Where to Find the Best
Posted by Carey Jones, November 2, 2009 at 12:00 PM
[Photo: Robyn Lee]
As Liz Lemon so sagely observed, "All of humankind has one thing in common—the sandwich. I believe that all anyone really wants in this life is to sit in peace and eat a sandwich."
So lunchers, take note: New York may have no higher concentration of sandwich deliciousness than Bleecker Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues. At Serious Eats, we call it "Sandwich Alley." Sure, it's tourist-trafficked and traffic-thronged, lined with photo-snappers and discount boutiques. But between Murray's, and Amy's, and Faicco's, and the rest of the dozen sandwich-selling spots on this single block, there are more lunchtime choices than you could eat in a month.
That's a whole lotta sandwich shops.
So grab your sandwich of choice, wander down to Father Demo Square while the weather still lets you, and make your own date with Sandwich Alley.
The store-by-store lineup, after the jump.
Continue reading »
Posted by Ed Levine, October 27, 2009 at 11:00 PM
Top: Bill's Bar and Burger; bottom, left to right: Shake Shack and RUB. [Photographs: Robyn Lee (Bill's Bar and Burger and Shake Shack) and Nick Solares (RUB)]
Right now, at this moment, it's raining burgers in this burg. And not just any kind of burgers: smashed burgers made from freshly ground, humanely raised beef.
Danny Meyer and company were the pioneers of this style of burger in New York with the now legendary Shake Shack, though the Shackers don't really smash their meat so much as press it down rather gently. In fact, it should be noted that burger lovers owe Meyer a smashing debt of gratitude for the lead role he and his crew have taken in treating the reasonably priced burger with respect and love—and elevating it to serious deliciousness with careful preparation, cheffy techniques, and quality ingredients. But enough about the Shack for now.
Restaurateur Steve Hanson has now stepped up to the (blue) plate with his newly opened smashed burger emporium Bill's Bar and Burger. And RUB's pitmaster Scott Smith and co-owner Andrew Fischel have snuck up on Meyer and Hanson with their burger, which is currently being served only on Monday nights.
A Hamburger Today and Serious Eats have been chronicling Shake Shack's serious deliciousness for years now. More recently in the past few weeks, my man Adam Kuban waxed enthusiastically about Bill's, Kenji Alt told us how to fake the funk of the Shake Shack burger with his amazing Fake Shack post and recipe, and I had a ridiculously fabulous urban burger at RUB.
So what's left, my burger-loving compadres? Why, it's obvious to me: It's the Serious Eats New York–AHT smashed-burger roundup, the ultimate throwdown. Is there one smashed burger in New York City that reigns supreme? Which of these juicy suckers should you pledge your burger-loving allegiance to? Which burger is worth your hard-earned money, your valuable time, and your true burger devotion?
We've got you covered, starting now.
Continue reading »
Posted by Carey Jones, October 27, 2009 at 10:00 AM
[Photos: Carey Jones]
We've written about their banana whip; Ed's raved about their contributions to the New Amsterdam Market. But even though we've got a long-standing relationship with The Bent Spoon—one of our contributors worked there, and I spent several years making near-daily visits—we've never done the definitive post. So it was about time we made a return trip.
Opened in May of 2004 by Gabrielle Carbone and Matt Errico, The Bent Spoon is less an ice cream shop than a lab of ingredient wizardry. Sure, they have a few standard house flavors—no, not chocolate chip and strawberry; more like chocolate habanero and cardamom ginger.
But "seasonality" doesn't quite capture the philosophy behind the rest of their rotating offerings. It's not "Where can I get the best ingredients for this ice cream?" Rather, "This is what I want to be eating right now. Let's make an ice cream out of it!" That explains the sweet potato ice cream and the Triumph Brewery stout, the crème fraîche ice cream and the heirloom tomato sorbet. Olive oil. Bourbon with caramel and sea salt. Earl grey. Red cabbage. And, literally, hundreds more.
Continue reading »
Posted by Carey Jones, October 19, 2009 at 10:00 AM
[Photos: Robyn Lee]
Our Top Five
- The Winner: Two Little Red Hens
- Mona Lisa Pastry Shoppe
- Lady M Cake Boutique
- Cheesecake Factory
- Fairway Market
In the pantheon of iconic New York foods, not much outranks the proud cheesecake. Whether after dinner at Luger's, by the round at Eileen's, or shipped across the country by Junior's, New York cheesecakes are a force to be reckoned with. The cheesecake is a dessert that's perfect in its simplicity. A silky, creamy base, an optional thin crust—and that's it.
