In Good Taste / April 2007

Work in progress

BAR seats are typically filled with loners, boozers and the luckless folk who forgot to make a reservation. But at L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon, a new New York outpost from the Michelin three-star chef, the bar is the place to be, and its seats fill up fast. The lacquered, blonde-wood counter, with its ample elbow-room and a plum view of the kitchen, was designed by no less an architect than I.M. Pei. The gleaming workspace on display raises the craft of cooking to high art: the effect resembles a black-box theatre, complete with attractive players and dramatic lighting. And theatre etiquette apparently applies—on one visit, a kitchen worker who yelled for assistance was promptly shushed by her colleague.

The food is too good for the curious diner to commit to a conventional entree. Consider small plates or the tasting menu instead. A recent meal began with a delicately flavoured amuse-bouche, a lemon-scented vanilla gelée, a cauliflower mousse and a daub of olive tapenade. The parade of plates continued with chilled, bite-sized lobster ravioli and a delicious lamb tenderloin. But the standout dish was a caramelised quail stuffed with foie gras. Ours was perfectly browned and intensely savoury, arriving with a side of pureed potatoes topped with thinly sliced truffles.

Do leave room for dessert. For a unique fusion of flavours, try La Sucre, a delicate, fist-sized pearl made of sugar and filled with violet crème, lychees and airy milk foam. Ground pistachios, condensed-milk ice cream and blackberry coulis garnish this delectable confection.

Given the hype surrounding this new restaurant, make reservations well in advance.

L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon 57 East 57th St, New York, NY 10022
Tel: +1 (212) 758-5700, Fax: +1 (212) 758-5711, Website

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At ease

WITH its view out over Kala Ghoda, Mumbai’s arts district, Khyber makes a good place to go in south Mumbai for unpretentious Indian food as many know it before setting foot on the subcontinent. It attracts a cheerful crowd of expats and locals, eager to partake of its hefty choice of Northwest Frontier-style cooking: tandoor-grilled kebabs, curries and biryanis, washed down with handfuls of roti or naan and bottled Kingfisher beer.

The light-brown tiled walls and floors, garish statuary and candlelit nooks and crannies make a warm and friendly ambience. Our fish had clearly been frozen beforehand, but curries were hearty: if elegant dining is your priority, best to look elsewhere on Mumbai’s resplendent culinary scene. Come to Khyber for comfort food, Mumbai-style.

Khyber, 145 Mahatma Gandhi Rd, Fort, Mumbai 400 023
Tel: +91 22 2267 3227

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Failing the smell test

EMBLAZONED on the walls of each Singapore subway are, as one might expect, an extensive array of prohibitions. Displayed in internationally recognisable cartoon style – inside a red circle crossed by a line – are cigarettes, hamburgers, petrol cans, expectorating figures, headphones, animals (both caged and wild), and, puzzlingly to westerners, a spiky hand grenade.

This, of course, is not a grenade but a fruit, to Malaysians “the king of fruits”: the durian, which emits a strong odour when ripe (hence the subway ban), and whose taste has been compared variously to cream cheese, onions, custard, and, in the words of one particularly horrified Briton, “crushed garlic mixed with a particularly strong-smelling that is consumed in close proximity to a horse breaking wind.” Now a Thai scientist, through crossbreeding, has produced a variety of durian that smells no more offensive than a banana. He hopes that the inoffensive smell will attract consumers who would otherwise be put off, but to the durian’s defenders – many of whom consider it an aphrodisiac – he is fixing what ain’t broke.

Thailand exported around $90m worth of durians in 2006. In western cities frozen and recently thawed durians (mostly from Thailand) can regularly be found at Asian markets, but not in supermarkets: the Thai government sees the smell, or fruit’s stinky reputation, as a bar to wider acceptability. Still, durian-lovers see their fruit heading the way of the tomato or the strawberry, with availability has coming at the price of taste, texture, and genetic variety. Adherents discuss each fruit’s unique characteristics with the same passion and precision the French devote to wine or cheese, and while cellophane-wrapped, pasteurised Cheddar may sell more than an Epoisse or Stilton, one results from care and tradition, and the other is an assembly-line product. Besides, what works in the West may be a disaster on the home-front: one horrified durian seller said that if the fruit doesn’t stink, it doesn’t get sold.

 

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A world ends in five days

New York’s infinitely multifarious culinary firmament grew a little darker in early April: two titans of the city’s once burgeoning smoked-fish trade died within five days of each other.

Conrad Spizz, who ran Rego Smoked Fish for more than half a century, went first, on April 3^rd. Though born in England, Spizz moved to Brooklyn when he was 12, and got into the smoked-fish business after high school, first as a deliveryman, then as the proprietor of a family concern (his wife’s family also worked in the smoked-fish business). Though he had little formal schooling, he taught himself French so he could read Hugo in the original; Shakespeare and Joyce shared space on his office shelves with whiskey and racing forms; and he attended the Metropolitan Opera three times a week. He preferred charcoal to hardwood, Remingtons to computers and yelling to speaking: befitting his stubborn individualism, his shop remained modest, and he closed it when he retired.

Rubin Caslow, who died on April 8^th, also started young and married into the trade – his father in law sold smoked fish on the streets of Brownsville in the early 20^th century – but his company, Acme Smoked Fish, became America’s largest fish smoker, selling 7m pounds of brined and smoked herring, salmon, chub, sturgeon and whitefish a year. When he and his father-in-law opened Acme in 1954, there were hundreds of smokehouses in Brooklyn; now, due largely to Jewish suburban migration, there are a scant half-dozen in all five boroughs.

Acme’s products are sold in stores like Russ & Daughters, a family-owned emporium that has sat on lower Houston Street for the better part of a century, as well as the quintessentially exurban Costco, a bulk-purchase retailer. Acme survived by being both traditional and innovative: it still does a brisk business in schmaltz herring and gefilte fish, but it also offers jalapeno-smoked salmon, which Mr Caslow’s ancestors needed like a loch in kopf.