Tag Archives: steak
Hunt & Fish Club
There’s a glitzy newcomer in town on 44th Street, a midtown stretch that desperately needs more dining options. Hunt & Fish Club falls squarely into the expense account steakhouse category, but here the fish is just as good as the meat. Go for the macho name or the promise of wild boar on the menu, but if you end up ordering something gathered instead of hunted, you will be equally happy. (more…)
Posted in American, Cuisine, Midtown West, Neighborhood, New York restaurants, restaurants
Tagged bars, cocktail bars, fish, French onion soup, pasta, seafood, short ribs, steak
Comments Off on Hunt & Fish Club
Colombia Part II: Cartagena
The cab from the airport raced past kids playing soccer on packed dirt fields, families crowded onto the beach, and agua fresca vendors peddling down the highway. After two flights from the tiny island of Providencia, we were finally approaching Cartagena, the more cosmopolitan part of our journey to Colombia. When we came to the city walls, our cab driver turned into an impossibly small tunnel and emerged in a plaza surrounded by 16th century buildings. They were colorfully painted, outfitted with balconies, and festooned with flowering bougainvillea vines that cascaded all the way to the cobblestone streets below. Immediately it was easy to see the attraction of this city, a favorite of Colombians and foreigners alike. (more…)
Cherche Midi
It was 25 minutes past our reservation time on a Tuesday night, and still our table at Cherche Midi hadn’t materialized. Aside from the wait, this can be a bad sign about a newish restaurant. Are the servers overwhelmed? Or the kitchen? Yet Shane McBride, the chef of Cherche Midi, who looks like someone you probably wouldn’t want to run into in a dark alley in Dublin, was leaning against the kitchen pass through, completely unperturbed. (more…)
Posted in Cuisine, French, Lower East Side, Neighborhood, New York restaurants, Noho, NoLita, restaurants
Tagged Cherche Midi review, French food, French fries, Keith McNally, steak, wine
Comments Off on Cherche Midi
Claudette
So a new French bistro opened in the neighborhood. This wouldn’t be so remarkable if it weren’t for the closing of so many bistros in Greenwich Village and the East Village over the last decade – often to become a TD Bank – but Claudette, started by the guys who brought you perennially popular Rosemary’s, was big news from the start. “It’s right around the corner from your apartment,” my mom said when we dined here on a random Monday night, months after it opened. “You should make it your neighborhood place.”
“We haven’t been able to get in until now!” This was sadly true. (more…)
Posted in African, Cuisine, food, French, Greenwich Village, Neighborhood, New York restaurants, restaurants
Tagged fish, French food, harissa, seafood, steak
1 Comment
Red Gravy
Saul Bolton’s casual Italian restaurant sits on a stretch of Atlantic Avenue that used to feel desolate not so long ago, when the border between Cobble Hill, Brooklyn Heights and the wilds of Red Hook was home to only a few solitary bars and take-out joints. But now the long-shuttered Long Island Bar has reopened, Colonie set up shop across the street, and Bolton of the Michelin-starred Saul, now relocated to the Brooklyn Museum, opened Red Gravy. In the give-the-people-what-they-want school of thought, he has definitely succeeded, stepping into a vacuum and creating just the sort of approachable neighborhood place the neighborhood never knew it needed until now. (more…)
Posted in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn Heights, Cuisine, Italian, Neighborhood, New York restaurants
Tagged burrata, cheese, gelato, pasta, ramps, Red Gravy review, steak, veal, wine
Comments Off on Red Gravy
Narcissa
Narcissa is the new restaurant in an odd, L-shaped space that they said couldn’t be saved. When Sam Sifton reviewed the old tenant Faustina here in 2010, he praised Scott Conant’s food but said “no matter the meal, you will eat it uncomfortably…in what is unmistakably an institutional setting.” (more…)
Posted in American, Cuisine, East Village, Neighborhood, New York restaurants, restaurants
Tagged cocktails, duck, John Fraser, risotto, seafood, steak
Comments Off on Narcissa
Le Philosophe
There aren’t many truly French restaurants in New York, but Le Philosophe is one of them. This isn’t the fussy cafe setting of Hemingway’s Paris, but a pared-down, black and white aesthetic that cross pollinated from one side of the Atlantic to the other and back again. The photographs on the walls may be of French philosophers, but the sleek open kitchen and industrial chic dining room is, as they say in Paris, très Brooklyn. (more…)
Posted in Cuisine, French, Neighborhood, New York restaurants, Noho, restaurants
Tagged dessert, duck, foie gras, French food, frogs legs, sausage, steak, wine
Comments Off on Le Philosophe
Estela
It’s hard to believe that Estela, the bright and airy new wine bar and seasonally-inspired tapas place on Houston Street, used to be the Knitting Factory, the alternative music space whose soundproofing consisted of sweaters stapled on the ceiling. All traces of grunge are gone, replaced with white marble countertops, globe lighting and brown leather banquettes more suited for a tête-à-tête than rocking out. (more…)
Posted in Cuisine, Neighborhood, New York restaurants, restaurants, Soho, Spanish
Tagged cocktails, Estela review, steak, tapas, wine bars
Comments Off on Estela
Lafayette
For the last ten years, one man has dominated the French restaurant scene for downtown New Yorkers: Keith McNally. It’s hard to imagine the Meatpacking District without Pastis or SoHo without Balthazaar, two highly stylized restaurants that stole Paris bistro decor and food so effectively that the trend of antiqued mirrors, subway tiles and flea market fixtures has been stolen back by a copycat place in Paris.
