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A Shrimp Roll Inspired by Ikea A Shrimp Roll Inspired by Ikea
(4 days later)
I still briefly flounder when I meet someone — at the dog run, at the laundry or in line at the bodega — and as the conversation turns to work and I say I have a restaurant, they ask: What kind of restaurant is it?I still briefly flounder when I meet someone — at the dog run, at the laundry or in line at the bodega — and as the conversation turns to work and I say I have a restaurant, they ask: What kind of restaurant is it?
The question strikes me as anachronistic, like when you have to fill out those forms at the doctor’s office and they ask you for your three phone numbers: daytime, evening, office.The question strikes me as anachronistic, like when you have to fill out those forms at the doctor’s office and they ask you for your three phone numbers: daytime, evening, office.
And my answer even more so, given that we now have restaurants of such micro-specificity as “Isan cooking of northeastern Thailand.” “Creative American?” I offer with a wobbly question mark, falling back on the neatly supplied category it was given by the Zagat guide after we opened in 1999; 20 years ago that was a statement meant to distinguish you in a landscape of Italian or French.And my answer even more so, given that we now have restaurants of such micro-specificity as “Isan cooking of northeastern Thailand.” “Creative American?” I offer with a wobbly question mark, falling back on the neatly supplied category it was given by the Zagat guide after we opened in 1999; 20 years ago that was a statement meant to distinguish you in a landscape of Italian or French.
We serve a pretty straightforward shrimp roll at lunch right now, but we are not by any stretch a seafood restaurant. It comes with a side of French fries, but we are as far away from a Maine-inflected lobster shack as you can get. Still, “creative American” feels vague and inadequate. Other times, more confidently, I’ve said, “It’s tiny, very small.” Hoping to sum it up, I’ve also tried: “I’m a salt-and-pepper cook. It’s all olive oil, parsley and lemon.”We serve a pretty straightforward shrimp roll at lunch right now, but we are not by any stretch a seafood restaurant. It comes with a side of French fries, but we are as far away from a Maine-inflected lobster shack as you can get. Still, “creative American” feels vague and inadequate. Other times, more confidently, I’ve said, “It’s tiny, very small.” Hoping to sum it up, I’ve also tried: “I’m a salt-and-pepper cook. It’s all olive oil, parsley and lemon.”
I’ve found it helps a lot to just name the actual menu items: “Sometimes we run a whole grilled fish with toasted fennel oil, and in the winter, braised lamb shoulder with preserved lemons. When we can get it, monkfish liver on buttered toast. Same with the rabbit kidneys.”I’ve found it helps a lot to just name the actual menu items: “Sometimes we run a whole grilled fish with toasted fennel oil, and in the winter, braised lamb shoulder with preserved lemons. When we can get it, monkfish liver on buttered toast. Same with the rabbit kidneys.”
If there’s time and the conversation gets going, I have sometimes explained: “It’s a personal restaurant. The food reflects a lot of my own experiences and appetites.” But I take extreme care with that, since lately the “narrative” aspect of eating out in a restaurant can often take an absurd turn, with the waiter standing there explaining the menu to you. “So, every dish here tells a story,” he begins, taking you hostage, and you immediately start looking for a magic getaway taxi to pull up in front honking for you. As Anton Chekhov said: Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on the broken glass.If there’s time and the conversation gets going, I have sometimes explained: “It’s a personal restaurant. The food reflects a lot of my own experiences and appetites.” But I take extreme care with that, since lately the “narrative” aspect of eating out in a restaurant can often take an absurd turn, with the waiter standing there explaining the menu to you. “So, every dish here tells a story,” he begins, taking you hostage, and you immediately start looking for a magic getaway taxi to pull up in front honking for you. As Anton Chekhov said: Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on the broken glass.
