Nick & Choose 5: Man Panel

Published November 8, 2008

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Man Trap
The truth shall set you free

Years ago, a girlfriend gave me a journal. Behind the cover, I taped the only New Yorker cartoon I’ve ever cut out. A couple sits in a restaurant. The man says, “There’s something you need to know about me, Donna. I don’t like people knowing things about me.”

We break up on page seven. I stop writing on 19.

I find it hard to open up. Evidently, I don’t even want future Nick to know his current state of mind. Personal questions just make me feel like an animal in a trap. I’d love the freedom of release. But that’d require chewing my foot off, so I just stall and bleed.

I need to be forced into candor, an opportunity that came courtesy of Laura Warrell, a local writer who runs the Man Panel, an alcohol-fueled interrogation of willing guys by dozens of single ladies. Warrell assured, “These are fantastic, attractive women in their 30s and 40s who just haven’t had luck in relationships.” My immature side pictured cat ladies brandishing glinting sewing needles. My empathetic, nearly-30 side RSVP’d.

Sipping my third IPA, I considered the difference between candor and vulnerability. Before me sat about 40 women, two reporters and a cameraman. I was prepared to be honest, but this was naked, defenseless, “I-was-in-the-pool!” honesty. Luckily, I had five other men in the foxhole. When the first question was lobbed, we all paused, wondering who would jump on the grenade, “What makes you approach a woman?”

Our eyes glazed, and I could almost hear our collective consciences scream, “Don’t say looks!” But to our credit, that truth was acknowledged. The man to my left—who no doubt owned a dog-eared copy of The Game—cited evolutionary biology, which would be his theme for the night. “Who here is sitting hunched with their arms crossed?” he asked. More than a few women raised their hands. “Exactly.” I scooted to my right and watched dozens of shining eyes slowly narrow. I’m no body language expert, but those looks could’ve come with a parental advisory sticker.

As the panel progressed, the discussion—ostensibly for the benefit of the females—became an impetus for self-discovery. I found that my safety net is metaphor. Throughout the night, I turned to lions, amoebas and traffic lights to make my points. “Well, at a bar or something, I consider everyone as a red light. If we lock eyes for a moment, you’ve changed to a yellow, and if we really lock eyes again, I have permission to advance.” I blushed so hard my skin prickled. I don’t know if it was because of the answer or the way I phrased it, but at least I was learning.

But were the women? We men provided simple truths. Why do guys hang out in bars? “Because I don’t have draft beer at my house,” posited a marketing exec. And for the most part, we presented the companionable version of our sex. Whenever our Y-chromosomes threatened to split us apart, the courteous, divorced father of two or the social worker with the godly voice steered us in the right direction.

But what did I offer? Trouble arrived with “What do you think women are looking for?” The suggestion of a sense of humor was met with approval, and my lonely heart soared at the response to my one marketable asset. But when the din died, I realized all I had left to offer was my confusion. A depressing thought when by yourself but oddly comforting in a room full of anxious women.

Collectively our answers were mixed, but with enough beer you could weave them into a lifeline. At the far end of the panel sat my antithesis—a muscled Southern firefighter/boxer/bartender in a mesh hat and tight “wing man” T-shirt. I’m certain that he has stories of eroticism that would make my inner Emily Post choke on her cucumber sandwich. Yet toward the end of the night, he said, “Don’t fool yourselves. We’re all scared as shit.” The women nodded. We nodded. And for a moment, both sexes hovered around the one thing we all recognized as truth.

Featured Feature: Menu Planning

Interesting article on menu psychology in The New York Times today.

I wrote a similar story this September. If you’re interested in menu planning, food costs, how a restaurant gets started or just like Trina’s Starlite Lounge, check it out.

Blueprint Special

Adventures in Reader Response 1: Fetishist?

Posting that Kinoki column reminded me of the oddest letter I’ve received.

Here it is for your reading pleasure:

“Hi Nick,
I really love your column (the pumpkin one that’s out now is most excellent.) While going through some old issues, I came across the one about those foot detox pads. I’m not sure if your feet were used for the photo that accompanied the article, but I was wondering if you’d be willing to answer a slightly random survey question for me. I conducted this survey while in college and still add to it now and again. If you’d be willing to answer it that would be awesome.
So here it goes:
What is your shoe size?
Are your feet ticklish?
If so, where? i/e: soles, arches, under toes, heels, etc.
On a scale of 1-10 (1-least ticklish, 10-extremely ticklish) please rate how  ticklish each spot is.

I know it’s totally random, but I thought it’d be worth a shot asking.

Thanks and keep the great articles coming!”

Partly because I’m naive and partly because I’m always thrilled to get a letter, the creepiness of this correspondence didn’t hit me until I was halfway through writing back.
Then I felt guilty, ’cause who knows? Maybe this guy really did have a kinky thesis project back in school? Who am I to shrink his sample size?

