Today is Australia day and the official grand opening of Pie Face, the new midtown meat pie shop. Read more about it on Serious Eats. There are freebies to be had if you're in the area!
Today is Australia day and the official grand opening of Pie Face, the new midtown meat pie shop. Read more about it on Serious Eats. There are freebies to be had if you're in the area!
Coppelia
Media-ish parties can be fun (on the rare occasion I'm invited) but they're not generally the best source of food even when hosted in restaurants. After a couple hours of alternating red and white wine and a few nibbles of fancy chicken nuggets and shrimp tempura I needed something substantial yet non-starchy. Hence, Coppelia's take on a Cobb salad with roast pork and chicharrón. A few drops of habanero sauce was my own handiwork. Better than my occasional Cobb-esque salad from Pret a Manger, but probably also twice as caloric. Oh, and and a spicy cucumber cocktail.
Alewife
After spending part of a Meat Hook gift certificate (that I gave James for Christmas) on fancy pork chops (though I scoff, part of me does wonder if my Western Beef meat is giving me diabetes) and lamb casings to make homemade (would you prefer artisanal?) wieners for all-scratch Super Bowl pigs in a blanket, I didn't feel like trying any of the newish restaurants in Williamsburg that I've meant to (Isa, Allswell, Mercado on Kent, Fushimi [really!]) plus it was too early for real dinner. Instead, we headed to beer-centric Alewife in Long Island City. I didn't realize I'd already been to this spot's two former incarnations: Lucky Mojo, the bbq/Cajun mashup and whatever the bbq place was that preceded it (not to eat but to have a drink after that transit strike fiasco in 2005--the midtown ferry is a block away). I didn't even mind that it was the baby dining time after a 21st Amendment Back in Black IPA and roast beef slider. That sounds kind of eh, but it's really two mini sandwiches on rye (supposedly "house baked") with said roast beef, melted swiss, caramelized onions, and the best part: horseradish-spiked creme fraiche on the side which I used as a dip. Too dark for cameraphones and I was SLR-less.
Bánh mì has come to Prague. The Czech Republic is home to a growing number of Vietnamese immigrants and consequently restaurants serving pho and the like are on the rise. I don't know much about the Czech palate, but I could see pickles, salami, or hard-boiled eggs being integrated in a bánh mì/chlebíčky mash up (I just wanted to play with as many special characters as possible in a sentence).
Quelle horreur! French women do get fat. But Jenny Craig is there for them with low-calorie packaged beef bourguignon...and chili con carne.
A small number of Cambodian refugees who came to the US in the '70s are returning to their home country. One opened a fast food joint in Phnom Penh called Mike's Burger House. And apparently there isn't much competition since no international chains yet exist in the country (I thought Burger King had its sights set on Cambodia over a year ago, but so far they just have a knock-off).
Photo credit: Things I Ate in Cambodia
Even though I'm not crazy about gambling or prime rib, I have developed a bit of an obsession with downtown Las Vegas's Four Queens, the only casino where I ever win anything, which I attribute to my long-gone great grandmother, and the cheap meat meal deals advertised all along Freemont Street. If you dine at Magnolia's Veranda, both can be experienced at the same time.
From 4pm to midnight, you can get a slab of meat, complete with baked potato and steamed carrots. No, the prime rib doesn't really taste like much of anything (that's what the gravy or jus, whatever, is for) and it's a little gristly. I only had two bites anyway. We were too late our first Friday in town (thanks to an asshole who got into a fight with the flight attendants just as we were about to take off from JFK and had to return to the gate and get security to boot him off and retrieve his luggage from the hull, which wasted an hour) to make the midnight cutoff, and on New Year's Day we were too early at 2pm and drove to get a Double-Double and animal-style fries to hold us over until 4:30pm when a line (!) had formed up the carpeted stairs of Magnolia's Veranda (there were plenty of seats; they were just understaffed).
First you get a salad, though.
Shrimp cocktail and a $4 mini bottle of Gallo merlot exemplifies the Four Queens ethos. Risky maybe, but the iceburg lettuce and chilled shrimp in a glass parfait was one of the only non-carby thing on the menu, and I was trying to save my appetite for dinner, three-and-a-half hours away at Lotus of Siam where my $116 in Caveman Keno winnings were well-spent.
