Gadget Sucker

I've always been a sucker for kitchen gadgets. And since people know that, they keep giving them to me. Except they're not things I would buy. Take that magic garlic peeler. "You just put the garlic in the flexible rubber tube, give it a couple of rolls with you palm, and voilà!" Yes, that was fun, for about three sessions. Then you found out how the little bits of skin start sticking to the inside, so the next clove won't peel, so you have to wash it . . .

And then there was the magic garlic crusher. At first, it looks so completely different from everything else, you think it might actually work. So you go through the motions. And you definitely end up with crushed garlic, which you're picking out of the crevices with a little spoon for about fifteen minutes.

And then they gave me the pasta pot, the one with the lid that doubled as a strainer, the one that barely held enough water for half a packet of pasta . . . and the "no-sharp-edge can opener," that worked if you had a black belt in contortion.

But now there is one that takes the prize, one that even to me looks so patently ludicrous that I'm confounded on how it ever got on TV. It's the Pasta Express, of course. It claims all you have to do is put boiling water in a "thermal tube," add the pasta, screw on the top, and you'll get perfect pasta in 9 minutes. Whatever happened to a pot full of hot water on a stove? You have to boil the water first anyway! This says it all.

However, I must confess I've been much, much luckier with the high-end gadgets I've bought. There was the Foodsaver, which cost me a pretty penny. I bought it when it was just an annoying infomercial years ago, but now chefs are buzzing about cooking "sous vide," where you heat food in vacuum bags. My Foodsaver has proved its worth time and time over; buying and freezing for a year that shitload of filets at Price Club that still tasted great when I ate them or freezing a batch of my curry to take to California, getting past all those nasty sniffer hounds. Definitely worth the $300-odd I paid for it.

And then there's this holy-mother-of-god gadget called the Cooper Cooler which claims to cool a room-temperature bottle of wine to 6 degrees C/43F in six minutes, and a can of beer in one minute. I'll be dipped in shit if it didn't do just that. I gave one to my brother at Christmas and all the people at the party were lining up, warm beers and sodas in hand just to watch it make its magic. They'd literally freak when you gave the can back to them.

I don't have one yet, but six months of the year I don't need one—there's my balcony.

But our old friend John Sculley—yes, the former CEO of Apple computer—has to be endorsing the biggest kitchen con gadget of all time: The Wine Clip.

I think I'll get one. It might work . . .

Shooting Food

The reason I've been shooting so much video lately is because my digital camera died. I now, however, have a very nice Canon 300D, and it should do the job nicely. I'm just waiting for a cable to hook it up to the computer and I'll be all set . . .

I remember being interested in taking pictures of food as far back as design school. We once had a type project in which we had to design some kind of publicity package. I chose to do the San Francisco Symphony . . . Cooks. It satisfied my need for music and food at the same time.

But I needed shots of food, and back in those days, there was no Internet, certainly no scanners, and only clunky film cameras. So I went out and bought one—a Canon AE1, if I remember correctly—and not having a clue how to make photos of food, I improvised, unconsciously making reflectors and diffusers before I even knew what they were.

However, the luxury of shooting 100 pictures to get one good one was not an option; film cost money and developing cost more. So I just ended up getting frustrated. I finally called it quits and cut some photos out of California magazine. I didn't get a very good grade . . .

But making food look good on film is a bit of an obsession for me. I just want it to look good.

Not wanting to go out and buy a book just yet, I checked out some sites. There is a good one here, which leads to another one here. Now we've all heard about what food stylists do to food to "get the shot"—the lacquer sprayed on the burger to give it that juicy sheen, the acrylic paint to make the squirt-bottle decorations—but it is still quite off-putting to think that some of those Gourmet photos we've drooled over were just some stylist's industrial-chemical nightmares.

I always like to think that after they shot that sumptuous dinner party that they all sat down to eat it.

Where I'm Going on my Summer Vacation

Hate to veer off food yet again, but if these aren't the most outrageous photos ever taken, Bob's your aunt.

These are completely unretouched and are taken at the approach to Princess Juliana airport in St. Maarten.

Photo 1

Photo 2

Ode to Phyllo

by Nicholas Robinson

Phyllo, I know,
Is an obdurate 'ho
Compared to the flour
Whose glutinous power
Gets starchy and old
If you overly fold.

