Italian food in New York City is terrible. Most of all in Little Italy. It’s all aimed at tourists, who are so enraptured with the closed, car-free streets and the outdoor seating that they forget to notice the bland, uninspired food. And then there’s Torrisi Italian Specialties, which was bold and impassioned, playful and polished–an embodiment of New York City itself.
Torrisi’s seven course, $65 prix-fixe menu is a steal and has received nothing but raves, but of course we couldn’t settle for a mere seven courses and went for the twenty-one course, $150 chef’s tasting menu with seven excellent wine pairings for $75.
This “mocktail”, a riff on the classic Americano, was made not with Campari and vermouth but juice and housemade bitters. My favourite part of it was the giant square ice cube. I’m not hard to please.
Torrisi is a bustling deli by day, serving a brined turkey sandwich office workers while away their lunch breaks waiting in line for, and the bar snacks were the perfect interlude to switch the tiny kitchen from that of a casual sandwich shop to one that puts a high Italian spin on the cuisines the people who make up NYC. These one-biters came at us so fast–in pairs or triplets–that I forgot to photograph the clam with celery and spicy oyster on the half shell. The Doughy caraway pretzels were like mustard-flavored gnocchi, the sable cigarette a kind-of-nasty/kind-of-clever reminder of the salmon cone at Per Se. The olive wasn’t an olive at all but a soft quail egg with a pleasant, not overpowering olive flavor; I was a little put off by the inedible accoutrements (though I would totally eat bay leaves if people would stop telling me I can’t) but loved the spoons they were presented on. The rabbit with carrot puree was sweet and herby with a crunchy base, and the caviar, served on a bed of buckwheat, was homey and warm. Not only was the caviar’s serving dish stunning, but we loved being able to decide how deep into the groats we wanted to plunge our knishes; the grain was easily crunched, like a nut. The chicken oyster, a nugget of dark meat on the chicken’s outer thigh, was so flavorful and juicy but really stood up to the cashews in a way I wouldn’t expect from such a tender piece of meat. The snails were sour, chewy, and only slightly less firm than the bacon chunks that accompanied them; it wasn’t my favourite dish of the night in flavor nor texture, but I appreciated the take on clams casino and was excited to try my first snail after all these years of fine dining without having ever been faced with one.
all paired with Lieb Cellars, Pinot Blanc, NV (nonvintage, which means it’s a blend of multiple years), NY
These beets, a nod to the Brighton Beach neighborhood of Brooklyn that’s still so Russian you need a tourguide to help you navigate restaurant menus, were a mix of crisp and tender, fresh and long-cooked. Sour apples and fried onions added to the already bright flavors.
• mackerel in crazy water
I missed this photo, as well, likely dazed by the idea of eating a traditionally very fishy fish alongside the most dreaded of all foods for me: tomato. But this was more like a gazpacho than a fresh salad, and the mackerel–served raw–was so unfishy it could’ve been sturgeon or halibut. The tomatoes, which were preserved, had the flavor of watermelon, and the sea beans added a crisp bite.
Bloomer Creek, Tanzen Dame, 2010, NY
Served at the same time and meant to be shared, the foie gras and tartare are updates of dishes made famous by one of the oldest and most noted steakhouses in NYC, Delmonico’s. The original Lobster Newberg was made with a creamy, buttery, alcoholic sauce; here, the sweet foie is topped with a brandy gelee and served with a salty, meaty, spiced oyster mushroom salad.
The Delmonico’s tuna tartare becomes a steak tartare with crisp, sour cornichon slices and a Béarnaise sauce that I can only dumbly describe as buttery. The presentation wowed me to the point that I was still taking photos of the delicately-carved pickles even as half of them had already been devoured. Spread on the thickest, saltiest, caper-powdered potato chips, it was more finesse than novelty.
But you can bet the novelty of the Demonico’s plates wasn’t wasted on me.
Kalin Cellars, Chardonnay, 2005, CA
This gnocchi was covered in a sauce so creamy and dense with peppercorn flavor, I would’ve paid for the pleasure of licking the pan. The ramps had the texture of green onion but are known for their more intense aroma and what my boyfriend called their “racier” taste. The ramps evidently replace the scallions that were being served on the oft-photographed version of this made with Coach Farms goat cheese; it had a strip of coffee/caramel/tobacco water “leather” on the side with the word “COACH” stamped on it like the label of one of the knockoff designer handbags sold in Chinatown. The more straight presentation of this dish makes me wonder if Torrisi is headed away from whimsical presentations or if they just weren’t in the mood to use marijuana syrup to draw a sheep in a ballerina costume on my plate.
