Restaurants: Yama

Dara writes:

On the way to our apartment near Gramercy Park in Manhattan after a long day of running pre-Christmas errands and fighting the midtown tourist crowds, James and I stopped in Yama, the venerable sushi restaurant on Irving Place.

Since we arrived before 6pm, we were seated immediately at a comfy corner table. Our server attended us lovingly and our sushi and sake arrived very quickly. We ordered inventive and huge rolls: salmon with chives and spicy mayonnaise; tuna and yellowtail with avocado; and the "crispy shrimpy," which is tuna with shrimp and little tempura flakes tucked inside. Each roll looked delectable and the fish broadcasted its freshness. The fish was tender, buttery, and clean tasting. Perhaps the rolls do play to Americans' focus on size. Nevermind.

While I love the sushi joint closer to our apartment, and I attest it is better than average, Yama was in a different class and reminded me of how important texture is in raw fish. It occurs to me the East 40s in Manhattan is a bit of a Little Tokyo, and I intend to try some of those places soon.

Food: Delishop

Dara writes:

Did you ever wonder what would happen if Zabar's, the storied New York purveyor of nova, bialys, gourmet cheese, and disgruntled older Upper West Side ladies, married a really sleek shoe store and they had offspring? Wonder no longer. The love child of gourmet food and hipness is the store my brother and his Spanish bride just opened in Barcelona, Spain: Delishop.

My brother has lived in Spain for years, working as a sports marketer and perfecting his cooking skills in Barcelona, which has become a culinary mecca whose imam is Ferran Adria of the famously experimental restaurant El Bulli. My brother has had two memorable meals there, by the way, after the first of which he scanned in his annotated copy of the menu, all thirty-some courses, and emailed it to us.

My brother's wife Monica has worked in advertising, but is also an excellent chef. The two pooled their entrepreneurial and culinary skills to dream up their new shop. As far as I can tell, the endeavor has two goals: to bring new cuisine to Spain, and to do it stylishly. According to them, Spain has been a bit insular, having only recently come out from under a totalitarian dictatorship. Staples we take for granted--soy sauce, ramen noodles, Bisquick--have never been readily available. Ricky and Monica will present "exotic" foods in a manner so hip you will be drawn into their shop first by the gorgeous layout (and handsome salespeople--my brother and their friend Sergio).

Foot traffic has been steady. The best-seller so far? Betty Crocker Brownie Mix.

Stay tuned in to supremefiction for more news from Espana.

Raymond's in Montclair: Mayberry's Odeon

Dara writes:

Yesterday James dragged me, sorry, brought me along on a trip to the Montclair Art Museum for an afternoon lecture on the 19th-century American landscape painter George Inness. I was sort of excited to visit Montclair, where I had never been, because I know that many NY writer-types live there and commute to the city. From our apartment near Union Square in Manhattan, the drive took about forty minutes. Not bad, yet I kind of always hold my breath through the Lincoln Tunnel, and has there ever been a more prosaic road than the NJTP? Highway 101 out of San Francisco over the Golden Gate Bridge it is not.

I very much enjoyed the Inness paintings. James appreciates the painter for his varied techniques: he painted both exact landscapes and almost abstract, emotional nature scenes. In one image, Sunset, in the museum's collection, brilliant orange sun beams peak out between two leaning trees. From a distance, there seems to be extraordinary depth behind the trees. Up close, the painter has daubed bright orange between the trees and in fact what seemed like depth now appears to be surface. I'm not an art historian, so I'm not sure of the significance of that observation, but I was intrigued by the work. Interestingly, an Inness collector and benefactor of the wing in the museum was on hand to give us a personal tour of the collection, which was delightful.

It was about 6:30pm, and James and I needed sustenance. The museum's director pointed us to Raymond's, down Bloomfield Avenue not far from the institution. Now, the museum is perched on a hill, and driving down Bloomfield toward the restaurant entailed a breathtaking view, on this clear night, of Manhattan.

Raymond's, which opened in 1989, is retrofitted to look like an old malt shop. Imagine an Odeon--albeit one estranged from the scene in downtown Manhattan in the 1980s--in Mayberry. We had to wait about ten minutes, and in that time I noticed a nice-looking--and chopped--cobb salad, and that most people were ordering burgers. While deliciously ripe avocado slices perched atop the lettuce, tomatoes, blue cheese, bacon, and chicken in the salad, and while the chicken was very moist, the salad lacked crispness and taste. The chef mistakenly thought heavily mixing the salad, so the blue cheese kind of spread its wealth, could compensate for a lack of dressing. No. A cobb salad should not just be creamy, but should taste of something. I ate more of the french fries that came with James's burger than I should have to get some salt and snap.

Could I see myself in Montclair? The main street was very well tended. The museum was estimable. But part of me feels if I will leave New York I will really leave it, not to a town on a hill where I will always feel like an outsider peeking in the window at the action.