It’s Monday night, and I have just been on a fatty food bender. I can’t even remember the last time I ate something either green or something that didn’t involve animal fat or deep frying. I guess it has all been worth it. I’ve got a lot to say.
Since b4b isn’t really all about food reviews, let me just briefly touch upon the meals that have added a special layer of padding around my precious mid-section. Fall is coming, and my instincts are kicking in full gear. It’s time to get ready for a long drought.
On Friday night, I headed out to Fort Greene, Brooklyn, to hang out for a bit with Uberchef and his gal. After their most generous hospitality and a bottle of wine, BG and I headed to No. 7 for dinner with a couple of friends, whose nicknames I have yet to come up with. I had known about No. 7 for a long time, since the owner’s wife is a friend of mine from our glorious days in the media business. I guess in the spirit of friendship, I would have to say this meal was great.
The meal was great!
But really, the meal was pretty solid, although there were a couple of misses, in my honest opinion. We started off with the fried broccoli (which I guess was green, so I take back my earlier statement), which was much better than I expected. It wasn’t tempura style, but it was not as heavily battered as a good piece of fried chicken (I must admit, I just got back from Locanda Verde and I still have fried chicken batter on the brain). We also got a scallop ceviche, which was pleasant enough, if not a little bit uninspired. There was also a frisée salad with some fig stuff and a grilled octopus salad. There were ok. That’s about all I have to say about that.
Then we moved on the main courses– two orders of fried quail (see, fried food dominates my life right now), a Wagyu ribeye, and some chicken thing wrapped in cabbage. I don’t really feel like commenting on these items, so I wont. They were good. The wagyu is probably worth going back for, but the quail and chicken are not. I will comment on the buttermilk pudding, which was great.
But really, all of this just ended up being killing time before the main event of the night. Unbeknownst to me, next door to No. 7 and down the block from uberchef’s lair is the Cake Man. The Cake Man, which you may recall, was featured on Bobby Flay’s Throwdown, for his red velvet cake. Needless to say, when you walk into the place, there are a lot of slices of red velvet cake in the display case. A LOT of slices of red velvet cake. In fact, there are so many, it just seems like there is no way that it can be good. But this assumption is totally wrong. This stuff was DA BOMB. I don’t really like Red Velvet cake, and I couldn’t get enough of this stuff. The cake was moist, the frosting was creamy but not overly sweet, it was just perfect. I can still taste it if I close my eyes. Maybe uberchef will find it in the kindness of his heart to give his buddy the BB some…
So that was Friday. Saturday was time to party like it’s 5769 going on 5770. For all of my jewish readers, “l’shanah tova!” BG’s mom had me over for “the Rosh”, so I knew it was time to party and get my brisket on.
I got my brisket on. I got it on good. I got it on again today for lunch with uberchef (man, uberchef has been getting a lot of shout-outs in this post).
What I really got on and what I’m going to be getting on for the rest of the week is some chopped chicken liver. Everyone that knows me (so, basically everyone that reads this blog) knows that I love offal, and BG’s mom made a batch just for me. In fact, I was the only one that got it at dinner. And then I was the only one who took it home. So it really was just for me. And it is awesome. Maybe I’ll post a pic on Wednesday, when I am reunited with this inner-organ deliciousness.
Now for the main event. As heavily touted on my twitterfeed and FB page, I went to Locanda Verde’s fried chicken dinner. For anyone who doesn’t know, it’s a 4-time occasion at Locanda Verde, down in Tribeca. There are two seatings a night, and for $41 bucks per person, you get half of a fried chicken, a fatty slab of bacon, a bunch of sides, biscuits, and a slice of pie. It’s a lot of food. Serious eats has pretty solid pics, so it’s probably not really even looking at mine. But I am going to make you look at them anyway.
I arrived at LV, and BG was already there. Apparently there was a reservation mix-up, and my reservation wasn’t actually there. After a moment of rage at Eva (WTF, Eva, you said we were cool!), BG confirmed that we were ok, they were going to “squeeze us in.” At that moment, I felt like I needed to overcompensate that we actually belonged there and we weren’t just some losers who wandered in off the street and tried to pull the “but I called ahead… I talked to some woman… she said she would seat us right away…” trick. I felt like I had to name-drop, but resisted the urge. Whose name would I use, anyway?
So we sat down in the back dining room. It reminded me of the lodge at which I stayed while fly fishing in Alaska. It was all deep, made-to-be-expensive-looking wood, and there was a fireplace. In the corner, the Woes were warming up, getting ready to play “some music to stuff yer face to” (I am saying that, they did not ever utter the words, but I would have enjoyed them more if they had). Behind me, one of the floor manager-types got a ragin’ fire burning, reminding me that if I wasn’t sweating my ass off from all of the fried products I was about to devour, I was going to sweat my ass off from the fire that was burning about four feet behind me.
Roaring fire.
The Woes
After a few minutes of hanging out and taking in the scene, the night’s plan of attack on my arteries was placed before me. I knew that it was going to be a tough battle, but I was determined to get through it. As I hoped, I only had two choices to make: what was I going to drink and what kind of pie was I going to have for dessert. Fortunately, I was only forced to choose what I wanted to drink.
The rest of the evening was a blur from this point on. There was bacon slabs with lima beans, disorientating flashes from all of the amateur food bloggers like myself (but I, unlike those oafs, prefer to have blurry dark pictures instead of looking like a tool in a restaurant), buttery corn on the cob, buttery doughy biscuits, buttery fried chicken, buttery butter, buttery water, butter beer, buttery collard greens, and butter on my shirt.
And a small heirloom tomato salad and some cole slaw, neither of which was buttery.
Bacon and Lima Beans
Cornucopia of heart ailments
Then there was pie. I actually felt pretty good going into the pie round. My stomach had not yet reached full capacity, and since I am reading Mindless Eating, I had set aside some chicken in an extraordinary show of self restraint (by the way, BG and I had three pieces of fried chicken left over. I know that we had three because in my head I had already planned out a leftover dinner around these pieces of chicken in which I would make a small salad on the side. I secretly gave myself two pieces of the chicken in this dream while she only got one. Anyway, when we got back to BG’s apartment, there were only TWO pieces of chicken. WTF??? If you’re reading this, Andrew Carmellini, have that extra piece sent to my office.). But the pie really did me in. And, to be honest, I didn’t really love either of them– one was a blueberry crumble and the other was a peach pie. They were both just ok. I know that there was a lot of hype around them, but I wasn’t feeling it.
If you get a chance to go to the fried chicken dinner, do it. Tell them burgerboy sent you. Since that will probably work about as well as my reservation did, give them a ring (you can only make reservations starting the Tuesday prior, and you can only reserve one week in advance, ask for Eva).
Locanda Verde
Corner of Greenwich and N. Moore Streets
