The Department of Pants

Caramel.  It's something I enjoy.  I believe it's concocted of caramelized butter and sugar.  I enjoy it.

I like caramel sauces.  I like pouring them atop ice cream and mounds of fluffy white whipped cream.

Speaking of ice cream, I like caramel ice cream.

There are ways and forms of caramel I long for which I will not mention, but take note I long for the above caramels in addition to the unmentionable varieties.

Melted caramel as a pants color.  This is some I do not enjoy.  Any man wearing a pair of caramel pants - melted or not - should be summarily executed.

JCrew has such a pant color, and they - the entire company - should be summarily executed.  This is a sad day for pants.

I Still Exist

I have not updated this blogsite in a while.  As I mentioned earlier, I was sort of losing it, it being the desire to write so much about a meaningless topic.  Being the astute nihilist that most readers of this blog are, I'm sure you're thinking, but all topics are meaningless! I have no good response to this sentiment.

Suffice it to say, my time and energies have been devoted to other things.  I have written some stories.  Here is one that I have finished: Washington Crosses the Delaware

A Kindle, Missing

Christmas is just about here, work is done for a while, etc. etc.  Yesterday I met a person, a human being, a man, at Shake Shake on the Upper East Side.  I ordered a double cheeseburger.  This was the first time I've had a double cheeseburger at Shake Shack.  It was good, I guess, but for me it was too much meat.  In other words, I like just one patty.  I also had a chocolate milkshake.

It was really busy, as it tends to be, and me and the human existent had no choice but to sit on a bench next to the condiments area, and also right next to a door that kept opening and closing as patrons walked in and out, allowing for freezing gusts of winds to blow in and up my jacket and pant legs.

I had my Kindle with me, and I placed the Kindle on the bench between me and the organism person.  I saw it - the Kingle - on the bench.  The someone saw it.  Then, sometime later, it was time to go, so we got up.  But wait - where was my Kindle?  It was no longer on the bench.  It wasn't on the floor.  I checked my pockets.  It was nowhere to be seen.

The someone wondered if someone had stolen it, but such a thing would have been very difficult.  The Kindle was on the bench between us, and I couldn't see how someone could be so clever as to grab it without being noticed.

I went to an employee and said, "excuse my good man, but is there some sort of lost and found?  I lost my Kindle."  A few minutes later he returned with my Kindle.  I was happy, of course, and I had no idea what could have happened.  Someone must have found it and turned it in, but just how it got from the bench, where I was sitting the whole time, to where someone found it and turned it into an employee without detection by myself, is beyond me.

I said goodbye to the thingy person, and later that day found myself at a friend's apartment.  We then got in his car, picked up someone else, and drove to Trenton, New Jersey, for pizza at DeLorenzo's.

DeLorenzo's is an unassuming place, with real, working-class people who eat pizza.  There was a dancing and singing Santa - if you put a quarter into him, he would sing your favorite Christmas song and dance around.  Honestly, it was a bit disturbing, and when he stopped doing his thing and no one was putting in another quarter, he stared directly at me.  Like, directly at me.  It made me feel uncomfortable.

Anyway, we finished our pizza, it was good, etc. etc.  When we were back in my friend's car I went to grab my Kindle but couldn't find it.  Not again!  We looked and looked but to no avail.  "I must have left it in your apartment," I said to my friend.  He agreed that was probably the case.

Today I talked to my friend, and he looked throughout his apartment but couldn't find my Kindle.  He searched his car again, in daylight, and could not find it.

The Kindle is gone.  I lost it twice in one day, and the second time seems to be for good.  I've had it for a year and a half and I've never lost it, and then twice in one day.  Why has god done this to me?  What purpose does my misery serve?  These are the questions that haunt humanity.

**Update**
A couple of months later my friend's wife was cleaning up the apartment and found my Kindle.  As I type these words it's sitting across from me, but I don't really use it that much because I like reading paper books.

Adventures in Eating

It was a chilly and misty evening, and I had time to kill.  I was in the West Village.  I was hungry.  I wanted to eat.  And so I thought I should eat.  And then I picked out a place to eat in my mind.  And then I walked there.

What was this place, you ask?  It was Taim, an Israeli falafel establishment.  It's a small place with some counters and benches.  I ordered a sabich sandiwch, a concoction filled with roasted eggplant and other things, which I'll describe shortly, in amazing detail which will make your mouth water, and which will make you feel like life is whimsical and pleasant.  And then we can all feel like we're fun, whimsical people, and we can congratulate ourselves and be overall excellent.

