Blue Hill

Watching the Top Chef finale reminded me of the best dish I had this summer. Hung, the eventual winner had a duck dish, whereby the duck was cooked sou vide. Blue Hill had one too. Like the winning dish on tv, my duck was not the world's most attractive looking dish. Cooked skinless, the whole piece of meat was a uniform dirty pink. But the texture was so wonderfully smooth, like a piece of velvet ribbon, that you ignored how it look. It doesn't hurt that each bite yielded tender, juicy pieces of meat, uncharacteristic of duck, so often tough and over-cooked. Treated in this matter, the duck seemed to have lost its usual gristle and fat. The gamey smell too, had been toned down. I was stunned by its perfect texture, much like the esteemed judges acted during the tv show.
What made the duck even more spectacular was the flavors that it took on from the accompaniments. The chef at Blue Hill masters the seasons, putting out the freshest ingredients in a most unobtrusive way that is original, subtle but definitely not bland. Sugar snap peas in season during July added crunch and natural candied sweetness, along with tiny pearl onions. The minty jus added brightness, and an unexpected lime glaze, brushed on with such restraint that you could almost miss it if you were not careful, brought a fresh acidity and summery scent that lingered long after the last piece of duck was consumed.
I too remember the wonderful berry and goat cheese dessert that was at once sweet, tart, creamy and cheesy at the same time; and the apricot that came at the end in place of petit fours, so full of amber juice it was threatening to burst. Last but not least the servers and bartender were the most natural, relaxed and hospitable people I've encountered this summer, that whilst I sat alone at the wide U-shaped bar on an early Saturday evening I did not feel lonely nor out of place. I remember being so guilty about having such a fine time at Blue Hill that I walked home from the village to Hell's Kitchen, paying penance for consuming that many calories while reminiscing about what I had just eaten. With this reminder, it could be time again for another visit.

Blue Hill
75 Washington Place (6th Ave & MacDougal)

Spotted Pig

At Spotted Pig, the massively popular "gastropub" in the Village, where an astonishing number of size zeros can be found digging into hearty dinners while drinking pints of beer, it is not the namesake but its bovine friend, in the form of an obscenely expensive, yet perfect burger, that enjoys #1 popularity amongst scores of diners.
A hefty beef patty, lightly charred and wonderfully juicy is topped with salty and stinky roquefort cheese that smells aggressive but tastes much mellower. The brioche bun comes with perfect grill marks and while soft and chewy, manages to encase the patty, juice and all, without falling apart. The near perfect meat-bun pairing ensured that by the time I finished the entire burger, self-control be gone, there was nary a drop of meat juice nor stray ground chuck left on the plate. Being a lover of thick cut fries, I'm somewhat ambivalent about the crispy but non-greasy haystack of shoestring fries that accompanies that burger, but these were made better with the addition of fried garlic slivers. The garlic chips, I am glad to report, are neither bitter or rancid from over-frying and adds flavor to the chips. A burger, a beer and a distended tummy in the aftermath, this is comfort dining at its best.

