Tag Archives: Brooklyn
Anella
One of the saddest things about losing a restaurant can be losing a favorite dish. Such was the case when Le Zinc closed several years ago: Although the airy, art-poster interior was mercifully preserved by the next tenant, Kurt Gutenbrunner of Blaue Gans, the outstanding French pork country terrine vamoosed with the beloved bistro.
Happily, that terrine has landed at new Anella in Greenpoint, which Marie Fromage led us to this past weekend. All this time the secrets to the dish have lived on in the mind of Michael Sullivan, chef of Anella and former co-chef of Le Zinc with David Waltuck (Chanterelle, Macao), who recreates the terrine, peppery ground pork laced with a delicate liqueur like Pernod, a dense spread that turns fluffy as soon as you apply it to toast. (more…)
Posted in American, food, Greenpoint, New York restaurants, restaurants
Tagged Anella, Brooklyn, marrow, New York
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Best NYC Outdoor Dining: An Opinionated Guide
Someday, someday, New Yorkers can hope to dine outdoors, right? When summer weather finally sticks around, arm yourself with this neighborhood-by-neighborhood guide to over 30 of the best places to eat outdoors in the city. Not all of these places are new and cool, and food is not always the main draw. But from sidewalk to garden to rooftop dining, they all offer great atmosphere and spur-of-the-moment accessibility, so you can catch the nice weather while it lasts.
Posted in food, Meatpacking District, New York restaurants, restaurants
Tagged Bobo, Brooklyn, Fette Sau, Frederick's Downtown, Gemma, Morandi, New York, Vutera
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Street Chic: David Byrne Concert in Prospect Park
What happens when David Byrne throws a free concert in Prospect Park to open the season of Celebrate Brooklyn, a summer of music, dance, spoken word, and film at the band shell? Approximately ten thousand people show up to see an amazing show. The concert, which was free because, as Byrne joked, “Given the cost of concert tickets these days, the poor hedge fund guys and investment bankers can no longer afford them. So made sense to do a free show, as the tour has been going incredibly well and we can afford it.”
Not only was there valet parking for bicycles, Byrne himself biked to the concert. (He lives in DUMBO.) Because of huge monitors and speakers set up in the surrounding fields, even fans squeezed out of the band shell could see the show.
The wait was suspenseful, but fortunately, we had people watching to entertain us in the meantime. Here are some of the best outfits on the scene – and some good clues to what to wear at outdoor shows this summer. Plus! A brief video of Byrne shimmying to vintage tunes “Crosseyed and Painless” and “Once in a Lifetime.”
Posted in fashion
Tagged bikes, Brooklyn, culture, music, street chic, streetchic
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This Weekend in Food: Bite of BoCoCa and Hapa Kitchen BBQ at Brooklyn Yard
Don’t just read about all the gourmet fare coming out of Brooklyn, taste it yourself this Saturday, with two – count ’em, two – food fests that promise to deliver great food at even better prices.
Lunch: Bite of BoCoCa
More than 20 Court Street and Smith Street restaurants, gourmet stores, and bakeries are taking over the Transit Garden at Smith Street and 2nd Place this Saturday from 1pm-6pm for Bite of BoCoCa. Your $10 for five tastings or $20 for 12 tastings will benefit the South Brooklyn Local Development Corporation (SBLDC), which keeps up the pretty gardens in the nabe. (more…)
Julie Powell: Food Bloggers Are Clannish, Slightly Evil People
Last night the Young Lions of the New York Public Library hosted a panel, “Eating at Home,” featuring Amanda Hesser, Rocco DiSpirito, Marion Nestle, and Julie Powell, author of Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment, the basis of an upcoming film starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams. The most revelatory part of the evening? Though she was perhaps the first food blogger to get a book out of her blog postings, and certainly the first to get a movie starring Amy Adams as herself, Julie Powell does not consider herself a food blogger and feels “deeply ambivalent” about the whole food blogging phenomenon. “Food bloggers are clannish, slightly evil people sometimes.” Et tu, Julie?