What makes a first-class cheesecake? It's smooth and creamy, just sweet enough, with a hint of tartness. If there's a crust, it adds something extra without overwhelming the taste of the cheesecake itself. And it's rich enough to seem a bit decadent, without going down like a cement pour. You should want to keep eating—at least, for more than one bite.
So we canvassed the boroughs for New York's best cheesecake, arrived at our finalists, and assembled our panel of crack tasters. All cakes were tasted blind, brought to the same temperature, in similar-size slices. We even scuffed up the edges of the more cosmetically privileged. And we had our tasters start with different samples, to cancel out the effects of palate fatigue—a real concern, after 14 cheesecakes. As it turns out, the first bite wasn't always the best bite.
(For the purposes of fair comparison, we went only with bakery cheesecakes, rather than restaurant ones. We also excluded all flavored and ricotta-based cheesecakes—stay tuned for later taste-tests.)
So after countless miles traveled, bites considered, and calories consumed, we've arrived at our winners. Our favorites, our surprise showings, and the best cheesecake in New York—after the jump.
Continue reading »
Posted by Carey Jones, October 6, 2009 at 11:30 AM
Or, 'Ed Levine's Existential Bagel Crisis'
[Photographs: Robyn Lee and Carey Jones]
The Heisen-Bagel Uncertainty Principle
n. The principle of bagels that holds the following: The act of transporting a bagel to a second location produces fundamental uncertainties in its inherent qualities, such that determining a true "best bagel," in a head-to-head face-off, becomes impossible.
It's a question asked so often that it's astounding that we've never attempted an answer.
Who makes the best bagel in New York?
There are a few clear contenders. In the past, Ed has leaned toward the Upper West Side's Absolute Bagels; his exhaustive 2003 bagel hunt for the New York Times also saluted Bagel Oasis and Hot Bialys in Queens, Terrace Bagels in Windsor Terrace, and Manhattan stalwart Murray's.
And then there are Ess-A-Bagel and H&H, and neighborhood favorites like Bagel Hole and Brooklyn Bagel—all of whom have their fanatical defenders.
So we organized a simple taste-test. Serious eaters would fan out over the three most bagel-happy boroughs and hurry back to World Headquarters with their piping hot loot, as fast as their feet, bikes, buses, trains, subways, or Zipcars could carry them. We'd cut them all up; we'd do a blind tasting; we'd ponder their merits and crown a winner. Simple, right?
But it wasn't that easy.
Ed, hard at work.
The problem became clear as we chomped our way through Round One, pens at the ready, taking bite after bite. None of the bagels were more than two hours old. All of them had been hand-delivered that morning. But chewing through so many mouthfuls of plain bagels, we all felt the same uneasy feeling descending upon us. Ed broke the silence.
"They all taste the same."
Well... not quite the same.
Continue reading »
Posted by Carey Jones, November 2, 2009 at 12:00 PM
[Photo: Robyn Lee]
As Liz Lemon so sagely observed, "All of humankind has one thing in common—the sandwich. I believe that all anyone really wants in this life is to sit in peace and eat a sandwich."
So lunchers, take note: New York may have no higher concentration of sandwich deliciousness than Bleecker Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues. At Serious Eats, we call it "Sandwich Alley." Sure, it's tourist-trafficked and traffic-thronged, lined with photo-snappers and discount boutiques. But between Murray's, and Amy's, and Faicco's, and the rest of the dozen sandwich-selling spots on this single block, there are more lunchtime choices than you could eat in a month.
That's a whole lotta sandwich shops.
So grab your sandwich of choice, wander down to Father Demo Square while the weather still lets you, and make your own date with Sandwich Alley.
The store-by-store lineup, after the jump.
Continue reading »
Posted by Ed Levine, October 27, 2009 at 11:00 PM
Top: Bill's Bar and Burger; bottom, left to right: Shake Shack and RUB. [Photographs: Robyn Lee (Bill's Bar and Burger and Shake Shack) and Nick Solares (RUB)]
Right now, at this moment, it's raining burgers in this burg. And not just any kind of burgers: smashed burgers made from freshly ground, humanely raised beef.
