She Rides Again

The Fressenwagen, that is. Kind of.

It's been a while, dearies. Life has intervened in the journeys of the Fressenwagen. It was bound to happen. Between coordinating a wedding, honeymoon, house purchase and kindergarten/first grade lunches...oh, and I have a job...it's been wonderful, but busy. Energies have been channeled in a non-Fressenwagen direction. Of course, to be technical, the actual Fressenwagen, the Honda Pilot, has long since given up the ghost of its lease (z"l), and has been replaced by something newer and flashier that I really should not be driving.

But what else has changed? Between last year's blockbuster celebrity Fressenwagen sporting over 30 people, and then the betrayal of having been stiffed on the bill for upwards of a few hundred bucks at my own birthday fete in June, I'd decided to hang up the keys to the Fressenwagen for a bit. My husband (!!), wanting my undivided attention, may have been somewhat relieved.

But the people clamored for more. And generally speaking, I do like to give the people what they want. Who am I to begrudge you folk your moments of joy? Let you eat cake, I say!

This is obnoxious. Sorry.

So last night's Fressenwagen was fantastic. Let's go over why, point by point.

1. Great restaurant pick: Gazala's, Upper West Side

Credit goes completely to Mike F. and Karen A. for this one, who'd been to Gazala Place in Hell's Kitchen before. Gazala's, opened a few months ago across from the Museum of Natural History, aka My Home Away From Home, and is a larger take on Gazala Place.

Gazala's is in a terrific, downtown-ish space with brick walls, high ceilings, nicely spaced tables, comfortable banquettes and pretty, non-fluorescent lighting (as you can see, I'm still recuperating from last year's Bukharan experience).

b) Atmosphere was perfect, but also, the Druze cuisine was unusual. It's a tweak on more conventional Middle Eastern fare, with a crepey-thin bread called sagg instead of pita used to scoop up the delicious hummus etc. I'll go into more food detail later, but the share-and-share-alike platters made our family-ish style dining experience incredibly easy, with people able to come and go according to their schedules.

c) The meal was also comparatively easy on the wallet. The BYOB factor ($5 corkage...which should really be $3 if it's a screwtop, but that's just my opinion) helped, as always, but for $35 each, no one walked away hungry. Oy, what a relief!

2. Great size of group/great group!

Wow...what a difference having only 13 people there makes! Don't get me wrong, the big Wagens can be fun, but this size was fantastic for conversation, getting to know people and keeping the Fressenwagen Driver sort of sane. I have a whole new attitude, people. I can't stress out anymore about whether you're coming, you're not coming, you're not sure if you feel up to it, you're not sure if you have a better plan, etc. etc. I just need a vague idea of how many are coming and we'll improvise from there. So I'm not sure if it was these particular people, or the fact that it was a Tuesday night or what, but that was a genuinely enjoyable experience, even for the Driver (fine, maybe that was also in part because I'm still in that dopey I-love-my-new-husband-so-much phase, which hopefully will last until there are no more humans. As I keep telling him, he's the best husband I've ever had - and I don't say that to everyone).

The food, the food. I'm getting there. (I mean, look how unfunny I am now that I'm happy. It's annoying, even to me.) "Gazala's Platters" to start. I thought the Labanee (labne) was especially good, with the perfect amount of tartness and spice. Also delicious = the harif-y red substance no one knew how to identify with a real kick to it.

Fatoush salad was somewhat disappointing if you've ever had the far-superior fatoush from Tanoreen (ah, Tanoreen!). I can't speak to the other chicken/meat dishes (I welcome comments) but I will say that the grilled fish we ordered was unbelievably delicious, sort of unexpectedly so. I never expect too much from the whole grilled fish, truthfully. But this one had the 'wow' factor of a mouth-puckering vinegar taste, buttressed by the sweetness of the fish and the sides. Absolutely terrific.

Desserts erred on the side of diabetic-death-inducing. The kenafi, shredded dough with homemade sweet cheese, pistachio and honey, takes an extra 20 min to make. Let it be known that said kenafi was sweet. Really sweet. Like, sweeter than panda bears kissing unicorns as they rode on rainbows through a shower of dew. Too much? Yeah, I thought so, but could see where, if you tempered it with semi-bitter coffee, it could go down okay.

Venue suggestions, comments on the experience, etc. more than welcome. See you all in 2011 -- may it be a kenafi-sweet, happy and healthy goyische new year for all of you!

Once upon a time (specifically in May of 2009), an intrepid group of eight brave souls boarded a soiled Honda Pilot and set out for Bay Ridge.

Ah, whatever. I don't have the patience to infuse this with drama or to attempt to craft some sort of macro-narrative. Last May was what would become the first Fressenwagen excursion, and said excursion was to a small storefront, family-owned BYOB for Palestinian/Middle Eastern food, otherwise known as Tanoreen. At the time, the restaurant was spartan, at best. Food was kept in overly-lit deli-esque shelves. The furniture made Ikea look fancy. The yellowy lighting was flattering to no carbon-based individual. I went there four times, and each time found that I was sitting at one of the few English-speaking tables in the place. And the food was transcendently delicious each time.

In so many ways, oh, what a difference a year makes. The Fressenwagen has taken on unwieldy, near-bulbous proportions -- we probably wouldn't even fit in one of those bachelorette-party-Humvees (with or without the drunk sorority chicks hanging out of the sunroof). We've picked venues that months later get accolades from mainstream media (see under: Motorino Williamsburg outing, July '09). And, I'm sad to say, my camp counselor organizational mojo is slowing down. This is not necessarily the death knell of the 'wagen...but perhaps the death rattle?

