Like so many of you I’m sure, I have a somewhat complicated relationship with food, though I mostly refer to it as an evolving friendship instead. Since I was a little kid, food never mattered that much to me, until it did; that is, if I was eating to essentially stay upright, then I’d inhale just about anything someone put in front of me. But—and this is the fun part—if food was the centerpiece of an “event” I was attending (dinner date, weekend brunch, backyard cookout), then, yes, I became as fastidious about food as any Manhattan dining critic worth reading. So what’s my current relationship status with food? Predictably…“it’s complicated.”
Having Cuban-born parents and grandparents meant that my earliest memories of food in my childhood home revolved around the alluring aromas involving garlic, onions and lime juice or what we call mojo. The moment Cubans’ version of the holy trinity hit a scalding hot frying pan, the deliciousness wafted over everything in its path making it damn near impossible to resist. After the savory fiesta in your mouth was over, dessert followed starring, of all exotic fruits, guava. Yes, my grandmother would serve us guava shells paired with a slab of cream cheese and a drizzle of honey. I warn you: Do not criticize this diabetic concoction until you’ve tried it. My mouth is watering even as I write this.
Which brings me to another point: How amazing is it that the mere mention of a long-ago food memory evokes such palpable feelings? I went to college in New Orleans, a city that introduced me to the most delicious foods I have ever had. Anyone who has spent any time in the Crescent City can surely still remember the taste the insanely flavorful gumbo/étouffée/jambalaya/po-boy/beignet meals as if it were yesterday. Those talented Cajuns ain’t messin’ around. I even miss the midnight group treks to Popeye’s on Carrollton Avenue near my campus dorm—can fried chicken taste any better?
From New Orleans I made a beeline straight to Manhattan and was gloriously assaulted by three unmistakable NYC cuisines at once: Ray’s pizza, Russ & Daughters’ everything bagels with lox, onions and scallion cream cheese and, maybe best of all, Chinese takeout. I mean, what says you’re a real New Yorker more than a bagel in the morning, a slice on the run at lunch and cold sesame noodles and shrimp egg foo young late night at home? #IYKYK
After several cross-country moves necessitated by exciting career opportunities, I discovered that San Francisco’s bread is just ridic next-level while the Vietnamese cuisine at The Slanted Door was worth a plane trip back; Los Angeles’ food trucks were incomparable—Korean kimchi, yum!; Las Vegas’ elevated fare even at their sports bars were the opposite of a joke, I happily returned to Gotham prepared to try my hand at legit fine dining: enter Jean-Georges Vongerichten.
The world-famous executive chef has had a number of excellent restaurants in Manhattan and I’ve happily been loyal to a lot of them starting with his OG, JoJo, before moving on to Vong, Perry St, ABC Kitchen, Nougatine, ABC Cocina, Four Twenty Five, Tin Building and even his decidedly underappreciated haute Chinese fusion spot (which I absolutely loved) 66, before embracing the elegant mothership, the legendary chef’s three-Michelin-starred masterpiece, the eponymously named Jean-Georges featured not only the cooking master’s most delicate, out of this world, inventive savory dishes, but he boasted the planet’s very best couture dessert creator, the impossibly irreverent Johnny Iuzzini. Talk about fine dining. An evening at Jean-Georges, just steps off the striking Columbus Circle, was a celebration, even at 9:15 on any given Tuesday.
Of course, I also frequented other chefs’ establishments, most notably Food Network superstar Bobby Flay’s twin offerings: Mesa Grill, near my home on lower Fifth Avenue, and Bar Americain, around the corner from my office at the Time-Life Building in midtown. Soho House New York, Café Luxembourg, Omar’s La Ranita, The Odeon, Indochine, lure fish bar, Michael’s (best media power lunch spot) and many others rounded out my insatiable Big Apple appetite.
Then, Poughkeepsie.
As my decades-long dear friend and true restaurant aficionado Hal Rubenstein so eloquently chronicles for The Mountains in every issue, dining out north of the city is something of a task best tackled with proper planning and long-held reservations. My reliably perfect go-to spot is End Cut, the Aspen-ski-lodge-meets-intimate-steakhouse in West Park, NY, some 15 minutes from my front door. End Cut Executive Chef/Owner Jordan Schor is everywhere in this issue as well, as a participant in Rubenstein’s top chefs’ roundtable as well as a decidedly qualified writer discovering the culinary offerings at the chic—and a little mysterious—Windham Mountain Club.
The arrival of Klocke Estate in Hudson into the fine dining scene has unquestionably changed the scene for locals missing access to more James Beard-worthy options. And by all accounts, we’re just getting started down this great food trajectory. And of course mom-and-pop diners, crazy-good farmstands and high-end specialty food shops will always abound everywhere you look, but fine dining wasn’t really a given in these parts until recently. Now, finally, it genuinely seems that we could really be culinary contenders after all. It’ll just depend on how hungry all of us really are. ¡Buen provecho!
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