by Rachel Nash Perlow

Gwynnie Bee is a subscription clothing rental business for plus size women. I decided to give it a try last year. Since having bariatric surgery, I had lost a lot of weight but wasn’t yet finished reducing. Who wants to buy clothes retail that you know you won’t fit in a month or two down the road? I had a great time trying clothes in successively smaller sizes, and my friends noticed I rarely wore the same thing twice!

Unfortunately, I had been having a customer service issue for the past couple of months. You see, there were sizes missing from many of the recent style releases, and that was the size range I seemed to be in. Many brands used to be offered in sizes 10, 12, 14, 16, 10W, 12W, 14W, 16W, and up to size 32 or 5X. But now they seemed to be skipping the four sizes between 12 and 14W. Believe me, there’s a large difference between size 12 and size 14W.

Click on the “Read the rest of this entry” link below for more.

I realized this gap was happening as I lost weight and had to adjust the sizes of items I was closeting (to closet is to put styles in your GB queue, sort of like Netflix but for dresses). Suddenly, the Size Advisor feature of the website didn’t know what to tell me. I would examine the Size Charts and remeasure myself. I closeted styles in both 12 and 14W, just to double check. Yup, the 12s were too small while the 14Ws were too big. From the items I had bought in the past in my home closet, I knew I needed sizes that had disappeared from being closetable.

I emailed customer service about this issue several times, pretty much to no avail, receiving responses along the lines of “thank you for your feedback” and “we’ll forward your suggestion to our buying team.” Then they’d consider the matter closed and I would never hear back from the buying team. It was very frustrating.

But then, it was announced that Christine Hunsicker, CEO of Gwynnie Bee, would be having a live video chat. I set my alarm (and delayed dinner that night) to participate. I got my question in early and it was read by Lisa Tinglum from the Social Media team (and the face of many GB videos) as the last question. Sort of. Instead of “why are sizes that used to be carried in certain brands, currently missing?” it was summarized as “Can you talk about the sizing gap for some of the brands, why don’t you carry the full run?” So, not quite the same question was answered on the video chat.

 

Spoiler Alert! Lisa Tinglum and I take a selfie during my Gwynnie Bee visit

 

However, Christine and staff were conscientious of the online written commentary, saw my lament and, more importantly, recognized this as the answer to a customer retention problem they had been experiencing. After a few online exchanges, Christine proposed we speak on the phone.

She explained how the sizing gap started, some customers confused the sized 14 vs 14W, for example. Then buyers noted that some sizes were very close (like 16 vs 14W) and maybe they could just go with one instead of both. As I understand it, several compromises like this eventually resulted in a standard order across several brands that led to a much larger sizing gap.

Getting to speak personally with Christine was a revelation for her as well as me. GB had noticed a lot of members in and around size 14 dropping the service and they didn’t know why. She wasn’t sure how the decision was made to drop four sizes in a row, but she is quickly taking steps to rectify the problem. For dresses already bought and live on the site, they are attempting to fill in where they can. Obviously, not all styles were offered in all sizes, but also, there may no longer be stock available where it was missing. But they’re trying to fill in where they can, just to reiterate. For future releases, they are also filling in, with more success since more of those styles are still being manufactured.

One point that was mentioned was that these middle sizes were closeted less often, contributing to the decision to drop them. I proposed that the solution wasn’t to drop them entirely, but just to order fewer pieces in those sizes. I’m unaware of how the buying process works in this regard, but hopefully my suggestion is a valid one.

As our conversation ended, Christine casually mentioned that if I were ever up in NYC, she would love to meet with me. “Well,” I responded, “I happened to be accompanying my mother back to NJ next week, perhaps I could come then?” Appointment made, I prepared myself to visit the Hive!

I examined my real life closet and came up with a few outfit options. The winner was this combo: a short black skort that is one of my wardrobe staples. It is by Croft & Barrow and I received it for free from my local bariatric support group Clothing Exchange (which I run). The top is the Jete Tiger Printed Scuba Shell Top. I had just received this recent release and it coincided nicely with an At Home sale, so I snagged it for $17. This was topped with a City Chic Fluffy Sequin Shrug which I stole for less than $10 during a City Chic online after Christmas sale!

I also brought a Karen Kane tank dress (pictured above the fold), a London Times sweater dress, and some extra shoes with me to my visit. As I told the parking attendant, I’m not sure if my meeting will be less than an hour or if I’d be there all afternoon. I wanted to be prepared! It turned out I was there about two hours, but a very full two hours.

The GB NY offices are located at The Factory in Long Island City (a section of Queens, NYC). A hip space, the cavernous cement floored lobby has several art installations. The striking sculpture of a school bus turned giant hand (again, pictured above the fold) is located in the area outside the elevator.

Arriving at the designated floor, the first office you see is Ralph Lauren, with GB just around the corner. This was excellent cred, I thought.

I was suspiciously greeted by a cautious miniature Sharpei. Turns out this was Christine’s dog, but he warmed to me after her welcome. The dog friendly office policy isn’t limited to the boss. I also met Lulu, buyer Shiho Makimura’s Malti-Poo. The open office is true to life depicted in this image of Christine from Forbes. It reminded me of the office space in The Intern, also about an internet clothing company. Coincidence or inspiration?

credit: Forbes magazine

After a brief chat, Christine turned me over to Lisa and Shiho who continued my tour to another floor where GB’s epic sample closet is curated and the model shoots occurred. We watched one in progress for a bit, then moved on to meet Emelia from the Merchandising team.

She had pulled a rack full of pre-new-release clothes for me to try on. Inspired by items I had closeted in the past, these were clothes where they were able to fill in the sizing gap. She had the 12s and 14Ws out for me to try on, as they were waiting for the fill-in sizes to arrive. She also pulled a couple Cherry Velvet dresses when I explained how I gave up on the brand after never finding the right fit. She pulled XL and 1X try, but it turns out I’m now an L in that brand! Going to the gym works, even if the numbers on the scale aren’t always going down!

I tried on at least six dresses.  After a while, Shiho came back to where we were and gave me the pleasant surprise that one of their photographers, Trévon James, would do a mini photo shoot of me in my two favorite looks. I also learned some new tricks of posing! Click to watch a brief sad video of my photoshoot.

I couldn’t wait to see my professional images, here are some. Hopefully, they will appear on GB’s website soon!

One final art installation… this is the freight elevator!

Cauliflower / Mushroom / Leek Kugel

This is my second Passover season post-bariatric surgery. Since I started this process I’ve lost about 140lbs.

The surgery has helped immensely, but I credit a lot of this to sticking to a diet that is rich in protein and vegetables and low in sugar and carbohydrates.

Passover is a holiday that is incredibly difficult for bariatric patients. Most traditional Ashkenaze Jewish holiday foods are extremely carb-rich, and Passover is no exception, with matzoh incorporated into just about everything.

Matzo ball soup, matzo rolls, matzo stuffing, and of course, the kugels.

I do plan to attend the family seders this year, but I won’t be able to partake in most of it.

I’ll be able to eat brisket if it is there, but since surgery I now have an aversion to chicken (which happens in some people) as I can’t stand the taste/texture of it anymore and it makes me ill. And I’ve never liked gefilte fish or chopped liver.

Potato Kugel and Matzo Ball Soup is off the menu. As is basically anything that is mostly carb-based.

I will be there, primarily, to be with family. And to watch everyone eat stuff that I can’t.

Welcome to bariatric hell. Does Quest make a matzo ball soup flavor of their protein bars?

My favorite dish, next to matzo ball soup itself is potato kugels made with matzo. It’s like carbs on top of carbs. If you want a crazy-good version, check out the one in this legacy post with other great Passover recipes. It’s awesome. I can’t eat it. Enjoy.

Recently Rachel and I have been experimenting with cauliflower in various dishes as an ersatz carbohydrate. It’s great when shredded/grated and used as a fried rice, or a paella. It also is wonderful mashed with cream and butter (did I mention I no longer care about fat content?).

No, cauliflower does not taste like potatoes. But it does taste good when seasoned and cooked properly. And it soaks up gravy like nobody’s business. Which is very important.

Here is a delicious kugel you can make that is much lower in carbs than a traditional potato kugel, as is made mostly with cauliflower, mushrooms, leeks and eggs.

There is a small amount of matzo meal in it as binder, but in those quantities it’s not worth worrying about if that’s what you’re going to reach for instead of the potatoes and a few slabs of the bread of affliction.

Oh did I mention it kind of tastes like grandma’s matzo ball soup?

Happy Passover.

Cauliflower, Leek and Mushroom Kugel

• 1 large head of cauliflower
• 4 tbsp olive oil, divided
• 1 medium onion diced
• 1 large leek cleaned and sliced 
• 8 oz white mushrooms, sliced
• 1.5 tsp salt
• .5 tsp pepper
• 2 tbsp finely chopped dill (divided)
• 1/2 cup finely chopped parsley (divided)
• .5 cup coarsely ground almonds
• 1/4 cup of matzo meal
• 4 eggs, beaten 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Shred cauliflower, cook in microwave in your largest glass bowl (so you can mix all ingredients in it later) until tender but not too soft (approx 10 mins stirring occasionally).

Heat 2 tbsp olive oil in large skillet, cook onions 5 mins or they begin to brown, then add leeks and salt, sauteed another 5 mins, then add mushrooms and cook another 5 mins. Remove from heat. Add ground  pepper, half the parsley and half the dill. Mix with cooked cauliflower and allow everything to cool.

In a small bowl, combine reserved dill, parsley and ground almonds with 2 tbsp olive oil, set aside.

Grease casserole dish liberally with olive oil.

Mix eggs and matzo meal with cooled off vegetables, spoon into casserole and smooth the top. Spread the herb and nut mixture over the top.

Bake in oven for 40-50 mins until puffed and lightly browned.

Serves 8-12 people or 24 bariatric patients

  I had let Off the Broiler go into indefinite hiatus about two years ago when I moved from New Jersey to South Florida. I discovered that along with my full time job and my writing for the technology industry, I didn’t really have the time for food blogging anymore.

To a large extent I now consider food blogging a pastime for the younger generation. I decided that I was not going to re-establish myself as a foodie blogger down here in South Florida because there were already a good number of people doing it, who know the area far better than I do, and who have far more connections in the food and restaurant industry down here than I could ever hope to amass.

