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“The News, Events, My Dinner at Yumcha.”

Hello All, and Welcome to The April 25th Edition of THE STRONG BUZZ. This Week: The News, Events, My Dinner at Yumcha.

THE NEWS.

The Revolving Kitchen Door
Matt Weingarten, most recently the chef at Porcupine, has left. He is now looking for a new gig, so if you are looking for a chef with a great eye for flavor, texture, seasonality, well, you might want to reach out to him. He was Katy Sparks’ sous chef for a while, and ran the loft at Quilty’s, and since then worked briefly at Tuscan (which is now English is Italian). He is young, driven, and quite talented. Please feel free to contact me and I will put you in touch.

Chris Schweiger, most recently the chef at The Odeon has moved on, replacing Sarah Jenkins as chef at 50 Carmine.

Mercadito Grove
Patricio Sandoval, the chef and owner of Mercadito, one of my all time favorite tequila cantinas in the East Village, is opening a new branch in the West Village. Mercadito Grove, located at the corner of Seventh Avenue South and Grove Street (100 Seventh Avenue South) will open in late May and will feature the same Mexican market menu of ceviches, tacos, and unparalleled margaritas.

Ludo
After a nice long stay in the land of hip couture, Chez Es Saada has closed. On May 10th, it will be replaced by Ludo, a new Middle Eastern/Mediterranean spot with a grazing menu of mezze by chef Einat Adimony, who has worked in spots like Danube and Patria, and who was most recently chef at the Tempest-inspired lounge, Odea. Owned by Rich Ko and Ravi Gulivindala, this sultry duplex space, designed by Post Logic Studio features copper framed lighting, and lots of snug nooks to get close. The staff will be outfitted in American Apparel uniforms. As for Eintat’s mezze menu (which includes small and large plates), expect boldly flavored dishes like Watermelon Salad with House Made Feta Cheese and Hibiscus Vinaigrette, Pork Belly Spring Rolls with Tamarind Chutney, Crispy Bulgar Wheat Kibbeh stuffed with raisins, ground beef, and pine nuts with a yogurt dipping sauce, Twenty Spice Skirt Steak on Green Apples with Fried Watercress, and Lamb Two Ways—Grilled Tenderloin Wrapped in Grape Leaves and Grilled Lamb Chops with Sunchoke Puree and Persian Lime Sauce. Ludo is located at 42 East 1st Street (b/w 1st and Avenue A), 212-777-5617.

Bar Americain
I had a chance to check out Bobby Flay’s latest venture, Bar Americain, the other night at the opening party—lights, cameras, foodies, press, Hank Azaria, Craig Bierko—quite a nice bash. And while I could not get my hands on much food, what I had was terrific—one shrimp in a small shooter filled with a zippy tomatillo salsa, and two slices of thin, super tender steak topped with a similarly spicy green sauce. (We went to the Spotted Pig afterwards for dinner, which was AMAZING.) But, I did get my hands on several cocktails, including one favorite —The Bronx Cocktail (Plymouth gin, sweet vermouth, dry vermouth, and fresh orange juice). After that, it’s pretty much going to be a good night.

Located in the sprawling space that was formerly Judson Grill, Bar Americain is actually a reference to the signs that Parisian cafe owners used to put up outside their storefronts to inform passerbyers that they served cocktails. Since cocktails were a purely American thing at the time, the signs said: "BAR AMERICAIN.” Designed by David Rockwell, the space is stocked with showy circular banquettes, and an impressive 28-foot long bar that stretches the length of the far wall.

As for the food, the menu is a celebration of meals inspired by Flay’s travels across the United States. The focus of his travels was, not surprisingly, heavy in the South by Southwest regions, with dishes like Vidalia Onion Soup with Parker House Croutons and Blistered Cheese ($9). Crawfish Raviolo with Brown Butter and Wild Thyme ($13), Gulf Shrimp and Grits with Green Onions ($14), and entrees like Mussels and Frites Americain in Green Chile Broth ($21); Duck, Dirty Wild Rice, Pecans and Bourbon ($27), Rack of Pork with Apple Ginger Chutney, Creamed Corn and Sour Mash ($28). Congrats to Bobby on his new place. Bar Americain is located at 152 West 52nd Street (b/w 6th and 7th Avenues), 212- 263-0700.

