Tag Archives: beef
Berlin Guide: Dining, Drinking and Shopping
The Berlin that exists today is actually two cities: East and West Berlin combined. After the wall came down, the result was a vast urban expanse with lots of room for new parks, monuments, pedestrian walkways, cutting-edge architecture, and new businesses – all coexisting with historic sites like the Brandenberg Gate and the Reichstag. There is history everywhere you look here, but Berlin feels distinctly modern, a city with both an intellectual vibe and a great dining and nightlife scene.
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La Maison Mère
When you think Parisian food, do you think filet mignon or pastrami? Tarte au chocolat or cheesecake? If the answer is the former, it’s time to revisit Paris, because the latest dining trend sweeping the city is cuisine new yorkais.
Traveling across the Atlantic to patronize ever-encroaching American chains like Starbucks is not recommended, but new Parisian places like Marcel and La Maison Mère are worth a visit to experience the French take on delicatessen classics. Basically imagine a Cordon Bleu student interning at Katz’s, and you’ve got the picture. (more…)
The Babbo Cookbook: Oxtail Ragu
I must have bought The Babbo Cookbook as soon as it came out nine years ago, but it included so many recipes that were nearly impossible to make until now. Remember when guanciale wasn’t exactly a household word? Oft-mentioned ingredients like boar sausage, beef cheeks and calf’s brains may still not be available at your local Gristede’s, but now Eataly’s butcher counter sells oxtail meat. (more…)
Posted in food, recipes
Tagged beef, Italian recipes, Mario Batali, pasta recipes, the copycat chef
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Torrisi Italian Specialties
It sounds like a scenario out of a magazine quiz: “Are You Really a New Yorker?” Would you be willing to wait in line in the bitter cold and pay $50 per person for a candlelit meal in… a deli? The answer should be yes, not because everybody else is doing it, but because the re-envisioned Little Italy fare at Torrisi Italian Specialties is too good to be a passing fad. (more…)
Posted in food, Italian, New York restaurants, NoLita, restaurants
Tagged beef, New York
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Puerto Rico Eats: The Luquillo Kiosks
Not far from the El Junque rainforest in Puerto Rico is a mecca of sorts for Puerto Rican street food. On the northeast coast, sun worshippers are drawn to the town of Luquillo and nearby Playa Fortuna for the long stretches of a beautiful public beaches. The only thing missing was a place to feed everyone, and so the kiosks of Luquillo sprang up, forming a ramshackle assortment of sheet metal and concrete structures between highway and beach. Flip flops, drinks in lopped off coconuts, and dozens of fried snacks are all for sale in mom-and-pop stands, some of which have been passed down through the generations.
Navigating the bonanza of treats from the 50-plus stands near the beach can be daunting, but it’s also hard to go wrong. Most of the proprietors speak English as well as Spanish and can tell you what’s inside the various fried shapes under the glass. Choose your kiosk by the number of locals frequenting one or the other and by the house specialty, usually listed prominently on the menu or the wall. Or you could do what we did last weekend, and just go from kiosk to kiosk and eat whatever looks good. (more…)
Posted in food, restaurants
Tagged bars, beef, Puerto Rico, seafood, travel
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Brindle Room
Though it’s a noble goal, authenticity isn’t always what you want when seeking out imported regional specialties. Take saucissons bourguignons. Few New Yorkers would likely complain that there isn’t enough tripe in French sausages here. Just pork and beef is fine, thanks.
Likewise, though authentic poutine has its devotees in Quebec, you might not want to recreate it exactly. Fast food fries slathered in mystery-meat gravy and piled with heaps of cheese that’s a cross between regular and cottage cheese is an acquired taste, even in a drunken state at 1am – which is generally when poutine is consumed in Montreal, under the fluorescent lights of a take-out shop. (more…)
Posted in American, East Village, food, New York restaurants, restaurants
Tagged bars, beef, beer, burgers, duck, New York, steak tartare
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The New "It" Food in Paris? Le Cheeseburger
Food fads look even stranger when viewed through the eyes of a foreigner. Like the as-yet-unexplained gin and tonic craze last year in Barcelona (one bar’s sign read: “17 Different Kinds of Gin & Tonic!”), the cheeseburger fad is taking Paris by storm. Though it has gotten the most press because of Ralph Lauren’s new gourmet cheeseburger restaurant on Boulevard Saint-Germain, “Le Ralph’s,” the cheeseburger craze started with young, hip kids in Paris before a big name designer usurped it.
We decided not go to “Le Ralph’s” after one look at the fancy brass-framed menu outside. Le Cheeseburger: 27€. Le Hot dog: 15€. Le Club sandwich (a runner-up for most faddish American food in Paris): 20€. If I’m going to spend more than $30 for a beef dish in Paris, it had better be a steak. (more…)
Vapiano
This first branch of this rapidly-expanding Italian “fast casual” chain in New York, Vapiano fills a void left by Dean & DeLuca when that panini and coffee shop closed just a couple blocks down on University Place, and it will probably become to the neighborhood what Dean & DeLuca was: a go-to place for a simple lunch or dinner. What will keep it from closing like Dean & DeLuca did? Vapiano has a liquor license, a spacious bar and a knack for marketing.
