Tacos el Bronco

I would be surprised if anyone tells me that haven't had some sort of Mexican food in their lives.  Mexican food is just a part of American culture nowadays as the hamburger.  Tacos, burritos, enchiladas, taquitos, salsa, mole, nachos, tamales, quesadillas, and guacamole.  Is your mouth watering yet?  Mine is too.

But like many cuisines across the United States corporate monkeys looking to make a quick buck destroyed the image of Mexican cuisine.  Chain and fast food restaurants like Taco Bell, On the Border, Chilis, and even Chipotle are using sub-par ingredients, dismal food pairings, and charging customers an arm and leg for it.  What's even more surprising?  People are willing to pay for it.

Mexican food is about love.  Mexican food is about simplicity.  It's not about deep-frying a burrito and covering it in three types of cheese, with a side of "Spanish" rice and beans.  It's about taking quality meats, slow-braising them until tender, and serving them inside soft, warm tortillas with onions, cilantro, and lime.  It's about taking homemade masa (corn-based dough), stuffing it with braised meats, and steaming it inside a banana leaf until tender.   In Mexico they fill their burritos only with meat and refried beans.  Whoever came up with the idea of stuffing rice, meat, salsa, sour cream, lettuce, avocado, beans, and cheese into a burrito is just looking to scam you by making you pay $12 for it.  Mexican food doesn't need all that.  As long as you have a passionate cook that knows how to handle the ingredients, you realize you don't need all the extras.  You taste the love that they put in with their own hands.

ilili

I received my first taste of Lebanese cuisine many years ago at a small hole-in-the-wall restaurant in Brooklyn.  I didn't know what to expect of the cuisine before heading in.  With a friend's help, she navigated me through the menu and after one bite of the fresh baked bread covered in za'atar (a fresh herb blend mixed with sesame seeds, sumac, and lemon), I fell in love.  I will never forget that first taste, and that first meal.

For years that followed I became intrigued by Lebanese, as well as other Mediterranean cuisines. Small plates of mezze (think tapas) of traditional hummus, baba ganoush (baked eggplant mixed with various seasonings), tabbouleh (bulgar and herb salad), to large skewers of meat (mainly lamb and chicken), fresh pita breads, and heavy seasonings of garlic, lemon, fresh herbs, cumin, aleppo pepper (a mild type of chili flake), and sumac (a dried reddish berry powder with a lemony flavor, but not as tart).  There are few that could dislike this cuisine, and if you have yet to try it, I am hoping my descriptions have made you willing to do so.  

At nighttime it can easily be seen as a restaurant

However, it has always served as a medium-profile cuisine.  Small restaurant owners setting up shop serving traditional small plates of hummus, pita sandwiches, and grilled meats over rice.  With the introduction of ilili into the NYC restaurant scene back in 2008, Lebanese cuisine has finally come into the major spotlight.  

Located just a short distance from Madison Square Park, it is very easy to pass by ilili in the daytime.  Like the service staff inside, the restaurant is painted black.  Unless you notice the brown lettering sketched into the black awning over the front doors, the space looks vacant.  Step inside, though, and its a whole other story.  

Barbuto

It's hard not to fall in love with Barbuto, which has a rustic sophistication to it.  The restaurant is basically a converted garage located on the ground floor of Industria Superstudios.  In the warm months, the garage doors are opened, creating an incredible airy and open restaurant, and the 24-seat patio seating starts to engulf the sidewalk of Washington Street and 12th Ave.

The decor is very simple.  Patio chairs and cheap tables, a wobbly iron divider partitioning the patio from the sidewalk, not a single piece of artwork, but yet...it all works together.  As cheap as it all is, the restaurant is warm and inviting, and once you taste the food, nothing else matters anyway.

The chef here is Jonathan Waxman, who arguably is one of the best chefs in America today.  He can sometimes be seen sweating over the stoves in Barbuto's open kitchen, or skillfully cooking in the wood-burning oven.

Born in 1950, Chef Waxman was one of the first pioneer's of California cuisine, and is credited with being the first chef to bring its style, fusing French technique with the freshest of ingredients, to New York City.  Heard of the "farm-to-table" craze that has been going on for decades?  Jonathan Waxman was the one who started it all here.

