The Tasting Room

I've been hearing about the Tasting Room for years now, usually in conversations with "foodies." You know the general line of questioning: "Just went to X. Have you been?" "Oh yeah. The meatballs are out of this world. Almost as good as Y's." "But not as good as the Tasting Room." "The Tasting Room!" "Love the Tasting Room!" "Love!" At which point I usually fall silent. Since I've never been to Tasting Room, the once-tiny, now relocated restaurant that cooks with the freshest Greenmarket ingredients, I am unable to step up to this gourmet throwdown.

Basta, I decide. Now that the Tasting Room has moved to a roomier location, it is time to give it a try. I enlist several friends for the task.

Though the space may be bigger, the door policy at the Tasting Room can still be a pain. When one of our party is unavoidably detained, three of us have to wait at the bar until the fourth arrives, despite our entreaties that she is definitely on her way. Making everyone wait would be understandable if it were a busy weekend night with multiple seatings, but it is 8:30 on a Thursday, and later we see that the place pretty much clears out after 10, with no one waiting for our table. I know that which of I speak is controversial, but still... I tend to side with the customer on this one.

At least the delay affords us time to have one of the excellent cocktails at the bar - an old fashioned, in my case. The bar area is a pleasing hybrid of sexy and welcoming, when you can get a seat. If you can't get a seat in this small front area, you will feel that you are always in every server's way.

My friend arrives; we are finally taken to our table in the back room.

"What is this place?"
"It looks like a conference room."
"No - a wedding tent. A cross between a conference room and a wedding tent."
"There are actual poles with weird dried leaves on them."
"Are these paintings done by mental patients?"
"What's up with those FedEx packages on the ledge? Is that supposed to be decoration? Hey! There's the package I never got at work the other day!"

Did I mention we can be snarky at times? Nevertheless, our waiter is nice and generally attentive. We start ordering - not always an easy task with this crew. There is something for everyone on the varied menu, though we do have some difficulty distinguishing between a "taste" and a whole dish, since most of the entrees and appetizers are listed at both price points. The waiter explains that a "taste" consists of just a couple bites, and therefore is not recommended for sharing, while ordering the larger-size portion would be good for the whole table. Thus, we make those of us who order unpopular dishes keep it to a taste.

The food starts coming in waves. N.B. that the menu changes daily, but some of our favorite dishes appeared in other incarnations in other reviews, so the selections I mention here may very well resurface. We have the late summer salad, which is more interesting than expected, with crisp new greens and a generous sprinkling of fresh soft feta. Rarely have I tasted fish as good as the butterfish escabeche, my (initially unpopular) small "taste" portion that arrives on a swirl of cannelini bean puree. The appetizer-size portion of kingfish on a bed of arugula isn't anything to write home about. We place the kingfish and the butterfish next to each other.

"It's the same size on a bigger plate."
"It's the same, but eight dollars more."

The beef short rib stew is our favorite of the appetizers, delicious and lively. We identify the distinguishing herb as mint, which gives it an interesting Vietnamese twist.

During the lull between courses, I notice that everyone in the room looks terrible. Fortunately, there are no mirrors, so I can't see how horrible I myself look. Only now does the lighting register - it's extremely unflattering, which would make me avoid this place as a potential date locale, unless you're absolutely sure your beloved wouldn't leave you at your ugliest.

The entrees arrive. Two of these are amazing: the meatballs, made with grass-fed beef, are melt-in-your-mouth good. I sense myself losing control and devouring them at a rapid pace before I remember to share. No one notices, because they are all attacking the fabulous eggy bread pudding with hen-o-woods mushrooms. I elbow my way in before that disappears as well.

Waiting for the check as things quiet down and the dining room begins to empty, we are feeling fat and content. The quality of the ingredients really shows through in each dish at the Tasting Room, and I get the sense that no expense was spared in sourcing them out. This feeling is reinforced by the number at the foot of the bill, which is much more than those of our usual casual dinners out. (OK, so we had some wine. But it was the cheap wine.) No one is all that happy anymore.

