Ambience Chaser

Mongolian Food: Buuz (Steamed Mongolian Dumplings)

2012-01-26T14:46:00.001-05:00

Of all the food I tasted in Mongolia, buuz, the country's dumpling's, are the dish that won my heart. The recipe is pretty much exactly the same as for khuushuur, the fried stuffed pancakes, but instead of being formed into flat, oblong envelopes and deep-fried, the dough is pleated into a round packet the size of a baby's fist and steamed until cooked through.

The mutton inside is flavored with onions, garlic, salt and pepper. During Mongolian New Year, people make thousands of them. You often hear people asking, "How many buuz did you eat today?" "Oh, only 300."

It wasn't New Year when we visited, but nearly every restaurant we stopped at had buuz on the menu and dining rooms full of men slurping away at a white soup made of buuz floating in milk tea. These buuz were made for lunch by Bata's wife and daughter-in-law, whose names I didn't manage to catch. Mongolian food doesn't involve a lot of vegetables, so buuz and milk tea are considered a full and satisfying meal. Bata's family put out a particularly impressive spread by including a salad of homemade shredded and pickled carrots.

Jian Bing (spicy crepes): A step-by-step guide to my favorite Beijing street food

2011-12-30T11:01:00.002-05:00

My first apartment in Beijing was in a classy neighborhood near Chaoyang Park, with lots of children and no nearby street food presence at all. Really, when I came home in the small hours of the morning, I'd have to order McDonald's delivery if I wanted anything to eat at all.

After about a year and a half I moved to a much smaller apartment near the Worker's Stadium, where I was surrounded by lively bars and all the street food I could possibly want. There was a chuan'r guy selling grilled skewers, boiled skewers, and fried skewers of everything from cumin/chili lamb chunks to whole chili peppers. My personal favorite, though, were the jian bing stands that dotted the street in front of my apartment selling spicy crepes.

First you take the crepe batter and pour a bit on the grill.

Then you spread it into a circle with this little tool. So far this process isn't much different from ordering from a crepe stand in Paris.

Then you crack a fresh egg onto the center of the crepe, break the yolk, and spread it around so it completely covers the crepe.

Next you flip the crepe over so the egg side is on the grill, then brush the top of the crepe with chili oil and sweet flower sauce (tian mian jian, the sweet brown bean sauce seen in the front. Sometimes it's called duck sauce or brown bean sauce or a million other names. Look for 甜面酱.) You can omit the chili oil if you don't like spicy, but I love it.

Then you sprinkle a small handful of diced spring onions and cilantro over the top. (You can omit the cilantro if you have that issue where you think cilantro tastes like industrial soap).

Now this part is crucial, and is also the part that's been stymieing my efforts to reproduce this snack at home: Then you put a small sheet of fried dough in the middle of the crepe, fold the sides over it, then crack the ends of the fried dough sheet a quarter of the way up, fold the ends of the crepe over the dough, then fold the whole thing in half again to make a little pocket.

Then, if you're Mrs. Hu, who owned the stall closest to my door, you put a piece of paper around the thing, drop the whole thing in a plastic bag, and sell it to me for 3 yuan (47 cents).

These are truly magical end-of-the-night foods: A little sweet, a little spicy, a little savory, a little chewy, a little crispy, a little crunchy, a little fresh and a little fried, and it all comes together in this mind-blowing, savory mouthful.

Note: Jian bing are also an excellent and popular breakfast-on-the-go for early morning commuters, but not for me because I only wake up that early if there's a fire.

My big fat cannoli from D'Amato's Italian Bakery

2011-11-20T18:47:00.001-05:00

Allow me to introduce you to the Big Cannoli from D'Amato's Italian Bakery in Chicago. It comprises one giant cannolo stuffed with 40 mini cannoli.

From the little scarecrows on top and the "Happy Thanksgiving" stick, you can probably tell that this is a Thanksgiving cannoli. But fear not, you can also get Christmas cannoli, birthday cannoli, or "My cannoli love cannot be appeased by just one measly cannolo. I require a ginormous cannoli stuffed with dozens of other cannoli."

I'm not saying I've eaten a whole one by myself, because that would be crazy. (I'm not necessarily saying that I haven't. Just that it would be crazy.)

Sesame and Egg Jiaozi

2011-11-11T16:34:00.000-05:00

Sadly, I left China a couple days ago and am now back in Chicago. Before I left, though, Mrs. Zhao and Mr. Shi came over for another cooking lesson. This time we did jiaozi, or dumplings. I've cooked a lot of dumplings before, but this set was an interesting variation that was stuffed with a crisp filling of toasted sesame seeds, scrambled eggs and diced spring onions.

To start, make a standard batch of dumpling dough. Nick is at a Shang history conference at Rutgers this weekend. When he gets back, I'll put up a standard "dumpling dough" post that shows how to knead, roll and pinch dumplings. (I'm waiting for Nick because he's particularly gifted at kneading things. Also because it's difficult to photograph yourself while covered in flour.)

Until I get that up, the recipe is basically as follows:
250g flour
130-140g water

Put the flour in a bowl and slowly add the water in stages. Mix well until you have a very smooth ball. Then cover it with a damp cloth and let it sit for 15 minutes. When it's done setting, knead it again and roll it into a long piece. Then cut it into 32 equal pieces. Take those and roll them into balls with your hands and then discs with a rolling pin.

OK, now we can get on with the interesting part of this recipe: The filling.

1lb white sesame seeds
6 eggs
1/2lb small spring onions
1T table salt
1T 13 spice
1T dark soy sauce
MSG optional

Toast the sesame seeds on the stove until very lightly browned. You can just lay them in there and give them a toss every once and awhile while doing the rest of your prep work.

Combine the eggs in a bowl and mix with chopsticks.

Scramble the eggs in about two tablespoons of cooking oil.

When the sesame seeds are toasted, crush them by rolling them with your pin.

Mix the sesame seeds and scrambled eggs.

Mince your greens, and add those to the mix.

Add the salt, 13 spice, dark soy sauce, and then look around for the MSG. When you find there isn't any in the house, like Mrs. Zhao did, proceed without it.

Mix the filling well.

Take your dumpling dough chunks (see above) and roll them out into wrappers.

Fill each one with about one rounded tablespoon of filling. Mrs. Zhao closes her dumplings in the casual way, by pinching it at the top, then squishing the sides together with both hands while holding the top closed with her thumbs.

When complete, boil, steam or fry like any other jiaozi.

These are a great combination. I love spring onions, and the toasted sesame seeds give them a great scent and crunchy texture. As an afterthought, these things are actually vegetarian! Good to know.

I almost forgot the airag (fermented mare's milk)

2011-10-21T16:51:00.011-04:00

Whoops! While I was putting up the other Mongolian food posts, I very nearly forgot to include the airag, fermented mare's milk. It's a thin, relatively sour and acidic beverage with a flavor that seemed closest to an extremely tart yogurt. It has a good fizz and a light but noticeable alcoholic kick. The first sip is awful; the second is mildly disturbing. The third is awesome.

Mongolian Food: Khorkhog (Real Mongolian Barbecue)

2011-10-19T08:57:00.002-04:00

The first time I had "Mongolian barbecue" I was in Indianapolis at what was basically a build-your-own stir-fry joint. I don't remember if it was good or bad, just that there was a buffet line of vegetables and sauces, and some nice gentleman cooked it all in a giant novelty wok.

It turns out there's nothing Mongolian about that (you can tell by all the vegetables. My entire time in Mongolia, the only vegetables I saw were cabbage and potatoes). On the last day of our trip, Minde said he'd cook Mongolian barbecue for a special treat. According to Mongolfood.info, the dish Minde was calling "Mongolian barbecue" is khorkhog and consists of mutton cooked in a container with hot stones.

That night we were staying in a ger with a nomad family that used dung for their fires instead of wood. At first I was disturbed by the idea, but I found it kept the ger warm much longer than the wood fires did. I'm a dung-power convert. While Minde and the family built the fire, I noticed them adding a bunch of flat, oval-shaped stones to the stove with the cow dung. I hadn't noticed them doing that at the other ger we stayed in, so I figured it had something to do with the heat source. I was wrong; it had to do with the menu.

When the fire was hot, Minde brought out his large cooking pot filled on the bottom with water and salt. He laid in a couple mutton ribs.

Then pulled one of the stones out of the fire ...

... and added it right on top of the meat. (Yes, the dung-rock was touching the food-meat).

It got very smoky very quickly.

Minde continued to layer mutton ribs and rocks until he was out of mutton. Then he began fitting some new potatoes in between the stones.

Finally he covered the entire thing in cabbage leaves and covered the pot.

The pot was then hefted back on top of the stove, where it was allowed to sit for an hour.

After letting the barbecue stew for 60 minutes, Minde unveiled it:

Then he used a fork to separate the barbecue into two bowls: one with potatoes and cabbage, and one with meat.

We ate the cabbage and potatoes with forks, and the mutton with our hands right off the bone.

I did my best, but no could match our host, who pulled out a small knife and cleaned the ribs and shoulder bones so thoroughly of any meat, fat or gristle that they looked like they'd been made from Plaster of Paris for a 3rd grade science class.

