Featured Brunch: Locanda Verde
Maryse Chevrière — June 25, 2010
Clockwise from top: “Scampi and Grits,” Bloody Mary della Casa, Housemade Sausage.
Well-deserved praise has been bestowed upon Locanda Verde’s breakfast and pastries. And while many of the stars—Lemon Ricotta Pancakes, Hazelnut-crusted French Toast, and a Blueberry Cake Doughnut—are on the brunch menu, there’s reason to stray towards savory items. Open with a Bloody Mary Della Casa— smooth, not spicy, and served with a hot Italian pepper and a cube of mortadella.
“Scampi and Grits,” a Southern classic reinterpreted through an Italian lens, is an absolute must-order. There are small rock shrimp, so tender and delicate they break the way an orange vesicle does. They’re mixed with nubs of sausage in a tomato sauce that is more sweet than savory. It’s wonderful over the not too coarsely textured polenta and mixed with the yolk from two coddled eggs. You wonder about the possibilities of this sauce tossed with any of the restaurant’s excellent pastas.
Featured Cocktail: Locanda Verde’s Spring Cocktails
Maryse Chevrière — March 11, 2010
“Our Pimm’s Cup” from Locanda Verde.
As reported, Locanda Verde recently introduced a series of new cocktails from Bobo mixologist Naren Young. Just what we needed, another good reason to crowd the bar at this TriBeCa hotspot.
Of the four cocktails currently available, “Our Pimm’s Cup” came highly recommended, and did not disappoint. It might sound simple— Hendrick’s, Ramazzotti, and Pimm’s No.1, charged with Fentiman’s Ginger Beer— but you have to appreciate a simple cocktail done well. It is not as bitter as some renditions, and so it certainly goes down smoothly. And yet it retains an edge. It has an attractive iced tea-like coloring and is similarly refreshing. A great drink to usher in the spring.
The Settanta Cinque.
Another, the “Settanta Cinque,” is their Italian interpretation of the classic French 75. It features citrus grappa, Strega liquori, fresh lemon, and Prosecco— a bright, springy, lady-friendly drink with tight bubbles, and a subtle tartness. Forget mimosas, this should be the new go-to brunch cocktail.
AlwaysInformed: Where to Eat the 10-Most Googled Recipes
January 19, 2010
Yesterday, Serious Eats posted a link to Restaurant & Institution’s Top 10 Most-Googled Recipes of 2009. Cooking at home for yourself or for friends can be a lot of fun, but you can also participate in the trend by tasting these popular dishes at these great New York restaurants.
1) Chili
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From Wildwood Barbecue: Jailhouse Chili.
Click here to view pictures of the 10 most-Googled dishes >>
Always Hungry: The Restaurant List
Jeff Zalaznick — January 05, 2010
Dishes from The Always Hungry Restaurant List.
If I had to choose, what restaurants would I take with me into 2010? Off the top of my head, what places do I know that I will choose to return to in the coming year? These are the questions that I asked myself as I thought about this year’s restaurant list. As I made the list, I have made sure that it not only reflects what restaurants to go to, but that it also lets you know exactly what to eat when you get there. As always, our goal is to arm readers with the information that they will need in order to have the best eating experiences possible. This list is a guide to a slice of the Always Hungry life. It is a roundup that will help you unleash your inner fat kid to the fullest in the New Year. If you have not tasted all of the dishes mentioned below, then you have a lot of work to do, but if you start now, you have a whole year to make it happen. So, without further ado, I present The Always Hungry Restaurant List: A Strategic Guide To New York Eating. Keep this close in 2010, and it will ensure that you Never Eat An Insignificant Meal Again.
Best of 2009: Trends and 2010 Predictions
Jeff Zalaznick — December 23, 2009
It’s that time of year again. Time for reflection and prediction. As we leave the aughts behind, we look back at the trends that changed New York City’s food landscape in 2009 and ponder what’s in store for 2010. We are going to take a positive spin: those that we hope will remain and those we eagerly anticipate.
TRENDS 2009
1. Best Steaks, Not From a Steakhouse New York has always been known for our steakhouses, but this year the best meat was ripped from the house’s hands and put into the control of some of the city’s best restaurants. Much of this loosened grip has to do with the all-star quality and distribution ability of Pat LaFrieda (watch video). Though I love me a Porterhouse at Peter Luger’s, a Rib-eye at Strip House and a Double Eagle Strip at Del Frisco’s, they have been surpassed by the Côte de Boeuf at Minetta Tavern, the Rib-eye for Two at Locanda Verde, the Strip at Marea. The list goes on and on. It was also the year that the bone in rib-eye finally rose up to overtake the porterhouse as King of all Steaks. It was only a matter of time. This is a major advancement across the board.