So, writer whose name I withheld, here’s the goods:
Shoe size: One is 13, one is now a peg.
Ticklish: One, definitely. The other, less so.
Where: Left, on the arch. Right, the toes of my ghost limb.
Scale: Left, 5. Peg, 1. Ghost foot, 11.

Happy holidays, my fetishist friend.

Nick & Choose 4: Kinoki Pads

Published Oct. 8, 2008

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Kinoki Dokey
Detoxifying foot pads cleanse you of 20 excess dollars.

I first saw the infomercial for Kinoki pads on a red-eye back from Vegas. After three days of treating my body like a military test subject, I was a quivering vessel of pollutants and pain. I would have clubbed a baby seal with a sack of newborn kittens to feel clean again, and here was the devil in the voice of a cheery spokeswoman extolling the wonders of pads “based on ancient Japanese reflexology” that would ride me of wastes, chemicals and cellulite. Wasn’t really worried about the last one, but I felt the first two in spades. Strapped for cash, the pads went unordered and—with my sputtering hippocampus—were soon forgotten.

The memory resurfaced a few weeks ago when my ex-roomate visited and a friend from Manhattan came to join the ruckus. That Friday we downed IPAs at the Four Winds until close, and Saturday saw a liver blitzkrieg of drinks at Kingston Station, the Hub Pub, Max & Dylans, Silvertone and Lobby. It was a perfect storm of pollution—and the ideal time to see if Kinoki could right our ships.

The Kinoki box ($19.99 at CVS) recommends a two-week cycle with pads on both feet “or other body part” on alternate nights, or on alternate feet every evening. Application is recommended an hour before bedtime, followed by eight to 10 hours of rest, to which my night-owl friend Al remarked, “No crap, if I slept 10 hours a night, I’d feel significantly better regardless.” Undeterred by his cynicism, I stuck a pad to my right hoof and dreamt of being free of thulium, thallium and other elements no doubt responsible for all my life’s failures up to this point.

I’ve got two alarms, and I normally hit the snooze twice on both of them. But that Monday, I was up immediately feeling fairly bushy-tailed. My dupable side attributed this to the once-white pad, now brown and smelling of jerky. My more rational side remained skeptical but began to sway the next day, when my friend Adam e-mailed from his office to say he felt energized as well. This seemed like proof. Time-stamped no less. There are many places one could expect to find Adam at 9 am. His desk isn’t one of them.

Intrigued, I began applying adhesives with reckless abandon—the preferred approach to alternative medicine. I wore two every night. I stuck another on before going to the gym. One evening I even placed pads on my foot and right above my liver. But in the morning, all I had to show was a glowing rectangle of stomach rash. I was expecting my liver to create an inescapable black hole of filth, but the pad remained unsoiled. Something was amiss, so I consulted the Internet. On YouTube, I found a fellow pseudo-scientist with a similar yet converse problem. “I put the pads on my testicles, and the next morning the pads turned black,” wrote scubajenjen. “This would suggest my balls are impure, and they are not!!!” Obviously further testing was needed.

So I spat on ’em. Sure enough, they darkened. Around this time, a friend also directed me to an NPR report that began, “What kind of moron would believe that a toxin-sucking foot pad would really work?” Hey, screw you Sarah Varney of member station KQED. But as she and UC Berkeley scientists discovered, Kinoki is useless; it only takes steam to discolor the pads.

“It’s a scam, man, “Adam concurred later. “One would think after consuming copious adult bevs they would look darker or smell different, but it was the same regardless if you were imbibing or not.” I must agree with my friend and his idiosyncratic diction. Twenty bucks is a lot for a small psychophysical benefit. The smart buy is a case of beer. Even if it’s bad, you’re sure to feel something.

My Buddy Chuck

Check out this essay from my friend Chuck Antin, which appeared in the Nov. 20, 2009 issue of The New York Times.

Nick & Choose 3: Box Wine

Published Sept. 10, 2008

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Boxed In
How merlot can you go?

A friend was having a wine party on her roof deck. An excellent hostess, she waded through the crowd to greet me and offer a drink, perhaps not seeing that I came bearing gifts. Well-mannered, I had a 2006 California cabernet in hand, four bottles worth to be exact, in a box. It’s not the proverbial turd in the punchbowl, but showing up with box wine is like taking your cousin to the prom. In a Firebird.

Trying everything but rubbing my belly and saying, “Mmm, yummy,” I did my best to sell it, but there were few takers. (Although I did get an “It’s f***ing fabulous!” from the drunkest person at the party, shortly before she left.) As one woman explained, the prevailing feeling is, “I just wouldn’t trust it.” Even late into the night, the two best responses were, “It’s not bad,” and a charitable, “Totally decent.”

