Having just come from a thoroughly disappointing meat at NY's latest attempt at a clam shack, Ditch Plains, I began to ruminate on how much I love fried clams. With Memorial Day, the official start of the fried clam eating season, just around the corner, here is my absolutely incomplete guide to eating fried clams in the NYC area, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, with a southern Maine spot thrown in for good measure. The descriptions of the clams themselves will be minimal. As I discovered a couple of years ago when I went on a ten clamshack eating adventure with Dave Pastnernack, the chef of Esca, fried clams are either really good (sweet, nutty, crisp and greaselessly fried with no breading... More

I'm exhausted. The night of the Beard Awards I end up hanging out at various after-parties until three in the morning. A couple of things I wanted to mention: The Beard Awards were much more emotionally resonant this year because we dedicated them to New Orleans. The live music was great (for the first time), the recorded music they used to accompany the winners' stroll to the podium was all amazing old New Orleans r and b (think Louis Jordan's Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens), and the food (all from New Orleans chefs) at the reception was real, honest and soulful. I had way too much of Willie Mae Seaton's transcendent fried chicken, and I would have had seconds... More

Fairly often my wife gets fed up with our eating regimen (lots of grilled cheese sandwiches (made with great cheese or sometimes Kraft Deluxe American slices), salads, hot dogs and burgers) and demands that I make her a home-cooked meal. So yesterday I bought a container of roasted vegetables at Fairway, one of my local gourmet stores, to use as a sidedish with the boneless pork roast I was going to make. After liberally salting the meat with kosher salt I browned the outside of the pork roast in a saute pan on top of the stove in some olive oil and a little butter. Put the butter in after the olive oil has heated up or else the butter... More

In yesterday's New York Times there was a funny piece about Jews and Chinese food by Patricia Volk. Best line: There's an e-joke making the rounds: According to the Jewish calendar, the year is 5766. According to the Chinese calendar, it's 4703. That means for 1,063 years, it's 4703. That means for 1,063 years, Jews went without Chinese food. And this line about Chinese food in the 1950's: "Every dish contained so much cornstarch, the ingredients appeared suspended." Growing up Jewish on Long Island in the late fifties, we (just like the Volks), too, went for Chinese food every Sunday (the housekeeper's day off) to China Jade in Hewlett. There were six of us, all big eaters, but my dad... More

Today was not a good food day. I went to visit Roadfood pioneers and great writers Jane and Michael Stern at their house in Connecticut. I brought them a box of schnecken (pecan sticky buns) and a black and white cookie from Greenberg's, a classic New York Jewish bakery that is simply not very good anymore except for the schnecken and the black and white cookies. We had a blast hanging out and swapping writer war stories. When I left, Michael told me I had to go to their latest discovery, Wave Hill, a bakery that made great rustic bread. Michael said it was on the way to my final lunch destination, the new Fairfield location of the seminal New... More