But Phyllo is cruel
(Though daintily cool)
If moulded in haste
(Plus it's bad for the waist)
And lacking in yeast,
It's a delicate beast.

So treat it with care;
Each layer prepare
With diligence sweet
('Twill be good to eat!)
And all will be fine
If paired with good wine.

Depression Era

I am inexplicably depressed. Maybe because winter has finally come to an end. The snowman has left the building. Too bad; I never got the chance to use my incredible fur hat. But even that thought is depressing—I realise I have finally become so used to Montreal winters that I never need it any more.

It's difficult to contemplate life without slippery sidewalks and biting wind. Maybe it's because this winter was comparatively mild that I look back with something approaching nostalgia. The snowstorms were heavy and comfortably predictable. That is to say, they fell and then they stayed for a goodly amount of time, and then they melted in an unexpected thaw and then they fell again. There was almost no messy week of transition in which all was wet and slush. Okay, maybe once.

So why the depression, when the sun threatens to shine and a day dawns on the plus side of zero?

It suddenly comes to me: I'm looking ahead to (and dreading) the Great Burger Shoot.

Hail To The Chef

Render unto . . .

Scotch and ice in an Air Canada tumbler

What a marvelous country we live in. People, those south of us have really no clue we're here. I'm a transplant, so I know. They have no idea what Canada is. To them, it really is beavers and mounties and eh? and beer. It's like they know that Canada is across the um . . . Montana border?

I'm American. But some asshole from California came up here the other week and swore up and down that I said "Aboot" and "Oot" like a Canadian. You asshole. It takes a lifetime of being Canadian to do that. Like I'm some maple puppet that jumps up and down in front of tourists and says Aboot. This provincial clown hailed from Pleasanton. Ever heard of Pleasanton? It's down there with the migrant farm workers and the angry grapes and the mice and men and that stupid orange bridge.

The Softnesses of the Market

I was talking to Glen, one of the co-owners of Les Douceurs du Marché, at Atwater Market, the other day. He's a really nice guy, but you get the feeling he doesn't get out much. When I mentioned I was from montrealfood.com, he said "Oh, computers! Well, I don't have much time for them." Thinking that pretty unusual for this day and age, I asked why.

"Oh, well, you know, you're bushed at the end of the day. When I get home I sit in my chair—"

—"and have a glass of wine," says I helpfully—

"—oh no, I have a martini." I like this guy. He's a martini guy. "I have a martini and think about what to do for dinner and I think, shall I cook, or shall I go out? And then that gets me to thinking, so I end up not doing anything except have another martini." My man!

In case you didn't know, Douceurs is possibly the coolest food shop in Montreal. It's stacked floor to ceiling with stuff like hot sauce—literally twelve shelves full—and gourmet olive oil, among many, many other things that are pretty much impossible to find in Montreal: fine Italian pastas (Rusticella d'Abruzzo among them), cans of stuff from all over the world, and a nice selection of spices and upmarket chocolates. If you go on a weekend, though, be prepared to fight for elbow room. This place is popular. (I remember it before they expanded, and then it was get in line, buddy, and buy tickets.)

If you're lucky enough to get in there on a slow day, like I was, take the time to chat with one of the owners. They're hilarious and they know their trade.

René, the other co-owner, will be on Télé-Québec on Friday, March 31 at 9 p.m. "They came over to our house," says Glen. "They did a great interview and then René made them dinner!"

If you're outside Quebec, maybe I'll tape it and put up excerpts.

Fuck recipes

I'm in a bad mood.

Half a cup or 200g. Who the fuck knows? How about "a little of this, a little of that?" A true cook does not waste time measuring. Notice I am not saying "baker." Those motherfuckers have to be spot on.

But if you like to cook, after a while, 1T of something becomes meaningless, unless it's a new recipe. You already know whether to insert two or twelve cloves of garlic, or whether they have to be crushed or diced. You just know. Coq au Vin? Whip out the mental recipe for the recipe. You know that 2 T of garlic is going to overwhelm 3 cups of sauce for Dish X, or know that it's not going to be enough. You know that if you put four jalapeños in the taco sauce that zero people are going to eat it, no matter how much you like hot food. You know that now, so you adjust.