I spent 20 years doing that in the NY/NJ area and I just didn’t have it in me to do it all over again. Food blogger relevancy is overrated and it reaps few rewards for what amounts to a lot of work.

In 2014 my co-founder at The eGullet Society for Culinary Arts & Letters, Steven A. Shaw, died suddenly at the age of 45. It was a horrible, tragic thing, and made me consider very seriously the issue of my own mortality.

At about the time Steven died I was facing the real possibility that I too would probably die within the next five years, due to my own unique health complications.

I was morbidly obese (390 lbs or so), I had Type-II diabetes, I had hypertension, high cholesterol and obstructive sleep apnea. I was taking a fist full of medications every day to try to keep things under control.

Bottom line, I was a mess.

Years ago, I had tried various methods of weight loss, including going on a healthier diet (there’s a large amount of healthier lifestyle posts in the archives) but the bottom line was that fighting a lifetime of obesity was a losing battle.

The New York Times chronicled one of my first attempts at trying to get my weight under control, but this was not a workable long-term solution.

I was always hungry because my stomach was so enlarged, so I ate huge portions of food. I also fought constantly trying to eat the right things, but never could keep it up. As a food blogger there were too many distractions.

If I didn’t do something drastic I would probably not live to see 50 years old. I had my 46th birthday in 2015.

After a lengthy 6-month approval process, on January 15th, 2015, I had a surgical procedure called a Vertical Sleeve Gastrectomy. My surgeon, Dr. Paul Wizman, is one of the best in South Florida and I recommend him highly to anyone looking at bariatric procedures down here.

As of January 2016 I have lost over 125 pounds. My diet consists heavily of protein and some vegetables, with little or no carbohydrates or processed foods of any kind. I have to take dietary supplements for the rest of my life, but it beats the meds.

My portion sizes, shall we say, are a lot smaller than they used to be.

I no longer register on the A1C as a diabetic and I no longer take diabetic medications or have obstructive sleep apnea. As of this writing I weigh under 240 lbs, and I hope to get down to about 200 over the course of the next year.

For those who are wondering, my wife, Rachel, had the same procedure done and she is doing very well.

Bottom line: I’m in a much better place than I was a year ago. I’m continuing to lose weight, but to do that as a bariatric patient and to keep the weight off, you have to “stay with the program” and continue to make the proper food choices as well as stay active.

Staying with the program, much like dealing with any kind of addiction, requires fixing your brain and learning new habits. The surgery helps immensely, but it’s only a tool, and it has to be used properly.

As part of this process I’ve given a lot of thought to other people who are struggling with weight loss and obesity. 

In South Florida and all around the Caribbean obesity and diabetes among Latin Americans is a serious problem because the diet is heavily based on carbohydrates and the use of saturated fats. Caribbean food is incredibly tasty and South Florida is one of the best places in the country to experience it. But if you eat fried food, rice, beans and plantains every day, it’s a bad combination. 

The first Caribbean recipe Rachel and I wanted to try to see if we could make healthy is a Picadillo, which is a dish served in virtually all Latin American countries, but it is particularly popular in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. It’s also one of my favorites.

Traditionally it is made with seasoned ground beef, tomatoes and has potatoes in it, but it has a lot of variations depending on what country it is made in and whose family recipe it is. Typically it is served over white or yellow rice along with fried plantains, or used as an empanada filling.

Dominican versions have a sweet and sour element to them due to the addition of sour orange and raisins. I thought that sounded interesting, so I figured I’d try to incorporate that.

This version of Picadillo that Rachel formulated (along with my input) is made with ground turkey breast (pavo), which is extremely low in fat compared to the carne molida that is normally used (70 or 80 percent lean hamburger, etc). Instead of the potatoes, we’ve added calabaza, a type of Caribbean pumpkin, but you could use any kind of pumpkin you want. We’ve also added black beans to this to give it a little bit of complex carbohydrates and that extra Caribbean something.

Picadillo heresy? Maybe. But try it anyway.

Picadillo de Pavo

1 large Tomato, chopped (about 2 cups)
1/2 cup Sofrito (Daisy Martinez’s recipe)
20 oz Jennie-O Ground Turkey Breast
1/2 cup Chicken Stock
12 oz chunk Calabaza, peeled and cubed (about 2 cups)
1/2 cup Raisins
1/2 cup Goya Alcaparrado Pimientos & Capers Manzanilla Olives, juices reserved
1/2 cup Black Beans (or more to taste)
1 Sour Orange
2 hard boiled Eggs
Salt & Pepper to taste

Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat and add chopped Tomato.

This is by far the most colorful Thanksgiving plate I’ve ever seen.

So after visiting Guavate, Rachel and I knew that we had to try making Pavochon ourselves, the real Puerto Rican way. This year, it happened that Thanksgiving was only going to be 4 of us — Rachel’s parents and the two of us, so we were assigned to doing the cooking. So if we were in charge, why not mix it up and do it Puerto Rican style?

Click on the “Read the rest of this entry” link below for more.

Daisy has a really good recipe for Pavochon which I reccomend highly — but in Guavate, I saw this particular turkey:

It had been deboned and stuffed back into its own skin and then roasted. This got me thinking — what if we took Daisy’s recipe, de-boned it, and then smoked it on my Weber Bullet, so it would really taste like slow roasted turkey over charcoal? Then it would be BARBECUE! And Puerto Rican at the same time!

First, you got your turkey. This is a regular supermarket turkey in the 12-14 pound range, which we bought frozen and then thawed out. As you can see, we completely removed all the skin from the breast area, and then laid it on a separate baking sheet, like so:

We then seasoned this with Adobo Seasoning Mix, cumin, and fresh ground black pepper.

We then removed the legs and wings from the turkey. Keep the wings aside and roast them separately, they are a great treat to keep for yourself as a snack later on when everyone goes home.

And removed the breast meat, leaving just an empty carcass. You can now throw him in a stock pot and make soup.

After removing the legs and the breasts, cut all the dark meat off the legs and throw the bones into the stock pot with the carcass.

Layer the dark meat onto the Turkey skin, and hit it with some more Adobo seasoning and cumin and black pepper.

In a food processor, make 1 recipe of Daisy’s Wet Adobo.

Spread the Wet Adobo on the dark meat.

Now layer on the breast meat and do the same. You might need to slice up the breasts so they lay more flat and even.

Now, using butcher’s twine, truss up the turkey like a Pork Roast. Here’s a video of how to do this. If a bit of the dark meat comes out the skin, its not a big deal.

Here’s a close-up of the knotting process.

This is how it should look when you are done. The roast is now sitting on top of a roasting rack in a disposable aluminum double roasting pan. Put some more Adobo seasoning and salt and pepper and cumin on the top for good measure, cover this with plastic wrap and let him sit in the fridge to marinate for 2 days.

When its time to cook the roast, put your root vegetables (Onion, Carrots) in the bottom of the aluminum pan. I used a Weber Bullet to smoke the roast over charcoals and hickory at approximately 225 degrees for 3 1/2 hours, or until the internal temperature of the meat was around 155 degrees, which is par-cooked, because i was going to transport it to my in-laws and re-heat it in the oven at 325 for about a half an hour. If you are going to fully cook the turkey in your backyard grill, it should probably take about 4 to 4 and a half hours, or until the temperature of the meat with a probe reaches 165 degrees.

Here’s a little bit of dark meat we grabbed off the roast. That pink color comes from the smoke.

Here’s the pan juices. We thew the whole lot into a blender with some additional stock (remember that carcass you cooked?) and made it into gravy.

Here’s the Pavochon, just out of the BBQ Smoker.

Here’s the table at my in-laws, set and ready to go.

Here’s the Pavochon after being re-heated in the oven.

Smoked Turkey wing, for mom.

Here’s the Pavochon sliced up, in all of its glory.

What do you serve Pavochon with? Well, we wanted to amp up the vegetable content with this meal, so we decided to whip up some “Boriqua Slaw”. This is not a traditional Puerto Rican dish, but its great for a salad course and is a great use for Daisy’s Pinapple Vinagre.

No traditional Puerto Rican meal is complete without Arroz con Gandules. Our version used brown rice, and we also added Calabaza, Puerto Rican Pumpkin. Calabaza is a term for different types of pumpkin that is commonly found in the Caribbean but you can get it in certain Latino supermarkets in major cities. This is what it looks like:

Here is a variety of Calabaza that is sold in Puerto Rico. You can find other varieties with different flesh colorations. Some of the ones that come from other countries have very bright orange flesh. Some of these are so big that they have to sell it in peices wrapped in plastic wrap.

Here’s the soup, a Caldo Gallego, which is a traditional soup from Galicia in Spain similar to an Escarole and Bean soup. This was made with the Turkey Stock from the deboned turkey, beans, cubed Calabaza, Chicken Andouille sausage (traditionally it calls for Chorizo) and lots of Kale.

Heres a plate of Asparagus and Green Beans sauteed with Garlic. Gotta have your veggies!

For dessert, Pumpkin Flan made with Calabaza. This was based off of Ellie Krieger’s recipe from Food Network. Pretty much exactly the same as her recipe, but we used leftover cooked and strained Calabaza instead of canned pumpkin.

And for dessert #2, Rachel’s Mom’s Apple Crumble.

Buen Provecho and Happy Holidays!

Passover Rolls

Ultimate Potato Kugel

Veggie Kugel

Matzo Brei

Pizza of Affliction

New York Egg Creams

I’m usually someone that’s good for pulling words out of my head on hard and complex subjects.

Not today.

I’m struggling to deal with the loss of someone who I spent five years of my life with creating and building what I consider to be one of my proudest achievements.

And it is especially hard because the two of us are the same age, and who had so much in common, even despite our differences.

I’ve told the eGullet story before, from my perspective, at the five year anniversary mark. But I never thought I would have to talk about it again in the context of a eulogy for a friend.

It was such a long time ago — fourteen years — that I have trouble remembering how exactly I discovered him. We were both users of Jim Leff’s Chowhound food discussion site, which by today’s technological standards and even at the time was a dinosaur.

I was intrigued by Steven’s writing on his original Fat-Guy.com, which many consider to be one of the first foodblogs. But really, it wasn’t a blog, it was just a collection of stuff, like most personal web sites were at the time.

It was just raw. But I was intrigued with what he was doing. I was a foodie, but also a technologist, who was delving into things like Linux and Open Source, which could enable a whole lot of things that you could not do before with information presented online.

