There's nothing like an overnight trip to Manhattan to take you away from all of your reality. You get on the train in Wilmington and in two hours you are in a whole new world, on the street with thousands of others, most of whom seem to be speaking a foreign language.
Every time we come home from a trip to New York, we try to figure out when we can go again. Last time was in June for the Fancy Food Show, and on the train back from that we decided a fall visit was in order. We go with only a vague idea of where we want to explore, making no reservations except for the hotel. Our feeling is, if we can't get a seat at the bar, we'll just go on to the next place on the list.
Our main destinations this Sunday was to MoMA to see the Kitchen Design Exhibit, and the East Village to see DBGB and others. We were very successful in all of our endeavors. The MoMA, besides being home to some incredible art and amazing design, is also the site of a Danny Meyer restaurant aptly named The Modern. For Sunday lunch, the dining room was booked, leaving only the tiny bar tables open for us: perfect. Small plates or half-sized entree portions make up the very intriguing menu. In retrospect, we decided that the hamachi tartare Kevin started with was one of the best things all weekend, as were the tasty mini-baguettes of bread with the square of very nice butter sprinkled with sea salt. We ate all the bread we could get, it was so good! I had the wild mushroom soup, which I knew, in a place like this, was going to be just how I like mushroom soup, and it was. The Chef at The Modern is Alsatian, so the menu leans deliciously in that direction - the Alsatian country sausage was Kevin's next choice, while I had - I know, I know - the liverwurst. Hey, this isn't liverwurst like you get at the deli-counter at SuperFresh...this was house made, dotted with black pepper and served with sour rye toast and a variety of house made pickles: mushrooms (didn't like those so much), carrots (really good), beets (the best), and half-sours (not as good as Kevin's!). What a wonderful lunch! And from there we headed right back into the museum for a couple more hours of culture.
After the museum we knew we were in need of more food - a least to look at - so we hoofed down to Mario Batali's mega mall of total Italian across from Madison Square Park. This blog offers some pictures of what the scene was like - and we were among those who waited in a line at the door just to get into the place. It was really pretty cool, despite the crowds. I loved the various food "stations", with a mix of stand up tables, cafe type seating and regular restaurant seats. Prices of course were as high as probably could be tolerated by New Yorkers, but we were not there to shop, only to gawk. The place is simply a palace of food, every square inch - pastas fresh and dried, produce, a sandwich bar, a panini bar, chocolates and gelato, two coffee stations - one with just espresso and machiatos - wine and charcutiere, bread and pastries, sauces and seafood, and everything else in between. We talked a little with the butcher at the meat counter about the Montana raised Piedmontese beef they offer (the rib eye came in at $28.50 a pound), and he handed us a sample of the tartare. It was quite flavorfully meaty and richly beefy tasting stuff. And while the 50,000 square foot "store" was pretty jammed, we managed to find a seat for our coffee break; it was never out-of-control crowded - mostly because they only let in a certain number of people in line at a time. We'll go again, next time we're in the 'hood!
After a short break at the hotel, we head down to the East Village for the main event - food that other people cook and serve. One of the beauties of dining out in Manhattan is that you really don't have to worry about the time - we didn't even start out until close to 7PM, and it's Sunday night, when generally you would think things are going to close up early. Well, early is relative, and at Daniel Bouloud's Bowery Street Kitchen and Bar the place was packed at 8; we were lucky to snag the last bar table in the corner. Another tiny table, another menu of small plates, and another meal of sausage and pate (if you consider liverwurst to be pate). The Thai sausage was superlative, and for the first time we tried Head Cheese - which is basically a cold pate with lots of gelatin in it. Delicious. It made Kevin want to get the head from one of St. Brigid's veal calves next time!
From this bastion of high end casually fine dining we headed a few blocks over to Hecho en Dumbo, for some truly authentic Mexican food. (BTW - this place serves food until 2AM on the weekends...) Two seats at the end of the bar, mojito in hand, menus once again of small plates, we were not disappointed. We shared three plates. First, the Esquites - a bowl of extremely fresh corn with a little spice, a little citrus and a little crema. It. Was. Fine. It proved true how sometimes the simplest dish can be the most impressive. Begin with a very fine ingredient and only do enough to it to enhance what you already have. This royal beginning was followed by a very good example of Fundido Chorizo - melted cheese and pork belly chorizo, with flour tortillas and a variety of salsas. Once again, very fresh, very well made, very good. By now I was reaching capacity, so I did not participate too much in the Chile en Nogada - a classic dish involving chicken, hot peppers and walnut sauce with pomegranate seeds, the colors representing the Mexican Flag - although I did enjoy the taste or two I had, especially the play of the walnut sauce against the pepper and the pomegranate seeds. I also did not participate in the shot of tequila with a tomato juice chaser that the bartender brought to us at the end of the meal. Needless to say, we did not make our return trip by subway, understanding that a cab would probably be a little less hazardous...
