Cookshop

Last week, we had dinner at Cookshop with Sonya and Seon. I had been wanting to try it for a while now due to the fact that there are many connections between the chefs at Savoy and Cookshop. Like Savoy, Cookshop highlights local, seasonal food, thoughtfully cooked and beautifully plated.

Sonya and I both started with delicious salads. I had purslane, blueberries, toasted hazelnuts, and champagne vinaigrette. The hazelnuts and blueberries went very well with the lemony purslane, and champagne vinegar is my absolute favorite.

As for Sonya’s–dandelion, toasted almonds, sherry vinaigrette, and anchoiade–I’m not a huge fan of dandelion greens, but the almonds were beautifully toasted and the dressing helped cut down on some of the bitterness of the greens.

Seon had white wine-steamed Littleneck clams, house-made pork sausage, cilantro, and lime. The clams were nice, but the flavor of sausage was a bit too strong (even when eating just the clams) for Sonya and me.

Dave ordered a special appetizer with rabbit sausage. Dave said the sausage was, “delicious.” (I’m working on trying to expand Dave’s food-descriptive vocabulary, as you can see, I’m making lots of progress.)

(I apologize in advance that the quality of the photos is about to decline as they dimmed the lights.)

This freebie course came in between our appetizers and main courses. Yes, I let it be known that I was working at Savoy and they treated us very well. This was one of my favorite parts of the meal, the shrimp was succulent and came in a delicious sauce.

For my entree I had the seared Rhode Island squid, cannellini beans, and salsa verde. I also ordered a side of polenta fries and chimichurri. I wasn’t that happy with the squid (which is really an appetizer). I thought that it was way too salty, but the beans were well cooked. The polenta fries were also a disappointment, but Dave liked them. They were too thick, making the ratio of crispy outside to mushy inside quite uneven. The dipping sauce was good, though.

Sonya had Maine dayboat sea scallops, creamy bi-color corn, snap peas, and pickled piopinno mushrooms. I tried a bite of her scallops which were nicely seared, and the crunch of the snap peas was quite pleasing.

Seon had Hudson Valley duck breast, Wehani, Carolina Gold, and wild rice salad, red and black currant compote.

Lastly, Dave ordered Block Island swordfish, cubanelle pepper, cranberry bean, cherry tomato and basil salad, tonnato sauce. Dave liked the taste and texture of his fish but said that his dish “was a bit too overcomplicated for my taste.”

Dessert was the true highlight of the meal. Clockwise from top left: brandied market cherries vanilla ice cream, and pistachios; buttermilk panna cotta market strawberries, black peppermint, and vanilla syrup; blueberry tart yogurt sherbet, peach jam, and market blueberries; Cookshop candy bars Devil’s food cake, gianduja crunch, praline ganache, frozen peanut nougat, and chocolate shell.

Since I let it leak that I was filling in for the pastry chef at Savoy the desserts simply arrived, and the pastry chef came out to talk to us as well. She was very nice, and some of her offerings were truly unique. Namely, the candy bars. Sonya had read about them before coming, and they lived up to their reputation: crispy, goey, cold, scrumptious. My favorite dessert was the blueberry tart, which had some of the lightest pastry crust I’ve had in a while. The other two were good, but I will admit that I’m not a huge fan of panna cotta, though it was well done. Lastly, the brandied cherries were a nice way to round out the offerings.

We were too full to indulge, but during the summer Cookshop has an ice cream stand outside. If you’re in the area (having just walked the High Line, perhaps), you should check it out. The flavor offerings looked awesome.

We left the restaurant stuffed, but happy. Next time I’ll know to just get a salad, and save the rest of the room in my stomach for dessert.

Read Full Post »

The Mermaid Inn

Dave’s mom was out of town, so his dad came in to the city to have dinner with us. We made reservations at a place we had been wanting to try for a while: The Mermaid Inn (the Upper West Side edition). My love for seafood, coupled with some great reviews from friends, made it a no-brainer.

While we waited for the food to arrive, some delicious crisp bread arrived. The accompanying butter came covered in a piece of parchment with the restaurant’s logo on it. Dave ordered a beer, and even it had a mermaid on it.

