Prune, round 2

Of all the restaurants Abby and I went to last summer in New York, Prune was one of our favorites. Abby was fortunate enough to get a spot in Manhattan for the New York Bar Exam (most out of staters get stuck in Albany or Buffalo), so we went back to Prune to celebrate the end of the two day ordeal. In addition to the bone marrow dish that we had on our last trip, we ordered and octopus salad with celery and chile flakes

fried sweet breads with bacon and capers

green beans with crab broth and almonds

and the special of the night, which was roasted suckling big with black eyed peas in a spicy broth.

As expected, everything was really, really good. Of the new dishes that we tried, I thought the suckling pig was the standout. It included bits of crispy cracklins, and the broth that it was served with was nice and spicy. It had a familiar, Sunday dinner feel to it, yet, at the same time, the spicy broth made it completely unique. It's too bad this was just a special. It would have made a nice addition to the permanent menu.

Brunch @ Diner, Williamsburg

We spent the weekend in New York and had an amazing brunch at the Diner in Williamsburg. The combination of local seasonal ingredients, tasty drinks, good company, and relaxing, sunny weather made for an ideal Sunday morning.

For the best bloody mary bar in existence, Sam and I usually turn to the East Coast Grill. It'll always be our go-to place for the drink (my favorite cocktail) in Boston. However, the version served at the Diner is arguably superior to anything I could fix up, even with the Grill's extensive bar. The Diner's bloody mary had a touch of herbs to it, garnished with sage flowers and pickled cauliflower, among other things. Because of the added punch of fragrance, it may very well top my list. I'm going to have to start experimenting at home to see if I can reverse engineer this deliciousness!

Jacob had an omelette with gruyere and salsa verde. Not a conventional combination, but it really worked. In all our dishes, the eggs were really fresh and bright.

Quite possibly the best fried oysters I've ever had. They were bursting with flavor and topped with a nice mix of lightly sauced herbs and fennel, over eggs. The Diner probably got them from Marlow & Sons next door, known for its fresh oysters.

Sam had biscuits and gravy, with a salad of fresh local greens. It's always nice to have something healthy and seasonal in your brunch! Also, on a side note, the portions were just perfect. Sam and I usually leave most brunch places engorged and on the verge of a food coma. But brunch at the Diner hit the spot, satisfying the tastebuds and stomach without going overboard.

Overall, a phenomenal brunch place! If I lived in New York, I would definitely frequent this restaurant.

Esca

Esca was the one Batali-Bastianich restaurant that Abby and I had not eaten at yet. After a weekend of heavy eating, we were both in the mood for something a little lighter, so it was the perfect time to try out this Hell's Kitchen seafood restaurant. It was awesome. Esca is famous for popularizing crudo - basically, Italian-style sashimi - in the United States. In fact, the claim is that one of the restaurant's investors, Joe Bastianich, coined the term crudo for these raw fish preparations when he, Mario Batali, and Chef Dave Pasternak were traveling around Italy doing research before opening Esca. If you go here, you absolutely have to order the crudo tasting.

The crudo tasting comes in two flights of three. Each flight is served in a tri-sectioned plate on a bed of crushed ice. This keeps everything cool and makes for a great presentation. The first flight we received had a distinct Pacific Northwest feel, which, of course, I really liked. Going from top to bottom, we had an oyster - I don't know the origin, but it would make sense if it was from somewhere in the Puget Sound/Olympic Peninsula region - followed by geoduck with cherries, and wild salmon with pink peppercorns. These were all very good, but I liked the geoduck (pronounced gooey-duck, also referred to as giant clam) the most. Geoducks are native to Western Washington, and you'll see people digging them up almost anytime you go to a beach around the Puget sound. Cherries are another local fruit, and the combination evokes summer in the Pacific Northwest, which is about as good as it gets.


