Tag Archives: duck
Apiary
Often it’s the new restaurant right around the corner that you get to last. That’ll be where you just stop in after a movie or a night out with friends, right? Wrong. The highly stylized and buzzed-about Apiary, right around the corner from me, was always fully committed when it opened in mid 2008. But obviously we’re in a different landscape now, and places that were once booked to the hilt are now wooing diners with recession specials. For Apiary, it couldn’t happen at a better time–it’s become more accessible just as chef Scott Bryan returned from Virginia to take the helm.
It was a sad day when Bryan left Veritas, considered one of the best restaurants in town by certain industry insiders–and not just for the wine. So it’s thrilling that he brought his signature American style inflected with French technique to Apiary, where you can find a similar quality for a gentler price.
Some think the decor here is a little chilly–we thought it was pretty fab, especially the laser-cut light fixtures. All the furnishings are by Conran. When the restaurant is full of people, as it was that night, it really does buzz.
We started with the endive and pear salad, which, although it looks bland on the plate, had a bright, sharp flavor and excellent crunch. The innovative plating–three large endive leaves propped together to form a sort of V that contained the rest of the salad–added a nice architectural touch.
The confit of duck leg was rich and tender, but it was the combination of celery root puree and French green lentils underneath that got devoured right away.
Bryan has real French flair with vegetables, as evidenced by the grilled pork loin, where it was turnips–turnips!–that stole the show. The pork itself was juicy and perfectly cooked, the shaved brussel sprouts were a nice accompaniment, but the turnips were sublime. My dining mate Marie Fromage described a French technique for vegetables–something involving cooking them very slowly under parchment with a hole on top–was that how he made them?
Fortunately, the chef himself came out later to check the night’s receipts at the bar. The turnips, we asked. How did you do it? Chicken stock, sherry vinegar, and butter he said.
That’s the kind of thing you’ve got to like about Bryan. Rather than being coy, he just out and says it–although without the technique, it would be hard to get the same end result. His cooking has the same refreshing directness. It’s approachable, but once you’re into it, there’s a subtle complexity that keeps you coming back.
And now there’s really no reason not to go back: Apiary has extended their $35 Restaurant Week prix fixe through Labor Day.
Posted in American, East Village, food, French, New York restaurants, restaurants
Tagged duck, New York
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Benoît New York
It can be terrifying when someone decides to tinker with a place you know and love. Such was the case several years back in Paris when the Alain Ducasse group took over Benoit, a beloved institution in the local dining scene, and injected it with new blood in the kitchen and a face lift in the dining room. Purists in Paris quibble that it’s a little too slick and international now, but at least it’s still alive and serving excellent food, unlike so many other traditional bistros there.
So what would happen when the Ducasse group decided to airlift the Benoit concept over to the United States? It seemed like there was no way they couldn’t mess it up in this town, which, due to the McNallification of the dining scene, equates “bistro” with loud music, subway tiles, and unisex bathrooms–several things that would never fly at a traditional bistro in Paris.
What a relief, then, to walk into Benoit in New York and find a little slice of authentic French food and dining culture. There is no music; there are no candles on the table. The lighting is not quite as bright as it is in Benoit Paris, but it’s dully uniform, just as it is in bistros there. It’s the idea of restaurant-as-stage-set, where your only choice is to pay attention to the food on your plate or the scene, and what a scene it is. Former patrons of La Côte Basque, mainly well-to-do Upper East Siders, have returned to the old location. On a recent night, an elderly lady done up in an exquisite black and white dress (Chanel?) and her elderly husband both sat on the banquette, facing the crowd. A large party of young, glamorous couples stopped in for a late dinner at 9:30; one woman walked down the aisle in a pencil skirt done up with bows above the high-cut slit in the back. Trés chic. As Florent Morellet has said, arrange your seating just so and you’ll create a veritable catwalk, just like they do it in Paris.
The staff, which was polite and attentive, started us off with a round of gougeres that arrived at the table straight from the oven. These seemed to have the maximum cheese-to-non-cheese-ingredients ratio and were some of the best in the city. Marie Fromage, JP Morgan, and I started with the escargots, since there are very few places where you know you’ll get them fresh, not out of a can, and Benoit is one of them. Have them fresh and it’s like tasting real French fries after eating frozen Ore-Ida’s – what a huge difference in quality. Benoit’s escargots were just as buttery and garlicky as anyone could desire, and crusted on top with a thin crispy layer of breadcrumbs.
