The 2012 olive harvest has begun in Europe…hooray!…and will continue in some European spots through February. Wise producers will send their new oils here quickly…since the dirty little secret of olive oil is that it never is better than on the day it’s pressed! But we’ll discuss this year’s best oils down the road. For now, in preparation for the season…let’s look at the regions that are likely to yield this year’s best oils!

A puzzler, first: is it really possible to say that olive oil regions have distinct characters? Is it really possible to choose favorites?

Indubitably yes. The same kinds of factors that go into regional consistency of wine also go into regional consistency of olive oil. But olive oil has its own set of analogues.

Let’s look at just one, before we travel the regions: green olives, black olives…which means the whole fascinating subject of ripeness.

As most people know…the same olive, on the same tree, goes from green, to darker shades, finally to dark black when it’s ripe. Pick it green, and you have a fruity, spicy, pungent, peppery olive oil. Pick it black, and you have a rich, golden, buttery oil. There are many stages in between, and many opportunities to blend lots from different degree-of-ripeness batches.

Now here’s the kicker: some regions, for various agricultural reasons, tend to produce more of one kind of oil, be it green-olive oil, or be it black-olive oil. And then…thousands of years of agricultural practice get reinforced by what has become “the local taste.” Regional producers today–even though they can fight nature with modern know-how–often “want” to make the kind of oil in their regions that nature dictated to their great-great-grandfathers.

1) Tuscany

Let’s begin with the Yankee Stadium of olive oil, Tuscany. No region in the world stands for a regional character as strongly as Tuscany does…and that character is emerald-green olive oil, blazing with a green herbal flavor, often described as wheatgrass (among many other descriptors). Once you sip some, or eat some on food, the back of your throat will start to burn; young olives from many places do this, but Tuscany’s oils are particularly pungent. Most tasters consider this a plus.

Why is Tuscan oil so reliably green? Traditionally…the weather. Tuscan olives do not want to turn black in October, or in November, as many other European olives do. Harvesting green olives is not an especially good thing for the grower; there’s 40% less oil in green ones. But when December is just around the corner–threatening to destroy the crop with bad weather–the grower says, “hmmm…I think I’ll harvest these green ones, in case they’re destroyed before they ripen.”

Today, of course, climate change may be wreaking olive change. But Tuscans know they can get a high price all over the world for their green olive oil, and continue to make it the same old way.

The leading olives in the region are Frantoio, Leccino, and Moraiolo; the former two have been planted now all over the new olive-growing world…but there’s much less Moraiolo, since it resists machine-harvesting.

2) Andalucia

I love me Tuscan olive oil, of course…but if there’s one olive in the world I positively worship, it is the Picual…which is not grown in Tuscany. It is, instead, grown in the vast olive oil fields of southern Spain, in the province of Andalucia, particularly around the olive-gorged town of Jaen. Picual olive oils can have a green character, a mixed character, or a gold-ish character (though not too often).

The most important thing to me is the flavor of Picual: I call these oils the “Sauvignon Blanc” of the olive-oil world. They are herbal in a way that differs from the Tuscan herbalness: these oils suggest, as Sauvignon Blancs sometimes suggest, what French winemakers call “pippi du chat.” Now, I’ve never had a cat, so I’m not sure. But I do know that Picual gives off a wild, feral gaminess that is extraordinary in the whole world of olive-oil-making. Additionally, the aroma of tomato vines is often present. You must try this!

Other olives in the region can reach the same flavor profile, when grown in Andalucia. Last year I tasted the Portico de la Villa, Aceite de Oliva Virgen Extra, Cordoba, Spain (only available to members of the Fresh-Pressed Olive Oil Club)–which, though made from another local olive, Hojiblanco–has a pronounced Picual character.

3) Kalamata

In the great and historic Peloponnese region of Greece, a large peninsula southwest of Athens, there is a city and region called Kalamata near the southwest corner. Putting two and two together, you may think that the purple-black Kalamata olives we all love at the table also go into the production of olive oil.

They do not!

In Kalamata, it is the Koroneiki olive that is used for olive oil–and has been for over 3000 years!

It is truly one of the world’s great olive-oil olives.

You might characterize it as a Tuscan-style oil, with important aromas of grass, artichokes, plus the late-palate pepperiness. But Greek oils, to me, usually add something extra to the party–the aroma and flavor of olives! Imagine that!

4) Provence

As you can surmise, my olive oil taste runs towards green oil, with a strong fruity-green character, and lots of peppery bite (it goes on bread, beans, pasta, etc. like a seasoning!) But there is some beautiful black olive oil out there, from fully-ripened olives, that I also love. And there is none I love more than the golden, carefully-crafted oils of southern France.

Here’s a perfect description of them from a source I trust, Rosa Jackson’s Edible Adventures:

“Of the dozens of olive varieties grown in Provence, the caillette - informally known as the Niçoise olive – is perhaps the most beautiful and subtle (and the hardest to pit, so watch your teeth when you eat pizza here). Native to the hills behind Nice and the nearby region of Liguria in Italy, this olive no bigger than the tip of my little finger ripens late, turning from pale green to purplish to almost black anytime between December and February depending on the altitude and the weather. The tradition in this area is to let most of the olives ripen fully before pressing them, which results in a deep golden oil with no bitterness. Over the years I have come to appreciate this oil’s gentle quality, even adding it to my lemon tart and my chocolate mousse. This is my everyday oil, one that I know will never overwhelm the other flavors in a dish. I even – gasp! – cook with it, since I don’t really trust any supermarket oil (more on that later).”

DR again: Of course, as Rosa also points out, across the border in Liguria similar golden oil is made–the best place in Italy for it, and entirely different from Tuscan oil. In Liguria, they have a local name for the Nicoise olive: Taggiasca. I first saw the name twenty years ago on a bottle of olive oil at Alain Ducasse’s three-star restaurant in Monte Carlo; he had fallen in love with Taggiasca, felt that it expressed his region (set as he was between Provence and Liguria), and adopted it as his premium house oil.

5) California

Ten years ago, you would not have seen this name on my list! But my oh my has progress been made! Today, California’s best oils are standing with the best oils from anywhere. The only odd thing about them, in the context of this list, is that the variety is tremendous; you can’t pin down any regions that are aesthetically consistent. But that’s often the joy of New World agriculture and production: we’re pioneers! It’s a work in progress!

Playing by the rules, I consider this to be THE REASON that California is one of my five favorite olive oil regions–it just keeps surprising me!

And…it’s easier for California producers to get you fresh olive oil than it is for producers elsewhere in the world to do so.

About two years ago I ran a mass olive-oil tasting, with hundreds of freshly-made oils from all over the world. Not only did California do extremely well–but it took the gold medal for #1 olive oil. I’m reproducing the note below, followed by my notes for two other tippy-top California oils.

Apollo Olive Oil, Gold Series Barouni, Premium California Extra Virgin, Oregon House, CA (/$1.57 per ounce, $19.95 for 12.7 oz. bottle) Who’da thunk this crazy oil would end up on top? Yes, I tasted a number of top-quality olive oils from this excellent producer located in the hills of Yuba County, to the east of California’s hot Central Valley (at the northern end of that Valley). But I was blown away by this one, made from rare Barouni olives, which are native to…Tunisia! Olive trees were brought from there to California about 40 years ago, and you’d be hard-pressed to find Barouni olives anywhere else…except Tunisia and Yuba County! How do we do without? This was one of the richest and most flavorful oils in my entire tasting! Unctuous-looking green with gold hints. The nose reveals an exaggeration of the Tuscan bruised-fruit thing, with some fresh peaches lurking in the background, along with touches of herbs and metal. On the palate, this elixir is so rich it’s almost sticky–but never does it cross the line into greasy.

Butte View Olive Company California Ascolano Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Butte County, CA ($0.71 per ounce, $6.00 for 8.4 oz. bottle) This oil, from a producer I had never heard of, flipped me out. It comes from Oroville, an old gold-mining site near the northern end of California’s hot Central Valley–and yee-haw, they are up to something there. I’ll resist most of the “gold” puns, but this one is clearly a gold-medal winner for me. In fact, it is one of the best Andalucian-like oils I’ve ever had from an American producer. We can, in part, credit the Ascolano olive (an important olive in days of yore for canned California colossals!)…which did so well in California oils throughout my tasting. This oil, a light gold with a green-ish tint, has lovely apple-y flavors–but the real excitement is a strong shot of Picual-like tomato-vine right at the center of things. Intense and delicious! Sexy-rich, but elegant, with a mildly bitter-peppery finish. I can’t think of another oil I’d rather drizzle on quiet carbs like grilled bread and warm white beans. By the way, this is no flash in the pan (OK, couldn’t resist): I also tasted a lovely, off-beat Mission bottling from the same Butte Valley Olive Company with intriguing citrus tones (but no added citrus).

Mardesich Estate Extra Virgin Unfiltered Olive Oil, Paso Robles, CA ($2.01 per ounce, $25.50 for 12.7 oz. bottle) A lovely and powerful oil, really exciting…but marked down slightly for the center-stage position the bitterness takes. Light, clear greenish-gold. One of the richest aromas in all the California oils: wheatgrass, melon, marzipan, earth. Made from the classic Tuscan olive blend, and the flavors are intensely Tuscan. Super-rich mouthful which picks up bitterness early on–that’s the problem–but then morphs into profound spiciness, which goes on for some time. If you have full-flavored and complementary food, this may be one of the top choices in California. But it’ll shatter delicate fish, for example.

Photos Via: BigStockPhoto

I‘ve been loving Greek food for a long time…not way back to The First Bites, of course, but long. My first exposure, in fact–after growing up with Italian, Chinese, and no Greek at all–was in 1971, at an unassuming place in Manhattan’s theatre district called Molfeta’s. Along with lots of Broadway actors who loved the prices and the food (I remember seeing Broadway star Julie Harris by herself on my first visit), I found it a revelation. The place was, as I realized later, blessedly authentic–just like many a simple taverna in Athens where you walk up to the steam table in the back, view the 30 versions of lamb with vegetables and sauces, and talk to the smiling chef about your selections.

