Manhattan: Hell's Kitchen
Posted by Kathy YL Chan, November 18, 2008 at 6:00 PM
Famous for their pizza bianca and loved for their sandwiches and insanely delicious square cuts of pizza (topped with cauliflower, zucchini, or mushrooms), the pastries at this Hell's Kitchen bakery are often overlooked and surely deserve more recognition. Since Sullivan Street Bakery ranks high on my personal list of favorite bakeries in the city, I've made it a point to, over time, taste each and every single one of the sweets they offer—diabetes be damned.
Some days I favor one over another—be it warm bomboloni or a round of tortino di cioccolato with crunchy bread crumb bits speckled in the batter. My current affair is with a caramelized wedge of banana bread pudding. I have an especially soft spot in my heart for puddings which are generous and easy in the mouth, and I love Bananas for the same reason. At Sullivan Street Bakery, the two are combined with a flaky, butter-rich crust. The bread pudding mix is immensely moist, lightly spiced, and hovers an enviable line between custard and cake. To top it off, the bananas have been soaked in sambuca and coffee and deeply caramelized—dancing on the verge of bitterness, but falling just to the right side of sweet. Rustic comfort at its best. This warmed cut of pudding, accompanied by coffee, would make for a very fine start to the day.
Sullivan Street Bakery
533 W 47th Street, New York, NY 10036 (b/n 10th and 11th; map)
212-265-5580
sullivanstreetbakery.com
Posted by Zach Brooks, November 7, 2008 at 1:30 PM
For those who want to eat Thanksgiving dinner out, we gave you a list of restaurants serving special Thanksgiving Day menus. For those who wanted to eat in, but didn't want to cook, we pointed you to the take out feasts being offered by Momofuku and Hill Country. But what about the person who wants to eat Thanksgiving alone? We recommend Piece of Chicken in Hell's Kitchen, which is now taking orders for individually packaged Thanksgiving meals. $10 gets you turkey and gravy, apple raisin coconut stuffing, candied yams, macaroni and cheese, string beans, collard greens, turnips, cranberry sauce, and banana pudding. Don't want to eat alone? I'm sure they'll work out a family size order for you. They recommend you place your order before November 12th, but they will be taking orders up until 2 days before Thanksgiving. 362 West 45th Street, New York, NY 10036 (b/n Eighth and Ninth avenues; map); 212-582-5973
Related:
Piece of Chicken, A Dollar Restaurant in Hell's Kitchen
Kyotofu, the Hell's Kitchen Japanese tofu and dessert bar, is one year old. And to celebrate their anniversary they will be giving out free samples of their new cupcakes, mini misos, & more all day long. And while they have your attention (everybody loves free food), they also have announced a line up of new fall desserts, and a new daily happy hour featuring half price cocktails and Japanese beers form 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. kyotofu-nyc.com
Posted by Ed Levine, October 3, 2008 at 10:00 AM
Trying to figure out what to bring to a dinner party can be difficult. Usually, what happens in our circle of friends is people ask me what I want to bring. I'm pretty good on dessert, more than adequate on cheese, and truly terrible on wine or spirits. So I have found the surefire winner to bring to any dinner party is a whole pizza bianca from either Sullivan Street Bakery or Grandaisy.
What is pizza bianca? Here's how Sullivan Street Bakery founder Jim Lahey describes it:
A 6-ft. long light, airy, hand-formed flatbread; porous and bubbly with silky crumb. Accented with extra virgin extra virgin olive oil, coarse sea salt, and rosemary.
Yum! Just take a look at this beauty in its unfurled state.
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Posted by Zach Brooks, September 29, 2008 at 3:00 PM
Photograph by Robyn Lee
Two weeks ago Time Out New York asked me to nominate my favorite food neighborhood in New York City, and they told me I couldn't pick Midtown (for obvious reasons, I guess.) So I was forced to go with the only other neighborhood I could speak to with any real authority—the one I live in—Hell's Kitchen. Despite the pride I took in most of my recommendations (they added a few that didn't come from me) I somehow managed to miss a big one. It's I wish I could say I had forgotten about Kashkaval, the Mediterranean cheese and gourmet food shop on Ninth Avenue, but the truth is for some inexplicable reason I had never been there for dinner until this past Wednesday night.
