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