Posts from the ‘Food’ Category

The Dish

One thing I’m really enjoying about being back in the Big Apple is getting back to dining out. My appetite for it has changed thanks to my time living off the land, and I no longer want to eat in restaurants seven nights a week. Instead I want to make my own meals, dishes that are much more simple than what you get when going out, most of the time. But I haven’t lost the urge to have other people cook for me completely. So I’m heading out to restaurants two or three times a week and loving it.

Slowly I’ve been making my way around all of my favourite haunts. I’ve had meatballs at The Meatball Shop, and fish steamed with ginger at Szechuan Chalet. I’ve stood outside my long-standing favourite Japanese joint in the East Village and stared miserably at the sign that says it’s shut down. I’m yet to get to udon noodles or to the Upper West Side for Mexican. Or to the depths of Queens for Thai. And I’m compiling a list of new places I want to try once I get through the old faithfuls.

But I’m not sure anything will beat this dish:

Food fit for a queen.

I had it at Recette in the West Village – one of the best casual bistros serving fine-dining quality food – last week. It might not look like much, but it was sensational: a summer corn and crab soup that was thick and sweet and delicious, topped with a stuffed zucchini blossom and garnished with a shaving of black truffles that had come all the way from Australia. It was the best thing I’ve eaten in the past year.

It’s gone on my Death Row Dinner plan. If I were facing the gallows (and while we’re on the subject, no one should ever be facing the gallows; that the death penalty is legal here is one of my biggest problems with the USA, but I digress) I would like this as my appetizer. Then one of Mum’s roast dinners. And then some sort of pavlova.

What’s your Death Row dish?

The Price is Right

I don’t want to go on like a broken record about how expensive New Zealand is, but now that I’m back in the land of cheap and cheerful I am even more gobsmacked at what it costs to live there. So gobsmacked that I have to do a little price comparison to make my point.

Yesterday, I made a quick run to the supermarket, which in New York is like playing an Olympic sport. The good stores – Whole Foods, Trader Joes – are always packed with neurotic New Yorkers who pay no mind to trolley etiquette or manners, or the fact that they are actually out in public dressed like a scarecrow, as they make a beeline for non-fat, non-dairy frozen yoghurt or whatever other weird non-food food item they are subsisting on that week. To survive the whole experience you have to limber up, resolve to stare straight ahead and reach your goal (e.g. the chocolate aisle) without allowing anyone else to get you off-course, and steel yourself for a lot of ducking and diving down crowded aisles, one or two arguments with lunatics, and a lot of queuing at the end of it all. Even if it’s 11 p.m. and you only popped in for a loaf of bread.

Anyway I was after basics only as I’m on a diet this week. And:

• A dozen free-range eggs cost me $2.19 US. In New Zealand the same would cost me $8.88 US.
• A small bottle of water was .17c US. At home that would be $3 US. A markup of about 3,000 per cent.
• A small chocolate bar (I told you, I’m on a diet) was .90c US. It would be more than double that at home.
• A thingy of Greek yoghurt was $1.69 US. I’m not sure, but I think it would be at least $4 US in New Zealand.
• Three bananas was .90c US. That’s three breakfasts – for less than a dollar.

It confirms for me that New York City may be one of the most expensive cities in the world, but it’s relatively easy, once you’ve paid the astronomical rent, to live cheaply.  That is not possible in New Zealand. I really do not know how entire families manage to eat in New Zealand. Or rather, eat well. Kiwi readers, how do you do it?