The lobster bisque was beautifully presented–a dollop of buttery, tender lobster meat and creme fraiche in the middle, which the waiter then surrounded with the bisque, poured from a pewter boat. The soup itself was a little too salty–the saltiness would be our main critique of the food here–but traditional French cuisine is generally much saltier than any nouvelle cuisine that has followed. Suck it up for tradition’s sake?
Lamb chops had a wonderfully smoky char, and the meat was lean, clean, and tasted of spring herbs. Quenelles, breaded flaked fish patties dressed up with sauce, aren’t something you often see on a menu–indeed, Marie Fromage remarked that she hadn’t seen them since culinary school. These were fluffy and light but decadently rich in flavor. The Spanish version of this dish, thought to be introduced by the Romans, is brandada de hacalao, found at Boqueria.
At my place arrived the true test of authenticity: the cassoulet. Benoit in Paris had the best cassoulet I’ve ever tasted–could the New York version compare? The perfectly tender white beans floated in a broth that was a little more watery than expected, but in the end this turned out to be a blessing, because the flavor was so intensely meaty (and admittedly salty) that a denser texture would have been overwhelming. Beans concealed a spicy lamb sausage and–surprise–an entire duck leg. This was over-the-top delicious, definitely on par with the Parisian version and almost certainly the best cassoulet in New York.
Wine aficionados will find a lot to like on the wine menu, which, like the food menu, includes many reasonably-priced, high-quality options. We really enjoyed our $10 glass of Bourgogne, a V. Girardin Cuvee Saint Vincent–and couldn’t believe it was just $10.
We managed to find about two cubic inches of stomach capacity left to tackle dessert, which we ordered because of its clever name, Mister Mystere. But there’s no mystery about it: this iced hazelnut mousse was refreshing yet rich, dressed up in melted chocolate, the perfect “light” ending to an excellent meal.
Benoit
66 West 55th Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues
New York, New York
646-943-7373
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Posted in food, French, Midtown West, New York restaurants, restaurants
Tagged duck, New York
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Bobo
It’s hard to be taken seriously with a name like “bobo.” Wharton business major Carlos Suarez found he kept using the word, coined by David Brooks, when describing his plans for a new restaurant. Only a Wharton business major or Mary-Kate Olsen wouldn’t pick up on the inherent insult in a word that means “half yuppie-bourgeois and half hippie-bohemian.” No matter: Like Mary-Kate Olsen and many a business major, bobo succeeds anyway.
If you’ve been before and dismissed bobo because of the lackluster food, it’s worth a revisit. Former chef Nicholas Cantrel left and has since been installed at Bagatelle. In his place are chefs Rick Jakobsen from Red Hook’s 360 and Jared Stafford-Hill of Hearth. How convenient! All this time I’ve been to lazy to schlep out to the famously good 360, now tragically closed. One can only hope that the new incarnation of bobo can channel what was before out in Brooklyn’s Red Hook.
If you can find this nearly-unmarked West Village townhouse, you’ll walk into a beautiful, low-ceilinged, candlelit English basement level space with exposed beams, a long bar upholstered with a houndstooth pattern, and a black upright piano stacked with vintage LP records. They may be bobo touches all, but the records aren’t just for show. We heard the Beatles and Led Zeppelin the night we were there, complete with a few pops and scratches and the uncompressed, rich sound of old vinyl records.
It’s an appropriate soundtrack for a place that strives to keep it real, as much as a bourgeois bohemian can. Bobo is one of a growing number of restaurants that, for environmental reasons, does not offer bottled water. Instead, they make their own purified and seltzer water and serve it in carafes.
It was a lively gang that night, perhaps because Knucklehead, Menudo, and Annette had already spent several hours at Smith & Mills before heading uptown. High Maintenance ordered the winter squash soup with pear, cranberry, and smoked duck – hold the pear, cranberry, and smoked duck (don’t ask). The spartan soup that remained held up well on its own, however, and it came served in pretty vintage bone china.
