The Well-Fed Bong

Grilling raw meat for a few minutes – most of the world would barely consider cooking; America has, however, managed to persuade everyone that it is, in fact, very haute as cuisine goes. The great American steak is something I am very fond of. When I first moved to New York, Atkins was all the rage and steak was practically health food. In the years that followed Atkins (real and diet both) rested in peace and cholesterol worries became a religion; New York’s steakhouses, however, did not seem to bother too much – the ancient ones still held their own while fancy new ones cropped up with great regularity to take turns at stretching the good old expense account. Steak remains America’s luxury dining of choice, and New York has some of the best. The most legendary steakhouse in the city is without a doubt Peter Luger . The place celebrates its 125th year by proudly proclaiming to have been #1 for the last 24 years (why it took a hundred years is a mystery). I had heard and read ple...

I've already written about my search for Kolkata-style Kati Rolls in Mumbai ; here's the map to help you find them. And lets not forget New York. The Kati Roll Company fuelled many of my parties, while Roomali was a lunch staple. Indian Bread Company served excellent tea along with decent rolls and a was a great place to read books in. Roti Roll's unusual curry fillings filled me out a couple of times while wandering near Columbia.

Ask anyone who's lived in Kolkata in his or her youth, and the one food they hanker for is the Kolkata Roll. Mustard fish, rossogolla. puchka, jhalmuri, all have undoubted appeal, but the most universal of the lot is the kati roll. Everyone except a dietician loves it. I don't visit Kolkata that much anymore, but its been my fortune to find the Kolkata roll becoming Bengal's biggest food export. New York, in particular, developed rather nicely as a roll destination; there were none when I moved there, now there are at least six. The most famous one - Kati Roll Company - is so popular it employs bouncers to keep the queues orderly. Other good choices, in order of preference are Indian Bread Company and Roomali , but nowadays Yelp lists over a dozen !! Mumbai had its own pretender - the Frankie invented by Tibb (whose son was briefly in college with me). However, the frankie is rolled in a naan rather than a paratha and filled with all manners of gooey curries (no barbecu...

Vir Sanghvi's Sunday column in the HT Cafe, about chocolates and chocolate snobbery , set me thinking. I'm not as convinced about chocolate and terroir as Vir Sanghvi is, but his column triggered my thoughts about where I've had the best chocolates or chocolate confections. Here, then, is my top 5 chocolate list. I'm not claiming any particular chocolate expertise here, but I doubt you will be disappointed with any of the choices. #1 My favourite chocolate experience has to be the city of Brugge. I know it is no longer fashionable to say that Belgian chocolates are great, but I cannot avoid putting this city at the top of the list nevertheless. Most people benchmark their idea of Belgian chocolate from the boxes of Godiva that grace every supermarket shelf, but that is doing the chocolatiers of Brugge grave injustice. Small, famous, historic Brugge is full of not chocolate stores that merely dish out mass-manufactured stuff, but c...

Sometimes, simplicity can be amazing. Sometimes a chef can combine just a couple of very basic ingredients in a way that you cannot have enough of. Not all the time; sometimes a simple combination can be just that tad too simple to be considered seriously. Unless you're paying generously for it. Mario Batali has made quite an empire out of simplcity. There are those raw fish thingies called crudo at Esca , tiny bits of raw fish in olive oil and one condiment that will set you back a dozen dollars a bite. A flight of six is a little better, at $30. Yes, the fish are good and the combinations interesting, but most reasonable sushi restaurants give you a tenth of the pretension (not to mention half the price) to outdo Esca ( of course, they don't have olive oil). Caviar House at London Airport charged me the same $12 a bite for salmon dipped in nothing, but the memory of that salmon still causes drops of saliva to start heading downwards. At Esca, the only thing I remember is ...

An email from Gayot a few days ago warned of the five rising chefs in America. Amazingly, only one was from New York. Zakary Pelaccio's distinctly pizza-parlor name hid a penchant for peddling inexpensive Malaysian food in superhip Meatpacking District. This Saturday, suitably encouraged by my stomach, I headed into Fatty Crab to check the chef rising. Its a tiny tiny place, barely able to contain the tables and waiters. The three of us were so space challenged that lunch was a constant juggling of plates and glasses and forks and knives. The food did, however, live up to its promise of being both interesting and affordable. We ate all kinds of the things of the menu, and were not disappointed by any (except possibly the tiny portions of the skate entree). The nasi lemak was spectacular, the lo-si-fun delectable and the crab more than passable. Portions are usually small, though. Of course, this isn't traditional Malaysian food; more on the lines of "inspired by". ...

