Manhattan: Times Square
Posted by Ed Levine, April 14, 2009 at 11:00 PM
Photographs by Robyn Lee
Schnipper's Quality Kitchen
620 Eighth Avenue, New York, NY 10018 (at 41st Street; map); 212-921-2400; schnippers.com
Service: Sometimes fast, sometimes slow (typical start-up issues)
Setting: Gleaming silver, white, and red interior with lots of seating and an open kitchen.
Compare It To: Shack Shack
Must-Haves: Cheeseburger, onion rings, chocolate malt
Cost: $15.50 for the above meal (yikes!)
Grade: B+ for the burgers, C+ for the rest of the food
Schnipper's Quality Kitchen is first and foremost a focused concept. It's a restaurant, it's an eatery, it's a burger joint, it's a comfort food emporium. It's all of the above, but most of all it's a concept. The Schnipper brothers, Jon and Andrew, know something about launching comfort food concepts and rolling them out. They successfully did just that with the more-than-decent Hale & Hearty Soups, which they created in 1995 and sold in 2006. Now they're back with Schnipper's, a comfort food concept that features burgers, hot dogs, fries, onion rings, mac and cheese, fish tacos, salads, and shakes.
George "Hamburger America" Motz bestowed his seal of approval on Schnipper's, so Robyn and I figured we should go try the burger along with the other comfort foods that burger-obsessed George never got to.
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Posted by Ed Levine, July 23, 2008 at 2:00 PM
I don't know about other folks, but I loved seeing Frank Bruni's review of Szechuan Gourmet in the New York Times. It's a restaurant that very much deserves two stars in my eyes. Szechuan Gourmet has been the object of our affection for awhile here at SE:NY, so I wanted to find out why Bruni decided to review it now.
Here's the text of my email to Frank:
What made you decide to review Szechuan Gourmet now? I've always found it curious that the Times never reviewed it, given A) how good it is and B) how close it is to the newspaper's building. As you may or may not know it's been a favorite of bloggers for years. I'm writing a blog post about your review and found myself wondering about the above.
His swift and straightforward response, after the jump:
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Posted by Joe DiStefano, June 5, 2008 at 12:00 PM
Sake Bar Hagi has received so much media attention, including a New York Times review and a segment on Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations that it's often impossible to get into. Nevertheless it remains one of my favorite izakaya in Manhattan, due in part to the sheer incongruousness of its Times Square location. Add to that a fairly priced selection of sakes and some interesting specials and I’m one happy gaijin.
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Today at 5 p.m., sample bits of food from Times Square restaurants at this annual block party. We recommend bypassing Applebee's and Hard Rock Cafe in favor of Toloache and Chop Suey. Admission is free; you only pay for the food you eat. 46th Street between Broadway and Ninth Avenue.
Posted by Ed Levine, May 17, 2007 at 7:13 AM
I've always liked Marco Canora's food. I first had it at the Tuscany Inn, his mother's restaurant-inn on Martha's Vineyard, then at Craft and the first, most delicious incarnation of Craftbar (all hail the chicken meatball soup, the duck panini, and the doughnuts), and finally at Hearth in the East Village. But the East Village is a major schlep for me. I take the 2 or the 3 to 14th Street, walk that long corridor to the sixth avenue stop on the L train, and take that to First Ave. It sounds worse than it is, but the contemplation of said trip just made it far less likely that I would go there on a whim.
So when Marco and his partner Paul Grieco opened Insieme, in the Michelangelo Hotel, 51st and 7th Ave., his food literally became a lot more accessible to me. The room is a rectangle, the walls are bathed in white, gauzy material, and the tables are very well-spaced. I don't think Bruni is going to like the space (he's much more design-conscious than I am), but I found it to be a lovely venue to actually talk to the people I ate there with. There was no need to shout to be heard across the table. What a concept in this day and age in NYC.
The food is divided into two sides, Italian contemporary and traditional Italian. Sounds sort of silly and theoretical and pretentious, but in actuality it's not. I've had lots of stuff off both sides of the menu and almost all of it was delicious, approachable, and full-flavored.
His take on crudo worked wonders, the asparagus soup was a wonder, the pork loin was impossibly tender and very porky, the olive fetuccine with duck ragu was grandma food if your grandmother had done a bunch of stages at great restaurants in Italy and here. My single favorite dish is the potato ravioli filled with fava beans, mint, and fennel cheese. All sounds pretty yummy, doesn't it?
