American – Page 2 – Writing With My Mouth Full

Salt & Fat

41-16 Queens Boulevard, Sunnyside, Queens
$40 each for 4 people, with drinks, with tip
718/433.3702
♥ ♥

Taking advantage of Queens while one of my favorite eating partners is in town from Chicago, we visited Salt & Fat with her brother to check out the scene in what is a very unfamiliar part of the city to me.

Tastiest:
1. Yellowtail tartare with yuzu gel and cassava chips – We got two orders of this because the combination of yuzu and tartare was very good.
2. Pork belly buns – Comparable to the trendiest of them all
3. Fried chicken – Pretty good and happily-salted fried chicken; I didn’t even need the herbed ranch that came with it. The spattering of pickled cubed daikon was a nice touch.

Pretty good:
1. Oxtail terrine – A little salty for me, but it didn’t seem to be a terrine
2. Pork trotters – Crispy and perfect with the slow-cooked egg
3. Truffled beet salad with yuzu crème fraîche – Simple

Notable:
1. Prices – Go now before the prices hike for visiting Brooklynites (as if they will ever leave Brooklyn!)

Weird:
1. Ice creams for dessert – A-plus for effort on the miso-apple, jalapeño-white peach and Thai iced tea flavors, but I felt like they lacked ooomph.
2. Service – Though pretty fast, our waitress seemed unhappy to be there. We had to ask for our pig trotters twice and we wondered if she was distracted.
3. The bathroom – It looked like Sanibel, Florida in there

Parish Hall

109 A North 3rd Street between Berry and Wythe in Williamsburg, Brooklyn
$86 each for 3 people, with 3 drinks apiece, without tip
718/782.2602
♥ ♥ ♥

The disclaimer here is that I made a small investment on Parish Hall to finally fulfill one of my dreams of being a small part of the restaurant business. I also wanted to support George Weld, someone I’ve known since the dot-com days when we used to pretend we were actually working. But the fact of the matter is that I will still give this restaurant a good review even if I did not know George and even if I wasn’t a fan of his first venture, Egg.

If I can eat the duck breast everyday with a side of their “new field greens”, I’d be totally content. I’ve had the duck twice the last three times I visited (fourth if you count them hosting the Gastronauts’ 6th anniversary), and both times it was cooked impeccably. I was just bummed that I had to share it with my friends.

The salad’s composition depends on what greens they have in the kitchen that day, taking the concept of farm-to-table to a whole new level since George actually owns Goatfell Farm which provides most of their vegetables. They’ve had dandelion, arugula, mizuna, chickweed, watercress and all sorts of lettuces, and all of them tasted fresh, earthy and healthy. During one visit, nasturtium was on my plate; it was peppery and tasted so much like a… green–there’s really no other way to describe its rawness.

Equally delicious is the grilled rack of lamb and roasted shoulder and equally surprising to see on the plate was the flax and nettle pesto that came with it, not so much of a sauce but a dollop so you can lather as little or as much as you want. (But don’t worry, no stings included!) The homey dumpling also changes depending on what ingredients are on hand. I loved the version with asparagus, pears–and what again?–spinach cream and fennel pollen. A most recent addition was trout in a clean broth with some fiddleheads and the perfect cubes of apples. The dishes seem simple, but simple is never easy to implement in the kitchen. I think a chef’s skills are more challenged when he or she can make something so complicated look so simple to us mortals.

If you walk past the restaurant or go to their Web site, you’ll read a variety of the produce they present: beet, maple, apple-sorrel sauces, purée of parsnips, green garlic aioli, nettle yogurt, kohlrabi and sunchokes chips. I would like to think I’ve had my share of eating in some of America’s best restaurants, but nowhere else have I been perplexed about ingredients that are so straightforwardly named. Thomas Keller’s menus always come with quotation marks to describe their food, but with Parish Hall you get the list of ingredients and still have to ask the servers about them.

George has described their cooking as “the truth of the Northeast”–I suppose I didn’t know anything about what this part of the country can offer. Parish Hall and chef Evan Hanczor shows it can offer so much.

Some photos from my last few visits:

A simple Alpine breakfast named after the highest peak in the Catskills with a slow-cooked egg, some charcuterie, mustard and jam. I like the touch of fresh radishes on the plate to cut through the richness.

Water buffalo pastrami made especially for the Gastronauts’ 6th anniversary. You won’t see this on the regular menu though.

A plate of beautiful radishes:

Isa

38 Wythe Street off South 2nd Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn
347/689.3594
$70 each for 2 people, with 2 drinks, without tip
♥ ♥ ♥

When Eater.com announced that Masten Lake would be closing, a small part of me hurt. I haven’t been in a restaurant that was as delicious and creative as Masten Lake since Momofuku Ssam, and even though I had to trek to Williamsburg from Harlem to eat there, I was so excited about it that I didn’t mind the L commute. Enter Isa, another restaurant in almost the same area that could very well replace my love for Masten Lake.

Notable:
1. Their prix-fixe menu is the best deal in town for $50 for three courses.

Tastiest:
1. The beet salad was so pretty. Each plate reminded me of Eleven Madison Park, which I totally did not expect in a hipster place like Isa.
2. The mackerel was overwhelming in that same awesome way Masten Lake’s version impressed me.
3. The grilled and shaved celeriac was a nice surprise.
4. The grapefruit curd was so interesting that I had to compliment the cute Asian girl in the back responsible for it.

