Maybe I should start a new blog called All Lamb All the Time, because that’s what this is starting to sound like. AV is in Morocco, and Eid al-Adha (lit., “feast of the sacrifice”) is in a few days. AV explains, briefly, what it’s about, and how to buy a live sheep, and how to get it home.
Here’s what the sheep will look like in a bit, and here’s AV’s more detailed description of Eid lamb treatment (scroll down to “News from abroad”), from this time last year, in lunar-calendar terms.
The crowd with feathered hair and jean jackets seated at the diner table were snapped out of their laughing reverie by the sound of the doorbell ringing…
Joanie scampered downstairs [because, um, the diner is on the second floor?] to find a big box from Niman Ranch on the doorstep. Wow–Joanie must be a psychic online shopper, because just the day before she’d been thinking of ordering a side of beef from this very place. In fact, though, the box was a gift from a member of the cast from Season 1.
Normally, in sitcom land, this would cause a flashback to that very character from Season 1 doing something totally hilarious, but I don’t think I’ve written anything about Chris on this blog. She was my college roommate for all four years, and now she lives in Geneva, where she eats her weight in cheese and duck daily. And she clearly knows me very well, to send me a box of oxtail and sausage as a get-well present.
So instead, we have to flash back to more issues re: meat. To set the tone, consider Meat Comes from Animals: Deal With It, or Eat Vegetables, or closer to home, Peter’s response to a vegetarian.
I’m also counting down the days to the release of Michael Pollan’s new book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma. It doesn’t come out till April, but Pollan is a smart guy, elegant writer and excellent journalist, particularly on the issues of industrial food. While you’re waiting, I highly recommend reading The Botany of Desire: highbrow research on GM potatoes, along with lowbrow musings on Amsterdam hydroponic weed.
End of commercial break. Back to the show:
Joanie breaks open the box and ogles the cross-sections of oxtails. “Cool! And to think there was a time I wouldn’t have eaten these…”
“Gosh, that was a really funny time…” says one of the wiseacre boys, and there goes the screen again…When it straightens up, we’re in Albuquerque, NM, circa 1990:
February 1, 2005
I Was a Teenage Vegetarian
I’ve been harboring a horrible, horrible secret: For several years, I did not eat meat.
I realize that may be difficult for many to imagine—especially if you could see me now, just starting to drool slightly at the thought of next weekend’s lamb roast.
But the odd thing is that there’s a whole category of people in my life who ask, “Wait—are you still a vegetarian?†before every meal. So I guess I must’ve been pretty fervent at the time, but I can’t even really remember why I’d given up the pleasures of the flesh.
It had something to do with reading Frances Moore Lappe’s Diet for a Small Planet, which posits that meat-eating is untenable because it’s an inefficient use of land. I was very into efficiency at that point—it informed a lot of my young thinking, including on such knotty subjects as the death penalty. (Whatever I said at NM Girls State, strike it from the record!) I would’ve made a tidy little fascist if I’d grown up in a different environment, but luckily some hippie humanitarianness rubbed off, and now I channel my love of efficiency into daily OCD rituals instead of public policy.
I was also raised whole-grainy, so Lappe’s whole combining-proteins concept didn’t seem too difficult, as we were already eating rice-and-bean casserole with green chile for dinner. And the power-to-the-people aspect of me loved the fact that I, halfway around the globe, was eating what 99 percent of India was eating for dinner.
People also talk about teenage vegetarianism as a low-level eating disorder, a way of expressing control over your body the same way anorexics and bulimics do. In my case, though, that was just crap. I was pretty well adjusted, body-wise (OK, small breasts meant for distressing bathing-suit shopping, but lots of people had it worse than me), and, more important, it soon became very, very clear that I had absolutely no control.
I’d been meat-free for the last couple years of high school—two years of high school I’d spent starting an environmental organization and squandering gas driving around aimlessly on weekend nights—and after I graduated, I needed a summer job to save up the necessary “student contribution” that my generous university had decided on for my financial aid package. Albuquerque not being exactly a booming economy, the options were slim. First I went to the nearest Wendy’s and picked up an application, and briefly talked myself into thinking I could work there, but fortunately my friend Chad called and said his mom could probably get me a job at Kmart.
Lo and behold, the first act of shameless nepotism in my life transpired, and I was soon wearing pantyhose and a little name tag that said “cash register service employee.” I felt bad getting a job offer after a five-minute interview, when there were six other more desperate people sitting in the antechamber, but given the management’s utter (and justified) paranoia about people stealing shit, I soon rationalized that it was just more efficient to hire the white girl who’s going to college, even if she is wearing a tie-dye T-shirt.