Just plain delicious, no matter what cuisines it’s trying to emulate, this vermicelli with lobster evoked the flavors of Chinatown with soy and scallion. The crunchy breadcrumbs made the lobster seem deep-fried, like sweet and sour pork gone high class.
Arnot Roberts, Rose, 2011, CA
This apparently replaced the much-lauded beef ragu for us and was probably a more interesting if not grandma-reminiscent dish. The chicken liver filling, contained in the most perfectly-cooked raviolo, verged on too iron-flavored at times but was nicely balanced by the sweetness of the tomato sauce. The brown butter with accents of sage added deep flavors ripe for red wine pairings. Food & Wine says that this dish was “named for the famed tenor who backed the epic NYC restaurant Mamma Leone’s ([chefs] Torrisi and Carbone cite Mamma Leone as an inspiration alongside Thomas Keller and Joël Robuchon in a video they made about themselves)”.
Coturri, Carignone, Testa Vineyard, 2009, CA
A young man brought this gleaming dish of tomahawk lamb chop to our table and unannoyedly held it while I photographed it. And then held it over the table of the people beside us when I said he was too close for my lens to focus. But in all fairness, they had been ogling our table all night as they sat there with the regular, ol’ prix-fixe dishes, so they owed me.
The loin and deckle together were not-fatty and fatty, gamey and not-gamey, delicious in their own ways when accompanied by fried mint and peeled grapes. The deckle had a thick glaze and a chewier texture, while the loin was leaner and less adorned. The chop itself was more impressive than the finished dish, but that’s always the way with these things.
Wind Gap, Syrah, 2008, CA
A sour, bitter palate cleanser to prepare us for the sweet, sweet desserts.
We were served two pieces from a large danish cut into fours and kept under a glass dome. It didn’t matter how our slices tasted, because all we could think was that we wanted the other two. It was buttery, with a burst of poppyseed flavor. The onions were sweet, the cheese so thick and creamy. But who was going to eat the other two pieces?! The kitchen? The servers? MORE IMPORTANT DINERS WHO GOT SIX SLICES INSTEAD OF FOUR? No! No, actually, our server returned with the other two slices when he saw us finish the first two. Phew.
Surprisingly creamy for an icy treat, with a strong bite from the ginger. This was unlike any shaved ice, snow cone, or slushie I’ve had.
This tasted like really expensive medicine, and I mean that in the best way. It was so strongly flavored, maraschino cherry ice cream alongside a root beer financier made of creamy mousse covered in a chocolate shell, with mashed pretzels providing the contrasting saltiness. All attempts to suck the cherry soda through the straw were fruitless and embarrassing, but at least it was edible.
Heitz Cellars, Port, NV, CA
People eating the prix-fixe around us were getting a small plate with the old-timey (and incredibly not-crave-worthy) bakery staple, the rainbow cookie, so we couldn’t have been more impressed when we instead were served this giant cake stand of pastries with the chef’s tasting. For each of us, there was an apple donut, a pistachio and lime truffle, a crumb cake, a pine nut macaron, celery cake, a really not-sweet cannoli, a mint chocolate truffle, and seaweed taffy. All of it was impressive. Even the seaweed taffy. They also sent us each home with a little box containing a rainbow cookie, ironically, and you know what? Even it was powerfully flavored and much, much better than any day-old rainbow cookie in any Italian bakery.
Torrisi is playful, gutsy, and aiming to please. The week before we dined here, my boyfriend and I had the chef’s tasting at a three-Michelin-starred restaurant that was supposed to be the best meal of our lives, and eating at Torrisi was a better experience. Where that restaurant was pretentious, Torrisi was humble. Where that restaurant was aloof, Torrisi was friendly, giving us details and stories associated with each dish. Where that restaurant was silent and imposing, Torrisi was filled with cool, jazzy music and couples not looking to out-foodie anyone. The only problem was that, as my boyfriend said, no one bite at Torrisi compared to any one bite at that restaurant. Nothing disappointed, but nothing had us using phrases like “the most” or “the best”, and we have used those words at similarly-priced restaurants. The effort is evident, though. You feel like Torrisi is making the absolute best food it can at this moment, and I have high hopes for its future.
