Disney's Vero Beach Resort: Tropical Chicken Pita

The Tropical Chicken Pita served at Bleachers (the poolside counter service restaurant) at Disney's Vero Beach Resort is perhaps my favorite Disney food (Dole Whip is a close second.) On our last trip down I carefully made notes about what might comprise this concoction. Here are my transcribed notes:

• Grilled Chicken
• Whole Wheat Pita
• Lettuce
• Shredded Monterey Jack Cheese
• Red & Yellow Peppers, finely diced
• Red Onion, finely diced or finely shredded
• Pineapple, diced
• 2 sauces?
  • Oil-based sweet oniony sauce
  • Wasabi sauce, mildly spicy (other items at Vero have a Mango Wasabi Sauce)

Update:

I have been informed this food item has been discontinued! I was lucky I recorded this information when I did. What a loss.

Where do you buy Tahini?

In the peanut butter aisle. I got my first jar at Fairway. I really had no idea what I was looking for. I knew it was sometimes called a paste and elsewhere a sauce. I wound up in the sauce aisle and scoured the shelves.

I was intently perusing the teriyaki sauce because a small part of my brain thought "hey, wouldn't it be great for OCD people if the supermarket was alphabetical?" I suppose some OCD people would a supermarket arranged by the order of colors on the spectrum of light (with ultraviolet colored food on one end and infrared colored food on the other end). And still other OCD people would need a supermarket arranged in size order. I don't know anything about OCD so if I've offended anyone, sorry. I digress.

Tahini. I asked a store employee who did look like he had heard of it and lead me back to teriyaki town. Then I more or less gave up and began to wander aimlessly until I saw the peanut butter selection out of the corner of my eye. And there it was right next to the cashew butter/sauce. Why do they call it peanut butter anyway? Butter ain't got much to do with it.

Being Fairway everything they had was organic and expensive, which kind of neutralizes the cost savings of using it to make your own hummus. Hopefully I won't have to use too much in each batch. When Skippy starts making tahini maybe we'll be in business.

All of the tahini(s) had oil on top. I went for the least expensive, Brad's Organic from Canada. The only ingredient was organic sesame seeds. Canada is not typically what I think of when I think of sesame seed-growing countries. I didn't check out the nutritional info until I was in the car, this stuff is pretty choloric and fatty. I'm hoping just a little bit will go a long way in the 'ole hummus.

By the way if your making your own hummus with canned chickpeas, the small Goya can at Waldbaums is more cost effective than the large can in terms of price/weight. Its printed right there on the sticker under the cans so I'm not sure why anyone would buy the big can.

Lyrics: Steven Lutvak - The Dinner Party

I was at a dinner party just a couple of weeks ago
All the guests were chic and/or high powered
The repartee was brisk
Throughout the lobster bisque
And the salad course completely Noël Coward
But then the conversation took an unexpected turn
And headed frankly where, I thought, it needn't
As one by one each guest
Did his very level best
To talk about his favorite antecedent

As their relatives had been where mine had never been
This was a topic to which I could find no entry
They spoke of duchesses and lords
Barons by the hoards
Favorites of several kings who'd reaped their sweet rewards
Several from the Mayflower
Several who'd owned fjords
And we hadn't even hit the eighteenth century

But with a startling pâté
Which was lovely by the way
A most alarming hush fell on the table
My hostess smiled, "And you,
what did your family do?"
I gave the best reply which I was able
And which I swore was absolutely true

We were bagel makers to the Czar
The lineage goes back very very very far
I think Ivan was the one
Who when fed up with the bun
Sent his men in search of something starchy and bizarre
Who came upon my uncle who had recently solved the riddle
Of how to make a roll with a hole in the middle
He served them fresh to Ivan's commissar
And was thus named bagel maker to the Czar

We were bagel makers to the czar
In the land of sour cream and caviar
Later Olga it is said
Never even tasted bread
And her mother, the Tsarina
Would not get out of bed
Without a toasted onion with some unexpected spread
Which added to her middle
But did wonders for her head
Oh, the things you learn about which must remain unsaid
When you bagel maker to the czar

