It Just Works

With Steve Jobs' passing, it seems everyone has something to say about him and Apple. Therefore, I will share one story as well. I bought an iPad when it first came out and it has become an indispensable device that I use everyday. This is no surprise since I've always liked Apple's products, starting from the Macintosh, especially for their design and ease of use. Steve Jobs once said, "This is what customers pay us for - to sweat all these details so it's easy and pleasant for them to use our computers. We're supposed to be really good at this."

What has surprised me is the iPad is so easy to use that even my two-year old daughter, Ava, can use it. I only have to show Ava a few times and she is able to learn to use the iPad to watch her cartoons. She knows to press the home button to turn on the screen; slide the tab from left to right; press the home button again to see the icons; swipe to find the Videos icon; tap and find the cartoons in preview forms; choose and tap the video; and hit the play tab. Now at three years old, she even knows how to adjust the volume from the screen and hit the small button on the top to turn the iPad off.

Below is a picture of Ava watching Elmo at a friend's wedding banquet in Hong Kong; the iPad allows the parents to eat in peace.

While I like to think of my daughter as really smart, the truth of the matter is the iPad, like many of the products by Apple, just works. It still amazes me that a two-year old can use the iPad by herself. This is really a testimony to Jobs' philosophy about design, as he once said, "Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it's really how it works."

Abu's Brasserie

My friends have accused me of only going to a handful of restaurants in Taipei and writing too much about L'Atelier de Joël Robuchon. Therefore, with a meeting in the late afternoon around Shing-Yi Road and Dun-Hwa Road, I decide to go to Abu's Brasserie nearby for dinner with my wife. This is my first time at a restaurant by Chef William Bu 布秋榮. Abu, as he is known, first opened a fancier place in 2009 (I have not been to yet) and then late last year opened the Brasserie, his second and cheaper restaurant.

The Brasserie is located in an alley off Shing-Yi Road. The exterior of the restaurant looks pretty good; I like the playful graphics of the signage. Unfortunately, the interior left much to be desired. The foyer is unnecessarily large for this small restaurants. A glass wine cellar is located to the right of the front door, which would have looked nice except boxes of wine are littered on the floor. Instead of an elegant display of wines it is more like an messy closet. We are seated just to the left of the foyer. The table is too narrow for comfort. The green bread plate took up more than a quarter of the width of the table. Next to our table is a Nuvola Rossa bookshelf by Vico Magistretti which acts as a space divider that is completely unnecessary as it makes the small room look and feel even smaller. The wall behind our table has a wood wainscot without a baseboard. A couple of art pieces are hung in a seemingly random fashion on the walls. The interior design just looks a bit haphazard.

The menu is essentially in three parts: chef menu, set menu, and à la carte. The chef menu seems to be too long, hence we choose to try the set menu as it seems to offer good value with six courses. Some of the courses in the menu have choices and the price of the set menu depends on the choice of the main course.

The restaurant starts us off with some foccacia bread and a strange white sauce. For my first course I order the pork terrine, which is a thin and small slice served on a large plate with a small salad. The plating is quite nice. The flavor of the terrine is satisfactory but the texture is too hard and too chewy. The terrine is also sliced too thinly and stingily. The second course is the mussels, which is quite good with a flavorful broth. The third course is a choice of a small soup and I have the porcini cappucino. I prefer a creamier soup, but it is acceptable. This is followed by the raviolo stuffed with chicken. The pasta is fine but the filling is just too dry; it was not a good dish. My main course is the braised beef cheeks. The meat is cooked well with good flavor. I only wish the sauce is further reduced as it is too thin and more like soup. The last course is the Dessert du Chef, which sounds grand, but is actually a small jar of panna cotta and a mini macaron served on a rectangular tray.  This is less like a dessert course and more like some mignardises. The panna cotta is a little bland and the macaron filling is too hard; both are made worse by the watery coffee. The meal ends in a very unsatisfying manner.

The pacing of the meal is inconsistent. The appetizers come very quickly yet there is a long wait for the main course. The service is also lacking at times, especially at the end of the meal. We wait for a long time for someone to deliver the check to our table. We become impatient and finally decide to just get up and pay at the cashier like we do at a New York diner.

Overall the experience at Abu's Brasserie is so-so. The pricing of the meal seems very reasonable. The cost of the menu I ordered is around NT$1300. Frankly it would have been fine to have one less course or pay a bit more for a real dessert. Will I go back? While I have issues with some of the dishes, the flavor profiles are okay and the restaurant is pleasant enough. So maybe I will go back, but not eagerly.

