NYC Restaurant Reviews | donuts4dinner.com » rating
If you’ve been reading donuts4dinner since its inception, you know that the original purpose of this blog was to chronicle my rise from a farmgirl to a three-Michelin-star dining powerhouse. Well, since I became a full-time resident of a new Brooklyn neighborhood and also unemployed at the same time, I’ve been focusing on local restaurants and healthier living. It’s been great for the most part–there’s not a lot that’s more satisfying than finding delicious food that’s a short walk away–but part of me has missed the beautiful plating and mindblowing bites of the finest eateries. But then, thanks to my roommate/landlord/former co-worker/boyfriend, I found Brucie in Cobble Hill.
The menu changes nightly at Brucie, so expect to be surprised when you visit.
We were seated at the bar in front of the window looking out onto the street, where our good friend JFK the Woodprint sat watch over us. We felt like we saw him give us a thumbs-up after we placed our order.
calamari, potato, caper, Meyer lemon
My boyfriend ordered this because he said the version he had the first time he visited a couple of weeks ago was so good. The funny thing is that halfway through the dish, he remembered that one of his friends had actually ordered it and that he’d only had a bite or two. It’s not that he didn’t like the calamari, but he didn’t really want to eat a whole bowl of squid. The extra funny thing is that I sort of did want to eat a whole bowl of squid and actually might order this myself when we return to Brucie. It was classic Mediterranean with the capers, lemon, dill, and tomato, and just really fresh and light. The dill especially was a knockout. And not a drip was wasted thanks to the fresh bread served with it.
winter citrus, Marcona almond, lentil, olive jam, parmigiano
Nothing against neighborhood eateries, but I was a little shocked when this gorgeously plated appetizer showed up at the table. I was dying to dig into it thanks to all of those colors and textures, but I composed delicate forkfuls for myself like a lady. I actually ordered this dish specifically because I don’t like olives and wanted to challenge myself, figuring that making them into a jam would temper the sour flavor a bit. But no, these were straight-up oil-cured olives, no tempering to be had. And I actually thought they added to the dish next to the charred flavor of the crisp lemon peel. The lentils weren’t much more than a textural element, but the taste of the sweet Marcona almonds and the savory herbs made this such a complete dish.
Just showing off that charred peel that I loved so much.
chicken for two, apple, Brussels sprouts, risotto fritter, Stumptown
In the reviews I read of Brucie before our visit, so many of the commenters recommended the chicken “in whatever form”, so even thought the brisket and porchetta were calling to me, I’m so glad we listened to the reviews and tried this dish. The chef delivered it to our table and told us it was a “funky” chicken, and we weren’t sure if she was referring to the ingredients in it or the fact that James Brown was playing over the speakers. I didn’t necessarily find this chicken very funky, but I did find it REALLY, REALLY DELICIOUS. It was a half a chicken, skin crisped and dripping butter. The risotto fritter was all butter and cheese and creamy. The apple was butter-browned and tasted like it might have just been plucked from a pie. But it was the Brussels sprouts that really got us. They were confit, the server told us, and boy, were they. They were just soaked in fat, nearly mushy because of it. My eyes were rolling back into my head as I ate them. I love Brussels sprouts, but these were just so beyond what I’ve eaten. Only the supremes of fresh Meyer lemon and the zing of the red onion kept this from being too rich.
the quirky, cool interior of Brucie
Honestly, the meal I had at Brucie was a five-star meal of the inexpensive variety. It was some of the best local food I’ve eaten in a long time, and I have absolutely no complaints about it, only accolades. But I hesitate to give it five donuts just because I didn’t try any pasta and I didn’t try any dessert there, and those seem like kind of a big deal for an Italian place. I can’t wait to go back and try another preparation of chicken, though, so this won’t be my last Brucie review. And Wednesday nights at Brucie are Italian ramen nights, which I won’t be able to resist much longer. The restaurant had a cool Brooklyn vibe with its novelty wallpaper, 60s soundtrack, and hipster waitresses, but the food was totally serious and careful and could stack up to some of the finest meals I’ve eaten in terms of flavor.
