A Restaurant of Offal: Holeman & Finch

Holeman & Finch Public House
2277 Peachtree Road Northeast
Atlanta, GA 30309-1173
(404) 948-1175
holeman-finch.com

Atlanta is often grating to me:  the sensory overload from all that shopping and traffic.  However, it is a city that likes to eat–having one of the highest numbers of restaurant per capita in the country.

Last night, a dear friend took me to Atlanta’s Holeman & Finch, the cheaper, adjacent, sister restaurant of the well-respected Restaurant Eugene.  Upon walking into Holeman & Finch, I noticed all the cured meats hanging in glass cases.  In the open kitchen, the cooks were meticulously prepping the food.  But I did not expect all that their menu offered.  My friend just ordered a number of little plates for the table, and it was a feast of rich, rich food:  a meat plate with delicate strips of lard, duck hearts and head, griddled pork belly, crisp pig tail, battered and fried livers, crawfish pies, and shrimp salad with perfectly fried shrimp heads.  Nothing goes to waste, and everything is wondrously defamiliarized.  All complimentary greens were crisp and subtle, mixing well with their respective dish and dressing.

This spot also has a nightly tradition of serving exactly 24 handcrafted burgers at 10 p.m. No more, no less.  We had had too much to try their pursuit of burger perfection.

Felafel and Fries

I have been getting my felafel at a small stand on the corner of Gordon and Frishman in Tel Aviv. Most felafel stands offer you french fries, called “tships” in Hebrew. This stand fries them in wonton wrappers. The pitas are fresh, the felafel balls a bit mushy, but the “tships” are something else.

The felafel guy claims they were his invention but they have been spotted elsewhere in town.

Tel Aviv Breakfast

My favorite meal in Tel Aviv is breakfast. When the fried and I traveled to Paris 5 years ago he suffered the lack of a warm meal in the morning. A chocolate croissant was not enough. When we flew from Paris to Israel, he was totally surprised to discover that Israelis really know how to eat and eat well. I will set politics aside for this post, although politics is one thing that  is difficult to avoid here!.

Israel breakfasts include eggs, fresh vegetables, a variety of cheeses and spreads, including feta, homemade cream cheeses, and labneh, sweets, and fresh.

Breakfast 1 is from Cafe Idelson on Dizengoff, which was until recently Cafe Casit, the literary cafe where the Hebrew literary elite, including Shlonsky, Alterman, and Goldberg used to regularly meet. Now the cafe has been turned into a hip spot to see and be seen. See this video clip of the cafe in French new wave style (although these images are from the Ben Yehuda branch.).

The soft boiled eggs were lovely, and the pretzel sticks with poppy seeds made of fried philo dough were a nice touch. The cheese and cinnamon cake were delicious as was the salad, the salami, and the yellow cheese. I couldn’t finish this on my own however.

My next breakfast was at Cafe Dubnow 8, named after  Dubnow street, which is in turn named after the famous Jewish historian, intellectual, and theorizer of Jewish diasporism, Simon Dubnow. The cafe was close to “Beyt ha-Sofer” (The Writer’s House), where the literary archives are located. This Israeli breakfast was a few shekels cheaper and more modest.

The salad, feta, cream cheese, , butter, and preserves were all fabulous. The bread was tasty and filled with all sorts of grains. A healthy way to start the day in the archives.

Gastronomic Impressions of London

We just visited London, and here are some quick impressions:

-The funniest food sign:  On the Tube, there was a sign that bluntly stated, “Please don’t eat smelly food.”

-The most awkward dining moment:  We ordered two bowls of ramen of the exact same variety.  One comes out and served to me.  I was enjoying some appetizers, so I offered my bowl to A.  The server comes out, minutes later, with the second bowl and perplexingly said, but that first bowl was for Asians.  Apparently, the second bowl was for non-Asians.  We asked for clarification, but didn’t get any.  The only difference we detected was that the “Asian” bowl had pork belly, while the “non-Asian” one had tenderloin.  Another example of the arbitrariness of categories and stereotypes.

