February 4, 2009
Critic’s Notebook
Restaurants Stop Playing Hard to Get By FRANK BRUNI
HAS a restaurant hugged you lately?
Has it insisted that you can have it more cheaply than you thought possible and whenever you want, not just at 5:45 p.m., when your desire isn’t close to peaking, or at 9:30, when you almost can’t be bothered anymore?
Has it dropped its usual guard? Surrendered its typical reserve?
I’m betting that the answer is “yes” — and that if you eat out regularly in New York, you’ve noticed a different reception, an altered mood: extreme solicitousness tinged with outright desperation.
Battered hard already by the recession and petrified of what’s to come, restaurants are talking sweet and reaching out in ways they didn’t six or even three months ago. They’re cutting special deals, adding little perks, relaxing demands and making an extra effort to be accessible.
They’ve seldom wanted you so bad, so they’ve rarely treated you so good. If you can still afford to dine out, you’re likely finding yourself enfolded in what the restaurateur Stephen Hanson— who recently closed two Manhattan restaurants, including Fiamma — describes as a big, tight embrace.
Predicting that “the consumer will just shut down” and that 2009 would be “a very, very tough year,” Mr. Hanson told peers at a conference in Manhattan last month, “You need to hug the customer.”
Trust me: the hugging had already begun.
I was feeling it regularly in restaurants where I was certain I hadn’t been recognized as a critic and where the “hello” from the host station sounded more like a “thank God.” I was feeling it on the telephone, as reservationists who couldn’t accommodate me one night veritably pleaded that I book another, or beseeched me for a callback number just in case a table suddenly opened.
And I wasn’t the only one.
Joan Rappoport, a Manhattan event planner who lives in the West Village and eats out regularly, said that she sensed a climatic shift as early as six months ago.
“The attitude that a number of places used to have, they don’t have that anymore,” Ms. Rappoport said, her tone of voice communicating equal measures bewilderment and relief. “That attitude of ‘we’re doing you a favor,’ that frosty condescending attitude — I don’t find that anymore. And I’ve experienced that change over and over again.”
Servers, she said, make double- and triple-sure that her table has everything it needs. Managers circle back to the table more often than ever to ask, with new urgency, if everything’s O.K.
They have the time. Fewer restaurants are filling up every night and more tables are going empty. According to Technomic, a Chicago-based research and consulting firm, fine-dining revenues could fall by 12 to 15 percent in 2009.
That may not sound cataclysmic, but restaurateurs say that for many restaurants, it is the difference between making and losing money.
“People need to understand how tight the margins are in the restaurant business,” said Alfred Portale, the chef and one of the owners of Gotham Bar and Grill, which opened 25 years ago.
Mr. Portale said that Gotham’s revenues are down by about 15 percent from a year ago, adding, “This is the toughest January I’ve ever seen.”
I asked if the restaurant was still eking out a profit. After hesitating for several seconds, he said, in a staggered cluster of short sentences: “I hope so. Yes. We will. A small one.”
Fabio Trabocchi, the chef at Fiamma, sounded even more dire in a recent telephone conversation, saying that some restaurants with prices as steep and standards as high as Fiamma’s and Gotham’s were seeing declines of up to 40 percent.
You get an immediate sense of that when hunting for reservations. While getting into a select cadre of perpetually mobbed restaurants can be as hellish and humbling as ever, getting into others isn’t nearly as tough as it once was.
“I’m a big fan of Chanterelle,” said Niko Canner, a management consultant who lives in Chelsea. “You can go to Chanterelle at the last minute now, in a way that you couldn’t nine months ago.”
As Mr. Canner spoke to me on the telephone last Wednesday around noon, he began surfing the Web site of Open Table, an online reservation system, and found that several highly acclaimed, steadfastly popular restaurants — including Chanterelle — could take a twosome that very night at the prime time of 7:30.
About two hours after our phone conversation, I tried my own Open Table experiment. I looked in the area round Union Square for a table for four at — or within a half hour of — 8 p.m. I had many options, including Gotham, Irving Mill and 15 East.
I looked in TriBeCa. I could dine in a foursome around that time at many of the neighborhood’s all-stars, including Chanterelle, the Harrison, Mai House and Matsugen.
Then I called Karen Waltuck, one of the owners of Chanterelle, who said that in the nearly 30 years since she and her husband opened the restaurant, she has never felt so unsettled.
“There’s a tenuous quality to everything that doesn’t give you a feeling of standing on solid ground,” she said, referring to herself and other restaurateurs. “We’re all looking around and saying: ‘What is going on here? What can we do to make it better for ourselves and for our clients?’ We all have to be clever in our ways.”
Chanterelle hasn’t instituted bargain menus or price reductions because, Ms. Waltuck said, the restaurant has always operated on a slim profit margin and tried to keep prices in check.
But so many other restaurants have fashioned so many special deals that two of the city’s most prominent dining-related Web sites — Eater and Grub Street, which is owned by New York magazine — have invented cheeky tags and new features to keep track of them.
Almost daily on Eater, about a half dozen new items pop up under the header “Dealfeed,” and the Web site has also unveiled a “recession specials map.” The flag that Grub Street uses for its ever-growing tally of price reductions: “The Recession Is Your Friend.”
At the avant-garde restaurant wd-50, on the Lower East Side, anyone who orders a 12-course $140 tasting menu can get any bottle of wine on the restaurant’s excellent list for half price. The promotion, begun in December, was initially supposed to last three months. Now it has no definite end date.
Wine discounts, waived corkage fees or wine lists showcasing less expensive bottles can be found in Midtown at Alto and the Modern, where bottles under $50 appear in the Bar Room as “wines for our times”; in TriBeCa at Capsouto Frères; and in Greenwich Village at Perry St., owned by Jean-Georges Vongerichten.
Mr. Vongerichten, many of whose restaurants have always offered price reductions at lunch, is being particularly aggressive (by which I mean huggy). In October Perry St. instituted the option of a $35 three-course dinner menu during the slow hours of 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. and 9:30 to 11 p.m. In December, his restaurant Nougatine, a casual adjunct of his Columbus Circle flagship, Jean Georges, instituted its own $35 three-course menu, every night but Saturday from 5:30 to 6:30 and 10 to 11 p.m.
That same month he began to offer a $35 seven-course omakase dinner at Matsugen, of which he is a principal owner. There are no restrictions on the hours when it can be ordered.
Not even the best-known chefs and most acclaimed restaurants are immune from the pressure to give diners more for less, and wild spending for extreme luxury is rapidly falling out of fashion.
At Del Posto in Chelsea, whose owners include Mario Batali, Lidia Bastianich and Joseph Bastianich, the price for the most extravagant, 20-course meal was reduced last month to $175 from $250. The price for a nine-course tasting menu fell to $125 from $175.
Daniel recently began offering, for people with reservations between 5:30 and 6:30 p.m. on Monday through Thursday, an early-bird special: three courses, including wine, for $98 as opposed to the usual $105 without wine. The restaurant Cru’s early-bird special, available every day up to 6:30 p.m., is three courses for $49.
Compass, on the Upper West Side, is promoting a “lobster sample sale,” until Feb. 15, that includes a whole three-pound grilled lobster for $39 and a lobster salad for $13.
Craft, which in October opened its private room twice a month for 10-course, $150 dinners cooked by Tom Colicchio — called Tom: Tuesday Dinner — reached out in the other direction, to bargain hunters, last month. It opened that room once a week for Damon: Frugal Fridays, with a range of dishes cooked by Craft’s executive chef, Damon Wise, for $10 apiece.
Dozens of prominent New York restaurants are extending the $24.07 lunch menus and $35 dinner menus of Winter Restaurant Week, well past when they were set to end last weekend. Le Cirque is prolonging them through February, something its owner, Sirio Maccioni, said he had never done.
Lever House has a $35 three-course dinner menu that it has said it will keep through March. Other restaurants have said that similar specials will last until the end of the year. At the rate things are going, Restaurant Week could become Restaurant Millennium.
And all sorts of rules and rigidities could crumble. The 21 Club recently abandoned requirements — in place for more than 75 years — that men wear neckties at dinner.
While its manager, Bryan McGuire, said the change wasn’t directly linked to the recession, he conceded in an interview with Glenn Collins of The New York Times that it “could help the restaurant greatly in a time of difficulty.”
