I Trulli on E. 27th St. is one of those Italian restaurants I seem to hear about all the time, but have never actually had the chance to try for myself . A friend was in town from the Netherlands, and I consider his taste in food to be sort of “upscale meat and potatoes”: nothing super fancy, but nothing boring and mediocre. Italian made sense, and being restaurant week, maybe we could go a little higher end without being ridiculous.

But first, let me say something about restaurant week. (Now extended through September 6th, so it might be called “Economy Sucks, Customers on Vacation, Trying Our Damnedest to Meet Payroll Month”.)  I have mixed feelings about restaurant week, both in terms of whether I should actually go to restaurants at this time and whether I should judge them by the same standards. The answer I’ve finally come to is: yes, and yes.

Ever since having a rushed and mediocre meal at Blue Water Grill during a restaurant week lunch several years ago, I’ve assumed that restaurants can get overwhelmed by unexpected traffic and not be prepared to provide the same level of service as on a typical day. But this is a cop-out and it’s giving unknown restaurants much undeserved slack. (I had never even eaten at Blue Water Grill before and still gave them the slack.) This view began to change last year with a single meal. Ilili, just two and a half blocks from I Trulli, was able to provide a delicious meal with friendly and competent service. They proved it could be done. And I’ve been back since.

But while sitting in the crowded, absurdly noisy dining room of I Trulli (an investment in carpeting would help), it occurred to me that it’s not like a restaurant adds extra tables during restaurant week. Presumably, they (a) have the staff to handle their tables, and (b) they’ve been fully booked before prior to restaurant week. If they can’t handle that many tables, it’s their own damn fault for participating in restaurant week and/or they have too many tables. Still, apart from a sommelier who promised to help us then never returned, I think I Trulli was capable of handling the number of customers. So for two reasons, that I Trulli was capable of handling the customers, and that they should be capable of it, I think it’s perfectly fair to judge them by my usual standards.

My friend and I both started with a fried squash blossom appetizer stuffed with ricotta. It was well cooked and right out of the fryer (further evidence that I Trulli was not overwhelmed by the crowd), but drenched in batter. Presumably it was a fresh, seasonal, squash blossom, so why hide this fact? Even if it were last summer’s squash, I would’ve enjoyed tasting it. It also suffered from a dominance of saltiness, not helped by an anchovy dressing. There’s a reason the Brits like vinegar with their fish and chips. I also would have liked an acid. With the vegetable overwhelmed by batter and cheese, essentially I was served a fried cheese stick. So where was the marinara?

Normally, I don’t complain about bread and butter. Bread before a meal is usually either average or noteworthy, edible but forgettable and neither adding nor subtracting to a meal, or a surprising stand-out. I Trulli’s focaccia, with its good amount of sun-dried tomatoes (meaning, not too many) was solid and could have been a stand-out. But then someone in the kitchen tried to be creative. A dish of seasoned ricotta (or ricotta butter?) replaced the standard butter or olive oil as its condiment. The result was a solid B for effort and B- for taste. Just too dry, especially when the bread is a focaccia. Had they given me a bottle of store-bought olive oil instead, I wouldn’t be complaining right now.

After working against the appetizer, salt saved the cavatelli. With almonds and broccoli rabe, it was an average dish, not a great one. Which brings me to my main problem with this restaurant, not counting the semi-audible nature of my dinner conversation. The prices are laughably out of proportion. $24 bowls of pasta and $28-average secondi plates?

A restaurant gives me average during its restaurant week promotion, a promotion that aims to gain new customers, and then expects me to come back and pay $24 for ravioli with tomatoes and basil? They better extend restaurant week a long, long time. Their market must be the rich and stupid, and in this economy, the stupid aren’t as rich as they used to be.

• Ma Peche last night. As tasty as the service was a joke. I.e., amazing. Recommend: raw oysters, crispy pig’s head, Bun Du Riz (noodles). #
• Ate at La Nacional last night. Electricity problem: no air conditioning, no hot food. Got most of the "cold tapas", sweated, and enjoyed it. #

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One of these days, maybe I’ll stop being so impressed about what you can see, where you can go, and what you can eat when you live in New York City. But it hasn’t happened yet.

That's me on the bicycle, holding the iPhone.

