A Full Belly

Batali, Bourdain and Buford, live at the NYPL

I had a great time seeing Mario Batali, Anthony Bourdain and Bill Buford chat at the NYPL last week—if you didn't get tickets before it sold out, don't blame me, 'cause it's not like I didn't tell you about it in advance. I wanted to write a long piece except that I was mostly too busy laughing to take lots of notes. $15 well spent! Here are four of the things I managed to scribble down that I think you'll appreciate:

• Batali, on Charlie Trotter's anti-foie gras stance: "At some point you have to realize you're on the top of the food chain, and that's all there is to it."
• Bourdain, on Rachel Ray: "40 dollars a day? Tip, bitch!"
• Audience: "Is [getting] fat an occupational hazard?" Bourdain: "They just don't smoke enough." (He should know, as he's supposed to smoke like a chimney and is a beanpole compared to the rotund Batali and Buford.)
• Audience: "What's your favorite fat to cook with?" Batali: "Lard, olive oil." Bourdain: "Pork."

My favorite discussion, i.e. the one that made me wish I was taping the entire thing, was Bourdain discussing the culinary tipping point he calls the "sushi barrier". He posted about it on eGullet early last year:

My theory, for some time, has been that the most significant point in modern North American culinary history was that moment when Westerners decided it was alright--even desirable--to eat sushi. That barrier-crossing raised all boats for all chefs of every stripe. Suddenly it was permissable to serve mackerel, octopus, fish roes, sardines and other traditional European seafood that were once largely shunned. What chefs found to be acceptable quality in seafood lept--as there was always a Japanese restaurant willing to pay for the good stuff (hence creating reliable demand for more variety and better quality). And once the bone-deep aversion to eating raw fish disappeared, other barriers fell as well. The dining public became more daring and willing to experiment.

Did you see the three Bs talk? Did you enjoy Bill Buford's new book Heat or Anthony Bourdain's latest The Nasty Bits? Let  us know in the comments!

kitchen secrets: bill buford with mario batali and anthony bourdain

New York City food nerds, alert! Mark June 21st off on your calendar and take out your credit card, you are about to buy a ticket to see former New Yorker fiction editor Bill Buford talk at the NYPL with two of our most favorite chefs ever, Mario Batali and Anthony Bourdain, in the latest installment of the Kitchen Secrets series.

I haven't gotten around to reading Buford's new memoir Heat yet but now I'm definitely going to have to before the 21st, because parts of it detail how he came to quit his job at the New Yorker and start apprenticing at Babbo under Batali himself. As for Bourdain, not only is he Amazon's featured guest reviewer for Heat (subtitle: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany), but his latest book The Nasty Bits just came out two weeks ago, so I guess I'll be picking that up too—just as soon as I finish my current read which is, coincidentally enough, his infamous Kitchen Confidential.

P.S. Heat's been getting reviewed left and right, but here are two I particularly enjoyed reading: Will Work For Food (Julia Reed, NYT) and Eating Out (Jason Epstein, New York Review of Books). If you read only one, then for your own good choose the latter as Epstein does a marvelous job with Heat in the first part of the article and an even more spectacular one with Julia Child's My Life In France in the second!

réveillon

French for revelry. Regina Schrambling: "Food is almost religion to the French, but never more so than at the holidays. One of the most alluring traditions from a country that invented foie gras and perfected chocolate is réveillon, the late-night feast on Dec. 24, the early-morning feast on Dec. 25 and, for good measure, the anytime feast on New Year's Eve or Day." Say what you will about the Church (I know I do!), but Catholic countries do not mess around when it comes to eating. [via The Morning News]

the foie gras controversy

The Controversy Over Foie Gras - Does a Duck Have A Soul? "The controversy has arisen not over the mere slaughter of poultry but over the way foie gras is, and by definition must be, created. (Literally, the term means “fattened liver.”) Foie gras is that most Catholic of delicacies: paradise attained through suffering." [via kottke.org]

sexiest food shops in Paris

The sexiest food shops in Paris. If it rains, go to the colonial style tea room at Mariage Frères on the Rue Bourg-Tibourg to pretend you're sodden in Saigon in the style of Marguerite Duras's L'Amant. The taste of Jardin des Poetes tea makes one long to do unspeakable things beneath a slowly revolving fan.

Sumile

Casse-Croute Tribeca

Amy Langfield has discovered Casse-Croute in Tribeca:

Had a late lunch yesterday at a great little place on West Broadway that isn't even listed on Vindigo yet. It's called Casse-Croute Tribeca, a French sandwich/quiche type place with limited seating - but the food and service are great. They do breakfast, lunch and dinner. I had lunch there a couple months ago, though it's been open since sometime this past winter. The drawback is that it's very tiny and you have to sit at tall chairs at one of two counters. And it's BYOB. 73 West Broadway, a block south of the Chambers Street subway for the 1,2,3, and 9 lines.