Shell shocked

Yesterday, Sarah and I went to the Riverside Oyster Festival, which turned out to be far less grand than its name suggests. Considering I'd heard about this thing two weeks ago and could barely contain myself in anticipation of going, it was hugely disappointing. I'd envisioned rows of vendors with canvas-roofed carts and grease-splattered aprons, dishing out oysters prepared in all manner of "county fair" styles: fried oysters, oyster po'boys, um, oyster sushi... yeah, okay, so maybe my imagination was pushing the boundaries of reality with oyster sushi, which I've only seen on the specials menu in some Japanese restaurants. But you get the idea.To my supreme dismay, once we arrived at Riverside Park (at 103rd Street, all the way on the West Side of Manhattan), we found that there was only a solitary stand serving only raw oysters. And the "festival" consisted of a whole bunch of people sitting around by the Hudson Beach area of the park, eating raw oysters and cocktail sauce off a plastic plate and ignoring a boorish, grooveless band in the vein of the Mighty Mighty Bosstones playing on a stage in the corner. [Pop culture tip for the clueless: the last time the Mighty Mighty Bosstones were popular, Bill Clinton was still President.] If you were curious what the scenic Hudson "Beach" looks like, here's helpful photograph:
To be fair, everyone knows Manhattan is hardly the first place you'd go in search of a beach. And at least the raw oysters were excellent (harvested in Maine, shucked right here in New York, cold and sweet, and requiring nary a hint of lemon juice or cocktail sauce). But there's a lesson in my disappointment: when in New York, you could attend hundreds of entertaining, unique and well-organized cultural events, or you could go to next year's Riverside Oyster Festival. And sometimes, until you're actually standing on that sand-swept patch of concrete and squinting past the four-lane highway at the rather arresting coast of New Jersey, you just can't tell the difference.

In the books

Today, I did something I haven't done since I was about six years old -- I got a library card. I've spent many Mountain Dew-fueled hours in college libraries, but I haven't borrowed a book from a public library in over ten years. Until today, I didn't realize how much public libraries have changed in ten years, and how much has remained the same.

The New York Public Library has a branch one block away from my apartment, a fact I discovered just a couple of months ago. Today, I made it a point to visit it for the first time. Two things struck me: there are so many computers! and there are so many kids! Both of these things, of course, totally make sense, especially the computers, but I'm constantly amazed that there are enough children under the age of 12 in New York to fill up a room at any given time. I can't really explain this amazement. Young children are everywhere in NYC, but for some reason, I can't allow myself to believe that they do normal things like visit the library, or go to Toys R Us, or play in a playground.

Some of you may wonder if I've read any books at all in the last ten years. The fact is, every book I've read in the last ten years I either bought at a bookstore, or borrowed from a friend. Some of you may then guess that I probably haven't read very many books in the last decade. You are right. I should absolutely read more. There several writers whose works are only familiar to me by reputation: Cormac McCarthy, Haruki Murakami, Jonathan Lethem, Toni Morrison and Joyce Carol Oates (both of whom taught at my alma mater, and whose inclusion on this list shames me to a degree), Philip Roth, and Jonathan Franzen. And these are just fiction writers who haven't died yet.

But they're a great start.

iWant

This week saw the release of updated versions of Apple's iPod, and I want at least one of them. Yes, yes, I know I'm just positioning myself as a cog in the whole consumerism machine, and technically I don't need a new iPod, since I own four of them already. You see, I bought a second-generation iPod Mini for Sarah some time ago, and later, I received a first-gen iPod Shuffle as a free gift. When the Mini decided to stop working, I bought Sarah a new Nano, which also gave out after several months. So I bought her a second-gen Nano. It was such a futuristic and unfamiliar-looking thing that when she accidentally left it at church office one Sunday, one of the toddlers coming out of childcare found it and promptly put it in the fridge for safe keeping.

Meanwhile, I was able to revive the old Mini, and now use it. Still, it would be nice to graduate beyond a monochromatic screen.

