Manhattan: Tribeca
Posted by Kathy YL Chan, September 23, 2008 at 6:00 PM
I was so sure that my craving for something chocolatey, fudgy, and full of walnuts would be satisfied after the cookie I had at Payard Patisserie. But unfortunately, the combination of chocolate and walnuts has this uncanny ability to make me desire the goods even more. In other words, consuming the object of wonder does little to satiate a craving—the more I eat, the more I crave.
I entered Bouley Bakery in Tribeca not quite knowing what I wanted, though faint images of cookies were floating though my mind. I browsed, oohed and ahhed, and then stopped dead in my tracks upon the sight of baskets filled with their dark chocolate brownies...with walnuts! So many walnuts. Losing all interest in looking any further, I declared the brownie my own and devoured it before reaching the front door. Sinking into bite after bite, I found the brownie to be dark with cocoa, yet texturally light and lush. Hovering on the cakey end of the spectrum and less sweet than I expected, walnuts were in abundance, and I ended up consuming the rather large treat without the slightest bit of hesitation.
Bouley Bakery
120 W Broadway, New York NY 10013 (b/n Duane and Reade Streets; map)
212-608-5829
davidbouley.com
Posted by Jenn Sit, July 31, 2008 at 1:30 PM
"Cheap" is relative. With cheap eats lists coming at you from every other magazine and website, I find myself scouring them and wondering how these writing staffs determine what exactly "cheap" means to them. Nothing got me thinking about this more than my recent trip to Province Chinese Canteen in Tribeca. Just meters from Chinatown, this eatery serves up sandwiches stuffed into small fluffy mantou. With fillings like short rib & kimchee, it was hard to resist a trip. Yet, with its close proximity to Chinatown, the mecca of truly cheap eats, I couldn't help but wonder why I was paying $4.25 for a sandwich as small as my palm.
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Posted by Ed Levine, July 1, 2008 at 11:00 PM
Photographs by Robyn Lee
Matsugen
241 Church Street New York, NY 10013 (at Leonard Street; map); 212-925-0202
Service: Knowledgeable (which isn't easy given the intricacies of the menu) and attentive, with a refreshing lack of downtown attitude and cool
Setting: They have warmed up the all-white, Sleeper-like design of Richard Maier considerably
Compare It To: Nobu, Soto, Bar Masa
Must-Haves: Inaku soba with goma-dare (sesame sauce), sea urchin with yuzu jelly, Kurobuta pork loin shabu shabu, grilled Kurobuta pork belly, grapefruit jelly
Cost: This will vary wildly depending on what you order. It could be anywhere from $60 to $125 for three courses, including a glass of wine, tax, and tip
Grade: B+ overall. (Meals can range from an A to a B, depending on what you order)
There are so many misconceptions floating around about Matsugen that I feel compelled to debunk all of them before proceeding any further.
Misconception No. 1: Jean-Georges Vongerichten is the chef at Matsugen.
Fact: He didn't even consult on the menu, although because he was asked, he contributed his now-legendary molten chocolate cake recipe (albeit this time accompanied by green tea ice cream). Matsugen is the first mainland U.S. restaurant opened by the Matsushita brothers, high-end Japanese restaurateurs (three of whom are currently working here) who own restaurants in Japan and Hawaii. Vongerichten absolutely adores Japanese food, thinks very highly of the brothers and their restaurants, needed a concept to install at the old 66 space, and made a deal as a restaurateur to bring in Matsugen. If Matsugen were a movie, Vongerichten would be an executive producer or maybe the producer, not the director. The first title card of the Matsugen movie might read Jean-Georges Vongerichten Presents.
Misconception No. 2: Matsugen is a noodle bar.
Fact: Wrong, wrong, wrong, as my son used to say when he was seven. There are some truly amazing rough-grained soba noodles made in-house served at Matsugen, but most of the menu is not noodle-based. In fact, most of the menu at the restaurant looks surprisingly like your neighborhood Japanese restaurant. There's sushi, sashimi, tempura, and shabu-shabu. No ice cream tempura, thank God.
Misconception No. 3: Matsugen is ridiculously expensive and overpriced.
Fact: There are a few very expensive items at Matusgen (Japanese Wagyu beef, seared fatty bluefin tuna), but that's because the ingredients themselves are very expensive. If you order carefully, you can eat very well here for less than $60 a head. It may not be the most exciting meal of your life, but it may be the most authentic contemporary Japanese meal you can get in this country.
Now that we've gotten all of this out of the way, let's get to the food.
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Posted by Ed Levine, June 25, 2008 at 6:00 PM
Editor's note: Every afternoon we post a short Sugar Rush to end your day. Think of it as the dessert to your daily blog reading. Today, the Godfather of Serious Eats New York, Ed Levine, hits up two new ice cream places in Tribeca. —Zach
Strawberries and clotted cream ice cream from Duane Park. Photograph by Gordon Mark
A couple of weeks ago I hit up two new spots for ice cream in Tribeca.
