Sapori D’Ischia is so out in the middle of nowhere that when my boyfriend and I approached–after getting lost no less than twice–and I said, “I’m not sure this is the right place,” the owner, who happened to be standing outside, said, “Trust me; it’s the right place. There’s nothing else around here.”
You always hear about people who haven’t been to one of the outer boroughs in ten years because they think everything worth seeing is in Manhattan. Well, I actually live in Brooklyn and get annoyed at the prospect of having to leave Manhattan, so if I’m telling you that it’s worth it to trek out to Sapori D’Ischia’s truffle festival, you know it’s something special.
The four-course, $60 prix-fixe menu seems to change weekly, but here’s an idea of what you’ll be served:
I know that everyone’s all, “Truffle oil?! For shame!” (Especially if you’re watching an episode of “Chopped“, where the judges famously chop almost any contestant who dares insult them with truffle oil.) The idea is that truffles are real and expensive and delicate, while truffle oil is synthetic and cheap and kind of knocks you out with how odorous it is. But I like my food to smell like food, so I don’t have a problem with it. I also loved the additional texture of it in this dish, which otherwise would have been much less creamy. All of the flavors were so rich, smoky, and earthy, perfectly-suited for complimenting the truffle shavings.
My good friends over at Wikipedia tell me that Vialone Nano is one of the two best and most expensive varieties of risotto rice. I’m not sure I’m versed enough in risotto to know the difference, but I thought this dish was about as good as it could have been for what it was, which was risotto and truffles. Again, this was heavy on the truffle oil, but I didn’t find it overpowering, and the dish probably would have been bland without it. I wouldn’t have complained about the addition of some sort of meat, but the plain risotto was the perfect vehicle for highlighting the truffle.
When I think of a juicy steak, I picture a piece three inches high and squishy in the center, so I was a little skeptical about this thinly-sliced version, but all of our filets were nice and red in the center. The creamy sauce only made it that much more melt-in-your-mouth, while the red wine sauce cut some of the richness. The potato cake actually tasted very vegetal to me–like it was made of something actually healthy–so I was surprised to re-read the menu and see it was just potato. It was a hearty cross of crunchy and creamy that added to the rustic feel of the dish.
The people at the table next to us were celebrating a birthday, and I loved the sparkler the birthday girl was given. I’m trying to figure out if the guy across from her is whistling or licking ice cream off his fingers.
This dish looks deceptively simple but managed to leave us satisfied, likely due to the richness of the truffle honey drizzled over the gelato. The pear was spicy and tender and not overly sweet, which was perfect for the savoriness of the truffle and mascarpone. This seemed to be everyone’s favourite dish of the night, if the utter silence of our group of six (including newcomer Lucy!) after we dug in is any indication.
I have to rate this meal purely by the quality of the food, because the restaurant is not only way, way out there but also partly a grocery store, so the decor mostly consists of jumbo cans of peeled tomatoes. Considering, though, that my meal was not only delicious but also cost less in its entirety than a single truffle course at any Manhattan restaurant I can think of, I’d say it’s well worth the train ride and having to stare at the canned goods. The truffle festival ends when the truffle supply does, and the menu changes often, so go quickly and frequently.
It’s funny how you can ride by a restaurant on the bus every day and not notice it until its chef is a contestant on a reality TV show. Or sad, maybe. But that was the case with Hearth, which I must have seen at least 365 times but didn’t actually see until Chef Marco Canora performed spectacularly on the Food Network’s Next Iron Chef. Another of the Tom-Colicchio-trained, it’s no surprise that his food seems honest and that his ingredients speak for themselves.
Hearth is casual without being unimpressive. The waitstaff is in t-shirts and visible tattoos, but the exposed brick, polished wood, and candlelight match the mid-priced menu. We tried the seven-course tasting menu, which is full of the fresh, bright ingredients of the season and is one of the more-affordable tastings in town at $76 per person.
Cool and starchy, with a floating topper of slightly-hardened yogurt and pea skin to add some texture. The natural sweetness of the pea, one of my favourite flavors in nature, contrasted the sourness of the yogurt.
It’s all of my favourite ingredients in one bowl! And then a whole lot of tomato, my least-favourite ingredient ever. But I’m an adult, and I ate the skin and an eighth of an inch off of every single one of those tomatoes before making Dr. Boyfriend switch bowls with me. Aside from the tomatoes, which even I will admit were perfectly ripe, this was summer in a bowl and made me sad for the mushy, mealy produce that’s going to be showing up in stores in the coming winter months. It was simple, fresh, acidic from the sherry dressing, hearty thanks to the beans, and crunchy from the celery. Of course I’m more preferential toward land animals, but the use of the tuna felt like a very deliberate choice to keep the salad light.
