This is How You Prep For A Red Meat Meltdown

Wednesday night, MD and I headed over to Madison Square Park to indulge in some Shake Shack lovin'. (That insanity will be posted shortly.) In order to gear up for this, I made what I believed would be appropriate dietary step-up measures: since I don't eat red meat very often (pretty much exclusively on Burger Nights), I needed to get my body adequately prepared for the bovine blitz to come. So on Tuesday, I went over to Sullivan Street Bakery, which is not on Sullivan Street in Soho, but in fact on 47th street, between 10th and 11th avenues. The bakery produces what I think is the best bread in the city; they also make these amazing Roman-style pizzas: thin-crusted, with simple, mostly-cheeseless toppings (plain tomato, mushroom, a spectacular one with yukon gold potatoes sliced chip-thin, and zucchini), served room temp. These pizzas pretty much singlehandedly restore my faith in humanity, which needs restoring about every 8 days or so. (MD adds: every 8 minutes, you mean?) Yesterday, though, I went to the bakery in the hopes that they would have my favorite sandwich -- and lo and behold, there it was: roasted beets, goat cheese, and arugula. Quality fillings inbetween glorious bread. The slight sweetness from the beets goes perfectly with the tang of the goat cheese and the spiciness of the arugula. It's like harmony of a higher order. And, very key: minimal, but adequate amounts of protein, via the goat cheese. Later in the evening, I was in Williamsburg following a much-needed haircut, and decided to try out Silent H, the Vietnamese spot that opened up not too long ago in the former Oznot's Dish location. They've done a nice job with the interiors (and they've got a wee back patio with 3 or 4 two-tops) -- very airy and minimal, and no weird billyburg-meets-oriental kitsch, which one tends to assume will happen when the 'burg and ethnic collide. I ordered the cha gio (spring rolls -- passable), and decided on the thit kho (porkchop), which I've always experienced as a manageable chunk of sauteed pork over a bit of rice, with maybe a couple pieces of pickled vegetables to boot. And it seemed like a good way to ramp up to the next night's burger-ing. Dear god. I mean, seriously. This is what came out. It was ginormous. And, to add to the insanity, they added a hard-boiled egg to the mix. (Because I could really use that heart attack now.) What would probably feed an entire family back in the home country was supposed to be my dinner. It was kind of nuts. And pretty good. Did I finish it? No. Did it propel me towards an inevitable food coma the following night? Oh yeah.