A recent weeknight bike ride turned into one hell of an adventure, culminating in a meal consisting of a subset of a cuisine I had never had before. It was like someone beamed me to another planet and I got to eat what half the population eats when everybody’s mother has the day off. The evening’s discovery? Guyanese-Chinese restaurants. Blocks of them.

In this case, my roundabout “discovery” of the restaurant where I ended up was the most exciting part. I say this as a former Jersey kid who finds it immensely cool to be able to get on his bike and find himself wandering around the JFK Airport. I also say it as someone who finds it immensely annoying to hear a permutation of the phrase, “the journey is more important than the destination”. You seem to hear this from people who are less than satisfied with their destinations. As if they like the process of journeying to the shit-hole, they just don’t like being in the shit-hole. Me, I try to keep my journeys generally in the direction of non-shit-holes. I don’t always succeed, but I try.

Jersey kid feeling at home.

Getting to JFK was surprisingly easy from where I live in Queens. If you can find your way to Lefferts Blvd., it’ll take you all the way there. Oh, and to other clueless ex-Jersyite bike-riders: I recommend an iPhone. Nothing beats having some idea of where you’re going, but short of that, GPS will do. It was actually seeing JFK on the map not too far from where I had already biked that convinced me to go for it.

Trucker takes my advice. Poor guy.

It turns out that just because you see a big sign that says you’re at JFK Airport, it doesn’t mean you’re necessarily at the airport. Not in the “this is where people go to get on airplanes” sense of the term. JFK is a big place. After I snapped the photo of the sign and continued past the gas-tank-laden swamplands (wait, is this Queens or Newark?), I suddenly became the official JFK groundskeeper. A trucker stopped me at an intersection and called down for advice from some random guy on a bike that could only, by the grace of Steve Jobs, find his way back home. Nevertheless, I had just gotten into this maze, I could tell him how to get out.

Incidentally, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Apple for including a “snap” sound in their iPhone photo software, thereby helping to preserve the phrase “snap a photo” in the English language. I’ll be damned if I’m going to beep a photo.

Maybe they're on their way to Guyana, too.

Soon after helping the trucker get the hell out of the maze that is the web of JFK back-roads, I found myself on… well, let’s call it a back-side road, which was true in both senses. I soon hear a car approaching me from behind along the garbage-strewn, pot-holed pavement.

Let’s just say that whoever was in the sketchy, red economy car could have had my iPhone and these photos long before I left the damn thing in the cab. (Yes, I lost it recently.) The car slowed down next to me, and I had one of those “how do I want to live my life?” moments: ignore the bastards on the premise that they were up to something, or assume the best? Instead, I told them both to fuck off. Just kidding. Actually, it turns out they were at the wrong airport entirely and were really looking for LaGuardia. (I guess they only saw the word “airport” on all the “JFK Int’l Airport” signs.) They mustn’t have been fans of the fact that my directions consisted of telling them to drive the way the crow flies, because they stopped the first car they encountered to get a second opinion.

Dude didn't trust my directions. (Smarter than the trucker.)

All this time driving around JFK, and still no sign of passengers. Where the hell was the main terminal? I was discovering where every third-rate shipping company parked its airplanes, but still no terminals. Clearly, there was only one thing to do. Kamikaze highway time. The cars had their lights on by now, so there was a pretty solid chance they’d be able to see me.

Not exactly a bike lane.

It turns out a bicycle helmet is actually good for something. Those branches along the Belt Parkway can be a bitch.

Relaxing, midweek, evening bicycle ride officially gets out of control. Usually, I just get lost, but this is even better.

Wait… wait… I think we might have something here…

Hopefully, the eighteenth Kennedy Airport sign might actually mean that Kennedy Airport is somewhere in the vicinity.

Good thing JFK is located within civilization, because it’s starting to get late and I’m in a country that possesses working light bulbs. Would I see an actual airplane and be able to take a photo to prove it? At first, no. I was too late on the draw and/or was too busy thinking the words “Holy shit!” as the first plane took off over me. I was only yards from the fence around the runway. Cool. Still, I sure as hell wasn’t leaving without something. So, there I stood with my flashless iPhone (not that a flash would have helped, except maybe to blind the pilot) and waited while the sun went down. At last, I finally commit an image to memory at 8:44 PM.

