When talking about “Big 3” regional styles of ramen, most people outside of Japan have heard of Hakata and Sapporo styles, both having evolved from large metropolitan areas with many vendors and varieties. But a third lesser known style was developed in northern Honshu in the small village of Kitakata which gives it its name. Known for its storehouses full of soy sauce, Kitakata-style ramen uses this as its base, a type of shoyu. The bowl itself appears simple, a broth full of noodles and topped with chashu and some thinly sliced spring onion, but do not let this fool you. This broth has been extracting pure umami from pork bones for “long hours” which gives it an almost smoky and toasted taste, full of earth and charcoal. Ban Nai is the most famous source of this style of ramen, with 62 locations around Japan. Here in the United States there are now 2 in Orange County, California, 1 outside of Chicago, and now 1 tucked into a grocery store in Jersey City.
Tag: nyc
Zooba
Nolita will soon be home to a popular Egyptian fast-casual restaurant serving street food — making it one of the few Manhattan restaurants dedicated to staples from the country. Zooba, which launched in Cairo and now has 6 locations, will be opening this summer at 100 Kenmare St
Nakamura Niche
Called Niche, the restaurant will be next door to Nakamura’s popular eponymous restaurant and is expected to open with a limited menu. For the new, 14-seat restaurant, Nakamura is serving dishes that combine elements of traditional Japanese cooking with inspiration from New York food culture, such as the legacy of Jewish-American food on the Lower East Side. One is an homage to Russ & Daughters’ famous smoked fish store, topped with copious amounts of fish roe and salmon smoked in-house. There will also be a Japanese take on carbonara, with uni and bacon replacing the guanciale.
NYC Art
Elmhurst Restaurants
It would be easy to characterize Elmhurst as simply Queens’ second, smaller Chinatown after downtown Flushing, or as a bustling Little Bangkok. Strong cases can be made for both, but the dining options here are as diverse as Queens itself. Tibetan dumplings, Venezuelan sandwiches, Indonesian noodles, Malaysian curry, and top-flight Thai can all be had along with some amazing old-school pizza. Herewith, a globe-trotting lineup of Elmhurst’s absolute best restaurants.
Re-Imagining Central Park
The results of the LA+ ICONCOCLAST competition have been published, asking designers to reimagine and redesign New York’s Central Park following a fictional eco-terrorist attack. In total, over 380 designers from 30 countries submitted over 190 designs, culminating in 5 equal winners. Hailing from the UK, USA, China, and Australia, the winning entries ranged from “megastructures to new ecologies and radical ideas for democratizing public space.” Jury chair Richard Weller praised the winners for “how designers can move beyond the status quo of picturesque large parks and embrace the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century.”
The 1000 Best
Today, we’re rolling out the 1000 Best. Our critics and editors have spent months and countless hours reevaluating old listings and revisiting New York’s seemingly infinite array of tony dining rooms, superlative bars, assorted food trucks, and ever-growing roster of food halls to come up with a list that we think represents the very best of what the city has to offer. Do we intend this to be the definitive list of New York restaurants and bars? Of course not. (In fact the actual list will never even contain exactly 1000 businesses.) Instead, we’ve designed it to be a fully searchable directory of our thoughts and recommendations: a highly subjective, always changing group of places we want everyone to know about.
Roberta’s
When Roberta’s first opened, it seemed like the kind of lark that might not last. A few dudes— Chris Parachini, Brandon Hoy, and Carlo Mirarchi— built out much of the wood-fired pizzeria by hand, and opened even without working gas (they used butane burners for the first year.) But along with perfectly charred, soft, chewy pies with charming names like Beastmaster, they also managed to do fried chicken and fresh greens surprisingly well for a bunch of hipsters.
Nearly 10 years later, it’s still worth the pilgrimage. Aside from some veggie-forward options on the menu—former chef de cuisine Nick Barker is to thank for an ever-so-slight shift to a lighter, California style of cooking—there have been no fancy updates to the restaurant, which you enter through a stickered, graffitied red vestibule.
Walking NYC
A new documentary celebrates the New York City our readers love: the unknown. In The World Before Your Feet, audiences journey alongside Matt Green, a New York City-based urban explorer who has vowed to walk all 13K km of the city’s walkways. Director Jeremy Workman and producer Jesse Eisenberg have captured more than 500 hours of footage, which includes little-known historical anecdotes and memorable interactions with Green’s neighbors. The result is the most comprehensive guided tour of New York City to date.
Japan Village
The 2k m2 market at 934 3rd Ave. delves into Japan’s food culture with several stalls that sell everything from soba and udon noodles made daily to Japanese street food like takoyaki. A liquor store has Japanese sake and whiskey on its shelves, and the izakaya restaurant and bar dishes out options like grilled chicken skewers and sashimi. And at Sunrise Mart — the same grocery store run by Japan Village owners Tony Yoshida and Takuya Yoshida — shoppers will have a varied selection of Japanese products, plus it comes with its own butcher shop and tofu market.
Gregor J. Rothfuss 