Posted by Ed Levine, January 19, 2007 at 12:01 PM
Some people count sheep when they can't sleep. I count pasta dishes. There's something about a plate of pasta that's incredibly soothing and satisfying at the same time, and soothing and satisfying thoughts are surefire paths to sleep. The other night I couldn't sleep, and I tried to come up with a list of my most satisfying pastas of the last year. I had a good time putting my little list together, so I thought other people would, too. I asked Adam Platt, restaurant critic at New York magazine, Serious Eats community member Sandro, and Johanne Killeen, co-owner of Al Forno in Providence, Rhode Island, and the coauthor (along with her husband and business partner, George Gerrmon) of the new book, On Top of Spaghetti
. Johanne was kind enough to let us post one of the pasta recipes from the book. After the jump, the responses (and the recipe).
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Posted by Ed Levine, September 20, 2006 at 8:45 AM
When we sat down to eat at Frankies Clinton Spuntino yesterday, we just about had the joint to ourselves.
We ordered, and great comfort food started coming almost immediately. At Frankies they serve absolutely delicious contemporary takes on classic red sauce Italian preparations. The Frankies obviously grew up with this food, and they have made it their business to restore its good name to food lovers in this town. If the run of the mill restaurants in Little Italy and Arthur Avenue actually served food that was anything better than acceptable, it would be the food they serve at Frankies.
We ate:
A delicous tomato, onion and avocado salad.
Two inspired classic sandwiches: grilled sweet faicco's sausage with broccoli rabe and meatball parmigiana, both served on toasted sullivan street bread.
a plate of pork braciole in marinara sauce, the tender pork tasting like Italian barbecue, the red sauce as good a red sauce as I've had in years.
For dessert, a not very sweet Ricotta cheesecake that would have made my cheesecake top ten in my Times article of a few years ago.
So walk, don't run, to Frankies 17 Clinton Spuntino. You'll never set foot in a bad Little Italy restaurant again. I haven't been to Frankies 457 Spuntino on Court Street in Carroll Gardens, but I'll be headed there soon.
Prices are extremely reasonable.
17 Clinton Street: 212-253-2303
Posted by Ed Levine, September 18, 2006 at 7:27 AM
A number of ELE users commented, and rightly so, that all the places on my Best Italian restaurant list were all pretty damned pricey. So I thought I should take a stab at a list of potential top five neighborhood Italian restaurants. How do I define a neighborhood Italian restaurant?
A restaurant where you can eat two courses and a glass of wine and spend $25. Neighborhood restaurants that don't require as much of a financial commitment and advance planning. You might wait on line because in many cases these restaurants don't take reservations.
The trouble with most neighborhood Italian restaurants is that most often they serve food that is well-meaning but mediocre at best. That said, there are a number of wonderful neighborhood Italian restaurants sprinkled all over NY. The over-all experience at these neighborhood spots will not likely be as satisfying (service and space can often be lacking), but the food can be delicious.
Here is my list of contenders:
Anthony's: Park Slope
Bianca: Noho
Biricchino: Chelsea
Celeste: Upper West Side
Cono & Sons: Williamsburg
Da Andrea: West Village
Frankies 457 Spuntino: Carroll Gardens
Frankies Clinton St. Spuntino: Lower East Side
Franny's: Park Slope
Gennaro: Upper West Side
Il Bagatto: East Village
Inoteca: Lower East Side
Joe's of Avenue U: Gravesend, Brooklyn
Manducatis: Long Island City
Nick's: Upper East Side
Sapori D'Ischia: Woodside, Queens
Sette Medi: Morningside Heights
Tommaso's: Bensonhurst
Via Emilia: Flatiron District
Have I missed any?