This items isn’t on the menu, which doesn’t surprise me, since the repetition of the beans in consecutive courses didn’t seem well thought out. Careless or not, I really loved this dish, and I say this as someone who would’ve been absolutely freaked to find edible suction cups on my plate a year ago. I always think that octopus is going to be rubbery and hard, and I always find it tender and just the right amount of chewy. It doesn’t hurt that this is grilled; I’m a sucker for charred flavor, and the grilled taste permeated the very manageable chunks of meat. The radicchio added a pleasant bitterness, and the oregano made everything a little more familiar for a landlubber like me.
Eating good pasta always reminds me that I want to eat more good pasta. The pappardelle at Babbo completely changed my expectations, and although this wasn’t life-altering, it was very nice. The little baskets of pasta were the perfect chewiness, and the ricotta added just the right amount of dry, crumbly texture. The basil-laden tomato sauce was still chunky and bright, so I could’ve really used some heavy meat in place of the eggplant to add a smokiness or some richer flavors. It felt a little too simple to me for a restaurant dish, not one you’d use to impress on your tasting menu.
Not to bring up another food I’m squeamish about, but up until very recently, I didn’t like cucumbers; they’re one of those half-sweet, half-savory foods, like tomatoes, that my tastebuds didn’t respond well to. But in this dish, the cucumbers were the best part! Their brightness matched the briny flavor and the freshness of the roe. This was my first time having freekeh after seeing it in an episode of “Chopped“, and I wasn’t disappointed; it added such a chewy texture and such a familiarity. The salmon made the freekeh less heavy, and the freekeh made the salmon heartier. The scapes in the freekeh reminded me of scallions, and we liked what we believe were pea shoots on top, but I unfortunately missed the mint.
I’ve had a lot of crispy-skinned pork in my life, and the most interesting thing about this pork was that it wasn’t crispy-skinned. Instead, the “skin” tasted like it had been caramelized, and its sweetness was a nice compliment to the cooked onion. The pork was extra-salty, and the housemade bacon was extra-firm–both pluses in my book. The gnudi of Swiss chard was . . . well, it was too healthy for my taste. I did like it, and I did think that the chard was a nice accompaniment to the pork, but I want my gnudi to be cheesy and bad for me!
This was easily the most interesting course of the night, and I’m ashamed to say that, as a hardcore tomato-hater. It’s not my fault, though. The tomatoes were sunk into a syrup so sweet and herbaceous it was like eating a Bloody Mary ice cream float. The saving grace was that there was the perfect amount of syrup in the bowl for me to take in multiple spoonfuls after each bite to mask any raw tomato flavor. With the yogurt sorbet providing a sourness, the dish became the perfect bridge between the savory and sweet courses.
I was a little preoccupied with my raspberry liqueur from the Finger Lakes and the fact that the people next to us were getting extra courses that I was dying to see, but the standout in this dessert was the chewy, sugar-dusted top of the financier. I loved how the lemon verbena ice cream was like lemon for grown-ups: bright and herby and not at all sour.
Hearth is serving solid rustic Italian-inspired food. The weirdest part about my visit is that the dishes I thought would be exceptional were really just fine–the pork, the pasta–while the dishes I thought I’d have to quietly shove into my napkin–the octopus, the tomato and ice cream–turned out to be my favourites. Although I think the individual dishes may be too simple for their price tags, the tasting menu was a great value, and I would certainly return for it.
It’s hard to get into Mario Batali’s Babbo. They don’t do online reservations, and week after week when I called, they would tell me they were full. At one point, my boyfriend and I said, “Screw Batali! We don’t want his relatively cheap ($75) tasting menu with also-cheap ($50) wine pairings if it means being jerked around like this!” But once we finally did get in, we realized why the place is always full and why our persistence was totally worth it.
We sat in the upstairs portion, which has a lovely skylight that made me excited to take photos. The problem was that as the sun set, so did the quality of my photos, so please excuse the varying lightness.
The Traditional Tasting Menu with wine pairings:
duck bresaola, sweet pea sformato “Vespa Bianco”, Bastianich 2007
This was my first sformato, a kind of molded creamy custard. It’s a texture I definitely associate with dessert, so the sweetness of the peas pleased me.