Loud, powerful, and impressive. But maybe you had to be there.

Ok, time to blow this joint. Must be that way. No, that way. Oh, shit, just open up Google maps for Christ’s sake.

Yes, I'm on a bike. You think I'm making this stuff up?

Shockingly, I’m not the only idiot exercising at an airport. A female jogger passes by, truckers and sketchy LaGuardia guys be damned. And she didn’t even have one of those all-powerful airport weapons like I had. (It was interesting that they let me this close to all those airplanes with a water bottle. That thing could have blown at any moment.)

Look carefully, she's there. Crazy chick didn't even have a bike.

Nineteen minutes later and the sun has set. I’m really hoping at this point that the Guayanese place I saw on the way here hasn’t closed yet. I have a blog post title in mind and I kind of need the part about “Guyana”.

Eastbound and down.

The only thing that could prevent me from getting home at this point is a hotel bar. If anyone loves a hotel bar, it’s me. Fortunately, though, it’s going to take more than Courtyard by Marriott. (Plus, the driver of their airport shuttle honked at me while I was taking the photo and it kind of spoiled the whole mood for me.)

The lure of the almighty hotel bar quickly loses its allure.

Getting back to Lefferts Blvd. took some time, with a brief visit through some immigrant neighborhood where post-sunset pastimes were sitting on the front stoop and driving cars through stop signs. I had a helmet, what did I care? But I kept peddling.

An iPhone Hansel and Gretel moment.

Eventually riding through a more populated area along Lefferts Blvd., I passed by a bus stop. Wait, was that…?

I tightened the brakes and drove back. Sure enough: there was the night doorman of my building in the process of commuting. I was only five minutes from a questionable neighborhood, one he might have lived in, and feeling like I was about to live out the beginning of Grand Canyon and/or Judgment Night. (Just seeing the latter movie was bad enough, believe me.)

So many Guyanese restaurants available, I had my pick. (Saving this one for another day.)

Approaching the Guyanese section of South Richmond Hill, a neon sign advertising “Fish Juices” and “Live Cricket” tempted me. Eventually, I understood the “live cricket” part, but I’m still not sure whether “fish juices” also involve a English-derived sport or if they are, in fact, the juices of fish.

I proceeded along Lefferts, and arrived at Kaieteur Restaurant. (Check out their snazzy website.) I must have been hungry, because, alas, I have no photo of the restaurant. I locked my bike and went inside.

A dark, sports bar atmosphere, with one of those friendly, square bars which patrons can sit around. About a dozen people inside, at one time or another, and the mood was lively. (Not counting the near-comatose drunk guy I sat next to.) I quickly discovered via the stereo a genre of music new to me. I’d later find out it’s called “chutney“, which is a pretty cute name for the Indian-flavored, Caribbean dance music. (I guess, technically, I might have been listening to chutneyish pop music, but don’t ask me.)

Sherry, the smiling, friendly bartender got me a Carib beer and kept them coming. Not my typical way of rehydrating after a bike ride, but this was a special occasion. The real question was: what to order?

Start with the fried shark, or the banga mary? The banga what??

“Spicy chicken wings” were calling my name, but with things like “lamb black pudding” and “jerk pork lo mein” on the menu, I wanted something a little more exotic. I had just come to this place via JFK Airport, for Christ’s sake. I went with the jerk pork lo mein. The idea of combining two things I love, jerk pork and noodles, was hard to refuse in itself. But when I asked whether hot sauce was available and was promptly provided with a small, plastic container of homemade scotch bonnet sauce, I was pretty much in a state of bliss. Along with the Caribs, Sherry refilled my hot sauce supply as I finished them, without me even having to ask. As I write this, I’m wondering: why haven’t I taken my wife here yet? I need to get back.

Oh, and the actual food? This was about to be my first encounter with Caribbean Chinese food, after all. Well, I guess I’d say it tasted like pork lo mein. The noodles were slightly below average and the pork slightly above. At the moment, though, absolutely perfect.

Just like they (the Chinese) make it in Guyana.

It was dark and I had a flashless iPhone, so I’m allowed to pretend to be artistic with the photo. And besides, in this case, I think it’s fair to say that the journey really was more important than the destination.

