Cookbook Survivor: Danny Meyer and Michael Romano, Second Helpings From Union Square Cafe
Saturday's Child Works Hard for a Living
Back on formula here: this is a cookbook which is teetering on not surviving as a part of my collection.
The original Union Square Cafe cookbook is one of my favorites of all time as a cookbook and as a token of affectionate memory.
There was an era in fine dining where the quality restaurants were generally very stuffy, at least in the Northeast and the Mid-Atlantic. On our honeymoon in New York City a long time ago, my wife and I went to a very high-end restaurant, essentially our first time dining out like that on our own dime. It was a very snooty place where the waitstaff went out of their way throughout the meal to look down on us, starting with seating us at the worst location in the restaurant, simply because we were in our twenties and didn’t look like we were old money or politically connected.
Union Square Cafe was one of the first places that we can remember eating that definitively broke with that old feeling—it wasn’t fast-casual or whatever they’re calling it now, the menu was sophisticated and ambitious, but it felt relaxed and festive. It quickly became the reigning mood of most restaurants, thank god. Whenever we were in New York, it was one of our favorite places to eat, whether on our own or meeting up with family and friends.
I’ve been an admirer of Danny Meyer’s restaurants ever since. (Though I don’t think Shake Shack is all that great and Blue Smoke always seemed to me to slightly miss the mark.) But his Second Helpings cookbook, unlike the first Union Square-connected book, just has never clicked with me.
Normally when I push a book into this column with a real thought that it might not survive the test, I haven’t used it much. I have sometimes flipped through Second Helpings and just not been grabbed by much, but I have also tried a fair number of the recipes in the book. The best recipes are for vegetable dishes, some of which are now kind of yeah-I-know like “bacon in brussel sprouts” and “horseradish in mashed potatoes”. A lot of the mains in the book either seem kind of boring or they just don’t come out all that well. So this is cookbook that just doesn’t enthuse me and the recipes have actually been disappointing on a few occasions.
Today I’m trying something new from the book—a recipe for monkfish in a dish that would normally feature chicken, a scarpariello, with sausages and peppers. I like monkfish and I think Meyer is right that it notionally could stand up to this preparation pretty well. I’m making a bit of broccoli rabe and some fried cubed potatoes (“Italian fries”, in the book) to go with it.
Though I’d rather have the chicken…