Today's review roundup includes: Landmarc, Spicy and Tasty, BLT Steak, Istanbul Seafood Restaurant, ChikaLicious, Masa and Bar Masa, Taboon.
NYTimes Restaurants Amanda Hesser gives Landmarc one star (179 West Broadway; 212-343-3883):
Landmarc's Chinese-restaurant-size menu reads like a studied survey of America's mainstream styles of cooking. Risotto and pastas mix with a section on mussels. Steaks are served with a choice of sauce. If you are in a bistro mood, there is foie gras terrine, and if you are hankering for American fare, there is a grilled pork chop with spinach and apples.
The best dishes percolate with detail. Fried calamari stings with a kick of pepper and is tempered by fried paper-thin slices of lemon. On a frisée salad, shrimp are sautéed and glazed with white wine. They mingle with sweet slices of artichoke and a sprinkling of capers. But the capers are fried, making them extra-salty and crisp, a smart textural element.
. . . With the huge menu, it is hard to do everything well, to keep every dish under control. Spaghetti Bolognese, with braised short ribs in a sweet rich sauce, would have been delicious had the spaghetti not been overcooked. A mushroom risotto suffered the opposite problem: the rice was grainy in the middle.
But two of Landmarc's elements made me feel kindly disposed to the place. One is the "No Substitutions" printed at the bottom of the menu. In other words: we aim to please but don't try ordering frisée aux lardons without the lardons! It may be a friendly neighborhood restaurant, but it has a backbone. The message reminds you that the whole point of eating out is to expand your horizons, to relax and choose trust over control.
Landmarc's other great virtue is its wine list, which could serve as a model for many others around New York. Included among a stimulating selection of mostly reasonably priced wines is a strong list of half bottles, just the thing for a weeknight, when you are out with friends in your favorite new neighborhood restaurant.
RECOMMENDED DISHES Sautéed shrimp and artichoke salad; salmon carpaccio; leeks vinaigrette; smoked tuna sandwich; egg and pepper sandwich; foie gras terrine; and endive salad.
NYTimes $25 and Under Eric Asimov reviews Spicy and Tasty (39-07 Prince Street 1H, Flushing, Queens; 718-359-1601):
Forget Pearson's Texas BBQ and Daisy May's BBQ USA and all the rest of the pretenders. New Yorkers can fuss and rage all they want about why they cannot find real barbecue in the city, but it has been here all the time, its smoky aroma wafting up right past closed noses.
It is called tea-smoked duck, and it is a staple of New York's better Sichuan restaurants. And when the tea-smoked duck is as good as it is at the new Spicy and Tasty in Flushing, Queens, then, my friends, you have real barbecue.
Only real barbecue could be as subtly yet deeply imbued with smoke as this duck ($9.95), served in slices with crisp skin, a thin layer of moist fat, the occasional bone and meat that is gloriously flavorful.
. . . Sichuan cuisine is much better known for spiciness than smokiness, and Spicy and Tasty does not stint on the chilies. Little cubes of rabbit ($4.95) are not often seen in Chinese restaurants, but they are delicious bathed in a spicy chili sauce fairly dancing with the flowery, numbing sensation provided by Sichuan peppercorns. Yes, I know it is now illegal to import Sichuan peppercorns, which may carry a canker that destroys citrus trees. Spicy and Tasty has certainly found an adequate replacement for this essential ingredient.
BEST DISHES Tea-smoked duck; rabbit in red chili sauce; shredded bean curd with celery; cold jelly Chengdu-style; cold noodles with red chili sauce; dan dan noodles; home-style lamb; shrimp with peanuts; twice-cooked pork; cured pork with garlic shoots; dry sautéed green beans; bean curd with minced pork
NYPost Steve Cuozzo gives BLT Steak 2 and 1/2 stars (106 E. 57th Street; 212-752-7470):
Traditionalist couples go for ribeye ($58 for two) and porterhouse ($72 for two). Distinctive Tourondel touches include creamy spring pea soup ($12) pungent with shallots and garlic. Rustic France pipes up in a generous complimentary charcuterie plate and condiments worthy of a Michelin-starred inn.
