Date: 2008-05-18 01:27 Subject: Mosaic memory and New York City: a sort-of restaurant review Security: Public Tags: autobiography, food, foodie posts, nyc, restaurants

I've always felt at home in New York City.

Some of that's from being born here (I'm in the city as I write this), which entitles one forever after to always answer that question of "Where are you from?" with "New York." (The "city" is implied. Otherwise you would have said "upstate." Conversely, one can also answer with just "The City" and anyone in the Northeast or MidAtlantic states will know which city you mean. When I got to college in Rhode Island it was one of the phrases translated for people from other areas of the country in the orientation handbook.)

Of course that question, "Where are you from?" was one I heard a lot as a kid, prompted not by curiosity about my birthplace but as a code for "where are your genes from?" Looking at me, people couldn't decide what I was. Italian? American Indian? Puerto Rican?

Of course, the correct answer to the person who asks "Where are you from?" but who is staring at you in such a way that you know they mean "what ethnicity are you?" is: "New York."
( I used to play with their minds... )

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Date: 2008-04-02 00:05 Subject: Written on Saturday at the bar at Clio Security: Public Tags: food, foodie posts

Wrote this on Saturday while sitting at the bar at restaurant Clio.

Sitting in the bar in Clio, the rather high end restaurant in Boston's Back Bay, sipping a lychee-based martini. It's quite good. Strawberry vodka, lychee puree, a sugared rim, and garnished with powdered, freeze-dried strawberries. There is one more alcohol in it, but the first few sips have already erased my memory of what it was.


The bartender recommends that next I try their "Enter the Dragon," which features cayenne as an ingredient. Another of the specialty cocktails features basil-flavored sugar on the rim.

The American palate is changing for the better, I think. It's not just the P.C. push toward healthier food, and it's not just the mainstreaming of more "ethnic" cuisines (i.e. you can get sushi in the grocery store now). Food is getting spicier, and a greater intensity of flavors is prevailing.

I'm seeing this not just in the changing of the mall food court and the menus of middle-of-the-road restaurant chains, but in cocktails.
( cocktail musings )

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Date: 2007-11-29 00:05 Subject: 16th Anniversary Security: Public Tags: foodie posts

So corwin and I went out and celebrated our 16th anniversary tonight.

Oh wow.

Wow and wow.

We went to Clio, Chef Ken Oringer's restaurant in the Eliot Hotel in Boston. It's where Mass Ave meets Comm Ave. We had been thinking of going back to Radius and having the tasting menu there, which we've done for two previous anniversaries, though not for a few years, and we recently had the tasting menu at No. 9 Park, but we'd never been to Clio.

The first thing that made us think we might really like it there is that there were at least 5 words on the appetizers list alone that we did not know when looking at the web site.

What follows is a description of the meal which will have a lot of ??? and WTF? in it, since there were literally things that we ate that we could not figure out what they were. We are serious foodies and we eat many types of cuisine, and yet there were some preparations that were so interesting and unique that we could either not figure out what was in them or how they were made.

( It was 13 courses, plus surprises and an additional truffle course. )

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