The Struggle of the Slightly-Informed and Writing Resolutions

Mezzetim from Bustan. Really a promise of more food photos if you scroll past all the “thoughts” and “feelings.”

Wow, it’s been a while since we’ve talked, hasn’t it? Hard to believe I’m actually sitting my butt down and writing a post for Experimental Gastronomy. But believe it, because I’m hoping to make this a regular recurring deal again. As I promised oh so many months ago, my intention is to have this blog evolve, since my own relationship with food has changed since EG’s inception way back in 2013. Food forms the basis of both my professional and academic pursuits, so it seems foolish to imagine that I could continue posting reviews and musings as just a passionate, fairly uninformed reader. However, before I start busting out new vocabulary (bottarga! torchon! and my favorite, chef de partie!), I want to take a step back into my comfort zone, aka, neuroticism, and talk about some of the pseudo-struggles that have come with my new perspective.

 

Maybe it’s because I’m the youngest of four kids, and the only girl, but I’ve never liked to argue. I’d guess that part of that comes from early formative experiences when my older brothers (the youngest of them 6 years my elder), tore apart my arguments for why I deserved a second chocolate chip cookie rather than them. With that background, perhaps it’s no surprise that I tend to default to avoiding confrontation if I’m not armed with a lot of facts and statistics. This might seem counterintuitive, since I was president of the Debate Club in high school, but actually that’s where I was most comfortable — I’d spend the week before each meeting studying up on the topic so I could make a coherent argument for my side.

 

This is actually a large factor for why I chose to go back to school (that, and a deep, abiding love for spiral notebooks). I found myself getting more and more passionate about issues of nutrition and food policy, but reluctant to take a public stand since my knowledge was limited to what I’d read on the Internet. Unlike many people in my generation, I don’t believe that having a Twitter handle means I’m a qualified expert. I’m hoping that with 3 or so years of NYU Food Studies education stuffed into my brain, I might actually be able to give a thorough answer when my friends and family members ask me about heirloom vegetables or GMOs.

 

Which brings me back to a current dilemma: what role does the informed friend or family member play in the lives of those around them? I was asked a number of times over the holidays about my opinions on factory farming, genetic modification, and organic food. In those cases, as with politics and religion, I feel like the best bet is to gently voice my opinions, but admit that I’m only about a hundredth more informed than the questioner at this point, and try to point them to resources with more information.

 

But what if you see someone making food choices in their life that you feel are less healthy, or even harmful? I really wrestle with this — I told people when I started reading more about the American food system and nutrition that I never want to be the obnoxious, preachy person off to the side. I went to high school with too many overly-vocal vegetarians to enter into that headspace. Food is so intensely personal for people, embedded with past experiences both positive and negative, and imbued with cultural resonance that draws the map we all navigate everyday. It’s nearly impossible to fully appreciate someone’s relationship with food without a deep knowledge of their background, and even then, we all have good and bad days. We’re usually witness to just a small sliver of an individual’s food choices — I recently realized that one of my friends only sees me in group settings where I tend to relax my general healthy food regimen — I have to wonder if she thinks I shovel Oreos and Peanut Butter M&Ms into my mouth 24/7, given how I behave around her. And that’s exactly the problem — I’m far from a paragon of Gwyneth Paltrow-esque purity. So who am I to clamber up on a high horse and raise an eyebrow when you pour yourself a glass of Crystal Light or bust open a box of Skinny Cow?

 

Do you only step in if you know there’s conclusive scientific evidence? Do I push for my relatives to buy organic milk to avoid antibiotics in their dairy? Do I become that person that sends around links to NPR articles about salmonella contamination in industrially-farmed chicken? Or is it the same as other taboo topics — in polite company, keep it to yourself? The Victorian version of food advocacy — speak only when spoken to? One of my cousins is a family doctor, and has to put up with us constantly having her check our throats whenever we sniffle slightly. But I’ve never seen her lay down the law on someone as they dive into their fifth helping of brisket during seder (that someone often times being me).

 

Beyond the initial question of whether to pipe up, even when I am directly asked questions about nutrition and the state of food production in America, I find myself being consciously tentative. One my greatest fears is to come off as patronizing, yet I hope someday to make educational media for mass audiences. How can I one day get up on a soapbox if I can’t negotiate the nuances of a conversation with a relative or friend? Does NYU offer a course on that?

 

Like most things in life, I guess it’s just going to be a messy, complex work in progress. In the meantime, let’s switch gears and get into a little food porn to lighten the mood.

 

Here’s a small sampling of deliciousness from the past couple of months:

 

First up, some bites from my very short trip to LA at the beginning of the month, where I reunited with my Gastronomic Life Partner Jacob for a whirlwind tour of old edible favorites and new discoveries.

Cape Cod Squash Rolls from Fishing with Dynamite — just look at butter sheen!

 

Right after I landed at LAX, we drove over to Manhattan Beach. My colleague Elena had basically insisted we visit Fishing with Dynamite, an elevated take on the seafood shack that had blown Elena away. Jacob and I were overwhelmed by the hospitality of the place — we ended up speaking to both the chef de cuisine and the sous chef over the course of our meal. One of the highlights was the Chef David’s Mom’s Cape Cod Squash Rolls, a sublimely simple dish, which was simultaneously unusual and nostalgic. Served with aromatic rosemary butter, the rolls came in a tiny cast iron skillet, shiny on top and tender, tinted slightly orange from the squash. I could have made a meal of this vegetal take on Parker House Rolls, but it was only the beginning of a smorgasbord of seafood and produce. I’m really hoping I can go back for dinner the next time I make it out west.

 

Just one small portion of the extensive selection at Huckleberry Bakery & Cafe.

Immediately after lunch, we went for dessert at Huckleberry Bakery & Cafe in Santa Monica. I spent a good five minutes hemming and hawing over what to get out of the display case that was brimming with baked beauties. Ultimately, Jacob and I settled on the Buckwheat Apple Cake and the Chocolate Pudding.

Buckwheat Apple Cake and Chocolate Pudding from Huckleberry: one side nutty and crumbly, the other rich and smooth.

I really enjoyed the nuttiness that came from the buckwheat cake. I’d love to start baking with alternative flours this year, since it seems like they’re much more readily available than before. And the chocolate pudding? Decadent, rich, deeply dark chocolate plus homemade whipped cream? I don’t think I really have to say anything more.

 

Photographic evidence of the myth, the legend … the Pizookie from BJ’s.

My last LA pick is not from a hot-new-spot, does not feature any sort of kale, and is not a taco (although I did have an awesome sampler from Guisado’s while I was there). After hearing Jacob go on about it for years, I finally tried the fabled Pizookie from BJ’s Restaurant & Brewhouse. Faced with an expanded menu that touted an Oreo, Salted Caramel, or Triple Chocolate iteration, I opted for the original. I’ve gotta have a baseline, you know? For the similarly uninitiated, a Pizookie is a giant chocolate chip cookie baked in a cake tin, and topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Imagine all your grocery store cookie cake dreams, warmed up and topped with your favorite substance on earth. So yeah, it was worth it.

 

Petite Shell‘s entrant into the chocolate rugelach game.

Moving back to NY, we’re rounding out the round-up with some Jew-y foods. First is the Chocolate-Hazelnut Rugelach from brand-new bakery Petite Shell on the UES. Matt and I went there to check out their line-up of unusual rugelach flavors, which ranged from the trendy Dulce de Leche to the downright strange White Chocolate–Granny Smith Apple. But I wanted to focus on the Chocolate-Hazelnut, since that runs in direct competition to EG favorite Breads Bakery (Petite Shell also offers a babka, but I haven’t had the chance to check it out yet). So how does it stack up? Pretty close, but I think Breads edges a victory out. The Nutella-esque filling from Petite Shell was sweeter than Breads, and I missed the stronger cocoa notes of the first rugelach to open my eyes to the format’s potential. Petite Shell also fell down on service, but it was the first weekend they were open, so they may shape up in time.

 

The Bustan Shakshuka: worth a trip, especially on a wintry weekend morning.

Last but not least, we finally have another entrant to my NYC shakshuka talent competition, this time from the UWS’s Bustan. I went there for brunch with a couple of college friends and was blown away by the freshly baked flatbread (ain’t no pita in this joint). Bustan has an extensive brunch menu featuring sweet and savory dishes, and offers 6, count ‘em, 6 variations on shakshuka. I went with the classic, which featured perfectly runny yolks, a peppery and bright tomato sauce, and stewed bell peppers and onions. I’d still recommend Zizi Limona for the die-hard shakshuka fan, but Bustan gets close to the mark. Especially with that amazing flatbread hot out of the oven and slicked with oil.

 

I’ll end on the note of salivation-inducing carbs, as per usual. Here’s my promise to you — I’m not gonna let this blog linger. I can’t promise I’ll be consistent, or that this won’t end up as a place sometimes filled with the existential crises of a Food Studies student, but at least there will be new content. And as always, if you follow me on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, you’ll pretty much get just food photos, without all the annoying thoughts and context to accompany them. Stay tuned and stay hungry.

Bustan
487 Amsterdam Avenue
http://www.bustannyc.com

BJ’s Brewhouse and Restaurant
http://www.bjsrestaurants.com

Fishing with Dynamite
1148 Manhattan Avenue
Manhattan Beach, CA
http://www.eatfwd.com/

Huckleberry Bakery & Cafe
1014 Wilshire Boulevard
Santa Monica, CA
http://www.huckleberrycafe.com/

Petite Shell
1269 Lexington Ave

 

Be Careful What You Wish For

Hi Guys — I kinda owe you all an apology. See, when I was starting this blog, I promised myself I wasn’t going to be one of those annoying bloggers who just stops updating without a word, leaving her readers wondering if the writer was carried off by coyotes. Well, I’m happy to report that my days have been coyote-free, but not that free of much else.

Life’s been pretty crazy recently, and I find myself with a surplus of happiness and fulfillment, but a real deficit of time. My new job at the James Beard Foundation gives me ample opportunity to explore the wonderful world of food and write about it (please visit our blog Delights & Prejudices, if you’re so inclined), but I’m still very much getting into the swing of things. And considering that I’ll be starting school at night come Labor Day, well, I think the most honest and fair thing I can do is admit that I won’t be able to update Experimental Gastronomy as regularly. This is not the end, I promise you that. I mean, it’s not like I’m going to stop documenting my addiction to ice cream and eggplant (not together though, because ew). But I have a feeling that working and learning about food will unexpectedly translate into eating out less. So I guess both you and I will have to learn to savor each meal a little more.

So if you’re willing to go on this irregularly scheduled journey with me, I can’t thank you enough. I’m hoping that the more I learn, the more I’ll be able to share, from photos of outrageous desserts to discussions of issues of food policy, culture, and history. If you’re the impatient type and eager for some slightly more instant gratification, feel free to check out my comings and goings on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

 

In the meantime, here are some of my favorite dishes and bites from the summer:

 

The Tater Pie from Jeremy’s Ale House. A brunch-exclusive cardiac threat.

This, my friends, is a Tater Pie from Jeremy’s Ale House at Southstreet Seaport. Tater tots, American cheese, beef chili, and a fried egg to seal the deal. And this was just part of a heart attack brunch of fried seafood glory we had for my friend Laura’s (of jam fame) birthday.

 

 

Uovo from SD26, perhaps the best definition of “luxury item.”

Outrageous Uovo (soft egg yolk filled raviolo with truffle butter) from SD26, just above Madison Square Park. This was my appetizer during a Restaurant Week Lunch with my parents, and it is every bit as decadent as you would expect from that description. The raviolo was constructed from freshly house-made dough, so thin and delicate you can see the bulk of the egg yolk shimmering through the top. A light puncturing with my fork let the soft yolk ooze out, mixing in with the dense ricotta-spinach filling and the truffle butter sauce at the bottom of the dish. I chose SD26 for Restaurant Week precisely because of this dish, which I saw Odette Fada cook on Top Chef Masters. If you can find an excuse, go and try this dish out — it actually lives up to the hype.

 

 

House Special Pan Fried Dumplings from Nom Wah Tea Parlor, one delicious part of their extensive dim sum menu.

 

Prosperity Dumpling‘s take on pan fried pork — very cost effective, if not the highest quality ingredients.