• Why Andrew Knowlton hates brunch. http://tinyurl.com/3ydjz42 "Hate" is strong, but I'd definitely say *way* overrated. #

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• Penn & Teller: Bullshit! “Fast Food” nicely mocks the pretentious thugs who want to tell you how to eat, and live http://tinyurl.com/39dueno #
• I love Food Network’s Chopped, but come on, producers. Must you edit the final seconds of every competition like your audience is on LSD? #
• Who Owns the Korean Taco? (@ Freakonomics blog) http://tinyurl.com/37qtd6o #
• Wine List (funny) http://wondertonic.tumblr.com/post/753735326/wine-list #

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Some recent travel has thrown off my writing schedule, so I have a lot of updating to do. This spring’s vacation included a road trip from Paris to Barcelona followed by a stop in Madrid, so there are plenty of food and dining discoveries to write about. In the meantime, there are a few domestic highlights I wanted to mention. Let me know if any of these spark an idea or two.

Soft-shell crab sandwich with a (get ready for it...) non-hot house, American tomato

You wouldn’t know it from the photo, but this soft-shell crab sandwich involved my inaugural soft-shell crab cleaning. I had, passing the buck as usual, asked the guy at the fish store to clean them for me. Upon arriving at home and unwrapping the crabs, I discovered that his and my definition of “cleaning” differed somewhat. (I wondered if maybe he had been using a sponge behind the counter.) It was a fortunate coincidence, though, because it forced me finally to confront the job myself. One quick snip removed the eyes, and then I folded each crab out to the side in order to remove the gills. The whole job only took a few seconds per crab, and they were ready to cook. (Referring to this how-to video helped.)

I dusted the crabs lightly in flour, and sauteed on medium-high heat in just a little corn oil for about 4 minutes per side as Mark Bittman recommends. Since I’ve cooked them before, I knew not to stick my face near them to see how they’re cooking this time. (Yes, they can pop from the internal moisture heating up, so keep your face at a safe distance and/or keep your glasses on.) We love Eric Ripert’s basic vinaigrette (which includes olive and corn oil as well as Dijon mustard), so we made that to drizzle on top. Soft-shells need some sort of acid, and the combination of both vinegar and mustard provide a helpful double-dose. As long as your bread is decent and your tomatoes are ripe, you’re set with a couple average-sized crabs per person. Great dinner, kick-ass lunch.

Drunken spaghetti (with pappardelle)

Now here’s a dish that’s both simple and exotic. We first discovered spaghetti all’umbriaco, otherwise known as “drunken spaghetti”, in Florence while on our trip to Italy last year. Fortunately for us, chef Gina DePalma of Babbo apparently discovered it at the same restaurant, learned the cooking method, and posted a recipe for it. (Hers appears much darker, which I’m not sure why.)

The whole idea behind drunken spaghetti is counter-intuitive, at least to me. Normally when you cook with wine, you plan on cooking off the alcohol. Not so in this case. Basically, the idea is to boil your pasta in a combination of half (well salted) water and half red wine. I sauteed sliced garlic (yes, more than called for in the recipe) in melted butter and olive oil. Before adding the pasta, I added a splash of red wine in with the garlic. And since you want the flavor of that extra wine, I did not cook it until the alcohol evaporated. I added the pasta, mixed, and it’s ready to serve.

Oh, and you might have noticed that I used pappardelle instead of spaghetti. The reason for that is really another reason why this dish is so cool: that if you have dried pasta and a couple bottles of non-expensive red wine around, you can make it. (You do keep garlic at all times, right?) We actually had spaghetti, but the pappardelle was one of those “fancy” imported kinds, so I thought, therefore, I should go for the pappardelle. Wrong. Even though the dish came out great, with that deep, wine flavor and slight tang infused right into the pasta, this was kind of a lesson in why pastas are better than others for various applications. Because the pappardelle has so much surface area, it gained a relatively slight gummy texture, even though it was cooked al dente. So, do like I’m going to do the previous time I made it: stick with good, old spaghetti.

Buffalo mozzarella and the best damn beefsteak tomatoes available (if you're a midget)

Because this was a “cook something interesting but make it easy” night, salad consisted of cut grape tomatoes and sliced buffalo mozzarella, with some chopped parsley and a drizzle of balsamic vinegar. I remember how the woman who had showed us around the un-effing believably amazing Bologna food shops had described this particular balsamic as “good for salad”. Later, I realized the extent to which that was the world’s biggest understatement.