I realized in a flash that since I'd begun to speak
all earlier camaraderie was gone
There every jaw was slack
They were taken so aback
I really had no choice but to go on

We were bagel makers to the czar
Who would give us every year another samovar
And it was Catherine the Great
That over-zealous head of state
Who fed some to her horse
But that of course
For her was par
And little Anastasia could never get her fill
See there are those who say
That yet today
She's snacking on them still
But then that's taking things a little bit too far
For even bagel makers to the czar

Before the hammer and the sickle
We were there with pumpernickel
The things we did with poppy
Everyone unsuccessfully tried to copy

[Everybody]

We were bagel makers to the czar

[Oh, thank you, that was wonderful]

No one ever learned the secret of our scrumptious repertoire
But of course it couldn't last
For, like all empires of the past
Who reach their inevitable finales
For when the revolution came
We very slightly changed our name
Traveled North
And made a fortune in bialys

Excerpt from Steven Lutvak's The Dinner Party

We were bagel makers to the Czar
The lineage goes back very very very far
I think Ivan was the one
Who when fed up with the bun
Sent his men in search of something starchy and bizarre
Who came upon my uncle who had recently solved the riddle
Of how to make a roll with a hole in the middle
He served them fresh to Ivan's commissar
And was thus named bagel maker to the Czar

Meat ad: What is the other 20%?

80% Fresh Ground Beef, 20% ?

Kiss The Chef (Goodbye) :-(

It seems Kiss The Chef has been sold. Oh well, I wasn't able to eat there anyway when they cut their weekend hours.

Food Box: Go!

Eatery Review

Ellen showed me one of her favorite haunts in Mineola, a little rail-car come diner called Kiss The Chef. It is, hands down, the best diner food that can be had. It is run by veterans of the NYC catering scene. It has a distinct latin flair to some of the food, owing to their Guatemalan origins. If you order a grilled chicken sandwich at any other diner, thats what you get; plain grilled chicken on a standard hamburger bun. The same dish at Kiss The Chef is a much different affair. The chicken is seasoned, the bun is a big tasty roll, and the presentation is above par. The service is friendly, and the prices can't be beat.

Kiss The Chef
106 E 2nd St
Mineola, NY 11501
(516) 739-9600

[newsday review]

Must.. eat.. pineapple... cakes....

The Perils of Supermarket Sushi

I always had a feeling that buying those pre-packaged sushi things in the various supermarkets was like playing russian roulette. Well, on friday I came down with some pretty severe food poisoning from a Salmon Combo Roll I purchased from the Stop & Shop in Port Washington. I had gotten into the habit of getting Stop & Shop sushi for lunch since its fast and right next to my place of work. To get sushi at a sushi restaurant on Main Street in Port Washington can take over an hour. But I sure did pay for the convenience. This is the second weekend in a row (and the second weekend I have had free all summer) that I have been sick. I will spare you the disgusting details and just say that I lost well over 5 pounds in bodily fluids and only narrowly avoided having to go to the emergency room. Thanks Stop & Shop!

Food Box: Go or No Go

Eatery Review: Horace & Sylvia's

A new favorite, found in Babylon, sports excellent food and good libations. Franziskaner is on tap. Biscuits are served in place of bread. They are tender and flakey, requiring no butter. I had the crab cake on brioche. It was among the best I have had all summer (alongside Gossman's Dock and Fulton's Crab House). I have never before had crab cake in a sandwich format, and I was pleasantly surprised. The french fries are a thin straw variety, and coleslaw was also served. It is one of the fancier pubs I have visited.

