Downtown Is For Hipsters

And I'm no hipster. Maybe the lack of a truly entrenched "hipster scene" is what left Village Tart empty at eight o'clock on a balmy Friday night. Who knows. Surely it isn't the tasty food that's keeping the masses away.

The food really is tasty. Ok, the parmesan popcorn, served in a wax paper sleeve, tastes little of cheese and a lot of drippy movie butter (and I mean that in a good way). I'll take my butter where I can find it. A salad of golden and red beets comes together with the help of unctuous Greek yogurt. And while the enormous Wagyu pig in a blanket, shrouded in buttery croissant, needs no help, the spicy mustard it comes with would be delicious even on toast.

Brussels sprouts with bacon and honey were too heavy-handed and sweet and not charred enough to my liking. I was hoping for some salt from the bacon, but sugar was the name of that veggie game, and next time I'll pass. I will order, however, the mushroom tart, thin sliced cooked beauties over another flaky open-faced croissant. The arugula salad that joins it, full of lemon and pepper, is just an added bonus.

Village Tart is the handiwork of pastry chef Pichet Ong, so one would expect pastry to reign supreme. We took our strawberry tart to go, and by the time we ate it, over an hour later, the cream had redistributed and the pastry was hard to get at. I'm not sure if that was a reflection of a chef's misstep or ours, so I'll make my way back, eventually, to indulge my sweet tooth.

*

Village Tart

86 Kenmare Street

New York, NY 10012

212.226.4980

Pizza Party

Pulino's, Nate Appleman's New York venture, opened a few months ago. It's the only pizza place I know of that has brunch service, which should come as no surprise to anyone who has been to collaborator Keith McNally's Balthazar. Appleman used to work at San Francisco's A16, which he abandoned last year when he decided to come east. I've been to Balthazar and Minetta Tavern and I've never felt terribly inclined to give a transcendent review. McNally's restaurants are always busy and fun to eat at, but I've never left one of his spots thinking it was the best meal I'd ever had. Yes, the steak at Minetta Tavern ranks high on my all-time list, but the other food was just adequate.

So I was pretty surprised by how much I liked Pulino's, despite the hype and the hour wait, despite the fact that the restaurant looks vaguely similar to Balthazar inside. Cocktails were fine--I had the house julep--if on the weak-and-miserly side. The menu offered more than just pizza. We started with two crispy pieces of pork belly and a pear mostarda, which I could have ordered again and again. Next came grilled asparagus spears with rhubarb, charred and perfect. Pasta courses are offered in small and large (we chose small) and ours, a large noodle stuffed with lamb ragu, was toothsome and earthy. Nduja sausage isn't for everyone; it's served on the cool side and is the texture of loose pate. But I was happy to spread it on crispy bread. It was studded with red peppers.

The pizzas are thin and crispy and cut into squares so that some slices have no crust. Discard your notions of the Neapolitan pie, or the New York pie, or the Chicago pie, since the Pulino's pie is none of the above. It's wafer-thin and charred and the toppings stay put and don't well up the dough with moisture. We had a meaty combination of meatballs and sausage, though basil leaves provided a vegetal respite from so much protein.

It isn't like me to skip dessert, but skip we did. We didn't need the calories anyway. I'm going to have to go back to Pulino's for brunch (who doesn't want and excuse to eat pizza in the morning?), or, better yet, for their late night menu, which features a burger notably absent from the regular nightly menu. Go now. It's worth the wait.

*

Pulino's Bar and Pizzeria

282 Bowery

New York, NY 10012

212.226.1966

The San Francisco Treats

I put my heels back on for some serious, mindful west coast dining. I tackled Manresa first, which I've heard loads about. I actually watched David Kinch cook--and lose--to Bobby Flay on Iron Chef America. I remember thinking that his plating was pristine and unique, but I didn't really know the level of precision exacted until I went up to Los Gatos on Thursday night. It's amazing I survived the red eye and didn't fall asleep in my veloute. But I didn't.

The dining room is intimate and warm, with red walls and dark wood. Somewhere, there's a garden, but night hid it from us, which is a shame. I would love to see where the produce comes from. Amuse bouche included crispy kale chips (similar to a recipe from The New York Times that I recently oversalted and consequently botched), warm savory beignets filled with chard and cheese, and an impossibly delicious egg; it somehow arrived in its shell, soft cooked and blended with creme fraiche and maple syrup. We had to dig deep and get each yolky combination on the spoon. It tasted like a condensation of breakfast, like we had mistakenly blended our eggs with our French toast, and in the best possible way.