You form a mental lattice of a recipe before you cook it, assigning each taste and each texture to its certain place. How will the potatoes taste if I fuck up the timing? Will it ruin the dish? Christ, several times I've made this, the sauce curdled. That can't happen this time. No goddamn uber-chef looking over my shoulder this time. It'll be only me to blame, and these motherfuckers don't even know how to scramble an egg. But it'll be my ass.

Sometimes 1/2 t of brown sugar is important. But if you have the instinct, which doesn't mean you have to be professional—just experienced—you'll know from just looking at it that it works or doesn't.

The rest of the time you just have to find out.

Making The 'Wich

I got tired of the usual BLTs so I invented an upscale one.

(I really should add where I got the ingredients:

Frantoia Extra Virgin Olive Oil (what do you do to a virgin to make them extra, I wonder): Douceurs du Marché, Atwater Market

Aceto Balsamico 5 yr. balsamic vinegar: Douceurs du Marché, Atwater Market

Italian ham (prosciutto): Exo Fruits

Cherry tomatoes, Gruyère slices and baby lettuces: Exo Fruits

Country bread: Au Pain Doré

Japanese mayonnaise (Kewpie) from Japan, but available at Miyamoto and the Korean Grocer

Amora Dijon mustard: Métro

Beer: Cuivrée by Boréale)

Crack-a-Roni

I don't know how old you are, but if you're my age, you certainly remember Noodle-Roni and Rice-a-Roni. There was an annoying commercial that I can only remember a snippet of (the one they wanted you to) and it piped cheerily "Rice . . . A-Roni! The San Francisco Treat!"

Well, let me tell you, they didn't need the jingle. We kids lapped that stuff up like hamsters in a honeydew patch, mainly because our mothers fed it to us in toxic amounts. My shake-knee weakness was Noodles Romanoff, by Betty Crocker. Today, I can think of nothing to recommend the original; it was in a box quite similar to today's Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, and the selling point was that it could be made in one pot. Just add some milk, and presto! instant dinner. It was pasty and viscuous and salty and day-glo yellow — crack-a-roni for little kids. I have no idea why it was named Noodles Romanoff. One has visions of the imperial family of Russia lounging about the palace snacking on vodka-laced stroganoff prepared with these very noodles: "Svetlana, my dear, more of zose vanderful noodles!"— but the reality was very different. Still, an addict never strays far from the fix, so I went in search of a recipe that would approximate this marvelously kid-dictive concoction. Here's what I came up with:

Noodles Romanoff

The key to success here is the Kraft Macaroni and Cheese day-glo yellow powder. Without it, you will never approach the original.

One package egg noodles (about 1 lb.)
1 cup sour cream (use full fat—don't make me come over there)
2 T butter, melted
1 medium onion, chopped finely
2 cloves garlic, crushed or chopped finely
3/4 cup grated Parmigiano Reggiano (okay, so I'm a cheese snob, except for):
1 package day-glo cheddar cheese powder from a box of Kraft Macaroni 'n' Cheese
1/2 cup chopped parsley
Cracked pepper to taste

Directions: Cook the noodles to al dente. While cooking noodles, sauté the onion and garlic in butter in large saucepan. Add parsley at the last minute; remove from heat. When noodles are a hair away from being done, drain but retain residual pasta water (don't wring them dry).

Put the hot noodles into the saucepan, then add the sour cream, day-glo powder and half the Reggiano. Mix very well with the cooked onions, garlic and parsley. The result should be a pleasingly creamy deep yellow mess. Add the pepper. Serve in individual bowls with the rest of the parmesan. Serve with a bone-in country ham and shots of frozen Smirnoff. Call rehab.

Incidentally, there was a double meaning in the title of this entry. The people who make Kraft Macaroni and Cheese are Philip Morris — the masters of addiction.

The ChefNick Challenge

How civilized are you, food-wise? By which I don't mean you yourself, but your surroundings. For anyone who loves to cook, where you live can be a challenge in itself.

Here's a little test I devised to determine just how civilised your food world is.