Dynamic content, social networking, all the things you can think of that exist today did not exist at the time, back in 1999 or 2000. There was no Facebook, no Twitter.

Google itself was only 2 years old. Just pause and think about that for a minute.

I could see that Steven’s writing had huge potential and there was just starting to become available, somewhat experimentally, software that could present information in a free-flowing interactive way that was searchable and had all the things you assume just exist on a content site today.

The two of us decided to see what could be done with his web site, if we could accomplish those things we take for granted today. We found some weird piece of software from Norway, we tried that out for a while. Then we looked at some other things that seemed like it would work, and settled on that.

And then it dawned on us that maybe if we found some other good food writers that were subject matter experts in specific areas — such as regional restaurants, wine and cooking — and combine it with this software, we would have something different than what was out there.

So we scrapped Fat-Guy.com and came up with eGullet. I dragged one of my spare servers to a small ISP in New Jersey and stuffed a bunch of half-baked free software on it.

We soft-launched it in late August of 2001 and prayed the thing wouldn’t blow up on us.

We thought it was just going to be a dozen or so local food nuts having geeky conversations for a year until we got some momentum.

We were wrong.

Both of us were complete unknowns in the food world. Steven decided to dump a really lucrative six figure job as a litigator at Cravath, Swain and Moore to become a food writer.

I thought he was completely nuts. I never had the courage to leave computer consulting and writing for the computer industry to take a swipe at professional food writing, because I knew how lousy it paid compared to what I was doing, even if you were lucky to get the gigs at the established and more prestigious magazines and newspapers.

I always considered food writing and food blogging an expensive hobby, never my profession. Steven took a leap of faith and a risk I would never even consider taking for myself. He was unbelievably courageous, crazy, or both.

I don’t know if Rachel would be as supportive if I had the balls to take a leap of faith on something like that. His wife, Ellen, is not only a sweet, generous and beautiful person, but she also must be unbelievably patient.

We came to a gentlemen’s agreement that Steven would provide the culinary and food writing expertise and I would be the technologist-cum-foodie enthusiast.

We didn’t know if the site would ever make money, but dammit, we would try. I also agreed to pay the bills because Steven had the most at risk and I was the only one with stable employment.

After September 11 came around, just a few weeks after we launched, traffic on the site simply exploded. We became sort of a group therapy session for New York foodies and food industry people caught up in the aftermath of that horrible thing.

I don’t remember exactly how big we were after the first year but it wasn’t uncommon to have several hundred people logged on simultaneously with at least a hundred discussion threads being updated every day. For the time, that was enormous.

Steven’s job was to give the site prestige and legitimacy — which he certainly did, especially after he won his James Beard award. Mine was to keep the lights on, which was no small task considering that the tech back then was no where near as mature as we have now.

We were both young and inexperienced at this whole online community thing (who was “experienced” then, really?) and as the site grew, we were simply just dealing with issues that arose as we went along.

The two of us, offline, I think had a great relationship. We respected each other’s capabilities, we loved dining out with each other and our spouses, we talked about so many things.

We said things to each other that we probably wouldn’t share with anybody else, including our wives. Our worries, our hopes, our dreams.

The first five years were great. But as Steven’s fame grew in the food community, it became harder for me to accept my role, as critical as it was, to simply be the site’s tech guy.

I felt my voice was equally important. I was an experienced writer in my own right, even though all of my “legitimate” recognition was (and quite frankly, still is) in the computer industry.

And while Steven was by far a more prolific poster, I contributed a great deal of valuable food content to eGullet as well.

We were both two Jewish kids from New York with huge egos and personalities to go with them. And I felt my creativity and input as well as my exposure was being stifled.

But we couldn’t have two Alpha Foodies on eGullet. And as the organization of the site became more complex, as we got more and more volunteer staff, I lost more and more control.

And being the control freak that I was (and still am) that was a very difficult thing for me to come to terms with.

So the two of us came to loggerheads. Frequently.

In hindsight I realize these disagreements were stupid and I wish I was mature enough to handle them at the time. But I was not.

There were also financial issues to deal with. Around the summer of 2005 I decided I didn’t want to pay the bills anymore, and the volume of traffic we were getting, in the millions of page impressions a year would easily be supported by advertising dollars.

But that would only cover the hosting costs for the site. We both came to the unfortunate conclusion that there was no way we could ever compensate the volunteers for all the time they were putting in, not unless the site was bought out for a huge sum of money.

Although we tried to generate venture capitalist interest, there were no buyers for content sites like eGullet in those days because the value of that content and the eyeballs viewing it were not well understood.

We were before our time. July of 2004 is when Facebook was founded, just in case you are keeping track of timelines.

Steven needed to make a living. The future of the site needed to be ensured. Steven needed a salary and health insurance or we would have to close up shop and he would have to go back to lawyering again.

So we did the only logical thing that made sense at the time, which was to turn eGullet into a not-for-profit, where Steven would become Executive Director and we’d have a board, with a mission statement and all those things.

To me at the time, this felt a bit like giving up. I had lost a lot of influence in the future of something I was instrumental in creating.

We terminated our relationship not long after the 501(c)3 status was formalized. In April of 2006 I started OffTheBroiler.com, and continued my career in the computer industry as both a technologist and a writer.

In retrospect, and now in dealing with Steven’s passing, I now understand how critical not-for-profit status was for eGullet’s survival.

eGullet survives now because Steven had the vision to turn it into the Society for Culinary Arts and Letters. It survived when he himself left and eventually embarked on a third career at Quirky.

It almost certainly will survive after his passing and hopefully, after the current generation of hard-working volunteers over there has ceded to another generation of aspiring writers and food bloggers.

I hope it exists forever.

By becoming a not-for-profit it was able to achieve a number of things that we just plain couldn’t do while it was another one of my hobby businesses.

Still, it was not an amicable parting, and there was bad blood all over. For me to deny that would be untruthful.

But none of that is important anymore, and I’ve been “over” it for a very long time. I enjoyed my time as an independent food blogger, and I probably should have started earlier.

Despite what many people wish to believe, we did, years later, patch things up. For a short time, I even had him writing for ZDNet, before he went on to become Community Director at Quirky, where his leadership impacted so many there.

I watched Steven’s star rise from afar. He’s respected by so many people in the food industry and has touched the lives of so many people in ways I never could have.

I envy him, and his many accomplishments. His influence on the food writing and food blogging world casts a long shadow. One which will not be forgotten.

I wanted so badly for us to share another meal together. For him and Ellen and PJ to visit our new home in Florida. For us to debate pizza and bagels and barbecue joints again. To talk about where to find decent Soup Dumplings.

I’m going to miss you, my friend.

Web Site: http://www.bluefinparkland.com

Note: Bluefin Parkland is now running an extremely aggressive “crowdsourced” gift card deal that frankly is one of the best fine dining bargains in the greater Broward and Palm Beach County area right now. For $100, you get a gift card worth $180. For $500, you get $1000, which you can split up into multiple gift cards if you like. If you’re a sushi fanatic like I am, you’d be crazy not to take advantage of this. The cards are good for up to one year at the Parkland location.

One of the first priorities for us after moving to South Florida was finding our “local” sushi place. Sushi is one of our favorite cuisines, and when you live in a warm climate it also is one of the most refreshing after a long and hot day.

But high-quality, authentic Japanese-style sushi can be extremely difficult to find in South Florida. Heck, it was difficult enough to find in suburban New Jersey where we used to live, and it’s still something of a challenge in New York City unless you go to the most expensive and well-known places.

We are lucky enough to live less than 10 minutes away from one of the best sushi restaurants in Broward County, if not all of South Florida, the Parkland location of Bluefin Sushi.

Chef Yozo Natsui, Proprietor of Bluefin Parkland.

The original Boca Raton location of Bluefin was opened by Japanese-born Chef Yozo Natsui in 2005 and has since remained one of the hottest restaurants for business lunches as well as for evening dining for its excellent and beautifully presented sushi and Thai dishes as well as its modern and attractive decor.

Natsui-san, who is a classically-trained sushi chef and has been in the business for over 30 years and is considered one of the prime innovators of American-style sushi, opened up a smaller location in Parkland in 2008, where he leads a staff of hand-picked sushi chefs that he has educated in the art and measure up to his meticulous standards.

While he continues to consult at the Boca location, he makes the Parkland one his permanent sushi dojo. The Parkland restaurant has ample table seating, but if you truly wish to appreciate Yozo-san and his chefs engaged in their art form, you want to sit at the sushi bar and observe their mastery.

An elaborate sushi boat presentation, with nigiri sushi, makizushi and sashimi in the classical style.

A sushi/sashimi dinner combo, from one of the pre-set menu items.

“Uzuzukuri Combo B”

Shrimp Tempura, Dinner portion

Steamed Gyoza

While Yozo-san’s traditional preparations are top-notch, the restaurant prides itself on its unusual and creative preparations. This is a lobster roll, which is an entire deep-fried lobster tail  with the meat removed and formed into a makizushi roll, with a sweet shoyu sauce and Japanese-style spicy mayo drizzled onto it.

Chutoro, medium-fatty bluefin tuna sashimi in a creative preparation.

Chutoro, served as a complimentary appetizer at the sushi bar with a Thai-style sweet and spicy vinegar sauce.

The “Sushi Bomb” which is one of the rolls that made this restaurant famous.  A makizushi of tuna, salmon, escolar, avocado, asparagus, scallion that is fried in a tempura batter and garnished with sweet shoyu-based “eel sauce” and spicy mayo.

Normally this goes for $13 but on Tuesday nights the place gets packed with people because it’s on special for $5. The “Parkland Roll” which is also $13 is $5 on Monday nights.

Spider Roll, deep-fried soft shell crab

Tuna Tartare

Spicy Scallop Maki

Kani Su, one of the cucumber-based makis. This is seasoned with the sweetened rice vinegar or “Su” that is used to flavor sushi rice.

Naruto Roll

Spicy Tuna Salad

Amaebi, raw sweet shrimp nigiri with deep fried shrimp heads

“Hot Tuna Sandwich Roll” in the pressed oshizushi style.

While the restaurant’s primary focus is sushi and other Japanese dishes it also has some very nice Thai items as well. This is a spicy Thai beef salad.

Lobster tail, in a Japanese teriyaki style.

Since moving to South Florida, I’ve been jonesing for some real Greek food, like the kind I used to get in Astoria and various places in New Jersey. You can get really good Greek food in Florida, but you may have to drive all the way to Tarpon Springs to get it.