Danny Meyer and company were the pioneers of this style of burger in New York with the now legendary Shake Shack, though the Shackers don't really smash their meat so much as press it down rather gently. In fact, it should be noted that burger lovers owe Meyer a smashing debt of gratitude for the lead role he and his crew have taken in treating the reasonably priced burger with respect and love—and elevating it to serious deliciousness with careful preparation, cheffy techniques, and quality ingredients. But enough about the Shack for now.
Restaurateur Steve Hanson has now stepped up to the (blue) plate with his newly opened smashed burger emporium Bill's Bar and Burger. And RUB's pitmaster Scott Smith and co-owner Andrew Fischel have snuck up on Meyer and Hanson with their burger, which is currently being served only on Monday nights.
A Hamburger Today and Serious Eats have been chronicling Shake Shack's serious deliciousness for years now. More recently in the past few weeks, my man Adam Kuban waxed enthusiastically about Bill's, Kenji Alt told us how to fake the funk of the Shake Shack burger with his amazing Fake Shack post and recipe, and I had a ridiculously fabulous urban burger at RUB.
So what's left, my burger-loving compadres? Why, it's obvious to me: It's the Serious Eats New York–AHT smashed-burger roundup, the ultimate throwdown. Is there one smashed burger in New York City that reigns supreme? Which of these juicy suckers should you pledge your burger-loving allegiance to? Which burger is worth your hard-earned money, your valuable time, and your true burger devotion?
We've got you covered, starting now.
Continue reading »
Posted by Carey Jones, October 27, 2009 at 10:00 AM
[Photos: Carey Jones]
We've written about their banana whip; Ed's raved about their contributions to the New Amsterdam Market. But even though we've got a long-standing relationship with The Bent Spoon—one of our contributors worked there, and I spent several years making near-daily visits—we've never done the definitive post. So it was about time we made a return trip.
Opened in May of 2004 by Gabrielle Carbone and Matt Errico, The Bent Spoon is less an ice cream shop than a lab of ingredient wizardry. Sure, they have a few standard house flavors—no, not chocolate chip and strawberry; more like chocolate habanero and cardamom ginger.
But "seasonality" doesn't quite capture the philosophy behind the rest of their rotating offerings. It's not "Where can I get the best ingredients for this ice cream?" Rather, "This is what I want to be eating right now. Let's make an ice cream out of it!" That explains the sweet potato ice cream and the Triumph Brewery stout, the crème fraîche ice cream and the heirloom tomato sorbet. Olive oil. Bourbon with caramel and sea salt. Earl grey. Red cabbage. And, literally, hundreds more.
Continue reading »
Posted by Carey Jones, October 19, 2009 at 10:00 AM
[Photos: Robyn Lee]
Our Top Five
- The Winner: Two Little Red Hens
- Mona Lisa Pastry Shoppe
- Lady M Cake Boutique
- Cheesecake Factory
- Fairway Market
In the pantheon of iconic New York foods, not much outranks the proud cheesecake. Whether after dinner at Luger's, by the round at Eileen's, or shipped across the country by Junior's, New York cheesecakes are a force to be reckoned with. The cheesecake is a dessert that's perfect in its simplicity. A silky, creamy base, an optional thin crust—and that's it.
What makes a first-class cheesecake? It's smooth and creamy, just sweet enough, with a hint of tartness. If there's a crust, it adds something extra without overwhelming the taste of the cheesecake itself. And it's rich enough to seem a bit decadent, without going down like a cement pour. You should want to keep eating—at least, for more than one bite.
So we canvassed the boroughs for New York's best cheesecake, arrived at our finalists, and assembled our panel of crack tasters. All cakes were tasted blind, brought to the same temperature, in similar-size slices. We even scuffed up the edges of the more cosmetically privileged. And we had our tasters start with different samples, to cancel out the effects of palate fatigue—a real concern, after 14 cheesecakes. As it turns out, the first bite wasn't always the best bite.
(For the purposes of fair comparison, we went only with bakery cheesecakes, rather than restaurant ones. We also excluded all flavored and ricotta-based cheesecakes—stay tuned for later taste-tests.)
So after countless miles traveled, bites considered, and calories consumed, we've arrived at our winners. Our favorites, our surprise showings, and the best cheesecake in New York—after the jump.
Continue reading »
Posted by Carey Jones, October 6, 2009 at 11:30 AM
Or, 'Ed Levine's Existential Bagel Crisis'
[Photographs: Robyn Lee and Carey Jones]
The Heisen-Bagel Uncertainty Principle
n. The principle of bagels that holds the following: The act of transporting a bagel to a second location produces fundamental uncertainties in its inherent qualities, such that determining a true "best bagel," in a head-to-head face-off, becomes impossible.
