The Dish Meets Scott Winegard

An interview with Scott Winegard - sweetheart, rockstar, culinary talent.

Q: What made you want to start these dinners, (Nasturium)?

A: I guess there are alot of reasons, mainly I wanted to get a chance to cook food the way I like to. To get some friends together and try out some recipes that I have been wanting to.

Q: How much are they?

A: fifty dollars

Q: Where do you hold them?

A: At a loft in Greenpoint Brooklyn, we may take it to some other cities, there's talk. I would love to.

Q: What was on the last menu?



Q: Does your music history come into play with these dinners and with your cooking in general?

A: Hmm? good question. I guess I am still inspired by music and my friends who still are rocking out, my menus don't have tag lines that say ex members of texas is the reason or anything like that but I do get people from time to time that ask for me and tell me that they were into my bands music and I am super flattered, I love all the music I have been a part of and very proud of it. I also get alot of no way you were in that band? from people I work with. I also get alot of you were in a band? oh I never heard of you.  but traveling from city to city I did get to eat at alot of great restaurants and local favs, usually I would ask the promoter of the show where the best vegetarian restaurant was in town and we would go there.

Q: That sounds better than what I imagine the usual road food is like. How’d you switch from music to food?

A: I always worked in restaurants while being in bands even when we were making enough money to pay our bills i kept working. i always wanted to go to culinary school but touring stopped me from being able. i guess i just had a moment when i just realized i need to start making cooking the priority and music the hobby. still never went to culinary school, but i worked with alot of talented chefs and learned alot actually i still am learning from them every day.

Q: Based on your skills, you must've had a Migayi of a teacher. Where do you like to eat in the city?

A: a few of my favorites are: caracas, franny's, souen noodle house, hangawi, taco chulo, taim, i know i am forgetting something these are the first that come to mind.

Q: Hangawi is an old favorite of mine. What’s your favorite dining city? Favorite dish?

A: nyc for sure, favorite dish? hmm? i guess i don't really have one specific, i would love to be eating an awesome salad with radishes and sunflower sprouts right now?

Q: Sounds like you should go to Curly's. What are your goals for the dinner series?

A: to have some fun hang out with some friends cook some good food and maybe someday it can evovle into my own little restaurant of something like that?

Q: Wish I'd be here for the next one. Good luck!

Soda Like Never Before.

Do you wish he was your quirky relative who showed up every year at Thanksgiving with some crazy sodas?

Cupcake Car

Good grief! There now exists a cupcake car.  Invented this year at Burning Man and now sold online for $25k at Neiman Marcus!

Gourmet Closing? Wha?

Gourmet Magazine just announced it will be closing. Wild.

Mother's

Mother's is one of those hole-in-the-walls that every great city has.  We have Katz's, LA has Phillipe's. New Orleans has Mother's. 

Check out this queue! Classic. And take a look at the menu.



T and I decided to split a combo platter that came with crawfish etouffée, jambalaya, collards, red beans, potato salad and rice.  We also couldn't pass up a cup of seafood gumbo.



Everything on the platter was outstanding.  Jambalaya was heavy on the andouille sausage, beans full of pork, collards were sweet and the potato salad was heavy on the curry and mustard!  The etouffée was also killer as was the gumbo.



Shrimp and oysters made up about as much of the cup as rice did.  The flavors were vibrant and it was easy to taste the freshness of all the seafood.

Of course, we wanted dessert and so decided to go for the bread pudding.  We were glad we did - it turned out to be our favorite dessert of Louisiana.



Spongy bread, flecked with raisins, grapes, and cherries just melted in my mouth.  It's crusty top made for a good counterbalance and even though of course the whole thing was rich, it seemed somehow light and airy at the time!

Du Monde

I've been hearing about Cafe Du Monde since I was 12 years old. It always had that aura around it - of something special and untouchable.  Somehow, it seemed more likely that I'd go to Madagascar than Cafe Du Monde.  Well I finally made it!



The beignets and café au lait are perfection. It was the first meal I had in Louisiana as well as the last - we did a drive-by at 5am before heading to the airport.  Since the place is opened 24 hours, it wasn't a problem.

Louie G's vs Ralph's TRUTH (according to Louie G)

I stopped by Louie G's tonight - the new one that opened a few doors down from Ralph's on Graham Ave to inquire why they'd opened so close.  I figured it must be personal beef.  Turns out - I am right! But who is really being wronged here?  According to Louie G, the ice cream shop that existed in the space they are now occupying was there for 25 years before Ralph's showed up and stole the show 4 years ago.  Since Louie G is related (cousins?) to the original ice cream tenants, they consider this move a sort of taking back of the turf.  Hmmm.  I guess all's fair in love of ices.  NYMag wrote about this earlier this week; but did they get it right?  Also, who do you think has the best ices?!!

Frost Restaurant - We Finally Tried It!