Later, I traveled a good deal to Greece, so I could know this kind of delicious food in situ. Oh man, is it good. Ironically, Molfeta’s is long gone…as are many other places in the New York area that used to be like this. But, comfortingly, many places like this are still alive in Greece! The reason, I imagine, is that this kind of mama food, so beloved by the Greeks, has refused to yield much space to the kind of new-fangled, la-di-da food that afflicts the restaurants of other European countries.

And, of course…this kind of food is easy to make well in your own kitchen, no matter where you may be!!!

Here are my five favorite Greek dishes of the homey/yummy kind:

1) Taramasalata

Of all the spreads and whips in the world of first-course mezes, this one is definitely my favorite: fish eggs (usually grey mullet, in Greece) whipped with a carb (usually either bread or potato) and olive oil into a light-colored, fluffy mousse. But there is lots of danger in Taramasalataland. So very often–especially in Greece!–the dish is crappy, and I mean crappy! In Greece, I suppose, since it is such a staple, and since everyone needs to offer one, many lazy restaurants buy and sell the industrial stuff, which is lurid pink and gloopy and flavorless. A good one is a very pale pink; it is creamy but very fluffy; it tastes faintly of fish, backed up by lusher tastes, like a good whitefish salad would do. Spread on a little pita–with some Kalamata olives and ouzo–it is Hellenic heaven, the sunset announcement that all is right with the world. I’m lucky in New York City; a place called the International Grocery, just behind the Port Authority, daily makes and sells the greatest taramasalata I’ve ever tasted. Please check it out, when in NY…or make the recipe yourself, which I reproduced in my 2003 cookbook, It’s ALL American food

2) Moussaka

Well, there are many folks (mostly from Istanbul!) who’d tell you this dish is not Greek at all, and then there are others who’d be surprised that something so common appears on my list.  I say phooey to all them; not only does Greek moussaka have a different feel from Turkish moussaka…but…moussaka is amazing when it’s well-made. Of course, I’m a sucker for mama-like layered casserole dishes (lasagna to me, for example, is also a miracle when well done). But the flavors of moussaka are even deeper and more interesting–as are the textures. The dish is built of eggplant, which loves to absorb flavor–like the cinnamon-scented kisses of the Greek tomato sauce. The gamy ground lamb boosts the party to another flavor level. And then the crowning glory: a puffy bechamel on top, which adds the gullet glow of dairy to the whole she-bang. A great moussaka quivers on the plate, just before warming your soul on a winter’s day.

3) Spanakorizo

It’s amazing how transformable rice is, how many rice dishes there are in the world with different textures. This fabulous piece of Greek home-style cooking is nothing like a risotto in texture, nothing like paella, nothing like fried rice. But it is a creamy bowl of rice-present greenness that is, in effect, a short course in Greek taste. Try the recipe below (it’s so simple!) to understand exactly how greens, herbs, lemon and olive oil configure Hellenically. You can serve it as a side dish to roast lamb (or roast most anything). Some Greeks like to get a little fancier with it–topping it with a dollop of yogurt, or curls of shaved feta, or even a sunny-side-up fried egg. If you choose the latter route, you might consider serving it as a first course.

 Spanakorizo
makes 12 tasting portions

1/3 cup olive oil
1 medium onion (about 6 ounces), minced
12 ounces fresh spinach, washed and coarsely chopped
1 cup chopped fresh dill leaves
1/2 cup long-grain rice
1 1/4 cups chicken stock
2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice

1. Place the olive oil in a heavy, medium-large pot over medium heat. Add the minced onion, and cook, stirring occasionally, until the onion is starting to soften, about 4-5 minutes. Add the spinach and 2/3 cup of the dill. Stir well to coat the greens with the olive oil. Cover, and cook the spinach until volume is considerably reduced, about 3 minutes.

2. Add rice and chicken stock to spinach, stirring well. Season broth to taste with salt. Cover, turn heat to medium-low, and cook for 20 minutes more.

3. After 20 minutes, check to make sure the rice is cooked. If not, cover and cook until the rice is done. When it’s finished, if there’s excess liquid, turn heat to medium-high and boil it away, uncovered, for a few moments. Just before serving, add the remaining 1/3 cup of dill, and the lemon juice. Stir well, check for seasoning, and serve.

4) Paidakia

It was only about ten years ago that I fell in love with paidakia, or Greek lamb chops. I dunno…it just never sounded very different, and there were so many other lamb dishes to try. But that was before I discovered that Greece is the frickin’ lamb chop capital of the world! Heading down to Athens after a northern Greece wine trip, I got a tip on a taverna not far from the Athens airport…at which I was specifically advised to try the lamb chops. I did. I’ve been back ten times since, and have led many people there just for the lamb chops. Then things got even better: I found that cooks all over Greece make lamb chops like these, and most Greek people always and passionately have their local faves for paidakia. Seriously…if you’ve been to Greece and missed paidakia…as I had…make arrangements soon to get back. Why are they so different? All over Greece, the chops are cut from young lambs…and cut in such a way so that the bones are long, arcing, and layered with meat, fat, meat, fat, meat, fat. Forget about your steakhouse lamb chops: these guys do not have big, rare, meaty eyes of lamb. The eye is rather small and, after cooking, the color is rather grey. No matter! I’m a “rare” man all the way in meat–but there ain’t nothing better in the world than these thin, well-done lamb chops, alive with crackle, bursting with flavor, kind of like the pork of lamb. I like to sit down and eat a dozen or so, if I’m not too hungry. The prep is simple as can be: salt, olive oil, and a big open flame. If you want to see for yourself…well, ten years later…I have never tasted paidakia in Greece better than my beloved first ones! So hie thee to Athens, stay at the airport Sofitel (a good hotel!), take a taxi to the nearby town of Kalyvia, and have dinner at Taverna To Trigono, right across from the gas station. Prepare for a thunder bolt.  And, if you’re dining at midnight, you’ll be privileged to see the whole lambs for tomorrow coming off the truck, straight from a shepherd high in the hills of the island of Lesvos. Ah, old world! Don’t vanish, please!

5) The Milos Special

I feel a little sheepish about including this last one, which is a dish from a fancy Greek restaurant–but, then again, it is one of the best things you’ll ever eat! Now, all over Greece you have the opportunity to taste lightly battered and fried thin circles of zucchini and eggplant. These morsels, though delicious, would not make it onto my list of Five Favorite Greek Dishes. Forty-Five Favorite, maybe, but not Five. And that’s where the fancy restaurant comes in. Milos, a very beautiful, very expensive Greek seafood restaurant in New York City–also in Montreal, Athens and Las Vegas–is run by a man positively mad for quality. Nowhere on the menu does this reverberate more profoundly than in Costa’s version of the humble fried vegetables. The dish is an appetizer called the Milos Special, and–despite the almost $30 price tag–you will see it on the tables of all the regulars at Milos. It is a high pile of impossibly light, crispy slices, anchored by a mound of garlicky tzatziki, ringed by perfect morsels of fried Greek cheese. Why so much money for, I dunno, a dollar’s worth of ingredients? Because Costa hires two cooks, full-time…just to cook this appetizer!!!. That curious labor maneuver guarantees perfect frying every time…and probably the most addictive fried vegetables in the known universe.

Photos Via: Culinary Flavors, Pomander Saveur, Volosday.gr, Kalofagas, Banana Wonder

One of the reasons I so love traveling in Europe: the ease and naturalness with which wine is treated at all levels of society there. Europeans seem to know, intuitively, that during a meal you have your bread, your butter, your fish, your produce, your meat, and you have your wine. No ceremony needed!

I observe that Americans have not yet reached this state of grace. For starters, about 90% of Americans do not have wine with their meals on a regular basis. But even among those who do…misconceptions are rife about wine…misconceptions which, in my opinion, can do nothing but obstruct the progress of America on its road to becoming a wine-drinking nation!

Here are five of the most common, and destructive, misconceptions about wine:

1) The most expensive wines are the best wines.

I’m not even sure how to address this one…a ridiculous point of view that resonates throughout our wine culture. I can only tell you that when I’m on the road with American wine importers, and great little bargains are shown to us that might cost the importer $3 a bottle, the typical importer response is “nah…I could never sell that…not expensive enough.” Then we go to a bistro, or tasca, or trattoria for lunch…and we soak up the cheap, local wine, which goes perfectly with the food, and makes us all so happy. And we watch every local diner at the same restaurant doing and feeling the same. It’s the way wine is supposed to be! Last year, after my return from a wine trip, one of the most pompous wine amateurs I know asked me where I’d been. “Beaujolais,” I beamed, because I love the simple, food-loving beauty of Beaujolais. The fact that at retail in America it still hovers around $10 a bottle only makes it better for me. “Yuk,” he responded.” I would never ever even drink Beaujolais.” And he walked off to his muscle-bound $100 bottle of young Barolo. The truth: most of the wine I taste that’s supposed to be great, that has 99 million points from Parker, is simply not as good for my food and my mood as excellent examples of cheap wine, matched well.

2) The “best” vintages yield the wines you want to drink.

The kind of vintage that suits ME

Here we go again. The wine-drinker looks at the vintage chart for, say, white Burgundy. He or she sees high scores for some years, lower scores for others…and, usually, tries to buy or order wines from the higher-scoring vintages. This goes on every day…but the vintage-chart makers rarely reveal why certain vintages get higher scores. It is almost always the same reason: those vintages had hotter weather, more sunshine, and the grapes developed higher potential for alcohol. In our wacky wine culture…bigger somehow got to be better. Screw the vintage charts. Do you want a “big” wine when you’re eating something light? I’ll never forget sitting in Paris in August 1984 with Alain Dutournier, great Gascon-born chef. It was pouring outside while we ate. “I hope the rain keeps up,” he said. I asked why. “Because then we’ll have a vintage for us. The last two vintages were for the Americans!” Think about it. My pompous wine friend did not, when I asked him last year to bring to a dinner party some Chablis for oysters. He brought, of course, Grand Cru Chablis from the biggest, fattest, most sun-gorged, highest-rated vintage of the last decade in Chablis, 2003. Yuk! It was like pouring pineapple juice on your oysters! Give me a brisk, crisp and crisp little Chablis from 2010!

3) “I know a wine is good…when it hurts!”