Service:
The dapperly-dressed man at the front of the house–ascot, natch–told us that all tables were committed until 10:30pm, but that we can sit at the bar since it’s first-come first-served basis. We returned a few minutes later and ordered some nice cocktails with bourbon and lemon dew and also a rum drink with mint. Said dapper man stopped by later to say that he was glad we made it after all.

Masten Lake

285 Bedford Avenue between South 1st Street and Grand in Williamsburg, Brooklyn
718/599.5565
around $125 for 2, with 3 drinks, with tip
♥ ♥ ♥

I was talking to my friend Stacie about where we’ve both eaten lately and as we went through our list, she said, There really hasn’t been anything exciting since Momofuku Ko. I thought about this for a few seconds and I agreed. Sure, I’ve been to some good restaurants the last few months–August and Riverpark among them–but she was right: nothing has stood out. That is until I sat at the bar of Masten Lake in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

During my first visit, there was a generous piece of fresh and unadulterated mackerel served with sour tomatillos and sunchokes with a dusting of Japanese ground spices and a hint of yuzu. It made me get up and walk towards the open kitchen to ask who was cooking that night. It wasn’t a new dish, and any mortal can buy that spice from Sunrise Mart on St. Marks Place–I just haven’t had it that way before.

My second visit was a more wintry night and my companion and I split a comfortable bowl of pici with tripe. This is definitely hand-rolled, he said while pointing at the pasta with his fork. Of course, it is; an alumna of Lupa wouldn’t have it any other way, right? Its heftiness lent itself to the subtle offal taste of the tripe; the crushed tomatoes rounded the dish off. It was a little heavy on the salt, as heavy-handed as the tagliatelle with mussels during my first visit, though the burrata with the shellfish made it more palatable. There are other, shall I say, whimsical and lighter dishes to share, which change almost nightly, like the apples with sheep’s milk cheese and foie gras with smears of melon and mascarpone. You get used to sliding and passing ceramics back and forth, creating works of food art on plates and bowls. Order several wedges of cheese and a plate of thinly-sliced lardo to compliment the easy choices of wine and nicely-made cocktails.

The next time I visit, I’ll take Stacie with me and we’ll cover our palettes with smudges and smears of the day’s freshest ingredients.

Red Rooster

310 Lenox Avenue between 125th and 126th Streets
212/792.9001
$86 for three, without drinks, with tip
♥ ♥

I’m very familiar with the Harlem Sunday brunch crowd. I’ve biked enough past the Baptist churches on Adam Clayton and Lenox Avenues to know that after service, large crowds gather at the nearby bakery or join the street barbecue line if it’s warm out. What I didn’t expect to see at Red Rooster was a colorful one–and I liked it. Seven years living in Harlem, I’ve witnessed the neighborhood change: beautiful brownstones getting gutted out and renovated, new apartments higher than six floors getting built in less than two years, Starbucks opening to serve $5 coffees. I’ve taken advantage of the gentrification, as most of you know, buying into one of the developments and enjoying decent brews with my bike safely chained outside the bar. I’ve slowly tried the handful of restaurants that have popped up, but businesses have shared one thread that still need a vast improvement: the quality of service. Red Rooster is no exception.

We walked in Red Rooster and joined the crowd at the bar while two people sang gospel songs. The waiting time was half an hour to forty minutes, so we felt lucky that we got bar seats. Getting bloody marys poured out of a plastic jug and a glass of a simply-mixed mimosa was another story–the two bartenders at the front seemed like they needed another pair of, maybe six more, hands to churn out the drinks being ordered. The bloody marys weren’t even worth waiting for.

The service didn’t change when we were finally shown our table. We must have been visited by at least five different servers, but none of them were quick enough at their feet to get our water glasses and coffee refilled, replace our butter spreaders with steak knives or place the correct plates in front of the person who ordered them. It seemed like the staff was overwhelmed, but there was constant traffic between tables and the service room that I wondered where they were all walking to.

Thankfully, chef Marcus Samuelsson hasn’t lost the talent that he’s honed during all his years at Aquavit. I’m not sure how many of the Top Chef audience even know that he has been around before they started blogging, but for a chef who’s been in the industry before all this foodie fuckfest, I’m also surprised that he’s gone uptown to start anew. He has adopted the Web and he has been parading himself on TV; he is also very visible on the floor chatting up and photographing with business partners and customers. It’s like Marcus Samuelsson Part Two without the need to talk about his familial background. It’s all about the food now, and at Red Rooster, it’s pretty good. The nuggets and toast, or their take on fried chicken and waffles, was well-refined and filling. The fried chicken nuggets were crispy and matched the sweetness of the toast slathered in maple syrup. I wasn’t a big fan of the baked eggs because they were just overcooked, but the mac and cheese using orecchiette with bitter greens made up for them. The five-ounce fillet steak was perfectly cooked and the sweet potato bits were a nice surprise with the French fries. The corn bread is the best I’ve tasted in a while, served with honey butter and tomato jam. The coffee, especially if served black, was so good that I didn’t mind not finishing my weak bloody mary; it will be marketed as Samuelsson’s own come next season. If I can’t get to Egg in Brooklyn often, Red Rooster will just have to do.

Chef Samuelsson’s baby is quite new, so I plan to make a return visit another Sunday to check on the service. I hope it improves and I hope they can deal with the crowd a little bit better next time because the food alone doesn’t carry an entire restaurant, nor can a famous chef.