Four Items - A Boot, A Beard, A New Trio, A New Bakery

I'm willing to confess that I've tended to enjoy bands influenced by the Velvet Underground more than the VU themselves, which may explain why I enjoyed this (probably old news to VU fanatics but new to me) live bootleg recording - purportedly recorded from a mic placed inside Lou's amp - better than almost any VU I've heard. Wherever the mic really was, the mix is very heavy on guitars, with drums and organ audible and vocals faint to non-existent (I believe this is the Reed-Morrison-Yule-Tucker lineup). If it hasn't already been done, somebody should start a band doing instrumental versions of VU songs. But make sure the guitars are plenty loud.

Two other guitar-centric items:

Having taken a pass on most of Bob Pollard's many, many post-GBV releases, I'd been meaning to check out more of his Boston Spaceships project and was finally pushed to shell out for one of the albums by Tom Scharpling's endorsement of Let It Beard on the Best Show. (It's the latest from the Spaceships, but I'm going to assume that Pollard has released something else in the four weeks or so the record has been out.) Beard's got only two fewer tracks than Alien Lanes (26 vs. 28) but close to double the run time. I wouldn't mind some of the songs being tightened up a bit, or even radically truncated early-GBV style, but the BS's generally make good use of the extra length and the hit-to-dud ratio is pretty high here. Choice cuts include "Chevy Marigold", "Earmarked for Collison", "I Took on the London Guys", "Red Bodies", "The Vicelords"(!) and "German Field of Shadows". Unfortunately, after those last two, "Speed Bumps" is a speed bump in the album sequence, a missed opportunity (Pollard's lyrics, about driving-while-texting or something, don't live up to the great bouncy backing track) that interrupts the record's cruise to the finish line.

I saw the first set of Paul Motian's new trio (billed, straightforwardly enough, as Paul Motian's New Trio, probably a reference to the fact that it has the same sax-guitar-drums lineup as Motian's longest-running trio with Joe Lovano and Bill Frisell) at the Village Vanguard last night and I think the drummer has another winner on his hands. Ben Monder, who's played with Motian in several different configurations, is a guitar monster who deserves wider recognition. His guitar sound ranged from atmospheric to menacing evil in the course of the hour-long set. The new element was Parisian native Jerome Sabbagh on tenor. Not having heard him before, I sampled some tracks on his website (many featuring Monder) and immediately got the impression that this was a guy who was already operating in Paul Motian's general sound neighborhood, an impression borne out by his performance with the trio. Sabbagh might have negotiated the standards a bit better than the Motian tunes (which seems natural for a first time out), but he was compelling throughout, and I'm tempted to check in again later in the week to see how this group develops.

On a last, non-musical note, the place I've been touting as the best bakery in NYC to anyone who would listen, Almondine (in Red Hook and Park Slope), has some competition from a new Cobble Hill spot, Bien Cuit on Smith St. I need to try more of their breads, but the baguette is more than solid and I'd put the pastries up against any in the city. Based on the evidence so far, this is the real artisan bakery deal, of the kind that seems to be more often seen on the West Coast (where artisan bakeries were an actual thing before the word "artisan" got degraded to a laugh line through rampant overuse) and only aspired to here. Going in the afternoon after Irene, when they were just reopening, was like a non-early-rising bakery lover's dream. It was mid-afternoon but everything was fresh out of the ovens.

The Selected Ballads Selects...Coffee and Baked Goods

Stumptown is my go-to supplier for coffee beans, as they have a great selection, they get consistently good beans, and they seem to know how to roast to just the right level. Just about everything I try from them makes a great cup of coffee, though I tend to like the Guatemalan and Ethiopian coffees the best. Hopefully this was an anomaly, but on my last trip to the Ace Hotel location, I had a hard time finding any beans roasted most recently than a week before. I feel a little silly even mentioning this, but Stumptown has spoiled me with their usually dependable freshness (often selling beans roasted the previous day), and after all, the beans only have to make it from Red Hook to the Flatiron. When I see Stumptown for sale in Brooklyn stores like Union Market and Blue Apron, it's much more common to see that they've been sitting around for a week or two.

