For my last post of 2008, I thought I’d go back and post about a place I’ve been meaning to write about for a while. It’s not a fancy place, or even a restaurant at all — there are no chairs or tables at Russo’s Mozzarella and Pasta. What they do have is great food.
I used to live a few blocks from Russo’s in the East Village (at E. 11th St), and stopped in occasionally for Italian cheeses and pastas. I walk to work past the Park Slope location, but for months I didn’t really bother — I have another Italian specialty store much closer to my apartment. But then I noticed the poster out front that advertised sandwiches, and I decided to stop there on my next lunch break. I was particularly intrigued by the broccoli rabe sandwich, as I am a huge fan of broccoli rabe.
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I know the tradition for Jews is to eat Chinese food on Christmas, and I’ve done that before, but this year I didn’t have any plans. My friend Jeff and I were trying to find out what restaurants were open and had tables available, so we used Open Table to find out. There were only a few dozen restaurants with tables available, and most were restaurants we had never heard of. Only one appealed to me — Rosa Mexicano. I know it’s a chain, and that they overcharge for what is, at heart, Tex-Mex food, but I had heard great things about the pomegranate margaritas and the guacamole made table-side. Jeff agreed — margaritas seemed just right for Christmas dinner.
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Sometimes I think I’m kind of a grouch when it comes to eating. Why can’t I just enjoy a meal, especially when it’s free (as my meal at Barbounia was)? I think i often set my expectations too high. I wasn’t anticipating much when I first saw the menu at Barbounia, but then I read Frank Bruni’s one star review and I thought maybe there was hope for the meal after all. Unfortunately, the bread and olives brought out at the beginning of the lunch were the best parts. The bread was still warm from the oven, and crusted with sea salt and rosemary, and they brought out plenty more at our request. Look at those greedy hands reaching for the bread!
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Swiss chard may be the most ubiquitous of the winter greens at the market. It’s easy to love the way it looks, since it comes in bright red and yellow as well as the standard green. I have had trouble finding a recipe I like for chard, however. The most success I’ve had is shredding up the leaves in a minestrone, but it felt wasteful not using the stalks. At Al Di La they have grilled swiss chard stems on the menu, which sounds intriguing (but not so intriguing that I actually ordered it). Someone once suggested to me that I saute the stems with a little bit of sugar, but that turned out pretty cloying — the stems are sweet enough as it is. I think I prefer my greens on the bitter side.
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I was speaking to my sister about her visit to Minneapolis when she mentioned she’d eaten vegetarian pho. I instantly became jealous — how come she could find vegetarian pho in Minnesota, while I live in freakin’ New York City and had never seen such a thing? I googled vegetarian pho in NYC and up came Lan Cafe, a vegetarian Vietnamese restaurant located a block away from where I used to live in the East Village (it turns out that Lan Cafe opened after I moved out of that apartment, so I didn’t miss it while I lived there). I made it my mission to visit Lan Cafe as soon as possible.
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When in Berlin, eat wurst. I knew the Germans were big on their wursts but I didn’t know they were THAT crazy about them. First of all I have never seen so many sausages in one place nor have I seen so many varieties. Everywhere I went I would see people eating one or two. Standing outside in the freezing cold by these tall round tables near the sausage place. One guy was so serious about sausages, he carried his own deep fryer on his lap cooking sausages while in a wheelchair!!!! Like WOW!!
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