Dare To Be Rare

Perhaps this should belong in the "And I Love Them" blog. However, whenever I pass The Palm Restaurant on 19th Street, I think of what it means to:

DARE TO BE RARE

BY GEORGINA MARRERO

When I was a little girl, we used to drive up Calle Ocho to The Dala Horse, a Swedish smorgasbord restaurant. I remember the groaning buffet table, laden with salads choking in mayonnaise, various pickled items – including corn relish, pickled beets and three-bean salad, Jell-O, pudding, bread—perhaps even bread pudding? You name it, that table was a fantasy come true, for a chubby little seven to nine year old.

After filling my plate several times – much to my mother’s dismay – I was ready for the formal part of the buffet. That is, the separate table where a server in a chef’s hat carved thick pieces of ham off a bone, offered up thin slices of a not overly dry turkey… and, most importantly, piled my plate full of slices of roast beef. Well done, to be exact.

For many years afterward, all I could handle – all I cared to handle – was well done, in whatever incarnation of bovine something or the other that was placed in front of me. Close to thirty years ago, however, I finally saw the light. Or decided to taste the squirm. Call it what you will, I began to ingest consumables that dared to be rare.

It all started at the Japanese restaurant on 119th Street, between Amsterdam and Morningside Drives. Aki, I believe it was called. Not brave enough to eat regular sushi yet, I joyfully slurped away at my udon soups. The thought of eating marinated raw octopus would have turned my stomach. And yet, what was the chief ingredient in that sunomono salad?

What I really loved, however, was the cold sliced yam dessert. Mushy, but no sushi.

A number of years passed. Squishy had become the name of the game. In lean years, it was named, pizza. And, in more flush times, anything that had recently or was perhaps still moving. I had my limits, though: no innards. No sea urchin. No recently decapitated birds.

However, I had learned to love jellyfish. And the Japanese waitress in California knew to place sake and a sashimi platter in front of me… after first presenting me with the steaming fragranced washcloth, of course. And – on the rare occasion when I indulged in a filet mignon at some fancy restaurant or the other – I now knew to order it medium-rare.

Sushi paved the way for fish eggs: both pedestrian, and rarified. But still no sea urchin. Tripe, however, worked its way onto my plate at a local dim sum parlor. Perhaps I’d accidentally ordered a serving’s worth at one of those food stalls in Singapore in the mid-nineties, when I’d ventured forth with trepidation on the one hand, but with an increasingly self-generated curious appetite, on the other? No matter: first base.

And now that I remember it, I’d also tackled mondongo as early as the mid-eighties (but evidently didn’t dare admit it to myself then).

As an adventurous teenager, both here and abroad, I’d wrested with escargots oozing butter and garlic. But they were safe. Infinitely safer than the huitres I tried to inhale on a regular basis, over the years, until a particularly nasty batch of them caught up with me at one of my favorite Colonial haunts. “Don’t eat oysters!” my mother kept warning me. Although she was the inspiration for my wanting to quaff those slimy creatures in the first place, regaling me, as she did, with her memories of consuming plateful after plateful during her heady Parisian student days.

From time to time, I still reverted to pizza. However, the Lebanese restaurant in D.C. made a mean lamb tartare. I’d learned to make my version of a garlicky gigot, rare except at the ends. And I couldn’t resist any carpaccio that walked my way.

In the late nineties, I returned to the fold. The Cuban Fold, that is. Palomilla country. Ask for it medium-rare? An impossible feat, as if you more than sear it, it shrivels into nothing. Hightailing it to Shula’s from time to time, a tender filet awaited me.

And then I made sushi out of a salmon fish head. But that’s another story…

Pan-seared rare tuna began to see more and more of me. That, sashimi and sushi – especially squid and octopus – fiery hot Thai yums of one kind or the other, delicate Pho’s that I still managed to spice up, and the occasional home-cooked veal porkolt. But still no sea urchin…

… Until early March of this year, that is. Whether I found the chef or the appetizer more enticing, I’m still not sure. But I relished my first sea urchin, nestled atop other squigglies, in a seaweed basket, all basking in the glory of really good Sevruga. Second base.

At the end of April, I attended another wine and food tasting extravaganza at The Biltmore. Several months earlier, I’d been bathed in searchlights, a la the Von Trapp Family Singers’ festinate departure from the Salzburg Music Festival’s stage. This time, I was handed a little plastic tray with a curved hole in it, which was supposed to serve as a coaster for an etched and engraved wineglass. Ascending the same stairs that I had graced two months earlier, I found myself back at The Dala Horse. At a Swedish smorgasbord, gone amok.

Booth after booth, containing a myriad of gracious hosts hawking wine after wine, and morsel after morsel, greeted me. Picking carefully, I stayed close to the Pinot Noirs. I began to sample a little avocado this, a little crab that; a little sushi everywhere you turned. Taste this, taste that. Ceviche here, there, and everywhere: ranging from a mushy, mealy glob to bite-sized tidbits designed to perfectly slide down one’s throat. The little plates began to mount up, so I slowed down a bit. Just in time to taste a poor relation of the lofty Petrus. At sixty-nine dollars a bottle, he can’t be too down and out.

And then I spotted Shula’s. No steak, just little appetizers. WHAT? I kept right on walking, except I couldn’t help telling the person who manned the booth that I remembered the original tartan plaid and horn-encrusted splendor of the Miami Lakes Inn and Country Club. Sniffing disdainfully, he informed me he hailed from Shula’s on DA BEECH. Oh, well.

Soberly patting my expanding stomach, I reentered the main tasting area. The BIG room, flanked – at either end – by The Biltmore’s own Palme d’Or, and The Palm. Eyeing little plates piled high with scrumptious-looking slices of perfectly rare roast beef, and fluffy mounds of creamed spinach, I wondered how I’d missed this treat during my first walk-through. I all but ran to line up in front of The Palm’s booth.

The servers must have seen me salivating, for they piled my little plate up high. Just like the servers at The Dala Horse. This time, however, I went for as rare as they – and I – dared. And they gave me a hefty dollop of that spinach, too.

Marching away in my form-fitting Moschino as gleefully as the chubby kid in loose little tops and shorts probably did from that carving table at The Dala Horse, oh so many years ago, I parked myself by a side table to devour my treasure. Actually closing my eyes in delight, it was then that those old images, that had tantalized me upon my arrival, enveloped me in all of their carnivorous glory.

I then wafted across the room to sample the Palme d’Or’s little phyllo-enveloped lamb pastries. Consistency in numbers: a true hallmark of excellence. Talk about greasing each other’s Palm(e)s. Perfectly aligned, I told myself, just like two sentries keeping watch over some prized possession. Not quite at the bursting point, I’d saved a tiny bit of room for one of those little parfait cups I’d eyed people enjoying over the last several hours.

The Biltmore is famous for its Sunday Brunch. Except for crepes suzette at another booth, the hometown hosts were the only ones dishing up plates of fruit, ice cream, and chocolate truffles. Buffet style, of course. And, of course, I had to spill the little dessert dish right back into the serving platter. Disapproving, or not, I was rewarded with another helping. Oh, the joys of being an adult child.

Now I’d really reached the end. However, the little glutton in me couldn’t resist glancing across the room one more time. The Palm had brought me home.

I must have slid through third base, though: no decapitated birds. Yet.

Copyright, 2004 by Georgina Marrero 1417 words All Rights Reserved