The Well-Fed Bong

My uncle in Calcutta would go to a lot of trouble for pork chops. They were a special treat at his house, served only when guests came from out of town. Good pork is not common in India; in this case he would leg it all the way to a single vendor in New Market's meat market to get the perfect cut. Later, when he became too old to try the journey himself, he would persuade others to go. It had to be that one vendor, and with good reason. Simply broiled and had with bread, they were wonderful pork chops - more than making up in a rich, robust taste what they lacked in tenderness. Now of course, cholesterol fears and a modernized New Market have put paid to the tradition for ever. I've only recently returned to pork chops. Never having tried to cook them, I can only comment from outside, but pork seems to strain a chefs chops more that one would expect. Perfectly competent chefs seem to falter at the attempt as diners scowl their way through dry, tasteless meat. Its easy to get c...

I never expected to like large slabs of meat barely cooked and served with nothing, but steaks have a way of growing on you - sometimes literally. There are two steak joints of note inches from where I work - Rainwaters on Kettner and Ruth's Chris . One a resolutely independent steakhouse, one part of America's largest fine dining chain. Both, however, were very similar in appearance - dramatic curved stairways leading to a huge, heavily wood-panelled upstairs dining room. Ruth's has the advantage of better views, perched as it is just off Harbor drive, and also seemed busier than the very empty Rainwaters. I had the ribeye in both places (no, not on the same day, not even the same month - I'm not that fond of cholesterol). To start with, both steaks were excellent, but there are differences. Ruth's gave me a detailed writeup of the special oven, the New Orleans rags to riches story and placed a sizzling medium-rare steak floating in butter in front of me. the butte...

As benefits a coastal town, San Diego is full of seafood restaurants, from hole-in-the-wall fish taco places to black-tie affairs. I've already written on some of them earlier, but I recently had a chance to go to the two that were the highest rated on downtown - Point Loma Seafoods and Top of the Market. Point Loma Seafoods is much away from the beaten restaurant track, serving salads, cocktails and fish plates amidst counters of fresh fish for sale. It was rated the number one in magazine reviews so I went there with high hopes and, well, came away very disappointed. The location seemed the only thing worth the effort; I wasn't impressed either with the quality of the fish or the cooking. Though the jetty next door gives the impression that the fish just came off the boat, many of the offerings at the counter had names starting with "Atlantic" and "farm raised". I tried their smoked fish, but its a very far cry from the stuff at, say, Katie's Smoke...

You would expect a place on the coast to be full of seafood restaurants, and downtown San Diego does not disappoint. Specialist seafood places abound in San Diego, and here are some of my favorite ones. Relarively speaking, San Diego restaurants are very good but usually never rise to the level of incredible. The focus of most seafood places in San Diego is to get freshly caught fish from various parts of the world - this from hawaii, that from Spain - and serve it simply grilled with butter-lemon sauce - which is all very nice but makes it difficult to distinguish restaurant A from B. The menus look similar, and they probably get their fish from the same suppliers too. Also, the skill is really with the fish supplier, not with the chef. Understanding, therefore, that all these places have the SGLB (simply grilled butter lemon) thing down pat, I'm going to write about what stood out. The most highly rated seafood place in San Diego, according to most reviews, is the Star of the S...

Today I ate elk. Yes I know, I should build up to it, write tales about majestic deer and redskin hunters, but basically that's what it was. I ate elk. It wasn't my intention to go elk-hunting. I was quite content at aiming for tasty slices of the domesticated bull and San Diego magazine gave me recommendations about steakhouses in downtown. At the top of the list was Greystone the Steakhouse so I landed up and sat at the bar in front of a fairly bustling dining room filled with suits and little black dresses. Rod the bartender gave me a choice between ribeye and elk, and of course my adventurous instincts took over. Elk sounded like a definite beenthere donethat - evoking eskimo hunts and igloo campfires and extreme survival in bitter conditions - so I jumped. It promised a crust of s and all kinds of other nice stuff. The elk steak turned out to be a mildly flavored meat; tender and juicy but more exotic that gourmet. Seems I was wrong about the eskimos too - this dee...