"Eighty-five dollars!"
"I guess that's the last meal I eat for the week."

I am satisfied, though I don't know if I would do it again. Not a great date place because of the decor, but not a great casual friend place because of the expense. Who would go here with me? Only a gastronome who cares about food, food, and more food. Only somebody who brags about meatballs.

In short, only somebody just like me. I make my apologies and slink out the door.

The Tasting Room
264 Elizabeth Street, between Houston and Prince Streets
212-358-7831

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Tea at the St. Regis

Forget the Plaza: all you need to feel like Eloise is tea at the St. Regis. First, there is the old world beauty of the high-ceilinged, gilded dining room itself - Astor Court, so named after John Jacob Astor IV, who built the hotel in 1904. Then the impeccably presented and delicious teas, cakes and tea sandwiches all conspire to make you feel like a very special visitor.



Tea at the St. Regis also presents a solution to a prevalent New York problem. It's so easy for visiting relatives to get here, but so seemingly difficult for them to stay the night. Is it the lingering visions of '70s muggers, or is the high price of hotels even scarier? Whatever the case, if you ever have a visiting aunt in town for just the day, take her here.

On the day my own aunt arrives, we get to the St. Regis at about 3:30. As soon as we are seated, the tea sommelier appears. She asks what sort of teas we usually drink - black, green, or white? English breakfast or Earl Grey? - then makes some thoughtful recommendations from the 25-plus teas available. We choose the Hao Ya "A" tea (Chinese black), and the St. Regis blend, which she compares to Earl Grey. "Lots of bergamot," she says, and I think of a favorite perfume. This turns out to be not such a good thing, because the St. Regis blend is so perfumy that I might have just taken a swig of Shalimar. But the tea balances out with more steeping time, and it is beautifully served: poured from individual pots, through an ornate silver strainer set over your teacup, with lemon and a tiny individual jar of honey on a plate alongside.

A parade of nibbles arrives. First, a mushroom and artichoke quiche, which is good though a little dry. Fortunately we have taken the sommelier's advice to ask for water immediately, while the tea brews. The menu has recently been divided into sweets and savories. The savories appear first, not mixed up on the tea tray as used to be the case, but presented almost like sushi, with a Japanese eye for design and color. Little sophisticated and modern twists make the sandwiches interesting. Mint is flecked throughout the cucumber sandwich, and chicken curry salad is spiked with mango. Smoked salmon comes wrapped up into a pinwheel with pumpernickel. The kitchen veers a little too far towards modernity, though, when they include a mini grilled vegetable wrap. I can only wonder which beloved tea sandwich was sacrificed to make room for that one. The new sushi-esque presentation looks pretty but leaves me wanting about five more of the low-guilt cucumber sandwiches. When the tea sandwiches used to be presented en masse, I got to eat much more of them, though admittedly, this might have been because I was eating everyone else's.

Then come the sweets. I could subsist forever on good scones and clotted cream, and the St. Regis' are no exception. Instead of clotted cream, they use Devonshire cream, which is slightly sweeter and more buttery than regular clotted cream. In any case, it's authentic, and the authenticity of scones and cream is the area where most tea services fall short. Also served with the scones are two kinds of jam and lemon curd, sweet and thick.

The tiered tea tray is also laden with lemon cakes, chocolate covered strawberries, and little chocolates filled with raspberry jam. I have to come clean here and admit that I don't really like sweets, thus the dearth of dessert reviews on this site. But I liked these cakes and candies, and the strawberries were delicious.

By the time we leave, a good hour and a half after we arrived, Astor Court is packed with tea takers. Some of them are drinking champagne with their cakes and pastries. Marie Antoinette would approve.

The St. Regis Hotel
2 East 55th Street, between Madison and Fifth Avenues
212-753-4500

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Madison Avenue, Upper East Side

Big bags and little dogs, double-breasted coats, and lots of leopard add some panache to the fuddy-duddy fashion of the Upper East Side, where riding boots and Barbour jackets never went out of style.