Brooklyn, NY 11201 (map)
The Entire Dim Sum Menu at RedFarm UWS
There are no reservations at the Upper West Side outpost of RedFarm, so my group of five showed up at 6:30 on a Thursday night hoping to beat the usual 8 p.m. dinner crowd. Even though it’s apparently twice the size of the original West Village location, the place was packed, and even having called earlier in the afternoon to put ourselves on a waitlist wasn’t helping. But the staff was zealous in finding a spot for us, and soon enough, we were seated at the end of a communal table in the middle of the checkered-table-cloth and blond wood dining room, about to eat every single item on the dim sum menu.
You can sell white people anything with a little woodgrain and some bold graphic design.
cucumber thyme cooler and blackberry ginger-lime soda
three color vegetable dumplings
Katz’s pastrami egg roll, mustard sauce
So spicy and everything I wanted it to be. How can you make the famous pastrami from Katz’s Delicatessen even better? DEEP FRY IT.
crunchy vegetable & peanut dumplings
These were just what you expect–all earthy vegetables with just a hint of peanut–but something about them made them really memorable for me. Probably the fact that they were so simple and fresh amidst a mass of fried things.
shrimp & mango fried wontons
FRIED THINGS.
shrimp & snow pea leaf dumplings
The way these were shaped just like the shrimp inside did so much to highlight the seafood. This was all about the shrimp and its texture.
five flavor chicken dumplings
The best part about these was the curry sauce underneath, which everyone loved and wanted to spoon onto everything else.
lobster cheese sticks
I was the only person at our table who seemed so-so about these. The cheese tasted processed to me. And you know I usually love a processed cheese food, but I wanted to be wowed by what was accompanying my lobster.
‘Pac Man’ shrimp dumplings
I know this was supposed to be all novelty, but it was one of my favourite plates in terms of flavor, too. The Pac-Man was made of tempura sweet potato, and the dumplings were shrimp with a heavy dose of lemongrass.
crispy duck & crab dumplings
The little “tail” on these was the end of a crab claw. (Have you noticed yet that practically every dumpling has eyes?)
pan-fried pork buns, spicy sauce
I loved these mini pork buns because I love all pork buns ever, but everyone else complained that they were only big enough to tease us.
pork & crab soup dumplings in individual bamboo steamers
pork & crab soup dumplings
I know everyone has her own idea of the perfect soup dumpling, and these weren’t mine. I liked the very tender meatball inside that made the guts easy to eat, but the thin skin made it too easy for the dumpling to fall apart while I was sucking out the soup. I prefer the thicker, chewy skin of the Chinatown soup dumplings I’m used to.
pork & shrimp dumpling skewers
Very tropical. Again, I thought the texture of the shrimp was the stand-out.
pan-fried lamb dumpling shooters, tofu, miso seaweed broth
A meeting of the land and sea.
BBQ’d duck breast, grilled litchi (lychee), lotus chip
One of the most complete bites I had: crunchy lotus, sweet fresh fruit, seared smoky duck.
shrimp-stuffed jalapeño poppers
soft & crunchy vegetable fried rice
Our friend Tiffany, who had visited the original RedFarm downtown, insisted that we order this despite its $14 price tag, and I secretly could’ve eaten the entire vat myself. Partly because the dim sum wasn’t nearly enough to fill me up, and partly because I loved the crunchy bits of watercress.
chocolate pudding
Our server became ECSTATIC about this chocolate pudding when reciting the dessert menu to us. It was the kind of build-up that ensures you’ll be disappointed by whatever follows. But I wasn’t disappointed. It was simply some of the thickest, chocolatiest pudding around.
The bill. For dim sum.
This should scare you.
