Posted on 09/05/2001 5:38:43 AM PDT by Orual
If it's true that you are what you eat, then what are we to make of the fact that we live here in the land of foie gras with chocolate sauce? Of eel with roasted watermelon and green tea-cauliflower foam? Whatever the answer, one thing is clear: Today, the New York culinary scene provides food for thought to challenge even the most bizarre tastes. See which Manhattan restaurants have the weirdest dishes of all: Can your palate handle it?
#7: Foie Gras with Dark Chocolate Sauce and Orange Marmalade
Goose liver only a chocoholic could love...
• $72 prix fixe at Lutece
The Dish: Is it breakfast? An appetizer? Dessert? If you're pressed for time, kill three courses in one slab of foie gras, drowned in dark chocolate sauce and accented with orange marmalade. All that's missing is the toast. The New York Times called it “ill-chosen” and “out of register” but still gave new chef David Feau’s pyrotechnics two stars.
The Restaurant: What would Andre Soltner think of this revamped culinary legend? The guiding force behind Lutece ( 249 E. 50th St.) is long retired, and his pantheon is being turned on its head. East Side ladies beware, this is not your father’s Lutece.
Other Dishes: Feau, formerly of Guy Savoy in Paris, is no French-cuisine snob. He borrows flavors from around the world to create dishes like raw tuna with cilantro, apple and Moroccan oil; cumin- and rosemary-crusted lamb loin with lemon sauce and parsnip gratin; and curried squab with mascarpone and fava beans.
#10: Lobster with American Cheese
The sublime and the ridiculous on a plate.
• $22.95 at East Boat Restaurant The Dish: Think of it as a new use for the Kraft single: Icky, viscous processed cheese defiles pricey lobster flesh. “Like tuna melt!” the owner told the reviewer from the New York Post.
The Restaurant: The Post’s Steve Cuozzo, the only New York critic to pore through the bizarre, voluminous menu at East Boat Restaurant (72 Kenmare St.), recently declared the place “NY’s weirdest eatery.”
Other Dishes: An endless variety of lobster preparations, from Sichuan to satay, served alongside garlic bread, New England clam chowder, and wok-sauteed spaghetti slathered in ketchup.
Sardines and crunchy peanut butter sandwich, on raisen bread, slathered in Hines catsup.
Goes well with a cold glass of catfish gravy.
Schmalz is simply lard, or in Jewish usage, I believe, chicken fat. It you render lard, the cracklings are the delicious little bits of browned meat or rind that float up. Mix them in corn bread for that old-fashioned flavor. (Try to find a recipe for cracklings in modern cookbooks!) Likewise for rendering beef suet, if only a few steak trimmings -- delicious little dabs of pure calories for your potatoes. Likewise for rendering chicken skins.
The pioneers preserved pork and other meats over winter simply by immersing them in a barrel of lard. That technique probably came from the old world, and it may have been a "dish" to serve the greasy meats from the lard barrel. But who knows? I'm out of guesses.
"Duck and fennel omelette on a bed of scallops and Hollandaise sauce with truffles and sweetbreads..."
from Manhattan Murder Mystery
12/31/1969 -- this may be the earliest FR thread. ;')
Okay.
That beats my mother's favorite sandwich. Tuna salad with grape jelly on top.
It still makes me gag just thinking about it.
You put chocolate on liver, you still have liver.
Blech.
I was wondering how on earth you eat the little guys. Do you have to de-shell and de-claw 'em first?
I used to work for the Tony's restaurants here in Houston, and once had occasion to ask a manager I was dating why shrimp 'n' pasta dishes come with the shrimps' tails still in shell. He explained that the tail shells stay on "because we don't want patrons to think we're overhandling the shrimp."
I tried for almost a year to convince him that while they're shucking the rest of it, they can go ahead and take the tail shell off. He never bought it.
Nothing doing.
I can't eat anything that watches me eat it. (Insert your own joke here.)
That all sounds repulsive.
The worst I've had is chocolate covered ants.
Hot as hell- what a waste of chocolate. I thought they were Raisinets- what a surprise!
For me the weirdest dish is Angelina Jolie.
Why screw with the corn flakes? That's, like, a whole extra step.
Lard you use when frying or scrambling eggs. Put a tablespoon in the skillet, and I promise your eggs will wow you.
I'm getting a bit drooly just thinking about eggs fried in bacon grease . . .
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