I had the oppurtunity to trail at a well-established restaurant in Carroll Gardens last week. They are famous for their beet salad with goat cheese ravioli (which I got to prepare and plate a few times) and slow rendered duck.

They should be famous for their quad pork dish: Pork stuffed with pork sausage, wrapped in caul (technical term for the fat netting they used all the time on the OG Iron Chef) and served with bacon fried rice. Bam!

I have yet to mention my enormous, unrelenting, unfaltering love for seafood. Combine that my new found obsession with French food and you get bouillabaisse - a dish I have eaten three times in last three weeks. Unfortunately, I feel self-conscious about taking photos of it with my crappy point and shoot camera with a flash in the kind of places that serve it. So here’s a photo I “borrowed” from the internet. It’s the best one I could find and it still doesn’t do it justice.

If you are unfamiliar, bouillabaisse is an uber-delicious cornucopia of various fish and shellfish and veg in a seasoned tomato based broth and served with rouille on toasted baguette slices. It’s the French version of the Italian based cioppino (which I’ve made at home a couple of times, despite the high cost). I think the broth in the bouillabaisse is more complex than the cioppino, but I’ve never had cioppino in a restaurant. The important thing is that I can cram as many different kinds of seafoods as possible into my gullet with just one dish.

You must understand that, for me, this is the food equivalent of Jenna Jameson or Pam Anderson or whoever the boys touch themselves to these days.

Matt and I went to Bouillabaisse 126 in Caroll Gardens yesterday for the last night of Dine In Brooklyn (B126 being the only participating restaurant in “Columbia Waterfront“). The restaurant is right next door to Schnäck and it’s backyard can be seen from our new backyard. C’est merveilleux! (That’s French for “fuckin’ awesome”.)

I’m on a mission to try the bouillabaisse at every restaurant in Brooklyn that serves it. Any other suggestions about good French eats in Carroll Gardens would be much appreciated, because there seems to be a wonderfully surprising amount of them.

Seafood, I love you.

Matt and I attended Split Thy Skull VIII at Mug’s Ale House in Williamburg this past Saturday. From 11am until close on Saturday and Sunday, they offered samplings of high alcohol beers (the lowest being 7% abv and the highest being 13.25%) for $3.50, 5 oz servings in little snifter glasses. We had attended their Belgium 2 Brooklyn beer fest in December, which I found more enjoyable because they had sour beers and I could drink a gallon of that stuff. At three pm, the bar was already three people deep. The good thing about it was that it was 90% beer nerds and beer nerds are very patient and there was not cutting or cursing or shoving that you get from regular booze hounds. There Matt’s coworker, Andy, met up with us.

We then sauntered over to Barcade, which is a green bar (solar powered). They have a nice selection of craft beers, a full bar and olde tyme video games. I suggested going there because I’ve been wanting to try the Dogfish Head vodka. Dogfish Head is an extreme American craft brewery that does crazy, delicious stuff like brew beers with a 20% abv or copy the recipe of the elixir found in King Midas’ tomb. And, apparently, they also distill their own liquor. Unfortunately, Barcade was out of it their vodka, so I decided to try their Jin, which was very herbally (pineapple mint, rosemary). It made an odd martini, but not unpleasant. And this is coming from someone who doesn’t drink gin. Now I’d like to ask a question for any bartender that may be reading: I’ve bartended before, but I find it odd how more often then not, when I order martini on the rocks the bartender mixes it in a shaker. Is this because of James Bond?

Continue reading…

Friday night some Chew Food contributors attended happy hour at The Brooklyn Brewery in Williamsburg. Matt is a huge beer nerd, so he was excited because it was the unveiling of Brooklyn Brewery’s new Brooklyn Local 1 (a bottle conditioned Belgian inspired beer).

At the Brewery, you buy beer tokens for $3 each or 7 for $20. The Brooklyn Local 1 was available with take-home glass (as pictured) for three tokens. Continue reading…

Finding a place in the East Village to partake in a little post-work imbibing is not a problem. Finding a place that is reasonably priced, relatively quiet during happy hour, and not obnoxiously tres chic usually ends in resignation with $3 wells at random pub standby number one or a desperate scramble on CitySearch.com. So after a friend recently suggested Lil’ Frankie’s, I gave it a shot.

When I heard it was a popular destination for celebrities in the neighborhood, I shuddered with flashbacks from a night waiting in line at B-Bar, but I was surprised to find the space both quaint and adorable. It proved to be an ideal go-to spot to start the night off with friends for drinks and even tasty eats. Sitting at the small 8-stool bar was a good choice; there’s a great breeze from the street (the front of the restaurant opens up al fresco style), and it’s close to the bartenders. The front dining area was nearly empty when we arrived, and I was relieved to see the absence of bar room televisions. The bedazzled, low-lit chandeliers, cheeky family photos, and rows of old medicine bottles lining the interior walls are all great for decoration and conversation starters, but the real gem is the specialty brew found right on the tap; Lil’ Frankie’s Six Point Ale, which the bartender claimed to have helped brew with the Six Point master himself. The 12-inch brick-oven Margherita pizza was a gooey, filling complement and only $10. We enjoyed a few pints before a sizable crowd wandered in for dinner, which included a mammoth 26 oz. t-bone steak for two special. The sweet scent of fresh basil quickly permeated the room, and it wasn’t until the bartender revealed a tray of mojitos (made here with basil instead of mint) that I realized we might just stay at Lil’ Frankie’s all night long.

Lil’ Frankie’s Pizza is located at 19 1st Avenue between First and Second Streets in Manhattan.
(212) 420-4900

http://www.lilfrankies.com/

Kuma’s Corner is a Chicago restaurant with an interesting menu. The burger-heavy selection is notable for the titles of its dishes. All but two of the burgers along with the pulled pork and chicken sandwiches are named after metal bands. From the classic (Iron Maiden) to the questionable (Hate Beak), nearly the entire spectrum of metal is represented. Even stoned upstarts Mastodon get in on the act as a Cheddar-Bacon Burger smothered with BBQ sauce.

Now, I am having a difficult time deciding whether or not I like this idea. Now, I enjoy my metal (actually, I am listening to Obituary on my headphones) and I love burgers, so it’s not like I feel either of the two is sullying the other’s name. And in theory it should work and just be the raddest thing ever. But it isn’t. In fact, I don’t like the idea at all. I just feel like I should. I don’t really know why the names bother me, but they do. It’s as if I woke up one day and everything in my room was shifted 20 degrees to the left. On one hand, it might really open up the room and make it seem bigger, but on the other… well, it’s just plain weird. I want to sit and pound my fist on my table when i listen to Reign in Blood; I don’t want to eat a slayer. That would just be too bizarre for me.

I think that it also just reminds me too much of Planet Hollywood. And anything that reminds me of that place is gonna give me some bad vibes. Sorry, Kuma and your corner; no offense intended. I just had a rather bad experience at PH one time, involving a spilled fajita platter and my lap. I’m sure your burgers are extremely tasty—I just couldn’t order one by its name!

Am I crazy? Is this actually a marriage made in meatily metallic heaven? Quite possibly. But I am sticking to my guns, dammit!

Oh yeah, big ups to Grant for the link.