Manresa offers two different tasting menus and we opted for the less pricey of the two. For that, we were able to choose an appetizer, a fish course, a meat course, and a dessert. As there were three of us, we decided to order twelve different dishes, a good representation of the restaurant. Appetizers included a light and delicate sea bream sashimi, with olive oil and chives; a verdant soup poured table side with tiny purple flowers and ground mustard; and battered, fried mussels with stacked stalks of asparagus. Flowers are abundant in every dish, a reminder of warmer weather. For fish: diver scallops seared and only slightly memorable; cod with a rich and salty brown sauce; seared sea bass with pureed parsnip. A fine nod to the sea, if not anything particularly mind-blowing. Our meat courses were larger than we expected, especially given the price to food ratio usually observed in fine dining (the larger the price tag, the smaller the meal). Duck breast came with an over oranged glaze but an addictive mashed beet side. Beef bavettes were fine, as were the accompanying grain, but the lamb won the show--loin and tongue, in a sea of spring ramps, mint, pea puree. We couldn't finish.

Manresa's wine list is manageable enough and we drank Sekt to begin and then a bottle of Brewer Clifton "Ashley's" pinot noir, cheap by New York standards. Drinking California in California is a bargain. We chose three cheeses for an extra fee, and the fromager, impressed by my limited but existent knowledge of American artisanal cheeses, brought over three extra, aged provolone and parmesan and creamy unnamed sheep's cheese from the back. Pre-dessert, a buttermilk sorbet with tangy foam. Desserts were combination plates, full of beignets with powdered sugar, ice-cream, caramelized banana, cake, nougat, mint panna cotta, and caramel. My favorite was a limey semifreddo served with strawberries. I could have done without the truffles that signified the meal's end, and even without the soft caramels that came as we walked to the car. But each plate maintained the signature of Kinch's sure hand, a delicacy and a beauty that only comes with a deep love of the craft. So I admire the ambition, even if I won't ever return.

For lunch on Friday, I headed to Japantown with my friend A. We went to Tanpopo, for pork broth ramen and then to a crepe place in the Japanese mall for crepes with banana and cinnamon and sugar and butter. Later, I met up with an old friend who, for several years now, has worked as a server at Traci des Jardin's Jardiniere. After a lot of complimentary Laurent-Perrier, we moved on to a complimentary charcuterie plate, the winner of which was the stellar pate and cornichon. We shared salty, pan-seared quail and diver scallops with fava beans and an uni emulsion that mostly tasted of butter. Next came a mid-course of gnocchi and mint and stewed lamb, extremely soft pasta that still took ample space in my stomach. I had to stop before I finished to save room for the next course, halibut and a pork tasting. The pork was rich, but once again too much on my plate. We washed this down with a Littorai pinot noir. Dessert remains a wide gap in my memory, which leads me to believe it wasn't particularly memorable. But the macarons that came with our check were chewy and sweet, a nice end.

Saturday found me first at the Japantown cherry blossom festival, where I watched my friend A. obsess over spam musubi and these little pancakes filled with red bean paste. We went to Absinthe for a drink and bowl of onion soup, a decidedly good version of one of my old favorites. By dinner, we were bored with nice restaurants and had decamped for the Mission, where we ate tacos and burritos and fine guacamole at Puerto Allegre. We ended the day of gluttony with cakes and puddings at Tartine, where I've heard they make a mean croissant (they were out). Instead, I had a lackluster and very sweet lemon meringue cake and a taste of a friend's smooth chocolate pudding, the surefire dessert winner.

Finally, for my last moments in the Bay Area, I pushed through rain and cold in a panda hat to the Ferry Building for lunch at the long-lauded Slanted Door. Thank heavens for my hearty eater friend N., who was up for the challenge of eating through the menu. And thank heavens for our server, who suggested half-portions of some dishes to save room in our stomachs and wallets. As a result, we had room for yellowtail sashimi with Thai basil and fried shallots; spring rolls with pork and prawns and peanut sauce; wood-fired Manila clams in broth with sliced green peppers, onions, and pork belly; sticky pork spareribs; a large daikon rice cake, swimming in soy sauce and cilantro; cellophane noodles with dungeness crab; and sugar snap peas with hen-of-the-woods mushrooms. We drank a surprisingly reasonable 1992 Zilliken spatlese riesling and came out in the clear. So long, San Francisco. Thanks for all the fish.

