Road food

I am way, way, way behind on updating our eating experiences here, but I am so adamant that everyone who can should make the pilgrimage to Storm King in the Hudson Valley that I’m adding the good barbecue place we found for lunch. (Reddit is now reliable.) Food in the sculpture center’s cafe looked decent, but Brothers served up a real meal.

Four of us split ribs (falling-off-the-bone-tender but gristly as we were warned), pulled pork and brisket from the heavy meat list plus fine potato salad, collard greens and smoked baked beans. And that was after a heaping appetizer of beer-battered and fried dill pickles with excellent ranch dressing. Iced tea was quart-size; service was attentive. And the place was a trip, with ceramic and other pigs everywhere. WIGB? Sure, but I hope we don’t wait 40 years for a return expedition to Storm King, which really is a lush green wonderland now. And this installation alone is vaut le voyage. What an homage to the new/old Gilded Age.

In Italy, no one drinks without eating

Way back in the Bushwhacking, before the Aperol spritz was a cliché ripe for reinvention, I did a piece for the LAT on aperitivo in Torino. And here it’s finally infiltrated NYC. And of course it was our Canadian friends who discovered it. (And of course that LAT piece has been lost to digital greed & stupidity.)

NJ Minute

I could do a whole rant on how useless search engines are in searching out restaurants in this era of enshittification, especially after we schlepped to the Newark Museum of Art for two amazing exhibitions and got no clue how many options there really were “close to Penn Station.” We wound up at Sihana in the Ironbound, which was pretty great, but we soon learned the same owners had newer, more to-our-day-drinking-taste options as well. And then we walked around and saw any number of spots that would have worked.

We knew Sihana would be great when we followed two Black couples in — clearly a local destination. And I’m glad we watched what was delivered to other tables before ordering, because splitting one huge sandwich of skirt steak, cheese, lettuce, tomatoes and sauce with A+ fries was the sane move. A flat white afterward was also splittable. The cafe is part eatery, part artists’ showcase, part used-book store. Newark, not like you picture it.

The anti-Aububon show was powerful, but what really blew us away on this exhibition expedition was the newly restored and reopened Ballantine House attached to the museum. It is the first place we have toured where Black lives were presented to matter more than the rich previous occupants’. Especially the installation in the dining room. And the even more powerful one in the young son’s bedroom. WIGB? Absolutely. This was our second transporting trip.

New York Minute

One thing I learned on coming home from India with regional cookbooks and investing in esoteric spices and a kadai was that this is a cuisine best experienced in restaurants. It’s not about a main and a side and/or a salad. It’s an experience. The one home meal we ate on our three-week trip in 2004 was courtesy of my former consort’s fixer in Kerala on his National Geographic shoot. And she had a full-time staffer to get the right array of dishes and bread on the table.

So Rudraks opening four blocks from our kitchen has been the best thing since warm naan. The lunch special in particular is Indian to the max: papadam with three relishes, main, dal of the day, rice (with peas), a basket of bread and a tiny dessert. We’ve only ever had the vegetarian option, and it is a whole lot o’ food for $15. The mains are a bit on the dainty side, but they’re always packed with flavor, especially the okra and any with paneer. Dals are always sensational, well-spiced and ghee-tempered.

We’ve only been once for dinner, but I will say it was nice to have good wine with the tandoori salmon and bhel poori in a lovely room. The servers are very sweet and remembered us from the first visit on. WIGB? We have at least five times.

Hey, that’s me in the Substack

Way back before Thanksgiving, my goal was to post here about the many, many, many great meals I had over the last year before the awesome Buffalo Eats posted his curated collection. But. Here we are. At least I included links to some of our best. (And my contribution was contributed before we ate our way around Boston/Cambridge.)

Hashtag Know Hope

How radically has the restaurant world changed since the pandemic began? We actually just had a better meal in Jersey City than we did at a NYT three-star joint in Nomad. One was early dinner, and one was brunch, but still. At the former, the very atmospheric Madame, where my stomach sank when I saw the menu read like Bucks County, the kitchen split a surprisingly good kale Caesar for us, so we each got exactly half the ample portion of basil-dressed greens, avocado slices, halved green grapes, slivered fennel and generous sunflower seeds. The kale-cutting coulda been more refined, but the parts really made the whole. Then the super-tender, very flavorful hanger steak in au poivre sauce was also perfectly divided, with a little cup of truffle fries for each of us.

Two days later we had a dainty plate of “linzer” beets with Little Gem lettuce and toasted hazelnuts set down between us at Koloman, and we had to ask for share plates. At least they were provided for the flavor-free pork schnitzel, which was fried to shoe leather and barely revived by the lingonberry sauce and redeemed by the (intricate) cucumber and (sloppy) potato salads.

