Eating our way through NYC: Part two

So, to recap: we've had Cuban sandwiches, French bistro food, and what the New York Times describes as a "high church of reverently prepared fish."

Where next?

Answer: The Morgan Library, first to check out the building (by Charles McKim and Renzo Piano), and then the holdings (manuscripts by Mark Twain, Alexander Pope, Galileo, Mozart; silver cups from first-century Rome; three, count 'em, three Gutenberg Bibles).

And then the cafe, with its oversized, horseradishy deviled eggs:



and its three-martini lunch.



Then we wandered down Broadway so I could check out the first US branch of Top Shop (verdict: cheaply made and overpriced. Much worse than the US H&M. Or perhaps I just have to accept that I haven't been in Toppo Shoppo's target demographic for, ahem, 20 years).

And then it was time to eat again, so we scooted over to A Salt and Battery, discovered that it was full to bursting (which I guess is a good thing) and repaired next door to Tea & Sympathy.

It was the first time we'd managed to get in; the place only has room for ten tables, and would frankly be more comfortable if they took a couple out. It's so small that people waiting for a table have to stand outside (not fun on a freezing January day).

On the other hand, there's a lovely selection of sponge cakes on the counter, a gregarious Bet Lynch-like manager, and a menu of bangers and mash, scotch egg and sausage roll.

It's definitely a niche, and seemingly populated by young female American Anglophiles, and so they can get away with charging (get this) $5.95 for Heinz tomato soup (yes, from a can) and $7.50 for a cheese and pickle sarnie. But it was also the rare chance for me to get my fix, so I didn't care.

We got tea, which came in mismatched china (oh, how quaint!)



And then I ordered a bacon butty (which was good — ah, proper bacon! — but could have done with a couple of slices of fried tomato to add moisture) and The Boy went for the Cornish pasty.



And that's when I realized we'd have to come back.



The meat was perfectly seasoned, deep and rich and full of flavor. There were recognizable chunks of veggies. And jus. It was one of the best Cornish pasties I'd ever tasted.

For our last meal of the visit, we went to eat oysters in the basement of a train station. (I know, it sounds a lot like getting sushi from a gas station.)

The Oyster Bar is a cavernous space just off the dining concourse underneath Grand Central. One section is laid out with long, diner-like counter seating, and the rest is ... this:



It turns out the architect, Rafael Guastavino, patented a method of creating vaulted spaces using interlocking terracotta tiles.



And his first work in the US? The Boston Public Library, for McKim, Mead and White. There. You learned something.

But we weren't there to improve our minds; we were there to consume bivalves. Luckily, the Oyster Bar has one or two choices.



We settled on four: the Bras d'Or, the Chincoteague, and two locals: Oyster Ponds and Westhampton. It was fascinating to taste the differences that location makes to the same animal. The first, from colder waters, was small and briny; the second, from warmer Virginia, was long and salty. The Oyster Ponds had an iron-ish tang, while the other Long Island type was surprisingly sweet.



It was only fitting to have champagne and toast the end of another fabulously food-filled trip.

And then we caught the train back home.

Lansdowne Pub: Magically delicious chips!

Remember how disappointed I was with the uneven, dry chips at the Battery?

It doesn't really matter any more. Because I found a place that does the closest thing to real, proper chips.

Last week, the Lansdowne Pub opened, so I went with lovely co-worker Sarah and new co-worker Eric to check it out.

In its corporate attempt to create the atmosphere of ye olde taverne from scratch, it's everything I dislike: 4,000 cozy square feet of faux-traditional, newly distressed, dark-wood bar room. A Pogues/Van Morrison/Cranberries soundtrack. Walls decorated with carefully distressed tchotchkes and cloth-bound books, Guinness posters and HDTVs showing sports.



I was all ready for a menu of authentic Irish dishes such as nachos and quesdillas and buffalo wings and chili.

But the Lansdowne's options were actually interesting. Yes, there were the usual bangers & mash and shepherd's pie and beef stew, but there were also pork chops, oysters, mussels, salmon—items that could easily appear on a trad/modern Irish menu but, at least in Boston, rarely do.

The Lansdowne also does the ubiquitious full-on fry-up breakfast on weekends, and what may be a proper Sunday roast. I shall investigate further.

But what gave me most hope was that they had chips with a variety of toppings: gravy, curry sauce, mushy peas, baked beans.

So Sarah ordered the grilled cheese sandwich, and was going to order a side of chips until the waitress explained they came with her dish anyway. And then this arrived:



"I thought you said it came with chips," Sarah said to our waitress, who rolled her eyes.

"You know, I keep telling them they should change the wording on the menu," she said. "People are always getting this confused."

Okay, so why didn't you clarify this before we ordered??

Eric went for the fish sandwich, which did really come with chips:



The fish itself was lovely:



And I ordered the ploughman's lunch. This was something of a test: in England, you can tell a lot about a pub from its ploughman's, which is, at its core, bread and a wedge of cheese, but can range from those ingredients alone to a feast of cured meats, pork pie, boiled eggs, salad and fruit.