The Young Lions Committee often features excellent panels like this (I’ve also seen Mario Batali, Anthony Bourdain, and Bill Buford face off on stage there), so if you want to see excellent speakers first hand, please join and help them out: The New York Public Library just lost $57 million in funding.
More highlights from the talk, after the jump.
Vutera
CLOSED
With all the secret, annoying, members-only nightspots opening recently, it’s a relief to find a place that’s hidden without being trendy or pretentious. Welcome to Vutera, the little spot in Williamsburg that opened beneath Rose Live Music. Owners Carlo and Gina Vutera managed to carve a romantic, candlelit space out of an unsuspecting basement beneath the bar, and the result is a very appealing mix of rustic decor and sophisticated food.
D. and I started with the chilled asparagus soup with herbed goat cheese ($7) and the Spanish mackerel escabeche ($10). Vutera’s escabeche was surprisingly breaded and lightly fried before being chilled and marinated – which actually added a slight edge of toasty flavor to the final product. Though the name of the restaurant says “Italian,” it was hard to pin a nationality on this dish. (more…)
New Brooklyn Bars: Sharlene's and High Dive
Where some see a recession, others see an opportunity: At Sample last night, D. and I heard about the opening of not one but two – count ’em, two – new bars by the owners of Commonwealth. Soft-opening tonight is Sharlene’s in Prospect Heights, in the old Mooney‘s spot on Flatbush. Sharlene, a bartender at Commonwealth, is opening her own spot with the Commonwealth owners as partners. They spent six months renovating the place and waiting for a liquor license. Mooney’s was once known as the neighborhood dive bar that served underage Brooklyn kids – now some of the same people (grown up, of course) will be working here as bartenders. Should be interesting to see what the face lift brings about.
La Superior
One of the worst things about eating Mexican food in LA is coming back and eating it in New York. The New York version of Mexican food is almost sure to disappoint after you’ve had the vibrant, spicy food at a random hole-in-the-wall in an LA strip mall. Even the most successful NYC Mexican restaurants don’t source traditional ingredients like goat, and they get the cheese all wrong – Vermont cheddar is surely not a staple south of the border. Most Mexican food in New York is what Italian food was here in the mid-’80s: dumbed-down Mexican-American, not authentic Mexican.
That’s why it was such a relief to discover La Superior in Williamsburg after reading Pete Wells’ $25-and-under review. As soon as the first dishes landed, we knew: they got the cheese right.
La Superior’s requesón is a mild but cheesy cheese, fresh, with the consistency of a crumbly cottage cheese. Though it’s said you can use ricotta as a substitute, I don’t find the taste the same at all. (One close flavor you can sometimes find is Mexican Cotija cheese – not at high-end cheese stores, but at corner bodegas.) Here it is sprinkled on top of the flautas de pollo, which were very crisp and topped with bright, fresh greens and salsa that contrasted with the creaminess of the cheese.
Gorditas, typical Mexican street fare, are highly addictive little corn buns, split and stuffed with chorizo, lettuce, and more requesón. La Superior’s taste a little like huitlacoche, the surprisingly tasty weird corn fungus. If you want to spice up the gorditas some more, the green salsa served alongside does the trick.
The quesadillas also come street-style, more like heftier empanadas than a mere fried tortilla. But for me this amount of bread overwhelmed the filling.
Their tacos are amazing little delights, each one a separate burst of flavor. (This too is where so many other NYC Mexican places get it wrong – all Mexican dishes shouldn’t taste the same.) Clockwise from top, these are the camarón al chipotle (very spicy shrimp tacos), the carne asada (smoky grilled skirt steak), the carnitas (pork confit topped with sweet white onion), and the phenomenal rajas, roasted poblano pepper strips cooked with that fabulous cheese. This was a really intriguing combination. Usually you think of a creamy cheese as something to quell the spiciness of pepper, but when they’re cooked together, the cheese has the effect of drawing it out.
Alas, there may be a shortage of authentic Mexican food in New York, but if you can locate Cotija cheese, here’s a recipe for a Mexican salad for you. But if you’re going to La Superior, here’s your strategy:
- Arrive early (7-ish). If there’s a wait, you’ll have to wait in line – they don’t take cell phone numbers.
