Sunday Brunch and Knotty Pine

Today my mother came to visit me! Seeing as it was Sunday and she was right on time, we participated in a New York institution and went out for brunch to one of my favorite neighborhood restaurants, Community Food & Juice.

Part of the allure of Sunday brunch is being able to put on a pair of massive sunglasses, scoot into the sun, and eat your meal outside. It's a scientific fact that challa french toast tastes up to 34.7% better al fresco (don't quote me on that). Unfortunately for city-dwelling synesthetes, eating outside introduces a whole slew of factors that may interrupt a perfectly good meal. These factors include:

Construction- the noise a jackhammer makes on concrete is best described as "creme de gritty dentist toothpaste."
Skateboarders- the scraping noise their wheels make is like biting the inside of your cheek.
...and car horns- no taste, just annoying as heck.

For obvious reasons I opted to have the hostess seat my mother and me inside.

I had an egg white omelet with goat cheese and apple-smoked bacon. On the side there was a scoop of hash browns laced in with strips of bright orange carrot and two slices of toast.

I always choose to have my omelets with egg whites when I can, not only because it dramatically reduces the cholesterol level of your meal but also because the egg whites tend to cook lighter and fluffier than they would mixed with the yolk. I've always paid a lot of attention to the texture as well as the taste of my food, and the difference in density makes a huge difference when you're adding another strong protein like bacon.

The slices of bacon in my omelet were very thickly cut and not as salty as I had anticipated- this ended up being fine because the goat cheese ended up having plenty of salt in its flavor profile. It was this unexpectedness compensation for the meal's saltiness that reminded me of the pleasant dissonance in the song "Knotty Pine" by David Byrne & Dirty Projectors off the compilation "Dark Was The Night" (which is one of the best-curated folk compilations of the past few years, by the way).

Have a great week everybody!

-Alexis

Rite of Summer and Ceviche

  

On any other food blog it would seem completely counterintuitive to start out with a post about a concert, but I’m setting out to make Dinner Music a little different from most food blogs. For people with synesthesia, the borders between our senses are blurred to indistinction, and the way I enjoy music is in some ways identical to the way I enjoy the sushi-inspired blue fin tuna tartar starter at BLT, or the steamed pork buns at Ippudo.

You’d think that having a condition where any given sound might make me taste something would mean that I like to keep my music space privatized- closed up and controlled by a carefully curated playlist of sounds to snack on as I move around a loud city like New York- but I actually enjoy the unpredictability of live music. Listening to a song that I know makes me taste key lime pie is fun, but hearing that song live adds more to the soundscape and flavor of that tune.

On Monday I went to Governors Island to see the last concert in the Rite of Summer series, a relatively new project that brings unique artists from different backgrounds together to perform live pieces. This last concert presented Todd Reynolds and Friends, a group that consisted of Todd (a violinist who used his violin almost like a vocal line, making it speak and sigh along to the music), Jordan Tice (a guitarist whose original music is fast and brutally exciting), Mathias Kunzli (a percussionist whose entire body is an instrument…he drums like he’s dancing), Michael O'Brian on bass (who really only got to show off in one of Jordan's songs and I wish I got to hear more of his playing), and Jonny Rodgers, a brilliant guitarist and vocalist who transforms a table of tuned wine glasses into an ethereal chorus of silvery voices…

I was particularly interested to hear Jonny Rodgers’ tuned glasses live, because on his recordings (which you can hear on his album TheAviary) their high, clear chords come across to me like a mouthful of snow. Their coldness and brightness mixes in perfectly with his singing voice, which is chilly and acidic like ceviche. Caustic in a cleansing way, not a burning way. 

Live, that clear taste of Jonny’s music was cut by different sounds and different tastes. The ringing of bicycle bells came in quick like a crunch of celery, the squeals and blips from the stage setup were raw and salty. The pieces Jordan Tice wrote and performed were full and fast- with so many changes in time signature and quick impressive riffs like spices it was hard to taste the tuned glasses at all. 

And through all this I sat up against a tree that was covered in spiders. I leaned my head against the bark and tasted the music. 

-Alexis