Gut Instinct

Sometimes when you’re wandering around drunkenly, searching the back alleys for an appropriate spot to relieve yourself, you hit the jackpot.

A six-pack belt. Absolutely genius. Genius! On a lighter note, how in h-e-double hockey sticks did that lovely picture of femininity get her eyes to move in two independent directions? There are higher powers at work, my friends, higher powers.

In four seconds, he springs to life and screams, “Tequila! TEQUILA! Who wanna do a shot of tequila?!”

It’s humbling to explain why, at 29, your shoes mimic Swiss cheese.

“I thought you work,” a friend said, marveling at my $5 knockoff Chucks with holes the size of pocket change.

“But I’m a writer,” I explained.

“You’re also anal. Go copyedit.”

“Point taken,” I said, taking a midtown corporation’s weeklong editing gig.

The work was smooth sailing: words, words, words. My office neighbor was stormy: a shrill brunette with hair apparently bleached blond via squirt gun.

“I can’t believe he didn’t call!” she bleated into the phone my first morning. “I am worth a phone call.”

To cope, I could embrace on-the-job intoxication (tip: vodka with Sprite!), or channel my ire into finding superlative lunchtime sustenance. I opted for the latter. What’s the lure of an after-work drink if you’re drinking at work?

Lunchtime Monday, I hit Chinese canteen Hing Won (48 West 48th St. betw. Fifth and & Sixth Aves., 212-719-1451). Buffet workers served gloppy sesame chicken, but the menu offered deceptively delicious comestibles: roasted duck, double-sautéed pork and noodle soup. Soup 11 struck my fancy.

“Pickle soup!” a ponytailed counterwoman screamed, delivering my plastic tureen of $6 goodness: Thread-like yellow noodles were topped with chewy porcine slivers, zucchini and tart pickles. I slurped the spicy soup noisily and lustily, returning to work wearing a grin and broth on my button-down.

Tuesday brought more inane nattering.

“I’m getting a time-share,” my work neighbor began, as I slipped away to drecky, gray West 39th Street. Amid garment shops awaited Szechuan Gourmet (21 W. 39th St. betw. Fifth & Sixth Aves., 212-921-0233), which serves seriously fiery, numbing cuisine: chili-black-bean rabbit, pork belly with leeks and dan dan noodles. I scanned the 40-item lunch menu and blindly selected braised crispy tofu with pork ($6.95). In China, I suppose, pork is a vegetarian treat.

“Extra spicy,” I told my server.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

I received magma-color tofu and pork slices, which was an oily, chewy-tender contrast that buzzed my lips and incinerated my tongue. Delectable, but note to self: no more super-spicy.

Wednesday. Hump day. “Bikini wax: yes or no?” my neighbor queried a caller.

I plugged my ears and marched to Moishe’s Falafel (46th St. betw. Fifth & Sixth Aves.), a Kosher-certified cart run by bearded Jews. I queued behind members of the tribe, their hats big and black, and ordered the cart’s namesake ($4.75). Crunchy yellow orbs, pickles and salad were shoehorned into a pita and then drizzled with tahini.

I like eating while walking, but Moishe’s forces sedentary ingestion. I sat on a fire hydrant while tan sauce sullied my fingers and lettuce fluttered onto my jeans like fall leaves. It was deliciously, shamelessly sloppy, much like me.

What’d my neighbor talk about Thursday? I dunno; I finally wore headphones. It was my second-smartest move all day. My finest was grubbing a roast-pork sandwich ($6.95) at homey Cuban joint Tina’s (23 W. 56th St. betw. Fifth & Sixth Aves., 212-315-4313). Like a jackalope, this sandwich shouldn’t exist: Crisp pernil, fried plantains, onions and a mayo squiggle are layered on thin, crunchy bread.

“Add potato sticks,” suggested a suit.

“Really?”

“You gotta go big,” he said, motioning to the caloric bomb.

I went big. The sandwich was a crunchy-soft combo of sweet and fatty, spicy and creamy. It sank to my stomach like an anchor, rooting me to my desk till 6 p.m.’s whistle.

Friday. My co-worker called in sick. Thanks, God. What’s a good meal for Friday? I wandered 49th Street. There: Bella Napoli (150 W. 49th St. betw. Sixth & Seventh Aves., 212-719-2819). This squat, steamy slice joint was filled with congealed pizzas and businessmen with necks spilling over collared shirts.

“Meatball sub,” I ordered.

“Meatball hero?” replied the gelled-hair counterman.