Spotted Pig
314 W11th St (at Greenwich St)
http://www.thespottedpig.com

Babbo

There is a reason why people do not make late dinner plans on a Monday night, regardless of how hot the restaurant is and how perfect the food is. The thing is, after a long day easing into the workweek, especially when you have to wake up at 5am the next day to make it into the office come Tuesday, you really do not have the mood to eat multiple courses and enjoy yourself like you would on Friday night. So under that premise, I must say that my meal at Babbo was less than I expected.
Of all the restaurants I've ever visited, Babbo, by virtue of its innovative Italian menu, modest prices and the fame of its owner Mario Batali, is by far the most difficult to get into. To get a table, be prepared to call one month in advance, at the strike of 10am, and be prepared to press redial multiple times. Rosie was probably put on hold for about 30 mins before she scored a table for 4 on a Monday night for Yanru's belated birthday dinner. That evening, we met in the restaurant, and huddled in one corner of the extremely crowded bar area, cramped full with diners without reservations (another way to score a seat without having to go through the trouble of making the calls). We were dismayed to find ourselves having to wait an extra 15-20 mins for the table before us to clear out, given it was 915 pm, we've been up since 5am for some of us, and were starving. The hostess though, did try to offer some help by bringing glasses of water to us while we waited.
Once we were seated, things did improve. For one, the upper floor where we were seated was much mellower than the circus downstairs, and the townhouse setting was urbane and warm. Water glasses were filled and chewy Italian peasant bread brought to us while we contemplated the menu, finally settling for 2 appetizers to share and a pasta each. Appetizers came fairly swiftly, an artfully presented plate of fresh salted sardines served with a cool caramelized fennel salad that I could not get enough of, and an exotic sounding Lamb's Tongue Vinaigrette with morel mushrooms and a 3 minute egg that was more cooked than poached. Yanru swooned over the unique flavors of the dish, although the rest of us were slightly more ambivalent and lamb's tongue, well tastes like beef tongue but gamier, but nothing ventured, nothing gain!
The pastas took some time to arrive but when they did, they were very good. I really enjoyed my black tangle of squid ink spaghetti, cooked al dente and tossed with fresh rock shrimp and spicy pancetta. I loved that the pancetta did not overwhelm the more subtle sweetness of the shrimp and the slivers of green chile provided extra heat. Rosie's spaghetti with tomato sauce, lobster and chives took me by surprise. While my dining companions were not too impressed by the ordinariness of the tomato sauce, I loved the introduction of subtly garlicky chives- which I only associate with chinese pork dumplings- enhancing the natural sweetness of the lobster flesh. It would have been even better if the tomato sauce was less sweet and more acidic. I went home thinking about the dish and ways to recreate it, given its simplicity. Yanru's beef cheek ravioli is probably the most complicated, with the winy braised beef cheeks shredded and stuffed into large packets and served with trace amounts of truffle oil. Very tasty but more a fall dish than summer one. Fennie's orecchiette was perhaps the most disappointing as it was more chewy than the rest of the pastas and bordered on undercooked. The sausage and broccoli rabe combination also played with sweet, bitter and spicy flavors but seemed more traditional and thus less impressive.
We skipped dessert as it was 11pm by the time we finished our entrees, and no one (except me) was in the mood to linger over coffee and dessert. What a waste though, because the dessert menu and our neighbors' plates looked fantastic. Oh well, I'll just have to come back another time.
When friends asked me about my dinner at Babbo, I told them that the food was good, but maybe not worth the effort of making endless calls and taking ridiculous timeslots for a meal (915 was great compared to the 1030 or 11 pm times they've offered for weekends). However, despite all that, I may find myself calling one of these days, 30 days in advance of a weekend night and eat again, this time not having to fear missing my bedtime, for the desserts that I've missed and the great pasta that is to be eaten.

Babbo
110 Waverly Place

Yolato Yogurt Gelato

Similar to Pinkberry, Yolato tries to harness New Yorkers' sweet tooth and guilt complex, selling sweet treats made from a healthier than milk-fat yogurt base. But while Pinkberry serves only 2 flavors of icy soft-serve, Yolato offer a variety of choices, from frozen yogurt to sorbets to yogurt-based ice cream that approximate the texture, creaminess and taste of real gelato. Its flavors also range from the tried and tested to wild, such as kiwinana, a mixture of kiwi and banana that unfortunately tasted rather like banana flavoring.
After tasting about half of what the store has to offer, thanks to a very friendly and obliging shop assistant, we made our selections. Goh Siew picked a scoop of nutella gelato while I chose a tangy strawberry cheesecake flavor. While some of the other flavors tasted a little artificial, we were pretty pleased with our flavors. And while I found the yogurt based gelato to a little less creamy than gelato, it remained very dense and quite tasty. I found my strawberry icecream to be pleasantly less sweet than most found in other ice cream parlors, which made it easier for me to finish the entire scoop without feeling sick.
In summary, Yolato offers a viable substitute for the health conscious but ice cream hungry masses. Go now and you can even participate in a lucky draw, the grand prize being a trip to Italy to visit the Coliseum and its surrounding gelaterias.

Yolato
120 Macdougal St
(212) 228-6303

Blue Ribbon Bakery

If you are seated in the sunny front dining room, you'll miss the oversized brick oven in the basement that makes Blue Ribbon Bakery a true bakery and not merely an ironic name for a small restaurant tucked in Greenwich Village. And while you're tucking into the freshly baked bread, you're missing out on the myriad of scents wafting through the semi-exposed kitchen - a combination of warm yeast, spicy caraway seeds and the honeyed sweetness of plump gold raisins - into the subterranean dining alcove. Goh Siew and I were seated right there with another 20 odd other diners, away from the bright sunshine and picturesque village streetscape streaming through oversized windows in the front room. But truth to be told, I think we had the better seats in the house. For the fragrance of baked bread elevated the pleasure of digging into the overly generous bread basket, piled high with the best free bread I've been served in the city. We had warm and chewy olive foccacia, slices of crusty rye and and a crumbly raisin walnut bread, slathered with soft butter, all before even ordering our entrees.
Greedy for more carbohydrates, I chose a heaping platter of french toast made of buttery challah. It sure soaked up a lot of egg as well as an injudicious dosage of maple syrup. All was good, but getting through all that french toast unfortunately became quite repetitive. I managed to offload some to Goh Siew who accepted the challenge, after having just polished off a happy platter of smoked salmon, the orange fish, yellow lemon slice, green chives and purple onions a colorful composition on the austere white plate.