One of my favorite Greek dishes is Keftedes, which are seasoned meatballs that have usually been fried. I haven’t been able to find any good ones down here yet, so I asked Rachel to see if we could whip some up.

What she came up with was nothing short of amazing. Not only are these lower fat because they are made with ground turkey as opposed to beef/veal, but they are also baked in mini muffin tins.

And they taste fantastic.

A healthier variation of the traditional avgolemono, a classic egg with fresh lemon juice sauce poured on top seals the deal. This can be served over orzo pasta or rice (we used brown rice in the picture, accompanied by a simple cucumber/tomato/feta salad.)

Healthier Keftedes (baked and made with turkey)

12 oz. ground turkey (preferably all breast meat)
1 onion
1 clove garlic
4 Tbs chopped fresh parsley (divided)
1 Tbs dried mint
1/2 cup fresh whole wheat breadcrumbs
1 Tbs grated cheese (hard sharp for grating, such as parmigiano, graviera or kefalotyri)
1/2 cup milk
1 egg white
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
Olive oil cooking spray or 2 tsp. olive oil for brushing

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees (or 350 convection).

Place chopped meat in a mixing bowl. Chop onions and garlic in a food processor, add all the other ingredients except the meat and 2 Tbs of chopped parsley (save for garnish) and pulse to combine. Scrape into bowl with meat and mix by hand (you don’t want to over process the meat, it makes the meatballs too soft).

Brush 2 mini-muffin tins lightly with olive oil, then using two teaspoons or a small disher, scoop the meat mixture into the cups. There should be just a little over an ounce in each cup. Lightly spray or brush a little more olive oil on top, but do not press the meat down at all, so they will still look like meatballs instead of mini-muffins.

Put the mini-muffin tins on top of a sheet tray and bake for about 30 minutes, or until lightly browned on top. You can make ahead to this point or continue with making the sauce and serving immediately.

Lite Avgolemono Sauce

16 oz chicken stock (preferably homemade, but if you must buy canned, get low sodium)
1 Tbs flour
2 oz lemon juice
1 egg white
1 tsp butter or 1 Tbs cream*
Salt & pepper to taste (no salt if you are using canned broth, even if
it is low sodium)

Combine the chicken stock and flour while the stock is cold. Put in saucepan and bring to a simmer until thickened (if you have a Vitamix, you can blend it on Hi for 5 minutes or so until steamy and thickened).

Keep the thickened broth warm in the saucepan until the meatballs are done (or place cooled meatballs in the sauce after it has thickened and simmered for a few minutes.)

Place lemon juice, egg white, and butter or cream (*you have to have a little fat in there, are skipping the egg yolks after all, you can try it without the fat, but I used a little cream), salt & pepper in the blender and whir to combine for a few seconds. DO NOT ADD TO THE SAUCEPAN YET.

Assemble the rest of your meal (brown or white rice or orzo, veggies, salad, etc). Take the meatballs off heat. With the blender on low, drizzle in about 1/2 cup of the hot thickened broth (push the meatballs to the side a bit and spoon up thickened broth only) to the blender a tablespoon at a time.

Once the flavoring has been tempered you can pour the mixture into the saucepan with the rest of the thickened broth and meatballs, stirring gently but quickly. Put the lid on the pot and allow it to rest for 5 minutes, but do not put back on heat.

Serve over brown rice or orzo with lots of sauce and garnish with chopped parsley.

You should have 24 meatballs, so 6 is technically a serving, but let’s face it, there were no leftovers when it was just two of us for dinner, but still, not an unhealthy meal.

Since moving to South Florida, I’ve been exposed to a number of Latin American cuisines that I did not readily have access to when living in the Northeast. One of those cuisines, Peruvian, has quickly become one of my favorites.

The cuisine of Peru is one of the most interesting in South America, as it merges traditions and ingredients of the indigenous peoples as well as immigrants from China and other places like Japan, Germany and Italy.

While there are a number of good Peruvian restaurants in Broward County, there are none which I would consider examples of the finer or more upscale-dining restaurants that Cuban or Colombian cuisine have in this area, for example.

The newly re-opened Saxsay, in Tamarac (Formerly Sunrise) plans to change that.

Peruvian food can be sophisticated, as Saxsay in Tamarac shows. Click on the “Read the rest of this entry” link below for more.

Saxsay’s main dining room reflects the warm and earthy colors of their previous but much smaller location.

The larger of the two private dining rooms allows for a more intimate experience.

A third, smaller dining room would be perfect for a romantic dinner for two.

You can’t start off a Peruvian meal without some Cancha, or crunchy deep-fried corn kernels.

Saxsay’s all-Peruvian culinary team.

A large amount of attention is paid to presentation, allowing the restaurant to show off even traditional foods like Causa, a cold appetizer that uses potatoes and yellow peppers.

Causa de Pollo (Chicken)

Causa de Camaron (Shrimp)

Papa a la Huancaina, boiled potatoes which have a spicy yellow pepper sauce on it.

Chinese cuisine or “Chifa”  is one of the most popular sub-cuisines in Peru.  Like other international cuisines, it has been adapted to local tastes and has a distinctly different flavor than Chinese food you may have tried elsewhere.

Typical Chifa dishes such as “Lomo Saltado” (Sauteed Beef) “Chaufa” (Fried Rice) and “Tallarin” (Lo Mein)  are now considered Peruvian staples since they were popularized in Lima’s bustling Chinatown during the 1920’s.

Lomo Saltado with French Fries, a popular Peruvian presentation.

“Tacu Tacu” is another unique way to eat Lomo Saltado, on a bed of fried seasoned beans and lentil paste with rice.

Chicken (Pollo) also gets the Saltado treatment as well.

Tallarin de Lomo Saltado is one of my favorite ways of having it.

Chaufa (Fried Rice) de Camaron.

Ceviche is also one of the most important Peruvian staples and Saxsay’s is fantastic. This is a mixed seafood ceviche with fish, shrimp, scallops, octopus and calamari.

Choritos a la Chalaca is a colorful and spicy presentation of mussels in the ceviche style.

Lesser known than Ceviche by most westerners is Tiradito, which is a carpaccio or sashimi-like dish covered with lime juice.

A classic Tiradito.

A “Tres Colores” (Three color) Tiradito.

My favorite of the raw fish presentations is Leche de Tigre (Tiger’s Milk) which is a spicy concoction of lime juice, hot pepper and bits of fish and shrimp. It’s supposed to put lead in your pencil.

Jalea is a mixed fried seafood dish that is absolutely out of this world, served with fried yuca.

This dish is “Picante de Mariscos” which is a mixed seafood sauteed dish with a spicy yellow pepper sauce. I got a small taste of this one and it’s a winner.

A fried fish filet, prepared in a garlic sauce.

Bistec con Tallarin Verde is another example of cultural integration in Peru, this being Italian. The very juicy seasoned steak is accompanied by a pasta in a spinach/basil pesto with a Queso Fresco.

Quebec City, as seen from the 10th floor of the Hilton facing the old city and Esplanade Park.

Summertime is the best time to check out Quebec. Click on the “Read the rest of this entry” link below for more.

The walls and citadel of Vieux Quebec.

Rue St. Jean in Old Quebec is where a lot of the tourist and restaurant action is.

The national dish of Quebec is Poutine, which is French Fries topped with fresh cheese curds, a beef-based gravy, and your choice of optional toppings. This one has steak hache on it (hamburger). Every eatery in town has their own version of poutine, with their own distinct gravies and toppings.

A Canadian-style breakfast, served at L’Accent Cafe in Quebec City.

A ham, mushroom and cheese crepe with hollandaise sauce and a poached egg at L’Accent.

Croissants

Vieux Quebec City has a distinctly European feel to it. Make sure you bring comfortable walking shoes because this city has a lot of hills.

Hills, like this.

Quebec is the largest producer of Maple Syrup in the world. Most of the tourist shops sell it in pretty glass bottles but if you want it in foodie quantities and to pay less money for it, you’ll want to buy it at a farmer’s market.

The 500ml cans go for about $7-$8 in the Quebec City and Montreal farmers markets and you want to buy the darkest grade you can find, amber at bare minimum. The light grade is for the tourists.

The farmer’s market in Vieux Port is by far the best place to buy all kinds of fruits and vegetables, as well as cheeses, meats and other food items for cooking or immediate consumption.

A picnic lunch of cheeses, locally produced ham and chorizo, berries, radishes, heirloom tomatoes and whole grain loaf.

Quebec’s Montmorency Falls as well as nearby Île d’Orléans where most of the local produce is grown should not be missed.

Montreal’s Chinatown is not big when compared to that of Toronto, Vancouver or other large American cities, but it is clean and has some very authentic restaurants.

Qinghua Dumpling, along Rue St. Laurent was one of our favorites.

This Shanghainese and Northern Chinese-style dumpling restaurant makes every batch of dumplings fresh per order, and there’s a huge variety to choose from.

Classic XiaoLongBao, or Soup Dumplings.

While we spent a lot of time in Montreal’s Chinatown due to the proximity of our hotel, the city is known for all of its ethnic cuisines. Schwartz’s is a Jewish delicatessen that specializes in Montreal Smoke Meat, which is a very close relative of Pastrami.

A classic Montreal Smoked Meat sandwich, on rye bread.

In addition to Jewish delis Montreal is also known for its unique style of bagels. Montreal bagels, such as the Fairmount bagel shown here, are about half the size of New York bagels and have a slightly sweeter dough.

Here’s the oven at St. Viateur, which has been pumping out bagels and other wonderful baked goods since 1957.

We also had a chance to try Tunisian cuisine for the first time at the tiny La Goulette cafe in Montreal. Like Moroccan food this North African cuisine is centered around couscous dishes and heavily employs the use of harissa, a spicy red pepper paste.

Montreal being ethnically diverse is known for its street fairs during the summer.

This street paella was the real deal.

Summer is blueberry season in Quebec, so you’ll encounter a lot of pastries featuring them.

But of course, you can just eat them all by themselves.

Web Site:  http://www.sazeracrestaurant.com/

It’s very rare that I get to sample most of a restaurant’s entire menu within the course of a few visits. It’s even rarer that I get to eat at one restaurant almost every day over the course of one week. In fact, I can’t even recall when I’ve ever done this.

