market research: olive oil

For research for my recent olive oil primer story for amNY I went straight to the source: Steve Jenkins of Fairway Market, a self-professed “idiot savant who’s whacked out about olive oil.” His knowledge is the kind that is cultivated over time, driven by passion — and let me tell you, the man loves his olive oil.

We talked for just over 30 minutes and exchanged approximately 3,870 words, of which about 120 made it onto the page. Here are another couple hundred of my favorites: 

On good olive oil: “Really good ones are gonna have a medium brilliance and cheerfulness about them. So much personality.” 

On taste: “Everybody’s different. So maybe you want an olive oil that’s really gentle and has got some citrus-y notes and some herb to it. On the other hand, if you’re like me you’ve got to bombard your senses, you want something that’s really robust and has got some bitterness to it, black pepper to it, that’s maybe going to make your tongue tickle or make you want to cough when you taste it.

go forth and multiply

My lurking obsession with typefaces periodically surfaces on this blog in one form or another, and we’re overdue for a sighting. So thanks to Serious Eats for catching a story in Print magazine in which typeface designers Nick and Adam Hayes marvel at the discovery of a NYC street food vendor — in this case, the Calexico cart in SoHo — using their font: 

“We’ve also found this strange use of Monark for a street vendor selling Mexican food [in Soho, New York City]. They used Monark for the menu and the logotype. I have no idea why a street vendor would use Monark to promote their services, because it was a typeface originally designed for a magazine. We love waiting and watching for our typefaces to pop up in the strangest places. This has got to be one of our favorites!”

My obsession with type doesn’t stem from its mathematical principles. Or the aesthetics of typeface design (serifs! spacing!). But rather in how typography is so different from the other creative arts: once a typeface is finished, the artist largely relinquishes control. 

… and it’s how they meet again that’s the interesting part: In the Print magazine article, type designer Mark Simonson talks about how he receives junk mail in Felt Tip Roman, the typeface he designed after his own handwriting. His reaction? “It doesn’t fool me for a second.”

notes from the aisle: going greek

tzatziki prep

A few weeks ago I holed up in a friend’s kitchen for an evening and made like Martha Stewart, taste-testing a handful of common supermarket brands of Greek yogurt (or “Greek style” yogurt, as the underwhelming Trader Joe’s version claims), in the full range of milkfat available: regular, 2% and 0%.

Lo and behold, Fage, which all other brands are attempting to emulate, is rightfully still the standard-bearer. My stream-of-consciousness tasting notes for Fage Total (blog exclusive!) read as follows: “smooth, thick you can almost taste it frozen, icy; YUM. Melt in your mouth, richness, tang a final note. Vague guilty pleasure feeling of eating sour cream out of the container, but thicker! Better!”

The complete findings, along with a short interview with a local nutritionist and a pair of recipes, are out tomorrow in amNewYork: “Explore Another ‘Culture’: Go Greek.”

live blogging: veselka bacon cheeseburger

The genesis: I’ve been thinking about live blogging as a form for some months (years?), and I’ve been thinking about food for my entire life. Live blogging. Food. Food. Live blogging. Food. mmm … 

There was, of course, a lot of other miscellany in between, but in the interest of (my) attention span, let’s fast forward to the realization that the only live blogging events I’ve ever been interested in are about food or food-related events — i.e. Gawker’s live blogging of the opening of the Whole Foods on Houston and Bowery, or the first live-blogged restaurant review by a real critic. So tonight I decided, let’s order some take-out and do this thing:

WHAT: Bacon cheeseburger, medium rare, to-go

WHERE: Veselka Restaurant, 144 2nd Avenue at E. 9th Street, 212.228.9682 

WHY: It’s been named the best, or among of the best, burgers in New York City by such burger aficionados as Josh Ozersky, editor of The Feedbag (see RSS at right) also formerly of NY Mag’s Grub Street blog, and also Nick Solares of Beef Aficionado, who also blogs for A Hamburger Today.

8:07 p. Order from the take-out register at Veselka. Scan the side options (fries/home fries/potato salad) and opt for the later. 