And in our neighborhood, the general rule is the smaller the tomato, the better. For now, I can only daydream about the heirloom tomatoes I sampled at the San Francisco farmer’s market. But I’ll take a good cherry or grape tomato over a truck-ripened tomato impostor (or Holland import) any day.

Oops, made too much food last night. We'll just have to eat it today, this time with sausage.

We had some drunken pappardelle left over, so I figured: why wait? The only thing we felt might have been missing was some meat, so I went out and bought some ground pork. This recipe is one of those worth making again, and maybe next time with the actual sausage casing. Seasonings were essentially the opposite of what you get in a standard, store-bought sausage: vibrant and spicy. Without the sausage casing, and more importantly with the lean pork, the sausage was dry. But still a nice addition to some fortunate leftovers.

My secret to not overcooking shrimp: undercooking them.

Think of this dish as the poor man’s Daniel Boulud open faced lobster ravioli with lobster bisque and pea puree. Alternately, think of it as the version of the dish that’ll take you less than 5 hours. I’ve made the dish from the Boulud cookbook twice before. (If you hold the book close enough to your ear, you will hear it laughing at you. Especially the place on the page where the word “appetizer” appears.) The solution/work-around to keeping this dish challenging but testing the bottoms of your Crocs to a lesser degree is: skip the goddamn lobster and lobster bisque.

I bought shrimp instead of lobster, and (hallelujah) I cooked the shrimp properly by intentionally trying to undercook it. I wanted it to be only partly cooked at the final stage when I added it and the ravioli to the pan to soak up the sauce. Hopefully my brain registered the pink color of the shrimp and will recall it the next time I want to fully cook some shrimp.

Ravioli that actually look like ravioli. Someone's wife must have made them.

I made the pasta dough, and rolling it out was a tag-team effort. But, given the regular shapes and straight edges, clearly I had no part in the forming of the ravioli. I did puree the proverbial shit out of the peas, though, thank you, very much.

All that was necessary for the pea puree, incidentally, was to cook the peas as usual in boiling water, and then puree with olive oil. I gradually added the olive oil (and salt and pepper) until I was happy with the texture, which I left thicker than I would if I were serving it outside of a ravioli. Fresh mint would have been an obvious addition, but I wasn’t sure it would work with the tomato, onion, and garlic sauce I intended on adding, so left it out.

Winging it on the ravioli sauce.

Taking the place of Boulud’s recommended lobster bisque for this recipe (or more accurately, taking the lobster bisque out back and smashing a Jack Daniels bottle over its head) was some garlic and onion sauteed in olive oil, and a little briefly cooked fresh, chopped tomatoes.

It's finally been beaten into my head: cook your pasta in the sauce before serving it.

The cooked pasta, along with the, ehem, perfectly cooked shrimp, were added to the pan with the sauce and (as I yell “feet don’t fail me now!”) I immediately dump out the contents so as to quit cooking the shrimp while I was ahead.

Open-faced lobster ravioli with pea puree, except closed and with shrimp.

We must have really been influenced by last year’s trip to Italy, because this “improvised” salad came straight from a memory of something we ate in the Jewish section of Rome (immediately before a plate of fried artichokes, themselves worthy of a separate blog post, if not a feature-length biographical film). For our version, we sliced up pears and Parmigiano-Reggiano in nearly the same size and shape, and threw them in with a bag of mixed lettuce and sliced tomatoes. And yes, some of that freakin’ delicious aforementioned balsamic vinegar from Bruno e Franco – La Salumeria.

Pear and Parmesan salad, taking us back to Rome.

One of these days, I’ll have to do a compilation of our mid-week meals, but for some reason I don’t see the intricacies of take-out sushi and Boston Market to be quite as interesting to an outsider.

A local doughnut shop recently installed a pizza oven. Said doughnut shop is within walking distance of my favorite local bar. It was only a matter of time before I convinced them to make me this:

If you're on a diet, don't ask for the extra cheese.

You might be thinking: “I’ve seen that before. That’s one of those Munchkin and Boston cream doughnut pizzas.” But what you don’t realize is that underneath all that cheese is a layer of mushrooms. That’s right, this is one of those Munchkin and Boston cream doughnut pizzas with mushrooms.

