May 2005 Archives

On a totally unrelated topic, I joined Dodgeball a while back and I still only have two friends.  Are any of you on Dodgeball so I can beef up my "friend" list and boost my self-esteem?  I need a prosthetic social life.  Pick me pick me pick me pick me pick me pick me!

I used to work with a manorexic raw food enthusiast who pretty much subsisted solely on peaches, avocados, and young coconuts when the summer rolled around.  But you don't have to fit into testicle-constricting size 25 jeans to enjoy the perfect refreshment of a well-chilled young coconut.  Have the vendor hack a hole in the top for sipping on the street, or take one home and cut a lid off the top by stabbing it in a circular shape using the butt end of your heaviest knife (or, better yet, a cleaver).  Drink the slightly sweet, aromatic, richly flavored coconut water inside.  Don't forget to scrape the silky, tender white flesh off the inside (especially the roof) of the coconut for snacking.   I always buy young coconuts imported from Thailand.  You can pick them up from the street stall fruit vendors in Chinatown for a mere $1.50 each.

"Are these pants too tight?  Is my lipstick too dark?" I wondered as I took a last look in the mirror before heading out.  I was about to meet a couple I'd never even seen before for dinner at Megu.  A couple of weeks ago, an EDOW reader and Miho Hatori fan had complimented me via e-mail on my blog and asked if I'd like to join him and his wife for dinner at Megu.  He assured me that they weren't weird.  How could I refuse such a generous offer?   

I was kind of wound up about it all day.  I mean, it's not like they were going to get me blasted on sake, slip roofies into my miso soup and abduct me or anything, right?  RIGHT?  I called Doug.

"I'm nervous.  What if we don't have anything to talk about?"

"Don't worry," he said.  "Just scandalize them."

Somehow, this made sense to me.  They would be my first ever dinner patrons, and for the cost of what would definitely be a pricey meal, I figured I'd better turn on the charm.  I really had no idea what to expect.  Gerry and his wife Anna had seen me perform with Miho before, so they sort of knew what I looked like.  Our reservation was for 7:30 pm, but I left the house at 6:15 in order to give myself ample time to sip a cocktail in the bar and wait to be recognized.  I didn't want to have to walk around the room, pathetically propositioning every man in the room like a lost orphan. 

A pre-dinner cocktail would allow me to loosen my nerves and lubricate my tongue, I thought.  At 7:00, I turned the corner onto Walker St. from West Broadway where the white Megu flags flapped around in the wind.  In front of the entrance, two lonely red velvet ropes bowed before a short stretch of red carpet mats, soggy with the evening's drizzle.

My boots clicked on the gray staircase to the little hotel reception-like desk where I checked in to make sure I was the first arrival.  I stepped around the desk to the dim bar where colorful, gilded stripes of antique kimono were encased in glass and red walls cast a devilish glow on the few faces in the room.  I parked nervously at a curved striated wood bar stool whose soft seat surprised me when I jumped into it. 

"A Blessing, please."  The bartender placed a chilled martini glass on the shiny black bar.  She muddled some wet strawberries in a shaker with jiggers of Belvedere vodka and triple sec, squirted in pomegranate juice and strained the shaken mixture into my triangular vessel.  The result was a Manic Panic red concoction that looked and tasted like alcoholic Kool-Aid.  And I don't mean that in a bad way.   

About midway through my cocktail, a man with boyish good looks came striding purposefully over.  "Hi, are you...how do you say it, Ganda (GAHN-da)?"

"Hi, Gerry.  Yeah, it's Ganda."  We shook hands enthusiastically.  It was a little awkward, though we were both obviously trying to make it not weird.  A tawny-haired woman with girl next door beauty wearing a gorgeous sky blue batik tunic peeked in behind him.  "This is Anna."   

"I feel like I'm on a blind date or something!" I admitted.  "Shall we go sit down?"

I guess it was like a blind date, in more ways than one.  Of course I was meeting total strangers, but going to a restaurant for the first time can also feel like a blind date.  We go into new places with high hopes and maybe even great expectations, depending on what our friends have told us.  But no matter how highly our friends regard a restaurant, it's really only your reaction to it that counts.  Matters of taste are purely subjective.  Either you click or you don't. 

We went around to the back of the bar so Anna could show me the view of the room from the perched bar's glass wall.  A ginormous Japanese bell the size of some Manhattan apartments hung solemnly in the middle of the open space.  Underneath it, the infamous Buddha ice statue was melting, hands first, from the heat of the candle flame in its lap, its pedestal surrounded by a low water moat filled with red rose petals.  We could also see the balustrade-like wall sculpture made of stacked rice bowls and sake bottles, which were painted white and red to form the Japanese flag.  It's a striking but over-designed space, super-stimulating with angry reds against creamy whites.  This was not supposed to be Zen Japan.  "They spent something like $15 million renovating this space," Gerry said. 