Kahskaval is one of those New York City chameleons. I have shopped there during the day on many occasions, buying cheese and coffee from the front part of the shop. In the daylight, the back looks like a drab, casual eatery, maybe good for a snack— but certainly no destination. What I never realized (and many seem to already know) is that nightly this "shop" turns into a warm and cozy candle lit dinner destination with a really delicious menu of Mediterranean snacks and fondue.
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Posted by Kerry Saretsky, September 25, 2008 at 9:30 AM
If I could be gastronomically reincarnated into another form, I am absolutely certain I would come back as a mouse. It is with this inveterate predilection for cheese that I attended Artisanal’s Cheese Basics class at their Artisanal Premium Cheese Center on West 37th Street last week. If you are as bright-eyed about cheese as I am, THIS is the class for you.
All 14 of us student-guests positively melted at first sight of two scintillating and pungent platters of cheese: soft tomes, bright goats, pungent blues, crowned with baguette hunks, planks of nut bread, walnuts, jams, dried apricots and cranberries. I was a bit disappointed that we weren’t in the famous “cave,” but the Cava that kept flooding my champagne flute quickly helped me get over it.
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Posted by Tam Ngo, September 12, 2008 at 10:15 AM
Miang or mieng. Kham, khum, kum, or kam. With mieng meaning “many” and kham meaning “one bite,” this salad is a symphony of its confederate parts.
Mieng Ka Na is often served as a snack on the streets of Bangkok, wrapped to order in betel nut leaves. But at Wondee Siam I, you’ll find Mieng Ka Na on the “Secret Thai Menu”—served as a pre-assembled salad accompanied by Chinese broccoli leaves. Diners use these raw leaves to roll their own hand-wraps, filling them with fluffy dried pork, brine, chili, peanuts, shallots, ginger, and thin bits of lime. A little bit o' this, a lotta bit o' that. Salty. Spicy. Sour. Sweet.
Mieng Kha Na is only one of several mouth-puckering dishes at Wondee.
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Posted by Ed Levine, September 2, 2008 at 11:00 PM
Photographs by Robyn Lee
Piece of Chicken
362 West 45th Street, New York, NY 10036 (b/n Eighth and Ninth avenues; map); 212-582-5973
Service: Slow, a little disorganized but well-meaning
Setting: Curbside cuisine
Compare It To: Charles' Southern-Style Kitchen, Pink Teacup
Must-Haves: Fried Chicken, Mashed Potatoes
Cost: $5 if you get three pieces of fried chicken and a side of mashed potatoes
Grade: A- for the fried chicken and the mashed potatoes, B for everything else on the menu
What in the way of substantial food can you get for a buck or two in Gotham these days? Not much. Chinatowns all over New York are full of inexpensive delicious treats: Dumplings, greens sandwiches, dollar hot dogs were all included in Serious Eater Gordon Mark's deliciously comprehensive guide to cheap eats in Chinatown. And then there's the dollar menu at McDonalds, which budget-minded students of all ages and ethnicities avail themselves of frequently. Finally, there have been a couple of pizza-slice-for-a-buck emporia starting to pop up all over town, but those slices will only do when any form of melted cheese on warm bread fix will suffice. Of those mentioned above, only the Chinatown offerings strike me as anything I would look forward to eating on a regular basis.
That's why I was so excited when Serious Eats: New York editor Zach Brooks told me about Piece of Chicken, a soul food take-out joint (really a kiosk fronting a kitchen) where most things on the menu are a buck or two.
Piece of Chicken operates out of a chunk of what was the kitchen of the old, elegant soul food restaurant Jezebel. Most of Jezebel's kitchen and the rest of its space are now 5 Napkin Burger, where the burgers and fries are good but cost way more than a dollar.
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Posted by Kathy YL Chan, August 26, 2008 at 6:00 PM
There's no shortage of flavor options at NYC ICY in Hell's Kitchen. The menu changes daily and is divided into two sides, with the right featuring "creamy" and the left showcasing the "dairyless." A recent Thursday night visit left us debating over Italian flan and Earl Grey tea on the right, and root beer and passion fruit on the left, just to name a few. But alas a choice had to be made, and while we sampled four flavors in total, the thai iced tea was the sure winner. It captured the complete experience of the well loved drink in a texture that married ice cream with sorbet and an extra touch of fluff—leaving us completely delighted.
