Dan Dickinson: The Primary Vivid Weblog

It's been nearly four years since I joined the staff of Weill Cornell Medical College. In that time I've held three different titles and worked on over what feels like a hundred projects.

The first project I worked on, the one I was hired for, has stuck with me through all four years. In one capacity or another, I've always had a hand in the WCMC Elearning team, supporting the curriculum efforts at the Qatar branch of the Medical College. In the spirit of honesty, it hasn't been my favorite project over the years: an operational effort that rarely gets acknowledged for keeping things running, but the first under fire when it falls apart. It's been a rough existence, fighting with 270 millisecond latency and MPEG-4 encoders. (Good thing we're not streaming live 99% of the time.)

On May 8th, the very first class of students graduated from WCMC-Q. This is the first time an American medical school has awarded M.D. degrees outside of US borders. These are the students that my work went towards teaching for those first two years when I was most involved with the project.

I'm proud to have been a part of this effort, knowing that it has achieved substantial good in the world. And I'm proud of the team I've worked with over those four years to help make fifteen students halfway around the world make history.

I am a young male. I was surrendered to the SPCA by my former owner who didn't take the time to leave any information about me. I am a super sweet and loving boy who loves to cuddle and is very playful. I am a handsome fellow with cute white mittens who must be seen to be appreciated. Please come to the shelter and meet me today!

Just over five years ago, I was unable to resist an adorable pet listing, and we ended up with a new addition to our family.

In that time, he's gained a dozen names ("Buttons", "Butt Butt", "Boo Boo", "Doctor Boo", "Boo", "Senor Buttones", "Nubbin", "dj BTNS", "Brickhouse", "Bubbles", "Mister Kitty", "Mister Fuzzles"), enchanted everyone he's ever met, and developed some sort of fanbase on the internet. He's also proudly caught some mice, shed enough hair to make a number of coats, and developed a nasty habit of poking me in the morning to get his kibble.

What can I say - he's the best cat ever.

There's been a number of posts already done about the overlap of GTA IV and the reality of New York City, such as Serious Eats' series on the restaurants of Liberty City.

But let me share my favorite restaurant joke, one that not a lot of people might have found because this doesn't actually register on the map.

Once you get to Algonquin - the Manhattan of GTA IV - head to the corner of Wardite Street and Exeter Avenue. It's up on the northern part of the island, right by the Tw@ internet cafe. If you don't want to drive or grab a cab, take the A, C, K, or J to Frankfort and walk the last block.

Looks like a regular old Cluckin' Bell from this side. (Cluckin' Bell, for those unfamiliar, is an amalgamation of KFC and Taco Bell.)

But wait - why can't you go in? What are those signs on the window?

That's right, folks. The "Liberty City Institute of Food Hygiene" has shuttered it. This seems oddly familiar.

I'm grateful that Rockstar's HQ is in the city, because they captured so many details about the city so well.

(With apologies to the Eater crew for the title of this post.)

Today, the final chapter in The Week Of Awesome Food.

4/15: Bistro 33 (Astoria, New York)
4/17: Momofuku Ko (Manhattan, New York)
4/22: Chez Panisse (Berkeley, California)

My mom emailed me on Monday morning:

I guess your acquisition of GTA early explains your lack of a new blog! That says it all.

Truth be told, it wasn't GTA4 that made this post take eight days. Nor was it the conference, the air travel, the weather, getting back to work, or any other activity. It was because I couldn't quite find an angle to tackle it with - blogger's block, I suppose. So to those that were waiting, my apologies.

Me: So I'm going to San Francisco at the end of April.
Friend: "Oh! Are you going to Chez Panisse?"

Twice within the same week, the same conversation occurred. Surely, it was a sign.

For nearly forty years, Alice Waters' Chez Panisse has been setting the trend of greenmarket cooking. The hallmarks are familiar within modern dining culture: a constantly changing menu, with organic ingredients sourced from a local greenmarket. Chez Panisse is widely hailed as the birthplace of California cuisine, a place to stop along the restaurant history of America.