It's a question asked so often that it's astounding that we've never attempted an answer.
Who makes the best bagel in New York?
There are a few clear contenders. In the past, Ed has leaned toward the Upper West Side's Absolute Bagels; his exhaustive 2003 bagel hunt for the New York Times also saluted Bagel Oasis and Hot Bialys in Queens, Terrace Bagels in Windsor Terrace, and Manhattan stalwart Murray's.
And then there are Ess-A-Bagel and H&H, and neighborhood favorites like Bagel Hole and Brooklyn Bagel—all of whom have their fanatical defenders.
So we organized a simple taste-test. Serious eaters would fan out over the three most bagel-happy boroughs and hurry back to World Headquarters with their piping hot loot, as fast as their feet, bikes, buses, trains, subways, or Zipcars could carry them. We'd cut them all up; we'd do a blind tasting; we'd ponder their merits and crown a winner. Simple, right?
But it wasn't that easy.
Ed, hard at work.
The problem became clear as we chomped our way through Round One, pens at the ready, taking bite after bite. None of the bagels were more than two hours old. All of them had been hand-delivered that morning. But chewing through so many mouthfuls of plain bagels, we all felt the same uneasy feeling descending upon us. Ed broke the silence.
"They all taste the same."
Well... not quite the same.
Continue reading »
Posted by Kathy YL Chan, September 28, 2009 at 12:00 PM
[Photos: Kathy Chan]
In the summer of 2008, we brought your our Guide to the Best Doughnuts in NYC. For that, we trekked up and down the city, eating doughnuts in every bakery and doughnut shop we could find—an exhausting, but intrepid effort.
But this time, we bring you the Top Five Fancy-Pants Doughnuts In New York City. "Fancy pants" doughnuts reside in higher-end restaurants, where the plates of fried dough might average $10. A higher price, to be sure—but one that factors in the cost of service and personal real estate at a classy establishment.
Some criteria of the standard fancy-pants doughnut? Served in a restaurant, of course. Always fried to order, and delivered piping hot. And the doughnuts come with "sides"—whether they be dipping sauces, or shooters, or ice cream, they do not sit alone.
After the jump, our five favorites.
Continue reading »
Posted by The Serious Eats Team, September 24, 2009 at 10:00 AM
Think of New York's greatest foods, and your mind might leap to pizza, or bagels, or a huge pastrami sandwich. But fried chicken?
New York has never been a first-class fried chicken town, but these days, it's popping up on more high-end menus than pork belly. And though we've eaten our fair share, we hadn't done an exhaustive survey. Until now. With Momofuku and Locanda Verde birds still fresh and crisp in our minds, we set out to find the city's best fancy-pants fried chicken: newcomers, old standards, specials, and all.
What qualifies as fancy-pants? Any fried chicken at a chef-driven restaurant, costing more that $15.
In ranking it all, we looked at the following criteria—in each category, giving the plate between one (worst) and five (best) Serious Clucks:
- Skin and batter: Was it crisp and crunchy? Did the batter and the skin become one? Was the exterior light, or did the batter and the crust overwhelm everything else?
- White meat: Was it tender? Was it juicy? Did it have any discernible chicken flavor?
- Dark meat: Again, is it tender and juicy? It's easier to get the thigh and the drumstick moist and juicy because there's a lot more internal fat in those parts of the chicken—but is it cooked through to the bone? Often, even carefully cooked fried chicken is bloody at the thigh bone. This should not be.
- Spiciness: Was the chicken well-seasoned? Enough salt? Enough pepper? What other spices were discernible in the crust? Did the spice mixture work together as a whole?
- Sides: What was included on the plate? Worth eating?
- Price-Value Proposition: Was it a good deal considering the quality of the food, the care that went into cooking it, and the setting you ate it in?
Possible perfect score: 30 Serious Clucks.
Our top eleven birds, and the title of The Best Fancy-Pants Fried Chicken In New York, after the jump.
Continue reading »
Posted by Adam Kuban, June 10, 2009 at 12:00 PM
Nostalgia goes a long way. This vintage 1956 Harvester International Metro van, home to Skippy's Hot Dogs, all but begs you to stop—even if you're full of pizza, as we were when we visited recently.
