Lesso Misto
by Celia Cheng
September 20th, 2007
INSIEME
777 7th Ave
(50th & 51st St)
212-582-1310
Located in The Michelangelo Hotel in Midtown Manhattan, Insieme stands out as chic and modern in contrast to the rather drab, old school hotel in which it’s housed. The restaurant is relatively small, seating just seventy-five in the main dining room and thirty in the private room downstairs. Though the sliver of a bar at the front of the restaurant is currently not in service, seats will be added and service will start soon. One can survey the entire dining room at a glance. I find the size of the restaurant rather endearing, and the interior modern but comfortable; it’s a bit understated with just the right amount of dim lighting to make you feel at ease.
Chef and co-owner Marco Canora pays tribute to his Italian heritage with a daily menu that is split down the middle with traditional items on the left hand side and contemporary dishes on the right. There’s also a special tasting menu for $85. While I tend to think of myself as a traditional type of girl, my friends and I ordered a good mix of dishes from both sides of the menu. And what we found was that Marco’s ability to fuse traditional with original is remarkable. Though I still have a bias towards the traditional menu, it was hard for my companions and me to say which type of dish was better as it really just came down to each person’s subjective tastes. Items from both sides of the menu warmed our tummies and hearts.
The sardine alle erbe, broiled sardines with breadcrumbs, herbs, garlic and lemon, was such a delight that even Monica, who usually shies away from sardines, found it to be one of her favorite dishes. Any dish that can convert a non-believer is always an indication of true talent. As part of the fish crudo appetizer, the iced cup with diced shima aji and watermelon was nice and refreshing, but the most pleasant surprise came as I dug for more and found a Barron Point oyster at the bottom of the cup — an elegant and winning ending to this subtle, light starter.
Pasta may just be my Achilles heel. We tried the lasagna verde alla Bolognese, spinach pasta with béchamel and meat ragu; linguine con vongole, linguine with clams; potato gnocchi with rock shrimp, braised lobster mushrooms and tarragon; and cocoa pappardelle with wild boar ragu, parmagiano regiano and thyme. There have been several reviews on Insieme, debating the excellence of the lasagna, but having tried a variety of Insieme’s pastas, I’d say that we should retire this argument. Marco’s entire body of work distinguishes him as a master chef, so if I must contribute anything at all to the discussion of his lasagna, I’ll say, let’s not insult him by dwelling on lasagna. The linguine con vongole alone is one of the best I’ve tasted (if I could, I would specialize in pasta with vongole). The key to vongole is how fresh and clean the clams are. The manila and little neck clams are cleaned and snipped so that only the body is left. It’s sweet and juicy without a trace of sand. The potato gnocchi was also tasty but the cocoa pappardelle took second place with rich and distinctive flavors that paired together cohesively.
While I hardly ever make it to the secondi in Italian cuisine as I get stuck on the primi pastas, the main meat dishes at Insieme are not to be missed! The lesso misto, boiled meats with salsa verde, horseradish cream and mustard fruits, is dreamy! There are four different varieties of meat: cotechino (pork sausage), beef cheek, veal tongue and chicken breast. The broth is made from two whole turkeys, fifteen stewing hens and forty pounds of beef shin. The cotechino is poached in the broth then removed. The remaining broth is used to cook the remaining three meats. Chicken tends to be my least favorite meat since it can often be flavorless or overcooked, but the chicken breast in the lesso misto has got to be the best chicken I’ve had in years. It was so soft and tender it nearly melted in my mouth. The arista di maiale arrosto con fagioli, roasted pork loin with beans, sage and garlic, was also juicy and tender, and all the ingredients harmonized with one another adding to a wonderful dinner experience. I’m not sure what Marco is doing to his meats, but it seems that in his hands, they just bow under his direction.
Insieme is not entirely without flaws though. This was my second visit and I did find some inconsistencies in the quality of the food from one visit to the next. However, any dining experience relies heavily on knowing what to order, and I think my choices, with the help of the chef, improved drastically on the second visit. Nonetheless, I did try the lasagna both times, and, again, all I’ll add is that there’s so much more to the menu. The restaurant only opened in April, so inconsistencies are to be expected and need some time to be ironed out. Especially based on this latest visit, I have no doubt that I will be returning to try more meats and fulfill my linguine con vongole craving.
Posted in Italian , Meat , Midtown West
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Taquitos de Jabalí (wild boar tacos w/ guacamole)
by Celia Cheng
August 7th, 2007
PALO SANTO
652 Union St
(4th & 5th Ave)
Park Slope, Brooklyn
718-636-6311
Chef-owner Jacques Gautier creates eclectic Latin (South American and some Caribbean) cuisine at this wonderfully home-style eatery located on Union Street between 4th and 5th Avenues in Park Slope. With the help of some local artisans, Gautier transformed the unassuming brownstone where the restaurant dwells into a little Latin haven for comfort food. From the artful, organic curvatures of the hand railing along the front steps, to the mosaics on the wall in the kitchen, everything about the restaurant is ornate but not fussy.