The challenge: to find within ten minutes' walking distance of the place you live the following ten items, in no particular order:

1. A salad spinner
2. Mirin
3. Chipotles in Adobo sauce
4. Arugula
5. 12-year-old Scotch
6. Serrano chiles
7. Sushi-grade tuna (not from a sushi shop)
8. Galangal
9. Freshly-sliced salami
10. An espresso pot

All I know is, for living in the downtown area of a major metropolitan city in North America, my score was dismal: 3 out of 10 (I'll tell you which ones later.)

How about you?

My beef with beef

Okay, the heat is on. The other day at a friend's house we ate burgers cooked on a gas grill. The ambient temperature outside was -8 C. We had to shovel the steps leading to the back yard in order to get to the grill. I ground some of the burgers myself, the day before. Grinding your own burgers may seem to some to be a bit extreme, but to me, it's just an extension of the love affair I have with beef. They turned out to be quite good, as usual. But that's the part that bothers me; that's the beef I have with beef.

Because no two beefy experiences I have ever had have been the same. There is no guarantee that the filet mignon I buy from Fred's Market today will taste the same as the one I bought a week ago. This is good, in that I will always be surprised by my next beef experience, but it's not good in that there seems to be little or no consistency with beef shopping, at least in your dreary, garden-variety grocery store. Add a couple of Dateline NBC hidden-camera exposés about grocers relabeling old product and selling it and you're left with an E-colicky taste in your mouth.

I don't pretend I know anything about what's under the hood of my car. I can take it to my mechanic and he can spout anything he wants about turbos and spark plugs and transmissions and I'm completely at his mercy. I don't have a clue what he's talking about, but when he says the solenoid in the draft mechanism needs to be replaced to the tune of $145, I just pay up. I have to; there is no other choice. Which brings me to my point: when I go to the grocery store and the package says "Grain-fed Angus Beef filet mignon" at $45/lb, who am I to quibble? It's gotta be good, right? But the truth is, sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. I've had nights when I've slapped the bastard on the grill for exactly the requisite amount of time and it comes out perfectly, melt-in-your-mouth delicious. But I've had other times, far, too many other times, when it's a chewy, rare mess.

Like plonk-fatigue, the illness provoked from imbibing too many inferior wines from the corner dépanneur, one gets filet fatigue. There has to be something bigger, something that transcends the daily grind, if you will. Something dependably delectable. Something so awesome, so life-affirming, so transcendental, so unattainable, that just the thinking of it leads to a disturbing obsession. Bon dieu, informez-moi. What could that be?

How to make perfect carpaccio.

I'll try to make that a priority next week.

Radish mice

Recently I've been really interested in the presentation of food—the one thing that separates my chicken in wine and mushroom, say, from one served at Caprices de Nicolas. Obviously, when I cook spaghetti for myself, I don't put an artful chiffonade of basil leaves on top, but when it's for someone else, I've been thinking that my cooking needs to go to a new level.

Most of the time you don't even eat the garnish. How many sprigs of parsley have gone untouched back with the busboy on your plates? And you don't lap up that squeeze-bottle squiggle of cilantro-lime reduction after you're done with the Thai Grilled Chicken, do you, but you're kind of glad that it's there. Those small touches always add that indefinable element to your restaurant experience.

A sprig of parsley is a tiny thing and you just don't think about it, but it's really like the curly holly ornament on a Christmas present. It doesn't need to be there, but it makes the whole thing more Christmasy.

Thus, my newfound interest. However, I think that unless you're going to be getting paid for it at your next soirée, making cucumber petunia clusters or radish mice is not an art form you're going to be needing much.

Yet I've been able to find spectacularly little information on the subject. Can you put a thin slice of lemon on a halibut, and will it make the fish taste better? Why not a handful of long-cut spring onions? Or maybe you put the halibut on a single leaf of crisp romaine and drizzle chili oil on top?

I realise that these things are individual choices that make up recipes, but isn't there a general guide to garnishing for the home cook that eschews grand soliloquies that involve melon ball-mushroom flower cutters in favor of some simple, eye-pleasing presentations that will make anyone's cooking look like it was made in a restaurant? What goes well with what? How to make those squeeze-bottle squiggles?

I won't bore you with a list of books on the subject matter that I've looked at, precisely because none of them fits the criteria I just outlined.

Maybe someone should start a webpage on the subject . . .

. . . whadda you looking at??