Later we threw them to the dogs, who raced right to the Americans, where the bones were covered in delicious little flecks of smoky meat. The slower dogs were left to sniff around at the clean, dry, white bones left by our hosts. I have to admit I felt a little sorry for those dogs; they looked utterly disappointed by the whole affair.

Mongolian Food: Khuushuur (meat-filled fried pancakes)

2011-10-16T12:24:00.002-04:00

Blue skies, horses, Genghis Khan: Mongolia is known for a lot of things, but food generally isn't high on the list. Meat and dairy dominate to such an extreme that Lonely Planet optimistically suggests vegetarians might still have a good time in Mongolia on the condition that they're willing to cook for themselves. Vegans are flat-out advised to reconsider their travel plans. That's still a significant step up from the first edition of Lonely Planet's Mongolia guide, which I'm told began with the sentence, "Do not go to Mongolia."

That book was written in '91, however, and the advice no longer holds. I had a wonderful time. I'm not a vegetarian and certainly not vegan, so everything was pretty idyllic to my tastes (including the time the host family slaughtered a goat immediately outside my door. It turned out to be a gift for the shaman staying two ger down).

Most things you'll read on Mongolian cuisine describe it as "practical." That's true, but it's not necessarily a bad thing, as simple food can have a lot of flavor, and it makes for an easier blog post when a person is only including meat, salt, and fire. I found that people in general were eager to talk about their food and tell me about the different ways of eating meat, dairy, and certain incarnations of flour. Near the end of the trip, we stopped in at a ger near the side of the road and our guide, Minde, asked the proprietress, a woman named Bolor, to make us some khuushuur, meat-filled fried pancakes. (You can also get them stuffed with other things. Cabbage is delicious.)

She started by mixing up a dough of about 250g of flour and 150g of water and kneading it until it formed a large, tacky lump.

Then she put the lump in a large bowl and covered it with a damp cheesecloth while she took care of the filling.

I saw a lot of this particular cut of mutton during the Mongolia trip. She stripped the meat from the bones with a knife and diced it.

She took the resulting 350g of minced meat and put it in a bowl. She then added three teaspoons each of salt and pepper.

She chopped one small yellow onion and smashed two cloves of garlic and added them to the meat. With her hands, she kneaded the meat, onions and garlic until it was well mixed, then she sat the filling aside.

Back to the dough! She kneaded the dough with flour until it was smooth and uniform.

She rolled out half the dough into a long tube about two inches in diameter.

Then she cut them into little chunks, about 1.5" tall. She pushed a little divot into the top of each and set them aside.

Each of the dough chunks was rolled out into a wide, very thin round pancake.

She'd roll out four or five pancakes, then fill them with meat, fold them over and pinch the edge closed.

While she filled the Khuushuur, her husband would take them in batches of four or five and slip them into a pot of very hot cooking oil.

For good luck, eat the khuushuur by holding onto the two ends. One end at a time is bad luck. It's served with suutei tsai, Mongolian salted milk tea. (There's no actual tea in this one, it's just hot milk, water, salt and some butter. The best version I had in Mongolia was at a tourist camp on the second day where it was made with fresh yak milk).

Nom!

The recipe is the same for many Mongolian dishes. If you stuff the pancake into a round dumpling shape instead of a half-circle, then it is a buuz if steamed (though the buuz I had at a restaurant in Ulaan Batar had a thinner, more delicate wrapper, like a wonton or a ravioli). It's called a bansh if boiled.

Mr. Shi's Pork, Garlic Scapes, and Tomatoes

2011-09-25T05:23:00.001-04:00

With fresh ingredients, Mr. Shi's stew of pork, garlic scapes, and tomatoes is magnificent. Mr. Shi got started prepping ingredients and cooking while in the middle of making noodles.

Ingredients:
1 2-inch piece of ginger, peeled and sliced
5 lajiao, dried red chili peppers, cut in half (with seeds)
250g pork
1 teaspoon dark soy sauce
2 tomatoes, roughly chopped into 1" pieces
2 tsp salt
1/2 medium purple onion, sliced and separated
3 long green peppers (these are spicy), roughly chopped
250g garlic scapes, cut into 2" pieces
250g thin celery, stalks only, cut into 2" pieces

Mr. Shi cuts off the pork fat and slices the meat into 1/8" pieces.

Here's Mr. Shi's mise en place. The garlic scapes are under the onions, because those will go in together.

In one tablespoon of peanut oil, cook the ginger until the flavor is released. You'll know that's happened when a cloud of intense ginger perfume rises from the wok. If you're standing over the wok with the spatula, you won't be able to miss it.

Then add the dried red chili peppers and cook until they're light brown.

Add the pork and the dark soy sauce, and stir-fry until the pork has become completely opaque and lost its raw pink translucence.

Add the chopped tomatoes and mix them into the pork, ginger and peppers. Add the salt and mix well. (Mr. Shi prefers to use MSG, but we didn't have any in the house.)

Cover the pot and let it cook for about five minutes, or until the tomatoes have released their juices and the pot is simmering. In the meantime, you can make some more noodles.

Add the rest of the ingredients and mix them together.

Cover the wok and allow the ingredients to simmer together for about 10 minutes, the onions should be tender and translucent, and the scapes and celery should have darkened from stewing in the tomato juices.

The final mix should look like this.

Serve over Mr. Shi's noodles.

Mr. Shi Makes Noodles

2011-09-10T04:45:00.000-04:00

Today we're going to watch Mr. Shi make noodles.

It's pretty easy to find cooking schools in Beijing that will teach you about famous dishes, restaurant food, and specialty cooking. (For a range of perfectly executed traditional dishes, I highly recommend Chunyi Zhou at Hutong Cuisine). But finding someone to teach basic home-style cooking, the kind of dishes you couldn't order in a restaurant without getting a weird look from the proprietor, is a little more difficult. Our friend Mrs. Zhao has been giving Nick and I a primer in the kinds of foods she cooks every day at home, which I've found to be very fresh, seasonal, and completely made from scratch. Prepared or preserved foods are in general much more expensive here than fresh foods that can be picked up inexpensively at the market.

Mrs. Zhao is from a village in Henan, which she says is a place where they eat wheat instead of rice. "In places where people eat rice, there's just rice," she said. "But in places where we eat wheat there's steamed buns, stuffed buns, pancakes, noodles, and more. There's all kinds of things you can do with wheat."

Today Mrs. Zhao's husband, Mr. Shi, came over to make some food. When people come over to show us how to cook something, usually they just start cooking and I try to watch, ask questions and take notes as they go along. But sometimes they just jump in and get to work. Today, for instance, I was just putting the pork in the refrigerator, and I turned around to discover that Mr. Shi had magically generated a ball of dough in the time it took me to turn around.

Mr. Shi's had a lot of practice making noodles, and he didn't bother measuring anything. For anyone else who wants to try it, the recipe involves equal parts flour and water (one and a half cups of each, in this case). No sugar, no yeast, no salt. Just flour and water. Mix it together with your hands until you have a big, soft ball. If it's too sticky, add more flour. Then, proceed like Mr. Shi:

Mr. Shi kneads the flour by pushing the dough away from himself with the heel of his hand, then lifting it back towards himself and pressing again.

After kneading it as a ball for awhile, he stretches it out and makes it a long, fat snake about the size and shape of a boa constrictor. He continues kneading along the snake in one-hand increments, pushing it away from himself and then back towards himself again.

He then brings the snake back together into a coil, kneads it back into a ball, then lays the ball out flat on the cutting board. He smears the top with peanut oil, then covers the whole thing in plastic and lets it sit for 10 minutes while he prepares the rest of the food.

After the dough has been allowed to sit 10 minutes, he slices thin strips off the edge, leaving the rest of the dough covered.

The thin strip is rolled and pulled into a long, thin snake, more like a garter than a boa this time.

Finally, he flattens the noodle with his thumbs until it's about an inch wide.

Then he tears the noodles into 3" pieces and boils them quickly until they're tender and chewy but not mushy, about a minute and a half. He boiled them in batches, preparing the next bunch of noodles in the brief interlude while the other noodles boiled. He removed the noodles from the pot with a strainer and plunged them immediately into cool water to stop them from cooking, removing them immediately so they didn't get cold.

The noodles then went into bowls for serving. I'll show you what he did with them in the next post.

Red-Braised Pork Belly (Hong Shao Rou)

2011-09-07T01:59:00.004-04:00

Red-braised pork, hong shao rou, is a classic Beijing dish. I don't eat it as much as I'd like to because it's excruciatingly fatty, but it's wonderful on special occasions. (OK, the presence of a plate of hong shao rou pretty much creates a special occasion by itself).

First you take about two pounds of pork belly (with the skin on), cut it into bite-sized pieces of about .75"x.75"x1.5", then you boil them until they change color and turn white, like this.

Then you put the blanched pieces into an empty wok (it will make its own oil shortly) and stir-fry them. This stage of the preparation is kind of like fighting the Medusa, because you have to hold the lid up like a shield to protect yourself when the pork pieces start to pop and spray hot oil at you.