Food Box: Go or No Go

Eatery Review: Elijah Churchill's

Gone are the halcyon days of the summer of 2005. Elijah Churchill's had been one of our favorite restaurants. Their lobster roll's were an event, their french fries unique, and a favorite beer was on tap. But Paulaner has been replaced by Blue Moon, and many other flavors of the moment (Blue Points and Brooklyns, for example). On this occasion, we started with crab cakes. They were overdone, heavy with salt, and had sun dried tomatoes. The caesar salad was over dressed, and therefore also heavy with salt. The sea bass was not offensive, but it was not tender and flakey as sea bass should be. The chipotle burger was also over done and salty. It seems as though salt has taken over as a theme. Former favorites of mine at Churchill's included the aforementioned lobster roll and the pot roast. But it has gone from Go to No Go.

Satay My Way

You won't be needing bamboo skewers where you're going. This was my first attempt at cooking chicken. I cooked it with no one in the house. All I had to go on was myth, heresay, and what I have heard from people who actually know how to cook. The best I was hoping for was the greatest thing I've ever eaten. The worst I feared was a ragging grease fire and salmonella poisoning. The result was something inbetween. My marinade consisted of 1 cup of plain yogurt, a teaspon each of garlic and ginger, and a table spoon of turmeric. I felt no need to skewer my satay, as I find it easier to eat and they were not necessary for cooking. I learned that larger pieces were unwieldy in the pan and that you can kill a wok if you don't use enough oil (as my mom pointed out when she came in towards the end of the operation). Overall it was okay. Good for a first attempt. It was a bit bland, but I picked the simplest marinade I could find. My marination technique was somewhat unrefined, but it got the job done. The darker pieces got a 30 minute marinade bath while the lighter ones sat with a brush of marinade for about 15 minutes. My main problem is that I don't think about obtaining food until I'm hungry, so cooking my own meat just adds to the wait for food. I probably would have been done sooner, but I was really paranoid about salmonella. But it was okay. I washed it down with Rolling Rock. If you're going to buy your beer in the supermarket, go for the cheap stuff. Otherwise your better off going to a distributor. Rolling Rock is far better than any of the popular Dutch beers. And the Yodels didn't hurt either.

Food Box: Go or No Go?

Eatery Review: The meat we found in the basement.

I came home from work today starving hungry, as all I'd eaten was a peanut butter sandwich and a granola bar. I search for food in the refrigerator, then in the cabinets. Finding only slack-jawed capers, I turned to the food room in the basement (a veritable warehouse of creamed mushroom soup and kitchen sponges). The only edible item there, other than four metric tons of brownie mix, was a single can of Treet, a 99¢ brick of mechanically separated goodness. This example was no less than four years old. Dave and I had a discussion as to the shelf life of SPAM-like products, and it was decided that the Treet would be opened, coated with brown sugar, baked, and then eaten.

I first took a bite of a raw slice, which tasted like watered down bologna, if you can fathom such a flavor (and texture). The rest was sliced and baked in the prescribed manner (which Dave allegedly learned from a vegetarian) and was excellent. The brown sugar formed a sticky candy coating and was very sweet. I ate mine plain and also with yellow mustard and horseradish whilst Dave had his with spicy mustard. I liked it better than SPAM.

My Morning Foodbox

When I used to work at Katharine Gibbs, I played my ipod on the half hour or so ride along the highway. My new job is much closer, and I can be there in as little as ten minutes. For these new trips, I usually do not take my ipod. I'm not sure why. It seems like I would be spending more time turning it on and adjusting it than I would driving. Anyway, I usually listen to WQXR on the way to work and WAXQ (Q 104.3) on the way home.

Almost every day at 8:30 on WQXR I hear Frank Bruni of the New York Times give his Manhattan restaurant review. It is not always an evaluation of some high class and expensive restaurant that one might expect to find on the New York Times Classical station. I have heard him talk about hot dogs during at least one review. He also reviews food books now and then.

Listening to Mr. Bruni's reviews has become my morning ritual. Sometimes he reviews a place that I have no interest in visiting or hearing about. Today was the first time that he reviewed a place that I want to check out for sure. The name of the place is Café d’Alsace. I mainly want to go there to try out some of the exotic beers they have, but Mr. Bruni makes the food sound interesting as well.