Instagram

Recently I downloaded the iPhone app Instagram and it is just a fun program to play with. With careful cropping and the use of filters provided, any photo can take on a dramatic new look. After the image is processed it can then be shared publicly. Through Instagram one can also browse photos from users all over the world.

I have used Instagram to rework some of the images I took a while back with my iPhone. Most of the images are of architecture and below is a sampling.

Beijing Airport by Foster and Partners

Staircase at the Qingdao Grand Theater by GMP

The Atrium at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City

The Sculpture Gallery at New Canaan by Philip Johnson

9/11 Remembered

Today is the tenth anniversary of 9/11. The New York Times has a section asking readers where they were on that day and another section showing the things that people kept. Instead of posting my responses to the Times' website, I am sharing them here.

On 9/11 I was at 14 Wall Street.

I was working at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. By the time I entered the building from Pine Street and rode the elevator up to the 23rd floor, the two airplanes had already hit the twin towers. At that time I didn't really know what happened. I watched the towers burn from a window on the 25th floor of our office. When the towers collapsed, our building shook as if there was an earthquake. Together with others we walked down the fire stairs and waited inside the Equinox gym on the ground floor. It was only then with the televisions above the treadmills that I learned what happened before I stepped into the office.

That day I stayed at the gym until around 4:30pm. I decided to leave when someone said there were buses to take people uptown on Broadway. When I stepped out of the building onto Wall Street, the sidewalk was completely covered in a thick layer of dust, like a sandbox in a playground. As I looked towards Broadway the sky was dark. I didn't think it was possible there would be any buses so instead I turned east and walked towards the East River. As I got closer to the river it was eerie to find a perfectly clear sky as if it was a normal day.

I ended up walking home like everyone else and what I kept are the pair of shoes that I wore on 9/11.

L'Atelier de Joël Robuchon Taipei: À La Carte

Fifteen minutes before the time of our reservation at L'Atelier de Joël Robuchon Taipei, my friend calls me and says he is stuck in traffic and running late. He says he still needs to go home and change since he is in shorts and t-shirt. Knowing my friend, it is not some fashionable shorts. My friend asks if L'Atelier will mind if he shows up as is, because if he doesn't have to go home he can conceivably show up on time. I reply that I don't think they have a dress code. While you may be the first person to show up in athletic shorts and Kristene at the door may have a good laugh, but she probably won't refuse to seat you. Why don't you just come. We will be sitting at the bar and perhaps not too many people will notice. Five minutes past the reserved time, sure enough my friend shows up looking like he'd just come from the gym.

While my friend is severely under dressed, just about all the other patrons in the restaurant are dressed casually; I don't remember seeing anyone with a jacket, though it is 30-plus degrees Celsius outside. L'Atelier is not a formal place but the food served over the counter is expertly prepared and very refined. Herein lies the great thing about L'Atelier: it is fine dining in a convivial setting without the formalities.

In my recent meals at L'Atelier I tend to order from the various set menus, which provide good values and a set sequence. However, the set menu provides only a limited number of choices for each course. For this meal, I want to order à la carte. In a certain way we are following the original intent of L'Atelier, which is modeled after the tapas bar where one can construct a meal in any manner that one likes.

Chef Angelo Aglianò starts us off with a Robuchon classic, Le Caviar Oscietra, which consists of layers of crab meat, lobster jelly, and caviar served in a tin. This is actually the first time I am eating this wonderful concoction; just delicious and a dish, actually a tin, that makes one smile in both presentation and taste. After this course, my friend and I go off on different paths.

I order another classic dish, the langoustine carpaccio, translucent slices arranged in a thin disk shape topped with roasted poppy seeds. This is as good as I remember it from the last time I had it, which was over a year and a half ago. I follow up with a fried polenta-coated soft-boiled egg topped with caviar and placed on a small bed of lettuce with smoked salmon on the side; a beautiful dish with seductive combination of colors, shapes, textures and flavors. I then order the risotto with sea urchin and tomato confit. As always the risotto is cooked wonderfully al dente and all'onda. My last savory course of the night is a tête de veau with the combination of veal cheeks and tongue. The garnishes are arranged as a red circular line around the meat, almost like an art piece. This is served with the classic pairing of ravigote sauce. I just love this dish. The ability to cook offal is actually the true test of the chef's skills.

