A BEC sandwich, onion soup, snails, dosas, and more

As a connoisseur of food courts I was dying to check out the Tin Building. This latest addition to the Seaport was masterminded by Jean-Georges Vongerichten, and as operator of a behemoth collection of over 35 restaurants spanning the globe, his ability to marshal culinary resources and plot floor plans is undeniable. In fact, six full-blown restaurants and four casual dining options are found in the Tin Building alone, plus beer and wine bars, presided over by newly hired chefs, and often those from his 12 restaurants on loan to help with training and opening.

I was also curious because the building housed the Fulton Fish Market from 1939 to 2005, a site of early morning pilgrimage for all would-be chefs. Would the slick food court — two levels in a pale stately structure — do the building’s piscine heritage justice?

During the preview weeks the Tin Building has only been open Thursday through Sunday afternoons, when I visited three times. Arriving at noon each day, I witnessed Vongerichten himself greeting the snaking line of early arrivals by clapping his hands, the applause echoed by employees inside standing at attention.

The Tin Building reminded me of our first Eataly, replicating its challenging maze-like arrangement, while striking a balance between groceries and prepared foods on one hand, and eateries on the other. The groceries run to meat, cheese, and fish on separate counters; fresh fruits and vegetables displayed in crates; a candy and ice cream store; a pair of pastry and bread bakeries; and a reach-in fridge featuring different kinds of French and Irish butter. A string of cases displays prepared foods for carryout and reheating in a Middle Eastern, Thai, soul food, and Chinese American vein, among other categories.

Additionally, there are two grocery stores on the second floor, one Asian the other European and American, approached via an escalator lit with colorful neon, giving your ascent a theme-park air. Could a wealthy person do all their grocery shopping here? Probably not, due to the absence of practical things like baking soda and toilet paper. But for food? Perhaps.

DAY ONE

I’d stopped on my way that first day to buy a BEC ($4.75) at a bodega, to see how the version offered at the Tin Building compared. Double Yolk announces itself with a yellow neon sign, and the menu directs customers to choose items from four categories to assemble an egg sandwich. The classic bacon, egg, and cheese ($13) features very yellow eggs cooked into a fluffy omelet, thick double-smoked bacon in short strips, and mild cheddar on a brioche. In contrast to the bodega version, the eggs dominate.

Yes, it was utterly delectable, though it lacked the agreeable plainness of the original, which can be eaten nearly every day without meal fatigue. After 5 p.m., the counter turns into a champagne and caviar bar.

I’d gone with a friend, and we threaded our way through the swelling crowd past T Cafe and Bakery, displaying over a dozen types of bread, some enormous loaves of whole-grain sourdough, others baguettes pointy at both ends with crusts a little on the tough side. We tried a larger-than-average croissant and found it good, but our favorite was a super-buttery Danish filled with rich custard that visibly quaked as you ate it.

Our next destination was a station without any seating called Crepes and Dosas. We were excited about the latter, but the southern Indian flatbread took a back seat to the crepes, for which there was a catalog of sweet and savory fillings. No Indian fillings aimed at the dosa were offered. The dosa itself was perfect — crisp on the bottom, cushiony on top, and slightly sour — and we ate it with a cheese, egg, and avocado filling, craving the conventional potatoes masala.

Afterward we rode the escalator upstairs, where we examined the two grocery areas, and noted many high-end varieties of olive oil and soy sauce, among other mainly luxury products (including cheese straws sold in paint cans), and looked for the Tin Building’s Chinese restaurant. We couldn’t find it, and peered in the door of a video studio instead. This all by way of getting some exercise before heading downstairs to T Brasserie for our biggest meal of the day.

Offering views of South Street and the overhead FDR, the brasserie is smaller than most and also more studiously elegant. The menu is compact, too, featuring Gallic standards with a few seasonal Americanisms (like heirloom tomato salad) thrown in. We made a splendid meal of a dark and gooey onion soup, a fresh-tasting tartare topped with a quail egg yolk, and a handful of snails in herb-laced butter that was an arresting shade of green. Next visit, the hamburger beckons.

We swung by the patisserie brimming with brightly colored fruit tarts, fondant-clad cakes, cupcakes with elaborate frostings, cookies, and pies that looked dull by comparison. But they would have to wait for another day; we simply didn’t have any more room in our stomachs.

DAY TWO

On our next visit my friend and I literally ran up the escalator to the second floor, because we’d managed to find out where the Chinese restaurant was and feared not getting a seat. We made our way through a curtained door marked only with a tiny red fan at the rear of the Asian grocery.

