Looking for a place to honor and celebrate Dad on his special day? Restaurant critic Merrill Shindler offers his suggestions.
To make Father’s Day extra special – and to avoid the extra work of kitchen and dinner table cleanup – restaurant critic Merrill Shindler has several suggestions for brunch, lunch or dinner. I used to believe that Father’s Day was something of a runner-up holiday, a consolation prize awarded to fathers after the gala celebration of Mother’s Day, with its flowers and chocolates and brunch.
Father’s Day as we know it began on Mother’s Day in 1909. A woman named Sonora Louise Smart Dodd sat in her church in Spokane, Washington, listening to a sermon on the sacrifices mothers make for their children. The sermon touched a nerve. Her mother had died when Dodd was young, and she had been raised by her father, who also raised five sons.
But instead, my family will insist we go out for a meal, probably with an assortment of relatives. I’ll be given a shirt I don’t need. I’ll be asked, politely, not to light that cigar I’ve been saving. If I feel the need for pork, I opt for the pulled model — shredded and rich with sauce. I prefer the baby backs, served in a rack, to the beef ribs, which take a lot of chewing; I’m split on the spare ribs, which come in batches of three or six. The hot links are always a good fall back; and there’s roast chicken for those who need roast chicken. It’s not a bad choice; it’s just not brisket.with a parking lot in back added as an afterthought.
The menu has evolved over the years. These days, there are hen of the woods mushrooms in green aioli, rather than eggplant tahini with pickled Fresno chiles. There’s Moroccan chicken with harissa aioli rather than Moroccan carrots with a spicy harissa sauce made in-house, along with orange zest and yogurt — and, of all things, crispy quinoa. If you thought you knew falafel, you haven’t tasted Chef Elmaleh’s version made with pickled fennel.
Garlic and vinegar are major flavor elements in Filipino cooking, as definitive as the crispiness. And they’re flavors that do not sag or weary the palate as you keep consuming them. Unlike, say, hot sauce, there’s no palate fatigue. You just keep wanting more and more. This is food that calls to you, telling you it’s time to keep the fiesta going.
The shirazi salad — tomatoes, scallions, cucumber and mint — is a fine midpoint dish, allowing you to marshal your appetite for the influx of rice and kabobs. The default rice is tasty basmati, sufficient by itself.
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