But the American mood dominates. With its crisply organized menu and side dishes served family-style, BLT's spirit is closer to the inspired simplicity of Tom Colicchio's Craft than it is to an old-fashioned steakhouse or anything French.
Elephantine, Gruyere-crusted popovers sap the will of the most lunatic Atkins devotees. Skip dull shrimp cocktail ($14) for crab cake that's nearly all-crab ($15). Splurge on grilled foie gras "BLT" ($22) - triangles of unctuous liver, bacon and lettuce on toast, the heft lightened by mayo-free, Asian-style slaw.
Beef seems below-par everywhere this year, and BLT's is no exception. A cut of Kobe skirt steak ($34) manages to be both sinewy and underflavored. But I loved the hanger veal ($28), a rarely offered cut that's 10 percent chewier but 80 percent more flavorful than ordinary veal. Dusky-flavored, red wine- and port-braised short ribs ($28) kick up a storm in a stewpot.
For my money, BLT's seafood is actually its strong suit - then again, after Cello, is this so surprising? A kiss of honey rescues black cod ($29) with soy sauce from its Nobu-inspired rut. Neither BLT's classic Dover sole ($34) nor spiced and herbed swordfish ($30), deftly accented with soy-citric sauce, can be beat.
Village Voice Robert Sietsema reviews Istanbul Seafood Restaurant (2817 Coney Island Avenue, Brooklyn; 718-743-0743):
Istanbul Seafood is that rare Turkish restaurant that specializes in seafood rather than meat; there are only two others like it in town. The selection and freshness rivals that of Astoria's Greek restaurants, and you can have most of the fish charcoal-grilled, sautéed, or breaded and fried. Nevertheless, you'd be nuts to let the cook do anything to your cupra (a/k/a royal dorado, $16.75) but grill it, which renders the thick skin crisp and the white flesh moist and sweet.
There's no choice of cooking methods with red mullet. This Mediterranean standard, which looks like a runty red snapper, arrives in a set of five lined up like newborn quintuplets—pink, thinly dusted with flour, and not overfried. The only problem is the tiny bones, which must be picked out of your mouth one by one. Bones are no problem, however, with hamsi tava (appetizer $9, entrée $15), wondrous silver fishlets that reminded me of Lake Michigan smelt, a freshwater delicacy that invades Wisconsin bars for one week in late winter. Just chew up the bones along with all the other fish parts, propelled by a squeeze of lemon. Another don't-miss selection is a cheese-topped octopus casserole that doesn't sound very good as described on the menu, causing me to ignore it till my last visit. Out it sails in a shallow vessel of cast iron, so heavy the waiter grunts under the exertion. Inside, under a bubbling mantle of kasseri cheese, is a tangle of octopus tentacles, bell peppers, mushrooms, and tomatoes, cooked just enough to make gentle the demon of the deep.
NYPress reviews ChikaLicious (203 E. 10th Street; 212-995-9511):
Much to my surprise, ChikaLicious, a dessert-only eatery and wine bar in the East Village, didn't feel all that indulgent. As imagined by the sweet freak in me, their $12 three-course dessert "meal" would amount to something as ridiculous as three slices of Junior's-sized cakes doled out with sloppy abandon.
Instead, ChikaLicious is as restrained as it is sugar-laced. The sophisticated bill of fare consists of an amuse, a small scoop of very fine house sorbet in a flavor-infused gelée, a choice of dessert (the "main") and an assortment of petit fours. Parting with the refrigerator-case convention of cake display, you cannot preview your choices of pastry here—the highly individual desserts at ChikaLicious are made to order.
