Behold the Power of Trends, and a LONG Tangent

This post was supposed to include some nice pictures of last Friday's dinner. (OK, it still could, for reasons I'll discuss below, but bear with me for the moment.) On Friday evening, after work, I met up with my sister Lauren and my brother-in-law Brian to have dinner at The Meatball Shop, a fairly new (opened in February) and significantly buzzed-about Lower East Side restaurant specializing in (no points for guessing this one) meatballs. The menu includes five different kinds of meatballs (beef, pork, chicken, veggie, and a weekly special), and you can order any one of the types in a variety of ways including a variety of different types of sandwiches or a la carte, as well as various sides and beverages and all that.

So, of course, meatballs are delicious, and we decided we wanted to give it a try. The reviews mentioned that there could be a long wait for a table, but we figured that we could always put our name down, leave a phone number, and then go get a drink at a bar nearby. But when we arrived, we were told that the wait would be a whopping two hours! OK, really, come on. I'm sure these meatballs are very good, but are they really that much better than what you get on a meatball sub at your local pizza place (my coworkers and I sometimes go to Liberatos Pizza in the Financial District) that that kind of a wait is justified? I mean, I'm not averse to waiting a reasonable amount of time for food. 45 minutes in the park waiting for my burger from Shake Shack? No big deal. Line outside Tomoe Sushi? I haven't been there yet, but everyone says it's worth the wait. But two hours for meatballs? Well, we didn't think they could possibly be worth the wait, and decided to head somewhere else.

After a bit of wandering, we wound up at a cute little place called The Pink Pony and decided to give it a try. (It didn't hurt that they had a sign saying "we have air conditioning!" and it was really hot outside.) Lauren ordered a nicoise salad, Brian ordered short ribs, which both looked very good. (Brian loves short ribs, so there wasn't much doubt that he'd be happy, and the tuna in Lauren's salad was nicely seared.)

I ordered cassoulet, which I'd never eaten before, but had been meaning to try for a while because: So after I took the bar exam back in the summer of 2006, I took a vacation to Europe for a few weeks. One travel day, when I was taking a TGV train from Bordeaux to Barcelona (or, technically, to Narbonne to transfer to a different train to Barcelona), I got, well, stranded. The train just stopped working with no explanation. (Well, there might have been some explanation, but not an explanation that I was going to be able to pick up on with my "Ou est la toilette?"-level understanding of French.) At first we were just stopped basically in a field, but after being held there for something like an hour we pulled forward at a slow speed until we arrived at the nearest station, in a small town named Castelnaudary. There we sat for... a few hours, as I recall. I still didn't really know what was going on, only that it was starting to look more and more like I was going to miss my connection. They were letting people off the train, though, so I got up to stretch my legs and eventually found out, from an English-speaking conductor (SNCF conductors wear little national flag pins representing various languages they speak, which I thought was clever), that there was some sort of electrical problem, that they didn't know how long it would be, but that they would make sure that everyone did get where they were going if we missed connections. (I later learned that all the electricity in southwestern France was not working that afternoon; I'm not sure whether that meant just for SNCF, or for everyone in the whole region.) I managed to call my hotel in Barcelona to let them know that I would be arriving late that night (the Spanish that I had learned in high school and college was, and still is, rusty but at least somewhat functional), and then settled in to wait. I couldn't really go anywhere, though, because there was no telling when the train would be ready to leave, and in any case I couldn't really communicate with anyone to figure out where I'd go even if I could go somewhere. The train eventually left Castelnaudary a few hours later and arrived in Narbonne close to midnight, something like five or six hours after I was supposed to make my transfer. SNCF, true to their word, put me and a bunch of other Barcelona-bound travelers onto a bus that eventually arrived at around 3 in the morning, and someone at my hotel (formerly Hostal Palacios, now Hotel Praktik Rambla, highly recommended) was there to let me in even at that late hour.

Aaaaaanyway, if you'll forgive the rambling (though this is all actually part of a much longer story that I'm certainly not going to go to the effort to type), the connection is: after I got home at the end of my trip, I decided to read up on Castelnaudary, where I had been stranded for a couple of hours. It turned out that what seemed to me to be a crappy little town in the middle of nowhere (to be fair, not many places look particularly nice if all you see is the train station) was actually a lovely town along the Canal du Midi that bills itself as the "World Capital of Cassoulet." Had I known this at the time, I would've certainly tried to find a place to eat cassoulet rather than whatever crap I found in a vending machine at the train station, but since I didn't, I've been meaning to try it for a while, and now here we are back at where we started.

