04.05.08

Tuesday With Maury

Posted in 1. The Story, 6. Reviews at 8:48 pm by Chef Matt

I know that the main reason that most of you read this blog is for the food-related content and how the story of my career into the culinary world is continuing to evolve day by day. And I promise that eventually this post will get to that interesting stuff. In fact, if you want to skip this main story, feel free to use this handy jump link to skip straight to the food stuff.

How can you not trust a face like that?

As I have mentioned several times before here and there in this blog, my guilty TV pleasure is watching The Maury Show. Like a train wreck in Darwin’s wading pool, I just can’t take my eyes off of watching that moment when a man learns that he is now going to have to spend the next 18 years of his life raising a kid that until just a few seconds before he was denying. Or the corollary, watching a woman become humiliated since the man she was “one thousand percent sure” turned out not to be the father. It is the lowest of the low form of entertainment in our society, but for some reason I love it so.

For these past few days, I have been up in New York, taking in some sights, hanging out with friends, even attending an art show opening (where I rubbed shoulders – literally – with David Burns (sic - “Byrne” - sorry!) of the Talking Heads) and of course enjoying some great food. (No, this isn’t the part where we get to the food stuff. Be patient.)

But when I knew I was coming up to New York for these other reasons, I was quickly on the phone to the good people who offer tickets for Maury, and I reserved a pair of seats for my friend, Niki, and me. The line began at about 7:00AM, and Maury himself came by and said hi to us all before he was ushered off to make-up. We were led in groups upstairs past “security” which was just a metal detector and some people who patted my pockets. Then we sat in a holding pen for about 20 minutes where they treated us to watching – what else? – today’s episode of Maury, before being ushered into the studio itself.

A pantheon of lights screamed down upon the collective masses assembled for the taping. More lights than I thought existed in the entire country in fact. Perhaps like God’s flashlight pointing down at all of us as if to say, “Why are you watching this?” But it was not too long before we knew why. The crowd was getting more and more psyched as time went by, and soon the stage manager was out there teaching us how to react to different situations on the show.

The Maury audience entering the studio.

“Let me hear you all react to hearing some really surprising news.”

“GASP!” we all replied.

“Now let me see what you think of some cheating boyfriend coming out onto the stage.”

“BOOO!!!” We all yelled while jumping to our feet.

“We are such sheep,” said Niki.

“Baa!” I replied.

Maury himself was really great. At no time did he seem uncomfortable with the masses who were gathered there to see him. He genuinely enjoyed these fans, and took the time to take photos with them and interact with everyone who wanted to say hi. I personally am not the type of person to bother a man at work, so I didn’t rush up there myself, but it was nice to see him be so happy with all those who did.

“You only watch good TV shows.” “True.” BEEP! “That answer was…. false.”

The show they taped was of the “Lie Detector Tests Revealed” variety, and while I’m not going to go into the details before it airs, let’s just say that it was pretty obvious to all of us in the audience that these guys were not being 100% truthful as soon as they opened their mouths.

And we dutifully let them know what we felt about them when they came onto the stage.

I’ll keep my eyes out on YouTube for any clips of this show, and especially if I’m in them so you can see me responding in all my “wind-up monkey” glory. I’m not proud, but damn if it wasn’t fun.

So now for the food. (Thanks for waiting for those of you who read all of this. For those of you who used the jump link, I’ll try to be brief since you obviously have very little time on your hands.)

I made sure to ask for some food recommendations before I headed up to New York, and I wrote down the names of the places that seemed best. I compared those to where I was staying, and I found that a nice French restaurant, Fleur de Sel was only about 10 blocks away from our hotel. So Niki and I headed out to a very nice dinner where she had frog’s legs and I enjoyed seared foie gras (almost as good as mine… ha ha) for a first course, and she had a fabulous veal breast and I a wonderful lamb rack for our second course. Washing it all down with a nice Cote du Rhone, the meal was nothing short of exquisite.

This is yuzu, and it is delicious!

But dessert is where this restaurant really shined. I had a roasted baby pineapple half seasoned with some firey Szechuan peppercorns and accompanied with an ultra-sweet yuzu sorbet. Niki had a delectable carrot cake, and in an apology from them for making us wait so long for our main courses to come out (it wasn’t all that long…) they gave us a free chocolate cake dessert that came with the darkest chocolate ice cream I have ever had the pleasure of tasting. It is also apparently standard practice for them to offer some homemade truffles and other candies for dessert for all customers, so our table was absolutely covered with sugary delights for this final course of our meal.

But wait, there’s more… As we waddled out of the restaurant, happy with all the collective dessert euphoria we had found ourselves immersed in, the maitre d’ handed us a small cake wrapped in plastic as a sort of “consolation dessert” for the evening.

“Is this just in case I need more dessert on my walk home?” I asked. The maitre d’s smile was all that was needed for me to know that I wasn’t the first person to ask this question.

The other food highlight comes at the other end of the culinary spectrum. As many of you know, I am a huge fan of great dives – which is something New York has plenty of – and on this trip I had to try the Venezuelan treat of “arepas” that Niki had been telling me about ever since her last trip to the Big Apple. For our last lunch, we headed over to Caracas to sample these tiny sandwiches.

Small but delicious. This photo is from their website, so this really is what they look like. I highly recommend giving them a shot.

Made fresh to order with a cornmeal exterior and awesome spiced meat interiors, these juicy handfuls are such a step ahead of any quick bite that McDonald’s has to offer. I can’t imagine how the McDonald’s around the street manages to stay in business in fact with such a better option available just a few steps away. But since that might have meant some compromise to the quality of my lunch, I was happy to have this place be a little more of a secret. Well, as much of a secret as it can be considering it recently expanded its business to the space next door to keep up with demand…

All in all, a great trip to New York. Great food, awesome museums, fabulous art show (and art show opening after party – a first for me) and of course, Maury. I had been needing some time away from the restaurant to recharge my batteries for some time now, and I think this trip was a great way to do it.

If only I now wasn’t so darn tired from all this recharging…

Chef Matt

P.S. Please don’t bother to point out how I rant against some TV being terrible, and then turn around and watch Maury. I’m already aware of the conflict there…

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