Recently in Food Writing Category
Again I'm late notifying you of the latest Haute Plates column. Please forgive the lapse.
In other news, my friend Mary has started a blog, Native Palate, that, if I know her, will have a lot to do with food. She's a clever young woman, and I expect good things. I suggest checking it out.
To conclude, here is a picture that I took at Three Muses the other night:
Rosemary Roasted Cashews
It's been a long day. I was in Alexandria taking a deposition, and I didn't have a chance until now to provide you, my friends, with a link to the current installment of Haute Plates.
I hope my tardiness is excusable. In addition, please have this picture from my meal at Oak:
Charred Baby Octopus with Serrano and Potato Salad
It's Thursday, and my Haute Plates column is online and available for your viewing pleasure. Leave a comment, why don't you?
Below is another photograph from a meal I had at the restaurant recently.
Trio of Desserts
This week's Haute Plates addresses Rambla, the restaurant housed in the International House Hotel. If you haven't been in a while, you might want to read the piece. The restaurant has changed a bit.
Indeed, here is a photograph of a menu item that has changed significantly:
Oyster Pintxo at Rambla, New Orleans
The current oyster pintxo comes with pepper jelly and green onions, as opposed to the Garotxa cheese and crystal beurre blanc pictured above.
Ladies and gentlemen, your weekly edition of Haute Plates is available. Please enjoy.
In other news, the long-delayed redesign of this website is finally under way. If all goes according to plan, within a week or two the new design should be live. In addition to a generally improved appearance, you will finally have the opportunity once more to provide comments. I know. Try to restrain yourselves.
In the interim, how about a picture of onion rings?
Onion Rings at Sid-Mar's
This week's Haute Plates will be up later today, is up and therein I discuss La Petite Grocery.
Not too long ago I attended a function put on by the James Beard Foundation at Kingsley House. Justin Devillier was one of the chefs providing food, and I got a shot of his dish:
Boudin, herb salad, and pickles
It doesn't have much to do with my piece on La Petite Grocery, but it was delicious, and I thought it was a pretty neat image. So there you go, I suppose.
This week's Haute Plates is about Middendorf's. If you haven't been, you should spend the 35 minutes or so driving north on I-55 that it will take you to get there. Trust me, you won't find better fried catfish.
Here are two pictures of the deck that was added a couple of years ago:
The Deck at Middendorf's
The Deck at Middendorf's, showing the bar
Yes, once more the fine people at MyNewOrleans.com have seen fit to publish my Haute Plates column. This week: Rare Cuts, and a few recipes. I do not have photographs to accompany this post, as I did not remember to photograph the food I cooked. Alas.
Also, you may have noted that other than brief updates to alert you to the existence of my online column, there has been scant writing on appetites over the last many months. I am hoping to correct that, and am in the planning stages of a piece about Vietnamese food. Unfortunately, the reasons for the lack of content here - work mainly - are not abating, so while I'd like to promise you more content, I can't. Let's just say it's an aspiration, and leave it at that?
And a dollar short, but Haute Plates is indeed up and available for your reading pleasure. This week, Little Morocco, where in addition to the food I discuss in the piece, things such as these are available:
Harissa, Preserved Lemons,Cous Cous
This week in my Haute Plates column, I discuss Delgado Community College's Culinary Arts Program. Please enjoy.
Here is yet another picture from the meal I had at Delgado:
Summer Melon Salad with Feta, Cucumbers, and Ginger-Lime Vinaigrette
A photo from a lunch I had recently at Delgado's Culinary Arts Program:
You may learn more about the program in my haute plates post tomorrow. Can you contain yourselves?
Apologies for the delay in alerting you to the latest Haute Plates, but I have been busy. I suppose that if you read this website regularly, the fact that my column comes out on Thursday is not news to you.
This picture was taken during one of the two meals I have had recently at Jung's Golden Dragon, but I hope you agree it looks appetizing:
Beef and Ox Tongue with Spicy Sauce
The Haute Plates blog for this week is available for your perusal at its usual location. This week the topic is Mondo, Susan Spicer's just-opened restaurant in Lakeview.
Here is a photograph that does not appear with the article:
Fried Hominy with Chile and Lime
New York Times restaurant critic Sam Sifton, in his review of Takashi, a restaurant that specializes in "raw offal and Korean-style Japanese barbecue," wrote the following paragraph:
Cubed raw liver comes to the table as well, a chilled, lumpy stew dressed with salt and sesame oil. It tastes of lightning storms on the high plains, of fear and magnificence combined. It is faintly metallic, rich with blood.
You know, I read a part of Anthony Bourdain's new book, Medium Raw, and I agreed with something he said therein. I don't have it in front of me, so I'll paraphrase: there is a limited vocabulary available to folks who write about food. It becomes difficult, after you've done it for a while, to come up with a new way to describe bacon. I feel this particularly acutely, because I find myself reading things I've written six or eight months apart, and finding too little to distinguish the way I described what I was eating. And if I have this problem? I, who have the vocabulary of a gifted 12 year old? You know it's got to be tough out there for a food writer.
So I am charitably inclined towards an author who tries to stretch the limits of the language to evoke what is ultimately a very personal, very visceral experience. That said, I want someone to fucking tell me what a lighting storm on the high plains tastes like. I do not want anyone to tell me what fear and magnificence combined tastes like. That's a flavor of Mountain Dew, I believe.
When I saw the excerpt for the Times piece in my newsreader, I honestly thought it might be a joke. I mean, a place that specializes in raw offal and Korean-style Japanese barbecue? Not Korean barbecue. Not Japanese barbecue, but Korean-style Japanese barbecue. Lest I sound entirely parochial, when he's not comparing liver to a thunderstorm, Sifton makes the place sound pretty damn good. Unbelievably pretentious, but pretty damn good nonetheless. I love both Korean and Japanese barbecue; I love offal, and I love less popularly appreciated cuts of meat. I bet I'd have a great meal at Takashi.
But I could not help thinking, as I read Sifton's review, that he is writing for an audience that doesn't really include me. That's fair enough; he's the restaurant critic for the New York Times, after all. But Jesus, Mr. Sifton, did you really have to conclude your review with this:
Takashi is probably not for everyone: too do-it-yourself and odd. But its eccentricity is honest, its atmosphere winning and its food quite good. So there is large intestine on the menu. You are not in New York to play on the junior varsity, are you?
Presumably if you consume large intestine, you're on the varsity team? Or wait, are you on the varsity team by virtue of living in New York City? Everyone has limits where food is concerned. As I said, I love offal; liver, sweetbreads, and tongue are all favorites. I'd rather eat a good piece of skirt steak than a fillet. But I don't think I've earned some sort of food-credibility because I happen to enjoy things that some other folks find distasteful. By the same token, when I tried stewed pork intestines with mushrooms and tofu at a local Chinese restaurant not too long ago, I didn't feel like some sort of junior varsity bench-warmer because it wasn't for me.
I don't know, maybe it's beautifully written. Maybe it's poetry; and maybe I just don't get it. But jesus, people: a lighting storm on the high plains?