I've played with the iPhone, a near-magical device so well designed that it may as well have time-traveled from the future. I don't particularly need a new cellphone, and especially not one with a built-in camera that merely captures 2-megapixel images. But an iPhone without the phone and camera is something I'd be in the market for, and that's exactly what the iPod Touch is. So should I get one?

I'll think about it. But quickly.

The 'roo morgue

I don't intend to turn One Year in New York City into a food blog, but to write about living in NYC without writing about food as often as possible is unjust and irresponsible. And so, fresh on the heels of yesterday's post, I find myself reminiscing about the most memorable meals I've ever had, and realize that I've had a fair share of them right here in New York.

I think it's rare for people to remember particular meals based on the food alone, unless, of course, the food was so astoundingly good that it didn't matter what the occasion was. For example, if I think hard enough, I can remember every meal I had on my trip Maui, Hawaii, last year. But that has more to do with the fact that I can remember virtually everything else about my trip. Based on the quality and originality of the food alone, the most memorable Hawaiian meal was the mixed plate I had in Lahaina, a combination of disparate dishes spanning three continents of influence. It wasn't much more than street food, but really, isn't that the best kind of food?

I remember gustatory delights from other travels as well. You won't believe this, but I had one of the best Hawaiian pizzas I've ever tasted in (of all places) Canberra, Australia, in 1997. The most decadent meal I've had was at the Park Lane Hotel in London (at least I think it was there, for aside from the grandeur of the food, I remember little else owing to my host's insistence that I empty the wine bottle). And the best lobster meal I've had by far was in the great state of Rhode Island, where, at a seaside shanty, I feasted on two succulent crustaceans and heaps of coleslaw, butter and french fries for $22.

But what about New York? What of the freshly grated wasabi at Megu, the toro at Koi, the simple garlic french fries at Barmarché, the herbed butter and strip steak at Schiller's, the chocolate bread pudding at Café Colonial, the grass-fed filet mignon and wild asparagus at Craftsteak, or the chicken adobo at Cendrillon? There just isn't enough time, and the scope of this post is too narrow to accommodate the story behind every memorable meal. Plus, as the title of this post indicates, what I really wanted to write about is my new favorite meat in the world: kangaroo.

Some of you will already be aware of my affection for 'roo meat. If you're adventurous enough to try it, and you do so at an establishment that knows how to prepare it properly, you'll be rewarded with a depth of earthy flavor unknown in 90% of steakhouses out there. I'm talking about eating the meat of animals that bounce across the landscape like dropped balls, to quote Bill Bryson. You can't get that kind of flavor from a sluggish, mooing, grain-chewing beast.

Of course, in order to try kangaroo, you might start at one of the several Australian restaurants in the City, of which the most highly regarded at the moment is Eight Mile Creek, a dimly lit place recalling a cramped old English pub (the real pub is in the basement, where you can get your lager on while watching Aussie rules matches). Eight Mile Creek has decent kangaroo -- I ordered the "kanga skewers," a satisfying if slightly unrefined appetizer. The best kangaroo in New York, however, is at Public (although it may be a special menu item, since I can no longer find it on their online menu). Juicy, full of character, and joyfully tender, Public's 'roo steak remains one of the most memorable meals I've had in New York.

By the way, I've learned that there's 'roo on the menu at Knife + Fork as well. If I go, I promise to take pictures.

Gastronomic proportions

I'm going to post a link to one of the best food articles I've read in my entire life. But first, a preamble.

Living in New York to a one-year countdown is like visiting New York with an enlightened tourist's agenda: you have too many things to do and not enough time to do them all. In our case, our adventurous appetites might never get around to finding satisfaction at any number of restaurants in the City in which we aspire to dine. Here's the problem: between Sarah and myself, we like food from virtually every corner of the world. If, for example, neither of us liked French food, we could just eliminate every café, boulangerie, pattiserie and restaurant from our mental lists. But we can't, because even though Sarah is not particularly fond of French cuisine, I love it, especially anything with fromage de chèvre or beurre demi-sel in it. I drool already.

