Food Trip

I'm still in the planning stages, but with the Brooklyn Eats Event behind us now.. and some Schnack things working out ok... I'm planning on completing my research for the next event...

Javanese Food

I'm back from Holland and I had a great time.. and I had a lot of food from Indonesia including food from Java and Sumatra. Also while I was away an article about what I've been up to was printed in the NY Post.

It said in part, "If you like ethnic eats, check out the Brooklyn Food Club, created by Harry Hawk, the chef and co-owner of Schnack, a Brooklyn burger joint with a cult following." See below for the full text or the link to the NY Post.

I'm now researching place to go for a Javanese dinner.


The article can be found here.

October 3, 2004 -- Oprah has done wonders for reading with her monthly Book Club, but with all due respect to the daytime diva, she's behind the times.
It's hard enough to get through the iPod manual, let alone a novel, and leisurely reading is taking a back seat to a more immediate pleasure - eating.

Whether you want to try coal-oven pizza or hang out in the kitchen at Per Se, there's a new club for every culinary craving.

If you're one of those people who reads about every new restaurant and plans dinners with friends to check out what's hot, Culinary Insiders, a freshly launched club for restaurant-obsessed gourmands, is the group for you.

Founded this year by Lisa Mamounas, an entrepreneur with a passion for dining out, Culinary Insiders is packing the fall calendar with day trips to Blue Hill Stone Barns hosted by chef Dan Barber, tours of the Essex Street Market with chef Aaron Sanchez followed by lunch at his Lower East Side spot, Paladar, and a series of dinners at hot new restaurants like Caf‚ Gray.

Mamounas, a longtime foodie and a former Web entrepreneur, decided to turn her love of eating out into a business after an Internet company she started was bought out and she lost her job.

"If you're a member of an art museum or junior group, you go on trips, go to art openings, go to galleries, and I realized that there was nothing like this in the food world," she said.



Tomorrow night, chef Daniel Boulud will host the launch party in his private dining room, with wine, hors d'oeuvres and kitchen tours.

"It's a social outlet, but it's really about learning," said Mamounas.

Other people just want to eat. And for them, Foodie is nirvana. This gourmet club was started by Joe DeSalazar, 28, a former ad exec with an incurable desire to cook.

In December 2002, he created a dinner club for folks who love tasting menus but can't stand their pretense or price tags.

He's hosted nine events at rented loft spaces around the city. For the last one, attended by about 50 guests - singles and couples from their mid-20s to late 50s - DeSalazar prepared a six-country tasting menu including dishes from Mexico (banana leaf steamed cod with Queretaro green mole) and Italy (eggplant parmigiano bolognese with wild boar ragu). The dinners are $100 per person and include wine, tax and tip.

"With Foodie, you get a fun, casual, affordable food and wine-tasting event," DeSalazar says. "Plus, it's a great way for me to showcase what I can do in the kitchen without having to make a full career change."

While Foodie presents elegant multi-course menus, Social Eats takes a more down-home approach to dining, hosting weekly parties at the apartments of home cooks around the city.

Ben Marcus, 28, who works in the hotel business, created the group last year as an extension of the regular dinner parties he threw at his studio on the Upper West Side. He still hosts one dinner a week (he can squeeze in about five guests) for Social Eats, but other hosts hold bigger parties.

Dinners are usually themed ("Steak Night," "My Favorite Salmon"), three- to four-course meals with wine ($10 to $30), and usually attended by "sophisticated" foodies in their 20s and 30s "who want to meet new people," according to Marcus.

If you like ethnic eats, check out the Brooklyn Food Club, created by Harry Hawk, the chef and co-owner of Schnack, a Brooklyn burger joint with a cult following.

Every couple months, Hawk chooses an ethnic restaurant and leads a group of intrepid eaters through a five-course dinner, keeping the tab under $30 per person.

Hawk started the club two months ago by e-mailing like-minded friends and is seeking only those with a desire for dishes that might be "an acquired taste."

The first Brooklyn Food Club dinner was at Teeda, an authentic Thai spot on Columbia Streeet in Brooklyn where the feast included Todd Man Pla (fried fish cakes), sea scallops with curry sauce,and Thai custard with ice cream.

If those dishes are your speed, you might want to join the Joey Thai Club - a monthly dinner group held at Joey Thai (17 E. 31st St., [212] 213-3773). The club was started by last summer by Sharyn Rosenblum, a publishing executive who discovered the restaurant with her her boyfriend.

"We thought it would be fun to get a bunch of people together here, so we got 10 of his friends and 10 of my friends together, and it became one of those things," says Rosenblum.

"It's all you can eat, it's very reasonable [about $20 per person] and it's so much fun. We let Joey prepare the menu and we just say, 'Feed us!' He puts out family-style apps and entrees, curries and things, and some new dishes that we've never had before. And then we all share."

Pizza, too, has a fan club - the New York Pizza Survey, which grew out of on-line discussions on the foodie Web site eGullet.com. The club meets about once a month to eat (and dissect) pies at spots like Totonno's, Di Fara's and Lombardi's, examining the crust with particular rigor.

"We believe that the crust is 80 percent of the game," says Sam Kinsey, an eGullet site developer. "We don't rhapsodize about the toppings or the sauce because it's not our bag."

Battling the New York Pizza Survey is Adam Kuban's Slice.com Pizza Club. Kuban, a copy editor at Martha Stewart Living, has enjoyed pizza since childhood.

"From the time I was about 9 years old, my dad and I used to spend days in the kitchen experimenting with recipes," he says.

Now 30, Kuban is creator of the pizza Web site www.sliceny.com, and since March 2003 he has lead a monthly group to sample and critique different styles of pizza.

They've covered New York favorites (Di Fara's, Totonno's, Patsy's, Lombardi's, John's) and are slated to hit Arthur Avenue in The Bronx for the next trip.

Kurban's Slice Club discusses all aspects of the pizza in detail,

He warns, "We really just talk about pizza, so you really have to be a big pizza nerd."

He adds, "It's not the kind of thing you do to meet other singles." At least he's honest.

The vitals

Culinary Insiders:

www.culinaryinsiders.com. info@culinaryinsiders.com

Foodie:

www.foodienyc.com, info@foodienyc.com.

Social Eats:

www.socialeats.com, socialeats@socialeats.com

Brooklyn Food Club:

www.brooklynfoodclub.blogspot.com, or email harryhawk@gmail.com.

Joey Thai Club:

email joeythainyc@yahoo.com

The New York Pizza Survey on eGullet:

www.egullet.org/nypizza

Slice Pizza Club:

www.sliceny.com