We finally had the time on this recent trip to NYC to cross over to Hoboken and have dinner in Maricel Presilla’s South American restaurant, Cucharamama. After the huge article about her that just ran in a recent issue of Gourmet magazine we were sure that we not be able to secure a reservation, but we did, for Sunday night.

The restaurant was smaller than I had imagined, but ample outdoor seating increased the capacity. It had been a hot day and was a warm evening. We had just wrapped up our tea seminar and day at the Fancy Food Show, so we were in the mood for air-conditioned comfort. The interior of the restaurant is dimly lit and softly decorated in warm, inviting earth colors. It gave us just the relaxing space we were looking for.

Cocktails were in order, and their listing offered many choices of Daiquiris with several types of rum: aged, white, and Venezuelan; a classic Pisco Sour, which features a choice of Pisco: pure, aromatic or acholado; classic drinks like  Mojitos and Caipirinhas; and drinks with alcohol and fresh tropical fruit juices.  The bar is located along the wall in the center of the restaurant, and two bartenders were kept quite busy all evening.

As we sipped our drinks, we began the serious business of ordering our food. We went right to the wood burning oven selections, and decided on the following from the listing of starters and main courses:

• Chorizo Argentino con Pimentos y Cebolla:  Argentinean sausage with rosted peppers and onions, and Argentinean red Chimichurri sauce

Chorizo Argentino con Pimentos y Cebolla

• Camaromes Tatacua, Salsa de Aji Panca: shrimp in Panca pepper sauce

Camarones Tatacua, Salsa de Aji Panca

• Tamal de Maiz Tierno con Tocino: fresh corn tamal with marinated and roasted slab bacon

Tamal de Maiz Tierno con Tocino

• Pechuga de Pollo Asado al Horno de Lena en Salsa de Calabaza y Mango con Boronia: boneless chicken breast in Peruvian abodo, pumpkin and mango sauce, ripe plantain and eggplant puree  ( sorry, no picture ! )

All of the food was excellent and the flavors were true, clear and spicy without being overly hot. No one dish shouted above the others, so the dishes complimented one another quite nicely. Each dish was nicely sauced and was accompanied with salsa or more sauce for those of us who cannot live without sauce. During the evening, many singles and couples came in and sat at the bar and had a drink and a plate of something to eat.  How I wish there was such a place where we live !

My only regret was that we were not with more of us at our table so that we could have tried more tastes of this lovely food. We passed on dessert, had a little nightcap, and then decided to bask in the glow of a great dinner and hired a cab to take us back to Manhattan. Yes, silly I know, but we could just not imagine jingling and jangling our way back to the Waldorf on the hot and nasty subway ( requiring walking and changing trains in two places ) after such a nice meal. Such are the moments of celebration !

lovely cheeses

We have been attending the Fancy Food Show for close to 30 years, which means that we were building our specialty food business and learning about all of the wonderful foods that many of us now take for granted through the amazing years of the 1970’s, 1980’s and 1990’s.

These were  glorious decades for specialty foods, when wave after wave of imported foods came to our shores for the first time. Also, we food lovers were exposed to a new kind of cookbook back then that featured ‘authentic’ recipes from the cuisine of another country. These cookbooks were written by knowledgable writers who lived or had studied and trained in the country about which they wrote, and knew of what they said. Their emergence set the bar for required expertise in food writing since those days. 

Restaurants, too, came alive during these years, offering us dishes that many of us had never tasted before, with ingredients that were new and exciting to our palates. Becoming a chef became a popular notion, and the era of the celebrity chef was upon us. Cooking school attendance swelled. Food surrounded us and as a nation we embraced it. The new breed of restaurant thrived and specialty foods that once resided in a sphere ‘above the norm’ slowly became ingrained into our lives all across the nation. 

Who can remember, for example, that it was only in the early 1980’s that Italian sun-dried tomatoes and pesto first appeared on the shelves of specialty food shops in New York ? Indeed, Americans are savvier about food today than we were 30-40 years ago. Not always savvier regarding nutrition, or how to eat a balanced diet, or in steadfast concepts of eating fresh foods in season, or even where many of the foods in the grocery store comes from, but savvier in regards to being able to navigate our way through sophisticated restaurant menus and know the ingredients that the dishes are comprised of.  Similarly, truffles, once rarified and only of importance to haute gourmands, are now familiar to all foodies thanks to affordable ingredients such as truffle butter, truffle salt and truffle oil.

