CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK
Dishes That Earned Their Stars
Phil Kline for The New York Times
Arroz con pato at Nuela.
By SAM SIFTON
Published: December 28, 2010
I MADE a list of the 15 best things I ate in New York City in the past year of reviewing restaurants for The New York Times. It is an accounting that comprises restaurant dishes of uncommon excellence and flavor. Together they underscore New York’s place as one of the planet’s best cities in which to dine out.
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A Critic’s Choice of Restaurant Newcomers (December 29, 2010)
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Roasted Grapefruit (December 29, 2010)
Hete Bliksem (December 29, 2010)
Guacamole de Frutas (December 29, 2010)
Whole Wheat Spaghetti With Spicy Chickpeas, Rosemary and Bonito Flakes (December 29, 2010)
A New Sifty Fifty
Sam Sifton’s current fifty favorite restaurants have been updated for fall. See the list on The Scoop, The Times’s iPhone guide on what to eat, drink and do in New York.
And we’ll get to them soon enough.
But these dishes make up just one part of a year’s meals taken at the professional table, one sleeve in the accordion folder marked “2010 Delicious.” Add meals I ate out of town on assignment or off the clock or on the way to the clock, and the catalog swells. There is, for example, the sandwich of deep-fried oysters and house-made bacon I had this year at Cochon in New Orleans, served on white Pullman bread with a chili-spiked mayonnaise. And the black vinegar spare ribs with pine nuts served at Shanghai River in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Hoarsely I sing to the poached egg, potato mousseline and chorizo crumble I inhaled at LudoBites 5.0, in downtown Los Angeles. Also to the rabbit parfait with rabbit rillettes and a cinnamon-scented rabbit consommé at Alinea in Chicago (whoa, now!).
Closer to home, there were the Shanghai-style dumplings from Chui Hong Yuan in Bath Beach, Brooklyn, and lunchtime salads from Yemen Café near Brooklyn Heights, and midafternoon pickled veal tongue at M. Wells in Long Island City, Queens, and, always, plates of oxtail gravy over rice and peas from the Golden Krust on Eighth Avenue in Midtown.
For breakfast, there was the grapefruit at Pulino’s in SoHo, not really a dish so much as a magic trick, the fruit covered with muscovado sugar and mint, then cooked into caramel. (A recipe for it and a few other dishes appear here.)
There is the fist of bluefin I got this summer from the fishing guide Brendan McCarthy, who killed a tuna off Cape Cod after a long slog east from Montauk in the wind. I ate part of it raw, with soy sauce, and cooked the rest for the children, who ate it as if it were cake.
And I want to remember forever the martini I drank at the Carlyle before hearing John Pizzarelli and his wife, Jessica Molaskey, sing, with Mr. Pizzarelli’s father, Bucky, in the audience. (I waved to him before the show. “Who’s playing tonight?” he asked, and laughed.)
Also: the barbecue chicken I got from a guy cooking out of a trailer in the parking lot of a Tractor Supply Company in rural Delaware. And a plate of topneck clams from Randazzo’s in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. And the fish tacos I crushed on the sidewalk in front of Juanita’s Taco Shop in Encinitas, Calif. Them, too.
But the following list, which is presented in no particular order, reflects my professional experience over the course of 12 months dining out specifically in New York City restaurants, hoping each night to be surprised, yearning to be delighted, always hungry for the next great bite.
CODFISH FRITTERS WITH LAMB-SAUSAGE RAGÙ AT RECETTE Jesse Schenker, the extravagantly tattooed chef and owner of this estimable West Village restaurant, makes a classic salt-cod bacalao, then deep-fries small balls of it. Paired with a fiery little lamb Bolognese with hints of smoked paprika and vinegar, and served beneath a drizzle of curried mayonnaise, it is an immensely flavorful introduction to his studied, intricate and soulful cooking. 328 West 12th Street (Greenwich Street), Greenwich Village; (212) 414-3000, recettenyc.com.
