01.21.10
Posted in food-related musings at 14:00 by Dominique
I am hungry all the time. I also try not to eat sweets, since they are empty calories and not filling to me. This is a problem when I’m away from home and just want a little snack. You can buy a candy bar or brownie or tons of other treats, but where are the non-junk savory snacks? As much as I love chips, they’re empty calories too. Jerky is out, Hot Pockets require equipment, and sandwiches or pizza slices are usually too much food. Fast food dollar menus tend to have smaller foods, but a burger is still not healthy or small enough.
My favorite solution to this conundrum is Café Zaiya. They have a location on 41st near Madison, and inside Kinokuniya Books on 6th and 41st. Their onigiri is great! A palm-sized triangle of rice with tuna, salmon, or shrimp inside, wrapped in crispy seaweed, is exactly the healthy, tasty small bite I’m looking for. And at not even $2, it’s a great deal. I wish more places had it. We have sushi and udon at nearly every random deli and café; onigiri is just as easy to make. This could be the solution to America’s much-discussed obesity epidemic!
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01.06.10
Posted in East Village, Latin, New York City Neighborhoods, New York City Reviews, rated 6 to 6.5 at 02:42 by Dominique
304 E.6th St. & 2nd/1st Aves., 212-253-5888
Great for: tequila lovers with deep pockets, dainty eaters
I wanted to do something nice for the Boyfriend, and we’d decided to move in together the next week (I know, I know, crazy fast, but it’s working), so I figured what could be better than taking a Mexican food- and drink-loving guy to a tequila bar/restaurant? Turns out I should probably have taken him to Crema, although we did find a lovely new tequila we both like.
We started off with good croquetas. The one of chorizo was slightly better than the cheese and smoked tomato one. We preferred the seared shrimp and scallops stuffed with chorizo and roasted sweet pepper. They came in skewers and we could have eaten a few more, for sure.
I also enjoyed his tacos with chicken, cilantro, radishes and lime. They were insanely hot in places – someone definitely didn’t understand how crucial dicing and spreading out peppers is – and otherwise crispy and quite nice. My entraña with chimichurri over summer corn pudding with pico of tomato, radish, red onion and Mexican oregano was only fine. It felt like a small amount of steak. I enjoyed the pudding, at least. We definitely needed more tequila to forget how much we were being charged for eh food.
The cocktails are pretty good. I liked the suro-mago, though I was puzzled that it came in half a tumbler. I don’t know why they didn’t just put it in a smaller glass. The amor morado came in a more appropriately sized container and was also good. The Boyfriend said his margarita was good, not terrific, despite people saying it’s Mayahuel’s specialty (but then the Cali boy is picky). He loved his 2 ounces of Siete Leguas, which is strong-tasting yet approachable. It was so good, we got a bottle at Astor Wines later.
This is an overpriced, New York-y type of place. Our waitress knowing her tequila saved them half a point. It’s pretty decent compared to some of the swill that passes for Mexican here, but at these prices I kind of expect a little more, and a bit better, food.
Rating: 6.5 / 10
Our cost: $135 (regular dinner + 4 cocktails)
Noise level: noisy until late
Chance of walking in: not great, but it’s still new.
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01.03.10
Posted in Asian, Chinese, New York City Reviews, Williamsburg at 22:08 by Dominique
208 Bedford Ave. & N.5th/6th Sts., 718-388-8898
Great for: everything, especially noodles, and it is not expensive at all
I usually only leave Manhattan for things that start with p: planes, poker and parties. In this case it was the bi-monthly Williamsburg Spelling Bee, which I suppose would go under prizes. I went on a lark with some British friends several months ago and won, and have been winning the local bees ever since. (There are also the NYC and Big Gay Bees.) This time I came in second. I could tell it wouldn’t be a good night when I spelled my first word, blintze, incorrectly. (Did you know it officially has an e? I was totally shocked too. In fact, Microsoft Word is giving it the red line right now.) But the winner spelled crazy words like emmeleia and pteridology correctly, so I wasn’t as upset with myself as I normally would have been. Plus I was meeting the New Boyfriend. He promised he’d move out of Brooklyn soon, which made me willing to explore it a bit while he lived there.
This restaurant is so good, I would seriously consider hopping a train for the two stops it takes from the Lower East Side just to have more of their noodley goodness. It’s better than a lot of the nearby places in Chinatown! We started with spicy wontons with peanut sauce, which are rather large and not terribly spicy. I thought it a tasty dish despite my dislike of peanut sauce.
He ordered chicken lo mein, which they got confused and served with beef instead. It didn’t matter – it was very, very good, with chewy, soft noodles and crunchy vegetables. I loved my terrific black pepper beef udon for basically the same reasons. The flavors and textures were perfectly balanced. It’s a lot harder to get it all right than it seems, and this jaded, spoiled Manhattanite was impressed. If he still lived in the neighborhood, we’d go back. As it is we might yet!
Rating: 8.5 / 10
Our cost: $40 (1 app, 2 noodle entrees, 1 beer and 1 wine)
Noise level: not too noisy but still lively
Chance of walking in: not bad.
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Posted in Asian, Japanese, Lower East Side, New York City Neighborhoods, New York City Reviews, rated 7 to 7.5 at 21:53 by Dominique
245 Eldridge St. & Houston/Stanton Sts., 212-358-7773
Great for: a quiet meal in that random Milk & Honey part of the LES, sushi
It was a sushi kind of Sunday, and after some Blackberry consultation, the New Boyfriend and I settled on this place. Our starter of furikake-dusted calamari with nori, sesame seeds and lime aïoli was pretty good, but not that impressive. The calamari could have been less rubbery and the aïoli was a bit distracting; it needed more spice and less citrus.
