I Am Going to Eat So Many Oysters...

About a year ago or so my sister moved into an apartment in Milford, Connecticut. Since I have little knowledge about Connecticut as a whole, let alone a tiny town there, I wasn’t too excited. However, when I drove over there to help her move in a noticed a small building downtown that was home to the annual Milford Oyster Festival!

This Friday I will get to sample the briny delights of the town with a permanent committee dedicated to these bivalves. Let the excitement begin.

Free Range Good, Free Meal Better

In my quest to learn more about food—i.e. eating as much as possible—I regularly read the food sections of local papers, scan the periodical sections of convenience stores and stay up late reading obscure and mostly pointless food blogs. Over the past few years I have come to look forward to a few yearly issues, updates and publications. One of these, New York Magazine’s Eat Cheap issue, came out last month and while I was flipping through the pages I noticed that one of the restaurants mentioned was the new employer of my good friend. I had just eaten there for brunch one Sunday and was looking to delve deeper into the menu. Excited, I asked him about it immediately and was informed that the restaurant, Community Food & Juice on 2893 Broadway, has been receiving quite a bit of good press lately. While this was great news for the restaurant, I was much more excited to find out that the owners were offering free dinners for two to all of their current employees. Whether this was to celebrate the recent good fortune or mollify their employees for rotten treatment I am unsure. However, this problem failed to blemish the delicious free meal I had locavore-friendly restaurant.

Community prepares local and usually organic food. The menu proudly states that all the beef is grass-fed, chicken free range and fish caught wild. The vibe is laid back but classy and the food is served in a laid-back atmosphere complete with a brown-shirted waitstaff. I have no idea why management wants their servers to run about looking like a fashionable pack of well-groomed UPS employees, but one need not worry about such frivolous things when enjoying a delicious—and free—meal. The menu at community starts simple and slowly eases its way to what I would call accessorized. Appetizers are uncomplicated affairs, meant to highlight to ingredients more than anything else. The butcher’s plate I enjoyed was a polished plank of wood adorned with perfectly spiced chorizo, raisin toast, bobolink cheddar (a delicious cheese from a farm in Jersey) and a delicious onion jam to slather on it all. Our second appetizer was a plate of scallion and zucchini pancakes, fried thin and crispy and served with nothing more than soy sauce.



Although I didn’t sample any of the soups or bowls—the Bowl O Beets has been calling to me for a while now—I was assured that these tasty treats were as straightforward as they sound. The Bowl O Beets was nothing more than that: take pile of beets, season accordingly, place in bowl and serve.

I say that the menu becomes more accessorized for a reason; the ingredient list gets longer and cooking processes are introduced but the food never becomes complex. Flavors meld and compliment one another, but nothing is ever lost for the sake of complicated sauce or archaic cooking method. For entrees we feasted on pan roasted scallops and wild caught (of course) striped sea bass.

The scallops came beautifully seared and sitting atop of what the fine folks at Community call corn pudding. It’s a simple mix of corn, seasoning and oil and accents the sweetness of the fat bivalves sitting on top.


The sea bass had a deliciously crisp crust and leaned up against a sweet doughnut peach with a little sprinkling of foie-gras in the middle. Little splashes of mojito sauce dotted the plate and gave a refreshing zest to the meaty fish and savory foie.


Dessert was an equally delicious affair. A vanilla pannacotta was served in a jamming jar and topped with sweet berries and the wooden slate made a second appearance to highlight three deliciously ripe cheeses and a small cup of honey. The dessert menu mirrors the appetizer menu and brings the dining experience full circle, presenting delicious ingredients prepared in ways to emphasize the natural flavors. Overall, Community is a tasty little gem in Morningside Heights. While I may seem biased because I know employees of the place and was lucky enough to snag a comped meal, I may just have to return and pay full price the next time I want to indulge.

Waiter Rant

I just ordered my copy of Waiter Rant. Apparently it is the Kitchen Confidential for the front of the house; I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Oi! ...I mean Oy!

