Entries from The Amateur Gourmet tagged with 'Boca Raton'
What Makes A Great Steakhouse
1. It must be dark, like you're underground. The consumption of red meat is such a primal, bodily act that darkness--like darkness in the bedroom--opens one up to experience pleasure with reckless abandon. 2. There must be a piano player with a bad toupee singing Neil Diamond songs or a cheesy duo of guitar player and female lounge singer doing their best cover of K.C. and the Sunshine Band. Even Edmund White, in his classic "A Boy's Own Story," describes such a figure when his family takes him to a steakhouse, "a place where the overweight ate iceberg lettuce under a dressing of ketchup and mayonnaise, steaks under A.1. sauce, feed corn under butter, ice cream under chocolate, where a man wearing a black toupee and a madras sports jacket bounced merrily up and down an electric organ while a frisky couple lunged and dipped before him in cloudy recollections of ancient dance steps."...
The Egg Onion Bagel
The bagel you see in the picture above is the result of Twitter. To wit: I announced on my Twitter feed that I was in Boca Raton for Thanksgiving (that's where my family lives) and Shuna of eggbeater responded: "You're in Boca?! Will you make a stop at Way Beyond Bagels? Have an egg onion for me? and Veggie schmear?"...
Bagelworks, Boca Raton
Comfort of comforts--the white fluorescent lights, the angry senior citizens shoving in line--is there a taste more sweet than the taste of a Bagelworks bagel, shmeared with lox spread and whitefish salad, topped with sliced tomato and onion and washed down with a glass of fresh squeezed orange juice? Welcome to Bagelworks in Boca Raton, the locus of my happiest eating from ages 11 to 18: from middle school through high school, with several visits between college and now. On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, I asked mom to take me here before going to my dad the dentist for a cleaning. The past flooded into the present as I entered that sacred space: a space that knew me as a gawky teenager, a first time driver, a failed candidate for student council president. There among my people--New York Jews transplanted to Florida--I can eat the way I was meant to eat: with my hands, unafraid of bad breath, wiping cream cheese off my lips with a napkin and eyeing the waitress to refill my water. When I'm at Bagelworks, I'm at home....
Thanks To My Florida Fans
A huge thanks to everyone who showed up to my Boca book signing on Sunday. It was a treat to see my whole family there, all our family friends, and--to my delight--a few Florida readers who came out just from the tiny post I did right before the event. It was great to meet you all!...