RedFarm, most notably, is expensive. It seemed like nearly all of the comments I read on reviews before my visit were centered around how expensive it is, and rightfully so. We spent $80 per person, and then we talked about going to Shake Shack afterward to actually get full. It was strange to find a restaurant charging $14 for 4 dumplings you’d pay $1 for in Chinatown and then adding eyes to everything like it was meant to help children stomach shrimp for the first time. That said, I actually really liked the place. Some of the dumplings were unmemorable, but some of them were bursting with flavor and had me wishing I was getting more than one of each kind (Pac-Man, I’m coming back for you by myself). And that creativity was reflected in the price. So was the fact that this wasn’t some dim sum factory restaurant with food being served from carts but a friendly place for white people to bring their mothers who are afraid of cuisine that sounds foreign. This is the kind of casual, cute eatery I’d love to pop into on a whim whenever the craving for dim sum hits (which is about every other day for me), but the price point unfortunately makes it more of a destination than a whenever spot.
New York, NY 10024 (map)
Char No. 4: American Southern Food and Whiskey in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn
I happen to live in the midst of all of the cutest parts of Brooklyn, so a night out to one of my favourite neighborhood restaurants usually involves passing four more that I want to try the next night. Char No. 4 is one of the places I’ve always noticed with its dark tones, ceiling full of lanterns, and bar bustling every night of the week. I remember looking at the Southern-inspired menu once and thinking it was too small, but when my friend Kim, her cousin, and I decided to go on a recent weekend, I realized that the menu’s actually too big, because I wanted every single thing on it.
old fashioned (Very Old Barton Bourbon, bitters, sugar, orange, & cherry)
Noreaster (ginger beer, lime, maple syrup)
pork nuggets
Like chicken nuggets, only more flavorful. With spicy mayo.
fried green tomatoes, shrimp remoulade
I didn’t try this because I’m still anti-tomato after all this time, but my dinner companions were surprised and pleased by the shrimp flavor.
deviled eggs, smoked whitefish
As a land-animal-favoring person, I tend toward the bacon side of deviled eggs, but the whitefish was a great addition to these. It was like tuna salad and egg salad in one.
lamb pastrami, coriander aioli, pickled onions, & grilled rye
Having recently had a really excellent lamb pastrami, the kind that’ll stick in my memory for quite a while, I was interested to see if Char No. 4’s version could compare. Resto‘s was just a big wallop of pastrami flavor, while this one was more subtle as part of a more composed dish meant to highlight several flavors. I like to be hit in the stomach by my food, so the Resto version will stay at the top of my list, but the aioli and onions from this version made it a real contender.
brisket, fingerling potatoes, kale salad
shrimp & grits, bacon braised collard greens, & cilantro
Char No. 4 Cheeseburger, Cabot clothbound cheddar, charred red onion, Dijon mayo, & fries
I was in the mood for a burger that night, and this one hit every spot for me. It wasn’t breaking any of the rules and it wasn’t trying anything fancy, but it was cooked right and made the bun soggy with its juices. I’d go back for it.
Char No. 4 is just the sort of neighborhood restaurant you become a regular at when you’re childless and dual-incomed in the swanky parts of Brooklyn. Our server was hip but very friendly, and you can’t beat the deep, comfortable booths with their low lighting and dark woods for a date night. The whiskey and whisky menus are extensive, the cocktails are expensive but composed and strong, and the food is solid enough that you want to eat it again but pricey enough ($25 for brisket is more than I’ve ever paid in Manhattan) that you’d have to sacrifice a week’s worth of diapers for it.
Brooklyn, NY 11201 (map)
The Marrow
I’ve read recently about how hard it is for a restaurant in NYC to survive after the initial buzz is over. A place opens, every blogger in the tri-state area rushes to review it, it gets no press after the first few months, and it dies. Naturally I accept all of the blame for this, because I’ve never been to any of the old Chef Harold Dietrle restaurants, but I’ve had my eye on The Marrow for months now. I watched him and cheered for him as he won the first season of “Top Chef”, and then I was so excited to live in New York City when he opened Perilla and Kin Shop. I probably looked at the menu on the Perilla website twenty times in the five or so years I was hardcore fine dining every weekend, but I never went. Of course Perilla and Kin Shop are doing just fine without me, but just to be sure The Marrow doesn’t fail on my account single-handedly, I took five of my friends there one Friday night after work.