So could the restaurant’s relatively new offer of free parking at any time of the night for diners, a bit of hugging that pales next to what one Chicago restaurant, Everest, is doing. Customers traveling 15 miles or less to the restaurant can get a luxury car service for $15.
Restaurants in New York and elsewhere are working harder than ever to make sure that no diner who has expressed an interest in them slips away.
David Barber, one of the owners of Blue Hill, in Greenwich Village, and Blue Hill at Stone Barns, in Westchester County, said that reservationists at those restaurants are newly assiduous about taking careful notes on any reservation request that couldn’t be met and are getting detailed contact information for whoever made the request. That way, a cancellation can be quickly replaced, and interested customers are more likely to be accommodated.
“There’s no assumption anymore that those cancellations are going to refill automatically, like in the days of two years ago,” Mr. Barber said.
And they’re showing their regulars even more love than usual.
Mr. Canner said: “If I walk into Craftsteak in my neighborhood without a reservation and they see me, the degree of palpable warmth around the ‘Oh, Mr. Canner, happy to see you!’ — the body language and the physicality around that — feels different.”
“Not that they wouldn’t be nice anytime,” he added, “but there’s more emotion around it.”
And at another of his regular haunts, Blue Ribbon Sushi in SoHo, a server brought him a free plate of fluke sashimi he hadn’t requested, as a thank-you.
“That’s something they generally don’t do,” he said. “And at that moment, I remember thinking, ‘If this restaurant, one of the most financially successful in New York, feels it’s so important to have that extra touch, what does it mean about the restaurant economy in New York?’ ”
It means tough going — and alms of a sort for the diners who help restaurants get through it.
Showing posts with label Bruni. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bruni. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
The 10 Best New Restaurants of 2008 By FRANK BRUNI
The 10 Best New Restaurants of 2008 By FRANK BRUNI
1. MOMOFUKU KO David Chang’s intimate 12-seat, sushi-counter-style restaurant heads this list not only because its best dishes and moments are so memorable, but because it’s a paradigm-busting experiment that, like so much of what Mr. Chang has done, heeds and adjusts for what a new generation of discerning diners cares most about — and what fuss and frippery they can do without.
2. CORTON This blissful collaboration of the restaurateur Drew Nieporent and the chef Paul Liebrandt presents luxury of a more classic sort, at an admirably moment-reflecting price of $76 for a three-course prix fixe with a flurry of amuse-bouches and petit fours. And it finds Mr. Liebrandt at the sweet spot between runaway imagination and good sense.
3. (TIE) SCARPETTA To what heights can a simple dish of spaghetti al pomodoro rise? Scarpetta provided the answer — the sky’s the limit — and a host of other delights, its sometimes agitated setting in the meatpacking district not among them. At Scarpetta the chef Scott Conant reconnected with his early glory days at L’Impero.
3. (TIE) CONVIVIO The post-Conant L’Impero, meanwhile, became this warmer, redder, more convivial restaurant. The chef Michael White’s improved menu here pegged him as one of the city’s top pasta whizzes, and he showed a Batali-esque enthusiasm for organ meat.
5. DOVETAIL The chef John Fraser abandoned Compass but not the Upper West Side, reemerging in this somewhat plain but entirely comfortable and charming restaurant, which surpassed just about everyone’s expectations, becoming more than just a neighborhood favorite.
6. MATSUGEN In the TriBeCa space where he had tried to make a lasting success of 66, Jean-Georges Vongerichten decided to treat Japanese cooking in a more straightforward and respectful vein than 66 had treated Chinese. He left the menu and cooking to a team from Tokyo, who rewarded him with underexposed, compelling dishes and excellent soba.
7. ADOUR ALAIN DUCASSE Mr. Ducasse ratcheted down the opulence of his previous fancy Manhattan restaurant in the Essex House with this successor in the St. Regis, notable for Sandro Micheli’s exceptional desserts and for a blockbuster (and pricey) wine list. I’d rank this higher if a first-year change in executive chef and Mr. Ducasse’s distant involvement didn’t raise questions about consistency.
8. BAR BOULUD This relatively casual effort from Daniel Boulud doesn’t get everything right, but for its outstanding charcuterie, an exemplary wine list and scattered other delights, it deserves big applause.
9. ALLEGRETTI Alain Allegretti, a French chef who worked under Mr. Ducasse, struck out on his own, choosing an odd block and a risky moment for saucy cooking that was, at its best, a heady ticket straight to Provence.
10. MIA DONA The chef Michael Psilakis, perhaps more prescient about the economy than some peers, responded to the kudos for his haute Greek restaurant Anthos with this Italian restaurant of big flavors and big portions at accessible prices.
December 31, 2008
Critic’s Notebook
Same Table Next Year? Not So Fast By FRANK BRUNI
IN a humble East Village space with dimensions better suited to a take-out pizza parlor, a restaurant as significant as any in the last few years bloomed. And though it charges an unyielding $100 for food alone at dinner — and an unbending $160 at lunch — admission is nearly as competitive as at certain elite preschools. What many food enthusiasts have wanted more than anything else in 2008 is one of the 12 stools at Momofuku Ko.
Where Montrachet withered, what took root was something more refined, more ambitious and arguably more French. In fact Corton, its replacement, may be the most quietly, classically serious restaurant in the restaurateur Drew Nieporent’s large portfolio and long career.
Financial crisis? Economic meltdown? In the pace and quality of restaurant openings this year, the recession was hardly reflected. In fact, 2008 was probably the best year for new restaurants in this city since 2004, when New York welcomed two four-star restaurants, Per Se and Masa, in one month. There hasn’t been a new four-star restaurant since.
This was the year of three stars. I gave that rating to seven debuts, all on my list of the year’s 10 best new restaurants. By comparison, there were no three-star debuts in 2007, and my top 10 list was headed by a place I awarded only two stars. As stocks tumbled, the city’s chefs and restaurateurs seemed to rally, staging what could turn out to be a last blast — for a while at least — of nearly unsullied optimism and unbound dreams.
But it wasn’t an act of defiance. Restaurants are planned, and reach a point of no return, far in advance of their debuts. The bumper crop of 2008 was planted anywhere from 6 to 24 months before the challenges they would face became clear.
I shudder to think about this time in 2009 — about the kind of reflection on the New York restaurant scene that might be in order then.
The next 12 months promise to be a grueling survival test for all but the most intensely beloved or flat-out utilitarian restaurants. Although there will be newcomers to celebrate and congratulate, most of them, I suspect, will come along during the first months of the year, laggards that missed their projected fall openings. The second half of 2009 could be barren and grim.
Will there be anything like Matsugen, a bold wager that superior soba in a relatively straightforward setting could be enough of a draw to fill more than 100 seats? I hope so, but I doubt it.
Or anything like Adour Alain Ducasse, with its baronial splendor and its interactive touch-screen wine bar? I wouldn’t bet on it, and while we can certainly live without such pomp and pampering, isn’t it nicer to have them around, just in case?
I’m not confident, in fact, that all of the worthy restaurants among this year’s top 10 will be around next December. And that drives me to appreciate them and extol their virtues, along with all the many other positive restaurant developments in 2008, all the more.
It was a great year for pasta, thanks in large part to one entirely new restaurant (Scarpetta), one sort-of-new restaurant (Convivio) and the installation of a new chef, Simone Bonelli, at an existing restaurant (Perbacco) that can barely contain his creativity. Their combined force should, by all rights, relegate the no-carbohydrate regimen to the dustbin of dietary history.
In fact, Scarpetta’s spaghetti al pomodoro alone should. The only reason I haven’t listed it among the best new dishes of 2008 is that it hasn’t changed substantially since Scarpetta’s chef, Scott Conant, cooked it years ago at L’Impero. If he’s smart, he’ll still be cooking it years from now.
It was a great year (yet again!) for David Chang. While tinkering restlessly to make Momofuku Noodle Bar and Ssam Bar even better than before, he unveiled Ko, whose significance isn’t a function principally of the novelty and quality of its dishes, impressive as they are. What Ko did, like Ssam Bar before it, was tweak and reevaluate the usual atmospheric context for superior cooking, rejecting old models and reassessing what’s important.