Note: for the seven-course menu, reservations can be made up to a month in advance on the website or by calling (212) 965-0955. Reservations for the chef’s tasting can be made up to a month in advance and must be made by phone Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. I recommend calling right at 9 a.m., and even then, you’ll probably have to dial and redial for fifteen minutes straight to get through.
I still remember the subtle delights from my first trip to Kajitsu back in 2010: the juxtaposition of grilled mochi on raw, flaky layers of lotus root cake, an osechi box full of foods I’d never heard of, let alone tasted. With chef Masato Nishihara’s departure from the restaurant looming, my group of dining pals and I stopped by for a final taste of his food before a new chef (Ryota Ueshima) takes over and Kajitsu moves to Midtown.
The eight-course, $70 Hana tasting:
Thanks to my dining companion cheeryvisage for her excellent memory; many of these are only labeled correctly because of her Flickr set.
When compared to the food at other high-end restaurants in the city, the food at Kajitsu can seem austere: an entire dish will be white or yellow, made up almost entirely of white rice or bamboo. No one flavor ever stands out, and even the tempuraed vegetables are tremendously fresh and light. I know that balance is sort of the point of this kind of food, but it can’t be stressed enough how subtle these dishes are, how you might get caught up in conversation and miss the simple perfection of a salted leaf or the smallest slice of peppercorn.
I love Kajitsu for the seasoned eater and the diner who’s never seen a fiddlehead fern in real life alike. The food is artful and exciting in its simplicity. The boxes filled with four different kinds of unrecognized vegetation dazzle the eye, and the dishes served in covered bowls build anticipation. I didn’t once miss the meat during this tasting and instead delighted in knowing that I wasn’t going to run into a single sinew or bone. With this two-Michelin-starred restaurants in town, vegetarians have it pretty good.
When you look up “banh mi” in the Midtown East MenuPages listings, you find Num Pang, a tiny Cambodian sandwich shop started by two friends that’s distinctly not-banh-mi yet nonetheless satisfies every spicy sandwich desire I have.
The menu is about fifteen sandwiches long and four side dishes deep (plus a bunch of soups and salads that I barely notice the existence of due to their health benefits), and my boyfriend and I haven’t tried anything yet that hasn’t left us wishing for one more sandwich to eat and one more side to hold onto like a little family pet that we bathe and take on a walk from time to time.
Here’s a sampling of one of our many orders:
It begins with the bread from NYC’s Parisi Bakery, which has that perfect crusty exterior yet doesn’t flake away all over your best shirt like a traditional banh mi does. Even when the first bite doesn’t yield any meat, the spicy-sweet chili mayo on the bread is a treat on its own. But the meat–whether it’s the spare ribs or the pork belly or the veal meatballs or the sausage–is always seared on the outside and tender on the inside and made all the more spicy and mouth-watering by the complimentary Sriracha sauce. And if you love a banh mi like I do, you’ll appreciate the familiar cucumber, carrots, and cilantro on every sandwich. Every bite is rich but also bright, familiar yet also distinctly Asian-influenced.
The corn was a complete shock to us, because we were expecting the flavors of Mexican corn-on-the-cob: lime, chili, and cotija cheese. The lime is there, and the chili mayo, but what looks like shredded cheese is actually shredded coconut. Shenanigans! I love cheese, but the sweet with the spicy and the tart is enough goodness to make me change factions.
The fruit salad is whole lychees, slices of pineapple, papaya, and mango, and cubes of young coconut in a lemongrass and mint juice. A few bites of this and a few sips of the blood orange lemonade is the perfect sweet-sour way to counteract the spiciness of the sandwiches. My boyfriend thinks the watermelon juice is better, but don’t listen to him.
I originally planned to give Num Pang 4.5 donuts out of 5 but started to reconsider it once I accidentally saw that both locations get 4 stars when you search for them on Google Maps. I thought through the menu and the meals I’ve had, trying to convince myself of a reason to drop its rating. Is too expensive? No, it’s exactly what I’m used to paying for banh mi. Is it not as flavorful as I expect? No, it’s actually more flavorful than most (if not all) comparable sandwiches. Can I think of anything that would make it better? More meat!, but that’s just me being greedy. I asked my boyfriend for his opinion, and he said, “One word: corn.” And then it became clear that I’m right and Google is wrong. 4.5 donuts it is.
