Roving Gastronome: The Blog

Back in Astoria, alhamdulillah. Back in the US, meh. After eating all kinds of fresh tastiness in Mexico, I’m reminded of the idiocy of US farm subsidies by an op-ed in the New York Times: “My Forbidden Fruits (and Vegetables),” in which a Minnesota vegetable farmer relates how he actually had to pay fines for growing produce, rather than commodity crops like corn and rice. How can American government praise free markets everywhere but on the country’s own farmland? File with a similar question re: democracy. Grump, grump, grump.

In good news, however, I ate at Philoxenia last night–the reincarnated Philoxenia. The old one was up on 23rd Avenue, and it felt like eating in someone’s living room. One night I dug into a big plate of the heartiest kind of pork stew with hints of orange and cinnamon, the kind of thing you’d normally only get in someone’s house, while a table of 20 people celebrated a birthday. I thought the party was winding down when an older woman got up and put on her floor-length fur coat–but then she went on to sing and dance for the whole crowd.

Well, it turns out Philoxenia maybe was in someone’s living room–there were some permit issues, I heard. Now it’s all legit, and settled into my dream restaurant space on 34th Avenue, near 33rd Street. In the years when I was considering opening a cafe, that space seemed ideal, quiet but on a well-walked block–with an apartment above, even. It has been host to a couple of Mexican restaurants, and an excellent Peruvian bar. The whole time, the back room has been weird and shadowy and not very well used.

The Philoxenia team has opened up that back room and done it up like…a living room. Complete with a rocking chair sitting by the gas fireplace in the back. Totally adorable, and a good choice, considering it’s a pretty big space that in the wrong hands could feel a bit catering hall-y.

The menu, at first glance, looks pretty spare. Some salads, some mezze. Grilled fish. Lamb chops. If you don’t know what you’re hankering for, it might seem a little uninspiring. Fortunately, we were starving, and we also knew from our experiences in the old place that we were in good hands. We ordered a pikilia–a little mix of the spready mezze, the sort of thing where there’s always one clunker. But no–excellent fresh-and-garlicky tzatziki (up there with Kyklades’), really solid eggplant salad with a nice vinegary bite but still smooth, and good feta spread and mellow taramosalata. And we got a super-charred octopus tentacle–also nice and vinegary.

Then we moved in on the specials: avgolemono soup, ideal for my vague feeling of maybe a cold coming on, plus a main dish of rooster with pasta. How can I explain how good this was? Liberal use of chicken fat (the skin was still on) in the tomato sauce gave this an amazingly soft mouth-feel, and the cinnamon was so delicate and also soft. Perfect winter food.

To lighten up, we also had a grilled dorado, and a side of dandelion greens. Those greens were especially nice–not overcooked, good texture. I could feel the vitamins and minerals coursing through my veins.

Oh, and of course we had some french fries with cheese and oregano, and a Greek salad, a virtual bucketful. All that food fed four of us more than generously, and we didn’t even have a chance to try any of the other mezze. When we couldn’t face dessert or coffee, our waiter brought us all little tiny glasses of really nice dessert wine, which hit the spot. Total bill was just $100. Reminded me of the good old days of Astoria dining. More realistically, I guess that’s what happens when you don’t drink much, for a change–we had just a half-liter of very drinkable house red.

I went away feeling like I’d had a home-cooked meal, which is a rare and wonderful thing. The living room may be bigger, but I felt just as at home.

Yo heart Astoria mas que nunca!

I’m skeptical of any organization that uses the words ‘Freedom’ or ‘Facts’ in its name, as it’s pretty much a guarantee of neither. (OK, Peter points out that Drug War Facts is legit.)

So yesterday I was poking around to see who’s putting those ‘PETA Kills Animals’ ads in the newspapers (not because I’m a huge PETA fan, but because it’s interesting they’re comparing PETA to whathisname Vick, who I think people are freaking out about way too much).

And I discover the extra-creepy Center for Consumer Freedom. First, it’s a .com, and not a .org, and then you can see the super-conservative, l-heart-mega-corporations interpretation of the food debate. Our food supply, is just fine, thanks, Americans are not grossly obese (this is hard to argue with, but they do), and mad-cow disease is no big deal (I actually didn’t read this because I was getting too depressed, but I’m guessing that’s their stance).

