HG’s two favorite writers on food and restaurants are Calvin Trillin and SJ (No nepotism. SJ’s blog, OishiGevalt.com, is both appetizing and brilliantly perceptive about many aspects of Japanese culture). HG shares with both writers a love for garlic and chicken fat, staples of HG’s late Mom’s Eastern European kitchen. Sammy’s Rumanian, the raucous, venerable restaurant in Manhattan’s lower east side features HG’s “Holy Trinity”: Garlic, Chicken Fat and Vodka. Here’s what Trillin has to say about Sammy’s: “Following the Rumanian tradition, garlic is used in excess to keep the vampires away. Following the Jewish tradition, a dispenser of schmaltz (liquid chicken fat) is kept on the table to give the vampires heartburn if they get through the garlic defense.”). Happy HG is looking forward to a dinner of chicken sautéed in olive oil with thirty gloves of garlic (plus lots of herbs from BSK’s garden). There will be a loaf of fresh ciabatta to soak up the juices and to spread with savory soft garlic. Count Dracula, beware!!!
SJ has discovered the pleasures of lunch. That’s what he reports in his enlightening blog, OishiGevalt.com. (The blog is a must read for anyone interested in food, sharp writing, Tokyo and life). SJ lives in Tokyo after years in New Jersey, Chicago, Manhattan and Brooklyn. SJ finds lunching in Tokyo a wonderland of treats. Every variation of fresh fish, meat, noodles. Best of all, these quality lunches are cheap. In SJ’s lunch post on Oishi Gevalt (“The $5 Lunch Special”, SJ mentions HG’s breakfasts of long ago consisting of black coffee and numerous Marlboro cigarettes and HG’s four-martini lunches (Those were the days when HG was a New York/New Jersey public relations biggie). No, SJ, four-martini lunches are suicidal. HG had modest two-martini lunches (plus wine or beer and post meal brandy). And where did HG lunch with alcohol loving journalists? Three places near the Times, Herald-Tribune, Newsweek and Business Week: Blue Ribbon (German food and world’s best steak tartare); Artists & Writers (German food with a specialty of konigsberger klops, a savory dish of meat balls in a cream and dill sauce); Sardi’s (lamb chops with a grilled kidney). Lunch with clients was at the Bar Room of the Four Seasons (Pool Room was for tourists). Other client lunch spot was Christ Cella, the great steak house (This was also convenient for lunching with journalists from the News, Mirror, Post, Wall Street Journal, New York Magazine and Barron’s). These days HG has a lusty breakfast, a spartan lunch and a lavish dinner. BSK, interested in keeping HG healthy and reasonably sober, has prevailed upon HG to substitute white wine for pre-dinner vodka martinis.