As if that weren’t enough, Mr. Chang also unveiled Momofuku Bakery and Milk Bar, where he showcases the pastry talents of Christina Tosi.
The continued emphasis on informality and the consistently growing respect for the contributions of spirits to an enjoyable meal made it a banner year for bars. I’m talking not about ales and highballs but about nomenclature.
New restaurants that misleadingly labeled themselves bars, wagering on the efficacy of that come-on, include Bar Milano, Bar Blanc, Bar Boulud, Bar Q, Bar Breton and Socarrat Paella Bar, which has the greatest justification, inasmuch as almost all of its seats are stools at a high, two-sided counter.
Speaking of libations and of bars nominal and actual, wine bars came into their own, not only multiplying in number but also serving food so appealing that lines were blurred and categories made less tidy.
Exhibit A is Terroir, whose best snacks and dishes are reason enough to wedge into a cramped East Village space and straddle a stool. Exhibit B is Gottino, where the chef Jody Williams turns out small plates that do full justice to the gifts she previously demonstrated with larger dishes at more conventional, full-fledged restaurants.
The trend toward outstanding food in incidental, unassuming and unusual formats was continued and amplified in 2008, and it was a banner period for the related phenomenon of limited-purpose, tightly focused restaurants.
Porchetta serves little more than, well, porchetta. Momofuku Bakery and Milk Bar devotes itself to breads and desserts. Socarrat revels in permutations of paella, while Obika mulls the possibilities in mozzarella.
Salumeria Rosi — much, much humbler than the prior enterprises of one of its owners, the chef Cesare Casella — invests its energies in imported Italian cured meats and cheeses. And the Cave des Fondus stakes its fortunes on fondue, along with wine and beer served in baby bottles, though the latter isn’t a trend. It’s just plain weird.
The year ushered in many opportunities for great eating at contained prices, though I suspect in this one sense 2009 may outpace 2008. It will have its work cut out for it, because in addition to Porchetta, Gottino and Terroir, there’s Cabrito, whose best dishes — including the carnitas with salsa verde and the roasted poblano peppers in cream — match those at just about any Mexican restaurant in New York.
There’s also Rhong-Tiam, where the chef Andy Yang does better Thai food than at his misguided and more expensive follow-up, Kurve, proving anew that pricier isn’t necessarily better. There’s the Redhead, the East Village bar that evolved this year into a Southern-accented restaurant with two runners-up for the year’s list of best dishes: its bacon peanut brittle and its fried chicken with cornbread.
Artichoke Basille’s Pizza & Brewery opened in the same few square blocks of the East Village where Una Pizza Napoletana struts its stuff, competing for pie lovers’ loyalty and intensifying the happy, fattening debate over what’s right, wrong and best when it comes to thin, thick and blistered crusts.
All in all the year’s blessings go far beyond the list of top 10 restaurants here. I left out Tom: Tuesday Dinner, a noteworthy new experiment by the chef Tom Colicchio, because it operates for only one evening every other week and because Mr. Colicchio hasn’t committed to keeping it going for more than a year. It served its first meal in mid-October.
And there are restaurants that came along at the end of the year that might well turn out to have as much merit as anything on my top 10 list; they just haven’t been open long enough for me to review them.
There’s some excitement out there, for example, about the John Dory, a British seafood restaurant from the team behind the Spotted Pig, and about Shang, where the acclaimed Toronto chef Susur Lee is making his New York debut. For the purposes of my top 10 rankings, they belong to 2009, just as Dovetail, which opened at the very end of 2007, belongs to 2008.
There were of course bitter disappointments and puzzling setbacks along with the good news in 2008. The restaurant Florent closed, marking nothing less than the end of an era. The chef Gray Kunz, such a great talent and such a persistent underperformer of late, closed Cafe Gray and severed his ties with the half-cocktail-lounge, half-restaurant Grayz, meaning he is once again a man without a Manhattan restaurant kitchen.
And what to make of David Bouley and Marcus Samuelsson, two highly regarded chefs with highly visible duds this year?
Perhaps distracted by all the other activity in his mini-empire, including the relocation of Bouley, Mr. Bouley inflicted a mess of a brasserie named Secession on a TriBeCa neighborhood that expected better of him. And Mr. Samuelsson’s supposed great labor of love, Merkato 55, a pan-African restaurant in the meatpacking district, drew less attention from him than it sorely needed.
But 2008 will be remembered more sharply for its many great successes. And that would be the case even if 2009 wasn’t looking as ominous as it does.
The Best Meal of 2008
If there’s a New York restaurant with a confidence, diligence and steadiness that surpass those of Le Bernardin, I don’t know it. I stopped here just once in 2008, for a (relatively) low-key lunch. And it was hands down my best meal of the year.
Lunchtime flatters this restaurant. The muted natural light that filters through its windows makes up for the dining room’s cosmetic shortcomings, and the restrained portions, which can leave you wanting more at dinnertime, are ideal for midday, when you don’t want to be weighed down.
My companion and I didn’t linger, heading off to our busy afternoons no more than 90 minutes after we had sat down. But Le Bernardin didn’t need any more time than that to remind us of its magic: of the ways its artfulness always stops short of preciousness or flamboyance; of the precision with which every ingredient is prepared and plated.
Could langoustines be cooked more expertly than those in one of our appetizers? The tail meat in several discrete, beautifully curved arches on the plate was so delicate that my companion insisted it must really be some sort of mousse.
Our other appetizer layered rectangles of cucumber, smoked salmon, fresh salmon and apple in three colorful, identical four-tiered towers, the balance of flavors as careful and appealing as the architecture.
The entrees were even better. Baked mahi-mahi was surrounded by an earthy, faintly sweet and bracingly intense broth made with fresh bamboo shoots, dried oyster mushrooms, brandy and young ginger.
Poached fillets of halibut had impossibly creamy flesh, draped with brussels sprout leaves for some textural contrast and sauced with a purée of uni, clam juice and mustard oil for some briny, zingy wow.
Each dimension of every dish sang with the exact pitch and volume that the chef Eric Ripert had no doubt intended. He’s a maestro, and his kitchen a finely tuned orchestra, and I could happily lose myself in their music every day.
The Best New Restaurant Dishes of 2008
MOMOFUKU KO’S FROZEN FOIE GRAS David Chang turned a classic torchon into flakes piled high, like an incongruously fatty and liver-y Sno-Kone, over a brittle of nuts and a sweet wine gelée.
PERBACCO’S ROLLED PASTA WITH TRUFFLED ZABAGLIONE This rich symphony of speck, buffalo milk mozzarella, béchamel and more was the most wickedly indulgent of the inventive pasta dishes on Simone Bonelli’s new menu.
TOM: TUESDAY DINNER’S CRISPY PORK TROTTER By frying the trotter and pairing it with a beet-stained, pickled quail egg, Tom Colicchio came up with something akin to a dinnertime bacon-and-eggs for the most jaded epicures.
GOTTINO’S WALNUT PESTO The best spread for toasted bread since crunchy peanut butter, it combines walnuts with olive oil, thyme, Parmesan and a dab of sun-dried tomato, which Jody Williams wisely rescues from disrepute.
TERROIR’S PORK BLADE STEAK Like many peers, Marco Canora smartly turned to the Virginia farmer Bev Eggleston for pork, then made the additionally sharp decisions to broil this thin shoulder cut and dump arugula and Parmesan onto it.
CONVIVIO’S PECORINO POTATOES The side dish of the year, a crazily addictive midpoint between roasted potatoes and French fries, given a salty charge and an extra dimension by the right cheese.
BAR BOULUD’S CROQUES-MONSIEUR AND -MADAME Two timeless sandwiches get the reverence they deserve and a richness beyond the norm.
CORTON’S CARAMEL BRIOCHE It’s a dessert (with banana and passion fruit in the mix), a cheese course (thanks to Stilton), a breakfast (in its mimicry of syrupy French toast) and altogether wonderful.
ADOUR ALAIN DUCASSE’S CONTEMPORARY VACHERIN. The terrific pastry chef Sandro Micheli stages a riveting tart-sweet drama with layers of mango marmalade, passion fruit sorbet and coconut meringue.
December 31, 2008
Resolution: Dine Well Without Breaking the Budget
Here are some of the best inexpensive places reviewed in the Dining section this year.
