AlwaysPartying: Superbowl Edition

Jeff Zalaznick — February 05, 2010

The spread.

Throwing a Superbowl party is something that must be done in style. Always Hungry style. The goal is to put together such an epic combination of food that your friends at the game wish they had stayed home. Normally this takes great meditation and planning, but if you stick with us, we will put it together for you. Follow these instructions and we guarantee that you will have the best Superbowl spread that any of your guests have ever seen.

Here is the move:

• New York’s best Buffalo Wings from Cercle Rouge
• Sloppy Joe Sandwiches from the Town Hall Deli
• A Bo Ssäm to-go from Momofuku Ssäm Bar
• And cook a Bacon Explosion just to ice the cake, and give the apartment that signature smell.

Click for an Always Hungry Spread >>

Best of 2009: A Few Dishes

December 22, 2009

A few of AlwaysHungry’s favorite dishes of 2009.

There is no question that a lot of eating has gone down this year. Rookies have introduced new favorites and standbys have reminded us that oldies can still be goodies. To celebrate the conclusion of the ninth year of the aughts, we’ve compiled a little photo tour of a few of our favorite dishes and organized them into nine of our favorite food groups.

Click Here for a few of AlwaysHungry's Favorite Dishes of 2009 >>

SEARCH: Flatscreens for Your Football

September 11, 2009

Cercle Rouge’s “Cercle Wings,” house special chicken wings.

Last night, the defending Superbowl champs, the Pittsburgh Steelers defeated the Tennessee Titans 13-10, marking the 2009 debut of NFL football. It also marked the beginning of an eating season filled with AlwaysHungryNY.com favorites like nachos, wings, and jalapeño poppers. There are plenty of places in New York City to eat great food and watch the game, including as we noted today about Tenzan, surprisingly enough, one where you can simultaneously eat good sushi. But when we think football season, we think Buffalo wings, and when we think wings, one restaurant in particular comes to mind: Cercle Rouge (restaurant page).

Hard as it may be to believe, this TriBeCa-based, classic French bistro scores a touchdown with their Cercle Wings. As we previously reported, Executive Chef Pierre Landet tweaks the traditional recipe by adding a few upscale touches, like “Frenching” the bone, but a final coating of Frank’s Red Hot harkens the original enough to satisfy purists.

While the wings at Cercle Rouge are certainly top-notch game day fare, the setting is probably not the rowdy bar space that you’re looking for. Not to worry, if a place with pitcher specials and a room with 14 HD TV’s (like at Southern Hospitality) is more your speed, we’ve got you covered.

Just go to AlwaysHungryNY.com’s Very Advanced Search Engine and select “Guys’ Night Out” from the What Occasion field and “Flat Screens Included” in the What Features field, to get a list of restaurants where you can take in the game.

AlwaysPartying: National Oyster Day

Arthur Bovino — August 05, 2009

It’s National Oyster Day and if there’s one thing we’re AlwaysHungry for it’s oysters. They’re tasty, great with drinks and they’re aphrodisiacs—what’s not to like? New York has had a connection with oysters that precedes colonialism (Mark Kurlansky’s book, The Big Oyster is a great account going back to the Hudson shell-middens of the Lenape Indians) and it continues to be a great place to eat oysters to this day. To celebrate, we compiled the ultimate oyster post so you can take an AlwaysHungryNY.com Olympics approach to this food holiday.

Below is a round-up of good restaurants with raw bars, a fried oyster round-up and a list of oyster happy hours. If you’re interested in some of the city’s notable oyster preparations check out AHNY’s Oyster Odyssey, a checklist of some of the city’s most significant oyster dishes.

Oysters on the Half Shell and Long Island Little Necks at The John Dory.

If you’re Downtown and want oysters with dinner, use the Very Advanced Search to generate a list of good restaurants with raw bars by selecting B+/A- and above, and Downtown from the “By Grade” and “Neighborhood” drop down menus, and Raw Bar in the expanded “By Features” blue box. Of course, you can do this for any neighborhood.