 

And here’s are Prosperity Dumpling‘s boiled shrimp dumplings, available in small or large piles. Proceed with caution, 10 dumplings is actually a substantial amount of wonton wrapper.

In our continuing run of use-a-gift-as-an-excuse-to-eat, Laura treated me to a Chinatown dumpling crawl for my birthday. The summer was so busy we didn’t actually get to do it until it was closer to her birthday than mine, but it was still a wonton wonderland of an afternoon. My favorite was the House Special Pan Fried Dumplings (Pork and shrimp dumpling in a homemade wheat wrapper and pan fried) from Nom Wah Tea Parlor, a Chinatown dim sum institution. We had just come from Prosperity Dumpling, where you can get an absurd quantity of dumplings for pennies (we had 10 shrimp dumplings for $3.50, and 4 fried pork & chive dumplings for $1). Prosperity is definitely more bang for your buck, but the dumplings you get at Nom Wah are clearly of a higher quality. Not that I have a huge amount of experience with pork, but even a neophyte like me could pick out a discernible improvement in flavor at Nom Wah compared to Prosperity’s pork & chive entry, and the extra small shrimp (that is their classification, apparently) in our mountain of shrimp dumplings couldn’t hold a candle to the actual chunks of larger shrimp in Nom Wah’s House Special. I also got to try my first soup dumplings at Nom Wah, and I’m eager to go back and have more, not to mention explore the rest of the diverse dim sum menu.

 

Xi’an Famous Foods’ Spicy and Sour Lamb Dumplings. Less mainstream, but a must for lamb fans.

We finished up our dumpling tour at Xi’an Famous Foods, with a slightly less mainstream pick of Spicy and Sour Lamb Dumplings (Classic boiled dumplings stuffed with lamb meat, smothered in their signature spicy and sour sauce). I wanted to visit Xi’an because I had heard about their Spicy and Tingly Lamb Face Salad (still on my list), and as a lamb aficionado, I couldn’t pass up the chance to have lamb dumplings. These are probably tied with Nom Wah’s House Special for my favorite, because of the variety of flavors and the complexity of the dish. The lamb had some depth to it, clearly not just sausage meat, which worked with the brightness of the cilantro and chopped cucumber sprinkled on top of it. The sauce was reminiscent of hot and sour soup, with a little more punch to it that left a little tingle on my lips. According to their website they’re opening up a new location on the UES, around the corner from my synagogue, so I’ll be able to do my Jewish New Yorker duty and have a little Chinese nosh after temple.

 

My parents and I ended up bookending Restaurant Week, since we also (completely accidentally) visited a participating spot near the beginning of the discount’s run. We were looking to have a meal up by my apartment, and so booked a table at The Writing Room. The Writing Room opened in the old Elaine’s space, but unlike its predecessor, the emphasis is very much on the food over the scene. That’s not to say that the restaurant is visually unappealing — it’s actually very nicely appointed, with a modern cum steampunk aesthetic, featuring a black and white newsprint color palette, Edison bulbs in wrought iron fixtures, and nods to journalism with newspaper racks up front, a card catalogue wall along the back, and a smaller rear dining room decorated and appropriately called “the library.” As it happened, we got a glimpse of the old Elaine’s celebrity magnetism, as NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton was seated in the library during our meal.

 

The Writing Room’s Fried Chicken: An impressive balance of crunchy crust to moist interior, plus a bangin’ biscuit.

 

Check out the side of Smoky Grits at The Writing Room for a delicious dose of Southern charm.

As for the food itself, I would recommend checking The Writing Room out for their bread program, and for their Southern-inflected menu items. Out of all the dishes we had, the standouts were my father’s Fried Chicken (Cole Slaw, Buttermilk Biscuit), and the side of Smoked Corn Grits. The breading on the chicken was gorgeous, shattering as you bit into it, buttery and salty without being too greasy. The breast was pretty good, but the drumstick took the cake for me, the meat moist in contrast to the crisp coating. The biscuit was as superb as the complimentary home-made Parker House rolls that are served at the start of the meal, like an upscale version of Cracker Barrel’s biscuits (and I mean that as a huge compliment). As for the grits, they were chock full of real corn kernels, with the smoky flavor present but not overpowering the dish, and the grits having just enough heft to them to achieve a mashed potato-like texture. So if you’re willing to double down on carbs, check out The Writing Room — I’m planning on returning for brunch, because I bet they make a mean french toast.

 

Thanks for sticking with me as Experimental Gastronomy enters its tumultuous blogdolesence. It’s been a fantastic ride for me so far, and I’m hoping that diversifying what I write about will make this project even more interesting. Don’t worry though, I’m not giving up my side career as a food porn purveyor. As I mentioned above, keep track of my on-the-go snackshots via Instagram or Twitter, or my commentary on labneh, tetrapak wines, and more at Delights & Prejudices. It’s a long term goal to find a way to work Oreos into their blog content.

 

Jeremy’s Ale House

228 Front St.

www.jeremysalehouse.com/

 

SD26

19 East 26th St.

http://www.sd26ny.com/

 

Nom Wah Tea Parlor

13 Doyers St.

https://nomwah.com/

 

Prosperity Dumpling

46 Eldridge St

http://prosperitydumpling.com/

 

Xi’an Famous Foods (multiple locations in NYC)

http://xianfoods.com/

 

The Writing Room

1703 2nd Ave (between 88th and 89th)

http://www.thewritingroomnyc.com/

 

Brief Bites: Mora Iced-Creamery

Heading across the Puget Sound to Bainbridge Island.

 

Two appearances is a coincidence, three is a streak, right? If that’s the case, then I’m about to hit an ice cream streak on this blog, since once again I’ll be talking to you about my visit to a new scoop shop. Not that it should be all that surprising — I’m betting an intrepid researcher weeding through the archive would find that 70% of this blog is ice cream (as is my body, considering my consumption levels).

Anyway, another week, another ice cream post. This is the final round of my backlog of summer adventures — a spot from my July 4th trip out to Seattle. Miraculously, I’m not going to talk to you about produce or seafood in this post (recurring motifs in my previous Seattle chronicles). Instead, let’s take a look at Mora Iced-Creamery, out on Bainbridge Island.

 

The Set Up:

 

Peeking in the window at Mora Iced-Creamery.

 

Mora Iced-Creamery is located on Bainbridge Island, a small community in the Puget Sound only a short ferry-ride away from Seattle. The parts of Bainbridge that I saw had a very Nantucket/Cape Cod-ish vibe to them, with central main street brimming with artisanal shops, restaurants, cafes, and bakeries, eventually leading out to a gorgeous countryside populated with farms and wineries. My brother Dan and his fiancee Leah took me out to Bainbridge on the last day of my trip, and we strolled around the town, enjoyed a few wine tastings, sampled some fudge, but Dan was insistent that I try Mora’s frozen fare. In fact, the ice cream was Dan’s main selling point when talking to me about Bainbridge, repeatedly ending descriptions of the island’s beauty with “and they have some amazing ice cream. Really good.”

 

Now Mora is no town secret — when we first walked by the shop, there was a substantial line out the door, and a local shopkeeper told us it’d be at least a 45 minute wait. When we returned an hour later, the line looked exactly the same, but as a credit to Mora’s staff, it only took about 10 minutes to get our ice cream.

 

At the outset Mora looks like your average ice cream shop — cute but clean decor dominated by purple, white and gleaming metal, uniformed staff working in synchronicity. But there are a few tweaks that set this purveyor apart: first, the ordering process, which I assume is a response to their enduring popularity. You order as you enter the shop, picking your ice cream vessel — cup, cone, shake, affogato, sundae, single scoop or more. This might seem limiting, because first-timers won’t even know what they want, but it does avoid a massive pileup of people hemming and hawing over flavors choices.

 

The tightly sealed, separated canisters of ice cream. No cross-contamination here, no sirree.

This comes after you’ve paid for your order, when you move down the line to the scooping zone. Here Mora takes another unusual tack — rather than the typical long glass case of brightly colored ice creams crammed next to each other, at Mora each flavor sits in its own individual metal canister, in order (according to their website) to avoid commingling of odors and flavors, and so customers won’t “taste with their eyes.” Fortunately, they also allow you to taste as many flavors as you wish, a boon since there are at least 40 flavors of ice cream or sorbet for you to choose from (including seasonal flavors that are fleetingly available).

 

The Bites:

 

My “single scoop” of Gianduja (left) and Banana Split.

 

With such an embarrassment of riches, this was no easy choice. I settled on getting a single scoop (where, confusingly, you can get two flavors) in a cup, to have the purest experience. Alas, the no-brainer of Chocolate Peanut Butter Moreo (chocolate mousse ice cream chock full of Oreo crumbles and swirls of creamy peanut butter), aka my soul-mate in dessert form, was sold out, so I had to go out on more of a limb here. In retrospect, this was actually a good thing, since I ended up going with a more unusual combination — Gianduja and Banana Split.

 

Yeah, yeah, Maggie, you got the Gianduja (Originated in Italy, this sweet chocolate ice cream is made with roasted hazelnuts and has a Nutella-like flavor) because you’re all about the hazelnut-chocolate combo now. (But wait, hazelnuts are awesome! I had an unreal hazelnut butter at the London Plane during this trip, too!) Ho-hum, old news. Tell us more about this mysterious Banana Split flavor.

 

Well, if you insist. Mora’s Banana Split ice cream (Our real-fruit banana ice cream is enhanced with traces of dulce de leche and shaved chocolate. An homage to the classic banana split in every bite!) is more evocation than accurate representation of the traditional banana split dish — which, by the way, is an option at the ordering station up front. Frankly, I was more than happy to skip out on the strawberry ice cream and maraschino cherry, which I generally view as corruptive influences on my ice cream experience.

 

Mora’s ice cream certainly lived up to the hype. It was very dense and creamy, achieving that somewhat taffy-like chew I adore in ice cream. Supposedly their ice cream contains less butterfat than “most super premium ice creams” (ice cream trivia — “superpremium” ice cream, according to the International Dairy Foods Association, “tends to have very low overrun and high fat content, and … uses the best quality ingredients” — overrun = aeration the ice cream goes through so you don’t end up with a solid block of inedible frozen milk. Whew.). I guess this means it’s better for you, but c’mon, we’re not talking Skinny Cow here. And to their credit, I wouldn’t say I missed the butterfat here (but who does say that?).

 

True hazelnut flavor was strongly present in the Gianduja, their distinctive woodsy taste carrying through the sweetness of the chocolate. I might even put this on par with Vivoli’s Bacio, although I think Mora’s version is a little sweeter. I guess that kicks the Banana Split way up on the sugar chart, because the Gianduja actually worked as a grounding flavor base against the candy-bar like sweet punch of the Banana Split.

 

What prevented the Banana Split from being cloying was the use of actual banana ice cream. It wasn’t like eating the ice cream version of banana Runts, but closer to the flavor of just pure, frozen bananas. It had a mellow sweetness from the fruit’s natural sugars (although I’m betting they add some to the ice cream base), and a fresh quality to the flavor that kept the dulce de leche in check. This was also aided by the shaved chocolate, which was at least dark chocolate if not semisweet, and was a nice distinction from the milk chocolate of the Gianduja. And let’s not downplay the dulce de leche here — you can see the wide ribbons of it swirled throughout the banana ice cream. It shows up in a number of Mora’s flavors, and with good reason — this is high quality caramel, which when combined with the bananas almost reminded me of the bliss of banoffee pie.

 

Last Licks:

 

Yet again I find myself tipping my hat to my older brother Dan. Mora Iced-Creamery offers high level ice cream with innovative flavors, stellar ingredients (they’re a member of Slow Food USA), and have the process of ordering ice cream down to an efficient science. I wish they weren’t so remotely located, so I could go back and taste to my heart’s content. I might make my brother take me back next time I’m in Seattle, so we can try a sundae — the hot fudge alone has me salivating. And if I can find enough people to go in on it, I might consider taking advantage of the fact Mora ships nationally. I mean, how can I go on living my life without experiencing Chocolate Peanut Butter Moreo? I’m pretty sure any reasonable adult would agree with me.

