My brother (who lives in Boston) was in town last night for some reason or other, so my dad decided to fly down so we could all go out for dinner (he was only going to come down if Grant could go, though, because I think he likes Grant more than he likes me).

Anyhow, we made reservations at Shabu Shabu, our favorite Japanese restaurant in the city, but last minute we cancelled those (Grant called and said we wouldn't make it because he had the hiccups) and went to Maloney and Porcelli instead.

As a steakhouse, it seems to vary a bit... I had a bone in sirloin that was good, if somewhat difficult to get at, but the reason you really go there is for the crackling pork shank. It's a whole pork shank that's confitted and then deep fried. Last night they seemed to have not quite been confitted long enough because the skin was a little leathery, but they were still so fucking good... it's served on a bed of pineapple coleslaw and with a jar of "firecracker" applesauce.

My brother is such a pain in restaurants, though. He ordered a rib eye steak, and asked for mustard with it. It took them a while to bring the mustard. "Excuse me," he said, "I asked for mustard 6-8 minutes ago. Can you heat this up for me please, and bring it back with mustard?" What an ass. Besides, only pretentious french snobs would eat their steak with mustard. Although actually his steak wasn't all that good. Last time I was there I had a porterhouse, and that was as good as any steak I've had in the city. I suppose the moral of the story is if you really want a steak, go somewhere else (like Spark's or the Old Homestead), but if you want a pork shank... wow...

They also had berries and (unsweetened) cream on the dessert menu, which rocked. Drives me nuts when they only thing I can have on the dessert menu is the cheese platter.


Oh yeah, if you want to make the shanks at home, it's not really that hard, just a little time consuming. I found the recipe on the food network site, in case you're one of those folks who likes to follow recipes: click here. Personally I'd probably do the confit on even lower heat and probably let it go for like 4 hours, not 2 1/2.