<< previous   next >>

the buzz

“The Strong Buzz for August 27th! The News (Josh Eden, Huckleberry Bar, Spitzers, Barfry, and more), Events, My Dinner at Rayuela”

Hello and Welcome to the August 27th edition of THE STRONG BUZZ! The News (Huckleberry Bar, Spitzer’s, Barfry, and more), Events, My Dinner at Rayuela.

Dining for Darfur
Thank you all for making my Dining for Darfur T Edward Wine Benefit another great success this year. Last week at the Puck Building we had a terrific crowd of people come together to sample some of the world’s most acclaimed artisan winemakers (all donated by Tom Byrnes of T Edward Wines) alongside smoked beef brisket and sausages from Hill Country, Rock Shrimp Po Boys and Ice Cream Sundaes from Cookshop, and the city’s most amazing six-foot heroes from Blue Ribbon. We raised over $16,000 in one night, and all of the funds raised will be donated directly to the International Rescue Committee’s life-saving humanitarian work in the refugee camps in Darfur and Chad. Many thanks to all who made it out to the event last week. To continue your support of the people in Darfur, please visit, www.savedarfur.org and www.theirc.org.

And now, THE NEWS
Chefs on the Move
Josh Eden to take over Goblin Market
Now here’s some great news in the world of the revolving kitchen door. Josh Eden, a Jean-Georges disciple (66, Xing), and an all around great guy, will be the new chef at Goblin Market. He replaces Richard Pelz (La Caravelle, La Grenouille) who will be leaving to pursue other projects. Can’t wait to check out his new menu, which he’ll start to put into effect when he joins Goblin Market after Labor Day.

New Chef at Sunset Beach
Chef Willis Loughead is the new chef at Andre Balazs’ Sunset Beach on Shelter Island. He was most recently chef de cuisine at The Modern at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art and previously worked at Bizcaya Grill at The Ritz-Carlton, Coconut Grove and Tantra restaurant & lounge, both in South Florida.

Looking Ahead: Huckleberry Bar
Despite the real estate boom and the continued exodus to Brooklyn, it’s not likely that Danny Meyer will be opening a bar in Williamsburg anytime soon. But that’s really okay because two of his disciples are. This September, Stephanie Schneider and Andrew Boggs, who met on the opening team of Blue Smoke/Jazz Standard, will open Huckleberry Bar, what they describe as “the bar at your favorite Danny Meyer restaurant, with its well valued wines by the glass, inventive seasonal cocktails and carefully chosen imported and domestic beers, transplanted to the heart of East Williamsburg.” Stephanie, who worked front of the house at Gramercy Tavern for five years, has been a Manager/Maitre D’ at Jean-Georges and was most recently the bar manager at Hearth, and Andrew (a manager at Village and Blue Smoke, and a DJ/producer) have teamed up with chef Seth Johnson (5 Ninth, Eleven Madison Park and most recently Resto) and will offer a menu of British and Southern-inspired small plates that will be prepared behind the bar and will be served late into the night. The restaurant seats 70 and has a charming garden out back for September’s Indian summer. A DJ will spin an eclectic mix of music ranging from old soul, funk, hip-hop, country/roots, rock, blues and jazz. Huckleberry Bar is located at 588 Grand Street, at Lorimer, in Williamsburg. 718-218-8555.

Open Now
Spitzer’s
Kiri and I were walking over to Suba for (a very impressive) dinner the other night when we passed this cool corner restaurant, paneled with wood and trimmed with steel, with long teak communal tables, and windows thrown open to the thumping Thursday night chaos of Ludlow Street. We walked inside, found a terrific beer bar stocked with 40 brews on tap (Leffe, Magic Hat, Smuttynose, Dogfish, Allagash, Bear Republic, and on and on) and a concise Resto/Spotted Pig-esque menu that includes plates of popcorn popped in pork fat ($4), oysters battered in beer with mustard cabbage slaw, and herb remoulade ($10), burgers cloaked in cheddar, bacon, caramelized onions ($12), cuttlefish tossed with preserved lemon and squid ink ($11), and heaps of mussels in bed with Italian sausage, roasted peppers and tomatoes ($14). Spitzer’s, as some of you might recall, got quite a pile of attention when Top Chef’s Sam Talbot was tapped to be its chef. He and the owners (the Shamlian brothers of Fat Baby) parted ways, and their chef is Mike Cooperman, formerly of Le Bernardin. I think he probably deserves some attention, too. That burger was great. Spitzer’s is located at 101 Rivington St at Ludlow St; (212) 228-0027.