A typical response to what some people consider “good wine“

Believe it or not, these words were uttered to me in California a few years back by a wine professional. And, most unfortunately, the words reflect the way that many West-Coast-oriented American wine-drinkers feel. My theory is that in the 1970s/1980s, Americans were asked to accept the foreign notion that, at dinner, on top of food costs, they should spend even more money on a bottle of wine. There was resistance at first (and many still resist)…but a certain type of drinker started believing that if you could perceive the “extra stuff” in a bottle of wine, you could more easily measure its value. So wines that “hurt”–that is, wines with high alcohol, or lots of oak, or unbearable tannin–began to be perceived by neophyte drinkers as wines that are “worth it.” The tragedy is that we never had a voice in this country to tell them how a classic European knows when a wine is good: when it demonstrates balance, harmony, refinement, finesse. Alas…those virtues are much more difficult to perceive.

4) Wine’s natural food partner is cheese.

A “romance” destined for “tragedy”

My point of view always has some oeno-evangelism in it; I want my fellow Americans to love wine as much as I do. So I fret every time I see yet another know-nothing source proclaiming that wine and cheese are soulmates. A little learning is a dangerous thing: though there are some wine-and-cheese matches that gladden the palate…for the most part, I find cheese one of the most difficult foods to match with wine…particularly red wine! But that’s the biggest misunderstanding within this misunderstanding: so many are told to drink red with cheese. Have you ever had a red Burgundy with some of the great cheeses of the region, like Epoisses? They often make a glorious goblet of Chambolle-Musigny taste like some fulsome pit of moldy tobacco. All creamy cheeses, and all washed-rind cheeses, are murder on elegant red wine. Firm cheeses are better, but still risky. White wines are generally best with cheeses, though caution is still needed. Sweet wines (like Sauternes, or Tawny Port) are probably the most reliable of all. But this message rarely gets through–and every time someone jumps off the romantic wine-and-cheese cliff, I worry that we’re losing yet another potential wine-drinker.

5) The sommelier is a monster, and tasting the wine in a restaurant scares the hell out of me!

Most sommeliers are nothing like this!

Oenophobia, I call it…and a big part of it is fear of the sommelier. Wine is far, far too often a social crucible, and many people feel that a discussion with a sommelier in a restaurant is going to ruin them in front of the other diners. First of all…if you don’t know the subtleties of the sub-regions of Rioja…who cares? So what? That’s the sommelier’s job. Do you feel bad if you don’t know the ins and out of…stamp-collecting? So why does wine spook you? Secondly, the sommelier is working for you! His or her job is to get a sense of what you like, and find you an appropriate bottle of wine. Of course, we all have to put up with what some consider the awkward crucible of “tasting” the wine before it’s poured…but that little life moment should not be awkward at all! You’re not being asked to assess like an expert, and utter some choice bon mot like “the nose is a brilliant paradox!” You are simply being asked to agree that the wine is healthy. That’s it! And there are just three major ways in which a wine can be unhealthy. If you know them, and you smell the wine (only smelling is required!)…you’ll know immediately whether it’s healthy or not:

A) It should not be “corked” (you’ll know a corked wine because it smells like a moldy cellar)

B) It should not be “oxidized” (you’ll recognize the related smell of a cut, browning apple sitting on the counter for a few days)

C) It should not have the smell of “volatile acidity” (often characterized as vinegary smell, or the smell of nail-polish remover)

Give that glass a quick swirl, a quick sniff…and, if it’s free of these three defects, just say “it’s fine.” That’s it! Really!

In fact, “fine” is a good wine word to live by. Do you read War and Peace every day? No. You probably read the newspapers, or a good spy novel. You probably save masterpieces for special occasions. Why do we need masterpieces in every glass? “Just fine,” in wine, is fine! Really!

Photos Via: Fox School Of Wine, BigStockPhoto, Barewalls.com

The reason we are discussing Manhattan today is:

It’s where I live!!!!!

Oh my, are there ever great ethnic restaurants all over the world. There are even great ethnic restaurants just across all the bridges and tunnels that lead from Manhattan! (Can you say…Queens???)

But Manhattan is my beat. Manhattan is where I wake up in the morning, thinking about what ethnic eating experience I’m going to have that day. Manhattan is where I approach the late-night hours thinking, “Gee, just a little bit of Pho or Chilaquiles would finish the day just right!”

And, frankly, though Manhattan gets LOTS of praise as a great place for restaurants…I think that the average quality of higher-end restaurants in Manhattan does not compare to the average quality of higher-end restaurants in Paris, or Tokyo.

Compare the cities, however, with respect to restaurant diversity…and Manhattan kicks butt! Only London, in my experience, and possibly Sydney, have more thrillingly diverse and thrillingly delicious ethnic restaurants.

Premise established…let’s proceed to the first five places that haunt me every day:

1) Yakitori Totto

 The yakitori bar at Yakitori Totto

My primary criterion for a great ethnic restaurant is deliciousness. But authenticity doesn’t hurt! And there’s possibly no restaurant in Manhattan that reminds me of its home place as much as Yakitori Totto; this is exactly like dining at a yakitori restaurant in Tokyo! The mostly Japanese crowd seems to agree. The one difference is this: since restaurants in Japan are highly balkanized (you go to a yakitori place, or a sushi place, or a teppanyaki place, or a tempura place, etc.)…you don’t find much at these places beyond the main subject and its principal accompaniments. At Manhattan’s Yakitori Totto, the menu ranges a bit wider. No matter! Focus on the chicken, and it’s Ginza-time! And what chicken! There’s at least a dozen parts on fabulous skewers, with the just-right taste of a great grill–from ropy neck, to soft-knee-bone, to heart. Come before 6:30 if you want the very best parts…the oyster, the tail, the skin…because these sell out fast. At any time, order the crazy green salad with fried little fish, cream cheese, and a coddled egg–it’s a perfect accompaniment. The sochu with grapefruit cocktail ain’t bad either…

2) El Malecon

El Malecon on Amsterdam Avenue, a neighborhood shrine

Manhattan’s Upper West Side is dotted with places that offer the homey soul food of the big-island Caribbean (Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, etc.)…but most rice-and-bean veterans agree that this is the best place of all. I wish this place were open later, because this is exactly where I’d come at 2AM for a major late-night fix. But the hours are dictated by the roasting chickens–burnished, crispy ones, rotating in the window all day, thick with seasoning. When they’re done, El Malecon is done; you don’t want to come here later than 10:30 or so. But…man!…as a regular dinnertime dinner at 8PM or so…this place is crazy good! There are just too many irresistible things on the menu…from soupy rice, asapao (I’m addicted to the shrimp asapao)…to mofongo (fried plantains mashed together in a mortar with stock, garlic, cracklins, etc.)…to wondrous rice and beans. But don’t worry about ordering everything: the insane prices encourage that! Three of us recently went through scads of food, with a few bottles of wine, and a few pitchers of Sangria. Total price: $98!!!

3) Milos

The display of seafood on ice at Milos

And now we go to another kind of price insanity: high! In fact, I considered leaving this very high-end Greek seafood restaurant off of my list–because when you’re spending north of $100 a person, can you call it an “ethnic restaurant?” I say yes, because 1) Greek is not mainstream…and because 2) Milos may be my favorite restaurant of any kind in Manhattan! It all revolves around the quality obsession of the owner, Costas Spiliadis; everything that hits your table at Milos has gone through the high-quality filter…from olive oil, to yogurt, to olives, to bread, etc. And more. Milos’ most popular app, the Milos Special, is just thin-cut zucchini and eggplant lightly battered and fried–but Costas has two chefs working exclusively on this dish alone to make sure the frying quality is maintained! And it is the best fried food on earth. He has arrangements with Greek fishermen in the Aegean, who fish all night, get their harvest to Athens by noon, which then comes to Manhattan by 3 and sits proudly on ice at the rear of the restaurant. The fish simply go on the grill…but when fish is this good, what else do you need? Service is absurdly attentive, and the Canadian goat-milk yogurt drizzled with honey from Kythera, Costas’ home island in Greece, may be the best dessert in Manhattan.

4) Yee Li

Yee Li at the corner of Elizabeth and Bayard in Manhattan’s Chinatown

My original ethnic craving in Manhattan was Chinese food, of course–because when I was ten years old, there wasn’t too much else. How many nights did I, with my new driver’s license, cruise into Manhattan from Rockaway Beach for midnight-and-later chow fun sessions? Unfortunately, Manhattan’s Chinatown finally followed the quality curve of neighboring Little Italy…and became a pretty bad place to eat! I still search it, relentlessly, for a great place serving the kind of food I loved in the 1970s. Chinese fried chicken. Crab soong. Whole fried fish with a light sauce. Great broad rice noodles with duck. The General Tsos of the world have wiped a lot of this away. However, just a few months ago, I found a place that’s like a time warp: Yee Li. I’m not done exploring it yet…but the pan-fried flounder alone… 

Pan-fried flounder at Yee Li in Manhattan’s Chinatown

…with its fins like potato chips, its sole-like filets, its light-as-can-be black bean sauce…makes me confident that the 1970s live again!

5) Haandi

Haandi, in the heart of Curry Hill, Manhattan

There are a plethora of Indian lunch buffets in Manhattan…from cheap ones downtown, to expensive ones (like $24) midtown. I have probably tried most of them, because I am an Indian-food fanatic. A few years back, a gourmandizing Pakistani friend suggested I try the Pakistani buffet at Haandi, right in the heart of Manhattan’s most sub-continental neighborhood (around 28th and Lex). Oh…my…god (Vishnu, Allah, whomever). This is, without doubt, the best Indian-like buffet in Manhattan…and at $9.99 a head!!!

Part of the buffet at Haandi

How does Pakistani differ from Indian? Not much. My friend says it’s a little richer and meatier–which seems exactly right to me. Of course the great difference here is on the quality front: at most buffets, all the dishes seem alike, as if they’re direct from the Central Curry Factory. Here, the dozen-plus dishes on display every day have individual distinctiveness! Set-apart spicing! Different textures! And if you took all of that away…I would still come here for the pot of lamb-and-chicken biryiani they offer everyday…possibly the greatest Indian or Pakistani rice dish in New York. I always start with that, and somehow keep going back to it in spite of the massive quantity of everything piling up on my plate. Haandi. Now that you know…it’s a crime to not go.

Photos Via: David Rosengarten

My fave place of all for barbecue

Well, let’s put it right at the top: I am a barbecue fan-addict!

