Shake Shack, Madison Square Park

This popular burger joint is a rainy day fave for me, if I'm working in the neighborhood. Rainy day = shorter line. The food is good, but not so good that I would stand in line for an hour.

I like the 'shroom burger, a pair of grilled portobellos fused together with an abundance of melted cheese, topped with lettuce and tomato on a fresh, good-quality bun. It's always a bit of a surprise to bite into the crisp and juicy 'shrooms and discover the creamy muenster and sharp cheddar center.

The fries are excellent, they taste as if they've never seen the inside of a freezer. The cheeseburger is good, but not my first choice. I wouldn't stand in line for it.

Even when there's no queue, the Shake Shack isn't fast food -- everything is prepared to order so it can take 15 minutes for your meal to come out.

Eating at the nearby tables or benches in Madison Square Park is remarkably pleasant. Or get the food to go, eat at your desk and risk the envy of everyone else in the office.

Get there early to avoid the wait, or keep an eye on the website's Shack Cam.

Falafel Hut, Montclair, NJ

Went here with a group after hearing Diane Moser play the music of Mary Lou Williams, great stuff.

The Falafel Hut was closing when we got there. But the young man whom the Grumpy Diner once referred to as "the Enigma Machine" has connections in higher places. The restaurant stayed open an extra hour to accommodate us.

We ordered the Hut Big Combo (chicken kabab, beef kabab, shawrma, kofta), the Hut Sampler (hummus, tabouli, falafel, stuffed grape leaves, baba ganoush), and a salad. I have a feeling they may have added a few extra little things, these huge, delicious and varied dishes would have fed an army.

I love the Mediterranean thing, a dozen or more dishes to try, lots of garnishes and endless combinations: hot and crunchy meet cool and smooth on chewy and warm. Yum!

Isle Thai revisited

I've been avoiding this Bleeker Street Thai restaurant for well over a year because of the noise factor, which I reported on a while back.

We were looking for a hang after after a reading by author Kirpal Gordon from his new book, Ghost and Ganga, accompanied by a band led by bari saxophonist Claire Daly.

After one of us stuck a head into to the door to ensure that the music was at a background level, the Isle staff quickly and cheerfully accommodated a reservationless group of 11 people and an upright bass.

The food was very good, the service was better than I remember, the bill was reasonable and the conversation was excellent.

Isle Thai is back on my list.

Musings on paella

I love the idea of paella, but the reality leaves me cold. How can something that involves several of my favorite things (rice! saffron! seafood!) be so blah and uninteresting, kind of a Seafood Helper? It seems like the seafood is usually overcooked, the rice somewhat undercooked and the whole dish rather bland and underspiced.

Maybe I never had well-executed paella. Maybe I had to eat it in its native land, where it's practically the national dish. With my hopes high, I had paella three times in Spain.

The first was part of the menu del dia at a little cafe near the Plaza Mayor, run by a guy named Alberto. Rating: eh. Our friend the Bill-der finished it for me. Overall, the meal was ok, but the most exciting part of dining at Alberto's was when the light in the basement bathroom went out -- it was really, really dark, visions of horror movies danced through my head. I made my way upstairs safely, before a crazed, cleaver-wielding cook punished me for not cleaning my plate.

The second time was at Barajas Airport while waiting for our flight to Bilbao. It was an act of sheer optimism to even consider getting paella at an airport cafeteria. I'd mentally nixed the idea, then said "paella," when I meant to say "albondigas." It was a huge portion and better than in the cafe, but more expensive. It was one of our most expensive meals in Spain, more than Casa Mingo or Cafe Gijon, which ranked way higher in every way. Bill-der finished that paella, too.

Luis, from whom we rented our cozy apartment in Barcelona, recommended eating at Barceloneta, which he credits with serving some of the best paella in the area. We headed over there on our last day in town and had a luxurious, leisurely lunch, with a view of the marina, the steeples of la Sagrada Familia, and most of Barcelona.

