Serious Eats: New York
'Edible Queens' Hits Newsstands; Joe DiStefano (Plus Ripert and Bourdain) Front and Center
[Ripert, second from left; DiStefano; Bourdain. Photograph: Michael Scott Berman]
No one knows more about Queens than our man Joe DiStefano, so we're not at all surprised that Edible Queens tapped him to write the feature piece in their debut issue—a food tour of Flushing with acclaimed chefs Eric Ripert and Anthony Bourdain.
Eating their way through the Golden Shopping Mall and Su San Seafood, the trio tackle sea cucumber, nearly-raw potato salad, and, incredibly, live octopus:
A platter descended upon the table. Upon it was a mass of 2-inch-long sections of still squirming octopus tentacles. Ripert’s eyes grew wide and he looked to me expectantly.
I looked to Bourdain, who deftly wrangled a tentacle with his chopsticks and dipped it into a mixture of salt and sesame oil, a combination said to prevent the tentacles from suctioning to the inside of one’s mouth. For a moment it escaped his grasp, but he grabbed it with his chopsticks and kept it from wriggling across the table. “Come to papa,” he said, before devouring it, an omnivorous smile crossing his face.
Then it was Ripert’s turn. Bourdain cackled with glee as the French seafood expert struggled to get hold of the tentacle. The look that crossed Ripert’s face upon placing it in his mouth was a combination of childlike wonder mixed with horror and utmost urgency. The tentacles, it seemed, clung to the inside of Ripert’s cheek, and he was struggling to release their grasp as he chewed.