*

Manresa

320 Village Lane

Los Gatos, CA 95030

408.354.4330

*

Tanpopo

1740 Buchanan Street

San Francisco, CA 94115

415.346.7132

*

Jardiniere

300 Grove Street

San Francisco, CA 94102

415.861.5555

*

Absinthe Brasserie and Bar

398 Hayes Street

San Francisco, CA 94102

415.551.1590

*

Puerto Allegre

546 Valencia Street

San Francisco, CA 94110

415.255.8201

*

Tartine Bakery

600 Guerrero Street

San Francisco, CA 94110

415.487.2600

*

The Slanted Door

1 Ferry Building

San Francisco, CA 94111

415.861.8032

Aloha

If you're wondering where I've been, I slipped off to the west, first to Hawaii and then to San Francisco (where I'm currently typing). San Francisco deserves its own proper blog, and I'll commit to that task later in the week. As for now, I give Oahu its due.

I spent the week with an outpost in Waikiki and from there I explored the leeward and windward sides of the island as well as the island's north shore. On my first afternoon in Waikiki, I ate lunch at Todai, at the suggestion of a friend. Todai is an all-you-can-eat sushi buffet that charges a minimally-invasive $15 at lunch. Sound gross? It wasn't. The sushi bar featured everything from shrimp tempura maki rolls to fresh tuna and avocado maki rolls. Individual pieces of sushi ran the gamut from ama ebi (sweet shrimp) to octopus. Even non-sushi-eaters would find this place a bargain. The cold bar included a range of pickled salads, like kimchi and taro root. The hot bar serves ramen and udon made to order, steamed and fried dumplings, shrimp tempura, addictive barbecue pork, glazed chicken, beef, and other delights. The dessert bar features all those weird and crazy desserts you get at dim sum brunch: gelatin cubes in varying colors, mango pudding, miniature pumpkin pies, crepes with cream. Dinner is $30, but for that still reasonable price, you get sashimi, too. In the late afternoon, I walked to the International Market in Waikiki, where a farmer's market was taking place. I had a pineapple to end all other pineapple-eating--they cut it up for you fresh and deliver it in a plastic bag--and bought some brown fruits called "chicos" and some fresh litchi and green mangoes. I also bought a red papaya, because I could. The chicos are like a sweeter version of a pear.

For dinner that night, we ventured to BLT Steak, where my friend is chef. I've written of the BLTs before, so I won't go into much detail here, though I will say that the Hawaii-inspired grilled corn with barbecue sauce is a nice side, the tomatoes in the tomato and stilton salad are the kind of tomatoes that remind one why all supermarket tomatoes should be permanently banned from sale, and the rib-eye was transcendent, as usual, marked by a thick sear crust and rarety rare in the middle. Chef sent a kurobuta pork belly, braised and served over risotto, a decadent and worthwhile trinket of tastiness. Later, we ate the blackboard special desserts: light steamed chocolate pudding and a coconut mango concoction that I can't explain but enjoyed eating.

The next day's lunchtime found us on the windward side of the island, near Lanikai and Kailua. There's only one place to eat over there and that place is Buzz's Steak House. At lunch, they feature less steak and more stuff. I made the mistake of ordering the house specialty, the "Big F*cking Rum Drink," a mai tai that tastes of diesel fuel and had me sleepy and inebriated for the remainder of the day. I also had a surprisingly great prawn salad. Buzz's was generous and gave me five big, smoky Hawaiian prawns, shell-on. Fresher is always better.

On the first Friday of every month, the art galleries in Honolulu's Chinatown open their doors late and allow in curious wanderers. So after a snorkel trip to famous Hanauma Bay, we headed to Chinatown, for art and Chinese. Chinese was a stop at Little Village Noodle House for fatty steamed pork dumplings, fried rice with tiny shrimp and roast pork, and a dish simply called "volcano." Pork chops are cut and flattened and battered in wondra and then dusted with five spice powder and flash fried. Then, they are put into a large aluminum foil egg, along with garlic, and set on fire at the table. The result is crisped pork and crisped garlic. It could have used an accompanying sauce, and the portion was so large it was almost ridiculous, but it made for good leftovers; I seared the pork in oil Sunday morning for my own personal Easter brunch.