The problem is compounded by the fact that several of the restaurants we would like to visit are -- how shall I put this delicately? -- stupidly expensive. Not that we don't think they are worth it. On the contrary, we have no problem spending money on a fastidiously prepared meal, made from hard-to-acquire ingredients. There are people who spend as much on a new cellphone, or a car payment, or a watch. But it does mean that these restaurant visits are very few and far between; special occasions, if you will.

But.

But, sometimes you read a food article that makes you want to empty the checking account, jump in a cab, and head over to a restaurant where you just might have the best meal in your life, and where that in itself is the special occasion. That's because the article contains these words: [It is] the most expensive restaurant in the country, if not the world. It is also the best sushi restaurant in the country, if not the world. But it's not a story about a restaurant. It's a story about food. I read this article a couple of months ago, and I haven't stopped thinking about it since.

Please read the whole story, all ten delightful pages of it. At the very, very least, you'll be a more knowledgeable member of civilized society.

If You Knew Sushi [Vanity Fair]

How to speak like a New Yorker IV

If you've ever visited New York City, chances are you've taken a trip in a yellow cab (read my post about NYC cabs here). But a common mistake visitors make is not knowing how to tell the cab driver where you want to go. First, some cab drivers may seem uncouth, but it's no reason to be rude or impatient with them. 90% of all the cabs I've ever been in were piloted by cabbies who were skillful, knowledgeable, grateful when tipped, and polite. And the other 10%? Well, I can be sympathetic to the fact that driving a cab in New York will test anyone's patience.

Second, it's important to give the address of your destination to your cab driver in a way that helps him or her (there are over 400 women cab drivers in NYC). For example, don't tell your driver that you want to go to "532 Broadway." Instead, it's far more helpful to know the "cross-street" (i.e. the street that intersects your destination). So if you get in a cab and say, "corner of Broadway and Spring," you're more likely to get there quicker.*

Third, once you're almost at your destination, you may instruct the cabbie where exactly to pull over. Virtually all the streets in Manhattan are one-way streets, so if you're stopping at an intersection, let the cabbie know whether you'd like to stop at the "near-corner on the left" or the "far-corner on the right" or whatever applies.

* True story: Sarah and I once got in a cab because we were too tired to take the subway back to our apartment. We told the cabbie the cross-streets, but he told us that he'd only been on the job for two weeks and didn't know where exactly Mott Street intersected with Houston Street. It was the first time we ever had to give a Manhattan geography lesson to a cab driver.

Caves of steel

We just got back from the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), where a stunning if marginally incomplete Richard Serra retrospective is on display until September 10th. If you're not familiar with Serra's unique sculptural works, click here. Most contemporary art enthusiasts will recognize him as the guy who puts up ridiculously large sheets of hot-rolled steel (richly colored with an orange patina) and constructs incidental environments with them. I first heard about him in art school -- his brother Rudy Serra used to teach there. But today was the first time I'd seen his work outside of the printed page, and it was an experience simultaneously new and primal.

New, because as you walk alongside the undulating walls of rusted steel, it feels like an alien landscape. Primal, because your brain desperately tries to make sense of this new environment, so it invents age-old scenarios. When the walls curved outward as they rose, it seemed like you were standing at the bottom of a 15-foot canyon. When they curved inward so as to hang overhead, it was like being in the shade of a cave. It was funny because as Sarah and I explored the different parts of the exhibit, she felt safest and coziest in the "cave" parts, where the walls curved inward. When I pressed her to move on, she'd do so only reluctantly. But she felt instinctively vulnerable in the "canyon" portions, as if her environment left her open to attack. How ironic that ribbons of steel placed inside the geometric confines of an art museum evokes such strong associations with natural geography and the outdoors.
Several steel walls were also placed outside the museum, in the sculpture garden (where the photo above was shot). Fantastic stuff all around.

And of course, we couldn't leave without revisiting the Piet Mondrian gallery, home of some downright brilliant canvases by my favorite painter.

[Click here to view MoMA's microsite on the Serra exhibit, including high-res images and a fascinating time-lapse video of the installation in the sculpture garden.]