But circumstances presented itself recently when I had the chance to stay for a week at Seattle’s Hotel Monaco, a boutique hotel owned by the Kimpton Group.  I ended up eating almost every dinner meal, two breakfasts and a lunch at the on-premises restaurant, Sazerac.

Typically, when I travel I try different restaurants and I have a chance to go out with different folks, but this was a unique situation where I spent 10 hours a day at the conference center and then came back at night to have something to eat.

I found Sazerac’s food to be so good, that I wanted to explore as much of the menu as I could.

A grand tour awaits at Sazerac in The Hotel Monaco. Click on the “Read the rest of this entry” link below for more.

The lobby at the Hotel Monaco. This a beautifully-decorated small hotel, with attentive service, and the added benefit of having a truly excellent restaurant sharing the same facility.

Sazerac’s main dining room. Warm, inviting. You walk in here and it feels like a place you want to dine in.

After a six hour flight from Atlanta, I arrived at the Hotel Monaco early on a Saturday afternoon. On the weekends, Sazerac has a brunch menu. Brunch? I needed a drink first. A spicy Bloody Mary. In fact, I had two of them. They were that good.

The menu, as you might have guessed, based on the name of the restaurant, has a certain Southern/New Orleans kind of flair to it, mixed in with flavors integrated from all over the world.

Chicken and Sausage Gumbo is always on the menu, and it is a very good Gumbo indeed. The roux is more of the blonde type than a dark type you might see more frequently in New Orleans, this is more of a New Iberia or North Louisiana type. It’s already been spiked with hot sauce, so there’s no need to amp this one up.

It may be the Pacific Northwest but this Gumbo is legit.

Brunch has some other interesting items on it, like this shrimp and avocado stuffed omelette in a hollandaise sauce.

It turns out it was fortuitous that I got to Sazerac on this particular Saturday during brunch. The Chef de Cuisine, Jason McClure, does a special cooking demo/class along with paired Washington State wines four times a year. I had arrived and finished brunch just as his class was getting started.

It did not take too long after explaining that I was a food blogger flying in all the way from Florida to get in on the action!

The first dish that was plated for the cooking class was a dungeness crab salad with heirloom tomato. After I had tasted this, I had basically made my decision that I would make every attempt to eat at this restaurant every day for an entire week. It wasn’t a hard decision to make.

The second dish was a pecan/panko encrusted chicken breast with a grain mustard aoli. Chicken was nice and juicy and the mustard had the perfect bite to go with the crunchy fried texture.

The dessert course, a blueberry tart,  was paired with a late harvest white dessert wine from Washington.  The restaurant has a very good beverage program, with a good variety of well-priced bottles and wines by the glass.

I was incredibly jet-lagged and tired so after that meal — with the unplanned (but very much appreciated) tastings, two boozy bloody marys and a few glasses of wine I decided to crash in my hotel room for four hours. By the time I woke up, it was HAPPY HOUR!

The Happy Hour menu at Sazerac consists of small plates, charcuterie and personal pizzas. This is a talleggio cheese and mushroom with onion jam pie, with a very thin crust. Like everything else at this restaurant, it’s awesome.

In fact it’s pretty much safe to say that virtually everything in this restaurant that I tasted was consistently excellent, so I don’t know if it’s possible to go wrong by ordering at random.

Beet Salad with Microgreens, Pistachios and Goat Cheese.

Arugula/Frise/Asparagus/Mint/Fava Bean Salad with Bacon and Fontina

Sliders. Often sliders are an afterthought on a bar menu. Do not hesitate to order these.

Mini pulled pork sandwiches with mustard BBQ sauce and melted white cheddar. The pork in this case has not been smoked but it has been slow cooked, resembling more of a Cuban rather than a southern BBQ style. But still very tasty.

The “Piquant” pizza that another patron ordered. Has spicy Salami, Garlic and sliced chile pepper on it.

This one has homemade andouille sausage, braised greens and pickled peppers on it. Cajun pie!

This is the only dish I had the entire week that had room for improvement. It’s a grilled baby artichoke appetizer with an onion mayonnaise. Sauce was amazing, but the baby artichokes were not the tender hearts, they had a lot of the choke on it and I had to do a lot of scraping to get the good stuff off.

That being said, if this was the only thing I didn’t completely enjoy on this menu I have to say this place is doing really well.

A braised pork cheeks and mushrooms entree another patron at the bar ordered. He loved it.

Home-made grilled lamb sausages with crispy kale and a pile of French lentils underneath. OMG was this good.

A classic beef tartare. Carnivore’s delight.

Mini grilled cheese sandwiches with tomato jam…

Ordered alongside a hearty tomato soup. This stuff would be even more incredible if amped up with red pepper flakes and served with fried calamari!

Diver scallop entree with manilla clams and chorizo. Man this one really hit the spot that night.

I did not sample many of the desserts at Sazerac, but I did have this one coconut/kaffir lime/macadamia/dulce de leche panna cotta that was practically orgasmic.

Breakfast, late in the week. Herbed omelette stuffed with spinach, cheese and bacon. Simple but perfectly executed, with nice crispy home fries.

Truffled potato croquettes with truffle cheese and truffle aoli ordered by one of my colleagues one night during a working dinner. Yes, I did try one. Yes, you should order them.

Appetizer portion of Brick-roasted Gulf Prawns with chorizo, caper berries and a lot of garlic. Dang. I wish I ordered a few plates of this.

A nice wide-angle view of the main dining room during early dinner service.

Bacon Cheeseburger, avec frites. Granted, one of the least interesting things on the menu but if you want a burger, this is a good one.

A curry mushroom soup with sweet potatoes. Very Indian tasting. In a quirky good way.  Brothy, not creamy.

Chicken Baguette club sandwich. I don’t know how the heck they do it without sous vide, but this is the juiciest grilled chicken sandwich I have ever eaten outside of my own home. According to Chef Jason this is marinated only for a few hours in olive oil and lemon juice. I need to try this out myself.

A nice treat from the staff after having dined at Sazerac all week. Shortbread cookies, baked in-house.

Web Site: http://www.howdoyouroll.com

Twitter: @how_do_you_roll

Quick Serve Restaurants, or QSR’s, are all the rage right now in casual dining. The trend of serving “faster, but higher quality” food items than what is served fast food establishments can largely be attributed to Chipotle, which is now a huge success story in the food and restaurant industry.

Since Chipotle made it big, others are trying to figure out what the next big QSR concept is. A lot of stuff since has been various re-spins on the burger concept. Asian cuisine, particularly sushi, is not something QSR as a whole has attempted to tackle yet, due to much higher sanitary standards as well as issues of keeping fish fresh.

How Do You Roll, a QSR chain that originated in Texas (and was profiled on the TV show “Shark Tank“)  is attempting to recreate Chipotle’s “Roll your own” model and success but with sushi and other Asian items. There are currently two locations in Florida, one in Sunrise and the other in Gainesville.

Rachel and I had the opportunity to visit the Sunrise HDYR location on a torrentially rainy saturday night with a group of sushi fans from Meetup.com when business was slow, so we got a chance to observe the franchise under optimal conditions for photography but not necessarily to see how service would perform under busy conditions.

As I mentioned, HDYR is a “Roll your own”, QSR restaurant where you pick from a list of ingredients and the sushi chefs put together your custom sushi roll, rice bowl or ramen soup.

HDYR is most definitely a “beginners” sushi place because there are only 3 raw fish types you can choose from, Tuna (Maguro), Salmon, Escolar (a bland white fish, sometimes referred to as “White Tuna”), and “Spicy” variants of the same. Additional proteins that can be rolled are cooked Beef, Chicken, Crawfish Tails, Surimi (“Krab Sticks”), Shrimp, Eel and Tofu.

There is also a nice variety of fruits, vegetables and a number of different sauces and toppings/condiments which allows for a good combination of things for the diner to create. Pre-designed roll combinations range from $3 to $7, so you’re looking at about half of what a mid-range sushi restaurant charges for similar items.

Like at a Chipotle, or a sub shop chain, you order at the counter and they give you a number and you sit down. When your number is called you either go up to get your order, or depending how busy the place is, they bring it to you. The place was so completely dead that evening due to the weather that we got first class table service.

Is How Do You Roll a fresh or a dead fish? Click on the “Read the rest of this entry” link below for more.

HDYR offers a few different types of beer and sake, including a “Buddha” beer in an interestingly crafted glass bottle.

The “Buddha” beer.

The sushi mise en place area, which as you can see is done very much Chipotle or Subway/Quiznos style. Cleanliness appeared to be something they were paying close attention to, which is critical for a QSR handling raw fish.

A rice bowl being prepared.

Edamame (soybean) appetizer.

Cucumber Salad / Sunomono

One of the small appetizer salads, the Chopped Asian Salad. Ingredients were fresh, was a nice accompaniment to the sushi.

Fried Dumplings (Beef, also come in vegetable) we thought were surprisingly good.

The ramen soup, while pretty, we thought was a miss. The broth, while “home made” is a vegetable based broth and doesn’t taste anything at all like a traditional Shoyu (Soy Sauce) Ramen broth. I’d skip this one.

I picked the Crispy Shrimp here as the topping for photographic aesthetics but they do get soggy very quickly because they dump them in the broth as opposed to serving them on top of the noodles in the traditional Japanese way.

This is the “Ceviche” appetizer. This is not a ceviche by Peruvian, Mexican or any South American definition and there is a lot of surimi in here mixed in with some escolar, avocado and onion and some spicy mayo served with chips. Rachel and I both liked this for what it was.

This is one Rachel ordered called “The Gluten-Free” roll. It’s a simple roll with nori seaweed, escolar, some avocado, sprouts and some asparagus. We liked this one due to the clean flavors and the simplicity.

This is one of the unusual cooked rolls, the “Beefinator”. It is supposed to be Grilled Beef, Avocado, Green Onion, Cucumber, Wasabi Mayo & Teriyaki. We didn’t get that, the mayo they used was a chipotle type and there was no teriyaki in it. So it came off very Mexican-tasting.

This one was called the “Mango Tango” with Surimi, Salmon, Sprouts, Avocado, Mango Salsa (fresh mango), Sesame Chili Oil and Spicy Mayo. We thought this particular roll was nicely executed, both Rachel and I liked this one.

This is the first of several “Spicy” rolls that I ordered, all of which look and taste very similar. This one, called the “Crazy Cajun” featured  Surimi on top and Crawfish Tails in the middle. We ordered this one with brown rice, which is available in all the rolls and rice bowls.