and
21 East 12th Street New York, NY 10003 (map)
If there’s one thing I love about NYC, it’s that for every diehard fitness fanatic waiting impatiently at the gym’s front door at 6 a.m., there’s a fried pizza fanatic who thinks four pizzas for three people might not be enough food. It used to be that you had to go to Park Slope’s Chipshop for a deep-fried slice, but Forcella took the fried pizza from an outer borough novelty to a full-on Manhattan sensation. Of course I was interested from the words deep-fried and pizza, but it was New York magazine’s article about the new Don Antonio by Starita that made me finally put down my Papa John’s and venture to Midtown:
Just when you thought the market for Neapolitan pizza had reached saturation, along comes Kesté’s Roberto Caporuscio and his old mentor Antonio Starita, who’ve teamed up to open Don Antonio in Hell’s Kitchen next Tuesday, February 7. In certain pizza-world circles, this is huge — like Gennaro Lombardi rising from the grave to sling slices with Dom DeMarco. For the uninitiated, Starita is third-generation pizza royalty. Along with Sophia Loren, his family’s Naples pizzeria starred in the Vittorio De Sica film L’Oro di Napoli. The man has served pizza to popes. He has tomato sauce coursing through his veins. In short, there is nothing about dough he doesn’t know. His student, Caporuscio, the U.S. president of the Association of Neapolitan Pizza Makers, is no slouch either.
How could I resist when my friends The Pretender and Lucy invited me out on a whim one night last week? And luckily, Lucy had her camera on hand to take these glorious photos:
Henry ordered these three starters–fried potato with homemade mozzarella and bread crumbs, a rice ball, and a spaghetti cake with baked Italian ham and mozzarella–and seemed pleased but not overwhelmingly excited by them. I really wanted a spaghetti cake of my own but knew I was already going to have a hard time finishing the four pizzas we’d ordered.
The S.T.G. is for guaranteed typical specialty, the pizza by which to judge all other pizzas. Typical as it may have supposedly been, I was pretty impressed. It needed more basil, but the sauce–which seemed a weak tomato-only puree at first glance–was somehow extremely flavorful. The crust was this perfect not-too-burnt-and-crispy, almost-chewy texture, bready enough and airy enough to please everyone.
Despite the similar toppings, the fried pizza was wildly different from the S.T.G. Every bite was noticeably smoky, and well, the crust was something special: crispy on the outside and soft on the inside, like a funnel cake or a French fry. And with that specific French fry/funnel cake soaked-through-with-oil-ness. It’s a magical mix of frying and oven-baking, and it was my favourite of the four.
It’s shaped like a racquet! And the handle is full of cheese! And is a big disappointment!
Overall, this pizza was awesome, and I say that as someone who barely like vegetables on pizza at all, especially when those vegetables are mushrooms (half-blergh!) and tomatoes (double-blergh!). But these vegetables were cooked down so flavorfully and lent a level of heartiness to the pizza that meats don’t. The disappointment was in the handle, which was lightly stuffed with creamy ricotta cheese and should have been the best stuffed breadstick ever but was just sort of okay–not quite flavorful enough and not quite cheesy enough. I need some oregano stuffed into that sucker.
With ricotta, mozzarella, and salami stuffed inside the crust and Italian ham, mushrooms, and basil on top, this is the pizza you order if you want to fill up on just one. We made the mistake of saving it for last and only ate half of it, because each piece feels like two. The spice of the salami contrasted the sweetness of the ham, and the cheese spilling out of the center made it a messy fork-and-knife feast.
For the longest time, the list of restaurants in NYC with three Michelin stars was three long, and there was one I couldn’t visit: Le Bernardin. My boyfriend, god bless him, didn’t want to drop a few hundred on a bunch of fish that he knew I’d only complain about, even after he went to the restaurant with a client and came home unable to stop talking about the things he’d seen. But after proving myself capable of continuing to gulp down guppies even in the face of great adversity recently, he finally relented and invited me to the three-course, $70 lunch.
And just as he suspected, I’m going to complain about it.
The place settings waiting at the table were some of the most beautiful I’ve seen. The white plates were immediately replaced with fresh ones on which to eat our salmon rillettes.
I’m to the point with fish where I could eat raw salmon all day long, but smoked salmon is still fairly unappetizing to me. Still, I took a heaping spoonful of this spread and applied it to my chewy bread hopefully. It tasted just like I expected, which is to say smoked salmon. I was hoping for a tuna-salad-like flavor experience, where I could be distracted from the fish by the celery or the pickles. I’ve seen recipes for this that involve leeks and onions, bay leaves and peppercorns, but this tasted much simpler, like smoked salmon slightly subdued by mayonnaise, slightly perked up with chives. I was a bigger fan of the Parker House roll I chose from the bread basket.