But I’d never even tasted the real stuff until about 25 years ago. I grew up in New York City, ya see…where my wonderful Dad used to periodically declare “let’s have a barbecue!” Unfortunately, he was using vintage Northeast terminology–the Northeast being one of the many parts of the country where “barbecue” used to mean “let’s throw some hot dogs and hamburgers on the Weber over the Kingsford briquettes jump-started with smelly kerosene!”

Barbecue, then…and still for many now, I fear…meant and means meat placed directly over hot fire.

To me, this would be called “grilling.”

The technique of real barbecue, the stuff you get across the South, and random other places like Kansas City/St. Louis/Oklahoma…is just the opposite. Real barbecue is meat cooked slowly, in proximity to, but not over, a low, smoky fire. Those exotic barbecue contraptions that look like railway cabooses…they’re built like that because the meat is placed at one end, while the “smoke box” is placed way the hell at the other end. Ribs take 6 hours to cook in an arrangement like this…and a whole brisket takes 18! But the meat, so slowly melted in this fashion, is so devastatingly delicious!

I had it for the first time, in Dallas, Texas, in about 1987. I was judging wine at a competition, and some of the other judges discovered the boy (or “bwoy”) from N’Yawk had never had real barbecue. Hickory-split, I was whisked away to Sonny Bryan’s, a Dallas temple of barbecue, where many of the seats were old wooden school desks. I loved the environment, the smoky smell, and…dang!…the barbecue!

Sonny Bryan’s today has nine locations across Dallas–and one in Utah. But last time I went–I was by then a barbecue veteran–old Sonny’s didn’t have the same allure for me that it once had. However, I shall never stop appreciating this company for the course correction it made in my life–and for instilling in me a love, above all barbecue loves, for Texas barbecue.

So when I look across the barbecue field, searching for my peak 5 experiences…I don’t mess with aforesaid Texas.

1) Kreuz Market, Smitty’s and Black’s/The Lockhart, Texas Triumvirate
This is the same kind of answer I give when asked my greatest meal–to which I reply, “don’t know, but some meal or other at Robuchon’s Jamin.” Barbecue? Don’t know exactly…but some meat or other in Lockhart, Texas, the meaty mecca of meccas, the pilgrimage spot in  central Texas for every would-be BBQ bubba. There are three restaurants there that must all be visited, particularly on the same day for comparison’s sake. They float up and down the chart, in my experience…but I’ll tell you what happened on my last visit, in July, 2012:

Kreuz Market kicked butt. On my day this summer, the pork ribs were perhaps the greatest BBQ pork ribs I’ve ever had: just like a layer cake, with striations of brown, pink, fatty, lean, red, moist. Sublime flavor, and they were NOT falling off the bone–your teeth pulled them, as they were meant to do (local Texas religion).  But even more thrilling was Texas’ #1 BBQ specialty…brisket. It is not possible to describe the perfection juxtaposition of crispy exterior, on these fat-and-wide slices,  with an interior so luxurious, so jiggly with melted collagen that your temptations to apply all kinds of sexual metaphors are marginally appropriate. You MUST hit Kreuz Market on a day like this!

Smitty’s was my favorite two times ago; I declared Smitty’s the winner then, with the array of BBQ items that had the highest average quality (brisket, beef ribs, pork ribs, and sausage being among the chief contenders). But on this visit, the ribs, which knocked me out in 2009, did not have the same layering, and had off putting sweetness to them. The brisket was fairly good, but not luxurious.

But Black’s came roaring forth. The least memorable of the three before, Black’s branded its insane brisket on my brain at the last visit. Oh, I had enjoyed its consistency before: this is a place where you get a very dark, almost burned exterior, roaring with smoky flavor–coupled with a deliciously moist interior. It is a style, and it is real, and it is delicious. But right place, right time, right question on this visit: can we get our brisket really “juicy?” (The new euphemism for “fatty.”) And the gates to brisket heaven came crashing down.

2) Charlie Vergos’ Rendezvous, Memphis, Tennessee
This was another important way station en route to my barbecue enlightenment. I first hit it about 20 years ago, and will, of course, never forget…the dry-rub ribs!!!!!  BBQ sauce is a real point of BBQ controversy; many purists feel you don’t need it. At The Rendezvous–definitely not. The spicy rub that goes on these ribs needs to be savored all by its lonesome. And here’s another surprise at Charlie’s (where Charlie rubs no longer, having gone to the pit in the sky in 2010): though the rack or pork spare ribs is great, the lamb ribs are even greater!

3) Arthur Bryant’s
My first visit to Kansas City was just a few years ago, but I’d heard about Arthur Bryant’s for decades (Calvin Trillin once called it “the world’s greatest restaurant.”) Could this claim be so…even as a rib-poking exaggeration? I didn’t know much about KC BBQ in general, so it was hard to judge from afar. I went. I judged. I’m a believer. I discovered two key things about Kansas City: A) if you are skeptical about the role of BBQ sauce, getchaself here, pardner! The variety and quality is astonishing; a Texas food writer friend once called this town “the Byzantium of barbecue,” and that notion certainly reflects in the opulent, variegated sauces. And…B) though there are many cuts of barbecue in Kansas City, the sliced meat sandwich is king. It all comes together at Arthur Bryant’s–where whirring robotic machines today cut the hams, and beefs, and porks perfectly (so the team can keep up with the lines), and where monumental BBQ sauce is on hand (or, more precisely, on your hands). What a funky monument to great eating! Best restaurant in the world? I can’t tell you exactly how far Calvin’s tongue was in his cheek, but I’d vote for at least a few millimeters.

4) The Salt Lick, Driftwood, Texas
OK, I’m back to Texas. But this great experience did not happen IN Texas. About ten years ago I organized a mail-order tasting of ribs from all across the country, all of those beautiful creatures sent to my apartment in New York. I was delighted at the quality in general…but I flipped over a couple. The Salt Lick was one of them, and they later became my go-to FedEx barbecue order. About three years ago I had the pleasure of going to the original Salt Lick, out in Texas Hill Country, a local shrine equally ready for large weddings and small snacks. Went once; Amazement! Not as good as the mail-order! Went again, to be sure….not as good as the mail-order! We started to theorize that at the restaurant, on a busy day, you get ribs that have set a spell, and are then re-heated on that big, fancy-ass circular grill they have. A grill! In my experience, what they pack in the box and ship….with no grill marks!…gets higher marks.

The Salt Lick grill, in Driftwood, Texas

5) Pearsons, Queens, NY
This shouldn’t even be here, because it isn’t even here. It’s gone now. But Pearson’s was a 1990-ish phenomenon, just across the Midtown Tunnel from Manhattan, that made us realize: yikes! there could be great barbecue in New York City! The thought, up that point, was alien. But an English hair-dresser who’d worked for Vidal Sassoon in Texas, and had fallen in love with Texas barbecue, read the future correctly and set up shop in New York. The style was right-on, the attention to detail was major-league, and the quality was outstanding. My favorite cut was something that’s rarely my favorite today in Texas: huge, meaty, succulent beef ribs. I loved this place so much that the one night I had in New York to entertain Alain Ducasse (in 1994)…I took him out here. He sat there, licking his fingers, exclaiming “Je l’adore! Je l’adore!”

Alain avait raison. Moi…j’adore le barbecue en generale! It is America’s greatest contribution to world gastronomy.

Ok…don’t look for anything creative here! But the big message is: I LOVE having mayo in my everyday life…it opens the door to so many of my staple yummies!

Now, I do understand that this essay must be something of a polemic; though a lot of people share my mayo passion, there are many who think it the devil. I call them The Lost Mayonnaise Generation. They mostly grew up in the 1980s-1990s, often rebelled against the kitchens of their parents and, most important…they think of mayo as something that makes you fat without bringing anything exciting to the table.

The rest of this piece will address the latter point. As for the former, however…come on! Hellman’s mayonnaise has 90 calories per tablespoon! Do you know how many calories are in a tablespoon of olive oil? 119 calories! I know, I know…olive oil has better stuff in it. But that doesn’t mean mayo has BAD stuff in it. Will it kill you to slather 90 calories on your sandwich bread, or whip it into your salad?

Obviously…I think not! And obviously…I think the flavor makes it worth it!

1) Tuna Salad

The greatest go-to of my home kitchen life. Unfortunately, the quality of this treat at home has declined for most, because companies like Bumble Bee and Chicken of the Sea are now selling crap in those Solid White Albacore cans. But if you can find good canned tuna–like Dave’s, a little company in Santa Cruz, California–the mayo will bring it to life as it always has! Spill most of the oil off the can, then dump tuna in a bowl. Mash mash mash with your fork until it’s approaching pastehood. Then add your mayo (oh, I go for about 2-3 tablespoons per can!), and keep mashing–until the texture is very light, amalgamated, mousse-y! I then like this spread best of all on…fluffy white bread!…with a glass of milk! I think it’s all about “white,” here…the whole thing exudes a sense of snowy innocence, a bridal sandwich. The mayo, with its gullet-glowing flavor, cuts the fishiness and saltiness of the tuna…turning it from merely “lovely”…to absolutely “sublime!”

2) Egg Salad

This is another interesting flavor synergy, the egg-and-mayo confrontation (and, once again, I’m really a purist here, no other stuff!). Somehow the egginess at the heart of a hard-boiled egg…is magnified by mayo! I guess it makes sense, since mayonnaise is made from eggs. But really and truly…a hard-boiled egg mashed with mayonnaise tastes eggiest of all! I like to throw a half-dozen hard-boiled eggs in a bowl, then start breaking them up…with a teaspoon! Don’t ask…but I have discovered that the back of a spoon works much better than a fork or knife. The goal is pretty big chunks, only partially broken down. Add mayo early or late, enough to bind and gild. I like to refrigerate for a few hours, because egg salad changes with the hours; it gets more eggy tasting, but usually needs more salt. Once again…I love it on white bread sandwiches! But I’m also great with egg salad on rye with thinly sliced onion!

3) BLT

Oh baby. Tomatoes and mayo together are good enough…but throw in some bread to soak it all up, PLUS some not-too-crisp bacon strips, PLUS the lightening crunch of good lettuce…is there a better basic American dish than this? I like the mayo to touch as many ingredients as possible…but I’m especially hot on the tomato and mayo making major contact! Also, a pretty new idea: since I like the flavor of toast, but don’t like a hard crunch on the sandwich’s exterior…I toast the bread under the broiler…ONE SIDE ONLY!…then put all the ingredients on the toasted sides of the two slices. Close it up…and the outside of the sandwich remains soft!

