Deconstructing Carbone

 Carbone is a popular New York City restaurant. It has branches all over the world and their food has a reputation. Yet is the overly expensive restaurant worth all the hype and money? 

Regular contributor Priya Krishna answered the question in today's New York Times Wednesday Food section. She toured all of them and discerned if they 're worth the good press.The chain is sort of like a Disneyland or another splashy New York eatery of long ago - Mama Leone's. Like MamaLeone's that closed in 1984, Carbone's attracts celebrities like Kim Kardashion and has the cache of expensive saucy dishes.Ms Krishna wanted to examine the mystique behind this chain. People either love it or hate it.s he wanted to know why and went on an American tour of the branches.The restaurant goes for fanfare, presenting diners with salami, bread, cauliflower salad and even a hunk of Parmesan cheese. Yet the food at the New York Carbone is just so so with some dishes, How was the MIami one. It seems only the desserts stood out, including the chilled rainbow cookies that every table receives/ The main meals were horrible / The shrimp was too rubbery and buttery tasting.The linguini vungole was  too oily to eat.

The Dallas Carbone had some bright spots. The crisp top on the lasagna Verde gave way to flavorful pesto and bechamel sauce. Their Negronis were well made Yet it stops there. The veal Parmigian crust, like its' Manhattan counterpart was tasteless. The broccoli was flaccid .The waiters were so schmaltzy that Ms Kirshna and her family has t  leave(after a waiter joked was her father on the cover of GQ) It did appeal to the rich tony types of the city but that was it. The Las Vegas one fared much better due in part to the owner Mario Carbone being in the kitchen. The shrimp cocktail had been upgraded to a lobster one.It was delicious. The sauces tasted homemade , as if they had been simmered on a stove all day .The vonglole was finally briny tasting. The best part it seems was the complimentary hunk of cheese. This Parmesan actually came from Parma and not Wisconsin. It seemed the Las Vegas Carbone was the best and miost authemticto Italian cooking.

Should you go to Carbone/s if one is nearby? If you want expensive so so Italain food ,yes. Keep in  mind that there are better restaurant to eat at in any of these cities.

Souvenir Recipes

One of the best things about vacations is the slew of souvenirs we take home. They can be tee shirts or shells, maybe even jewelry or salt and pepper shakers. Yet the best ones are the food memories, souvenirs perfect for our kitchens. No matter where we go, there's a recipe we're bound to recreate.

Foreign vacations mean foreign foods. It's easy nowadays to recreate dishes from across the globe. Recipes can be easily gotten and translated, thanks to the Web.If you were lucky enough to lounge on Mediterranean beaches, you probably got to lunch on pissaladiere slices or a bowl of pasta vongole .Pissaladiere is relatively easy to make.It's a short crust base topped with a yummy mixture of anchovies , olives and onions spiced with thyme sprigs. Pasta vongole is simply linguini with clams. Again homemade is an easy make. Use fresh clams (none of the canned stuff) and boil them. reserve the juice or broth.It's then cooking chopped clams in them with a little white wine, red pepper flakes and garlic. If you spent July sunning on Mikonis or Karpathos and Kos, then you may be hankering for stuffed grape leaves or dolmades. Fill grape leaves (which can be easily bought at Trader Joe's) with a tasty marriage of arborio rice and pine nuts along with raisins, chopped onions, and mint. You can  add meat, usually ground lamb.

You can still bring back recipes even if you stuck close to home. South Jersey has a variety of fun dishes and boardwalk snacks. Taylor ham, a Boardwalk specialty can be recreated in a variety of dishes.It is good on a soft roll, Atlantic City style, especially when the bread sops up all that melted butter, yet you can also have it as a side with scrambled or sunny side up eggs. Seafood is big  along both of New Jersey and New York coasts. Go to your local fish monger for fresh seafood. You can make an easy dipping sauce using just ketchup and horseradish that's perfect for everything from clams to shrimp. Boardwalk fare can be easily copied. Frozen custard is a treat and can be created on any stove top. It's an egg rich custard that's then poured into an ice cream maker. A fun, spin, popular at many shore ice cream parlors is frozen custard served in a hot waffle boat. The last requires a special machine but you can make fresh  ones with a regular waffle maker.Homemade fudge is a Jersey classic and must have.It's super simple to make, both over a stove top and microwave.Use semisweet chocolate and condensed milk for a Boardwalk must have.

A summer traveled is a summer full of souvenirs. Recreate your tastiest ones in your kitchen. It' s a way of still having the best time all year round.