Global Fusion
July 14, 2009
- Cuisine: Global
- Vibe: Tavern chic
- Occasion: Group dinner; casual date; night out
- Don't Miss: DBGB dog, tuna crudo, lamb Tunisienne sausage, raspberry pistachio cake
- Price: Appetizers $11, entrees $18, dessert $9
- Reservations: Recommended
- Phone: (212) 933-5300
- Location: 299 Bowery., between Houston & First Sts.
The bar is loud and crowded - so crowded that on most nights, bar traffic spills out between the tables in the upfront dining area. The floors are cement, and the mirrored walls are covered in a collage of quotes.
Boulud's always been an uptown guy. He's got an uptown empire of French restaurants: Daniel, Café Boulud, DB Bistro Moderne and Bar Boulud. His newest one is way downtown on the Bowery, just above Houston St.
The
main dining room is furnished with long columns of booths and a
partially open kitchen, a lobster tank and wood shelves lined with
kitchen supplies à la the Bowery. The fanciest adornment is a
collection of copper pots given to
Boulud by famous chefs, including Ferran Abria and Mario Batali.
This is a very dressed-down Boulud. There are 24 beers on tap and 38 beers by the bottle. The only thing missing is a beer sommelier to guide you through the extensive selection. It's rare to find an Allagash on tap, but they've got one at DBGB. If you're not a beer drinker, it's the perfect starter beer. The Allagash Witbier, the white wine of beer, is a white wheat ale with hints of orange and spice.
DBGB has 13 kinds of sausages, three sundaes and three burgers on the menu, named the Piggie, the Frenchie and the Yankee. Boulud and his executive chef, Jim Leiken, have imagined a globally inspired selection of sausages, categorized by smoky, sweet, spicy and cheesy.
Order the Viennoise, and out comes a plump, pork sausage stuffed with Emmenthaler cheese and topped with a terrific, white wine-flavored sauerkraut on a bun.
Or the Espagnole, a meaty chorizo with piperade sauce and basil oil. I liked the Tunisienne, an aggressively spicy lamb merguez seasoned with harissa and mint and served over braised spinach and chickpeas.
My favorite is the DBGB dog, a beef wiener with squiggles of mustard and ketchup, sautéed onions and homemade relish, served in a homemade bun.
Forget the burgers, they're all overworked, especially the Piggie, clobbered by barbecue pulled pork, a mustard-vinegar slaw, and jalapeño mayonnaise toppings.
I didn't care for the country paté at Bar Boulud uptown and I don't care for the dry, chalky downtown version, either.
If
you've never eaten head cheese, this is the place to try it. I had a
wonderfully tender, pig's head terrine called the fromage de tête.
DBGB doesn't just serve hot dogs and burgers. There's also a bit of uptown Boulud on the menu, a little bistro, a little brasserie, with downtown prices. One of the best dishes on the menu is a $12 tuna crudo with radish, cucumber, harissa-sesame sauce, and tuna so fresh you can't distinguish between the bits of tuna and watermelon until they cross your tongue.
The skate au pistou - prepared with tarbais beans, niçoise olives, baby artichokes, yellow beans and pesto - is nearly as good.
For dessert, I loved the gâteau russe au framboise, French for cake layered with savory pistachio mousse and raspberry filling. You can also pig out on the coffee-caramel sundae sprinkled with brownie, chocolate cookie and candied pecans. Anyone hungry for a taste of Boulud should head to his kitchen on the Bowery.
February 3, 2009
Chinese cooking too clever for its own good.187 Orchard St., near Allen St.,
(212) 260-7900
Hours: Dinner, Mon.-Sat., 6 p.m.-11 p.m.
CUISINE: Global fusion
VIBE: Glossy hotel haunt
OCCASION: Group dinner, business dinner, date.
DON'T MISS DISH: Singapore slaw with salted plum dressing, turnip cake, chickpea sweet onion fritters.
AVERAGE PRICE: Appetizers, $16; entrees, $28; dessert, $10.
RESERVATIONS: Recommended.
I worry about new restaurants. Especially big, glossy ones with 130 seats to fill. I mean, who could've predicted such a frosty economy?
Opening a restaurant requires years of planning. Think of all the details that have to be settled — financial backers, designers, vendors, inspections, a liquor license and getting Con Edison to finally flip the switch.
I'm sure the Thompson Hotel Group had big plans when they first set their sights on the fashionable lower East Side. The Thompson Hotel and Shang — its restaurant — were still on the drawing board back when the Dow was over 10,000. But those days are gone, and you can feel it the moment you walk in the restaurant.
It feels like you're going back in time — oversized red banquettes, lacquered decor, bronze mesh chandeliers and the smell of money burning.
It just feels wrong.
Shang is a restaurant with an idea. The chef, Susan Lee, is cooking global Chinese, drawing his influences from some of the countries in which the Chinese have settled — India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, even Jamaica.
