Today's review roundup includes: David Burke & Donatella, Lucy Mexican Barbecue, Cubana Cafe, Natchez, Sam Won Gahk, Roomali, Cabo Rojo, TOC, Bivio.
NYPost Steve Cuozzo reviews David Burke & Donatella (133 E. 61st St. at Lexington Ave; 212-813-2121):
Executive chef Burke, famed for his work at River Café and Park Avenue Café, but more recently a honcho at the Smith & Wollensky chain, is finally back at the stove, cooking in his signature exuberant style.
His fanciful, sometimes impetuous combinations flatter a glam setting that's been packed every night since day one.
And Donatella Arpaia presides graciously over the dining rooms. She and Burke are partners in business and in restlessness - hers, to go beyond the Italian cuisine of her other restaurant, Bellini; his, to return to the kitchen from the corporate jungle.
A long white limousine - the joint's "smoking car" - lazes out front; inside the house, the clubland-like crush reduces hostesses to glaze-eyed paralysis.
. . . But as playful as Burke is, he doesn't cut corners on raw materials or execution. Dishes deliver awesome flavor payloads that are worth the trip on a bitter winter night.
Two entrees deliver herb-and-spice constellations so disparate - and perfect - you'd guess they came from different kitchens.
Ginger-rubbed salmon ($25) possesses Asian-esque virtuosity, flanked by powerful XO sauce and bacon-crisp lapchung sausage. Celery root and wild mushroom cavatelli ($20) channel rustic Italy with truffles, sage and a sprinkling of porcini mushroom chips.
Burke can be straightforward, as in "Bronx-style veal filet mignon" ($36) kissed with garlic, cayenne, mustard and sage. Other dishes need a map. Lush confit of roast suckling pig ($28) reposes inside a round of crackling, topped with a veritable Matterhorn of clams.
Only rarely do things run off the rails. Chestnut-mushroom consommé ($10) could double as a salt bath; Dover sole ($36) is uneventful for the price.
NYTimes Restaurants Marian Burros gives Lucy Mexican Barbecue a "satisfactory" (35 East 18th St.; 212-475-5829):
The cooking, mainly Oaxacan, if the personnel is to be believed, bears the same relationship to the food in that Mexican region as Outback Steakhouse does to Peter Luger. You can divine what the kitchen is trying to do by reading the the menu, but not by eating the dishes. The owner, Phil Suarez, the experienced restaurateur who also owns the highly regarded Patria, should know better. Especially as Andrew DiCataldo, who oversees the kitchens at Patria, is in the kitchen at Lucy.
Oaxaca is the land of seven moles, known for their depth of flavor and their complexities. Lucy has moles, too, each of which sings only a single note. The green mole served with fish tasted only of tomatillos; the flavor of the poblano pepper had vanished. A yellow mole could have been any bland vegetable.
It is as if the cooks are afraid that real Mexican food would frighten Americans, much the way most Thai restaurants in New York are afraid people will not like the complexity of their flavors and instead make them all sweet.
RECOMMENDED DISHES Guacamole; chorizo con queso; posole rojo; barbacoa.
NYTimes $25 and Under Eric Asimov reviews Cubana Cafe (110 Thompson St.; 212-966-5366):
As it turns out, Cubana Cafe has a sense of manifest destiny, annexing quite a few Mexican dishes to its quasi-Cuban menu. They are pretty good, in fact. The shrimp quesadilla ($7.50) is fresh and lively, layered with avocado and a smoky chipotle salsa. A tangled mop of julienned jicama, with slivers of green apple and crumbled cotija cheese ($6) makes a superb salad, simultaneously refreshing and savory, while a tangy ceviche of shrimp and calamari ($8) is, at the least, serviceable.
But Cuban-style food is the central theme and the heart of the menu — Cuban-style, because Mr. Houle, who oversees the kitchen, is not after authenticity so much as he is simply trying to make food that tastes good. Perhaps the best dish I tasted was a special, a whole roasted red snapper ($14) that was filleted before it arrived at the table. It was moist and full of delicate flavor, served with a chunky mango salsa, a decidedly Nuevo touch.
