and the fried eggplant. The only "problem", if it can be called that, is that the bread was stuffed so full of good ingredients that the hot salad tended to fall off the top, but this is still way preferable to a sandwich that's all bread. Highly recommended (as is the hot roast beef sandwich I mentioned above), and note that if you want to give it a try but don't frequent South Brooklyn, they recently opened a satellite location in Manhattan at 21st and 3rd.

A Tale Of Two (Huge) Sandwiches: Part The First

You know what's good? Sandwiches. Sure, a fancy meal is awesome every now and then, but sandwiches are delicious and filling and generally quite affordable. Honestly, I think the greatness of sandwiches is so universally acknowledged that I don't even need to say anything more on the subject.

A few weeks ago I found myself in Atlantic City for the 2011 ECAC Men's Hockey Tournament. The outcome of the games... well, we don't really need to talk about that. But I was happy to be down there because it gave me an opportunity to try out the White House Sub Shop. If you're not familiar with it, the White House is a famous deli not far from Trump Plaza (which, by the way, has free self-parking just a couple of blocks away) that's been turning out huge, awesome, cheap sandwiches for decades, and has the yellowed celebrity photos on the wall to prove it. You can't read a review of the White House without hearing stories of how people stop there on the way out of town to buy a bunch of sandwiches to take home, or have them delivered by courier, or how Frank Sinatra reportedly had a bunch shipped to his movie sets. So, I had to give it a try.

I had read stories of people waiting in line for an hour or more at the White House, but my arrival was conveniently in the lull between lunch and dinner and there were only a couple of people in line ahead of me. Once my number was called, I gave my order to the sandwich-maker (who called me "Chris" because apparently I look like a guy named Chris): a half tuna and a half White House Special. My plan was to eat the tuna for a late lunch/early dinner, and the Special (salami, ham, provolone, capicola) as a snack on my ride home later that night. It should be noted here that a half is on a half a loaf of bread - about a foot long, still a big sandwich. The tab for both sandwiches came in at around $14. I took my sandwiches to a little park across the street and dug in. Here's a picture of the tuna sandwich:



Or, let's be more precise: this is HALF of a half tuna sub, after I had devoured the first half before it occurred to me to take a picture. Note 20 ounce soda bottle shown in the background for perspective. You get a lot of sandwich for $7. The bread was fresh and awesome, and actually sturdy enough to basically hold all the ingredients; the tuna was chunky and tasty and not overly mayonnaise-y; the tomatoes were fresh; the onions and oil and vinegar gave it some kick; the lettuce... was lettuce. This was a delicious sandwich, and big enough that I couldn't finish it. (Without any chips on the side or anything, either.) Stashed the other sandwich in the trunk of the car (so the inside wouldn't smell like meat for days afterward), went to the game.

Well, I think the picture of the first sandwich demonstrates the flaw in my plan: these sandwiches are way too big to eat while driving. As a result, I wound up making my way back to the Parkway and pulling off at the first rest area I found, only a couple of miles up from the Atlantic City Expressway, to pick up a bottle of water and go to town on that bad boy. Unfortunately, because I was eating in the car (sorry Mom), I wasn't able to take a picture of the Special, so I'm borrowing these, with credit to Always Hungry New York:



In addition to the great bread and the delicious meats and cheese and lettuce and tomato and onion, note the hot pepper relish on top. That stuff was a particular highlight, definitely something that sets sandwiches from the White House apart from what you might find elsewhere. Because I wasn't all that hungry after eating the tuna sub earlier, I ate half of the Special and brought the rest home for my father to enjoy (and also out of guilt since I had made a sandwich with the last of the roast beef for lunch earlier in the day).

Incredible sandwiches. Just thinking about them makes me want to go have lunch right now. If you ever find yourself in Atlantic City, you should definitely make a stop. I'm told their cheesesteaks and meatball subs are excellent as well. (NB: They also have a location set to open in the Trump Taj Mahal sometime within the next couple of weeks.)

Part 2 soon to come...

Taco In A Cone Is A Taco In A Cone

(With a nod to Ted Berg for the wording of the title.)