And it turned out to be better than expected:



The bread was fabulous, light and nutty; the cheddar could have been stronger; the salad was okay (no one expects tomatoes to taste of anything in April anyway); and it came with an interesting tomato chutney, as well as Branston pickle, to which I am addicted.

And then there was the meat:



The camera doesn't lie: that's about how appetizing it was. Basically thin-sliced deli turkey and beef, it was cold, clammy, and completely without flavor. I'd seriously suggest that the Lansdowne ditch it and serve a couple of cold sausages instead.

Oh, and the chips?



As good as it gets without going to a proper chippy. Soft and pliant, not too dry or too greasy, held salt and vinegar well. Better than most late-night post-club takeaways back home, at least. I'm usually able to restrain myself from eating a whole plate of chips, but it took willpower not to finish the lot.

The Lansdowne Pub isn't the cheapest lunch option—my bread and cheese set me back $13—but I'm glad it's there for when I get the insatiable urge for real proper chips.

Restaurant Week: Lunch at L'Espalier

Q: What's better than going to L'Espalier for lunch?

A: Going to L'Espalier for lunch during Restaurant Week. Three courses: $20.09.

Q: What's better (or perhaps worse) than having to read a long, rambling post about how well crafted, beautifully plated and generally delicious the food was?

A: Having to look at a whole bunch of photos. (Sorry.)

To begin, a salad of spring greens with rhubarb vinaigrette and Three Sisters cheddar:



And a light, sweet Vidalia onion soup dotted with licorice sugar (dark and explosive on the tongue)



with a tiny island of light, fluffy parmesan flan, topped with roasted almonds.



Next, pork belly with caraway-roasted potatoes and pickled-ginger sauerkraut.





And, for a little extra, one of the spécialités de la maison: juicy, salty sirloin burger with pulled pork (!), served in a toasted brioche bun with Roaring Forties cheese and slaw ...



The burger came with thick fries that were more like roasted potato (a slight crunch to the outside; light and fluffy inside), and a trio of condiments that included a homemade barbecue sauce and a lovely garlic-truffle ailoi.



For dessert: chocolate brownies with crumbled white chocolate ...



And a mango mousse with macademia nuts.



This is allegedly Restaurant Week for Winter 2009. But as of this dessert, spring has officially begun.

Thanksgiving at Rialto

I know you're all wondering about our Thanksgiving lunch at Rialto. Arentcha? Sure y'are!

We decided to go at real proper lunchtime, largely because if we waited until, say, three or four, we'd already have demolished a box of crackers and an entire wedge of Stilton with dates and oranges, and then we wouldn't be hungry.

As it turned out, that was the right time to turn up: there were only a handful of occupied tables and we were shown to a lovely window spot in a secluded corner.



(One of the nicest things about Rialto's recent redesign is that the room is sectioned off with linen drapes, creating smaller, more intimate seating areas. Sure, you can still hear the obnoxious diners at the next table, but at least you don't have to look at them.)

Rialto's Thanksgiving menu was a three-course prix-fixe.



Even though there weren't that many choices, we still had a tough time deciding.



Actually, there were four courses: everyone got the roasted pumpkin soup, a creamy, velvety little serving with pumpkin seeds, a dollop of ginger cream and a fried sage leaf.



For the first course, I chose the salad with poached pear. The greens came tucked inside what was essentially a taco shell made entirely out of parmesan cheese. (Process that for a moment.) The pear was allegedly poached in red wine, but there was something else (Amaretto, perhaps?) that gave it a sweet, almondy note.



And then, the star of the show: the turkey dinner.



The mouthful of crisp skin and the scattered pecans were a tasty and unexpected bonus.



Note the diced morsels to the left of the sprouts in the next photo. Notice how the sprouts do glisten so? Bacon, my friends. Bacon.



With the turkey, I had a German Spätburgunder; it's unusual to find German reds, and this was lighter than its French Pinot Noir cousins and a good match for the meal. This shows the color pretty well:



And then dessert: a pumpkin custard topped with chocolate and cream, each flavor carrying hints of fall spice and blending together in a happy harmony.





And finally, a nice cup of mint tea in a teapot that looked like the kind of teapot that would appear in a 1950s sci-fi movie about drinking tea in the year 2000.



So that was all very — wait, what's that you say? What did The Boy eat?

Well, let's ask him, shall we?



(And yes, they played salsa all afternoon, which I loved, especially hearing Celia Cruz and a Beny Moré cover, but which The Boy compared to how I would feel if they played incessant Beatles while we ate. I saw his point.)

The service is always graceful at Rialto, and was especially so that day. Perhaps it was because the atmosphere felt like more of a celebration, or perhaps the staff was thankful that people were still willing to eat out, even in the middle of an economic apocalypse.

Either way, a number of lovely people stopped by our table to chat, including Rialto's chef and owner Jody Adams.

Darn. I should have asked her the secret of the poached pears.