In no time at all, the pork will be happily simmering away in its own oil. Don't let your guard down; they'll still pop at you. When they get nice and golden brown around the edges like this, remove the pork from the wok and set aside. Pour off the oil and set that aside, or throw it away if you prefer to use vegetable oil for the next step.

In about two tablespoons of the melted pork fat or cooking oil (peanut, corn, canoloa, vegetable), caramelize two and a half tablespoons of white sugar. This part goes lightning fast, so be careful. The sugar should be golden brown, but not burned.

Cooking sugar is notoriously difficult to time correctly. It's probably easier when you don't have a girl getting all up in your grill with a camera. "Stop stirring, I need a picture!" "It'll burn!" But as always, Nick is a trooper.

As soon as the sugar's the right color, put the pork back in the wok and mix until it's covered well.

Gather all the meat in the center of the wok. Around the edge add two teaspoons of shaoxing wine, two tablespoons light soy sauce and about 2/3 teaspoon dark soy sauce. This is where it starts to look really delicious, but don't eat it yet; it's not finished.

Cover the meat with two cups of water. Add a star anise, a bay leaf, half a teaspoon of salt, and a little piece of cinnamon about the size of a pinky nail. Also add 30g of ginger, cut into coins, and a 3" piece of spring onion (white part only). Cover and let it simmer over low heat for an hour. If the water isn't gone by then, uncover it and cook the water off.

Finally, serve this dish with fluffy white rice. (In this case, it was also served with mu xu rou, ie: moo shoo pork, and shredded cold spicy/numbing chicken). This is one of the few dishes where I think rice is actually a better accompaniment than beer. The rice is an excellent match for the heavy, sweet, oily and salty sauce. If it comes out properly, the taste should be deep and smoky, simultaneously sweet and salty with the savory edge of caramelized sugar and crisp, browned pork fat.

Note: There are as many authentic versions of hong shao as there are cooks making it. This one comes from Chunyi Zhou of Hutong Cuisine, who's had the often difficult task of teaching me Chinese cooking for the past six months.

China Market Tour Part Five: Noodles and staple goods

2011-08-25T01:19:00.000-04:00

The third and final floor of the market is devoted to noodles and bulk staples like rice, grains and cooking oils.

This lady was also selling mantou, steamed white buns, and wonton wrappers.

This man was making enormous pancakes on a griddle. He also had chunks of sponge cake and some stacks of round wonton wrappers.

Here's where you'd buy staple products like grains and oil.

There was also a little bakery where you could get pre-made cakes and cookies and other kinds of pastries. My personal favorite is a kind of twisty bread roll with sesame paste run through the dough.

Well, we've finally reached the end of our market tour. It took awhile, but this is basically everything you'd see if you went to a market like this. Unfortunately, I recently moved apartments and am now in Sanlitun, where my local market is a standard Jingkelong grocery store. Le sigh.

Market Tour Part Four: Meat

2011-08-15T00:46:00.000-04:00

Depending on your personal proclivities, this section may be either the most exciting part of the market tour or the least. If you happen to be a vegetarian, well, the tofu's at the end of the post. You might want to just skip ahead to the noodles or back to the vegetables for awhile, because this post gets a little bloody.

The second floor of the market is devoted to meat. What you'll see here is mostly pork, which is by far the most popular meat in the Chinese mainland, and the popularity is only growing as living standards and meat consumption rise. According to the New York Times, "While per-person consumption is still higher in some nations like Denmark, the Chinese, over all, produce and eat more than half the world’s pigs."

So we'll be looking at a lot of pork today.

At the market, it's all out in front of you, not kept behind glass. As in the rest of the market, the meat section is made up of individual purveyors instead of following a centralized grocery store model. If I want a heart, liver, pig foot, or tripe from this lady, I'll select one and pay her for it. If I want a chicken from the stall across the hall, I'll go to that vendor and buy one from her.

The shopper in front of me investigated the tripe for freshness. It was quite fresh.

There are many kinds of eggs available. Chicken eggs, duck eggs, pigeon eggs, quail eggs, goose eggs, preserved eggs, 100-year-old eggs, tea-soaked eggs. The other day I picked up a tea-soaked egg from the convenience store and was disappointed to find it was actually an espresso-soaked egg. Tea-soaked eggs are wonderful. Now that I think of it, I should do a post on those in the future. Stay tuned for that.

We picked up some preserved eggs for later.

Whole poultry, and poultry broken down into its component parts. Note the presence of black chickens. I was interested in getting one of those, but my host, Chunyi, said that black chickens are more nutritious than regular chickens, but they don't taste as good. They're very tough and are best when braised. Chunyi complained about the chicken breasts. "Why do these chickens have such huge breasts? We never had chickens with breasts like that back home. These chickens are weird mutants. This spring, I'll get some of my own so we can have normal-sized, chickeny chickens."

There was a random spine lying on the floor.

Many of the vendors selling beef and mutton were from the north of China. The vendor I talked to was from Xinjiang originally.

I promised you tofu, didn't I? The tofu display wraps up the meat floor with tofu blocks, tofu sheets, tofu noodles, preserved tofu and pre-cooked tofu. If any vegetarians are reading, I'm sorry you had to go through all the meat to get here.

Next post we'll conclude the tour with noodles and staples.

China Market Tour Part 3: Main Floor Miscellany

2011-08-05T10:59:00.001-04:00

My camera is still incommunicado, so until it's fixed I'm going to have to continue using my iPhone camera. But that's no reason to sit around, so here's part three of our Beijing market tour. Continuing on from the vegetable portion (the biggest individual section), one is deposited into an area for general miscellany. In this case, dried fruits, spices, fish, nuts, etc.

Next up, meat!

China Market Tour Part 2: The Vegetables

2011-07-23T01:18:00.001-04:00

China Market Tour Part 1: The Fruit

2011-06-08T11:48:00.004-04:00

One of the things that surprised me the most when I moved to China was the difference between the markets here and the ones I shopped at in New York. There are Jingkelong Supermarkets on every corner and plenty of Jenny Lou's import stores, but my favorite place to shop is at the massive produce markets--multistory affairs that look like food-filled dealers' halls at conventions where individual dealers set up giant booths selling their particular specialties.

This is what it's like when I buy groceries here.

I start at the entrance

There were so many pictures at the end of my last trip that I decided to break this tour up into its component parts. I'll try to take you along from the entrance on through in order, so we'll start with the vendors closest to the entrance, where everyone was selling fruit.

Rambutan, aka "hairy lychees."

Mangosteens

Lychees and rambutan, alongside some peaches, cherries, mangoes and breadfruit

Waxberries

Mangoes of varying sizes

Fresh water chestnuts -- these are amazing, very crisp and sweet.

Breadfruit, not durian. If they'd been durian, we wouldn't have made it much farther into the tour.

Next stop: Vegetables!

Six Sweet Cocktail Accessories for Serious Mixologists

2011-05-22T12:55:00.005-04:00

Truly, you don't need a lot of fancy tools to keep a well-appointed bar. A small selection of spirits and mixers, a shaker, and a bag of ice from the corner bodega will keep the drinks flowing and your guests lubricated.

But if you take your cocktails as seriously as gourmands take their food, there's a nigh limitless toybox of whosits and whatsits out there to make cocktails even more delicious. And even if they don't add much functionality, they do add a lot of style. Here are six fun gadgets for cocktailians who want a bar that's as cool looking as it is well stocked.

• Yarai Mixing Glass $34

The Yarai mixing glass is named for the cross-hatched pattern in the crystal, which theoretically makes it more difficult to drop. While they're not inexpensive, these mixing glasses are the ne plus ultra of mixology tools. Gorgeous to look at and tough enough for professional work, setting one of these on the bar says, "I am really serious about my cocktails."

• Yukiwa Gold 3-Piece Cobbler Shaker $67.50

While many professional bartenders swear by the two-part Boston shaker, a three-part cobbler shaker like this one is necessary for the hard shake, the intense shaking method preferred by hardcore Japanese bartenders. Kanetaka Daiki, the master mixologist behind the bar at Glen in Beijing, uses a simple single-serving shaker made of plastic, but I like the bit of kitschy flash from this gold one.

• Ice Ball Mold $205

A perfectly clear sphere is the holy grail of ice, and it's almost impossible to get without a lot of effort. Once you've got your block of perfectly clear ice (an adventure in itself), you can either chip away at it with an ice pick, or you can use an ice mold like this one to shape it into a perfect ball.

• Muji Silicon Ice Ball Maker $11.75

If all you want is the ice ball and you don't need the bragging rights behind a perfectly transparent one, the silicon ice ball maker from Muji is an easy and economical choice. The two-part rubber mold is easy to use and makes drinks look extra special.

• Chef'n Citrus Jucier $19.95

Fresh-squeezed juice is the gateway to serious cocktails, and that requires a serious juicer. I've used everything from electric juicers to pressers – in a fit of desperation I've even used the handle of a pot lid set into a frying pan (it's really hard to find juicers in Beijing) – and while I prefer a good hand mixer, cleaning the goop out afterwards can be a colossal pain. With this sunny presser, you can get fresh-squeezed citrus in an instant, and then the whole thing can just pop in the dishwasher with no nooks and crannies to hold onto the pulp.