Check out:
Diner's Journal by Frank Bruni

and also:
The Pour by Eric Asimov

Disney ~ day 3

The Disney Architecture group that I started on flickr has attracted none other than the likes of Mr. Thomas Hawk. I just thought that was cool.

My memory of what we did and when we did it on our recent Disney World trip is starting to fade, so here is day three:

I forget exactly what we did that morning (did we go to the pool? Eat breakfast?). Maybe that was they day I slept until 10 when I got a cell phone call to come down to the pool. I can't remember. Maybe its because finished the Franziskaner the night before.

I do, however, know that we went to the Magic Kingdom. We took the monorail (you take either the monorail or the ferry from the lot to the park). I also remember it being hotter on that day than on other days.

We walked down mainstreet in the park, towards the castle. We wanted to get a photo of us in front of the castle. We carefully avoided the Disney camera people, who are stationed around key photo vantage points so that they can take your photo and then charge you for it. We found a fairy nice place and began to figure out which stranger we would ask to take our photo. We found a couple and one of them took this picture:



If you want to see it bigger, just click it. After our photo op, we went off to the Adventureland part of the park. We got fastpasses for the Jungle Cruise, which I had not been on since I was six. Then we looked around for things to do until the passes were valid. We heard some people talking about Pirates of the Caribbean. Being who we are, we already knew this ride was closed until the summer. They unfortunately are rennovating the ride to go along with the the movies of the same name, the second of which comes out right around when the ride reopens. This is a most unfortunate turn of events. Hopefully, they won't ruin the ride. At the very least, we all hope they retain the dirty foot, which I do not have a photo of. If anyone has a photo of the dirty foot from the ride, let me know. We need to start a 'save the dirty foot' campaign. Anyway, we checked the ride out, just in case it was open. This photo pretty much tells the story of what we found:



So, we hopped in to The Enchanted Tiki Room (Under New Management), which was antother classic attraction that was changed when new movies came out. It was okay. I really don't remember the old one much, as I was six years old. We also went on the Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse, which is a walk through treehouse. I was tired and there were a lot of stairs, but it reminded me of the movie, so that was fun. We then went on the Jungle Cruise! We had a very entertaining guide/boat driver guy. He seemed a little disgruntled, but that might have just been part of his act. I believe his name was Sean, but it might not have been spelled that way. He was fun. After the Jungle Cruise, there was nothing else in Adventureland that we wanted to do, so we went to Frontierland. We narrowly avoided getting stuck behind an oncomming parade consisting of a highschool marching band, but we dashed just as the parade barrier was being put up.

We got fastpasses for Splash Moutain, but then we didn't go on it. We did go on Thunder Mountain, which had a long line (we did not get fastpasses). It was actually my first real roller coaster. It wasn't bad, except for the few times that I was sure that I was going to fall out. After that, we went to Tom Sawyer Island, which was kind of dissappointing. It might have been more fun if I were younger and my legs didn't feel like they were going to snap off before I even set foot on the island. There were a lot of cute ducks around, but you don't need to go to Disney World to see those guys.

We got back to the "main land" and were really getting tired. We decided to get some food, and by food I mean hot dogs. I managed to eat my hot dog (mustard with a hot dog somewhere under it) without getting a drop of mustard on myself. They were very refreshing and boosted our energy. We went to Liberty Square next. We went to the Hall of Presidents, mainly because it was air conditioned and we could sit down. I think the show needs some serious historical revisement. Anyway, we went to The Haunted Mansion after that. The Haunted Mansion is always fun, but it wasn't as much fun as last year, when we went in the evening and the cast members are extra spooky.

After Liberty Square, we went to Fantasyland, where I snapped this photo of a rooster:



We went on Its A Small World. The line for Peter Pan was too long, so we went on Snow White's Scary Adventures. Then we went to Mickey's PhilharMagic. This was a great 3D show, and it included a lot of classic Disney scenes redone in 3D. I liked it a lot. After the show, Ellen bought me shorts that say "crabby but loveable", with a picture of Donald Duck. Then we went on the Mad Tea Party, which was a blast. Of course, we could barely walk after it was over.