Nonetheless, the closer Mr. Houle sticks to the traditional the better he succeeds. Black bean soup ($4), rich, smooth and full of cumin, is a cold-weather treat, and I happily devoured the hunk of garlic bread set in the middle of the bowl. Picadillo ($8), the ground beef dish, is a satisfying, traditional blend, with pungency from olives and sweetness from raisins, while pulled pork with red wine gravy ($9) is moist and delicious, superior to the dry roasted pork ($9).
BEST DISHES Shrimp quesadilla; jicama salad with apple and cotija; roasted red snapper; black bean soup; pulled pork with red wine gravy; ropa vieja; flan.
NYMetro reviews Natchez (31 Second Ave.; 212-460-9171):
Stripped of the usual trappings like a voluminous wine list and plush surroundings, the kitchen dedicates itself to the food—inherently rich, intensely flavored Cajun-Creole fare. Consider, for instance, the hearty, compulsively edible andouille-and-duck gumbo: Pleasingly spicy, but far from scorching, it’s deftly thickened with a rich roux to the proper point between soup and stew and fortified with popcorn rice. A bowl of gumbo, a cold beer, and a surprisingly wieldy po’boy of crunchy fried shrimp tucked into a soft, Philly-cheese-steak-style roll smeared with sweet chipotle sauce and served with excellent homemade potato chips makes a fine Louisiana feast. But the rest of Knight’s short menu, which he tends to tweak almost nightly, offers less-obvious, more-sophisticated takes on Creole-style New York bistro cooking.
Sometimes he pours it on a little thick—like the chive-buttermilk dressing that weighs down a salad of whole romaine leaves, dappled with blue cheese and croutons. Entrées like potato-crusted, spice-rubbed redfish, accoutred with lump crabmeat and sweet tomato marmalade, although tasty, can seem overwrought. If that dish were an NFL defensive lineman, it would get a fifteen-yard penalty for piling on.
Village Voice Robert Sietsema reviews Sam Won Gahk (82-83 Broadway, Queens; 718-458-0700):
When Koreans go Chinese, they demand red kimchi and yellow pickled radish on the side, and there are plenty of restaurants in Manhattan and Flushing that will oblige them. But only two serve the freshly made noodles called cha chiang mein. Carried to Korea by northern Chinese refugees after World War II, these wheat noodles are made from dough that's hand-pulled like a skein of yarn, whipped around, and thrashed on a hard counter till it breaks into strands of square circumference. The process has never been chemically explained as far as I know. Patrons insist these noodles be served immediately after being made, gobbed with a sauce like lumpy crude oil. The result is one of the city's most sublime noodle experiences.
At Sam Won Gahk, an Elmhurst diner, the centerpiece of the menu is "noodles with special brown Peking sauce" ($7.95), which comes in two bowls. The smaller holds tidbits of coarsely ground pork and caramelized purple onions bound with an inky black-bean paste that boasts a camphorous fragrance and a pleasantly bitter edge. The larger bowl encompasses a heap of glistening noodles folded in on themselves in undulant waves like the blond hair of a siren, scattered with julienned cucumber like so many green bobby pins. The aproned waitress approaches rapidly carrying a giant pair of scissors, causing a momentary panic. But she's only there to snip the precious noodles into smaller pieces, which facilitates mixing spaghetti and sauce.
The extensive menu features additional northern Chinese fare, which is relatively rare in New York. The blasé-sounding "dumplings" ($6.45) are worth a visit in themselves. Though shaped like Japanese gyoza, they're twice the size, as if they've been inflated with a bicycle pump. And instead of being fried on only one side, these meat-and-onion dreadnoughts are deep-fried, so that they arrive glistening with oil and well browned all over. No sauce is needed and none is offered. The balance of the menu comes from other parts of China where the food is admired by Koreans, including a scattering of Sichuan dishes that are obviously prized for their chile wallop. My favorite is "hot green pepper beef" ($11.95), a prodigious mound of meat strips, onions, and green chiles presented in a simple sauté, again with no sauce. Looking around as my friends and I chopsticked the last morsels of beef and green chile, mopping our brows from the spiciness, we noticed that, in the northern Chinese style, there wasn't a bowl of rice in the place. This is a Chinese joint?