“Yes,” I replied acidly. Though I say soda instead of pop, I still make the occasional Midwestern misstep—just like my Ohio brethren in every recent presidential election.

I forgave the server upon receiving a sloppy, forearm-length assemblage of sprightly tomato sauce, springy meatballs and molten cheese. Oh, cheesy meat! Instead of wolfing it down, I luxuriated: a mistake. Given time, the sauce disintegrated the bread, making the hero look as bloody and messy as a zombie victim. I sat on a ledge and devoured the red mess, one pawful after another, as a woman and her chubby-cheeked youngster strolled past. The kid stared at my spectacle.
I fluttered my red fingers.

“Let’s go,” the mother said, gawking at my messy mitts, my holey shoes. She dragged her kid away, and I dragged myself back to the office with a full belly—but little else.

Methinks he’s dreaming naughty, naughty metal-man thoughts about Dorothy.

It’s a fiesta of cheap chow in Spanish Harlem, from champurrado to guineo  

Since the 1950s, East Harlem’s El Barrio ’hood has been a Puerto Rican stronghold featuring down-home eateries heavy on rice and beans, mashed mofongo and heart-slowing fried pig morsels. Nowadays, the 116th Street artery has been infiltrated by taquerías and tamale vendors, creating a scrumptious cuisine convergence.

Belly grumbling on a blustery weekday—and packing a $10 bill—I depart the 2 train at 116th Street and Lenox Avenue and embark east toward Sea & Sea Fish Market (60–62 W. 116th St., 212-828-0851). The seafood depot contains a lunch counter run by yellow-smocked men deep-frying hockey-puck fish cakes for 75 cents apiece. My crunchy cake is honey-brown, but its insides are February-frigid and as mushy and flavorful as oatmeal.

Trashing the pap, I head to patriotically themed $1 $2 $3 USA Superstore (64–68 E. 116th St., no phone) and uncover 79-cent, God-bless-the-U.S. Iced ’Spresso. The flavor? Nauseatingly syrupy American vanilla.

There are far fewer jingoistic eats at Zapotitlan Family Mexican Restaurant (118 E. 116th St., 212-426-6100). In the cluttered shop crammed with dried peppers, a sliding glass cabinet contains bread pudding.

“Cuanto cuesta?” I query the counter lady.

“Setenta y cinco,” she replies: 75 cents. Bingo. I chomp a hefty square suffused with subtle cinnamon and vanilla notes: a cheap-eats home run.

Buoyed by my discovery, I saunter to Sam’s Famous Pizza (150 E. 116th St., 212-348-9437), a corner spot selling five garlic knots for a buck. I sit on a red swivel stool and devour my bite-size breads. They’re well-toasted and covered with enough real garlic to mortify a vampire.

My stinkiness precedes me as I enter Puerto Rican old-timer Cuchifritos Frituras (168 E. 116th St., no phone), which slings stacks of fried brown weirdness heated by lightbulbs. A striped-shirt counterman eyeballs me warily, then serves me a $1 combo of nonalcoholic piña colada and a guineo: a boiled, unripened banana. It’s as mealy as a rotten apple.

“Do you like that?” asks a diner.

“No.”

“That’s because you need garlic oil,” she says, handing me a squirt bottle. I douse the fruit and savor its transformation from torture to plate-scraper.

I uncover another torture at Capri Bakery (186 East 116th St., 212-410-1876), which peddles SpongeBob cakes, milkshakes and 50-cent beef or chicken “partties.” I order both, which is two more than I recommend. The flaky rounds ooze grease, and the fillings taste scavenged from a butcher’s dumpster bin.

I ditch my partties in a trash can (corner of East 116th Street and Third Avenue), beside which stands a wee red-hooded woman with Igloo corners. She’s vending one-buck cups of hot, thick champurrado, fashioned from masa and chocolate. Screw Swiss Miss, I think, sipping the chocolatey goodness: This is winter’s wonderful stomach warmer.

I’m so blissed out, I nearly overlook the jackpot awaiting across the street: a woman huddled over a shopping cart containing two covered metal pots. I quick-step across traffic and unleash my high school Spanish.

“Usted tiene tamales para un dólar?” I ask.

“Sí, sí,” she replies, reaching into a steaming pot and passing me a plump delight. I gleefully unwrap the corn husk and dig into spongy masa containing chicken shards bathed in salsa verde. It’s the peak of street eats—and tongue-numbingly piquant.

