Mark Rotella

A Lunch at Esca
June 14, 2007

I'm a Florida boy at heart, which means a hot, muggy day like Tuesday makes me want to sit back
on the beach, drink an ice cold rum and tonic and slurp oysters.

But luckily, something even better was in store that day--a lunch at Esca, at which chef David Pasternack was promoting his book The Young Man & the Sea: Recipes & Crispy Fish Tales from Esca. Instead of a beach you had a garden, and instead of the sound of waves beating the shore you had the rumble of buses on 42nd street. Instead of rum, I drank rhubarb bellinis (yes, more than one).

As for the food--it was an amazing buffet of the grilled, the fried, and the raw. Whole stripedbass was served with a delicate salsa verde. Alongside of that were plates of clams--baked and fried, as well as a ceviche of razor clams. But what stood out for me were the fried sand eels, mixed in with fried lemon rinds. Sea eels are really tiny, slender fish that burrow in the sand and are fished only from late May to early August (and are food for the above-mentioned bass).

"Those are the french fries of the sea," said one man standing next to me. I looked up to see he was one of three large, ruddy complexioned men.

It occurred to me that Pasternack had also invited his favored fishermen to the book launch.
 

Posted by Mark Rotella on June 14, 2007 | Comments (0)