Category: Manhattan

We watched Bobby Flay’s Takedown last week on the Food Network, in which each week he has his own private Iron Chef-like dual with people with a particular expertise in a certain dish. He got his butt kicked by Tony Luke’s, who operates cheese steak restaurants in Philly and in New York. He won with his speciality cheese steak, “Steak Italian”, which is made with provolone cheese and sauteed broccoli rabe (aka “Chinese” broccoli). The broccoli rabe makes the sandwich much lighter than the traditional “wiz with”.

We had to try it out ourselves, so we went with P-‘s friends there on Friday through the rain. The service was slow (our steaks took a good 40 minutes to come out of the kitchen) but when they came out, it was as perfect as could be expected outside of Philly. Fresh, chewy Italian bread, paper-sliced tender steak, stir-fried broccoli rabe, all bound together with the cheese. P- got the chicken version, which was made with stir-fried chicken breast slices, which were succulent and perfectly cooked.

Just finished watching 5 Takes USA on the Travel Channel, which is basically a non-competitve version of Amazing Race. A group of 5 people from Asia are given $50 a day and a video camera, and they have to tour several American cities and give their reactions as non-Americans. Getting on the 5 takes team is the prize – there’s no million dollar pot at the end of this trip. Zack, the guy from outside Manilla, looks a heck of a lot like our friend AS. The footage is edited and shown the following week. They survived Los Vegas and the Grand Canyon, and are now in Alaska. They will be in New York Thanksgiving week, so that should really be a lot of fun for them. Recommended.

Slashdot reports NY Courts proposed rules considering attorney websites and blogs – or just about anything put into media or on the Internet – as regulated attorney advertising. The pertainent proposed rules, pushed by the NYS Bar Association, requires filing an entire copy of a website each time a change occurs on the site (i.e. each blog posting), and that the filing is public record. The City Bar and a gazillion other people put out strong objections to the proposed rule changes on First Amendment and stupidity grounds. While we’re not advertising anything (we’re not even using our real names), Triscribe could conceivably be covered by the proposed rules if we link to any law or lawyer sites. I don’t know.

In the second of our Iron Chef themed restaurant outings, we went to Bobby Flay’s sous chef Patricia Yeoh’s restaurant SAPA. We were disappointed. Our waiter failed to give us a bread basket. The food was small, cold and didn’t even match what was on the menu. The environment was so pounding with sounds that we couldn’t hear each other talk. The only thing to say was that the Cosmo-jito was pretty good. Not recommended.

So, we were still hungry and looking for something to rescue it, say a slice of pizza. Then we thought, where is the nearest Mario Batali restaurant? Otto Enateca at 1 Fifth Avenue was the answer. It’s designed to simulate an Italian train station – you’re given a ticket to an Italian city, and you wait in the waiting room-like bar until your city appears on the tote board. You then are led into another room which appears to look like any train station cafeteria you might see oversees, just nicer. Not much pretense – we ordered 2 pizzas, a salumi salad, and drinks. They came fast, hot and of high quality. And we didn’t break $50 between the 2 of us.

Cityscape has a number of complaints, mostly about the B&T crowd, and not the restaurant itself. Perhaps because we came off hours, it wasn’t a factor. For me anyway, the ambiance is important, but not as important as the food. If the food is bad, the rest isn’t worth it.

In other Food Accidents, Alton Brown crashes and burns in his series Feasting on Asphalt, where he and his merry men motor from one coast to the other in search of non-chain restaurant food. If you can imagine Monty Python and the Holy Grail as an informative Food Network show, this would be it. The crash scene happens in episode 4, where he wipes out on camera just outside of Las Vegas, and breaks his clavacle. Ouch!

The neatest found object from Feasting on Asphalt is the 12V Travel Oven. It looks like a big lunch box, but actually inside are 2 metal trays where you can put food on. You then close the lid and plug it in your cigarette lighter outlet. Sometime later, you have hot food. Convenient for anyone who spends all of their time in the car.

I’m going to Vegas for my friend’s bachelor party, and thinking of making it an entire West Coast week. Any suggestions welcome…