We started with tomato bread and a well-prepared calamari appetizer with aioli, accompanied by cava and agua minerale. The Grumpy Diner had grilled butifarra with two kinds of roasted peppers for his main course. This sausage is a mainstay of Catalan cooking, and it's easy to understand why. As soon as you taste it, you can imagine a lot of ways to prepare it.

And I ordered seafood paella with shrimp, clams, scungilli, langoustines and scallops. It was rich, redolent of saffron, but still not an earth-shaking experience. It was probably the best paella I've ever had. Bill-der wasn't there. I cleaned my plate.

But in spite of the luxe ingredients, even this paella felt like a cozy, down-home rice dish, not an elegant special-occasion meal. It's good, but what's the fuss? I feel like a heretic.

Dessert was the showstopper at Barceloneta: in my case, plum ice cream drizzled with armagnac, unbelievably luscious, sweet and smoky, hot and cold, a world of contrasts in every bite. The GD made a divine choice, crispy layers of pastry filled with a rich custard, topped with tiny, sweet, perfect strawberries sprinkled with powdered sugar, in a pool of creamy, delicate sauce.

But back to paella: Chef Jose Andres believes that paella should be cooking on every barbecue grill in America. Maybe it really is an at-home experience. Maybe this summer I can enlist the GD to join my quest to try cooking paella that will make the earth move, or at least do more than shrug.

Iridium, New York

Nobody goes to a jazz club to eat. There's that pesky minimum, which is easy to max out on a cocktail. But for nondrinkers and designated drivers, it can be very hard to order.

At Iridium last night, literally nothing on the menu appealed. My companion wanted triple chocolate cake and I advised him to make it a la mode, thus fulfilling both of our $10 minimums. However, the waitress told us food from the regular menu wasn't available, we could only order from the "late night" menu. Is there anywhere in this world where 7:30 is considered late night? Not even Disney World, says the Grumpy Diner.

We decided to split a burger, violating my rules about eating underground and eating ground meat, but so what. It arrived well after the music started, and rated an "eh," at best. It put the meat in mediocre, to steal a phrase from my pal Doc Habib, the Egyptologist from the Institute.

So during a sublime solo by pianist George Cables (is he capable of any other kind?), a waiter crouched by my companion's side to explain that the burger had been missing some of the promised toppings (no cheese, bacon, whatever). To make up for that lapse, the club wanted to treat us to coffee and dessert. Their peace offering? The chocolate cake that was the only thing we were interested in ordering in the first place!

The previous night, my friend who from this moment onward will be referred to here as "Bananas Foster," ordered the dessert of that name. She described it as a few hunks of battered, deep-fried bananas that brought to mind a plateful of deep-fried testicles. The dish had some tasty garnishes, which she enjoyed. "I ate everything but the testicles," Bananas Foster reported. She sent those wrinkled bits back to the kitchen practically intact.

Regardless of the vagaries of the kitchen and the waitstaff, we got what we came for: The Charles Tolliver band was slammin', and how could it not be with those great eccentric charts and soloists like Cables, Billy Harper, the mighty Bill Saxton, and my ol' fave Howard Johnson!

Ordering-wise, the smart move is probably to stick to water and just pay the minimum. Keep the focus on the music and skip the nonsense.

Dateline: Bilbao

I could have used two days in Bilbao, and I would have happily spent one of them without budging from our room in the Silken Gran Hotel Domine. We had a view of the Guggenheim from every part of the sleek, simply appointed room, including from the enormous bathtub. Between the beckoning bathtub and the amazing view, I didn't want to shut my eyes. I slept like Lazarus nevertheless.

We ordered coffee and hot chocolate as soon as we got up, and I spent at least a couple of hours just staring out the window. The strong coffee arrived with a pitcher of warm milk, for DIY cafe con leche. I blended it with the thick, rich, bittersweet chocolate, and gazed out the window. I could barely tear myself away from the view to write my morning pages.

Some of the lines of the titanium-sheathed roofscape mimic the curves in the roads swooping around the hills beyond the museum.





An outcropping of the facade is my favorite color, a shade of cobalt I call "Egyptian laundry detergent blue." Workers -- are they curators or gardeners? -- were reflowering Jeff Koons' terrier.









