American – Page 19 – Writing With My Mouth Full

wd-50

50 Clinton Street between Stanton and Rivington Streets
212/477.2900
about $300 for two, with a bottle of wine, with tip
♥ ♥ ♥

Wylie Dufresne, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways…

1. Pickled beef tongue with fried mayonnaise and onion streusel. I loved the beef tongue carpaccio style; you can barely remember it was pickled. And fried and cubed mayonnaise? It was worth ordering just to find out how the hell they would do it.

2. Octopus with celery pesto, pineapple and tiny bits of mojama, or dry tuna, and marcona almonds. Celery pesto is something I’ve never had before.

3. Corned duck, rye crisp, purple mustard and horseradish. Our waiter told us this is the mainstay on the wd-50 menu and that it was an absolute must-try. He was right. The mini parsleys were a nice touch.

4. Root vegetable “lasagna” with sweet and sour mushroom broth. I tasted carrots, parsnip and burdock in there. Perhaps beets were not in season. Lasagna is in quotes because the familiar layering technique was used. The mushrooms were a delight to eat, but I wish this came in a smaller portion.

5. Rack of lamb, sauerkraut spaetzle, swiss cheese consommé. We finished a bottle of wine from Piedmont and all I remember about the lamb was that it melted in my mouth. We ordered medium, but it was definitely rare. Divine.

6. Kumquat confit, carob ice cream, or St. John’s Bread, a pea pod that looks like cocoa but without the caffeine, with soy caramel. The kumquat was chewy, but I wondered if it would be any softer if cooked longer.

7. Caramelized banana, smoked chocolate ice cream and stout. I have no clue how one would smoke ice cream, but we paused after every spoonful and asked, Is that bacon I taste?

8. Thin crisps in a wooden box. I had to ask our waiter to take them away because I couldn’t stop picking from it.

A very expensive meal for two, but worth every penny.

Aurora Ristorante

70 Grand Street at Wythe Avenue, Wiliamsburg, Brooklyn
718/388.5100
about $125 for two, with a bottle of wine, without tip
♥ ♥

Dinner’s always nice when a group of you eat and drink without feeling like you’re at a restaurant. The waiter asks for your orders and serves them unobtrusively. He also knows when to ask if everything is okay and knows when to leave you alone. I wondered whether this is just a Brooklyn thing, and if it is, I might find myself in the area more often.

Aurora was a very cozy place for us to eat dinner one cold, Saturday night. Five of us shared two bottles of wine; one light and sweet and the other, heavier, courtesy of our waiter who gladly suggested them even though they weren’t the most expensive bottles on the list. The octopus was warm with potatoes and capers. The veal tongue was done just right and not overpowering. I loved the bagna cauda, the Piedmont anchovy dip served in half a roasted red bell pepper; it went well with all the vegetables that came with it.

I haven’t had pork belly with skin that was evenly toasted and crispy. The meat was so tasty and not at all salty, which is easy to do with pork belly. The broccoli rabe and caramelized apple were side dishes with it.

The frisée, fennel and pear salad was a nice addition to our table. My truffle ice cream was perfect with the chocolate powder and sauce. It was a nice ending to a very comforting meal.

Ureña

37 East 28th Street between Park and Madison Avenues
212/213.2328
about $150 for two, with two drinks, without tip
â™¥ â™¥
Update, 2007: Renovated as Pamplona

UreÃ±a is the latest restaurant to open in Murray Hill from one of David Bouley’s apprentice and ex-executive chef of Blue Hill, Alex Ureña. The restaurant has been dubbed one of the ugliest by New York blogs when it opened, but it was obvious that they’ve listened to the critics by the time we visited. They’ve softened the lights to tone down the harshness of the yellow walls and swirl-patterned carpet. The bar is still by the door, but New York City real estate doesn’t come cheap and I can imagine that it will stay there.

Alex UreÃ±a is Dominican and UreÃ±a is billed under Spanish food, but I would categorize it under New American because the menu was a mishmash of different ingredients and cooking techniques. There’s a lot more fish in the menu than I expected, but there’s really nothing unheard of. I wanted to see more of the experimental side of the chef–the El Bulli techniques he’s learned from another mentor, Ferran AdriÃ .

I did enjoy the octopus and the arctic char with the sweetbreads. The beef ribs also melted like butter. The sauce was a good match to our Grenache. The reward came during dessert with one of Caryn Stabinskyâ€™s creations, of Wylie Dufresne’s WD-50. I loved the beet panna cotta; it was in perfect harmony with the sour cream and orange salt.

Our waiter did not warm up to us until he saw that we loved our dessert. When we were seated, he asked us if we wanted tap or sparkling water. When the boy answered tap, he asked us what “chap” was. He may have left us perplexed, but I’m pretty sure UreÃ±a will finally surprise us the next time we drop by.

Blue Hill Restaurant

75 Washington Place between MacDougal and Sixth Avenue
212/539.1776
about $150 for two, with two drinks, without tip
♥ ♥

To welcome autumn, Nabi and I had dinner at Blue Hill in the West Village last night. It’s probably the first restaurant in the city that attempts to be an answer to Chez Panisse with all their locally-grown produce offered on the menu. Everything we ate reminded me of that day in Berkeley, but in a more intimate outdoor summer night setting.

So intimate in fact, that a gargantuan roach decided to drop on my bread plate in the middle of my admiring the Berkshire pork. Our very good-looking waiter happened to be right next to me attending to the other table when it happened and I managed to grab and dig my fingernails on his arm to muffle my scream. I stood up and walked away without knocking our wine glasses. Nabi said she watched the waiter gracefully, and quickly, cover the plate with a napkin and walk away with it.

The manager ran to our table after hearing about the incident. He was very thankful that I did not make a scene to scare the rest of the restaurant. They comped everything from our main course on: the soufflÃ©, an extra glass of white for Nabi, two glasses of dessert wine and a pot of mint tea. I think they should have comped the entire meal, but maybe the roach wasn’t large enough.

Sans the Kafka episode, the food was refreshingly divine. We started with the different kinds of tomatoes in watermelon, cucumber and basil jus. We also split the Maine crab salad. Nabi had the wild striped bass which was cooked perfectly. My pork came from a very happy pig indeed, its own juice sweet without help from any kind of sauce.

After an entire conversation that involved mastication and other big vocabulary words not roach-related, we walked out of the restaurant happy and content. Blue Hill remains as one of my favorite New York City restaurants, but I have to subtract two stars because of the roach. I like organic, but not that organic.

Corner Bistro

331 West 4th Street at Jane
212/242.9502
about $45 for two, with a few drinks, with tip
â™¥ â™¥ â™¥

Possibly the best burgers in New York City besides Le Parker Meridien’s, people wait at Corner Bistro not just for the $2.50 McSorley’s but also for the Bistro Burger, a slab of juicy beef so big you can barely flatten it to put it in your mouth. The best part of it all is that it comes with crispy bacon and onions.

Related post/s:
Le Parker Meridien Burger Joint