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The Copycat Chef: Mussels with Bacon and Peas from Angus McIndoe

Many reviewers, amateur and professional, have raved about the mussels at Angus McIndoe. They're true country comfort food, perfect for this time of year. As soon as I tasted the wonderful bacon-and-peas cream sauce, I thought of a recipe from The New Basics Cookbook, by the same authors of The Silver Palate: Pasta with Prosciutto and Peas, one of my all-time favorites. In a somewhat bastardized version of an Italian sauce, the prosciutto is sauteed slowly with butter and flour to make a light roux, then the cream and other ingredients are added. The Angus McIndoe cream sauce had the same bacony cohesiveness as the Rosso-Lukins version.

The combination of mussels and cream was harder to source. Where did this come from? The recipe seems to owe more to Normandy, Brittany, and the Île de Ré, famed land of mussels, than Scotland. Anthony Bourdain's version of mussels in cream sauce has many of the same qualities as the Angus McIndoe dish. By subtracting some of the particularly French ingredients - Pernod, for instance - I might find a reasonable facsimile of the Angus McIndoe version.

I cooked the mussels in beer instead and added some of their cooking liquid to the cream sauce. Surprise: it was completely disgusting. Here I had bought a whole loaf of French bread to sop up the sauce, which I couldn't even stand to eat. It was horribly bitter, especially with the addition of parsley. The lesson: don't drink beer with cream. I thought I learned that over a decade and several White Russians ago, but I must have forgotten.

Trying again, I took a page from Jacques Pepin and used his suggestion of Sancerre as an excellent cooking base for mussels. This worked a lot better. The final product, though, should really have a certain shine to it. The mussels at Angus McIndoe looked positively glazed, they were so shiny. This reminded me of Lidia Bastianich's Linguine with Bacon and Onions, in which an egg yolk is added at finishing time to achieve a similar shiny, thick sauce.

For the first version of this dish, I used real live peas instead of frozen ones, but then I figured, why bother. At Angus McIndoe, the peas were so evenly sized that they must have been frozen, and the flavor of frozen thawed peas was actually better in this sauce.

In a dish this simple, the quality of the ingredients is even more important. For the first attempt, I went to Wild Edibles on Third Avenue and 35th Street (also at Grand Central Market) for the mussels. The salesguy there was very helpful and friendly, explaining why they only sell Prince Edward Island mussels and even knocking each of them before putting them in a plastic baggie to make sure the ones he sold me were all alive. The next time around, I went to Citarella, whose mussels were almost as good, but where the service wasn't quite as helpful. When I asked the Citarella salesguy where the mussels were from, he responded "Canada." Last I checked, Canada is a pretty big country. (They were also from P.E.I.) But, miracle of miracles, Citarella apparently has caved to popular demand and is now stocking their freezer with items a little less esoteric than just edamame beans: they finally carry frozen peas and other frozen vegetables.

I used Schaller and Weber Black Forest bacon, which is the best I've found in the city. You can get it on Fresh Direct, but you have to go to a nice off-line grocery store like Garden of Eden on 14th Street to get it sliced thin, which is very important for this recipe.

A note to the fat-phobic: Though this is a seafood dish, it is decidedly not low-fat; in fact it's pretty much a heart-attack-in-a-bowl. Attempts to make a lower-fat version, using half & half instead of cream, for instance, failed and are not recommended.


Mussels with Bacon and Peas à la Angus McIndoe

Time: 35 minutes

1.6 lb. mussels
1/4 lb. bacon, very thinly sliced
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp flour
1 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup frozen peas, thawed
1 tsp sea salt
several grinds of black pepper
3/4 cup Sancerre or other dry white wine
1/2 cup water
1 egg yolk

Scrub mussels under running cold water with a wire brush until their shells are clean and shiny. Check for any bits of beard poking out of the shells, and pull them out. (You probably will not find many, if any at all, with P.E.I. mussels.)