 

Mora Iced-Creamery

139 Madrone Lane

Bainbridge Island, WA

http://moraicecream.com/

Defining Identity: Dinner at RiverMarket Bar and Kitchen

 

Afloat in this nebulous sea of my mid-twenties, it seems somewhat hypocritical to make remarks about an identity crisis. I find I am still very much chipping away at the jagged piece of stone that is my public persona, slowly working my way through the marble to pick and choose among the quirks and traits I’m truly comfortable with (as well as the deficiencies I need to acknowledge and accept). As I’ve gotten older, I’ve definitely become more confident in what makes me unique as an individual, and more importantly, to value that as something worth sharing with others. But it took a while to be all right with not just going with the crowd, for recognizing that your difference of opinion might actually add something to the discussion.

 

I think we sometimes forget that restaurants are run by people, and rather than being some autonomous hive-mind or giant Star Trek replicator (geekiness = one facet I am embracing), the people involved ultimately make decisions that craft a “personality” for the enterprise (yup, I went there). Granted, my view is only from the outside, but it seems like new restaurants have to go through the same sort of growing pains as everyone else, with a similar spectrum of awkwardness when it comes to adolescence. Some places are going to be that one cool kid who never had acne and went from Bar Mitzvah beefcake to senior prom king, but a lot of places have to reckon with getting food stuck in their braces for a few years before they bust out those shiny straight teeth.

 

I couldn’t help but feel like RiverMarket Bar and Kitchen in Tarrytown is in the midst of that growth spurt. I was there recently for a dinner, and found myself thoroughly enjoying the food, if a little uncertain of what tone the restaurant was trying to strike. It’s got a lot going for it, and I think has a huge amount of potential, once it settles on what crowd it wants to sit with at the cafeteria.

First Impressions:

Some of the outdoor seating on RiverMarket‘s huge patio — this side unfortunately faces the train station and Tappan Zee Bridge.

 

RiverMarket Bar and Kitchen is located in the Westchester town of Tarrytown. The restaurant sits only a few hundred feet from the Hudson, and is part of a huge redevelopment project along the waterfront, called the Hudson Harbor Complex. While the large patio offers lovely views of the river on one side, unfortunately if you turn the other way you have a nice panorama of the Tarrytown Metro North train station. Still, not all sidewalk seating in New York offers gorgeous vistas.

 

The “market” section of RiverMarket, where you can buy prepackaged goods and fresh produce from local sources.

As the name implies, RiverMarket has both dining and retail components, with an overarching focus on locally sourced ingredients. Just inside the entrance to the restaurant is an area lined with shelves stocked full of locally-grown heirloom tomatoes, milk and cheese from Battenkill Dairy, and bread from the famed Balthazar Bakery, not to mention the NY-based wine and spirits sold just next door.

 

Inside the restaurant itself, a mish-mash of rustic and industrial chic.

 

Walking further in takes you to the restaurant itself, which is decorated with a blend of rustic and industrial touches, combining wrought iron lighting fixtures and bar shelves with light wood tables and thick wooden beams suspended across the ceiling. This aesthetic, combined with the dress code for the staff (branded t-shirts with jeans), a classic rock soundtrack, and the robust craft beer selection, suggest that RiverMarket wants to be a slightly more upscale neighborhood spot. And I have no problem with that desire — I wish there were more spots like that in NY. The identity issues start when you pair the visual with the menu, which seems to have much loftier aspirations.

 

Our drinks for the night — the Brooklyn cocktail on the right, and the Red Newt Cellars Riesling.

 

It was yet again another birthday dinner (May/June are busy months in my family), but this time we were celebrating my father’s birthday — hence the Westchester locale. This time I was on my game and documented the drinks we ordered. My mother and I had glasses of the Red Newt Cellars Riesling, a wine from the Finger Lakes that was on tap at the bar, and ended up being a slightly sweet, clean tasting wine that paired well with my food. My father went for the Brooklyn Cocktail (Green Hook Ginsmiths Gin, Green Hook Ginsmiths Gin Liqueur, Angostura Bitters, Orange Peel), which I didn’t like, mostly because of the gin, but more importantly, he really enjoyed.

 

In what unfortunately ended up being a recurring theme for the evening, our server was initially confused and brought my dad a Brooklyn Brewery beer instead of his cocktail. She was very attentive and kind, but didn’t seem to know much about the menu. This meant she was perfectly happy to repeatedly go back and ask the chef to answer or confirm something, but didn’t inspire a lot of confidence in us about the staff’s ability to represent the restaurant. Then again, maybe we were snooty New York diners with unrealistically high expectations of servers. I think it’s hard to say where the line really is — I certainly don’t expect someone at the Olive Garden to know the intricacies of each pasta dish, but when your restaurant makes a big deal about where they source the ingredients, should the staff be required to know the ins and outs of those ingredients? Anyway, enough about the context, let’s get into the food itself.

The Food:

RiverMarket specializes in seasonal American fare, with some pasta and international influences thrown in (one might even say another example of California Cuisine). Pulling from the Hudson Valley and the Long Island Sound/Atlantic, there was unsurprisingly a fair amount of seafood, although through our collective orders we ended up running the gamut from starch to fish to fowl and beyond. To start, my mom got the RiverMarket Montauk Hardshell Lobster Bisque, I chose the Montauk Hardshell Lobster Salad, and my dad went with a half portion of the Green Herb Fettucine. Then for entrees  my mom got a half-portion of the Potato Gnocchi, my dad ordered the Grilled Block Island Harpoon-Caught Swordfish, and I had the Roast Hemlock Pasture-Raised Chicken. And because it’s not a meal with my parents without dessert (or a meal with me in general), we finished up with the Strawberry Shortcake and the RiverMarket Cookies and a Milkshake. And then I dearly wished I could walk back to the Upper East Side from there.

 

Our complimentary chunk of crusty bread. Narcissa wins this one with their mini boule.

Things kicked off with a hearty slice of complimentary bread, presumably from Balthazar. It was an herbed loaf, rustic and crunchy, almost burnt on the outside. I still would rather have one of the Pepperidge Farm dinner rolls my mom would give us over a slice of Italian bread any day, but I guess that’s not really trendy.

 

The RiverMarket Montauk Hardshell Lobster Bisque, smooth and creamy, yet packed with flavor. Also a strong vote in favor of the merits of calamari.

We visited RiverMarket only a few weeks after our dinner at Narcissa, so a bit of comparison was inevitable. After the somewhat muddled lobster butter my mom had at Narcissa, I was glad that her appetizer had such a crustacean-packed punch. RiverMarket Montauk Hardshell Lobster Bisque (Warm seafood salad crostini) was a little worrying at first, arriving smooth and bright orange with nary a piece of lobster in sight. Even though it was a bisque, I thought there might be a few chunks of lobster on the crostini, but the wedge of bread was topped with herb-dusted circles of calamari instead. However, what the soup lacked in lobster meat, it more than made up for in flavor. This was the opposite of Narcissa’s lobster butter — pure, unadulterated lobster beaming directly from the broth to your tastebuds. The crostini was also a nice addition, the toasted bread soaking up the bisque while still retaining a bit of texture, so you had a lobster-carb hybrid. My mother doesn’t care for calamari, so I happily took them off her hands, since they were well-executed, just slightly chewy without veering into rubber territory, and full of flavor from the surrounding bisque and a light coating of red pepper and olive oil.

 

The Montauk Hardshell Lobster Salad, a true summer dish.

My appetizer ended up being my favorite dish of the night, and given the size, I might actually return and just have this as an entree. The Montauk Hardshell Lobster Salad (heirloom legumes, celeriac, avocado, orange citrus vinaigrette) was beautifully plated, very carefully bundled together in a layered tower of salad components. It featured an enormous quantity of lobster meat, with both a sizable claw and a tail that were only lightly seasoned with salt, pepper, and the orange citrus vinaigrette. The lobster was incredibly fresh, hitting that sweet spot of chewy, buttery, briny richness that epitomizes great shellfish. To be honest, I was pretty focused on the lobster when ordering, so I didn’t pay much attention to the heirloom legumes listed with it, but as a legume lover I was delighted to see a wide variety of beans, from butter beans to favas to these dark brown ones that looked like oversized black beans. They were all cooked al dente, soft without being mushy, and mixed in well with the assortment of greens, ripe avocado, and crunchy slivers of what I thought was carrots, but ended up being celeriac. The acid of the vinaigrette was the perfect way to bring the salad together and balance out the natural richness of the seafood. It just seemed like the ideal summer dish, fresh and bright and full of the season’s best.

 

The Green Herb Fettucine, with roughly formed but impressive handmade pasta, and a pile of lamb on top.

RiverMarket really has a handle on their pasta, as evidenced by my father’s continuing to reference his appetizer even days after our dinner. The Green Herb Fettucine (slow-braised hudson valley lamb ragú, fresh mint and olives) really bowled him over, specifically how fresh the noodles were. As with my lobster salad, this dish challenges the notion of “half-order” (or perhaps, implies a Godzilla-sized full portion), with a pile of verdant green strips of pasta topped with full chunks of lamb and a dousing of cheese. I was very impressed that the dish used pieces of lamb, rather than the shredded or ground meat you often find in ragus. It was braised to the point of holding its shape only until pressed upon by a fork, then falling to pieces. I actually think it’s a shame RiverMarket doesn’t have a lamb entree — I’d come back for a braised lamb shank or shoulder (maybe that’s more of a winter dish?). The fettucine itself was the thickest cut iteration I’ve ever seen, rustic and far from visually perfect, but infused with lots of great flavor. The whole thing was topped with stewed tomatoes, cheese, and a few olives to add some bite, and though my positivity towards olives is still very much a work in progress, I found myself enjoying them here, where they worked in contrast with the rest of the dish.

 

The Potato Gnocchi, another excellent pasta dish, if not exactly light fare.

My mother was also very impressed with her pasta entree, the Potato Gnocchi (Stone Broke Farms 100% grass-fed beef bolognese, roasted hen of the woods mushrooms). She also ordered a half-portion, and wasn’t even able to finish that (fortunately, my father and I are card-carrying members of the Clean Plate Society). Like the fettucine, this was another bowl full of large pieces of pasta and a hefty allotment of meat. If Narcissa’s gnocchi were delicately browned pillows of starch, RiverMarket’s were the equivalent of Sock ‘Em Boppers — body-pillow-sized chewy, gooey bon bons. I feel like you don’t see Hen of the Woods Mushrooms on menus that often, so it was wonderful to have them paired here with the hearty ground beef. While this was definitely one of my favorite dishes of the night, it’s a bit of a gut bomb, so I can’t imagine actually having this as your full entree. I was more than happy to pick at my mom’s leftovers, but I’d recommend splitting it as an appetizer so you can enjoy the flavors without giving up all your stomach space to the gnocchi dumplings.

 

The Grilled Block Island Harpoon-Caught Swordfish, unlike any piece of swordfish I’ve had before.

Both my father’s and my entrees had the opportunity to be relatively light dishes, if you ignored the starch component. The Grilled Block Island Harpoon-Caught Swordfish (roasted peach and heirloom tomato salsa, pea tendrils, creamy hudson valley polenta) was a revelation. Usually I shy away from swordfish because I’ve only encountered it as thick-cut and treated like the steak of the sea, cooked medium-well so it’s tough and sort of bland. But RiverMarket’s version was sliced thin and cooked so that it was as tender and flaky as any piece of sea bass or snapper, yet still retained that meaty, umami taste. My dad had initially ordered it to try out the salsa, which fortunately lived up to expectations and had him raving about it, bite by bite. I liked the sampling I had, but I think I’m just relatively old-fashioned when it comes to salsas — I’d rather have a pico de gallo or salsa roja over non-tomato-fruit-focused variations. The last lighter component was the greens, which at first glance appeared to be spinach, but as with my parsley root at Narcissa, ended up being a vegetable homoglyph — these guys were pea tendrils, and had a slightly bitter taste that worked well with the sweet salsa. What turned this plate into a hefty meal was the underlying rectangle of über-buttery polenta, which almost reminded me of the outrageously rich grits you find at some southern restaurants. It was absolutely delicious, and worked well with the brighter flavors of the rest of the dish, but man was it filling.

 

The Roast Hemlock Pasture-Raised Chicken, the only real disappointment of the evening, due to underseasoning.