The wines-by-the-glass list wasn’t very extensive, but the one Riesling on hand was sweet enough for the citrus in my appetizer but dry enough to pair well with the beefiness of my entree. Perfect for my needs.
Our other dining companion had this, and I failed to ask her for impressions. It’s highly recommended on all of the review sites, though, so do with that what you will.
In this preparation, octopus was the steak of the sea. It was thick, meaty, and hearty, yet tender, too. The charred suckers were the perfect crispy topping, and the sweetness of the meat was complimented by the savory black bean sauce and pears. My boyfriend said the “major flavor drama” was the charred shellfish against the tart tang of the bean, pear, and ink.
Le Bernardin meant it when they named one of their menu sections “almost raw”. If these were “cooked” at all, it was by the citrus in many of the preparations. Clockwise, there were plain scallops, scallops with olive oil and sea beans, with piquillo peppers, with wasabe and roe, and with yuzu and shiso. It truly was a progression from simple to complex, starting with the purest scallop flavor, moving to the crispy bean and lemony olive oil, then to the sweet pepper, to the spicy, crunchy roe, and ending with the big kick of the yuzu. I certainly prefer the texture of seared scallops, but I couldn’t have asked for better accoutrements.
This was another dish ordered by our friend, and again, we were too busy yakking about other things for me to catch her thoughts on it.
My boyfriend ordered this, and I was shocked to see the pile of truffle slices on top! He said the truffle butter was the star of the dish, and I agree that buttery is the best descriptor for his dish in general, but I’m surprised that big ol’ stack of truffle wasn’t written somewhere on the menu.
I’ll admit that I ordered this a little bit to suck up to my Persian boyfriend and a little bit because I’ve had a hankerin’ for his mom’s cooking lately. This was all the flavors I’ve been craving. The sauce was like a rich beef broth, the cucumbers fresh and sour with a bite. The garlic cloves were sweet and jam-like in texture, spreading smoothly onto the bass with my fork. I loved the crisp skin and the seared edges of the fish and longed for more surface area.
When the server set this in front of our dining partner, she said, “Oh, I ordered the pistachio,” and the server nodded. I think she actually expected to see pistachios somewhere on the plate.
My boyfriend only ordered this for the name, and it looked like the least interesting thing on the menu to me. When he gave me a bite, though, I was ready to trade. The choux pastry had a crunchy sugar top and the flavor of brown butter with a little sourness from the powder. I usually want to eat choux for the filling, but this was all about the shell.
I was concerned that this dessert would be too light and that I’d miss having chocolate, but I couldn’t resist the call of the spicy yuzu and ginger and am so glad I went with my gut instead of my brain. The yuzu parfait was a cold cross between mousse and meringue, supplemented by the thick white yuzu foam. There was a chewy green tea cake under the ice cream and dots of a sweet and sour sticky ginger sauce. I loved the crisp of the rice but thought that the green tea was enough of a savory element that the sesame wasn’t necessary. Otherwise, a flawless dessert.
We were only disappointed that the bottom of this bowl had a little pedestal in it to prop up these warm, chewy pistachio madeleines to linen-parting heights and make it look more full; we thought we’d be there snacking all afternoon.
The reason I don’t think Le Bernardin stands up to the other 3-Michelin-star restaurants in NYC surprisingly has nothing to do with the fish; our fish was cooked perfectly, sauced perfectly, presented perfectly. What was lacking was the rest of the dish; all of the entrees seemed incomplete. Each dish was just fish, and no plate of pickles will convince me otherwise. Dishes at Per Se, for instance, are also composed of a protein, a sauce, and small side items, but the difference is that those sides items are creative, intricate creations like cauliflower panna cotta and spinach pain perdu. On the other hand, I found the service and decor luxurious (finger bowls with lemon between courses and plush banquettes that begged to be lounged upon), and I loved seeing that Chef Eric Ripert was actually working in the kitchen. I’d return to Le Bernardin for exceptional desserts and a perfect piece of fish, but I’d bring a purse full of side dishes from somewhere else along with me.
5 donuts: transcendent experiences
4.5 donuts: extremely awesome meals
4 donuts
3.5 donuts: good eats
3 donuts
2.5 donuts: food I could have made
2 donuts
1 donuts: dinners not fit for the dogs