4) Chicken Salad

Did my Dad ever make a mean one; about a dozen times a year I try to reproduce it. He would start with left-over chicken from Friday night’s chicken soup–dark and white both, skinless, torn into big shreds. Season well with salt and pepper. Blend in lots of mayo, stirring, mashing ever so slightly. The big Dad keys were two:

A) Instead of celery, he used finely shredded cabbage…moving the salad a bit into cole slaw territory.

B) This is reinforced by the sweet-sour touch in Dad’s dish: a little sugar, a little white cider vinegar.

Best use of all, for me? Rye bread double-decker with bacon, lettuce…and more mayo on the bread!

5) Shrimp Salad

And here’s the only use not headed toward a sandwich! In the summertime, I LOVE tossing cold boiled shrimp in a big bowl, then adding big chunks of various veggies: bell peppers, avocados, cucumbers, hearts of celery, etc. Mayo keeps it all together, and–as the French have known for eons–has a fabulous synergy with shellfish. I like tomatoes and hard-boiled eggs as well, but they get messy if you toss them in. Garnish! They look beauteous on top. And one creative tweak: my Dad used to love mixing the mayo with a little ketchup before mixing it in…basically a Russian Dressing Shrimp Salad. I approve!

Photos Via: Just Bento, Slow Trav, Sweet & Saucy,  JD Foods.net, Yummly

I chose my words carefully here. I was tempted to call this group “my five favorite chefs of all time,” but then realized that’d be impossible to decide. Too many chefs, too much great food! Furthermore, the chefs that kept coming up in my mind all made or make mind-blowing food, of course…but every one of them also had or has an “importance” in the world of food, some aspect beyond deliciousness that has affected us all. That limited things, made it easier. So the resulting list is a blend of yum roll…and drum roll! Taste…and…taste-making!

Still…how the hell do you stick to five?????? So for the first time ever, the My Five quintet…expands to a double quintet…

My Ten! And maybe more…

Keep on scrolling!

1) Joël Robuchon

Whenever I’m asked which meal stands out as the greatest meal of my life, I say without hesitation…well, I’m not sure exactly which one it was…but it was certainly one of the three meals I was lucky enough to have in the 1980s at Jamin, in Paris. Oh…mon…dieu. Jamin was Robuchon’s little spot, his only little spot, before he exploded onto the world stage. All of the big-deal chefs in France were grappling with the implications of Nouvelle Cuisine, sometimes in similar ways…but Robuchon’s food had a vastly distinct, idiosyncratic character. Is that what he taught us: be brave and be yourself? But his prodigious talent, his absurdly refined taste, pushed it way beyond that. If he made a surprising juxtaposition, it always made cosmic sense on your palate. Anything served on a Jamin table was a triumph of precision; you felt as if he was cooking JUST for you, and you were being treated like a powerful restaurant critic. Through la cuisine Robuchon, to this day, there is a dependence on great products, sure, like all the others…but this guy really means it! How else could I have had the greatest oysters ever–raw, plain, and really the greatest–at a Robuchon restaurant in Paris in 2004? (From Cancale, he told me.) Set him loose beyond the products themselves, and a customary place for Robuchon (which I love)…is decadent richness that makes sense. The hollow noodle gratin at the Victor Hugo circa 1995…each noodle stuffed with foie gras by hand. The signature Jamin dish in 1985…langoustines wrapped in cabbage leaves with an ambrosial foie gras sauce. Sure, he has lightened up somewhat in recent years, at his Ateliers around the world…but even in a Robuchon sashimi dish there’s always a core of decadence, maybe based on nothing more than which fish he chose and how brilliant that fish is. The point is…you can always tell it’s Robuchon, and you can always feel the lift above all other contenders. I’d say that for us old-time foodies from the ’80s…Robuchon was the moment that we started believing chefs could be gods. Robuchon was a rapturous leap to divinity, and there will never again be a leap like this in my lifetime. Well, actually going to heaven would be the next opportunity.

2) Alain Chapel

Ten years before Robuchon started astonishing the world in Paris (early 1980s), Alain Chapel was building his own god-like credentials in Mionnay, twelve miles outside Chapel’s birthplace of Lyon. I had the chance to dine at Alain Chapel only once, in 1983, and I will never forget the aura of that incredible meal. Neither will anyone else who experienced a meal there; Chapel is one of the old-time foodie’s hugest heros. (I attended a class at the CIA in Hyde Park a few years ago in which the students were asked to research Chapel, and write a fictitious “review” of the restaurant, so legendary is it!) All the history books call Chapel a founder of Nouvelle Cuisine, but that, to me, is reductive: none of the star chefs of that day, to my knowledge, with the possible exception of Bocuse, fought so hard to preserve tradition. My main course that night was stuffed pigs’ ears with fried parsley, and I am forever grateful for the time travel to 1932 or thereabouts. Chapel had roughly the same effect in the business that Robuchon had: long before chefs were stars, he made all around him reach for the stars. He died, of a stroke, in Avignon, in 1990…so we’ll never know whether his later-in-life work would have been as scintillating as Robuchon’s. I’m guessing yes. And I’m averring that these are the two guys from the ’80s who changed the world.

3) Michel Bras

The one other French chef who MUST be mentioned among the universally revered of the last 40 years…is Michel Bras, still high on a hill in Laguiole, France, in knife-and-cattle country, near the center of France. Going to Bras is a pilgrimage, and many serious foodies have made it. I first heard of Michel in 1989, when I met a young chef in a long-forgotten NY restaurant who, without even being billed as the chef, was making dazzling food. Some of us noticed. I found out that his name was Tom Colicchio, and I went backstage. I asked him who influenced him. He said “I did an apprenticeship at Michel Bras. I will never be the same again.” I went to Bras ten years later, and now I will never be the same again. Bras holds many miracles for those who know his work. In some ways, he is a 21st-century Chapel, spreading his supernaturally talented gloss over traditional local food. His part of France is known for aligot, a kind of mashed potato with cheese whipped in. (In his town, they use same-day curds of Laguiole cheese.) My aligot at Bras was the greatest ever. Visiting the kitchen during the meal, I saw an elderly lady preparing the dish. I commented to Michel how nice it is to have tradition like that in a three-star kitchen. “She is my muh-ZAIR,” he said. Wow. Madame Bras. On the world-influencing side, however, Bras is even more important in what was then the dawning idea of locavore-ism. He had his chefs roam the mountain pastures of the Aveyron, finding unusual herbs and plants to incorporate into the cuisine. (The same idea was soon picked up by chef Marc Veyrat in Annecy, who did it, as he does everything, in a much louder way.) Yes, Bras served the great local steak of the Aubrac…but he also elevated stand-alone vegetable dishes to a culinary pinnacle (like his famous gargouillou, an exotic vegetable sauté, anticipating many a modern chef). Most important, perhaps, is the way Bras, building on Robuchon and Chapel, embossed the tradition of talented chefs with magic and aura. Bras kept (and keeps) scrupulous notebooks, with fantastic drawings, about his culinary ideas (picked up later by El Bulli as a working concept); I had the great fortune to look over his current scrawlings with him in 1999, and I came away feeling I had unmistakably met the culinary DaVinci.

4) Jean-Louis Palladin

And here is the man who brought that level of chef aura to the U.S., fathering a whole generation of American chefs who wanted to be Jean-Louis Palladin. I was lucky enough to have a number of interesting contacts with Jean–Louis–dining together at a restaurant I recommended to him in Dijon (he loved it!); in Las Vegas, sharing a calf’s head with Daniel Boulud and Jean-Georges Vongerichten that was boiled by Jean-Louis at his restaurant there; actually dining at Palladin’s legendary, game-changing Watergate restaurant in D.C. several times. On every occasion I could see his extraordinary energy and charisma; when we tasted the snail-stuffed brussels sprouts in parsley sauce at Thibert in Dijon, the Gallic flare of his nostrils (a sign of delight) immediately went on my list of indelible culinary memories. Basically, Jean-Louis took all the things that the greats were doing in France…and started doing them with the same panache in the U.S. But he did it American-style, which is why he was so important. His New York Times obituary quotes him as saying ”the challenge of cooking in America is to discover the newest and best products from the different states — baby eels and lamprey from Maine, fresh snails from Oregon, blowfish from the Carolinas and California oysters — and then to learn how to integrate them into your cuisine.” Born in the southwest of France, Palladin already was a star before coming to America; in 1974, when he was 28, cooking at La Table des Cordeliers in Condom (near his birthplace) he earned two Michelin stars. No one this young had ever earned two twinklers before. But Jean-Louis, who had a serious lust for life, wanted to play on a larger stage…and in so doing changed dining in America. He died at 55 years old, from lung cancer–never able to truly see the results in his adopted country of his innovation.

5) Judy Rogers

There’s probably no American-born chef who gets a bigger piece of my heart than Judy Rogers, chef/owner for decades of Zuni Café in San Francisco. Judy is a chef’s chef, not known widely to non-industry foodies outside of California, but someone who in my opinion changed everything in American cooking. Of course, that description is supposed to go to Alice Waters, another Bay Area great, who revolutionized the way we think about prime ingredients. Let us give Alice her due! She did do that! However, my meals at Chez Panisse–which one local writer described to me as akin to “going for dinner at the home of a really good cook”–never for me reached the mind-blowing deliciousness levels of my many meals at Zuni Café. And this deliciousness has had great impact on so many East Coast chefs who, as I’ve been hearing for 30 years now, come into the San Francisco airport, bring their luggage with them directly to Zuni, then go to their hotels to check in after lunch. I once asked Judy to describe her food at Zuni, and she told me a story. “The best food of my life,” she said, “was what I ate at the three-star Troisgros in France…in the kitchen, when I was working there!” Perfect. That is the casual, informal, delicious tone of Zuni Café. And in some ways the French background is important: Zuni has arguably America’s best oyster service, as well as roast chicken of the gods (famously stuffed with bread and cooked in a wood-burning oven). But there’s a strong Italianate spin as well; pastas are great, and REAL, and I’ll never forget the way this woman gloops mascarpone on runny polenta and turns it into a masterpiece. THEN…there’s the American side! Zuni’s hamburger is glorious and, perhaps best of all, you will never in this universe find a better Caesar Salad (so crisp and lemony it becomes a permanent part of your dreams). In other words, in drawing together an all-star team of informal French, Italian and American specialties–Judy anticipated by 30 years all of the things that obsess us today. Not to mention–Judy codified all of this in a cookbook that I believe to be, in terms of passion and an original world-food-view, the most important American cookbook since the first tome by Julia Child.