On Saturday, I met up with friends of my father and we went to the Kapiulani Community College where, on Saturday mornings, a fine market opens and closes before eleven. We arrived in the nick of time and scored fried green tomatoes with wasabi aioli, tall glasses of fresh lemonade, butterfish (known to easterners as black cod) over salmon fried rice, curried rice with dried cranberries, and fried rice with some kind of sausage. It was a fine way to start the morning and sustenance for our long drive to the often unvisited leeward side of the island.

I met back up with my host for dinner and we hunted down Irefune, known by everyone for their "garlic ahi." Irefune offers a variety of combination plates that feature the ahi, so I ordered the garlic king crab legs (messy, but sublime) along with my ahi. The dish also came with miso soup, a salad, Asian cole slaw, and rice. For $17. And the ahi? It was cooked through and tasted of a fine marinated steak. You really have to like garlic, which, in my case, is no real dilemma. For dessert, we drove a little farther down the road to famous Leonard's for malasadas, a type of Portuguese donut that somehow made it to the island years ago. Leonard's has a few different varieties, including a "flavor of the month," which rotates seasonally between mango, lilikoi (passion fruit), pineapple, and some kind of nut. We are in mango season now, so mango it was, along with plain (dusted with Li Hing Mui sugar, or the island's well-known "salted plum sugar") and custard. Custard and mango won the battle. The donuts are round and leak cream when you bite into them and are best eaten hot or warm. The mango cream is less like a jam and more like a decadent custard that just happens to have mango in it. I'm glad there is no Leonard's near where I live or I would weigh 300 pounds.

Sunday's meals are not worth a mention, so I'll soldier on to Monday. For a late dinner, we headed to Side Street Inn, which is really a local outpost and also where people in the restaurant industry eat after work. Side Street is really a dive, which is part of what I loved about it. Pulled pork buns came with grilled pineapple and a sticky, yummy barbecue sauce. A salad of shrimp and dressed greens satisfied my healthy impulses, as did some of the finest poke I've had: cubed raw ahi tuna with soy sauce, Maui onions, and seaweed. The tuna is impossibly red. Kal-bi, or marinated bone-in short ribs, on the other hand, satisfied my unhealthy impulses. We could have skipped the massive plate of fried rice, which had spam hidden somewhere in it. But I would go back for the buns and short ribs.

On Tuesday, I took a trip alone to the north shore. The car rental people ran out of compact cars and gave me a convertible instead. My first stop in Hale'iwa was Aoki Shave Ice, not as famous as the idolized Matsumoto's, but equally good. They make their own syrups and keep them cold. I got rainbow. I don't know what flavors they put in there, but it was the perfect breakfast, regardless. (Please, don't judge.) As I made my way up and back around the leeward side, I stopped first at Giovanni's Shrimp Truck for six garlic shrimp in hot oil over rice. The shrimp trucks are world-famous, and there are many of them, but I was told to stick to Giovanni's. Next time, I'll do some comparison shopping. The shrimp were shell-on and scalding hot, but were also completely delicious and dripping in garlicky oil. I saved room for Uncle Bobo's, right outside of the Polynesian Cultural Center, where I ate a pulled pork sandwich with homemade barbecue sauce that was roughly the size and shape of a nerf football. They gave me all the crispy bits, and for this I thank them.

I had dinner alone at the Honolulu version of Matsugen, the noodle master's first restaurant in the United States. Unlike the Manhattan restaurant, which is in conjunction with Jean Georges and which charges an outrageous $30 to $50 a plate, Honolulu's modest Matsugen charges a more reasonable $13. I ate soy-pickled cucumbers and drank a glass of plum wine on ice (a taste for which I share with a family member) and had fresh buckwheat soba, cold, dipped in a soup of pureed daikon and perfect Japanese mushrooms. The restaurant was filled with Japanese, slurping their soba and udon. I can't think of a more modest decent meal in Waikiki.