From there, we went to Tomorrowland. I don't remember what we did first. We went on Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin, which had a long and delayed line, but was fun. We also went on the Tomorrowland Transit Authority (aka the people mover). By that time it was an hour away from our dinner reservation at Tony's Town Square, so we headed off in that direction. The huge nightly parade/show had begun, so it was tough going from Tomorrowland to Tony's at the front of the park. We were packed in like sardines and we could barely get through the crowd. An agitated cast member kept things moving by yelling at people to keep walking. We made it trough and we were on the correct side for Tony's (which we more or less planned). We were seated soon after arrival. Ellen told me the menu was not as extensive as it once was. I eye balled the spagetti, but then I figured that I was on vacation. I could eat spegetti any time and at a tiny fraction of the price. I decided to get steak. I thought there were two steak choices on menu, but I didn't read the descriptions or even the title of what I was ordering for that matter. My steak came, and it looked kind of strange. I figured there was just some kind of fat on the outside, so I cut into it. It turned out to be a light color on the inside. I was embarassed because I had no idea what I had ordered. Ellen thought it was some cut of pork. Eventually, I asked the waiter what I had ordered ( :-) ) and he told me it was a veal t-bone. I guess I saw the word t-bone on the menu and, too tired to read on, ordered it. I had never eaten veal before. Anyhow, Tony's wasn't that great, it was just okay (especially compared to the Biergarten!!!). Luckily, we were near the front of the park by the time dinner was over, so we got out pretty quickly despite the crowds.

I think we stopped briefly in Downtown Disney (or the marketplace) on the way back, where I got Ellen a Mickey pillow/ball/stuffed thing. It was cute.

Disney 2006 - Day 2

This is a pretty long post. If you want to read my review of the Biergarten (the most entertaining part of the post, go down to ** Food Box: Go or no go? **

We got up bright and early on Thursday to go to Animal Kingdom, the largest Disney theme park. Its good to go there early because thats when the animals are awake. It was fairly crowded going through security. After we got in, we went directly to the back of the park to get FastPasses for Kilimanjaro Safaris. This one ride is bigger (in acreage) than the entire Magic Kingdom (I think). It is at the back of the Harambe marketplace in Africa. Harambe is one of my favorite examples of Disney architecture.


Ellen near Harambe

After we got our FastPasses, we went to Asia to go on the Kali River Rapids. The line was very short. We brought zip lock bags and garbage bags to put our wallets, cell phones and camera in. A sign along the line to the ride says "You will get wet, you may get soaked!" The ride was short, but Ellen got completely drenched when we went down a tall drop. I got fairly wet too. We also brought a towel with us. We had some time to kill before our Kilimanjaro Safari Fastpasses were valid, so we went into the Maharaja Jungle Trek. Its a walk trough exhibit with Asian animals. We saw huge bats and tigers, among others.

After that, we went back to Harambe to get on our safari. Its very safari-like, as the name suggests. There are barriers between the trucks and the more dangerous animals. The lions were a no-show this time, and our driver/guide didn't even mention them. There were a bunch of baby elephants, though.

After the safari, we strolled through Harambe. Then we crossed a bridge to go to DinoLand U.S.A. On the bridge, we saw Expedition Everest, a new roller coaster. It is the fourth tallest point in Florida and the largest artificial mountain constructed by Disney. We saw it last year when it was under heavy construction. It was scheduled to open 5 days after our 2006 visit, but we heard screaming people as one of the cars whizzed along. I guess they are testing it on live subjects. In DinoLand U.S.A., we went on the DINOSAUR ride, which we also went on last year. I consider it to be the scariest Disney ride that I have been on (even scarier than the Scary Adventures of Snow White!). I think it might also have the brightest light on a Disney ride - there is one lighting flash that leaves you seeing an impression of whatever you were looking at when it goes off. Fun! After the ride, we got one of a number of Nestle Tollhouse chocolate chip cookie iced cream sandwiches, which we call "tasty sandwiches" for short. Then, we headed out of Animal Kingdom.