With enough lead time, my coworker and good friend Zach Szukala snagged a reservation for the Thuesday night of our trip to San Francisco for the Web 2.0 Expo. It was to be a celebration of food and drink, a high point on a trip that would otherwise be full of drinks and nibbles.

Or at least, that was the plan.

One of the problems with a place that changes the menu every night is that when this place is also somewhere that requires a long lead time on reservations, you're inevitably going to be blindsided. The menu could contain nearly anything.

A pre-inspection of the menu cleared the immediate hazards off the list, and we opted for a split wine pairing for the three savory courses.

A quick aside: food photography leaves me conflicted. I'm obviously not against taking pictures of things I've eaten - it certainly makes documenting it easier - but at the same time, I strive to be non-obnoxious. By not shooting with flash and not taking multiple shots, I often am left with lesser quality shots. The following shots have been drastically color corrected, and may be a bit grainy.

Also: Zach has left his thoughts on the meal on the Flickr page for each photo, if you're curious for a comparison of thoughts.

First out: this beautiful halibut carpaccio with lime, ginger, and sea salt, accompanied with some lettuces and crostini. While it was slightly tricky to manipulate - thicker than all other carpaccio dishes I've had, and slippery - it was a wonder to behold. Each bite got better and better - and the wine pairing was fantastic.

Surely, with a first course such as this, we were in for an incredible meal.

And then came the cursed gnocchi. More specifically, the cursed potato and green garlic gnocchi with black trumpet mushrooms.

I'm not clear why I'm having such a problem writing this paragraph. Is it because it feels like blastphemy to dare speak ill of such a beloved institution? Is it that I set myself up for this by being stupid enough to name a series of food posts "The Week Of Awesome Food"?

Whatever the reason, damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead: these gnocchi were possibly the worst thing I ate while in California. I should qualify that: while in San Francisco, I ate a meal at Denny's. (Just saying.) The gnocchi were problematic in execution, not concept: they were mushy and flavorless. No hints of the garlic, no taste of the mushroom - they were just little mounds of mush.

Our view of the entire meal was thrown off. As we salvaged the remainder of the white wine, we began second guessing the kitchen, becoming hypercritical. We had let down our guard and paid the price.

The last savory course emerged, a grilled duck breast in five spice sauce, with spring onion cake and spinach.

By all reasonable measures, the dish succeeded - the duck was flavorful and sauced just right. The spring onion cake was crispy and rich. The spinach was flavored with garlic and fennel, and was a great contrast to the meat. The red it was paired with was a good match.

But I found myself trying to pick things apart, looking for chinks in the armor. I ended up lamenting that the duck was a touch too fatty.

Finally, dessert, and one I was looking forward to: meyer lemon crepes with creme fraiche and strawberries. This simple dessert brought me back to a happy place - a well-made crepe with an crisp exterior and a bit of give in the middle, bursting with lemon flavor.

We finished the meal off with a coffee and an iced green tea, divided up the bill, and trekked back to the BART - where we promptly got on the wrong train and ended up near the Oakland airport before turning around right before the end of service.

So here's the quandary: we had three good-to-excellent courses. Wine pairings were excellent, service was good, atmosphere was appropriate. The cost was a little steep for a four-course meal with wine, but I left the restaurant feeling satisfied and not particularly upset.

But my mind keeps coming back to the cursed gnocchi.

I'm not convinced that it's fair to hold one failed dish against a restaurant, enough to taint the rest of your experience. The chef may have been having an off night, or just lost track of the cooking process for a moment. I want to believe that it was a fluke dish.

In the end, I consider the trip to Chez Panisse an important reminder about tolerance and consistency. The food obsessed are quick to snap judgment and eager to amplify both the highs and lows. But: not every dish will come out perfect. Not every service can be polite and prompt. Not every bill will seem reasonable.

Not every meal can be the Best Meal You've Ever Had.

Chez Panisse has certainly stood the test of time. The length that Alice has been in business is an eternity in the restaurant business. It's hard to say much about the consistency of the place from a single visit, but I can only assume that a place that's coming up on forty years may be the very definition of consistency.

