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“The Strong Buzz: News (Tinto Fino, Provence), Events, My Dinner at Lonesome Dove”

Hello All and Welcome to this October 23^rd edition of THE STRONG BUZZ. This week: The News (Tinto Fino, Provence), Events, and My Dinner at The Lonesome Dove.

THE NEWS

Tinto Fino
Mani Dawes, the lovely owner of the Spanish restaurant Tia Pol, will open Tinto Fino this Tuesday. A true labor of love, Tinto Fino is New York City's first wine store dedicated exclusively to Spanish wine and sherry. While the space is only 400 square feet (and quite charming with its hand-silvered distressed mirrors and wrought iron chandeliers), you'll find over 150 wines selected by Mani herself representing every corner of Spain, including a collection of value-driven, lesser-known wines from emerging regions and classic selections from world-renowned bodegas. The store is quite user friendly, organized geographically to help guide you through Spain's wine regions. She'll also be on hand to give you some insider tips and help you pick the right wine and sherry for your evening. Tinto Fino is located at 85 First Avenue (between 5th and 6th Streets), 212.254.0850; Tuesday - Saturday from 12:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. Sundays from 12:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. Closed Mondays for now; will be open seven days in the near future.

Provence from Five Points
When I got back from Italy this weekend, one of my firsts stops was brunch at Five Points with Craig. When I called to say hi to Vicki, and reserve a table for us, she said she had tried to reach me while I was in Italy because she had some news. "You're going to think I have lost my mind," she said, "but Marc and I are opening another restaurant." I told her that I agreed; she had indeed lost her mind. I was in shock, but it's true. (Not the part about her losing her mind, the part about she and Marc opening another restaurant.) After opening Cookshop just about a year ago, she and her husband, chef Marc Meyer, have purchased Provence, the longtime Soho favorite owned by Michel Jean. Vicki explained that the place was very special to her and holds some very dear memories. She and Marc got engaged there. Vicki and Marc are going to keep the restaurant's name the same but transform the menu so that it is more in the Five Points/Cookshop style, sort of Provence by way of farmers in the Hudson Valley. The chef will be Lynn McNeely, a longtime friend of Marc and Vicki's, who was most recently chef de cuisine at Barbuto. He is currently in Provence, cooking and soaking up inspiration. Provence will open in January.

Allen and Delancey
Also while I was in Italy, I got some very upsetting news from Akhtar Nawab, who was getting ready to open Allen and Delancey in the next few weeks. Due to an unexpected investor issue, the project will not proceed. Akhtar, who is one of our city's rising culinary stars, hopes to find another project. If any of you hear of anything that might be right for him, please drop me a line. Thank you.

Izkaya Ten
I was sorry to learn that Lannie Ahn had closed her restaurant D'Or Ahn a few months ago. It was a place I really adored. (I'd love to know where chef Rachel Yang is cooking; I loved her food. So if anyone knows, please drop me a line.) In D'Or Ahn's place she has opened Izakaya Ten, a Japanese sake bar and eatery serving a menu of traditional everyday Japanese food by chef Thomas Kato, who worked the sushi bar at Morimoto and was a pastry chef at Nobu. This concept is meant to be more casual and affordable, a place to stop in for a bite at the bar with a glass of sake, or to linger for dinner with friends over a casual meal of small Japanese plates. Kato's menu, divided into several categories, including the restaurant's signatures like Uogashi Age-tofu fishcakes in bonito broth, ginger-braised pork belly, and eel dynamite-barbecued eel, avocado and spicy sauce. There are also classics like Yaki Onigiri-pan seared rice balls with eel or spicy tuna, Ocha Zuke-bonito broth with wasabi, rice and either plum or salmon, and Tsukune-organic chicken meatballs served on a skewer. Izakaya Ten is located at 207 Tenth Avenue, between 22nd and 23rd Streets, 212-627-7777.

EVENTS

The Chef's Table at the Waldorf-Astoria
The Chef's Table is returning for a series of dinners throughout the fall and winter that will offer an opportunity to enjoy an elaborate five-course dinner (paired with wine) prepared by Executive Chef John Doherty, whose first cookbook, The Waldorf-Astoria Cookbook, was released this fall. The stove-side dinners take place in the hotel's main kitchen and will be held on November 8 and 17 and December 15 and 20. The cost of dinner is $150 per person, exclusive of tax and gratuity. For more information or reservations call (212) 872-1275 or visit http://www.waldorfastoria.com/.

MY DINNER AT THE LONESOME DOVE

When I first heard about a restaurant from Texas moving to New York I was skeptical. Generally speaking I am skeptical of most things that come from Texas. But I try to be open-minded and not pre-judge, though I imagined a menu I thought would be amateurish or maybe some sort of rip-off of Bobby Flay's Mesa Grill fare. I wondered, what could Tim Love do that our chefs hadn't done before? Turns out, quite a bit.

First, there's the big brown and white cowhide rug sprawled out on the sidewalk of 21^st Street that you must walk over to enter the restaurant. It's rare. Then there's the restaurant itself, which Love designed to feel like an urban saloon. The space is marked by dark wood, with a long welcoming stretch of bar topped with cactus plants, chile peppers, and margarita-filled tumblers. On the pressed tin ceilings hang deer antler chandeliers, and on the burnished walls, a giant heifer's head. The vibe will have you searching for the swinging doors and the smoking gun.