We spent the second half of the day at EPCOT, and we had made reservations at the Biergarten in Germany.



We had a lot of time before dinner, so we decided to go to every country in the World Showcase starting with Canada (we started at Mexico last year, so now we went in reverse). We didn't really do anything at Canada or the United Kingdom, we just poked around in the shops. In France, we decided to get a snack, so we went into the Boulangerie Patisserie. I forget what Ellen got (raisin bread???), but I got a liquid snack. I didn't even know the French made a beer. I decided I had to try it. They had to do a bit of looking around for a bottle opener (probably because nobody ever orders the beer in France). More than five dollars later, I ended up with what must be the Bud of France, it was nothing special or interesting at all. I guess that is why France is more famous for their wine.

After France, we walked around Morocco a little, seeing some Disney made north African architecture. Then it was on to Japan. We went through the big store in Japan. Most of the stuff they sell there is available at H Mart in New York for about one twentieth of the price. We also tried to find some sushi in Japan for another snack, but we couldn't find a place that had it. There was a really cool exhibit of old Japanese tin toys. If you are in EPCOT, I recommend seeing it. After the tin toys, we breezed trough the American Adventure to Italy, where we did some more poking around and candy buying. There were some British guys there doing Romeo and Juliet. Shouldn't they have been in the UK area? After Italy, we looked around Germany's shops. We would come back to Germany later for dinner (and what a dinner it was!)

There is an "African" trading outpost between Germany and China that sells crap from the other countries, mainly because no African country is represented (except Morocco) in the World Showcase. Come to think of it, there aren't any South American Countries (Jose Carioca, anyone?) or Australian/South Pacific countries either. In China there was a cool exhibit about the building of Hong Kong Disneyland. We were really tired at this point, but there were still two countries left!!!!! We went on the Maelstrom ride in Norway and on the El Rio del Tiempo ride in Mexico where they put all of the malfunctioning Small World animatronics, according to Ellen. Then we went to get dinner.

** Food Box: Go or no go? **

We sat outside of Germany until it our reservation time. People were gathering around the lagoon for the fireworks show. It was here that a mosquito decided to bite my leg. Anyway, we got in to the all you can eat Biergarten buffet just as the band was finishing their last show of the night. We always got the latest reservation possible. It looks like a real bier garden inside, with a fake sky and fake trees. You share your table with other guests. The German waitress asked us for our drink order. We ordered Franziskaner and she was surprised that we knew what it was. She asked us if we wanted the large or the small, so we ordered the large. I assumed the large was a half liter (how wheatbeer is usually served) and the small was a regular pint glass. She came back with what looked like two gigantic glass buckets with handles on the sides. They were at least a liter each. I don't know how she carried them and several other glasses at the same time. This was all (actually more than all) the Franziskaner we could handle. And the food was THE BEST FOOD I HAVE EVER EATEN, EVER!!!!! There were assorted meats (they all had name tags on them), pretzel bread, mustards, macaroni and cheese, POTATO DUMPLINGS! I didn't give the salad a cursory glance because I had all-you-can-eat meats and starches. I didn't look at the desserts either because I had another plate of food for dessert :-) If I could, I would eat at this place every day for the rest of my life, which would probably be very short after eating there so often would cause heart failure. Its not that you can't eat healthy there, its that you won't. It was also very reasonably priced. Obviously, there was no way we could finish a liter of beer each. First off, we had stuffed ourselves silly. Secondly, one of us had to drive back to the hotel. Fortunately, they offer beer to-go cups. This place is heaven on earth! The to-go cups are ordinary disposable plastic cups. While transferring the beer, we accidently spilled some. It didn't seem like munich, I mean much, because our beers were huge to begin with. We were mainly disappointed with wasting precious franziskaner.

Wearily, we made our way back to the car. We couldn't drive back to the hotel with two open containers of Franziskaner, but we had gone to the Winn Dixie (a southern supermarket) the night before and bought a 12 pack of 24 oz. water bottles. By the time we went to dinner I had a empty water bottle that I was bent on recycling, so I poured the beer into the empty bottle, as illustrated here:


It pays to recycle!