I wasn’t actually working for my friend Chad’s mom—she was the manager at another Kmart on the other side of town, in a livelier strip mall. My Kmart was just off a freeway exit and shared its mall space only with the Olde America Shoppe, a slightly creepy right-wing junk store that even I couldn’t find anything good in, and I’d been shopping second-hand my whole life. And way off at the far end of the parking lot, by the freeway on-ramp, was a Burger King.
On my mandated 15-minute breaks, I would step out in the sun to counteract the frigid a/c. Also, the break room was grim and fluorescent, and once I got cornered by the manager, an earnest, sad man who told me how great it was that I was getting out of here and going to the Ivy League, and that I should make good and sure I made something of myself. Usually for lunch, I would pack a little something and eat it in my car (employees were discouraged from sitting on the sidewalk in front of the store and eating sandwiches).
But with a few weeks to go before the end of my Kmart tenure, the wind shifted, and I don’t mean that metaphorically. Whenever I walked out of the store’s front doors, all I could smell was flame-broiled goodness, the essence of Whoppers wafting downwind toward me from the far-off BK.
Even pre-veg, I’d had a soft spot for Whoppers, always coming down firmly on their side whenever a Big Mac booster shot off his or her mouth. I mean, duh: Flame. Broiled. Meat. Essence of human food.
Also, of course, essence of corporate evil. We were very pre-Fast Food Nation at that point, but I still knew about slash-and-burn ranching in the rainforests and all that. I knew BK was wrong, but, baby, it smelled so right.
So one day, I walked right across the parking lot (huh, not so far away after all, it turned out) and ate a Whopper.
I’d like to say I never looked back, but then I went to my very expensive college that had very vile food, and rarely did we have anything meat-based in the dining hall that was as sublime as a Whopper. I ate so much broccoli in two years that I couldn’t eat it again for four, and I had peanut-butter sandwiches (good combining proteins) every day for breakfast. I scavenged free pizza and ice cream, and gained a decent ass-load of weight.
I was greatly relieved when junior year rolled around, when I joined the amazing Terrace Club and could choose from fabulous food of every possible kind, from roast suckling pig to the human sushi bar. Chef Barton Rouse (RIP) made all food so pleasurable, so filled with love, that it seemed ungrateful not to eat all of it. Plus, he took great delight in bitching about finicky eaters like “milk-jug girls,” who whined that the skim milk had run out, and all, coincidentally, had really big tits. Earning Barton’s approval meant eating meat, and loving every bit of it. That strategy worked, and as a bonus, all that free-pizza weight came right off.
I think my few meatless years now keep me from indulging in that unthinking macho meat-coma gluttony (most of the time), but it also makes me appreciate that it’s all about where the meat comes from, and I don’t mean just whether it’s bioengineered. If it comes from someone who cares about you, that’s the essence of human food. And if it’s flame-broiled, well, so much the better.
What’s wrong with me? I saw this picture a couple of weeks ago, and it just keeps popping into my head and making me think, Awwww. I don’t know the people at Machine Project, who took this picture, but I think I’d like them. I really want a Fry Daddy…
Oh. My. Gawwwwd.
I think that’s the most articulate review of Spicy Mina anyone has ever been able to muster, because the place is so delicious and so spicy that it just slams through the language centers, and all the other centers, of your brain.
I’m probably preaching to the converted here, but in case some errant New Yorker whom I don’t know pops by, here’s the deal: Spicy Mina is a restaurant specializing in “Bangladeshee Cuisine” (according to the awning). The eponymous chef toils quietly in the back, almost always out of sight, but for the occasional glimpse of a sandal and a sari.
What she’s doing back there is obvious, though, once the samosa chaat appetizer arrives: She’s creating the most delicious Indian food you will ever be lucky enough to eat.
You might also order, say, an appetizer called halim, because it’s got lamb, and you’ve never heard of it before. It will be delicious and soupy and full of ginger. Then along comes the creamy chicken korma, the one “mild” thing you ordered, and it’s bursting with all kinds of fruits and nuts. And the palak paneer, quick-fried spinach that’s super-oily and thick with dried red chiles and chunks of nicely browned fresh cheese. A whole fish smothered in mustard sauce plunks down in the middle. Chicken biryani, which you ordered because the waiter said, “She’s making a very nice one today,” gets squeezed on the side. And some aloo paratha. And some garlic naan. And a mango lassi. And the beer you brought with you.
