Featured Brunch: New York’s Hangover Dishes

Arthur Bovino — August 20, 2010

Hangover Pasta at Resto.

Hangovers cures are like hiccup cures— everyone has a theory about what works best. If you read the online, ah-hem, literature about what constitutes the best hangover cures you find all kinds of baloney:

Eat bananas. Peanut butter! No, prickly pear juice! Coconut water. Drink coffee. Don’t drink coffee! If you do drink coffee, drink a lot of water! Eat fried foods! But only before, not after. Have a little hair of the dog. Try a Prairie Oyster. Stop, drinking again is the worst thing to do— it causes alcohol dependency. Eat burned toast. No, drink sports drinks! Take Advil. Don’t take Advil! It will explode your liver. Take aspirin. B-6. B-12. Rosiglitazone. No, Berocca. Hey, I heard that American Indians claim that eating six raw almonds before imbibing helps prevent intoxication. Really? My friend said that eating peanut butter beforehand is an African remedy. Exercise. Sex. Sleep. No, don’t sleep!

Sshhh. Don’t scream— makes it worse. Some of these ‘cures’ sounds like torture. Exercise? Burned toast? Not sure about the last time you went on a bender, but likely you weren’t planning enough to eat almonds, or have Rosiglitazone. Recovery is about water, and what works for you.

For many, food is the best cure— something to make you feel better, placebo or not. So, it’s no surprise there are more than 40 dishes on New York brunch menus that include ‘hangover’ in name or description. There are boring ones— juices, egg platters— but intriguing ones too. Given that the last thing you want to do hungover is read gobs of text, here’s a list of interesting hangover brunch dishes.

New York's hangover dishes >>

AlwaysPartying: Cures for St. Paddy’s Day Hangover

Arthur Bovino — March 18, 2010

ENGOV is an over-the-counter hangover cure that you may have wanted to get ahead of time.

Is it normal that your head is still spinning when you close your eyes? Probably not. If after last night’s revelry, you actually feel like eating today, there are solutions for getting over your St. Paddy’s Day hangover. The first one you might have needed to plan out a bit, it involves a lesser known, over-the-counter hangover pill that can be snagged in at least one spot in Queens.

Nobody here is a doctor, but ENGOV has been known to clear the cobwebs if not quite get you from 0 to 60. It’s a Brazilian thing. A Brazilian hangover cure for an Irish-themed holiday? Why not— given that Brazilians know how to party, they should know how to lessen the pain. Down there, when people know they’re going to get ripped, they stop into a local farmácia to buy packets of these pills whose ingredients (aluminum hydroxide, caffeine, acetylsalicylic, and pyrilamine maleate) can be found in antacids, aspirin, and antihistamines. You’re meant to take one before your first drink and another after the last. But, you can also just take two the next day.

It may just be a placebo, but for future reference, you can find ENGOV at Rio Bonito in Astoria (32-15 36th Ave), the Brazilian Market that was the site of New York’s first pizza cone sightings before K! Pizzacone came to town. If you’re not into pill-popping, there are some food cures…

Food Hangover Cures >>

AlwaysInvestigating: Hangover Cures

The Hungry Goat — October 16, 2009

Left, Resto’s Belgian Hangover Pasta. Right, Chef Sebastiaan’s Hangover Cure from Bar Blanc Bistro.

Unless you’re an 18-year-old college frat boy, chances are you don’t go out drinking with the intention of getting a massive hangover the next morning. However, in honor of Fergus Henderson’s hangover brunch at The Breslin tomorrow (part of FergusStock ’09), we thought it appropriate to do exactly that. The goal? To see whether Resto’s Belgian Hangover Pasta and Chef Sebastiaan’s Hangover Cure at Bar Blanc Bistro could actually deliver on curing a hangover. A friend’s birthday dinner on a recent Saturday night was the perfect set-up for putting these dishes to the test.

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AlwaysLearning: Umeboshi

The Gluttoness — September 16, 2009

Umeboshi at Soba-Ya. Pickled Sour Plum ($6.75).

Intensely tart and salty fruits, Umeboshi aren’t your average pickles.