Take that shrimp roll, for instance. We use rock shrimp — a kind of “poor man’s lobster” — and there’s a sliced hard-boiled egg shingled on top with crosswise sliced coins of bitter endive. I love the clean crunch of that endive so much. The bun is griddled, not just on the outside but split and griddled on the inside too — getting the most possible surface area of the best part of the bun: the warm, sweet, buttery part. We pile the salad — plenty of mayonnaise, plenty of rock shrimp, very little onion and celery — onto the bun so generously that this could be a fork-and-knife deal.Take that shrimp roll, for instance. We use rock shrimp — a kind of “poor man’s lobster” — and there’s a sliced hard-boiled egg shingled on top with crosswise sliced coins of bitter endive. I love the clean crunch of that endive so much. The bun is griddled, not just on the outside but split and griddled on the inside too — getting the most possible surface area of the best part of the bun: the warm, sweet, buttery part. We pile the salad — plenty of mayonnaise, plenty of rock shrimp, very little onion and celery — onto the bun so generously that this could be a fork-and-knife deal.
The rock shrimp — so called as their shells are rock-hard, unlike the brown, pink and tiger varieties, whose shells more closely resemble flimsy plastic — have sweet meats and a texture that resembles uncannily the tail meat of lobsters. Farmed in Florida, they come from deep cold waters, the harvest practices are monitored — no coral damage, no overfishing — and the shrimp are happily affordable. The rock shrimp — so called as their shells are rock-hard, unlike the brown, pink and tiger varieties, whose shells more closely resemble flimsy plastic — have sweet meats and a texture that resembles uncannily the tail meat of lobsters. They come from deep cold waters in Florida and the harvest practices are monitored — no coral damage, no overfishing — and the shrimp are happily affordable.
If there’s one sure way I’ve always described the restaurant, if there’s one constant through line to the story here, it’s about being thrifty. The restaurant has always had expensive tastes but modest means. I’ve spent my career making excellent use of the low cuts, the discards, the crumbs, the castoffs. Our roasted marrow bones used to be sent by the butcher free — for our dogs, he thought! Now they are $3.95 a pound.If there’s one sure way I’ve always described the restaurant, if there’s one constant through line to the story here, it’s about being thrifty. The restaurant has always had expensive tastes but modest means. I’ve spent my career making excellent use of the low cuts, the discards, the crumbs, the castoffs. Our roasted marrow bones used to be sent by the butcher free — for our dogs, he thought! Now they are $3.95 a pound.
While the negroni we serve comes from that late-afternoon piazza in Rome, with all the Italians sitting around in their cashmere sweaters and suede loafers, and the Calvados omelet on our dessert menu comes from a summer trip to France, this rock-shrimp roll comes, in a way, from the Ikea in Brooklyn. There’s a bike ride I loved to take all the way out to the maritime wonder that is Red Hook, Brooklyn — not for a bookcase or a bed frame or a stylish affordable pendant lamp — but just to go to the cafeteria and get the open-faced shrimp-salad sandwich on rye bread and then to sit on a bench just past the parking lot, looking out at the industrial mouth of New York Harbor, those mesmerizing colossal ocean liners and oil tankers and cargo ships being tugged in and out. But that back story need never make its way to the table. The piled-up rock-shrimp roll speaks for itself.While the negroni we serve comes from that late-afternoon piazza in Rome, with all the Italians sitting around in their cashmere sweaters and suede loafers, and the Calvados omelet on our dessert menu comes from a summer trip to France, this rock-shrimp roll comes, in a way, from the Ikea in Brooklyn. There’s a bike ride I loved to take all the way out to the maritime wonder that is Red Hook, Brooklyn — not for a bookcase or a bed frame or a stylish affordable pendant lamp — but just to go to the cafeteria and get the open-faced shrimp-salad sandwich on rye bread and then to sit on a bench just past the parking lot, looking out at the industrial mouth of New York Harbor, those mesmerizing colossal ocean liners and oil tankers and cargo ships being tugged in and out. But that back story need never make its way to the table. The piled-up rock-shrimp roll speaks for itself.
Recipe: Rock-shrimp rollRecipe: Rock-shrimp roll