‘SIMPLY COOKED’ SCALLOPS AT THE MARK RESTAURANT BY JEAN-GEORGES Four scallops the color of gold, adorned only with salt and pepper, sitting on a white plate in the manner of a gift. Jean-Georges Vongerichten, who opened this restaurant in the Mark Hotel this year with Pierre Schutz in the kitchen, pairs the shellfish with a small bowl of sauce: a pink-hued, sriracha-enhanced mixture of egg yolks, grapeseed oil, kombu seaweed water and orange and lime juice. Mayonnaise for the celestial set. 25 East 77th Street, Upper East Side; (212) 606-3030, themarkrestaurantnyc.com.
BURGUNDY SNAILS AT MÁ PÊCHE These tender little nuggets, garlicky and sweet, are as pure an example of old-school French cooking as you’re ever likely to find at a David Chang restaurant, outside of the way the cooks bathe fish in hot butter at Momofuku Ko. Tien Ho, Má Pêche’s chef, combines the snails with a fat pork sausage in a sticky, almost unctuous sauce, suitable for mopping and mopping and mopping up with a crisp piece of baguette. 15 West 56th Street, Midtown; (212) 757-5878,momofuku.com/ma-peche/.
WHOLE WHEAT TONARELLI WITH SPICY CICERCHIE, ROSEMARY AND SHAVED BONITO AT DEL POSTO It sounds like hippie spaghetti with chickpeas, I know. But Mark Ladner, whose brilliance in the kitchen helped elevate Del Posto into the thin air of four-star restaurants this year, takes a rich, toothsome pasta and combines it with the earthy flavor of chickpeas and the piney scent of rosemary to create something that evokes nothing so much as a coastal forest. As the bonito flakes wilt and shrivel in the heat of the finished dish, they release a briny pungency into the air, completing the mental image. It’s crazy: this was just supposed to be dinner. 85 10th Avenue (16th Street); (212) 497-8090, delposto.com.
SMOKED CRAB LAKSA AT FATTY ’CUE A funky smokiness runs along like a bass line in this luscious bowl of soft, thick lai fun noodles, with a melody made up of cold-smoked lump crab meat, tiny anchovies, maitake and shiitake mushrooms, grated daikon, brown-rice vinegar, unrefined palm syrup and fiery chili heat, addictive as Marlboros. 91 South Sixth Street (Bedford Avenue), Williamsburg, Brooklyn; (718) 599-3090,fattycue.com.
BLACK SEA BASS WITH CHILIES, HERBS, RED BLISS POTATOES AND SPINACH AT ABC KITCHEN Spa food doesn’t come much better than this herb- and jalapeño-scented roast fish served at the second restaurant Mr. Vongerichten opened in Manhattan this year, with Dan Kluger in the kitchen. Soft potatoes accompany the plate, with wilted spinach hit up with sweet lemon confit. Oh, man. 35 East 18th Street, ground floor of ABC Carpet & Home; (212) 475-5829, abckitchennyc.com.
GARGANELLI WITH CREAM, TRUFFLE BUTTER AND PROSCIUTTO ATOSTERIA MORINI These beautifully shaped and cooked quills of pasta swim in heavy cream and truffle-scented butter, alongside wisps of smooth, salty prosciutto. The food of Emilia-Romagna is the point of this pretty new restaurant from Michael White, and if it’s richer and silkier than the genuine article, that is all to the good: Intensity is at the center of his Italian love affair. 218 Lafayette Street (Spring Street), SoHo; (212) 965-8777,osteriamorini.com.
GUACAMOLE FRUTAS AT TOLOACHE It is one of the great treats of the theater district, up there with bumping into Laura Benanti in front of Joe Allen: the chunky guacamole with apple, pear and jalapeño that the chef Julian Medina serves at his marvelous little Mexican joint on 50th Street. Just add margaritas. 251 West 50th Street, Clinton; (212) 581-1818, toloachenyc.com.
