Lunch at 2 Boroughs Larder

Awesome.  My favorite restaurant.  And the fact that she always gives us the 20% employee discount now isn't making my crush on Heather any easier to manage.  Luckily, D thinks its cute.

We had:

Thinly shaved porchetta (that's pork belly and loin, rolled and sliced) with persimmons, radishes, and yellow squash

Broccoli Rabe with peppers and garlic (I would have paid $5 just to do a shot of the pot liquor.  Best greens ever)

Roasted Mushrooms with a 'medium poached egg' (it was 64 degree texture, but poached), sourdough crumbles, and sheep's milk feta (total umami bomb)

Brussels Sprouts with Salumi Vinaigrette (I will cover this in my next post)

Pumpkin Soup with Smoked Sausage and Dukkah (1 billion bonus points if you can look of Dukkah and tell me what it is and where it comes from)

and 2 dishes that bear actual discussion.

First: Tuna Conserva with Shishito Peppers and Soffrito

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This dish is cool for 2 reasons.  1, it was incredible.  The tuna was slow cooked in olive oil and then dressed with a spicy, tomato-ey soffrito (you know that one, right?  coz otherwise Nate is gonna spin-kick you), and topped off with whole deep-fried peppers that were just a little bit hot.  

The other reason its cool is that I feel like in this day and age it takes balls to serve fully cooked tuna.  Like, in the old days, tuna came out of a can.  Then, in the eighties, sushi got big and French chef Gilbert da Coze of Le Bernardin got the idea to use raw tuna like beef in tartare.  Fast forward 20 years, and all anybody does is serve tuna raw or just-seared.  Hats off to places like 2BL for showing that the flavor of cooked tuna is what got us all into it in the first place.

****Major Food Engineering Breakthrough*********

The other major breakthrough we experienced was, we figured out how to eat the scrapple sandwich.  FINALLY!!  Its one of our favorites.  Over easy egg, scrapple and cheddar on a really good hard roll.  (Can't remember, do you like scrapple?)

The problem is, when you try to cut it in half, the bread is super crisp and firm (which is why its good) but the scrapple and egg are soft and squishy.  I have used MS Paint to diagram the problem.  Please do not show this horrible picture to any graphic designers you happen to be banging.  I want her to think I'm cool.

So you see, the problem is that by cutting the sandwich in half, you lose all the toppings.  However, D and I share everything when we go out, so we devised a solution.  Remove the top bun.  Remove the egg.  Scrape half of the scrapple onto the top bun, taking care to bring the cheese with it.  Gently cut the egg in half, preserving the yolk, and place half on each side.  Eat open-faced, and use the last bits of your bun to scrape up any errant yolk and scrapple.  Brilliant, right?

Oh well, that's all for now.  I have 1 more post about this lunch, but that can wait.