Service was very good for a destination restaurant, Blue Ribbon Bakery being one of those bestowed with more brunch devotees than they can handle, where more often than not you find harried servers and empty glasses. My glass was always filled even though I drank copious amounts of water, and coffee refills were volunteered and not begged for. With a convivial atmosphere and professional service, and all the bread I can eat, I am probably coming back to Blue Ribbon Bakery, albeit maybe not for brunch, as the menu is a tad limited to french toast and about half a dozen egg dishes. But the bread will be there come breakfast, lunch or dinner. And I hear the restaurant makes a killer bread pudding for dessert too. Yes, I think I will be back.

Blue Ribbon Bakery

33 Downing St (Downing & Bedford)

(212) 337-0404

http://blueribbonrestaurants.com/bakery_about.html

Pearl Oyster Bar

As readers of this blog well know, I have two roommates. While we all fit the stereotype of nice Asian girls overworked in the financial world, have similar hairstyles and share a kitchen and a vacuum machine, we also all have a good appetite and a distaste (or rather, lack of motivation to go on) for diets. However, when it comes to what we eat, our individuality shines through somewhat. Gerrie's the trendiest amongst the three of us, with an admirable goal of dining at as many brand-name culinary temples in the city. I am the eclectic eater who will munch at anything but the kitchen sink and have a weird fascination for off-beat eats , and Ceci's the classy chick who goes for classic and elegant food. With that in mind, for Ceci's belated bday dinner, we decided to go to Pearl Oyster Bar, a homey New England style seafood house in the village for an unpretentious evening, slurping down fresh shellfish and trying out the "best" lobster roll in the city.
After a 3 day survey of lobster pounds in Bar Harbor during August, I thought I would have good authority to say that the cramped dining room was prettier than any simple shack I had been to in Maine. The seafood at Pearl was also as fresh as those I had eaten in Maine, and perfectly cooked to yield an even better taste than the great tasting, but simply boiled lobsters and sublimely fried fish and clams I had. Between the 5 of us (rmmates + friends), we split a platter of fried oysters (a little over battered), and another plate of briny and yet sweet raw clams and a refreshing, fruity riesling to rouse up some appetite.
After we hacked away at the appetizers, our entrees found its way onto the table and we tasted through 5 dishes, including a good sized and nicely grilled lobster, a generous bowl of bouillabaise that was stuffed with small and plump mussels, a roasted whole fish (snapper? or mullet?) that I did not taste but looked and smelt fantastic. I ate a slice of snow white cod, succulent and flaky, tasting like what fish fingers would taste like if they had been made of real fish and only lightly dusted with floor. And Gerrie ordered the house specialty lobster roll served with a heap of shoestring fries, which at twice the price and almost twice the size of any old lobster roll you see in a fish shack in Maine, was quite a tasty, mayonnaisey monstrosity.
Dinner for the three of us must end on a sweet note, so despite already stuffed stomaches, we ordered a slice of blueberry pie and two sundaes to share. The pie was great. Not too sweet and the slightly sour tang of the blueberries blended well with the creamy sweetness of the vanilla icecream that topped it. The hot fudge and butterscotch in the old-fashioned sundaes were unapologetically viscous and rich and the whole deal with thick fresh cream and more vanilla icecream was pure fatty sin. But so good we ate it all up.
Like Ceci, Pearl Oyster Bar is a classic.

