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“The Strong Buzz Nov. 20th: The News (Ramsay, Sushi Sasabune), Last Minute Turkey, Bookmark, My Dinner at European Union”

Hello all and Welcome to the November 20th edition of THE STRONG BUZZ: The News (Gordon Ramsay, Sushi Sasabune), Last Minute Turkey Rescue, Bookmark (What to Drink with What you Eat, The Red Cat Cookbook), My Dinner at European Union.

THE NEWS

Gordon Ramsay at the London
When a press release leads with a paragraph that says reservations can be made two calendar months in advance, you kinda get the idea that the restaurant in question may be a bit, shall we say, in demand. As you probably know—unless you’ve been living in the house next to Borat—the restaurant in question is Gordon Ramsay at the London Hotel (the former Rhiga Royal), the stateside debut of the celebrated chef behind the hit series Hell’s Kitchen. But actually, Ramsay is actually bringing us two restaurants, not just one. And the second one sounds a lot more appealing to me.

But let’s begin with the first, which is a formal, fine-dining experience called Gordon Ramsay at the London, which seats 45 people in a room designed by David Collins in shades of emerald with glossy timber panels. The menu, by chef de cuisine Neil Ferguson, features a seven-course Menu Prestige ($110) with signatures like lobster ravioli with celery root cream, shellfish vinaigrette and chervil veloute, and cannon of lamb with candied onions, confit tomatoes and marjoram jus. For daintier appetites, he’ll serve a modest three-course menu ($80) with plates of hand-dived sea scallops caramelized with salardaise potatoes, Alsace bacon and black truffle vinaigrette, braised Pacific halibut with romaine hearts, radishes, artichokes and confit of Meyer lemon, and Brandt beef with braised oxtail, roasted ceps (porcini mushrooms) and Bordelaise sauce.

The second restaurant is modeled after Maze, Ramsay’s more casual London restaurant. The concept is a lot less fussy and a lot easier on the wallet. The London Bar, is both a bar and a dining room cloaked in leather furniture in mossy tones of blue and green. The restaurant, which will serve breakfast, lunch, dinner and high tea, will offer a daily changing menu of market specials and small plates with Asian influences. The average price for a dish is $14. The London Bar will also offer both a 4-course ($55) and a 6-course menu ($75).

Gordon Ramsay at the London Hotel is located at 151 West 54th Street, www.gordonramsay.com. For reservations at Gordon Ramsay at the London, call 212-468-8888. For reservations at The London Bar, call 212-468-8889.

Sushi Sasabune
This new LA transplant asks New Yorkers to do the one thing we have a bit of trouble with—trust. Literally. The restaurant boasts a "Trust Me" sign instead of a menu. Kenji Takahashi, the restaurant’s itame (sushi chef) and owner, doesn’t believe in menus; he believes in giving people an experience. Said experience, however, will not include common items like California Rolls or spicy tuna. His menu is traditional, and focuses on the temperature of the rice and the freshness of the fish. You’ll find fish like fluke fin, butter fish (black cod), and albacore, all served at varying temperatures either as sashimi with homemade ponzu dipping sauces or over hot rice that warms the fish slightly to bring the flavor of the fish to its optimum. In fact, he varies the temperature of the rice for each fish to bring out specific flavor profile of each fish. What’s more he’s got a photographic memory; he’s been known to remember a customer’s favorite dishes after just one visit. Cool, right? Check it out. Sushi Sasabune New York is located at 401 East 73rd Street, 212-249-8583. Closed Sundays.

LAST MINUTE TURKEY

If you’re wondering how you’re gonna roast a turkey this Thanksgiving—how you’ll get one up the five flights to your apartment, how you’ll keep it cold in a fridge the size of a large purse, how your roast it in an oven that is used as your shoe closet, have no fear, LASSI is here. Yes, Heather Carlucci-Rodriguez, the lovely and amazing chef at the city’s best Indian takeaway, Lassi, is doing Tandoori Turkeys to go for Thanksgiving. Her birds are marinated in yogurt and spices—a brilliant mix that breaks down the muscle of the bird and turns it into buttery, juicy beauty. The crispy skinned turkeys come with two sides and in two sizes: 20 lbs for $65 or 10lb for $45. To order, please call Heather at 212-675-2688 by Tuesday. Lassi is located at 28 Greenwich Avenue.