NYPress reviews 2 sandwich shops, Roomali (97 Lexington Ave., entrance on 27th St. between 3rd & Lexington Aves; 212-679-8900) and Cabo Rojo (254 10th Ave., between 24th & 25th Sts.; 212-242-1202):
Roomali calls them "rolls," and they go for $4 or $6 apiece. The shop’s owner, who also owns nearby Madras Mahal, must have caught wind of the "wrap" craze and realized he could do it one better. Instead of omitting decent bread, Roomali uses freshly cooked, chewy paratha. It’s superb. In Caribbean Brooklyn, neon signs refer to this tasty bread via blazing neon signs: "Hot Roti"–but it’s rarely so crisp yet pliant as Roomali’s.
The aloo roll houses slow-cooked potato, spiced like the inside of a samosa. The sandwich itself, in fact, amounts to a more user-friendly version of that deep-fried appetizer. Roomali’s wraps are densely packed and carefully folded. They feel perfect in the hand and never fall apart.
. . . My favorite was the chicken tikka roll. Decent chicken tikka isn’t so hard to find, but it turns out the stuff is much better on bread than with flowery rice. Tucked into Roomali’s roti, fragrant with herbs, tender tikka finds its American home as portable lunchtime staple.
. . . Roomali’s big drawback is that it’s slow, especially when busy. That’s just a reality of food made-to-order. Also, big eaters are unlikely to find a single Roomali sandwich completely filling. You can add a fried eggwhite to any roll for an extra 50 cents, which helps, and enhances the flavor of the kebabs especially. And one eggwhite adds only about 17 calories to a sandwich, if you care.
. . . His comments inspired me to sample his two Manhattan favorites: the one served at Café Habana, a little Elizabeth St. restaurant always packed with twentysomethings, versus the version prepared at Cabo Rojo, a Puerto Rican counter-service diner that’s been in the Chelsea gallery district for about 40 years longer than there’s been a Chelsea gallery district.
The latter was my hands-down preference. I don’t remember ever before eating a Cuban sandwich that truly tasted of all the ingredients. On Habana’s, I saw toasted bread, pungent Swiss, juicy pork, ham, mustard and pickles, but in the dark one wouldn’t know they were all there. Cabo Rojo’s Cubano is a piece of work. Iron Jeff ranked it uno as well–noting also that it goes for $4, compared to Habana’s $7.
Citysearch recommends TOC (6 Clinton St.; 2121-228-9388):
This is not the two-dimensional, shouty, giant-flavored Thai food that's so common. Instead, the seasonings are delicately, artfully layered, so that subsequent mouthfuls reveal new nuances. Beef sate has sweet hints of cardamom and other spices lurking, and is served over a subtle fried rice laden with pineapple, cashews and vegetables. Tom kha gai soup balances coconut richness, earthy galangal and tart lemongrass in excellent proportion; pad thai achieves a crisp-and-chewy texture with no gumminess or excess sugar. Even a simple onion-and-basil saute is richly, complexly flavored. Bringing one's own beer, such as a full-bodied ale to complement the spice, is highly recommended.
Citysearch recommends Bivio (637 Hudson St.; 212-206-0601):
Shareable Italian plates--assorted cured meats, antipasti and pastas--comprise most of the menu. Start with the house caponata--a spreadable onion, eggplant and sweet pepper dip that's already a favorite and often sells out--and share a simple salad of fennel, arugula and parmesan. Among pastas, the orrechiette with broccoli rabe and sausage is a better choice than the garganelli with too-scarce pieces of braised lamb. Entrees are few in number but show careful preparation; both the buttery tuna loin over herb and olive oil-marinated white beans, and the soothing stew overflowing with fresh, tender seafood satisfy.