Before venturing out, a few words. First, we can be grateful the Kumomoto craze is over and every Tom, Dick and Harry has stopped saddling up to the bar wielding this word to impress dates. Second, Rowan Jacobsen’s The Oyster Guide is a great resource for learning about oysters in the States. Generally, East Coast oysters are more mild than West Coast ones. There are five categories of edible oysters.

Belons Salty with mineral finish. Indigenous to Europe. In US: Maine, California and Washington.
Eastern Salt, taste, texture vary. Canadian Maritime to Gulf of Mexico. Same type, regional names.
Pacific (Gigas) Sweet, slightly fruity and mineral. Available around the world.
Kumamoto Small, sweet, citrusy, often creamy. Originally from Japan. Also grown along West Coast.
Olympia Small, assertive flavor. Native to the Pacific Northwest.

CLICK HERE for AHNY’s list of GOOD DOWNTOWN RESTAURANTS WITH RAW BAR.

Pearl Oyster Bar’s fried oysters.

Fried Oysters. Crunchy. Juicy. Salty. Goodness with tartar sauce. Enter, “Fried Oysters” into AHNY’s Very Advanced Search to generate a round-up of some of the city’s best renditions.

CLICK HERE for AHNY’s FRIED OYSTER LIST.

OYSTER SPECIALS & HAPPY HOURS

Aquagrill:
Daily Happy Hour: 4pm-6pm, $1/Blue Point Oyster.
Cercle Rouge:
Sun-Thur: 4pm-7pm, $1.50/Oyster.
Ed’s Lobster Bar:
Tues: 5pm – Close, Sunday: 12pm-6pm, $2/Oyster.
Fishtail:
After 10pm, $1/Oyster.
Lure Fish Bar:
Mon-Fri: 5pm-7pm, $1/Oyster.
Shaffer City:
Daily Happy Hour: 4pm-8pm, $1.50/Oyster. Includes one type from each coast.
The John Dory:
Daily, 3pm—5pm $25/Dozen Oysters and Glass of Cava or a Half-Pint.

Dish of the Week: Cercle Rouge’s Chicken Wings

February 23, 2009

It meant mustering all our self-restraint, but we needed to make sure we could get our Superbowl party catered—so for selfish reasons we couldn’t drop this bombshell on you earlier: Cercle Rouge, a classic French bistro in TriBeCa, makes New York City’s best Buffalo wings.

“A French bistro?”

We know, we hear you. It sounds like heresy. But it’s true. Here’s why.

You know how it is when you’re eating the average wing, you get that first good bite from the center then you immediately face two problems: 1) getting at those strings of meat between the two bones in the middle of the wing, and 2) distinguishing the meat at the tip of the wing from that unpleasant bit of cartilage you inevitably bite into.

Cercle Rouge’s wings eliminate both of these problems. Executive Chef Pierre Landet starts with the same center portion of the chicken wing traditionally used. He removes one of the two center bones and pulls up all the meat towards one end. He then “Frenches” the bone—scraping all the meat from the bone so that it’s clean.

The result is genius—classic French technique applied to barfood. You get all the meat in one or two bites and there’s no cartilage to worry about.

It is important to note a few things. There are a few additional touches like the dainty celery shavings that adorn the wings. Traditional Buffalo wings aren’t dressed in egg-wash and breadcrumbs before being fried. Chef Landet does apply this classic, French “a l’anglaise” technique because it adds a perfectly delicate crispy-crunch that you don’t get with most wings. Because the meat is broken apart in preparation, the breadcrumb-coating keeps the meat together when it’s fried.

Traditional ingredients for the dipping sauce are also tweaked. Customary dipping sauces include mayonnaise, milk and onion powder, while Chef Landet uses a luscious combination of blue cheese, sour cream, sherry vinegar, salt, pepper and chives. But they don’t make the mistake of trying to make it taste too fancy – the wings are coated in Frank’s Red Hot, offering that conventional Buffalo flavor.

The result is a chicken wing that has received all of the TLC that it deserves and is better for it in every way. The extra work, however, is reflected in the price: $10 for 4 wings, but for the best of the best, it’s undoubtedly worth it.

You’re welcome.