Gramercy Tavern, Rounds 2 and 3 – Burgers, Burgers for Everybody

31 December 2016

The one thing that I didn’t get the first go-around in the tasting menu at Gramercy Tavern was the infamous burger, which is only available in the Tavern.

Gourmet burgers, the ultimate high-brow/low-brow question mark at so many restaurants in the city, have been having their moment for a while – and as much as I hate being a sucker for food media-driven trendspotting, when it comes to burgers, I’m still a sucker for a good one. Let’s be honest, I’ll always be a sucker for a good burger. And sometimes, even if you’re at a fine-ass restaurant, you want a burger. This is one of those burgers that won’t make you regret ordering one.

I mean, for the love of God, just look at that. A lot of housemade details: condiments, brioche-y bun, potato chips, pickled chilis, cured bacon. These things, plus a lava flow of funky white cheddar.

Most importantly, you can really taste the beef, the grind and the juices. The patty does not break into chunks. The bun holds its weight against the grease drip and the heft of the meat. I guess I’m not really surprised, but nevertheless it’s a damn delicious piece of culinary engineering.

Power lunch Wednesday, pt3: this medium-rare bad boy @gramercytavern #latergram #eeeeeats

A post shared by Hao Wang (@houseofhaos) on Sep 24, 2015 at 10:20am PDT

Some stupid-delicious blend of beef cuts (a base of chuck, plus brisket and short rib). That’s a good mix, flavorful, still a little bloody, beefy/funky, fatty, done medium-rare.

Gramercy Tavern (menu)
42 E 20th St, New York, NY
(212) 477-0777

Cook Your Own Korean Meat – Don’s Bogam, NYC

5 January 2015

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When my sister was visiting New York, we dropped by Don’s Bogam for what we hoped would be some really good Korean barbecue. I forget where exactly I’d heard of the place, but I think it was on a mention in passing on Floyd Cardoz’s Instagram. I’ll take my chances in following the leads of chefs and sommeliers on where to eat. Anytime.

Don’s didn’t disappoint. A clean, gas flame and copper grill, with some banchan to nibble on. Nothing about the banchan was that notable, but the soy-braised lotus roots were pretty tasty. We ordered a seafood scallion pancake to share, as a starter. Decent. For meats, we ordered the maeun galbi, a marinated short rib in the chef’s housemade spicy sauce. Some really top-quality meat, marbled and sliced at a respectable thickness, holding up nicely to the licks of the blue flame. Fatty and chewy and full of flavor (wasn’t actually very spicy, but also not as sweet as galbi typically is). The ventilation tube is also positioned strategically right over the grill, so there’s not this overabundance of smoke. Between the galbi and the bulgogi, we split a bowl of spicy bibim-naengmyun, cold arrowroot starch noodles with cold broth, spicy gochujang-based chili sauce, and a hardboiled egg. We finished with a steaming pan of bulgogi, aromatic and sweet, cooked also atop the gas grill flame. Generous amounts of halved green onions and enoki mushrooms steeped and cooked in sweet soy-sauce and onion. Really good stuff, on par with some of the better meals that Myra and I had had in Seoul, back when we ate nothing but barbecue for about four straight days. Cordial, attentive service. But mostly, really delicious meat.

Don’s Bogam (website)
17 East 32nd Street, New York, NY 10016
(Google Maps)

In Search of Thai – SriPraPhai, Queens, NYC

27 December 2014

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The best Thai food in New York is a bit of a hike from our place in Hell’s Kitchen. It’s a straight shot on the 7 train out to Woodside, Queens, a historically Irish part of the metro area that since the 1990s has been a magnet for a multicultural smattering of immigrants, including large Filipino and Thai communities. Hence its reputation as host to the city’s best Thai food.

In my time in Los Angeles, Jas and the fine folks at Jitlada showed me what Thai food could really be, beyond the peanut-sticky-sweet pad thai and tame tom yums of university take-out joints. New York has in the past few years experienced an incredible reception to the peculiarities of Southeast Asian food. There’s Laotian cuisine offered up by Chef Phet over at Khe-Yo (which I unfortunately haven’t been to yet), Isaan-inflected Lower East destinations Somtum Der and Uncle Boons, Andy Ricker’s dedicated etude of the best things Thai at Pok Pok, and my neighborhood go-to Larb Ubol (as well as its new Soho outpost Lan Larb). There’s also a Burmese restaurant opening soon in Manhattan, I hear.

So I took two trips out to SriPraPhai (its backstory here), on the recommendation of one of Jas’ customers, once alone and once with a group of five. Here are all the things we ate.

