THE GURGLING COD

Burger King Ain't Tha 1

From The VV, news of a nine dollar rib dinner at Burger King. For those of us who cut our teeth on the McRib, this does seem like a failure to keep it real. More immediately, if this sort of fancy dining at BK catches on, what about the children? Specifically, the children who will not understand why it is that Ice Cube deems a meal at Burger King an appropriate and more economical alternative to a lobster dinner.

Sifton Soundtracks: Mia Dona b/w The Members, "The Sound of the Suburbs"

It's a huevo de gallina for Mia Dona. Sifton appears to be saving his A game for loftier fare. It's disappointing. Based on complaints in Chowyelpistan that nobody reading the NYT food section should be expected to know who Liev Schreiber* is, I had the exciting idea of annotating his next review as a public service. But, jeebs, Sifton gets about as deep as a kiddie pool this time out. Counting Crows? Even the Applebee's reviewing Silent Majority knows who they are. But it does sound like the kind of place that's hard to get excited about, and is on Sifton's radar primarily because of the place it used to be before Psilakis left. So, like kudos for getting through the writeup without mentioning Olive Garden.  But Sifton does get to remind you where he grinds:

And so here is the new, chef-less iteration of Mia Dona: exactly the sort of decent, middlebrow, red-sauce Italian restaurant you’d relish if you found it in a town near the town where you grew up in the suburbs of New York. Within the five boroughs of New York City, we call that sort of restaurant satisfactory.

The enthusiasm Sifton brings to having NYC as his beat in nearly every review is infectious, mostly. It's as if he spend his formative years chained by the ankle to the steam table at a Ponderosa, and is happy to be eating better than that.

But the review is criminally thin on soundtrack inspiration. With its invocation of the red sauce places of yore, Sifton dares you to go with "Scenes from  an Italian Restaurant," but the Cod is congenitally allergic to Billy Joel, who is the Lynyrd Skynyrd of Tri-State fifty-something hausfrauen. Thus a song to play off Mia Dona, back to where it belongs, which is to say not in New York Fucking City, where solid Italian food is not good enough.

 

*I can think of at least two folks who would be happy to tell you that Schreiber is to sex what the stickle is to the pickle.

My Girlfriend was on David Letterman!

Not food related, but The Gurgling Cod's new girlfriend was on David Letterman. The studio version( below) is a crisper performance, but damn. In particular, for a 24 year old girl from the Georgia to cop James Brown's signature cape shtick suggests that Ms. Monae has a set made out of a spaceage alloy of brass and awesome. I like to think the Godfather is pleased.

Muffin tops and skinny jeans...

...the look for 2k10? On the one hand Williamsburg mainstay Spuyten Duyvil's offshoot St. Anselm is inflicting the Newark Double on 11211 denizens looking to grow right out of those Am Appy sizes. Click through for the description, but it appears to be the vanguard of   new post-sincere, post This Is Why You're Fat cuisine. On the other hand, word of a new diet book for tubby hipsters, called Chubsters. Rest assured, the diet book will be "appropriately snarky." The Cod wouldn't want it any other way.

Kenmare: world's first bizarro gastropub?

I've been meaning to write up a recent meal at Kenmare, an sidelight of my recent bootlegging trip to NYC. So far, the jury seems pretty well hung on the place. I enjoyed my meal there. We were well looked-after, even though both members of our party were dressed like carnies, more or less. (The adjacent fourtop looked like Transgendered Sha Na Na, so that might have diverted attention.) It's a room that feels dressy, of which more in a moment. It was about seven-thirty on a Sunday a couple of weeks ago, but we walked right in, and were seated immediately, no gatekeeping necessary.

For all of the hype, the food I had seemed to be about doing simple things very well. The cheddar fries w/ giblet gravy and green onion were delightful -- exactly what one would want from upmarket poutine, which is is exactly what it is. I fought my hesitation and ordered the "The Chicken," and was glad I did. A lot of effort and technique + simple ingredients = win, especially at $19.  I enjoyed in the same way that I enjoy Duran Duran's cover of "White Lines" -- artifice + enthusiasm overwhelms your better judgment.

That said, Kenmare does seem to be making a bid to be the worlds first bizarro gastropub, in that it offers well executed, but relatively humble food in gratuitously upmarket and chilly room. The disks visible in the picture at upper left only Khan's coffee table could love, and the same motif is on the front door (see right, via Lost City) creating the impression of the first restaurant with its own Dalkon Shield. With a door like that, gatekeeping hardly seems necessary. The food and the company was fantastic, but The Cod could have done with a little less untz,untz, untz from the room and the staff.

Forget it, Savannah, it's Chinatown

Is it just me, or does putting Paula Deen in charge of a high school culinary arts program also remind you of Noah Cross scooping up his, um, granddaughter at the end of Chinatown?

WSJ: AZN BBQ FTW

I like Food News Journal -- while the unread feeds pile up like drifting snow on the tundra in my RSS reader, the FNJ comes to my inbox, and usually gets at least a cursory glance. One quirk of FNJ is the degree of attention they pay to food stories that run in the Wall St. Journal. On the positive side, they seem to have a mandate to engage both fancy NY chefs and the restaurants located in relation to interstate exits where the rest of us eat. Thus, a reference to Chili's btw Chang and ZP. On the other side of the ledger, the WSJ's food coverage has an curious atemporal feeling -- like picking up an old Popular Mechanics magazine to read about what the Kitchen of the Year 2000 would look like. To wit, an article from last week about how Asian techniques are shaking up BBQ in the USA. 

True, Asia is a continent with much to offer the BBQ chef, but it is also true that you could already find cookbooks on grilling AZN steez on remainder tables Barnes and Nobles back when River Phoenix was still alive. So, excepting the mention of the aforementioned Fatty Cue, the Newsyness of this is hard to see. However, the entire business is worth it for the dire warning:
Food companies and chain restaurants, always looking for new flavor trends, aren't far behind. Chili's Grill & Bar, a 1,499-unit chain owned by Brinker International, is developing banh mi sandwiches and Korean barbecue quesadillas. Cammie Spillyards, director of food and beverage innovation, says the chain began noticing the popularity of Asian street foods about a year to a year and a half ago. Chili's wants to be "first to market" among casual dining chains with these items, Ms. Spillyards says.

Bahn mi is coming to Chilis? Save the last bullet for yourself. And "korean barbecue quesadillas"? Do you even have to ask if this is just another Guiteau Monday?

Big Boi + Martha Stewart = guaranteed hilarity

Via the keen-eyed cinetrix:

St. Augustine FL? Restaurants? Bueller?

Bueller? Heading there for a conference -- looking for something good to eat. Welcome any and all suggestions.

Onstad cooks balls!

A nice feature w/ FOC Chris Onstad cooking testicles from a PDX paper. The Achewood Cookbook deux drops soon. Pre-order it here. Betimes, Onstad completists will want to grab Errands into the Metropolis, which has cover art by Onstad, complete w/ secret hidden Philippe. Those not nuts about nuts will be happy to hear that the Mercury article includes a link to a secret hidden fried chicken receipt.