Last week, I went to John Dory Oyster Bar for a decadent lunch to celebrate with an ex-New Yoker friend, who was in town during the summer break from his Ph. D studies in Iowa.  As an inveterate gourmet, my friend wanted to try oysters at John Dory Oyster Bar, which is also conveniently in the neighborhood.

First, John Dory has a first-rate cocktail list (alas, but expensive at average $14 per cocktail, but perhaps that is normal in Manhattan) that goes very well with the seafood.  I ordered Negroni Sbagliato (Prosecco instead of gin in normal negroni), which was very refreshing for a summer afternoon.  We ordered half-dozen oysters from 3 different regions: Long Island, Washington State and British Columbia.  The oysters from British Columbia were sweet and briny and tasted of ocean.  In fact, all the oysters at John Dory were extremely fresh and high quality. I also liked the accompanying mignonette sauce that had some heat with an addition of jalapeno peppers.

We also ordered a few small plates to augment the oysters: Escarole salad with anchovy dressing ($9.50), roasted pork sandwich with tuna mayonaise ($16), chorizo stuffed squid with tomato ($16), excellent parker house rolls ($4.50) and terrine of halibut with radish salad ($14).  They were all really excellent, and I especially enjoyed the stuffed squid!

John Dory Oyster Bar, 1196 Broadway (@29th Street in the Ace Hotel) New York, NY 10001. The closest subway station is the 28th Street N/R Station. No reservations. Dinner time wait can be long.  We were there at noon when they open for lunch and we got a table right away.

SPQR on Fillmore

Bone Marrow Sformatino

We were expertly guided by our friend L. in our restaurant choices. We met L. for dinner on our first night at SPQR on Filmore Street, which is a Roman style trattoria that had an unusual menu. We started with Bone marrow sformatino, which was totally unexpected and divine and Chopped chicken liver. For our pasta dishes, we had Squid ink scungilli & octopus ‘puttanesca’, Meyer lemon risotto, pea shoots & fried lemon and Beef cheek pyramid , amaranth, lemon & walnuts; the last being the most unctuously good pyramid shaped raviolo/tortellino style pasta.

Hog Island Oyster Bar

Domo in Hayes Valley

Particularly I enjoyed mainly West Coast selection of raw oysters at Hog Island Oyster Company for lunch one day. This restaurant is inside the Ferry Building Marketplace on Embacadero, which is full of gourmet and specialty food shops. You can enjoy an excellent individually brewed coffee at Blue Bottle Coffee in the same building afterward. I also caught up with one of my oldest friend G. and her boyfriend for dinner at Domo Sushi, which had some very interesting inventive sushi rolls.

One of my favorite meals was at Thanh Long, whose justifiably famous specialty is Vietnamese style roasted crab and garlic noodles. I should have known that it was going to be a memorable feast when the waiter came around with plastic bibs for each of us. The monstrous dungeness crab was sweet and buttery. I could not believe that I could finish the whole crab. Another favorite meal was the lunch at the girl & the fig, where we had a very good duck confit (and I have eaten my weight in duck confit in my life) and the best Quiche Lorraine that I have ever had (really!) when we went to Napa and Sonoma for a little wine tasting. We also liked Serpetine in newly gentrifying Dog Patch neighborhood.

We had dinner at Vinegar Hill House in Dumbo after the deinstallation of my exhibition at A.I.R. Gallery.  I was thrilled to find this restaurant last year short after it opened when we were tooling around on our bicycles in the neighborhood.  The decor is archly ramshackle hipster (mismatched tables and chairs, weird cabin like decorations, old ship parts, etc.), the noise level deafening and the wait sometimes very long, but the atmosphere is always relaxed and they also have two of my current restaurant meals in New York: Cast Iron Chicken and Red Wattle Country Chop.  Wait staff here also adds to the ambience of the place, off handedly charming if a bit slow during busy hours.  The garden in the backyard is a great place if you can snag a table early enough.

We always begin our meal there with an excellent cocktail (Rob Roy being Ben’s favorite, although a caveat is that sometimes it takes forever to get your drinks since there is only one bartender and there are often people three deep around the bar waiting for tables) and Shaved Market Salad.  The salad changes seasonally and it is always a very interesting and fresh combination of vegetables and greens.  Our version on Sunday’s dinner was Watermelon radish, sugar snap peas and pea shoots and feta cheese.  The sweet crunch of radish mixed well with salty feta and almost grassy chewy pea shoots.  As a main course, we debated between the chicken and the chop; Cast Iron Chicken is a half chicken roasted in individual cast iron skillet with some shallots and thyme, and it is one of the juiciest, the most flavorful chicken in any restaurants.  In the end, we ordered the chop, a loin charred to crispiness outside and almost bloody rare inside, an unusual combination for pork, but almost addictively rich and clean tasting.  We split the chop between the two of us since it is really way too big for one person.  To round off the meal, we had a side order of homemade pickles (part of the current trend in Brooklyn of making the everyday humble food special by going artisanal), which was good, if somewhat over-priced.  For desert, we had upside down rhubarb tart with ginger vanilla ice cream, which turned out to be more like an upside down cake.  I am not a big fan of desert at Vinegar Hill House, but we enjoyed the flavor combination of rhubarb and ginger.  We pushed our stomachs carrying some of my art works toward the subway entirely satisfied after an exhausting day.

