Happy Birthday Axl Rose ! Hop On The Night Train (re post)

A repost of Night Train in honor of the great Axl Rose’s bday (originally posted April 10, 2005)
Enjoy!
-Simon

Night Train Express +
Brass Monkey +
Alize’ Wine Alcohol +
Menthol Cigs :
= A great night but a horrible day after.

On the way to a friendly game of Texas Hold’em Poker at Martin’s, Jeff and I stopped by a liquor store on Mira Mesa Blvd (San Diego) – just past Black Mountain Road near the Jack in the Box. We were trying to decide on what types of beers to pick up when Jeff spotted the MD 20/20 (Mad Dog) Right next to it were 2 other classics. Night Train Express and Thunderbird.

Basically it went downhill from there.

First all, to really know Night Train Express Alcohol is to listen to the insightful lyrics of Axl Rose of Guns and Roses about this legendary street wine.

. . . Loaded like a freight train
Flyin’ like an aeroplane
Speedin’ like a space brain
One more time tonight

I’m on the nightrain
And I’m lookin’ for some
I’m on the nightrain
So’s I can leave this slum
I’m on the nightrain
And I’m ready to crash an’ burn
Nightrain
Bottoms up
I’m on the nightrain
Fill my cup
I’m on the nightrain

Whoa yeah
I’m on the nightrain
Love that stuff
I’m on the nightrain
An I can never get enough
Ridin’ the nightrain
I guess I
I guess, I guess, I guess I never learn . . .

Priced at $1.99, Night Train Express is powerful wine alcohol made of cheap red wine with toxic sulfites. Don’t let the 17.5% alcohol content fool you, once you drink Night Train Express you’re on a one way express train ride to severe stupidity and stumbling drunkenness. Once you unleash this beast, there’s no going back to sanity or soberness for some time. Yeah Axl, I guess I never learn.

At this fine liquor store establishment were other street wine classics such as Alize’ and Brass Monkey which we were delighted to pickup to accompany the Night Train.

The Lineup

The entertainment line up for the poker party was as follows (I don’t know why the Thunderbird or MD20/20 didn’t make it) – Sorry no Newports for whatever reason.:

The Taste

I would have to say the alize’ tasted the “best” of the three. “Hit Em Up” Tupac! The brass monkey was kind of like sour gatorade and the night train was like a sweetened vinegar with an Everclear like throat numbing aftertaste.
One interesting note about Night Train is that it specifically states on the bottle to Serve very cold . I guess this is to ensure that you don’t taste the vile aftertaste of the cheap wine (it is definitely more “palatable” cold than warm) I would never recommend anyone to drink Night Train at room temperature for sure. Doesn’t it look great next to the Tabasco and Kraft Mayo?

Needless to say I don’t remember much after wards. I played horribly at poker that night, lost everything, and had an epic hangover the next day. There was one kid there named Denver and he showed us all how it was done. Here’s a picture of him killing off a bottle of Brass Monkey. I heard latter on that he was supposed to wake up at 6Am for work the next day but didn’t crawl out till the afternoon.

The Man Denver Killing Off A Bottle of Brass Monkey.

Who’s bringing the Thunderbird, Cisco and MD 20 next week?

Easy RAW Lettuce Wrap Recipe – New Years Health Standard Process Cleanse Diet (Day 18)

It’s Day 18 of 21 on the New Years health Standard Process cleanse diet. We are finally in the final stretch and I can already taste the steak, coffee and pork that I will soon be enjoying. I’m going to especially enjoy the pork ever since my friend Katie tagged me in a photo of roasted suckling pig chicharrón from her trip to Bali. FUCK that was mean! Overall I feel pretty good and I don’t need as much sleep as the first week. I’ve also lost about 3 Kg or 6.6 lbs already even though that wasn’t the goal of this diet cleanse. I think I lost about 8 lbs the last time I did this last Spring.

I could also really use a beer right now. I’m tired of the odd looks I get when ordering glasses of sparkling water and orange juice at bars although staying sober may have helped me last weekend when made a bit of money at a poker tournament.

