Tag: food

Best NYC Restaurants

As the population of New York continues to diversify, the city will only become a happier place when there’s a deeper bench of honest, uncompromising, and non-exorbitant places to eat. Take Llama San. It serves as proof that an excellent Peruvian-Japanese restaurant can book up just as far out as a classical fine dining temple. Or consider Haenyeo, a packed French-Korean spot that’s packed on any given night thanks to a Mexican-Korean rice cake fundido. And for those craving the meaty, milky cuisine of Italy’s Emilia-Romagna, Rezdora is happy to take your name for an 23:30 seating.

Meatless New World Mall

Standout dishes that are vegan, vegetarian, or pescatarian.

  • Dae Jang Guem: King Trumpet Mushroom skewers (vegan)
  • Sichuan Cuisine: Mapo Tofu (vegan)
  • Lanzhou Handmade Noodle: Vegetable Noodle Soup (vegetarian)
  • Laoma Malatang: Dry pot (vegan, vegetarian, pescatarian)
  • Eight Beautitudes: Japchae with Rice (vegan)
  • The Old Captain Fish Dumplings: Egg and Chive Dumplings (Vegetarian)

Aoi Kitchen

For the last 140 years or so, Japan has had eating establishments known as yoshoku-ya. These specialize in foods from outside the country’s cuisine that have been adapted for Japanese tastes, such as curry (India via England) or hamburgers (Germany by way of America). The results are often enthralling, and the canon constitutes a perfect example of the salutary nature of fusion cuisines, which have often developed as a result of international trade, or from more negative causes like war and colonialism. Though these dishes have dotted New York Japanese restaurants for decades, only recently have restaurants opened with menus more thoroughly dedicated to yoshoku — sometimes offering several dishes artistically on a single tray. Aoi Kitchen is the latest example. The largest features set meals that each focus on one yoshoku dish. The one I ordered blew me away: omurice. While this is no ordinary fried rice, the omelet is also unusual. It plays with the nature and meaning of eggs. A hemispheric heap of fried rice goes on the plate, then an omelet cooked into a dome is placed so that it seamlessly covers and conceals the rice. The exceedingly yellow omelet forms a damp tarp, so that the partly cooked egg glistens in every depression and crevice of the dome.

Omurice

Omurice is a cross between an omelette and Japanese fried rice. The eggs are cooked until they’ve thickened, draped over rice, and then covered with a filling, which can vary from chicken to onions or anything at all, really. The scramble is wholesome, creamy, cooked until it’s not quite set. It is nearly as thin as a crêpe and is served with savory sauce to give it flair. You can ladle some tomato sauce over the eggs, or you can set it on the side. Or, if you’d like something heartier, a demi-glace works. Or a creamy mushroom gravy. Or, if you’re lucky, the chef will blanket your omurice with sliced yellow cheese.

F & F

F&F, where the entire space boasts the caramelized aroma of faintly burnt cheese, reinterprets classic New York pizza. The offerings include “regular” cheese and tomato slices, both cut into squares from larger Neapolitan pies, and square Sicilian slices. And that’s about it for now. Scarr’s on the Lower East Side and Paulie Gee’s in Greenpoint follow this same neo-nostalgic path, to stellar results. 2 early visits suggest that F&F, which finishes its slices with good sea salt and olive oil, is well on its way to keeping up with its ambitious peers.

Cheese-Oozing Flatbread

But now we have an actual accurate rendition of crescia and the sandwiches made from them at Cremini’s, a new Italian restaurant in the southern reaches of Carroll Gardens. The crescia sandwich ($10) is really quite amazing. The flatbread is dappled with brown spots and tastes of wheat, and the selection of fillings (pick one meat and one cheese) is identical to the list of cheese and charcuterie listed earlier in the menu