Rickshaw Dumpling Truck

Dumplings aren't something you need to learn to love.

The Rickshaw Dumpling Truck is one of many mobile food vending units of Rickshaw Dumpling Bar, which has several locations throughout New York.  Rickshaw Dumpling Bar was co-founded in 2005 by Chef Anita Lo.  In my mind a very high-class but low-key chef, she is the Executive Chef of Restaurant Annisa in Greenwich Village, and has been a former contestant on Iron Chef America, Top Chef Masters season 1, and most recently seen in the public eye on Food Network's Chopped.  In 2010 she left Rickshaw Dumpling Bar to pursue other culinary interests, but her legacy still lives on in these handmade, steamed bundles of joy.

At the Dumpling Bar locations, you can choose between five different types of dumplings.  You then have your choice of getting them pan-fried or steamed, on top of a large salad or in a bowl of hot noodle soup.  Service is fast, the portions are large, and everything is just so damn good.

Although still good, the trucks only offer three types of dumplings, and you can only receive them steamed, and on their own with a dipping sauce.  Chicken with Thai basil, pork with Chinese chives, and vegetarian edamame.  Rickshaw prides itself on using organic Bell & Evans chicken, the same used by most NYC restaurants, and organic edamame.  The flavors are clean, and do come through.  However, at $6 for 6 pieces, you wonder how paying $1 for a steamed dumpling is justified.

McDonalds

The double golden arches are an American icon.  It's hard not to meet a person who hasn't had a taste of the iconic thin and one-note McDonald's hamburger.  Now operating it's 71st year what is it about the child obesity-causing restaurant that makes Americans love it so much?

Dick and Mac McDonald opened the first McDonald's BBQ restaurant in California in 1940.  It was your typical American drive-in at the time featuring a large menu and car-hop service.  In 1948, they closed their restaurant for alterations, re-opening it as a self-service drive-in, reduced the menu to just 9 items, and introduced the 15 cent, 80% bun hamburger.

In 1954 52 year-old multimixer salesman Ray Kroc made a trip out west hoping to sell the McDonald brothers more mixers, and fell in love with their operation.  He learned the brothers were looking for a nationwide franchising agent.  Ray Kroc then decided to make his future in hamburgers, and in 1955, opened the second McDonald's location in Illinois.  This location was the first to feature the ever-now famous double golden arches, and red & white tiled walls.  In just a decade, McDonald's would expand to over 700 locations through the US alone.

Operating now in 118 countries around the world McDonald's is no longer just an American icon, but an international one.  The menus reflect the country they are located in, and there is enough sub-par food to please every undeveloped palate out there.  But lets get to the classics.

Life, on the Line: The story of Grant Achatz and my time at Alinea

His name is synonymous with the food world.  At only 37 years of age Grant Achatz has received more media coverage than anyone else in the food industry.  If you haven't heard of the gastronomic destination that is Alinea, you're living under a rock.  His techniques have inspired chefs all over the world.  What is the most important aspect of all of this, though, is his incredible story of how he got there.

Life, on the Line explains in full detail the life of Grant Achatz.  I first learned of Chef Achatz back in 2004, before he had become the widely popular chef he is today.  As a writing assignment for my last culinary school class, the professor had asked us to write a letter requesting employment from a restaurant.  Many of my classmates had written letters addressed to the best restaurants in New York City, including Daniel, Le Bernardin, and Jean-Georges.  I, however, after doing a little research, learned of a young chef making a name for himself in the small town of Evanston, Illinois.  His name was Grant Achatz, and at age 29, earned himself four stars from the Chicago Tribune at Trio.

It wasn't just the four star rating which gained my attention and appreciation for Grant Achatz.  It was all the awards he was gathering for himself.  Five diamonds from Mobil, the James Beard Award for Rising Star Chef, one of the ten Best New Chefs from Food & Wine Magazine.  The young chef who looked no more than 16, standing there on Trio's website in full chef whites, arms crossed, and a warm smile, had it all to me. It was then I started doing research on him.