Easy RAW Lettuce Wraps Recipe
Large swiss chard leaves
Cucumber (sliced)
Carrots (sliced)
Seaweed
Basil leaves
1/2 cup of thinly sliced scallions and cilantro
Fresh alfalfa sprouts
Brown rice (optional)

Avocado Coriander Sauce
1/2 avocado
5 sprigs of coriander
Juice of 1/4 lemon
4 scallions diced
1 tablespoon of olive oil
1 teaspoon coriander seeds
1 small dried red chili (sliced)
Salt, pepper

Mix in a blender.

Take the Swiss chard and pile on the vegetables, top with sauce, wrap and enjoy!

P.S.
R.I.P. JD Salinger.
YOU ARE AWESOME!!
Life can be lousey!

Watermelon Tomato Cucumber Salad + Cauliflower Tabouleh – New Years Health Standard Process Cleanse Diet (Day 9)

It’s now been over a week on the Standard Process cleanse diet and I’m beginning to see the results of the diet. I have a lot more energy, don’t need to eat as much and get great sleep. Adding a few of the RAW recipes from Sarma Melngailis’s Living RAW Food cookbook into the rotation has definitely helped us get over our quickly exhausted excitement of red beet salads, butternut squash and roasted vegetables.

Here’s 2 of our favorites so far:

Watermelon, Heirloom Tomato, Cucumber & Herb Salad
Adapted from Sarma Melngailis’s Living RAW Food cookbook
8 cups of watermelon -cubed
8 cups of heirloom tomatoes – cubed
4 cups of cucumber – cubed
1 small bunch of parsley
1 handful of cilantro leaves, shredded
small bunch of mint leaves
2-3 scallions minced
1 jalepeno or dried chilli pepper
fresh squeezed juice of 2 limes or lemon
1-2 tablespoons of olive oil
sea salt to taste
Toss and enjoy!

Cauliflower Tabouleh
Adapted from Sarma Melngailis’s Living RAW Food cookbook
6 cups cauliflower -diced
3 cups of cucumber – diced
3 cups of parsley – chopped
3 cups of tomatoes – diced
1/2 cup of scallion
1/4 cup of lemon juice
3 tablespoons of olive oil
sea salt and pepper to taste
Toss and enjoy!

Go RAW One Luck Ducky Restaurant – New Years Health Standard Process Cleanse Diet (Day 6)

I got a little frustrated browsing the vegetarian and vegan cookbook section at Strand because most of the books called for a lot of tofu, seitan and pasta which are all not allowed on the diet. Then I came across a book with the skinny blonde chick drinking a fruit shake on the cover. My first impression was this was some trendy diet book and laughed until I opened the book to a page with a recipe for Watermelon, Heirloom Tomato, and Herb salad. Hey this looks awesome and it’s totally in line with the cleanse diet! Next I flipped to a recipe for Avocado Soup with Blood Orange and Mango Salsa which also looked amazing and was also kosher for the diet! I not only bought the book, but we ended up going to her Pure Food and Wine Restaurant on 54 Irving Pl. When we found out they are only open for dinner, we went around the corner to the smaller take out restaurant at E17th Street at Irving Place.

One Lucky Duck RAW Take Out Restaurant
125 1/2 E 17th Street (at Irving Place)
212 – 477 7151

It’s a tiny little shack with 3 small tables, but they serve almost everything out of the book. We ended up getting a seaweed vegetable salad with wakame, carrots, beets and sesame-scallion dressing as well as plate of the spicy Thai lettuce wraps (mango, pea shoot, carrot, savoy cabbage, cashews and tamarind sauce. We weren’t sure if neither sesame nor cashews are allowed for the diet so we tried to pick them out. Otherwise this was a revelation for our Standard Process liver cleanse diet! This book and the restaurant are awesome. Stay tuned for recipes from the book.

Healthy Kale Chips & Salsa – New Years Health Standard Process Cleanse Diet (Day 4)

Ok it’s now day 4 of the 21 day Standard Process New Years Cleanse Diet. I know I just have to get through one week and it will get easier but seriously when you wake up having dreams of bbq ribs and chocolate it’s not easy. Having done this last year, we are a lot more efficient at the diet: we have all the recipes lined up, know where to shop, know how much time to set aside for cooking, cleaning, etc. But I think it’s also not as novel and the recipes aren’t as exciting. We’ve already had Butternut Squash and roasted red beets twice this week, so we really needed something new, novel and just plain good to eat.