Heat the butter until foaming in a wide saute pan. Add the bacon, stir a couple times, and reduce the heat to medium-low. Cook for 1 minute, then sprinkle the flour over top and stir again. Continue cooking for about 3 minutes, until the bacon is wilted and has rendered a good deal of its fat.

Whisk in the cream and raise the heat to medium-high. Continue whisking until sauce begins to bubble and thicken, about 1 minute. Whisk in peas, salt, and pepper, and turn the heat down to the lowest temperature.

Bring the wine and water to a boil in a roomy pot, preferably fitted with a glass lid. Add the mussels and boil 3-4 minutes until they all yawn open widely, shaking the pot every once in a while to redistribute the mussels.

Scoop them out with a big wire skimmer, then carefully decant 2/3 cup of the cooking liquid, leaving any sandy residue at the bottom of the pot. Whisk the cooking liquid into the cream sauce, raise the heat to medium-high, and continue whisking 1 minute until the mixture begins to bubble and thicken again. Turn off the heat and mix in the egg yolk, then then mussels in their shells, tossing to mix the sauce evenly throughout.

Serve immediately with crusty country bread.

Serves 2.

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Kittichai

"That was not great," says a matronly woman at the corner table, breaking out of Italian for a moment to address her waiter in English.

"Too spicy?" he asks.

"There was spice?" she says pointedly. She strikes me as the kind of Italian lady who would play a ruthless game of chicken on the narrow sidewalks of Florence, preferring to drive any oncoming passersby onto the street rather than move her umbrella one inch in the pouring rain. As an unsure foreign exchange student, I always ended up in the gutter. Now she turns to her dining companion and switches back into Italian. I expect her to leave in a huff. But no: she lingers over coffee for at least another forty-five minutes, seeming to enjoy the place.

Such is the mystique of Kittichai. We know it's not all it's cracked up to be, so why stick around? For one thing, while the food may not be buonissimo anymore, it still holds its own. It is to Kittichai's advantage - one that is sometimes abused - that there are so few good Thai places in NYC and so many bad ones. In the area around NYU, for instance, you could throw a brick and hit some watery tom kha gai, bland pad thai, and cloyingly sweet curry all in one blow. There is such a proliferation of bad Thai that many people don't even realize it's bad anymore. Kittichai is good by comparison, but it can leave you wondering if it might be "not great."

So how to unravel the mystery of its appeal? There is something extraordinarily pleasing about the space itself. At night, the low lighting gives way to the flickering candles that circulate gently on a square pool in the center of the room. The banquettes all face the main action, which can be interesting, since the restaurant belongs to the hotel 60 Thompson, a convenient stop-off point for celebrities, visiting and local. On the night I visited, Damon Wayans was drinking martinis at one table with two industry suits, while Ingrid Sischy held court at the table next to his. We were lucky enough to have the table right across from theirs, perhaps no accident, since our host is a regular at Kittichai.

On that night, my back is to the wall, the edges of the square room are softened by the drape of raw silk curtains, the view of the pond's surface, the flowers dangling above, the candles, the round tables in the center, and the room itself is clear, yet we are tucked away and thus do not feel exposed in any way. Then it strikes me: I am living in a feng shui fantasy! This place is feng shui'd to the nines - the eights, rather. It is carefully engineered to both excite and comfort, and it's that push-pull that makes Kittichai a sexy dining experience.

Enter the food from stage right. On the Damon-Wayans-Ingrid-Sischy night, sans Italian matron, we order several dishes to share. The salt and pepper rock shrimp is supposed to be phenomenal. The salt and pepper tempura is good, but the shrimp meat itself isn't particularly exciting, and the two elements don't come together the way they should. Tuna tartare is a bit sad and dry, probably because it is covered in dry flaky pastry and served alongside a strange contraption of additional dry pastry shells. The tangy beef salad is composed of excellent seared steak, though the extreme lime-y-ness of the dressing can overwhelm it. The weird-sounding chicken relish turns out to be a delicious peanuty puree of chicken served alongside delicate fried bread crisps. The fatty peanut flavor gives way to the slow fire of hidden chilies.