Now awareness of foams and emulsions are sneaking into the vernacular, even among those who have not yet actually encountered them.  We are no longer a ‘naive’  food nation and there is no going back.

French Perigord black truffles

The Fancy Food Show has been instrumental in making ’special’ foods and ingredients accessible, and for introducing legions of specialty food retailers, chefs, cooking school teachers, private chefs, etc, to a wider palate of foods and ingredients than most of us grew up enjoying.

This year marks the 55th Anniversary of the Fancy Food Show. Those of us who attended the show before it permanently moved to the Jacobs Javit Center can remember a much smaller show with far fewer items and vendors. French food was the only major foreign influence, and German marzipan was cutting edge in confectionery circles. The show as held in the old Coliseum building ( now the site of the upscale Times Warner Center ) and in several hotel locations near Columbus Circle. And attendance was light.

Each year the Fancy Food Show grows larger, thanks in part to an increasing presence by foreign vendors who bring their products here for the first time, and American companies who are trying to find a toehold in the fickle American marketplace. Every show still manages to feature new cheeses, meats, ethnic ingredients, spices and condiments that are new. Retailers like ourselves try and determine which products are right for our shops and which ones will have the most mouth-appeal to our customers.  The tables have been turned over time, and the once fearsome French food producers have been eclipsed by the domination of the suave Italian importers and exporters.

yummy whole roasted Porchetta

This year, one of my favorite new products was roasted, de-boned, salted and spiced, hormone-free, small Kentucky pigs ( with head attached ) that I sampled from Porchetta Primata, Birmingham, AL.  These artisan porchettas are for sale to any deli, restaurant, take-out food shop, etc, that wants in on the ‘pork’ craze that is sweeping our country. Porchetta is well known to those who have traveled through Tuscany in northern Italy. Many good farmers markets usually feature a skilled counterman who slices thin slabs of hot, juicy ’porchetta’ right off the beast as everyone around hungrily watches. No other sandwich is as good as a freshly-made, hot and juicy porchetta sandwich, and no other food at the farmers markets draws such a crowd !

This year we did not notice any clear trends, but there appeared to be an abundance of snack foods, bottled beverages of all stripes and bake-off cake, cookie and bread mixes, and ready-made sauces. And, the show would not be the show without the handfull of goods that we find useless and un-appealing, over- packaged and over -priced and generally unnecessary.

Bob’s seminar on Fundamentals of Specialty Food Retailing went we,, as did our jointly-presented tea seminar. We delivered a hearty quantity of background information about the six classes of teas ( including slides from our trips to Japan and China ) and then tasted seven  teas with the group. Everyone left well watered, on time , and with all questions answered.

me speaking at our Tea Tasting Primer

Bob and I just spend an entire day in Flushing wandering the streets and visiting Chinese restaurants and grocery stores with our friend, Jacqueline M. Newman, Editor-in-Chief of Flavor & Fortune magazine, the only English-language magazine about Chinese food and cuisine. www.flavorandfortune.com

While Manhattan’s Chinatown is an important historic neighborhood on the lower East side which became the new American ‘home’ to one of New York’s major immigrant populations  in the late 19th century, Flushing is now the ‘new’ Chinatown and where the most interesting restaurants and best markets are located. 

Flushing has what Chinatown Manhattan lacks – a vibrant food scene comprised of  intriguing, small, family-run restaurants that feature the ethnic cooking of  several of China’s lesser-known  cuisines, such as Fujianese, Dongbei and Hunnan. Each time I visit Chinatown Manhattan I am disappointed by the dull and jaded vibe of the place. So were were happy to have the opportunity to spend time in this new environment and see what is going on.

There is only one train stop in Flushing, so immediately one is thrust out into a very busy street that is lined on both sides with food shops. We enjoyed wandering in the markets, where we watched speedy fish mongers gut and clean sparkling-fresh seafood of all stripe, and where crowds of shoppers quickly grabbed first of the season fresh lychees.

Larger restaurants are located on street level ( and even these are relatively small ) but there are also independantly operated food stalls located here and there in pockets of space located one level below the street.  As we ducked through a doorway and headed downstairs we entered a world of smaller ( and more clastrophobic ) versions of the hawker foodstalls in Singapore.

