Through Hard Work And A Lot of Eating

My interest in getting started on Yelp was accidental. We got invited by one of my wife's friends to go to an Elite Yelp event last year. For some reason, I never thought an event of this kind ever existed. The event was all about desserts and it was free to those on the invite list. Free food. Free party favors by Yelp. Great way to meet new people to talk about food. Did I mention the food was free?

We talked to one Elite "Yelper" that day and she said it wasn't too difficult to become an Elite Yelper. You need to eat and write a lot of reviews and use Yelp as often as you can. I do eat A LOT. I do like to write, even though my wife is right that I need to proof read what I'm writing [which is what I'm doing right now] because there are a lot of grammatical mistakes the first go around. But the draw was the free food that day. And it wasn't a bunch of Oreos and Chip Ahoys sitting on the table. There were some really fabulous desserts there and even though it was sugar overload, it was a fun way to have food as the catalyst for social networking. So, why not?

For the last year, as you can see above, I have made "friends" on Yelp, written about 100 reviews locally and from our travels [most notably New York, London and Paris], offered tips, and created lists. I've come to really enjoy writing reviews and reading other people's reviews. On October 14, 2010, I officially became an Elite Yelper. The angels sang, the heavens opened as I dreamt about the different Yelp events we will get to go to...[Taking a moment to look out the window in bliss]...OK, the angels didn't sing, the heavens didn't open, but nonetheless, I was still really happy.

Food is still, to me, the quintessential social force that draws people together. One can argue alcohol is, but I still think food is what evokes the memories of people when they remember their past the most. It helps chefs/cooks innovate new dishes based on classics of yore. It creates memories of places and people that perhaps only music, as the other medium, could conjure up. But what even music can't even do is to get a small group [less than 20] of people, friends or not, to come together and be the focal point starting conversation and leading that to people talking about their lives, interests, hobbies, etc. I don't hear a lot of people saying, "Hey guys, got the new U2 CD, come over and we'll see how it compares to their other ones." While music still has high impact in connecting people, food has flourished in the social media. People are passionate about great food and service as well as crap food and service. People want to express themselves in the way they prepare food, eat food and write about food. As with music, there is a lot of high and lows about making something out of basic ingredients. But we have to be realistic, not everyone can be Bono or Chris Martin, but everyone needs to eat. Whether you're making a simple PBJ or creating a new dish from the basic PBJ, there's a process that goes from an idea or just basic hunger, to putting food on a plate and eating it. Not everyone can be Thomas Keller and Gordon Ramsay, but everyone prepares food in one way or another. Not everyone loves food or the passion to cook food, but everyone has a palate that tells them if what they just ate was good or bad.

Being an Elite Yelper, I've come to realize, it's not just about writing reviews endlessly, get the Elite status and you're done. It's more than just putting your "Yelper" flair to what you write. It's still about remembering the moment in which you are at a particular restaurant and eating a particular food. It has helped me to remember our travels as much as, if not more,writing a review about my apathy towards Baja Fresh. And that is what being an Elite Yelper means to me. Yes, it's really cool to continue to be an ambassador for Yelp, but it's also about meeting new people, reading what they have to say, and having a connection, even if it's a digital one, to other people. In our day and age, where people starve for relationships, where Facebook and Twitter has become the norm in how we keep up with our friends, it is only realistic to do the same with food. Because food is still what brings people together.

How Corporate America Makes Us Unhealthy

The coupons section of the Sunday paper, for many, must be a treasure trove of money saving goodness. Where else can you get multiple sections of coupons and savings every single week. And on the things that we need to subsist on [namely food], no less! Only in America, right?

I used to think that coupons in the Sunday paper was so great. You can clip and save a ton of money when you go to the grocery store. But over the last 15 years, there have only been a handful of food coupons that I have actually used. Why? Don't I want to save money? Am I happy to pay retail for food? But if you look at the coupons that Corporate America [Nabisco, Coca Cola, etc.] are handing out, they are telling you what you want to eat. And you know what? It's scary. I would say for every 10 food coupons [I'm not talking about make up, dog food, and useless supplements] I see, there are only 1, maybe 2 items that I would even eat. And not on a regular basis. The coupons you see are mainly frozen foods, processed foods, buy-more-than-you-can-eat-so-you-can-save-$0.50 kind of food. Even though there are granola bars, Healthy Choice, Lean Cuisines out there to be had and saved money on, it is loaded with sugar and sodium. Two ingredients I think we can use less of.