Whole Foods Beer Market
Whole Foods Bowery Market has just opened a new 1,600 square foot pub-style beer room featuring Whole Foods Market’s top picks from local breweries in New York and around the world. (Sadly, there’s no beer drinking allowed. Just beer shopping.) The most impressive thing about this beer shop is the way they will sell their beer. They will not only offer bottles and cans, but you can even get your beer fresh from the tap, by way of The Growler. Yes, The Growler. This reusable half-gallon (64oz) glass jug was first introduced in the late 1800’s for folks who wanted to take beer home with them. It can keep beer fresh for up to a week. (As if it will last that long.) At the Whole Foods beer hall, you pay $2.99 for your very own Growler, then reuse it indefinitely, paying only for the cost of your beer.

The beer hall features a long mahogany table where “beer keeps” can answer questions, make recommendations and offer expert tips on which brew is perfect to bring to a party or will pair precisely with a meal. For the opening, six New York ales and lagers will be on tap, ready to be filled in the reusable Growlers: Blanche de Brooklyn (Brooklyn Brewery), Brownstone Ale (Sixpoint, Brooklyn), Kelso Saison (Kelso of Brooklyn), Liquid Gold (Captain Lawrence, Pleasantville), Ommegeddon (Ommegang, Cooperstown) and No Apologies Double IPA (Bluepoint, Patchogue) will be available from August through September. These beers will only be available for sale in the Growler. Many great imported beers will also be available in bottles, including Chimay Red, Unibroue La Fin du Monde, Lindemans Framboise and Cidre Dupont Brut. The Whole Foods Beer Market is located at Bowery and Houston Streets.

Sanctuary T
This new 40-seat, cork-paneled restaurant and bar from Dawn Cameron (who owns the online tea company SanctuaryTea.com) is dedicated to the art of tea and features over 50 varieties of fresh brewed tea alongside creative tea-infused cocktails by Benoit Cornet. Chef Kevin Stanton, who cooked under David Bouley and Paul Liebrandt, will serve a lunch menu of salmon poached in strawberry tea and organic greens, and honey-glazed turkey on 12-grain bread with raspberry chutney. The dinner menu features small plates idea for sharing like king salmon cooked in Red Moon Tea, with cucumber relish, wax beans and kafir lime sauce and cold-smoked brook trout with red cabbage, red currants and shaved fennel. To encourage the ritual of relaxing over their tea, the restaurant will offer board games and free Wi-Fi. Sanctuary T, 337B West Broadway (Corner of Grand), 212-941-7832.

BarFry
The menu at the newly opened BarFry reads: “Time Frys When You’re Having Fun.” Well, all you fry-heads out there (whether you like getting fried or just eating fried food), this is one place that sort of guarantees a good time. I mean, this is a restaurant dedicated to fried food, after all. What’s not to love? What’s more, the chef is one of my favorite people in chef whites—Josh DeChellis (who recently sold his interest in Sumile). Josh’s idea was to open a shop devoted to the Japanese art of tempura. To bring his vision to life, he partnered with Five Ninth and Fatty Crab’s Rick Camac and then he started testing over 100 recipes. His goals were to find a cost-effective recipe (he didn’t want to charge an arm and a leg) that would produce tempura that met three vital criteria: low oil retention in the batter, longevity of crispiness, and lightness of flake. Once the recipe was perfected (a process that he explains was more laborious than any other cooking project), he turned the 40-seat space formerly occupied by 50 Carmine into a temple of light and crispy tempura. His a la carte list of tempura items includes shrimp, cod, eggplant, string beans, tofu and pork cutlets ($5-$8 each), but there’s also a list of BarFry Po Boys (shrimp, crab, chicken fried steak, and Bar Fry Burger). Your best all around family-style meal deals are the Bar Boxes which include a selection of seafood and vegetable tempura, a few Po Boys, and hand-selected meats prepared tonkatsu style, and frisky homemade sauces like Pickled Jalapeno Soy, Red Yuzu Hot sauce and Wasabi Remoulade. The liquor license is in full effect so you can have a Pineapple Yuzu margarita, a JD Gaijin Pale Ale (a beer produced exclusively for DeChellis by Rogue Brewery in Newport, Oregon), or a glass of wine or sake. If you get Josh liquored up he may give you the tempura recipe, but it’s doubtful. BarFry is located at 50 Carmine Street, 212-929-5050.

