New York Restaurants by Area – Page 23 – Writing With My Mouth Full

Ramen Setagaya

141 First Avenue between St. Mark’s Place and 9th Street
212/529.2740
about $30 each for three, with sake, with tip
â™¥

What shoyu, or soy sauce, ramen is to Rai Rai Ken is shio to Setagaya. Shio, or salt, ramen is the only type available at Setagaya, so you better like it more than you do your pork bone type, or tonkotsu, or fermented soybean paste, or what we all know as miso.

I walked in with two other friends who were craving a hot bowl of soup for dinner and I suggested that we try Setagaya. It was cold outside so the line that snaked around First Avenue when the restaurant first opened is now gone, but the cold air has moved inside with the customers. The glass wall does not help. We sat tucked in the corner by the kitchen bar, but every time someone came in, we felt a chill. We ate our dinner wearing our coats and sharing two small bottles of sake.

Setagaya follows the traditional shio broth recipe that includes boiling dried seafood, like anchovies and scallops, for hours at a time. In fact, all that saltiness comes from the ocean. The broth is not clear because it is also flavored with pork that’s been barbecued on a charcoal grill. It sounds good, but we all had the same complaint: the broth tastes too much of barbecue. The secret ingredient is reportedly Vietnamese salt, and boy, was it salty. I love shio ramen because it’s lighter than the other types, but the charred and salty flavors didn’t meld the night we visited.

The noodles, though, were perfect in texture and stringiness. I love my ramen noodles a little chewy and meaty, and Setagaya’s reminded me of those $5 giant bowls I ate in Tokyo’s ramenyas oh so many years ago. Stick with the regular size when you visit, though, because you can only have so much barbecue and salt flavor in your ramen.

Bacaro

136 Division Street between Ludlow and Orchard
212/941.5060
$50 each for five, with two bottles of wine, with tip
â™¥

I used to know someone who lived on Madison Street in the deep recesses of Chinatown five years ago, but I haven’t been back in the area since then. Before that, Good World on Orchard was the place to be among dot-comers. For the last four years, I’ve been working in and around SoHo and have grown to love Frank DeCarlo and John LaFemina’s Peasant on Elizabeth Street. Its downstairs space is one of the places I end up in when I don’t have a reservation nor a dinner plan.

When Bacaro started appearing in food blogs as DeCarlo’s latest project after splitting from LaFemina, I kept a note in my head to make it back to Division Street when I get the chance. That opportunity came a little earlier last week when five of us wanted to eat from small plates and share bottles of wine but had nowhere to go. I had to lend my cab driver my iPhone to show him where Division Street is located because he said he had never heard of it. I was dropped off in the corner of a very quiet and deserted street. If it weren’t for the few smoking outside, I would have thought my Google map was wrong.

At 7pm, the four in our party were at the bar waiting for a table. We witnessed as other groups were seated as soon as they came in. It became worrisome that once another group showed up, we’d have to leave to find another restaurant, unless we wanted to wait for another hour. The bartender was nice enough to seat just the four of us–he made a smaller group move to a smaller table near the door just to accommodate us–and let us order food and wine while we waited for our fifth.

We started with duck prosciutto and some pear slices. Salty and tougher than the prosciutto I’m used to, the pears were still a good match. The braised duck leg that was served when our party was complete fared better, although it was still on the salty side. I assumed the octopus would come in vinaigrette just like they have them in Peasant, but they were fried in batter like calamares, which I’m not a fan of. It was amusing to find lemon peels and yellow bell pepper covered in batter, too, but I just thought the dish didn’t belong with the rest of our food. I also thought the meatballs were going to be gigantic like they have them at Ã¡pizz, John LaFemina’s second venture but without DeCarlo, but they were so small I could have eaten twenty more of them. The polenta salad was the most interesting because it was topped with a small chunk of cod. At Bacaro, everything I thought was a salad did not come with any leaves. The cod whet our appetites and prepared us for the gnocchi cooked in brown butter with mushrooms and the pasta with anchovy sauce–one warm and hearty, the other difficult to split among five.

Smith’s

79 MacDougal Street off Houston
212/260.0100
about $45 each for two, with tip
â™¥

I’ve been wanting to go to Smith’s since it opened, but every time I would remember to walk by, they always give me an estimated hour-long wait. One Monday night, I was able to get a table for two on short notice. The place was full, but when I asked our waitress if we can chill with our drinks first before ordering anything, she told us we can stay as long as we want because it wasn’t going to be a busy night. I was so glad to hear that, too, because I was losing faith with restaurant servers due to most recent experiences. Our waitress continued to be attentive and pleasant the entire night.

When we finally started to feel hungry, we ordered several small plates to share. I loved the squid, charred with lemon, olives and pancetta bits, and I thought it was a good match with the heavier, more substantial artichoke pasta with black truffles. A steamed egg with Gorgonzola and polenta was a sophisticated dish even though I feel like foams have come and gone. The Portuguese sardines were butterflied and were quite tasty with tomato confit, but oh, is that more foam? I loved how crunchy the fish was but the small bones were cumbersome in my mouth. One even pricked my gums and I had to excuse myself and go to the bathroom to pull it out.

Either we were getting more drunk as we sampled dish after dish, or that our choice of sparkling wine really matched everything we ordered. Even the roasted beets became more interesting–I love beets, don’t get me wrong–but with creamy horseradish and a nutty flavor, it was a nice complement to the corzetti pasta and earthy mushrooms.

