NYC Restaurant Reviews | donuts4dinner.com » 2012 » February
As a general rule, I don’t cook. Not only do I live in the food capital of the U.S. (and arguably the world), but my boyfriend weirdly doesn’t like to eat food not cooked by either his mom or some complete stranger in a restaurant. There are 343 restaurants that deliver to his apartment for free and 87 that deliver to mine on Seamless.com alone, so we have no shortage of new and interesting, non-home-cooked foods to try.
Except bánh mì. There is no bánh mì.
But I bought a slow-cooker recently. As a person who has an inkling of desire to cook but is supremely lazy, the appeal of the one-pot meal is immense. And morally, I’m very much in favor of home cooking. Not only am I learning a new skill, but I’m getting closer to my food. I know exactly what went into the dish I made and also where those ingredients came from. I took a seven-pound pork butt that was covered in fat and skin and hair (hair!) and labored over it and let it nourish me. It’s kind of romantic, right?
The thing is–as righteous as I feel about cooking for myself and as well as I think my pork butt turned out, it still didn’t satisfy me the way a non-home-cooked meal would’ve. It filled me but didn’t fulfill me, you know? And that has to be a social construct, right? I know a lot of people say they don’t even like eating out. That they get sick of it. That they think their home-cooked food tastes better. But I never have. I see nasty, greasy, fatty, salty, not-even-made-with-natural-ingredients food as a treat. I guess because I was raised on my family farm’s own beef and pork and the vegetables from our garden. And also because nasty, greasy, fatty, salty, not-even-made-with-natural-ingredients food is meant to be addictive, and I am a weak, weak person.
I loved my mom’s cooking, sure, and I look forward to holidays with my family where I get to eat those special once-a-year dishes my stepmom, aunts, and grandmother make. But for the most part, I don’t want to eat your home cooking. I appreciate your inviting me over to your house and taking your time to cook for me, but . . . can we just order Pizza Hut instead?
Fix me!
Don Antonio: Pizza Fried, Stuffed, and Racquet-Shaped
If there’s one thing I love about NYC, it’s that for every diehard fitness fanatic waiting impatiently at the gym’s front door at 6 a.m., there’s a fried pizza fanatic who thinks four pizzas for three people might not be enough food. It used to be that you had to go to Park Slope’s Chipshop for a deep-fried slice, but Forcella took the fried pizza from an outer borough novelty to a full-on Manhattan sensation. Of course I was interested from the words deep-fried and pizza, but it was New York magazine’s article about the new Don Antonio by Starita that made me finally put down my Papa John’s and venture to Midtown:
Just when you thought the market for Neapolitan pizza had reached saturation, along comes Kesté’s Roberto Caporuscio and his old mentor Antonio Starita, who’ve teamed up to open Don Antonio in Hell’s Kitchen next Tuesday, February 7. In certain pizza-world circles, this is huge — like Gennaro Lombardi rising from the grave to sling slices with Dom DeMarco. For the uninitiated, Starita is third-generation pizza royalty. Along with Sophia Loren, his family’s Naples pizzeria starred in the Vittorio De Sica film L’Oro di Napoli. The man has served pizza to popes. He has tomato sauce coursing through his veins. In short, there is nothing about dough he doesn’t know. His student, Caporuscio, the U.S. president of the Association of Neapolitan Pizza Makers, is no slouch either.
How could I resist when my friends The Pretender and Lucy invited me out on a whim one night last week? And luckily, Lucy had her camera on hand to take these glorious photos:
Potato Croquet, Arancini, Fritattine
Henry ordered these three starters–fried potato with homemade mozzarella and bread crumbs, a rice ball, and a spaghetti cake with baked Italian ham and mozzarella–and seemed pleased but not overwhelmingly excited by them. I really wanted a spaghetti cake of my own but knew I was already going to have a hard time finishing the four pizzas we’d ordered.
Margherita S.T.G.
The S.T.G. is for guaranteed typical specialty, the pizza by which to judge all other pizzas. Typical as it may have supposedly been, I was pretty impressed. It needed more basil, but the sauce–which seemed a weak tomato-only puree at first glance–was somehow extremely flavorful. The crust was this perfect not-too-burnt-and-crispy, almost-chewy texture, bready enough and airy enough to please everyone.
Montanara Starita
Despite the similar toppings, the fried pizza was wildly different from the S.T.G. Every bite was noticeably smoky, and well, the crust was something special: crispy on the outside and soft on the inside, like a funnel cake or a French fry. And with that specific French fry/funnel cake soaked-through-with-oil-ness. It’s a magical mix of frying and oven-baking, and it was my favourite of the four.
Racchetta
It’s shaped like a racquet! And the handle is full of cheese! And is a big disappointment!