From the front of the restaurant — at the tables or counter seats — diners can see the chefs at work in the open kitchen. There is also a corner table for larger parties on the same level past the kitchen. In the back, down a flight of wooden stairs, tables boast a garden view where herbs grow around a rock-sculpted fountain. Besides the sight of Gautier and his crew lovingly cooking, every detail of the restaurant speaks to his passion for this creative neighborhood venture.
The menu changes daily. Appetizers generally range from $6 to $14 and entrées from $17 to $24. However, from Sunday through Thursday, there is a three-course prix-fixe dinner (appetizer, entrée and dessert) for just $25. An absolute steal!
My friends and I started with a chayote (squash-like vegetable in the gourd family) salad with jicama, grapefruit and avocado, a light and endearing summer appetizer. Then we continued with the taquitos de jabalí (wild boar – braised in a sofrito containing beer and chilies — and guacamole tacos), which were so delicious I could have had rounds of these for dinner. The plantano relleno, a slender baked plantain boat stuffed with bacalao (cod), cooked in a tomato-heavy sauce, and topped with Manchego cheese, was both beautiful and mouth-wateringly delicious. The chorizo casero (homemade pork liver sausage) with beets, radicchio and pork cracklings was another meaty but rewarding dish as the loose pork liver sausage played well with the different textures of the sliced beets, crisp radicchio and crunchy pork cracklings.
For mains, first, the clams asopado (soupy rice) really hit the spot. There’s something about soupy rice that is just comforting, and the brininess of the clam juice mixed with butter made it slightly richer but not heavy. While the kingfish a la plancha (grilled on a metal plate) sounded more appealing than the pan-roasted barracuda, it was actually rather disappointing. Served with purple potato, olive and radish, the fish was dry and the starch of the purple potato weighed the dish down further. The olive and radish didn’t add any flair either. The barracuda, on the other hand, turned out to be a knock out. The sweetness of the plantain and the slightly sour hot slaw melded adoringly with this tropical fish.
For dessert, the cool, refreshing papaya sorbet was the ideal antidote to a hot summer night. We also tried the peach crisp with peanut topping and vanilla ice cream, which would be ideal for peanut lovers, but for me the peanut flavor overpowered the peaches.
Palo Santo is wonderful on so many levels. The food while eclectic is not heavy-handed in terms of flavor, but rather carefully comprised of ingredients that work together. As I spend more time in Park Slope, I am delighted to learn that there are so many wonderful neighborhood restaurants with tasty food, no attitude and fair prices. Yay for Brooklyn!
Posted in Latin , Meat , Park Slope
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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
Izmir Kofte
by Celia Cheng
December 13th, 2006
TAKSIM [CLOSED]
99 2nd Ave
(5th & 6th St)
212-979-5400
I tried the original Midtown Taksim just about a month ago and it didn’t make enough of an impression for me to write a review, good or bad. This new East Village sister restaurant however, has offended me enough to write about.
Taksim is hard to miss on this Second Avenue block as the signage and exterior is very red. The restaurant interior is large and spacious, which accentuates the emptiness when there aren’t enough diners to fill the space. The meze and hot entrees are all displayed behind the glass counters, in front of the kitchen, creating a very open and eye-catching atmosphere. Despite the fact that it was rather empty on a Wednesday night, I initially thought there was hope when I first walked in. As the evening progressed, positive feelings kept giving way to dissatisfaction and disappointment. Sigh! The search for yummy Turkish food continues. It’s just that this one is so close to home!
I went to Taksim with my Turkish friend, Cem. As soon as we sat down, Cem complained about the music — a mix of Turkish, Arabic, Egyptian and Greek pop that had an unnervingly heavy beat for dinner time and became annoying very quickly — and mid meal asked them to turn it down as it was so loud we felt like we had to yell at each other to communicate. The meze and shepherd salad were standard enough but not memorable, which was how I felt about the entire meal at the Midtown Taksim. At that point, things were still okay. For mains we ordered the Izmir kofte (meatballs cooked in a tomato sauce with potatoes and green peppers, Izmir’s most famous local dish) and the special, tandir (lamb cooked in the oven for 8 hours), both dishes served over rice. I love Izmir kofte and had the pleasure to try a very traditional and delicious restaurant that specialized in it while in the town of Alacati, close to Izmir, the 3rd largest Turkish city located on the Aegean coast. It’s mouth watering because the lamb meatballs, potato and green peppers simmer in juices of the tomato, and when poured over rice, the rice soaks up all the goodness. Back to reality here in NY, at Taksim: it’s not quite as good but still appetizing. The tandir, turned out to be just pieces of lamb meat over rice. I have a suspicious feeling that the meat was not cooked in the oven for 8 hours, and if it was, what a waste of time! Cem and I picked at the tandir a little but then moved on to devour the Izmir kofte. The tandir remains a mystery to me since there was no sauce, no yogurt, clearly just lamb over rice. Of course, I understand when lamb is supposed to be so tender that it needs no embellishments, it should be eaten alone, but we definitely didn’t reach that level of culinary excellence in this case. I even struggle to recall if there were traces of onion with the meat. When I asked Cem, he said, “I’m not sure but it just tasted like bad rice underneath bad lamb meat.”