We descended another staircase to the dining room, where we were seated at a roomy four-top in creamy leather chairs with only one padded cylindrical arm each.  Our waiter wore a hideous mandarin-collar shirt with silkscreened bamboo stems.  I've never been to a French restaurant where the waiters wore berets with Eiffel towers emblazoned on them.  I hate this sort of Asian-themed drag. 

"Is this your first time here?" the waiter asked. I told him that it was my first time here -- Gerry and Anna had already come before.  "I know the menu can be overwhelming.  I've been here since the restaurant opened," he qualified.  "If you have any questions, or need some assistance, I'll be happy to help."  I opened up my menu, a tome so shiny and thick it looked like it was published by Taschen.  The categories included some crazy headings like "Crown of Japan", "Jewels of Japan", "Crown Jewels", and "Japan Jewels," or some such nonsense.  I was lost already, and my electric Kool-Aid wasn't helping me focus any.

"Order whatever you'd like," Gerry encouraged.  Anna and I chose some jewels, some crowns, some doo-dads and some biddly bops.  The mostly silent and efficient waiters whisked away our unused orange-red geometric-patterned plates and returned with delicate tulip bud shaped stemless glasses for our water and (strangely to me), wide bottomed wine glasses for our sake.

Our stories unfolded as we waited for the nosh to arrive, great but not obtrusive music being piped at a nice level into the still fairly empty room.  Anna regaled me with fantastic tales of carting Monets and Picassos with varied gun-toters around the world, while Gerry talked about his passion for the downtown music scene and his hopes of working in music after he moves on from his current line of work.  I had expected to be the entertainer and was pleasantly surprised to be so charmed and entertained by my patrons.

I can't say that Megu's food made such a great first impression.  If Megu were a blind date, it would be the flamboyant scenester who talks about himself so much that it's impossible to know what he's really like, besides ostentatious.  Our first dish was a pretty white ceramic ramp lit underneath with glowing blue ice cubes, with perfect Lilliputian cornstalk-like rows of eight inch tall green branches on which the cold, cooked edamame pods dangled like earrings.  But the ice leaked out onto the table as the evening wore on, and we had to struggle to tug the pods off the branches, leaving my fingertips feeling a little raw and pruny from all the salt.

The toro tartare on seared tuna was perfectly plated, the thin rectangles just lightly seared around the edges with globular little breasts of toro tartare topped by fresh wasabi nipples.  The waiter encouraged us to use the little pastry brush to dab the garlic soy sauce onto each piece of seared tuna.  But what looked perfect on the plate was hard to get into the mouth.  After struggling with chopsticks to not spill the tartare off its little magic carpet, I wound up picking up the  tuna tiles with my fingers, dripping garlic soy on the table.  The texture was lovely, though Anna pointed out that the searing did make it taste a little fishy. 

Next up was the toro "ravioli", a silly name for a great dish.  Dice-size cubes of meltaway toro were stacked like half a pink Rubik's cube between two perfect lengthwise slices of avocado, sprinkled with grated lemon zest and surrounded by an avocado wasabi mousse that had the smooth but slightly pasty texture of commercial guacamole.  On the side was a gimmicky test tube on ice, filled with a slightly thickened bonito soy sauce which wasn't really necessary.  Avocado and toro are both such sensual, fatty delights -- they're sinfully good together.

We also sampled the Kobe beef tartare, a perfect disc of bright red chopped beef blanketing perfect brunoise of grainy soft Asian pear and shallots and topped by a sprinkling of Japanese chives.  The raw beef was incredibly tender and satiny, though I missed the unctuousness of raw egg.  It was served with a long round spoon with a melon-baller like bowl, perfect for scooping up little bits of the mixture.

And yet another tartare came to the table --the salmon tartare this time, with tapioca and ikura.  The tapioca and ikura were almost exactly the same size, the opaque white balls and glistening orange balls so charmingly arranged around the hockey puck of salmon and against the background of orange ikura juice.  It was so impossibly cute you could see Sanrio serving it to Hello Kitty -- you know, if she had a mouth and could actually eat.  It was topped with a solid cube of soy wasabi.  A runner came by with a red, glowing piece of burning wood charcoal to "sear" the top -- though really, all it seemed to do was melt the little cube of soy.  I'm not a huge ikura fan, but the texture was really lovely, if salty.  I didn't think the tapioca contributed much besides looks, though. 

But those courses sort of beg the question -- why so many kinds of tartares?  I know, I know, maybe we're not supposed to order all the tartares.  But the menu has the Shopsin's effect -- so many things sound interesting that it's easy to lose focus and wind up inadvertently ordering variations on a theme instead of a varied and stimulating menu.