Onto the main courses. After a brief scuffle between the waiter, my friend and me over the preferred serving method of the whole halibut - filleted or not filleted? - I give way to the pro-filleting side and again end up in the gutter. In deference to Western, bone-shy tastes, the fish is cut into bite size chunks before, not after, it is flash fried, which I didn't realize from the waiter's description, and which means that it does not retain that succulent meatiness it has when fried whole, bone-in. A successful version of a similar dish can be found at Grand Sichuan, where the fish of the day is served fried, whole, head-on, smothered in bean sauce. At Kittichai, I feel gypped, but only because they pegged us for bone-shy Westerners, which, admittedly, some of us are.

The curries are fabulous. They exude a sweet heat that makes me spoon the last remaining sauce over little piles of rice even after the sliced chicken and egg noodles of the light yellow curry are gone, and the short ribs in the green curry are just a pile of bones - mostly on my plate.

We also have a good chili smoked hangar steak, the wok-fried rice with ginger, shitake mushrooms and coriander, which comes very prettily served in half a pineapple, and plain jasmine rice. As all of this is served, our waiter makes sure to point out what each dish is. The steak is steak, the chicken is chicken, and even the rice is revealed to be rice. Eureka! Because I was about to dig into a decorative fried fish head, thinking it was rice.

I return another day at lunchtime, hoping to sample the chocolate short ribs that I later read were amazing and that I had not tried. Sadly, they are not on the lunch menu, but there is an offering of "galangal and chicken coconut soup," longhand for tom kha gai. I consider myself a tom kha gai aficionado, if not a connoisseur. At the slightest sign of a cold, I order tom kha gai, the Thai version of chicken soup. In a warning sign of what may be true New Yorkiness, plain old chicken soup just won't do it anymore for me. Kittichai's version of tom kha gai is creamy, not watery, full of hunks of tender chicken and those whole little straw mushrooms that always remind me of the cutesy cool of Japanese anime. The sweetness of the coconut milk is balanced by the kaffir lime juice and the orange sheen of chili oil on top. For a while, I am enthralled by the tom kha gai. Then I release it back to the attentive waiter, saving some of my appetite for the monkfish.

The staff is attentive indeed. There is a sense you get as a restaurant reviewer, even a blogging one, when you've been made. The hair on the back of your neck stands up, you're looking at them, they're looking at you, and suddenly your water glass is always full. Such is the case at Kittichai the second time around, and this may have been at least part of the explanation for what happens next.

Because here is the fish I was looking for last time. A tender, flaky, filet is doused in an excellent sauce spiked with hearts of palm, sauteed red onion, and holy basil leaves, whose strange yet distinctive taste permeates the dish. This I pick at slowly, because it is worth savoring.

Unlike the Italian lady, I am quite satisfied by the time I get my check. It is only when I'm out on the street, walking further and further away from the restaurant itself that I wonder, how hard is it, anyway, to make tom kha gai? Could I make it myself, using a simple cookbook like this one? But I certainly wouldn't be able to recreate that monkfish without a lot of practice and perhaps some divine intervention. Most importantly, if I tried this at home, I would be denying myself the pleasure of visiting the restaurant itself. Back in that elusive Bermuda triangle of feng shui'd charm, I'm sure I would fall under the Kittichai spell once again.



Kittichai
60 Thompson Street between Broome and Spring Streets
212-219-2000

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Luxury! Humor! Taste?

As my yoga instructor used to say in her resigned, melancholy way, "some of you may still be eating meat and [sigh] wearing leather shoes." If you have read anything on this site, you probably know by now that I am one of those people. But Barneys came up with something even a ravenous meat-eater like me couldn't dream up: using baby animals to advertise leather goods made of fellow animals - brilliant!