We ordered two appetizers to share: seared calamari, wild mushrooms, frisee, feta; and steamed mussels, aromatic shellfish broth. The calamari salad stole the show. It was superb, well seasoned, with perfectly cooked squid mixed with all the right stuff. The mussels were pretty generic, but tasty nonetheless. We didn’t partake, but they also have an extensive raw bar selection. Many people around us were happily slurping oysters.

I ordered the lobster sandwich, which comes on a brioche bun with a side of old bay fries. The sandwich exceeded my expectations: the bread was soft and flavorful, the lobster chunks were big and not over-saturated with mayo-based sauce (as is often the case), and the fries were crisp and delicious.

My father-in-law ordered the braised skate wing, cooked with pine nuts, fresh tomato, garlic, and saffron. It was served in a way I had never seen before: on the bone. The fish and the sauce were both quite flavorful, and I think he was pleased.

Dave ordered the shrimp po-boy which comes with coleslaw and old bay fries. He proclaimed it, “the best shrimp po-boy I have ever had.” When we got home he also said that the Mermaid Inn will likely become a neighborhood go-to. I wholeheartedly concur.

The only downside is that they don’t have a dessert selection. At the end of the meal, everyone is presented with this chocolate “mousse” and a fortune teller miracle fish. Taking the thin, red fish out of its plastic sheath brought back memories of getting them at candy stores and birthday parties when I was a kid. The fish was a great touch, but it wasn’t enough to distract me from the horrendousness that was dessert. I put the word mousse in quotes because it was more of a chocolate blob, not quite jello, but certainly made with too much gelatin in it to be called a mousse. It also seemed old. Not the best way to end an otherwise flawless meal. It would have been better to have had no dessert at all, just the fortune teller and the check.

We’ll definitely be back, and next time we’ll know to skip dessert.

Read Full Post »

Tanoreen

Thanks to my friend Leah, who I met while interning at the Food Network, we were introduced to an amazing Middle Eastern restaurant in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn: Tanoreen. We went for dinner with Leah and her husband Paul, and Claudia (another FN employee) and her husband, Paul. Yes, it’s hard to get to (luckily we got to ride with Leah and Paul in their car), and yes, it looks like just another not-so-special restaurant from the outside, but it is a hidden gem, with food that is magical, delicious… transcendental. Did I mention it’s BYOB, and very affordable.

I won’t go into detail about every dish, but I will comment on my favorites. After every photo I’ve included the description of the dish from the take out menu that I grabbed on the way out (all spellings are theirs, not mine). We started our meal with some small plates to share:

Hummus: pureed chickpeas with sesame paste (tahini), lemon juice, and garlic. Some of the pita that came with the hummus was coated in a delicious mixture of sumac and sesame.

Fatoush: salad composed of lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, parsley, mint, sumac, olive oil, lemon juice, and toasted wedges of pita. This salad is my favorite Middle Eastern dish. I fell in love with it when we lived in São Paulo and often ate Lebanese food as it is quite common there.

Falafel: vegetarian fried chickpea patties with tahini sauce and salad toppings

Cheese pie (from that night’s specials menu). The cheese was tangy and a bit sour, made from yogurt, I believe. The pie was simply delicious.

Eggplant napoleon: crispy eggplant slices layered with baba ghanouge and topped with tomato and basil salad. I do not like eggplant, I will be the first to admit it, but I tried a bite of this anyway. Let’s just say that if this was the only eggplant I’d ever eaten, I would love eggplant.

Pies: meat, spinach, and feta cheese. My only disappointment of the night was the spinach pie (the triangular one), the spinach was way too sour. I got a second opinion; Leah agreed with my assessment.

After all of the above, we ordered main courses. I was getting full so I kept nibbling on what was on the table, but most people ordered entrees. I didn’t take photos of everyone’s orders (I think people were getting sick of my camera) so I just took one of Dave’s. Shish kabob: marinated lamb cubes, served with salad and Egyptian rice. The rice was tasty, Paul jokingly compared it to Rice-a-Roni as the rice is mixed in with little pieces of noodle. Dave said the lamb, “was well-cooked and yummy. I liked it.”