After running out of my last bag of Stumptown beans, I decided to give Gorilla Coffee another try. I'd written their coffee off as overroasted, with the consistently heavy hand on the roaster eliminating flavor differences between single-source beans from different parts of the world, but based on the Guatemalan beans I just bought from them, they seem to have eased up, much to the coffee's benefit. After only one cup, I can't judge the new-and-improved Gorilla yet, but if I was going to name some honorable mentions behind Stumptown, the first two that come to mind are La Colombe, the Philly roaster that now has cafes in Manhattan, and Blue Bottle, the San Fran "microroaster" with a Williamsburg location. Blue Bottle is probably Stumptown's nearest competitor in quality and attention to detail in their cafe - they've been getting serious with their baked goods lately and they serve NYC's best (and possibly most expensive) iced coffee. La Colombe takes a different (Italian-influenced) approach, focusing on blending rather than single-source coffee, and roasting darker across the board. Though I tend to like lighter roasts than the typical La Colombe coffee, they seem to really know what they're doing, and if I'm in the mood to switch things up with a darker roast, I'll go with one of their blends. Intelligentsia beans (from Chicago), some of the best in the country, are available at a couple places in NYC, but haven't been fresh when I've looked at them as I don't think they're being roasted locally. I'll pick up a bag next time I'm in Chicago.

[Update: good piece on Stumptown here - "the Jesus Christ of caffeinated beverages"]
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For me, the undisputed king of NYC bakeries is still Almondine - their bread is the best (they wisely stick to a few basic French styles that they've mastered, rather than trying to be everything to everybody) and they can contend with anyone in the pastry and cake department (I was very fortunate to receive some of Almondine's superb macarons as a gift recently). Grandaisy is not far behind, though, and may be the best bakery in Manhattan, also very strong in both bread and sweet stuff (my observations are based on the W 72nd St location). In Brooklyn, Marlow & Sons, though only having a small pastry case at the front of the restaurant, produces consistently excellent scones, biscuits, and the like. I also tried Peels on the Bowery for the first time recently, and the two items I got (a biscuit and a banana donut) were enough to convince me of its potential elite baked goods status.


Venturing into still sweeter realms, I was in Yorkville for the first time in some time over the weekend and stopped in at Two Little Red Hens. I was glad to be reassured that it's still the place to go for unpretentious and unashamedly sweet and rich desserts - cookies, lemon (or lime-coconut) bars, cakes/cupcakes, and though they didn't have it when I stopped in, the best cake/loaf-style gingerbread I know of. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately for my health), I didn't make it to neighborhood landmark and old-school butter-bomb cookie and pastry provider Glaser's. I need to get back there for what may be the world's greatest prune danish before they go on their annual extended summer break.

On the doughnut front, I've been hearing great things about Dough, the new place in Clinton Hill. While a still-warm dulce de leche from Doughnut Plant has put doubt into my mind at least once and Pies 'n' Thighs puts out a fine product (though they don't taste quite as good as they look - P'n'T might have, to my eye, the most visually appealing donuts in town), I still haven't found any place that seriously challenges Greenpoint's Peter Pan for NYC donut supremacy. I do tend to favor the purity of an unadorned or lightly glazed cake donut over the yeast-raised, heavily-iced-in-exotic-flavors style Dough seems to be working in, but I look forward to trying their offerings with an open mind. I've somehow not mentioned pie in this post, but Four & Twenty Blackbirds in the Gowanus is also high on my list of places to try.

As a final note, I'm pretty sure I got fatter just by typing the second half of this post.

Notes From The West Coast, Part Two - Food

The second installment of my notes from a recent trip to the SF Bay Area and points north, in which The Selected Ballads tries his hand at food writing. The third and, mercifully, final installment will be stuff I drank.

Acme Bread - Berkeley, CA
I've been describing this place to people as looking like the photos in coffee table books about bread - everything about it is pure, archetypal artisan bakery. This location (the original?) is mostly a working bakery with only a small walk-in sales area, leading to a perpetual line out the door. I tried Acme a few times during my stay in the Bay Area, but on my first visit I was thrown off by the local convention of labeling non-sourdough breads as "sweet" (as in "sweet baguette" rather than just "baguette").

I've eaten a lot of bread in NYC, and I'd say that only Almondine and Sullivan Street are in Acme's league. Unfortunately, I didn't get to find out who else in the Bay Area is in Acme's league - maybe on my next West Coast trip.

Flour + Water - San Francisco, CA
Apparently, this place has had a lot of buzz in SF food circles over the past year, as evidenced by the crowd assembled outside the door 15 or 20 minutes before they opened for dinner. The menu is split evenly between pizza and pasta, with some ambitious appetizers and mains, but I seemed to be one of the few diners who ordered pizza. Maybe pizza as an upscale dinner option hasn't quite caught on in SF the way it has in NYC. In any case, the pizza (size and shape conforming to the lately en vogue Neapolitan style) was quite good, especially the crust, as might be expected from the restaurant's name. (Adam Kuban of Slice was not overly impressed, though he also noticed that most diners didn't seem to be there for the pies.)