ABRAçO ESPRESSO 86 East Seventh Street, East Village; (212) 388-9731.
Espresso drinks are among the city's finest and drip coffee is even better. There's a small flavorful menu with a Spanish-style frittata of ethereal, custardy creaminess ($4) and warm French toast folded around sweet ricotta ($3).
THE BROOKLYN FLEA Starting in April at the playground of Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School, Lafayette Avenue between Clermont and Vanderbilt Avenues, Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Hours are available at brooklynflea.com. Winter location at 76 Front Street (Washington Street), Dumbo, Brooklyn, has limited food vending.
This market is full of craftspeople, designers and costly vintage items, as well as food vendors from the Red Hook ball fields and elsewhere. Among the notables are the Vaquero family's grilled corn with mayo, cheese and chili powder ($3); Salvatore Bklyn Ricotta cannoli ($3), filled to order with lightly sweetened ricotta spiked with lemon zest, Marsala, chopped chocolate and salt; tiny cupcakes from Kumquat Cupcakery ($1 apiece); bonbons ($20 for a dozen) from Nunu Chocolates; sandwiches ($6.50 to $7.25) at Choice Cafe and pizza from Pizza Moto.
CABRITO 50 Carmine Street (Bedford Street), West Village; (212) 929-5050.
Tacos ($4 to $6) and enchiladas ($14) are delicious and carefully made, wrapped in tortillas with the drape of linen and the tenderness of crepes.
GAZALA PLACE 709 Ninth Avenue (49th Street), Clinton; (212) 245-0709.
Perhaps New York's first outpost of Druse cooking. Gazala Halabi is an accomplished baker with a roster of breads ($4 to $5) topped with spices, cheese or meat, or some combination of the three. Burekas are as flaky and buttery as the best puff pastry, with a thick, rich filling of goat cheese and sun-dried tomatoes. An ideal end to a meal is osh al-saraia ($3.50), an alliance of yogurt and spongecake soaked with rosewater and honey.
GOTTINO 52 Greenwich Avenue (Charles Street), Greenwich Village; (212) 633-2590.
A wine bar with a great chef, Jody Williams. The crostini with walnut pesto or with fava beans and sheep's milk ricotta ($5) trawl the confluence of Italian soul and finger food.
IPPUDO NY 65 Fourth Avenue (Ninth Street), East Village; (212) 388-0088.
The purest expression of tonkotsu ramen, the richest style of this noodle soup, made with pork. The akamaru modern ramen ($13) builds on the template to make a bowl of noodle soup about as good as any in the city. Every noodle in every bowl of soup is cooked perfectly al dente.
LA SUPERIOR 295 Berry Street (South Second Street), Williamsburg, Brooklyn; (718) 388-5988, lasuperiornyc.com.
Tacos (most $2.50) taste resoundingly good, especially those with rajas, strips of mild roasted poblanos swaddled in thick cream, and grilled pescado zarandeado, a very welcome addition to New York's fish-taco landscape. Quesadillas are big, deep-fried turnovers filled with sautéed mushrooms or a mash of potatoes and chorizo, then hidden under thick cream and fresh cheese ($3.50). Gorditas with requesón ($5 for two), and the torta ahogada ($7.50), a sandwich with crisp, juicy chunks of carnitas, covered with a red sauce of chiles de arból are worthy of passion.
NO. 7 7 Greene Avenue (Fulton Street), Fort Greene, Brooklyn; (718) 522-6370.
No. 7 offers sophisticated assemblages, like slices of rare tuna fanned out with crisp, almost sweet Asian pear ($10). Allow the server to talk you into the appetizer of "fried broccoli, dill, grapefruit, black beans" ($7). Shrimp cocktail ($12) gets a spicy, bracing update from chili peppers and sesame oil in the sauce. Expertly cooked hanger steak with spicy kimchi pirogis ($20) overachieves.
PORCHETTA 110 East Seventh Street (First Avenue), East Village; (212) 777-2151.
Pork loin, wrapped in pork belly with fennel pollen, garlic, sage, rosemary and fistfuls of salt and pepper, then roasted for five hours in a combi oven that has locked in its moisture, wants nothing but slicing onto Sullivan Street Bakery rolls ($9). Potatoes ($5) are crisped with leftover bits of the good stuff.
THE REDHEAD 349 East 13th Street (First Avenue), East Village; (212) 533-6212.
A soft pretzel with grilled Texas sausages ($8); pecan sandies with butterscotch pudding ($6); and salty, picnic-ready buttermilk fried chicken and biscuits ($17) that ought to be in the Biscuit Museum are the kind of cooking that should be getting more serious attention in New York.
ROBERTA'S 261 Moore Street (Bogart Street), Bushwick, Brooklyn; (718) 417-1118.
Heretically creative pies are the thing to get, although the menu goes beyond pizza. Roberta's take on a Hawaiian pie ($15) comes topped with paper-thin sheets of ripe pineapple, shreds of fine ham, sliced jalapeños and dabs of ricotta. Guanciale and egg ($12) is just that: a mozzarella pizza strewn with crisp-cooked pieces of housemade guanciale and an egg cooked to a slightly runny doneness.
SOBA TOTTO 211 East 43rd Street, Midtown; (212) 557-8200.
Buckwheat noodles ($10 to $20), made fresh every day, are the centerpiece of the menu. There is also a full complement of deftly prepared yakitori ($2.50 to $8 each).
SOCARRAT PAELLA BAR 259 West 19th Street, Chelsea; (212) 462-1000, socarratpaellabar.com.
Eight paellas ($21 to $23 a person) dispel many paella misconceptions. Paella Valenciana has pork ribs, rabbit and snails. There's an all-seafood paella, a vegetarian paella, and a house paella with seafood, chicken, beef and fava beans. One's made with squid ink, and a meat paella gets an earthy kick from a mushroom soffrito and a spicy kick from thick coins of chorizo. Fideua (fee-day-WAH) is made with thin, crisp strands of pasta.
TERROIR 413 East 12th Street (First Avenue), East Village; (646) 602-1300, wineisterroir.com.
Along with the pork blade steak ($17), bruschette with braised black cabbage and pork sausage ($7), and deep-fried lamb sausage wrapped in sage leaves ($7) rise far above the glorified sandwiches and snacks at many wine bars.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/31/dining/31cheap.html?ref=dining&pagewanted=print
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1. MOMOFUKU KO David Chang’s intimate 12-seat, sushi-counter-style restaurant heads this list not only because its best dishes and moments are so memorable, but because it’s a paradigm-busting experiment that, like so much of what Mr. Chang has done, heeds and adjusts for what a new generation of discerning diners cares most about — and what fuss and frippery they can do without.
2. CORTON This blissful collaboration of the restaurateur Drew Nieporent and the chef Paul Liebrandt presents luxury of a more classic sort, at an admirably moment-reflecting price of $76 for a three-course prix fixe with a flurry of amuse-bouches and petit fours. And it finds Mr. Liebrandt at the sweet spot between runaway imagination and good sense.
3. (TIE) SCARPETTA To what heights can a simple dish of spaghetti al pomodoro rise? Scarpetta provided the answer — the sky’s the limit — and a host of other delights, its sometimes agitated setting in the meatpacking district not among them. At Scarpetta the chef Scott Conant reconnected with his early glory days at L’Impero.
3. (TIE) CONVIVIO The post-Conant L’Impero, meanwhile, became this warmer, redder, more convivial restaurant. The chef Michael White’s improved menu here pegged him as one of the city’s top pasta whizzes, and he showed a Batali-esque enthusiasm for organ meat.
5. DOVETAIL The chef John Fraser abandoned Compass but not the Upper West Side, reemerging in this somewhat plain but entirely comfortable and charming restaurant, which surpassed just about everyone’s expectations, becoming more than just a neighborhood favorite.
6. MATSUGEN In the TriBeCa space where he had tried to make a lasting success of 66, Jean-Georges Vongerichten decided to treat Japanese cooking in a more straightforward and respectful vein than 66 had treated Chinese. He left the menu and cooking to a team from Tokyo, who rewarded him with underexposed, compelling dishes and excellent soba.