So, cassoulet. Tasty. Beany. Should've taken pictures, like I mentioned above. I think I'm going to need to try it elsewhere for comparison.

The end? Perhaps, though I do still want to go try those meatballs some night when the line isn't so long.

Well Hello There

Sorry for the lack of posts lately; I'm sure there will be more forthcoming soon, if I can just remember to take pictures and actually write about things. One thing that can definitely be filed under "coming soon" is the garden out back by the verandah (read: planter on my fire escape).

In the meantime, the always-excellent Ted Berg of SNY takes some time out from his normal sportswriting to bring us Sandwich Week. It's not my own material, obviously (save for a few comments to Ted's posts), but worth a read nonetheless if you like sandwiches. (And who doesn't like sandwiches? You don't like sandwiches? What's wrong with you? You know who didn't like sandwiches? Hitler. Think about it.) Check out his posts on:

the Chacarero Completo at Barros Luco, 300 1/2 East 52nd Street
Ted's own homemade Cuban sandwich
the Sloppy Bao at Baoguette, various locations around the city

And stay tuned for what I assume will be several more sandwich posts, assuming Sandwich Week is accurately named.

Trader Joe's Update

You know, I'm going to have to stop going to Trader Joe's and buying way more than I planned to if they can't figure things out so that I don't have to spend 25 minutes in the checkout line at 9:30 at night. Jeez.

Deal Of The Century

So, hold on a second. You go into the bar. Not just during happy hour, or only on certain days of the week, but any time on any day. (I was there at around 11pm on a Tuesday.) You order a drink. Not just expensive drinks, or special drinks, or skunked kegs that they're trying to get rid of, but any drink. (I had a draft Yuengling for $4; most drafts were $5 and a couple were $6, and most bottles were $4 or $5. Nobody I was with had liquor, but I would guess it would be comparably reasonably priced.) The bartender hands you your drink, and with it you get a ticket. It's just a standard red ticket, but it may as well be golden.

Because, you see, at Lulu's (formerly known as the Alligator Lounge, at the corner of Greenpoint Avenue and Franklin Street a block West of the G train at Greenpoint Avenue), with each drink you buy, you get a ticket redeemable for a free personal pizza that's made to order.

Let me repeat that. Buy a drink, get a free personal pizza. How awesome is that?

And the pizza is actually pretty good. Made fresh when you order it, not frozen and heated in a microwave or something. You can add toppings for $1 each if you want; they had about four meat toppings, four vegetarian meat substitutes, and ten or twelve veggies. Here's mine, with pepperoni and mushrooms:



(Sorry it's a camera phone picture and not better quality.)

But I mean... even if it weren't great pizza, it's included for free with something you were buying anyway. This is just incredible, if you ask me. I'd keep going on about it, but I think it's pretty obvious by now how I feel.

By the way, tip the guy who's making the pizza. Totally worth it.

Damn You, Trader Joe

Tonight I went to Trader Joe's to buy two things. Two.

I needed a box of cereal and a quart of yogurt. I waited until around 9:30 to head over to TJ's because if I try to go there when I'm on my way home from work (generally in the 7:00-8:00 range), it's always packed and you can easily spend half an hour waiting in line. On the other hand, if it's closer to closing time, the line is shorter and I can get in, grab what I need, and head out.

Well, so much for that. Yogurt is right by the checkout lines, so I went to pick up cereal first. On my way from the door to the cereal, I passed by bread, and the loaf of bread I have in the freezer is down to two slices, so I decided to grab a fresh loaf of whole wheat bread ($2.49) because I'll probably need it sooner or later. Then cereal. I grabbed a box of maple pecan clusters ($3.99), which was what I planned to get in the first place, and as long as I was in the cereal aisle, I picked up a box of golden flax cereal ($2.49) because hey, it's not perishable and I'll eat it eventually. I was all set to head over to the dairy case and pick up my yogurt, but then I realized I was almost out of granola to mix in with the yogurt, so I picked up a fresh bag of three berry granola ($3.29) for when I run out; it was right there next to the cereal.