- BYOB! There’s a bodega around the corner with a good selection of beer.
- Prices are crazy cheap.
- Their idea of “decor” is a single string of colored lights. You’re not here for the romance.
- It’s much easier to get a table on busy nights as a party of two than as a larger party.
La Superior
295 Berry Street
Williamsburg
Brooklyn, NY 11211
718-388-5988
Posted in food, Mexican, New York restaurants, restaurants, Williamsburg
Tagged Brooklyn, cheese, New York
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Lucali's
Pizza, pizza: it’s cheap, delicious, and in the news—even making it into Page Six today via a Jimmy Fallon incident at Posto—an enviable feat for any food item. (Even burgers should be jealous.) Every time we turn around, a new pizza joint seems to be opening: Emporio, Spunto, Ignazio’s, Sora Lella, Scuderia, Kesté Pizza & Vino, Tonda—and that’s just within the last month.
Before you go chasing after the latest speck-inflected wonder, however, don’t forget the classics, because the one thing pizza shouldn’t be is trendy. A hot oven (wood- or coal-burning), 00 flour, the finest, freshest toppings and the correct technique are what go into the ideal pizza.
I had a madeleine moment when I bit into the pizza at Lucali’s in Carroll Gardens for the first time last week—it transported me to a rustic little pizzeria outside Florence, years ago. The Italians would drive for miles to get to this place. And so it is at Lucali, where even at 7:15, the wait for a table for two is two hours. Don’t go hating on the reverse bridge-and-tunnelers like me, though, for the wait—most of it is due to local fans who put their names in, then happily go home and wait.
In Lucali’s open kitchen, which, because of the wood-burning oven, is more of an open hearth surrounded by a white marble countertop, the chef grates the bufala mozzarella by hand. The choices for toppings are traditional, not trendy. One particularly sublime ingredient is the pepperoni, which, according to Serious Eats, comes from Esposito’s around the corner. This plus the onion was a fantastic combination–the sweetness of the onion contrasting with the smoky spiciness of the pepperoni. An excellent pizza is all about balance: the crispiness of the crust versus the chewy pockets of air at the edges, the tang of the sauce versus the creaminess of the cheese, then the high notes of basil and a little garlic. Lucali’s achieves this and then some, since all of the ingredients are potent and fresh enough to stand on their own. The attention to detail is particularly impressive: there’s a scant amount of freshly grated Parmesan sprinkled on top to give the cheese the slightest edge.
The ingredients aren’t the only thing here with an excellent pedigree. Slice reports that the oven comes from defunct Leonardo’s down the street, and owner Mark Iacono, who was raised in this once primarily Italian-American neighborhood, uses recipes from his Italian granny and aunts.
And guess what? The candlelit restaurant is actually romantic. There aren’t very many romantic pizza restaurants in NYC, and this one lets you BYOB, so our tab came to about $30 for two.
Lucali’s Strategy
- Go early and put your name in. The hostess will take your cell number and call when your table’s ready.
- There aren’t any bars right near by. A good option a couple blocks away is Court Street’s Minibar, which has a nice selection of wines by the glass.
- Dress as if you’ll be sitting outside for a half hour or more in the cold, because you very well may be.
- There is nothing on the menu but pizza and calzones. Literally.
- Don’t forget to bring your own wine. Small corkage fee – $4?
- If all else fails, Lucali’s also offers take out!
Lucali’s
575 Henry St
Brooklyn, NY 11231
718-858-4086
Posted in Carroll Gardens, food, Italian, New York restaurants, restaurants
Tagged Brooklyn, New York, pizza
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Tindersticks
Saw UK band Tindersticks this weekend, compliments of D., at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple in Fort Greene, which is a great place to see a show. It has the intimacy of a high school auditorium,
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if your high school were cool. Lead singer Stuart Staples has a haunting, hypnotic voice and moody, Smiths-like melodies, though the multi-layered sounds of the huge band are thoroughly modern. They got two standing ovations from the crowd.
If you missed them this time around, you can hear a few of their songs on My Space.