I would only recommend Magnolia's Veranda for hardcore old Vegas enthusiasts.
To the left of the entrance and downstairs is Hugo's Cellar, a not inexpensive restaurant that has not seen a remodel since the day it opened--the video says it all (click into dining). I really wanted to go experience the tableside Caesar salad, flambéed desserts, and free red rose for the ladies, but with limited time in town ended up doing the early bird $69 prix fixe at Jean Georges Steakhouse in modern, tastefully flashy Vegas, where you still end up spending more than $200 when you add in a side and wine pairings (though not a bad deal). I wondered what the difference would be between the upstairs prime rib at Magnolia's and Hugo's $42 version.
Magnolia's Veranda * Four Queens Casino, 202 Fremont St., Las Vegas, NV
Sure, we have Turkish food in NYC, but it’s not as ingrained in our culture as in Berlin. I wouldn't call it a top of mind cuisine. And while our love of gyros matches a German fondness for doner kebabs, our geographically generic shaved meat in a pita isn’t particularly Turkish or Greek or...whatever it's supposed to be.
Cafeteria-style Mercan, in Kreuzberg, is as good as any place to get acquainted with homey Turkish cooking. For only 6 euros, you can pick an entree (in the American sense--we're the only weirdos who use the term to mean the main dish, not a starter) from the handful of giant metal pans behind glass at the counter, choose rice or bulger, and salad or dessert. Nothing is labeled—the only written indications are in German on the chalkboards out front--but it's likely that one of the cooks will be able to speak enough English to explain the basics.
You may find a thick ground lamb and eggplant dish slicked with mildly spicy oil (perfect for dipping the fluffy focaccia-like bread), the abergin musakka. I've always wondered why countries like England and Germany use French words for so many food items, or are we the weirdos again with our eggplants and zucchinis? When a server at speakeasy, Beckett's Kopf, described a cocktail to me using the term "pamplemousse," I remarked, "oh, grapefruit," and he got all flustered like I was correcting him (I was not). I'm still trying to figure out the German temperament.
Or you can have Lamm nacken a.k.a. lamb shank stewed with potatoes. There are plenty of non-lamb options, by the way.
Rice is fortified with meaty white beans. I think they refer to this style with slivered nuts and cooked in broth as pilaf.
The chopped cucumber, tomato, and onion salad was a little bland even with the sliced chiles and a squeeze of lemon. It wasn’t until after I finished eating that I noticed other diners making a dressing with the oil and vinegar on the table. Of course. I'm not used to d.i.y. dressing, though it seems commonplace in other countries--Spain and Argentina, off the top of my head.
Mercan * Wiener Strasse 10, Berlin, Germany
Just as you can't really assess a restaurant's true nature based on a Christmas buffet, I can't say that China Poblano's New Year's Eve tasting menu is necessarily representative of a typical meal in Jose Andres' more casual casino restaurant. Many of the dishes served that evening aren't on the regular menu. For a traditionally price-gouging evening (if I were crazy, senseless rich I would've done the $1,300 Times Square T.G.I. Friday's event) I thought the two $45 (nine courses) and $65 (ten courses with slightly more luxurious ingredients) tasting menus were fairly priced. I ended up trying the latter.
My only issue was that dishes came out rapid-fire so that at any given moment, there were four sitting on the table at once. More like tapas than a tidy procession, (combined with a propensity for slow eating) at least half ended up being cold by the time we got around to eating them. I don't know how they would've possibly executed the four-cocktail drink pairing also being offered. So, I can't say if my favorite dishes were just the ones I happened to sample at their optimal temperature. The sense was that the staff was trying to wrap everything up by midnight.
Us, we had no desire to be on the strip to ring in 2012 as our eyeballs had already maxed out on stumbling packs of ladies squeezed into barely-butt-covering sausage casing dresses. It's one thing to be surrounded by small packs in casinos, The Cosmopolitan in particular (those ubiquitous kooky TV ads must work--or maybe it was the giant stiletto sculpture where I had to force myself not to take pictures of the girls taking pictures of themselves sitting inside the oversized shoe. Besides, Flickr is fertile ground for such shots already), but packed in among thousands felt apocalyptic.