Shelly’s Trattoria La Tradizionale
Shelly Fireman has transformed his Prime Steakhouse into a new trattoria celebrating the cuisine of the Italian coast. The menu at his newly opened Trattoria La Tradizionale features two sections—from the land and from the sea, with fish flown in daily from the Mediterranean, Atlantic, Gulf and Pacific. Chef Shane Cash (yes, he’s related to Johnny) is serving tagliata al gorgonzola—thinly sliced prime steak with gorgonzola crostini and sweet onions ($27.95), Pescatrice in Tegame—monkfish with escarole, organic cecci beans and lemon thyme ($24.75), whole grilled Mediterranean Dorade with baby fennel, black olive salmoriglio ($32), pappardelle Bolognese ($21), and Fazzoletto—a large handmade raviolo filled with creamy burrata and stracchino cheese.
If dinner in Midtown is just not your thing, the restaurant offers a great way to have a quick bite after work. His happy hour at the bar offers a free menu of ciccetti—snacks like ceci fritti (fried chickpeas), patatine al balsamico (house made potato chips with balsamic vinegar seasoning), along with assorted focaccia, tramezzini and crostini, and chiacchiere (fried sweet dough)—from 5-8pm with any cocktail. I don’t know about you, but that makes me happy. Shelly’s Trattoria La Tradizionale is located at 41 West 57th Street, 212-245-2422.

Accademia di Vino
Kevin Garcia had some big shoes to fill over at ‘Cesca when he took over after chef Tom Valenti sold his interest in the restaurant to concentrate on Ouest. Tom’s quite a tough act to follow but to his credit, Kevin is holding his own. He’s even ready to expand his reach and last week he opened Accademia di Vino with partner Anthony Mazzola of the ‘Cesca’s Off the Menu Restaurant Group. The restaurant is located in the former Mainland space, which has been transformed into a 200-seat enoteca, with a 500-bottle Italian wine list. (By the way, Brian Young, who was the chef at Mainland, is now at Tavern on the Green. Now that’s interesting. I loved his food at Citarella and at Mainland so I might be dining at Tavern on the Green soon to see what he’s up to there. I’ll have Craig pin a corsage on my dress before we go.)

So, back to Accademia di Vino. The menu offers wine-friendly fare from salumi and cheese, to pasta (Bucatini alla Carbonara with guanciale, cracked black pepper, scallion, and egg $18), Garcia’s signature Al Forno-styled grilled pizzas (corn, potato, and gorgonzola ($14), sausage and broccoli rabe ($15)), and heartier main courses like Heritage pork porterhouse, roasted potatoes and cavolo nero ($27) and American kobe fiorentina, Cesare’s beans and broccoli rabe ($40). Accademia di Vino is located at 1081 Third Avenue at 64th Street, New York City in mid-August. Accademia di Vino will be open seven days a week, from 12 noon to 12 midnight. Reservations: 212-888-6333. www.accademiadivino.com.

EVENTS
Introduction to Food Writing at Mediabistro
I will be teaching my Introduction to Food Writing class at Mediabistro again this fall beginning September 20th (8 weeks). It gives you the tools for research, how to pitch stories, and how to break into food journalism with well-written features.

The folks at Mediabistro also did an interview with me about my appearance on Top Chef. Read it here!

Clamapalooza IV: The Chowder Off
On September 6th, I’ll be judging the Clam Chowder Cook-Off at Professor Thom’s, my favorite sports bar. (The fact that I now have a favorite sports bar is alarming, yes, I know. But it’s true, and when dating Craig, also necessary.) Anyway, the contest launches the debut of Harpoon’s Octoberfest and the fun starts at 7pm with prizes, lots of beer and, of course, chowdah! To enter your recipe, email Chris at chriswertz@gmail.com or head into Thom’s and fill out a recipe entry form. Professor Thom’s is located at 219 Second Avenue between 13th and 14th Streets, 212-260-9480.

