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bellastraniera
a.k.a. Marcy Swingle - obsessed with food and fashion.View my photography website.
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Tag Archives: American food
Strong Place
You wouldn’t think Court Street would need another bar – until the right one opens, and it feels like it should have been there all along. The latest addition to the neighborhood, Strong Place, is a grown-up bar with a staggering 24 beers on tap and 14 more available by the bottle. The vintage industrial interior with its exposed brick walls, wooden bar and science lab stools feels like Brooklyn’s answer to the Otherroom in the West Village.
There’s a spacious restaurant here too, and though we didn’t have time to delve into the entire menu, the deviled eggs served as the perfect bar snack. Creamy and fresh with a kick at the finish, these eggs doubled down on spice with cayenne on top and peppery olive oil underneath.
Seersucker
Have you ever discovered a new favorite place only to see it splashed all over the New York Times several days later? That’s what happened to us with not one but two places last week. Our only hope is that the Brooklyn location will keep (some of) the masses from swarming them.
Place number one is Seersucker, a refined little Southern restaurant that recently opened on Smith Street in Carroll Gardens. Behind an unassuming exterior with stained glass and plants in the window, the inside has a modern farmhouse feel, with polished exposed brick walls, plain wooden tables, lab stools at the bar and Wilco on the stereo. (more…)
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Tagged American food, bars, Brooklyn, New York, restaurants, Southern food
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The Lion
The Waverly Inn may be one of the most celeb-packed restaurants in the city, but some of us actually went for the food. Sure, the scene is thrilling – particularly the time that Owen Wilson came out from the back room to mix with us civilians at the bar – but the thing that made the aggravating attitude at the door tolerable was the reward of those flaky, golden, melt-in-your-mouth biscuits. Without fail, they would be plopped down on your table as soon as you sat down, a light at the end of the tunnel.
Turns out I must not be alone, because many patrons of the Waverly Inn have followed chef John DeLucie here to the Lion. Mick Jagger caused a stir on a recent night there, and now the flashbulbs of paparazzi outside the door greet anyone vaguely famous-looking. Alas, the Lion’s democratic touch that enraptured Jay Cheshes at Time Out is already fast disappearing, and you may find waits of two hours or more now for one of those walk-in tables in the front room.
Lunch: Bark Hot Dogs
Hot dogs may be one of the most basic New York foods: a tube of beef or pork, a squishy bun, and some mustard, ketchup and relish. Simple, right? Wrong. Hot dogs just got a whole lot more gourmet at Bark Hot Dogs in Park Slope.
There are 10 different kinds of hot dog on the menu at this airy, industrial space with communal tables and high school science lab stools. But Bark’s are a different kind of mystery meat from your traditional dirty water dog. Commissioned from Hartmann’s Old World Sausage in Rochester, the recipe is a private label affair, with the exact mix of ingredients kept secret. But the mix of pork and beef with garlic and spices served as an excellent canvas for the creations that followed. (more…)
The Vanderbilt
In its Prospect Heights neighborhood, the Vanderbilt is known as “the expensive place.” Mobbed at first and then dismissed for its small portions at higher-than-usual price tags, the Vanderbilt is quieter now. You can actually see the reclaimed wood in the industrial but rustic front room when it’s not jam packed with people, and when you order one of the excellent cocktails at the marble-topped bar, you can hear yourself speak. You can even walk in and get a table. And if you’re from Manhattan, land of the $15 glass of wine, $15 for thick, peppery slabs of hamachi crudo by Brooklyn’s Michelin-starred chef Saul Bolton will seem like a bargain.
