Julio Cortázar’s Hopscotch
Cleaning up a few books I read in March: Dashiel Hammett’s The Thin Man
Ingrid Rowland’s The Scarith of Scornello
→ By
Cortázar, Hammett, and a nonfiction book.
→ By
New Homestar Runner ‘toon.
Date Nite – the funniest thing they’ve posted in a year.
→ By
A Dance to the Music of Time.
So I’m curious whether any of you have read all or part of Anthony Powell’s novel sequence, A Dance to the Music of Time. I just finished the first book, A Question of Upbringing
→ By
Tapas at Toro.
So I kind of got dragged to the South End, which might as well be the other end of the earth for me, last week by a couple of friends, one of whom was on furlough (his wife and one-year-old son were on a plane back from California at the time). The destination was Toro, a be-seen tapas bar created by Ken Oringer, the chef behind Clio and Uni in Back Bay – in other words, a really famous chef around these parts.
Anyway, the food at Toro was impressive. The best dish, one that Ming Tsai raved about in a review I found after we ate at the restaurant, was a grilled maize dish. The cobs are seared to the point where the outside of the kernels is starting to blacken, after which it’s rolled in a garlic-mayo (tasted like butter was in there too) and topped with a crumbling of cotija cheese, which I didn’t even know I liked. Other hits included the shrimp in a mildly spicy butter sauce, a braised short rib served in a tiny cast-iron skillet, bacalao croquettes (a little soft inside, but not fishy, with a perfectly fried exterior) with a ring of deep-fried lemon rind, and boquerones (marinated fresh anchovies).
There were a couple of misses, of course. The skirt steak was bland and a bit undercooked (we asked for medium, it was still mooing when it reached the table). The pimientos de padron were very bitter, which was a big disappointment because it was my first time trying them after reading about them in Calvin Trillin’s Feeding a Yen
I’m told the wine list at Toro is solid, for what that’s worth, but since I drove downtown I didn’t partake.
I left not hungry, but not exactly full, for $30 or so, which doesn’t strike me as a great bargain, but is typical of my experiences at tapas places. I’m not a huge eater, but the tiny little plates never seem to add up to a full meal. So if you like tapas or want to go to a restaurant with a scene, Toro’s worth the trip, since the food itself is good. I just like a little more bang for my buck.
→ By
→ By
Florida eats (part two)
Second update:
The best find of the trip was probably Jerk Town USA in West Palm Beach, a small Caribbean place right off West 45th (and close to my hotel) which offers good food in large quantities for not much coin. I ordered their $7.99 “small” jerk chicken platter, which was anything but small: probably a half-pound of meat, mostly white with a little dark, spicy but not obscenely hot. The platter also included a large mound of red beans and rice, with a subtle coconut flavor that really took it to another level; a warm cabbage slaw; and two maduros, which (QED) is one secret to getting a good review from me. Great value, great food, no way you could leave there hungry, especially with a “large” option on the platters.
Caspian Grill in Plantation was one of the better high-end (relatively speaking) restaurants I hit. The restaurant’s iced tea is brewed to order and was excellent. I ordered a combination plate that included two kabobs, one of chicken and another of a spiced ground meat mixture. The plate was huge – the chicken alone was probably two servings – and came with a huge portion of plain basmati rice that had obviously just been steamed, although it could have used a little flavoring. The chicken was perfectly cooked, but a little dull (I know, it’s chicken, it’s dull as a result of a few decades of corporate blanding efforts), while the beef mixture was outstanding. The combo dish was $16, plus $2 for the iced tea. If I end up there again, I’ll go for the beef-only platter ($11) and try the hummus ($5), which ought to be outstanding in a Persian restaurant – or a sign to head in the other direction.
Sushi Rock in Coral Gables was solid, despite the odd atmosphere (the “Rock” refers to rock music, with an eclectic mix of music piped in and some musicians’ portraits on the walls). The salad was huge, a bit overdressed but very good. I went for a simple lunch of salmon nigiri, unagi nigiri, and a spicy tuna roll. The salmon was good, definitely fresh, but maybe a bit bland. The unagi was outstanding, although in my experience, as long as it’s not ice cold, it’s usually good. The spicy tuna roll was a disappointment; the spicy sauce was vinegary, not spicy, and it was kind of dumped on rather than integrated with the fish. When I ordered, I asked if the spicy tuna was made with mayo, and I’m pretty sure that the waitress who said no said something about “kimchi,” which would explain the tartness.
