Don’t see this at home.
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First meal back in the US: Balthazar parklet. Great people watching on a warm spring day, every kind of high and low fashion and unfashion. Guy in opera slippers with no socks. Goths. Slobs.
Shrimp cocktail was great with a glass of Sancerre. Good grief the wine markups in this town.
Nice Gamay, better value than the Beaujolaises on the list.
Solid steak-frites. My main reason for choosing Balthazar was that I was tired of the lousy French fries we had in Paris and these were much better.
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Orion Bar in Bushwick. My friend from the neighborhood called it a pocha, but the bartender said it’s really an anju.
Got banchan, kimchi, and a big bowl of rice, all excellent. Good value.
Space Spam frozen cocktail, didn’t taste like Spam to me, more like a delicious tiki bar drink. The Jeju Blast was also delicious.
Really fun place. Dead quiet at the end of a Sunday night, the bartender said Saturday was packed.
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Great N.Y. Noodletown.
Roast pig, nice crunchy skin.
Wonton soup, I prefer pork to shrimp but this was really good anyway. Excellent broth.
Pea leaf, could have used more garlic but really good anyway.
Ginger-scallion lobster, good but why didn’t we order soft-shell crab? I blame jet-lag.
$100 cash (no credit cards) with 20% tip. There are possibly / maybe places similar to that in Paris’s Chinatown but we were staying on the far opposite side of town.
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Getting down there for soft shells is on my agenda for the week.
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Srsly.
Bar Contra. I’m not a big cocktail person but if they were all at this level I might be. Lots of molecular gastronomy: centrifuge, thermos of liquid nitrogen on the bar, carbonator, malic and cotric acid, etc. Friendly bartenders, great playlist. Delicious drinks, huge variety, great originality.
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Did you do the food here? Contra was one of my formative restaurants so I was so surprised how bad the food was. Loved the drinks tho.
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Had eaten a big dinner already. Didn’t notice anyone eating food.
El Castillo de Jagua on Rivington: years ago we had a great meal at El Gran Castillo de Jagua in Brooklyn (no connection), so ordered the same dishes and had high hopes.
Squid rice: tasty but could have used a lot more garlic Beans were so good we ordered more, best part of the meal.
Mofongo with chicharron: could have been crunchier and fattier and had more garlic. Does anyone make it that way any more? Probably hqve to schlep to Queens.
Mixed vegetables: very good.
Uncle Ray’s Chicken Rice: flagged it in Google Maps after reading about it in the NY Times 100. Went because we went to the Duchamp show at MOMA and it’s nearby.
Broth was great. Poached chicken was correct. Sauces were good. Rice could have had more chicken flavor / fat. The 100 blurb said, “the real luxury here is the rice, swollen with chicken broth, haunted by ginger and good enough to eat on its own.” I wonder if the resuting surge in business may have meant they don’t have time to make it like that? Anyway I’ve had better and bet there is better somewhere in the city.
Greens were good.
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Somssi, new place from the NA:EUN group (Atomix, Atoboy).
Drank a great Gewürztraminer. They inherited a cellar from the previous tenant Acru but are adding a lot more stuff.
Fennel salad, nice. Kumquat seemed out of place to me but my dining companion really liked it.
Tongue, I presume seriously salt-cured. Chewy and flavorful. Nice sauce. Wasabi didn’t make sense to me. We ate more than half before I remembered to take a photo.
Neglected to photograph the mushroom dish. Very good, seemed like Chinese home cooking.
Lamb (“mutton”) chops with great demiglace sauce. Should have gotten bread to sop that up.
Cabbage was very good, nice texture. Did they say they steamed and then grilled?
Excellent pickles.
Ice cream flavored with White Rabbit candy and served with crunchy caramelized nuts, delicious.
Good meal, friendly service, nice space. While everything was good the menu seems a little unfocused, lacks a clear point of view / coherent story compared with, say, Kabawa.
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Was here tonight too!
didn’t love it!
Corima last night fantastic I’ll post about it later
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