Monday's plan was for more ethnic, at the rather upscale Chinatown Brasserie in NoHo. It's raining a little on Monday, but that doesn't stop us from walking down through Chelsea and the MeatPacking District, with a stop Kee's for some chocolate. We get to the CB just as they are opening at 11:30. We chose this place because we are big fans of Dim Sum, and the the Executive Chef here, Joe Ng, is supposedly a Dim Sum master. It is a very fancy, ornate dining room, sort of what you expect a high end Chinese restaurant would look like - lots of red. Once we were seated in a cozy round booth, Kevin's troubles began. The menu was huge. How could he ever decide? We knew we wanted a couple of dim sum dishes - but what?? The crispy mango and shrimp roll? Pork buns? The vegetable pot stickers? And all of those other things we were hungry for - cold green noodles, crispy orange beef, or even Peking duck! Oh man, it was going to take forever for him to order. So, we just did it one step at a time - first, the duck spring roll: crisp and not the least bit oily, with relatively large pieces of BBQ duck and a hoisin dipping sauce. Good start. Second: the shrimp noodle roll, which was sheets of rice noodles wrapped around lightly cooked shrimp. Hard to eat with chopsticks, but very good flavor of seafood and a sort of soy sauce juice to dip it in. Excellent. The tempura chile with shrimp was the third course - this was kind of like a Chinese popper, with the chile holding a shrimp mousse instead of cream cheese. It was pleasantly spicy and crunchy. Wonderful. For the "main" courses, we took the server's suggestion of the Very Thin Egg Noodles with Wild Mushrooms, and the Wok Sauteed Asparagus and Brussels Sprouts. The first was a crunchy mass of noodles, with a sort of meaty sauce and a variety of mushrooms, many of which were not very wild but your everyday buttons. The partly crunchy, partly chewy noodles were really good, although would have been better had the sauce been more evenly distributed and the mushrooms more wildly flavorful. The vegetables were just wonderful - we both scarfed them up immediately, probably because we had pretty much been living on sausage and cheese up until then... They were lightly glazed with an almost buttery something and cooked just enough.
We were finished. We headed back into the now pouring rain, got on D train (or was it the N?) back to the Hotel, picked up our bags and hustled over to Penn Station to wait for the 2:05 to Wilmington. A Tim Horton Coffee and a Vosges Curry Coconut Chocolate Chip cookie provided us with a sweet ending to our non-stop search for food in Manhattan.
When can we go again?
After the museum we knew we were in need of more food - a least to look at - so we hoofed down to Mario Batali's mega mall of total Italian across from Madison Square Park. This blog offers some pictures of what the scene was like - and we were among those who waited in a line at the door just to get into the place. It was really pretty cool, despite the crowds. I loved the various food "stations", with a mix of stand up tables, cafe type seating and regular restaurant seats. Prices of course were as high as probably could be tolerated by New Yorkers, but we were not there to shop, only to gawk. The place is simply a palace of food, every square inch - pastas fresh and dried, produce, a sandwich bar, a panini bar, chocolates and gelato, two coffee stations - one with just espresso and machiatos - wine and charcutiere, bread and pastries, sauces and seafood, and everything else in between. We talked a little with the butcher at the meat counter about the Montana raised Piedmontese beef they offer (the rib eye came in at $28.50 a pound), and he handed us a sample of the tartare. It was quite flavorfully meaty and richly beefy tasting stuff. And while the 50,000 square foot "store" was pretty jammed, we managed to find a seat for our coffee break; it was never out-of-control crowded - mostly because they only let in a certain number of people in line at a time. We'll go again, next time we're in the 'hood!
After a short break at the hotel, we head down to the East Village for the main event - food that other people cook and serve. One of the beauties of dining out in Manhattan is that you really don't have to worry about the time - we didn't even start out until close to 7PM, and it's Sunday night, when generally you would think things are going to close up early. Well, early is relative, and at Daniel Bouloud's Bowery Street Kitchen and Bar the place was packed at 8; we were lucky to snag the last bar table in the corner. Another tiny table, another menu of small plates, and another meal of sausage and pate (if you consider liverwurst to be pate). The Thai sausage was superlative, and for the first time we tried Head Cheese - which is basically a cold pate with lots of gelatin in it. Delicious. It made Kevin want to get the head from one of St. Brigid's veal calves next time!