On my final afternoon in Hawaii, I went to the Asian grocery store near where I stayed, Don Quijote. Don't ask me why the name is Mexican; I have no idea. In the store's fish department, they sell ten different types of ahi poke and a bunch of different kinds of kimchi. The fish counter guy will let you try whichever one you want with a toothpick. I bought a quarter pound of fresh ahi tossed in soy sauce and green onion for a staggering $2.50. Add to that a quarter pound of cucumber kimchi for $1.00 and you have the perfect poor man's meal. I met back up with my father's friends for dinner and we went for Korean barbecue at Gyu-Kaku. It was one of the craziest, most frenetic meals of my life. Like me, my father's friend has an impulse to order everything, and does. We ate fried calamari and edamame and deep-fried cheese dumplings and ahi poke and bibimbap (Korean rice pot with soft cooked egg) and kimchi ramen and seaweed soup. And then the barbecue came: two different types of marinated skirt steak, scallops, shrimp, filet mignon, zucchini, eggplant, corn, onions, tuna, enoki mushrooms, white button mushrooms. We dipped everything in sauce and finished every bite and then, when dessert came, we finished that, too. Dessert, tiny pancakes grilled on the barbecue and topped with azuki bean and green tea ice-creams and maple syrup, was the perfect sweet goodbye to Honolulu.

*

Todai Restaurant

1910 Ala Moana Boulevard

Honolulu, HI 96815

808.947.1000

*

BLT Steak

223 Saratoga Road

Honolulu, HI 96815

808.683.7440

*

Buzz's Original Steak House

413 Kawailoa Road

Kailua, HI 96734

808.261.4661

*

Little Village Noodle House

1113 Smith Street

Honolulu, HI 96817

808.545.3008

*

Irefune

563 Kapahulu Avenue

Honolulu, HI 96816

*

Leonard's Bakery

933 Kapahulu Avenue

Honolulu, HI 96816

808.737.5591

*

Side Street Inn

1225 Hopaka Street

Honolulu, HI 96814

808.591.0253

*

Aoki Shave Ice

66-117 Kamehameha Highway

Hale'iwa, HI 96712

808.637.7017

*

Giovanni's Shrimp Truck

83 Kamehameha Highway

Kahuku, HI 96731

808.293.1839

*

Uncle Bobo's

51-480 Kamehameha Highway

Kaaawa, HI 96730

808.206.7479

*

Matsugen

255 Beach Walk

Honolulu, HI 96815

808.926.0255

*

Don Quijote

801 Kaheka Street

Honolulu, HI 96814

808.973.4800

*

Gyu-Kaku

1221 Kapiolani Boulevard

Honolulu, HI 96814

808.589.2989

From Low To High

For dinner last night, I joined friends in the east village for dinner at Northern Spy Food Company, named for the famous local apple. And boy, do they do local. Not only does Northern Spy sell farm-to-table dinners, but they also sell, as a part of a shop in the restaurant's rear, everything from local soup to nuts.

To start, we shared a raw kale salad with clothbound cheddar and kombucha squash, a fatty pork pate with nose-clearing mustard and a lightly dressed arugula salad, and a side of white beans cooked with more cheddar. Dinner included a sandwich of crisped chicken thigh with a poached egg and chimichurri sauce, a flatbread panini of ham/cheese/mustard/pickled onions, and a pan-seared fillet of black bass served on a bed of nettle and watercress. The former two impressed, while the fish was tasty enough, if not quite inspired.

Dessert included a slightly undercooked slice of apple pie accompanied by a perfect scoop of almond ice-cream and, my personal favorite, a raisin-heavy square of carrot cake with a pure half-inch of piped cream cheese frosting. The candied ginger on top, though a nice tough, was completely unnecessary; I would have eaten the frosting with or without it.

As for our non-alcoholic tipples, we enjoyed ciders from Red Jacket Orchards. For me, a concord grape and apple, for one of my friends a light-colored Fuji. Northern Spy is downright inexpensive and worth the schlep to Alphabet City for a pretty little market meal.

So compare that with today's lunch, which began as an unambitious trip to Eleven Madison Park for the restaurant's "two courses, $24" lunch. Sometimes, I'd rather just eat the ham sandwich. Two courses (per person) turned into six (per person); we were spotted, and sent four courses apiece, all on the house. Lunch began with a miniature olive baguette as well as a sourdough version. Amuse bouche were tiny savory macarons, one celery, one filled with foie gras. Then: uni custard with bay scallops and apple in the hollowed shell of an egg; a "cappuccino" of lemongrass, curry, and langoustine; a salad of shaved and blanched market greens with a red wine vinaigrette--asparagus, pea tendrils, multi-colored carrots, sugar snaps, baby lettuce; radicchio with buffala mozzarella and pickled persimmon; deep-fried veal sweetbreads over toasted fregola in a rich meat broth; fresh linguine tossed in butter and served with shredded king crab and herbs; a square of crisped halibut in a broth of mussels and chorizo; par-cooked salmon with daikon; pork belly and (regrettably overcooked) loin with gorgeous spring onions and salty-sweet rhubarb; lamb sausage, belly, and loin in a broth of paprika and jus. For all that? Fifty-eight buckaroos. Total.