But the food is what really got me to stop and reconsider my preconceived notions. Love is doing some fun and quite inventive cooking. I've eaten at Lonesome Dove a few times now, for a feature assignment from the Post, for a shoot with Code TV, and with Craig, Adrienne and Gregg before we left for Italy, and I have become a big fan of his food because it's a dose of fresh air, it's something new and boldly different from what we are used to. Love's vision of the Wild West includes ingredients from his native Texas and from what he considers the new Wild West-Australia. He brings together unexpected ingredients to surprising effect. I loved the kangaroo "nachos"-actually tender seared slices of kangaroo carpaccio layered on tortilla chips and topped with a rosettes of creamy boursin cheese partnered with an avocado and roasted corn salsa and glossed with huckleberry-habenero demi glaze ($12). Then there are the buffalo corn dogs, sweet corn fritter dough blanketing spiced buffalo dogs served with a tangy ketchup called State Fair Sauce-a smashing puree of Dijon mustard, mustard powder, garlic aioli, and roasted poblano chilies ($12). The quail quesadillas are also terrific-soft flour tortillas filled with shredded quail, goat cheese and New Mexican onions, folded over and marked on the grill until hot and gooey and served over smooth black beans and tart crème fraiche. The weakest appetizer is the braised rabbit empanadas ($12), which are so doughy that all you taste is bread and none of the flavors on the inside.

By now you've already heard about the Prairie Butter ($10), which actually has little to do with butter. In fact, it's dairy free, though it is far from vegan. It is a buffalo femur bone that is split down the middle and roasted with chile and onions and served with piping hot, just-grilled camp bread-think puffy slices of pizza dough. While the marrow flavor can at times be obscured by the intense flavor of the salt and the chiles, when you get the right bite, is hot and meaty, and tastes like pan juices from searing a really good steak in butter and herbs. Mop it up with that hot camp bread. Yeah, baby.

Larger plates are oversized, in both flavor and portion, so if it's petite plates with precious delicate nuance you're after, look elsewhere. Take The Tomahawk Chop for instance, which was a spectacle similar to the recent big boned beef I had at Country. This slab is cut straight from the ribcage of the cow and had an 18-inch bone as an appendage. The beef is wet-aged for 21 days, then dry-aged for 28 days, and then peppered, rubbed, seared and roasted on the rib bone so the meat swims in its own juices. The chop is accompanied by a grilled Australian lobster tail, a couple of succulent seared scallops the size of hockey pucks and a monster-sized mound of smoked yukon gold potatoes so high you could throw a fastball off of it. This dish is said to serve two but it can easily serve four and while we loved it, the price tag was startling. The server, who was quite interested in giving us every detail of the menu and of how to approach and order from said menu, left out the little fact that this market price dish was $125. Sticker shock is putting it mildly. When a dish is going to cost you over a hundred dollars, it might be nice to be told in advance.

On the more affordable spectrum, go for the garlic-stuffed beef tenderloin that truly speaks to the tender half of that word. It's also a big boy portion that would be a Quick Draw McGraw favorite for sure. It comes with an order of Western plaid hash-a fevered mess of fried shoestring potatoes topped with braised red and green cabbage, sautéed with garlic, red onion, red bell pepper and red wine ($34). But one of my favorite entrees was actually a fish dish-the grilled whole Colorado trout ($25) had flesh so sweet and flaky, I could barely stop eating it, but did so that I could concentrate on the accompanying succotash, made from corn, sweet potatoes and langoustines cooked down with bacon for that added hit of smoke that makes everything taste better.

The seared monkfish ($24) was firm and almost too sturdy, and came in a "spicy" posole stew (made from hand-made posole Love sources from a woman in New Mexico) that wasn't nearly spicy enough for me, though it was garnished with some amazing rendition of lobster that Love calls lobster bacon: lobster poached in veal stock, soaked in bacon fat and fried in peanut oil-that should be illegal considering what it will do to your arteries (and your hips).

The duck breast is described on the menu as crispy, and while I loved the texture (nice and moist) I didn't find it crispy at all, though it does come with a very crispy Rosti-a tangle of shredded potato and manchego cheese. The pork tenderloin ($26), which was perfectly cooked, gets rubbed with a coarse grind of coffee and cocoa and comes piled up with crispy fried onions and another pitcher's mound of those smoked Yukon potatoes. But the red deer chops ($31) come with the most indulgent side dish of all-a copper crock pot of gloriously gooey mac ‘n cheese, made from silky orzo pasta, no elbows in here. For a little more fun and added texture, Love tops the mac off with a few polenta-crusted deep-fried baby artichokes. It's killer. I'd like to see those fried artichokes at the bar, with a smoky chile mayo for dipping. I'd also recommend ordering a side of the ricotta dumplings ($8). These firm but fluffy fritters are greaseless and have a sneaky spicy kick to them, a great balance to the sweetness of the cheese.

Sadly, though, desserts need some work and are not worth the calories. We had a huckleberry and pear crisp that was basically stewed fruit topped with some uncooked oats, and a chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwich fashioned from two cookies that were so hard we could not cut into them to eat the ice cream sandwich. We tried teeth, we tried knives, we could have asked for the buffalo femur bone saw I suppose, but nothing worked. Finally, we disassembled it and broke the cookie into hunks with our bare hands and spooned the ice cream on top of the cookie pieces. Instead of desserts, have another round of Margaritas, especially the one infused with jalepeno. Texans may not know ice cream sandwiches, but they do Margaritas, and quite a few other things, very well.

Lonesome Dove is located at 29 West 21st Street, between 5^th and 6^th Avenues, 212-414-3139.

And that's THE STRONG BUZZ for this week. Until next week, READ IT AND EAT!

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Posted: October 23, 2006

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