Midtown – Writing With My Mouth Full

Ippudo Westside

321 West 51st Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues
$115 for 2 people, with drinks, with tip
212/974.2500
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Ippudo without the wait? You don’t say! We stopped by the new Ippudo in Hell’s Kitchen during their soft opening week and were whisked upstairs to sit in front of the still-unused kitchen covered in subway tiles. The space will remind you more of Momofuku rather than Ippudo East Village because it’s brighter and lighter inside.

It was quite hot outside, so we decided to nosh on appetizers and try as many dishes as we could and just split a bowl of ramen for our main course. The Hirata steamed buns filled with eggplant and eringi mushrooms were really good. I loved the subtle crunch from the tempura (or was it panko?). The beer-battered fried chicken came with blistered shishito peppers and were probably the best appetizer on the menu. We weren’t as thrilled with the zucchini-potato dish because they were unexciting compared to their other tastier options.

For our ramen, we opted for the Shiromaru Hakata Classic, a tonkotsu soup noodle with pork loin chashu and sesame kikurage mushrooms, plus additional toppings of mustard leaves and pork belly. True to Ippudo style, the noodles were cooked perfectly: tender and just the right amount of bite and chew; the broth so satisfyingly rich and full.

Don’t wait until it gets cooler outside to make your trip uptown. You’ll be waiting in line soon!

Betony

41 West 57th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues
$120 each for 2 people, with drinks, with tip
212/465.2400
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The disclaimer here is that I know someone in the kitchen at Betony. I met Josh in 2008 when I went to the Spotted Pig for Fergus Henderson’s visit from the UK. Josh came all the way by bus from Delaware just to eat the chef’s food and we immediately got along and shared our plates. Since then, he’s worked in several other restaurants and we’ve shared more than just pig’s face to eat. It was a given that I would support him at his latest gig even if Betony was not started by his old friends from Eleven Madison Park.

Betony brings the food experience back to basics, or at least it makes you feel like you’re eating very simple dishes. Josh’s marinated trout roe with cucumber looks just like that: trout roe served on a rice cracker, but I found out later that the puffed rice was made from scratch, the roe was marinated in dashi and the cucumber was a bavarois using the cucumber juice that was turned into a fluid gel.

The shellfish ragout is one of their best dishes. The lobster with the season’s peas was decadent, and the cured pink snapper subtle and clean.

Eleven Madison Park won all those awards not because of how fancy their food was but because of how simple they made everything look. It’s the quiet simplicity that will make Betony successful; New York City diners will just have to make room for more excellence.

Danji

346 West 52nd Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues
212/586.2880
$66 for my share with 2 others, with drinks, with tip
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Tastiest:
1. Spicy whelk salad with buckwheat noodles – just enough saltiness and spiciness. It’s refreshing to see whelks on the menu.
2. Poached sablefish with spicy daikon – reminded me of a wonderful dish I had at Tojo’s in Vancouver, only not as much finesse
3. Tofu with ginger-scallion dressing – I couldn’t tell what kind of tofu it was because it was stringy. I wondered if it was the fried batter that made it so because it had the texture of mozzarella cheese.
4. Makgeolli, or Korean rice beer – They called it rice beer, but I read that it’s mostly referred to as rice wine. It’s quite thin but milky, and the sourness and sweetness are both very subtle.

Most boring:
1. Kimchi-bacon-chorizo “paella” with fried egg – I think they called it paella because it was on a sizzling plate, but it reminded me of a dish you make with your leftovers topped with a fried egg. It’s good–just not worth $16.

Overrated:
1. Bulgogi sliders – Even Ruth Reichl wrote a poem about them, but it’s still the same bulgogi flavor you get outside of the Los Angeles area: a little too sweet and lazy

Service:
The maître d’ was impatient when the place was crowded from about 6:30pm until 9pm. She just had it from every customer insisting they were the next ones to be seated. We never saw her again until my friend ordered another glass of Riesling, but the entire staff was more attentive after the dinner rush was over.

Convivio

45 Tudor City Place off East 43rd Street
212/599.5045
$170 for two people, with drinks, without tip
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While in Colombia, we had a few unfortunate meals that involved pasta. Sure, Italy shares a lot of history with South America–the mass emigration of Italians was between 1876 to 1976 and brought a lot of them to countries like Argentina and then to Colombia–but the “Italian” meals we had didn’t quite involve a loving grandma in the kitchen. At the beach, vegetables were brought in from the nearest big city, about six hours away, so canned sauces were easier to come by. When there were fresh tomatoes, they were used with pasta that came in a box and because most of our meals weren’t cooked individually but in a big batch for the day’s guests, the concept of al dente was nonexistent.

Back in New York, I searched for that pasta lovingly massaged by big hands covered in flour and I found it at Convivio. We had no business spending any more money after our two-week trip, but I couldn’t resist Convivio’s $62 Sunday night prix fixe menu. Unlike most prix fixes in the city, their 4-course menu included a pasta and a dessert without skipping a separate main course. I opted to start with the yellow fin carpaccio drizzled in olive oil and sprinkled with finely chopped scallions and pistachios. I wanted to start light before my preferred pasta dish: saffron gnocchetti with crab and uni.

Did you just read that? Saffron gnocchetti with crab and sea urchin! I am not exaggerating here when I tell you that the combination made me roll my eyes back in ecstasy several times. Sea and earth have never smelled and tasted this heavenly together. The pasta was soft; full, yet springy at each bite. It was pasta at its best. At first, I thought the half portion would not be enough, but it was actually the right amount for such a rich dish. It left me wanting some more and yet I was completely satisfied. I think if I had a whole serving, I wouldn’t have cherished each spoonful as much as I did.

I could not say no to the duck breast. Duck is my new lamb. Done perfectly with Swiss chard alla Romana and spaghetti squash, it was the most beautiful wintery dish without being too heavy. Thankfully I was with someone who picked the lamb chops that tasted so carnivorously good with escarole and white beans. The last time I had lamb that tasted like it was just running an hour ago was at Per Se–that’s saying a lot for a most generous option on a prix fixe menu.

For dessert, it was a battle between the vanilla panna cotta with huckleberries and lemon sorbet or a trio of “freshly-spun” gelato (peach, mango, lemon the night of our visit). I am wont to order only one dessert and split it between me and my companions, if I order at all, but both were so irresistible that we shared them during our last few minutes in the restaurant.

If every homecoming meal was Convivio style, I would gladly suffer through a bad meal or two abroad just to remind me that sometimes you don’t have to go too far to enjoy a meal that’s full of heart–grandma or no grandma.

Arirang Home-made Noodle House

32 West 32nd Street, 3rd floor, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues
212/967.5088
$10 for a large bowl of soup
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The key is the “home-made” part in the restaurant’s name. Don’t let the office space turn you off. I know it looks like a fire hazard in there but an hour of your life in danger is worth it for the kalguksu, or “knife noodles”, the wheat-flour noodles that are cut instead of extruded or spun. They’re soft and plump and they easily give without falling apart when swished in the hot broth.

Don’t miss out on any of Arirang’s kar-jeabe, a combination of kalguksu and sujebi, dumpling skin look-alikes that have been torn to smaller pieces. They simmer all the ingredients together for a very long time resulting into the most complicated broth you’ll ever taste. The gingery taste in the chicken broth is good if you’re feeling down this winter. They come in large bowls that could easily be split between two people unless you’re eating with a hungry Korean doctor.