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                                                            Photo by Shota Akiyoshi

 

    Gastropubs were a good idea when they burgeoned back in the nineties by basically upgrading the quality of traditional bar items like burgers and chicken wings. Most never went much beyond the familiar, but with the appointment of Eddie Huang as exec chef at The Flower Shop the ante has  been upped.

       After a successful pop-up stint called the Gazebo at The Flower Shop last summer, Huang found what he’d been looking for since closing his own restaurant Baohaus and turning to writing his memoir, Fresh Off the Boat, which was turned into an ABC TV series, as well as writing and directing the Taylour Paige and Pop Smoke film Boogie, and directed and

starred in his second feature,  Vice is Broke.

       His return to The Flower Shop, opened in 2017 by Dylan Hales and Ronnie––there’s a branch in Austin, Texas––increases interest in what had been a successful bar drawing a fashion and arts crowd to the cusp of Chinatown and the Lower East Side. The place itself hasn’t changed, with its main bar at ground level, with comfortable booths along a wall filled with sketches of city life. Piped-in music makes it louder than it need be. Downstairs is a basement bar with pool table, TVs and sunken living room.

The reception is very cordial, the service on spot, and Huang is in and out of the kitchen to bring plates and describe them.

       His is a playful menu with nothing very complex, reflecting his own food culture and others he’s experienced, revving up what a gastropub should be in 2026. There are small, medium and large plates, with the highest priced item $30.

General Tso's Skate Wing takes the Buffalo chicken classic and gives it a Taiwanese spin applied to a whole fried skate wing finished with orange zest (right).

A typical Spanish tortilla is treated to flavors of a garlic chive dumpling featuring sesame oil, white pepper, and a dash of soy sauteed with duck fat to give it a richer coating (left). Duck fat is also the medium for some delightful crispy, vinegared fries of a kind you’d find at a stall in Taiwan’s Shilin Night Market, which accompany the menu’s most impressive dish of  long-braised confit of duck leg with a garlic chive and cognac brown braised soy sauce and a balancing squirt of lemon.

I loved the Asiatic slaw, as much for its textures as for its Asiatic seasonings, but I found the pappadaw and olive potato egg salad very bland.

X.O. Caesar salad is made with arugula rather than romaine lettuce and combined with parmesan, chili oil breadcrumbs. dried scallops and pulverized dried shrimp with X.O. sauce.

A traditional Shanghai-style crispy garlic blackfish is seared and then served with pickled Fresno peppers, scallions, ginger, and a seafood soy. 

As noted, every gastropub needs a burger, and The Flower Shop has three. Two with beef, one called a Cantonese Wedding Fish Sandwich (right). It’s a terrific  variation that begins with meaty cod fried in walnuts and panko then brushed with a housemade Sichuan chili oil honey crisp. It is then roasted under the red hot salamander and served on a sesame seed bun from Pain d’Avignon painted with citrus-honey mayonnaise and topped with  slaw. It’s a massive tour de force not to be missed.

You expect flank steak to be a little chewy, but Huang’s is made with wagyu beef, so you’d think it would be more tender. It is seasoned with salt and white pepper, basted with clarified to gild the lily and finished with a Hunan red cooking braise lashed with Cognac and cream to mimic steak au poivre. 

You might also expect pork belly to be velvety with fat but the Iberico pork was  beyond chewy, despite being marinated in two Taiwanese vinegars, goat’s cheese stuffed peppadews and Castelvetrano olives served with a Sichuan-Basque potato salad of proprietary chili oil, garlic crisp, creamer potatoes, peppadaw/olive brine, garlic chives, and kewpie mayo.

There are just two desserts: A miso apple pie with Schlag whipped cream, and that beloved New York classic cookie, the black-and-white, made famous in a 1994 episode of Seinfeld, when Jerry explains to Elaine, “The key to eating a black-and-white cookie is you want to get some black and some white in each bite. Nothing mixes better than vanilla and chocolate, and yet still somehow racial harmony eludes all of us. If people would only look to the cookie all our problems would be solved.” Maybe not, but Huang is giving it a gung-ho try.

The bar has several signature, along with a perfect Hemingway Daiquiri, ten beers but only eight wines (all available by the glass).

Nothing on Huang’s menu is quite what you expect, and it is supposed to be fun, however serious he is about making it his own.

 

 

Open for dinner Tues.-Sat.