The next flight of crudo included seared yellowtail tuna
Kingfish with caviar (This was also awesome. I'm not sure which one I liked more, this or the geoduck), and razor clam with some hot chiles.
After the crudo, we ordered an appetizer that was lightly scrambled eggs loaded with sweet corn and lump crab meat. This is something that I'll have to make at home. The sweetness of the corn and crab are ideal complements, and the still runny scrambled egg perfectly tied them together.

Next, we split an order of hand cut spaghetti with crab and sea urchin roe. Sea urchin in pasta is something I never would have thought of, but it worked really well. This was a very unique and surprisingly good dish.
Finally, we had pan roasted red snapper with arugula, olives and hearts of palm. The snapper was perfectly cooked. A great dish.
After trying all the Batali-Bastianich restaurants, this one ranks right near the top. Esca lacks the fame and formality of Babbo and Del Posto, but I think I actually enjoyed the food here more. More than anything, this probably has more to do with the fact that they were serving seafood than any other factor. With seafood, you can really tell when someone uses high quality ingredients and treats it just right. This clearly comes through at Esca. It was worth every penny.

Mary's Fish Camp

Mary's Fish Camp is located on a quiet corner in Greenwich village, but it might was well be in a small town on the Cape. The restaurant is small, without being overly crowded, and a large metal counter sweeps through the center of the room, dividing the small dining area from the kitchen. The two walls facing the street are almost entirely glass, letting in a lot of light and lending to the coastal feel of the place. Vases with reeds sit on the window sills. These sort of remind me of the coastal vegetation you would see in a place like the Outer Banks. The interior walls were adorned with a painting of a sad looking fish and a chalkboard with the day's menu.

This restaurant is known for its unfussy preparation of really fresh ingredients. Its the kind of place where you can get a whole fish grilled with a little salt and pepper and a spritz of lemon juice. We ordered cockles with white beans and garlic for an appetizer, I had a spicy fried sardine sandwich, and Abby ordered the oyster po' boy. We both loved the appetizer. I thought my sandwich was great, but Abby was not impressed by the po' boy. It was good, but didn't measure up to our current standard, the Barking Carb in Boston. Even so, I would recommend this place. Prices were decent, the food was good, and the atmosphere is nice.

Mesa Grill

Bobby Flay might just be my favorite TV celebrity chef. Years ago, I bought one of his grilling cookbooks, and it remains one of my favorites. Not having a grill - or a yard, for that matter - I haven't used it much since I moved to Boston, but back when I lived in DC I would make something directly from this cookbook or directly inspired by something in the cookbook on a fairly regular basis. All of the recipes have been consistently good. Naturally, I couldn't spend a summer eating in New York and not try one of Flay's restaurants.

I can't really compare this place to many of the other restaurants I have been to recently for a couple of reasons. First, we sat at the bar, and, second, we weren't that hungry, so we just ordered a bunch of appetizers.

We started out with a flight of three different ceviches: sea scallop with tomatillo and orange, shrimp with pickled hot and sweet peppers, and lobster and octopus with yellow pepper and smoke paprika. I thought that these were all really good, but I liked the lobster and octopus ceviche the most. (As an aside, the best ceviche I have ever had was at this sushi place that Abby and I went to when she was living in Santiago, Chile. I can't remember the name, but it was in Plaza Nunoa. If you are ever in that city, check it out.)

After the ceviche, we tried the dishes pictured below.

Barbecued country ribs with mango habanero glaze and green onion peanut relish. These were really tender and the peanuts created a nice textural contrast. The sauce was awesome. That's something I could say about all of his dishes. I think bold, interesting sauces are sort of a Flay signature. Tequila cured salmon and cripy squash blossom salad with roasted lime vinaigrette. This was my least favorite dish, but it was still pretty good.
Shrimp and roasted garlic corn tamale with fresh corn and cilantro sauce. I didn't actually try this one, but it got rave reviews at our table. It looks great.
Barbecued pork and Oaxaca cheesee quesadilla with hot and sweet cabbage relish. This one was sort of mundane, but it was still tasty. I just wouldn't have paid $13 for it.
Blue corn pancake with barbecued duck and habanero chile-star anise sauce. This was my favorite appetizer. It is one of the restaurants most popular appetizers with good reason.
Vanilla, Sevilla orange and creme fraiche flan with blueberry salad and orange sage caramel. I thought this was a really good flan. It had the perfect level of citrus accent, which made the flavor really bright, for lack of a better word. The blueberries mixed with the orange sauce and some candied orange zest were great.
Chocolate and dulce de leche layer cake. I only had a bite of this one. It was very rich, but very good. If you like chocolate, this is your kind of dessert.
In total, I thought that this was pretty good food, but I thought you were definitely paying for some combination of the location (right near Union Square) and the celebrity brand. Most of the appetizers were around $15 and most of the entrees were over $30. At those prices, I would expect something much more formal than the dining experience offered at the Mesa Grill. So, it was good food, but overpriced.