BOOKMARK

A few books you might want to check out (and even buy)!

What to Drink with What You Eat
Authors Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg have already taken you inside the mind of a chef in their books Becoming a Chef, Chef’s Night Out, and The New American Chef. Now they take you into the brain of a sommelier with What to Drink with What you Eat (Bullfinch, $35). This essential new book will answer every and any question you might have about how to pair food and drink. They cover every conceivable beverage on the planet (save, perhaps, Diet Snapple): beer, sake, hard cider, wine, coffee, tea, and even water, with the help and advice of over 70 top wine experts from restaurants like Babbo, French Laundry, Jean-Georges, Per Se, and more. They also include chef’s recipes on what to eat with all those beverages, along with their tips on what to drink with everything from Indonesian to Popeye’s fried chicken, Barbecue, ice cream, foie gras and even French toast. Just last week the book was awarded the 2006 Georges Duboeuf "Wine Book of the Year" Award, chosen for its ability to "illuminate the subject of wine for both the beginner and the connoisseur." Check it out.

The Red Cat Cookbook
After serving an estimated 100,000 orders of Tempura Green Beans, 55,000 orders of Sautéed Zucchini and somewhere around 85,000 Simple Skillet Roasts of Chicken, chef Jimmy Bradley decided that he had perfected the recipes that have made Red Cat a neighborhood favorite for the past decade. He’s just published The Red Cat Cookbook: 125 Recipes from New York City's Favorite Neighborhood Restaurant (Clarkson Potter $35). The Red Cat Cookbook is Jimmy’s take on feeding loved ones—this means recipes for hearty, full-flavored plates like shrimp cakes with remoulade, savory pork sausage with clams and garlic, and spaghetti with a salad on top (one of my favorites). Written with Andrew Friedman, this is an addictive book to read (Jimmy tells a damn good story), and one that I’ve already brought into the kitchen, where it sits open to a recipe I’m planning for Sunday dinner—the simple skillet roast of chicken with fried tomato sauce and polenta. How good does that sound? Enjoy.

EVENTS

Law: The Afterlife
On November 29, 2006, starting at 7:30 PM, Law: The Afterlife will be hosting an event at Stone Creek Bar and Lounge (27th St. btwn 3rd/Lex Aves). The event will begin with cocktails and mingling, and will be followed by a panel composed of lawyers-turned-writers. The panel will be moderated by Marci Alboher, a lawyer-turned-freelance writer/speaker/coach, whose upcoming book, One Person/Multiple Careers: A New Model for Work/Life Success, will be published by Warner Books in February 2007. Panelists include Jeremy Blachman, AKA Anonymous Lawyer, career coach Michael Melcher, and Gretchen Rubin, a former attorney who clerked for Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, and who has written three non-fiction books. There is no charge or RSVP required. Cash bar.

MY DINNER AT EUROPEAN UNION

Sometimes in this journey known as life, a few wrenches get tossed into the picture that threaten to derail your grand plans. The other morning, for instance, when Craig and I were attempting to make beignets for some ambitious plans we had for our breakfast, we faced a few such obstacles. I won’t bore you with all the details, but suffice it to say we could not get the beignet dough to puff up in the hot oil. What we were turning out were our own variety of Wheat Thins, not pillowy homemade donuts. We kept trying to get the oil hotter, to roll the dough thinner, to do something to get the recipe to rise, but nothing worked. When we melted our slotted spoon in the oil (oops), leaving the oil swimming with black globules of melted plastic, I was ready to give up and call it a morning. But not Craig. He has much more patience for deep-frying than I do. I believe the patience-for-deep-frying gene is one that is specific to males. We females got the ask-for-directions gene, they got the deep-fry one. Seems fair.