My tuna, white bean and arugula salad arrived as a salad alongside a massive hunk of tuna that must have been prepared in some high-tech way. Was it grilled then sous-vide’d? Grilled then preserved in a crystallized format somehow? Either way, the resulting tuna, though visually appealing, was oddly rubbery and bland. As Sara Jenkins pointed out, why do male chefs insist on treating the kitchen like a science lab? But the white beans were wonderfully toothsome and the arugula nice and peppery.
Menudo’s winter vegetable salad was exactly as advertised and came with a delicately tangy lemon dressing. Raw scallops and grapefruit, beets, and fennel came together in Knucklehead’s dish, the best of the appetizers. 
The scallops had a wonderfully clean, barely saline taste, delicious with the bitter sweet juicy crunch of the grapefruit. As we saw at Momofuku Ssam, scallops pair particularly well with fruit, and a sprinkling of fennel leaves gave Bobo’s a tingling herbal taste.
Surprisingly for a place that’s not even Italian, much less a serious pasta joint, Bobo has a ricotta ravioli that could contend with the best. Huge, plump, generously portioned ravioli were already decadent before getting dressed in butter, parmesan, and meltingly soft winter vegetables.
The chicken was just the sort of elevated comfort food we were craving on that rainy night. Crispy skin, tender meat, and a buttery flavor throughout. It had been seasoned just enough, but not too much to overwhelm the rich flavor. A mixture of polenta and black cabbage topped off the homeyness of the dish.
Supposedly there was a basic steak dish at the previous incarnation of Bobo, which I never visited. The current entree takes steak to the next level, topping it with oxtail soffrito and caramelized cippolini. Here again Bobo straddles the line between comforting and outright decadent and succeeds with flying colors.
Pot au feu gets a tweak with lamb substituted for beef as the starring meat. I can’t imagine why I’ve never seen this dish before in a New York restaurant. Lamb makes the pot au feu so much more flavorful, and the vegetables were still al dente, done in the Dan Barber haute barnyard style.
There are so many iterations of Annette’s Berkshire pork entree with cabbage, potatoes, and pinot gris in the city now that it was hard to set this one apart, but his had prettily carved baby potatoes in the French style.
As for the desserts, we wished the chocolat pot de creme had gelled a little bit more – it should be firm, not gloopy. But it was nice to see a good old-fashioned upside down cake, this time in
pear, on an urban menu again. Definitely worth the post-prandial calories.
A trip to the restroom revealed a gorgeous second floor dining room on the townhouse’s parlor floor. All the details have been well thought-out here, from the octagonal book nooks to the dramatic chandeliers to the Victorian wallpaper and brass swan fixtures in the powder room. Now, it seems, bobo’s food is finally following suit. If liking Bobo makes one bobo, then consider me guilty as charged.
bobo
181 West 10th Street at Seventh Avenue South
New York, New York
212-488-2626
Posted in American, food, French, Italian, New York restaurants, restaurants, West Village
Tagged beef, Bobo, duck, New York
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Dovetail
Normally I don’t even try to go to popular new restaurants on the Upper West Side, considering it an exercise in futility. I could never get a table at ‘Cesca when Tom Valenti was cooking, and by the time I got to Aix, it could have been called “eh.” It might be the Upper West Sider’s uncanny ability to plan ahead – all that booking of Met and Carnegie Hall tickets – but here’s another theory why, with apologies to Jessica Hagy of Indexed.
Dovetail aims to be a neighborhood place: the side street location on the ground floor of a limestone townhouse in the West 70’s makes that clear. But this new place by chef John Fraser shouldn’t be the property of neighborhood residents alone. Run, don’t walk, to Dovetail before the entire city is flocking to the Upper West Side for this fantastic new restaurant.
The only things keeping this from N.F.P. status may be the decor. Sleek to the point of moody minimalism, done in shades of gray, brown, and browngray, Dovetail reminded me of a starkly decorated residence of a lifelong bachelor, the kind who would rather unplug and move one lamp from bedroom to living room rather than buy an extra lamp, much less artwork (true story). Muted moss green chairs are as exciting as it gets.
Canada, the Master Orderer, Marie Fromage and I were greeted with amuse bouches of caviar, fried capers, sour cream, and vodka gelee. Very decadent, like something out of the Master and Margarita, and the vodka added an intriguing, slightly bitter element to the salty-creamy mix.