2. Haute Dogs The hot dog went gourmet and I am not complaining. Crif Dogs has been doing impressive things with the genre for a while now (though their new usage of “everything bagel spice” is very exciting), but restaurants like DBGB, Fatty Crab UWS and Cabrito are jumping into the mix with some seriously delicious contenders. This is one that I think will continue to grow in the next year.
3. Omnipresent Octopus Seriously, think about every restaurant you’ve visited lately and ask yourself if there was octopus on the menu. I guarantee that more often than not, no matter the cuisine or price-range, this cephalopod was probably present. And why not? It’s economical to serve, and recently, the average rendition is fabulous. I am so happy that chefs have finally learned how to prepare it so well, leaving the chewy childhood memories behind. Also, keep an eye out for sweetbreads, I think that they are starting to fall into the same category.
PREDICTIONS 2010
1. Artisanal Italian beer everywhere.
2. Large-format alternative (not steak or chicken) proteins for two.
3. Lamb belly becomes the new pork belly.
4. Italian Small Plate (aka “Stuzzichini”) Restaurants
5. Brain is the hot new Offal
6. Mexican Infusion: Fusion Cuisine and Sandwich Revolution.
Best of 2009: New Restaurants
December 21, 2009
By row, left to right: Locanda Verde’s Chicken for Two, Marea’s Spaghetti with Crab & Uni, and The Breslin’s Thrice Cooked Chips. 2nd Row: The Standard Grill’s Rock Shrimp & Iberico Hash, Minetta Tavern’s Côte de Boeuf, and DBGB’s Yankee Burger. 3rd Row: Kesté‘s Pomodorini e Provola Pizza, Fatty Crab’s Fatty Sliders, and Vinegar Hill House’s Red Wattle Pork Chop.
Here are our picks for the nine best new restaurants to enter the New York food landscape in 2009. If you want to know what to eat when you get there, go to the restaurant pages for AlwaysHungry’s recommended dishes.
BEST NEW RESTAURANTS OF 2009
1. Marea. Michael White is king. The Octopus & Bone Marrow Pasta says it all.
2. Locanda Verde. The valiant return of Andrew Carmellini. Incredible vibe for any occasion.
3. Minetta Tavern. McNally’s greatest hit. Proving supercool can taste good too.
4. The Breslin Bar & Dining Room. A new scene for the food scene. French Fries. Late nights.
5. DBGB Kitchen & Bar. Something for everyone. Great space. Great sausages.
6. Vinegar Hill House. Re-invinegarated a neighborhood with the Red Wattle Pork Chop.
7. Kesté Pizza & Vino. The best of the new artisanal pizza contenders.
8. Fatty Crab UWS. Taking a risk with heat, spice and fat on the UWS.
9. The Standard Grill. Without a doubt, the best party in town.
AlwaysHungry: New York’s Great Bread Baskets
The Gluttoness — November 02, 2009
Complimentary bread basket at Bar Americain.
Complimentary bread baskets are a beautiful thing, they’re the reason why AlwaysHungryNY.com has a Worth-It Bread option in its Advanced Search Engine. After all, who doesn’t love free stuff? Well actually, Frank Bruni for one. Remember?
“If restaurateurs charged for bread, might those of us who hanker for bread on a given night end up with better bread as a result of the restaurant being able to treat it — and, indeed, being forced to treat it — like any other menu item?”
Maybe. But charging for bread could just as easily mean diners would be paying for the same mediocre bread baskets that used to be free. Regardless, the restaurants featured below already serve some of the best bread in New York City. A warm, fresh French baguette is a simple delight, but these baskets go above and beyond the call of carbohydrate duty. BLT Prime’s steamy, sea-salted popovers are inspiration in themselves to have a steak dinner whether or not you’re in the mood. And while Del Posto and Commerce operate out of disproportionately sized kitchens, both serve some of the best bread in town. We won’t even go into the famed lardo that Del Posto serves with theirs.
From tomato-dressed focaccia to buttered buns and French gougères, the bread baskets in the slideshow below really made it difficult to exhibit self control. Whether the bread was assorted, as at Bar Americain or purely in the style of the restaurant’s cuisine, as at Beyoglu, each basket was delicious in its own right—although they all tasted even better since they were on the house.
Go ahead, ask for seconds. We won’t tell.
AlwaysNYCWFF: Meatball Madness, Carmellini Wins!
