Fried chicken. Funnel cakes. Doughnuts. If you ever thought deep-fried foods could never be sexy, think again. This is a picture of fish and chips as taken by The Girl Who Ate Everything. She is currently making her way through various parts of Europe on vacation, but these fish and chips are from Chip Shop in New York (obviously - I can't imagine they'd serve fish and chips with Ranch dressing in England). What can I say? It's not just food porn, this baby is sexy. Maybe it's the lighting. Maybe it's the way the French fries (chips) are tumbling all over each other. Maybe it's the naughty pose of the deep-fried fish on the edge of the plate.

And you thought a two-month advance reservation for French Laundry in California's Napa Valley was a big deal? Try going out in New York City. If you were lucky enough to have a hotel room at the Marriott Marquis, you made that reservation in 1983. Dinner too? The Rainbow Room was completely booked for New Year's Eve 1999 four years in advance.

It's not quite so difficult to land reservations in premier spots these days. Sure it takes some careful planning, a lot of patience, and some quick reflexes on the redial button. An article in the New York Times lists some of the slightly more difficult tables in the city -- Per Se, Mario Batali's Babbo, Le Bernardin -- and a good strategy for "getting in."

Chef Eric Ripert of Le Bernardin in mid-town Manhattan will be opening two new restaurants in the Caribbean. The two, to be called Blue and Periwinkle at the new Ritz-Carlton, Grand Cayman, will be seafood restaurants, like Le Bernardin. Blue will be fine-dining and Periwinkle will be a casual restaurant.

The new $440 million Ritz-Carlton will be a 144-acre luxury resort that is scheduled to open in late fall. Ripert has asked Le Bernardin's sous chef, Richard Brower to serve as chef de cuisine for both restaurants. In order to ensure quality standards, Ripert also plans to fly to the restaurants in the Caribbean with a whole team every month. From Manhattan to the Caribbean once a month? What a life!

For a foodie voyeur, MenuPages is highly addictive. The site has been around for a while as a resource for people who dine out in NY. It has addresses, phone numbers, and most importantly, scanned images of the restaurant's menu so that we can see what's available and for how much. Sure, lots of restaurant review sites have dollar signs to indicate about how much one would spend on a three course meal, tax and tip (not) included, but for me, those three $$$ mean nothing. I like to know how much certain things are. 

MenuPages has recently launched in LA. Not a few days later, MenuPix also launched its site, offering the exact same kind of resource! And to think I was going to do the same thing on my own blog! I guess great minds think alike.

Has anyone used either or both sites? What do you think? Which is better?

Steakhouses, as a rule, all used to market themselves the same way. The place was presented as a sanctum sanctorum, an all-male preserve where men could drink whiskey, eat charred beef, and revel in their temporary liberation from the tyranny of women.

But times have changed; and the New York steakhouse has changed with them, giving yesteryear's cultural baggage the heave-ho. A few classic exemplars of the old school persist, and are rightly celebrated as temples of meat-worship; but now they compete with a new generation of steakhouses, all of whom bring a new, metrosexual take to the most primal of all restaurant concepts.

Typical of this breed is Quality Meats, a tarted-up meatery from the corporate group that brought you 78 different Smith and Wollensky restaurants, not to mention Cite, Maloney and Porcelli, and the Post House.

Motivated by the new rotisserie and fried chicken takeout spot from Alison Vines-Rushing and Slade Rushing (formerly of Jack's Luxury Oyster Bar) called Dirty Bird To Go, the Village Voice did a blind taste test to see if Dirty Bird's claims of "an exciting alternative to conventional fast food to satisfy families and foodies alike" were accurate. Dirty Bird went up against the real dirty birds, KFC and Popeye's.

Dirty Bird won for surviving travel, maintaining its crunch, and having the moistest, best tasting meat. However, taste-testers were disappointed with seasonings.

KFC was found to be the greasiest and least crispy of the three. Popeye's was reported as "trashy, delicious chicken. The flesh is shiny with fat, the fried shell puffy and golden brown." One of the taste-testers hypothesized that perhaps there was some sort of addictive chemical added to the chicken.

Who cares about the chicken? I could eat a dozen of Popeye's buttermilk biscuits, which I am quite certain they deep fry right alongside their chicken.

 

Next week Monday through Friday, January 23 to 27, and the following Monday through Friday, January 30 to February 3, New York City hosts its two week run of Restaurant Week.

The event is organized by the city's official tourism group, and sponsored by Amex and Coca Cola, but it's not all just about commercial interests. For every reservation made via OpenTable for either of the $24.07 prix fixe lunch or $35.00 prix fixe dinner, a donation is made to CityHarvest, a charitable organization that rescues leftover food from the food industry and distributes it to New York's hungry.

The website is organized well so you can find restaurants by cuisine, neighborhood, and name.

Between NYC Restaurant Week and SF's Dine About Town, January is looking like a great time to spend your holidays gifts of cash.

 

Mark Bittman debunks the myth that rice should never stick to the bottom of the pot and gives us a few recipes for stuck-pot rice with yogurt, lentils, or potatoes. Hey, I've been eating the stuff for years. In Korea (as Bittman has also explained), it's called noo-roong-jee and tastes great after dolsot (stone pot) bibimbahp.

Sarah Gilbert has already pointed to the Times' taste test of "alternative" breakfast cereals. The article seems to lean toward the opinion that they don't taste good at all and may not last against the big brands, but Sarah and her family enjoy them.

Frank Bruni first whines a little about stealth charges in NY's restaurants, wagging his finger mostly in the direction of Gilt, where the average price of red wine is $246 for a glass. Then he shuttles off to Brooklyn to give two stars (**) to Italian gem, Al di La.

We go for dip in the sea with some suggestions for sardines, oysters, and the best thing to drink with oysters other than their own liqueur, muscadet.