So with all that said, Chez Panisse is OK by me, and is certainly worth a stop as a landmark in the dining scene. (Just watch out for the gnocchi.)

Chez Panisse; 1517 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, California; reservations taken one month in advance.

Today, the second of what will be a three part series: The Week Of Awesome Food.

4/15: Bistro 33 (Astoria, New York)
4/17: Momofuku Ko (Manhattan, New York)
4/22: ? (Berkeley, California)

In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations, the new needs friends. Last night, I experienced something new, an extraordinary meal from a singularly unexpected source. To say that both the meal and its maker have challenged my preconceptions about fine cooking is a gross understatement.

“Are you fucking kidding me?”, you may be thinking. At least, I’m thinking it. Quoting Ratatouille? Am I high? (As it turns out, I am not.)

The NYC food scene is a deafening chaos, one that can easily baffle and frighten both tourists and townies. New restaurants can lead this chaos into a feedback loop, where hype creates more hype and long lines creates longer lines. The old example of this is my beloved Shake Shack (which then spawned a Shacklash); the newest example of this is Artichoke.

But there’s a catch. This loop can be created anew - or broken entirely - by one person with the penultimate power over restaurants in NYC. That person is the NY Times Food Critic, and at the current point in time, that person is Frank Bruni. Bruni publishes one review a week, which appears in the Wednesday edition of the paper. Eater has a regular feature, giving odds on how many stars a restaurant will get, called BruniBetting.

It was through BruniBetting — and not the hype circus — that I finally awakened to David Chang, master to all that is Momofuku. Upon discovering his second restaurant (Momofuku Ssam Bar) was getting a review from Bruni, he penned a piece for Eater laying out how he felt about the process:

The problem with guessing what he’d make of the restaurant is the problem that makes Ssam Bar good in my opinion: It is run by a bunch of cooks in dire need of Ritalin who cannot keep the restaurant focused. If it seems like a good idea to us, we try it. You can’t sort out why there’s a ten-pound pork shoulder on the menu next to a $9 Korean burrito. We just cook.

He also outlined the various responses the staff would take for each possible star:

If it’s a good two-star, expect to see amazing acts of drunken buffoonery on Tuesday night. Wednesday will not be the best time to eat at either Momofuku as both kitchen crews will be nursing major hangovers. Major.

Hours later, Bruni’s more than favorable two star review appeared:

David Chang is a terrific cook, a pork-loving, pickle-happy individualist whose integration of Asian flavors and his own unbound sense of what’s delectable makes for some deliriously enjoyable meals. At Momofuku Noodle Bar, which he opened in 2004, and at Momofuku Ssam Bar, which came along in 2006, he has proven himself one of this city’s brightest culinary talents.

Point taken.

For reasons beyond my comprehension, it would be just over ten months before I would finally make it to Momofuku Ssam Bar. Another four trips soon followed, as well as a long overdue visit to Momofuku Noodle Bar. But just as I was catching up to this hype train, a new one was getting ready for departure: the third restaurant in the dynasty, Momofuku Ko, was launching shortly.

I’ve made reference to it previously, but the reservation system at Ko will either strike you as “egalitarian” - in that it is truly fair, with no backdoor for VIPs - or “fucking insane”, because all the reservations opened on a given day tend to disappear within 30 seconds. Bruni has written about it three separate times.

By some strange fate, I ended up with a reservation for two for 10PM this past Thursday. So enough backstory - let’s talk about the meal.

Ko is a long bar with about twelve seats on one side and a kitchen on the other. A small team of waitresses will help with place settings and beverages; the chefs serve the food after they finish cooking it. It would be hard to have a more direct or more intimate relationship with a restaurant; as Katie pointed out, it’s as close to a private kitchen experience as you may get.

There is no printed menu at Ko; $85 gets you around eight courses plus some smaller dishes. Your only real option is what to drink: besides a number of sakes and wines, there’s an alcohol pairing for $50 or $85, depending on what level of alcohol you want. Note that while it’s called a “wine pairing”, “alcohol pairing” is more accurate - over the course of the meal, we were collectively treated to two whites, one red, three sakes, one beer, one sherry, and one sparkling dessert wine.

