Raymond's in Montclair: Mayberry's Odeon

Dara writes:

Yesterday James dragged me, sorry, brought me along on a trip to the Montclair Art Museum for an afternoon lecture on the 19th-century American landscape painter George Inness. I was sort of excited to visit Montclair, where I had never been, because I know that many NY writer-types live there and commute to the city. From our apartment near Union Square in Manhattan, the drive took about forty minutes. Not bad, yet I kind of always hold my breath through the Lincoln Tunnel, and has there ever been a more prosaic road than the NJTP? Highway 101 out of San Francisco over the Golden Gate Bridge it is not.

I very much enjoyed the Inness paintings. James appreciates the painter for his varied techniques: he painted both exact landscapes and almost abstract, emotional nature scenes. In one image, Sunset, in the museum's collection, brilliant orange sun beams peak out between two leaning trees. From a distance, there seems to be extraordinary depth behind the trees. Up close, the painter has daubed bright orange between the trees and in fact what seemed like depth now appears to be surface. I'm not an art historian, so I'm not sure of the significance of that observation, but I was intrigued by the work. Interestingly, an Inness collector and benefactor of the wing in the museum was on hand to give us a personal tour of the collection, which was delightful.

It was about 6:30pm, and James and I needed sustenance. The museum's director pointed us to Raymond's, down Bloomfield Avenue not far from the institution. Now, the museum is perched on a hill, and driving down Bloomfield toward the restaurant entailed a breathtaking view, on this clear night, of Manhattan.

Raymond's, which opened in 1989, is retrofitted to look like an old malt shop. Imagine an Odeon--albeit one estranged from the scene in downtown Manhattan in the 1980s--in Mayberry. We had to wait about ten minutes, and in that time I noticed a nice-looking--and chopped--cobb salad, and that most people were ordering burgers. While deliciously ripe avocado slices perched atop the lettuce, tomatoes, blue cheese, bacon, and chicken in the salad, and while the chicken was very moist, the salad lacked crispness and taste. The chef mistakenly thought heavily mixing the salad, so the blue cheese kind of spread its wealth, could compensate for a lack of dressing. No. A cobb salad should not just be creamy, but should taste of something. I ate more of the french fries that came with James's burger than I should have to get some salt and snap.

Could I see myself in Montclair? The main street was very well tended. The museum was estimable. But part of me feels if I will leave New York I will really leave it, not to a town on a hill where I will always feel like an outsider peeking in the window at the action.

Molyvos: Amazing salads

Dara writes:

Last night James and I were treated by his mother to a wonderful pre-Carnegie Hall meal at the Greek restaurant Molyvos on Seventh Avenue and 55th Street in Midtown Manhattan. I had always associated the establishment with the power luncheon crowd, as I would make reservations there for various bosses when I worked in various Midtown publishing ventures, including (the now defunct) Talk magazine and the publishing company Little, Brown. As we were dining last night pre-concert, I assumed I was headed for an obligatory, rather than revelatory meal.

In contrast, the romaine, dill, and scallion salad wowed me. I am a salad fanatic and this one stood up. I shared it with my mother-in-law, so the smaller portion arrived at table in a delightful white porcelain creche. The greens were chopped, which I love. To my mind, the point of a salad is getting all the fresh flavors in my mouth at once. The chopped salad facilitates this by making every morsel smaller and thus more able to fit on one forkful. In Molyvos's version, the greens--herbs and leaves--were remarkably fresh. But perhaps most importantly, the dressing was sublime. What was it? I dare say only olive oil, lemon, and sea salt. But what a bracing, briny blend. The bitter lemon balanced the sweet herbs in a tingly way.

I am going to try this simple dressing at home, armed with an oil recommended in the magazine of Christopher Kimball (an author with whom I worked at Little, Brown), Cooks Illustrated. The condiment can be purchased from Crate & Barrel (finally, this over-hyped store is good for something).