Ahhhh. Breathe deep. The endorphins are rushing with every bite of warming spice, each flavor perfectly distinct: there’s cardamom, cinnamon, clove, cumin, a sinus-clearing rush of ginger, and a hiccup-inducing skinny green chile, which gives a different heat than the smoky red chiles. You’re giggling a little, feeling a little collective high with the others at the table. One…more…bite…
That’s the Spicy Mina experience. That, and winding up with scads of leftovers, enough for a whole meal again the next day, not to mention a check that comes to only $30 per person even when you grossly overorder (what’s described above was for, um, three people).
Mina has had a checkered restaurant history since 2003, when I first heard of her place in Sunnyside. Mina, just Mina, was the name, and the place was cold and fluorescent-lit, and once I peeked in the kitchen on my way back to the bathroom, and I saw it strewn with dishes the way your home kitchen gets when you’re cooking Thanksgiving or something–just completely out of control and unoiled in any “professional” sense. I felt a pang of empathy for the apparently chronic in-the-weeds-ness. The first meal I ate here was so mind-expandingly tasty and so tragically cheap that I almost cried when I saw the bill–this woman deserved to be showered with money! How could she practically give all that food love away?
Well, I guess she couldn’t, because the original Mina closed. Then Mina went to work at an Indian restaurant on 6th Street in Manhattan, which is somehow hilarious–that in fact, in that strip of lookalike cheap-ass curry joints, one secretly held a priceless gem. Which is a _very_ different situation from in college, say, when you’d come to NYC with a gang, and someone would claim to know that one of those restaurants was better than the others, but of course it wasn’t.
And then Mina wasn’t working there. And there was a disturbing quiet period.
And finally, we’re where we are today: Spicy Mina, 64-23 Broadway, Woodside, NY. Open 7 days a week. Maybe twenty paces from the 65th Street stop on the R/V/and-sometimes-E-and-G. The decor is warmer, with lots of candles. The waiter (Mina’s husband? He seems very worshipful. But if not, I’ll take him) is a bit more organized. Beer is available for purchase at the bodega next door.
This would all be heavenly, except: Spicy Mina needs more business. If this restaurant closes for lack of custom, the world is truly an evil place.
See, some people are idiots, and whine that the food takes too long to come. That’s because this amazing woman is cooking it from scratch for you! Bring some peanuts to snack on, or whatever it takes…
Some people bitch that Mina isn’t consistent. This is also an utterly pointless complaint, because it’s always freakin’ great, even if it’s not the same as last time. Yes, I secretly mourn a certain rendition of the bindi masala (spicy okra), in which the okra were dry and almost caramelized; I’ve never had it that way again, but it has always been delicious. I just carry that one version in my heart, a little okra-y secret.
Some people complain they order things, and then they aren’t available. Tough shit. Order what she does have, and you’ll like it. Again, can I emphasize enough that this woman is cooking her heart out every night of the week, and not cutting any corners?
Peter and I ate there again tonight. We brought newspapers to read while we waited. We drank beer. I gushed at the waiter, even though I always feel a little silly about this–I can’t pull off an ebullient Tamara-style “I want to marry you!” sort of praise, which makes people laugh, so I just gush and gush sincerely, and the waitstaff backs away, with a frozen smile.
As we were leaving, Mina came out. I gushed at her. She said, modestly and obviously, “I am Mina.”
Yes, and you are my new goddess. Bow the hell down, all y’all. Bow DOWN.
“Joanie, you weren’t kidding–I thought one animal on a spit was funny, but two–wow, that’s even funnier!”
Damn right. If the last post got you all teary-eyed re: flame-cooked meat, you can follow the plot here, which details the second lamb roast; the third lamb roast is detailed here; and the fourth, here.
But wait–I think all that lamb roast talk reminds of something else…and there’s the screen going all wiggly again…you’re getting whooshed back to…
Tuesday, February 24, 2004
Reader, I did not marry him.
The New Year’s meat-fest reaps dividends:
Last week I’m on the Chinatown bus from DC to NYC, and this guy starts chatting me up. My flimsy magazine is not barrier enough to conversation. I’m absolutely terrible at extricating myself from these things. I can’t say no, or as Adrienne, Queen of Reno, puts it, “kill someone’s mojo.” Especially when there’s no bathroom to run off to. But he seems nice enough, and he does dangle some interesting conversational tidbits about how he used to party with Krush Groove and stuff.
