An Effing Foodie

Calçotada, ChachaCHA: Springtime @ Savoy, SoHo, NYC

I'd heard fables of calçotada via Anthony Bourdain and similar globe-hopping eaters; much as foodies stateside go apesh*t over ramps, Catalans eagerly anticipate the arrival of calçots:

[C]alçotada, a party centered around eating piles of messy calçots, or green onions, that are blackened over open fires and served with a garlicky romesco sauce of toasted almonds, toasted bread, and smoky ñora peppers.

Calçots are a Catalonian specialty grown in a unique way: harvested in early summer, they're replanted and then repeatedly covered with dirt so that the white part of the root elongates, producing a sweet and tender vegetable. (Calçots take their name from the Catalan calçar, which means to put shoes on, a reference to the process of covering the roots.     [Saveur]

It was on the castle-in-the-sky To Do List, as I've no earthly idea what spring I'd be able to trot around Spain.

And then, I caught wind that Savoy and Back Forty were holding calçotada respectively.

Bless Peter Hoffman for cheerily provoking New Yorkers to eat with their hands and cavort with strangers!

The elder of the 2 Effing BroBros joined me for this soiree of charred carousing; we knew we were in for a treat as we saw clouds of onion-and-lamb affected smoke wafting down Prince St.

Dinner included dangerously drinkable bottomless rosé, both in-glass and arced directly into mouths by a porron-wielding Peter Hoffman himself.

"It's all in the arms!"  Hoffman happily demonstrated, the blush-colored wine catching light as it streamed neatly into his open mouth.

Family Effing threw down, but not nearly to as impressive effect.  (My lips touched glass as I tapered off--FAIL!) Cheers to our table, where every single diner gave the porron a go.

Like snarfing new herring or dismembering decapods, haphazard method and humbling communal messiness seems half the point of eating piping hot calçots:

After sliding off the onions' scorched outer layers, all present, from children to grandmothers, dunk the calçots in romesco (see Grilled Green Onions with Romesco), tip back their heads, and lower the long, white stalks into their mouths, leaving behind sooty fingers and a mound of carbonized leaves. [Saveur]

Our green onions were not as hefty or sooty as the Catalonian ones described, so no stripping was necessary; the helpful grill-master's mate showed us how to coil the onions and scoop up romesco from the large shared bowl.  Big, greasy smiles and blackened fingers followed.

The romesco was rich, coarse and thick, like a red-hued pesto, chunky with mortared almonds.  The brazen garlicky-fattiness of it mingled beautifully with the sweet-n-bitter grilled green onions, flame-cripsed at the ends and tender within.

EF and Effing BroBro: HUMuhgwd. Eesh go good.

I wish I'd thought to scoop out a big blob of it to eat with my lamb, greens, sausage and beans...but I was too busy eating lamb, greens, sausage and beans. 

Everything was that stripped-down stripe of satisfaction.  The grilled lamb was a lovely medium-rare, with a good sprinkle of flaky sea salt; the kale with maybe a little lemon and olive oil; the botifarra sausages were plump, generous, and totally unadorned; and the beans tasted...like beans, not sugar or pork, tooth-tender and creamy. 

Crispy-topped crema catalana capped off the bloat:

Catalans claim that their custard is primordial creme brulee, but when you've got a trap full of heavy cream and burnt brittled sugar, you're unlikely to quibble over chicken-or-the-egg.

Spoons plonked to pause down our long table of good-humored, rosé-glowy company, live flamenco tumbling the whole restaurant along.  'Twas a mighty fine way to spend a spring night.

EF Eats Tokyo, Vol.2: Tsukiji Fish Market, Day 1

Good 'ol EST jetlag made snapping up in bed at an ungodly wee hour relatively easy--not that it would have been hard anyway, since Soft-Spoken Feisty Lady and I were about to embark on one of my long-coveted foodie dreams.  We strapped on knee-high combat boots and wellies respectively, and padded out into a barely stirring Tokyo.

Some foodies dream of El Bulli and The French Laundry, of vintage wines and caviar, of green-chile cheeseburger trails, cross-country pie conquests, and sniffing out the most authentic Maine lobster roll.  And while I'm game for any of the above, I wouldn't trade any of them for the 2 mornings that I had at the Tsukiji Fish Market.