But with Pastis closing for nine months in 2014 as a new building is constructed above and longtime chefs Lee Hanson and Riad Nasr leaving McNally’s empire, change is afoot. Now popular local chef Andrew Carmellini (Locanda Verde, the Dutch) is throwing his hat into the ring with the opening of French mega cafe Lafayette. The old Chinatown Brasserie (and Time Cafe/Fez) space has been overhauled with no expense spared, columns covered in glossy Art Deco patterns of inlaid wood, red leather banquettes ringing the raised dining level, walls opened up with huge plate glass windows, copper pans glinting in the saucier and rotisserie station and glassware glimmering above the bar. Baz Luhrman could walk right in and film another scene for the Great Gatsby. (more…)
Posted in Cuisine, food, French, Neighborhood, New York restaurants, Noho, restaurants
Tagged Andrew Carmellini, bars, bread, cocktails, croissants, dessert, oysters, seafood, steak
Comments Off on Lafayette
Cafe Tallulah
It was like watching a bomb explode in slow motion.
When the first piece of shrapnel flies by, you just think: that’s odd. In this case it was a mix-up with our cocktail order. Six of us sat down for dinner in the prettily decorated new French bistro Cafe Tallulah on the Upper West Side, but there were only four water glasses on the table. When I asked for water, our server said: Should I cancel your cocktail order then?
Hmmm. (more…)
Posted in Cuisine, French, Neighborhood, New York restaurants, restaurants, Upper West Side
Tagged bars, bistros, cocktails, steak
Comments Off on Cafe Tallulah
Bill’s
Though a number of historic New York restaurants closed over the last year, a lucky few were given new life. One that rose from the ashes is Bill’s, formerly Bill’s Gay Nineties. The 1850s brownstone it occupies, a five-story anomaly crouched next to a skyscraper in Midtown, was leased by John DeLucie and the Crown Hospitality Group, who have a knack for collecting beautiful old New York spaces (the Lion, Crown). (more…)
Posted in American, Cuisine, Midtown East, Neighborhood, New York restaurants, restaurants
Tagged cocktails, steak
Comments Off on Bill’s
Colonie
The owners of Colonie, a continental restaurant on the border of Brooklyn Heights and Cobble Hill, have been getting a lot of press recently for their most recent openings Gran Electrica and Governor. But before we tried the latest incarnations, D. and I wanted to sample the original, which opened right after D. moved out of the neighborhood and I therefore lost my Brooklyn pied-a-terre. Too bad, because we would have benefitted from this place: Colonie brings a new level of dining sophistication to an area that really needed it. (more…)
Posted in Brooklyn Heights, food, French, Italian, Neighborhood, New York restaurants, restaurants
Tagged beef, cocktails, oysters, steak
1 Comment
Colicchio & Sons Tap Room
Despite the number of restaurants that have opened in the Meatpacking District in recent years, it’s still hard to find a good place to go before or after an event in West Chelsea or Chelsea Piers. So many of the new places feel big boxy or inordinately expensive, and the old places can get a little old hat. (more…)
Posted in American, food, Meatpacking District, New York restaurants, restaurants
Tagged asparagus, Colicchio & Sons Tap Room review, lobster rolls, New York, pizza, steak, Tom Colicchio
Comments Off on Colicchio & Sons Tap Room
The Beagle
CLOSED
Though we try to get to new NYC restaurants as soon as possible, sometimes it pays to wait. The Beagle, another gastro pub in the vintage British vein, got a lot of press when it opened in the East Village earlier this year, including a review from the Times in which the restaurant was praised for offering some inventive food and cocktail pairings but reprimanded for withholding the wine and beer menu from diners who wanted to make their own choices.
Fast forward to now, when our server immediately pointed out that the wine list was on the table, where she left it for the entirety of the evening. The innovative appetizer and cocktail pairings are still on the menu, but now diners can opt for wine, beer, or a number of food options without any pairings at all. (more…)
Robert et Louise, Paris
If you’re a stranger in a strange land, sometimes it’s better to ditch the guidebook and get lost, as former Frugal Traveler Matt Gross recently did in Paris. After all, all the other tourists are probably reading the same guide books as you are.
But when it comes to walking into a restaurant blind, what should you consider? First of all, don’t be afraid to keep walking. It would be easy to settle on the first vaguely familiar place that comes along. (Presumably this the secret of Olive Garden’s success in NYC, a city full of good Italian restaurants, and the baffling success of Starbucks in Paris.) But the best finds usually come after some investigation. (more…)