The parsley-coated aftermath. As you’re eating, the chef-owner, a smiling but somewhat imposing woman, comes around to each table to make sure that everything is alright, and, of course, it is.

Then, we ordered desserts:

Knafeh: house specialty composed of shredded filo dough stuffed with two kinds of cheese and baked, topped with homemade syrup and pistachio nuts.

Harissa: baked semolina cake soaked in syrup and topped with pistachio nuts. That night it was a bit special and had a layer of dates as well.

Sahlab: custard flavored with authentic Middle Eastern sweet spice, topped with pistachio nuts and syrup.

When I first heard that one of our desserts had cheese in it, I was a bit skeptical, but let me say here and now that this dessert was one of the best I’ve had. Ever. The crispy sweetened filo with the soft oozing cheese, all smothered in a sweet syrup was just indescribably good. The semolina cake (my order) was also divine. It was soft and cakey, but also a bit dense thanks to the dates and the syrup, a winner indeed. Don’t take my word for it, go to Tanoreen. Go now.

Read Full Post »

BarBao

The last stop on our restaurant week tour was BarBao, a modern Vietnamese joint on the Upper West Side. I had heard good things from the sous chef at Savoy and was excited. We, again, decided to eschew the restaurant week menu and instead ordered two appetizers to share and one entree each. Our server informed us that all the food was meant to be shared, but we ordered separate entrees anyway since Dave wanted meat.

The appetizers were the best part of the meal. We went with the “peel and eat” tiger shrimp which came with a chili-yuzu sauce, and the vegetable Saigon noodles. The shrimp were good, but I didn’t feel the need to peel them. I ate each crispy morsel whole, tail and all. The noodles were soft and flavorful, but could have been mixed with a bit more veg.

For my main course I had the market fish which was a bass, sauteed and served over a bed of vermicelli and mixed vegetables. The fish was wonderfully crisp and the sauce was sweet and delicious. By the time I got to the noodles at the bottom, they had soaked in all that nice flavor. My only complaint was that by the end the sauce became a bit too much, it could have been a little thinner.

Dave ordered the crispy Berkshire pork belly which came with white rice. The pork itself was, “soft and juicy and good but not great.” Dave quickly realized why all the dishes are meant to me shared, that no one person is meant to eat that many slices of pork belly.

All in all it was a solid meal, but doesn’t trump my favorite modern Vietnamese in NYC, Nam.

Read Full Post »

Matsugen: best Japanese I’ve had since Tokyo

I had been wanting to try Matsugen (Jean George Vongerichten’s Japanese restaurant with a focus on soba noodles) for a long time. When I saw that they were participating in restaurant week, I made a reservation right away. Not only was I not disappointed, I left ecstatic, having been fed one of the most generous restaurant week dinner portions, and having found a new favorite Japanese in NYC. (It joins my other favorites Sushiden and Matsuri.)

I started off with one of the housemade sodas: cherry-yuzu. The delicate flavor of the yuzu permeated the carbonated treat, and wasn’t overwhelmed by the sweet cherry.

The restaurant week menu is a six-course (eight-dish) affair, if you include dessert. Each dish is small, but they definitely add up. I left the restaurant just as one should: completely satisfied but not stuffed.

First course: edamame and homemade soft tofu. Since I don’t eat that much soy these days, the tofu was an extra special treat. Just the right texture, smooth and cold with a drizzle of soy-based sauce, it took me immediately back to summers in Japan.

Second course: seaweed salad, shrimp and vegetable tempura. The seaweed salad contained a nice mix of different colored plants, unlike the generic monochromatic offering that you see so many places. The tempura was good, but not great. My mother who is very picky about her tempura said that the batter was a bit too heavy-handed. My father, however, loved the red pepper tempura.

Third course: black cod with miso. Thanks to Nobu, it seems everyone has to have one on their menu. I wanted a little more miso flavor, but the cod was cooked well, separating into delicious large chunks when I dug in with my chopsticks.