The same thing happened with my Roast Hemlock Pasture-Raised Chicken (moroccan spices, lyonnaise potatoes, summer squash and asparagus salad, cardamom chicken jus), where the potatoes performed as a heavy anchor for the dish. I chose this dish on the server’s recommendation, and while it certainly wasn’t bad by any means, overall I was a little underwhelmed by it. I had expected the Moroccan spices to pack a punch, and while there was a bit of a warm cumin/cinnamon coating on the crisp and crackly skin of the chicken, the spices had failed to really permeate down into the meat itself. The bulk of the meat was also slightly on the dry side, except for the dark thigh meat, which I unfortunately had last because it was tucked underneath the rest of the chicken. This piece was rich and gamey and moist, and if I could, I’d tell the RiverMarket kitchen to drop the breast and make the dish entirely out of dark meat. The jus had good chicken flavor, although again I had trouble finding the cardamom in it, and we all know how I feel about cardamom, so this was a bit of a disappointment. My favorite part of the dish was probably the vegetable sides of summer squash and asparagus, which had soaked up all of the chicken juices, perhaps defeating their purpose but rendering them lip-smackingly delicious. My mother happily dug into the potatoes (a trade for the gnocchi, I guess), but I just wasn’t interested in them, finding them mushy and lacking the pop of the onions to break up their flavor. All in all, compared to the deft handling of the pasta and swordfish, the wimpy seasoning on the chicken just made it seem a little unattended to.

 

The adorably festive Strawberry Shortcake.

Now I’m never going to complain about oversized desserts, and RiverMarket definitely delivers on that front. My father got the Strawberry Shortcake, which is not listed on the website, suggesting it may not be a lock-in on the menu. Considering how much he enjoyed it, though, I think it’s worth making it a permanent addition. Since it was his birthday, the kitchen decorated the plate and, in an inspired move, put a candle in one of the fresh strawberries. I usually don’t go for strawberry shortcake because so often the “cake” is a bland poundcake with little flavor, leaving a soft texture throughout that I find monotonous (I’m a heterogeneous texture fan, okay?). RiverMarket’s version, however, was made of two real biscuits (short cakes, I guess) sandwiching fresh chantilly cream with macerated sliced strawberries, and a drizzle of caramel on top. The biscuits had real heft to them, with a crust that required a little bit of pressure to break through to the softer interior, and it was nice to have thick slices of strawberries so their unadulterated flavor could shine through. Of course, my favorite part was the fresh whipped cream (no shlag, but pretty damn good).

 

The RiverMarket Cookies and Milkshake — sometimes all you need is simple, straightforward sugar.

But let’s be honest, the RiverMarket Cookies and a Milkshake (Espresso chocolate chip,‎ snickerdoodle, chocolate brownie, creamy vanilla thick shake) are way more my kind of dessert. They reminded me of the amazing Cookies and Milk plate you can get at Jane in SoHo (check it out if you’re unfamiliar, it is worth it to eat there just for the eventual dessert). RiverMarket gives you three piping hot cookies, warmed to the point that the chocolate chips in the espresso cookie have melted down to little puddles that require a fork to properly eat. Alongside this small bag of cookies is a tumbler of vanilla milkshake, simple and utterly satisfying in the way only comfort food can be. In fact, for all of my high-falutin’ talk of food, textures (not to mention RiverMarket’s own claims to regional sourcing), our server said the ice cream in the shake was probably regular ol’ Breyers, since they were out of the local creamery’s milk they typically use  to make the ice cream in house. Regardless of store-bought vs. hand-churned, the shake was tremendous — blended just to the point of still having real clumps of ice cream in the liquid, so you could sip it or attack it with a spoon, depending on your choice of strategy and level of desire for cookie-dunking. The chocolate brownie and the snickerdoodle were both solid cookies, but the espresso chocolate chip had wonderful soft-baked dough and gooey pools of chocolate with a real depth of flavor that contrasted with the straightforward vanilla shake. And I wasn’t upset about more whipped cream and chocolate syrup in my life. It looks like a small package, but this was actually a lot of dessert packed into a compact dish, and I’d happily go back to RiverMarket for a drink, some cookies and a shake to watch the sun set on the Hudson. Now those are some simple pleasures.

 

Final Thoughts:

 

I think when it comes down to it, RiverMarket is very close to being a slam-dunk. There are dishes that are less successful than others, but that’s true at any restaurant, and for the areas where they do excel, you’re getting large portions of great food for a pretty solid price. It seems like the easiest answer to RiverMarket’s highbrow/lowbrow identity problem is to be well-informed without adding pomp-and-circumstance. If a grounded, lowkey setting is your ideal, embrace that, but recognize that an emphasis on local sourcing means your staff should know those producers. They don’t have to be sommeliers or graduates from the CIA — in fact, I’d rather chat with a townie who’s invested in Tarrytown as their home.

 

It’s a small change that I hope will happen naturally, since RiverMarket appears to be a pretty popular place. I know I’d like to go back for brunch or lunch before the summer’s out, so I can enjoy the beautiful outdoor seating (and some more of that lobster). So if you’re coming north to enjoy a brief break from the hot concrete of Manhattan, consider jumping on the train to Tarrytown. You’re only a short hop away from RiverMarket Bar and Kitchen, where you can see what the Hudson Valley has to offer without emptying your wallet. It may still be in its gawky teenage years, but as a former awkward teen can attest, if you learn to appreciate strengths and acknowledge your weaknesses, you’re well on your way to a bright future.

 

RiverMarket Bar and Kitchen

127 W. Main St

Tarrytown, NY

http://rivermarketbarandkitchen.com/

Birthday Humble Tart: Dinner at Narcissa

The entrance to Narcissa, tucked back behind the hotel’s more casual restaurant.

 

I’ll hit a month at my new job this week, and one of the biggest lessons so far has been how little I actually know about food. I suppose it’s all relative (aren’t most things in life?), since I probably know far more about the ins and outs of animation than my new coworkers. But here I am, very much an amateur enthusiast, surrounded by people who have worked in kitchens and front of the house, who can list grape varietals like the names of their nieces and nephews, and could discern a julienne from a brunoise simply by touch. It can be a little intimidating at times, but I generally try to operate with an awareness of my own ignorance. I’d rather be surprised and delighted by something new, rather than rely on incomplete information to make decisions that may prevent discovery.

 

This all came to mind when thinking back on my recent birthday dinner at Narcissa, a popular farm-to-table restaurant in the Standard East Hotel. When I mentioned to my brother where I would be dining, he said “oh, I guess California cuisine is your favorite, then?” I hemmed and hawed (I hate picking favorites), trying to qualify what appealed to me about Narcissa’s menu (the emphasis on vegetables, the seasonal quality, the unconventional flavor combinations), claiming that it was somehow totally different from the delightful birthday dinner I had at Barbuto last year. But what I really should have said was “maybe.” The truth is I didn’t know the definition of California cuisine (here’s what Wikipedia has to say), and even with a bit of Googling I wouldn’t put all my favorite eggs in that particular basket.

 

Eh, enough dithering about known unknowns (ain’t that a timely idiom?). Regardless of categorization, I had another fabulous birthday dinner with my parents. Narcissa is certainly a buzzed-about restaurant in NYC right now, and it was lovely to have it live up to, and then exceed the hype.

 

First Impressions:

 

A view into the open kitchen at Narcissa.

As I mentioned above, Narcissa is located in the Standard East Hotel, which reopened last year after extensive renovations. The entrance to Narcissa is tucked back behind the more casual restaurant, Cafe Standard, which has sidewalk seating. Narcissa has outdoor seating as well, but it’s made up of a small patio behind the dining room, creating a little oasis from the bustle of the city. I imagine it’d be lovely to sit out there in the sunshine (especially now that the restaurant is serving brunch).

 

The unexpectedly angular dining room at Narcissa.

Once you make your way past Cafe Standard, you’re greeted with a doorway surrounded by greenery and topped with a placard that reads Narcissa on a background of rolling farmland. The restaurant sources many of its ingredients from the farm Locusts on Hudson, where the eponymous cow Narcissa lives. Step inside and you’ll find a large open kitchen immediately to your left, maybe half of the size of the whole dining room. I beat both of my parents to the restaurant, and enjoyed watching the cooking and prep in action. To the right is the bar and dining room, decked out in soft white, golds, light woods, and blue-and-yellow striped banquettes. There seemed to be a prevalence of diagonals, from the square space of the room distorted by acutely angled windows, to our table which was not round, but actually octagonal. This lends a modern air to the casual elegance of the decor, which otherwise is kind of rustic chic — wooden/wicker chairs, no tablecloths. The bar area is sizable in itself, taking up about a third of the dining room space, staffed by at least two bartenders at a time to handle the orders of the dozen seats at the bar, collection of tables nearby, and the customers in the dining room.

 

The staff was friendly and charming from the get-go, offering plenty of advice on cocktails, and ever ready with refilling our (perplexingly tiny) water glasses or fetching us more bread. Throughout the meal our waiter explained each dish to us, even identifying components when we were confused, and even snuck us a few extra treats by the end. My mom was intrigued by the Buttermilk Ice Cream included in the Summer Sundae, but we passed on ordering it, so our waiter brought a tiny sample of it with dessert, alongside the Sundae’s pineapple sorbet. This, combined with the speedy, yet never pushy, service (we were out of there within 2 hours), helped to set a festive and exploratory mood. Plus, I always get a little bit of a kick out of dining at places where they refold your napkin for you — it’s the type of silly decadence that makes eating out an “experience.”

 

 

The Food:
After doing my requisite research and soliciting suggestions from a coworker, I came to my dinner at Narcissa armed with a post-it note crammed with dishes. The bad news is that, as a restaurant focused on seasonal ingredients, many of those items hadn’t made the transition from the Winter to the Summer menu. The good news is the ones that really mattered did, and with a little deliberation and negotiation, my parents and I settled on a repast covering a whole host of both highlighted dishes and unknowns. We decided to start with the Rotisserie-Crisped Beets, the Crab Salad, and the Potato Gnocchi, then I ordered the Lacquered Duck Breast, my mother got the Maine Scallops, and my father chose the Steamed Black Bass, along with a side of Supergreen Spinach for us all to share. Dessert (aside from our ice cream/sorbet sampler) was the Bittersweet Chocolate Tart and the Apricot Tart Tatin.

 

Complimentary bread served as a boule already sliced into quarters. Fresh butter that is barely needed on the fresh herbed sourdough.

Our dinner began with a small boule of complimentary herbed sourdough bread, sprinkled with rosemary and served with a side of soft butter. The bread was crusty and crackly on the outside, with a whole wheat interior that was airy and chewy. I was more than happy to eat a piece on its own, though I have no complaints about the creamy fresh butter accompanying it. The bread was also exactly the right type of solid dough to sop up the remaining sauce from the gnocchi after we’d torn through the appetizer’s contents.

 

 

Potato Gnocchi — delicate bundles of starch tucked underneath shaved parmesan.

Speaking of, the Potato Gnocchi (fava beans, ramps, parmesan) was a solid, straightforward dish, perfectly fine but paling in comparison with our other hors d’oeuvre. The individual pieces of pasta were excellent — delicate little pillows of potato that managed to be chewy without being gummy — and I felt these were the best component. The rest of the pieces were certainly fresh, with the whole fava beans adding a summery brightness, but the broth and the cheese proved a bit too salty for me, and brought down the overall impact of the combination.

 

 

The Crab Salad — a case for the value of hearts of palm.

If I hadn’t been told to try the Crab Salad (blood orange, hearts of palm, hazelnuts), I probably would have made the mistake of passing it by on the menu, simply because up until this point in my life, I’ve never met a heart of palm I liked. Now thanks to Narcissa, I think I might give them another go. This is a salad in the sense of chicken or tuna salad — hunks of shredded dungeness crab meat stuffed into a petite pot with an overhanging lip, mixed with sliced hearts of palm, pieces of chopped blood orange and hazelnuts, and plenty of sliced basil and parsley on top. The crunch of the nuts and the hearts of palm paired well with the softer textures of the crab and blood orange, and the addition of citrus acidity is always great with seafood. This dish was not a flavor bomb by any means, more about the combination of the ingredients than a hearty slap of crabmeat. My mother was underwhelmed by it, but I thought it was a light dish with a combination of acid, herbs and briny seafood flavors to wake up my palate before the heavier entrees.