What I tasted of my dining companion's pasta was also good - pastas made in-house from unusual ingredients (like beets) seem to be the focus. We also had a lamb's tongue and potato appetizer. I was initially thinking that lamb's tongue might be a green (turns out I was thinking of lamb's ear), but of course it turned out to be exactly what it said it was - the tongue of a lamb - and it was delicious.

Cafe Reyes - Point Reyes Station, CA
I had another good pizza at Cafe Reyes, near Tomales Bay, one of the major spots for oysters on the West Coast. I was slightly disappointed the cafe didn't offer the local specialty, BBQ oysters, but in the end I was happy I ate them raw. I'm not really a great oyster lover, but eating these was an intense sensory experience, tasting so strongly and purely of the ocean that they produced sense-memories of childhood beach vacations (seriously).

Returning to the pizza, I ordered it because it was clear that they took their pizza (a little too?) seriously - prominently displayed peels, wood-burning oven in full view, flour info on the menu. As with Flour + Water, the crust was the highlight, though I may have erred in ordering sausage - the overgenerous portion of crumbled topping caused severe "tip dip" and overwhelmed the sauce and cheese.

El Dorado Kitchen - Sonoma, CA
The trendy boutique hotel vibe of this restaurant was cause for trepidation, but it turned out to be a good experience, with some well thought-out food and old-fashioned good service. Cheese and charcuterie plates were the highlight, each meat and cheese successfully paired with some complimentary flavor (honey, sauerkraut, and prunes were involved, among other things) instead of just being sliced and arranged on a board.

Eaten Lately, NYC (#1 in a Series)

Almondine Baguette at Almondine

Almondine, in DUMBO, showed up on my radar screen when Cornell history professor and French bread expert/fanatic Steven Kaplan rated theirs the best baguette in NYC (not a great distinction in Kaplan's bread worldview) in a taste (and smell and feel) test organized by NY Magazine.

As a bread lover and amateur baker, I'm mildly to moderately obsessed with Kaplan. I heard him several years ago on NPR (probably The Splendid Table) and found it amazing that an American (a Brooklynite, no less) could be recognized by the French as the expert on their bread. I was seriously tempted to buy his untranslated French-only guide to Parisian boulangeries when I encountered the only copy I've ever seen (at the Upper East Side's Kitchen Arts & Letters), even though I can't read French and wasn't planning a trip to Paris anytime soon. And of course, his appearance on Conan in which he engaged in some heavy petting with a baguette (seems to be gone from YouTube, but worth tracking down if you can) just reinforced my fascination with this strange, brilliant man.

Before I get to Almondine's bread, here are some choice Kaplan quotes taken from the NYC baguette showdown (linked above) and a separate NY Mag interview:

“It’s as if the female crumb has completely reduced the male crust to helpless impotence.”

"...I yearn for a symbiotic relationship between crust and crumb. I covet the voluptuousness of a fleshy crumb, laden with aromas, tightly embraced by a virile, caramelized crust, together dancing a tango of flavor."

“It’s insipid. It lacks sapidity."

"If the baguette is engaging in appearance, if it emits a bewitching bouquet of aromas, if it's crusty and sings to me under my caress, if I suspect that it will be a sumptuous treat, then I will eat it on the way home from the bakery. Such a baguette needs no accompaniment — neither butter nor cheese nor jam." (Though I wouldn't express it quite this way, I'm in complete agreement with Kaplan's sentiments on this one.)

So, on to Almondine's bread. They offer a traditional baguette (I'm guessing that Kaplan would point out that the term "French baguette" is redundant) and an Almondine baguette, which is shorter, a bit plumper in the middle, and with pointier ends than the traditional style. While the difference in shape is more obvious, the use of whole wheat flour in combination with white flour is what really makes the Almondine a distinct offering.

In any case, the Almondine is what I had and it didn't last long, not even making it out of DUMBO. I don't have an elaborate Kaplanesque point system, but I've eaten enough bread to know this was excellent. Great, contrasting textures inside (crumb) and out (crust), and whatever the proportion of whole wheat is, it really makes a nice contribution to the flavor. Next time I'll try the traditional version.

I should do a roundup of other NYC bread highlights at some point, and I'll have to work in something about my hometown's truly excellent 222 Artisan Bakery.

Bonus Link: the syllabus for Kaplan's "Social History of Food and Eating" course at Cornell.