New York Restaurants by Area – Page 12 – Writing With My Mouth Full

Klee Brasserie

200 Ninth Avenue between 22nd and 23rd Streets
212/633.8033â€Ž
$104 each for a group of 11, with several bottles of wine
♥ ♥

From Klee’s Web site, I imagined a Meatpacking District type of place where we would be screaming at each other so that we can have a conversation. It’s probably the first restaurant Web site I’ve seen where the creator is in touch with what New Yorkers are looking for these days: a blog from the chef, updated food photographs and, oh my god, a Facebook group. I expected the restaurant to be as loud as the site. I was pleasantly surprised when I walked in: Klee is a lot smaller than what I originally thought and it’s actually cozy even with eleven girls sharing a long table.

My friends had arranged for a group dinner to celebrate anotherâ€™s last days of singledom. A pre-fixe dinner for $55 per person was arranged which included a choice of appetizer and a main course; mignardises were served as desserts selection. We ordered several bottles of wine to share and still, our bill only came out to $100 each.

There was chilled pea soup poured into a bowl of squid tentacles. They didn’t seem to go together, but it worked and the presentation was pretty. I opted for the beets with blue cheese. Three of them came on a rectangular plate: one gold, one red and another pink. I thought the romaine lettuce worked well with the sharp blue cheese even though the pumpernickle “soil” didn’t make a difference except to make the plate look like a mini-garden. My mahi-mahi was a bit on the bland side–such is the nature of the fish–but it came with an interesting broccoli rabe purée and a crispy potato. The grilled chicken won me over with a crumble of chicken-peanut sausage and a faint taste of corn and lemon together. It’s from Murray’s and it would have been naturally sweet anyway without all the accoutrements.

Klee was very generous with the dessert selection, a good move on their part knowing that eleven girls were eating during a bachelorette party. The sommelier was very helpful with the wine: I ended up selecting a Hungarian rosé to start and continued on with two bottles of Burgundy. The service was swift since our party took half of the restaurant space; they just wanted us to keep moving. We still closed the restaurant but I think they couldn’t complain after our hefty group bill in the end. I was equally content.

Jo’s

264 Elizabeth Street between Houston and Prince
212/966.9640
about $40 for one, with a drink, with tip
♥

The night that Jo’s officially opened, I walked by to check out how the old Tasting Room space had transformed. It was before 8pm and it wasn’t crowded, so I decided to stay and sit at the bar for a Vin de Pays and try out the pappardelle with lamb stew as my Wednesday night meal.

One of the greatest things about New York City is that you can sit at a bar alone and there’s usually a fifty per cent chance that you’ll meet someone who’s not as creepy as the rest of the city’s inhabitants. If you’re lucky you could get a free drink out of it, but if you’re really lucky, you can get invited to the menu tasting by the co-owner’s friends. I was in the really lucky category last week. I ended up joining the group next to me while they passed around dishes that the kitchen was churning out for feedback.

Jo’s labels itself as “American bistro”. I think its an appropriate description because they had a mélange of cuisines available. As I sat down at the marbled bar and looked around the dimly-lit space, I expected tapas with expensive wines. The space looks more handsome than the food offered on the down-to-earth menu. On a chalkboard, burgers and fries; a bowl of skewers joined a plate of Thai-spiced chicken pieces; my pappardelle could have been paired with the arugula salad. The back room feels a little bit more diner-like: the Tasting Room heavy stable door is gone and the wine cellar has been moved next to the bathrooms to make room for another group by the main entrance.

Jo’s, named after one of the owners’ mother, might still be having an identity crisis in terms of food while they hash out the details, but while I was there I could feel the love from the owners’ friends and families who showed up to celebrate the opening. The economy might be bad, but people are still out enjoying their early summer nights with good company. It’s another reason why I love New York City. I wish Jo’s the best.

Related post/s:
I still miss the Tasting Room

Pylos

128 East 7th Street between First and Avenue A
212/473.0220
$40 each for two, with drinks, without tip
♥ ♥

I’m always excited to find another Greek restaurant in the city. I was even more thrilled to try Pylos because I walked by its glass wall one night and took a note of it as a must-try when I make it back to the neighborhood. When a friend wanted to meet for dinner before heading out on a Saturday night, I suggested that we go there even though I never got a chance to look it up and read about it. I later learned that the owner partnered with Diane Kochilas, a widely recognized authority on Greek cuisine, to be the consulting chef–I now remember the cookbooks on display in the restaurant.

