Restaurant_Reviews

11/04/2012 48 Hours of Food–Atlanta, Georgia by Nate

——————————————————————————————Tuesday Dinner: Empire State South——————————————————————————————

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Ever since receiving Hugh Acheson’s cookbook, A New Turn in the South, a couple of months back as a gift, the thought of heading down to Georgia to experience one of his restaurants has been fresh in my mind. Luckily, one of my closest childhood friends, Matt Lipkins, is a musician whose band, The Shadowboxers is based in Atlanta, and Chef Acheson opened his newest restaurant, Empire State South downtown in that very city. Hugh Acheson is known for his modern approach to Southern Cuisine, using French and Italian culinary technique and applying it to the local ingredients and traditions. ESS is no different. We kicked it off with a rye based cocktail, a spiced up Sazerac, mixed with Aperol, orange bitters, antica and sugar, and an impeccable Charcuterie plate, possibly the best part of the meal. Five meats — bologna, terrine and a chicken liver pate in a small ball jar — accompanied by freshly baked bread, three homemade mustards and an assortment of pickled veggies. The waitress picked the rest, sending a plethora of small plates: Farm Egg w/ Crispy Rice & Bologna (pictured above), Prime Steak Tartare (pictured below), Crisp Pork Belly, Crisp Sweetbreads, Octopus & Pork Sausages, Foie Gras Ravioli, and a light Vegetable dish to cap it off. The food was paired with a gin cocktail w/ rosewater, and two Uinta Wylde Pale Ale’s, both fantastic for the heavy food we were ingesting. For dessert, we got a taste of the “Not Carrot Cake” made with Parsnip, instead of carrot, and two perfect double espressos to sober us up for the evening’s rehearsal. The Shadowboxers were gearing up to play a big show on the final day of my trip, and I was content be a spectator.

I must give a shout out to Jarrett Stieber, ESS’s brilliant butcher, whose hospitality and charcuterie plate were unprecedented. Thank you for showing us what Atlanta food is all about. Hotlanta, as it’s called may not be know for its food, but this was a spectacular start of two days saturated with innovative Southern cuisine.

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10/10/2012 Déjeuner et Dîner à Paris by WK

Déjeuner à Merci:
By Sanaë

We are in the Marais, but not in the narrow, lively streets where falafel restaurants and small boutiques attract Parisians and tourists alike. Instead, Merci is off the wide Boulevard Beaumarchais, on a fairly quiet and sober stretch of the street. But step inside Merci and you’re entering another world: there’s a used bookstore at the front with a café, and at the end of the cobblestone pathway you’ll enter the luminous store, designed as a loft. The ground floor boutique sells designer clothes, perfumes, jewelry and shoes. Upstairs you can find furniture and Muji-style materials — bedding sheets, tablecloths, and napkins — and a beautiful selection of Japanese notebooks. True, you’ll come across expensive waxed paper bags for sale, and sophisticated teapots for sixty euros, but there are also a few good finds, and I like to peruse the store for unusual gifts, such as portable, flexible vases, or notepads made of envelopes. The basement is my favorite place though, with the Merci Cantine, open for lunch from noon to 3pm. The restaurant looks onto a small green garden where Merci grows many of its herbs. There are wooden crates filled with vegetables and fruits. The menu is written in chalk on a blackboard. Most of the ingredients are organic.

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09/04/2012 The Kitchen Sink — Le Chateaubriand by Nate

Enjoy the Serge while you read…

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Last nights in Paris are tough. There is something about the city’s energy, its history, its sights and smells that make it impossible to leave. To soften the blow, last nights in Paris are overtaken by the consumption of delicious and innovative French Food. Last year was Le Verre Volé, a restaurant in a wine store serving up gentrified provincial cuisine–for this occasion Sanaë and I finished a bottle of Vouvray together. This year it was Paris’ newest “bobo” bistro in the 10th Arrondissement, Inaki Aizpitarte’s Le Chateaubriand, a chef and his restaurant stacked with all the hype the world can offer. Maybe by oblivion or sheer naivete, I was unaware that Le Chateaubriand, was just ranked #15 in the WORLD on San Pelligrino’s list of top 50. Without preconceived notions of perfection, Le Chateaubriand’s 60€, mercurial prix fixe exceeded our expectations and awoke the magic that emanates from Paris’ cobblestone streets on last nights.