Dessert is a la carte, and who knows how we had the room for a mango linzer tart, pine nut and ricotta tart, and slice of chocolate caramel pie. But we did--or so we thought, until I rose after lunch, sick to my stomach. Dinner desserts are composed plates, but our tarts came with a savory vanilla creme fraiche, not exactly the winner of the afternoon. The petit fours, more macarons, probably put us over the top. The different types included pink peppercorn, chocolate/banana, toasted coconut/chocolate, peanut butter/jelly, sesame/green tea/kumquat, poppyseed/lemon, and grapefruit. Wine is expensive, but varied, but get too carried away and you'll find yourself miles from that check of $24 per person. Luckily, there wasn't too much room for more damage this afternoon. The compositions at EMP are some of the most beautiful I've seen in any dining room, anywhere. The market salad alone would probably have encouraged me to come back, during fairer weather. But lunch is the way to go, if you're willing to skip the calories of dinner. Otherwise, you're sure to break the bank.

*

Northern Spy Food Company

511 East 12th Street

New York, NY 10009

212.228.5100

*

Eleven Madison Park

11 Madison Avenue

New York, NY 10010

212.889.0905

Farm To Table

My family and I were supposed to visit Blue Hill at Stone Barns on Saturday night for my sister's birthday, but inclement weather relegated us to a pot-luck dinner in my bedroom instead. Luckily, the incredibly generous and accommodating staff of BHSB allowed us to switch our reservation to Sunday instead, and even pretended not to hate us when we showed up a half-hour late (we literally got stuck behind a bulldozer).

Blue Hill at Stone Barns can probably be credited for bringing California "farm-to-table" cuisine to metropolitan New York, even though the restaurant is in Westchester. Their sister restaurant, in the west village, sources most of its food from the Westchester working farm, and both spots have been doing so for some years now, starting well before local restauranteurs touted the virtues of heirloom tomatoes. So there.

As is customary at Stone Barns, we began the evening with a bit of local produce. Winter may be ending, but root vegetables still abound. Our amuse bouche began with baby carrots and bok-choy, both lightly salted. Next came deep-fried salsify and proscuitto, a tiny shredded vegetable tart, caramelized onion bread with whipped lardo and cottage cheese and butter and carrot salt, roasted beet sliders, chilled carrot soup, and a plate of coppa and speck. We opted for the five course menu rather than the eight course ordeal, the first of which was a lovely beet salad--red and golden--atop pine nut butter and served with greenhouse greens.

To underscore how much Stone Barns caters to the whims and wishes of its guests, I point to our wine selection. My father no longer drinks, which left only two adults, one of whom was driving. We didn't want to invest in a bottle and we don't really share similar wine tastes. My stepmother told Thomas, the Stone Barns Wine Director, that she prefers buttery chardonnays, like Kistler's "Les Noistieres." Presto: a bottle of the wine appeared at her side, with the friendly invitation to drink as much as she liked. That hundred-dollar bottle of wine cost us a mere $25.

As for me, I allowed Thomas to serve whatever he saw fit. That meant a 1989 Ehrhard riesling from the Rheingau, followed by a ribolla from Movia (a Slovenian cult wine), and a 1998 Brunello di Montalcino. With dessert? A 1979 Pedro Ximenez Sherry. All this for--you guessed it--another $25.

But back to the food. Beets gone, waiters arrived with round glass pyrex dishes containing one large Maine sea scallop and a cream broth with fennel, celery, octopus, mussel, and rock shrimp, a superior take on chowder. Our egg course, enjoyed by four of us, was an egg-circulator egg in a broth of mushroom and broccoli. One stab to the egg yielded orange runny yolk. Before the course, our server had brought to us a glass basket of different colored eggs from the farm's hens, some of which gleamed green and blue, the color specific to breed.

My father hates eggs, so he had salt-baked rutabaga instead, kind of like the best sweet potato you've ever had. Entrees were slabs of pink Berkshire pork, brined in something sweet, like cider, and served with more of that tender baby bok-choy.

Dessert arrived in waves. First, honey with tofu and bergamot; next, chocolate mousse with apricot jam and frozen raspberry cream; finally, moist carrot cake with fromage foam, cream cheese, and vanilla ice-cream. They put a candle in my sister's cake and brought petit fours of chocolate, yogurt marshmallow, and sesame candy. Stone Barns remains one of the most worthwhile meals in New York.