-The most difficult thing about London lunch:  Most of the restaurants waited until at least noon to open for lunch.

-The most counter-intuitive aspect:  It’s easier to get a pint of beer, then a glass of tap water.  As learned at the Anne Hathaway house, historically it was safer to drink beer than to drink water.  Perhaps an accurate precedent, or American diners have just come to expect water.

-Our new favorite dessert:  Posset, rich layers of cream or milk, sugared, and lightly curdled with wine.

-Consistent:  it’s almost an annual event for us now, and though it seems to have lost some lackluster, Wild Honey still serves up some great food, with a great wine list, and knowledgeable staff.

-Most enterprising: Alan Yau keeps opening great restaurants.  The latest Cha Cha Moon.

-Most liked this time around:  Tayyab’s, near Brick Lane.  Some of the best Pakistani food we’ve had.

Asia-fying Crawfish

An interesting, fun story in the NY Times today about SE Asian entrepreneurs spreading the Cajun love for crawfish in California, Texas, and Atlanta.  In agreement here:  not that I’m biased, but my Vietnamese relatives in the bayou make the meanest crawfish boils anywhere.  Disagreement:  NYTimes editors, how can you write about New Orleans crawfish and use the term “crayfish”?  If you’re going to write about the further creolization of crawfish, you’ve got to at least creolize your English.

A Visual Feast

I am paralyzed by all that I want to say and write about SE Asia.  So for the time being…some pix.

First meal in Saigon: shellfish late-night, in a residential neighborhood:

Food on the move in Bangkok:

Lots of good mango:

Roast duck and dim sum at BKK airport:

Crab soup in Hanoi:

Sidewalk cafes spilling into the cathedral’s yard:

A Hanoi food stall:

Banana flower salad from Hwy. 4:

Herb-roasted duck, fried basil leaves, and the best buns ever:

Escargot noodles:

Family dinner in Saigon:

Close up of food (notice all the sauces):

A Saigon drink stand with pickled-fruit drinks.  Iced coffee being made:

Dim sum at the Legend:

Diners provide their own instruments & music in Saigon restaurants

Last meal in Saigon at a local restaurant.  Open-air space, overlooking a huge roundabout:

Old-School Saigon Restaurant

Cục Gạch Quán
10 Động Tất
Tân Định, Q. 1, Hô Chí Minh City
038 48 01 44
http://www.cucgachquan.com/

With Vietnam’s maddening changes and uncertain future, there’s a bit of nostalgia for the past…or at least a repackaging of the past.  In Ho Chi Minh City, I went to Cục Gạch, a restaurant that crafts vintage Saigon for a higher aesthetic and culinary experience.  This is a must, if you’re in Saigon.

The food is of classic southern affair:  all served sparsely and beautifully.  Simplicity and fresh ingredients from the rich southern region, combined with subtle, yet striking culinary know-how.  My favorites were the lotus salad and the chicken wings fried in fish sauce.  The homemade desserts, healthy and not so sweet, were quite tasteful.

This is one of the most memorable dining experiences I’ve had in Vietnam.  Tran Binh, the restaurateur, combines his architectural profession with a brilliant eye for vintage items to create an atmosphere suitable for his impeccably simple home cooking.  Case in point: the restaurant’s audio and visual centerpiece  is a stereo system encased in dark wood, complete with a mint tube amp and reel-to-reel tape deck.  The divas of south Vietnam, like Khanh Ly, were crooning with their velvety voices and lyrics.

In Ho Chi Minh City’s current socialist capitalism, postsocialist society, or whatever you call it,  hypocritical irony abounds, and this is as comforting and, at least it should be, as troubling as the new Saigon gets.  You feel like a guest dining with an upper middle-class Saigonese family.  The spaciousness of the house, the custom woodwork, the Toto bathroom fixtures, the plethora of food and drink…if all this is what everyone is rushing around to attain, then why did we wage a war–where millions were displaced, millions died,  and millions more were wounded, physically and psychologically–when current Vietnam, it seems, merely wants to relive old Saigon?