As expected, the Master Orderer triumphed with his choice of the gnocchi with veal short ribs, foie gras butter, and prunes. The gnocchi were light and retained just a hint of riced-potato texture inside. Veal short ribs turn out to be a very meaty but elegant cut, not as fatty as beef short ribs. The sauce was significantly richened by the foie gras butter. Though the food here could be called “New American,” Fraser’s use of French technique significantly deepens the experience.
As with the veal short rib sauce, he often takes a familiar recipe and turns it up a notch by refining the key ingredients in the mix. Terrine was made not with pork but with rabbit – again a leaner, lighter meat that takes this countrified dish up a notch. Perfectly seasoned and ground, the terrine was also at the right temperature – not too cold, just slightly cooler than room temperature either. A too-cold country pate reminds me of leftover meatloaf straight from the fridge – not good.
The mildest of the appetizers, the brussels sprouts leaves salad, was lightly citrusy, an elegant winter salad with a nice crunch and a smattering of prosciutto and pears.
After the veal gnocchi, our other favorite appetizer was the pork belly, maitake mushrooms, kale, and egg, which the menu calls a “hen egg” (as opposed to a rooster egg?). I love a coddled egg, and here it was sandwiched next to kale that had been brought to the point of nori-like crispiness. Mixed with the succulent pork belly, the whole thing was a fabulous conflation of flavors.
Moving on, we managed to order all meat courses, though there are some excellent fish choices on the menu as well, including the requisite fish-n-bacon combo. The Master Orderer – we must always check in with this bellwether first – went for the roasted sirloin and beef cheek lasagna. Here’s another food trend I’m liking: serving up the animal in various incarnations (apologies to Buddhists). In this case, the nicely aged and grilled sirloin was better than the lasagna, which was actually just mushrooms and beef cheeks stacked to resemble lasagna – gyp.
Each of our entrees – the sirloin, the grilled venison, the pistachio crusted duck, and the rack and leg of lamb – was notable for the quality of the meat itself and the wonderful sauces, which seemed to have a demiglace base. That night we didn’t have the problem that Alan Richman had of the meat being dried out – quite the opposite. Too often now not enough attention is paid to the star player on the plate, and restaurants just hope you get swept up by the sides, as I sometimes do. But even without the chestnuts, tangy-sweet stewed cabbage, and cute little marshmallows that decorated the plate, the cut of slightly smoky, tender venison itself would have been a star.
“Now that’s how venison is supposed to t
aste,” Marie Fromage said.
“I don’t get the marshmallows,” Canada said. Indeed, they were cutesy.
But the Master Orderer said, “Marshmallows are always good.”
The pistachio-crusted duck was flavorful and bird-y, not gamey, the dish a refined French preparation that involved lots of beautiful slow roasted vegetables like endive.
The menu description of “rack and leg of lamb” with “Indian spices, winter tabouleh, and yogurt” conjured up a very specific idea. A whiff of the exotic, plus the comfort of the known, with the enticement of tabouleh reinterpreted for a different season. One of the best things about Dovetail is that it delivers on your expectations and then some. The cut of lamb was so delicious and perfectly cooked to medium rare, the rub of spices so fragrant but unobtrusive, the hominy-like texture of the warm bulgur wheat tabouleh so good against the tang of yogurt. One bite and you’re transported away, maybe not as far as India, but at least as far as Morocco.
Fortunately the portion sizes are not overwhelming, because we still had room for dessert. The best was Canada’s order of the banana brioche with a bacon-flavored wafer. Don’t be afraid: there’s only a hint of bacon compared to the richness of the brioche. Delicious. Another good pick on that night’s dessert menu was the cheesecake ice cream.
The only downfall of the night was weird little beet jelly petits fours presented at the end. Even if you were a beet fan. As Marie Fromage put it, “They’re trying to challenge you, and at this point of the night you don’t want to be challenged.”
Prices were reasonable for this caliber of food, though the wine list does not feature enough bottles under $100. There’s a $125 tasting menu, including wine pairings, which I would do on a second visit. Service was very attentive and smooth, though we did have to wait forever for the check, and I think I terrified the waitress when I whipped out a camera to photograph the food. God knows why, since I am just a blogger, and they’ll probably have many more.