VINEGAR HILL HOUSE, 72 Hudson Ave., Brooklyn, NY,  718.522.1018

We went to see Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson at Public Theater last night despite the miserable weather.  I am going to post a full review of the play soon, but for now, I have to say the musical was one of the most interesting musicals that I have seen in a while.  It was also interesting that there were so many more young people in the audience compared to your usual off-Broadway shows proving that you can draw younger people into the theater if the show appeals to them.  The show lasts 90 minutes without intermission, so we were out of the theater by 8:45 (on Tuesdays, the show starts at 7).

As usual, our preferred eatery around Public Theater neighborhood, Ippudo was packed (1 hour – 1 1/2 hour wait on a rainy Tuesday night!!).  As usual, we headed to our alternate favorite restaurant, Sobaya on 9th Street.  Ben had Nabeyaki Udon ($18, perfect for rainy cold night), and I had Sake Oyakodon ($16 and comes with a small dish of pickles and a small bowl of hot soup (very smoky) with inoki and shitake mushroom).  Nabeyaki Udon was topped with a barely cooked egg and some tempura.  The noodle was chewy and al dente (as how it should be!), and the broth exemplary: smoky, briny and clean.  I love the name oyakodon, literally meaning mother-daughter don.  (Don just means any rice dish in a bowl that is topped with savory things, usually protein).  It can be many things, but in this case it was the salmon and salmon roe sashimi combo.  The rice was still slightly warm, and topped with slivers of nori and very thinly sliced salmon fanned out on top.  On top of this were some thicker pieces of salmon on a shishio leaf and a small mound of salmon roe.  The fish was velvety and very fresh, and I appreciated the contrasting texture provided by differently sliced salmon (very thoughtful).  Salmon roe was not too salty (usually an indication of cheaper specimen), and each bite a burst of the taste of pure sea.  Also important was the quality of the rice: properly cooked and seasoned.  I can usually judge the quality of a Japanese restaurant by the quality of their rice and tea, and Sobaya did not disappoint.

Sobaya, 229 E. 9th Street, NYC, tel. 212-533-6966

Pennoni alla cabonara

Taylor and I had a lunch at Maialino, Danny Meyer’s newest restaurant at Gramercy Park Hotel for Taylor’s birthday.  As usual for Danny Meyer’s restaurants, the service was impeccable (knowledgeable, prompt, warm and no attitudes).  He really knows how to train the staff. The restaurant is supposed to be a Roman trattoria, and accordingly the room is rustic (blue checkered table cloth and lots dark woods) yet modern (white table cloth on top of blue table cloth). The Sunday afternoon menu is a brunch menu, so the menu was mostly egg dishes and sandwiches and limited number of pasta dishes.  We ordered Panella alla Gricia (a small roll with guanciale and pecornio) as a starter, and they were perfect little morsels of savory warm bread.  As befitting to its name (meaning little piggy in Italian), Maialino’s menu is heavy on pork products.  I ordered Pennoni alla carbornara (with guanciale instead of pancetta), and the sauce was an exemplary carbonara, but I did not care for pennoni (relative of penne) as much as perhaps homemade tagliatelle.  Taylor had Raviolo al uovo, and I would order that dish again any time.  It was one big raviolo filled with egg yolk, potato, ricotta cheese and herbs with sage butter sauce.  When you cut the raviolo, the egg yolk bursts and mixes with butter and cheese and potato, and it is heavenly.  We finished the meal with a Torta della nonna (in this case, lemon custard tart with pine nuts) and Tartufo with caramelized apple.  They were both lovely even though Tartufo was more like panna cotta than ice cream.  Happy birthday, Taylor.

Manju from Sobaya

Neither Japanese nor Koreans are known for deserts, and I would always go for a killer chocolate cake than one of the rice cake confections, but sometimes chewy manju is just the thing, like after the other night after a satisfying bowl of udon at Sobaya. Of course, we wanted to eat at Ippudo just like all the other ramen crazied New Yorkers, but as usual, the wait for the table was more than an hour. Luckily for us, the nearby Sobaya is always calm and serene, we can always have a bowl of authentic udon or soba.  Long live the noodles!

Manju (饅頭?) is a popular traditional Japanese confection, related to better known mochi. There are many varieties of manju, but most have an outside made from flour, rice powder and buckwheat and a filling of bean paste, made from boiled azuki beans and sugar. They are boiled together again and kneaded. According to Wikipedia, there are several varieties of bean paste used for manju, including koshian, tsubuan, and tsubushian.