"First time here," said Skippy's proprietor Dawn Bellach, issuing not a question but a statement.
"Yeah," I said. "Do we look like that much like flustered newbies?"
"I've been here 30 years," Bellach said. "I know who's new and who's a regular."
So we did as any newcomer would do and asked for the most popular thing on the menu: the chili cheese dog. For good measure, we also ordered a hot dog with mustard only.
"You want that chili dog with hot or mild sauce?" Bellach asked.
Continue reading »
Posted by Ed Levine, August 5, 2008 at 11:30 PM
Photographs by Robyn Lee
The bar for tacos in Manhattan is not set very high, and the fish taco bar here is set even lower. So when Pinche Taqueria owner and Soho Films partner Jeffrey Chartier announces to the world that he is opening a branch of his Tijuana taqueria in part to show other downtown taquerias like La Esquina how to make a proper fish taco, it sounds like a plenty plausible throwdown.
Pinche Taqueria
227 Mott Street, New York NY 10012 (between Prince and Spring streets; map); 212-625-0090; pinchetaqueria.com
Service: Friendly but surprisingly slow for what is basically a self-service operation
Setting: Your basic unairconditioned taco counter with a few seats inside and a bench and a two-person counter outside
Compare It To: La Esquina, Pampano Taqueria, Bonita
Must Haves: Fish tacos, shrimp tacos, carnitas mulita, huevos con chorizo, aguas
Grade: A for the fish tacos and the shrimp tacos, B+ for the carnitas burrito or tacos, and a B- for the rest of the food
I had fish tacos from Pinche and La Esquina within minutes of each other. One bite in at Pinche and I could tell that these folks knew exactly what they were doing. They make a killer fish taco. Chunks of crisp fried fish are tucked into a house-made tortilla and topped with cabbage, a spicy cilantro-spiked mayonnaise, and guacamole. These tacos are crunchy, flaky, spicy, and creamy. What more could you want from a taco? It really is the first good fish taco I've had outside Southern California or Mexico, though the one I had at Bonita in Williamsburg was damn good. And the shrimp taco (both the fish and the shrimp tacos are $3.75) may be even better, as the crisp, small-but-not-teeny shrimp have some actual shrimp flavor.
Meanwhile, over at La Esquina, just watching the guys in the kitchen make my fish taco, I knew it was going to be no contest. The cook took what appeared to be a pregrilled fish kebab out of a fridge and put it on the grill. It was a lame, half-hearted fish-taco-making effort.
So Chartier wins this hyperlocal fish-taco throwdown handily. But what about the rest of the food?
Continue reading »
Posted by Ed Levine, June 10, 2008 at 10:55 PM
Photographs by Robyn Lee
Roberta's
261 Moore Street, Brooklyn, NY 11206 (near Bogart Street; map); 718-417-1118; robertaspizza.com
Must-Haves: Paige's Breakfast Burrito, Calzone, Guanciale and Egg Pizza, Porchetta and Fontina Sandwich
What You'll Spend: $25 per person for salad, pizza, soft drink, tax, and tip. Roberta's is BYO on beer and wine
Grade: B
There are three kinds of people in the pizza-making universe. There are the to-the-oven-born, old-school types like Lawrence Ciminieri of Totonno's, whose great uncle Anthony Pero (nicknamed "Totonno") introduced pizza to the family gene pool almost a hundred years ago. Then there are the obsessive, perfectionist, chef/bread baker types, like Anthony Mangieri of Una Pizza Napoletana, Andrew Feinberg of Franny's, and Chris Bianco of Pizzeria Bianco in Phoenix. Then there is the third school, what I call the "We're good cooks who love pizza, so let's open a pizzeria" contingent, where a can-do attitude, enthusiasm, some cooking chops, and economic necessity are the forces driving the people involved.
Wall of logs and the pizza oven.
The partners at the very fine Bushwick, Brooklyn, pizzeria Roberta's definitely fall into the latter camp. Musician and bar-owner Chris Parachini and his partners Brandon Hoy, Carlo Mirarchi, and Mauro Soggio decided to open a pizzeria because they love pizza. They found a practically unfinished space with high beams and poured-concrete floors in a hard-core commercial section adjoining an auto-repair shop in Bushwick, went to Italy to apprentice with an Italian pizzaiolo, found a fire-engine-red wood-burning pizza oven in a bankrupt Italian pizzeria (yes, pizzerias do go bankrupt in Italy), and came back to Brooklyn, put in the pizza oven in the front and waited for the city to install the gas line in the kitchen in the back. They waited and waited until they were about to run out of money, so they were forced to open Roberta's with the aforementioned pizza oven and three pans and three propane burners in lieu of a kitchen.
