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Bronx Eats: Back for Birria at Real Azteca

Birria—Mexican goat stew—is a rare treat in New York City, a blip on our culinary radar worth hunting down. So when we spotted the dish ($10, weekends only) on the menu at Real Azteca, whose heaping enchiladas michoacanas we featured on Bronx Eats two weeks ago, we knew we would have to investigate. It is, after all, what we believe to be the only regularly available bowl available in the borough. More

Wylie Dufresne's Alder: Better Bar Food Through Science

Wylie Dufresne's new venture Alder—his first since wd~50—is a subtler place, casual in its setting and more reined in. Dufresne is a master of the baroque—you don't make noodles out of seafood without dreaming big—but he also knows restraint. He has stayed with wd~50 for a decade, an eternity in today's New York restaurant years, avoiding television fame or branded pasta sauces so he can keep to his work. This new restaurant (with executive chef Jon Bignelli) and bar (director Kevin Denton) takes the best of that studied creativity and deploys it with great care.

Ambitious but unfulfilling small plates restaurants are a dime a dozen these days, so leave it to Dufresne to school them on how it's done. Because Alder may be the very definition of a great small plates restaurant. It's fun here. You can drink well. The food is exciting even when it's not perfect. And you can eat to feel nourished, not just entertained. People have been calling Alder a "pub," which is wrong both for pubs and for Alder, but the restaurant makes a strong case for better living, and drinking, through chemistry.

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Sao Mai, Reliably Delicious Vietnamese in the East Village

Sao Mai is my far and away my favorite Vietnamese restaurant within walking distance of my home, and it might be even be my favorite in Manhattan, period. Just like the best Vietnamese restaurants in Chinatown, Sao Mai has a no-frills, stripped-down dining room with brisk service that offers flavors that are bright and vibrant. With its arrival in the East Village, I have stopped heading down to Baxter Street to Nha Trang or New Pasteur (now Phó Pasteur) for my phó fix. More

A Sandwich a Day: Eggplant Parm at Rosario's Deli

I can count on one hand—if that—the number of times I've had a still-crisp eggplant parm on a hero. But that's fine by me so long as we adjust our expectations for a successful sandwich. If you like the idea of breaded eggplant spread with sweet tomato and milky mozzarella, the version at Rosario's deli in Astoria ($6.50 on a roll, $5.50 on a roll) is probably up your alley. More

We Chat with Chef Sue Torres of Suenos

Sue Torres has held Suenos at a level of success for ten years, and she hasn't opened a second restaurant anywhere else at any time. Instead, she has the kind of faith in her staff that only comes with a long restaurant run, so that she can sometimes leave the kitchen to take an unrelated cooking class or go on a hike, where she says much of her creativity stems. We talked with her about her introduction to Mexican cooking and where she thinks the cuisine is going in New York. More

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