Mob food

I've always been fascinated with the Mob, in movies and in print, and one thing that seems to run through the whole subject, in fiction or in fact, is food. I own The Mafia Cookbook by Joe "Dogs" Ianuzzi. The Wiseguy Cookbook by Henry Hill. A Goodfella's Guide to New York, by Henry. I own an autographed script of Goodfellas with Henry's moniker on it. I have the film Dinner Rush, and of course I have The Godfather.

How did these guys eat so well while doing such bad things?

Henry Hill, in particular, is in love with food. You can feel it in his recipes. A tried and true one is his recipe for pizza dough. It hasn't failed me yet. Joe Dogs apologises for injecting so much fat into his rich cream sauces and casually talks about whacking some poor fool in the next sentence. Sample item: Sweet Lobster with a Béchamel Sauce. Probably not a dish best served cold.

And the movies are great. I learned about slicing my garlic for the marinara sauce with a razor blade from Goodfellas. And all those rat bastards in The Godfather ever seem to be doing is sitting down to eat and drink—massive amounts—when they're not throwing the dishes around the kitchen, that is. I know that in this case there is a heavy influence from Francis Coppola, who owns his own highly esteemed winery in California. No wonder "the veal is good here" for police captain Sterling Hayden—it's his last meal.

But who would imagine an entire movie set around the nefarious dealings of the Mob in a trendy New York eatery, the plot of which is filled with entire slabs of babble about good food? That would be Dinner Rush. I won't spoil it for you, but you'll get a rush out of the ending.

And of course there's that memorable line when Clemenza has finished dispatching Paulie Gatto in the front seat of a car on the causeway. "Leave the gun—get the cannoli." Stuff like that almost makes me want to screw up my eyebrows in a bad restaurant and say "Look how they've massacred my manicotti."

First the post; now the movie.

I made a small video of my recent insanity trek in first class to Japan. For you curious types, the soundtrack is "Manhattan Serenade" and I liked it because of the luxe overtones. You movie buffs will know where it was made famous.

Goshdarn, I can't get over those gorgeous plates of food. Can you?

Stew

It's an overlooked meal, I think. Or maybe just too ordinary to really get much notice. But stew is pretty much common to all cuisines in one form or another; it's how our ancestors dealt with a pantry whose components were coming to a rapid end and needed to be used. It's called curry in India, tagine in Morocco, bourguignon in France and sukiyaki in Japan, but it's basically stuff shoveled together into a pot with a liquid and simmered for a mite, preferably accompanied by some mind-altering beverage while you're doing it. Low maintenance, high yield.

This one I propose to you here is very simple and has a minimum of exoticness. I guess it's just an all-around one-pot dish that happens to star beef. I'm going on the American or European model here, so let's think Western. But it need not be bland. Let's look at the ingredients: we like garlic. We like onion. We like potatoes. We like top sirloin. We like butter and we love wine.

So here's the list:

Meez:

Four nice cloves garlic, finely chopped
One large or two medium Vidalia onions, roughly chopped
Two or three large carrots, sliced in rounds
Three Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and sliced into 1/2 inch cubes
A couple of pounds of top sirloin, cut in generous 3/4 to one-inch cubes
A cup of full-bodied red wine, like a Merlot or Bordeaux
4 cups of chicken stock
1/4-1/2 cup of parsley (Italian or broadleaf is best)
1 cup kernel corn
1 cup green peas (miniature is good)
2 tablespoons tomato paste
2 tablespoons brown sugar
4 teaspoons olive oil
1 tablespoon butter
Herbes de Provence to taste (thyme especially)

Check out the video for visual directions, but basically, the method is this:

Don't get anal about this recipe—just put in the amount of stuff that you like. Get everything chopped and diced beforehand. Trust me, it's just easier. Put a couple of teaspoons of olive oil into a wide sauté pan and blast it. Toss in the meat, but let it stay on one side for two or three minutes—we're not looking to cook it, but to get a good fond and caramelisation. The meat will be nicely browned—like I say in the video, don't let it boil, we want it to sear, so dump the juices in the vegetable bowl if they get too much—in about ten minutes, if you're doing it right. Sprinkle salt and pepper on it while it sears. Remove from the pan and set aside in a bowl. Now add a couple of tablespoons of olive oil to the hot pan and sauté the onions and carrots on medium high for about ten minutes, then add the garlic. Cook for two minutes more. Put aside in the bowl with the meat.

