A Tiger In The Kitchen

Spasso: Where The Pasta's The Thing

On the fourth day of its official existence, this is not always what a New York restaurant looks like late on a weeknight: the bar and tables are jammed shoulder to shoulder with the hungry. The place is so overbooked with reservations that the only shot at a bite to eat is a more than hour-long wait for a seat at a woefully small counter in the back of the room.

What a difference a favorable pre-opening feature in the New York Times dining section weeks before a restaurant opens makes. Well, and the fact that the owner's beloved other restaurant, Choptank, has been closed for a spell no thanks to a flood, leaving its fans yearning.

Never able to resist checking out a restaurant in its infancy, however, we decided to stick it out at Spasso, a place that opened in the first days of January in the West Village. Restaurateur Bobby Werhane has earned some decent stripes with his Maryland-style seafood over at Choptank, after all. And Spasso's chef Craig Wallen himself has dished out some solid Italian at Convivio, L'Impero and Lupa in his previous lives.

A 60-minute wait? As some might say: Meh.

Ciano: A Night to Remember

The idea had been to have dinner, plain and simple.

No thinking about writing about the dishes as we're eating. No scribbling of notes. No blogging. This was a celebration, after all. There should be no room at the table for work of any sort.

But the moment our food started arriving, the game plan changed. Ciano, the much-anticipated new restaurant by Shea Gallante (who greatly impressed critics and diners at the now-shuttered Cru, where he earned three stars from The New York Times' Frank Bruni), pretty much had me at shrimp balls.

From my first nibble of rock shrimp polpette ($8 for five), the deliciously warm one-inch balls stuffed with big chunks of shrimp, I was hooked. Out came the paper and pen and off we were ...

Vino Rosina: The New Italian On The Block

 

Years ago, I found myself creeping along the quiet streets of a swath near Baltimore's Little Italy, squinting through the darkness as I tried to find Charleston, a restaurant that had been highly recommended.

Even though this roughly eight-block area was flanked by the perennially packed and fratty Fells Point on one side and the touristy Inner Harbor on the other at the time, its streets were still largely undeveloped in the late 1990s. Charleston, a Southern-inflected French restaurant, was an early adopter in the neighborhood and once we'd located it, we were glad we went. The meal was phenomenal and it was thrilling to be at a place that felt like it was on the cusp of something larger.

The husband and I recently returned to Baltimore for a short visit and decided to trek to Charleston to take a look at the place where we'd had one of the first romantic dinners of our courtship. The restaurant, helmed by the talented Cindy Wolf in the kitchen, is still there and hopping but the area around it has since become unrecognizable. Now named Harbor East, the area has sprouted gleaming condiminium, office and hotel buildings and has become as packed with restaurants, cafes and bars as its nearby neighborhoods. (You can check out a piece I wrote for the New York Times Travel section this past weekend on Harbor East here.)

Amid the current hubbub, a new little place caught our eye: Vino Rosina, a modern Italian restaurant in the Bagby Furniture Company Building, a historic red-brick structure that used to be a factory. Outside on the street, we could hear laughter wafting out along with the intoxicating smells of oven-roasted meats. So of course, we decided to step in and give the place a whirl ...

Lincoln: A Dazzler of A Show

It's been hard to ignore only the Most Significant Restaurant Opening in New York so far this year.

Since Jonathan Benno announced he would be leaving Per Se for Lincoln, an upscale Italian restaurant the Patina Restaurant Group was opening at Lincoln Center, the stories and blog items have been unceasing. Weeks before the restaurant opened late last month, the city's food Web sites were already aflutter with anticipation. Just days after it opened, food blogs were filled with photos of its eggplant parmesans and breathless accounts of transcendent meals there.

It's difficult to live up to such hype, but Benno, his crew and the beautifully sculpted setting, complete with a modern glass-walled kitchen in the heart of it all, they do it in spades.

Eataly (Il Pesce): A Mixed Bag Of Fish

Eataly can be a hard place for the hungry.

For starters, chaos rules the moment you set foot in the door of this cavernous Whole Foods-meets-tony-food-court Italian emporium in New York City that opened at the end of summer. Believe me, you'll need all the strength you can muster to bulldoze your way past the bodies before you can get at any food.

And while you're pressed up, body against body, there are the displays of cheeses, desserts, milk and coffee you'll be breezing past. You'll want to stop, of course -- but the mosh pit all around owns you. All you can do is cast longing glances, hoping for some private time with that fetching taleggio later in the evening perhaps, as the crowd carries you helplessly along.

Our destination on this particularly mobbed Saturday evening is Il Pesce, the fish restaurant within this 50,000 square foot-place that partner Mario Batali has famously billed as a "temple," where "food is more sacred than commerce."

Amid the sections where you can buy pasta, bread, cookbooks or stand around tall tables in a "tasting piazza" and nibble on cured meats, there are a few eateries devoted to specific categories -- vegetables, pasta, fish, meat. Our dining companion for the evening, the insatiable Gael Greene, has already eaten her way through a few of those places. "I was curious to try the fish restaurant ..." she says.