This brilliant concept was brought to life in a two-stage process. The first stage was R&D, which occurred on a previous day and also required alcohol. The second stage was the “Jesus Christ, this is so ridiculous I have to get these bastards to actually make this” stage. But I use “bastards” in the nicest sense possible. Not only was the doughnut shop employee slash pizza maker willing to make this absurd creation for me, he even took special care to make sure the Munchkins were cooked properly.

Huh? That’s right. Whereas the mushrooms and cheese were placed on the pizza at the beginning of the cooking process, he insisted on adding the Munchkins later so as not to, well, “ruin” the pizza. And this guy had another handful of Muchkins ready to go on top. I actually had to tell him I had enough! I’m the drunk fool asking for the doughnut pizza and here I am having to weigh the pros and cons of additional Munchkins before saying, “No, thanks, I think my pizza has enough Munchkins.”

In yet another flash of inspiration, I asked for a big doughnut to be placed in the middle. It only made sense that it be a cream-filled doughnut, so on went the Boston cream. You might not be able to see the chocolate and sprinkles under the cheese, but oh yeah, it’s there.

That meatball almost makes this pizza look good. Oh, never mind. That's a chocolate Munchkin.

Since some Dunkin’ Donuts executive somewhere is flipping out about an unauthorized pizza oven installation, let me point out that I’m using the term “Munchkin” in the generic sense. This was a Twin Donut Plus restaurant,  but I’ll be damned if I use the phrase “doughnut hole” (and I’ll be even more damned if  I use the spelling “donut”). As far as I know, Dunkin’ Donuts invented the Munchkin, so they’re going to have to live with the fact that, thanks to me, there will always, throughout the rest of time, have existed at one time on this Earth: a Mushroom, Munchkin, and Boston Cream Doughnut Pizza. If either they or the city of Boston should wish to use this name for marketing purposes, I hereby grant permission.

• NYC bartenders reveal their favorite drinks (The Booze Chain @ NY Mag) http://nymag.com/nightlife/wheretodrink/2010/booze-chain/ #
• "Children’s menus are the death of civilization." – Nicola Marzovilla of I Trulli (NY Times, May 24) http://tinyurl.com/2vo4xdu – Smart guy. #
• Funny: 16 Items They Only Sell At Chinese Walmarts http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/16-products-they-only-sell-at-chinese-walmarts/ #

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Ever since reading about the existence of miracle fruit in a New York Times article, I’ve been curious to try it. The small, tart berry that supposedly would change the way your taste buds perceive the flavors of sour and bitter was intriguing. But two issues always got in the way. Fortunately, both have been solved with a new product I recently came across: mberry tablets, containing miracle fruit powder plus corn starch. Essentially, miracle fruit in a pill.

When life throws you lemons, trip on miracle fruit.

The first issue slowing me down from trying miracle fruit had been having to go out of my way to buy it. The berries spoil quickly, so rather than keeping them around until the day you feel like giving them a try, you need to eat them within a day or two. Like other New Yorkers, I’m open to new addictions; I just wasn’t convinced by it yet and didn’t feel much like traipsing across Manhattan to buy it. (Unfortunately, I don’t live or work near the Washington Square Park of miracle fruit.)

The second issue was: when exactly would I want to experience the supposed flavor-tripping caused by the berry, which would last for an hour or more? Presumably, when I’m hungry, right? But what if I don’t like the experience? I’d have to suffer through a god-awful meal that tasted like my third-grade elementary school orchestra sounded (that was me playing B flat instead of C on the saxophone), or at the very least, wait hungrily until the effects wore off. In fact, when I had bought some miracle fruit berries two summers ago, they sat uneaten because my friends and I were in the mood for a more mundane taste bud experience. Stuff like: cilantro, habanero, guacamole. Nothing that we felt required any tongue-altering substances. We couldn’t seem to work them in between the margaritas and the entrees. Fortunately, I’m happy to say after two years that I’ve overcome my issues.

The results: interesting, partly enjoyable, and with not enough residual enthusiasm to be trying it anytime soon.

mberry (one of those annoying brand names without a capital letter, but at least they leave out an exclamation point) can be purchased in New York City at various locations of Garden of Eden Gourmet. I had purchased the actual berries at the store location on 14th Street, so that’s where I stopped to see if they still sold them. The employee told me that the Chilean earthquake affected crops, so therefore they were stocking only the super-shelf-life variety. Bullshit? Maybe, but I coughed up the cash.