Searching for cooling relief, I trundle to El Barrio Juice Bar (308 E. 116th St., 212-828-0403). Fancifully named fruit drinks such as Hangover Cure, Melon Madness and Body Wiser are promising, and too pricy. So I pick a highlighter-orange cantaloupe popsicle. Packed with pureed fruit, it’s fresh and not cloyingly saccharine: $1 paradise on a wooden stick.

My sweet tooth piqued, I search for one final sugary nibble at L&T Coffee Shop (2265 First Ave., 212-358-4485), a narrow Greek diner crowded with school kids. Behind the cash register, I spy homemade doughnuts.

“Which one’s your favorite?” I ask the grizzled counterman.

“My favorite? I don’t like doughnuts,” he replies.

“He also doesn’t like feta cheese,” a customer chimes in.

The counterman shrugs. “Get a twist.”

I do, and my 70-cent selection is a beaut: It’s braided like challah, heavily glazed and pillow-soft. The donut sends my blood-sugar levels rocketing and makes me happy as a puppy, a sweet ending to a day made sweeter by my pocketful of jangling change.

Howdy, y’all. Because we all like pictures of drunk peopele, I’ve decided to start Drunkard of the Day®, a daily exploration of all the horrible, I shouldn’t-have-had-that-last-beer pictures. This one holds a special, dirty place in my Jewish heart. Agree?

Gone Country
Driven by culinary compulsions, Southern food is consumed at an alarming clip—pork cracklin’ and all

My obsessive-compulsive urges mean my toilet is always sparkling. Sparkling. I maniacally manicure my eyebrows, which would otherwise conjoin like Siamese twins. I listen to songs on repeat, nibble my nails to the bloody quick and, with a single-mindedness that demands institutionalization, fixate on food.

Some weeks, I’ll only slurp ponds of nose-watering Thai curries. Then I’ll devour crisp dosas, stacked like firewood, followed by a month of chorizo tortas. My whims are as arbitrary as the weather. Take last week’s Southern addiction: My mania began, as often occurs in this modern age, with an email. “Put on your cowboy shirts. We’re gonna eat barbecue,” a pal wrote.

Several days later, I was seated at fat-dude-favorite Hill Country (30 W. 26th St. betw. Broadway & 6th Ave., 212-255-4544). It’s a ginormous Texas mess hall with SS-style hospitality. Ropes corral customers. Diners are crammed together like cattle. The by-the-pound ’cue (prices range from $10-$20) is doled out, cafeteria-style, by carvers with tongues sharper than their knives.

“NEXT! STEP UP AND ORDER!” a young lass ordered with dominatrix élan.

“Quarter-pound of moist and lean brisket!” I shouted back. “Gimme a sausage and a rib, too. A big one.”

I got a big one. She wrapped my meat in wax paper along with bread slices as thick and white as my butt. At an adjoining station, I nabbed baked beans, cornbread and mac ’n’ cheese: enough calories to last a week. I descended downstairs to our long, communal table—wrinkled men with sauce-slicked fingers sat beside me—and tore into flesh.

“Wipe your mouth,” my girlfriend ordered. Brown goo surrounded my pucker like misapplied lipstick.

“Mmmpphh,” I grunted, lost in carnivorous rapture. The beef ribs were caveman delicious, though the sausage was kindling and the sides as forgettable as a Paris Hilton flick. The brisket was so luscious, I chucked my manners.

When a fellow diner tied his shoe, I sliced off a blackened brisket nub. “Stop. Stop that right now,” he ordered.
I repented, then repeated my crime when he visited the toilet. My Southern-eating urges were as uncontrollable as my beating heart.

My fervor continued days later when I pedaled east from my Crown Heights apartment, searching for Southern grub. Miles ticked away. Trucks invaded my path. I detoured onto frenzied Atlantic Avenue and spied Carolina Country Store (2001 Atlantic Ave., B’klyn, 718-498-8033).

Bare-bones Carolina possessed a gamy odor of grandma mixed with butcher shop. Diamond-hard candies and Day-Glo tonics beckoned beside pig parts sliced, diced, smoked, cured, brined and cased every which way but Sunday.

“What do you want?” barked a woman behind the counter.

“Uh, just looking around,” I replied.

“Mmmhmmm,” she said as sternly as a schoolmarm.

I fingered peanuts and peanut brittle. Bone-in ham was appealingly pink. “Made up your mind yet?” the lady asked, drumming her fingers. Buy something, she telepathed. Buy something.

“Not yet.”

“Mmmhmmm.” Buy something!