Milk and Cookies
I don’t know about you, but I often wonder why we don’t have milk and cookie hour as adults (or nap time for that matter). I mean, it would just be so lovely to take a break from the grind, sit around with a cold glass of milk and some hot and gooey cookies. Well, now you can make your own milk and cookie hour. Husband and wife team Marc and Jennifer Limotte have opened Milk & Cookies—a sweet little storefront in the West Village in a landmarked building decorated with colonial and vintage antiques, where they are bringing snacktime back to life with fresh-baked cookies—chocolate chip, peanut butter, oatmeal and Snicker doodles—and several varieties of brownies to boot. To wash down your cookies, grab a cold glass of Ronnybrook Dairy milk, or if that is too light for your taste, you can slurp down a thick milkshake instead (banana, strawberry and chocolate). Milk & Cookies also features a full line of espresso and tea drinks from Porto Rico Importing Company, as well as homemade gourmet hot chocolate. Milk & Cookies is located at 19 Commerce Street (b/w Bedford and Seventh Avenue), 212-243-1640.

Providence
Margherita Aloi, the chef most recently of Arrezzo, has moved onto the stoves at Providence, a new restaurant featuring “Coastal European” cuisine in the space that was most recently Le Bar Bat, but was originally the Manhattan Baptist Church. The space has been redesigned with wooden beams, marble and vintage elements that stay true to it’s original structure and more appropriately complement Aloi’s menu that highlights her skill with Italian cuisine—Saffron Ribbons with Fresh Lobster ($25), Spaghettini with Veal Meatballs ($22), and Atlantic Halibut with Yukon Gold Potatoes, Broccoli Rabe, Baby Artichokes, and Shiitake Mushroom Sauce ($27). Providence is located at 311 West 57th Street, 212-307-0062.

Pastavino
This old world Italian Trattoria from partners John Chang and Marcello Villani (Tre Pomodoro) offers a simple Italian fare—loads of fresh antipasti, bowls of fresh pasta, and secondi like sweat sausage with roasted potatoes, pork fillet with rosemary sauce, veal scallopine, and special menus for large parties—baked lasagna, suckling pig, whole roasted branzino, meatballs, and veal piccatta. Located in a townhouse on Second Avenue, the restaurant is warmed with exposed brick and wooden wine racks, and features a sky-lit back room for private parties. Pastavino is located at 1742 Second Avenue (b/w 90 and 91st Streets), 212-831-8167.

Buzzing on the Radar
Mainland is set to open at the end of May and will feature modern authentic Chinese cuisine by chef Brian Young (Harvest on Hudson, Citarella, Le Bernardin), and classic cocktails with an Asian Twist. It will be located on 3rd Avenue (b/w 63rd and 64th).

Arthur Schwartz’s NYC Cookbook Wins Cookbook of the Year!
Arthur Schwartz, the fabulous host of The Food Maven, a weekly radio program on WWRL 1600AM, and the former host of WOR’s Food Talk with Arthur Schwartz, won the Cookbook of The Year Award from IACP (International Association of Culinary Professionals; Think Best Film in The Oscars.) He won for “Arthur Schwartz’s New York City Food: An Opinionated History and More Than 100 Legendary Recipes (Stewart, Tabori & Chang). This is a great read for diehard New Yorkers, food lovers of every generation, and fans of history alike. Congratulations to Arthur!

A Casa
If you would love to entertain but really have no idea how to put together a menu (or have no time to do so), or perhaps you are going to be a house guest this summer and are looking for a cool edible gift to bring along, or even if you are just into having good food around your own house, allow me to give you this little tip. I just discovered it and I love it. It is A Casa. The creation of Melissa Fox, a former film executive who left LA and returned home to New York City to pursue her passion as a cook, A Casa is a Latin-inspired gourmet food/catering company that aims to make intimate stylish home dining simple.

Fox, a native New Yorker with a Nicaraguan mother, was raised in a bi-lingual household and was been steeped in Latin American cooking for years. Her catering and mini-empanada business is quite a find. Her stuff is fabulous. I have been trying to make my assortment of her mini-empanadas last, but I keep gobbling them up. They heat up in about 12 minutes, and have this great crisp pastry dough crust, and they are stuffed with fillings like Queso Blanco, Pulled Spicy Beef with Tomatoes, and Spicy Chorizo and Manchego. (If you want to try and make them last, you can freeze them for 6-8 weeks and they can be refrigerated for 5 days.)

She also serves full on catered Latin feasts with larger dishes like Roasted Mojito Chicken, Grouper Huachinago, Arroz con Pollo, Camarones a las Brazas (shrimp wrapped in bacon), and Carne Chorizada (a quintessential Nicaraguan dish of spicy beef and vegetables). Melissa will also include her own collection of Latin American serving pieces, if you want a really authentic experience. Dinner parties for up to 45 people and cocktail parties for up to 75. Prices vary and begin at $60 per head. Mini-empanadas (get them with the chipotle mayo for $7 for the 6.5 ounce jar) are sold at $10 a dozen. (These are really a fun house gift for a party.) For more information and to place orders, please call Melissa at a casa, 212-683-3064 or visit www.acasafox.com.