Shrimp tom yum soup – no shortage of flavor or spice here, with hearty stalks of lemongrass and a bowl rimmed with red. Sour Isaan sausage, sturdy and chewy, with a crisp casing. Fried marinated pork – chunkier and a bit less seasoned than I’d like, but perfectly crisp. Beef tendon soup – gelatinous, with fat, chewy strands of tendon, the soup is surprisingly sour, the fresh cilantro a faint breath of lightness in what is otherwise an exercise in depth and richness. A vibrant roast duck salad, with onion, chili, ginger, lime juice, mango, pineapple, tomato, cilantro, and crushed peanuts. The fatty slivers of skin-on roast duck combine with the fruitiness of citrus and tropical fruit, and the slow-building kick-in-the-mouth, sweat-out-of-my-nose spiciness of whatever the dressing is comprised of. Soft-shell crab in basil chili sauce. Fried basil is the boss. For me, it’s hard to distinguish soft-shell crab past the obscene crunch (I mean that in a good way), but there’s just enough sweet, creamy innards for each crab to be worth it. Continue reading →

Dinner at Peter Luger – Williamsburg, NYC

14 December 2014

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There’s not much to say about the iconic steakhouse that does some of the best dry-aged butter-drenched porterhouse steaks known to man. It’s a historic place, dating back in various incarnations to 1887, with a fanatically loyal customer base and a famous secret dry-age technique, a mecca of all things beef. Onion rolls. Everything in Peter Luger smells in a marvelously stinky, savory way. Bacon, smoky and charred and meaty. Steak for four, baby. There are no words. Just tender beef goodness, the spectrum of dark burn to pink to ribbon’d fat and back, with a sheen of seasoned grease. The dry aging is something special, imbuing the rich, succulent steak with a beefy tang, the glorious aftertaste of climate-controlled decay. A side of German fried potatoes. And for dessert, the Holy Cow hot fudge sundae, with a mound of whipped schlag (cream), sturdy and sweet. And this amazing slice of cheesecake. Creamy and dense and more funky and sour than anything you’ll get out of a frozen Sara Lee box. As a side note, despite our somewhat brusque (brusque-friendly?) experience with the reservation line (but nothing less than professional), we didn’t have a wait to be seated, which I hear can be hit-or-miss, even if you arrive with full party and on time. So everything worked out great. The leftover steak made for fantastic steak and eggs in the morning. God bless America.

Peter Luger (website) – cash only
178 Broadway, Brooklyn, NY 11211
Google maps

Dinner at Betony – NYC

14 December 2014

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We celebrated an anniversary at Betony, a posh midtown restaurant headed by Chef Bryce Shuman and GM Eamon Rockey, alums of Eleven Madison Park. The dining room exudes luxury, in whatever way that soaring ceilings of relief sculptures and plush, comfortable oval-backed chairs exude luxury. But there’s also something cool, something about the towering exposed brick walls and the elegant tableware, through a kind of plush, dark, rich, velvety, rarefied air of midtown Manhattan.

And the food. Indulgent, irreverent, rich, but also creative and sometimes restrained.

Crisps.Foie gras bon-bons, with black pepper. The oily nuttiness of crushed cashews and the creamy burst of foie are the epitome of savory candy. Crisps with scallops. And this beautiful beast: pan-seared foie gras (the way I prefer it), stuffed with ham, in a wonderfully salt ham hock consommé, topped with a crisped kale leaf. Continue reading →

Paris, A Moveable Feast, Part 2: Spring

7 June 2014

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Our second night in Paris was spent in the dining room at Daniel Rose’s Spring – its elegant floor-to-ceiling windows peering out onto a quiet cobblestone’d backstreet, an openness that extends to the restaurant’s tidy cold kitchen. The design is both industrial chic and rustic, clean lines of white, wood, and iron alongside the dull gleam of copper pots and warped support beams from another era, encased in glass.

Chef Daniel’s story is compelling, the story of an American moving to France and of food and learning and cooking and doing it at an extremely high level. In some ways it is unique, because of how Spring started as a one-man show in one of the most food-obsessed and -particular cities in the world. In other ways, it is a story of falling in love. This Charlie Rose interview is pretty cool (Chef Rose’s part starts around 31:00).

Service was cordial, unpretentious, attentive. The sommelier brought us some champagne, and recommended me some ridiculously tasty peach nectar from Alain Milliat (unpictured). At our 7pm sitting, the restaurant was just whirring to life, with only a table or two having started before us. The meal started with small bites: fried oysters, cured foie gras with artichoke hearts, and marinated scallops. The foie gras was especially delicious, cold and intensely savory, with a bit of crunch from finishing salt and cracked pepper. Then this amazing langoustine tail, in a broth of enormous depth with crisp bok choy, atop of a bed of tapioca pearls. It conjured obscure memories of some magnificent soup that an old Chinese restaurant might nurture out of a master stock, but with the precision in that langoustine tail of a technically savvy kitchen. After the bread, a filet of red mullet with baby spinach, squid, and shredded Galician beef. Again the broth was very satisfying, enhanced by the beef’s pungent salinity.Roasted venison with venison jus, kumquat, and another garnish I don’t remember: A play on shepherd’s pie with braised venison and celery root purée:A glimpse of the restaurant: A trio of sweets – sorbet, clementine, and pineapple (the last cooked in butter). And Spring’s play on a traditional bûche de Noël – a little hazelnut cake with meringue and caramel hazelnuts.Chocolate truffles and tea & coffee to finish:A view of the passe as we were leaving:Spring Restaurant (map)
6 Rue Bailleul, 75001
Paris, France
Tel: +33 1 45 96 05 72
(le fooding)

Tasting Menu at Han Dynasty – East Village

12 February 2014

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When I went to Han Dynasty, we had a reservation for a large group, so were spared a long wait. I don’t mess with long waits for Chinese food. If I skipped Kau Kee for a thirty-minute line, you bet your ass I’d skip Han Dynasty, where on the night I visited, walk-ins for two were being told one hour.