But the ride wears on—there’s rush-hour traffic well past Baltimore—and he’s getting more flirtatious, borderline leering. Talking about how he wants a woman to share his life with. How he’d like to see me “get loose” in Miami. How I caught his eye when I first got on the bus.
And it’s already clear this guy is not my dream man: “I’d like to take you out on a date. Have you ever been to Tavern on the Green?” he coos suavely.
No, I haven’t, and I have zero desire to go, and I can’t think of a more terrible idea for a date—all glitz, no substance. This place seats many hundreds, and specializes in rubber chicken and corporate Christmas parties. The kind of place you go if you want to impress someone with your money but have absolutely no sense of good food.
By now the bus is completely dark—I certainly can’t go back to reading my magazine now. The only thing I can do is feign sleep, but I don’t want to close my eyes with this guy around.
So my strategy to cool his affections while still remaining polite is to emphasize our dissimilarities. What are my turnoffs? he asks. Guys who brag about their money—he’s been talking about the Ferrari he’s going to buy. (Remember, we’re on the Chinatown bus, roundtrip NYC-DC for $30.) I don’t “work hard and play hard” (his claim)—I work not very much and play pretty well.
Finally, the greatest opportunity of all arises: “What did you do for New Year’s?” he asks.
We-ell. You saw the bloody pictures. Poor guy had mentioned early on that he’s a vegetarian. I tell him all about buying the lamb, and the fur on its head, and the little chopped-off legs—and of course how delicious it all was. He did keep up his end of the conversation after that, but the dinner invitation was not repeated.
If the carcasses on a spit hadn’t worked, I had only one more piece of ammo (as yet untested, but I suspect it’ll weed out the wrong kind of guy): I was wearing my new thong underwear that said “Live Poultry – Fresh Killed.”
Ah-ha. I forgot all about this, me being authoritative on The Azumano Travel Show on KPAM radio in Portland, Oregon, back on November 12. A little clipped, but fortunately they edited out some of my more meandering answers. Here’s the link directly to the sound file.
I did another interview prior to that, but I can’t seem to find it. I know you’re on the edge of your seat…
To commemmorate the beginning of the third year of Roving Gastronome, I’m going to run a Best Of series for the next week or so.
It’s just like in the old sitcoms, when all the actors were too burned out to do anything at the end of the season, and they put together this cheesy montage of the most hilarious moments, all stuck awkwardly in some kind of shaky frame story that got all the actors sitting around the same diner table and reminiscing…
“Hey, Chachi, remember the time…that was sooooo funny…”
And then the people at the diner table go all wiggly, and presto, you’re back in some gem of a moment involving striped socks, a case of mistaken identity, and a monkey.
Or, in the case of Roving Gastronome, a hare-brained scheme, a 50-gallon drum, and two animal carcasses:
January 12, 2004:
If It’s Worth Doing, It’s Worth Overdoing, or It Takes a Village to Roast a Pig (and a Lamb)
Who knew roasting a whole pig—plus a whole lamb, just for the heck of it—could be so easy? Well, aside from the creeping anxiety of spectacular failure beforehand, and the running around collecting weird bits of metal, and the blinding, acrid mesquite smoke the night of…it was pretty easy.
Perhaps foolishly, I did think it would be easy when Tamara first called to ask if she could delegate the pig-roasting duties for her second-annual overkill New Year’s Eve party, this time bearing a luau theme. Although Astoria has its suburban charms, Tamara doesn’t have a yard where you can dig a pit and pile in a pig, so we would have to rig up something—surely we could find some instructions on the Internet. Tamara is the quintessential hostess, and I can’t think of a better person to have as a patron of such a dodgy, expensive enterprise. “Don’t worry—if it doesn’t work, there’s always booze,” she airily assured me.
Peter was immediately deputized. When I notified him that he’d been tapped for large-animal-roasting duty, he said, “No problem. But if we’re going to all this trouble, we should roast a lamb too. My people have always roasted lambs.” Peter has some wicked strong Greek roots, which seemed irrelevant to a Hawaiian theme party, but as it happens, he does seem genetically predisposed to cranking a spit for five hours.
The other thing, aside from Peter’s Greekness, that made him want to roast a lamb, was our proximity to the not-telling-the-whole-truth Astoria Live Poultry, just down the block from me. This fabulous storefront traffics not just in chickens, capons, geese, quail, turkeys, ducks, guinea hens, pigeon, and rabbits, but also, just lounging casually in a back room, cows, lambs, and goats. It’s like a petting zoo, but not. I’ve gotten all manner of poultry there before, and was just working my way up to rabbits (they weigh everything in front of you, squawking and squirming, so you have to really look them in the eye; and the bag of meat they give you is still warm, which is weirdly comforting). But Peter was all for jumping straight to the head of the class.