Here, cooks were busy and customers milled around waiting for their food. Most food we eyed was cooked to order, and in fact, the dumplings and  hand-pulled noodles were made from scratch each time an order was placed.  From the various stalls one could choose from rich brothy soups, noodle dishes embellished with vegetables, meat or fish, and all manner of hand-rolled and stuffed meat dumplings.  The smells were enticing, and more than one hungry shopper flopped onto a chair to slurp a quick bite.  Others left with a multitude of containers that had been gathered from several stalls, perhaps to bring food back to work for co-workers to share or to stock the home fridge.

you start with a length of dough....

twirl and manipulate the dough....

first you get thick noodles...

twirl and manipulate the dough again....

and finally, thin noodles !

We went above ground for lunch to two places that Jacqueline particularly wanted us to try. First up at Nan Xiang Xiao Long Bao, where  no one spoke English. But fortunately she visits Flushing often and knows her way around. And, as we learned, simple menus are available in English, but the bland descriptions did not do justice to the vibrant and delicious food.

Here, we had glorious pork and crabmeat Shanghai soup dumplings that were rolled, filled and steamed ( in the tiniest kitchen imaginable ) while we waited. Soup dumplings are served piping hot, and it takes a little manuvering to sip the hot soup from the dumpling without dribbling the hot broth down the front of your shirt and or scalding the inside of your mouth.

While we would have been content sitting there eating these luscious, thin-skinned dumplings, other dishes were calling. Next up was a visit to Golden Palace Restaurant, a very non-descript, a dime-a dozen-looking Chinese food kind of place. But, this restaurant is run by a couple from the northeast region of China known colloquially as the Dongbei region, and they serve the unusual and delicious food from their distinctive homeland culture.

We started with a platter of their sour cabbage filled house dumplings. The dough was thicker and coarser dough than the previous dumplings, and not as elegantly pleated. But the flavor was tasty and delicious, and quite a change from familiar meat fillings. Next, we had a hot and spicy green chile and potato dish ( made with long, noodle-like strands of potato ) which is another vegetable that is enjoyed in the northern part of China but one that we had never encountered in our travels around China.

But the most glorious dish was the crispy flounder with chili pepper, which came to the table garnished with a layer mouth-watering and spicy chili paste. The paste featured scallions and cumin as well as chili, and it was absolutely stunning and very distinctive; not too hot but very spicy, and reminsicent of something that one would be served in Turkey or Morocco, not China.  I hope the next time we visit this dish is still on the menu !

For those who wish to learn more about Donbei cuisine, Jacqueline has written a very detailed and interesting article titled: China’s Dongbei Cuisine, which is featured in the Spring 2009 issue of Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture.

We love this restaurant, and in fact, look forward to dining here when we are in the city. The restaurant space is open, airy and not overwrought and the service is warm, efficient and never-in-your-face or lax.  Neither tries to complete with the food, but both simply compliment the food.

Right now, Gotham is featuring a $25.00 prix fixe Anniversary Celebration luncheon special which is a great deal. The selections on the menu are highlight dishes from days past and present in this successful restaurant’s history. In this era when many restaurants appear to be feeling the pinch of the current economic upheaval, this restaurant was bustling. Alfred Portale, the owner and Executive Chef at Gotham is not only an accomplished chef but a smart businessman.

This is what we chose from the menu:

Me:

roasted black plum salad

grilled New York steak w/Bordelaise sauce

Gotham chocolate cake with basil-chocolate chip ice cream

Bob:

carrot soup w/shrimp garniture

roasted haddock

trio of sorbets: strawberry-watermelon; apricot -pineapple; cucumber-lime

Staying in this grand art deco hotel is a wonderful way to get in touch with the glorious history of this amazing city. The Waldorf was built in 1931 and immediately became a beacon of style and grace. Since then, dignitaries and illuminaries, presidents and royalty have stayed in the hotel’s lavish suites, and countless charity balls and debutante parties have come to pass in many of the hotel’s elaborately decorated, European-treasure-house inspired ballrooms.

Walking through the hotel is tracing the steps of history -  architectural details from the Art Deco period when the hotel was built are evident throughout the lobby and public spaces. The grandure of the hotel is not diminshed by time, but rather underscores the elegance and importance that New York exemplies.

The lobby shops contain splendid displays of jewels and antique treasures.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

However, modernity does intrude. We were awakened in the middle of Friday night by the shrill sounds of the hotel’s fire alarm. By the time the reality of what was happening set in, we could hear room doors around us opening and slamming shut and fellow guests running down the hall. As we raced to get dressed and grab essentials such as camera and laptop, the alarms continued. Just as we were ready to leave our room, a voice came over the floor intercom ( who knew there were such intercoms ? ) announcing that the alarm system was malfunctioning and all guests should return to their rooms. Relief brought an easy return to sleep.