Around for decades, box wine suffers a reputation for being low market, mostly because, for years, it sucked. Hooch sullying swill’s good name. But now, new, better brands are adopting the packaging. One reason: Boxes are lighter than glass, leading to buzzwords like “carbon footprint.” One bottle of wine shipped from Napa to New York generates twice the emissions of a three-liter box. Then for non-hippies, there are important drinking benefits. Box wine stays fresh for weeks, eliminating the “problem” of having to immediately finish every bottle you open. Plus, boxes don’t break when dropped, which is key after quaffing a few liters of shiraz.

At the moment, the problem really isn’t what’s in the box, but the box itself. Oenophiles are traditionalists, and if you’re going to make changes, you have to hide them. Like sneaking your dog’s medicine in a treat, you’ve got to wrap a plastic cork under the foil. With that in mind, I spread out some cheese and crackers and held a wine tasting, keeping the packaging safely out of view.

The guests were my buddy Adam, an aspiring connoisseur fresh off a trip through southern Italy, and my friend John, who will drink anything. First up was the leftover cabernet from Bota Box ($18.99). When asked for a grade, Adam hemmed and hawed about tannins, while John stepped it up and asked, “With A being Opus One and F being Boone’s Farm?” After the cab was given a chance to breathe, it moved into the low B range, although Adam didn’t try to hide his grimace when saying, “I guess I could order this with dinner.”

Next was a merlot from Black Box ($26.99). “It has a cleaner finish, much smoother,” Adam said, before declaring, “B+, but I’m biased because I don’t like merlot.” (Easy there, Giamatti.) Both Adam and John gave the merlot a restaurant price point of $30-$35, an amount more than triple the three-liter box’s value. As a qualifier, John added, “I’ve paid a lot more for worse wine.”

Buzzing now, the tasting became more of a slugging, which worked out as the last wine was the loser of the night. A chardonnay from Bandit ($12) came in tetra packs—basically adult juice boxes. With our professionalism eroded, I labeled the flat and fruity juice “chick wine,” a term quickly met with concurring nods. Somehow finding a less classy way to summarize, John concluded, “If I was trying to get someone drunk, and I was drinking beer, I’d give them this.”

After the reveal, John took one look at the tetra packs and shouted, “That shit is raunchy”—a heady thought to consider when choosing a wine for your next picnic. Adam defined the spectrum with a bit more grace, saying, “I’m not surprised by the chard and very impressed with the merlot.” Highlighting the Black Box victory, John added, “I just poured two more,” and handed Adam a glass.

Nick & Choose 2: Secret Dinner Club

Published Aug. 13, 2008

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Sneaky Supper
Dinner done “Underground”

“We have had our eye on you,” the letter said. “Due to your history of good taste and bold nature, you have been selected by the conspirators as a potential guest.” Sure, the note wasn’t addressed to me, but my editor could read between the lines. Valued as the guy who tries the offal or polishes off last week’s sushi from the office fridge, I was dispatched to a clandestine dinner presented by “The Underground.”

Secret supper clubs are sprouting up nationwide. The reason for the cloak-and-dagger routine is it’s illegal to charge for food from an uninsured, uninspected kitchen. As we’ve established, I’m not a real germaphobe, and I assumed someone at the party knew the Heimlich, so that just left me to RSVP and agree to the $100 admission fee. Soon after, I received a call informing me of the rendezvous point and dress code—”somewhere between James Bond and rock ‘n’ roll.”

On the assigned day, I walked to the BPL wearing a stylish suit and a concealed Beretta. Using her keen eye for detail, my dining companion, photo editor Katie Noble, spotted our fellow guests: a small huddle dressed for hipster prom. The first person I met introduced himself as “Blade.” I was sure I’d misheard. Clearly this fellow with the pocket-square hadn’t named himself after a deadly weapon. I checked by introducing him to Katie. To my delight, I’d heard right, and as they conversed, I smiled at the auspicious start to the night’s entertainment.

Shuttled out to Newton, we gathered in the backyard of some well-to-dos and mingled over oysters. There were chefs, financiers, bar owners and a couple of young students agonizing over the gravity of their love lives. Thankfully, there was also a bar stocked with enough booze to intoxicate a T-Rex, and it was somewhere between Katie’s second caipirinha and me daring her to climb into the tree house that word got round that our hosts were of the unwitting variety. Seems they’d run off to Asia, and their housesitter had fallen for the chef’s powers of persuasion.

He’s a young guy, and even after 25 straight hours of prep, he exhibited the kind of boundless energy that makes you want to nap. The former sous chef, now a full-time musician, cofounded the Washburn Underground in 2005, because, as he says, “I come up with these ideas, and I can make it happen, so I feel a duty.” It’s an endearing idealism, which miraculously doesn’t make you want to throttle him.