This is another spicy roll called “Crunch Daddy” which features Shrimp, Jalapeno, Mandarin Orange, Spicy Mayo, Tempura Crunch topping & Chili Powder.

The spiciest of the spicy rolls is the “3 Alarm” which is similar to the “Crazy Cajun” but features Spicy Tuna in the middle.

The one item we thought was poorly executed was this custom tuna hand roll Rachel had ordered. It had gotten kind of squashed and the distribution of ingredients didn’t really work.

While this is a lot to ask from unskilled teenage sushi rollers being taught a QSR system versus something you would get at a mid-range sushi place from supervised trainee sushi chefs, I’ve actually had better hand rolls at sushi buffets, like this one from Santos in Coconut Creek.

So the conclusion on HDYR — this is obviously not a destination sushi place, and it doesn’t have the fish variety of a mid-range local sushi place. I would also say that most buffet sushi restaurants in the area probably make similar quality sushi. In terms of overall sushi value, if you’re really hungry, and you want a dinner option, I’d probably go to Santos in Coconut Creek instead.

However, I would say this is a good place probably to stop in for a quick lunch as a healthier alternative to going to Subway, Chipotle or even walking into Publix and buying some of the pre-prepared sushi packages (which HDYR is definitely better since it is freshly made and you know the rolls have not been sitting around in a fridge case).

And I would also say that this is a good “Training Wheels” sushi place for people who are beginners, or a place for parents to bring kids since coming up with your own roll with the stuff you want in it is a fun idea. And the chain’s attention to cleanliness is a huge plus.

Web Site: http://www.jaxsonsicecream.com

I just want to note that despite recent appearances on this blog, I do not eat hamburgers and massive ice cream sundaes every day of the week, OK? Okay.

So, a few weeks ago I found out that legendary Los Angeles foodie Chris Cognac was going to be visiting South Florida for a day prior to heading on a vacation cruise and then heading off to Orlando to engage in mouse-related stuff.

Chris and I have known each other for over 10 years, as he was one of the very first folks to register on eGullet.com. But in that time, we never had a chance to meet each other in person.

Given the hastiness of the information, we didn’t have a lot of time to plan an ideal get-together. It was further complicated by the fact there were wife and kids also in tow and we wanted a place pretty close to where they were staying. As it happened, their hotel near Fort Lauderdale International Airport was only minutes away from Jaxson’s in Dania Beach.

Now, Jaxson’s is not necessarily a foodie outlet. In fact, I’d call it anything but that. Specifically, the place is known for ice cream. Massive, massive amounts of ice cream served in gigantic portions designed to give seven year olds nightmares and tummy aches.

It’s the kind of place you go to when you are visiting your grandparents in Florida and they want to take you out — for ice cream. In fact, virtually all of the visits to Jaxson’s in my entire life span were with Jack and Sylvia Perlow, when I came to visit them during the 1970s and early 1980s when they were snowbirding in Hallandale.

Dinners were usually early birds at Pumpernick’s, Morrison’s or some other South Florida institution catering to seniors that has long been history. And yet Jaxson’s remains — because it appeals to everyone.

Despite the ice cream focus, Jaxson’s still serves a full menu, mostly dominated by sandwiches, burgers and comfort food types of things that you would see in a classic luncheonette. Except that everything is Jurassic Park sized.

The place is also frequently a mob scene unless you get there right before the big lunch and dinner rushes. Literally there is a line a hundred or so people long right in front, and there’s no way you’re gonna wait any less than an hour to get in to get your ice cream unless you specifically use the take-out window outside. The photo below was taken right before noon on a saturday. By the time we had left, it was extremely busy and there was a wait to get in.

Jaxson’s is the place to be in South Florida for massive ice cream creations. Click on the “Read the rest of this entry” link below for more.

As you enter there’s a big candy store area where there’s all sorts of old-school sugary stuff for sale that adults should not be eating. But it’s impressive particularly if you are under 12.

It’s hard to see the scale of what you are looking at, but this is a one pound cheeseburger made with twin 8oz burger patties. It is a very large burger, too big for a normal-sized person to eat. Chris and I split this monster in half. As burgers go I would have to say it was kind of ordinary after the novelty of its massiveness wore off. It was kind of uniformly grey in the middle, not particularly beefy in terms of flavor. It was just… BIG.

This is actually not the biggest cheeseburger here either, they have a triple 8-ounce cheeseburger platter called the “Titanic” as well.

The onion rings on the other hand which were arranged in a tower on top were actually very good, and you can order them just by themselves. I saw a whole bunch of Hammurabi-esque onion towers of Babel coming out of the pass that way, so it’s clearly a popular item.

The “Artillery Dog” is at least a pound in weight, and comes with all of the trimmings. Again, Chris and I who are both champion fressers had to split this thing. Both of us felt the dog was superior to the burger in every respect, it was a nice firm beef dog with a good amount of spices in it. As we understand, this hot dog is custom made for Jaxson’s, but I’m unsure of the supplier.

Clearly this is the biggest wiener that either Chris or I have ever seen in our lives. That’s what she said.

The cone of french fries.

The wives decided to eat some more normal-sized stuff, but even the regular sandwiches are pretty big. This was the tuna salad sandwich on marble rye.

Chris’s wife got the turkey burger. As turkey burgers go, it actually looked pretty good.

One of Chris’ teenage kids ordered the corned beef sandwich. Pretty sure he inhaled it. I love the little potato pancakes on top, that’s a nice touch.

On to the main event, the ice cream. Jaxson’s makes all of its flavors in house and has all sorts of giant sundae creations you can order, including something called “The Kitchen Sink” which is actually served… in a sink. Unless you’ve got ten people to eat the thing, I strongly suggest you do not order one of those.

Chris’s wife ordered something normal-sized, which is entirely possible here. Probably the most sensible thing to do.

This is a cola float with vanilla ice cream and fresh whipped cream. It is big. The cola that is used is actually Jaxson’s own formula, they don’t have Coca-Cola or Pepsi here.

Chris and I actually decided to get stupid and ordered the “Chocolate-Peanut Gargantuan” which is crunchy peanut butter ice cream “swimming in a goblet of hot peanut butter and chocolate fudge, chopped peanuts, chocolate chips, banana and whipped cream” with a cherry on top.

This is far more ice cream than any two people could ever hope to eat, especially after consuming around a pound of meat each. This required assistance from the spousal units and children to even try to put a dent in it.

Fun food, awesome ice cream and great company aside, I think the best part of the visit was getting to meet Monroe Udell, who has owned and operated Jaxson’s for 53 years. If South Florida can claim having its own Willy Wonka, that person would have to be Mr. Udell, who despite his 85 years of youth maintains a watchful eye over everything and is still sharp as a tack. I hope he stays with us for years to come.

Web Site: http://www.shulaburger.com

Twitter: @shulaburger

In the last three years, I’ve been to a lot of soft openings and press events for various quick serve restaurants that are burger-themed. But since I’ve moved to South Florida I hadn’t yet attended one of these.

Shula Burger is new QSR concept restaurant chain owned by Shula’s, the restaurant group founded by legendary Miami Dolphins and Baltimore Colts football coach Don Shula.

The Delray Marketplace store, which is located in a brand-new upscale and entertainment-oriented shopping plaza, marks the fifth location of Shula Burger, all of which are located in Florida. There will soon be a sixth opening near Orlando.

Frankly, there isn’t that much new ground you can cover in burgers. And there are so many burger places in South Florida that it’s easy to get lost in the crowd.  So the bottom line is, are the burgers good, and are they good value?

Is Shula Burger a champion, or a chump? Click on the “Read the rest of this entry” link below for more.

Coach Don Shula himself was present at the press event. I didn’t get a chance to talk to him as he was surrounded by other media outlets vying for his attention.

Frankly, I have no idea what I’d even ask Don as I’m so not a sports person. The only football I ever watch is the Superbowl and I do it almost exclusively just to hold a big party once a year with lots of food, which I pay far more attention to than the actual game itself. But it was cool to see him there.

Okay, on to the burgers. I mostly photographed stuff coming off the pass so I did not get to try every burger combination.

This one is called “The Beach Burger” and has fried shrimp on top with pepper jack cheese, cilantro lime cole slaw, pico de gallo and a chipotle crema.  The standard burger bun is a brioche, but there is also a multigrain offered.

This burger was on the list of “Signature” burgers which range from $6.49 to $8.99, with the Beach Burger being the most expensive one on the list.

The Shula Burger, shown above ($6.49) is the basic cheeseburger, which has lettuce, tomato and pickle on it.

Shula Burger uses a blend of Black Angus Chuck, Short Rib and Brisket for their burger mix, which is delivered fresh, never frozen to the store already ground by a trusted supplier. The  head chef told me that their blend  has a fat content of about 23 percent, which is a nice ratio for a burger.

Another one from the pass. This is a “Southwest” with Roasted corn and black bean salsa, charred red onion, roasted tomato, shaved lettuce, pepper jack cheese and chipotle spread.

This one is called “Wine Country” and it has roasted pepper, goat cheese, balsamic greens and roasted tomato on it.

One of the two burgers Rachel and I actually did try is called “The Don” ($9.99). This is a burger patty with a huge beef hot dog, merged together with melted cheese, pickles, onion sauce, ketchup and yellow mustard. I like the idea but Rachel and I thought this had too many condiments loaded on it.

This is one another customer ordered, with a multigrain bun. “The French Onion” with caramelized onions, double gruyere cheese, garlic mayo and crushed garlic croutons. I think this one is probably a winner.

While Shula’s is known for their signature burgers you can also build your own from a long list of toppings. I asked them to make me a double Shula Burger, but with double cut peppered bacon on top and BBQ sauce. I dub this one “The Big Game”.

My “Big Game” burger bisected. They did a nice job of cooking it medium, a little on the rare side like I asked, still pink inside. Nice and juicy, both Rachel and I thoroughly enjoyed this one. I think the key with ordering burgers here is to stay simple with the toppings and don’t go too crazy with condiments.

If you DO want to amp up your burger with condiments, there’s a full selection to choose from at the condiment bar.

A lot of folks were ordering these Blue Cheese and Bacon Chips which looked really good.

