2015-08-05: Idle hands and the Devil

David had mentioned Shopsin's the other day as a place that was quintessentially New York. Apparently some people claim the Soup Nazi is based on the chef / owner of Shopsins. He has a bunch of rules; no photos except of the food, the size of groups, how to order etc and a habit of kicking people out for breaking his rules. And an insane sprawling menu.
Lots of Yelp reviews mention the rules and lots of reviews say they were kicked out for "no reason at all", usually after saying they were doing one of the things that are explicitly forbidden like breaking a group up into smaller parties to get around the group size rule. I like Yelp, makes me laugh...

They were arguing loudly in the manner of Crazy Street People the world over. The topic of discussion was the Large Hadron Collidor which I thought gave them a unique take on Street Crazy.

We still don't really know what our travel times to places will be. Mostly because we can expect at least one "Ohhh Shiny" detour on most trips. So we tend to leave early. On the way in we saw a Poland Springs truck and by asking the Uber driver to try and get alongside (I want a good photo of one) we actually arrived earlier than no Ohhh Shiny moments would normally have gotten us there.

A shop called Beer and Smokes? Definitely an Oh Shiny moment. Decent range of beer.

Shopsin's is in the Essex Street Market. Markets are always Ohh Shiny moments for us. Essex Street Market is okay. Has some nice enough looking produce, decent range of cheese and a few interesting looking products I don't know how to cook with and so on.

I am thinking I should start trying mangos across the world, they almost always look subpar compared to what we had in Sydney. I could be wrong.

Given the nature of New York the market is unlikely to be a tourist destination and I didn't notice anything that I would suspect is hard to source from other markets in NY. Would probably be a regular for me if I lived nearby but catching a train here would be for some other reason.

I have so many of this photo in various markets I ought to make a gif. This one has less chaos and cleaner floors than many of our favourites.

Some of the bread looked particularly good however some New Yorker chefs have told me there is a large number of local bakers that take bread rabidly seriously and we have seen many examples of decent looking bread around the city. So I am not sure the bread would be enough to draw anyone from across the city. Plus Kossars Bagels & Białys is right around the corner and I expect their bread is going to be pretty popular.

We checked we knew where we going before rambling and the sign seemed to fit the reputation David had given us.

Across the road was another building using letters from Scandinavian languages incorrectly which appears to be a worldwide trend at the moment so I went to look at that and stumbled upon a true Ohhh Shiny.

Places Review: Economy Candy

mapref
http://www.economycandy.com/
Checklist places on our "hey we went somewhere cool we should have planned that!" list often have something interestingly "wrong" with them. I can't think of the word "Economy"ever passing the marketing board for a food company nowadays. Apparently in New York they were poor enough once that Candy had to be cheap.

No babies in evidence.

In contrast to the order of the Essex St Market, Economy Candy has more similarity to the São Paulo fruit market in terms of profusion of colour and chaotic layout. Their website even classifies candy by colour rather than type.

The in store categorisation system is slightly less logical

The range is rather overwhelming. I have been to several lolly shops around the place, one of the better ones in my opinion is in Leura, Blue Mountains, Sydney. They have a big range. Takes maybe an hour to just look at each type of candy. It is reasonably orderly though.

I wonder just what the shelf life for gum is.

This place I can't see anyone being able to look at each variety of candy in less than a couple days. The range and the chaos is just too much.

Mental conversion of pounds to kilos almost led to an excessive surplus. Stupid imperial system.

We bought some. In theory we bought the candy to take back to the kiddies at the dojo in Japan. In practice of course I will probably get drunk and turn into the Candy Monster.

Kiddies probably don't even like bacon candy or tabasco candy

It is only stealing from babies if the babies know it is their candy, I shan't tell them should I steal the candy and thereby avoid doing the devils work (semantically anyway).

Rating: 9.5/10 (Just to leave scope for a theoretical better candy store)

David was a little later than the planned meeting time and so he didn't know we were also late due to our candy sidetrack. Cunning of us! We look like Good People and he wallows in guilt through a simple non disclosure of information. Mostly I figure jewish guilt is kind of like catholic guilt. I have a bit of a handle on catholic guilt so it is all I can work from.