This seems like an appropriate time to warn that the alcohol pairing is not something to just do without pre-meditating on, both for the health of your liver and for extenuating circumstances, such as “having work in the morning” and “living nowhere near the restaurant”. I’ve done it once, and once will be enough.

Onto the food.

(not pictured) A fresh fried pork rind was the first small plate, which was surprisingly light for something deep fried and involving pork. This was quickly followed with a house-made english muffin with pork fat and chive. This was better than it had any right to be, and is the sort of english muffin I wish I could eat every morning.

A sliced kampachi with muscat grapes was the first course, beautifully sliced and buttery smooth.

The first soup hit next, and we were given two different dishes. Katie got a sweet pea soup, with mushrooms and crawfish - not a pairing I would have expected, but (unsurprisingly) it worked. I was instead given the kimchi consommé with pork belly and oysters, and this Ko staple was easily in my top three for the night. The broth was salty and just the right level of spicy, while the pork and the oyster provided interesting texture for it to play off of. Utterly fantastic soup.

Next: A coddled hen’s egg (yes, yes, I know) with caviar, onions, wine vinegar, and potato chips. It’s not a stretch to say this single dish spanned more textures and flavors than most of my meals normally do.

(not pictured) At this point came a fried soft shell crab, with brown butter and Old Bay. This was the dish that was paired with the beer (it happened to be Budweiser, amusingly), and while I am not knowledgeable about the intricacies of crabbing, Katie’s Maryland side came out and was singing high praises of the dish. I defer to her judgement.

I knew this was coming, as another one of the now notorious dishes, but it’s still hard to fathom that this is shaved foie gras with lytchee and riesling. I am not one to order foie gras - not because of the ethics, but because I don’t particular enjoy the taste. But this - this was the sort of dish that changes your outlook on a food entirely.

Out of the frier came this fried short rib, with daikon radish and pickled mustard. Meat appearing from a frier can be frightening - but with some lovely fat marbling and various pickled accompaniments, fear was not needed. Although I was starting to fear this meal would never end - I was losing track of the courses, getting mildly drunk, and I had no idea how many more dishes were going to be thrown at me.

Fear resolved - the second soup course was flagged as the last savory course, and so I dug into this miso soup with grilled rice and pickled vegetables. As someone who always leaves his nori and tofu at the bottom of his miso, their non-appearance in this soup was welcome. Also: I love grilled rice balls with sea salt. This very simple dish was the perfect note to head to the sweet stuff with.

Sorbet course: pineapple sorbet, with chewy pineapple. Not pictured was Katie’s dish, a kiwi sorbet with olive oil and apricot. I am a sucker for quality sorbet, and a bigger sucker for pineapple - this dish was gone in sixty seconds.

Finally, the dessert - a deep fried apple pie, with sour cream ice cream and toasted miso. Yes, like a McDonald’s Apple Pie. Just considerably better - fresh out of the fryer, with the right amount of liquid in the middle and paired with superb ice cream. Unfortunately, I was unable to complete this course due to the overwhelming fullness I was feeling.

The bill came, and we stumbled out onto 1st Ave and caught a cab home, knowing we were in trouble the next day, but loving it nonetheless.

The problem of the hype feedback loop I mentioned earlier is that we are not all alike, and the experiences of others may not be the one you have. When a meal fails to live up to the hype, your displeasure becomes amplified: you want to break the cycle of good buzz by inserting your horror story right in the middle, hoping to derail it all.

I certainly find those situations frustrating, but I find I’m more frustrated with this meal because it did live up to the astronomical levels of hype that I had been following. I got exactly what I had hoped for: a flawless meal. Hell, I got more: I got outstanding service from the waitstaff and a very fun, unique experience of sharing the restaurant with one other couple.

A friend asked me a few days ago how it was, and the best quantitative analysis I could give was this: the last truly upscale meal I had was at Eleven Madison Park. Both meals were delicious, and both meals had impeccable service. But Ko featured a more intimate experience, with food that pushed more creative boundaries, and also managed to come with a eclectic beverage pairing. And after tax and tip at both locations, Ko was exactly half the cost of that meal at Eleven Madison Park.