7. ADOUR ALAIN DUCASSE Mr. Ducasse ratcheted down the opulence of his previous fancy Manhattan restaurant in the Essex House with this successor in the St. Regis, notable for Sandro Micheli’s exceptional desserts and for a blockbuster (and pricey) wine list. I’d rank this higher if a first-year change in executive chef and Mr. Ducasse’s distant involvement didn’t raise questions about consistency.
8. BAR BOULUD This relatively casual effort from Daniel Boulud doesn’t get everything right, but for its outstanding charcuterie, an exemplary wine list and scattered other delights, it deserves big applause.
9. ALLEGRETTI Alain Allegretti, a French chef who worked under Mr. Ducasse, struck out on his own, choosing an odd block and a risky moment for saucy cooking that was, at its best, a heady ticket straight to Provence.
10. MIA DONA The chef Michael Psilakis, perhaps more prescient about the economy than some peers, responded to the kudos for his haute Greek restaurant Anthos with this Italian restaurant of big flavors and big portions at accessible prices.
December 31, 2008
Critic’s Notebook
Same Table Next Year? Not So Fast By FRANK BRUNI
IN a humble East Village space with dimensions better suited to a take-out pizza parlor, a restaurant as significant as any in the last few years bloomed. And though it charges an unyielding $100 for food alone at dinner — and an unbending $160 at lunch — admission is nearly as competitive as at certain elite preschools. What many food enthusiasts have wanted more than anything else in 2008 is one of the 12 stools at Momofuku Ko.
Where Montrachet withered, what took root was something more refined, more ambitious and arguably more French. In fact Corton, its replacement, may be the most quietly, classically serious restaurant in the restaurateur Drew Nieporent’s large portfolio and long career.
Financial crisis? Economic meltdown? In the pace and quality of restaurant openings this year, the recession was hardly reflected. In fact, 2008 was probably the best year for new restaurants in this city since 2004, when New York welcomed two four-star restaurants, Per Se and Masa, in one month. There hasn’t been a new four-star restaurant since.
This was the year of three stars. I gave that rating to seven debuts, all on my list of the year’s 10 best new restaurants. By comparison, there were no three-star debuts in 2007, and my top 10 list was headed by a place I awarded only two stars. As stocks tumbled, the city’s chefs and restaurateurs seemed to rally, staging what could turn out to be a last blast — for a while at least — of nearly unsullied optimism and unbound dreams.
But it wasn’t an act of defiance. Restaurants are planned, and reach a point of no return, far in advance of their debuts. The bumper crop of 2008 was planted anywhere from 6 to 24 months before the challenges they would face became clear.
I shudder to think about this time in 2009 — about the kind of reflection on the New York restaurant scene that might be in order then.
The next 12 months promise to be a grueling survival test for all but the most intensely beloved or flat-out utilitarian restaurants. Although there will be newcomers to celebrate and congratulate, most of them, I suspect, will come along during the first months of the year, laggards that missed their projected fall openings. The second half of 2009 could be barren and grim.
Will there be anything like Matsugen, a bold wager that superior soba in a relatively straightforward setting could be enough of a draw to fill more than 100 seats? I hope so, but I doubt it.
Or anything like Adour Alain Ducasse, with its baronial splendor and its interactive touch-screen wine bar? I wouldn’t bet on it, and while we can certainly live without such pomp and pampering, isn’t it nicer to have them around, just in case?
I’m not confident, in fact, that all of the worthy restaurants among this year’s top 10 will be around next December. And that drives me to appreciate them and extol their virtues, along with all the many other positive restaurant developments in 2008, all the more.
It was a great year for pasta, thanks in large part to one entirely new restaurant (Scarpetta), one sort-of-new restaurant (Convivio) and the installation of a new chef, Simone Bonelli, at an existing restaurant (Perbacco) that can barely contain his creativity. Their combined force should, by all rights, relegate the no-carbohydrate regimen to the dustbin of dietary history.
In fact, Scarpetta’s spaghetti al pomodoro alone should. The only reason I haven’t listed it among the best new dishes of 2008 is that it hasn’t changed substantially since Scarpetta’s chef, Scott Conant, cooked it years ago at L’Impero. If he’s smart, he’ll still be cooking it years from now.
It was a great year (yet again!) for David Chang. While tinkering restlessly to make Momofuku Noodle Bar and Ssam Bar even better than before, he unveiled Ko, whose significance isn’t a function principally of the novelty and quality of its dishes, impressive as they are. What Ko did, like Ssam Bar before it, was tweak and reevaluate the usual atmospheric context for superior cooking, rejecting old models and reassessing what’s important.
As if that weren’t enough, Mr. Chang also unveiled Momofuku Bakery and Milk Bar, where he showcases the pastry talents of Christina Tosi.
The continued emphasis on informality and the consistently growing respect for the contributions of spirits to an enjoyable meal made it a banner year for bars. I’m talking not about ales and highballs but about nomenclature.
New restaurants that misleadingly labeled themselves bars, wagering on the efficacy of that come-on, include Bar Milano, Bar Blanc, Bar Boulud, Bar Q, Bar Breton and Socarrat Paella Bar, which has the greatest justification, inasmuch as almost all of its seats are stools at a high, two-sided counter.
Speaking of libations and of bars nominal and actual, wine bars came into their own, not only multiplying in number but also serving food so appealing that lines were blurred and categories made less tidy.
Exhibit A is Terroir, whose best snacks and dishes are reason enough to wedge into a cramped East Village space and straddle a stool. Exhibit B is Gottino, where the chef Jody Williams turns out small plates that do full justice to the gifts she previously demonstrated with larger dishes at more conventional, full-fledged restaurants.
The trend toward outstanding food in incidental, unassuming and unusual formats was continued and amplified in 2008, and it was a banner period for the related phenomenon of limited-purpose, tightly focused restaurants.
Porchetta serves little more than, well, porchetta. Momofuku Bakery and Milk Bar devotes itself to breads and desserts. Socarrat revels in permutations of paella, while Obika mulls the possibilities in mozzarella.
Salumeria Rosi — much, much humbler than the prior enterprises of one of its owners, the chef Cesare Casella — invests its energies in imported Italian cured meats and cheeses. And the Cave des Fondus stakes its fortunes on fondue, along with wine and beer served in baby bottles, though the latter isn’t a trend. It’s just plain weird.
The year ushered in many opportunities for great eating at contained prices, though I suspect in this one sense 2009 may outpace 2008. It will have its work cut out for it, because in addition to Porchetta, Gottino and Terroir, there’s Cabrito, whose best dishes — including the carnitas with salsa verde and the roasted poblano peppers in cream — match those at just about any Mexican restaurant in New York.
There’s also Rhong-Tiam, where the chef Andy Yang does better Thai food than at his misguided and more expensive follow-up, Kurve, proving anew that pricier isn’t necessarily better. There’s the Redhead, the East Village bar that evolved this year into a Southern-accented restaurant with two runners-up for the year’s list of best dishes: its bacon peanut brittle and its fried chicken with cornbread.
Artichoke Basille’s Pizza & Brewery opened in the same few square blocks of the East Village where Una Pizza Napoletana struts its stuff, competing for pie lovers’ loyalty and intensifying the happy, fattening debate over what’s right, wrong and best when it comes to thin, thick and blistered crusts.
All in all the year’s blessings go far beyond the list of top 10 restaurants here. I left out Tom: Tuesday Dinner, a noteworthy new experiment by the chef Tom Colicchio, because it operates for only one evening every other week and because Mr. Colicchio hasn’t committed to keeping it going for more than a year. It served its first meal in mid-October.
And there are restaurants that came along at the end of the year that might well turn out to have as much merit as anything on my top 10 list; they just haven’t been open long enough for me to review them.
There’s some excitement out there, for example, about the John Dory, a British seafood restaurant from the team behind the Spotted Pig, and about Shang, where the acclaimed Toronto chef Susur Lee is making his New York debut. For the purposes of my top 10 rankings, they belong to 2009, just as Dovetail, which opened at the very end of 2007, belongs to 2008.
There were of course bitter disappointments and puzzling setbacks along with the good news in 2008. The restaurant Florent closed, marking nothing less than the end of an era. The chef Gray Kunz, such a great talent and such a persistent underperformer of late, closed Cafe Gray and severed his ties with the half-cocktail-lounge, half-restaurant Grayz, meaning he is once again a man without a Manhattan restaurant kitchen.