The positive spin: grassroots change in food is becoming such a force that corporations (via some consulting firm run by a senator, if I read the PETA conspiracy page correctly) are feeling like they have to push back. The negative: they have all the money in the world, and a lot of people don’t care either way, so they will surely win.

I hate my ‘freedom.’

Matt over at Post Haste Taste blogs about sustainable agriculture, and how eating normal, unprocessed food for dinner, even if it is poor demonized potatoes, is just not going to kill you.

He has a good thoughtful essay on why the current food system in the US is failing, and how it could be better. A popular topic, to be sure, but this one works in the Patton Oswalt joke about those gross KFC Chicken Bowls, and includes the chilling intimation that Mexican soda companies might start using corn syrup after all. When I can’t get a good cane-sugar Coca-Cola south of the border, that is a sure sign of the apocalypse.

A while back, I posted a portion of Dan Barber’s editorial on the Farm Bill.

Now plans for the new bill are getting a little more concrete, and the editorials are a bit more frequent. First, Michael Pollan wrote a sensible, succinct piece for the New York Times Magazine, last Sunday, “You Are What You Grow.” As usual, he cuts to the essential problem in a very tidy way: Twinkies, calorie for calorie, are cheaper than carrots, which makes no sense. Produce prices have risen 40 percent over 15 years, while soda prices have dropped 23 percent. This is all due to the Farm Bill’s support of large-scale commodities farmers, rather than farmers who actually grow immediately edible food.

The Albuquerque Tribune also has a nice editorial, “Food Fight,” by Daniel Imhoff, which gets into the politics of the bill a bit more. It also points out (I didn’t know this) that about half the money from the bill goes to food stamps, school lunches and similar programs.

So there’s this nasty irony that if the antihunger people want to preserve food stamps, they have to get together with the large-scale farmers–who are getting a grossly disproportionate amount of the money, and who then produce soy, corn, etc. to make the super-cheap food that makes people on food stamps fat and diabetic.

Now is the time for cranky letters suggesting that Farm Bill money be used to encourage food crops, rather than commodities crops. Contact Hillary Clinton, Charles Schumer and (if you’re in Queens) Carolyn Maloney.

Here’s a suggested outline for a letter you could send (just scroll past Bono at the top).

Burger King to Serve Up Cage-Free Food, go the reports on the wires today. The fast-food co. plans to order more of its meat and eggs from producers who “do not keep their animals in cages and crates.”

This looks like great news, but the cynic in me is just counting down the seconds till the words “crate” and “cage” get redefined. Also, the current percentages of BK ingredients from such enlightened producers is 10 percent of its pork and all of 2 percent of their eggs–the latter is set to double by the end of the year. And it’s not like I go to BK to order pork or eggs.

Still, it’s a start.

Skipping over the gastronomic adventures of the past couple weeks, I’ll get right to the terrible bit of information I just discovered.

We got into Amsterdam day before last. Yesterday morning Karine popped out to the grocery store to pick up some breakfast provisions, including a small jar of Nutella. When I saw the Nutella, I sighed. “Delicious,” I thought, “but all that nasty hydrogenation…” I felt a bit wistful for the days before I knew how horrible hydrogenated fat was, before I could graphically envision every Jif sandwich I’ve ever eaten, all still stuck there on the walls of my arteries.

Later, when I was savoring my Nutella on a day-old baguette (what—you thought I wouldn’t actually eat it?), I looked at the ingredients: sugar, peanut oil, hazelnuts, cocoa, skim milk powder, whey powder, soya lecithin, unspecified “aroma.” No word, in Dutch or French, remotely resembling “hydrogenated.”

About the same time, Karine said, “A friend of mine says European Nutella is better than the American version, but I can’t remember why.”

A flurry of Internet research ensued, and lo, American Nutella contains:

Sugar, Peanut Oil, Hazelnuts, Cocoa, Skim Milk, Reduced Minerals, Whey, Partially Hydrogenated Peanut Oil, Soy Lecithin; An Emulsifier, Vanillin; An Artificial Flavor.