Saints, Cajun Food, and New Orleans

Contrary to popular assumption, growing up in New Orleans is not a childhood of reverie in the French Quarter. I remember, most vividly, the city’s dark earth tones–derivations of the delta’s black, black soil: the spiraling gray of Spanish moss, the camouflage olive of turtles we sought in the woods, the muddied red of crawfish, the bottom-fed, dulled silver of catfish, the aging concrete of above-ground tombs, the rusty surface of the mighty Mississippi, the anodized bronze of the  Superdome, the lackluster gold of the Saints’ uniform.  To this day, decades later, I associate the Gulf of Mexico with a constant overcast sky, drab waters without a touch of ocean blue.  These colors and the milieu they foster–like the suffocating humidity–made me feel as if I was living below sea-level, even if, as a child, I was not cognizant of the fact.

I did not know of the city’ Garden District, its fancy restaurants, its Mardi Gras balls, its kings and queens.  What I did know were the red beans and rice, jambalaya, and corn bread served at the school cafeteria; the po-boy stands; the dacquiri drive-thru’s, Gulf shrimp and oysters; and the sucking of crawfish heads.   Only when I lived elsewhere Southern, moved out West, and visited up North did I realize that all of that food was specific only to New Orleans–not America as a whole.  In turn, what made me a native of New Orleans were spontaneous cravings for gumbo and boudin.  But only in retrospect did I learn about my New Orleans identity through food.

Growing up on the West Bank, in an immigrant family still naive about American life, my fandom for the Saints was the only way for me to imagine myself as part of the city’s culture.   On Sundays, my family sat in our modest ranch home and rallied for the New Orleans Saints.  We believed in Louisiana’s sole Danish celebrity:  Morten Andersen, the side-armed Archie Manning, the graying Ken Stabler, the post-USFL Bobby Hebert, Bum Phillips’s cowboy hat, the undersized Sam Mills, the pass rush of Pat Swilling–the patois of Who Dat!–only to be disappointed.  But I was New Orleans…that much I knew and felt, even then as a child.

I returned to New Orleans shortly after Katrina to do some reporting.  One Sunday, I visited a convention center that had turned into the makeshift home for hundreds of the city’s victims.  It was a tent city, boxed in by concrete.  It was somber and bleak and quiet…until an eruption of cheer startled me.  A local electronics dealer had provided some televisions, and of course, it was a football-season Sunday, so folks were watching the Saints.  Displaced and distraught, everyone commingled and rallied as a city.  (The Saints beat the Carolina Panthers that day.)  And as a native son, I understood why those people–strangers to each other–huddled and crowded over those plastic, lit boxes.  Too often in that gray, submerged city, there is too little to hope for–except went the Saints go marching.

NYC Recommendation

A friend asked us for a restaurant recommendation for NYC, based on our recent stay there.  Robataya comes second, but hands down we vote for:

Aldea
31 W 17th St
NY, NY 10011
212.675.7223

A loving parent wanted to take us out for dinner, and that Saturday she got us a reservation for 8 pm at Aldea. The last-minute availability made us a bit skeptical, but while perusing TONY’s 2009 best dishes, we realized that there were two Aldea dishes in the article (Appetizer: sea urchin toast; Entree: arroz de pato). We perked up after learning about these dishes, but did not anticipate such a fine affair.

Aldea is a Portuguese restuarant, and its chef is George Mendes.  The restaurant is nestled in a long, narrow space with clean lines and minimally elegant decor–perhaps belying the complexity of food that Mendes serves up.  Our table started off with a pestico, appetizer, and charcuterie.  The sea urchin toast was better than promised:  the fragile balance of the sea urchin, cauliflower cream, and sea lettuce was unbelievable in its imagination and execution.  The caramelized lychee that accompanied the cuttlefish appetizer had the same imaginative flair, but 2/3 of the table weren’t completely seduced by the baby cuttlefish.  The foie gras terrine had the right infusion of sweetness and richness.  It was gout-inducing decadence, but with a moderation that made us want more.