18 Cornelia St

Chocolate Haven

Trust the French to call a less than healthy obsession on haute chocolaterie "un péché mignon", or an adorable sin. Well, adorable or not, I do have a pretty big sweet tooth, and an appreciation for good chocolate. Thank goodness I live in New York, the land of $5 chocolate bars and gourmet chocolate shoppes, ranging from artisanal local names like Kee's to conglomeratized mega- brands such as Fauchon and La Maison du Chocolate. Chocolate Haven sits in the middle of the spectrum, a large enough enterprise to have 2 factories and a website selling a whole gamut of cocoa-loaded goodies and a celebrity chocolatier at the helm, but still small and localized enough to be quintessentially New York.
Chocolate Haven's owner is Jacque Torres, dessert wunderkind and ex-dessert chef at the legendary Le Cirque. Besides all those titles, he has also been called the city's Willy Wonka and in his shop/factory down on Hudson Street, I could see why. Instead of the austere decor in La Maison du Chocolate, the walls within Chocolate Haven are painted in vibrant reds and oranges. The servers (aka. Jacque's Oompa Loompas) were likewise dressed in bright reds, greens and yellow tops and all wore weird multicolored braided headdress of sorts, as though as they were wrongly transplanted in the greyish cityscape, and should have been in a tropical rainforest instead.
Some things to try while in the shop are the signature hot chocolate (in the normal and wicked version, wicked being spiced i think); the chocolate truffles and the chocolate chip cookies, and during the hot summer months, the decadent cookies and icecream, in the form of an ice-cream sandwich. And if you are looking for some more durable gifts, the chocolate bars, as well as the bags of chocolate dipped sweets, ranging from marshmallows to expresso beans to malt balls. While not as blatantly New York as bagels and pretzels, these chocolates make an equally worthy food present from the Big Apple.

Chocolate Haven
350 Hudson St

Otto - GelOtto & Pizza

We thought we were invincible. We had by either sheer luck or too much persistence managed to fish out a lot of kate spade goodies, in relative good shape, for very little moolah and were very pleased with ourselves. If we could pack so much shopping in such a short time, we rationalized, what's a short walk from Century 21 to the village for pizza and some oddly flavored ice cream? What's wrong with strolling in the sun, with no sunblock on a 90 degree day? We are from the tropics and therefore had a natural immunity to sweltering heat, or so we thought.
Just so you know, we did manage to get to Washington Square Park and did locate Otto. We also ate there. But the hour long walk was anything but short, and the initial excitement about trying olive oil gelato for the first time had died down somewhere between tribeca and soho. By the time we stumbled into the restaurant, thoroughly dehydrated and very sweaty at 4 pm we just wanted to crash into the chairs and be fed as quickly as possible.
It is under this premise that Ruoying and I tried the pizza and pasta at Otto, the most affordable Mario Batali-related establishment in the city. I had very inexplicably imagined the restaurant to be in a tiny and quaint cornershop, but it was pretty cavernous and comfortably dark. While it was extremely quiet at 4 pm, I can imagine it being a bustling and jam packed place during more normal dining hours. We ordered quickly and played safe on our choices. At 4pm, we really didn't need added grief if the pizza lardo (lard on bread, dad would kill to try this) didn't come up to our expectations. The server and efficient server, as if sensing our hunger (which is pretty apparent, it being 4 pm for lunch and all) served us rather quickly and plied us with bread and numerous refills of water. We tried the penne alla norma, very al dente, which is the way I like it but less to Ruoying's liking. But the eggplant was nicely done and Ruoying, normally averse to eggplant actually fought me to get to the last couple of eggplant bits on the plate. The ricotta also binded rest of the ingredients together well without being an overkill.. The pizza margherita was also very yummy with a thin crispy base. An afficionado of thick and chewy dough probably would not appreciate it so much however.
With our tummies sated and with us having sufficiently recovered from our unfortunate walk, we then contemplated our gelato choices. Pickings were mainly conventional save for the house specialty olive oil gelato. We chose that of course, as well as chocolate and the hazelnut flavors. The trio was quite a good balance, with the saltiness of the olive oil balancing the sweet nutty hazelnut flavor. The chocolate flavor was somehow less creamy and more sorbetty, and served as a palate cleanser of sorts. Oddly, I was a little disappointed by the olive oil gelato, i had imagined it to be a putrid green or yellow and tasting of solidified evoo. Silly me, Mario Batali and crew obviously have a more understated and sophisticated palate than that! After all, he is an Iron Chef..
The wine selection at Otto is enormous and given its surprising affordability, I can't wait to bring Peishan there when she's in town again =)


p.s.: I thought i saw susan sarandon while in the bathroom. She had curly hair and a nice mellow voice. I was probably mistakened, but after spotting johnny depp and spiderman in the past 2 wks, I wouldn't be surprised if it was her too... i love the cheap thrill of celeb spotting, don't you?
Otto
1 Fifth Ave (on 8th St)