CHILI LOBSTER AT MARC FORGIONE An upscale take on the classic Singaporean dish of chili crab, Marc Forgione’s appetizer (at his rustic and comfortable TriBeCa restaurant) offers cull lobster in a fiery sea of butter and sriracha, ginger, soy and lobster stock, with a faint note of lime acidity on top. Big hunks of Texas toast come along with, in place of steamed buns. 134 Reade Street (Hudson Street), TriBeCa; (212) 941-9401,marcforgione.com.
DEVIL’S CHICKEN AT TORRISI ITALIAN SPECIALTIES There is a new menu virtually every night at the tiny restaurant that Rich Torrisi and Mario Carbone run out of their Little Italy storefront (at which, at lunchtime, you can reliably find the city’s best turkey sandwich). Dozens of dishes have graced them. But the devil’s chicken, a smoky-hot version of the classic pollo alla diavola, with crackling skin and a swab of tangy local yogurt, remains a highlight. 250 Mulberry Street (Prince Street), Little Italy; (212) 965-0955, piginahat.com.
BUTTER-POACHED OYSTERS WITH CELERY ROOT AT COLICCHIO & SONS In a restaurant that offers both the casual ease of its tap room and the more formalized experience of a tasting menu in its main dining room, these sweet little fatties from the à la carte menu were a brilliant demilitarized zone, with celery root that had been cooked and cut into a vegetable rendition of tagliatelle pasta, and a large smack of American caviar on top for seasoning and texture. 85 10th Avenue (15th Street), Chelsea; (212) 400-6699, colicchioandsons.com.
ARROZ CON PATO AT NUELA Giant, shareable dishes are the chef Adam Schop’s great strength at this nightclubby Latinate restaurant. And nowhere is his skill more apparent than with this big duck paella, served with foie gras, duck confit, seared breast, a pile of gizzards and a massive fried duck egg on a plate the size of a manhole cover: grandiose peasant food in a nightclub restaurant in the greatest city on earth. 43 West 24th Street, Flatiron district; (212) 929-1200, nuelany.com.
HETE BLIKSEM AT VANDAAG Phillip Kirschen-Clark, the chef at this spare and elegant Netherlandish restaurant, brings a firm understanding of the intersection between sweet and savory to this side dish to lunchtime sandwiches and evening hen. “Hot lightning” is how the words translate from the Dutch: little fried fingerling potatoes combined with smoked bacon and a tiny dice of tart apples, all of it glossed in stroop, a velvety syrup made of sugar, butter, cream and molasses, then flavored with juniper, nutmeg, mace and cinnamon. 103 Second Avenue (Sixth Street), East Village; (212) 253-0470, vandaagnyc.com.
CAVATELLI CON VONGOLE AT LINCOLN Opinions abound about whether there should be a $20 million new restaurant on the Lincoln Center campus and, if so, what it should be like and whom it should serve and what they should pay. While you’re discussing that, eat the chef Jonathan Benno’s cavatelli with razor clams, a warm bowl of beautifully prepared pasta the same size as the perfectly cooked clams, with sweet peppers to match and lemon thyme and butter for flavor. The dish leaves people moving their arms as if they were Alan Gilbert at the Philharmonic, calling in the bassoons. Lincoln Center, 142 West 65th Street, Upper West Side; (212) 359-6500, lincolnristorante.com.
SFERA DI CAPRINO, CELERY AND FIG AGRODOLCE AND CELERY SORBET AT DEL POSTO Brooks Headley, the pastry chef at Del Posto, has the appearance of a rock drummer who just fell off the couch. (Until he started cooking, in fact, that was his job.) But he makes dessert like a beautiful demon, and his little goat-cheesecake spheres, rolled in salted bread crumbs made slick with olive oil, with a sweet-and-sour mixture of celery and figs, and a football of celery sorbet, were hands-down the best dessert I ate this year. Check, please! 85 10th Avenue (16th Street); (212) 497-8090;delposto.com.
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