Chile En Nogada (stuffed Poblano peppers)
by Cristy-Lucie Alvarado
November 23rd, 2007
BARRIO CHINO
253 Broome St
(Ludlow & Orchard St)
212-228-6710
Living on the border of Mexico for eighteen years biased me somewhat towards Mexican food in New York City. Bonita’s tortillas are too thick, Rosa Mexicano is too pricey, La Esquina is too pretentious, and El Sombrero (The Hat) doesn’t serve tacos al pastor — irresistible two-bite tacos typically garnished with onion, cilantro and lime.
Somehow though, I managed to stumble upon Barrio Chino a couple of summers ago while searching for fresh fruit cocktails. Spanish for “Chinese neighborhood” in reference to its location in the Chinatown vicinty, Barrio Chino is now the only Mexican restaurant I set foot in. Their tacos are legit, their margaritas are truly worth the $9, and my favorite dish, usually served exclusively during pomegranate season, is served year-round*: chile en nogada.
Barrio Chino delivers its version of the stuffed chile with incredible grace. The mild poblano chile is grilled and stuffed with a festive mix of ground pork, pears, apples, almonds, and raisins. I could probably stop here, but there’s more. This wonderful little package is covered in a white blanket of creamy walnut sauce, and when in season, sprinkled with plump pomegranate seeds. And as if that weren’t enough, it’s accompanied by a scoop of green rice.
Now I would eat this in the scummiest, emptiest, most desolate hole in the wall, but I don’t have to. The cozy, dimly lit room is raw, unpolished, and adorned with a dash of Chinese flair, paying homage to the mix of Chinese and Latin cultures in the area, and thanks to their extensive selection of tequilas (hence the killer margaritas), Barrio Chino has a great bar scene, at a key location on Broome Street on the Lower East Side.
I’m due for my fix this week!
Note: The chile en nogada is served year-round at dinner and sometimes for lunch.
Posted in LES , Mexican , Pork
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Meatball Parmigiana Sandwich
by Celia Cheng
May 17th, 2007
FRANKIES SPUNTINO
17 Clinton St
(Houston & Stanton St)
212-253-2303
It’s been a while since I deliberately went out for an evening of restaurant crawling, but what else can you do when you really crave one thing but also want to try something else?! I don’t believe in choosing, and tend to end up eating two or three meals. It’s particularly fun when you can do this with girlfriends of the same mind set, so Jennie, Monica and I embarked on an evening of four rounds on Clinton Street. The intent was to try Frankies Spuntino, but the small twenty-plus seat restaurant doesn’t take reservations. While waiting, we’d start the evening with a light meal at Falai, one of our favorites, and then move on to Frankies when it was ready for us. We were having so much fun at Falai that we ate and drank more than planned, and since a forty-minute wait at Frankies turned into a two-hour wait, we stopped in at Cube 63 — across the street from Falai — with a bottle of sake and had some seared white tuna and volcano rolls in the interim. We finally started our main meal at Frankies at 10pm before returning to Falai at 11pm for dessert.
Normally, this would be the part where I start ranting about a two-hour wait for a simple eatery with a lot of attitude. Maybe it was the amount of alcohol I had consumed by that point, but I wasn’t really mad. And I enjoyed the food so much I didn’t mind, but of course, this was an unusual evening, and I wouldn’t have been so forgiving had I not already had two meals.
This was my first visit to Frankies, and I’ve never been to the original in Carroll Gardens. Frankies serves rustically straightforward Italian-American fare at extremely reasonable prices. Everything we had, from the fennel, celery root and parsley salad with red onions and lemon, the cremini mushroom and truffle oil crostini to the meatball parmigiana sandwich reflected the simplicity yet downright goodness in Frankies’ home-style cooking. There are no tricks up its sleeves but the flavors speak for themselves. I was particularly enamored with the side order of cauliflower. Roasted in olive oil and seasoned with salt and pepper, the natural process caramelizes the vegetable slightly so there is a tinge of sweetness, but it’s entirely refreshing and addictive in a way the artificial addition of sugar could never produce. The meatball parm sandwich, as all the sandwiches on the menu, is served on the delicious rosemary bread from Sullivan Bakery.
(The article continues below in Falai’s Panna Cotta post.)
Posted in American , Italian , LES , Meat , Sandwich
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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Lobster Roll
by Celia Cheng
October 21st, 2006
URBAN LOBSTER
240 E Houston St
(Ave A & B)
212-677-2626
This seems to be the month of comparisons. First Torys and Yakitori Totto, and now I’m pitting Tides’s lobster roll against Urban Lobster’s. Actually, in this case, it’s not much of a competition. Tides wins hands down.
Urban Lobster opened this month and it’s trying to turn New England seafood favorites, like lobster rolls, into a fast food business. But at $19 a pop, these are not fast food prices. I would willingly pay a couple bucks more to eat the superior lobster roll at Pearl, Tides, The Mermaid Inn or Mary’s, which have pleasant atmospheres to boost. You can probably already see where this is going.