Kale Chips and Salsa!
To our surprise we found a recipe for kale chips on the Standard Process website . Well, I guess more to Gisa’s surprise since in Germany Kale is usually eaten with sausages – not as a healthy snack, let alone as chips. Either way, the kale chips are great with a tomato salsa (recipe below) or a guacamole (still waiting for our avocados to ripen).

Kale Chips
1 bunch kale
1 Tbs. olive oil
1 tsp. sea salt
1 tsp. cayenne pepper
Preheat oven to 350. Line a non-insulated cookie sheet with parchment paper. With a knife or kitchen shears carefully remove the leaves from the thick stems and tear into bite-size pieces. Wash and thoroughly dry kale with a salad spinner. Drizzle kale with olive oil and sprinkle with Sea Salt. Bake until the edges brown but are not burnt, 10 to 15 minutes

Salsa
1 cup of heirloom or cherry tomatoes
1/4 of red onion thinly sliced
1 tsp sea salt
1 tsp cilantro
1 tsp basil
sprinkle of lemon juice
1 dried red chili pepper (crushed)
Place all ingredients in a blender and mix for 3-5 mins depending on how chunky or smooth you want your salsa. Add salt / pepper to taste.

The kale chips break easily so my advice is to cut them slightly larger than bite size so it makes it easier to scoop up the salsa. Enjoy!

My New Year’s Diet – Standard Process Liver Cleanse (again) – Day 1

Happy New Year ! How are those resolutions going? For those of you who opted for the traditional New Year’s resolution of health/diet/weight loss, here’s a proven way to achieve those goals with the Standard Process Cleanse diet. As you may recall, I blogged about this last spring when my girlfriend and I first tried out the Standard Process cleanse and this week we are kicking off the year with the same cleanse diet.

The Standard Process Cleanse is essentially a vegan diet + minimal carbs (cup of lentils or brown rice/day) + no alcohol + no caffeine. Yeah it can be frightening to think how you can live without meat and dairy let alone beer and coffee. Anyways, I’m not going to lie – the first week is a scathing bitch. I recommend quitting coffee a few weeks before starting this and eating less and less. I kind of ate more and more (see my last 2 blog posts) so I’m paying for it now. The cleanse lasts for 21 days and on day 11 you can begin to eat fish and chicken. Every day you supplement your meals with protein and fiber tablets. Unlike the master cleanse (lemon juice + syrup/molasses + paprika), you can eat as much vegetables and fruit as you like with the Standard Process Cleanse Diet. Also it’s probably better to do this in the Spring / Summer when you can get seasonal fresh fruit but don’t use that as an excuse because you can always get plenty of frozen fruits. (We did a Costco run on Monday and stocked up our freezer)

A typical day consists of:

Fresh Fruit Shake with protein supplements (Breakfast)
Salad and roasted vegetables (Lunch)
Fresh Fruit (Afternoon Snack)
Roasted Vegetables, Salad, Vegetable Soup (Dinner)
Fresh Fruit Shake (Dessert)

The benefits (realized within a week) include awesome sleep, alertness, and of course weight loss.

Anyways, here we go – I’ll be blogging regularly while on the diet! If you are interested in joining me, email me at eat.at.plateoftheday.com !

Il Porto Wood Burning Oven Pizza Italian Restaurant Brooklyn NY – 93 Plates Food Project

Il Porto Italian Pizzeria
37 Washington Avenue
(between Flushing Ave & Park Ave)
Area: Between Dumbo, Ft Greene and Williamsburg across from the Navy Yard
Brooklyn, NY 11205
(718) 624-0954
www.ilportobrooklyn.com

What’s the best way to get to Brooklyn Navy Yard from the East Village? L to G to 57 bus? Q to Dekalb? I found myself in this predicament yesterday when I was hanging out with Hagan Blount for restaurant #29 of 93 of his 93 plates project. We just finished eating and blogging the Crooked Tree Creperie in the East Village and had to motor down to Il Porto near the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Why? Because there was supposedly a Blogger’s Meetup but when we finally arrived 40 minutes later via the 6 from Astor to Union Square to the L to the G and walking down Washington, there wasn’t a blogger’s soul in sight! I don’t really know who the organizer was but that’s pretty lame to not show up to your own Meetup.

