3:10 to Yuba
Welcome to Gourmet magazine, an independently owned digital food magazine that’s not affiliated with the Gourmet magazines of yore. Our Tuesday editions are where we feature great writing about food. Thursday is for recipes.
IN THIS ISSUE: A matter of max headroom, a giveaway, and an old restaurant featured in a new magazine.
Appetizers
Coffee Conundrum
I am a black coffee drinker. And every time I order one to-go at a café, I am met with a friendly “Room for milk?” Here’s the problem. I do not want a full inch of headspace in the cup for dairy. But I also don’t want said cup filled to the point that the hot liquid inevitably sloshes out of the sip hole and around the lid seams before I’ve made it to the door. What’s a Joe to do? I’ve tried saying something to the effect of, “Okay, well, no, I don’t want room for milk, but can you just not fill it all the way up? Like, can you leave me ⅓ or ½ an inch of head space in that cup just for safety’s sake?” But this is usually met with a confused stare and the ire of the person waiting behind me in line. What’s the best way to make this less complicated? Any baristas in the house? Hit the tip line! —A.B.S.
(Editor’s note: FILL MY COFFEE AS FAR AS IT CAN GO, SECOND DEGREE BURNS BE DAMNED —C.G.W.)
(Further editor’s note: FILL ’ER UP, I WANT IT TO SPILL OVER MY KNUCKLES —N.S.)
(Really extra editor’s note: ICED ONLY, YOU FREAKS: YOU’LL NEVER HAVE THIS PROBLEM!! —A.T.)
You Got Serviette’d
We hosted a few dozen of our readers from our Epicurean, Super-goûteur, and Communard tiers at International Bar in the East Village last Thursday for a delightful evening of drinks, minestrone, pain de campagne, and an entire 87-pound wheel of Parmigiano-Reggiano. We broke the cheese into chunks for nibbling, as well as fat wedges that we encouraged our guests to take home wrapped in commemorative hankies that Alex, his partner Sharanya, and I screenprinted by hand. A few of them went unclaimed at the end of the night, and we’d love to mail them out (no Parm included, sadly) to the first twelve readers who fill out this form. Stay tuned for suggestions on how to use your hanky in Thursday’s newsletter. —N.S.
Paris, Taix-as
Brand-new Los Angeles news enterprise L.A. Material reports an art heist at Taix, Echo Park’s iconic French restaurant that’s set to close this coming weekend. It’s “not quite the Louvre,” but nevertheless a sticky-fingered diner pinched a 1984 print made by Gary Eberle, “the Godfather of modern winemaking in Paso Robles.” (Don’t worry, the tale has a happy ending.) Sunday is the last day to dine at the restaurant or drink at the bar before it shutters. A new mixed-use development is going up in its place, though Taix will allegedly reopen on the ground floor in 2029. —A.T.
3:10 to Yuba
By Nozlee Samadzadeh
Photographs by Gregory Gentert
Brooks Headley is spending time and money flying food to Phoenix. He doesn’t really know why.
Brooks Headley needs to get 2,000 frozen French fries, five quarts of cooked chickpeas, and just shy of 200 Kaiser rolls from the East Village to Phoenix, packed in dry ice that the FAA defines as a “hazardous material,” for a reason that he cannot quite articulate. The purpose is simple: Brooks, the owner of the cultishly beloved East Village vegetarian restaurant Superiority Burger, agreed to do a one-night pop-up at Bad Jimmy’s, a smashburger spot in Phoenix. But when I ask why he is doing this, his immediate answer is “I don’t know.” He sounds doubtful about whether that’s even right.
Since it opened in its original itty-bitty location on East 9th Street in 2015 (and now at its larger space around the corner that used to be the Odessa Diner), Superiority Burger has become known for doing whatever the hell it—or Brooks—feels like doing. During a recent blizzard, it decided to be a pizza shop; its specials are often just lists of the ingredients Brooks found at the farmers market (an Instagram post from last summer sings of “Tomatoes and peppers and fig leaves and cucumbers and corn and okra and grapes and”). He is generous about hosting and highlighting other chefs’ cooking, recently hosting pop-ups from Oakland’s Lion Dance Cafe and the Filipino chef Gabby Namm. And sometimes Brooks himself does a pop-up.