Like that fateful meal at the end of Ratatouille, I have had my preconceptions about what fine dining can be challenged by an unlikely source. I am left defending the new. I can say that Momofuku Ko lived up to the hype.

My meal at Ko is, to date, the best meal I’ve ever had.

(Momofuku Ko; 163 1st Ave., between 10th and 11th; take the L to 1st Ave. Reservations required, and taken a week in advance online only. Dinner service only.)

Dear Fellow Traveller
Originally uploaded by Dan Dickinson

Dear Fellow Traveller,

Good morning! I hope you are having a pleasant morning, and I'm glad our paths have crossed. I relish every chance I get to meet someone new, no matter the place, time, or circumstance.

Friend, forgive the observation, but given your prone position and placement of your hat tell me that you're a bit tired. Perhaps you had a late night, or a late start to your day. Maybe you've been following the Pope on his trek around the city - truly tiring work!

No matter the cause of your case of the drowsies, please feel free to catch another few minutes of sleep before your flight. Rest comfortably, knowing that your fellow travellers have no use for the three seats you're blocking with your bum-like presence.

You fucking prick.

Passive-aggressively yours,
Dan Dickinson

Today, the first of what (I assume) will be a three part series: The Week Of Awesome Food.

4/15: Bistro 33 (Astoria, New York)
4/17: Momofuku Ko (Manhattan, New York)
4/22: ? (Berkeley, California)

Northern Astoria - for nearly five years, I've called the area around the last stop on the N and W lines my home. If you push on further north, you'll find the Steinway Piano factory, a Con Edison Power Plant (oh the sweet, sweet irony), and if you're willing to swim, Rikers Island. We are the northwest edge of Queens, not dominated by any one particular ethnic group and what I like to refer to as the "quiet part of town".

While there's plenty of good food to be found on Steinway south of Astoria Blvd., those of us on the north side occasionally get stuck in a rut. Quick and cheap options are plentiful: hole-in-the-wall Asian, various forms of pizza, and assorted fast food. But the well executed restaurants are limited: an upscale steakhouse, a French bistro, a Greek tavern.

So today, I find myself dumbfound perusing the Time Out NY Eat Out Awards. A little French/Asian fusion spot called Bistro 33 wins the Reader's Choice Award for Best Queens Restaurant. And it's technically in my neighborhood - if you want to call over twenty blocks away "in my neighborhood". Yet strangely, for a place that just won a fairly notable award, Yelp was pretty barren for reviews.

So after work, Katie and I made the trek from 31st St., down Ditmars Boulevard to the western edge of Astoria, and were the first for dinner at Bistro 33. As if I needed invocation to try more food, we were informed that Tuesdays and Wednesdays were "Two For Ten" night - most of the appetizers, the cocktails, and the sushi were 2 for $10.

Say no more. After we got our wine, the dishes started hitting.

A plate of pork and scallion gyoza started me off, seared just the right way with a wrapper that didn't give like so many other dumplings I've had lately. The competition wasn't tough, but these were easily the best gyoza I've had in Astoria.

A bowl of tempura crawfish tossed in a spicy mayo gave me fond memories of the Cajun Popcorn at Maxie's Supper Club. I quickly forgave the softening of the tempura by the mayo given the extremely generous serving of crawfish.

Not pictured: Katie ordered the Truffled Lobster Mac & Cheese. Why no picture? Because it was half gone by the time the two above pictures had been taken. A quickly shared bite made it obvious - big chunks of lobster, along with the right blend of cheese to not overwhelm it, make it hard not to plow through immediately.

Katie's choice of entree was obvious, a combination of her two great food loves: sushi and foie gras. While I had my doubts (and truth be told, I didn't try it), after one bite she proclaimed that Bistro 33 was her new favorite restaurant.