Cremebruleed, a dearly trusted foodie who I'd not been in touch with for YEARS, had just moved back to Tokyo, and was all too happy to meet us for our first tryst into the edible aquatic wonderland.  It was her birthday, after all--what better birthday breakfast than the freshest sushi in the world?

Even though it was early, cold and rainy, we 3 were in great spirits, and Cremebruleed laughed aloud as I danced in little circle of fishy anticipation.  Without ado, she yanked us into the bustling, living hive of commerce.

As with much of Tokyo, my noggin was flatly unprepared for the intensity and scale of Tsukiji.  The infamous international tuna auction has been closed to tourists, so we were making a beeline to the heart of the market (rows and rows of seafood and Japanese longshoremen), and working our way to the outer rings (produce markets, pickle stands, kitchen hardware stores, street foods, and minuscule restaurants favored by the longshoremen once they were done with work). 

Basically, if you needed live cuttlefish, a sharkskin wasabi grater, a fresh root of wasabi to go with it, and a giant bowl of spaghetti with fresh Hokkaido crabs, this little city within a city is where you'd go to get it all.

BTW, some haters would scowl at the closing of certain areas of the markets to tourists, but let me tell ya: The market-proper is a full-powered, dangerous place, and if you don't have your wits about you, you'll probably be mowed down by one of a thousand forklifts pinging in a million directions at worst, or catch a face-full of fishy hosewater at best.

NYer walking/dodging/perrying skills definitely helped us from dying or stopping vital business, and even we got annoyed at the congestion-causing telephoto-lensed momos wandering haplessly into certain disaster.

Cremebruleed led our little duckling line through the damp, endless rows of piscine jewels and treasures--crabs of every imaginable size, shape and feistyness:

Bitty rock crabs, alien Hokkaido crabs, Alaskan King--every one alive and kickin'.  If it can't poke your eye out, it ain't fresh.

One fish!

Two fish!

Flat fish!

Group fish! (Group o groupers.)

But you're here for the food, and so were we.  By 9 AM, we'd worked up a hearty appetite sidestepping splatter and gawking at swimmy critters, so Cremebruleed inched us toward the outer ring of the market.  She strolled down a row of tiny sushi places, past all the tourists and nationals waiting in hour-long lines at Daiwa and Sushi Dai, and stopped at the last sliding glass door.

The sushi master greeted us warmly as we inched our way into the clean, lilliputian space; bags went in a rack directly over our heads, bottoms on stools, backs against the wall, knees under the sushi bar.  Scale: Subway car, if that.

With a hot towel and a quick flip of the picture-oriented menu, the 3 of us each chose the 14-piece, 1 roll omakase (3,700 yen, I think...definitely under 4,000, or $40 USD), in which we would choose the last two pieces of nigiri.  SSFL and I were grinning and bobbing like kids on Christmas, and Cremebruleed was smiling like...well, a lady in-the-know at a fab birthday breakfast.

First four pieces of nigiri--(L to R) maguro (lean tuna), toro (fatty tuna), hata (grouper) and tai (red snapper).

Each tuna cut was rich, fatty, and distinct; the grouper was meaty and almost creamy, and the snapper sparklingly saline; all were so clean and fresh that you could practically hear their offers for three wishes melting in the slightly warm rice. 

I didn't fully realize where I was in the world until the moment that 1st piece--maguro--broke apart on my tongue.  It was the reverse of Proust's madeleines, the distillation of the immediate and fleeting, a pulse that slows and gives one rare focus--this tuna, on this birthday morning, could not have happened anywhere as it has happened here.

It was about now that the lovely man handed us bowls of the best miso soup I've ever had.  Maybe it was just nice to be sipping something savory and steaming on a cold day.  Or maybe it was because it was stare-back soup.

But seriously, the amaebi (deep sea shrimp) heads impart a subtle sweetness and tomalley oomph that ups the unami ante to near-infinity.  Cremebruleed translated that we could have as much soup as we wanted, but we practiced restraint and saved room for the arriving feast.

SWEET! Effing Foodie a la Saveur Magazine!

Life is funny.  One lucky day, you're sitting on a beach with your best friend, just eating lunch...

...and a year later, said lunch ends up on your favorite magazine's website.

YEAH!!!

Much love to Alli and Brandon, who led me to this box from Nu'uanu Okazuya, and countless other meals I still dream of.