. . . More impressive than the fire show is the astonishing economy of movement on display. Whether the ladies are spooning sorbet, easing a cheesecake out of its mold or dicing bananas, not a gesture is wasted, and if you watch closely, you might learn a trick or two. After scraping up a scoop of ice cream, rather than shaking it free the way we might do at home, the pastry chef will rub the underside of the spoon against the palm of her hand, heating it so that the ice cream slides effortlessly onto the plate. While such techniques are common to most high-end pastry kitchens, the visibility at ChikaLicious allows diners to appreciate the expertise that goes into making fine desserts.
NYMetro reviews Masa and Bar Masa (10 Columbus Circle; 212-823-9800):
At Masa, you will pay $300 each for the chef’s omakase lunch or dinner, provided you’ve made a reservation for one of the 26 seats weeks in advance. You must announce yourself to the security guard or the hostess or both before being led into the restaurant itself, a dimly lit, severely edited Shinto-like space, replete with burbling water, brushed clay walls, even a retinue of sushi acolytes, their heads shaved like monks, working silently behind the bar.
There are no menus at Masa; the chef adjusts his meals according to the availability of ingredients (white-truffle tempura is a specialty in the fall) and his diners’ whims. These meals are intricate, lavish cultural entertainments, part nourishment, part entertainment, and part ancient performance art. They’re designed to be enjoyed in a state of blissful suspended animation, and sitting at the bar at Masa, with a world-class chef preparing food for you, that’s more or less what happens. After the tuna tartare, I was presented with aji mackerel sashimi tossed in shiso blossoms. This palate-cleansing course set up a whole salvo of rich, uniformly delicious dishes that began with uni risotto (rice plus sea urchin plus copious amounts of truffles and truffle butter), continued with a meltingly sweet version of Kobe-beef sukiyaki, and culminated in an extravagant shabu-shabu composed of fresh lobster and lobes of foie gras.
Of course, a normal Japanese person wouldn’t dream of cooking foie gras in his shabu-shabu. But then Takayama isn’t overly concerned with normal people, and what he is selling is more than just a meal: It’s a personalized aesthetic experience of the most rarefied kind (though New York is not, and is never likely to become, a cultishly devoted sushi town like Tokyo or L.A.).
. . . If you think that spending this kind of cash on a single meal is an absurd extravagance, then you can travel next door to Bar Masa, a smaller, more animated, comparatively economical version of the mother ship.
There’s a menu at Bar Masa, and several items from the fancy omakase menu next door—including a selection of sushi and generously fat maki rolls—appear on it. You can also indulge in a selection of primped-up Japanese street foods like good chicken yakitori ($8), grilled baby squid ($5), and a not entirely successful version of yaki-soba (fried noodles) mixed with shreds of dried Kobe beef.
Takayama is perhaps too addicted to elaborate, upmarket ingredients. He scatters Kobe beef and black truffles around his menu the way a car salesman places luxury sedans around his showroom. It’s a way of making the customers feel part of something exclusive as they pay through the nose. Snooty truffle hounds should find all sorts of satisfaction at Bar Masa (black truffles baked in a trio of fresh oysters was my favorite), and there’s also a poor man’s version of the tuna-tartare-and-caviar dish available in a selection of what the menu calls “sushi canapés.”
Citysearch recommends Taboon (773 10th Avenue; 212-713-0271):
The menu plays with cultural pairings, the most flavorful being the mezes. Butterflied sardine, seasoned with cilantro, garlic and parsley melts in the mouth without a hint of fishiness, while the calamari ceviche features bok choy for a nicely textured dish. Lamb figures heavily in entrees: Chops arrive tender and juicy, and kebobs--large, heavily spiced patties--thankfully never got near a stick. Jerusalem artichokes accompany the tender five-spiced duck confit for yet another twist. Save room for dessert: The first taste of the malibi with its rose-infused cream will instantly refresh, as will vanilla ice cream with date honey and tahini.