“...emerging at the end carrying Ben’s homemade cream cheese with scallions and Tanenbaum’s fresh pumpernickel bagels, both of which would be combined with my Russ & Daughters’ Nova Scotia to create the single perfect Nova Scotia and cream cheese on bagel available in today’s depleted market.”
-Calvin Trillin

I’ve always wanted to recreate Calvin Trillin’s Lower East Side Sunday morning ritual. Jewish food just interests me, I don’t know why. Perhaps it’s because my knowledge about the cuisine stops at lox, but I think it’s really because I’ve listened to Jewish friends vehemently complaining about Gefilte fish and other oddities they were forced to wolf down at Passover dinners. Either way, I was going to be on Houston Street to complete a Craigslist purchase on Saturday morning and decided it was the perfect opportunity to nosh.

Unfortunately for me, Tanebaum’s and Ben’s are closed. I know that Ben’s Dairy was turned into Ben’s Cheese Shop, but all I could find about this store was a loving homage in a 1989 article in the New York Times. Yonah Schimmel is still in town selling potato kinnishes, and Katz Deli still whips up tons of pastrami and corned beef sandwiches, but it was 10 in the morning and I wanted some breakfast.


I wandered into Russ & Daughter’s around 10:15 and was greeted by a surly Asian man in front of the bagel display, a fellow named Jose behind the smoked salmon and two older Jewish women bickering about someone who was in the store earlier. I couldn’t tell if they were happy with the customer or upset, but they were arguing with purpose. There were a few other employees running around in the back but I wasn’t able to get a glimpse before the bagel man started hounding me for an order. Looking around, I realized there were only two other people in the store but the impeccably dressed counter man was insistent that I get my food immediately. Three blazingly quick minutes later I was out the door with a $12 scallion cream cheese and smoked salmon on a poppy seed bagel sandwich. I made my way over to a nearby park, sat down on an empty bench and opened up a thing of beauty. Perhaps I should delve into Jewish cuisine a bit more to discover what it’s all about. Maybe then I can complain about Gefilte fish too.

Today at work...

...I got the best tip ever!

Dear restaurant goers, please continue to tip your waiters with a nice bottle of wine in addition to a fat hunk of cash.

Beware of Hungry Old Men

Food makes people…funny. After waiting for a little while, I’ve come to realize that not everyone who sits down to eat will be cheerful, happy, nice, polite, honest or (one I’ve just encountered) not a thief! People get very, very angry if their plates come out a second earlier or later than when they expect them. One woman even threatened to sue because the pepper she ate had vinegar on it. Que Ridiculous.

On Sunday I worked a double shift, so I got to see the restaurant in all its chaotic glory from opening to close. It’s a long day, but it isn’t anything too terrible; drink a few cups of coffee, have a glass of water now and then and everything will be fine. I had a few cheap tippers, but nothing really worked me up until this man showed up.

Not only did this seemingly charming old man spend over an hour at the table, slowly nursing a veal platter with his wife, but also he left without signing for his credit card and successfully stole my pen. After chasing his hobbling body outside to get his John Hancock I returned to my station to realize that my pen was gone. I will be on the look out for this shady character from now on.

Wait for it...

As of today, the fourth of July, I have officially been a waiter for one week. After three days of training I swindled my way into getting a solo dinner shift last Thursday and have since been presenting diners with giant plates of pasta in return for big wads of cash. I should have gotten into this earlier.

Although I would much rather end up in the kitchen than in the front of the house, coming home every night with cash in your pocket it a great feeling. Also, there is absolutely no way I could survive in a professional kitchen right now; it is absolutely insane in there during the rush. However, despite the heat, puddles of sauces and frantic, Spanish chaos, I linger in the kitchen whenever I have the chance. As an added bonus, I’ve ended up making a few friends. A few of the guys invited me out to play futbol with them this morning at 8am in the local park. Although none of them ever showed up—bromas, bromas!—I am still flattered. ¡Oye!

I found this article pretty interesting. Times critic Frank Bruni took a week to turn the tables and spend time serving critical old cranks instead of being one. Use it as a reminder to tip those folks taking care of you in the service industry.