I've been spending the last fortnight entertaining my mother and aunt, which means trying out some nice new restaurants. My travels took me to some new ones, and some old favorites. One of the new ones was Vong , the much reviewed restaurant from celebrity chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s chain of restaurants. It's hidden away under the lipstick building, and is populated entirely by Bangladeshi waiters, which made life much easier for us. I seem to be having French-Asian everywhere nowadays; cream sauces dusted with exotic spices and presented brilliantly. The interesting part is how they convert Asian street foods or communal serving to the plated paradigm, where each person gets a plate all his own all beautifully laid and not to be touched. Plated food always puts me in a bit of a tizzy. I have two worries; one is - am I supposed to eat all those things that make it look pretty? Do you put all of them in your mouth together (the perfect bite) or are there combinations t...

I've finally inspired other people. Here's the review (unedited except for links and capitalization) sent in a few days ago by the very friend of mine that fished in hell in with me. Last week, this foodie friend of mine suggested that we try sampling fare at restaurants/bars named after their addresses. I found the idea intriguing but we got drawn to the Osteria Gelsi fish (which was very very good), so today, when another friend came to the city from India I decided to try this place called 44 SW in Hell's Kitchen. It said ristorante and the menu outside seemed to have antipasti and insalata - so we walked in assuming they would have the usual entrees on the menu. The place turned out to be full of disappointments. First, they did not have half the wines on their list. The list itself was kind of sparse and uninformative. The pretty stewardess recommended something that turned out to be rather bland. More chicken than fish in an italian restaurant sounded like bad n...

I know you're running out of money. What better than a free magazine to recommend cheap joints, so here's the 2005 cheap&best list from Village Voice. And cheap&best was in fashion in earlier years too; here are the previous lists - Italian (2004) , Latin (2003), Asian (2002) and the Original List in 2001. No, I haven't eaten at all these places. I may be chubby but I am NOT FAT.

I discovered myself in French food fairly regularly in the last few days. I also realized that for some reason all French restaurants in New York look very similar. The first was Les Halles , one branch of which is right around the corner from my house and open till midnight. yes there's a celebrity chef involved, but the place isn't fantastically expensive. The roast duck was basic and simple, but beautifully executed - enough to overcome the bother of constant jabber from my somewhat inebriated (and male) neighbor. It had this half-inch thick meltingly sinful skin, browned and crisp on top but a sweet yam mash on the side that I didn't care for. Then there was Artisanal , widely known as cheese heaven with another celebrity chef in tow. The cheese plates are excellent; amazing choice and good presentation. A waiter with a disappointing lack of accent informed us that there was a short list of cheese (around 40) on the specials and the whole list of over 150 (some of whi...

A drive to get rid of excess clothes on a Sunday took me to the east village, where I stumbled upon Ma*ya Hurapan . It turned out to have nothing to do with Mayans; the food is a scattering of dishes from South East Asia. The interestingly colorful two-level eatery was empty when I went (for a late late late lunch) so I got myself a nice seat at a window (all the better to see summer belly-buttons through) and ordered Roti Canai and Chinese Sausage topped Vegetable Fried Rice. Before the roti canai, however, came a free plate of shrimp crackers with peanut sauce of the satay kind. I must tell you, however, that the peanut sauce was incredibly fantastically wonderful - this from a guy who's punded the streets of Singapore trying out every satay vendor there is. It's not as good as the best that a Singapore street vendor can offer, but it's close - and certainly far above the namby-pamby versions every other New York place offers. Even better - its free. The roti canai was ...

Hell's kitchen isn't on my normal routes, but a friend who lives there assured me that it would be well worththe trip so I found myself in his neighborhood Italian restaurant - Osteria Gelsi . It wasn't merely Italian; it was Puglian (they don't let you into New York City Italian restaurants without a geography exam nowadays - Puglia happens to be on the boot heel of peninsular Italy). I dont know anything about Puglia, but its obvious they're fond of fish. The menu leaned heavily towards seafood, but more interestingly (in a city of a million Italian eateries) promised fishes that I'd rarely seen anywhere else, such as porgie or rock scorpion fish. We ordered one of each, preceded by baked baby squid and followed by a huge square of (what else) tiramisu. The food was fantastic. Both the fishes were revelations; the assertive, coarse-grained porgie simply grilled with herbs, the flaky, buttery rock scorpion fish with cherry tomatoes. The baked baby squid start...