Then we went back to Cornado Springs.

Here is a shot of the bottle with Franziskaner:



Side note: We thought the water we bought was Zephyrillis brand (which sounds like a tropical disease). Only after I posted the photos to flickr did I notice it is actually Zephyrhills, a water brand native to Florida. But during the whole trip, we offered each-other water bottles saying "Zephyrillis?" and calling the water "Zephyrlicious".

Food Box: Go or No Go

Eatery Review: Azerbaijan Grill (aka Azerbaijan Restaurant & Grill).

Looks are deceiving, as this Azerbaijani restaurant looks like a small takeout place from the outside. It is, in fact, a nicely furnished eatery with friendly staff. I felt a bit underdressed in a t-shirt and jeans, but sallied fourth to dine nonetheless. The sign outside says mediterranean and food from the silk road. The menu does have many items that are similar to Greek food. To begin, we were brought complementary pita bread and a yogurt sauce. From there, we ordered an appetizer consisting of a sort of Azerbaijani cheese stick, made with feta and some kind of herb. These are good and come with a spicy green dipping sauce. For dinner, I had boneless chicken kebab. This was also very good. It was served with rice, grilled tomato, onion and broccoli, as well as a lemon. The staff is very attentive and was happy to explain a few of the finer points of Azerbaijani cuisine. Its easy to see why Azerbaijan Grill was named by Newsday as one of the top 10 new restaurants of 2005.

Azerbaijan Grill (aka Azerbaijan Restaurant & Catering)
1610 Old Country Road.
Westbury, NY 11590

The blogging of a blog; a new Food Box

Brother Dave has a new food review blog:

Excerpt: "The baked clams were awful. Six weak, atrophied representitives of the species, mostly bread crumbs and bathed in some fluid I now believe to be water, and tasting of soap. To be avoided."

Click here to visit Dave's new blog.

Wasabi caviar cleaned my clock

Ellen gave me a gift certificate to Nisen in Commack for my birthday. We went there on Friday night for sushi. It was very late when we got there because I teach a class at Katharine Gibbs from 6 to 11 (see below). It is not the first time we have gone for Japanese when the restaurant is nearing closing hours, but the folks in this place seemed less annoyed than in one of the places closer to where I live.

We got a sea-food salad appetizer, which was a miscellaneous assortment of mostly unidentifiable sea life. There was crab meat and shrimp, something that we believe was octopus, and one completely unidentified formerly ocean-going creature. After that, we both ordered sushi.

We each got the aptly named Yummy Roll (Yellow Tail, roe, etc.) and Ellen got a roll with eel in it. The Yummy Roll at Nisen is probably my most favorite sushi. As I was hungry and feeling adventurous (and had a gift certificate), I ordered a roll I never had before. I'm not even sure what kind of fish was in it (tuna or salmon possibly), because the main attraction of this roll (I can't remember the name) is the copious amount of roe (aka caviar) on top. There were eight pieces in the roll. Some had black caviar, some had red. The most interesting were the pieces with green wasabi caviar.

I've had wasabi before (every time I have sushi, for example), but i was not expecting the wasabi caviar to be as strong. There was at least a good table spoon and a half on each piece. I ate a wasabi caviar piece first, and I was pretty sure I was going to die. After dropping my chopsticks and seeing a few new colors, I came to with my sinuses completely cleared.

The other pieces with roe were pretty bland. I ordered the roll because I like the crunchyness of the little roe, but this was sort of a messy, slippery caviar overload. Clearly, when it comes to sushi and roe, more is not necessarily better. It was still good, but not as good as the Yummy Roll (which has a little bit of red roe spread throughout).

