Presenting The Faux Gourmet!

The Faux Gourmet has been on hiatus for a while. I began this blog as a creative outlet during law school. After law school, I started other blogs on other topics and no longer needed this as a creative outlet, not to mention my diminishing free time.

But I kept cooking, kept taking food pictures and garden pictures, kept wanting to share the little tidbits of what I'd made. I occasionally did this on my personal blog (to which, I'm sure, people yawned and wondered when I'd post another cat picture). But I started to miss this space. Of all the blogs I have, this format, culled over several dedicated years and incorporating that adorable illustration by Sam Wedelich (see info the left) is by far my favorite.

So I'm back!

Expect short and sweet posts. Less food porn, more recipes and tips. If you want food porn you can look at any of the 5000 million existing food blogs. I don't have good lighting in my apartment and don't have time to style plates. I just want to make something yummy and eat it. If that sounds ok with you, stick around.

Looking forward to being back in touch!

xx

The Faux Gourmet

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    Monday, February 4, 2008

    Restaurant Week outing #2: Kittichai, January 29

    Khao Gaeng Ron Ron Ma Laew Ja!!

    Taste & See:
    Like Mercer Kitchen, Kittichai is the domain of a celebrity chef. Like Mercer Kitcher, Kittichai is the hotel restaurant of a rather swank SoHo hotel. Unlike Mercer Kitchen, however, the food at Kittichai is inventive and fun, anything but dull. As I explained previously, I found MK tasty, but not particularly exciting. Kittichai is both.


    I had been to Kittichai in the fall, courtesy of a potential employer (with, apparently, impeccable taste). It was a rooftop party looking out on the twinkling Manhattan skyline, with trays and trays of eye-popping appetizers from which I picked and munched on constantly, with absolutely no shame-- even as I carried on polite chit chat with higher-ups. The food put us on equal ground: we were all in awe of it. Naturally, Kittichai was one of the first places I thought of for Restaurant Week this year.


    The interior is quite and still, with dark walls imprinted in heavy metal Thai letters leading to a a dimly lit room draped floor to ceiling along the walls in swaths of autumnal raw silks. Orchids dangle from the ceiling over a pool in the middle. The peaceful atmosphere- a girl is studying at a table opposite us!- is perhaps in some part thanks to the advice of the feng shui master who was called in to consult on design.


    Chef Ian, as the restaurant website affectionately refers to the head chef, is noted for being the first Thai chef to head the five star Bangkok Four Seasons Hotel:


    What this means for me is not simply that he has broken racial and cultural barriers, but that I have previously had the honor of dining in one of his restaurants, the Italian 'Biscotti,' where my real parents hosted my Thai host family to a memorable fine (Western) dining experience when I first lived in Thailand.

    Chef Ian's illustrious career began at the age of three when he would rise before dawn and help his mother buy vegetables, then later push through the city yelling Khao Gaeng Ron Ron Ma Laew Ja!!!-- hot curries are coming! I find the familiarity of the phrase, one I've heard being hurled through Bangkok allies, and retold in an anecdote on the restaurant website, comforting.

    Now at Kittichai the hot curries are coming, along with multitudes of other creative arrangements of Thai-esque food ("Thai Tapas"). It is a very tasty take on Thai food, even if you'd never find it in Thailand itself. No wonder it is
    Mario Batali's favorite restaurant in New York.

    The normal menu changes regularly, and features a wider range of options than does the Restaurant Week Prix Fixe; I'd go for the chocolate baby back ribs and Thai spices, the banana blossom salad with cashew nuts and chili jam, or the crispy rock shrimp with grilled eggplant and palm sugar tamarind sauce if I had my way. And those are just appetizers.

    This time we started with a crispy fried bean curd and green beans with a mild curry sauce ($5) from the regular menu:



    A seafood salad from the RW menu, with shredded raw mango and juicy scallops, squid and shrimp:



    Also for RW, a light curried butternut squash soup with a single pumpkin ravioli:



    The restaurant week entrees were a bit of a disappointment, compared to my high expectations-- just a little too simple. The vegetarian salad with Brussels sprouts, plump whole tomatoes and fried tofu was a bit too saucy, though the tangy, sweet sauce in lower proportions would have been nice:


    The five-spice beef potato curry had a good flavor, but nothing I couldn't mix up myself, and the beef was a little tough-- all three pieces of it.


    The spikes of color from the vegetables and the unexpected green egg noodles were a fun-though odd- touch.



    The grilled beef with green beans and preserved chili sauce off the regular menu ($14) was hands down the favorite; the meat was tender and held the sauce wonderfully:



    No other way to put it, the desserts knocked our socks off:


    The bright orange black specked Thai tea custard, like a Reese's Peanut Butter cup upside down, was swirled with rich caramel and simply divine:


    All in all, well worth the splurge- for Restaurant Week and again (and again, and again).

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