Core’s Classic Cinema Tuesday’s
We’ve all heard of dinner and a movie, but what about dinner during a movie minus your couch? Well that’s just what the Lower East Side’s Core has in mind with “Core Cinema,” a weekly screening of classic films like The Three Musketeers and Zoro under the stars at cozy tables or underneath the glass-enclosed patio. At 8:30p.m. on every Tuesday, skip the popcorn and instead munch on plates like rabbit confit with mushrooms and fava beans or hanger steak with shaved aged gouda. For the complete movie schedule, visit www.core191.com. Core is located at 191 Orchard Street, between Houston and Stanton, 212-228-9888.
—Celine Valensi

THE STRONG BUZZ CLASSIFIEDS!
This week on THE STRONG BUZZ CLASSIFIEDS, a West Village chef is looking for a sous, PR firm looking for account execs, and Harold Moore, who is about to open a new restaurant, is looking for a great front of house person. Read more and post your own ad on THE STRONG BUZZ CLASSIFIEDS today!

My Dinner at Rayuela
One of my favorite things about summer is that I have a lot more time to get into some great books. I love to read and somehow in the winter, I just don’t do it as much as I do in the summer when I’m out at the beach on those weekends away. In terms of literary style, while Craig is all about the classics, I’m more into contemporary fiction. This summer, I feel particularly blessed by the wonderful books I have read, all exquisitely written page-turners: The History of Love (Nicole Kraus), Water for Elephants (Sara Gruen), A Thousand Splendid Suns (Khaled Housseini), The Glass Castle (Jeanette Walls), and most recently, The Bookseller of Kabul (Asne Seierstad). I’m now looking for some Labor Day reading (suggestions are welcome), but based on some fun meals at a new restaurant called Rayuela on the Lower East Side, I might just have to include the 1963 novel of the same name by Argentine writer Julio Cortázar. I’d never heard of this book, nor did I know that Rayuela was Spanish for “hopscotch,” but I learned both of these things from Héctor Sanz, an owner of the Rayuela. I also learned that while Freestyle Latin sounds like a fancy 1970s roller-skating move, it’s actually the cuisine served at this ambitious new restaurant. Allow me to elaborate.

The first thing you’ll notice about Rayuela is its look. From the outside—an iron, glass, and brick façade—the word “Rayuela” is written in a sexy swooping silver light script. Step inside, and you’ll find a festive space pulsing with life (read: hipsters leaning into lounge tables, and South American hotties crowding the bar). Even when it’s not quite full at the bar (which is rare) the place feels effortlessly fabulous, like a cool bar somewhere in Buenos Aires that’s landed on Allen Street. Granted, the bar here serves drinks like you’ve never seen before. These are fruity but still serious cocktails by Junior Merino that highlight single spirits, like the Mezcal ($11)—a smoky blend of Mezcal, ginger, pineapple and Cointreau that pretty much guarantees a hangover if you exceed one. Ditto the Rye ($11), which was a personal favorite—mixed with guava, mint, lemon and agave nector. Hangovers, I have learned, are sometimes a necessary part of the dinner experience. Drink lots of water, take two Tylenol, and you should be fine.

Now, the restaurant is not just all cool cocktails in a blank space. Quite the opposite. The design is hot. I thought it was an AvroKo space but then I learned that it was designed by Sanz along with Jun Aizaki, previously of Rockwell Group and founder of Crème Design Collective in Brooklyn. Jun, I’ll say this: very impressive. The restaurant has this chic, raw, industrial/organic feel to it, a vibe that comes off walls and windows made from iron and beveled glass, salvaged hard wood planked floors, deep, banquettes/couches upholstered in textured sage and chocolate fabrics, and a beautiful olive tree that reaches up into the second floor dining room, like some sort of magical tree from Jack and the Beanstalk. It’s hard to resist leaving your seat to climb its branches up through the ceiling.

And now we come to the menu, a rather important part of the experience. All the stylish settings and colorful libations in the world can’t help a kitchen in need. But the kitchen here is on good, if curious, footing. The menu is a playful and fun experiment in pan-Latin cooking, but it’s also daunting. There are just under 50 dishes listed on the menu from ceviches, to salads, soups, appetizers, entrees, and sides. The pure volume of choice was overwhelming. (Please edit the menu.) In addition, it seems almost every one of these 50 plates is composed of at least a half dozen cross-cultural ingredients. Chef Maximo Tejada, who cooked under Douglas Rodriguez at Ola and Chicama, reaches across Latin America, all the way over to Spain, to create his signature Estilo Libre Latino (Freestyle Latino) cuisine. And while it’s clear that Tejada is having fun with the food, the sheer excess of ingredients made me cautious about his approach.