Pour the wine into the pan you just made the meat in and bring it to a boil for a couple of minutes. Put that into the bowl with all the rest. Now, you will need a clean pan for the potatoes, so wash it out. Melt the butter and add the potatoes when the pan is not quite smoking. Watch the potatoes very carefully, but once they're in the pan, don't turn them over for about 5 minutes. Don't worry, at this point if you're doing it right, the butter won't burn. Now turn the potatoes over so that the other side can brown. This is labor-intensive, but worth it.

We're almost done . . . after about 15 minutes of sautéing the potatoes, add the parsley after turning off the heat.

Now fire up your soup pan—a pot for pasta is good. Put all the ingredients except for the potatoes and parsley into it, adding the chicken broth and tomato paste. It's all downhill from here. About 25 minutes before you plan to eat, add the potato-parsley mixture. Thicken with cornstarch, demiglace powder or onion soup mix. You're gonna be loving this one.

Thoughts on travelling the world in 72 hours

It used to take three months to sail the Pacific from the Americas to Japan. Ninety lice- and flea-ridden sweaty days aboard a leaky ship, scurvy sweeping the crew like a curse from a vengeful undergod, men dying like the flies that swarmed their living selves during the inhumanly long trek. "Many travails," writes Willem Jantszoon, an early Dutch explorer in his ship, the Duyfken. "Moft of the men afflicted with bloody flux or fever. All for the entire purpofef of sampling the miraculous Kobe beef."

Well might Jantszoon have complained. I did the same trip in 72 hours. There were less fleas, but okay, well, no buts, there was no scurvy either. Okay, well, but, I'm about three seconds younger than I would have been had I not made the trip. This is not because of the odd time-lapse phenomenon due to speed travelled minus distance spanned, but because of the restorative powers of sake consumed proportional to time spent horizontal.

So in the persona of my wonderfully relaxed younger incarnation, I did indeed go in search of the much-fabled Kobe beef. This proved a mightily difficult task. Much in the spirit of how most Japanese people have absolutely no idea whether it's more proper to drink sake cold or hot, they proved just as ignorant about what constituted Kobe beef. Really, not a shred of a clue.

From my exhaustive research conducted from the privacy of my laptop, I deduced that the proper item had to be extremely well-marbled. If you've lost me at this point, bear in mind the teachings of acolyte Lao-Tzu: "He who waits before asking for five minutes is with learning imbued; he who waits in line for a Tim Hortons donut is crazy."

But I found out soon enough what the meaning of "well-marbled" is. It is, people, more white than red. Yep, the samples I viewed on display at "Nara Family," the local department store in Nara, were actually more fatty than meaty, if you can visualize that. Riddled with fat. They weren't called Kobe beef—that is a strictly Western appellation—but they were the most heavily marbled pieces of meat I have ever seen.

"So what the hell did it taste like?" you ask, breathlessly. Well, I'll tell you, as soon as I travel to California next month, which is where they came from. Yes, Kobe beef is all grown in the States and re-imported back to Japan.

And I promife thif time I will take photof.

First class to Japan

I hassled the check-in agent in Montreal this morning (this morning? Seems like two weeks ago) good-naturedly. I have a lot of Aeroplan miles, so I'm Elite. Imagine that! But then they sent me lots of coupons that tell me I can upgrade to First. Is life not great? So I hassled her and brandished the coupons, knowing that there wasn't a hope in hell, considering that you probably need a full-fare ticket to qualify for the upgrade, and that it was basically like shouting in the Grand Canyon.

And so it was. Montreal to Vancouver is a spiritless trek on Air Canada. There just isn't anything to recommend it. Foodwise, there is nothing to write about, except that there are exactly two (2) places to sate one's appetite at YUL if you're on your way to somewhere in Canada. Unbelievably pathetic--Moe's Bar and Grill and some tiny Bar at the End of the Universe near Gate 1 (not near where everyone's going at Gates 49 +).

This is an international airport? I've had better at Newark--far better.