A hearty (New) English pub lunch

As part of our goal of not wasting yet another summer sitting around (and then spending the fall bemoaning the fact that we did nothing all summer), The Boy and I came up with a plan to take a few day trips and see some new places.

Our first ride was back to Portsmouth, NH. Okay, that wasn't a completely new place, but I hadn't been able to get the scotch eggs out of my mind. So the real point of the trip was to have lunch at the Coat of Arms pub.

The Coat of Arms is a pretty fair approximation of the real English pub experience: it's a dark room with a long, solid bar, a snooker table, dart boards, footie on the telly and the pervasive odor of stale cigarette smoke. It also has a good selection of beer on tap, including Old Speckled Hen, McEwans, Courage and Tetley.



And, of course, our main reason for visiting: a menu that includes such traditional, artery-clogging delicacies as scotch eggs,



a surprisingly good steak and kidney pie,



a sausage, fish and chips basket meal that renders future visits to the rather overpriced A Salt and Battery in NYC unnecessary,



and a treacle pudding and custard that wasn't quite perfect--the treacle had soaked into the sponge instead of sitting on top, and the "homemade" custard tasted suspiciously like the canned Ambrosia version--but certainly nostalgically lovely enough under the circumstances.



It's probably not the healthiest thing to be an hour's drive from such greasy, stodgy, salty temptation. But it's good to know that, when the urge strikes, there's a place to indulge occasional cravings for the food of My People.

A few final food-related vacation highlights

Our Montreal vacation now seems so long ago (two whole weeks; time does fly when you're, um, back at work). But I can't move on without mentioning a few more tasty highlights from the trip.

1) Breakfast at Eggspectation, Montreal
From the outside, this place looked like a sketchy chain diner. But after the previous day's Ritzy $100 breakfast for four--which worked out to about $10 per fried egg, plus juice and coffee--we were up for something (anything) cheaper.

Inside, it was cool and funky, all alterno-hip waitstaff, college radio music and exposed bricks and ductwork.



Eggspectation's menu is mostly, um, well, ovo-centric, with unusual takes on classics and some of their own creations. But there's also a plethora of carbs: bagels, waffles, crepes, French toast. And smoothies, including one of fruit and granola, which would make a sufficient breakfast by itself. (I, of course, ordered it as well as more solid food, and realized I couldn't manage the whole thing.)

The rest of my meal: Brioche Beauty, which was actually two sizable cinnamon rolls covered with yogurt, honey and almonds, served with a fresh fruit salad.



This, to me, is the epitome of breakfast: 50% healthy and nutritious, 50% sweet and decadent.

I'm so used to "fruit salad" that turns out to be awkward chunks of under-ripe melon with a few grapes thrown in; here, the strawberries had flavor, the kiwi wasn't sour and there were slices of mango and papaya.

Eggspectation is a Canadian franchise, with only a handful of locations in the US; our closest is South Portland, Maine. (They're in one other country: India.)

I'm not saying I'd want to make a trip north solely to eat there, but if we were in the area ...

2) Hotdog and poutine, Cité Souterrain, Montreal

I really don't think this needs an explanation.



3) Turkey dinner at The Parson's Corner

We were on our way back from Montreal, somewhere close to Nowhere, when we realized it was time for lunch, and took the next available exit off Rte. 91: Barton, Vermont. The pickings were slim--an ice-cream place, a Chinese resto called Ming's (which is always a dubious name to the English) and The Parsons' Corner, a pretty house that claimed to be a restaurant.



They stopped serving lunch at 2:30. It was 2:15. We hurried inside, and found a full-on diner counter, a guy slinging hash and the living- and dining-rooms converted into booth space.



I went for a straightforward grilled cheese sandwich; The Boy chose the steak and cheese sub. His dad ordered a burger, and his mom decided on the day's special: turkey dinner.



Everything was good, but the dinner was the winner, getting big points for nostalgia (canned peas! Gelatinous cranberry sauce!), for the silky mashed potato and gravy (doubtless both reconstituted, but who cares) and especially for--because there's no way you can fake this--the tender, moist, thick slices of roast turkey.

4) Scotch eggs in Portsmouth, New Hampshire
The last leg of our return trip included lunch in Portsmouth. We wandered the streets for a while and decided on the Portsmouth Gas Light Company, which has a look and vibe much like the Miracle of Science. The food was lovely, fresh and interesting.

But this isn't about that place. It's about the place I wanted to go, but which didn't open for another hour: The Coat of Arms, a British pub whose menu included not just yer usual faux-Anglo fish 'n' chips and bangers 'n' mash, but also a ploughman's lunch, sausage rolls, treacle pudding and custard and (gasp!) scotch eggs.

After lunch, as we were heading back to the car, I ran a quick errand.



I probably should have ordered them uncooked; they came hot, and they warmed my lap for the rest of the ride home. Sadly, we were too full to eat more, and didn't get to try them until the next day, when they were cold and a little tough and chewy: not at their best.

This just means we have to go back. And also try the treacle pudding.