Take the Lobster Revolution ceviche for example. It includes chunks of sweet lobster meat along with grilled pineapple, jalapeno, young coconut water, lemongrass, ginger and a dollop of Uruguayan caviar. Can you say gild the lily? Then again, I’ll admit: I loved that lily. Ditto the churrasco—a long and lovely filet of beef from Uruguay that’s grilled perfectly so it’s tender and melting in your mouth, but this steak got all sorts of bling goin’ on. It’s anchored by Peruvian roasted potatoes, jeweled up with meaty wild mushrooms and a creamy puddle of cheese fondue, and topped not with just a plain old chicmichurri but one twinkling with lump crabmeat. Now did this nice steak need to be tricked out like Paris Hilton after a day at Harry Winston? Nope, not really. But did I love the dish? Well, yeah. Did Craig leave one bite left over? Not on your life. So, I guess my point is that while Tejada is a “more is more” chef, and that can cause for some concern, for the most part, his approach works.

As I’ve already mentioned, the ceviches (there are a dozen) are a strongpoint and a great way to start a meal. They are bright and light, and animated with layers of flavor—tart, sweet and spicy. Other favorite starters were the Bolos de Mofongo—spicy fried balls of mashed green plantains shaped like falafel, and filled up with bacon and onions and then balanced on a stew of peasant-like pulled braised pork shoulder that sort of reminded me of old school ropa vieja. Yum.

Tejada’s Jalea is also a fine way to begin your meal, but like the Bolos, this is not a dish that’s meant for one. Tejada cooks for four with each single serving. Clearly, he learned to cook from his grandmother (or mine). Anyway, the Jalea is sort of like the Peruvian version of fritto misto. It combines lightly fried shrimp, scallops, calamari, and octopus with a zippy, tangy aji amarillo aioli, slivered red onions, and dense and golden yucca fries. It’s far from delicate or light, but when Court and I had it on one of my first visits to Rayuela, we licked the plate clean. It’s delicious. Shrimp and (slightly tough) coins of spicy chorizo are served in a long banana shaped bowl tossed in a rich red salsa that’s almost like a mole, and plated over a bed of fufu (mashed plantains mixed with bacon—hello hips) with thin plantain chips that you can use sort of like edible spoons.

But sometimes Tejada’s “more is more” school of cooking feels sloppy. The house paella is an example. It’s made from green rice that’s slightly mushy and overcooked, and is stocked with peas, clams, chorizo, shrimp, and lobster (though not the least bit dried out) and then fitted into in an extra large ring mold that doesn’t really look so pretty stacked up into a six-inch hockey puck. Why not use a paella pan, a cazuela, or at least a nice big bowl? It’s tough to eat paella off of a flat plate. (And it’s not as much fun when you can’t scrape the bits of crusty rice from the pan.) Another curiosity is that he adds grilled chicken as a sort of garnish over the top of the rice, a strange decision considering part of the joy of eating paella (for me at least) is having the ingredients all cook together and soak up the seasonings from the rice. Why bother to slice some grilled chicken over the top? There’s enough going on in the paella without a chicken garnish.

On the other hand, the Arroz con Pollo that Craig and I tried on a more recent visit, is spot on, and allows a spare presentation of a roasted free range chicken with a paprika-dusted skin (and quite a juicy bird underneath it) tucked into a generous portion of (slightly mushy) rice that’s seasoned up with cinnamon and paprika, and rounded out with diced chicken and apple sausage, capers and olives to really give your taste buds a full body workout. Craig’s cousin Ricki, who’s not a huge fan of spicy food, went for a plate of crispy Cuban pork ($24) that includes a braised shoulder, cooked slow and long so it’s almost silky, with a sweet plantain and grilled pineapple mojo and cracklings so crispy I might’ve chipped a tooth trying to take a bite. Other than that though, a good plate o’ pork.

There’s probably not going to be much room for dessert if you’ve managed to work your way through the dinner menu, but if you crave a little something sweet, have the apple crumble timbale ($7), it’s a strangely down home American offering on such a Freestyle Latin menu. But those Freestyle kids are so unpredictable.

After dinner, I came home and looked up the novel Rayuela and discovered that it was an experiment in a genre known as magical realism. Cortázar wrote 155 chapters, but he designated the last 99 as "expendable." In essence he leaves the reader to decide whether to read them or not, and in what order. I thought, this could just be the perfect summer book. Hello, Oprah?

Rayuela is located at 165 Allen Street, between Stanton and Rivington Streets. (212) 253-8840, www.rayuelanyc.com.

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

<< previous   next >>

Posted: August 27, 2007

Share !