A Pig-Eat-Pig World
The Cannibal | 113 East 29th St. (Bet. Park & Lexington Aves.) | 212.686.5480 | thecannibalnyc.com |
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LAST TIME I WENT TO Peter Luger's—New York City' quintessential steak house—the girl I was with ordered the chicken. Blasphemy!, I know, but she claimed that she was overwhelmed with the sizes of the beautifully marbled thick cuts of mostly rare beef, with excellently grizzled edges, and wanted something less fatty and less undercooked. At a steak house!
And it has just been the girls, friends of both genders have offered their company for a outing, but then squawk and menu items more adventurous than a burger, which is shame because they have yet to understand that PHUDE is supposed to be an adventure, where in less than a 30 square mile area I can have food from all over the world, and no where else than New York City can make that claim!
So most of my PHUDE outings have been solo endeavors so as to not have someone else wince at the idea of cod milt, or sweetbreads, and bone marrow and snails, even whole baby octopus (many people can't even stomach fried calamari unless they do not include the tendrils). Not only do you need to be adventurous to do PHUDE, but you also need to love to eat. A lot! And you need to want to try as many different dishes per place as possible—easier to do with a partner.
One of the newest trends in a growing few of New York City restaurants are offering a variety of dishes from the many parts of just one animal, namely, the pig! There are even classes that now teach pedestrian food-lovers how to butcher a full pig, salumerias are making their own versions of dried pork meats and sausages, and big name chefs like Michael Chang are offering price fix full roast pig services with a two-day reservations.
And new to Murray Hill is one of these new oink-to-stink places called The Cannibal, from the team that put together the resto, Resto, and named from the nickname of a Belgian cyclist of some note. This is the kind of place that also makes it's own sausages, and offers a slow-roasted pig's head as a staple dinner item. I had been dying to go nuts for a little while now, and when my new friend Eliza offered to join me, not only was she not repelled by the idea of possibly eating sliced pork head, she was convincing eager to do so. So we landed on East 29th, walked through the small and narrow space (that also proudly boasts hundreds of beers from around the world), to a nice long table in the backyard, open to the stellar Manhattan autumn air.
Our game faces ready, we perused the lunch menu while sipping cherry sodas, marveling at the charcuterie of several cured, fresh, and ham ham pork plates, but went with two starter and two sandwiches. Oddly enough, Eliza and I had our eye on the same four dishes; first the starters of porchetta-spiced pork rinds and whipped lardo (rosemaried pork fat) toast.
The pork rinds were already better by having been just fried, so they were still hot, yet crunchy, and aromatically homey with the savory properties of the porchetta seasoning. Whipping the lardo gave it a smoother texture than I've ever had, making for a more pliantly satisfying bite into hearty, toasty country bread. We were big fans of both dishes.
We ordered the sandwiches when we ordered the starters, and the appeared soon afterwards. Again, Eliza and I were eyeing the grilled cheese with bacon and pork belly and the pig's head Cuban, so it was easy to order one of each.
The grilled cheese, gooey with melted cheddar and gruyére, was elevated by thick slabs of bacon and inherently crispy and fatty pork belly. The Cuban, a first for Eliza, was properly pressed to help its internal heat impart the ever-surprisingly agreeable mix of mustard, pickles, and thin slices of tasty, juicy, slight sweet and very aromatic of slow-roasted pork head (I assume—hope—some cheek, but it didn't really matter).
It all made for a spectacular spread, as you can see, and Eliza and I proudly, shamelessly, ate everything! We couldn't stop, making animals of ourselves, swapping sandwich halves, biting into them with abandon, all while dumping the pork rinds out of its paper bag and onto its plate for easier access and crunching into the lardo toast with so little care that it ceased to matter who has been eating which piece.
Yes, we two little piggies had pork, in many fine and exciting ways, leaving not a morsel or crumb on our plates. And we weren't even done. Our waitress, probably sensing our ravenous appetites, easily sold us on two perfectly house-baked peanut butter cookies; they would have been a supremely perfect match for an ice cold glass of milk, but were heavenly on their own (and with the last few sips of cherry soda).
I cannot reiterate enough how much more fun PHUDE is when I get to experience the wide parameters of the New York City food scene with someone who has the same love of all kinds of food that I do. (Must give due props, though, to my girl, Nicole, who not only volunteered for the phaal curry challenge at Brick Lane Curry House, but also won the challenge!) One date once trimmed all the fat out of her pork belly in a pork belly bun; Eliza handily demolished whipped herb-infused fat on toast without blinking an eye, except in response to its flavorful pleasures.
She is even game in me referring to both of us as "pigs" in the context of this post, defending her shameless attitude with all things food-related, and the way we "pigged out" over the stellar lunch we had at The Cannibal. And as she was even finishing the second half of my peanut butter cookie, we started looking forward to our next exciting and adventurous PHUDE trek!
Bun Apple Tea!
.kac.
The Cannibal | 113 East 29th St. (Bet. Park & Lexington Aves.) | 212.686.5480 | thecannibalnyc.com |
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