But first we put aside the meat details to focus on engineering. Four days later, and plenty of URLs about smokin’ hawgs and trussing little lambies swapped, we really hadn’t decided anything or purchased any materials or even agreed on just how much meat we’d be dealing with. Over lunch, we could only mutter tersely at each other: “Let’s not talk about it.” “OK. Yeah, later.” We had only two days left.
But lo, on Tuesday, the day before Spit-Crankin’ Day, everything fell into place: Peter found a 50-gallon-drum at a scrap yard, as well as a hefty iron I-beam to support the barrel and keep it off the patio surface (which was also the roof of Tamara’s downstairs neighbors’ apartment–a small fire code infraction). We bought about a hundred pounds of mesquite at Home Despot, as charcoal seemed to be out of season. Our metalworking friend Joel made a spit and sawed the barrel in half. And Ali, world’s greatest chef and all-around generous guy, let us borrow his car to haul all the crap around.
Wednesday morning dawned late and too brightly. We’d all been at Ali’s place, the Kabab Cafe, too late, celebrating our triumphant requisition of supplies with buckets of wine. Peter asked if I’d nip down to the corner and order the lamb, but I demurred—my eyes were too bleary to face a little lamb. But it’s a full-service establishment, with delivery, and took him seriously when he requested $120 worth of meat by phone, with no deposit.
Meanwhile, Tamara picked up the pig, which she’d ordered through Prune. It had been boned, so it was like a big sausage with a head–I think it was about 25 or 30 pounds of pure meat. We had to do a mucky but fun maneuver of removing the too-short wooden stake the pig had been trussed on and ramming a longer one in–an operation that took three people and inspired Deb to comment, “This is kind of sexy, actually.”
The lamb required a little more attention. None of our Internet- and Ali-derived information on lamb trussing seemed particularly helpful, and we couldn’t get the spit to lodge tightly anywhere in the lamb, so Peter just resorted to a lot of kitchen twine and plenty of special sliding boat knots. At one point I had to hold the lamb’s head down while Peter tied it in place–its small skull fit nicely in my hand, and there was a little tuft of fur still left on its forehead, which I couldn’t help rubbing a little.
Meanwhile, we’d also gotten our fire going in our spit setup: the I-beam was just long enough to support and stabilize both barrel halves, set next to each other (lucky–we’d been a little optimistic about fitting both animals in one barrel half). Cinder blocks were propped at the ends of each of the barrels, coincidentally just the right height for resting the spits on.
We hoisted the pig into place around 5:30 p.m., and the lamb went on a half-hour later. The pig had been stuffed by the butcher with assorted herbs and prosciutto. The lamb got garlic cloves stuck under its skin and doused in a mixture of citrus juice (mostly lemon, but also grapefruit and several other things Peter had at home) and at least a cup of ground spices–cinnamon, turmeric, pepper, paprika, cayenne, nutmeg, cumin, black pepper. Peter probably added lots more red chile.
Here we parted ways: Peter settled himself into a chair with a big bottle of retsina and a big bunch of dill for swabbing the marinade on periodically. He maintained that the lamb required constant turning, and he was probably right. And he was glad to do it, the picture of Greek village manliness in a long, blood-smeared apron and a big furry hat. As for the pig, Joel and Deb took turns cranking it, but after a while, when the mesquite smoke reached toxic levels and the fun wore off (it was only the manufactured Tom-Sawyer-getting-his-friends-to-whitewash-the-fence kind of fun anyway), I made an executive decision that it didn’t have to be turned constantly, as it was balanced better on its spit and didn’t flop the way the lamb did. I’m really surprised that the neighbors didn’t call the fire department–there was seldom any visible flame, but the smoke was incredibly sharp, thick and almost oily.
After about 4.5 hours, I made another executive decision: the pig was done. I was wrong–or partially. We just chopped it up bit by bit, putting the cooked pieces on a serving platter and chucking the others into a hotel pan to finish in the oven. What made it a little tricky was that the smoke had made a lot of the outer layer of meat turn pink and look (and feel) a little raw, which had to be explained to guests. Nobody really bought my declaration that “trichinosis is sooo over.” The skin had also gotten seriously charred, though we did end up with a few good chunks of crispy chicharron. The meat was delicious, though not mind-blowingly succulent–the fire had been too hot for that, I think, and too much moisture lost. Some guests objected to the display of the head along with the meat, so it was covered with a napkin and sunglasses. Deep apologies, pig—we really meant no disrespect.