From this bastion of high end casually fine dining we headed a few blocks over to Hecho en Dumbo, for some truly authentic Mexican food. (BTW - this place serves food until 2AM on the weekends...) Two seats at the end of the bar, mojito in hand, menus once again of small plates, we were not disappointed. We shared three plates. First, the Esquites - a bowl of extremely fresh corn with a little spice, a little citrus and a little crema. It. Was. Fine. It proved true how sometimes the simplest dish can be the most impressive. Begin with a very fine ingredient and only do enough to it to enhance what you already have. This royal beginning was followed by a very good example of Fundido Chorizo - melted cheese and pork belly chorizo, with flour tortillas and a variety of salsas. Once again, very fresh, very well made, very good. By now I was reaching capacity, so I did not participate too much in the Chile en Nogada - a classic dish involving chicken, hot peppers and walnut sauce with pomegranate seeds, the colors representing the Mexican Flag - although I did enjoy the taste or two I had, especially the play of the walnut sauce against the pepper and the pomegranate seeds. I also did not participate in the shot of tequila with a tomato juice chaser that the bartender brought to us at the end of the meal. Needless to say, we did not make our return trip by subway, understanding that a cab would probably be a little less hazardous...
Monday's plan was for more ethnic, at the rather upscale Chinatown Brasserie in NoHo. It's raining a little on Monday, but that doesn't stop us from walking down through Chelsea and the MeatPacking District, with a stop Kee's for some chocolate. We get to the CB just as they are opening at 11:30. We chose this place because we are big fans of Dim Sum, and the the Executive Chef here, Joe Ng, is supposedly a Dim Sum master. It is a very fancy, ornate dining room, sort of what you expect a high end Chinese restaurant would look like - lots of red. Once we were seated in a cozy round booth, Kevin's troubles began. The menu was huge. How could he ever decide? We knew we wanted a couple of dim sum dishes - but what?? The crispy mango and shrimp roll? Pork buns? The vegetable pot stickers? And all of those other things we were hungry for - cold green noodles, crispy orange beef, or even Peking duck! Oh man, it was going to take forever for him to order. So, we just did it one step at a time - first, the duck spring roll: crisp and not the least bit oily, with relatively large pieces of BBQ duck and a hoisin dipping sauce. Good start. Second: the shrimp noodle roll, which was sheets of rice noodles wrapped around lightly cooked shrimp. Hard to eat with chopsticks, but very good flavor of seafood and a sort of soy sauce juice to dip it in. Excellent. The tempura chile with shrimp was the third course - this was kind of like a Chinese popper, with the chile holding a shrimp mousse instead of cream cheese. It was pleasantly spicy and crunchy. Wonderful. For the "main" courses, we took the server's suggestion of the Very Thin Egg Noodles with Wild Mushrooms, and the Wok Sauteed Asparagus and Brussels Sprouts. The first was a crunchy mass of noodles, with a sort of meaty sauce and a variety of mushrooms, many of which were not very wild but your everyday buttons. The partly crunchy, partly chewy noodles were really good, although would have been better had the sauce been more evenly distributed and the mushrooms more wildly flavorful. The vegetables were just wonderful - we both scarfed them up immediately, probably because we had pretty much been living on sausage and cheese up until then... They were lightly glazed with an almost buttery something and cooked just enough.
We were finished. We headed back into the now pouring rain, got on D train (or was it the N?) back to the Hotel, picked up our bags and hustled over to Penn Station to wait for the 2:05 to Wilmington. A Tim Horton Coffee and a Vosges Curry Coconut Chocolate Chip cookie provided us with a sweet ending to our non-stop search for food in Manhattan.
When can we go again?
Oh Wow, Barbara...whatta wonderful gustatory trip for your reader/eater fans to enjoy vicariously. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteAs mentioned before, you COULD have a second career as a travel writer/food critic based on your year-long trip blog, and your behind-the-scenes Brooks' blog....Only don't...Just stay with us no matter how tempting an offer you get from the nation's really important publications. We need you. What fun for us to dream that maybe we could retrace your steps some day.C.G.
Great post, Barbara. That city is crazy for food. You mentioned in an earlier post that Kevin was trying a half-sour recipe and linked to my site. If he used my recipe/technique, I'd love to know how it came out and get any feedback or questions about it. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteThank you Mr. Herring. I googled "half-sours" and linked to your site because it offered a great explanation, with pictures and recipes! For his technique, Kevin read several recipes from various sources, which is his usual method. They turned out really good - he used garlic, salt, dill and a hot pepper in his brine, 3 days at room temp (in an old olive container). They are sort of creamy on the inside with a nice crunch, not too sour, not really sweet.
ReplyDeleteThank you Connie, for your continued support!