The Girl Who Ate Everything

Ohhhh, hi there. I know it's been a while. :( I didn't mean to ignore you! But I've had a string of jam-packed weekends over the last few weeks. There was the Serious Eats Sandwich Festival one weekend, followed by moving to a new apartment the subsequent weekend (I'm in Greenwood Heights in Brooklyn now...or where Park Slope ends and Sunset Park begins...anyone else in this neighborhood?), followed by a three-day weekend trip to Virginia. And now I'm here. Phlegmier than usual, but here.

Why write about meals I've eaten recently when I could write about meals I ate eight months ago? The latter is surely much easier and relevant and sensible and no it's not I'm lying.

But I'll do it anyway because, aside from what I ate during my trip to Virginia last weekend, I haven't been eating much recently. I mean, nothing worth noting. Proof: Today I ate beef chow fun for lunch. House later, I ate the leftovers for dinner.

...Now that I've gotten that out of the way, let's revisit some meals from January.

Tasting Menu at Roberta's

About half of the dishes. Click on each photo for more info.

On a scale of one to ten, my palate's level of sophistication is around a four, while Chuck's of ChuckEats is somewhere in the 20s. So when he generously invited me to eat an unadvertised tasting menu by chef Carlo Mirarchi at Roberta's—a restaurant that debuted primarily as a pizzeria in 2008, but has since grown far beyond pizza to include gardens, a bakery, and fine dining-level fare featuring locally grown, high-quality ingredients in a most non-fine dining setting (hey, it's Bushwick)—I thought 1) Damn, the food must really really really damn good if Chuck wants to go there, and 2) My level four palate is probably not worthy and Chuck will wonder why he invited me and then we'll spend the whole night in awkward silence, aside from the sounds of our self-conscious chewing.

Let's go back....six months. I was in Norway. I'm still writing about it. Refresh your memory with day 1, day 2, day 3, and day 4.

Driving to the ferry. And arriving at the ferry!

"I'm in a car! On a boat!"

"Yeah..."

"On a boat!"

"Mmhm..."

Kåre probably didn't respond with such disinterest, but since I can't remember conversations that happened over six months ago, I shall turn to the time-honored practice of "making stuff up."

However, I'm pretty sure my part of the conversation is accurate—the part where I'm really excited about being in a car on a boat. Why? Because I'd never experienced it before—riding in a vehicle, in another vehicle, on water. That's like a cat hitching a ride on a porpoise to get across a river. Exactly like that. Or nothing like that. Something like that?

Mail truck, get on the boat.

...Well. The experience tickled me for some reason. Probably because I'm 500 percent landlubber. Kåre grew up with the ferry experience thanks to a childhood of frequent visits to his family's summer house in Tysnes, an island most easily accessible from Bergen by driving to the southern tip of Os and riding a ferry for half an hour. Which is what Kåre and I did because we were going to spent the night at the house.