The House of the Red Pearl turned out to be a rather grand room with booths and circular tables featuring low-slung plush seating and perhaps too many hanging lamps — very cocktail lounge-y. As we sat ourselves at the bar, the bartender told us in what seemed to be scripted remarks that the place was intended to evoke the world of James Bond in Dr. No, and indeed the staff wears stiff Mao-style military jackets. (Indeed, all of the employees at the Tin Building wear carefully conceived costumes, from the pink jumpsuits in the candy store to the long aprons of T Brasserie.)

While the decor is supposed to look retro, the menu is very much a modern one, filled with faultlessly prepared dishes. We ate our way through the usual soy-marinated cucumber salad, Sichuan wontons filled with shrimp and pork, an egg-drop soup heaped with greens, a version of Chongqing chicken that seemed too oniony and moist, excellent steamed pea shoots that swan in butter teeming with crunchy shallots and caramelized garlic, and, best of all, a wok-fried cumin lamb that may be the best version in NYC of this adapted Uyghur dish. We left $135 poorer, feeling like House of the Red Pearl was the most ambitious restaurant in the Tin Building, and maybe the best. But the theme made us slightly uneasy.

We next got a pair of shaved beef a la plancha tacos ($12), one of five choices at the Taquito window, right next to the beer bar overlooking the main entrance. The blue corn tortillas were dark and flavorful, but there was only one per taco, making the tacos quickly disintegrate. The avocado-cucumber crema was a nice touch but the sliced beef wasn’t quite right for a taco.

This was only a prelude to sliding downstairs to the Fulton Fish Co., a single row of seats that arcs along a raw bar with a luscious display of seafood — the dining option that does the most to evoke the building’s storied past. We enjoyed a taste of each of the oysters, two from Prince Edward Island, four from Massachusetts, as well as a lobster roll ($26) in which the meat was a little overcooked. The jewel of our visit was a pair of razor clams, served in their finger-like shells decorated with herbs and microgreens. Each bite was firm-fleshed and sweet — heavenly!

Afterward, we sought out the sushi bar Shikku, hidden in a dark corner just beyond the candy store. There was no one there except the lonely itamae, so we decided to skip it. We did stop at the bakery on the way out for a black-and-white cookie ($3.75), invented to celebrate Henry Hudson’s voyage up the river that came to bear his name. The cake was a little dull and dry; the fondant too thinly applied.

DAY THREE

On the third day I was on my own, scrambling to visit attractions at the Tin Building I’d heretofore neglected. Seeds and Weeds is the unappetizing name for the Tin Building’s mainly vegan restaurant, which has a wall with windows facing the rest of the food court, making it feel like a self-contained establishment. It has a menu that might remind you of Vongerichten’s ABCV, and the food is every bit as good. It provides two more uses for the dosas available downstairs, including one stuffed with eggs, cheddar, and sambal. On a menu that extends to 16 dishes, some highlight mushrooms, others grains. There’s a bread service centered on a blue corn and einkorn-wheat sourdough loaf, as well as a few dips.

One of those pita swishers is called Jimmy Nardello and hazelnut dip ($15), which made me think Jimmy might be an old pal of Vongerichten’s — it turned out to be a fruity red frying pepper, with coarsely ground nuts that made a crunchy dip something like Balkan ajvar. I also tried sweet-corn wontons, which echoed the dumplings found in the House of the Red Pearl, only tumbling out kernels into a broth with some serious and surprising Sichuan peppercorn action.

I scampered to the other side of the second floor to try Frenchman’s Dough, which is Vongerichten’s ode to the New York pizza and pasta joint. There is a snaking seating area that generally surrounds a flaming oven, but I sat at the cocktail bar adjacent, where the full menu is available. My starter of tuna tartare was ho-hum, but my pizza — chosen from a list of five that were conventionally Italian, was the only one that I might have called a French pizza. On a pleasantly puffy crust, charred here are there, thin slices of cured lemon were planted on a carpet of ricotta, fontina, and parmesan. At first I wasn’t sure about this pizza oddity ($18), but when I got the leftovers home — the cold slices were fantastic.

Still feeling a bit peckish I descended the glowing escalator one last time, and stepped up to the sandwich counter, which featured a very plain little eating area adjacent. Turkey and roast beef sandwiches led the menu, presumably aimed at the business lunch-break crowd. I knew that if I searched long enough at Tin Building, I would find nearly every dish made famous by our fast-casual culture — and here was the fried chicken sandwich ($15) I knew would be somewhere in the complex. This one, on the same brioche as the BEC that started my Tin Building adventure, featured a thin but very crisp cutlet.