 

 

Forget Boston Market’s chicken, Narcissa‘s Rotisserie Beets prove rotated roasting is hardcore delicious.

Although I enjoyed the Crab Salad, the Rotisserie-Crisped Beets (bulgur salad, apples, creamed horseradish) were one of the best things I’ve eaten in a long time. This is one of the dishes that has gotten a tremendous amount of buzz, so I went in with fairly high expectations, only to have them blown to bits by the real McCoy. Now I should be up front and offer a disclaimer: because I’m an old lady at heart, I’m really into beets. Like eggplant level of love for them. So if you’re not a beet fan, you might not have the revelatory experience that I did, but I would be shocked if you still didn’t enjoy the crap out of this appetizer. As the name implies, this dish shows off the rotisserie oven that Narcissa is known for, with the beets roasted to a blackened crisp on the outside. From the photo you might think they’re crusted with something, but it’s actually just the charred exterior, creating a crunchy shell that holds a supple, deep violet beet flesh inside. Not surprisingly, the flesh is super-giving, your fork gliding through it. The bulger, apples and herbs add some bulk to the dish, all of which is served on a pool of creamed horseradish sauce. Once again, I found myself face-to-face with an ingredient I largely avoid. Horseradish means one thing to me — maror (bitter herbs) at Passover, where it’s sandwiched between two pieces of matzoh in an obligatory ritual I’d otherwise opt out of. But here the bite of the horseradish was softened by the cream, retaining enough power to counter the sweetness of the caramelized beets and raw apples chunks. Overall, it was a great showcase of the skill of the kitchen — taking something as mundane as beets and elevating it through basic techniques. This is actually a perfect example of what I love about the recent turn towards giving vegetables their due — maybe it’s because I’m becoming a lame-o adult who actually loves eating well-prepared veggies, but I think people in general would change their minds about brussels sprouts or beets if given the opportunity to have dishes like this one (or simply being exposed to better cooking options than just the pile of steamed vegetables sitting on your plate at Outback).

 

 

The Maine Scallops with somewhat muted lobster butter.

There was only a little bit of downtime before our entrees arrived. I had been tempted by both of my parents’ choices, since the dish I had eyed from all the reviews, the lamb loin, had not made it onto the summer menu. So once I had that out of the way, I zeroed-in on the Maine Scallops (asparagus, green garlic, potato puree, lobster butter), but that was my mother’s top pick, so I went with my other menu kryptonite, the duck breast. Her dish came with four sizable scallops, seared to an exquisite golden-brown on top, but still a pale off-white on the sides and interior. They were melt-in-your-mouth smooth, not really seasoned beyond basic salt and pepper. The lobster butter, which my mother had been especially excited about, seemed to be located in the sauce underneath, and had a surprisingly subtle flavor. I had expected it to be more like a bisque with a real lobster tang to it, but I can understand the restraint given the delicacy of scallops — you don’t want a taste as recognizable as lobster to overpower the main component of a dish. This entree seemed to be the most classically executed and plated dish, so the vegetables were straightforward but well-cooked, with shaved slivers of asparagus and a silky potato puree, and greens that the menu lists as green garlic, but I thought looked like fiddlehead ferns. Then again, what do I know, I’ve never actually tasted fiddleheads, so I couldn’t discern a difference based on flavor.

 

 

Our side of Supergreen Spinach, which cannot be accused of false marketing.

We also shared a side order of the Supergreen Spinach (potato chips). You can’t see it in this picture, but the dish totally lives up to its name — we’re talking Incredible Hulk bright green. The potato chip topping was a cute play on the common steakhouse sides, and I definitely enjoyed it, but I think it wasn’t particularly memorable outside of its gamma-irradiated hue. Just solid creamed spinach, and nowhere near as innovative a use of potato chips as the incorporation into the Cod Brandade at Picholine.

 

 

The Steamed Black Bass — so good it inspires musical theater references.

My father’s Steamed Black Bass (french curry broth, eggplant, toasted almonds) also looked great to me because of the accompanying items (as I believe Julie Andrews sang, curry, eggplant and almonds are a few of my favorite things). I thought the plating of the dish was just gorgeous, with the fillets sitting firmly atop the little hill of vegetables, just slightly bowing to show how soft the flesh was. You don’t think of steaming as a particularly exciting cooking method, but here it prevented the skin from becoming too soggy while the fish meat was easy to flake away with your fork. Unlike the scallops, I thought the sauce defined the taste of the dish. The curry had a strong flavor without real heat to it, and the fish and eggplant pieces soaked it up easily. The toasted almonds mirrored the nuttiness of the curry, and gave a nice crunch to an otherwise pretty soft dish. I think I would have been plenty satisfied if I had ordered this dish, but having now tasted the duck, I’m going to struggle to try other entrees if I return to Narcissa.

 

 

The Lacquered Duck, a dish now in my lifetime hall of fame.

The Lacquered Duck Breast (parsley root, melted leeks, rhubarb) was hands-down my favorite dish of the night, and no joke, I’ve been actually thought about this dish several times in the weeks since my birthday dinner. I adore duck, and this might truly be the best duck I’ve ever eaten. First things first, it was a massive duck breast — this duck had Double D’s, and was clearly very well fed. The “lacquered” crust (which Google tells me just means a sweet glaze that lends itself to caramelization and the appearance of a lacquer-like sheen) was shiny and gave the skin a crunchy, crackly texture, and its sweetness enhanced the gamey flavor of the duck meat underneath. There was a much appreciated hint of tartness from the rhurbarb, which was echoed by the acidity of the melted leeks, which were almost like a puree in texture. I’m not sure how great my breath smelled after finishing the leeks, but I thought they served a similar purpose to the horseradish sauce in our beet appetizer — the bite of the ingredient softened by its preparation. Cutting into the breast revealed a cross section of medium rare and bloody meat topped by a full layer of fat sitting just below the crust. I felt like I do when there’s a bit of fat on steak, and I tell myself I should just cut it off and avoid it. But what can you do when it’s an integral part of the duck breast makeup? So I demolished it. The dish also came with what I thought were parsnips, but now realize was actually parsley root, which looks similar but is less sweet, again a very interesting and intelligent strategy when paired with the delicious but sugary glaze on the breast. This dish was relatively simple in its components, but really unlike any preparation of duck I’ve had before, and I can’t get over how addictive the combination of the duck meat and that glaze was. I would seriously go back to Narcissa for the beets and the duck alone.

 

 

The Apricot Tart Tatin, visually stunning but too sweet for my taste.

The desserts certainly didn’t lower the overall level of the meal, but they were just more pedestrian compared to the earlier standout dishes. I think my dad was a big fan of the Apricot Tart Tatin (goat milk ice cream, pepper caramel), but I ultimately found the dessert cloyingly sweet. I enjoy the traditional apple tart tatin, and I do like apricot and apricot-flavored things generally, but here the apricots were almost like ovals of marmalade in their consistency, completely cooked down and syrupy. The best part of the dish was the pepper caramel, which I’d vouch is superior to salted caramel. Rather than enhancing the sweetness through salt, I think the pepper provides an interesting contrast that confused my tongue a bit. Not to harp on one point, but it was the same deal as the horseradish sauce and the melted leeks, where a bit of savory flavor made me stop and think for a second about what I was eating, how all the components came together.

 

 

The Bittersweet Chocolate tart, an exercise in tempered sweetness.

No surprise that the Bittersweet Chocolate Tart (curry-roasted bananas, espresso ice cream) was a little more up my alley. The outer shell was crisp, looking almost bruleed on top, and inside was a dark chocolate mixture somewhere between a molten lava cake and mousse. The sweetness was tempered in every element of this dessert, from the selection of a darker chocolate base for the tart, to using the bitterness of the espresso to tamp down the gelato’s sugar, to adding curry as a savory element to counter the caramelized bananas. Despite my prior misgivings over espresso gelato at Osteria Morini, I really liked Narcissa’s version, which I felt has less of a burnt tone to it. Add in the Oreo-like cookie crumbles strewn throughout the dish, and I was more than happy to blow out the candle and let this dessert cap off a remarkable birthday dinner.

Final Thoughts:

 

What impressed me most about Narcissa was the deft handling of a variety of preparations, from the more classical techniques and flavor profiles of European cuisines to more unusual takes on American dishes. My parents and I had three radically different entrees and all of them were stunning in their own regard. They really ran the gamut, from the playful and elegant plating, to the provocative pairings of savory and sweet — themes that were echoed in every course of our meal. With a lovely atmosphere, attentive service, interesting cocktails, and a progressive menu of fresh, seasonal farm-to-table food, I would strongly recommend Narcissa to anyone looking for an American restaurant with a global eye. Perhaps that’s even one definition of Californian cuisine?

 

Speaking of, I owe my brother an apology — on Narcissa’s own website, they claim to “marr[y] the clean flavors and impeccably-sourced ingredients of California cuisine with new techniques of roasting, rotisserie and slow-cooking.” So count that as yet another reason to keep my mouth shut and my ears open. Or rather, to stop talking and start eating.

 

Narcissa

21 Cooper Square (between 5th St. and Bowery)

http://www.narcissarestaurant.com/

Pushing at the Edges: Zizi Limona

I celebrated my birthday this past week, and looking back at the year that was, it’s hard not to think of the old adage of “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” I’ve got a lot of new, exciting developments in my life, from changing jobs to my upcoming enrollment in grad school. But as food shifts from passion to profession for me, I’m noticing more than ever my palate’s internal tug-of-war between my desire for new tastes and experiences and my lifelong devotion to those comfort foods that evoke contentment and simple satisfaction.

 

So in a way it’s fitting that one of my last meals as a 25-year-old was at Zizi Limona, a restaurant that bills itself as “Mediterranean Home Cooking,” and was called “Grandma’s Middle Eastern kitchen” in one review. My brunch at Zizi Limona was the perfect combination of the traditional and the innovative, taking me back a little over a year to the scents and flavors of my Birthright trip to Israel, while also introducing me to a take on falafel that I’m pretty sure would leave the cooks at our kibbutzim scratching their heads. This is exactly the reason to get yourself over to Williamsburg and check this place out. You’ve got safe bets and experimental options aplenty, catering to any type of bruncher (or dinner-er … diner) you might have in your posse.

 

First Impressions:

Mismatched chairs, brick and wood covered walls, and Mediterranean goods for sale say a lot about Zizi Limona’s vibe before you even crack a menu.

The trip to Zizi Limona was instigated by my belated birthday present to my Gastronomic Life Partner Jacob — a tour of the Mast Brothers Chocolate Factory. I could spend an entire separate post on that experience, but I’d rather just tell you to go. It’s very affordable, and aside from starting at 10am on a weekend, definitely a memorable experience. It’s worth every dollar for the amount of high quality dark chocolate you get to put in your face, plus you learn far more about the art of chocolate-making than I did at the “factory tour” at Hershey Park.

 

However, after our blood sugar levels dropped from their Mast-induced highs, Jacob and I found ourselves in the brunch mecca of Williamsburg with a desperate craving for non-cacao-based dishes. Neurotic that I am, I had of course researched our options, and landed upon Zizi Limona, a restaurant that had been on my radar for a few years after reading raves about its sandwiches and spreads.

 

The other side of the dining room, with the tiled bar and hanging pewter pitchers for brewing Turkish coffee.

Zizi Limona is an establishment with personality, to be sure. This is immediately apparent from the vibrantly green exterior topped by a red-and-green striped awning. Peering inside reveals a single, light-filled dining room constructed out of a variety of woods and exposed brick. This orchestrated mishmash of decor continues throughout the space, from the collection of non-matching tables and chairs, to the multicolored painted tiles on the small bar. Behind the bar are multiple shelves brimming with wine and beer bottles, and the wall across from it holds shelves stuffed with regional speciality products, like Turkish coffee, spice mixes, and date molasses. Speaking of Turkish coffee, Jacob (recently back from a trip to the country) noted that Zizi Limona hangs pewter vessels over the bar, to be used in the traditional method of brewing the coffee. We sat at one of the handful of outdoor tables, also made up of an assortment of styles, sizes, and seating arrangements. In fact, the only consistency I saw came in the table setting — all of our flatware and dishes was of the same set. I would venture that Zizi Limona is trying to emphasize a “restaurant next door” persona, quirky, eclectic, but accessible.