Wine presentation was much more fine-dining at Koloman, and my glass of Austrian sauvignon blanc was worth the $19 Bob paid. With two rounds of drinks, the tab was exactly $9 more at Madame. But to be fair, the cocktails in both establishments were too sweet.

BTW: Jersey City was also vaut le PATH voyage for a huge loaf of amazingly crusty-soft sourdough bread from Razza and a little shopping at CoolVines on Grove, where we scored some Duke’s mayonnaise plus a couple of bags of Rustichella d’Abruzzo pasta, the latter for all of $7 each.

2023 wasn’t all bad…

Once I started thinking about the best meals my no-longer-consort and I ate in 2023 I couldn’t stop, not least cuz my phone retains everything far better than my cranial sieve does. And it contains thousands of images.* I did an international roundup for Buffalo Eats, since we get around, but these are my top visually amplified memories from what really is the greatest city in the world.

The most lavish dinner we had here all year was at Essential by Christophe in our neighborhood (the wide-open UWS), where we indulged in the full sit-down experience in the swankola dining room, with Michelin star-meriting service. But we’ve since been back twice to the bar for dinner, since they make it so welcoming. The one centered on the A+ cheeseburger we split ($24, a Manhattan deal), was the most spectacular, since it started with the dining room amuse and ended with the dining room petits fours. (Well, we also indulged in hamachi tartare with avocado, and intricately dressed deviled eggs, and scallops with sunchokes.) The bartender is exceptional, the ideal mix of total pro and total pal.

Another meal that felt like #beattherich at their own game was on the sidewalk at One White Street in Tribeca, which offers a $316 prix fixe with wine upstairs but also lets you do far more affordable a la carte at street level, with deceptively simple dishes like grilled bass with clams and wild ones like shaved fennel salad with yuzu, anchovies, blue cheese and pistachios. We just wandered by around the time reviewers were raving and lucked into a sidewalk table.

Dame in the West Village was also awesome on all levels, not least for the upbeat servers delivering the likes of grilled oysters with green chartreuse hollandaise and grilled caraflex cabbage with mussels and horseradish. (The best takeaways from eating out this year were what to buy to eat in, like that cabbage, and like maitake mushrooms.) Lord’s, the newer restaurant from the same team, was a letdown, from the distracted service to the heavy food, however. Maybe it’s a guy thing.

Untable in Brooklyn (no website) impressed us and friends with its inventive Thai, like larb tofu, crab croquettes and “What the Hell Fried Rice” (served with spicy ingredients you can mix in to taste). Llama San and Llama Inn were also transporting, with their exquisite mix of Peruvian and Japanese; the latter, in Brooklyn, felt like eating at Zuni Cafe in San Francisco. We also had sensational classic Lebanese food — and wine — twice in the streetery at the very upscale Illili in NoMad. (As always with Middle Eastern, the mezze make a feast.)

We loved Caleta in the East Village for the cerebral dishes served at a tiny counter in the tiny shop, especially the cassava chips topped with anchovies and the ceviche tostadas and the pickled mussels on toast. We had a nice-enough Indonesian meal at Wayan in Nolita but a dazzling dinner at the couple/owners’ new Ma-Dé. The softshell crab was perfection, as were the fava bean dumplings and ramp hummus with toasts and crudites, but what stood out was the Huatulco cocktail made with smoked rhubarb amaro. Which is now often an essential ingredient in Bob’s nightly cocktail at home.

The closest thing to eating in Atlanta was at Peaches Prime in downtown Brooklyn: spinach and artichoke dip with chips; quintessential shrimp and grits, and, as billed on the menu, the ultimate egg, bacon and cheese sandwich. The very stylish, friendly crowd was half the experience. We also had excellent service and food at the new incarnation of Gage & Tollner, especially the she-crab soup, Parkerhouse rolls and crabcake with frisee and lemon aioli.

King in Soho was also all it was sold as, during one of those lulls when it felt safe to eat in a small, crowded dining room, especially for the grilled scallops with blood orange and bottarga and the roasted monkfish with tomato, fregola, rainbow chard and aioli.

We didn’t eat all fancy food over this last year of this ceaseless pandemic, though. Wu’s Wonton King, the last place we met up with our eating Asian/Asian eating friends to show support for Chinese restaurants back in early 2020, again came through big time with pan-fried dumplings, soup dumplings, ribs, stir-fried greens, roast duck and Peking duck buns. Adda, in Long Island City, was the best Indian, in the coolest environment, we had away from home all year. And we ate Mexican out at least once a week (and more often at home).