The Spotted Pig

I forgot my camera, so I don't have any pictures for this review, which is too bad. We ate lunch here, and we probably could have snapped some decent photos since we actually had some honest to goodness sunlight - not the dim lighting of your typically evening dinning room. Anyway, on with the review.

I had heard a lot about the Pig. The head chef, April Bloomfield recently had a strong showing on Iron Chef and made a cameo on Top Chef last season; Anthony Bourdain listed this as one of his favorite places on a recent episode of No Reservations; and this Greenwich Village gastro-pub has received glowing reviews from just about every critic that walked through the door. It has one Michelin star and is a "Top Pick" of the New York Times. Friends I talked to said that they tried to eat there twice, and both times were rebuffed by the three hour wait times (reservations not accepted at this place). In short, this place is scorching hot right now. It may be one of the trendiest restaurants to be seen at this season. Given all the hype, I expected to love the place. It was good. I love food and would be hard pressed to find a meal that I don't like, so "good" is a bit of a lukewarm review. I'll include the caveat that I ate lunch here, so the menu was limited, but the full dinner menu didn't include a ton of additional options. On the website, I saw pictures of servers maneuvering through crowds with plates bearing half of a pigs head or pieces of roasted marrow. That's the sort of food I was hoping for, and was disappointed to not find it on the menu.

When we walked in, we didn't have to wait too long to get a seat at the bar, where I quickly ordered a Bloody Mary - they are supposed to be amazing. It was nice and thick with a decent amount of horseradish and garnished with a pickled green bean. It was...here's that word again...good.

It only took about 15 minutes to get seated at a nice table upstairs. The upstairs dining room has an additional bar and is significantly more spacious than the first floor. Like the first floor, every inch of the walls are covered with some sort of kitschy decoration. Most of the decorations have a pig theme, but there are several illustrations of vegetables and other bucolic subjects. A couple of large mirrors with menus and beer-lists scrawled across their surfaces adorn two of the walls upstairs and help open the space up a bit. I loved the decor. Very cool.

Once seated, we ordered the deviled eggs and chicken liver toast. Both of these were good, simple dishes. The egg tasted like it had a bit of vinegar in it, giving it a bit more of a kick than your typical deviled egg. I'm not sure why I keep ordering chicken liver dishes. I don't really like chicken liver, but I feel like I should, as a non-vegetarian foodie. Anyway, I actually thought this was pretty good for a chicken liver dish. The liver was seasoned and blended into a fairly loose spread and served on grilled toasts. Charred bits of bread really complemented the liver flavor well.

For our main courses, Abby and I orderd the gnudi (a ricotta dumpling served with brown butter and crispy sage) and the ricotta and prosciutto tart with marjoram. The gnudi were good, but they seemed a little out of place on an the menu for an English gastro pub. I guess they are a popular dish, though. So, give the customers what they want, right? The tart seemed like a more fitting menu option, and the crispy pastry shell, the saltiness of the prosciutto, and the sour taste of the ricotta all went together quite well. These were good dishes, but would I wait three hours for them? Not a chance.