These bunnies are so cute, they make me want to rush to Barneys and buy a rabbit-fur-lined Juicy Couture jacket.



These boots are made of pony. I always wanted a pony!



Bunnies aren't the only models. In another issue, little puppies make leather bags look even more adorable.



Some of the puppies even look like foxes - another product Barneys sells!

+ =


Then I thought, wouldn't this campaign be even more effective if they used the animal associated with the product to advertise it? Sort of an "I'm OK, You're OK" approach. It could be an all-animal catalog!



That would be the most cutest catalog in the whole wide world!

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Tattooed Wellies

Wellies may be a centuries-old trend, but tattoo art still looks fresh. Stay dry in these rain boots, available online at Diane's Little Lambs, offline at LF Soho.

If you can't get enough of good ol' Jolly Roger, there's a duelling skulls version available, also at LF Soho.

LF Soho
149 Spring Street
between Wooster and West Broadway
212-966-5889

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Trendy Soho

Stripes, Chanel bags, dresses by M for Missioni, big hair, leggings, lockets, popcorn sweaters, guys with ties, and, of course, models were all part of the Soho shopping crush this weekend.

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Black People Love Coca-Cola BlaK!

I've heard of junk food companies targeting minorities before, but...Coca-Cola's new drink is called "BlaK"? I assume that's just a reference to black coffee, or an attempt to get in on the young, "urban" Red Bull market. It must be just a coincidence that the Coca-Cola BlaK site plays bongo drums overlaid with smooth jazz. Or that the sultry, mellifluous female voice-over encourages you to "experience the fusion of Coke effervescence with coffee essence." I don't know. As you can tell from my picture, right, I am a whitey, and I was too busy creating my own gallery of "Artistic Expressions of the Essence of BlaK" on Coke's interactive website to notice.


A lot of Starbucks loungers think of themselves as artists too, and Coke is obviously trying to jump on the Starbucks bandwagon by launching a coffee product. I don't blame them for wanting to be like Starbucks, another, equally scary Death Star in the beverage universe. I blame them for trying to be black.

Coke reps were putting the black back in Times Square the other day by distributing plastic bottles of BlaK instead of the usual glass. Presumably the Coke heads don't know anything about the Crain's article that concluded that "free product samples, sweepstakes, free gifts and travel prizes all can motivate minority consumers to buy a particular product if they are well-planned and targeted." After all, the former Coke head quoted in the article who handled "ethnic marketing" for Sprite has left the company, but not before organizing a free trip giveaway to the Soul Train Awards Show. No, the Coke heads were probably just handing out free soft drinks in New York City because they thought we were thirsty! Aw, shucks.

Fortunately, I happened to be having lunch with a black person that day. ("Half black," he elaborated. Whatever, Tiger. Black enough for the purposes of this article.) I couldn't wait to see what he thought of Coca-Cola BlaK.

First, we admire the bottle. At least Coke knows good design, as has been mentioned before here. Is the plastic bottle supposed to bring down the cost? Let's hope so. Right now it's $6.99 for a friggin' four pack of Coke BlaK on Fresh Direct (where a lot of white people might secretly order Coke BlaK). I haven't done my market research, but the last I checked, black people and most other people don't want to spend more than $1-$1.50 on a Coke. It's like the subway-pizza rule of inflation. Coke is basically a monetary unit, one that should be on the currency index. If a Coke is half as expensive here as it is in another country you're thinking of visiting, for instance, chances are your vacation will cost twice as much as planned.

My friend and I request a glass with ice at the restaurant where we are having lunch. No corking fee is required once we explain that we just chanced into a highly coveted giveaway of plastic-bottled Coca-Cola BlaK. The pour is similar to that of regular Coke. It is fizzy and dark brown, not really black. Then again, that same issue always confused me as a child - why were black people called black when sometimes their skin is actually dark brown? And shouldn't redheads be called orange-heads? So I guess Coke has some leeway here.