Posted by Ed Levine, September 18, 2006 at 4:08 AM
Gusto
Giorgione
Spigola
Place Nantucket Couple Own
Maremma
Posted by Ed Levine, September 13, 2006 at 9:10 AM
For more than a century New York has been awash in Italian restaurants, from Barbetta in the theatre district, to Gargiulo's in Coney Island, to Mario's on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx to Parkside in Corona Heights, Queens. And for almost that long New Yorkers have been arguing about which Italian restaurant is the best. Of course chef/restaurateurs like Mario Batali have in the last ten years redefined the New York Italian restaurant (both the food and the experience). In fact people like Batali and his partner Joe Bastianich, Lydia Bastianich (Felidia) and Tony May (San Domenico) have raised the Italian food bar considerably higher.
So I've been thinking a great deal lately about what are the city's top five Italian restaurants, and I've decided that these are the contenders, in alphabetical order:
Al Di La
Babbo
Del Posto
Esca (full disclosure: I've written a cookbook with Esca chef/partner Dave Pasternack)
Felidia
Il Mulino (I've never even had a good meal there, but other people seem to really like it)
L'Impero
Lupa
San Domenico
Scalini Fedeli (also never been, but I've received some good reports)
Teodora
A couple of things I immediately notice when I look at this list. None of the old-fashioned southern Italian-American red sauce joints outside Manhattan even made the list of contenders. That doesn't mean you cannot get a good meal at places like Tommaso's in Brooklyn and Don Peppe in South Ozone Park, Queens, or even Rao's in East Harlem. It's just that the food at those places really doesn't measure up to the places on the list.
Next week I will post about moderately priced Italian restaurants.
Posted by Ed Levine, September 11, 2006 at 11:55 AM
Adam Platt weighs in this week on Trestle on Tenth, the new Germanesque restaurant at 242 Tenth Ave. (24th St.), 212-645-5659.
He went on a pork binge, which is what I do almost every day. And he concludes that the chef, Ralk Kuettel does heavy better than light, long deep flavor cooking. Here are the menu highlights the way I interpret Adam's review: Pork crepinette (pulled pork shoulder, savoy cabbage and spices), a pork sandwich (served with horseradish mayo, sauerkraut and melted gruyere), thick bone-in roasted pork loin served with caramelized carrots. It's a veritable pork festival.
Posted by Ed Levine, August 22, 2006 at 7:36 AM
"SOME COOKS ONLY KNOW HOW TO COOK DELICIOUS FOOD"
Momofuku's David Chang and his talented crew of cooks are folks that seem to only know how to cook delicious food. So it should be no surprise that the brand new Momofuku Ssam Bar (there's supposed to be two dots, an umlaut, over the a in Ssam, but I can't figure out how to put it in), opening tomorrow (Wed.) at noon, serves food I would happily eat every day if it were in my neighborhood. A ssam translates in Korean into wrapped food of any kind. So what kind of wrap did I try last night? Black beans flavored with ham hocks, kimchee puree that didn't taste like any fermented cabbage salad I'd ever had before, whipped tofu that was as creamy as sour cream, rice, and toothsome Berkshire roast pork. It was the ultimate Korean burrito. I also had phenomenal chicken and pork buns, similar to the ones you get at Momofuku, but made with braised and shredded meat instead, and a vegetarian salad with roasted mushrooms that had me believing there was meat in there somewhere as I wrapped it in a whole lettuce leaf . Think of Momofuku Ssam Bar as a Korean-American version of a Chipotle Grill (and that's a compliment). And unlike Momofuku there's even a few tables for those of us old fogies who like to eat facing one another.
207 Second Avenue at 13th St. 212-254-3500.
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Posted by Ed Levine, August 7, 2006 at 7:30 AM
I am gathering restaurant horror stories in the next few weeks. Here's what just happened to me:
Yesterday I met my brother, his wife, and four of their friends at Cafe D'Alsace for lunch or brunch or whatever it is you call a meal eaten at 1:15 on a Sunday afternoon. Needless to say, I suggested the restaurant, which was reasonably convenient to the group's next planned activity, a visit to the Guggenheim to see an exhibition of Jackson Pollack drawings. I must have been feeling lightheaded from all the heat. Why else would I agree to go a museum instead of watching the Yankee game?