Aleyda’s, a “Tex-Mex” place in West Palm Beach on Okeechobee, was a huge disappointment. Although the menu leans more towards the Mex side of Tex-Mex (a Good Thing™), the food was bland and the portions skimpy. I ordered chicken fajitas – not my norm, but they claim it’s their signature dish – and there was little to like. The chicken was overcooked when it reached the table, a problem that only got worse as it sat on the hot cast-iron skillet, and it had little to no salt on it. The yellow rice that came on the side was hard, like it had come from the bottom of the bowl or had been sitting out for a while. And the side of guacamole that came with the dish made us laugh – it was less than a tablespoon’s worth. To make matters worse, the service was terrible, starting with the hostess giving us a broken highchair and continuing with the waiter disappearing from when the food was delivered until long after we’d finished. The live cockatoo and amazons in a cage out front was a plus, at least from my 10-month-old daughter’s perspective.
Another dud: Mamma Mia in Boynton Beach, a restaurant I had actually been to before, but not since 2000. The veal piccata was overcooked and slightly greasy, the side of pasta was cooked to within an inch of its life, and the salad was drowned in dressing. The portions are huge, and that’s why they pack them in, but the quality isn’t there.
One more update after I get back to Massachusetts…
→ By
Florida eats (part one)
So I’ll be here in Florida for most of the rest of March, but rather than posting a leviathan piece at the end of the month, here’s a rundown of the non-chain places I’ve hit since I got down here on the 14th.
The first find of the trip was a little café in the City Place mall in Palm Beach called Bacio. The appeal is that they serve gelato – real gelato, without the grainy or icy texture that most American gelaterias dish out. It was pricey – $4.50 for a medium dish – but the chocolate gelato was excellent, not too sweet with a good cocoa flavor. The crème caramel was a little too sugary and not caramelly enough, but was still good, while the strawberry tasted like real strawberries and (most impressively, since the extra moisture from the fruit can screw things up) had no icy texture at all.
On my two trips down to see the University of Miami play, I hit two restaurants along the Dixie Highway (US-1) for dinner. The first was a Colombian place called Las Culebrinas, just down SW 27th street a few hundred yards off US-1. I had gotten the impression from something I read online that it was a casual place, but it’s not – it’s a somewhat upscale, sit-down restaurant, although they told me I was fine in my rather casual scouting outfit. The menu was standard Colombian, with all the hits, but with one twist – about a dozen dishes are available in tapas-sized portions, in addition to the large menu of entrées. I went for the fried pork, which was served on a bed of pureed avocado, with sides of black beans and rice and steamed (I think) yucca. I also ordered a side of maduros, fried sweet plantains, and one of my favorite foods in the world. The waitress/bartender warned me “It’s a lot of food,” and she didn’t lie – three huge chunks of pork, fried perfectly with a nice salty crust, plus almost a whole yucca (in spears), and separate dishes with the black beans and rice and the plantains. The yucca was undercooked, which I don’t like and don’t trust (raw yucca contains cyanide, which breaks down through the cooking process), and since it’s carb-laden anyway, I figured it would take up real estate in my stomach better reserved for the plantains, which were delicious – moderately sweet, cooked to still have a little tooth to them. The black beans and rice were good, very simple without any other obvious ingredients. Total cost was about $18 plus tip, and I did leave so full that I didn’t eat anything the rest of the night.