What it is: Umeboshi are pickled ume fruits. While they are closer in relation to apricots, ume fruits are typically referred to as Japanese plums. Once pickled, the round, wrinkled fruits are both sour and salty. They can be eaten alone as a side dish, but are more commonly enjoyed in small quantities with rice or stuffed inside of rice balls (onigiri) or sushi. Umeboshi is most commonly puréed (bainiku) and served as a paste to be used as seasoning.

How it’s made: Ume fruits are picked before they are ripe, and then soaked in brine. Red shiso leaves are used in the pickling process to impart a pink coloration. The resulting pickled fruit is extremely sour and salty due to a high quantity of citric acid, which is believed to fight bacteria, aid digestion and ward off fatigue.

Where it’s from: Umeboshi is most common in Japan. The town of Minabe, in Japan’s Wakayama region, in particular, supposedly grows and produces more ume and umeboshi than any other town in Japan. Manufactured umeboshi can be found in Asian (and some gourmet) markets and on Japanese menus around the world. Because of its perceived health benefits, umeboshi is said to be the standard Japanese folk remedy for colds and flus (it’s also said to be a good cure for hangovers).

Where to get it in New York: We found umeboshi on the menu at Sakagura and Soba-ya. Soba-ya serves it as an appetizer, Pickled Sour Plum ($6.75). The three wrinkly plums were more orange than pink and their soft skin gave way to moist, juicy fruit that had a stewed texture. As soon as the fruit hits your tongue, the intense flavors immediately cloud the palate. It’s as salty as seawater, with an immensely sour aftertaste that makes your mouth salivate like a Warhead Sour Candy with a subtle fruitiness coming through in the aftertaste. It makes you understand why this Japanese specialty is best accompanied with rice. Not only does the starch help soften the insane tang, but the grittier texture would compliment the mushiness of the pickled flesh.

AlwaysHungryNY: Bouley Market’s Croque Monsieur

The Gluttoness — May 15, 2009

It’s early in the morning, you’re starving, and you want something substantial to eat on-the-go before you settle in at the office. It’s a toss up between your staple bagel and cream cheese or a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich to comfort you after last night’s extra drink. If you’re nearby Bouley Market in TriBeCa, you have the luxury of forgoing your usual breakfast for the sensational: a handheld Croque Monsieur. This hot ham and cheese sandwich is said to have been devised as a French fast food snack, but richer executions with Mornay or béchamel toppings have rendered the convenient, unwieldy. Bouley Market has reclaimed the portability and preserved the decadence.

Rather than coating the sandwich in sauce, two thick-cut slices of Bouley’s homemade white bread are soaked in béchamel and joined with a thin layer of ham between them. The soaking creates a consistency like moist, savory French Toast. While it’s cooked, the sandwich becomes covered in a bubbled, overflowing layer of melted Gruyère cheese. At room temperature, the congealed cheese coating reinforces the sandwich’s approximate English translation, “Mister Crunch.” Even without egg, it’s a great breakfast sandwich.

While eating a Croque Monsieur on the run may give you a stomach ache, the price won’t. It rings up at the register at a very reasonable $3.52.

AlwaysInformed: Bacon Scientifically Cures Hangovers

April 23, 2009

It’s no secret that a warm Bacon, Egg & Cheese sandwich is many people’s go-to fix for a hangover, but why? A team of researchers at Newcastle’s University Centre Life decided to investigate this correlation. They found that food, in general, helps cure hangovers because it speeds up the metabolism so that the body can quickly rid itself of the alcohol. Is this the greatest scientific discovery ever, or what?

But, bacon, in particular, has a scientifically special place in the hearts of the hungover. This is because “a complex chemical interaction in the cooking of bacon produces the winning combination of taste and smell which is almost irresistible”—even to vegetarians! It’s the “reaction between amino acids in the bacon and reducing sugars in the fat [that] provides the sandwich with its appeal.” So the next time you crawl out of bed and head for the deli, you might be better off heading to the kitchen, since the smell of sizzling bacon is almost as therapeutic to your headache as the indulgent ingestion of the crispy swine. Either way, sounds like science is simply proving something us Hungry Hippos have known, and practiced, for an awfully long time.