Damn, I Ate Real Good This Summer

Some Final Culinary Notes

Around this time of year, I get super sad. It’s true. I love good food, I love an edible story. And summer’s when I really let my guard down and gain up to two pounds (it would have been 20 but I take Metformin, the wonder drug that’s better than Olympic or whatever that new thing is called). I sometimes think of living in a place that’s all summer all year round, but suffering is in my bones. You can take the boy out of the shtetl, etc.

So here are some final culinary notes.

I spent part of this summer in Korea and Japan, and of course it was the bomb. But where I’m also dying to go is Ethiopia, a country whose food I adore. (Magazine editors! Do you want to send me there via business class? Talk to me!) This is Hav & Mar, Marcus Samuelsson’s new joint somewhere west of 14th Avenue. It’s incredible. You’re looking at the Swediopian cured gravlax with a berbere spice blend.

And this guy above is the Addis York. You can spot the fried drumstick representing NYC, but did you expect the doro wat to be wrapped in injera?

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I recently wrote a piece for CN Traveler about Upstate and I swooned over Hudson’s Cafe Mutton (and also my old fave Swoon), but right down the street from Mutton there’s the modern classic Lil’ Deb’s Oasis and their chicken is also insane. Monday’s you can eat your chicken accompanied by all the wines they didn’t get rid off during the weekend for a very modest fee (something like thirteen bucks, I think). Again, wild.

But what I’ll miss the most, of course, are the cookouts. Here’s my friend the writer Dinaw Mengistu (more Ethiopia!) making the most delectable steak in the Mid-Hudson. Oh, how I’ll miss this. Sad emoji.

Drinking was pretty good this summer. Very much under my two-glass a day limit, working out to about 12 glasses a week except for when I got to Seoul where it spiked to 46 and Tokyo when it hit 90. OK, see you all in the fall!