Grant Achatz basically grew up around food.  His parents owned a diner which was called The Achatz Depot.  He was a mere five years old when he started washing dishes in his parents' restaurant, standing on a milkcrate over the three-compartment sink.  Throughout the years he spent the weekends at the diner, and by age ten, finally graduated to working the line, flipping eggs for plenty of customers.  He explains this as being the favorite time of his life.  He loved every aspect of working in a kitchen.

At the age of 19, Grant knew what he wanted to do with the rest of his life, and that was cook.  After receiving blessings from his parents, he did just that.  After a painstaking wait, his acceptance letter from the Culinary Institute of America finally came in 1993.  He was on his way to achieving greatness.

John's Famous Deli

Never heard of it?  It's ok, because before last week I never have either.  Why do restaurants put the word "famous" in their titles?

I will say one thing, though.  Even though this place is not that famous, it should be.  John's Famous Deli is a small operation located in Staten Island, with three more locations in Brooklyn.  From the outside it looks like your typical deli.  Open door, plenty of signs displaying Boar's Head products and prices, and breakfast and lunch specials.  

John's boasts that it has the best roast beef in the world.  After reading yelp reviews of the deli, I was intrigued to try it myself.  Everyone was going crazy for the roast beef sandwich.  Roast beef?  Fresh Mozzarella?  Onions?  Gravy?  This I was looking forward to.  

They offer two sizes.  On a roll for $6, or on a hero for $7.50.  I went for the hero.  The guy behind the counter then sliced the roast beef fresh, piled it on my sandwich, added a few slices of fresh mozzarella, caramelized onions, and threw it into a pizza oven to toast.

A sign on the drink fridge reads "If you're in a hurry, you're in the wrong place."  Funny.

There was just one person in the deli ahead of me.  He ordered two roast beef sandwiches for himself.  Then another guy came in and ordered a roast beef sandwich.  Then three more guys came in and did the same.  Six guys, seven roast beef sandwich orders, in a span of ten minutes.  Wow.

Onieals

I love hanging out in Hoboken.  The square, mile-long city has plenty of perks.  I consider it "the village" of New Jersey.  Plenty of diverse restaurants and bars, great nightlife, people, and just an overall great vibe to the city.

When given the chance my friends and I will travel to Hoboken not so much for the food, but just to hang out in a fun city.  That being said, you can't expect much from the restaurants in this area.

Onieals is nothing too special.  It's your average neighborhood Irish bar.  They do, however, serve a menu that is slightly a step above than the competition.  In fact, residents in the area rave about the food here, and it sure does fill up quick.  Lets see if they're correct, or if this is just the best of what New Jersey has to offer.

Yes, if I sound bitter toward NJ restaurants, please check out my experience at Casual Habana.

At first impression the waitstaff here is very friendly.  Everyone from the hostess to the two cute, young female servers we had residing over our table gave off nothing short of a happy vibe.  Every time they looked and addressed us they smiled.  They were on point with their service.  They were very helpful in navigating us throughout the menu.  They checked on us regularly.  I would love to have service like this everywhere I go.

Meatopia 2011

"The Woodstock of Edible Animals"

Floyd Cardoz and Joshua Ozersky

The name says it all.  It's a festival of meat.  Every animal.  Every cut.  Every method of cookery.  If you're a meat lover, Meatopia is your heaven.  And that is exactly what it is to the founder of the event, Joshua Ozersky. 

Joshua is very well known in the food world as a food writer and meat lover.  He was one of the founding editors of Grub Street, has written two books including one on hamburgers and a carnivores guide to NY.  It is no surprise that he is the man that brought over forty chefs from all over the country to celebrate his favorite thing.  

Although many people think this year marked the second year of Meatopia, they are actually mistaken.  This event has now passed its seventh year, with the first five years being a small invitation-only event.  Every year was themed, and Joshua invited 5-7 chefs to cook pork, lamb, beef, etc. for about 200-300 guests.

Floyd Cardoz and I were invited to cook at Meatopia two years ago during the lamb event.  "Lamb Bam Thank You Ma'am" was the slogan.  We witnessed six chefs grilling whole baby lambs over spits.  Spraying and brushing the animals with marinades, and sitting back and waiting patiently for hours until the perfect doneness.  At the end of a long, hot day, the animals were brought over to picnic tables, and broken down to serve the diners. It was magical.