May, 2010 - - Page 3

by gansie

A Second Round of Heart

So Im in Osaka and I cant find the apostrophe on the keyboard so just go with it. I will tell you a quick story before we start our day here.

It was our first night in Japan. Tokyo. Fourteen fucking hour plane ride. We find the hotel, which is of course a story itself, quickly pull ourselves together and walk around our tiny section of Shinjuko. Its a maze of restaurants and bars with very little English signage.

We circle the area about six times, too scared to walk in anywhere. There are no other tourists in this area. We have not heard a lick of English. But we smell deliciousness all around and are ready to wash away the processed plane food.

We walk into a long narrow place with about 15 tables. The 20-something-year-old cooks greet us with wide smiles and something in Japanese. We smile. Show two fingers (as in there are two of us) and we are brought to a high-top.

When the waitress arrives the best we can do is bring our hands, in a cup shape to our mouth, and pretend we are drinking. We say beer. It works. We are brought out two drafts and are given menus. Everything is in Japanese. I look and laugh. 80 laughs.

We try to order and Im not even sure what we say. We just kinda giggle and our 20-something waitress with thick fake eyelashes and a scrounge in her hair giggles back. She walks away and 80 and I are like – what the fuck do we do. Fuck.

Babies: Too Fancy For Their Own Good?

We’re always down for a good kid-people versus kid-haters food debate here at ES, whether it’s about child menus, kid-friendly cooking or hot dog design, so two items over at Good Bite caught my eye this week.

The first covers the growing debate about whether it’s kosher to take your tots to fine-dining venues:

It seems like the debate is separated into those who feel their dinner will be ruined by a crying child (and thus feel it’s an incredibly selfish move to bring a young child into a restaurant) versus those who want to teach kids restaurant etiquette and believe kids should be welcome in more formal dining venues.

What do you think? Is bringing your rugrats to Jean-Georges a great way to teach them about sophisticated food or a waste of your money and everyone else’s eardrums?

Which brings us to the second item — at least one celeb chef is firmly on the kiddies’ side:

You’ve heard of kids menus at restaurants, but have you heard of baby menus? Tyler Florence has recently released a line of baby food called Sprout and now he plans to serve Sprout in his three NorCal restaurants. What makes his baby food better? Florence says he “uses techniques like roasting to caramelize produce and bring out the natural sugars. The result is delicious, pure food.”

Hmm…I have to say that paying Tyler Florence to cook for your infant falls decidely on the “waste of your money” side of things. I mean, what’s next? Breast milk on the menu? Oh, right.

(Photo: Sprout)

by gansie

Artsy Photo of the Day

Mmm…asparagus season is here. What are you all doing with your stalks? Ideas?

in Photos / Veggie 3 comments

by BS

100 Things to Do with a Banana

How many times has someone spotted excess, overripe or just unused bananas in your kitchen and said, “uh-oh, looks like it’s time to make banana bread!” — as if the only things possible to do with a banana are eat it or turn it into bread? Well we say “no more.” With no particular offense meant to anyone’s banana bread recipe, we believe the humble banana is in fact as versatile as bacon or eggs, and we’ve got the internets to prove it.

Here’s our carefully curated list of 100 Things to Do with a Banana (not including banana bread). Yes, we’ve got plenty of banana breakfasts and banana desserts, but how about some banana curry, banana soup or a banana martini? And don’t worry, there are — of course — a few ways to eat banana with bacon.

Click on the photos for full recipes.

From Bananas to Apples, 100 things to do with apples:

And: 100 Ways to Cook with Strawberries
100 Ways to Cook with Guinness
100 Ways to Cook with Sriracha

in 100 Ways / Featured / Lists 102 comments

by BS

Feed Us Back: Comments of the Week

– Knew we could count on you ESers for all kinds of answers to what to do with a radish. Krista:

Pickle them and use the results in place of an olive in your martini.

La Morgan:

I slice my radishes & let them sit in a puddle of lemon juice (meyer lemon is great – on special at WF now), salt, and a little sugar. Sort of like quick pickle. Good to serve with fish, meat, rice, etc.

Other ideas for how to make those little suckers sing?

– JoeHoya asks by far the most relevant question about high tea etiquette:

I’ve always wondered if there’s a corresponding low tea.

If so, count me in!

And if you thought gansie and 80 proof had a rough time with their hot avocado experiment, Charles brings us an avo-disaster story that um, should probably just be read in full:

Shrimp and Grits (and Buttermilk too)

There are few times when the BF and myself have an opportunity to cook together. Either he’s cooking a pasta dish or grilling some chicken which needs no more than one person, or I’ve taken over the kitchen and he doesn’t dare come near me, which is a shame really as the BF can actually cook.

On this occasion our cooking together was brought on as we were hosting a birthday brunch for our friend Butter, who has recently moved to DC from Jersey. Butter and I were having a cocktail at our local haunt and there were two women dining at the bar. Butter couldn’t quite determine what they were eating but was intrigued — so she asked. It was shrimp and grits. Butter had heard of grits but never tried them, so I figured shrimp and grits would be a nice surprise for her birthday brunch.

ES Local: What’s Eating DC

Our weekly local roundup of the best eating and drinking events going down in Washington, DC
View ES Local: What’s Eating DC in a larger map

Event of the Week: On Sunday cross the river to Ballston for this year’s Taste of Arlington, checking out dishes and chefs from over 40 of your favorite VA restaurants.

Remember, you can check out the constantly updated map any day of the week

If you represent a restaurant or bar and wish to have your event listed on the ES Local: What’s Eating DC map, please write to me at britannia(at)endlesssimmer(dot)com

in Restaurants 0 comments

May 2010