West Village + TriBeCa – Page 4 – Writing With My Mouth Full

Ditch Plains

29 Bedford Street corner of Downing
212/633.0202
about $100 for 5 people, with drinks, with tip
â™¥ â™¥

It’s appropriate that Landmarc’s owners named Ditch Plains after the famous stretch of beach in Montauk, Long Island. While the Hamptons-style crowd mingles at Blue Ribbon and at Mas across the street, the laid-back type is inside the sleek and cozy Ditch Plains. They may look like they haven’t changed their looks since graduating from college, but at least you know they’re just there to eat a low-key meal.

The menu is straightforward: mussels and oysters, burgers and mac and cheese. The choices are unexciting, but there is nothing plain about the taste. The burger was cooked after my own heart: chunks of bacon sandwiched with perfectly medium-rare meat and melted cheese. The mac and cheese was addictive with burnt cheese clinging to dear life against the ramekin. The mussels in wine with onions and parsley were perfect with a piece of toasted baguette.

Ditch Plains gets crowded for dinner, but the service never falters. Our waitress brought us an appetizer portion of calamares to let us know she was taking care of us despite the wait.

Giorgione 508

508 Greenwich Street off Spring
212/219-2444
â™¥ â™¥

Giorgione is a jewel of a place found in the transforming neighborhood of Greenwich Street and the West Side Highway. It reminds me of the delis in Europe where locals eat and drink wine in the middle of the afternoon or leisurely enjoy coffee with a pastry. As soon as you walk in, you’re confronted with lunch boxes of greens with chicken or seared tuna. The long glass bars invite you to sit and casually enjoy your meal. It is that civilized way of living which delights me about Giorgione. When the restaurant is full during busy lunch hours, it looks like a happy communal space with beautifully-dressed New Yorkers.

My seared tuna looked more like sashimi but it was perfect with the bean and tomato salad. The baby arugula and endive salad with goat cheese became a more interesting dish when citrus and toasted pine nuts were added. I think a bowl of greens is easy to make, but a well-done salad is a hard feat. Giorgione does it easily and well. The hanger steak sandwich with stewed onions was large and filling, but the meatball sandwich covered in a big blob of mozarella looked unappetizing. All the lunch items are a bit pricey but this Italian joint is a nice break from the usual hangouts on Hudson Street.

Mercat

45 Bond Street between Lafayette and Bowery
212/529.8600
$120 for two, with 3 drinks, with tip
â™¥ â™¥

It was a Monday night and Mercat has only been open for three days, yet the decibel level made it seem like it was a Thursday night. The place is packed; the white tiles immediately reminded me of Cal Pep in Barcelona. One of the bartenders gave me a long-stemmed pink rose to alleviate my 25-minute wait for a seat at the bar in front of the restaurant. (I saw later that every woman in the house was holding the same rose. I wasn’t so special after all.) The sausage and cheese station was manned by one doing all the slicing and plating and was surrounded by the curious also waiting for the bathroom to free up. In the back, the open kitchen was being watched by the more important people who sat at the chef’s bar. Everyone seemed to be in good spirits.

We started with the crispy sweetbreads on a bed of fennel, orange and capers. It was a light and delicious appetizer to an unexpectedly heavy meal. The grilled sardines were great with salsa verde even though I was picking small, thin bones off my mouth the entire time. What made my night, however, was the braised pork belly served with crosnes, my latest favorite vegetable. Never mind that it also came with asparagus which seemed pretty boring compared to the sauce that made the dish special: a dollop of preserved cherries. No one should be afraid of eating their meals with fruit; I could have eaten this all night with my glass of cava.