Service is friendly but not polished. Our Irish waitress would come and ask how things were when Cem and I were most engaged in conversation and at other times when we needed attention was somewhere far away. The manager was also very chatty, trying to befriend the customers to ensure repeat business. He’s Turkish, which is a good sign, but I found it rather offensive that when he stopped by our table to ask how everything was, I politely replied, “good,” to which he responded, “That’s good that you liked it but I’m asking the person who counts because he knows what it should really taste like.” Wow! If I actually cared and thought there was hope I would have considered that a slap in the face. This is after Cem told him I had just returned from Turkey, no less.
Did dessert at least save the day? No. The almond pudding was disgusting. It was watery and did not exude the aromatic flavors of almond. I wondered if they’d given us the rice pudding by mistake but then started chewing the almond slices so I realized that it must be the almond pudding. I prefer to determine my food based on a combination of taste and texture, rather than just the latter.
When leaving, the manager again came by to ask us how things were, and Cem gave him a piece of his mind about how disturbing the music was, a good way to drive customers away. Though they conversed in Turkish, their attitudes clearly revealed the nature of the exchange. The manager replied that this is the type of music the owners want to play. Well, in that case, the owners shouldn’t count on doing much business because if it’s just about them and not about the diners, they should get out of the hospitality business. Go take some lessons from Danny Meyer, please!
Posted in East Village , Meat , Turkish
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Beef Salad
by Celia Cheng
November 20th, 2006
SOBA NIPPON
19 W 52nd St
(5th & 6th Ave)
212-489-2525
Wow! What a rough month it’s been. I’ve eaten 20 days without finding anything that really struck me as worth sharing, until now. Well, I take that back. While in San Francisco for a weekend, my dinner at The Slanted Door was amazing! It was my second visit to Charlie Fan’s famed Vietnamese restaurant in the Ferry Building, and like the first time, the overall experience was flawless! But I will reserve that topic for a future feature.
This month, having suffered through the most mediocre of mediocre meals, I’ve decided to just do one longer piece and briefly touch on the mostly unremarkable ones and then talk about how my palate and stomach were rejuvenated at Soba Nippon.
I tried the burgers at BLT Burger twice, hoping that the second time would give me the confirmation that I needed to deem it a good burger. And here’s what I can say: the quality of the meat is good — black Angus beef — and I like the Idaho hand cut French fries, but both times, by the end of the meal I just wasn’t jumping for joy. I’d still rather have the burger at Corner Bistro, Burger Joint or Tony’s, even if the quality of the meat at any of these three places is not comparable to BLT’s. And if I want a fancy burger, DuMont wins hands down. The burgers here are not big and the buns are kind of pathetic, compared to the buns at Royale (caveat being that I love sesame buns and BLT’s are plain). It’s not that the burgers are outrageously pricey, other than the $62 Japanese Kobe burger, which I would never get because ordering a burger made of 100% Japanese Kobe beef is a complete waste of that type of meat and downright stupid, but here you know you are paying for the BLT name more than anything else. Having said all those unkind words, I am still happy that this is my new neighborhood burger joint that delivers. In the depths of winter when I am hibernating and refuse to move, it’s not a bad option.
Moving on to European Union. I had heard good things about this nouveau bistro in Alphabet City when it opened without its liquor license. It took so long for them to get it that they had to close in between. Reopened a month ago with both food and alcohol, I thought it would be a good time to try it. Interestingly, a friend recently brought to my attention the chapter on food in David Sedaris’ Me Talk Pretty One Day: Today’s Special. One paragraph in particular, strikes a cord with me after my experience at E.U.:
“As a rule, I’m no great fan of eating out in New York restaurants. It’s hard to love a place that’s outlawed smoking but finds it perfectly acceptable to serve raw fish in a bath of chocolate. There are no normal restaurants left, at least in our neighborhood. The diners have all been taken over by precious little bistros boasting a menu of indigenous American cuisine. They call these meals “traditional,” yet they’re rarely the American dishes I remember. The patty melt has been pushed aside in favor of the herb-encrusted medallions of baby artichoke hearts, which never leave me thinking, Oh, right, those! I wonder if they’re as good as the ones my mom use to make.”