And what to make of David Bouley and Marcus Samuelsson, two highly regarded chefs with highly visible duds this year?
Perhaps distracted by all the other activity in his mini-empire, including the relocation of Bouley, Mr. Bouley inflicted a mess of a brasserie named Secession on a TriBeCa neighborhood that expected better of him. And Mr. Samuelsson’s supposed great labor of love, Merkato 55, a pan-African restaurant in the meatpacking district, drew less attention from him than it sorely needed.
But 2008 will be remembered more sharply for its many great successes. And that would be the case even if 2009 wasn’t looking as ominous as it does.
The Best Meal of 2008
If there’s a New York restaurant with a confidence, diligence and steadiness that surpass those of Le Bernardin, I don’t know it. I stopped here just once in 2008, for a (relatively) low-key lunch. And it was hands down my best meal of the year.
Lunchtime flatters this restaurant. The muted natural light that filters through its windows makes up for the dining room’s cosmetic shortcomings, and the restrained portions, which can leave you wanting more at dinnertime, are ideal for midday, when you don’t want to be weighed down.
My companion and I didn’t linger, heading off to our busy afternoons no more than 90 minutes after we had sat down. But Le Bernardin didn’t need any more time than that to remind us of its magic: of the ways its artfulness always stops short of preciousness or flamboyance; of the precision with which every ingredient is prepared and plated.
Could langoustines be cooked more expertly than those in one of our appetizers? The tail meat in several discrete, beautifully curved arches on the plate was so delicate that my companion insisted it must really be some sort of mousse.
Our other appetizer layered rectangles of cucumber, smoked salmon, fresh salmon and apple in three colorful, identical four-tiered towers, the balance of flavors as careful and appealing as the architecture.
The entrees were even better. Baked mahi-mahi was surrounded by an earthy, faintly sweet and bracingly intense broth made with fresh bamboo shoots, dried oyster mushrooms, brandy and young ginger.
Poached fillets of halibut had impossibly creamy flesh, draped with brussels sprout leaves for some textural contrast and sauced with a purée of uni, clam juice and mustard oil for some briny, zingy wow.
Each dimension of every dish sang with the exact pitch and volume that the chef Eric Ripert had no doubt intended. He’s a maestro, and his kitchen a finely tuned orchestra, and I could happily lose myself in their music every day.
The Best New Restaurant Dishes of 2008
MOMOFUKU KO’S FROZEN FOIE GRAS David Chang turned a classic torchon into flakes piled high, like an incongruously fatty and liver-y Sno-Kone, over a brittle of nuts and a sweet wine gelée.
PERBACCO’S ROLLED PASTA WITH TRUFFLED ZABAGLIONE This rich symphony of speck, buffalo milk mozzarella, béchamel and more was the most wickedly indulgent of the inventive pasta dishes on Simone Bonelli’s new menu.
TOM: TUESDAY DINNER’S CRISPY PORK TROTTER By frying the trotter and pairing it with a beet-stained, pickled quail egg, Tom Colicchio came up with something akin to a dinnertime bacon-and-eggs for the most jaded epicures.
GOTTINO’S WALNUT PESTO The best spread for toasted bread since crunchy peanut butter, it combines walnuts with olive oil, thyme, Parmesan and a dab of sun-dried tomato, which Jody Williams wisely rescues from disrepute.
TERROIR’S PORK BLADE STEAK Like many peers, Marco Canora smartly turned to the Virginia farmer Bev Eggleston for pork, then made the additionally sharp decisions to broil this thin shoulder cut and dump arugula and Parmesan onto it.
CONVIVIO’S PECORINO POTATOES The side dish of the year, a crazily addictive midpoint between roasted potatoes and French fries, given a salty charge and an extra dimension by the right cheese.
BAR BOULUD’S CROQUES-MONSIEUR AND -MADAME Two timeless sandwiches get the reverence they deserve and a richness beyond the norm.
CORTON’S CARAMEL BRIOCHE It’s a dessert (with banana and passion fruit in the mix), a cheese course (thanks to Stilton), a breakfast (in its mimicry of syrupy French toast) and altogether wonderful.
ADOUR ALAIN DUCASSE’S CONTEMPORARY VACHERIN. The terrific pastry chef Sandro Micheli stages a riveting tart-sweet drama with layers of mango marmalade, passion fruit sorbet and coconut meringue.
December 31, 2008
Resolution: Dine Well Without Breaking the Budget
Here are some of the best inexpensive places reviewed in the Dining section this year.
ABRAçO ESPRESSO 86 East Seventh Street, East Village; (212) 388-9731.
Espresso drinks are among the city's finest and drip coffee is even better. There's a small flavorful menu with a Spanish-style frittata of ethereal, custardy creaminess ($4) and warm French toast folded around sweet ricotta ($3).
THE BROOKLYN FLEA Starting in April at the playground of Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School, Lafayette Avenue between Clermont and Vanderbilt Avenues, Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Hours are available at brooklynflea.com. Winter location at 76 Front Street (Washington Street), Dumbo, Brooklyn, has limited food vending.
This market is full of craftspeople, designers and costly vintage items, as well as food vendors from the Red Hook ball fields and elsewhere. Among the notables are the Vaquero family's grilled corn with mayo, cheese and chili powder ($3); Salvatore Bklyn Ricotta cannoli ($3), filled to order with lightly sweetened ricotta spiked with lemon zest, Marsala, chopped chocolate and salt; tiny cupcakes from Kumquat Cupcakery ($1 apiece); bonbons ($20 for a dozen) from Nunu Chocolates; sandwiches ($6.50 to $7.25) at Choice Cafe and pizza from Pizza Moto.
CABRITO 50 Carmine Street (Bedford Street), West Village; (212) 929-5050.
Tacos ($4 to $6) and enchiladas ($14) are delicious and carefully made, wrapped in tortillas with the drape of linen and the tenderness of crepes.
GAZALA PLACE 709 Ninth Avenue (49th Street), Clinton; (212) 245-0709.
Perhaps New York's first outpost of Druse cooking. Gazala Halabi is an accomplished baker with a roster of breads ($4 to $5) topped with spices, cheese or meat, or some combination of the three. Burekas are as flaky and buttery as the best puff pastry, with a thick, rich filling of goat cheese and sun-dried tomatoes. An ideal end to a meal is osh al-saraia ($3.50), an alliance of yogurt and spongecake soaked with rosewater and honey.
GOTTINO 52 Greenwich Avenue (Charles Street), Greenwich Village; (212) 633-2590.
A wine bar with a great chef, Jody Williams. The crostini with walnut pesto or with fava beans and sheep's milk ricotta ($5) trawl the confluence of Italian soul and finger food.
IPPUDO NY 65 Fourth Avenue (Ninth Street), East Village; (212) 388-0088.
The purest expression of tonkotsu ramen, the richest style of this noodle soup, made with pork. The akamaru modern ramen ($13) builds on the template to make a bowl of noodle soup about as good as any in the city. Every noodle in every bowl of soup is cooked perfectly al dente.
LA SUPERIOR 295 Berry Street (South Second Street), Williamsburg, Brooklyn; (718) 388-5988, lasuperiornyc.com.
Tacos (most $2.50) taste resoundingly good, especially those with rajas, strips of mild roasted poblanos swaddled in thick cream, and grilled pescado zarandeado, a very welcome addition to New York's fish-taco landscape. Quesadillas are big, deep-fried turnovers filled with sautéed mushrooms or a mash of potatoes and chorizo, then hidden under thick cream and fresh cheese ($3.50). Gorditas with requesón ($5 for two), and the torta ahogada ($7.50), a sandwich with crisp, juicy chunks of carnitas, covered with a red sauce of chiles de arból are worthy of passion.
NO. 7 7 Greene Avenue (Fulton Street), Fort Greene, Brooklyn; (718) 522-6370.
No. 7 offers sophisticated assemblages, like slices of rare tuna fanned out with crisp, almost sweet Asian pear ($10). Allow the server to talk you into the appetizer of "fried broccoli, dill, grapefruit, black beans" ($7). Shrimp cocktail ($12) gets a spicy, bracing update from chili peppers and sesame oil in the sauce. Expertly cooked hanger steak with spicy kimchi pirogis ($20) overachieves.
PORCHETTA 110 East Seventh Street (First Avenue), East Village; (212) 777-2151.
