• Fun fact: It’s cheaper for restaurants to buy an entire animal and butcher it in-house than it is for them to buy pre-butcherd parts. Heather Shouse convinces chefs at big-name restaurants all over the city to reveal how they’re using every single part of their pigs and lambs, including the so-called “fifth quarter”: the head, tail, feet, and offal. It’s not for the squeamish, but it is for the hungry. Particularly dedicated to this whole-animal eating is Blackbird, where we learn that whole small pigs are deboned, brined, and then turned into confit, and that an entire lamb is deboned and ground to feed hungry lunch-eaters as lamb burgers. [TOC]
• We learn some more exciting things about Heather Shouse in her review of Mana Food Bar (1742 W Division St, 773 342 1742), namely that she is dating a vegetarian and thus “drowning in seitan.” But Mana promises to change that: the vegetarian small-plates restaurant shies away from faux-meat, instead turning to fresh vegetables and legumes for inspiration. The results are mixed — no dish merits a rave (the closest we get is “garlicky, well-seasoned hummus”), but there’s only one Marianas Trench of a dish: a “truly disastrous,” “nearly inedible” attempt at pho. Four stars out of six. [Shouse, TOC]
• Kind of an opposite situation for David Tamarkin’s coverage of Madame Tartine. The French bistro falls short more or less everywhere: cookie-cutter jazz-age-Paris decor that looks like it came from Target, underseasoned steak, fatty lardons in the frisee (we hate that!) — and those were the best dishes. The bad ones are, well, worse: rubbery lobster, flavorless duck confit, cruddy wine. Hey, at least the photo looks good. Two out of six. [Tamarkin, TOC]
[Photo: Beef diagram, via James*C’s Flickr]