So anyway, while I was ready to quit and have a bagel, Craig was already out the door, running down to get a fresh (clean) supply of vegetable oil. When he returned, he heated the fresh oil in a new pot, and rolled out some more dough and handed me the knife to start cutting the dough into squares for the beignets. (This is a man who has never turned on his oven, and there he was, rolling dough. Granted, he didn’t have a rolling pin so we were using a big beer mug covered in flour, but hey, it worked.) Anyway, about half an hour later, we had succeeded. Sweaty and greasy, we sat down to a plate of powdered sugar coated beignets and coffee. They were nothing like the ones at Café du Monde that had inspired this feast in the first place, but they were hot, airy and almost puffy.

So what does all of this have to do with European Union, you’re probably asking yourselves right now. It has to do with perseverance—the act of not giving up. You see, Jason Hennings and Bob Giraldi, the owners of European Union, a terrific new gastro pub in the East Village, have had to do quite a bit of persevering over the past year.

As you probably know by now, their restaurant was set to open this past spring, with chef Anne Burrell at the helm. But the Community Board opposed their liquor license under the 500-foot rule, and the State Liquor Authority agreed with the Board, and rejected their license. When the restaurant opened as BYOB, neighbors complained and the restaurant was soon shut down by a little known, rarely enforced “bottle club” permit law which the police decided to crack down on, thereby not allowing anyone to drink anything other than water, soda or juice with dinner. Not a good combination for a restaurant. And so the restaurant had to close its doors, losing its chef, until the owners could work out a compromise with the Community Board, which they did a few weeks ago.

All told, the EU has now gone through two chefs (Burrell and then Gwenaël Le Pape) and almost one full year of drama to open as a fully functioning wine-and-beer serving restaurant. All I can say is thankfully they persevered. This place is worth the wait.

Designed by AvroKO (Public, Stanton Social), EU is raw-bricked and weathered, with wood-beamed ceilings and a long food bar at the entrance overlooking an open kitchen and charcuterie station hung with sausage links, prosciutto, and salumi. The front area also offers a farmhouse table for large groups or communal seating, and several hightops for a quick beer and a chat over a platter of their exceptional charcuterie ($18)—a spanning the globe selection that includes Serrano and Iberico from Spain, proscuitto from Iowa, and Liverwurst and Kalabanossi from Germany. The Kalabanossi sausages (all sausages are sourced from Schaller and Weber) were my favorite—slender and smoky and paired up with house-pickled vegetables. As a vehicle for your meats, the platter also includes one of the most heavenly expressions of the carbohydrate I have ever experienced—gnoccho frito—just-fried square puffs of ivory dough meant for puling open and filling up with sliced meats.

Walk past the front room and you’ll find heavy dark wood tables tucked into modern banquettes in soft black leather, and a lean bar backed in subway tiles where draught beers from France (Lindemans), Belgium (Saison Dupont), and more are poured in frosty mugs to pair up with snacks like house-pickled herring—substantial briny slices in crème fraiche and fennel fronds, resting on top of a crisped potato rosti cake ($5), shrimp in creamy tzatziki ($5) and wedges of fluffy frittata ($5).

The menu at European Union is gastro-pub in nature (read: simple, crowd-pleasing fare made from seasonal, carefully sourced ingredients). But unlike The Spotted Pig, it casts a wide net over Europe—bringing in dishes from Spain, Austria, Germany, France, the Netherlands and United Kingdom. The concept could be a recipe for disaster in the hands of a chef or restaurateur without the ability to focus and edit. But perhaps because the owners have had quite a bit of time to articulate their vision, EU is a precise, well-edited (and reasonably-priced) culinary showcase of the countries that comprise the European Union. Rather than overwhelm, the targeted menu gets your mouth watering, pulling your appetite in many exciting directions. Thanks to chef Sarah Ochs, who worked for five years at Esca, rewards are found on every road traveled.

