Back when I was hungry and vicious and always questing after dumb-luck fortune in the galleys and basement kitchens of this country, I could smell doom in a restaurant a mile away. It was a survival mechanism then, learned rather than instinctive, though no less hardwired into my autonomic switchboard…
Here’s what Emil-Lene’s Sirloin House is missing: a really big steak. Not just a big steak — big steaks it’s got. There’s a 16-ounce sirloin on the board, a 10-ounce prime rib that’s cut so generously it takes up half a plate, even a 24- ounce T-bone that certainly far…
Outside the front doors of the Fresh Fish Company was a valet — a big fella, slouched in his chair at the curb, hands in the pockets of his windbreaker. He was staring out at a lot with room for about 10,000 cars, enough parking for the hundreds of people…
The phone rings once, three times, five, and then Charlie Master answers. “Brix. Happy Monday.” This would be an incredibly annoying way for anyone to answer the phone — shades of that “case of the Mondays” scene from Office Space — if Charlie didn’t sound so sincere. He really means…
At the diners I frequent on deadline day, the waitresses know what I do for a living and don’t hold it against me. They see me hunched up in the corner going longhand through these discursions on food and love and triumph and disappointment, dog-earing menus, smoking too much and…
If I lived in New Orleans, I’d be fat as a bastard. Old-Southern-colonel fat, in a Borsalino damp around the hatband from sweating in the Delta sun, a white linen jacket with the pockets full of boiled crawfish, and étouffée-stained pants with steel-belted suspenders to keep them up. Every time…
Three months. For most critics, that’s the amount of time that must pass before a brand-new restaurant is considered fair game for a review. Ostensibly, three months should be long enough for a place to survive its opening jitters, find a true tone and voice, and get a good set…
This was one of those weekends when too much introspection and too many bad memories had turned me sour, when anything could trigger an avalanche of old junk down in my subconscious basement, raising dust and making my head hurt. Some ill-timed souvlaki, a lack of sleep and the smell…
I have yet to become acclimated to the vastness of the American West. It’s been almost five years since I left New York (the state), longer since I spent any significant amount of time in New York (the city), and still, my internal cartography remains keyed to East Coast measures…
It was a beautiful piece of fish. Generously cut from mid-body with a gentle, mathematically pleasing slope from the thick flank to the thinner, slightly more tough back quarter. The lovely white flesh was shiny with oil, golden-brown on the top and bottom from a pristine pan-sear and a broil…
This is important, so pay attention. I’m going to tell you the secret of eternal happiness — and it won’t cost you a dime. You’re getting it in a free paper and from a restaurant critic, which just goes to show that you never can tell where or when enlightenment…
John has a British accent — cultured, smooth, well-practiced, but fake. It keeps dropping off mid-sentence and goes out entirely when he has to raise his voice to be heard over the Saturday-night crowd of beautiful people and liars at Mao Asian Bistro and Sushi Lounge, hereafter to be known…
It was the steak knives at the Capital Grille that really got to me. They were beautiful, utilitarian works of art with gleaming, sharp blades laser-etched with the restaurant’s logo near the forte, perfect balance, full-tang handles and black grips cold-riveted with bright steel. On the table, they had the…
It was getting on toward late, but I was still sitting at Cielo, sprawled in a soft, comfortable, sky-blue chair across from the fireplace in the vaulted dining room, closed in by cloud-white walls, the arched black ceiling above me like starless midnight. There had been four of us for…
Imagine that you’re a restaurateur who’s just been handed a million dollars. A little more than that, actually, but for the sake of nice, round numbers, I’ll call it a million. You’ve got a big, fat check in your hand, ink still wet on all those zeros. What do you…
Matt checked the steel-bodied German dive watch clipped through the top buttonhole of his chef’s jacket. “Eleven minutes,” he said. “Total?” I asked, turning to make a bare-handed grab out of the salamander, the count “one-one-thousand-two” in my head as I set a searing hot platter on the stovetop rail…
I’d been eating out with Glen again, which is almost never a good idea, and I think I felt the building housing Sonoda’s shudder with relief when the two of us finally showed the front door our backs. Although the servers had never rushed us, had never been anything other…
When Jim Ilg and his crew were renovating the space that would become Java Moon, they found a safe sealed up inside one of the walls. It’s big — all black iron and tarnished silver with a swollen head mounted over a heavy, footed pedestal that makes it look like…
New York-style pizza is a tricky thing. In the places where it’s done properly — on the island of Manhattan, in one of the boroughs or, with rapidly declining rightness, in any of the cities that make up the outer estates of the Pizza Kingdom — it’s not even called…
We stood in front of Sherpa’s Adventurers Restaurant, Laura and I, like Hansel and Gretel before the gingerbread house, peering through the dusty windows, looking for some sign of life in the dim interior. What tables we could see were set with wineglasses, white cloths and crimson napkins stiffly folded…
No, no…Jason, you gotta listen. This place, it’s going to be great! We’ve got a chef coming in from Suriname. I don’t even know where that is, and the guy doesn’t speak a word of English, but he makes this yak-butter soup you won’t believe!” I get calls like that…
No doubt about it: I have the best job in the world. Make that one of the best jobs in the world, because there are other good careers out there, and I don’t want to step on any toes. International playboy, for a start. Professional coffee taster. Sole heir to…
