In the heat of the kitchen

Although I've been to Hearth a number of times, I've never sat at the chef's counter until two Fridays ago (I'm so behind in blogging this). You can immediately feel the temperature difference when you sit at the counter from the heat lamps, so it may not be the best idea on a blistering summer day. It really felt more like dinner and a show, and I thoroughly enjoyed seeing the hectic rush and bustle when it was peak dinner time. It was quite amazing seeing how a well-oiled kitchen handles that type of stress.

Hearth is definitely my go-to if I'm craving pasta (and/or fish, come to think about it). It's just damn good. No other way to describe it. So it wasn't a surprise that I had a pasta to start and then fish, while Jimmy had a fish to start, then pasta. We were also sent a lovely bowl of gnocchi with morels and peas as a mid-course.

We were so stuffed we actually ordered dessert to-go. Although the light in that area is a bit all over the place, I think it worked well in that full-size portrait shot to create an appropriate dramatic effect.

I always recommend Hearth when my guy friends ask me where they should take a girl on a first date. ;)

Ashley in the west village

My lovely friend Ashley and the Contax met on a blissful Friday evening for some portrait making. The Contax enjoyed Ashley very much, especially her eyes and her hair. Killer colors, both of them.

It's funny because Ashley and I only started talking online in maybe January or February of this year but she's become my go-to person to bounce ideas off. She also calms me down when I'm flipping out (which happens almost daily) about my business and whining about various expensive things I lust after. She reminds me to breathe and carry on and gives me pep talks. She's the best. :D

We got together on Friday afternoon to take some portraits in the West Village. I must have been nervous because I literally did the dumbest things - like when the Contax was OFF, and I was freaking out that the metering wasn't showing, and then having the dark slide in position where I couldn't press the shutter... it was a rough start.

Sadly, a few of the negatives were messed up; one was beyond repair. The one processed to black and white here was also extremely botched. I did the best retouching I could and figured I'd have better luck with a high key-ish b/w processing. It just sucks that I lost quite a bit of detail in doing that.

We found a gorgeous cobblestone-lined quiet side street and had no trouble blowing through most of the roll on that street. My favorite on the roll was actually the very last shot that I haphazardly took while waiting for a cab to drive through the scene.

And just for fun (digital - I'm not quiiite ready to get the timing perfect on a jump shot with film :P.):

Portraits are rewarding but HARD. I really want to get better at more interesting poses and compositions. To me, formal portraits are still much more stressful than still life and food and it definitely does not come naturally or effortlessly. This is a challenge I'll gladly take on though.

Fresh from the farm (blue hill at stone barns on film!)

I was a little crazy to shoot this whole meal on film, but I wanted to test the versatility of the Portra 400. Film guru Jonathan Canlas has been able to shoot this film two stops underexposed and still come out with great results. Of course, since I am doing my own scanning, my results were less than superb. I'm not sure what kind of adjustments my scanner is making behind the scenes, but it often leaves me with really inconsistent colors and contrast. The same scene, same exposure will get scanned differently - very frustrating.

I know I could have gotten fantastic results on digital, because we were sitting near decent window light, but I looked plenty insane already with the Contax at dinner. Towards the end, I was shooting handheld at 1/15s and it got a bit ugly. There happened to be a wedding going on in the patio area outside the restaurant and the photographer was slinging a Contax 645 and a Canon. I was dying to figure out who it was! I would've flipped out if it were Jose Villa (because those are the two cameras he uses at weddings!)...

Jimmy will take it from here:

Blue Hill at Stone Barns is one of the most distinctive restaurants in New York City (arguably). Chef Barber focuses on seasonality with intensity far beyond that of the dozens of “seasonal” restaurants in the city. Its relationship to the city is also unique. While Blue Hill at Stone Barns is generally classified as a New York City restaurant, it’s actually in Pocantico Hills, about an hour each way from Grand Central Terminal via Tarrytown. This creates a unique ambiance; many argue that the quiet of the countryside provides a far better backdrop than the distractions of the city for thoughtfully enjoying good food. Not even the most serene dining room in the city can fully take one away from the city.

Our menu at Stone Barns was heavily focused on vegetables. Of our six savories, only one unambiguously featured a protein as the main element. The bulk of the rest centered on the indisputably superb produce available to the restaurant. I don’t feel too much of a need to list our courses individually. The quality of the produce speaks for itself; while in some ways the meal reminded me of our meal at Kajitsu, the subtleties were in the depths of flavor in the spectacular ingredients, not in preparations that were complex on face. This isn’t to say that the cooking wasn’t fantastic. It was. My personal tastes tend toward more complex preparations, but the skill involved in getting just the right amount of seasoning or grilling to just the right level of doneness is indisputable. I just don’t really have the vocabulary to describe it. Perhaps the only element that drew attention to itself was a spectacular egg yolk pasta that was indescribably full of flavor.

A lot of chefs speak of letting the ingredients speak for themselves. In practice this usually ends up boring. Successful execution requires both immaculate sourcing and skill at cooking rivaling the most complicated modernist preparations. Blue Hill at Stone Barns is one of the rare restaurants that succeeds. I appreciate the meal only more in retrospect.

We had a 1987 Lopez de Heredia Viña Tondonia Blanco Gran Reserva with dinner. It rocked.

(Thanks, Jimmy!)