The light-filled interior, with soaring ceilings and sleek Italian design throughout, sets the stage for what’s actually a very back-to-basics dining experience, though at first glance it seems high tech. After picking up a key card at the door, you take a tray and collect your meal yourself, selecting panini, salads, pizza and pasta from various food stations, where they prepare each dish in front of you and scan the card. If your college dining hall went gourmet, this is what it would be like. (more…)
Posted in food, Greenwich Village, Italian, New York restaurants, restaurants
Tagged bars, beef, lunch, New York
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Mother’s Restaurant, New Orleans
Certain hometown restaurants inspire a kind of mania among their fans. In New Orleans, that restaurant would be Mother’s, whose po’ boy gets raves from longtime patrons of the creole lunch counter. Go here and locals will give you one important instruction about that sandwich: “Make sure you get the debris.”
As with many recent additions to New Orleans patois, this one has a traceable history. When a customer asked for the shreds of roast beef from the pan on his po’ boy, original Mother’s owner Simon Landry responded, “You mean the debris?” A sandwich was born. (more…)
Posted in food, New Orleans, restaurants
Tagged beef, lunch, New Orleans, travel
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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…)
Posted in American, food, New York restaurants, Prospect Heights, restaurants
Tagged beef, beer, Brooklyn, hot dogs, lunch, New York
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Brasserie Lipp
Though New Yorkers may think of a cool restaurant as something new and trendy, one of the coolest restaurants Marie Fromage and I visited in Paris was also one of the oldest: Brasserie Lipp. Here the maitre’d will greet you with the hauteur befitting a place that’s been a see-and-be-seen destination since 1880. If you walk in without a reservation, they will look you up and down and see if they could possibly find a place for you, and the odds aren’t good. Fortunately for us, we made it to the back room, where we found a very good dinner and some familiar faces from Paris fashion week.
The Breslin
The Breslin is a restaurant for people who like to eat. That may sound redundant, but given the lengths to which some restaurants go to accommodate picky eaters (an entrée of “steamed vegetables with boiled egg” at one downtown spot comes to mind), the Breslin embraces food with genuine gusto.
Granted, chef April Bloomfield’s British pub fare is extreme cuisine. Bacon-wrapped eggs, stuffed pig’s foot and fried head cheese are all on the menu, should you be craving them. But there’s also sea bass, chicken (aka poussin) and some excellent salads if you’re not a particularly adventurous diner. The menu—and the food—almost seeks to provoke: the “onion and bone marrow soup with parmesan toast” ($10) turns out to be a particularly meaty, velvety riff on French onion soup, with the bone marrow only adding to a beefy flavor that already existed in the original. Tread carefully, but do not be afraid. (more…)
Posted in British, food, New York restaurants, NoMad, restaurants
Tagged April Bloomfield, bars, beef, gastropubs, marrow, New York
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Brinkley’s
Brinkley’s may be new, but this pubby Nolita spot has an old-school preppy vibe, with Steve Miller Band and the Doobie Brothers playing on the stereo. Outfitted with a huge backlit bar, subway-tiled dining room, and horseshoe-shaped banquettes good for parties of six, Brinkley’s draws a similar bankers-and-ex-debs crowd as Southside downstairs.
Still, there’s a downtown edge to the darkly lit space with industrial light fixtures, vintage prints on the wall, and coy wallpaper in the bathrooms with illustrations of farm animal breeds (including an “Improved Tennessee Sheep”). It’s as if your old friend Dorrian grew up, developed some taste in food and decor and moved to a loft downtown. (more…)
Posted in British, food, New York restaurants, NoLita, restaurants
Tagged bars, beef, duck, gastropubs, New York
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Jeanne’s Potatoes au Gratin
It seems like an easy dish: just potatoes and cheese, right? But this cold-weather staple can be boring if you just take the traditional French route. Luckily, my family was treated on Christmas Day to some of the best potatoes au gratin I’ve tasted. My future sister-in-law Jeanne Arnondin combined her mother’s recipe with a Food Network recipe for a dish that’s decadent and infinitely craveable. The key differences are fennel and Pecorino Romano, which brings a sharper umami flavor that a straight French preparation doesn’t have.
Make it with a simple beef tenderloin roast for an elegant but easy winter dinner party. (more…)
Posted in food, recipes
Tagged beef, French recipes, holiday recipes, sides recipes, the copycat chef, vegetable recipes
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SD26
Restaurant partnerships can be a tricky thing. As with any celebrity couple, there are joyous, hyper-publicized births (of new restaurants) and bitter divorces played out in the tabloids (or Flo Fab’s column). So it’s a good thing that Tony and Marisa May are father and daughter, because the dining public would benefit from them sticking together for a while. The new SD26 injects Marisa’s modern, even trendy style into the old restaurant San Domenico, but maintains Tony May’s hospitality and chef Odette Fada’s classic Italian cuisine.
Anyone interested in Italian wine should come here for the bar, where a huge wine selection is listed on Palm-Pilot-like devices. Sort the list by country, then by region or varietal, or sort the entire thing by price. SD26’s Italian wine consultant wrote extensive descriptions of each wine, though a few things get lost in translation to amusing effect: The bottle we chose on a recent night apparently goes well with “white meats and redheads.” (more…)
Posted in Flatiron District, food, Italian, New York restaurants, NoMad, restaurants
Tagged bars, beef, New York
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