The restaurant at the corner of our block is called Frost Restaurant.  It's a very old, very neighborhood Italian spot.  They are busiest between 5-7pm.  Check out the crowd!



With new restaurants popping up all over this neighborhood (Beco, Sel de Mer, the Mexican place, Motorino), it's important to balance out the nights with the old classics.  So we walked in here - Taylor's lived within two blocks for ten years - for a long overdue sampling and were greeted by what were clearly career waiters.  Seated promptly. Menus dropped. Water filled.  We quickly put in an order of stuffed mushrooms.



Five mushroom caps floated in sweet tomato sauce.  The 'shrooms were filled with garlic and herbs.  We used our bread to sop up the extra sauce.  Blistery hot peppers came to the table gratis along side the bread - this made for a perfect bite between bites of the mushrooms.

We both went for pasta as our entrée.  I ordered the shrimp fra diavalo and chose rigatoni as its base.  Taylor had the baked ziti - an item off the homemade column.



My rigotoni was doused in spicy sweet sauce.  It came with not only colossal shrimp but with clams as well.  I took half of it home and the following evening, it was just as satisfying. Taylor's dish was a moutain of cheese.



The ziti came out in a piping hot ceramic dish.  Fresh mozzarella melted over top.  The interior was a cheesy, ziti explosion.  He, too, took half home. We couldn't opt out of dessert though and so chose a simple canoli.



The canoli cream came flecked with chocolate chips - my favorite.  And the tube was fresh filled.  I cannot believe that we waited so long to try Frost.  It's a diamond in the rough!

Daniel Craig Pops

Many know that I was working on a line of popsicles a while back. Well, I have to admit, I cannot top these. "Super smooth and license to chill." Where do you go from there?

Ruth Reichl Undercover

Ruth Reichl has long been a favorite food critic and writer of mine. Mostly because of her sense of humor.  Here she is in full form.

Pelican Larry's

Pelican Larry's is that special place in Naples (Florida) where we stop on our way from the airport to the beach.  It's perfect: dive bar meets fresh seafood meets deep fryer.  It's our place.  At Larry's, a key job of the (cutie pie) bartender is to shuck oysters. 

And at Larry's, the oysters are served with Saltines, cocktail sauce and horse radish... not the fancy New York mignonette and other various jus meant to be drizzled just so. 

There is also a killer grouper basket available - five or six pieces of just caught grouper, dredged is a thin layer of crispy batter before getting dunked in the deep fryer. 

Maybe living in New York has sheltered me too much from the sheer thought of divey bars serving respectable seafood as snack.  Who knows - but I sure appreciate it when I come down here.  A visit isn't complete without conch fritters.   Some special blender of herbs give these a wonderful flavor after biting into the piping hot, crusty exterior. 

In the past, we've enjoyed peel 'n eat shrimp, crab cakes, calamari and a whole slew of the other seafood options on the menu.  Did I mention almost nothing is over $10?  So next time you are in Naples, want to catch a game (any game - there are over ten TVs just at the bar), eat delicious seafood and cheap beer (less than a buck on Monday nights), Pelican Larry's can be your place, too.

Graeter's For All

Anyone who talks to me for two minutes about ice cream will learn that I am utterly faithful to Graeter's.  I grew up with it in Cincinnati, eating it every single day after school... "chocolate chip in a cup with a cone on top and chocolate sprinkles, please."  The only time my order ever changed was in June, strawberry chip month (when they were still doing flavor of the month(s)).

last day of high school

Graeter's was founded in 1870 and is still today a family-run operation.  They make all of their 'scream in small batches - two gallons at a time using the French pot process - in a facility on Reading Road - a main artery in Cincinnati. When I moved to New York in 2002, people were just getting excited about Il Labratorio del Gelato.  I could not understand what was so special about this gelato.  Having grown up on Graeter's, it was pretty difficult to approve of anything else.  Throughout my years in New York and in all of my travels, domestic and foreign, I have always looked but never found anything that remotely compares to the creaminess and satisfaction that is Graeter's (Bi-Rite, I am sorry.  This includes YOU!) The chips in a scoop of Graeter's are incomparable.  Huge chunks of chocolate that form when liquid chocolate is poured into each batch are a dream - imagine getting a candy bar-sized block of brown randomly throughout your years of scoops.  It happens just frequently enough to keep you wanting more.

I always had dreams of opening a Graeter's franchise in New York, just to show people here what they were missing.  Sure, you can order it by the pint anywhere in the US, but there's nothing like getting a fresh scoop from the parlour.  Last week in Cincinnati, I had Graeter's everyday.  I even snuck it into the movie theater (When they say Irresistible, they mean it.).  Naturally, talk of Graeter's comes up almost everytime I am visiting my home town, so this time, when my friend Eric mentioned their big expansion plans, you can only imagine my surprise.  He pointed me towards an article to get the details. I'd always wondered why the businessmen behind Graeter's weren't expanding beyond the tristate (Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana), but apparently they were thinking the same thing I was.

