A.G. Newsletter #39: Bouchon Bakery, Joseph Leonard, Lizards!, Cafe Boulud (Palm Beach), Bice
Hello Readers,
First of all: a Happy Mother's Day to all the mamas out there! I was a very good son this Mother's Day weekend, having flown home to be with my mom on this very important national holiday. I even convinced her to let me show her refrigerator to the world, and you can watch a video of it on the blog.
Right before I left, I'd caused something of a sensation on The Huffington Post with my article: "10 Things You're Doing Wrong At Restaurants." I kind of knew, when I wrote it, that the piece would get some traction (it has a hooky title), but as of this e-mail, it currently has 1,119 comments, more comments than anything I've ever written online in my life. I wrote another piece for them that should appear online later this week. Stay tuned for that.
Ok, now for some pictures of food and people....
Last week, I met my friends Morgan & Phil for lunch at the Bouchon Bakery in the Time Warner Center. I've been there many times before (see, for example, here) and though I've loved it in the past, this time, I thought it was just ok. Especially this sandwich:
Morgan and I shared the tuna tartine (which is still very good) and then the sandwich you see above which was listed as a "squash sandwich" (Phil was wary) and was basically warm zucchini and yellow squash on bread. It tastes as good as it sounds which is to say... meh.
Then, on Thursday when I was leaving for Boca, I convinced Craig to join me for breakfast before he left for work and I left for the airport. We decided to breakfast at Joseph Leonard.
If you're going to have a weekday breakfast in the West Village, Joseph Leonard is the place to do it. So much sunlight! Seriously, I don't know why magazines and newspapers bother ranking prices, wines, food.... they should simply have a graph that reveals how much natural light a restaurant gets and I'd use that as my primary guide. It matters to me very much.
Look at all that sunlight hitting Craig's face while he eats his egg sandwich:
As for the egg sandwich, it happened to be excellent.... served on a croissant with roasted Brussels sprouts & Sriracha:
At first I thought the Sriracha was too aggressive for early in the morning, but once I stirred it around, it offered a nice, pleasant heat to the proceedings.
And then it was off to the airport....
Once my parents picked me up and took me home from Ft. Lauderdale, I took a picture of a lizard on my front porch because Craig loves lizards and I figured "not everyone has lizards where they live":
That first night, my sister-in-law Tali cooked a lovely dinner that was so nice, I may blog about it this week. (I need her recipe for schnitzel so I can write about it.)
The next day, my parents drove me up to West Palm Beach--a tradition, at this point--where we ate lunch at Cafe Boulud (another tradition, for any other long-time readers of this newsletter.)
Cafe Boulud in Palm Beach has a really nice prix fixe lunch. For my first course, I had an elegant riff on whitefish salad:
Tasty! And elegant!
For my entree, I had a mushroom bolognese that was so meaty and rich, it was hard to believe that all of that came simply from the mushrooms:
My dad skipped the prix fixe and had a burger instead. He was happy:
For dessert, mom got a raspberry chocolate sundae with her prix fixe:
And I had a lemon cheesecake that was surprisingly light:
Here's a picture of Daniel Boulud & his mom that appeared with the check; very cute:
Well between that meal and Sunday (Mother's Day), we ate many other wonderful things, most notably, stone crabs at Joe's Stone Crab (which I plan to write about this week too.) And then, for Mother's Day brunch, we drove back to Palm Beach and went to one of my mom's favorite places, Bice.
Here I am with the Mother's Day mother:
And here's what I ate; in short order, Caesar salad, orecchiette with broccoli rabe & sun-dried tomatoes, and Tartufo for dessert:
Mom was very happy and I was too.
Ok, well I am writing this on Sunday night from Florida (I plan to post it Monday morning before leaving for the airport)....
Until next week!
Your friend,
Adam (The Amateur Gourmet)
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