So if I can pull it together, my next post will be on all the NYC destinations we hit return on at least once. And after that where we ate outside the country and outside the greatest city in the world. I already did Atlanta.

*Pro tip, tho? A notebook is a more reliable memory-jogger — I can pick one up from a trip to France or Italy 20 or 35 years ago and recall every detail of a day just by a few scribbles on what we ate, and where. (The where is especially problematic with the phone. I assume I will always flash on the name and food. But not in CDMX, or Toronto, and other places where Google is not your friend…)

New York minute at cusp of 2024

Sez everything about how great the food scene is everywhere that I just got finished spending a couple of weeks sorting through all my photos and receipts from restaurants for Buffalo Eats to compile my top meals of 2023 that I “filed” and immediately had one more to add.

The shining-new Parla (from The Smith whizzes) on Columbus Avenue near us was actually astonishing: The service was superb (I got there first and had to wait at the sidebar and the server complimented me on my phone photo of #Feliz); the room was buzzing even though we were seated next to a fat-faced baby, and the food was beyond impressive. Cacio e pepe arancini made with pasta instead of rice were perfectly fried, so the outsides were crisp and the insides oozed mozzarella. Broccolini with tomato vinaigrette shoulda been a placeholder but commanded attention (as in: we scarfed it all down). Our S.O.P. pizza topped with fennel sausage and onion confit and shishito peppers blew Motorino’s out of the oven. With three glasses of wine and one cocktail, the bill was all of $105 before tip. WIGB? Absolutely, if we can get in.

New York minutes

IRL friend at the Sunday Greenmarket asked if I would be writing about all the amazing meals I keep raving about from all our travels this year (Phila, twice; Atlanta; CDMX; Berkshires/Catskills; Toronto/Buffalo), and I swore I would. One way to procrastinate, though, is to focus only on where we’ve eaten in one week back home.

As is usually the case, our first dinner after dropping off our bags was Motorino, for a kale Caesar and a soppressante super picante pizza — both even better than usual, especially with a nice, affordable bottle of rosé, poured by our usual server in a particularly mellow mood. (Nina’s Great Burrito, BTW, after our earlier trip to a tick wedding was a total reentry bust: half-assed margaritas, lame nachos and I can’t even remember what else.) WIGB? Closer than Song e Napule…

After the awesomeness that was “Barbie” (30 percent off for tickets to a 3 o’clock Thursday matinee), we made our way to a reserved 5:30 table at Cafe Luxembourg, where we had not eaten in literally years and where the room and the food held up astonishingly well. (When I said so over to the Twitter, many people said the streetery was a sad way to eat. Design matters — as the restaurateur we met years ago in Estonia, in a joint called Grandma’s, said: “Restaurants sell air.”) Salmon tartare was a perfect blend of richness and acidity; my croque monsieur was Paris-worthy, as were the frites, and Bob’s special of skate with asparagus and porcini sauce was so much better than our old failsafe order of fish&chips woulda been. Rosé here was even better than Motorino’s, and for only $20 or so more. WIGB? Now back in the rotation. Truly comforting to see so many staffers, especially so many multi-culti staffers. #Bidenomics

And then there was Fonda, which I think was the first restaurant we braved during “lockdown,” when even sitting outside far apart from other tables was quite an experience. I can’t count how often we’ve been back over the last three years, both to the Chelsea location and the new one in Tribeca (both Chelsea Market & Hudson Street Greenmarket). As always, we got our own A+ classic margaritas and split the awesome queso fundido with chorizo (with an extra order of freshly made corn tortillas), but rather than our usual crabcakes or duck serape braved the beef tostadas. WIGB? Absolutely, but not for the tostadas, which were good but not QF level.

New Jersey minute

The camera roll on my phone is where meals go to die anymore, but I’m motivating myself to note the better (and some of the worst) ones here as Twitter itself dies a slow death. So what was on the table on the Fourth of July, as we searched out a restaurant in Jersey City (via The Infatuation) before a fireworks party? Four of us shared everything at Kitchen Step, and the best dish arrived first: A whole smoked maitake drenched in spicy coconut curry sauce over triangular miso-scallion rice cakes. Mushrooms really should be the new meat. Airy gnocchi were better than the tomatoes, peas and mushrooms paired with them in a pallid sauce, and the St. Louis smoked ribs were not great simply because they had no chance: the pork was not great. But the little kale Caesar salad was, like the maitake assemblage, well-conceived and -executed, with bite-size greens teamed with farro, smoked Gouda, candied walnuts and mint. WIGB? Absolutely. The place was pretty and lively, the service was casually great and the Ceretto Arneis* that goes for $25 minimum in wine shops was all of $44.

*A varietal that’s the water of Piemonte, which is one reason Torino is my second favorite city.