NYC ICY
628 10th Avenue, New York NY 10036 (nr. 44th Street; map)
347-789-1849
Posted by Zach Brooks, August 26, 2008 at 4:15 PM
Our love for Sullivan St. Bakery sandwiches is well documented, and I tend to stalk the place like a crazy ex-boyfriend. It helps that it's right around the corner from my apartment, and because my illness is profitable a restraining order has been unnecessary. This past Saturday my lurking uncovered their latest: the Panino di Tortilla Espanola. Essentially a Spanish omelet sandwich, it's made from taking a slice of their house-made tortilla (egg, potato, and onions baked in a pan) and topped with piquillo peppers, and arugula. The bread (which needs no further acclaim from this site) gets smeared with an egg-less Spanish style aoili. The only downside of this delicious new creation is that they are only making them sporadically. So if Sullivan St. Bakery is not on your regular food stalking route, you may want to call ahead and make sure they're selling it.
Sullivan St. Bakery
533 West 47th Street, New York NY 10036 (Tenth/Eleventh; map)
212-265-5580
sullivanstreetbakery.com/
Posted by Ed Levine, July 29, 2008 at 11:00 PM
Photographs by Robyn Lee
Amy's Bread
Location Visited: 75 Ninth Avenue, New York, NY 10011 (Between 15th & 16th Streets); 212-462-4338; amysbread.com.
Additional locations at 672 Ninth Avenue, New York NY 10036 (Hell's Kitchen) and 250 Bleecker Street, New York NY 10014 (West Village)
Service: Friendly, accommodating, and quick (except when you order a pressed sandwich)
Setting: Bakery counter with some tables and chairs. Look to the left and you can watch bread being made.
Compare It To: Balthazar, Sullivan Street Bakery, Mangia
Must-Haves: Ham and cheese biscuit, grilled cheese and tomato sandwich, Cuban sandwich, cherry cream scone, butterscotch cashew bar, lemonade, lemon mouseline cake.
Cost: $10-15 for a sandwich, cookie, and drink.
Grade: B+
Here at Serious Eats world headquarters we work in what can only be called a sandwich, bread, and baked goods-challenged neighborhood. For sandwiches we have Salumeria Biellese, but it limits itself to big, meat-centric sandwiches on unsatisfactory bread (they still haven't taken me up on my suggestion to carry Sullivan Street Bakery stirato). The bread and baked goods situation is even more dire. Basically, we've got nothing unless we're willing to brave the line at Whole Foods.
Over the past few months while going down to Chelsea Market for various meetings, I rediscovered Amy's Bread. To the people who live near or work in Chelsea Market, Amy's Bread is a godsend. And to those people I say, do not take Amy's Bread for granted. Proximity should breed support, not contempt.
Almost everything Amy Scherber and her hardworking crew make—from bread to cake, from cookies to sandwiches, from pizza to focaccia—is damned tasty, with a few items reaching the level of serious deliciousness. Scherber brings a taste, know-how, and pride to everything she sells here, and the result is an eatery I would kill to have in my neighborhood. She has proven herself to be a dough wizard; the breads, cookies, and cakes all have a chance for greatness. And even though all the sandwiches at Amy's Bread are premade, usually a sandwich no-no as far as I'm concerned, she manages to transcend the limitations of that tired genre.
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Posted by Zach Brooks, July 3, 2008 at 5:30 PM
At first glance this may look like your standard chocolate/vanilla swirled soft serve, but it most definitely is not. It's the latest offering from Kyotofu, the Japanese dessert restaurant/bakery/tofu shrine in Hell's Kitchen. Added to the menu at the beginning of June, the soft serve is made entirely from soy milk, and the flavors change every Tuesday. This week you can choose between, or swirl, chocolate black soybean and white sesame, and for $3.85 you get a small cup plus one of six toppings, which include two kinds of mochi, Kuromitsu whipped cream, compote, fresh fruit, or Mugi-choco, a chocolate covered puffed barley (which you can tell from the photo above, won out.)