• Bitters bottles $23.95

There's a wealth of bitters out there beyond Angostura and Peychaud's. Some people make their own, and there are tons of artisanal producers experimenting with strange flavors to add depth to cocktails. The only problem is those bottles don't necessarily match each other and your bar can wind up looking cluttered. But fear not, because that opens up one of the most fun bar accoutrements around: bitters bottles! They come in any number of sizes and the corked stoppers make for a perfectly measured dash every time. Best of all, they look like tiny potion bottles. Sometimes I like to sit in front of my collection and pretend I'm a wizard.

10 Stylish Cat Accessories So Cool Cats Might Not Ignore Them

2011-05-22T10:52:00.005-04:00

1) Alessi Tigrito Cat Bowl $90

Why do dogs have all the luck? Every luxury house from here to Timbuktu makes designer dog leashes and luxe canine bedding, but when it comes to cats conventional wisdom holds that the best we can hope for is to keep their necessities as out of sight as possible. But nobody can keep a kitty backstage when it wants to be front and center, so luckily there are some stylish options out there for entertaining your cat and decorating his or her home. Because as any cat owner knows, it's the cat's home, we just live in it.

2) Loyal Luxe Native American Teepee $24

3) Adult Cat Tree House $1085

4) Cat's in Style Post $564

5) Smart Cat Ultimate Scratching Post $46.64

6) ModPet V-leg Pet Bed $95

7) AtomicAttic Upcycled Vintage Suitcase Pet Bed $59

8) Urban Pet Haus Wave Perch $99.99 - $149.99

9) Modkat Litter Box $180

10) Igloo Cat Bed $149.99

Good Libations: Mint Julep

2011-05-20T05:58:00.000-04:00

Receipe:
10-15 mint leaves
1.5 Tbsp. simple syrup
1/2 cup bourbon (seriously, half a cup)

Pull about 10 mint leaves off their stems. If you're using a glass instead of a julep cup, rim it with sugar first, then add the leaves and the simple syrup and bruise the leaves just a little bit with a muddler. Fill the glass with crushed ice, then the bourbon (yes, the full half cup of it). Give it a quick stir, once is probably enough. Garnish with the rest of the mint.

Receipe from Saveur

The ongoing construction of Beijing

2011-05-19T10:30:00.001-04:00

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Eye Candy: A Man Refills the 'Drinkable Water' Jug

2011-05-15T08:55:00.001-04:00

On my way home from work this evening, I spied a man refilling a "drinkable water" jug from a common hose. Beijing tap water is not potable. This is not a particularly unusual sight for this city.

The doors of Beijing

2011-05-15T08:37:00.001-04:00

Created with flickr slideshow from softsea.

Beijing has a lot of really beautiful, interesting doors. I've been taking a few pictures whenever I happen to pass one. My very favorites are the old, shaped doors. They were designed to basically create a frame for the view behind them. I included the Foo Dog door guardian at the end because he doesn't flank a grand siheyuan. He and his twin guard the doors of a very modern law office and copy shop on Yaojiayuan Street.

Further evidence that Chicago is the best city in the world

2011-05-15T07:47:00.002-04:00

"The large stone slabs that form the windowsills and front steps of many turn-of-the-20th-century homes and apartment buildings in Chicago are made of limestone, a rock that forms from the skeletons of ocean-dwelling animals. These rocks also contain fossils."

A fossil in the Pittsfield building on Washington St. in Chicago.

Full story at the Chicago Tribune

Eye Candy: The Corner Produce Market

2011-05-11T08:45:00.002-04:00

This is the corner street fruit market. Sometimes they have vegetables, but it's really mostly fruit. Dragonfruit is in season now. Cherries should be along shortly.

Eye Candy: Bejing Public Telephones

2011-05-01T08:40:00.004-04:00

This is what public telephones look like in Beijing. They're pretty common, so it's not unusual to see strings of these lining both sides of a major street.

Whenever I see one I am uncomfortably reminded of the Real Housewives of Orange County. Please tell me it's not just me.

Eye Candy: Beijing's Answer to Zipcar

2011-04-25T09:02:00.000-04:00

Beijing's shanzai (knockoff) Zipcars are heavily decorated.

Eye Candy: Olympic Leftovers

2011-04-15T09:03:00.000-04:00

Olympic-themed decor is still ubiquitous around Beijing.

This is how clutter happens

2011-03-15T07:49:00.000-04:00

I keep having ideas for things that would be awesome to have around. Then, when I acquire them, I have too many things lying around. Here is a list of things I want to have in my apartment because they would be cool.

A typewriter:

Typewriters look impressive, and sometimes I might want to use it if I want something typed on paper but do not want to have to carry my computer all the way over to the printer and plug it in.

A pleating iron:

This thing is both aesthetically toothsome and practical. You heat up the bottom part in the oven, and then you use this to pleat fabric. (For me, that is practical.)

A feng shui compass:

Earlier this week I decided to get into Feng Shui. I don't personally believe in geomancy, but I do believe in rules, and following Feng Shui's arrangement rules will theoretically prevent me from just piling all my possessions in the breakfast nook and calling it a day. You don't need the compass to do Feng Shui, but it looks kind of cool.

A forest of heads:

I kind of already have a forest of heads from all my wig blocks, but I also have several head-shaped vases and hat stands and such. I think it would be cool to get some mannequin hands in there.

So this is my current "home decor" shopping list. These things will join my creepy doll collection, 4,000 books, Nick's old Transformers, and 30 years of action figures in my nascent hoarder hole.

Covet: These weirdly cute hedgehog mittens

2011-02-13T09:04:00.001-05:00

Image via The Gloss

I really need to own these hedgehog gloves. Why can I not buy them! The knitting kit is $24, but I cannot knit. Why can I not knit? How did this skill elude me so long?

Curse my non-knitting fingers.

The knitting kit is here: http://www.morehousefarm.com/KnittingKits/Mittens/Hedgehog/

Vera Wang + David's Bridal collab

2011-01-28T07:55:00.000-05:00

This is a random post, but I know a bunch of people on my FL are getting married soon, and I happened across pics of Vera Wang's line for David's Bridal, and they're kind of spectacular.

Images from nymag.com
These are $1500, $1200 and $700, respectively.

The official site is here

I'm gonna make that bitch a queen. Bitches love being queen.

2010-10-15T07:56:00.000-04:00

A.C.'s Fantasy Shopping League: Acquired: Perfume, Desired: Glowing, crying candle head

2010-03-05T08:47:00.000-05:00

I got a fragrance for Nick based on a really good review Cintra Wilson put in the NYT (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/03/fashion/03CRITIC.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=fashion). I didn't want to get a whole 4oz. bottle, so I got a set of 3 .5oz bottles.

The line is called Histoires de Parfums and they're made by a chef in Paris who got it into his head to make perfumes, and a lot of them are based on historical or literary figures. I got the Jules Verne one for Nick. I'm wearing it now and I do quite like it. It's strange though, his is like ... hmmmm. ... half of me. Ooh, I know what it is. This scent feels really rich, deep and thoughtfully intellectual but in a driven, passionate sort of way, if that makes sense. It's someone I want to talk to. But on me it is missing something. I'd like this as a base, but I want something more energetic and arty on top of it.

In other news, how much do I want this?

It's the "Bust of Dierdre" candle from DL & Co.. Yep, that thing is a candle. And the best part about it is that when you burn it, the whole head glows, like this:

And the wax comes out like this:

So cool.

http://www.dlcompany.com/catalog/bust-dierdre-candle-dl-limited

The A.C. Fantasy Shopping League: Comme des Garçons

2010-02-26T12:55:00.004-05:00

I'm seriously enamored of this Comme des Garçons blouse/jacket/thing from Fall 2008. I've been stalking it over on Yoox, where it's on sale for $660. Le sigh.

Pictures via Yoox, Style.com.

Style blogger Sea of Shoes has the most amazing picture of it:

Picture via Sea of Shoes

Behold, the "Weir Royale" Olympic-Theme Cocktail at the Russian Tea Room

2010-02-18T16:40:00.001-05:00

When I heard that tonight The Russian Tea Room was planning to debut a new cocktail inspired by Olympic figure skater Johnny Weir, of course I had to go check it out. I mean, what could it look like? I was imagining Swarovski crystals and gilded crucifixes. Conveniently, I was right around the corner, so here it is, The Weir Royale:

It's made with Russian Czar's Gold Vodka, which is distilled through real gold. The Olympic-appropriate vodka is shaken with lemon juice and simple syrup, layered over Blue Curacao and served with a strawberry garnish in a martini glass rimmed with red sugar. Starting tonight, when Weir competes in the long program at the Olympics in Vancouver, the drink will be on the menu at The Russian Tea Room for $14.

Inspiration Permutations: Separated at Birth?

2010-02-11T15:44:00.002-05:00

Christian Dior Haute Couture, 1957

Glinda from Wicked

Costume design by Susan Hilferty

Things I want today

2010-02-01T13:06:00.006-05:00

I find myself toying with the idea of purchasing this for myself. But it's $169.22. But I really want it ...