My friend selects the crispy frog legs which were beautifully fried into a golden color. He follows it with some Hokkaido scallops served in the shell. When this dish is served my friend offers to let me try one of scallops. Before I have a chance to stick my fork in his dish he finishes all of them. I assume it is very good. My friend then veers into his beef mood as he orders the burger with fries follow by the Kobe beef. I wouldn't have ordered two consecutive beef courses myself, but there are no rules at L'Atelier.

It is clear that Chef Aglianò has the kitchen crew operating at a high level. We order a variety of dishes that require a wide array of techniques, ranging from raw seafood, risotto, burger to offal, and everything is expertly prepared.

As usual I ask the sommelier Benoît Monier to pick a wine for us. He always asks me what do I want to drink and stresses that it is more important to drink something we like instead of worrying too much about pairing wine to food. I tell him I am in the mood for some white wine and he picks out a nice Meursault for us.

After finishing the wine we order desserts. My friend chooses the dessert of the day while I go with a classic: Crepe Suzette, a dish that was invented in the late nineteenth century. I haven't had this dish in a long time and it is nice to see it on the dessert menu. Grendy, the manager, set the alcohol on fire at the counter side and pours it on top of the cooked crepe. Not too many restaurants do this dish anymore. For me this dish always conjures up images of a very serious waiter in a very formal but old fashioned restaurant. Here we are in 2011, the dish is still delicious and a dramatic way to end a meal, yet we no longer feel constrained by the rules and formality of an old way of dining.

After we finish our coffees and macarons, Benoît treats us to some Chartreuse to end the night. As my friend and I comment on the alcohol level of the liqueur, Benoit jokes what do you expect from reclusive monks. We all have a good laugh, which is really one of many we share throughout the night. As I get up from my seat to leave the restaurant, I cannot help but smile and think how enjoyable and fun the night is. It really doesn't matter that my friend looks like a gym rat. What matters is eating delicious food, being in a friendly ambiance, and having a great time.

Financier

While I wait for clients to pay my fee, I figure I make some "bullion" for myself first; actually financiers, little rectangular cakes that resembles gold bars.

Ever since I bought a so-so financier from my local bakery a while back, I have wanted to make some. I kept thinking that I must be able to make it a little better. Recently I bought some rectangular financier molds and got to work. Financier is a little more difficult to make than madeleine because the recipe for financier requires making some beurre noisette. However besides the butter, the recipe is quite minimal: just some sugar, almond powder, flour, and egg white. The large quantities of egg whites required make the financier a good dessert to do when one makes other desserts like pots de crème which requires a large amount of egg yolks.

The time required in the oven is around the same as madeleine. The cakes are done when they crown and are springy to the touch.

The financier is a rich cake, ideal with coffee and as a little snack in the afternoon or as petit four after dinner. Even without the money from the clients, at least I feel more well off after eating some financiers.

Del Posto

Since Del Posto opened in 2005 I have tried the restaurant several times. Frankly I never had a great meal as there was always something that wasn't right. In 2009 my sentiments were echoed by the Michelin Guide, which downgraded the restaurant from 2 stars to 1 for its 2010 guide. The lost of a Michelin star shook up the restaurant. In an effort to regain the star, the owners decided to reduce the number of tables and invest more on quality. Their efforts paid off when in the fall of 2010, The New York Times gave the restaurant four stars, making it one of the top six restaurants and the only Italian restaurant in the City with that distinction. Clearly Del Posto has changed and is worth another try.

Del Posto is located on the corner of 16th Street and Tenth Avenue near The High Line (the City's latest landmark), thus an ideal place for lunch before or after the visit to the new park. Besides the location, Del Posto offers a great deal for lunch: a three-course menu for $29. Del Posto has now replaced Jean Georges as the cheapest place to get a four-star meal.

I made the reservation after getting assurance from the restaurant that I could bring our two kids and they would make some simple pasta for them. When I walked in the restaurant, the decor hasn't changed and the piano player is still there, but I could sense it was a bit more spacious with less tables.

The restaurant started us off with a trio of amuse-bouches: small sandwich, speck with sauerkraut, and a shot of tomato soup. Our server then brought a bread basket accompanied by very good butter and even better house-cured lardo.