Fourth course: zuki sushi, made with pieces of marinated tuna. I am not a big fan of tuna (especially in its raw state), but these bites were phenomenal. Enough said.

The fifth and final savory course was larger and served as the entree. It was, of course, soba. Matsugen’s menu offers three different thicknesses: Rin (no husk, center of the soba, delicate, served cold), Seiro (medium husk, smooth, 90 percent soba), and Inaka Soba (with husk, very coarse, served cold).

The soba course was the only one that offered us a choice between seiro kamo nanban soba (duck, hot) and inaka goma dare soba (sesame, cold). My dad ordered the hot noodles, but had chicken substituted for the duck (above top), I had the cold sesame noodles (above bottom), and my mother went hot, but with no meat at all (not pictured). I loved my thicker, heartier inaka soba, and the sesame sauce was nice too. My mother raved about the taste of her kombu (seaweed) broth. Coming from her, that means it was top notch.

Dessert was a green tea pudding. When I read that on the menu my heart sank, as I’m not a big fan of pudding, but this one won me over. It was very light, almost like a cross between a pudding and a jello, and came with a dollop of red bean paste on top. It tasted like green tea but in a refreshingly non-cloying way.

Thank you Jean George for importing a $10,000 buckwheat grinder to New York City (I know this because a friend used to work in the kitchen at Matsugen) so that I can enjoy soba perfection outside of Tokyo.

Read Full Post »

Weczeria food and wine

Thanks to some online research by Kristen, the night before the wedding we had a delicious dinner at Weczeria Food & Wine, a Saskatoon newcomer. One of the few, if perhaps only, restaurants in town that focuses on the use of local ingredients, it had photos of the farmers who supply the restaurant on the walls. Weczeria also boasts the only wine list in the province that is comprised solely of Canadian wines. The menu changes daily, and our server brought it over (written on a chalkboard) and propped it up on a chair for all to read.

Kristen started with the BBQ bison with coleslaw, while the rest of us ordered the tomato watermelon salad. Kristen said the bison was tough, but seemed happy with the flavor, and the coleslaw (which I did taste), was quite good (even by my mayo-hating standards). The salad was refreshing, and I found the pistachio nuts to be quite unique. That said, I didn’t find the use of tomato that successful. I thought that its texture and flavor was not the best match for watermelon. I do, however, love watermelon in a savory salad preparation, I make mine with feta and red onions.

The entrees were all listed on the menu as a sequence of four ingredients. First is the protein, the main element. Second comes the vegetable followed by the starch. The final ingredient, according to our server, is the flavor that should permeate the entire dish. Nancy and I ordered pike · arugula · lentil · basil. For me, the lentils were the star of the dish, perfectly cooked and seasoned, they were simply divine. The fish, which was pan fried, had a nice crust on it and its mild flavor went well with the very flavorful lentils. Having a raw element–the arugula–was the perfect finishing touch. I can’t say that the taste of basil permeated the dish, or that I even tasted it for that matter, but I loved my entree nonetheless.

Kristen had the sockeye salmon · asparagus · wild rice · arugula. She seemed very pleased, and the bite that I had of her rice was delicious. Mike’s flatiron steak · romaine · potato · BBQ sauce looked good too.

When it came to dessert I thought there were some hits and some misses. I had the apple tart tatin which was my favorite of the bunch. The pastry crust was spot on and the ice cream on top had a wonderful swirl of butterscotch (or maybe caramel), which was the perfect touch.

Mike’s flourless chocolate cake was good, but I think he would have been happier had it come with a scoop of  ice cream.

Nancy ordered vanilla panna cotta which came atop some cherries and with a side of pistachio-covered cream. The texture of the panna cotta itself was fine, but she found all of the elements a bit hard to integrate into one cohesive dish.

Lastly, Kristen’s peach clafouti, was hardly a clafouti at all. What should have been a custard around the fruit, was entirely too cakey.

