Category Archives: Random tidbits
Gothamist reports that someone’s opening up a mayonnaise store in my old neighborhood. TedQuarters aims to support small businesses and all, but the thought of so much mayonnaise in one spot turns my stomach a little. I’m just imagining gobs of mayo on shelves, and people behind a counter ladling mayo from giant tubs into jars, and a mayo slick on the floor that gets on the bottom of your shoe so you slide around all day. And I realize it’s probably not like that.
Since I have no particular distaste for mayonnaise as a condiment and since this place is making its own high-end, flavored mayos, I’m certainly open to trying it out. I think I’d just prefer it by mail-order or if someone gave some to me.
Acquired and devoured at the Shake Shack location on 86th and Lexington last night:
That’s the Smoke Shack, a burger with bacon, cherry-pepper relish and the familiar Shack Sauce.
It’s delicious, no doubt, and you’re never going to hear me say there’s anything in the world that shouldn’t be baconed. But the entire experience confirmed my suspicion that bacon is not really necessary on the Shake Shack burger. The bacon was bacon — though it was a little thick to be perfectly crispy like a great burger-bacon, to be honest — and added delicious bacon flavor. But the best innovation here, I thought, was the cherry-pepper relish, which added a spicy kick that went well with the sweet, creamy Shack sauce.
Straight up, if I ate a Shackburger every night for dinner and then one day I saw this on the menu I’d be all, “oh sweet lord, a change-up!” and order it. But as long as I’m doing everything I can to resist eating a Shackburger every night for dinner, I don’t really need that taco Doritoed, if you know what I’m saying.
The Daily News presents a slideshow of the 15 craziest stadium foods, and most of the ones that aren’t testicles look pretty delicious. I’m especially intrigued by this one from Progressive Field in Cleveland, a chicken and waffles sandwich:
The candidate: Peanut butter between Thin Mints from the analog TedQuarters kitchen. Prepared annually whenever we run out of Tagalongs.
The construction: A dollop of Skippy creamy peanut butter sandwiched between two Thin Mints.
Arguments for sandwich-hood: It’s a familiar, incontrovertible sandwich filling — peanut butter — sandwiched between two identical (and carby) items.
Arguments against: The things doing the sandwiching are cookies. Also, it’s hard to argue that the peanut butter is the focus of the sandwich here: It’s not really the dominant taste so much as a binding agent connecting two delicious Thin Mints. You probably wouldn’t call this a “peanut butter sandwich on Thin Mints” unless you were trying to be cute with it.
How it tastes: Oh, it’s great. It’s a bit messy — Thin Mints are not meant for containing peanut butter, so the peanut butter slides out when you bite into it and you wind up having to lick off the little ring of peanut butter that forms around the sides. But that’s fine, because it’s delicious peanut butter.
But when you get the bites that are both Thin Mint and peanut butter, they’re awesome. Obviously I don’t need to tell you how great peanut butter and chocolate go together, and presumably if you’re familiar with the Thin Mint you’re also familiar with the Tagalong and you know how well Peanut Butter and Chocolate combine with the crunchy texture of a cookie.
I’m not even a big mint guy (well, I’m a big, totally mint guy, like in the 1980′s sense; I don’t generally love things that are mint-flavored, is what I mean to say), but throw in that little hint of cooling mint flavor with the warmness of the chocolate and peanut butter and the crunchiness of the cookie and now we’re talking about f@#$ing dessert.
What it’s worth: Uhh…. I really have no idea. My wife buys the Girl Scout Cookies. Those things are expensive though. I suspect they have uncut cocaine in them. Also: How is it possible that the suggested serving size for Tagalongs is two cookies? It should be no less than seven.
The verdict: I’m conflicted, but I think not a sandwich. It has more to do with the bagel-and-cream-cheese thing than with this being a dessert. The peanut butter here is a nice complement to the Thin Mints, but this thing is primarily Thin Mints. For the purposes of this exercise, I’m willing to consider and devour ice-cream sandwiches, which I suspect are indeed sandwiches. I am that dedicated.
Today’s candidate is something I like to make at the analog TedQuarters during Girl Scout Cookie season. It’s a couple of Thin Mints with a dollop of peanut butter in between. It’s delicious.
But is it a sandwich?
Loading ...Big thanks to sandwich enthusiast @BobbyBigWheel for tipping me off to this thing and joining me for the festivities.
The sandwich: Ju Pa Bao (a.k.a. Macanese pork chop bun) from Pok Pok Wing, Rivington and Suffolk in Manhattan.
The construction: A fried pork chop on a Portuguese roll. That is all.
Important background information: Pok Pok Wing primarily sells wings made from a Vietnamese family recipe from a former co-worker of a chef named Alan Ricker who is lauded for his Thai restaurants in Portland, Oregon. The Ju Pa Bao is, per the Wikipedia, one of the most famous and popular snacks in Macau. I ate it in a Lower East Side bar next to a 50-something British photographer and his mid-20s girlfriend, both of whom complimented my looks and told me they had an open relationship. New York City is a strange and interesting place.
What it looks like:
How it tastes: You don’t even know. You don’t.
F@#$.
Look at that unassuming thing. Just look at it for a second. It looks like something that shouldn’t even merit a shrug no less several hundred words here, and you’re probably thinking, “oh Ted’s run dry now, just reviewing a plain ol’ pork chop on a bun.” But that’s because you don’t know.
Holy hell. There’s only two things and they’re both amazing. First, the bread: Piping hot, crusty on the outside, soft on the inside and sopping up just a little bit of the grease from the pork, bready and delicious.
Then, the pork: Not terribly thick but not too thin either, the perfect balance to the bread, and so tender and juicy, and just singing with pork flavor. It’s seasoned on the outside with what I’d guess is salt and black pepper and some garlic, pleasant and familiar flavors that remind me of my mom’s fried chicken only then, lo, it’s amazing pork.
There’s just one issue, one minor setback that’s going to keep this sandwich out of the Hall of Fame. There’s a bone in there. It’s a pork chop, remember, and it’s cooked with the bone in and they leave the bone in when they serve it up on the bone.
It’s not a terrible thing to negotiate, plus I recognize that there are some culinary advantages to leaving it that way. And it’s apparently the traditional way, for whatever that’s worth.
But everything else about this sandwich demands that I absolutely punish it with giant disgusting wolf-bites, and here I needed to be tentative because I knew that bone was threatening. It alters the sandwich-eating experience, and not in a good way.
Which is not to say the sandwich-eating experience wasn’t a pleasant one. It was amazing. This sandwich is outstanding. It’s just falling short of the Hall of Fame because I had to nibble at times instead of gobble and this is America bro.
What it’s worth: $8, and it’s a solid but not huge meal.
How it rates: 89 out of 100.
Serious Eats puts together a slideshow of the best hot dogs and sausages in the vicinity of Major League stadiums. Amazingly, I’ve been to games in nearly all of these cities and never had any of these hot dogs. The only one of these places I’ve been to is Tony Luke’s in Philly, and I had a cheesesteak there.
Via BBTF.
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