Everyone loves Carnival Food, and in that spirit, the most recent addition to Dirt Candy’s dessert menu are Fennel Funnel Cakes. You can buy them off the menu, or at the stand down the midway right between “Mofongo: Gorilla of the Mind” and the Gravitron. They’re delicious! Mini Funnel Cakes served with mango and fennel sorbet and chocolate sorbet, and a caramelized mango and fennel salad on the side.

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Jesus’s month of birthday family meals is coming to an end. First, three meals from the last days before I left for Italy.

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Tuesday: Swasti the intern made today’s family meal. Garlic broccoli, spicy potatoes with tofu, and a banana jam for the potatoes (lurking in the background).

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Wednesday: we’re obviously all desperate to go away on vacation. A salad and fried tofu.

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Thursday: broccoli, eggplant curry, jicama, mango banana smoothie and a salad.

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After the jump, the last of the non-Jesus family meals, plus treats from a regular customer.

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We’re in the middle of a new dining trend, and no one even realized it. Carnival Food! New York City chefs are cooking just like the vendors at county fairs. And it’s not just New York. Some of the most popular shows on the Food Network and the Travel Channel (judging by the fact that they always seem to be on) are Diners, Drive-ins & Dives and Man vs Food – both of them odes to Carnival Food. And here in the wicked city I’ve got Fennel Funnel Cake on the menu (and even a fancy version of Cracker Jacks). So every time you hear about some new burger mutation, towering porcine gutbuster, bizarre dessert, or unlawful hybrid of savory and sweet at a classy restaurant, just remember that county fair vendors got there first.

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Chocolate-covered bacon!

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The Indianapolis State Fair offers Doughnut Burgers

and so does RUB BBQ right here in NYC.

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Or have your Doughnut Burger with bacon, egg and cheese!

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Fried Coke!

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Fried Twinkie Lattes!

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Pork Parfait!

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And last, but not least…Fried Butter!

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We eat our food out of trucks. We eat it while walking down the street. We eat it at ourdoor beer gardens. Just like we’re at a county fair!

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Poutine! Cone Pizza! The KFC Double Down! All Carnival Food!

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So let’s give credit where credit is due. The most influential chef in NYC cuisine right now might just be Dennis Reas.

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So what do you do after you get a big, fat $10,000 check from PETA? I had plans. Oh, I had plans. By the time that check found its way into my hot little hands I had spent it a dozen times over. It arrived already dissected, apportioned, cut into wedges and ready to be disbursed.

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And then I realized that my air conditioner was failing.

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It’s no secret that the original contractors who built Dirt Candy were incompetent at best and criminal at worst, and I’ve gone through four HVAC companies since I opened trying to have someone explain to me why this restaurant is cold in the winter and hot in the summer – the exact opposite of what I’d initially requested. If you’ve eaten here you’ve seen the space heaters, you’ve witnessed the fans.

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A Dirt Candy human customer

six weeks ago.

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A Dirt Candy bunny customer

six weeks ago.

(Our carrot buns are very popular!)

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Finally, Astoria Mechanical came in, recommended by John Fraser from Dovetail. The first thing they discovered was that most of my heating system wasn’t actually installed. Ducts weren’t taped, pipes were capped rather than being connected, and the whole thing was working at about 50%.

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They fixed that and then I asked them about the air conditioning. They wound up installing a new unit, the only option available since the original unit wasn’t big enough for the space. I trusted them so much that they did the work while I was in Italy, and when I came back, Dirt Candy was finally cool on the inside.

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Price for the work? $10,000 exactly.

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*sigh*

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A Dirt Candy customer now.

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(PS – I recommend Astoria Mechanical very highly. If you want their contact number, let me know. They are the first contractors to work here that I didn’t subsequently wish would be crushed in a wildebeest stampede.)

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I’ve crossed paths with the mighty zucchini before. It was last summer when the Dirt Candy menu featured the first dessert I came up with after my pastry chef left, Zucchini Ginger Cake with Cream Cheese Ice Cream. This summer, I knew zucchini would return, but a year later I wanted it on the menu as an entree and I wanted it on the menu looking sophisticated and chic. And so, please welcome Zucchini with Mint & Tarragon Pasta, Squash Blossom Relish and Yogurt & Saffron Sauce.

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Why is zucchini back? Because, like the white whale, it is a challenging and elusive beast and I will hunt it again and again until I finally get it exactly right.

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Why does it take so long to do the simplest things? This summer heat makes everything move at half-speed. But I finally updated the wine list online – it’s been different at the restaurant for a while but I’m finally getting around to doing it here.

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The big changes: we’ve made our sparkling wine a spumante (and a rosé at that), the vintage on the Rotgipfler and Goldmuskateller has changed from 2007 to 2008, we added a Chardonnay (say what?!? full explanation here) and our Le Fraghe Bardolino has changed to a Le Fraghe Rosé (what do you expect? It’s summer).

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Here’s the updated wine list.

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Recently I was asked to donate my time to a charity that will remain nameless. They wanted one famous chef to cook for each of their tables at a big fundraising dinner, and for some reason I guess they ran out of famous chefs and they asked me. Even though it meant closing the restaurant for a night, I said “Sure!” and asked them to give me some more details.

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Yesterday they called  and here’s how the conversation went:

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Charity: We’re wondering if you’d just do dessert.

Me: Dirt Candy isn’t really famous for its desserts. I’d rather do something savory.

Charity: You could do an hor’s d’oeuvre.

Me: I thought I was cooking for a table?

Charity: You could do two hor’s d’oeuvres.

Me: I’d like to do a table. I thought we agreed to that already?

Charity: Well, we have a lot of big donors coming and we think that if they’re assigned to your table they’ll be disappointed.

Me: But why?

Charity: Because you won’t be serving meat.

Me: But I’m a vegetarian restaurant.

Charity: Yes.

Me: And you’re saying I’ll disappoint your donors?

Charity: Yes.

Me: But you invited me.

Charity: Oh, right.

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As of now, I’m not sure if I’m still invited to participate or not, but I thought that this was the funniest thing that’s happened to me since my sister-in-law was chased by wild boars.

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Back from Italy and Dirt Candy is back in business, starting tonight (August 3). I stayed in Tuscany with my husband’s family and right now I feel like I’m a fleshbag stuffed with 200 pounds of pasta, I sweat olive oil and when I cry my tears are made of Chianti.

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During the trip: my sister-in-law was chased by wild boars, I turned my 14-year-old nephew into a wine snob who now says things like, “It’s hard to taste anything beyond the sugar in this disappointing white,” I got all MISSION IMPOSSIBLE on an ATM machine in Rome and managed to extract my jammed card using nothing more than a bobby pin, I ate a burrata pizza in Florence that makes all those fancy NYC pizzerias look like a bunch of punks, I learned that my mother-in-law is a brutal and ruthless poker player who likes to make people cry and I drank. A lot. After the jump: pictures!

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