The folks at Duane Park Cafe opened up a tiny ice cream scooperie in the window. The bourbon butter pecan ice cream was outstanding, creamy, smooth, and full flavored. The strawberries and clotted cream is simply the creamiest strawberry ice cream imaginable, though as is often the case, the frozen strawberries were a deliciousness hindrance. The apple pie made great use of what we assume must have been last night's dessert at the restaurant. Peanut butter is a flavor that doesn't often work in ice cream, but Duane Park's peanut butter ice cream tasted like ultra-creamy smooth peanut butter of the highest quality.
The flavors vary from day to day because they're made entirely from organic ingredients and will vary depending on what is available to the chef; you may want to call first unless you're willing to play ice cream bingo. Skip the sorbet and the frozen yogurt. Both were icy and kind of nasty. 157 Duane Street, New York NY 10013 (near West Broadway; map); 212-732-5555
Right around the corner from Duane Park, The Odeon has set up a little ice cream cart in its outdoor cafe. All three house-made flavors were icy and pale-flavored. Did anybody taste these before they were put into the cart? I doubt it. 145 West Broadway, New York NY 10013 (near West Broadway; map); 212-233-0507
The winner of this taste-off? Duane Park Cafe by at least a gallon.
Posted by Ed Levine, May 16, 2008 at 2:30 PM
Taste of Tribeca is one of the more fun, reasonably priced food events in New York.
For $40 ($45 at the door), you get to try six tasting plates from an impressive line-up of Tribeca restaurants, including Bouley, Chanterelle, Blaue Gans, Centrico, Pepolino (one of city's best under-the-radar Tuscan restaurants), and The Harrison. Plus, it's for a great cause: two terrific Tribeca public schools, PS 150 and PS 234.
If you click through to Taste of Tribeca's fairly well-organized website, you can actually try to plot which booths you want to visit. Alas, it must be pointed out that many restaurants, including all of David Bouley's (Bouley, Bouley Bakery, Danube) and The Harrison, did not submit their dishes to the organizers, so when you click on their names, it just says "chef's surprise." No help!
Anyway, here's where I'll be headed tomorrow. Don't worry, I've left some room on my dance card to partake of the chef's surprises.
Carnitas tacos from Centrico
Schnitzel and potato salad from Blaue Gans
Pappe al pomodoro, the incomparable Tuscan tomato bread soup, from Pepolino
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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Posted by Ed Levine, November 2, 2007 at 7:45 AM
Here's a baker's dozen plus two of my favorite bakeries in New York. Are they the best fifteen in Gotham? You tell me.
As the northeast weather turns colder and Thanksgiving approaches this man's attention turns to baked goods. Of course it doesn't take much to get me thinking about pies, cakes, cookies, and any other food item containing the holy trinity of butter, sugar, and flour. That smell, that wondrous, incredibly alluring bakery smell, is what I live for. If I'm feeling blue, that smell transports me to a better, happier place.
New York City happens to be home to more great bakeries per square block than any other city in the country. Why? A couple of reasons. New York has long been the first stop in America for an incredibly diverse ethnic groups. Many of those ethnic groups, the Germans, the Russian and Polish Jews, the Hungarians, the Austrians, the southern Italians, and even in smaller number the French settled here at different points starting at the turn of the twentieth century. Many of these folks brought incredibly rich baking traditions with them.
During the eighties, however, as ethnic enclaves began to break down and disperse, many of the great ethnic bakeries of New York closed. French bakeries like Dumas, Bonte, and Colette shut their doors. So did the great Hungarian bakeries Riga and Mrs. Herbst's. Ditto for great Jewish-style bakeries like Litchtman's and Grossinger's.
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Posted by Ed Levine, May 10, 2007 at 11:59 AM
I had lunch at Pepolino the other day, and after a very good, very Italian meal I immediately asked myself why I don't eat there more often. Pepolino is the brain child of Patrizio Siddu and Enzo Perrone, two alumni of the famed Florence trattoria Cibreo. The main dining room is a sun-washed, simply decorated room, painted that golden yellow ubiquitous in Italian restaurants in America. Upstairs there is a 50 seat dining room that is good to know about for relatively inexpensive private parties.
Even though it was a gorgeous May day I had the hearty tomato and bread soup and a spinach sformato (savory flan) as starters. The feather-light veal and ricotta meatballs (polpettine) were served with slices of roast potato. Friends had the spaghettini with braised leeks and parmesan cheese and the pappardelle with fresh thyme and tomato. Both were sauced appropriately lightly.
