Cocktails @ Eleven Madison Park

Cocktails and a snack at the bar of Eleven Madison Park restaurant are a worthwhile excursion. The city has become cocktail obsessed with the old-school speak-easy type bar becoming de rigueur.  The cocktail and bar approach at Eleven Madison Park takes on the same rigorous attention to detail as befits a New York Times four star restaurant: elegance with precision.  Provide any of the bartenders with a little direction and the able mixoligists will guide you down the path of cocktail bliss.  I enjoy the cool vibe of the speakeasy cocktail hideaways, but the restrained elegance and precision of Eleven Madison Park is refreshing change of pace.

A Quick and Easy Dinner with Friends

There are different ways to plan for dinners and it depends on the type of cook you are and the type of friends you have invited for dinner. This past Saturday, I'd invited good friends over for dinner, but was handicapped with a hangover. After a rough night out the previous night, a long day of preparing elaborate food for dinner was not on the cards.

I started shopping at about 5pm and by 8pm I had prepped most everything for dinner. Here's the menu:

Hors d'Ouevres 

- smoked salmon on buttered brown bread with lemon and cayenne pepper 

- smoked anchovies
- marinated anchovies (boquerones) 

Entree 
- roasted chicken thighs with thyme
- broccoli gratinata
- mixed mushroom and pea risotto

Dessert
- apple and blackberry crumble with vanilla gelato

Wine

- Luneau-Papin 2005 Muscadet Sevre et Maine L D'Or
- Zarrak-Berri 2008 La Costa Guipuzcoana
- Produttori del Barbaresco 2008 Langhe Nebbiolo

The Last Days of Gourmet

I always loved Gourmet magazine for its photography and overall style.  Kevin Demaria, Gourmet magazine's former art director, documented, in a haunting fashion, the sad last days at the Gourmet office and published the pictures in this blog: www.lastdaysofgourmet.com.

How To Open A Wine Bottle Without a Corkscrew

Thanks to Dr. Vino for putting this on his blog. It's a fascinating show of how far someone will go to open another bottle of wine (or anything for that matter) when he's already had a few too many. On the other hand, it's a new approach that I have never seen before, so aside from the total drunkenness of the situation, it is actually quite educational.