As an entree that seems to be too many things duck (confited legs, poached breasts, and CRACKLINGS!), the arroz de pato brought out the best qualities of duck (savory, rich tenderness), set against saffron rice cooked just right and garnished with olives to give one last zing.  A had the lamb dish–loin and belly. We’d  never seen lamb belly on a menu before, but it was fabulous.  Not as fatty as pork belly, but with an earthy flavor.  L wanted her arctic char grilled with no salt, no nada, and the kitchen managed to turn those requests into a good dish, with everything on the side.

The service, from the front of the house to the runners, was attentive.  Our waiter was an abd, Berkeley grad student (is there a better way to get at our hearts?) who knew his wines well and suggested bottles and glasses that complimented each course.  So much so that I don’t seem to recall the finer details of our desserts.  We stayed and lingered much later than we normally would, to soak in and prolong the experience.

Speculating on the easily obtained reservation and not-so packed house (there weren’t that many turns the night we were there), the problem with Aldea is actually its under-priced menu (entrees:  $23-$28).  The undervalue here compliments too well the understated restaurant–thus it’s unable to create a constant buzz.  The opposite can be said of another memorable NY experience we had:   Scarpetta, which has the most amazing spaghetti (touche Bruni), but the din of the pretentious crowd and the obsequious service was a bit over the top.

Make that reservation at Aldea, T-Bone.

August in the West Village

L and I went to see a great production of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town at the Barrow Street Theater. I had made a 7:15 reservation at August for a post-theater dinner. The Fried and I had been years ago, and we received a second recommendation from Ggg. It was a cold and windy afternoon, but right after the performance L wanted to introduce me to the cheap shirts at Uniqlo. So we braved the cold and headed to Broadway. We hailed a cab to the West Village for dinner at 7. August is a small restaurant with a tiny front room that includes a brick oven, a plating station, and a glassed-in solarium of sorts in the back. The air in the restaurant was a bit chilly, and we wondered if there was a gap in the glass roof. We started with two starters: the Roasted Delicata Squash Soup ($9) and the foie gras special ($18). The waiter reluctantly agreed to split the soup into two lovely bowls, once he understood that we were sharing the foie gras. The soup was chicken stock based, and had a lovely tangy zing. It was topped with a spicy marshmallow that melted into the soup, reminding me of a bowl of Lucky Charms (a good thing). The foie gras dish was pleasing, but not spectacular. There were two portions of foie gras, rolled to look like bales of hay, atop a bed of carmelized onions, next to a few pieces of home-made, Belgian-style waffle. The waiter then lightly poured some maple syrup over the dish. The foie gras was cold and dense and didn’t quite go well with the waffle or the bread on the table. However, the syrup and carmelized onion blended well together. L had the Dorade ($24), which came out of the oven on an iron plate. It was beautifully presented and then spirited away to be deboned. I had the Cochinillo Asada (roasted suckling pig, coco beans, kale, and pimenton, $25).

The heaping portion was gorgeous. The pork skin was beautifully crisp, the middle tender, and the bottom a rich and warm bed of pork fat. It was lighter than pork belly, but still rich and delicious. The tiny selection of wines by the glass proved excellent.  L had a glass of Gruner Veltiner, and I chose the Zweigelt (on the waiter’s recommendation). My glass was earthy and spicy–just right.  I hope to find another bottle of this Austrian wine.

