March 2007
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Month March 2007

Entries 5 Total

Ed’s Lobster Bar

Mar 17, ’07 9:44 PM

222 Lafayette Street between Spring and Broome Streets
212/343.3236
$90 for three with Birch beer and two glasses of sparkling wine, without tip
♥ ♥

Ed McFarland, another Pearl Oyster Bar graduate, has opened up his own seafood restaurant and rawbar. (Ex Pearl partner, Mary, left to open Mary’s Fish Camp.) The location is great because it’s quite hard to find a decent place to eat in SoHo without straying away from Broadway. Ed’s Lobster Bar is narrow in front and opens up in the back. There is wainscoting on the walls and bricks are painted white. The space and the menu reminded me of the many seafood places I’ve tried during drives around New England. Three of us were seated in the back during its opening weekend where it was busy and pretty tight. We were next to the bathroom and the kitchen but the collective buzz contributed to a happier ambiance than not.

Press writeups laud the lobster rolls and everyone around us ordered them, but I just couldn’t get into all that mayo even after picking the fresh lobster pieces in it. The fries were a bit soggy and I ended up pushing the boring greens that came with it. The best thing on the plate were the homemade pickles. They were perfectly salty and briny. I know I’ll be back for a jar of them and skip the $19 roll altogether. All those years visiting New England never taught me what proper clam chowder is. I liked Ed’s version because it was runnier, but my companion told me she would have prefered it chunkier, Brooklyn style. We also ordered three oysters from Blue Point and three from Pine Islands. They were fresh, sweet and salty just like the ocean. We would have appreciated the scallops better if we weren’t painfully full because they tasted like they were seared in glorious bacon fat. We had visited two other places beforehand, so we called it an early night as if we were actually in New England.

Related post/s:
Mary’s Fish Camp
Brooklyn-style clam chowder

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Cafe Falai

Mar 17, ’07 8:53 PM

265 Lafayette Street, off Prince
917/338.6207
$50 for two, BYOB for now, with tip
♥ ♥

I remember loving Falai when I visited two years ago. A panetteria has opened down the block since then, and now a cafe on the west side. Cafe Falai is BYOB and closes at 8pm while they wait for their liquor license. The waiter entertained me while I waited for my two dining companions. They were so late he lent me his cell phone so that I can play Boggle. He told me he had only been working there for three days, but as soon as my group showed up, it seemed it was his first stint as a waiter, ever.

The menu is not much different from the original Falai. Our beautiful bowl of caramelized onions came with a dot of yolk. Before we finished raving about how it looked, the waiter grabbed a spoon, stirred the yolk and scooped up the onions to distribute in our small bowls. He left and returned with a small pot of consommé and poured the broth in our bowls and then left again to take everything away. Our delicate onion soup looked abused. It looked like we were eating chunky tea, but the waiter obviously thought he was giving us extra love. Fortunately, he left us mostly to ourselves the rest of the night. (We tried to laugh with him when he burped while giving us our check.) The breaded and fried mozarella was incredibly light and the balsamic dressing over the frisé was exceptional. I was just a tad disappointed that it came with only five small golden beets. The pappardelle with mushrooms was good, served with buttered sauce and sage. The branzino was perfectly cooked. Its crisp skin gave way to the tender white meat. I loved that it soaked in soupy pesto with mini Brussel sprouts and grape tomatoes. The veal meatballs were less adventurous, however, and the octopus, I thought, was undersalted and too soft. Because chef Iacopo Falai was a pastry chef at Le Cirque 2000 back in the days, we didn’t want to skip the cafe’s dessert offerings. We ordered a citrus tart which I loved because of its gingery taste, but my companions preferred the light and flaky apple pastry. I would like to go back for their baked goods and cup of illy coffee the next time I visit. I just hope that the waiter is not there before dinner service.

Related post/s:
Iacopo Falai’s first restaurant

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Nicaragua Volcanoes

Mar 17, ’07 11:38 AM

Here’s the video of the three volcanoes we visited in Nicaragua, courtesy of Trip Films.

Related post/s:
All posts about Nicaragua
Video courtesy of Tripfilms.com

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The Corn Islands, Nicaragua

Mar 16, ’07 10:07 AM

We’ve seen the old city. We’ve seen the new city. We’ve hiked several volcanoes. It was time to go to the beach and spend our remaining days in Nicaragua on Little Corn Island. After a quick flight from Managua to Big Corn via Bluefields, we waited for a couple of hours for the boat that took us to Little Corn. At the docks, one of the locals asked us and a Canadian couple to follow him after he heard that we all wanted to stay at Derek’s Place–this small paradise on the island with only a short description in our guide books. (We didn’t know then that you could go to the dive shop at the docks and ask for availability. They can radio almost anyone on the island to save you from trekking through the forest yourself.) With our backpacks on and the humidity like Times Square in July, the trek to Derek’s Place was tiring. When we finally got there, we found out that there was only one hut available. They only have four huts on their property and you basically have to wait and see. We introduced ourselves to the Canadian couple and shared the hut for the first night. The next day, we lucked out when another hut was vacated–we felt more at home the next two nights.