Lee has always tried to be different. In Toronto, he decided to serve entrees before appetizers, and in doing so, he made a name for himself.
The fact is, Lee is a really good cook who's too clever for his own good sometimes. You can see it in the jerk chicken. He takes a Jamaican dish, applies a French technique — roulade — and sprinkles in a few Chinese accents. The result, international warfare. Does the world really want to eat tiny jerk chicken rolls? It might if they tasted great, but these don't.
Too many dishes on this menu taste like cleverness. (Sometimes, after all, you just want to eat dinner.) And somehow, Lee's cleverness is always undermining the protein. The sauces, the condiments, the accompaniments can be tasty.
But if you order the slow-cooked pork belly, you don't expect the best thing on your plate to be the lily bulb and apple puree. I ordered the crispy-skinned chicken. I remember the sweet and sour onion marmalade beside it. Also, that the skin wasn't crispy.
Smoothness is a guiding principle at Shang for Lee and the diner. He's a master at it so order anything that sounds silky. Lee turns seafood into custard, cake into pudding.
One of the best things on the menu is a turnip cake with steamed eggplant, black bean sauce and shiitake mushrooms. The turnip cake tastes almost as doughy as gnocchi. It's also one of the more traditional Cantonese dishes on the menu. It made me wonder what Lee could do with straightforward Chinese cooking.
I was ready to hate the $16 Singapore slaw, especially after the server told me it had 19 ingredients. That could easily have been 17 too many. In fact, it was terrific. It had roasted hazelnuts, jicama, daikon, carrots, celery, onion seed sprouts, pansies, lotus root, fried shallots, etc., etc., etc. It was every desirable texture you could imagine in your mouth, plus a salted plum dressing.
The real inspiration of Shang is simple Chinese food and the way it's been adapted all the way around the globe. I'd go a long way for good, simple, Chinese food.
January 20, 2009
311 Church St., near Walker St.(212) 431-8750
Seven days, 5 p.m.-4 a.m.;
CUISINE Global fusion;
VIBE Exotic speakeasy;
OCCASION Swanky date, bar bites, festive group dinner;
DON'T MISS DISH Sticky rice-stuffed quail, Portu-guese-style shrimp with green sauce, trio of flans;
AVERAGE PRICE Appetizers $8, entrees $22, desserts $7;
RESERVATIONS Highly recommended.Macao Trading Company
At the moment, the most beautiful bar in New York may be the one at Macao Trading Co.. It's a grownup's bar - owned by grownups, staffed by grown-ups. But really, it feels like a bar for 8-year-olds. That's a good thing.
I suppose you could get a Grey Goose martini, dirty. But why, when you can drink Drunken Dragon's Milk or down a Bashful Maiden or be treated by Dr. Funk? After all, what's a bar for, if not to free you inner 8-year-old?
The bar resembles the Nike swoosh in mahogany. People sit at it, eying what looks like a mirrored cage full of magic potions, their drinks resting in pools of light cast by the stage lamps overhead.
The bartenders are wearing berets and ridiculous mustaches, like characters in some French cartoon. A second-floor gallery frames the room. It's a warehouse for fantastical junk, a balcony where people might eat if they were the size of elves.
You lean in, order a Lovee Long Time and suddenly you're onstage. And all of this is the very reason the bar at Macao is crowded with 8-year-olds every night of the week.
What does all of this have to do with the real Macao?
Absolutely nothing. Which is just about what the food has to do with the real Macao. In a way, the food is as fictional as the mood at the bar. The real Macao is a Chinese territory that was once ruled by the Portuguese.
But here, in Tribeca, instead of a fusion of Chinese and Portuguese food, there's an uneasy negotiation between the two cuisines.
According to the menu, you can order things Chinese-style or Portuguese-style. But whatever you do, don't think too hard about the meaning of "style." After all, how would you feel if you were served ribs "American-style"?
Bottom line: This is fictional food. Forget the Portuguese-style food - except for the prawns in green sauce. And if it has tomatoes? Skip it. There are musty-tasting tomatoes in the mackerel escabeche, sautéed black bass and the braised ribs.
What's left? There are the dishes with sticky rice - those are good. At first, this doesn't seem like the kind of place where you'd imagine yourself picking meat off of a fried quail. But the sticky rice-stuffed quail is worth it.
The Chinese pearl balls are just a fancy name for steamed pork rolled in really sticky rice. And you're safe with the chicken or the lobster dumplings. And the trio of flan - coffee, dulce de leche and vanilla.
A final food note: Do not order the ants climbing the tree.
The real mystery at Macao Trading Co. is the brains behind it. What were they thinking? The chef is David Walluck from Chanterelle. The management is the mustached gang from Employees Only. Surely, they know better. This is the problem with fictional food: The fact that you can dream it up doesn't mean anyone wants to eat it.
Eating at Macao Trading Co. makes you wonder what they're eating in the real Macao tonight.