The taste: my first thought is "ice cream." It tastes like melted coffee ice cream with an overlay of dulce de leche. Sweet! (Literally and figuratively.) It has half the calories of a regular Coke. Read the fine print, though and you'll see this is not just because it's half coffee, but because it's sweetened with both aspartame and corn syrup. (Coke's decision to use corn syrup instead of sugar in the American market is credited to "local tastes" and has absolutely nothing to do with farming subsidies.) This half-sugar, half-not combo is similar to an annoying Starbucks order of "grande coffee, half caf, half decaf, in a venti cup" that confuses the counter person enough to make her summon the manager while everyone else waits in line.* Just make up your mind already.

My friend tastes it. He likes it! He really likes it! Oh phew. Now I can drink Coca-Cola BlaK in good conscience. Because I would drink it again, though we decide it would probably taste better with vodka. Or maybe a little Hennessy.

*actual recent Starbucks scenario

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Angus McIndoe

As any humble (or seemingly humble) actor will tell you, so much of making it in the theater depends on being in the right place at the right time. So I felt especially fortunate when I happened to be at a restaurant on 44th Street when the entire cast of The History Boys stopped in for a pint after their last performance, the one I had just seen, with a television crew trailing behind. Angus McIndoe was exactly the right place to be.

An upscale Scottish pub, Angus McIndoe (pronounced MAC-indoo) was the subject of a Times story when Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane first starred in The Producers. They ate at Angus McIndoe nearly every night, and when Nathan Lane couldn't make it to the restaurant itself, he ordered in. Whenever Angus McIndoe, the eponymous owner, called to see how Nathan Lane's meal was, he replied, "Surprisingly good."

The food is in fact surprisingly good for the theater district, where most restaurants have no qualms about keeping it mediocre, presumably thinking they won't ever see these damn tourists again. But Angus McIndoe is the sort of place people come to once, then again, then over and over, not just because the food is good - though a little uneven - but because each night there is a frisson of behind-the-scenes excitement. You can almost imagine Eve Harrington stopping by for a drink - or poisoning Bette Davis'. After the shows, many of the stars arrive for a late dinner, and beforehand, the real producers fill the seats.

With all of this hullabaloo, it's fortunate that wine is always served immediately and as a quartino, so pre-theater diners don't have to suffer anxiety pangs wondering if they'll be able to order a second glass of wine before they have to bolt. Upstairs and downstairs are equally entertaining places to sit, depending on the hour - upstairs is better later.

On a preliminary visit for this review, I find the food not as surprisingly good as I remembered, however, perhaps because the kitchen is serving a large private party on the top floor at the same time. The all-day breakfast plate, which has been reliable in the past, doesn't thrill like the first time. The pork-apricot sausages that sound so good on the menu seem pre-cooked and warmed over, and the "potato scone" prompts my friend to say, "This isn't a scone. This is fried mashed potatoes." Overall she pronounces the dish "all right." The tasting plate, part of the nightly special menu, manages to be uneven all on one plate. The country pork paté with cornichons could be my new favorite, but the smoked salmon is bland and the grilled shrimp smells fishy. The hamburger with Boursin cheese sounds intriguing. There is a little too much Boursin caked on top when it arrives, but it's a nice combination, and the burger itself is great - ground sirloin with a little Worcestershire sauce thrown in, just to add a touch of Great Britain to the mix.

On another day at lunch with a friend who works for a certain newspaper whose Times Square offices are right above Angus McIndoe, the kitchen is running on an even keel. We have oysters similar to Kumamotos, with the same fluted shell and delicate, sweet taste. The presentation on a bed of chipped ice is very pleasing, though not so for the shrimp cocktail, which is served a plate of rather sad mesclun. Neither of us likes the chipotle dip that comes with the shrimp alongside the usual cocktail sauce, but then again, I am a traditionalist and don't tend to encourage things like chipotle sauce with shrimp cocktail. We also order chili with our three seafood appetizers, and the waitress doesn't blink an eye, perhaps assuming we are stoned.