But how can a family of 4, with a single income survive without some savings? How can Timmy and Sally get their nutritious meals without costing mommy and daddy a king's ransom? Well, our food industry has solved our problems. They have kindly sent coupons of their own foods to our home every week. How thoughtful of them to give up some profit for the sake of a family to buy already packed meals at a discount! Once again, Corporate America has come to the rescue.

It really is a bunch of crap. Corporate America, out of their need to increase shareholder value and the bonuses of their upper management, has taken America's health to the limit. Sugar, sodium, and preservatives have ruled the food industry for years. And our minds are force fed, every day, that our time is too precious. Too precious for anything and anyone. Cooking? Puh-lease. I get that when you have a family, it takes every last ounce of energy out of you. And I'm not about to stand on a soapbox to say that life is easy or that everyone in this country can knock out meal after meal in their kitchen with organic products and made-from-scratch meals. But damn, we have got to try. The amount of sugar and sodium that is in that prepackaged crap we call food is not investing in our health. A home cooked meal of fresh ingredients doesn't have to mean an 18 course tasting menu from the French Laundry. It does take more time to prepare, mentally, what needs to be cooked. But I'm with Jamie Oliver, Gordon Ramsay, and Anthony Bourdain on this one: Cook SOMETHING. The amount of money you think you're saving by buying crappy frozen foods, no matter how many coupons you clip, cannot be compared to the money you're really saving by making your own spaghetti sauce and freezing that instead. No, you cannot freeze it for 3 months, but you get to control the salt, sugar, and other ingredients you're eating.

I'm not against all sugar and salt because heck, I love going out to eat. But we never buy frozen foods as a meal. NEVER. Our lives cannot afford it. No matter how many coupons we clip and no matter how much money we think we're saving. We have to bring cooking back into the homes in our country. Our lives depend on it.

Being Uppity and Loving It

If having afternoon tea at the Grosvenor House in Hyde Park, London makes me snobby or uppity, my response would be to quote the once beloved but later maligned Marie Antoinette, "Let them eat cake [brioche]!" Which is to say, "I don't care what you think."

No matter how you feel about afternoon tea, you must overcome this colonial travesty of the upper crust drinking tea and eating scones with clotted cream while the oppressed locals work in the fields. That is a separate issue than the dining experience itself. When done well, like the Grosvenor House Park Room in London, it is one of the quintessential experiences of what the British has brought forth to its colonies - India, Hong Kong, just to name a couple. However, if legends be told is true, it originated in Portugal, only to be brought to England when Catherine of Braganca married Charles II in 1661. It wasn't until Anna Maria Russell, Duchess of Bedford, transformed afternoon tea into more of a meal in the afternoon than a refreshment. Of course, many Brits don't normally take in the afternoon tea ritual anymore, but nonetheless, it is a tradition that's been well kept, even if the people who partake in the tea now are tourists.

History lessons aside, when the tower of morsels come to the table, one can only imagine what it must have been like to be a Duke or a Duchess back in the 17th or 18th century. The main attraction, of course, is the tea itself. To me, there's nothing finer than eating a scone/finger sandwich/pastry and washing that down with an English Breakfast blend with the right amount of milk and sugar. That is, I'm told, the proper way of taking tea. And to be even more proper English, to drink and eat from fine china is the penultimate of enjoying afternoon tea.

We definitely got all that and more at the Park Room in the Grosvenor House. For about 2 hours, we embrace that dining experience as much as anything else on our trip. To me, it's not just that it's English afternoon tea, but that it has to be properly done. You can't just throw in any type of tea. You can't serve it with a Starbucks scone and say you've had English afternoon tea, although I am sure many do that nowadays. It's got to be with fine china, loose leaf teas, finger sandwiches comprised of cucumber, salmon, and egg salad, and an assortment of scones and pastries. That's the way a duke or duchess would have it. Anything else would be, well, uncivilized.