 

 

The Food:

 

That’s actually a pretty apt description of Zizi Limona’s menu, as well. The menu denotes vegan and gluten-free foods, but also carries the warning: “to keep our food balanced the only possible substitutions are listed.” Grandma’s only doing so much for your picky palate, kiddo. After struggling to narrow down our choices, Jacob and I chose to split an order of Aunt Trippo’s Falafel, followed by the Challah Sandwich for him, and the Shakshuka for me. Jacob almost ordered the Sabih (sic) Croissant (he does love his sabich), but drawn to the Challah by the promise of a more egg-forward, brunchy dish.

 

Complimentary spiced popcorn — not as good as the pita and tahini to come but I’m never one to turn down free carbs.

Our meal started with a complimentary bowl of popcorn sprinkled liberally with Spanish Paprika. I would have preferred the pita and tahini bread basket outlined in the Serious Eats review I read, but in hindsight the popcorn was a nice entrée into brunch — heavily spiced, with lots of smoky flavor and salty, but not greasy or oily, which meant it didn’t make a serious dent in my stomach.

 

Aunt Trippos Falafel, the Aggro Crag of chickpea appetizers.

Aunt Trippo’s Falafel (pickles, smoked tomato, curry yogurt/tahini) was unlike any falafel dish I’ve seen before — tiny fried chickpea balls, each about the size of a large marble, plated atop a curried tahini sauce, then piled high with a smoked tomato chutney, charred shallots, and pickled cabbage. The falafel themselves were a little on the dry side, but had nice mix of basic chickpea flavor and fragrant spices like cumin and coriander, and the crunchy outer crust provided textural contrast with the tahini and the chutney. I really enjoyed both of the sauce elements — the curry-infused tahini was not as assertively sesame-y as some versions, its spices marrying well with those incorporated with the falafel, reminding me somewhat of Indian pakoras. The tomato chutney, chunky enough to stab with your fork and smokey and speckled with peppers,  turned out to be serious foreshadowing for my shakshuka. Overall, the dish was unfamiliar but satisfying, grounded in the traditional combination of falafel with vegetables and tahini, but taken to new corners of the globe through its spices and format, a tangle of tastes and textures that is far from Taim’s pita pocket, but still quite delicious.

 

 

Zizi Limona‘s Shakshuka, the best specimen I’ve tried outside of Eretz Yisrael.

Now as you know, I fell in love with shakshuka in Jaffa, care of licensed practitioner Dr. Shakshuka. Since I got back from Birthright I haven’t really found an iteration that lived up to the Doc’s, most of them mere echoes of the soupy, stewy, umami bomb of a skillet I had in Israel. But Zizi Limona’s Shakshuka (Two eggs poached in tomato stew with smoked eggplant, tahini, and cilantro) comes closest to reaching that high bar. As it happens, the owners of Zizi Limona come from Hummus Kitchen and Hummus Place, two restaurants where I’d been reasonably satisfied, if not bowled over, by the shakshuka. Apparently it took a meeting of the minds to crack the eggy code. What brought me back to Jaffa was the inclusion of the smoked eggplant, adding a deep, earthy flavor that cut through the richness of the perfectly cooked eggs, and fought for dominance with the alternately sweet and savory tomato stew. I really appreciated the wide variety of flavors that intermingled in this dish, from the bright cilantro to the nutty tahini, the acidity of the tomatoes to the mild bite of the onions. After breaking the eggs, the texture was pretty much like a sauce, but as with the falafel there were substantial chunks of tomato strewn throughout, thickened by the mixing with the unctuous eggplant. I sopped up the shakshuka with the same pita we had been given with the falafel — a fluffy disk of warm, soft dough, sturdy enough to handle the soupy shakshuka but still chewy and light on its own. The dish was a very filling, but wholesome lunch that took me back to that outdoor table in Jaffa — albeit, with a slightly different vibe, as a number of hip Brooklyn stereotypes strolled by us on a Sunday morning. But the stew itself evoked enough nostalgia to make me place Zizi Limona’s shakshuka at the top of my stateside list.

 

The ginormous Challah Sandwich — all about the bread, at the unfortunate expense of its filling.

Unfortunately, I felt like the Challah Sandwich (omelette, charred veggies, harissa) was the weakest dish of our brunch, although it was it was by no means a bad sandwich. Our waiter had called it the “heavier” of the two when comparing the Challah and Sabih Croissant, and it was easy to see why he felt that way: this was definitely a monster of a sandwich,  with two thick, almost Texas Toast-style slices of toasted challah encasing an egg patty, harissa, tahini, and a bounty of grilled vegetables. It came with pickles, yogurt, and some sort of lemon sauce on the side, which tasted like curd but had the appearance of applesauce. Despite all its promise, I found myself disappointed by the sandwich. It ended up being almost entirely about the challah and vegetables, which would have been fine if the challah had matched the standard set by the pita. But it was the kind of white-bread-esque challah I find underwhelming except when employed as the base for french toast. See, I grew up eating Zomicks, a local brand of challah that has a supremely sweet eggy dough, with their best loaves possessing a pliant, even bouncy texture as you tear into them (leading to the occasional smushing as you try to slice them). If you haven’t encountered Zomicks, seek thee out the diamond in the rough.

 

As for the filling, after the care and subtlety of our other two dishes, I was surprised by how bland the Challah Sandwich was. The grilled vegetables had a nice amount of char to them, but the eggs that Jacob had wanted so badly were anonymous in the sandwich, reminding me of the kind of generic patty of premixed omelet you’d find in a cafeteria. The tahini was creamy, but there was none of the punch of a good harissa. Jacob ended up opening up the sandwich to eat it with a knife and fork by the end of our meal, and I found myself happiest with the dish when I used the challah to soak up more of my leftover shakshuka.

 

 

Final Thoughts:

Overall, I was more than satisfied with Zizi Limona — it’s got a great, laid back atmosphere, helpful servers, and Mediterranean-inflected food that is playful without neglecting its roots. I fully intend on returning to try some of the meat dishes like the shawarma, or come back for lunch for the infamous Sabih Croissant to take another stab at Zizi’s sandwiches. Although I’ll admit it’s going to be a struggle to order anything besides the shakshuka, so maybe I’ll just have to visit enough to quench my stewed-egg-longings.

 

I’ve spoken before about authenticity, and the more I explore cooking and dining, the less stake I put in it (at least in this city of Ramen Burgers and General Tso-boys). My point is that, at least in my case, sometimes you can have it all — the genre-bending and the classic fare, the loves both old and new. I fell in love with Mediterranean food over the past year (as mentioned over and over and over on this blog), but hummus has been my homeboy for at least a decade. I kinda like that I’m the girl who tries chicken hearts on rosemary skewers, but is also desperate to find the new Reeses Cup Oreos (seriously, anybody seen ‘em?). Maybe the whole point of exploring food, or growing up, is not to “put away childish things,” but rather to realize that your experiences lie on a spectrum that widens as you age. By trying new things and challenging myself, I push the outer limits of that spectrum, but that means there is always room for Archie comics and the Atlantic, for blue Cookie Monster ice cream and Durian Banana Sorbet, for Mickey Mouse pancakes and for damn fine shakshuka. Almost makes me glad I’m getting older.

 

Zizi Limona

129 Havemeyer, Brooklyn, New York

http://zizilimona.com/

The Grand Cookie Crawl: Bouchon Bakery

I have to apologize. I’ve been so busy filling my time and stomach with nachos and ice cream, I’ve neglected one of my most important missions — to wade through the endless morass of New York’s chocolate chip cookies for your edification and sanity. After far too long a hiatus, I bring you another entry in the annals of the Grand Cookie Crawl (and as a bonus, this one features pretender to the Oreo throne)!

In the waning days of freedom of my inter-job NYC staycation, I had the fortune of going to a taping of the Daily Show with (who else) Jacob, and so after an exhausting 90 minutes of sitting and laughing loudly, we obviously were in dire need of sustenance … made completely of sugar. So we trekked up Broadway to Columbus Circle, to sample the wares at Bouchon Bakery.

Bouchon Bakery is famed chef Thomas Keller’s ode to French boulangeries. Keller is the chef/owner behind 8 restaurants in the US, including renowned California restaurants The French Laundry and Ad Hoc, and NY hot spot Per Se (located next to Bouchon Bakery in the Time Warner Center). Not impressed enough? Keller has seven Michelin Stars, and according to his bio is the only American-born chef to hold multiple 3-star ratings by the Michelin Guide. I’ve yet to be able to visit one of his restaurants, but with Bouchon Bakery much more within reach, I was determined to try whatever of Keller’s output I could get access to.

 

 

First Impressions

 

The soft white and pastel paint of Bouchon Bakery are a nice break from the mall’s metal and glass architecture.

Located in the “Shops at Columbus Circle” (aka the Time Warner Center) just down the hall from Per Se, this location of Bouchon Bakery (there’s another in 30 Rock) is, well, kind of just a fancy mall bakery. When you get down to brass tax, the Time Warner Center is just a glitzy, glass and metal version of many of the upscale malls you can find in America. It’s anchored by the pedigree of high-caliber restaurants like Per Se and priciest-meal-in-NYC sushi heaven Masa, but look past them and you’ll find plenty of familiar faces, from Sephora and Williams Sonoma to Swarovski and even the Art of Shaving. So you can’t really fault Bouchon Bakery for fitting into this mold, restrained in both its physical and aesthetic footprints.

 

 

The large selection of baked goods helps, too. That’s right, those macarons come in regular and SUPER-SIZED.

The space is fairly generic at first glance — a counter with refrigerated cases facing out towards a cluster of metal tables and chairs. Small touches evoke a French influence, from the delicate palette of pastel greens and pinks in the Bouchon Bakery logo and menus (not to mention the literally French quotes on the wall), to the chalkboard menus, to the retro light fixtures hanging above the baked goods. Speaking of, there were still a good amount of options at 7:30pm, including a wide variety of macarons (small and giant-sized), cookies, and traditional pastries. Bouchon Bakery also offers a small selection of savory items with sample versions displayed, leaving me vaguely disgusted by a bowl of soup that had to be on the verge of entirely congealed. When you get close to dinner, I’d suggest skipping the Bakery counter in favor of the recently opened cafe, which has a more robust menu, and probably doesn’t leave its soup out for hours.

Undeterred by sludgy soups, Jacob and I went for a selection of the Bouchon Bakery classics — a Chocolate Chip Cookie, a TKO (Thomas Keller Oreo, chosen for obvious reasons), and the eponymous Bouchon (which Jacob makes everyone try).

 

 

The Cookies:

 

The eponymous Bouchon, an elegantly cork-shaped … fancy fudge cake.

We’ll start with Bouchon Bakery’s namesake, the Bouchon. The word means “cork” in French, which explains its shape, but belies its heft. This is no crumbly, air-filled confection — it’s basically a dense, fudgy chocolate chocolate cake, made out of such a dark cocoa powder it’s nearly black (suggesting dutch-, or even ultra-dutch-processed cocoa). The taste was reminiscent of a box brownie mix, and I mean that in the best way possible — chewy and rich rather than cakey, the outside made of a crisp, thin skin giving way to a moist interior crumb. I certainly enjoyed the Bouchon, but found it almost too much even at such a small size. I’d love to pair it with a scoop of ice cream to vary up the texture a bit.

 

 

The TKO, for the discerning eater who doesn’t claim Oreos as her kryptonite (aka, not me).

Now as we know I’m a skeptic when it comes to Oreo-imitators. I’ll use Joe-Joes in baked goods in the place of Oreos, but if I’m chowing down on just the cookies, get those Newman-o’s away from my face. However, a simple Google search of “Bouchon TKO” will yield endless blog posts naming the cookie as “to die for,” “amazing” and a “more sophisticated” take on an Oreo. Occasionally I like to pretend I’m more than a 5-year with her hand in the cookie-jar when it comes to dessert, so I stuffed down my trepidation and made the ultimate sacrifice of eating an artisanal cookie.

