Category Archives: Random tidbits

My bad

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This weekend sort of… got away from me. It happens sometimes, especially when there are three Mets games in 24 hours, grocery shopping to do, burgers to barbecue, laundry to wash, etc.

Sandwich of the Week will come tomorrow. I ate a sandwich, I just didn’t write about it yet. My bad.

But hey, here’s a fun fact: In cookbooks and all over the Internet, people will have you believe you need to do all sorts of fancy things before you cook corn-on-the-cob on a barbecue. They’ll say you need to soak it first, or pull the husk off and wrap it in foil, or use some sort of special corn-holding device, or peel back the husk and spread some olive oil on the kernels then replace the husk. Variations on those themes, mostly.

Turns out it’s nonsense. Leave the husk on and throw it right on the grill. The husk will burn and blacken, but no worries. After about seven minutes, rotate it and cook it on the other side for another seven minutes. Take it off the grill and let it cool for a couple of minutes. Now the husk and silk pulls off really easily, and under it you find piping hot, delicious, smoky corn.

This might not be news to you, but in my house growing we always boiled corn-on-the-cob, even if someone was grilling the main course. But if you don’t have a dishwasher — as I don’t — you become pretty conscious of ways to conserve dishes, and this is a solid one.

I suppose it helps to start with delicious corn. Apparently corn is in season in Florida.

Also, the Mets finally won. So that’s pretty sweet too.

Hot dog slideshow? Hot dog slideshow

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Serious Eats has a slideshow of the best and most ridiculous hot dogs in Major League parks this year. Check it out. The Nationals are doing some pretty absurd things with hot dogs. I don’t think I’d ever be able to disrespect Ben by getting anything other than a chili half-smoke from Ben’s Chili Bowl while there, but I’ve got to admit the Banh Mi Dog is intriguing. Multiple stadiums are serving hot dogs with pepperoni on them. And the Diamondbacks have the Big Kid Dog, which features macaroni and cheese and fritos:

Link via Jonah Keri.

Rangers get a sandwich

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In honor of the Rangers’ playoff appearance, Katz’s Deli has unveiled the Rangers Hat Trick. It is pastrami, corned beef and brisket on rye, apparently with mustard. It looks like this:

Color me only vaguely enthused. Katz’s has an edge on most of the other old-school meatpile New York Deli places because its meat is, if I remember correctly, legitimately juicy, flavorful and delicious. And to this sandwich’s credit, it doesn’t look nearly as gimmicky as the Carmelo Anthony sandwich from the Carnegie Deli.

On the other hand, it costs $18.95, which is one of the problems with Katz’s. It’s not that they make bad sandwiches — anything but, really — but to be worth $18.95 a sandwich has to be pretty much mind-numbingly awesome, and I’ve never found them to be that.

Chipotle opening Southeast Asian chain

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Chipotle Mexican Grill has unveiled additional details for its new restaurant concept slated to open this summer. The concept, ShopHouse Southeast Asian Kitchen, is inspired by the traditional shophouses found throughout Thailand, Malaysia, and Vietnam. Shophouses are classical two or three-story buildings where families live upstairs and run restaurants or fresh markets on the ground level.

The ShopHouse menu will pair the bold and complex flavors of southeast Asia with fresh, sustainably raised ingredients; grilled and braised meats, a variety of fresh vegetables, aromatic herbs, spicy sauces, and an array of garnishes. Customers will move along a service line and customize their meal according to flavor preference and diet, in a format similar to the one that has become the hallmark of Chipotle’s success.

– RestaurantNews.com.

Well Chipotle is delicious and Southeast Asian food is also delicious, so it’s hard to see how this one goes wrong.

I know some people will be upset because Chipotle is a chain and we’re all very punk rock and programmed to hate everything corporate. But I wonder, too, if a national Southeast Asian food chain could serve to expose more people to the cuisine than would normally try it and ultimately increase traffic to the mom-and-pop stores that currently serve us delicious banh mi.

Also, I find it difficult to fault chains when the chains serve me delicious food. See Taco Bell for details. Chipotle consistently serves me delicious food and does so quickly, cleanly and conveniently. So I’m calling this one a net positive.

Someone pays someone other than me to write a book about New York sandwiches

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What better way to celebrate the Golden Age of the Sandwich than with the Big New York Sandwich Book. A gorgeous collection of more than 99 delicious sandwich recipes from a “who’s who” of talented chefs, such as Dan Barber, Daniel Boulud, Jean-Georges Vongherichten, Mario Batali, and beloved restaurants in New York City, it is a virtual map–in sandwiches–of New York’s diversity. From the classic deli-style sandwich to the exotic haute sandwiches, there is a sandwich for everyone.

