My friend Lisa recently moved to her own apartment on the Upper West Side and before I left for my trip, I went uptown to see the place, to give it my blessing (I smashed a bottle of Bartles & James on the door), and to join her for dinner.
“Where should we go?” asked Lisa, smartly deferring to me because of my strong opinions regarding food and restaurants.
“I don’t know,” I replied coyly, wanting to appear open-minded and non-domineering.
“We could go to–”
“FAIRWAY CAFE,” I shouted, creating an awkward moment that took a few minutes to dissipate.
Many of you who’ve read my book have asked if Lisa, star of Chapter Three, is a Supertaster. You ask because Lisa abhors coffee and olives and her sensitivity to these foods makes her a likely candidate for Supertaster status. Since it was Lisa’s birthday recently, I contacted Doug Cress who administers The Supertaster Test and asked him to send me a sample. He kindly did (a few samples, actually) and I brought them with me to Lisa’s apartment after our dinner at Kefi (see below). The following video, then, finally sheds light on the mystery of Lisa’s tastebuds. To make it even more dramatic, I’d tasted a strip and barely tasted anything and Craig didn’t taste anything at all. And so, without further ado, here’s Lisa and the supertaster test:
After signing books at Best Cellars on the Upper West Side on Friday night, my dear pal Lisa (who lives up there now) joined me for the two block walk over to Kefi. “This is supposed to be great,” I told her. “Really good Greek food for not very much money.”
One of the joys of living New York is that you can be reading Florence Fabricant’s column in the New York Times about a new frozen yogurt place in Park Slope and then realize that to get there you need only walk out your door and over a few blocks. And that’s exactly what I did after reading about Öko which, apparently, means “eco” in Hungarian. What does “eco” mean in English? Regardless, here’s what I brought back:
That’s just plain frozen yogurt (there was only plain or wild berry) with kiwi and a gooseberry on top. I’d never had a gooseberry and I immediately heard Veruca Salt’s voice: “The gooseberries taste like gooseberries, the snozberries taste like snozberries!” In fact, this gooseberry was like nature’s version of one of those gummy sour balls, except not gummy. It had a wonderful surprising squirt of sour.
And as for the yogurt, the richness and complex flavors took me by surprise. This is some serious frozen yogurt–the Harvard graduate to TCBY’s community college drop-out–and I couldn’t get enough. And with the kiwi it felt like a healthy snack, but was it? Lisa tells me that unless it says low fat, it’s probably still fattening. So I guess I can’t eat it three times a day. Perhaps this video, the last video of music week, will set the record straight.
Music week continues today with falafel! Not only does falafel have three bouncy, musical syllables but it’s also a food I’ve never attempted to make at home. I recruited my friends Lisa and Ricky who are not only game falafel makers but also wonderful musicians and singers (they sing the song at the end of the post). We used Joan Nathan’s recipe which you can read here on Epicurious. Here are Lisa and Ricky rolling our falafel in flour:
