Tasteblazer

A Midtown Feast

I had thought that I arrived in New York too late to participate in Restaurant Week.  Then, flipping through an issue of TimeOut New York, I came across a two page ad spread telling me that no, I wasn't too late, that 85 restaurants were continuing their promotions through Labor Day.  There is a god.

When I read Shar the list of participating restaurants at which we can get $35 prix fixe dinners, I heard a gasp from her end of the phone.  "Manhattan Ocean Club.  Oh my god," she exclaimed.  "The last time we went, the five of us racked up a $900 bill.  Not including tip."  She paused.  "We're going!"

I did some quick research on the chef.  Craig Koketsu was a Bay area native who helped Jeremiah Tower open the renowned Stars in Palo Alto.  After, he moved to New York because of the belief that living here was "crucial" for a training chef.  (Sounds familiar.)  He became chef de partie at Lespinasse, then sous chef.  After the restaurant closed, he was hired as executive chef at Manhattan Ocean Club, where he developed a menu of incredibly fresh seafood entrees with hints of Asian influence.

Reserving a table at Manhattan Ocean Club for a Friday night was simple, since it's not one of the trendy restaurants that are all over the NYC newspapers and magazines, because of its celebrity chef or new take on new cuisine.  Rather, it falls in the category of restaurants that produces consistent, reliable food, akin to Gramercy Tavern but without the legendary prestige. 

With all the menu options, half of us decided to forgo the prix fixe.  Either way, the meal was a worthwhile one.

The appetizers were surely a great start.  Despite the name of the restaurant, the house clam chowder bares no resemblence to standard Manhattan clam chowder, which, to a Massachusetts native, is just a thin broth with totato soup.  This is thick, hearty, New England clam chowder that made the Bostonian in me smile widely.  The crab cakes were large, succulent, and perfectly crisp on the outside.  Other options included spicy sake steamed mussels, and hamachi (yellowtail) sashimi with green papaya.

For the main courses, there is the option of daily fresh fish cooked a la plancha.  Norwegian salmon, yellow fin tuna, halibut, grouper, pink snapper, diver scallops, black sea bass, or Guatamalan shrimp.  Any of those can be cooked with sauce vierge, chili garlic sauce, 5 herb aioli, ginger scallion hollandaise, pineapple tamarind, lemon soy brown butter, spicy lime and cucumber vinaigrette, or extra-virgin olive oil with balsamic, fig, or banyuls vinegar?  My yellow fin tuna in sauce vierge (basically a light tomato sauce with lemon juice, evoo, and capers) was cooked with well, with the light sauce allowing the freshness of the fish to shine through.  The spicy garlic sauce, when cooked with salmon, was great, but could be too heavy if paired with any of the lighter fish.  There are also seafood options that aren't a la plancha, including dover sole and lobster roll.  For the landlubbers, there are lamb chops, roast chicken breast, and filet mignon, but then again, to me, it is a cardinal sin to order anything but seafood in a seafood restaurant. 

Side dishes are served family style.  Sauteed spinach seemed a bit oily for my taste, but jumbo sticks of potato croquettes are as crisp as the crab cakes and more than filling.

Looking around the restaurant, the whole lobster appears to be one of the most popular menu options.  The soaring seafood tower appetizer, filled with lobster, shrimp, mussels, clams, and everything else you could possibly want, is a show stopper.  It should be, as a $150 appetizer.

On the sweeter side of things, desserts were a mixed bag.  One of the options was a large plate of cookies served with vanilla ice cream, which would be good if you were a ten-year-old child with a fondness of milk chocolate.  The chocolate and peanut butter tart was so hard that one had a hard time poking the fork through, and an equally hard time chewing.  There was a blueberry cobbler that was overly sweet.  But those aforementioned desserts were massive servings, and when all were served at once, made my tiny lemon chiffon cake look like a weakling among giants.  I received a few "haha, guess you picked the wrong dessert," comments.  Well, while everyone else was prodding their hulking masses of sugar, I was savoring the delicate balance between sweet and tart in mine, and finished every last bit.

It was a delicious evening, and thanks to the blessed Restaurant Week on-goings, the bill came nowhere close to $900.

Manhattan Ocean Club - 57 W. 58th St., Midtown West

Chinatown Dim Sum

For many, going to dim sum can be a formidable experience.  Cart after cart of interesting-looking items go by, and for the uninitiated, trial and error is often the way to go.  Even for me, though I've been dim summing ever since I could chew, it is still a not-so-comfortable experience since I'm not completely fluent in Cantonese and often forget not only the words for certain foods but also what is in that incredibly good looking fried thing.  Thus, I also have to resort to pointing once in a while.

Golden Unicorn, which I've heard from many sources as the place to go for dim sum in Chinatown, takes care of the awkwardness.  In front of every cart are pictures and English descriptions for the dishes, so you know exactly what you're getting.  Also, the matronly ladies pushing the carts speak English pretty well, if a bit hurriedly. 

We sampled the standards.  Har gow, or shrimp dumplings, were round and delectable and not soggy like a lot of the ones in Boston's Chinatown.  (They also did not emit the same incredibly fresh shrimp and outer skin smell like they do Hong Kong and China, but that's forgiveable.)  Wu gok, or taro balls filled with vegetables and coated with a flaky fried shell, were very good as well.  The pork buns were fluffy and not overloaded with sweet pork.  Even the congee was good, and I'm not usually a big fan of congee.  Fried wontons were nice and crisp, but I would have prefered the sauce on the side and not drenching the wontons, which made them soggy after about two minutes.  My favorite was the siu mai, which is usually served with beef but here served with seafood. 

The only thing that makes Golden Unicorn a good instead of great is the temperature at which things are served.  Dumplings and buns at a truly great dim sum restaurants should be served piping hot, almost but not quite to the point of burning your mouth.  Everything was so lukewarm that one wonders how long they've been out of the kitchen, and maybe they should do something about the temperature control inside those carts.  And the traditionally piping hot towels handed out at the end?  Cold as ice. 

Golden Unicorn - 18 E. Broadway, Chinatown                                                                                                                                                                                      

A Good Omen

Among Japanese restaurants in Manhattan, Omen is not typical.  It is not the celeb-studded, salary-draining, highly publicized empire akin to Nobu or Megu.  It is not a prized sushi gem like Blue Ribbon or Jewel Bako.  And, god forbid, it is far from the cookie-cutter sushi joints that have popped up everywhere in the tri-state area in the past five years.  In fact, Omen barely serves any sushi at all.

What it does serve is authentic Japanese cuisine in the Kyoto style.  While sushi has taken the U.S. by storm, in Japan it is hardly served in restaurants.  Instead, there is steamed acord squash with tofu, tuna steak with ginger, cold broiled chicken, and those all-important big fat soba noodles. 

From the outside, the Soho restaurant appeared to be tiny.  The interior, however, is spacious in that it stretches far back, possibly to the other side of the street.  The very Zen interior is complete with high-hanging bulbous paper lamps.

We sat at the bar and were quickly given steaming hot hand towels.  The menu, printed book-style with hand-written English and Japanese, includes four different tasting menus (seasonal, steak, sashmi, and deluxe sashmi) as well as a la carte choices.  The tasting menus are very similar, all composing for 7 or 8 small to medium sized courses, with the difference lying in the main entree. 

I opted for the regular sashimi menu and it was more than enough food.  The first courses, or light appetizers, included little squres of daikon, strips of very fresh red snapper, and a small shrimp salad and seaweed salad.  Next came cold broiled eggplant, melon, and chicken in a light soy sauce.  The chicken, though just slightly cooked and season, was incredibly flavorful.  A dish of broiled eel followed.  Though described on the menu as simply "broiled eel," it turned out to be a large square eveloping steamed tofu and bits of seaweed, like a pouch.  For someone who has rarely had eel without soy sauce and not accompanying rice, this was definately a real treat. 

The main course consisted of the freshest tuna, yellowtail, and I have ever tasted.   Three pieces of each of the fish, plus all the courses before, was very filling at this point.  But there were still the noodles to go.  The miso soup for the noodles were presented first, in a bowl.  Next, a box of sesame seeds to add into the soup yourself.  Then a box of warm noodles bathing in their own clear broth.  And finally a separate box with scallions, spinach, and slivers of garlic and onion.  With these ingredients you fix the noodles to your liking.

For dessert, we got the full menu to choose from.  The "mango and blueberries with purple syrup from the Aso National Forest" sounded exotic and tempting, but I opted for mochi balls wrapped in a thick layer of azuki bean paste.  A better dessert was the grean tea ice cream with Azuki syrup, complete with the beans.  You know how most green tea ice cream served in Asian restaurants is just Americanized ice cream with tea flavoring?  The dessert at Omen is made from tea leaves, rendering it almost brown in color with a very earthy taste.  It was wonderful.

Omen

113 Thompson Street (btwn Prince and Spring), Soho

Ahh, convenience...

At the corner of 2nd Ave. and 7th St. sits a bistro-type cafe where one can sit, eat, and peruse her TimeOut New York without interruption.  I decided to supper here mainly because of the outdoor seating and ample people-watching opportunities.  And the food?  Not bad at all. 

The service is friendly and very prompt.  The menu leaned toward French staples like steak frites and salad nicoise but also included things like hummus plates, grilled salmon, and fritatas.  I ordered a croque monsieur oozing with gruyere and bechamal, and the requisite fresh-cut frites.  Dessert was a generous three scoops of homemade raspberry sorbet.

The best part about Virage?  It's in my neighborhood and it's open 24 hours.  So if, for example, I have a 2am craving for another oozing croque monsieur, I'll know where to go. 

Virage
118 2nd Ave. (at corner of 7th St.), East Village

Hot child in the city

One East 6th St., you can stuff yourself silly on very little money.  Indian restaurant after Indian restaurant will vie for your business, and as we all know, in a capitalist society competition drives down cost.  I didn't want just any cheap meal, but I had heard that Sonali was one of the better ones on the block.  The interior was lowlit and charming, so I decided why not.  The $7.95 dinner special did sound tempting.

So what does one get for $7.95?  For starters there's a vegetable samosa and a vegetable pakora (fritter fried in chickpea batter).  Then there's a big bowl of mullitagawny soup.  Then the choice of any chicken, beef, lamb, salmon, or vegetable dish.  Then rice pudding for dessert.  And finally, coffee or tea. 

Some of you may remember one of my previous posts about Rani Indian Bistro, and how a "very spicy" on a Boston menu can translate into mild at best.  New York, as I learned, is a whole different game.  I ordered the chicken vindaloo, described on the menu as "mild."  At first, I thought, okay, this is a little spicy.  Halfway through, I realized I had a few tears coming out, and I am someone who can handle very very spicy food. 

The food wasn't spectacular, but you get what you pay for.  The samosa, pakora, and chicken seemed dry.  But now I've learned that in terms of spiciness, ethnic joints here mean business.  Thank god for water.

Sonali Indian Restaurant
326 E. 6th Street (btwen 1st and 2nd Ave.), East Village

A late bistro lunch

Window-shopping in Soho works up an appetite.  After a few hours of walking around, I needed a place that served a substantial late lunch rather than tiny bites.  Balthazar seemed like a good stop.

Even at 3pm, the dining room was till bustling.  Like sister restaurants Odeon and Pastis, Balthazar's interior is designed to evoke an early 1900s Parisian bistro.  The enormous slanted wall mirrors allow diners to watch themselves eat surrounded by the beautiful Art Deco decor.  Everything old is new again.

The bread served comes from the inhouse bakery, and even though many restaurants in New York serve Balthazar bread (and reveal the source proudly), there is something to be said about eating it at the namesake restaurant.  The chicken liver moose appetizer came with grilled country bread and a delicious red onion compote. 

One of my favorite brasserie dishes is steak frites, but for some reason I was in more of a fish mood.  The grilled brook trout, served over a warm spinach salad with lentils, was served with skin on and turned out to be more substantial than I had thought. 

Some day I'll have to come back late at night, because apparently that's when the restaurant really gets bustling.  Delicious hearty bistro food any time of the day...I may not be in Paris, but at Balthazar, it sure feels like I am.

Balthazar
80 Spring Street (btwn Broadway and Crosby), Soho

Food Aplenty

After moving in and settling into my new apartment, my first meal as a bonafide Manhattanite was at Grand Sichuan just around the corner.  The 9th Ave. branch of this restaurant, for the Sex and the City fans out there, was immortalized as the dining spot guys take their dates who they're secretly ashamed of.  But, as Mr. Big pointed out, the food is some of the best Chinese around.

I wasn't on a date, thank god, but my gal pal Shar and I were both hungry and wanted something different.  We couldn't make up our minds on what to order and the waitress did not bother to hide her annoyance.  Service was noticeably unfriendly thereafter. 

The food, however, was abundant, cheap, and pretty damn good.  Everything was served family style.  The $3 pumpkin soup came in a huge bowl with plenty of pumpkin slices.  The 5-spiced beef dish was a heaping platter of thinly slices.  The Sichuan dan dan noodles also came in a big bowl with spicy scallion bits on top.  The cucumber with garlic, another generously-portioned entree, was perfect for cooling down the palate.

Despite stuffing ourselves, we still had plenty of leftovers.  And a satisfied stomach is nothing to be ashamed of.

Grand Sichuan
19-23 St. Mark's Place, East Village

The Last Supper

My last week in Boston saw many Last Meals with friends.  Cactus Club’s run-of-the-mill Tex-Mex, and Golden Leaf’s surprisingly good Malaysian, were chosen for convenience’s sake.  Domani was carefully selected from a list of top contenders that included Sel de la Terre and Petit Robert Bistro (though it failed to live up to critical hype.)  Montien, my last Last Meal, was chosen just because I had a craving for Thai food.

We were sitting by an open window, and right in the middle of our meal, yet another torrential downpour started.  At least four different waiters and waitresses asked us if we wanted it shut.  Wasn’t the rain bothering us?  Wasn’t it coming in through the window, landing on our arms?  Sure, a little.  But the air felt nice, and we were too busy enjoying our meals to care about a few droplets here and there. 

Montien shares the same owners as Chilli Duck in the Back Bay, and likewise has a regular menu and something called a Traditional menu.  I’ve eaten with a group at Chilli Duck, and for some reason the food at Montien is a lot better, even though the prices are the same. 

A great appetizer was the mussel pancake, stir-fried with sprouts, scallions, and egg and served with Srichacha chili sauce.  The mussels themselves appear to have been first fried by themselves before being cooked with the other ingredients, which gave an added crunch.  The curry turnover dish was the only one we didn’t order from the traditional menu (it was a special).  It was pretty good, but didn’t seem much different from vegetable samosas you find in Indian restaurants. 

The Moo-Krob, a dish of crispy pork with basil, rhizome, and peppercorns, was served with a medium chili sauce.  Poo-Nim-Rad-Prik was a dish of two large soft-shell crab under a sweet chili sauce.  Both were ample-sized and very good.  My favorite, however, was the roast duck in a what was simply called curry sauce.  It was thicker than many of the watered-down curries in Thai restaurants, but still had the same sweet flavor. 

After dinner I bid adieu to my two friends, whom I’ve known for 10 years.  Wow, I thought, I’m really going to miss Boston.  And to think, all this time I’ve been looking for a great authentic sit-down Thai restaurant in Boston proper, and I found it on my very last night.

Montien
63 Stuart St., Theatre District

The Last Lunch

Until recently, if you wanted Malaysian food in Chinatown there was only one option: the usually-packed Penang that is part of a small Northeast chain.  Now that Golden Leaf is up and running on Hudson street, those seeking a little Malay escape have another option. 

Golden Leaf was my third Last Meal in Boston (if you've been following the series).  We went on a Saturday afternoon.  The decadent dining room, complete with waterfall set into the wall, had an elevated stage-type floor that was partly see-through, so you could glimpse the smooth rocks and pebbles below.  Opulent, but more refined than Penang's Disneyesque bamboo hut theme. 

For appetizers, we ordered the roti canai, a Malay staple that is thin chewy pancake (similar to naan but lighter) with curry sauce.  The curry was as good as the version at Penang.  The New England fried oysters (yes, we succumbed to a little fusion) came heaping on a large plate and could easily feed 2 as an entree or 4 as an appetizer. 

The Hainanese chicken entree was juicier and more flavorful than any version I've tried in Chinatown, which is saying something because this is essentially a Chinese dish.  The Kari Mee, a curry noodle dish with seafood, chicken, and vegetables in a coconut curry broth, was delicious as well.  I didn't think the dish was too spicy, but if you need something to cool you down, a wide assortment of iced drinks, including lychee, longan, rambutan, and Malaysian iced teas will do the trick.

Golden Leaf
20 Hudson Street, Chinatown

(Kind of) Like the Romans

One of the best parts about moving away from a city is having the excuse to eat many last meals with friends.  For most of last week, I was going to Last Meal after Last Meal, sampling as many Boston restaurants as I could before I moved away.  I ended up having four Last Meals total, and Domani on Huntington Ave. was my Friday night pick. 

Domani was designed to imitate a trendy Roman trattoria, from the food to the ambiance.  The modernist décor is bathed in reds and browns.  A bright red Vespa, though not zipping around the streets like if it were in Italy, is on display in a glass case set into the wall. The up-tempo music makes the restaurant a suitable dinner stop for those headed to Saint, the adjacent nightclub.  In nice weather, the front restaurant wall opens up to the streets, so diners are treated to the bustle of Back Bay traffic.  Unfortunately, last Friday coincided with yet another summer storm, so we could only glimpse the street through the rain-soaked window panes.

With so many Italian restaurants in the Boston area, newcomers have to find their niche by specializing in the cuisine.  Chef Rene Michelena, who trained at Chicago’s Charlie Trotter’s and L.A.’s Patina, two of the country’s most innovative kitchens, focuses on Roman cuisine with a dab of Asian fusion.  (This applies to the main dishes more so than the appetizers.)

For the appetizers we chose a rare beef bresaola, which seemed overly salty.  There were also a few salads to choose from, as well as Roman-styled pizzas, but we chose the soft-shelled crab special instead.  It came with walnuts and was deliciously crisp.

Most of the pastas we tried erred on the adventurous side.  The crab meatballs with garganelli pasta was doused in a fennel and parsnip cream sauce and layered with bits of pistachio.  The polenta gnocchi with artichoke was also swimming in an overly complex sauce.  The tortellini, however, was a real treat.  Filled with peas and fava beans, the plump little squares were lightly flavored with a mint and zesty orange syrup.  The Asian-influenced (and Trotter-influenced) sweet/savory flavor combo continue into the meat and fish entrees.  The baked black cod with carrot truffle glaze brings to mind the sweet glaze on top of eel served in Japanese restaurants.  My only question was whether the rest of the main entrees matched the inventive simplicity of the cod, or whether they were trying too hard, like the crab meatball pasta dish or the polenta gnocchi.

I don’t know how authentic peach cobbler is in Roman cuisine, but it was the special and it seemed more appealing than anything else on the dessert menu.  It had bits of white chocolate (not very Italian) and served with a side of vanilla gelato (pretty Italian.)  Overall, it wasn’t a classic Italian dessert, but then again, most of the dishes I liked weren’t classic Italian either, but instead fused with something totally unexpected.  Much like the red Vespa elevated in a glass case, the food at Domani is best when the main ingredient is placed in a whole new environment. 

Domani
41 Huntington Ave., Back Bay