All of the dishes, sweet and savory, were beautifully plated with great attention to detail. At the end of the meal the chef, who had heard from our server that we were in from New York, came out to ask how we liked our meal. He was very friendly and seemed like he really valued our opinions. He even claimed to be a little intimidated when he found out that we were all culinary school grads; a fear that was quickly alleviated with our praise. He stayed for a while and chatted with us about his philosophy of local sourcing and how he is really trying to bring something new to the region. He’d even heard of Savoy, when I told him that I work at a place that does the same.

If for any reason you find yourself in Saskatoon, Weczeria is the place to eat, hands down.

Read Full Post »

All you can eat crab

As you know, this week I went to Back Forty for their crab boil, held every Tuesday during the summer. I arrived late. Dave and my parents were sitting in anticipation…

To whet our appetites, these arrived:

fried codfish balls with a piece of yuca (manioc, cassava, whatever your word of choice may be) inside. They were delicious, and brought me back to my days in Brazil, where cod fish balls are a popular appetizer/bar snack. Before we were even done with the balls, our server arrived with a huge metal bucket filled with crabs and dumped them out onto the table.

Along with the all you can eat crab, comes an ever-replenishing supply of tasty sides: the codfish balls; some deliciously seasoned green beans; and some boiled, herbed potatoes. For those with patience (my mom and Dave) the meal was comprised of a long series of carefully picked out bits of crab meat. For those without (my dad and me), it was more of a smash, eat, and burn out. The aftermath:

One thing was for sure, we were all overdressed. We should have gone clad in ratty old T-shirts, instead we all left with our (mostly nice) clothes covered in crab juice and flecks of red from the spice rub that came on the crustaceans.

Dinner ended with a piece of mixed berry cobbler each, accompanied by a small shot of ice wine. Before dessert, we were all able to wipe our hands off with some hot towels, but that didn’t stop Kuma from attacking my hands with licks when I arrived home.

If you like crab, or simply want to have an evening of eating with your hands and pounding your food with a wooden mallet, then get your reservation requests in on Back Forty’s website as close to 10am on Wednesday as you can (that’s when they open the lines for the crab boil the following Tuesday). Good luck. And, whatever you do, don’t wear white.

Read Full Post »

Campo

Last week, Tracy and I went to dinner at Campo. Having walked by this Morningside Heights Italian many times on my way to visit Dave at Columbia, I had been wanting to try it since I first passed by. Then, I saw the executive chef, David Rotter, on an episode of Chopped (I was watching because one of my teachers from culinary school was also competing that week). He did not come across well on the show, but it renewed my desire to try the food at Campo.

We started our meal by sharing the housemade mozzarella and fried green tomato caprese, which came drizzled with balsamic vinegar and pesto and topped with some micro greens. The tomatoes were lightly breaded, crispy and flavorful on the outside, and warm and tomato-y on the inside. The pesto was quite tasty as well; add the mozzarella and it was the perfect dish.

For main courses I had the wild mushroom pappardelle and Tracy had the special pizza of the day which was topped with heirloom tomatoes. My pasta was quite good, its texture was spot on and the mushroom flavored sauce was delicate and perfectly portioned. I did wish that there were more actual mushrooms in the dish. Tracy’s pizza was also delicious. Campo grills its pizza which results in a thin, crisp crust that leaves you craving another bite.

We ended our carb-fest dinner with some zeppoli. The small, puffy doughnuts came drizzled with honey and coated with powdered sugar. I thought that they could have come out of the oil just a bit earlier, but the ultra crispy exterior contrasted well with the doughy, hot interior. A sweet ending to a casual weekday meal.

If you find yourself on the Upper West Side and hungry, Campo is a friendly, hearty option.

Read Full Post »

Fatty deliciousness

 

My friend Lisa was in town visiting from Alaska. She lives in a small town and rarely eats out (even if she wanted to her choices are limited) and she had requested Asian for dinner. Dave and I decided on Fatty Crab, known for its flavorful Malaysian street food, which recently opened a second branch on the Upper West Side.

