On the menu, it's called the "gringo," and it has all the familiar markings: ground beef, shredded yellow cheese and, most tellingly, a crunchy hard tortilla.No self-respecting Mexican would go for some corny hard-shell taco like this, particularly one filled with ground beef. 'Tis the antithesis of auténtico. It's hardly even a taco — it's…
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[caption id="attachment_75977" align="alignnone" width="700" ] Pull up a placemat and join us for Italian-American Week.[/caption] Everyone has a favorite food memory from childhood*. For me, it’s my grandma standing over the stove in her 1970s-era Long Island kitchen, keeping watch over the Sunday sauce (we called it sauce in our family — and no, I’m…
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In my darker moments, I imagine what it might be like to live through an alien invasion. I'm not a War of the Worlds, death-and-destruction kind of guy; I am more prone to creepier visions of the Invasion of the Body Snatchers variety, in which our enemies live comfortably amongst us. And, lately, I’ve come…
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We'll have more from this weekend's blowout in Brooklyn's Prospect Park, the Great GoogaMooga, later today. But I wanted to give a quick take on what this food and music festival accomplished. First, why this photo of Pat LaFrieda sitting in a fork lift with 867 pounds of Black Angus beef suspended in the air?…
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“Good to meet you, chef.” Please. Stop. Is anyone else getting tired of the use, and overuse, of the title “chef” when people address any chump who works in a kitchen? The rise in foodie culture has seen a commensurate glorification of the head of the kitchen, which is all fine and good, but the…
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My wife and I hosted a Christmas party the other night. It started out a respectable affair, with nibbles, music and casual conversation but when it ended sometime after 2:30, the hardcore revelers (including this host) weren’t merely tipsy. We were f-ing drunk. Usually, when I’m in this position, I drink a lot of water—several…
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With more than 35,000 Subway franchises in the world (and close to 25,000 in the U.S.), it's hard to avoid the bread-y aroma emanating through the streets. You know the smell. It billows for a good hundred yards from seemingly strategically placed vents. It’s a sweet-sour odor that doesn’t smell like any other bread ever…
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Try enjoying a meal while a four-year-old girl, dressed in a bright pink sweat suit, with pale skin and little-to-no lower lip, repeatedly yells, “Did I scrubby enough? Did I scrubby enough?” This was my task on a recent trip to California’s Disneyland. I was sitting there at the Troubadour Tavern in Fantasyland with my…
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