Like any food court, Tin Building offers very good as well as some mediocre food. But I’d have to say the average is higher here than many other food courts in town, with some outliers like the lemon pizza, snails in herb butter, cumin lamb, and custard danish that you wouldn’t find anywhere else all in one place, and are by themselves worth a visit.

A few weeks ago, I was using Google Maps to search for lakes north of the city. Most seemed to have your typical lake names, like Green Mountain Lake, or Harmony Lake, but one in particular caught my eye…

Does New York really have a Nuclear Lake??

Of course, the first image to pop into my head was the Nuclear Lake from The Simpsons, complete with three-eyed fish jumping about and a pipe openly dumping radioactive waste.

As it turns out, this actually isn’t all that far from the truth. In 1958, an experimental nuclear fuel research lab was set up on the shores of a lake in Pawling, NY, by Nuclear Development Associates. According to this 1955 NY Times article, the remote site was chosen because “it was the largest convenient and available tract that was not crossed by public roads and could be adequately guarded for secret experiments,” which would involve “uranium and other radioactive materials.” How reassuring!

All was apparently fissioning along just fine until the early 1970s, when two serious accidents occurred at the site. First, in 1971, a rubber stopper came off of a plutonium powder container, contaminating a lab room with radioactive material. Then, in 1972, a chemical explosion occurred in the building adjacent to the lake (pictured below in this NY Times article), causing an unknown amount of plutonium powder to spew out into the air and presumably onto the surrounding grounds. Nuclear Lake had earned its name.

Little seems to be known about the accident, though local legend has it that at least one person died, and that there was a cover-up. In the comments left to this Nuclear Lake post, one local recalls his mother, a nurse, saying that one of the victims came into the hospital with his watch melted down to his bone; another rumor has it that the ambulance he was transported in is buried on the site (you can read about a horrifying accident at a similar facility here).

A clean-up commenced at a cost of $3,000,000, and the land was deemed safe for “unrestricted use.” The company closed down the plant shortly after, and the land was sold to the National Park Service for inclusion into the Appalachian Trail. Though documents were found that suggested the company may have also been dumping radioactive waste water into the lake, a Nuclear Regulatory Commission study gave it a clean bill of health in 1994.

Of course, I had to visit Nuclear Lake for myself.

Last weekend, I drove up to Pawling with a few friends and my fluffy-butted dog Lulu. We parked at the trailhead and headed into the woods.

It didn’t take long before we began spotting the ubiquitous white blazes signifying the Appalachian Trail, painted every few trees (sadly, we didn’t see any thruhikers – perhaps it’s too early in the season?).

We continued deeper into the forest for about 20 minutes, seeing numerous squirrels, chipmunks, and woodpeckers, though surprisingly, not a single mutated turtle of either the teenage or ninja varieties.

Finally, we arrived at the Nuclear Lake loop trail, which circles around the lake to rejoin the AT on the other side.

Starting the trail, we soon came across the first remnant from the former lab: the original access road leading to the site, which appears to still be maintained. Crazy to think this was once a guarded road for a nuclear lab conducting secret research for the government.

Shortly after, we spotted a chain-link fence through the trees surrounding the former lab site.

Finally, we began to see water. We made our way through an opening in the trees…

…and arrived at the shores of the disgusting, grimy, pollution-filled Nuclear Lake.

Kidding, of course! Nuclear Lake is absolutely gorgeous, with nary a Swamp Thing or Gil-man to be found. In fact, many thruhikers on the Appalachian Trail describe it as one of the most beautiful sights on the entire trek.

But what about the former lab site? From our vantage point, we could see the area at the south side of the lake, surrounded on both sides by chain-link fences (all buildings have since been razed).

To the left, we could also see a floating barrier in the water. Any idea what the purpose of this is?

Hoping to take a look at the former lab site up close, we continued hiking around the lake, eventually rejoining the Appalachian Trail and heading back south.

Finally, we arrived at the insurmountable chain-link fence, clearly in place to prevent anyone from accidentally entering the contaminated grounds and inadvertently turning into either an Amazing Colossal Man or a 50-foot Woman, depending on your gender.

Kidding again. Actually, the fence is quite easy to get around, and seems only in place to prevent people from driving onto the former lab site.

Here is where the lab would have been…

…and if you can forget the possibility of getting a little plutonium dust in your sandwich, it really makes for a fantastic picnic location.

Here’s the picture of the abandoned lab again to give you a sense of where it was once situated:

Today, there’s no trace of the former buildings save for what appears to be a foundation off to one side (possibly remnants of the former waste disposal building?).