So, Il Pesce it is ...

Top 10: The Memorable Eats Of 2009

 

You know it's been a good year when you are able to say this: 2009 was when I began to eat for a living.

I'd always been a devotee of affairs of the stomach. I may have written about fashion and other lifestyle areas for a living but baking, braising, trying new recipes, eating out -- those were what consumed me when weekends rolled around. 

Luck has its ways of finding you, however. Now, on the precipice of 2010, I'm beginning to close out a lunar calendar year of cooking and eating with my family in Singapore as research for my book, "A Tiger In The Kitchen." 

My journey so far has taken me many places -- France, where I had the loveliest gingery champagne cocktail with friends old and dear; China, where my father and I went in search of my great-grandfather's footprints in the village of his birth. And, of course, Singapore, where my aunties and maternal grandmother have been plying me with meals, recipes and much, much love along the way.

With all that I've packed into 2009, it's hard to decide what the highlights have been. But, inspired by some stellar Top 10 gastronomic lists out there (definitely check out Sam Sifton's list of Top 11 dishes in New York in the New York Times), I decided to give it a go.

Here, in no particular order, are my 10 memorable eats of 2009. 

Enjoy, buon appetito and listen, let's do this again in 2010 ...

Panettone: The Seven-Day Bread

 

If you are among the people who believe that nothing says "The Holidays" like a festive loaf of panettone, let me just say this: You are mad.

This bread, it is evil.

It will drive you insane, make you tear your hair out. You may find yourself repeatedly staring intently at an unrising bowl of taupe glop, thinking, "Just, why, God, WHY?"

I mean this for the folks out there attempting to bake it, that is. (If you're the sort who buys panettone in a store then, sure, go for it. I'm sure that's pretty harmless.)

The problem I had here was holiday spirit.

Recently, I found myself so infused with the stuff that I decided to tackle panettone for the Bread Baker's Apprentice challenge. 

The 12-Hour Bolognese

I used to think Martha Stewart was high maintenance -- but that was before I encountered Heston Blumenthal.

Yes, the man -- chef/owner of the three Michelin-star Fat Duck in Bray, U.K. -- is a molecular gastronomy genius responsible for tongue-boggling dishes like powdered anjou pigeon and scrambled egg and bacon ice-cream.  

But let's take something like, say, bolognese, one of the most basic dishes in classic Italian cooking. It should be fairly easy to make ... well, except that this is Blumenthal we're talking about.

His bolognese recipe includes this instruction: "Cook for at least six hours." And this would be taking place after a good two hours or so of cooking and prep work.

By the time my Blumenthal bolognese was done, it was 4:30 a.m. and the ragu had taken a total of 12 hours to make. I was mad at my oven, my bolognese -- while also plotting a trip to Bray to give Blumenthal a piece of my mind.

But then I had my first spoonful of the ragu, a rich and muscular concoction that was beefy and hefty but also so, so, so sweet. Each morsel had just the slightest hint of licorice and the beef was so tender that I wondered if it was possible that I was actually feeling it melt on my tongue.

It was, in short, a joy to eat.

East Side Social Club: Not Quite Monkey Bar Lite

"Let's meet here," I had said, noting an Eater.com post that called the new East Side Social Club "a sleek sexy spot for the Monkey Bar rejects."

My "been everywhere" friend Bob's immediate response? "I never get rejected at the Monkey Bar."

Good point.

Even so, East Side Social Club held some intrigue. Opened by Billy Gilroy (owner of Macao and Employees Only), with celebrity photographer Patrick McMullen as an investor and Devon Gilroy, who's clocked time at Chanterelle and A Voce, helming the kitchen, the restaurant had generated plenty of buzz well before its doors officially opened last week.

The menu was designed to be Italian, with some modern American dishes with a locavore bent tossed in. And the cocktails, given Papa Gilroy's other establishments, promised to be interesting.

We had no big complaints about either, really -- the price and the ambience, however, were another matter altogether.

If you're expecting anything like the fashionable, genteel comfort of modern supper clubs like Graydon Carter's Monkey Bar, you're going to be a little disappointed.

Terzo Piano: Where Chicago Is The Art

Terzo Piano is a restaurant that literally makes your heart skip a beat the moment you walk in.

With its high ceilings, crisp, white furniture, spare decor and wall of glass windows providing a sweeping view of Chicago old and new, it's the embodiment and reflection of the city's stunning Mies van der Rohe-infused skyline.

On a clear day, when light is pouring in, sending angular shadows shooting across the pristine, gleaming furniture, the space is just breath-taking. This restaurant, which just opened in the Art Institute of Chicago's modern wing in May, truly does the city justice.

All of this, of course, combines to set some incredibly high expectations for the food itself.

But that, it turns out, is another story.