That night (turns out I didn’t even need to take advantage of the long-shelf-life), my wife and I decided to go for it. The moment would be early dinner, right at the bar of our local Irish pub. I opened the package.

This aspirin-sized pill won't cure a headache, but might help you in the consumption of your village's rancid fish meal porridge.

The instructions were simple: “Place one mberry tablet on your tongue and dissolve completely.” The company claims the process is simpler than the consumption of the actual berry since there’s no pit to deal with, which is bitter and to be avoided. The tablet itself tasted both sweet and sour, with a consistency like a slightly chewy Flintstones vitamin or SweeTart, and a fruit flavor of raisin or blackcurrant. It took about a minute or less to fully dissolve the tablet. And then we were ready to go.

The downside of our choice of location for the experience was that we didn’t have the super-geeky array of food items that some people prepare themselves. (See the mberry website for examples.) Here’s what we had, along with, ehem, tasting notes:

• Guinness (beer) – I read somewhere that a Guinness would taste like a chocolate milkshake. Not quite, but a prominent sweetness was evident. And probably due to the creaminess of the stout, the sweetness didn’t seem foreign; for a small quantity, the taste was both interesting and complementary.
• Ketel One vodka with club soda and lime - You’d be convinced that this drink had tonic rather than club soda. If you prefer your drink sweet and were on a diet (or a diabetic, I suppose) this would be just once instance when miracle fruit would come in handy.
• Shepherd’s Pie – This was the only thing we consumed that didn’t taste particularly good sweet, even in small quantities. Some things were meant to be served savory, and if Shepherd’s Pie weren’t one of them, I’m sure Irish chefs would already be adding sugar. (Now that I think about it, I have had sweet Shepherd’s Pies in the past, and didn’t like them.)
• Tabasco sauce (straight) – I had expected that the vinegar (the main ingredient in Tabasco) would be altered to sweet. It was, and much more than I imagined. But additionally, the strength of the spiciness was noticeably reduced. I have a high tolerance for hotness, but I wouldn’t normally be able to taste spoonfuls of straight Tabasco without experiencing some pain. So, given that your taste buds and your tongue’s pain receptors are totally different things, this means either the miracle fruit affects both, or the newfound sweetness alleviates the spice.
• Lemons (raw) – Slices of raw lemon were by far the most enjoyable, and fun, thing we tried. If there’s any doubt about the effects of miracle fruit, eating a raw lemon changes that. The lemon, while tartness was still evident, tasted absolutely sugary. It was literally lemonade. Very cool, I have to say, and this pretty much made the experience worth it. Interestingly, if you ate several bites of lemon in a row, the tartness became more evident and the sweetness a bit less, like the lemon was starting to overpower the effects of the miracle fruit.

The effects of the mberry tablet lasted about an hour, which was longer than I would have preferred since I had moved on from Guinness to Harp and wanted my old taste buds back. All in all, though, an interesting experience, and one I’m glad I tried. But fortunately there’s enough decent food still left in this country that I probably won’t be rushing to do it again.

• I think I made the most of Kansas City, MO: Arthur Bryant’s, Jack Stack’s, BB’s Lawnside, Gates. In that order of quality. #
• At Arthur Bryant’s in Kansas City, we met two guys who flew in from Oklahoma to eat there and take more food to go – round-trip same day. #
• First time I read Frank Bruni I thought: what a pretentious bastard. Eighteenth time I read Sam Sifton I thought: what a pretentious bastard #
• (For the record: the third or fourth time I read Frank Bruni, I thought: this guy knows how to (a) write and (b) review.) #
• I almost did what Sam Sifton does. I almost threw out an insult without an explanation. So, here’s my explanation: that’s what Sifton does. #
• Yet another reason why I love Chopped: the judges (on the rattlesnake episode) argued about specific dishes & choices, not about the chefs. #
• Batali + Dogfish Head = Awesome. http://tinyurl.com/yknbznl I’m hearing of it now, so the delay doesn’t bother me http://tinyurl.com/y63hnef #

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