Taco Taco Taco

Pachanga Patterson has been all over the blogs recently, which is weird, because it's in my neighborhood, which typically shies away from citywide attention. The concept is "Mexican food as made by people behind the line who are hungry after a night of service." Maybe not the most terse description, but hey, it's accurate. Of course, people already know this place, thought it has only been open a few weeks. I ran into the sous chef from Ma Peche, a sign that industry has already caught on.

Here's what they've caught on to:

P & H soda mixers in the cocktails from Anton Nocito at P & H. The hibiscus margarita is delish, if a little on the boozy side. A trio of salsas might not be in season (corn and tomato in March?), but I ate them anyway. Tomatillo had good texture and acidity, while a roasted tomato version coaxed every available molecule of summer sweetness.

I'm surprised by how much I enjoyed a crispy, crunchy, peanutty salad of romaine leaves, fried peanuts, jicama, and pickled red onion. It would have been the perfect salve for the extremely fiery and nonetheless addictive fried chiles with cotija cheese that I ordered with my tacos. Because I can't do anything food-related in moderation, I ordered nine tacos for the two of us. (Note: this is what I consider to be a restaurant misstep; every taco plate comes with three tacos and the menu specifically says that mixing and matching is prohibited. Boo to a lack of variety.)

Moo shu duck tacos actually tasted nothing like moo shu--I was thinking cabbage and mushroom and hoisin--but they did taste strikingly similar to the Ssam Bar pork buns, and I mean that as a compliment. The filling appeared to be a confit of leg, along with lightly pickled cucumber and fresh sliced radish. Berkshire pork tacos were stuffed also with pickled onions and deep-fried pork rinds. Say no more. A taco advertised as "black trumpet mushrooms" was actually portabellos for the evening, a huge disappointment, since the two couldn't be more different versions of fungus. Still, it tasted good. Overall, the restaurant could use to include one meat taco with more meat texture, as opposed to all the slow-cooked stuff it has going on (pork shoulder, short ribs, duck confit). Bring on the tongue!

Dessert was the dark version of Vesta's baby Jesus cake, the Diabolita--same owners, different appeal. The cake is a square of chocolate and spice, served warm with caramel. It isn't a cerebral dessert, but dessert needn't always be so thinky.

K-Town, Etc.

Anyone who knows me would gladly attest to the following: I am not a nice/forgiving/happy/generous/enjoyable-to-be-around human being when I am hungry. This is just fact. I get grumpy. I get hypoglycemic. I swear to whomever I'm with that I'm just going to die. I could substantiate this with a thousand vignettes from childhood and beyond, but I'll leave it up to the imagination of my readers.

Now, on Friday afternoon, I ended up in Manhattan, walking up 6th Avenue, where you ain't bound to find anything worth buying, unless you're really into plastic beads or fresh flowers. This includes anything remotely ingestible. It's a culinary wasteland. I was starting to get my familiar hypoglycemic hand shake, and became immediately convinced that if I did not stop for food RIGHT NOW, I would... well, you get the picture.

My companion did not much care for my theatrics and kept telling me to pick a place, but what was there to pick? A corner bodega? A McDonald's? None of this jived with my "local foods" or "homemade" mantra that I've been espousing since August.

Inevitably, we ended up on 32nd Street, home to Korea Town, commonly referred to by drunks and foodies as K-Town. We were reminded of a place recommended to us by a friend of mine a few months ago, but before we made it I saw signs for Pho32 & Shabu and decided that we need walk no farther: Pho it was.

Pho32 & Shabu specializes in two things: pho (duh), and shabu shabu. Pho is a delicious Vietnamese soup, and Shabu Shabu is this method of cooking wherein a pot of steaming broth is lit on fire before you and you dip assorted things (a.k.a. meat, vegetables, tofu) into this broth until they cook. I opted for pho, since I've never been able to get shabu shabu down.

First, a salad of cabbage and ginger dressing arrived. It was slightly bitter, crisp, salty, perfect. Next, a plate of lime, bean sprouts, shaved green peppers, basil. Finally the soup, a large bowl of beef broth, thin-sliced flank steak cooked rare, beef brisket, rice noodles. I was instructed to spill my plate of stuff into the broth "to taste" (that meant spilling the whole thing in). A condiment caddy displayed sriracha, hoisin, and chili paste. I dumped that in, too. What resulted was a rich, meaty, basil-y, crunchy, chewy, satisfying bowl of stuff. True pho eaters will tell you that tripe is a very important part of the pho experience. But I will tell you that I think tripe is disgusting and I don't like the way it looks like cotton or spun sugar, sitting out on the butcher display in my neighborhood, so I will never order my pho with tripe.

My dining companion ordered great fried chicken potstickers, but I wouldn't go back just for those. I would, however, go back for that soup, which may have been the most transcendent bowl of Asian noodles ever, aside, of course, from those pork-perfect ramen bowls at Ippudo. Slurp, slurp.

*
Pho32 & Shabu
2 W. 32nd Street
New York, NY 10001
212.695.0888

Just Ducky

I'm not a big fan of repeated experiences (at least in terms of the execution of this blog), but my Monday night dinner deserves mention, even if I just wrote about dim sum haven Pacificana last week. We went back for the Peking Duck, which we had eyed on a neighbor's table that night that we ended up with the heavenly clams.

First things first. I started with a mediocre hot and sour soup that I would never order again. Strike one. But the vegetable dumplings that followed--wrapped in a translucent dough and stuffed with all sorts of chewable veggies, like mushrooms and water chestnuts--made up for the minor misstep. If these dumplings are any indication of the dim sum experience at Pacificana, it's one I wouldn't want to miss out on. We also ordered a plate of bone-in spare-ribs. They were fatty and luscious and salty and sweet and there were a lot of them for $6.

And then there was the duck.

You can order a half duck--which we did--for $14.95, or a whole duck for $28.95. A whole duck would have garnered way too many wasted leftovers. Our lacquered beauty came to the table in one piece. Our waiter sliced and diced, taking large squares of skin and dipping them in hoisin sauce before placing them on pillowy buns. Next came dark meat, followed by cucumber spears and more sauce. We each had three buns and the waiter disappeared and then returned from the kitchen with the rest of our carved bird, most of which we ate with our fingers.

This is not your traditional American duck-on-withered-pancake guy. No way. It's so much better. And at under $15 a pop, it's a stone's throw away from cheap eats.

*

Pacificana

813 55th Street

Brooklyn, NY 11220

718.871.2880