The first sign of trouble was the response from the woman that answered the phone when I inquired if they took reservations for brunch. She said that they don't take reservations, that it wasn't crowded the moment I called, and she couldn't say if it would be crowded when we got there. In other words, she made no effort to be accommodating or helpful in any way.
Seven of us (I know, I know, it's a large party. But that's exactly why even restaurants with a no reservations policy make exceptions for large parties) walked into the restaurant at 1:15, and we were told it would be about fifteen minutes before we could be seated. Fifteen minutes went by, and though no large tables became available, there were at least ten tables seating four or less standing empty. The natives (my brother and his friends) were getting restless, and I felt their restlessness keenly, as I had suggested the restaurant.
I kept going over to the podium and suggesting ways they could accommodate us by being just a little creative with their seating plan.
The officious jerks at the restaurant would have none of it. They kept telling us, "No, we can't do that." I felt like a character in that David Spade credit card commercial.
Finally, after 25 minutes they sat us at a table directly across from the swinging kitchen door. And the food was actually really, really good.
Excellent burgers, homemade pork sausage with delicious sauerkraut, even the dreaded quiche was excellent. But all we were left with was the sour taste of having been strung along by the turkeys at the podium.
Adam Platt's take on Cafe D'Alsace in NYM
Frank Bruni's take in the Times
I actually like the food at Cafe D'Alsace more than Platt or Bruni does. Which makes it even more of a pity that the folks working the front of the house behaved so badly yesterday.
Posted by Ed Levine, July 28, 2006 at 11:05 AM
In theory, the turkey club sandwich is a great idea. Turkey, bacon, lettuce, tomato, mayo, and toast; what's not to like? Yet every element of a club sandwich, except perhaps the mayo, is fraught with peril. Dry turkey or turkey roll, rigormortis-ridden bacon that was cooked and left for dead hours before it makes it into your sandwich, iceberg lettuce browned to a not-very-crisp, and woody, cardboard tomatoes that taste more like potatoes than tomatoes, often lead to a turkey club sandwich gone horribly wrong.
That's why I am thrilled to report that there's finally a great turkey club sandwich in NY, at Cookshop. There chef Joel Hough constructs his club sandwich with gently house-smoked turkey, smokey and just sweet enough Hatfield Farms bacon from New Hampshire, ripe avocados, baby lettuces, housemade mayo, and Balthazar toasted potato batard. Each bite of this sandwich gives you smokey, sweet, creamy, tender, crisp, fresh-tasting pleasure. And isn't that what we're all looking for?
The Times take on Cookshop.
NYM's take by Hal Rubenstein.
Cookshop is at 156 10th Avenue (20th St.) 212-924-4440
Posted by Ed Levine, July 24, 2006 at 10:34 AM
Kenny Shopsin complained bitterly to me a couple of weeks ago about the fact that no food writer had sampled his sliders, which he proclaimed to be the best in NYC. So last Friday I braved the sweltering heat and went down to Shopsin's for the sliders, which come three to an order accompanied by Shopsin's very good fries. Damned if Kenny wasn't right. His sliders were magnificent: each mini-burger had a crunchy exterior and was juicy inside, crunchy yet pliant fried onions were actually melded into the top of each slider, along with American cheese. The mini-potato buns were grilled and buttered, so they formed a snug holder for the burgers. The bad news is that Shopsin's is now closed for a month for vacation. But his movie "I Like Killing Flies" opens this Friday at the Cinema Village.
Posted by Ed Levine, July 6, 2006 at 10:04 PM
New York is full of hidden culinary and cultural treasures, and I guess that's one of the reasons many of us love the city. Take Long Island City's Water Taxi Beach, a two minute boat ride from the East River at 34th Street.
There the lovably eccentric and civic-minded Harry Hawk, one of the city's true gastronomic originals (he owns Schnack in Carroll Gardens and is a veritable hot dog and hamburger historian), has constructed a beach bar, complete with sand and picnic tables and a fantastic view of the city skyline. The setting alone is worth a trip there, but the fact that Harry is making great food there makes Water Taxi Beach an essential stop on any NYC burger and hot dog tour.