We didn’t have a reservation, but arrived by 6pm and were seated right away. However, once seated we were forgotten for quite a while and didn’t even get menus until we asked for them. After this initial hiccup, however, our server was attentive and gave us some nice suggestions with respect to our meal. Everything is meant to be shared so we ordered a bunch of dishes, though finding things without meat in them on the Fatty Crab menu is virtually impossible. In addition, the whole fish bakar, which sounded delicious and had been recommended by a friend, was sold out.

The first dish that arrived was steamed veggie buns. The cooked vegetables, to which we were instructed to add a piece of hard-boiled egg and some fresh cilantro, were divine, and went nicely with the bun. On the side was a sweet and spicy sauce that was the prefect addition to the buns. 

Next came the fatty sliders (mini pork and beef burgers). Dave and Lisa dug right in and seemed very pleased. Dave described the combination of beef and pork as, “succulent and tender.” He also noted that the cucumber added a nice crunch.

Along with the sliders came the lo si fun (short rice noodles with Chinese sausage and shiitake). Initially, I was planning on just picking out the pieces of sausage, which were easy to spot. But, after a bit of digging it became clear that, in addition to the sausage, there was a hefty amount of ground meat in the sauce (Dave thinks it was beef). I was able to taste a few noodles, which had a nice texture, but I found the sauce to be a bit heavy. 

We also ordered a side of steamed baby bok choy (with oyster sauce). This (quite standard) dish was well executed and brought me back to my days living in Hong Kong. I think it helped that Lisa and I were in Hong Kong together, and shared many a meal.

Our last dish, which was the crowd favorite, was the fatty duck. Yes, I had a piece. The duck meat was sweet and crispy and fatty and amazing. It came on a bed of rice mixed with cilantro and some thinly sliced chilies. Every time you got a bit of chili in your mouth it provided a pleasing burst of hotness.

With the check came a complimentary desert of coconut panna cotta and mochi cake. The panna cotta was nothing special but the cake was excellent. It was light and cakey but with the chewiness of mochi. I need to find a recipe for this cake and make it myself soon.

Read Full Post »

Best Soba in town

While I have yet to try the much lauded soba at Matsugen, I am sticking with Soba-ya as my favorite place to go for soba in Manhattan. One of my qualifications for a good Japanese restaurant outside of Japan is that most-to-all of the servers must speak Japanese. Soba-ya delivers in this category, however, sadly, when we went a few days ago with Christina and Rich we got stuck with one of the few with whom I had to communicate in English.

(Side note: my mother will say that the true test of a good Japanese restaurant is the miso soup. One sip and she can judge whether a place is worthy of her patronage. I suppose in a noodle shop this test can’t really be used, especially in one where miso soup isn’t on the menu.)

One step inside Soba-ya and I’m back in Japan. All the sounds and smells are there and I feel right at home. And, if you are there in the afternoon you can even see them hand rolling the noodles. 

To start out, the boys ordered some beers and we got some small plates to share including spinach and green beens mixed with a delicious sesame sauce (goma ae) and Japanese-style deep fried marinated chicken (tatsuta age).

After that we all enjoyed our noodle dishes. Dave and Christina both ordered the kamo seiro: soba with a side of hot dipping sauce made of duck broth and containing pieces of duck and scallions. Dave liked the “strong, meaty broth,” but was a little sad that he had strayed from his usual order of nabeyaki udon (udon noodles served in a hot pot with lots of yummy toppings).

Rich went with tempura udon.

I ordered from the seasonal soba/udon section of the menu which has specials for every day of the week. That day the special was kawari soba: cold buckwheat noodles flavored with shiso and served with a cold soy sauce-based dipping sauce. The shiso flavor was delicate but present in just the right way and I finished wishing there was more on my plate.

As for dessert, the winner (which Christina had had before and raved about it) was the honey wasabi ice cream, which is served on top of crispy soba noodles. I do not care for wasabi, so it wasn’t for me, but everyone else thought it was unusual and tasty. To quote Dave, “just when you thought the wasabi flavor was going to get too hot, the honey would kick in and counterbalance it.”

I could eat at Soba-ya every night and never get bored. Last week’s meal was the perfect summer time dinner, light but filling, with a satisfying slurp.

Read Full Post »