Herr Pamplemousse
Reposado, pink grapefruit, lime, and ginger beer. With a side of water.
pretzel bread
Pretzel bread should be in every bread basket, everywhere. And not those pretzel rods, either. I want it soft, hot, and buttery.
crispy kale, bay scallops, pickled red onion, cashews, and hot mustard-buttermilk dressing
I am ruined for kale any other way. This was super acidic, very vinegary. Since it was deep fried, it was partly so crisp it was falling apart with every ravenous jab of my fork and half becoming soft again under the dressing. And then there were the cashews to add even more crunch, along with the sour snap of those red onions.
burrata, local heirloom tomatoes, baby basil, balsamic, extra virgin olive oil
I was forced into trying this, and even as a tomato-phobe, I found these tomatoes so mild, almost roasted to the sweet flavor of a sauce, but they still had plenty of texture for those at the table who eat tomatoes like apples. The burrata was all mozzarella on the outside but creamy and fresh inside, just as it should be.
housemade rigatoni, spicy duck sausage, tomato ragu, basil, pecorino
One of my friends had this and told me it was “delicious”. Nothing but the finest in-depth reporting here at donuts4dinner, folks.
bone marrow, sea urchin, fried potatoes, meyer lemon aioli, baby celery greens
Likewise, I didn’t get a bite of the bone marrow. You know, the dish that’s in the name of the restaurant. Because who would ever share their bone marrow with uni?
pate
I also didn’t try this. I have terribly selfish friends. I think this was duck liver pate on brioche with gooseberry compote. Don’t quote me. You’re just here for the pictures, anyway.
juniper-braised lamb neck, rutabaga puree, red sauerkraut, whole roasted carrots
My friend Chantee described this as unctuous and melt-off-the-bone. My friend Nik didn’t care for the amount of fat on the lamb but loved the cabbage, which he said brightened up the rich neck meat.
pan-fried duck schnitzel, quark spaetzle, hazelnuts, cucumber-potato salad, stewed wolfberries
I love dill to begin with but thought this potato salad made particularly great use of it, adding even more freshness to the cucumber to combat the heaviness of the schnitzel. The wolfberries were soft and sweet (but maybe a little overpowering), while the curd spaetzle had a brilliant crunch from the hazelnuts.
dry-aged rib steak for two
When my friends Jack and Andrew discussed sharing this, I didn’t want to dissuade them, but I also thought they were sort of silly to order a steak in a non-steakhouse. Turns out I was the silly one, because this sort of random restaurant that doesn’t at all need to prove it can do a steak is doing a super-tender one with so much flavor, so much butter, and such great texture. It was just really, really well-seasoned. The corn absorbed all of the truffle butter, beef juice, and onion flavor and was therefore perfect.
Butter on perfectly-cooked steak. YES.
grilled hampshire country style pork rib chop, cannellini beans, dandelion green
salad, hot cherry peppers, pork jus
I never, ever need lettuce with my meat (okay, maybe the exception being creamed spinach at a steakhouse), but I loved the way these peppery greens complemented the black pepper flavor in the rest of the dish, the slightly spicy crust of the pork, and the bright pickled onion slivers.
This was the dessert special the night we went, and I have no idea what it was. You’re welcome.
ginger stout cake, roasted peaches, honey ice cream
Eating this was like eating a piece of warm, soft gingerbread. Easily the most-beloved dessert at our table.
chocolate semifreddo, cherry compote, pistachio torrone
A very light semifreddo, very milk chocolatey, with a thick, dense, frosting-like dollop of darker chocolate. The torrone was a chewy nougat-like confection that added a textural component, and that’s weirdly all the cherries were, too–they just weren’t very flavorful despite all of the visual impact.
caramelized white chocolate ice cream
This didn’t come with any of our desserts, so we just ordered bowls of it on the side. Because
caramelized
white chocolate
ice cream. It was brown buttery and made me feel like I was wrapped in a warm blanket on a cold winter day.
looking out into the West Village from the damask-patterned interior of The Marrow
One side of The Marrow’s menu is Italian food to honor Chef Dieterle’s mother, and the other side is German food for his father. We were all over the menu and couldn’t find much at all to complain about. Everything was homey and comforting but elevated enough to make it clear that these aren’t just family recipes but a professional chef’s take on them. The decor is basically what would happen if a zoot suit threw up in a cigar bar, and by that I mean it’s all pinstripes and red leather. The service is laid-back, friendly, personal and makes the place almost seem quaint until you remember that you’re eating caramelized white chocolate ice cream. The menu changes often, though, so get there before everything I’ve mentioned here is gone.
