I watched her walk away. I watched her come back again, smudging the glass on the display case with perfectly manicured fingers. I watched her walk away again, high heels clicking on the tiles, her basket empty but for one lonely glass jar of Stonewall Kitchen raspberry-peach champagne jam. For…
Sean Kelly is no celebrity chef. His hands give him away. They’re big, strong, the wrists thick from handling sauté pans, fingertips mauled, palms rough as untreated leather. Cooks know cooks from the feel of each others’ hands, and they can gauge how long someone’s been in the business from…
There are moments in a chef’s life that forever define him. The first taste of foie gras; the oily reek of anchovies; the crisp, celery-stalk snap of a rabbit’s neck being broken; the explosion on the back of the tongue set off by the full, huge, deep-brown flavor of a…
It was Saturday night in Littleton, and the wife and I were arguing. She was upset because she couldn’t find her favorite pair of black strappy heels, so she’d fallen back on the black Doc Martens that dated from her days as a Philly punk-rock girl, and one of our…
The name is not Cue-ba Cue-ba. It’s sexier than that, smoother. Say Koo-ba Koo-ba, and the words should slide off your tongue like you’re sucking on silk. The sound should make you feel like putting on a white Panama hat and growing a pencil-thin moustache. That goes for you ladies,…
Chefs love fire. Food may be their medium, but fire is their element. In the pan, fire is magic — binding, breaking and bringing out the hidden life in everything it touches. Emulsion, reduction, a blanc and a point — when you learn how to play with fire, you have…
Stepping off the crowded Pearl Street Mall and into Triana is like burying your face in a flamenco dancer’s best dress or jumping into a pile of autumn leaves. Fiery reds and oranges explode in this small space. The ceiling is painted black, a dark sky but for the exposed…
The strip mall looked half-dead. There was a scruffy guy dressed Unabomber style in a hooded sweatshirt and cheap, wraparound mirrored sunglasses loitering outside the liquor store, and a bunch of contractors in hard hats standing at the squat little complex’s far corner, as if sizing up the place for…
Do you remember your first Chinese meal? Think back to your introduction to egg rolls and the virgin sting of soy sauce on your tongue. Did they feel like foreign foods to you then? Did the words wonton, chow mein and moo goo gai pan feel as strange in your…
So where’d you go for lunch?” I asked. “We ended up at El Taco de México — it’s got real Mexican Mexican food. You been there yet?” I shook my head. I’ve been eating like a pig since I came to town a few months ago, and despite the fact…
Not too long ago, going out to eat meant just that: leaving your house and going someplace where someone unrelated to you would do the cooking. It was a simple process, requiring nothing of the diner except an appetite and a wallet. You didn’t need to buy a new wardrobe,…
Over the years, I’ve been assembling a dream menu of the best foods I’ve ever eaten, a desert-island top ten from which I’d choose if ever asked the question, “If you could eat only one thing every day for the rest of your life, what would it be?” Beef jerky…
All of you health nuts are going to feel pretty stupid someday, lying there in your hospital beds dying of nothing in particular. Redd Foxx said something like that once, and I agree with him. All you joggers, all you twig-and-berry vegans, all you juicers, you fasters, you calorie-counters and…
Gene Tang — the owner, floor manager and master sommelier of 1515 — knows how to work a room. One minute, he’s on the stairs, smiling all the way back to his eyeteeth and greeting the point man for a group of eight just making their way up from the…
The interior of Shead’s Fish and BBQ Heaven is not hip or slick or fabulous. Nor does it have that bogus clutter aesthetic or the faux-rustique feel so popular at some of the carefully sculpted eateries I’ve been skulking around these days. I can guarantee you that not a single…
Chefs acquire weight over time. I’m not talking about pounds packed on the beltline from nights spent surrounded by food, but rather a kind of metaphoric weight — a density of celebrity that increases incrementally with each mention of their names by critics and chowhounds, a slow accretion of notoriety…
When I first sat down at Maruti Narayan’s, the table was a blank canvas, holding only white plates and white napkins set against a white tablecloth. By the end of the meal, it was chaos, a full-color topographical portrait of the Indian subcontinent done entirely in shades of food. There…
In prison, they say the quickest way to gain respect among the general population is to pick the biggest, meanest, ugliest guy in your block and, on your first day inside, beat him to death with a chair. Sure, you’ll spend a few months in the hole, but this establishes…
The Oldsmobile Toronado is a monster of a car. Seventeen feet long and grossing nearly two tons, it’s an old-school blacktop heavyweight and, in its day, was one king-hell luxury ride. Although it never had the power of a Corvette or the raw muscle of those classic Mustangs, pound-for-pound, the…
It’s been almost two years since I’ve had decent Italian food. I’ve just recently come north from the culinary hinterlands of New Mexico, where a good red sauce is as hard to find as a cloudy day, a competent driver or a virgin bride. There were nights when I would…
A trip to the Buck Snort Saloon is legendary, an outing in itself, a day’s itinerary for out-of-town visitors. My own memories of the place always start with trying to get there in a substandard car — the International with the haunted carburetor; the Baja bug missing a lug nut…
My Hungarian stepfather was a fussy eater. He wasn’t a gourmet. He was just following — rigidly, as he did almost everything — dietary restrictions imposed by various bodily ailments and psychological quirks. He had a weak stomach, he said, so he couldn’t eat garlic, onions or cabbage. Heart problems…