Tino Seghal at Guggenheim

The spring weather is finally here in NYC if not spring itself.  I have been holed up in my studio getting ready for my solo show at A.I.R. Gallery next month (hence neglecting this blog far too long…and more on that later).  On Sunday, finally taking advantage of the weather I went out for a brunch in LIC and visited Tino Seghal show at Guggenheim.  For the conceptual artist Seghal, who only uses non-exhaustive resources (i.e. humans) for his art, Guggenheim emptied everything from its famous rotunda except “actors” who would engage the museum goers and moving sculptural piece called “Kiss” in the lobby.  The effect was disturbing and engaging at the same time.  Very crowded, the rotunda somewhat resembled a shopping mall on a busy weekend, but trying to discern “actors” from regular museum goers made an interesting guessing game.  But I quickly learned to distinguish them by incongruity of their companion (artsy, hipsterish young guy with two middle aged women, for example) and their enthusiasm.

Tino Seghal, "Kiss"

Apple Millefeuille at the Wright

More importantly for this blog, we went to the Wright, the new fine dining restaurant at the Guggenheim, the hyper-designed white space (with the colorful help from Liam Gillick), which tries a little too hard to be a destination.  But it was blissfully uncrowded (probably due to the stiff prices). Ben and I shared lovely glasses of white wine and a pretty but random cheese plate (not worth $18 for 3 tiny slivers of okay cheese with no DOC!).  We also ordered a desert, which was advertised as Apple Millefeuille with clove ice cream and chantilly cream.  It turned out to be a deconstructed millefeuille, which was fine but another example of trying a little too hard. Despite my snarky comments , it’s nice to have some place not so snooty but also not a deli to rest weary feet in the desert that is UES after a hard day of museum going.

Vegetable Soup

Okay, so it was Ben’s birthday yesterday, and we went to Daniel for a 3 course dinner to die for. For appetizers, he had mosaic of capon, foie gras, celery root with pickled daikon, mâche and pear confit. I had Maine peekytoe crab salad with celery, walnut oil and Granny Smith sauce. For main, him: Pan seared Millbrook venison loin with barley ragoût, Okinawan sweet potato, roasted foie gras and pickled quince. Me: Roasted squab breast with turnips and clementines and crispy legs, Swiss chard and Kaffir lime-carrot coulis. Dessert, honey crisp apple confit and warm Guanaja chocolate coulant. Everything was super refined and textured and every bite was some explosions of new taste sensations. And of course there were pre- and post-meal extras like amuse-bouche of sweet potatoes and mini Madeleines and petits fours, and glasses of wine. Service was amazingly efficient and friendly, everyone trying to make sure that you have a good time, etc, etc.

Of course, we enjoyed it immensely until I got sick right in the restaurant. My cursed stomach was overwhelmed by too much richness and refinement and decided to rebel. So up came everything in the hushed plush restroom stall. I thanked a restroom deity for the completely sealed private stall. In the end, I paid for it for upset stomach all day today with no eating. I guess that you always pay for your sins (gluttony is one of them, right?) By dinner time, I was hungry, but craving something hot and soothing. Rummaging the vegetable crisper drawers, I took out everything I had: zucchinis, carrots, celery, parsley, thyme, quarter of a red cabbage, radicchio, fennel, Swiss chard stalks (left over from the torte)…Hmm, vegetable soup, obviously was the answer.  So I took out a big pot (biggest one I got), and here’s the recipe.  Additional ingredients needed: 28 oz. can of whole or diced tomato, tomato paste, and a can of beans of your choice. And staples like onion, garlic, salt and pepper.

• Chop 1 head of onion and 5 garlic cloves.  Brown them in olive oil and add a heaping spoonful of tomato paste and continue to cook it until everything is evenly coated with tomato paste.
• Put about 1/4 of all the chopped vegetables that are going to be used in the pot and continue sautéing. Season with salt and pepper. I put some vegetables early on to increase the soup flavor and some later for crispier texture.
• Make bouquet garnis of fennel stalks, Swiss chard stalks, parsley, thyme, bay leaves. Add to the pot.
• Add the can of chopped tomato or whole tomato chopped by you.
• Add my secret ingredient: parmesan cheese rinds. I save the rinds left at the end of grating cheese in the freezer and add little pieces when I make soup.  Greatly increases complexity of the broth.
• Put water to cover slightly more than half the pot.  Bring it to boil, then simmer for 10-15 minutes to develop flavor.
• Add the rest of the vegetables (I like half inch cubes in my soup) and a can of garbanzo beans (or cannelloni beans or your favorite any beans, but rinse and drain beforehand).
• Simmer until all the veggies are cooked.  Add more salt and pepper.

It is nice to mince some fresh parsley and fennel fronds and add them to the soup bowl as a finishing touch.  Ben likes his with a little bit of grated parmesan cheese and toasted cheesy bread.  The broth really settled my stomach so I can eat again!