As for my class at Gibbs, I teach an HTML class on Friday nights. We rarely go the full five hours, because honestly, they don't want to learn for five hours and I can't teach that long. I do tell them that I will stay until our official end time if they want to try stuff out or ask questions. Last friday was the first time anyone actually stayed. I mostly wanted to get out of there and get my Yummy Roll, but I waited until the last student left. Also of note in the Friday night class, the projector was not working and my dry-erase marker ran out of ink. Imagine, if you will, teaching HTML and CSS without visual aides.

"Less than H-T-M-L greater than, less than head greater than, less than title greater than..."

Kind of frustrating for me and them. There are some things I like about teaching, but I'm not sure if I want to stay at K Gibbs after this quarter. Besides, I still want a full time production job. Any takers?

Travels with Chapstick

December 9th was Ann Marie's birthday. I went with Ellen's family to a restaurant called H2O. I had seared Chilean sea bass, which was served on top of cooked spinach and a potato pancake with a tomato-caper sauce. The Bass was very flakey and it was good. It was on the really expensive side, so I am not sure if I'll get back there anytime soon.

On Saturday, Ellen and I took my car to the Port Jefferson ferry, and took it to Bridgeport, CT and drove up to Boston to see the Boston Pops. On the drive up, we stopped at a Roy Rogers. All the Roy Rogers places on Long Island closed years ago, and I hadn't eaten in one probably since I was five years old. I was rather disappointed in my meal on Saturday, and it was, by a wide margin, the worst fast food I have ever eaten. It was only by some miracle that both of us didn't get sick from all of that disgusting grease.

But on to Boston. We stayed at the Hilton in the Back Bay area, not far from Symphony Hall. We got to the city a little early and had some time to kill. Looking trough one of those books/guides/advertisements you frequently find in hotel rooms, we decided to walk to the International Poster Gallery on Newbury Street. It turns out Boston is really cold in the winter (who would have thought that?), but we were sufficiently bundled up. What we were less prepared for was the treacherous sidewalk conditions. The main problem was stepping off the side walk into the street when crossing, where large lakes of deep slush had formed. I got a nice sneaker full of slush at one point. Some of the sidewalks also had nice layers of slush and snow packed down and dirtied by heavy foot traffic, making for an interesting walk. Newbury St. is a very interesting area and tourist destination. There are a tremendous variety of stores and boutiques packed in to the first floors and basements of brownstones and rowhouses. The International Poster Gallery is one such store. They display and sell actual vintage posters, which are in amazing condition from the looks of things. They have gigantic ones that seemed to hover around ten-thousand dollars all the way down to little ones in the hundreds of dollars, all of them vintage prints. I was really cool. We walked back trough the slush to the hotel, stopping to take a few photos as the sun set.

After we were ready to go to Symphony Hall, we decided it might not be a bad idea to take a taxi. Walking trough the Boston slush was hard enough in sneakers and boots, let alone shoes. We sat at a table in Boston Symphony Hall, and we ordered some snacks. The show was a lot of fun. They had an opera singer for some of the songs, and that was fairly amazing. There was a sing along at the end, which I tried to take part in. It seemed I knew the first few lines of each song and not much more. After that, I mumbled along when I knew the tune, but I mostly sat there quietly. Santa Claus even made a visit to the hall, carrying a big sack of what might have been his laundry. After the show, we walked back to the hotel (only a few blocks but sit very difficult in shoes). We decided we had had enough of the Boston winter, and went to the restaurant inside the hotel, Boodles.

Boodles is advertised in every hotel elevator, in several places throughout the room, and elsewhere as well. I had already known about it from my searches for brew-pubs and restaurants in the Back Bay area. We had some expensive Lobster salad sandwiches, which were awesome and worth every penny. I also had some Allagash White, a hefe weizen from Maine. It was really good. So good, in fact, that it could go toe to toe with its best Belgian or German cousins. There were even cute little pouring instructions on the bottle, to make sure you got the full flavor of the yeast that may have settled on the bottom (see Wheat Beer). Boodles is a go.

As we fell asleep (or tried to), it seemed like there was a riot going on on our floor. There must have been a wedding party. The ride home was uneventful. We didn't take the ferry on the return trip. It was a fun little excursion.