 

CHAPTER NINE

 

    More and more Katie thought all those she’d interviewed had the same vision for New York magazine, which she didn’t find all that original. True, Talk magazine had flopped trying to cover uptown and downtown in the same pages  as a must-read tabloid would,  but People magazine had for years already been covering Black entertainers, hip hop and the transition of Disney’s TV child actors into major pop culture stars that People was only too happy to help happen. Then again, Vanity Fair had only a fleeting interest in pop culture that was not mainstream glamor or high-class scandal. Even Princess Diana, who had died five years earlier, could sell more copies if Graydon Carter stuck her on the cover than any up-and-coming challenger to Madonna. The so-called super models of the nineties had faded from the covers quickly.

       The way things were shaping up, her story was going to be very repetitious if all the bidders for New York were after the same thing.  And that was not something she expected to get from the Wall Street banker types who were in the bidding. Except for the South African Angus Pierce, all the bidders were powerful New York Jewish men, all of whom, except Deutsch, had married non-Jewish trophy wives, what Jewish-American novelist Philip Roth (whose principal fictional character was named Zuckerman) had called “hypergamy—bedding women of superior social class.” Each, except Weinstein, had joined a club of New York millionaires and billionaires who were constantly in competition, circling the ring like smiling Cheshire cats who could sometimes agree to work together to mutual benefit. For each, New York magazine was another trophy, but one they all insisted on should turn a profit. These men were so rich that they could afford to lose millions every year and keep pouring more in to right a sinking ship.

       Katie had always thought of herself in some ways as Alice in Wonderland, going down rabbit holes, being tricked and given false leads, always trying to find the truth of a story in a world of obfuscation. Actually her favorite character in Alice was the Cheshire Cat who had said, “We are all victims in waiting,” and who seemed to sum up why very, very wealthy men are always restlessly trying to find more: Only a few find the way, some don’t recognize it when they do—some don’t ever want to.” 
     Katie’s familiarity with Angus Pierce was only because he was a media baron. As Zuckerman had said,  he was, with Murdoch and Maxwell, considered one of the three titans of the media business whose  strategy was always to attack competitors’ underbelly, often bidding way over the value of a company, even if that company would later be incorporated into another or killed outright.

       Their politics went with the prevailing winds of probability, and they were willing to contribute to a winning side on the assumption that there would be pay-back at some future time. Recognizing that paper tiger politicians could be more valuable than men of integrity, the trio had always backed those who had media charisma without the underlying intelligence. It was a shell game at which the men shuffling the shells always won.     

Pierce stayed away from the limelight, only giving interviews to reporters from Pierce-owned newspapers or media stations.  Like others among the bidders, Pierce was known to stay at Epstein’s mansion when he came to New York, where he enjoyed complete privacy from the press.                

       There was no set deadline for the bidding to end but Katie knew it would be in the very near future. She was hoping for someone like Epstein or Weinstein to win the prize because she saw them as more colorful characters for her story. The word was that New York’s circulation  of 432,000 had fallen in 2002 and the magazine had earned less than $1 million on revenue of $43.6 million that year.

Her phone rang the next morning. It was Dobell.
       “The sale of New York was just announced,” he said.
       Katie was surprised at the suddenness of the news.
       “So who got it?”    
        “Wasserstein (left). Paid $55 million for it, along with assuming $8 million in liabilities.”
            “He’s got that kind of money?”
      “Apparently he does. He had sold his investment bank for $1.37 billion in stock and is using his own assets through his New York Media Holdings.”   
        “Where’s this news coming from?”
        “It’s in both the Times and the Post. Apparently he bid $10 million more than anyone else, which is why—it says here—they call him ‛Bid-em-up Bruce.’ Zuckerman  was the front runner and thought he had the deal sewn up. It also turns out Zuckerman had hooked up with Pelts, Epstein, Weinstein and Deutsch.”
    “Jesus!” said Katie, trying to wrap her head around the idea that all those she’d interviewed had been in bed together on the deal. She only regretted that she hadn’t gotten to Wasserstein before the sale went through.
    Dobell read from The Post report: “‛We believe New York has significant long-term value and growth potential,’ Mr. Wasserstein said in a statement. ‛It is the leading magazine for successful New Yorkers and we intend to build from this position to enhance this historic franchise and extend the brand.’"
    There was a pause, then Dobell said, “Lemme ask you, Katie. Have you still got a story here?”
    “Well, we’d agreed the story would go beyond the sale, and . . ."
     “And what? I don’t see it going anywhere.”
     “Let me think it over. The personalities in this whole scenario are fascinating, powerful men who share a lot of traits.”
        “But with five of them bidding together, it kind of dissipates the rationale for a story. I can’t let you dig into something so vague.”
        “I understand, Alan, just let me give it some thought.”
        “Fair enough. You coming into the office now?”
        “Yeah, be there in an hour.”
        Katie was suddenly feeling very empty, especially of new ideas.