New York, NY 10014 (map)
Distilled is More Than Just Wings (But the Wings Are Pretty Amazing)
It only took seeing “gochujang wings” and “Momofuku Noodle Bar veteran” in an article about Distilled to convince me. Our friend Colin had already visited and said the wings were “weird”, but they apparently weren’t weird enough that he wouldn’t come back, so he joined my friends Nik and Tim and me there one day after work to share what felt like a whole lot of food at the time but turned out to be just a little bit of southern comfort food and a whole lot of wine, mead, and cocktails made of wine and mead.
Distilled wings
These wings are not weird. Well, unless you consider it weird that they were exactly as over-the-top crunchy as you’ve always wanted wings to be but never are. And unless you consider it weird that the sweet/spicy fermented gochujang sauce was so sticky I could peel the batter off in two-inch strips and eat just that if I wanted to. And I wanted to. The chicken was fine, too. But GOCHUJANG.
chilled charred broccoli, peanuts, duck bacon, pickled watermelon rind
Tim insisted that we order this because he cares about health and bowel movements, and you can bet I was loudly protesting in my head, but there was so much going on in this dish I couldn’t be mad. Namely duck bacon in thick slabs. The crunch of the peanuts, the tang of the watermelon, the zesty little greens. I wouldn’t have been offended had this been my main dish.
country fried duck & waffles, French toast style waffle, smoked chili maple syrup, whipped honey butter, Thai basil
I almost want to just let you read the components of the dish and leave it at that, because this was exactly as good as you think fried duck over a waffle with spicy maple syrup would be. The interesting part was that the duck was boneless and had the texture of pulled pork, like it had been cooked, torn apart, and then reassembled before being fried in that thick coating. I didn’t notice anything French toasty about the waffle, but it may have been that I was too busy licking honey butter off of everything in sight, including myself.
glazed pork ribs, jalapeno, delfino (cilantro), compressed watermelon salad
The meat slid off these bones in one big hunk, disappointing those in our group who enjoy slathering their entire faces in sauce while trying to awkwardly nibble a rib, but those of us who will take a knife and fork to soup if given the chance really appreciated the opportunity to slice through these suckers. The jalapeno was just spicy enough to offset the sweet sauce but not spicy enough that a heat-hater would even take note of it. I expected the watermelon salad with its herbs and dressing to be very savory, but it was still a sweet watermelon salad, just a very dense one thanks to the compression.
Nik was pretty excited about those ribs.
New York strip steak, bone marrow black garlic butter, sauteed spinach, onion ring
If there’s one thing I took away from dating a Persian guy, it’s a love of black garlic. His mom had homemade jars of the sweet and sour fermented stuff in her garage, and I wanted to order this based on it alone. Oh, yeah, and the bone marrow. Also the onion ring. The steak was overcooked for my taste, but I’m not in the habit of expecting a perfect medium-rare at a non-steakhouse. It was still plenty tender and made all the more luxurious by that rich, silky butter.
the view from the patio at Distilled
Sitting on the raised patio outside Distilled, eating this southern food with an Asian twist and watching the fine people of TriBeCa with their dogs and on their longboards, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt that particularly New Yorky. The food was delicious and hearty if not challenging and delicate, and the cocktail menu with mead from upstate NY reflected that same dedication to solid, unfussy pub fare. I stepped inside only to check in with the hostess, so I can’t comment on the interior atmosphere, but I can say for sure that the patio will be one of my go-to places this summer.
New York, NY 10013 (map)