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.
AlwaysLateNight: The Candlelight Inn (Scarsdale, NY)
Katie Reisert — August 11, 2009
Restaurant: The Candlelight Inn (view map)
Address: 519 Central Park Avenue, Scarsdale NY
AlwaysHungry Grade: A-
AlwaysHungry Recommends: Buffalo Wings, Seasoned Waffle Fries
For more than fifty years, the tiny red house with a green roof on Scarsdale’s hectic Central Ave., has been home to one of Westchester’s most beloved resaurants.
The Candlelight Inn is infamous for a “no reservations” policy and long lines. But don’t let the name fool you, it’s little more than a biker bar with a small dinning room, a full bar and a dozen tables. The maître d’ is a clipboard nailed to the wall.
If you don’t order a basket of the famed wings, you’ve missed the point. They’re moist and meaty inside and are served swimming in sauce, but still have crispy exteriors. Instead of a pile of wings and drumsticks, The Candlelight’s wings remain connected— the joint broken, skin intact, supposedly to seal in moisture. Customers can choose between three sauces: teriyaki, barbecue and buffalo.
Buffalo wings at The Candlelight Inn, in Scarsdale, NY.
Barbecue sauce is sweet and mild, but with a tangy quality appropriate for wings. The buffalo sauce varies in intensity of heat. Options include: mild, hot, extra hot or the feared “Chernobyl.” Extra hot, while a delicious balance of flavor and heat, leaves many diners icing their lips. Customers are encouraged to mix the sauces as they please, take the recommended “hotiyaki,” a combination of hot buffalo and teriyaki sauces. It’s a good compromise. The Asian element makes the heat more bearable by delaying its onset, and the heat lends a spicy spin on the traditionally mild sweet and sour sauce.
OnlyLook: Lucy Browne’s
The Gluttoness — August 04, 2009
The “Big O’ Burger,” described as a “secret blend crusted with sweet shallot,” $12.00.
For a restaurant to be significant, for it to be “approved” and included in AlwaysHungryNY.com’s quality-controlled, Very Advanced Search Engine, it must first be thoroughly investigated. Lucy Browne’s (view site) came onto our radar when our friend, Josh Ozersky (aka The Feedbag), got involved in the transformation of the former Steak Frites space into a comfort food eatery with the creation of his signature “Big O’ Burger.”
Thanksgiving on a Roll, $13.50.
We’ll get to the burger in a moment. Let’s start by saying, that if we had only tasted the Thanksgiving on a Roll, our experience may have amounted to a FirstLook, a glimpse into a new AHNY-approved eatery. The soft Balthazar roll housed a well-proportioned mix of holiday staples: stuffing, gravy, juicy slabs of turkey, and an authoritative cranberry sauce speckled with fruity gems. The accompanying mountain of French fries were commendable as well, impressively crisp. Their presence was the only thing that ultimately saved our unsatisfied palates as we waded through the other dishes.
Continue reading about AlwaysHungryNY.com's first, and only look at Lucy Browne's. >>
AlwaysLearning: Regional BBQ Primer
The Hungry Goat — June 12, 2009
Hill Country’s Beef Ribs
In honor of the summer and all the BBQ we intend to eat this weekend at the Big Apple BBQ Block Party, we’ve compiled a BBQ primer for you that details many of the varied types found across the country, their cuts and traits, their typical sauces, sides, serving styles and cooking methods.
Most importantly, we have included the restaurants and dishes in New York where you can find many of these different preparation styles.
Featured Dish: Thai Nachos
The Gluttoness — June 04, 2009
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Rhong Tiam bills this dish as Thai Nachos but considering the composition, “Thai Chips and Salsa” is more like it. White and green shrimp chips surround a Coconut Dipping Sauce laced with minced bits of chicken and shrimp. The airy chips sizzle and soften when dipped— it sounds like a cross between Pop Rocks and the Snap, Crackle, Pop of Rice Krispies. It’s a curious but light and tasty summer appetizer.
Featured Dish: Mexican Radio’s Nachos
The Gluttoness — May 19, 2009
The CORE loves nachos, but there’s a fundamental issue of uneven topping distribution in most presentations we’ve come across. Most often, you’ll get a giant stack of tortilla chips with a healthy top layer of ingredients. But each ingredient rarely ends up together on every “chip, and after the first few bites clear away some of the toppings, you end up with a pile of naked tortilla chips underneath. You are lucky if a few straggling black beans manage to slip through the cracks.
Mexican Radio has figured out a solution, and the result is not only aesthetically impressive but profoundly flavorful. Individual tortilla chips are laid out much like slices of a pie, one next to the other in a circular composition around a pile of chopped lettuce and sliced, pickled jalapeños. Each chip is evenly coated with an adequate layer of melted cheese and warm black beans and the jalapeño slices in the center allow you to control the spiciness of each nacho. Decorative swirls of crèma and hot sauce create a bulls-eye presentation, which guarantees that each bite is perfect.
It’s difficult to imagine ever eating nachos any other way again.
AlwaysPartying: Cinco de Mayo Restaurant Crawl
The Gluttoness — May 04, 2009
Clockwise from left: Café Habana, Pinché Taqueria, Mexican Radio, La Esquina Taqueria
Tomorrow is Cinco de Mayo, the anniversary of the Mexican Army’s defeat of invading French forces at the Battle of Puebla, in 1862 (and Corona’s greatest marketing campaign ever). Rather than choose one spot to celebrate all night, AlwaysHungryNY suggests taking an AlwaysHungry Olympics approach to the holiday. We’ve created the route for an exemplary Mexican restaurant crawl, noting some of the best food and drink along the way. All you’ve got to do is throw on a sombrero and start building a base for your night of boozing.
AlwaysHungryNY: Yankee Stadium Fare
Arthur Bovino — April 22, 2009
Eating was fun at the old Stadium even when the best option was Premio Sweet Italian Sausage in tin foil, but now that the Bombers have relocated to grander digs with an expanded menu we were excited to see what was what. We passed on peanuts, crackerjacks and the delicious, double-feature popcorn smell wafting through the food courts to do a thorough tasting of each stand. Having seen foodie takes on ballpark food, we thought we’d do a baseball take on ballpark food.
So with the help of veteran Yankees announcer, John Sterling’s WCBS radio calls, we’ve included highlights, things to avoid and the best Stadium meal you can create.
Click here for Stadium home runs, doubleplays and our culinary batting order>> >>
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