– Amazon.com product description, “The Big New York Sandwich Book.”

OK, accuse me of jealousy all you want, but I’ve got some beef with this book before I even buy it and crack it open (as I almost inevitably will). “The Golden Age of the Sandwich”? What’s that supposed to mean?

The sandwich is timeless! Nearly every civilization ever has wrapped protein in starch. Every age of the sandwich is the Golden Age of the Sandwich because sandwiches are inherently golden. I don’t know who’s responsible for that product description, but if you think this right here is the Golden Age of the Sandwich you might as well go pee all over the grave of John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich. Do you know about him? He didn’t even really invent the sandwich but just lends his name to it because he liked them like basically everyone in history does.

Link via Brad.

 

Sandwich of the Week

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People I respect have been recommending Cherry Valley Deli in Whitestone since I started writing about sandwiches. Hell, before that — when I was just a guy who likes sandwiches, not a guy who likes sandwiches and also reviews them. Mets-fan Pete from my weekly baseball game was the first to tip me off, I believe. Countless others have followed.

The sandwich: The Corona from Cherry Valley Deli, 150th St. in Whitestone, Queens.

The construction: Chicken cutlet with cheddar cheese, bacon, onion rings and barbecue sauce on a garlic roll.

Important background information: There are so many tempting options on the Cherry Valley menu that as soon as you order, you notice something else that sounds even better than what you told the guy you wanted and become overwhelmed with sandwich regret. Most of them — or at least most of the really awesome-sounding ones — are some meat with bacon, some cheese, some sauce and some bonus fried thing, generally either onion rings or french fries. I prefer french fries to onion rings and waffle fries — another option — to most traditional french fries, but I didn’t immediately see any sandwich with a bunch of ingredients I knew I wanted that had waffle fries on it.

So I went with the Corona, in part because I panicked, in part because it was among the sandwiches recommended to me by multiple people.

What it looks like:

How it tastes: Honestly? Underwhelming.

Look: Any sandwich with fried chicken, bacon and cheddar cheese on it has a pretty high floor, but the  Corona — at least this particular Corona — wasn’t far above it. For one thing, when I hear “garlic bread” I assume that means loaded with butter and toasted with strong garlic flavor. I’m pretty sure they forgot to do any of that to my roll, and since it was about 9 p.m. and they presumably had the rolls delivered in the morning, it was reasonably stale by the time I got to eat it.

Second, nothing on this sandwich except maybe the bacon was even warm. Look at the cheese in the picture above. What do you notice about that cheese? It’s not melted. I don’t expect a deli to necessarily melt the cheese on top of the chicken cutlet, but I would hope the chicken would be warm enough to melt at least some of the cheese by the time I got it back to my car and unwrapped it. Wasn’t the case. Perhaps I’m missing the point and this sandwich isn’t intended to be served hot, but the aluminum foil certainly implies otherwise.

The onion ring was there, but I was hoping it’d give me something extra crispy on the sandwich, and no dice. I’m pretty sure it only made the whole thing saltier, and the whole thing was pretty salty to begin with. The barbecue sauce — perhaps KC Masterpiece — was unevenly applied, and sweet enough to be nearly cloying on the end of the sandwich where it was heaviest. The best I can say is that the chicken wasn’t dry, as some deli chicken cutlets can be.

Don’t get me wrong: Still enjoyable. It had bacon and chicken and cheddar cheese, like I said. But given the amount of hype I’d heard about this place, I was almost amazed by how pedestrian the sandwich was.

Is Cherry Valley Deli resting on old laurels, or did I just get the wrong sandwich-maker on the wrong day? Was there a bad taste lingering in my mouth from the Mets’ woeful home opener?

Herein lies the unspoken, inherent flaw with my Sandwich of the Week reviews: Sample size. I judge a sandwich’s merit off only one tasting. It’s like drawing conclusions from one week — or one game — of a baseball season. I hate when people do that with baseball, and yet I do it all the damn time with sandwiches. Certainly you’d hope that sandwich purveyors strive for some sort of consistency, but baseball players do too, and we see how often they actually achieve that.

Still, I’m too far along now to roll back on this system. I will probably give Cherry Valley another shot based on the number of recommendations and its proximity to Citi Field — about a 10 minute drive. It’s open late, too, which could come in handy after some night games.

What it’s worth: Six bucks plus tax. Pretty reasonable.

How it rates: 70 out of 100. Tempted to go lower when I consider the magnificently constructed Fed Ex. I’m not done with this place though, so perhaps there are sunnier ratings to come.

$175 grand? Hot dog!

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Shelling out six figures for a piece of Manhattan real estate should get you a roof and four walls, but not if you’re a hot dog vendor vying for prime selling space in and around Central Park.