6) Nobu Matsuhisa

For most of my early culinary life, the American restaurant scene was dominated by French restaurants, Italian restaurants, Chinese restaurants…and, from Texas/Chicago on west, Mexican restaurants. Sure there were other kinds of restaurants decades ago…but the Big Four WAS the waterfront. Still is. But…there has been one major addition: the sushi bar! Look around. Sushi bars are ubiquitous now, in every major city, in every minor city. Japanese restaurants are now part of the new Big Five. And I would argue that one man had almost everything to do with this: Nobu Matsuhisa. Nobu, basically, figured out how to get Americans to love sushi. I, personally, didn’t need his guidance; I first had sushi in New York in the 1970s, and it was love at first bite. But not so much for my friends, as I recall so well. It’s hard to realize this now, but the typical response to sushi was “yeccch!” My dad, great 1950s eater, said…”that’s bait!” as I tried, over and over, to get him on the hamachi highway. For a few decades, I contend, Americans wanted to eat sushi: so healthful, so chic. But they didn’t love it. Then…out of the blue…along came Nobu. I first encountered him in the early 1980s, at Matsuhisa, his place in Beverly Hills–where I saw Billy Wilder, Hall & Oates, Warren Beatty, dutifully doing the raw. I knew something was up. Out came the uni roll, wrapped in shiso, battered and fried, tempura-style…OMG…and I said…this dude is different! He is Japanese-born, but he has awesome assimilative powers….unlike most Japanese chefs of his era, who fiercely stuck to tradition. Before coming to the U.S., Nobu spent some years in Peru–where he fell in love with chiles, where he started to experiment with them at the sushi bar. Later, first in L.A., then in New York at Nobu, he waged a revolution. Americans who didn’t really dig “raw fish” flocked to Nobu…where your sashimi might be flash-fried, or drizzled with oil (olive, even!), or tossed with garlic, or partnered with chili heat, etc. He won the revolution because the radical thinking was just right for its time…but also because his food was so disarmingly, sexily delicious. Today, the waterfront is dotted, everywhere, with Matsuhisa heirs. Though others have gone beyond Nobu in their Japanese creativity, he will always be the man who paved the way for Japanese food America.

7) Francis Mallman

And here’s a man whose influence in America is as yet small…but, starting in Mendoza, Argentina, several decades ago, he set the South American food world on fire. Almost literally. In a world-wide restaurant era obsessed with cooking showily over open fire–consider all them California grill-meisters of the ’80s and 90s and today!–Mallman is unquestionably the greatest grill man of all time. I’ve had his food several times now in various South American venues, and I am always dazzled by the flavor and texture he coaxes out of grilled food. He also created the model of the rock star chef in South America, which is also of importance…but I think his influence on the cooking side will only grow. Why? A few years back he teamed up with my food writer bud Peter Kaminsky (Brooklyn resident!) to create the blazingly brilliant cookbook Seven Fires–which is about, as it screams, seven different ways to cook with open fire. I suspect that one of the great restaurant trends all over the world, going forward, will be chefs applying fire in creative ways; I guarantee that Mallman will be the god of this activity, as he is now to those who know him.

8) Alain Ducasse

One more world-shaking impulse erupted from France in the 1990s: Alain Ducasse, who earned a third star at Louis XV in Monte Carlo (well, that’s almost France) about twenty years ago. But that’s the least of the story: then, Ducasse really got to work. Sure, there had been peripatetic chefs before–ever since Bocuse got famous in the 1970s, a man named Roger Jaloux was mostly guiding the Bocuse kitchen in Collonges–but Ducasse had empire in his eyes from the get-go, a unique vision of world domination, and the highly unusual skill set to pull it off brilliantly. Younger than Robuchon, he saw before Robuchon what one man can do in an ever-shrinking world–a vision that will surely continue to affect us all for decades. Foodies sometimes grouse about star chefs who are not in their kitchens–but I’ve had meals at Ducasse restaurants that were stupendous without a shred of Ducasse presence. He is a brilliant conceptualizer, hirer, motivator, teacher, discoverer of raw material sources–wherever he is. He restlessly visits his few dozen restaurants, and his input–which sometimes must carry his restaurants through to his next visit, months later–is like nothing I’ve ever seen. I had the honor of sitting with him once at his original place in New York, at 4 in the afternoon, as the restaurant’s chef de cuisine presented Ducasse with the 15 new dishes coming up on the Winter menu. He tasted every one, spoke quietly to the chef, then caught a plane. I returned to the restaurant a few nights later to taste all the dishes again during dinner. Despite the fact that the first meal was cooked by the chef for only two of us at 4PM…every dish the second time around, during a dinner service for 60…was much, much better! Ducasse had spoken, Ducasse had tweaked. Sure, there have been some flat Ducasse meals over the years (he had one big restaurant fizz in Provence, a few years back)…but I think his genius continues to sparkle, and I think he has taught many an entrepreneur how to do this (though few can be as great as he at doing it). Most important–and you can’t be on this list without this element–he is a thrilling chef who has wowed me multiple times with his ability to soak up the local influences wherever he may be, then produce food that is indisputably here and now. That first three-star, Louis XV in Monaco, presented (and still presents) the apotheosis of southern European cuisine; I’ll never forget the seafood salad with brilliant Taggiasca olive oil that made ME feel as if I were a big fish sucking littler fish off the rocks alongside the Monegasque coast.

9) César Ramirez

I don’t think this quiet, humble man from a Mexican family in Chicago is a household word just yet–but Ramirez’s work at Brooklyn Fare in New York’s hippest food borough has earned him a rare position in the New York foodie pantheon…and, singlehandedly, coaxed me out of my recent disdain for fancy restaurant food. I was dragged to his industrial-feeling space about 2 1/2 years ago, where a horsehoe-shaped table seats a grand total of 18 diners; I didn’t want to go because I’d heard the chef had creative, fusionista tendencies…and like so many world-weary foodies today, I do not want to experience yet another chef expressing his soul in foie gras. I am Kellerized, Bouludated, and Ripertofied beyond despair (though I greatly respect them all). But as soon as the first amuse at Brooklyn Fare hit (a warm glass of raspberry/beet juice), my friends recall, I sat up, wide-eyed, and softly said: “he has my attention.” Twenty glorious couses later, I was a raving fan. A few months later, Michelin jumped on the bandwagon with two stars, astonishing for such a low-rent place. One year later…holy fuck…three stars from Michelin. He is a wrecking crew…turning out some of the most delicious food I’ve had, anywhere. For sure, for my money, there is no high-end restaurant in New York that compares today. But beyond that, on the historical side, Ramirez (ex-head of David Bouley’s amazing kitchen) is anticipating with antennae a-quiver the next verities of big-deal food. Much of what he does is grounded in the Japanese aesthetic; other chefs flirt with it, but Brooklyn Fare is a non-Japanese restaurant that moves Japanese to center stage. Much of Ramirez’s dazzle is flown in each day from Japan, or Italy–putting him at the cutting edge of the anti-locavore backlash, sure to grow. “If the best piece of yellowtail I can get comes from Japan, why can’t I serve it?” he seems to ask with many courses.  Like the Japanese, Ramirez is a texture freak, moving us all towards the tactile mouth experience that many Asians prize over the flavor experience. Lastly, Ramirez’s restaurant is a restaurant in control of flow. The days when we expected to indulge ourselves at a restaurant, at our pace, may be over; Ramirez, cooking right in front of you, offers a show–but it’s HIS show, at HIS pace. Mesmerizing, and very 2015.

10) Angelo

There is a high degree of wack in this one. But despite the fact that nobody knows Angelo…hell, I can’t even remember his last name!…I MUST put him on my list. For Angelo’s restaurant, on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn, was the first restaurant where I can recall bursting out of my pants with unbearable pleasure. I’ve had many a fine meal since….but the joy of that first restaurant love has lasted me a lifetime, and forever pushed me on. The food, of course, was Italian-American…back in the day when the best Italian chefs in America cooked Italian-American, way before they wanted to climb Mount Radicchio. Imagine ten-year-old Davie sitting there every weekend, with his dad and uncle (both fixtures in the Italian-Jewish garment center), demolishing anchovies and pimientos on the world’s best garlic bread; moving into linguine white clam sauce, and other Italian-American monuments; hitting high gear with intense chicken cacciatore before the descent into spumoni/tortoni. But here’s the thing: every morsel had just the right amount of garlic, oil, seasoning, texture. This guy was a simple cook from Naples, but so great was his flavor-creating skill that I don’t think I’ve ever taken more pleasure in food. I submit that many of us, of my generation, learned to love food at Italian-American tables like these…and I put Angelo on this list not so much in a literal sense, but as a tribute to all the great Italian immigrants who kept cooking alive in America during some of its darkest years.

BONUS ROUND: Ferran Adria

I decided to leave Ferran off my top ten list…but, Lord knows, he must be mentioned. Founder of what is widely called molecular gastronomy, and indubitably the most influential chef of the last 15 years, Ferran doesn’t quite make my cut. “Food not delicious enough?” you may wonder? Not at all. I had the great fortune to go to El Bulli twice during its run…and I was dazzled by the deliciousness of it all. “If Ferran had not invented molecular,” I always used to say…”he’d still be counted among the world’s great chefs.” The problem is…I wish he hadn’t invented molecular. Yes, it influenced many….but, in my view, it led most of them down the wrong path. Ferran can make a “foam,” or “air”…because he’s Ferran, and it will be mind-blowing in his hands. But all the others, all those tortured souls trying to copy him…they should have spent that time learning to cook delicious food that expressed their souls. Ferran, I trust, now on hiatus…will be back within a few years on a new path that will be beneficial for all.