There are two small tables and a side counter for diners to eat in, but Urban Lobster’s slogan is “prepared seafood to go” and that’s the business they want to run. Based on the seafood boom that New York City has seen, creating a take-out seafood restaurant should make for higher profit margins, as you don’t have to deal with table service.
The “restaurant” is set up more like a deli. Upon entering, the cashier and drinks are to the right and straight ahead is where you order. You walk up to a counter where the salads and sides sit behind the glass partition. The kitchen is behind the counter. The problem with food sitting out in a counter like this is that it can’t retain freshness for very long. I love an avocado, tomatoes and red onion salad, but the avocados were brown and just didn’t look appetizing. The salads seemed to be in good shape, but the tuna salad looked like food poisoning waiting to happen. At 5pm, dinner dishes were being prepared and brought out, so the sides like corn on the cob and red bliss mashed potatoes with fresh butter looked enticing.
I decided to test out the lobster roll. If the selling point of the restaurant wasn’t any good, I don’t know what else could be. I started to have my doubts as soon as I saw the large chunks of celery in the lobster salad — one of my pet peeves is when people can’t bother to cut things delicately. Let’s just say that you could tell it was the workmanship of a take-out joint rather than a restaurant.
The description for the roll on the menu reads: “a mound of fresh lobster salad stuffed into a buttered toasted hot dog bun, served with cole slaw.” That hot dog bun was definitely not toasted, in fact it was as cold as could be. It would have been better toasted, but the cold bun wasn’t really a point of contention for me.
Though cole slaw is a fairly traditional accompaniment to seafood in New England, I found it to be a bad choice as the only side dish offered with the lobster roll. Not only was the cole slaw bad, but its distinctive taste also clashed with the lobster. After I had finished this meal, the taste of the sea lingered in my mouth like a bad aftertaste. Even when I tried to get rid of it with a nice dry Riesling, it didn’t go away.
Urban Lobster has received a lot of press in the past two weeks. For the amount of money they spent on PR, they might have put some dollars into their website too. They have been fixing it up but it still looks like a hack job. It’s pretty amusing. But, as you know, food for me is no laughing matter.
Posted in American , LES , Seafood
Fried Honeyed Eggplant
by Celia Cheng
October 13th, 2006
TIDES
102 Norfolk St
(Rivington & Delancey St)
212-254-8855
When Tides opened last July, I had heard good reviews but didn’t put it on the top of my list to try because I was suspicious that it would be one of those “trendy” restaurants. I waited to see if it was just hype or if it would stand the test of time and live up to the discerning palates of New Yorkers.
It seems that I was mistaken. Though Tides has a chic, award-winning interior space, the cuisine also stands on its own. The food is hearty and the service warm. The crowd seems uniform in the sense that they are all food lovers, regardless of their age or style.
I mainly came to try the lobster roll, but a side dish at the table next to mine caught my eye so I had to inquire to find out what it was. Turns out it was the fried honeyed eggplant. When I think deep-fried eggplant, I imagine something like eggplant tempura, but this one looked more like a doughnut of some sort. Chef Judy Seto came up with the idea of beer-battered, deep-fried eggplant drizzled with honey, and the result is delicious. Large slices of eggplants are dipped in thick beer batter and deep-fried, so it comes out looking and tasting like beignets. The honey adds a touch of sweetness to round it out. This side dish is rather copious and good to share amongst friends. Had I not devoured the rest of my meal beforehand, I probably would have been able to stuff a couple more of them in.
The lobster roll changes seasonally and currently it’s “succulent sweet lobster meat, dressed lightly with lemon zest, cilantro, cucumber and mayonnaise.” Seems fancy, but the bottom line is that it tastes downright good. The hotdog bun it comes in is grilled so that it’s not only toasty warm, but also has a slightly crunchy texture. Though it looks a little burnt, it tastes better than any lobster roll bun I’ve ever had. I devoured it then licked my fingers. The roll is accompanied by yucca chips. The thinly sliced chips come out looking so graceful. They’re extremely crisp and tasty, but aren’t overly greasy. I don’t particularly like potato chips, compared to other potato dishes that is. Yet the yucca chips complemented the lobster roll so well, perhaps even better than shoe-string fries.
I know I’m going in reverse order but I just don’t want to leave anything out. I started the meal with the salad Sevillana — baby Arugula, thin sliced red onion, grape tomato halves dressed in a paprika and red-vinegar based “Sevillana” dressing. It’s garnished with 2 hard-boiled egg quarters, 2 artichoke hearts, thin sliced Serrano ham, shaved Manchego cheese and a thin slice of guava paste. Sounds complicated but it was actually rather fun to keep finding different things in the salad, all of which were delicious. For a second, I thought the guava paste was a piece of bottarga, and was so excited, but when I bit into it, I was surprised to taste guava, one of my favorite fruits.
The ceiling at Tides is noteworthy. A visual presentation of seagrass is made from over 110,000 bamboo skewers embedded into a back-lit acoustical ceiling. Wow! It’s gorgeous and makes the restaurant really special because there’s something so soothing about the visual movement it creates — the skewers look like they are gently swaying in water. So even though there are no tides anywhere close by, you can still feel very close to the ocean. Just look up!
Posted in American , LES , Seafood
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