About an hour later, the lamb was deemed done, or maybe Peter just got tired of cranking. Again, about half of the meat had to be finished in the oven. But the meat was stupendously delicious—a little smoky, a little tangy, very moist, with no single spice predominating. The strongest endorsement came from Barbara, a surprise guest who really got into the primal fun of breaking down the meat (a business so messy that Tamara wailed, “There’s lamb in my bed!” the next day). With the carcass splayed out on a bench behind her, Barbara happily gnawed on a greasy rib bone and rolled her eyes: “I can’t believe I was a vegetarian for eight years!”
Because I often glaze over about two-thirds of the way through Frank Bruni’s restaurant reviews in the New York Times, this is exactly what I need: Bruni’s most winning bons mots and terrible puns, pulled out and mocked, and even illustrated with pictures! Lots of boob jokes too. Perfect for the short-attention-spanned.
First: All drollery aside, Mt. Sinai is a hundred times better than either of the LIJ joints I was in. (My ID doctor said that if I had to stay over the weekend, he’d take me on a tour of the chichi $1,500-a-night suites on the hotel floor.) I’m still glad to be home, especially with all the good wishes from everyone.
But I know, while you’re writing the get-well cards and sending the chocolates, you’re definitely thinking: What about the food?
Let me first admit: I have a soft spot for airplane food. The little individual compartments and containers are very compelling to me (but maybe that’s just my OCD talking). I have never had a completely inedible meal on an airplane, and once, in Delta biz class, I actually said “Yum!” while I was eating. My only complaint is that the flight attendants just say “Beef or pasta?” without explaining more, and then I don’t want to hold up the whole process by saying, “How would you say that beef is prepared? And what’s the cut of meat? And is that linguine or shells?”
So, that said, I didn’t find the hospital food that bad–at first. I’d been actively fearing it because several years ago I went to a restaurant-supply convention here in NYC, where I stood mesmerized and morbidly fascinated in front of a robotic food-dispensing machine for use in “institutions such as prisons and hospitals” (suggested the demo video). A huge stainless-steel box contained Nutrient Gloop A, and it was pumped through springy tubes, then squirted in precisely measured portions onto trays running by on a conveyor belt. I was scared straight, as they say.
But fortunately there was no Nutrient Gloop on my tray in Forest Hills. Most food items were recognizable. The separately heated entree dish and coffee mug provided the familiar reference point of dining in the sky. The trouble with the airplane-food analogy is that I’ve never been on a plane for more than three meals. My first hospital stay, eight days total, would be the equivalent of jetting to Australia and back four times in a row. In the hospital, you get a special jiggly bed that ensures you won’t die of deep-vein thrombosis, but the stewardesses aren’t the least bit cute. And, at least at LIJ in Forest Hills, you don’t even get a choice of beef or pasta.
And what your menu says rarely correlates with what’s on your tray. Best example: a promised chicken cacciatore took the form of tuna casserole with tricolor rotini–very jarring if you’re expecting chix with mushrooms. Some items required a little imagination to match them up with their labels. At first I thought “Chinese-style roast chicken” was another case of a failed menu writing. Then I realized the little scallion slices and the brown glaze signified “Chinese-style.”
And then some things were just straight-out weird: one day I got some beef stew with mandarin oranges. Yes, the ones you get in the syrup in the cans. Is it tacky of me to blame this on the fact this was a Jewish hospital? This was perhaps some institutional interpretation of Passover brisket? That’s the only real-life foodstuff I could peg this concoction to.
Additionally, there was a disturbing lack of concern for nutrition. Partially hydrogenated spread was the norm. I, a heart patient, got coffee for breakfast every morning. And dessert portions were always physically larger than entree portions. Which I guess was supposed to be a perk, but only seemed to reinforce the miserableness of being in the hospital, as the big bricks of gooey cake practically screamed, “You poor hopeless sickie! Here’s a treat!”
