Not the Last Temptation for Ed

Posted by Ed Levine, December 14, 2005 at 1:30 PM

When you're a food critic on a diet you're subject to more temptations than one could possibly imagine. Add those temptations to the array of holiday gatherings and the food that accompanies them, and you have a recipe for diet 911.

Last Saturday was a perfect example. I ate lunch with my brother and his wife at the tiny but wonderful pan-Mediterranean bistro August, on Bleecker Street in Manhattan's Greenwich Village. My brother had a German pancake stuffed with caramelized quince and topped with powder sugar. Delicious! My sister-in-law had a frittata topped with skordalia, the Greek potato and garlic puree. Virtuous me opted for the Greek yogurt parfait topped by cherries soaked in Burgundy. One diet disaster averted, three to go.

We went early to a dinner thrown for our artist friend Mike Sells, whose thought-provoking and disturbing exhibit just went up at the Jason McCoy Gallery at 57th Street and Madison Avenue. There were lots of great-looking cheeses on hand, but I managed to stay an hour and just have one pretzel.

Dinner was with old and dear friends at a Tuscan restaurant, Beppe. The food was a little disappointing there (I have had many wonderful meals there in the past), but as I know the owners, they sent out every dessert they serve to our table. I tried to take one spoonful of each (panna cotta, warm chocolate cake, pineapple upside-down cake, homemade s'more, a cheesecake, and an assortment of ice creams), and for the most part I succeeded.

After dinner everyone else at my table went home, but I went to a party for some friends of ours, Kathryn Kellinger, a food writer, and Lee Hanson, her chef husband. Their table was full of roast baby suckling pig (one of Lee's favorite recipes) and various and assorted cookies (Kathryn loves to bake). Once again I managed to resist.

These are certainly not going to be the last temptations I am confronted by as I try to lose 40 pounds, but I figure it's a pretty good sign that I managed to resist most of the goodies put before me.

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Tags: August, Beppe, Italian, Kathryn Kellinger, Lee Hanson, New York, New York City, NYC, West Village