*

Blue Hill at Stone Barns

630 Bedford Road

Pocantico Hills, NY 10591

914.366.9606

Eye-Tal-Yun

On Monday, I went to Locanda Verde, where I've been wanting to eat for a while. Reviews from friends have been mixed. Last week, one friend told me not to order any of the pastas, but that the antipasti and secondi were worth a try. Saturday, a different friend disclosed the opposite. "The pastas are fantastic," she said. Well, whatever.

The dining room is massive and it was incredibly loud, even for someone like me who has worked in far louder environments. We sat at 9:30 and I expected that, for a Monday, the crowds would be dwindling, but that wasn't the case. In fact, our food came so quickly, it was clear they were pushing our table for yet another seating. Rushed would be the polite term for how the evening went.

To start, we ate steak tartare with cornichon, walnut, and a quail egg. The steak lacked salt and the bread was a bit thick and eggy for the meat. The star of the evening came next, blue crab and jalapeno crostini, spicy and salty and briny and perfect. The sausage and pickled ramp crostini were nice, too, though the pickled ramp receded a bit into the background.

Pastas were good but not life-changing. The rigatoni with lamb and ricotta and mint tasted bright and fresh and somewhat reminiscent of the love letters at Babbo. But the "grandmother's ravioli" was a disappointment. It was billed as ravioli filled with pork and beef, but it could have been filled with anything; the prevailing taste was that of the sauce, a fresh tomato and basil that would have made a more appropriate compliment to a less-complicated pasta. In all that tomato, I couldn't taste even a hint of meat.

For dessert, we ordered a lemon tart, the filling of which mostly tasted of lemon meringue pie. Buttermilk ice-cream was nothing to turn one's nose up at, but the real winner was the flaky pie crust. Karen DeMasco uses lard in her crusts, which is probably the secret to foolproof flakiness. Our server offered biscotti as a petit fours, but we waited longer for our check than we had waited for any of our four courses. Perhaps I would feel better about the experience if the "get them in and get them OUT" mentality hadn't been so completely pervasive, but we were finished with our meal in a scant hour, certainly not my idea of a relaxing evening.

*

Locanda Verde

377 Greenwich Street

New York, NY 10013

212.925.3797

Pork Barrel

I was looking for a dinner spot that wouldn't break the bank and, more importantly, could accommodate me and a very pregnant friend. So we headed to Ardesia, where my friend (who happens to be the chef) agreed to hold a table for us. Ardesia is equal parts wine and snack bar. The most expensive menu item--the duck banh mi--weighs in at $14, assuming you don't count the plate of all house cheeses, which is $30, but a lot of food. That makes the spot cheaper than Casellula, though no less enjoyable.

We ate Brussels sprouts topped with fried shallots and tasting of something bring, possibly fish sauce. They were perfect, as was the skewered garlic shrimp, four to a skewer, eight to an order. Pork belly bites were cubes of fatty pork atop sweet apple, richness and salt matched by lean, crisp fruit. Surprise! The duck banh mi boasted a glorious layer of liver pate, along with the usual suspects of pickled vegetables and cilantro and the unusual suspect of cured duck.

Next up: bacon lardon, white bean, and frisee salad, but this bacon was fattier and thicker cut than normal salad bacon. And then, tiny house-made cocktail sausages, served with crusty white bread and spicy mustard, a vast improvement over the sticky barbecue sauce ones my grandmother serves in her ancient chaffing dish (no offense, Grandma). Two cheeses--both pasteurized for my preggy friend--were served with candied lemon and bread.

Chef sent dessert on the house. Three open-faced s'mores came atop what amounted to tiny gingersnap cakes--an homage to the graham cracker. The marshmallows, bruleed, tasted better than any traditional campfire. Finally, a square sandwich, wrapped in wax paper, announced our final dessert: a cookies n' cream ice-cream sandwich on chocolate cake. The alternate flavors, we later learned, were peanut butter and vanilla.

The nicest decor detail? The backs of the bathroom doors are painted with blackboard paint and there are nubs of chalk in the bathrooms for high-end note-writing, nothing like those bar bathrooms of yore. Also, to keep you company, a real, live goldfish swims in his glass bowl on a stool in the corner of the loo. No worries, Mr. Fish isn't on the menu. Ardesia is a restaurant for meat-eaters, with only a spare nod to marine life.

