Are you ready to have lunch with me and writer/musician Sarah Pinsker? Because the first episode of Eating the Fantastic is now live!

If you want more details about what the Eating the Fantastic podcast is all about, check out my earlier post.

But if you’re a TL;DR type of podcast listener, then simply click play below and join Sarah and me for lunch at Baltimore’s Family Meal.

I hope to eventually get Eating the Fantastic into the iTunes store so you’ll be able to listen on the go, but until then, I think you should still find the episodes enjoyable enough to listen to here.

UPDATE: Eating the Fantastic has been accepted and added to the iTunes store. You can now check it out and subscribe here!

And if you’d like see what the two of us were putting in our mouths on Sunday rather than just being teased by our descriptions (and quite audible groans), check out the photos below. (more…)

As I announced Monday, I’ll shortly be launching a podcast titled Eating the Fantastic. Only two things stand in the way of posting the first episode, which I hope to do before the end of the week—deciding whether or not fair use allows me to include a seconds-long food-related audio snippet from a movie—and settling on the iTunes-appropriate image which best represents the show.

I’m working on unraveling the mysteries of fair use to better understand the former, but as for the latter—I previously shared two possibilities and asked for your opinion.

But this morning, when I posted a photo to celebrate Pancake Day from my visit to Portland’s Stepping Stone Cafe, I realized I had far more choices than just those two.

If you have a moment, I’d appreciate it if you checked out the other images below, which I haven’t yet mocked up, and let me know if you think any of them would be a better fit.

Thanks! (more…)

Over on Twitter and Facebook, I’ve been teasing a SEKRIT PROJEKT which I would only unveil once I was 100% sure I was going to proceed.

And after having had lunch with Sarah Pinsker this afternoon, I have my answer—I am going to proceed!

“What,” you may be thinking, “could lunch with Sarah Pinsker possibly have to do with a sekrit projekt?” (more…)

I love old timey menus—such as the one I shared with you several years back which showed the fare available at the Revere House on May 18, 1851. But no menu from yesteryear is so personally important as the one describing a meal served in the Temple Auditorium Catering Hall at 251 Rochester Avenue, Brooklyn, New York on January 24, 1954.

The reason this meal matters so much to me is because without it, I wouldn’t exist!

The menu below records what was served at a reception and dinner following the wedding of my parents, Barney and Toni Edelman, 62 years ago this month. I discovered this document mixed in with my mother’s letters and photos after she died on December 30. Until then, I had no idea it even existed.

My favorite part of the meal? That the roast turkey wasn’t served with just the usual sides of cranberry sauce plus carrots and peas, but with stuffed derma as well.

Any meal featuring stuffed derma is my kind of meal … whether or not it leads to my eventual birth.

I wish I could have been there. But, of course, I wasn’t to show up for another 14 months.

I’ll be heading over to the Writers Group from Hell holiday party later this afternoon, to which even former members like me are invited, and since it’s a potluck, that meant I spent the last two days baking.

After flipping through my cookbooks in search of something new—wouldn’t want to bore my friends, after all—I settled on one recipe each from Paul Fehribach’s The Big Jones Cookbook and Bryan Voltaggio’s Home.

I’d already made two previous Fehribach dishes—Chicken with Dumplings and a Jelly Roll Cake—and one from Voltaggio—Blueberry Cake with Peanut Streusel. This time I decided to attempt Cheese Straws by the former and Lemon Cookies by the latter.

On Friday, I started with the Cheese Straws, because Fehribach indicated they’d improve with age, so serving them 48 hours later would be no problem.

I began with 10 ounces of sharp cheddar cheese and two ounces of blue cheese along with 1-3/4 cups of flour, so these cheese straws were sure to be … cheesy!

One thing they didn’t turn out be, however … was straws. (more…)

I’ve been lucky enough to get to Next—the Chicago restaurant which reinvents itself three times per year—for six of their menus—Sicily, Kyoto, The Hunt, Vegan (twice!), Bocuse d’Or and, most recently, Tapas.

With SFWA’s Nebula Awards weekend once more returning to Chicago, I’ve been looking forward to Next’s announcement of its 2016 plans. And now that, minutes ago, they’ve gone public with their three latest offerings, I know what I’ll be having for dinner with several of you.

So here’s what’s in store— (more…)

While I was at the World Fantasy Convention in Saratoga Springs, I was asked by dozens of my friends what awesome dining plans I had that weekend, for they know I always do make such plans, taking great care not to waste a meal when traveling. What I told them is what I already told you here —that the peak culinary experience of my trip wouldn’t be at the con, but after, at the eponymous Damon Baehrel.

What makes Damon Baehrel so special is not just its amazing food, but also its close relationship with a specific plot of land, a relationship which I don’t believe is replicated anywhere else in the world, as these words taken from the restaurant’s site prove.