The chili is good, fired under a broiler until the cheddar cheese melts on top, then sprinkled with crispy bits of bacon that really make the dish. It adds the same crunchy texture crackers would, but with the bonus of contributing flavor. The pork chop is not as exciting, and my friend calls it "a little dry." I blame the matinee ladies. It is Wednesday, after all, and hordes of tourists have just eaten here, probably demanding pork chops cooked to at least 180 degrees Fahrenheit. This chop is a little pink but not alarmingly so. I don't think it's half bad, but it's not as good as the pan-roasted free-range chicken, pounded thin like chicken paillard and seared on the outside, juicy within. The mashed potatoes that accompany it are so smooth and buttery I would almost accuse them of being fakes, if they were not Angus McIndoe's, which, though it is not Irish, does know its potatoes. Any guilt from eating mounds of mashed potatoes can be assuaged by forking up the garlicky sauteed kale served alongside.

The phenomenal steamed mussels with bacon and peas are the pinnacle of the meal, the pinnacle of any of my meals at Angus McIndoe over the years. The mussels themselves are little and sweet, dunked in a creamy sauce flavored by the thin, limp folds of bacon and fresh peas. I devour nearly the entire thing myself and start dreaming of the next Copycat Chef recipe...

The History Boys don't show up for this meal or for the one before. They come to Angus McIndoe when I'm there by chance, because we're looking for a good place to have an after-theater drink in the neighborhood, and Angus McIndoe is a good place. It's this kind of loyalty, almost reflexive at times, that can pay off in the theater district, where sometimes kismet is of your own making.


Angus McIndoe
258 West 44th Street
between Eighth Avenue and Broadway
212-221-9222



Corrections amended: A Mr. McIndoe wrote in to inform this geographically-challenged American that Angus McIndoe is in fact Scottish, not Irish, which I would have realized had I carefully reread the Times article cited. Therefore, some phrasing in this review has been changed from "Irish" to "Scottish," "of or belonging to Great Britain," or simply "not Irish." Gastro Chic is horribly embarrassed by the error.

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48th and 6th: Corporate Dress

Despite the strict uniformity of corporate dress codes, a few well-put-together people stood out in the crowd - as did the Mets fans.

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Brilliantined Hair

Many of you guys may have given this one up for dead, but it's back: brilliantined hair, also called Brylcreemed hair, after the product that made the look popular. The ultimate Brylcreemed gent was Cary Grant.

My stylist at Aveda tipped me off to this trend in early September, and I've seen it many times on the street. To get the same look, you must have enough hair - alas, isn't that always the first hurdle? Then, it must be long on top, and preferably short on the sides. It looks like Aveda's Custom Control would well as a styling product, as do several Kiehl's products, though Aveda's line smells sexier.


Magazine tear sheets from T: The New York Times Style Magazine, Men's Fashion Fall 2006.

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Update: Eating Disorders Still Optional, Highly Encouraged

Okay, that sly Clyde - he got me. After corresponding briefly with Josh Ozersky at Grub Street (thanks for the tip off?), I began to see the light. It was all a cruel joke. There is no Proper Mastication Initiative, no maximum steak thickness or required goggle use in the works. It all seemed strangely believable at the time. It was as if Clyde Haberman could see deep into my heart, pluck out my darkest fears, and lay them bare on the page.

Why was it so believable to me? OK, I'm gullible. Taxi drivers can smell it - they always tell me there's construction/tunnel traffic/a street fair and take the long way. But I remember a time at the height of fat-phobia when I could not find any potato chips with fat in them at my local deli. Even today, just the mention of the phrase "whole wheat pasta" sends me into a state of panicked paranoia.

Sorry for the false alarm. But is the world of enforced proper mastication far behind that of no trans fats? We shall see.

Clyde's letter:

Dear [bellastraniera]:
I happened to be on line when your e-mail landed. That column was indeed pure satire, with tongue planted firmly in my cheek.
Thanks for writing -- and for reading.
All the best,
Clyde Haberman

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