Potato Salad/Baked Grapefruit/Red Beer
by Cristy-Lucie Alvarado
July 28th, 2008
ROEBLING TEA ROOM
143 Roebling St
@ Metropolitan Ave
Williamsburg, Brooklyn
718-963-0760
My last visit to Roebling Tea Room was a snacky and satisfying one. I couldn’t decide on a single dish, so I took the sides route. I needed something starchy (potato salad), something interesting (baked grapefruit), and something uplifting (red beer).
I was happy to find that, for mid-afternoon, the place wasn’t too crowded, so I chose a cozy corner and awaited my mini-meal. The potato salad, comprised of thinly sliced bliss potatoes with the peels intact, was cooked to just the right consistency, crunchy but not raw. A creamy pink dressing coated the sliced potatoes while capers and bits of red onion added a little zing and texture. I later found out that the salad gets its pink hue from Frank’s RedHot hot sauce, not paprika, as I had suspected. This atypical potato salad perfectly satisfied my carb craving.
Next I moved on to the baked grapefruit, which was cut open and carved like a star. Sparkly brown sugar was sprinkled on the face open grapefruit, which was then baked in the oven until parts of the sugar became nice and crusty. I wasn’t sure how my fork was supposed to find its way, so I dug in with hands and teeth. The juice was warm and the slight bitterness you typically find in a grapefruit was tamed by the temperature and sugar.
Finally, I topped my snack-fest off with a Red Beer: a Bloody Mary made with beer instead of vodka. Genius! It’s smoother than a Bloody Mary, and you actually get a taste of tomato juice. With a salted rim and slices of lemon and lime, this is definitely my new brunch cocktail!
Roebling Tea Room’s menu has a lot to offer, but these three items were a nice place to start and will secure many visits to come.
Posted in American , Dessert , Drinks , Potato , Williamsburg
Panna Cotta
by Celia Cheng
May 17th, 2007
FALAI
68 Clinton St
(Stanton & Rivington St)
212-253-1960
(This article is the continuation of a larger piece that starts in the above Frankies Spuntino’s Meatball Parmigiana Sandwich post.)
In contrast, our starting and ending meal at Falai was on the opposite spectrum of refined and studied Italian cuisine. Falai has recently switched to its spring menu and is currently serving crudo of nairagi — a.k.a. marlin or a’u — from Hawaii. Light and extremely fresh. The gnudi — doughless ricotta cheese and baby spinach dumplings — were voted best in town by New York Magazine for a reason. They are larger in size than I had expected, little domes sitting like small scoops of ice cream in a butter, cream and sage sauce. As a pasta dish, it is incredibly light, despite the cheese, cream and butter, but I had filled up on several pieces of homemade black-cabbage rolls and onion rolls.
For dessert, Falai’s deconstructed version of tiramisu made me think. Unlike the oversaturated and traditional tiramisu with ladyfingers, espresso and other ingredients mixed and layered, Falai’s version has the ingredients placed separately on the plate, with espresso then poured over them, so you can play with the proportions as you please. It’s rather unconventional, and I was a bit apprehensive at first, but then realized that this is much more amusing and thought provoking. However, my pick for dessert is the panna cotta with dried strawberries in orzata — an Italian almond syrup — foam and cocoa butter. It was delicate, precious and stellar!
The evening reminded me why the Lower East Side and particularly Clinton Street stands apart from other areas from a culinary standpoint — where else in the City can you have such a fun and diverse culinary extravaganza within a one-block radius? With more time and a larger appetite I could have hit many more restaurants on the street or in the area, but even the glutton in me knows that it’s best we leave that for another time.
Posted in Dessert , Italian , LES , Pasta
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Kyotofu Original Tofu
by Celia Cheng
March 16th, 2007
KYOTOFU
705 9th Ave
(48th & 49th St)
212-974-6012
Kyotofu is a darling little hide-away in Hell’s Kitchen. This very modern restaurant is predominantly white, inside and out, and doesn’t have any loud signage, which actually makes it stand out amongst its neighbors — it’s noticeable precisely because it is trying to be quiet.
The restaurant is small and seats around thirty, but the space is beautifully designed. The kitchen and bar space are open in plain view upon entering Kyotofu. The counter space at the bar and by the window are good hang outs, but the main seating area is through the corridor formed by the bar and kitchen: two rows of seats on each side of the wall in the back room.
Kyotofu is a dessert bar, but they also have savory bites on the menu and a fun drink list with sake, shochu and cocktails. Being the savory girl that I am, I’ve tried everything on the list other than the cheese plate: daily selection of otsumami appetizer plate, Kyotofu original tofu, black edamame, tofu chicken _tsukune _meatballs, mini onigiri rice balls. These are all small plates so even with two people you could sample all of the savory dishes on the list.
The tofu chicken tsukune is nice because the addition of tofu mixed with minced chicken meatballs made the texture softer and tender. But the real knockout of the lot is the Kyotofu original tofu.
This original tofu is served with two dipping sauces, one sweet and one savory. The sweet one is kuromitsu, a Japanese black sugar syrup, and the savory a white soy sauce. The natural association is that the darker sauce should be the savory soy, and the white a sugar syrup, but here it’s actually the reverse. The tofu is like Chinese dou hua, extremely fine silken tofu that is served as dessert but can also be served as a savory depending on the sauce. But I’ve actually never had dou hua with a texture as fine as Kyotofu’s original tofu. It’s fresh and warm and as good as tofu gets. Some people have the misconception that tofu is disgusting, either too mushy or too stiff, but soy products are actually one of the most versatile, ranging from yuba, tofu skin, silken tofu, to medium firmness that can be deep-fried, or harder ones used for stinky-tofu; there’s just endless possibilities for taste and texture! This rendition is just exquisite! It’s a fine piece of art both to look at and to taste!
As part of the otsumami plate was a tsukune gratin. Tsukune, as mentioned before is chicken meatballs, but this version is in a little dish that is baked and topped with a slice of renkon, lotus root, and it’s an interesting way to serve tsukune, which is usually served on skewers, and rather successful.
I am a big onigiri, rice ball, fanatic, and while the aojiso, pickled shiso, mini onigiris looked tasty, the rice was too firm and the accompanying tsukemono, pickled vegetables, a bit generic and lackluster.
For dessert, the black sesame sweet tofu is lovely, with the pairing of hojicha tea syrup. Hojicha is a stronger barky tasting tea that is often served after a meal. Creating syrup from this rooty tasting tea is a fun idea that works and pairs well with the gritty sweetness of black sesame. The sansho pepper tofu cheese cake is rather interesting and not at all what I expected. The sansho flavor is more for accent and subtle, which is probably good since a larger dose may numb your mouth, but the tofu cheese cake’s sourness threw me off a bit. The texture was more refined and less dense than that of traditional cheesecakes. I’m still not sure how I feel about this one.
I love shochu, Japanese distilled liquor, kind of like Japanese vodka. I usually drink it Japanese old man style with hot water and a pickled plum, though that kills the essence of the liquor. Shochu can be made from rice, wheat, potato, or other grains or starches. Kyotofu serves a shochu from the producer Beniotme in Fukuoka that’s made from white sesame. Drinking this on the rocks is really fabulous as you get the aftertaste and sweet aroma of the white sesame. I don’t mean to say that the drink is sweet, as it is a rather stiff hard liquor, but the lingering essence of the white sesame gives it a rich flavorful sweetness.
For an education on how good tofu can be, I would definitely rush to Kyotofu to try their original tofu. It’s a fun and comfortable place to hang out, although given its limited seating, it gets rather crowded so go early or late.
Posted in Dessert , Drinks , Japanese , Small Plates