The Agony of the American Food Court

Why is it that every time I walk into a food court, almost always exclusively in a mall, I get this sense of dread. A dread that slowly turns to death. The death to foods, which ironically should be found in a food court, where battles are won by how tragically low we Americans have come to the state of a meal.

Now, the rest of the world is no stranger to the concept of food courts. You can find them in Asia and Europe. But there's something amiss in the food courts that we so desperately hold on to as "food" that we miss the point of a food court. A food court should be a place where one can find good food. The first and foremost thing about the food court is, imagine that, the food! But we have perversed the notion of a food court to a cheap experience where food is not central, but by how fast and how cheap the food can be that has become the standard by which we contemplate our taste for anything resembling food.

The picture I took above is from Harrod's Food Hall in London. Now, Harrods is the world's biggest department store. It is both magnificent as it is intimidating. And for thousands of shoppers at any given time, you have to keep them happy, if not by the selection of your merchandise, then by keeping them in your store for as long as possible by offering them food. But this Food Hall is so very different than ours here in the States. There are different areas, one that serves seafood, one that serves grill foods, one that serves pizza, etc. You might say, "Well, that's not that different than what we have here." If you looked at the surface, you would be right. But sit down at the seafood counter and you are greeted by items such as crab and rock shrimp dumplings, seafood bouillabaisse, pan roasted halibut with seasonal vegetables and the like. Here in the States, you will find "Pretzel Wetzel" and "Hot Dog on a Stick". Let's not even start with the taste of the foods. We ordered the seafood bouillabaisse and it tasted like it came from a really good seafood restaurant with a bill to fit. Amazing bouillabaisse period, regardless of where it's being served.

Now, to be fair to the cheap American substitutes we find here, the Harrod's Food Hall is not cheap. But you can't put lipstick on a pig and bring her to the prom. The bouillabaisse is damn good. Harrod's could not stiff you with a £14 bouillabaisse if it were crap. You would cry bloody murder and let's face it, the Food Hall would be empty. But look at the picture! It was taken at 4PM on a WEEKDAY. It is humming with people - people from all over the world. We sat next to a family from Italy. On the other side, a family from Russia.

That's where the "let's be fair" ends. Because we seem to love Auntie Anne's more than bouillabaisse. We seem to love hot dogs on a stick served by teenagers with weird Halloween costume than eat crab and rock shrimp dumplings. Why? I think it's because our values are different. Clearly different. We value fast, quick, cheap, so we can get to the other fast, cheap, bargain at the Gap. We don't want to sit down and enjoy a meal at the mall, we want to shop dammit! And nothing will get in our way of totally destroying our credit line, not the least some good food! Just give us the crap you wouldn't even serve your kids. We'll eat it!

It's sad really. I like Auntie Anne's and I don't even know who she is. Or if she's even a woman in real life. But I just cannot be OK with the type of food we are setting a standard in our lives. It's not OK to shove a sBarros thick crust pizza that's nothing but frozen dough and crappy cheese so we can keep shopping. As guilty as the next person, I need to stop and enjoy a meal, no matter where I'm at. It doesn't have to be bouillabaisse and it doesn't have to cost a lot. But it needs to be good and fresh ingredients. My existence depends on it.

Creating Memories

London. Paris. Rome. They're such iconic cities. Names, when uttered, evoke emotions. Memories. They are totally different, yet they are very similar.

We had the fortune to have visited all three cities now. Rome in 2008. London and Paris in 2010. Whereas Rome is known as the Eternal City, London and Paris has its own eternal aura about them. The English, for so long, have been derided for their lack of imagination in its cuisines. Even fish and chips, as iconic as that dish is, has its day in the shadows to the Italians and French in its culinary circles. And yet, over the last decade, England has created and forged many of the best restaurants in the world. Gordon Ramsay, a Scot, has the most Michelin stars of any English chef in the world. In fact, he is only behind the "Chef of the Century", Joel Robuchon in the number of Michelin stars. "Fat Duck" has been perennially been competing with Spain's "El Bulli" as the best restaurant in the world.

