Meat and chocolate
By Mr. HenryTwice in one week Mr. Henry has eaten chocolate on meat. Is this a new national trend, a millennial generation mania? If so, why hasn’t anyone informed Mr. Henry about this before? He is supposed to be in the forefront of food fashion, not outside waiting behind the ropes.
At Columbus Circle, the AOL Time Warner Center is a bizarre amalgam of the authentic and the ersatz. The towers are handsome enough, if twin towers are what captivate your urban fantasies. Personally, Mr. Henry finds them deeply, doubly uninspiring. The interior is an essay in wasted space. Vast hollow chambers wind slowly round a half circle. Upstairs the celebrated Allen Room with its view down Central Park South is flanked by an awkward trapezoidal foyer larger than the performance hall itself.
Per Se (menu pris fixe, $275) and Masa, arguably the two best restaurants in the country, share a common hallway entrance from what looks like an upscale shopping mall, a decor suggesting Dallas or Short Hills. However, on a rainy Wednesday evening last week a veteran New York bum borrowed this entrance as a staging area to clean his soaked and blackened feet. Ah! New York City! Where wretchedness and superabundance reside side by side.
Down one flight at Cafe Gray, Mr. Henry could not resist ordering the loin of pork with braised shoulder and braised belly because they were finished with “chocolate stout” – a very light, subtly aromatic, slightly bitter chocolate ale. It was a remarkably appropriate complement to pork’s mild flavors.
Last night at Mary and Michael’s house, the worldly and curvaceous Donna, fresh from a day of rock-climbing, cooked an imaginative short ribs with tagliatelle topped NOT by Parmesan cheese but by finely grated bitter chocolate, a recipe borrowed from Giada Di Laurentiis.
Lighter and less insistent than Parmesan, the bitter chocolate awakened taste buds not otherwise aroused by the sweet round flavors of slowly braised short ribs. It was a success made more exciting by being so unexpected.
Will chocolate hamburgers be the next new thing? Let’s see….ketchup and bitter chocolate together, isn’t that almost a salsa molé?
April 4th, 2008 at 9:08 am
It is more than twenty years now that La BellaDonna had lunch at a Mexicon (or possibly even Aztec) restaurant in Philadelphia, and she had the chicken with the bitter chocolate sauce.
So … no, not such a new trend as that; at least, not in my experience.
April 4th, 2008 at 9:09 am
It is more than twenty years now that La BellaDonna had lunch at a Mexican (or possibly even Aztec) restaurant in Philadelphia, and she had the chicken with the bitter chocolate sauce.
So … no, not such a new trend as that; at least, not in my experience.
April 4th, 2008 at 9:11 am
*sigh* The apology for the double (now triple) post, but La BellaDonna truly does know how to spell “Mexican.”
April 12th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
I think the movie Chocolat brought it into a wider distribution in terms of acceptance. That and Vosges chocolates. Chocolate, especially 72% and up, is powerful and strong enough to handle much of anything – spices and meat.
Both dishes sound great.
Luv
Poochie
January 26th, 2009 at 1:47 pm
Hi. This is all about taste. I completely agree with you regarding \”Manolo’s Food Blog\”, but I think you are in the thin line of thinling. Don\’t you? Maybe you can try gourmet english chocolates