"When God closes a door, he always opens a window..."
I don't know why that little
Sound of Music line just popped into my head.
But it's true: last week we heard the terrible news of the Yankee Doodle closing; this week we learn of the rebirth of
O'Rourke's. Hallelujah.
R.I.P. Yankee Doodle
Truly sad news in New Haven today. One of my favorite restaurants of all time, the
Yankee Doodle, has closed after 57 years. Article from the Yale Daily News
here.
It is a dark day. Never again the grilled donut. Never again the two-cheese-two-pig lunch. My arteries celebrate; my taste buds weep.
Thank You For Your Patience
...as I settle down from several months of house craziness, holiday festivity, and promotion file panic. Now I can take a deep breath and tell you: EXCELLENT
new cheese store in New Haven! Best pancakes in Connecticut discovered in Westbrook! Oyster glove inauguration on Christmas Eve! Dried hibiscus flowers in Champagne: delicious!
Hello to all the readers who've just discovered this, and hello to the remaining few of you who actually check this blog for updates occasionally. New year, new posts.
On that note, though, I must sheepishly say that I'll be away for the next week. Will come back to regale you with tales of old and new favorites in Miami.
Pardon the Interruption
1. Conference madness.
2. Summer lethargy.
3. Buying a house.
Many tales to tell, soon, about the glory and the gutwrenchingness of
New Mexican food,
Blackbird Redux and
Hot Doug's disappointment in Chicago, a perfect summer day of
German beer hall,
Rich Chocolate ice cream, and
wok-seared shrimp, re-visiting a favorite
Italian in New Haven, and our last bottle of
Pacific Echo Cremant.
Belated
Belated birthday wishes to this blog, which turned two this month. At the moment I think I could have this blog taken away from me by blog protective services, though, for neglect.
But I was inspired to post by this amazing little gadget that my very sweet Swiss Saarinen researcher gave me yesterday:
Isn't it lovely? It is a REX vegetable peeler. Kornell said that 98% of Swiss households have one of these. It is light as a feather and made peeling my potato last night feel like peeling butter. Incredible! And check out the little potato-eye-popping-out widget on the side:
In other news, we just got back from Chicago, where we ate at
Alinea, for better and for worse (neither of us cared much for the spun-sugar dessert that felt like chewing a mouthful of licorice-flavored fish bones, but some of our other courses were LIFE-CHANGING), and also at
Hot Doug's, where our shared three sausages and platter of duck-fat fries allowed us to go the entire rest of the day without eating, and also at Kuma's where we had incredible burgers with Kim and Eric, and at the Pitchfork festival where we ate some kind of delicious lamb + beef + pork pattie thing served with spicy eggplant sauce, and at
Avec, where the lovely bartender said, upon learning that we were leaving that meal to go to Hot Doug's for Second Dinner, "It is clear that it is not your first time at this rodeo." (But actually, it marked us as mere amateurs, since we learned when we got there that Hot Doug's is only open for lunch. We went back another day.) I have a huge list of places we didn't get to. Fortunately I'm going back at the end of this month.
We are going to
Still River Cafe this weekend (finally!) to celebrate our eighth anniversary together. It was eight years ago this week that we first kissed on the
Gantry Plaza State Park piers to the catcalls and hoots of the kids riding around us on bikes and skateboards. Who cared about them? We just took another swig of wine from our picnic bottle and kissed some more to spite them.
Oh, right, and we are buying a house. This one:
If you have hidden carpentry skills, or an excess of plywood laying around your house, we would like to hear from you.
Frozen in place
Literally, due to the g-d
Indiana Jones filming that has cut off access to most of downtown New Haven to vehicular traffic, and created minimum 15-minute delays trying to get to or from the Yale campus on foot. Derek was stopped on his way to work this morning by a cop -- not even film crew flunkies, a COP -- demanding to know where exactly he thought he was going as he tried to cross College street. "Um... to work?" Casey has an altercation with the PAs every time she needs to get in or out of the building she lives in downtown. One of them told her to "go find a bar." New Haven and Yale are purportedly seeing enormous financial gains from allowing this production to shut down the heart of the city for a week. I say we New Haveners should get free parking anywhere in the city for six months, at the very, VERY least. Checks in the mail would be even better.
And figuratively frozen in place, too, by this presentation I'm scheduled to give to a
jury of my peers in Chicago two weeks from today. I'm supposed to be an "expert" in this stuff, but I've never been so freaked by a presentation in my life! They're paying me! It's terrifying! So many second-guesses about how I do things and so many second thoughts about my chosen career. I need to breathe. Two hours out of my life and it's over.
To take my mind off the whole thing, I've been cooking: key lime pie, broiled salmon, multigrain salad with dressing of pureed cucumbers and feta, warm broccoli and turnip green salad (I know it makes me a rube, but I don't think I like turnip greens -- or any bitter greens, for that matter), some other stuff I'm forgetting now. And buying fresh pickles and prosciutto bread (PROSCIUTTO BREAD! Can you believe such a thing exists?!) from the
flea market in New Milford.
And eating: the first hot, buttered lobster roll of the year at
Abbott's in Noank, of course; backyard barbequed filet mignon at Kyle and Sabrina's house; kefte kebab and cheeses at Stephen and Moa's; and a wonderful dinner at the new
Po in Brooklyn, where I was sweet as peaches and cream to the frazzled maitre d' after he said to a foursome who had been waiting for their reservation for 10 whole minutes, "which table would you like me to kick out so that you can sit down?" I purred about how hard it must be to be so popular after only being open a week, of course we'd be happy to sit at the bar, smiling, smiling, smiling.
Five minutes later we had a table. And we made good use of it. Poached asparagus with truffled egg salad crostini and Cacio di Roma. Tuna with white beans, leeks, cabbage, and chili oil -- the best salad I've had in recent memory. Orecchiette with sweet sausage ragu and broccoli rabe, pappardelle with the sweetest peas and mint and Parmesan all over it, local strawberries in balsamic vinegar with ricotta gelato, and a thin tile of dark chocolate terrine with amaretti crumbles, vin santo and espresso caramel that was barely sweet. Did someone once hear me say I wasn't a big fan of Italian food? I eat my words.
Send me your suggestions for where to eat in Chicago. We'll be there a week.
Alinea is already on the itinerary.
Just Quick
1. Tom assures me that the burrito carts are in no danger of closing. I hope he's right.
2. Word on the street is: don't waste your hard-earned cash at Foster's, that new fancy place on Orange Street next to ArtSpace. Our anonymous tipster reported chicken so dry it was like jerky, a stuffed pork loin "special" that had likely been sitting in the fridge for three days, and syrup-like salad dressing. Every new kitchen takes a few weeks to find its stride, to be sure, but when the chef has
this kind of kitchen experience, the learning curve should probably be a little less steep.