EVENTS

An Experiment in Cheese and Wine
Nolita House is hosting a very rare wine and cheese event on Wednesday May 11th from 6:30-8:30 pm. Cheese guru Max McCalman, maitre fromager for Picholine and Artisanal restaurants, will conduct an interactive Cheese Lab, pairing seven artisan cheeses from the United States and abroad with four wine varietals from New York’s Wölffer Estate Vineyard. During this interactive lab, you can sample and comment on these pairings, and your feedback will be included in one of Max’s upcoming cheese books. The price for the event is $45 excluding tax & gratuity. Space is limited, so reservations are required. Reservations can be made by calling (212) 625-1712. Nolita House is located at 47 East Houston Street between Mott and Mulberry Streets.

Corey Creek Vineyards Hosts Sommelier Dinner
Corey Creek Vineyards (one of my favorite picnic ground spots in the North Fork, and in my opinion one of the best producers of Gewürztraminer on Long Island) will host a dinner and discussion of “Niche Whites” with sommelier Darrin Siegfried, former president of the Sommelier Society of America (SSA) and current Operating Partner of Red, White, & Bubbly wine shop in Brooklyn. The dinner will take place on Saturday, May 7th at Corey Creek (Main Road, Southhold) from 6:00-9:00pm. Tickets are $100/General Public OR $75/Wine Club Members. For reservations, please call 631-765-4168 or writing wineclub@coreycreek.com. For more information, visit www.bedellcellars.com.

MY DINNER AT YUMCHA

There is just one thing I didn’t like about Yumcha. But aside from this singular issue, the rest of the dining experience—from the magnificent “Modern Chinese” cuisine, to the fine service, to the serene and elegant space designed by Glen Coben (with a bathroom that is so peaceful and relaxing I felt like I was in a spa), to the rosebuds imported from Beijing that bob around in their homemade infused teas—is flawless, and one I would like to repeat, and often. The one thing I don’t like is, well, you know what, I’ll make you wait until the end of the review for that. (NO CHEATING!)

Yumcha, a cool, clean and modernly Zen space warmed with rich garnet tones and dark wood, is located in the space that was formerly Bar D’O. The restaurant has undergone a radical makeover since those days. You’ll now find soft lantern lighting, glass walls etched with Chinese characters, and a lean open kitchen that allows the trance-like aroma of ginger, chiles, and star anise to fill the room, and permits diners to watch chef Anglelo Sosa, a handsome guy with a great smile, at work. Sosa, who has spent most of his career in the tutelage of Jean Georges (Spice Market and at Restaurant Jean Georges), describes his menu as “Modern Chinese”—he spent a month working in Hong Kong and learning real Chinese technique—but to me it is so much more than that.

His cooking style, which clearly contains elements of Modern and Chinese, more importantly illustrates the development process of a brilliant young chef—one who is pulling from past experience in multi-starred French kitchens, and layering those skills with his own personal vision, along the way producing a menu of rare and wonderful dishes fueled by his own imagination and steeped in the exotic senses and flavors of the Far East.

I dined at Yumcha last week with my friend Robert Oliver, a Fijian chef (most recently of The Cleaver Company) who will open a new place in the East Village (more to come on that later this summer), and a few friends of his—a fabulous group of men that included Dan Dimin, an entrepreneur who has just started over-nighting sustainable, line-caught fish from the West Indies (Tobago) to New York City. (If you are a chef looking for quality fish, check out www.tobagowild.com. He is selling to Le Bernardin, 71 Clinton, and Gramercy at the moment.) We all gathered ‘round a big circular table and took in the well-edited menu. (Thank the lord—another restaurant with a nice small menu!) Since there were six of us, we basically ordered the entire lot, a plan of attack which I strongly recommend.