After a year of negotiations and searching out sites (some outside of the Motherland), they decided to keep the product Cincinnati-based. They've recently broken ground for the new 28,000 sq foot plant, which, by 2010, will start producing enough Graeter's for the entire nation.  The ice cream shop plans to stock Kroger brand grocers throughout the nation.  They've already started shipping to Denver, Dallas and Houston.  Supposedly, nothing about the French pot press will change; they'll simply be making more room in both their freezer facility and blending area.  But who knows, are my dreams of having national access to Graeter's set up for failure?  Will there be reason yet to still return to Cincinnati for my fixes?  Will the entire line be ruined?  We'll just have to wait and taste.  But for now, I'm marking this as a joyous occasion - the more Graeter's, the merrier.

Alice Waters Edible Schoolyard

Crazy? ... or crazy, crazy cool? You be the judge.  I, for one, would have loved to hold chickens during recess when I was younger (and now).  And edible flowers?!?! As kid, my head woulda exploded!

Citifield Bites

Serious Eats went in depth into the Citifield Stadium food yesterday.  Do you think they'll even keep the Cracker jacks around? I sure hope so... but now there's MAJOR competition.... Lobster Rolls? check. Shake Shack Burger? check. Belgian Frites? check. Mac n' Cheese with white cheddar and pancetta? holy freakin' check.

Génoise Cake

This morning, Ruth Reichl twittered about a kitchen goddess.  I wasn't disappointed when I followed her link.  Ribboning and specifics of folding are demystified! Trifles and Petit-Fours: here I come!

Sexy Burgers: Paris vs Padma

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GoodWorld Goodbye for Good

Some pics from our farewell dinner last night at Good World. My brother and Taylor were in tow to help snap pics as well as partake in burger heaven.

The menu - what was left of it.

Fellow Mourners

The Potato Pancake

Fries

The Main Event. My Burger.

A Cross Section.

My Brother's Last Bite.

So long, farewell; Auf Wiedersehen, goodnight
I hate to go and leave this pretty sight

So long, farewell
Auf Wiedersehen, adieu
Adieu, adieu
To you and you and you

Goodbye GoodWorld

One of the best burgers in NYC will be no longer in a matter of days.  Good World, the Scandinavian spot at the Southern end of Orchard Street will say goodbye over the weekend to make way for condos. My favorites were always the burger, the peel and eat shrimp and, of course, the potato pancake.

2 Degrees of Kevin Bacon

Did you know that if you eat at Stogo, you'll be only 2 degrees from Kevin Bacon? Check it out.... Kevin Bacon (Kyra Sedgwick's hubby) --> Rob Sedgwick (actor, brother of Kyra & founder of Stogo) --> YOU. It's even rumored that Bacon comes by for the mint chip whenever he's in the East Village.

Dumpling House

A friend of mine recently moved to the Lower East Side and had been raving about Vanessa's Dumpling House.  He told me the location and I couldn't believe that it was unfamiliar to me.  I'd lived in the Lower East Side from 2003-2005 and had oft frequented a dumpling house on the same block as the haunt he was mentioning.  In fact, I'd written up my favorite shack for Time Out.  When he and I finally made it to his dumpling mecca, I was flabbergasted - it was in the same spot as mine.  My mind instantly jumped to a take over; had mine gone out of business due to health code violations (it was a very tiny hole in the wall) and this shiny, expanded version had come to take it's place?  As I walked through the doors though - and into the throngs of hungry-hungry-hipsters - I saw the trusted Chinese dumpling magicians behind the long counter to whom I'd grown accustomed at my dumpling house.  Indeed, Vanessa's was my Dumpling House.  It's an expanded rendition.  I guess a lot can change in 4 years.  Word can spread and people can capitalize on a formula that works.  When I was a regular at DH, there was a mixed clientele.  If I went early in the morning or during the weekday, I'd be surrounded by Chinese.  I would always get cut in line because I wasn't speaking Chinese.  If I went at night, on the weekend, I'd be in the company of a few hipsters living in the area.  These days, it is mobbed by every kind of LES hipster - starving artists and NYU kids alike.  Luckily, though the food has gone up in price quite a bit percentage-wise (50¢ sesame pancake up to 75¢), each dish is just as good.

I am partial to the vegetable dumplings in soup and the chive and egg pancake, which is a Chinese breakfast burrito of sorts.  It's only good fresh and on this last visit, it had clearly been made a few hours earlier.  Heating it in the oven if this happens to you will do the trick.  The seasame pancake (the giant circle of fried dough cut into wedges) is tasty as ever and they've added a Peking duck variation, which is quite delicious for the pennies you pay.

All in all, even though my Dumpling House is history, I am glad that Vanessa's has risen from it's grave.  VDH offers the same quality and authentic flavor for a similar cheap as it's previous iteration.  It's probably more sanitary now and they certainly get you in and out more quickly.  Sometimes change isn't a bad thing.