You can feast on Nordic treats at Torst or Aquavit, Spanish bites at La Vara or El Colmado or Cata, Chinese at Fung Tu, British at the Shakespeare, and Korean at Hanjan. Bar snacks in New York have gone all “The World Is Flat” on us. The eggs at Ardesia, devised by the chef Amorette Casaus, happen to be garlanded with chicharrón and pickled jalapeño, but these days you’re just as apt to find them with green tahini, sea urchin, Sichuan peppercorns or a glaze of Thai fish sauce. These days, deviled eggs are as de rigueur as artisanal bitters.
Throughout New York City, bar snacks have become such a booming revenue stream (with the drinking coaxing us to eat more, and the eating coaxing us to drink more) that a professional drinker could subsist for weeks on little more than croquettes and chicken wings, sliders and skewers and shishito peppers, and a seemingly endless deluge of deviled eggs. Nowadays, even a cup of spiced nuts may set you back a few bucks.) Influenced by the izakayas of Japan, the tapas counters of Spain, the gastro pubs of England and mixology trailblazers like PDT in the East Village, bar owners and restaurateurs have brought a new level of care, craft and passion to something that used to be a negligible form of human nourishment. Bar snacks were meant to lace your mouth with plenty of salt, leading you to reach more often for your thirst-slaking gimlet.īut over the last decade or so, the elevation of the American cocktail has led to a corresponding gift to booze hounds everywhere: the refinement of the American bar snack. Even if you didn’t start out wanting to drown your sorrows, the food made you want to.
PRETZEL LOGIC ranks alongside AJA as one of the band's finest achievements.For years, lingering at the bar came with a penance: a bowl of stale peanuts or soggy pretzels. Yet Steely Dan blend their colours ever more effectively here, writing shorter, sharper compositions packed with harmonies, instrumental interplay, witty wordplay, and satisfying hooks. Louis Toodle-Oo and the bop atheleticism of "Parker's Band", a tribute to Charlie Parker. The bar is raised in terms of musicianship here, as evidenced by the sassy cover of Duke Ellington's "East St. Though Fagen and Becker write the material and handle vocals/keyboards and bass, respectively, their recording process increasingly involved a rotating cast of session musicians, honing their studio-cobbled sound to a flawless perfection. A sinuous slice of jazz-pop that merges piano balladry with a samba-esque groove, the song became a Top Ten hit. "Rikki Don't Lose That Number", the album's lead off track, is a case in point. On PRETZEL LOGIC that combination is perfected, even as band masterminds Donald Fagen and Walter Becker moved deeper into jazz-influenced territory. They managed-on their first two albums and, especially, on PRETZEL LOGIC-to combine breezy, ear-pleasing accessibility with an immensely sophisticated sensibility that upended most pop conventions. Steely Dan holds the title as one of the most quietly subversive pop bands of the 20th century.