After a few days of this, I was living that dumb joke: The food is terrible, and the portions are so small! At every meal, I’d been diligently cleaning as much of my plate as I could before I was gripped with utter despair (I drew the line at the margarine), but on the morning of the third day, I was weak and dizzy with hunger. Fortunately, Tamara started the daily dinner delivery that night, but by then I’d already been carted down to the special heart-monitoring floor, as I gasped, “It’s just low blood sugar…need REAL food badly…”
Getting transferred to LIJ in Manhasset was a step up, because there at least I got a little menu to choose entrees from each day. Again, descriptions rarely gibed with reality, and chicken broth, a plastic mug of tasteless murk, accompanied every meal. One morning I just started crying right off the bat; I was crushed by the task of discerning actual oatmeal bits amid the starchy pap. I felt like Oliver Twist, but without the pluck or, of course, the desire for more. But the green beans weren’t so mercilessly boiled, the dessert portions were a bit more moderate, and fresh fruit made an occasional appearance. One night I got a thimbleful of real butter, but the bread to put it on was like mattress stuffing. I rubbed it on the ubiquitous green beans instead.
After all that, Mt. Sinai was like Babbo, Le Bernardin and Jean-Georges all rolled together. The nightly bulletin applied a bit of hyperbole to the next day’s choices–though to be fair, a “seasonal” green salad in December would be iceberg lettuce and carrot shreds. Otherwise, I felt like I had a new nutritional lease on life, with my choice of butter or margarine (duh), salad and fruit options galore, and dinner entrees so edible that I fortunately can’t remember any of them.
So, a tip to hospitals: If you make your patient cry or swoon in her chair, it might be time to reevaluate the kitchen. And future patients should consider this: Food quality appears to correlate directly with the quality of the medical care. If you get served spinach that inspires you to sing that “Great green gobs of greasy grimy gopher guts” song, tell ’em to put their scalpels away, and make a run for the door.
As you, dear readers, well know, I am accustomed to jetting off to Amsterdam, Tulum, and Santa Fe to assess the quality of hotels and other tourist accommodations. So the assignment I received in 12/8–NS/LIJ Forest Hills Hospital–was quite a novelty.
My research assistant, Peter, and I set off with a weekend bag and a frisson of excitement. We’d get to ride the V train, and neither of us had spent any time in this part of Queens called Forest Hills, known for its pretty suburban garden developments.
When we arrived, we found we were nowhere near the luxe Forest Hills Gardens; instead, we were on the less savory northern side of Queens Boulevard, amid LeFrak-ish blocks and some swoopy condo skyscrapers that likely dated from the 1960s: the Kyoto Gardens Towers was the name, but, to adapt Vonnegut, there were no damn gardens and no damn Kyoto.
But one shouldn’t judge a hotel entirely on its neighbors. Whisking in through the sliding glass doors etched repeatedly with “EMERGENCY” in a rather chic sans-serif font, Peter and I found a less-than-welcoming front desk. Having to get buzzed in to a room called “triage” is just not the best sign of hospitality, anywhere in the world.
Nonetheless, the staff was courteous, if a bit skeptical (had they guessed my travel writer’s credentials?), and I was told to wait outside…while they readied my room, I suppose. (I had been promised a bed in the elite tower wing, but due to some byzantine bureaucratic requirements–another bad sign for this operation’s professionalism–I was required to check in on the more low-rent side.)
The lobby was a dismal affair, dominated by a large TV with its hues out of whack: a green-at-the-gills Judge Judy declaimed from her emerald-hued bench, and the assorted loungers watched, rapt. One man had his shoes off. A woman was wrapped in a blanket. Either they were very, very avant-garde, or I was in precisely the opposite of a five-star hotel.
Indeed. This became quite clear when my name was finally called, and I was handed a folded sheet. A hostel operation, then.
Peter and I were showed what I was assured was our temporary bed: a less-than-twin arrangement on wheels. Still, we had a bit more privacy than your standard dorm-beds-to-the-rafters situation, with clever little curtains on runners and a bit-too-small folding screen that preserved the barest of dignity of the guest next to us. Service continued to be courteous but spotty, with cryptic claims of “We’re working on getting you a bed” delivered by a range of people, some of whom were just not flattered by the corporate uniform, an all-white smock. This was meant to convey boutique minimalist chic, but frankly it looked a bit dumpy on most of the staff–more tailoring, please! And if that’s a blood stain on your thigh, I hope it’s tongue-in-cheek.
But I shouldn’t quibble. In my experience (yes, I have spent my fair share of nights in hostels, remarkable as that may seem), these cheap-sleep places are all about the people, primarily the other guests. Once I got myself acclimated (in the handy, if drafty, pajamas they’d issued me along with the sheet–an odd perk), I peered around my privacy curtain to get a feel for the social scene in the common area.