So—what?! Americans are so squeamish that any possibility of visible liquid oil needs to be eradicated? Americans stock their bunkers at Sam’s Club, and require their Nutella have a shelf life of 10 years? Americans only have one mental category for bread-spread, so everything must behave exactly like Jif? Either one of these things, or the American food industry is actively trying to kill its customers, which is untenable from a business standpoint.

Now I feel it’s my duty to eat as much Euro Nutella as possible before I return to the US next Wednesday. Excuse me–it’s breakfast time.

Joey in Astoria had this to say in a rundown of Queens-y blogs:

Roving Gastronome is sort of random in my opinion, but claims Astorianess.

Of course I got all huffy for about 3 seconds, and then I realized: Coverage of my toilet-lid exploits is random. And I haven’t mentioned Astoria specifically in I can’t remember how long.

So here it is again, lest we forget: I fucking love Astoria!

And I promise to get a bit more focused narrative going in future posts. Can I blame the current random tone on the bacteria coursing through my veins?

Omigod, which reminds me: Remember my fear of gout, and its possible ending my decadent gourment lifestyle? Well, that’s not what I have. It’s worse. (Or I think it is–still waiting on blood tests to confirm.)

I think I’m sick because I ate raw-milk cheese. How completely unfair. I mean, I adore little goats–they’re absolutely lovely, with their floppy ears and little noses. How can they make me sick?

And even more outrageous, how can the US government be right?! Of course the USDA is crazy to ban young cheeses made from unpasteurized milk. Of course those people who smuggle stinky fromage back in their socks are heroes. I mean, Max McCalman himself said he feeds raw-milk cheese to his daughter. (But maybe that’s part of the reason he’s divorced. Still, I admired him when I heard him say that.)

Other than eating some funky goat cheese in Greece and Turkey, I can’t remember a single thing I did this summer that would’ve exposed me to heart-infection-causing bacteria. Unless…that night in Sofia…it’s sort of a blur…we had that whole bottle of pear brandy…I suppose I could’ve blacked out the part where I was frolicking in the post-Soviet fields with pregnant livestock (that’s the other risk factor).

That’s the news, kids. I swear I’ll be more coherent once the meds kick in. Long live Astoria!

Peter’s at it again. I’d say he’s kicking my ass, but then I remembered my spirit of non-competitiveness. But that orange juice thing is truly horrifying. When I read that, I felt like I was in one of those nightmares where everywhere you turn, the door slams shut and then you’re trapped in this little corridor. Like the hydrogenation-industrial complex is actually devoted to ferreting out the little loopholes to healthy food, like normal OJ, and closing them right up.

I am so looking forward to the demise of the processed-food industry, now that people finally realize that hydrogenated fat is evil. (Click soon–expires in a week.) Duh–if the fat is forced to stay solid at room temperature, why do you think it will behave differently inside your body?

The sweetest turn of events:

“There was a lot of resistance from the scientific community because a lot of people had made their careers telling people to eat margarine instead of butter,” said Walter Willett, chairman of the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health and one of a handful of medical researchers who have led the fight against trans fat. “When I was a physician in the 1980’s, that’s what I was telling people to do and unfortunately we were often sending them to their graves prematurely.”

Now I’m going to eat a natural peanut butter sandwich, and feel smug. And thank my parents for always using butter, and withholding Jif even when I whined and moaned.

This, from my mother in an email:

“…lunch at applebee’s which surprised me by being good… who knew? or am i really turning into country mouse, satisfied with barley? shoot me…!”

Well, I have heard that Applebee’s is the finest of the mall-parking-lot restaurants. I realize it’s a lot easier to be a city mouse when you actually live in the city. When I lived in Indiana, we got into eating this casserole that involved chicken breasts, blue-cheese dressing and a frozen pizza flopped upside down over the whole thing then stuck in the oven to bake. If that’s not rural American barley, I don’t know what is. Applebee’s, are you listening?

But I’m not too worried about my mother….wait, what about that day I took her to Krispy Kreme for the first time, and she was wild-eyed and raving “Go buy me another!” with a little fleck of ‘kreme’ (whipped hydrogenation) on her lip? An anomoly–and who wasn’t brought so low by their first KK, anyway? But the day she says something about margarine being just as good, well, that’s when I’ll send in the troops to bring her to Astoria.