The Chopped (salad)
by Celia Cheng
May 1st, 2007
QUALITY MEATS
57 W 58th St
(5th & 6th Ave)
212-371-7777
Quality Meats opened last April as the latest addition to the Smith & Wollensky Restaurant Group (SWRG). While the restaurant is located in Midtown and caters to those who work in the area with generous expense accounts, I was pleasantly surprised to find how much I enjoyed the atmosphere, food and service each time I visited. This statement may sound unfair, but I only mean that Quality Meats is a smart and nice contrast to the original old school Smith & Wollensky steakhouse (now steakhouse conglomerate). Not that there’s anything wrong with old school, but I tend to feel a little out of place despite my voracious appetite for meat! By comparison, Quality Meats is modern and has a varied menu that has been expertly and beautifully executed with a touch of levity.
In fact, Quality Meats is more of a contemporary New York restaurant than a steakhouse. And while there’s no doubt of its expertise in meats, I actually am a big fan of all the seafood served. Chef Craig Koketsu pays close attention to the orders coming in. When my friend and I ordered soft shell crab, crabcake, crab and avocado, and hamachi sashimi for appetizers, he altered the seasoning and ingredients of some to make sure there wasn’t too much overlap in flavors. All of it is extremely fresh and the presentation beautiful. The hamachi sashimi remains my favorite. The fresh hamachi (yellowfin tuna) pairing with the creaminess of avocado and refreshing, crunchy green papaya is a knockout.
The lunch menu at QM is really a delight with “The Chopped” salad as one its main highlights. Guests choose from a selection of mixes including classic (romaine, Boston bibb, beefsteak tomatoes, thick-cut onions, bacon lardons, and bleu cheese dressing), Mediterranean (arugula, olives, artichokes, chickpeas, cucumbers, roasted peppers and basil vinaigrette), roasted beet (red and gold beets, radicchio, endive frisée, arugula and toasted walnut vinaigrette), green goddess (romaine, cucumbers, olives, red onions, apples, sunflower seeds, and creamy fresh herb dressing), or eastern (napa cabbage, carrots, scallions, cilantro, hosui pears, green papaya, roasted peanuts and spicy lime vinaigrette). After choosing your mix, you pick “a finishing touch” from the choices of roasted vegetables, grilled chicken breast, marinated shrimp, thinly sliced diver scallops, seared yellowfin tuna, pepper seared filet mignon or lobster (when in season). I’ve tried the classic with filet mignon and the green goddess with lobster, both of which were fun and great lunch options, as they were filling but not heavy.
The QM burger is also a nice alternative as it comes with an avocado on top and is served with parmesan hot fries, a.k.a. Tabasco fries. With all the food we had ordered, I wasn’t quite sure what was so spicy at first, but then realized that the fries were seasoned with Tabasco and sprinkled with grated parmesan. The waiter also explained that in addition to ketchup, another condiment served with the fries is Tabasco mayonnaise, just in case the fries alone were not hot enough. I love these fries! Spicy foods always open up my appetite, so I couldn’t get enough of them.
For dessert, pastry chef Cory Colton makes a variety of his own ice creams, including “coffee and doughnuts” and raspberry chocolate truffle. But I actually fell in love with the warm apple tart with apricot and blueberry compote. The tart is thin and refined, but there’s something about warm apple pies, one bite and it just feels like home. Despite being uncomfortably full after an extremely copious meal, I wanted to finish this dessert — and those who know me know I am not a sweets girl!
After lunch on both visits, I was ready to go home for a nap. I felt completely satisfied and blissful. And walking out of the restaurant, I relished the thought of how good life is. And for that, I give Quality Meats a thumbs-up.
Posted in American , Midtown West , Salad , Seafood , Steak
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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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Chopped Salad
by Celia Cheng
March 24th, 2006
BONITA
338 Bedford Ave
(S 2nd & S 3rd St)
Williamsburg, Brooklyn
718-384-9500
Okay, it’s not that I want to harp on Bonita, but I just can’t get over how good the food is, not to mention the great service too. Even though it’s a “famous” place, you never get any attitude here.
The chopped salad is unique in that it has pulled pork in it. While the vegetables in the salad keep it light and refreshing, the pork really brings in the flavor and makes this a delicious dish. It’s good to share with friends as an appetizer or it could be a substantial meal for one.
Let me just gush a little more. Come on, when there’s good food to be had, we must share. The fish tacos are super yummy too. The fish is pan-fried, so it has a bit of a crispy texture that makes all the difference. One order comes with two, and though we were sharing, I seriously wanted both of them for myself.
The vegetarian tamales were also delicious, with cheese and peppers inside the corn dough. I often find tamales to be too dry, particularly when the filling is meat, but these were perfect.
Bonita is just almost too good to be true, but I’m not complaining. I’ll just count my blessings.
Posted in Mexican , Salad , Williamsburg
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Gotham Salad
by Celia Cheng
March 11th, 2006
CAFÉ 745
Bergdorf Goodman
754 5th Ave
@ 57th & 58th St
212-339-3326
This is a lady of leisure type of establishment and I got a real kick out of looking around to see who these ladies were. Don’t get me wrong, there are men who dine here too, but mostly as the ladies’ companions.
The menu is clearly going to be overpriced, but I don’t think most of the diners care. The good news is, the food is pretty decent at Café 745. The menu has rather delightful items such as deviled eggs and finger sandwiches. (Unfortunately, neither of these two dishes is that tasty.)
What is rather good is the Gotham salad. It seemed like most ladies were ordering or had ordered this salad, so clearly it has a following. It’s a copious salad with diced chicken breast, ham, gruyere, tomatoes, beets, bacon, hard-boiled egg, iceberg lettuce and Thousand Island dressing. Ah, yes. Thousand Island dressing makes everything better. But truthfully all the ingredients play an important role in achieving the final balance of flavors.
Treat yourself to a day of indulgence, buy some beauty products and enjoy a snack or meal at Café 745. When you come to Bergdorf, it’s all about pampering yourself. As my sister always tells me, Bergdorf is for her the equivalent of Tiffany’s for Holly Golightly (Breakfast at Tiffany’s) — being there always brightens her day.
Posted in American , Midtown East , Salad
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