Category Archives: Restaurants

Favorite Things: Shabu-Tatsu Shabu-Shabu

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I love eating with a method and process. It feels ceremonial, ritualistic, and respectful of the food.

Fantastic in the winter and great in the summer, Shabu-Tatsu is the only place we go for Shabu-Shabu in NYC, and is one of our few favorites for a hot and soupy meal. They have been around for over a decade and have never failed expectations.

Prime rib beef, vegetables, tofu and shiitake after “swishing” in the hot broth.
I don’t have to tell you that Shabu-Shabu means “swish-swish” (or do I?) and that is the extent of the cooking you do during your meal whose center of attention is the hot pot of water where your group will dump vegetables and swish around some meat.
The setup: a plate of prime rib slivers, and a hot pot with vegetables.

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Grimaldi’s New Location Photos – Brooklyn Closed Down? No, It Just Moved To The Corner

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We went to have our favorite Grimaldi’s Pizza today but this was what we saw where it was supposed to be. Oh my god, did it close down? That news would have caused me to well up and start crying. At the old location a sign reads that Julianna’s Pizza is soon to open, “The return of Patsy and Carol Grimaldi.” What gives?
The Grimaldi’s Pizza restaurant that has been at 19 Old Fulton Street for decades moved around the corner to 1 Front Street, an old bank building that has the only cast iron facade in the area. Of course it took this move for me to look into its reasons. Grimaldi’s owner Frank Cioli (who purchased the restaurant’s rights from Patsy Grimaldi in 1988) lost his lease at the old location, including the use of the legendary coal brick oven that produced Grimaldi’s magical pies. Apparently Patsy Grimaldi is coming out of retirement to take the old restaurant back and naming it Juliana after his late mother. I love Italians. There’s always a family story! Continue reading →

NYC Dept of Health Restaurant Grading – Why B is Fine With Me

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Today’s NYTarticle on why restaurants suffer lower Health Department ratings to servefood the way it is intended is right in my line of thinking.
I don’t really care if my sushi chef doesn’t wear gloves (asin Sushi Yashuda, a world-renownedrestaurant), I see him washing and wiping his hands and food surfaces multipletimes an hour.
 If my liver terrine is going to be tasteless cold then I’drather go to a B restaurant and have it served at room temperature the way it’ssupposed to be served, as with cooking meats and steaks.
The NYC Department of Health restaurantscoring guidelines do a fine enough job weeding out blatant violators androdent-infested dumps, but adhering strictly to the rules does not make arestaurant great. I’d really rather dine at a B than an A restaurant if itmeans they’ve sacrificed the grade in order to do things right.
Besides, the system is not exempt from most in that itcan be bought. According to a Per Se waiter’srevelation in NY Magazine:
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Nha Trang Restaurant, New York City

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“Hello, kamusta (how are you)? Long time, no see!” the old waiter at Nha Trang Restaurant on Baxter Street greeted us on entry.

He’s not Filipino but greets all Pinoys this way, and if you chat him up on why he knows how to say masarap (tasty), he will tell you that he lived in a Vietnamese refugee camp in the Philippines for quite a while. We’ve been coming to Nha Trang for over a decade and personal touches like this are hard to ignore.

That’s not to say the food doesn’t deserve credit. Other than Nicky’s, Nha Trang’s pho is among the tastiest we’ve found in the city, and the have perfected the use of half-cooked beef slices that melt in the mouth. Continue reading →

Purple Yam Restaurant: Not Precisely Filipino

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I’ve always wondered why there aren’t any Filipino restaurants in Brooklyn. Are Brooklynites’ palates too refined for the bold flavors of Filipino cuisine?

In years of cooking I’ve seen a lot of wrinkled noses when I say the words “fish sauce,” and have heard many complaints about the strong acid aromas of any good adobo in process. But I always thought it was a matter of real estate prices that there weren’t any accessible places where I could easily scratch a Pinoy food itch.

And so I was very happy to hear that friends had tried and successfully enjoyed meals at Purple Yam in Ditmas Park since they opened. Built by the Manhattan “Filipino fusion” restaurant Cendrillon‘s owners, NYT food critic Sam Sifton was actually pleased when he visited Amy Besa and Romy Dorotan’s new joint a few steps from the Q train in Ditmas Park.

After many friends raved about the new taste, and remembering Romy’s statement in the NYT article that most Pinoy’s don’t consider this their mother’s cooking, we gave it a shot and were pleasantly surprised. Purple Yam is a food experience that stands on its own, especially in an area where the closest competition is a bakery that sells cracked cheesecakes and Spongebob Squarepants cookies.

We began with the okoy, battered and fried vegetable fritters with big pieces of shrimp. It was hot and tasty served with a diluted duck sauce. Continue reading →

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