Food and Beverage


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Food and Beverage

My Review of Cyclo in Long Island City

Posted on Yelp for more to see.

Two of us did a take out order at dinner: a pork chop sandwich (extra spicy) and a shrimp vermicelli salad. Both dishes were excellent. There was a fair amount of spice, and believe me I love spicy foods, but it was nowhere near what one could get from a more “authentic” Vietnamese place.

If you like Tuk Tuk, which is comparatively bland compared to other Thai places in Jackson Heights or Los Angeles but still serve excellent food, then you’ll like this place. Otherwise, heed the advice of others and head to Elmhurst.

It’s Not Just a “Royale with Cheese”

Jim and Neven from the Salt and Fat podcast devote an episode to discussing the role of food in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction.

This was one of the better analyses of Pulp Fiction I’ve ever heard (or read). Not only do they catalog the various restaurants in the film, they also analyze the meaning of the coffee shop and of Jack Rabbit Slim’s in the world of film (1990s Los Angeles in the shadow of the 1970s). They also do a great job of connecting the characters to their choices of food.

Ball Buster Margarita

Here’s a margarita I made for the Ball Busters team-building party last night. It was a hit. I wanted to use blueberries and basil from the Union Square farmers’ market, but I had run low on time and relied on the local supermarket instead. (Ironically, the basil and blueberries were significanlty less expensive at the greenmarket than at the supermarket when I went to check today. Go figure.)

Making the margarita requires two steps.

Sweet-Sour Mix

  • 12 ounces of fresh lime juice
  • 10 ounces of fresh lemon juice
  • 10 ounces of sugar

Combine and heat lemon and lime juice in a saucepan and add sugar. Stir until sugar dissolves. Pour into a quart-sized mason jar (or something similar). Refrigerate until cool.

Margarita

  • 4 ounces of sweet-sour mix
  • 3 ounces of silver tequila
  • 1 ½ ounces of triple sec
  • 6 basil leaves
  • 8 blueberries
  • 1 ounce of agave nectar

Add sweet-sour mix, basil, and blueberries in a cocktail shaker and muddle ingredients together until you’ve “squished” all of the berries. Add tequila, triple sec, agave nectar and ice to the shaker. Shake together. Pour into a twelve-ounce glass filled with crushed ice.

Garnish glass with a couple of blueberries and a single basil leaf.

Hot Kentucky

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Maybe it’s because Sarah left for a ten-day trip, but I couldn’t help feel drawn to a beverage offered at a local Brooklyn art gallery. It’s called the Hot Kentucky. The contents for the beverage were listed on a chalkboard, and on a summer day, it sounded like a splendid beverage.

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The lemonade–ginger–cayenne pepper was pre-made at the gallery, but if I were to reconstruct this recipe, I’d do something like this.

Lemonade

  • 1 cup lemon juice
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1 tablespoon of thinly sliced ginger
  • 1 tablespoon of cayenne pepper
  • 6 cups of water

Combine, heat, and stir lemon juice, sugar, ginger, and cayenne pepper until sugar and pepper dissolve. Transfer lemon-ginger-pepper syrup to a half-gallon pitcher or mason jar and add water. Chill until lemonade is cold. Tick-tock-tick-tock…

Cocktail

  • 1 ½ ounces of bourbon
  • 3 ounces of spicy ginger lemonade

Combine and shake ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice. Pour into a glass filled with crushed ice. Garnish with lemon wedge. Enjoy.

Celebrating Independence and Pig

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While we didn’t picnic at Riverside Park on Independence Day, we did have the pleasure of going to a party at the City Foundry in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. The party was hosted by Industry City Distillery and was a benefit for the Trade School Everywhere. (I’m still trying to wrap my head around the scope of the entire event.)

The party boasted a potluck, a variety of beverages, live music, and pretty limited view of the Macy’s Fireworks. The highlight of the evening was a pig roast. Whoa! I had some loin, belly, and then some other random bits at the end of the night, and it was delicious. The sides consisted of some Beet Cole Slaw and Vegan lentil and farro salad with kasha. It was almost a well-balanced meal, and a great night.

I just wish we were off from work the next day.

Happy National Mai Tai Day

Last year, there was some hoopla about National Mai Tai Day, but this year there seems to be a lot less enthusiasm about marking the day with this quintessential Polynesian cocktail.

The Mai-Tai

While there are a ton of recipes for making a Mai Tai, I adapted the version from my dusty copy of Mr. Boston’s Official Bartender’s and Party Guide.

Ingredients

  • 2 ounces of rum
  • 1 ounce of triple sec
  • ½ ounce of grenadine
  • ½ ounce of lime juice
  • ½ ounce of orgeat syrup

Mix ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice. Pour into a highball glass filled with crushed ice.

I had to make a few substitutions. As I learned to make my own grenadine earlier this year, I was in the process of reducing the cherry juice into a syrup but having left it unattended for too long, it literally caught on fire. Instead of buying more cherry and pomegranate juices, I bought some fancy grenadine from my local gourmet grocer.

Orgeat syrup can be very hard to find, even in a city like New York. I learned that a couple of stores in Manhattan have this precious nectar, but I was not in the mood to schlep to the city to get a $8 bottle of syrup. Instead, Sarah found that one can approximate orgeat syrup by mixing one part almond extract, which one can find in just about any grocery store, and eight parts simple syrup. I gave it a try, and it comes close to mellowing out the harsh rum flavor.

Cheers, everyone!

The above link to Amazon is an affiliate link. If you buy something that link, I will earn a commission fee.

Cash-Only is “Inhospitable” and a Little Sleazy

A local restaurant here in Long Island City went “cash-only” about a month ago. When they first implemented the strategy, one of their bartenders told me that it was a “new business decision.” I jokingly replied, “of course, it’s easier to hide cash.” Initially, they put up a sign indicating their anti-plastic policy, but over the course of the last few weeks, any notice of the policy has disappeared: it was not mentioned on their cocktail menu and there is no sign over the register. The lack of any sign made me think they abandoned the policy and returned to accepting credit cards.

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The other evening, a couple of friends and I stopped by for a few drinks and to sit in an air-conditioned room. We ordered six $10 cocktails, and when the check came, we saw the “cash only” edict on the bill. None of us had brought much cash, thinking that they took plastic. They don’t. However, the restaurant’s management had conveniently installed an ATM in the back, charging a $1.75 transaction fee (in addition to whatever your bank might charge you). This seemed too opportunistic, and even a little sleazy.

If that wasn’t bad enough, they added sales tax to the $10 cocktail price. I’ve never seen any place add sales tax on a cocktails-only order. If a bar itemizes sales tax, the base price is a number that, when tax is added, reaches a nice even price. For example, our cocktails should have a base price of $9.18. Add 8.875% NY state and city sales tax, and you will get $9.99. And I’ll let them call it $10.

The biggest issue was that I had to get up, get cash from their ATM, and cobble together our payment. Not only was it bad enough that our six $10 cocktails actually cost $67.08, before tip, it just seemed mean. Bon Appetit’s Foodist also dislikes cash-only policies for restaurants, writing “It’s one thing for a sandwich shop or food truck to accept cash only, but when a place is charging $15 or more for entrees and offering wine by the bottle, not taking credit cards seems downright inhospitable.” Because of the added cost and inconvenience, I kind of stiffed the servers on the tip. I left only about a 10% tip, reasoning that the additional and completely unexpected costs made up the other 10%. Before they come after me, however, they might consider directing their ire towards the management and its “inhospitable” policies.

I won’t be back, and that’s a shame because the food and service were both quite good.