I'm feeling Schiaparelli lately. I'm very tempted to buy a huge bolt of hot pink fabric and just wrap it around things in my house. Like the cats.

This too is ambience.

2009-09-01T11:40:00.000-04:00

My friend who lives in Texas found this in a restaurant and sent a picture of the menu.

Now, I spend a lot of time arguing over how things I want to talk about count as ambience, but really, when they gave me this blog I just said, "Sonya's got cocktails, Bret has food, so just give me everything else about the dining experience."

If something makes you laugh, it is totally part of the dining experience. If I lived in Texas, I would definitely bring out of town guests to that restaurant to see "Pie as a vegetable." (Oh, who am I kidding? I would totally always get pie instead of vegetables. In fact, I would convert green beans, broccoli and potatoes into pie for a mere $2.85.)

What? This totally counts as "ambience"

2009-08-20T08:37:00.000-04:00

Thrillist, which always gets scoops before me, emailed this morning with news and pictures of Bianca's, opening August 25 at 550 W 38th St, near 11th Ave in Hell's Kitchen. (Which is really inside HeadQuarters men's club.)

The blood-red lounge space warms the cockles of my tiny, rockabilly heart. It looks like a 1940s boudoir -- but the boudoir of some "bad girl," not Kate Hepburn or Lana Turner. (Maybe the boudoir of a prostitute cut to look like Lana Turner...) That's an LA Confidential reference, so I can't get in trouble for saying "prostitute" on this blog, right?

Regulars I'm sure will note that we keep reporting on the success of the "breastaurant," which is one of the only restaurant genres doing noticeably well in this economy. And Hooters really can call itself a family restaurant when Robert's at the Penthouse Club and Bianca's in HeadQuarters feature actual nakedness.

For me, the most fun part of all this is how much fun restaurant reviewers seem to have writing about these places. Like Thrillist which opens with "They say a way to a man's heart is through his stomach, but who doesn't also heart boobs?" and ends with a description of the food: "... halibut slathered in asparagus and wild mushrooms, whose parents will be devastated that they exposed their caps for a bunch of fratty, middle-aged businessmen."

From Thrillist.com. (Readers with poetic souls may want to click the link, because Thrillist is offering access to whoever sends them the best haiku about food and boobs.)

Vivienne Westwood gives the best interviews

2009-07-14T17:14:00.000-04:00

Vivienne Westwood was predictably spectacular when she appeared last Friday on Jonathan Ross’ BBC1 TV show to talk about climate change. She swept in wearing a gown made of 7 meters of lightweight silk duchess satin cinched with a belt, and Ross had to help her fling her train dramatically across the couch.
“This dress is really 7 metres of fabric,” she said of her ensemble. “It’s got a label on it, so there we are.”

During the course of the interview she and said the best-dressed people are over 70, clothes look better over time if you never wash them, and that people should wear tablecloths and towels and only spend money on things that are truly excellent, like Vivienne Westwood.

[Grazia]

He had golden chains on his leather jacket

2009-07-14T15:49:00.000-04:00

Rock and roll style and cheap, DIY-fashion are two trends that are still going strong as the recession continues. It's an easy project to combine those by decorating random shirts, pants or bags with motorcycle-inspired studs. New Yorkers can pick up studs, as well as buttons, rhinestones, ribbons and other DIY supplies at Daytona Trimming & Braid on 39th st. between 7th and 8th.

They come in silver and gold and can be found in all kinds of shapes like dots, stars, spikes and pyramids. They’re just a few dollars for a couple dozen, and they don’t require any special tools to apply. They have spiky ends on their backs, and you just push those through your material and bend them over with your hands or something hard. Knives and spoons work well for that.

In the window: LV’s dancing bags

2009-07-14T15:35:00.000-04:00

Louis Vuitton on the corner of 5th Ave and 57th has updated its windows with animatronics that make bags spin around and glide through doors like model trains.

This logo-stamped mirror-finish monogram Speedy spins around on its axis, flashing at passersby.

Cupcakes and furniture

2009-07-14T15:05:00.000-04:00

BoConcept, the interior design concept with 7 stores in New York, has decided to expand its purview a little bit by teaming its Chelsea store with Kyotofu, which makes Japanese-inspired pastries. The co-branded kiosk has a selection of coffees and full-sized and miniature versions of Kyotofu’s signature pastries.

Gift wrap made me do it

2009-07-14T14:38:00.000-04:00

It can be such a let-down to spend a lot of time and money picking out the perfect gift and then get stuck having to wrap it up in fat Santas or cartoon chipmunks saying, “Happy birthday!”

Washi, traditional Japanese wrapping paper, makes presenting a gift as elegant and tasteful as whatever is inside. (Or more so. There’s no reason you can’t show up with a 6-pack of edible panties wrapped in fancy paper.)

Styles vary from cute and girly to bold and gilded to dramatically understated. How chic is that striped one on the end?

Rolls are available for $7-$16 at Kinokuniya Japanese bookstore on 6th Ave. between 40th and 41st, across from Bryant Park.

Facebook is so hot right now, says J.C. Penney

2009-07-14T12:05:00.000-04:00

Women’s Wear Daily reports that J.C. Penney Co. Inc. is gearing up for back-to-school by launching a website for teenagers and a page on Facebook. According to executive vice president and chief marketing officer Mike Boylson, the move is part of the company’s plan to get deeper into digital media this year.
In a classic, “You’re a great girl, but …” moment to traditional media, he explained the strategy by saying: “Traditional media is still important, but each year they are losing their effectiveness and costs are going up so we are evolving from broadcasting to narrow casting, which is much more targeted.”

That sound you hear is a million print journalists crying over their lost ad pages.

[Women's Wear Daily]

Tie one on

2009-07-14T01:26:00.000-04:00

A lot of guys don’t start having to wear ties regularly until they grow up and get jobs at places with dress codes. They probably know how to put one on, but a lot of them don’t know what to do with it once they’ve taken it off. Ties like to hang flat so their insides don’t lose their shape, so it’s not a good idea to store them in a roll in your sock drawer. Besides, you don’t want your head to smell like feet. To protect and store ties, you need an old-school tie rack so they can hang flat.

This one is a good option because it won’t take up a lot of room at the end of your closet. The ties go inside the arms and drape over the side so they won’t slide off. If you hang the ties with their ends towards the back, you’ll be able to slide out the one you want without disturbing the others.

This one spins.

It seems like an inefficient use of space, but it’s a neat toy.

If you’re a fancy guy who owns many leather-bound books, something like this might be more your style:

That one has the benefit of also being able to be used for belts, so your artfully distressed, reclaimed-leather ceinture doesn't start to look scruffy. But belts can be difficult because when you get them all properly stored, the next one you want is inevitably at the back of the belt hook. This belt-holder co-opts three-ring-binder technology to store belts on big clicky circles, so you can open them wherever you want to retrieve the desired one.

Above items sourced from The Container Store

Store Sidekicks: Swatches The Boston Terrier, At Mood

2009-07-13T19:24:00.000-04:00

This is Store Sidekicks, a new end-of-the-week feature where we profile the fuzzy wuzzy creatures that inhabit shops across the city. If you'd like to nominate your favorite store animal, drop us a line at
tips@racked.com.

Swatches the super-friendly Boston Terrier is an enthusiastic greeter at the Project Runway-featured Mood Fabrics on 37th. Boston Terriers are known for being intelligent and loving the company of humans, and Swatches’ super puppy brain has keyed him into the prime people-meeting areas of the store. Most days he can be found by the front of the store near the cash registers or the store entrance, wherever there are more customers talking about how cute he is. Swatches prefers back rubs to tummy rubs, and he likes to eat chewing gum, which is hilarious.

Coloring book chic

2009-07-13T19:22:00.000-04:00

Designer Berber Soepboer created her “Colour-In” dress with the idea of making clothing that would be partly designed by the person wearing it. The dresses were made for an exhibition about a textile factory, but the Colour-In dress’ flattering cut, graphic pattern and playful, coloring book aesthetic attracted enough attention that it was put into production. The black and white dress comes with textile markers for coloring in the pattern to create a unique garment that is customized for each wearer.

http://berbersoepboer.nl/

The Colour-In dress is available by special order for 238 Euros or $333 at http://berbersoepboer.nl.

Street Scenes: India at Kinokuniya.

2009-07-13T19:20:00.000-04:00

Today's Street Scenes subject is India, shot at Kinokuniya on 5th Ave. between 40th and 41st. Feel free to vote on whether you like or dislike her outfit below. Your choices are 'Perfection!,' 'So close,' 'I feel strangely ambivalent about it,' or 'Who did this to you?'

India is wearing a blazer and shirt by H&M, shorts by Target, shoes by DV Dolce Vita and a bag from Foley & Corinna. Her favorite store is The Reformation.

This is India at Kinokuniya. What do you think of her outfit?

If Landmarks likes it, then you should put a ring around it

2009-07-09T14:49:00.001-04:00

Lately I've been writing a lot about restaurants in Landmark-protected buildings. Historical sites are fantastic for restaurants, because they come equipped with a natural sense of history and ambience that is really difficult, and expensive, to fake. The down side to that, however, is that the Landmarks Protection and Preservation Commission is extremely dedicated to keeping these spaces as they are, and they can be tough about letting restaurateurs change things like lighting and fixtures.