The humor definitely lies in the way Sedaris phrases his opinion and experiences but I find some truth in what he says here. E.U. tries too hard… to overdress and overcompensate everything. The steak tartare with sea urchin sabayon would have been fine without the latter ingredient, and the butter clams have completely wasted the precious Iberico ham it’s mixed with. The watercress and beet salad with bottarga and goat cheese vinaigrette was again a dish with just too many ingredients that worked to flop rather than as a whole. The fish and chips were also just okay and left me thinking that I should pay a visit to A Salt & Battery. The one side dish that I did enjoy was the beer-glazed carrots, perhaps because that was one of the simpler dishes. But you see! Even the unpretentious carrots needed to be “beer-glazed!” E.U. is packed but the overall feeling I get from the experience is that it’s trendy and more of a place to be seen.
Okay, so after two high-profile restaurants, I decided to go grass roots and check out the long-standing Turkish restaurant, Taci’s Beyti, close to Coney Island. Now, everyone knows that I’m willing to travel for food, but I have to give my friend Adria kudos for driving out from Mamaroneck to Coney Island to try this restaurant. I also have to apologize profusely and make it up to her for asking her to come all the way for such a below average Turkish experience. In fact, I can’t think of a worse Turkish meal I’ve had in the City. Granted, my standards may be a little high after returning from Turkey, but even the last Turkish meal in the City at Taksim ranked higher than this one. The pan-fried calves liver cubes are much better at Turkish Kitchen, and the gyro platter with yogurt at Sip Sak far surpasses the one here. The meze were most unimpressive and the mixed grill again, just mediocre. The one thing that was very good was the lamb sautée — a casserole of small pieces of baby lamb filet mignon sautéed with tomatoes, onions, green peppers and herbs. The meat was so tender that we thought it had been slow cooked, but the waiter told us it took only a couple of minutes and the trick is marinating the filet mignon.
Finally, once I reconciled that I would have nothing to talk about this month I went to Soba Nippon to satiate an old craving.
It’s been nearly two years since I was last there. I knew that I was craving the beef salad but couldn’t quite remember what it was all about. I also recall that the beef soba salad is one of the most appropriate dishes to have during the hot summer months. Even so, on this cold fall evening, I stopped by Soba Nippon to jog my memory. I ordered the prix-fixe dinner so I could have a taste of everything. The key dishes being: agedashi mozzarella, beef salad, and the mori soba (plain cold soba with sprinkles of shredded seaweed).
The soba is handmade at Soba Nippon and the owner actually has a buckwheat farm in Canada, which is explained alongside a large photo of the flowering buckwheat plants on one wall inside the restaurant. I have never been a fan of the soba here. The texture is too hard and it’s cut too wide. Soba shouldn’t be too hard nor too soft (such is the case at Sobakoh) but just right. Therefore, despite the restaurant’s name, I would opt to forgo the soba for some of the other dishes.
One of my favorite things is the complimentary fried soba sticks they provide as snack before your meal — goes so well with beer. They serve it with a little dish of chili mayonnaise. Once I started eating the sticks dipped in the mayo, I couldn’t stop. I have a pretty high threshold for spicy foods but I found the mayonnaise to have a particularly strong kick — fabulous! When I asked the chef what was in the mayo, he just said “Chinese chili oil.” Okay! It works.
The agedashi mozzarella is one of Soba Nippon’s concoctions that is delicious. Since mozzarella is a relatively mild flavored cheese, substituting the cheese for tofu — the original dish that this is based on is agedashi tofu — actually works really well, especially because the cheese is slightly melted inside after being deep-fried. This is really something quite special and worth trying.
Oh, now the beef salad! It gives me great pleasure to talk about this dish. The salad is a regular iceberg lettuce, shredded red cabbage and carrot salad with a ponzu-based dressing. What’s remarkable are the thin slices of seared beef prime rib that sit on top of the salad. Dressed with sesame seeds, the beef is still slightly warm when served, and so tender that it almost melts in your mouth. While this isn’t Kobe beef, it is a similar type of pleasure you get. The cut of the meat is so luscious and juicy, laced with just the right amount of fat. I almost started to cry in ecstacy!
The beef salad is also made as a cold soba dish: beef soba salad. Even though I don’t love the soba here, when the cold soba is dressed with the perfect toppings in the beef salad, it complements the salad and creates a delicious soba dish. So for those days when you prefer to go low-carb, there’s the option of just the salad, but when you want a heftier meal, order the beef salad soba. You won’t regret it either way.
So ultimately, the month wasn’t so tragic after all. I have a short memory, especially when something good comes along to save the day… or month!
Posted in Japanese , Meat , Midtown West , Salad
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