When I was growing up in New York City, nobody had ever heard of a Big Mac with Special Sauce…because it hadn’t been invented yet! To hard-core NY eaters like my dad, a burger was all about the meat. When he first saw the new burger culture coming out of California in the mid-1960s, he freaked out. “That’s not a hamburger,” he said, doubtless like so many of his generation. “That’s a salad!”

Now, I must confess that today…I consume burgers all the time, all over the country, and the world, replete with crazy toppings, lots of distraction for the burger inside. Truth be told…I kind of like the variety of it all. However, I must also confess that when I make a burger at home, I absolutely keep the distraction to a minimum. I focus on great meat (with at least 20% fat), and the perfect cooking of that meat. And the perfect bun. At serving time, I revert to childhood, and mostly serve the simple toppings that so enchanted my dad.

The burger doesn’t fall far from the tree!

Here are five of them (with one small apostasy)…all freshly cooked and photographed in my kitchen. I hope you have the discipline to give one or more a try, simple as they seem. If you have a great burger inside the bun…you will have a great burger experience!

1) Raw onion and ketchup

The only provision here is: get a juicy, delicious sweet onion, not tear-inducing, and slice a round that is see-through thin. Handle it carefully so it stays intact. I would say that 90% of the hamburgers my dad consumed…were served exactly like this! It is still my go-to today…

2) Raw onion, tomato and ketchup

Yes…this has an entirely different taste! My dad viewed this variation as very exotic. On the weekends, we’d drive down to an Irish bar near Rockaways Playland called Bogie’s, and feast on hot dogs, fried fish, and burgers. Bogie’s always insisted on adding a tomato slice to the basic onion-and-ketchup burger…and my dad loved it (though he never added the tomato at home). The little bit of juice that it adds to the gestalt–without distracting from the beefy burger-ness of the burger–seemed like some kind of new world to us. Which it was. Today it seems like the model of restraint.

3) Raw onion and green relish

Another “exotic” variation, but another winner my Dad occasionally wheeled out that has stood the test of time. The germinal idea here anticipated a generation of pickles on burgers, and a generation of sweet things on burgers. Again, compared to what we see today, this is vastly understated–but once again, it is the subtlety that works so well. As in the first two burgers, the thinness of the onion slice is key:

Another key is the relish. Sure, you can make this dish with the crappy, too-sweet, mass-market relish that’s in every supermarket. But relish has become kind of a locavore obsession–and I’d strongly recommend you check out your local farmer’s market for a high-quality, spring-green, fresh-tasting relish. The one I purchased recently at Manhattan’s Union Square Greenmarket, made by Beth’s Farm Kitchen, from Stuyvesant Falls, New York, is fabulous on this burger–not too sweet, positively herbaceous-apply in its fresh pickle-ness.

4) Fried onions with ketchup

And this may be my favorite “traditional” topping of all. Slice the onions thinly, sauté them slowly, with a cover, until they melt, then turn the heat up a bit for a few minutes to develop a medium-brown. I dream about this taste that my dad served up when he wanted to go “fancy”: somewhere between a French bistro and an American burger joint.

5) Focaccia bread with dolce gorgonzola

One of the transformative burgers of my life has been served for many years at my beloved Zuni Cafe, in San Francisco; I first had it in about 1985. The burger is always perfect, of course–but it has always been served on focaccia, with a slab or two of dolce gorgonzola cheese. This Cali job certainly would have gotten my dad’s contempt–but, with a little reflection, he probably would have leapt from contempt to love. I just made it last week, and I fell in love all over again: the creamy cheese, and the herb-y bread, combine to bring out a kind of High Funk in the burger. I do love cheeseburgers of all kinds–but this one, un-New-York as it may be, is at the top of my list.

Photos Via: David Rosengarten, Emily Oberto, Danielle Lieberman

Iloves me wine. But even among “wine-lovers” there is so much confusion out there! There needn’t be, really! For me, there are just two major, overarching thoughts that come to my mind whenever wine is discussed:

1) Wine is for food. Let me say it again, a little louder: WINE IS FOR FOOD! With rare exceptions, wine gives the most pleasure when it’s drunk, nicely matched, in the presence of pleasurable food. This American habit we have of a glass of red wine as a “cocktail,” all by its lonesome (usually all by its loathsome), is not a habit you’ll see in any of the wine-drinking nations of Europe.

2) As I’ve tracked wine-with-food over the decades, I’ve found that certain kinds of wines are generally difficult with food (unless you’re lucky, or really talented at menu selection). And, I’ve found the opposite:  certain kinds of wines are really easy to match with food!

Let’s call spades spades. California Syrah is always going to need a lot of care in gastronomic marriage-making. But as the famous English wine writer Hugh Johnson once proclaimed as I pulled out a dry German Riesling for lunch (and he didn’t know the menu!)…”Ah!! The banker!!” Meaning you can bank on this wine to go with almost anything.

Many wine-drinkers in the U.S., intoxicated with the variety of global wines available to us, carry around the fantasy that every wine has a waiting food soul-mate somewhere! And we assiduously go at the global match game. We struggle and struggle with wine selection at the table to get it right, to satisfy all the lost vinous souls. Unfortunately…as it is in life…only certain kinds of wannabes (people or wines) have their soul-mates. For many wines, it’s a lifetime of bachelorhood (or, from my point of view, should be!)

But I’ve got a better plan. Rather than surveying the whole international wine constellation every time a wine is needed for, say, fried chicken…why don’t we simply train ourselves to recognize “wine groups” that always go well with food? Like five or ten of them? Doesn’t that make life a lot easier?

There’ll be a lot more on this later on. Before 2012 is out, I will be selling wines that fit into ten “food-loving” categories…and, at that, ten categories not so easy to find in the U.S. I’ll be launching my new Rosengarten Report in 2013, which will give all wines a rating for flexibility with food.

But for now, on this My Five day…

Here are my five most reliable kinds of wine to go with your dinner!

1) Dry Sherry

For some, this seems like an oxymoron. But to me, it is the Sherry-challenged who seem like oxymorons…minus the oxy! (OK, way too harsh, but couldn’t resist the word play!) Now, it is true that most of the Sherry message we get in America does concern a sweet, brown, mediocre drink that you would only want to share with Aunt Edna at the vicarage. But that’s just the super old-fashioned Sherry (of which there are actually some superior examples). Most of the Sherry-drinking in Spain (and remember that Spain is the only country I mean when I say “Sherry”)…concerns bone-dry, super-crisp Sherry, that looks exactly like a young white wine in the glass. The Spaniards like to keep it super-cold, usually in half-bottles…and use many crackling cold half-bottles of it to while away an afternoon or evening of shellfish, and other treats. I also love it with salumi (Iberico ham, of course!), hard cheese, anchovies, almonds, red peppers, seafood dishes (particularly pasta)…millions of things. I often find it easier to match with, say, a generic main course like roast chicken than “regular” white wines. It is time for a Sherry boom in America! To make sure you have the dry stuff…look for “fino” or “manzanilla” on the label.

2) Dry Riesling

My own true love. Riesling is another terribly misunderstood wine. After World War II, the shattered Germans needed to find a good overseas market for their product…so they started shipping cheap, sweet Riesling (like Liebfraumilch) to sweet-tooth customers in the U.S. and England. It was a great temporary fix. But that particular  band-aid finally came off: several generations of Yanks and Brits now believe that German Riesling is a crappy sweet thing, and are adverse to the GREAT dry wine coming out of Germany! In fact, about 70% of the Riesling produced in Germany today is dry…and, say, a fourtop of businessmen at lunch in Frankfurt would never drink anything other than the dry stuff with their meal! The key word is “trocken”…no matter what else is on the label, if a German bottle indicates “trocken”…it’s dry. And my oh my…is it ever widely flexible with food. It has relatively low alcohol (dry Rieslings are usually 11-12% or so), no interfering oak, otherwordly acidity to cut through food. The flavors are fruity in youth, but turn minerally within a few years–the perfect accompaniment to savory food. Dry German Riesling can be served either as a tart “similarity” match to light, acidic foods, like salad or ceviche…or as a buzz-saw cut-through for rich and fatty foods, like roast pork. This kind of wine has got the menu covered! Now, I do focus on dry Riesling from Germany, because I think it the most food-friendly…but dry Riesling from other places is also effective. Alsace and Austria both produce gorgeous dry Rieslings, though often a little more forceful (and trickier for food) than the German ones. New World ones are all over the map, food-wise…but my absolute favorite New World place for dry Riesling is four hours south of Perth, in the Great Southern Region of Western Australia, a still-obscure little micro-climate called Frankland River.

3) Champagne with Age

For starters, I’m being quite specific here…when I say Champagne, I mean sparkling wine made in the Champagne method in the Champagne region of France. It is the only legal definition of “Champagne” in Europe…but producers ’round the world (including some in California) abuse the word, and call their inferior bubblies “Champagne!” Beyond the geography issues…I’m also calling for Champagne with some age; at this moment, for wide-ranging food flexibility, I’d only consider Champagne from 2004 or before. Why? Young Champagne (like a lot of the basic Bruts out there) is dominated by young fruit, on nose and palate. I don’t dislike this stuff…but it’s not regularly lock-and-key with food, as older Champagnes are. This type of Chardonnay-Pinot Noir-Pinot Meunier fruit often gets in the way. Older Champagnes usually feature a more savory grilled-bread/yeasty quality, great with food. I like ‘em dry, in general…but, with age, Champagne usually dries out a bit more, all to the good. Try a fruity young Taittinger, or Moet & Chandon, with caviar: that match ain’t going anywhere. But try the same caviar with, say, a 1985 Charles Heidsieck…oh baby! That’s what I’m talking ’bout! And with all salty foods (ham, smoked salmon). With fish (salmon is insane with yeasty-tasting Champagne), even fish in cream sauce. Fried foods–from shrimp tempura to Southern Fried Chicken! And sushi! And…and…and…Of course, if you can find a Champagne house that makes wine in a super-crisp, elegant style to begin with…you’re in luck. Tippy top of that pyramid? The super-luxury house of Salon. Pay a fortune, taste their 1996 (one of my favorite Champagne vintages)…and ye shall see the light.