Carne Apache tenderloin crudo/ chile pasilla de Oaxaca/pickled cactus and Traditional Sui Mai shrimp/pork/ water chestnuts/mushrooms/peanuts. The chile-spiked beef tartare was a hit, but the pork and shrimp dumplings dusted with gold leaf soon distracted. It wasn't a battle, but the tartare prevailed. The more successful--or more exciting, rather--dishes almost always were the least conventional.
Ceviche de Kampachi grapefruit/ mint/serrano pepper and Hawaiian Blue Prawns with Salsa Negra prawns/chipotle chile/piloncillo/garlic. The ceviche and sweet-and-smoky prawns that almost seemed Indian, were the two favorites of the evening. Maybe I'm just responding to the micro-herbs and flower petals as haute cuisine signifiers. The green puree is a mystery; the texture was like saag but not spinach, and didn't distinctly taste of cilantro, mint, or parsley either. Neither dish was overtly Chinese nor Mexican.
Carnitas Taco braised baby pig/pork rinds/ spicy salsa verde cruda and Flautas de Pato slow braised duck/mole Mihateco. The flautas and tacos got ignored for the competing seafood above, so they weren't at their prime. (Also, I may have ruined my appetite by making a late lunch in the hotel room with carnitas and corn tortillas purchased at Mariana's Supermarket. NYC desperately needs a real suburban-style Latino grocery store, like a Hispanic Hong Kong Supermarket, not a glorified bodega.)
Dragon’s Nest pan fried egg noodles/whole live lobster/shiitake mushrooms/ carrot butterflies
Twenty-Vegetable Fried Rice fresh vegetables/fried rice. The lobster (half, for what it's worth) dish was very Cantonese with the crisp-bottomed egg noodles and a light brothy soy-based sauce. We barely made it past the seafood component and couldn't even think of eating the fried rice (somehow the carrot butterflies ended up here) after a few bites of noodles. We actually brought the rice back (as well as Lotus of Siam beef jerky, jackfruit curry, and chile basil duck, and those carnitas and corn tortillas from earlier--we hate waste and love leftovers) in our luggage to NYC because there was nothing post-holidays to eat in the house. I didn't have the wherewithal to count the vegetables, though the baby turnip (more like a zygote) no bigger than a pinkie toe, was adorable.
Cajeta Flan goat’s milk caramel/pineapple and Chocolate Terracotta Warrior caramelized banana/sesame/ginger. I don't think we were supposed to get both desserts, and we certainly couldn't finish them (though I appreciated the gesture, prompted after we couldn't decide between the two). I preferred the flan simply because caramel feels lighter than chocolate. The chocolate warrior was very impressive even if the figurine (filled with chocolate mousse, by the way) was probably not supposed to be lying down on the job.
When I first heard of the Salt Air Margarita, I imagined a glass entirely filled with foam like a Czech pilsner served mliko-style. No, the "air" is simply a layer of salty fluff atop the cocktail, that works perfectly to balance the lime juice's sourness--unless you're one of those freaks who likes their margaritas frozen with no salt rim. Normally, I would branch out and try a different style drink for round two, but I rarely encounter sal de gusano, the chile/salt/powdered worm condiment drank with mezcal in Oaxaca, in the US. Why not use it as a margarita rim?
China Poblano is probably best experienced in small bursts. If I were back in Vegas I would likely stop in for a duck tongue and lychee taco and pork buns, two enticing things I didn't have a chance to try.
China Poblano * The Cosmopolitan, 3708 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas, NV
There are so many un-American things about Nordsee, the German fast food chain (though its mascot is very Spongebob). I can't see a fish restaurant not exclusively devoted to the battered and fried doing so well. Plus, real plates, glasses, and beer in a mall food court?
To be fair, there are plenty of fried options at Nordsee; the woman in line ahead of me was getting a very Brooklyn Chinese takeout combo of fried shrimp and fries. I was trying to not fill up so I could squeeze in a second lunch later, hence the petite sweet-and-sourish pickled herring, cucumber, and onions on a roll. I would totally buy this instead of those sad still-hungry-afterward half-baguette sandwiches from Pret a Manger that I occasionally get sucked into ordering.