Things got off to a terrific but teary start with a platter of fantastic deep-fried Frog’s Legs ($13). Just pretend they are chicken if you are squeamish about the Kermit issue, and eat them. Really, they are fabulous and an adventure worth signing up for. The plump legs are slathered in fiery Thai chile mayonaisse, and served with shot glass of pineapple consommé to sooth your blistered and burning (but happy nonetheless) mouth. Crunchy Spring Rolls ($9) stuffed with luscious bits of pork butt, sweet shrimp and nice hits of ginger, came my way next. These greaseless and crisp golden tubes were ideal utensils for a spectacularly zippy ginger-mustard dipping sauce. This sauce had several of us, myself included, double dipping and finger licking. (When I went back later in the week with Susie, she proclaimed that she was ready to either (a) drink it or (b) bathe in it.) The Tea-Smoked Chicken ($10)—a confited breast that is smoked in green and oolong teas—was moist and tender and served sliced in circular rounds, each bite delicately infused with softly exotic flavors. We also slurped down the Udon Noodle Salad, in a perfect peanut sauce topped with a cool citrus sorbet, poured on tableside that startles all flavors to sharp attention. NICE! But the grande dame of the appetizers was the Sesame Glazed Pork Rib with Spicy Shallot and Cabbage Salad ($11). This dish, served in a deep almond shaped bowl, was hands down one of the most extraordinary things I have eaten in recent memory. That meat is beyond any known notion of succulent.

I thought the pork had been braised in its own fat, but after speaking with Angelo, I discovered the real secret was in the pineapples. Yes, pineapples, which he explained have enzymes that really break down the meat. He braises all his meats in the same wild and super effective concoction—soy sauce, cassia (a Chinese cinnamon made from the bark of a cinnamon street), star anise, Thai Chiles, and quartered pineapples (with the rind left on). The result is meat that is tender to the point of impossibility. The pork rib is served in fat cubes in a salad that contains an entire weather system of flavors—a crazy twister of chiles and lime and ginger that is miraculous.

Friends, wait, there is more.

The Peking Duck Breast ($24)—marinated in black chinese vinegar, sherry wine vinegar, red wine vinegar, palm sugar and hoison sauce—was much juicier and flavorful than I seem to recall a duck ever being. It was served in neat domino-sized slices with a spring onion crepe, sort of like a pancake. The Slow Baked Atlantic Halibut ($23) was silky in texture, crowned with a fine dice of sausages and black beans, wading in a pool of rich broth made from Chinese Lapchoung sausages (a very sweet sausage), infused with garlic, ginger, and shallots. That sausage soup was YUMMY. If you are a tofu fan, you’ll love his Silken Tofu ($16) given serious amounts of flavor from aged soy sauce and finger chiles. The Szechwan Dusted Beef Tenderloin ($24) was, like the duck, shocking in that the meat was ridiculously tender and intensely saturated with flavor. It came balanced on squat, tree stump-shaped slices of super-soft, chile-flamed Japanese eggplant. But the most startling entrée of all was a crock-pot of slow braised Ginger-Lacquered Veal Cheeks ($23), the texture of which I have never experienced before. The reason? You guessed right—that pineapple braising liquid. It is magic. (I am braising everything in this from now on.) The melting cheeks are served in an apple cider broth spiced up with fresh ginger and stocked with plenty of silky rice and firm slices of apple. The guys at my table were all hogging the last bits, though they did save a little for me. Awwww. We also ordered some Curried Fried Rice ($5), a spectacular creation of chewy, nutty rice that tasted almost like faro to me, flecked with chunks of ham and charred vegetables, nudged up to a neon-colored curry cream that gives the rice an extra special zing. Absolutely fabulous. I could not let it leave the table until desserts was planted in front of me.

While Frank Bruni indicated in his Diner’s Journal that he was hungry after dining at Yumcha, we were quite sated (and very happy) after dinner. We did still had room for desserts—and so we ordered a few of them—firm fried beignets in a condensed milk fondue ($7), a terrific Green Tea Pot de Crème ($7), and a Peanut Butter Cheesecake Mousse ($8) that the guys loved but I found too sweet and creamy. It needed some texture and some balance. But the homemade ice creams were dee-vine.

Okay, now I will tell you about my singular issue with Yumcha. (Are you cheating? Did you read the whole review?) Drum roll please. What I don’t like about Yumcha is….the name.

For starters, Yumcha, which means “drink tea,” in Chinese, is not exactly a word that rolls off your tongue. Nor is it a name that sounds particularly sexy or inviting. But more importantly, it does not seem to speak to the concept of the place. Yumcha is not a tea house. Sure the restaurant serves a lovely selection of teas, curated by tea master Jin R—but this place is not really about tea. Yumcha is really about Angelo Sosa’s tongue-tingling, smile-inducing food. So, to me, Yumcha is the wrong name. And if you’re asking me what the right one is—which you are not, but I’ll tell you anyway—I think Sosa has quite a nice ring to it.

Yumcha is located at 29 Bedford Street (at Downing), 212-524-6800.

And that's The Strong Buzz for this week. Thanks for reading, and please share THE BUZZ!

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Posted: April 24, 2005

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