So, it's not hard to believe that once you get past the obvious, the sights and sounds of London and Paris, that what rests in the soul, or at least the gastronomical souls, of traveling through these two magnificent cities is the food. I could write for days on end about the Westminster Abbey, Parliament Square, Buckinghamd Palace, the Louvre, Versailles Palace, etc. And yet, I can also write for days about the foods we had on this trip.

Haute cuisine did not greet us every day on our 12 days splash to London and Paris this summer, but that's not the only way memories are created. A cup of "cafe", the smell of a boulangerie, the grand luxury of afternoon tea - these are not "haute cuisines", and yet, they brand our hearts and minds with association to cities we've visited. On this trip, we certainly had our fair share of haute cuisines, although we did not visit the royal-ness of a Joel Robuchon or a Gordon Ramsay, we nonetheless ate well in both cities.

Now, whenever I drink a "cafe", I will always remember Paris. More specifically, I will always remember La Regalade, that wonderful restaurant on Rue de Honore by the Louvre. The next time I have a scone, I will always be transported to the Grosvenor House by Hyde Park. These are memories that God willing, will stay in my heart and mind until I am no longer here, only to be greeted by it again when I get to heaven.

Traveling isn't just about seeing the sights and understanding how they are incorporated into the history of that city. It's not rushing into the Louvre and snap some pictures of the Mona Lisa and it's on to another piece of artwork without understanding the importance that painting and artist has had over the ages. Traveling is also about the tastes and smells of the foods that bring us comfort and that open the door for us to see and experience new things. The comfort of English tea will always remind me of England, but eating and experiencing something new, like a tuna tartare at Le Regalade will always remind me that food is ever changing and evolving. One doesn't always have to eat fish and chips where the fish is always cod. Hammock and chips is just as good, if not better.

Part of life is about creating new memories that will fill our lives with richness and depth. We ought to appreciate the importance of why the Magna Carte is so important to the history of democracy. And, we also ought to appreciate the tastes and smells of a city as defined by its foods. There's nothing wrong with eating at McDonalds when you're in Paris, but why transport a memory you already own to a place you have never visited, or have not re-visited in a long time? Isn't it time to create some new memories? It was for us. It was for me.

Two Numbers That Changed The World

You could see the sign if you looked for it, but in the throngs of people walking toward whatever destination they were headed to, it's a little tough to tell. The picture above was taken in Times Square, June 2010. It was a hot and humid day and we had already walked from The Met to the Apple Store on 5th Ave and 60th Street via Central Park. We then walked from there to Rockefeller Center and finally to Times Square. We had walked a lot that day, especially in the suffocating New York summer.

The sign I referred to above is The Roxy. I've eaten at The Roxy twice. The first time was with my brother when I visited him in CT and we had gone down to New York to watch one of the best plays in recent memory: Angels In America. For lunch, he took me to The Roxy, a delicatessen that would give Adam Richman, of Man vs. Food fame, a run for his girth. I remember what I had ordered: A chicken salad bacon sandwich. What came out was not a sandwich. It was a statement. A statement that said, "I dare you." And of course, there was no way. A triple decker sandwich that was loaded with at least 1/2 pound of bacon and then another 1/2 pound of chicken salad with 3 slices of gigantic bread and cheese to boot. It was by far, the scariest, yet inviting thing I had known to that point. We gorged on our own sandwiches with delight, but ultimately defeated with ignominy.

The second and last time I ate at the Roxy was clearly on September 14, 2001. Four days after 9/11. Who would have thought the numbers 9 and 11 would forever be imprinted in our minds and hearts for those who lived through it, no matter what city or country you were in at the time. For us [my mom, brother and I], we were right dead center in New York City near Wall Street, 5 avenue blocks away from the World Trade Center. It took us 3 days of calls to United Airlines and my cousin finally getting through in San Francisco to get my mom and I back home. My brother, who had lived near Wall Street at the time, had to live through the aftermath of a city that to this day, no doubt, continues to heal from that infamous day.