Stepping further back, it soon became clear that the entire area we were standing on was an artificial hill, made all the more obvious when you went down the slope on the far side:

We found a hatch set into the top, and while I’d like to believe it leads to a Dharma Initiative-like room (what were the numbers again??)…

…a better guess would be that it’s an access point for the dam opening at the base of the hill:

All in all, we had a beautiful two-hour hike, there were no unwanted mutations amongst the group, and about the only suspicious thing we came across were these oversized dandelions just outside the lab site (I suppose there are worse things in the world than mutant dandelions).

If you’re looking for a fun and relatively easy hike, Nuclear Lake definitely makes a great option. Despite Google Maps’ estimate, it only took us about an hour and twenty minutes to drive up to Pawling. We did the Nuclear Loop side first, but I’d actually recommend starting with the Appalachian Trail portion, which gives you the best views of the lake and plenty of picnic spots early on. You can find more info on the hike (including where to park) here.

-SCOUT

PS – On the way back, I highly recommend a stop at Heinchon’s Ice Cream Parlor about 10 minutes away on Route 22 South.

Founded in 1923, the place is as old-fashioned as it gets. In fact, I think the sitting area literally qualifies as an actual parlor.

Head all the way to the back of the house for your ice cream – the mud pie was amazing.

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Attn: Sara who reads my blog sometimes.

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SIR – Your article on the state of Britain’s coalition government used “dominatrixes” as the plural of dominatrix (“Enter the van men”, August 3rd). Whoever wrote that, rather than “dominatrices”, deserves a good spanking. 

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In a few months, Delta will offer Blue Smoke meals on planes flying between JFK and Heathrow. Ryan Sutton thinks that barbecue is a good call: "The meats can be prepared entirely in advance, stored, and reheated with little degradation...Barbecue is also appropriate for eating at altitude because high elevations dull the taste buds. This isn't where you contemplate the difference between micro-cilantro and micro-shiso; it's where you appreciate salt, vinegar, and spice." [Bloomberg, Previously]

Fictional FBI Special Agent Mike Casper (Clark Gregg) told Josh Lyman (Bradley Whitford), "We don't take curtain calls." Real-life CIA Agent Tony Mendez got the Intelligence Star but could tell no one -- not even his family -- about it. Members of these agencies who protect the public, country, or President from attacks often don't get the recognition they deserve, so this is our way of saying, "Special Agent Ron Butterfield, take a bow."

From a purely shallow standpoint, Michael O'Neill has quiet, unassuming looks. He has slightly too much neck and not enough of a chin to be the kind of actor that gets spread across a teenager's wall on high gloss paper. And yet, there are times when an actor's physical portrayal of a character and what he does with the lines written for that character supersede the shallow and turns a plain-to-unfortunate looking actor into sizzling hot pin-up material. Michael O'Neill's understated Ron Butterfield from The West Wing is one of those times.

On repeated West Wing rewatches, it's clear that Butterfield (though only an occasional character) is kick-ass. Even seven years after the show ended, O'Neill's Alabama-drawly rendition of the quietly intense and solidly capable head Secret Service agent continues to make us tear up, send chills down our spines, and generally make us wish we had our own Special Agent Butterfield covering our asses.

Operating under the belief that everything's better with Butterfield, here's a handful of the Butterfield-smeared moments we'd splice together as The Butterfield 8.

Kickass Butterfield

S02E01: "In the Shadow of Two Gunmen I"

Set-Up: Gunmen open fire on President Bartlet (Martin Sheen) and his entourage following an appearance in Rosslyn, VA. At this point in the episode, Bartlet and Butterfield are in the presidential motorcade screaming across Memorial Bridge, and the full extent of the casualties at the scene is not known. In the car with the President, Butterfield refuses medical attention for his shot and bloody hand until he gets the President safely inside the White House. Bartlet is railing against Butterfield's "end-of-discussion" face when the agent notices blood in the presidential mouth. Eyes burning with Secret Service fire (seriously, dude could have been Emmy-worthy for his expression in this moment alone; it was like he was X-raying the President's injuries), Butterfield feels the President up for injuries until he pulls a bloodied hand away from Bartlet's midsection.

Baller Quote: "GW! Blue! BLUE! BLUE!" (with an assist from the limo driver pulling a U-turn on Constitution Avenue)

Man-of-Action Butterfield

S04E20: "Evidence of Things Not Seen"

Set-Up: Gunshots are fired from outside the White House into the dark and deserted press room where CJ (Allison Janney), Toby (Richard Schiff), and Will (Josh Malina) are flicking cards at the empty seats. As the main cast assembles in the Oval Office where the Secret Service is holding them until the all clear, Leo (John Spencer) reports on several other terrorist-like attacks throughout the world that same night. Bartlet tries to brush these off, but as soon as Butterfield hears that a sniper killed Guam's Head of the Office of Insular Affairs, he leaps into action.