4) Young Beaujolais

What I have to say about Beaujolais and food is kind of embarrassing, in many regards. First of all, Beaujolais is the wine that wine snobs love to hate; “it’s so simple and grapy,” they say. Well, they are right…it is! In the way that a GREAT bistro wine in France is, right alongside your garlic sausage, or grilled loup de mer, or cassoulet…or almost anything from the French canon! Get over yourself! Young Beaujolais tastes like a party in a bottle: strawberries, raspberries, bananas. What’s wrong wi’ dat? Now, I really push the envelope when I say: the “better” the Beaujolais is…the less flexible it is for food! Some of the more open-minded snobs will now deign to drink the more expensive Beaujolais from one of the 11 famous villages (known as “crus”) that put the village names on the labels (Fleurie, Julienas, Morgon, etc.) These bottles do not blare “Beaujolais” on their labels. Fine. Save them for special gastronomic circumstances. What I like to drink with food is very young Beaujolais (2010 or 2011 right now) that calls itself “Beaujolais”…either Beaujolais-Villages, or Beaujolais, or even…embarrassment of embarrassments!…Beaujolais Nouveau, which has given the region a bad name among wine snobs, but is so PERFECT with most foods from November through the summer. Just remember: the operative fantasy image is sitting in a bistro in Lyon, not dining at Daniel in New York, or Taillevent in Paris! Party on, mes amis!

5) Old Rioja

Let’s say that red wine has two gastronomic sides worth caring about: the fruity-but-balanced side (see Beaujolais above), and the more regal, complex, polished old-wine side. Note that neither feature the harsh tannin American wine-lovers have been deceived into liking (actual quote from a Californian: “Dave, I know a wine is good…when it hurts!”).  I generally do not like expensive California red wine with food. But when I do want to burn a few bucks on red at the table…I turn to aged European red wines…be they Bordeaux, or Burgundy, or Rhônes, or Brunellos, or Piedmontese Nebbiolos…or aged red Rioja! In fact, of all these regal wines…aged red Rioja may be the one that has brought me the highest percentage of matching success at the table. As these wines age, tannin recedes mightily, leaving suave, velvety, elegant wines with ineffable and mysterious aromas of leather, chocolate, forest floor. It is my favorite kind of red wine for rare red meat…and a number of other meaty delights as well (avoid sweetness and spice). Old red Rioja has several other advantages. It starts tasting like an “old wine” in fewer years than, say, Bordeaux…so right now the great Rioja vintage of 2001 is starting to drink well, whereas I’m still waiting for 90′s from Bordeaux to come around. Additionally, old Rioja (like the 2001) will cost you nothing next to old-tasting Bordeaux, Burgundy, etc. The one caveat is this: a lot of Rioja producers, over the last few decades, have started pumping out a sturdier, more international style of red Rioja. Avoid these. Go with the tried-and-true traditionalists: Lopez de Heredia, Murrieta, CUNE, La Rioja Alta. Buen provecho!

Photos Via: Danielle Lieberman

How many times have I made the following joke about my own palate: “my favorite flavor is fried.”

But it ain’t no joke, really. I LOVE fried food…and in my cooking life have fried everything from Tuscan lamb chops to Mexican worms (though I confess I’ve never deep-fried a Mars bar).

Let’s get the definitions straight, from the beginning, because I am using a kind of shorthand here. When I say “fried,” what I really mean is “deep-fried.”

And when I say “deep-fried,” what I really mean is food with some kind of coating or batter dropped into deep oil (usually more than 1″ deep in the pan). You can “fry” things in shallow oil, but I call that “sautéeing” (which often leads to an oilier finished product than deep-frying does!). You can also drop uncoated food in deep oil (as I do when pre-cooking shrimp for Cantonese stir-fries)–but I don’t really consider that deep-frying, either.

One mo’ once:  DEEP-FRYING: FOOD WITH SOME KIND OF COATING OR BATTER DROPPED INTO DEEP OIL. Print it.

And why do I love it so? That ain’t so easy to answer…because every coated ingredient dropped into deep oil brings me an individual thrill. Each little fry baby has its own way of talking to me.

I can tell you this, however, in general: the Deep-Fried Police scare me no more than, say, the MSG Police, or any other ersatz nutritional force. I will never forget the brilliant study, about two decades ago, that measured deep oil in a fryer (let’s say three cups), dropped in a single piece of coated chicken, fried it, removed the chicken…then measured the oil again. Post-frying, the remaining oil weighed in at…three cups minus a 1/4 teaspoon.

This is worth giving yourself a deep-fried fright for your whole life?

Of course…how you deep-fry has much to do with this. When home cooks fry blind, without a deep-fry thermometer, and cook their precious nubbins at less than 325 degrees…yes. The food will pick up oil and become greasy. But in the range from 325 to 375, your food should remain as dry as a bone. My comfort zone is usually around 365…but I’ve been known to break the 375 ceiling, cranking up all the way to 395, if I want small pieces of food to get real brown real fast without too much internal cooking.

So…without any further ado…the five fry items that I think gain the most particularity from their bubble time in the deep-fryer:

1) Shrimp

Oh my do I love fried shrimp…any kind of fried shrimp. Here’s how much I love fried shrimp: if I’m at the Acme Oyster Bar in New Orleans, having the time of my life… I will take a break every two dozen oysters or so…to get some Cajun fried shrimp as an intermezzo! What’s the deal? In general, I think, crustaceans pick up this crazy-good extra flavor when they’re deep-fried; it’s almost like an intensification of shell, even when shells are off. The principle works best with shrimp, because of the physical nature of the animal; somehow the size and density of lobster doesn’t yield the same satisfying effect. But…ssssshhhhrimp!  Oh my. And then, a perfect fry adds wonderful complexity. Probably my favorite of all is shrimp tempura (which happens to also be my favorite tempura of all!): the delicacy of the light and lacy coating plays perfectly against the medium-textured shrimp. (TEMPURA COOKING NOTE: A Japanese chef once showed me how to dribble extra batter off of a single chopstick onto the just-placed-in oil tempura item, increasing the complications of the lace!)

2) Fish
Well, that’s kind of broad. But I’m sure ya know what I mean: fish filets, as in the main part of fish and chips. Another aesthetic principle is at play here, varying from the shrimp principle. I could eat shrimp cocktail all night…but simple fish filets, boiled fish filets, even sautéed fish filets, don’t have the intrinsic flavor/texture interest of plain shrimp. And this, I believe, is why fried fish filets have become such a global phenomenon; coated and fried fish is to the fish filet as a crispy piece of roast chicken (skin on) is to a boiled chicken breast. Frying fish filets adds an extra layer of bite and flavor that’s sorely needed! Of course, there are some fish that would be wasted in a deep-fried context; I’m a fanatic for Dover Sole, for example, and don’t think the resilient texture yielded by a simple sauté in browned butter can be improved. But flounder? Tilapia? Scrod? Cod, for god’s sakes?????? Bring ‘em on! Finally, there is the question of coating. Most people don’t know this, but I am a partner in a fish-and-chips restaurant in Reykjavik, Iceland–where our light, healthy batter has been a huge hit. So I’m for batter–unless it’s heavy and sodden. Yeah, sometimes I’ll be happy with crumb-coated fried fish, or cornmeal-coated fried fish–but my standard fried fish play, without doubt, is “batter up!”

3) Clams

 I love clams…but they crazily change flavor on you, depending on the context in which they’re presented. I love raw clams; that’s one very specific flavor. I love clams oreganata, another kind of clam taste. Ditto my all-time clam fave, Linguine with White Clam Sauce, with so much emphasis on the briny brightness. And let me not forget the unique taste of my favorite quick New England dinner, Steamers, served with hot clam broth! Amazingly, none of these presentations features the kind of flavor you get from a platter of fried clams. For starters, it is very important that you use the right kinds of clams for proper fried clams: the same soft-shelled clams you’d use in a potful of steamers (these clams with the “pisser” have been a long-time specialty of Ipswich, Massachusetts…though semi-depleted beds have led to the rise of beds in southern Maine at Damariscotta). These clams have a fat belly, and a “rim” around the belly; I like a plate of fried clams that features both. The classic batter involves evaporated milk, flour and yellow cornmeal–giving rise to a finished product that’s light, crunchy, clammy and rather sweet. It’s a unique profile–well worth the trip to the Clam Box in Ipswich, Mass., my favorite fried-clam place in the world.

4) Chicken

Ah, fried chicken. Do I even need to comment? Sure I do…because there are about 3 trillion types of fried chicken out there, most of them not in the first rank! In fact, of the 500 recipes in my Beard-Award-winning book “It’s ALL American Food,” not one got more testing attention from me than southern fried chicken; my staff and I estimate that we ran approximately 100 tests, switching up various factors, to get this thang just right. The most important factor, of course, is the type of exterior crunch; so much of the fried chickem I’m served has what I call “the helmet”–a single-sheeted exterior plane that seems almost painted on the outside of the chicken, rather than growing organically (metaphor!) from within. The really good stuff, on the other hand, seems to arise from the chicken itself, a logical extension; it is not a single sheet, but an ever-changing surface of crazy whirls, crisps, bumps, ridges, etc. The secret is simple: good fried chicken has no batter, just a shake-in-the-bag seasoned flour. But there is probably no fried-food coating in the world–I’m talkin’ ’bout the COATING part–that is as seductive as a proper fried-chicken coating. Somehow the rise of chicken fat up to the surface seems to have an effect both on the texture, and on the fatty, golden-glow flavor. By the way…..in my opinion, the fast-food chain in America that features the highest-quality item…is New Orleans-based Popeye’s which, all over the country, serves up some badass southern fried.

5) Okra
To the American South we go again, to round out my deep-oil quintet. Sure, I like all kinds of vegetables with a batter and a fry (I LOVE Indian pakoras, for example)! But nothing in the green kingdom is quite as special in deep oil regalia as is okra. For one thing, the subtle flavor of okra seems to get its best emphasis in this cooking treatment. Then there’s the texture thing. As we all know, okra has this “mucillaginous,” or gummy nature. Now, when that okra slime is oozing into a wet medium–like tomato sauce–the trail of ooze is unattractive to many. However, say I…encase that oozy thang in a crispy thang, and you have a textural duet that is much more appealing! Fried okra is a staple in the American south, where, in preparation, something wet precedes something dry before the cut pieces of okra are deep-fried. Leading “wet” ingredients are egg, and buttermilk (or both)! Leading “dry” ingredients for the coating are cornmeal, and flour (or both)!

Photos Via: Bigstockphoto, Cooke’s Seafood