Blogger’s Bites: Best Bites of 2014
Bloggers’ Bites is a series of posts chronicling the foodie adventures of Penn Appétit’s blog staff. Being the end of the year, the blog staff is sharing their best bites of 2014!
Elena Crouch: I hate to sound too cliche, but my absolute best bites of 2014 were in Italy, specifically at my uncle’s house in Livorno, a port city near Pisa. Now, I have eaten my fair share of authentic Italian food, coming from a Sicilian family and going to Sicily every summer, so I’m not just saying this food was delicious because I was caught up in some romantic notions of Italy. No, what made this food great was the sheer freshness of the ingredients and the care with which they were prepared. Anything I ate at my uncle’s house would qualify, from the raw prawns marinated in lemon juice that were sourced from a trusted fisherman who had caught them that morning, to the breath-taking paccheri with shellfish, a pasta dish that blew me away with its restrained creaminess and taste of the sea. I even grew to appreciate the unsalted bread that Tuscany is famous for, especially when used to sop up molasses-like balsamic vinegar, aged properly and sold in tiny bottles like the precious liquid it is. Here are a couple pictures:
Chase Matecun: Distilling a year full of spectacular food into a single bite took some serious reflection. Tangy al pastor tacos, startlingly tart pomegranate salads, rich cups of hand-brewed coffee, and moan-inducing pastrami sandwiches filled my plate during 2014, but in the end the “best bite” I decided on was decidedly simple—the whipped feta smear with cucumber from The Purple Pig in Chicago.
Like standard feta, the spread was rich and salty with a muted tang, but this smear had been whipped into airy peaks, topped with crisp cubes of cucumber, and drizzled with grassy dribbles of olive oil. It was cool, refreshing, and perfectly spreadable. The rustic sourdough bread it came served with was a revelation in itself—thickly cut with an airy interior and painted with olive oil and toasted until just barely crisp on the outside. My family and I smeared piece after piece and before we knew it, the entire bowl was gone.
Lena Antin: My best bite of the year was all things Momofuku. Má pêche in Midtown served up the best dim sum I’ve ever had, from fluffy pork buns and classic ramen to the more unconventional habanero fried chicken and spicy chopped apples. Upstairs houses the Milk Bar, which makes some of the best soft serve, pie, and cookies in the city. The seasonal grasshopper pie (a mint cheesecake with brownie filling and graham cracker crust) was impressive, but the real winner was the giant Milk Bar birthday cake my mom sent me for my birthday. It’s six inches and three layers of confetti goodness, topped with a rainbow cake crumble– a dangerous precedent for future birthday cakes.
Nicole Woon: One of my most memorable 2014 dining experiences was at Laurel, thanks to a Twitter contest I won in honor of the restaurant’s first anniversary. Laurel’s gnocchi were unlike any I’d tasted before. I’ve always been wary of eating gnocchi based on stodgy clumps of dough I’d consumed at nondescript restaurants in the past, but Nick Elmi transformed the dumpling into melt-in-your-mouth macaroni-esque pasta that was light and hearty all at once. Bits of salty pancetta lardons and crusty sourdough croutons added texture and a pleasant crunch. Forget mac and cheese: ricotta gnocchi is the go-to comfort food.