Anyway, we ordered the relatively affordable tasting menu ($35 per person), which was just a set rotation of dishes from the menu. For a lower per-person amount, Han would provide fewer dishes or fewer meat and seafood dishes.

As for the food itself, I agree in concept with Pete Wells’ write-up in the New York Times. It’s not “authentic,” nor is it high-quality or notably well-made. There’s a bunch of sugar and garlic (the garlic part isn’t all that foreign for Chinese food, but it’s also not used to that degree in Sichuan dishes I’d tasted in China), and a surprising lack of spice. The spiciest entree was the dry pepper style chicken (an 8 on Han’s self-administered 10-point scale), and even that was middling at best.

That said, somehow, the meal was quite enjoyable, aided by a skillful front-of-house team. The dishes were tasty and Sichuan in name, but in execution they certainly tended to veer more towards the land of General Tso. For $35 per person though, that’s not altogether a bad thing. As long as I don’t have to wait, I wouldn’t mind having Han Dynasty again.

Here’s a run-down of what we had. The dan dan noodles: Sichuan wontons:Dumplings in chili oil:Spicy crispy cucumbers:Pork belly in garlic sauce and fried Taiwanese sausage: Continue reading →

Oh My Beef – Fukujukan at Takashimaya, Osaka

3 February 2014

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After wandering the underground food court at the Osaka Takashimaya at Namba Station, past all those meat purveyors with ridiculous displays of perfectly marbled meat, we couldn’t leave the city without squeezing in a round of Japanese beef. So much so that we skipped on a dinner at Honkogetsu, a two-Michelin-starred kaiseki restaurant, and spent the night avoiding thinking about our transgression.

Fukujukan, on the ninth floor of Takashimaya’s upstairs food court (a collection of restaurants, really), specialized in beef, either grilled or in shabushabu. In particular, Fukujukan had Matsusaka beef, one of the triumvirate of well-known Japanese beef types (Kobe and Yonezawa being the other two), which come from a black-haired cow. The meat is distinguished by an intense level of marbling and, partially resulting from this, a buttery tenderness. I mean, just look at this (the frontmost piece is the highest-quality. There is a five-point scale to rate Matsusaka beef).And this.And the obligatory plate of vegetable skewers.The kicker was that the grill, a beautiful slab of perforated stone, was greased with piece of beef fat melted over its surface. I think I just watched this process with my mouth wide open. Shock and awe. Continue reading →

Molokai – Shanghai, China

29 January 2014

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In Luwan, there’s a streamlined Cantonese restaurant called Molokai (摩罗街) putting out relatively straightforward dishes with equally straightforward flavors, cleanly and simply presented, with quality ingredients. In Shanghai, this is not a bad achievement. Think of Molokai as a step up from Tsui Wah, at heart still all about Cantonese comfort foods, with milk teas, fried rice, and brisket-centric dishes.

My friend Winston ordered this stewed brisket (清炖牛拉) with daikon radish, and I had a bite. This is a fairly simple dish but the flavors aren’t easy to get right, and Molokai’s version had good balance between the fragrant sweetness of the daikon and the umami depth of the brisket. The meat was nice and tender, with a few choice bites of collagen hidden throughout.

A commendable version of sweet and sour pork (咕噜肉), with a crunchy outer layer enveloping some fatty, chewy pork and a light coating of citrusy-sweet sauce. In this case, less (sauce) is indeed more.

A bowl of fried rice (大肚婆炒饭, roughly translated as the fat lady’s – or the fat wife’s – fried rice). Really simple, with minced ginger, egg, and thin strips of lettuce. Continue reading →

More Korean BBQ – Mapo Sutbul Galbi, Gangnam, Seoul

28 January 2014

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In need of more Korean barbecue (yes, a pressing need, even), I turned once again to Seoulistic, which has a list of some of Seoul’s most famous and popular galbi restaurants. Not being in a place to judge the article’s merits by comparative measures, I just took these guys’ at their word.

They turned out to be pretty spot on about the first place on their list, Mapo Sutbul Galbi in Nonhyeondong, Gangnam.In addition to a few more banchan dishes, Mapo Sutbul had a raw crab (without the brains) in gochujang, which was a pleasant distraction while we waited for the meat to arrive. So much so that Myra had to get me to stop gnawing at the crab when the meat arrived. And I, with a messy gochujang-stained face and numbed lips, obliged once the pork belly hit the grill. We ate everything ssam style, with big, fresh, crisp sheets of lettuce and a little sesame oil with salt. I prefer lettuce to perilla, but if push came to shove, anything works as long as pork belly is involved.And marinated pork and beef galbi, which was tantalizingly fatty on the grill. Continue reading →