I loved Smith’s for its location and coziness more than the food itself, but that strip off Houston is so unexciting otherwise I’d definitely come back to make sure it gets a share of my business.

Bun

143 Grand Street off Lafayette
212/431.7999
about $45 for two, with tip
♥

Update, 2008: Michael Bao has left Bun

I can only imagine how hard it is to work as a waiter/waitress in a city teeming with restaurants, but for everybody’s sanity, find another job if you can’t even put up with a simple request from one of your customers. I eat out a lot and I’d like to think that I know what I want when I’m ready to eat. There are things I expect when I pay for my food and one of them is some kind of service from the restaurant’s staff. Now, I’m not talking about waiting on me hand and foot; I just want the menu as soon as I sit down, the food I’ve ordered after a reasonable wait, and my bill, preferably with the correct total, after you’ve cleared the last plate from my table. I could even understand if you don’t know an ingredient off the menu (the cute waiter at E.U. during its opening week who told us periwinkles are cured meat) or if you’ve forgotten today’s specials (the waitress who touted the lamb shoulder as chops), as long as you don’t act like an asshole afterwards and try to make me the bad person because of your mistake.

We went to Bun, Michael Bao’s new restaurant on Grand Street, to show our support for a new Asian restaurant opening in the midst of multi-million glass condo buildings coming up in SoHo. It wasn’t a particularly busy lunch hour and we were able to score the table near the door as soon as we walked in. My friend and I were the only Asian-looking customers inside. We couldn’t but help notice the lacquered red stools at the bar and the canvas Asian prints on the wall. The prices on the menu are obviously set to pay for the restaurant’s decor: $6 for a summer roll, $9 for a bowl of pho, $12 for a hot pot.

To start, my friend ordered one salmon roll served with anchovy sauce. The sauce reminded me of the Filipino bagoong from the north. The roll is simply a Vietnamese summer roll, only with salmon was used instead of shrimps. Berkshire pork is touted several times on the menu, so I opted for the vermicelli noodles, the restaurant’s namesake, with a few slices of them tossed with shrimps. We both ordered the pho for our main course, even though we knew our lunch tab was already running up to $40 without drinks.

The chicken pho was bland and we were surprised that it was peppered with pieces of chicken skin, complete with the small goose bumps. It’s just like eating at home, said my Chinese friend, but we wondered how the non-Asians in the restaurant felt upon seeing them in their soup. They do not taste bad, of course, but I know people who would be put off with boiled chicken skin in their dish, if not for the looks of it, the jiggly fat underneath. My bun was the day’s saving grace. I can’t make sure that the pork was indeed Berkshire pork since it’s not as distinctively sweet as a Niman Ranch pork, but the sweet and sour sauce had just the right Vietnamese flavor. At Xe Lua in Chinatown, I always order the beef bun when I’m not craving their pho.

It was only after the bun came that I realized I’ve ordered too much food. I got our waiter’s attention to ask him to cancel my beef pho. The order was already put in, but I’ve made a mistake, and I know it wouldn’t be too hard to accommodate my request. Instead of going back to the kitchen, our waiter tried to convince me that I should take the pho to go. He only stopped insisting when I told him that I’m not going to eat reheated pho back in the office.

When our bill came, the $9 for my canceled pho was still there. I tried to get our waiter’s attention again, but he kept looking away whenever he saw me looking. Fed up of waiting, I walked up to the bar, assumed the only guy behind it without chef’s white was the manager, and asked him to please take off the $9 off my bill because I’ve canceled that order earlier. When I returned to our table with the correct bill and we were getting ready to leave a tip, our waiter finally made an appearance and told us, I don’t have control over the computer to change your order or the bill. I nicely reminded him that I, too, don’t have that access and that was why I expected him to do his job.

We still left a 20% tip because we didn’t want the other waiters at Bun to think their own efforts are not appreciated. But I hope the restaurant owners realize that only one ugly feather can make an entire plume look bad.

12 Chairs

56 MacDougal Street between Houston and Prince
212/254.8640
about $120 for four, with drinks, with tip
â™¥

12 Chairs tastes so much better from the outside than inside. We were famished, but another restaurant around the area couldn’t accommodate four people for at least another hour. We walked down one of my favorite streets in the city and stopped in front of 12 Chairs. It’s one of the restaurants on the block I’ve been meaning to check out but never remember to visit when I’m in the neighborhood. It looked good when we peeked from the street, so we went inside.

And then a shock of light surprised us. Did it all of a sudden transform into a pizza parlor? Why the hell is it so bright inside? We were there with a couple more people, but the space felt abandoned and lonely. The Mediterranean menu looked simple enough, but nothing was so exciting that we just ended up ordering a bunch of appetizers.

I liked the stuffed grape leaves–I never skip them when I see them on any menu. A soft yogurt dip drizzled with olive oil came with them. I appreciated that the beets weren’t from a can, and believe me, even New York restaurants do that. 12 Chairs roasted them just right. The egg salad guacamole was a more interesting dip than it sounds and a good accompaniment to the falafel and pita bread. The veal dumplings were on the heavier side, and the chicken pockets–I don’t know why any restaurant would admit to calling them that–were stuffed with spinach. I was a little more hungry, but because I was already feeling unsure about 12 Chairs, I ordered the safest thing on their list: a medium-rare burger. It unfortunately came with Thousand Island dressing, which I’ve asked to be left out, but it was satisfying until the last bite.