So then, I could've just walked to the end of that aisle to the dairy case, gotten my yogurt, gotten in line, and that would've been the end of it. Instead, I decided to make a quick trip around the store and see if I saw anything I wanted. And that was where it really went awry. Walking out of the cereal aisle the way I came, I saw a box of whole grain cereal bars with apple ($1.69) that seemed like they'd be good to have on hand. In the next aisle, I decided I needed fresh jars of peanut butter ($2.99) and jelly ($3.49) because that's one of the things the bread was for in the first place. Then I figured maybe I should balance the grainy things I'd bought out with some fruit, and on the way over to the fruit aisle I grabbed a bag of reduced-salt roasted cashews ($5.49) because the bag I have is almost empty. In the fruit aisle, I only picked up one grapefruit ($0.89) because once I was there I remembered that I had done my fruit shopping yesterday. But they also have meat near the fruit, and I picked up a package of boneless skinless chicken breasts ($7.09) for dinner for the next few nights.)

Leaving the meat section, I saw the canned foods aisle, and of course Trader Joe's excels at canned food, so that required a stroll. I picked up a can of chili ($1.99) and a carton of red pepper and tomato soup ($2.79), because it's always nice to have something on hand that's easy to heat up and eat. At the end of that aisle, I figured I probably had enough, and wandered back up the frozen foods aisle towards the dairy case, and while I was going through there a box of ice cream sandwiches ($3.69), and while I should know better, they called my name like a grail-shaped beacon (Bad, bad Zoot! Bad, naughty Zoot!) and into the basket they went. At that point, I was up to where I needed to be, so I got in line, grabbed the yogurt ($2.99), and checked out.

So I meant to spend $6.98, and instead Trader Joe got himself $45.36 of my dinero. Damn you, Trader Joe.

Mother's Day Brunch: Dessert

As I mentioned at the end of my post about Mothers Day Brunch at No. 7, later on that same day the family had ourselves some dessert. (In between, we stopped back at my apartment so that my sister and I could help our mother learn how to use her new iPhone; our father really hit a home run with that Mothers Day gift.) We took a walk down to Blue Marble Ice Cream at their location on Court Street in Cobble Hill, not far from my apartment. Earlier that week, while picking up dinner at Nectar (right next door to Blue Marble), I noticed a line out the door around 9pm on a weekday evening, and decided it was high time to give the new scoop shop (formerly the home of a Tasti D-Lite) a try.

Because it was mid-afternoon on a cool day, there wasn't a line, just one family that had already received their ice cream occupying the one table inside the small store front. My brother-in-law and I both ordered small cups of their blackberries and cream ice cream, which was excellent. Very creamy, very fruity. (All the ice cream was very creamy, not too airy.) I didn't actually even finish mine (maybe because of the big brunch we'd had a few hours earlier), and took the extra home to eat after dinner. The guest of honor (i.e., Mom) ordered a small cup of banana chip, which had a great ripe banana flavor, and just a sprinkling of small chocolate chips mixed in. My father ordered... gosh, I can't actually remember. A small cup of ice cream, but what flavor? Caramel chip, maybe? I'm sure he enjoyed it, in any case. My sister opted to go against the grain and have a brownie, then trade some of the brownie for tastes of everyone's ice cream. (We're very good at trading tastes of everyone's food in my family.) She chose the Sweet and Salty Brownie, made with caramel and fleur de sel, which (true to their locally-sourced ethos) Blue Marble gets from Baked in Red Hook. The texture was very rich, almost fudge-like; the caramel and salt flavors were subdued enough that I might not have noticed them if I weren't aware that they were there.

All in all, the dessert was very good, and I definitely endorse Blue Marble as an option after you've had a meal near one of their locations. (They're also in Boerum Hill on Atlantic Avenue between Bond and Nevins, and in Prospect Heights on Underhill Avenue between Sterling and St. John's right near Grand Army Plaza, as well as at the Brooklyn Flea.) Not sure I'd necessarily go too far out of my way to eat there; nothing against them, of course, there's just so many good dessert options in the city. Based on the brownie, I'd also recommend checking out Baked in Red Hook at Van Brunt and Dikeman, not too far from the Fairway and the IKEA.

One more note: be forewarned, it's not cheap ice cream. The small cups were (I can't precisely remember) either $3.75 or $3.95, and the Brownie was, I think, about $3, so for the five of us it came to around $20. If you want better value for your ice cream dollar, you can't go wrong at TJ's.

I Told You So

Food Wars and I were right: Duff's has the best wings in Buffalo.

Want proof? That's where the President goes.

Ah man, now I want to eat wings.