Overall, this pizza was awesome, and I say that as someone who barely like vegetables on pizza at all, especially when those vegetables are mushrooms (half-blergh!) and tomatoes (double-blergh!). But these vegetables were cooked down so flavorfully and lent a level of heartiness to the pizza that meats don’t. The disappointment was in the handle, which was lightly stuffed with creamy ricotta cheese and should have been the best stuffed breadstick ever but was just sort of okay–not quite flavorful enough and not quite cheesy enough. I need some oregano stuffed into that sucker.
Vesuvio
With ricotta, mozzarella, and salami stuffed inside the crust and Italian ham, mushrooms, and basil on top, this is the pizza you order if you want to fill up on just one. We made the mistake of saving it for last and only ate half of it, because each piece feels like two. The spice of the salami contrasted the sweetness of the ham, and the cheese spilling out of the center made it a messy fork-and-knife feast.
New York, NY 10019 (map)
Is It Easier for Celebrities to Get Dinner Reservations? Of Course!
My friend Ramblings & Gamblings sent me a link yesterday to this story by Deadspin.com: “Are New York’s Most Exclusive Restaurants More Eager To Seat Jeremy Lin Or Eli Manning?”
The site called eighteen of NYC’s most notoriously unbookable restaurants–Per Se, Babbo, and Minetta Tavern, to name a few–posing as assistants to sports stars Eli Manning and Jeremy Lin to see who could get a last-minute reservation where. The results are unsurprising but saddening to those of us who will never be celebrities. Deadspin writes:
Final tally: Manning had only two flat rejections, while Lin had four. Of the restaurants that offered to seat Manning at another time, only one, Per Se, bumped him from his 8 p.m. request by more than a half-hour. Lin got a better offer than Manning once: at L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon. Linsanité!
The only redeeming news is that neither of them could get a reservation at Brooklyn Fare. Deadspin says, “Brooklyn Fare, in a tone suggesting we’re stupid for even asking: ‘We take reservations weeks in advance.’” God bless you, Brooklyn Fare, even if you answered in the same tone when I called and said I would only take a reservation on a Saturday night.
The Bow Wow Wow and Frozen Hot Chocolate at Big Daddy’s
After a night of drinking, my friends and I needed some filling, not-fancy grub. Weeks before, I’d been to the Big Daddy’s in Gramercy Park just for a giant strawberry daiquiri after dinner and had been interested in basically the entire menu, so I led the way to the retro diner for some of the heartiest breakfast foods around.
My friends ordered things like pancakes dripping with melted chocolate chunks and omelettes practically exploding with meats and cheeses, but I went for the biggest, nastiest, kitchen-sinkiest thing on the menu: the Bow Wow Wow.
It’s a buttery waffle sandwich filled inches-high with a slab of scrambled eggs, American cheese, Canadian bacon, and hash browns. For the person who’s drawn to sweet breakfast items but never quite gets the satisfaction of savory items from them, like me, this is the perfect compromise: there’s all the cheesy saltiness of the filling, but there’s always the syrupy sweetness of the waffle. And a side of tater tots to boot. The waffle was super-crunchy on the outside but doughy on the inside, just the way I like it, and the sandwich was so stuffed and stuffing I had to eat it with a knife and fork and take half of it home (and you know I like that, too).
Everyone else ordered shakes to accompany their meals to overwhelmingly positive reviews, but I had to get the frozen hot chocolate to see how it compares to Serendipity 3‘s (the most famous in the city) and Dairy Queen’s (my personal favorite). Nothing will ever compare to the thick, rich, ice-creamy version that DQ does, but the Big Daddy’s version was eerily similar to that of Serendipity.
Which is to say not that impressive. I always expect the milkiness of my mom’s homemade hot chocolate with ice and ice cream blended in, but it’s like some terrible mom used a packaged hot chocolate mix in some water and just added ice. It’s thin and watery and wimpy. But it tastes good, I’ll admit. I just need to remember to ask for a scoop of vanilla on top. And probably some peanut butter, too. Also marshmallows.
Big Daddy’s is my kind of diner. It’s open 24 hours, it’s big enough to seat a party of eight with no problem, and it’s not the usual drab neighborhood joint you only frequent because it’s convenient; not only is the food so comforting it’s worth going out of the way for, but the decor is something you only find in places owned by Branded Restaurants (the folks behind City Crab and Duke’s, another favourite of mine for really over-the-top, fattening stuff); it looks like a 1950s kitchen, but the walls are covered in giant logos for Atari and PanAm and Kool-Aid, displays of throwback products from my childhood, and framed photographs of TV stars too bygone for me to recognize. It’s worth a visit, drunk at midnight or otherwise.
New York, NY 10003 (map)
This is Why You’re Fat
If there’s a good reason to be fat, this is it.
It’s a Chips Ahoy! Chewy cookie, topped with a fire-roasted marshmallow, rolled in Nerds.
My boyfriend, his friend Gary, and I concocted it in Gary’s backyard last summer while we were in California. We had already eaten four packages of Swedish cookies and a bag of marshmallows, and I guess the concern was that the sugarbetes wasn’t onsetting quickly enough.
I really love irresponsible eating.