Other food folks have already discovered it. Ruth Reichl loved the lasagna.
To me, Marco Canora has come full circle, from cooking traditional Italian food with contemporary touches with his Mom at the Tuscany Inn to the fine, if little too Craft-derived-for -my-taste food at Hearth, to Insieme, where he has brought together the breadth of his cooking experiences to create a menu full of extraordinarily tasty things you just want to eat.
If I were the Times Critic, I would give it 3 stars, and just to beat my friend Ben
Leventhal of Eater to the punch, that's what I think Bruni is going to give it. Even money on three stars.
A three course meal with a glass of wine will be anywhere from $60-75 dollars with tax and tip.
Insieme
777 Seventh Avenue (51st St.)
New York, NY
Ph: 212-582-1310
Posted by Ed Levine, August 17, 2006 at 7:26 AM
Yesterday I posted my ten favorite fancy-pants burgers in New York City. They all cost more than ten bucks and aspire to hamburger greatness. They were:
1. Cafe D'Alsace
2. Telepan
3. Union Square Cafe (only available at lunch)
4. Spotted Pig
5. Cookshop
6. Country
7. Burger Bar at Grand Central
8. Nice Matin
9. Bar Americain
10. David Burke Sliders at Bloomingdale's
For addresses and phone numbers go to Menupages.
An ELE reader commended me on the list and mentioned Home's burger as one I should consider for the list. Adam Kuban, founder of A Hamburger Today, the nation's leading hamburger website, liked the list but wondered aloud about whether the fries should make a difference if what you're trying to judge is the burger.
Josh Ozersky, Mr. Cutlets, newly installed online Food Editor for New York Magazine and a serious burger maven, then weighed in with the force of twenty double quarter pounders with cheese. He said, and I quote, "The fact is Fancy Pants burgers are nearly indistinguishable...Eating them is just eating a meatloaf between two slices of obtrusive bread. All character in hamburgers exists in the lower realms, where the inside is an afterthought, and the surface speaks volumes."
Is Mr. Cutlets right when he suggests that fancy-pants burgers all suck?
Is any burger bigger than Shake Shack's doomed to failure? Do fries not matter? Is any roll other than a generic white bun a pretentious exercise in Foodiedom? Or is Josh a reverse burger snob, a purist who is ignoring the inherent deliciousness of a burger made with high-quality meat, cheese, bun and fries?
Posted by Ed Levine, August 16, 2006 at 7:57 AM
I don't know why, but lately I find myself eating fancy-pants burgers at every turn. Perhaps I'm coming under the influence of Adam Kuban, who really does order a hamburger in every restaurant that has one on the menu. Whatever the reason, I have discovered a handful of terrific fancy-pants burgers lately, enough so that if I updated my New York Times piece on burgers I would have a very different "best of" list.
Let's define our terms.
Qualities of a Fancy-Pants Burger
ound beef and ground beef only. Burgers with foie gras in them like the new Robuchon restaurant in the Four Seasons Hotel or the DB burger are burgers in name only. They
What is a fancy-pants burger? It's a burger that:
- Costs more than ten dollars and less than twenty.
- Comes with excellent french fries.
- Is served by a waiter in a comfortable, white tablecloth setting.
- Is made from fresh, high-quality ingredients.
Moreover, because it's so pricey every element of a fancy-pants burger must be nearly perfect. That is:
- The bun must be a high quality piece of bread either grilled or toasted.
- The cheese must be fully melted: no unmelted cheese blankets allowed.
- High quality, freshly ground meat with enough fat to make the burger moist, beefy and juicy.
- Lettuce must not be shredded and brown. Actually, lettuce should be banned from burgers, fancy-pants or otherwise.
- Onions should not be raw; they should be grilled, fried, and/or sauteed.
- Relish or pickles would in a perfect world be housemade.
- Should be cooked as ordered the first time around (this is really hard, but at the very least they should get it right the second time around).
- No mustard or mayo should be put on the burger unless they are specifically requested (see below).
A bad fancy-pants burger is cause for fury and revolt, because who wants to pay all that money for a lousy burger that comes off as a pretentious exercise in populist food.
Lastly, a fancy-pants burger must still be made from high quality, freshly grmay taste great (the DB burger most assuredly does; I haven't had the Robuchon creation yet), but they are serious dishes created by world-class chefs that have been inspired by true burgers.
Anyway, here's my list of the Top Ten Fancy-Pants Burgers in New York City:
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