This is the dish I still dream about. It’s hard to even describe what makes homemade pasta so incredibly different and better than boxed pasta–maybe it’s the texture? Fresh pasta is much grittier and more tender. I’ve grown to love fresh pappardelle in particular because it has no rigid shape and can be cut however I please. For me, this is the pasta by which all other pastas are measured.
grilled hanger steak, royal trumpet mushrooms, cipolline agrodolce Aglianico del Vulture, Basilisco 2002
Coach Farms’ (NY) finest goat cheese, fennel honey Franciacorta Brut, Cavalleri NV
This was the point in the meal where my boyfriend started feeling overwhelmed by the tasting menu. Between the many glasses of wine and the richness of the dishes, I thought he was going to wimp out on me. I don’t really understand the idea of finding food too intense, though; I just can’t be sympathetic. And I like anything-flavored honey.
chocolate “al diavolo” Malvasia delle Lipari Passito, Hauner 2007
peach and raspberry budino, honey butter, honey vanilla gelato Brachetto d’Acqui “Le Donne dei Boschi” Ca’ dei Mandorli 2009
fruit tart that strangely wasn’t on the menu
almond biscotti, chocolate baci, almond meringue cookies
I understand that people love Italian food–and I theoretically do, too–but I’ve been disappointed time and time again by boring, bland Italian food in this city. And if you were to ask me my top five restaurants in the city overall, I’m not sure I’d actually put Babbo in that list, but for what it is and the kind of food they do, I think they’re doing it better than anyone in their category.
Finding restaurants that can hold a group as big as my office’s monthly dinner club of co-workers past and present can sometimes be a major challenge, so super-touristy places like Becco are sometimes our only choice. Luckily, super-touristy doesn’t have to mean super-might-as-well-have-gone-to-McDonald’s.
I know the last picture is awful, but that carrot was so crazy soft and delicious that I had to publicly preserve its memory.
My friend Ash ordered the osso bucco, and everyone was amazed as she went to town on it, scooping the marrow out of the bone with a tiny fork first so she could be sure she didn’t fill up on anything else.
But Becco’s main draw is its unlimited pasta special. For a stupidly low price, you get the three house pastas of the day brought to your table in heaping piles until you beg your server to stop. That night, ours were:
(Even with my usual distrust of mushrooms, the ravioli was easily my favourite of the three.)
Now, I have to admit that pasta never exactly blows me out of the water (unless it’s gnocchi). A lot of it is way too bland for me after growing up with a mother who must have used half a gallon of oregano in her spaghetti. But this was really, really good pasta. My boyfriend couldn’t stop talking about it for days, actually. And even the Brooklyn-born Italian in our group didn’t complain.
This dessert was the hugest disappointment of my life, but I don’t think it was Becco’s fault. When I ordered it, I guess I was thinking of streusel or an apple brown betty or something, because I expected apple pie filling with a crumbly brown sugar topping. Instead I got apple pie filling and a flaky crust. NOT THE SAME. Very light and not overly sweet, but these are not the things I look for in a dessert.
Funnily enough, I chastised my boyfriend and the Italian for ordering the zabaglione with seasonal fruit, thinking it was the equivalent to a stupid fruit cup with some whipped cream. But dude, zabaglione is great. The custard was suuuuuuuper-intensely flavorful and much more dense than I would’ve imagined. GET THE ZABAGLIONE. You’re welcome.
I kind of get a kick out of going to places like this from time to time, because they’re so unlike most NYC restaurants. Meaning huge and bright and full of people who actually eat. I definitely recommend Becco for big groups and anyone who wants to feel like he’s at a huge family dinner for a night.
It was just a couple of months ago that my boyfriend found a rudimentary menu for the soon-to-be famous Meatball Shop, and now the place has totally blown up into what you might call a phenomenon. And I love a gimmick as much as the next guy, so a co-worker and I rode the bus from our office in Battery Park up to the Lower East Side recently to give the balls a go.
The restaurant itself is all dark wood and old-timey feel, very small with a storefront entirely made of glass so that it gets plenty of natural light and air. The kitchen takes up the entire back wall and is also open so that you can see your meat being freshly-ground and your balls being freshly-formed.
My whole wheat hero with pork meatballs, spicy meat sauce, and mozzarella probably lost a lot of its freshness on its way back to the office, but that didn’t matter one bit. This wasn’t the biggest meatball parm I’ve had, nor the sauciest, but I’ve never had one made with better ingredients. Even the mixed greens salad with sliced pears and chives was worth talking about.
As usual, a small menu is a better menu when it means the chef can do a few things really well rather than a bunch of things mediocrely, and executive chef Daniel Holzman has meatballs down
Note: Everyone who tried my pork meatballs agreed that they were better than the chicken ones, so you know what to order.
5 donuts: transcendent experiences
4 donuts: extremely awesome meals
3 donuts: good-ass eats
2 donuts: food I could have made
1 donuts: dinners not fit for the dogs