To make the best of a situation that was becoming rapidly ridiculous, we decided to try out a few slices at Il Porto.  Besides a) there isn’t much else in the neighborhood b) we were kind of getting hungry and c) the wood burning oven pizza smelled and looked pretty nice.

We chose a platter that included an eggplant calzone, a slice of a white pizza (just mozzarella), and a personal sized garlic mozzarella pizza. As we started taking out our gear to snap photos of the food, the owner took pause and engaged with us in a light conversation about Hagan’s 93 plates project. I guess the potential publicity that a restaurant gets from 93 food bloggers is quite a draw and before we were finished with our slices, we were offered a slice of his ‘Grandma’ pizza (pictured above). Although it’s a simple combination of sweet tomato sauce, mozzarella, basil and a splash of olive oil, it was our immediate favorite. It’s the most popular selling slice at Il Porto and I can easily see why.

Next, we indulged in a 32oz dry aged steak over a bed of asparagus and green beans along with a pear/pancetta/spinach/gorgonzola salad.  First it’s a little laughable that the other bloggers who bailed on us completely missed out on this amazing food, and second I had intended on going to Peter Luger’s that night but ended up cancelling the reservation after being so stuffed from all this food. The steak at Il Porto isn’t the same cut as the mighty Peter Luger porterhouse so it’s difficult to compare, but overall the dry aged cut had great flavor and it’s a deal at $26.

As I powered through my meal, I asked the owner what type of customer would venture out to the industrial outskirts of the Brooklyn Navy Yard? Through its young 15 month run, he said the majority of the business occurs during the day, when Il Porto is packed with TV/Film crews and cast (including the likes of Sex and The City, and various modeling agencies) from Steiner Studios located across the street  as well as small business employees from the Brooklyn Navy Yard space down the street.  Secondly, Il Porto casts a wide net with their delivery service that covers DUMBO, Ft Green and the outskirts of Williamsburg.  For me, I was pretty happy with the $5 bud light + slice happy hour special (4-7pm), but even more clever in my opinion is the FREE pickup and delivery candlelight dinner service on Thur, Fri and Sat nights at Il Porto. That’s brilliant!

The pizza here is good folks and although we only sampled a small portion of the overall menu, I would recommend making the trek out here to check it out. (Don’t depend on a Blogger Meetup as an excuse to go).

Crooked Tree Creperie East Village – 93 Plates Food Project

Crooked Tree.
110 Saint Marks Place
New York, NY 10009
(212) 533-3299

Fuck Julie and Julia. Ok as a blogger and food lover I love Julia Child and the movie, but for those of you who don’t or can’t cook, try doing this challenge: food blogging a month of continuous meals three times a day. Today I am at the Crooked Tree in the East Village with Hagan Blount of Wandering Foodie on his 28th meal out of 93. (In Sept and August Hagan did 24 restaurants in 24 hours in Boston and DC).

To start the meal, Sim (co-owner and chef) prepared two savory crepes including a Green Tomato, Arugula, and Prosciutto and a Chicken, Goat Cheese and Sun Dried Tomato crepe. I’ve tried different creperies in the city and most make them on the lighter side – here at the Crooked Tree the crepes have more bite, more dough, and chew. (Sim explains that this is a result of his own special batter formula for the crepes that took him months to perfect) This ‘heavier’ crepe goes great with the savory as well as the sweet crepes.

The Green Tomato Arugula comes topped with a poached egg – oozing warm yolk, always a great bonus. For sweet, we tried both the Nutella/Banana/Ice Cream and a flambee’ Chocolate/Strawberry/Grand Marnier crepes. I especially like the Chocolate/Strawberry/Grand Marnier – it’s a classic combination and they do it quite well. For something different and for those of you who can’t decide between savory and sweet like me, try the Chocolate, Almond and Bacon crepe.