Continue reading »
Posted by Ed Levine, May 20, 2008 at 11:30 PM
(Photographs by Robyn Lee)
Salumeria Biellese
376-378 Eighth Avenue, New York NY 10001 (at 29th; map)
212-736-7376; Website
Must-Haves: Mixed cold-cut sandwich, meatball hero, roast turkey or pork with mozzarella and brown gravy—on Sullivan Street stirata bread
What You'll Spend: $6.75, including the cost of the stirata (which is big enough for two large sandwiches) and the top-shelf cold cuts
Grade: A+ for the above-mentioned sandwiches on stirato, B for the same sandwiches on Biellese's regular bread
In my capacity as the official reviewer for Serious Eats New York, I feel it's perfectly within my rights to invent a new category of Italian sandwich emporium: the BYOB deli. The B in this case stands for "bread," not "bottle." That's right, I'm advocating—in fact I'm telling you flat out—that if you would like to eat the finest mixed Italian cold-cut hero to be found in New York, you need to bring your own bread to Salumeria Biellese, which from the outside looks like the most nondescript, generic steam-table Italian deli you can imagine. It's even a little nondescript on the inside, too.
Get over how ordinary the place looks and bring your bread, which, if you can swing it is a stirato from the Sullivan Street Bakery or its offshoot Grandaisy. The stirato is, simply put, the most heroic hero bread in the land. It is just chewy and crusty enough to generate a slight noise when you bite into it, but its interior has lovely hole structure and tenderness. For the purposes of this review I bought my stirato at the Whole Foods on Seventh Avenue and 24th Street, a mere five blocks from Salumeria Biellese.
When it is your turn to order, tell one of the countermen you would like a mixed Italian cold-cut hero with the housemade Genoa salami, soppressata (your choice of hot or sweet), capicola, and provolone, made on the bread you are giving him.
Continue reading »
Posted by Adam Kuban, April 3, 2008 at 1:00 PM
I was already running late this morning, and the Root Hill Cafe is, technically, out of my way as I make my morning beeline to the subway station. But I had a feeling. A thought slowly started to nag at me—What if they have a Clover machine?
Over the last few months, I've been watching this space on the corner of Fourth Avenue and Carroll Street in Brooklyn transform from a spottily run car service to a hip little coffee house with lots of thoughtful architectural details. And given that it opened just last week—at just the right time to have possibly snagged one of the last non-Starbucks Clover brewers—I didn't mind adding a few minutes to my commute by crossing the street to find out and put that nagging thought to rest.
Continue reading »
Posted by Ed Levine, February 29, 2008 at 6:15 PM
I know it's winter, so you're probably not thinking about ice cream, gelato, or any other frozen dessert, but listen up. Gino Cammarata, as I wrote in the New York Times in 2002, might be New York City's best artisanal gelato maker, and he is back this week after a prolonged absence from Gotham's food scene.
He's making his transcendent gelati in the front of a popular tanning salon in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn.
You heard me right. In a tanning salon.
Continue reading »
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.
Continue reading »
Posted by Ed Levine, February 19, 2008 at 8:33 AM
I've always loved the gutsy, simpler Tavern menu at the Gramercy Tavern, and after having the meatball entree there recently, I have fallen in love all over again. Michael Anthony's meatball is a long way from the meatballs that filled the meatball hero at Rocco's, my local Italian-American deli growing up. Made with pork, beef, and veal, the succulent, moist meatball arrives split in half, the size of a baseball; great aged fontina cheese oozing out of the center; a pile of wonderful sweet onion marmalade between the two halves; and surrounded by an intensely creamy potato puree. Armed with my newfound penchant for portion control, I ate half the meatball (and a couple of forkfuls of the potato puree), and took the other half home with a vision for my meatball sandwich dinner dancing in my head. Around 8 o clock that night I toasted a bialy and placed the microwaved meatball neatly between the bialy halves. Meatball sandwich nirvana, serious eaters, way better than Rocco's.