We started with crispy phyllo dough filled with cured beef pasturma, tomatoes and kasseri cheese. The flavor was subtle but very savory. The octopus was grilled and I couldn’t get enough of the balsamic reduction on the plate. It could have used a lot more of the sauce though, so that the octopus was a little bit more flavorful. They had ran out of the anchovies and the cabbage leaves stuffed with rice and ground beef, so we immediately moved to the main course of grilled baby lamb chops which were perfectly medium-rare and soft, served with stuffed eggplants and slivers of fingerling potatoes. The chops were so good they made up for the maitre d’ who huffed and puffed when we inquired to be seated without a reservation on a Saturday night.

We got the table next to the giant glass wall under a ceiling covered with unglazed clay pots. (Pylos stand for “things of clay”, see?) The street lamp outside illuminated our side of the restaurant and gave the front section a warm glow while the back room looked like a long dining hall. Everyone around us seemed like they’ve been going to Pylos for years since most tables were comprised of bigger groups. I’d have to come back with my own posse, but I’ve taken a more detailed note: Pylos is a nice little spot without the frills of a New York City Saturday night. It was perfect for two friends and could be perfect for a first date.

Cafe Cortadito

210 East 3rd Street between Avenue B and C
212/614.3080
$158 for 4, with drinks, with tip
♥ ♥

One of my favorite things about eating with friends? Sharing food. One of my least? Wasting food. So I was taken aback when I read the footnote on the Cafe Cortadito menu that a fee would be tacked on if main courses are split between guests. I’m not exactly sure as to why they would stop diners from sharing a dish because each one is ample for more than one. It probably made sense when they were still waiting for their liquor license, but now that you can order a pitcher of champagne sangria and a few glasses of red wine, sharing a ropa vieja with a bottle of Cab between friends just makes more sense to me.

Chef Ricardo Arias is Salvadorian, and his wife, Patricia Valencia, is from Ecuador, but you wouldn’t know any of that when you taste the Cuban-inspired food. The meat dishes were delicious; the skirt steak was well-seasoned and I couldn’t stop eating the chimichurri salsa. The oxtail braised in tomatoes and red wine reminded me of a good family meal. I didn’t finish my dish but I ate as much as I can that I had heartburn for the rest of the night. Of course, I could have skipped the maduros, or the sweet plantains, but I couldn’t help myself from ordering something else besides meat. By the end of the night, I was pining for fresh and green vegetables with a shot of whisky to push everything down.

I’m not a big fan of paying a lot of money for Latin food because I grew up in Washington Heights in New York City and was surrounded by very affordable home-cooked meals from the Caribbean and Central America. Besides, most of the Cuban restaurants I’ve tried were not even good enough to warrant a review. Cafe Cortadito changed all that: the food is simply tasty even if I couldn’t share all of it.

Related post/s:
Read about my 2003 trip to Cuba

Perilla

9 Jones Street between West 4th and Bleecker Streets
212/929.6868
$147 for three, with a bottle of wine, without tip
♥ ♥

I’ve watched Top Chef enough to know that the judges sometimes can’t make up their minds between “cooking outside the box” and “sticking with what you know”. You had Carla who finally stuck with the food most familiar to her and she made it to the final round. You had Marcel the twat who does everything Wylie Dufresne style and the judges sometimes thought it–he–was too much. But then there were episodes when the contestants were not trying hard enough or were trying too much–you just couldn’t predict what the judges were going to say next.

When Frank Bruni gave a less than stellar review to Perilla, Harold Dieterleâ€™s first restaurant, my heart went out to the first-season Top Chef winner. I can’t even imagine the anxiousness chefs feel when their new restaurant opens in New York City because one review can either make or break them. Three years later, Perilla is still in business and thankfully so because I had a very good dinner there a couple of months ago with some friends. We were looking for a low-key spot to get together and catch up with our holiday stories, particularly a small place where we didnâ€™t have to scream at each other to have a conversation. In fact, Perilla doesnâ€™t even look like it came from a TV winner. I gather that if people who have never seen the show walked in the restaurant, they would think the same way I did: Oh, this is nice and cozy and that’s about it.

I walked in and joined the standing queue at the bar one prime Saturday night. My friends joined me a few minutes after the bartender made my martini and we were soon seated right next to the kitchen entrance. I went for the sure-fire lamb while my friend ordered the fish; her fiancé, beef. A hamachi crudo was refreshing with yuzu and the notorious duck meatballs didn’t disappoint. Brussels sprouts and sunchokes are usual fare in seasonal menus and they both served their purposes well at Perilla.

The portions were larger than what I usually see in the city for the same prices, and considering I was unemployed at the time, I couldn’t complain. The food and the service matched the ambiance: nothing was overdone because everything was modest. Maybe now that chef Dieterle has made it past Bruni’s claws, he’d be willing to cook outside of his comfort zone. But you know what? Maybe I’d like for him to cook just the way he’s been cooking.