Casual soft serve fans may not see what the big deal is, but ice cream thrillseekers will appreciate the beaniness of the chocolate, and the slightly-grainy-in-a-good-way nuttiness of the white sesame. If the thought of another cone at Mister Softee bores you to tears, Kyotofu has your new favorite summertime treat.
Kyotofu
705 Ninth Avenue, New York NY 10019; (nr. 48th Street; map)
212-974-6012
kyotofu-nyc.com
Posted by Erin Zimmer, July 2, 2008 at 6:00 PM
A debate regarding patriotism has us puzzled here at Serious Eats Headquarters. Is it un-American to eat a flag? Destruction it may be, but we're not dragging the cookie through the dirt or anything. Just nibblin' on the stripes. Mmm, America.
Amy's Bread will be closed on the 4th, so grab these today or tomorrow. Flags are $3, big stars $2.75, small stars $1 and those flip-flops with the adorable "toe polish," $2. By the 5th, they'll likely just be crumbs, but Amy's Bread should have patriotic cupcakes all weekend. Amy's Bread has three locations in Manhattan.
Posted by Adam Kuban, June 6, 2008 at 1:15 PM
Serious Eats contributor Matthew Amster-Burton just tipped me to this review of Wondee Siam in the Bangkok Post: "I read the Bangkok Post review every Friday, and I've never seen them venturing outside Thailand before."
After brushing off popular Sri Praphai, the paper's Ung-Aang Talay writes:
Wondee Siam's som tam Thai was quite authentic, made from crunchy strands of green papaya with only a few easily avoidable threads of carrot thrown in for colour. It also included crisp, sweet green beans and American cherry tomatoes, so much tastier and more fragrant than local Thai equivalents. Sourness seemed to come from American limes, perhaps Key limes, whose flavour was close enough to Thai manao. The crab, however, was alien, larger and with a thicker shell than poo na and more difficult to eat, but still viable. It was made sour and hot and was very satisfying.
Talay also liked the soft-shell crab there. [Snip, after the jump.]
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Posted by Zach Brooks, May 30, 2008 at 4:45 PM
Seeing this post about mason jars on the main page of Serious Eats yesterday made me think of one of my favorite New York City drinks, the sweet tea at Daisy May's BBQ. Available at their 11th Ave. restaurant, and from their Midtown cart, I can't think of a more refreshing drink for this time of year (you may say the secret ingredient is sugar). Flavored with mint, it's a tad bit pricey at $4, but you get to keep the mason jar. It may not be a collectible, but it sure is fun to collect.
Daisy May's BBQ
Restaurant: 623 11th Ave. (at 46th St.), 212-977-1500.
Cart: 50th St. between 6th and 7th Avenues, No Phone.
http://www.daisymaysbbq.com/
Posted by Ed Levine, May 27, 2008 at 11:00 PM
Wine bars with cheese programs are cropping up everywhere, but even more exciting to a cheese freak like me are the places that put the proverbial cart before the horse, or, in this case, the cheese plate before the wine bottle. The year-old Casellula (a bad, impossible-to-spell pretentious name that has something to do with the Latin roots of house and cheese), actually calls itself a cheese and wine bar, so you know what its owner, Brian Keyser, considers most important. Amen, Brian.
The kitchen that turns out the extremely tasty and carefully thought-out cheese-based food here is actually located behind the bar, and in fact it's not really a kitchen at all. It's a carefully laid-out mise en place with a sandwich press and a small convection oven. What they understand here is that cheese is so powerful a flavoring agent that this set-up produces plenty of delicious, complex, elemental flavors and dishes that could satisfy anyone, especially anyone who likes cheese and is willing to construct an entire meal around it.
Casellula Cheese & Wine Cafe
401 West 52nd Street, New York NY 10019 (b/n Ninth and Tenth; map); 212-247-8137; casellula.com
Must-Haves: Domestic Darlings cheese flight, chistorras in a blanket, stuffed Peppadew peppers, endive salad, goose breast reuben, mac and cheese, goat cheese hazelnut truffles
What You'll Spend: $25 for two courses, not including wine
Grade: B+
You can get your cheese fix many different ways here. Six dollars gets you one cheese from the constantly rotating list of 40, served with really good bread from Tom Cat Bakery and a seemingly endless variety of house-constructed condiments. Tia Keenan, who oversees the cheese program, is uncommonly gifted when it comes to cheese and condiment pairings.