Bar Boulud

Bar Boulud is Daniel Boulud’s newest restaurant located just across from Lincoln Center. I met up with L and B there for a pre-opera dinner. Bar Boulud has a split personality. On the one hand, Daniel Boulud is capitalizing on the newest trend, serving in-house cured meats, pates, and the like–all accompanied by a smart wine list with great wines by the glass. On the other hand, he offers quick and reasonable pre-fixe, pre-theater meals. The first concept soars, while the second concept tanks. I had read up on the place ahead of time and was forewarned by the reviews to steer clear of the entrees and head straight to the sides and charcuterie. L and B, however, were attached to the pre-fixe, that staple of theater dining. I ordered the celery root velouté for $12. The soup was rich, creamy, yet light. The celery leaf and toasted, sliced chestnuts  added  a lovely color to the cream  dish. L and B started their pre-fixe with a  salad of grapefruit and arugula that I make at home when I am in a rush. My next course was Compote de Joue de Boeuf, shredded slow-braised beef cheek onion confit and pistachio for $11. The compote had the visual texture of a giant corned beef, but the flavors were smooth and light. If I hadn’t been with L and B, and they weren’t so nervous about getting to the Met on time, I might have ordered more. Instead, I consumed the beet salad. The beets were lovely, the dressing salty, and the fried shallots, likely days old. I know the beet salad is the boring thing to order, but I was under various constraints. To accompany beef cheeks and beets, I drank a glass of the damilano nebbiolo d’alba
for $12. L and B had the cassoulet, which looked like something from a high-end museum cafe. The meat was grey and overly fatty. I couldn’t bring myself to try the dish. I ate L’s ice cream for dessert. The chocolate and vanilla were boring, but the clementine was much lovelier.

All in all, if you have to eat near Lincoln Center, this is a great choice if you order right. Otherwise, if you are on the upper west side and want to nosh on charcuterie and drink some excellent wines by the glass, sit at the communal table and enjoy.

Aroma Espresso Bar

I woke up in Washington Square Village New Years day and headed out to find myself some breakfast and coffee. Last night, in a Nashville state of mind, I worried that nothing would be open. I was  wrong! I couldn’t resist Cafe Aroma, a block away on Greene Street.  This Israeli coffee chain opened up its first American cafe in Soho in 2006. In an area chock full of Israeli owned and staffed cafes and bars, this seems like the obvious choice. They also have branches in the Ukraine, Kazakhstan (no joke), Cypress, Canada, and Romania. The menu has an Israeli feel, but the only direct reference to Hebrew or Israel is on the retro lighting fixtures. The Israeli breakfast has been renamed a netural “All Day Power Breakfast” and includes eggs, olives, cream cheese, feta, and tomatoes ($12.95). 

I had the  Mediterranean sandwich on multi-grain bread ($5.40 for the half sandwich). Divine was the mix of sliced hard-boiled egg, roasted eggplant, tehini, pickles, and tomato. It was kind of like a breakfast felafel without the felafel, but all the flavors. The small cappuccino ($2.95) was disappointing. The espresso was bitter and overwhelmed by too much thick foam. There are much better espressos to be had in Tel Aviv, Nashville, and New York. New York, being New York, table space was a premium. But this didn’t stop one NYU undergraduate from loitering, working on what must have been last semester’s final paper for her Joyce seminar. Another student played dominoes with the small, and not very good, free chocolates that accompany each coffee drink and folded the wrappers from drinking straws into Jewish stars. As my grandmother says, “Go Know.” For my part, I blissfully read a Yiddish novel.

This pickle was missing her fried on the first morning of 2010.

More Food in NYC

Some friends had suggested we meet at Ping’s restaurant at 22 Mott St.  The place is a favorite among locals.  It was a split level restaurant, and we were seated upstairs, at a table near the  front steps.  Every time the front door opened, a gust of wind would scurry in and nip at our ankles.  Luckily the day’s cruel elements were quickly forgotten with sips of hot tea and a plethora of well prepared dishes: shiu mai, hao cao, and a hybrid of these two aforementioned classics. We appreciated the innovation but not the taste. There were also chicken feet, tripe, pastries, rice rolls, spare ribs, and repeats of some dishes.  This was not your bustling, clanking dim sum affair. The laid-back atmosphere suggested a dining experience where both restaurant folks and patrons knew how dim sum should be served up.