Afterwards we couldn’t say enough good things about this place. Canada and the Master Orderer are going back “with friends.” (What are we, chopped rabbit?!?) Let’s hope John Fraser will be considered for the 2008 Food & Wine Best New Chef awards. In the meantime, diners from all over the city should head to the Upper West while this great new restaurant is still in a very exciting stage – when the star chef is in the kitchen, cooking.
Dovetail
103 West 77th Street between Columbus and Broadway
New York, New York
212-362-3800
Posted in American, food, New York restaurants, restaurants, Upper West Side
Tagged beef, duck, foie gras, New York
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North Fork Table & Inn
Most New Yorkers wouldn’t think of fall as the season to go “out East,” which is exactly why it’s a great time to go. A tour of Long Island wine country during harvest time will take you to one of the best restaurants out East, in the Hamptons or otherwise. The North Fork Table & Inn in Southold is smack in the middle of vineyard-land.
Using local, seasonal ingredients from the myriad neighboring farmers, chef Gerry Haden, formerly of Aureole and Amuse in Manhattan, created an extensive but focused menu that leverages the bounty of quality vegetables, fish, and game available on the North Fork. Though it doesn’t come cheap – the average entree price is about $35 – the food at North Fork Table is worth it.
Unlike so many places in the Hamptons where you pay top dollar to get jostled at the bar and neglected at the table, North Fork Table has the ambiance and service to match its price point. The atmosphere inside the quaint old farmhouse is sophisticated and quiet, with a stripped-down, almost stark interior and ambient lighting throughout. Many of the diners are regulars with houses in the area. Everyone seemed particularly intent on the wine list, which is heavy on offerings from North Fork vineyards. Lest you worry you don’t know the terroir well enough to pick a bottle, sommelier and owner – with his wife Mary – Mike Mraz will steer you in the right direction, often offering a taste before you commit to a whole bottle. The Paumanok 2000 Cabernet Sauvignon Grand Vintage was excellent, and Jay McInerney’s Long Island favorite, The Grapes of Roth, is also on the list and all it’s cracked up to be.
If there were any misses on the menu, we didn’t find them on a recent Friday night. Cod and Yukon Gold potato cakes were light and fluffy, served with homemade tartar sauce laced with truffle oil. The assortment of K.K.’s biodynamic heirloom tomatoes were enveloped in a paper-thin slice of delicious Berkshire pork prosciutto. Apparently, K.K. is a local farmer who’s rather obsessed with tomatoes, bathing the seeds in all sorts of concoctions before planting them. 
“She puts a ram’s horn in the earth on the night of the full moon,” Mraz joked of her biodynamic methods, which are derived more from the Farmer’s Almanac than the bioengineering trickery of today. Ram’s horn or no ram’s horn, the results are amazing tomatoes.
The white asparagus and fava bean salad was out of this world. Somehow the combination of this cool vegetable crunch, the delicate green onion buttermilk dressing, and the campfire scent of applewood smoked bacon made for an incredible trio. When asked where they got the bacon, Mraz said, “Just the local butcher in Southold.” Who knew?
Black Angus strip steak was as good as any you’ll find in a steak house, and the accompanying glazed baby carrots and truffled potatoes were on another plane entirely. Fresh fig sauce pooled around the succulent duck breast, 
giving it a similar sweet tang as a traditional cherry sauce, but with an almost grape-y flavor much better suited to a meal served with fine wine.
The piquillo pepper “gazpacho,” made entirely with peppers and laced with shrimp, avocado and cilantro, lacked any of the harshness you might expect from a soup made entirely with peppers, because they had been roasted to a point of falling-apart sweetness.
Kudos go to pastry chef Claudia Fleming too, who makes cinnamon beignets light as air and the triple-threat dessert of 
chocolate mousse, a brownie, and dulce de leche ice cream.
The best you can expect from most restaurants is an attention to detail. The North Fork Table exhibits an attention to minutiae – microfarming, the microclimate of Long Island wine country, and micromanaging everything that appears on the table. If the fall menu, due to debut any day now, is anywhere near as promising as the summer one, we say please, manage away.
North Fork Table & Inn
57225 Main Road
Southold, New York
631-765-0177
Posted in food, restaurants, the Hamptons
Tagged duck, travel
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