 

 © John Mariani, 2024

                                        WINE WITHOUT FOOD IS LIKE
                                       WEARING A TIE WITHOUT A SHIRT

 

                                                                            By John Mariani

 

 

    Centuries––millennia really––of praise lavished on wine as a divine drink have unfortunately obscured the reality that wine drunk on its own diminishes the pleasure that would otherwise be had by drinking it with food. 

    It’s like listening to a baseball game on the radio or shadow boxing. It’s like Reader’s Digest or visiting only Hong Kong on a trip to China.
    Wines’ first usage was to go with food, and one may assume the earliest efforts, in the Caucasus region about 8,000 years ago, were modest. The idea that wine, containing alcohol, was a better alternative to drinking contaminated water came along when people moved into cities. Yet the effect of wine, which the Bible calls a gift of God, has certainly been disassociated from its role as an accompaniment to food––even if the enjoyment leads to tipsiness or drunkenness.
    To be sure, there are plenty of wines that can serve as an aperitif, though it’s always questionable when a person just orders “a glass of dry Chardonnay,” which shows about as much discrimination as buying a pair of black socks. Even then, that Chardonnay’s middling virtues will be enhanced when sipped with snacks, canapes or appetizer, whether it’s pretzels, shrimp cocktail or sushi.

    Drinking red wines all on their own is even a little ridiculous,  because their flavors and tannin lack the stimulus that food, especially fat or some kind, provides. Whether it’s with a hamburger or ribeye, a red wine will always taste better than on its own.
    For the same reason eating food without a beverage makes no sense––and water doesn’t do anything at all for the beef, onions, cheese and ketchup involved. Wine writers are constantly pairing up what they insist is the ideal wine to go with a specific dish, but the options are so numerous for any dish as to be little better than the advice of having white wine with seafood and red wine with meat.
    There are wholly natural pairings that make perfect sense when it comes to the food and wine within a region. Why would anyone eating, say, Sicilian food order a French Burgundy or serving a dish of Spanish paella with a German Riesling? After all, the grapes of a region––sometimes indigenous––grow in the same soil as the food, and that soil contains the same nutrients and minerals absorbed by the grapes.
    Take, for example, a modest Italian white like Vermentino, once a workhorse grape, very light, very pale and in the past indistinguishable from others. But modern examples are not only better but show off their regional character, so that the Tenuta Ammiraglio Massovivo Vermentino 2024 ($22) from Tuscany that comes from seaside vineyards is quite different from the Val delle Rose “Litorale” 2024 ($20) from Maremma’s inland vineyards and Olianas Vermentino di Sardegna 2024 ($23) from the terroir of the island in the Tyrrhenian Sea.

    So, too, an oaky, vanilla-rich Chardonnay from Napa Valley is going to taste a lot different from a more subtle example from Oregon’s Willamette Valley. New Zealand Sauvignon Blancs like Cloudy Bay are  mostly made into a sweet style almost like punch, whereas those from the Loire Valley have more tempered fruit, vegetal and mineral flavors that go with the local goods like goat’s cheese, rillettes of pork, perch in a  beurre blanc.

    If any rules should apply with regard to wines, it should be that they match up with the food traditionally produced by growers and cooks who know from long experience that the Pinot Noirs from California or Australia taste very little like those from France, as they should, given the widely varying terroirs of those nations. Japanese drink beer or sake (itself a beer) with the food grown from farms and fished from the sea, and wines are almost always a lesser match-up with sushi and sashimi. The post-war affection for beef in Japan has, oddly enough, caused the creation of ultra-fatty wagyu beef, with which beer is a decent accompaniment but big red American or Australian wines are a much  better idea.

    Sometimes there’s  nothing better than to slug down an ice cold bottle of beer or Coke, and tea and coffee make for good pick-me-ups all on their own. So can a glass of wine, but it will be made better if there’s some food on the table.

 

 

 

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