Instead of asking the kitchen cook a simple pasta for the kids, I actually ordered the Garganelli Verdi al Ragu Bolognese on the menu for them to share. Both kids ate the pasta silently, which is usually the sign of a very good pasta. I tried one bite of the pasta and it was indeed excellent. After the kids finished their pasta they played with my two iPads, which have the magical ability to keep them quiet through the rest of my lunch.

I started with the Cotechino and chose the sliced duck breast as my main course. My dessert was the chocolate tartuffo. My wife, Maria, went with the Primavera della Terra salad followed by the wild salmon. Her dessert was macerated strawberries with gelato. I won't go into details about the dishes except to say all of them were wonderful.

With our coffees the restaurant brought out mignardises that included some great bombolini. On our way out, we were given more chocolates to take home.

At Del Posto the food was great and the service was professional and friendly. It is definitely a much better restaurant than I remembered. I still don't really like the decor and I cannot tell whether or not the piano player has improved. Nevertheless, Del Posto is now a great restaurant and the lunch is a fantastic deal.

Al di Là Trattoria

When we visited our good friends and their kids in Park Slope, Brooklyn, we decided to stay in the neighborhood for dinner. I have always wanted to try Al di Là Trattoria in Park Slope since I saw Chef Anna Klinger featured on Mark Bittman's book and TV show, as well as the glowing 2-star review from The New York Times. Al di Là, which means "beyond", doesn't take reservations except for a few tables for parties of 6 or more, hence our two families made one for the first seating at the early bird hour of 5:45pm on a Saturday.

I arrived at the restaurant first by myself five minutes before our reservation. When I walked pass the front door, I found the restaurant to be almost fully occupied already, except for a table for two and our reserved table for 8. The host greeted me and asked if my party is all present. I said no and the host refused to seat me at the table and even suggested that I wait outside in the heat. Frankly, I didn't see why I couldn't be seated at the reserved and empty table. I understand the policy of not seating incomplete parties later in the evening as there is no reservation at the restaurant and often a long wait for the tables. However, it didn't make sense when my reservation was the first seating of the night. It is puzzling why the restaurant cannot be more hospitable to someone who came a long way and made the reservation three weeks in advance.

The rest of my party arrived shortly after the reserved time and the host finally agreed to seat us. We were a party of four adults and four kids. My friends who live in Park Slope told me that it is a super child-friendly neighborhood and the restaurants all welcome kids. Given that two of the kids in our party are still small and typically sit and eat better in high chairs, we asked the waiter for a couple of them. To my surprise, the restaurant only has one high chair and it was already being used by another kid. Maybe the restaurant is not as child-friendly as my friends purported it to be.

For my kids I ordered a Tagliatelle al Ragù which was so-so. For myself, I started with the Trippa alla Toscana that was slimy but too spicy. This was followed by the Tortelli di Piselli, homemade ravioli filled with spring peas, butter, mint, and Pecorino. The pasta was mushy and the dish was a bit under seasoned and tasted a bit bland. I didn't finish either of my two dishes and we all skipped dessert and went home.

Al di Là was a disappointment. It certainly did not go beyond the expectations, rather quite the opposite. Maybe the restaurant had an off-night or perhaps the standards have slipped after so many years; the restaurant opened in 1988. Given that Al di Là does not take reservations for small parties and the food is only so-so, the restaurant only makes sense for people who live in the neighborhood. In comparison, a few days before our meal at Al di Là, we ate at Osteria Morini in SoHo. The food there was simply better, for instance, the Tagliatelle al Ragù was more satisfying both in terms of flavor and texture and it was only $1.50 more. The restaurant in SoHo not only takes reservations but even have more high chairs. In short, I cannot see a reason why I will ever go back to Al di Là.

New York Eats 2011

Recently we spent a few weeks back in New York City. Similar to last year, one of the main activities I did was to eat. With the limited amount of time, I went to a few of my favorites: Jean Georges, Daniel, and Per Se; revisited Del Posto and Eleven Madison Park and found both restaurants have improved; ventured into the outer boroughs with a great lunch at M.Wells in Queens and a disappointing dinner at al di la in Brooklyn; tried a few new places: Michael White's Ai Fiori and Osteria Morini, Marcus Samuelsson's Red Rooster, Jonathan Benno's Lincoln Ristorante, Mario Batali's Eataly, Danny Meyer's Maialino and Untitled, and Angelo Sosa's Social Eatz.

Below are the places I went:

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