When I ordered the Domestic Darlings flight ($18), the Green Hill from Sweet Grass Dairy was served with candied pecans, the 5 Spoke Creamery Tumbleweed was served with a tomato relish, and Faribault Dairy's St. Pete's Select Blue was served with a surprisingly felicitous chocolate wafer. All thoughtful, wonderfully realized pairings.
Spanish chistorra sausages wrapped in tortillas and stuffed Peppadew.
Four dollars gets you four little Spanish chistorra sausages wrapped in tortillas, in a pool of Mexican crema (sour cream), arranged like Lincoln logs. Even better are the stuffed Peppadew (cherry peppers; $7) wrapped with speck (smoked prosciutto) and stuffed with buffalo mozzarella. These are so good that you will be disinclined to share them once you've had your first.
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Posted by Ed Levine, February 24, 2008 at 9:22 AM
Kyotofu's Signature Sweet Tofu. Photograph by Tam
I finally made it to the jewel-like Japanese tofu palace Kyotofu yesterday. I had the chef's lunch dessert selection, and thought most of the offerings were more intriguing than singularly delicious. I did find its Signature Sweet Tofu, topped with kuromitsu black sugar syrup and served with a white sesame tuile, to be an oddly beguiling, satisfying creamy dessert. The insanely smooth texture of the tofu was like the best creme brulee or pot de creme you've ever had. The rest of the selections, cookies, sansho-pepper tofu cheesecake, and a yokan (a traditional Japanese sweet made of azuki beans, agar agar, and sugar that was halfway between jello and jelly, all struck me as having an acquired appeal.
But it was another item on the menu that caught my eye on the way out that totally rocked.
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Posted by Ed Levine, December 5, 2007 at 12:00 PM
Short ribs are not a cut of meat most pitmasters bother with in barbecue epicenters like Kansas City, Texas, and Memphis, and yet I have found that my favorite dish at both Daisy May's and Hill Country is short ribs. At Daisy May's, where unfortunately you have to special order the short ribs, Adam Perry Lang leaves the crusty on the outside, tender on the inside short rib meat on the bone, but each rib is easy to carve and eat. At Hill Country the short ribs (which were a special yesterday) are off the bone. The meat is carved into trapezoid-shaped slices that are perfectly marbled and meltingly tender.
I never thought I would say this, but perhaps there is something the great pitmasters around the country can learn from their New York brethren.
Daisy May's BBQ USA
623 11th Ave. (corner of 46th St.)
New York, NY 10036
Ph: 212-977-1500
Hill Country
30 West 26th Street (bet. Broadway and 6th Ave.)
New York, NY 10010
Ph: 212-255-4544
Posted by Ed Levine, November 14, 2007 at 11:17 AM
A selection of pies and tarts from Trois Pommes Patisserie.
As many of you know I am a pie freak, which in New York is not a bad thing, as New York has quietly become an excellent pie town. Last year some of you might recall I posted about New York's five best pies. It is now time to move beyond my top five pie list in New York, to a place called Pie Heaven.
I have eaten hundreds of pies in Gotham, and I believe that no one should want for a great piece of pie on Thanksgiving. So in honor of Ben Leventhal and the rest of the crew at Eater I give you my current, up-to-the-minute list of fine pie establishments in and around New York. A lot of these places don't allow walk-in pie purchases on either the day before Thanksgiving or on Turkey Day itself, so to avoid extreme Thanksgiving pie disappointment, call now.
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Online food magazine Cravings is having a shochu tasting event at Kyotofu. Shochu is a distilled liquor popular in Japan—often weaker than whisky but stronger than sake. The respective staffs of Cravings and Kyotofu will match different types of sochu with a dinner menu prepared by Kyotofu's chef, Magdalena Wong.
Details: November 19, 8 to 10:30 p.m.; $100 a person, all inclusive; RSVP at Cravings. Kyotofu is located at 705 Ninth Avenue, b/n 48th and 49th streets.