The atmosphere alone probably makes this place worth going to, but I don't think its worth a long wait (I MIGHT wait for an hour to eat here). You also have to pay quite a bit for what you get. One diner sitting next to me looked shocked when he was served the bib lettuce salad ($14). It was a plate of lettuce, lightly dressed with a light vinaigrette (probably oil and lemon) and a light sprinkling of herbs. I think a problem was in the presentation. It looked like a naked plate of lettuce. Hardly the kind of thing you want to pay more than a couple bucks for, even if it is some damn good lettuce.

My recommendation would be to go here during lunch when the wait is more reasonable or wait a few months and see if the hype dies down and the crowds get more manageable. Even though I wasn't totally impressed by my first trip, I would definitely go back. There are several other menu options that I would like to try out before going against the conventional wisdom and saying that this place is overrated. Again, I really want to love this place and hope that future visits will change my mind.

Late night dinner at Babbo

Last night we ate at Babbo. People I've talked to who have eaten here usually say things like "best meal I have ever had," "best restaurant ever," or some other superlative when describing their experience at Babbo. While I won't go out and proclaim that it's the single best meal I've ever had, I'm having a hard time coming up with places that were, across the board, better than Babbo. I think that the best dishes I had at Del Posto were better than the best dishes that I had at Babbo, but I thought that Babbo was stronger across the board. This could just be a function of what we ordered. I would be more likely to go back to Babbo because its not as expensive as Del Posto. On the other hand, it's pretty tough to get a reservation at Babbo. The only table we could get was at 11pm. It was well worth the wait, though.
I really liked the layout of the restaurant. You walk into a crowded bar. Behind the bar is a lower level dining room with a large table in the center that has a big center piece along with bottles of wine, olive oil, and vinegar. Some dishes, such as the branzino, are platted here after the waiter shows you the whole fish (or whatever dish you are ordering). Del Posto also has these serving stations. I think it's a really nice touch. A large staircase in lands in the center of the room, and leads up to a more spacious second floor dining room that has a large skylight and another large serving table in the center of the room. The sound track accompanying diners includes bands such as Led Zepplin, Guns and Roses, and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. The soundtrack would seem bit at odds with the food and the setting, but, surprisingly, it works.

As far as the service goes, I thought that the bartender was a bit brusque, but the rest of the staff was fantastic. I didn't get our waiter's name, but he was awesome, and gave us a number of great recommendations. Here's what we had.

Grilled octopus with "Barlotti Marinati" and spicy lemoncello vinaigrette.
Testa (pig's head) with pickled pearl onions and thyme vinaigrette.
Warm tripe "alla Parmagiana"
Mint love letters with spicy lamb sausage.
Black spaghetti with rock shrimp, spicy salami calabrese, and green chiles.
Goose liver ravioli with balsamic vinegar and brown butter.
Whole grilled branzino with cardoons and lemon oregano jam.
Grilled pork chop with cherry peppers, cipolline and aceto manodori.

Future Food @ WD-50

Every season on Top Chef, there's at least one contestant that is really in to molecular gastronomy, Wylie Dufresne is always a guest judge, and the producers always show a clip of said contestant gushing about how great Dufresne is and how he is one of the pioneers of this type of cooking. Having seen it executed on TV many times but never tried it, Abby and I jumped at the chance to grab lunch there.

The verdict? It was good. I don't think this type of cooking really adds much in terms of taste, but all the dishes were really creative, sometimes surprising, and everything looked great. If this were an Iron Chef battle, the dishes would have been maxed out on the plating and creativity scores, and average on the taste scores.

Here's what we had:

They started us out with some 'sesame paper' instead of the typical bread basket.
The first dish in the lunch tasting menu was poached New Zealand Snapper with green mango, parsley root, and cumin.
Dish two was "Knot foie," a strip of foie gras terrine tied in a know with puffed rice. The puffed rice added a nice textural contrast, but it was also all I could taste. I think it would have been better if they had used about half the amount of the puffed rice.
The third - and perhaps most creative dish -was their version of eggs benedict. The yellow stuff is poached egg yolk with a pinch of volcanic salt. Its topped with a Canadian bacon chip. On the side, they serve a hollandaise cube dusted with English muffin crumbs. You read correctly...that's a cube of sauce. Very cool. When you break open the cube, the hollandaise sauce spills out, and you can mix all the ingredients together. It tastes just like a very good eggs benedict.
Course four on the menu was a seared 'crab tail' covered with and edamame noodle in a cinnamon dashi broth. I thought the cinnamon was a bit off-putting at first but was really in to it by the time I finished the dish. It added a really nice aroma.
The fifth dish on the menu was chicken liver spaetzle with radish, cocoa nibs, and pine needle oil sauce. I liked how the sauce looked like mint chip ice cream and the radishes add nice texture. I'm not crazy about chicken livers done this way though.
The last savory dish was beef tongue with king oyster mushrooms, crispy quinoa, palm seeds infused with bitters, and a cherry-miso sauce. Beef tongue has a pretty distinct flavor, so this is probably something that you love or hate. The palm seeds were a nice complement to the dish.
The first dessert dish was called "Waldorf Salad." It has walnut crumble, walnut tuile, goldn raisins, celery, celery mayonnaise, apple, and apple ice cream. I thought that this was a really clean tasting, well done dish....very creative.
Dessert number two was toasted coconut cake, carob, smoked cashews, brown butter sorbet, and coconut foam. Another winner.
The last dessert course was Yuzu ice cream with a marcona almond coating.

Prune NYC

Roasted bone marrow is one of those things that I had seen a couple of times on TV shows - Tony Bourdain's show, to be specific - that I really wanted to try. The first time it made an appearance was on his London show when he went to Fergus Henderson's restaurant, St. John. A few weeks later, the same dish of roasted bone marrow with parsley salad made an appearance on the New York episode when he went to Prune. There was no way I was going to find myself in London anytime soon, but Prune happens to be just down the street from Abby's place, so we decided to give it a shot. The place is tiny, and it may not be the easiest seat to get on a Saturday night, but a rain storm the left us dripping wet must have chased away a few customers. We were able to walk in and a table was sitting there waiting for us.

This meal was worlds away from the highly refined seafood we had the night before. It wasn't uniformly spectacular, but it was good, comfort food that tasted like it could have come out of someone's home kitchen....if that someone was a really good, creative cook with hookups for good ingredients. The first thing we got when we set down was a little bowl of fried chickpeas with another bowl of salt for dipping. I've made fried chickpeas as an element for a dish a couple of times here and here. I must say, its a great little bar snack, and one of the many little quirks that makes this place worth going to.

For the appetizer we ordered the roasted bone marrow dish. The serve it with grilled pieces of bread, sea salt, and a salad of parsley, shallots, capers, and cornichons. The bitterness and brininess of the salad cuts through the rich marrow. It's a great combination. This seems pretty easy to make, so I'll have go give it a try at a dinner party sometime.
We ordered grilled lamb shoulder chop with braised dandelion greens and skordalia; braised rabbit leg with vinegar sauce; wax beans with grated beets, citrus, and honeycomb; and braised leeks and celery hearts with collard greens and a dijon mustard sauce. Abby and I both thought the beets with honeycomb were really interesting. I think we both thought the main courses were good, but not quite as good as the sides that we ordered.

We were still a little hungry after the main courses, so we ordered these enormous "shrimp" that everyone in the restaurant seemed to be getting. The menu said that they were grilled head on shrimp with anchovy butter, but they must be langoustines, which are somewhere between a shrimp and a lobster. This was awesome. (So awesome that every time I look at this photo I instinctively start drooling. I have yet to try a tastier shrimp! -abby)
This dish and the bone marrow are reason enough to come to this restaurant. When you're all done, they give you cherries, instead of chocolates or mints. I thought this was another nice quirky little touch.
I enjoyed my meal here and would recommend it to anyone who isn't a vegetarian. The place is small, but if the weather is crappy or you walk in right at opening, you might be able to get a table for two without reservations. Its probably better to play it safe, though, and call ahead. Given that the side dishes and appetizers were great and the main courses were just ok, I think I'll treat this like a tapas bar next time I come here and just order small plates.

