Where to Find the Best
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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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, 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
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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.
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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
Posted by Ed Levine, December 10, 2007 at 7:25 AM
Wafels & Dinges has parked its truck outside Fairway (74th and Broadway) on Sundays, so how could I resist a Belgian waffle's siren call when I finished food shopping? I couldn't and I didn't. I had a liege and a regular with Belgian Fudge around 12:30. They were perfect pre-Giants game snacks. I was carb loading in anticipation of some heavy rooting.
The $4 Liege, described on the menu as the "other" Belgian wafel, was packed with sugar pearls and was soft, chewy, and caramely, with a nice cinammony twist. The $4 regular, described on the menu as the mother of all wafels, was light and crunchy and amazingly the Belgian fudge sauce tasted like a high quality hot fudge, smooth and not too sweet. Not surprisingly because chief wafel master Thomas Degeest said he makes it himself. The truck's hot chocolate, made with a combination of Nestle's Dark Chocolate and a Belgian mix, is too sweet and eminently skippable.
These wafels are well worth eating. In fact, they are downright delicious. They're better than Le Pain Quotidien's Liege-style Belgian waffles, which by the way are pretty tasty as well. But to make sure your waffle is up to snuff make sure they make your waffels to order. Mine were, and I am sure that's why they were so good. Serious Eater Raphael, who grew up in Belgium, had both kinds of waffel at the Wafels & Dinges truck a couple of weeks ago, and his waffels had clearly been sitting out of the waffle iron for more than a few minutes. As a result he was underwhelmed by what he ate. So even if you see a stack of already made waffels on the counter in the truck, tell Thomas or his helper you will gladly wait for a freshly made waffel. It's well worth the wait.
Note to Thomas Degeest: Upgrade the hot chocolate. Jacques Torres may not be Belgian, but he makes a very fine hot chocolate mix. Here's where to find these waffels:
Tuesday - Friday: Broadway between Spring and Prince, starting late morning till about 7pm.
Saturday: Park Slope Location TBD
Sunday: Upper West Side, on Broadway at 74th, right across from Fairway, starting at 10 am.
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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Posted by Ed Levine, November 4, 2007 at 2:15 PM
Seth Kugel plugs into New York's best coffee bars. Add this to Peter Meehan's picks from a year ago (the first four of the following guide) and you have a pretty comprehensive list of where to get a serious cup of joe in New York. Notice I said pretty comprehensive. Add your own favorites to the list and we'll try to put them on the map.
View Larger Map
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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, October 24, 2007 at 7:46 AM
I love onion rings. Don't you? I'm talking about real individual, separate-and-more-than -equal rings of fresh onion battered and fried. Crisp, golden brown, slightly puffy, greaseless onion rings.
I'm not talking about bloomin' onions or onion loaves or wispy onion strands. Those have their place. Just not here. So to honor those chefs and cooks who know how to fry real onion rings up right, I'm going to put together a list of killer onion rings in New York. Please help me, as I'm sure I haven't eaten every great onion ring in Gotham.
Here it is, New York's Greatest Hits, onion ring–wise (I'm warning you now. My list isn't very long. I have very high standards when it comes to onion rings).
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Posted by Ed Levine, October 23, 2007 at 8:00 AM
Writing about the late, great Abe Lebewohl, a man's stomach turns its attention to delis—Jewish-style delis of course. Some of my earliest food memories are of eating at Wilshire's Deli on Central Avenue in Lawrence, New York. I remember my typical lunch there being a pastrami sandwich and two hot dogs, but I couldn't have eaten that much, could I?
One of the first dates I went on with my wife was at the dear departed Gitlitz's on Manhattan's Upper West Side. But when it comes to delis in New York, I don't need to wax nostalgic. Though there are far fewer delis here than there once were, there are still enough excellent examples in Gotham that we maintain our status as America's preeminent Jewish-deli city. Some Los Angelenos insist that L.A. is a better deli city, but I believe they have simply spent too much time in the sun.
How do you judge a deli? To me there are clearly established yardsticks, pastrami or corned beef, soup (matzo ball or mushroom barley), and french fries. The quality of the cole slaw and the pickles matter as well.
Using those yardsticks, here is a list of my favorite delis in New York. Are there great Jewish delis outside New York? I love Langer's pastrami in Los Angeles, I've enjoyed many smoked-meat sandwich and french fry lunches at Schwartz's in Montreal, and my Baltimore friends swear by Attman's, but, Serious Eaters, I long to know of others around the country. Do tell.
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