Something kept me from plunging right in. Normally, as a guidebook researcher, I am happy to chat with fellow travelers and locals; I do, however, gauge a situation to see whether it’s worth revealing my real job, as saying I’m a guidebook author can lead to all kinds of tedious and repetitive conversations along the lines of, “Dude, that’s coooool!” and ultimately leave no time for tip-gathering.
This crowd didn’t look like it would be too curious about my secret agenda, which was just what I wanted. But it also didn’t look like it would help give me the inside scoop on this place called Forest Hills. One man was hopelessly drunk, which is certainly not out of keeping with hostel habits, but his big fur hat and pointy-toe loafers suggested he was not the typical backpacker demographic. Another woman I made a note to avoid at all costs: “Nurse, can I get some help here?” she kept saying. What a tedious conversation gambit.
Also, the music was setting a distinctly odd, asocial tone. I think it’s what the kids are calling IDM (“intelligent dance music”) these days, but it hearkened back to John Cage, with its series of three tones cycling ever so subtly in and out of sync. Ambient chatter and walkie-talkie noise filled out the drama. Frankly, it was the music of drug fiends and intellectuals. Which caused me to ponder: Perhaps there was some indigenous drug here in Forest Hills, something that intrepid young tourists traveled here to take? That would certainly explain the behavior of the Nurse-can-I-get-some-help-here woman–maybe she was freestyling? Though I can’t imagine what sort of pharmaceutical or natural herb could make one enjoy this particular fluorescent-lit setting.
I retreated to my bed. At this point, I’d given up on the staff’s promises of a better bed and silently handed out grades of ‘F–‘ to all of them. Peter was a bit miffed as well, but he’s very professional (though officially amateur in his capacity as hotel reviewer) and kept his lips zipped.
Finally, after I’d dozed off while musing over the local drug culture, I was started out of my sleep by a staff member ready to escort me to a different room. Amazing, if horribly ill-timed. I’d been waiting for a full 12 hours! Does that mean my bill would reflect half a night at hostel rates, and half a night at chi-chi club tower rates?
Which brings me to a hot issue in travel writing: freebies. After someone says, “Dude, that is so coooool!” about my job, they without fail continue with, “So I guess you get all your hotels and restaurants paid for?” It’s sad to burst their bubble, but, dude, no, I do not get any of that paid for.
I also do not get paid particularly well. But it is also my job to assess the quality of hotels well above my station, and these hotels will often offer me a free night or two. This of course creates a quandary. I without fail say that I cannot possibly promise the hotel will be included in the guidebook, but yes, I’d love to frolic on their 500-thread-count sheets. And bring up one of those buckwheat pillows.
But my free visit is constantly haunted with the thought, “What if I had to pay for this?” Sometimes that’s $70 a night; sometimes it’s $400. Sometimes the place measures up; sometimes it doesn’t. And I have to factor in the weirder, fuzzier element of “Would a person who’s willing to spend $400 on a hotel be impressed with this place?” In the case of this mongrel hostel/hotel scenario I found myself in, I wasn’t quite sure what the going rate was, but I hoped it didn’t include a free CD from the house DJ. And I was damn glad I wasn’t paying for it–I’d arranged this stay through a sort of PR firm known only by its acronym, HIP. Even at, say, $25 per night, the hostel operation seemed to be a rip-off–all the money was going into the pretentious music, the unflattering uniforms, and the armies of staff, many of whom seemed to do nothing but stand around chatting about where they were going to order dinner from.
The hotel proper, however, was a little better–though I can’t imagine the rates were cheap. I got hustled into a wider bed with a contemporary version of the “Magic Fingers” technology–an off-and-on full-body massage, with no coins required. Sheets were that trendy jersey knit, with what the bellhop called a “safety pad” laid across the middle. The pad had a rubber facing–what kind of clientele did they get in this place? The decor, which I could make out faintly in the 5 a.m. light, was a hideous mix of ripe pastels of the sort only seen on unfortunate prom dresses, but it was not so charmless compared to the sterile white scheme in the hostel wing.
I slept fitfully for the next few hours, and when the sun was fully up, I peered out the wide window to scan the view. There, to the left, was the glorious Unisphere, great symbol of Queens. I wasn’t far from home, but I was out of my element. Nor can I imagine any sort of traveler would feel at home in this place, so I can’t recommend this schizophrenic, institutional hideaway on the unfashionable fringes of Forest Hills. It just does not make the cut, freebies or no.