New York Magazine's design editor, Wendy Goodman, discovered that the Ace Hotel in New York found a clever way to get around the problem by installing hanging lamps that ring the space's columns without actually touching them.

From Nymag.com

While we're on the subject of Landmarks, another benefit to landmark status is that your insurance is required to replace everything exactly as it was in case of a fire or other emergency. Without Landmark status, an insurer can, and probably will, argue that there is no need to replace a 19th-century tin roof with another tin roof, when something modern and cheaper would do just as well.

For more landmark restaurants, see also:
The Oak Room
Dovetail

Eye Candy: Dune

2009-05-01T12:07:00.000-04:00

I have some pictures of Michael Getter's soon-to-open Nantucket restaurant, Dune, and the place looks pretty chill and sandy. They sent one picture in particular, which shows the custom stone bar top. Stone is always cool when it works out, because every piece is unique and has its own shapes and colors. They got pretty excited about this piece for the restaurant, because as soon as they looked at it they saw a pattern in the stone that looked like Nantucket island.

For reference, this is a map of Nantucket:

The bar top is naturally patterned Brazilian quartzite fabricated by GerrityStone.

Eye Candy: This blog post brought to you by the letters "O" and "A"

2009-04-24T17:32:00.001-04:00

I loved fireworks when I was 5 or 6. Then I became cool and they were "so lame" until I turned 21, which is when I figured out that one of the great gourmet pairings of the world is the marriage of fireworks and beer. Honestly, when else can you say, "Ooo" and "Aaaa" without a trace of irony?

I'm embarrassed to admit I said that out loud just now, even though I'm in my plain beige cubicle and there are neither fireworks nor beer within 100 feet. All I actually did was open a press release from a British company called Limlip that makes fiber optic chandeliers. They look like this:

Ooooo.

Aaaaa.

Oooo.

This is like Laser Floyd.

I was going to write about "A properly orchestrated lighting schematic is essential to the deployment of blah blah ambience blah." But I'm easily distracted by brightly colored glowing things. I'm also fairly certain that those chandeliers would do truly amazing things to any women who happened to be wearing sequined dresses while sitting under them.

They also do plain crystal chandeliers that don't glow or anything. They just look like this:

Look! It's space!

Bobo's stuffed cat freaks out fashion bloggers

2009-02-13T10:38:00.000-05:00

Bobo hosted the presentation (sort of a low-cost alternative to a runway show where fashion people walk around the clothes instead of seeing them on catwalk parade) for fashion designers Alison Lewis and Ashley Granata last night.

During the fashion show, a few bloggers from fashionista.com saw Bobo's stuffed bobcat for the first time and vaguely freaked out. Bobo's stuffed bobcat hangs from the ceiling and wears a pink tutu and pearls "like it was Audrey Hepburn," say the fashion bloggers. They thought he was dressed up for the fashion event, but really those are just his everyday clothes.

As far as hanging preserved animals from the ceiling, the Bobo cat may rival the Trader Vic's fish for this year's most terrifying decor award.

(I don't have pictures, but they do.)

Hawaiian Tropic Zone plans renovations

2009-02-04T11:28:00.000-05:00

Hawaiian Tropic Zone, the suntan-theme Times Square restaurant with waitresses in bikinis and a menu by David Burke, announced today that it would be launching a $500,000 renovation after serving 1,000,000 customers.

The renovation is under direction of architect Robert Parnes of Tobin & Parnes Design Enterprises. The plan is to consolidate the 200-seat restaurant on the second floor of the building, vacating the street-level space to free up 3,100 square feet for a new retail tenant.

The restaurant will be closing for renovations February 8, so there are a few days left if you need to get in there before it reopens on May 1.

If you visit the website, you can see photos of the "table concierges" and read about their "guilty pleasures," "pet peeves" and favorite celebrities. Unfortunately there's no page for Burke, so we don't get to find out his feelings on rude people or guys who have dirty nails. Maybe he could borrow Melanie's leopard print bikini.

Restaurants of the future

2009-01-14T14:52:00.000-05:00

TheWit Hotel is under construction in Chicago, and they're shooting for an opening in May, coinciding with the National Restaurant Association Restaurant Hotel-Motel Show. That sounds like pretty good timing, given that the NRA show tends to consume every hotel in Chicago over that weekend. In fact, over on the Knot wedding-planning boards, the NRA show is the bane of every Chicago bride who wants to wed that weekend, because she had nowhere to put any of her guests.

Anyway, the hotel will include three restaurants by Atlanta-based restaurant development and management firm, Concentrics Restaurants. We've picked up some renderings from their PR department.

State and Lake: State and Lake will be an artisanal American restaurant on the ground floor of the hotel, overseen by chef Bradley Manchester, previously with Hotel ZaZa in Houston as well as ENVY Steakhouse and the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas.

Cibo Matto: "Crazy Food" will do modern Italian, also under chef Todd Stein. Situated on the second floor of the hotel, Cibo Matto will feature a 10-foot glass salumi and cheese display, a 4,000 bottle wine vault and a Chef’s Table in the kitchen, as well as a 30-foot fresco on the ceiling by acclaimed artist and Chicago native, Todd Murphy, who has been collected by celebrities such as Sting and Elton John. This one might open by the end of the summer; ceiling frescoes are time-intensive projects.

Roof:
Stein will also oversee Roof, a 7,000-square-foot destination serving small plates and artisanal cocktails atop the 27th floor of the hotel, featuring both indoor and outdoor spaces open year-round.

Dish of the week

2008-11-19T16:47:00.000-05:00

Bret Thorn once told me that Ambience is the 2nd most important part of a dining experience. The first is whom you are with.

I think the two aren't mutually exclusive.

Standards & Pours' Sonya Moore and I just had an over-the-cubicle high-five over #9 on Jezebel's "10 sexiest everyday men of 2008," famed barman Sasha Petraske.

Jezebel's 10 Sexiest Everyday Men

Eye Candy: KOKO

2008-11-13T11:12:00.000-05:00

The International Hotel & Restaurant Awards are in, and KOKO Restaurant + Bar has received the 2008 Best Conceptual Design Restaurant Award. The restaurant opened this year in the Opus Montreal, a new boutique hotel in Montreal, and serves high-end, Asian-fusion small plates.

The big-box, deco-style atmosphere is the work of Opus Hotel designer Robert Bailey

“Koko adds an exciting new element to the dining scene in Montreal,” says John deC. Evans, President of Opus Hotels. “Much as its setting integrates the classic aspects of Joseph-Arthur Godin’s 1914 art nouveau structure with its adjoining contemporary concrete and glass structure, Koko blends an array of Far Eastern flavours and textures with Western culinary techniques to bring an international dining and socializing experience..."

http://www.kokomontreal.com/

Eye Candy: Sea Pearl

2008-10-30T17:26:00.000-04:00

Hey everyone, I hope you enjoyed the break. Today we're back with a look at Sea Pearl in Falls Creek, Va.

STUDIOS Architecture is behind the design of the contemporary, casual-dining restaurant that's clearly inspired by its own name. The curtains here are made of lit Capiz shells and are handmade in the Phillipines.

Sea Pearl was opened by Ly Lai, one of the Lai sisters behind Four Sisters, a Vietnamese Restaurant also in Falls Creek.

The scattered light effects visible in the following picture are intended to evoke the image of light filtering down under the sea.

When the sardine begin the beguine, it's music to me...

Eye Candy: Vapiano

2008-10-10T11:23:00.000-04:00

Vapiano is a German chain of Italian restaurants that's planning on expanding into the United States. This restaurant, located in Washington, D.C.'s Chinatown, is expected to open in December of this year.

Everything is better with monkeys and video

2008-10-07T14:47:00.000-04:00

From the BBC: Two macaque monkeys named Yatchan and Fukuchan are waiting tables at this restaurant in Japan. They bring hot towels and drinks, and they get soy beans as tips.

Maybe this belongs on the HR page?

We've got dumps in the truck, truck, truck

2008-10-06T14:22:00.000-04:00

Last week Bret alerted his Twitter followers to the news that Rickshaw Dumpling House had sent out a truck to sell dumplings to officeworkers all over New York. The next day it stopped by near the NRN offices, so I ran out to investigate.

I like the red paint job and retro-cute signage.

Here is the dumpling truck menu:

How do chalkboard menu-writers get the right mix of casual and legible? If I wrote a chalkboard menu, no one would be able to read it.

You could get chicken, pork or veggie dumplings. I was hoping for a pan-fried pork dumpling, but they only had steamed dumplings available. I got the pork ones. I would have been up for trying two of each to compare them, but you had to get 6 of a kind, and I was pretty sure I couldn't eat 18 dumplings for lunch. They were tasty, but my heart belongs to Rickshaw's chocolate soup dumplings. They're fantastic, chewy rice-dough balls with black sesame seeds and a molten chocolate center. That chocolate invariably squirts all over the place, so you have to be very cautious while eating them. Or you could throw caution to the wind and just wear a bib like any right-thinking grown-up.