The problem seems to be one of clarification: the Vanderbilt was probably never meant to be cheap. It brings Saul’s artisanal, global cuisine from the more formal restaurant on Smith Street to a wider audience via a small plates menu that touches down everywhere from Japan to Germany. Could you go down the street and get bigger portions for less? Yes. If your idea of fancy food involves Hollandaise sauce, then by all means keep walking. But if you want a kitchen that can do artisanal food very well, you’re in the right place. (more…)
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Tagged American food, Asian food, Austrian food, bars, Brooklyn, New York, restaurants
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Almond
Tell someone the address of Almond restaurant, and they’re liable to say: “Wasn’t that Borough/Rocco’s/Caviar and Banana/Commune?” The answer is yes, yes, yes and yes. Walking into the space may also make you experience déjà vu all over again, because interior has many of the same elements of its predecessor Borough – the same tables and chairs, the same posh billiards room in back, the same rough-hewn wood lining the walls, the same popular bar scene – with a prettified face lift of coral wallpaper and gilt-framed mirrors.
Before you consider the place doomed, know that while this is still El Chod’s space, the owners of the very successful Almond restaurant from the Hamptons are much of the time, making sure things run smoothly. The crowd has gotten a polish too. Gone are those grubby locavores that patronized Borough, now the crowd includes stick-thin women in wrap dresses and big jewelry, men with winter tans and cashmere V-necks. (“They’re not on our team, ladies,” our waitress whispered.) Chelsea Clinton dined there on a recent night. Celebrities, gays, emaciated women, face lifts: Almond is a Hamptons away from the Hamptons, and I mean that in the best possible way. (more…)
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Tagged American food, bars, Flatiron District, French food, New York, restaurants
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The Redhead
The Redhead has been playing hard to get for some time now. Though she lives right near by me, every time I stopped by for dinner, she was booked, with waits of an hour or more. Ever since Bruni gave her a star – an honor that many similarly casual spots don’t earn – the Redhead’s dance card has been full.
The only answer is to persevere, because this is one small, inexpensive, urban-rustic place that merits the hype. Unlike so many other places that are carefully set-designed to look like a diamond in a rough but are really just rough, the Redhead has real polish in the food and service. (more…)
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Tagged American food, bars, East Village, New York, restaurants, Southern food
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The West Branch
When an upscale chef embarks on a downscale restaurant, does the place get elevated or the chef get knocked down a notch? Tom Valenti is the latest of a number of respected New York chefs to go the casual route, opening the West Branch, a gastro pub to complement his successful Upper West Side restaurant Ouest a few blocks away.
The interior feels like a sophisticated sports bar, with a flat screen TV in the bar room and two separate dining rooms paneled in antiqued mirrors. The owners didn’t take too many risks on the décor, which is homey but sleek, with standard wooden chairs and simple drop lighting overhead. And the crowd that filled the bar that night was decidedly un-fratty, a big relief on the Upper West Side.
Unfortunately, the front of the house did not make as good an impression as the atmosphere. (more…)
Vinegar Hill House
Dumbo: It used to be the kind of place where women didn’t walk alone at night, artists and musicians got home just as day laborers were waking up, and the only place to eat was Pedro’s, though you wouldn’t necessarily want to eat there, either. The nearest deli was in Brooklyn Heights, and there were no grocery stores. You could get a deal living in an old graffiti’d gun factory, if you were willing to rig up your own electric heating system and build your own bedroom wall. The streets were empty, the views were spectacular, and no one else knew where the hell it was.
Fast forward thirteen years to now: “Dumbo,” a woman in a silk wrap said into her cell phone in the middle of Vinegar Hill House the other night. “The neighborhood is called Dumbo.” A half hour later, her friends arrived. (more…)
The Standard Grill
Now that the High Line has opened to the public, the Meatpacking District feels newly revitalized. Can it also be an exciting dining destination again, as it once was before all the restaurants here turned to lowest-common-denominator cuisine: steak, potent cocktails, and faux exotic Asian food? The just-opened Standard Grill may be guilty of trying to be all things to all people – bankers, tourists, 20-something hipsters, and clannish food bloggers – but it could also put the MePa back on the map as a place to eat, not just see and be seen.
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