Sadly, my friends, Nabisco’s dodgy ingredient list still wins the day. I found myself perplexingly disappointed by how, well, fresh the TKO was. The scalloped wafer cookies were made with the same uber-dark cocoa powder as employed in the Bouchon, which was evocative of Oreos, at least in appearance. The flavor of the cookies, however, was too intensely chocolatey, and there was a strange smoky/salty aftertaste that left Jacob semi-convinced Keller uses bacon in his cookies. The filling was a white chocolate buttercream, far too soft to stand up again the rigid wafers, so that with each bite I found the cream squeezing out the sides and into my hands. Again, the definitive white chocolate flavor was a step away from the unmistakable but somewhat anonymously sweet taste of Oreo creme. As so often happens, this was really a case of subverted expectations. Had I been given a TKO without knowing its name or inspiration, I probably would have happily dug in — to Keller’s credit, it’s a visually appealing cookie, well-made with high quality ingredients. But with the weight of Oreo reverence already tipping the scales, it’s no surprise that personally, the TKO didn’t stand a chance.

 

 

Bouchon Bakery‘s Chocolate Chip Cookie, simple, staid, classic, and pretty damn tasty.

The reverse situation happened to me while eating the Chocolate Chip Cookie. It had mostly been an afterthought — an obligation for covering the Grand Cookie Crawl, and nowhere near as exciting as the new, shiny, unfamiliar Bouchon and TKO. But of course, it’s the underdog that steals first place. Bouchon’s Chocolate Chip Cookie is roughly the same size and shape as the ones at City Bakery and Jacques Torres — wide, thin, golden brown in hue. Bouchon uses semi-sweet chocolate chunks, and through the mystery of cookie chemistry, these chunks maintain a semi-solid state well after cooling (these cookies were sitting under heat lamps in a case, rather than warmed like JT’s). As you split the cookie, these pockets of gooey chocolate ripped open and oozed outward (although not quite the deluge of Levain‘s entry). I’ve come to the conclusion that the quality of the chocolate chips is not a huge priority for me when it comes to these cookies. Nestle semi-sweet or Guittard 80%, I’ll take either if given a properly executed dough. And Bouchon delivers exactly that — a cookie base with a crispy exterior but chewy inside, and strong notes of caramelized brown sugar and vanilla. To me, a good chocolate chip cookie baker isn’t afraid of his eaters encountering the stray chip-less bite, because the dough can stand on its own (sometimes I search through my mother’s batches for a chip-free runt of the litter, because her recipe is that good).

 

 

Final Verdict:

 

I’m still waiting for the cookie that can unseat Levain, and I’m not sure I’ll find it in NY. Anyone who thinks their favorite can topple those UWS behemoth baked goods, please let me know. I’m very much game for the challenge. However, I would slide Bouchon’s Chocolate Chip Cookie in above City Bakery’s (and Jacques Torres), because it had the killer combo of texture and flavor. Certainly I’d recommend Bouchon’s drop cookies over the TKO, although I’ll allow that others may be able to look beyond the paragon of packaged cookies and appreciate the subtlety of Keller’s ode to the childhood classic. I do want to try his take on a Nutter Butter, since I’m much more open-minded when it comes to peanut butter-based desserts. I’d also like to return for more items in the vein of the Bouchon, to see how Keller does with his takes on more traditional French pastries and cakes (those eclairs were calling out to me).

Considering its surroundings and pedigree, Bouchon Bakery is relatively unpretentious, and worth a visit if only for the variety of its menu, and the lovely view out onto Columbus Circle. Does it have the local, down-home vibe of a place like Levain? Of course not, it’s in a mall, after all. But if you can look beyond the brand, Bouchon Bakery does offer more than one spoonful of sugar to make your post-shopping credit card bill just a little bit easier to swallow.

 

Bouchon Bakery

Ten Columbus Circle, Third Floor

New York, NY 10019

http://bouchonbakery.com/

Never Mind the Sizing, Just Try a Scoop: Solid Gelato at A. B. Biagi

With the return of the summer season, I can finally stop making excuses for my near-constant ice cream craving. Intellectually, I always want ice cream, regardless of how the rest of my body feels about it. I’ve recently discovered I’m genetically predisposed towards this condition, when my father told me that his mother ate a bowl of ice cream nearly every day of her life. So it was really only a matter of time that I stumble into a new cup-and-cone-commissary, wide-eyed and near-drunk with the anticipation of embracing my birthright once more.

The first entry in my list of Summer 2014 frozen desserts is A.B. Biagi, a small and relatively new (they opened last summer) gelateria on Elizabeth St. Jacob and I paid a visit after our falafel-fest at Taim, braving intermittent rain to once again test the veracity of a Serious Eats rave review.

(I suppose you could argue that I’ve already broken the seal with my inhaling of a Sprinkles Sundae, but I’d counter that the focus of that dish was split between ice cream and cupcake, whereas A.B. Biagi is all about the gelato.)

 

First Impressions:

The priority at A. B. Biagi is clearly the making, rather than the serving of gelato, since the kitchen dominates the space.

As I mentioned above, A. B. Biagi is only a few short blocks away from Taim, a gelato oasis in the relatively scoop-free Nolita. The bright yellow exterior gives way to a tiny store front, narrow, yet deep, with most of the space devoted to the kitchen. Inside, the walls are covered in white tiles on the bottom half, with the upper sections decorated with unconventional paintings evoking scenes of Italy on one side, and a large mural of a woman (A.B. herself?) on the other.

 

A. B., is that you?

Across from the counter is a small bench that offers the only seating. The set up is similar to Il Laboratorio del Gelato, albeit smaller and less clinical in decor — the goal is to get you in, ordering gelato, and out again, with minimal hanging around. Although in our case, we were the only customers on a rainy Friday afternoon.

 

The Food:

 

I guess at this shop, size is in the eye of the beholder…

A. B. Biagi offers a rotating selection of 6 flavors of gelato, a couple of sorbets, and espresso, coffee, tea and hot chocolate (covering all your temperature-based food needs). On our visit, the options were Stracciatella, Chocolate Brigadeiro, Vegan Almond Butter, Pistachio, Chia Pudding, and Coffee gelato, and Lemon and Guava sorbet. Any of those can be scooped into A. B. Biagi’s somewhat confusingly named sizes — Tiny, Small, or Regular — which remind me of the McDonald’s strategy of renaming Super Size as Large, hoping we wouldn’t notice that the actual volume stayed exactly the same. The cashier warned us that the Small cup holds more gelato than you’d expect, so we opted to play Goldilocks and go neither too big or too small.

After sampling nearly all of the gelato flavors, we ended up splitting a Small cup of the Stracciatella and the Vegan Almond Butter. I was a little surprised that Jacob would ignore the opportunity to have chocolate gelato, but he said the Chocolate Brigadeiro was a little too sweet, and I concurred that it might be best left as its own dessert (as former employees of Brazilian animated film director Carlos Saldanha, we’ve been fortunate enough to sample more than a few authentic brigadeiro varieties, such as those from My Sweet Brigadeiro).

 

Vegan and non-vegan gelato, meeting briefly for peace-talks before being forced to coexist and my stomach. Vegan Almond Butter on the left, Stracciatella on the right.

As promised, our cup came piled high with gelato, split between the two flavors. The Stracciatella was composed of a thick and intensely rich sweet cream base, speckled with dark chocolate shavings still big enough to offer a bit of a snap as you bit down on them. Whereas the Chocolate Brigadeiro fell more on the milk chocolate side, the chocolate in the Stracciatella was just over the edge of bitter, providing a nice contrast to the sugar of the gelato base. I was hit with a bit of childhood nostalgia when eating it, suddenly taken back to bowls of Breyer’s Chocolate Chunk ice cream out of my parents’ freezer, my teeth struggling to crack through the semi-sweet chocolate chunks.

Yet despite the memories called up by the Stracciatella, my favorite of all of A. B. Biagi’s flavors was by far the Vegan Almond Butter. Although we asked the cashier, he wasn’t sure what the base of the gelato was. It tasted like it was made of almond milk, but had the same thick consistency as the non-vegan Stracciatella, leaving me curious as to how they achieved that chewy texture (most vegan ice cream recipes I’ve seen call for coconut milk, but I couldn’t detect any coconut flavor in A. B. Biagi’s version). Regardless of the technique, the Vegan Almond Butter was absolutely delicious, creamy gelato that had a subtle almond taste, no frying-pan-to-the-face of almond extract here, punctuated with the sweetness of the almond butter, thinly swirled throughout so it was more like an array of crunchy crystals rather than a ribbon. I’ll admit that after being a lifelong peanut butter fanatic, I’ve been on a bit of of an almond butter kick, adding it to my yogurt in the morning and a few cookie recipes. It feels like a more adult flavor (at least, the raw unsweetened version I bought) — somewhat more restrained, but still giving you that wonderful nuttiness. That was the level of flavor in A. B. Biagi’s gelato as well — not the orgiastic sugar wonderland of say, Sprinkles‘ Rocky Road, but a more mature, composed dessert that you should linger over.

 

Final Thoughts:

Overall, I was pleased with the quality of gelato at A. B. Biagi, and understand why Serious Eats was a fan (I think their offices might be close by, too…). However, considering the prices, I’d recommend checking out Vivoli or Il Laboratorio del Gelato first, depending on your tradition vs. innovation preference when it comes to gelato. Despite it being in Macy’s, you’ll get more bang for your buck at Vivoli, which still tops my list for classic gelato in NYC, and I’d tell anyone that you have to try some of the wacky flavors at Il Laboratorio if you’re a frozen dessert fan. Not to knock A. B. Biagi — they do offer a solid group of interesting and well-made gelatos, but just not of the caliber to break into my pantheon of ice creams. If you’re walking around Nolita or Little Italy, and you’re looking for a cool treat, I’d say stop by and try the Almond Butter. Maybe I was just born this way, but I think you can make any day better with the addition of just a little gelato.

 

A. B. Biagi

235 Elizabeth St (Between Houston and Prince)

abbiagi.com

Brief Bites: Taim

Ever since I got back from my Birthright trip last year, I’ve been on the hunt for good falafel in New York. After my misleadingly named fiasco of a falafel at Market Table, I thought perhaps I should resign myself to inferior offerings on this side of the Atlantic. Maybe the falafel of the Holyland is a product of Israel’s water, like the bagels in New York. Or maybe falafel is one of those foods that you just aren’t meant to eat at a table with a knife and fork, but rather should be deposited directly in your mouth by means of messy, saucy street pita. I’ll have to hit up a few more food carts to answer that question properly (not to mention pay a visit to the famous Mamoun’s Falafel, which arguably has the cheapest falafel sandwich, recently raised to an outrageous $3.50). Or perhaps the answer lies somewhere in the middle ground, far from the black and white pronouncements like so many of life’s great quandaries. Perhaps it takes a combination of native handiwork and a little New York thrift to produce American falafel worth frying — the kind you’ll find at Einat Admony’s Taim Falafel & Smooth Bar.

 

The Set Up:

The tightly packed Taim, full of lunch rush patrons.

Taim’s Nolita location (their original spot is in the West Village) is just a few blocks away from the Spring St. 6 stop, so I’ve walked by the storefront many times, but never found an opportunity to stop for a meal. Given the multiplicity of mediocre falafel-purveyors in NYC, I only noticed Taim once I read that Serious Eats had pronounced it to be the best in the city. And then Jacob had to come back from the Middle East talking endlessly of falafel and shawarma, virtually ensuring that Taim would be a part of my NYC Staycation before starting a new job.

Taim (which means “tasty” in Hebrew) is the casual chainlet of Chef Einat Admony, a Tel Aviv emigrant who also owns the sit-down restaurants Balaboosta and newly-opened Bar Bolonat. I’m eager to try all of her establishments, since she seems to bring together reverence for the ingredients and techniques of her heritage with a more modern whimsy.

The Nolita Taim is a small, modern boxy space that sits on the corner of the block, with the counter and kitchen in the back. The exterior walls are plate glass, which helps to keep the space from feeling too dark and claustrophobic, and rest of the space is decked out in vibrant colors, from the bright green of the back wall to the traffic-cone orange stools. Those stools, and the bar-height counters paired with them, are the only seating in Taim, suggesting the shop is mainly intended for take-away. This makes sense given the high volume of customers we saw pass through during our brief lunch — they’d never be able to seat everyone anyway.