Moon is a Thai/Japanese place right next to a Starbucks on the northbound side of US-1. I generally avoid combo restaurants, but this one had several good reviews, and Asian joints are usually good for getting in and out quickly. It turned out to be a stroke of luck, as they had my favorite Thai dish and general bellwether, pad thai, available in an appetizer portion ($7.95, I believe), allowing me to also order a little sushi and try both sides of the menu. The pad thai was very good, tangy, spicy, just a hint of peanut, and not American-sweet. The sushi was a mixed bag; the salmon was definitely fresh, but didn’t have a lot of taste, and was probably Atlantic or even farm-raised, while the freshwater eel (unagi) was delicious and butter-soft. The size of the nigiri is worth mentioning – everything was huge, to the point where I couldn’t fit an entire piece of eel into my mouth. The sushi isn’t cheap – $2.50-$3 per piece for most fish – and the total bill came to about $20 before tip including a green tea.
Amigos Mexican-Spanish Restaurant in West Palm Beach was a real find, a little bit of dumb luck. I came across this list of Latin American restaurants in the area, drove past Amigoes one night, and thought it was worth a shot. It was – turns out they have a huge menu with dishes from all over the Spanish-speaking world, including Spain, Argentina, Colombia, and Cuba, which is where my choice was from – picadillo criollo. The meal ($8.95) included shredded beef that had been sautéed with olives and some mild spices, rice, black beans (served separately as a soup), and maduros. Everything was outstanding; the plantains were particularly so, super-sweet with great caramelization on the crust, while the beef had a nice flavor from the olive oil and the spices. My wife ordered a chili verde burrito ($10.95), which was huge and which she also liked, saying just that it needed more salsa verde on the outside. The guacamole ($3.95 for a side order) was fresh but needed more lime juice. We’ll go back there again before we leave.
→ By
Scoop: Feather-footed through the plashy fen…
So in a recent chat, I mentioned that I had Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop
Dear Anonymous Reader:
You were right.
Keith
It’s been a while since I ripped through a classic novel the way I tore through Scoop last week. It is brilliant, hilarious, sublime, a pinpoint satire with an everpresent smirk. It’s the novel I wish I could write.
For those who, like me, were introduced to Waugh by means of the good but serious Brideshead Revisited
I’m hesitant to say anything more for fear of ruining any of the jokes. It’s a hilarious book, laugh-out-loud funny in many places, and amusing throughout, with shades of Wodehouse in the snarky prose and Molière’s touch for satire, with almost everyone and everything in the book looking like a sendup of someone or something else. My favorite joke in the book involves the Ishmaelian town of Laku, including the origin of its name. You’ll have to read the book to understand why, but you won’t regret the choice, either.
→ By
Atlanta eats.
On the culinary front, Atlanta was disappointing – five restaurants, the best of which was one I’ve been to many times, and two of which were big disappointments.
The Flying Biscuit is a bit of a local legend, apparently, but I’d been warned that it wasn’t as good as it was in its heyday. Given how I feel about biscuits, though, I thought it was worth a shot, especially since the one thing I expected them to still do well was the food item that appears in their name. No such luck: The biscuit was tasteless and even a bit flat, with a dry exterior and a doughy interior. Nothing else on the plate stood out, and I was a bit put off by the fact that the menu includes no pork products of any kind. It’s breakfast, kids. Bacon comes from a pig. Don’t insult me by trying to make it out of poultry.
On the other hand, the biscuits at the Silver Skillet, over by Georgia Tech, were excellent – light, fluffy, buttery (maybe a bit too much so – seriously, just brush the tops, don’t douse them), and you get two of them with your eggs and pork product. The eggs (scrambled) were nicely cooked as well. Some other online reviewers seem to like the décor, but I found it kitschy, and they get a point or two off for serving food-service tea.
Two separate rankings (one by CitySearch) put Williamson Bros. Bar-B-Q at the top of Atlanta-area barbecue joints … which doesn’t say much for Atlanta-area barbecue. (J.C. Bradbury, of Sabernomics blogging fame, told me later that day that Atlanta has no good ‘cue. Figures.) I went with a combo plate – ribs (which turned out to be spare ribs), pulled pork, fried okra, BBQ beans, and a slice of toast. The ribs were so tough that I gave up after one. The pulled pork was better, nice and moist, but really light on flavor; they get bonus points for including some end bits in the mix. The okra was greasy, and the batter didn’t include the traditional cornmeal. The BBQ beans were actually quite good, with a fruity flavor I couldn’t identify (I’m thinking apple juice, but I’m not sure). I’d go back for a plate of pulled pork or a sandwich, but a Q place that can’t do ribs doesn’t belong at the top of any rankings.