Gramercy Tavern
42 East 20th Street
New York, NY 10003
Ph: 212-477-0777
Posted by Ed Levine, February 9, 2008 at 11:30 AM
Midtown and Upper East Side chocolate places for Valentine's Day worth a nibble and a few extra calories:
MarieBelle
Maribel Lieberman has gone uptown on us, but her hot chocolate and chocolates are still as good as ever. Don't worry—her Soho location is still open. 762 Madison Avenue, between 65th and 66th Streets; 212-249-4585; mariebelle.com
Continue reading »
Posted by Ed Levine, January 15, 2008 at 6:45 AM
Many current and former New York City residents swear by a local specialty: the black and white cookie, an oversize cakey, almost spongecakelike cookie iced with a shiny, half-vanilla, half-chocolate fondant frosting. There was even a famous Seinfeld episode, "The Dinner Party," in which Jerry held up a black and white cookie as a symbol of racial harmony and peace among men and women (George and Elaine, to be precise).
But what a lot of folks don't know is that, according to most culinary historians and even Wikipedia, black and white cookies probably originated in central New York (where they're called half-moons) at a Utica bakery, Hemstrought's. In 1999 Saveur magazine tracked down Hemstrought's half-moon cookie recipe. And just to confuse matters further, in Germany there is a black and white–like cookie called an Amerikaner.
Continue reading »
Posted by Ed Levine, January 14, 2008 at 11:27 AM
I was passing E.A.T. yesterday, and the siren call of Eli Zabar's overpriced but usually delicious food got the best of me.
I ordered four items, all sweets; a quarter-pound of the fruit coffee cake ($3), a mini chocolate cupcake ($2), a black and white cookie, and a cup of Eboni and Ivory Pudding (chocolate and vanilla) ($4).
The coffee cake was reasonably moist and had thick veins of dried fruit, but it had too much orange rind in it for my taste. The mini chocolate cupcake was very chocolatey if a little dry. The black and white cookie tasted less than fresh.
The clear winner of the quartet was the pudding combo. It was almost obscenely rich and creamy with loads of real vanilla and high quality milk chocolate flavor. It might be the best pudding to be had anywhere in New York outside the butterscotch pudding at Sweet Melissa's in Brooklyn.
Note to all Ed Levine Diet Helpers: I adhered to my one-bite rule for all four items mentioned above, except for the pudding. I had two spoonfuls. It was just too good.
E.A.T.
Address: 1064 Madison Avenue, New York NY 10128 (b/n 80th and 81st streets)
Phone: 212-772-0022
Posted by Ed Levine, January 12, 2008 at 9:00 AM
I hadn't been to Lombardi's in a year or so, so when two pizza-crazed colleagues from Minneapolis came to New York this week, I decided they should experience eating at the oldest pizzeria in America. We ordered three pies: a small sausage; a small half-pepperoni, half-pancetta; and a small half-plain white, half–sautéed spinach. All the pies were at least very good, and the white pie was awesome.
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Posted by Ed Levine, January 11, 2008 at 9:01 AM
Lucali's, 575 Henry Street, Brooklyn NY 11231 (b/n Carroll Street and First Place; map)
I finally made my way to Carroll Gardens to eat at the pizzeria of the moment, Lucali's. I'm embarrassed that it took this long. I'm officially chagrined, too, now that I've seen the place and eaten Mark Iacono's pizza and calzone. Mark and his brother (Mark makes the pies, his brother takes them in and out of the oven) make what is essentially a Di Fara–style pie in a wood-burning, gas-assisted oven.
That means the cheeses that go on the pie include mozzarella di bufala, a low-moisture full-cream mozzarella, and freshly grated grana padana. That cheese combination produces a spectacular, simultaneously tangy and creamy topping for a pizza.
Toppings include (among others) sausage from the neighborhood's fantastic Esposito's Pork Store (on nearby Court Street) and fresh portobello mushrooms that Mark slices to order. Lucali's crust is just about 100 percent crisp, which means those of us who'd like a little tenderness in our pizza crust interior will have to look elsewhere. Interestingly, Mark's calzone crust was in fact much more tender.
Crisp-tenderness issues aside, eating at Lucali's is a deeply pleasurable experience. It's a totally real, unpretentious, and heartfelt pizzeria. Plus, it's the only pizzeria I know outside Pizzeria Bianco in Phoenix that gives off such a singular warm, lovely, and inviting glow.
"Don't be a stranger," Mark called out to me as I was leaving.
I won't.
Lucali's
Address: 575 Henry Street, Brooklyn, NY 11231 (near Carroll, map)
Phone: 718-858-4086
