April has been busy. While it started with a quiet decadent mid week dinner at Chanterelle, it picked up speed very quickly. Joe had his birthday at Long Tan in Brooklyn, then exactly one week later, on my birthday, Joe took me to Fresh downtown. Somewhere in the middle of that week I entertained out of town clients for lunch at The Odeon and then dinner at The Harrison in Tribeca. Throw in a long weekend trip to California, an excellent meal at Bistro 21 and a day wine tasting in Santa Barbara I can say that I am totally full and exhausted!

If I get some time this week I may add some details on the dinners at these restaurants. There may even be time for me to play with my new birthday toy, a pure white 325 watt KitchenAid with meat grinder and sausage attachments -- fun, fun, fun.

One of my new favorite restuarants is Supper, Frank Prisinazo's relatively new East Village restaurant. I went there last night with a friend visiting from out of town. We wanted something casual, inexpensive and given the winter storm, something that would warm us up completely. Supper did that perfectly.

What I like at Supper more than the prices is that the kitchen does simple northern Italian fare well, very well in fact. I had the calamari which were served perfectly tender in a garlic broth. For my pasta entree I had the "priest stranglers". They were al dente tossed in a great marinara sauce and the plate garnished with a dollop of ricota cheese. The service this time around was much improved and there was no "didactic" host, which more than pleased me.

It is hard to eat here and wonder why you had to eat so many bad Italian meals. Supper really respects the ingredients it uses and it shows. The kitchen takes advantage of quality ingredients used in simple combinations. They don't rely on garlic as the only means of imparting flavor nor do they use olive oil as a heat transfer medium but rather an ingredient in its own right.

I am beginning to appreciate the nature of simplicty at work and starting to translate that into other things around me such as my cooking, which isn't as easy as it sounds.

My dinner tonight was inspired by Supper's simple menu. I didn't want to waste time preparing anything, dealing with multiple pots or cleaning up after fancy creations. I had 3 eggs in the fridge and a half pound of asparagus, so I decided that an asparagus omelette was going to be my dinner. My mother made this all the time as a side and I loved it as a kid. I love it more now for the fact that all you taste is the asparagus, fresh, green and crisp.

1/2 pound of asparagus
1 tablespoon olive oil
3 eggs
Salt & pepper

1. Trim asparagus and then cut into 1 inch lengths. If the stalks are thick, you might need to cut them in half lengthwise.

2. Heat the oil in a non-stick frying pan until very hot and smoking. Add the asparagus and cook on high heat until browned, about 5 - 10 minutes depending on the stalk's thickness. Season with salt and pepper. Spread the asparagus so that it evenly covers the bottom of the frying pan.

3. While the asparagus are cooking, beat 3 eggs, add salt and pepper. Add eggs directly to asparagus in the pan. Reduce heat to medium and cook until egg is set on bottom.

4. Transfer pan to broiler to cook egg on top. Another 5 minutes.

5. Invert onto serving dish and serve, sliced in wedges.

For a variation, you could add diced tomotoes when cooking the asparagus and/or add any type of grated cheese to the egg mixture.

Joe and I have been on a dow mui kick for months now. We stumbled across this Chinese green (also know as pea shoots) at the Grand Sichuan in Chelsea. This is one of the better chinese restaurants in the city and it isn't even located anywhere near Canal Street. These little sprigs of green are bright to taste and almost as sweet as the peas they eventually produce.

Dow mui is easy to make. Simply saute the dow mui over hight heat with a little oil (corn is preferable but olive or peanut would do) for several minutes or until the leaves start to wilt and the stalks just give to the tooth - kind of al dente for pea shoots. Just before you remove the shoots from the wok, add salt and garlic slivers, toss to combine and serve immediately. 1 pound of dow mui will make enough for 2-3 people as a side dish.

Making the dow mui at home is not the problem. The problem lies in finding someone to sell you dow mui in the first place. Living close to Chinatown and having navigated it's maze of streets, vendors and smells many times, Joe and I still had trouble finding someone to sell us the greens. Asking for pea shoots didn't help us. Chinese vendors looked at us blankly or shooed us away for taking too much time away from regular customers.

After some research at home (the equivalent of asking our Chinese speaking roommate what pea shoots translated into) we went back into Chinatown determine to get at least 1lb of the sweet stalks.

Again no success. We tried pronouncing dow mui differently. Placing emphasis on different syllables and even changing the inflection. No luck. Still blank stares, but we were making progress. Store keepers understood our very poor Chinese and told us they didn't have dow mui. "No more today" and "Market too expensive" were common responses.

Then on Mulberry Street, deep in the bowels of Chinatown, we had success. "Dow Mui? Yes, we have. In the back. How much you want?" Finally. While they gathered our dow mui we started chatting with the women running the store. Apparently pea shoots are very popular and sell out quickly. Hence they are generally kept in the back and are only available to special customers on request.

At $3-6lb the shoots are considered expensive by Chinese standards. For us they are well worth it since 2lbs of dow mui will be our dinner for that night. And now we are the special customers.

Shanghai Cuisine was recommended by Hong Kong Chinese Canadian friend of mine. He claimed it's the one of the most authentic Hong Kongese place around. I never doubt the boy's food recommendations, especially his asian picks. He's a great cook and has never led me astray before.

However, this time, we found the menu uninspiring. It read like your standard on the corner "We deliver" Chinese. The Chef's Specials raised our hopes somewhat of finding something unique but the list was even more mainstream American Chinese than the regular one.

Did we order incorrectly? Maybe. Although I doubt it. A quick glance at other people's dishes seemed to suggest our experience was the norm. Meat dishes were covered with familiar sauces, and the noodles thick and sloppy without any real discernable taste. To be fair, Joe's vegetable noodle soup was good and full flavored (albeit a little salty). Probably a result of the chicken, which despite the "vegetable" label, had been added to the soup.

If you go, make sure you try...

The soup douplings maybe the only thing worth the trip and definitely better than Joe's Shanghai to be sure. The iced espresso coffee with condensed milk was authentic - strong like true italian espresso with enough condensed milk to cut the bitterness. Just be patient watching the cup fill drip by drip.

Shanghai Cuisine
89 Bayard Street
SW cnr Bayard & Mulberry

Around since 1985 Florent has seen the meat packing district pack meat. The pink neon sign glowing in the huge pane of glass defines Florent as simple and unpretentious.

A Joan Allen like hostess presides over seating arrangements and glides as effortless as the movie star herself between the close knit tables. The food is good French bistro fare served American diner style in equal parts. People watching is its own past time in New York and Florent is as vibrant as you will get. Especially if you come early in the morning as the crowds from the nearby not-so-main-stream bars and clubs roll in. Everyone's checking everyone out.

Sitting along the wall looking at the pressed tin over the bar I want to believe that in the pre-Guiliani years, Florent was a hedonist's hangout. Only visited by those in the know and a clientele willing to risk the trip west into a dimly lit, smelly, seedy, cobblestone district. Perhaps I got glipse of the of what this might have been like after the Gay Pride parade last year. Drag queens swilling beer on the sidewalk. Gay men and lesbians in leather outfits best described as costumes. Sweaty Chelsea boys in hot pants and tank tops. And of course the requesite number of trendy straight wanna be's perched on bar stools trying to recognize faces in the crowd while waiting for tables.

If you go, don't go without trying...

Almost everything is good. Joe swears by the mussels, even after reading Bourdain's warning in Kitchen Confidential. For me, the Nicoise is one of the better ones in the city. It's served with a decent peice of gently grilled tuna lying on the lightly dressed greens. The burgers aren't bad either.