Tapas

I've really been into fino sherry lately. It smells like caramel, figs, and raisins and tastes like a salty, tart, apple. Deliciously confusing and great with tapas.

Red Hook Ballfields

At the Red Hook futbol/soccer/football fields on Saturdays and Sundays there is a grand collection of Latin American street food vendors.


Guatemala, Honduras, Salvador, Puerto Rico, Mexico and many others are represented by their expats hawking pupusas, tacos, huaraches, ceviche, elotes, and agua frescas.


MEXICO.


Revuelta (pork and cheese) and jalapeno and cheese pupusas with the standard curtido and pickled jalapenos. Salvadoran food is not characteristically spicy, like some other latin american cuisines. Instead of salsa, pupsas (round, hand packed, corn disks stuffed with different fillings) are served with curtido, a pickled cabbage/carrot mixture similar in some senses to German style sauerkraut. You can chomp on some pickled jalapenos if you are addicted to capsaicin.


Potato and chicken flautas and one carne asada taco from the Mexican truck. They were pretty good but too much lettuce.


This little girl is about to smash this Hummer into the junkyard!!! This is what my birthday party is going to look like.

Burger Joint

Jared turned me on to an incredible Midtown secret. You head to Le Parker Meridien on 118 West 57th St. walk in, pass the suits and soaring ceilings, modernist columns and marble floors, make a sharp left and down a velvet draped dark hallway, you'll see this...


It's a mutherfuckin' burger joint!


The great charred burgers, cooked perfectly, with the works, are only $7.00. A pitcher of Sam Adams' Lager, $18.00.


The fries are forgettable. More useful as lincoln logs than burger accompaniments.


The decor, however, is very special.

This is what a picnic looks like

Mmmm, family.

Mi familia came to visit me and chow down on the NYC offerings.


We ate bagels every single morning. Raw red onion and slices of tomato, salt, and lots of pepper.


To Chinatown for dumplings


and Dim Sum.


We visited the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens (free on Tuesdays!) and nibbled our way through the incredible herb, fruit, and vegetable garden.






In addition to this beautiful swiss chard, there was amaranth, sorrel, lamb's quarters, tobacco, quinoa, and dozens of plants I have never even heard of.


At the New Museum, they have rich and crumbly peanut butter cookies filled with whipped peanut butter-buttercream. 3$!


Cheddar-baked eggs with grits and golden raisin- fennel toast.


Ricotta on toasted baguette with fig jam, dried sour cherries, walnuts, and arugula. Roebling Tea House.


This handsome young guy graduated into culinary manhood when he tried his first on-the-half-shell oyster this weekend. Will it be his last?