GutterGourmet — October 12, 2009
Top, Locanda Verde’s winning Lamb Meatball Sliders. Bottom left, Judges Gail Simmons, Frank Bruni, and Jeffrey Steingarten. Right, from left to right, Pat LaFreida; Meatball Madness winner, Andrew Carmellini; Giada De Laurentiis and Mark Pastore.
I always loved, as a child, the ending of the song ‘On Top Of Spaghetti’ when the mushed meatball turns into a beautiful meatball tree in the garden. Sunday night, that childhood dream became a reality in The Terminal Stores la. Venue, the site of Meatball Madness debuting at the New York Wine & Food Festival and hosted by the beautiful Giada. The meatball has never received the equal respect with the burger that it so rightly deserves, but this event may have helped to even the score. Andrew Carmellini was victorious with Locanda Verde’s lamb meatball, which I have to agree with judges Frank Bruni, Jeffrey Steingarten and Gail Simmons, are incredible.
AlwaysInformed: Meatball Madness Preview
Arthur Bovino — October 08, 2009
Meatball Sliders at The Little Owl.
It’s finally here this weekend: New York City Wine & Food Festival’s Meatball Madness hosted by Giada De Laurentiis. The GutterGourmet has been waiting for this moment for months. He’ll be at the event covering it for us on Sunday. To bone up:
-To learn about participants, visit relevant sites and AlwaysHungryNY.com’s restaurant pages below.
-For great meatball pictures, revisit our Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs roundup.
-For who else it might have been interesting to see compete and in which categories, read the Meatball Madness preview that GutterGourmet wrote after Meatball Melee of the Boroughs.
AlwaysInvestigating: Frying Fowl
The Gluttoness — October 08, 2009
Devi’s Masala Fried Quail with Spicy Indian Slaw and Calcutta Mustard Potato Salad.
The round-ups have been done and The Times did their fried chicken cover, so the trend is officially over. We still love large format fried chicken dinners at Locanda Verde and Momofuku Noodle Bar, and believe that new birds deserve recognition, but since we reported on Momofuku’s Ko-style chicken dinner reservation system and how delicious a deal it is, we haven’t seen any green checkmarks. So it’s time to focus on restaurants like Devi (view) and Park Avenue Autumn (view), which have turned fried chicken preparations to a different fowl: quail. While small, these birds fry up with lots of flavor.
AlwaysInformed: The Losses and Gains of Summer ‘09
The Hungry Goat — September 15, 2009
Dubbed by some as the Summer of Death, the 2009 summer season has certainly experienced its fair share of losses. Joining the dearly departed of the celebrity world are several beloved and well-respected, recently shuttered New York City restaurants. In their honor, AlwaysHungryNY.com has compiled a list of the dishes we’ll miss and why miss them. Of course, where something is lost there’s generally something gained. So with that in mind we included and annotated our favorite new crave-worthy dishes from restaurants that opened during the summer.
What We Lost
Clockwise from top: The John Dory’s Hangtown Fry, French Fries, and Oyster Pan Roast.
Restaurant: The John Dory, closed 8/29/09
The Hangtown Fry “The John Dory’s rendition has to rank up there with the city’s best egg dishes. Eggs are creamy. Bacon is substituted with a thick prosciutto that has the texture of tender corned beef. Slices of pickled jalapeño add bursts of a light vinegary flavor and heat also spread throughout the dish. The oysters are only slightly cooked. The pooled flavors lining the plate’s bottom when you finish are worth wiping up with the delicious Parker House rolls.” (read more)
Oyster Pan Roast & French Fries “Plump, warm, bathed in cream, I needn’t more than a bite to know this classic would be my favorite dish at The John Dory. A perfect bite is to dip a fry in the oyster pan roast. Incidentally, if crisp is an overused word by food writers, this is its definition.” (read more)
AlwaysInvestigating: Tasting Salumeria Rosi’s Porchetta
The Gluttoness — June 18, 2009
I immediately knew Cesare Casella’s Porchetta was special when I tasted it at last week’s Street & Savory event. As if his array of branded, Italian charcuterie didn’t make it obvious enough that he’s passionate about his pork you might get the idea from the 500-pound Stonewall crossbreed hog that he developed in partnership with The Center for Discovery, a charitable organization with a farm in upstate New York. Turns out Cesare has more than one porchetta up his sleeve. His salami-centric restaurant, Salumeria Rosi, actually serves three variations of roasted pork.
Continue reading AlwaysHungryNY.com's tasting of Salumeria Rosi's three versions of Porchetta >>
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