The museum interior has vaulting, arching shapes, catwalks and stairways and ramps that brought to mind Wright's Guggenheim in New York.








I was more interested in the architecture than in the collections, but I was attracted to the Serras as never before. Entering the curving, embracing structures was like riding a horse into a canyon, not sure what you're going to find inside, a feeling of anticipation with a touch of wariness. The colors of the metal were amazing. There was a lot to see in the discolorations and striations, whole stories told by huge pieces of dull steel.

But what did we eat? The guidebooks, which we considered totally off the mark as to what there is to see and do in Bilbao, all strongly recommended the museum cafe. The pasta salad we had there was not just the worst meal we had in Spain, it was the worst meal we've had in memory: Several pieces of pasta, ham, cheese and eggs decorating a bowl of slimy greens. Two of us shared the salad and didn't come close to finishing it. Gross.


After we checked into our hotel the night before, we wandered around downtown and went to a couple of tapas places that I enjoyed very much: cheese, olives, tortilla Espanola, bread, pintxos (tasty combinations on toothpicks such as anchovies or sardines with olives, tiny onions, mild chilis and the like). Tapas meals are like what I call a "sneaker dinner": you drop in somewhere, have a drink and something to eat, chat, walk down the street and do it again. Repeat as desired.

We finished our visit to Bilbao with a couple of bocadillos at the absolutely gorgeous Calatrava-designed airport. They were very good. Thin slices of savory jamon serrano and manchego cheese on a light but crusty roll. I could eat that every day. Wait, I did.

Cafe Gijon, Madrid

We built up an appetite spending the morning wandering around Parque Retiro, exploring el Palacio Cristal, its impressive conservatory; enjoying a great cup of cafe con leche near a small lake with a monument to Alfonso XII (el Estanque de Retiro), checking out the Palacio Velazquez, named for its architect, Ricardo Velazquez Bosco; and dodging any number of reed players throughout the park playing the same awful version of "Autumn Leaves." (How could they all be so bad in exactly the same way? Maybe it's a union thing or a mafia thing.)


Walked through the Salamanca district,

window shopped for shoes on Calle de Agusto Figuroa, discussed lunch options and ended up at
Cafe Gijon.

The cafe, which has been around since 1888, has a nice, warm atmosphere. I think I would eat here a lot if I lived in Madrid. It's on the Paseo del Recoletos, near the Plaza Cibeles. Dozens of open-stall book sellers have set up shop along the tree-lined paseo, I like the atmosphere even if I can't read any of the Spanish-texted tomes.


We ordered from the menu del dia, a fixed-price, multi-course meal that restaurants in Spain seem to be required to offer at midday. Waiters seem to automatically bring the ala carte menu to the table, but will provide the menu del dia if you ask for it. Also known as "la comida," the menu del dia is often posted on a chalkboard outside restaurants and usually costs between 8 and 15 Euros for three courses, bread and a beverage.

Our first-course choices on this chilly Monday included smoky pimenton-seasoned gazpacho and roasted potatoes stuffed with rich bonita in a lovely, homey, golden sauce with subtle touches of saffron and curry. The soup was very good, but the potato dish was divine.

My main course consisted of two big pieces of flaky white fish in a saffron-scented sauce with mussels, shrimp and tiny clams. My companion had entrecot (a boneless rib steak), grilled medium with a side of grilled eggplant and fries. Multiple thumbs up. Mineral water, a flask of mild red wine and a basket of excellent crusty bread were included.

We finished the meal with quartered fresh pineapple, a nice balance to the previous rich courses. It was one of the best meals we had in Spain and felt like a real bargain at 12 Euros, service included.

I've already tried to replicate the potato dish at home, scooping out the center of raw Yukon gold potatoes, and filling them with a light stuffing of bonito, paquillo peppers, onion and parsley. I clustered the potatoes in a baking dish, added an inch or two of stock and baked them in the oven for an hour or so. When they were tender I seasoned the stock and thickened it a bit. Very nice.