 

The Bites:

Taim’s topping bar, a panoply of sauces and salads.

Taim’s menu covers smoothies, sandwiches, salads, platters, spreads and sides (they also have a small case with a few desserts, like baklava). Jacob and I opted to share a Falafel Sandwich (green falafel, with hummus, Israeli salad, pickled cabbage and tahini sauce) and a Sabich Sandwich (sliced eggplant, fried to order, with an organic egg, parsley, hummus, israeli salad, pickled cabbage, tahini sauce and amba), both on whole wheat pita (you have a choice of wheat or white). When I go back to Taim, I’d really like to try one of their platters so I can sample the salads — I enjoyed the traditional Israeli salad included in my sandwich, but they’ve got several other options like a Moroccan Carrot Salad, and varieties of beet and eggplant-based spreads and salads.

 

Our cozily wrapped sandwiches — Falafel on the right, Sabich on the left.

The Falafel Sandwich, nearly bursting at the seams.

Both of our sandwiches came wrapped in wax paper and nestled in a wooden bowl, which proved to be extremely prudent as our overstuffed pitas deteriorated upon attack. The front view photo reveals how packed these pitas were, and as with most falafel sandwiches, I found that the further into the meal you get, the soggier your pita becomes, leading it to fall apart at the tail end of the sandwich, a product of hummus/tahini sauce gravitational pull. This is a shortfall of the entire pita genus, however, and not a reflection on Taim’s iteration, which overall was a simple, but excellent falafel sandwich. Taim actually offers 3 flavors of falafel: the traditional Green (with parsley, cilantro, mint), the mildly spicy Harissa (mixed with Tunisian spices), and the Red (mixed with roasted red pepper). Despite the cashier’s strong suggestion to try the Harissa, I chose the Green, wanting to test the mettle of the traditional for my first Taim experience. Although I’m game to try the Harissa next time, the Green falafel was stellar — the balls were crispy on the outside, their exterior coating holding up against the tahini sauce which was creamy but discernibly sesame-flavored. Once I bit into a falafel ball, I encountered a chewy, moist interior with a solid chickpea flavor, subtly underlined by the herbs. The remaining elements of the sandwich integrated well, the Israeli salad providing textural contrast and some moisture to combat the whipped-butter viscosity of the smooth hummus.

 

The Sabich Sandwich up close, a little unevenly distributed.

The fact that Taim offered a Sabich sandwich was the tipping point for Jacob, after he had fallen in love with them in Israel. As with the Falafel sandwich, the pita was fluffy and pliant, with a prominent whole wheat taste, and the hummus and tahini were obviously just as good, since they all come from the same source. Initially I found the sandwich too segmented — you can see from the photo that one side is virtually sauce-less, while the other side is submerged in tahini. There was also an iceberg of hard boiled egg floating in that sauce-sea, which I think would benefit from being chopped up and distributed throughout the sandwich. As you got further down into the pita, the flavors did meld together more, with the oily, sweet eggplant playing against the nutty tahini and hummus, and the sour/sweet amba (pickled mango-fenugreek chutney) adding a wholly different tasting note (which felt almost Indian-inspired to me). The Sabich fell apart slightly more at the end than the Falafel, leading to a fork-mandatory situation, which I actually thought helped to coalesce the elements of the dish. Even though it costs more, I think the Sabich works better as a platter, since it’s hard to get both eggplant and egg in one bite if you go the sandwich route.

The Last Licks:

I haven’t had enough falafel in the city to really assess the veracity of Serious Eats, but I definitely agree with them that Taim offers an exemplary model of the food. Admony has solved the age-old issues of hard-as-rock exteriors, flavorless interiors, or dry as bones chickpea fritters. Taim’s not looking to reinvent the wheel here (after all, they don’t even offer the “chips” topping I got at Tasty Falafel 4), but they do a damn good job making straightforward sandwiches. I’m hoping to pay a few more visits and sample the rest of the menu, especially the platters I ogled as we exited the shop. I’ll be honest, my favorite pita spot is still Taboonette down by Union Square, because of the sheer variety of their menu (and the fact that it’s still really well-done), but Taim has some standout falafel that make a trip to Nolita or the West Village a worthwhile investment. So head on down there, to ponder life’s great questions of chickpea-based cuisine, or simply to awaken your tastebuds — either way, they’ve got plenty of balls to go around.

 

Taim

45 Spring St.

http://www.taimfalafel.com/

Snackshots: Summer Desserts

With the temperature rising, I can finally indulge in one of my favorite New York City activities — walking anywhere and everywhere I can. This has its pluses and minuses, since on the one hand, fresh air and a little cardio are good for the body, but on the other hand, traipsing about the city places me directly in the path of many dessert purveyors with offering designed explicitly to remove the health-benefits of my walks. Yeah, I know — this ain’t exactly a third world problem.

This exact scenario took place last weekend, when Manhattan was thrust full-force into summer and the thermometer climbed to the mid-80s. I spent most of the weekend walking around SoHo, Gramercy, and the UES, and found myself somehow checking two items off my Summer Sweets List, with a visit to Dominique Ansel Bakery and Sprinkles Ice Cream.

 

Peering back into the rear of Dominique Ansel Bakery, where a few tables (and the master chef himself0 were.

The visit to Dominique Ansel Bakery was an unexpected salve for fruitless apartment hunting, with the shop located just around the corner from the building I was visiting. After my time-delayed experience with the Cronut, I obviously couldn’t ignore the opportunity to try a fresh-from-the-oven Ansel creation (plus, Jacob my food enabler was with me and insisted we go). The store was larger than I anticipated, a narrow but deep space devoted to the retail area in the front (overflowing with full pastry cases), and with a few tables in the back (where Ansel was chatting with employees when we were there).

 

No cronuts, but plenty of other options at Dominique Ansel Bakery.

Our visit happened to be on the 1 year anniversary of the Cronut, and unsurprisingly they were already sold out by the time we arrived. (Although a table at the front of the store had four pristine Cronuts just sitting there, uneaten — is this the latest sign of the bourgeois 1% — leftover Cronuts?) To be honest, I was relieved that they were sold out, because it freed us up to order something else. We opted to go with the DKA — Dominique’s Kouign Amann, the pastry the bakery was best known for pre-Cronut-mania.

 

The DKA, approximately the same size as Levain cookie (or Jacob’s fist).

The Kouign Amann (pronounced “Queen Ah-mann”) is a Northern French pastry from Brittany, little known outside of Quebec and France until Ansel brought his version to NY. The cashier told us that the DKA (“Tender, flaky, croissant-like dough with a caramelized crunchy crust”) is slightly smaller than the normal sweet, which is somewhat mitigated by its intense buttery richness. As Jacob described it, the DKA is like a hybrid croissant/elephant ear (or palmier). It’s made of laminated dough like a croissant (or Cronut, for that matter), but the caramelized sugar topping evokes the crunchy, crispy shatters of the palmier. I’m not really into palmiers, since I find most of them too dry, but here you got the best of both worlds. Biting into the DKA, you get the punch of sweetness from the sugar topping (and who doesn’t like crunchy sugar melting instantaneously on her tongue?), but then fall into the soft center of the pastry, so moist and butter-infused you might think there was some sort of marzipan or custard. But no, that’s just barely salted, straight up butter.

Is that custard inside? Nope, that’s just straight-up buttery dough.

Aside from the Cronut anniversary, our stop at Dominique Ansel Bakery was also just a few days after Ansel won the James Beard Award for Outstanding Pastry Chef. It’s clear that he is an enormously talented innovator pushing the envelope in the field, but I was impressed by how simple yet beautifully-wrought the DKA was, since it’s a traditional pastry that relies on classic techniques. His classical chops might seem obvious given his background as executive pastry chef at Daniel (not to mention his newly minted award), but it was nice to know that Ansel is far more than just the Cronut-guy.

Would I still try a fresh-off-the-presses Cronut if offered? Absolutely, I mean c’mon, it’s fried croissant dough. But the next time I’m at Dominique Ansel Bakery, I won’t be upset if they’re already sold out. I’m more interested in what else is in the pastry case, and I’d recommend looking past the glittering tuiles and edible decorations for the more basic, rustic, perhaps classic but never old-fashioned options. I’ve got to see what this guy can do with an almond croissant.

 

 

Our Sprinkles Sundae in all its glory — Banana Cupcake encasing a scoop of Rocky Road.

Round two is at another trendy spot — the new ice cream expansion of Sprinkles Cupcakes. Sprinkles Ice Cream just opened up a few weeks ago, next to the cupcake shop, with the Cupcake ATM in between. Although we all know I’m an ice cream fiend, I was slightly skeptical of Sprinkles Ice Cream, since it’s so easy to dilute the quality of your brand when you start expanding your offerings. Would the new homemade ice cream and cookies really measure up to the Sprinkles standard?

The space seems to be about the same size as the cupcake emporium next door, but with less seating and a nearly all white decor that evokes a 2001-esque space vibe. The confections are stored and assembled behind a semi-circular barrier, although there are glass peep-through windows that let you see the employees in action.

As with all good ice cream shops, the menu options range from reasonable to absurdly decadent (I’m looking at you, Ben & Jerry’s Vermonster). At Sprinkles you can get your normal scoops in a cup or waffle cone (even a red velvet waffle cone), and as with their cupcakes, the flavor options rotate daily. You can go for a regular sundae with the familiar sauces, toppings, etc, or a cookie/brownie sundae, a milkshake, malted or float. But then things begin to get a little more ridiculous — an ice cream sandwich with homemade cookies, or one made with two cupcake tops (including frosting), frozen hot chocolate, an affogato, or the beast that we split — the Sprinkles Sundae.

The eponymous sundae is comprised of a single scoop of ice cream between a cupcake top and bottom. That’s right — crack open a full-size cupcake and stick a scoop of ice cream right in its guts. Jacob and I shared one that featured a Banana Cupcake (banana cake with bittersweet dark chocolate frosting) sandwiching a scoop of Rocky Road (dense dark chocolate ice cream loaded with crunchy toasted almonds, homemade marshmallow cream and housemade chips made from bittersweet tcho chocolate). Boy oh boy, this was a homerun combination. The Banana Cupcake is Jacob’s favorite Sprinkles flavor, and as a huge banana fan, I totally get it. The cake was like fresh-baked banana bread, with a dense, moist crumb, the sweetness slightly tempered by the bittersweet chocolate frosting. The Rocky Road was gelato-like in richness and texture, slightly melty without falling totally into the soft-serve zone. My fears of brand dilution dissolved in the face of the quality ingredients evident in the individual components, strong enough to be separately identified within the mass of Rocky Road (everyone gets 2 tastes, so between Jacob and I we also sampled the excellent Red Velvet, PB Cup, and Coffee Fudge Almond). The best thing about the Sprinkles Sundae is that it totally solves my main hang-up on cupcakes (vs. slices of cake) — the too-often unbalanced ratio of frosting to cake, and the subsequent dryness of that cake. Having a scoop of ice cream in the middle ensures that each bite of cupcake will be moist, soft, and flavorful. I highly recommend the sundae we got (I mean, banana and chocolate, banana and almonds, banana and marshmallows — all strong duos, so no surprise that this combination worked well together), but I fully intend to return for more scoops from the Sprinkles shop. Plus they’ve got a pretzel peanut-butter cookie that this PB fiend can’t resist. There’s also a kids’ mini version of the Sprinkles Sundae, for those less-inclined to shoot their sugar levels skyward.

 

So now I have two good options for the rest of the summer — cool, refreshing ice cream from Sprinkles to escape the sunscorched sidewalk, and warm, buttery french pastries from Dominique Ansel to make those summer thunderstorms a little more tolerable. Neither of them is particularly conducive to my beach bod, but if we’re being straight with each other, this pasty-white gal ain’t doing that much tanning, anyway.

 

Dominique Ansel Bakery

189 Spring St (between Thompson and Sullivan)

www.dominiqueansel.com

 

Sprinkles Cupcakes, Ice Cream & Cookies

782 Lexington Ave (between 60th and 61st)

www.sprinkles.com