Sushi Yasuda

Last night, Abby and I went out to Sushi Yasuda with Alex and Jane. This is one of their favorite places, and I heard rave reviews from Abby after she went there last fall when she was in NYC interviewing with law firms. I had been looking forward to eating here, and I must say, this is hands down the best sushi I have ever had.

If you go, I would suggest sitting at the bar. Call ahead to see if you can get a place in front of Yasuda-san (pictured above). We just let him serve us what he thought was good, and since he knows more about seafood than I, or just about anyone else, can hope to know, that's really the best way to get a great dining experience. He's a really personable guy, and offers his views on sushi to you, explaining how important things like texture and temperature are to the taste of sushi.

Sushi, at its best, is very subtle. The decor at Sushi Yasuda reflects this idea. The heart of the restaurant is a long, blonde wood bar. The walls, ceilings, and floors are all the same, giving the restaurant a clean, understated look. When you sit at the bar, leaves, rather than plates, are your serving dishes. Each dinner gets a little pot of soy with a dipping bowl and plate, but these are unnecessary. You eat right off of the leaf as the chef serves you, and each piece of sushi is perfectly seasoned. Dipping it in soy would just ruin the delicate balance.
I have always heard that the quality of the rice is what really distinguishes great sushi from good sushi. Getting high quality fish is about judgment and knowing the right purveyors. Yes, cutting the fish just so is a hard learned skill, but making great sushi rice is a craft that people spend years learning. At most places you go to, the rice sticks together and, when you eat the sushi, it more or less stays stuck together as you chew it. At Sushi Yasuda, the rice sticks together nicely, but each grain is distinct. When you put the sushi in your mouth, it gently falls apart, allowing you to appreciate the texture of each perfectly seasoned grain of rice.
Temperature, timing, and attention to detail are all very important to making perfect sushi rice. You must rinse all of the starch from the rice and let it dry out thoroughly so that the grains don't stick together. You must cook the rice in just the right amount of water at just the right temperature for just the right amount of time. You must spread it out and fan it in a wooden bowl that will absorb some of the moisture. And, finally, when the rice has reached the proper temperature, you must season it with just the right amount of vinegar. At Sushi Yasuda, all of this is perfectly done. The amount of vinegar on the rice really livens up you taste buds and allows you to appreciate some of the more subtle cuts of fish.

While the rice is impressive, its just one half of what makes this place great. The selection is outstanding. All of the standards are hear...uni, unagi, squid, toro.
But you don't just order, say, yellowtail, you can choose a specific type. Yasuda decided to give us a yellowtail tasting, offering four different varieties of yellowtail (below). For just about every type of fish on the menu, you have several options.
You can also eat some things that you may not be able to find anywhere else. There were certainly a number of firsts for me. The scallops are a great example of his creativity. Normally, you just eat the adductor muscle of the scallop. Yasuda will serve this to you (top right), but you can also get the scallop tentacle, or gills that go around the fringe of the shell (bottom left), and the liver...I'm not sure if its actually a liver, but that's what he called it (bottom right). In the top left of the picture below, you see all the different parts of the scallops on Yasuda-san's cutting board. The color of the liver varies by gender (bright red or gray).
Here are a couple more types of sushi....I can't remember all of them. The best one I had all night though, was the Peace Passage Oyster (from my home state of Washington) pictured in the top right below. I can't describe how good this was.
Every last piece of sushi we had was amazing. Yasuda seasons each piece with wasabi, a squeeze of lemon juice, a brush of soy, and/or a sprinkle of sea salt. I had never thought of putting sea salt on sushi before... this idea is a Yasuda original....but it is really, really good. It adds just a little bit of crunch and saltiness that is completely unexpected. It is especially good with the uni.

Yasudu isn't only about sushi, though. There are several interesting appetizers. Above, we have a bowl of different fish livers....another things that I had never had before. Do order this if you ever come here. It's delicious, just like everything else on the menu.