My entree may have also been seen as an obvious choice - it was merely labeled as "Pork". But perhaps the description of the dish needs emphasizing: "Slow roasted Berkshire pork with crispy proscuitto, manchego cheese, shredded pickles, Dijon-soy mayo & julienne nori". You'll also note there's some bread. The waitress, after seeing my eyes widen, patted me on the back and wished me luck.

I don't like to admit defeat, but -- I couldn't finish it, solely because of the size. The flavor and texture were both spot on - the thing was just too big, and besides, I had been promised dessert.

The specialty dessert, a gingerbread parfait, was matched with a lemony ice cream and tiny blueberries. I could not think of a better conclusion to the meal.

Katie opted for a chocolate soufflé matched with raspberry sauce. As she cracked the soufflé, I saw the steam rise off her spoon, and I didn't need to taste it to know it had been done right. (That said, I did taste it anyhow. And it was.)

After being presented with a very modest bill given the amount we had ingested, I was faced with a comment card. I am not normally one to leap on a comment card, but I found myself digging into my bag for a pen and wrote, without even thinking about it, the only comment that could do the experience justice: I feel like I've been doing myself a disservice by not coming here sooner.

As we got up to leave, we were asked where we heard about the Time Out awards (thus marking the third time I've had to namecheck Eater in the last year), and I learned that their award (which is presented as a dish) was broken before they got it. On the way out, chef/owner Gary Anza gave us a big smile, thanked us, and asked if we'd be back tomorrow.

We said next week, but I'm not so sure I can hold out until then.

Bistro 33; 19-33 Ditmars Boulevard, Astoria; take the N/W to Ditmars and walk west 10 blocks to 21st St. Alternately, take the Q19A bus. (718) 721-1933. Open for dinner and brunch.

An interesting new iPhone Twitter client appeared within the development community over the weekend. It's called Twinkle, and while there's no official homepage for it, there is (naturally) a Twitter account.

The interface is clean, although it's a little hard to read while you're walking due to what looks like an 8pt font. But as for why it's interesting:

Twinkle is (through what is undoubtedly some interesting magic) using the iPhone location APIs to geolocate the messages sent through it. It also allows for pictures to be attached.

Curiously, unlike other attempts to add geographic metadata to Twitter, none of this information is stored within the Twitter message. (You can see this on the web version of the message pictured above.) Twinkleking has mentioned that the pictures are being stored on his/her/their web server, and I would assume the geolocation data is being similarly shadowed.

While I'm not crazy about shadow systems like this, Twinkle does work terribly well at what it intends to do - it's a very natural enhancement to the Twitter experience.

It also gets me thinking that, between this and some of the other technologies people have tried to shoehorn into Twitter, that Twitter itself may want to consider providing some sort of extensibility to their base message model. Being able to add machine-readable metadata to any tweet, much like the machine tags on Flickr, would allow for all sorts of useful enhancements without breaking the core model.

In one hypothetical hand, I hold an instrumental version of Trent Reznor's seminal (ha!) single, Closer. The original is directly sexual and raw. It continues to have one of the most familiar refrains in recent musical history - you know, the one about, er, doing things to people like an animal and feeling them from the inside.

(Warning: the song and the video, embedded below, are NOT SAFE FOR WORK. Also, do not play this if there are children in the area. Not because I don't want them to see and/or hear it, but I don't want to be held responsible if you hit the play button.)

In my other hypothetical hand, I hold the original staged version of Business Time by New Zealand's fourth most popular folk rock parody band, Flight Of The Conchords. Never has the actual process of lovemaking been so accurately described.

(Strangely, the video for Business Time is flagged on YouTube, but the video for Closer is not.)

You can see where this is going, I'm sure. And certainly this hilarious photoshopped image will make it even clearer.

I would traditionally use this paragraph to half-heartedly apologize for ruining perfectly good songs in my mashups. Mocking my usual inability to find appropriate loops or sighing about parts where the track trainwreck, I would try to lower expectations.

Not this time. This one came out pretty well.

DOWNLOAD: Nine Inch Conchords - Closer To Business Time

(For the technically inclined, this was done in a very uncomplicated manner in Ableton Suite 7.)

Never forget.

Life is good.