Schnack is making what he is calling a Motz Burger (named after burger auteur George Motz, producer and director of the world's greatest hamburger movie, Hamburger USA. The Motz burger is freshly ground chuck made on a super-hot griddle, so the burgers get that great char we all know and love at the Shake Shack. I actually went with Motz himself to have the burger tonight, and he was mightily offended when I ordered my Motz burger with cheese (Motz is a purist who disdains cheeseburgers). The burgers are just the right size, and though they overcooked my first one (I ordered it rare and it was medium), they immediately cooked another one for me that was perfect. The hot dog was also serious, topped with Coney Sauce (chili for the uninitiated).
Water Taxi Beach is worth a summer evening or weekend excursion any time you get the urge for a burger overlooking the water. Water Taxi Beach doesn't really have a street address. It is closest to 2-03 Borden Ave. Take the number 7 line to Vernon-Jackson. It's about an eight minute walk from there. Or take the two minute water taxi from 34th Street and the East River. The boat runs continuously on weekends, and up to about 8 p.m. on weekdays.
Posted by Ed Levine, June 25, 2006 at 8:36 AM
People seem to have sworn their smoked fish, bagels and cream cheese allegiance to either Russ & Daughters
or Barney Greengrass.
I love them both, so when I want to have a plate of sturgeon, eggs and onions and not do the dishes, I go to Barney Greengrass.
There I'll be semi-graciously ignored by the waiters as they simultaneously slide my food to me as they walk away.
When I want snappy counter repartee and fantastic wild Baltic Smoked Salmon, or some herring, a bissel cream cheese and a pletzel, I head down to Russ & Daughters 
for some good-natured abuse from Mark, Herman, Josh and the rest of the Russ and Daughters gang.
And if you don't live in NYC, they both ship.
Posted by Ed Levine, June 23, 2006 at 6:57 AM
I know it's going to seem socio-culturally incorrect to say this, but it's very possible that the best dim sum to be had in NY is to be had at the recently opened, non-Chinese-owned Chinatown Brasserie.
Photo courtesy of eater.curbed.com
Joe Ng has cooked for many years in many of Brooklyn Chinatown's best dim sum joints, and Chinatown Brasserie consultant Ed Schoenfeld discovered him and persuaded the youngish dim sum master with the streaked hair to ply his trade in a chi-chi restaurant owned by the same folks that own Lever House and Lure Fish Bar.
Here's what we sampled, and almost everyone was a dim sum home run with the exception of the not very ducky tasting duck dumplings:
Steamed Pork & Shrimp Dumplings
Shanghai-style Soup Dumplings
Roast Duck Dumplings
Shrimp & Chinese Chive Dumplings
Chicken & Garlic Roll
Classic Egg Roll
Beef, Onion & Mushroom Triangles
Tatsoi Salad with toasted sunflower seeds (obviously not dim sum)
'Lasagnette' with chopped pork and chili sauce.
The Egg Roll was so good it had me thinking I was tasting an egg roll for the first time, in general the dumpling wrappers were delicate and super-thin, and the fillings were deep-flavored with just the right non-mushy texture.
I look forward to going back for dinner to try the barbecued duck, Peking duck and the St. Louis-Style Ribs.
I know foodies have been down on this place because apparently the party the restaurant hosted for the Beard Awards in May when it was still under construction was a disaster. My advice: Go back now and taste dim as they're meant to be.
Posted by Ed Levine, June 8, 2006 at 7:12 AM
I know no one is going to believe me, but the Ruby Foo's on 77th and Broadway has become what is desperately needed in any neighborhood, a good, reasonably priced restaurant that you can walk into and get a table without waiting. Immediately upon opening ten? years ago, Ruby Foo's became an unpleasant "scene" restaurant that neighborhood residents had almost no shot of walking in and being seated in under an hour.
But I've had three meals there in the last week that were spontaneous evenings out with family and friends, and we were able to walk in each time between seven and eight o clock and be seated immediately.