Where there's smoke there's booze

2008-09-25T14:40:00.001-04:00

At the BNP Paribas Taste of Tennis event, Rums of Puerto Rico had a guy making frozen mojitos and mango daiquiris with liquid nitrogen. It was pretty awesome to watch, because it looked like something from MacBeth, except he was just getting me drunk instead of foretelling my doom or something.

When he was done, he handed me a sinister-looking smoking martini glass. I gotta say, anyone would look awesome holding something like that.

Twitter: I must only use this power to annoy

2008-09-25T13:49:00.001-04:00

http://twitter.com/ambiencechaser/

We've got Twitter. Sign up to follow me around New York if you want to learn about restaurant decor without all those pesky visual aids.

Eye Candy: Catch-22

2008-09-24T12:46:00.000-04:00

Catch-22 is a WWII-inspired tapas bar, which means it has a menu of small plates from apas menu from the U.S.A., Germany, Italy, Japan, Finland, Spain, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia and Slovakia.

The restaurant promises a foosball table and female wait staff dressed like film noir femmes.

Adventures in terrifying decor

2008-09-08T15:29:00.000-04:00

This weekend I went to Trader Vic's in the basement of the Hilton Atlanta. I was hanging out at the bar with my friend India (whose hair was totally not perfect, and we totally did not make that joke seventeen thousand times that night).

India joked that the classic Breck-girl, "Don't hate me because I'm beautiful" over-the-shoulder hair flip best demonstrates the awesomeness of perfect hair. For me, I maintained the master is Rita Hayworth with her front-to-back, full-body hair flip from Gilda. While demonstrating the move, I flipped my head back and and found myself face-to-face with this:

FLOATING DESSICATED TERRIFYING FISH ... OF DOOM!

This is the most evil objet d'art in the history of the world

It might be worth mentioning that I have a completely bizarre and irrational phobia of fish. Really, it borders on the pathological. Maybe I was a plankton in an earlier life? Who knows. Anyway, fish scare the pants off me, and this one looks like a cross between a WWII floating mine and the thing that ate Nemo's mom in Finding Nemo.

Did I mention there were 15-20 of them hanging all over the ceiling?

But it was OK. After 3 or 4 Mai Tais the horrifying dessicated zombie monsterfish stopped bothering me.

New web page design and contest

2008-08-18T12:04:00.000-04:00

Elephants Deli just launched a new website, and they are having a feedback-giving contest. The first 50 people to send their comments about the website to marketing@elephantsdeli.com will get a prize and be entered to win a picnic basket for two.

Smell like you have the phone # to Milk & Honey

2008-08-11T19:21:00.000-04:00

It’s good to have friends with connections, like Sonya Moore of Standards and Pours, who can get into any bar in the city. Over the weekend we went to Milk & Honey, where I was forbidden from breaking out the camera in the bar or publishing the ultra-exclusive secret phone number. (Sorry, but if I don’t keep Sonya happy she won’t hook me up with sazerac cupcakes.)

The dark bar was off-limits to the Ambience Chaser camera, but no one was there to stop me from snapping pictures in the ladies’ room. Honestly, it wasn’t so different from the bathroom in my apartment, except I don’t have a list of rules like “no starf*cking” posted in mine. At least, not since college.

Note the posh soap and lotion:

This soap picture will self-destruct in 30 seconds

It’s Kiehl’s Deluxe Hand & Body Lotion with Aloe Vera & Oatmeal and Bath and Shower Liquid Body Cleanser in Grapefruit, available on Kiehl’s website in 16.9 oz. bottles for $30.50 and $25.00, respectively.

Do with that information what you will. Maybe you could wash your hands with it, then go to Milk and Honey and wave them at the hostess as proof that you’ve really been in the bar all night and just stepped out to hit the ATM so she’ll let you “back” in.

Weekend wrap-up

2008-08-11T12:37:00.000-04:00

The Miracle Fruit bungle seems to have wound itself down after the weekend. I guess they have jobs too.

It was pretty lukewarm as these things go. I got about five or six messages bitching out Miracle Connect, seventeen thousand requests for people to stop hitting “Reply to all” when bitching out Miracle Connect, and a couple people who decided the recipient list made a delightfully captive blog audience or support group.
“sorry, [name redacted], but I think it's important that everyone knows that many of us are experiencing the same frustration,” reasoned one fan of the Reply All button. (One might think the 224 names on the recipient list accomplished that on their own, but who am I to judge? Oh yeah, a blogger: J’accuse!)

I did get a chance to commiserate with Miracle Fruit-hunting restaurateur Carlos Suarez, owner of Bobo, who says he is still waiting for his berries or tablets. As to whether he was investigating berries for the restaurant, he says, “Indeed, I was just curious...initially I thought to share them at a friend's birthday party, but you never know!”

I hope he does get some. Then I hope I get some. (I kinda hope a couple people who spent the weekend spamming me about their crushed berry dreams don't get any at all.)

my kingdom for this berry

Publicity stunt go "boom"?

2008-08-08T15:30:00.000-04:00

The whole "Ruby Tuesday blows itself up" thing went down earlier this week.

In summary: The restaurant didn't explode. In the video, a similar-looking restaurant next door blew up instead. The crowd looked understandably aghast. I mean, a casual-dining restaurant that didn't know it was going to be blown up is probably going to have people in it.

As I'm sure you've guessed, it wasn't a real accident. (That news is good, if unsurprising). It wasn't even a real restaurant. It was just a model blown up in a studio. There's behind-the-scenes footage at Ruby Tuesday if you are still interested.

Strange Fruit

2008-08-08T12:42:00.000-04:00

Oh dear. I just received the email addresses of 224 disappointed Miracle Fruit buyers.

Awhile ago those Miracle Berries that rewire your tastebuds were in the Times and nymag.com. They sounded pretty awesome, and everyone went crazy trying to get some. Including me.

But too many people wanted them and there weren't enough berries to go around. That brings us to today, when I got an email from Miracle Connect saying that there were no berries to be had, but they'd send a refund or miracle fruit tablets, which work the same way as the berries but are infinitely less exciting.

That's a little disappointing, but c'est la vie. The problem is that the mailing list was not BCC'ed (Blind Carbon Copied, in case my grandpa is reading) so every recipient can see every other recipient. Ugh. Last time this happened my mail box was stuffed for 4 days with people shouting, "Everyone just stop replying!" to each other.

(Also, there's at least one restaurateur on that list.)

Do restaurants get sad?

2008-08-04T19:38:00.001-04:00

Back in college we had a friend who came back from the infirmary one day and said, “I have SAD.”
“OMG, j00 can has teh sad?” I replied.

But he wasn’t speaking in l337 or some kind of proto-LOLspeak. He was telling us he’d been diagnosed with SAD – Seasonal Affective Disorder. To treat the condition, which pretty much made him really sad in the winter – he was prescribed a giant sun lamp to trick his body into believing it wasn’t under 14 feet of New England snow.

Now that I’m out of school and all gainfully employed, I don’t see the sun at all during the week unless I’m running late for work (which, er, totally never happens all the time). Lately I’ve been thinking I need one of those giant pretend suns for myself.

Then I got an email from a place called The Sky Factory, which makes programmable virtual skylights and windows for restaurants. The screens simulate the rising and setting sun and changing seasons. Their primary source light apparently incorporates the same faux sun my friend used to treat his SAD during the winter.

That picture is really, really blue.

Click Click Boom

2008-07-31T19:46:00.000-04:00

Coworker Molly just sent over the news that Ruby Tuesday is upgrading to a more sleek, modern-style decor. And it's promoting the change by exploding the last remaining "old-style" restaurant this Thursday at 3PM.

I try so hard to be really hip and jaded with regards to publicity stunts, but ... explosion!

Seriously, Ambience Chaser would like to go on the record as officially approving of all explosion-related promotions. If anyone else would like to explode something, I am very good at pushing big, red, candylike buttons and would be more than happy to help out.

Furniture porn

2008-07-31T19:41:00.000-04:00

Check out this cool video of an expanding table. It’s called the Capstan, which is hard to say, and it doubles in size from perfect circle to slightly bigger perfect circle using self-contained leaves. We are way too entranced by that expanding star in the middle. And bonus points to the craftsman who made sure the grain lines match up when the table is big as well as when it’s small.

Chewing the Scenery

2008-07-31T19:40:00.001-04:00

NRN Food editor Bret Thorn of Food Writer’s Diary said ambience is the second most important part of a dining experience, the first being whom you are dining with. So with that validation ringing in our ears, we’re ready to start covering restaurant design. Yay!

Here at Ambience Chaser we’re going to look at the nonfood aspects of the dining experience. And, for the record, we have every intention of being as shallow and superficial as humanly possible. Why are we qualified to write this blog? Because we’ve got a cell-phone camera and a wireless card, and we are not afraid to use them. (OK, we’re a little afraid to use them. It’s really embarrassing to take a picture in the middle of a crowded restaurant.)

