Oh Mile End, I like how you bring a TON of people onto Hoyt Street every weekend during brunch hours. No I don’t actually. I hate waiting with big crowds, I’m hungry and I want to eat right away but for some odd reason I don’t mind waiting for dim sum. Weird. Anyways the only time I’ve been to Mile End was just to go and pick up my Montreal bagels.

Yes I’ve been wanting to go try Mile End for a while now but they close too damn early everyday and with the crowds over the weekend I’ll never get to go! Oh wait they just did announce their brand spankin new dinner hours! w00t! Maybe now I can get my smoked meat finally?

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So this week I cheated a bit. The recipe called for pancetta and thyme or rosemary. I didn’t use pancetta, I know its in the title but pancetta is pricey, so instead I used bacon. Also I had 5 strips of bacon in the fridge already. As for the herbs I wanted to use something different, something I have never used before…..like…..tarragon! I think sage would’ve worked good in this dish also. Well I guess I might as well just say that I didn’t use tagliatelle pasta either! Geez… This wasn’t my fault I couldn’t find any so I got linguine.

Parsnips have sort of a licorice taste to it, I think, and so does tarragon. What I made tasted okay but probably tarragon wasn’t the right herb to use because it taste like parsnips, I don’t know. Will try again with sage! Love sage.

So whats the big dealio about ramps? I keep hearing people talk about ramps ramps ramps. They’re like crack to some people. Okay so they’re like leeks and taste a little bit like garlic and when cooked down they kind of look like spinach. To find out what’s all the craze over this little vegetable I asked Howard to pick up some ramps for me at the Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket. I had this grand idea for a ramps tasting where I’ll cook it few different ways but I ended up only making 2 things.

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A rare thing, I went to the Farmer’s Market at Grand Army Plaza on an early Saturday morning with Howard. There wasn’t anything particular that I wanted to buy but I ended up getting leeks, kale flowers, fresh eggs, bacon and a baguette. So then on Sunday night I was thinking about what to eat for dinner and this is what I came up with. I just cooked the bacon first then added the kale flowers. Once the orzo was done cooking I added to the bacon and kale and added a good amount of parmesan cheese. And because I love eating more carbs I ate the orzo with some baguette.

Meat and whiskey! Thats all you need to know about Char No.4. Oh and I guess their shrimp and grits are pretty good too oh and fried cheese curds. And that pretty much the reasons what brought me, Howard, Matt and Anh to Char No.4 or at least for me. I have heard many good things about their shrimp and grits but what I really wanted was MEAT. Howard showed interest when he found out they served fried cheese curds. He had some amazing ones in his Wisconsin trip.

So we went on a Thursday night and surprisingly we were all on time! Really rare that happens, eh I guess I’m always 30mins late to everything. We went in and got seated right away. The waiter quickly told us that they were out of the smoked half chicken and it was only 8:15pm. I took a lot longer than usual to finally decide what I wanted. But here’s what we all got.

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For pure research and to blog more for Drink To Blog, Matt, Phae and I went to a beer tasting at the Beer Table recently. The guest talker was Chris Munsey of Murray’s Cheese. You can read about the stout tasting here.

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