My main at Molyvos was actually just as winning. A Mediterranean sea bass atop baby lentils, parsnips, and brussels sprouts. The root vegetables were as flavorful as if the chef had just brought them from Union Square Market. The fish was sweet and lovely and the skin so crispy that actually a piece scratched my throat. In spite of that momentary abrasion, I loved the dish. I had been a little worried that it might be heavy when I saw legumes and brussels sprouts accompanying it. Brainwashed by one too many recent meals laden with Thanksgiving leftovers, I was expecting a plate bursting with the meat and then heaping side portions of veggies and starch. Instead, this fish perched on a sprightly mound of lentils just barely studded with a few caramelized root vegetables. Delightful! And not gouging on my stomach.

Perhaps next time this long-standing establishment will be the evening's main attraction.

Borat: My Name A...

Dara writes:

Since I saw Sacha Baron Cohen's one-man picaresque last night, I cannot stop saying, "My name a Borat," with that intonation the comedian has. If you haven't seen the movie but are interested in language, I almost recommend the flick just to absorb Mr. Cohen's voice modulations.

Yet there are other reasons to pay (New York's) $11 and watch the film now. You don't go to the theater because this show *demands* a big screen. No. You go because you want to be talking about this when everyone else is. And Borat is worth talking about.

For those who have been under a rock, the nominal plot is this: Borat Sagdiyev, Cohen's character, is a Kazakh journalist who travels to America to learn from the country; but, when he sees Pamela Anderson on TV, he ditches his assignment and travels by ice cream truck to Malibu to woo her. Along the way, Cohen exposes feminists, southerners, racists, anti-Semites, rodeo cowboys, and Pentecostals to their own follies.

Did I say "expose"? I meant, "ripped from their hearts until the blood gushed out." Cohen is relentless. True, his targets are soft--who doesn't think southern frat boys are a menace--but the results are no less excruciating. Borat meets the frat boys when he is hitch-hiking and they pick him up in their Winnebago. Already in a miasmic state of drunkenness, one of the boys immediately asks the foreigner how the "bitches" are in Kazakhstan, and if Borat has his way with them (he uses grosser language) and then never calls them. The frat boy is horrible, but Borat's response is, "And why you not call--because the women don't have telephones, right?" To which the frat guy insists, "Nah! Because you don't respect them." Cohen is miraculous at not only getting suckers to dig themselves into a hole, but then, at his suggestion they haven't dug deep enough, to get them to dig in the mud for ten more feet.

One of the other boys in this scene complains how "minorities" in the U.S. have "all the power, especially the Jews." It chills me to hear this, because it's essentially what all Jews secretly fear; that when we're not around (or when we are, or when people don't *think* we're around), our fellow Americans excoriate us.

Cohen portrays Borat as a vicious anti-Semite who thinks Jews have horns, shape-shift, and, when he ends up at a Bed and Breakfast run by an old Jewish couple, that Jews are out to poison him. Cohen makes Borat adopt this role so that he may expose the vicious anti-Semitism apparently lurking beneath every genteel American face. Cohen occupies himself with this task presumably because he his Jewish, and in fact grew up Orthodox in an England where, I'm sure, especially in the upper echelons--Cambridge, and the like--of which Mr. Cohen was a part, long-standing anti-Semitism was quite out in the open.

Cohen is angry. He is hostile. He is a terrible bully. Terrible. The kind I would not want to run into in a schoolyard. And yet, his aggressiveness is precisely what makes him so remarkable. In American culture, there are certain stereotypes about Jews: we are bookish, we are effeminate, we read, we ingratiate ourselves in order to assimilate as well as possible. If members of another minority group do something reprehensible--certain Columbia professors' inhibiting of pro-Israeli opinions from entering their classroom, for example--Jews are sometimes the last to respond, as the fear is this: next time it will be us. At least among my immigrant ancestors, there was a sense, "don't rock the boat."

Sacha Baron Cohen sinks the Titanic. He is in-your-face, he is mean and cruel and sadistic. He is loud and obtrusive. Even physically he has attributes we don't associate with Jews: he is incredibly tall and imposing. Bookish--NOT! Just as Borat exposes the folly of stereotypes, the very person of Sacha Cohen is a subversion.

I did not stop laughing for the first 45 minutes of the movie. As the story got more serious, I stopped holding my side, and in the climax when Borat tries to kidnap Pam Anderson at a book-signing she gives in a California Virgin megastore, I felt incredibly badly for the Baywatch star, who seemed tragically shocked. Despite this and a few other gaffes, I laud Mr. Cohen's pranks.