The hot dishes were all very different.  Four fat fried asparagus came skewered lengthwise, coated in a crunchy batter of savory crushed sembei.  Sweet shrimp were imported from Japan for what our waiter told us was "by far, the most popular dish on the menu."  A huge platter with a small sunken bowl in the middle cradled the fried ama ebi, which were smaller than rock shrimp and very tender, slicked lightly with a mildly spiced, mildly creamy sauce and topped by a tangle of super-fine white scallion strands.  I imagine these lady-like morsels are perfect for the dainty chopsticks of lip-glossed, slim-wasted arm candy whose consorts can afford to regularly take them to places like Megu.

The tonkatsu was Berkshire pork, also known as kurobuta in Japan.  I loved the tender, dark meat kurobuta tonkatsu at Maisen in Tokyo, but Megu's kurobuta was suspiciously pale.  It tasted as though it had been brined, which seasons the meat and keeps it moist with salt water but not moist with fat as the Maisen kurobuta is.  But the thin layer of panko was nice and crisp, and the stripe of olive oil anointed, finely shredded raw cabbage provided a lovely palate cleanser.

The special we chose, a split grilled langosta crustacean with long alien tentacles, came unadorned and not terribly interesting, the meat sweet but with some unappetizing looking albumen peeking out from the very lightly charred flesh.

I had to try a piece of sushi, so I ordered a silky piece of uni, which was draped over a bed of too-vinegary rice and topped with the ubiquitous wasabi bead.  Gerry and Anna also had what I believe was a shrimp tempura roll, which seemed tasty but had the same over-vinegared, over-seasoned rice. 

Desserts were enjoyable, but missable.  The tender wedge of matcha mille crepes was just like the Lady M mille crepes that I used to get at Takashimaya, but with the slightly bitter edge of green tea powder.  Anna's choux with custard and salt ice cream was okay, though the choux texture honestly didn't match up with Beard Papa's crisp fluffiness.  The custard also tasted a bit grainy.  The salt ice cream had excellent flavor (I love salted sweets) but its texture was a little hard and long crystaled, like refrozen ice cream. 

As we finished off our pot of green tea, I invited them out to eat at Sripraphai in Queens.  As promised, Gerry took care of what I am sure was an astronomical check, and while the dishes were sort of hit and miss, I had a great time on our blind date adventure, getting to know two people I might not have otherwise met.  I hope they'll let me take them out on a second date. 

"So what did you think?" Gerry asks as we climb back out.  "Nobu's better, right?" 

I'd have to agree.  I mean, Megu's nice and all -- it's just not my type.

Grade: B

Total:  I don't know, because I didn't want to look at the bill.  My guess is that it was around $160 per person after tax and tip.

Will I return?  No, I can't afford to eat like that.  It's fun to be big pimpin' when someone is generous enough to take you but I'm saving my next special occasion outing for Daniel.

Megu

62 Thomas Street between West Broadway and Church

1, 2, 3, or 9 to Chambers St., A, C to Chambers St.

212-964-7777

The first of a three part series on the James Beard House debacle!  This is some hot goss!

*Link from Saute Wednesday

I'm a little behind, but I just started poking around the T Style Food Issue.  I told my friend Mike I was going to watch what I say, but come on, what the fuck is going on over there?  A story written by a self-proclaimed picky eater in L.A. who doesn't eat bananas, avocados, lamb, or dill?  Cod cheeks as the "new staple"?  A $950 basket backpack as a "dining must-have"?  A writer who has to call the Cherry Marketing Institute in Michigan to figure out that you can buy frozen cherries at the supermarket? 

Reading the Times' Dining section these days is like watching Rosie O'Donnell spilling out of her orange t-shirt and long shorts while playing Andie McDowell's candy-snorting retarded sister in a Hallmark movie.  It's horrifying on so many levels, but I'm compelled by its Medusa-like spell to watch and wither away. 

This morning I bought my lunch of two hot tamales from a kid hiding inside a dark van with all the shades drawn.  I recognized his orange Coleman coolers of foil-wrapped tamales and large thermoses of hot arroz con leche and champurrado in the shadows of the van.  He's probably the tamale lady's kid.  His scout was up the block, presumably watching for the cops who've been uncompassionately busting the small-time street vendors.

And that's how we roll in Sunset Park.

In the Best Vanilla on Vanilla Cupcake category, the winner is: Baked!  Sweet little cakes with light, downy crumb, springy yet totally tender, and just enough satin buttercream icing to grease the chute.  Extra points for the springtime apropos cherry blossom motif decorating the top.  Red Hook, I eat my words.  I will be back to try the lemon drop cake and the chocolate malted cake, whether you like it or not.

Baked

359 Van Brunt St. between Dikeman & Wolcott

F train to Smith/9th St. and then a lot of walking or the B77 bus or the B61 bus.