Food And Beverage Review: Shopsins

http://shopsins.com/

Shopsins is kind of Japanese in terms of size. I figure they could seat on the order of 15 people. A documentary was made about either Kenny (the owner / chef) or the place, I haven't seen it. David said his mother used to come here regularly and would mutually argue with Kenny constantly. I am going to claim he used the word Kvetch but that could be me projecting. David (and his mother obviously) are jewish. I know a little about jewish culture but most of it is from MAD magazine in the 70's and 80's. MAD magazine certainly used the word kvetch a lot.

Sweet corn fritters are different to NZ style. These are better, we never had Chipotle sauce growing up and we certainly didn't have squeeze bottles of varying chilli levels.

Kenny on the other hand I think is something I know well. He is a cook (he may also be jewish, I don't know, Cook is a more specific an ethnic group than Jewish though). He is A Good Cook. He is not a chef, he cooks food people like. He is also aware that if you don't like it you have a bunch of other options.
There is the abusive yelling, some feels almost like Customer Expectation Fulfilment and some feels genuine. From my perspective it is just the normal back of house yelling screaming and ranting taken into the front of house. Certainly I think he swears about the same as me so I didn't find that so weird. He also has the same opinions as me regarding people taking other peoples tools. He made this well known when one cook used another cooks pan or something. There was truth in that yelling. Most of the rest was just normal kitchen style abuse of people, things, abstract concepts etc.

Ewa saw bread. It looked like good bread so she went for a sandwich. She was happy.

The menu is, in chef terms, a rambling mess. Apparently it is just stuff he has cooked and thought was good so chucked it on the menu, there is no corporate planning or profit maximisation and there is definitely no "Story of discovery the chef wishes to take you along". It also includes random photos or people and what I think was Malcolm McDowell from Clockwork Orange wearing a baseball cap.

David is a regular. A foolish regular. He tries new things. I think they buy outsize basil leaves to make this deep fried baby look smaller on the plate.

As it was a bit quiet Kenny came out to talk to David and, by association, us. At first he and I disagreed mildly on a few concepts (largely about how people learn to cook). Then, to my way of thinking, he came round to my side. That was when I decided he is, like me, someone willing to argue any point from any perspective. I like to think arguing from perspectives I may not hold makes me a seeker of knowledge therefore I have to grant him the same laurels.

I am smart. If you eat too many corn fritters anything that comes in easily Give Away portions is good. Especially when the other two are at the beginning of their food and don't realise I can refuse their offers later.

Some of his other regulars heard we live in Japan and we gave them some advice about things to do, frantically trying to remember any trip we did which wasn't focussed on a dojo somewhere. Kenny mentioned his daughter lives in Japan and she made a book. My lord did she make a book! He made mildly disparaging comments about his daughter and then presented the book she made.

Would you like to see the absolute worst Amazon placement ever of a product? Look here it is far and away the worst fucking amazon page I have seen for an awesome book. If you know anyone even remotely on the aspergers, clever or comedy scale this is a fucking awesome damn book. Even this site is crap. Each page has two pictures related somehow (shape, number, colour etc) the next 2 page spread continues from the previous last page. It is fucking hilarious and, if you are smart, it makes you feel good seeing the connections. If you don't like this book you are a moron and not seeing the beauty in the world around you. They say it is for 5 year olds and up. I am considering placing a bulk order once our current "things we give away to people that train with us" supply runs low.

I honestly think it is one of the funniest things I have read in ages and it has no words, it is all pattern recognition and association photos. I am pretty sure he is also exceedingly proud of that book made by his daughter and the disparagement was a cultural thing.
I am more than willing to admit that without his presence and tacit I'm-not-calling-it-approval-just-not-hating-us the place is probably not as great as we found it.
But then I read the rules on the menu and tried not to break them which probably helps a lot too. Fucking idiot Yelp people. Pretty sure Kenny would agree.

Rating: 9/10 (would go to 10 if I lived nearby and the Essex market was better as it would be an entire days fun).

I can't remember if Shopsins sell beer but we wandered off very full of food to find beer. It could have been to clear tables for higher profit customers or because they don't sell beer. Probably they don't sell beer as I can make a beer only table super profitable, even in Japan.
We found a place.

David wanted photos so he knew what we drank (we had already drunk a couple) but it was funny because....

Sour ales are infected from falling yeast whereas Saissons aren't and they served the saissons with glasses over the neck. I think I have now been amused by the most obscure and pointless potetntial joke that never happened except in my mind.

I am not sure where it was. I am sure google does.We were happy for several hours. The had a fire department sign saying No Smoking but it also had ashtrays. I always obey the nearest authority types.