When Gary Shteyngart isn’t posing with bears or acting with James Franco or appearing before co-op boards or making it onto short lists with high stakes, he’s taking his satiric, elegiac style to Times essays.
A solid 100 degrees Fahrenheit on any given New York thermometer on Wednesday, and We Made a Blog made an after-work beeline for a nice, cold…thimbleful of sake. Really.
Semi-secret underground sake bar (and now you see why we couldn’t think of anything cooler) Sakagura celebrated the Japanese Tanabata festival with a sake tasting. The usual astronomical fairytale of parted lovers meeting only under an alignment of stars (with an extra flight of fancy in the form of magpies, represented at Sakagura by bird-shaped cookies), Tanabata is celebrated, like many festivals, with alcohol.
Sponsored by Hakkaisan Brewery (a boutique outfit located in a snowy outskirt of Tokyo), four sakes were proferred, including one, Daiginjo, not available in the United States. It was flown in along with guest of honor and president of Hakkaisan, Jiro Nagumo.
Friend of Sakagura and the brewery, Tim Sullivan (Tim-san) wore a dove-grey yukata (summer kimono) that seemed as impervious to wrinkling or wilting in the damp heat as his smile and friendly demeanor as he poured the sakes into the commemorative cups provided to the guests. He first poured us Honjozo, a fortified sake that had a bolder taste than most. After our tentative sips turned into appreciative gulps, we inquired what it was fortified with. A heartier grain of rice? Wheat? More alcohol, as it turned out. Fortified, we moved on to Tokubestu Junmai. Created from the melted snow that slips off Mount Hakkai, it was the closest to sparkling sake can be without actually being, well, sparkling. Separate flavor profiles announced themselves simultaneously on the tongue.
We took a sake break to sample the appetizers. Finger-friendly edamame were popular with the milling cocktail-hour crowd. Crudite had a Japanese bent with the addition of okra and daikon to the usual batonnet of vegetables and a sesame seed-dressed dip comprised of red snapper and miso paste, redolent with umami. Plump, flaky smoked salmon was snapped up as fast as the chopsticks necessary to eat it were and chunks of savory chicken were so moist they barely withstood the skewers they were served on.
After an official greeting and toast, Nagumo-san began doling out the Daiginjo from a squat cobalt bottle. It was exactly of the transcendent quality you’d expect would cause the country to hoard it from export.
We closed out our sake sampling with a delicate sensation of Junmai Ginjo on our palates. Turned out into the heart of the hot, hot city, we were braver for being saked and sated.
It’s the (beginning and) end of the world as we know it.
Is this a quote from the North American Man/Boy Love and Yoga Association? Oh, well. When life hands you lululemons, make lululemonade.
Food writing is at the mercy of the same vagaries automotive writing is – the writer often has to be forgiven an emotional bias. This is appropriately the case with Goods, a restaurant whose kitchen is housed in a refurbished and repurposed Spartan trailer. Just as you might give a biased review of a Ferrari’s handling because you are so overwhelmed by the attractiveness of its exterior, a proper review requires a second, harder look. So it is with Goods.
Parked at the corner of Metropolitan and Lorimer in Williamsburg, it’s damn charming, right down to the woman taking your order, curly hair held up by a bandanna a la Lucy, who interacts with customers in a way that has you considering if she was transported in time along with the trailer. Order your dish off the simple menu, wait for your number to be called and relax in the wood and pebble garden around back.
The lunch/dinner menu has seven items on it, but all you need to know about are two – the biscuit and the fried green tomato sandwich. The biscuit is a delicate, properly sized platform for the addition of eggs, an organic sausage patty and fresh local cheese. It’s very cool to order an egg sandwich and see a rind on the cheese. The assembled sandwich is a thing of beauty, not surprising considering the same talent behind 3rd Ward is responsible.
I once was a vegetarian and often made the argument that my meat-free meals were just as satisfying as the dishes my non-vegetarian friends enjoyed. When I started eating meat again, I understood why they found the concept silly. But the fried-green-tomato sandwich – all thick-fried tomato goodness and spicy relish topping – is not to be trifled with. It stomps on lesser, meat-filled concoctions.
Of note is that they have fried-chicken Sundays, which I have yet to try, but when I do, it will be held to the standard of Pies ‘n’ Thighs.
Go to Goods for their dedication to preparing delicious, comforting food. While it seems destined to be the next fashionable hipster eatery (take that to mean what you will), there is substance behind the facade that’s so pretty it could have been the place’s undoing. Thankfully, they really do have the goods.
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