On Tuesday, vendors offered to pay the city hundreds of thousands of dollars to rent just a few feet of sidewalk space — the same amount some people pay for an entire apartment — for their pushcarts.

Minimum bids for the 10 new pushcart contracts up for grabs range from a low of $7,350 a year for the Central Park side of Fifth Avenue between East 97th and East 98th streets, to an eye-popping $176,925 for the right to hawk snacks and sodas at the northwest corner of East 60th Street and Fifth Avenue.

– Leslie Albrecht, DNAInfo.com.

The article goes on to detail how tough it is to make it as a street vendor these days, in large part due to the overwhelming cost of overhead. The moral of the story is: Tip your hot-dog man.

I love living in (or, technically, near) a city where hot dogs, halal meats, roasted nuts, and various curbside sundries are so abundantly available. While in college once while I was down by the putrid C&O Canal near Georgetown, someone (not a New Yorker) joked that I probably had a higher tolerance for bad smells since I had spent so much time in New York City. But New York City, for the most part, smells amazing. Sure there’s exhaust and the occasional randomly steaming sewer of gross stuff, plus there are spots outside fish markets that are pretty awful, but generally it smells like meat and pizza and all sorts of delicious things.

 

 

Twitter Q&A-style product

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Hell yes it was awesome. Sad thing is I was in the press box, where fist-pumping is frowned upon.

What’s less awesome is it’s a moment that will certainly be overlooked by the trade-David-Wrong set next time he strikes out in the same spot. It’s like I said in my season preview: We expect Wright to come through all the time, so the spots where he does are hardly notable. Too many people remember the whiffs and forget the go-ahead doubles.

This is totally unscientific, but I expect Wright to return to his 2006-08 form in 2011. I can’t say why; maybe it’s the regime change, the new hitting coach, a stronger lineup around him, whatever. Could be just blind Mets-fan optimism.

Technically yes. I ate a sandwich that was of Cuban ancestry: The Fritas Cubana from Morro Castle in Little Havana. It’s a burger with sausage meat mixed into the patty, covered in crispy shoestring fried potatoes. Pretty excellent.

I did not eat a traditional pork/pickle/mustard pressed Cuban sandwich, though. That’s unfortunate because I really like those, but I figured I have had plenty of ’em before and I’d never had a Fritas Cubana. Plus the place I was hoping to have one — Las Olas Cafe in Miami Beach — is now closed. I did enjoy a Cuban sandwich of sorts the last time I was in Florida, in West Palm Beach.

I’m reasonably certain it’s just Starship’s “We Built This City” on infinite repeat.

Paul Assenmacher, and it’s not even close.

Well my first instinct is to just say astronaut ice cream on a roll, but did they have astronaut ice cream in 1969? When did astronauts get ice cream?

I’m thinking you need the sandwich to be patriotic, so Russian dressing is right out. Same goes for French and Italian, I suppose, and the Thousand Islands are a little too Canadian for this endeavor. Sad thing is there’s no “American dressing.” Does mayo count as American dressing? Mustard is too European. Ketchup seems to be of American origin, but I’m not sure I want to put ketchup on such a monumental sandwich. No disrespect.

This is hard; I’m trying to think like a 1969 deli owner. How’s this: I take turkey breast, cut it into strips and batter and deep fry it. Those, with Cheez Whiz — doesn’t get more American than Cheez Whiz — and some Open Pit barbecue sauce, the tangy red type (a nod to Tang, of course). And on a hero, obviously. Only problem is the red barbecue sauce and yellow cheese might look vaguely Soviet. Commies.

That’s a pretty gross sandwich in concept but I bet in reality it’d be pretty awesome. Especially in 1969, which is probably before a lot of good sandwiches had even come out. Why does no one make turkey fingers, anyway?

I’d probably call it The Apollo. Pretty mighty name for a sandwich.

As far as I’m concerned, yes. I’m something of a descriptivist when it comes to sandwiches. It has to be on a case by case basis, but generally as long as something is wrapped in starch and portable, it’s a sandwich. Thus, Jamaican beef patties are sandwiches. Wraps are sandwiches. Burritos are sandwiches. Empanadas? Sandwiches.

Kentucky hot brown: Not a sandwich. Delicious, undoubtedly, but the whole OG point of sandwiches is that you can eat them with your hands without getting your hands messy. Try that with a hot brown someday. Also, sounds like some sort of perverse thing you’d joke about in ninth grade.

Also, my friend Jake is fond of pointing out that Jamaican beef patties might be the world’s most consistent food. I’m not sure that this is certainly the case in Jamaica, but in Brooklyn pretty much every beef patty you can find — whether you’re getting them at the beef-patty place, the pizzeria, the bodega, wherever — tastes the same: Amazing.