For the time being, let's avoid discussions like that. Much more importantly, over the past year, Tanoreen has hit the big time. With shout-outs from the New York Times, things have changed, exemplified by the "valet parking" sign outside the restaurant. They've switched to a bigger location with (gasp) a semblance of decor. They have a liquor license and a bar. They even have sassily-named beverages involving Nazareth and rosewater. I didn't try the bathroom, but I'm willing to bet that, unlike 100% of my past Tanoreen experiences, it is well-equipped with toilet paper and the toilets probably even flush.

But as with every cliche, one can find truth in its converse: that is, in many other ways, the more things change, the more they stay the same. I'm speaking of the most important way possible: The food retained its awesomeness in absolutely every way, from its reasonable prices to its sheer deliciousness. Another retained feature: what, for lack of a better word, I'll call haimischeness.

"I know you," Jumana, daughter of the owner, said to me as I checked in for our reservation.

"I don't think so," I replied. I mean, I'm used to the whole paparazzi thing, but come on.

"You've been here before," she said. "I remember you! You came here few late nights with big groups of people on the weekend, everybody always smiling and laughing and having a good time."

Um, yeah, that would be me. I'm not sure I'd be remembered if I started my semi-frequent diner status now, truthfully -- the crowd eating (as well as serving) is much more diverse than that of last year, and there's a much higher rate of turnover. I mean, I *am* unforgettable, but still.

Let's go into the food. Each time I'd eaten at Tanoreen, I'd always been amazed by how I'd remember that a particular dish was good -- the fatoush salad with feta, for example, or the vegetarian kibbe -- but not the exact flavors, or how nuanced each one was. The thing with Tanoreen is that each first bite of every dish is overwhelming, but wonderfully so. Each first bite (and every bite thereafter, for that matter) is a perfect combination of unexpected flavors -- whether sumac, molasses, pomegranates -- all come to life on the tongue. Everything served, even the simplest things, are nuanced and intense.

Each bite of almost everything we ate this trip -- the fatoush, the roasted vegetables, the branzino, and, according to others, the lamb -- was so vibrant that I, for one, sort of felt like the rest of my food-eating life has been ill-spent. Why have I spent my days until now eating on a sort of culinary cruise-control? Why would anyone do that when they can come here, where flavors jump out at you in an almost-Avatar-like blur of beauty and surprise?

Each time I eat at Tanoreen, it reminds me how food can be pageantry or food can be an exciting adventure. New York offers so many opportunities at both. The new Tanoreen makes deferential gestures to showmanship, but at the end of the day and at its heart, it's still a delicious adventure. Perhaps Fressenwagen is as well. Time will tell.

The Jackson Fifteen

I'm feeling a bit forlorn as I write this post. Why is that, you may ask? Well, dear reader, it's because of you. No, not you. Yeah...actually, yeah, I'm talking to YOU. But more on that later.

Getting to the Jackson Diner is easy as one, two, three, as the Jackson Five would have it: a hop, skip and a jump on the R train. I know you miss my (filthy) vehicle, but it was so happily (parallel!) parked that I couldn't bear to move it from its happy spot.

I realize we had no celebrity cameos this time around (not necessarily a bad thing, mind you), but our small-scale showing was semi-irritating to me and I want to address it. Not all of you may know about my feelings on football. Diplomatically and without profanity, I generally put football in the same category as 'gangrenous limb removal' - to be avoided if possible. And not only that, but I'm onto you people: I know the game was over by the time we had dinner.

The reason it bothers me is as follows. We couldn't go to another place we were going to go because 30 of you said you were coming, and the place I wanted to go said we couldn't have a reservation for more than 15 people. Fine, I said, we'll go to the 15 person place another time, and made the Jackson Diner reservation. But then, only 14 of you showed up...meaning we could have gone to the other place. Those who let me know earlier in the day that you weren't able to come, no worries. Those who didn't...well...

Let me put it this way. I don't want to nag you, honey. I love you! And I don't like the way I sound when I nag. I sound like my hair is in curlers, I'm in a pink bathrobe, I've got that eye cream you hate all over my face and I'm tapping my foot saying, "Where WERE you?" when you flick on the kitchen light just before midnight. My voice is edging upwards in the smallest bit of a whine, which you totally hear and you shudder with involuntary revulsion and that upsets me all the more. Then you say, "I had to work late, sweetie, I'm sorry." But I can totally smell the beer on your breath.

Baby, I don't want that to be us! We're better than that!

Oh my God, slap me across the face. Phew. Yeah, okay. I'm better now.

But you get the drift. Enough said. Perhaps (definitely) more than enough. Let's move on.

So anyway, don't worry about not showing up, because we ordered enough for all of you (how's THAT for guilt-inducing?). And now some members of our party have refrigerators fairly bursting with saag paneer and chicken tikka masala as a result of my largesse with their cash.

The food was abundantly delicious. We'd requested a medium level of spice (deeming 'mild' to be the Indian food equivalent of 'wuss,' and 'hot' to mean 'mistake'), and the food delivered quite nicely. At least two of us thought that the appetizers -- samosa chat and chat papri, in particular -- were on a level well above the main dishes, which were not quite as transcendent as that which had preceded them. Or it may have been, of course, that our senses were simply dulled by the ingestion of way too many Kingfishers (which would not have transpired on my part if I had been driving). I will say that the cheese in the saag paneer was unusually good. Mm. Chewy.

Looking at the menu now, despite having ordered ample amounts of food, we missed out on a lot. Then again, looking at the menu, I once again feel rather full. In the interest of culinary exploration, perhaps we should have ordered dessert. In the greater interest of being able to actually get home, we did not.

See you crazy kids soon.