07/12/13 10:00am
Matt Gelfand and Tyson Ho prepared Eastern North Carolina BBQ.

Matt Gelfand and Tyson Ho prepared Eastern North Carolina BBQ.

Last night Edible Queens celebrated its relaunch with Summerbeat in Sunnyside Gardens Park. The event’s theme “Eat meat, drink beer,” echoed that of the magazine’s summer issue, which includes some great articles about local butchers and brewers as well as my new column, At the Table. It was a very special evening on many levels. For one thing summer has always meant cookouts. Over the years the cookouts in my life have grown in scale from backyard grilling to the smoking of hogs, but the aroma of roasting meat in summer remains as welcome to me as the sight of the first fireflies of July. (more…)

06/06/13 10:13am

Uncle John’s hot links are revelatory.

I’ve always been a big fan of the gado gado gals at Masjid Al-Hikmah’s Indonesian food bazaar. Now thanks to Real Cheap Eats I know that they also make a spicier version called pecel.”

“The more we show faith, the better the barbecue has the potential to become,” Max Falkowitz writes in a mixed yet laudatory review of John Brown Smokehouse spinoff Alchemy,Texas, which due its location in the back of old man bar Legends, is “more deserving of the title ‘barbecue joint’ than anywhere in NYC.”
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05/01/13 12:21pm
Meat maven Josh Ozersky and pitmaster Robbie Richter parade a barbecued ewe.

Meat maven Josh Ozersky and pitmaster Robbie Richter parade a barbecued ewe.

PLEASE NOTE THIS RESTAURANT IS CLOSED

I’ve just about recovered from what I’ve taken to calling ‘Mini-Meatopia.’ For that’s exactly what Monday’s pop-up at Alchemy, Texas BBQ was. Meat maven Josh Ozersky and pitmaster Robbie Richter teamed up on a menu that included everything from short rib to a grass-fed Vermont ewe, all cooked in Alchemy’s gigantic smoker. It was the first of hopefully many pop-ups. It was a very special night for barbecue and Jackson Heights with a globe-trotting menu that spanned from Jamaica to Uzbekistan.

First up: bulgogi tacos,with gojuchang aioli.

First up: bulgogi tacos,with gojuchang aioli.

For the past few years Richter has been moving away from American barbecue and experimenting with Asian flavors, notably at Fatty Cue and the upcoming project Roadhouse L.A. with the Umami Burger crew. So it’s not surprising that the evening’s meaty offerings started with bulgogi short rib tacos. They were served with kimchi, and a zippy aioli made from the Korean fermented bean and chili paste, gochujang. My one complaint was the flour tortillas. That did not stop me from eating two tacos, though. (more…)