As I sat I waiting for my sandwich, I noticed a man seated next to me, furiously jotting things in a notebook.  His lips were like sausages and he reeked of lemonade.  He noticed me peeking at him and suspiciously tilted his body away from me so that I could not glimpse his sketches.

"I'm quite sorry," I said.  "I didn't mean to pry, but those were some very nice sketches."  They were actually not very nice sketches. They were amateur in method and trite in subject.

"Well," he finally said, "I studied at the Sorbonne."

"Oh," I said.

My sandwich was brought to me and I took in the wholesome, deep aromas.  The pita smelled of Egyptian summer, and the earthy, deep eggplant was covered in bright, crisp cucumber salad with garlic, oil and lemon juice, rich tahini, piquant pickled cabbage, and a hard boiled egg.  The flavors melded and danced in my mouth.  I was ablaze with passion.

I was so caught up in my sandwich I didn't notice the Sorbonne student had left.  Disappointed, I wandered out of Taim and decided I needed a treat to recover.  I went to some Italian pasty place on Bleecker street and ordered a pastry filled with cream and topped with chocolate crunch sprinkle things.  The cream was as light as clouds and so wonderful.

As I sat in a park eating my cream, I noticed a smell - a smell of lemonade.  I turned and saw the Sorbonne student.

"It's you," I said.

"It's me," he said.

Taim
Near 7th Avenue South somwhere

Some Italian Pastry Place
On Bleecker close to 6th Avenue

The Food and Pants Files

How much can a man write about food?

This blog, as you've perhaps noticed, is called Food and Pants, and there was a time when I wrote about both topics with relative frequency.  In its latest incarnation, I've written almost exclusively of food.  The record shows that after about 3 years of incessant blogging, I took a break starting in November 2010, and did not return to regular blogging until September 2011.  Since starting in September of last year, I've updated often several times a week, but usually at least once or twice.  There have been a few pants posts, but it's been almost entirely food.  And so I say again: How much can a man write about food?

There must be a limit.  How could I write about food at least a couple of times a week for the rest of my life?    What good could come of that?

Perhaps next week I'll get into it once more.  Or maybe next year.  Or maybe never.  But right now I just do not care to write about food.  Perhaps I'll spend the next year writing about pants, as I've not delved into the topic in great detail in quite some time.  Or perhaps I'll write about some other subject.  Or perhaps something else.

The Pizza Files

Welcome to yet another edition of the Pizza Files, in which an intrepid young adventurer -- yours truly (me) -- travels all over the place and chronicles his noteworthy pizza experiences.  I am glad to have you back.  Please have a seat, and I'll have my butler bring you a ginger ale.

Ready then, are we?  Good.

Yesterday, a rather cold day, the first day of December, I headed into the Brooklyn territories so that I might try Williamsburg Pizza, a new establishment that has been written about in the great, most important food website of our time, Serious Eats. Ed Levine, who basically runs a cult over there at Serious Eats, describes Williamsburg Pizza as having an extremely solid "old-school" New York City slice.  As mentioned exhaustively in these chronicles, I've become rather tired of all the Naples-style pizza and have been much more into Americanized versions of pizza, so I was curious to try.

Williamsburg Pizza is located in a more remote section of Williamsburg, yet hipsters abound, and while seated inside I counted at least 20 young men with the most absurd facial hair displays I have ever seen.  And don't worry, their pants were tight, their shirts checkered, and glasses rimmed and plastic.

Williamsburg Pizza certainly begs comparison to Best Pizza, also in Williamsburg, also hipsterish.  The basic premise, although I'm sure Serious Eats would be happy to further break it down  in excruciatingly boring and pointless detail, is that white, American young men, possibly from prosperous-enough families but in the very least in a way which appeals to people from prosperous backgrounds, who choose to shun more mainstream New York City yuppie circles, create pizza places that pay homage to the idea of the classic slice places that may or may not have existed in New York in earlier parts of the 20th century up through, say, the 70s. As mentioned, there are differences between Williamsburg and Best, but this seems to be the idea behind them both.

Indeed, for all of the talk of great pizza in New York, and there certainly is a lot of it, there is probably more mediocre pizza than good pizza here.  Really good slice places are hard to come by.  Williamsburg Pizza, like Best, is a good slice place with a hipsterish sensibility.

