THE GURGLING COD

Gesundheit!

With its air of exclusivity and mystery and its Mexican menu, La Esquina is sort of like Studio 54 with chipotle subbing for cocaine.

Frank Bruni visits a taqueria that fronts like it is Hernando's Hideaway, but is actually more  the Honeycomb Hideout:

The adjacent kitchen produces food not only for this netherworld hacienda but also for an attractive street-level cafe with an entrance around the corner. It operates under the same ownership and is clearly marked La Esquina.

Shit, this restauranting thing is easy. Open a run-of-the-mill Mexican joint, and have a an offshoot in the basement with an unlisted number and the Gimp as maitre'd. I'd consider pushing this hideout in the basement idea a little further and having a VIP area in a fort made out of sofa cushions. Seriously, this whole thing feels like a deleted scene from the unreleased sequel to Josie and the Pussycats. Also, Bruni must have forgotten to charge his iPod:

But those servers demonstrated considerable knowledge about, and enthusiasm for, La Esquina's spectacular selection of about 100 tequilas. After a shot or two, the smartly chosen music - Nina Simone, Soul II Soul, Nouvelle Vague - seems to swell louder, but not so loud that eavesdropping becomes impossible.

Tequila and "Back to Life"? This sounds like an ideal restaurant for sex-havers. 
Finally, a Gurgling Cod lapel pin for whomever can fill in the blank:
Studio 54/Cocaine is to Bianca Jagger as
La Esquina/Chipotle is to _________.

Gyro Gearloose

If you have been wondering how to bring Gyro magic into your own home, your quest is over. I am actually comfortable leaving this magic in the hands of professionals, but Mr. Cruft has a trash can smoker project that is quite inspiring. Yes, once again, via Make.

Standing in the rain

Once they clear away the debris, it appears that the crew over at About Last Night is a preseason favorite to follow in the footsteps of Spuds McKenzie, John Goodman, and Harry Connick, Jr., and be honored as the grand marshal of a Mardi Gras parade. Because they love Balanchine? Partly. Mostly though, because for reasons that are entirely unclear to me, this artsy arts blog became the de facto clearinghouse for Katrina-related blogging. I'm not qualified for meditative chin-scratching on the future of media, but I found this swarm approach immensely more useful and satisfying than watching CNN. Against the cable news paradigm of a coiffed anchor hollering at some poor sucker in an anorak, who replies inaudibly, with cutaways to whichever experts they can round up, the impromptu blogroll offered a sense of what it was like to be in the storm, and a feeling of how the storm was affecting the lives of those in its path. The TV episteme of putting someone in rain or snow to demonstrate that it is raining or snowing has always struck me as incontrovertibly stupid, and I'd argue that a verbal, rather than visual approach has more to offer.

Closer to home

If you prefer your culinary travel free of  moonshine, Nam musings, offal, and Bourdain, you may enjoy this tour of outre food festivals around the USA, sent along by the sharp-eyed cinetrix. Inexcusably absent is the shrimp and petroleum festival. (Link NSFW if your boss objects to midi-ized cajun music. I find it makes me angry very quickly.) Also, why would a shrimp need a hard hat? Isn't that what the exoskeleton is for? In any case, it starts Sept 1st, so you have just enough time to figure out how to get to Monroe, LA. Failing that, you can watch the stream.

Katrina Update

The Times-Pic's in-house blogger comes correct, stiff-upper-lip-Battle-of-Britain-stizz, but with a spicy cajun twist. The Cod encourages all y'all to have the traditional Monday New Orleans staple of red beans and rice tonight, and keep those folks along the Gulf and inland in your thoughts.

Disquieting American

Chris Onstad not only writes Achewood, which is always high on my list of reasons to wake up in the morning, but also watches Bourdain, so you don't have to:

Tony Bourdain's various travel shows can be fairly characterized by the following standard conventions:
1) Tony will go to a third-world nation and drink their local moonshine out of used plastic soda bottles,
2) Tony will work in a lot of tough-guy references to war movies or Viet Nam,
3) Tony will eat something's cock or face.