Rachel and I tried the Sweet Potato Tots and the “50/50” which is half fried pickles and half fried banana peppers. I loved the 50/50, the briny pickles and banana peppers are absolutely addictive. Rachel really liked the tots, I thought they were a bit sweet, but then again they are sweet potatoes.

If you don’t want a burger there are salads. This is  Santa Fe salad with Grilled Chicken that Rachel ordered.

Normally these come pre-dressed and we asked for it that way to see how it would come out. That being said, I’m of the opinion you should probably order your dressings here on the side, as I found the honey lime dressing to be pretty sweet. But it was a nicely prepared salad nonetheless.

Last, but certainly not least is the Shula Steak Sandwich. At $13.49 it’s the most expensive item on the menu, but we’re talking about 8 ounces of nice juicy steak here with grilled onion, gruyere cheese, herb mayo on a baguette. And they cooked it perfectly medium with plenty of juices and it had a nice grilled flavor.

So the verdict on Shula Burger: I would not necessarily drive out of your way, but if you are in the area and are coming to shop or to visit one of  the other entertainment venues (like the IMAX movie theatre) at the Delray Marketplace it is definitely worth a stop and is a solid burger experience.  Shula Burger also serves beer on tap and has a selection of wines, although personally I’d go for one of their Haagen-Dazs shakes.

Web Site: http://www.elmagodelasfritas.com

Twitter: @magodelasfritas

Since moving to Florida I’ve started to acclimate myself with the other local food bloggers. By far, the most serious blogger (and food truck fair organizer) in Miami has to be Sef Gonzalez, also known as “The Burger Beast.”

As his name suggests, he’s big on burgers and all kinds of casual dining kinds of stuff. I first learned about him when watching George Motz’s Burger Land show on The Travel Channel, where he was featured in an episode about hamburgers and food trucks in Miami.

Miami of course is known for a specific type of hamburger, the Cuban “Frita”. I’ve written about Fritas before, specifically El Rey De Las Fritas, which is probably the most well-known establishment serving this particular style of burger.

Lesser known is El Mago De Las Fritas (Burger Beast post), which is owned by another member of the same family. It only has one location, and a much more limited menu than El Rey. But it has its adherents and now that I have been there, I understand the allure of the place.

For the last couple of weeks Sef and I had been planning to hook up and to talk about stuff we could do together. He suggested we have breakfast on a Saturday at El Mago. Fritas for breakfast? Okay then.

The magic awaits at El Mago De Las Fritas on Miami’s Calle Ocho. Click on the “Read the rest of this entry” link below for more.

Sef Gonzalez, The Burger Beast. And he has an appetite that lives up to his name. I’m a total lightweight compared to this guy.

Cortadito. Stronger than a Cafe Con Leche or a Cafe Au Lait. An espresso topped with a little bit of steamed milk. I start every Cuban meal with one of these usually.

This is a Sandwich De Tortilla. This is eggs with shoestring potatoes and onions, and optionally ham and cheese.

This is a Frita Doble (double spicy meat patty) a Caballo (Runny Fried Egg) and melted cheese. In my opinion, when ordered this way, this has the ideal ratio of protein to starch on a Frita. The runny egg and cheese really brings it home.

Sef thinks you look like a tourist if you order a Frita with cheese. Maybe. But I dissent on this.

A thing of beauty.

Also not to be missed is his Pan Con Bistec (steak sandwich) which has been heavily marinated and cooked in the frita juices. I ordered this with extra onions.

Batido de Frutabomba (Papaya Milkshake). Cause you need something to wash it all down with.

My second Cuban Coffee of the AM. A “Colada” of espresso.

El Mago practicing his craft.

Here is El Mago (“The Magician”) in all of his glory, with a plate of croquetas (Potato and Ham Croquettes) that just left the deep fryer.

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Croquetas closeup. I had one of these when they were lava burning hot with a touch of his home made habanero hot sauce. Fantastic.

We had made it there early enough to observe El Mago cooking a fresh batch of chicharrones. He only makes Chicharrones on Saturdays, so get there early.

They look good, don’t they?

The cutting ceremony.

Chicharrones portion. Fried pork. Yum.

A traditional pastelito de guayaba (Guava)

A plate of home made Dulce de Leche. This is different from other kinds I have had before, it has more of a granular rather than a creamy texture.

In the last 10 years, the phenomenon of Sous Vide, or thermostatically controlled water bath cooking, has caught on like wildfire, much of it due to the popularity of a massive set of discussions on eGullet about it.

Despite this massive amount of discussion about Sous Vide, I had no interest in the subject for the longest time.

In fact, I felt it was so geeky and so elitist and pretentious that the only way I was really interested in enjoying food cooked using this method was in fine restaurants, which could afford the expensive thermostatically controlled water circulators ($1000+) and had the need to utilize it for large-scale cooking efforts, for which the technique and the technology was originally designed.

But as with any technology, price does come down. And in the 10 years since the original eGullet threads started, microprocessor-controlled Sous Vide cooking systems have dropped down in price dramatically.

How cheap? How about $99 for the Dorkfood Sous Vide controller now sold on Amazon, combined with a cheap hot plate/cheap rice cooker or an electric crockpot and a package of Zip-Lok bags?

I was sent the Dorkfood controller to review by the manufacturer — I’ll have a more technical write up on ZDNet about it shortly.

But let’s get to the meat of the matter: Anyone with the willingness to do so can now cook Sous Vide, with minimal skill, budget and debugging required.

First of all, why would you want to Sous Vide anything? Well, the advantage is that you can cook a vegetable or a protein to its finished cooking temperature. Once it reaches that temperature, it is perfectly cooked. Because you are cooking it in a sealed bag in a water bath controlled by a computer, you have no loss of juices and the meat does not dry out.

The flavors using this process are absolutely intensified because you are cooking the meat in its own juices.

While Sous Vide is often used for extremely expensive cuts of beef, fish, seafood and poultry to cook right “on point” like the guys on Top Chef do, you can also use it to make the juiciest rare cheeseburger known to man.

And if that isn’t worth forgiving me for using a fancy French technique on the 4th of July to cook an All-American Cheeseburger, I don’t know what is.

You want to make one of these? Follow my lead, young Sous Vide padawans. Click on the “Read the rest of this entry” link below for more.

First, you’re going to need a Sous Vide controller. Today, the cheapest solution on the market is the Dorkfood. There is another product under development in the UK known as the Codlo, which should reach the US within the next six months. I don’t know how much the Codlo will retail for, but I suspect it will be in the $150 to $200 range.

Here’s how I have the Dorkfood set up in our kitchen. I have a cheap hot plate we bought for about $20 plugged into the Dorkfood, and the Dorkfood is plugged into the wall socket.

A pot with water is on top of the hot plate with a probe sensor coming out of the Dorkfood and is submerged in the water. We have a little metal strainer attached to the sensor cord to weigh it down a little so it stays submerged and a metal clip attached to the pot to fasten the thermocouple sensor cord.

This is about as Ghetto as Sous Vide gets, folks.

Okay, so you got your Sous Vide controller all set up. Now, I’m going to ask you to do something which flies so wrong in the face of cooking burgers the traditional way that you’re gonna think I’m nuts, but bear with me.

I want you to go out and buy as much LEAN COARSE GROUND BEEF as you need to cook 8oz burgers.

Yes. I said it. Lean. Heck, get Bison meat if you can get it, that’s even leaner. But do not get Wagyu or some really expensive marbled Prime here.

The reason is that with Sous Vide, we can seal all of those juices in during the cooking process, and even lean beef is going to produce a lot of juices and the flavor is going to be intensified using this method, so we don’t want fatty meat.

I have supermarket fresh ground 93 percent lean stuff here. This is fine. Don’t get 70 percent chuck or something like that, I would say 85 percent lean and up or 90 percent is fine for this application.

Next, we take our burger meat and season it with ground black pepper. Do not, I repeat, do NOT salt the meat. I know this makes no sense, but we’re turning burger cooking upside down here. Salting will draw the juices out, which we do not want.

Next form nice big 8oz patties, ones which will fit on your burger buns. I have onion rolls here. Do not overly knead the meat, just pack them into roundish patties.

At this point you can do one of two things. You can take the formed patties and freeze them, and then vacuum seal them. At which point these will stay good this way for a very long time and you can cook them in Sous Vide bath directly from frozen.

However, if you do not own a vacuum sealer, and you just want to cook them for immediate use, put the burgers in Zip-Lok bags and use a straw to suck out as much of the air you can and seal them shut. It will not be a perfect vacuum seal, but it will do the job.

Next, cook all your burgers in the Sous Vide bath per your controller’s directions at 126 degrees F for one hour. If you go longer than an hour, it doesn’t matter, because the computer is holding the temperature and the burgers will not cook anymore, they will simply remain warm.

This is good if you have a party and need to batch cook a whole bunch of burgers or you know you’re going to have a meal in a few hours and you need to go out for a while while the burgers cook. No problem.

If your burger party is tomorrow, that’s no problem either. Cook the burgers until they reach the target temperature for one hour, remove them from the bath, and put them all in the fridge. If you’ve vac sealed the burgers, you could store these in the fridge for quite a while.

You’re now starting to understand why this tech is cool, right?

Here are two Sous Vide burgers. The one on the left was cooked in a Zip-Lok bag and the one on the right was vacuum sealed. The vac-sealed one was a bit more uniformly cooked, but we did not taste a significant difference in the end product.

You’re probably wondering what to do with the juices in the bag. Well, we waste nothing here. Cook up some nice portobello mushrooms in a pan, add the burger juices, and deglaze with some red or white wine. Set aside.

If you are cooking the burgers post-Sous Vide a day or so later, don’t remove the juices from the bag. Just let them rest in the fridge for as long as they need to sit, they should suck up all the juices until you need to sear them.

Here is the magical ingredient: A vegetable or nut oil with a high smoke point, like peanut oil or soybean oil.

Get your frying pan smoking fires of hell hot. Brush it with the vegetable oil. Before throwing the burgers in, season them with some kosher salt.

Cook each burger for one minute on each side before removing them from the pan. We’ve thrown the sliced portobello mushrooms in here as well to give them a nice quick sear and to catch any escaping juices.

Prepare your Cheeseburger Mise En Place. I’ve got some nice red onion here, and a garden grown ripe tomato, and sharp cheddar cheese.

Next, toast your buns. In our first attempt we lightly toasted the buns and then used the broiler function on the toaster oven to melt the shredded cheddar cheese on each side of the bun, and then hit it with some more black pepper.