As I cleaned off the last bit crepe on my plate, Hagan and I chatted with Sim about the Crooked Tree’s rich history. Like the East Village, the Crooked Tree has seen some major changes over its 11 year history. Just a block away from St Tompkins Square Park, the courtyard of the Crooked Tree in the 90s was once a shady drug dealer’s spot. Today, Sim says that the Crooked Tree has become a different hook up spot – its quiet and intimate interiors make it a popular cozy choice spot for dates. Sim flashes a smile as he adds that the Crooked Tree’s special house-made sangrias, salads and sweet crepes seem to also attract a lot of single women. Good to note people! (Not like the food isn’t already a good enough reason to go).

Next stop on the meal marathon is a food blogger’s meetup at Il Porto in Ft Greene Brooklyn. Honestly, I think just eating and blogging two places in one day is quite a challenge for me. Maybe someday I’ll be in a good condition for eating out at 93 places in a row or even cooking 524 Julia Child recipes in a year. In the meantime just being part of this project and meeting various NY food bloggers will be great inspiration and a great source for more great places to eat. And yes, I will be blogging it one plate at a time. Stay Tuned!

Cafe Tropical – Good Coffee and Great Cookies – Silver Lake Los Angeles CA

2900 W Sunset Blvd
Silver Lake
Los Angeles, CA 90026
(323) 661-8391

On a trip to LA last November, we stopped by Pho Cafe and had awesome Vietnamese food . Afterwards we needed some coffee and headed a block down to Cafe Tropical. On Yelp, everyone is writing raving reviews about their amazing Cuban style coffee which I agree is good but are these reviewers blind?!!! Did they not see the gargantuan sized cookies in the dessert bar? These things are enormous and awesome! The tiramisu and carrot cake are also pretty good by the way. (Yes we ate a lot that night).

Oh by the way check out the random decorations of this place. I’m not talking about the multi-colored paper mache lamps – check out the gloves, hats, and other random articles of clothing that are pinned to the walls and ceiling. One of our friends has a theory that they just post all the unclaimed things that people leave behind (there’s an weekly AA meeting next store) and use it as decoration. Pretty random, but good desserts, great coffee and gigantic cookies! Enjoy!

Pho Cafe Vietnamese Hipster Restaurant Silver Lake Los Angeles, CA

2841 West Sunset Boulevard
Silver Lake
Los Angeles CA 90026
213-413-0888

Over Thanksgiving weekend, we drove up to visit some of Gisa’s friends in the Silver Lake area of LA. While we were out in China, her friends spent a few days at our apt in Brooklyn and talked about some of the places they liked in Williamsburg such as the funky Bagel Store (they loved the French Toast bagels). We proceeded to swap stories about good places to eat in LA and Brooklyn and eventually ended up at Pho Cafe.

I guess being in Silver Lake, I was a little excited to see West Coast hipsters and was happy with the vantage point I got that night at the innermost table of the restaurant. There, you can pretty much get a lengthwise view down the long corridor of tables under the repeating designer lamps of the entire restaurant. But as expected it’s the same shit, different place.

The food however was definitely special. I ordered the #16 Bun Cha Gio Thit Nuong (vermicelli rice noodles with egg rolls, charbroiled lemongrass steak, peanuts and fresh herbs). It was similar to Tu Lan’s #17 in San Francisco but I kind of like Tu Lan’s rolls better. Even more remarkable however was a dish straight out of the appetizer section – #6 (Ban H Xeo Chay – Vietnamese crepe with tofu, mushrooms, bean sprouts, mung beans, served with fresh herbs and rice paper wrap).

You basically roll your own using the rice paper wraps and the stuffing which includes the amazing crispy deep fried crepe. Note: it’s a little tricky with the rice paper, so be sure to start rolling the wraps the second the server puts the dish on the table since the rice paper wraps tend to dry and stick to each other quite quickly. Here’s to the West Side! Sorry, no time to check out so many good places in LA – definitely need to spend more than a few days next time!