Fette Sau
Perhaps no other advertising campaign has done a greater disservice to its product than “Pork: The Other White Meat.” Borne out of the fat-phobic late ’80s, the National Pork Board’s campaign reduced the entire animal to the pork chop. If the complex, meaty, by turns fatty and lean pig could talk, she would no doubt tell you: I am so not a chicken.
Twenty years later, our obsession with barbecue and pork’s ability to take on and emphasize spicy, smoky flavors may seem new, but it has long been part of the basic vocabulary in Chinese, Korean, Italian, German, and yes, Southern cuisine. Consider this: would David Chang of Momofuku be David Chang without his silent partner, the Berkshire pig?
It requires a certain mania for the fatty beast to see a barbecue joint in an auto body shop, bring in a crypt-sized Southern Queen smoker, make all the right connections with Berkshire pork suppliers, and open your doors for business. But that’s just what owners Kim and Joe Carroll of Fette Sau have done.
By now you probably know what’s on the menu: pork spareribs, pork sausages, pulled pork, plus some beef brisket to give that guy a nod too. But it’s the sau that impresses. Fatty, rich pork belly is like the foie gras of pork products. The ribs are charred on the outside, meaty and tender between the bones. There’s an espresso-and-brown-sugar rub on them, but as with the pulled pork, the true deliciousness comes from the unadulterated flavor of smoke. The Southern Queen smoker – and chef Matt Lang – sure can cook.
I’m no barbecue expert, since I come from Maryland, the no-man’s-land considered the South by Yankees but disdained by Carolinians and ignored by Texans. But barbecue experts have endorsed Fette Sau’s separation of meat from sauce, which you combine yourself at the table. The sweet sauce is the traditional mix of ketchup, vinegar, maybe a bit of Worchestershire sauce, and some other secret ingredients, but it was still my favorite because of my Southern-ish sweet tooth – same goes for the sweet white rolls. Fette Sau’s spicy sauce is a much more complex, mole-like mixture that tastes of coffee, dried chilies, molasses, and unsweetened chocolate. The two would taste great mixed together.
The non-meat sides received a drubbing in previous reviews of Fette Sau, so we skipped these – except for the excellent Gus’ half sour pickles – and headed straight for the baked beans. Embedded with hunks of brisket, they tasted like the ideal incarnation of Fette Sau’s mole-like spicy sauce.
Though the atmosphere is pretty much the polar opposite of Frederick’s Downtown, Fette Sau does have that see-and-be-seen scene, Williamsburg version, lots of outdoor seating at picnic tables, and few rules. (“No drinks outside after 11pm.”) Walking into the garage, I felt the same kind of relief a teenager experiences upon arriving at a keg party in somebody’s indestructible concrete basement. It’s the kind of place where you can let your hair down, don some Williamsburg style glasses in weird 80’s frames à la Michael Caine, and drink a gallon of beer – literally. A slew of microbrews is dispensed from pulls rigged with butchery tools into gallon-size glass jugs. If that doesn’t spell an afternoon of Brooklyn patio drinking, I don’t know what does. Just get there early because, like Pies ‘N’ Thighs, Fette Sau tends to run out of food, usually by 9:30pm on weekends.
The extensive list of bourbon, whiskey and rye is like the bonanza of breaking into the absentee parents’ liquor cabinet: Whiskey, all you want! We particularly liked the Tuthilltown rye and the Black Maple Hill bourbon. If you’re really daring, knowledgeable bartender Dave Herman will serve you a bit of corn mash liquor that tastes like moonshine: the ceramic jug says it all.
As with a keg party, days later, my clothes still smell like smoke, but this time it’s the alluring scent of barbecue. It even makes me hungry, which is no problem, because like addicted regulars at Fette Sau, I ordered more pulled pork at the end of the night – to go.
Fette Sau
354 Metropolitan Avenue at Havemyer Street
Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York
718-963-3404
for directions go to hopstop.com
Posted in American, food, New York restaurants, restaurants, Southern, Williamsburg
Tagged BBQ, beef, beer, Brooklyn, Fette Sau, New York
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