Take the road to Portugal for instance, which she paves with plates of fat, meaty sardines ($9), so fresh they were almost jumping on the plate, set up with Marcona almonds, golden raisins and plump pitted olives. The perfect bite gets a slice of that fat sardine, a raisin, an olive and an almond all on your fork. Once the flavors hit your tongue—briny, sweet, salty, oily—you’ll be addicted. She also takes you to Spain with a dish of tiny squid ($9) cooked on the plancha and paired with a black rice cake that is lightly smoky. The accompanying segments of citrus pull the dish into sharp focus, saving flavors that could have become murky and bringing them into the light.

One of the most impressive appetizers is a riff on a beet and goat cheese salad. But the star of the salad is neither the beets nor the goat cheese. It is the watercress. I know, shocker. But it is spectacular. Piled into a long narrow bowl, the watercress is remarkably fluffy and so vibrant in flavor it tastes almost minty. The leaves are tossed with shaved bottarga (slightly salty sheets of dried fish roe) and sheer beet slices. Goat cheese comes into the picture in the form of a tangy goat cheese vinaigrette. It’s refreshing to find a salad that has become so matter-of-fact come into its own in such a brilliant new composition. Sarah is not just going through the motions; she is quite thoughtful. How nice.

Since this is a gastro-pub after all, the menu includes several sandwiches and three kinds of burgers ($15)—the Italian (with pancetta and dried tomatoes), the German—with Black Forest ham and Allgauer Berkase), and the English (with Farm Cheddar and Brown Sauce). But we opted for an open-faced sandwich of Bauernwurst sausage (a mild snappy German sausage made from pork) on housemade pretzel roll (dense and salty and terrific) with a shaved brussel sprout slaw in a bacon vinaigrette standing in for the more ubiquitous cole slaw ($13).

The selection of entrees also spans the European continent—there’s a Catalonian lamb cassoulet with white beans and garlic sausage ($25), schnitzel with almond spaetzle and pink pears, skate with brown butter, apples and chestnuts ($21), and artic char with golden beets, candied fennel and licorice vinaigrette ($21).

When Kathy, Julie, and I were dining there the other night, we went to England with the daily fish and chips. The night we were in, it was really more of a full-on fabulous fish fry than fish and chips, with perfectly cooked shrimp, squid, hake and skate all in attendance in crunchy robes of golden batter. Then we swung over to Italy with Sarah’s homemade cheese and pumpkin cavatelli that she serves in a wide flat bowl, tossed with wild mushrooms and braised greens ($17). The cavatelli were just lovely, rolled by hand so they were tender yet firm, and the mushrooms added a balance of dark earthy flavor to the mildly sweet pasta. I guess there needs to be an option for vegetarians on the menu, but to me this dish begged for a smoky hit of pancetta. (What isn’t made better by the addition of pancetta? I mean, really. For heaven’s sake.)

Desserts are quite good (despite being pancetta free). I was especially impressed when I learned that the pastry chef, Andrew Lesturgeon, is all of 23 years old. He most recently worked at Perry Street, and prior to that spent three years at Balthazar where he cooked on the line, worked pastry and waited tables. His menu mirrors the savory tour Sarah’s menu takes you on. We loved the Cannelé de Bordeaux, a moist sponge cake cloaked in a dark brown crust that is often served with tea and juice, which he serves with a delicate Chamomile cream and juicy tangerine sorbet ($7). His cheesecake is fresh and light with a bit of a ripe zip thanks to goat’s milk. He gives the cheesecake a clever Mediterranean twist by serving it on a homemade olive-fennel flatbread with roasted figs ($8).

I’m glad that EU has finally opened for business. (In the next few weeks they’ll do brunch and then lunch too.) It’s a great neighborhood restaurant, one that offers value (both reasonably priced food and wine) and one that can work for almost every craving, from a drink and a snack, to a burger and a beer, to a weeknight dinner with wine. Jason and Bob have persevered, and the beignets finally got made, so to speak. Now just get over there and eat.

European Union is located at 235 E. 4th St. near Avenue B, 212-254-2900.

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

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Posted: November 20, 2006

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