Keira and the Clams

Last night, A. rented a movie I had seen earlier but enjoyed watching again: Pirates of the Caribbean, The Curse of the Black Pearl. Now when I wasn't watching Keira Knightley's every wonderful move, I was reminiscing about my trip last May to New York City where I had a great time hanging out at the Black Pearl Restaurant and meeting co-owner David Leonard.

I LOVE the Black Pearl. I mean, come on: the freshest seafood combined with a great atmosphere, cool bar, long martini and beer list...and cool owners who hang out at the bar late at night. Even now the menu makes my mouth water: Maine lobster pot pie, lobster rolls, Portsmouth seafood chowder, Ipswich fried clams, a whole lot of different types of steamed mussels...and of course, and AWESOME oyster menu.

Let's just say that wheels are in motion regarding my next (ad)venture to New York City, and one of my first stops will be the Black Pearl.

Black Pearl Restaurant

37 West 26th Street

New York, NY 10010

P.S. Hmmm...and I wonder if Keira likes seafood?

Holiday Gift Ideas: Part 3

The countdown continues.... In my posts of Dec 12 and Dec 14, I've given you Xmas gift ideas ranging from vintage cool coasters from Virgins, Saints, and Sinners to tuffles and other gourmet goodies at EnjoyFoieGras.com. So what's the next best thing to giving great food and wine gifts? Giving books about food and wine. Here are some suggestions. And if you want to help support Every Meal A Feast, you can conveniently access Amazon.com through the "Search Amazon.com" feature on the right-hand side of this blog. Enjoy!

American Food Writing

Chocolate Obession

The Tenth Muse

My Life in France

Bruce Aidells's Complete Book of Pork

Kitchen Confidential

My Food Fantasy

O.K., I’ve shared with Frequent Readers of This Blog (FROTB) a food confession, I introduced you to the Meat Monkey, and I’ve gone on and on about the Land Lobster. Now it’s time to take this one step further: I want to share a Food Fantasy.

And no, my food fantasy does not have to do with celebrity wonder chef Giada De Laurentiis and tomato sauce.

(No, you see, my fantasy about Giada goes like this. She makes me one of her special gourmet breakfasts, and serves it to me in bed. And because my hands are bandaged from some sort of non-lethal accident, she has to feed me the breakfast. And then afterwards, again because my hands are bandaged, she—wait! Whoa. Sorry about that—I started to get a little carried away!)

My food fantasy is this: I want to have in my backyard one of those big old wood-burning pizza/bread ovens. Then I could make really cool wood-fired pizzas and roasted veggies and awesome breads, and invite all my cool friends over and have great backyard parties drinking awesome Napa Valley or Sonoma County wine and playing bocce ball and so on and so on. Wouldn’t that be cool? You know, crank up the oven to 900 degrees or so and just go at it.

Here’s what I want:


Here’s what I have:


I even have the perfect spot in my backyard. You see, we had this old gazebo which began to rot away. So I knocked the darn thing down! All I need to do is knock out the deck and presto!—wood-fire oven spot.

Gazebo, eight minutes later (well, maybe 10-12 minutes later):

So what do you think? The ovens only cost about $5-$8K… plus delivery… and custom installation… and of course the cooking classes… and you need a couple-three cords of wood. I mean, that’s not a lot, is it?

Let me know what you think.

And stay tuned for my next post, when I talk about the wood-fire oven class I recently attended put on by Andrea Mugaini whose company re-established wood-fired ovens in the U.S.