Speaking of the 'Nam, the publicity for the show seems torn between Graham Greene and Joseph Conrad for its muse. Never mind that the graphics were jacked from a high school production of Miss Saigon-- the image looks like the jacket of a pirated edition of The Quiet American produced in a country where the only caucasian model is a long lost Kray cousin, and the copy seems to have been thrown together by someone who skipped a lot of classes in college to watch Apocalypse Now over and over again:

A Cook's Tour takes us along for a ride with chef/writer Tony Bourdain as he travels to more than a dozen countries in search of rare, legendary and sometimes dangerous foods. Some of the locales and delicacies are challenging, others are more familiar...from the heart of dark Cambodia to the streets of sun drenched Los Angeles. "There's no script, there's really scary locations," says Bourdain, "It's very different."

"Dark Cambodia"? The last fellow I heard use "dark" to describe a nation was my man Paddington, and it's OK when he does it because he is from Darkest Peru. Otherwise, it makes you sound like Stanley.

Katrina

Dear Katrina-
Please go easy on New Orleans. A lot of good folks live there, and there are lots of wonderful places to eat that should not be underwater. Thank you.

You can get a blog's eye view of events thanks to the handy links compiled by Terry and OGIC.

Next week: Mac and Cheese podcast with Sufijan Stevens

From the relentless Make, receipts on your iPod. The less good part? The author is Kraft.  If you do not have an iPod, you can simulate this exciting new use of technology by writing BUY MORE MAYO on the duct tape that holds the batteries in your Walkman.  Like most corporations, Kraft is interested in having you purchase its goods or services, and thus makes missteps like this:

Pesto Crostini
3 cups fresh basil leaves, washed, dried
1/3 cup KRAFT Special Collection Classic Italian Vinaigrette Dressing
1/3 cup KRAFT 100% Grated Parmesan Cheese
32 baguette slices (1/4-inch thick), toasted
1 container (8 oz.) PHILADELPHIA Cream Cheese Spread
1/4 cup KRAFT 100% Grated Parmesan Cheese

PLACE basil leaves, dressing and 1/3 cup Parmesan cheese in food processor or blender container; cover. Process until well blended.
SPREAD baguette slices evenly with cream cheese spread, then with pesto mixture.
SPRINKLE evenly with 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese.

Ah, Tuscan summers... reclining under the olive trees with a tub of cream cheese and a trowel. Couldn't Kraft just wait outside supermarkets with a gun and take people's wallets? It would be healthier for their customers, and the barrel of a gun just might be tastier.

Haute Box

Box wines at Cambridge's swishest dining destination? The rumors are true-- the "Box Wine Haute Picnic Dinner" is coming to Up Stairs on the Square, the cafeteria for the power elite of the World's Greatest University. I support box wines as a way of addressing wine shortages, but this event seems kind of a zero sum business: a fancy restaurant announces, putatively shockingly, that they will be featuring box wines, but in the context of a picnic. If the purpose of the event is to encourage the non Halo-playing wine drinking demographic that box wines are viable, why not just put them on the wine list? Also, as details of the "picnic" emerge, I will pass them along, but until then,  $65 seems like a lot to shell out for an ironic picnic. I am rooting for watermelon and corn on the cob on blankets spread out at the corner of JFK and Mt. Auburn, but I'm not gonna hold my breath.

If you have time to lean...

you have time for this:

AN after-hours orgy erupted at celebrity chef Mario Batali's Bistro Du Vent last week, resulting in the firing of four staffers, PAGE SIX has learned.
The randy sex romp between an openly bisexual waitress, a male chef, a female manager and a waiter was captured on the West 42nd  Street restaurant's surveillance cameras, which feed to a monitor right next to the host's stand.
We're told that the oversexed staffers were boozing it up at the bar after closing when things got physical.
Our snitch, who saw the steamy surveillance footage, says the X-rated action took place "on the bar top, down to the floor, on top of the banquettes — chef on waitress, manager on waiter, waiter on waitress, all four tangled up in one bunch."

A few thoughts:
1) Were they fired for failing to invite Mario? Arguably, this kind of thing suggests a high level of staff cohesion.
2) Does the proliferation of surveilance cameras mean the end of the afterhours banquette-based orgy? What would Jeremy Bentham say about that?
3) "Chef on waitress, manager on waiter" sounds like something from the Santorum scrapbook.
4) In 2005, we still have "admitted" bisexuals?
Via the Fiddler.