The classic New York City slice I had at Williamsburg was good, although I made the mistake of allowing them to reheat the slice.  It looked fresh enough and I should have just eaten as is (I've mentioned before that a reheated slice at a slice place is generally problematic).  Still, the slice was of obvious quality and I think would have been really good fresh or fresh enough and not reheated.

I also had a square, grandma-like slice with smoked mozzarella, caramelized onions, and pancetta.  The smokey, creamy cheese with an ever so slightly sour funk, with the rich onions and savory pancetta, was a symphony of flavors that Beethoven would have aspired to.  Actually, no, it wasn't that good, but it was indeed good.  But just not that good.  But please, don't think I'm not saying it wasn't good, it was, just not that good.  But definitely good.

There was a fine soda selection, something which certainly appeals to young, educated people who think they're cool because they drink artisinal root beer.  I had a Mexican Coke, a clear signifier that I'm awesome, abhor high fructose corn syrup, and am generally tolerant as I have no problem drinking a beverage associated with a country like Mexico (interpret the "like" before Mexico as you will).

So yes, dear friends, Williamsburg Pizza was enjoyable, a fine place, pleasant inside, etc. etc.  After, I walked from Brooklyn to the Upper East Side, crossing the Williamsburg Bridge, feeling the pains of a compressed bladder yet somehow deciding not to stop to relieve myself until the level of discomfort was quite high.  I ended up running into Grand Central, doing my business there, and later found myself at Jones Wood Foundry, a British-style pub which is one of the best bars in New York I have ever been to.  Adventure, my friends, adventure.

Williamsburg Pizza
Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Jones Wood Foundry
Upper East Side, New York

A Farewell to Tacos

In the gray coldness of an early November day, he ascended from out of the station and walked.  He walked east to meet a friend at Mexicocina, of which he had read and of which he had wanted to go, hearing it was good.

Walking not as far as he thought he needed, he arrived, but his friend was not there and so he stood waiting, the sounds of hip hop beats filling the cold, metallic air.  A man, plump and with red cheeks, smoked cigarettes and said "today is a fine day for tacos."

He waited and then received a message sent through text.  "I will be 20 minutes late" the message read.  He leaned against a parking meter and waited.

Another message through text came.  "The trains are not running properly I will be 40 minutes late."

He looked into the sky and its vastness and felt very cold inside, colder than the November cold. 

Then, sometime later, a new message: "I am here - where are you?"

He looked but he could not see his friend.  Then, his cellular rang, and it was his friend.

"I am here," the friend said. "Where are you?"

"I am also here," he said.

"Are you not at 800 East 149th Street" the friend asked.

And then he realized he was not there but at 444 East 149th Street.

"You must come to 800," his friend continued.  "I will be waiting."

And so he walked, thinking how funny that he and his friend went to separate locations. When he arrived, his friend, smiling, greeted him.

"What funny luck" the friend said.

"Yes."

"We each went to separate locations.  But this is the right location.  This is the one mentioned in the article of the newspaper you sent me."

"Yes."

They went in and it was warm and there were many purples and blues and greens on the walls, and it smelled of toasted masa, and a family ate tacos, and they sat in a vacant corner. It was very warm and toasty inside.  A waitress, a young girl, with raven eyes and hair of darkness, came.

"I will have a Mexican coke," he said.

The girl smiled.

"Water" the friend said. 

 When she returned, she took their order.

"We will have steak with peppers, and a quesadilla with fungus, and tacos, ones with chorizo and ones with pork."

"Si," she said.  "Yes."

She smiled at the one with Mexican coke and left.

"I think she likes you," said the friend.

"Who? Me? Oh.  No, I do not think so." 

But she was beautiful and it was true, she smiled at him still, from across the room.  And then the hate in his friend's eyes swelled and he could see it.  The girl returned with the food, which was flavorful, and he soaked up the sauce with tortillas and said it was very good. 

"I hate you, it is true," the friend said.  "For she loves you, and I love her, and she does not love me."

"No," he said. "Oh.  Well.  No."

And then a cry filled the room, and they looked, and a piece of the ceiling had caved in and crushed the girl, and she was dead, her dark eyes looking up. 

The two friends left and walked back into the coldness, the one who had been loved, the one who had loved, and walked briskly back to the train.

Mexicocina
*800* East 149th Street, the Bronx
(the 444 East 149th location, spelled Mexicozina, with a "z," serves tacos only)