Well, that isn't really true; the biggest flaw with Target Field's new Walk-A-Taco (CBS Minnesota news item) is also the reason why this post's title is misleading. The Walk-A-Taco is not, in fact, a taco in a cone. Rather, it's a taco salad in a cone. Now, that isn't the worst thing in the world; the taco salad is a pretty good food item. But what it's not is a taco, which is a better food item. Here's a picture of a taco cone, as it was sold to me at the Twins' home opener on Friday, April 8, 2011:



I guess I had three main gripes with the Walk-A-Taco:

1. The Cone

Now, obviously you can't just take a regular hard taco shell, remake it into the shape of a cone, and call it a day. It'd be far too fragile (I can barely eat a hard taco without getting food all over myself as it is) to be any kind of a portable food item. The shell for the Walk-A-Taco was actually more like a fried taco bowl from a taco salad remade into a cone form. It's marginally more sturdy, yes, but the taste wasn't really right, and it felt vaguely greasy. I had actually guessed it would be in more of a flatbread-type wrapper, like a Taco Bell chalupa, and I still think that would be a better choice, but then I guess it would be more like a gyro-with-taco-filling rather than a Walk-A-Taco.

2. The Filling

As you can probably tell from the picture above, the Walk-A-Taco has a lot of lettuce in it. This wasn't just the case at the top; the proportion of meat to lettuce that you can see is about what it was throughout. The dressing was also more appropriate for a salad than for a taco, more of a southwestern vinaigrette (or maybe it was more or a ranch) than anything taco sauce/salsa-like. The meat was in larger bite-size chunks rather than in ground taco meat form, which I suppose has both good and bad points. There was some chopped tomato and shredded cheese in there as well, but overall, yeah, a lot of lettuce. The jalapenos, sour cream and cilantro featured prominently in the product shown in that CBS story? Non-existent, as far as I can recall.

3. Portability

See the fork there in the picture I included? You're going to need that. This is the case because, as I explained above, what you're really eating is a salad and not a taco, and even if the cone itself were perfectly conducive to walking and eating (and it's not), you'd still want to eat it with a fork. Because of this, my friend and I wound up walking a few sections until we found a ledge where we could put down our beers so we could eat with the provided forks. And you know how, when you're eating an ice cream cone, sometimes the bottom will crack (or just be leaky to start with) and the melty ice cream at the bottom will drop on your shirt? Yeah, that happens with a Walk-A-Taco too, except instead of ice cream it's salad dressing. (A cure for that problem: Dippin' Dots! ICE CREAM OF THE FUTURE!)

(I should add that the line at the stand selling the Walk-A-Taco was one of the longest anywhere in the stadium. However, I think that's because it was a new food item being sold on opening day and lots of people wanted to try it; I would imagine that the lines will die down eventually, so I didn't think this was worth calling a major issue.)

None of this is to say that the Walk-A-Taco is a bad food item, of course. If you're at Target Field and you want something with vegetables, this might actually be your best choice; probably not even all that bad for you if you don't eat the cone itself. But if I find myself back there, I think I'm going to stick to what they're best at: meat in tube form.

Hecho En Dumbo

Wow, it has been a while since I last wrote! Time to remedy that...

Last night, before a show at the Mercury Lounge, a friend and I went to Hecho en Dumbo, on the Bowery between 4th and Great Jones. The name, if you haven't heard of the place before, is a reference to the fact that the restaurant was originally located in DUMBO, but relocated across the river about a year ago.

As far as the atmosphere goes, the noise level was buzzy (it was pretty crowded the whole time we were there, on a Thursday evening) but not really what I'd call loud. It was very warm inside, even on a cold winter night, so you might want to be prepared for that; also, there's only one bathroom (which is huge, and I don't know why they don't subdivide it). We waited a little while for our table, as you might expect at a crowded restaurant, but once we were seated everything came out fairly quickly. Service was friendly, although perhaps not the most attentive.