More American was Papa Asada, the Tex-Mex restaurant, selling something that looked suspiciously like a Crunchwrap. In fact, it was called a Crunchwrap. It's also suspiciously absent from its website. Perhaps Taco Bell should look into a German expansion.
Nordsee * ALEXA, Am Alexanderplatz Grunerstraße 20, Berlin, Germany
Oft-mentioned 2011 places to eat that I could walk to and only feel semi-guilty for never having visited. 2012, maybe?
Battersby
Bien Cuit
Colonie
Court Street Grocers (ok, late 2010)
Littleneck
Rucola
Shelsky’s
Smith Canteen
Smorgasburg (er, not really walkable but it was mentioned so much it felt nearby)
However, after 7.5 years in Carroll Gardens I finally did try Saul. It's a solid neighborhood restaurant, no flash, not crowding or waiting for tables, serving the local, seasonal food that's become standard practice in Brooklyn. I couldn't help but think of Saul when I read Adam Platt's revised list of 101 restaurants and he knocked The Grocery off with the comment, " Almost everything on Smith Street now seems old." Fair enough, restaurants that aren't viewed as exciting anymore, but aren't venerable enough to transcend their comforting sameness (is there a Brooklyn Le Grenouille?) are in danger.
I only had an appetizer and an entree because it felt more appropriate than a tasting menu (and diners who came in after we did, left well before, emphasizing the casual drop-in for a bite vibe).
The green beans , corn and squash accompanying the fist-sized portion of sweetbreads almost felt summery. The fat, creamy tan beans, though, added heft and texture that was similar to the organ meat's soft interior.
Squab was served two ways: rare breast sliced and spindly legs that had been confited. Green faro added a nice chewiness, though with the brussels sprouts, potatoes, and cauliflower, the amount of grain overwhelmed a bit.
I wanted to try the signature baked Alaska because come on--how often do you get to eat a mound of ice cream frosted in burnished meringue peaks? I'd ordered heavier dishes than I'd realized, though, so went smaller...sort of smaller. The pine nut tart wasn't exactly light, but it satisfied a desire for a caramelly cold weather dessert.
Saul * 140 Smith St., Brooklyn, NY
After reading about the Berlin arrival of Hofbräuhaus, a beer garden franchise from Munich that has outlets in Dubai and Las Vegas (maybe I'll pop in this weekend), I knew I had to pay a visit. If only because Bavarian kitsch in the capital might be akin to a Cracker Barrel in Manhattan (no one seems to realize that you can reach the country chain if you head west for an hour--no need to cross the Mason-Dixon Line).
The giant space designed to hold 2,500 wasn't even close to capacity on a dark, blustery Friday afternoon, but there was an oompah band (they had just left the stage). We were the only ones who didn't know the words to the songs.
The real reason I wanted to go to the Hofbräuhaus was because I needed a schweinshaxe fix. Berlin is known more for eisbein, a boiled pork knuckle, but I wanted a massive dose of lechon-like crispy skin and fat.
But I didn't want to seem like a total glutton. Even though I knew I was ordering something embarrassingly massive, I played it off like I was a naive American unwittingly picking random things. And oddly, this was the only restaurant I dined at that didn't have English menus or translations below dishes, and it was the most touristy place by far, right off Alexanderplatz, the metaphorical Time's Square of Berlin.
When it arrived and drew the attention of the neighboring group of German tourists who'd commandeered two big tables, I pretended like I was surprised. I may have even opened my eyes wider and held out my hands as if I were air-measuring the knuckle's girth.
Of course, I couldn't eat it all myself. There was no way the crackled hunk of meat was going to be to even be tackled fully by two people, and I didn't get the impressions that Germans, like most Europeans, engaged in doggie bagging. We did the best we could. I have to tamp down my food-wasting guilt on vacations.
I did not order the sausages and potatoes.
Hofbräu Berlin * Karl-Liebknecht-Straße 30, Berlin, Germany