For dessert, the city's best ricotta cheesecake: airy, lemony and just creamy enough. I called it out in my best cheesecake in the city story in the Times a few years ago, and it remains one of Gotham's great taste treats.
When you eat at Pepolino you get fresh, authentically Italian food, made with good ingredients and cooked with care. In short, Pepolino is just what you want in a casual but serious neighborhood Italian restaurant. I wish it was in my neighborhood.
Pepolino
Address: 281 West Broadway, New York, NY 10013 (b/n Lispenard and Canal; map)
Phone: 212-966-9983
Website: pepolino.com
Posted by Ed Levine, September 6, 2006 at 7:28 AM
Bouchon Bakery's bouchon, Shake Shack's cone, and Burgers and Cupcakes' mini-cupcake
So what can you buy for $2.00 or less that is good enough to tell your friends about, (not including pizza slices, which I'll deal with separately)?
My top 11 list (is that a baker's ten?) list, not in any particular order. Please pardon the lack of visuals and links. I'm totally crazed this morning.
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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 15, 2006 at 10:28 AM
Why do most birthcake cakes suck?
I'd really like to know. While everybody else is singing "Happy Birthday," I'm thinking about how that first forkful of cake is going to be dry, virtually tasteless, and inedibly sweet, with grainy icing. Birthday cakes are often so bad I welcome the taste of the melted wax from the candles. I know I'm going to be seen as a killjoy and a curmudgeon, but I'm willing to take one for the team (of passionate eaters) here.
But on Saturday night, at a friend's 50th birthday, we had a killer chocolate mocha cake that could have been served as a dessert at a great New American restaurant like Craft or the Union Square Cafe. That the cake was great was no surprise to me. I told my friends to get the cake from Two Little Red Hens. I've had at least ten different kinds of cake from TLRH, everything from yellow to white to chocolate cake, with every kind of frosting and filling imaginable, and I've never been disappointed.
There are a few other neighborhood bakeries that make very good birthday cakes: Soutine, and Amy's Bread.
I used to love Cupcake Cafe cakes, and while they are indeed beautiful, I have found that over the years they have gotten so buttery that's all they taste of. The Cupcake Cafe cakes prove that in fact food can suffer from butter overload, and I didn't think that was possible.
So maybe birthday cakes don't have to suck. We just have such low expectations for them that we accept bad birthday cakes as a given, and we convince ourselves that they're not all that bad (my very polite wife's solution).
As a result we suffer in silence. Not any more. Join me in my "Birthday cakes don't have to suck" crusade.
Posted by Ed Levine, April 8, 2006 at 12:17 PM
It's really interesting to find out what you learn when you dine at the same restaurant two days in a row. You begin to see what it's like to be a restaurant critic at a serious publication like the New York Times, New York Magazine or the Los Angeles Times. Publications of that caliber give their critics the financial resources and the time to visit restaurants at least three times before writing their review.
So I had my Frank Bruni (currently the restaurant critic at the NY Times) moment this week when I ate dinner on consecutive nights at the "newish" casual German restaurant (maybe gastropub would be a better descriptor), Blaue Gans, owned by chef-restaurateur Kurt Gutenbrunner, who also co-owns Wallse,Thor, and Cafe Sabarsky. At dinner on Thursday night, I loved just about everything we ate at Blaue Gans. The Burenwurst was a pork and beef sausage positively bursting with flavor, accompanied by delicious sauerkraut, a not too spicy mustard and pungent horseradish. The bread that showed up at our table was kind of a limp, wan version of German dark rye bread, and even though it was accompanied by a tasty, smooth liptauer spread (made of farmer's cheese, paprika, and onion) we ordered a pretzel to accompany our sausage and the terrific smoked trout that was more terrine than filet. The pretzel was a revelation: crisp enough on the outside, tender on the inside, with just enough interior and exterior salt. If it had been baked a little longer I would have declared it the best soft pretzel I have ever eaten.
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Posted by Ed Levine, November 5, 2005 at 1:48 PM
A great turnover is a rare and wonderful thing. And in New York, there is only one truly great turnover, made by Madeline Lanciani in her easy to miss Tribeca neighborhood bakery, Duane Park Patisserie (179 Duane St. bet. Hudson and Greenwich Sts. 212-274-8447). Her turnovers are buttery and flaky, with firm but not overly sweet fruit inside. I can never choose between the apple and the cherry, so I end up getting one of each. I feel guilty about buying two such decadent creations, so I end up rationalizing my purchase. I'll just bring one home to Vicky, I say to myself. But I know the chances of one of the turnovers making it home intact are nil. Sure enough, by the time the Number 1 subway reaches Times Square, only four stops from home, the turnovers are both gone. I toss the empty butter-stained white bag into the trash and hang my head in shame. Another failed exercise in restraint.