In the dining room, I sat next to an amicable cattle farmer who went to culinary school in Bilbao. Katie sat next to Blade. (Yea!) The six-course meal began with a spring-roll salad and then presented a choice of “Rosas del Diablo” (a roulade of chicken, rasher and capicola) and “Les Ailes de Cieux” (deboned chicken wings stuffed with Dijon-Marsala mascarpone). I went for the wings: Tasty but topped with flakes of flavorless gold, they demonstrated how the chefs had exceeded the budget. Understaffed, the dishes came sporadically, but the beverages flowed with regularity. After the Southwest ravioli, the waitress whispered to me, “People are really getting toasted.”

“I know,” I responded, before ordering another glass of Rioja.

I won’t say things devolved, but after we played a round of word games and a mute teenager banged out the Zelda theme on the piano, it became apparent that we’d gone down the rabbit hole. I’d been expecting a grown-up dinner party. What I got was adults playing dress up. The dishes were good, not gourmet, but playful—which was really the point. More than an ego stroke of ingredients and technique, the supper club offers a dining experience. This is Boston. Our restaurant meals don’t end stumbling home at 4 am. For that you’ve got to go underground—off the puritanical radar for something both indulgent and genuine. It’s a choice worth making.

Nick & Choose 1: Durian

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Published July 9, 2008 in The Improper Bostonian.

The Magic Fruit
Adventures in durian tasting

Because I either have adventurous tastes or watch too much Travel Channel, durian has always intrigued me. It’s known as the “King of Fruits,” probably for its resemblance to a spiked bowling ball. (Had Isaac Newton been sitting under a durian tree, we’d still be living in a world without the concept of gravity.)

There’s also the stench, which has gotten durian banned from hotels and public transport all over Southeast Asia. On an episode of Bizarre Foods, Andrew Zimmern ate a still-beating heart and a stir-fried bat, but he couldn’t choke down some fetid durian. The novelist Anthony Burgess wrote that durian consumption is “like eating sweet raspberry blancmange in the lavatory.” Dessert and scatological humor? Sounds delicious.

With that in mind, I decided to find the best durian shake in Boston—one that encapsulates the horrors durian wages upon the wimpy Western palate, but in a cutesier form. Needing to discover what durian actually tastes like, I bought frozen segments at a Super 88. Back at the office, even through the plastic casing and shrink-wrap, the thawing flesh emitted a distinct funk. Said one office mate, “I’m going to start farting in here to take away the smell.” After being cursed for merely pretending to open the packaging, I stayed late with the only coworker brave enough to eat it with me.

She described the flavor as “a cross between a lychee and a sweet onion.” That’s fairly accurate, and actually sounds somewhat tasty, but it doesn’t begin to describe the impact of that flesh first hitting my virgin taste buds. My synapses fired in alternating bouts—my tongue telling my brain and nose, “It’s not so bad,” and my esophagus shouting back, “Screw you guys, I’m not swallowing.” Then there was the smell, a bouquet we broke down as cheese, fecal matter and natural gas. The reek of Nstar was so strong, it prompted a colleague to leap from her office 30 feet down the hall and shout, “Do you guys smell gas? I’ve gotta get out of here!”

Enlightened and armed with a list of seven durian-dishing venues, I set off for Chinatown. My first stop was Penang, where $4 got what amounted to a durian icy. “You can put the sugar, but it’s sweet already,” the waiter advised. Walking out, I realized that the best thing about durian shakes is the lid, which caps the funk like a manhole cover. The blend had a milky, rotten banana flavor, and when it came through the straw icy, it wasn’t half bad. The occasional warmed patches, however, were like pulls from a colostomy bag.

At Saigon Sandwich, a durian shake ($3) included tapioca bubbles, condensed milk “and sugar, don’t forget the sugar,” the counterwoman said. Words to live by, should you take this journey yourself. Thanks to the bubbles, there was a wider straw that fired durian slush like a waste pipe, but the sweetener took the edge off. It was like spoiled milk after a bowl of Frosted Flakes.

Fear struck my heart when I ordered a second bubble shake from Xinh Xinh ($3.70) and smelled the fruit 20 feet from the blender. Ignoring the muffled weeping of my stomach, I forged ahead to find the best durian iteration yet. Fresh and pungent, all the shock value was there, but given the Dunkin Donuts treatment, there was enough sugar and half-and-half to ease the finish. This one’s a great rookie introduction to durian, and a friend may even take a second sip before wondering why the hang out with you.

For the actual durian enthusiast, there’s Pho Soa. Their shake ($2.75) was strong and, being extra thick, allowed for strict portion control, so I took four delicate sips before chucking it. I was done, palate-fatigued, milkshake-sick and about to barf all over Chinatown. I had three places left, but I’d tackled the stink head-on and ingested enough durian to choke a flock of fruit bats. Eat it, Zimmern.