We sampled twenty dishes during those three meals. The food ranged from excellent to more than acceptable, with only two dishes that I wouldn't order again, an overbreaded fried calamari and a flavorless Asian slaw.
The highlights:
Great Malaysian chicken potstickers, some of the best I've had.
Sesame Crusted Tuna with wok seared spinach and shitake mushrooms
Wok-seared sizzling filet of beef with asparagus, spinach and spicy ponzu sauce
Meaty spare ribs served with the awful Asian slaw noted above
Shockingly tasty Kung Pao Chicken with Cilantro and Peanuts
A solid tuna, smoked salmon and avocado hand roll.
Crispy yellowtail roll
Spicy tuna roll
Ruby Foo's is a huge multi-level restaurant (I believe it has 300 seats), so that may be the reason we were able to walk in and get a table each time at a prime hour. The Rockwell-designed restaurant still looks great and now you can get a good meal there without a reservation. That's big news. Ruby Foo's uptown is at 2182 Broadway (between 77th and 78th Streets). The phone number is 212-724-6700, but I don't think you'll need it.
Has anyone ever eaten at the Ruby Foo's in Times Square? Better yet, has anyone eaten there recently?
Posted by Ed Levine, May 22, 2006 at 2:56 PM
I had a friend, Stuie Bleckner, who died fifteen years ago. Stuie was a good soul, depressed and confused about a lot of things, but crystal clear on many others. He was one of those cabbie philosophers who could engage just about any fare in a highly personal but unintrusive conversation. He did the same thing with his friends, of which I was one of many.
Like many cabbies, Stuie loved to eat, and had incredible eatar (eating radar) He turned me on to more great food in unlikely places than anyone else I've ever known. On Friday I was meeting my friend Bob for lunch. Bob, who was in fact much closer to Stuie than I was, suggested a Stuie dumpling spot called Chinese American (yes, that's the name). Stuie must have been holding out on me, because I had in fact never been there .
Chinese American turned out to be a totally nondescript joint on West 32nd St. that was clearly a Greek coffee shop in a former life. There was a small counter as you walk in with a window into the kitchen, and a small counter next to the window where the Chinese cooks left the food for the waitresses to pick up. Ugly acoustical tile and bad flourescent lighting completed what would have been a classic picture except for the fact that the joint serves Chinese food.
And pretty damned good Chinese food at that. Anyone who walks through the door here has to have the fried dumplings, which have beautiful brown crispy exterior, surprisingly thin dough casing, and juicy, tasty pork filling.
The rice noodles with chicken were pretty boring, but the fried pork with scallions was good enough to have me already thinking about a return visit.
In fact, the dumplings are good enough that I might make Chinese American a daily stop on my way to work.
So, my late great friend Stuie, you held out on me. I don't really mind. It gave Bob and me a chance to raise our glasses of Diet Coke and our used chopsticks to you one more time. We miss you, Stuie. Your memory lives on in places like Chinese American, 106 W. 32nd St. (between 6th and 7th avenues) 212-564-4597.
Posted by Ed Levine, April 24, 2006 at 11:16 PM
What a food weekend I had. On Friday night I had dinner at Cafe D'Alsace, on 88th and 2nd Avenue.
It's an Alsatian brasserie featuring the cooking of Philippe Roussel. The highlights of the meal: a fine split pea soup with bacon, two kinds of housemade sausages, one made of pork, the other or duck, both served with excellent sauerkraut, a juicy, perfectly cooked hangar steak served in a red wine reduction with great frites; an exemplary roast chicken that even had moist white meat (a true rarity in restaurants these days), and very good housemade ice creams and an eggy, buttery blueberry tart for dessert. Disappointments included a blah trout preparation and a standard creme brulee. The joint was reasonably priced as well. My hangar steak and frites was $18.
I wish Cafe D'Alsace was in my neighborhood. Unfortunately, it's at Second Ave, 212-722-5133.
Here's Gael Greene's take on the restaurant