I was happier with my sushi sashimi combo. The tuna, salmon and hamachi sushi were well executed, as were the good-size pieces of salmon, tuna, shrimp and yellowtail nigiri. The spicy tuna maki were small and nice. Our favorite thing of the meal was the creative and spicy yellowfin tuna roll with Thai basil.
In a word, the meal was nice. So was our service, mostly. Initially we were the only patrons, and asked them to switch the channel to poker. We sat facing the TV and discussing the action. Then two guys came in and unasked, the owner changed back to baseball. Which the guys, who weren’t even facing the TV, ignored. Poker might be a slightly odd request but I found the switching back quite rude. I’m not deducting points for that; it was just a weird footnote to an otherwise pleasant dinner.
Rating: 7 / 10
Our cost: $65 (1 app, 1 combo, 2 rolls)
Noise level: quiet, but it was empty
Chance of walking in: good.
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Posted in Asian, Lower East Side, New York City Neighborhoods, New York City Reviews, Southeast Asian, rated 6 to 6.5, small plates at 21:48 by Dominique
113 Ludlow & Rivington/Delancey, 212-353-8866
Great for: sharing lots of small dishes, easily impressed out-of-towners
One of my favorite girlfriends organized a girls’ night one Saturday. I’d been here before so I wasn’t too excited about the food, but fortunately her presence makes up for quite a lot. The last time I was here the company was also better than the food, which is only middling anyway, so it is not the place to take a foodie. Unless they like everything sweet.
We had to wait a very long while for the people at our reserved table to clear out, for which inconvenience we were given free edamame with lemon butter and salt. It was really good. It sustained me through our first dish of pickled vegetables, which was kind of like being tasered with a pickle. In my mind, even when a dish is “pickled [something],” it ought to still have some balance. I shouldn’t be fighting to keep my eyes open.
Fortunately the scallops with bacon, kalamansi and sake were much better. They also were a little sour, but a nice size and overall pretty tasty. So was the pork tonkatsu with watercress salad and lime butter. I found the meat a tad dry and the sauce a little sweet, while the lime butter was nice. I did not, of course, eat the mushrooms with baby bamboo, though the bamboo was decent.
The langoustines special in panko with wasabi tobiko aïoli was the best dish we had. The aïoli is addictive – the shellfish was good too. I enjoyed the sautéed Chinese sausage with super-hot Thai chili-lime sauce, which offset well the sweetness of the meat. The tofu with Thai basil and wood ear mushrooms in spicy soy mirin was not good. Too sweet, and just blah all around. I didn’t care for the seared ahi tuna in Thai chili-miso vinaigrette either.
We finished things off with the dessert tasting. The Thai chili chocolate ice cream (for an avowedly Filipino restaurant, they really like those Thai spices) was fine, as were the black plum sorbet and fried plantains. The lemongrass panna cotta was the best.
The service partly makes up for the mediocrity of the food. They are very attentive, and it was nice of them to mitigate the annoyance of waiting 45 minutes with unsolicited edamame. On the other hand, we were shocked to be charged corkage for our two bottles of sake; we tried to empirically figure out if that’s standard, and couldn’t remember details of past byob dinners well enough to come to a consensus, but basically it was surprising to be charged for twist-open bottles.
I can’t tell you why this place gets so much hype. Both visits I was in parties of 4 that ordered a good cross-section of the menu, and had an okay meal that rose to pretty good at best. I might have liked it better if I liked sweet flavors in food, and I think that might be a Filipino idiosyncrasy, but I am not a fan. Another annoyance is that everything is kind of expensive. Nothing is under $7, and most is considerably more. Not even the vegetarian dishes. Really? On the Lower East Side? The food definitely didn’t earn its price tags.
Rating: 6 / 10
Our cost: $130 (just food, they’re byob with small corkage fees)
Noise level: a bit noisy, not bad
Chance of walking in: not great. You can reserve for **parties of 4 or more.
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Posted in Asian, Chinese, Midtown West, Murray Hill, New York City Neighborhoods, New York City Reviews, rated 6 to 6.5 at 21:30 by Dominique
30 W. 32nd St. & Broadway/5th Ave., 212-629-6450
Great for: noodles, eating non-Korean late in Koreatown
This was a really big day for me. I shot my first feature film (I play a gangster who stabs a girl after helping kill her fiancé) and had my first date with the New Boyfriend!
He got spicy noodles with chicken substituted for seafood, and it was quite tasty. The lovely round noodles were silky and slightly chewy. The sauce was a bit sweet, but pleasantly so. My Szechuan chicken was an absolutely giant dish. It was only medium spicy, with far too many mushrooms. The sauce was also on the sugary side without being annoying.
It’s a decent Chinese restaurant, and certainly a better bet than some of the Korean joints on the street. I love barbecue and regular Korean food, but it’s so easy to walk into a random place and end up spending $60 on maybe two plates of raw meat and wondering why we’re still hungry. (True story, at Won Jo.) Plus, this place seems to stay open forever – we left around 5am and there were still people coming in – and you won’t smell like barbecue when you leave. (Though personally I am always delighted by that smell.)
Rating: 6.5 / 10
Our cost: $30
Noise level: it’s pretty large so I imagine it’s not quiet when full
Chance of walking in: not bad.
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