But I digress. After the leg at YVR--cold hot dogs at the only "restaurant" in the International terminal, echoing Montreal's sparse hospitality--we boarded the flight to Osaka. About ten minutes after we were settled in 23 H a frazzled stewardess came up to me and told me I had to move up to 4 H. Well, that was good news, except I was having a great conversation with a cute Japanese mother across the aisle. Still, SuddenlySingle FlirtSchool notwithstanding, I and the little boy moved up to First Class.

So what's it like, you ask? Well, in three words or less, not that great.

The seats were vast and we had fun making them extend, expand and twirl, but apart from that, the food was boring--some sort of chicken dish and smoked salmon was all that was offered. But the major crime was that the champagne was far from free-flowing. In fact, it was like pulling teeth to get a glass of white wine--I actually preferred being back with the rabble, where at least I could pay for it. This way, they made you feel like a beggar for every refill.

I'm here for 24 hours—not quite enough for a food story. But I'll be on the job for the food blog!

montrealfood radio

For those of you who may have missed it, Barry and I appeared on a CBC radio show called Home Run on February 23rd. This is an edited version with just Barry and me (mp3, 15.8MB.) Barry's ability to entertain shines through here, while the quailing tremor of the neophyte warbles through my segment. Next time I'll have to break out my food critic joke book ("A pig, a chicken and a food critic go into a restaurant . . . ")

In other news, I will fly to Japan tomorrow. I'll see what food-related items I can rustle up across the pond.

Carroty curls

A question for the teeming hordes: what kind of kitchen tool makes those strings of carrots (or daikon) that you get in Japanese restaurants, sometimes with sushi, or sometimes with stuff like gyoza? Is it this thing?

It seems a bit too industrial-looking. Could there be a smaller device that works?

The Beguiling

Here at montrealfood.com we have a stats page that tells us how many hits we're getting, what country they're from etc. There's also a section that lists who is linking to us. I find it incredibly amusing that in the top 50 referrer pages, three are from, er, beguiling female sources. We are mentioned prominently on their pages here, here and here. Must be my stiff prose.

Prato Pizzeria

Went to Prato Pizzeria tonight to meet a friend who highly recommended it. Barry reviewed it a while ago, and I’ve heard about it many times, so I was curious to sample the product.

It’s a bit eccentric in a couple of ways--you can only get the pizza in one size (around medium) and I get the strong feeling there are no substitutions (no pizza for you!)

Another eccentricity is the lack of servers (the night we were there, although it all fits with Barry’s review.) Basically, there is only one, to deal with what I estimated to be 60 + diners. Like Barry, it took about twenty minutes to get in our order, let alone get some wine. Then it was another half hour till we saw the pizza. But what a pizza it was! Happily rhombozoidly irregular, thin as a Premium cracker and bursting with flavorful ingredients (ours was a Salsiccia--sausage--and our friend’s was the Neapolitan). Very reminiscent of the good thin-crust pizzas from the Bay Area of California, which is where I am from.

There were quibbles, though: the pizzas are served on a type of wax paper and your only implement to cut them is something resembling a cheap steak knife. By the time you cut the slice the paper has become soggy, yet resilient, so when you start sawing away, wads of the paper mix in invisibly with the pizza slice. God forbid if you bite down on a wad, and you’ll know it immediately by the unpleasant resistance between your molars. It's about as pleasant as chowing down on a piece of ground glass. Note to kitchen: you won’t be doing yourselves an injustice by pre-slicing these things. Or at least supply a pizza wheel.

As a side note, I was delighted to notice someone at a table of four nearby and swear I recognised him, even though we’d never met before; just through a photograph online. His name is Ed Hawco and he runs one of the founding blogs of Montreal. I wasn’t sure it was he, however, because I had never met him in the flesh, but there was a gumball machine next to their table and my 4.5 year-old son wanted one, so while I pretended to be fumbling with the quarter, I was hissing just under my breath, then gradually louder and louder until it became a half-bark: “Ed! Hawco! Blork!” (his blog nickname.) Now either I whisper too quietly or someone’s deaf, because he never noticed me, until he came ambling over in our direction on some errand and I practically yelled his name in his ear. Of course, he was very puzzled as to why a complete stranger was yelling his name in his ear. That’s what it must be like to be famous.

Anyway, I highly recommend Prato for the pizza, but ask for a separate plate that you can cut it on and be prepared to wait a looong time to get served.

And say hi to Blork when you’re there.