Baller Quote: While pointing commandingly at the other agents in the room -- can an index finger win an Emmy? -- he orders, "Shut it down! Crash it!"

Steadfast Butterfield

S02E02: "In the Shadow of Two Gunmen II"

Set-Up: In a post-shooting conversation with Butterfield, a conscience-stricken Toby worries about a memo he wrote at President Bartlet's behest, which changed how Bartlet leaves buildings after public appearances. Toby fears the Secret Service is taking too much heat for the shooting, and wants to release the memo to redirect blame away from the guys who took down the shooters, focusing it instead on the West Wing. Butterfield won't let him do it.

Baller Quote: "We got the President in the car. We got Zoey in the car, and at 150 yards and five stories up, the shooters were down in 9.2 seconds after the first shot was fired. I would never let you not let me protect the President. It was the act of madmen. Anyway, the Secret Service doesn't comment on procedure." All of which he delivers while casually holding up a wrapped but STILL BLEEDING HAND BECAUSE OH YEAH HE WAS SHOT!

Unruffled Butterfield

S04E22: "Commencement"

Set-Up: Zoey Bartlet (Elisabeth Moss) is abducted from a nightclub, and a member of her detail is found shot through the head. Back in the West Wing, Butterfield shows up breathless to tell Leo what's happened. Commanding and unshakable when Bartlet was shot, Butterfield's rattled state in this singular instance shows he's human -- staggeringly, embraceably, lusciously human. But he's clearly still got that shit under control.

Baller Quote: Wiping down his mustache with one hand: "We have a situation. We're at black...Zoey Bartlet is missing and there's a dead agent at the scene."

Businesslike Butterfield

S03E18: "Enemies Foreign and Domestic"

Set-Up: After C.J. receives a death threat, Butterfield is called in to examine her email correspondence. C.J. flaps around her office, telling Butterfield she gets hate mail all the time since she's the most visible face of the White House besides the President, so a death threat is really no big deal. Butterfield ignores all of this and finally cuts her off mid-flap.

Baller Quote: "Could you type in your password?"

Strong Butterfield

S03E21: "Posse Comitatus"

Set-Up: Following the arrest of her stalker, C.J.'s bodyguard and new love interest is fatally shot in a convenience store hold-up while the rest of the presidential party is at a play nearby. Butterfield has to break the news to C.J. outside of the theatre.

Baller Quote: None that we can hear. He just stands there with C.J. fixed in his unwavering gaze as she protests the impossibility that Agent Simon Donovan (Mark Harmon) is dead. Only after C.J. stumbles away from him in tears does Butterfield allows himself to betray any emotion -- controlled and understated emotion, just a bending of his head as looks down. His restraint makes you want throw your arms around him and wail, "Oh, Agent Butterfield, I'd stop the world and melt with you!"

Portentous Butterfield

S05E20: "No Exit"

Set-Up: The West Wing is locked down when evidence of an environmental attack is detected. Charlie (Dulé Hill), Fiderer (Lily Tomlin), and Bartlet are all held together in a medical bunker where they are examined and made to take decontamination showers. Once the lockdown is lifted, everyone else in the West Wing is told it was a false alarm, but Charlie and Fiderer are told it was an "active drill" used to determine the readiness of the evacuation protocol teams should such an attack ever occur. After Charlie and Fiderer leave, Butterfield reveals to Bartlet that it was not a drill, that they actually had been under chemical attack and that a substance called tularemia ("plague," the bunker doctor explains) was found, and a suspicious chemist is being watched.

Baller Quote: "Tularemia won't get through again." Translation: Tularemia better hope Tularemia doesn't meet Agent Butterfield in a dark alley.

Last Butterfield

S07E22: "Tomorrow"

Set-Up: In the final episode of the series, Butterfield is seen only in the background as he escorts and protects his new charge, President-Elect Santos (Jimmy Smits).

Baller Quote: There's nothing for him to say. O'Neill no longer needs any lines to make Butterfield's influence felt. Just catching squinting sight of him in the blurry background is all you need to feel safe and protected. That's his legacy.

(Confidential to the poster- and action-figure-makers out there: I'd like Special Agent Butterfield in two poses, please -- one with his gun drawn and the other running. Both with his hand to his earpiece. Both in his quiet, unassuming dark grey suit.)

The Butterfield 8 appeared first on Previously.TV

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