In closing, a photographic record of the last place we dined:

Now I practice embedding YouTube videos

2008-03-14T16:35:00.000-04:00

Fun with websites

2008-03-05T16:39:00.000-05:00

http://www.isabelmarant.tm.fr/

I adore the this website for French fashion designer Isabel Marant. I haven't even gotten in to see the clothes yet. I've been too busy swirling the mouse arrow around and pretending to be a fairy princess.

True gaming in the True Tavern

2007-12-06T14:53:00.000-05:00

I got in a little trouble for cheating at True Dungeon this year. Nick, Justin, Tom and I were playing Saturday, so Friday we just hung out in the adjacent Fantasy Tavern playing checkers and drinking geek cocktails (I'm not saying they cockail-geek cocktails like the Desert Rose at PDT, but geek-geek cocktails, like "The Vulcan Death Grip -- really just a vodka cranberry)

A guy in a furry vest came up and sat next to us. He was excited because he'd just finished the dungeon crawl. He was also eager to talk about it, so I bought him a Battlestar Fantastica (7 and 7) and chatted for awhile.

Next to me, the guys were disbanding the checkers game on account of one of them being a bad checkers sport, and Nick said, "FWD, did that guy just tell you everything that happens in the dungeon?!"

"Yeah, kind of," I said. "I just bought him a drink and said 'so what are the rumors about what's in the dungeons this year?' and he told me everything."

Some people might think of it as cheating. I prefer to think of it as a successful Gather Information check. (+2 circumstance bonus for booze.)

My in-laws' dog ate my fake boob

2007-12-06T14:48:00.000-05:00

My fancy shoes and costumes survived GenCon relatively unscathed. But Kipper the poodle-something-something dog ate one of my fake boobs.
They were the water-filled kind from Frederick's. He ate it and it popped and then he got a mouth full of whatever not-water they fill those things with. Then he drooled and looked pathetic for a little while, occasionally barking angrily at the remains of the fake boob.

To illustrate, here are some elegant bust pads called, amazingly, "Your Secret".

Don't you just love the lily? It's saying "It's OK, I'll keep Your Secret. I'm a lily. Everyone trusts lilies."

You can't have this pillow, because it's mine

2007-11-06T13:19:00.000-05:00

I recently found uk-based designer showpony on Etsy, and I really like what she has to offer.

I normally don't go in for subtle patterns or colors - my taste is admittedly pretty flashy and entropic - but I have a serious construction fetish. Things that are well-made impress me, almost regardless of what the things might actually *be*. And in this case, her workmanship is impeccable. In particular, the line of "hidden pattern" purses and pillows really shows off what she can do with a sewing machine.

This cream, "hiding place" pillow is made of organic, fair trade cotton and is screen-printed with subtle, cute nature designs. The tiny folds she's sewn create little tucks, and there are spiders and beetles hidden in there!

Showpony's aesthetic is subtle and restrained, but she's got a great sense of humor. I really can't get over how cute and well-made these things are. Matching patterns like this is really difficult. If you miscut or mis-sew anywhere, it won't come out right. The attention to detail and workmanship are really showing off here, but they're doing it so subtlely that only someone who really looks for these things would notice. If I saw this in your house, I would be really impressed.

I hope someone sees it in my house and is impressed.

Ode to a cute hat that I got in the Village

2007-11-06T12:46:00.000-05:00

O cute hat that I got in the Village.
You are cute.
And I got you in the Village.

I was looking for a secret bar that is not very secret.
They had cocktails by a famous guy.
The summer cocktails were gone, and I didn't get a hot dog.

But I did get a hat! A hat that was cute, and purchased at a 24-hour hat shop in the Village.
(I didn't know I was in the Village. Someone told me later.)

The salesgirl was cute, but I could not purchase her, even in the Village.

So instead I got the cute hat she was wearing, so I too could be cute in that Village-shopgirl way.

O cute hat, I do not look like the shop girl, but I will never remove you.

Because my hair looks like shit under here.

The Lovely Mistresses of George W. Bush

2007-11-06T12:27:00.000-05:00

Sometimes the most amazing things turn up in my inbox. (Being an internet journalist is easy. You don't even have to leave your desk or stop playing Warcraft).

Today I got an announcement for a vintage-inspired pin-up calendar called The Lovely Mistresses of George W. Bush, which is amazing.

13 luscious liberals bid fond, half-naked farewell to the president with a 13-month countdown to his last day in office: January 20, 2009. (A date I know only because of this press release). I'd love it for the pictures alone, which are some of the best modern pin-ups I've seen, but the best part is the personal love letter to the soon-to-be-ex president from each girl, including telecom heiress Miss Eve Stroppin', frightened homemaker Miss Tara Fied, and pageant winner Miss Hallie Burton.

So far these are my favorites:

When you don't get drunken emails from your parents

2006-09-18T16:16:00.000-04:00

... it usually means something is wrong.

My family usually calls or emails pretty frequently, so when the weekend passed with no heads-up I vaguely wondered what was up.

This morning I get the first communique in five days. My sister emails to say: "Good news! We found your car!"

That's always an interesting experience, as I had no idea that my car was missing.

Apparently she took my car out for a spin about a week ago and it disappeared. Then the entire family went into hush-mode and proceeded to not email me at all lest someone let it slip that my car is AWOL. Once it was found they could release the documents and email saying: "Hahaha! Your sister totally lost your car! We thought it was stolen for a week, but now that it turns out that she'd just parked in a tow-zone, we can apprise you of the whole situation."

I suppose there is precedent for this sort of thing. Two-thirds of my family worked for the government.

Beware of geeks bearing gifts

2006-08-16T18:01:00.000-04:00

I just returned from Gen Con in Indianapolis this weekend. We spent all Friday in the True Fantasy Tavern where we drank lots of beer and got challenged to bar brawls by large men dressed like orcs. I showed up dressed like an elf, and one of them gave me all the tokens he'd won in the dungeon.

When we went to leave the man stamping arms stamped me like four or five times, then said: "You don't really need a stamp. I just wanted to touch you."

At the White Wolf party Saturday I moved into a cage at an industrial club in downtown Indy and stayed there all night. I've heard dance cages decried for being misogynistic because they cater to the male fantasy of keeping women as pets. All I have to say is that those people have never been on a dance floor full of guys with ponytails and glow-in-the-dark contact lenses. The cage is my panic room.

An awesome friend of mine gave me a belly-dancing lesson in the big cage. There were four such cages and they were quite large. One contained a girl in duct tape gyrating upside-down with a glo-stick stuffed in ... no man's land. The other contained two very large women groping eachother and wetly tongue-kissing.

Is all this hip, or lame? I can't tell anymore.

Dogs don't know it's not bacon

2006-08-16T17:56:00.000-04:00

Without comment, I present a list of things my mother-in-law's dog ate out of my room this weekend:

1 cap to a travel-sized bottle of hand lotion
1 prosthetic elf ear (the left one)
1 strap from Ten Suns' Birkenstock
3 dice
1 dirty Kleenex-brand tissue
5 press-on fingernails

My First Craigslist Ad

2006-08-02T20:11:00.000-04:00

Ten Suns is looking for another tutoring job, so he posted on craigslist. I thought his ad was too boring for craigslist, so I wrote one of my own.

Tutor available: Please get my husband out of the house

I am looking for young academics willing to do me a huge favor and be tutored by my husband. He is an Ivy League graduate and a Ph.D. student at Columbia, and all summer he has been driving me crazy.

Do you know the molecular composition of a carbohydrate? I do! He explained it to me last night. I had only asked if he wanted white rice or brown with dinner, and much later I knew all about the difference between complex and simple carbohydrates and how the human body metabolizes them. Is anyone out there taking Biology who needs help with this stuff? He understands it all and is eager to explain.

My husband is a highly sought-after tutor with excellent teaching skills. He has taught college classes at Dartmouth and Stanford, as well as high school students in and around the New York area.

This morning he ranted at me for 20 minutes that Capt. Kirk would not score well on the SATs because of his tendency to split infinitives. (“To boldly go…”) If you want to ace the SAT and pass your English class, please let him explain the rules of English grammar to you so I can watch my Star Trek reruns in peace.

In all seriousness, he is a very good teacher. Heck, his help with essay writing and test prep got me accepted to Harvard, Stanford, and Columbia for graduate school. If he can do it for me, I’d bet that he could do the same for you. If you want help studying for the SAT I or II, or the ACT, TOEFL or Regents Exams, he is the best tutor you could possibly have.

He also is available to help with applications and essays. Also, I’m not kidding but he can teach you Minoan Linear B. If your kid is a crazy intellectual who wants to learn weird stuff like that, please give me a call and I will lend you my own crazy intellectual to lead you or your child down the path of intellectual exploration.

My husband is qualified to teach English, History, Biology, Latin, Japanese, and Chinese. He is getting his Ph.D. in Chinese History at Columbia. That’s right, he can actually teach you “ancient Chinese secrets.” Craigslist, take him away!

Tell the TSA body scans how you really feel

2001-11-25T07:57:00.000-05:00

I found this on Refinery29: 4th Amendment underwear is printed with metallic-based ink, so the messages on these shirts, bras, underwear and socks will be visible to anyone viewing the screen.

Stick It To TSA Body Scans With These Shirts Containing A Hidden Message