Today's Review Roundup includes: Hurricane Hopeful, 325 Spring Street, Daisy May's BBQ USA, Maroons, Village Mingala
NYTimes $25 and Under reviews Hurricane Hopeful: Not a rave review, except when it comes to their chowder. "For all the bother, though, the chowders are worth it. There is genuine passion at work in their flavors. They are both authentic and genuinely pleasant. It is extremely good soup. That's real sand beneath your toes. A few cold beers and a suspension of disbelief is possible: endless summer."
NYTimes Restaurant's William Grimes reviews 325 Spring Street: Grimes reports that head chef Clément Bruno (chef and owner of Chez Bruno in France), is only so in title. "What we have here is a marriage of convenience. Mr. Bruno lends his prestigious name and in return gets a toehold in Manhattan and an opportunity to showcase his cuisine and his line of truffle oils, on sale up front. What diners get is an erratic menu, erratically executed, with very high highs and some pretty low lows." Some of the highs:
Three of the many truffle dishes leap off the page. The first is a gently poached egg nestled in a martini glass, where it is swathed in albuféra sauce sprinkled with caviar and truffles. The sauce, a 19th-century relic, seems barely legal today, a heart-stopping concentration of cream, chicken velouté and demi-glace sweetened with port. To drive home the point, the kitchen has added a little foie gras as well. Never has a simple egg been treated so lavishly. The menu also includes a signature dish from Chez Bruno, a black truffle wrapped in bacon, grafted to a chunk of foie gras and baked in a ball of puff pastry. It is as good as it sounds, and twice as rich.
NYTimes Food Stuff visits just opened Daisy May's BBQ USA (623 11th Avenue @ 46th Street):
Mr. [Adam Perry] Lang, who has cooked at Daniel and Monzù, does his smoking and roasting in a building down the block, fine-tuning the temperature and smoke. He produces irresistibly lush and smoky beef short ribs, chicken that is moist with a little kick, succulent Kansas City-style ribs and chunky pulled pork, which he serves in a sandwich with coleslaw. He seasons the pork with fleur de sel. "I couldn't help it," he said, adding that his friend Sottha Khunn, a former chef at Le Cirque 2000, helped him tweak his sauces.
NYPost reviews Maroons, "moderately priced, friendly and exotic":
I've had jerk chicken in Montego Bay, Harlem and at any number of "Caribbean" joints below 96th Street. Usually, I tasted pepper and grease. It's another story at Maroons, whose "Culo's" marinade, based on a recipe from Jamaica's Boston Beach, made it into Bon Appetit last month.
The juicy half-bird ($16) is glazed in a tingling marinade of espresso coffee beans, mustard seeds, cinnamon and nutmeg, thyme and oregano, as well as chilies. The flavors permeate the meat down to the bone. It comes with corn grits and wonderful, fat-drenched collard greens.
Village Voice's Robert Sietsema reviews Village Mingala:
To go to the heart of Myanmar cuisine, stick to the curries, noodles, and salads. Burmese curries are simpler than their Indian counterparts, spiced with onions, fresh ginger, chile powder, garlic, and turmeric ground into a gravy-thickening paste. . . . Beef curry ($8.50) is the best at Village Mingala, sporting dark brown gravy, tender chunks of boneless meat, and small potatoes bobbing like white skulls. Some Welsh pals particularly admired this curry, which does indeed taste almost like a well-made beef stew. You can also get a smaller serving for $7.50, accompanied by a buttery paratha hyperbolically called "thousand layer pancake."