In our second attempt we put a larger mound of shredded cheese just on the top part of the bun. I’m not sure it made a huge difference here.

Begin burger construction.

Exhibit A. Sous Vide Cheeseburger with Portobello Mushrooms Au Jus, Garden Tomato, Red Onion, Melted Sharp Cheddar. No condiments were used.

The completed burger.

This one has bread and butter pickle slices and corn relish on it.

More often than not, they were the “Bad Guys”. But from all accounts I have heard, especially from those who knew him personally, Gandolfini was a kind, gentle and generous man that respected everyone who he worked with. I never met him. I wish I did.

Gandolfini will always be known for his role in playing the modern-day Italian-American New Jersey mobster Tony Soprano, a thug with a heart, a family man, and a man with considerable weaknesses and great personal demons.

He was brutal, as a Mafia Don should be, but he commanded respect and he was obviously a guy that appreciated the good things in life. Like Gandolfini.

So for Gandolfini, who like his alter-ego Tony Soprano also grew up in the Garden State, in the exact Bergen County area I lived in for 22 years, I wanted dedicate a dish to him.

This is what I came up with — a  pasta twist on the classic Italian-American sausage and peppers that is seen in summer festivals and pizza restaurants as a sandwich all over the New York and New Jersey metro area.

But like Tony Soprano, this one has a bite.

The recipe is also somewhat heart-healthy as it only uses a small amount of oil. Given the circumstances of Gandolfini’s passing, he’d probably not want you to go the same way.

This dish calls for fresh ripened tomatoes (plum, if you can get them) and fresh basil. Don’t even bother to make it unless you have these.

Pasta a la Gandolfini

Servings, 2

1/2 Box of Dried Pasta (6oz) , Whole Wheat preferred

3/4lb  fresh Italian sausage, hot or sweet. If sweet add chile pepper flakes.

1 Tbps Extra Virgin Olive Oil

1 White Onion, sliced

1 Red Bell Pepper, sliced

4 or 5 Cubanelle Peppers, sliced

1 Habanero Chile or other very hot chile pepper, fresh, julienned

4 Garlic Cloves, julienned

1 cup diced ripe tomatoes, preferably a variety from your garden

1 handful of fresh basil leaves (also from your garden)

Grated Parmigiano Cheese to taste

Freshly ground black pepper to taste

Directions:

Cook pasta of your choice in salted boiling water to al dente consistency while you prepare the condimenti.

Remove sausage from casing if using links. Brown in large non-stick pan and drain to remove excess fat. Set aside in large bowl.

Using a silicone basting brush, brush a scant amount of olive oil in the pan, saute the onions and peppers of each type individually, adding to the bowl with the sausage as soon as you get some char marks and is just barely cooked.

Add the rest of the oil to the pan, along with the sliced hot chile pepper and garlic. Stir for 30 seconds then add the tomatoes. Once again, just cook until they barely wilt. Add the reserved ingredients back to the pot.

Reserve about 1/2 cup water when you drain the pasta. Add the pasta and the water to the pan and toss to combine with other ingredients.

Remove from heat, add the basil, black pepper & cheese.  Toss and serve.

NEW: Click for Hi-Res Slide Show

Holsten’s
1063 Broad St, Bloomfield, NJ
(973) 338-7091

Web Site: http://www.holstens.com

Holsten’s, as depicted in the final scene of The Sopranos. (HBO)

There was a time back in the not so distant past where the typical activity for dating teenagers on a Friday or Saturday night was to head down to the local Ice Cream Parlor or Malt Shop, sit down at the counter, share an Ice Cream Soda or a malted with a hamburger and fries, and then go out and see a B picture at the drive-in. As my grandparents and my parents used to tell me, there once were many such malt and ice cream soda shops, but few of these American originals survive today.

One such place that seems to have resisted the destruction of these quaint landmarks of the 1950’s is Holsten’s, in Bloomfield. Opened in 1939, going there is literally like being sent back in a time machine to observe the social habits of pre-WWII and 1950’s American youth. The menu of ice cream treats and food items it serves are totally retro.

This is not by design like one of the newer established 50’s chains like Johnny Rockets or Cheeburger Cheeburger, but because it has ALWAYS been that way — it is the Real Deal in every respect. The prices are also remarkably cheap, and while there only are about a dozen or so varieties of ice cream, all of them are made in-house and are very fresh.

Holsten’s Storefront.

You don’t need to be the Jersey mob boss to appreciate the old-time ice cream at Holsten’s. Click on the “Read the rest of this entry” link below for more.

A view above the counter area.

The ice cream menu.

Holsten’s also makes chocolates.

The menu has all the kinds of old-time ice cream treats you’d expect, as well as simple luncheonette dishes like hamburgers, grilled cheese, tuna melts, and club sandwiches. Holsten’s also serves breakfast.

The counter area. The stools are original and I beleive the counter also has not been replaced in a very long time.

Hand packing some ice cream.

Ice cream sundaes, with real whipped cream.

An Egg Cream, made the proper way.

Much of the original glassware and malt shop equipment is still used today.

Holsten’s chocolate cake. If you’re not up for ice cream, don’t overlook this. Its moist and really rich and chocolaty.

The main dining area.

A “Cherry Crush”, one of the several kinds of traditional sodas that can be made from in-house made syrups, which can also be bought to bring home. It tastes kind of like a Shirley Temple

I sepia toned this photo so you could get an idea of the old-timeyness of the place.

Holsten’s “Special”, twin cheeseburgers with potato salad and coleslaw. The burgers are cooked perfectly medium rare, with the buns grilled with melted cheese on each half with crispy bacon. The perfect retro cheeseburger.

Holsten’s crinkle-cut fries and onion rings are excellent as well.

“Best in ‘da state!”

A mint chocolate chip sundae. Note that the chocolate chips are not the pre-manufactured kind, they literally took good block chocolate and broke it up into pieces to make the chips.

I ordered myself a mint chocolate chip shake. This is the classic presentation, in the actual stainless steel mixer cup with a glass on the side.

Shake, poured into glass.

Rachel ordered a vanilla fudge ice cream cone with almond butter crunch topping. Yes, this is a regular sized cone, not a double.

Black Raspberry Malted

Malted, poured

Lemon Fizz, a combination of Vanilla Ice Cream, Lemon Sherbet and Seltzer

Orange Fizz

Web Site: http://www.jerseydawg.com

Twitter: @jerseydawg201

Jersey Dawg Food Truck, parked in the Shell Station on the corner of Cypress Creek Road and Powerline in Ft. Lauderdale, FL.

I’m frequently asked, “Is there life after Jersey?”

It was almost one year ago that Rachel and I packed up what remained of our belongings and set forth in a Volkswagen to South Florida. We got on the New Jersey Turnpike, and drove until it became I-95.

A week later, we found ourselves in the Fort Lauderdale and Pompano Beach area. Which we now call home.

I’ve made my choice and I’m very happy with it. The weather is fantastic, I have a lovely home. The food down here is great. I have no complaints.

Well, maybe one or two.

There are certain types of food items that are either difficult or impossible to find in South Florida. You either have to go to great lengths to get them, or they just plain do not exist. And there’s certain things I fully accepted I would never have again, unless I returned home.

Like New Jersey-style hot dogs and sliders.

I mean, you don’t even think such a thing would exist here, so you don’t go looking for it. Sure, we have some really good burger and dog places. We even have a food blogger down here that specializes in it. He’s practically a celeb.

But these are substitutes and not full-blown replacements. The only way you can replicate this kind of food is to have the exact ingredients and to prepare it exactly the same way. By someone who is intimately familiar with such things.

So when I heard about Jersey Dawg, a new food truck that recently started doing Jersey-style hot dogs and sliders, I couldn’t wait. I hadn’t had either one in a year.

Yes, fairy tales can come true. It can happen to you. Click on the “Read the rest of this entry” link below for more. 

Any questions?

Rob Goodman, Jersey Dawg’s owner. He saved up for six years to buy this truck and realize his dream of bringing Jersey-style burgers and dogs to South Florida.

“You want my dog, chump? Fuhgedaboudit.”

To properly replicate a Jersey-style dog you need the right type of hot dogs. These are Thumann’s, specifically formulated for deep frying. They are made in Jersey and have a special “plumping” ingredient which causes them to expand and rip out out the casing when cooked. The Thumann’s hot dog is used by a lot of places in Northern New Jersey, and it’s a beef and pork hybrid.

This is what is meant by “Ripper”. This particular dog was ordered as a “Weller” or well-done. The next phase after that is “Cremator.”

Two ripper dogs with home-made relish.

Two with onions.

Rob manning the deep fryer.

Jersey Strong, baby.

Al Fresco dining at the food truck.

The menu.

A happy customer with chili fries.

Chili has always been a staple of New Jersey hot dog restaurants. Every place has its own unique formulation, but what is consistent about them is that the chili is more of a “sauce” and they are beanless. Jersey Dawg’s chili is on the sweet side, meant to evoke the type served at some well-known establishments in Bergen County.

With cheese, of course.

Ripper with “The Works.” Mustard, Chili, Onions, Cheese, Relish. Order this and you’d better be wearing a T-shirt that you’re not particularly fond of.

This is what I’m talking about.

I just thought you might want to see that again.

Another satisfied customer.

It should probably be noted that you cannot make a true Jersey Dog without Martin’s Potato Rolls.

If Jersey Dog only had hot dogs, as we Jews say “It would have been sufficient.” But Rob makes Jersey-style sliders as well.

I did a double-take the first time I saw this plate.

It’s a beautiful thing, isn’t? Look at that and tell me it doesn’t look like it belongs in a little place down the street from the Bergen County courthouse in Hackensack.

Welcome to Florida, Jersey Sliders.

If you’re a foodie based in South Florida, don’t miss out on our new Meetup group, Off The Broiler Dining Adventures. My plans for this new group are ambitious — I intend to have group dinners and special food events at least once per month, at restaurants and venues selected by yours truly.

Joining our Meetup group is free. As we did with previous dining events in the NY Metro Area, we’ll be planning dinners in Broward, Palm Beach and Dade County/Miami with set (as well as a la carte) menus and will need to secure reservations, so please be sure to notify the event organizers at least a day before if you need to cancel.

You must participate in this group to be notified of upcoming events and to reserve your places at these dinners, as we have no other way of tracking attendance.