Flustered, I grabbed a softball-size bag of crisp cracklings. They looked like Styrofoam packing peanuts and were a red-orange hue typically painted on hookers’ toenails.

“Mmmhmmm,” the counter ma’am said, weighing my bag. “A buck ninety-two.”

I paid and popped fried epidermis into my mouth, grinding crackly skin between my molars. The cracklings were aggressively salty and stinky as a swine pen. No wonder the Jews prohibit pork consumption. To kill the foul flavor, I ventured across the street to Saratoga Country Kitchen (1991 Atlantic Ave., B’klyn, 718-498-0200).
Inside the no-frills, no-menu Southern restaurant, middle-aged women with matronly bosoms piled steam-table ribs, baked chicken, collard greens and black-eyed peas into aluminum containers.

“What are your favorites?” I asked.

“All good,” a gap-toothed woman said.

“I know that,” I said. “But what would you eat?”

“Fried chicken, mac’n’cheese and cabbage.”

Done. She loaded me up with enough edibles to feed Ethiopia’s famished children. Cost? $8.32. The gooey mac was worth double, and the cabbage was as earthy and savory as it was soggy. The chicken? Cold and dry as the Mojave after midnight. Despite my clucker’s shortcomings, I still joined the clean-plate club.

I burped my thanks, remounted my steed and pedaled home, scanning East Brooklyn’s faded storefronts for another Southern gem to sate my single-minded hunger.

Wild as the Yeasts
Why invasive airborne fungi make for great beer.

Vinnie Cilurzo, the brains behind Russian River Brewing Company in Santa Rosa, California, fashions the maniacally hoppy Pliny the Elder and Pliny the Younger, the gold standards for double and triple India pale ales. But they’re as conventional as Coors when compared to Cilurzo’s pet creations, which are so dangerous they’re brewed in isolation behind closed doors.

“I like making beers with bugs and critters,” says Cilurzo of his sour, Belgian-style ales fermented with Brettanomyces, a particularly potent type of yeast that he has experimented with since 1999.

Brettanomyces (often informally called “Brett”) imbues beers, such as barrel-aged Belgian lambics, with mild sourness and an earthy, barnyard funkiness (often considered defects in wine) that’s as foreign as your first bite of gamy goat or stinky durian. “We’re making creative beers with lots of personality,” Cilurzo says. His innovations include the woody Temptation, made by adding Brett (in addition to Lactobacillus and Pediococcus bacteria) to the raw wort and aging in oak Chardonnay barrels; and the sour-cherry Supplication, made by adding Brett and aging in Pinot Noir barrels. For the tart, 100 percent spontaneously fermented Beatification, Cilurzo doesn’t add yeast at all—it is simply floating in the air (the result of brewing Brett beers for a number of years in close quarters), and it colonizes the wort on its own.

Unlike normal beers, which ferment predictably with the addition of brewers’ yeast and can be drinkable in as few as two or three weeks, Brett beers “aren’t even tasted until they’re six months old,” Cilurzo says, adding that they are often aged for more than a year. “The beers tell us when they’re ready, and they work at their own pace. You can’t think like a brewer; you have to think like a winemaker.”

This challenge has attracted brewers at Allagash, New Belgium, and Jolly Pumpkin, which exclusively manufactures unfiltered, barrel-cured wild-yeast beers. Still, these sour ales remain a niche within the microbrew niche for several important reasons. “The wooden barrels require tons of space, and there’s a huge risk involved if the wild yeasts infiltrated other beers,” Cilurzo says.

“If Brett got into our regular production beer while it’s fermenting, it could be devastating,” says Gary Fish, owner of Deschutes Brewery in Bend, Oregon, explaining that the invasive spores would impart unwanted sour flavors. So “we were absolutely fastidious with our cleaning process” when creating a sour brown ale that’s aging in barrels containing mashed cherries (the beer, which will be called The Dissident, is tentatively scheduled for a September release).

Cilurzo takes safety one step farther by embracing kosher-style cleanliness methods: duplicates of every brewing gasket and tube—one for Bretts, one for normal beers. A costly headache? Not to Cilurzo. His complex beers have proven so popular that he’s ramping up production sixfold at his new brewery, slated to open this spring, with more than 400 oak barrels for aging.

“We make funky, challenging beers we like to drink,” Cilurzo explains, “and thank God, there are people out there who like them.”