Pork loin, wrapped in pork belly with fennel pollen, garlic, sage, rosemary and fistfuls of salt and pepper, then roasted for five hours in a combi oven that has locked in its moisture, wants nothing but slicing onto Sullivan Street Bakery rolls ($9). Potatoes ($5) are crisped with leftover bits of the good stuff.
THE REDHEAD 349 East 13th Street (First Avenue), East Village; (212) 533-6212.
A soft pretzel with grilled Texas sausages ($8); pecan sandies with butterscotch pudding ($6); and salty, picnic-ready buttermilk fried chicken and biscuits ($17) that ought to be in the Biscuit Museum are the kind of cooking that should be getting more serious attention in New York.
ROBERTA'S 261 Moore Street (Bogart Street), Bushwick, Brooklyn; (718) 417-1118.
Heretically creative pies are the thing to get, although the menu goes beyond pizza. Roberta's take on a Hawaiian pie ($15) comes topped with paper-thin sheets of ripe pineapple, shreds of fine ham, sliced jalapeños and dabs of ricotta. Guanciale and egg ($12) is just that: a mozzarella pizza strewn with crisp-cooked pieces of housemade guanciale and an egg cooked to a slightly runny doneness.
SOBA TOTTO 211 East 43rd Street, Midtown; (212) 557-8200.
Buckwheat noodles ($10 to $20), made fresh every day, are the centerpiece of the menu. There is also a full complement of deftly prepared yakitori ($2.50 to $8 each).
SOCARRAT PAELLA BAR 259 West 19th Street, Chelsea; (212) 462-1000, socarratpaellabar.com.
Eight paellas ($21 to $23 a person) dispel many paella misconceptions. Paella Valenciana has pork ribs, rabbit and snails. There's an all-seafood paella, a vegetarian paella, and a house paella with seafood, chicken, beef and fava beans. One's made with squid ink, and a meat paella gets an earthy kick from a mushroom soffrito and a spicy kick from thick coins of chorizo. Fideua (fee-day-WAH) is made with thin, crisp strands of pasta.
TERROIR 413 East 12th Street (First Avenue), East Village; (646) 602-1300, wineisterroir.com.
Along with the pork blade steak ($17), bruschette with braised black cabbage and pork sausage ($7), and deep-fried lamb sausage wrapped in sage leaves ($7) rise far above the glorified sandwiches and snacks at many wine bars.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/31/dining/31cheap.html?ref=dining&pagewanted=print
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Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Rewritten, in a Language of Its Own By FRANK BRUNI
November 28, 2007
Rewritten, in a Language of Its Own By FRANK BRUNI
MORE than a few chefs have spent more than a little time trying to turn carpaccio into an intricate production that reflects and trumpets their ingenuity.
At the restyled Fiamma in SoHo, Fabio Trabocchi joins the challenge in an original fashion. He wraps thinly sliced Australian wagyu beef around columns of tofu, which support a crunchy Parmesan tuile and, over that, a teetering quail egg. On a long, thin rectangular plate he lines up three of these delicate towers, interspersed with ovals of wagyu tartare that wear caps of chopped mushrooms and Parmesan.
Is it carpaccio? Sort of. But not really. And so what? It’s crazily enjoyable, and that’s what counts.
Mr. Trabocchi relishes the finer fowls and isn’t inclined to let them be, so both roasted poussin and roasted wild Scottish pheasant come with fatty lobes of foie gras. The dark sauces pooling beneath the meat have an almost staggering richness.
Would you find these entrees in Italy, even up north? Maybe, in a very fussy restaurant. In most others, no. And who cares? They’re prepared with finesse and they’re the definition of luxury, no matter the geography, no matter the language.
Since Mr. Trabocchi took over the kitchen at Fiamma in September, much of the response to his cooking has been perplexed, centering on questions of nomenclature and ethnic fidelity.
Can a lasagna with as little sunshine and as much stormy intensity as Mr. Trabocchi’s justly call itself lasagna? And can a restaurant with food as ornate, saucy and creamy as Fiamma’s rightly call itself Italian?
That’s a chewy topic for debate, and I cast my vote this way: Fiamma is about as Italian as a poodle in a Prada scarf.
It owes its accessories — the olive oil, the balsamic vinegar, many of the cheeses (fontina, burrata, ricotta salata) — to Italy. It owes its classically indulgent soul to France.
It owes apologies and explanations to no one. When a restaurant turns out this many dishes that make you stop mid-chew, nudge a companion and nod your head vigorously — because you’re excited; because you need to start working off the calories any way you can — it needn’t worry about fitting into a tidy box.
Fiamma has been around since 2002, when William Grimes gave it three stars in The Times, solidifying its reputation as the lone thoroughbred among the many New York workhorses that belong to the restaurateur Stephen Hanson. He also owns multiple branches of Ruby Foo’s and Dos Caminos.
But in a shakeup this year that has turned out well for the city’s gastronomes, Fiamma’s chef, Michael White, decamped to the restaurants Alto and L’Impero, both of which are turning out distinguished food. And Mr. Hanson lured Mr. Trabocchi from Maestro, a restaurant near Washington, D.C., where he had established himself as one of the most dazzling chefs around the nation’s capital.
Mr. Hanson also spruced up the SoHo town house the restaurant inhabits, giving it not so much a new look as a fresh glow. The main, second-floor dining room, with its warm colors of orange and red, nimbly splits the difference between elegance and unceremonious comfort.
Elegance is getting extra attention these days. Previously called Fiamma Osteria, the restaurant has lost the second word, which evoked informality. (The remaining word is Italian for flame.) And there’s a fanciful array of new plates and cutlery, meant to cast the food they showcase in an artistic light.
That food is indeed artistic but seldom precious, the key to its success. Mr. Trabocchi delivers bold, resonant flavors; if anything he goes overboard with them, making you wish there were a more varied rhythm to his meals.
He comes out swinging and goes constantly for the knockout punch. An appetizer of various cuts of rabbit includes leg meat stuffed with prosciutto. The Romanesco broccoli around it is sautéed with guanciale. And the broccoli purée beneath everything includes a generous dose of rabbit jus.
Take a deep breath. You’ve got at least two courses —and maybe more — to go.
Although Mr. Trabocchi produces terrific gnocchi in way that uses less flour, he offsets their lightness with a goat ragù that, like so many of his sauces, has the kind of haunting intensity a laboriously made reduction does.
He takes flour, too, out of what might otherwise be a béchamel for the lasagna. What does he leave in? Well, a reduction of chicken stock and cream, which is layered with noodles and with a ragù of veal sweetbreads, chicken livers, chicken gizzards, prosciutto and more. Around the lasagna goes veal jus. And chanterelle mushrooms, for some additional dark magic.
For Mr. Trabocchi, more is more. He puts poached bone marrow on a saffron-flavored risotto. He puts fried bread crumbs on a whole lot, including monkfish liver and, separately, thick-cut, gorgeous Dover sole. He puts crushed Alba hazelnuts, sautéed in butter, on top of braised veal cheeks, which accompany a hunk of roasted veal rib-eye.
There’s nuance in the mix, the tofu in the newfangled carpaccio providing one example. It lends volume, shape and a chewy element to the silky beef without muffling its flavor.
And what you find on impeccably roasted rack of lamb isn’t rosemary but nepitella, an Italian herb that does the work of mint in a less assertive manner.
Mr. Trabocchi scatters such surprises throughout a meal, and he scatters luxuries, too: black and white truffles; porcini mushrooms; sea urchin (in a dish of spaghetti); langoustine (as an amuse-bouche).
In the context of that, and of Fiamma’s lofty prices, it’s a happy shock to find a wine list with dozens of bottles under $50 and scores under $75. And they’re interesting wines, from more countries than Fiamma’s list previously represented.
The desserts by Thomas Wellings, the pastry chef, tend to be fastidiously composed. My favorite was a so-called salad of roasted pears and pine nuts, accompanied by ice cream flavored with Corbezzolo honey, from the nectar of a shrub found in northern Italy.
The shrub’s provenance, I suppose, makes the dessert Italian. I’ll certainly go along with that, provided I get a second serving.
Fiamma
***
206 Spring Street (Sullivan Street), SoHo; (212) 653-0100.
ATMOSPHERE Equal measures of warmth and elegance enliven dining rooms on the ground floor and upstairs of a SoHo town house.