Derek’s Place is nice; there’s no other word to describe it. Derek first came to the island when he was young and returned when he decided to leave California. He met his Catalunyan wife, Anna, a bit later and she followed him to the island. They have two young kids and they’ve since made their living by welcoming travelers from all over the world to their huts. I’ve stayed in plenty of huts the last six years, but none were as beautifully built for $25 a night. Colored bottles emit glow when the moonlight hits them at night. The shared bathroom has a giant wok for a sink and the shared shower room reminded me of Caves Branch in Belize from a trip a few years ago. Derek likes to cook so we had very good dinners for three nights. During the day, we would eat the same usual fare: fried chicken and fried fish with plantains bought from the small shacks by the docks. But for dinner, Derek served us everything from conch and shrimp salads, to pasta with shiitake mushrooms, to fish broth to curry to smoked snapper and jack. The Dr. and I also drank the coldest beers on the island because of their windmill and solar power. We even finished a bottle of wine and rum in two days just by sitting around the fire at night. During the day, when we weren’t reading our books or sleeping on the hammocks, we walked to and from the docks to look for food, rented bikes to circle the island, swam and sunbathe on different beaches. Little Corn may be little, but it had so much to offer big city dwellers like us.

You can imagine how difficult it was to leave. On our way back to catch our flight to New York, we decided to stay on Big Corn Island instead of Managua. There was an unmistakable feeling that, once upon a time, Big Corn Island was the center of it all. Walking around the island felt eery. Somehow, I kept thinking of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s words and imagining the ghosts of the island’s past. As we walked around and witnessed empty lobster traps strewed on the side of the road, buildings left in ruins, and a dry swamp with mangroves clinging to dear life, Big Corn Island instantly became a ghost town; a place that was once full of life. We stayed at Anastasia’s on the Sea, a sound recommendation from the dive shop on Little Corn. It was a long way, but a pretty drive especially when the road started to hug the sea. Coconut trees leaned and followed the warm wind, while anchored boats floated in the water. Our room at Anastasia’s came with two beds, satellite TV, and private bathroom for the same price as our hut at Derek’s. Our door opened up to a porch with small steps to the shallow water. Anchovies swayed with the waves like blades of grass. The view was incredible: infinite turquoise waters and a wooden bridge which connected the hotel to their bar and restaurant on stilts. But after closer inspection, Anastasia, with the rest of the island, became antiquated before our eyes and just became eery. (And I was sober.) The cheesy fish and shell decor in the hallway was a much better choice than bustling Managua, but something was amiss. It was time to go home.

Where to stay in Little Corn Island, Nicaragua: Derek’s Place
Where we stayed in Big Corn Island, Nicaragua: Anastasia’s on the Sea

Related post/s:
Little Corn Island photos on Flickr
Big Corn Island photos on Flickr

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Pan-Fried Brook and Rainbow Trout

Mar 15, ’07 10:49 AM

It felt like spring, so imagine how perplexed I was when I saw that there were only a few tents set up in the farmers’ market. I suppose if the market was crowded, I would have missed the group of men gathered around a small table. Men? Shopping? I squeezed myself in just as the last smoked trout was bought, but saw that there were still some fresh fish inside the giant coolers. Dave Harris of Max Creek Hatchery told me that his fish were still swimming until 7pm the previous night. He introduced me to the rainbow trout which had some purple tints on its scales, and to the brook trout which had some yellow polka-dots. He told me he prefers the brook trout, but both were very pretty that I ended up buying them to cook and compare during dinner.

Ooh, pretty, was the Dr.’s reaction when I told him over the phone that I bought trout from the market. He loves to fish and he loves eating them even more, and trout was what he was pining for when we were driving past the river in Oregon. When he came over, he brought with him a bottle of a 2006 Sauvignon Blanc Semillon Australian wine. We drank while he got to work: he put a sliver of butter inside each of the fish with some garlic cloves. He lightly coated them with flour and sprinkled them with salt and pepper. He fried them in hot oil until they were both golden brown and crispy. With some of the leftover frying oil, he sautéed some mushrooms in a skillet and tossed them with arugula and rice wine vinegar dressing. I was surprised that the brook trout tasted like salmon. Its meat was orange and sweet. The rainbow trout was like any fried white fish–a little less exciting but would have been great with green mango salad.

Ingredients:
1 fresh brook trout, cleaned
1 fresh rainbow trout, cleaned
half a stick of butter, thinly sliced
1 cup of flour
6 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
salt, pepper, frying oil

1. Insert garlic and butter in trout’s cavity. Season the inside of the fish with salt and pepper. Combine flour, salt and pepper and coat trout.
2. In a skillet, heat oil and fry trout until golden brown on one side. Use tongs to gently turn and cook the other side until golden brown, too. Do not cover. Remove each each fish to a plate lined with paper towel when cooked.

Related post/s:
Union Square Greenmarket

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