Recipes and food adventures with Adam Roberts

  • Hot Off The Presses! John Kessler Profiles The Amateur Gourmet

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    It’s finally here folks, a profile several months in the making. I owe John Kessler a great deal of gratitude for such a generous piece. I owe the photographer a buttered-knuckle sandwich for such a horrible picture:I look like a nose with glasses or, worse, Dobby from the Harry Potter movies.Anyway, apparently the AJC site…

  • The Pastry Swan

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    Screw religion, I’ve got reality TV to teach me values. “Survivor” teaches me that only I matter and that toilet paper is a luxury many can’t afford. I’ve taken to palm fronds, now. “The Real World” teaches me that every house should have an Asian, an African-American and a homosexual. I have several, now, bound…

  • MYSTical Dining at Nam

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    I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, all because they played video games. I know because I was one of them: my mind was nurtured not on Luigi Pirandello but Luigi as in Mario and Luigi as in Super Mario Brothers 1, 2 and 3. Also, Legend of…

  • Contracts: A Sushi Bar Question

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    For your enjoyment–(and by enjoyment I mean realization that you made a good choice not going to law school)–I will occassionally share food-related questions that pop up on my bar review. This one came last week at the PMBR and was the 35th question in the contracts section. I’m curious to see how non-legal-minds would…

  • Pizza Quickly Reviewed: Savage

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    My friend J.C. and I did improv comedy in college. Rathskellar, our troupe, is the oldest college troupe in the country. I met most of my friends doing it. Josh and Katy were in it. Lauren was in it. Lolita was in it.Since college, though, things have changed. I, for one, went to law school.…

  • “Decoding Ferran Adria”

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    I really enjoyed this sneak peek of Anthony Bourdain’s profile of Ferran Adria. For those not in the know, Ferran is the chef and founder of El Bulli in Spain—perhaps the most important food innovator in the world today. For those who read The New York Times Magazine Section he was on the cover a…

  • Hesser’s Last Stand

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    Got a trackback this morning from The Gothamist which linked my moderate defense of Amanda Hesser since today was Hesser’s last review as the NYT’s interim critic The review in question is of Masa and already Hesser’s bold gesture–four question marks in lieu of stars (which she invites the incoming restaurant critic, Frank Bruni, to…

  • Let Yourself Go

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    Didactic is one of those words that, when people use it, they sound incredibly smart and you feel stupid because even though you’ve looked it up in the dictionary a thousand times you still don’t really know what it means. What does it mean? Let’s look it up now. Didactic: “meant or meaning to instruct.”I…

  • Two Theories of Blogging in the Face of an Overwhelming Workload

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    I would like to present for you now two competing theories of blogging in the face of an overwhelming workload (hence the title). The theories go like this:Theory One: A heavy workload is so demanding that blogging becomes impossible. All the resources one might devote to his or her blog and his or her blog-reading…

  • Nancy Silverton’s Banana Bread: The Superlative Killer

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    I am currently reading Charles Dickens’ Bleak House (a nice light read while studying for the New York bar) and I’m actually really enjoying it. One of my favorite characters is Lawrence Boythorn, a boisterous giant of a fellow who is described by one character as: “Always in extremes; perpetually in the superlative degree.” He…