Yes, we were exhausted from a day of travel from the South; yes, it was a bit too hot inside despite the cool air outside; yes the wine arrived a bit too late, and yes the clientele was a bit over the top. But these were only blips in a two hour, 5 course meal filled with warm service, chilled watermelon soup and mint ice cream, funky whites and juicy reds, and proteins from the land and the sea.

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07/30/2012 Postcards from Paris — Soya Restaurant by WK

Soya: A Restaurant Review by Sarah Sahel

In a hidden street behind the canal Saint-Martin, signs indicate the imagined past lives of printing shops and ceramic manufacturers. Haussmanian façades contrast with balconies from the 1960s. A truck is parked in the middle of the road, delivering spare parts to the Germanic producer “Kurz.” It stands in the way of lost drivers who accidentally turned right on the rue de la Fontaine au Roi. Two boys chase one another on small bicycles, electing the street as their playground. The sky is heavy with dark clouds, and despite the early summer, rain is forecast for the afternoon. If the neighbourhood is lively, made of colourful bookshops and little cafés, the rue de la Pierre Levée (“street of the rising stone”, a rather unusual name for quite a common setting) remains calm with very few pedestrians. Yet, those who come here have been initiated into the pleasant world of Soya, an organic vegetarian restaurant hidden behind a black front and large picture windows.

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06/30/2012 An Island Oasis: La Bombonera by Nate

A couple months back, we took a trip to Puerto Rico. Before our departure, we got a book, a Lonely Planet guide to spark our culinary adventures on this Caribbean island just shy of the Dominican Republic. We had three days to explore and what we found was comida frita, or fried food, and we found it everywhere. Fried cheese, fried yucca, fried plantains, fried fish, fried dough, fried eggs and re-fried beans graced us with their presence multiple times over a three-day span. While some of the traditional dishes were pleasing, like mofongo and salted cod, they also left the stomach with something to be desired. There was the soggy and cold Puerto Rican breakfast we searched for on day one (and recommended by Lonely Planet,) there was the lunch at Luquillo Beach, consisting the cheapest smorgasbord of fried food $20 could buy (we had left our wallets in lockers) and the overpriced, lumpy and tasteless Italian meal we had near the strip of casinos. Then on the last day, we found exactly what we had been yearning for: Pan de Mallorca—an age old Puerto Rican treat, accompanied perfectly with a café con leche—and we found this local delicacy at an age old establishment called La Bombonera in Old San Juan.

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04/18/2012 Old Man Bars–Top Eleven by WK

11 Old Man Bars Worth Frequenting in Lower Manhattan and the BK
by Matt Gallagher

Why so glum, chum? World getting you down? Sometimes, a person just needs to be alone with their thoughts, a pint, and a grumpy, leather-faced bartender that is completely disinterested in customer relations. The much-venerated Old Man Bar offers just such an escape from existence – and, contrary to popular opinion, you don’t need to be an old man to frequent one. Just leave the noise, energy, and fist pumping at the door. No need to rile the natives.

At first glance, New York City, a wonderland of clubby indulgence, would seem the antithesis for the Old Man Bar-proponent. Where’s the peace and the quiet, the sawdust and the space? After careful and diligent research on the matter, I can assure the reader that such is not the case. The Old Man Bar not only lives, it thrives on the streets of Gotham. Here are 11 Old Man Bars worth frequenting in Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn. (Limited to those regions to keep this list manageable. And because the Seventh Circle of Hell, also known as Murray Hill, is somewhere up there. Real talk.)

Some quick guidance for the uninitiated: Old Man Bars are best visited between the hours of noon and 5pm, Monday through Thursday. Happy Hour crowds and weekend rovers ruin everything. Also, general protocol calls for monotone chatting about surface topics – the weather, the score of the game, that sort of thing. No drama-rama, no prattling, and especially no Lady Gaga karaoke.

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