Afterward, we headed up to the Met, where a line stretched up a block, in the blistering cold.  There was plenty of tension inside the museum. Visitors (including us) went rabid when faced with long lines and lack of tables at the cafes.

For an early dinner we headed to the Isle of Capri.  This was old-school Italian.  The decor, the heavy wood trim, and  the red paint were well-aged, and the wooden floors were well-worn.  Display cases of expensive cognacs had unfinished bottles that was once opened for mobsters–or at least that’s the feeling you get.  The entire staff, including those who did not look Italian, had an Italian accent.  There were diners in tinted glasses, camel cashmere jackets, hunched over, loud, and particular about the preparation of their Nova Scotia lobster on top of their spaghetti with the red sauce, “just on top and not mixed in.”  Our main courses, however, were a reversal of what one would expect from a traditional lobster-and-pasta establishment.  The pasta dishes were amazing–from the rigatoni in pink sauce to the cheese tortellini.  However, the osso busco and grilled rack of lamb lacked imagination and taste.  The kitchen, however, did provide a cocktail fork for the osso buco’s marrow.  Desserts were heavily chocolate, and a round of raspberry and lemon liqueurs were on the house.  It was a great setting for a memorable gathering with family.

Late-Night Italian

We took the 7 p.m. train from Philly to NYC.  After dropping off our bags, we had an errand to run in the Village.  Blistering hunger set in, and we needed dinner.  Our first option was closed for health violations–not a good sign, and our other choices were closing when we arrived.  We stumbled upon Bleeker’s Trattoria Pesce Pasta, which specializes in northern Italian cuisine.  The straw Chianti bottles and iced fish in the windows seemed a bit kitschy.  But the food was quite different.  We split a Caesar salad that had just the right hint of anchovy flavoring to punctuate the greens, but not overpower them.  Ahs ordered the spaghetti and meatballs–a classic that only good restaurant really do well.  Ahs thought the meatballs were too mealy, though I liked their texture and taste.  I got the suggested pasta special of the day, fettuccine mare monte, a combination of pasta, portobello mushrooms, and shrimp in pink sauce.  The delicate sauce brought out the smoky taste and aroma of the mushrooms, and the shrimp, fresh and not-overcooked, complimented the dish well.  We were the last diners, and the staff (who were not speaking Italian, but perhaps Ukranian) patiently waited for us, while remaining attentive.  Good random find.  We needed such a meal to battle the cold and the subway ride home.

Now: thinking about lunch options

Lunch in Philly

When my brother lived in Princeton, he would often go to Philly on the weekends to eat at a Vietnamese restaurant called

Nam Phuong
1100 Washington Avenue
Philadelphia, PA 19147-3802
215.468.0410

That was our destination today for lunch.  The restaurant was abuzz, nearly full between 1 and 2 p.m. on a Sunday afternoon.   I got the iced, milk coffee–served old-school drip-coffee style at the table.  For an appetizer, we ordered a papaya salad with shrimp.   We then had the “Three Delight” dish (pictured above) for two.  The plate comes with a bundle of fresh herbs, leaves of lettuce, splinters of cucumber, squares of tapioca-ed vermicelli [bánh hỏi], marinated and minced meat wrapped and then grilled in grape leaves, shrimp balls speared by whittled sugar cane  and cooked, and grilled meat balls.  All that food is to be wrapped into nice rolls with the stack of rice paper provided.  The dish’s total price for two people was $22.95, $11.50 each.  The combination of marinated meats/seafood and fresh vegetables and herbs, supplemented by rice, rice noodles, or rice paper is Vietnamese food at its best.  Nam Phuong’s food is bold and simply good, but there’s nothing pretentious about it–much like Philly.