8:08 p. Misread the sides, doh! To order some starch is apparently “deluxe”, aka an extra $1.75. I reorder burger solo. Fork over $10.02. 

8:14 p. I walk out the door, briskly. I’m always wary about taking burgers to-go, nothing’s worse than a cold burger/damp soggy bun/cheese that has melted and then re-solidified into some oozing awkward shape.

8:20 p. Home. Tear into the white paper bag that I’ve been catching bacony-cheesey wiffs of from all the way home. First thought: holy shit that’s big. (Insert wry dirty joke here, I did.) Nearly fills the entire girth space of the circular to-go container. 

8:25 p. inspection

8:21 p. First inspection of burger. Holy shit that’s big (yes, again). Huh. No L/T/O. Well I guess that’s how Velseka rolls. Doctor up with a pair of ketchup packets. First bite. … Executive decision: A burger this big needs a little roughage. Dive into fridge for lettuce mix, bit of red onion. Ahhh much better.

8:25 p. WTF, I haven’t even made a dent. Good burger though, passes inspection. Wide, evenly formed patty. Nibbling at the meat around the sides to taste “just” the beef. Nice char. A bun that can take care of business. Pink inside, yum.

8:30 p. Still haven’t made a dent. Wondering if I’m going to be able to manhandle (womanhandle?) this burger or if it’s going to get the best of me. Damn I need a beer.

history a la carte: Gold earns Pulitzer for food criticism

I don’t remember when I picked up Counter Intelligence: Where to Eat in the Real Los Angeles . I think I bought it as a gift, and doubled back to the bookstore a few weeks later to pick one up for myself. Or maybe I gave away my first copy, edges slightly tattered from months (years?) of riding in the passenger’s door pocket of my Honda Civic (truly, the only book I’ve ever granted permanent status in my vehicle), to a new friend, who also happened to be a new Angeleno. Revise that. Not the permanent status part. Same new friend, who was new. I drove to three different bookstores between La Cienega and Third Street Promenade to track down a fresh, new copy of Counter Intelligence: Where to Eat in the Real Los Angeles to give to her for a gift exchange around the holidays. Several years after it was first published, Gold’s book was sold out at two of three Border’s locations.

I’m not even sure how I found Gold: book or column (of the same name), and which inspired a devoted allegiance to the other? But as two visual memories stand out sharply against the rest, I’m hedging my bests that I first saw, and bought, Counter Intelligence, the book, in the UCLA bookstore, shortly after it was published because I can remember what it looked like on display there. And I’ll hedge my bets that I first read Gold (at least, with any association of him being Gold), when I first opened the book to the first page of the introduction, because the second starkly visual image I can see now in my mind is of Pico Boulevard, that vast Los Angeles artery, stretching from the Westside towards downtown, neighborhoods changing, languages changing, and a few things remaining essentially the same: the sense of community, and the food.

In the introduction, Gold looks back to his pre-Weekly days, when he was a young copywriter (editor?) at a downtown newspaper. He describes driving down Pico Boulevard, his wonder at the many varied cultures. And he describes the monumentous task he set for himself: I decided I was going to eat my way down Pico Boulevard.

And so he did. Little did Gold know where Pico Boulevard would take him. He transferred to a job at the L.A. Weekly, and, a couple of years later, the debut of his weekly food column, “Counter Intelligence.” Now, twenty years later, the first Pulitzer Prize ever awarded a food critic. And with good reason. To pull from two examples the Pulitzer committee has posted of his ’06 columns, Gold is equally at home chasing down his favorite taco truck for the ephermial ecstasy of a couple of tacos al carbon as he is a $120 kobe steak at Wolfgang Puck’s white-on-white-on-white minimalist venture at The Regent Beverly Wilshire (yes, the Pretty Woman hotel). The brilliance of his writing is, yes, he always gets around to talking about the food in critic-terms—and it’s some of the most spot-on food writing you’ll ever read—but his columns are woven with stories of cultures and traditions and Los Angeles nostalgia and travel, all within the one address on Pico Boulevard.

I always knew you were good.