Back over by Georgia Tech, I walked from the park (a top-notch college facility) up to the Tin Drum Asia Café, which theoretically is a quick food option. I say theoretically because it took over 20 minutes from when I placed my order for me to get my very simple lunch, which I don’t believe they started making until I complained that it was taking so long. To make matters worse, the food was nothing special: The coconut soup with chicken (tom kha gai) was bland, and the shrimp tempura “drumroll” (a couple of fried shrimp with avocado, tomato, and a honey-miso dressing on a small roti) was greasy. I can see why the student body likes it, though – all that plus a bottle of water was under $10.
Finally, the best meal I had on the trip was an old standby: Annie’s Thai Castle in Buckhead, which I’ve been visiting on trips to Atlanta for about twelve years now, and it’s still as good today as it was when my friend Steve first took me there. Their pad prik with beef was the highlight of this visit – spicy but not incendiary, with extremely tender strips of beef – and their pad thai is always solid. We also had their chicken with yellow curry, which was very good, not too sweet the way a lot of places serve it. You also get plenty of food at Annie’s, which is important, since I was eating with a scout who has two hollow legs.
→ By
The Betrothed and the Novel 100.
So the two weeks off between posts shouldn’t be the norm, but it took me about twelve days to finish off Alessandro Manzoni’s The Betrothed
I’m a lists guy, which is no surprise to those of you who read my ESPN stuff. I love lists and rankings, both for the debates they generate and, in the case of stuff like books or albums or restaurants, for the way you can work through them yourself. My favorite book-ranking is a book in itself, and probably one of the best gifts my wife has ever bought me: The Novel 100
When I got the book, I was all cocky and thought I was so well-read and probably had already read 30-40 of the books on the list. I was wrong – I was only at sixteen, and had never even heard of close to half of the titles. This, of course, was a personal affront, and a challenge not to be declined, so for the last two-plus years I’ve been plowing through the books, a few of which (Lawrence’s Women in Love, James’ The Ambassadors, the latter of which I didn’t even finish) were duds but some of which are now among my all-time favorites, including The Betrothed.
(I’d like to publish the list of titles, without his essays, and if I can reach Prof. Burt I’ll do so. In the meantime, I believe the top 10 are Don Quixote, War and Peace, Ulysses, In Search of Lost Time, Middlemarch, Moby Dick, Madame Bovary, The Brothers Karamazov, The Magic Mountain
The Betrothed (I Promessi Sposi) is one of the earliest historical novels, the greatest novel in the canon of Italian literature, and a work that was influenced by and then in turn influenced a number of great English writers. The story revolves around the engagement between two young peasants, Renzo and Lucia, whose wedding is blocked by the local lord, Don Rodrigo, who saw Lucia in the street and has decided as part of a bet with his cousin that he will seduce Lucia for himself. Renzo and Lucia flee and end up separated, leading to two story lines that eventually connect again in the end.
That plot (separated lovers) isn’t all that uncommon, but Manzoni adds two wrinkles to make this novel unique. One is the introduction of some amazing secondary characters, including the Nun of Monza (based on a real person) and the fiend only known as the Unnamed. Each of them receives his or her own short story within the novel, and while I ordinarily find that sort of thing distracting, it works here because those stories are themselves very compelling.
The other twist, one I didn’t care for as much, was a very long digression in the novel’s last third where Manzoni describes the twin tragedies that hit the Italian states and particularly Milan in the late 1620s, when the novel is set. Milan was first beset by a famine that was largely caused by idiotic economic policies (like arbitrary price ceilings), and then was hit by the Black Death, introduced by invading soldiers and facilitated by the inaction of the local governments. It is a withering criticism, one that makes Manzoni something of a literary forerunner of Friedrich Hayek, but it is more history than story, and the tangent from the main plot line is extremely long.
The writing itself is crisp, and a lot of aspects of the prose and the story reminded me of Tom Jones