This sunday a charming woman chose academics over me, so I was left to my own devices. And, just by that solace of abandonded souls (Bed Bath and Beyond) was a very interesting restaurant indeed. Almost as soon as I had gotten on my trusty steed, my eye was caught by a chic modern whitelaminate space that prominently announced " Tebaya " and threatened to sell me Japanese chicken wings. What captured my interest was that for such a slick space the menu was miniscule; Nagoya-style chicken wings in three portion sizes, kushiyaki (chicken on a stick) and a katsu burger. Teba, it turns out, is deep fried chicken wings with a secret sauce - soy, sesame and pepper to be sure, but there's more in there. The sides are gummy, sticky potato balls in a wonderfully buttery soy sauce called potemochi. It takes some courage to sell such a small menu, but Tebaya does a great job. The wings are fabulous, and messy and cheap to boot. The potemochi is kind of strange but addictive - s...

Every once in a while, you stumble upon a restaurant that you really like but critics ignore and no one else knows about. A few weeks ago I was led to a small, almost unseen vietnamese restaurant nestled in Tribeca between much more famous neighbours. We could see Bouley from our window, and Nobu, Megu, Chanterelle and a dozen critical raves were staring over our shoulder, but our quiet little place held its own. Not unlike Vietnam itself, one might say. Hoi An , named after a once-famous port town in Vietnam (ok I googled that) is small, unpretentious, inexpensive and strangely enough staffed by small cheerful Japanese women. There is no easy way to discover Hoi An. I was taken there by a friend, and that's probably the only way to go; on your own you'll almost always get distracted by one of the much better reviewed neighbours that abound in Tribeca. That would be a mistake, though - the food there was some of the best Vietnamese I've had in recent times. We ordered the ...

Here are two places that I visited recently Bridge Cafe turns out to be the oldest surviving bar in New York, which is big in a city where some 99% fail in the first few years. Situated just below the Brooklyn bridge on Water street, it turned out to be a small, plain cafe that showed few signs of its ancient heritage. However, age is not the only reason to go there - we went for brunch and the food was very good, specially their apple-smoked honey bacon. They also have one of the best selections of single malt whisky in Manhattan, stretching three deep across half the bar. Von Singh was my midweek, a somewhat quirkily named store on West 8th and McDougal selling its own take on Indian kati rolls. As the name suggests, the menu aims at fusion. The rolls here come in tortilla-like baked flatbreads (which, in my opinion, is not ideal) and contain varieties of curried chicken, optionally topped with a few kinds of sauce. The effect is more pita or burrito than kati roll, but the chick...

I have often bemoaned in these columns (ok I haven't ever bemoaned and this isn't even a column but I think it makes me sound like I'm getting paid for this - lets not get distracted here) that Indian food abroad is a bit like Chinese food in India. Every restaurant sells the same menu, and most of those dishes dont even exist in traditional Indian cooking. Chicken Tikka Masala is firmly a British invention, almost certainly the fortuituous combination of Bangladeshi cook and tomato sauce. It is, in fact, so British that the British Council uses its history in an English lesson - I kid you not! It was with considerable admiration, therefore, that I stared at the menu of Babu . A vast expanse of nicely expensive paper made no mention of either tikka or tandoor, and vindaloo was mysteriously invisible. At first I though it was a trick of the dim lights (entirely candles) but no amount of blinking made any of the familiars appear. I was instead marooned with names like doi m...

There's plenty of tea in New York too, and you dont even have to climb over hills to get at it. Lets start with the cutest - Alice Tea Cup ; the name smells of baby showers and women sitting around knitting. That, in fact, is exactly what happens. This is the female equivalent of a steakhouse, the food equivalent of a chickflick, the last hideout for women in the age of sexual equality. Well, nearly. It's true that the place is full of cutesy stuff and upper westside women who knit, but it's also a serious tea place with plenty of excellent tea choices. And by tea, I mean the whole tea service thing - perfectly brewed tea in teapots, double filtered water, food, tea scones and some serious clotted cream. Sit down, let out a slow breath and relax while menus of tea choices and sandwiches appear on the rough, solid-looking bench before you. Real tea pots and cups too. Its subterranean location at 73rd Street is nearly impossible to find the place so peace and quiet are assu...