From Xanax to Xanadu
Eggs and bacon? Eww! A lifelong brunch eater finds bok choy bliss in Sunset Park

“Hey, Josh, want to do brunch?” is a question I answer by screaming and galloping to a dark corner safe from runny eggs, crisp bacon, fluffy pancakes and other sinister tortures.
Whereas New Yorkers find brunch to be both Xanax and Xanadu—mingling with friends, scanning the Sunday Times, faking interest in the previous night’s coitus companion—I despise brunch. Particularly when people use it as a verb.

My belief places me in a NYC minority more miniscule than single heterosexual men. Why? Because brunch is hell served with greasy taters. Service is erratic. Lines are epic. Seating is cheek to jowl. Waiters force customers out as quickly as plates are cleared. In this regard, brunch-serving restaurants are like porn stars angling for an orgy world record: Pack ’em in, pleasure not included.

Ideally, brunch spots would operate on Chinatown’s magical formula: low cost + high volume = a happy me. I find this mathematical bliss at old-school diners like Tom’s and old-man coffee shops like Mei Lei Wah. Here, roast-pork buns cost $.75. A coffee is another $.75. Sure, the wrinkled cashiers are surly and the clientele ain’t winning any beauty contests, but I’m allowed to dine at my pace, not one dictated by profit margins.

Instead, eateries’ formula of high volume + high cost = the reason I avoid brunch like Greenpeace volunteers begging for donations. During weekend mornings, I’ll cook gossamer egg sandwiches for everyone, but it’s easier to convince me to wax my Speedo line than hit brunch.

Then my lady friend hit me with an order: “My cousin Jen and her girlfriend want to meet you,” she said.

“Great,” I replied. Maybe I could cadge a free drink off a family member.

“She wants to have brunch.”

“No.”

“Please?”

“N-O.”

“I’m asking you nicely.”

I considered standing firm, but since I’d like conjugal relations before 2009, I played good boyfriend and compromised: “Dim sum!” I exclaimed. “Dim. Freakin’. Sum.” It’s chaotic. It’s mysterious. It’s a sensory assault that requires snap reflexes to differentiate delectable and repellent eats.

“OK, dim sum it is on Saturday,” she said.

On Friday night, I prepared myself by getting pie-eyed at a birthday party. This fete was for home brewers opening Connecticut’s Upside Brewing later this year. This meant beer. Gallons of beer. I sipped Upside’s smooth English bitters before guzzling Captain Lawrence’s bourbon-y Nor’Easter Winter Warmer and Green Flash’s imperial IPA. It smelled like marijuana and made me unfortunate.

“Oh, my God!” the host screamed. He watched, googly-eyed, as I relieved myself outside. “You’re peeing on my grill.”

I slurred an apology and snagged a cab, mumbling along to Rihanna as I sped.

The next morning, my girlfriend dragged my bedraggled body to Sunset Park. It was an instant restorative. I love visiting this hurly-burly Chinatown as much as I adore sniffing my fingers when no one’s looking. I drift among crowds, snacking on thin mei fun noodles and joining cantankerous Chinese women in uncovering plump shiitakes and leafy bok choy.

“Stop looking at the vegetable stands,” my girlfriend said, as if I were ogling another woman. “It’s time for dim sum.”

In Manhattan, I head to Triple 8 Palace or Jing Fong. In Sunset Park I’m gaga for Pacificana (813 55th St. at 8th Ave., 718-871-2880), located above a bank. The parlor’s nearly as long as a basketball court, with ceilings tall enough for Yao Ming to trampoline. The tablecloth-topped tables are filled with Chinese families feasting wantonly—$10 covers even gluttonous diners, tips included. Our foursome sat down. We sipped green tea. Then I began flagging down cart-pushing ladies with vim that belied my beer-addled brain.

“Har gau!” I commanded to a woman peddling bamboo containers filled with translucent shrimp dumplings.

“Rice noodles!” I ordered, grabbing a plate jiggling with soft shrimp-studded rolls.

“Gimme…that!” I said, nabbing bean curd stuffed with mushrooms, pork and other minced creatures. Soon arrived plates burdened by soy-sauce-slicked greens, fried buns with black-bean paste centers, skin-on eggplants. Our bill filled with circular stamps, signifying each—god bless dim sum—sub-$3 purchase.

“I thought you didn’t like brunch?” my girlfriend asked, chopsticking up a veggie dumpling. Her cousin was enthralled by black-bean goo, the girlfriend occupied by a crisp scallion pancake.

“Shh,” I replied, plucking more steaming deliciousness from endlessly circling carts, like sharks in reverse, until my lips curled into an odd shape that looked awful close to a smile.