SOUND LEVEL Moderate.
RECOMMENDED DISHES Carpaccio; tuna crudo; mussels and cuttlefish with polenta; lasagna; gnocchi; squash agnolotti; Dover sole; veal cheeks and rib-eye; poussin; pheasant; lamb; pear salad; chocolate ganache with pistachio; chocolate torta Caprese.
WINE LIST Interesting, sophisticated and nicely varied in geography and price.
PRICE RANGE Three-course prix fixe, $75; five-course prix fixe, $100; six-course tasting, $110; à la carte dessert, $12.
HOURS Dinner from 6 to 10 p.m. Monday, to 11 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday, to midnight Friday, and from 5:30 p.m. to midnight Saturday. Dec. 3 through Jan. 31, lunch from noon to 2:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. Closed Sunday.
RESERVATIONS Call at least two weeks ahead for prime dinner times.
CREDIT CARDS All major cards.
WHEELCHAIR ACCESS Entrance at street level, with elevator service between floors and accessible restrooms.
WHAT THE STARS MEAN Ratings range from zero to four stars and reflect the reviewer’s reaction to food, ambience and service, with price taken into consideration. Menu listings and prices are subject to change.
Rewritten, in a Language of Its Own By FRANK BRUNI
MORE than a few chefs have spent more than a little time trying to turn carpaccio into an intricate production that reflects and trumpets their ingenuity.
At the restyled Fiamma in SoHo, Fabio Trabocchi joins the challenge in an original fashion. He wraps thinly sliced Australian wagyu beef around columns of tofu, which support a crunchy Parmesan tuile and, over that, a teetering quail egg. On a long, thin rectangular plate he lines up three of these delicate towers, interspersed with ovals of wagyu tartare that wear caps of chopped mushrooms and Parmesan.
Is it carpaccio? Sort of. But not really. And so what? It’s crazily enjoyable, and that’s what counts.
Mr. Trabocchi relishes the finer fowls and isn’t inclined to let them be, so both roasted poussin and roasted wild Scottish pheasant come with fatty lobes of foie gras. The dark sauces pooling beneath the meat have an almost staggering richness.
Would you find these entrees in Italy, even up north? Maybe, in a very fussy restaurant. In most others, no. And who cares? They’re prepared with finesse and they’re the definition of luxury, no matter the geography, no matter the language.
Since Mr. Trabocchi took over the kitchen at Fiamma in September, much of the response to his cooking has been perplexed, centering on questions of nomenclature and ethnic fidelity.
Can a lasagna with as little sunshine and as much stormy intensity as Mr. Trabocchi’s justly call itself lasagna? And can a restaurant with food as ornate, saucy and creamy as Fiamma’s rightly call itself Italian?
That’s a chewy topic for debate, and I cast my vote this way: Fiamma is about as Italian as a poodle in a Prada scarf.
It owes its accessories — the olive oil, the balsamic vinegar, many of the cheeses (fontina, burrata, ricotta salata) — to Italy. It owes its classically indulgent soul to France.
It owes apologies and explanations to no one. When a restaurant turns out this many dishes that make you stop mid-chew, nudge a companion and nod your head vigorously — because you’re excited; because you need to start working off the calories any way you can — it needn’t worry about fitting into a tidy box.
Fiamma has been around since 2002, when William Grimes gave it three stars in The Times, solidifying its reputation as the lone thoroughbred among the many New York workhorses that belong to the restaurateur Stephen Hanson. He also owns multiple branches of Ruby Foo’s and Dos Caminos.
But in a shakeup this year that has turned out well for the city’s gastronomes, Fiamma’s chef, Michael White, decamped to the restaurants Alto and L’Impero, both of which are turning out distinguished food. And Mr. Hanson lured Mr. Trabocchi from Maestro, a restaurant near Washington, D.C., where he had established himself as one of the most dazzling chefs around the nation’s capital.
Mr. Hanson also spruced up the SoHo town house the restaurant inhabits, giving it not so much a new look as a fresh glow. The main, second-floor dining room, with its warm colors of orange and red, nimbly splits the difference between elegance and unceremonious comfort.
Elegance is getting extra attention these days. Previously called Fiamma Osteria, the restaurant has lost the second word, which evoked informality. (The remaining word is Italian for flame.) And there’s a fanciful array of new plates and cutlery, meant to cast the food they showcase in an artistic light.
That food is indeed artistic but seldom precious, the key to its success. Mr. Trabocchi delivers bold, resonant flavors; if anything he goes overboard with them, making you wish there were a more varied rhythm to his meals.
He comes out swinging and goes constantly for the knockout punch. An appetizer of various cuts of rabbit includes leg meat stuffed with prosciutto. The Romanesco broccoli around it is sautéed with guanciale. And the broccoli purée beneath everything includes a generous dose of rabbit jus.
Take a deep breath. You’ve got at least two courses —and maybe more — to go.
Although Mr. Trabocchi produces terrific gnocchi in way that uses less flour, he offsets their lightness with a goat ragù that, like so many of his sauces, has the kind of haunting intensity a laboriously made reduction does.
He takes flour, too, out of what might otherwise be a béchamel for the lasagna. What does he leave in? Well, a reduction of chicken stock and cream, which is layered with noodles and with a ragù of veal sweetbreads, chicken livers, chicken gizzards, prosciutto and more. Around the lasagna goes veal jus. And chanterelle mushrooms, for some additional dark magic.
For Mr. Trabocchi, more is more. He puts poached bone marrow on a saffron-flavored risotto. He puts fried bread crumbs on a whole lot, including monkfish liver and, separately, thick-cut, gorgeous Dover sole. He puts crushed Alba hazelnuts, sautéed in butter, on top of braised veal cheeks, which accompany a hunk of roasted veal rib-eye.
There’s nuance in the mix, the tofu in the newfangled carpaccio providing one example. It lends volume, shape and a chewy element to the silky beef without muffling its flavor.
And what you find on impeccably roasted rack of lamb isn’t rosemary but nepitella, an Italian herb that does the work of mint in a less assertive manner.
Mr. Trabocchi scatters such surprises throughout a meal, and he scatters luxuries, too: black and white truffles; porcini mushrooms; sea urchin (in a dish of spaghetti); langoustine (as an amuse-bouche).
In the context of that, and of Fiamma’s lofty prices, it’s a happy shock to find a wine list with dozens of bottles under $50 and scores under $75. And they’re interesting wines, from more countries than Fiamma’s list previously represented.
The desserts by Thomas Wellings, the pastry chef, tend to be fastidiously composed. My favorite was a so-called salad of roasted pears and pine nuts, accompanied by ice cream flavored with Corbezzolo honey, from the nectar of a shrub found in northern Italy.
The shrub’s provenance, I suppose, makes the dessert Italian. I’ll certainly go along with that, provided I get a second serving.
Fiamma
***
206 Spring Street (Sullivan Street), SoHo; (212) 653-0100.
ATMOSPHERE Equal measures of warmth and elegance enliven dining rooms on the ground floor and upstairs of a SoHo town house.
SOUND LEVEL Moderate.
RECOMMENDED DISHES Carpaccio; tuna crudo; mussels and cuttlefish with polenta; lasagna; gnocchi; squash agnolotti; Dover sole; veal cheeks and rib-eye; poussin; pheasant; lamb; pear salad; chocolate ganache with pistachio; chocolate torta Caprese.
WINE LIST Interesting, sophisticated and nicely varied in geography and price.
PRICE RANGE Three-course prix fixe, $75; five-course prix fixe, $100; six-course tasting, $110; à la carte dessert, $12.
HOURS Dinner from 6 to 10 p.m. Monday, to 11 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday, to midnight Friday, and from 5:30 p.m. to midnight Saturday. Dec. 3 through Jan. 31, lunch from noon to 2:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. Closed Sunday.
RESERVATIONS Call at least two weeks ahead for prime dinner times.
CREDIT CARDS All major cards.
WHEELCHAIR ACCESS Entrance at street level, with elevator service between floors and accessible restrooms.
WHAT THE STARS MEAN Ratings range from zero to four stars and reflect the reviewer’s reaction to food, ambience and service, with price taken into consideration. Menu listings and prices are subject to change.
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