The mushroom dish will mostly likely leave Mercat bankrupt. For only $12–and I can’t believe I’m saying “only” here–I think I tasted sautÃ©ed morels, hen-of-the-woods, shiitake and crimini mushrooms on my plate. The last time I stopped by a Whole Foods, morels were going for $60 for a pound. A very earthy and filling dish served with crunchy strings of potatoes and topped with a fried egg was hard to resist even if the egg was a little overdone. They ran out of razor clams by 10pm and I totally missed the blistered Padron peppers from the top of the menu, so we finished with the snails and chorizo skewers. It sounded promising but what happened to this dish? The snails tasted like they’ve been in the bottom of an aquarium for days. The chorizo-tomato salsa could not even cover the algae taste that we decided to leave the dish unfinished.

From my experience at Cal Pep, the meals got better as the night wiled away. At Mercat, the night started inspiringly, but after I ate the snails, all I wanted was to rewind my experience back to the pork belly and back to Spain.

Dani Restaurant

333 Hudson Street corner of Charlton
212/633.9333
$300 for fifteen without drinks, with tip
â™¥

Update, 2008: Dani is now closed and only available for special events.

Dani looked promising as soon as we walked in. Its space on Hudson is so airy and spacious, it made me wonder why other restaurants just don’t move to the West Village. I booked a table during lunch for a big group. They told me over the phone that our tables will be separated in two groups but assured me that they will be next to each other. When we were all seated, we occupied an L-shaped corner but with an empty table in between the two groups. We asked the maitre’d to move the place settings one table over so that we can be together but she never returned to fulfill our request. So there we ate, two groups side by side, separated by a small table in between, standing to pass plates of appetizers from one table to the next.

The lunch menu is very simple with a good selection of sandwiches and salads. There are also some hearty fares like my super al dente orecchiette with lamb or my co-worker’s pasta al forno with smoked mozarella and sausage. A tuna special was deemed mediocre by another co-worker which was curious because I’ve only seen him eat fried chicken during lunch times. Their prix fixe was a good deal with a small bowl of soup, salad and a panini, but those who ordered the paninis alone all disliked the pasta dough chips served on the side. Dani provides a nice space for big parties, but its staff needs to loosen up to accommodate even those who do not order booze during the day and work a little harder for the 20% tip they automatically add to group checks.

Blue Ribbon Bar

34 Downing Street off Bedford
212/691.0404
$86 for two with four beers and a glass of wine, with tip
â™¥ â™¥ â™¥

So there’s Blue Ribbon Sushi and Blue Ribbon Brasserie on Sullivan; the Blue Ribbon Bakery on Bedford and Blue Ribbon Market around the corner. Of course, there’s the other brasserie in Brooklyn. I wasn’t surprised when I heard the Bromberg brothers have opened Blue Ribbon Bar on Downing Street because they have been in the business even before the Lambs started taking over the East Village and way before David Chang started attracting other chefs at his restaurant during its after-hours. What I like about any of the Blue Ribbons is that they go past the food trends. People who still wait in line are most likely customers who have been following the empire for the last ten years. I know that when I go, I will get more than just a decent, civilized meal; that I’ll get a tried dish that only a select few will appreciate.

It’s their dependable reputation that made me order the pickled tongue, the wild mushrooms with sweetbreads and the steak tartare with capers. I like that a restaurant, even a tight bar space, will be adventurous enough to offer those items. I like it even better when they can do them right. The pickled tongue, which reminded me of wd-50, was so tender that it made me happy to be eating it even as it discombobulated after a bite. The steak tartare was classically Blue Ribbon and put in mind one of my favorites from their roster, roasted bone marrow with oxtail marmalade. The mushrooms were so fragrant that my companion didn’t mind the sweetbreads even after I told him what they really were. They have a great wine list and less expensive flights for their sparkling wines, Pinots and Reislings. It’s also the same reputation that makes their employees less obnoxious–I was going to use an eight-letter word starting with an “a”–than other waitstaff in the city. Our bartender was very accommodating even after more people squeezed in and he never forgot us sitting in the corner, refilling our water glasses and serving us a complementary flight of wine after already several drinks.