Everything we ate was very tasty. The portions weren't huge, though also not as small as some of the Yelp reviews would lead you to believe. I guess the thing is, if you go into your meal expecting it to be like Chipotle, where you get a huge burrito for $8 and that's your meal, or like a traditional taqueria where you get a couple of $2 tacos and you're done, you're not going to be happy with your price/volume-of-food ratio. If you think of it as going to a Manhattan restaurant that happens to be serving Mexican food rather than Italian or Japanese or whatever else, you'll be fine with it. My friend and I were stuffed for $48 each (including tax, tip, and one drink each), and we're both hearty eaters.

We started with an order of guacamole, prepared fresh and a bit creamier in texture than I generally expect. Queso Fundido Huitlacoche (with mushrooms) was delicious, though I'm not sure how much credit I can give since melted cheese is, by rule, always awesome. Next we had an order of mixed seafood tacos (called "tacos el alcalde", though I'm not sure what the mayor has to do with them), which were an interesting blend of smoked sable, shrimp and braised octopus. If I were I more pretentious writer, I'd say that the smoked fish pays tribute to the Lower East Side's Jewish heritage, but I'm not. At about the same time we also received our burritas (basically just a burrito cut into three pieces), with wine-braised steak, black beans and caramelized onions. The meat was very tender and I would definitely order these again. (Actually, everything I've mentioned I would order again.) Last, we had Carnitas Campechanas, a variety of cuts of pork (shoulder, belly, cheek, ear), served with small tortillas and a spicy green (tomatillo and avocado, according to the website) sauce. One of the more expensive things on the menu, but also a nicely sized pile of delicious pork. (I'm not a good Jew.) It was reminiscent of Cuban roast pork I sometimes get for lunch at Sophie's, except way better.

As a final note on price, the tacos were $11 for three fairly small tacos, which seems a bit steep, even for seafood. On the other hand, the burritas, for $9, could probably be a meal on their own for daintier eaters, since if you put the three pieces together you'd basically have a medium-sized (not Chipotle-sized, but reasonable) burrito. The guacamole ($7) and queso fundido ($9) were right in line with what you'd expect to pay for a sharing-oriented appetizer anywhere else in Manhattan. The carnitas, as I mentioned, were one of the most expensive things on the menu ($21), but they were also a big pile of pork that defeated me and my friend.

One last thing: I'm coming to the conclusion that I just don't like micheladas, so I don't think the fact that I didn't like theirs is significant. Should've had a regular beer or a drink with tequila instead.

Definitely Soup

So I decided that the stock, or maybe soup, or maybe stock, or maybe soup, that I was working on should be soup after all. Figured that after going out and buying stew beef, I may as well turn this directly into something I could eat. Grabbed another couple of carrots and another couple of sticks of celery out of the fridge, cut them up and added them to the pot. Went to the grocery store and picked up a couple of small potatoes and a shallot; peeled them, cut them up, threw them in with the rest, left it all to simmer for another couple of hours. Voila: soup!

And let me tell you... it was great! Here's what it looked like in the pot, after I'd eaten about half of it:


And in a bowl, ready to go:


I don't know that there's another expensive steak dinner in my near future, so I won't have steak bones to start with again, but I think I may try the same thing with just stew beef sometime. Maybe I'll buy some marrow bones too, because mmmmm marrow.

Adventures In... Stock? Soup? TBD...

About a week and a half ago, my cousin Mike and I went to Wolfgang's in Tribeca and had some steaks. (Well, had a steak, since Wolfgang's does "steak for N" in the same style as Peter Luger.) When we got done eating, there was this lovely t-bone with a fair amount of meat still on it, and it seemed like it would be a shame to just let it get thrown away, so I took it home planning to make beef stock out of it. (I had done the same thing a couple of years ago with a couple of Peter Luger steak bones, and figured maybe I could manage the same thing now.)

So I started the bone boiling in water, added a couple of carrots and a couple of stalks of celery and an onion, figuring that those were about the basic ingredients of beef stock. And salt and pepper, because everything needs salt and pepper. After about four hours of simmering the first night, I realized that the taste was very watery, and that I had to add more beef. So I went to Trader Joe's and bought a pound of stew meat, browned that in a hot pan and then put it into the pot with the rest. At this point it occurred to me that maybe instead of stock I could make beef vegetable soup, so... now I'm trying to decide whether to do that. I guess we'll see what I decide! Stay tuned...