Japanese Home Style

Family Recipe, an LES project spearheaded by Chef Akiko Thurnauer, may be one of the best small plates joints to pop up in Manhattan. Small plates restaurants normally force me to a.) overorder and b.) overspend, but Family Recipe required no such sacrifice. We were a table of four and ate a wide cross section of the menu without overindulging. And all this for sixty dollars a person, alcohol included.

I will overlook the somewhat negligent service for now, given the fact that the one working waitress (I get it; it's a Monday night) spoke parsed English and struggled to keep her tables cleared and fed. In fact, an oversight on her part bought us a free bottle of Valpolicella, sent out gratis for our troubles. Anyway, the fun, tasty food made up for lapses in service. Chicken wings were salty and crispy and came with tiny spears of celery and a creamy pink sauce. Battered and fried okra and shisito peppers with salt and lime provided ballast without too much bulk. Delicate lobster dumplings came with cracked peanuts and soy sauce and a swipe of mustard and pork buns, reminiscent of the Chang variety, approached perfection with a side bowl of Kewpie mayonnaise.

Then came pan fried shrimp over corn and rice cakes in curry, somewhere between the texture of risotto and a rice krispy treat. Pullman toast on the side of a plate of Prince Edward Island mussels with nori and a rich, buttery sauce sopped up whatever was left over. Pork ribs were meaty, sticky, salty, sweet. And kobe burgers came with a tiny bowl of potato chips. Everywhere, competing textures helped the meal to its acme. Even dessert--a coconut rice pudding with a bruleed sugar crust--was made more complete with textural contrast. I don't know much about Chef Akiko's family heritage of recipes, but the food she puts forth, right down to a carafe of sake sangria with watermelon and strawberries, is soul-satisfying.

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Family Recipe

231 Eldridge Street

New York, NY 10002

212.529.3133

'Cue

I stopped by Fette Sau in Billyburg last night, but the long line and lack of seating pointed me elsewhere. But when you're in the mood for 'cue, you're in the mood for 'cue, so to South Williamsburg we ventured, miraculously snagging a vacant table at Fatty 'Cue in under ten minutes.

The spot, in aesthetic and execution, isn't so different from Zak Pelaccio's Fatty Crabs, which is to say that the food is spicy, sweet, salty, textured and, above all else, full of fat. The best exemplar of "fat is flavor" comes across in the Dragon Pullman Toast with Master Fat. What is it? Slices of that well-known and pillow-soft bread with grill marks and a salt crust, served with a side of fat drippings from the barbecue. It's like eating the deckle of a rib-eye on toast, if that deckle had been rendered into a dippable liquid. Not half bad, I say.

We ate lamb ribs, off the bone and crisp, with a mackerel aioli, which sounds gross but isn't. Two mammoth pork ribs came with a palm sugar glaze that's stickier, sweeter, and more appealing than the best Texas red sauce. Pork bone broth is basically a rich consomme with sliced crunchy celery. In the context of all this meat, it almost reads like health food. So, too, do the habit-forming black eyed peas, served with the traditional addition of burnt ends and the not-so-traditional slickening of yellow curry. Grilled bacon, leaning towards the fatty, comes with a curry mustard and toast points, a modern take on charcuterie that doesn't feel too haute or out of place.

I would have ordered the crab for a shareable entree, but one of our party members is allergic, so we settled on brisket instead, which didn't disappoint. Fatty 'Cue serves the lean, pink slices alongside the dense, fatty ones. The brisket comes with mayonnaise, chili sauce, steamed buns (Peking duck style), cilantro, pickled red onions, and a bone broth for dipping. It's a rendering of make-your-own pork buns, or a French dip. And it's really, really good. Cutting all that fat with sugar and acid (found everywhere in accompanying sauces and in the vinegar and fish sauce container left on the table for each party's personal use) works so well, one wonders why Malaysian barbecue isn't already a "thing" in the city.

Then again, these treats are probably best enjoyed in moderation.

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Fatty 'Cue

91 South 6th Street

Brooklyn, NY 11211

718.599.3090

All You Can Eat. No, Really.

Hill Country inaugurated "all you can eat Mondays" last night, a deal that will extend until the end of February. And what a deal it is. For the paltry admission price of $25, you get as much BBQ chicken, lean brisket, and pork ribs as you can eat. And then there are the sides. Choose from German potatoes, sweet bourbon mashed potatoes, cucumber salad, cole slaw, pinto beans, black eyed peas, green bean casserole, skillet cornbread with ancho honey butter, and, for two additional dollars, macaroni and cheese, Texas red chili, and bacon baked beans.

Not to mention all the white bread and fountain soda you want.

It was an excellent deal, I discovered last night. The pork ribs were dry rubbed and you could supplement the smoky, peppery flavor with Hill Country's barbecue and hot sauces. Chicken was fall-off-the-bone tender and the brisket was... well, we had to ask for more brisket. And even then, it wasn't enough for my carnivore companions.

I would have loved some beef ribs, pulled pork, and Kreuz sausage to round out the meatfest, but that probably would have been overkill.

I was surprised that our all you can eat menu offered so many unlimited sides. German potatoes resembled a cream-less smashed, with the welcome addition of some kind of crumbled meat. Sweet potatoes were more of a dessert like a side, and the cucumber salad was essentially a welcome cup of pickled cucumbers buttressed by thin slices of pickled white onion.

Baked beans with bacon were smoky and sweet. One member of our party, a Houston native, happily pronounced the experience authentic and praised the restaurant's brisket. That's a big deal, coming from a Texan.

Hill Country serves Texan delicacies all around. Peruse the beer list and you'll find Lone Star, the Texas canned shlock, and Dos Equis, a Mexican beer favored in the south and southwest. On the sweeter side, they serve Blue Bell ice cream, a company that has been churning out high-fat favorites in Brenham, Texas since 1907.

And there's always sweet tea, served in a mason jar, which, the Texan informed me, is not what Texans actually drink out of down south. But hey, it's all part of the rolicking theme-park atmosphere that is Hill Country, a slice of the Texas pits all the way up here on our little island.

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Hill Country
30 West 26th Street
New York, NY 10010
212.255.4544