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Ardesia

510 West 52nd Street

New York, NY 10019

212.247.9191

Playing With My Friends

Another stress fracture has me grounded, which means less time with my running sneakers and more time doing... something else. I have to remember to exercise restraint with food during the next two months, or I'll be forced to wear nothing but leggings while my skinny jeans writhe in protest. Yesterday wasn't a good start to period of said restraint.

I was invited to see my favorite married couple for bloody marys and burgers. In addition to burgers--ground beef, short rib, and chorizo--we ate pizza pomodoro from the Jim Lahey bread book and cookies from City Bakery and these weird cheesy balls that came from a packaged Brazilian bread mix. That, paired with the leftover cookie dough I ate for breakfast (give me a break--it was whole-wheat dough) would have probably racked up enough calories for the day, but I was hungry, hungry, hungry by the time I made it to Mad for Chicken in Koreatown at ten o'clock.

Mad for Chicken is like the worst nightclub you've ever been to that also happens to sell the best fried chicken. You have to wait for an hour for your table. The bartenders are beyond incompetent. The drinks--a lychee mojito for me--are doused in sugar and bad rum. The clientele is "Asian club kid." If you aren't familiar with that clientele, no need to be.

But then, you sit at one of the Mad for Chicken tables and they bring you insanely spicy crunchy kimchi chicken wings with pickled daikon and celery sticks and this weird cheese and rice-cake casserole that kind of tastes like Spaghetti O's and larger plates of non-spicy-but-equally-crunchy drumsticks and Mexican corn rolled in mayonnaise and queso and chili powder and pretty much everything is okay with the world. In our case, they also brought these ridiculous glass kegs of beer that were topped with dry ice, creating the illusion that the beer was smoking. Each keg was five liters. Our group drank three of them. I won't get into the mathematical possibilities of that, but suffice to say that our bill came to a whopping thirty bucks a person, including tip, so if you want to eat really good fried chicken and drink until you think that playing dominoes is normal and socially acceptable dinner behavior (as two of my co-eaters did), head to K-town asap.

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Mad for Chicken

314 5th Avenue, 2nd floor

New York, NY 10001

212.221.2222

I Hate Saturdays In NYC

And yet I somehow manage to put myself in the middle of the fray. I don't want to go to restaurants on Saturdays, I really don't. But sometimes that's just the way things go--battle the Bridge and Tunnel for a decent bar spot, while you wait an hour for a "table," no bigger than a nightstand. Ugh.

Well, anyway. Saturday snobbery aside, Txikito was a decent place to spend the night. Sure, three people at that nightstand of a table was a little ridiculous, but the menu just about made up for it. Gluttony, I have not left you behind. Small plates are the downfall of any good foodie, and this was no exception. We started with white asparagus with black truffle olive oil and chopped egg, served cold. Spring is on our heels. Next up: miniature mushroom and shrimp grilled cheese sandwiches. Meh. I couldn't really taste the ingredients, aside from the cheese. The sandwich of chorizo hash was more successful, pretty much the tiniest baguette I have ever seen in my life.

Then: shredded chorizo and a sunny side up quail egg on toast, perfect in its execution. Followed by: blood sausage-filled eggrolls (more eggroll than blood sausage, but still delicious), lamb meatballs with "minted broth" (more lamb than mint, but I don't tend to badmouth meatballs), cross-cut braised spare ribs with red and green peppers (very delicious), and salty head-on shrimp (no surprises here, but who really cares?). Finally, the highlight of the meal arrived, a suggestion from our waiter, who recognized our meat-heavy order--seared veal jowl terrine with a sweet onion vinaigrette. Imagine the fattiest rib-eye fat, pressed into a terrine mold and then pan seared and that's pretty much what we ate. The consistency vacillated between unctuous fat and crispy sear and the onions offered a sweet respite from all that density. I wouldn't have ordered the dish without being pushed in that direction, mostly because veal is something I try to eat very little of. But I would have missed the point entirely if I had left without eating it.

For dessert, we shared a very average cheese plate, all sheep's milk, all sliced a hair too thin and served with pedestrian quince paste. Fine. The blue satisfied my cravings, even if the dish as a whole failed to impress me. Ditto a chocolate pudding with sherry whipped cream, though I would eat that again simply because I love pudding.

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Txikito

240 9th Avenue

New York, NY 10001

212.242.4730