In addition to the cultivated and native ingredients from our Sagecrest Native and Organic Gardens and property, all of the cheeses, cured meats, flours, vinegars, pressed oils, breads and butters (including cow, goat and sheep varieties) are hand prepared by Damon. Chef/Grower Damon partnered with a nearby organic farm long ago to raise these and other livestock, and whole animals have been utilized for the charcuterie and meat courses since day one. East coast seafood is personally selected by Damon for the popular seafood and vegetable courses. Damon also make all of the so-called “pantry” ingredients…including Fresh pressed Grapeseed oil, Sunflower oil, Nut oils. Flours: including Cranberry Bean Flour, Fava Bean Flour, Acorn & Hickory Nut Flour, Spruce & Pine Flour. (just to name a few) as well as over 60 Homemade Vinegars. Hundreds of powders & flours he creates to highlight his original Cuisine, Partridge Berry, Wild Fiddlehead Ostrich Fern, Smoked Cedar Berry, Wild Sorrel, Gem Studded Puffball Mushroom, Dandelion Root, Hickory Bark, etc. are just a few of the many ever changing tastes you will get to experience.

Now that I’ve experienced what turned out to be a seven-hour meal there, I’m being asked, “Well … ?”

And words fail me. Because in trying to explain what it’s like to have the privilege (and yes, that’s what it felt like, a privilege) of eating what Baehrel has dubbed “Native Harvest” cuisine, I feel as if I’m being tasked to describe the indescribable. I’ve been tossing out adjectives, which really explain nothing, and have been tempted to resort to one of the worst cliches of all—”You had to be there.” Which, while for the most part true, is tremendously unsatisfying for both of us.

So let me try to avoid that “You had to be there” cop-out and take you along on my journey as best I can.

It all began on January 7, 2014, when I was reminded by this Eater post that Damon Baehrel, located in Earlton, New York, was within striking distance of the World Fantasy Convention to be held the following year in Saratoga Springs. So on January 17, I shot off an email and hoped for a miracle.

Why would it be considered a miracle to get a reservation at a restaurant more than 22 months before the desired date? Because at the time I began my quest, there was a five-year backlog in place, and on April 1 of that year, just a few months later, Damon Baehrel stopped taking any new requests entirely, as there were already 100,000 reservation requests from 67 countries. Keep in mind that’s table requests, not just the number of diners, and that’s for a restaurant which only handles approximately 12-14 guests per seating, five days each week.

By May of 2015, I was informed that number had increased to 200,000 table requests from more than 80 countries, and with that increase, my hopes diminished. But (to make a long story short) eventually, miraculously, Chef Baehrel was willing to rearrange his schedule and open his restaurant for us the Monday after World Fantasy, on a day when he would normally be closed, a fact which I learned just two weeks prior to our meal.

And so, at around 3:40 p.m. on November 9, I pulled up to the locked gate at the mouth of the drive, filled with anticipation. And some justifiable fear as well. For how could anything possibly live up to that kind of hype?

(Spoiler alert: This anything did.) (more…)

Last night, my local Alamo Drafthouse hosted a Dr. Phibes Feast, with an appearance by Vincent Price’s daughter Victoria and a five-course dinner prepared from recipes out of the 50th anniversary edition of Vincent and Mary Price’s cookbook A Treasury of Great Recipes. From the moment I learned of the event, I knew I’d have to be there. After all, if you created a Venn diagram consisting of Food and the Fantastic, for me those two circles would surely come close to a complete overlap.

Check out the announced menu above, lacking only the alcoholic pairings accompanying each course, which as those who know me already know, I eschewed. (more…)

I’ve been teasing you for months about my seemingly impossible quest to dine during this year’s World Fantasy Convention at a particular restaurant, one which I’ve avoided mentioning by name so as not to jinx my efforts. I first reached out to the restaurant on January 17, 2014—yes, 21 months ago, and even then I worried that wasn’t enough lead time—as soon as I realized Earlton, New York was only an hour away from Saratoga Springs.

What’s in Earlton? I received word a few hours ago from an extremely helpful and patient reservations manager that I was able to get a table for six the day after the con ends, so now it can be told—next month I’ll have the privilege of paying a visit to a place Eater called “what might possibly be one of the toughest reservations to get in the world”—Damon Baehrel. Some have waited as long as five years for a table, and as the restaurant site reveals, they’re so backlogged they’ve decided to no longer accept new reservation requests.

Since April 1, 2014 Damon has given me the OK to take a break from accepting NEW reservation requests for an extended period in order to process/organize the huge influx that came in by that date. Recent National/International media coverage has resulted in us being completely inundated and overwhelmed with requests from around the world. As we will not be processing any new requests for the time being, we will not be keeping your contact info/reservation request details on file if you do send one. Please check back here every few months as we will post here when we will begin accepting new requests again.

That day has not yet come. (more…)

With my wife’s attendance at the New Jersey Romance Writers annual conference acting as the catalyst, she and I took an extended weekend trip that led us (but mostly me) into Manhattan, Brooklyn, and out onto Long Island for get-togethers with friends seen far too infrequently. And those reunions (of course) involved food.

Here’s what we ate and where we ate it along our journey.

Hometown Bar-B-Que

The first thing to pass our lips once we reached New York was BBQ from Hometown (which I first visited back in July), with a beef rib so amazing it remains one of my favorite bites of the year. New for me this time around was its pastrami bacon, which was sold out last visit. I could eat that all day. (more…)