The day we finally left the city to my cousin's home in New Jersey was a rainy and cool September day. With public transit still down, we walked with our suitcases, dozens of blocks to the nearest working subway line to get a train to Times Square. We had time for one more meal in New York, and we settled for The Roxy.

I still remember what I had that day: Pastrami and eggs with hash browns. The boat load of food came and I looked at the portions thinking, "The city was just struck by the worse terrorist attack in history and The Roxy is still churning out ridiculous portions." Those eggs and pastrami never tasted so good. I can still feel the taste and the heat of the food down my throat and into my empty stomach. You have to understand that for 3 days, nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing was open where we were except for various places in Chinatown. Nothing was getting down to Downtown. No deliveries, no news, no electricity, no hot water. NOTHING. So, when I put a forkful of eggs and pastrami in my mouth, it imprinted not only the taste, but a memory for me. On our way out of Roxy to get the ride to Jersey, I had gotten a gigantic chocolate dipped palmier. That sucker was the size of a frisbee. And I took that thing all the way to Jersey and on the plane when we finally left the city on 9/16.

That was the last taste of New York for me for almost 9 years. We didn't eat at The Roxy on our recent trip to New York. We didn't have enough meals to fit it in our schedule. But I had to take a picture of the place where I ate my last meal in New York just days after the terrorist attack.

The Roxy is not the best place to eat in New York, nor would anyone say it's near the top 5 delicatessens. But for me, it's a place of refuge where we had none. A place where people, still talking about the events of the World Trade Center, came to eat, live, and be satisfied - if only to satisfy their hunger. It took 9 years for me to go back to New York. Not because of 9/11, but life happens. This time around, I am married and I enjoyed the city as if it were my first time there because I came with my wife. Next time, I will surely visit The Roxy again, if only to get the cartoonish frisbee size chocolate dipped palmier.

Wait, But Is It A High Class Food Court?

The first thoughts I had about the Chelsea Market is how chic and wonderful it is. We have nothing like that around these parts, not unless you want to count outdoor "malls", which I don't. It's filled with various cafe's, markets, and dessert shops. One of the places I saw was a spot called Fat Witch, which we didn't try because we just didn't need anymore sugar and butter to our already fattening dining itinerary. But oh did it look good and boutique-y.

We did eat at a spot called Ronnybrook Dairy Farm for lunch, which you can read about my review here. It was a spot for both savory and sweet and it was a good spot to hit on the day we left. Iron Chef Masuharu Morimoto has also opened his restaurant there called Morimoto, but we didn't get a chance to dine there.

Then I started to think. Is this really just an upper crust kind of food court? I mean, there are food courts [the kind you find at the outlet malls] and then there are food courts [with italics to show they're unique and kind of snooty]. And in doing research on Wikipedia about the Chelsea Market, it is labeled as an "urban food court". So my thoughts were not totally off, but can you really call it a food court? To put the Chelsea Market in the same breath as a sBarros and a Charley's Steakery just doesn't seem right. And, it's not. No matter what category you think Chelsea Market ought to be in, it is not, in my mind, a food court. There's no "court", a central area where you wander aimlessly to figure out what grotesque food item combos you're going to ingest, then sit down with the other tired shoppers who are eating to merely get mor energy to pump more money back in our battered economy. There's also no Auntie Anne's or Wetzel Pretzel, a sure sign that you are definitely in a food court. And of course, there's no sBarros, the pantheon of all food court royalty cafes where they somehow think that more processed Parmesan cheese is what diners want.

I would be proud if we had a Chelsea Market where we lived. But for now, I'm staring down the barrel of Panda Expresses, sBarros, and pretzel places where our appetites and diets go for a slow death. I don't hate food courts, heck I've eaten at them with gladness at times, but no one can deny that as far as food goes, there is a fine line between edible and barely edible. And that's where food courts come to help you decide. The Chelsea Market offers fresh, organic, and truly good food that doesn't lead one to think how much chemicals did I just ingest. It's a place where one can wander and let your senses dictate what you want to eat. Then you go in to that cafe/restaurant and eat. No centralized area where people are herded like cattle to sit and dine. You sit and dine where you order your food. What a novel idea.

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